subject: [Textbook-l] Block against

body:
BTW cf. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Staff_lounge#Banned_WP_editor_Primetime
which seems to have been accepted without question. That's more the
kind of thing I was talking about...(again this is more copyright
related, not social behaviour, and lazyquasar made a good point that
in some cases people can "start anew".) I mean yes each project has
its own community but I don't think it's beneficial to treat them like
strangers. In situations like this we can work together and save each
other some hassle.

Heh, imagine if WoW showed up at a new project and we had this
attitude... "Give the man a chance! He might have reformed!" :)

cheers
Brianna


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] DPLforum

body:
sannse wrote:
[snip]
> If this is possible, it would be great to get it set up quickly.

Where, how, why, for what purpose? On a private wiki for internal use? On a
public wiki for discussions? Whose discussions? What kind of discussions?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] A proposal for organisation

body:
On 6/15/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Delphine M?nard wrote:

> > So we'd have the following defined roles
> >
> > *Community members (members of all Wikimedia projects)
> >
> > *Project management committees - for us, these would be people within
> > the community appointed by resolution of the board of directors of the
> > Wikimedia Foundation. Once appointed, the PMC members have a right to
> > propose to add members in their PMC. The PMC would be in charge of
> > making sure the legal aspects of each projects are taken care of and
> > observed, make sure that procedures are followed in the development of
> > the projects. These are not automatically the editors with the
> > greatest number of edits, but rather those who have shown a commitment
> > to the organisation and the day-to-day running of the projects, taking
> > care of legal issues, procedure issues etc. They'd have a
> > responsibility and an oversight role. Not an editing power as such
> > (ie. they can't impose their POV on an article). Their frame of action
> > will have to be very clearly defined, but if it is, they'd be an asset
> > to the projects.
>
>
> Correction : in the ASF, the PMC are chosen by the community itself. By
> support from the community (a bit as we agree on our sysops).
> In our case, that makes sense, because the board does not know enough
> the local community to suggest names necessarily in a wise fashion.
> It seems to me as well these PMC should pretty much be self-organised.
> However, it would probably be best that the board has a veto over those.
> Another option would be that they be appointed by board upon a
> suggestion of names given by their community.
> I would myself support "elected by community with board veto".

Right, I missed the election part, and jumped to the resolution part. My bad.

>
> The PMC have a couple of officers, such as a chair and a secretary.
> Those could either be appointed by the board or appointed by committee
> members with veto from board. But in any cases, the officers have a
> legal responsability, so should absolutely be RealPerson.
>
>
> > *Wikimedia Foundation members - those would be nominated by the board,
> > proposed to the board by anyone else who feels someone should be a
> > Foundation member. They could be issued directly from the community,
> > from the PMCs or from anywhere else.
>
> Correction again. WMF members should not be appointed by the board. They
> should be elected by the community. I would even go as far as to suggest
> that there should be NO board veto over these ones. If a problematic
> person slips in, it will not be a big deal, because of the size of that
> membership. We could expect a membership of over 100 people. They could
> indeed be issued from anywhere.

Here I do not understand if you're correcting my understanding of how
ASF works, or my application to WMF.

This part:
"How does someone get ASF Member
ASF member is a person that was nominated by current members and elected
due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation. Members
care for the ASF itself."

is not clear as to who elects the ASF members. My understanding is
that they were nominated by an ASF member (or through an ASF member
upon recommandation from someone external) and voted in by the
existing ASF members. Seems I am wrong.

> > *Wikimedia Foundation board of directors - are elected within the pool
> > of members of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Note : in the ASF, all board members are actually *from* the pool of
> members and elected by the members.
> We might wish to make it possible for "externals" to join the board as
> well. In this case, we could imagine having the membership pool electing
> for an "external" to join the board (now, the question is, could we
> imagine 100 people voting to allow, say, Stallman, to join the board ?
> Would that be reasonable ?). Or we could have board members been allowed
> to appoint up to xx external people to get on the board.

Well, my take on that, and how I understood it, is that ASF members
could come from outside, since they were voted in by the existing
members. But if it is the community that elects the ASF members, then
that is moot.
[snip]

> > As I see it, this is indeed an interesting bit. To answer Tim's
> > concerns (and I agree with Lukasz comment, btw), I believe the fact
> > that members of the Wikimedia Foundation would be appointed by the
> > board actually make it pretty "safe" for anyone who might have a
> > problem with a community elected body. For the record, I am one of
> > those. A great editor in a virtual project does not make a great board
> > member in a real-life organisation, and the predominance of one
> > language or one project does not ensure harmonious representation. The
> > model might seem restraining at first (only the board's "friends"
> > could be considered as members of the Wikimedia Foundation) but in a
> > mid-term perspective, I cannot see the board only appointing their
> > best friends/supporters, as it would not scale. And the larger the
> > body that nominates, the more diversified the people on it.
>
> This is the place where I do not understand your explanation.
> If the board appoints members, and is then elected by members... we
> might just get stuck in a loop. This is not at all what the AFS did. The
> community elect the membership. The membership elect the board.
> I think that this model could get very much in the wrong direction... if
> the membership is very limited in size (it would actually be a
> pre-election of the board).
> But if the membership is rather around 100 people (for example), then
> the risk of having a total mess in the elected body is actually pretty
> limited.

And this is where we seem to disagree. The board might choose to keep
people out as long as possible, but it is neither in their interest,
nor in the interest of the organisation. If people are voted into the
membership by the existing members, there has to come a time where the
body that votes the members in is big enough to ensure diversity. Of
course, if the board and the first members stop at 10 people, then the
model doesn't work. My take is that membership of 10 people is rather
stupid, and that 100 sounds like a better approach, whether it is set
as a goal to reach in a certain time frame, whether the number is set
etc. would still need to be determined.

>
> Note that a suggestion I would do is to include amongst groups of
> voters, meta and chapters. This would largely tip the balance in favor
> of those who are *actually* working for Foundation issues.

You forget that many meta users and chapter members are *also* editors
in a project or another. This could lead to people either voting
twice, or having to choose sides (the project or the chapter? meta or
wikipedia?)
>
> We might get to something like
> * Wikipedia can elect up to 30 members overall to become members
> * Wikibooks can elect up to 20 ...
> * Wikiquote can elect up to 1 ... (just kidding)
> * Meta can elect up to 20 members
> * All chapters members can elect up to 20 members
>
> etc...
>
> It may be that people are supported in two places. So what ? Who cares
> if there is no strictly fixed number ?
>
> There is another point...
> You said "a good project editor does not necessarily make a good
> Foundation member".
> Yup... so what about "forcing" people to make a *choice* ?
> Either PMC member... or Foundation member ?
> The same skills are not required...

Yes, that is indeed a must-be requirement. You have to chose your battles.

>
> (as a reminder, all PMC must have 2 Foundation member on them. These 2
> guys may volunteer or be appointed by board or appointed by MWF members.
> But only these 2 may be both on WMF membership AND a PMC).
>
>
> > The way the PMC are set up also gives the board an oversight. However,
> > it would be stupid from the board to appoint on the PMCs people who
> > have absolutely no community support, because it would make the PMC
> > members' job way harder. So in our case, the appointement of PMCs
> > could be coupled with polls within communities as to who should be on
> > the PMCs. Note that as I understand it, PMCs members have a real life
> > responsibility, which would call for a disclosure of their real life
> > identity. I would argue that PMC members are not necessarily stewards
> > or bureaucrats, which would still be elected as "trusted" community
> > members", but rather people who have made clear what their skills and
> > agendas are as to the responsibility they are offered in being part of
> > a PMC.
>
> Nod. The PMC members could be elected by project, with a veto from WMF.
> Or a pool be elected by project, and the final members appointed by WMF
> (roughly, the english arbcom system).
> I would not suggest that all should give their real life identity as it
> would exclude too many people. We might require that only from the chair
> and co.

I personally don't like the veto system. It is uncomfortable both for
the board *and* the people involved. Pool to choose from is much
better.

> The *most* important point would be to very very clearly define their
> scope of action. They would have no particular rights as editors over
> the other editors for example, nor would they have the right to
> run/manage the local projects as "editor in chief".

This is where any model fails, coming to think of it. If the PMC's are
elected by the community and have some kind of oversight granted by
legal means, where does the "legal" part of their task stops and the
"community mandate" starts? If those PMC's are held by community
recognition, it is my belief that they will, at some point, have to
make a choice.

The big problem with Wikimedia as I see it, is that we are trying to
apply something that works to build an encyclopedia (utter democracy,
collaborative community decisions) to a world with different rules
(legal, financial, etc.), and most of all, rules which can't really be
changed with a community decision the way we change spelling or
bibliography rules.

The same way copy/pasting the ASF model, or the Greenpeace model, ot
the US Federal model, you name it, doesn't work, copy/pasting the
Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects model to the organisation doesn't work
either.

So well, I'll have to think about this more.

Delphine
--
~notafish


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] A proposal for organisation


from_name: Anthere

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:

>>The PMC have a couple of officers, such as a chair and a secretary.
>>Those could either be appointed by the board or appointed by committee
>>members with veto from board. But in any cases, the officers have a
>>legal responsability, so should absolutely be RealPerson.
>>
>>
>>
>>>*Wikimedia Foundation members - those would be nominated by the board,
>>>proposed to the board by anyone else who feels someone should be a
>>>Foundation member. They could be issued directly from the community,
>>>from the PMCs or from anywhere else.
>>
>>Correction again. WMF members should not be appointed by the board. They
>>should be elected by the community. I would even go as far as to suggest
>>that there should be NO board veto over these ones. If a problematic
>>person slips in, it will not be a big deal, because of the size of that
>>membership. We could expect a membership of over 100 people. They could
>>indeed be issued from anywhere.
>
>
> Here I do not understand if you're correcting my understanding of how
> ASF works, or my application to WMF.
>
> This part:
> "How does someone get ASF Member
> ASF member is a person that was nominated by current members and elected
> due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation. Members
> care for the ASF itself."
>
> is not clear as to who elects the ASF members. My understanding is
> that they were nominated by an ASF member (or through an ASF member
> upon recommandation from someone external) and voted in by the
> existing ASF members. Seems I am wrong.

Correcting the understanding of how ASF works.

It is actually unclear on their website.
But Lars was very clear when he explained it to me yesterday.

Participants elect ASF members. Not all participants... sufficiently
active ones (I do not know how he exactly defines "active". For us, that
would probably be anyone who has been involved in a project for at least
3 months and xx number of edit AND/OR anyone who is active on one of the
Wikimedia Chapter)

It is not really an election. It is more a process such as our sysop
elections. Wide support : the guy is on. Mild support or opposition :
the guy is not on.

He did not say if it was upon nomination from someone, or candidacy.

But it was definitly not election from those already AFS members.
Note that it is not a definite nomination. Once you are trusted and
appreciated, you are a member. Period. You do not have to be confirmed
every year or so. I suppose that if someone gets totally out of it, they
have a system to "remove" him though.

Ant


from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject: [Foundation-l] A proposal for organisation

body:
On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 12:27:47PM +0200, Anthere wrote:
> Jan Kulveit wrote:

> > One dissimilarity - what are the "projects"? In the sense of ASF it
> > may be Wikipedia, Wikinews, Commons, etc.  Here the projects are
> > language versions of "meta-projects".
> > Commiters have common languages - code and English. Wikimedia
> > projects do not. You can hardly effectively oversight a Wikimedia
> > project if you dont understand the language. => question - if you take
> > board members and their freinds, and maybe even theirs friends, does it
> > cover the spectrum of Wikimedia languages? I would guess it doesn't.
>
> If course it does not...
> I would be tempted to say that Wikimedia projects are the projects (so,
> Wikipedia, Wikinews etc...), rather than by breaking down to language.

Thats nice idea and I would like it to be that way, but is it reality?
In social sense, how much are the people from various language connected?
Do they form one community, pay attention to the same disscussions?

> Why so ? Because even if they have a different language, the various
> language versions share the same goals (or precisely *should* share the
> same goal), the same needs and the same threats.
>

They share ultimate goal, but wether thay have the same needs and
threats is questionable. Wikipedias are very different in size and
age and needs and threats may scale differently with size.

For example the problem of en: with libelous articles about living perosns
is practically nonexistent in cs: - the RC are of such size that still
every new article is inspected by several users. Problems which led to
semi-protection on en: can be easily solved by hand - if there is an
attempt to vandalize an article about a controversial politician in
average one in a weeks, its easy to revert it by hand. If the frequency
is once per minute, it makes normal editing impossible. Etc.

Apart from that, the communites may be in various stages of
[[meatball:WikiLifeCycle]]. Somewhere the community is just finding
its way how to decide policy issues and if someone wants make a new
recommendation/policy, all he has to do is be bold and write it.
Elsewhere it a formal process with voting and, elsewhere matter of
weeks of wikipolitics and  reading of megabytes of old talk,...

> A direction of thought would be to examine to areas of authority of the
> PMC. Here are my suggestions
> * ensuring all projects are following the same goal
Sure, but thats very broad.

> * overseeing tm issues (the project logo, the project tm, domain names...)
That's IMO more suitable task for one specialized tm/domains officer of
the foundation. (should be one person responsible for dealing with
firestormforces in case of wikipedia.eu, other for wikimedia.eu, yet another
for www.wikimania.eu?)

> * overseeing the general threats facing this particular project (legal
> threats faced by wikiquote are definitly different from those faced by
> Wikipedia)
As I wrote above, threats scale. There may be wider difference among
Wikipedias than among projects in general.

> * overseeing the licencing issue of the project (note that this
> naturally occured when wikinews chose another set of licensing... for
> all language version wide)
That doesnt seem practical. While in theory, language versions are
independent of countries, in practice in many cases law of some country
is more equal than some other. (eg image licensing issues)

> * oversee technical needs (wikiversity or wiktionary needs are specific
> to a project, not to a language version)
Dont forget Commons, which are even more different :)

> etc...
>
What in areas where responsibility toward foundation may clash with
will of project contributors? Overseeing the threats - ok, but in case
of legal threats, who will be that one to interfere with the normal editor
process of the project, and who will be liable for the results?

> Naturally, the PMC can not cover all languages version. But if that
> committee has 20 members (for example), I guess they will always cover
> more languages than the current board ;-)
>
> > Another dissimilarity is in the existence of local chapters. How do
> > they fit in the above scheme?
>
> I do not see why local chaters would get a specific involvement in the
> PMC scheme.
> They could get involved in the membership scheme by also having up to a
> certain number of representative on the Foundation.
>
> > Anyway, it would solve some current problems, but not all.
>
> Sure.
>
> Remind me what are the other problems you have in mind ?
>

It was allready disscussed here. Generally the overwhelming scope of
board members work, from long-term planning to investigating trollish
email complains about checkuser abuse.

If you wanted more specificic examples what bother me - I  won't give
examples of problems in day-to-day tasks, but in longterm perspective
IMO there are some things which are talked about for years, it seems
everybody agrees, yet there are very little visible results. Single
login, some "stable version/validation/1.0/..." support, etc.

Jan Kulveit


list: commons-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] Category:Own work

body:
Matthias wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
>>> 3. In order to grant their obvious wish to release these images under a
>>> free license, we add GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5 to all of these images
>>> 4. We leave {{OwnWork}} and change it into a notice that the license
>>> information below is assumed, and if the author doesn't agree, (s)he
>>> should write a note on the talk page or fix it directly
>>>
>>
>> That's not a bad idea actually. As long as we leave {{OwnWork}}.
>> With all our bots running around now there should be far fewer cases.
>>
>> Probably I would just make it {{GFDL}} though. I think it'd be
>> stretching it to put a CC license, just because we like them. :)
>> Whereas it's much more likely they're aware that Wikipedia is GFDL.
>>
>> At the moment {{own work}} actually says it is depreciated to NLD. :|
>> I rather disagree with this but I understand the need for it. These
>> OwnWorks just hang around forever...
>>
>> Brianna
>>
> At the German Wikipedia a similar template
> ({{Bild-wahrscheinlich-GFDL}}, "Image likely to be GFDL") has been
> deleted recently because it was not clear in some cases whether the
> user really wanted to release it under this license.
> de:User:Historiograf stated that one should not simply assume a
> license under which a picture is released, especially it a user did
> not understand the "legal technicalities".
Germans are strange people. Oh wait...
>
> The whole discusson can be found at
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Urheberrechtsfragen&oldid=17884025#selbst_erstellte_Bilder_.3D_automatisch_GFDL.3F
I quote what seems to be the central argument:
    "Zu behaupten, dass jedem genau die Konsequenzen eines Hochladens
absolut klar sein m?ssen, ist reine Heuchelei."
roughly
    "Claiming that everyone realizes the exact consequences of uploading
images is pure hypocrisy."

I don't agree with that statement. What if someone uploads an image on
commons, chosing "GFDL" as a license, then comes back a year later,
claiming "I didn't know what that meant, I want the image removed"? What
if the image is used on a dozen wikipedias? Do we just delete it? I
think not.

The upload page clearly startes that only images under a free license
(or PD) are acceptable at commons. If someone uploads an image, we have
to assume that (s)he understands that. It's like a contract - if you
change your mind later, too bad for you.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't be as forthcoming as possible in
individual cases; neither does it mean we shouldn't try whatever we can
to find and ask the author directly. *But*, if there's no apparent way
to contact the author, we should either
* delete the image if it looks fishy (less dramatic soon through the
image undeletion function) OR
* put it under a free license, as it was intended by the uploader
(intention proved by uploading the image, thus agreeing to our conditions)

Otherwise, we'd continue presenting an unfree image on our site, which
is the worst option IMHO.

We should keep a note about this, though, in case the original author
comes back one day. (S)he might decide to release it additionally under
another license, for example.

Magnus


list: wikien-l

from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for the unblocking of PatCheng

references:
<4f70ab2d0606131252x14d3acd7k615fdc4ba9bd32bc@mail.gmail.com>
	<4oa092l0g2iuciekf9q46j6da2s6qjh2g8@4ax.com>
	<4f70ab2d0606141800y11bfb859vdf4183165e185997@mail.gmail.com>
	<c6d292t54vb52rubuiadhgipcsom9cmuql@4ax.com>
	<4f70ab2d0606150522y16fcb0a2r9c2ee70fd61b8739@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:22:12 +1000, "Richard Fan"
<richardfanx at gmail.com> wrote:

>Go and check mine and his talk pages. I apologised to him and he accepted
>it.

Shouldn't have said it in the first place.  Some insults are beyond
the pale.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 09:10:05 +1000, "Stephen Bain"
<stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mahk_Twen&diff=prev&oldid=45857228

Superb!  Worthy of the mop all by itself :-)

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


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] Hiring of Interim Executive Director and Legal
 Counsel

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Can you cite examples?
>
> It is my belief that the board and other people deeply involved in the
> foundation are currently mismanaging their time by spending far too
> much of it being concerned with the potential reaction of every random
> non-productive armchair expert who inevitably crops up to call foul on
> any possible idea.
>
> It's a lot easier to speculate on what we could and should do than to
> actually do it... and it's a lot easier to naysay than to act.  It's
> nearly impossible to find a solution to anything complex without at
> least a few people writing kiloword screeds on the great evil of the
> solution. We must stop allowing ourselves to be victimized by people
> whose only skills are complaint and speculation and whose only assets
> are time and a desire to hear themselves talk.
>
Can you cite examples?

Many of the people complaining on this list about board management are
precisely the same people who have been actually doing things to advance
our projects.  Erik Moeller is to a large extent responsible for the
existence and organization of both Wikinews and the Wikimedia Commons.
Tim Starling is one of the major MediaWiki developers.  And so on.

Does your comment have any substance besides a gratuitous and unfounded
personal attack on people you happen to disagree with?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:17:32 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>I've also suggested that one or two people should take it upon
>themselves to really study the candidate over several days, going
>through their entire history and producing a short report, which other
>people can base their votes on. Rather than the current system where
>each person independently supposedly checks the history, and probably
>votes based on the first 3 edits they see.

This has definite merit.  More like a RFAr - initial fact finding,
then voting.  I'd vote for that if polls weren't evil ;-)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:14:49 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>There are a number of "RfA regulars". They, IMHO, tend to be the most
>demanding, tend to throw their weight around the most, and are the
>most resistant to any idea of reducing the discretion given to voters
>in RfA.

You may well be right.  I only vote for (or against) editors I know or
whose history I have reviewed to the point where my (fairly low)
criteria are satisfied.  I cleave to the "no big deal" rule; as long
as they are productive and not edit warriors, give them the mop. Worst
case, they do Bad Things and we take it away again.  Best case: the
backlog for admin actions gets shortened.

I think that my real criteria are that someone is prepared to be
accountable for their actions, and will acknowledge a mistake with
good grace; that demands a certain volume of edits to prove.  But not
that many.  Again: no big deal.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:27:33 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>The questions from the peanut
>gallery are less good.

Best one I've seen: do you see the role of administrator as that of
policeman or janitor.  Made me think, anyway.

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


from_name: Theresa Knott

references:
<4f70ab2d0606131252x14d3acd7k615fdc4ba9bd32bc@mail.gmail.com>
	<4oa092l0g2iuciekf9q46j6da2s6qjh2g8@4ax.com>
	<4f70ab2d0606141800y11bfb859vdf4183165e185997@mail.gmail.com>
	<c6d292t54vb52rubuiadhgipcsom9cmuql@4ax.com>
	<4f70ab2d0606150522y16fcb0a2r9c2ee70fd61b8739@mail.gmail.com>
	<4vr292dcqv1tbi27o3i2447394f20rjuq0@4ax.com>

body:
On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:22:12 +1000, "Richard Fan"
> <richardfanx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Go and check mine and his talk pages. I apologised to him and he accepted
> >it.
>
> Shouldn't have said it in the first place.  Some insults are beyond
> the pale.

Well he can't very well unsay it now can he? He said something he
shouldn't have an apologised for it. What would you want him to do
now?

Theresa


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 6/15/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> The big problem with Wikimedia as I see it, is that we are trying to
> apply something that works to build an encyclopedia (utter democracy,
> collaborative community decisions) to a world with different rules
> (legal, financial, etc.), and most of all, rules which can't really be
> changed with a community decision the way we change spelling or
> bibliography rules.

As is done now, legal or financial issues trump community decisions.
We may not like the fact that [[Johnny Moneybags]] has to get deleted
because of his lawyer, but that's life. There is no conflict, because
the precedence rules are very clearly defined.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke at octa4.net.au> wrote:
> Exactly. That is what I do. Who are these people who chase through every
> nominees contributions when they do not know them?

There are a number of "RfA regulars". They, IMHO, tend to be the most
demanding, tend to throw their weight around the most, and are the
most resistant to any idea of reducing the discretion given to voters
in RfA.

With apologies to an RfA regularl here - there are also at least one
or two who do a very good job.

Steve


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] List congestion

body:
While all this discussion of the cost of pizza in Tampa Bay is
very interesting, it might be polite to other list members if
discussions are kept focused on the organization of the Wikimedia
Foundation and its board.  I'm not speaking for any of these, I'm
just a bystander with an interest in statistics.

In the last week, I have received 216 messages addressed to
foundation-l. That would be 800 posts per month, which is twice as
much as the comfortable level.  As a comparison, wikitech-l saw
124 messages in the same time and the German wikide-l only 44.

The most frequent posters to foundation-l were:

     24 From: Michael R. Irwin
     20 From: Anthony DiPierro
     14 From: Kelly Martin
     13 From: Erik Moeller
     11 From: Gregory Maxwell
     10 From: Zack Clark
     10 From: Anthere
      8 From: Jimmy Wales
      6 From: Robert Scott Horning
      6 From: Delirium

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] List congestion


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:27:33 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
> <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >The questions from the peanut
> >gallery are less good.
>
> Best one I've seen: do you see the role of administrator as that of
> policeman or janitor.  Made me think, anyway.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --

Adminship is to a large degree what you make it. A lot of admins are
not particlarly active as admins (for the record I define not
particularly active as less than 100 actions per month). Others
specialise in cleanup. Others try and become policemen. Still others
politicians.

--
geni


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
On 6/15/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/15/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This editor has socked and attempted to create a hostile RfC against
> > the blocking admin.  I've deleted it and indefinitely blocked the
> > sock.
>
> What a shame. I was actually close to assuming good faith and undoing
> the block.  Oh well.
>

Tease.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Hiring of Interim Executive Director and Legal
	Counsel

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNCEHFDBAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<453b6e50606150209g74d4a137gf7e399d2d6a4e79d@mail.gmail.com>
	<44916872.2010109@netzero.net>

body:
On 6/15/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
[snip]

> The Wikimedia Foundation needs to decide who their "constituants" really
> are in this case.  In other words, who do the board members really
> represent, and what is their purpose in being?  And what is the role of
> the WMF in regards to the Wikimedia projects?
 [snip]

> To this end, the view that there is some sort of seperation from the
> community and that there are two distinct entities, the foundation and
> the user/contributors is a falsehood.  The real truth is that there are
> a huge number of people that the WMF represents, and that they can't be
> beholden to a single group, such as en.wikipedia.  While Wikipedia
> certainly is the flagship project, the actual percentage of the total
> amount of Wikimedia content that is hosted on en.wikipedia, along with
> the number of participants, is a minority.  And a shrinking minority at
> that.  If you believe that decisions reached on the Village Pump of
> en.wikipedia represent the whole of Wikimedia projects, you have lost
> sight of many other participants that never get to those pages, even on
> Wikipedia.

I suppose this is a general *you*, but I'll answer for myself. As a
French writing to you in English, living in Germany, chair of the
chapters committee, member of three chapters, admin on three projects
(fr, commons and meta), I am conceited enough to believe I am probably
the last person who could be accused of believing that the English
village Pump represents the whole of the Wikimedia projects. No more
than the French, the Wiktionnary village Pump, or the Commons one.

This said, what I understand of your comment, is that the Foundation
is not heeding the people who never express their opinion, may it be
on these lists, on the village pumps, or even on their user pages.
Well, I am not sure I get how the Foundation is always the one
supposed to be fishing for comments. Actually, I believe our board
members/committees have done a pretty damn good job at trying to get
feedback. If they don't get it, there comes a time in life where you
just need to act. So they did.

And here, I mean feedback as a whole, ie. if *the community* wants to
have a say in the appointment of the next accountant, we organize
ourselves and make sure a proposal/counter-proposal is proposed to the
board for review. Right now, all I see are individuals (and I include
myself in those) who are expressing their opinions.

In my opinion, saying that the WMF represents the users *is* the
falsehood. If we kept it on a strict legal level, authors that
contribute their content under the GFDL are *not* assigning rights to
the WMF, or asking the WMF to represent them in any way. Now we might
argue that image (PR) and such are a form of representation. Well, it
is not clear to me, and I believe it is not clear to anyone so far, or
we wouldn't have this conversation.

[snip]

> Treating the user community as the enemy is going to seriously cause
> problems in the future if it is not addressed right away.  And some
> recent comments on this mailing list have made me feel like just that.

In the end, I find it rather amusing that it is always the *poor
community* (of which I feel a member, just in case that is not clear)
that is being treated as an ennemy. After threads on end on the
subject, it rather looks to me as the Foundation is the one that's
considered the ennemy.

I believe I have always been an advocate of stronger separation (read:
make sure everybody knows exactly what they have to do, what they are
responsible for) AND better communication and collaboration.

It seems to me an easy exercise to talk of *the community* when nobody
seems to have a real understanding of who/what *the community* is. Is
it you? Is it me? Is it us? And if it is us, who is *us*?

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Commons-l] Category:Own work

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> 1. People who upload their own work at the commons obviously want them
> to be realeased under a free license (otherwise, they'd go to flicker or
> something)
> 2. As they didn't chose a license, they either didn't know they have to,
> and/or don't care about these "legal technicalities"
> 3. In order to grant their obvious wish to release these images under a
> free license, we add GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5 to all of these images
> 4. We leave {{OwnWork}} and change it into a notice that the license
> information below is assumed, and if the author doesn't agree, (s)he
> should write a note on the talk page or fix it directly
> 5. Where the author is easily reachable, leave them a note what we did

I am on a train right now, and so I can't see what the {{OwnWork}}
template says, but in general making any sort of assumption about what a
user might have meant, with respect to licensing, is a very dangerous
idea.  This should be doubly true for commons, which tries to be the
gold standard for freely licensed images, and which can not rely on
"fair use" rationales in the same way that some-language Wikipedia
currently do.

--Jimbo

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subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/15/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> > Bureaucrat candidates who have ever indicated that they would act as
> > something other than votecounters have been strongly opposed; some
>
> Heh, "RfA is not a vote. However, bureacrats are strongly encouraged
> to treat it as one..."

Or better yet, RfA is a !vote. If vote-counting is illegal, let us
!vote-count. Each comment in AfDs and RfAs shall henceforth be known as
!votes, and we shall !vote count to our heart's content.

!voting is !evil.


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Best one I've seen: do you see the role of administrator as that of
> policeman or janitor.  Made me think, anyway.

The role of admin on Wikipedia pretty much corresponds to nothing
anywhere else. Hence the problem.

Steve


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Section numbering

body:
Netocrat wrote:
>
>>On 6/14/06, Netocrat ... wrote:
>
>>For common ones, you can set up redirects to the section heading. That
>>works, thankfully.
>
> That's welcome news: they didn't work the last time that I checked (1.5.x;
> just confirmed on 1.5.6), but I see that they do on a 1.6.5 install.

What are you referring to here? The following definitely does NOT work:

	#REDIRECT [[Article title#Section name]]

Timwi


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

body:
Somebody wrote:

>I personally don't like the veto system. It is uncomfortable both for
>the board *and* the people involved. Pool to choose from is much
>better.
>
>
Personally I think this is a very incorrect approach.

It can tend to mask crony networks.

Having to veto the choices, nominations, or elected candidates will
inevitably show a trend if cronyism or factionalism gets established.
This process should be about getting effective
managers/governers/leaders that the "community" accepts as effective and
in whom the legal trustees can be equally confident.  The ideal incoming
leader is percieved as effective in both key roles, operations within
the foundation and content creation or other valuable community tasks.

Might be feasible in other organizations but considering that we start
from a crony network currently in charge how will allowing the crony
network to wait until an appropriate crony or someone they like who
might someday become a crony to become available in the "pool" restore
any confidence of fair representation in the rest of the community at large?

Might as well save time and energy and have the Board or Jimbo appoint
their buddies in the first place.

Regarding discomfort.   It is no more comfortable for people nominated
to hang around waiting indefinately for a call that will never come than
it is to be told firmly no,  you are not accepted for the position.

This is why most well run companies or organizations will eventually
send a letter of some kind telling aspiring candidates that there is no
place currently open or another interviewee was selected for the
position.   Thank you for your interest and time.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Just when you think you've seen it all...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
>
> One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has some
> nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:

Finally got around to reading this. What rot. Complaints included:

* The aforementioned fake categories
* Using a "fake signature" (actually he forgot to sign), unretracted
* Not "conveying an image of seriousness" (???)
* Not using standard warning templates (he wrote WTF on a vandal's
talk page with a link to the offending edit)
* "Casually mentioning that he might undelete some articles" - the
question asked was what he would do with his admin tools. He said he
might undelete some speedied articles. Um, yes? He might block some
users, too. Both legitimate activities.
* "Conduct unbecoming an admin" - I think this refers to having a
sense of humour
* Finding vandalism funny...

In other words, he doesn't take Wikipedia that seriously, and is able
to make valuable contributions anyway. Eep.

Steve


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
This editor has socked and attempted to create a hostile RfC against
the blocking admin.  I've deleted it and indefinitely blocked the
sock.


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:50:36 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>In other words, he doesn't take Wikipedia that seriously, and is able
>to make valuable contributions anyway.

Seems set to become a rouge admin even before he's started!

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


body:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:58:49 +0100, "Tony Sidaway" <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
wrote:

>This editor has socked and attempted to create a hostile RfC against
>the blocking admin.  I've deleted it and indefinitely blocked the
>sock.

Enough said.  Community patience for such activities being limited to
approximately none at all.

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


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Delphine M?nard wrote:
>
>
>
>>To make a long story short, as I see it (and as I have made clear in
>>an earlier post) the Foundation should *not* be ruled byt he
>>community, no more than the community should be ruled by the
>>Foundation. Separation as Aphaia put it and to which I agreed means
>>that those from the community who wish to participate in the
>>organisation are more than welcome, but that the community does not
>>have the high hand on things it cannot be held responsible for. I said
>>it earlier and I'll say it again, a great editor in any of the
>>Wikimedia projects does *not* make a great board member/commity
>>member/CEO/accountant, you name it. And the trend as I see it today is
>>that people in the community judge by what they can see. And if the
>>community is not involved in Foundation day-to-day business, they only
>>see how many edits a person has. Not what their real skills are.
>>
>>Delphine
>>
>>
>>
>>
>One thing that democratic institutions do very well with is to get a
>diversity of opinions regarding a topic.  And to get opinions from new
>or shifting viewpoints earlier than most other types of governance units.
>
>The Wikimedia Foundation needs to decide who their "constituants" really
>are in this case.  In other words, who do the board members really
>represent, and what is their purpose in being?  And what is the role of
>the WMF in regards to the Wikimedia projects?
>
>The concern is that perhaps the board is becomming too insular and not
>really paying attention to the participants on the various Wikimedia
>projects.  My response to the above questions, from my viewpoint, is
>that the WMF exists as a support to see that the content on the various
>Wikimedia projects is developed in a consistant and organized fashion.
> And to maintain the servers and other physical and intangable assetts
>that belong to the "community" that is putting all of this together.
> They also exist to keep the needs of potential readers of Wikimedia
>materials and content in mind, as there certainly exists an audience of
>people who read Wikipedia but don't actively work in the creation of
>content.
>
>One other constituancy group that is not often mentioned here is also
>the MediaWiki software developers.  While the software does exist to
>serve and help develop the community, there is a somewhat seperate
>community of people who are developing the software running all of this,
>and that is indeed a seperate "product" that adds to the dynamics of the
>WMF, and something that must be managed as well by the WMF board.  With
>very few exceptions these are all volunteers and are just as valuable as
>people writing Wikipedia articles.  And requires volunteer management
>experience.
>
>The extra dynamic here is that there do exist multiple projects, and in
>essense seperate communities, including different groups speaking
>multiple languages.  fr.wikibooks has a very different group of people
>than zh.wikipedia, for example.  The WMF needs to cope with the needs
>and wants of both groups, and that isn't easy.
>
>What the WMF does not represent is publishers who distribute Wikimedia
>project content, ISPs, or corporate sponsors, including grant agencies,
>nor any government.  It also doesn't represent critics of Wikipedia, nor
>people who feel they have been wronged by Wikimedia projects (read John
>Siegenthaler here), nor does it represent members of the popular press
>even though nobody likes bad publicity.
>
>To this end, the view that there is some sort of seperation from the
>community and that there are two distinct entities, the foundation and
>the user/contributors is a falsehood.  The real truth is that there are
>a huge number of people that the WMF represents, and that they can't be
>beholden to a single group, such as en.wikipedia.  While Wikipedia
>certainly is the flagship project, the actual percentage of the total
>amount of Wikimedia content that is hosted on en.wikipedia, along with
>the number of participants, is a minority.  And a shrinking minority at
>that.  If you believe that decisions reached on the Village Pump of
>en.wikipedia represent the whole of Wikimedia projects, you have lost
>sight of many other participants that never get to those pages, even on
>Wikipedia.
>
>My concern is that some recent actions, notably the checkuser policies
>but other issues as well, have ignored these other constituant groups
>and may cause some additional problems in the future if they are
>ignored.  I'm not saying that it is easy to get in touch with such a
>diverse group of individuals, but it is worth it to at least try.  Board
>members that are appointed because of close ties to current board
>members or because they are politically connected by whatever term you
>want to use to describe the politics, may not have the best interests of
>the Wikimedia projects at heart.  At the very least there needs to be a
>way to get a voice heard, and to have an avenue of appeal if you don't
>think something is working out, or that some sort of injustice is
>happening.
>
>Treating the user community as the enemy is going to seriously cause
>problems in the future if it is not addressed right away.  And some
>recent comments on this mailing list have made me feel like just that.
>
>
>

Many of the excellent points raised above by Roberth are often addressed
in a business plan or operations plans.   Most not small U.S. business
entities have an annual update process whereby these plans are reviewed,
adjusted, modifed to reflect the organizations current intentions.   The
process is used to update and propagate critical information between all
levels and often even mere  stakeholders.   The plans are typically not
intended as straightjackets rather they are a snapshot at a moment in
time of the best summary of itself the organization can provide to all
its diverse elements.  Another similar tool is a stakeholders report
that summarizes past periods performance compared to the planned
performance and analyzes causes or sources of any major deviation and
appropriate adjustments if any.

Does such a beast exist somewhere publicly available?

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> In other words, he doesn't take Wikipedia that seriously, and is able
> to make valuable contributions anyway. Eep.
>
> Steve

Admin takeing wikipedia seriously = rapid burnout.

The only real issue is the Lolicon thing and since I avoided that one
the second time around I'm not really in a position to comment.
--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] List congestion

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>While all this discussion of the cost of pizza in Tampa Bay is
>very interesting, it might be polite to other list members if
>discussions are kept focused on the organization of the Wikimedia
>Foundation and its board.  I'm not speaking for any of these, I'm
>just a bystander with an interest in statistics.
>
>In the last week, I have received 216 messages addressed to
>foundation-l. That would be 800 posts per month, which is twice as
>much as the comfortable level.  As a comparison, wikitech-l saw
>124 messages in the same time and the German wikide-l only 44.
>
>The most frequent posters to foundation-l were:
>
>     24 From: Michael R. Irwin
>     20 From: Anthony DiPierro
>     14 From: Kelly Martin
>     13 From: Erik Moeller
>     11 From: Gregory Maxwell
>     10 From: Zack Clark
>     10 From: Anthere
>      8 From: Jimmy Wales
>      6 From: Robert Scott Horning
>      6 From: Delirium
>
>
>
>
Interesting.

I recently got out of the hospital and responded to a 6-7 week backlog
in the last couple of days.

Plus I currently have no permanent or stable workspace for Wikiversity
activities to absorb my time and vamoose me away from here to useful
recruiting, content creation, yack yacking with my buddies with a common
goal or vision there, etc. etc.

No doubt I shall remain in the top twenty for a while.

It might be polite for people tired of reading windbags who have just
dropped in for a few months to figure why a project with overwhelming
support from everyone; the Board, the voters: except people who oppose
it and will probably not participate in it; to simply delete my posts
and quit implying I or others providing useful information for me should
shut up.

Perhaps you and others should consider reviewing the archives or the
daily mediawiki digest if we are clogging your inbox and you dislike
automated filtering or rapid deletion without reading.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] List congestion


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Just when you think you've seen it all...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
>
> One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has some
> nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:

We need to enforce sane rationales for votes on RfA ... somehow. Particularly for oppose votes, since they carry much more weight. Failing that, perhaps we should start a Wiki society that, for every oppose vote judged to be idiotic, automatically mass votes in favour of the candidate.

And I'm only half-joking ;-)

-- Matt
[[User:Matt Crypto]]


from_name: Brian Salter-Duke

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 12:56:46PM +1000, Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
> G'day Guy,
>
> >Just when you think you've seen it all...
> >
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
> <snip/>
> >Others think that his use of non-standard warnings means he doesn't
> >take vandalism seriously enough (does every admin have to be at the
> >forefront of the fight against vandalism?)
> >
> >I can understand people choosing not to vote for admins they don't
> >admire, but opposing on these weird grounds is... well, weird.
>
> Heck, using non-standard warnings (albeit perhaps not as flowery as the
> one cited) is something to be admired, not complained about.
>
> We use the {{testN}} series far too often, and in cases where it's
> inappropriate.  Admins being willing to think for themselves and treat
> the people they speak to as human beings is a Good Thing.

Entirely agree. I took a look at that RfA and thought "Why the hell do
people apply to be admins. Nobody needs to put up with that much crap". i
The process needs improving.
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse
>
>
> ------------------------------

--
         Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) b_duke at octa4.net.au
       Post: 626 Melbourne Rd, Spotswood, VIC, 3015, Australia
    Phone 03-93992847. http://members.iinet.net.au/~linden1/brian/
Honorary Researcher Fellow, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Univ.


references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNCEHFDBAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<453b6e50606150209g74d4a137gf7e399d2d6a4e79d@mail.gmail.com>
	<44916872.2010109@netzero.net>
	<453b6e50606150747kb1890d1x4d22303d13c11376@mail.gmail.com>
	<4491861A.6070905@netzero.net>

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Delphine M?nard wrote:
>
>
>
Great work both of you!

Some really good analysis of constituent groups.   We (anybody bored and
willing to volunteer if they thought it might get used or be valuable
sometime somewhere) could probably cut and pasted and have an entire
section of a business operations plan or marketing analaysis a quarter
to half finished.

Anybody know if the new Interim Director is bringing his own ops plan or
likes to develop his own in private?

Last time I initiated business planning at meta I was designated a troll
so expect no dangerous unilateral initiative from me.

I will merely keep this as a reference or maybe use some of it for a
lession plan or two at Wikiversity.

Thanks folks!

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Sean Barrett

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

Richard Fan stated for the record:

> What do you expect me to do? I tried emailing Blnguyen and several other
> admins but they never bothered responding. I merely created the sockpuppets
> as a last minute attempt to get their attention, not trying to reengage the
> edit-war with TJive or anything. I corrosponded with Jimmy Wales, and he
> asked me to take it to mediation.

I like it!  That will make a great page name: [[I Merely Created the
Sockpuppets as a Last Minute Attempt to Get Their Attention and Other
Deleted Nonsense]]

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Fair? Fair's a place you win goldfish, son.
 sean at epoptic.com |
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Section numbering

body:
On 6/15/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >>For common ones, you can set up redirects to the section heading. That
> >>works, thankfully.
> >
> > That's welcome news: they didn't work the last time that I checked (1.5.x;
> > just confirmed on 1.5.6), but I see that they do on a 1.6.5 install.
>
> What are you referring to here? The following definitely does NOT work:
>
>         #REDIRECT [[Article title#Section name]]

Heh, yeah, you'd think I would have noticed that by now. Well, I've
probably created a dozen of those for the day when it does work.

Steve


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 15/06/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
> >
> > That sounds like an argument for making "hard" links where both titles
> > are equally authoritative---i.e. "traveling" and "travelling" are both
> > top-level titles, but in fact are the same page.
> >
> > The current solution, making them different pages, is IMO much worse
> > than favoring one or the other, since it requires people to basically
> > copy/paste definitions across multiple pages, and make sure changes stay
> > in sync.  Look, for example, at "traveling" versus "travelling", which
> > currently actually have wildly different content despite being the same
> > word with a minor variation in spelling (this was the first example I
> > checked).
>
> I do wonder why they don't simply redirect both to [[traveling,
> travelling]].  Of course, I'm not an active wiktionarian, so I wouldn't
> know.  It sounds so obvious that it's probably a perennial proposal.

But *which one would go first*?

(I'll bet you people would fight over that, too.)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
I think bureaucrats should disregard stupid oppose votes when deciding
consensus and should say so.

Theresa

On 6/15/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > Just when you think you've seen it all...
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
> >
> > One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has some
> > nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:
>
> We need to enforce sane rationales for votes on RfA ... somehow. Particularly for oppose votes, since they carry much more weight. Failing that, perhaps we should start a Wiki society that, for every oppose vote judged to be idiotic, automatically mass votes in favour of the candidate.
>
> And I'm only half-joking ;-)
>
> -- Matt
> [[User:Matt Crypto]]
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--

http://theresaknott.googlepages.com/home

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


body:
On 6/15/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> This editor has socked and attempted to create a hostile RfC against
> the blocking admin.  I've deleted it and indefinitely blocked the
> sock.

What a shame. I was actually close to assuming good faith and undoing
the block.  Oh well.

Theresa


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 15/06/06, ABCD <en.abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/15/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But *which one would go first*?
>
> That's simple -- put them in alphabetical order - I mean, this /is/ a
> dictionary, right?

Uh... um... WP:NOT paper. And alphabetical order is just Western
systemic bias. Oooh, oooh, I know! You're really wanting us to use
(the one that comes first) and you're suggesting this as a sneaky way
to avoid consensus...

You'd be *amazed* what people can come up with when they get their
heels stuck into something.

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


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've also suggested that one or two people should take it upon
> themselves to really study the candidate over several days, going
> through their entire history and producing a short report, which other
> people can base their votes on. Rather than the current system where
> each person independently supposedly checks the history, and probably
> votes based on the first 3 edits they see.

That sounds like an excellent idea. I, like many other people in my
experience, only tend to vote on RfAs where I know about the
candidate, where I have edited many articles that they have edited or
participated in many discussions that they have participated in.

This is fine for me, but there are quite a few people who participate
on RfA who don't know every candidate well (which is fine - it's a
community decision).

Most often, nominators are people who have plenty of experience with
the candidate, and perhaps they sometimes forget to communicate
clearly to that second group of people who want to participate but
aren't familiar with all the candidates. Higher standards for
*nominators* means better information for the community.

I would also suggest more standard questions for candidates, and
encourage people who add questions of their own.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Cobb

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
Why AFD just does not work, or, what happens when zealots flood a
"discussion" with keep votes.

* "I can't find this anywhere else"

* "Keep and Cite as per Nscheffey. This page is extremely useful to my
  Star Wars: Jedi Academy clan, it's no worse than some other sci-fi
  entries, it just needs citations!"

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lightsabercombat

Will any admin have the brass ones to do the correct thing and delete
an awful unsalvageable article, or will they count up the votes, wimp
out, declare "no consensus" or "keep" and let an unencylopedic
carbuncle survive?


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
> Strange, [[template:delete assist]] worked for me just fine. Anyway,
> I've patched BOO just to be sure.
>
> If it still makes problems, please give me an example page (category).

cool, it works for me now. Thanks a ton!

Brianna


subject: [Commons-l] Category:Own work

body:
> 3. In order to grant their obvious wish to release these images under a
> free license, we add GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5 to all of these images
> 4. We leave {{OwnWork}} and change it into a notice that the license
> information below is assumed, and if the author doesn't agree, (s)he
> should write a note on the talk page or fix it directly

That's not a bad idea actually. As long as we leave {{OwnWork}}.
With all our bots running around now there should be far fewer cases.

Probably I would just make it {{GFDL}} though. I think it'd be
stretching it to put a CC license, just because we like them. :)
Whereas it's much more likely they're aware that Wikipedia is GFDL.

At the moment {{own work}} actually says it is depreciated to NLD. :|
I rather disagree with this but I understand the need for it. These
OwnWorks just hang around forever...

Brianna


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Commons-l] Image uploads now undeletable

body:
Uploaded files which are deleted can now be undeleted; admins can also view the
deleted files without actually undeleting them. This is integrated into the
existing Special:Undelete in what I hope is a fairly clear and intuitive manner.

It's my hope that this will encourage admins to tackle the deletion backlogs a
little more aggressively, since mistakes will be easier to undo.

I've tested it both offline and on the live servers and everything seems fine so
far, but if you do encounter problems please report them at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image uploads now undeletable

body:
Uploaded files which are deleted can now be undeleted; admins can also view the
deleted files without actually undeleting them. This is integrated into the
existing Special:Undelete in what I hope is a fairly clear and intuitive manner.

It's my hope that this will encourage admins to tackle the deletion backlogs a
little more aggressively, since mistakes will be easier to undo.

I've tested it both offline and on the live servers and everything seems fine so
far, but if you do encounter problems please report them at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Image uploads now undeletable

body:
Uploaded files which are deleted can now be undeleted; admins can also view the
deleted files without actually undeleting them. This is integrated into the
existing Special:Undelete in what I hope is a fairly clear and intuitive manner.

It's my hope that this will encourage admins to tackle the deletion backlogs a
little more aggressively, since mistakes will be easier to undo.

I've tested it both offline and on the live servers and everything seems fine so
far, but if you do encounter problems please report them at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> Do you have a handle on how large the deleted content will be? Seems we
> could end up hosting a *lot* of deletions = lot of space.

Likely much smaller than live content.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: sannse

subject: [Wikitech-l] DPLforum

body:
The info-en team on OTRS are totally overwhelmed.  We are going to have
to start rejecting a lot of mail until we can get other solutions in
place (we are going to use a very general form letter for the vast
majority of mail)

This means we will be sending lots of clueless newbies to the discussion
pages on Wikipedia.  If would really help if these were easer to use -
that would reduce the number coming back to us for help.

Wikia is currently using a MediaWiki extension that gives forum-like
indexes of pages.  It's written by Uncyclopedia:User:Algorithm and works
really well to organise discussion pages.

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/DPLforum>

<http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Forum:Village_Dump>

I know that liquid threads is planned, and that you have discussed
similar extensions in the past (maybe even this one, I couldn't find the
thread on search) but this would be easily implemented as a temporary
solution that would be invaluable to communications.

The problems I've heard with this so far, are a dislike of the term
"forum" (a namespace is needed, currently set as "forum" on Wikia -
maybe it could be changed to something less... forumy?) and a question
on the way it deals with caching (it disables cache on forum pages I'm
told... would this be an issue for us?)

If this is possible, it would be great to get it set up quickly.  I know
everyone says that about their pet projects, but I really think this can
make a difference to the big problem that the OTRS team and
communications committee are having.

Thanks,

-- sannse


subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Important notice: Brion totally rocks.
>>
>> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.
>
> Sounds nice. But how and where?
> I am now at http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Category_sort_example.png
> through a red link, a deleted image, but possibly have no button for
> undeleting.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Image:Category_sort_example.png

Undeletion links are provided on the description page if the page is altogether
missing, and on the history tab if it has any deleted history.

This image was deleted several weeks ago so it's not archived. Thus you can
undelete the description page text, but not the image.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Important notice: Brion totally rocks.
>>
>> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.
>
> Sounds nice. But how and where?
> I am now at http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Category_sort_example.png
> through a red link, a deleted image, but possibly have no button for
> undeleting.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Image:Category_sort_example.png

Undeletion links are provided on the description page if the page is altogether
missing, and on the history tab if it has any deleted history.

This image was deleted several weeks ago so it's not archived. Thus you can
undelete the description page text, but not the image.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Important notice: Brion totally rocks.
>>
>> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.
>
> Sounds nice. But how and where?
> I am now at http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Category_sort_example.png
> through a red link, a deleted image, but possibly have no button for
> undeleting.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Image:Category_sort_example.png

Undeletion links are provided on the description page if the page is altogether
missing, and on the history tab if it has any deleted history.

This image was deleted several weeks ago so it's not archived. Thus you can
undelete the description page text, but not the image.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Important notice: Brion totally rocks.
>>
>> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.
>
> Sounds nice. But how and where?
> I am now at http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Category_sort_example.png
> through a red link, a deleted image, but possibly have no button for
> undeleting.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Image:Category_sort_example.png

Undeletion links are provided on the description page if the page is altogether
missing, and on the history tab if it has any deleted history.

This image was deleted several weeks ago so it's not archived. Thus you can
undelete the description page text, but not the image.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Sue Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The biggest problem that I see with the RfA process is that you have a group of folks (and it's a fairly large group) who vote on nearly every RfA. Unless they are spending all of their  wiki time researching admins, which I think is silly, they have to come up with some fairly objective standards to measure folks against. It could

"Objective" is a nice way of putting it. "Superficial", "arbitrary" or
"meaningless" come to mind as well. Again, the problem is not that
objective measures exist. It's that each user comes up with his own,
without consulting with anyone else over whether or not they're
actually meaningful or have any value.

So, instead of "User X is a bit of a dweeb, I've seen him around, and
he only ever makes stupid comments" we have the "objective" comment of
"User X failed my automatic dweebatron2000() measurement, hence voting
no."

Steve


from_name: Richard Fan

references:
<4f70ab2d0606131252x14d3acd7k615fdc4ba9bd32bc@mail.gmail.com>
	<4oa092l0g2iuciekf9q46j6da2s6qjh2g8@4ax.com>
	<4f70ab2d0606141800y11bfb859vdf4183165e185997@mail.gmail.com>
	<c6d292t54vb52rubuiadhgipcsom9cmuql@4ax.com>

body:
Go and check mine and his talk pages. I apologised to him and he accepted
it.

On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:00:02 +1000, "Richard Fan"
> <richardfanx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [snip some stuff]
>
> Care to defend this?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:FWBOarticle&diff=prev&oldid=48217581
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 10:45:23AM +0100, geni wrote:
> On 6/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Bad reasons I've seen for voting against:
> >* Didn't have email set (no one had told him to)
>
> No but it is generaly considered polite to do so.
>
> >* Had a web link in signature (no one had told him not to)
>
> That would generaly be considered to be one of those things you should
> just know.
>
> >* Has strong opinions on userboxes
>
> After Cyde it is understandable that people are going to be a little
> twitchy about that one.
>
> >* Hasn't done anything stupid
>
> Pretty good reason in fact. Admin powers should go to as many users as
> we can trust with them. The ability to avoid doing stupid things is
> something I like to se in admins.
>
>
> >I've also suggested that one or two people should take it upon
> >themselves to really study the candidate over several days, going
> >through their entire history and producing a short report, which other
> >people can base their votes on. Rather than the current system where
> >each person independently supposedly checks the history, and probably
> >votes based on the first 3 edits they see.
> >
> >Steve
>
> Or you could encourage people to use my system of only voteing for
> people they already know about.

Exactly. That is what I do. Who are these people who chase through every
nominees contributions when they do not know them?

>
> --
> geni
>
>
> ------------------------------

--
         Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) b_duke at octa4.net.au
       Post: 626 Melbourne Rd, Spotswood, VIC, 3015, Australia
    Phone 03-93992847. http://members.iinet.net.au/~linden1/brian/
Honorary Researcher Fellow, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Univ.


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Bureaucrat candidates who have ever indicated that they would act as
> something other than votecounters have been strongly opposed; some

Heh, "RfA is not a vote. However, bureacrats are strongly encouraged
to treat it as one..."

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] DPLforum

body:
On Wikipedia.en - to make the various discussion pages easy to find and
use.  No more massive pages and lost discussions.  For use by anyone,
but of particular help to the clueless newbs we will be sending there
from OTRS.

More specifically the Village Pump, the Help Desk and the Admin
Noticeboard would be the three key areas - those three would be in the
main index, each with a sub-index to further split topics.

Once the system is in place, it would be easy to work out the best ways
to arrange these and what other pages could be included in the main
index.  It would also be easy to add other similar talk pages (all this
is done by editors if you haven't looked at that bit yet)

I don't know how it's installed, I know that it needs a namespace -
although I'm told it can be set to use an existing one (talk??).  But
you know how un-techy I am, I can get hold of Algorithm for any
questions though.

Sorry for not getting it all in my last message

--sannse

Brion Vibber wrote:
> sannse wrote:
> [snip]
>> If this is possible, it would be great to get it set up quickly.
>
> Where, how, why, for what purpose? On a private wiki for internal use? On a
> public wiki for discussions? Whose discussions? What kind of discussions?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 14/06/2006


from_name: Aphaia

body:
On 6/15/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Treating the user community as the enemy is going to seriously cause
> problems in the future if it is not addressed right away.  And some
> recent comments on this mailing list have made me feel like just that.

On my part I haven't heard Delphine taking the community as an enemy
to the foundation, and thank her for her plain but well thought
expantion of my brief comment.  Also personally I'm grad to see a
reader who has grasped what I had meant.

Separation, or distinction is itself not evil. To respond Erik Sachte,
I thought the two spontenous individual bodies, never mixed, but
working together, both attempting to listen to the other for further
understanding and cooperation.

--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:13:58 +1000, Mark Gallagher
<m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:

>I'd like to see more creative answers.  Like: "admins are neither
>policemen nor janitors; we're volunteer firemen from the SES.  We clean
>up messes, protect fellow community members from fires, and if necessary
>have the power to confiscate matches from particularly nasty firebugs."

Exactly.  Policeman is a fail, janitor is a fail (too obvious), your
answer is a pass :-)

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


from_name: Essjay

subject: [Commons-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Important notice: Brion totally rocks.

Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.

I'll be leading group worship at the Church of the Almighty Brion at 7PM
UTC tomorrow.

Essjay

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*


subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*


subject: [Wikitech-l] Brion is *the man*


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Just when you think you've seen it all...
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
>>
>>One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has some
>>nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:
>>
>>
>
>Finally got around to reading this. What rot. Complaints included:
>
>* The aforementioned fake categories
>* Using a "fake signature" (actually he forgot to sign), unretracted
>* Not "conveying an image of seriousness" (???)
>* Not using standard warning templates (he wrote WTF on a vandal's
>talk page with a link to the offending edit)
>* "Casually mentioning that he might undelete some articles" - the
>question asked was what he would do with his admin tools. He said he
>might undelete some speedied articles. Um, yes? He might block some
>users, too. Both legitimate activities.
>* "Conduct unbecoming an admin" - I think this refers to having a
>sense of humour
>* Finding vandalism funny...
>
>In other words, he doesn't take Wikipedia that seriously, and is able
>to make valuable contributions anyway. Eep.
>
>Steve
>
>
There's a difference between treating WP like a playground, and treating
it like a workplace where whistling while you work is acceptable. If
there was ever evidence that RfA just fails on occasion, this is one of
those cases.

John


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] Category:Own work

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> 1. People who upload their own work at the commons obviously want them
>> to be realeased under a free license (otherwise, they'd go to flicker or
>> something)
>> 2. As they didn't chose a license, they either didn't know they have to,
>> and/or don't care about these "legal technicalities"
>> 3. In order to grant their obvious wish to release these images under a
>> free license, we add GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5 to all of these images
>> 4. We leave {{OwnWork}} and change it into a notice that the license
>> information below is assumed, and if the author doesn't agree, (s)he
>> should write a note on the talk page or fix it directly
>> 5. Where the author is easily reachable, leave them a note what we did
>>
>
> I am on a train right now, and so I can't see what the {{OwnWork}}
> template says, but in general making any sort of assumption about what a
> user might have meant, with respect to licensing, is a very dangerous
> idea.  This should be doubly true for commons, which tries to be the
> gold standard for freely licensed images, and which can not rely on
> "fair use" rationales in the same way that some-language Wikipedia
> currently do.
>
I am not claiming "fair use", I'm trying to back up the user's intention
(release under a fair license) with a concrete implementation (GFDL).

Basically, we have three options:
* Find the user who uploaded the image and make him/her chose a license
(great!)
* User can't be found, assuming good faith and calling it GFDL
* User can't be found, assuming nothing and deleting the image

Magnus


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject: [Commons-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
  Hi,

> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.

  I just tested this at en.  Either my browser cache is fooling me, or this
works as one would expect it to.  Only for recent deletions, however.

                    Jkelly


from_name: Brad Patrick

body:
Do you have a handle on how large the deleted content will be? Seems we
could end up hosting a *lot* of deletions = lot of space.

On 6/16/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Uploaded files which are deleted can now be undeleted; admins can also
> view the
> deleted files without actually undeleting them. This is integrated into
> the
> existing Special:Undelete in what I hope is a fairly clear and intuitive
> manner.
>
> It's my hope that this will encourage admins to tackle the deletion
> backlogs a
> little more aggressively, since mistakes will be easier to undo.
>
> I've tested it both offline and on the live servers and everything seems
> fine so
> far, but if you do encounter problems please report them at
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-06-16

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

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

Passed 388 of 404 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


subject: [Commons-l] Commons browser

body:
As a personal excercise in a programming language rather new to me, C#,
I have started a commons category browser. It uses WikiSense to generate
a commons category tree on-the-fly, and downloads the images in a
selected category to be displayed as thumbnails.

Noteworthy points:
* Tries to download existing image thumbnails first to increase
speed/save bandwidth
* Caches the thumbnail locally
* Doubleclick opens the browser with the image description page

Note that not much else is working right now; it's just what I hacked
together in an afternoon, in a programming language I'm still exploring.
Scrolling through thumbnails doesn't work yet, some images are ignored,
UTF8 category names are broken, etc.

Plans:
* Fix bugs
* Cache category tree locally
* Load thumbnails in the background, so one can browse in the meantime
* Analyze description pages in the background to mark images with
troublesome templates

For those not faint of heart, with a fast internet connection and .NET
2.0 installed (Window$ only, though AFAIK the current Mono should
theoretically support it):

http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/CommonsBrowser.zip

For the rest of you, here's a screenshot:

http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/Screenshot.png

Just the executable, source will be released under GPL, in anyone is
interested that is ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Commons-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
jkelly at fas.harvard.edu wrote:
>   Hi,
>
>
>> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.
>>
>
>   I just tested this at en.  Either my browser cache is fooling me, or this
> works as one would expect it to.  Only for recent deletions, however.
>
>                     Jkelly
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
I tested as well. See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=Essjay&page=Image%3ABusy+Icon.PNG

for evidence. And yes, this will only be for images deleted from now-on.

Essjay

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/16/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Uploaded files which are deleted can now be undeleted; admins can also view the
> deleted files without actually undeleting them. This is integrated into the
> existing Special:Undelete in what I hope is a fairly clear and intuitive manner.
>
> It's my hope that this will encourage admins to tackle the deletion backlogs a
> little more aggressively, since mistakes will be easier to undo.
>
> I've tested it both offline and on the live servers and everything seems fine so
> far, but if you do encounter problems please report them at
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Good this means I can stop maintaining an offsite copy of images from
en and nagging for en image dumps.


subject: [Commons-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Hot diggity SHAZAM!!!!!
>
> Yes, indeedy.
>
> *cracks whip at Commons admins* no more excuses now!!!!! woot...
>
> Brianna
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
As promised, I will start on my 1000 shortly. Must see to the daily
ritual on en.wiki, but as soon as that is done, I'm going to buzz
through my 1000 as fast as I can.

Essjay

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Wikitech-l] An issue on Cite.php extension

body:
Shinjiman wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Someone just found out about an issue using the "Cite this article" function.
> for example, when we see the "Wikipedia" article as of 00:33, 16 June
> 2006, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&oldid=58859884].
> The URL link to the "Cite this article" is linking to the current
> version of the article. It should supposed to cite that article as of
> that modification time, instead of the current revision , IMHO. Is
> this really an issue about the Cite.php extension?

Huh?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Postgres and oracle need updates

body:
A heads-up for you alternate-DB fans:

The filearchive table for deleted image data will need to be added to the pg and
oracle schemas; also some equivalent of the locking done in FileStore.php will
need to be devised, and some abstraction put into Database.php.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Shinjiman wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Someone just found out about an issue using the "Cite this article" function.
>>> for example, when we see the "Wikipedia" article as of 00:33, 16 June
>>> 2006, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&oldid=58859884].
>>> The URL link to the "Cite this article" is linking to the current
>>> version of the article. It should supposed to cite that article as of
>>> that modification time, instead of the current revision , IMHO. Is
>>> this really an issue about the Cite.php extension?
>> Huh?
>
> The user is pointing out that the Special:Cite link in the sidebar
> will always create a permalink to the latest revision, even when
> viewing an old revision.

Ok, apparently I need more sleep. :)

When viewing an old revision, it ought to link to that revision. Right?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Important notice: Brion totally rocks.
>>
>> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.
>>
>
> Sounds nice. But how and where?
> I am now at http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Category_sort_example.png
> through a red link, a deleted image, but possibly have no button for
> undeleting.
>
Images deleted in the past cannot be restored; they were lost at the
time they were deleted. From now on, any image that is deleted will be
saved so that it can be restored. So, if you delete an image right now,
it can be restored at any point in the future, just like any other page.
It works through the regular undeletion interface.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was excited. :D

Essjay

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*


subject: [Commons-l] Commons browser

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> For those not faint of heart, with a fast internet connection and .NET
> 2.0 installed (Window$ only, though AFAIK the current Mono should
> theoretically support it):

Mono 1.1.15 doesn't seem too happy with it; it seems to be missing the
SplitContainer control. Got source I could look at?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
That's why I apologised. I have said such in anger over the Nanjing Massacre
article, not because I meant it.

On 6/16/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:22:12 +1000, "Richard Fan"
> <richardfanx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Go and check mine and his talk pages. I apologised to him and he accepted
> >it.
>
> Shouldn't have said it in the first place.  Some insults are beyond
> the pale.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think they're important lest we be confused with a gardening store.
>> The allusion to the wiki syntax has always worked for me, and I've
>> seen quite a few wikis create derivative works with something else
>> between the brackets. (This is one reason why I insist that the logo
>> should be free content.)
>
> Are they they only way this can be done?  Is [[image]] the only
> arrangement incorporating MediaWiki syntax with an image?

How about:

{{sofixit}}

No wait, that's the Wikipedia logo... ;)

> I know I'm sounding negative here, but I'm not particularly taken with
> the new flower - always sort of liked the old one, asymmetry and all.
> :) Would like to hear what others think.

The old flower has a real, organic look to it which I like, though it could do
with more contrast. The new one looks very fake, despite being real. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
On 6/16/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Deleted text has always been much, much smaller than the non-deleted text,
> and the old image directories have always been much smaller than the current
> image directories.
[snip]

Just to interject some data into the discussion.

There are 489678 image pages on enwiki. There are 207320 distinct
image page titles which have been deleted. If we presume that deleted
image pages with deletions have the same number of image versions and
similar image sizes then we can say roughly that preserving deleteds
would have increased our enwiki storage requirements by 50%. Because a
substantial chunk of these may have been deletions from objects moved
to commons, past performance may not indicate future results. Although
with 73,214 (vs 148k uploads) image pages deleted on enwiki in the
first three months of the year, we can expect the future storage
requirements to be non-trivial.

Commons on the other hand has a far smaller number of deleted image
pages (~40k), no doubt due to the sites lower profile for uninformed
users leading to less problems images, the lack of a migration causing
deletions, and less vigorous copyright enforcement.

In any case even if keeping deleteds were to double our image capacity
requirements they may well be worth it (consider detecting reuploads
of previously deleted images, even modified copies of previously
deleted images) ... but lets not forget to calculate the real cost of
storage (it's not just the $120 that a 320gb disk costs... think of
backup, etc).


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:

>I think bureaucrats should disregard stupid oppose votes when deciding
>consensus and should say so.
>
>
Bureaucrat candidates who have ever indicated that they would act as
something other than votecounters have been strongly opposed; some
barely scraped through (e.g. Essjay) and even this was after they gave
in and agreed to avoid exercising discretion unless the percentage of
support votes was between 75% and 80% (>80% is automatic support; <75%
is automatic fail, or a relist at best). In short, "RfA regulars" or the
"community" are uncomfortable with such discretionary powers; to them,
bureaucrats are just for deciding the sticky 75% to 80% decisions, and
discounting socks. Then again, this does seem to work for the most part.
Barring a major controversy, I think Herostratus will pass comfortably.

John