from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 3/19/2006 12:11:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> datrio at gmail.com writes:
>
> The  Polish Wikimedia Meetup will take place on August 30 - May 2,  AFAIR.
>
> Thats a long meetup

There are some tough naming disputes to settle...   --SJ


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Wiki conferences this August, and logos (fwd msg)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] academic inquiry msg

body:
2006/3/19, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com>:

> The IP address of the sender
> (219.79.22.41<http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=219.79.22.41>)
> is from Hong Kong, and AFAIK, China blocks wikimedia projects.

Mainland China and Hong Kong are acting mostly independently in that
respect, so I think it would not be blocked in Hong Kong

> So, how can a
> person from Hong Kong possibly access wikipedia extensively so as to analyse
> the contributions and nature of wikipedia?

See above; interestingly, on another university in Hong Kong (the
University of Hong Kong) there is also research into Wikipedia, led by
Andrew Lih ([[w:en:User:Fuzheado]]).

> and moreover, he says that he is
> sending it to only 100 wikipedians. This can make the result very different
> from the actual fact.

There will always be large differences, because people who answer an
enquiry like this are not a random sample from the total population of
people having been asked.

> should i participate in the enquiry?

That should be your free choice, in my opinion.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


list: foundation-l

body:
On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Dariusz Siedlecki wrote:

> I'm not sure we really can ;).  Well, this will be a pretty... "Free"
> conference. There's no attendance fee, anyone can come and leave
> whenever they want...  I'll catch you on IRC, so we can talk more
> about it.

Ahh, cool.  (I thought this was something else, at the end of August :)

--SJ


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] To Gerard re: Moldovan wiki

body:
This is incorrect, after Pavel made a big fuss by trying to move
Cyrillic pages to Latin names and replacing their entire contents with
Latin copied directly from rowp, the old idea of "no Latin content, go
to rowp for that" was sort of amended so that now both are hosted at
mowiki. See for example the main page in Latin:
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_principal%C4%83_-_latin

Now, I for one think it's sort of ridiculous, but it shouldn't count
for nothing.

Mark

On 19/03/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > That's a reason to add more content, not delete existing content.
> >
> > Chris
>
>
> Yes, maybe. The dispute, however, the way I see it at least, is not over the
> content per se, but rather the situation it's placed in, that is:
>
> 1) That the language is called "Moldovan" (I believe, however, calling it
> Romanian and writing with Cyrillic would be even more controversial,
> Romanian nationalists claim otherwise)
>
> 2) That Cyrillic is hosted on the main mo.wiki subdomain, and no Latin
> content is hosted on this subdomain (Latin is the official, majority
> script). Note that Latin is, however, listed first in the interface.
>
> The problem has also, I believe, been augmented by a series of Mark's
> actions, although I believe they were in good faith (i.e. the interface was
> changed just so that it uses different terms to the Romanian Wikipedia, and
> many of the words don't make sense even to Moldovans).
>
> Which is why I think a good compromise would be the subdomain solution.
> However, it seems that it was agreed that the existing mo.wiki would be
> locked down.
>
> --
> > Chris Jenkinson
> > chris at starglade.org
> >
> > "Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
> >   -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia?

body:
Hoi,
Every relation is unique. There may be similarities but they are
differences at the same time. What you call Romanian is about people /
country what we are doing in the WMF is about language.

When there are some people that like to read Moldovan, there is no
reason why we should discriminate against them. The political
relevance it has, it has only because you making it relevant. The fact
that many people say the same thing does not mean that they are right.
The fact that politicans say things does not mean it is true.

On a larger scale, should it really matter what you or Mark believe
about nationality and ethnicity. What matters is that we allow the
other to have his or her POV. The main thing relevant is this POV in
the way of writing NPOV articles. If you argue that it cannot be NPOV
because of the language used, the argument would be a two-sided affair
and it would make everything you have written suspect as well.

I am interested in words, in lexicology. Having words that are used or
have been used makes sense. When Moldovan literature exists, there is
the possibility to get enough words in a digital way so that we can do
things. We could build spellcheckers for instance. Where you would
argue that nobody wants to write Moldovan, I would argue that Moldovan
has been written and therefore there is enough that can be OCR'd and
spellchecked. There is enough to want to collect Moldovan words and
find the words that have a different meaning in that context.

In the Netherlands there was this period where the protestants
destroyed religious imagery because of reasons of religion. Roman
statues in the Vatican have missing genitalia because of the
insistence of prudety. The attitude of denial of others is what
destroys a heritage that may be thought important in 100 years time.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 3/19/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/3/19, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> >
> > If we had such poor function in articles related to Bosnia, IE, that
> > they were dominated by Serbian ultranationalist trolls, they would
> > very likely say "Bosnian is essentially the same as Serbian" -- there
> > *are* relatively few differences, many of them are artificial, etc.
>
>
> I think this links in to what I believe is the source of a lot of the
> confusion related to Moldova(n) - the fact that the relationship between
> Moldova and Romania is unique in the world, and there is no comparable case.
> The Bosnia-Serbia case is different - Bosniaks are undoubtedly a separate
> nation from Serbs, whereas Moldovans are still engaging in the process of
> nation-building (or maybe moving away from it... the problem is that even in
> the current confusion over nationality, the country is being pulled both
> ways, one way towards a Romanian national identity, the other way towards a
> separate Moldovan identity). So, this is why a lot of Romanians feel they
> have authority to write about Moldovan subjects, because they consider
> Moldovans to be the same nation as them.
>
> Mark, of course, believes, from what I know, that there really is no
> Romanian nationality, that the present "Romanian" ethnicity is really
> Wallachian, and that Moldovans are hence different to Wallachians/Romanians,
> and hence any form of Romanian intervention into Moldovan affairs is
> (Wallachian) irredentism (consider, however, that current Wallachia is just
> one of three regions of modern Romania, and is neither the most prosperous
> nor the most significantly over-represented region in Romanian culture and
> politics).
>
> I think a similar situation to Moldova is that of Kosovo. That is, Kosovo is
> to Albania as Moldova is to Romania, in many ways. Many people in Kosovo
> would consider themselves Kosovars about 15 years after independence (or
> maybe even now). Also, Just imagine for a second that during Yugoslav times,
> the Kosovars had been taught that their language was called "Kosovar" and
> made to write it using Cyrillic letters. That's sort of the situation we
> have in Moldova now.
>
> Ronline
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Shinjiman Ho

subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposed code changes for the OutputPage.php

body:
Hi all,

I am a new comer for contributing the code for MediaWiki.

(don't mind if my English is not good enough)
I am having a proposed changes for the function headElement() function,
which accepts various language while in different language code. The main
propose of this changes is to display the correct language/font correctly.
This problem is already exists in the Chinese wikis, which the language is
in Chinese, however the browsers (at least IE and Firefox browsers) are
detected as a Simplified Chinese webpage.

The problem have been discussed in its local Wikipedia pages:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88/%E6%8A%80%E6%9C%AF/%E5%AD%98%E6%A1%A3/2005%E5%B9%B412%E6%9C%88#.E7.B9.81.E9.AB.94.E7.B6.B2.E9.A0.81.E8.83.BD.E5.90.A6.E6.94.B9.E6.88.90.E6.96.B0.E7.B4.B0.E6.98.8E.E9.AB.94.EF.BC.9F

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E7%B9%81%E7%AE%80%E4%BD%93%E8%BD%AC%E6%8D%A2%E8%AF%B7%E6%B1%82#-.7Btw:.E8.A7.92_.3D_hk:.E8.A7.92_.E2.89.A0_cn:.EF.A0.B3.7D-

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88/%E6%8A%80%E6%9C%AF#.E6.9C.89.E9.97.9C.E4.B8.AD.E6.96.87.E7.B6.AD.E5.9F.BA.E7.9A.84.E5.AD.97.E9.AB.94.E9.A1.AF.E7.A4.BA.E5.95.8F.E9.A1.8C

(All these webpages are from Chinese Wikipedia, in Chinese language)
And according to those pages, the users generally have a consensus to having
a change of display the language/font when it's in Traditional Chinese.

The display language has been tested under Internet Explorer and Firefox,
the results have been shown below:

Key:
IE = Internet Explorer
FF = Mozilla Firefox
SC = Simplified Chinese
TC = Traditional Chinese
TC-HKSCS = Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong Suppmelmentary Character Set
! = There's some problem when displaying the language of the webpage, the
language is incorrect

zh: SC(IE), SC(FF)
zh-hant: TC(IE), TC(FF)
zh-hans: TC(IE)!, SC(FF)
zh-cn: SC(IE), SC(FF)
zh-tw: TC(IE), TC(FF)
zh-hk: SC(IE)!, TC-HKSCS(FF)
zh-mo: SC(IE)!, SC(FF)!
zh-sg: SC(IE), SC(FF)

however, the Internet Explorer browser does not perfectly supporting the
zh-hans and zh-hant tags respectively. So to fix this language/font problem,
we need a several PHP scripts to display that properly. the steps are
indicated below:

1. Detects if a user is logged on or not, if so do the display language-code
check against the language value in user perferences;
2. If the user is not logged on, do the display language-code check against
the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE value;
3. If the browser does not support the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE (for very old
browser only). Automatically fallback to global language.

For display language code checking:
1. Detect is that a non zh-cn ot zh-tw installation, if so return the global
language;
2. Do the match for the language against several language-codes, if matches
return the display language code;
3. When none of them above matches, then automatically fallback to the
global language.

(this part of code can also performed besides the Chinese language)

For solving this problem, I've wrote a piece of code to there, however,
there's no idea which file are better inserting these pieces of code, or in
a seprate file. After I have had suggestions from here, I will put my code
into Bugzilla to do the checkout of my piece of code.

thanks :)

Shinjiman

--
http://meta.wikimedia.org/User:Shinjiman
http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Shinjiman


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
G'day Phil,

> On Mar 15, 2006, at 3:55 PM, Dan Jacobson wrote:
>
>>Regarding http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Captcha/help :
>>it says "Please contact the site administrators for assistance if this
>>is unexpectedly preventing you from making legitimate posts." but
>>doesn't have a button to do so.
>>
>>Anyway, e.g., I have images turned off in my browser, so come up with
>>a word quiz.
>>
>>Hmm, wikibooks not wikipedia? OK sorry.
>
> You have images turned off in your browser? Are you using Netscape
> 4.7 or something?

Alternatively, he could be on dial-up.  Or he could be emotionally
scarred from the *many* times over the past year that Wikipedia pages
have stalled in loading because images wouldn't download.  Or he could
simply like browsing text-only, and really, who can blame him?

> There are many important features waiting for our developers to
> implement. Supporting 1990's era web browsing is not one of them. I
> suggest you use a modern browser to browse Wikimedia sites in the
> future.

We strive to include everyone, regardless of their intentions:
neo-Nazis, paedophiles, corporate propagandists, physics kooks, road
warriors, LaRouche tragics, Randroids, trolls, even Tories.  But people
using set-ups that differ from that of Phil Welch, well ... obviously
*they're* up to no good and need to be squashed.

You need to approach Wikipedia in good faith, and the best way to
establish that faith is to browse with Firefox.  It's the choice of Phil
Welch, Mark Gallagher, and Willy on Wheels!

Firefox!  It's what's for dinner.

--
Mark Gallagher,  who used to be an elitist Lynx-using asshole on Linux

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


body:
> Note: '^' means "start of word", and "$" end of word, and the rules are
> intended to be applied from top to bottom to reduce ambiguity.

> ? = ? (all occurances of ? in a latin text can be treated as if they were ? during conversion)
> ?? <-> ghiu
> ?? <-> chiu
> ?? <-> ghia
> ?? <-> chia
> ?? <-> ghe
> ?? <-> ghi
> ?? <- ?in
> ?? <- ?im
> ?? <-> iii$
> ??$ <-> ii$
> ? <-> ^ia
> ?? <-> aia
> ?? <-> iia
> ?? <-> ?ia
> ?? <-> uia
> ?? <-> eia
> ?? <-> oia
> ?? <-> ?ia
> ?? <-> ia$
> ? <-> ^iu
> ?? <-> aiu
> ?? <-> iiu
> ?? <-> ?iu
> ?? <-> uiu
> ?? <-> eiu
> ?? <-> oiu
> ?? <-> ?iu
> ? <-> ^ie
> ?? <-> aie
> ?? <-> iie
> ?? <-> ?ie
> ?? <-> uie
> ?? <-> eie
> ?? <-> oie
> ?? <-> ?ie
> ??? <-> aio
> ??? <-> iio
> ??? <-> ?io
> ??? <-> uio
> ??? <-> eio
> ??? <-> oio
> ??? <-> ?io
> ?? <-> che
> ?? <-> chi
> ?? <-> cea
> ?? <-> ciu
> ?? <-> gea
> ?? <-> giu
> ??$ <-> ce
> ??$ <-> ci
> ??$ <-> ai$
> ??$ <-> ?i$
> ??$ <-> ui$
> ??$ <-> ei$
> ??$ <-> oi$
> ??$ <-> ?i$
> ?$ <-> i$
> ?? <-> ge
> ?? <-> gi
> ? <-> ci
> ? <-> ea
> ? <-> a
> ? <-> b
> ? <-> v
> ? <-> g
> ? <-> d
> ? <-> e
> ? <-> j
> ? <-> z
> ? <-> i
> ? <-> c
> ? <-> l
> ? <-> m
> ? <-> n
> ? <-> o
> ? <-> p
> ? <-> r
> ? <-> s
> ? <-> t
> ? <-> u
> ? <-> f
> ? <-> h
> ? <-> ?
> ? <-> ?
> ? <-> ?
> ? <-> ?
> ? <-> ?
>
> End of table.

Unfortunately, that will leave a lot of words spelt incorrectly. For
example, the word "crea" should be "????" and not "???" because of
syllabification; same for a few other words. Another inconsitent rule
is that "obiect" should be "??????" rather than "??????", also for
quite a few other words again because of its pronunciation.

See, Cyrillic writing for Moldovan is very phonetic. How you pronounce
something changes how you write it. Romanian writing, on the other
hand, is a bit more loosely phonetic, and seems unconcerned with
distinctions between the different "i" sounds for example, or with
writing words differently based on syllable rules.

Another *huge* problem is names. Romanian and Moldovan names should
convert just fine, but other names are a problem. What about "Mihail
Sergheievici Gorbaciov"? That should be converted as "?????? ?????????
????????" (I think; it might be ~????). Or what about "chabad"? That
should be "?????", not "??????".

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
The current situation seems to be that all AOL users are blocked
pending cooperation from AOL in trying to stop vandalism. This seems
like a good approach to me.

Existing contributors who already use AOL should be motivated to
contact AOL and request that they cooperate, or they can change ISPs,
or maybe we can allow people who log in with certain usernames.

Mark

On 19/03/06, Mark Evans <alberrosidus at gmail.com> wrote:
> I disagree with Gerard about the approach to use here. To deny
> thousands (millions?) of AOL users the right to contribute to
> wikimedia projects because of some guy who tried to create a word
> called "exicornt switch" would be a mistake. To justify it because we
> supposedly receive very little benefit from AOL is typically elitist.
> If said user were blanking out whole useful sections of wiktionary or
> launching DOS attacks or something else that would affect the end user
> (whom I doubt is affected by the addition of nonsense words such as
> this), then maybe a temporary block would be in order. Until then, I
> think wiktionary editors need to suck it up and delete these pages as
> they come along. Wikipedia is great precisely because it strives to
> not privilege one group of users over another. Let's keep it that way.
>
> On 3/19/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > It may be disproportional, but the disruption of this vandal is also
> > disproportional to the benefit we get from AOL. There is no other
> > method available to prevent this sorry sod somewhat. It would help if
> > we could put some bumbs on the road making vandalism less easy. It
> > would also help if we could go to the police.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >    GerardM
> >
> > On 3/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 2006/3/15, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > > > Seeing as the user comes from AOL, I can't help but agree.
> > >
> > > Unless AOL changed it policy recently, I think him being from AOL is a
> > > good reason NOT to give a site-wide ban. AOL uses, or at least used to
> > > use, variable IP-numbers. Any blocking would thus block other AOL
> > > users just as likely as the perpetrator himself. And to block all of
> > > AOL for this seems widely disproportional to me..
> > >
> > > --
> > > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Off-wiki vs. on-wiki discussion

body:
On 3/19/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
>
> Making fun of people who aren't very good at spelling or are dyslexic
> never gets old, does it?
>
> Chris

I agree.  I'm a picky speller, so making fun of my errors is fair game.
Making fun of Geni's spelling isn't acceptable.

Ian


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Look, you all keep saying what small number of people there is that
can't use captchas, and if it's only used for regestering accounts,
why not just put up like an address to the helpdesk or an email
dedicated specifically for this, and say "If you can't for some reason
see this image, send us an email and we'll set up an account for you".
And the address, obviously.

BTW, if people use browser unable to display images, how much would an
audio captcha really help (I mean, sound's way more hi-tech)?

--Oskar

On 3/19/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/19/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >
> > You have images turned off in your browser? Are you using Netscape
> > 4.7 or something?
>
> Not everyone loves a face full of Goatse when they're browsing the
> latest vandalised pages.
>
> There should be an alternative to the captcha, at least for people
> using screen readers. Perhaps something using small sound files would
> be easier to implement than something text-based?
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia?

body:
GerardM wrote:
> On 3/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>>Problem? Look at the recent changes on mo.wiki. You and your band of
>>>thugs have not been caring about that place since you left a week or
>>>two ago. You just noticed it's still there, oh, let's go complain.
>>>
>>>The fact is, none of you actually visits there very often.
>>>
>>
>>AFAICT, it was a POV fork of the Romanian Wikipedia (in Cyrillic), and
>>you were the only person adding anything to it. The fact is, Moldovan is
>>a relic of the Cold War, and the only people who still officially use it
>>are the unrecognized republic of Transnistria.[1]
>>
>
>
> Hoi,
> Please read what you write; '''people''' who still use it..  Of all
> the lame arguments that I have heard this is a great one. May I remind
> you of what the Wikimedia Foundation stands for? Information to all
> people in their language... Therefore if you want an argument to keep
> this project you just provided it.
>

So, you're in favour of American English split from Commonwealth English
then? After all, the American people have their own language...

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

body:
GerardM wrote:
> Hoi,
> The arguments that you use to deny people who use the cyrillic script
> is political. By continuing this line of arguments you make your POV
> case worse. What does it matter that Transnistria can be seen as a
> relic of the cold war, what does Transnistria matter that its
> government glorifies USSR and communism. Wikipedia is for people.
>
> The continued insistance of this blatantly political POV makes me
> consider that you the people in Transnistria are discrimated against.
> They are denied their place under the sun. A place under the sun that
> does not cost us much .. hard disks are cheap.
>
> With this continued agressive insistence of the deletion of this
> Wikipedia, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that it is
> wrong for the Wikimedia Foundation to close down this project. The
> reason: the arguments used are plain discrimation. It is
> discrimination because of ideological and political reasons.
>

Its very existence is a POV fork - it's a language which nobody
offically recognises as being distinct from Romanian (I say lift, you
say elevator), for a country which nobody offically recognises as
existing. If the Foundation says yes, a country which doesn't exist is
allowed to have projects in a language which doesn't exist, they are
promoting the POV that the country and it's language exist and should be
recognised. /That/ is not a goal of the Foundation.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> On 18/03/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
>>Gerard, you forgot an important thing of this affair:
>>NO MOLDOVANS requested or wanted this Wikipedia.
>>
>>We have *no* Transnistrian Moldovan contributors who want to write a
>>wikipedia in Cyrillic alphabet.
>>
>>Its only supporters are Node_ue (the kid in Arizona who barely speaks the
>>language) and a few Russians who support it for ideological/political
>>reasons and who can't contribute anyway, as they don't know the
>>language.
>>
>>There are no newspapers, no journals, no magazines, no books currently
>>published in Romanian Cyrillic in Transnistria. The children use
>>decades old schoolbooks from the time of the Soviet Union.
>>
>>Virtually everyone there would like to switch the education system to
>>the Latin alphabet, but dissent is not something easy to do in a
>>totalitarian regime: there are some Romanian/Moldovan Transnistrians
>>in prison since 1991 for political dissent.
>>
>>So, I'd say to close it now, not because of political reasons, but for
>>the simple fact there are not enough people to contribute to it.
>>
>
> If that's your reason, we should probably close gotwiki as well.
> Perhaps gvwiki.
>

Has anyone apart from yourself and a few (insert nation here)
nationalists contributed to these? Are they real langauges? Would any
real people find them useful?

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

body:
2006/3/15, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> Seeing as the user comes from AOL, I can't help but agree.

Unless AOL changed it policy recently, I think him being from AOL is a
good reason NOT to give a site-wide ban. AOL uses, or at least used to
use, variable IP-numbers. Any blocking would thus block other AOL
users just as likely as the perpetrator himself. And to block all of
AOL for this seems widely disproportional to me..

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
Hoi,
It may be disproportional, but the disruption of this vandal is also
disproportional to the benefit we get from AOL. There is no other
method available to prevent this sorry sod somewhat. It would help if
we could put some bumbs on the road making vandalism less easy. It
would also help if we could go to the police.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 3/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/3/15, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > Seeing as the user comes from AOL, I can't help but agree.
>
> Unless AOL changed it policy recently, I think him being from AOL is a
> good reason NOT to give a site-wide ban. AOL uses, or at least used to
> use, variable IP-numbers. Any blocking would thus block other AOL
> users just as likely as the perpetrator himself. And to block all of
> AOL for this seems widely disproportional to me..
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel against Wikipedia and Jimbo

body:
On 3/18/06, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
<snip>
> The author also is complaining that Wiki entries critical of Holocaust denial are part of the conspiracy of Jews.
>
> See:
>
> http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia_supplement.htm#Fredrick%20Tobens%20comments%20that%20were%20deleted
>
> This is really nasty stuff.

Am I crazy or are they violating the GFDL in that link? I mean they
publish a few complete articles without mentioning the authours and
without providing the text of the GFDL. God, it would be sweet to sue
these assholes (pardon me' french). Can't we atleast send a Jack
Thompson-esque threatening letter?

--Oskar


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 18 Mar 2006 at 14:42, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> You have images turned off in your browser? Are you using Netscape
> 4.7 or something?
>
> There are many important features waiting for our developers to
> implement. Supporting 1990's era web browsing is not one of them. I
> suggest you use a modern browser to browse Wikimedia sites in the
> future.

Wikipedia is the last site I'd expect to be telling people "Get a
better browser, loser!"  What are you going to do next, add user-
agent sniffing to turn people away if they're not using the right
browser, resolution, or operating system?

Anyway, Firefox and the Mozilla/SeaMonkey Suite, to name a couple of
fully modern browsers, offer the configuration option to disable
images.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] When Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
	2.5license makes sense

body:
It goes like this

HTML dweeb = people who have just learned how to use the <table> tag.
Programmers = People who can program in a Turing complete language
Developers = People who can actually make applications
Insane people = People who still program C

and finally

?bermensch = People who can program atleast C++, Java, PHP, Lisp,
Prolog, SQL, Assembly and has read and understood at least 60% of
Knuth's TAoCP

Personally, I fail only the last criteria for ?bermensch (<jonstewart
type="Throws fists up in air>damn you Knuth!!!!</jonstewart>)

On 3/15/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Being an HTML dweeb myself, I'm unsure whether to agree entirely (HTML
> > > is not programming), get irritated (only a very silly minority think of
> > > themselves as "programmers"), or sit in the corner and cry (I don't know C).
> > >
> >
> > HTML dweebs can become programmers if they learn PHP or Javascript... :)
>
> Ah, but 'tis a fine line between programming and "mere scripting", is it not?
>
> FF
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 19 Mar 2006 at 19:59, "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> AFAICT it would only be on registering; we've had quite a few sprees of
> bot-automated account creation in the past (cf. Supertroll).

I would hope so... there's one affiliate-program site I use that has
the extremely annoying "feature" of having a captcha you've got to
get through *every* time you log in, which really screws up Mozilla's
saved-password system, which generates a new record for the site
every time because the field values differ.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
If they can only create 10 per day, then the sleeper acct's can be
banned as well, and if that's still a problem, there should be some
way to make it so their IP can't edit at all, even with an acct.

Mark

On 19/03/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> So many things to say on this:
>
> 1) AOL has been contacted before, by Wikimedia, by the developers, by AOL
> users, and the response has always been that they simply don't care. AOL
> causes a great deal of problem on en.wikipedia, so getting AOL to cooperate
> has been tried quite a bit.
>
> 2) Bug 550 deals with the issue of allowing users who have accounts to edit
> even if thier IP is blocked. The solution for it is quite simple; it's
> actually three lines of code that can be written by anyone with minor PHP
> skill. It requires the following:
>
> a) that the patch be enabled;
> b) that account creation from blocked IPs be disabled (to prevent the
> vandals from simply creating an account to sidestep the IP block) which to
> my knowledge is already enabled
> c) throttling account creation from IPs to x per day, currently 10 per day.
> This allows legit people to create accounts, but prevents vandals from
> creating 1000 sleeper accounts to use once the IP is blocked.
>
> The devs are aware of the fix, and are not willing to enable it. The exact
> quote was that doing so is a  "very very bad idea." It is thier opinion that
> it will be of no use, that the vandals will just create sleeper accounts and
> evade the blocks. I don't agree, but I'm not a developer either; I defer to
> thier expertise in the matter.
>
> In short, if the only way for AOL to be unblocked is for AOL to cooperate,
> then AOL will be blocked until hell freezes over, because they've never
> shown any interest in doing so. Anyone on AOL will be blocked, whether they
> are logged in or not, and there is no expectation that a change will be
> forthcoming. I doubt anything short of a Board-level order to implement a
> fix to 550 would solve the problem.
>
> Essjay
>
> On 3/19/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The current situation seems to be that all AOL users are blocked
> > pending cooperation from AOL in trying to stop vandalism. This seems
> > like a good approach to me.
> >
> > Existing contributors who already use AOL should be motivated to
> > contact AOL and request that they cooperate, or they can change ISPs,
> > or maybe we can allow people who log in with certain usernames.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 19/03/06, Mark Evans <alberrosidus at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I disagree with Gerard about the approach to use here. To deny
> > > thousands (millions?) of AOL users the right to contribute to
> > > wikimedia projects because of some guy who tried to create a word
> > > called "exicornt switch" would be a mistake. To justify it because we
> > > supposedly receive very little benefit from AOL is typically elitist.
> > > If said user were blanking out whole useful sections of wiktionary or
> > > launching DOS attacks or something else that would affect the end user
> > > (whom I doubt is affected by the addition of nonsense words such as
> > > this), then maybe a temporary block would be in order. Until then, I
> > > think wiktionary editors need to suck it up and delete these pages as
> > > they come along. Wikipedia is great precisely because it strives to
> > > not privilege one group of users over another. Let's keep it that way.
> > >
> > > On 3/19/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > It may be disproportional, but the disruption of this vandal is also
> > > > disproportional to the benefit we get from AOL. There is no other
> > > > method available to prevent this sorry sod somewhat. It would help if
> > > > we could put some bumbs on the road making vandalism less easy. It
> > > > would also help if we could go to the police.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >    GerardM
> > > >
> > > > On 3/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > 2006/3/15, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > > > > > Seeing as the user comes from AOL, I can't help but agree.
> > > > >
> > > > > Unless AOL changed it policy recently, I think him being from AOL is
> > a
> > > > > good reason NOT to give a site-wide ban. AOL uses, or at least used
> > to
> > > > > use, variable IP-numbers. Any blocking would thus block other AOL
> > > > > users just as likely as the perpetrator himself. And to block all of
> > > > > AOL for this seems widely disproportional to me..
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > > > > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Essjay
> -----
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
> Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
> http://www.wikipedia.org/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] academic inquiry msg

body:
On 3/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/3/19, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com>:
>
> > The IP address of the sender
> > (219.79.22.41<http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=219.79.22.41>)
> > is from Hong Kong, and AFAIK, China blocks wikimedia projects.
>
> Mainland China and Hong Kong are acting mostly independently in that
> respect, so I think it would not be blocked in Hong Kong
>
> > So, how can a
> > person from Hong Kong possibly access wikipedia extensively so as to analyse
> > the contributions and nature of wikipedia?
>
> See above; interestingly, on another university in Hong Kong (the
> University of Hong Kong) there is also research into Wikipedia, led by
> Andrew Lih ([[w:en:User:Fuzheado]]).
>
> > and moreover, he says that he is
> > sending it to only 100 wikipedians. This can make the result very different
> > from the actual fact.
>
> There will always be large differences, because people who answer an
> enquiry like this are not a random sample from the total population of
> people having been asked.
>
> > should i participate in the enquiry?
>
> That should be your free choice, in my opinion.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels

Andre's just said pretty much everything that I was going to - I most
definitely agree with participation in research being a voluntary
decision. As a researcher myself, I know about the problems attached
to consent, ethics, sampling, bias etc. I'm not going to comment on
how someone else conducts their research - unless they ask - that's up
to them to be conscious of. But researchers should be open to
questions from participants about their own process - you should feel
free to ask questions about how and where the information is used etc,
before you decide to say anything. Or if you don't want to say
anything, tell them why not. This itself is good feedback.

General comments: there is and has been lots of research done on
participants of Wikimedia projects - see, for example:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research . The questions you've been
asked are not unusual - I've asked more or less the same ones myself
;-). And a sample of 100 is not unusual either. There is a limitation
on conclusions drawn from *all* research - again, it is up to the
researcher to be conscious of this.

Cormac [[w,m,b:en:User:Cormaggio]]

> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] academic inquiry msg

body:
Well all I can say the name is most definately Thai! Mai is a very
common nickname here also!

Waerth/Walter

>I received the following email today:
>
>----
>
>Hello:
>
>I am writing to you to ask you about your objectives as a Wikipedia
>contributor.
>
>
>
>My name is Mai Pattarawan.  I am an academic at the City University of Hong
>Kong, researching Wikipedia.  Specifically I am interested in the objectives
>and motivation of Wikipedians who take the time and make the effort to
>contribute.
>
>
>
>I would like to ask you just three questions and hope you will be able to
>answer:
>
>
>
>
>
>1. Why do you contribute to Wikipedia? Would you say it is a personal
>matter, where you enjoy the opportunity to reveal your knowledge on a
>subject, or a collaborative goal where you enjoy sharing knowledge with
>others?
>
>
>
>2. In what ways do you find your contributing to Wikipedia beneficial? (E.g.,
>satisfaction of building the world's largest encyclopedia). Would you say
>these benefits (personal or for the entire community) are felt right away,
>or do you expect the benefits to arise as time goes by?
>
>
>
>3. Do you expect that your contributing more to Wikipedia will lead to
>others to contribute more?
>
>
>
>
>
>Please just type your answers right behind the questions, or below, if you
>like.
>
>
>
>I am sending this email only to about 100 Wikipedians, so I very much hope
>you will answer me and allow me to gain some insights.  I found you via
>Google, by searching for Wikipedians who post their email address in
>Wikipedia.
>
>
>
>If you like to receive feedback about the results of this inquiry, please
>let me know and I will email it to you.  Of course, yours and everyone
>else's personal information will not be disclosed.  I will only share
>non-personalized and summary information.
>
>
>
>Thank you very much.
>
>
>
>Regards,
>
>
>
>Pattarawan (Mai) Prasarnphanich, PhD
>
>Assistant Professor, Department of Information Systems
>City University of Hong Kong
>
>----
>
>The IP address of the sender
>(219.79.22.41<http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=219.79.22.41>)
>is from Hong Kong, and AFAIK, China blocks wikimedia projects. So, how can a
>person from Hong Kong possibly access wikipedia extensively so as to analyse
>the contributions and nature of wikipedia? and moreover, he says that he is
>sending it to only 100 wikipedians. This can make the result very different
>from the actual fact.
>
>should i participate in the enquiry?
>
>i am also posting the msg. header as it may interest you:
>
>X-Gmail-Received: 11b8396eb5824772da6c80e6cf069014796fc9e1
>Delivered-To: vedant.lath at gmail.com
>Received: by 10.66.255.10 with SMTP id c10cs16807ugi;
>        Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:12:14 -0800 (PST)
>Received: by 10.35.89.10 with SMTP id r10mr351875pyl;
>        Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:12:14 -0800 (PST)
>Return-Path: <pprasarn at cityu.edu.hk>
>Received: from obav02.netvigator.com (obav02.netvigator.com [218.102.62.130])
>        by mx.gmail.com with ESMTP id v53si740577pyv.2006.03.18.22.12.11;
>        Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:12:14 -0800 (PST)
>Received-SPF: neutral (gmail.com: 218.102.62.130 is neither permitted
>nor denied by best guess record for domain of pprasarn at cityu.edu.hk)
>Received: from obav02.netvigator.com (obav02.netvigator.com [127.0.0.1])
>	by obav02.netvigator.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 866481B1605
>	for <vedant.lath at gmail.com>; Sun, 19 Mar 2006 06:12:10 +0000 (GMT)
>Received: from Mai ([219.79.22.41]) by imsm058dat.netvigator.com
>          (InterMail vM.6.01.05.02 201-2131-123-102-20050715) with ESMTP
>          id <20060319061210.SCJT22606.imsm058dat.netvigator.com at Mai>
>          for <vedant.lath at gmail.com>; Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:12:10 +0800
>Message-ID: <008801c64b1c$0e8ac220$6501a8c0 at Mai>
>From: "Pattarawan (Mai) Prasarnphanich" <pprasarn at cityu.edu.hk>
>To: <vedant.lath at gmail.com>
>Subject: Academic inquiry on your objectives and motivation as Wikipedian
>Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:12:09 +0800
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
>	boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0085_01C64B5F.1C4491F0"
>X-Priority: 3
>X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180
>
>X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2180
>
>
>Vedant Lath
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vedant_lath
>http://vedant.lath.in/icse/User:Vedanta
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] academic inquiry msg


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
> > ==Libel against Wikipedia and Jimbo==
> >
> > Hi, an article defaming Wikipedia is spreading across the internet.
> > [http://thailandesl.chazzsongs.net/internet.wiki.htm

Woot, I'm one of the "moderators" she chose to picture. So I'm part of
the Jewish conspiracy now, awesome! Just another step towards world
domination.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:
>>
>
>
> Yes, maybe. The dispute, however, the way I see it at least, is not over the
> content per se, but rather the situation it's placed in, that is:
>
> 1) That the language is called "Moldovan" (I believe, however, calling it
> Romanian and writing with Cyrillic would be even more controversial,
> Romanian nationalists claim otherwise)
>
> 2) That Cyrillic is hosted on the main mo.wiki subdomain, and no Latin
> content is hosted on this subdomain (Latin is the official, majority
> script). Note that Latin is, however, listed first in the interface.
>
> The problem has also, I believe, been augmented by a series of Mark's
> actions, although I believe they were in good faith (i.e. the interface was
> changed just so that it uses different terms to the Romanian Wikipedia, and
> many of the words don't make sense even to Moldovans).
>
> Which is why I think a good compromise would be the subdomain solution.
> However, it seems that it was agreed that the existing mo.wiki would be
> locked down.
>
>

What we need now are some transliteration rules for Latin <--> Cyrillic
for mo:, and the last excuse for not shutting down mo: prior to making
it a joint Latin/Cyrillic portal to the ro: data in the Latin alphabet
should disappear.

Just to set the ball rolling, with the benefit of _absolutely no_
knowledge of Romanian _or_ Moldovan Cyrillic orthography, but with a bit
of Googling, I've produced a very simple first hack at a transliteration
table (see below).

Now, these rules are undoubtedly totally wrong, (for a start, there are
round trip problems, and my references are inconsistent with one
another) but I'm sure that, in the spirit of Wikipedia, the readers of
this thread can do much better than me, given a few moments. Perhaps we
should put it up on the Wiki, and let people edit it there.

Reading the list archives, I see that [[User:Bogdan Giusca]] has done
some work on this, but he hasn't published his PHP script.

-- Neil

----------------------------

The table:

Note: '^' means "start of word", and "$" end of word, and the rules are
intended to be applied from top to bottom to reduce ambiguity.

?? <-> ghiu
?? <-> chiu
?? <-> ghe
?? <-> ghi
?$ <-> ii$
?? <-> iiu
?? <-> iea
?? <-> che
?? <-> chi
?? <-> cea
?? <-> ciu
?? <-> gea
?? <-> giu
^? <-> ^?
?? <-> ia
?? <-> ie
?? <-> ii
?? <-> io
?? <-> iu
?? <-> i?
?? <-> ce
?? <-> ci
?$ <-> ?$
?$ <-> i$
?? <-> ge
?? <-> gi
? <-> ci
? <-> iu
? <-> ea
? <-> gi
? <-> a
? <-> b
? <-> v
? <-> g
? <-> d
? <-> e
? <-> j
? <-> z
? <-> i
? <-> c
? <-> l
? <-> m
? <-> n
? <-> o
? <-> p
? <-> r
? <-> s
? <-> t
? <-> u
? <-> f
? <-> h
? <-> ?
? <-> ?
? <-> ?
? <-> ?
? <-> ?

End of table.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Greasemonkey script to filter the watchlist page

body:
Hello,
Proof of concept is here:
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/stevage/EnhanceHistory.user.js

It's a bit let down by the diff routine, which seems to miss some
deletions. Also, on a test on a larger page, it ran out of steam after
about 20 or so diffs.

But the idea is there :)

Steve

On 3/19/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> > I mean displaying the key differences between one version and the next
> > actually on the history page itself. Schematically something like:
> >
> > 1 Jan 2006 Jimbo add source  '''+*Wikipedia.org'''
> > 2 Jan 2006 JohnSmith change inflammatory wording -"clueless newbies"
> > +"newcomers"
>
> That sounds interesting.  Challenging, too.  I don't think I've heard of
> anyone doing that before.  Good luck!
>
> --
> Ilmari Karonen
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Mel Gibson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
The account name is Marcyu and can be seen at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Marcyu&action=edit

Admin Nlu claims a personal attack, but he deleted the page permanently so
there is no evidence against the contrary.

-Marc

>From: Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation
>Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:31:49 +0000
>
>Mel Gibson wrote:
> > Hello all.  I am writing to this list because I believe the blocking
> > policy was violated for my account.  Admin Nlu blocked my account due to
> > "personal attack".  However, there was no such attack whatsoever.  I had
> > comments on my front page stating, in my opinion, admins who I thought
> > were doing a good job and admins who were not.  Can anyone look into
> > this for me?  In advance, I greatly appreciate anyone's assistance.
>
>What account name? Could you link to the block log for the account name
>in question?
>
>Chris
>
>--
>Chris Jenkinson
>chris at starglade.org
>
>"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
>   -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
So many things to say on this:

1) AOL has been contacted before, by Wikimedia, by the developers, by AOL
users, and the response has always been that they simply don't care. AOL
causes a great deal of problem on en.wikipedia, so getting AOL to cooperate
has been tried quite a bit.

2) Bug 550 deals with the issue of allowing users who have accounts to edit
even if thier IP is blocked. The solution for it is quite simple; it's
actually three lines of code that can be written by anyone with minor PHP
skill. It requires the following:

a) that the patch be enabled;
b) that account creation from blocked IPs be disabled (to prevent the
vandals from simply creating an account to sidestep the IP block) which to
my knowledge is already enabled
c) throttling account creation from IPs to x per day, currently 10 per day.
This allows legit people to create accounts, but prevents vandals from
creating 1000 sleeper accounts to use once the IP is blocked.

The devs are aware of the fix, and are not willing to enable it. The exact
quote was that doing so is a  "very very bad idea." It is thier opinion that
it will be of no use, that the vandals will just create sleeper accounts and
evade the blocks. I don't agree, but I'm not a developer either; I defer to
thier expertise in the matter.

In short, if the only way for AOL to be unblocked is for AOL to cooperate,
then AOL will be blocked until hell freezes over, because they've never
shown any interest in doing so. Anyone on AOL will be blocked, whether they
are logged in or not, and there is no expectation that a change will be
forthcoming. I doubt anything short of a Board-level order to implement a
fix to 550 would solve the problem.

Essjay

On 3/19/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The current situation seems to be that all AOL users are blocked
> pending cooperation from AOL in trying to stop vandalism. This seems
> like a good approach to me.
>
> Existing contributors who already use AOL should be motivated to
> contact AOL and request that they cooperate, or they can change ISPs,
> or maybe we can allow people who log in with certain usernames.
>
> Mark
>
> On 19/03/06, Mark Evans <alberrosidus at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I disagree with Gerard about the approach to use here. To deny
> > thousands (millions?) of AOL users the right to contribute to
> > wikimedia projects because of some guy who tried to create a word
> > called "exicornt switch" would be a mistake. To justify it because we
> > supposedly receive very little benefit from AOL is typically elitist.
> > If said user were blanking out whole useful sections of wiktionary or
> > launching DOS attacks or something else that would affect the end user
> > (whom I doubt is affected by the addition of nonsense words such as
> > this), then maybe a temporary block would be in order. Until then, I
> > think wiktionary editors need to suck it up and delete these pages as
> > they come along. Wikipedia is great precisely because it strives to
> > not privilege one group of users over another. Let's keep it that way.
> >
> > On 3/19/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hoi,
> > > It may be disproportional, but the disruption of this vandal is also
> > > disproportional to the benefit we get from AOL. There is no other
> > > method available to prevent this sorry sod somewhat. It would help if
> > > we could put some bumbs on the road making vandalism less easy. It
> > > would also help if we could go to the police.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >    GerardM
> > >
> > > On 3/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > 2006/3/15, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > > > > Seeing as the user comes from AOL, I can't help but agree.
> > > >
> > > > Unless AOL changed it policy recently, I think him being from AOL is
> a
> > > > good reason NOT to give a site-wide ban. AOL uses, or at least used
> to
> > > > use, variable IP-numbers. Any blocking would thus block other AOL
> > > > users just as likely as the perpetrator himself. And to block all of
> > > > AOL for this seems widely disproportional to me..
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > > > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day Oskar,
>
>
>> BTW, if people use browser unable to display images, how much would an
>> audio captcha really help (I mean, sound's way more hi-tech)?
>>
>
> Some people use browsers that cannot display images because they're
> blind.  In such cases, audio is a Good Thing, and use of images
> specifically designed to be unreadable to computers is not.
>
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse
>
>
An E-mail request link is pretty effective, I think. It is reasonable to
assume that anyone who is intending to edit Wikipedia has some way of
reading and writing text, whether directly or via assistive technology,
and this will accommodate everyone who has them, without being
bot-friendly.

Also, a secure but accessible sound captcha is rather more difficult to
pull off than a visual captcha, since there are many more people in the
world with partial hearing than partial sight.

-- Neil


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> I mean displaying the key differences between one version and the next
> actually on the history page itself. Schematically something like:
>
> 1 Jan 2006 Jimbo add source  '''+*Wikipedia.org'''
> 2 Jan 2006 JohnSmith change inflammatory wording -"clueless newbies"
> +"newcomers"

That sounds interesting.  Challenging, too.  I don't think I've heard of
anyone doing that before.  Good luck!

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Ilya N.

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocked for a week for some harmless fun on a
	wikiproject page and a your mom joke

body:
But is a one week block maybe a little overkill?

On 3/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/19/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_California_State_Highways&diff=next&oldid=44465253
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SPUI&diff=prev&oldid=44465982
> > The first two are a bit of harmless fun on a project page. The third is
> > a simple inoffensive your mom joke as a response to an overreaction to
> > the first. I put {{unblock}} on my talk page, and he nowiki-ed it and
> > protected my talk page to prevent me from putting it back. Something
> > seems off here.
>
> Ok, so you make a joke contribution. Someone, sensibly, reverts it.
> Then you re-add it? With the word "fuck" in the edit summary? Why?
> What were you thinking?
>
> People even went out of their way to use the correct humour templates
> to indicate that your jokes weren't funny and were getting on their
> nerves. Your reaction? "Your mom's getting old." and "Hahahaha".
>
> Seriously, why be annoying? And if people object to your being
> annoying, why complain about it? Your user page is a pretty clear
> demonstration that you *want* to be annoying and offensive. What else
> do you expect to come from that?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Dariusz Siedlecki

body:
On 3/16/06, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> [resending to foundation-l]
>
> August seems to be "Wiki conference month"  this year : WikiSym is
> moved back to Aug 21-23 (in Odense), and both Dutch Wikimedians (ca.
> August 20) and Chinese Wikimedians (August 27-29) are arranging
> August meetups around Wikimania.  I like the familiar look of the
> Chinese page... ;-)  but there are logo / name issues involved.

The Polish Wikimedia Meetup will take place on August 30 - May 2, AFAIR.

We (the Polish chapter) are wrapping up everything right now, I'll
send further info to the list in a few days.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] From admin noticeboard

body:
Probably just more disinformation from a Ruy Lopez sockpuppet.

nobs

On 3/18/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is just a case of some crank writing some stuff on the internet
> that nobody with any brains will believe.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] User Golbez has established his own admin policies
	that do not agree with Wikipedia's

body:
I disagree - these appear to be in line with Wikipedia policy.

On 3/10/06, JUDITH HANEY <haneyje at alltel.net> wrote:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Golbez
>
>
> Admin policies
>
>
> Let me put these right out here:
>
> 1.      No mercy for vandals. If you vandalize a page, you will probably
> be
> warned. If you vandalize again with fluffy stuff, you will be warned
> again.
> On the other hand, if you vandalize maliciously, you will be blocked. I
> will
> consider a clean slate after a month, removing old warnings from anyone,
> in
> case the IP has changed hands.
> 2.      Personally, I think Speedy Delete should be expanded. Too much
> stuff
> clogs up AfD. But until this happens, I will remain within the strict
> lines
> of Speedy.
> 3.      You can always contest any action with me. Please do.
> 4.      I will not typically protect for vandalism; I figure, if I can do
> that, I can also block the vandal, which does more good than protection. I
> will, however, protect, without warning, any high traffic page that has
> been
> doubled. Sorry, but if it's so high traffic, it would double the time to
> fix
> if I inserted a notice. Please understand. I will as quickly as I can fix
> the doubling, and unprotect it.
>
> NOTE: If you send me an email about being blocked, please put in all
> information needed to unblock you like, I dunno, your IP address? because
> I
> will likely not respond to your email directly.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 17 Mar 2006 at 17:32, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I suspect numbers are a more important difference than softwear.
>
> Softwear... is that something like underwear?
>

Making fun of people who aren't very good at spelling or are dyslexic
never gets old, does it?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

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


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 3/19/06, Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com> wrote:

> The Polish Wikimedia Meetup will take place on August 30 - May 2, AFAIR.

Wow, a meeting that lasts 9 months?

/me supposes you meant April 30-May 2

;-)

Delphine
--
~notafish


body:
On 3/19/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/19/06, Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The Polish Wikimedia Meetup will take place on August 30 - May 2, AFAIR.
>
>
> Wow, a meeting that lasts 9 months?
>
> /me supposes you meant April 30-May 2

April, August, same thing, starts with an 'A'.

...

Oh look! Their last letters look almost the same, too!

On 3/19/06, Samuel Klein <sjklein at hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> Sweet :-)  Let me know how we can coordinate w/ Wikimania.

I'm not sure we really can ;).  Well, this will be a pretty... "Free"
conference. There's no attendance fee, anyone can come and leave
whenever they want...  I'll catch you on IRC, so we can talk more
about it.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On Mar 19, 2006, at 12:44 PM, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

> On 18 Mar 2006 at 14:42, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
>> You have images turned off in your browser? Are you using Netscape
>> 4.7 or something?
>>
>> There are many important features waiting for our developers to
>> implement. Supporting 1990's era web browsing is not one of them. I
>> suggest you use a modern browser to browse Wikimedia sites in the
>> future.
>
> Wikipedia is the last site I'd expect to be telling people "Get a
> better browser, loser!"

That's because we don't use AJAX or Flash or anything extravagant
like that, and if we did, we'd have other ways to use the site. We
ask so little.

> Anyway, Firefox and the Mozilla/SeaMonkey Suite, to name a couple of
> fully modern browsers, offer the configuration option to disable
> images.

Do they offer the option to turn them back on again? Even
selectively, so you can right-click on an image and choose to load
it? If so, captchas should be no problem. In fact, captchas should be
no problem even in Netscape 4.7 because as I recall, Netscape always
had that feature.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/19/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>You need to approach Wikipedia in good faith, and the best way to
>>establish that faith is to browse with Firefox.  It's the choice of Phil
>>Welch, Mark Gallagher, and Willy on Wheels!
>>
>>Firefox!  It's what's for dinner.
>
>
> A little uncalled for? Especially when you're asking someone to go to
> a significant amount of additional effort to support a feature which
> is probably required by very few people?
>

Well, hiddenStructure doesn't work on browsers without CSS support
(read: text-only browsers, probably most screen readers, most old
browsers), but certain people still seem to think it's a good idea...

> Now, I'm not clear on whether this Captcha is displayed every time you
> make any contribution, or only when registering an account, but if
> it's the latter, then it seems almost *everyone* could manage to get
> images to display once for the purpose. Blind people aside, of course.
>

AFAICT it would only be on registering; we've had quite a few sprees of
bot-automated account creation in the past (cf. Supertroll).

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

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> On 18/03/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
<snip>
>>
>>Its very existence is a POV fork - it's a language which nobody
>>offically recognises as being distinct from Romanian (I say lift, you
>>say elevator), for a country which nobody offically recognises as
>>existing. If the Foundation says yes, a country which doesn't exist is
>>allowed to have projects in a language which doesn't exist, they are
>>promoting the POV that the country and it's language exist and should be
>>recognised. /That/ is not a goal of the Foundation.
>>
>
> That's a rather inaccurate assessment. The official language of the
> Republic of Moldova, which is recognised by every nation on earth, is
> "Moldovan".
>

Ok, so how is it different to Romanian? According to [1] Moldovan "is
essentially the same as Romanian". Let's call a spade a spade, mmkay?

> Also, whether or not Transnistria is internationally recognised as an
> independent country, it's certainly undeniable that there is some
> usage of the Cyrillic script over there.
>

Sure, but as Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> NO MOLDOVANS requested or wanted this Wikipedia.
>
> We have *no* Transnistrian Moldovan contributors who want to write a
> wikipedia in Cyrillic alphabet.
>
> Its only supporters are Node_ue (the kid in Arizona who barely speaks the
> language) and a few Russians who support it for ideological/political
> reasons and who can't contribute anyway, as they don't know the
> language.
>
> There are no newspapers, no journals, no magazines, no books currently
> published in Romanian Cyrillic in Transnistria. The children use
> decades old schoolbooks from the time of the Soviet Union.
>
> Virtually everyone there would like to switch the education system to
> the Latin alphabet, but dissent is not something easy to do in a
> totalitarian regime: there are some Romanian/Moldovan Transnistrians
> in prison since 1991 for political dissent.
>

So, they are obviously not doing it by choice, and none of them were
contributing anyway.

> And if having mowp is a statement by WMF to the legitimacy of
> Transnistria, isn't *not* having it equally POV in the opposite
> direction? Note that I don't personally think it's POV.
>

No. NPOV says that we have to include all *majority* viewpoints, not
*all* viewpoints. Including all viewpoints is /balanced/, but inclusion
of a POV which is not in the majority (recogninsing the unrecognised
language of an unrecognised nation) is itself POV. If the UN recognises
Trasnistria overnight, and they declare that their offical language is
Moldovan written in Cyrillic script, and Transnistrians start to ask for
a Wikipedia in Moldovan-Cyrillic, they can have it. But not before.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Moldova#Language

--
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: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 3/19/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
> wrote:
>
>> You need to approach Wikipedia in good faith, and the best way to
>> establish that faith is to browse with Firefox.  It's the choice of
>> Phil Welch, Mark Gallagher, and Willy on Wheels!
>>
>> Firefox!  It's what's for dinner.
>
> A little uncalled for? Especially when you're asking someone to go to
>  a significant amount of additional effort to support a feature which
>  is probably required by very few people?

No.  There are legitimate reasons for people to browse without images on
(being blind is a rather good one), and blaming the victim of our own
carelessness is *not* appropriate.

> Now, I'm not clear on whether this Captcha is displayed every time
> you make any contribution, or only when registering an account, but
> if it's the latter, then it seems almost *everyone* could manage to
> get images to display once for the purpose. Blind people aside, of
> course.

People on old computers that can only run Lynx?  People on poor
connections?  People in a work environment that enforces "no image
browsing"?

Now, it may well be that we *need* to use captchas and other things that
break in browsing environments other than
the-best-browser-on-the-most-modern-OSes.  But tt's one thing to say
"gee, we're sorry you can't register an account, but we have no choice,
because of vandals and that", and another entirely to say "get a better
browser and stop being difficult, you jerk".

Cheers,

--
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: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

body:
>
> Some people have raised the issue that there is low internet access to
> people who write this language in Cyrillic. That is certainly true.
> Internet access is poor. But the same is true for Bambara, or Yoruba,
> or Fulfulde, and yet we are building Wikipedias for them. The hope is
> that someday they will have a better infrastructure, or that perhaps
> they can be distributed in print format.
>
> Mark

Yes, but remember that Cyrillic is a script in decline. The 150,000 or so
Moldovans in Transnistria are made to use Cyrillic, and they would prefer to
use Latin, as can be seen by the crisis provoked by the decision to remove
state funding from Latin-script schools. OK, none of these are reasons
against the existence of a Moldovan Wikipedia in Cyrillic per se, but I
think your point of this being able to be used for any tangible positive
purpose is overstated. This can be seen by the fact that there are no
contributors who are interested in adding information to the project at the
moment (i.e. native speakers). Even *this* wouldn't be a problem.

The biggest problem that people don't agree with, however, is that the
Moldovan Wikipedia is biscriptal, and in practice is Cyrillic-only
(article-wise), when Cyrillic is neither the majority script, nor an
official script, while also ideologically representing a symbol of past
repression (we can't always look at things in a political vacuum).

Ronline


from_name: Ben Lowe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Innocent User Autoblocked

body:
>
>
> There was no discussion by Cryptic with me and the only other similar
> discussion is here, in which everyobdy but the person making a delete
> request has voted keep (at least until a few minutes):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Halliburton_Shill
>
> Since then, Cryptic has also made it a point to blank my user page without
> any broad support.  My only vehicle for comment is my own talk page and this
> mailing list.

Actually, this was posted to the administrator's noticeboard on the 13th, so
there has been other discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&diff=prev&oldid=43516973

Ben

---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
> Use Photomail to share photos without annoying attachments.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 3/18/06, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Actually, this is the classic antisemitic conspiracy theory linking Jews and Freemasons in a vast age-old plot. This was the theme of the hoax document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
>
> See:
>
> http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/masons.html
> http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/protocol.html
>
> The author also is complaining that Wiki entries critical of Holocaust denial are part of the conspiracy of Jews.
>
> See:
>
> http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia_supplement.htm#Fredrick%20Tobens%20comments%20that%20were%20deleted
>
> This is really nasty stuff.
>
> Cberlet
> aka
> Chip Berlet
> Political Research Associates
> www.publiceye.org

Let's examine the latest Political Research Associates shenanigans.
On March 10 Anon 71.193.216.103 did as follows:

01:21, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jeffrey Dahmer
01:15, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Sean Hannity (?Anti-Hannity)
01:10, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Osama bin Laden
01:09, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Pat Robertson
01:08, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jerry Falwell (?External links)
01:06, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ann Coulter (?External links)
01:00, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Tom DeLay
00:59, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Saddam Hussein
00:52, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) David Irving
00:47, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ted Bundy

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=71.193.216.103

What do Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Jeffrey
Dahmer and Ted Bundy have in common?  They no longer are in
[[Category:controversial people]].

Who has taken their place? Holocaust denier David Irving, Pat
Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. This is
really nasty stuff.


from_name: Vedant Lath

subject: [Wikipedia-l] academic inquiry msg

body:
ok. will participate when i get time.

thanks for the help.

vedant

On 3/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2006/3/19, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com>:
>
> > The IP address of the sender
> > (219.79.22.41<http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=219.79.22.41>)
> > is from Hong Kong, and AFAIK, China blocks wikimedia projects.
>
> Mainland China and Hong Kong are acting mostly independently in that
> respect, so I think it would not be blocked in Hong Kong
>
> > So, how can a
> > person from Hong Kong possibly access wikipedia extensively so as to
> analyse
> > the contributions and nature of wikipedia?
>
> See above; interestingly, on another university in Hong Kong (the
> University of Hong Kong) there is also research into Wikipedia, led by
> Andrew Lih ([[w:en:User:Fuzheado]]).
>
> > and moreover, he says that he is
> > sending it to only 100 wikipedians. This can make the result very
> different
> > from the actual fact.
>
> There will always be large differences, because people who answer an
> enquiry like this are not a random sample from the total population of
> people having been asked.
>
> > should i participate in the enquiry?
>
> That should be your free choice, in my opinion.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jay Converse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia: Admins abusing their authority

body:
On 3/19/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> > On IRC, DavidGerard was extremely rude and belligerent, and demanded
> money
> > from me, saying that unless I did so he would not publish the checkuser
> > result.
>
> Do you have independently-verifiable logs backing up this claim?
>

I log all chats that I idle in, as my client automatically does so.  Give me
a date and time, and I'll see if my internet connection was cooperating at
that time and I have a log of it.

Unless it was private.  I can't log that stuff.  (Yet...)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
Do the aforementioned comments constitute a personal attack?  As noted, I am
merely stating my opinion.

-Marc

>From: Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
>Reply-To: m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au,English Wikipedia
><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation
>Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 14:26:55 +1100>
>
>G'day Marcyu,
>
> > The account name is Marcyu and can be seen at:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Marcyu&action=edit
> >
> > Admin Nlu claims a personal attack, but he deleted the page permanently
> > so there is no evidence against the contrary.
>
>Ach, that's where you're wrong.  The page hasn't been deleted
>permanently, and it's still possible to view what you said.  Let's take
>a look ...
>
>    I have decided to become the self-proclaimed policeman of these out of
>    control Wikipedia editors.  They have no sense of tolerance,
>    diversity, or humility.  Their grammatical and editing skills are
>    suspect, to say the least.
>
>You then added a template to your userpage, requesting that it be
>deleted.  Finally, and this is just delicious:
>
>    In my own personal opinion and experiences, I have found the following
>    admins to be extremely biased, immature, and unprofessional:
>
>    [[User:Nlu|Nlu]]

>    [[User:R._Koot|R._Koot]]
>
>    Email me if you want me to add your name to this page as those who
>    support the cause of having a voting method to revoke admin powers of
>    certain users.  Also email me if you have another admin you would like
>    to add to either list (see below) and I'll take a look at their
>    history.
>
>    And on the flip side, here is a list of admins I believe to be fair
>    and level-headed:
>
>    [[User:Android79|Android79]]

>    [[User:Dave_souza|Dave_souza]]
>
>Congratulations to android79 and Dave for making the cut, for what it's
>worth.  I'm kinda baffled that you'd say "so-and-so is extremely biased,
>immature, and unprofessional", and *then* have the hide to claim that
>any block or deletion was unjustified.
>
>I guess you'd hoped that Nlu had covered up not his own actions, but yours.
>
>
>--
>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: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 3/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> >
> > Am I crazy or are they violating the GFDL in that link? I mean they
> > publish a few complete articles without mentioning the authours and
> > without providing the text of the GFDL. God, it would be sweet to sue
> > these assholes (pardon me' french). Can't we atleast send a Jack
> > Thompson-esque threatening letter?
> >
>
> They'd probably claim "fair use" for commentary purposes.
>

1. They're probably quoting a little too much to be termed "fair use".

but

2. We have credibility, they don't.

Wikimedia Foundation shouldn't sue them for the same reason a guy in a
nice house wearing nice clothes and with a reputation for fairness
doesn't go out in the yard with a shotgun and blast a dog for shitting
on his lawn.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Retrieving article deleted for NN

body:
On 3/17/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I think. In this case, the university cracked down several years
> ago on "alcohol-related" events. Something like, you can have alcohol
> at an event, but you can't advertise an event as being about alcohol.
> I seem to recall on at least one occasion hearing a public
> announcement by a club along the lines of "Sorry everyone, the pub
> crawl's been cancelled. In case anyone's wondering where I'll be this
> afternoon, I'm going for a walk around the neighbourhood, starting at
> pub X in 30 minutes."

One of the more popular orientation week events at my uni is the
"Parkville Heritage Stroll", which samples some of the wonderful
architecture in the suburb around the campus. Of course, all the
lovely old buildings just happen to be pubs.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 10:42:29PM +1030, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> I've been forced to use Lynx over sluggish SSH tunnels before. With
>> image-only captchas I'd be locked out in the cold, dark and wet.
>>
>> If you've actually bothered to read [[CAPTCHA]], you'll realise that
>> they're a pain in the arse, you insensitive clod.
>>
>
> Ah, after reading all these messages, I finally find out what you are
> all talking about. You are right, they are a pain in the arse. Do not go
> that way.
>
> [[Bduke]]
>
As you say, captchas are nasty, inconvenient and user-unfriendly.
However, sometimes they are the lesser of two evils. Where the other
evil is automated vandalism is one of those cases.

-- Neil


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2006, at 1:41 AM, Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
>
>>>A little uncalled for? Especially when you're asking someone to go to
>>> a significant amount of additional effort to support a feature which
>>> is probably required by very few people?
>>
>>No.  There are legitimate reasons for people to browse without
>>images on
>>(being blind is a rather good one), and blaming the victim of our own
>>carelessness is *not* appropriate.
>
>
> There is a vast minority of people who can *never* browse with images
> on.
>
>
>>>Now, I'm not clear on whether this Captcha is displayed every time
>>>you make any contribution, or only when registering an account, but
>>>if it's the latter, then it seems almost *everyone* could manage to
>>>get images to display once for the purpose. Blind people aside, of
>>>course.
>>
>>People on old computers that can only run Lynx?
>
>
> It's 2006. There are adolescents younger than "old computers that can
> only run Lynx". People who do not upgrade their computers for twelve
> years are not likely Wikipedia contributors. If you have an
> idiosyncratic preference for 1980's-era technology, don't expect us
> to indulge it--especially not at the cost of developer time and
> effort that can be used to benefit the Wikipedia in far better ways.
>
> CLI fanatics who prefer to only run Lynx are probably a bigger
> constituency, but even that is an idiosyncratic preference we can't
> be expected to indulge.
>
>
>>People on poor connections?
>
>
> A Wikipedia captcha page presumably loads two images: the Wikipedia
> logo and the captcha itself. Perfectly feasible, if sluggish, on 28.8
> dialup. If your connection is slower than that, you probably wouldn't
> be contributing anyway.
>
<snip>

I've been forced to use Lynx over sluggish SSH tunnels before. With
image-only captchas I'd be locked out in the cold, dark and wet.

If you've actually bothered to read [[CAPTCHA]], you'll realise that
they're a pain in the arse, you insensitive clod.

--
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: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 9 Mar 2006 at 23:08, "Gay Muslim" <queeran at gmail.com> wrote:

> My username is Queeran, because I am a gay muslim.

The compatibility of those two aspects is between you and Allah... it
does not affect your status on Wikipedia.

> On IRC, DavidGerard was extremely rude and belligerent, and demanded money
> from me, saying that unless I did so he would not publish the checkuser
> result.

That's a very serious allegation, that an admin is demanding bribes,
kickbacks, blackmail money, or any other payment to influence his
actions regarding the site.  Do you have any evidence?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


body:
>
> As I've noted many times before, Latin alphabet is still taught in
> private schools in Transnistria. Nobody is being forced to use
> Cyrillic.

Yes, OK, they're not being forced to learn it, but they *are* practically
forced to have a knowledge of it since it's used as an official language (if
it's used at all).

No -- what it seems to me is that most people either don't like the
> fact that Cyrillic is used *at all*, or that the name "Moldovan" is
> used. Nobody seems to have any of those nuanced feelings you detail.

Well, I think it's the fact that Moldovan + Cyrillic is being used. A
Moldovan Latin wiki would also be controversial, because most people doubt
the existence of a separate Moldovan language. What adds a further nuance of
controversy is that fact that it's written in Cyrillic, which people see as
a political step. Even if it might not be tht way, the majority of people
will continue seeing it as a political move ("back to the old days" sort of
thing). It would be like launching an Azeri wiki with content only in
Cyrillic.


body:
>
> That's a reason to add more content, not delete existing content.
>
> Chris

Yes, maybe. The dispute, however, the way I see it at least, is not over the
content per se, but rather the situation it's placed in, that is:

1) That the language is called "Moldovan" (I believe, however, calling it
Romanian and writing with Cyrillic would be even more controversial,
Romanian nationalists claim otherwise)

2) That Cyrillic is hosted on the main mo.wiki subdomain, and no Latin
content is hosted on this subdomain (Latin is the official, majority
script). Note that Latin is, however, listed first in the interface.

The problem has also, I believe, been augmented by a series of Mark's
actions, although I believe they were in good faith (i.e. the interface was
changed just so that it uses different terms to the Romanian Wikipedia, and
many of the words don't make sense even to Moldovans).

Which is why I think a good compromise would be the subdomain solution.
However, it seems that it was agreed that the existing mo.wiki would be
locked down.

--
> Chris Jenkinson
> chris at starglade.org
>
> "Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
>   -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/19/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> You have images turned off in your browser? Are you using Netscape
> 4.7 or something?

Not everyone loves a face full of Goatse when they're browsing the
latest vandalised pages.

There should be an alternative to the captcha, at least for people
using screen readers. Perhaps something using small sound files would
be easier to implement than something text-based?

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia?

body:
2006/3/19, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
>
> If we had such poor function in articles related to Bosnia, IE, that
> they were dominated by Serbian ultranationalist trolls, they would
> very likely say "Bosnian is essentially the same as Serbian" -- there
> *are* relatively few differences, many of them are artificial, etc.

I think this links in to what I believe is the source of a lot of the
confusion related to Moldova(n) - the fact that the relationship between
Moldova and Romania is unique in the world, and there is no comparable case.
The Bosnia-Serbia case is different - Bosniaks are undoubtedly a separate
nation from Serbs, whereas Moldovans are still engaging in the process of
nation-building (or maybe moving away from it... the problem is that even in
the current confusion over nationality, the country is being pulled both
ways, one way towards a Romanian national identity, the other way towards a
separate Moldovan identity). So, this is why a lot of Romanians feel they
have authority to write about Moldovan subjects, because they consider
Moldovans to be the same nation as them.

Mark, of course, believes, from what I know, that there really is no
Romanian nationality, that the present "Romanian" ethnicity is really
Wallachian, and that Moldovans are hence different to Wallachians/Romanians,
and hence any form of Romanian intervention into Moldovan affairs is
(Wallachian) irredentism (consider, however, that current Wallachia is just
one of three regions of modern Romania, and is neither the most prosperous
nor the most significantly over-represented region in Romanian culture and
politics).

I think a similar situation to Moldova is that of Kosovo. That is, Kosovo is
to Albania as Moldova is to Romania, in many ways. Many people in Kosovo
would consider themselves Kosovars about 15 years after independence (or
maybe even now). Also, Just imagine for a second that during Yugoslav times,
the Kosovars had been taught that their language was called "Kosovar" and
made to write it using Cyrillic letters. That's sort of the situation we
have in Moldova now.

Ronline


subject: [Wikipedia-l] academic inquiry msg

body:
As far as I know, the internet is not censored in the Hong Kong SAR, only in
mainland China.

Ronline

2006/3/19, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com>:
>
> I received the following email today:
>
> ----
>
> Hello:
>
> I am writing to you to ask you about your objectives as a Wikipedia
> contributor.
>
>
>
> My name is Mai Pattarawan.  I am an academic at the City University of
> Hong
> Kong, researching Wikipedia.  Specifically I am interested in the
> objectives
> and motivation of Wikipedians who take the time and make the effort to
> contribute.
>
>
>
> I would like to ask you just three questions and hope you will be able to
> answer:
>
>
>
>
>
> 1. Why do you contribute to Wikipedia? Would you say it is a personal
> matter, where you enjoy the opportunity to reveal your knowledge on a
> subject, or a collaborative goal where you enjoy sharing knowledge with
> others?
>
>
>
> 2. In what ways do you find your contributing to Wikipedia beneficial? (
> E.g.,
> satisfaction of building the world's largest encyclopedia). Would you say
> these benefits (personal or for the entire community) are felt right away,
> or do you expect the benefits to arise as time goes by?
>
>
>
> 3. Do you expect that your contributing more to Wikipedia will lead to
> others to contribute more?
>
>
>
>
>
> Please just type your answers right behind the questions, or below, if you
> like.
>
>
>
> I am sending this email only to about 100 Wikipedians, so I very much hope
> you will answer me and allow me to gain some insights.  I found you via
> Google, by searching for Wikipedians who post their email address in
> Wikipedia.
>
>
>
> If you like to receive feedback about the results of this inquiry, please
> let me know and I will email it to you.  Of course, yours and everyone
> else's personal information will not be disclosed.  I will only share
> non-personalized and summary information.
>
>
>
> Thank you very much.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Pattarawan (Mai) Prasarnphanich, PhD
>
> Assistant Professor, Department of Information Systems
> City University of Hong Kong
>
> ----
>
> The IP address of the sender
> (219.79.22.41<http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=219.79.22.41>)
> is from Hong Kong, and AFAIK, China blocks wikimedia projects. So, how can
> a
> person from Hong Kong possibly access wikipedia extensively so as to
> analyse
> the contributions and nature of wikipedia? and moreover, he says that he
> is
> sending it to only 100 wikipedians. This can make the result very
> different
> from the actual fact.
>
> should i participate in the enquiry?
>
> i am also posting the msg. header as it may interest you:
>
> X-Gmail-Received: 11b8396eb5824772da6c80e6cf069014796fc9e1
> Delivered-To: vedant.lath at gmail.com
> Received: by 10.66.255.10 with SMTP id c10cs16807ugi;
>         Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:12:14 -0800 (PST)
> Received: by 10.35.89.10 with SMTP id r10mr351875pyl;
>         Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:12:14 -0800 (PST)
> Return-Path: <pprasarn at cityu.edu.hk>
> Received: from obav02.netvigator.com (obav02.netvigator.com [
> 218.102.62.130])
>         by mx.gmail.com with ESMTP id v53si740577pyv.2006.03.18.22.12.11;
>         Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:12:14 -0800 (PST)
> Received-SPF: neutral (gmail.com: 218.102.62.130 is neither permitted
> nor denied by best guess record for domain of pprasarn at cityu.edu.hk)
> Received: from obav02.netvigator.com (obav02.netvigator.com [127.0.0.1])
>         by obav02.netvigator.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 866481B1605
>         for <vedant.lath at gmail.com>; Sun, 19 Mar 2006 06:12:10 +0000 (GMT)
> Received: from Mai ([219.79.22.41]) by imsm058dat.netvigator.com
>           (InterMail vM.6.01.05.02 201-2131-123-102-20050715) with ESMTP
>           id <20060319061210.SCJT22606.imsm058dat.netvigator.com at Mai>
>           for <vedant.lath at gmail.com>; Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:12:10 +0800
> Message-ID: <008801c64b1c$0e8ac220$6501a8c0 at Mai>
> From: "Pattarawan (Mai) Prasarnphanich" <pprasarn at cityu.edu.hk>
> To: <vedant.lath at gmail.com>
> Subject: Academic inquiry on your objectives and motivation as Wikipedian
> Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:12:09 +0800
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
>         boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0085_01C64B5F.1C4491F0"
> X-Priority: 3
> X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
> X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180
>
> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2180
>
>
> Vedant Lath
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vedant_lath
> http://vedant.lath.in/icse/User:Vedanta
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>