from_name: Steve Sanbeg

subject:
[Wikitech-l] fixing lines automatically which run
	through	theborder

body:
On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 09:47:11 +0000, Mark Clements wrote:

> "Rob Church" <robchur at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:e92136380612161920k7469d462gf2b73e4316964eed at mail.gmail.com...
>> On 17/12/06, Jax <cybercorecentre at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> > As you see if you copy text files to the mediawiki then some line will
>> > overruns the border and after you got thousands of pages in your wiki it
>> > can't be fix by hand. This wiki is not public, I need to maintain it for
>> > my company so I can't just ask someone to setup a bot to fix it even if
>> > that's a solution.
>>
>> The problem seems to be that some lines prefixed with spaces are
>> creeping in from the source text. MediaWiki treats this as a cue to
>> enter <pre> mode, which means that formatting and line breaks are up
>> to the user. To correct this, delete the preceding spaces at the start
>> of each line.
>>
>> To fix this in bulk, you could write a quickie maintenance script
>> which whizzes through all pages in the database (or just those you
>> specify) and performs this edit for you, saving the page if changes
>> were made.
>>
>
> If the pages are text files, then presumably there is no wiki markup in it
> anyway, therefore you should wrap the whole page in <nowiki> tags.
>
> You will need to remove the tags and perform any clean-up (e.g. removing
> leading spaces, as pointed out by Rob) if you want to introduce wiki markup
> into the page at a later date.
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)

There's also a poem extension, which is used by wikisource to simplify
copying texts.  This prevents auto filling and drawing the box around
text, but allows wiki & HTML markup in the text.  You'd just install that
extension and wrap the text in a <poem> tag.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
On 12/18/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, the law is much trickier and more gray than that, and Wikipedia
> > editors need to get out of the notion that they can use original
> > research to outline arguments and pontificate about what the "true
> > facts" are.  As well, we really have no idea what people believe, we
> > only know what they say and do.  Thus, you can state,
> > "A number of authors have stated X[cite][cite], while legal scholars
> > have stated Y[cite][cite][cite]", but that's as far as we can go, and
> > indeed, as far as we need to go. It makes the point equally well
> > without the smell of argumentative POV-pushing.
>
> Stated is much better than believe, yes, excellent point. I'm not sure
> what your saying in your first sentence though...

What I was saying was that regarding legal opinion, we don't tell
people what is "correct", we just tell them what legal scholars have
said on the matter. The latter meets [[WP:NPOV]], the former does not.

Jay.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
> I was speaking to the particular example given, where there are two
> popular positions on the subject held by lay people, while all expert
> accounts support only one of those positions. In this context, where
> all experts who have written on the subject have agreed with the same
> position, surely it is not original research to say so.

It would be easiest in this case just to state it as fact and cite the
sources you've found.

"While some members of the public believe X [cite], legally, Y is
correct [cite][cite][cite]."

You are allowed to assume that your sources are correct, as long as
they appear reliable (something published in a law journal counts as
reliable). That's why we cite sources, so in the event that the source
is wrong it is clear who is at fault, and we can't be charged with
libel, or whatever else the consequences of false information may be.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
> The number who have been desysopped suggests otherwise.

How many people have been forcibly desysopped? I don't think it's many...


list: wikitech-l

from_name: jra at baylink.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Where are the network graphs?

body:
> I was looking for these to show off to a friend (I said the funding
drive was mostly for boxes and bandwidth, they were curious as to just
how much we actually served) and couldn't find them. I thought they
were on http://ganglia.wikimedia.org/ but that appears to be CPU and
memory. Are the network and bandwidth charts still up anywhere?

Well, my somewhat aged page with useful such links is at

   https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Collected_Status

though I haven't tested them all recently.

Cheers,
-- jra

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Assume good faith" is no longer policy.

body:
> > So much for policy changes being discussed widely prior to implimentation...
>
> It doesn't seem to work like that these days - the change is made,
> then thye see who complains.

Which is fine. That's the point of a wiki - you can make changes and
if other people don't like them, they can undo them.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erica Flynn

subject: [Foundation-l] Pledge of personal commitment

body:
On 12/17/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Or we could make "man" a gender-neutral term.

No. I would entertain "Chairperson", or simply "Chair", as well as
"Chairwoman" or "Chairman" as appropriate.

Erica

On 12/17/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 17/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Chairwoman, grumble, grumble, grumble.
> >


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
On 12/18/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Or making the edit box as fancy-shmancy as the article -- like being able to
> collapse some features... or previewing images! or WYSIWYG editing box! or
> telepathic article writing!
>
> What about pressing a button and finding that 100,000 featured articles have
> been written?

Who are you mocking here?

Steve


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
>
> > > > I think we should totally do away with the Guideline/Policy/Essay
> > > > notices.. Instead we should put a signature space below... so users
> > > > can see all the people who support the page.
>
> > > Right. And people should renew their sig evey time the page is edited.
> > > Seriously, Voting IS Evil.
>
> > Encourage SPOV editing. ;)
> > What I suggested isn't a vote anyways. If you think it is, then you
> > misunderstand me or you misunderstand voting.
>
>
> It will look like a vote and be assumed to be a vote.
>

Still, what Gregory is proposing is exactly how it used to be, isn't it. Of
course, that was when Keep Rules Simple was a Rule.

Dan


body:
>
> I haven't participated in any of the discussion about Assume Good Faith, but
> in my experience, I've usually encountered it when users quote it to claim
> that criticism of them is equivalent to not assuming good faith.
>
> Does it really solve more problems than it causes?
>

Judging this sort of thing by how it is cited in arguments will probably give
you a skewed view. I can only assume it is read and understood by lots of people
who never feel the need to name-drop it.

Dan


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> (And I realise Alexa numbers are less than widely respected, but still
> consider that they give us some idea of scale, i.e. we're currently in
> the range of 1/5 to 1/10 Google's page views. JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION
> GET IN THE CAR)

You're giving too much credibility to the alexa data. There are sites
which are ranked somewhat lower than us which I know for a fact are
processing more req/s.

It is indisputable, however, that we are one of the more visited sites around.


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org

body:
Most of it
should be possible to translate with merely a dictionary.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_C.O.R.E.

JePe wrote:
> On http://fundraising.wikimedia.org there are now next to English some
> translations made. How can we make a translation in another language?
>
> Hans (JePe)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 12/18/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > (And I realise Alexa numbers are less than widely respected, but still
> > consider that they give us some idea of scale, i.e. we're currently in
> > the range of 1/5 to 1/10 Google's page views. JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION
> > GET IN THE CAR)
>
> You're giving too much credibility to the alexa data. There are sites
> which are ranked somewhat lower than us which I know for a fact are
> processing more req/s.

The key is *somewhat*.  There are probably very few sites ranked
under, say, 30-50 (or at least under 100) that actually get more
traffic than Wikipedia.  Alexa is acceptable for very rough ballparks,
although how rough exactly would be interesting to statistically
analyze.


body:
http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/reqstats/ is where Mark Bergsma has our
traffic information.  Pay attention to the monthly and yearly graphs;
the trendline is unmistakeable.

David Gerard wrote:
> I was looking for these to show off to a friend (I said the funding
> drive was mostly for boxes and bandwidth, they were curious as to just
> how much we actually served) and couldn't find them. I thought they
> were on http://ganglia.wikimedia.org/ but that appears to be CPU and
> memory. Are the network and bandwidth charts still up anywhere?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Commons-l] Recruit photographers with your blog

body:
On 18/12/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Or, we could use query.php (or that other api thing...) :
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=imageinfo&titles=Image:Cetacea_range_map_Chinese_River_Dolphin.PNG
>
> to import the image history, and use SpecialImport for the description
> page only.

No, I think it makes more sense if Special:Import handles the full,
proper import itself.

Rob Church


subject: [Foundation-l] when uploading pictures to commons ....

body:
On 12/18/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
[snip]
> When the majority of people will have problems opening these files we
> are doing something against our own mission statement.

How about some perspective?

The majority of people on earth to not have a computer.
Most probably do not have immediate access to a desktop computer.

Most people certainly aren't using firefox, which is the only browser
that I'm aware of right now which will try to render SVGs and fall
over in the process.

And like others who have already responded, for me clicking on the
image in nlwikipedia takes me to the image page which displays
correctly.  Are you sure you are being taken directly to the SVG file?


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On 12/18/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> I know it sounds tempting, but the "Crash my computer" button on Commons
> will just have to not be clicked. :)
>
> In other words, if you know an image is large, as in very very large, don't
> click on the full-size version link.

Size is not a problem: the png version is about 4000x4000 and I can
view it fine with an Athlon 900Mhz with 2gb of ram, while I gave up on
the .svg after two minutes at 100% cpu. Seems rather a problem with
Firefox's svg handling.

> Where is the image description page for this map, by the way?

It's here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:India_roadway_map.svg

Alfio


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

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

Rob Church wrote:
> On wikis where recent changes patrol ($wgUseRCPatrol) is enabled,
> users who are permitted to mark edits as patrolled (administrators,
> usually) have an additional user preference; when enabled, this causes
> their edits to be automatically marked as patrolled. I added this some
> time ago.
>
> I'm wondering whether or not it would have been a better idea for me
> to simply make this the default behaviour, and do away with the toggle
> altogether; it certainly makes more sense now, on reflection.

Yes!

Preferences are evil; they multiply code complexity, tech support
burden, and the user's mental model of the site leading to more mistakes
made.

New preferences should very rarely be added.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
>
> > About a dozen, last time I counted.
>
> Less than 1% of admins, then... I don't think that suggests anything.
>

I think it suggests the opposite, in fact.

I originally wrote a post about "skewed perspective", but I just used that
phrase. Also, my post had "signal to noise ratio". Ugh. I had to trash it,
before I start saying things like Non-Notable Good Faith POV Original Research
Fair Use Consensus Process.

Dan


body:
On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>That's a pity - 70,000 users is really quite a high-resolution sample
>[*]; it's a pity their sample selection is evidently crappy.

Three cheers for the self-selecting sample.

On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> They'll be reading this thread and want the real numbers? ;-)

Well, the link has been given... and the same data has been previously
provided to other donors, it's just that it never made it onto the
pages.

The graphs themselves are a bit hard to read because the daily
volatility swamps the short term growth... If only I there were stocks
which I could trade that followed our traffic patterns.

Keep in mind that roughly 2/3 of the overall requests are images, so a
correction must be applied to convert req/s to approximate page
views/src.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"David Ashby" wrote

> Is there a functional difference between "guideline" and "policy"?

Oh yes.

Charles

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body:
Ms. Devouard has made it clear she prefers to be referred to as "Chair",
period.  I for one do what she asks in that regard.

Erica Flynn wrote:
> On 12/17/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Or we could make "man" a gender-neutral term.
>>
>
>
>
> No. I would entertain "Chairperson", or simply "Chair", as well as
> "Chairwoman" or "Chairman" as appropriate.
>
> Erica
>
>
> On 12/17/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> On 17/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Chairwoman, grumble, grumble, grumble.
>>>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Cherokee Language C.O.R.E. Pages

body:
Can someone add a link for translation of the fundraising pages into
Cherokee.  If I need a Mediawiki account to do so, let me know.  If someone
puts up a link, I'll translate it and see if any of the Nations want to
contribute this year as well.

Thanks

Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Finding out what to take photos of

body:
On 12/18/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> As far as I know, WP:RI isn't used nearly as much as the category, and the
> category is useful as it's connected to a template that one can add to the
> article's talk page, so that everybody who looks at the talk page finds out
> that it needs a picture, which is something that Commons can't do.

Could a bot or something feed these language-specific requests into a
central repository? It'd be nice if Jacques P Frenchie at
fr:Discuter:New York can request an image, and that request actually
be acted on by New Yorkers. New Yorkers who, presumably, are not
likely to be reading the French version of their favourite article...

Steve


from_name: Nojhan

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikimedia Foundation's help to
	the	projects

body:
Le Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:36:15 +0100, Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> At the moment juriwiki-l is configured so that postings from the
> outside are moderated and replied to by a group of insiders. Is there
> any real issue, from a legal point of view, with making it a public
> mailing list? This is perhaps something Brad can answer.

This would be a good idea, imho.

There is a true need for simple ''informations'' about legal ''advices''.
Peoples does not ask WMF for represent them in a lawsuit nor to give
official "howto", but just to have a good idea of what they can do or not,
say or not, hope or not, and at which degree, with which confidence.
I agree with Birgitte SB on this point.

If all the WMF can do is a page explaining how difficult it is to have
clear legal statements, this is just fine, because we have ''explained''
something. What bothers me is when a contributor is just asking for
advices and that all we can answer to its questions is "wangle it yourself".

Let me be clear, I'm not talking about advices on how to prosecute someone
for improper copyright statement, but advices on how to convince someone
to allow free distribution of its work. For such negociations, having some
idea of legal issues and of what the WMF allow for its projects, can be
usefull.

--
Nojhan


body:
 "Gregory Maxwell" write
> I think we should totally do away with the Guideline/Policy/Essay
> notices.. Instead we should put a signature space below... so users
> can see all the people who support the page.

Right. And people should renew their sig evey time the page is edited.

Seriously, Voting IS Evil.

Charles

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body:
Le Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:40:07 +0700, Walter van Kalken a ?crit:
> So we are busy becoming very unfriendly very fast for the average
> enduser. Let alone for our targetaudience which is people who will view
> this on older machines. There goes our "access to knowledge for
> everyone" slogan. As these maps again are worth "nothing" when viewed as
> a thumbnail!

One of the possible solution is to import a PNG version at a higher
resolution.

But I will strongly discourage you to ask to replace SVG maps
by bitmap ones, only because your computer is slow. SVG gives additonal
informations that are unvaluable.

--
Nojhan


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 18/12/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>  "Gregory Maxwell" write

> > I think we should totally do away with the Guideline/Policy/Essay
> > notices.. Instead we should put a signature space below... so users
> > can see all the people who support the page.

> Right. And people should renew their sig evey time the page is edited.
> Seriously, Voting IS Evil.

And stupid.

- d.


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
fyi, i have a computer from the flinstones-age, 250 mb RAM on a pentium III,
and the rest is probably bas as well, and i can view the image without big
problems, and without firefox craching. I have to note however that i was
unable to see the text in the image when i enlarged it, i was only able to
see the background.

Lodewijk

2006/12/18, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:
>
> James Hare wrote:
>
> >I know it sounds tempting, but the "Crash my computer" button on Commons
> >will just have to not be clicked. :)
> >
> >In other words, if you know an image is large, as in very very large,
> don't
> >click on the full-size version link.
> >
> >Where is the image description page for this map, by the way?
> >
> >
> Ok for me. But how many of our XXXXXXX visitors know this? This is the
> xxth case of yes we as wikimedia editors are computersavvy and work our
> way around. But 99% of the general population is not. Their Firefox
> crashes (or other browser) and they just recon something is wrong with
> the site. This is very unfriendly for endusers. The map is worth nothing
> when viewed as a thumbnail! So if this is the case, the .png version
> should be used by default and not the .svg version as it seems unstable.
> It is not just this map. By looking around on commons I found many many
> maps that gave me this same problem.
>
> So we are busy becoming very unfriendly very fast for the average
> enduser. Let alone for our targetaudience which is people who will view
> this on older machines. There goes our "access to knowledge for
> everyone" slogan. As these maps again are worth "nothing" when viewed as
> a thumbnail!
>
> Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 12/18/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/18/06, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> >
> > I haven't participated in any of the discussion about Assume Good Faith,
> > but
> > in my experience, I've usually encountered it when users quote it to
> claim
> > that criticism of them is equivalent to not assuming good faith.
> >
> > Does it really solve more problems than it causes?
> >
>
> I'd say it causes more problems than it solves, precisely because it's an
> instant "veto" to valid questions of whether someone is trying to POV push
> or has a conflict of interest.
>

It only works effectively that way if people are naive about it.

I see people trying to use it that way, but it's generally really clear very
early on that it's being used falsely as a shield, and most experienced
admins and longtime editors seem to recognize that pretty well.

The policy doesn't say how long we have to keep assuming it, so people's
general common sense seems to work to deal with that.

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


body:
On 18/12/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:

> Pic is about halfway on:
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/India
> if I click on it it brings me directly to the upload.xxx.xxx file
> instead of to the commonspage.

Do you mean http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:India_roadway_map.svg
? That's the only complicated SVG on that page.

It works for me, going to the image page (with server-rendered image)
rather than directly to the svg. In fact, I just clicked every image
on that page and it went to the SVG properly.

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
On 12/18/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> That is not the point.
>
> IS there nobody here who understands that we make this project for all
> the people out there! Not to satisfy our own geekly lust to pursue the
> latest fashion in computerelectronics and programming.
>

We don't otherwise the site would be built rather differently.

> *It is not about me being able to view this or not*. It is about the
> many many people out there who do not have the latest gear installed on
> their computer, nor will they install the latest gear on their
> computers. But it seems that plea is falling on deaf (wo)mens ears here.
> And it seems with these kind of answers to me that we are just making
> this project for the computersavvy 1% of this world population.
>
> Do we really need to be the trendsetter like with .svg??????

There are times when vector graphics are the best option.

> And with
> that exclude the majority of the internetters, including those in the
> countries that we say we set out to help in the first place? Or should
> we follow the herd so we can have a product that the fast majority of
> the people can use? I thought the wikimediaprojects were about the last
> one. We should not be the trendsetters in these areas. Because that
> means nobody can use it.
>

You only see the SVG if you chose to downlaod it.

> You are talking about being better supported in a couple of years
> Briana. Ask yourself the question do you want people to be able to use
> this graphics *NOW *or in a couple of years?

People can use it now. If you need to see the full size file and have
browser issues one method would be to download it and open it up in
inkscape.

>
> Also putting warnings up is strange. Why put them up. Like I said in my
> initial mail. These graphics are *USELESS *when viewed as a thumbnail.
> They might just as well not be there.
>

We have some very large raster images which also require warnings.
--
geni


body:
On 18/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/18/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> >  "Gregory Maxwell" write

> > > I think we should totally do away with the Guideline/Policy/Essay
> > > notices.. Instead we should put a signature space below... so users
> > > can see all the people who support the page.

> > Right. And people should renew their sig evey time the page is edited.
> > Seriously, Voting IS Evil.

> Encourage SPOV editing. ;)
> What I suggested isn't a vote anyways. If you think it is, then you
> misunderstand me or you misunderstand voting.

It will look like a vote and be assumed to be a vote.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
On 12/18/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Original Research is also totally new ideas or concepts not published
> anywhere else.

Well, yes. And collecting evidence etc. I was attempting to define the
high water mark, if you will.

Steve


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
On 18/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > On 12/17/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> OR is when you go out and test the evidence yourself. Finding sources to
> >> corroborate a point is called research, not original research.
> >
> > No. In Wikipedia, OR is when you do the interpretation of evidence
> > yourself. We should simplify the OR rule to make this clearer:
> > "Wikipedians are dumb. We cannot interpret, only repeat."
> >
>
> So, in theory every entry could be written by a bot, eh?
>
> /me imagines RamBot adding articles on every court decision and piece of
> legislation...

I'm manually writing articles on pieces of legislation - sadly the
data isn't available to make it bot-generable, otherwise I'd set that
going and tidy the results up.

Which neatly brings out another aspect of pushing-OR. I open my copy
of "Tudor Constituional Documents", and proceed to write something
like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridges_Act_1530
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_Act_1555

The problem is, all that the source contains is (a translation of?)
the original text; I've recast it in a more modern style and converted
from long and tedious legalese to a fairly comprehensible precis, but
I've done it solely working from the original and not from any
secondary synopsis of the Act.

Is this original research? If not, why not - where does "rewriting"
end and "interpreting" begin? Does it depend on the complexity of the
source document?

I think I'm in the clear - but I'm curious to know where we would draw
a line on this sort of thing.

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


from_name: JePe

body:
On http://fundraising.wikimedia.org there are now next to English some
translations made. How can we make a translation in another language?

Hans (JePe)


from_name: henna

body:
On 12/18/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/18/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> > Yes and now here is the catch. The graphic is all over wikipedia
> > already. Like in nl.wikipedia on the India page as a thumbnail. Now
> > someone clicks on it and is immediately taken to the original huge .svg
> > file which crashes firefox 2 about 50% of the times and IE doesn't seem
> > to be able to open it at all.
>
> That shouldn't be what happens. When the user clicks on the thumbnail
> they should be brought to a larger image on the image page.
>
> If the image on nlwikipedia is doing that, we have a copyright related
> problem and some rendering warts should be the least of our worries.
>
> Can you give me a URL on nlwikipedia where this is happening to you?
Just to make sure, when I tried to get to the image from [[nl:India]]
I was taken straight to the image page, not the image itself. If you
still try to see the complete one after that it's your decision, not
our fault.

henna

--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
On 12/18/06, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
> I haven't participated in any of the discussion about Assume Good Faith,
> but
> in my experience, I've usually encountered it when users quote it to claim
> that criticism of them is equivalent to not assuming good faith.
>
> Does it really solve more problems than it causes?
>

I'd say it causes more problems than it solves, precisely because it's an
instant "veto" to valid questions of whether someone is trying to POV push
or has a conflict of interest.

Parker


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update 12/18/06 - UTC 20:27

body:
Hello:

Some minor points to report -

Persons who donate through Moneybookers should expect a delay before
their donation is posted; our engine only accepts processed
transactions, which in the case of Moneybookers is slower than with
Paypal.  Our data indicate donors who submitted transactions in the last
48 hours are still being processed, so for those of you who gave, thank
you, and you will see your name in due course.

Earlier today, some changes to the caching options for the live
reporting server (finetuning) resulted in a freeze in updating the live
bits around 15:30 UTC; the situation was resolved and all data are
updating normally.  Language work continues on the C.O.R.E. system,
please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_C.O.R.E. to
provide assistance.

-Brad


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
It's become a guideline. Ho hum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising Core Pages

body:
I translated the page to Cherokee, but it didn't show up right away.
Someone may want to look at it.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising Core Pages


body:
On 12/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/18/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > It doesn't seem to work like that these days - the change is made,
> > > then thye see who complains.
> >
> > Which is fine. That's the point of a wiki - you can make changes and
> > if other people don't like them, they can undo them.
>
> That undermines the credibility of our policies, though. It means that
> they're pretty much just ephemeral, reflecting the mood of the latest
> contributor, rather than anything more substantial than that.
>

We have seen this bite people; I've seen policies quoted by people who'd
happened to see a version which was then pushed back and reverted, for
example.

This is normally not that bad a problem, but people who tend to rules lawyer
instead of acting in the spirit of cooperation can cause glitches.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
"Andrew Gray" wrote

> The problem is, all that the source contains is (a translation of?)
> the original text; I've recast it in a more modern style and converted
> from long and tedious legalese to a fairly comprehensible precis, but
> I've done it solely working from the original and not from any
> secondary synopsis of the Act.
>
> Is this original research? If not, why not - where does "rewriting"
> end and "interpreting" begin? Does it depend on the complexity of the
> source document?

A fair summary is clearly not any kind of original research. Collation of material is not in itself original research. These are the fundamental processes of encyclopedia production, rather.

> I think I'm in the clear - but I'm curious to know where we would draw
> a line on this sort of thing.

Basically the material should not carry any degree of spin; spin and interpretation should be added only by citation of some authority. But it seems often to happen that the apparent OR is a wording difficulty: i.e. it is not a clear-cut case of original research having happened, but rather than the conclusion is overstated. Saying 'OR' in such a case is somewhat lazy shorthand, I think, for 'UR', or unencyclopedic rhetoric. Really tendentious material, crank or conspiracy theory stuff, has a different profile; and cannot possibly be salvaged by toning down how it is phrased.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: David Ashby

subject: [WikiEN-l] Top posting poll; was Re: MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On 12/18/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jim Schuler wrote:
> > > On 12/15/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> On 12/14/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>>>> M I i N d T- E p R o W s E t A i V n E g - i P s O t S h T e I o N n
> > >> G l F
> > >>>>> y O w R a M y E to go. :-)
> > >>> You just stole at least a minute, probably two, of my life trying to
> > >>> decipher your email, and I want them back.
> > >> !gnitsop evaewretni daer ot drah *taht* lla ton s'tI
> > >>
> > >
> > > !ton s'ti oN
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Qm90dG9tLXBvc3RpbmcgeW91ciBtZXNzYWdlcyBhZnRlciBCYXNlNjQ=
> > ZW5jb2RpbmcgdGhlbSBiZWF0cyBldmVyeXRoaW5nLg==
>
> begin 644 -
> M5&AA="=S(&YO="!V86QI9"!B87-E-C0Z('EO=2=R92!O;FQY(&%L;&]W960@
> C=&\@<'5T("<])R!A="!T:&4 at 96YD(&]F('1H92!F:6QE+ at H
> end

OK, now you're just showing off.

-david


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
Thanks, Brad, for your clarification.

On 12/18/06, Brad Patrick <bpatrick at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I think the best approach is to keep the notice, and add individual
> localized information on the Deductability of Donations page, see DE and
> FR comments, for example. This will prevent any confusion that may arise
> about the law that applies to WMF in other countries.

So how are we going to clarify it? Here we need clear criteria what to
describe and not. Currently the default link may be led to
deductability page in English and now mentions only US, Deutschland (
in German) and France ( in French). There is no other country or area
information. Some editor tried to add "no deductability in ..." in her
language, but self-reverted. Similar ideas could happen to arise in
other's mind.

- Yes, add your country information in your language to the central page !
- Eh, sorry no, we are going to say "In other countries no tax
deductability is available as of December 18, 2006" on that page
additionaly, and encourage you to their language page.

Which direction are we going? Thoughts?
Cheers,

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
> No, the law is much trickier and more gray than that, and Wikipedia
> editors need to get out of the notion that they can use original
> research to outline arguments and pontificate about what the "true
> facts" are.  As well, we really have no idea what people believe, we
> only know what they say and do.  Thus, you can state,
> "A number of authors have stated X[cite][cite], while legal scholars
> have stated Y[cite][cite][cite]", but that's as far as we can go, and
> indeed, as far as we need to go. It makes the point equally well
> without the smell of argumentative POV-pushing.

Stated is much better than believe, yes, excellent point. I'm not sure
what your saying in your first sentence though...


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
> Which neatly brings out another aspect of pushing-OR. I open my copy
> of "Tudor Constituional Documents", and proceed to write something
> like:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridges_Act_1530
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_Act_1555
>
> The problem is, all that the source contains is (a translation of?)
> the original text; I've recast it in a more modern style and converted
> from long and tedious legalese to a fairly comprehensible precis, but
> I've done it solely working from the original and not from any
> secondary synopsis of the Act.
>
> Is this original research? If not, why not - where does "rewriting"
> end and "interpreting" begin? Does it depend on the complexity of the
> source document?

I think you're ok. You're working from a primary source, so all you
can state is facts, but those facts are fine. Rewriting something
which isn't open to interpretation isn't OR, however if there are
multiple ways to interpret it, choosing one of them certainly is. Of
course, determine whether or not something is open to interpretation
is very difficult (you may simply have not noticed the alternative).
It's probably best to stay as close to the original wording as
possible...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
> About a dozen, last time I counted.

Less than 1% of admins, then... I don't think that suggests anything.


body:
I was looking for these to show off to a friend (I said the funding
drive was mostly for boxes and bandwidth, they were curious as to just
how much we actually served) and couldn't find them. I thought they
were on http://ganglia.wikimedia.org/ but that appears to be CPU and
memory. Are the network and bandwidth charts still up anywhere?

- d.


body:
On 12/18/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/17/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It's become a guideline. Ho hum.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
>
> So much for policy changes being discussed widely prior to implimentation...

It doesn't seem to work like that these days - the change is made,
then thye see who complains.

Incidentally, see the "Assume high intelligence" bit?

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 18/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was looking for these to show off to a friend (I said the funding
> drive was mostly for boxes and bandwidth, they were curious as to just
> how much we actually served) and couldn't find them. I thought they
> were on http://ganglia.wikimedia.org/ but that appears to be CPU and
> memory. Are the network and bandwidth charts still up anywhere?

Mark appears to have some that are updated at
http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/reqstats, e.g.
http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/reqstats/reqstats-hourly.png - is this
what you're after?

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 18/12/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:

> >> About a dozen, last time I counted.

> > Less than 1% of admins, then... I don't think that suggests anything.

> It suggests that it takes a lot to de-admin someone.  I'm not entirely
> sure that's a good thing, but I'm not sure how to solve it anymore,
> either.

I don't think it's a bad thing. Before 2006, de-adminning was
ridiculously rare. Unfortunately, with so many more users we have
hugely more admins, so we're going to be wrong about the "basic sanity
check" from time to time. The ArbCom does de-admin when it's called
for.

Though cluification is *always* preferred, and a bit of positive peer
pressure (honey catches more flies than vinegar) from fellow admins,
in a collegiate spirit, goes a long and productive way. I've seen a
lot of admins I thought would be disasters turn out fine, so I worry a
lot less now.

- d.


body:
On 18/12/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I was looking for these to show off to a friend (I said the funding
> > drive was mostly for boxes and bandwidth, they were curious as to just
> > how much we actually served) and couldn't find them. I thought they
> > were on http://ganglia.wikimedia.org/ but that appears to be CPU and
> > memory. Are the network and bandwidth charts still up anywhere?

> Mark appears to have some that are updated at
> http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/reqstats, e.g.
> http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/reqstats/reqstats-hourly.png - is this
> what you're after?

That's the sort of thing :-) I just remember from a year or two ago a
scary set of Ganglia-generated graphs with a worrying upward trend ...

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
> What I was saying was that regarding legal opinion, we don't tell
> people what is "correct", we just tell them what legal scholars have
> said on the matter. The latter meets [[WP:NPOV]], the former does not.

I think it is implicit that "The sky is blue [1]" means "Source 1 says
the sky is blue". We don't need to go through and put "So-and-so says"
at the beginning of every sentence in the encyclopaedia.


body:
On 18/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's the sort of thing :-) I just remember from a year or two ago a
> scary set of Ganglia-generated graphs with a worrying upward trend ...

I remember them as well; there were some on Kohl, I think, in home
directories. It's possible those got lost/disabled somehow when we had
that whole NFS mount business?

Rob Church


from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

body:
> From: jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<6a8d9d700612180823s701590f2pcfe4bd97a2938ac6 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 12/17/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/17/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/17/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Of course that's ok. Original research in that scenario would
> be to
> > > > say "the consensus among legal scholars is A, but they haven't
> > > > considered C, and therefore D is the correct position."
> > > >
> > > > Original research is about posing new theories, or making new
> > > > inferences, or drawing new conclusions that are your own
> opinions and
> > > > involve some element of analysis or synthesis. Fundamentally,
> original
> > > > research is introducing your own original thought into
> articles.
> > >
> > > And, of course, drawing your own conclusions and stating that
> there is
> > > a "legal consensus" on this matter, based on your own research
> into
> > > what various legal scholars have said, is a prime example of
> original
> > > research. Quote the scholars, list their names, state that there
> are a
> > > number of them, but don't introduce your own original thought
> that
> > > these selected sources have created a "legal consensus".
> >
> > I was speaking to the particular example given, where there are two
> > popular positions on the subject held by lay people, while all
> expert
> > accounts support only one of those positions. In this context,
> where
> > all experts who have written on the subject have agreed with the
> same
> > position, surely it is not original research to say so.
>
> On the contrary, it surely is. All of the people that this particular
> investigator has found, and consider to be legal experts, have one
> view, so it's fine to state something like "Legal experts have stated
> Y", with a series of footnotes. However, one cannot go from that step
> to stating "All legal experts believe that Y", since we have no idea
> what *all* legal experts believe, only the statements of the ones we
> happen to have surveyed. Even worse would be an insistence that we
> must conclude that "the law is Y", since the law is complicated,
> malleable, and context specific, and one often has no idea which way
> a judge, panel of judges, or jury will rule.

I'm happy that my question provoked some useful discussion.

"All legal experts believe that Y" would clearly be wrong, as it
isn't even verifiable.

On the other hand, even though "Legal experts have stated
that Y [cite][cite]" is clearly valid, it doesn't properly convey
what the sources indicate.  There ought to be some way to
record that a standard legal database did not provide ANY
contrary opinions.  Given how much lawyers love to argue
with each other, this is a highly unusual situation.

Perhaps there is another useful way to look at it: consider
the legal database to be "the" source, rather than a
collection of sources.  Can I say something like "Legal
opinions found in the LawIsUs database uniformly favor Y"?
(The wording may need tweaking.)

Zero.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
> Though cluification is *always* preferred, and a bit of positive peer
> pressure (honey catches more flies than vinegar) from fellow admins,
> in a collegiate spirit, goes a long and productive way. I've seen a
> lot of admins I thought would be disasters turn out fine, so I worry a
> lot less now.

Maybe we need a new subpage of the admin noticeboard for determining
consensus on whether or not an admin made the right decision. At the
moment, admins sometimes go to AN/I and say "I've done this, was I
right?" which is great, but I think a more formal process would be
good (and a way for other people to ask the question).

Someone explains the admin action, then other admins state whether or
not they endorse it. In most cases, we'll just get a load of "
'''Endorse''' --~~~~" comments, and that should shut up anyone
complaining about the admin action. In cases where the admin action is
more questionable, it can be discussed more fully and a course or
action decided upon, rather than it becoming a wheel war. This is
essentially what happens on AN/I already, but I think it should happen
more often (not for every action, obviously, but anything
controversial - it should only take a few admins a couple of minutes
to check and endorse an action), and slightly more formally.

If we had this process, we would be able to catch admins making
questionable decisions before they start making outright wrong
decisions, and we move the "You're abusing your powers, unblock my
friend now" comments from the admin's talk page, to a central place
where we can help deal with them.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

> Do we really need to be the trendsetter like with .svg??????

Come on now, Walter, we're already the trendsetters in using
massive collaboration on the Internet to write an encyclopedia.
There's no way we can try to be mainstream.  We're radical.
I think trailblazer (German: Bahnbrecher) is the word for it.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


body:
On 18/12/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > That's the sort of thing :-) I just remember from a year or two ago a
> > scary set of Ganglia-generated graphs with a worrying upward trend ...

> I remember them as well; there were some on Kohl, I think, in home
> directories. It's possible those got lost/disabled somehow when we had
> that whole NFS mount business?

Sounds familiar. I ask because I put a begging notice on my livejournal:

  http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/375133.html

- and the geeks promptly asked for detailed info. As they would be expected to.

(And I realise Alexa numbers are less than widely respected, but still
consider that they give us some idea of scale, i.e. we're currently in
the range of 1/5 to 1/10 Google's page views. JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION
GET IN THE CAR)

- d.


body:
> Still, what Gregory is proposing is exactly how it used to be, isn't it. Of
> course, that was when Keep Rules Simple was a Rule.

How long ago was that? I don't remember ever seeing or even hearing
out policy pages with lists of people that endorse them...

If you endorse a policy page, you do so by keeping quiet. If you don't
endorse it, you either edit the bit you don't like, or you mention it
on the talk page. You can tell if a policy has the support of the
community by looking at the talk page and history. That's the
difference between consensus decision making and democracy.


body:
On 18/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're giving too much credibility to the alexa data. There are sites
> which are ranked somewhat lower than us which I know for a fact are
> processing more req/s.

When it comes down to convincing people to give us cash, what's a
little unreliable data among people who know better?

Rob Church


body:
On 18/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > (And I realise Alexa numbers are less than widely respected, but still
> > consider that they give us some idea of scale, i.e. we're currently in
> > the range of 1/5 to 1/10 Google's page views. JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION
> > GET IN THE CAR)

> You're giving too much credibility to the alexa data. There are sites
> which are ranked somewhat lower than us which I know for a fact are
> processing more req/s.

That's a pity - 70,000 users is really quite a high-resolution sample
[*]; it's a pity their sample selection is evidently crappy.

> It is indisputable, however, that we are one of the more visited sites around.

The traffic stats yearly graph makes that clear. 1 gigabit/second
sustained, doubling in the last six months ... if we could just slow
it down to Moore's Law rates ...

[*] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error - in a result which
many statistics students find surprising, the margin of error depends
*only* on the number of samples taken, not on the size of the sampled
population. Most political polls, for example, sample about 2000
people; sampling 70k is a *lot* of people.

- d.


body:
On 18/12/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> > You're giving too much credibility to the alexa data. There are sites
> > which are ranked somewhat lower than us which I know for a fact are
> > processing more req/s.

> When it comes down to convincing people to give us cash, what's a
> little unreliable data among people who know better?

They'll be reading this thread and want the real numbers? ;-)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Begging letters on our blogs?

body:
Feed the 'pedia, Let them know it's cup-rattling time ... I've put a
note on my blog, as has Kat Walsh:

  http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/375133.html
  http://mindspillage.livejournal.com/11763.html

If others could follow suit, that would probably be a good thing. If
we're not going to have ads on the site, we need to get the money
other ways. Let EVERYONE know we need their pennies!

(Note I also suggest that if they're not cashed up, they can give us
photos or write stuff!)

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Begging letters on our blogs?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Stripping markup in search result excerpt

body:
Matt Hampel wrote:

> Is there a function that will either strip or render Wiki markup in
> the "excerpt" section the search results? It's unfriendly to give
> users the markup in the results, but the excerpt itself is helpful in
> judging a page's relevance.

Such a function could be useful for spell checking as well.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: theProject

body:
On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 18/12/06, Parker Conrad <parkerconrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm curious -- what is the objection to advertising? If there was, say,
> one
> > unobtrusive text ad per page, I imagine that would cover all of the
> > wikimedia foundation's costs and allow new features to be developed a
> little
> > more quickly. Would people be offended and stop contributing?
>
>
> Because people hate, despise and loathe the idea of advertising, and a
> substantial fraction of the volunteers who write all the content would
> get up and *leave*. And that would be bad.
>
> Basically, instead of the annoyance of advertising you get the
> annoyance of slow servers on a Sunday afternoon and occasional
> downtime. And people seem to be willing to accept that deal. Jimbo has
> said in the past that downtime is our most lucrative product ;-)
>
> So we get money by asking the readers, and now that we have properly
> audited books we're going after big-time donors.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

Someone's going to have to explain this to me. If the problem with Coca-Cola
buying advertisements on our site is that our article on them might be
perceived as not NPOV, then how is it any different if we accept a donation
from them? As far as I know, we do have a list of fairly big donors, and
some of them have articles.

Not that I support advertising on Wikipedia -- something just seems a bit
disconnected.

--
theProject


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
When people upload files to commons it would be nice if they would
consider that not everyone out there has the latest PC hardware.

My pc is a pentium IV, 2 ghz, with 1gb of RAM and a 64 mb graphics card.
Not the worst system out there I would think. I found a new map added to
the India article on the nl.wikipedia. Which looked quite nice so I
wanted to see the original version of it. I clicked on it and crash
there went firefox. Now I have managed to open the file but it
completely eats all of my computer resources! It eats 100% of my CPU
capacity and 500 mb of RAM for just this file (add to this the 250 mb of
RAM that gets eaten by the usual programs on my pc and I get very close
to my max). So when people upload files please see to it that people
with lower configurations can use it! Most people simply do not work
with the latest hardware available!

It is this file btw:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/India_roadway_map.svg
Waerth


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/18/06, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What disturbs me about the vandalism on the Main Page articles is the
> fact that the vandals don't appear to be drive-by vandals, but rather
> users who know who to use the right tags and summaries to mask their
> activities and inflict the most damage. Not to be the pessimist here,
> but we're clearly dealing with a professional vandal who knows how to
> beat the system. We need to take action against this person in
> particular, if that is possible, because once we block one avenue,
> (s)he'll just find another.

Along those lines, we need to remember checkuser -- they can't review and
block the source, if we don't let them know which usernames to check. The
usual "block and move on" mentality won't quite cut it, in this case;
there's an ongoing section at RFCU about all of this, and unfortunately the
checkusers can't see everything.

Rangeblocks have been slowing it down, but have not yet stopped it. We need
to explore new options, including protection options for templates.

As far as templates on TFA, is there consensus as to whether they should be
semi or fully protected? We're obviously dealing with somebody smart enough
to start using sleeper accounts, is what I figure, but I'm not sure how much
they've done so, yet.

Eh. This one is incredibly frustrating, to me.

-Luna


body:
James Hare wrote:

>I know it sounds tempting, but the "Crash my computer" button on Commons
>will just have to not be clicked. :)
>
>In other words, if you know an image is large, as in very very large, don't
>click on the full-size version link.
>
>Where is the image description page for this map, by the way?
>
>
Ok for me. But how many of our XXXXXXX visitors know this? This is the
xxth case of yes we as wikimedia editors are computersavvy and work our
way around. But 99% of the general population is not. Their Firefox
crashes (or other browser) and they just recon something is wrong with
the site. This is very unfriendly for endusers. The map is worth nothing
when viewed as a thumbnail! So if this is the case, the .png version
should be used by default and not the .svg version as it seems unstable.
It is not just this map. By looking around on commons I found many many
maps that gave me this same problem.

So we are busy becoming very unfriendly very fast for the average
enduser. Let alone for our targetaudience which is people who will view
this on older machines. There goes our "access to knowledge for
everyone" slogan. As these maps again are worth "nothing" when viewed as
a thumbnail!

Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
On 17/12/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello
> A comment came from a community:
> Talk:Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenotice%28default%29/2006&rcid=484233
> ----
> Hungarian is at hu:MediaWiki:Sitenotice, the Tax-deductibility link is
> taken out, as it doesn't apply in Hungary.--Dami 21:12, 17 December
> 2006 (UTC)
> ----
>
> Brad, we will apprecite your comment about such localization.

On the matter of Hungarian... we've been sent a copy of the entire
Fundraising FAQ translated into Hungarian by a kind user; the draft is
at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Datrio/notepad waiting for
Datrio to copy it over.

Could our Hungarian speakers glance over it and see if anything
important was missed out? Thanks!

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


body:
On 18/12/06, Parker Conrad <parkerconrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm curious -- what is the objection to advertising? If there was, say, one
> unobtrusive text ad per page, I imagine that would cover all of the
> wikimedia foundation's costs and allow new features to be developed a little
> more quickly. Would people be offended and stop contributing?

The objection is that the community reacts with screaming and violence
at even the vague *thought* of advertising; getting money in is
absolutely not worth driving off our contributors. The objections may
or may not be well-reasoned - some are, some are just silly - but they
exist, and we're not going to be able to handwave them away with
executive decisions on the matter.

It has happened before - the Spanish wikipedia forked over a garbled
"there is a possibility we might not rule out thinking about
discussing the prospect of looking into advertising" argument; it
stalled that project for quite some time.

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


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Brad Patrick <bpatrick at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Some minor points to report -
>
> Persons who donate through Moneybookers should expect a delay before
> their donation is posted; our engine only accepts processed
> transactions, which in the case of Moneybookers is slower than with
> Paypal.  Our data indicate donors who submitted transactions in the last
> 48 hours are still being processed, so for those of you who gave, thank
> you, and you will see your name in due course.

Very few potential donors read this list. I suggest saying the same thing near the top of the
tracking page; many donors will check that page right after donating to see their donation and
comment.

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
On 12/18/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Aphaia wrote:
> > Thanks, Brad, for your clarification.
> >
> > On 12/18/06, Brad Patrick <bpatrick at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >
> >>I think the best approach is to keep the notice, and add individual
> >>localized information on the Deductability of Donations page, see DE and
> >>FR comments, for example. This will prevent any confusion that may arise
> >>about the law that applies to WMF in other countries.
> >
> >
> > So how are we going to clarify it? Here we need clear criteria what to
> > describe and not. Currently the default link may be led to
> > deductability page in English and now mentions only US, Deutschland (
> > in German) and France ( in French). There is no other country or area
> > information. Some editor tried to add "no deductability in ..." in her
> > language, but self-reverted. Similar ideas could happen to arise in
> > other's mind.
>
> I think "her" was I in this case. It was for the swiss chapter. I
> realised I was not sure it was tax deductible (yet ?). The only chapters
> I am sure have tax deduc are the french and german. I know the italian
> does not as it is clearly mentionned on the site. For the other ones, I
> just have idea. I prefered removing the info by default.

Ah, you did? No, I meant another lady. She wrote "in (her country) no
tax is deductible" and then reverted it soon. Afterwards she made her
language version to mention unavailability. Just days ago. So now I
convince more we need a criteria. Things twice happened would happen
again.

>
> > - Yes, add your country information in your language to the central page !
> > - Eh, sorry no, we are going to say "In other countries no tax
> > deductability is available as of December 18, 2006" on that page
> > additionaly, and encourage you to their language page.
> >
> > Which direction are we going? Thoughts?
> > Cheers,
>
> An important point to mention is that the chapters are different legal
> entities than the Foundation. It may be (likely it is) that the money
> collected by chapters serve the exact same mission than WMF, but we can
> not garantee that to donators. So, somehow, we need to make it clear
> that there is a difference. So, the general idea is not
>
> We can give in countries x, y and z and get tax deductibility. In
> others, no tax deduc
>
> The general idea is
>
> The Foundaiton is tax deduc in the USA and no where else. If you want to
> help and want some tax deduction, consider giving to the chapters, which
> are different entities, but helping toward similar goals.
>
> This does not confuse people in thinking they are giving to the same
> entity, only with different bank localizations.

/me nods.
As non-English native, I would like some English speaker make a draft
mentioning the above.
Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/19/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been having
> > with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images
> into
> > transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting
> this
> > to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
> > extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution to
> it.
> > The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload
> them,
> > and protecting every single template on TFA (including
> > transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
> > suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
> > re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?
>
> Every type of vandalism goes away if we can implement a short delay
> before the page goes "live". Allow rollbacks/undos to be carried out
> on non-live versions of the page, and edits should also always be
> performed on the newest version.
>
> The problem is not vandalism in itself. The problem is that our
> timeframe for reacting to vandalism is zero. Any act of vandalism is
> instantly visible to the entire world. Even a short delay of 2 minutes
> would drastically reduce the incentive for vandals and their impact
> even if successful.
>
> Steve

That is not an in-wiki fix for the problem.  While I agree that it would be
useful, major modifications to MediaWiki are outside the immediate tactical
scope... Unless you know PHP a lot more fluently than I do and have commit
access to the source ;-)

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


body:
> Wouldn't it make more sense to wait for the days the donations are
> going to be matched so the results of your blog post are worth double?

You mean they aren't being matched now? Why are we accepting donations
at all until they're being matched?


from_name: Sarah

body:
On 12/18/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Perhaps there is another useful way to look at it: consider
> the legal database to be "the" source, rather than a
> collection of sources.  Can I say something like "Legal
> opinions found in the LawIsUs database uniformly favor Y"?
> (The wording may need tweaking.)
>
The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to
the general public, and it's not clear that we can expect the public
to have access to a legal database. Also, we have to depend on you
having conducted the search correctly, which you may not have done if
you have no legal education; and we have to depend on you correctly
describing the opinion that you say is uniformly favored, which you
may also not have done.

If it's as unusual as you say it is to find no legal opinion against,
then someone else is likely to have written about that, so you can
look for a secondary source and quote it. If no one has written about
it, perhaps it's not so unusual, or perhaps it's of little interest,
or perhaps it's not accurate. It's for these reasons that secondary
sources are preferred to a Wikipedian's interpretation of primary
sources in any area that's disputed.

Sarah


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Wikitech-l] little OTRS bug

body:
In the OTRS, there is this nice box, where you can see the agents,
that are online. Well, and in the Wikimedia OTRS we may welcome a
famous new editor, called ":  $Text{"Online Agent: %s", ", who ranks
prominently at first rank of the displayed online agents. Is this an
OTRS bug or is it rather Wikimedia-side?
Michael


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Sarah wrote:
> The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to
> the general public,...

Which I understand to include such things as legal databases. In theory
at least, anyone in the general public can do what is necessary to
acquire access to such a database. We certainly don't require that
sources are immediately available to anyone.

-Rich


body:
That is not the point.

IS there nobody here who understands that we make this project for all
the people out there! Not to satisfy our own geekly lust to pursue the
latest fashion in computerelectronics and programming.

*It is not about me being able to view this or not*. It is about the
many many people out there who do not have the latest gear installed on
their computer, nor will they install the latest gear on their
computers. But it seems that plea is falling on deaf (wo)mens ears here.
And it seems with these kind of answers to me that we are just making
this project for the computersavvy 1% of this world population.

Do we really need to be the trendsetter like with .svg?????? And with
that exclude the majority of the internetters, including those in the
countries that we say we set out to help in the first place? Or should
we follow the herd so we can have a product that the fast majority of
the people can use? I thought the wikimediaprojects were about the last
one. We should not be the trendsetters in these areas. Because that
means nobody can use it.

You are talking about being better supported in a couple of years
Briana. Ask yourself the question do you want people to be able to use
this graphics *NOW *or in a couple of years?

Also putting warnings up is strange. Why put them up. Like I said in my
initial mail. These graphics are *USELESS *when viewed as a thumbnail.
They might just as well not be there.

Waerth

>Geez, that is one hugely impressive map. what a labour of love!
>
>How do you make a "low res" version of an SVG?? the only way is to
>actually take things out of the image, isn't it?
>
>SVG support is going to improve dramatically over the next few years,
>I imagine. It doesn't seem sound to recommend that people upload
>inferior works when this soon shouldn't be an issue.
>
>On 18/12/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>By looking around on commons I found many many
>
>
>>maps that gave me this same problem.
>>
>>
>
>If you can give me a list of the images that caused you problems, I'll
>put a small template on the image pages warning that they might cause
>browser crashes.
>
>cheers,
>Brianna
>user:pfctdayelise
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
On wikis where recent changes patrol ($wgUseRCPatrol) is enabled,
users who are permitted to mark edits as patrolled (administrators,
usually) have an additional user preference; when enabled, this causes
their edits to be automatically marked as patrolled. I added this some
time ago.

I'm wondering whether or not it would have been a better idea for me
to simply make this the default behaviour, and do away with the toggle
altogether; it certainly makes more sense now, on reflection.

What do people think? This is also bug 5411.

Rob Church


body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:

>On 19/12/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>That is not the point.
>>
>>IS there nobody here who understands that we make this project for all
>>the people out there! Not to satisfy our own geekly lust to pursue the
>>latest fashion in computerelectronics and programming.
>>
>>
>
>I am not in favour of bleeding edge technology for its own sake, but
>the reason this file is so large is because of the detail in it. I
>don't see how that can be reduced without reducing quality.
>
>There are links on that page to a PNG and a simpler SVG. These are
>ways to make it accessible for all without sacrificing quality.
>
Yes and now here is the catch. The graphic is all over wikipedia
already. Like in nl.wikipedia on the India page as a thumbnail. Now
someone clicks on it and is immediately taken to the original huge .svg
file which crashes firefox 2 about 50% of the times and IE doesn't seem
to be able to open it at all.

You see Briana they are not taken to that page on commons with the
description file. Which might mean they wouldn't get in any kind of
trouble. But they are taken, after clicking, to that monster file
immediately.

And like I said before, the thumb is useless if you cannot view the
original. Now there is a .png which is just as detailed it seems. But
since there is an effort going on wikimediawide to replace all .png's
with .svg's this means trouble for most internetusers!

Why don't we do it the other way around. Put the .png versions on the
pages in the projects, with a link to the .svg versions. You see ,png
any browser can open without problems. Why must we always be the first?

Waerth


body:
On 12/18/06, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sarah wrote:
> > The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to
> > the general public,...
>
> Which I understand to include such things as legal databases. In theory
> at least, anyone in the general public can do what is necessary to
> acquire access to such a database. We certainly don't require that
> sources are immediately available to anyone.
>
Any member of the public must be able to access the source and also
see what the source says. So Zero's search would have to be very
straightforward, one that no one could argue with or interpret
differently, and it would have to be a search of a database that a
member of the public could reasonably be expected to gain access to.
And arguably his conclusion, that no legal scholar holds a different
opinion (or whatever words he used), would have to be notable and
relevant in a way that didn't invoke OR, otherwise it would be like
saying no mathematician believes 2 plus 2 equals 5.

The NOR policy is clear that "anyone?without specialist knowledge?who
reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia
passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary
source material requires a secondary source."

Sarah


from_name: Bence Damokos

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
Hi!
I've put back the tax  deductibility link, though I still think its
unnecessary as only a portion of the visitors come from the US (
http://stats.wikipedia.hu/cgi-bin/awstats.pl).

I'll have a look at the translated FAQ page.

Regards, Bence Damokos

On 12/18/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 17/12/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello
> > A comment came from a community:
> >
> Talk:Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenotice%28default%29/2006&rcid=484233
> > ----
> > Hungarian is at hu:MediaWiki:Sitenotice, the Tax-deductibility link is
> > taken out, as it doesn't apply in Hungary.--Dami 21:12, 17 December
> > 2006 (UTC)
> > ----
> >
> > Brad, we will apprecite your comment about such localization.
>
> On the matter of Hungarian... we've been sent a copy of the entire
> Fundraising FAQ translated into Hungarian by a kind user; the draft is
> at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Datrio/notepad waiting for
> Datrio to copy it over.
>
> Could our Hungarian speakers glance over it and see if anything
> important was missed out? Thanks!
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


body:
On 12/18/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> If we only have primary sources, then we say what the
> primary sources say. If we have a secondary source that says "the
> consensus of legal opinion is", then great. If not, then *we* cannot
> become that secondary source that draws that conclusion ..."

That's exactly right. Wikipedia cannot become the secondary source.

Sarah


from_name: xaosflux

subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
'''Support'''!
I can't think of any reason this would ever need to NOT be set in the
wikimedia setting.

en:xaosflux

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Church" <robchur at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 3:22 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

> On wikis where recent changes patrol ($wgUseRCPatrol) is enabled,
> users who are permitted to mark edits as patrolled (administrators,
> usually) have an additional user preference; when enabled, this causes
> their edits to be automatically marked as patrolled. I added this some
> time ago.
>
> I'm wondering whether or not it would have been a better idea for me
> to simply make this the default behaviour, and do away with the toggle
> altogether; it certainly makes more sense now, on reflection.
>
> What do people think? This is also bug 5411.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
"Thomas Dalton" wrote

>We don't need to go through and put "So-and-so says"
> at the beginning of every sentence in the encyclopaedia.

I basically agree. The referencing junkies will push us back a notch, to where we have the 'materials for an encylopedia', not the encyclopedia itself. Or perhaps that has always been where we are. In which case we are delaying the day when we have 'finished' articles.

Is this good or bad? Well, the Internet is full of argumentative people, and many topics are contentious. The way to deal with those people and topics may well be to summarise controversies. But we really do need, even there, a degree of concision; otherwise we are going merely to recreate the scholasticism of past centuries. And then, in fact, people want to look up facts in encyclopedias. They don't always want quibbles.

As with many things here, we'll sort this out; but not very quickly.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


body:
Pic is about halfway on:

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/India

if I click on it it brings me directly to the upload.xxx.xxx file
instead of to the commonspage.

Waerth

>On 12/18/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Yes and now here is the catch. The graphic is all over wikipedia
>>already. Like in nl.wikipedia on the India page as a thumbnail. Now
>>someone clicks on it and is immediately taken to the original huge .svg
>>file which crashes firefox 2 about 50% of the times and IE doesn't seem
>>to be able to open it at all.
>>
>>
>
>That shouldn't be what happens. When the user clicks on the thumbnail
>they should be brought to a larger image on the image page.
>
>If the image on nlwikipedia is doing that, we have a copyright related
>problem and some rendering warts should be the least of our worries.
>
>Can you give me a URL on nlwikipedia where this is happening to you?
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/18/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've
> suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
> re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?

Having watched the discussion and thought about it for a few hours, I
think that of the options which are technically viable, this one seems
to win for ease of near-term implimentation and completeness of proper
function.

Assuming that a {{subst:}} works recursively and automatically, which
I really don't know...  My MediaWiki installation is outside my
immediate hands-on test radius unfortunately.

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


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
We should be locking the meta templates -- the kind that won't be changing
anytime soon and if there's vandalism it'd be awful.

On 12/18/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been having
> with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images
> into
> transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting
> this
> to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
> extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution to
> it.
> The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload them,
> and protecting every single template on TFA (including
> transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
> suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
> re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?
>
> --NSLE
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
Hi!
It could happen, yeah, for the US. But I don't see a way on the Fundraising
page/donation form, to choose a Chapter as the receiver of the funds, so it
really is only for US visitors (but again I have no statistics about the
readig order, first the tax bit, and after the donation form, but looking at
the incoming donations, I don't think tax-deductibility is the major reason
for donating to Wikimedia...).

Regards, Bence

On 12/18/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
> thank you for your help.
> Yes, I agree it would be not helpful for visitors living in Hungary. I
> guess however it would be useful for the visitors living in US now or
> Germany or France ... In Japan, most of jawiki* visitors are in the
> same situation, but according to statistics, 300,000 Japanese
> nationality holders reside in the United States. Similar things could
> happen in other language community?
>
> Cheers,
>
> On 12/19/06, Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi!
> > I've put back the tax  deductibility link, though I still think its
> > unnecessary as only a portion of the visitors come from the US (
> > http://stats.wikipedia.hu/cgi-bin/awstats.pl).
> >
> > I'll have a look at the translated FAQ page.
> >
> > Regards, Bence Damokos
> >
> > On 12/18/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 17/12/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Hello
> > > > A comment came from a community:
> > > >
> > >
> Talk:Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenotice%28default%29/2006&rcid=484233
> > > > ----
> > > > Hungarian is at hu:MediaWiki:Sitenotice, the Tax-deductibility link
> is
> > > > taken out, as it doesn't apply in Hungary.--Dami 21:12, 17 December
> > > > 2006 (UTC)
> > > > ----
> > > >
> > > > Brad, we will apprecite your comment about such localization.
> > >
> > > On the matter of Hungarian... we've been sent a copy of the entire
> > > Fundraising FAQ translated into Hungarian by a kind user; the draft is
> > > at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Datrio/notepad waiting for
> > > Datrio to copy it over.
> > >
> > > Could our Hungarian speakers glance over it and see if anything
> > > important was missed out? Thanks!
> > >
> > > --
> > > - Andrew Gray
> > >   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> KIZU Naoko
>   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>   * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/18/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yeah, the problem extends beyond the TFA due to the widespread use of
> these
> vandalised templates...
>
> On 19/12/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > We should be locking the meta templates -- the kind that won't be
> changing
> > anytime soon and if there's vandalism it'd be awful.
> >
> > On 12/18/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been
> having
> > > with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images
> > > into
> > > transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting
> > > this
> > > to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
> > > extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution
> to
> > > it.
> > > The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload
> > them,
> > > and protecting every single template on TFA (including
> > > transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
> > > suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA
> (and
> > > re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any
> solution?
> > >
> > > --NSLE
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I think Messed is saying that these templates should be protected anyway.
The fact that they're in FAs isn't really relevant, if anything their being
vandalized is just drawing our attention to the fact that they should be
protected.


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/18/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been having
> with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images into
> transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting this
> to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
> extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution to it.
> The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload them,
> and protecting every single template on TFA (including
> transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
> suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
> re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?

Wait, is this vandalism happening on templates transcluded into the
full article, or just the TFA blurb that's displayed on the main page?

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
The highly used meta templates should just be moved to {{hprotected}},
[[Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests]] never seems to have that much
of a backlog if legit updates are needed.  (e.g. I just added {{for}} to
hprot).

X

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 8:59 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

> We should be locking the meta templates -- the kind that won't be changing
> anytime soon and if there's vandalism it'd be awful.
>
> On 12/18/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been having
>> with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images
>> into
>> transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting
>> this
>> to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
>> extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution to
>> it.
>> The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload them,
>> and protecting every single template on TFA (including
>> transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
>> suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
>> re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?
>>
>> --NSLE
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
NSLE wrote:
> ...problems we've been having with the TFA each day on the main
> page (vandals inserting shock images into transcluded-on-transcluded
> templates).

[This is armchair speculation by a reader who is not as expert in
these matters as he might be; apologies if I'm completely off-base.]

If nothing else, this indicates another reason why nested-
transclusion is problematic, and why complexity like this ought
perhaps to be avoided.  (But of course this observation does
nothing to solve the current problem.)

This strikes me as a problem that might be amenable to a
technical solution.  Perhaps we need some new, more-stringent
form of protection which is automatically honored not only by
the protected page, but by any other content which it includes,
transcludes, or otherwise references.  Or, perhaps there should
be a "recursive protect" button, which applies (normal) protection
to every page included by a given page.

(I don't know enough about how the various inclusion mechanisms
are implemented to be able to say how easy or hard either of
these solutions might be, but I suspect they wouldn't be
impossible.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
>
> On 12/18/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Assuming that a {{subst:}} works recursively and automatically, which
> I really don't know...  My MediaWiki installation is outside my
> immediate hands-on test radius unfortunately.
>

Temporary substing is something to explore. But it would have its own
problems, I think -- meta templates aren't substed when you subst the main
template, from my experience. Substing all the infoboxes and other templates
on a page can make it pretty ugly, too... unless we were thinking about
copying all the templates to temporary subpages?

An adminbot is starting to sound a bit more tempting, from my end. Any bot
would be able to find and protect TFA, and absolutely everything transcluded
onto it, pretty easily, I think. Though I don't imagine that'll be an easy
sell. Might be easier to see if we can get pgkbot to report all edits to
that set of pages in the IRC counter-vandalism channels.

Still just brainstorming, here.
-Luna


from_name: shi zhao

subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews and cc logo

body:
new cc logo used. see
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses

wikinews use cc-by-2.5  license, it logo is
http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/2.5/88x31.png

plese update [[MediaWiki:Copyright]], use new logo.

zh wikinews have use.

--
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
CNBlog: http://blog.cnblog.org/weblog.html
Social Brain: http://www.socialbrain.org/default.asp
cnbloggercon: http://www.cnbloggercon.org/

[[zh:User:Shizhao]]


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews and cc logo


from_name: Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
What disturbs me about the vandalism on the Main Page articles is the
fact that the vandals don't appear to be drive-by vandals, but rather
users who know who to use the right tags and summaries to mask their
activities and inflict the most damage. Not to be the pessimist here,
but we're clearly dealing with a professional vandal who knows how to
beat the system. We need to take action against this person in
particular, if that is possible, because once we block one avenue,
(s)he'll just find another.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

Steve Summit wrote:
> NSLE wrote:
>
>> ...problems we've been having with the TFA each day on the main
>> page (vandals inserting shock images into transcluded-on-transcluded
>> templates).
>>
>
> [This is armchair speculation by a reader who is not as expert in
> these matters as he might be; apologies if I'm completely off-base.]
>
> If nothing else, this indicates another reason why nested-
> transclusion is problematic, and why complexity like this ought
> perhaps to be avoided.  (But of course this observation does
> nothing to solve the current problem.)
>
> This strikes me as a problem that might be amenable to a
> technical solution.  Perhaps we need some new, more-stringent
> form of protection which is automatically honored not only by
> the protected page, but by any other content which it includes,
> transcludes, or otherwise references.  Or, perhaps there should
> be a "recursive protect" button, which applies (normal) protection
> to every page included by a given page.
>
> (I don't know enough about how the various inclusion mechanisms
> are implemented to be able to say how easy or hard either of
> these solutions might be, but I suspect they wouldn't be
> impossible.)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 12/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On the other hand, even though "Legal experts have stated
> > that Y [cite][cite]" is clearly valid, it doesn't properly convey
> > what the sources indicate.  There ought to be some way to
> > record that a standard legal database did not provide ANY
> > contrary opinions.  Given how much lawyers love to argue
> > with each other, this is a highly unusual situation.
>
> I think a better way to handle some of these issues is to accept that
> straying into the grey area of OR is unavoidable, so let's come up
> with good ways to do it. "The consensus of academic opinion in X
> database appears to indicate that" is better than "The consensus of
> academic opinion in X database is that", for example.
>
> "Appears that", "is probably" etc are key words that indicate to the
> reader that the interpreter is us, and therefore not very reliable. We
> have a similar situation when we need to indicate that *we* (the
> nameless, voiceless writer) don't actually know something: "Whether
> there are other species with these characteristics is not known" can
> be a bit ambiguous (who doesn't know it - scientists, or us, the
> laypeople).

Actually, that's making things worse; we're now using weasel words
("appears that", "probably is") to cover our original research ("the
consensus is"). If we only have primary sources, then we say what the
primary sources say. If we have a secondary source that says "the
consensus of legal opinion is", then great. If not, then *we* cannot
become that secondary source that draws that conclusion, partly
because we're not experts in this field, but mostly because it's
original research.  Remember, the second you say "the consensus is",
you need to be able to state exactly who considers there to be a
"consensus".  Otherwise you are "introducing an analysis or synthesis
of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that
builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing
that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source."

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
I think fully protecting templates on Main Page related articles has
become the norm. See {{mprotected}} and the category linked from the
template page.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

Luna wrote:
> On 12/18/06, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What disturbs me about the vandalism on the Main Page articles is the
>> fact that the vandals don't appear to be drive-by vandals, but rather
>> users who know who to use the right tags and summaries to mask their
>> activities and inflict the most damage. Not to be the pessimist here,
>> but we're clearly dealing with a professional vandal who knows how to
>> beat the system. We need to take action against this person in
>> particular, if that is possible, because once we block one avenue,
>> (s)he'll just find another.
>>
>
>
> Along those lines, we need to remember checkuser -- they can't review and
> block the source, if we don't let them know which usernames to check. The
> usual "block and move on" mentality won't quite cut it, in this case;
> there's an ongoing section at RFCU about all of this, and unfortunately the
> checkusers can't see everything.
>
> Rangeblocks have been slowing it down, but have not yet stopped it. We need
> to explore new options, including protection options for templates.
>
> As far as templates on TFA, is there consensus as to whether they should be
> semi or fully protected? We're obviously dealing with somebody smart enough
> to start using sleeper accounts, is what I figure, but I'm not sure how much
> they've done so, yet.
>
> Eh. This one is incredibly frustrating, to me.
>
> -Luna
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 08:30:11 -0800 (PST), Ken Arromdee
<arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

>I haven't participated in any of the discussion about Assume Good Faith, but
>in my experience, I've usually encountered it when users quote it to claim
>that criticism of them is equivalent to not assuming good faith.
>Does it really solve more problems than it causes?

It's like "don't be a dick".  The idea is to do it, not to quote it.

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


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
On 18/12/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Yes!

Normally I get "what a stupid idea", "you retard" and other colourful
phrases (not necessarily from Brion).

> Preferences are evil; they multiply code complexity, tech support
> burden, and the user's mental model of the site leading to more mistakes
> made.

It's gone as of r18435.

Rob Church