from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ref tag usage

body:
On 3/19/07, stevertigo <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The problem with this is that starting a new line leaves whitespace in
> > between the text and the reference superscript link, which is not
> > normally present, and not desired.
>
> This does not appear to be the case: In display mode, text on the same
> level that doesnt have at least two returns after the line will
> concatenate.  So this
> sentence
> even though its on
> separate
> lines, in code mode will display normally.

I think you misunderstand; as with regular HTML, any number of space
characters, tabs and single returns become a single logical space.
However, a return gives a logical space in between the text and the
reference superscript.

IOW, "text.<ref>foo</ref>" gives "text.[1]" (ignoring lack of
superscripting), while

text.
<ref>foo</ref>

gives "text. [1]".  In other words, a space in between the period and
the reference number.

-Matt


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] non-revertable editors

body:
On 3/19/07, Avi <avi_wiki at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So what was the point of user:Dannyisme? I thought that was OFFICE specific and non-revertable?

Turns out that the use of a special account for OFFICE actions means
that the trolls can easily watch for controversy and make a big fuss
about it.

-Matt


list: foundation-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
What do they mean, "would cause impersonation"?

Even if it weren't against the rules, I can think of dozens of reasons
why it would be a Bad Idea as well as just plain mean.

Has this person given a reason for what they did? Perhaps, NSLE, they
thought your username was just so clever that they wanted it for
themself? ;-)

Mark

On 19/03/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The impersonator's somewhat surprising response to this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Z.E.R.O.#Sockpuppet
>
> "Sorry, I did not realize that using the same username as other people
> in other wikis would cause impersonation. I thought there was not any
> rule for using the same username until now."
>
> Angela
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andrew Garrett

subject: [Wikitech-l] E-mail password abuse

body:
>On 19/03/07, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk> wrote:
> > I have some joker who thinks its funny to hit the "E-mail password"
> > button on the log-in page for my account. They are going in via an
> > anonymous proxy.
> >
> > Any suggestions how can prevent the abuse? For example, adding a
> > 2-minute delay between its use?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ian

I swear this was previously solved by Tim Starling in 1.8...

Andrew Garrett


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  ASINs and ISBNs

body:
Hello all. This was posted back in August 2005, but sadly has not been
kept by the list archives; we have a gap of a dozen days or so, and
whilst the end of this thread survives, anything before the 21st
August is lost.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-August/thread.html

The topic in question has arisen again, and I wanted the opportunity
to quote this, so I'm forwarding it back to the list so I have a
citable source to point to. I promise I'm not just making it up... :-)

If anyone is interested, the current discussion is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Amazon
- basically, are Amazon internal catalogue IDs a useful and sensible
piece of data to give as a reference? As may be apparent I swing
towards HELL NO, but YMMV...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
Date: 10-Aug-2005 19:20
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] ASINs and ISBNs
To: andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>

Andrew Gray wrote:
> According to Google, I've now done about a quarter of the pages
> mentioning ASINs. This seemed a good time to see what people thought -
> are there any real objections to me continuing, and purging all ASINs
> from wikipedia? I can't see any problem with replacing them with
> ISBNs, but it struck me some might object to removing the unique ones.

I think ASINs are very very very very bad things, and that you are doing
wonderful wonderful work in purging them from Wikipedia completely.

--Jimbo

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


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] User space needs to be more clearly marked

body:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:16:40 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>The problem is that it's no longer safe to draft an article in article
>space, unless you like getting CSD A7 mid-drafting.

Disagree.  You just have to make it clear right from the outset that
the subject is important - or at least include some sources.

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


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] moderator extension

body: extensions/StableVersion


from_name: James Farrar

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool - how to prepare for the onslaught

body:
On 19/03/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > Based on my experience in previous years, I have no doubt April 1 will bring
> > out a lot of pranksters.
> > We had a lot of mess before. Are there any preparations to keep things under
> > control this year?
> > If not, we should organize something ASAP.
> >
> You could get a two-fer by announcing that WP is now "completed" and
> that therefore no further editing is necessary, then protect (or
> semi-protect?) all pages for the 48 hours necessary to catch all timezones.
>
> :-)

I like it :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re:  E-mail password abuse

body:
Ian Tresman wrote:
> If a throttle is implemented, anyone know from what version? I'm
> stuck on 1.6.. because I don't have PHP 5.
>
> And yes, the anonymous proxy was using random IP addresses.
>
> Regards,
> Ian

I thought you were talking about wikipedia. mediawiki-l is the
appropiate list then.
This was brought on this [1] thread.
Was bug 5370 [2], fixed on r14200 [3]
Apply patches [4] & [5] I see $wgRateLimits is defined on 1.6 so it will
probably work "as is".

1-http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2006-October/027103.html
2-http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5370
3-http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki?view=rev&revision=14200
4-http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialUserlogin.php?r1=14200&r2=14199&view=patch&pathrev=14200
5-http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/DefaultSettings.php?r1=14200&r2=14199&view=patch&pathrev=14200


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Based on my experience in previous years, I have no doubt April 1 will bring
out a lot of pranksters.
We had a lot of mess before. Are there any preparations to keep things under
control this year?
If not, we should organize something ASAP.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Links: a philosophical problem

body:
If there's another source with the same info, we can cite that, but failing
that, I agree with the other posters.
If there's no better source, citing Amazon is perfectly acceptable.

On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/19/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > So: should we link to a retailer's sales page as a reference for
> > (trivial?) information?  Does the presence of a "buy now" link in and
> > of itself introduce a problem for the project?
>
> Absolutely, if it's the most reliable source readily available, and
> IMO it doesn't introduce a problem for the project.  Quite frequently
> sources for commercial products will be commercial sites; most
> software and many other products can be purchased from their
> producer's sites, for instance.
>
> If one is going to cite a commercial website for such trivial but
> likely non-controversial information, and it can't be obtained
> directly "from the horse's mouth", Amazon is possibly one of the most
> reputable commercial sites for that info.
>
> I'd also say that a worse-quality non-commercial source is not
> necessarily preferable.  Given equal quality, I'd prefer the
> non-commercial source.
>
> -Matt
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ganfyd - an online medical encyclopedia

body:
Wasn't Wikipedia trademarked? Anyway, technically wikipedias is the correct
term to use as all the different language versions are different projects
right now.

Mgm

On 3/19/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> G'day folks
>
> Nature has apparently published an article about Ganfyd which is an online
> textbook of medicine only edited by doctors. I was alerted by a blog post
> by
> the medical library of the University of Utah. It is also interesting that
> wikipedias is used as a plural which may be an indication that wikipedia
> is
> becoming a word for an online editable encyclopedia.
>
> The post reads:
>
> Read the following article about wikipedias, especially about a new
> medical
> wikipedia, Gandfyd http://www.ganfyd.org/. Only registered medical
> practitioners are allowed to edit Ganddyd. In it's "about us" section, it
> states "Simply put this is an evolving textbook of medicine."
> http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v13/n3/pdf/nm0307-231.pdf
> "WikiMedia" *NATURE MEDICINE *VOLUME 13 | NUMBER 3 | MARCH 2007
> "Ganfyd, short for 'get a note from your doctor,' accepts contributions
> only
> from people with medical credentials. More than 300 doctors have already
> written some 3,000 articles for Ganfyd."
>
> Regards to all.
>
> Keith Old
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:38:14 +0100, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>If there's another source with the same info, we can cite that, but failing
>that, I agree with the other posters.
>If there's no better source, citing Amazon is perfectly acceptable.

Turns out that there are three other sources... with *different* info.
Amazon disagrees with all other sources.  Rather dents the credibility
of Amazon sales pages as a source, in my view.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  ASINs and ISBNs

body:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:06:36 +0000, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
wrote:

>If anyone is interested, the current discussion is at
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Amazon
>- basically, are Amazon internal catalogue IDs a useful and sensible
>piece of data to give as a reference? As may be apparent I swing
>towards HELL NO, but YMMV...

+1 for HELL NO, especially since in the specific example cited Amazon
turned out to be *wrong* (see above).

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


body:
Maybe I'm just being ignorant, but isn't the large title
"User:ExampleUsername/Paris" a BIG hint it's not actually an article? I'd
like to know from the original poster how his girlfriend's sister determined
the information was 'good'.

Mgm

On 3/19/07, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This whole discussion is why I'm particularly fond of the {{Userpage}}
> template... perhaps it should be applied automatically at the top of
> user-space?
>
> Philippe
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Wagner
> To: English Wikipedia
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 4:09 PM
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User space needs to be more clearly marked
>
>
> On 3/18/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Umm, what skin are you using, in the defaul skin (monobook) Article
> space is
> > a white background, everything else is light blue last I checked.
>
> Thanks for pointing that out - I never noticed before, because on an
> LCD monitor, the two colors are almost indistinguishable.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 3/19/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Anybody

Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anybody can edit but anybody never has.


list: commons-l

from_name: peter green

subject: [Commons-l] Making a home wiki field in user login

body:
> Just a try, but what do you think about this:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
better than nothing but users can still ignore it and go straight to the upload button.


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/19/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wasn't Wikipedia trademarked?

yes and if that is how they described themselves there would be a problem.

They also have one of the strangest lisences I've run across:

http://www.ganfyd.org/deeds/commons.html

--
geni


body:
> > Yeah I couldn't work out a way of distinguishing between a
> > non-existent user, and a user who has never done anything.
> >
> > Steve
>
> Like this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Anybody
>
> --
> geni

Actually, that won't do anything because if the account was created from
another account it won't show up in the new account log for that user.
You need to go to their user page.  If there's a "User contributions" link
the user exists, otherwise the user does not.
--Mets501


body:
On 19/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think my point still stands - the subtle background color difference
> > between namespaces in Wikipedia's monobook skin is functionally
> > meaningless for anyone except those quite familiar with our site.
>
> Hell, it's functionally meaningless to *me*. I sure didn't notice.
>
> In fact, if you'd asked me what colour the background of Wikipedia is,
> I probably would have said "oh, a very pale light blue". Now that I go
> and look, yes, I see there is a difference, but it's ridiculously
> subtle. #F8FCFF - a grand total of 3% less red and 1% less green than
> pure white.
>
> Eep.

I see no difference on my laptop, even looking for it.


from_name: Ian Tresman

references:
<200703191147.l2JBlYqi029026@host.onnethosting.com>
	<OF520D0AA7.6149F6BF-ONC12572A3.00452A92-C12572A3.00455A65@compass.css.ch>
	<etmktk$a7d$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<200703191853.l2JIrGmB021437@host.onnethosting.com>
	<etmv4m$js2$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
>This was brought on this [1] thread.
>Was bug 5370 [2], fixed on r14200 [3]
>Apply patches [4] & [5] I see $wgRateLimits is defined on 1.6 so it will
>probably work "as is".
>
>1-http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2006-October/027103.html
>2-http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5370
>3-http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki?view=rev&revision=14200
>4-http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialUserlogin.php?r1=14200&r2=14199&view=patch&pathrev=14200
>5-http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/DefaultSettings.php?r1=14200&r2=14199&view=patch&pathrev=14200

Thanks for that.  My MediaWiki 1.6.8 does not appear to have [4]
above included in the code, but it looks easy to add.

$wgRateLimits is described at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:%24wgRateLimits but it appears
to be disabled by default, and I can't figure out what I should enter
for  $wgRateLimits=

I tried the following, but I didn't understand the description:

$wgRateLimits= array(
         'mailpassword' => array(
         'user'   => null,
         'newbie' => null,
         'ip'     => array (1, 60), //Max 4 hits in 60 seconds
         'subnet' => array (1, 60),
     ),
)

Regards,
Ian


from_name: Bennett Haselton

subject: [WikiEN-l] purpose served by anonymity / unmoderated edits

body:
At 05:32 PM 3/20/2007 +1100, Steve Bennett wrote:
>On 3/20/07, Bennett Haselton <bennett at peacefire.org> wrote:
> > balance, independently of which system is actually better -- such as,
> > Wikipedia having gotten there first, or having more users.)
>
>Why do you think Wikipedia has more users? I know that's kind of a
>cheap shot, but it's true: unfettered ability to edit and publish is a
>major drawcard for people wanting to contribute. And, of course,
>vandals.

Well Citizendium also builds up articles by having them go through an
initial growth period, before they are "approved" and signed off on by
editors, and any future changes also have to be approved by editors.

If the difference were only due to the fun of real-time editing, then there
would be just as many Citizendium users participating in the
real-time-editing process during the growth period of an article, as there
are on Wikipedia.  I think it's safe to say that Wikipedia's first-mover
advantage and name recognition is the main reason this is not the case :)

>Your idea is interesting, and I agree with your "more bang for your
>buck" theory: 100 hours of community-provided work followed by 20
>minutes of expert work could easily double or triple the value of the
>work provided by the community. However:
>- Where would we find experts?

Well, the same place you find them now.  It seems there are enough experts
motivated by fun, altruism, etc. to put together pretty high-quality
articles on things like Biology.  It seems likely that some of them would
make the comparably tiny extra effort just to read what's already there and
say "Yep, that's true" if they knew it would make the article many times
more useful.

>- Who would want to verify our really boring articles, lists, etc...
>- Would an expert really "stake their reputation" on an article?
>What's in it for them?

The answer to both questions is the same, I think, except that in the first
case the person approving the article wouldn't have to be an
expert.  There's the same fun/altruism motive that motivates people to
contribute in the first place, and then there's also the name-up-in-lights
factor of being the person who approved *the* Physics article in Wikipedia,
for example.

I've actually argued that Citizendium should go even further with the
name-up-in-lights factor by giving the approving editor(s) name recognition
right at the top of the article, with individual contributors listed in the
"end credits" (at the bottom, or on another page if the credits run too
long).  This may become an "ego thing" for the editors, but to the extent
that the "ego thing" motivates them to make sure the article content is
good, that would serve the interests of the project.  Some people think
that kind of thing detracts from the "spirit" of the project, but I think
such choices have to be judged on how much they serve the project's goals,
and if it results in better content, then it would be a good thing.

If the person's name is not right there on the article (even if it can be
looked up in the history), then the reward associated with signing off on
it, decreases.  However, if their name is not on the article, then the
*risk* associated with signing off on the article also decreases.  So in
either case there is a reward associated with the risk.

For having your name on an article, does the reward outweigh the risk?  It
would seem that many people believe the answer is overwhelmingly yes, given
the amount of stuff people write and almost always sign with their own
name.

>- Can we really present this in a useful way to the public? "This
>article is unverified. However, 3 months and 280 revisions ago, an
>expert from a university you've never heard of verified it as
>accurate." Um...

In the Citizendium model, once an article is approved, that's the version
that people see by default, and the next one in the pipeline only replaces
the current version after the assigned editor has signed off on that too.

         -Bennett


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Wikitech-l] Live mirroring from Portuguese Wikipedia again

body:
*
http://www.tiosam.com/enciclopedia/enciclopedia.asp?title=Especial:Recentchanges>
Yeah, he missed the public and private talk >(

* http://www.ebaita.com/enciclopedia.asp,title,Especial:Recentchanges > Same
guy!

* http://www.tiosam.com/dicionario.asp?title=Especial:Recentchanges > Live
mirror from the Portuguese Wiktionary *new*

* http://www.ebaita.com/dicionario.asp,title,Especial:Recentchanges > Also
the Portuguese Wiktionary *new*

* http://www.contestado.com.br/wiki/Especial:Recentchanges > I don't remeber
if this has been blocked in my last report

* http://www.gigabusca.com.br/wiki/Especial:Recentchanges.html > A *new*
live mirror


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-20

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20562).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  17 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: ASINs and ISBNs

body:
On 20/03/07, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:

> -1 for HELL NO.
>
> There are many cases where the amazon (.com, .co.uk, .de and .fr are
> different) contain metadata that simply is not available in other
> accessible catalogs.  [[James Hanratty]] has an example.  People
> understandably get a bit stroppy when you try to remove these amazon
> links unless you can find a better catalogue to use for verification.

But the thing is... why not just say

Jean Justice. "Le Crime de la Route A6". Laffont, 1968.

Not everything has to have a weblink next to it... why does it need to
be "verified"? All that does is confirm the purported source exists;
it doesn't actually give us any help in confirming the content of the
source.

If you want better metadata than the fragment on the Amazon site, you
can get it out of the BNF catalogue easily enough - it took me, with
my patchy French, two minutes to find...

Jean Justice. Le Crime de la route A6 [Texte imprim?][?Murder versus
murder?]. Traduction et pr?sentation de Claude Mourth?. - Paris : R.
Laffont, 1968. - In-16 (20 cm), 343 p., carte, pl., couv. ill. 19,50
F. [D. L. 2867-68].

...but you can't give it a fixed URL, so I guess it may as well not
exist. Catalogue number is FRBNF33059758 ;-)

> In the mean time, we can vet the use of amazon links to see if they can
> be replaced with links to international catalogue numbers that are
> built to be more stable, _where possible_.  It wont take long; a team

I think the problem here, to my eyes - and speaking as a librarian -
is that *there is no reason to insist on catalogue numbers*. They're
icing on the cake; they are not needed to find a work, and never have
been. Trying to insist on keeping one which has active *defects* when
we can simply lift the bib data to cite the work conventionally just
seems to be futile...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: ASINs and ISBNs

body:
On 20/03/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you want better metadata than the fragment on the Amazon site, you
> can get it out of the BNF catalogue easily enough - it took me, with
> my patchy French, two minutes to find...
>
> Jean Justice. Le Crime de la route A6 [Texte imprim?][?Murder versus
> murder?]. Traduction et pr?sentation de Claude Mourth?. - Paris : R.
> Laffont, 1968. - In-16 (20 cm), 343 p., carte, pl., couv. ill. 19,50
> F. [D. L. 2867-68].
>
> ...but you can't give it a fixed URL, so I guess it may as well not
> exist. Catalogue number is FRBNF33059758 ;-)

Also, I feel the need to make a slightly odd objection here - why are
we citing an English work *and* citing its French translation? Does
the latter contain more information?

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


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ref tag usage

body:
On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you misunderstand; as with regular HTML, any number of space
> characters, tabs and single returns become a single logical space.
> However, a return gives a logical space in between the text and the
> reference superscript.
>
> IOW, "text.<ref>foo</ref>" gives "text.[1]" (ignoring lack of
> superscripting), while
>
> text.
> <ref>foo</ref>
>
> gives "text. [1]".  In other words, a space in between the period and
> the reference number.

I see. Is that a major concern for you?

-Stevertigo


body:
At 08:26 AM 3/20/2007 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>On 3/20/07, Bennett Haselton <bennett at peacefire.org> wrote:
> > for Citizendium vs. Wikipedia and how they pertain to the Essjay
> > controversy.  It's not so much about Essjay as about the more general
> > merits of anonymous / unmoderated edits, versus identity verification
> and
> > change moderation, and how Essjay illustrated a flaw in one approach.
>
>Isn't a credentialist approach much more vulnerable to Essjay style
>credential fraud? He may have faked his bio, but according to
>Wikipedia policy, it was not relevant.

Exactly; that's why Citizendium does plan to verify credentials.  The
easiest way to do this is that if someone claims to be a professor, you can
verify their .edu e-mail address, and make sure that their e-mail address
actually identifies them as faculty (either because their e-mail address is
linked from a faculty Web page, or because it says faculty.schoolname.edu
in the domain for example).

Remember, to give an article credibility, you only have to verify the
credentials of the editors who signed off on the article and vouched for
its accuracy, not the credentials of every person who contributed.  (Well,
at least, I think so.  Some people might think that it matters *how* the
article was written, whether by credentialed people or not.  I think that
only the finished result matters, and it's the finished result that is
signed off on by the editors.)

         -Bennett


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

body:
Steve Bennett schreef:
> On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think my point still stands - the subtle background color difference
> > between namespaces in Wikipedia's monobook skin is functionally
> > meaningless for anyone except those quite familiar with our site.
>
> Hell, it's functionally meaningless to *me*. I sure didn't notice.

I think, but am not sure, that I have noticed it.

The German wikipedia also has a blue background for non-main namespaces,
but it is a bit darker, and noticable; but not enough that people who
are not familiar with wikipedia will know they are outside the
encyclopedia proper.

The French and Dutch wikipedias have an even more noticable yellow
background. Enough to make someone wonder why the page is different from
other pages.

It's worth checking out the interwiki links on [[Wikipedia:Village
pump]] to look for alternative colour schemes.

Eugene


body:
At 03:06 PM 3/20/2007 +0800, John Lee wrote:
>On 3/20/07, Bennett Haselton <bennett at peacefire.org> wrote:
> >
> > >- Can we really present this in a useful way to the public? "This
> > >article is unverified. However, 3 months and 280 revisions ago, an
> > >expert from a university you've never heard of verified it as
> > >accurate." Um...
> >
> > In the Citizendium model, once an article is approved, that's the
> version
> > that people see by default, and the next one in the pipeline only
> replaces
> > the current version after the assigned editor has signed off on that
> too.
>
>
>This strikes me as a major disincentive to have articles verified, since
>then it would mean all future edits have to go through an expert who may
>or
>may not be free to review the edits on a timely basis.

You could have a group of editors designated as potential approvers for an
article on a given subject; then the changes can just be approved or
rejected by the first one who has time to de-queue them.

Actually I don't think that each new edit is reviewed one-at-a-time by the
editors.  Once an article has been approved, then it's the usual editing
free-for-all for the next draft of the article, but that draft is only
visible to people who go looking for it, so the incentive to vandalize it
is limited, and nobody has yet staked their professional credentials on
it.  Then once that's ready to go live, the editor(s) sign off on it.

         -Bennett


body:
On 3/20/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having a
> single search box that searches both the encyclopaedia and the project
> is also wrong, imho.

Unless you know they names of namespaceds you are unlikely to find
your way out of the article namespace useing that.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requesting assistance re user:Bastique

body:
On 3/20/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/15/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am truly puzzled that there is no further reaction to the issue that I
> > brought up with my earlier post. Have we really come to the point where
> > where have a de-facto class of editors who are un-revertable, where
> > reverting them is seen to be an offense, regardless of the merits of the
> > case?
>
> Worst case scenario: We have a class of editors who are un-revertable,
> consisting of Jimbo and Danny and no one else.

Nope there are quite a few foundation bods who have a claim to this.

It's when some of the committee people started to try and claim that
power that it got anoying.
--
geni


body:
On 3/20/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you referring here to the sitenotice?

No.

An old argument over [[MediaWiki:Blockiptext]]. It doesn't matter any more.

Just wanting to clariffy it is more than Jimbo and Danny.

At the present time the accepted convention appears to be:

Board members
Foundation employees
and in certian areas developers.

--
geni


body:
On 3/20/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah I couldn't work out a way of distinguishing between a
> non-existent user, and a user who has never done anything.
>
> Steve

Like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Anybody

--
geni


from_name: Aphaia

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cary Bass (Bastique) hired as Volunteer
	Coordinator

body:
On 3/19/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Dear community,
>
> I would like to announce officially that the Wikimedia Foundation has
> decided to hire Cary Bass (User:Bastique on various wikis, most active
> on Commons) as Volunteer Coordinator. He will work full-time in the
> Wikimedia Foundation office in St. Petersburg, Florida.
>
> Please see
>
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/028066.html

Congrats, Cary!

For translators, see also http://wikimediafoundation.org and help
updating your language news section (Template:news-xx/2007-03). I
expect Effeietsanders already update the meta translation platform too
...
Thanks all :)

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


from_name: Keith Old

body:
G'day folks

Nature has apparently published an article about Ganfyd which is an online
textbook of medicine only edited by doctors. I was alerted by a blog post by
the medical library of the University of Utah. It is also interesting that
wikipedias is used as a plural which may be an indication that wikipedia is
becoming a word for an online editable encyclopedia.

The post reads:

Read the following article about wikipedias, especially about a new medical
wikipedia, Gandfyd http://www.ganfyd.org/. Only registered medical
practitioners are allowed to edit Ganddyd. In it's "about us" section, it
states "Simply put this is an evolving textbook of medicine."
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v13/n3/pdf/nm0307-231.pdf
"WikiMedia" *NATURE MEDICINE *VOLUME 13 | NUMBER 3 | MARCH 2007
"Ganfyd, short for 'get a note from your doctor,' accepts contributions only
from people with medical credentials. More than 300 doctors have already
written some 3,000 articles for Ganfyd."

Regards to all.

Keith Old


from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] What a sock puppet looks like to an amateur

body:
I'm guessing there's more than one or two socks in this loop, Sue being
simply the latest. Another account which she interacts with frequently had
an interesting first edit, she edited her monobook as the first edit of her
newly opened account.  Going all these interesting places on Wikipedia is
one thing, but opening an account and editing your monobook as your first
edit, that''s really special.

The Sue sock has good taste as she's now copying my user page because, she
says, it is so cool--which might be flattering under other circumstances.

KP

On 3/18/07, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Actually, I was more wondering if Sue was a sock of Chahax, as their
> sudden
> crossing of paths seemed rather curious too.
>
> Risker
>
>
> On 3/18/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > (sorry if I duplicate this post)
> >
> >
> > Sometimes I wonder though when I find an editor who seems just like
> > another
> > editor.   Funny, how these two appear to have almost cloned each other's
> > users pages.
> >
> >
> >
> > See, *this* is what I call a sock-puppet:
> >
> >
> >
> > A quote from User:Nesbit/User:Sue Rangell
> >
> >
> >
> > Why I do Wikipedia
> >
> >
> >
> > Wikipedia is an excellent example of how knowledge can be socially
> > constructed. The editing and discussion tools constitute a collaborative
>
> > knowledge building environment that stands as an alternative model to
> > threaded asynchronous conferences, collaborative annotation systems,
> > blogs,
> > and software development systems.
> >
> >
> >
> > They also are both have a discrete number (less than twelve) of right
> > justified, paragraph spaced rather than continually stacked,  user boxes
> > identifying both as native speakers of English, left handed, skeptical
> of
> > MBTL (whatever that is), users of Mozilla firefox browsers, they both
> > program in Pascal and HTML, and they both may, one day, become
> > self-proclaimed professional procastinators.
> >
> >
> > As for professional interests, they both have the exact same list:
> >
> >
> >
> > My professional interests on Wikipedia include:
> >
> > Cognitive psychology
> >
> > Concept mapping
> >
> > Knowledge representation
> >
> > ?
> >
> > Music Synthesizers
> >
> > Jazz
> >
> > Computer programming
> >
> >
> >
> > *Interesting enough, in light of the Essjay scandal, they both claim to
> be
> > professors or educators at universities*, one a woman in the department
> of
> > education at DeMoines University (sic), the other a man at a university
> in
> > Canada.  Only the man links to his faculty page, whereas I assume the
> > spelling might be an issue with the woman's link--is there really a
> > DeMoines
> > University?
> >
> >
> >
> > I've run across a handful of pairs like this on Wikipedia, both active
> > editors, just like these two--Nesbit just editing a few days ago, Sue
> > posting a poorly written snowball of an article to FAC today.  They seem
> > more like socks, to me, than the random rantors that pop up on this list
>
> > every once in a while. They come up in unusual situations, like GA
> > nominations, FAC.  Sue Rangell's nomination for FAC was such a poorly
> > written article, ridiculously made into a series of lists, that I
> wondered
> > what else she had done.  Not much considering she only made her user
> page
> > and first edit a week ago, but has already been giving away barnstars
> like
> > crazy and getting awards, too.
> >
> >
> >
> > I suppose there is some obvious explanation for this, so I'll just ask
> > User:Nesbit if User:Sue Rangell is his sock puppet.  But like last time
> I
> > asked this, I just got a denial, although the editor in question did
> stop
> > supporting him/herself on GA nominations.
> >
> >
> >
> > Am I missing something?  I suppose if the socks are not misbehaving it's
> > not
> > an issue, so maybe that's why administrators are not commenting upon
> > these.
> >
> >
> >
> > But check user?  Similar whiney rants on this list?  It's not like
> whining
> > requires finese and originality, especially when angry.
> >
> >
> >
> > KP
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 3/20/07, Bennett Haselton <bennett at peacefire.org> wrote:
> for Citizendium vs. Wikipedia and how they pertain to the Essjay
> controversy.  It's not so much about Essjay as about the more general
> merits of anonymous / unmoderated edits, versus identity verification and
> change moderation, and how Essjay illustrated a flaw in one approach.

Isn't a credentialist approach much more vulnerable to Essjay style
credential fraud? He may have faked his bio, but according to
Wikipedia policy, it was not relevant.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


body:
On 3/19/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Based on my experience in previous years, I have no doubt April 1 will bring
> out a lot of pranksters.
> We had a lot of mess before. Are there any preparations to keep things under
> control this year?
> If not, we should organize something ASAP.

Just make April 1 of every year Spring Cleanup day and be done with it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Naconkantari/cleanup

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 20/03/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Anybody
>
> Actually, that won't do anything because if the account was created from
> another account it won't show up in the new account log for that user.

I don't know what "created from another account" means, but no log
entry is very simple - created before late 2005, when the log was put
in place.

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


from_name: Keitei

body:
On Mar 19, 2007, at 20:17, Steve Bennett wrote:
> It's much more noticeable. However, I see that the downside of
> tweaking the background colour is that it interferes with images.
> Mostly a problem for the Image: namespace, and pages like WP:FPC.

At Uncyclopedia where putting images in colored boxes is more common
than at Wikipedia, there's a css modification which gets rid of the
whitespace that's normally created; the site (uncyclopedia) is down
right now, but I'm sure it'd be small fries to implement at Wikipedia
if we were to change the background color.

--keitei


from_name: Angela

body:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Anybody
> Actually, that won't do anything because if the account was created from
> another account it won't show up in the new account log for that user.

That also won't work for accounts made before the user creation log
was invented. The way to tell is to look at their contributions list.

If the user page link is red or blue, they exist. It if it gray, they do not.

Compare these two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Anybodyx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Anybody

Angela


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> I can recall on several occasions starting a quick stub article on
>> something based off of general information I already knew and then later
>> on came back with more detailed information and sources after I'd
>> researched a little. I guess I've just been lucky so far that CSD
>> fundamentalists haven't caught me at it.
>
> What's the point of that? It would be better to wait until you've
> found the sources before you start writing, otherwise you may be
> adding incorrect information.

Maybe for you, but my approach works just fine for me thanks. I find it
convenient to have an existing structure on which to hang new
information. If some of the information I thought I knew turns out to be
incorrect I can fix it later, and I'll also know at that point that
perhaps I should mention that it's a common misconception.

If the end result is still the same article, what's the problem? You
write articles however you like and I'll write them however I like.

> Citing sources should be easy because they should be the actual source
> of the information, which you will already know since it's whatever
> you just finished reading.

As I said, in some cases (usually where I already know a lot about the
subject) I start the stub _before_ I go reading stuff. So that would be
impossible.


from_name: Florian Straub

body:
"peter green" <plugwash at P10Link.net> wrote

> > Just a try, but what do you think about this:
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
> better than nothing but users can still ignore it and go straight to the
> upload button.

I don't know how many registered since we changed it, but two new users already use it :)

Regards,

Flo
--
"Feel free" - 5 GB Mailbox, 50 FreeSMS/Monat ...
Jetzt GMX ProMail testen: www.gmx.net/de/go/mailfooter/promail-out


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> As I said, in some cases (usually where I already know a lot about the
>> subject) I start the stub _before_ I go reading stuff. So that would be
>> impossible.
>
> That's exactly what people are meant to be not doing. You shouldn't be
> writing based on your own knowledge, you should be writing based on
> reliable sources. What's the points of writing from your own knowledge
> if you have to go and check a reliable source anyway? Just check the
> source first...

I've already explained what the point is, sometimes I find it convenient
to throw down a framework before I start digging into sources. If I'm
"not supposed to do it" and yet it still results in good articles being
written, perhaps there's something wrong with having a rule against it
(assuming we actually do)? And I certainly have no intention of changing
my approach just because you personally don't prefer to do it that way.


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary
sources is OR.  The section is question was drawn in part from primary
sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).  In
reference to this, Jimbo said:

"I removed the section about the lawsuit as being (quite blatantly) original
research of the sort that Wikipedia must avoid. This is actually an
excellent example of what is wrong with original research in Wikipedia -- by
drawing selectively on sources, the section gave an impression that is
significantly at odds with the views of relevant parties to the dispute, so
that WP:NPOV was badly violated."

The assertion that NPOV is violated because the "other side" was not given
(the other side saying "this is false" on the article talkpage) may have
some merit (I'm not convinced, but that isn't the issue here)

This is very different from what WP:ATT says about original research:

* introduces a theory, method of solution, or any other original idea;
* defines or introduces new terms (neologisms), or provides new definitions
of existing terms
* introduces an argument without citing a reliable source who has made that
argument in relation to the topic of the article; or
* introduces an analysis, synthesis, explanation or interpretation of
published facts, opinions, or arguments that advances a point that cannot be
attributed to a reliable source who has published the material in relation
to the topic of the article.

Jimbo is making the assertion that using primary source documents, like
legal rulings, is ALSO original research, despite the fact that common
practice is Wikipedia goes the opposite way.  By extension, everything that
cites original sources is OR, right?


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
>
> Scientific papers are primary sources.

I'm still trying to track down all of what Jimbo said, but my input on
this would be that extending guidelines about OR from one field to
another completely unrelated one is always a bad idea, and that
appears to be what you're doing here.

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


from_name: Deathphoenix

body:
On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Who cares about the grammer? The actual information is wrong:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Nobody
> >
> > ;)
>
> I'm going to reply to myself before anyone beats me to it:
>
> Nobody has editted Wikipedia.
>

Or, better yet:

The encyclopedia that Anybody can edit, but Nobody has.


subject: [WikiEN-l] non-revertable editors

body:
On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/19/07, Avi <avi_wiki at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > So what was the point of user:Dannyisme? I thought that was OFFICE specific and non-revertable?
>
> Turns out that the use of a special account for OFFICE actions means
> that the trolls can easily watch for controversy and make a big fuss
> about it.

Wait, Danny's normal account is actually being considered
nonrevertable due to office use now?  Since when?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>
> Guettarda wrote:
> > In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary
> > sources is OR.  The section is question was drawn in part from primary
> > sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).  In
> > reference to this, Jimbo said:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Jimbo is making the assertion that using primary source documents, like
> > legal rulings, is ALSO original research, despite the fact that common
> > practice is Wikipedia goes the opposite way.  By extension, everything
> > that
> > cites original sources is OR, right?
>
> If we're hearing "draws" as "cites," then this is an epic change and not
> for the better.  If "draws" is "I cite X, and claim it says Y," then it
> doesn't appear to be a change in anything.  I can't cite a primary source
> and then make any determination on it (draw anything from it) - I can
> merely say what it says.
>
> Some clarity might help.
>
> -Jeff

Oops, sorry, forgot the links (too busy being pissed off for being called a
POV-pusher that is holding Wikipedia hostage; second link)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christopher_Michael_Langan&diff=116513802&oldid=116432075
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChristopher_Michael_Langan&diff=116514311&oldid=116512682


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] non-revertable editors

body:
They can, but Jimbo is the boss and if the office action is approved by
Jimbo, they can make a fuss all they want, but it's not gonna help.

Mgm

On 3/20/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/19/07, Avi <avi_wiki at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > So what was the point of user:Dannyisme? I thought that was OFFICE
> specific and non-revertable?
>
> Turns out that the use of a special account for OFFICE actions means
> that the trolls can easily watch for controversy and make a big fuss
> about it.
>
> -Matt
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: odder

body:
Polish-language version done.

--
Przyszed?em po?u? gum?
i nieco poedytowa?
http://pl.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/20/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> Read the following article about wikipedias, especially about a new medical
> wikipedia,

Bizarre. Anyone seen any other usage like that?

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>Bennett Haselton wrote
>
>
>>The disadvantage of making people register under a presumed real name, much
>>less following up and trying to verify their identity and credentials, are
>>of course that you will have fewer users that way.  On the other hand, the
>>advantage is that you can give articles the stamp of reliability if it's
>>been signed off on by, say, a professor whose .edu address has been
>>verified.
>>
>>Could you get the best of both worlds by (a) allowing unverified users to
>>build up the meat of an article, but then (b) verifying the credentials of
>>certain users (Citizendium calls them "editors"), and having those users
>>sign off on the contents of a given article once it's reached a stable
>>state?  (And then future edits to that article have to go through them?)
>>
>>
>One can. One could set up one's own wiki and import any WP articles that one wanted to 'bless' into it.
>
>The WP way has been to be free-wheeling and pick up the pieces afterwards. That's obvious. Something less obvious to most people, apparently, is that _discussing WP article by article_ misses the basic point that we write hypertext, not self-enclosed essays. You don't really 'improve' a knowledge network by stabilising it.
>
This is an important point that is difficult for anyone married to a
hierarchical knowledge system to understand.  Hierarchy requires
stability to function. The "stamp of reliability" is an artifact of a
hierarchical saystem.  It ensures the survival of received wisdom, and
leaves little room for alternatives.

I've tended to look at wikis as a fractal element of a paradigm shift.

Fractal systems incorporate a lot of randomness.  Tiny new structures
keep popping up all over the place.  Most of them, like so many of our
non-notable articles are not viable.  Left alone they are eventually
resorbed into the growing system.  Very few become major growth points.
We cannot effectively apply a hierarchical system to predict which will
grow.  Order is statistically imposed.  Radioactive half-lives operate
statistically in that we know that within a given time (about) one-half
of the atoms will have decayed, but we cannot predict which ones.  Is
there any basis for thinking that it would be any different in a
knowledge network?  Belief that a hierarchy can impose its will on a
statistical reality is tantamount to belief in a form of interlligent
design where the hierarchy is substituted for God.

Major paradigm shifts are extremely rare.  The present situation which
has put into everyone's hands to means of bilateral communications is
what puts us there now.  The old hierarchies worked because the
abilities of the hieresiarchs and the masses to communicate were grossly
unequal.  As Thomas Kuhn said: "There are losses as well as gains in
scientific revolutions, and scientists tend to be peculiarly blind to
the former."  With the widening of the base of uploaders in a
collaborative knowledge system the loss of respect for established
experts is bound to suffer. The experts will just have to learn to live
with that cruel fact.  The reliability upon which those experts relied
may not be as reliable as they imagined.

I do not believe that reliability should be or even can be one of our
goals.  I also believe that teachers and professors are perfectly
justified when they criticize their students for using Wikipedia as a
reference.  I would also hope that Wikipedia becomes so reliable as to
allow them to do otherwise.  This does not mean that we should stop
striving for accuracy; it means that if we succeed too well we will have
emasculated that drive from our readers.  We want readers who are
empowered to question not only what they see in Wikipedia, but what they
encounter in real life.

Ec


body:
On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think my point still stands - the subtle background color difference
> between namespaces in Wikipedia's monobook skin is functionally
> meaningless for anyone except those quite familiar with our site.

Hell, it's functionally meaningless to *me*. I sure didn't notice.

In fact, if you'd asked me what colour the background of Wikipedia is,
I probably would have said "oh, a very pale light blue". Now that I go
and look, yes, I see there is a difference, but it's ridiculously
subtle. #F8FCFF - a grand total of 3% less red and 1% less green than
pure white.

Eep.

Steve


body:
On 3/20/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/19/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Then when you draft on userspace, unstead of..
> >
> > user:Mr_Bozo/Paris
> >
> > Name it
> >
> > user:Mr_Bozo/Article_Draft_1
>
> Follow up, Perhaps a "this article is a rough draft" tag might help as well.

Well, let's take this a bit further. Make a tag and *insist* that
people use it when creating anything that could be mistaken for
encyclopaedia content in their user page.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo's rejection of [[WP:ATT]]

body:
I would like to know the reason for the belated rejection of WP:ATT
by Jimbo. Mainly I would like to understand why did he not engage
during the last five months during which the proposal was debated, or
made any comments in this mailing list when it was raised here.

The proposal was first proposed on October 2006 and  was upgraded to
policy on February 17.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia_talk:Attribution#This_merger_is_a_really_bad_idea

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/2exosx

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ref tag usage

body:
On 3/20/07, stevertigo <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> The second suggested convention is to avoid putting refs in mid
> sentence, placing them instead at the end of complete sentences. This
> might not resonate well, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

This doesn't work well for some sentences with distinct facts coming
from distinct sources:

Although Elbonia is the world's biggest exporter of mail-order
brides[1], some analysts believe that Zamunda will overtake it in the
next three years.[2]

Writing this with the two sources at the end of the sentence is less
precise, and looks like the two sources agree with each other or are
somehow mutually redundant. Due to Wikipedia's "special needs" with
regards to referencing, I think we should be leaning towards more
precise and explicit referencing, not less.

Steve


from_name: wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Inconvenience

body:
> From: "John Lee" <johnleemk at gmail.com>

> > What's the point of that? It would be better to wait until you've
> > found the sources before you start writing...
> >
> > Citing sources should be easy because they should be the actual source
> > of the information, which you will already know since it's whatever
> > you just finished reading.
>
> This strikes me as a rather inconvenient process.

It's known as "work." Writing is work. Writing an encyclopedia is work.

> Perhaps other people work
> at things differently, but I rarely directly refer to sources when starting
> an article unless I know little about it. The only exception is when I have
> sources and am not sure what articles could use them, in which case I hunt
> through the book/whatever for things I could write about. Otherwise, when I
> want to write about something in general (especially when it's on impulse,
> normally after "what? this is a redlink?"), it's often inefficient and
> frustrating to hunt down a source.

Why is it any more "convenient" to do this in the main article space than in your own user space?

> Call me an eventualist,

I don't call this eventualism.

I call this rehearsing in front of the audience.

I call this running out into the street naked and telling the policeman "But I was just about to put my clothes on."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, SonOfYoungwood at aol.com <SonOfYoungwood at aol.com> wrote:
>
> If Wikipedia decides to ban primary source citing, here's what
> will  happen:
>
> * Numerous articles will be removed of featured, A-class, or GA  status.
> * Wikipedia's coverage and material will be significantly limited.
> * A lot of good work will be removed (ruined).
> * Numerous editors will leave Wikipedia because their chance of  writing
> featured articles, especially on popular culture and many other  subjects,
> will be
> gone. Not to mention the fact that their hard work is  being removed.
>
> Plus, stating the facts of primary sources - like citing a script example
> that Darth Vader is killed at the end of Return of the Jedi, or citing an
> interview with a developer when stating that he was influenced by Japanese
> paintings - are not the same as OR.

At WP:ATT he has said the the issue was not the use of primary sources, but
the generation of novel conclusions based on the sources.  Of course, that
totally contradicts his original posting, where he says that the material
should not be reintroduced unless it is supported by secondary sources.  In
addition, as far as I can tell, the material fairly reflects the sources in
the article, and no attempt was made to explain how it is that the material
did not.

So now it would appear that OR has not been redefined, except where it has.
It's ok to use primary sources, but information supported by primary sources
cannot be reinserted into an article unless it is supported by secodnary
sources?  Maybe that's what's being said?  Who knows.  But be careful,
because if you do use primary sources, Jimbo may call you a POV-pusher
holding Wikipedia hostage.


body:
On Mar 20, 2007, at 10:48 AM, Slim Virgin wrote:

> The merge was popular, smooth, there were no changes to policy, and
> ATT has quickly become a widely used page, so I'm assuming this was a
> misunderstanding that will be sorted out soon enough.

I am not so sure, SlimVirgin.

This is what he writes. He calls ATT a "monumentally bad idea". What
needs to be clarified is that the distintions between V, RS and OR
not only have been maintained in WP:ATT, but their formulation
synchronized with one another as well.

-- Jossi

<snip>
I take virtually no position on the details of WP:ATT. I think that
it probably was a more or less accurate merger of the three separate
policies. But merging three separate policies into one, even when
that change is not intended to make any actual policy change, is not
trivial and in this particular a monumentally bad idea. All over the
site are hundreds or thousands of links to these policy pages, and
the meaning of referring someone to WP:V versus WP:RS versus WP:NOR
are overwhelmingly important to a coherent understanding of the
arguments people are making. We must not merge these separate
concepts, or we have no means of distinguishing them. Not everything
is the same thing.--Jimbo Wales 15:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
</snip>


body:
On 3/20/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> The WP way has been to be free-wheeling and pick up the pieces afterwards.
> That's obvious. Something less obvious to most people, apparently, is that _discussing
> WP article by article_ misses the basic point that we write hypertext, not self-enclosed
> essays. You don't really 'improve' a knowledge network by stabilising it. I hear almost
> nothing from this angle.

The value to end users of a knowledge network is a combination of the
value of each piece on a standalone basis, and of the network
interlink count and quality and quality of the linked information.
Article quality shows up in both terms.

Different users will have different use patterns - some will come in
via Google or another external search, or a very direct Wikipedia
search, to a single article, and then be done or leave.  Others will
spend all day hopping around wikilinks expanding their horizons.

We mean too many things by quality.  Among other things, we don't
really have a quantatative description for the overall value of
Wikipedia, to be able to look at usage patterns and say "Oh, we need
more links over here" or "This section of Wikipedia is mostly accessed
one article at a time, we need to encourage article quality growth on
a standalone basis".

I think that we have widespread agreement on long-term direction, but
we're essentially random-walking all the individual components vaguely
in that direction.

Based on articles I pay attention to, I would have to say that
vandalism and spamming are more of a problem than "bad edits".  I see
a very few good intentioned edits that I want to edit back in a weeks'
time.  I see several hundred vandalisms.  Stable versions would
clearly help with vandalism problems.  It would remove incentive for
people to do it, and would make managing that which did happen much
easier.  I am guessing that some form of vandalism fighting takes up
between a quarter and a half of all senior user time, including admins
and arbitrators and staff.  How much worth do we get from getting all
that time back for other useful pursuits within the project?

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


body:
John Lee wrote:

>Yes, I was just about to sugges a similar system myself. An ongoing fork is
>a much better solution than making the approved version the sole public one.
>Speaking from personal experience as a webmaster, simply making users take
>one more step to edit an article (i.e. clicking on "view draft article",
>instead of being able to go direct to editing) can drastically reduce (I'd
>say halve wouldn't be unreasonable) the number of users who take the desired
>action.
>
Probably so.  While I still support the idea of an approved version that
counterracts the most egregious silliness, I would prefer something far
more sophisticated that takes into account a number of factors in
evaluating an article.  The result could be a single number (or block of
numbers that measure different criteria).  It would be a statistical
accumulation of individual ratings applied by many people, and would
need to take into account subsequent unreviewed edits.  It would need to
be sufficiently robust to not be derailed by the eccentric opinions of a
single user.

Since I do not have the programming skills to implement this I can only
dream. :-(

>And speaking from experience as an editor, a lot of my edits are "impulse"
>ones made when I see an obviously erroneous statement or wrong formatting or
>spelling error, or when I see something obvious I can quickly add to an
>article. I'm sure a lot of other edits, especially those by anons, are made
>this way. If I had to take one extra step to view the latest version of an
>article (which I'm sure would be the only editable one), as I'm sure all
>anons would be forced to under the proposed Citizendium-ish idea, my number
>of impulse edits would probably be zero.
>
Absolutely.  I'm sure we've all made minor corrections to articles we
would not otherwise edit.  That is an important element in the dynamism
of the site.  It becomes frustrating when the error is buried in a
protected template.  Sure we can always bring it to the attention of an
admin, but who wants to enter into complicated discussions and
explanations just to have a single letter changed in a spelling error.
We can't both use the mantra "sofixit", and make that fix inordinately
complicated or even impossible.

Ec


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Messages message

body:
To any and all,

I don't know who else to ask about this so I thought I'd ask here. For the
last several days I have been getting a "You have new messages" indicator,
but when I click on it, and go to my Talk Page, there are no new messages
listed. Am I somehow missing them? Is anyone else experiencing this, and
what could be the problem?

Help!

Marc Riddell


body:
On 3/20/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Turns out that there are three other sources... with *different* info.
> Amazon disagrees with all other sources.  Rather dents the credibility
> of Amazon sales pages as a source, in my view.

Do the other sources agree with each other? From a research point of
view, it's probably best to cite all 4 of them, unless any can clearly
be dismissed. It's much stronger to say "three autoritative sources
say that X, although Amazon claims that...".

Steve


from_name: John Vandenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: ASINs and ISBNs

references:
<f3fedb0d0508081341593ed53c@mail.gmail.com>
	<42FA536A.8020200@wikia.com>
	<f3fedb0d0703191506k688d2317yabdd4d5da8014fce@mail.gmail.com>
	<sc4uv21qhd4hjtelkoku6qkpvurb4368j8@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/20/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:06:36 +0000, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >If anyone is interested, the current discussion is at
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Amazon
> >- basically, are Amazon internal catalogue IDs a useful and sensible
> >piece of data to give as a reference? As may be apparent I swing
> >towards HELL NO, but YMMV...
>
> +1 for HELL NO, especially since in the specific example cited Amazon
> turned out to be *wrong* (see above).

-1 for HELL NO.

There are many cases where the amazon (.com, .co.uk, .de and .fr are
different) contain metadata that simply is not available in other
accessible catalogs.  [[James Hanratty]] has an example.  People
understandably get a bit stroppy when you try to remove these amazon
links unless you can find a better catalogue to use for verification.

+1 for systematic and careful improvement of citation data.

IMO, that the amazon metadata can be wrong is all the more reason why
simply removing the amazon links / ASINs isnt the best way to address
this.  Incorrect citation data will be left behind unless they are
handled case by case.

Like many other commercial databases that are referenced in Wikipedia
content, Amazon is used because it is an accessible and extensive
catalogue.  If it goes down, we can deal with that then.  If an ASIN
disappears, we can deal with that like we deal with broken links.   In
the mean time, we can vet the use of amazon links to see if they can
be replaced with links to international catalogue numbers that are
built to be more stable, _where possible_.  It wont take long; a team
of about eight people fixed ~2500 articles with Invalid ISBNs in less
then two months. (see [[User:EdJohnston/ISBN_fixing]] ).  This ensures
a bit of care is taken to ensure that the resulting citation data is
100% accurate, and the original contributor is respectfully contacted
if the citation data cant be pinned down without guessing.

I am concerned that some people are foaming at the mouth to remove
them all instantly (like suggesting that the ASIN template be
deleted).  There are WikiProjects that can deal with this, as it
doesnt require admin privileges.  While AN/I may be a useful place
kick start a discussion, I dont think it is the appropriate platform
to make any final decision on how to tackle these links.

--
John


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:11:56 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Turns out that there are three other sources... with *different* info.
>> Amazon disagrees with all other sources.  Rather dents the credibility
>> of Amazon sales pages as a source, in my view.

>Do the other sources agree with each other? From a research point of
>view, it's probably best to cite all 4 of them, unless any can clearly
>be dismissed. It's much stronger to say "three autoritative sources
>say that X, although Amazon claims that...".

Yes.  And no it's not worth citing all of them because frankly it's
the VHS release date of a film, and *nobody cares*.

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


body:
On 3/20/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> The French and Dutch wikipedias have an even more noticable yellow
> background. Enough to make someone wonder why the page is different from
> other pages.

The French wikipedia seems to have made many improvements to their
interface that I'm quite jealous of. I particularly like their "see
also" templates. But I digress...

I've just put this code in my user monobook.css:
#content {
    background: #e0F0FF; /* not a light blue */
}

It's much more noticeable. However, I see that the downside of
tweaking the background colour is that it interferes with images.
Mostly a problem for the Image: namespace, and pages like WP:FPC.

However, I really feel that we need to go further than just a
background colour. From many points of view, it would be really
desirable to clearly distinguish between the encyclopaedia (which
probably includes the Image namespace) and the project. Having a
single search box that searches both the encyclopaedia and the project
is also wrong, imho. Could we somehow fix all these problems in one
hit?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/20/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary
> > sources is OR.  The section is question was drawn in part from primary
> > sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
> suggests that whether or not primary sources can be used depends on
> how public the figure is. For non-public figures, it says "material
> from primary sources should generally not be used," whereas for public
> figures it says "material from primary sources should be used with
> care" though that is under the heading "Presumption in favor of
> privacy".
>
> Angela

True.  But if the issue is BLP, say that it's BLP.  If the issue is NPOV,
say that it's NPOV.  But if you do so, then don't say "this is OR, and can
only be reintroduced if seconday sources are found".

Without clarifying the distinction between Mega Foundation, Mega Society and
Mega Society East, the article can be misleading (has been in the past),
especially given things like this http://www.iscid.org/christopherlangan.php


body:
On 3/20/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> You could get a two-fer by announcing that WP is now "completed" and
> that therefore no further editing is necessary, then protect (or
> semi-protect?) all pages for the 48 hours necessary to catch all timezones.

Why miss out on this golden opportunity to make thousands of people
realise that anyone can edit Wikipedia?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: ASINs and ISBNs

body:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:17:39 -0700, "Matthew Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Part of the point of references is so we know where information came
>from.  Removing it because EWWW IT'S A COMMERCIAL SITE is in my
>opinion contrary to our mission.

Nothing against Amazon as a source, it's the "click to buy" bit that
causes the problem.  And that not least because it is but a small step
from that to spammer.com publishing the Betamax release date, as the
sole site to do so, and then adding itself as a source for this
"vital" information.

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


body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 20/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hmm. If someone told me that any change I made to Wikipedia would have
>>to be "approved" by someone, or that the change would be somehow
>>"provisional" or "second-rate', I would be less motivated to work on
>>it.
>>
>>
>Mmm. Motivation is likely to decrease as the approval process gets
>backlogged, and I'd be impressed at a process which can (to pick
>numbers out of the air) re-approve a couple of hundred thousand
>articles on a weekly, or even monthly, basis.
>
It's a bit like an "Articles for cleanup" feature.  Things are put into
the bin faster than they are taken out.  For some it makes deletionism
an attractive option.  When a process becomes backlogged it is evidently
not scaling well.

>As an aside, this is a perfect project for an "ongoing fork". Every
>article on StablePedia is a static copy of a past Wikipedia article,
>perhaps slightly tidied by SP editors and reviewers; old revisions
>aren't displayed, and people are pointed back to Wikipedia to work on
>the ongoing draft. When you want to update, you just dump the old one,
>grab a new copy, approve and post on StablePedia - GFDL compliance is
>simple enough, and this means you can display your "approval
>infrastructure" nice and cleanly without conflicting with the live
>project. There's no conceptual reason the Foundation couldn't host
>both, either, and it might even be beneficial to do so as a trial
>balloon.
>
I have no problem with others creating forks into more specialized
Pedias either.  I'm sure we would also be happy to share our vandals
with them. :-) For us we would still need to maintain a fluidity between
the projects.  I would leave it to the techies to comment on which would
work better on that level.

>(The downside is that it's much less high-profile... but the *upside*
>is that it might actually happen. Major changes to the publishing
>structure of enwp proper, especially a credentialled editorial-control
>system, are rather unlikely to ever actually get in place...)
>
Agreed.  It's one of those ideas that only succeeds in uncovering new
problems.

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] OT (was Re: Fwd: Oops (or,
	be careful when quoting Wikipedia in your newspaper, part 2))

body:
On 3/20/07, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> "a" is because "wringing" is being used as a shorthand for "operating
> the wringing mechanism".  "c" is because many materials are less
> flexible when dry than when wet, something that is not obvious to the
> average person.  As an extreme example, take two sticks.  Soak one of
> them in water for a few days, then tie each of them in a knot.  Guess
> which one breaks in the process?

Ah yeah, that makes sense. "Don't pull the lever while the mop is dry
- you may break it."

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] New Messages message

body:
on 3/20/07 11:14 AM, NSLE (Wikipedia) at nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com wrote:

> I've heard of this before. Try unwatching your talk page, if you have it
> watched, I think?

Thank you, I will try it.

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a primary source

body:
On 3/20/07, Bartning at aol.com <Bartning at aol.com> wrote:
> I've setup a group on Yahoo to discuss Wikipedia problems.

Isn't that what this list is about?

Steve


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
>>
>
> Scientific papers are primary sources.
>
According to [[primary source]], the term is specific to historical
scholarship, which doesn't include science. I don't know of any
Wikipedian who seriously challenges the validity of published
peer-reviewed scientific papers as sources for articles.

Stan


body:
On 3/15/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am truly puzzled that there is no further reaction to the issue that I
> brought up with my earlier post. Have we really come to the point where
> where have a de-facto class of editors who are un-revertable, where
> reverting them is seen to be an offense, regardless of the merits of the
> case?

Worst case scenario: We have a class of editors who are un-revertable,
consisting of Jimbo and Danny and no one else. This is not a very bad
case - we can trust them not to make harmful edits. And it's not even
the case. So let's drop it.

Steve


from_name: Mak

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ref tag usage

body:
My answer has always been to put <ref>foo, pg. 72</ref> in the text of
the article, and the full citation in a separate section at the end. I
think it makes the wikitext much, much easier to read and edit, and is
more intuitive to newbies.
Makemi

On 3/20/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> On 20/03/07, stevertigo <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/19/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > text.
> > > <ref>foo</ref>
> > >
> > > gives "text. [1]".  In other words, a space in between the period and
> > > the reference number.
> >
> > I see. Is that a major concern for you?
>
> Am I alone in finding that more readable? Also, what's up with the
> bracketing? I'd expect a reference, if we're trying to make them look
> better, to look like the result of 1. Piles
> of punctuation are better left to source code, not articles.
>
>
> --
> Earle Martin
>             http://downlode.org/
> http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Messages message

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> To any and all,
>
> I don't know who else to ask about this so I thought I'd ask here. For the
> last several days I have been getting a "You have new messages" indicator,
> but when I click on it, and go to my Talk Page, there are no new messages
> listed. Am I somehow missing them? Is anyone else experiencing this, and
> what could be the problem?

It happened to me the other day, even after I purged.  I can't recall how
I fixed it, though.

-Jeff


from_name: John Lee

body:
On 3/20/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/20/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/19/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Then when you draft on userspace, unstead of..
> > >
> > > user:Mr_Bozo/Paris
> > >
> > > Name it
> > >
> > > user:Mr_Bozo/Article_Draft_1
> >
> > Follow up, Perhaps a "this article is a rough draft" tag might help as
> well.
>
> Well, let's take this a bit further. Make a tag and *insist* that
> people use it when creating anything that could be mistaken for
> encyclopaedia content in their user page.
>
> Steve

This sounds impractical to me. Most people will forget to do that. Rather
than making this opt-in, let's make it opt-out. Apply the tag to all user
subpages by default. People who don't like the tag appearing at the top of
the subpage can opt out by applying another tag that would hide the default
"THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE" tag.

Johnleemk


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>I'll settle for a semi-colon, I think.
>>
>>The encyclopaedia that Anybody can edit; Nobody has.
>>
>>
>
>No, I think the bit after a semi-colon has to be a full sentence...
>
Unless  some kind of personification is intended by capitalizing
"Anybody" and "Nobody". :-)

Ec


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>Who cares about the grammer? The actual information is wrong:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Nobody
>>
>>;)
>>
>>
>
>I'm going to reply to myself before anyone beats me to it:
>
>Nobody has editted Wikipedia.
>
Correcting one's own edits sometimes leads to more errors.
(grammer/grammar, editted/edited) ;-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] New Messages message

body:
>
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> To any and all,
>>
>> I don't know who else to ask about this so I thought I'd ask here. For the
>> last several days I have been getting a "You have new messages" indicator,
>> but when I click on it, and go to my Talk Page, there are no new messages
>> listed. Am I somehow missing them? Is anyone else experiencing this, and
>> what could be the problem?

on 3/20/07 11:41 AM, Jeff Raymond at
jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
>
> It happened to me the other day, even after I purged.  I can't recall how
> I fixed it, though.

Thanks, Jeff. So far I have tried logging off and unwatching my Talk Page;
we'll see if this works. I was beginning to suspect an alien spirit trapped
within trying to get a message out :-).

Marc


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Benjamin Keith Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Looking to interview Wikipedians

body:
I am a researcher seeking to interview Wikipedia contributors of any and all
levels of experience and involvement.  In-depth, one hour interviews will be
conducted over the phone or email beginning March 27.  Compensation for your
time will be provided ? a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  Must be 18+
and U.S. resident.  Contact Benjamin Johnson, Department of
Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, Michigan State University,
by email at john2429 at msu.edu or by phone at 517.230.1272.

Thanks!
Benjamin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Guettarda wrote:
> In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary
> sources is OR.  The section is question was drawn in part from primary
> sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).  In
> reference to this, Jimbo said:
>
> ...
>
> Jimbo is making the assertion that using primary source documents, like
> legal rulings, is ALSO original research, despite the fact that common
> practice is Wikipedia goes the opposite way.  By extension, everything
> that
> cites original sources is OR, right?

If we're hearing "draws" as "cites," then this is an epic change and not
for the better.  If "draws" is "I cite X, and claim it says Y," then it
doesn't appear to be a change in anything.  I can't cite a primary source
and then make any determination on it (draw anything from it) - I can
merely say what it says.

Some clarity might help.

-Jeff


from_name: Steve

body:
Sounds good.

Stephen Yeago
312 279 6769

On 3/20/07, Benjamin Keith Johnson <john2429 at msu.edu> wrote:
> I am a researcher seeking to interview Wikipedia contributors of any and all
> levels of experience and involvement.  In-depth, one hour interviews will be
> conducted over the phone or email beginning March 27.  Compensation for your
> time will be provided ? a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  Must be 18+
> and U.S. resident.  Contact Benjamin Johnson, Department of
> Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, Michigan State University,
> by email at john2429 at msu.edu or by phone at 517.230.1272.
>
> Thanks!
> Benjamin
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>I've already explained what the point is, sometimes I find it convenient
>>to throw down a framework before I start digging into sources. If I'm
>>"not supposed to do it" and yet it still results in good articles being
>>written, perhaps there's something wrong with having a rule against it
>>(assuming we actually do)? And I certainly have no intention of changing
>>my approach just because you personally don't prefer to do it that way.
>>
>>
>What do you mean by framework? A framework shouldn't contain anything
>that needs sourcing - to me a framework of an article would be just a
>list of section headings.
>
Being "not supposed to do it" is not a strong enough excuse for not
doing it.  One shouldn't become doctrinnaire about sources when an
article is just started; that only quashes the inspiration to do
something.  Articles develop over time; we shouldn't expect them to be
perfect right from the beginning.

Ec


body:
Gee did I just do that?

Woops.

-S

On 3/20/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sounds good.
>
> Stephen Yeago
> 312 279 6769
>
> On 3/20/07, Benjamin Keith Johnson <john2429 at msu.edu> wrote:
> > I am a researcher seeking to interview Wikipedia contributors of any and all
> > levels of experience and involvement.  In-depth, one hour interviews will be
> > conducted over the phone or email beginning March 27.  Compensation for your
> > time will be provided ? a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  Must be 18+
> > and U.S. resident.  Contact Benjamin Johnson, Department of
> > Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, Michigan State University,
> > by email at john2429 at msu.edu or by phone at 517.230.1272.
> >
> > Thanks!
> > Benjamin
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>


from_name: Slim Virgin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/20/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary
> > > sources is OR.  The section is question was drawn in part from primary
> > > sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
> > suggests that whether or not primary sources can be used depends on
> > how public the figure is.
>
> True.  But if the issue is BLP, say that it's BLP.  If the issue is NPOV,
> say that it's NPOV.  But if you do so, then don't say "this is OR, and can
> only be reintroduced if seconday sources are found".
>
I don't know the particulars of this case, but in case it helps -- in
general the issue is that we need a secondary source so we know that
the issue is important enough to write about in the first place. If
the only people writing about something, apart from the primary
sources, are Wikipedians, there's a danger that undue weight will be
given to the issue, which is where the NPOV policy kicks in.

WP:ATT says that primary sources should only be used to make entirely
descriptive claims. Any contentious issue, or anything that requires
interpretation, shouldn't be based entirely on primary sources.

Sarah


from_name: SonOfYoungwood at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
If Wikipedia decides to ban primary source citing, here's what will  happen:

* Numerous articles will be removed of featured, A-class, or GA  status.
* Wikipedia's coverage and material will be significantly limited.
* A lot of good work will be removed (ruined).
* Numerous editors will leave Wikipedia because their chance of  writing
featured articles, especially on popular culture and many other  subjects, will be
gone. Not to mention the fact that their hard work is  being removed.

Plus, stating the facts of primary sources - like citing a script example
that Darth Vader is killed at the end of Return of the Jedi, or citing an
interview with a developer when stating that he was influenced by Japanese
paintings - are not the same as OR.

************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone.
 Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Inconvenience

body:
wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com wrote:

>>From: "John Lee" <johnleemk at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>Perhaps other people work
>>at things differently, but I rarely directly refer to sources when starting
>>an article unless I know little about it. The only exception is when I have
>>sources and am not sure what articles could use them, in which case I hunt
>>through the book/whatever for things I could write about. Otherwise, when I
>>want to write about something in general (especially when it's on impulse,
>>normally after "what? this is a redlink?"), it's often inefficient and
>>frustrating to hunt down a source.
>>
>>
>Why is it any more "convenient" to do this in the main article space than in your own user space?
>
>
>>Call me an eventualist,
>>
>>
>I don't call this eventualism.
>
>I call this rehearsing in front of the audience.
>
>I call this running out into the street naked and telling the policeman "But I was just about to put my clothes on."
>
I call this a non-sequitur.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Actually, in looking at Jimbo's statement, it doesn't look like he's making
an extremely generalized statement. I think he's referring to controversial
claims or those that can easily suffer from POV issues. If that's the case,
then  this shouldn't be extended to all primary sources.

************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone.
 Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.


body:
On 3/20/07, jf_wikipedia <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to know the reason for the belated rejection of WP:ATT
> by Jimbo. Mainly I would like to understand why did he not engage
> during the last five months during which the proposal was debated, or
> made any comments in this mailing list when it was raised here.
>
I believe that Jimbo may have misunderstood and thinks substantive
changes were made, rather than just a merge -- perhaps because of the
situation today at the Langan article and the discussion about primary
sources on this list, which seems to have given the false impression
that changes were made to the NOR policy.

The merge was popular, smooth, there were no changes to policy, and
ATT has quickly become a widely used page, so I'm assuming this was a
misunderstanding that will be sorted out soon enough.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>Using primary sources makes it difficult to ensure that you haven't
>missed something. When using secondary sources you simply have to
>determine what bias exists in the source, and if there is no
>significant bias (for example, it's an independent newspaper article
>about the case), you can trust that nothing significant has been
>missed out.
>
!!! The suggestion that newspaper articles are unbiased is a novel one.

Ec


body:
On 3/20/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nope there are quite a few foundation bods who have a claim to this.
>
> It's when some of the committee people started to try and claim that
> power that it got anoying.

Oh? Hadn't heard of this. If it's a major issue, start a new thread
and we'll examine it properly.

Steve


from_name: phoebe ayers

body:
You might want to send this over to Wiki-research-l as well (
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l). There's been a
few projects to interview Wikipedia contributors in the past and people may
have ideas and questions. In addition, I and no doubt others from that list
would be interested in your methodology, why contributors must be a U.S.
resident, what you're trying to find out, and all those other pesky research
questions :)

cheers,
phoebe

On 3/20/07, Benjamin Keith Johnson <john2429 at msu.edu> wrote:
>
> I am a researcher seeking to interview Wikipedia contributors of any and
> all
> levels of experience and involvement.  In-depth, one hour interviews will
> be
> conducted over the phone or email beginning March 27.  Compensation for
> your
> time will be provided ? a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  Must be 18+
> and U.S. resident.  Contact Benjamin Johnson, Department of
> Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, Michigan State
> University,
> by email at john2429 at msu.edu or by phone at 517.230.1272.
>
> Thanks!
> Benjamin
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The text that Jimbo removed was OR. Using lots of different primary
> > sources to support what you are saying is generally OR.
>
> That is going to come as a bit of a shock to the authors of [[Biaxial nematic]].
>
That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.


from_name: Rob Smith

body:
On 3/20/07, jf_wikipedia <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 20, 2007, at 10:48 AM, Slim Virgin wrote:
>
> > The merge was popular, smooth, there were no changes to policy, and
> > ATT has quickly become a widely used page, so I'm assuming this was a
> > misunderstanding that will be sorted out soon enough.
>
>
> I am not so sure, SlimVirgin.
>
> This is what he writes. He calls ATT a "monumentally bad idea". What
> needs to be clarified is that the distintions between V, RS and OR
> not only have been maintained in WP:ATT, but their formulation
> synchronized with one another as well.
>
> -- Jossi
>
> <snip>
> ...All over the
> site are hundreds or thousands of links to these policy pages, and
> the meaning of referring someone to WP:V versus WP:RS versus WP:NOR
> are overwhelmingly important to a coherent understanding of the
> arguments people are making. ...Jimbo Wales 15:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
> </snip>

Jimbo's reservations are covered, as I understand it, in the merged policy.
This should actually work to improve the encyclopedia by catching weak and
faulty information and subjecting it a more rigorous test.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 20/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hmm. If someone told me that any change I made to Wikipedia would have
> to be "approved" by someone, or that the change would be somehow
> "provisional" or "second-rate', I would be less motivated to work on
> it.

Mmm. Motivation is likely to decrease as the approval process gets
backlogged, and I'd be impressed at a process which can (to pick
numbers out of the air) re-approve a couple of hundred thousand
articles on a weekly, or even monthly, basis.

As an aside, this is a perfect project for an "ongoing fork". Every
article on StablePedia is a static copy of a past Wikipedia article,
perhaps slightly tidied by SP editors and reviewers; old revisions
aren't displayed, and people are pointed back to Wikipedia to work on
the ongoing draft. When you want to update, you just dump the old one,
grab a new copy, approve and post on StablePedia - GFDL compliance is
simple enough, and this means you can display your "approval
infrastructure" nice and cleanly without conflicting with the live
project. There's no conceptual reason the Foundation couldn't host
both, either, and it might even be beneficial to do so as a trial
balloon.

(The downside is that it's much less high-profile... but the *upside*
is that it might actually happen. Major changes to the publishing
structure of enwp proper, especially a credentialled editorial-control
system, are rather unlikely to ever actually get in place...)

> Hmm. I'm not against...but I guess I would have to see
> it in action.

I think we'd all like to see proposals working :-)

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


body:
On 3/20/07, jf_wikipedia <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 20, 2007, at 10:48 AM, Slim Virgin wrote:
>
> > The merge was popular, smooth, there were no changes to policy, and
> > ATT has quickly become a widely used page, so I'm assuming this was a
> > misunderstanding that will be sorted out soon enough.
>
>
> I am not so sure, SlimVirgin.
>
> This is what he writes. He calls ATT a "monumentally bad idea". What
> needs to be clarified is that the distintions between V, RS and OR
> not only have been maintained in WP:ATT, but their formulation
> synchronized with one another as well.
>
Exactly, and I hope when he realizes that he'll reconsider what he did
today. I do think it was based on a misunderstanding prompted by the
discussion on the list about the Langan article.

Sarah


body:
On 20/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nope there are quite a few foundation bods who have a claim to this.
> >
> > It's when some of the committee people started to try and claim that
> > power that it got anoying.
>
> Oh? Hadn't heard of this. If it's a major issue, start a new thread
> and we'll examine it properly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Blockiptext

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Blockiptext

As it was a) admin-facing internal infrastructure, b) he was opposed
by several people, c) those people were (on the whole) right, and d)
he was able to keep arguing with them and editing the page, I think
generalising from this case to "OMG Foundation cabal has unrevertable
editorial control" is a little disingenious.

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