subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use examples

body:
On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Tom Parmenter wrote:

> For poetry fair use:
>
> [[William Butler Yeats]] quotes 8 out of 22 lines from the poem, "The
> Second Coming", which was first published in 1922, but surely has a
> later copyright due to republication in collected works, etc.  Yeats
> died in 1939.

Its copyright won't expire before 2009 (death+70 years).

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] more fair use

body:
Suitable fare for Stallman and Lessig:  [[Hitler has only got one
ball]].

An assertion of copyright is being made concerning what I believe are
public-domain lyrics.  I could be wrong, but, at any rate, it is an
ongoing discussion of the very point we are pursuing.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use examples

body:
On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Axel Boldt wrote:

> --- Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com> wrote:
> > For poetry fair use:
> >
> > [[William Butler Yeats]] quotes 8 out of 22 lines from the poem, "The
> > Second Coming", which was first published in 1922, but surely has a
> > later copyright due to republication in collected works, etc.
>
> No, if it was first published in 1922, then it's in the public domain
> period.

IIRC Any work produced in the EEA is protected for authors lifetime +70
years, and this limit applies in the USA as well due to the Uruguay Round
GATT (1994).

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright Violation Deleted

body:
I just deleted a copyright violation: 67.0.49.91 copied a BBC news
article into [[James Kilgore]].  That seems to be his/her/its only
"contribution."

I don't think anything needs to be done (now that I've deleted the
article) -- just keep an eye out.

--
 Sean Barrett     | You don't need a Weatherman to
 sean at epoptic.com | know which way the wind blows.


from_name: Steve Callaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] VANDALISM ALERT

body:
This is being done on the mailing list since a known vandal has now got a user account; we have no way of blocking user:

PresidentPTC

Can Jimmy or Lee or someone who has the right magic spell wipe this account //immediately//. This is the same user I blocked yesterday below:

a.. 14:24 Nov 7, 2002, Sjc blocked 62.171.194.36 : Reason: Persistent homophobic vandalism in nonsense article Marcel Petiot, now deleted.

Steve Callaway (sjc)
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] epidemics

body:
Some people get the hint pretty quickly.

When they want to advertise their web site or favor
their view point or whatever, they go to one of the
wikipedia...just add their stuff here and there,
couple of links...then they just use the magic
links...land on another language wiki...add their
stuff... and move on to the next wikipedia magic
link...add again...

Think about it. That's how bubonic plague kill 1
person over 3 in 13 years a few centuries ago in
Europe. Boats and rats. How our cows got the ''fievre
aphteuse'' a year ago. Planes and dinner tray.

New channels for enhanced flow, new vector agent, more
disease. Not new, just more.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use examples

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

>Jimbo about fair use:
>
>
>>Even so, I want to give some good and challenging examples.
>>
>>My "first pass" would be these three:
>>
>>
>
>(to which Imran added other good ones).
>
>I would add http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album) which
>includes album photos which are *not* the album cover (though they're
>certainly well-known as being from _the White Album_).
>
>The page above also includes 'fair use' samples of six of the songs.
>
>kq
>
>
>
How about this as an idea: wiki-tags for fair use, like this

<fair_use>
Material that is being quoted under the fair-use provisions.
</fair_use>

There would be no display rendering for the tags, they would be metadata
only.
This way, the material is both flagged for editors, and can be searched
for by the software.

Neil


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re: Repost: clear
 guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
I want to say that I am slowly coming around to Ed's way of thinking.

My departure last winter left a vacuum of power.  No, scratch that--far
more people have more power now than I ever presumed to have or use, which
I find disturbing.  What it has left is a vacuum of moral authority:
essentially, hardly anyone, including me, has any anymore.  This is in
large part because some eedjits (I won't name names, but you know who you
are) will now very predictably challenge any correctly self-righteous
attempts to enforce the rules, and there is no one person who is generally
respected who can step in and say, "You really should stop this.
So-and-so, you don't understand the such-and-such rule.  That's how we do
things here.  If you don't like it, leave."

Now, to a certain extent, this was always a problem.  For many months
before she became a more general public spectacle, Julie and I and a few
others struggled with Helga.  There is *nothing* I could do to make Helga
understand, or respect, the NPOV policy.  I tried publicly and privately
several times.  Julie and others were *forced* to follow her around and
clean up after her.

The reason that I didn't want literally to ban Helga (though, as with
others, I told her privately that she should leave) is that I knew it
would be for reasons of content--viz., her content was usually
outrageously biased--and I knew that that would set a dangerous precedent
and would also potentially undermine what moral authority I did have.  I
was *hoping* that we simply never would have to ban people for content,
and that they could be shamed and arm-twisted into behaving.  But our
worst trolls have made it abundantly clear that there are some people who
simply cannot be shamed into doing anything at all.  They *enjoy* both
being the center of attention and disrupting the flow of productive
activity and discussion.  Far from respecting anything like moral
authority, one of their greatest pleasures in life is to flout and
undermine it in whatever forms they find it.

We *do* need an effective way to deal with these people.  We *don't* have
an effective way right now.

For purposes of thinking of a solution, it does help, as much as I hate to
admit it, to think of Wikipedia as a sort of microcosm of society (a
classroom is such a microcosm as well, in some respects--I agree with you
there Ed).  There's much that's disanalogous, but a few principles are the
same:

(1) In the absence of people who are generally respected as in authority,
"rebellion" will continuously break out.

(2) In the same circumstances, the destructive members of society will
tend to push the productive members of society away from active social
intercourse.  (We won't go out at night, as it were; we'll keep to
ourselves.)

(3) As the population (classroom size, Wikipedia editor base) grows, the
need for legitimate authority is made more pressing by ever more constant
disruptions.

We can debate about this, but I hope we can do so reasonably, with a
minimum of fallacy and innuendo.  Let's be up front and explicit.

I hate the idea of a literal "police force."  We have a "militia" but
that's entirely tongue-in-cheek and has no official powers of any sort.

But I think I do like the idea of *moderators*.  My vague, not-entirely-
worked-out idea is a *regularly* changing body of randomly selected but
experienced Wikipedians, something like the Athenian Senate only smaller.
These would not go around and look for infractions of the rules, as police
do.  Rather, their job *while working as moderators* would be to hear
complaints from complainants (self-appointed prosecutors) and arguments on
both or all sides on the incident or issue.  (Of course, they could simply
refuse to "hear" certain petty disputes.)  They would be empowered by the
community to *interpret* rules and make sanctions, much as a court would,
but not actually to *make* rules.  They'd also be empowered to ban vandals
peremptorily, as sysops are now.

This raises a lot of really difficult questions.  How are moderators
selected?  (Perhaps: randomly from some sort of screened pool of qualified
candidates.)  How do we ensure that someone who is a poor judge of the
rules and of situations does not become a moderator?  (Sounds like it
could get very personal--but given what Wikipedia, probably necessarily,
has become, can that be avoided?)  What "rules" would be enforceable?
Doesn't this mean that we should now back away from the "ignore all rules"
thing?  (Reluctantly, I admit, it appears so.)  Will we build a body of
case law?  (Surely.)  How can we put checks on the powers of the
moderators, some of whom will certainly be found to be too immature and
too untrustworthy to have the power?  (By having three moderators working
at once.)  Doesn't this mean an even more baroque power structure?  (No,
I'd tentatively suggest we strip all erstwhile "sysops" of their
too-easily-abusable rights, in favor of this system.)  How do we ensure
that this system isn't abused by people who want to use it as part of
personal vendettas?  (By having multiple moderators who check each others'
work; and by having an explicit rule not to bring "petty lawsuits.")  How
do we avoid "conflicts of interest"?  (Ditto and by making sure that
*certain* people do not hear complaints from *certain other* people.)
What sanctions would the moderators have at their disposal?  (Something
like this: warning; final reprimand; temporary ban; permanent ban with
opportunity for appeal at a later date.)

I am not going to argue for this or elaborate it anytime soon.  (I'd like
to get the Wikipedia peer review project going first:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/sifter-l )  But I would lot to
hear nonfallacious, nonvacuous, non-potshot-ish comments about it, if
anyone has any.

Larry


from_name: athymik

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bots...

body:
> On Thursday 07 November 2002 14:15, athymik wrote:
> > Hello everybody,
> >
> > Was everybody ok for using Ram-bot ?
>
> To me (and I know others agree), the main problem about Rambot was that
> Recent Changes was useless while it was running - I check it (and the new
> pages page) for new pages by IP addresses and red-linked users which are
> likely to be garbage. Now that the figures are in, I'd like to know where
> to find out how many of the Asians in Charlotte are Gujarati Indians, how
> many of the Caucasoids are Russians, etc. I know they're here - the Hindu
> Center is within walking distance - but not how many.
>
> phma

Is there no way to edit the Recent Changes to hide the changes made by a bot ?

Tim


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re:
 Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
Erik,

Thanks for the reply.

>> I'm not familiar with Helga's writings, so I cannot comment on that
specific case. In general, I do not see the problems you see.

That's probably one main point of disagreement, then.  Suffice it to say
I've been with Wikipedia from the beginning and I do think that things are
very bad right now, far worse than they have been in the beginning.  I
think it's becoming nearly intolerable for polite and well-meaning people
to participate, because they're constantly having to deal with people who
simply don't respect the rules.  I take it you do care about that, if it's
happening, but perhaps you don't see it happening.  In that case, we can
always collect a list of people who have been driven away or who have
quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust with having to deal with
people who just don't get it.

Put me at the top of the list.

>> There will always be edit conflicts, and giving a small, however
selected elite control to resolve them seems like an awful idea.

I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not an "elite."  Tarring the
proposal with that word isn't an argument.

>> Sure, many times those who are shouting against the majority are just
cranks. Sometimes, however, they happen to be right.

Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people
are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen
political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other
words, violating community standards.

>> Note that one of your favorite "bad examples", Everything2, is an
example for a community that has been completely eroded by a supposedly
benevolent elite (albeit not a random, changing one).

Note also that the group I propose to great is far more reasonable a
notion of authority than the arbitrary hierarchical power structure of
Everything2.  We can learn from their mistakes without being committed to
a completely anarchical situation.

>> I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
security".

Why don't you explain exactly what that means here on the list, and why
you and others think it's such a good thing?

>> If we want Wikipedia to develop in a certain fashion, we should try to
enforce our rules through peer pressure. People who violate NPOV should be
educated about its purpose.

It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse to bow to "peer
pressure" or to be "educated" about anything regarding Wikipedia.
Without generally-accepted standards and moral authority and the shame
culture that accompanies them, peer pressure is impossible.

Peer pressure seemd to work relatively well in the past.  It is working
less and less well as the project has grown and since I left a position of
official authority.

>> Antagonistic statements of the "if you don't like it, leave" sort do
not cool down conflicts, they drive and fuel them.

They do certainly cool down conflicts if the person receiving the
statement knows that the person issuing the statement has the authority to
do something about it.  They also let the recipient know that there are
some lines that just can't be crossed without the community taking a
forthright stand against it.

>> Express respect for the other person's view, and try to find a way to
integrate it without violating NPOV.

When the disagreement concerns Wikipedia policies and obvious
interpretations of them, when the violator of those policies does so
brazenly, knowingly, and mockingly--and surely you've been around long
enough to know that this happens not infrequently now--then it's not
particularly important that we "express respect for the other person's
view."  By then, it's clear that diplomacy will not solve the problem.

>> If this kind of behavior was more effectively trained and practiced by
Wikipedia regulars, I believe we could deal with seemingly destructive
newbies much more rationally. But the prevailing attitude by many
contributors seems to be: "If the other child plays with my toys, I either
take them and go home, or I find someone to complain to". If we want to be
the adults on this playground, we should behave accordingly.

Please do acknowledge that some newbies (and a few not-so-newbies) really
*are* destructive, at least sometimes.  And that's a really *serious*
problem, that we must not ignore simply because it violates our righteous
liberal sensibilities (I have 'em too; I am a libertarian but not an
anarchist).

You seem to be implying that, if we simply were nice to people, cranks,
trolls, vandals, and other destructive elements would be adequately
manageable.

First, Wikipedia has grown a lot.  It's the biggest wiki project in the
world.  We *can't* make people nice as you suggest.  They will be as they
are.  We can try, of course; but the point is that we will utterly fail.
I'm trying to be realistic about this.  If I thought you were right that
people *could* be made more nice, what you say would be more plausible.

Second, again, our experience with *many* different damaging elements
shows that some people just will not behave, no matter what we try.

Third, your proposal requires that the best members of Wikipedia follow
around and politely educate an ever-growing group of destructive members.
We've tried that.  We've lost a number of members as a result, and I
personally am tempted, every so often, to completely forget about
Wikipedia, and resign it to the dogs.  But I don't want to do that.  I
still feel some responsibility for it, and I think I helped build it to
where it is now.  I don't want to see something that I've helped build
wear away into something awful.

>>Note that Everything2 does have a few good ideas, and one of them are
so-called mentors. Newbies are taught the ways of the site by old-timers.
To make this work, however, we need an improved internal messaging system
and a mentor selection process.

We do this automatically, of necessity, on talk pages.  No internal
messaging system would be better than direct constructive criticism on
offending pages.  And, indeed, this is one of the things that has made
Wikipedia work as well as it has: unlike Everything2, we are working
together on the articles themselves, and in order to work together, we
must respect each other.

But there are some people who constitutionally are unable to work with
other people and who do insist on flouting the rules that define the
community.  It would be nice if those taking your view, Erik, would
acknowledge that more often.  No amount of niceness and mentoring will
solve that problem.

>>Article certification mechanisms we are currently discussing may serve
as a further incentive for people to come around.

This I agree with 100%.

But one reason I'm worried about the current state of Wikipedia is that we
might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good work here, only
to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out of attacking an
expert precisely because she's an expert.  That *will* happen, almost
certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets going.

>>IF and only if *all* else fails, [...]

When would we have determined that all else has failed?

>>[...] I believe randomly chosen samples are a bad way to make final
decisions. Slashdot uses such a scheme, and you probably have noticed how
well it works. Decisions should not be made randomly but by those who care
about the subject in question and have all the necessary information. A
random sample tends to make uninformed decisions following a certain
average pattern.

The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely to forestall the sort
of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear.  I fear it probably as much
as anyone, in fact.  I also fear mob rule, though.  Both are to be
avoided, and I'm confident that with wisdom we can avoid both.

Thanks again for the reply.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


list: sifter-l

source: wayback-mbox

subject: [Sifter-l] Names

body:
Would anyone care to comment on the proposal, raise questions, etc.?

We could begin by choosing a name!  I have a number of ideas--comments?
Other ideas?  Here they are:

* infofilter.org.  The problem with this is that infofilter.com is taken,
but perhaps we shouldn't let that stop us.  Or maybe we should, because it
would be only too easy for the owner of infofilter.com to make it look
like infofilter.org, since infofilter.org will be free.

* infosifter.org.  Ditto the above: .com is taken.

* pediafilter.org (.com available).  Cumbersome, but accurate.

* entrypicker.org (.com avail).  ;-)

* encyclops.org/com.  Wow, it's available and it's original, but it might
also be kind of annoying!

* infocyclo.org/com.  It's available!  It's also kind of annoying.

* revencyclo.org/com.  Well, it's a reviewed encyclopedia.  But that
suggests:

* encyclofilter.org/com.  It's there!

* encyclosifter.org/com.  Even better.  It does imply that it is a
"filter," which has nasty connotations these days, and implies a gentler
process (we're just "sifting"!).  Also, it has cool alliteration that
encyclofilter doesn't.

Larry

--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Throbbing Monster Cock

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
> but when they write nonsense, brazen political
> propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so
> forth

But very often one person's "brazen political
propaganda" is another person's "neutral point of
view".  I don't see any way around this problem.

> some lines that just can't be crossed without the
> community taking a forthright stand against it.

Who defines who the "community" is?  If one person
comes who the "community" sees as a crank, that
doesn't make them a crank.  If twenty people come who
the "community" sees as cranks, that still doesn't
make them cranks.  And if enough cranks come that they
become the majority, does that make the old-timers the
new "cranks"?

Wikipedia strives to neutrally present all points of
view, but that really is impossible since there is no
"gold standard" of neutrality.

> It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse
> to bow to "peer pressure" or to be "educated" about
> anything regarding Wikipedia.

If there is a difference of opinion where one
wikipedia member is in opposition to five hundred
wikipedia members, then it could just as well be said
that the five hundred are failing to bow to "peer
pressure" or to be "educated" by the one.  Might does
not make right, and the so-called "community" is
dangerously close to mob rule.

If Wikipedia is to have long-term standards, then I
don't see any way to maintain them other than to
simply state that they exist, state that they will be
enforced, and stop trying to justify them behind
higher principles.

Of course, all of this is IMHO.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re:
 Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce) (fwd)

body:
Cunctator opines:

>> There seems to be a pretty fixed number of Wikipedians who write "write
nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff" on a
consistent basis.

And that fixed number can be counted on one hand.

It is a problem that people stop editing out of frustration, but the
evidence just isn't there that this is a ballooning problem. <<

I'm not just concerned about the ones who do it "on a consistent basis."
I'm really concerned about the behavior, not the people.  Moreover, the
number of people who have polluted Wikipedia to any very significant
degree in these ways would easily run into the many dozens.  That's not
counting the mere vandals.  We've just forgotten about them because
they've gone away, in many cases very quickly.  The ones whose names
immediately come to mind can be counted on one hand, yes.

I admit of course that I was merely stating my own opinion as to the
seriousness of the problem.  It's hard to quantify, but it seems
completely obvious to me.  It's not like there was a golden age of
Wikipedia when everyone was friendly and cranks weren't in sight.  On the
other hand, I remember writing at one point (for the "replies to our
critics" page, I think) that we hadn't had many problems with cranks and
internecine warfare.  Now, I really couldn't write that, and I suspect the
"replies" page should be updated, if it hasn't already been.

What do the rest of you think?

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Someone erased the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page

body:
Someone at 194.126.122.18 erased the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page. Someone at
194.126.122.18 also made some good-looking edits to other pages.

nslookup says the address is gennet.gennet.ee. whois.ripe.net says it belongs
to the Estonian Telephone Company. It's not running Squid. Do any of you know
Estonian, and can you find out if it's a proxy or what?

phma


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was
	Re: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
LMS makes the argument that Wikipedia right now is much worse than it has
been in the past.

He asserts that there is an ever-growing group of destructive members.

I don't see that. There seems to be a pretty fixed number of Wikipedians who
write "write nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported
stuff" on a consistent basis.

And that fixed number can be counted on one hand.

It is a problem that people stop editing out of frustration, but the
evidence just isn't there that this is a ballooning problem.


from_name: David Levinson

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] Names

body:
Three others for the ballot

* hyperpedia.org (.com owned by  Carl Steadman and used as alias)
* metapedia.org (.com owned by Martin Irvine and unused)
* ultrapedia.org (.com owned by David Max and unused)

While this is a filtered version of wikipedia, I think the identity
should be sufficiently distinct, i.e., the user would not necessarily
be aware of the wikipedia origins until they investigated. Filter and
Sifter, while it may be what is done, doesn't give the aura of
completeness that some of the other, more generic, names do.

Unlike wikipedia, I think, this is more a product and less a process.

-- David

On Saturday, November 9, 2002, at 04:30  PM, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Larry Sanger wrote:
>
>> Would anyone care to comment on the proposal, raise questions, etc.?
>>
> Just a few points:
> * We're still waiting for Lee to set up my (highly experimental!)
> software on his server
> * Should we use exactly the same article names as in wikipedia? (makes
> sense)
> * Should we have user pages? Talk pages? (I think not)
> * Should we have guidelines for contents/structure/layout of articles?
> (I think yes; the WikiProjects could be a start)
>
>> We could begin by choosing a name!  I have a number of
>> ideas--comments?
>>
> My suggestion : "recyclopedia"
>
>> * infofilter.org.  The problem with this is that infofilter.com is
>> taken,
>> but perhaps we shouldn't let that stop us.  Or maybe we should,
>> because it
>> would be only too easy for the owner of infofilter.com to make it look
>> like infofilter.org, since infofilter.org will be free.
>>
>> * infosifter.org.  Ditto the above: .com is taken.
>>
>> * pediafilter.org (.com available).  Cumbersome, but accurate.
>>
>> * entrypicker.org (.com avail).  ;-)
>>
>> * encyclops.org/com.  Wow, it's available and it's original, but it
>> might
>> also be kind of annoying!
>>
>> * infocyclo.org/com.  It's available!  It's also kind of annoying.
>>
>> * revencyclo.org/com.  Well, it's a reviewed encyclopedia.  But that
>> suggests:
>>
>> * encyclofilter.org/com.  It's there!
>>
>> * encyclosifter.org/com.  Even better.  It does imply that it is a
>> "filter," which has nasty connotations these days, and implies a
>> gentler
>> process (we're just "sifting"!).  Also, it has cool alliteration that
>> encyclofilter doesn't.
>>
> I like the two last ones. The others look kinda "constructed". (Well,
> they are;-)
> I bet most Germans know "filter" but not "sifter", though.
>
> Magnus
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sifter-l mailing list
> Sifter-l@nupedia.com
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/sifter-l
>
>
David Levinson
levin031@tc.umn.edu


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] phpbbs

body:
(assuming we use a bbs)

PHP BB (http://www.phpbb.com) seems to be the natural BBS system for
Wikipedia to use, since it's GPLed and PHP+MySQL. It may be more ornate than
we need, but with a little work to coordinate it with the main code, it
would be very nice.

The only crucial thing we need to do is to have people who have logged into
Wikipedia (any of the language instances) automatically be logged into the
BBS.

The simplest way would seem to be to import user info from the current dbs
into the BBS user db, and have code to keep the BBS user db in sync with new
user creation.

Is there a test server on which this could be installed to work on?

--tc


body:
On Saturday 09 November 2002 16:03, Imran Ghory wrote:
> It's running an open proxy on port 80.

Hmm. It's no longer listed in DSBL, but if it's still open it soon will be.
It's listed in Osirusoft. I'm going to block it.

phma


body:
On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Pierre Abbat wrote:

> Someone at 194.126.122.18 erased the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page. Someone at
> 194.126.122.18 also made some good-looking edits to other pages.
>
> nslookup says the address is gennet.gennet.ee. whois.ripe.net says it belongs
> to the Estonian Telephone Company. It's not running Squid. Do any of you know
> Estonian, and can you find out if it's a proxy or what?

It's running an open proxy on port 80.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: erik_moeller at gmx.de

body:
Larry,

I'm not familiar with Helga's writings, so I cannot comment on that
specific case. In general, I do not see the problems you see. There will
always be edit conflicts, and giving a small, however selected elite
control to resolve them seems like an awful idea. Sure, many times those
who are shouting against the majority are just cranks. Sometimes, however,
they happen to be right.

Note that one of your favorite "bad examples", Everything2, is an example
for a community that has been completely eroded by a supposedly benevolent
elite (albeit not a random, changing one).

I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft security".
If we want Wikipedia to develop in a certain fashion, we should try to
enforce our rules through peer pressure. People who violate NPOV should be
educated about its purpose. Antagonistic statements of the "if you don't
like it, leave" sort do not cool down conflicts, they drive and fuel them.
Express respect for the other person's view, and try to find a way to
integrate it without violating NPOV.

If this kind of behavior was more effectively trained and practiced by
Wikipedia regulars, I believe we could deal with seemingly destructive
newbies much more rationally. But the prevailing attitude by many
contributors seems to be: "If the other child plays with my toys, I either
take them and go home, or I find someone to complain to". If we want to be
the adults on this playground, we should behave accordingly.

Note that Everything2 does have a few good ideas, and one of them are so-
called mentors. Newbies are taught the ways of the site by old-timers. To
make this work, however, we need an improved internal messaging system and
a mentor selection process.

Article certification mechanisms we are currently discussing may serve as
a further incentive for people to come around. If we get this right, the
biggest honor a Wikipedia author can receive is to contribute to an
article certified by a high number of users -- something that is worth
striving for. Hopefully, this will motivate at least some people to
examine their behavior.

IF and only if *all* else fails, I believe randomly chosen samples are a
bad way to make final decisions. Slashdot uses such a scheme, and you
probably have noticed how well it works. Decisions should not be made
randomly but by those who care about the subject in question and have all
the necessary information. A random sample tends to make uninformed
decisions following a certain average pattern.

I'm not entirely against content-based bans, but I believe open voting
would be necessary in such situations. See my previous posts on the
subject for ideas how to implement this properly.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] Names

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Would anyone care to comment on the proposal, raise questions, etc.?
>
Just a few points:
* We're still waiting for Lee to set up my (highly experimental!)
software on his server
* Should we use exactly the same article names as in wikipedia? (makes
sense)
* Should we have user pages? Talk pages? (I think not)
* Should we have guidelines for contents/structure/layout of articles?
(I think yes; the WikiProjects could be a start)

>We could begin by choosing a name!  I have a number of ideas--comments?
>
My suggestion : "recyclopedia"

>* infofilter.org.  The problem with this is that infofilter.com is taken,
>but perhaps we shouldn't let that stop us.  Or maybe we should, because it
>would be only too easy for the owner of infofilter.com to make it look
>like infofilter.org, since infofilter.org will be free.
>
>* infosifter.org.  Ditto the above: .com is taken.
>
>* pediafilter.org (.com available).  Cumbersome, but accurate.
>
>* entrypicker.org (.com avail).  ;-)
>
>* encyclops.org/com.  Wow, it's available and it's original, but it might
>also be kind of annoying!
>
>* infocyclo.org/com.  It's available!  It's also kind of annoying.
>
>* revencyclo.org/com.  Well, it's a reviewed encyclopedia.  But that
>suggests:
>
>* encyclofilter.org/com.  It's there!
>
>* encyclosifter.org/com.  Even better.  It does imply that it is a
>"filter," which has nasty connotations these days, and implies a gentler
>process (we're just "sifting"!).  Also, it has cool alliteration that
>encyclofilter doesn't.
>
>
I like the two last ones. The others look kinda "constructed". (Well,
they are;-)
I bet most Germans know "filter" but not "sifter", though.

Magnus


body:
> That's probably one main point of disagreement, then.  Suffice it to say
> I've been with Wikipedia from the beginning and I do think that things are
> very bad right now, far worse than they have been in the beginning.  I
> think it's becoming nearly intolerable for polite and well-meaning people
> to participate, because they're constantly having to deal with people who
> simply don't respect the rules.

It would be nice to get some specific examples. Perhaps Ed's "Annoying
users" page (if renamed) isn't such a bad idea. I have certainly observed
some people like Lir to be quite persistent and sometimes silly, but I
have also noticed quite a bit of hysteria from the other side (see the
recent "Lir again" thread).

So maybe we should start collecting individual case histories and examine
them in more detail, instead of relying on our personal observations
entirely. This might allow us to come up with better policies, and
quantify the need for stronger enforcement.

> In that case, we can
> always collect a list of people who have been driven away or who have
> quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust with having to deal with
> people who just don't get it.

That's not the kind of list I'm talking about, because it only tells us
about the reactions, not the actual actions. You may say that these people
were driven away by silly eedjots, but I cannot tell whether this is true
without looking at the actual conflicts. Often I've seen so-called experts
on Wikipedia try to stop reasonable debate by simple assertion of their
authority. This doesn't work, and this shouldn't work on Wikipedia, and if
they can't handle that fact, it's my turn to say they should better leave.

> I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not an "elite."  Tarring the
> proposal with that word isn't an argument.

Sorry, but I do not really see much of a difference. A group with superior
powers is an elite, trusted or not. The word "elite" requires a certain
stability of that position, though, so it might not apply to an approach
of random moderation privileges.

> Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people
> are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen
> political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other
> words, violating community standards.

Do you mean nonsense in the sense of "something that just isn't true" or
in the sense of simple noise, like crapflooders? How do you plan to define
/ recognize "crankish unspported stuff"?

Yes, I know, there are egregious cases where we would all agree that they
are not tolerable. I'm just worried that such terms might mean different
things to different people, and if we adopt them, we risk suppression of
non-mainstream opinions. Is Wikipedia's page about MKULTRA, a CIA mind
control project, nonsense, crankish? No, it's not, it really happened, but
the large majority of Americans would never believe that.

>>> I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
> security".

> Why don't you explain exactly what that means here on the list, and why
> you and others think it's such a good thing?

The idea of soft security has evolved in wikis, and it is only fair to
point you to the respective page at MeatballWiki for the social and
technical components of soft security:
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity

As to why I, personally, think it's a good idea, that's simple: Once you
introduce hard security mechanisms like banning, deletion etc., you create
an imbalance of power, which in turn creates a risk of abuse of said power
against those who do not have it. Abuse of power can have many different
results, it can encourage groupthink, drive newbies away, censor
legitimate material, ban legitimate users etc. We already *have* a
situation where we occasionally ban legitimate users and delete legitimate
material. We need to get away from this. I am absolutely disgusted by the
thought that we are already banning completely innocent users.

My underlying philosophy here is that it's worse to punish an innocent man
than to let a guilty man go free.

> It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse to bow to "peer
> pressure" or to be "educated" about anything regarding Wikipedia.

I'd like to see evidence of those growing numbers. Wikipedia's overall
number of users has been growing constantly, are we talking about absolute
growth or relative growth? Again, we should try to collect empirical
evidence.

> Without generally-accepted standards and moral authority and the shame
> culture that accompanies them, peer pressure is impossible.

Yes, but in my opinion, the worst way to attain authority is through the
exercise of superior power. The best way is through respect. With the
trusted user groups that are part of my certification scheme, it might be
easier to build a reputation.

> Peer pressure seemd to work relatively well in the past.  It is working
> less and less well as the project has grown and since I left a position of
> official authority.

Well, you know that I disagree about the effect of your departure on the
project, so let's not go into that again.

> They do certainly cool down conflicts if the person receiving the
> statement knows that the person issuing the statement has the authority to
> do something about it.  They also let the recipient know that there are
> some lines that just can't be crossed without the community taking a
> forthright stand against it.

I think this kind of last resort authority should not be concentrated but
distributed. If a poll shows that many members think that member X has
"crossed the line", this sends a much stronger message than any non-
totalitarian scheme of concentrated authority. Especially if last resort
measures like banning *can* be approved by the majority.

It appears that Jimbo opposes voting, though, so you might be able to
convince him of your stance.

> When the disagreement concerns Wikipedia policies and obvious
> interpretations of them, when the violator of those policies does so
> brazenly, knowingly, and mockingly--and surely you've been around long
> enough to know that this happens not infrequently now--then it's not
> particularly important that we "express respect for the other person's
> view."  By then, it's clear that diplomacy will not solve the problem.

Yes, I agree that those cases exist. But I also believe that we need to
have a lot of patience when dealing with newbies. Not an infinite amount,
but a lot. And I think everyone should be given the opportunity to
rehabilitate themselves.

> Please do acknowledge that some newbies (and a few not-so-newbies) really
> *are* destructive, at least sometimes.  And that's a really *serious*
> problem, that we must not ignore simply because it violates our righteous
> liberal sensibilities (I have 'em too; I am a libertarian but not an
> anarchist).

True.

> You seem to be implying that, if we simply were nice to people, cranks,
> trolls, vandals, and other destructive elements would be adequately
> manageable.

No, I just consider hard security a last resort, to be used carefully and
only when all else fails (as to when we know that is the case, we might
actually develop a timeframe of conflict resolution, based on data about
previous conflicts).

> First, Wikipedia has grown a lot.  It's the biggest wiki project in the
> world.  We *can't* make people nice as you suggest.

Allow me to psychoanalyze a bit. My experience is that most people just
want to be respected, to be part of the "club", but some people have
failed in their life to learn the necessary behaviors to do so. Sometimes
we are dealing with years of problematic experiences, and often we cannot
really help these people, I agree. But I've also seen the opposite cases,
especially on Kuro5hin, where the combination of peer pressure and voting/
rating has driven many trolls away or made them serious (although often
somewhat unskilled) contributors. Why? Because they learned which
behaviors worked and which didn't.

The best example I can think of is a troll called OOG THE CAVEMAN. At
first he would troll and post crap in all upper case. A large number of
his comments were hidden by majority vote, and OOG suddenly started
posting on-topic comments. They still weren't rated highly or of high
quality, but he stopped his behavior. I've seen (but not recorded) similar
turnarounds.

To make this work, we probably need both the carrot and the stick. But I
disagree with the Christian philosophy of "Spare the rod, spoil the
child". Force should not be used as a training mechanism but strictly for
self protection. We should try to *always* be friendly and courteous, even
if we ban people.

> Third, your proposal requires that the best members of Wikipedia follow
> around and politely educate an ever-growing group of destructive members.
> We've tried that.  We've lost a number of members as a result, and I
> personally am tempted, every so often, to completely forget about
> Wikipedia, and resign it to the dogs.  But I don't want to do that.  I
> still feel some responsibility for it, and I think I helped build it to
> where it is now.  I don't want to see something that I've helped build
> wear away into something awful.

Again, I'm not seeing that happen. I've seen many articles improve
rapidly, though. Simple vandalism is a growing problem and really putting
the wiki model to the test. We might consider a rather simple solution:
edits only for logged in members. This drastically limits the
accessibility of the wiki, but we do have a core of contributors, and if
we can't grow without losing some of them, maybe we should slow our
growth.

(user-to-user comm.)
> We do this automatically, of necessity, on talk pages.  No internal
> messaging system would be better than direct constructive criticism on
> offending pages.

Talk pages are nice, but they have the disadvantage of being not very
personal. The mentor idea truly centers around building a social bond.
Although you might not want to "bond" with strangers, I can tell you with
authority that some people are very, very good at this, and actually enjoy
it a lot. Within a sufficiently large community, which Wikipedia is, you
will have such mentors.

> But one reason I'm worried about the current state of Wikipedia is that we
> might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good work here, only
> to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out of attacking an
> expert precisely because she's an expert.  That *will* happen, almost
> certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets going.

Well, I can predict that I'm going to "attack" experts myself if they add
non-NPOV content, fail to cite sources properly, insist on their authority
to make their point etc. As you want me to acknowledge the problem of
vandals and cranks (which I do), it would be nice if you would acknowledge
the fallibility of experts more often. My view on experts and what makes
an expert is very different from yours, but I believe both views can
coexist in a good certification system.

> The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely to forestall the sort
> of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear.

I know, and I respect this good intention. I just don't think it's the
right approach, it will only lead to less informed decisions. Better keep
the decision process open to (almost) everybody (we need to prevent vote
flooding as well), that way we can reduce abuse of power the most
effectively. That's why K5's moderation system works and Slashdot's
doesn't.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce) (fwd)

body:
On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 02:50:37PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote:
> I admit of course that I was merely stating my own opinion as to the
> seriousness of the problem.  It's hard to quantify, but it seems
> completely obvious to me.  It's not like there was a golden age of
> Wikipedia when everyone was friendly and cranks weren't in sight.  On the
> other hand, I remember writing at one point (for the "replies to our
> critics" page, I think) that we hadn't had many problems with cranks and
> internecine warfare.  Now, I really couldn't write that, and I suspect the
> "replies" page should be updated, if it hasn't already been.
>
> What do the rest of you think?

It seems to me that the proportion of bad edits, and bad users, is no
worse now than it has generally been in the last year.

I worry that any proposed cure may be worse than the disease.

I _would_ like to see clearer guidelines on when it is appropriate to
ban people and to freeze pages. I agree with you that currently we have
users doing these things (and threatening to do them) in circumstances
which would have been surprising a year ago.

-M-


from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikipedia-l] now *THIS* is different

body:
As I am not on the list, please reply to me directly.
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-September/thread.html#5243

My resolve is unwavering on this matter.

As wikipedia grows, if you take no effort to increase the quality and
nature of the connections between the articles, then u will eventually
have to rely on some googlish mechanism, bag of words, vector space
retrieval POS to try and extract data, as you are now.

My proposal is the solution.

You'll see the original discussions here:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AHfastedge.

If u would like me to clean it up, I can.

As I am not on the list, please reply to me directly. Also, please dont
waste your brainpower if your reply is solely to tell me that my idea is
not for wikipedia.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir yet again

body:
Lir just made a Wikipedians page titled "Anti-American_users" which has (as
the title would indicate) caused a storm of unproductive flames. Pages like
this shouldn't exist because of the divisiveness they cause. They do not
further our goal of creating an encyclopedia and only lead to mean
spiritedness. I vote for removal. See the talk page for more.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Anti-American_users

--mav


from_name: tarquin

body:
let's see how all this soft security & community expectation stuff
really works: (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CommunityExpectation
and http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity)

How about we ask Throbbing Monster Cock to:
1) change his/her user name (and thereby invite Isis back)
2) stop being so literal and obstinate on the "Hitler has only..." page
(where everynoe so far disagrees with TMC's interpretation of the
principles of copyright)


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir yet again

body:
tarquin wrote:
>Could we remove the rest of "wikipedians segregated into categories"
>pages too? I don't like any of them, for the same reason.
>If people can assert on the Wikipedians pages that they are vegetarian,
>mac users, pagan or gay, why not assert their opposition to american
>imperialism?

I didn't see the problem with the anti-American imperialism page, actually,
except that it was titled poorly (IIRC it was "anti-American," rather than anti-
imperialism or anti-American imperialism).
kq


from_name: Tucci

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Looking for recruits

body:
Hey, Tubby and I (Tokerboy) are working on
Wikiproject:Albums.  I think having popular
music-articles will attract many new users from Google
et al, who want their favorite band's encyclopedia
articles to be complete, so I plan on trying to focus
on this for a little while.  There is a list of a
bunch of important albums on the talk page that I
copied from some site, though those are just
suggestions and you can do albums not on that list.

Tokerboy

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


body:
> 1) change his/her user name (and thereby invite Isis back)

I disagree here. I think his username is perfectly valid, and Cock clearly
explains his stance on his page, quite humorously even. If it drives other
people away, that's unfortunate, but these people would likely be driven
away by other "offensive" content on Wikipedia which we want to preserve.
I could see a much stronger argument made about removing the goatse.cx
link from the goatse.cx article, for example.

If soft security doesn't work here, it's because you do not have enough
community support for your desire to get him to change his nick.

> 2) stop being so literal and obstinate on the "Hitler has only..." page
> (where everynoe so far disagrees with TMC's interpretation of the
> principles of copyright)

I agree here. Do not judge TMC because of his behavior on that page alone,
though. He has made quite a few perfectly valid contributions, and in this
matter, he simply disagrees with the majority, and has presented arguments
to make his case. I think these arguments are wrong, but hard security
would not get us anywhere.

This is an edit conflict where I think voting would be an appropriate
conflict resolution mechanism. First, however, we should try restoring the
original version after waiting for a few days.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir yet again

body:
On 10-11-2002, Daniel Mayer wrote thusly :
> Lir just made a Wikipedians page titled "Anti-American_users" which has (as
> the title would indicate) caused a storm of unproductive flames. Pages like
> this shouldn't exist because of the divisiveness they cause. They do not
> further our goal of creating an encyclopedia and only lead to mean
> spiritedness. I vote for removal. See the talk page for more.
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Anti-American_users
I agree with you and vote for removal too.

Is it at all possible to work out policies to discourage political POV
and propaganda that is totally against the principal goals of Wikipedia ?
I'd rather refrain from any hard security measures.

Regards,
Kpjas.


subject: Questions (was Re: [Sifter-l] Names)

body:
On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Just a few points:
> * We're still waiting for Lee to set up my (highly experimental!)
> software on his server

Yes, Lee, it would be really great to see that!

> * Should we use exactly the same article names as in wikipedia? (makes
> sense)

I think definitely; otherwise, we fork Wikipedia, which I think it is a
bad idea.

> * Should we have user pages? Talk pages? (I think not)

User pages--well, not the way they're done on Wikipedia.  The reviewers
should have bio pages, which might in some ways resemble user pages.  They
should definitely be easy-to-edit.

Talk pages--that's a really good question.  On the one hand, I would
oppose a *direct* link to the talk page of the corresponding Wikipedia
article, because there's not infrequently vulgar, juvenile, and abusive
talk that the sifter project shouldn't be directly associated with.

On the other hand, we need a way to direct people to give feedback on the
article.  Since, presumably, we'll have a link to the corresponding
Wikipedia article from any "filter" article, we can simply direct people
there.

> * Should we have guidelines for contents/structure/layout of articles?
> (I think yes; the WikiProjects could be a start)

Yes, and we can consult the WikiProjects guidelines, but many of those
guidelines are probably incomplete and flawed.  I think we should think
and talk more about this generally.

Excellent questions.

Larry


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir yet again

body:
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:

>On 10-11-2002, Daniel Mayer wrote thusly :
>
>
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Anti-American_users
>>
>>
>I agree with you and vote for removal too.
>
>
Gone.


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<3DCE95F6.4030109@planetunreal.com> (message from tarquin on Sun,
	10 Nov 2002 17:23:02 +0000)

body:
|From: tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>
|Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 17:23:02 +0000
|
|erik_moeller at gmx.de wrote:
|
|>>2) stop being so literal and obstinate on the "Hitler has only..." page
|>>(where everynoe so far disagrees with TMC's interpretation of the
|>>principles of copyright)
|>>
|>>
|>
|>I agree here. Do not judge TMC because of his behavior on that page alone,
|>though. He has made quite a few perfectly valid contributions, and in this
|>matter, he simply disagrees with the majority, and has presented arguments
|>to make his case. I think these arguments are wrong, but hard security
|>would not get us anywhere.

<snip rest>

Comparison of "perfectly valid contributions" for judging:

TMC:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Throbbing_Monster_Cock

Isis:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Isis

Me:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Ortolan88

TMC states on his user page that he believes the Wikipedia is "doomed
to to failure at worst or uselessness at best" and explicitly states
his opposition to NPOV.  Despite his pose of bold nihilism, and his
pretense that the name is pure poultry, he is so embarrassed by his
user name that he never uses it, even on his own pages.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Looking for recruits

body:
URL: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums

|From: Tucci <tucci528 at yahoo.com>
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 11:33:16 -0800 (PST)
|
|Hey, Tubby and I (Tokerboy) are working on
|Wikiproject:Albums.  I think having popular
|music-articles will attract many new users from Google
|et al, who want their favorite band's encyclopedia
|articles to be complete, so I plan on trying to focus
|on this for a little while.  There is a list of a
|bunch of important albums on the talk page that I
|copied from some site, though those are just
|suggestions and you can do albums not on that list.
|
|Tokerboy
|
|__________________________________________________
|Do you Yahoo!?
|U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
|http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
|_______________________________________________
|Wikipedia-l mailing list
|Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IP to watch

body:
I just unblocked 24.64.223.205 at the request of a legitimate user who was
trying to use the proxy. This was used a few weeks ago to vandalize [[Longest
word in the English language]]. Where do I put the IP to watch?

phma


from_name: Zoe

body:
Hysteria?  I'm getting very very close to the point where I find my usefulness to the Wikipedia as being not only denigrated but unappreciated.
Zoe
 erik_moeller at gmx.de wrote:> That's probably one main point of disagreement, then. Suffice it to say
> I've been with Wikipedia from the beginning and I do think that things are
> very bad right now, far worse than they have been in the beginning. I
> think it's becoming nearly intolerable for polite and well-meaning people
> to participate, because they're constantly having to deal with people who
> simply don't respect the rules.

It would be nice to get some specific examples. Perhaps Ed's "Annoying
users" page (if renamed) isn't such a bad idea. I have certainly observed
some people like Lir to be quite persistent and sometimes silly, but I
have also noticed quite a bit of hysteria from the other side (see the
recent "Lir again" thread).

So maybe we should start collecting individual case histories and examine
them in more detail, instead of relying on our personal observations
entirely. This might allow us to come up with better policies, and
quantify the need for stronger enforcement.

> In that case, we can
> always collect a list of people who have been driven away or who have
> quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust with having to deal with
> people who just don't get it.

That's not the kind of list I'm talking about, because it only tells us
about the reactions, not the actual actions. You may say that these people
were driven away by silly eedjots, but I cannot tell whether this is true
without looking at the actual conflicts. Often I've seen so-called experts
on Wikipedia try to stop reasonable debate by simple assertion of their
authority. This doesn't work, and this shouldn't work on Wikipedia, and if
they can't handle that fact, it's my turn to say they should better leave.

> I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not an "elite." Tarring the
> proposal with that word isn't an argument.

Sorry, but I do not really see much of a difference. A group with superior
powers is an elite, trusted or not. The word "elite" requires a certain
stability of that position, though, so it might not apply to an approach
of random moderation privileges.

> Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people
> are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen
> political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other
> words, violating community standards.

Do you mean nonsense in the sense of "something that just isn't true" or
in the sense of simple noise, like crapflooders? How do you plan to define
/ recognize "crankish unspported stuff"?

Yes, I know, there are egregious cases where we would all agree that they
are not tolerable. I'm just worried that such terms might mean different
things to different people, and if we adopt them, we risk suppression of
non-mainstream opinions. Is Wikipedia's page about MKULTRA, a CIA mind
control project, nonsense, crankish? No, it's not, it really happened, but
the large majority of Americans would never believe that.

>>> I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
> security".

> Why don't you explain exactly what that means here on the list, and why
> you and others think it's such a good thing?

The idea of soft security has evolved in wikis, and it is only fair to
point you to the respective page at MeatballWiki for the social and
technical components of soft security:
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity

As to why I, personally, think it's a good idea, that's simple: Once you
introduce hard security mechanisms like banning, deletion etc., you create
an imbalance of power, which in turn creates a risk of abuse of said power
against those who do not have it. Abuse of power can have many different
results, it can encourage groupthink, drive newbies away, censor
legitimate material, ban legitimate users etc. We already *have* a
situation where we occasionally ban legitimate users and delete legitimate
material. We need to get away from this. I am absolutely disgusted by the
thought that we are already banning completely innocent users.

My underlying philosophy here is that it's worse to punish an innocent man
than to let a guilty man go free.

> It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse to bow to "peer
> pressure" or to be "educated" about anything regarding Wikipedia.

I'd like to see evidence of those growing numbers. Wikipedia's overall
number of users has been growing constantly, are we talking about absolute
growth or relative growth? Again, we should try to collect empirical
evidence.

> Without generally-accepted standards and moral authority and the shame
> culture that accompanies them, peer pressure is impossible.

Yes, but in my opinion, the worst way to attain authority is through the
exercise of superior power. The best way is through respect. With the
trusted user groups that are part of my certification scheme, it might be
easier to build a reputation.

> Peer pressure seemd to work relatively well in the past. It is working
> less and less well as the project has grown and since I left a position of
> official authority.

Well, you know that I disagree about the effect of your departure on the
project, so let's not go into that again.

> They do certainly cool down conflicts if the person receiving the
> statement knows that the person issuing the statement has the authority to
> do something about it. They also let the recipient know that there are
> some lines that just can't be crossed without the community taking a
> forthright stand against it.

I think this kind of last resort authority should not be concentrated but
distributed. If a poll shows that many members think that member X has
"crossed the line", this sends a much stronger message than any non-
totalitarian scheme of concentrated authority. Especially if last resort
measures like banning *can* be approved by the majority.

It appears that Jimbo opposes voting, though, so you might be able to
convince him of your stance.

> When the disagreement concerns Wikipedia policies and obvious
> interpretations of them, when the violator of those policies does so
> brazenly, knowingly, and mockingly--and surely you've been around long
> enough to know that this happens not infrequently now--then it's not
> particularly important that we "express respect for the other person's
> view." By then, it's clear that diplomacy will not solve the problem.

Yes, I agree that those cases exist. But I also believe that we need to
have a lot of patience when dealing with newbies. Not an infinite amount,
but a lot. And I think everyone should be given the opportunity to
rehabilitate themselves.

> Please do acknowledge that some newbies (and a few not-so-newbies) really
> *are* destructive, at least sometimes. And that's a really *serious*
> problem, that we must not ignore simply because it violates our righteous
> liberal sensibilities (I have 'em too; I am a libertarian but not an
> anarchist).

True.

> You seem to be implying that, if we simply were nice to people, cranks,
> trolls, vandals, and other destructive elements would be adequately
> manageable.

No, I just consider hard security a last resort, to be used carefully and
only when all else fails (as to when we know that is the case, we might
actually develop a timeframe of conflict resolution, based on data about
previous conflicts).

> First, Wikipedia has grown a lot. It's the biggest wiki project in the
> world. We *can't* make people nice as you suggest.

Allow me to psychoanalyze a bit. My experience is that most people just
want to be respected, to be part of the "club", but some people have
failed in their life to learn the necessary behaviors to do so. Sometimes
we are dealing with years of problematic experiences, and often we cannot
really help these people, I agree. But I've also seen the opposite cases,
especially on Kuro5hin, where the combination of peer pressure and voting/
rating has driven many trolls away or made them serious (although often
somewhat unskilled) contributors. Why? Because they learned which
behaviors worked and which didn't.

The best example I can think of is a troll called OOG THE CAVEMAN. At
first he would troll and post crap in all upper case. A large number of
his comments were hidden by majority vote, and OOG suddenly started
posting on-topic comments. They still weren't rated highly or of high
quality, but he stopped his behavior. I've seen (but not recorded) similar
turnarounds.

To make this work, we probably need both the carrot and the stick. But I
disagree with the Christian philosophy of "Spare the rod, spoil the
child". Force should not be used as a training mechanism but strictly for
self protection. We should try to *always* be friendly and courteous, even
if we ban people.

> Third, your proposal requires that the best members of Wikipedia follow
> around and politely educate an ever-growing group of destructive members.
> We've tried that. We've lost a number of members as a result, and I
> personally am tempted, every so often, to completely forget about
> Wikipedia, and resign it to the dogs. But I don't want to do that. I
> still feel some responsibility for it, and I think I helped build it to
> where it is now. I don't want to see something that I've helped build
> wear away into something awful.

Again, I'm not seeing that happen. I've seen many articles improve
rapidly, though. Simple vandalism is a growing problem and really putting
the wiki model to the test. We might consider a rather simple solution:
edits only for logged in members. This drastically limits the
accessibility of the wiki, but we do have a core of contributors, and if
we can't grow without losing some of them, maybe we should slow our
growth.

(user-to-user comm.)
> We do this automatically, of necessity, on talk pages. No internal
> messaging system would be better than direct constructive criticism on
> offending pages.

Talk pages are nice, but they have the disadvantage of being not very
personal. The mentor idea truly centers around building a social bond.
Although you might not want to "bond" with strangers, I can tell you with
authority that some people are very, very good at this, and actually enjoy
it a lot. Within a sufficiently large community, which Wikipedia is, you
will have such mentors.

> But one reason I'm worried about the current state of Wikipedia is that we
> might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good work here, only
> to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out of attacking an
> expert precisely because she's an expert. That *will* happen, almost
> certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets going.

Well, I can predict that I'm going to "attack" experts myself if they add
non-NPOV content, fail to cite sources properly, insist on their authority
to make their point etc. As you want me to acknowledge the problem of
vandals and cranks (which I do), it would be nice if you would acknowledge
the fallibility of experts more often. My view on experts and what makes
an expert is very different from yours, but I believe both views can
coexist in a good certification system.

> The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely to forestall the sort
> of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear.

I know, and I respect this good intention. I just don't think it's the
right approach, it will only lead to less informed decisions. Better keep
the decision process open to (almost) everybody (we need to prevent vote
flooding as well), that way we can reduce abuse of power the most
effectively. That's why K5's moderation system works and Slashdot's
doesn't.

Regards,

Erik
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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Just blocked someone

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Toby, that was a smelly thing to say.

I can't argue with you about that.
I apologise for stinking up the list.

>And Cunct, please stop being such a prick.

A less smelly body part.

-- Toby


body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de wrote:

>>2) stop being so literal and obstinate on the "Hitler has only..." page
>>(where everynoe so far disagrees with TMC's interpretation of the
>>principles of copyright)
>>
>>
>
>I agree here. Do not judge TMC because of his behavior on that page alone,
>though. He has made quite a few perfectly valid contributions, and in this
>matter, he simply disagrees with the majority, and has presented arguments
>to make his case. I think these arguments are wrong, but hard security
>would not get us anywhere.
>
>This is an edit conflict where I think voting would be an appropriate
>conflict resolution mechanism. First, however, we should try restoring the
>original version after waiting for a few days.
>
Well I'd LIKE to except TMC will come gallumphing back and delete the
lyrics again.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Name-calling and hair-pulling

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Ed Poor wrote:

>>>Why are you so cantankerous? You, you -- you CURMUDGEON!

>>Comparing our personalities:
>>Is Ed calling somebody "curmudgeon"
>>equivalent to me calling somebody "asshole"?
>>Remember, it's all relative to what we normally say.
>>^_^

>No, it's relative to civility and incivility; "darn" is not as
>offensive as "damn" no matter who says it.

That's not what I was referring to.
I meant the equivalent in terms of the speaker's internal thoughts.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] performance tweak

body:
Zoe wrote:

>It has nothing to do with how brain dead your browser is, but how its
>preferences are set.  I can set IE to refresh a page every time I come to it,
>to only refresh once in a session, or to refresh whenever content is change.

Which reminds me: how do they know when the content has changed
if they don't download the page every time from the server?
What's the practical difference between this and every time that you come?

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir yet again

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Lir just made a Wikipedians page titled "Anti-American_users" which has (as
>the title would indicate) caused a storm of unproductive flames. Pages like
>this shouldn't exist because of the divisiveness they cause. They do not
>further our goal of creating an encyclopedia and only lead to mean
>spiritedness. I vote for removal. See the talk page for more.
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Anti-American_users
>
>
>
Could we remove the rest of "wikipedians segregated into categories"
pages too? I don't like any of them, for the same reason.
If people can assert on the Wikipedians pages that they are vegetarian,
mac users, pagan or gay, why not assert their opposition to american
imperialism?

>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Spinoff "newspedia" project?

body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>  wikipedia-l : concerns the whole project (all languages)
>  enwiki-l : only concerns en.wiki
>  xxwiki-l: only concerns xx.wiki (replace xx with a language code)
>  wikitech-l : all about the software and performance issues
>  intlwiki-l : discussion that concerns the internal matters of any wikipedia
>language that doesn't have its own mailing list yet or who are trying to
>establish themselves as a wiki.

I think that you've proposed a very good system.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Just blocked someone

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Cunctator, it seems to me that you don't care that you have alienated, put
>off, not just Toby and Gareth but a large number of people on the project.

What's particularly upsetting to *me* is that I agree with Cunc
about half the time, and especially when I'm in a minority position.
Much as I have come to dislike him personally,
I think that the project would be worse off
if he weren't here participating in these discussions.
But I will try to keep my personal opinion to myself in the future.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] user windt

body:
tarquin wrote:

>User Windt has posted two (so far) copyvios, PInk (singer) and Zero Mostel.
>since it's a registered usernam I can't block.
>i'm about to log off, so can someone else keep an eye out?

I came upon this 6 days after Tarquin posted it,
but there was still an item that was missed: [[Toni Braxton]].
(I just mention this for those that might assume that
they should ignore a message like this 6 days after it was posted.)

User Windt appears to be same as anonymous user 161.114.1.185,
who also made two apparently useful edits at the same time:
fixing [[October 7]] and [[October 8]] so that Braxton's birthday
is correctly recorded, at least according to the copied biography.
(I just mention this for those that might assume that
copyright infringers aren't interested in improving Wikipedia.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce them

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>People are confusing the Wikipedia (particularly talk pages) with the
>Usenet.  If non-participating "moderators" were willing to jump in,
>delete nonsense from talk pages, and enforce civility, even incoherent
>or ideological contributors can learn NPOV.

I like the idea that people come from outside the discussion
to impose civility in this fashion by moderating.
We don't have to give people extraordinary powers for us to do this.
(To a large extent, this is what Ed Poor has been doing the whole time.)
These actions would be based on moral authority, not police force.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use examples

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

>How about this as an idea: wiki-tags for fair use, like this

><fair_use>
>Material that is being quoted under the fair-use provisions.
></fair_use>

>There would be no display rendering for the tags, they would be metadata only.
>This way, the material is both flagged for editors, and can be searched
>for by the software.

Since this wouldn't be used very often,
it's OK that the markup is ugly and HTMLish.
And it's certainly pretty obvious as to what it means.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strong request: Make the == presentation smaller

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>tarquin wrote:

>>drop the font size a bit,

>I dropped the large header sizes so they're not so freakin' huge (and
>increased the small header sizes, so they're no longer smaller than the
>body text!) Note that it's now hard to tell the levels apart. Better
>suggestions are welcome.

Personally, I think that the "==" headers are too small now,
and in particular were better the way that they were before.
I'm probably in a minority position there, however ^_^.

>>and could we also remove most of the space
>>after too? at the moment == headers seem to stand alone, isolated from
>>both the para above and below.

>We did that a long time ago; headers have a bottom margin of zero. If
>you don't put in a paragraph break, they directly abut the following
>text.

But remember that this works only in those browsers (most, so far)
that don't render the HTML correctly (according to W3C).
And along the same lines, it can't even be done in XHTML.
I think that it would work better if the same wiki markup
were implemented in HTML in different ways using style sheets,
if this is possible.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Don't be stupid! Be cool!

body:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote in part:

>If you have some issue with me you should feel free to e-mail me at
>lapollutionestsimauvaise at yahoo.com or contact me at AIM MarderIII ...

I was checking these out, and I found <http://qwert.diaryland.com/>.
I have a question: is all of this stuff yours?
(I assume that <http://qwert.diaryland.com/021107_46.html> is ^_^.)
Or is some of that writing by Adam Jacob [name omitted for privacy reasons]
(<http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_[name omitted for privacy reasons]>)?

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] performance tweak

body:
Good question.  I never thought of that.  There must be some kind of time stamp they can access?
Zoe
 Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:Zoe wrote:

>It has nothing to do with how brain dead your browser is, but how its
>preferences are set. I can set IE to refresh a page every time I come to it,
>to only refresh once in a session, or to refresh whenever content is change.

Which reminds me: how do they know when the content has changed
if they don't download the page every time from the server?
What's the practical difference between this and every time that you come?

-- Toby
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re: Wikipedia article: "Holocaust revisionism"]

body:
Neil Harris wrote in part:

>I wrote to Ken McVay of the NIzkor project for permission to use the
>Nizkor project's copyrighted materials under the GFDL. Here is my
>original message, and his reply.

>Feel free to use any Nizkor FAQs or Nizkor Features you wish - i.e.
>those that originated from our staff. That includes the FAQs,
>Techniques of Denial, and the 66 QAR sections.

Should an account of this permission be placed
under "Other "Free" and "Semi-Free" Resources"
on [[Wikipedia:Public domain resources]]?

-- Toby


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] Names

body:
OK, here are the proposed names so far, in categories.

First, a new one, which is kind of interesting:

infomni.org

info + omni

Names that at least one person has supported:
* encyclofilter.org  It's there!
* encyclops.org  I've decided I kind of like this one!
* encyclosifter.org
* gnupedia.org (Jimbo owns this)
* hyperpedia.org (.com owned by  Carl Steadman and used as alias)
* infomni.org
* metapedia.org (.com owned by Martin Irvine and unused)
* pediafilter.org  Cumbersome, but accurate.
* recyclopedia.org
* ultrapedia.org (.com owned by David Max and unused)

Other ideas:
* entrypicker.org (.com avail).  ;-)
* infocyclo.org/com.  It's available!  It's also kind of annoying.
* infofilter.org.  (.com taken)
* infosifter.org.  (.com is taken)
* revencyclo.org/com.

Other ideas and comments?

Some various principles for choosing a name have been proposed:

1. Don't use "sifter" or "filter" in the name because that implies the
process rather than the product.

2. Don't use names where the .com variant is unavailable.  It would be too
easy for the owner of the .com name to set up a confusing mirror, or even
a fork, at that name.

3. Try to make it relatively short.

4. Try to make it relatively descriptive.

5. Try to make it attractive.

Good luck to us trying to think of a name that fits all the constraints!

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> Personally, I think that the "==" headers are too small now,
> and in particular were better the way that they were before.
> I'm probably in a minority position there, however ^_^.

So far it's you versus dozens of whiners over the last few months.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease. ;)

>>>and could we also remove most of the space
>>>after too? at the moment == headers seem to stand alone, isolated from
>>>both the para above and below.
>
>>We did that a long time ago; headers have a bottom margin of zero. If
>>you don't put in a paragraph break, they directly abut the following
>>text.
>
> But remember that this works only in those browsers (most, so far)
> that don't render the HTML correctly (according to W3C).
> And along the same lines, it can't even be done in XHTML.
> I think that it would work better if the same wiki markup
> were implemented in HTML in different ways using style sheets,
> if this is possible.

I'm not sure I follow you, so I'll make something up that sounds like
what I think you want.

What we could theoretically do is create an alternate paragraph style
that has no top margin, and explicitly use it when we start up text that
immediately abuts a header; I think this should give the desired results
by the book.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Soft Bans?

body:
If we set a cookie in the browsers of all Wikipedia visitors, anonymous or
not, we could the assign them random global user IDs. Instead of banning users
by IP, we could ban them by GUID, which would eliminate the risk of
accidentally banning legitimate contributors.

While the majority of users have cookies enabled, a minority does not, so
"soft bans" as I like to call them would not work for them. Other users might
be smart enough to turn cookies off to avoid the ban. But I consider both
beyond the technical understanding of most vandals, so I think soft bans might be
quite efficient.

What do you think?

Regards,

Erik

--
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Soft Bans?