body:
On 4/10/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> How many mirrors is enough? 1000? 10,000? 100,000? Eventually I imagine
> the market will become
> saturated, when a new mirror can't recover its minimal startup costs, even
> with the most aggressive
> SEO techniques. What will the Internet look like then? Will the average
> user be able to find
> independent information in the search engines, which didn't come from
> Wikpedia?
>

I guess that within this theoretical framework, you have to decide whether
you're more interested in what's good for the internet or what's good for
WMF. Fortunately, that's a false dilemma, as we seem to be getting by just
fine with donations. The only way we would be forced to make such a decision
is if we chose to adopt this idea.

Ryan


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deterioration of Featured Articles

body:
On 4/10/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:

> Yes, some people might read those statistics as "Even wikipedia says
> that 99,8 per cent of the articles are crap" and to some degree, one
> must agree: The average article is very currently poorly referenced,
> formatted, sourced, comprehensive and so on (this applies also to en.wp
> IMHO). It is no help that traditional encyclopedias have even less
> external references.

You're doing it again. It's difficult to tell whether this kind of statement
is pessimistic or driven toward endless improvement. But saying that the
articles are crap is a  subjective assertion that really says more about
your attitude toward them than anything about the articles themselves.
Personally, I don't agree that the average article on the English Wikipedia
is crap. I think the average article on the English Wikipedia is probably
decent, and likely to have more basic information about the topic in an
accessible format than even a Google search would have produced. For
example, if I am searching for information on something that is likely to be
in Wikipedia, I'll often skip Google alltogether.

IMHO, if an initiative is able to draw more attention to quality related
> aspects, I generally support it. If an initiative no longer has this
> ability, it can be neglected or abolished. This is one of the reasons
> de.wp got rid of this {{stub}} template.

Yeah, I agree with you there. But I'm sceptical about whether putting the
focus on the featured article process is the best way to do this. Frequently
people become obsessed with featuring the article they are currently working
on and may attempt to game the political system as a way of getting a leg up
on the FAC process, for example by recruiting their friends to support the
article. I've also seen people object in a FAC by giving general objections
and then the nominator responds that because there are no specific
objections, the objection is "not actionable" and therefore invalid. When
specific examples are given, the nominator corrects them but leaves many
more still in the article, but expects the oppose vote to be withdrawn.

There are many other symptoms of this behavior which I think is centered
around this notion that a featured article is somehow inherently better than
others, or that getting an article featured is more of an achievement than
making good edits. We have Wikipedians who are bragging on their userpages
about their "number of featured articles" and so on. That seems very
backward to me; it's editing Wikipedia for recognition, not for its own
sake.

Besides, I react when people cite the number of featured articles as if it
had something to do with the quality of our work. It really doesn't.
Probably thousands of those articles are on subjects that just aren't
interesting enough to get featured anyway. How many articles on train
stations or stamps got featured? Not many. But that doesn't mean the
articles are bad. Sometimes, creating a lot of short stubs is the right
thing to do, in my opinion.

Ryan


body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/10/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Seriously, I don't think there is much point to such goals. Sure, they
> > improve the encyclopedia, which is great. But people will cite
> statistics
> > like "Only 0.1% of our articles are featured!" as if this means that
>
> Sure, but only the ridiculously high 50% of the population with an IQ
> less than 100 would say that...

You lost me.

Ryan


body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is it helping the encyclopaedia get written? As long as they don't
> excessively game the system, draw attention away from other articles,
> then I would say yes. Wikipedia isn't a charity or an ideology - it's
> a job we have to get done, by one means or by another. If we had the
> funds, we would pay people to write articles. As it is, we have to
> motivate them however we can.
>
> Don't you agree?

I don't think this is a point that is worth debating. By and large, people
who make it their goal to feature a lot of articles improve Wikipedia, so
they're good in my book. I'm brining up food for thought that only makes
sense in the context of the discussion, not as its own meta-debate.

On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 50% of the population has an IQ less than 100. An arbitrary percentage
> chosen much as defining an FA to be in the top 0.1% of articles would
> be.
>
> Personally, I think we should stick with defining fixed criteria for
> FAs, and considering Wikipedia complete when 100% of articles are FAs.
>

Well, good luck getting those criteria defined. (/not sarcasm)

Ryan


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fatally Flawed,
	part II: The Economist corrects itself

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:

> It's still wrong then; to my withered and weary eyes, if you follow
> the article line to the top where it ends, it is vastly closer to 3M
> than 2.6M.

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm

According to the stas, all Wikipediae in different languages had 2.9
Million articles at the end of November 2005.

One can assume that by the x>200 char-count, all the different languages
(and dialects...) have now more than 3M articles.

200chars in an ideographic language might be totally different in the
number of information than, hmm, lets say Finnish. It also does not
include the number of "List of Something, sorted by something
else"-articles, which happen to populate some editions. While they might
or might not be useful (or redundant (even if you consider the
possibiliies from the Semantic Mediawiki hack)), it is very hard to
consider them articles.

So all in all: When a journalist asks me "How many articles do all the
wikipedias have?", I feel comfortable to answer "about 3 million".

Mathias


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Shinjiman

subject: [Wikitech-l]Getting the current month number without leading	zero

body:
Locke Cole <locke.cole.wiki at ...> writes:

>
> On 4/9/06, Shinjiman <shinjiman at ...> wrote:
>
> > is that have any suitable method to produce the current month (in
> > number) without the leading zero? I've been found out in the MediaWiki
> > software currently only have the magic word CURRENTMONTH which would
> > generate the current month with leading zero. Is that have any other
> > ways to generate the current month without the leading zero? or maybe
> > I would like to submit a patch to BugZilla to resolve this issue?
>
> There's CURRENTDAY (which does the day without a leading zero) and
> CURRENTDAY2 (which does the day *with* a leading zero). I suppose they
> could always add CURRENTMONTH2 (which would do the month without the
> leading zero). It would be backwards from the CURRENTDAY magic words,
> but at least you'd be able to get the month without the leading zero.
> =)
>
> -L
>

Since the CURRENTMONTH magic word is widely used in WikiCommons. If this word
is changed, it will affect majorly affecting the pages as like in Commons I've
stated. I think having a name called CURRENTMONTH1 is more suitable for this
case. Is that will be okay?


from_name: Blackcap

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template for new pages

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>   This has probably been debated millions of times before, but could
> someone tell me the basic results of the debate, even if that's the
> case?

It has been hashed out once before on the list. Here's the oldest post in
the thread I can find:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/035511.html

I assume this is technically possible. So what's the social reason for
> not doing it?

Well, it was a well-liked proposal, and then, in traditional style, it was
totally forgotten about. It did get so far as making [[Wikipedia:New article
template]], though.


from_name: Resid Gulerdem

subject: [WikiEN-l] Indefinite Block

body:
   Hi,
   My account has been blocked indefinitely by an
admin [[User:Cyde]] while I was blocked for a week. I
would like the admins reconsider the case and take
[[User:Cyde]]'s discretionary, unjustified, and unfair
action back.
   As an editor, I contributed to a few articles and I
would like to add more to Wiki.
   In order to understand the case you might consider
visiting the following pages:
*[[User:Rgulerdem]] and talk page
*[[Wikipedia:Wikiethics]]
   Thanks,

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, Jay Whetherspoon <polynomialjay at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's ridiculous. Ten minutes of research, even, will clarify to anyone who
> viewed the image that it is _not_  legally child pornography, no matter how
> you interpret the PROTECT Act's constitutionality. There's no legal reason
> to remove a completely legal image.

Expect that it was a "fair use" image used without permission from its
author, who might be very pissed his or her "art" is hosted on
Wikipedia...

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Katie (keitei)

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally, I think we should stick with defining fixed criteria for
> FAs, and considering Wikipedia complete when 100% of articles are FAs.
>
> Steve

It'd be a sad day if Wikipedia were complete, but even so, I don't
think that FA should be a goal for any or every article. The goal
should be to get every article to FA quality; whether it's been
featured or not is rather irrelevant in the long run.

--keitei--


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ian Tresman

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policy clarification: Undue weight

body:
At 20:20 09/04/2006, you wrote:
>I would say that the vast majority of people who abuse it are people
>with an agenda.
>
>The point of it is so that we don't have pages and pages of Alex Chiu
>crap in [[immortality]] and [[teleportation]] and the like, or two
>entire books full of "how to goodbye depression" and "internal fenix"
>(sic) crap in the [[Eric Castenada]] article.
>
>The point is not so that we don't have two sentences about Flat
>Earthers or so that we don't have two sentences about people who
>believe GWB sucks.

I agree with all of this, but nevertheless, editors are citing undue
weight and that information should be presented in the "proportion to
the prominence of each". And this is in relation to little-known
verifiable peer-reviewed papers.

I've been through every dispute resolution processes, consensus falls
behind one another and tells me I'm wrong; the administrators notice
board say they can handle only 3RR and vandalism. The mediation cabal
talks reason, but can't make a decision, and the arbitration
committee tell me its a contents dispute.

I can't even get policy clarified as certain editors are content with
the current wording.

What's my next course of action? I personally believe that the
addition of one sentence of clarification in the Undue weight section
of NPOV would solve the issue.

Regards,
Ian

>Mark
>
>On 09/04/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > This is an on-going problem. It is done both by those who
> > misunderstand the policy and by those with a point of view agenda.
> > The only reasonable recourse is to patiently discuss the policy. I'm
> > not sure the section on undue weight could be made any clearer. If
> > you are unable to negotiate successfully with those who have a point
> > of view agenda please use the dispute resolution procedure. Please
> > don't edit war with them.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > On Apr 9, 2006, at 9:09 AM, Ian Tresman wrote:
> >
> > > Significant material is sometimes excluded from some articles on the
> > > grounds of undue weight. Can someone clarify whether the policy on
> > > NPOV Undue weight is being misinterpreted, and if so, whether it can
> > > be clarified?
> > >
> > > NPOV Undue weight states:
> > >
> > >          * "... the article should fairly represent all significant
> > > viewpoints, in proportion to the prominence of each". See
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Point_of_View#Undue_weight
> > >
> > > But if the perceived prominence is very low, the proportion is
> > > rounded down to zero, and material excluded, regardless of the
> > > significance? The policy goes on to say:
> > >
> > >          * "To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or
> > > to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape
> > > of the dispute."
> > >
> > > In other words, the mere mention of a significant-minority view may
> > > be misleading, not whether we write that text in a neutral point of
> > > view?
> > >
> > > But I also note from the NPOV tutorial:
> > >
> > >          * Editors may unwittingly or deliberately present a subject
> > > in an unfair way [.. by] Entirely omitting significant citable
> > > information in support of a minority view, with the argument that it
> > > is claimed to be not credible.
> > >          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I have examples of material being excluded from several articles on
> > > the grounds of Undue weight, though the material is peer-reviewed,
> > > citable and verifiable. In some cases, there are dozens of citations.
> > >
> > > The result is that anonymous and accountable editors may by
> > > consensus, completely exclude verifiable material from credible,
> > > career scientists; yet "Consensus should not trump
> > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV>NPOV (or any other official
> > > policy)" See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus
> > >
> > > Shouldn't we be open and inclusive, so that "Readers are left to form
> > > their own opinions" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> > > Neutral_Point_of_View ]
> > >
> > > I'd like to see a clarification that significant minority views, in
> > > which prominent adherences can be verified (eg. as peer-reviewed
> > > authors), should not be excluded from an article on the grounds of
> > > undue weight; their views may be summarised, though detailed in an
> > > article of their own.
> > >
> > > Examples on request.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Ian Tresman
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>--
>"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Douglas Jones

subject: [WikiEN-l] BLOCKED FROM EDITING

body:
User talk:Etexzan    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Jump to: navigation, search
  Hello my name is Douglas. I go by the pen name etexzan. I request to be unblocked. I have recently added my website to relevant topics as an external link. This is not spam. I have legitimate non commercial information pertaining to the areas in which I am submitting my link as a resource. Thanks, Douglas
  [edit]

  SPAM  To The Administrators of WIKIPEDIA,
  I have been blocked from editing pages. Why, I do not know. I offer my website as an external link for the wikipedia IQ page. I have no spam at my website and offer a comprehensive database that is full of free information.
  Here is my IP Address: 70.173.162.237. This is one of the editors that blocked me: wikien-l at wikipedia.org This is where I am blocked from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq This is my link: * Kids IQ Test Center
  I cite your website numerously in my WebPages. I am not spamming wikipedia and I do not understand why I am being hassled. I offer a unique website that offers information that is simply not found on other so-called IQ websites.
  Actually, I have scrolled through numerous so-called IQ websites that are featured in the External Links and the majorities have spam linking directly to the sorriest piss poor excuse for an IQ from the www.tickle.com website.
  If anything, I feel that I am being hassled because I actually have a website that is NOT TRYING TO PAWN SOME CRAPPY TICKLE TEST down a visitor?s throat.
  I ask that you lift the ban on my site and allow me to continue to offer FREE INFORMATION regarding IQ, personality and other psychological tests on the internet.
  Look past the front page of my website. Look at all the information that is free and that provides a service.
  Thanks for your consideration of this matter.
  Regards,
  etexzan
  [edit]

  Spam  To understand why your links are not acceptable, please review each of the links in the warning message:

   Please do not add commercial links (or links to your own private websites) to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links to the encyclopedia. See the welcome page to learn more. Thanks. -- Barrylb 14:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
If that is the case then all of the external links to the referenced IQ page should be discarded. Each and every single one of them are someone?s private website and each page has commercial content. Your rationale to ban me from providing a link to a website that is unique from the run of the mill websites that are listed in the external links section is an argument, which you could clearly not win. That is if this were a public debate with a cast of neutral judges.
  This is just another case of an abuse of privilege. You feel that since you have power over someone who disagrees with your policy that you are entitled to discard rationale and impose your will. By chance, are you a communist or related to Fidel Castro?
  To hell with your lame reply; as far as suggesting that I add content to your site, forget about it. I am sure that after hours of tedious work, some zealot with editorial powers would come by, find fault, and remove the topic from your index.
  Censorship is appropriate from protecting disturbing and unethical content from being displayed in Wikipedia. However, to ban me from listing a website that is a damn good reference for the "IQ" topic is absurd.
  However, why don't you ban the topic of autofellatio from your index? I am sure that MSN Encarta would not consider it for inclusion nor would The Britannica Encyclopedia.
  As far as me being a supporter of Wikipedia, forget it! As time permits, I will yank every single damn link that points to your URL. Over 87 indexed pages in my website point a link to Wikipedia as an educational resource. For me to think that Wikipedia has the merit of being a resource of educational value has changed. Your site parades itself as an online encyclopedia but it is nothing other than a directory of pop culture.
  --etexzan 16:13, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

"Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

  Douglas Jones wrote:
> To The Administrators of WIKIPEDIA,
>
> I have been blocked from editing pages. Why, I do not know. I offer
> my website as an external link for the wikipedia IQ page. I have no
> spam at my website and offer a comprehensive database that is full of
> free information.
>
> Here is my IP Address: 70.173.162.237. This is one of the editors
> that blocked me: wikien-l at wikipedia.org This is where I am blocked
> from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq This is my link: *
> [http://www.kids-iq-tests.com/Kids IQ Test Center]
>
> I cite your website numerously in my WebPages. I am not spamming
> wikipedia and I do not understand why I am being hassled. I offer a
> unique website that offers information that is simply not found on
> other so-called IQ websites.
>
> Actually, I have scrolled through numerous so-called IQ websites that
> are featured in the External Links and the majorities have spam
> linking directly to the sorriest piss poor excuse for an IQ from the
> www.tickle.com website.
>
> If anything, I feel that I am being hassled because I actually have a
> website that is NOT TRYING TO PAWN SOME CRAPPY TICKLE TEST down a
> visitor?s throat.
>
> I ask that you lift the ban on my site and allow me to continue to
> offer FREE INFORMATION regarding IQ, personality and other
> psychological tests on the internet.
>
> Look past the front page of my website. Look at all the information
> that is free and that provides a service.
>
> Thanks for your consideration of this matter.
>

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links

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

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Outage

body:
On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 10:27:23AM +0300, Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Now as we have enough of money to perform better, we can start planning.
>
> First of all, for 24/7 operation we'd need to have 9 fully qualified
> system administrators ( for every 8h timeslot with redundancy, leave/
> sick coverage, etc) (payroll costs ~100,000$ each).
>
> Of course as these guys would be working on site operations, they'd
> not have any time for development. So we need >100 guys outsourced to
> India (payroll costs ~1000$ each).
[ ... ]
> I guess other developers (especially with experience in high-
> availability environments) could add more requirements for fluent
> operation!

Hee.

On a serious note, though, if a backup site is beeing looked at, we
might want to talk to the DirectNIC people in New Orleans...

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I find this sad. :(

Why, exactly?

Two well-known things are called Georgia.  It is thus logical for the
title to be a disambiguation between them, and everything else known
by that name.

-Matt


list: commons-l

from_name: David Benbennick

subject: [Commons-l] [Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Commons moving helper]

body:
On 4/10/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I recently noticed what a pain it can be to move image to commons,
> especially with the image description. To help this issue, I now offer
> this service:
>
> http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/commonshelper.php

Neat!  Here's a couple bugs.

If the image upload summary has interwiki links, the links break.  For
example, (taking an image from EN):

here's a summary with [[link]] and [[de:interwiki link]]. How about
[[commons:link]]?

turns into

here's a summary with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link Link] (link)
and [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/interwiki_link" class='extiw'
title="de:interwiki_link] (de:interwiki link) . How about
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/link" class='extiw'
title="commons:link] (commons:link) ?

Also, it would be nice of the helper deduced wiki-syntax for links in
the upload summaries, instead of making everything be external links.
For example, [[link]] should turn into [[:en:link]], not
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link Link].

Another minor bug, interwiki links in image descriptions aren't quite
right.  In terms of link syntax, the Commons thinks of itself as an
English Wikipedia (in otherwords, [[q:Foo]] links to English
Wikiquote, while [[:de:Foo]] links to German Wikipedia).  The script
needs to know this quirky fact.  Again from EN, the image description

[[Foo]] and [[:de:Bar]].  [[:Image:Bob]].

turns into

[[:en:Foo]] and [[:en::de:Bar]]. [[:en::Image:Bob]].

when it should be

[[:en:Foo]] and [[:de:Bar]]. [[:en:Image:Bob]].

(Notice the double :: in two places, too.)


body:
>Ask any Wikipedian if they've ever knowingly tried somehow or other to
>get a POV in Wikipedia. If they say no, they're lying or they haven't
>been around very long.

Sure, we all like to put a "good spin" on our own points of view, and
begrudgingly moderate our views to fit into the neutral point of view style.

But I'm talking about the wholesale exclusion of material on the
pretext of undue weight. I haven't even got as far as describing the
minority view, let alone doing so in an NPOV style.

Regards,
Ian

>Mark
>
>On 10/04/06, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk> wrote:
> > At 20:20 09/04/2006, you wrote:
> > >I would say that the vast majority of people who abuse it are people
> > >with an agenda.
> > >
> > >The point of it is so that we don't have pages and pages of Alex Chiu
> > >crap in [[immortality]] and [[teleportation]] and the like, or two
> > >entire books full of "how to goodbye depression" and "internal fenix"
> > >(sic) crap in the [[Eric Castenada]] article.
> > >
> > >The point is not so that we don't have two sentences about Flat
> > >Earthers or so that we don't have two sentences about people who
> > >believe GWB sucks.
> >
> >
> > I agree with all of this, but nevertheless, editors are citing undue
> > weight and that information should be presented in the "proportion to
> > the prominence of each". And this is in relation to little-known
> > verifiable peer-reviewed papers.
> >
> > I've been through every dispute resolution processes, consensus falls
> > behind one another and tells me I'm wrong; the administrators notice
> > board say they can handle only 3RR and vandalism. The mediation cabal
> > talks reason, but can't make a decision, and the arbitration
> > committee tell me its a contents dispute.
> >
> > I can't even get policy clarified as certain editors are content with
> > the current wording.
> >
> > What's my next course of action? I personally believe that the
> > addition of one sentence of clarification in the Undue weight section
> > of NPOV would solve the issue.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ian
> >
> > >Mark
> > >
> > >On 09/04/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > > > This is an on-going problem. It is done both by those who
> > > > misunderstand the policy and by those with a point of view agenda.
> > > > The only reasonable recourse is to patiently discuss the policy. I'm
> > > > not sure the section on undue weight could be made any clearer. If
> > > > you are unable to negotiate successfully with those who have a point
> > > > of view agenda please use the dispute resolution procedure. Please
> > > > don't edit war with them.
> > > >
> > > > Fred
> > > >
> > > > On Apr 9, 2006, at 9:09 AM, Ian Tresman wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Significant material is sometimes excluded from some articles on the
> > > > > grounds of undue weight. Can someone clarify whether the policy on
> > > > > NPOV Undue weight is being misinterpreted, and if so, whether it can
> > > > > be clarified?
> > > > >
> > > > > NPOV Undue weight states:
> > > > >
> > > > >          * "... the article should fairly represent all significant
> > > > > viewpoints, in proportion to the prominence of each". See
> > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Point_of_View#Undue_weight
> > > > >
> > > > > But if the perceived prominence is very low, the proportion is
> > > > > rounded down to zero, and material excluded, regardless of the
> > > > > significance? The policy goes on to say:
> > > > >
> > > > >          * "To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or
> > > > > to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape
> > > > > of the dispute."
> > > > >
> > > > > In other words, the mere mention of a significant-minority view may
> > > > > be misleading, not whether we write that text in a neutral point of
> > > > > view?
> > > > >
> > > > > But I also note from the NPOV tutorial:
> > > > >
> > > > >          * Editors may unwittingly or deliberately present a subject
> > > > > in an unfair way [.. by] Entirely omitting significant citable
> > > > > information in support of a minority view, with the argument that it
> > > > > is claimed to be not credible.
> > > > >          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > I have examples of material being excluded from several articles on
> > > > > the grounds of Undue weight, though the material is peer-reviewed,
> > > > > citable and verifiable. In some cases, there are dozens of citations.
> > > > >
> > > > > The result is that anonymous and accountable editors may by
> > > > > consensus, completely exclude verifiable material from credible,
> > > > > career scientists; yet "Consensus should not trump
> > > > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV>NPOV (or any other official
> > > > > policy)" See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus
> > > > >
> > > > > Shouldn't we be open and inclusive, so that "Readers are left to form
> > > > > their own opinions" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> > > > > Neutral_Point_of_View ]
> > > > >
> > > > > I'd like to see a clarification that significant minority views, in
> > > > > which prominent adherences can be verified (eg. as peer-reviewed
> > > > > authors), should not be excluded from an article on the grounds of
> > > > > undue weight; their views may be summarised, though detailed in an
> > > > > article of their own.
> > > > >
> > > > > Examples on request.
> > > > >
> > > > > Regards,
> > > > > Ian Tresman
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >--
> > >"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>--
>"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 4/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Deterioration might not be so bad. In evolutionary optimization (for
> example via genetic algorithms) a concept that's often mentioned is the
> "fitness landscape", a graph showing the relative fitness of all
> possible solutions to a particular problem. The landscape for most

I'm familiar with this problem, but do you know of any detailed (if
not particularly formal) analysis to see if it applies to Wikipedia,
or even wiki editing in general? Not infrequently you hear people say
"this article is a mess, nothing short of rewriting is required here".
But I'm not convinced. Is it not possible, given an article in state
T0, where state Tp is perfection, find small, realistic changes T1, T2
etc?

> reach. For example, new material might be added covering some aspect of
> the article's topic that wasn't covered previously, but the new material
> has bad grammar and sparse citations and is "bad" enough to knock the
> article off of Featured status. The best approach in this case is not to
> just revert to the old version, but rather clean up the new material to
> result in an even better article than it was before.

In this particular instance, it seems that you could add *some* of the
new material in a small enough block that the lack of citations or
poor copyediting does not knock the article off its FA perch. Then,
when that material has been brought up to scratch, add the next batch.
Wholesale additions of poor quality material are generally quite
destabilising for an article, and tend to piss off existing editors,
who wonder when it will all stop...

Steve


from_name: thomas Armstrong

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to insert a "Wiki contents table"

body:
Hi.

I'd like to insert a "Wiki contents table", similar to the green ones at:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Botany

Which is the wiki code to generate it?

Thank you very much,
--thomas


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/8/06, Jay Whetherspoon <polynomialjay at gmail.com> wrote:
>There's no legal reason to remove a completely legal image.

What do you mean by "legal reason"? If you mean, legally, we are not
required to remove a  legal image, then that's a tautology. If you
mean, there is no valid reason to remove a legal reason, then that's
simply incorrect. We remove images that are redundant, irrelevant,
possibly copyright violations, offensive, poor quality, ugly,
corrupt...

> And morality is entirely subjective. Arguing that a certain image  is
> "immoral" is *not* a valid argument in the context of Wikipedia, because we
> have to adhere to WP:NPOV. You, personally, see this drawing as morally
> wrong. I do not.

But visitors to the site might, and if they feel strongly enough, they
might even do something about it.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template for new pages

body:
It's certainly technically possible.  The problem I can see is that newbies
will be turned off by the rigid structure of it (really, if they're going to
make a three-sentence stub, do you think they'll bother to cite their
sources, even if we request it?).  I'd much rather teach newbies bit-by-bit,
rather than give them a bunch of information that will annoy them.

A specific problem as well, to requesting categories, is that they'll add
nonexistant categories, and, possibly even worse, click the red links and
create the categories, thus creating more work for new page patrollers.

Generally I'm unsure on the idea, though I think it's a decent proposal and
could have positive results as well.

On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> This has probably been debated millions of times before, but could
> someone tell me the basic results of the debate, even if that's the
> case?
>
> Proposition: When you create a blank page, instead of having an empty
> page, have a basic template like:
>
> <!-- Lead, including '''article name''' in triple quotes. -->
>
> <!-- Sources - please include at least one verifiable source under a
> ==Sources== heading -->
>
> <!-- Stub template. If the article is less than two complete
> paragraphs, please insert {{stub}} or something more specific (see the
> stub page [[can't remember it]]) -->
>
> <!-- Categories: Every article should belong to at least one non-stub
> category. Add these like [[Category:Wikipedia articles]] -->
>
>
> Etc. If nothing else, it would help us avoid forgetting some of these
> basic things, and would help newbies not get bitten, create peace on
> earth, free beer, etc...
>
> I assume this is technically possible. So what's the social reason for
> not doing it?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


subject: [WikiEN-l] Real-time mirrors as a net revenue _source_?

body:
On 4/9/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >From a business perspective, what is to stop a site from sucking in
> just enough to mirror in real-time, and then turning around and
> forwarding it to other mirrors? In an extreme case, there would be

Is this a bad thing? Wikipedia's goal is the free disemination of
information. We would only charge as a means to that end. If those
sites aren't sucking our content directly, they're not costing us,
hence no need to charge them. And it's generally considered a good
thing if third parties are making money off our content.

Steve


from_name: Matt R

body:
----- Original Message ----
From: Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> If articles don't deteriorate, why do they get de-featured?

I agree with you that articles can and do deteriorate, but another reason articles are defeatured is because the accepted standard of Featured Articles has been steadily increasing.

-- Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] BLOCKED FROM EDITING

body:
On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links

I note that that "style guide" is very long and contains lots of
examples and counter-examples.

I propose a simple policy:
Do not add a link to any site you have an interest in, to any article
in Wikipedia. If you feel it is relevant, mention it on the
corresponding talk page, and another editor may include it.

Steve


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> On 4/9/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> That's arguable. You could say that there are many copies of Wikipedia on
>> the Internet, and only one
>> of them is ad-free, that is the one at wikipedia.org. Most readers come to
>> Wikipedia via the search
>> engines, and a large part of the remaining 80% of advertising revenue will
>> go towards spamming those
>> search engines with irrelevant keyword-pumped advertising-laden copies of
>> Wikipedia pages.
>>
>
>
> Okay, but isn't that the situation we are already in? The only difference is
> that the people running the advertising-laden copies will have to pay for
> the privilege of doing so.
>
> Ryan
>
>
Well, strictly speaking, they won't _have_ to pay anything, since the
content itself is free, they could simply download a dump and work from
that.

It's just that if they want to load Wikipedia's servers by using them in
real time, and don't want to get cut off without notice, they could pay
for the privilege of doing so, and thus support Wikipedia by offsetting
significantly more than the raw cost of serving their hits.

Of course, they can always leech without paying, as is generally the
case now, but if they can be cut off rapidly before they make any money
(hint: they only get revenue if they appear on search engines, and as
soon as that happens, we can also see them and distinguish them from
non-real-time mirrors) they may well consider paying part of their
revenue to be the better option.

-- Neil


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> - Ads are incompatible with NPOV

I've never understood this: how are they incompatible?  NPOV applies
to articles only (as the userbox people are so keen to point out).
Articles are what's in the div wrapper "content", i.e. the article
content.

OK, if we take the assumption that advertising inherently is
non-neutral, Wikipedia (and, indeed, the Wikimedia Foundation) does
not need to be neutral.  Of course, in an ideal world, we would be
utterly and totally neutral, but this isn't an ideal world.  Why
shouldn't the Foundation publicise those who are keen to give us
backing?  This is just a smaller scale version of
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors

Our role is not to produce a neutral website.  It is to produce
neutral and factual content.

--
Sam


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Outage

body:
Hi!

> Right now most stuff seems to be back up and running: viewing,
> editing, images,
> IRC feeds.
>
> Editing-time outage: 6 hours, 15 minutes.

Now as we have enough of money to perform better, we can start planning.

First of all, for 24/7 operation we'd need to have 9 fully qualified
system administrators ( for every 8h timeslot with redundancy, leave/
sick coverage, etc) (payroll costs ~100,000$ each).

Of course as these guys would be working on site operations, they'd
not have any time for development. So we need >100 guys outsourced to
India (payroll costs ~1000$ each).

Sure, as open source technologies are not that suitable for round the
clock operation, we might have to start using either Java
(enterprise!!!) or .Net/C# (on Microsoft platform, sure, enterprise
again!!!).

Then, datacenters. To have a reasonably working read-only stand-by
datacenter, we'd have to invest ~250k$ in it (with current load).

We should of course have 3rd party consultants to help this set up
(+100,000$ one time, one week gig).

Moreover, we should invest into security measures (as wikis are often
hacked). We'd need to screen traffic, ensure highly secure AAA
subsystems, uh oh.

I guess other developers (especially with experience in high-
availability environments) could add more requirements for fluent
operation!

So... let's start rolling!!!

Domas


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template for new pages

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

I was thinking that by putting everything in comments, the structure
> isn't too rigid - they can basically ignore it if they want. And at
> least by putting in helpful comments like bolding the name of the
> article, they don't feel overwhelmed by the emptiness of the editing
> box.

This might be an area where technical improvements could make this easier.
My worry is that people will get confused by the nature of comments, placing
their text before the "-->", or removing it altogether.

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


subject: [Wikitech-l] Outage

body:
On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 04:37:35PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> > On a serious note, though, if a backup site is beeing looked at, we
> > might want to talk to the DirectNIC people in New Orleans...
>
> Why? What's special about them?

Well, they managed to stay on the air during the near total destruction
of the New Orleans metropolitan area; that's got to be good for
*something*....

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> So, you wouldn't mind reading an article on eg. the September 11 attacks
> and having ads for jewsdidwtc.com appearing at the side?

With respect, I was discussing advertising in principle, not specifics
of whether we would have editorial control over adverts.  Too often I
see people dismissing advertising out of hand based on false
assumptions.

--
Sam


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Getting the current month number without leading
	zero

body:
Outsider's view: you can achieve "logicalness" by using ...1:
(currently defined terms asterisked)

*CURRENTDAY -> no zero
CURRENTDAY1 -> no zero
*CURRENTDAY2 -> leading zero

*CURRENTMONTH -> zero
CURRENTMONTH1 -> no zero
CURRENTMONTH2 -> leading zero

Then, if you deprecate the forms 'CURRENTDAY' and 'CURRENTMONTH', you
have achieved spiritual consistency.

Steve

On 4/10/06, Locke Cole <locke.cole.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Shinjiman <shinjiman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Since the CURRENTMONTH magic word is widely used in WikiCommons. If this word
> > is changed, it will affect majorly affecting the pages as like in Commons I've
> > stated. I think having a name called CURRENTMONTH1 is more suitable for this
> > case. Is that will be okay?
>
> This was pretty much what I was suggesting. =) I just think
> CURRENTMONTH2 would be the logical choice (given the
> CURRENTDAY/CURRENTDAY2 naming).


body:
On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> More often than not, people will add stuff to an article, and some time
> later, another editor will come along and clean it up. Then some more
> stuff will be added, and some time later, it will get cleaned up again.
> Very rarely do you see an article /only/ get better (one example I *can*
> think of is [[Jordanhill railway station]]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanhill_railway_station>), but that was
> an extraordinary case.

Someone should do some analysis of Wikipedia article development
cycles/processes. For some articles, I think in terms of an accordeon
model. People add content, which is full of air, redundancy etc. Then
more people add content in the same style. Then someone comes along
and squeezes the whole lot down to its basic essence. A 500 word
paragraph becomes a 200 word paragraph, almost without losing
information.

Other times, I see a huge slab of prose which has become so big that
people feel uncomfortable adding to it. They see that the "History of
X" section of the article is so long, they shouldn't touch it any
more. I simply insert subheadings by year, and suddenly they realise
that the period 1950-1960 is totally blank. I don't have a name for
that model.

Then other times, someone creates a stub, then someone else sees how
to structure the article, and creates a whole structure full of
subheadings, but with no actual text. But it actually constrains
future editors, who wouldn't necessarily have used that particular
structure. I came across a good example of this recently but can't
find it now :/

There are probably lots of other models...a bit of analysis and we
could find solutions to some of the problems, identify the models that
work best etc.

Steve


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
At 19:10 -0400 7/4/06, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>On 7 Apr 2006 at 15:30, "Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  - Our natural bias against popular culture
>
>Since when do we have *that*?
>
>--
>== Dan ==
>Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
>Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
>Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>

What about alternative forms of "music", that do not fit extant categories?

For example:

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

--
Gordo (aka LoopZilla)
gordon.joly at pobox.com
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
http://www.loopzilla.org/


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 4/8/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>1) Policy is descriptive --- it *describes* what we already do, it
>>    attempts to document consensus.  When we look to policy, it's because
>
> IMHO, "policy is descriptive" is misleading. It's actually
> descriptively prescriptive. That is, it describes what people think we
> should do. It does not only describe what people actually do. Nor does
> it prescribe what people should do, without evidence that people
> actually want that (with a few rare exceptions like WP:OFFICE, that
> come "straight from the top").

Okay, how's this: policy is descriptive, but incomplete, so there's
always an element of wishful thinking there ...

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.0/306 - Release Date: 9/04/2006


body:
At 09:59 10/04/2006, you wrote:
>My guess:
>
>You never will.
>
>Is it unfair? Yes. Do I think you should be able to? Yes.
>In all likelyhood, will it ever change? Nope.

Surely anything can change if there is the will. It is VERY simple. A
one line clarification in the NPOV Undue weight section.

Then editors can get on with editing, rather than policy-making decisions.

Regards,
Ian

>In short: I wish I could help you, but it's pretty much hopeless.
>
>Mark
>
>On 10/04/06, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > >Ask any Wikipedian if they've ever knowingly tried somehow or other to
> > >get a POV in Wikipedia. If they say no, they're lying or they haven't
> > >been around very long.
> >
> > Sure, we all like to put a "good spin" on our own points of view, and
> > begrudgingly moderate our views to fit into the neutral point of
> view style.
> >
> > But I'm talking about the wholesale exclusion of material on the
> > pretext of undue weight. I haven't even got as far as describing the
> > minority view, let alone doing so in an NPOV style.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ian
> >
> >
> > >Mark
> > >
> > >On 10/04/06, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk> wrote:
> > > > At 20:20 09/04/2006, you wrote:
> > > > >I would say that the vast majority of people who abuse it are people
> > > > >with an agenda.
> > > > >
> > > > >The point of it is so that we don't have pages and pages of Alex Chiu
> > > > >crap in [[immortality]] and [[teleportation]] and the like, or two
> > > > >entire books full of "how to goodbye depression" and "internal fenix"
> > > > >(sic) crap in the [[Eric Castenada]] article.
> > > > >
> > > > >The point is not so that we don't have two sentences about Flat
> > > > >Earthers or so that we don't have two sentences about people who
> > > > >believe GWB sucks.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I agree with all of this, but nevertheless, editors are citing undue
> > > > weight and that information should be presented in the "proportion to
> > > > the prominence of each". And this is in relation to little-known
> > > > verifiable peer-reviewed papers.
> > > >
> > > > I've been through every dispute resolution processes, consensus falls
> > > > behind one another and tells me I'm wrong; the administrators notice
> > > > board say they can handle only 3RR and vandalism. The mediation cabal
> > > > talks reason, but can't make a decision, and the arbitration
> > > > committee tell me its a contents dispute.
> > > >
> > > > I can't even get policy clarified as certain editors are content with
> > > > the current wording.
> > > >
> > > > What's my next course of action? I personally believe that the
> > > > addition of one sentence of clarification in the Undue weight section
> > > > of NPOV would solve the issue.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Ian
> > > >
> > > > >Mark
> > > > >
> > > > >On 09/04/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > > > > > This is an on-going problem. It is done both by those who
> > > > > > misunderstand the policy and by those with a point of view agenda.
> > > > > > The only reasonable recourse is to patiently discuss the
> policy. I'm
> > > > > > not sure the section on undue weight could be made any clearer. If
> > > > > > you are unable to negotiate successfully with those who
> have a point
> > > > > > of view agenda please use the dispute resolution procedure. Please
> > > > > > don't edit war with them.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Fred
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Apr 9, 2006, at 9:09 AM, Ian Tresman wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > Significant material is sometimes excluded from some
> articles on the
> > > > > > > grounds of undue weight. Can someone clarify whether
> the policy on
> > > > > > > NPOV Undue weight is being misinterpreted, and if so,
> whether it can
> > > > > > > be clarified?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > NPOV Undue weight states:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >          * "... the article should fairly represent all
> significant
> > > > > > > viewpoints, in proportion to the prominence of each". See
> > > > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Point_of_View#Undue_weight
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > But if the perceived prominence is very low, the proportion is
> > > > > > > rounded down to zero, and material excluded, regardless of the
> > > > > > > significance? The policy goes on to say:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >          * "To give undue weight to a
> significant-minority view, or
> > > > > > > to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as
> to the shape
> > > > > > > of the dispute."
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > In other words, the mere mention of a
> significant-minority view may
> > > > > > > be misleading, not whether we write that text in a
> neutral point of
> > > > > > > view?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > But I also note from the NPOV tutorial:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >          * Editors may unwittingly or deliberately
> present a subject
> > > > > > > in an unfair way [.. by] Entirely omitting significant citable
> > > > > > > information in support of a minority view, with the
> argument that it
> > > > > > > is claimed to be not credible.
> > > > > > >          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I have examples of material being excluded from several
> articles on
> > > > > > > the grounds of Undue weight, though the material is
> peer-reviewed,
> > > > > > > citable and verifiable. In some cases, there are dozens
> of citations.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > The result is that anonymous and accountable editors may by
> > > > > > > consensus, completely exclude verifiable material from credible,
> > > > > > > career scientists; yet "Consensus should not trump
> > > > > > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV>NPOV (or any other official
> > > > > > > policy)" See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Shouldn't we be open and inclusive, so that "Readers
> are left to form
> > > > > > > their own opinions" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> > > > > > > Neutral_Point_of_View ]
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I'd like to see a clarification that significant
> minority views, in
> > > > > > > which prominent adherences can be verified (eg. as peer-reviewed
> > > > > > > authors), should not be excluded from an article on the
> grounds of
> > > > > > > undue weight; their views may be summarised, though
> detailed in an
> > > > > > > article of their own.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Examples on request.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Regards,
> > > > > > > Ian Tresman
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >--
> > > > >"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > > > >_______________________________________________
> > > > >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >--
> > >"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>--
>"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Application of the {{pd-art}} tag

body:
On 4/6/06, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't have any luck getting an answer to this on the wiki, so I'll
> try asking here.  I've been using the {{pd-art}} tag for Greek vase
> paintings I've uploaded, but before I really go hog wild and start
> uploading these on a large scale I'd like to be sure that this would be
> a good idea. So, two questions:
>
> 1. Are we relatively sure that the Bridgeman Art Library vs. Corel Corp.
>   case applies to two dimensional art on a non-flat surface?  I've seen
> other users use this tag for that purpose, but I don't know that any of
> them were any more informed about this than me.

I am not a lawyer, but IIRC, Bridgeman v Corel only applies to
two-dimensional copies of two-dimensional works (though it may apply
to three-dimensional copies of three-dimensional works).  The basis of
it is that a "slavishly accurate" copy of a work involves no creative
effort, and so cannot establish a copyright separate from that of the
original.  Photographing a 3D work involves creative effort, in the
choice of lighting and camera angle.

> 2. Since that case was a strictly US case, are there likely to be issues
> with downstream usability of these images outside of the US?

Images created and published in the US that are public domain under
Bridgeman v Corel are probably public domain everywhere else, as well.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deterioration: losing references

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
> I'm afraid I don't, not at hand, but one phenomenon I've noticed and
> am going to make a point of documenting the next time it occurs is
> that there is a significant tendency for references to be lost over
> time.
Hopefully the new cite.php reference formatting will help in this
regard. Reference text can now be bundled directly with the text that it
is a reference for with the list of references at the bottom of the page
being automatically compiled from that. It makes it impossible to have
"orphan references" now, and perhaps having the full description of the
referenced material in place will make it harder for an editor to
accidentally delete it when removing unrelated material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes for anyone who was
unaware of the new system. I'm loving it. :)


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template for new pages

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Blackcap <snoutwood at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, it was a well-liked proposal, and then, in traditional style, it was
> > totally forgotten about. It did get so far as making [[Wikipedia:New article
> > template]], though.
>
> Why does this happen? Who has to actually implement it? Whose door do
> we need to constantly knock on? This isn't one of those situations
> where there's only one person in the world who can implement the
> change, and he has 5000 other things to do, is it?
>
> Steve

It might be. A good implementation of this would be sort of like a
form letter with slots, or like the image upload's page method of
picking licenses- instead of requiring one to know what they need,
provide a list. That way, we don't get 1000 articles a day, all
bearing {{stub}} or {{uncategorized}}...

~maru


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Next step in the spam arms race.

body:
On 4/10/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> >
> > Things like this make nofollow more attractive all the time.  Has
> > there ever been any discussion on perhaps allowing a white-list for
> > non-spam sites that we won't no-follow?  This would be useful for
> > wikis who don't want to kill all their externals with no-follow.
>
> Or at least a second blacklist for sites that can be linked to but will
> have rel="nofollow" applied.
>
> Also, shouldn't we enable nofollow for talk pages?  For example, if this
> discussion had been on a talk page, those example links above would now
> be indexed by search engines and thus help the spammers.

I'm not sure how to implement black or whitelisting for nofollow... :(
  Right now we do our URL blacklist at page submission, thats not a
fast path so we can do computationally expensive things like apply a
long list of regexes...  to black or whitelist URLs for nofollow we'd
need to perform it at page load, which might not be acceptable. The
only alternatives I can see involve complex changes. For example, we
could extend our external link syntax so that you must explicitly tag
links in order to prevent them from being no-followed, and the black
or whitelist would control which links are allowed to be tagged.

Can a developer please comment on the idea of applying a external
links filter at page load time?

Nofollow per namespace would actually be really good.  If we had
per-namespace nofollow right now I'd enable it everywhere except the
main namespace ... you can argue that the main ns links are reviewed
and are of some quality, but that doesn't extend to anywhere else.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Image deletion

body:
On 4/6/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Instead of adding a major burden to admins deleting images (which is
> something that needs to be done; I'm fairly sure there are large
> backlogs), and slowing them down, and aggravating them, why not simply
> fix image deletion's permament deletion?

Off-the-cuff remark: Why not upload a new version of the image which
is totally blank, and protect it with a note saying that if no
consensus is gained to undelete the image in a month, it should then
be permanently deleted?

Steve


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Commons moving helper

body:
Hi,

I recently noticed what a pain it can be to move image to commons,
especially with the image description. To help this issue, I now offer
this service:

http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/commonshelper.php

where you can enter the wikipedia language code and image name, and it
will generate a commons description consisting of link to original image
page, original contents, and wikified upload history.

It can also be called with the language/image as part of the URL:

http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/commonshelper.php?lang=de&doit=1&image=Struktur_Luftwaffenamt.PNG

For German language, it will also translate several copyright template
names (e.g., "{{Bild-GFDL}}") into the the English (commons) version.
This can be expanded for other languages as well.

Magnus

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
G'day Jay,

[Context restored, for what little good it does]

> On 4/7/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Exactly. Child porn images shouldn't be included for moral and
>> legal reasons but ordinary sexual images (where they are relevant
>> to the article of course) are perfectly fine. WP:NOT censored for
>> minors.
>
> That's ridiculous. Ten minutes of research, even, will clarify to
> anyone who viewed the image that it is _not_  legally child
> pornography, no matter how you interpret the PROTECT Act's
> constitutionality. There's no legal reason to remove a completely
> legal image.

Three minutes' research shows me that you're committing that cardinal
sin of assuming everybody else is American.  Why should David --- or
anybody else here --- give a flying fuck *what* the PROTECT Act says?
Are you incapable of interpreting country codes, or just persistently
unobservant?

> And morality is entirely subjective. Arguing that a certain image  is
>  "immoral" is *not* a valid argument in the context of Wikipedia,
> because we have to adhere to WP:NPOV. You, personally, see this
> drawing as morally wrong. I do not.
>
> I *do* think censorship is morally wrong, though...

Well, good for you.  Hopefully you've thought that one through a bit
further than "titties and explosions good, children and sensitive women
bad".

(Does "censorship is morally wrong" count as an argument in favour of
keeping kiddie porn on the servers?)

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.0/306 - Release Date: 9/04/2006


body:
On 4/10/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If articles don't deteriorate, why do they get de-featured?
>
>  Usually it's because the standard for featured articles has gone up.

Or because the article should never have been promoted in the first
place.  I remember [[Terrorism]] falling into this category.

--
Sam


from_name: MAURICE FRANK

subject: [WikiEN-l] BLOCKED FROM EDITING

body:
 On 4/10/06, TGGG85 at aol.com  wrote:
 >
 > I too was blocked not too long ago from editing Wikipedia. I
 > NEVER  recieved
 > an adequate explanation from any of the administrators. I think a lot  of
 > them
 > are power freaks ...

 On 4/10/06 Ryan Delaney wrote:
 For starters, if you want the situation to be rectified, starting out by
 insulting the only people who can help you is probably not the most tactful
 approach ...

 For "tactful" or kowtowing approach ever to matter, in correcting any wrong, defines a tyranny and can only happen in one. No good can ever be contributed to the world by any society with no ethics, that defines all access to fair play as a discretionary mercy instead of a right. Such a society will always be corrupted to its own elite's agendas.

---------------------------------
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre.


subject: [WikiEN-l] BLOCKED FROM EDITING

body:
On 4/10/06, MAURICE FRANK <megaknee at btopenworld.com> wrote:
>  For "tactful" or kowtowing approach ever to matter, in correcting any wrong, defines a tyranny and can only happen in one. No good can ever be contributed to the world by any society with no ethics, that defines all access to fair play as a discretionary mercy instead of a right. Such a society will always be corrupted to its own elite's agendas.

You will never achieve anything, however just your cause, by insulting
the people you want to help you.  This is a fairly basic rule of life,
I'm afraid.

--
Sam


body:
On 4/10/06, Mak <makwik at gmail.com> wrote:
> This has come up in an article I'm working on- does this ruling apply to
> images from books or manuscripts? Are books three dimensional art works,
> even if what you're reproducing is a single page from them? My father, a
> librarian, seems to think the owning library continues to hold copyright for
> all such images. I'm not so sure.

In the United States, Bridgeman v. Corel applies.  Elsewhere, the
issue is vaguer.

-Matt


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subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ohh, come on, there's a huge difference between Georgia the Country
> and Georgia the State. Georgia is a WHOLE country. Like, bigass, we
> got troups, "why don't we take this outside, former Soviet
> country-style", international trade, country.
>
> Disambigging those two would be like disambigging "Paris" to separate
> "Paris, Texas" and "Paris, France". This is the worst kind of
> US-centrism.

(English) Wikipedia does not decide such things by a taxonomic
classification of importance.

It decides it by the purely practical matter of seeing if one usage so
outweighs other usages that it deserves the primary topic.  Among
users of the English language, the US State is referred to at least as
often as the nation.

Probably, in fact, more so, but that's not important.  What matters
from the point of view of primary topic disambiguation is whether one
use of a word OVERWHELMS other uses.  In the case of 'Georgia', this
test is failed both ways.  Neither the state nor the nation so
overwhelms the word that either should have the primary topic.

A quick look at the Wikipedia articles tells us that Georgia the state
has a significantly greater population than Georgia the nation,
besides ... which just shows the futility of basing this on
'importance', because in many cases it will be impossible to reach
agreement.

-Matt


body:
On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> If articles don't deteriorate, why do they get de-featured?
>
> Deterioration happens when:
>
> - Vandalism goes unnoticed, especially sneaky (fact-changing) or
> blanking-type vandalism
> - Random crud (aka. "cruft") gets added
> - Other stuff which we can't quantify yet

Deterioration is bad. But is it sufficiently common to be a problem?
What are the relative rates of FA->non FA vs non-FA->FA transition?

Steve


body:
On 4/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Photocopying a page of a book is a slavish copy... but you can make a
> good case that photography of any book as an archival process, or with
> the intent of producing high-quality images, is a sufficiently
> difficult process that it passes the minimum-creativity standard.

Difficulty is immaterial.  There are many difficult things one can do
which are not copyrightable.

The point is that when making a photograph or scan of a 2D work, one
is attempting to accurately reproduce the original.  In other words,
one is seeking to have NO difference between the original and one's
copy; imperfections are flaws (acceptable or not).   All one's efforts
are attempting to get rid of any 'creative' differences.

Thus copyright does not apply.  The US does not recognise the concept
of 'mechanical copyright', although other nations do to varying
degrees.  Simply taking a copy of something does not generate new
copyright, no matter how hard the copying process.

-Matt


body:
On 4/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes for anyone who was
> unaware of the new system. I'm loving it. :)

I've already had one editor remove my references in this format,
seemingly out of not liking it.  Reverted and posted to his talk page
and he hasn't done it again, but it was annoying.

Some editors seem to be unaware of a corollary of WP:CITE and WP:V;
references should never be removed if the material that relies on that
reference remains, unless a better reference can be found that
completely supercedes the earlier one.

-Matt


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Finding non-Wikipedia sources (was: Re: Real-time
	mirrors as a net revenue _source_?)

body:
On 4/10/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>Will the average user be able to find
> independent information in the search engines, which didn't come from Wikpedia?

It's already tricky sometimes. Specifying "-wikipedia" is the only way
I know to do that, and that's obviously useless if you're looking for
information *about* Wikipedia. For example, how would you find sources
about the Seigenthaler controversy that wasn't published in WP itself?

Steve


body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking something similar once.
> * Deny all links that are not wrapped in a {{url}} template.
> * Deny {{url}} template to anons. (contentious) Perhaps allow
> white-listed anons? Or allow some other template which generates a
> comment rather than an actual link?
> * Add "nofollow" to all links that are not wrapped in {{urlfollow}}
> * Deny {{urlfollow}} to everyone except confirmed users (reg + 10 days
> or something)

FWIW,  Anons are not a real spam liability.. anyone competent enough
to be a significant annoyance is able to make an account.

The template solution you've proposed is effectively an extension to
the wikitext syntax... I don't see a reason to overload the template
system for that purpose... just extend the syntax if thats what we
really want.

> Though there's something I don't like about people deciding on a case
> by case basis about whether to use nofollow or not.

> Perhaps, alternatively, devise a mechanism whereby URLs automatically
> become "follow" links after some time period, like 5 days.

"And then a miracle occurs"...  Making that scale will be a challenge.
 ...and still doesn't cover the cases of spam on namespaces that get
less attention.


from_name: Molu Bosu Palit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil

body:
John Lee wrote:

  "I've never set foot in the US and I've still seen and heard more
references to Georgia the state than Georgia the country in my entire
life. I think making [[Georgia]] a disambig is a good compromise."

  I must disagree. I live in India and I've heard far more about Country Georgia than the US state. This is just like, as someone else said, disambig-ing Paris. An example of demographic bias?

---------------------------------
New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.


from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Meta templates in other languages

body:
We have been requested not to use meta templates. But
they are used on the Commons a lot for other language.
In the template Copyvio there's even two meta
templates (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyvio ) .

1. Question: Is this really detremental for the server
performance? To me it seems possible that the extra
server power it takes to invoke templates on Wikipedia
projects is an extra strain on server resources (as it
were an additional meta template). What do the
developers say?

Furthermore, I find it useless to have links to
translation of templates for all minor languages such
as Alemannisch, Asturianu, Brezhoneg, etc. To me, it
is sufficient to have translation in French, Spanish,
Italian, Chinese, etc (the larger languages). Isn't
this Alemannisch , etc, just some kind of vanity
thing? I mean, they would have to know at least one
other language anyways.

/ Fred-C.


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/8/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Except that the WP:V question is the crux of the matter!  Those Iranian
> military secrets would either be entirely unverifiable, and thus
> un-Wiki-able, or they would be verifiable, and so not secret.

"Secret" does not in a legal context mean "unknown," it means
"designated as information which publishing or otherwise passing to
other people or countries is against the law." Hence the legal
question of whether WP should publish them and a clear analog to the
other questions here: if textual content illegal in the U.S. is posted
on a foreign website, can we post it on Wikipedia? If it is truly
known to be illegal in the U.S. (it is only in rare cases that the
U.S. "confirms" that a secret has been released), then the answer is
clearly no, we shouldn't. If it is illegal in other countries, it
becomes a more complicated issue (esp. for WP reps in those countries,
I imagine) but not necessarily as pressing of one.

As for WP:V, people have discussed it well enough already here so I
didn't feel the need to comment on that specific point, but just to
mention what seemed to me to be the legal approach to it, which has to
do with jurisdictions more than anything else.

> I just went through this loop a few times personally -- I posted details
> about the [[S8G reactor]] plant back in the days before WP:V was
> enforced.  Recently, a newbie popped up and accused me of endangering
> the lives of his shipmates and threatening to have me arrested.
> Hilarity ensued, until I added the sources I had omitted earlier.
> Obviously a secret widely available on the Web (including, as I recall,
> a Russian Web site) is not much of a secret.

Whether it is posted elsewhere does not mean it does not have a safe
legal status in the U.S. at all, as I understand it. There are some
categories of information that even if derived from entirely open
sources can still technically count as legally secret under U.S. laws
(see our WP article on [[born secret]]), though legal enforcement has
been rare and is constitutionally ambiguous, but are part of laws
which are still on the books and which the government has never
implied they would not try to enforce. Of course, without direct legal
confrontation from a government source in question we should not be
worried about this and certainly not be pre-emptively paranoid about
it, but it is not a legally irrelevant issue.

FF


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Fredrik Josefsson wrote:
> We have been requested not to use meta templates. But
> they are used on the Commons a lot for other language.
> In the template Copyvio there's even two meta
> templates (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyvio ) .

There is absolutely nothing wrong with simple nested templates. The only problem
they ever had was updating properly when the nested templates are edited, and
that problem has been resolved.

> 1. Question: Is this really detremental for the server
> performance?

No.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/4/10, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk>:

> Surely anything can change if there is the will. It is VERY simple. A
> one line clarification in the NPOV Undue weight section.
>
> Then editors can get on with editing, rather than policy-making decisions.

It's not as simple as that. A one-line clarification can only clarify
this much. One still can debate what is undue and what is not undue
weight. Some POVs are given undue weight by mentioning them on another
place than in the article of the group holding that opinion (for
example, as far as I know there hasn't been a serious flat-earth
movement in over 50 years, and I don't think they deserve a place in
the [[Earth]] article), others are given too little weight if they are
NOT mentioned in the appropriate article. Some can do with a short
remark (I think it would be good to add to [[blood transfusion]] that
Jehovah's witnesses and some other christian groups reject it on
religious grounds, but there's no need to spend two or three groups on
arguments for and against their point of view), others would need an
extensive and balanced treatment of two opposing points of view. Who
am I to decide what is and what isn't balanced treatment? And even if
I somehow get to be the judge on it, how on Earth could I state it in
a single line?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If articles don't deteriorate, why do they get de-featured?
>
>
>  Usually it's because the standard for featured articles has gone up.
>

Pretty much the same is happening with the "Exzellente Artikel" from
de.wp.  The current standard is now much more rigid than in 2004. Last
year, there was a semi-featured status "Lesenswerte Artikel" introduced.

It is the common perception that many of the first featured articles in
de.wp would fail to qualify for "Lesenswerte Artikel", let alone for the
current "Exzellente Artikel".

However:
Some de-featured articles came to this status just because de.wp was
lacking someone to point out the structural errors and problems it
contained. This situation has improved as well in the last year.

The current aim of some people is to reach the (moving) target of 0,2
per cent of featured articles.

de.wp is currently 52 articles away from this moving target.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistik_der_exzellenten_Artikel

the aim of some people is to make 0,5 per cent to get "Lesenswerte Artikel".

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistik_der_lesenswerten_Artikel

They are currently 678 articles away from that target.

Mathias


body:
2006/4/9, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk>:

> Shouldn't we be open and inclusive, so that "Readers are left to form
> their own opinions" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Point_of_View ]

Leaving readers to form their own opinions is often done better by
being *exclusive* than by being *inclusive* in many cases. Wikipedia
should not be talking from both sides of the matter, but from neither
side.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The point is that when making a photograph or scan of a 2D work, one
> > is attempting to accurately reproduce the original.  In other words,
> > one is seeking to have NO difference between the original and one's
> > copy; imperfections are flaws (acceptable or not).   All one's efforts
> > are attempting to get rid of any 'creative' differences.
>
> Heh, you mean if there's a flaw, such as a scratch, in the
> photocopying process, copyright could reside in the flaw? :)

No; rather my point was that by attempting to minimise differences
between your copy and the original, you were explicitly trying NOT to
have creative additions.

However, a copy that was artistic (distorted, etc. deliberately) might
establish new copyright.

-Matt


body:
On 4/10/06, Aerik <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> Well, I'm a developer wanna-be and not a real developer :-) but if we
> set aside for a moment the policy type questions about whitelisting
> and nofollow, whitelisting does not need to be the same process as
> blacklisting.  For blacklisting, we need fancy regexes because people
> will try to get around the list - for whitelist, we could probably
> define a much simpler validation (to be applied when the parser parses
> the url) because if someone is posting an url that is whitelisted, they
> will know what url they're trying to match.  There's still an issue of
> scale - checking against thousands or tens of thousand of whitelisted
> urls may not be feasible - but calling "in_array" for example is probably
> *much* faster than bunches of regexes.

Right right.. There are all sorts of ways to make set membership
testing fast... esp if "probably a member" is good enough (which it is
for us).

Really then, whitelisting becomes the same as the redlink/bluelink
challenge.. There are 5.9 million external links currently in enwiki
vs ~3.8million pages. So it's obviously not intractable.

Still, we come back to the question... it it worth it? Why not just
set nofollow on all links and save our spamfighting resources to deal
with the people who aren't just concerned with SEO?


from_name: Eugenia Tenneriello

subject: [Wikitech-l] Virus attack to SMTP Server (DOS Denial of service)

body:
Hello,
I want warn the MediaWiki community against a possible virus attack to a Mediawiki website.
I published a website based on MediaWiki platform few weeks ago.
Today I have noticed Google indexes it, but this morning I have received a virus attack to my SMTP Server  from a website that uses Mediawiki too.
The attack caused a DOS Denial of Service on the SMTP port number.
Every help is welcome.
Thanks in advance.

Eugenia Tenneriello

"L'unica organizzazione capace di crescita illimitata e di apprendimento
spontaneo e' la rete. Qualsiasi altra topologia pone dei limiti allo
sviluppo futuro" - Kewin Kelly


body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
>> The current aim of some people is to reach the (moving) target of 0,2
>> per cent of featured articles.
>
>
> I'll tell you how you can achieve that goal immediately: Lower the standard
> to such a degree that all articles are included.

There is a third option: Delete several thousand articles that are not
notable for anything.

> Seriously, I don't think there is much point to such goals. Sure, they
> improve the encyclopedia, which is great. But people will cite statistics
> like "Only 0.1% of our articles are featured!" as if this means that
> Wikipedia sucks or something. No, it just means the standard for featuring
> is high, and if the gap between articles : featured articles is increasing,
> that just means the standard is going up. It has nothing to do with the
> objective quality of the encyclopedia; it's only the relative quality. That
> is, the relative quality between articles.

Well, there are "historical" reasons why such goals can have an positive
impact. In 2004, de.wp reached 100.000 articles (depending on what
counts as an article). With all the media hype and more people coming in
to wikipedia, it was the general perception that de.wp is now more or
less "usable" for the average reader. There were at least rough
information heaps on every major topic (nota bene: the more general a
topic gets, the more likely it was that this was just a bunch of
wikilinks, loosely linked with small sentences).

The idea was to shift the focus of attention from quantity to quality.

Yes, some people might read those statistics as "Even wikipedia says
that 99,8 per cent of the articles are crap" and to some degree, one
must agree: The average article is very currently poorly referenced,
formatted, sourced, comprehensive and so on (this applies also to en.wp
IMHO). It is no help that traditional encyclopedias have even less
external references.

Alexander Bob, the CEO of Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus AG
(publisher of the Brockhaus Enzyklop?die) said during a debate that one
must not compare the 300.000 articles from the Brockhaus Enzyklop?die to
the (in those days) 250.000 articles from the German Wikipedia but
rather the 300k from Brockhaus to the (in those days) 400 "exzellenten
Artikel".  Please do :)

IMHO, if an initiative is able to draw more attention to quality related
aspects, I generally support it. If an initiative no longer has this
ability, it can be neglected or abolished. This is one of the reasons
de.wp got rid of this {{stub}} template.

Mathias


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Commons-l] Commons moving helper

body:
Thanks Magnus!

I have been wanting to write something like that myself for quite some
time now. Too much else to do, I guess.

About categorizing the image: this is very important, and one of the
things often ignored by commons newbies. Its also a task that may take
some time to do it right.

I have written CommonSense
<http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CommonSense.php> for
automatically suggesting categories, based on where an image is used
and/or keywords from the description text. It has a mode with easy to
parse output for bots... maybe you can make your thing use it?

Regards
Daniel

--
Homepage: http://brightbyte.de


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 4/10/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Seriously, I don't think there is much point to such goals. Sure, they
> improve the encyclopedia, which is great. But people will cite statistics
> like "Only 0.1% of our articles are featured!" as if this means that

Sure, but only the ridiculously high 50% of the population with an IQ
less than 100 would say that...

Steve


body:
On 4/10/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are many other symptoms of this behavior which I think is centered
> around this notion that a featured article is somehow inherently better than
> others, or that getting an article featured is more of an achievement than
> making good edits. We have Wikipedians who are bragging on their userpages
> about their "number of featured articles" and so on. That seems very
> backward to me; it's editing Wikipedia for recognition, not for its own
> sake.

Is it helping the encyclopaedia get written? As long as they don't
excessively game the system, draw attention away from other articles,
then I would say yes. Wikipedia isn't a charity or an ideology - it's
a job we have to get done, by one means or by another. If we had the
funds, we would pay people to write articles. As it is, we have to
motivate them however we can.

Don't you agree?

Steve


body:
On 4/10/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > like "Only 0.1% of our articles are featured!" as if this means that
> >
> > Sure, but only the ridiculously high 50% of the population with an IQ
> > less than 100 would say that...
>
>
> You lost me.

50% of the population has an IQ less than 100. An arbitrary percentage
chosen much as defining an FA to be in the top 0.1% of articles would
be.

Personally, I think we should stick with defining fixed criteria for
FAs, and considering Wikipedia complete when 100% of articles are FAs.

Steve


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> Personally, I think we should stick with defining fixed criteria for
> FAs, and considering Wikipedia complete when 100% of articles are FAs.

If you mean "fixed" as in "feel free to specify or improve", I agree to
the first part.

If the world would stop spinning around, scientists stopped their work,
wars ended and so one, Wikipedia would be complete when 100% of the
relevant things and concepts in this reality would be FAs.

It could not hurt to accept that wikipedia will never be finished.
Approximation to this idea by various means might serve as a goal.

Mathias


body:
On 4/10/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
> > Personally, I think we should stick with defining fixed criteria for
> > FAs, and considering Wikipedia complete when 100% of articles are FAs.
>
> If you mean "fixed" as in "feel free to specify or improve", I agree to
> the first part.

I meant fixed as a direct contrast to constantly moving goalposts,
particularly those that serve to strip former FAs of their status,
when the article itself hasn't changed.

> If the world would stop spinning around, scientists stopped their work,
> wars ended and so one, Wikipedia would be complete when 100% of the
> relevant things and concepts in this reality would be FAs.

There, I meant "complete" as "comprehensive". Wikipedia should of
course keep evolving with the world. But necessarily there should come
a point where it does not need to change as fast as it currently is.
We're playing catch-up.

Steve


body:
On 4/10/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On 4/10/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>Also, shouldn't we enable nofollow for talk pages?  For example, if this
> >>discussion had been on a talk page, those example links above would now
> >>be indexed by search engines and thus help the spammers.
> >
> > Nofollow per namespace would actually be really good.  If we had
> > per-namespace nofollow right now I'd enable it everywhere except the
> > main namespace ... you can argue that the main ns links are reviewed
> > and are of some quality, but that doesn't extend to anywhere else.
>
> Ask and ye shall receive: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5523

The patch seems obviously correct.
I've tested it here with $wgNoFollowNsExceptions = array(0);  and it
works just fine.

It would be great to see this make it into the main branch, it would
remove some of the incentive for things like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Timpani&diff=22299267&oldid=20394448
(which wasn't found and removed for over a month)

>From the angle of being a good netizen this would appear to be an
ideal comprimise.


from_name: Jan Vanoverpelt

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Writing a patch or using a template to put text on
	a non-existing page?

body:
2006/4/5, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net>:
>
> Minh Nguyen wrote:
> > Jan Vanoverpelt wrote:
> >  >
> >  > I think this problem is due to the fact that i have created some kind
> of
> >  > "hard link" behind the image, so that the user is always forced to go
> >  > directly to the edit-box with the preloaded text in it. Is there a
> way to
> >  > fix this, so that the user (after he/she visited the non-existing
> page for
> >  > the first time, added something and saved it) is directly taken to
> the
> >  > actual page the second time (like is done in case of "normal" links)
> ??
> >
> > Yes, I think there is: the English Wikipedia has an "exists" template
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Exists> to check if a particular
> > page has been created yet.
>
> Eww!  That's clever, but also incredibly ugly.  I can see why a template
> (or a parser function) for this might be useful, but Jan's problem would
> be much cleanly solved by a small patch to MediaWiki.
>
> A minimal patch would be to add a new action ("action=editnew"?) that
> would act like "action=edit", but only if the page does not already exist.

Thanks for the reaction,  but unfortunately i don't have that much knowledge
about patching MediaWiki. Where do i have to define such a new action and
how do i have to define it? I would be glad if it just worked (even if it is
a little bit ugly ;-) so maybe it is advisable for me to keep trying to use
some kind of template?

Recapitulating what i am trying to do:
Scenario:
1) The user clicks on an image, which refers to a non-existing page.
2) The user is linked to the non-existing page's edit-box in which the
preloaded text is written.
3) The user adds some additional text and saves the page.
4) The user leaves the pages, surfs around on the wiki and goes back to the
image through which he previously created the new page.  This is the point
where the practical problem jumps in: the user clicks on the image, BUT he
must be taken to the actual page (which exists now, so he does not have to
be linked directly to the edit-box of the page again).

I tried to modify the "exists"-template so that after this template has
checked whether a page exists or not, another template (a template with
preload-parameter for a new page or a template without preload-parameter for
an existing page) is returned:

=> The original qif-code of the {{exists}}-template is:
     {{qif
          |test={{booleq
          |1=[[{{ucfirst:{{{1|defaultFalse}}}}}]]
          |2={{:{{{1|defaultFalse}}}}}
                   }}
          |then={{{else|false}}}
          |else={{{then|true}}}
     }}

=> I tried to adapt this into:
     {{qif
         |test={{booleq
         |1=[[{{ucfirst:{{{1|defaultFalse}}}}}]]
         |2={{:{{{1|defaultFalse}}}}}
                  }}
         |then={{{else|{{hotspot || Image = image-name.gif | Link =
name-of-the-page
                | Preload=Template:templatename | Heigth = 81px}}}}}
         |else={{{then|{{hotspot-no-preload || Image = image-name.gif | Link
= name-of-the-page
                | Heigth = 81px}}}}}
     }}

Unfortunately, I want to apply this to several different images, each of
which links to a different page so i should have to put this qif-code into
different {{exists}}-templates so that each of these different
{{exists}}-templates then contains its own " image-name.gif"-reference and
"name-of-the-page"-link. This is not efficient because lots of
{{exists}}-templates have to be made.

A little bit more efficiently: I could put this qif-code on the wiki each
time such an image should be displayed, but i do not understand how the
name-of-the-page-parameter can be passed to this qif-code without referring
to a global template like {{exists|name-of-the-page}}. What i mean is that
when the {{exists}}-template is used, the parameter is passed by {{exists
|name-of-the-page}} and then the qif-code knows which page to check. What i
would like to accomplish now, is to adapt the qif-code so that i can
manually define in the qif-code which page should be checked for existence.

In short: how do i adapt the above qif-code, so that it knows what page to
check for existence, without passing the name-of-the-page-parameter via
{{exists|name-of-the-page}}?? Or is there another
"quite-easy-to-implement"-solution to this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help!

JAN


from_name: Shinjiman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting the current month number without leading zero

body:
Hi all,

is that have any suitable method to produce the current month (in
number) without the leading zero? I've been found out in the MediaWiki
software currently only have the magic word CURRENTMONTH which would
generate the current month with leading zero. Is that have any other
ways to generate the current month without the leading zero? or maybe
I would like to submit a patch to BugZilla to resolve this issue?

regards

Shinjiman


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image deletion

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/6/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Instead of adding a major burden to admins deleting images (which is
> > something that needs to be done; I'm fairly sure there are large
> > backlogs), and slowing them down, and aggravating them, why not simply
> > fix image deletion's permament deletion?
>
> Off-the-cuff remark: Why not upload a new version of the image which
> is totally blank, and protect it with a note saying that if no
> consensus is gained to undelete the image in a month, it should then
> be permanently deleted?

Volume.  Approximately 1,500 images are deleted every day.  It's a
slow enough process when the image is already orphaned, and clearly
meets the requirements for deletion.  Adding "blank, protect, and
check back in a month" will just make things that much slower.

(speaking of images, [[Category:Orphaned fairuse images]] has a
backlog of roughly 1800 items right now)

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]