from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primer on PC (for Ed)

body:
Sean Barrett wrote

.> "African-American" most emphatically does not
> mean "American from Africa" -- it is nothing more nor less than a
> seven-syllable synonym for "Negro," "black," and "descendant of
> natives of central Africa."

An Irish-American, self-identified, may never have left Boston MA.  Your
point?

Charles


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Time-out for Wik

body:
I have listed myself at
[[Wikipedia:Possible_misuses_of_admin_privileges]], because I think my
temporary block of Wik yesterday falls into the "borderline" category.
Caroline (SecretLondon) reversed the block 12 minutes later, and she was
right to do so.

Wik and another user were then both blocked by Tim Starling -- who
enjoys a deservedly higher level of respect and trust than I do, by the
way -- for what I suppose is a 24- or 48-hour period.

I must say that I do not claim that the subsequent ban "vindicates" my
unilateral action. What I did was wrong.

I hereby sentence myself to watching "Anger Management" as penance :-)

--Uncle Ed

	-----Original Message-----
	From: Rick [mailto:giantsrick13 at yahoo.com]
	Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 10:35 PM
	To: English Wikipedia
	Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Time-out for Wik

	Tim Starling has now banned both Wik and Anthony DiPierro for
getting into a revert war on the Votes for Deletion page, which cause
the page to be protected and unusable.

	RickK

	"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

		Caroline,

		I agree that I was wrong to apply a unilateral ban. But
what else can we
		do with someone who censors articles, and refuses to
explain himself?

		See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Suicide_bombing&action=histor
		y

		I don't think that "rv for already stated reasons" is a
sufficient
		explanation, so I protected the article.

		Ed Poor
		_______________________________________________
		WikiEN-l mailing list
		WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
		http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

  _____

	Do you Yahoo!?
	Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=22055/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] terrorism

body:
Zero proposed a way out of this zero-sum game:

> Why can't we just say
>
>    "blew up a bus with 20 civilians and 5 soldiers"?
>
> What information are we hiding if we leave out the
> "t" word?  Aren't we actually insulting our readers
> when we don't allow them to choose their own moral
> responses?

I agree with Zero that this kind of writing is good. It is both accurate
and neutral. It allows readers to choose their own moral responses.

Where's that Barnstar graphic? Zero deserves one!

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] terrorism

body:
zero 0000 wrote:

>Another problem with the word "terrorism" is that the number
>of cases that are really clear-cut and unarguable is not so
>great. The extreme cases that most people here are giving as
>examples are not really representative.
>
By avoiding a contentious, ill-defined word you don't have to deal with
the serious problem of defining the limits that distinguish between act
that are and are not terrorism.

>I guess most of us will agree that deliberately blowing up a
>bus full of schoolkids is terrorism.  What about a bus full of
>uniformed soldiers? (I heard some of you ask "ours or theirs?";
>shame on you :-) What about a bus full of uniformed soldiers
>except for one schoolkid?  Or a bus full of schoolkids except
>for one armed soldier (who isn't there just to protect the
>schoolkids)?  What about a 50-50 mix?
>
>Does anyone here have a mathematical formula describing where
>the border between terrorism or not lies?  This is not a
>concocted example.  Anyone who rides busses in Israel knows
>that there are often uniformed (and even armed) soldiers taking
>the bus from one place to another.  Or, from the other side,
>Israeli assassinations done from the air kill on average about
>the same number of bystanders as intended victims.
>
By mixing military populations with civilian ones you can provide a more
effective shield to protect the military from attack by people who would
be moral enough to avoid civilian casualties.  Saddam Hussein and
Milosevic were both reputed to have unsuccessfully used this tactic;
they anticipated that their attackers would be moral people.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
It sounds like the "report" should be attributed to the settlers --
rather to the newspaper. Perhaps we could say:

* According to an article in Die Welt, a settlers group called IsraelNN
complained that EU humanitarian aid has been diverted to terrorist
operations.

P.S. It would be disappointing if OneVoice, having assembled a team or
coalition of "like-minded" Wikipedians, didn't live up to the
expectations he himself set for the team. But I'm going to keep assuming
good faith for now.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The integrity of Wikipedia

body:
Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Calling the people who killed over 3000 innocent people "militants", and
> refusing to allow them to be labeled as "terrorists"

So terrorism = "taking thousands of innocent lives"

What about the pilot of the Enola Gay?
or the RAF bombers who levelled Dresden.

Should we call them terrorists, too?
--
Gareth Owen


subject: [WikiEN-l] The integrity of Wikipedia

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:

> > But the rest of us, who know who moral standards differ between places and
> > eras, are going to think that looks pretty odd in the middle of [[Abraham
> > Lincoln]].
> >
> The presumption that heroes can say nothing wrong, and that villains can say
> nothing right is often very strong.

You miss the point entirely.

The Lincoln quotation was *at the time* an extremely liberal
position for a white politician to take.

These days, an sentiment would not be considered a liberal position.

That's moral relativism.


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primer on PC (for Ed)

body:
On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Sean Barrett wrote:

> > use.  Supporters of "African-American" argue that term is better because
> > it puts more emphasis on the culture rather than just the skin color,
>
> Except that neither of my friends who were born in Africa and are now
> naturalized citizens of the United States (America) can call
> themselves African-American.  You see, one was born in Cairo and the
> other in Johannesburg.  "African-American" most emphatically does not
> mean "American from Africa" -- it is nothing more nor less than a
> seven-syllable synonym for "Negro," "black," and "descendant of
> natives of central Africa."
>
Ethnic labels are never tidy.

There is the issue of "Black Cherokees", the descendents of the slaves
owned by Cherokee Indians. They consider themselves Indians, due to
arguments of culture; the Cheorkees consider them African-Americans due
to their racial ancestory. From what I've read, there is an issue of
money involved.

But then money is also at the root of the disagreement over whether
the Chinook Indians are extinct or still have descendants alive in
Southwestern Washington State. The BIA is disinclined to recognize
Native American groups that it has declared gone.

Finally, racial origins make the Lumleys of North Carolina remarkable:
AFAIK, they are the only group in the US who are the descendants of
African-American, Native-American & European-American origins. I
wonder if Wikipedia has an article about them, or at least a mention
under [[Lumberton, North Carolina]].

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Diverted funding (was:OneVoice)

body:
On second thought, it looks like the source is IsraelNN.

The IsraelNN website /claims that/ Die Welt "reported that OLAF
had finally confirmed Israeli allegations that Yasser Arafat had
diverted millions of dollars in EU funding to the Fatah Tanzim
and Hamas terrorist organizations."

I forget how we deal with this sort of thing. I wish Mav was here...

Does anyone think there's at least a 50-50 chance that OLAF
really issued a statement "confirming the allegations"? If so,
then this is probably news and should go in [[Current events]].
If not we'd better state that IsraelNN made the allegations and
just put it in one of the articles about violence in the Middle
East.

This is what mathematicians and computer scientists call "nesting". The
accusation is buried is layers of attribution.

Level 0 -- the allegation of diverted funds
Level 1 -- OLAF confirms the allegation
Level 2 -- Die Welt reports the OLAF confirmation
Level 3 -- IsraelNN cites the Die Welt report

At some point in this "nesting", the information becomes hearsay or
rumor or something like that, right?

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Someone working on improving HTML?

body:
Hi Karl.

This has been fixed in CVS. You can try it in the test wiki:
http://test.wikipedia.org (when it works. Test seem to be having some
kind of DNS troubles right now)

// E23

Karl Eichwalder ke-at-gnu.franken.de |wikipedia| wrote:

>Once again I kindly liek to ask whether someone is working on HTML
>improvement?  One improvement would removing tricks.
>
>After "== title ==" always start a proper block element even if there is
>not an empty line in between the title and the paragraph start:
>
>    ==  title ==
>    paragraph
>
>    paragraph
>
>and
>
>    ==  title ==
>
>    paragraph
>
>    paragraph
>
>should result in exactly this code (modulo white space):
>
>
title

>
paragraph

>
paragraph

>
>Deprecated are results as follows:
>
>
>
title

>    paragraph
>
paragraph
>

>
>
title

>
paragraph
>
paragraph
>

>
>
title

>    paragraph
>
paragraph

>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Haaretz

body:
How about Haaretz as a news source? Founded by Zionists nearly a century
ago, it claims a daily circulation of 75,000 and describes itself as "an
independent daily newspaper with a broadly liberal outlook both on
domestic issues and on international affairs."

Could we add a [[Current Events]] item, using Haaretz as the source?

* The European Union anti-fraud office (OLAF) is studying documents
suggesting that [[Yasser Araftat]] diverted EU funds to organizations
involved in terror strikes. Their final report is expected in two
months.

I would cite Haaretz as the source as follows:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/392891.html

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Definition of terrorism

body:
Oh, Their demands have always been clear; withdrawal from Saudi Arabia and
the Middle East and cessation of any other activities which oppose Islamist
activities including abandonment of Israel. Given the long history of
treating Muslims as second class people who must be somehow controlled, in
their eyes they are simply responding to Western aggression.

We and the British (and French, even the Dutch) have a long history of
opposing Islamic fundamentalism by various sorts of interventions and
support of Secular Arab authority. And probably a good thing too, though
with baleful long term implications.

I believe they would say that the long sustained pattern of interventionism
was unlawful. That said, most nations who waged aggressive war or theatened
it during the 20th century put forth similar rationalizations.

Fred

> From: "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 12:53:34 -0500
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Definition of terrorism
>
> Something that I don't recall seeing recently in the arguments about
> whether or not 9/11 was terrorism is this. Since we in the United
> States were, in fact, terrorized, we are inclined to see it as a
> terrorist act. The question is, what specific actions was Osama bin
> Laden trying to intimidate or coerce us into taking? I'm not very clear
> on this. Now, suppose the psychological message was aimed _at Arabs_
> and was "Al-Qaeda is big, strong, courageous, and capable of attacking
> the United States with impunity. Join us." If this was the nature of
> the act, then, by the dictionary definition, would it constitute
> terrorism?


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: brian suda

subject: [Wiktionary-l] wiktionary formatting

body:
This wiktionary mailing list was created to discuss some possible changes,
implementations, and improvements to the current Wiktionary. The idea is to
transform the current freeform wiki-dictionary into a more formal structured
format. That way things can be more easily searched, linked, and managed.

The debate is how simple or complex should the system be. If it is too complex
no one will add to it, if it is too simple, then the conversion from wiki-system
to the new format was in vain. We also don't want to reinvent the wheel, there
are several other dictionary format available. One for example is the DICT
protocol[1]. The Dictionary Server Protocol (DICT) is a TCP transaction based
query/response protocol that allows a client to access dictionary definitions
from a set of natural language dictionary databases. RFC 2229 has more
information.[2] This might be an intersting format to follow, or maybe not?

The system should be fairly simple and expanded later. The major points to be
broken down are: Words (terms, various prononciations, language), Definitions
(part of speach, definition, example), synonyms, antonyms, etymologies,
translations? Each would be it's own table keyed by the word. This is a very
simple system, and it is a good point to start a discussion.

The other table i would suggest is some sort of 'See Also'. This would be used
for things like mutiple spellings, or plurals. So if i enter 'colour' and color
is already in the dictionary, i can add a definition to 'colour' as "The british
spelling of color"... SEE ALSO: color. The same would work for plurals (goose,
geese). This doesn't force any weird root word constrains, and allows for some
miskates by people NOT check for alternate spellings first, but is easily
fixable with a 'see also' link.

that's my two cents, any suggestions?
-brian

[1] - http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict
[2] - http://www.dict.org/rfc2229.txt

--
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Definition of terrorism

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

> When I was a kid, I had a discussion with a family friend who happened
> to be a lawyer. I did not understand why the person who executes a
> death sentence is not committing premeditated murder.
>
> He explained to me that murder is the _unlawful_ killing of a person.
> The execution of a death sentence is lawful, therefore it is not murder.
>
> Regardless of one's position on the morality of capital punishment...
> and regardless of whether you _like_ the definition of the word
> "murder..." it _is_ the definition, and it is possible to understand
> it and to apply it in deciding what acts should be labelled murder.
>
> Similarly, terrorism is "the _unlawful_ use or threatened use of force
> or violence by a person or an organized group against people or
> property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or
> governments, often for ideological or political reasons." Definition
> AHD4, emphasis mine.
>
> Now, deciding what is and is not lawful can be difficult enough in
> domestic matters (as I am well aware at the moment, living as I do in
> Massachusetts) and it is far more complicated in international
> affairs. So this doesn't really answer any questions. But it does
> _raise_ some questions.

As you say the problem is with the word lawful. (The Massachusetts court
is certainly to be commended for its recent enlightened position.)  It
frequently happens that a law is passed and treated as lawful only to be
struck down as unconstitutional (=unlawful) more than a century later.
 A more important question can be, "_whose_ law applies?"
 Extrapolations are always on dangerous ground, and exporting domestic
law to an international situation is a fine example of that.  The US
attack on Iraq may have been perfectly lawful under domestic law, but
was just as unlawful under international law.

> If, for the sake of argument, you assume that the intention of the U.
> S. bombing of Nagasaki was not primarily to take out a military
> target, but to create "shock and awe" in the Japanese populace,
> military, and Emperor, in order to convince them to surrender--that
> is, to intimidate or coerce them--then it was terrorism if unlawful,
> and was not terrorism if lawful. On the whole, given that the U.S. was
> attacked and was in a state of declared war with Japan, I think most
> would label it as lawful.

Not so fast.  It represented an escalation of weaponry.  Even the
Germans showed restraint over the use of poison gas on the battlefield.
 Their equipment was set up to use it in Crimea, but they didn't.

> On the other hand: would our characterization of the bombing of
> Nagasaki be affected if its purpose was neither military, nor a
> psychological message aimed at Japan, but a psychological message
> aimed _at Stalin and at the Soviet Union_--one saying "We have these
> weapons of mass destruction and we are willing to use them?" Perhaps
> that would make it a terrorist act after all--but one directed at the
> Soviet Union, not at Japan.

Speculative.  The Soviet Union was a non-combatant in the Pacific
theatre until August 10, 1945, i.e. the day after the Nagasaki bomb.
 With the end in sight it joined the war for a quick territorial grab.

> Something that I don't recall seeing recently in the arguments about
> whether or not 9/11 was terrorism is this. Since we in the United
> States were, in fact, terrorized, we are inclined to see it as a
> terrorist act. The question is, what specific actions was Osama bin
> Laden trying to intimidate or coerce us into taking? I'm not very
> clear on this. Now, suppose the psychological message was aimed _at
> Arabs_ and was "Al-Qaeda is big, strong, courageous, and capable of
> attacking the United States with impunity. Join us." If this was the
> nature of the act, then, by the dictionary definition, would it
> constitute terrorism?

Looking back at that time, the Anthrax scare was a far more effective
terrorist tactic despite the fact that very few lives were lost.  We
still don't know who did it, and the "terrorists" apparantly lived to
fight another day -- thus not only effective but also cost-effective.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
Viajero,

Thank you for setting a good example of self-restraint. I can certainly
learn from you! :-)

I put a condensed and somewhat bland version of the same story into
current events, using Haaretz as a source.

I got 3 frantic messages from OneVoice on my talk page. I guess he
doesn't subscribe to the mailing list. I suggested he slow down a bit.
This is not CNN, it's an encyclopedia.

Ed Poor


from_name: John C. Penta

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
Uh, the source he's referring to is far-right, yes. Not illegal anymore, however.  (They used to be. Then, through various maneuvers, they became legal.)

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl>
Date: Friday, February 13, 2004 10:19 am
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

> On 02/13/04  at 06:02 AM, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> said:
>
> > OneVoice put in a
> > totally false report from an illegal radio station whose
> operators were
> > recently sentenced to prison terms in Israel for perjury,
>
> OneVoice just tried to pull a similar stunt on Current Events. He
> addedthe following text:
>
> * In an as yet unpublished report the European Commission's Anti-Fraud
> Office (OLAF) is said to have concluded that tens of millions of
> dollarsin humanitarian aid, donated by the [[European Union]] (EU)
> to the
> [[Palestinian Authority]] has been utilized for [[terrorist]]
> operationsagainst [[Israel]], according to the German daily
> newspaper "Die
> Welt".[http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=57792]
>
> Note that it *appears* that he is citing Die Welt, but actually he
> citingIsraelNN, this illegal outfit run by a group of settlers to
> which Zero is
> referring above. I have deleted this entry. If OneVoice supplies the
> original citation to the German publication that would be another
> matter.
> User OneVoice has no concept of NPOV and left to his own devices
> he will
> turn all the Middle East articles into soapboxes for his particular
> extremist poltical ideology. I have lost all patience trying to
> deal with
> him on Talk pages and prefer to revert and have the pages
> protected.
>
> Something urgently needs to be done about this user.
>
> V.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] OneVoice

body:
zero 0000 wrote:

>Something really has to be done about OneVoice.  The guy is an
>absolute curse on Wikipedia.  Look at [[Thomas Hurndall]].
>OneVoice put in a totally false report from an illegal radio
>station whose operators were recently sentenced to prison terms
>in Israel for perjury, then he keeps reverting to it even though
>the correct version of the story now carries citations to all of
>these:
>
>
I'm a bit undecided here, but I'd suggest assuming good faith.  It's
clear that OneVoice has a particular political ideology, but I'm not
convinced he's unwilling to work with others.  He seems to occasionally
get the impression that he's being opposed by supporters of the
Palestinians, or even by radical supporters of terrorism, or by some
combination thereof.  In a few cases where I've had minor conflicts with
him (one over [[Mahmoud Abbas]]--see that page history and talk page for
more), he's seemed reasonable.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
Ed: That would be inaccurate. The same story has been found in other Israeli papers, notably the Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1076559704383)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
Date: Friday, February 13, 2004 10:40 am
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

> It sounds like the "report" should be attributed to the settlers --
> rather to the newspaper. Perhaps we could say:
>
> * According to an article in Die Welt, a settlers group called
> IsraelNNcomplained that EU humanitarian aid has been diverted to
> terroristoperations.
>
> P.S. It would be disappointing if OneVoice, having assembled a
> team or
> coalition of "like-minded" Wikipedians, didn't live up to the
> expectations he himself set for the team. But I'm going to keep
> assuminggood faith for now.
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Nils Kehrein

subject: [Wikitech-l] Access Denies

body:
> While trying to retrieve the URL: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite
>
> The following error was encountered:
> Access Denied.
> Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at
> this time. Please contact your service provider if you feel this is incorrect.
> Your cache administrator is webmaster.

<span style="AYBABTU">
What happen?
</span>

Nils.

--
Created by 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters.


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Definition of terrorism

body:
When I was a kid, I had a discussion with a family friend who happened
to be a lawyer. I did not understand why the person who executes a
death sentence is not committing premeditated murder.

He explained to me that murder is the _unlawful_ killing of a person.
The execution of a death sentence is lawful, therefore it is not
murder.

Regardless of one's position on the morality of capital punishment...
and regardless of whether you _like_ the definition of the word
"murder..." it _is_ the definition, and it is possible to understand it
and to apply it in deciding what acts should be labelled murder.

Similarly, terrorism is "the _unlawful_ use or threatened use of force
or violence by a person or an organized group against people or
property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or
governments, often for ideological or political reasons." Definition
AHD4, emphasis mine.

Now, deciding what is and is not lawful can be difficult enough in
domestic matters (as I am well aware at the moment, living as I do in
Massachusetts) and it is far more complicated in international affairs.
So this doesn't really answer any questions. But it does _raise_ some
questions.

If, for the sake of argument, you assume that the intention of the U.
S. bombing of Nagasaki was not primarily to take out a military target,
but to create "shock and awe" in the Japanese populace, military, and
Emperor, in order to convince them to surrender--that is, to intimidate
or coerce them--then it was terrorism if unlawful, and was not
terrorism if lawful. On the whole, given that the U.S. was attacked and
was in a state of declared war with Japan, I think most would label it
as lawful.

On the other hand: would our characterization of the bombing of
Nagasaki be affected if its purpose was neither military, nor a
psychological message aimed at Japan, but a psychological message aimed
_at Stalin and at the Soviet Union_--one saying "We have these weapons
of mass destruction and we are willing to use them?" Perhaps that would
make it a terrorist act after all--but one directed at the Soviet
Union, not at Japan.

Something that I don't recall seeing recently in the arguments about
whether or not 9/11 was terrorism is this. Since we in the United
States were, in fact, terrorized, we are inclined to see it as a
terrorist act. The question is, what specific actions was Osama bin
Laden trying to intimidate or coerce us into taking? I'm not very clear
on this. Now, suppose the psychological message was aimed _at Arabs_
and was "Al-Qaeda is big, strong, courageous, and capable of attacking
the United States with impunity. Join us." If this was the nature of
the act, then, by the dictionary definition, would it constitute
terrorism?

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate:
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


body:
Fred Bauder wrote

> We could say that in war sometimes the tactic of terrorizing the civilian
> population or governmental authorities is used. See [[Shock and awe]]
which
> is, I guess, intended to terrorize military forces. It would seem by this
> operational definition that the 911 attack had that intent, at least the
> Trade Center Towers portion with respect to the American population.

In writing history on the basis of intention, one is stuck with trying to
justify inference of that intention.  That's a general problem, though.
Even to call someone a 'reformer' moves from the idea of change to the
supposed purpose; even to say a government introduces drugs legisation in
order to deal with a social problem assumes something.

I'm not one who has any great problem with the 'terrorist' term.  The
inference that the 9/11 attacks were by terrorists seems stronger than that
Osama wanted to take credit for ordering them; the inference that Osama
wanted to take that credit seems stronger than the inference that the
attacks were by or on behalf of Al-Qaida; and the evidence that the attacks
were (in some way) Al-Qaida seems very strong, by now.  The inference that
the subsequent anthrax attacks in the USA were also terrorist in intention
also seems quite strong; no one I think can say just what those were
intended to do, though, with any degree of certainty.  I mention this
contrast to keep a perspective - could 'just' have been a deranged person.

To return to the integrity issue - I wouldn't use the Wikipedia articles as
reference for contemporary history, except as casual reading.  That's
because 'caveat emptor' applies here.  I  don't think that the arguments
brought forward really argue a lack of integrity, as things stand.  Which is
not to say that there aren't too many POV edits.

Charles


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Access Denied

body:
Nils Kehrein wrote:
>> The following error was encountered: Access Denied.

It works again. Thanks to Mr. Unknown!

Nils.

--
Created by 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters.


subject: [WikiEN-l] OneVoice

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I'm a bit undecided here, but I'd suggest assuming good faith.  It's
> clear that OneVoice has a particular political ideology, but I'm not
> convinced he's unwilling to work with others.  He seems to
> occasionally get the impression that he's being opposed by supporters
> of the Palestinians, or even by radical supporters of terrorism, or by
> some combination thereof.  In a few cases where I've had minor
> conflicts with him (one over [[Mahmoud Abbas]]--see that page history
> and talk page for more), he's seemed reasonable.

To follow up on that, my discussions on various talk pages with OneVoice
have been quite productive thus far today.  See [[Talk:Tom Hurndall]]
and [[Talk:Mahmoud Abbas]] for more.

-Mark


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik and Anthony DiPierro temporarily blocked

body:
Andrew Smith wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I would like to request the temporary banning of both Wik and Anthony
> DiPierro. They have spent the last half an hour reverting the Votes for
> Deletion page, a page which should not be protected dur to its high use.
> They have filled the edit histories of many pages with their junk today
> and have done so on many previous days. Sometimes one is in the right,
> sometimes the other, but they are both acting in a totally unacceptable
> way. I believe banning them both for a period of 24-48 hours would
> reinforce to them the fact that they can't just log on to Wikipedia and
> do whatever the hell they like (which is what they currently seem to
> favour) and would give everyon a break from their incessant niggling. In
> my opinion the Wikipedia would be a better, calmer place without them.
>
> Please consider making a community-backed concensus on this as they are
> getting beyond tolerable.
>
> Andrew (Ams80)

It seems we both came to the same conclusion at the same time. I blocked
Anthony and Wik, and saw this post some time later. Here is my
rationale, copied from the village pump:

After an edit war between Anthony DiPierro and Wik over VfD, that page
was protected. Apparently recognising the inconvenience of an edit war
on VfD, or the protection of this extremely heavily edited page, they
both made comments suggesting the acceptability of a temporary mutual
ban. Wik said in an edit summary:

    "ban Anthony, or, if you can't tell a serious contributor from a
troll, ban both of us, but this can't continue"

And Anthony said on IRC:

    <anthony> as long as he gets banned as long as i do i'm fine with it
    ...
    <anthony> i didn't volunteer to be banned
    <AdamBishop> but you said you'd be happy as long as Wik was banned
with you, and Wik asked to be banned
    <anthony> wik asked to be banned?
    <anthony> well, if that's true, let's do it

So I did it, and unprotected VfD.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin notice (was: Definition of terrorism)

body:
=> The question is, what specific actions was Osama bin
=> Laden trying to intimidate or coerce us into taking? I'm not very
=> clear on this.
=
=It might not be the US government.  Could apply to trying to coerce the

=government of Saudi Arabia, for example - into removing US forces.  Or
=affect Algeria.  Or cause instability in the Phillipines/Indonesia
area.

Okay, I think we all get the picture. Maybe this thread could be
continued privately or at [[Talk:Terrorism]]?

Ed Poor
Wikien-l Administrator


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Friday

body:
On Feb 13, 2004, at 11:14, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> wikibooks.org only shows up in larousse's logs currently, is it not
> moved
> yet?

I've had an awful time trying to munge the DNS settings for some of the
domains that are registered at "godaddy.com". Makes BIND look easy...
:P

May or may not be set right now (or once it propagates).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
On 02/13/04  at 06:02 AM, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> said:

> OneVoice put in a
> totally false report from an illegal radio station whose operators were
> recently sentenced to prison terms in Israel for perjury,

OneVoice just tried to pull a similar stunt on Current Events. He added
the following text:

* In an as yet unpublished report the European Commission's Anti-Fraud
Office (OLAF) is said to have concluded that tens of millions of dollars
in humanitarian aid, donated by the [[European Union]] (EU) to the
[[Palestinian Authority]] has been utilized for [[terrorist]] operations
against [[Israel]], according to the German daily newspaper "Die
Welt".[http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=57792]

Note that it *appears* that he is citing Die Welt, but actually he citing
IsraelNN, this illegal outfit run by a group of settlers to which Zero is
referring above. I have deleted this entry. If OneVoice supplies the
original citation to the German publication that would be another matter.

User OneVoice has no concept of NPOV and left to his own devices he will
turn all the Middle East articles into soapboxes for his particular
extremist poltical ideology. I have lost all patience trying to deal with
him on Talk pages and prefer to revert and have the pages protected.

Something urgently needs to be done about this user.

V.


from_name: Charles Podles

subject: [WikiEN-l] OneVoice

body:
zero 0000 wrote:

>Something really has to be done about OneVoice.  The guy is an
>absolute curse on Wikipedia.  Look at [[Thomas Hurndall]].
>OneVoice put in a totally false report from an illegal radio
>station whose operators were recently sentenced to prison terms
>in Israel for perjury, then he keeps reverting to it even though
>the correct version of the story now carries citations to all of
>these:
>
>
For what it's worth, OneVoice has admitted that he was wrong in this
case; see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiproject:Arab-Israeli_conflict/Oasis

In this case I think he simply didn't understand why Zero (quite
rightly) objected
to the wording of the Arutz Sheva report, which erroneously claimed that
the
soldier was "convicted of manslaughter" rather than the correct phrase
"the charges
were upgraded to manslaughter" -- and to be fair, Zero didn't explain
this, though
the difference between "charged" and "convicted" should have been
readily apparent.

--Charles (en:user:Mirv)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
On 02/13/04  at 10:40 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:

> P.S. It would be disappointing if OneVoice, having assembled a team or
> coalition of "like-minded" Wikipedians, didn't live up to the
> expectations he himself set for the team. But I'm going to keep assuming
> good faith for now.

Well, I guess I had better stop. I have reverted OneVoice on Current
Events more than three times. The last several times, OneVoice tried to
disguise re-entering the story under a misleading edit summary. I invite
other users to check this out for themselves.  Please see the page
history:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Current_events&action=history

V.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please revoke 168..'s sysop status IMMEDIATELY!

body:
So far, just today, he has reverted [[DNA]] (again) to his version of the
article and then protected his version without adding {{msg:protected}} or
listing it at [[wikipedia:Protected page]]. When I updated the summary at
[[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/168]] to reflect this 168 protected that
page and when the protection was lifted by another admin he DELETED the page
(10 times so far) and blanked it a couple times.

Please see the summary at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/168 (if it still
exists).

I hereby request that 168...'s sysop status be removed and for the matter to
go directly to the arbitration committee. Since I am on the arbitration
committee and a party to this dispute I will recuse myself.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


subject: [Wikitech-l] Please revoke 168..'s sysop status IMMEDIATELY!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching, compression, and servers oh my!

body:
For those not spending 24hrs/day in #mediawiki, here are some updates:

The file cache has been turned off. It was largely redundant, since the
squids handle upstream caching, and it caused congestion on the NFS
server. Moving the file cache onto each server's local disk would be
possible but so far doesn't look like it'd be worth the effort.

Output compression has been enabled globally for browsers that support
it. (Formerly this was special-cased in the file cache as a side effect
of compressing the cached pages for disk savings.) Some browsers may be
briefly confused during the switchover if they get a 304 response for a
page that is _now_ compressed but wasn't before. Mozilla is known to
have such problems. Close the browser and restart; that will probably
clear it up. If not, give a shout.

The additional compression doesn't seem to hurt load on the servers,
and it'll cut bandwidth usage further.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
On 02/13/04  at 11:46 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:

> I put a condensed and somewhat bland version of the same story into
> current events, using Haaretz as a source.

Thanks. You are doing what OneVoice should have done in the first place.
According to Zero,  "Arutz Sheva [which runs the INN website] is an
illegal radio station run by extremist settlers. The organizers of Arutz
Sheva were recently sentenced to prison terms for offences that included
making false statements to an Israeli court."

I think we can and should do better for sources for news stories listed on
Current Events.

V.


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>I hereby request that 168...'s sysop status be removed and for the matter to
>go directly to the arbitration committee. Since I am on the arbitration
>committee and a party to this dispute I will recuse myself.
>
>
I believe as currently constituted the arbitration committee in its
"temporary" phase can only accept disputes referred to it by Jimbo,
so... does Jimbo wish to refer it?

-Mark


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
On 02/13/04 16:46, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> I got 3 frantic messages from OneVoice on my talk page. I guess he
> doesn't subscribe to the mailing list. I suggested he slow down a bit.
> This is not CNN, it's an encyclopedia.

I only got one. What am I doing wrong?

(Have been rewriting as appropriate. I try to make a relevant note in
the history.)

- d.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Definition of terrorism

body:
> The question is, what specific actions was Osama bin
> Laden trying to intimidate or coerce us into taking? I'm not very clear
> on this.

It might not be the US government.  Could apply to trying to coerce the
government of Saudi Arabia, for example - into removing US forces.  Or
affect Algeria.  Or cause instability in the Phillipines/Indonesia area.

Charles


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] The integrity of Wikipedia

body:
On Thursday 12 February 2004 18:59, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sascha Noyes [mailto:sascha at pantropy.net]
> Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 12:51 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The integrity of Wikipedia
>
> On Thursday 12 February 2004 11:41 am, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > There is a significant difference between NPOV and "moral relativism",
>
> Actually there isn't.
>
> > NPOV does not say this,
> > but as a practical matter insists that no article be used to take a
> > stand endorsing or opposing any values.
>
> Not endorsing or opposing any values, because they are not absolute, is
> the
> fundamentalist moral relativist position.

Well, there is a difference between believing that there are no absolute
values and believing that there might be absolute values, but that we cannot
know which values are absolute.

I agree that in practice, both views may have same results.


from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arutz Sheva, OneVoice

body:
I can't find the message, but someone stated here that Arutz
Sheva is not illegal any more.  This needs clarification.

Arutz Sheva is not a legally registered radio station in Israel,
but it is legal for it to broadcast from international waters
into Israel.  That's the sense in which it is legal.  One of
the things that 4 former managers were sentenced to jail terms
for was for broadcasting from land then falsely testifying in court
that they were broadcasting from off the coast.  Currently the
prosecution is appealing the sentences (3-6 months) as too lenient,
so you can see just how happy the authorities are about this bunch.
See http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/392420.html .

There is also a move afoot in the Knesset to make Arutz Sheva legal.
A bill has been introduced to that effect.  I don't know what the
chances of it passing are.

OneVoice has a history of posting doubtful stories from Arutz Sheva.
At [[Refusal to serve in the Israeli military]] he posted a claim that
some general had said that refusal to serve had dropped by 80%.  What
the general had really said was that *convictions* for refusing to
serve had dropped by 80%.  I replaced the false claim by the correct
story together with all the details (actual numbers of convictions
from the general's testimony) and citation of my sources, but OneVoice
just went into his usual obsessive reversion loop regardless.  I don't
accept the good faith assumption, this has happened too many times.  He
is here with a mission and that mission has nothing to do with writing
a good encyclopedia.

Zero.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid stats / switch almost done

body:
Almost all traffic is hitting browne now (coronelli isn't in the dns table
for the main domains), thing work quite well so far.
Live stats of browne & coronelli set up by jeronmim via snmp are online
at http://wmperf.mine.nu:8043/wmperf/index.org.wikimedia.all-squids.html.
You can see the cache grow...

Cheers
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Friday

body:
On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 02:43:11 -0800, Jason Richey wrote:

> I'm heading to San Diego Tomorrow (Friday the 13th) to remove the
> servers that are now out of use (most notably Gunther and Geoffrin).
> I imagine I'll be in contact with Brion before I pullthe machines, but
> feel free to pipe up if you have concerns...

wikibooks.org only shows up in larousse's logs currently, is it not moved
yet?

Apart from that i expect nearly all requests to hit the new hosts tonight
Californian time, it might be possible to remove all machines.
Currently larousse gets about 2.2 requrests per second vs. ~78 on the new
Squids, this shouls taper off further.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arutz Sheva, OneVoice

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Why is this particular user being singled out when this is relatively common
>behavior?
>
>
Unfortunately, that does seem to be the case.  I think, probably
unsurprisingly, a good deal of the contributors to the
Israeli-Palestinian articles are either strong Palestinian advocates, or
strong Israeli advocates.  [[User:BL]] stands out as a sometimes
unhelpful advocate on the other side, for example, often linking to and
even importing information from websites run by Palestinian refugee
advocacy groups.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arutz Sheva, OneVoice

body:
Why is this particular user being singled out when this is relatively common
behavior?

Fred

> From: zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 19:19:09 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arutz Sheva, OneVoice
>
> He
> is here with a mission and that mission has nothing to do with writing
> a good encyclopedia.


from_name: Nathan Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arutz Sheva, OneVoice

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

zero 0000 wrote:
| I can't find the message, but someone stated here that Arutz
| Sheva is not illegal any more.  This needs clarification.
|
| Arutz Sheva is not a legally registered radio station in Israel,
| but it is legal for it to broadcast from international waters
| into Israel.  That's the sense in which it is legal.  One of
| the things that 4 former managers were sentenced to jail terms
| for was for broadcasting from land then falsely testifying in court
| that they were broadcasting from off the coast.  Currently the
| prosecution is appealing the sentences (3-6 months) as too lenient,
| so you can see just how happy the authorities are about this bunch.
| See http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/392420.html .
|
| There is also a move afoot in the Knesset to make Arutz Sheva legal.
| A bill has been introduced to that effect.  I don't know what the
| chances of it passing are.
|
| OneVoice has a history of posting doubtful stories from Arutz Sheva.
| At [[Refusal to serve in the Israeli military]] he posted a claim that
| some general had said that refusal to serve had dropped by 80%.  What
| the general had really said was that *convictions* for refusing to
| serve had dropped by 80%.  I replaced the false claim by the correct
| story together with all the details (actual numbers of convictions
| from the general's testimony) and citation of my sources, but OneVoice
| just went into his usual obsessive reversion loop regardless.  I don't
| accept the good faith assumption, this has happened too many times.  He
| is here with a mission and that mission has nothing to do with writing
| a good encyclopedia.
|
| Zero.

If you want the article locked, now or later, message me by email or WP.

At this point I think that would be more than justified, and I'm willing
to take a bit of flack if I'm seen as less than neutral.

Nathan
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

body:
On 02/13/04  at 12:16 PM, Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> said:

> I'm a bit undecided here, but I'd suggest assuming good faith.  It's
> clear that OneVoice has a particular political ideology, but I'm not
> convinced he's unwilling to work with others.

OneVoice may be sincere about wanting to work with others but as far as
actually discussing the issues goes I have found I get absolutely nowhere
with him on the Talk pages.  A sense of working together in a
collaborative fashion towards a collective goal -- describing the issues
in a neutral way without taking sides -- simply doesn't emerge.  For
example, see the discussion on [[Talk:Elon Peace Plan]].  The text as it
now stands seems pretty innocuous, but OneVoice kept insisting on removing
any specific details of the plan and only including platitudes.
Assertions he made were even contradicted by information presented on the
plan's website, and he studiously avoided meaningful debate.  After
getting nowhere, I asked for the page to be protected and it remained so
for a couple of weeks.

The situation repeated itself with [[The People's Plan]]. In his first
version,  OneVoice included specifics of the initiative, but then
immediately removed them.  I reintroduced them, as it seemed like vital
information.  He insisted otherwise and tried to impose a quid pro quo
with the Elon article which made absolutely no sense, as can be seen on
the Talk page.  Now, the amount of background information to be included
in each of these articles was debatable,  but in no way could we dispense
with a brief summary of the details (ie,  citizenship issues) --
fundamental information after all.

More recently, an article called [[Terrorism against Israel in 2004]] was
started in early January by an anon user and OneVoice (companion articles
for earlier years were also created).  As can be seen from the page
histories, initially it was a timeline of Israeli victims of atrocities.
Danny was furious about this article and left an angry comment at the top
of the Talk page. I agreed:  I thought it was basically a propaganda
exercise.  User BL took it upon himself to salvage the thing by renaming
it [[Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 2004]] and adding
Israeli atrocities to give it more balance.  OneVoice insisted on removing
the Palestinian listings for a variety of convoluted reasons given on the
Talk page.  I agreed with BL's actions, and reverted OneVoice, and also
reverted his repeated efforts to undo the redirect from [[Terrorism
against Israel in 2004]].  As a reward for our efforts, OneVoice listed BL
and me on [[Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress]], accusing BL and me of being
the same person.

The situation was similar with [[Terrorism against Israelis]] which
Eloquence renamed to something else last year, someone else named back,
and last week Eloquence again renamed again to [[Violence against
Israelis]]. OneVoice refused to accept the name change and kept trying to
undo the redirect leading to the situation where people were editing
''both'' versions (!).  Again, I had Ed protect the redirect.  Tim
Starling pointed out to me that there still many links pointing to the
article's old name, and so I started renaming the links to the article
under its current name, but OneVoice started reverting those as well. As
can been seen on the Talk page of [[Violence against Israelis]], OneVoice
and another like-minded recent arrival, StarOfDavid, insist not only that
every description of atrocities against Israeli's in Wikipedia include
language which implies passing moral judgement against those who
perpetrate the crimes but that Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression
are in no way comparable. In OneVoice's worldview, Israelis are always the
victims and the Palestians are all terrorists.

This afternoon, OneVoice kept trying to delete the following text from the
first paragraph of [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]

<quote>
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians revolves today around these
two issues:

    * The fate of the occupied Palestinian territories - the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip.
    * The fate of the Palestinian refugees.

While the latter issue has always been a part of the conflict the
aforementioned issue was introduced into it in 1967 during the Six day
war. Other conflicts related to these two have also sprung up at a later
stage. It is those two issues that both parties agree must be solved
before a just and lasting peace can be established.  </quote>

His argument was: "The article starts with a statement that the conflict
is based upon occupation and refugees. This is disputed. [...] The
conflict began not later than 1929 and perhaps no later than 1920. At that
time there was neither occupation nor refugees. The bases of the conflict
can not be events that would not take place for another 20 years."

In vain I tried pointing out to him that the operative word was TODAY --
it wasn't an analysis of historical roots. He refused to acknowledge this,
and after several reversions I asked another sysop to protect the page.
Why he wanted the text deleted I still don't completely understand; it
wasn't like he was offering an alternative reading.

Perhaps Delirium is nonethless right in assuming good faith, but I think
it will take a herculean amount of coaching for OneVoice to ever genuinely
fully understand and embrace the NPOV philosophy. Personally, I don' t
think I have the patience and stamina for the task.

V.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, Gabriel Wicke wrote:

>Almost all traffic is hitting browne now (coronelli isn't in the dns table
>for the main domains), thing work quite well so far.
>Live stats of browne & coronelli set up by jeronmim via snmp are online
>at http://wmperf.mine.nu:8043/wmperf/index.org.wikimedia.all-squids.html.
>You can see the cache grow...

Cool!

What's the graph titled "Cache HTTP miss service time" ? It should be like
a duplicate of the one before, but the shape is different. Maybe the
title is wrong.

Alfio


body:
On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, Alfio Puglisi wrote:

>What's the graph titled "Cache HTTP miss service time" ? It should be like
>a duplicate of the one before, but the shape is different. Maybe the
>title is wrong.

Ignore that. It's the same chart, but with a different scale and with data
for the whole day instead of a few hours.

Another one, the RAM chart for browne is empty.

Alfio


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] 168 temporarily desysopped, review requested

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Can the arbitration committee or Jimbo please review 168's
> desysopping, and advise whether it should be permanent? Or if not,
> what the term should be?

I'm trying to get out of the businesss of reviewing such matters on a
permanent basis, but of course we're still in transition.  I do give
my blessing to Tim's action here as an emergency measure.

--Jimbo


body:
Delirium wrote:
> >I hereby request that 168...'s sysop status be removed and for the matter
> >to go directly to the arbitration committee. Since I am on the
> >arbitration committee and a party to this dispute I will recuse myself.
> >
> >
> I believe as currently constituted the arbitration committee in its
> "temporary" phase can only accept disputes referred to it by Jimbo,
> so... does Jimbo wish to refer it?

Yes, I'm willing.  If there are other steps that should be taken
first, I don't want to short-circuit that, but something needs to be
done here.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tact, and its lack (was: Known Trolls)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Certainly. You're a case in point. Of all our sysops and respected
> contributors, you are easily the least tactful. You bully everyone who
> dares to disagree with you (even Jimbo).

I don't even know what this discussion is about, just the usual Ed and
Sheldon sniping I guess, but I wanted to say that I've never felt
bullied by either Ed or Sheldon.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] trust metrics

body:
I am not advocating anything in this post, I'm just sharing some of my
thoughts over the past few days.

There are perennial discussions of trust metrics for things like
automatic sysopping and general "reputation management" system.  It is
rightly pointed out (by me and many others!) that such systems are
difficult to design properly and often easy to "game".  At the same
time, the hope is that a well-designed system would be scalable and
informative, while not oppressive or empowering of tyrants.

The system at slashdot is clearly broken, as many have said.

One system that I think does actually work, though, is the system at
Ebay.  At Ebay, after every transaction, buyers and sellers can leave
feedback for each other, positive or negative.  Whenever people want
to buy or sell something, they can look at the feedback of the
potential counterparty and see how much total feedback there is, how
many positive, how many negative.

For us, we have nothing like a 'transaction', but the system could be
generalized from that.  Each person could assign positive or negative
feedback to others.  Just a simple 'up' or 'down' rating with an
optional comment.  Some people might give an 'up' rating to everyone,
some might give a 'down' rating to everyone, some might just abstain
totally.

But most would adopt a personal policy of giving mostly positives or
abstaining, reserving negatives for worst case scenarios.

Newcomers would have no rating at all, obviously.  Very prominent
people would have lots of ratings, mostly positive I would have to
assume.  I would probably have 95% positive rating, but not perfect,
since beloved though I am and obviously deserve to be (*wink*), I am a
target.

We'd likely see perfect positive ratings for people like Michael
Hardy, who keeps his nose to the grindstone editing topics that aren't
controversial, and who stays out of internal politics almost
completely as far as I know.

Some sysops have taken enormous and weighty responsibilities on
themselves to do important but controversial work like VfD or banning
trolls or mediating disputes or editing articles about the Middle
East.  We'd naturally expect them to get mixed reviews, but we might
be surprised... lots of people would give them positive ratings just
for doing those jobs, acknowledging the difficulty and risk involved.

Some virtues of this concept:

1.  Easy to program... it's just a single table in the database,
feedback, with 5 fields -- 'from', 'to', 'up/down', 'comment',
'timestamp'.  (The timestamp is so old feedback can be expired.  Maybe
positive votes expire after 1 year, negatives after 1 month, so as to
encourage more positivity!)

2.  Difficult to game -- it is NOT automated, so there's no way to
game the system by engaging in repetitive actions to score points.

3.  Easy for end users -- no complex system of approving or
disapproving of individual edits.  You can just give someone a smile
or a frown, as you wish, when you wish, or not.

4.  Rewards co-operativeness and friendliness and neutrality, because
to get a high rating, you have to please lots of people.

5.  It would be a relatively simple matter to also calculate a
"weighted" score, where the weight is based on the raw scores of those
who have rated this user.  What I mean is that if someone has a
perfect positive score, then their impact on the weighted score
calculations would be higher than the impact of someone with a high
negative score.  I consider this weighted score to be optional and
possibly dangerous, but it is at least easy enough to do.

6.  It *might* lead to a lot less demands and bickering.  It isn't
uncommon for someone to write to the lists or to me personally asking
that such-and-such prominent wikipedian be banned or desysopped.  This
is exhausting and divisive.  Possibly instead we could have a system
where people have a way to express displeasure, and to privately
advocate that others express displeasure, but in a way that doesn't
involve long drawn out flamewars.

7.  It is reflective of what we actually do in practice, i.e. it's
just a formalization of how we actually do operate.  Everyone has an
opinion, and when I think about who is good and prominent, I think
about my *own* opinion, but I also think about the opinions of
*others*.  But this can only be guessed at, not measured.  Tim
Starling held a quick poll on whether 172 should be de-sysopped, and
when it went heavily in one direction, he followed through.  If the
system I am talking about were in place, we'd instead just see 172's
positive rating start to evaporate.

-------

Some possible downsides, and there are many...

1.  Unintended consequences -- I'm imagining this working in one way,
but it might work in a totally different way in practice.  Perhaps the
system would encourage some bad behaviors that don't happen now, while
at the same time not discouraging any of our current bad behaviors.

2.  People might be dissuaded from taking controversial and brave
stands, if it's going to get them some negative feedback.

3.  People might be incentivized to create sham accounts just to give
themselves positive feedback.  This could be minimized, maybe, with a
second-order calculated metric which would take into account that
positive feedback from people with no feedback is essentially
meaningless.

4.  Well, I thought up the system, so I'm having a hard time seeing
other downsides, but I'm sure they exist.  :-)

-------

At least initially, such a system should have *no* real-world
consequences.  It would just be an indicator, which might be ignored
or not.  That's the way Ebay is -- you can have a pretty mediocre
rating, and it doesn't really affect anything automatically.  It may
inform others, though.

But with experience, we would surely organically come to some customs.
After some minimum number of feedbacks, with some percentage of them
positive, people could be sysopped.  When feedback gets sufficiently
negative, people could be desysopped.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Are things getting worse?

body:
Is the amount of internal squabbling getting worse or better?  My
rough sense is that it's getting worse, but maybe I'm just tired of it
and therefore perceiving it to be more of a problem lately.

What can we all do to build a sense of love and harmony?  What can
each of us do to alter our own behavior to be supportive of others,
less argumentative, more productive?

Is the mediation/arbitration system working to increase internal
political problems, or do decrease those problems?  Or, is it way too
early to tell?

My concern is that it seems to me that we're spending way too much
time on internal court intruigues, to our detriment.  Every day, it
seems, there's some new crisis of management, some new emergency ban,
some new sysop crossing the line.

Part of this was caused, I think, by a perceived power vacuum after
the start of the year.  I was out of the business of policing, but the
arbitration committee was still not ready.  Sysops felt a real need to
do something to stop some real problem users.  It was a vicious cycle.

But, what about now?  How can we bring about peace?

--Jimbo


from_name: Edward Senft

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are things getting worse?

body:
I have found that Wikipedia users like to squabble a
lot over trivial issues.  It is easy for me to stay
out of this because I simply don't engage in these
types of arguments.  I'm here because I like writing
and reading articles. (I don't care enough about my
being right to engage in an edit war just to prove a
point)  I have found that many users participate in
edit wars just to prove that they are they are right.
In reality, the users who engage in edit wars cause
problems, regardless of whether or not they are right.
 I find it comical that users such as wik will state
that they don't believe in the 3 rv rule.  Three
reverts is very generous.  It should be more like 2.
I think users need to stop arguing over silly things
and actually write articles.  We could be getting much
more work done if we didn't spend so much time
arguing.  I realize that we still need to argue, but
engaging in revert wars doesnt fix an article.

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I think one thing I could do is simply to quit
> arguing about folks who are
> are here to push a point of view and just accept
> folks will ordinarilly do
> that and that it is ok provided other points of view
> are also expressed.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 07:17:25 -0800
> > To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Are things getting worse?
> >
> > Is the amount of internal squabbling getting worse
> or better?  My
> > rough sense is that it's getting worse, but maybe
> I'm just tired of it
> > and therefore perceiving it to be more of a
> problem lately.
> >
> > What can we all do to build a sense of love and
> harmony?  What can
> > each of us do to alter our own behavior to be
> supportive of others,
> > less argumentative, more productive?
> >
> > Is the mediation/arbitration system working to
> increase internal
> > political problems, or do decrease those problems?
>  Or, is it way too
> > early to tell?
> >
> > My concern is that it seems to me that we're
> spending way too much
> > time on internal court intruigues, to our
> detriment.  Every day, it
> > seems, there's some new crisis of management, some
> new emergency ban,
> > some new sysop crossing the line.
> >
> > Part of this was caused, I think, by a perceived
> power vacuum after
> > the start of the year.  I was out of the business
> of policing, but the
> > arbitration committee was still not ready.  Sysops
> felt a real need to
> > do something to stop some real problem users.  It
> was a vicious cycle.
> >
> > But, what about now?  How can we bring about
> peace?
> >
> > --Jimbo
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are things getting worse?

body:
I think one thing I could do is simply to quit arguing about folks who are
are here to push a point of view and just accept folks will ordinarilly do
that and that it is ok provided other points of view are also expressed.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 07:17:25 -0800
> To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Are things getting worse?
>
> Is the amount of internal squabbling getting worse or better?  My
> rough sense is that it's getting worse, but maybe I'm just tired of it
> and therefore perceiving it to be more of a problem lately.
>
> What can we all do to build a sense of love and harmony?  What can
> each of us do to alter our own behavior to be supportive of others,
> less argumentative, more productive?
>
> Is the mediation/arbitration system working to increase internal
> political problems, or do decrease those problems?  Or, is it way too
> early to tell?
>
> My concern is that it seems to me that we're spending way too much
> time on internal court intruigues, to our detriment.  Every day, it
> seems, there's some new crisis of management, some new emergency ban,
> some new sysop crossing the line.
>
> Part of this was caused, I think, by a perceived power vacuum after
> the start of the year.  I was out of the business of policing, but the
> arbitration committee was still not ready.  Sysops felt a real need to
> do something to stop some real problem users.  It was a vicious cycle.
>
> But, what about now?  How can we bring about peace?
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] wik is back

body:
I see that wik has come back and has already started
reverting.  Something needs to be done.

__________________________________
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from_name: Karl Eichwalder

in_reply_to:
<5241-64113@sneakemail.com> (f23wop602@sneakemail.com's message
	of "Fri, 13 Feb 2004 10:59:04 +0100")

body:
"E23" <f23wop602 at sneakemail.com> writes:

> This has been fixed in CVS. You can try it in the test wiki:
> http://test.wikipedia.org (when it works. Test seem to be having some
> kind of DNS troubles right now)

Thanks a lot.  It is still impossible for me to acess
http://test.wikipedia.org, but I believe in you you did the right thing
- no need for verification :)

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] trust metrics

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>One system that I think does actually work, though, is the system at
>Ebay.  At Ebay, after every transaction, buyers and sellers can leave
>feedback for each other, positive or negative.  Whenever people want
>to buy or sell something, they can look at the feedback of the
>potential counterparty and see how much total feedback there is, how
>many positive, how many negative.
>
>For us, we have nothing like a 'transaction', but the system could be
>generalized from that.  Each person could assign positive or negative
>feedback to others.  Just a simple 'up' or 'down' rating with an
>optional comment.  Some people might give an 'up' rating to everyone,
>some might give a 'down' rating to everyone, some might just abstain
>totally.
>
In eBay you can only give feedback if you are directly involved in the
transaction.  There is no such thing as third-party feedback.

>But most would adopt a personal policy of giving mostly positives or
>abstaining, reserving negatives for worst case scenarios.
>
The eBay statistical norm for feedback ratings would appear to be in
high 90s%.  Abstentions are not and perhaps cannot be counted.  If this
kind of thing were implemented, I suspect that the statitical norm for
us would be a lot lower

>Newcomers would have no rating at all, obviously.  Very prominent
>people would have lots of ratings, mostly positive I would have to
>assume.  I would probably have 95% positive rating, but not perfect,
>since beloved though I am and obviously deserve to be (*wink*), I am a
>target.
>
Hmmm!  Ego may be a negative factor in attributing rating. :-)

>We'd likely see perfect positive ratings for people like Michael
>Hardy, who keeps his nose to the grindstone editing topics that aren't
>controversial, and who stays out of internal politics almost
>completely as far as I know.
>
People like this don't get noticed.  That's the one thing that may tend
to keep their ratings low.

>Some sysops have taken enormous and weighty responsibilities on
>themselves to do important but controversial work like VfD or banning
>trolls or mediating disputes or editing articles about the Middle
>East.  We'd naturally expect them to get mixed reviews, but we might
>be surprised... lots of people would give them positive ratings just
>for doing those jobs, acknowledging the difficulty and risk involved.
>
Agreed

>Some virtues of this concept:
>
>1.  Easy to program... it's just a single table in the database,
>feedback, with 5 fields -- 'from', 'to', 'up/down', 'comment',
>'timestamp'.  (The timestamp is so old feedback can be expired.  Maybe
>positive votes expire after 1 year, negatives after 1 month, so as to
>encourage more positivity!)
>
eBay feedback never expires, but it is aged.  If a person has had a
period of significant negative feedback one can see whether it is recent
or more than a year ago.  It is also important that the person giving
the feedback is identified.  The person receiving negative feedback then
hs the opportunity to reply to the feedback, and perhaps give negative
feedback in return.

>2.  Difficult to game -- it is NOT automated, so there's no way to
>game the system by engaging in repetitive actions to score points.
>
I think that it would NEED to be automated to work.  We already track
the number of edits that a person has made.  Perhaps the number of
reverts that a person receives could be an automated negative.  This
could quickly put our problem people into an overall negative rating.
 It will also have a negative effect on the people who clean up the
messes, but at the same time it could be an incentive to them to find
more conciliatory approaches when dealing with problems.   Those who
perpetually revert without discussion will soon find their ratings go down.

>3.  Easy for end users -- no complex system of approving or
>disapproving of individual edits.  You can just give someone a smile
>or a frown, as you wish, when you wish, or not.
>
How often?

>4.  Rewards co-operativeness and friendliness and neutrality, because
>to get a high rating, you have to please lots of people.
>
>5.  It would be a relatively simple matter to also calculate a
>"weighted" score, where the weight is based on the raw scores of those
>who have rated this user.  What I mean is that if someone has a
>perfect positive score, then their impact on the weighted score
>calculations would be higher than the impact of someone with a high
>negative score.  I consider this weighted score to be optional and
>possibly dangerous, but it is at least easy enough to do.
>
In some ways this would be better, but see 2 above.

>6.  It *might* lead to a lot less demands and bickering.  It isn't
>uncommon for someone to write to the lists or to me personally asking
>that such-and-such prominent wikipedian be banned or desysopped.  This
>is exhausting and divisive.  Possibly instead we could have a system
>where people have a way to express displeasure, and to privately
>advocate that others express displeasure, but in a way that doesn't
>involve long drawn out flamewars.
>
I don't think that we will ever be able to do away with these attempts
at covert influence.  Some off-list comments are warranted, especially
when real confidential information is at issue.  If your proposal were
operational it might be helpful to reveal the names of unwarranted
secret accusers, and giving them a negative score for failure to be open
with the community.  That could happen irrespective of whether their
accusations toward the other contributor were justified.  That would put
the cat among the (stool)-pigeons! :-)

>7.  It is reflective of what we actually do in practice, i.e. it's
>just a formalization of how we actually do operate.  Everyone has an
>opinion, and when I think about who is good and prominent, I think
>about my *own* opinion, but I also think about the opinions of
>*others*.  But this can only be guessed at, not measured.  Tim
>Starling held a quick poll on whether 172 should be de-sysopped, and
>when it went heavily in one direction, he followed through.  If the
>system I am talking about were in place, we'd instead just see 172's
>positive rating start to evaporate.
>
I've not had any particular problem with 172, although he can be
confrontational, and with overall political sympathies that are closer
to mine than Jimbo's.  I've seen a lot on the list lately about 168.
 I'm even wondering whether Jimbo said 172 when he really meant 168.

That being said, I've had very little contact with 168, and thus would
not have a valid basis for either approving or diaapproving his
sysophood.  Do I really want to take a large amount of time just to
review what he has been doing?  I think my time would be better spent
somewhere trying to do something constructive, but without taking that
time I cannot give a fair vote.

>-------
>
>Some possible downsides, and there are many...
>
>1.  Unintended consequences
>
>2.  People might be dissuaded from taking controversial and brave
>stands, if it's going to get them some negative feedback.
>
>3.  People might be incentivized to create sham accounts just to give
>themselves positive feedback.
>
>4.  Well, I thought up the system, so I'm having a hard time seeing
>other downsides, but I'm sure they exist.  :-)
>
Probably the biggest downside is the practical one.  Even on eBay people
need to be constantly encouraged to leave feedback, and still often
don't.  Implementing this will mean a lot of extra work for everybody

Philosophically and theoretically I do not oppose such schemes.  My only
reservation is that it won't work.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Pages with lots'o images

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> writes:

> I have recently seen several pages with many images on them, in a way
> that, even thumbnailed, the pages seem cluttered and hard to read.
>
> In (unsaved) experiments, I found that it is possible to align several
> thumbnailed images on a single page on the right side by doing this:
>
> {| align=right
> |[[image:1.jpg|thumb|right|first image]]
> [[image:2.jpg|thumb|right|second image]]
> [[image:3.jpg|thumb|right|third image]]
> |}

Interesting :)  Is this the recommended syntax to line up images
vertically?

> This is best done with thumbnails of similar size, which can be achieved
> easily enough.

It isn't that easy if images should be aligned horizontally.  I'm
interested in a layout as follows (this is: images in a row with the
same size but with different description texts):

   +-----------+   +------------+   +------------+
   |           |   |            |   |            |
   |           |   |            |   |            |
   |           |   |            |   |            |
   |           |   |            |   |            |
   |           |   |            |   |            |
   |           |   |            |   |            |
   +-----------+   +------------+   +------------+
   |           |   |            |   +------------+
   +-----------+   |            |
                   |            |
                   +------------+

I get this far (centered at the middle: ........):

                   +------------+
   +-----------+   |            |
   |           |   |            |   +------------+
   |           |   |            |   |            |
   |           |   |            |   |            |
...|...........|...|............|...|............|....
   |           |   +------------+   |            |
   +-----------+   |            |   |            |
   |           |   |            |   +------------+
   +-----------+   |            |   +------------+
                   +------------+

                                [ powered by Emacs/artist-mode ]

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Arbitrators' wiki

body:
The arbitration committee has mostly decided that there will be private
deliberation to some extent for cases brought before the committee.

Is it possible to set up a MediaWiki with read/write access limited just
to arbitrators, so that we can deliberate in Wiki form?

If so, could someone who has permission and knows how please set that up
right away so we can start using the private Wiki?

- Nohat


from_name: Mark Gerdes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are things getting worse?

body:
I'm no longer an active participant on Wikipedia
though I do lurk now and keep up with goings on
because the project is fascinating and worthy.  So
take my comment for what its worth.

You will have argument and conflict where there is no
clarity in policy.

If you have clarity in policy, there will be argument
and conflict where you do not consistently follow
policy.

For instance, you have the "inclusionist" and
"deletionist" factions and they WILL conflict until
Wikipedia makes a firm stand one way or the other.
Until then it will be a hodge-podge of deletions and
inclusions that will frustrate everyone depending on
how their fight on VfD succeeded that day.  The
conflict will not magically just go away.

You have the conflict over the word terrorism.  The
two sides WILL fight it out here, and will fight it
out in revert wars.  But those fights CANNOT be won by
either side and thus continuous combat is assured.
The combat will not just magically go away.

This is just common sense and it applies to every
conflict that occurs on Wikipedia and not just these
two examples.  If you want to end the conflict, find
out what the conflict is about, what caused it, and
then set a policy establishing what Wikipedia is and
is not and consistently enforce that policy.

That would mean losing people.  People who do not
agree with a policy will leave and then peace will
reign (or at least exist) for those who remain.

You can decide to allow survival of the fittest in the
encyclopedia wars.  That is a valid choice and is in
fact how it works now.  You can't argue with the
200,000 articles that this chaos and anarchy has
produced.  But sometimes, "the fittest" for internet
wars are not necessarily the fittest for writing
encyclopedias and many good people are driven off.
Being loud and persistent is not the same as being
good.

Does Wikipedia want to remain a utopian anarchy or
does it want to establish firm policies to reign in
conflict?  Does it want to be inclusionist or
deletionist or does it want to be all things depending
on a vote?

I don't know.  I recuse myself from making a
recommendation since I am already a loser in the
encyclopedia war and proved to MYSELF that I am
"unfit" to continue editing here.

But if you are a utopian anarchy, then stop worrying
about it and accept conflict as a good thing.

If you are concerned about conflict and edit wars and
trolls then make some firm rules and don't make
exceptions for some people and not others.

You are currently a utopian anarchy.  To be that and
complain about chaos is just plain silly folks.

__________________________________
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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: terrorism

body:
Zero wrote:

>Another problem with the word "terrorism" is that the number
>of cases that are really clear-cut and unarguable is not so
>great. The extreme cases that most people here are giving as
>examples are not really representative.

This is also true, though, regarding many useful and important words
-- in fact, most words. Language is a very complex and subtle thing.
Take for example the word "democracy." There is a simple definition
for it: a system of government in which the people rule (as opposed
to dictatorship, monarchy or anarchism, which is a social system
marked by the absence of government). In practice, though, there have
been endless debates over whether a given society is truly a
democracy. In all existing democracies, some people have more
influence than others. Does this mean that "the people" aren't really
ruling? How oligarchic does a country have to get before it no longer
qualifies to be a democracy? No one can answer that question to
everyone else's satisfaction. But does this mean that term democracy
has no meaning or value? I think it has a great deal of meaning and
value, notwithstanding the impossibility of finding examples of its
perfect implementation.

The same thing can be said even about very precisely defined
mathematical terms, such as "zero," "infinity," or "line," none of
which can be found in nature but are nevertheless indispensable.
There are no perfectly straight lines in nature, but the CONCEPT of a
straight line enables people to achieve some very close
approximations which are very useful to architects and engineers.

Getting back to the word "terrorism," personally I favor a fairly
strict definition of the term. All acts of war and violence instill
fear, but I think terrorism should be defined to mean specifically
that ASPECT of warfare in which instilling fear is the primary goal
of the warrior. This is how most military strategists use the term.
The anthrax mailings in the United States, for example, only killed a
few people, but they did billions of dollars worth of economic damage
by spreading fear and compelling the U.S. to devote extensive
resources to protecting against similar attacks in the future.

Following this definition, the 9/11 attacks would be classified as an
act of terrorism, but the bombing of Hiroshima or the firebombing of
Dresden or the U.S. invasion of Iraq would not, nor would the Nazi
holocaust against the Jews. All of those actions were considerably
more lethal than any terrorist act to date, but instilling fear was
not their PRIMARY purpose.

Of course, some people here are bound to disagree. Suit yourselves.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] wik is back

body:
Erik said:
>The easiest and most effective thing to do is for Jimbo to
>officially authorize the "three revert rule". More than three
>reverts on the same page per day and you're out for at
>least one day -- no need for either mediation or arbitration.

I very *very* strongly endorse such a policy (IMO it should be 3 reverts in the
same dispute, not just the same day).

Some talk on the issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Edit_war#Edit_and_Revert_wars_getting_out_of_hand

A vote on the issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:How_to_revert_a_page_to_an_earlier_version

So far it is 16 in favor and 5 against (Wik of course is listed as against).

I think that this is such an important rule that I understand why some would
consider putting their sysop status on the line for it.

--mav

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Sennheiser/Ed Senft

body:
No, and I don't live in Charlotte, Virginia.   (By
contributor I assume you mean Wik?)  BTW, I would not
like people to know where I live so please respect my
privacy and stop attempting to resolve my IP address.

--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
> On 02/14/04  at 08:22 AM, Edward Senft
> <edwardsenft at yahoo.com> said:
>
> [...]
>
> Hi,
>
> You recently applied to be an admin. on VfA and
> another contributor
> supplied some circumstantial evidence to suggest
> that you might be another
> user, Alexander Plank. I notice that the IP number
> you posted this message
> from resolves to Charlotte, Virginia, where Alex
> lives, which would indeed
> give added weight to such suspicions. Are you Alex
> Plank?
>
>
> V.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Arbitrators' wiki

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I recommend using boards.wikimedia.org for that purpose. Besides being
> better for discussions, phpBB also has the advantage that it supports
> creating polls.
>
> Just tell me whether you want a separate board limited to arbitrators and
> I'll set it up and assign the permissions.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

The idea for the Wiki is so that we can collaboratively work on
compiling evidence and drafting rulings, two things that I think the
wiki process are superior for than bulletin boards or mailing lists.

However, I agree that having a phpBB for discussions is a good idea. We
are already using a mailing list for most discussion, but it is proving
to be clumsy for compiling evidence and drafting rulings. In addition,
we are having problems on the mailing list, first in that there is no
central archive of the list, and second it is misconfigured so that
reply-to is set to the message sender so a lot of messages accidentally
get sent to a single member instead of the list. Please do go ahead and
set up a BB that is read/write limited to arbitrators.

Finally, are the polls on phpBB non-secret? That is, does it specify who
voted for what? If it doesn't I don't think it will be much use to the
arbitrators, as we need to know who is voting and how. As our group is
small, we haven't yet identified a need for secret ballots.

- David


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [Wikitech-l] Arbitrators' wiki

body:
On Saturday 14 February 2004 11:09 am, David Friedland wrote:
> The arbitration committee has mostly decided that there will be private
> deliberation to some extent for cases brought before the committee.

Bleh. And who is watching the watchers? I still want to see a commital to make
public _all_ arbitrator discussion. The only semi-cogent argument I have
encountered for not making the discussion public is that people would try to
influence the arbitrators. Firstly, it is still possible for people to
attempt to influence them without seeing the discussions. Secondly, if the
discussions are made public after the ruling, the argument is invalidated.

Now, is the arbitration committee going to release its discussion or not?
Within which timeframe? And why should the arbitration committee decide
whether or not they are subject to public oversight?

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


subject: [Wikitech-l] Arbitrators' wiki

body:
Ignore, sent this to the wrong list.

Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] trust metrics

body:
Again, I'm not advocating anything, I'm just thinking out loud here.

Till Westermayer wrote:
> First: I didn't understand *when* a person gives another person trust/
> distrust. Should this be related to article edits? Should one person/
> distrust give trust to another person only once (and can change from up
> to neutral or down, if they want?). Or could one person give trust
> multiple times to others? Each of these decisions will affect the
> possibility to "game".

Right.  I would say that the best answers to these questions are

1.  that a person can give 'trust' or 'distrust' (if that's the right
word!)  whenever they feel like, for whatever reason they like.
Presumably, it would often be related to article edits.

2. It's only a single point at any given time, and yes it could be
changed from 'up' to 'down' to 'abstain' whenever the person feels
like it.
>
> Second: Two possible ressource (but only in German): the German online
> democracy simulation game www.dol2day.de uses a person-based trust/
> distrust system, where between to dol2day members there can be the
> relations A trusts B, A is neutral to B, A distrusts B (and vice versa,
> of course). And then there is a minor thesis about trust and possible
> computer implementations (for multi agent systems) I wrote in 2000.
> [http://www.westermayer.de/till/uni/studienarbei_.pdf Trust in Bots].
> This is in German, too, and I don't have the time to translate it, but
> maybe it (or the resources listed in the end) is helpful for developing
> a trust management system for wikipedia for some.

It sounds like your expertise would be very helpful here.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tact, and its lack (was: Known Trolls)

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>I don't even know what this discussion is about, just the usual Ed and
>Sheldon sniping I guess, but I wanted to say that I've never felt
>bullied by either Ed or Sheldon.

Actually, in this case, I didn't fire a shot at Ed. I didn't even
respond to his message about me.

I agree that we've had more than enough sniping between me and Ed,
which is why I've declined to post photographs of him with that young
intern. He was cute, too. ;-)
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Arbitrators' wiki

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 14, 2004 at 11:09:48AM -0500, David Friedland wrote:
>
>>The arbitration committee has mostly decided that there will be private
>>deliberation to some extent for cases brought before the committee.
>>
>>Is it possible to set up a MediaWiki with read/write access limited just
>>to arbitrators, so that we can deliberate in Wiki form?
>>
>>If so, could someone who has permission and knows how please set that up
>>right away so we can start using the private Wiki?
>
>
> Setting up a cabal, aren't we ?
> Where's the "become public after certain period of time" part ?

It isn't going to happen. There are going to be private discussions
between arbitrators regardless of the policy. We all know each others'
email addresses.

We may as well make the policy reflect reality.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
When 168 got into a deletion/undeletion war by trying to delete complaints
about him, people changed their votes on my temporary desysopping poll such
that it went from 5-4 in favour to 11-2 in favour. Accordingly, I desysopped
him immediately. The poll is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Possible_misuses_of_admin_privil
eges

Can the arbitration committee or Jimbo please review 168's desysopping, and
advise whether it should be permanent? Or if not, what the term should be?

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] trust metrics

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> In eBay you can only give feedback if you are directly involved in the
> transaction.  There is no such thing as third-party feedback.

That's true.  Of course, their model was only a jumping off point for
my musings, because we have nothing directly similar to a
'transaction'.

> The eBay statistical norm for feedback ratings would appear to be in
> high 90s%.  Abstentions are not and perhaps cannot be counted.  If this
> kind of thing were implemented, I suspect that the statitical norm for
> us would be a lot lower

That might be true.  Of course, Ebay numbers show a survival bias --
people with bad numbers are wise to simply ditch the besmirched
account and start a new one.

> >We'd likely see perfect positive ratings for people like Michael
> >Hardy, who keeps his nose to the grindstone editing topics that aren't
> >controversial, and who stays out of internal politics almost
> >completely as far as I know.
> >
> People like this don't get noticed.  That's the one thing that may tend
> to keep their ratings low.

Their number of ratings might be low, but their percentage would
presumably be high.  This is actually fairly important, because right
now, we have a lot of really wonderful contributors who aren't
"famous" with the "in group" because we're all here talking to each
other while they mostly just ignore us and write.  :-)

It'd be nice to be able to find and recognize people who have, say, 7
positive ratings and no negative ratings, even though they aren't
"famous".

> eBay feedback never expires, but it is aged.  If a person has had a
> period of significant negative feedback one can see whether it is recent
> or more than a year ago.  It is also important that the person giving
> the feedback is identified.  The person receiving negative feedback then
> hs the opportunity to reply to the feedback, and perhaps give negative
> feedback in return.

Yes, I do agree with this.  Anonymous negative feedback would just
encourage bad behavior.  If you're going to say something bad about
someone, or abstain from saying something good, you (or at least your
online persona) should stand behind the remarks.

> >2.  Difficult to game -- it is NOT automated, so there's no way to
> >game the system by engaging in repetitive actions to score points.
> >
> I think that it would NEED to be automated to work.  We already track
> the number of edits that a person has made.  Perhaps the number of
> reverts that a person receives could be an automated negative.  This
> could quickly put our problem people into an overall negative rating.
> It will also have a negative effect on the people who clean up the
> messes, but at the same time it could be an incentive to them to find
> more conciliatory approaches when dealing with problems.   Those who
> perpetually revert without discussion will soon find their ratings go down.

Well, this is where we run into my opposition to automation.  *People*
can quite easily look at the history of some situation and discern
what's going on, and judge accordingly.  That's the wiki way, to trust
people to be able to make good judgments.

Automated negatives or positives just encourage certain kinds of rote
behavior or non-behavior.  If I'm penalized for reverting, and the
computer is counting reverts, then I don't revert anymore, I just
"almost revert" by reverting but changing one irrelevant word.

That's the sort of useless "game" that I think can be a real energy
waster.

> >3.  Easy for end users -- no complex system of approving or
> >disapproving of individual edits.  You can just give someone a smile
> >or a frown, as you wish, when you wish, or not.
> >
> How often?

Whenever you feel like it.  Or not.  As for the user interface, what I
had in mind was that whenever you visit a person's User page, there's
a link there to leave feedback.  Then there's a dropdown box with
"positive" and "negative" and a line where you can leave a short
comment.

> I've not had any particular problem with 172, although he can be
> confrontational, and with overall political sympathies that are closer
> to mine than Jimbo's.  I've seen a lot on the list lately about 168.
> I'm even wondering whether Jimbo said 172 when he really meant 168.

Oh, darn, yes.  I think I did make this mistake.

> Probably the biggest downside is the practical one.  Even on eBay people
> need to be constantly encouraged to leave feedback, and still often
> don't.  Implementing this will mean a lot of extra work for everybody
>
> Philosophically and theoretically I do not oppose such schemes.  My only
> reservation is that it won't work.

Maybe it wouldn't be all that much work.  Or maybe it would, I'm not
sure.

--Jimbo