from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
Now he's trying to get [[Wikipedia:WikiLawyering]] deleted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikiped
ia:WikiLawyering

(Didn't it used to be "Wikilawyering" without the CamelCase interior
capital?  That seems to have been changed somewhere in the course of
it being moved and then moved back.)

--
== 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/


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[User:Jon_Awbrey]] is at it again...

body:
On Aug 29, 2006, at 6:25 PM, David Gerard wrote:

> On 29/08/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
>> Now he's trying to get [[Wikipedia:WikiLawyering]] deleted:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/
>> Wikipedia:WikiLawyering
>
>
> See, this is what I meant when I said that wikilawyering
> "wikilawyering" was not Wikipedia's Godel number and would not cause
> Wikipedia to contradict itself, Mediawiki to output "DOES NOT
> COMPUTE", the server network to explode and the smoking remains to
> finally be scraped into a small dustpan and sold off to Britannica.
>
> Could someone please speedy-close this one? If process doesn't
> presently "allow" this, it damn well should.

Done, and with a complimentary 24 hour vacation to many urls on Teh
Intarwebs that do not end with "&action=edit" for Mr. Awbrey.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] References - ugh

body:
On 8/29/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Anyone got any implementation experience with diffing XML trees?

No, but I'm wondering what happens if you simply flatten it down to
text then diff. What's the worst that could happen?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:LIVING and "sensitivity" again

body:
On Aug 29, 2006, at 6:37 PM, geni wrote:

> On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yes. Bluntly, most of our articles about pop cultural figures need
>> an enema.
>
> Evedences?

Have you ever READ a popular culture article?

Particularly one about a fictional character, where you've got better-
than-even chances of being right to add {{cleanup fiction-as-fact}}
to it before you even start to deal with its other problems, of which
there will be many.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
On 8/29/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> I don't see why it's not well-formed.  They've just made it magic,
> because it looks prettier on output to hide the parenthetical.

How would you know? How can you test if the parser can parse something
if every time you try and save it, mediawiki converts it into
something else?

Maybe something really tricky like using subst would work:  [[foo
(blah){{a}} where {{a}} is the string "|]]".

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] WMF Approval of New Languages/Projects

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Daniel Bregman wrote:
>
>>Over at Incubator we've been deciding our policy with regard to
>>starting new language (of an existing project) tests, and new project
>>tests.
>>We've come up with this:
>>
>>   - New languages can create a test on Incubator quite easily, needing
>>   only to get a few people who will help. (
>>   http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/I:NTR)
>>   - New
>>   languages can create a full wiki using an approval process on
>>Incubator, and it will be made (or not) after consensus
>>   has been reached. (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/I:NLR)
>>   - New projects will need approval from the foundation to have a test
>>   made, and then need further approval to make a full wiki.
>>
>>Is this acceptable? We are also not sure about what exactly the Foundation
>>needs to approve. Views we got previously seemed to be slightly
>>contradictory on this matter.
>>
>>Thank you for your replies,
>>
>>Dbmag9 (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dbmag9)
>
> Hoi,
> In the past we have accepted codes to be used as "language" codes which
> were non-existent and have had as a result that we are not in compliance
> with the rules of accepted use for the ISO-639 codes. When codes for new
> languages are used that are not consistent with the existing ISO-639
> codes (all two and three character codes) a language should not be
> accepted at all.
>
> Anthere has indicated a few weeks ago that in the end it is the board
> that accepts languages and that this process happens at Meta not at the
> incubator.

Uh, sorry no. New projects on meta. New languages on incubator. But I
think it is not very important and it is best people who run such things
decide where to put it.

HOWEVER, I see a huge problem with the rules you set up, which are not
consistant with a position the board has tried to hold for some time
now. Artificial languages. According to your rules, anyone (with help of
a few friends or of a few sockpuppets) can re-open the Zorglub language
(oldbies will understand which language is concerned).
So, your proposal needs to mention the issue of constructed languages.

Besides, I see you wrote "The Foundation will also have to approve the
domain". Errrrrrrr. I'd prefer we avoid such bottleneck. How about
something like "if at least 20 votes with a very large majority", no
approval needed. If less votes or less obvious support, then, the
Foundation or the spc must approve before creation ?

Ant

> Thanks,
>     GerardM


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Well darn, Pokemon is important after all.

body:
On 29/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You can see what I believe is the sampling period by looking at
> > [[MediaWiki:monobook.js]]; it's currently 5000, and hasn't been lower
> > than 3000.
>
> Heh, ok. So if we're seeing figures that end in 333, it presumably
> means the magic factor was like 4333 for a while or something. Yes,
> massive flaw in my logic, thanks for pointing it out ;)

-333 has been there since the beginning; I'm guessing it's something
to do with the algorithm used, but I dunno what. I'll ask Leon if I
see him - I'm curious now!

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


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

body:
On 8/29/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> According to your rules, anyone (with help of
> a few friends or of a few sockpuppets) can re-open the Zorglub language
> (oldbies will understand which language is concerned).
>

Ebyam ew dluow evah erom srotide naht ni nognilk egaugnal...

.g
--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


from_name: Daniel Bregman

body:
Dear all,

Thank you all for your comments. I agree with what Timichal has said
for the most part. I think that there are still problems with the
voting process, some of which can never be solved.

A percent range of approval is a good idea; although it is again
vulnerable. Now we need to find a foolproof method of notifying the
foundation about what's going on at Incubator :).

Thank you again for your thoughts.

-Dbmag9 (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dbmag9)


from_name: hunterda at adelphia.net

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body: Can you please take my son off this mailing list. For some reason he is receiving numerous e-mails, probably due to his signing up mistakenly. So sorry for the trouble. Thank you.         Jill Aldridge


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WM project][Sitenotice] Please blank it for a while.

body:
Global sitenotice on the Wikimedia project says:
> Candidates for the Election for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation
> are being accepted until 23:59 UTC Monday, August 28, 2006.

On behalf of Election Committee and all those who helped this
acceptance, I am happy to say hereby we closed acceptance on August 28
successfully. Soon the complete list of candidates will be in public.
Now we don't therefore need to advertise it moreover. Please now
remove the message. Thank you!

And also your assistance for the coming voting I appreciate you the
developping team in advance.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

body:
On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 10:18:12PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> The referenced bug is a long standing feature request that we don't
> have plans to implement, owing to the fact that it contradicts a lot
> of the "ethos" of MediaWiki; its purpose and concept.

Sure.

Just like groups.  And read-protection by groups.  :-)

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>According to your rules, anyone (with help of
>>a few friends or of a few sockpuppets) can re-open the Zorglub language
>>(oldbies will understand which language is concerned).
>>
>
>
> Ebyam ew dluow evah erom srotide naht ni nognilk egaugnal...
>
>
> .g

? sulp euq 5 sruetide ne bulgroz


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cannot access Thai Wikipedia from Thailand

body:
Wow, this is pretty serious. Do you think it could be a block? Has
there ever been a block before of anything on the Internet in
Thailand?

-Andrew

On 8/29/06, [LiM] Manop <manop at 6tub1.com> wrote:
> Thank you for the reply. It seems that people from Thailand cannot access
> Wikipedia in other languages as well as Thai Wikipedia; I and my friends did
> test in English (en), German (de), and Japan (ja). The problem occurs in
> other projects as well including Wiktionary, Wikisources.
>
> However I and my friends in Thailand can access to this site
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page
>
> Manop
>
> On 8/29/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 29/08/06, [LiM] Manop <manop at 6tub1.com> wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I'm wondering if anyone have the same problem. Several of my friends in
> > > Thailand cannot access to Thai Wikipedia (http://th.wikipedia.org) today
> > > since 4-5 hours ago. But I access from the USA, it works fine for me.
> >
> > Is it just th.wikipedia, or other language sites as well?
> >
> > --
> > - Andrew Gray
> >   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> >
>
>
>
> --
> (LiM) Manop Kaewmoracharoen
> 427 Town Engineering Bldg.
> Iowa State University
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: timichal

body:
>>
>>
>> In the past we have accepted codes to be used as "language" codes which
>> were non-existent and have had as a result that we are not in compliance
>> with the rules of accepted use for the ISO-639 codes. When codes for new
>> languages are used that are not consistent with the existing ISO-639
>> codes (all two and three character codes) a language should not be
>> accepted at all.
>>

We can handle ISO-639 codes, it's no problem to assign the correct code if it
exist. In my opinion, even languages without an ISO-639 code should be
accepted; however, this shouldn't be controlled by us, but the decision should
be made in the New language requests vote.

>
> According to your rules, anyone (with help of
> a few friends or of a few sockpuppets) can re-open the Zorglub language
> (oldbies will understand which language is concerned).
> So, your proposal needs to mention the issue of constructed languages.

The policy is just a proposal at the moment; however, we'll take this into
account. There is a Quenya language test in Incubator; I suppose we should
delete it?

> Besides, I see you wrote "The Foundation will also have to approve the
> domain". Errrrrrrr. I'd prefer we avoid such bottleneck. How about
> something like "if at least 20 votes with a very large majority", no
> approval needed. If less votes or less obvious support, then, the
> Foundation or the spc must approve before creation ?

I removed the approval part, I think it remained there from the time when it
was imported on Meta and reworded by Daniel. As for your 20 votes suggestion -
unfortunately there are often cases of flash voting, where 20-30 voters can
easily appear out of nowhere and declare their support. We can counter this
somewhat by forcing all voters to have accounts, but there are still problems
with that. I think this has yet to be decided somehow. We should make a
percent range of approval, like with RfAs on English Wikipedia; e.g. more than
75% support gets approved automatically, between 50% and 75% needs approval by
Foundation/SPcom and less then 50% fails to get a wiki estalished.

Michal Zlatkovsky ([[incubator:User:Timichal]])


body:
On 8/29/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can see what I believe is the sampling period by looking at
> [[MediaWiki:monobook.js]]; it's currently 5000, and hasn't been lower
> than 3000.

Heh, ok. So if we're seeing figures that end in 333, it presumably
means the magic factor was like 4333 for a while or something. Yes,
massive flaw in my logic, thanks for pointing it out ;)

> I'm betting on anomaly.

Given the previous, then yes, that would be likely.

Steve


body:
On 8/29/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> > On 8/29/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>According to your rules, anyone (with help of
> >>a few friends or of a few sockpuppets) can re-open the Zorglub language
> >>(oldbies will understand which language is concerned).
> >>
> >
> >
> > Ebyam ew dluow evah erom srotide naht ni nognilk egaugnal...
> >
> >
> > .g
>
>
> ? sulp euq 5 sruetide ne bulgroz

sap lam ed sneg tno ul uorips, te al eugnal tse sulp elpmis euq el nognilk

! eviv bulgroz

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] "wikinomics"

body:
I'm not sure the authors of this book about "how mass collaboration
changes everything" have ever heard of Nomic, but they have a cute web
address, a remarkably familiar cover image and font-choice, and are
looking for better title suggestions.

Perhaps someone should send them cover-image suggestions as well.  (Or
perhaps, as they seem to have developed a 3D model of a suitable
globe, there could be an exchange -- license to use that cover for a
3D model of the real WP logo... which would be handy.)

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] "wikinomics"


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Election] Big season of translation,
	we have now close to 20 candidates!

body:
Hello all,
thank you for your help and interest as usual, now we close candidate
accepting. I hope we can release soon the complete list of candidates.
This election gets a wide attention, and we have now close to 20
candidates. I'm really excited about that.
Quicklist of candidate statement by language:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_translations_2006/En#Candidates

Some of those candidates came late, but I hope the Wikimedia community
pay impartial attention to all those candidates. All statements will
be read closely, ideally in the language most convenient for each
reader, that is, each voter. Regretfully we need to admit not all
voter can read those statement in the language they are most familiar
with, though.

But luckily and thankfully being helped by many eager translators,
some language speakers will be able to have each of those statements
in their own languages - or not. It depends on our volunteering staff,
and if you are multilingual, you can help it. Your translation will
help your friends in your community and help assuring the neutrality
and impartiality of this coming Election. I think no one will be happy
if some candidates have their statements in multiple language, and
others have only in few, or some language speaker voters can read what
a certain candidate think and promise, but need to rely on machine
translation or a language version which is obscure for them at all. I
want to pursue the equal opportunity to the highest extent. On this
Election. Not only because I am serving as officer to that, but also I
believe in the equal right of us the Wikimedia editor and trust you
all as collaborator to the same goal; to provide free knowledge in
every potion of this planet, in every language. And voting for our
community representative should be one of most significant part to
pursue this goal in my opinion. And for that, we need your help, you
German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Polish ... and many other
translators.

Again, we need your help. To provide all our voters enough information
consider this Election as serious as possible. As impartial as
possible. And you can help us. Us the Wikimedia community, assuring it
the global character, the equality - and free access to a certain
knowledge: what those candidate think about our mission. So, give a
look to our workspace and consider what you can do!
Quicklist of candidate statement by language:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_translations_2006/En#Candidates

Thank you for your attention, and see later on meta.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cite.php footnote problems on en.wikipedia.org

body:
Ligulem wrote:
> Error reports about <ref> footnotes on en are piling at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29
>
> Example bad page:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misnamed_theorems
>
> Anybody knows something? Is somebody twiddling with Cite.php?

See http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7162


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 8/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So less than a third of the total who ran in en.wikipedia's arbcom
> > elections. Are people now going to accept that
> > [[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] provides enough profile for this kind of
> > notice?
>
> By your logic we would conclude that a watchlist only site notice gets
> higher visability than the system wide one.

I believe Geni's logic is that there are fewer people in the Board
election than in the ArbCom election, and thus that the interest in
the latter is greater than in the former, justifying a less prominent
notice.

At least I think that's the logic...

--
Sam


from_name: David Gerard

body:
oops, meant to send to list as well

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
Date: 29-Aug-2006 20:44
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:LIVING and "sensitivity" again
To: Sydney aka FloNight <poore5 at adelphia.net>

On 29/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I note that one of the talk page responses is that a "sensitivity"
> policy would reduce editor arguments. So would Sympathetic Point Of
> View and article forks, and that isn't a reason either.
> Perhaps I'm worrying about nothing. But it really sits wrong having that there.

I should point out also: that although the big fuss is about negative
articles being libelous, the serious *quality* problem with our pop
culture articles is that they are hagiographies. The fans are the main
people interested in those articles, and they guard them jealously.
This makes our pop culture articles *really bad*. Neil Gaiman
commented at length about this in his (widely read) blog, for example.
Our pop culture articles are rubbish, and they definitely need no more
encouragement toward a hagiographic point of view.

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/29/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/29/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > So less than a third of the total who ran in en.wikipedia's arbcom
> > > elections. Are people now going to accept that
> > > [[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] provides enough profile for this kind of
> > > notice?
> >
> > By your logic we would conclude that a watchlist only site notice gets
> > higher visability than the system wide one.
>
> I believe Geni's logic is that there are fewer people in the Board
> election than in the ArbCom election, and thus that the interest in
> the latter is greater than in the former, justifying a less prominent
> notice.
>
> At least I think that's the logic...
>

No I'm pointing out that something that was advertised through
[[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] ended up with more than 3 times as many
candidates and something that was advertised through banner ads on
every single project. This provides further evidence that
[[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] is a perfectaly adiquate method for
advertising things.

Incerdentaly for those following this it is now 69 days since there
was 24 hours without something in [[mediawiki:Sitenotice]].

--
geni


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
timichal wrote:
>>> In the past we have accepted codes to be used as "language" codes which
>>> were non-existent and have had as a result that we are not in compliance
>>> with the rules of accepted use for the ISO-639 codes. When codes for new
>>> languages are used that are not consistent with the existing ISO-639
>>> codes (all two and three character codes) a language should not be
>>> accepted at all.
>>>
>>>
>
> We can handle ISO-639 codes, it's no problem to assign the correct code if it
> exist. In my opinion, even languages without an ISO-639 code should be
> accepted; however, this shouldn't be controlled by us, but the decision should
> be made in the New language requests vote.
>
You can only vote on things that are acceptable in the first place. It
is not acceptable to make up codes that are in violation with the rules
of usage of the ISO-639 codes. You can vote all you like and have
whatever majority but is is fundamentally wrong. When you want to have
codes that are permissible, the http://simple.wikipedia.org is a great
example of what CAN be done without infringing on compatibility of the
ISO-639 rules.
>> According to your rules, anyone (with help of
>> a few friends or of a few sockpuppets) can re-open the Zorglub language
>> (oldbies will understand which language is concerned).
>> So, your proposal needs to mention the issue of constructed languages.
>>
>
> The policy is just a proposal at the moment; however, we'll take this into
> account. There is a Quenya language test in Incubator; I suppose we should
> delete it?
>
>
>> Besides, I see you wrote "The Foundation will also have to approve the
>> domain". Errrrrrrr. I'd prefer we avoid such bottleneck. How about
>> something like "if at least 20 votes with a very large majority", no
>> approval needed. If less votes or less obvious support, then, the
>> Foundation or the spc must approve before creation ?
>>
>
> I removed the approval part, I think it remained there from the time when it
> was imported on Meta and reworded by Daniel. As for your 20 votes suggestion -
> unfortunately there are often cases of flash voting, where 20-30 voters can
> easily appear out of nowhere and declare their support. We can counter this
> somewhat by forcing all voters to have accounts, but there are still problems
> with that. I think this has yet to be decided somehow. We should make a
> percent range of approval, like with RfAs on English Wikipedia; e.g. more than
> 75% support gets approved automatically, between 50% and 75% needs approval by
> Foundation/SPcom and less then 50% fails to get a wiki estalished.
The problem with the votes that were taken on Meta proved that there was
little merit in much of the votes. Many of the votes were plain
political. The lack of reason proved to be such that I only voted when
the proposal was seriously flawed. For me ANY proposal that prevents us
from communicating what language we are using is seriously flawed. It
did not prevent us from having projects where an existing Wikipedia
prevents setting up a wikipedia using the rightful "owner" of the
ISO-639-3 code .. :(

Does it help that with single login, everybody who works on any project
has his or her user ??

Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: cohesion

subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/29/06, Oskar Sigvardsson  wrote:
>
> Since these are a work of the US Government, they are public domain,
> yes? In that case, fantastic!!!
>
> --Oskar

Yes, according to him they are public domain, as works of the usgov.
The cost, I think, is just for the USGS to scan deliver etc. The
appropriate template for images would be
[[Template:PD-USGov-Interior-USGS]]. :D


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

body:
On 8/29/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 30/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 10:18:12PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > > The referenced bug is a long standing feature request that we don't
> > > have plans to implement, owing to the fact that it contradicts a lot
> > > of the "ethos" of MediaWiki; its purpose and concept.
> >
> > Sure.
> >
> > Just like groups.  And read-protection by groups.  :-)
>
> Groups became a necessary evil. Read protection in MediaWiki is
> limited in implementation, which is a Good Thing, in my opinion.
>
> People often seem to confuse MediaWiki with a magic solve-all for
> document management. While the platform is popular, quite mature and
> secure, and extremely extensible, and while MediaWiki is a pretty damn
> good collaborative editing application, it is subject to an enormous
> amount of abuse.
>
> You have a pot of screws and a hammer. Purchase a screwdriver.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

I have a real document management system.  Several, in fact.

I also have a Wiki at (place I contract at) Work (Twiki), and at
(contracting company I work for) Work (MediaWiki, in deployment now).

In both of those cases, the ability to ensure that non-employees aren't
using the collaboration tools (Wiki, document management software, internal
websites, internal sysadmin tools) is not only good business sense, but is
at one of those locations a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance audit control.

Wikis are just as useful in environments where complete freedom of data
access is not acceptable from a business standpoint.  The employee community
may be smaller than "everyone in the world", but the type and quality of
interaction within the community can be helped greatly by Wikis and other
modern internet collaboration.

"All information should be free!" likely does not extend as far as
"...including your 401K manager's internal security data and all your health
records", even for die-hard info-libertarians.

Some of these environments will benefit from Wikis; many of them will
require additional access control.  It's unreasonable to expect that
MediaWiki would never find itself installed in such a situation.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
timichal wrote:

>>>In the past we have accepted codes to be used as "language" codes which
>>>were non-existent and have had as a result that we are not in compliance
>>>with the rules of accepted use for the ISO-639 codes. When codes for new
>>>languages are used that are not consistent with the existing ISO-639
>>>codes (all two and three character codes) a language should not be
>>>accepted at all.
>>>
>>>
>We can handle ISO-639 codes, it's no problem to assign the correct code if it
>exist. In my opinion, even languages without an ISO-639 code should be
>accepted; however, this shouldn't be controlled by us, but the decision should
>be made in the New language requests vote.
>
I wouldn't go so far as to say a language without a code should be
completely unacceptable, but the threshhold should be higher.
Arbitrarily assigning an unused code to the language could be
problematic at some time in the future.  There is a block of "q" codes
reserved in the standard for user use.  That's probably what we should
use if necessary.

>>According to your rules, anyone (with help of
>>a few friends or of a few sockpuppets) can re-open the Zorglub language
>>(oldbies will understand which language is concerned).
>>So, your proposal needs to mention the issue of constructed languages.
>>
>>
>The policy is just a proposal at the moment; however, we'll take this into
>account. There is a Quenya language test in Incubator; I suppose we should
>delete it?
>
Quenya is one of the 24 constructed languages with an ISO 639-3 code.
Before a project is started in them the support should be overwhelming.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy across different languages

body:
On 29/08/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> WP:CIVIL is probably more borderline, because it's more about internal
> dynamics of the community than about the encyclopedia.  Presumably all
> communities will come up against issues of civil behavior, but I'd be
> inclined to let them decide how to formulate policies to deal with
> them.  But we can't support an encyclopedia project under the
> "Wikipedia" name that isn't neutral and based on existing, cited sources.

Er, yes. Offer those trying to vote verifiability out help in setting
up a fork. "Here's the software, here's how we set it up, here's how
you use the database dump, here's how Wikinfo does it. Have fun now,
don't forget to write, scream if you get killed."

What is the rationale for dumping verifiability, and what cracksmoking
maniacs thought this was a good idea and why?

- d.


body:
On 29/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> you use the database dump, here's how Wikinfo does it. Have fun now,

(I mention Wikinfo as an example as it's not a particularly
acrimonious forking. I wonder if we could set up a UserboxProcessPedia
forked from en:.)

- d.


body:
On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> What is the rationale for dumping verifiability, and what cracksmoking
> maniacs thought this was a good idea and why?
>
>
> - d.

Well in theory I supose you could get there by useing the argument
that if there is an error someone else will be along to correct it.
The vast majority of information on en.wikipedia isn't backed up with
cites so technicaly verifiability isn't needed for most articles. How
you deal with conflicts without verifiability I'm not sure. How is
anarchopedia doing these days?

--
geni


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [16217]
	trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialDisambiguations.php

body:
On 29/08/06, Yuri Astrakhan <yuriastrakhan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rob, thanks for the heads up on the release notes (although it is not a
> breaking functionality - the original format of the message will continue to
> work).

When. You. Change. Something. You. Must. Update. The. Release. Notes.

If the change is TRIVIAL, don't bother. This change wasn't trivial.

Release notes reside in trunk/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES. If the change
fixes or part-fixes a bug or fulfills a feature request, prefix with
the bug number, e.g. * (bug 550)

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Smoother treatment of actions like "unwatch"

body:
On 29/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Even if I wasn't hanging paper on three houses with only one hand, I
> probably couldn't, no.  Dammit, Rob, I'm an analyst, not a programmer.

All right, then...

...I want a UI mockup, full implementation plans (incl. flow charts
and a few GANTT chars), proof-of-concept code and volunteers to cover
all aspects of user discussion, integration, education; documentation
updating, advertising, etc., STAT!

Rob Church


from_name: ScottL

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> I think Jimbo needs to step in and talk to some bigwigs at
> ru.wikipedia.org and sort this out. Maybe even wave his magic wand if
> need be (after all, he more than anyone else has been arguing for this
> for a long time). We cannot have an encyclopedia without a
> verifiability policy, it's just not possible in the long run.
>
> --Oskar

   I don't think the ones opposed are arguing that they want an
encyclopedia without verifiability.  Its more that they are arguing that
the other policies (No OR, NPOV etc) can be used to derive verifiability
without adding more rules, and giving people ammunition to wikilawyer.

   I suspect that this may be (in part) a (not unreasonable) reaction to
the extremes that some people have gone on en.wiki.  Have a look back at
the threads on here about the topic.  I think one of them was with the
subject "The sky is blue {{citation needed}}" (with at least one witty
post on the thread pointing out that the sky was in fact not blue).

SKL


body:
On 8/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be useful if someone could translate some of this for those
> of us who do not read russian.

as far as I can figure out from machine translations the policy has
recently been translated from English and they are now trying to get
community approval. Most of the opposition appears to be from those
who think it is over ridged and that cites should only need to be
provided in cases where something has been challanged.

--
geni


body:
On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> (I mention Wikinfo as an example as it's not a particularly
> acrimonious forking. I wonder if we could set up a UserboxProcessPedia
> forked from en:.)

No but http://eng.anarchopedia.org/index.php/Main_Page already exists
and I'm sure a nocommunitypedia could be started.
--
geni


body:
On 29/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> as far as I can figure out from machine translations the policy has
> recently been translated from English and they are now trying to get
> community approval. Most of the opposition appears to be from those
> who think it is over ridged and that cites should only need to be
> provided in cases where something has been challanged.

I believe that's currently the policy regarding {{cite}} tags on en:
... that you don't put them on unless it's been questioned. That
material with no references or external links gets an {{unreferenced}}
tag. Etc.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I agree where the ~~~~ is concerned, but how about [[Foo (blah)|]]? I
>> have always considered the way that has been programmed to be some
>> kind of error. I think it would have been better to keep [[Foo
>> (blah)|]] in the text, and change it at parsing. Apart from the
>> 'surprise' factor, I see two more advantages:
>> * It diminishes the human readability of the wiki text less (just
>> disregard the special symbols and anything between brackets and you
>> get the 'flat text')
>> * It makes it much easier for newbies to learn this 'trick'. Now you
>> have to hear or read it somewhere, but if it were not changed on save,
>> one could find it in existing wiki text and learn that way.
>
> Agree with all that - I would be curious to hear what the rationale
> was.

So the feature could be removed if unpopular without breaking text.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobob.com)

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body:
On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe that's currently the policy regarding {{cite}} tags on en:
> ... that you don't put them on unless it's been questioned.

Okeeey so when you you put them in? I mean my way of dealing with
stuff that doesn't have cites that I don't belive is to delete it.
--
geni


body:
On 8/29/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Very much agreed.  I am very against any suggestion that strongly
> sourced, accurate negative information that is relevant to the
> person's notability/notoriety should be removed from articles for
> 'sensitivity'.
>
> I am in favor of being very tough about the 'well sourced' part,
> though, and about the notability of life details.  Not everything
> about their private lives that has been e.g. dragged out in divorce
> court is really notable.

I don't think anyone is contesting these issues.  The only issue under
contention is whether this should be stated explicitly for fear of
causing even more hagiography.

--
Sam


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:NPOV and images (possible policy update)

body:
I don't know. Sometimes expanding upon a policy or making clear how it
applies in certain cases can be clarifying. I find the current NPOV
FAQ section to be very helpful in discussing NPOV with people new to
it.

An alternative approach is to consider policy somewhat analogous to
case law. Without stating that all decisions are prescriptive towards
future decisions (I doubt anyone wants to pretend that Wikipedia
decision-making is anywhere near as pretentious about its universality
as the US court system pretends to be, though isn't), having a list of
"here's one issue that was relatively important, and here's how it was
satisfied to most people's satisfaction" might serve as a way of
defusing future conflicts.

There's an obvious appeal to having simple policies, but in many cases
that leads to a reinvention of the wheel many times over and some very
bitter disputes. Somewhere on a level near "guideline" could
potentially exist something like "here's how we thought about this
previously, this may or may not be applicable in the future" which
doesn't exist for the sheer purpose of shutting down discussion. (But
maybe in the end that's what policy is about anyhow, on some level.)

FF

On 8/27/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/08/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>
> > I agree the main NPOV article is the best place to start (though I
> > couldn't resist the temptation to fix a couple of things anyway).
> > Otherwise we'll need separate sections for NPOV in animations,
> > diagrams, photographs, videos, B/W film, ...
>
>
> And it'll need regular pruning per [[m:instruction creep]] - it's a
> very bad place to blur the distinction between the policy and the
> guidelines on implementing that policy. The policy is simple and hard
> to argue, but some people unfortunately appear to consider they can
> weasel past it if they add enough rubbish to the guidelines. Not that
> I've seen it repeatedly.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

body:
On 29/08/06, Dion Rowney <dion_rowney at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> This bug has status "Resolved (wontfix)"
>
> Am I correct in that it Its also seems to elude to trying to block users
> from certain sections, The entire wiki and loging completion?

I don't think that was the bug that was supposed to be referenced. I
might be wrong, but going on what the original poster's email said, I
interpreted that as more of a "lock out accounts and hide them" job,
which would come under
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6397.

The referenced bug is a long standing feature request that we don't
have plans to implement, owing to the fact that it contradicts a lot
of the "ethos" of MediaWiki; its purpose and concept.

Rob Church


body:
On 29/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think anyone is contesting these issues.  The only issue under
> contention is whether this should be stated explicitly for fear of
> causing even more hagiography.

Yes. Bluntly, most of our articles about pop cultural figures need an enema.

- d.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
So isn't it better to cite stuff to avoid it getting questioned. It also
helps avoid stuff getting deleted. If something isn't verified and I can't
find the info to back it up, I tend to go for deletion discussions. If
people bother to verify beforehand you get a reliable wikipedia with a lot
less after-the-fact work.

Mgm

On 8/29/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It would be useful if someone could translate some of this for those
> > of us who do not read russian.
>
> as far as I can figure out from machine translations the policy has
> recently been translated from English and they are now trying to get
> community approval. Most of the opposition appears to be from those
> who think it is over ridged and that cites should only need to be
> provided in cases where something has been challanged.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> I think Jimbo needs to step in and talk to some bigwigs at
> ru.wikipedia.org and sort this out. Maybe even wave his magic wand if
> need be (after all, he more than anyone else has been arguing for this
> for a long time). We cannot have an encyclopedia without a
> verifiability policy, it's just not possible in the long run.
>

Given the translation, I'm not sure that's necessary.  It appears only a
handful of people really oppose verifiability in general, and most of
the worry is that this is going to be some draconian policy where any
uncited sentence is going to be deleted 48 hours from now or something.
I'd be inclined to see what happens and allow the community to craft
their policy, only stepping in if it goes horribly awry or something.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
ATR wrote:

>A publicity photo is just for that purpose, to have the person's photo
>be put out into the public. Besides the strict fair use argument (there is
>no loss to their
>marketplace by putting the celebrity photo out) one could also argue that a
>plain head
>shot (that does not involve any creative positioning etc.) really the photo
>belongs to the
>celebritity (and usually they own those photos by contractual work made for
>hire agreements anyway) not to a publicist or other third party (though
>sometimes photos made for specific publications are copyright by that
>publication as part of a story that
>is being done for that publication). A regular publicity photo might only
>have a claim by
>the celebrity and in that case one might even argue that under the NY Times
>test that
>as long as actual malice does not apply to use of the photo, that the photo
>can be
>reproduced anywhere else (I haven't done any caselaw research on this so I
>cannot state
>that this would prevail but it seems a reasonable argument to make now).
>
If a litigious industry like the entertainment industry has never so
much as bothered to file a case anywhere on something like this, I think
there's a message in that.

>This question also opens up all the moral rights questions associated with
>altering someone's work. Obviously if some punk rocker took a GFDL released
>photo (with a right of publicity implicitly released) from someone's profile
>on WP and then altered it into making them look "evil" that could be
>considered defamatory (either as a breach of privacy or perhaps some other
>tort, if not actual defamation) and so one could argue that the GFDL and CC
>never include permission for such tranformations of an image, even a public
>domain image could be the basis of a tortious transformation. If it were
>just being
>used in another encyclopedia article how could they argue that an accurate
>image of their
>face damages them in anyway (including under copyright laws) since that is
>the reason they released the photo in the first place?  Having the photo
>used in a thumbnail in an encyclopedia is just enhancing their celebrity
>status, not causing them to loose money.
>It is the other transformative uses that need to be looked at, I think.
>
>Of course if the GFDL were drafted by an Canadian open source foundation
>then the
>whole bundle of moral rights protections would definitely apply, besides the
>right of
>pubicity issues, but in the US it is not so clear even though it signed the
>Berne Convention it has limited moral rights protections under the [[Visual
>Artists Rights Act]]
>that only apply to limited types of "works of visual art" as defined in
>Title 17 USC  sec. 101 and do not cover publicity photos.
>
>
It will probably be an even longer time before the question of moral
rights is sorted out.  Parody as fair use is essentially a US concept,
but even elsewhere there is a recognition that public figures leave
themselves open to this sort of thing.

To some extent we can say that our free use is what allows downstream
users to copy, edit and republish our material.  We assure him of that.
We have no control over the user's changes to the material in a way that
might leave to a violation of moral rights.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


body:
On 29/08/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> Now he's trying to get [[Wikipedia:WikiLawyering]] deleted:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:WikiLawyering

See, this is what I meant when I said that wikilawyering
"wikilawyering" was not Wikipedia's Godel number and would not cause
Wikipedia to contradict itself, Mediawiki to output "DOES NOT
COMPUTE", the server network to explode and the smoking remains to
finally be scraped into a small dustpan and sold off to Britannica.

Could someone please speedy-close this one? If process doesn't
presently "allow" this, it damn well should.

> (Didn't it used to be "Wikilawyering" without the CamelCase interior
> capital?  That seems to have been changed somewhere in the course of
> it being moved and then moved back.)

O rly? I thought it was previously at the camelcase version when I
moved it back.

- d.


from_name: theProject

body:
Would this effect be replicable by using a proxy server in Thailand? I just
tried a couple of proxy servers there and I can use them to load both
th-wiki and en-wiki, despite the ridiculous reduction in speed which I think
is primarily due to using a proxy server. Mind you, that's just one proxy
server, and besides, I'm the last guy to ask about anything technical. :-)

theProject

On 8/29/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wow, this is pretty serious. Do you think it could be a block? Has
> there ever been a block before of anything on the Internet in
> Thailand?
>
> -Andrew
>
> On 8/29/06, [LiM] Manop <manop at 6tub1.com> wrote:
> > Thank you for the reply. It seems that people from Thailand cannot
> access
> > Wikipedia in other languages as well as Thai Wikipedia; I and my friends
> did
> > test in English (en), German (de), and Japan (ja). The problem occurs in
> > other projects as well including Wiktionary, Wikisources.
> >
> > However I and my friends in Thailand can access to this site
> > https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page
> >
> > Manop
> >
> > On 8/29/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 29/08/06, [LiM] Manop <manop at 6tub1.com> wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I'm wondering if anyone have the same problem. Several of my friends
> in
> > > > Thailand cannot access to Thai Wikipedia (http://th.wikipedia.org)
> today
> > > > since 4-5 hours ago. But I access from the USA, it works fine for
> me.
> > >
> > > Is it just th.wikipedia, or other language sites as well?
> > >
> > > --
> > > - Andrew Gray
> > >   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > (LiM) Manop Kaewmoracharoen
> > 427 Town Engineering Bldg.
> > Iowa State University
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/29/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a
> fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are
> being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here
> http://ransom.redjar.org/
>
> Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers
> eager to get these into wikipedia :D
>
> Judson

That's pretty neat. I wish it had been mentioned here or on Reddit - I
may not be a big user of maps, but their value for Wikipedia is
obvious enough I'd've donated.

~maru


subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
On 8/29/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> (or "small solar system bodies", as we should probably start calling them)
>
> Today, I noticed that rambot was alive again - just running tests, but
> it still made me think about mass-content-adding.
>
> We currently have somewhere north of one thousand articles on
> asteroids; maybe 1200? Only two seem to have been deleted after AFDs,
> and at least one of those was a one-sentence stub; that said, there's
> only been about six deletion debates. So there seems, on the face of
> it, to be a vague acceptance of them.
>
> This group of articles should, at least in theory, be something that
> could be filled out with bots - the basic asteroid article is "was
> discovered by A on B, named for C, part of group D, here are orbital
> elements E and very sketchy composition details F, external links to
> databases G and H." The main reason this is simple is that for
> asteroids studied in detail, we've usually written the article
> already!
>
> So, this is me dipping my toes in the water.
>
> a) Would people accept a mass-created set of articles like this, if
> done neatly and tidily and well-referenced? They're not of desperate
> general interest, but they're not going to clutter the namespace
> (nothing except asteroids is called "5464 Obscurename"), they're not
> going to demonstrate any particular cultural bias... and, hey, it's
> not like they're unverifiable.
>
> b) If so... where's the limit? All asteroids known well enough to
> catalogue is excessive - there's well over 100,000 numbered and
> ~350,000 known - so we'd need a threshold somewhere (plus "obviously
> notable" cases). The first n asteroids? All ones with assigned names
> (~13,500)? All those believed to be above a certain size?
>
> Feedback appreciated; I'll poke the data sources a bit in the next few
> days and try to put a more detailed proposal on the wiki.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray

A quick off-hand observation: any asteroid which comes anywhere close
to hitting Earth is automatically notable in my book. Personally, I'd
also say that any asteroid large enough to cause extinction-level
events should probably also have at least an entry in a list, but I
don't know whether that sentiment is widely shared. :)

~maru


body:
On 8/29/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> I deliberately put aside the debate on which notice should be used. I have
> my own point of view about this, but I don't have the time to split hairs.
>

On en wikipedia that is one page vs 5,503,662. Pretty big hair

> This said, I don't really understand how you can compare the Board election
> and the ArbCom one.

Only elections we have that were advertised through
MediaWiki:Watchdetails (and Signpost and general community chatter)

>We are talking about completely different positions.
> Being an arbitrator has nothing to do with being a Board member, so
> comparing the number of candidacies of these two elections seems completely
> irrelevant to me.

Not completely irrelivant. So far the general approach I'm seeing is
"the notice will go in MediaWiki:Sitenotice if you disagree we will
ignore you" which is unhelpful. Thus anything that might get discusion
going is worth a try.

--
geni


body:
On 8/29/06, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
> Besides, ArbCom is/was an en: only thing and Board election is pan-project.
>

You're right. That should give them an even larger pool to take candidates from.

--
geni


body:
On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. Bluntly, most of our articles about pop cultural figures need an enema.

Evedences?

--
geni


body:
On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> See, this is what I meant when I said that wikilawyering
> "wikilawyering" was not Wikipedia's Godel number and would not cause
> Wikipedia to contradict itself, Mediawiki to output "DOES NOT
> COMPUTE", the server network to explode and the smoking remains to
> finally be scraped into a small dustpan and sold off to Britannica.
>

Fortunetly not since Wikipedia:WikiLawyering appears to have been
writen so it can be abused by rule lawyers.

--
geni


body:
On 8/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > It appears that Russian Wikipedia is about to reject Verifiability as a policy:
> >
>
> In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia verifies YOU!
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

In Soviet Wikipedia, you must verify Verifiability?
In Russian Wikipedia, [[Soviet (council)|Soviet]]s work on wikiprojects?
In Soviet Wikipedia, votes on Verifiability need not be verifiable?

~maru
/got nothing


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

body:
Hello,

On 8/29/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> No I'm pointing out that something that was advertised through
> [[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] ended up with more than 3 times as many
> candidates and something that was advertised through banner ads on
> every single project. This provides further evidence that
> [[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] is a perfectaly adiquate method for
> advertising things.

I deliberately put aside the debate on which notice should be used. I have
my own point of view about this, but I don't have the time to split hairs.

This said, I don't really understand how you can compare the Board election
and the ArbCom one. We are talking about completely different positions.
Being an arbitrator has nothing to do with being a Board member, so
comparing the number of candidacies of these two elections seems completely
irrelevant to me.

g.

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] on new article creation

body:
At 13:37 +0200 29/8/06, Steve Bennett wrote:
>On 8/29/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>>  I have found two articles that needed attention within the past few
>>  days. I probably came to Wikipedia via a Google.com search. In other
>>  words, I did not start in Wikipedia.
>
>I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, but the discussion was
>primarily about creating *new* articles - it looks like you have
>*rewritten* two articles (a very welcome move indeed!)

OK.

>
>>  When I started being editing, and I am a late comer (January 2004),
>>  there was no clear policy (or I was unaware of it).
>
>The living persons policy is quite new (late 2005 or early 2006).
>
>Steve

Indeed. That was my point.

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [WikiEN-l] on new article creation

body:
At 14:02 +0100 29/8/06, David Gerard wrote:
>On 29/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  On 8/29/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>  > When I started being editing, and I am a late comer (January 2004),
>>  > there was no clear policy (or I was unaware of it).
>
>>  The living persons policy is quite new (late 2005 or early 2006).
>
>
>The important point about the living persons policy is that it's
>really a guideline to be really hard-arsed about NPOV and
>verifiability. If you keep that in mind, everything follows.
>
>- d.

And you can't libel the dead.

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Election] Big season of translation,
 we have now close to 20 candidates!

body:
Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 8/29/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> No I'm pointing out that something that was advertised through
>> [[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] ended up with more than 3 times as many
>> candidates and something that was advertised through banner ads on
>> every single project. This provides further evidence that
>> [[MediaWiki:Watchdetails]] is a perfectaly adiquate method for
>> advertising things.
>>
>
>
> I deliberately put aside the debate on which notice should be used. I have
> my own point of view about this, but I don't have the time to split hairs.
>
> This said, I don't really understand how you can compare the Board election
> and the ArbCom one. We are talking about completely different positions.
> Being an arbitrator has nothing to do with being a Board member, so
> comparing the number of candidacies of these two elections seems completely
> irrelevant to me.
>
> g.
Besides, ArbCom is/was an en: only thing and Board election is pan-project.

Filip


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 29/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > See, this is what I meant when I said that wikilawyering
> > "wikilawyering" was not Wikipedia's Godel number and would not cause
> > Wikipedia to contradict itself, Mediawiki to output "DOES NOT
> > COMPUTE", the server network to explode and the smoking remains to
> > finally be scraped into a small dustpan and sold off to Britannica.

> Fortunetly not since Wikipedia:WikiLawyering appears to have been
> writen so it can be abused by rule lawyers.

So? It's what we call a "wiki". You know what to do.

- d.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-30

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

body:
On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 09:12:47PM -0700, George Herbert wrote:
> > You have a pot of screws and a hammer. Purchase a screwdriver.
>
> I have a real document management system.  Several, in fact.
>
> I also have a Wiki at (place I contract at) Work (Twiki), and at
> (contracting company I work for) Work (MediaWiki, in deployment now).
>
> In both of those cases, the ability to ensure that non-employees aren't
> using the collaboration tools (Wiki, document management software, internal
> websites, internal sysadmin tools) is not only good business sense, but is
> at one of those locations a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance audit control.
>
> Wikis are just as useful in environments where complete freedom of data
> access is not acceptable from a business standpoint.  The employee community
> may be smaller than "everyone in the world", but the type and quality of
> interaction within the community can be helped greatly by Wikis and other
> modern internet collaboration.
>
> "All information should be free!" likely does not extend as far as
> "...including your 401K manager's internal security data and all your health
> records", even for die-hard info-libertarians.
>
> Some of these environments will benefit from Wikis; many of them will
> require additional access control.  It's unreasonable to expect that
> MediaWiki would never find itself installed in such a situation.

You're missing his point, though, George:

MediaWiki happily doesn't claim to provide those features, so if you
spec it into those environments, *you've* screwed up.  You're welcome
to patch it to do anything you like, or pay someone else to, though.

If MediaWiki doesn't fill your needs, and you can't patch it to do so,
you're welcome to use something else; Tim and brion won't be offended.

That said, see my other reply.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Mark K

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sybase port

body:
Hi All,

I am wondering how difficult it would be to use wiki with Sybase ASE. Has
anyone attempted this with any amount of success? I'm willing to work on
this with others who may be interested. I've downloaded mediawiki 1.6.8 (due
to PHP4) and just starting to look around.

Thanks,
Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to
>> the United States, for some funny reason.
>
> Ah, thought the G was Geographical. Not sure I think the logic is that
> self-evident, but anyway.
>
> Steve

   It is actually called "United States Geological Survey" not service.
  In this case it is pretty self evident.  If were called "Lunar
Geological Survey" .....

SKL


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

body:
Dion Rowney wrote:
> Thank you so much.  Thats work perfectly.  Saved me a huge amount of time.
> We see only one drawback which should be easy enough to fix.  When a user
> logs in, if they dont have "reader" access they get an error message saying
> "Login Required."  We plan to override the message and say "Access Denied."
>
> Regards!
>
>
> Dion

Try modifiying [[MediaWiki:Loginreqtitle]] and [[MediaWiki:Loginreqtext]].

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


from_name: adam

body:
I don't see how you can have NPOV without Verifiability - surely by
presenting a dispute or provide critical analysis or whatever by showing
what other people have said about it you are inherently requiring that
these statements be verifiable, no? Unless of course the Russian
Wikipedia's concept of what NPOV means is different to the English
Wikipedia's, which from "And furthermore, to create the ideal article,
we need to study the actual thing, not stories about it in
'authoritative sources'"  they quite possibly do.

adam

Kirill Lokshin wrote:
>
> It's a bit too long to translate entirely (and some of it seems to be
> people settling personal scores -- oppose because so-and-so supports
> and that sort of thing), but here's a sampling of the opposes:
...
> "The assertion that verifiability is more important than truth seems
> disputable.  And furthermore, to create the ideal article, we need to
> study the actual thing, not stories about it in 'authoritative
> sources'" -- Fred


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] WkiTrans Update/Swahili Machine Translation 20060817
	(Corrections)

body:
I have made another machine translation run and removed particle
insertion, the erroneous swahili lexicons identified by Martin Benjamin,
and recompiled the swahili thesaurus based solely upon the Kamusi
swahili lexicons, which Martin states are only partially completed and
possibly has some ambiguities.   Future runs of this project will be
posted and announced after application of the grammar rules and full
conjugation and sentence decomposition and reconstruction rule sets
based upon Dr. Benjamin's parsing rules, which may be a month or two
from now after
more work is done on the grammar parser for this language.   One other
challenge is language drift into Arabic, which was explained to me that
Swahili and many other African Languages have drifted to incorporate
arabic language derivatives which may require overlapping rule sets to
machine translate properly.

I have activiated the english link grammar parser for this second run
and have begun using word paring against the Kamusi lexicons, which are not
yet setup to fully handle these cases yet (but well on their way to this
goal).   The Cherokee language (and most native languages)  produce
words which are complete self contained morphemes and word meanings are
typically not split accross word pairs as appears to be the case in
Swahili, and the Cherokee parsers and lexicons are a lot further along,
having been in development by our linguists for several years for this
precise application (In Cherokee, each complex verb is in fact an entire
self contained sentence of sorts - and some nouns as well).  As Martin
points out, this language has a lot more work to go to get to the same
point the machine translator for Native American Languages has already
reached with comprehesive lexicons and grammar rule sets for machine
translation.   Nonetheless, the tremendous potential Wikipedia machine
translation holds for African Languages is compelling enough for the
Wolf Mountain Group to approve funding for this effort to move it
forward along with any other interested African Languages in support of
the Wikimedia Foundations Projects and Goals for African Communities.

I still anticipate we can get to 90% by the end of Autumn.  This project
will be under development and regular updates which will be posted to the
machine translations page setup by Sabine on Meta for African
Languages.  These first runs were examples to illustrate the power of
Wikitrans
to rapidly apply and create the whole of Wikipedia almost overnight in
another language (provided the lexicons and rule sets are complete and
accurate
for the translator to rely upon).   The African languages project is
very useful to allow further abstractions to be instrumented in
WikiTrans to deal with a multitude of languages for all of Wikimedia's
projects, which is the ultimate goal.

The real value here are the grammar and parsing rule sets and word
paring logic for each language and dialect.  Over time, Wikitrans will
develop a
large body of these rule sets and lexicons for all interested languages
we target.  Rule sets may or may not be published, depending on the project
and the interests of the contributors.  French, Spanish, German, Dine,
Italian, and other popular and pervasive language rule sets will certainly
be published sometime this fall so folks interested in porting a
language to WikiTrans can do so by writing rule sets and lexicons and
submitting
them to the project for test runs.

Latest run for swahili is at:

http://sw.wikigadugi.org

Latest lexicons, thesaurus, and xml dumps are at:

ftp://ftp.wikigaudgi.org/africa

Jeff


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> So? It's what we call a "wiki". You know what to do.
>
>
> - d.

The problems tend to be rather built in. Firstly it produces a
slightly hard to define behaviour that is semi officially "frowned
upon". This allows it to be used as an effective weapon since you can
force your opponent to defend themselves from such accusations rather
than have to deal with whatever the real issue is. In the end anything
related to rules is going to provide more ways to rule lawyer.

Going through the sub issues

1.Using formal legal terms inappropriately regarding Wikipedia policy.

Useful but could be used against those evil people who keep removing
non free images (any rule lawyer who can't argue their way around the
word "inappropriately" isn't worth worrying about).

2.Asserting that technical interpretation of Wikipedia:Policies and
guidelines should override the principles they express.

Has the interesting effect that it allows you to interpret policies
any way you like by claiming you are ignoring technicalities and
enforcing the underlying principles (which is always a difficult one
to disprove).

3.Asserting that technical interpretation of Wikipedia:Policies and
guidelines should override the principles they express.

see above. It also justifies not taking the time to write proper
policy. it also creates problems for the 3 revert rule which is pretty
much all technicality.

Not much to be done about this. Most of it can be delt with by takeing
the position that it is an essay and therefor not binding but that
opens up other problems.

--
geni


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/29/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a
> fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are
> being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here
> http://ransom.redjar.org/
>
> Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers
> eager to get these into wikipedia :D
>
> Judson

Since these are a work of the US Government, they are public domain,
yes? In that case, fantastic!!!

--Oskar


subject:
[Foundation-l] WkiTrans Update/Swahili Machine Translation
 20060817 (Corrected FTP URL)

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>Latest run for swahili is at:
>
>http://sw.wikigadugi.org
>
>Latest lexicons, thesaurus, and xml dumps are at:
>
>

>ftp://ftp.wikigadugi.org/africa
>
>

Corrected.

>Jeff
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
Thanks for translating!

On 8/29/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a bit too long to translate entirely (and some of it seems to be
> people settling personal scores -- oppose because so-and-so supports
> and that sort of thing), but here's a sampling of the opposes:

Some of these objections make a kind of wierd sense (Edward???'s for
instance), many of them seem to me to be just people not understanding
the policy.

> "Bureaucracy = evil" -- ??????

Per definition? Someone should say something to the bureocrats.....

> "Don't see the point.  These rules are too obvious (on the level of
> being fundamental principles of Wikipedia), and are thus simply
> extraneous" -- Edward???
>
> "Without a strict understanding of 'authoritative source', the rule is
> useless and perhaps even harmful" -- Jannikol
>
> "Our deletionist activists will start to remove the contents of the
> encyclopedia at a very rapid pace.  The {{citation needed}} template
> is quite sufficient" -- ???

What is {{citation needed}}, other than an implementation of this policy?

> "Forbidding original research will be enough, in my opinion.  Extra
> disputes and bureaucracy won't lead to anything good" -- Terminus
>
> "And what am I supposed to do if my source is a paper book?" -- ?? ????????????

Use the book as the source?

> "The assertion that verifiability is more important than truth seems
> disputable.  And furthermore, to create the ideal article, we need to
> study the actual thing, not stories about it in 'authoritative
> sources'" -- Fred

If something is true and encyclopedic, it should be verifiable. If
there are no sources to a claim, then chances are it's not fit to be
included in an encyclopedia.

> "According to this rule, I cannot, for example, write about something
> which I saw with my own eyes..." -- Azh7

No you can't..........you never could, that would be original research.

> (I haven't read the actual policy yet; I wonder how close it is in
> meaning to the English one.)

I think Jimbo needs to step in and talk to some bigwigs at
ru.wikipedia.org and sort this out. Maybe even wave his magic wand if
need be (after all, he more than anyone else has been arguing for this
for a long time). We cannot have an encyclopedia without a
verifiability policy, it's just not possible in the long run.

--Oskar


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to
the United States, for some funny reason.

Kelly

On 8/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> > Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a
> > fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are
> > being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here
> > http://ransom.redjar.org/
>
> How odd. Do you know which maps are included? Just the US?
>
> 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
>


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

body:
On 30/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 10:18:12PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > The referenced bug is a long standing feature request that we don't
> > have plans to implement, owing to the fact that it contradicts a lot
> > of the "ethos" of MediaWiki; its purpose and concept.
>
> Sure.
>
> Just like groups.  And read-protection by groups.  :-)

Groups became a necessary evil. Read protection in MediaWiki is
limited in implementation, which is a Good Thing, in my opinion.

People often seem to confuse MediaWiki with a magic solve-all for
document management. While the platform is popular, quite mature and
secure, and extremely extensible, and while MediaWiki is a pretty damn
good collaborative editing application, it is subject to an enormous
amount of abuse.

You have a pot of screws and a hammer. Purchase a screwdriver.

Rob Church


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
(or "small solar system bodies", as we should probably start calling them)

Today, I noticed that rambot was alive again - just running tests, but
it still made me think about mass-content-adding.

We currently have somewhere north of one thousand articles on
asteroids; maybe 1200? Only two seem to have been deleted after AFDs,
and at least one of those was a one-sentence stub; that said, there's
only been about six deletion debates. So there seems, on the face of
it, to be a vague acceptance of them.

This group of articles should, at least in theory, be something that
could be filled out with bots - the basic asteroid article is "was
discovered by A on B, named for C, part of group D, here are orbital
elements E and very sketchy composition details F, external links to
databases G and H." The main reason this is simple is that for
asteroids studied in detail, we've usually written the article
already!

So, this is me dipping my toes in the water.

a) Would people accept a mass-created set of articles like this, if
done neatly and tidily and well-referenced? They're not of desperate
general interest, but they're not going to clutter the namespace
(nothing except asteroids is called "5464 Obscurename"), they're not
going to demonstrate any particular cultural bias... and, hey, it's
not like they're unverifiable.

b) If so... where's the limit? All asteroids known well enough to
catalogue is excessive - there's well over 100,000 numbered and
~350,000 known - so we'd need a threshold somewhere (plus "obviously
notable" cases). The first n asteroids? All ones with assigned names
(~13,500)? All those believed to be above a certain size?

Feedback appreciated; I'll poke the data sources a bit in the next few
days and try to put a more detailed proposal on the wiki.

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


from_name: Sean Black

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Pop culture articles (was WP:LIVING and
	"sensitivity" again)

body:
> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:44:20 -0400
> From: Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:LIVING and "sensitivity" again
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <AE950BBF-4D5A-4038-9A37-3B6734D40931 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=US-ASCII;	delsp=yes;	format=flowed
>
>
>
> On Aug 29, 2006, at 6:37 PM, geni wrote:
>
> > On 8/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Yes. Bluntly, most of our articles about pop cultural figures need
> >> an enema.
> >
> > Evedences?
>
> Have you ever READ a popular culture article?
>
> Particularly one about a fictional character, where you've got better-
> than-even chances of being right to add {{cleanup fiction-as-fact}}
> to it before you even start to deal with its other problems, of which
> there will be many.

And have you ever considerd trying to fix that and improve the
articles instead of complaining about it on some mailing list? It's
amazing how often the people who have virtually no experience actually
editing articles and creating content are the ones who complain the
most.

~~ Sean


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
--- Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> This group of articles should, at least in theory, be something that
> could be filled out with bots - the basic asteroid article is "was
> discovered by A on B, named for C, part of group D, here are orbital
> elements E and very sketchy composition details F, external links to
> databases G and H." The main reason this is simple is that for
> asteroids studied in detail, we've usually written the article
> already!

Not a good idea since that is all we know about most asteroids and those data would be far more
useful in a big table of asteroids, not on individual pages for each space rock.

In fact, the basics are already in the List of asteroids tables.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroids_%2839001-40000%29

We can just add to the table.

-- mav

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


from_name: David Mestel

subject: [WikiEN-l]  Asteroids (first Wikipedia post)

body:
I think that the key question you have to ask yourself, and indeed in
many ways the fundamental criteria for inclusion of everything, is "is
anyone going to want to actually read this article?".  If you believe,
as I do, that no-one is for the 20,000 very short stubs, we shouldn't
have them.

--
David


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:LIVING and "sensitivity" again

body:
On 30/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I don't think anyone is contesting these issues.  The only issue under
> > contention is whether this should be stated explicitly for fear of
> > causing even more hagiography.

> I think it already *is* stated. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind the
> bit about not including birthdate information for fear of "identity
> theft" being removed - sheer paranoia.

The *what*? That's bloody stupid.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
On 30/08/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> We currently have somewhere north of one thousand articles on
> asteroids; maybe 1200? Only two seem to have been deleted after AFDs,
> and at least one of those was a one-sentence stub; that said, there's
> only been about six deletion debates. So there seems, on the face of
> it, to be a vague acceptance of them.
> This group of articles should, at least in theory, be something that
> could be filled out with bots - the basic asteroid article is "was
> discovered by A on B, named for C, part of group D, here are orbital
> elements E and very sketchy composition details F, external links to
> databases G and H." The main reason this is simple is that for
> asteroids studied in detail, we've usually written the article
> already!

Sounds good. But fergoshsakes just put the info in a table. Worst
thing about the town rambot articles is that they're pretty crappy
prose but it never gets edited, ever; second is that the demographic
information came from a table and should be presented as a table, not
as crappy prose.

As for notability and verification - they wouldn't have numbers if
they hadn't been verified sufficiently to get one.

- d.


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 8/30/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 30/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 8/29/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > I don't think anyone is contesting these issues.  The only issue under
> > > > contention is whether this should be stated explicitly for fear of
> > > > causing even more hagiography.
> >
> > > I think it already *is* stated. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind the
> > > bit about not including birthdate information for fear of "identity
> > > theft" being removed - sheer paranoia.
> >
> > The *what*? That's bloody stupid.
>
> It may or may not surprise you to know that that is a surprisingly
> common reason for asking "please do not list my birthdate"...
>
Of course the fact that it's not useful information combined with the
fact that it's almost never an easily verified fact is an equally good
reason.

IOW, ask Jimbo to see his birth certificate some time...

Anthony


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
On 8/30/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> a) Would people accept a mass-created set of articles like this, if
> done neatly and tidily and well-referenced? They're not of desperate
> general interest, but they're not going to clutter the namespace
> (nothing except asteroids is called "5464 Obscurename"), they're not
> going to demonstrate any particular cultural bias... and, hey, it's
> not like they're unverifiable.

Speaking very personally, the asteroid articles annoy me. It's an
irrational hate, I agree. But when doing various types of maintenance,
they always seem to pop up, often in the "most wanted redlinks"
(because hundreds of asteroid articles seem to link to each other, or
to missing asteroid articles).

Maybe I just personally find them uninteresting? Maybe because for the
vast majority, nothing interesting will *ever* be written about them.
At least for Hicksville West, Somecountry, there's the chance that a
local resident will write a paragraph about how Mr Famous spent 3
nights there in 1934.

By definition, any information which can be added automatically and
never improved on does not strike me as exceptionally encyclopaedic.
But then, I've already said this is a probably an irrational distaste,
and I don't know if there are really any good reasons for not wanting
20,000 articles about unnamed, insignificant asteroids.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/29/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a
> fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are
> being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here
> http://ransom.redjar.org/

How odd. Do you know which maps are included? Just the US?

Steve


body:
On 8/29/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think anyone is contesting these issues.  The only issue under
> contention is whether this should be stated explicitly for fear of
> causing even more hagiography.

I think it already *is* stated. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind the
bit about not including birthdate information for fear of "identity
theft" being removed - sheer paranoia.

Steve


from_name: Gordon Joly

body:
At 22:19 +0100 29/8/06, David Gerard wrote:
>On 29/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  I don't think anyone is contesting these issues.  The only issue under
>>  contention is whether this should be stated explicitly for fear of
>>  causing even more hagiography.
>
>
>Yes. Bluntly, most of our articles about pop cultural figures need an enema.
>
>- d.

You mean like

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

perhaps?

***

Nurse! The screens!

***

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to
> the United States, for some funny reason.

Ah, thought the G was Geographical. Not sure I think the logic is that
self-evident, but anyway.

Steve


body:
On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The *what*? That's bloody stupid.

Fortunately it seems to have been removed. It read thusly:

Privacy of birthdays

Wikipedia includes exact birthdates for some famous people, but
including this information for most living people should be handled
with caution. While many well-known living persons' exact birthdays
are widely known and available to the public, the same is not always
true for marginally notable people or non-public figures. With
identity theft on the rise, it has become increasingly common for
people to consider their exact date of birth to be private
information. When in doubt about the notability of the person in
question, or if the subject of a biography complains about the
publication of his or her date of birth, err on the side of caution
and simply list the year of birth rather than the exact date.

Steve


body:
On 8/30/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's an obvious appeal to having simple policies, but in many cases
> that leads to a reinvention of the wheel many times over and some very
> bitter disputes. Somewhere on a level near "guideline" could
> potentially exist something like "here's how we thought about this
> previously, this may or may not be applicable in the future" which
> doesn't exist for the sheer purpose of shutting down discussion. (But
> maybe in the end that's what policy is about anyhow, on some level.)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NBD - you may want to add
something about at least recording non-binding precedent.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
At 08:17 +0200 30/8/06, Steve Bennett wrote:
>On 8/30/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  a) Would people accept a mass-created set of articles like this, if
>>  done neatly and tidily and well-referenced? They're not of desperate
>>  general interest, but they're not going to clutter the namespace
>>  (nothing except asteroids is called "5464 Obscurename"), they're not
>>  going to demonstrate any particular cultural bias... and, hey, it's
>>  not like they're unverifiable.
>
>Speaking very personally, the asteroid articles annoy me. It's an
>irrational hate, I agree. But when doing various types of maintenance,
>they always seem to pop up, often in the "most wanted redlinks"
>(because hundreds of asteroid articles seem to link to each other, or
>to missing asteroid articles).
>
>Maybe I just personally find them uninteresting? Maybe because for the
>vast majority, nothing interesting will *ever* be written about them.
>At least for Hicksville West, Somecountry, there's the chance that a
>local resident will write a paragraph about how Mr Famous spent 3
>nights there in 1934.
>
>By definition, any information which can be added automatically and
>never improved on does not strike me as exceptionally encyclopaedic.
>But then, I've already said this is a probably an irrational distaste,
>and I don't know if there are really any good reasons for not wanting
>20,000 articles about unnamed, insignificant asteroids.
>
>Steve

Asteroids, cricket statistics, all the same really.

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Anonymous or new-editor edits will need to be approved by a logged-in
> editor.

I am sure that no matter what some percentage of the people reading this
will misinterpret it, but it might be a bit clearer to _start_ with the
word "edits" and explain what "approval" entails; "The edits of
anonymous or newly-signed-up editors will need to be approved by an
editor who's already been on Wikipedia for a while before they'll be
shown to other readers."

> Jimmy Wales asked for a time-delay feature for casual readers in late
> 2004; after very fast editing on the Indian Ocean tsunami produced a
> very high-quality article
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake) very
> quickly, but with some highly visible vandalism; we've hotly discussed
> how to achieve stable high-quality editions of Wikipedia since almost
> the start of the project, in 2001.

I like semicolons but there are too many in this paragraph. The first
should be a comma, the second a period IMO. And the last comma shouldn't
be there at all.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>
>
>>I think Jimbo needs to step in and talk to some bigwigs at
>>ru.wikipedia.org and sort this out. Maybe even wave his magic wand if
>>need be (after all, he more than anyone else has been arguing for this
>>for a long time). We cannot have an encyclopedia without a
>>verifiability policy, it's just not possible in the long run.
>>
>>
>Given the translation, I'm not sure that's necessary.  It appears only a
>handful of people really oppose verifiability in general, and most of
>the worry is that this is going to be some draconian policy where any
>uncited sentence is going to be deleted 48 hours from now or something.
>I'd be inclined to see what happens and allow the community to craft
>their policy, only stepping in if it goes horribly awry or something.
>
Supporters of draconian policy anywhere have a great capacity for
enraging people.  Their policies tend to be designed around the worst
case scenario, which only rarely happens.  The result is that people who
would otherwise behave and operate within self-controlled parameters too
easily step over the rigid bounds set by the rulemakers who have a
vested interest in literal interpretation.  People who wouldn't dream of
being vandals get their toes stepped on.

With most, but not all, unverified material there is no citation
emergency inviting dire consequences if the material isn't immediately
removed from the data base.  Alternative proposals pending verification
need to be available in most cases.  The suspect material needs to be
identified, and perhaps moved to the talk page where verification can
proceed at a more leisurely pace.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Ok I'm working on a form letter. Where shoudl I put it and does anyone
know if a human readerable form of the GFDL has been created?

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to
> the United States, for some funny reason.
>
> Kelly

This is true however there are PD maps of britian availible for dates
up untill 1956 (and a couple of bits of europe that were of
significance during WW2). However you would need deep pockets and a
big scanner (or a lot of grandparents/parents and a big scanner) in
order to get hold of them.

--
geni


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Well darn, Pokemon is important after all.

body:
>>>> Or popular with the readers, at least.
>>
>> Interesting. I am surprised that "Irukandji jellyfish" came so high
>> up on the list... is there some anomoly here?
>
> ...Interesting to see how quickly our use (apparently) reacts to news
> stories. The sex-related ones - lists of porn stars etc - were consistently
> high and are now dropping; I wonder where they'll stabilise at.

It really is a case of "be careful what you wish for", isn't it?

We were quite pleased over at en.wiktionary when Leon turned
stats on there for us a couple of days previously, but the joy
is now mixed with rue as we learn that among our most popular
entries, so far, are consistently MILF, penis, fuck, masturbate,
and breasts.

(It's true, though; clearly we'll all want to wait weeks or
months before we can imagine that the stats in general aren't
swamped by fixations du jour.)


subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
One significant potential source of error in Leon's (marvelous!)
new hitcount stats is the possibility that one reader is for
whatever reason fetching the same page multiple times (perhaps
due to nothing more than a prolonged edit).

Obviously it would be best to filter out multiple fetches of the
same page from the same IP address over some interval, probably
one day.  (Yes, this could then undercount hits from behind NAT
firewalls and proxies, but I think it'd still be worth it overall.)

I know that Leon's scheme is currently not logging IP addresses,
and given AOL's recent high-profile screwup I have to agree that
not logging IP addresses in this context is probably a good idea.
But what if we logged a one-way hash of the IP address, that
couldn't be correlated with anything else?


body:
On 8/30/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know. Sometimes expanding upon a policy or making clear how it
> applies in certain cases can be clarifying. I find the current NPOV
> FAQ section to be very helpful in discussing NPOV with people new to
> it.
>
> An alternative approach is to consider policy somewhat analogous to
> case law. Without stating that all decisions are prescriptive towards
> future decisions (I doubt anyone wants to pretend that Wikipedia
> decision-making is anywhere near as pretentious about its universality
> as the US court system pretends to be, though isn't), having a list of
> "here's one issue that was relatively important, and here's how it was
> satisfied to most people's satisfaction" might serve as a way of
> defusing future conflicts.

The problem is that once people think that a decision is going to
result in a president they tend to bring up a load of annoying side
issues.

--
geni


list: commons-l

from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject: [Commons-l] [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
[ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ]

On 8/29/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
>
> Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a
> fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are
> being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here
> http://ransom.redjar.org/
>
> Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers
> eager to get these into wikipedia :D
>
> Judson
>

Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?

g.

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
[ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ]

On 8/29/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
>
> Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a
> fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are
> being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here
> http://ransom.redjar.org/
>
> Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers
> eager to get these into wikipedia :D
>
> Judson
>

Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?

g.

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.