from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> How much truth is there to this:
>
> The Parents for the Online Safety of Children (POSC) organization is
> worried about parents letting their children into a website that is a
> known gathering for pedophiles. Any pedophile can easily obtain a
> child's IP address and use it to locate the child's place of
> residence outside of the internet. Pedophiles may also solicit
> children for sex or attempt to contact them through using WikiPedia
> as a medium, or even find out their e-mail address or instant
> messenger screen name.

We do still encourage everyone to become a registered user, in which
case the children's IP addresses are not public knowledge.  The first
step in internet safety is what the child does to protect himself.  He
should not register himself anywhere under his real name.  Wikipedia is
only one site, but an inventive pedophile can use any site to lure
children.  The more obscure ones are likely to be more effective.

Parents who engage in that kind of whining would probably serve their
kids best if they first understood what they were talking about.  Many
of them may not even know how to turn a computer on.  The kids can see
right through that, and those parents soon lose all credibility in the
eyes of their own kids who promptly do the opposite of what they're told.

> Since WikiPedia allows pedophiles to edit WikiPedia pages and view
> the IP addresses of children freely, we recommend that you use
> filtering software to block WikiPedia from access in your household
> or school.

When the parent doesn't understand computers he can always get the kids
to help with the software installation. ;-)

> The internet is already a dangerous lurking ground for pedophiles;
> statistics show that about 1 in 5 children are solicited for sex
> online, and with the growth of the unregulated WikiPedia, that number
> can only skyrocket.

"Lies, damn lies, and statistics ..."  with a little non-sequitur for
flavour.  We now require material to be sourced; do they?

> Since WikiPedia refuses to address the issue of pedophiles within its
> ranks and the allowance of random editing to pages, we can only
> recommend parents to withhold access to WikiPedia.org for the time
> being.

Simply banning identified pedophiles doesn't help the kids.  You can
always keep an eye on the identified ones.  The really dangerous one are
the ones who have not been identified at all.

> Excerpts from http://news.baou.com/main.php?
> action=recent&msg_recent=&rid=20679
>
> What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I
> exclude fighting among ourselves in a destructive way)

Providing accurate information about internet dangers that parents can
use to protect their children would be a positive step, but that has
limited value for people who are never online.

Ec


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sherool

subject: [WikiEN-l] A novel policy interpretation

body:
On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 16:02:14 +0100, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> [[WP:AN]] currently contains this announcement:
>
> "The userbox Template:User pedophile [...] is a great way of
> identifying those users who consider themselves to be pedophiles. I
> plan on indefinitely blocking any user who includes this template.
> I've already blocked the only user to include this template [...]
> Wikipedia has no obligation to permit deviants to edit. If a someone
> has sexual thoughts about children, keep it to yourself and stay off
> Wikipedia. I can't even imagine the PR nightmare that the Wikimedia
> Foundation would face if articles were being written by
> self-identified pedophiles."
>
> I can just tell this one's going to be a fun argument to watch.

"Fun" indeed, this aparently got so bad than Jimbo temporarily de-sysoped
no less than 5 admins for "wheel warring" (enter blocking and unblocking
users and other admins or deleting and undeleting the template), one wich
wich aparently descided to quit in protest.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Desysoppings>.
Not something you see every day...

I do hope people have cooled off after a good nights sleep.

--
[[User:Sherool]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>- Any nasty person would leave a huge electronic trail behind them
>publicly visible to basically anyone.
>
Far more visible than in an MSN chat room.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Manuel Vazquez Acosta

subject: [Wikitech-l] Small patch to mediawiki-1.5.3

body:
Hello all,

A few days ago I posted a patch to the list, I realized the site where
I put the patch isn't working properly.

In the hope this is usefull, here is the patch.

Regards,
Manuel.


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Some key points that come to mind:
> - It's not easy to get the ID of a user with a login name

What do you mean by ID in this context?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Sam Korn and Morven have been given the checkuser
	privilege

body:
Just to let people know, Sam Korn and Morven, two members of the
Arbitration Committee, have just been given the checkuser privilege.

More on CheckUser can be found at:
  --> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] WIKIPEDIA USER ZOE

body:
There was our entertainment for the day :)

On 2/6/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > On 2/3/06, asd asdh <chemancheche at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>ZOE IS A TERRORIST SYMPATHIER, BLOCKS AMERICAN PATRIOT FOR REPORTING
> >>TERRORIST
> >>
> > Exactly how did this message get through?
> >
>
> Mark got bored? :)
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


subject: [WikiEN-l] add UTC to time

body:
On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:19:53 +0100, Dan Jacobson <jidanni at jidanni.org>
wrote:

> One each page e.g.,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes
> we see e.g.,
> "This page was last modified 03:06, 1 February 2006.":
> Say GMT, UTC, etc., like you do for signatures.

Yeah, unfortunately it's not a trivial task, the "last modified" time (as
well as the dates in the edit history and such) is given in whatever time
zone the user have set in his preferences, default is UTC, if someone have
set +1 it will display in UTC+1 (aka CET) and so on. The problem is there
is AFAIK no way for the [[MediaWiki:Lastmodified]] page to know what
offset a user is using, as we can't rely include any logic on the page, it
just dumps out the time variable provided by the server.

Guess it would be possible to make the returned time include a time zone
offset like (UTC-8)or whatever though, but it would require a software
change I think, so probably better to file it as a suggestion on
<http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org>.

--
[[User:Sherool]]


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
See also:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_talk:Story_preparation/Wikipedia_class_action_lawsuit_linked_to_possible_earthquake_charity_fraud/Wikipedophilia

This is just some silly troll outfit as far as I can tell


from_name: David Schor

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper block

body:
User:Dschor was improperly blocked for a violation of WP:Point.
There was no such violation.  The administrator who placed the block
failed to WP:AGF.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Sort of like an IP, but with a typo.

Aha. :) Thanks,I didn't think of that. :)

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: wiki at marcusbuck.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Captcha on nds.wikipedia.org

body:
I already questioned this before, but nobody answered or finished my request.

Here again:

Could somebody with the right for it please deactivate the Captcha at the new
users registration page on nds.wikipedia.org like it is deactivated on other
wikipedias? There is everyday activity on the wiki and we can handle good with
the incoming spam and vandalism. There is no need for this kind of barrier.
Thanks

Slomox
Marcus Buck


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 3D Anaglyphics Commons-logo

body:
That looks really cool...I just wish I had 3D glasses

On 2/6/06, lists at schwen.de <lists at schwen.de> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> we have an ongoing discussion at [[:en:Wikipedia talk:3D Illustrations]]
> on
> the use of anaglyphic 3D images in en. At this time the consensus seems to
> be
> tending towards not using these pictures inlined in articles (to avoid
> confusing the lots of readers without 3D glasses and maintaining printable
> illustrations), but giving the pictures some exposure by using a new
> template
> analogous to {{commons}} called {{3d_commons}}. (see [[:en:Gorilla]] for a
> first example).
>
> I now created a derivative work of the original commons logo, to use in
> this
> template:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Commons-logo-Anaglyph.svg
>
> I realize that this already constitutes a violation of the original
> commons-logo license, but I'd like to transfer copyright of my logo the
> the
> Wikimedia foundation as well to make it official. Is that possible? Who'd
> be
> the appropriate person to contact and sort out the mess?
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] regarding texvc (and tex localization bugs)

body:
Branko Kokanovic wrote:
> Am I allowed to work on texvc?

Of course. It's free software.

> To whom to consult for details (if any)?

The original author is Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>.

> Will you accept my patches (of course, if they work:) (I don't want to
> do it just for myself)?

If they don't break anything and fix bugs, you should have no trouble
getting the patches accepted.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


body:
Oh wait...I just realized I had red and blue colored transparent plastic
things. I guess they'll suffice :D

On 2/6/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That looks really cool...I just wish I had 3D glasses
>
> On 2/6/06, lists at schwen.de <lists at schwen.de> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > we have an ongoing discussion at [[:en:Wikipedia talk:3D Illustrations]]
> > on
> > the use of anaglyphic 3D images in en. At this time the consensus seems
> > to be
> > tending towards not using these pictures inlined in articles (to avoid
> > confusing the lots of readers without 3D glasses and maintaining
> > printable
> > illustrations), but giving the pictures some exposure by using a new
> > template
> > analogous to {{commons}} called {{3d_commons}}. (see [[:en:Gorilla]] for
> > a
> > first example).
> >
> > I now created a derivative work of the original commons logo, to use in
> > this
> > template:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Commons-logo-Anaglyph.svg
> >
> > I realize that this already constitutes a violation of the original
> > commons-logo license, but I'd like to transfer copyright of my logo the
> > the
> > Wikimedia foundation as well to make it official. Is that possible?
> > Who'd be
> > the appropriate person to contact and sort out the mess?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Daniel
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ~Ilya N.
> http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
> http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
On 2/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I put it back, leaving a message at his user_talk asking him not to
> edit my page and to discuss the matter at my user_talk page, and
> protected my userpage.

Not really a model use of admin powers, now is it?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
Some key points that come to mind:
- It's not easy to get the ID of a user with a login name
- Wikipedia actively discourages off topic discussion. Anyone asking
for anyone's personal details or providing an email address would
generally be told off, whatever the context.
- Any nasty person would leave a huge electronic trail behind them
publicly visible to basically anyone.

Steve

On 2/6/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I exclude
> fighting among ourselves in a destructive way)
>
> Block anyone we see actively using talk pages to groom minors I guess.
> Personally I've never seen evidence of this and I can't imagine that any
> pedo would be dumb enough to do it in a public forum like that. I suppose
> there is some marginal risk that a pervert will meet a child through
> Wikipedia just by virtue of the fact that we are so highly trafficked and we
> permit user communication through our site, but there isn't much else we can
> do about it short of shutting the whole thing down. It's not our
> responsibility to raise people's children, and parents should know what
> their kids are doing on the internet.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
On 2/6/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I exclude
> fighting among ourselves in a destructive way)
>
> Block anyone we see actively using talk pages to groom minors I guess.
> Personally I've never seen evidence of this and I can't imagine that any
> pedo would be dumb enough to do it in a public forum like that. I suppose
> there is some marginal risk that a pervert will meet a child through
> Wikipedia just by virtue of the fact that we are so highly trafficked and we
> permit user communication through our site, but there isn't much else we can
> do about it short of shutting the whole thing down. It's not our
> responsibility to raise people's children, and parents should know what
> their kids are doing on the internet.
>
> I say ignore it.
>
> Ryan

I completely agree. BTW, what young kid uses wikipedia so actively so
that he actually starts using wp talk-pages? In my experience,
wikipedia is strictly for adults, young or otherwise (well, adults in
age-range that is, not necessarily maturity).

Maybe someone should send a polite email to POSC explaining that there
has been no such activity at all on wikipedia, and also remind them
how the word is capitalized?

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unitary Administrator

body:
On 2/3/06, Chris Backert <cbackert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Questions:
>
> I ask the Wikipedia Community, are there no rules or regulations for
> administrators? Can administrators make unilateral decisions as to that what
> is "wrong or right?"  How can any user know what is wrong or right? Were the
> actions of [[User:Demi] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Demi> ] correct?

See [[WP:POL]]. Administrators can unilaterally make decisions which
interpret those policies.

> Can any user post false declarations in an RFC?

Yep, it's a wiki.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: communications committee

body:
Anthere schrieb:
> Hi All
>
> Thanks for the update Elian :-)
>
> Just one comment and one question.
>
> The comment : this committee will consist of these members only after
> approval by the board. It has not yet been approved.

I know.

> A question : why are all members only people living in english-speaking
> countries ?

Most other major languages have press teams who do pretty good work.
English had no formal team yet while it needs it most. Also, most of the
international press work has to be done in english. Third, if I invited
all the non-english people who'd merit it, we would end up with a really
large committee and have still not all languages represented equally. I
think for the sake of efficiency it's better to start small. These were
my reasons for focussing on having people from english speaking
countries on the committee.

This shouldn't mean that others are excluded. One first task of the
communication committee will be to invite all members of the local press
teams to the subcommittee press where probably most actions take place.
By having this subcommittee, we can integrate all languages equally.

So far my concept for the committee. If you favour a different approach,
I'm open for suggestions.

greetings,
elian


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A school teacher's wiki-like classroom experiment

body:
Did anyone notice that Mitch Kapor co-founded Wikipedia?

I sent a letter to the editor, they haven't responded to it yet.

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/current/goods_next.php

Nick

---------------------------------
  Yahoo! Cars NEW - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online search now
---------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
Sort of like an IP, but with a typo.

Steve

On 2/6/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Some key points that come to mind:
> > - It's not easy to get the ID of a user with a login name
>
> What do you mean by ID in this context?
>
> Chris


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
>>>> By "it" I meant "your personal crusade", not "the CVU", although I
>>>> suspect you already knew that.
>>>
>>> Well, since you're willing to give me enough credit to recognize
>>> antecedents, maybe you'd be willing to consider that I'm making a
>>> serious point, one that's been agreed with by other people. Are they
>>> blatantly trolling too?
>>
>> If you just posted and said "Counter-Vandalism Unit is an
>> unnecessarily aggressive name under which to organize counter-
>> vandalism" that would be one thing. But you started with "Counter
>> Vandalism Unit sucks and is a bunch of evil militarist jackbooted
>> fascists!!" to get a bunch of responses on the mailing list. That's
>> the textbook definition of trolling, or as we used to call it, "just
>> trying to get attention".
>
> That's not what I wrote. Mischaracterizing other people's words is the
> textbook definition of a strawman argument, or as we used to call it
> "just making stuff up."
>
> Okay, we didn't call it "stuff".

Forgive me for paraphrasing.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA

subject: [WikiEN-l] I'm not allowed to say you're attractive, but...

body:
--- Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:

> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf
> Of Philip Welch
>
> > >> Anyone using Wikipedia to initiate sexual
> contacts through
> > Wikipedia
> > >> will get a very permanent ban on their person.
> > >
> > > Cripes. And it's Valentine's Day next week, too.
> >
> > I agree. I think it would be very sweet if two
> Wikipedians
> > fell in love on a talk page. But only if they were
> both above
> > the statutory age of consent.
>
> Well, I dunno. Thinking back to the editor who
> precipitated all this, it's
> clear that he's big on what I'd call frivolous
> userboxes. He identifies as
> "16-ish" (in one of the few items of personal
> information NOT found in a
> userbox), and when I was 16-ish, I had very strong
> desires for others in
> that age range. I'm thinking of Joan Smith here, a
> 17-ish classmate whose
> ripening womanly attributes dominated my adolescent
> thoughts to a remarkable
> degree. If she had appeared naked and willing in bed
> beside me (in respose
> to my fervent prayers), I would not have hesitated.
> I would have embraced
> the moment.
>
> Perhaps young scamp Joeyramoney was being serious
> when he declared his love
> for children, and he meant someone about his age,
> rather than what we older
> and wiser folk might at first imagine. Perhaps he
> was having a bit of a
> laugh at our expense.
>
> I can understand why some O&W editors wanted to
> shoot him and scatter his
> ground up ashes into the Rhine, but I cannot condone
> this sort of behaviour.
>
> Peter (Skyring)

Children, as in this case, are usually defined as
those under 13. If an adult has sex with a teen
between 13 and 17, it is defined as underage sex.
Under 13 is, I suppose, child sex -- and that's where
pedophilia comes in. If you take a look at the Wiki
article about pedophilia, you will see that there are
organizations out there that try to legalize
pedophilia.

Direct link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophile#Advocacy_of_pedophilia

I'm guessing that none of those people would be
allowed to express their opinion on Wiki. From what I
read, pedophilia is when one is "being sexually
attracted primarily or exclusively to prepubescent
children." To be sexully attracted to children is in
itself not a crime. It becomes a crime when you "act"
on it. Some doctors say that pedophilia should not be
deemed as an illness. Many cultures included what we
call today, pedophilia, such as: Greek-, Roman-, and
Ottoman Empire.

I'm not condoning what that guy did (I'm not a
pedophile), but if Wiki had better-defined rules, we
wouldn't waste time on such debates.

>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: David Boothroyd

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Casting call

body:
At 15:35 +0000 6/2/06, David Gerard wrote:
>
>Hmph! [[Jason Isaacs]] if you please. Including the overwhelming hubris.

I did notice the likeness at the London wikimeet last year. Especially in
his Lucius Malfoy garb.
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Wheel war" (Worst. Userbox. Ever.)

body:
c.f.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war/Workshop

Our actions have real-world consequences. Wikipedia is no longer a
closed society where we may make our rules and policies as we please.
Instead we are a prominent web site in a larger world that imposes
standards of behavior and conduct rather more stringent than
Wikipedia's own. When we have a lapse in judgement, we put "an
encyclopedia that anyone can edit" at risk. Our ability to live up to
"your changes will be visible immediately" without interference from
the courts, the government, the press, and other powerful institutions
depends increasingly upon our ability to demonstrate that we can
conduct our affairs responsibly. Responsible websites don't joke around
about pedophilia; they shut down any discussion that has the least hint
of a solicitation for sex with minors.  A user who places a userbox
reading "this user is a pedophile" might be seen by some as soliciting
minors.  We can't take the risk.

I applaud Jimbo's actions in dealing with this matter decisively and in
desysopping a few people who clearly lack the judgement to be
administrators at Wikipedia.

Wake up and smell the coffee, everyone.  With our new Alexa rating,
we've had our very own September That Never Ended, and the rules have
changed.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Counter-Stupidity Unit (was Worst. Userbox. Ever.)

body:
On 2/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, anyone reading this who's been on Wikipedia more than six
> months and is flabbergasted at the levels of STUPID surrounding the
> entire {{user pedophile}} incident should consider themselves a hot
> draft prospect ...
>
>
> - d.

Nah anyone who has been around for 6 months and doesn't view the whole
thing as situtation normal has been editing the quiter bits of
wikipedia.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
On 2/6/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, the best way to avoid that would be to have a user name, since
> then you would be anonymous, at least a month or two after your last edit.
> Which reminds me - if the amount of time that IP addresses of logged in
> users is kept is lengthened, my advice would be to announce that change
>
> Ian

No need there is a trivial cheack you can do yourself to see how long
IPs are kept within the current system.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
I've proposed a strict policy against wheel warring at
[[Wikipedia:Proposed wheel warring policy]]:

1. Any given use of administrative powers cannot be reverted or
reversed by another admin unless the issue is brought to adequate
discussion.
1. a. Blocks may be extended without discussion, but they cannot be
shortened or lifted.
1. b. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
2. Any administrator who reverses another administrator's use of
admin powers without any discussion shall be desysopped immediately
without further review.
3. Once discussion is opened, a final decision cannot be made until
either the parties involved have reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a
specific intervening decision is made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration
Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Directors. (This means that mere interpretation or extrapolation of
something Jimbo said previously does not warrant admin reversion.)
Any administrator who reverts another admin's use of administrative
powers before this has happened shall be desysopped immediately
without further review.
4. Administrators desysopped under this policy must wait three months
before starting the process to regain admin status.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
> This seems unnecessarily harsh and byzantine.

Did Jimbo desysopping five admins last night seem unnecessarily
harsh? Wheel warring is a pretty big problem, firstly. Secondly,
admins need to be held to a higher standard.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 2/6/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I put it back, leaving a message at his user_talk asking him not to
>>> edit my page and to discuss the matter at my user_talk page, and
>>> protected my userpage.
>> Not really a model use of admin powers, now is it?
>
> No, I don't think edit-warring other people's userpages is a model use
> of admin powers.

I believe that Steve was talking about your protection of your user page.

Also, people aren't required to get permission before editing a page.
Please read the protection policy:
  --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Please read the user page policy:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_page
>
> Quote:
> "In general it is considered polite to avoid substantially editing
> another's user page without their permission, but feel free to correct
> typos and other mistakes."
>
> Yes, I violated [[Don't be a dick.]] So did Drini.

I'm not sure how Drini violated "don't be a dick". All he did was remove
a rather uncivil userbox from your user page, and repeated his action
when you re-added it (twice). You then proceeded to call him a
"sanctimonious jerk".

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject: [WikiEN-l] CVU -> WP:CVP? (was The Counter Vandalism Unit? Whaa?

body:
On 2/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is getting somewhere--now if we can come up with a positive,
> rather than negative name, we'd be perfect.

We could but the anti newspeak force killed of the idea of the "care
bear unit".

As long as the name is within wikipedia policy the people involved in
the project can call it what they like.

--
geni


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 2/6/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> As long as the name is within wikipedia policy the people involved in
> the project can call it what they like.

The difference between "can" and "should" is not insignificant.

--
Sam


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
On 06/02/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> How much truth is there to this:

(...)

> Excerpts from http://news.baou.com/main.php?
> action=recent&msg_recent=&rid=20679

BAOU/"OfficialWire" is run by the same guy behind [[QuakeAID]] - and
[[WikipediaClassAction.org]] - who would publish "WIKIPEDIANS EAT
BABIES" if someone suggested it to him. HTH.

(PS: please don't suggest it to him)

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


body:
On 2/6/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As long as the name is within wikipedia policy the people involved in
> > the project can call it what they like.
>
> The difference between "can" and "should" is not insignificant.
>
> --
> Sam

Sure but the name appears to be the one they want so I see no reason
to stop them useing it. As I said no complaints to the helpdesk so
they appear to be doing better than other groups.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wheel warring

body:
> On the other hand, sometimes it's better (only the first time!) to
> revert a
> block and place a note on the AN with something like "if you still
> feel the
> block is justified, I won't revert again without more discussion"
>
> First time punishment is too harsh

I agree, and have written a new proposal with this in mind:

Ban on wheel warring (1RR edition by Philwelch)

1. In the spirit of the 1RR, no sysop action may be reverted more
than once in any given dispute. In practice, this means that a
reviewing admin may unblock a user previously blocked by another
admin or unprotect a page previously protected by another admin (for
example), but the original admin or second reviewing admin may choose
to reblock or reprotect. At this point, no further reversion is
allowed?even by a previously uninvolved party.
1. a. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
2. Further reversion is only allowed once the parties involved have
reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a specific intervening decision is
made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors. This means that mere
interpretation or extrapolation of something Jimbo said previously
does not warrant further reversion.
3. Any administrator who violates this policy shall be desysopped
immediately. The desysopped admin may refer to Requests for
adminship, Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors for review and appeal.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
On 2/6/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 2/6/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > > Personal attacks may be removed. You are also violating assume good
> > > faith. However, no warning is wrong, as is edit warring over it.
> > >
> > I didn't make any personal attacks. I think the phrase "Counter
> > Vandalism Unit" has fascistic overtones, and I think it's lame. I
> > wasn't trying to broadcast this or stomp on everyone's fun, just state
> > my opinion on my own userpage. I wasn't forcing this down anyone's
> > throats, nor making any personal attacks. I had no idea who any of the
> > people involved were.
>
>
> The solution is simple enough - the box obviously offends some people.
> Rather than fight about it, be the bigger person and remove it yourself.
> Then place some nicely phrased text explaining what you feel, text that will
> inspire people to think, instead of inspiring them to remove it from your
> user page.
>
> End result - thoughful discourse and an end to a revert war.

I already did.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >> By "it" I meant "your personal crusade", not "the CVU", although I
> >> suspect you already knew that.
> >
> > Well, since you're willing to give me enough credit to recognize
> > antecedents, maybe you'd be willing to consider that I'm making a
> > serious point, one that's been agreed with by other people. Are they
> > blatantly trolling too?
>
> If you just posted and said "Counter-Vandalism Unit is an
> unnecessarily aggressive name under which to organize counter-
> vandalism" that would be one thing. But you started with "Counter
> Vandalism Unit sucks and is a bunch of evil militarist jackbooted
> fascists!!" to get a bunch of responses on the mailing list. That's
> the textbook definition of trolling, or as we used to call it, "just
> trying to get attention".

That's not what I wrote. Mischaracterizing other people's words is the
textbook definition of a strawman argument, or as we used to call it
"just making stuff up."

Okay, we didn't call it "stuff".


body:
In 2/6/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> geni wrote:
> > On 2/6/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 2/6/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> As long as the name is within wikipedia policy the people involved in
> >>> the project can call it what they like.
> >> The difference between "can" and "should" is not insignificant.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Sam
> >
> > Sure but the name appears to be the one they want so I see no reason
> > to stop them useing it. As I said no complaints to the helpdesk so
> > they appear to be doing better than other groups.
>
> It doesn't need to cause specific complaints to engender an atmosphere
> of bad faith assumption and a lack of wikilove. Not that the name
> necessarily /does/ do that, but...

Considering that the name comes from a declaration of war on vandals,
I'd say it's pretty difficult to argue that it does not suffer from a
lack of wikilove.

In fact, there's rather a lack of evidence for that position.


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why has everything gone to hell?

body:
I'm afraid I must agree.

As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an encyclopedia?
How come we become more about community just because we're in the top-20 of
internet sites?

I must say that the community has started trudging along and becoming more
venomous over the last few months to a year.

If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and mandate
that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating *directly
to articles
*
I don't remember any wars on the term 'fuckwit' but I remember many other
wars. I also remember before then when Wikipedia stood together in the fact
of things like vandalism and community upsets. Maybe that time is gone?

Ugh!

On 2/6/06, Alex Schenck <linuxbeak at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
>
> I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the
> community
> will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term
> "fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back).
> Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel
> warring.
>
> Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion
> of
> the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired
> of
> the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that
> sense
> of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's
> word
> was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what
> they
> were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean,
> come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as
> David
> Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some
> oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are
> not
> liking what we see.
>
> Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for
> herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on
> writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes.
> What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people
> more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox
> purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"...
> wtf!)
> and arguing with others.
>
> At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a
> band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of
> adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
>
> Here ends my long and horrible rant.
>
> --Alex, aka Linuxbeak
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
On 2/6/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> How much truth is there to this:
>
> The Parents for the Online Safety of Children (POSC) organization is
> worried about parents letting their children into a website that is a
> known gathering for pedophiles. Any pedophile can easily obtain a
> child's IP address and use it to locate the child's place of
> residence outside of the internet.

No, they can't IP addresses are only available for not logged in users, and
for people with CheckUser access.

Pedophiles may also solicit
> children for sex or attempt to contact them through using WikiPedia
> as a medium, or even find out their e-mail address or instant
> messenger screen name.

Parents should tell their children to never share personal details online.
Anyone using Wikipedia to initiate sexual contacts through Wikipedia will
get a very permanent ban on their person.

Since WikiPedia allows pedophiles to edit WikiPedia pages and view
> the IP addresses of children freely, we recommend that you use
> filtering software to block WikiPedia from access in your household
> or school.

We don't. Simply make an account, and their IP won't show up, or simply
don't announce your personal details when you're not logged on.

The internet is already a dangerous lurking ground for pedophiles;
> statistics show that about 1 in 5 children are solicited for sex
> online, and with the growth of the unregulated WikiPedia, that number
> can only skyrocket.

The internet is also used by murderers, and crackpot theorists...

Since WikiPedia refuses to address the issue of pedophiles within its
> ranks and the allowance of random editing to pages, we can only
> recommend parents to withhold access to WikiPedia.org for the time
> being.
>
> Excerpts from http://news.baou.com/main.php?
> action=recent&msg_recent=&rid=20679
>
> What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I
> exclude fighting among ourselves in a destructive way)

Encourage anyone who is worried about their security to surf safely
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_1600000/newsid_1607200/1607213.stm

Fred
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: James D. Forrester

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

geni wrote:
> On 2/6/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2/6/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> As long as the name is within wikipedia policy the people involved in
>>> the project can call it what they like.
>> The difference between "can" and "should" is not insignificant.
>>
>> --
>> Sam
>
> Sure but the name appears to be the one they want so I see no reason
> to stop them useing it. As I said no complaints to the helpdesk so
> they appear to be doing better than other groups.

It doesn't need to cause specific complaints to engender an atmosphere
of bad faith assumption and a lack of wikilove. Not that the name
necessarily /does/ do that, but...

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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from_name: Branko Kokanovic

body:
hi all (my fist post here)
First, my understanding (from irc and bugzilla) is that there's nobody
working on texvc. I was going to fix bug (or to add feature, if you
like it better) which can be found on more places in bugzilla:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=798
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2458
...

Problem is regarding UTF and localization, but since every languages
has its own latex package, i was thinking of somehow general approach.
OK, I'm not going to go into details right now, first I'm interested:
Am I allowed to work on texvc?
To whom to consult for details (if any)?
Will you accept my patches (of course, if they work:) (I don't want to
do it just for myself)?
If my mail is on wrong mailing list, where to ask?

Thanks in advance, Kokanovic Branko

--
"Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you
hear them speak." -Anonymous


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
On 2/6/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > Please read the user page policy:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_page
> >
> > Quote:
> > "In general it is considered polite to avoid substantially editing
> > another's user page without their permission, but feel free to correct
> > typos and other mistakes."
> >
> > Yes, I violated [[Don't be a dick.]] So did Drini.
>
> I'm not sure how Drini violated "don't be a dick". All he did was remove
> a rather uncivil userbox from your user page, and repeated his action
> when you re-added it (twice). You then proceeded to call him a
> "sanctimonious jerk".

I just take it very personally when people edit my userpage. The
problem of false attachment, and all that. I think the last person to
delete content from my userpage without asking was LMS. Back then that
was worse than making people unhappy by calling them names (which, I
might note, I wasn't doing).


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do

body:
On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >>>> By "it" I meant "your personal crusade", not "the CVU", although I
> >>>> suspect you already knew that.
> >>>
> >>> Well, since you're willing to give me enough credit to recognize
> >>> antecedents, maybe you'd be willing to consider that I'm making a
> >>> serious point, one that's been agreed with by other people. Are they
> >>> blatantly trolling too?
> >>
> >> If you just posted and said "Counter-Vandalism Unit is an
> >> unnecessarily aggressive name under which to organize counter-
> >> vandalism" that would be one thing. But you started with "Counter
> >> Vandalism Unit sucks and is a bunch of evil militarist jackbooted
> >> fascists!!" to get a bunch of responses on the mailing list. That's
> >> the textbook definition of trolling, or as we used to call it, "just
> >> trying to get attention".
> >
> > That's not what I wrote. Mischaracterizing other people's words is the
> > textbook definition of a strawman argument, or as we used to call it
> > "just making stuff up."
> >
> > Okay, we didn't call it "stuff".
>
> Forgive me for paraphrasing.

If I had the authority, I would forgive you your trespasses, but I'm
just another humble soul. Not as humble as John S. Novak, though. I do
forgive you for paraphrasing. I hope you'll consider taking my
criticisms seriously. My sense of outrage at the project's name was
entirely earnest, by the way.

Forgive me for dropping in from time to time and expressing, like Rip
Van Winkle, my shock at how things change. The fact that I complain
loudly about the things I think are wrong and don't loudly praise the
bulk of things that are good (and there is, of course, much new
good--templating, categorizing, bots, the Foundation, etc. are being
used well the majority of the time) shouldn't be taken as a
characterization of my overall opinion of How Things Are Going.

But the changes I think are pure unmitigated crap, or simply pulling
the project in the wrong direction, do upset me and I will rail
against.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
> The only objection I have to this is that sometimes, an admin makes a
> mistake (say, for example, a 3RR block when in reality, only three
> reverts
> and a legitimate edit was made). I've had editors contact me
> wanting to
> contribute to Wikipedia, but find they can't because of a wrong
> blocking. In
> these cases, I usually go ahead and unblock them, and then leave a
> nice
> message on the blocking admin's talk page. Any other delay due to
> communication between admins I think is unfair to the blocked editors.

Given the way most people reply on listservs, I can't blame you for
not seeing this yet, but  I've already addressed this concern in my
1RR edition :)

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On Mon, 6 Feb 2006, David Gerard wrote:

> Heh. Since you bring it up, I'll give the list the comparable
> experience of Uncyclopedia.
>
The following is probably off-topic, but since the subject line is
appropriate to my subject, I'm hi-jacking this branch of the thread.

Last weekend I took part in the RecentChangesCamp that was held here
in Portland, where I had the oportunity to talk to Ward Cunningham &
heard from him his experience with his own pioneering Wiki at
www.c2.com. (He may have discussed it at Wikimania last summer, but the
first time I heard about the following was last weekend.)

One thing he had done -- much as Jimbo did a few years ago with Wikipedia --
was to identify a number of contributors (either 14 in number, or a total
of folks whose average time dedicated to Wikiwiki totalled an FTE of 14, I'm
a little hazy here) who showed sufficient knowledge of how the Wiki & the
community worked, & made them his assistants to help him deal with spam,
vandalism, & other malicious behavior towards the Wiki. This allowed him
to step back & devote more time to other things, & because he wasn't as
closely involved in the day-to-day activities of the wiki on c2.com he
was spreading the word of the success of the Wiki way, how the community
was successfully managing itself & dealing with its problems. And he
honestly believed this.

He had this utopian belief corrected after a couple of years when the Wiki
was rocked by a severe flamewar over a "trivial matter" that had gone as
far as the opposing sides each creating bots to revert the edits of the
other side. (For the record, the controversy was over whether to keep or
delete a node that was a parody of the movie "Fight Club", called
"BoogerClub".) As he spent time not only to get to the bottom of the
matter, but also to bring himself up to date with the Wiki & the community,
he discovered that the struggle to keep the Wiki usable & in order had
burned out his assistants in their long, hard & unappreciated efforts.

Ward said he was able to help his assistants by adding a simple bit of
code which prevented bots from functioning on his Wiki -- which stopped
the spamming immediately & brought a cease-fire to the major flamewar,
but the damage had been done. People left, & WikiWiki "plateaued" in
growth, losing something of its original excitement & attraction.

I've held off on sharing this story with this mailling list because I
feel that in telling it, it should have a moral or a lesson -- but I'm
not smart enough to point to it. Except to belabor the obvious point
that Wiki communities aren't as self-regulating as people think they are.

Geoff

(P.S. I talked about Wikipedia at the conference to quite a few interested
people, & I hope I didn't help perpetuate too many myths. You can
check the record at www.recentchangescamp.org & learn for yourself.)


body:
On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> I agree. I think it would be very sweet if two Wikipedians fell in
> love on a talk page. But only if they were both above the statutory
> age of consent.

As per the Wikiholic test, sockpuppets don't count.

--
Sam


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 40

body:
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 10:25:43 -0500
> From: The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <dfd0b40602060725s466867c0p338a18bd57250ead at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I don't think this rises to an ArbCom situation, but I'm not sure what
> the current mores are on Wikipedia. I put something relatively rude on
> my userpage (I put up a version of the "Counter Vandalism Unit"
> userbox with the text "The Cunctator is a non-member of the Retarded
> Fascism Unit").
>
> Drini removed the box without any warning or discussion.
>
> I put it back, asking him not to edit my page.
>
> Drini removed the box again without any warning or discussion.
>
> I put it back, leaving a message at his user_talk asking him not to
> edit my page and to discuss the matter at my user_talk page, and
> protected my userpage.
>
> Drini removed the box again without any warning.
>
> I don't really mind, but my understanding is that Drini's actions were
> rude as well. I'd like to be able to express my opinions on my
> homepage with a reasonable lack of censorship.
>
>

ok, let's get things straight:
1. I did remove the rude userbox  21:13, 4 February 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AThe_Cunctator&diff=38194710&oldid=38072376

2. Then you put it back: 19:50, 5 February 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AThe_Cunctator&diff=38349522&oldid=38194710

3. And left the note on my page:  20:01, 5 February 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ADrini&diff=38351177&oldid=38346457

4: I proceeded to remove it again... 20:53, 5 February 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AThe_Cunctator&diff=38358855&oldid=38349522

5. ...explaining VERY politely my reasons on his talk page 20:59, 5
February 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AThe_Cunctator&diff=38359688&oldid=38333073

6. Then he puts it back: 03:45, 6 February 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AThe_Cunctator&diff=38411699&oldid=38358855
(and he never replied me back)

(....) fast forward

7.  He puts a less rude version 15:11, 6 February 2006 :
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:The_Cunctator&diff=next&oldid=38425655
and even though he namecalls me a jerk

8. He apologizes later 15:17, 6 February 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ADrini&diff=38469269&oldid=38351177

I'm sorry if I came as rude, and I didn't mean to editwar. I was just
being firm in that such namecalling was uncalled for.

For the record I also commented what I was doing on WP:AN/I:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&diff=38433635&oldid=38433480
which by he way, was inmediately attacked by several new accounts.
Well, that's what happened.


body:
On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >> Anyone using Wikipedia to initiate sexual contacts through
> >> Wikipedia will get a very permanent ban on their person.
> >
> > Cripes. And it's Valentine's Day next week, too.
>
> I agree. I think it would be very sweet if two Wikipedians fell in
> love on a talk page. But only if they were both above the statutory
> age of consent.

Unlikely. Excluding anon IPs [[Love]] is linked to from exaclt 9 user
talk pages.

--
geni


body:
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Philip Welch wrote:

> > > Anyone using Wikipedia to initiate sexual contacts through
> > > Wikipedia will get a very permanent ban on their person.
> >
> > Cripes. And it's Valentine's Day next week, too.
>
> I agree. I think it would be very sweet if two Wikipedians fell in love
> on a talk page. But only if they were both above the statutory age of
> consent.

In Florida? Or are we going to be governed by whatsoever laws are
applicable to the individuals? ;-)

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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from_name: Alex Schenck

body:
It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.

I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community
will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term
"fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back).
Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel
warring.

Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of
the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of
the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense
of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word
was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they
were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean,
come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David
Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some
oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not
liking what we see.

Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for
herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on
writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes.
What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people
more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox
purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!)
and arguing with others.

At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a
band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of
adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?

Here ends my long and horrible rant.

--Alex, aka Linuxbeak


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 43

body:
> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 14:27:40 -0500
> From: The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] CVU -> WP:CVP? (was The Counter Vandalism
>         Unit? Whaa?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <dfd0b40602061127p3578b884h9d9fea68d913390d at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> This is getting somewhere--now if we can come up with a positive,
> rather than negative name, we'd be perfect.
>
> Pretty much the best kinds of project names are ones that are either
> expressly positive (i.e. their name assumes good faith, doesn't create
> an us/them dichotomy), or failing that are ironicly ugly (like
> "bureaucrat", "benevolent dictator", or "spelling nazi" or "mediation
> cabal").
>

Well, for the record, I?m working wit ha few people on [[WP:CUV]] (NOT CVU)
not looking for repalce CVU, since that is NOT our goals, but rather
to provide an alternate venue and central resource without the
fighting imagery


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Casting call

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>
>>David Gerard - [[Pete Postlethwaite]]
>>Lest any of
>>the subjects be offended by my choices, I'm not necessarily saying you
>>look like these people. My focus was on picking capable actors who could
>>be made to look more or less like you. This is for entertainment value only.
>>
>>
>Hmph! [[Jason Isaacs]] if you please. Including the overwhelming hubris.
>
>
Of course, Jason Isaacs is absolutely perfect! Please forgive the
oversight, I've already fired the casting director.

Now you can look forward to a fantastic scene in the sequel, Wikipedia:
Return of the Cabal, where the members of the Arbitration Committee
suddenly appear, hooded and masked, when Jimbo presses a secret
combination of keys on his laptop. Then we have a tremendous wheel war
between Jimbo and Lir (using one of his stealth sysop accounts) in which
Jimbo tries to delete [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]] and replace it
with Totalitarian Unificationist Left-wing Objectivist Jewish
Micronation Terrorist point of view. (By the way, if anybody knows what
that point of view would look like, please contact me, our scriptwriters
for the third movie are kind of stuck.)

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wheel warring

body:
Just a tad harsh and overreactionary?

Just one reverse warrants a desysopping?! Jeez...

On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> I've proposed a strict policy against wheel warring at
> [[Wikipedia:Proposed wheel warring policy]]:
>
> 1. Any given use of administrative powers cannot be reverted or
> reversed by another admin unless the issue is brought to adequate
> discussion.
> 1. a. Blocks may be extended without discussion, but they cannot be
> shortened or lifted.
> 1. b. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
> 2. Any administrator who reverses another administrator's use of
> admin powers without any discussion shall be desysopped immediately
> without further review.
> 3. Once discussion is opened, a final decision cannot be made until
> either the parties involved have reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a
> specific intervening decision is made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration
> Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> Directors. (This means that mere interpretation or extrapolation of
> something Jimbo said previously does not warrant admin reversion.)
> Any administrator who reverts another admin's use of administrative
> powers before this has happened shall be desysopped immediately
> without further review.
> 4. Administrators desysopped under this policy must wait three months
> before starting the process to regain admin status.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Ben Emmel

subject: [WikiEN-l] What ever happened to Article Validation? (EOM)

body:
Does anyone know if this extension is still in the works, going to be
implemented, or shelved? Because the way some things look right now, we need
all the help we can get.

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


body:
On 2/6/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm afraid I must agree.
>
> As an editor of 3 years I must ask what happened to writing an encyclopedia?
> How come we become more about community just because we're in the top-20 of
> internet sites?
>
> I must say that the community has started trudging along and becoming more
> venomous over the last few months to a year.
>
> If it were me I'd say delete all userboxes except for the babels and mandate
> that users spend more attention on articles and meta issues relating *directly
> to articles
> *
> I don't remember any wars on the term 'fuckwit' but I remember many other
> wars. I also remember before then when Wikipedia stood together in the fact
> of things like vandalism and community upsets. Maybe that time is gone?
>
> Ugh!
>
> On 2/6/06, Alex Schenck <linuxbeak at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
> >
> > I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the
> > community
> > will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term
> > "fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back).
> > Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel
> > warring.
> >
> > Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion
> > of
> > the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired
> > of
> > the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that
> > sense
> > of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's
> > word
> > was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what
> > they
> > were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean,
> > come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as
> > David
> > Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some
> > oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are
> > not
> > liking what we see.
> >
> > Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for
> > herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on
> > writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes.
> > What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people
> > more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox
> > purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"...
> > wtf!)
> > and arguing with others.
> >
> > At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a
> > band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of
> > adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
> >
> > Here ends my long and horrible rant.
> >
Userboxes freak me out too. I don't know that it's become more or less
venomous (at least towards me) -- my criticisms of problems with
Wikipedia seem to still generate similar responses of either praise or
threats to block me and claims of trolling. The difference is that
back in the day only LMS could make threats -- now there's bunches of
people, like arbitrators, who really should avoid making threats
unless they're officially notified. Though I know that's difficult,
since what makes one a good or willing arbitrator is some degree of
willingness to police the land.

There's getting to be a loooot of cruft though. I personally think
that articles should not be allowed to have warnings. Not sure about
the userboxes -- there do need to be ways of coordinating the
community, and mechanisms of "tagging" obviously work super well (see
Flickr) and are very wikilike. Perhaps a semi-official third party
site would be best.

I know we're not myspace, but we shouldn't ignore the successes of
other web-projects.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> I've proposed a strict policy against wheel warring at
> [[Wikipedia:Proposed wheel warring policy]]:
>
> 1. Any given use of administrative powers cannot be reverted or
> reversed by another admin unless the issue is brought to adequate
> discussion.
> 1. a. Blocks may be extended without discussion, but they cannot be
> shortened or lifted.
> 1. b. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
> 2. Any administrator who reverses another administrator's use of
> admin powers without any discussion shall be desysopped immediately
> without further review.
> 3. Once discussion is opened, a final decision cannot be made until
> either the parties involved have reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a
> specific intervening decision is made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration
> Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> Directors. (This means that mere interpretation or extrapolation of
> something Jimbo said previously does not warrant admin reversion.)
> Any administrator who reverts another admin's use of administrative
> powers before this has happened shall be desysopped immediately
> without further review.
> 4. Administrators desysopped under this policy must wait three months
> before starting the process to regain admin status.

This seems unnecessarily harsh and byzantine.

I've never been a fan of mandatory sentences in the real world -- and
we're not talking about real crimes here. Not trying to minimize the
bad feelings that can be engendered, but people should be allowed to
be human.

Why not just use [[Don't be a dick]] and [[Assume good faith]] to
guide decision making?

I think apologies work nicely. Most people cool off in a lot less than
three months.


body:
Along the same vein, what happened to implementing a stable version
guideline?

On 2/6/06, Ben Emmel <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know if this extension is still in the works, going to be
> implemented, or shelved? Because the way some things look right now, we
> need
> all the help we can get.
>
> --
> Ben Emmel
> Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
> bratsche1 at gmail.com
> "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
> -- William Blake
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wheel warring

body:
On the other hand, sometimes it's better (only the first time!) to revert a
block and place a note on the AN with something like "if you still feel the
block is justified, I won't revert again without more discussion"

First time punishment is too harsh

On 2/6/06, Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The 1RR on a protected article seems a bit arbitary and strict, but I
> think
> the rest of the ideas are sound.  Admins need to be held accountable for
> their actions, and they need to present a clean face to the rest of the
> world.  If people look at the admin discussion and find childish
> bickering,
> how do you think they'll feel about the site as a whole?
>
> On 2/6/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Just a tad harsh and overreactionary?
> >
> > Just one reverse warrants a desysopping?! Jeez...
> >
> > On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> > > I've proposed a strict policy against wheel warring at
> > > [[Wikipedia:Proposed wheel warring policy]]:
> > >
> > > 1. Any given use of administrative powers cannot be reverted or
> > > reversed by another admin unless the issue is brought to adequate
> > > discussion.
> > > 1. a. Blocks may be extended without discussion, but they cannot be
> > > shortened or lifted.
> > > 1. b. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
> > > 2. Any administrator who reverses another administrator's use of
> > > admin powers without any discussion shall be desysopped immediately
> > > without further review.
> > > 3. Once discussion is opened, a final decision cannot be made until
> > > either the parties involved have reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a
> > > specific intervening decision is made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration
> > > Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> > > Directors. (This means that mere interpretation or extrapolation of
> > > something Jimbo said previously does not warrant admin reversion.)
> > > Any administrator who reverts another admin's use of administrative
> > > powers before this has happened shall be desysopped immediately
> > > without further review.
> > > 4. Administrators desysopped under this policy must wait three months
> > > before starting the process to regain admin status.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Philip L. Welch
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > ~Ilya N.
> > http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
> > http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jay Converse
> I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> I've proposed a strict policy against wheel warring at
> [[Wikipedia:Proposed wheel warring policy]]:
>
> 1. Any given use of administrative powers cannot be reverted or
> reversed by another admin unless the issue is brought to adequate
> discussion.
> 1. a. Blocks may be extended without discussion, but they cannot be
> shortened or lifted.
> 1. b. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
> 2. Any administrator who reverses another administrator's use of
> admin powers without any discussion shall be desysopped immediately
> without further review.
> 3. Once discussion is opened, a final decision cannot be made until
> either the parties involved have reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a
> specific intervening decision is made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration
> Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> Directors. (This means that mere interpretation or extrapolation of
> something Jimbo said previously does not warrant admin reversion.)
> Any administrator who reverts another admin's use of administrative
> powers before this has happened shall be desysopped immediately
> without further review.
> 4. Administrators desysopped under this policy must wait three months
> before starting the process to regain admin status.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

The only objection I have to this is that sometimes, an admin makes a
mistake (say, for example, a 3RR block when in reality, only three reverts
and a legitimate edit was made). I've had editors contact me wanting to
contribute to Wikipedia, but find they can't because of a wrong blocking. In
these cases, I usually go ahead and unblock them, and then leave a nice
message on the blocking admin's talk page. Any other delay due to
communication between admins I think is unfair to the blocked editors.

This is an international project, and we all can't expect to be online at
the same time, what with time zones, sleeping, eating, school, work and
such. I don't think I'll be able to say to that blocked editor "Sorry, I
can't unblock you for fear of losing sysop status for at least three months.
You'll have to wait while Admin XYZ, who is currently sleeping in
Asia/America/Europe to check his email/talk page and unblock you."

But otherwise, a strict wheel-warring policy is needed. Admins aren't above
the law. Our disciplinary procedures should at least attempt to show this.

We are now at the age where adminship is truly a "big deal".
--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


from_name: Joanne

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Gallagher" <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Should we be declaring war on vandals?

> That is an excellent point --- but it's not just Cool_Cat.  In fact
> Cool_Cat himself is quite good when it comes to vandals; he's written the
> vandalism-sensing bot which I gather is quite useful, raised awareness of
> the problem of vandalism, and done other neat stuff that I'm sure I'd
> remember if I hadn't just returned from a hard night of softball.  I
> haven't noticed any harmful interactions between him personally and
> vandals.
>
> The problem is that his "war on vandals!" attitude is shared by the
> "Counter-Vandalism Unit".  Now, CVU boasts quite a few great people, who
> are calm and efficient and cluey and would really be doing the same job
> whether CVU existed or not.  But it *also* includes many newbies who've
> arrived, seen an interesting-looking clique, and signed on, jumping into
> the vandal-fighting thing without really knowing anything else about
> Wikipedia.  These people, as well as being bloody annoying when they get
> underfoot (such as demanding admins speedy articles or block users on
> their say-so, regardless of policy or, more importantly, Common Sense),
> are also the ones most likely to bite newbies.

Agreed, I've seen this happen. I've been active in the CVU quite a while,
and I've seen both the 'few great people' and the 'newbies' that Mark is
referring to. I always hope that the CVU provides ways for the first group
to help and correct the latter, and I've seen evidence of those newbies
turning into quite useful vandal fighters after some helpful hints. However,
I do agree and recognise that the current structure, name and ways that the
CVU presents itself, could be displeasing to other people.

People in the CVU, like Cool Cat but also some others have been, very
helpful in limiting the amount of harm vandals, testing school kids and
other 'less helpful editors' do. In fact, I think the good the group is
doing, outweighs the bad by far. I also see some value in having some
structure, as opposed to some others on this list, since problematic newbie
vandal 'fighters'  will always exist. I personally rather see them join a
group in which their actions can be seen and, if necessary, corrected, then
doing so on their own, undetected, in the wrong way for who knows how long.

In my opinion, CVU activities and people could benefit from another name and
structure (and there are people working on that), but regarding CVU as the
source of all evil, like the Cunctator appears to do, is not likely the way
to accomplish anything...

Regards,
JoanneB


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Counter-Stupidity Unit (was Worst. Userbox. Ever.)

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard

> That's pretty much what I'm asking for ;-) Preferably people
> less inclined than me to call a spade a fucking shovel.

Don't ask people to do this. Tell them. I think that a lot of people who ask
for power shouldn't have it. Where would we be if juries were made up of
those who held their hands up to do it?

Now that I've read through that particular discussion, I'm utterly disgusted
about some of the opinions expressed, and I'll refrain from further comment.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
>> Are we here to have fun or to write an encyclopaedia?
>
> Actually, to have fun.  We are unpaid volunteers.  This is a
> hobby.  If it
> isn't fun, if it isn't enjoyable, then there is no reason to stick
> around
> and no way to build this encyclopaedia.
> No fun, no community = no encyclopaedia.

I propose a new Wikipedia policy:

*Everybody have fun tonight.
*Everybody Wang Chung tonight.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Peter Dietze

body:
Sorry, but i want to be asked in french.
Regards!
Peter

2006/2/6, wiki at marcusbuck.org <wiki at marcusbuck.org>:
>
> I already questioned this before, but nobody answered or finished my
> request.
>
> Here again:
>
> Could somebody with the right for it please deactivate the Captcha at the
> new
> users registration page on nds.wikipedia.org like it is deactivated on
> other
> wikipedias? There is everyday activity on the wiki and we can handle good
> with
> the incoming spam and vandalism. There is no need for this kind of
> barrier.
> Thanks
>
> Slomox
> Marcus Buck
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dangers to Children

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> How much truth is there to this:
>
> The Parents for the Online Safety of Children (POSC) organization is
> worried about parents letting their children into a website that is a
> known gathering for pedophiles. Any pedophile can easily obtain a
> child's IP address and use it to locate the child's place of
> residence outside of the internet. Pedophiles may also solicit
> children for sex or attempt to contact them through using WikiPedia
> as a medium, or even find out their e-mail address or instant
> messenger screen name.
>
> Since WikiPedia allows pedophiles to edit WikiPedia pages and view
> the IP addresses of children freely, we recommend that you use
> filtering software to block WikiPedia from access in your household
> or school.
>
> The internet is already a dangerous lurking ground for pedophiles;
> statistics show that about 1 in 5 children are solicited for sex
> online, and with the growth of the unregulated WikiPedia, that number
> can only skyrocket.
>
> Since WikiPedia refuses to address the issue of pedophiles within its
> ranks and the allowance of random editing to pages, we can only
> recommend parents to withhold access to WikiPedia.org for the time
> being.
>
> Excerpts from http://news.baou.com/main.php?
> action=recent&msg_recent=&rid=20679
>
> What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I
> exclude fighting among ourselves in a destructive way)
>
> Fred

BAOU is a coalition of trolls. Having said that, I think [[WP:NOT]]
censored for the protection of minors covers this sufficiently.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Jay Converse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wheel warring

body:
The 1RR on a protected article seems a bit arbitary and strict, but I think
the rest of the ideas are sound.  Admins need to be held accountable for
their actions, and they need to present a clean face to the rest of the
world.  If people look at the admin discussion and find childish bickering,
how do you think they'll feel about the site as a whole?

On 2/6/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just a tad harsh and overreactionary?
>
> Just one reverse warrants a desysopping?! Jeez...
>
> On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> > I've proposed a strict policy against wheel warring at
> > [[Wikipedia:Proposed wheel warring policy]]:
> >
> > 1. Any given use of administrative powers cannot be reverted or
> > reversed by another admin unless the issue is brought to adequate
> > discussion.
> > 1. a. Blocks may be extended without discussion, but they cannot be
> > shortened or lifted.
> > 1. b. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
> > 2. Any administrator who reverses another administrator's use of
> > admin powers without any discussion shall be desysopped immediately
> > without further review.
> > 3. Once discussion is opened, a final decision cannot be made until
> > either the parties involved have reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a
> > specific intervening decision is made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration
> > Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> > Directors. (This means that mere interpretation or extrapolation of
> > something Jimbo said previously does not warrant admin reversion.)
> > Any administrator who reverts another admin's use of administrative
> > powers before this has happened shall be desysopped immediately
> > without further review.
> > 4. Administrators desysopped under this policy must wait three months
> > before starting the process to regain admin status.
> >
> > --
> > Philip L. Welch
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> ~Ilya N.
> http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
> http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jay Converse
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On Feb 6, 2006, at 10:41 PM, Guettarda wrote:
> On 2/7/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>>> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>>> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Guettarda
>>
>>> This whole mess has left me feeling bruised and shocked, and
>>> rethinking my role here.  If El C and Carbonite leave we have
>>> lost a lot more than can be counted in them just as
>>> individuals.  El C, for one, made this place fun, and if you
>>> aren't having fun there is not reason to stick around.
>>
>> Are we here to have fun or to write an encyclopaedia?
>
> Actually, to have fun.  We are unpaid volunteers.  This is a hobby.
> If it
> isn't fun, if it isn't enjoyable, then there is no reason to stick
> around
> and no way to build this encyclopaedia.
> No fun, no community = no encyclopaedia.
Actually, that's not *exactly* true; no community = no changes to the
encyclopedia.  It's free content.  The mirrors aren't going anywhere;
the various full(i.e. including history) dumps aren't going anywhere.
This is a point that needs to be remembered.  We are * making more
encyclopedic free content * , that's all.

It certainly needs to be rewarding, or the community will leave - but
fun is hardly the only form of reward that people can have.
Achievement, social recognition, physical stimulation, all of these are
forms of reward. (Not that Wikipedia provides much in the way of
pleasurable physical stimulation, but let's not go there...)

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 2/6/06, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 14:27:40 -0500
> > From: The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] CVU -> WP:CVP? (was The Counter Vandalism
> >         Unit? Whaa?
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Message-ID:
> >         <dfd0b40602061127p3578b884h9d9fea68d913390d at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> >
> > This is getting somewhere--now if we can come up with a positive,
> > rather than negative name, we'd be perfect.
> >
> > Pretty much the best kinds of project names are ones that are either
> > expressly positive (i.e. their name assumes good faith, doesn't create
> > an us/them dichotomy), or failing that are ironicly ugly (like
> > "bureaucrat", "benevolent dictator", or "spelling nazi" or "mediation
> > cabal").
> >
>
> Well, for the record, I?m working wit ha few people on [[WP:CUV]] (NOT CVU)
> not looking for repalce CVU, since that is NOT our goals, but rather
> to provide an alternate venue and central resource without the
> fighting imagery

Great...now if only we could get people less excited about the concept
of vandalism...most of it's just silliness.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] WIKIPEDIA USER ZOE

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> On 2/3/06, asd asdh <chemancheche at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>ZOE IS A TERRORIST SYMPATHIER, BLOCKS AMERICAN PATRIOT FOR REPORTING
>>TERRORIST
>>
> Exactly how did this message get through?
>

Mark got bored? :)

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
This whole mess has left me feeling bruised and shocked, and rethinking my
role here.  If El C and Carbonite leave we have lost a lot more than can be
counted in them just as individuals.  El C, for one, made this place fun,
and if you aren't having fun there is not reason to stick around.

Wheel warring is something that sensible people should not indulge in.  On
the other hand, the ability of admins to undo each others' blocks is one of
the things that make adminship "no big deal".  Piles of regulations, and
people who live to interpret regulations and find loopholes in regulations
do the project no good.  Rather than wheel-warring, clamp down on
inappropriate blocks.  Blocking vandals is an easy decision.  Blocking
people who say "Get the fuck away from me you fucking psycho" are easy to
block.  But the onus needs to be on the first person doing the blocking,
that they get it right, not on the other people involved.  We need to look
at people's actions, look at the number of blocks you had overturned and the
number of blocks you overturned...and if you have more than three blocks
overturned in a fortnight, then someone needs to take you aside an talk to
you.  If you regularly overturn blocks, then someone needs to talk to you.
We are developing a culture where wheel warring is become acceptable.  We
need to change to culture, not by creating new regulations, but by
socialising people away from it.

Page deletion and recreation is another issue.  We cannot fetishise process,
and *fD needs serious reform.  We need to organise a Wikiproject to reform
*fD.  Get people to throw in ideas, and get other people to repackage them.
Do not impose a solution, and make sure that we come up with something so
devoid of ego that no one feels ownership of the idea.  The standard
"propose-and-argue" method has too much ego in it - you fight to defend
"your view".  We need some people to generate ideas and write them up, other
people to try to put together, and others to harmonise the final ideas. Be
editors, not creators.  Or some crap like that.

Despite my efforts to stay on the fringes, I find this whole thing sapping
my energy.  I don't know what it does to people at the centre of it all.
Give it a rest, try to preserve your sanity - and try to think about
collaborative solutions.

Ian


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of MacGyverMagic/Mgm

> On 2/6/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> >
> > > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
> >
> > > That's pretty much what I'm asking for ;-) Preferably people less
> > > inclined than me to call a spade a fucking shovel.
> >
> > Don't ask people to do this. Tell them. I think that a lot
> of people
> > who ask for power shouldn't have it. Where would we be if
> juries were
> > made up of those who held their hands up to do it?
>
>
> If any such unit is created, I'd like Jimbo to appoint its
> intial members.

I wouldn't. Bagehot's views on the role of a monarch are as valid now as
they were 140 years back.

My point is that a posse of level headed citizens are going to be far more
effective in resolving disputes  than a squad of stormtroopers in a
wikicommunity where every editor is theoretically equal. Once you get
admins, let alone some "Anti-Stupidity Squad" with approval right from the
top, throwing their weight around, then you are going to get resentment from
those who feel that they are being unfairly stepped upon. And labelled
stupid.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we be declaring war on vandals?

body:
G'day Chris,

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> [[User:Cool Cat]].
>
> One person? It seems a more productive path would be to discuss it on
> his talk page rather than discussing it behind his back on the mailing
> list - as far as I know, he's not subscribed.

That is an excellent point --- but it's not just Cool_Cat.  In fact
Cool_Cat himself is quite good when it comes to vandals; he's written
the vandalism-sensing bot which I gather is quite useful, raised
awareness of the problem of vandalism, and done other neat stuff that
I'm sure I'd remember if I hadn't just returned from a hard night of
softball.  I haven't noticed any harmful interactions between him
personally and vandals.

The problem is that his "war on vandals!" attitude is shared by the
"Counter-Vandalism Unit".  Now, CVU boasts quite a few great people, who
are calm and efficient and cluey and would really be doing the same job
whether CVU existed or not.  But it *also* includes many newbies who've
arrived, seen an interesting-looking clique, and signed on, jumping into
the vandal-fighting thing without really knowing anything else about
Wikipedia.  These people, as well as being bloody annoying when they get
underfoot (such as demanding admins speedy articles or block users on
their say-so, regardless of policy or, more importantly, Common Sense),
are also the ones most likely to bite newbies.

One memorable time --- I have no diff, alas --- I saw a CVU member
berating an anon user for causing "us in CVU" to worry and waste time
dealing with vandalism.  Funnily enough, the reason I remember it is
because I got a little irritated that the user in question really
believed CVU was the be-all and end-all of vandalism-fighting
activities, and didn't give a second thought to the whole newbie-biting
stuff of complaining at a user that his vandalism was causing stress.
There's a little newbie-muncher in all of us.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/251 - Release Date: 4/02/2006


from_name: Joshua Griisser

subject: [WikiEN-l] User conduct RFC straw poll

body:
Ever since the Kelly Martin fiasco, I've had serious misgivings about the wisdom of User Conduct RFCs as a method of dealing with disputes. I'm not alone in this: many scathing comments about the RFC process were posted at the [[Wikipedia:Admin accountability poll]]. Generally, there seems to be a feeling that RFCs are merely fora for the venting of grievances, that the lack of any consequences makes people fail to take the process seriously, and that RFC is often viewed as simply a preliminary step to an arbitration case. I've decided to see if this can be reformed. After an aborted attempt to nominate [[WP:RFC/USER]] for MFD (consensus: bad idea), I've created a straw poll. See [[Wikipedia:User RFC reform]]. Any comments are appreciated.

-C. horridus


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard

> Peter Mackay wrote:
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
>
> >> That's pretty much what I'm asking for ;-) Preferably people less
> >> inclined than me to call a spade a fucking shovel.
>
> >Don't ask people to do this. Tell them. I think that a lot of people
> >who ask for power shouldn't have it. Where would we be if
> juries were
> >made up of those who held their hands up to do it?
>
>
> You underestimate my diplomatic powers when I try. "This user
> is a _native_ speaker of _Bullshit_." We have ways of *asking nicely*.

<grin> I think an appeal to Wikilove should be sufficient. This whole
userbox thing should have been scotched early on before it got to ArbCom
involvement.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: lists at schwen.de

body:
Hello,

we have an ongoing discussion at [[:en:Wikipedia talk:3D Illustrations]] on
the use of anaglyphic 3D images in en. At this time the consensus seems to be
tending towards not using these pictures inlined in articles (to avoid
confusing the lots of readers without 3D glasses and maintaining printable
illustrations), but giving the pictures some exposure by using a new template
analogous to {{commons}} called {{3d_commons}}. (see [[:en:Gorilla]] for a
first example).

I now created a derivative work of the original commons logo, to use in this
template:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Commons-logo-Anaglyph.svg

I realize that this already constitutes a violation of the original
commons-logo license, but I'd like to transfer copyright of my logo the the
Wikimedia foundation as well to make it official. Is that possible? Who'd be
the appropriate person to contact and sort out the mess?

Cheers,
Daniel


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 2/6/06, Ben Emmel <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >
> > I've proposed a strict policy against wheel warring at
> > [[Wikipedia:Proposed wheel warring policy]]:
> >
> > 1. Any given use of administrative powers cannot be reverted or
> > reversed by another admin unless the issue is brought to adequate
> > discussion.
> > 1. a. Blocks may be extended without discussion, but they cannot be
> > shortened or lifted.
> > 1. b. 1RR is strictly enforced on protected pages.
> > 2. Any administrator who reverses another administrator's use of
> > admin powers without any discussion shall be desysopped immediately
> > without further review.
> > 3. Once discussion is opened, a final decision cannot be made until
> > either the parties involved have reached Wikipedia:Consensus or a
> > specific intervening decision is made by the Wikipedia:Arbitration
> > Committee, User:Jimbo Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> > Directors. (This means that mere interpretation or extrapolation of
> > something Jimbo said previously does not warrant admin reversion.)
> > Any administrator who reverts another admin's use of administrative
> > powers before this has happened shall be desysopped immediately
> > without further review.
> > 4. Administrators desysopped under this policy must wait three months
> > before starting the process to regain admin status.
> >
> > --
> > Philip L. Welch
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
> The only objection I have to this is that sometimes, an admin makes a
> mistake (say, for example, a 3RR block when in reality, only three reverts
> and a legitimate edit was made). I've had editors contact me wanting to
> contribute to Wikipedia, but find they can't because of a wrong blocking. In
> these cases, I usually go ahead and unblock them, and then leave a nice
> message on the blocking admin's talk page. Any other delay due to
> communication between admins I think is unfair to the blocked editors.
>
> This is an international project, and we all can't expect to be online at
> the same time, what with time zones, sleeping, eating, school, work and
> such. I don't think I'll be able to say to that blocked editor "Sorry, I
> can't unblock you for fear of losing sysop status for at least three months.
> You'll have to wait while Admin XYZ, who is currently sleeping in
> Asia/America/Europe to check his email/talk page and unblock you."
>
> But otherwise, a strict wheel-warring policy is needed. Admins aren't above
> the law. Our disciplinary procedures should at least attempt to show this.
>
> We are now at the age where adminship is truly a "big deal".

It really doesn't have to be.


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] User conduct RFC straw poll

body:
On 2/6/06, Joshua Griisser <JDGRII8338 at ngcsu.edu> wrote:
> Ever since the Kelly Martin fiasco,

I must say, I would rather prefer it if my name were not used in
conjunction with "fiasco" any more than necessary.

Just a thought.

Kelly