from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] banned user Vera Cruz is making edits again - action required

body:
The twice-banned troublemaker Vera Cruz is making edits again. Would someone with the appropriate skills and permissions
mind explaining how this is possible, and what action can be taken about it please?

We all know that it's possible for a banned user to use a different IP to make edits anyway (by visiting an Internet cafe, for
example), but the inconvenience is obviously going to slow them down a bit. Pending any possible further technical action to
enforce the ban - and enforce it we must, else there is no point whatever in having a ban in the first place - I suggest that all list
members revert any new edits made by the banned member *regardless of content*.

The only alternative is to admit that we lack the power to enforce any policy, and that does not bear thinking about.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] banned user Vera Cruz is making edits again - action required (resent with proper wordwrap)

body:
Sorry about that - those long lines are difficult for many people to
read, so here is my message again in more presentable form.

The twice-banned troublemaker Vera Cruz is making edits again. Would
someone with the appropriate skills and permissions ind explaining how
this is possible, and what action can be taken about it please?

We all know that it's possible for a banned user to use a different IP
to make edits anyway (by visiting an Internet cafe, for example), but
the inconvenience is obviously going to slow them down a bit. Pending
any possible further technical action to enforce the ban - and enforce
it we must, else there is no point whatever in having a ban in the
first place - I suggest that all list members revert any new edits made
by the banned member *regardless of content*.

The only alternative is to admit that we lack the power to enforce any
policy, and that does not bear thinking about.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] popularity of Eo Wikipedia article on Sweden

body:
On 02-02-2003, Chuck Smith wrote thusly :
> I'm always suprised when I go to the plej vizitataj
> pagxoj (most visited pages) in the Esperanto Wikipedia
> and I see:
>
> 1. Cxefpagxo (19094-foje)
> 2. Svedio (3181-foje)
> 3. Sxekspiro (707-foje)
> 4. Esperanto-muziko (664-foje)
> 5. Germanio (604-foje)
>
> Having Shakespeare, Esperanto music and Germany don't
> surprise me, but does anyone have a clue why the
> article on Sweden is so popular?!  This has been
> bugging me for a while now...  :-)
>
> http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciala:Popularpages
>
> Mi cxiam surprizigxas kiam mi vizitas la plej
> vizitatajn pagxojn en la Vikipedio kaj vidas (la
> liston supre).  Sxekspiro, Esperanto-muziko kaj
> Germanio ne surprizas min, sed cxu iu scias kial la
> artikolo pri Svedio estas tiom populara?!  Cxi tio
> "gxenis" min dum iom da tempo nun...  :-)

Hi,

We, at the Polish Wikipedia, were told by Tomasz Wegrzanowski,
that it is because of Lars' script continously trying to estimate
loading times of certain pages. Surely Sweden, his homeland, is
his favourite.

I wonder that we (intl Wikipedias) still have the access counter
running, while at the English WP it is disabled.

Regards,
Kpjas.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Anonymous talk pages

body:
Well, it looks like they don't work if there's more than one anonymous
user on the wiki. :)

The user_newtalk table has a unique key on user_id, and all entries for
anonymous users are keyed with user_id = 0. Once one gets in, no more
anonymous users can be added.

I've changed it to a regular (non-unique) key, it seems to work now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: julien tayon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
Le Sun, 2 Feb 2003 02:24:18 -0800 (PST),
inspir? Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> ?crivait la plume alerte :
> Right Aoineko.
> Calling someone "Philippe Kampf" is NO JOKE.
> Especially after all the words you have used to depict
> him.
> Or it means we have a very different definition of
> what a joke is. Then we should try an article on
> jokes, that might be interesting to give examples
It was no joke, he made a mistake by getting in the flame war, so did I.
I just recognize I still make mistakes too.

P.'s talks are NO JOKE either.

>
> > > There is nothing to justify the insults you use
> >
> > There is nothing to justify incitement to racism
Yes, arguments ad hominem do not serve your opinion. Sorry, Aoineko I
cannot support you on this even though I fully agree with you. It
decreases your credibility : you were clearly fooled by a provocator.
Next time be more careful, you erased P.'s own unforgivable behaviour.
"Defending a cause with bad arguments is the best way to screw it up"
Nietzche (approx)

>
> There is nothing to justify insulting people and
> calling them bad names. It only leads to exasparation,
> suffering and escalation of violence. We are lucky
> Philippe is not replying to your insults with further
> insults. What would you do then ? Would you consider
> using even nastier insults, or calling the cops ?
That's a luck in our bad luck he did not reply. And, yes I could
consider calling cops if there are serious grounds, even if I get blamed
for this. No one is supposed to ignore the law.

>
> But apart from legal matters, for which I don't care
> much, don't do to others what you would not want
> others to do with you. At least that is what the Bible
> taught us. I believe that's a valid suggestion.
::demonstration of how this could lead to a flamefest,
::and that we shoud stay neutral Anthere
I am an atheist thanks God, this does not apply to me then :)
::end of demonstration don't catch the flame pliz!

You're right, I have thought about the law point of view thanks to all
of you, it is one point to take into account but not pertinent in WP
spirit : I therefore propose that we respect epistemological principles
such as considering Ockham (who was Franciscan Anthere) razor for
instance as a good criterion for accepting (or rejecting) a theory. We
may have to define our epistemological principles then, shouldn't we ?

>
> And a Wikip_dia where grown-up throw such words to
> each others faces is definitly not a place I would
> recommand to anybody, if only my kids. So please
> Aoineko, for the sake of peace, give up the insults.
On one hand, insults are unforgiveable, on the other hand Aoineko is
right : there are fights some days and P's behaviour is unforgivable
too, Anthere.  I do rather face conflicts, than ignore them.

Friendly yours,

--
Julien Tayon
http://www.tayon.net/			       http://libroscope.org/
Si la v?rit? est une femme, essayons de la s?duire avant de la saisir.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
julien tayon wrote:

>Le Fri, 31 Jan 2003 11:22:43 -0800,
>inspir? Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> ?crivait la plume alerte :
>....
>
>>Why shouldn't they be?  If these phenomena exist, they need to be
>>described fairly.  That doesn't mean agreeing with them.  A racist
>>article and an article about racism are two different things.
>>
>This is easy :
>racism means there is a difference between race.
>
Not at all, and there are differences between races, at least at the DNA
level, but the racial markers in a DNA analysis tend to be weaker than
those which distinguish two individuals of the same race.  It comes down
to how important those differences are.

Le petit Robert gives the following for racism "Th?orie de la hi?rarchie
des races, qui conclut ? la n?cessit? de pr?server la race dite
sup?rieure de tout croisement, et ? le droit de dominer les autres."
 This is very different from simply saying that races exist

>If in the article we
>show there is no such things as human races, how can you use a term such
>anti-caucasian racism without implying first there are different races,
>and as a consequence that regarding the race that are concerned the
>racism is different !!!
>
Evidently, the people who say that there is anti-caucasian racism don't
agree that there is no such thing as race.

>If racism are different regarding the ?race? you
>can compare them and say : oh anti-negro racism is worse than
>anti-caucasian racism or else.
>
Reverse discrimination is an unfortunate by-product of affirmative
action.  Without a belief that races exist there would be no affirmative
action programmes either.

Eclecticology


from_name: Zoe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Limited client-side caching

body:
I was having a problem with new content not being updated when I backspace back to a previous page last night.  I don't know if it's still happening, I'll see soon.
And I just wanted to let Brion know that I'm not hitting Refresh while the User contributions page is being accesed, it's only once I've gotten the "Page cannot be displayed" page.
I'm using IE 6.0.
Zoe
 Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:On Sunday 02 February 2003 12:56 am, Brion Vibber wrote:
> The browser still must check with the server to see if the page has
> changed, but if it hasn't the browser's cached version can be shown,
> saving a lot of database sorting, wikitext parsing, link checking, and
> bandwidth. If it has changed, you get the new version.

Everything is much faster now and that is great! But one minor annoyance is
that (at least with Konqueror 3.0.3) the New Messages message doesn't seem to
trigger the 'changed page' flag so Konqi dutifully displays the cached
version of a page instead of updating the page to display the new dynamic
content. No biggie though.

BTW, would it be possible to have the top header area be a different HTML
frame so that each frame can be dealt with separately? Then the content of
the page could be cached /server side/ after it is requested by an anon (or a
user with default settings) and served-up for anons and users with default
settings until a change is made to the page. Then the next anon/default user
accessing the page causes all the queries that are needed to render the new
page and then that page version is cached and made available to the next
anon/default user to view... The only thing that would be dynamic for anons
and default users would be the top frame (since it displays their IP/user
name and the 'new messages' link - but that could be cached client side so
long as the display of 'new messages' and changes in login status tells the
browser that that frame has changed). Just some thoughts - do with them as
you see fit.

--mav

WikiKarma
This was a bug report
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
Anthere wrote:

>>The opposite problem is words that have fallen out
>>of use, that only
>>need to be explained to help people understand
>>really old texts, such
>>as Phlogiston.
>>
>
>Hummmmm.....I don't know that word. It is not in my
>dic. Maybe it doesnot exist...anyway, it may belong to
>wiktionary more than wikipedia maybe ?
>
>Seriously, phlog and phlox means flame. I would
>guess...that's an old type of lighter...or a cannon
>filled with oil-enflammed tissue used in middle age
>wars...
>
"Phlogiston" is from the 18th century, and you are right about its
connection with "flame".  It was a substance that was theorized to exist
in every combustible thing, and which would be released when it was
burned.  The closest modern concept might be carbon dioxide.  There are
a lot of words like that which represent dead ends in old science.

Eclecticology


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
At 11:18 PM 02/02/03 +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
>Some people on the German wikipedia want to get rid of the amazon.de link
>on the ISBN page, because of the "one-click" patent thing. I told them it
>would be not-NPOV to do so. Now they want to make some two-level ISBN
>page, with some "all bookstores" and "good bookstores" groups. I'm not
>sure what exactly they imagine, but it would require a software change.
>
>Is there a policy on that? Should we exclude bookstores (the largest one,
>actually) from the list because some (many?) wikipedians don't like them?
>Or should we leave the choice where to order to the user? Jimbo?

How about making the bookstore used by ISBN links configurable in user
preferences? Simpler, or harder?


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page counters

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> However, the counters are so limited that it's not clear just how
> useful
> they are -- they don't distinguish been old and recent traffic; they
> don't distinguish between one person loading a page over and over and
> ten different people looking at it; they don't distinguish googlebot
> from a human.

I am in favor of getting rid of them, at least in their current form.
Meaningless numbers are a lot worse than no numbers, especially if
people are not aware of the extent of their meaninglessness.

Axel

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from_name: Pieter Suurmond

subject: [Wikitech-l] ReRe: Anthere

body:
Hi Anthere,

I very much appreciate these 'personal essays'.
They should be given a proper place (don't remove!).
They should however be separated from 'development'.

Software-development and maintainance is a very
serious business, please don't call it 'hacking'
any longer because Wikipedia is reaching adulthood. :-)
(Grown-up software-developers don't call themselves
 'hackers': It's all about thinking and mathematics!)

Please keep the 'personal essays', but not mixed
with serious development stuff.

Thanks,
Pieter Suurmond

Anthere wrote:
>
> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > > I agree with Anthere and strongly disagree with
> > eliminating personal essays
> > > from meta. If POV material isn't allowed on meta
> > then where should it go?
> > Um .. how about just getting rid of it? Why is it
> > within Wikipedia's
> > mission to somehow provide storage space for
> > personal essays? We're an
> > encyclopedia, not a hosting provider.
> >
> > Taku is correct in that this only makes Meta hard to
> > use, especially for
> > other people who want to help working on the
> > Wikipedia software. While it
> > is possible to better organize meta, the Recent
> > Changes list is cluttered
> > by this stuff. There are literally hundreds of
> > entries like this:
> >
> > ...
> > # diff) (hist) . . MN Meta-symbiosis; 15:25 . .
> > Saprtacus
> > # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:43 . .
> > Saprtacus
> > # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:39 . .
> > Saprtacus
> > # (diff) (hist) . . M User:Saprtacus; 15:38 . .
> > Saprtacus
> > # (diff) (hist) . . MN Meta-etiology; 15:33 . .
> > Saprtacus
> > # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:31 . .
> > Saprtacus
> > ...
> >
> > Now try to find the critical "How Wikipedia can be
> > really, really fast"
> > development proposal hidden deep within this
> > idiosyncratic nonsense.
>
> Meta is not only about software development, so don't
> try to restrict his use for that matter.
>
> Besides, you'll have to define what a "personal" essay
> is. So not only would we need a consensus for removal
> of pages from the meta, but we'll need a consensus
> about what a personal essay is, and we'll need to
> decide whether each and other page a personal essay
> is.
>
> All that to make a couple of articles more visible
> (some on software development) or rather some less
> visible (those you think are trashing meta).
>
> A simpler way could be to implement a little something
> which would allow a user to hide changes made by
> another given user.
>
> This was asked on the french wiki btw (not by me). I
> think it would for example make sense to hide all the
> automatic generation of bots (after it is checked
> these are correct). That option sounds to me feasible,
> and more desirable than just arbitrarily removing
> other people stuff and upsetting them.
>
> (oh crumbs, another feature to reject...)
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are
evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions*
of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of
print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right
now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used
books.

If versions of a book are being published by different parties, as is
true for many important books that are in the public domain, then
ISBN's are furthermore inherently POV, since they pick out a single
publisher.

No reference work, encyclopedia, library catalog, bibliography, article
or book ever refers to books by ISBN number. Because they are not book
identifiers. Given properly formatted author and title, our software
could and should query bookstores and libary catalogs.

I think I said it before: meaningless numbers are worse than no
numbers.

Axel

WikiKarma: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_number

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re:  "View user page" edit links on anon talk pages

body:
> Meta is not only about software development, so don't
> try to restrict his use for that matter.

I did not. But I don't think it's about personal essays either.

> Besides, you'll have to define what a "personal" essay
> is.

That's not so hard to do - anything outside the scope of Wikipedia's /
meta's defined mission is, by definition, personal stuff. I still think
that it should be deleted, but because people will cry "censorship" if it
is, the creation of a Crap:, excuse me, Scratch: namespace might satisfy
those who need Meta for mental masturbation, while it still allows us to
filter the RC accordingly. (If you think I'm harsh here, read the stuff
that Saprtacus puts on meta.)

I would prefer it if Jimbo would just state categorically that Wikipedia
is not a hosting provider, and give us authority to clean it up according
to the criteria I have outlined in:
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-January/008747.html

But if Jimbo wants meta to be our general wiki for everything, then we
should at least be able to filter that defined subset.

> This was asked on the french wiki btw (not by me). I
> think it would for example make sense to hide all the
> automatic generation of bots (after it is checked
> these are correct).

We already have that feature. See Wikipedia:Bots. Any registered bot is
hidden by default from RC. Currently, Brion is our bot-registrar.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] ReRe: Anthere

body:
> They should be given a proper place (don't remove!).
> They should however be separated from 'development'.

> Software-development and maintainance is a very
> serious business, please don't call it 'hacking'
> any longer because Wikipedia is reaching adulthood. :-)
> (Grown-up software-developers don't call themselves
>  'hackers': It's all about thinking and mathematics!)

Insulting nonsense. There are plenty of "grown-up" software developers who
call themselves hackers. Ask the people at

        http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers

or the folks working on the Linux kernel:

        http://www.kernelhacking.org/

for example. I wouldn't say that these people are not capable of thinking
or do not understand mathematics.

Wikipedia is an open source project, and in the open source community, the
term "hacker" has a much different tradition from other development
groups. It is a perfectly appropriate term for the development process,
unless you see open source itself as "unprofessional" and "not for grown-
ups" (in which case you should don your asbestos suit..)

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Vera Cruz is up to her old bad habits already

body:
Yep - she's marking EVERYTHING as a "minor change" again. The edit war
lunacies can't be far away. Please, can't anyone DO SOMETHING?

She is supposed to be banned. Twice over. Is "banning" just a word that
means "go away for a few days"?


subject: [WikiEN-l] English WIkipedia in read-only for maintenance

body:
The English-language Wikipedia is currently in read-only mode while the
old revisions table is munged into a more friendly, less prone to delays
when loading oft-edited pages, state. It should be through in a couple
of hours (it's a DARN big table!); sorry for the wait.

In the meantime, explore meta.wikipedia.org, wiktionary.org, or dabble
in another language...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] English WIkipedia in read-only for maintenance

body:
The English-language Wikipedia is currently in read-only mode while the
old revisions table is munged into a more friendly, less prone to delays
when loading oft-edited pages, state. It should be through in a couple
of hours (it's a DARN big table!); sorry for the wait.

In the meantime, explore meta.wikipedia.org, wiktionary.org, or dabble
in another language...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] the word "hacking".

body:
I apologize when I insulted people here.
Nevertheless, I would prefer a more neutral,
term. The word 'hacker' might scare people
and it doesn't sound very 'inviting' to me.

    Specification and clear documentation is
    much more important than implementation!

I personally hate maintaining software, keep adding
features forever, updating, debugging, etc.
I love 'design'.

Well, sorry for bothering you all. Thanks for
correcting me and giving me stuff to read about
'hacking', Erik.

Don't know in which way I can contribute to
Wikipedia-software-development for I almost don't
know anything about databases and database-locking
(which seems to give rise to performance-problems).

Sorry for crying out nonsense here; thank you for always
responding; but most of all thanks for making Wikipedia
at all possible, in that regard you're really doing a
great job!

Pieter Suurmond

Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> > They should be given a proper place (don't remove!).
> > They should however be separated from 'development'.
>
> > Software-development and maintainance is a very
> > serious business, please don't call it 'hacking'
> > any longer because Wikipedia is reaching adulthood. :-)
> > (Grown-up software-developers don't call themselves
> >  'hackers': It's all about thinking and mathematics!)
>
> Insulting nonsense. There are plenty of "grown-up" software developers who
> call themselves hackers. Ask the people at
>
>         http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
>
> or the folks working on the Linux kernel:
>
>         http://www.kernelhacking.org/
>
> for example. I wouldn't say that these people are not capable of thinking
> or do not understand mathematics.
>
> Wikipedia is an open source project, and in the open source community, the
> term "hacker" has a much different tradition from other development
> groups. It is a perfectly appropriate term for the development process,
> unless you see open source itself as "unprofessional" and "not for grown-
> ups" (in which case you should don your asbestos suit..)
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE:  partisan wrangling on wikipedia

body:
I'm on the verge of following Tom's lead.  What's the point of trying to even try, when people like Lir/Vera are allowed back without warning and continue to slash their way through the 'pedia with no one even bothering to let us know that they were responsible for allowing them back in, and what their rationale was.
Zoe
 Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com> wrote:|From: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com
|Cc:
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 22:18:58 -0800
|
|mav writes:
|>No! You are reading too much into my words. You never said that it is
|>possible for us to keep from bickering and wrangling so my above
|statement
|>was not directed at you but at Wikipedia skeptics in general who /do/
|say
|>exactly that (and then fault us for not accomplishing this artificial
|ideal).
|
|Well, my point was that it seems wikipedia could be more collegial.
|Some conflict is to be expected, yes, but I rather suspect some people
|look forward to it when it comes. Some people live for it, some
|merely tolerate it, some people are bothered by it and avoid it. I'm
|formerly of class 1 (horrible arrogant troll I was 5 years ago),
|recently of class 2, moving towards class 3. I guess this is my
|problem, not everyone else's, except I wonder how many people really
|_enjoy_ acrimony--fewer than 12 on the 'pedia, I imagine, probably
|fewer than six, and I wonder how many of the other several hundred
|active contributors truly are put off by it. Those kind of people
|tend to be quieter about it until they've had enough, and then they
|leave, with or without explanation. I think Julie was one of those
|people; and losing her was a considerable loss.

I don't think I'm a skeptic, I believe in NPOV, and I believe it can
be achieved, but I'm worn out. I am going to join class 3 and avoid
all conflict. A few pointed questions and an errant indentation of a
talk page comment have earned me a bitter enemy, neither a nice
person, nor an interesting one. Asking, and then trying to explain,
what was new about [[new imperialism]] led to weeks of fussing and
fighting about a topic that was peripheral to me. I helped, but
wouldn't an article on ''[[Bleak House]]'' or ''[[The Way We Live
Now]]'' have been a better expenditure of my time?

I just don't have any interest in struggling with anyone anymore. A
few tussles here and there (and yes, wisecracks and smarty-pants
remarks) were fun, but from now on when people have no commitment to
anything but conflict, they're going to have to conflict with someone
else. There aren't many of them. I hope they lose, but I'm out of
bullets.

I'm going to concentrate on novelists and pop music and jazz and
language and and copy editing and other odds and ends where I have
some scraps of knowledge and just let the article on [[Richard
Wagner]] go to hell without my protest and [[remote viewing]] can
claim that "viewers" have seen Pontius Pilate's signature on Jesus's
death warrant and I won't say a word.

By saying that I am going to join class 3 and avoid all conflict, I am
saying that I am surrendering the field to the anti-NPOV forces. I
don't know that I have distinguished myself in this area, but I have
tried. I'm not going to try any more. In the meantime, if people
want to write blatant and stupid articles, I hope someone else will
stop them.

I'll be off bolding alternate forms of article titles, putting song
titles in quotes and album titles in italics and writing little
articles about Trollope and Dickens and Pinetop Perkins, sincerely
hoping that none of the troubling people will bother to track me down
there. But each time they do track me down, I'm dropping out of the
topic. And, if I drop out of enough topics, if even [[punctuation]]
and [[English plurals]] start drawing the energy vampires, then I
guess I'll just be gone for good.

I'll ask my questions where they have a chance of being answered
civilly. The new person writing articles about [[rodeo]] took my
skeptical but honest questions about [[bareback bronc]], [[saddle
bronc]] and [[bull riding]] in hand and just plain answered them,
never bothering to accuse me of being a PETA member or a disgruntled
cowboy failure.

Someone just popped in to [[Talk:Mumia Abu Jamal]] to compliment us on
the achievement of NPOV. We worked on that one back in August. It
seems decades ago. I just don't think it would have happened that way
now and I'm fearful of even mentioning it, but since I am taking it
off my watchlist, maybe I won't hear of any bad things happening to
it.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

PS - I just remembered I still have a little backlog on the [[Bombing
of Dresden in World War II]] and [[David Irving]] that I promised to
get off my chest, but even there, one peep of protest and I'm out.
And then, no more like it. See you in [[knot]]s.

|
|best wishes, I will see you all (except the lurkers) ;-) in a few weeks.
|
|kq
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Anonymous talk pages

body:
> Well, it looks like they don't work if there's more than one anonymous
> user on the wiki. :)

> The user_newtalk table has a unique key on user_id, and all entries for
> anonymous users are keyed with user_id = 0. Once one gets in, no more
> anonymous users can be added.

Oops, sorry about that, and thanks for the fix. There's another problem
with the IP check (it can only go by the page title, and currently doesn't
regex-check that), I'll fix that.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] English WIkipedia in read-only for maintenance

body:
On dim, 2003-02-02 at 18:42, Brion Vibber wrote:
> The English-language Wikipedia is currently in read-only mode while the
> old revisions table is munged into a more friendly, less prone to delays
> when loading oft-edited pages, state. It should be through in a couple
> of hours (it's a DARN big table!); sorry for the wait.

We are, by the way, back online.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On dim, 2003-02-02 at 18:42, Brion Vibber wrote:
> The English-language Wikipedia is currently in read-only mode while the
> old revisions table is munged into a more friendly, less prone to delays
> when loading oft-edited pages, state. It should be through in a couple
> of hours (it's a DARN big table!); sorry for the wait.

We are, by the way, back online.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
Some people on the German wikipedia want to get rid of the amazon.de
link on the ISBN page, because of the "one-click" patent thing. I told
them it would be not-NPOV to do so. Now they want to make some two-level
ISBN page, with some "all bookstores" and "good bookstores" groups. I'm
not sure what exactly they imagine, but it would require a software change.

Is there a policy on that? Should we exclude bookstores (the largest
one, actually) from the list because some (many?) wikipedians don't like
them? Or should we leave the choice where to order to the user? Jimbo?

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
> Some people on the German wikipedia want to get rid of the amazon.de
> link on the ISBN page, because of the "one-click" patent thing. I told
> them it would be not-NPOV to do so. Now they want to make some two-level
> ISBN page, with some "all bookstores" and "good bookstores" groups. I'm
> not sure what exactly they imagine, but it would require a software change.

Why not do it the wiki way? Instead of excluding certain sellers from the
list, just add an article link to each link:

* Amazon.com ([[Amazon.com|Wikipedia article]])
* PriceSCAN ([[PriceSCAN|Wikipedia article]])
...

That way, visitors can read about the seller's business practices before
making a decision. I for one am a long time Amazon customer in spite of
their patent practices, which I find annoying but common (how about
boycotting IBM? do you know how many bogus patents they have?).

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting rid of filesort?

body:
It's the sorts on some of our queries that are so damn slow. A few
hundred or a couple thousand rows can take *a couple minutes* for it to
sort on the timestamp field.

I've just put in a hacky manual sort (in CVS) for the page history; all
rows are returned without sorting (so in ID order, usually but not
always chronological) and then output in reverse order. It's *immensely*
faster. Try loading up the history on the Village Pump or Votes for
Deletion, and watch it actually come up! Kinda nice. :)

I also took the opportunity to drop in the see next X links, so you
don't have to load all 2500+ items at once on your (well, my) 56k modem.
(These are used pretty generally, and the code really ought to be moved
out of SearchEngine.php and into globalfunctions...)

Of course, it would be *nicer* to do the ORDER BY and LIMIT in mysql.

The old query:
EXPLAIN SELECT old_id,old_namespace,old_title,old_user,
    -> old_comment,old_user_text,old_timestamp,old_minor_edit FROM old
    -> WHERE old_namespace=4 AND
    -> old_title='Village_pump'
    -> ORDER BY old_timestamp DESC;
+-------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------------+------+----------------------------+
| table | type | possible_keys | key           | key_len | ref         | rows | Extra                      |
+-------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------------+------+----------------------------+
| old   | ref  | old_namespace | old_namespace |     256 | const,const | 1900 | where used; Using filesort |
+-------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------------+------+----------------------------+

The new query:
EXPLAIN SELECT old_id,old_namespace,old_title,old_user,
    -> old_comment,old_user_text,old_timestamp,old_minor_edit FROM old
    -> WHERE old_namespace=4 AND
    -> old_title='Village_pump';
+-------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------------+------+------------+
| table | type | possible_keys | key           | key_len | ref         | rows | Extra      |
+-------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------------+------+------------+
| old   | ref  | old_namespace | old_namespace |     256 | const,const | 1900 | where used |
+-------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------------+------+------------+

Now, in an ideal world, it could do the sorting based on that handy
index it has on old_timestamp. In the topsy-turvy world of MySQL,
however, only the index used for the WHERE clause means anything. Other
ways to speed it up?

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/ORDER_BY_optimisation.html

Oh, yes, and I changed the index from old_title to a combo on
old_namespace and old_title. This should cut down the number of rows a
little bit where a page and its talk page are both long; we never WHERE
the two columns separately on the old table, only together.

SHOW INDEX FROM old;
+-------+------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+---------+
| Table | Non_unique | Key_name      | Seq_in_index | Column_name   | Collation | Cardinality | Sub_part | Packed | Comment |
+-------+------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+---------+
| old   |          0 | old_id        |            1 | old_id        | A         |      744949 |     NULL | NULL   |         |
| old   |          1 | old_timestamp |            1 | old_timestamp | A         |      744949 |     NULL | NULL   |         |
| old   |          1 | old_user      |            1 | old_user      | A         |          14 |     NULL | NULL   |         |
| old   |          1 | old_user_text |            1 | old_user_text | A         |       74494 |     NULL | NULL   |         |
| old   |          1 | old_namespace |            1 | old_namespace | A         |          14 |     NULL | NULL   |         |
| old   |          1 | old_namespace |            2 | old_title     | A         |      148989 |     NULL | NULL   |         |
+-------+------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+---------+

And, since I was torturing things with slowness anyway, old is now
InnoDB. Whoop.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com
|Cc:
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 22:18:58 -0800
|
|mav writes:
|>No! You are reading too much into my words. You never said that it is
|>possible for us to keep from bickering and wrangling so my above
|statement
|>was not directed at you but at Wikipedia skeptics in general who /do/
|say
|>exactly that (and then fault us for not accomplishing this artificial
|ideal).
|
|Well, my point was that it seems wikipedia could be more collegial.
|Some conflict is to be expected, yes, but I rather suspect some people
|look forward to it when it comes.  Some people live for it, some
|merely tolerate it, some people are bothered by it and avoid it.  I'm
|formerly of class 1 (horrible arrogant troll I was 5 years ago),
|recently of class 2, moving towards class 3.  I guess this is my
|problem, not everyone else's, except I wonder how many people really
|_enjoy_ acrimony--fewer than 12 on the 'pedia, I imagine, probably
|fewer than six, and I wonder how many of the other several hundred
|active contributors truly are put off by it.  Those kind of people
|tend to be quieter about it until they've had enough, and then they
|leave, with or without explanation.  I think Julie was one of those
|people; and losing her was a considerable loss.

I don't think I'm a skeptic, I believe in NPOV, and I believe it can
be achieved, but I'm worn out.  I am going to join class 3 and avoid
all conflict.  A few pointed questions and an errant indentation of a
talk page comment have earned me a bitter enemy, neither a nice
person, nor an interesting one.  Asking, and then trying to explain,
what was new about [[new imperialism]] led to weeks of fussing and
fighting about a topic that was peripheral to me.  I helped, but
wouldn't an article on ''[[Bleak House]]'' or ''[[The Way We Live
Now]]'' have been a better expenditure of my time?

I just don't have any interest in struggling with anyone anymore.  A
few tussles here and there (and yes, wisecracks and smarty-pants
remarks) were fun, but from now on when people have no commitment to
anything but conflict, they're going to have to conflict with someone
else.  There aren't many of them.  I hope they lose, but I'm out of
bullets.

I'm going to concentrate on novelists and pop music and jazz and
language and and copy editing and other odds and ends where I have
some scraps of knowledge and just let the article on [[Richard
Wagner]] go to hell without my protest and [[remote viewing]] can
claim that "viewers" have seen Pontius Pilate's signature on Jesus's
death warrant and I won't say a word.

By saying that I am going to join class 3 and avoid all conflict, I am
saying that I am surrendering the field to the anti-NPOV forces.  I
don't know that I have distinguished myself in this area, but I have
tried.  I'm not going to try any more.  In the meantime, if people
want to write blatant and stupid articles, I hope someone else will
stop them.

I'll be off bolding alternate forms of article titles, putting song
titles in quotes and album titles in italics and writing little
articles about Trollope and Dickens and Pinetop Perkins, sincerely
hoping that none of the troubling people will bother to track me down
there.  But each time they do track me down, I'm dropping out of the
topic.  And, if I drop out of enough topics, if even [[punctuation]]
and [[English plurals]] start drawing the energy vampires, then I
guess I'll just be gone for good.

I'll ask my questions where they have a chance of being answered
civilly.  The new person writing articles about [[rodeo]] took my
skeptical but honest questions about [[bareback bronc]], [[saddle
bronc]] and [[bull riding]] in hand and just plain answered them,
never bothering to accuse me of being a PETA member or a disgruntled
cowboy failure.

Someone just popped in to [[Talk:Mumia Abu Jamal]] to compliment us on
the achievement of NPOV.  We worked on that one back in August.  It
seems decades ago.  I just don't think it would have happened that way
now and I'm fearful of even mentioning it, but since I am taking it
off my watchlist, maybe I won't hear of any bad things happening to
it.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

PS - I just remembered I still have a little backlog on the [[Bombing
of Dresden in World War II]] and [[David Irving]] that I promised to
get off my chest, but even there, one peep of protest and I'm out.
And then, no more like it.  See you in [[knot]]s.

<snip>

|
|best wishes, I will see you all (except the lurkers) ;-) in a few weeks.
|
|kq
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|


subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting rid of filesort?

body:
More ugly hacks... User contribs now checks the recentchanges table
first, then moves on to 'cur' and 'old' if it hasn't hit its quota yet.
(See in CVS.)

This makes it actually possible to look at contribs lists for very busy
users. Yay!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On dim, 2003-02-02 at 15:28, Zoe wrote:
> And I just wanted to let Brion know that I'm not hitting Refresh while
> the User contributions page is being accesed, it's only once I've
> gotten the "Page cannot be displayed" page.

I've managed to speed up the contribs display so that shouldn't be a
problem anymore. (But if it is, holler.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Intent to implement: "Ignore this page" (as site option)

body:
I'd like to implement an "Ignore this page" feature that can be used to
ignore a page, and, optionally, its subpages in the recent changes list.
It would work similar to the Watchlist feature: An additional "blacklist"
table, a "My blacklist" link (for removal only). Only for pages, not for
users. This would be a site option, meaning that it could be turned on for
e.g. meta, and turned off for the normal Wikipedias.

I'd also like to implement subpage support for both the blacklist and the
watchlist feature. The simplest way to do this (and therefore the best, at
least at first) is to make this a user preference: Ignore subpages of
ignored pages, Watch subpages of watched pages.

My primary motivation is OpenFacts, a Wikipedia for many different open
source projects. There might be a few projects taking up a lot of
Recent_Changes space, and it should be easy to filter those. But both
features should also be useful on meta, and require no additional
footprint if deactivated. Therefore, if there are no objections, I'll
implement it in CVS, which makes it easier for me to keep OpenFacts up-to-
date.

Note that I'm not sure when I'll get to this - maybe tomorrow, maybe in a
couple of months. If someone else needs it, too, I'll prioritize it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
> I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are
> evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions*
> of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of
> print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right
> now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used
> books.

I agree with Axel. Having a formatting standard for titles/authors would
not only allow us to auto-query library catalogs (which is tremendously
useful to see availability if you don't want to buy the book) *and*
booksellers, it would also be useful from a policy POV. Right now, all our
books and papers are formatted differently, which is very unprofessional.

The ISBN support is a gimmick from UseMod days. We have to think of better
solutions now. What would be really neat is a BibTeX type set of tags
(only simpler and more wiki-style) to format bibliographies and references
to them within the text. Axel, since you are probably familiar with the
current systems and the requirements, how about proposing such a
bibliography syntax? I'm sure the opposition can be quickly stifled once
we actually have something to show ;-)

(I also agree re: the counters, as I have already stated. If people knew
what performance hit they took, nobody would advocate them.)

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

> I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are
> evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions*
> of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of
> print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right
> now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used
> books.

Amazon already has a system to remember out-of-print ISBNs and make
redirects to ISBNs of existing editions, don't they?  When I look at a
paperback edition, Amazon also informs me that there is a (more
expensive) hardbound edition of the same title that I might prefer.
After all, they want to sell books.

I wish there were standardized parts numbers for music CDs and film
DVDs, and supposedly the European EAN bar code could serve this
purpose, but the CD and DVD shops that I have talked to refuse to use
the EAN codes for their online shops, since they are less unique than
ISBNs (I don't know the details).  Amazon uses their own "ASIN" codes
for CDs and DVDs, which look like an ISBNs with an "A" or "B" instead
of the first digit, but you don't really want to encourage users to
input codes that are only valid for one shop.

It is problematic of course that Amazon has such a dominating
position on the English and German online book markets, but most
smaller online stores have a *painful* lack of understanding for the
usefulness of the ability to make links between websites.  For
example, many just say "we don't have that book" on a blank page when
I make a link with an invalid ISBN, they don't even try to convince me
to buy something else, like Amazon does.

> No reference work, encyclopedia, library catalog, bibliography, article
> or book ever refers to books by ISBN number.

Yes, library catalogs use ISBN numbers, but none that I have seen make
any links to Amazon.  And this is because they didn't know they could.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Vera Cruz

in_reply_to: <5.1.1.6.0.20030201204725.018dbba8@mail.btopenworld.com>; from pilich@btopenworld.com on Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 08:51:06PM +0000

body:
She's banned.  If she's on anyway, that's because of a technical
issue only.

Lee Pilich wrote:

> I thought that User:Vera Cruz was banned, yet s/he is making edits, and
> just made [[Laurel Clark]]. Am I mistaken, and she's not been banned at all?
>
> I don't much care whether she's banned or not, incidentally, but a lot of
> other people seem to, and I'm curious as to what's happened here.
>
> lp (camembert)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Daily cron instead of realtime?

body:
It strikes me that some of our nice "extra" features, like Most
Wanted, are slow and could also be just as useful (or nearly so) if
they were not generated 'realtime', but rather if they were generated
only once per day.


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please revoke Isis' sysop status

body:
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 12:37:18PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>Given Isis'/Kay's continued legal threats against a valued member of the
>Wikipedia community (Tarquin) for a misunderstanding (largely on her part), I
>must insist that her sysop status be revoked. I cannot trust her to be fair in
>the use of the sysop privileges any longer.
>
>Jimbo, please take action in this matter ASAP.

I object to this request, and request that Isis sysop status be left
alone.

Isis has repeatedly asked for clarification, in very polite terms.  I
have not seen attempts to answer him.

Isis is acting out of concern for his own legal liability.  I think it
would be the right thing to do for you, Jimbo, or for Tarquin to give
Isis a brief note of assurance that he is not liable.

As you may or may not have noticed, Isis works as a paralegal.  He has
experience of how things work in the law, so has a better idea than the
rest of us if he actually is in legal danger or not.  Far better to have
him onside and working for us, than to snub him and lose his valuable
services.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 12:37:18PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>Given Isis'/Kay's continued legal threats against a valued member of the
>Wikipedia community (Tarquin) for a misunderstanding (largely on her part), I
>must insist that her sysop status be revoked. I cannot trust her to be fair in
>the use of the sysop privileges any longer.
>
>Jimbo, please take action in this matter ASAP.

I object to this request, and request that Isis sysop status be left
alone.

Isis has repeatedly asked for clarification, in very polite terms.  I
have not seen attempts to answer him.

Isis is acting out of concern for his own legal liability.  I think it
would be the right thing to do for you, Jimbo, or for Tarquin to give
Isis a brief note of assurance that he is not liable.

As you may or may not have noticed, Isis works as a paralegal.  He has
experience of how things work in the law, so has a better idea than the
rest of us if he actually is in legal danger or not.  Far better to have
him onside and working for us, than to snub him and lose his valuable
services.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Please revoke Isis' sysop status

body:
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 12:37:18PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>Given Isis'/Kay's continued legal threats against a valued member of the
>Wikipedia community (Tarquin) for a misunderstanding (largely on her part), I
>must insist that her sysop status be revoked. I cannot trust her to be fair in
>the use of the sysop privileges any longer.
>
>Jimbo, please take action in this matter ASAP.

I object to this request, and request that Isis sysop status be left
alone.

Isis has repeatedly asked for clarification, in very polite terms.  I
have not seen attempts to answer him.

Isis is acting out of concern for his own legal liability.  I think it
would be the right thing to do for you, Jimbo, or for Tarquin to give
Isis a brief note of assurance that he is not liable.

As you may or may not have noticed, Isis works as a paralegal.  He has
experience of how things work in the law, so has a better idea than the
rest of us if he actually is in legal danger or not.  Far better to have
him onside and working for us, than to snub him and lose his valuable
services.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] partisan wrangling on wikipedia

in_reply_to: <200302010122.h111MbB24644@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 05:22:37PM -0800

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Something about the culture here is just *wrong*; it calls to people
> who itch to have a buzzer in hand, and those of us lucky enough not
> to be on the receiving end are still uncomfortable watching the
> spectacle.

This can change, this should change.

> Why are you here?  Are any of you trying to change another person's
> opinion?  If you are, you belong on Usenet, and best of luck.

I agree.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <8f0MN6jxpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 12:39:00PM +0100

body:
(This is a policy discussion and should be on wikipedia-l, not
wikitech-l.)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Um .. how about just getting rid of it? Why is it within Wikipedia's
> mission to somehow provide storage space for personal essays? We're an
> encyclopedia, not a hosting provider.

Right, but...

It's pretty easy to say, with no insult or offense offered, or taken,
that a particular piece is "not encyclopedic".  So it's easy to boot
stuff out of the article namespace into somewhere else.

But the next step, i.e. we allow meta discussion of some kinds, but
not if it's "personal", is problematic.  People want to write about
their own views of how wikipedia should operate, etc.  And that's
fine, that's what meta is for.  If that tends to allow people to also
write about other topics, well, I'm reluctant to get into policing it
at that level.

As you've surely noticed, I have a rather full plate just trying
to keep the murder rate law around here.  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Challenge to Sheldon Rampton re: global warming

body:
Everyone take a deep breath.  It was pretty out of character for Ed to
post a sharp remark like that, and I think he'll quickly make things
right with Sheldon.

And Ed has always, more than just about any of us, expressed a firm
commitment to NPOV.  Attacking his biases is something he will likely
welcome, as an opportunity to improve an article.

Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> It gushes about his "cheerful attitude" and "intolerance of
> injustice," and states that Moon "had a vision or revelation of
> Jesus Christ while praying on top of a tall hill," as though this
> were a documented fact.

How do we deal with similar claims/stories for other religious
figures?  It seems pretty easy to fix, for example by saying, "In
1969, Moon said that he had had a vision or revelation of Jesus Christ
while praying on top of a tall hill".  This is a nice formulation
because it limits us to making a simple uncontroversial claim, without
projecting any kind of attitude of belief or disbelief.

Another reformulation might say something like "Moon allegedly had a
vision or revelation", but I like my version above, better, because
the word "allegedly" has some baggage.

> It's clearly POV and a violation of Wikipedia policy to inject
> first-person commentary based on church gossip into the actual text
> of articles.

Maybe, unless this gossip is documented somewhere as having actually
happened.  I mean, asserting the content of the gossip as fact isn't
good, but reporting on the gossip is fine, if it was important and
widespread.

> I don't fault Ed for having some ideological blind spots. I'm sure I
> have my own. However, I strongly disagree with his absurd notion that
> I have some personal responsibility to do his dirty work for him by
> inserting arguments with which I do not agree into the global warming
> article.

But I think this is a misreading.  I think that his idea is a very
good one.  All of us, if we are writing in an area where we know we
have some strong feelings, should try *hard* to formulate the
arguments of the opponents as best we can.

There are at least two views of how wikipedia articles should be
written -- the competitive view and the co-operative view.  Ed
is merely (and correctly, I think) advocating for the co-operative
view.

On the competitive view, partisans go at it and fight until the fight
has gone out of all sides, and the result is an article that no one
hates too much.  On the co-operative view, partisans try really hard
to please _each other_ with a presentation that's fair to all sides.

The co-operative method is faster, and also less exhausting in the
long run.

> am sure that he will set an example for us all by editing his
> articles about Rev. Moon so that they "focus on making the best case"
> for arguments... [against Moon]

In my experience, Ed has always set an example for us.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our own extreme POV sometimes makes it impossible for us to write NPOV prose

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> We should all understand that the ability to 'write for the enemy'
> is difficult and that trying to write for your mortal enemy whom you
> absolutely despise is very difficult and impossible to do correctly
> for most people.

I think that's right.  And as head peacemaker around here, I'd like to
add this: let's *all*, and I mean *all of us*, try to go around with
the default assumption that we're all *trying* to behave in a
_co-operative_ rather than _competitive_ manner.  Let's encourage a
social equilibrium of love, rather than argument.

When you see someone making a POV remark, assume until you just
absolutely can't help it, that they are *trying* to accomodate you,
but that it's *hard*, for the reasons that Mav writes about above.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] [brion@pobox.com: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Problem with "User Contributions"]

body:
Forwaded from wikipedia-l... this seems like a good example to me of
something that could be cached.  If someone requests "User
Contributions" then if they've calculated it within the last 24 hours,
say, then they should be given the cached version and told that a new
one will be generated after midnight, or similar.

That is, unless people use their User Contributions for some realtime
work.

----- Forwarded message from Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> -----

From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
Date: 01 Feb 2003 17:19:30 -0800
To: wikipedia-l <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Problem with "User Contributions"

On sab, 2003-02-01 at 14:33, Zoe wrote:
> For several days now, when I've clicked on "User Contributions" on my
> user page, Wikipedia has churned for several minutes, and then
> displayed the browser's "The page cannot be displayed".  I can
> sometimes Refresh and eventually it comes up, but today, that's been
> completely unsuccessful.

That's cause you edit too much, Zoe. ;)

Seriously, though, yes. Certain operations that involve checking large
numbers of old page revisions are sometimes excruciatingly slow of late.
This is hitting:

* User contributions
* History of oft-edited pages with hundreds of revisions (Village pump,
mav's talk page, current events, talk:main page, vandalism alerts)
* Diff to last edit on the same. (This involves sorting to find the most
recent edit, and that seems to be holding us up.)

Until this is resolved, I'd like to ask that you _don't_ hit refresh
when one of these is churning away like mad, but rather just let it go.
The first query keeps running for a while, and it's just not going to go
anywhere until it's done (or I or Magnus or someone logs in and kills
the query), and a second request might just make it worse. :(

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

----- End forwarded message -----


in_reply_to: <200302030450.XAA31790@TheWorld.com>; from tompar@world.std.com on Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 11:50:57PM -0500

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> I don't think I'm a skeptic, I believe in NPOV, and I believe it can
> be achieved, but I'm worn out.  I am going to join class 3 and avoid
> all conflict.

[...]

> By saying that I am going to join class 3 and avoid all conflict, I am
> saying that I am surrendering the field to the anti-NPOV forces.  I
> don't know that I have distinguished myself in this area, but I have
> tried.  I'm not going to try any more.  In the meantime, if people
> want to write blatant and stupid articles, I hope someone else will
> stop them.

What I'm hoping is that we can compile some suggestions for a middle
ground.  How can we avoid conflict without surrendering the field to
"the anti-NPOV forces"?

-------

The thing that pains me most is when I see good people at each other's
throats.  *Those* are the ones we should be able to avoid.  Yes, there
will always be a tiny majority of insufferable jerks.  Those can be
banned if they get bad enough.  But sometimes what happens around here
is that good people get mad at each other, and things spiral out of
control.

--Jimbo


body:
Zoe wrote:
> I'm on the verge of following Tom's lead.  What's the point of
>trying to even try, when people like Lir/Vera are allowed back without
>warning and continue to slash their way through the 'pedia with no one
>even bothering to let us know that they were responsible for allowing
>them back in, and what their rationale was.

Please don't take that as indicative of anything.  Vera is still
banned, and if she's around, that just shows we need more sysops
to make sure that stuff like this is nipped in the bud.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

in_reply_to: <3E3D993A.8030705@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 11:18:34PM +0100

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Is there a policy on that? Should we exclude bookstores (the largest
> one, actually) from the list because some (many?) wikipedians don't like
> them? Or should we leave the choice where to order to the user? Jimbo?

Wow, I don't know.  My first inclination is to list several sources,
and if people don't like some of them, then they shouldn't shop there.
It's really not a good idea for us to get involved in the particulars
of endorsing/not-endorsing particular shops.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are
> evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions*
> of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of
> print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right
> now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used
> books.

I'm listening.  This sounds like a valid objection to this particular
technical detail.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis -Tarquin dispute.

in_reply_to: <002601c2cb97$c6deddf0$0100a8c0@mint2k>; from minty@keergill.screaming.net on Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 03:20:25PM -0000

body:
I'm talking to the both of them and hope to have this straightened out
soon, one way or the other.

Let's not discuss it too much on the mailing list until we
absolutely have to.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis -Tarquin dispute.

body:
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 03:20:25PM -0000, Eugene Gill wrote:
>   I'm quite disgusted at Isis' behaviour to the extent that I've joined this
>   mail list so that I can voice my wish (seconding Eloquence's) that Isis be
>   removed from sysop status. Furthermore I think she should be banned for
>   making ridiculous threats of legal action to a fellow Wikipedian (Tarquin)
>   over a comment that as far as I can gather was merely a difference of
>   opinion.

You seem ignorant of how the law works.  Isis has brought up some valid
issues that the Wikipedia needs to deal with for it's own future safety
and continuance.

I really hope the Wikipedia will not be the type of project that shoots the
messenger when problems are pointed out.  Isis is a valuable sysop, and
I would be sad to see his privileges taken away.

Wikipedia, not Ostrichpedia!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis -Tarquin dispute.

body:
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 03:20:25PM -0000, Eugene Gill wrote:
>   I'm quite disgusted at Isis' behaviour to the extent that I've joined this
>   mail list so that I can voice my wish (seconding Eloquence's) that Isis be
>   removed from sysop status. Furthermore I think she should be banned for
>   making ridiculous threats of legal action to a fellow Wikipedian (Tarquin)
>   over a comment that as far as I can gather was merely a difference of
>   opinion.

You seem ignorant of how the law works.  Isis has brought up some valid
issues that the Wikipedia needs to deal with for it's own future safety
and continuance.

I really hope the Wikipedia will not be the type of project that shoots the
messenger when problems are pointed out.  Isis is a valuable sysop, and
I would be sad to see his privileges taken away.

Wikipedia, not Ostrichpedia!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Isis -Tarquin dispute.

body:
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 03:20:25PM -0000, Eugene Gill wrote:
>   I'm quite disgusted at Isis' behaviour to the extent that I've joined this
>   mail list so that I can voice my wish (seconding Eloquence's) that Isis be
>   removed from sysop status. Furthermore I think she should be banned for
>   making ridiculous threats of legal action to a fellow Wikipedian (Tarquin)
>   over a comment that as far as I can gather was merely a difference of
>   opinion.

You seem ignorant of how the law works.  Isis has brought up some valid
issues that the Wikipedia needs to deal with for it's own future safety
and continuance.

I really hope the Wikipedia will not be the type of project that shoots the
messenger when problems are pointed out.  Isis is a valuable sysop, and
I would be sad to see his privileges taken away.

Wikipedia, not Ostrichpedia!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
Amazons prices are higher (and they are not politically correct), but the
listings on Amaazon often include reviews which are quite helpful. I
personally have never purchased a book from Amazon (always able to find a
cheaper book elsewhere) but frankly if you use the reviews, you might
consider buying there. At any rate I think it's a personal choice.

Anyway I hate polical correctness so much that I would dismiss that notion
out of hand just on that basis.

Fred (an ABE bookseller)

> From: Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 23:18:34 +0100
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links
>
> Some people on the German wikipedia want to get rid of the amazon.de
> link on the ISBN page, because of the "one-click" patent thing. I told
> them it would be not-NPOV to do so. Now they want to make some two-level
> ISBN page, with some "all bookstores" and "good bookstores" groups. I'm
> not sure what exactly they imagine, but it would require a software change.
>
> Is there a policy on that? Should we exclude bookstores (the largest
> one, actually) from the list because some (many?) wikipedians don't like
> them? Or should we leave the choice where to order to the user? Jimbo?
>
> Magnus
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
Marvellously wrongheaded, most books published after 1970 have ISBN numbers
and are most easily found an purchased if you start with that number
(although it can get complicated as books are reprinted under diffent
numbers). The general practice in the bookselling business currently relies
on the ISBN number and will for the forseeable future.

Fred an ABE bookseller

> From: Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 17:22:46 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links
>
> I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are
> evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions*
> of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of
> print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right
> now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used
> books.
>
> If versions of a book are being published by different parties, as is
> true for many important books that are in the public domain, then
> ISBN's are furthermore inherently POV, since they pick out a single
> publisher.
>
> No reference work, encyclopedia, library catalog, bibliography, article
> or book ever refers to books by ISBN number. Because they are not book
> identifiers. Given properly formatted author and title, our software
> could and should query bookstores and libary catalogs.
>
> I think I said it before: meaningless numbers are worse than no
> numbers.
>
> Axel
>
> WikiKarma: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_number
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] "View user page" edit links on anon talk pages

in_reply_to: <8etMDmLSpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:41:00PM +0100

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Rename - yeah, makes sense. When I suggested Wikipedia in some
> contexts, people were frightened by the encyclopedia-notion, which
> would not be appropriate for their project.

We should name it "Phase III, Version 1.0".  Because that's what we
call it anyway, Phase III.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] 142 and voting systems pages

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E0A5D281@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 05:45:30PM -0500

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Just revert - no need to justify. Or ban the IP. This sort of
>nonsense doesn't need a long debate. we're here to make an
>encyclopedia, not to accommodate weird views.

Agreed.


body:
I'm responding to this one privately.  Jonathan, I don't think
you've got the basic facts of the dispute straight at all.

I don't want us to discuss this one on the list too much right now,
and never unless it becomes absolutely necessary, but I did want to
say that Jonathan's factual summary is not even remotely correct.

Jonathan Walther wrote:
> Isis has repeatedly asked for clarification, in very polite terms.  I
> have not seen attempts to answer him.
>
> Isis is acting out of concern for his own legal liability.  I think it
> would be the right thing to do for you, Jimbo, or for Tarquin to give
> Isis a brief note of assurance that he is not liable.
>
> As you may or may not have noticed, Isis works as a paralegal.  He has
> experience of how things work in the law, so has a better idea than the
> rest of us if he actually is in legal danger or not.  Far better to have
> him onside and working for us, than to snub him and lose his valuable
> services.
>
> Jonathan
>
> --
>                      Geek House Productions, Ltd.
>
>   Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
>   QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
>   General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998
>
> Phone:   604-435-1205
> Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
> Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
> Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:MyPasswordIsHELLO

body:
Jason Williams wrote:

>[[User:MyPasswordIsHELLO]] - I think this user account should
>be deleted, since it subverts the user account system.
>
How?

Ec.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis' threats

body:
Isis is really starting to rattle me.
She is now saying she's going to sue me in Delaware, whether I show up
to defend myself or not. -
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales

I know that she doesn't have a leg to stand on, but still, this is not fun.
This goes against our collegiate spirit as much as TMC's username did.
Doesn't Wikipedia have a policy on making threats?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis' threats

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>Isis is really starting to rattle me.
>>She is now saying she's going to sue me in Delaware, whether I show up
>>to defend myself or not. -
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales
>>
>>I know that she doesn't have a leg to stand on, but still, this is not
>>fun.
>>This goes against our collegiate spirit as much as TMC's username did.
>>Doesn't Wikipedia have a policy on making threats?
>>
>
>Can someone with a legal background explain what happens if Tarquin does not
>appear in a Delaware court? Is a "default judgment" then likely?
>
Although I believe that Isis should be reprimanded for her lawyer tactic
of intimidation with idle threats, this is not yet at the point where
withdrawal of sysop privileges should be withdrawn.  I saw her original
posting before it reached this point, and although she denies that it
was her intent, it's easy to see how Tarquin could have interpreted her
as saying that all photographs were copyright exempt.

I don't doubt that she could get a default judgement in Delaware.  I
believe that Delaware is considered a soft touch by juristdiction
shoppers because of this.  Whether that judgement can be enforced
outside of Delaware is an other matter.  Since Tarquin is in England, if
Isis thinks she has a valid case it should be filed in England.  That
would be the honourable thing to do.  If I were the one being victimized
by these threats, I would ignore Delaware jurisdiction.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] racialisme

body:
julien tayon wrote:
> Yes but shoud we present the fact that it is legitimate to think Shoah
> never existed, or shoud we state (arbitrary) that revisionism is a far
> rightist theory that Shoah never existed. Can you tell me which can be
> written in wikipedia, and why ?

I think we can (and should) say that the theory that "Shoah never
existed" is held only by a very tiny minority of people, and that no
notable historian takes such claims seriously.

We absolutely should _not_ act as if holocaust revisionism and
standard history are equally valid.  To do so would itself be a
perversion of NPOV.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

>Marvellously wrongheaded, most books published after 1970 have ISBN
>numbers

I don't dispute that. Most books published after 500 BC have an author
and a title.

>and are most easily found an purchased if you start with that number
>(although it can get complicated as books are reprinted under diffent
>numbers).

Since many books are eventually reprinted under different numbers
(softcover, second edition), your second half sentence seems to
contradict the first. How is searching for a book by author and title
any more complicated than searching for it by ISBN? You will find all
editions by all publishers that way, hardcover and softcover, printed,
Braille or on tape, whatever.

>The general practice in the bookselling business currently relies
>on the ISBN number and will for the forseeable future.

Sure. ISBN's were invented by and for booksellers and serve a useful
purpose there, namely to identify a specific edition of a book so that
it can be ordered from a wholesaler and delivered to the customer. But
they don't serve a useful purpose for someone who wants to locate a
book in a (used) bookstore or library. These people are Wikipedia's
clientele.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:MyPasswordIsHELLO

body:
Jason Williams wrote:

>On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 08:42:03AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>Jason Williams wrote:
>>
>>>[[User:MyPasswordIsHELLO]] - I think this user account should
>>>be deleted, since it subverts the user account system.
>>>
>>How?
>>
>
>Because with it, anonymous users no longer have their IP address
>visible (and can't be banned by non-deities). If that's what is
>wanted, then that is what the policy should be, and the software
>modified accordingly.
>
As I understand the process, by choosing a user name, he is no  longer
anonymous.  This chosen name should function in the same way as any
other chosen name.  Unless this name has some hidden effect on the
operation of the software, the name may be a little weird, but not
offensive.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:MyPasswordIsHELLO

in_reply_to: <3E3EA9CB.4080005@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 09:41:31AM -0800

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >>>[[User:MyPasswordIsHELLO]] - I think this user account should
> >>>be deleted, since it subverts the user account system.

> As I understand the process, by choosing a user name, he is no  longer
> anonymous.  This chosen name should function in the same way as any
> other chosen name.  Unless this name has some hidden effect on the
> operation of the software, the name may be a little weird, but not
> offensive.

It is a little weird, but we can easily adjust to it.  If someone
starts using that account to do naughty things, we will just ban
the account.  If someone keeps doing this, we'll have to deal with
it when it comes up.

Historically speaking, we haven't had a lot of trouble with people
trying to subvert the system.

--Jimbo


from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] banning is for goatse! not for lir!

body:
I object strongly to DW being called an idiot. I resent the fact that it is considered ok to call him an idiot. He brought up some very legitimate complaints, not the least of which is that Zoe openly reverts changes based not on their merit, but merely because she doesn't like the user who made them. She is open about this, she has admitted it, she has argued, "But User:XX made the change, why should we listen to that idiot?"
It is true that wikipedia is full of argument and that this is a problem, but the problem is not merely those, like DW, TMC, or even myself the mongrel troll Vera Cruz, which engage in inappropriate behavior not because we are incorrigible, but because we honestly don't always know better. For example, DW does not know that informing JW that he has a system of approved ignorance is not going to come across well, nor did I know that arguing that it is racist to refuse to use forign spellings would be bad.
Certainly I have learned to be increasingly non-argumentative, and I am sure DW, TMC, 172, Danny, etc can definitely become even better contributors than they are. So no, I don't think we are the real problem, even if we can from time to time be offensive because we don't have a high enough level of class or protocol.
I think there is a serious problem with people such as Isis, who insults people (me others), refuses to discuss the problem with the people she hates, and then winds up threatening to sue somebody for libel, a crime she regularly commits herself!
There is an amazing difference between the two groups, the most notably difference being that Im no advocating banning anybody. Isis can call me names all day, I don't care. User:172 can go insane with insisting that his dry rambling articles are the ultimate nobel prize explanation of every subject every written. But I don't want to ban them.
Banning is for people that load goatse or change the dates of WWII to 1836-2321. Banning is not for somebody who writes, "Columbus was a slavetrader" or "The Israelis are actively conducting genocide in Palestine". Yes, anyone with brains know those statements are absolute truth, but it takes time to learn NPOV.
At this wiki, we have a group of people who are snide and elitist. They do not have perfect NPOV, they do not have perfect decisions, but they believe they do. They reinforce their belief because they are just about the only people who read or talk on the mailing list and they are arguing all over the wiki, thus making them feel that they are the wiki, and everybody else is a noobie or non-contributor.
Those people should not be banned, they should not lose their sysop privileges. But, at the same time, the bullshit has got to fucking stop. You don't sue somebody from England because they tell u that as a paralegal you don't know jack about law. You don't call people an idiot simply because they don't agree with anything u think.
Id like to talk about how I shouldn't be banned, its pretty obvious that Im somebody who is going to contribute valuable material. I don't think even my biggest opponents can deny the fact that just about every time I click submit I am adding something of value and just about everytime there is a problem, I back down or its eventually decided that I was correct.
I know Im not a problem, but I can't convince anybody of it. There is a reason that legal courts do not require a defendant to prove their innocence, its IMPOSSIBLE to prove one's innocence. It cannot be done no matter what the crime or no matter how innocent you are. Not a single one of you can prove that you were not Adolf Hitler who committed a genocide and then, via parapscyhological phenomena, teleported himself into the future.
Im supposed to apoligize to people or something so I can be unbanned. Ive apoligized, Ive apoligized ten-fold. Am I changed? I change every morning when I wake up, its a gradual sorta thing. Nobody has apoligized to me, and nobody can honestly deny that I haven't been the victim of rude abuse. I don't want your goddamn apologies, I want you to grow up and realize that from time to time somebody is gonna show up at the wiki and not only have info to contribute, but they are gonna start revising stuff that everyone of u thought was perfect. Its gonna happen next year, and ten years down the road, and its already happaned. Because Im not just a spell-checker or information-dumper, Im a reviser.
Look at that ridiculous New Imperialism, its got to be just about the most boring piece of crusty lecture Ive ever looked at, you can't honestly expect some 4th grader, or working class stiff, or even an academic, to want to read that. Thats why none of you have actually read it! Don't tell me you've read that, I know you haven't read it. If you'd read it you'd be able to discuss it with me. Yes, I know, thats argumentative, maybe u even have read it and Im sorry if you have and I just libeled you. But the point is, that article needs revision and I need to revise it and nobody will let me simply because we don't get along.
Why? Why can't we all just get along? I don't see any reason we can't get along. I've obviously taken numerous steps to try and reconcile things, Ive written a great deal of material which NOBODY has read. I admit that Im not the greatest writer ever, but Id like somebody else to take a step. Id like somebody else to consider the fact that I might be right, maybe a student of New Imperialism shouldn't be required to read a massive paragraph about the word imperialism, maybe he should just be able to click on imperialism when he decides he wants to read all that.
In any case, thats what I was doing when I was last banned and I apoligize for not apoligizing enough and instead using this opportunity to make demands and concessions, but Im pretty stuck on this territorial dispute regarding New Imperialism, and I know, if you give in at all the floodgates will come crashing open and pretty soon Ill be over on Isaac Asimov or Charles Dickens insisting that he wasn't the greatest writer ever whose greatest book ever was such and such, but yah know, I did have a point about the Asimov article being POV.
So let's like talk about articles sometime, cuz honestly, I don't know what to say about anything else. At least DW was trying to talk about whatever changes he was going on about on Jimbo Wale's talk page, I know for a fact that Zoe doesn't discuss things, she argues "This is the wiki way!", but the wiki way is to make a good encyclopedia. And I don't see how that can be done without a little more conversation and a little less resorting to law by commandment and imperial decree. Not to state that Jimbo is a King or some totalitarian, just to note that no matter how benevolent things may be, there hasn't been enough friendliness.

Oh, I almost forgot, for about the hundreth time, plz add some simple chatrooms like even the most moronic of websites have. You can't honestly expect to go another year without even one chatroom, can you?

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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis -Tarquin dispute.

body:
I don't think Jimbo is going to demote anyone from "sysop" just because of a difference of opinion.

It's not easy to carry on a discussion, when all we can see is text messages. Even a phone call sometimes is not good enough.

Often a single misplaced word (like "disingenuous", to use a personal example) can open up a Pandora's box of hurt feelings.

To maintain congeniality, I hope we will all try to remain mild-mannered and patient.

Uncle Ed
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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> However, I will say this in addition:
> >  To allow wikipedia to be accessible, I
> > thus will delete any article which directly
> > contradicts the first and the second article of the
> > universal declaration of the humans right:
>
> There is a great irony here.  It is suggested that we should delete
> any article that contradicts the first and the second article of the
> universal declaration of human rights, because of a French law that is
> itself a strong violation of article 19 of that same document!

Also, what would it mean to 'contradict' those articles? The way I read
them, they DON'T say that all people are equal, they say that they should
be treated equal by the law, and have equal rights. As far as I can see,
what these articles attempt to do is to forbid _laws_ that make a difference
between people (article 2 is even further restricted, and only talks about
those rights that are granted by the declaration itself). Wikipedia, being
neither law-creating nor law-enforcing in nature, seems to be unaffected by
such an article, as far as I can see.

Andre Engels


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis -Tarquin dispute.

body:
On 2/3/03 10:20 AM, "Eugene Gill" <minty at keergill.screaming.net> wrote:

> I'm quite disgusted at Isis' behaviour to the extent that I've joined this
> mail list so that I can voice my wish (seconding Eloquence's) that Isis be
> removed from sysop status. Furthermore I think she should be banned for making
> ridiculous threats of legal action to a fellow Wikipedian (Tarquin) over a
> comment that as far as I can gather was merely a difference of opinion.
>
Man oh man, Wikipedia is getting entertaining again. See what happens when I
don't attract all the negative attention?

I recommend banning everyone for a month.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, julien tayon wrote:

> ....
> > Why shouldn't they be?  If these phenomena exist, they need to be
> > described fairly.  That doesn't mean agreeing with them.  A racist
> > article and an article about racism are two different things.
> This is easy :
> racism means there is a difference between race. If in the article we
> show there is no such things as human races, how can you use a term such
> anti-caucasian racism without implying first there are different races,
> and as a consequence that regarding the race that are concerned the
> racism is different !!!

Very simple, independent of whether there exists races or not, and
independent of whether IF there exist races 'Caucasian' is one of them,
it is surely the case that 'Caucasians' is a certain _group_ of people.
And anti-Caucasian racism is a kind of racism that is directed to that
group of people.

> If racism are different regarding the ?race? you
> can compare them and say : oh anti-negro racism is worse than
> anti-caucasian racism or else.

Well, you can, but you cannot do so on Wikipedia, since 'worse' is not
NPOV.

Andre Engels


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Vera Cruz

body:
On lun, 2003-02-03 at 05:28, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> She's banned.  If she's on anyway, that's because of a technical
> issue only.

Ahh, that sounds nice and concrete. *click click*  An actual ban on the
account 'Vera Cruz' is now in place, rather than a hypothetical one.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:MyPasswordIsHELLO

body:
>It is a little weird, but we can easily adjust to
>it.  If someone starts using that account to do
>naughty things, we will just ban
>the account.  If someone keeps doing this, we'll have
>to deal with
>it when it comes up.
>
>Historically speaking, we haven't had a lot of
>trouble with people
>trying to subvert the system.
>
>--Jimbo

I don't think that it is a good idea to allow this
because it becomes impossible to track who is doing
what if multiple different people are using the same
user name at the same time. I know this also happens
due to cheap-ass ISPs who use proxies but it is
relatively rare that two people from the same IP edit
at the same time. They also don't have a real choice
in the matter.

Being a logged-in user has many benefits - but it also
has added accountability. This is subverted by having
a full-featured 'guest account.'

-- mav

PS I just checked and some evil person has changed the
password to something other than "hello" or "HELLO."
But there still is a policy issue here to keep in
mind.

WikiKarma:
I created the images that are now in [[crystal
structure]] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_structure

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: User:MyPasswordIsHELLO


subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting rid of filesort?

body:
On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 11:03, Brion Vibber wrote:
> More ugly hacks... User contribs now checks the recentchanges table
> first, then moves on to 'cur' and 'old' if it hasn't hit its quota yet.
> (See in CVS.)
>
> This makes it actually possible to look at contribs lists for very busy
> users. Yay!

Cool. I think there should be a "My edits" link in the sidebar now that
it's reasonably fast. It's too useful to have it hidden like that. Any
objections?

It would also be neat to use the same paging style as in the history.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Isis' threats

body:
> Isis is really starting to rattle me.
> She is now saying she's going to sue me in Delaware, whether I show up
> to defend myself or not. -
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales
>
> I know that she doesn't have a leg to stand on, but still, this is not
> fun.
> This goes against our collegiate spirit as much as TMC's username did.
> Doesn't Wikipedia have a policy on making threats?

Can someone with a legal background explain what happens if Tarquin does not
appear in a Delaware court? Is a "default judgment" then likely?

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [WikiEN-l] New quest account: User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW

body:
You are now being quoted Jimbo:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MyPasswordIsYELLOW

Can we stop this before it gets out of hand?

--mav

Wikikarma:
I responded to two emails from newbies trying to learn
the ropes.

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body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> PS I just checked and some evil person has changed the
> password to something other than "hello" or "HELLO."

Heh, the problem solved itself.  I wish they all would!

> But there still is a policy issue here to keep in
> mind.

Yes, I agree.

> WikiKarma:
> I created the images that are now in [[crystal
> structure]] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_structure

Here's my WikiKarma: I spent the whole damn day trying to put out
WikiFires and spread WikiLove, and managed to make virtually no
headway with any of it.

I'm *this damn close* to going on a banning spree.  But, I'll
relax first.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:MyPasswordIsHELLO

body:
[[User:MyPasswordIsHELLO]] - I think this user account should
be deleted, since it subverts the user account system.

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/