body:
G'day Ray, G'day Sascha

At 01:54 AM 2/12/03 -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Sascha Noyes wrote:
>
>>This person needs a stern talking to.
> From his user page:
>>under "modified pages"
>>"Alternative medicine - I cleaned up this article. I removed the
>>anti-bias and made it pro-alternative medicine."
>>
>>under "Interests"
>>"To get important natural health related information and definitions in
>>an Internet accessible encyclopedia / dictionary."
>>
>>It is clear that /his/her/its purpose is to inject their POV and remove
>>that of others.
>So he's trying to put his own spin on things.  How is that so different
>from what most Wikipedians are trying to accomplish?  Announcing areas of
>interest is pretty normal.
>
>Ec

Having had a quick look at the article history, I'd have to agree with Sascha.

The first quote about making it pro alternative medicine was exactly what
this user did. The worst of it has already been removed. I haven't looked
to see whether his claim of anti alternative medicine POV in what he found
there is true, but what he left was certainly pro alternative medicine POV,
it read just like a pamphlet you might pick up in a practitioner's waiting
room.

But there have been no reversion wars so far that I can see, despite some
corrections to the worst of his rhetoric. So it's possible that he will
quickly get the idea of NPOV and even accept it. If he's as heavily
involved in alternative medicine as I suspect, he may be a very good source
of information on the subject.

I expect some Wikipedians regard alternative medicine as all gospel, and
others regard it as all quackery. So to come up with a generally accepted
NPOV will be quite a challenge, but IMO not an impossibility.

Andrew A

****
andrewa @ alder . ws
http://www.zeta.org.au/~andrewa
Phone 9441 4476
Mobile 04 2525 4476
****

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] contributions of User:Mr-Natural-Health

body:
Yes, NH is strident and condescending, but maybe we can teach him to
become nice and humble. It only took Larry and Mav three or five months
to chill me out, when I first stumbled upon this wikiwiki, and look at
where I am today! ;-)

Uncle Ed


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy on edit conficts (Re:Martin)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>
>
>>*By the powers vested in me by the Wikipedia power structure, I
>>*hereby declare those changes to be de facto official, subject of
>>*course to overruling by other sysops *Is this implying that sysops
>>*have special powers in regards to the formulation of policy, I
>>*thought they were no better than the rest of us...
>>
>>
>
>Adam is right of course.  I don't know who he is quoting, and maybe
>that was only a joke, but sysop is always and everywhere supposed to
>be a purely technical matter, not a position of authority and power of
>any kind.
>
>I think maybe I need to say that a lot more often, eh?
>
>And maybe we need to focus on what technical changes could be made to reduce
>the differences between sysops and ordinary signed-in-users.
>
>
This will probably be opposed by those who'll see it as just another
step into hierarchical organization, but I think it might be a good idea
to create a new, more-inclusive class of users, that has authoritative
significance but no technical powers.  Basically any user who has been
here for some period of time (maybe 2-3 weeks or so), and shown
him/herself to be editing in good faith.  As we get bigger, I think
there will be a lot more "fake" users trying to influence things, so
restricting things like policy formation and votes to "real" users in
some sort of formal way might be a good idea.  I'd envision it being
very easy to gain this status: even someone who's invovled in lots of
edit wars should be considered a "real user", so long as they aren't
purely a troll or vandal, or someone who just signed up 3 hours ago.

This might actually have the effect of reducing the hierarchy somewhat,
because right now sysops are a sort of de facto group of "trusted
users", since the only defined groups we have are "sysops", "logged-in
users", and "anonymous users".  Sysops are too small a group, and
logged-in users are too big a group (anyone can create 100 accounts if
they wish).  Making a larger group of trusted users without technical
powers would reduce sysops to being just a subset of that group with
additional technical powers, but no additional powers of any other sort.

Ideas?

-Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] I never metadata I didn't like

body:
>>>>> "LA" == Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> writes:

    LA> You have to provide some incentive for the editor of an
    LA> article to input the metadata.  How are you going to succeed
    LA> in attracting wikipedia article editors?

That's a worthwhile question. Here's some possible answers:

* Automatic indices. Use metadata to automatically create indices to
  the encyclopedia, like [[list of X]]. We could probably also do some
  fun automatic stuff with the timeline and date pages.

      [[meta:year=1885,born]]
      [[meta:year=1923,died]]

* Metadata-guided search. Currently we have three levels of search:
  exact title (the "Go" button), title match, and full-text match. I'd
  say that a metadata search (probably placed, in order of value,
  between exact title and title match) would be helpful. We could
  leave it on (like "Go") even when full-text search was too
  compute-intensive.

* Metadata in search results: even for full-text search, it can be
  useful to return metadata. Like, if I search for "Springfield", it'd
  be kind of nice to see:

     - Springfield
       is-a: city, is-part-of: Kentucky

       (matching text here)

     - Springfield
       is-a: city, is-part-of: Missouri

       (matching text here)

     - Springfield
       is-a: fictional city, genre: animation

       (matching text here)

  Yes, the presentation is lame -- I don't think we'd ever show raw
  tags like that. But you get the picture.

* Geographical proximity. Frankly, I think ICBM tags make the whole
  thing worthwhile, just on their own. But that's my own bete noire.

* Breadcrumb navigation. It's fairly cumbersome to write, in
  [[cyclotron]], that "A cyclotron is an [[instrument]] used in
  [[particle physics]] which is a branch of [[physics]] which in turn
  is a [[natural science]] which is a kind of [[science]]." After all,
  the article isn't about natural science -- why describe it from
  here?

  But with metadata we could have a breadcrumb link thing that says:

    sciences > natural sciences > physics > particle physics > instruments

Frankly, what I think is that we just need to have one or two
applications of the metadata, and people are going to think up
brilliant new ones. They'll send patches for MediaWiki to do it, or
they'll send RFEs, or they'll develop their own bots or whatever.

In other words, I don't think we're going to need to worry about
getting people into doing metadata; we're going to have to worry about
keeping up!

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Please, please do not turn on this feature. Human-inserted metadata is
>basically unwiki. There are better approaches to dealing with the
>problem of categorization/computer comprehension of data. The right
>approaches act like magic.
>
>
Would be great to have one of those. But, AFAIK, there's no way to
implement a category scheme purely by code. That mean, there *has* to be
some interface for humans changing categories around. That can be either
some "Add/remove/change category" construct on every page; ugly, and a
bitch to write, as one would have to re-implement "old version",
delete/undelete, and the like *for the category system alone*. OTOH, we
can use the way of language links; while I'd prefer a centralized
language link facility (one for all wikipedias), it could work better
for the category scheme, as that information stays within that 'pedia.

And since when is editing an article unwiki? :-)

>Moreover, this isn't really (only) a discussion for wikitech-l.
>
>
The original question was a technical one, IIRC. I also vaguely remember
support for that category scheme when I had it running at the test site.

But if we need Yet Another Discussion (TM) on wikipoedia-l about the
nature of the category system (I *know* we kinda decided to use one!),
so be it.

Magnus


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

    MM> Well, the code *I* wrote (which I assume is what you're
    MM> talking about) is finished, in the sense of "it works, but it
    MM> ain't too pretty".

OK. Right now, as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to work, since
it's commented out. I can find the part where it collects the category
links, but I can't find the part where it renders them.

The whole thing is blocked out by a "CHECK MERGE" comment, which I
guess means it was a merge problem.

    MM> Example: "[[Category:Stuff]]" somewhere in the article will
    MM> show a link above (similar to language links), leading to the
    MM> category page ("Category:Stuff"). That will automagically list
    MM> all pages in that category (meaning, that link there via
    MM> category link). A category page can be edited like a normal
    MM> page (the article list is automatically shown below), and can
    MM> include "super-categories" (e.g., "[[Category:Biology]]" on
    MM> "Category:Zoology"). Any page can, of course, have many
    MM> categories.

Hrm. OK, I'm grokking part of this, at least. There's some stuff in
the skin code to do category links. I'll see if I can reenable it in
the unstable branch.

    MM> You'll have to enable categories in LocalSettings, but I
    MM> forgot how :-(

$wgUseCategoryMagic.

So, I think that this is a nice piece of work. Since it's not in use
in production -- couldn't be, with all that commented-out stuff -- how
would you feel about me generalizing it to just another kind of
metadata? That is, instead of trying to find [[Category:Foo]], use
[[metadata:category:foo]] instead?

This would leave the door open for other kinds of metadata.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] asking for an appointment

body:
I had tried at one point to volunteer myself for the
mediation committee, but then got disconnected and
lost the message.  By the time I got around to doing
it again, the discussion had died out.  Now that it
appears to be happening again, I'd like to renominate
myself for mediation.

TUF-KAT

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree


in_reply_to:
<03ec01c3bb13$8e1cca10$74001c12@reflection> (The Cunctator's
	message of "Fri, 5 Dec 2003 04:38:34 -0500")

body:
>>>>> "TC" == The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> writes:

    TC> Moreover, this isn't really (only) a discussion for
    TC> wikitech-l.

How to put metadata into articles is a tech question.

What metadata fields to define -- like "category" -- and how to use
them is an implementation question. It would vary from installation to
installation.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Narrowing focus

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>    * Editors can put markup into a page like this:

>              [[field:name:value]]

>      * "field" is a per-installation fixed string, defining this
>        link as a data field. It probably should not conflict with any
>        namespace, language code, or InterWiki link.

>      * "name" can be any string that won't interfere with other
>        wikitext parsing and doesn't contain a ":"; it is the field
>        name.

>      * "value" is any string that won't interfere with other wikitext
>        parsing, and doesn't contain "]]". It is the field value.

>      * The field tag can go anywhere in the page text. There can be
>        multiple field tags with the same name.

You know, if you combine with <somebody else>'s suggestion
to employ "=" and reduce the overload on ":", then we could get
a very nice general system here.

To start with, notice that interwiki links behave a bit oddly right now.
On [[meta:]], I can (or could once) link to [[fr:]] with the link [[fr:Fou]].
But on [[en:]], that won't work, the link [[fr:fou]] behaves specially.
It might be clearer if ":" was always for links and "=" always for magic.

But ":" magic wouldn't work unless turned on -- by recognising the "name".
So the format is [[name:value]], and we might start by recognising:
* [[en=foo]], [[fr=fou]], [[eo=fu]] and other interwiki links
* [[category=nonsense word]]
But maybe Wikitravel will decide that it wants more.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia hierarchy (Was: New policy on edit conficts)

body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote in part:

>Delirium wrote:

>>This will probably be opposed by those who'll see it as just another
>>step into hierarchical organization, but I think it might be a good idea
>>to create a new, more-inclusive class of users, that has authoritative
>>significance but no technical powers.  Basically any user who has been
>>here for some period of time (maybe 2-3 weeks or so), and shown
>>him/herself to be editing in good faith.

How is this different from the requirements for sysophood?
Jimbo is always trying to convince us that sysophood is no big deal,
and that we restrict it only for technical reasons because it's so powerful.

>Now at the other end of things, maybe at this point on the English
>wikipedia we have enough sysops in attendance at any one time, that it
>would not be unreasonable to require two concurring sysops to perform
>sysopactions which are uncommonly needed but potentially particularly
>controversial. I am thinking about unprotection of pages and undeletion
>as well.

Undeletion should never require more official validation than deletion.

-- Toby


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search engine.

body:
FYI, regarding search...

In case people are using Mozilla Firebird (which you really should!) you
can make a really nice keyword to do WP search.  Make a bookmark to:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en
<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site%3A.wikipedi
a.org+%s&btnG=Google+Search>
&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site%3A.wikipedia.org+%s&btnG=Google+Search

And then go to "Manage bookmarks," do a "Properties" on that bookmark
and enter something like "wps" in the Keyword box.

>From now on, you can type "wps food" or "wps France" in the address bar
and it will do the search.  The "food" or "France" will be substituted
for the %s in the URL.  So searching WP from a Firebird windows is as
simple as -

CTRL-L

wps france

-Andrew

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Arbitration/mediation on en

body:
I think this is already what you have in mind, but just to clarify what
I think is an important point, is this the correct understanding of the
two committees' "power", such that it is? --

Mediation: Involved in both disputes between users, and in particularly
difficult disputes over articles (including content and content
presentation), for example by suggesting compromise wording or
rearrangements.  Mediators have no specific power to impose a solution,
but should act in good faith, and hopefully their efforts will be seen
as a good faith attempt to mediate disputes to reach a mutually
agreeable conclusion.

Arbitration: *Only* tasked with reviewing potential bans of users.  Does
*not* have any power with regards to arbitrating the disputes over
content or content presentation.  Basically, this committee is what
decides when someone simply cannot work within Wikipedia, after an
appeal from someone who has made that claim and asked the user to be
banned.  The actual disputes themselves stay at the mediation level
indefinitely, and are not subject to arbitration (any "voting" decision
on them would be a wider vote on the talk page, presumably).

-Mark


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> Undeletion should never require more official validation than deletion.

And generally less, right, since after all a person can always 'undelete'
by just starting the article over and copying and pasting the text?

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] en is down, probably brought down by ja

body:
On Dec 5, 2003, at 12:58, Peter Gervai wrote:

> from here it seemed index corruption on ja, and after that en started
> to crawl, then choked.
> developers required i guess.
> just mumbling to myself.

Apache on pliny is still doings its occasional go crazy and hang thing,
which seems to have been the general problem. I'll try a nice fresh
compile of the current version and see if that helps. (yay voodoo!)
Anyway it's restarted and running for now.

The ja problem was corruption in the linkscc table; this may be
leftover from last night. I've repaired the table and cleaned it out,
and it's running.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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in_reply_to:
<BKELLDAGKABIOCHDFDBPGEOAEKAA.danny666@virgilio.it> (Danny
	Ayers's message of "Fri, 5 Dec 2003 13:52:18 +0100")

body:
>>>>> "DA" == Danny Ayers <danny666 at virgilio.it> writes:

    DA> This is all aside from how you'd get metadata from the Wiki -
    DA> there's all the mechanical stuff (e.g. page
    DA> creation/modification dates), stuff that can be semi-automated
    DA> (e.g. author) - management of this is pretty straightforward
    DA> to hook up to an existing system (most of it's probably
    DA> already there in the DB tables). Then there's stuff that's
    DA> entirely human-created. I reckon the MediaWiki is in an
    DA> excellent position to lead the way on how this is done (what
    DA> syntax etc.).

A lot of what's considered important metadata, from a World Wide Web
standpoint, could already be provided from the MediaWiki
database. Scanning over the Dublin Core element set:

           http://www.dublincore.org/documents/dces/

...I don't think there's much that we couldn't encode either as RDF or
in HTML link/meta tags. Yeah, I know, Dublin Core is only one part of
the magical world that is RDF and the Semantic Web and so forth.

Whether we do that for MediaWiki is a separate question from
how and whether we do editor-assigned name-value pairs.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Danny Ayers

body:
I only started lurking recently, but I thought I'd better decloak at this
point.

Metadata is (IMHO) a generally good thing, and the reasons have already been
given in this thread. The primary benefit is in making individual
applications more useful, but longer term there is likely to be huge benefit
through exchange of that metadata. The beginnnings of this are already
visible with RSS feeds from blogs, news sites and Wikis.

>From the immediate point of view of the developer, it makes sense to reuse
existing work - and there has been a *lot* done in this area. There's a
reasonably mature standard for describing resources : the Resource
Description Framework (RDF) - some refs below. The key part of this
framework is the model, and I'd strongly recommend that this was followed in
WikiMedia projects. There are toolkits/APIs for practically every language.
(A lot of people get hung up on the RDF/XML syntax, which looks pretty
painful, but in practice it's the model that's important and that's pretty
simple).

This is all aside from how you'd get metadata from the Wiki - there's all
the mechanical stuff (e.g. page creation/modification dates), stuff that can
be semi-automated (e.g. author) - management of this is pretty
straightforward to hook up to an existing system (most of it's probably
already there in the DB tables). Then there's stuff that's entirely
human-created. I reckon the MediaWiki is in an excellent position to lead
the way on how this is done (what syntax etc.).

Cheers,
Danny.

----
http://dannyayers.com

RDF Specs : http://www.w3.org/RDF/

RDF One-pager
http://dsg.port.ac.uk/projects/uisb/docs/design/rdf_one_pager.pdf

RDF in 500 Words:
http://www.dannyayers.com/docs/rdf500.htm

Some nice pdfs:
http://www.semaview.com/resources/resources.html

One of the RDF vocabularies that's been getting a lot of attention recently
is FOAF( friend-of-a-friend), which (amongst many other things) can allow
you to express social relationships: Fred foaf:knows Bert. People are
encouraged to add a 'profile' of themselves to their web site:
http://www.foaf-project.org/

A couple of PHP APIs -

RAP:
http://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/suhl/bizer/rdfapi/

Redland:
http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/docs/php.html

I've been working on RDF-enabling a Wiki myself, with the help of the Jena
(Java) toolkit:
http://66.70.191.189/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=stiki

http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/jena.htm

Already the ModWiki and Dublin Core vocabularies are finding application in
Wikis, but there's a lot more interesting and useful stuff could be done:

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ModWiki

It looks like 'categories' is a bit of a permathread around here - hopefully
the ongoing work on RDF thesauri will help here:

http://esw.w3.org/topic/RdfThesaurus


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search engine.

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>>So I guess I'm advocating for a "Search {ProjectName} from
>>Google" radio button right under the MediaWiki search form. The default of
>>the toggle would be to use MediaWiki's own search functionality so long as
>>the database server isn't bogged down.
>>
>
>This seems obviously correct to me.
>/Given/ that some people want to use Google, that is
>(I would prefer the in-house search in almost all cases myself).
>
That would be my preference too.  Would it be a good idea to make the
in-house search available to registered users?  The Google search is
likely adequate for people who have only a read-only interest in Wikipedia.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Crashy MySQL

body:
On Dec 5, 2003, at 03:51, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I'm checking alll the tables and taking wikis out of read-only lock as
> they pass.

There've been no further events noted in mysql's error log so far. The
linkscc table on jawiki got left uncorrupted because 'check table' only
_pointed out_ the error and didn't correct it, needing a 'repair table'
to actually fix the problem.

The backup dumps I made last night look to be of reasonable size and
nothing barfed while creating them. So, so far so good.

Nonetheless it's rather worrying that there was any data corruption to
begin with!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: Narrowing focus (was Re: [Wikitech-l] I never metadata I didn't like)

in_reply_to:
<873cc0duvi.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
	(Evan Prodromou's message of "Thu, 04 Dec 2003 18:29:53 -0500")

body:
>>>>> "EP" == Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> writes:

    EP> Anyways, I wanted to float a design idea for inclusion of
    EP> metadata in MediaWiki articles.

I probably oversold this proposal by using the word "metadata", since
it's such a loaded term. Introducing categorization as a possible
metadata application, which is also a loaded subject for Wikipedia,
might have also been a misstep.

Perhaps I should have stuck with "editor-assigned field-value pairs".
All *I* want is a way to:

     * define field-value pairs for a page

     * define different ways to render these field-value pairs: as
       in-page links, as out-of-page links (like interlanguage links
       now), as <meta> or <link> tags in the <head> of the HTML
       output, not render them at all, or whatever.

In other words, I want a technical feature for the MediaWiki
software. How that feature gets used in different MediaWiki
installations should be up to the communities using the installation.

I'd like to make the feature powerful enough that it can handle
categorization of Wikipedia, which is one possible if complex
application. But if it can't, I'd still like to have the feature.

So, to boil things down again, here's the technical proposal:

    * Editors can put markup into a page like this:

              [[field:name:value]]

      * "field" is a per-installation fixed string, defining this
        link as a data field. It probably should not conflict with any
        namespace, language code, or InterWiki link.

      * "name" can be any string that won't interfere with other
        wikitext parsing and doesn't contain a ":"; it is the field
        name.

      * "value" is any string that won't interfere with other wikitext
        parsing, and doesn't contain "]]". It is the field value.

      * The field tag can go anywhere in the page text. There can be
        multiple field tags with the same name.

   * When a page is saved, the fields are extracted and put into a
     database table called "fields". The table has the following
     columns:

        field_id: an autoincrementing unique identifier
        field_cur_id : the cur_id of the cur row that contains this field
        field_name: the contents of the name part
        field_value: the contents of the value part

   * When a page is rendered, the associated fields are retrieved, and
     depending on field name and the installation configuration, they
     can be:

        * ignored. Just left out of the page entirely.
        * displayed as a link in-page.
        * displayed as text in-page.
        * displayed as a link out-of-page (like interlanguage links)
        * displayed as text out-of-page
        * displayed as a <meta> field-value pair
        * displayed as a <link> field-value pair

Any application of this feature is up to the
installation. Auto-indexed pages, bread-crumb navigation, field-based
search, field display in search results, directories, etc., could be
implemented if needed.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


body:
Delirium wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Adam is right of course.  I don't know who he is quoting, and maybe
>> that was only a joke, but sysop is always and everywhere supposed to
>> be a purely technical matter, not a position of authority and power of
>> any kind.
>>
>> I think maybe I need to say that a lot more often, eh?
>>
>> And maybe we need to focus on what technical changes could be made to
>> reduce
>> the differences between sysops and ordinary signed-in-users.
>
> This will probably be opposed by those who'll see it as just another
> step into hierarchical organization, but I think it might be a good
> idea to create a new, more-inclusive class of users, that has
> authoritative significance but no technical powers.  Basically any
> user who has been here for some period of time (maybe 2-3 weeks or
> so), and shown him/herself to be editing in good faith.  As we get
> bigger, I think there will be a lot more "fake" users trying to
> influence things, so restricting things like policy formation and
> votes to "real" users in some sort of formal way might be a good
> idea.  I'd envision it being very easy to gain this status: even
> someone who's invovled in lots of edit wars should be considered a
> "real user", so long as they aren't purely a troll or vandal, or
> someone who just signed up 3 hours ago.
>
> This might actually have the effect of reducing the hierarchy
> somewhat, because right now sysops are a sort of de facto group of
> "trusted users", since the only defined groups we have are "sysops",
> "logged-in users", and "anonymous users".  Sysops are too small a
> group, and logged-in users are too big a group (anyone can create 100
> accounts if they wish).  Making a larger group of trusted users
> without technical powers would reduce sysops to being just a subset of
> that group with additional technical powers, but no additional powers
> of any other sort.

I'd like to see statistics about how many users create multiple ID's for
the purpose of mischief.  When a vote or policy making takes place, how
much influence do these newbies have now.  If a newbie's opinion is
overly na?ve it will stand out like a sore thumb and be ignored.  On
voting, I don't think that most newbies feel confident enough to
participate, and those who do will not be in significant numbers.
 Reducing hierarchy by adding another level of hierarchy doesn't make
sense.  I don't support the proposal.  It's trying to solve an imagined
problem, not a real one.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
> From: Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 13:07:43 -0800
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Arbitration/mediation on en
>
> I think this is already what you have in mind, but just to clarify what
> I think is an important point, is this the correct understanding of the
> two committees' "power", such that it is? --
>
> Mediation: Involved in both disputes between users, and in particularly
> difficult disputes over articles (including content and content
> presentation), for example by suggesting compromise wording or
> rearrangements.  Mediators have no specific power to impose a solution,
> but should act in good faith, and hopefully their efforts will be seen
> as a good faith attempt to mediate disputes to reach a mutually
> agreeable conclusion.
>
> Arbitration: *Only* tasked with reviewing potential bans of users.  Does
> *not* have any power with regards to arbitrating the disputes over
> content or content presentation.  Basically, this committee is what
> decides when someone simply cannot work within Wikipedia, after an
> appeal from someone who has made that claim and asked the user to be
> banned.  The actual disputes themselves stay at the mediation level
> indefinitely, and are not subject to arbitration (any "voting" decision
> on them would be a wider vote on the talk page, presumably).
>
> -Mark

The arbitrators cannot decide any dispute that is not submitted to us, but I
think our jurisdiction should include disputes over content in appropriate
instances, for example, where repeated struggles to produce a NPOV article
have failed.

Fred


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Undeletion should never require more official validation than deletion.
>
Perhaps undeletion should be available to everybody, not just sysops.
 Deletion itself could still be limited to sysops.

Ec


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: I never metadata I didn't like

references:
<3FCFDAA7.9040301@apple.com>
	<87llps7zpz.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
	<3FD04E6E.2070605@web.de>

body:
On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 10:22:54 +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Well, the code *I* wrote (which I assume is what you're talking about)
> is finished, in the sense of "it works, but it ain't too pretty".
>
> Example: "[[Category:Stuff]]" somewhere in the article will show a link
> above (similar to language links), leading to the category page
> ("Category:Stuff"). That will automagically list all pages in that
> category (meaning, that link there via category link). A category page
> can be edited like a normal page (the article list is automatically
> shown below), and can include "super-categories" (e.g.,
> "[[Category:Biology]]" on "Category:Zoology"). Any page can, of course,
> have many categories.
>
> You'll have to enable categories in LocalSettings, but I forgot how :-(
>
> Magnus

Hello,

Maybe this should be activated on test.wikipedia.org so people can look at
it and crash it ?  Then we will have more feature requests to improve the
system :)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar
do not send mail to listme at listme.dsbl.org


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>The arbitrators cannot decide any dispute that is not submitted to us, but I
>think our jurisdiction should include disputes over content in appropriate
>instances, for example, where repeated struggles to produce a NPOV article
>have failed.
>
Of course.  Arbitrators who are narrowly focused on whether someone
should be banned or not would be a waste of human resources.  Based on
the facts in an actual case, they should have a wide range of possible
solutions available to them.

Ec


body:
On Fri, 5 Dec 2003 06:15:22 +0100 (CET), Lars Aronsson wrote:
>> Many articles contain complicated and advanced usages of HTML, and that
>> seem to work out fine.
>
> I don't think anybody is happy with the need for HTML markup in wiki
> pages.

Hello,

I personally like being able to code html in wikipedia articles. That's the
frist descriptive langage I learned.  I don't see why we should relearn a
new langage (wiki) when there is already one working well.

I mean <b> to bold a text is not THAT difficult to learn :)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar
do not send mail to listme at listme.dsbl.org


in_reply_to:
<3FD0CEBC.9030409@tonal.clara.co.uk> (Neil Harris's message of
	"Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:30:20 +0000")

body:
>>>>> "NH" == Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> writes:

    NH> How about just allowing links with equals signs in, like this:

    NH> [[predicate=object]] in RDF terminology, where the article is
    NH> the subject.

    NH> Note that this has the advantage of currently being an illegal
    NH> format for links, so we won't break anything.

I really like that, actually.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


body:
Viajero wrote:

>On 12/05/03  at 12:03 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said: >
>Yes, NH is strident and condescending, but maybe we can teach him to >
>become nice and humble.
>
>Sorry, Ed. I am afraid you won't be able to work your famous charm on him.
>He left this on Talk:Alternative medicine:
>
><quote>
>
>  I tired of wasting my time here. Any database that works locks out edits
>while some one is editing
>
>  Secondly, the editors on Wikipedia are hopeless biased, busy-bodies, who
>think their biased personal opinion is more valuable than referencing
>references.
>
>  I have backed up everything I have stated. You Geeks have not backed up
>any of your stupid statements: Not one.
>
>  The last edit is so patently absurd that you guys deserve your fate. --
>Mr-Natural-Health 22:04, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
>
></quote>
>
Ah-ha!  The proletarian mob raises the flag of victory from the yardarm!
 That was too close for comfort.  There was a serious risk that if Ed
had gotten to him first he might have become a useful contributor. :-(

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] User: TittoAssini

body:
LOL, yes, sorry! My brain must have slipped out of gear due to
[[santorum]].

I'm still trying to clean the coffee off my screen (Hi, DJ!).

I feel like Lady Macbeth, trying to get out these damned spots...

Uncle Ed


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> The arbitrators cannot decide any dispute that is not submitted to
>> us, but I
>> think our jurisdiction should include disputes over content in
>> appropriate
>> instances, for example, where repeated struggles to produce a NPOV
>> article
>> have failed.
>
> Of course.  Arbitrators who are narrowly focused on whether someone
> should be banned or not would be a waste of human resources.  Based on
> the facts in an actual case, they should have a wide range of possible
> solutions available to them.

I do see your point somewhat, and might be willing to let arbitrators do
things like set up a vote and interpret its results.  I'm somewhat
opposed, however, to letting an arbitration committee actually arbitrate
the content of controversial articles.  If something cannot be worked
out through mediation and must be put to a vote, I think a vote of the
contributors on the talk page is preferable to a vote by a separate
committee.

In my view, the arbitration committee should really only be taking over
powers previously reserved by Jimbo, which are basically to make
decisions on banning and procedural matters.  He's never reserved a
right to dictate resolutions to content disputes, and I don't think the
new committee should either.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] The trouble with log pages

body:
Log pages are a pain. They quickly get too long to load comfortably, so
people end up manually editing them to archive the information, but
attributions of edits are lost when the next automatic edit overwrites
it.

They can't be programmatically resorted or filtered very easily. And
the upload log makes Special:Unusedimages rather hit-and-miss by
linking to every uploaded file...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>> The arbitrators cannot decide any dispute that is not submitted to
>>> us, but I
>>> think our jurisdiction should include disputes over content in
>>> appropriate
>>> instances, for example, where repeated struggles to produce a NPOV
>>> article
>>> have failed.
>>
>> Of course.  Arbitrators who are narrowly focused on whether someone
>> should be banned or not would be a waste of human resources.  Based
>> on the facts in an actual case, they should have a wide range of
>> possible solutions available to them.
>
> I do see your point somewhat, and might be willing to let arbitrators
> do things like set up a vote and interpret its results.  I'm somewhat
> opposed, however, to letting an arbitration committee actually
> arbitrate the content of controversial articles.  If something cannot
> be worked out through mediation and must be put to a vote, I think a
> vote of the contributors on the talk page is preferable to a vote by a
> separate committee.
>
> In my view, the arbitration committee should really only be taking
> over powers previously reserved by Jimbo, which are basically to make
> decisions on banning and procedural matters.  He's never reserved a
> right to dictate resolutions to content disputes, and I don't think
> the new committee should either.

I agree that having arbitrators decide on the contents of an article
would be unwise, but then so is voting on the contents or an
overdependence on Google statistics.

We have a number of contributors who are otherwise very good
contributors, but who tend to go off the deep end when dealing with
certain subjects.  Depending on how the meta-data discussion ends up it
could be possible to block a user from editing a range of articles.
 Thus a person who loses perspective over the Middle East conflict could
be barred from editing any article that are classified with the words
"Israel" and "Palestine".  Arbitrators would still primarily deal with
disciplinary matters.  (I don't know about the procedural)  They could
still have a wide range of solutions available.

Mediators could be more free to deal with content since they would not
be implementing solutions.  In dealing with an edit war over content,
 by talking with the parties they could perhaps convince both to shift
their positions.

Ec


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Arbitration/mediation on en

body:
On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I would like to encourage a similar setup on the larger non-English
> wikipedias, perhaps customized to some extent to fit localized needs.
> But the overall concept is to have in place clear methods for group
> decision making that are respectful of our overall ideals.
>
> On the English wikipedia, this was not necessary until now, but on the
> other wikipedias I think that it is necessary sooner because there is
> no real way for me to be an effective benevolent dictator.
>
> So, let's discuss this.

As far as my experience from the Dutch Wikipedia is, I do not see any
need for this kind of institute yet. De facto the ruling is currently
done by a relatively large group, consisting basically of the regular
contributors (including but not restricted to the sysops). What
conflicts there are that do not get immediately and amicably resolved,
usually are between a single new user and several existing users. That
would hardly be helped by mediation or arbitration, as a new user
would see such as a clique protecting each other any way. Besides,
they usually tend to either change their ways into something more
fitting or leave Wikipedia well before that.

Andre Engels


body:
>>>>> "TB" == Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> writes:

    TB> I think that you should work out the integration of Magnus'
    TB> own scheme with the present code, recreating what we had on
    TB> [[test:]] back then. [...] With fresh blood (you), we can get
    TB> it straightened out this time, get it running on a big wiki
    TB> (like [[en:]]) and working for real; then we'll all be in a
    TB> good position to say ?What's still missing?? and decide if we
    TB> want more extended metadata.

I'd be perfectly happy to do that, but I'd prefer to do it with a
syntax and design that's extensible to other metadata. That way, if or
when it's endorsed, we can actually *use* the other metadata we think
up.

Magnus's design is pretty cool, and I think all I'd have to do is
tweak a couple of things to make it work with in a field-value pair
context.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: [Wikitech-l] I never metadata I didn't like

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>>From: Magnus Manske
>>
>>The Cunctator wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Please, please do not turn on this feature. Human-inserted metadata
>>>
>>>
>is
>
>
>>>basically unwiki. There are better approaches to dealing with the
>>>problem of categorization/computer comprehension of data. The right
>>>approaches act like magic.
>>>
>>>
>>>

I disagree strongly. Note that inter-language links and in-article links
are already human-generated metadata, and work just fine.

Let's turn on this feature ASAP, and get people to mark articles up, so
we can then experiment with ways of processing the category links.  Wiki
is data-driven: we can bootstrap the system by simply showing the list
of category links in an article in a similar way to the list of
interlanguge links.

I don't believe that adding the [[category:xxx]] feature will generate a
single ontology: rather, there will be a forest of possible ontologies,
creating a rich wiki-like mulch of human-relevant meaning that can then
be processed by computers.

All we need for the moment is agreement that

1.  [[category:xxx]] links should be permitted in articles
2.  how to display them (if at all) in the current article rendering

-- Neil


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I think that you should work out the integration of Magnus'
>>own scheme with the present code, recreating what we had on
>>[[test:]] back then. [...] With fresh blood (you), we can get
>>it straightened out this time, get it running on a big wiki
>>(like [[en:]]) and working for real; then we'll all be in a
>>good position to say ?What's still missing?? and decide if we
>> want more extended metadata.

>I'd be perfectly happy to do that, but I'd prefer to do it with a
>syntax and design that's extensible to other metadata. That way, if or
>when it's endorsed, we can actually *use* the other metadata we think
>up.

Just change Magnus' [[categery:foo]] to [[category=foo]].

>Magnus's design is pretty cool, and I think all I'd have to do is
>tweak a couple of things to make it work with in a field-value pair
>context.

Frankly, I find most of the metadata proposals on this thread rather fishy.
(I mean, do we really need [[discussion=Talk:Foo]]???)
But categories were popular, so you can get started.
Then allowing more becomes a wiki-by-wiki decision,
so Wikitravel's needs won't be limited by the cramped vision
of me and The Cunctator (any many others) on the English Wikipedia. ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: Viajero

body:
On 12/04/03  at 05:21 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> said:

> What I found remarkable about the articles was
> (at least a couple days ago) the lack of activity on the talk pages.

Most of the activity the past few days has been here: Talk:Alternative
medicine

I for one would like to see better coverage of alternative therapies in
Wikipedia; the last time I looked, the acupuncture page, for one,  was way
out of date and pretty bad. Maybe Mr NH will be able to help out in due
time, but my first impression is that he is strident and condescending.

V.


body:
Eclecticology wrote in part:

>Delirium wrote:

>>In my view, the arbitration committee should really only be taking
>>over powers previously reserved by Jimbo, which are basically to make
>>decisions on banning and procedural matters.  He's never reserved a
>>right to dictate resolutions to content disputes, and I don't think
>>the new committee should either.

>We have a number of contributors who are otherwise very good
>contributors, but who tend to go off the deep end when dealing with
>certain subjects.  Depending on how the meta-data discussion ends up it
>could be possible to block a user from editing a range of articles.
>Thus a person who loses perspective over the Middle East conflict could
>be barred from editing any article that are classified with the words
>"Israel" and "Palestine".  Arbitrators would still primarily deal with
>disciplinary matters.  (I don't know about the procedural)  They could
>still have a wide range of solutions available.

Note this distinction:

"The arbitration committee rules that [[User:X]] is hereby banned."

may be softened to:

"The arbitration committee rules that [[User:X]] is hereby banned
 from all articles relating directly to politics of the State of Israel."

which is rather unlike

"The arbitration committee rules that [[User:X]]'s edits to [[Palestine]]
 are wrong and [[User:Y]]'s version is the one that we will keep."

I believe that Ec is arguing for #2 (the ban of limited extent),
while Mark is arguing against #3 (the direct ruling on content).
So there should be no conflict here.

And inasmuch as the arbitration committee is known to have #1 available,
I also would support allowing #2 but not allowing #3.

-- Toby


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New project proposal to replace Sep11 wiki: Wikimorial

body:
Please join the discussion on meta:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimorial

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] I never metadata I didn't like

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>>>>>"TC" == The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
>    TC> Moreover, this isn't really (only) a discussion for
>    TC> wikitech-l.
>
>How to put metadata into articles is a tech question.
>
>What metadata fields to define -- like "category" -- and how to use
>them is an implementation question. It would vary from installation to
>installation.
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
How about just allowing links with equals signs in, like this:

[[predicate=object]] in RDF terminology, where the article is the subject.

Note that this has the advantage of currently being an illegal format
for links, so we won't break anything.

So, we could in principle have things like

[[category=biology]]
[[author=J. R. Hartley]]
[[author=W. Mandella]]
[[latlong=21.2N 33.4E]]
[[OSGB=SN 045 055]]

There should be no restriction on either the predicate or object values
other than that is that neither can contain "]" or "=": hopefully, data
formats that are useful will be invented and standardised by the normal
Wikipedia process.

In this way, we don't overload the current use of colons for namespaces,
but make the insertion of name-value pairs fairly intuitive.
This way, both the chosen predicates, and the choices of values for
those predicates, can be chosen by the community.

Again: the knotty issue is how to display these values in normal article
rendering to users who are not editing, as these values will only
accumulate cruft if they are not visible for peer review.

Suggestion: a line near the top of the article showing

  Author: J. R. Hartley, W. Mandella; Category: biology; Latlong: 21.2N
33.4E; OSGB: SN 045 055

We can then have special links to [[Category:]] articles for the
_predicate_ names (where their definitions, formats etc. can be defined
and discussed), and to Wikipedia articles for the values.

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Narrowing focus

in_reply_to:
<3FD0DD02.3000204@tonal.clara.co.uk> (Neil Harris's message of
	"Fri, 05 Dec 2003 19:31:14 +0000")

body:
>>>>> "NH" == Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> writes:

    NH> Does anyone have any good ideas for the fixed string in Evan's
    NH> scheme?  Obviously, we can't use "meta".

    NH> Unless someone can think of a good string, I would suggest the
    NH> [[name=value]] notation from my earlier post.

So, I like this, as it's visually distinct from namespaces.

My only caveat is that it would prohibit any article titles with "="
in the name. For example, [[F=ma]] or [[Silence = Death]] or
something. I don't know if that's an issue.

Using a little namespace-like prefix would make that a moot point,
although it's a little less clear.

I can't really think of an article that would or should have an equal
sign in the name, so that's probably unnecessary.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Narrowing focus

body:
>>>>> "TB" == Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> writes:

    TB> You know, if you combine with <somebody else>'s suggestion to
    TB> employ "=" and reduce the overload on ":", then we could get a
    TB> very nice general system here.

Yes, I like it too.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] The trouble with log pages

body:
>>>>> "BV" == Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

    BV> Log pages are a pain. They quickly get too long to load
    BV> comfortably, so people end up manually editing them to archive
    BV> the information, but attributions of edits are lost when the
    BV> next automatic edit overwrites it.

For some reason, the history gets lost, too.

    BV> They can't be programmatically resorted or filtered very
    BV> easily. And the upload log makes Special:Unusedimages rather
    BV> hit-and-miss by linking to every uploaded file...

Not to get too hung up on database-related solutions, but: would a
database-related solution work here?

For example, having a logs table (or actions, or whatever) like:

    action_type - "delete", "protect", "upload", "ban"
    action_user - user name
    action_object - article title, image title, user name
    action_timestamp - timestamp
    action_comment - what shows up in the comment on log pages now

This could be queried with a special query page, and you could
navigate backwards and forwards in time.

The downside is that the changes wouldn't show up in Recent Changes,
unless we made them.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


body:
Fred wrote:
>The arbitrators cannot decide any dispute that is
>not submitted to us, but I think our jurisdiction
>should include disputes over content in appropriate
>instances, for example, where repeated struggles to
>produce a NPOV article have failed.

I agree. However, IMO, the main task of arbitrators in
this regard would be to determine if more discussion
would be useful and whether discussion seems to be
going in circles or has stopped in some significant
way. Then the arbitrators could ask on the relevant
talk page whether or not a vote should be held. If a
majority (say 60%) of the user's (to be defined)
responding to that question respond 'yes' then a vote
should be set-up. The arbitrators' job at that point
would be to help the litigants decide which questions
should be asked and what the terms of the vote should
be. The resulting outcome of the vote would be binding
and should not give the impression that the
arbitrators are making content decisions (all
arbitrators should recuse themselves from  voting on
at least any issue they are arbitrating). We could
also set-up [[Wikipedia:Official votes]] as a
jumping-off place to the various official vote pages
on Wikipedia.

The current "vote" pages that are set-up willy-nilly
should be regarded as strawpoll opinion surveys not
subject to listing on the 'Official votes' page and
should not be considered binding in anything other
than the current wiki sense (meaning that people will
not get in trouble for working against the outcome of
the poll unless they very consistently break a policy
such as Wikiquette).

Just some ideas.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>>>>>"DA" == Danny Ayers <danny666 at virgilio.it> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
>    DA> This is all aside from how you'd get metadata from the Wiki -
>    DA> there's all the mechanical stuff (e.g. page
>    DA> creation/modification dates), stuff that can be semi-automated
>    DA> (e.g. author) - management of this is pretty straightforward
>    DA> to hook up to an existing system (most of it's probably
>    DA> already there in the DB tables). Then there's stuff that's
>    DA> entirely human-created. I reckon the MediaWiki is in an
>    DA> excellent position to lead the way on how this is done (what
>    DA> syntax etc.).
>
>A lot of what's considered important metadata, from a World Wide Web
>standpoint, could already be provided from the MediaWiki
>database. Scanning over the Dublin Core element set:
>
>           http://www.dublincore.org/documents/dces/
>
>...I don't think there's much that we couldn't encode either as RDF or
>in HTML link/meta tags. Yeah, I know, Dublin Core is only one part of
>the magical world that is RDF and the Semantic Web and so forth.
>
>Whether we do that for MediaWiki is a separate question from
>how and whether we do editor-assigned name-value pairs.
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
Yes: I've explored this in another project I'm working on, which is a
Wiki-meets-database-meets-Semantic Web hybrid that is still at the early
experimental stages of alpha development. Based on this, I think we can
place our trust in the Wiki-nature first, and let bindings to the
Semantic Web develop subsequent to this.

For example, it's likely that the Wikipedia community will choose
[[author=...]] to mean the same as the
<http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator> RDF predicate. Or maybe
they'll want to write [[dc:creator=...]], to be extra sure?

It doesn't matter: we will naturally tend to absorb standards from the
larger world, and things will sort themselves out.

-- Neil


from_name: Peter Bartlett

body:
[Snip wiki markup versus HTML example]
>Also, our own wiki markup gives us a better chance of producing the
/correct/ HTML -- which in this case is <em>, not <i> at all. ^_^
-- Toby

Another reason for preferring the more compact and simpler wiki markup
whenever possible is that HTML might not always be our target format for
display. E.g. I wrote a very simplistic Wiki markup to PDF script,
announced here
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-December/008768.html.
(It currently chucks more-or-less everything inside HTML tags as there
don't appear to be any HTML->TeX converters around that support anything
beyond HTML 2.0)

Pete / User:Pcb21


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] editing sections confused by <!-- comments -->

body:
"de:N?rnberg", that's http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%FCrnberg ,
features some <!-- == commented sections == --> and this obiously
confuses the embedded "edit" ("bearbeiten") commands.

Click on "5 Stadtgliederung    [bearbeiten]" and "== Politik ==" will
pop up.

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


subject:
Narrowing focus (was Re: [Wikitech-l] I never metadata I didn't
	like)

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>>>>>"EP" == Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
>    EP> Anyways, I wanted to float a design idea for inclusion of
>    EP> metadata in MediaWiki articles.
>
>I probably oversold this proposal by using the word "metadata", since
>it's such a loaded term. Introducing categorization as a possible
>metadata application, which is also a loaded subject for Wikipedia,
>might have also been a misstep.
>
>Perhaps I should have stuck with "editor-assigned field-value pairs".
>All *I* want is a way to:
>
>     * define field-value pairs for a page
>
>     * define different ways to render these field-value pairs: as
>       in-page links, as out-of-page links (like interlanguage links
>       now), as <meta> or <link> tags in the <head> of the HTML
>       output, not render them at all, or whatever.
>
>In other words, I want a technical feature for the MediaWiki
>software. How that feature gets used in different MediaWiki
>installations should be up to the communities using the installation.
>
>I'd like to make the feature powerful enough that it can handle
>categorization of Wikipedia, which is one possible if complex
>application. But if it can't, I'd still like to have the feature.
>
>So, to boil things down again, here's the technical proposal:
>
>    * Editors can put markup into a page like this:
>
>              [[field:name:value]]
>
>      * "field" is a per-installation fixed string, defining this
>        link as a data field. It probably should not conflict with any
>        namespace, language code, or InterWiki link.
>
>      * "name" can be any string that won't interfere with other
>        wikitext parsing and doesn't contain a ":"; it is the field
>        name.
>
>      * "value" is any string that won't interfere with other wikitext
>        parsing, and doesn't contain "]]". It is the field value.
>
>      * The field tag can go anywhere in the page text. There can be
>        multiple field tags with the same name.
>
>   * When a page is saved, the fields are extracted and put into a
>     database table called "fields". The table has the following
>     columns:
>
>        field_id: an autoincrementing unique identifier
>        field_cur_id : the cur_id of the cur row that contains this field
>        field_name: the contents of the name part
>        field_value: the contents of the value part
>
>   * When a page is rendered, the associated fields are retrieved, and
>     depending on field name and the installation configuration, they
>     can be:
>
>        * ignored. Just left out of the page entirely.
>        * displayed as a link in-page.
>        * displayed as text in-page.
>        * displayed as a link out-of-page (like interlanguage links)
>        * displayed as text out-of-page
>        * displayed as a <meta> field-value pair
>        * displayed as a <link> field-value pair
>
>Any application of this feature is up to the
>installation. Auto-indexed pages, bread-crumb navigation, field-based
>search, field display in search results, directories, etc., could be
>implemented if needed.
>
>~ESP
>
>
>

I agree completely with most of Evan's points.

Does anyone have any good ideas for the fixed string in Evan's scheme?
Obviously, we can't use "meta".

Unless someone can think of a good string, I would suggest the
[[name=value]] notation from my earlier post, which
* eliminates the need for a per-installation fixed string,
* the "=" char easily accessed in all international charsets, since it
is needed to do math
* does not conflict with any existing link scheme
* needs fewer characters to type
* does not look like ordinary links
* is perhaps self-explanatory?
* allows namespaces to be used within the fields themselves, eg:
[[discussion=Wikipedia talk:Foo]], [[originally-from=en:Fish]]

-- Neil


from_name: Fantasy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: We need 10000 to 20000 USD per year?

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
  > I'll answer your questions as best I can, ....

Jimmy, I tried to summarize your answer in
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia#Financial_situation
so we can add there also the donation status and other things.

I think the "on what will we spend money" is something that should be
discussed in a clear and open way, therefore i startet that "Financial"
part on the Wikimedia Article. Just looking in some postings on a
mailinglist should not be the way to find out, how Wikimedias Situation
is (at least I don't feel comfortable with it...).

I hope this page is ok for you,
Fantasy :-)

PS: Maybe we should later create an extra "Wikimedia-Financial" page
that is protected. But I did not get admin-rights yet, so I can not
protect this page for now.


references:
<03ec01c3bb13$8e1cca10$74001c12@reflection>
	<877k1bw3pk.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
	<3FD0CEBC.9030409@tonal.clara.co.uk>

body:
Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> writes:

> [[predicate=object]] in RDF terminology, where the article is the subject.

But please keep it separate from the article!  I don't feel comfortable
with the idea to download more and more metadata (like navigation links
or table data) again and again.
--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 22:13, Delirium wrote:

    Jimmy Wales wrote:
    >Adam is right of course.  I don't know who he is quoting, and maybe
    >that was only a joke, but sysop is always and everywhere supposed to
    >be a purely technical matter, not a position of authority and power of
    >any kind.
    >
    >I think maybe I need to say that a lot more often, eh?
    >
    >And maybe we need to focus on what technical changes could be made to reduce
    >the differences between sysops and ordinary signed-in-users.
    >
    >
    This will probably be opposed by those who'll see it as just another
    step into hierarchical organization, but I think it might be a good idea
    to create a new, more-inclusive class of users, that has authoritative
    significance but no technical powers.  Basically any user who has been
    here for some period of time (maybe 2-3 weeks or so), and shown
    him/herself to be editing in good faith.  As we get bigger, I think
    there will be a lot more "fake" users trying to influence things, so
    restricting things like policy formation and votes to "real" users in
    some sort of formal way might be a good idea.  I'd envision it being
    very easy to gain this status: even someone who's invovled in lots of
    edit wars should be considered a "real user", so long as they aren't
    purely a troll or vandal, or someone who just signed up 3 hours ago.

    This might actually have the effect of reducing the hierarchy somewhat,
    because right now sysops are a sort of de facto group of "trusted
    users", since the only defined groups we have are "sysops", "logged-in
    users", and "anonymous users".  Sysops are too small a group, and
    logged-in users are too big a group (anyone can create 100 accounts if
    they wish).  Making a larger group of trusted users without technical
    powers would reduce sysops to being just a subset of that group with
    additional technical powers, but no additional powers of any other sort.

    Ideas?

    -Mark

I for one love this idea. In addition to addressing the problems that
Delirium lists above, it would have the added benefit of giving users a
modicum of validation from very early on, thus maybe reducing the number
of walk-in walk-outs, and also reducing the number of folks applying for
sysophood after 2 weeks and 100 edits who only really want validation
for their existence on wikipedia.

Now at the other end of things, maybe at this point on the English
wikipedia we have enough sysops in attendance at any one time, that it
would not be unreasonable to require two concurring sysops to perform
sysopactions which are uncommonly needed but potentially particularly
controversial. I am thinking about unprotection of pages and undeletion
as well. Perhaps protection of page as well, with the proviso that only
one of the sysops participating in the protection be uninvolved in
editing the page or having taken a strong view about it. Is this
technically feasible?

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)

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body:
On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 23:06, Toby Bartels wrote:

    Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote in part:

    >Now at the other end of things, maybe at this point on the English
    >wikipedia we have enough sysops in attendance at any one time, that it
    >would not be unreasonable to require two concurring sysops to perform
    >sysopactions which are uncommonly needed but potentially particularly
    >controversial. I am thinking about unprotection of pages and undeletion
    >as well.

    Undeletion should never require more official validation than deletion.

The inclusion of the word "never" in your argument; and the absence of a
stated justification for your view; suggests that your position is a
dogmatic one. Am I mischaractericising your attitude?

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)

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from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
 from here it seemed index corruption on ja, and after that en started to
crawl, then choked.
developers required i guess.
just mumbling to myself.

grin


body:
On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 23:15, Jimmy Wales wrote:

    Toby Bartels wrote:
    > Undeletion should never require more official validation than deletion.

    And generally less, right, since after all a person can always 'undelete'
    by just starting the article over and copying and pasting the text?

    --Jimbo

Right. Got me. Although there is the possibility of putting something in
place of the deleted page and protecting it. So in that sense the most
powerful action a sysop can do (apart from blocking users) is to protect
and unprotect pages, and those are the crucial actions to concentrate
on.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Apache/php on pliny

body:
I've reinstalled apache (now 1.3.29) and php (now 4.3.4) on pliny.
mod_throttle is still disabled. We'll see if anything changes...

Apache config:
OPTIM='-O2 -mcpu=i686' ./configure --with-layout=Apache
--enable-module=rewrite --enable-module=mmap-static
--enable-module=headers --enable-module=expires
--activate-module=src/modules/php4/libphp4.a

PHP config:
./configure --enable-shmop --with-zlib --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql
--with-iconv --with-apache=/home/brion/src/apache_1.3.29
--with-readline --enable-sockets

Pliny has GCC 2.96.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 12/5/03 6:54 PM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> We have a number of contributors who are otherwise very good
> contributors, but who tend to go off the deep end when dealing with
> certain subjects.  Depending on how the meta-data discussion ends up it
> could be possible to block a user from editing a range of articles.
> Thus a person who loses perspective over the Middle East conflict could
> be barred from editing any article that are classified with the words
> "Israel" and "Palestine".  Arbitrators would still primarily deal with
> disciplinary matters.  (I don't know about the procedural)  They could
> still have a wide range of solutions available.

That possibility disgusts me.


from_name: Yann Forget

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

Hi,

Le Friday 05 December 2003 15:57, Andre Engels a ?crit :
> On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > I would like to encourage a similar setup on the larger non-English
> > wikipedias, perhaps customized to some extent to fit localized needs.
> > But the overall concept is to have in place clear methods for group
> > decision making that are respectful of our overall ideals.
> >
> > On the English wikipedia, this was not necessary until now, but on the
> > other wikipedias I think that it is necessary sooner because there is
> > no real way for me to be an effective benevolent dictator.
> >
> > So, let's discuss this.
>
> As far as my experience from the Dutch Wikipedia is, I do not see any
> need for this kind of institute yet. De facto the ruling is currently
> done by a relatively large group, consisting basically of the regular
> contributors (including but not restricted to the sysops). What
> conflicts there are that do not get immediately and amicably resolved,
> usually are between a single new user and several existing users. That
> would hardly be helped by mediation or arbitration, as a new user
> would see such as a clique protecting each other any way. Besides,
> they usually tend to either change their ways into something more
> fitting or leave Wikipedia well before that.
>
> Andre Engels

For the French WP, I would say like Andre. Up to now, most of the problems
have been solved by discussion and consensus. In the case of the recently
banned user, it is after that any other solution was tried that a unanimous
vote decided to ban him.

Yann

- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
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RDzUR6Hhcx32WXbPbEDBfuI=
=CYJ0
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body:
On 12/05/03  at 12:03 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said: >
Yes, NH is strident and condescending, but maybe we can teach him to >
become nice and humble.

Sorry, Ed. I am afraid you won't be able to work your famous charm on him.
He left this on Talk:Alternative medicine:

<quote>

  I tired of wasting my time here. Any database that works locks out edits
while some one is editing

  Secondly, the editors on Wikipedia are hopeless biased, busy-bodies, who
think their biased personal opinion is more valuable than referencing
references.

  I have backed up everything I have stated. You Geeks have not backed up
any of your stupid statements: Not one.

  The last edit is so patently absurd that you guys deserve your fate. --
Mr-Natural-Health 22:04, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

</quote>

The "last edit" he is referring to is some changes RK made to the text.

V.


from_name: Alex R.

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> >The arbitrators cannot decide any dispute that is not submitted to us,
but I
> >think our jurisdiction should include disputes over content in
appropriate
> >instances, for example, where repeated struggles to produce a NPOV
article
> >have failed.
> >
> Of course.  Arbitrators who are narrowly focused on whether someone
> should be banned or not would be a waste of human resources.  Based on
> the facts in an actual case, they should have a wide range of possible
> solutions available to them.

If Wikipedia's arbitration committee gets really good at what it is doing
perhaps
it can start soliciting arbitration cases and donate the fees for such
service to
Wikipedia. Online arbitration is a fast growing field. Maybe I'm dreaming
out loud but arbitrators that know the law regarding fair use and its First
Amendment implications on the net could provide a useful service and maybe
keep those DMCA disputes out of the courts like the recent Diebold and
the EFF contravention. Of course the wikiarbiters would have to be known
 as fair, impartial and knowledgeable, but there is little doubt that such \
will be the case in my mind.

Alex


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

references:
<03ec01c3bb13$8e1cca10$74001c12@reflection>
	<877k1bw3pk.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
	<3FD0CEBC.9030409@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<shbrqnf67o.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
* Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de> [2003-12-05]:
> Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> writes:
>
> > [[predicate=object]] in RDF terminology, where the article is the subject.
>
> But please keep it separate from the article!  I don't feel comfortable
> with the idea to download more and more metadata (like navigation links
> or table data) again and again.

There could be two "html" sections generated : the "classification" and
the article itself and "Edit this page" and "Classify this page" as two
different links for editing two different sources.

Just fwiw.

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Expert Determination anyone?

body:
From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

>Me too. As does the whole discussion of whether arbitrators should have a remit which includes content of articles.

>I think this highlights the fact that the missing third wheel of the mediation/arbitration pair is Expert Determination.

>I think Alex756 briefly mentioned this in a much earlier discussion, but it got lost in the volume of discussion about arbitration and >mediation, which are slightly better known by most folks. So, Alex756, would you like to recap?

Arbitrators make decisions based upon a dispute.  Sometimes this dispute is based upon facts, or relationships between facts (we often call that law, rules) or relationships between rules (adjectival dispute resolution). There are facts that are readily determinable through such activities as reviewing documents, listening to the testimony of individuals (I was there, I saw what happened) or through an expert. I am assuming that this is what you are interested in. Such experts make reports.  It is true that experts may have differing opinions, thus several experts (representing each position in a dispute) may tender their reports and opinions.  True the arbiters may make the final decisions ( these may be judge like or jury like, or a combination of those roles) but their decisions must bear some reasonable relationship to the generally accepted methodologies of the experts. Or they could make a reference to such experts, or a panel thereof and that panel could make a determination based upon their generally recognized expert qualifications ir the arbiters could appoint an expert and ask for a report. Such report may be questioned by the various parties to the arbitration (they are not litigants, arbitration is basically a contractual relationship, not one that is state imposed) and some type of appeal to the arbitrators may be possible if the experts make a determination that can be shown to disregard the decision making process of their expertise. There are really many ways in which arbitration and the determination of experts can interact. Does that help, Cimon?

Alex
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from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem uploading pictures

body:
I've been having problems trying to upload an image tonight. I select
the file to be loaded, enter the description, tick the copyright
clearance box and click "upload", and I get:

Upload file
 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Successful upload
File "" uploaded successfully. Please follow this link:
(Image:Uk2pnd2002-S.jpg) to the description page and fill in information
about the file, such as where it came from, when it was created and by
whom, and anything else you may know about it.

i.e. it knows what I wanted to call it, but didn't apply the filename to
the actual image. If I follow the link it asks me to, I get:

Image:Uk2pnd2002-S.jpg
 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

UK ?2 coin, 2002 - Scottish variation - own scan

Image history
Legend: (cur) = this is the current image, (del) = delete this old
version, (rev) = revert to this old version.
Click on date to see image uploaded on that date.

(del) (cur) . . Arwel Parry (23504 bytes) (UK ?2 coin, 2002 - Scottish
variation - own scan)
Image links
The following pages link to this image:

British coin Two Pounds

As you can see, there's no date on the detail line for me to click on to
see the image! Any ideas what's happening?

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki: namespace and customizable messages

body:
Tim Starling has fixed a few final bugs in this feature that's been in
development and it should now be active on the various wikis.

Most of the user interface messages can now be modified directly by
editing a special page in the 'MediaWiki:' namespace. Since this can be
somewhat dangerous these pages are protected and editing is restricted
to sysops.

So far this feature does not completely replace the LanguageXx.php
files, but it should make it a lot easier to get most things adjusted
without the delay of contacting the developers to get new versions of
language files tested and installed. Additionally, custom messages may
be used to insert common reusable bits of text into articles.

For some documentation, see:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-Wikimedia:MediaWiki_namespace

and on the English wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MediaWiki_namespace

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Rob Hooft

subject: [Wikitech-l] The trouble with log pages

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Log pages are a pain. They quickly get too long to load comfortably, so
> people end up manually editing them to archive the information, but
> attributions of edits are lost when the next automatic edit overwrites it.
>
> They can't be programmatically resorted or filtered very easily. And the
> upload log makes Special:Unusedimages rather hit-and-miss by linking to
> every uploaded file...

Looks like you're calling for time to replace all log pages by a system
similar to RecentChanges instead?

Rob

--
Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/


from_name: Russell Jones

subject: [Wikitech-l] A wiki of semantics for the wiki?

body:
I'm being quite wooly here, but I think we may be able to avoid the kind
of issues Lars seems to be worried (of remote, centrallised, irrelevant
meta data) about by wikifing the semantics themselves, making them fluid
and negotiable like the rest of the wiki. For example, I could write:

/King Harold died in [[meta:DiedIn:1066]] during the [[Battle of
Hastings]] in [[that year|meta:Battle:1066]].
/
Now, neither DiedIn or Battle need be defined beforehand.  These could
themselves be pages that describe further semantic relationships, eg
that battles have a start and end time, participants and a location.
These could be added by other participants (possibly prototyped in
natural English with links to relevant wiktionary or wikipedia articles)
along with references to existing relationships.  And talk pages, of course.

Elsewhere I might write:

/Fred Bloggs lived until [[meta:LivedUntil:1977]]. /

This could be dealt with as a synonym for DiedIn in a way similar to
page redirects.  I'm concious that there are other examples where ways
of stating relationships are incompatible, though I can't think of any
at the moment. Consequently I can't concieve of how they might work yet.

There are relationships that are complementary, eg the ball is in the
box if and only if the box contains the ball. How that and similar types
of relationships can be 'understood' by the system to be equivalent
without vast amounts of processing, I must admit I have no idea.  Some
of you seem to have studied this topic.  Any thoughts?

Storing relationships and their semantics allow us to do things like
automatically create timelines of battles and other categories of
historical events.  Webs of relationships between objects (and meanings
of words) would start to be set up allowing other classification and
possibly even reasoning of sorts to be performed.  Whether these could
be made practical to carry out, particularly as edits occur, I don't know.

There's lots more to be usefully said on this topic (possibly not be me,
I don't think I really grasp it yet), but far more that is not useful.
I hope the list will not be clogged by wild extrapolations, but debate
around this topic may point to simple, implementable solutions.

However, is wikitech-L the place for such debate? Should there be a page
(or pages) on meta.wiki.org called "applications of metadata" and
"semantics in the wiki"?

Russell Jones

Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>>>>>"LA" == Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
>    LA> You have to provide some incentive for the editor of an
>    LA> article to input the metadata.  How are you going to succeed
>    LA> in attracting wikipedia article editors?
>
>That's a worthwhile question. Here's some possible answers:
>
>* Automatic indices. Use metadata to automatically create indices to
>  the encyclopedia, like [[list of X]]. We could probably also do some
>  fun automatic stuff with the timeline and date pages.
>
>      [[meta:year=1885,born]]
>      [[meta:year=1923,died]]
>
>* Metadata-guided search. Currently we have three levels of search:
>  exact title (the "Go" button), title match, and full-text match. I'd
>  say that a metadata search (probably placed, in order of value,
>  between exact title and title match) would be helpful. We could
>  leave it on (like "Go") even when full-text search was too
>  compute-intensive.
>
>* Metadata in search results: even for full-text search, it can be
>  useful to return metadata. Like, if I search for "Springfield", it'd
>  be kind of nice to see:
>
>     - Springfield
>       is-a: city, is-part-of: Kentucky
>
>       (matching text here)
>
>     - Springfield
>       is-a: city, is-part-of: Missouri
>
>       (matching text here)
>
>     - Springfield
>       is-a: fictional city, genre: animation
>
>       (matching text here)
>
>  Yes, the presentation is lame -- I don't think we'd ever show raw
>  tags like that. But you get the picture.
>
>* Geographical proximity. Frankly, I think ICBM tags make the whole
>  thing worthwhile, just on their own. But that's my own bete noire.
>
>* Breadcrumb navigation. It's fairly cumbersome to write, in
>  [[cyclotron]], that "A cyclotron is an [[instrument]] used in
>  [[particle physics]] which is a branch of [[physics]] which in turn
>  is a [[natural science]] which is a kind of [[science]]." After all,
>  the article isn't about natural science -- why describe it from
>  here?
>
>  But with metadata we could have a breadcrumb link thing that says:
>
>    sciences > natural sciences > physics > particle physics > instruments
>
>Frankly, what I think is that we just need to have one or two
>applications of the metadata, and people are going to think up
>brilliant new ones. They'll send patches for MediaWiki to do it, or
>they'll send RFEs, or they'll develop their own bots or whatever.
>
>In other words, I don't think we're going to need to worry about
>getting people into doing metadata; we're going to have to worry about
>keeping up!
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Arbitration/mediation on en

body:
Yann Forget a ?crit:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi,
>
> Le Friday 05 December 2003 15:57, Andre Engels a ?crit :
>
>>On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>>I would like to encourage a similar setup on the larger non-English
>>>wikipedias, perhaps customized to some extent to fit localized needs.
>>>But the overall concept is to have in place clear methods for group
>>>decision making that are respectful of our overall ideals.
>>>
>>>On the English wikipedia, this was not necessary until now, but on the
>>>other wikipedias I think that it is necessary sooner because there is
>>>no real way for me to be an effective benevolent dictator.
>>>
>>>So, let's discuss this.
>>
>>As far as my experience from the Dutch Wikipedia is, I do not see any
>>need for this kind of institute yet. De facto the ruling is currently
>>done by a relatively large group, consisting basically of the regular
>>contributors (including but not restricted to the sysops). What
>>conflicts there are that do not get immediately and amicably resolved,
>>usually are between a single new user and several existing users. That
>>would hardly be helped by mediation or arbitration, as a new user
>>would see such as a clique protecting each other any way. Besides,
>>they usually tend to either change their ways into something more
>>fitting or leave Wikipedia well before that.
>>
>>Andre Engels
>
>
> For the French WP, I would say like Andre. Up to now, most of the problems
> have been solved by discussion and consensus. In the case of the recently
> banned user, it is after that any other solution was tried that a unanimous
> vote decided to ban him.
>
> Yann

I waited for a while to see what french would say about this. And
indeed, I am not surprised by your comment Yann.

There is somehow an arbitration commitee. We saw it on Papotages issue.
The arbitration commitee involved basically any user that have been
there for a couple of weeks. Every one was allowed to speak up on
Papotages banning issue. Being a sysop or not made *no* difference
whatsoever.
I suppose though, that if recent users have declared themselves against
the banning, their opinion would have been discarded. Their opinion was
receivable because they agreed with the general opinion.

I hardly dare to say that the banning when it was pronounced, was *not*
unanimous as you claim it was. You are arranging the truth Yann. It was
perhaps very widely consensual; but on the 11th of november, if you
claim it was unanimous, you are just lying. That our opinion was said
non acceptable is one thing, however, I would appreciate that you
recognised minorities opinions existed.

Of course, we will agree that *now* there is unanimity. But it was not
such on the banning day.

The second is about mediation. As you say, we tried. Not all of us, not
in an organised way, but we tried; and failed.
However, I am sorry to say that several users, up to 2 months before the
user was banned, considered any attempt at mediation, as troll feeding,
and actively empeached the process of mediation, as they were already
activity trying to out Papotages.
That certainly did not help.
I see not how mediation could ever be used properly on fr, as long as it
is seen as a destructive or dangerous process for wikipedia, as I was
told by some people.
Setting up an official group of people who could help could have the
benefit to make it clear to all, that mediation is meant to *help*, not
to further *damage* Wikipedia.

In short, the banning process looked ok to me. The mediation one was a
disaster :-)
And one of the reason why Former User left Wikipedia in disgust.

I would be happy to read Aoineko opinion on mediation.


body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
To: Wikipedia mailing list
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 1:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Expert Determination anyone?

On Sat, 2003-12-06 at 06:49, Alex R. wrote:
?
From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

<..smip..>

> Well yes, it helps define what I wasn't talking about ;-)

>I guess I was thinking more on the lines
> of expert determination like that in cases where a
> contract itself says that in case of a
>dispute an independent expert is brought in,
> and produces a binding evaluation.

Sorry, but you did not understand what I wrote if you do not think that this
category is not included in
arbitration. I am talking about arbitration from ancient Roman times down to
modern international
commercial arbitration. I am covering your very narrow example with many
different possiblities of
contracts. Yours is clearly included in the general discussion. Of course I
have not Capitalized Words
to make them sound important, but when you are talking about a phenomenon
that has spanned
thousands of years and involves many different cultural expressions you
cannot sum everything up
so that it is understood through one particular cultural expression of such
a social activity.

If you carefully reread what I previously wrote you will see that it
includes your example. Clearly
a binding evaulation is included in the various possible scenarios and it
depends, as you state,
on the contract since arbitration is a contract it can be determined by the
will of the parties. They
can put in anything they want. They can say, let us toss a coin and if the
coin lands head you win,
if tails, I win.  If it stays on its side, well, we will get another coin.
This is exactly what I said and
that is all you have said about "experts". I have tried to put them in more
context so that people
can see that it is not so simple as just this minor example of the roles
that experts can play in
contractual decision making. Excuse me for trying to be so encyclopedic.
Isn't that what we do here?

Just think about it clearly before you decide that I haven't answered your
question.

Alex


body:
On Sat, 2003-12-06 at 05:30, The Cunctator wrote:

    On 12/5/03 6:54 PM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
    > We have a number of contributors who are otherwise very good
    > contributors, but who tend to go off the deep end when dealing with
    > certain subjects.  Depending on how the meta-data discussion ends up it
    > could be possible to block a user from editing a range of articles.
    > Thus a person who loses perspective over the Middle East conflict could
    > be barred from editing any article that are classified with the words
    > "Israel" and "Palestine".  Arbitrators would still primarily deal with
    > disciplinary matters.  (I don't know about the procedural)  They could
    > still have a wide range of solutions available.

    That possibility disgusts me.

Me too. As does the whole discussion of whether arbitrators should have
a remit which includes content of articles.

I think this highlights the fact that the missing third wheel of the
mediation/arbitration pair is Expert Determination.

I think Alex756 briefly mentioned this in a much earlier discussion, but
it got lost in the volume of discussion about arbitration and mediation,
which are slightly better known by most folks. So, Alex756, would you
like to recap?

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)
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references:
<BBF6B77E.147D2%cunctator@kband.com>
	<1070685416.16645.42.camel@myhome.home>
	<00a101c3bbb4$5cc8d980$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>

body:
On Sat, 2003-12-06 at 06:49, Alex R. wrote:

    ?
    From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

    >Me too. As does the whole discussion of whether arbitrators should
    have a remit which includes content of articles.

    >I think this highlights the fact that the missing third wheel of
    the mediation/arbitration pair is Expert Determination.

    >I think Alex756 briefly mentioned this in a much earlier
    discussion, but it got lost in the volume of discussion about
    arbitration and >mediation, which are slightly better known by most
    folks. So, Alex756, would you like to recap?

        Arbitrators make decisions based upon a dispute.

Yes, well this is pretty much the problem with having wikimedias
arbitrators decide the content of articles. The content of the articles
can almost never be easily framed as a "dispute" (where there are two
clear alternatives).

Almost always quarrels over article content are what are technically
termed "issues" (where the object of the dispute resolution is to
discover what the content should be, not which). Or so I think.

If a one were to allow disputant wikipedians to bring to arbitration
"formulated disputes" between two versions of an article, that would be
a horrendous usurpation of the wikipedia editorship as a whole.

         Sometimes this dispute is based upon facts, or relationships
        between facts (we often call that law, rules) or relationships
        between rules (adjectival dispute resolution). There are facts
        that are readily determinable through such activities as
        reviewing documents, listening to the testimony of individuals
        (I was there, I saw what happened) or through an expert. I am
        assuming that this is what you are interested in. Such experts
        make reports.  It is true that experts may have differing
        opinions, thus several experts (representing each position in a
        dispute) may tender their reports and opinions.  True the
        arbiters may make the final decisions ( these may be judge like
        or jury like, or a combination of those roles) but their
        decisions must bear some reasonable relationship to the
        generally accepted methodologies of the experts. Or they could
        make a reference to such experts, or a panel thereof and that
        panel could make a determination based upon their generally
        recognized expert qualifications ir the arbiters could appoint
        an expert and ask for a report. Such report may be questioned by
        the various parties to the arbitration (they are not litigants,
        arbitration is basically a contractual relationship, not one
        that is state imposed) and some type of appeal to the
        arbitrators may be possible if the experts make a determination
        that can be shown to disregard the decision making process of
        their expertise. There are really many ways in which arbitration
        and the determination of experts can interact. Does that help,
        Cimon?

Well yes, it helps define what I wasn't talking about ;-)

I guess I was thinking more on the lines of expert determination like
that in cases where a contract itself says that in case of a dispute an
independent expert is brought in, and produces a binding evaluation.

I confess that the problem with this is where to find an outside expert,
as quite likely they are already embroiled anyway. Looking outside
wikipedia has problems, though there is precedent for that. I'm thinking
about the case of Florentin Smarandache and his Neutrosophy article
(from my first days on wikipedia, btw).

As I recall, in that case the man was totally unable to write about
himself and his theory comprehensibly, and an outside logician from
India was brought in to fix the articles.

I suppose a nearmiss might be to get someone from an adjacent field to
do the expert determination.

Where the arbitrators might conceivably come in is, if one party wanted
to directly revert the article back to what it was before the expert
made his contribution. Maybe.

Well, these are my thoughts at the moment anyway. Ask me tomorrow, and I
might have a differerent opinion.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)

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