subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
Charles Matthews (charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com) [041212 09:32]:

> For the record, I think POV pushing is the single problem in relation to WP
> to which we don't have a working solution, as of end 2004.  So I'm entirely
> behind Jimbo's analysis of the challenge.  We have the eyeballs to
> fact-check with, in many areas; we have the eyeballs to see what is too
> vague to be checkable, as a practical matter if not as a legalistic
> definition.  What we don't have, in practice, and what I feel the lack of,
> is the way of defining a 'pattern of POV editing' that would warrant warning
> and then sanctions.  This ought to be seen as the current defining issue.
> Anyway, this all points back to the ArbCom elections as the real focus of
> Wiki-en's public life; which is only right and proper.

The POV-pushing problem can be alleviated to some extent with references.
(e.g. when Mr-Natural-Health added a reference to [[Alternative medicine]]
which someone looked up and pointed out it actually supported the opposite
view to the one he was intending it to support).

What we need is to encourage a culture of including references. I'm trying
to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it doing
fancy reference-indexing things.)

I would love love love it if the standard edit boilerplate included the
following as the first paragraph, on its own:

    Have you remembered to include your references?

- with the word "references" being a link to a page on how to reference
things. (Inline links, a mention in ==External links and references== ...
Do we have a suitable page?) What would it take for this to happen? Can
anyone see any insuperable problems with putting this in?

- d.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
On Sat, 11 Dec 2004, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> At 09:48 AM 12/12/2004 +1100, David Gerard wrote:
> >What we need is to encourage a culture of including references. I'm trying
> >to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
> >implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it doing
> >fancy reference-indexing things.)
>
> Once upon a time long long ago I remember putting in a feature request for
> a simple "footnote" markup, along the lines of adding [[Note:blah blah
> blah]] anywhere in the article and having it turn into a superscripted
> number linking to an anchor for the text "blah blah blah" down at the very
> bottom of the page. Something like that could be suitable for references
> too, though it wouldn't be nice for making multiple references to the same
> source scattered throughout an article. Maybe a [[Ref:blah blah blah]]
> markup that automatically combines identical "blah blah" text into the same
> reference at the bottom?
>
The following won't solve the entire problem, but it's an easy fix to part
of the problem of providing references.

I've recently noticed, while updating a few of the articles that offer
statistics on nations, that for the most part they lack any notice that the
information was taken from the CIA Factbook. Adding a reference to those
articles would not only explain where these figures came from, but in the
all-too-frequent case of outdated information allow a user to find the
latest numbers.

The only reason I can see that we wouldn't want to provide proper attribution
is that contributors don't want to acknowledge a connection to the US CIA,
which, to put it mildly, has a remarkably tarnished reputation.

So to solve this problem in attribution, I wrote {{template:CIAfb}}, to be
added to the bottom of the relevant articles. Perhaps some folks could
join me in adding this template to more articles where appropriate?

Geoff


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New policy proposal

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Once upon a time long long ago I remember putting in a feature request for
>a simple "footnote" markup, along the lines of adding [[Note:blah blah
>blah]] anywhere in the article and having it turn into a superscripted
>number linking to an anchor for the text "blah blah blah" down at the very
>bottom of the page. Something like that could be suitable for references
>too, though it wouldn't be nice for making multiple references to the same
>source scattered throughout an article. Maybe a [[Ref:blah blah blah]]
>markup that automatically combines identical "blah blah" text into the same
>reference at the bottom?

I would suggest a markup along the lines of [[ref:id:position]],
accompanied by a separate markup of the form,
[note:id]fullreference[/foot], where "id" is a unique indentifier of
the reference, and "fullreference" is the full reference. For example:

[[ref:Nolan:p. 12]]

and:

[note:Nolan]Hamilton Nolan,
"[http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=226978&site=3 UFCW seeking
to unionize Canada Wal-Mart workers]," ''PR Week'', November 8,
2004.[/note]

One problem with a simple [[Ref:blah blah blah]] markup is that it
doesn't provide a way to put wiki markup into the reference, such as
italicization or hyperlinks. The syntax I've described above would
also make it possible to have multiple references in a text to the
same source. For example, there might be several places where the
text references the Nolan article, e.g., [ref:Nolan:p. 7],
[ref:Nolan:p. 12], or just [ref:Nolan]. Each reference would point to
the same note. It would also be possible to choose different options
for display of the notes. Someone who doesn't want to see them at all
could have the option of turning them off in user preferences. In the
event that a print version is published, there could be the
additional option of displaying notes as footnotes or as endnotes.

I think having a footnote markup is a good idea, but the syntax
should be sufficiently robust to accommodate all of the things that
are currently done with footnotes in traditional publications such as
books and academic journals. And I sympathize with people who don't
want to feel obligated to footnote everything in Wikipedia, but
personally I find references extremely valuable. Also, references can
be used to help resolve editing disputes. I don't think anyone should
be *obligated* to use references, but it would be a step forward if
the software provided this capability as an option.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New policy proposal

body:
At 12:43 PM 12/12/2004 -0600, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>One problem with a simple [[Ref:blah blah blah]] markup is that it doesn't
>provide a way to put wiki markup into the reference, such as italicization
>or hyperlinks.

Why not? [[Image:]] tags can have all sorts of wiki markup in their
captions, we could use something similar here. Yours works too but seems a
little more "fragile" to me, since it's possible to insert references that
don't link up due to typos in the ids or because one half got deleted. On
the other hand, it does make multiple references a lot tidier. I guess it's
a personal preference.

>The syntax I've described above would also make it possible to have
>multiple references in a text to the same source. For example, there might
>be several places where the text references the Nolan article, e.g.,
>[ref:Nolan:p. 7], [ref:Nolan:p. 12], or just [ref:Nolan]. Each reference
>would point to the same note. It would also be possible to choose
>different options for display of the notes. Someone who doesn't want to
>see them at all could have the option of turning them off in user
>preferences. In the event that a print version is published, there could
>be the additional option of displaying notes as footnotes or as endnotes.

One could add additional fields to the [[Ref:blah blah]] syntax too, just
like image markup.

>I think having a footnote markup is a good idea, but the syntax should be
>sufficiently robust to accommodate all of the things that are currently
>done with footnotes in traditional publications such as books and academic
>journals. And I sympathize with people who don't want to feel obligated to
>footnote everything in Wikipedia, but personally I find references
>extremely valuable. Also, references can be used to help resolve editing
>disputes. I don't think anyone should be *obligated* to use references,
>but it would be a step forward if the software provided this capability as
>an option.

Hear hear. I'm just quibbling over minor syntax semantics; I just prefer
having the footnote or reference text be inline with the text that's being
footnoted/referenced. Since I don't imagine Wikipedia being as heavily
referenced as a scientific article I don't expect multiple references to
the same source being all that common; I guess that'll be something that
time would tell, though.


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 17, Issue 16

body:
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 01:30:24AM +0000, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> > What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.
>
> I'm happy if I can get a good book or two referenced, and an external link
> or so to corroborate.  I am totally against having to footnote everything.
> That is a lame way to have to write - training wheels for Ph.D. students.
>
> Basic point for me, in fact becoming fundamental: WP is not an academic
> institution, and can't afford 'guild restrictions'.  Leaving the question of
> what it is.
>
I understand your objection, and note another one from a different
perspective: Adam Carr, a history
academic who has been a profilic and high-quality contributor to the
Australia-related articles, notes that often his work is the
distillation of hundreds of different things he has read on the topic.
This is particularly the case with articles on broader topics.  Trying
to footnote all of this is very, very difficult.

Notwithstanding this, referencing is *essential*.  How else are we
supposed to fact-check the Wikipedia?

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job
to interpret law.
  -- George W. Bush
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


body:
[Someone wrote]
>>>What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.

[Apologies that this appears to a reply to Robert Merkel, when in fact
it references a parent post - I cannot locate the original]

May I plug then {{Template:Book reference}}?

At the moment only a hundred or so pages use it. However, if the number
of references using this template grows then it would become a great
starting point for an automated conversion to using a references tab as
mooted in other posts.

I am considering also introducing {{Web reference}} and a series of
{{Journal reference}}.

Pete


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wiktionary-l] languages

body:
Hi GerardM.
I usually use a Google search such as this to find exotic language names:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ruanda%7Csotho+iso%7C639%7Cethnologue

In fact I was looking for these very two languages just yesterday for
my Wiktionary parser I've been working on. You can find the results of
that effort here:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:HippieBot:all_langs_sorted

For many of the languages marked as "unknown" in that list I have made
notes on the talk page where I've found:

Ruanda:
iso:rw, kin; sil:RUA, en:Kinyarwanda
Sotho:
northern sotho: iso:nso, sil:SRT; southern sotho: iso:st, sot, sil:SSO

Which gives ISO 2- and 3-letter codes, SIL code, alternative names,
plus notes that
in this case, Sotho is actually considered 2 non-mutually-intelligible
languages by
the folks at SIL.

Hope this helps.
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail).

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:32:58 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
<gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hoi,
> > I have problems identifying words in two languages. On the
> > en:wiktionary these are called Ruanda and Sotho.
> >
> > Ruanda is not known by a ISO 639 code but it should be known by
> > another name. Sotho is known but with two names; Southern and Northern
> > Sotho. So what is it ??
> >
> > Saturday is the word that brought this problem again to my attention.
> > So far I just removed these entries and that is not nice so I am
> > asking for assistence.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >    GerardM
>
> Hoi,
> On IRC is was told by "dannyisme" that Ruanda is /Kinyarwanda/ The ISO
> 639 code is rw and kin. It is the first word in this language on the
> nl:wiktionary. I hope many will follow :)
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
> //
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> With that I can actually agree. That is, PROVIDED that we don't
> promote them. IMHO an e-gold link can be listed somewhere down,
> towards the bottom of the screen/list, so it's there for the *nought
> point n* percent of people who actually use and prefer e-gold. But I
> would not grant this "also-ran" payment service more attention than
> that. If they want to be featured specially, then let them buy
> advertising. Elsewhere.
>
> I'm actually somewhat sorry for my harsh tone here... but at the same
> time I really did find e-gold infuriatingly impractical when I looked
> at their service... so maybe I'm just venting some overblown past
> frustration here. Thanks for humoring me.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com
>
> On 12 Dec 2004, at 23:14, Robin Shannon wrote:
>
>> Well i would say that the more different forms of payment, the better.
>> Surely there are some wikimedians who are e-golders aswell, so if they
>> wanted to use e-gold, i cant see why they shouldnt be able to.
>>
>> paz y amor,
>> [[User:The bellman]]
>
The one positive aspect of e-gold that I really like is that it is
currency neutral... it works the same if it is Rupee, Dollars, Yuan, or
Euros.  Wikipedia is quite international in scope, and the ability to do
donations from places outside of the USA is an attractive feature.

I will say that I agree that PayPal is horrible, and it would be nice to
have an effective micropayment system, but all that I've seen so far are
thinly disguised scams.

E-gold has been around for several years, so this isn't just a
fly-by-night scam in itself, and should be evaluated on its merits.
 Unfortunately, I haven't done nearly the amount of research into it as
I perhaps should have myself, so my opinion of e-gold as a service
provider for cash transactions is not particularly good.  Still, if we
accept on-line cash donations we shouldn't restrict. ourselves to a
single provider like PayPal or Western Union, particularly if there
isn't any regular cost for maintaining the account

It would be nice, for instance, to have some means to "buy" Wikipedia on
CD-ROM (or DVD) as a "donation" to the Wikimedia Foundation.  This is
certainly under the realm of something to worry about in terms of
fundraising techniques.

--
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
I looked at e-gold at some length when I needed a way to accept
donations for my DICT distribution (www.ropersonline.com/dict).

I had heard quite a number of Very Bad Things about PayPal, plus I
don't like eBay and only cope with them where it's unavoidable -- in
short, my motivation was high to look at alternative e-payment
solutions.

The end result: I didn't sign up with e-gold, I grudgingly signed up
with PayPal.
e-gold may be a good idea in theory, but their "cost of entry" (not
necessarily in a monetary sense) is just too high.

It's just too bleedin complicated to get money into the e-gold system.
If e-gold already WAS a pervasive world currency, accepted as
frequently as, say, VISA cards, THEN it probably would make sense to
make it difficult to move money into or out of the e-gold system. This
would make sure most parties keep their funds in their e-gold accounts
and pay each other, circulating the money that way, yadda, yadda,
yadda. It would NOT be nice to thus make things difficult, but it would
make sense. Seeing however that e-gold is an "also-ran" in the
e-payment market, this just doesn't make effin sense. As a user, I
expect a single page where I can punch in a few numbers and be done.
e-gold will only grow if they CATER FOR END USERS, with the possibility
of e-gold internal money circulation arriving almost as an
afterthought.

With PayPal I find it *annoying* that the payer has to create an
account, mandatorily. Why, oh why can't that be an OPTION? Let the USER
decide if they want to go through the hoops, submit an email address,
etc. etc. instead of just punching in their credit card details and be
done.

With e-gold however, things are INFINITELY worse: Not only does the
user also have to create an account, they actually have to create TWO
accounts, one for e-gold and one for the service the use to get money
into the e-gold system (that's 2 new important and non-trivial
passwords to remember). Plus, the (not very appealing or
well-structured) e-gold website DOES NOT TELL YOU THIS upfront. You
have to do a fair bit of reading to figure out how their feckin system
works.

I want a payment service that can be used by commercial and hobbyist
webmasters alike, without the need for a minimum transaction volume AND
without mandatory account creation. Let the user punch in their numbers
and be done if desired. Make it an OPTION to create an (i.e ONE(!))
account if they so choose. Where the payment service has its own
"currency", that currency should be easy-peasy to exchange into any
other currency and easy to move into regular current accounts in all or
most countries.

I'm not the Wikimedia Foundation, but if I was the Wikimedia
Foundation, then I would stay well clear of e-gold unless and until
they get their act together. It's not in our interest to make it
difficult and frustrating for people to donate money to us. (Plus it's
not in our interest to have that money in a "currency" we can't use to
pay for, say, new Apache boxen -- ie. we ultimately need to put the
dough into WMF bank accounts anyway.)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Charles Matthews (charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com) [041212 09:32]:
>
>
>
>>For the record, I think POV pushing is the single problem in relation to WP
>>to which we don't have a working solution, as of end 2004.  So I'm entirely
>>behind Jimbo's analysis of the challenge.  We have the eyeballs to
>>fact-check with, in many areas; we have the eyeballs to see what is too
>>vague to be checkable, as a practical matter if not as a legalistic
>>definition.  What we don't have, in practice, and what I feel the lack of,
>>is the way of defining a 'pattern of POV editing' that would warrant warning
>>and then sanctions.  This ought to be seen as the current defining issue.
>>Anyway, this all points back to the ArbCom elections as the real focus of
>>Wiki-en's public life; which is only right and proper.
>>
>>
>
>
><snip>
>
>What we need is to encourage a culture of including references. I'm trying
>to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
>implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it doing
>fancy reference-indexing things.)
>
>I would love love love it if the standard edit boilerplate included the
>following as the first paragraph, on its own:
>
>    Have you remembered to include your references?
>
>- with the word "references" being a link to a page on how to reference
>things. (Inline links, a mention in ==External links and references== ...
>Do we have a suitable page?) What would it take for this to happen? Can
>anyone see any insuperable problems with putting this in?
>
>
>- d.
>
>
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]]? I'm not sure if they cover inline
references, though.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alex Kwan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Firefox vs. other browsers

body:
Hello,

Mark Williamson wrote:
> font tags on the page - try viewing http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/
> in FireFox (make sure you have Chinese fonts installed first, or you
> won't be able to replicate this) and rather than displaying in a nice
> Roman font like Tahoma like it should (and does in IE), it displays in
> the default Chinese font. This is annoying, because although it is

Um, I don't know what it's *supposed* to show, but all I got Tahoma font
stuff that looks more or less like Vietnamese or something...

little Alex


body:
Sounds like a good idea. Although I am familiar with the usage of
references, every time I have to write up a reference section, I need
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] open in another tab.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Pete/Pcb21 wrote:

>
> [Someone wrote]
>
>>>> What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.
>>>
>
> [Apologies that this appears to a reply to Robert Merkel, when in fact
> it references a parent post - I cannot locate the original]
>
> May I plug then {{Template:Book reference}}?
>
> At the moment only a hundred or so pages use it. However, if the
> number of references using this template grows then it would become a
> great starting point for an automated conversion to using a references
> tab as mooted in other posts.
>
> I am considering also introducing {{Web reference}} and a series of
> {{Journal reference}}.
>
> Pete


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
I've had this idea kicking around in my mind for a while. What would
people think about a third tab for references. ie. The main article
tab, the talk tab, and the references tab, and the subscripted numbers
(or whatever) would be links to the references tab. i mentioned this
to tim starling, and i dont think that he saw any particualarly big
tech problem with this.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 21:33:59 -0800, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> At 09:48 AM 12/12/2004 +1100, David Gerard wrote:
> >What we need is to encourage a culture of including references. I'm trying
> >to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
> >implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it doing
> >fancy reference-indexing things.)
>
> Once upon a time long long ago I remember putting in a feature request for
> a simple "footnote" markup, along the lines of adding [[Note:blah blah
> blah]] anywhere in the article and having it turn into a superscripted
> number linking to an anchor for the text "blah blah blah" down at the very
> bottom of the page. Something like that could be suitable for references
> too, though it wouldn't be nice for making multiple references to the same
> source scattered throughout an article. Maybe a [[Ref:blah blah blah]]
> markup that automatically combines identical "blah blah" text into the same
> reference at the bottom?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
With that I can actually agree. That is, PROVIDED that we don't promote
them. IMHO an e-gold link can be listed somewhere down, towards the
bottom of the screen/list, so it's there for the *nought point n*
percent of people who actually use and prefer e-gold. But I would not
grant this "also-ran" payment service more attention than that. If they
want to be featured specially, then let them buy advertising.
Elsewhere.

I'm actually somewhat sorry for my harsh tone here... but at the same
time I really did find e-gold infuriatingly impractical when I looked
at their service... so maybe I'm just venting some overblown past
frustration here. Thanks for humoring me.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 12 Dec 2004, at 23:14, Robin Shannon wrote:

> Well i would say that the more different forms of payment, the better.
> Surely there are some wikimedians who are e-golders aswell, so if they
> wanted to use e-gold, i cant see why they shouldnt be able to.
>
> paz y amor,
> [[User:The bellman]]
>
>
> On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 19:10:48 +0100, Jens Ropers
> <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>> I looked at e-gold at some length when I needed a way to accept
>> donations for my DICT distribution (www.ropersonline.com/dict).
>>
>> I had heard quite a number of Very Bad Things about PayPal, plus I
>> don't like eBay and only cope with them where it's unavoidable -- in
>> short, my motivation was high to look at alternative e-payment
>> solutions.
>>
>> The end result: I didn't sign up with e-gold, I grudgingly signed up
>> with PayPal.
>> e-gold may be a good idea in theory, but their "cost of entry" (not
>> necessarily in a monetary sense) is just too high.
>>
>> It's just too bleedin complicated to get money into the e-gold system.
>> If e-gold already WAS a pervasive world currency, accepted as
>> frequently as, say, VISA cards, THEN it probably would make sense to
>> make it difficult to move money into or out of the e-gold system. This
>> would make sure most parties keep their funds in their e-gold accounts
>> and pay each other, circulating the money that way, yadda, yadda,
>> yadda. It would NOT be nice to thus make things difficult, but it
>> would
>> make sense. Seeing however that e-gold is an "also-ran" in the
>> e-payment market, this just doesn't make effin sense. As a user, I
>> expect a single page where I can punch in a few numbers and be done.
>> e-gold will only grow if they CATER FOR END USERS, with the
>> possibility
>> of e-gold internal money circulation arriving almost as an
>> afterthought.
>>
>> With PayPal I find it *annoying* that the payer has to create an
>> account, mandatorily. Why, oh why can't that be an OPTION? Let the
>> USER
>> decide if they want to go through the hoops, submit an email address,
>> etc. etc. instead of just punching in their credit card details and be
>> done.
>>
>> With e-gold however, things are INFINITELY worse: Not only does the
>> user also have to create an account, they actually have to create TWO
>> accounts, one for e-gold and one for the service the use to get money
>> into the e-gold system (that's 2 new important and non-trivial
>> passwords to remember). Plus, the (not very appealing or
>> well-structured) e-gold website DOES NOT TELL YOU THIS upfront. You
>> have to do a fair bit of reading to figure out how their feckin system
>> works.
>>
>> I want a payment service that can be used by commercial and hobbyist
>> webmasters alike, without the need for a minimum transaction volume
>> AND
>> without mandatory account creation. Let the user punch in their
>> numbers
>> and be done if desired. Make it an OPTION to create an (i.e ONE(!))
>> account if they so choose. Where the payment service has its own
>> "currency", that currency should be easy-peasy to exchange into any
>> other currency and easy to move into regular current accounts in all
>> or
>> most countries.
>>
>> I'm not the Wikimedia Foundation, but if I was the Wikimedia
>> Foundation, then I would stay well clear of e-gold unless and until
>> they get their act together. It's not in our interest to make it
>> difficult and frustrating for people to donate money to us. (Plus it's
>> not in our interest to have that money in a "currency" we can't use to
>> pay for, say, new Apache boxen -- ie. we ultimately need to put the
>> dough into WMF bank accounts anyway.)
>>
>> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>>      www.ropersonline.com
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
> --
> hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
> jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au
>
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
> Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
> _______________________________________________
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>


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>David Gerard wrote
>
>>What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.
>>
>>
>I'm happy if I can get a good book or two referenced, and an external link
>or so to corroborate.  I am totally against having to footnote everything.
>That is a lame way to have to write - training wheels for Ph.D. students.
>
A sense of balance is important.  We also can't confine ourselves to
only peer-reviewed journals, as some seem to suggest.

>We need to have the word 'para-academic' in mind.  WP can be everyone's
>resource of quick access, to extent that they have an Internet connection.
>WP can be one of the Seven Wonders of the Web.  WP can make para-academic
>sound very good: not the thesis of 300000 words on a humanities subject, but
>the executive summary.
>
Hmmm!  An executive summary of everything. :-)

>Of course cranking up the standards would help, generally
>speaking; of course making formats for references less slapdash, and having
>some editing tools for that, would also be a plus.
>
Agreed


from_name: TOR

subject: [Foundation-l] Cutting quotes and other such stuff

body:
Please, please, PLEASE, people, do NOT quote the whole post you are
repling to - only sections of it that are somehow connected with your reply.

And please write your replies UNDER the quoted messege, not above it.

These are general netiquette rules and are to facilitate reading. You
read form top to bottom, right? That's why it's only logical to have the
quote first and the reply second. They also keep the size of the posts
down. Essencially, if you quote the whole post in your reply, you're
making all the readers download it twice (first the original and then
it's copy in your reply).

Please try to follow these rules. Thank you.

TOR

P.S. I didn't want my first post here to be concerned with such matters
but after a few posts I saw in this ("e-gold proposal") thread I changed
my mind. :) So... I'd just like to say "Hi" to everyone here and
apologize if anyone viewed the tone of the above as harsh - I didn't
want to offend anyone.


subject: [WikiEN-l] A need to maintain credibility

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote
>
>
>>Nobody is supporting "a massive repository of crank view"  Saying that
>>Wikipedia would become so is entirely speculative.
>>
>>
>Agreed.  My view that nonsense is gradually squeezed out of WP, by steady
>edits by sensible editors.  It is, in the main, a salami-slicing operation.
>
>Obviously something daft gets posted every day, and there are occasions when
>editors dig in their heels to defend what are, on a consensus view, cranky
>views.  I don't think either of those facts need be used to undermine the
>position that the normal process  - 'enough eyeballs' - works.
>
When it comes to cranky views, the most effective refutations can often
be made with a minimum of words.  Lengthy and detailed arguments in
opposition are often counterproductive in that they leave the impression
that there must be something there worth aguing about.

>The bad history and politicised rants can be first toned down, then replaced
>by better points.  There is always going to be some 'placeholder' material
>on WP, waiting for a better job.  I think trying for credibility in excess
>of the natural trend is probably a mistake.  The pages have a disclaimer;
>and I wonder whether anyone can foresee a time when they will not.
>
>
It will never happen. In articles touching on medical subjects in
particular there will always be individuals ready to take our "advice"
literally and uncritically.  These same ones will be just as ready to
blame Wikipedia when the "advice" doesn't work.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> ...
> I will say that I agree that PayPal is horrible, and it would be nice to
> have an effective micropayment system, but all that I've seen so far are
> thinly disguised scams.

PayPal helps us pay the bills. Yes it is not perfect, but it is very popular
and widely trusted, thus is used by a great many people. They are trying to
internationalize, but it has been a painfully slow process.

> E-gold has been around for several years, so this isn't just a
> fly-by-night scam in itself, and should be evaluated on its merits.

Nod - although IMO we should not be concerning ourselves with evaluating every
different alternative since we just need a way to accept payments. So far we
have PayPal handling the the great bulk of our donations and MoneyBookers
acting as the multi-national/lingual catch-all that hardly anybody ever uses.

>  Unfortunately, I haven't done nearly the amount of research into it as
> I perhaps should have myself, so my opinion of e-gold as a service
> provider for cash transactions is not particularly good.  Still, if we
> accept on-line cash donations we shouldn't restrict. ourselves to a
> single provider like PayPal or Western Union, particularly if there
> isn't any regular cost for maintaining the account

We don't. See above.

> It would be nice, for instance, to have some means to "buy" Wikipedia on
> CD-ROM (or DVD) as a "donation" to the Wikimedia Foundation.  This is
> certainly under the realm of something to worry about in terms of
> fundraising techniques.

That would be wampum given to people who donate certain amounts. However, the
logistics of making that actually work is beyond what our current volunteer
staff can handle at the moment.

Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> With PayPal I find it *annoying* that the payer has to create an
> account, mandatorily. Why, oh why can't that be an OPTION? Let the USER
> decide if they want to go through the hoops, submit an email address,
> etc. etc. instead of just punching in their credit card details and be
> done.

You do *not* have to create a PayPal account to give a one-time donation.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/onetime

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
Well i would say that the more different forms of payment, the better.
Surely there are some wikimedians who are e-golders aswell, so if they
wanted to use e-gold, i cant see why they shouldnt be able to.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 19:10:48 +0100, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> I looked at e-gold at some length when I needed a way to accept
> donations for my DICT distribution (www.ropersonline.com/dict).
>
> I had heard quite a number of Very Bad Things about PayPal, plus I
> don't like eBay and only cope with them where it's unavoidable -- in
> short, my motivation was high to look at alternative e-payment
> solutions.
>
> The end result: I didn't sign up with e-gold, I grudgingly signed up
> with PayPal.
> e-gold may be a good idea in theory, but their "cost of entry" (not
> necessarily in a monetary sense) is just too high.
>
> It's just too bleedin complicated to get money into the e-gold system.
> If e-gold already WAS a pervasive world currency, accepted as
> frequently as, say, VISA cards, THEN it probably would make sense to
> make it difficult to move money into or out of the e-gold system. This
> would make sure most parties keep their funds in their e-gold accounts
> and pay each other, circulating the money that way, yadda, yadda,
> yadda. It would NOT be nice to thus make things difficult, but it would
> make sense. Seeing however that e-gold is an "also-ran" in the
> e-payment market, this just doesn't make effin sense. As a user, I
> expect a single page where I can punch in a few numbers and be done.
> e-gold will only grow if they CATER FOR END USERS, with the possibility
> of e-gold internal money circulation arriving almost as an
> afterthought.
>
> With PayPal I find it *annoying* that the payer has to create an
> account, mandatorily. Why, oh why can't that be an OPTION? Let the USER
> decide if they want to go through the hoops, submit an email address,
> etc. etc. instead of just punching in their credit card details and be
> done.
>
> With e-gold however, things are INFINITELY worse: Not only does the
> user also have to create an account, they actually have to create TWO
> accounts, one for e-gold and one for the service the use to get money
> into the e-gold system (that's 2 new important and non-trivial
> passwords to remember). Plus, the (not very appealing or
> well-structured) e-gold website DOES NOT TELL YOU THIS upfront. You
> have to do a fair bit of reading to figure out how their feckin system
> works.
>
> I want a payment service that can be used by commercial and hobbyist
> webmasters alike, without the need for a minimum transaction volume AND
> without mandatory account creation. Let the user punch in their numbers
> and be done if desired. Make it an OPTION to create an (i.e ONE(!))
> account if they so choose. Where the payment service has its own
> "currency", that currency should be easy-peasy to exchange into any
> other currency and easy to move into regular current accounts in all or
> most countries.
>
> I'm not the Wikimedia Foundation, but if I was the Wikimedia
> Foundation, then I would stay well clear of e-gold unless and until
> they get their act together. It's not in our interest to make it
> difficult and frustrating for people to donate money to us. (Plus it's
> not in our interest to have that money in a "currency" we can't use to
> pay for, say, new Apache boxen -- ie. we ultimately need to put the
> dough into WMF bank accounts anyway.)
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>      www.ropersonline.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
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subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: NPOV and credibility (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Original research)

body:
This would be fine except that often the claim is that
the 'credible' scientific sources are involved in some
kind of conspiricy, or are systematically unable to
appreciate the field for some reason.

I see where you're going with this, and I agree with
you on a personal level, but we are picking and
choosing which sources are 'credible' based on what we
believe to be right.

Mark

--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Mark Richards wrote:
> > I think we may be at cross purposes. I think the
> > difficulty is in identifying who the credible
> sources
> > are, and with whom they are credible when you are
> > dealing with things that some people think are
> > pseudoscience and others think are suppressed
> truth.
>
> Why is it difficult in this case?  Are there
> articles in journals
> which meet standard practices of peer-reviewed
> academic research?
> Credible.  Are there articles in the National
> Enquirer?  Not credible.
>
> Are there books published by respectable acacemic
> presses?  Credible.
> Are there books published by "New Age" publishers
> who appear to
> publish anything which will sell?  Not credible.
>
> With ESP, the question is often framed in terms of
> statistical
> probabilities that thus-and-such could have been the
> result of chance
> or not.  While we may not be qualified to directly
> assess the
> statistical evidence itself, we are qualified to
> look at such
> questions of: what is the training of the author?
> Does this person
> have a PhD in statistics from a reputable
> University?  Does this
> person publish work in peer-reviewed journals?
>
> I don't see any difficulty at all here, as long as
> we abandon the idea
> that neutrality requires epistemological nihilism.
>
> In most cases, it is sufficient to simple state the
> unconversial facts
> in a reasonably complete manner.  "A study conducted
> by Professor
> Smith at Harvard University and published in _Review
> of Statistical
> Psychology_ found thus-and-such.  While this
> reflects the broad
> consensus of the scientific community, it is also
> true that a vast
> popular literature continues to promote..."
>
> --Jimbo
>
> --
> "La n?fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th
> article on fr.wikipedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote

> A sense of balance is important.  We also can't confine ourselves to
> only peer-reviewed journals, as some seem to suggest.

I can see why the historians get annoyed, in that if you don't have to check
any sources, anyone who can read a newspaper can write 'history'.  On the
other  hand on WP anyone _can_ write anything. That's not balance, it's how
a wiki works.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

body:
Just heard a radio interview with [[Andrew F. Smith]],
who edited this two volume set, the contents of which,
he claimed, were severely limited by space. It would
be wonderful if we could fill in the gaps left by his
770 articles on (the minutia of) food and drink in
America, as well as the rest of the world. Just wanted
to share. It might be interesting to look at the kind
of articles these guys consider 'encyclopedic'

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195154371/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-4604303-2289765#reader-page

Mark Richards

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from_name: Shane King

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Not "more popular" -- "in proportion to their representation among
> experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties" -- credibility
> is an inherent part of this judgment.

But that IS about who is more popular. We don't take each individual
scientist, evaluate how good they are, and decide to rank their views
according to that. Instead we shotgun it and say nearly everyone
believes Albert not Gertie, so we'll declare him the winner.

At a more abstract level, I don't see why you think we can even evaluate
credibility. You point out how we can't evaluate theories well because
we're notnecessarily qualified to do so, and I agree with that. But if
we can't evaluate those theories, how can we evaluate how well the
people who do evaluate those theories are doing? That's what makes
someone credible: they get things right. But if we can't work out what's
right, how can we tell if they're getting it right?

Popularity. It's a popularity contest.

It's also a  popularity contest on other levels. A typical edit war
starts when person A believes source or view X while person B believes
source or view Y. Which source or view is the most "credible"? Well,
it's whichever one gets the most people turning up to support it on the
talk page! If consensus isn't going to happen, it's always going to end
up in a "vote": whether formal or informal.

Jimbo, I think we basically agree, except that you think what's written
is the way things really work. I'm all for keeping crackpots off
wikipedia, but I don't think the current policy lets us. That they're
mostly kept off is despite policy, not because of it. Unfortunately I
also think our current means of dealing with it (throw it to a
popularity contest) probably keeps off legitimate minority views too.

Shane.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:
> The second comment has to do with credibility.  I agree 100% with
> Jimbo's point that what makes Einstein's theories more credible than
> aunt Gertie's is not crude popularity but that physicists give more
> credence to Einstein's theories (about physics by the way -- Aunt
> Gertrude may be more of an authority on needlepoint or, so as not to be
> sexist, repairing a carburetor, than Einstein).

But this is exactly what I mean when I say it's a popularity contest. We
say Einstein is believed by most physicists. That's still a poularity
contest, just one amoung physicists rather than the general poulation.
We never take into account that there might only be one dissenter, but
that might be the best physicist in the world, and maybe he/she's right.
How can we tell though? We don't evaluate who's the best physicist when
making these decisions. Instead we just use the crude approximation of
how many support the idea. I don't know about anyone else, but I still
call that a measure based on popularity.

Shane.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I agree that that article is dreadful.  To begin with it is sprinkled
> throughout with with words like "supposed" or "alleged" which if
> repeated tend to bias the commentary, and certainly detract from the
> flow of the text.  Expressions  like "ESP's critics, a group that
> includes most mainstream scientists," is a gratuitous reference to the
> authority of scientists.  I think that it would be closer to the truth
> to say that most scientists have never paid any serious attention to
> ESP, so that the basis which that majority criticizes ESP is its own
> lack of knowledge.  That to me is not very reassuring.  Many articles
> would be much better if the science lobby started to show some
> restraint.  A single well-written paragraph can more than adequately
> represent the views of the detractors.  Trying to debunk concepts that
> have never been proven, with equally questionable data only makes for
> an article full of sniping.   The average reader does not choose to
> read the article to watch the sniping.

I agree with that approach.  Most people do not take ESP seriously, and
so it's not necessary to beat them over the head every other sentence
with "but, ESP is actually a bunch of cranks!!!".  I imagine if I were
looking for an article on ESP, I would want to know what people who
believe it is true think about it, and why, and so on.  Of course it
should also be mentioned that the vast majority of scientists think it's
nonsense, and that the few purported scientific studies to demonstrate
it have been roundly criticized.

Mostly I think tone is a big issue.  When I read an article and it
sounds to me like whoever wrote it is trying to push a point of view, it
irritates me, even if I agree with the point of view.  Think, "does this
sound like it's written by someone with strong feelings on the
subject?", and if so, why, and how can we change that?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Shane King wrote

> But this is exactly what I mean when I say it's a popularity contest. We
> say Einstein is believed by most physicists.

Well, if you chuck away all the reasons anyone has for believing anything,
then of course you get apparently 'foundational' problems of epistemology.
WP, however, is not here to solve those problems, which may be insoluble in
ultra-sceptical terms.  It is here to do an honest job of compiling an
encyclopedia, not to enquire itself into 'what is knowledge?'  You can look
in WP and find the various fates of Einstein's views about the photoelectric
effect, special relativity, general relativity and the EPR paradox discussed
intelligently.  On the last there is some minority view discussion on the
site, even though 'most physicists' think Einstein was wrong on that one.

Charles


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> At 09:48 AM 12/12/2004 +1100, David Gerard wrote:
>
>> What we need is to encourage a culture of including references. I'm
>> trying
>> to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
>> implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it doing
>> fancy reference-indexing things.)
>
>
> Once upon a time long long ago I remember putting in a feature request
> for a simple "footnote" markup, along the lines of adding [[Note:blah
> blah blah]] anywhere in the article and having it turn into a
> superscripted number linking to an anchor for the text "blah blah
> blah" down at the very bottom of the page. Something like that could
> be suitable for references too, though it wouldn't be nice for making
> multiple references to the same source scattered throughout an
> article. Maybe a [[Ref:blah blah blah]] markup that automatically
> combines identical "blah blah" text into the same reference at the
> bottom?

<footnote>This would probably be better and more intuitive.</footnote>,
where the tag might be "footnote", "foot", "note", or whatever. It also
fits in with the way that the software is designed to be extended.

-- Neil


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Mark Richards wrote:

>Just heard a radio interview with [[Andrew F. Smith]],
>who edited this two volume set, the contents of which,
>he claimed, were severely limited by space. It would
>be wonderful if we could fill in the gaps left by his
>770 articles on (the minutia of) food and drink in
>America, as well as the rest of the world. Just wanted
>to share. It might be interesting to look at the kind
>of articles these guys consider 'encyclopedic'
>
>http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195154371/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-4604303-2289765#reader-page
>
Uh-oh, his stuff is going to get listed on VfD for sure now....

:-)

Stan


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] re: questions

body:
John,

I dont know of anywhere that you could read up on the
higher level of organization needed for a wikibook than for
th WP, its an observation of mine that a book is organized
at a higher level whereas the Wikipedia encyclopedia is
able to be more organic and live without a higher,
systemized organization.

To write a wikibook, the organization does not have to be
fully outlined at first. Parts or modules can be written
one at a time and then incorporated into one volume.
Further editing can reveal what is missing and fill in the
gaps, as well as edit for consistancy of tone, etc.

The quality of the work depends on the effort and ability
of the people creating it. I believe that "normal" teachers
working together are more than capable of creating an
excellent work. And even if the work begins as mediocre, it
can be continually revised and improved by the best minds
who are willing to contribute.

The level of moderation infrastructure is not extensive on
the site. If you want to create a book here with people you
have you will have control as well as responsibility for
things to turn out well. My experience shows that on the
Wikipedia there are not very many problems on finding
aggreement except in extreme cases, and even in those cases
things are not too difficult to resolve in an aggreeable
manner. One key is following tbe state guidelines; that
will help you reach aggreement more quickly.

Hope that helps sir!
Karl

--- John Dehlin < > wrote:

> I sincerely appreciate you guys being willing to
> entertain my questions.
>
> It's funny, because I now revere Wikipedia so much, that
> I just assume that
> all aspects of Wikipedia are running on full throttle.
> Hearing your
> responses reminds me as to what I should have known all
> along....that I/we
> am/are the community.....and what it is, or what it is to
> become, is
> squarely up to me/us.  I guess that's the beauty, huh?
>
> So...I have a question...where is the best place to read
> up on "...Here,
> there is a higher level of organization to make a book."
>
> What types of moderation infrastructure or policy or
> technology are in place
> to make a textbook?  This is obviously a huge key to
> success (state
> adoption).
>
> I very much look forward to learning/engaging more.
>
> John Dehlin

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subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
After literally minutes of further thought, and reading the other
contributions to this thread, I can see that there are two things needed:
* a syntax for footnotes within article text
* a way of gathering them at the end of the article, and inserting links
within the article text to the footnote.

It seems that these are two different functions. The first would be done
best by using the template syntax. The second would be best done using
an extension tag, to allow the footnotes to be gathered together as a
list under a heading (and to manufacture that heading if it is not
present in the article), and generating the links within the HTML
structure. (All of this assumes that template expansion is done before
page-rendering).

So, you could have nice templates like
{{book-ref|author=...|publisher=...|etc...}}, {{journal-ref}} and so on,
taking named arguments, which are
* self-explanatory
* easy to understand
* easy to customise
* use existing friendly inline syntax
and a lower-level <reference subheading="..."> ... </reference> syntax
which can be used within the templates themselves that invokes a
Wikipedia extension mechanism. Thus, the implementation (and low-level
syntax for invoking that mechanism) is nicely decoupled from the
user-visible syntax.

We could probably also do {{extlink}} in the same way, to mop up the
remaining in-line external links, and put them under the "External
links" subheading.

-- Neil


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just...wow.

body:
I am proposing limits on the length of presentation and in this case asking
the participants to restate their evidence in more usable form. The state of
the evidence page made it almost impossible to use productively for its
intended purpose.

Fred

> From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:05:13 +0000 (GMT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Just...wow.
>
> I recently stumbled across
> [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/HistoryBuffEr_and_Jayjg/Evidence/Full_ver
> sion]],
> and ... wow! I've neither knowledge of this dispute nor any great ideas on how
> Wikipedia should do arbitration, but I think this 500k page is one of the most
> mind-boggling -- and disturbing -- artifacts I've yet come across on Wikipedia
> ;-)
>
> (Sorry, I don't really have a point, I just needed to voice a "wow".)
>
> --Matt
>
> [[User:Matt Crypto]]
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just...wow.

body:
I recently stumbled across
[[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/HistoryBuffEr_and_Jayjg/Evidence/Full_version]],
and ... wow! I've neither knowledge of this dispute nor any great ideas on how
Wikipedia should do arbitration, but I think this 500k page is one of the most
mind-boggling -- and disturbing -- artifacts I've yet come across on Wikipedia
;-)

(Sorry, I don't really have a point, I just needed to voice a "wow".)

--Matt

[[User:Matt Crypto]]

___________________________________________________________
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from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just...wow.

body:
>I recently stumbled across
>[[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/HistoryBuffEr_and_Jayjg/Evidence/Full_version]],
>and ... wow! I've neither knowledge of this dispute nor any great ideas on
>how
>Wikipedia should do arbitration, but I think this 500k page is one of the
>most
>mind-boggling -- and disturbing -- artifacts I've yet come across on
>Wikipedia
>;-)
>
>(Sorry, I don't really have a point, I just needed to voice a "wow".)

I'm rather disturbed by it myself, ;-)

Jayjg


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
What I wonder here is this, what is the motivation for linking to
English articles for every single internal link?

Wikipedia practice - on all existing Wikipedias - is to link to the
local version of an article, even if it doesn't exist yet.

The reason for this is that somebody who clicks on the link will be
invited to write an article, rather than be forwarded to an English
article.

Right now, I think an outsider would go "this Wikipedia isn't in
chiTumbuka, it is almost completely in English", rather, the intention
is to make it obvious that those pages don't exist and invite people
to create them which is currently not what happens.

Mark

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:52:39 -0500, Stephen Forrest
<stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Dinette,
>
> On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:49:55 +0200, Mamma Mia <dinnette at softhome.net> wrote:
> > ...and Gerard, the links in the articles entered in the form:
> > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc] keep on disappearing. We can't
> > have an articles to all the relevant links in Tumbuka (not within a short
> > time, anyway) hence the references to the English relevant entries. What
> > could be causing that, someone deliberately changing them or does the system
> > change links automatically to the form [[ITEM A B C etc]]?
>
> I'm not sure I understand you.  Are you saying that links entered in
> the chiTumbuka wikipedia, in the form
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc], are being rewritten
> somehow as [[ITEM A B C etc]]?
>
> If that's happening automatically, that's a problem.  One possible
> solution is, instead of entering them as
>
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc]
>
> to enter them as
>
> [[:en:ITEM A B C etc|ITEM A B C etc]]
>
> For example, I believe [[:en:Canada|Canada]] will point at the English
> wikipedia version of the article on Canada from any wikipedia (French,
> German, chiTumbuka).
>
> Hopefully using the wikipedia-style link above will prevent the
> automatic replacement from happening.  Additionally, you might want to
> include some kind of notice to readers that the link they're about to
> follow contains English text (in case they don't read English).
>
> Regards,
>
> Steve
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
Hello Dinette,

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:49:55 +0200, Mamma Mia <dinnette at softhome.net> wrote:
> ...and Gerard, the links in the articles entered in the form:
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc] keep on disappearing. We can't
> have an articles to all the relevant links in Tumbuka (not within a short
> time, anyway) hence the references to the English relevant entries. What
> could be causing that, someone deliberately changing them or does the system
> change links automatically to the form [[ITEM A B C etc]]?

I'm not sure I understand you.  Are you saying that links entered in
the chiTumbuka wikipedia, in the form
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc], are being rewritten
somehow as [[ITEM A B C etc]]?

If that's happening automatically, that's a problem.  One possible
solution is, instead of entering them as

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc]

to enter them as

[[:en:ITEM A B C etc|ITEM A B C etc]]

For example, I believe [[:en:Canada|Canada]] will point at the English
wikipedia version of the article on Canada from any wikipedia (French,
German, chiTumbuka).

Hopefully using the wikipedia-style link above will prevent the
automatic replacement from happening.  Additionally, you might want to
include some kind of notice to readers that the link they're about to
follow contains English text (in case they don't read English).

Regards,

Steve


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use

body:
Xenu can be a very contentious topic and raise a storm. While I am against
censorship, is it wise at this point to make that statement. I do not know

Danny


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> A person trying to likewise donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation
> with paypal indeed IS NOT forced to create an account.
> (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/onetime )
> However, a person trying to donate money through paypal via the button
> on my own website IS forced to create an account.
> (see www.ropersonline.com/dict)
>
> Does anybody know why that would be?

You need to have a Business/Premier Account to use that feature.

See:
http://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_help-ext&eloc=1531&loc=1528&unique_id=62053&source_page=_home&flow=

-- mav

__________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use

body: getting it featured article status


from_name: Mamma Mia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
...and Gerard, the links in the articles entered in the form:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc] keep on disappearing. We can't
have an articles to all the relevant links in Tumbuka (not within a short
time, anyway) hence the references to the English relevant entries. What
could be causing that, someone deliberately changing them or does the system
change links automatically to the form [[ITEM A B C etc]]?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] fundraising for new hardware? Fwd: [Wikide-l] Spendenaktion für Hardware?

body:
--- Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote on Wikipedia-l:
> Christoph Lange asked (posting attached below) on the wikide-l mailing list
> wether there will a fundraising drive shortly before Christmas. He argues
> that while it is possible to donate money anytime that it would be more fun
> to do this within a concentrated fundraising drive and also that people
> around Christmas time are in a donation mood :-)

I plan to be the coordinator for our Q1 2005 fund drive sometime in mid January
to early February. The timing will likely coincide with Wikipedia Day and
perhaps the 500,000th English Wikipedia article and maybe some other milestones
along with distribution of the newsletter. I never considered having a fund
drive right before/during the winter holidays...

-- mav

__________________________________
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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] References considered virtuous (was New policy proposal)

body:
Ray Saintonge (saintonge at telus.net) [041213 20:03]:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
> >David Gerard wrote

> >>What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.

> >I'm happy if I can get a good book or two referenced, and an external link
> >or so to corroborate.  I am totally against having to footnote everything.
> >That is a lame way to have to write - training wheels for Ph.D. students.

> A sense of balance is important.  We also can't confine ourselves to
> only peer-reviewed journals, as some seem to suggest.

I'm for footnoting quite a lot, particularly on contentious pages - I've
seen how effective it can be in defusing editor conflicts. I'm thinking
particularly of [[United Kingdon Independence Party]], the section on
neo-Nazi infiltration. That was thrashed out between a UKIP supporter and
myself (not a supporter) using sentences each of which was followed by a
reference. The resulting paragraph is quite readable, getting its facts
across nicely, and you can look up every assertion.

That's an extreme case, but it was needed for an NPOV summary of the facts
that would survive the editing process.

(And at the moment I'm herding [[Xenu]] through Featured Article
Candidates. You can be sure *tremendous* attention is being paid to NPOV
and solid referencing ...)

You'll have the occasional Adam Carr who just *knows* his stuff. But, as
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] points out: "This applies even when the
information is currently undisputed - even if there's no dispute right now,
someone might come along in five years and want to dispute, verify, or
learn more about a topic." Furthermore, contributors like that are in fact
*rare*.

A culture of referencing will do wonders for the general standard of
Wikipedia.

> >Of course cranking up the standards would help, generally
> >speaking; of course making formats for references less slapdash, and having
> >some editing tools for that, would also be a plus.

> Agreed

I'd still love '''Have you included your [[Wikipedia:Cite
sources|references]]?''' on the 'Submit' boilerplate. If it doesn't lead to
[[m:Instruction creep]]. Because, you know, editors generally just don't
bother much with references, and they should.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
Robin Shannon (robin.shannon at gmail.com) [041213 00:24]:

> I've had this idea kicking around in my mind for a while. What would
> people think about a third tab for references. ie. The main article
> tab, the talk tab, and the references tab, and the subscripted numbers
> (or whatever) would be links to the references tab. i mentioned this
> to tim starling, and i dont think that he saw any particualarly big
> tech problem with this.

I see a slight problem in using it to reduce contention: that sometimes the
recalcitrant editor has to be hit over the goshdarn head with the
references for them to sink in. I'd rather have them rendered in <small> at
the bottom of the article if they're not in the main text.

OTOH we could have an option, cinse developer time is of course copious and
free [*].

OTOOH, I suggest we get editors into the general habit of providing backup
for their assertions, see what form references tend to take then write the
feature to facilitate that. How it's done on other Wikipedias would be
important to check too.

- d.

[*] probably not


subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
John Lee (johnleemk at gawab.com) [041212 23:00]:
> David Gerard wrote:
 >
> >What we need is to encourage a culture of including references. I'm trying
> >to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
> >implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it doing
> >fancy reference-indexing things.)
> >I would love love love it if the standard edit boilerplate included the
> >following as the first paragraph, on its own:
> >   Have you remembered to include your references?
> >- with the word "references" being a link to a page on how to reference
> >things. (Inline links, a mention in ==External links and references== ...
> >Do we have a suitable page?) What would it take for this to happen? Can
> >anyone see any insuperable problems with putting this in?

> [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]]? I'm not sure if they cover inline
> references, though.

That would be the page I was thinking of :-D

- d.


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ArbCom voting

body:
James D. Forrester (James F.) wrote:
> This might give some idea of what we Arbitrators have to go through to vote
> on cases, and hopefully an (or, at least, some) understanding of why cases
> can take so long.

Yes!  I would like to personally vouch for this, because I try to
follow along with most of the ArbCom cases, but of course they spend a
lot more time on these things than I do.  This is a big job, and it's
an astounding thing that we have so many good people who are willing
to do such a great job of it.

> Throwing more active Arbitrators at the problem (and I look forward
> to serving with the others, assuming I get elected to be
> re-appointed - and if you haven't voted yet, please do, because the
> larger the number of votes case, the clearer the community's mandate
> for our work) doesn't make such issues go away, nor speed their
> digestion up significantly.

Yes, everyone please vote, and please remember that *thoughtfulness*
is the best path to *justice*.  We want an ArbCom that is neither
vindictive nor soft -- and James F. has pegged it here... it takes
time and it takes thoughtful people.

--Jimbo


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
Mamma Mia wrote:

>....and Gerard, the links in the articles entered in the form:
>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc] keep on disappearing. We can't
>have an articles to all the relevant links in Tumbuka (not within a short
>time, anyway) hence the references to the English relevant entries. What
>could be causing that, someone deliberately changing them or does the system
>change links automatically to the form [[ITEM A B C etc]]?
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
Hoi,
Indeed someone has changed all these references. I had changed just one
(the first) to have it refer to the en:wikipedia using the standard
syntax ([[:en:word|word]]  where word is the name of the article). This
syntax has a better performance than the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITEM A B C etc] syntax.

I do agree that you want to slowly change the articles to the chiTumbuka
language. At this moment you have it the hardest, there are so few
articles that it is hard to imagine how beautifull the tum:wikipedia
will become :)

I will ask this person to not make any changes on the tum:wikipedia (I
know the man).

Thanks,
    Gerard
<http://tum.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=ChiTumbuka&action=edit>


subject: [Foundation-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use

body:
I'm trying to herd [[en:Xenu]] through Featured Articled Candidates. It's
getting general support and many useful suggestions have been made. One was
that if the thing about Hubbard's handwriting is mentioned, a scan of at
least that word should be put in.

So I've put the scan in as fair use for academic research purposes. Which
it blatantly is. And the full scanned page has been on Dave Touretzky's
site on the subject (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/OTIII/) for nine years
without a legal threat. However, the Church of Scientology has threatened
others in the past.

I'm not keen to indulge in copyright paranoia - the tiny page fragment in
question is OBVIOUS fair use in a encyclopedia, of all places - but thought
it would be appropriate to at least mention it to the Foundation.
Particularly as Clearwater is just down the road from St.Petersburg in
Florida ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Xenu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Xenu

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use


subject: [Foundation-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
Hi Dinnette,

I understand what you are saying and as you and your husband speak
Tumbuka and I do not, I will leave the matter to you.

However I think I should note, it's OK to write short articles that
say "Zimbabwe is a country in southern Africa, located to the east of
______ and the west of ________. It has a population of _____________,
and its capital is ___________.", these are called "stubs" and their
purpose is to give at least basic information on the topic in the
native language until somebody has time to expand them into full
articles.

Mark

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:04:30 +0200, Mamma Mia <dinnette at softhome.net> wrote:
> I had actually intended to send that email to Gerard privately and guess
> where it ended? In fact am glad it ended here because now I have received
> more advice than I would have received from Gerard alone.
>
> Mark, I do get you, and you'll have noticed that I actually said that with
> time I hope most relevant articles will have been translated into chiTumbuka
> but that takes time and in the meantime it's a way of helping the reader get
> more information, albeit in English. The current 'depth' of the articles in
> chiTumbuka is such that a reader with limited knowledge of English should
> find the article detailed enough for information purposes but at the same
> time give those that understand English an opportunity to learn more about
> the items mentioned in the article. This is what I have seen in English
> articles - the articles themselves are complete, cross-linking just helps
> you get more information on an item mentioned in that article.
>
> At the moment only my husband and I have contributed articles and we are
> both in full-time employment and that puts a limit to what we can do but I
> am selling the idea to friends and I am optimistic that in time we should
> have a 'semi-self sufficient' wikipedia. Normally you don't get that much
> participation on most e-fora this time of the year as people are too busy
> getting ready for the holidays.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com>
> To: "Stephen Forrest" <stephen.forrest at gmail.com>;
> <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 2:24 AM
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email
>
> > What I wonder here is this, what is the motivation for linking to
> > English articles for every single internal link?
> >
> > Wikipedia practice - on all existing Wikipedias - is to link to the
> > local version of an article, even if it doesn't exist yet.
> >
> > The reason for this is that somebody who clicks on the link will be
> > invited to write an article, rather than be forwarded to an English
> > article.
> >
> > Right now, I think an outsider would go "this Wikipedia isn't in
> > chiTumbuka, it is almost completely in English", rather, the intention
> > is to make it obvious that those pages don't exist and invite people
> > to create them which is currently not what happens.
> >
> > Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia closed for maintenance

body:
Is advance warning posted anywhere of maintenance closures?  This is
the second day in a row the message has come up -- after 15 minutes
spent trying to save an edit -- that the database is closed for
maintenance. Advance warning, if that's possible, would be very
helpful.

Slim


subject: [WikiEN-l] wikien-l broken? test message

body:
Known sent messages haven't come through for a few hours, but there's
nothing in the moderation queue. Let's see if this one gets through ...

(cc'd to a few people - who actually administers the mail server itself?)

- d.


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
On 13 Dec 2004, at 17:55, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> You do *not* have to create a PayPal account to give a one-time
> donation.
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/onetime
>
> -- mav
>

And right you are -- at least as regards the Wikimedia Foundation!
That's intriguing!

A person trying to likewise donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation
with paypal indeed IS NOT forced to create an account.
(see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/onetime )
However, a person trying to donate money through paypal via the button
on my own website IS forced to create an account.
(see www.ropersonline.com/dict)

Does anybody know why that would be?

Presumably I did something different/wrong when setting up my donation
button?
'Wonder what needs to be done to get things to work the way they work
for the foundation?

Sorry for moving to something off-topic as regards this list, but I'm
genuinely quite curious and would like to invite replies. (If you think
there's less of a public interest in your reply, then please email me
direct instead the list.)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
On 13 Dec 2004, at 14:18, Neil Harris wrote:

> <footnote>This would probably be better and more
> intuitive.</footnote>, where the tag might be "footnote", "foot",
> "note", or whatever. It also fits in with the way that the software is
> designed to be extended.
>
> -- Neil

You're aware that we do have footnote syntax, right?
Admittedly somewhat unwieldy (and a new syntax has been proposed), but
it's there anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes#Example_2

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: wikien-l broken? test message

body:
Actually...

I am not sure it is a great test in terms of speedy answer to cc to the 3 people basically non available online at all during last week end ;-)

But... ahum, I got it ;-)

David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

Known sent messages haven't come through for a few hours, but there's
nothing in the moderation queue. Let's see if this one gets through ...

(cc'd to a few people - who actually administers the mail server itself?)

- d.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Meet the all-new My Yahoo! ? Try it today!


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just...wow.

body:
On Monday, December 13, 2004 5:05 PM, wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org <>
wrote:

> I recently stumbled across
> [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/HistoryBuffEr_and_Jayjg/E
> vidence/Full_version]], and ... wow! I've neither knowledge of this
> dispute nor any
> great ideas on how Wikipedia should do arbitration, but I
> think this 500k page is one of the most mind-boggling -- and
> disturbing -- artifacts I've yet come across on Wikipedia ;-)

Yeah. This is, I think, the largest evidence page that we on the Committee
have had to put up with, but, I'm pretty sure, not the least comprehensible.
The vastness, however made it useless, and Fred's suggestion of limiting
evidence to 500 words seems to be a very good one.

> (Sorry, I don't really have a point, I just needed to voice a "wow".)

This might give some idea of what we Arbitrators have to go through to vote
on cases, and hopefully an (or, at least, some) understanding of why cases
can take so long. Throwing more active Arbitrators at the problem (and I
look forward to serving with the others, assuming I get elected to be
re-appointed - and if you haven't voted yet, please do, because the larger
the number of votes case, the clearer the community's mandate for our work)
doesn't make such issues go away, nor speed their digestion up
significantly.

> --Matt
>
> [[User:Matt Crypto]]

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Just...wow.

body:
On Monday, December 13, 2004 11:43 PM, Fred wrote:

[Re. HistoryBuffEr vs. Jayjg evidence page]

> I am proposing limits on the length of presentation and in
> this case asking the participants to restate their evidence
> in more usable form. The state of the evidence page made it
> almost impossible to use productively for its intended purpose.
>
> Fred

Yeah, I think this is a good idea, though I'm slightly worried about the 500
word limit - does anyone think that this is perhaps a little too short? I'm
just concerned about people whose complaints are wide-ranging (and it's
interesting, though perhaps not terribly surprising, just how many people's
complaints become wide-ranging once they have progressed all the way along
the dispute resolution chain to Arbitration).

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use

body:
On Monday, December 13, 2004 11:46 PM, David Gerard wrote:

> daniwo59 at aol.com (daniwo59 at aol.com) [041214 10:38]:
>
> > getting it featured article status
>
> That's different from 'main page candidate' status. Featured
> Article means it's acknowledged as being up to a certain standard.

Indeed; I think that we probably should feature this and other
Scientology-related articles on the Main Page, but I would be worried that
doing so might well put us on their radar, which could very well be a Bad
Thing in terms of sysop load.

[Snip]

As to the Fair Use bit, I completely agree with you about this qualifying.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Misunderstanding NPOV

body:
In response to Jimbo, Shane writes:
> But that IS about who is more popular. We don't take each
> individual scientist, evaluate how good they are, and
> decide to rank their views according to that. Instead we
> shotgun it and say nearly everyone believes Albert not
> Gertie, so we'll declare him the winner.

No, Shane, we DO NOT do that. Wikipedia does NOT engage in
original research, and it does NOT make findings of
scientific fact. Rather, we follow NPOV policy by reporting
who believes the findings of Albert Einstein and why; we
don't declare anyone a winner.

> At a more abstract level, I don't see why you think we
> can even evaluate credibility. You point out how we can't
> evaluate theories well because we're not necessarily
> qualified to do so, and I agree with that. But if
> we can't evaluate those theories, how can we evaluate how
> well the people who do evaluate those theories are doing?

Either this is a strawman, or you are taking a logical
argument to highly illogical conclusion.  I am NOT an
authority on General Relativity, but there are dozens of
scientists who are such authorities, and they are easy to
find.  Only the most obvious trolls and internet-cranks
claim otherwise.

In an article we would report something like "Most
physicists believe that X is correct", and explain their
reasons. We would also say that "Some physicists believe
that X should be re-evalutaed because...", and explain
their reasons.  We can even offer a brief overview of some
of the popular views held by self-published cranks.  We do
not need to proclaim anyone the "winner".  By following
NPOV we just say who holds a view, and how representative
their view is.

> Popularity. It's a popularity contest.

No it is not, not in the slightest.  Right now you are
beginning to worry me. I have seen this exact argument made
by cranks and trolls on the physics newsgroups.

Robert

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Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
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subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Japanese wiktionary is OFF first character
	capitalisation ..

body:
Hoi,
Brion was so good to change the ja:wiktionary off first character
capitalisation. This means that all new articles will be in their
correct case and, that the current articles with the wrong case need to
be changed..

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
I had actually intended to send that email to Gerard privately and guess
where it ended? In fact am glad it ended here because now I have received
more advice than I would have received from Gerard alone.

Mark, I do get you, and you'll have noticed that I actually said that with
time I hope most relevant articles will have been translated into chiTumbuka
but that takes time and in the meantime it's a way of helping the reader get
more information, albeit in English. The current 'depth' of the articles in
chiTumbuka is such that a reader with limited knowledge of English should
find the article detailed enough for information purposes but at the same
time give those that understand English an opportunity to learn more about
the items mentioned in the article. This is what I have seen in English
articles - the articles themselves are complete, cross-linking just helps
you get more information on an item mentioned in that article.

At the moment only my husband and I have contributed articles and we are
both in full-time employment and that puts a limit to what we can do but I
am selling the idea to friends and I am optimistic that in time we should
have a 'semi-self sufficient' wikipedia. Normally you don't get that much
participation on most e-fora this time of the year as people are too busy
getting ready for the holidays.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com>
To: "Stephen Forrest" <stephen.forrest at gmail.com>;
<wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 2:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

> What I wonder here is this, what is the motivation for linking to
> English articles for every single internal link?
>
> Wikipedia practice - on all existing Wikipedias - is to link to the
> local version of an article, even if it doesn't exist yet.
>
> The reason for this is that somebody who clicks on the link will be
> invited to write an article, rather than be forwarded to an English
> article.
>
> Right now, I think an outsider would go "this Wikipedia isn't in
> chiTumbuka, it is almost completely in English", rather, the intention
> is to make it obvious that those pages don't exist and invite people
> to create them which is currently not what happens.
>
> Mark


body:
David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) [041214 09:17]:

> Known sent messages haven't come through for a few hours, but there's
> nothing in the moderation queue. Let's see if this one gets through ...
> (cc'd to a few people - who actually administers the mail server itself?)

Cheers to Brion Vibber and #mediawiki for getting it working :-)

- d.


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just...wow.

body:
Thats just freaking ridiculous. Ive said it once and ill say it again.
SHORT bans for any breech of policy. Lots of short bans pavlov's dogs
style.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:05:13 +0000 (GMT), Matt R
<matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I recently stumbled across
> [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/HistoryBuffEr_and_Jayjg/Evidence/Full_version]],
> and ... wow! I've neither knowledge of this dispute nor any great ideas on how
> Wikipedia should do arbitration, but I think this 500k page is one of the most
> mind-boggling -- and disturbing -- artifacts I've yet come across on Wikipedia
> ;-)
>
> (Sorry, I don't really have a point, I just needed to voice a "wow".)
>
> --Matt
>
> [[User:Matt Crypto]]
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com (daniwo59 at aol.com) [041214 10:25]:

> Xenu can be a very contentious topic and raise a storm. While I am against
> censorship, is it wise at this point to make that statement. I do not know

What statement do you mean? The fact of the article's existence?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[en:Xenu]] and fair use

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com (daniwo59 at aol.com) [041214 10:38]:

> getting it featured article status

That's different from 'main page candidate' status. Featured Article means
it's acknowledged as being up to a certain standard.

Besides, the CoS could always send in an NPOV editor ...

- d.


from_name: sannse

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
Mamma Mia wrote:
> I had actually intended to send that email to Gerard privately and guess
> where it ended?

Umm... I guess that means that the mail address Gerard set in his
preferences is wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org  This seems to me to be a Bad
Idea.  When someone mails privately they really should be able to expect
that it will not be delivered directly to a public mailing list

--sannse

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subject: [WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

body:
Jens Ropers (ropers at ropersonline.com) [041214 12:17]:

> You're aware that we do have footnote syntax, right?
> Admittedly somewhat unwieldy (and a new syntax has been proposed), but
> it's there anyway:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes#Example_2

Those are called HTML anchors ;-)

A less unwieldy footnote syntax (e.g. not needing to be renumbered by hand
every time the article sections are shuffled) would, I assume, require some
intelligence from MediaWiki in processing it into a nice-looking article.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia email

body:
> Mamma Mia wrote:
>
>> I had actually intended to send that email to Gerard privately and guess
>> where it ended?
>
>
> Umm... I guess that means that the mail address Gerard set in his
> preferences is wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org  This seems to me to be a Bad
> Idea.  When someone mails privately they really should be able to expect
> that it will not be delivered directly to a public mailing list

My misunderstanding - this wasn't a private mail via the Wikipedia
mailing system I'm told.  sorry

--sannse

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from_name: Delirium

subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] fundraising for new hardware? Fwd: [Wikide-l] Spendenaktion für Hardware?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>I plan to be the coordinator for our Q1 2005 fund drive sometime in mid January
>to early February. The timing will likely coincide with Wikipedia Day and
>perhaps the 500,000th English Wikipedia article and maybe some other milestones
>along with distribution of the newsletter. I never considered having a fund
>drive right before/during the winter holidays...
>
>
For consideration in future years, many nonprofit groups start donation
drives around October/November, in the hopes of convincing people to
make an end-of-year donation.  Since US taxes are done by calendar year,
there are a certain number of people who decide on their donations near
the end of the year---donations in December still count as deductions on
that year's taxes, but are sufficiently late in the year so the people
know their income/tax situation as much as possible and can decide how
much they want to give for the year.

(It'd be interesting if there were any statistics on how successful such
drives are, of course.)

For future years, more product-oriented things might work too.  A
nicely-bound print version of Wikipedia (or some subset thereof) could
make a good Christmas present.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

body:
On 14 Dec 2004, at 03:37, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>> A person trying to likewise donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation
>> with paypal indeed IS NOT forced to create an account.
>> (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/USD/onetime )
>> However, a person trying to donate money through paypal via the button
>> on my own website IS forced to create an account.
>> (see www.ropersonline.com/dict)
>>
>> Does anybody know why that would be?
>
> You need to have a Business/Premier Account to use that feature.

Ah. Thank you! :) -- ropers


subject: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 01:05:45 +0100, TOR <tor at oak.rpg.pl> wrote:

> These are general netiquette rules and are to facilitate reading. You
> read form top to bottom, right? That's why it's only logical to have the
> quote first and the reply second. They also keep the size of the posts
> down. Essencially, if you quote the whole post in your reply, you're
> making all the readers download it twice (first the original and then
> it's copy in your reply).

I prefer to have the new text *above* the old one, especially if there
is lots of text quoted. In that case I can read the new text and
ignore the old. Putting it below means I have to go down through the
text to get to the new stuff. I too read from the top to the bottom,
and therefore I would like to have the most important material, being
that material that I have not read yet, at the beginning.

Andre Engels


body:
On 14 Dec 2004, at 15:46, Andre Engels wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 01:05:45 +0100, TOR <tor at oak.rpg.pl> wrote:
>
>> These are general netiquette rules and are to facilitate reading. You
>> read form top to bottom, right? That's why it's only logical to have
>> the
>> quote first and the reply second. They also keep the size of the posts
>> down. Essencially, if you quote the whole post in your reply, you're
>> making all the readers download it twice (first the original and then
>> it's copy in your reply).
>
> I prefer to have the new text *above* the old one, especially if there
> is lots of text quoted. In that case I can read the new text and
> ignore the old. Putting it below means I have to go down through the
> text to get to the new stuff. I too read from the top to the bottom,
> and therefore I would like to have the most important material, being
> that material that I have not read yet, at the beginning.

<ha-ha-only-serious>
	Please don't feed the trolls.
</ha-ha-only-serious>

I mean, for crying out loud, the guy said it was his first post here --
yet he tried to tell us/me what rules we/I should play by here. (!)

If he had searched the our lists' archives he would have found that
this too is an issue some of us hold opposing views about -- from the
visceral (or jocular?) "ARRGGHH TOP-POST KILL KILL" to a clear
preference for that order. People also differ on how much previous
material should be quoted: It largely depends on whether the sender
assumes people to have (ie. have kept) the relevant previous emails.
Since I don't claim to be clairvoyant about how *everybody else* has
got their email client configured, I personally tend to include more,
preferably just enough so my reply can be fully understood in context.
I also ''tend'' to top-post (sometimes) because bottom posting requires
manual cutting and pasting with Mac OS X Mail. Some people here like
that, some don't. What-Ever. If there is a clear democratic preference
then I will respect that. Failing that, this issue is nothing to go
finger-wagging and lecturing people about.
Can't remember who said it, but someone observed that
top-posting-aversion was a shibboleth, nothing more. Fair enough. But I
don't have to be a member of this or that canonical tribe and TEH REAL
OLD SKOOL L33t HAXORS don't pwnerz this list.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

PS: Oh, and just in case there's anyone out there feeling that what I
just said amounted to [[Eternal September]]: Which is worse -- a
"mostly harmless" choice of preference or making an arse of yerself by
loud huffing and puffing and preaching to pwn TEH TURTH?