body:
Matt R wrote:
> --- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Matt R wrote:
>>> --- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to
>>>> revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and
>>>> tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were
>>>> all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
>>> Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of
>>> instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user
>>> blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's
>>> vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the
>> time
>>> to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone
>> with
>>> a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very
>> shortly
>>> thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
>>>
>> If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you
>> mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective
>> method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted
>> had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:
>
> Even better, of course, would have been for the person to have used (say) the
> edit summary box to give some indication of why they were blanking an
> encyclopedia article. I really do feel that the onus is on them to give some
> reason for their drastic action, which is otherwise indistinguishable from
> hundreds of similar acts of vandalism a day.
>

Perhaps we need to enable one of the JavaScript "Warn if no edit
summary" things (I wrote a great one which can nag you up to 3 times)
for anons... something like "As an anonymous user, you are required to
provide a reason for your changes. Please enter it in the text box
below:"...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Before reverting blanking, please read the text

body:
Matt R wrote:
>> You do realize how completely stupid you sound, right?
>
> And I hope you realise that I have not read your email because this line caught
> my eye. If you want to have a discussion about something, avoid abuse.
>

Here's a summary:

Be nice to newbies. Everyone was a newbie once, even you.

Assume good faith. If you were wrong, no harm done. If you assume bad
faith and you were wrong, lots of harm done.

Admins are so entrenched in their elitist jargon and pet policies that
they forget how to interact with anyone who doesn't know the jargon and
the policies.

We need a welcome bot.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-20

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 421 of 437 tests (96.34%) FAILED!


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
GerardM wrote:

>What needs doing:
>
>   - Much information needs to be preserved. Much data that is really
>   precious needs digitizing. So that we will nor suffer another disaster like
>   the burning of the library of Alexandria.
>
It happens all the time.  The earliest US patent records were lost
because of a patent office fire in the 1830's.  The introduction of
cheap wood pulp papers in the 1830s led to self-destructing documents.
The 1890 US census records were lost because of a fire.  The records
office in Dublin was destroyed during the struggle for independence.
The 1960 US census became almost unreadable because it was kept on IBM
punch cards.  Early information relating to space information is
difficult to use because it was stored on large magnetic disks with a
fraction of the storage space of a modern CD.  Besides obsolete formats,
there is the strong risk of magnetic degradation.  Then there's the toll
from human activity like the looting of the Baghdad museum when Iraq was
invaded, or ancient manuscripts that were used to wrap food in other
middle eastern marketplaces.  At least one complete Bach Oratorio was
among the things lost during allied bombings of Germany during World War II.

Redundancy is likely a key to the preservation of heritage.  Having more
places hold copies of the information greatly reduces the risk of having
them completely lost to catastrophic events.  Such projects are not
cost-effective for businesses whose cost-recovery depends on skimming
the top of the most popular products.  Governments are too inclined to
so wrap such projects in bureaucracy that it's a wonder that anything is
ever accomplished.  Perhaps all governments need to be convinced through
stark risk analyses that the best survival chance for a lot of priceless
information is a mass popular effort at digitization and distribution.

>   - Many schools suffer from expensive and often substandard teaching
>   materials. Bringing the best that money can buy into Free resources would
>   help create a generation that grew up with Free content, technology and the
>   associated paradigms.
>
This will take more than just materials.  It will also take teachers
with the capacity to cope with massive amounts of information, teachers
who are able to guide their students into the information treasure room
without having them go mad with riches.

>   - Our infra structure is really cheap. It is outrageously successfull
>   in what it does but as more people start to depend on it and as more
>   functionality / data gets connected, it becomes more fragile. It would be
>   good to remain as cost effective but we do need more giants like Brion, Tim,
>   Mark, Domas ..
>
If we are going to run on a shoestring it should be long enough to be tied.

Ec


references:
<17515899.1161257278969.JavaMail.root@web16>
	<rssej2ljugf299caned89f4ri29ojdkcju@4ax.com>
	<46d9b7490610190730w7181274ft7dac7edf999f20c6@mail.gmail.com>
	<k37fj2lf9mq1b4aoafcviv15rr26uo07tt@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
<snip>
> Is vandalism a significant problem on Wikipdeia?  Yes.  Is reversion
> of valid blanking by accounts newly registered to fix a problem, but
> without the knowledge to comment, request help elsewhere, or include
> an edit summary, a significant problem on Wikipedia?  We have, to
> date, one example.  Let's try to maintain a sense of proportion, shall
> we?

"We have, to date, one example".

We have, /that we can remember/, one example. How many other examples
have been raised in the past, nobody can remember. How many other
incidences there have been, nobody knows. I somewhat suspect that none
of the current admins care, either, because they're all too busy making
themselves feel big and important and patting each other on the back for
making the most mouse-button-clicks in an hour. Never mind the actual
intent, it's the number of button clicks that count!

> Bear in mind that I actually take the time to userfy egregious
> vanity from single purpose accounts if the username matches the
> subject, because in the end newbies *do* matter, but demanding that
> every vandalism edit be accompanied by the planting of a shrubbery on
> the user's Talk page does not seem to be based on any realistic
> assessment of the problem.

You make it sound like we're asking you to chop down the tallest tree in
the forest with a herring. We're not. We're asking you to use a little
bit of Common Sense. How on earth is someone meant to defend themselves
if they don't even know the crime that they've been charged with? How on
earth is a newbie meant to learn that there are certain things they're
not supposed to be doing something if nobody ever tells them?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
David Goodman wrote:

>The priority purchase in the sciences is very clear:
>I/
>The standard modern enclyclopedias and other refereneces works:
>Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of chemistry and chemical technology,
>Walker's Mammals of the World,
>Encyclopedia of Life Sciences,  and so on.
>Most, but not quite all, are already available in digital format.
>Some, such as ELS, do not actually make a profit.  Almost all are
>esigned for the advancedd undergraduate level.
>The difficulty would not be that of acquiring them, but of keeping
>them up to date.
>
Keeping things up to date would be a different sort of challenge.  Maybe
that is still better done by the original publisher.  Agressive as my
copyright views may be I still recognize that these publishers need to
maintain some usefulness.  If the book is readily available from the
publisher we don't need to have it too.  Maintaining good relations with
publishers will be important.  As long as we don't interfere with their
exclusive rights to publish and sell their works they will be more
willing to pass us the material that they can no longer reprint
profitably, but which will still be of interest to a limited number of
scholars.

>III/
>Scientific American
>tho perhaps a little below our level, it is exceptionally well and
>consistently edited/rewritten, and has had major financial
>difficulties in the past.
>
The first series of 14 volumes (1845-1859) is already available on CD.
Until WWI it did a fantastic job of reporting on current patents, but
all of these issues are already in the public domain.  The early volumes
of "Popular Science" were a lot more informative and well written than
the current version.

>V/
>Some of the major review and current awareness journals:
>Accounts of Chemical Research,
>Nature reviews in,  etc.
>These are very up to date, and while some of the content is of the
>graduate level, much should be accessible. I wouldn't suggest getting
>them all. I would suggest instead selective licensing of content.
>
>But I am not sure it would necessarily be the best approach to
>incorporate the material here, rather than to make the publications
>themselves open access.
>
With journals like this that are in continuing operation the difficulty
is in scanning and maintaining an accessible online archive of the older
issues.  They could be happy to have someone else do this for them.

Ec


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Microsoft IE7 default search setting

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> FYI:  If you download the new IE 7 from Microsoft, you can set Wikipedia
> as your default search tool.  Have a look!
>

You downloaded IE7? We're doomed!

FWIW, Firefox lets you do this too: enter the URL about:config, and set
keyword.value to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> FYI:  If you download the new IE 7 from Microsoft, you can set Wikipedia
> as your default search tool.  Have a look!
>

You downloaded IE7? We're doomed!

FWIW, Firefox lets you do this too: enter the URL about:config, and set
keyword.value to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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list: wikimedia-l

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> FYI:  If you download the new IE 7 from Microsoft, you can set Wikipedia
> as your default search tool.  Have a look!
>

You downloaded IE7? We're doomed!

FWIW, Firefox lets you do this too: enter the URL about:config, and set
keyword.value to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> FYI:  If you download the new IE 7 from Microsoft, you can set Wikipedia
> as your default search tool.  Have a look!
>

You downloaded IE7? We're doomed!

FWIW, Firefox lets you do this too: enter the URL about:config, and set
keyword.value to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> You contradict yourself. If you leave it to the bot, you are assuming
> it is more intelligent than you are, or, you are just ignoring a
> problem.

No, I don't. It' is apparent that some people are not reading before
they revert, and there are folks in this thread advocating that doing
so is okay.

My position is that if you aren't going to read it, you shouldn't
revert it... leave it to a bot which will (eventually) do a better job
than a human who reverted blindly.

> Why leave something for a bot, that you could have done on
> sight.

I'd rather a human make a decision, but if they aren't going to a
decision and instead act like a bot... then we should allow the bot to
do the work, it will do a better job and its mistakes will be both
more excusable and easier to fix.

> The edit in the first post was a short edit. Do you really
> really expect everyone to, 1) wait for a bot, which may or may not
> come, or 2) to read the entirety of every edit which can be
> comfortably, with a large margin, to be considered vandalism.

Or more accurately, I want people who are not going to read to refrain
from vandalism reversion...  leave it to the bots and reading humans.

> Bots are
> not more consistent with their intelligence, they are just plain dumb.
> Consistency in your context does not mean the intelligent consistency.

A human who reverts a blanked page because it was blanked without
reading anything is never superior to a bot. At its very worst a bot
would be equal, but when a bot reverted blanking inappropriately we
could add rules to avoid some cases... not true with a human who
doesn't read.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Foundation-l] Business Week: Alexa numbers are rubbish,
 and the others are worse

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>>http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006095.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
>>
>>
>
>It's probably no big surprise for those who are aware of Alexa's data
>collection method. Just be glad we only use these statistics for curiosity
>and bragging. For web companies who need to convince investors or
>advertisers of their value, I can easily imagine the situation becoming
>hellish.
>
>
>
We do not use them only for that. On the nl.wikipedia there is a huge
group of people who consider Alexa to be the holy grail and use it to
dictating what an article can be written about or not. I wished you were
right Tim.

Waerth


from_name: Mindaugas Indriunas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Suggestion: Problem solving feedback system

body:
Hello, dear all.

I am not sure if this is the right place to suggest to Wikipedia
MediaWiki development people. I believe that having a good feedback,
including suggestions, is very important to Wikipedia's further
development.

Google is one of the companies that really cares about the feedback
from users, they say it that they love to hear from the users. It has
a well-developed feedback gathering system, which is accessible
through the help on their services.

I believe one of the success factors of Google was trying to be good
for people, so people wanted to give out their good ideas on further
development. People like to give good suggestions to the one who is
creating something that they like.

I believe the time has come, and Wikipedia has the level of importance
to the World, where people would want to give their good ideas out to
Wikipedia software developers.

So one suggestion would be to make such a feedback system, and there
should be a much larger number of people giving out their ideas; some
of which might be of real value.

--
Mindaugas Indriunas (Inyuki/????/??)
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Inyuki


body:
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human
> who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no
> more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack,
> and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the
> inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original
> blanker is just as much in the wrong.
>
> Can we tone down the hyperbole a bit?

Lets trade, I'll stop being offended by how lazy some of our
anti-vandalism video game players are when the rest of the folks in
the thread stop making excuses for them.

As to why we'd hold bots to a different standard than humans: Bots
don't have brains, humans do... If you are mindlessly reverting
vandalism in a manner no more effective than what a bot could, should,
and would do then you are doing nothing more than needlessly pumping
your edit count.

I've substantiated my position, but I've yet to see a clear argument
as to why it's okay to chose not to read, beyond it "being easier".


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>A specific example: In the UK, the various county record offices have
>a large number of deposits - papers that are held, catalogued, curated
>and made available by them, but with the ownership kept private, and
>handled as a long-term indefinite loan, anything from photograph
>archives to manorial tax records. Every now and again, someone
>withdraws one of these to sell it - you can get a goodish amount from
>an American university, usually - and they're faced with the dilemma
>of letting it go or trying to match the price offered.
>
>By squeezing the pips you can usually get enough together to keep it.
>Unfortunately, the first problem is that other depositors then say
>"Cor, they got two million for that stuff? I'm taking mine to the
>States too!", cue exodus of everything else - and potential depositors
>start asking tricky questions like "Why should I leave this stuff with
>you when I could just sell it to someone outright?"
>
I don't think we want to get into bidding wars for this kind of
material, and I don't think it will be necessary.  The LDS Church has
certainly be effective in microfilming large amounts of local records
for genealogical purposes.  My feeling is that many of these archives
are overwhelmed by the huge quantities involved, and can have major
headaches simply storing it all.  Many have difficulties doing even a
rough index of what they have.  They would probably welcome the help if
they are confident that the archive will be kept safe and if restrictive
covenants connected with some items are respected.

Ec


body:
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
[snip]
> Some of the reactions in this thread to this mistake are way over the
> top, IMO, we should not be holding our editors to unreasonably strict
> standards of perfection. This was an "oops, should have read that more
> carefully" situation, not a "what kind of brainless moron would do such
> a thing!?" situation.

The first post in the thread made it clear that its intent was not to
single out that particular edit, but rather criticize a class of
behaviors.

Yes, it's possible that the person in this case read the text and
missed it.  Although its unlikely, since the text itself made it clear
that it was an unsourced/unsubstianted rumor.

I'm not, nor was uninvited primarily complaining about random
mistakes, rather we were complaining about a systematic failure.

As such there is no attempt being made to hold our editors to any real
standard, beyond simply taking the most minimal steps necessary to
ensure that they will not fail to do the right thing every single time
something in the form of a compound vandalism occurs.

So you'll have to pardon me for my "over the top" reply when I see
people suggesting that simply reading the screen is too difficult for
our editors.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:

>On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:19:13 -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>However, our task at the moment is not to dream about _that_ per se, but
>>rather to dream about what kinds of work under existing copyright, we
>>would like to see made free.  There have been many good suggestions, and
>>
>>
>I agree. All I ask is that if such a decision is ever taken, consider very
>carefully not only the value of the information you are setting free, but
>also the message you are sending to content owners/producers and other key
>players.
>
Maintaining the viability and vitality of the journals is just as
important as building our own database.  It needs to be a win-win situation.

Ec


body:
Creating feedback form (unless you put the feedback link into a very
visible place) shouldn't increase the feedback load.

On the contrary, complex feedback form asking to categorize the
suggestion, and giving already frequently suggested ideas to review
before sending something new, would reduce the feedback load amount,
and increase it's quality.

Gradually you could put the feedback link somewhere in a more visible
place if you felt that the lack of feedback.

On 10/20/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/10/06, Mindaugas Indriunas <inyuki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > So one suggestion would be to make such a feedback system, and there
> > should be a much larger number of people giving out their ideas; some
> > of which might be of real value.
> >
>
> There are many ways to give feedback to both the MediaWiki and Wikimedia
> guys. You can make suggestions on the IRC channels, make suggestions and
> proposals on these mailing lists, make suggestions and proposals on a few
> Wikis (http://meta.wikimedia.org/ http://www.mediawiki.org/), or post a
> bug/feature request at Bugzilla (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/).
>
> I would say with confidence that the Mediawiki developers are far closer and
> more responsive to their users. Importantly, they are mostly volunteers
> drawn from the Wikimedia community.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Mindaugas Indriunas (Inyuki/????/??)
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Inyuki


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Why there will be no "Wikipedia" at Debian

body:
They can always use the serif W like the favicon, no?

On 10/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> Debian has problems with trademarked material ie the logos et al to be
> under a license that prevents them from being changed. As the Wikimedia
> Foundation has a license for its logos that is incompatible with the
> Debian way, it is not possible for it to host Wikimedia Foundation logos
> in the first place. We also do not allow anyone to use the names of the
> Wikimedia projects for their mirror without permission.. something I
> would think is also not in line with what Debian thinks is reasonable.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> Milos Rancic wrote:
> > Hm. But, Debian should not have a problem to use it in distribution...
> >
> > On 10/20/06, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Debian and Mozilla had a struggle about using Mozillas Trademarks in
> >> Debian if the software and logos are changed but the name is not.[1]
> >> This should also apply to Wikipedia if people want to distribute
> >> Wikipedia content or modified parts then they cannot just call it
> >> "Wikipedia" - I just wanted to clarify and give an example because many
> >> people think that the our name and logos are as free as the content.
> >>
> >> Greetings,
> >> Jakob
> >>
> >> [1] For instance http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3364701970.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
> Some of the reactions in this thread to this mistake are way over the
> top, IMO, we should not be holding our editors to unreasonably strict
> standards of perfection. This was an "oops, should have read that more
> carefully" situation, not a "what kind of brainless moron would do such
> a thing!?" situation.

I'm more of a "what kind of incivil jerk would revert it and then not bother
to send anyone a message asking them politely to not blank pages, and upon
seeing they were a newbie give them the welcome message as well" kind of
person myself.

The first blanking I chalk up to someone realizing that the article was at
least half libelous bullshit.

The second blanking I chalk up to the reverting editor's not doing their
goddamn job.

The rest I chalk up to the downfall of AGF and civility as admins have
realized they're untouchable and never bother with them anymore.

Parker


body:
On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than
> blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page.

And it's great when that happens.

I know I always
> listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative
> than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.

And you do no favors when you don't even bother to initiate dialogue if you
find someone who seems to have an objection to the article.

I still do not see why we
> should be beaten down because of a mistake which was caused by their
> lack of communication.

Our lack of communication is equally to blame, and it's the responsibility
of "longtime respected editors" and "vandal fighters" alike to follow our
policies, assume good faith, and find out what the problem is.

Instead, what was the reaction? Blind Revert, Blind Revert, Block user - all
by the same admin Darwinek - without a single talkpage message or message to
the editor in question that I know of.

This is the same sort of behavior I was complaining of when I shut down
using my admin account. I've stayed talking on email thus far hoping that
maybe, having brought these concerns to the list and to Jimbo, something
might change. Instead, I'm watching over half of the thread's participants
defending what ought to be undeniable, inexcusable behavior (not the
reverting or the blocking necessarily, but not bothering to check the
article for problems and not bothering to make any effort to contact the
user, absolutely).

As was said before, their should be informative
> messages before blanking is allowed, so they can see the intelligent
> options more clearly.

There should be a lot of things. That still doesn't excuse the behavior by
the "respected editor" who didn't do their job properly.

Possibly even link directly to the BLP
> noticeboard, which gets a large volume of traffic and can deal with
> the sort of things that were so worrying in the single case that has
> been demonstrated here.

It's not the only case, or the BLP page wouldn't have a line about how
oftentimes biography blankings happen because there's something problematic
in the article, and I'll thank you and whatsisname to stop throwing the
"well this is the only case we have on record" strawman around right now.

Parker


body:
On 10/20/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> [snip]
> > Some of the reactions in this thread to this mistake are way over the
> > top, IMO, we should not be holding our editors to unreasonably strict
> > standards of perfection. This was an "oops, should have read that more
> > carefully" situation, not a "what kind of brainless moron would do such
> > a thing!?" situation.
>
> The first post in the thread made it clear that its intent was not to
> single out that particular edit, but rather criticize a class of
> behaviors.
>
> Yes, it's possible that the person in this case read the text and
> missed it.  Although its unlikely, since the text itself made it clear
> that it was an unsourced/unsubstianted rumor.
>
> I'm not, nor was uninvited primarily complaining about random
> mistakes, rather we were complaining about a systematic failure.
>
> As such there is no attempt being made to hold our editors to any real
> standard, beyond simply taking the most minimal steps necessary to
> ensure that they will not fail to do the right thing every single time
> something in the form of a compound vandalism occurs.
>
> So you'll have to pardon me for my "over the top" reply when I see
> people suggesting that simply reading the screen is too difficult for
> our editors.

Nobody seemed to care at all when I brought up obvious vandalism that had
been restored by FreakofNurture (
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kakashi_Hatake&diff=79744377&oldid=79734103)
who was obviously hunting a user that I still consider fraudulently banned
after they were obviously wikistalked and harassed.

In fact, nobody cares at all when accusations of "sockpuppet" are thrown
around freely by our POV crusaders, or when "vandal fighters" take arbitrary
and over the top actions without the slightest regard for AGF or civility.

At least, that's how it seems. Right now, I've watched as over half the
participants on this thread are trying to defend an absolutely indefensible
refusal by an admin to contact a user who has an issue with an article and
find out what the real problem is, a refusal to even leave a warning message
or better yet the NEW USER WELCOME MESSAGE.

So yeah. We have systemic problems. All over the place. But by bringing them
up, I was labeled a "troll" by some personalities on this list, and told by
two people in private emails to "well fuck off if you're leaving then."

That's why I said we've broken wikipedia. I meant it.

Parker


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] good example of overuse of {{fact}}

body:
On 10/19/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 10/19/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > "Critics of the GPL often describe it as being  "viral", based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
> >
> > What should we do with that?  {{fact}} tag it?  Remove it?  Leave it as is?  Personally I'd say it should be removed.  I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception".  Let's see what happens.
>
>  21:59, 19 October 2006  75.202.44.46 (Talk) ({{fact}})
>  22:18, 19 October 2006 Haeleth ( Talk | contribs) (rv deletion with misleading edit summary)
>
> I'm not at all surprised.  This is why I usually use the {{fact}} tag.

And now it's turned into an all out multi-party edit war.

01:05, 20 October 2006 75.202.80.124 (Talk) (?Criticism)
01:06, 20 October 2006 75.202.80.124 (Talk) (?Criticism)
03:25, 20 October 2006 Gwern (Talk | contribs) (?197 words changed? rv
inane {{fact}}s)
10:02, 20 October 2006 Alphax (Talk | contribs) (If there /are/
citations for this stuff, please <ref> them...)
10:45, 20 October 2006 Haeleth (Talk | contribs) (The sky is
blue.{{fact}} Grass is green.{{fact}})

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&action=history

So what's the solution?  Are we destined to keep speculative
paragraphs like the one in question in the encyclopedia?

I'm going to try removing the paragraph completely again, and leaving
a note on the talk page.

Anthony


from_name: Abigail Brady

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On 10/20/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> There is no harm in waiting a few days and see what happens with that
> story. There is no rush, really.

Meanwhile, I started to actually clean up the article with respect to
sourcing.  Is it me or are  our American political biographies just
totally awful?  I removed a paragraph saying

  On September 28, 2006, Craig voted to suspend [[habeas corpus]]
provisions for anyone deemed by the Executive Branch an "unlawful
combatant," barring them from challenging their detentions in court.
Craig's vote gave a retroactive, nine-year immunity to U.S. officials
who authorized, ordered, or committed acts of torture and abuse,
permitting the use of statements obtained through torture to be used
in military tribunals so long as the abuse took place by December 30,
2005.  Craig authorized the President to establish permissible
interrogation techniques and to "interpret the meaning and
application" of international [[Geneva Convention]] standards, so long
as the coercion fell short of serious bodily or psychological injury.

And someone is actually trying to defend this garbage on the talk
page!  Also HE VOTED AGAINST CUDDLY ANIMALS.

--
Abi


body:
On 10/20/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?
>
> Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU
> General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that
> incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself
> become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is
> distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely
> available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the
> GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization
> making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent
> commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to
> distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product
> rather than just the cost of distribution.
>
> Speech Transcript - Craig Mundie, The New York University Stern School
> of Business
>
> Prepared Text of Remarks by Craig Mundie, Microsoft Senior Vice President
> The Commercial Software Model
> The New York University Stern School of Business
> May 3, 2001
>

No, I don't.  Craig Mundie, and/or Microsoft, is hardly "critics
often".  Perhaps there is a time and a place for the use of the phrase
"critics often" in a sentence in Wikipedia, but I don't see any
evidence that this is one of them.

Anthony


body:
On 10/20/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
> > Anthony wrote:
>
> >> What should we do with that?  {{fact}} tag it?  Remove it?  Leave it as is?
> >> Personally I'd say it should be removed.  I just removed, without logging
> >> in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding
> >> this "perception".  Let's see what happens.
>
> > Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?
>
> Never mind, I've done it, now let's see what happens.

It's starting to look good to me.  Hopefully these new changes will
stick around.

> I have to wonder
> about WP:POINT here, the edit war that started could so easily have been
> avoided by searching google for the term GNU viral.

Frankly, if it were up to me I wouldn't devote so much space to this
comment by Craig Mundie.  I think the encyclopedia is better now than
it was before, but if it were up to me I'd remove the entire
"criticisms" section.

So yeah, it's possible if I had searched google for the term GNU viral
I would have come up with exactly the quote you're talking about,
would have made the change, and we would have saved a few edits.  It's
also possible I would have noticed all the uses of the term "viral" to
describe the GPL being made by people who weren't critics, and would
have changed the paragraph in a completely different way.

> Still, the
> encyclopedia got improved and no-one got hurt.  I'm hoping we're all
> learning the lesson here that we might not be as bad as we actually
> think we are for reliability, but that the lack of sourcing and how we
> source and represent those sources in the articles is becoming an issue.
>
Reliability isn't really the problem with these sorts of statements.
POV is more the problem when you throw out these fringe statements,
attribute them to "critics", and then proceed to prove them wrong.
It's the problem with the GPL article (which is far from fixed in my
opinion, in two days we've fixed one paragraph of it).  And it's also
the problem with the original quote by Jimbo (the idea that proponents
of political correctness perceive the term "blackboard" as improper is
so ludicrous that it amounts to nothing more than picking on the
political correctness movement).

Anthony


list: commons-l

from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Commons-l] www.wikitheque.fr (.org, .com)

body:
Wikim?dia France has installed a portal at www.wikitheque.fr (and had
obtained .com and .org in order to prevent squatting).

This portal provides task-oriented directions for finding images and
text content on Commons and Wikisource, with the help of Wikipedia (we
may in the future extend this to friendly third-party sites with libre
content).

Examples of tasks include: I'm looking for a photograph of an animal,
where do I look? I only know the French common name of that species,
what do I do?

The idea is to address the needs of e.g. teachers and schoolchildren
with step-by-step instructions.

This portal is now not much developed, but we aim to make it bigger.

In order to preemptively address a few obvious questions:
* This portal will not provide content; content will all be on other
sites (Commons, Wikisource etc.).
* This portal is not editable as a wiki because there would be
difficulties with that:
** The wiki interface may scare "normal" people - too many buttons.
** We cannot afford vandalism on a portal for welcoming e.g. schoolchildren.
** We might use a "closed" wiki but it's a heavier solution than the
current one.

-- DM


subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikitheque.fr (.org, .com)


from_name: Peter Ansell

body:
On 20/10/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which
> is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when
> you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will
> generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a
> human who is pretending to be a bot.

You contradict yourself. If you leave it to the bot, you are assuming
it is more intelligent than you are, or, you are just ignoring a
problem. Why leave something for a bot, that you could have done on
sight. The edit in the first post was a short edit. Do you really
really expect everyone to, 1) wait for a bot, which may or may not
come, or 2) to read the entirety of every edit which can be
comfortably, with a large margin, to be considered vandalism. Bots are
not more consistent with their intelligence, they are just plain dumb.
Consistency in your context does not mean the intelligent consistency.

Peter Ansell


from_name: Jakob Voss

body:
Hi,

Debian and Mozilla had a struggle about using Mozillas Trademarks in
Debian if the software and logos are changed but the name is not.[1]
This should also apply to Wikipedia if people want to distribute
Wikipedia content or modified parts then they cannot just call it
"Wikipedia" - I just wanted to clarify and give an example because many
people think that the our name and logos are as free as the content.

Greetings,
Jakob

[1] For instance http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3364701970.html


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Feature request: "single block"

body:
Given the competence of the average admin on enwiki, I think this is a
phenomenally bad idea.  Giving select admins the authority to impose
all-project blocks for IP addresses or even named users is probably
something that is needed, but this is a very powerful privilege and
should be extended on a very limited basis with input from multiple
projects.  Passing a beauty contest on enwiki should not give one the
power to block people on commons, dewikt, or frwikisource.

I would support the Foundation providing an open proxy listing service
to which individual projects could subscribe to or not depending on
their particular circumstances.  Most projects would subscribe,
perhaps with certain exclusions; some, like zhwiki, would probably not
subscribe.  It would be a project-by-project decision whether or not
to subscribe.  A DNSBL is the obvious way to do this.  Selecting
people to maintain this list should be done on a multiproject basis,
similar to how stewards or meta admins are elected, or alternatively
selected directly by the Foundation.

In any case, this is 10% technical and 90% policy, which suggests that
some other mailing list is more appropriate for the discussion.

Kelly

On 10/20/06, Piotr Derbeth Kubowicz <derbeth at wp.pl> wrote:
> I am talking only about common block for IP numbers, not users. Moreover, I am strongly against blocking user's account on one project for things he has done on another project. So please do not make off topic and discuss what NPOV is and what it is not, because we are on technical list.
>
> With IP numbers the situation is completely different. Common behaviour of occasional vandals on English Wikipedia is switching to (for example) Wikibooks immediately after having IP blocked and going on with vandalising random pages. This is really hard to catch by sysops and could be very easily stopped by automated propagating IP number block to all available Wikimedia projects. Whether it would be done by creating common database (similar to Commons) or by a bot similar to CommonsTicker - it's irrelevant for administrators of projects suffering from vandals coming directly from Wikipedia. In most cases 2-hour block restricted to anonymous users is just enough to stop vandal.
>
> --
> Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
> Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl
>
> Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/
>
> Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 19/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> It would also result in cross-wiki block/unblock wars with no central
> authority to realistically appeal to.  Open proxies should be dealt
> with on the software level via DNSBL as discussed here a while back,
> and there's not so much reason to carry over other blocks.  If this
> does occur, it needs to be a (bureaucrat-settable?) local option to
> inherit from one specific wiki, and blocks need to be locally
> overridable by local admins.
>

Perhaps after single login it may be good to have a pan-Wikimedia user
control space where blocks are discussed/controlled multilingually. I've no
idea who could be a member of this space (all admins on any Wikimedia
project?).

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors

body:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution
history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last
500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my
understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise
the development of articles.

My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in
Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?

Peter Ansell


body:
On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Peter Ansell wrote:
> > On 20/10/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which
> >> is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when
> >> you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will
> >> generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a
> >> human who is pretending to be a bot.
> >
> > You contradict yourself.
>
> I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human
> who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no
> more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack,
> and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the
> inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original
> blanker is just as much in the wrong.
>
> Can we tone down the hyperbole a bit?
>
>

I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than
blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page. I know I always
listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative
than a new user blanking a page repeatedly. I still do not see why we
should be beaten down because of a mistake which was caused by their
lack of communication. As was said before, their should be informative
messages before blanking is allowed, so they can see the intelligent
options more clearly. Possibly even link directly to the BLP
noticeboard, which gets a large volume of traffic and can deal with
the sort of things that were so worrying in the single case that has
been demonstrated here.

Peter Ansell


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
> > Also HE VOTED AGAINST CUDDLY ANIMALS.
> >
>
> Oh, well that does it then. I'll order a Level 14 Cabalstrike.
>

It's obvious that nobody in this case is THINKING OF THE CHILDREN.

And that's why I'm leaving Wikipedia.

Cheers,
Dan


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Anthony wrote:
> On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10/19/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the
>> person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an
>> abortion.
>
> I'm disappointed to have read this entire thread before getting this bit of
> information.
...
> Absolutely.  If you're going to revert a blanking, you should be damn sure
> that at least *some* part of the original text was in fact accurate.

Don't know whether the reverter was "damn sure", but some part of the
original text _was_ in fact accurate. The unsourced rumor was in the
second half of the article, the first half of the article was pretty
much okay.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Pattern copyvios involving comic book characters

body:
Earle Martin wrote:
> On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> In this incident we had two copyvio articles and a bunch of unattributed
>> images. It's not at all clear how you're progressing from that to the
>> conclusion that all of Wikipedia's fictional character articles are so
>> out-of-control that they need to be "nuked."
>
> I think Phil is speaking from having read numerous fictional character
> articles, not implying that his feelings stem from this incident. (I
> happen to agree with him; the amount of blithering fancruft is
> astonishing.)

Yet he's using this incident as his "excuse" for it. If this incident
itself had nothing specifically to do with his proposal and he was just
tossing in an old dream of his, why was it initially focused on just
Marvel comics characters?

>>> We need to demonstrate our lack of tolerance with a zeal
>>> previously known only to BLP.
>> Wikimedia Foundation could get sued for having "fancruft" in articles
>> about fictional characters? Or having fancruft could somehow ruin the
>> lives of fictional characters? Those are the reasons for BLP but I don't
>> see any similar level of importance for fictional character articles.
>
> Again, I think you're misreading Phil's point, namely that we should
> be as ruthless at eliminating fancruft as we are at BLP issues, not
> that fancruft is causing the same problems as BLP issues.

No, I don't think that I am. There's reasons why BLP is "ruthless" with
regard to biographies of living people and those reasons are completely
inapplicable to biographies of fictional characters. If you want to
propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
a reason that's just as strong.

Also, the definition of "fancruft" is far less clear than the definition
of "libel." I'd want to see something solid and widely accepted for that
as well.

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from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
Hm. But, Debian should not have a problem to use it in distribution...

On 10/20/06, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Debian and Mozilla had a struggle about using Mozillas Trademarks in
> Debian if the software and logos are changed but the name is not.[1]
> This should also apply to Wikipedia if people want to distribute
> Wikipedia content or modified parts then they cannot just call it
> "Wikipedia" - I just wanted to clarify and give an example because many
> people think that the our name and logos are as free as the content.
>
> Greetings,
> Jakob
>
> [1] For instance http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3364701970.html
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:

>Paraphrased can still be a copyvio in most jurisdictions, including the
>U.S., when the overall sentence and paragraph structure remains the
>same.  It starts looking like a derived work when the ideas are
>organized and presented the same way even though the word choices are
>different.
>
Paraphrasing is only sometimes a copyvio.  Saying that it _can_ be does
not imply that it is.  Many of the marvunapp entries are very short, and
suggest that there may not be much more to say about a particular
character.  In such cases the merger principle may be applicable because
the information itself is not copyrightable, and the number of ways that
you can express that information is very limited.

If we only have occasional short short quoted paragraphs that are
properly attributed that comes well within fair use.

One possible source of copyvios is selection, but that is far more
difficult to establish.  If a person is systematically drawing on
marvunapp's material and using that as the basis for what he includes
that could be a copyvio, but a small random selection of material would
not be.

In your comments you make no mention of your negotiations with
marvunapp, and their willingness to find an accomodation.  This is
better than assuming that because they have complained there is
necessarily a copyvio.  Even if none of our entries are copyvios and
what we do is entirely within the law, they still have a right to exist
in their own particular niche, and we should resist the urge to
overwhelm them with our size, or to otherwise engage in Borg-like behaviour.

It would be very interesting to see reports on negotiations.

Ec


body:
On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Peter Ansell wrote:
> > I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than
> > blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page. I know I always
> > listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative
> > than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.
>
> Certainly, this is the best way to go about something like this. I
> wasn't saying that the silent page-blanking was "okay." The sort of
> slack I was talking about cutting was to respond "oh, I see, you're just
> trying to delete that bit at the end because it's libel. You weren't
> going about things in the best manner, though, here's how to handle a
> situation like this in the future to ensure we get the right idea..."
>
> Not cutting slack would be more along the lines of "Oh, I see you're
> just trying to delete that bit at the end. Nevertheless, you blanked the
> entire article instead. BANNED!"
>

Thats quite reasonable. Did that person actually get banned for their
good faith action?

Peter Ansell


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
> On Oct 19, 2006, at 8:40 PM, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
>> The term "ludicrous overkill" comes to mind. I think you've got
>> another
>> agenda here. :)
>
> Damn straight.
>
> Our articles on fictional characters are cesspools of fancruft,
> original research, and outright idiocy. This should be a clear call
> to the fact that we do not have sufficient control over these
> articles. We need to demonstrate our lack of tolerance with a zeal
> previously known only to BLP.

I want to point out I am in broad agreement with Phil here, but doubt
we'd get the consensus to do it.  That said, there is a consensus
forming along that exact opinion, that it should be done but we'd never
be able to do it.  Although the list of copyright violations on the list
provided were very small, they might be very large in the contributor in
questions edit history.

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
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from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors

body:
On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution
> history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last
> 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my
> understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise
> the development of articles.
>
> My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in
> Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
>

I think that you need to be careful about that; I've seen quite a number of
experienced editors and administrators fall into that trap for periods of
time.  I myself am currently extricating myself from an hole I fell in for a
couple of months, doing much more "administrative stuff" in wikispace and
talk than any real article edits.  Fortunately I realized what I was doing,
and simultaneously realized there were several whole classes of engineering
materials articles which didn't exist yet, so I've started working on
those...

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


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On 10/20/06, jf_wikipedia at mac.com <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 19, 2006, at 4:30 PM, Rob wrote:
>
> > There is a case to be made either way, I think, and that is a
> > legitimate issue to be discussed, and it's one I've gone back and
> > forth on in my internal dialogue as well as on the talk page.  But
> > it's just absolutely not true that it has not been discussed in the
> > mainstream press and I find it frustrating that you keep repeating
> > this false assertion, especially when your other comments on the
> > matter are thoughtful and responsible.
>
> If you refer to this:
> : http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/10/19/publiceye/entry2108678.shtml
> ... I would suggest you read it.

This is an unusual case. If I may make a brief summary from what I've read:

a) Some guy publishes rumours on his blog, and mentions them while on
a radio show
b) A small newspaper [1] takes the unusual step of running the rumours
c) The rumours spiral through the blogosphere
d) The mainstream media publishes opinion pieces using the story to
comment on the nature of rumours in the new media [2]

So the real story is not about Craig at all. The rumours remain
rumours - the attention they have received from all parts of the media
has been exclusively "Mike Rogers said this". Other people saying that
someone said something doesn't really change the fact that only they
said it.

We could have a sentence in Craig's article saying "in October, Mike
Rogers claimed in his blog that Craig was gay". But would that really
be responsible? How notable is Rogers? Blogs are acceptable sources
*for the opinions only* of notable people, but what good reason is
there to publish Rogers' opinion?

We could have a paragraph in Craig's article describing the
controversy, including how the Spokesman-Review ran the story and the
mainstream commentary on the whole business. But would that be
appropriate from a BLP perspective? The real story is only
peripherally about Craig.

My view is that we should have a nice objective paragraph *about the
controversy around reporting the rumours* (not about the rumours
themselves) in [[The Spokesman-Review]] article, or perhaps the
article on Rogers (if he should actually have an article).

----
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spokesman-Review
(2) http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/raasch/2006-10-19-raasch_x.htm,
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/10/19/publiceye/entry2108678.shtml

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:09:42 +0100, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>>Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia.
>>You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you
>>do? You delete it.
>>
>>
>The whole article?  *All* of it?  Even the bits which are not crap? No
>I don't.
>
It's not surprising.  If they find a section which they believe is crap,
it's easy to jump to the conclusion that everything in the article is
crap.  It's not logical, but people do think that way in real life more
often than I like to believe.

Ec


from_name: Earle Martin

body:
On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
> > Our articles on fictional characters are cesspools of fancruft,
> > original research, and outright idiocy. This should be a clear call
> > to the fact that we do not have sufficient control over these
> > articles.
>
> In this incident we had two copyvio articles and a bunch of unattributed
> images. It's not at all clear how you're progressing from that to the
> conclusion that all of Wikipedia's fictional character articles are so
> out-of-control that they need to be "nuked."

I think Phil is speaking from having read numerous fictional character
articles, not implying that his feelings stem from this incident. (I
happen to agree with him; the amount of blithering fancruft is
astonishing.)

> > We need to demonstrate our lack of tolerance with a zeal
> > previously known only to BLP.
>
> Wikimedia Foundation could get sued for having "fancruft" in articles
> about fictional characters? Or having fancruft could somehow ruin the
> lives of fictional characters? Those are the reasons for BLP but I don't
> see any similar level of importance for fictional character articles.

Again, I think you're misreading Phil's point, namely that we should
be as ruthless at eliminating fancruft as we are at BLP issues, not
that fancruft is causing the same problems as BLP issues.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 01:46:59 +0930, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
><alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Bear in mind that I actually take the time to userfy egregious
>>>vanity from single purpose accounts if the username matches the
>>>subject, because in the end newbies *do* matter, but demanding that
>>>every vandalism edit be accompanied by the planting of a shrubbery on
>>>the user's Talk page does not seem to be based on any realistic
>>>assessment of the problem.
>>>
>>>
>>You make it sound like we're asking you to chop down the tallest tree in
>>the forest with a herring. We're not. We're asking you to use a little
>>bit of Common Sense. How on earth is someone meant to defend themselves
>>if they don't even know the crime that they've been charged with? How on
>>earth is a newbie meant to learn that there are certain things they're
>>not supposed to be doing something if nobody ever tells them?
>>
>>
>Common sense indicates that wholesale blanking is usually vandalism.
>
>
>
Experience (rather than common sense) may very well suggest that
possibility.  It's a valid presumption, but that only suggests that the
matter should be investigated further before asserting that it is in
fact vandalism.

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
Debian has problems with trademarked material ie the logos et al to be
under a license that prevents them from being changed. As the Wikimedia
Foundation has a license for its logos that is incompatible with the
Debian way, it is not possible for it to host Wikimedia Foundation logos
in the first place. We also do not allow anyone to use the names of the
Wikimedia projects for their mirror without permission.. something I
would think is also not in line with what Debian thinks is reasonable.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Milos Rancic wrote:
> Hm. But, Debian should not have a problem to use it in distribution...
>
> On 10/20/06, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Debian and Mozilla had a struggle about using Mozillas Trademarks in
>> Debian if the software and logos are changed but the name is not.[1]
>> This should also apply to Wikipedia if people want to distribute
>> Wikipedia content or modified parts then they cannot just call it
>> "Wikipedia" - I just wanted to clarify and give an example because many
>> people think that the our name and logos are as free as the content.
>>
>> Greetings,
>> Jakob
>>
>> [1] For instance http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3364701970.html


body:
jkelly at fas.harvard.edu wrote:

>I'm a little surprised by this thread.  Unless I am not understanding what I
>am reading, there seems to be actual resistance to the idea that one should
>read what they are reverting back to.  When one reverts, one becomes the latest
>author/publisher of that article; I suggest that there should be some sense of
>responsibility for its content.
>
>  I'd just encourage all of us not to make edits that can result in introducing,
>or, yes, re-introducing, defamation, nonsense or vandalism into Wikipedia
>articles.  If you really cannot afford the time to read your edit, it probably
>is better to not make that edit.  As Greg Maxwell is pointing out, the bots do
>at least leave a message on the user's talk page about what to do if they
>believe that they have been reverted in error.
>
In all fairness, I believe the issue has to do with edits where no
reason whatsoever is given for the blanking.  Defamation and vandalism
do indeed require action, but not all of it is put into an article in an
obvious way.  A single defamatory sentence in a long article is not
always easy to spot, especially in an unfamilar subject.

Let's assume that in a long biographical article about a math professor
there is the sentence: "Shortly after his divorce in 1988, he left
Princeton and was made a full professor at Yale."  The entire article is
essentially correct, and there is no shortage of references for his
mathematical theories and most other aspects of his life.  The _only_
problem is that he was never divorced.  He sees our comment and blanks
the entire article without explanation.  Is it reasonable to expect
anyone who restores the article will spot the error about the divorce?
How much time would it take?

Ec


body:
Hoi,
For your amusement, I have won a bet that within a month of the launch
of single login people would ask for exactly this kind of functionality.
You will appreciate that the policies of when to block are not the same
on all projects. Even the notion of what is NPOV and what is POV is not
appreciated in the same way on all Wikipedias.. The fact that there was
a holocaust for instance is not accepted fact everywhere.. :( There are
already functions that have been implemented that work on all projects,
the spam functionality is the first that comes to mind.

Mind you, dealing uniformly with open proxies is a good thing. A project
should be able to unsubscribe to such a service, this is how you can
give projects their "autonomy".

Thanks,
   GerardM

Oldak Quill wrote:
> On 19/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It would also result in cross-wiki block/unblock wars with no central
>> authority to realistically appeal to.  Open proxies should be dealt
>> with on the software level via DNSBL as discussed here a while back,
>> and there's not so much reason to carry over other blocks.  If this
>> does occur, it needs to be a (bureaucrat-settable?) local option to
>> inherit from one specific wiki, and blocks need to be locally
>> overridable by local admins.
> Perhaps after single login it may be good to have a pan-Wikimedia user
> control space where blocks are discussed/controlled multilingually. I've no
> idea who could be a member of this space (all admins on any Wikimedia
> project?).


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Andrew Gray wrote:
>
>
>>The issue here isn't that someone blanked their own page and was
>>reverted without us talking to them. The issue is that someone blanked
>>their own page *containing blatant crap* and was reverted for it;
>>
>>
>Actually, it wasn't all _that_ blatant. Blatant crap is stuff like
>"GEORGE IS GAY LLOLZORS!!1!". The article was neatly formatted, had a
>nice picture, was well categorized, and the first half of it was
>completely plausible (and as it turns out mostly true). The second half,
>which contained the objectionable bit, was not readily distinguishable
>from the first simply by scanning ones' eyes lightly over it. Still not
>correct to revert to but an understandable thing to overlook under the
>circumstances.
>
Your example is easy to find because it is in all caps.  However a
simple "George is gay" in normal typeface in the middle of a long
article about somebody named George (Curious George?) will not be easily
noticed.

Ec


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>
>>Tim Starling wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>David Gerard wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006095.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>It's probably no big surprise for those who are aware of Alexa's data
>>>collection method. Just be glad we only use these statistics for curiosity
>>>and bragging. For web companies who need to convince investors or
>>>advertisers of their value, I can easily imagine the situation becoming
>>>hellish.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>We do not use them only for that. On the nl.wikipedia there is a huge
>>group of people who consider Alexa to be the holy grail and use it to
>>dictating what an article can be written about or not. I wished you were
>>right Tim.
>>
>>
>>
>
>There's a rumour going around that on nl.wikipedia that there's a group
>of people who think that the rest of us "have no clue whatsoever when it
>comes to the meaning and regulations on copyright". Please tell me it's
>not true.
>
>
As someone who knows close to nothing about copyright I usually stay
away from those discussions. I wouldn't be surprised though. I was
recently involved in a debate about Alexa toolbar though. And then I
read this article which writes exactly what I thought. And then I saw
Tim's hope that nobody takes Alexa seriously. Unfortunately big groups
of people do and they do not see the flaws.

Waerth

Waerth


subject: [WikiEN-l] We go! We go!

body:
On 10/20/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > From: "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name>
> >
> > I remember reading somebody's online description of trolls, where one
> > of the signs is that they keep saying that they're quitting an online
> > community / list / newsgroup / forum / site / etc., but rarely
> > actually do.
>
> GENERAL: Away, away!
>
> POLICE: (without moving)    Yes, yes, we go.
>
> GENERAL: These pirates slay.
>
> POLICE: Tarantara!
...

When vandal-fighting duty's to be done, to be done,
An admin's lot is not a happy one, happy one.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
ScottL wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>ScottL wrote:
>>
>>
>>The practical approach is still to presume that the existence of an
>>official ISO 639 is strong evidence for allowing a Wikipedia in that
>>language, and that the absence carries a presumption that we should
>>not.  Nevertheless, any presumption is rebuttable.  Several constructed
>>languages have a code, but the barriers for having Wikipedias in those
>>should be higher.  For languages without a code there is still a large
>>swath of q-codes available for user definition if a language meets our
>>other criteria.
>>
>>
>From a practical approach you have a point but I hesitate to adopt
>the POV of an external organization even a standards body unless the POV
>is can be reasonably supported.  Which means it should still be a case
>by case thing.
>
Absolutely.  That's why I emphasize that such a POV is only a starting
point.
.
Ec


subject:
[Foundation-l] Good example;
 The works of Charles Darwin freed :)

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/19/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>How can he hold the copyright to a work that's over a century old?
>>
>>
>I belive the president under english and welsh law is the Graves case.
>The royal society is doing something simular with their scans of old
>documents. Would you like me to send you a copy of the three pages of
>conditions that the imperial war museam put on the use of copies of
>their PD material?
>
Links would be enough.

Ec


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] slow diffs

body:
Travis Derouin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We've had some complaints off and on about diffs taking a long time.
> This happens at random times, doesn't happen often and clears itself
> up after awhile. When this happens,  the load on the Apache servers
> seem low and the database seems ok.
>
> We did seem to have this problem if users had the Google toolbar
> installed a few months ago, but it appears that the problem is back
> and unrelated.
>
> I wonder if the job queue has anything to do with it, sometimes it
> get's up to over 10,000 on us, but usually is at 0. I haven't been
> able to check what it's at when users experience this problem.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas on how to debug, or what the possible
> causes might be? We're still running 1.6.7.

The PHP difference engine is slow, especially where lots of distinct
changes were made. Processing time can easily run into the minutes. It
could be that the complaints arise from such diffs, and that it appears
to be random because when you view the diff again, it is cached and thus
fast.

The solution to this is to install the C++ extension "wikidiff2", which
is fast for any input text.

The other possibility is that diffs are slow for reasons not directly
related to diffing. Display of diff pages requires loading the revision
text, which is uncached in 1.6.7, and also rendering the whole page to
HTML for display underneath the diff, which can take several seconds.
However, if this were the problem, you would expect other operations
such as page saves to suffer as well.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Anthony wrote:
> On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10/17/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
>> article.
>>
>> Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up
>> in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not
>> obvious.
>>
>> (minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)
>
>
> Looking back at the example, I guess the sort of thing like "Thomas
> Jefferson was the third president" does belong in an encyclopedia, and I can
> see how such a fact could be considered "obvious".
>
> At the same time, I'd put this in the category of those facts which
> absolutely should be contained somewhere in the reference material, but need
> not be referenced by an individual footnote.
>
> What's more controversial is "obvious" facts about public perceptions, such
> as the example Jimmy was talking about.
>
> "Critics of the GPL often describe it as being
> "viral"<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F>,
> based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under
> the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
>
> What should we do with that?  {{fact}} tag it?  Remove it?  Leave it as is?
> Personally I'd say it should be removed.  I just removed, without logging
> in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding
> this "perception".  Let's see what happens.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?

Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU
General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that
incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself
become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is
distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely
available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the
GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization
making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent
commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to
distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product
rather than just the cost of distribution.

Speech Transcript - Craig Mundie, The New York University Stern School
of Business

Prepared Text of Remarks by Craig Mundie, Microsoft Senior Vice President
The Commercial Software Model
The New York University Stern School of Business
May 3, 2001

--
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body:
Hoi,
They could use whatever that is not part of our logos. They would still
not be able to use the names of the projects.
Thanks,
   GerardM

James Hare wrote:
> They can always use the serif W like the favicon, no?
>
> On 10/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Debian has problems with trademarked material ie the logos et al to be
>> under a license that prevents them from being changed. As the Wikimedia
>> Foundation has a license for its logos that is incompatible with the
>> Debian way, it is not possible for it to host Wikimedia Foundation logos
>> in the first place. We also do not allow anyone to use the names of the
>> Wikimedia projects for their mirror without permission.. something I
>> would think is also not in line with what Debian thinks is reasonable.
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>> Milos Rancic wrote:
>>
>>> Hm. But, Debian should not have a problem to use it in distribution...
>>>
>>> On 10/20/06, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Debian and Mozilla had a struggle about using Mozillas Trademarks in
>>>> Debian if the software and logos are changed but the name is not.[1]
>>>> This should also apply to Wikipedia if people want to distribute
>>>> Wikipedia content or modified parts then they cannot just call it
>>>> "Wikipedia" - I just wanted to clarify and give an example because many
>>>> people think that the our name and logos are as free as the content.
>>>>
>>>> Greetings,
>>>> Jakob
>>>>
>>>> [1] For instance http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3364701970.html


body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Anthony wrote:

>> What should we do with that?  {{fact}} tag it?  Remove it?  Leave it as is?
>> Personally I'd say it should be removed.  I just removed, without logging
>> in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding
>> this "perception".  Let's see what happens.

> Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?

Never mind, I've done it, now let's see what happens.  I have to wonder
about WP:POINT here, the edit war that started could so easily have been
avoided by searching google for the term GNU viral.  Still, the
encyclopedia got improved and no-one got hurt.  I'm hoping we're all
learning the lesson here that we might not be as bad as we actually
think we are for reliability, but that the lack of sourcing and how we
source and represent those sources in the articles is becoming an issue.

Steve block

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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>>> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006095.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
>>>
>>>
>> It's probably no big surprise for those who are aware of Alexa's data
>> collection method. Just be glad we only use these statistics for curiosity
>> and bragging. For web companies who need to convince investors or
>> advertisers of their value, I can easily imagine the situation becoming
>> hellish.
>>
>>
>>
> We do not use them only for that. On the nl.wikipedia there is a huge
> group of people who consider Alexa to be the holy grail and use it to
> dictating what an article can be written about or not. I wished you were
> right Tim.
>

There's a rumour going around that on nl.wikipedia that there's a group
of people who think that the rest of us "have no clue whatsoever when it
comes to the meaning and regulations on copyright". Please tell me it's
not true.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>>> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006095.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
>>>
>>>
>> It's probably no big surprise for those who are aware of Alexa's data
>> collection method. Just be glad we only use these statistics for curiosity
>> and bragging. For web companies who need to convince investors or
>> advertisers of their value, I can easily imagine the situation becoming
>> hellish.
>>
>>
>>
> We do not use them only for that. On the nl.wikipedia there is a huge
> group of people who consider Alexa to be the holy grail and use it to
> dictating what an article can be written about or not. I wished you were
> right Tim.
>

There's a rumour going around that on nl.wikipedia that there's a group
of people who think that the rest of us "have no clue whatsoever when it
comes to the meaning and regulations on copyright". Please tell me it's
not true.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>>> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006095.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
>>>
>>>
>> It's probably no big surprise for those who are aware of Alexa's data
>> collection method. Just be glad we only use these statistics for curiosity
>> and bragging. For web companies who need to convince investors or
>> advertisers of their value, I can easily imagine the situation becoming
>> hellish.
>>
>>
>>
> We do not use them only for that. On the nl.wikipedia there is a huge
> group of people who consider Alexa to be the holy grail and use it to
> dictating what an article can be written about or not. I wished you were
> right Tim.
>

There's a rumour going around that on nl.wikipedia that there's a group
of people who think that the rest of us "have no clue whatsoever when it
comes to the meaning and regulations on copyright". Please tell me it's
not true.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>>> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006095.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
>>>
>>>
>> It's probably no big surprise for those who are aware of Alexa's data
>> collection method. Just be glad we only use these statistics for curiosity
>> and bragging. For web companies who need to convince investors or
>> advertisers of their value, I can easily imagine the situation becoming
>> hellish.
>>
>>
>>
> We do not use them only for that. On the nl.wikipedia there is a huge
> group of people who consider Alexa to be the holy grail and use it to
> dictating what an article can be written about or not. I wished you were
> right Tim.
>

There's a rumour going around that on nl.wikipedia that there's a group
of people who think that the rest of us "have no clue whatsoever when it
comes to the meaning and regulations on copyright". Please tell me it's
not true.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors

body:
Peter Ansell wrote:
> I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution
> history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last
> 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my
> understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise
> the development of articles.
>
> My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in
> Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
>

That depends on what they're doing. Can you tell us which pages (or
sorts of pages) in the Project namespace they're contributing to?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: photo by gus freedman -- may I use in book]

body:
On 10/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> She is a journalist and friend of Wikipedia, so please help her if you
> can. :)  I don't know the photo she is talking about...
>

No idea which pic but the answer to the question appears to be at the bottem of:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:BradPatrick

so

Credit WMF

licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

Would appear to be what needs to be added. Of course the foundation is
free to come to different agreement with the author.
--
geni


body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/19/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Perhaps this could be combined with a coarse edit analyser of some sort. For
>> example, if there is a large reduction in the article length, then the user
>> gets nagged for an edit summary. If the page is blanked, then the user could be
>> given a warning such as: "I see you're blanking the page. Would you like some
>> advice on that?".
>
> I think we did that when we were haveing problems with the google toolbar.
>

AFAIK we still do. There's the "Warning: you're editing a page over
35KB" stuff, as well as a template which instructs people how to fix the
problem (upgrade the Google toolbar). Can't remember the name of it but
it does exist.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Matt R wrote:
> --- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>> You make it sound like we're asking you to chop down the tallest tree in
>> the forest with a herring. We're not. We're asking you to use a little
>> bit of Common Sense. How on earth is someone meant to defend themselves
>> if they don't even know the crime that they've been charged with? How on
>> earth is a newbie meant to learn that there are certain things they're
>> not supposed to be doing something if nobody ever tells them?
>
> Hang on, I thought we were just reverting an unexplained page blanking by a new
> account without communicating with them. We're not, as far as I recall,
> charging them with a crime or requiring that they defend themselves from
> anything.
>

Oh, it goes beyond just reverting them. In this case the user was
blocked without communication.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
She is a journalist and friend of Wikipedia, so please help her if you
can. :)  I don't know the photo she is talking about...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	photo by gus freedman -- may I use in book
Date: 	Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:56:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: 	Melissa Rossi <melissarossi199 at yahoo.com>
To: 	jwales at wikia.com

Hey Jimmy,
   Do I have your permission to use the photo by Gus Freedman from
Wikipedia in my book What Every American Should Know about Who's Really
Running America?

   As far, as I can tell this is OK to use as long as Gus Freedman is
credited?

   Im totally under the gun -- it's brutal what is happening at moment --
so please let me know ASAP. Love the one by Chrys but couldnt afford it!

   Thanks!
Melissa Rossi PS I will probably have to send some more legal signoff,
but this will suffice for moment.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great
rates starting at 1?/min.
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/postman7/*http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=39666/*http://messenger.yahoo.com>


from_name: bawolff

subject: [Commons-l] Scheduled attendance for Wikinews or Commons

body:
Do to some recent confusion about overlaps of attendance of events (at
wikinews), theres now a new page for coordinating event attendance,
and I thought it probably should be announced on the mailing list:

Summary from the page:
Anyone planning to schedule attendance at an event, as a
representative of Wikinews or Wikimedia Commons, should announce their
plans as soon as possible on [[meta:Scheduled attendance for Wikinews
or Commons]] , in order to not cause unnecessary overlap. Formally
arranged coverage is best registered here. This is not necessary if
you're attending informally, such as a tourist attraction, a protest,
etc.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler#Page_for_coordination
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_attendance_for_Wikinews_or_Commons

-bawolff


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] new checkuser-l listmod added: Alphax

body:
I've just unilaterally cursed Alphax with listmod status on
checkuser-l, so *now* we might get a pile of people added :-)

- d.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
I think everybody agrees that we shouldn't use 3-letter codes that belong to
other languages.

When people propose to use codes that belong to other languages, it's out of
ignorance, not malice.

However, to be able to use bat-ltg instead of lat-ltg is a different debate
-- "bat-ltg" doesn't belong to another language, and it likely never will.

Mark

On 20/10/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> Please explain what the arguments are NOT to accept a standard that is
> the only viable way of making sure that other people understand what
> language we are using. Please explain what alternative exists given the
> all too frequent choice of codes that are the codes for languages given
> by the standards organisation when new projects are proposed. Please
> explain what is gained by going against what is the standard for the
> acceptance of languages and measure it against what it would cost us to
> do it in an idiosyncratic manner. Please explain what is wrong to use
> either codes that comply with the standard and when we do not want to
> use such a code, a code that is manifestly different.
>
> It is fine to have a different opinion but please let there be some
> method behind the madness.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > ScottL wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> ScottL wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The practical approach is still to presume that the existence of an
> >>> official ISO 639 is strong evidence for allowing a Wikipedia in that
> >>> language, and that the absence carries a presumption that we should
> >>> not.  Nevertheless, any presumption is rebuttable.  Several
> constructed
> >>> languages have a code, but the barriers for having Wikipedias in those
> >>> should be higher.  For languages without a code there is still a large
> >>> swath of q-codes available for user definition if a language meets our
> >>> other criteria.
> > From a practical approach you have a point but I hesitate to adopt
> >
> >> the POV of an external organization even a standards body unless the
> POV
> >> is can be reasonably supported.  Which means it should still be a case
> >> by case thing.
> >>
> >>
> > Absolutely.  That's why I emphasize that such a POV is only a starting
> > point.
> > .
> > Ec
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

body:
I am talking only about common block for IP numbers, not users. Moreover, I am strongly against blocking user's account on one project for things he has done on another project. So please do not make off topic and discuss what NPOV is and what it is not, because we are on technical list.

With IP numbers the situation is completely different. Common behaviour of occasional vandals on English Wikipedia is switching to (for example) Wikibooks immediately after having IP blocked and going on with vandalising random pages. This is really hard to catch by sysops and could be very easily stopped by automated propagating IP number block to all available Wikimedia projects. Whether it would be done by creating common database (similar to Commons) or by a bot similar to CommonsTicker - it's irrelevant for administrators of projects suffering from vandals coming directly from Wikipedia. In most cases 2-hour block restricted to anonymous users is just enough to stop vandal.

--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

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