body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 08:48:52 -0600, Nick Reinking wrote:

> On Jan 9, 2004, at 7:57 AM, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>> A quote:
>> Google's infrastructure: Google uses consumer-level hard disks and
>> 'really cheap, unreliable memory.' ('If something fails, it's not
>> you, it's probably the memory.') They have around 10,000
>> commodity-level Linux computers set up in a parallel network ('the
>> largest Linux cluster in the world'), and anticipate the death of 'a
>> few machines every day.' Their network is set up to be able to route
>> around a failed machine instantly.
>
> Google also has a much larger hardware budget than we do, and a small
> army of PhD developers working on their code.  ;)
>
>> ... much pricing data follows ...
>
> Do these Dell prices include support?  Ideally, it would be nice not to
> have to worry about people having to drive all over the place to fix a
> small hardware error.  That's the biggest reason (IMO) for buying a Dell
> machine - if we're were not going to take advantage of their support
> contracts, then we would probably be better off buying cheaper, faster
> machines elsewhere.

Hm- yes. They include Support:

* DB server: 3Yr BRONZE Support, Next Business Day Onsite, S/W Support
* others: 1Yr Parts + Onsite Labor (Next Business Day) + 1Yr Technical
  Support

We can save 300$ on the DB if we go for '3Yr BRONZE Support, Next Business
Day Onsite'. The others don't seem to have smaller Support packages. Maybe
in the consumer/desktop department? I've only looked in 'small business-
servers'.

The only reason for picking Dell is my lack of knowledge about cheaper
american companies. I know where i'd look for it in germany, and i
personally consider Dell to be in the medium/upper price bracket. If you
know a cheaper source with reasonable reputation let us know.

--
Gabriel Wicke


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete vs salvage

body:
There are two reasons I don't do anything, once an article makes its way
to VfD:

1. The matter will be decided by a vote.
2. The vote will ignore what I do to fix the article.

So many times, I've labored for over an hour on an article, just to find
it deleted by a committee vote. I'd rather run for political office, at
least I might get my picture in the paper.

If the article is really THAT BAD, just delete it: you're an admin, be
bold and can that trash!

If it just needs a lot of work, pick a volunteer and assign him (or her)
the task of fixing it.

If they refuse, they lose one WikiDollar ;-)

Ed Poor


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Call for Configurations

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 08:48:52 -0600, Nick Reinking wrote:

> Google also has a much larger hardware budget than we do, and a small
> army of PhD developers working on their code.  ;)

The point is- Google would need at least double their current budget if
they went for high-end hardware with the same performance.

>From http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/03/1352239:
Almost all the technology we use to support our server farm is home-grown.
The system we've built is so efficient we can maintain more than 10,000
computers with a handful of ops folks.
Of course, we benefit a lot from our massive redundancy: Unlike many
companies, we don't need to worry immediately if a computer, or two, or a
hundred, die, because the dead computers have lots of clones.
--

About work:
We set up redundancy and completely automatic failover anyway, there's
nothing else to develop. The only additional work is copying the hd images
over to new boxes and configuring ip/hostname (if not done with dhcp). We
should have a development box (could use Apache number six for the
beginning) that serves as the template. A small rsync script and we should
be ready to update all boxes at once, there would be little difference if
there are 4 Apaches, 6 or 12.

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Pliny etc

body:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 03:48:22PM +0100, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 15:30:50 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:
>
>
> > So it's using 900 MB of real memory. Swap is used, but the vmstat's I've seen all
> > had very small si/so rates (0 most of the time, 5 maximum), so this is no issue.
>
> Ok, but this is on a dual Cpu- a single one apache would run fewer
> threads. Would this halve Apaches's memory?

right, I forgot about the dual CPU. 1 Gig per new box should do the job.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
KNOTT, T wrote:

>From: Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>
>>VfD is completely broken.  I say that here for emphasis because I
>>think we really should get rid of it entirely.
>>
>>
>
>So do I. The very idea of deleting people's work, that they have freely
>given, is insulting, off-putting to newbies, and non-collaborative. I
>suggest that we delete VfD and use cleanup instead.
>
>
Have you looked at the crap that's been deleted lately?  Much of it
*was* on Cleanup first, sometimes for over a month, and most of the rest
either doesn't belong here, or is such terrible nonsense as to be
useless as a savageable starting point for a future article.

A sampling:
[[JumpTheCroc]], an idiosyncratic term coined on Wikipedia
[[Mac OS XI]], a made-up mac rumor that even the mac-rumor sites don't carry
[[The mo]], an animal invented by the submitter with a somewhat amusing
backstory
[[Soylent Greens]], a fictitious political party invented by the submitter

etc.

So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine.  Do those who
think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator
excepted, because I know he does)?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and Viajero's claims

body:
Robert wrote:

>Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider
>Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the
>original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these
>quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the
>Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are
>proud of them. The only problem is that some people are
>uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to
>hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project.
>
>
My problem is that I do not believe selecting some quotes is the proper
job of Wikipedia: going to the texts of speeches, interpreting them, and
selecting a few quotes from millions of documents is original research.
We should be summarizing existing research.  If you want to suggest that
Palestinians are insincere about the peace process, you should find a
historian or respected commentator who has made that argument, and cite
him, perhaps also citing the quotes he cited as "so-and-so cites an
Arafat speech of 1988 to support his case, as follows: '...'", and so on.

And, while I generally lean towards the Israeli point of view, I do find
this text rather biased.  It's a primary-research selection of quotes
attempting to build an editorial case that the Palestinians are
insincere about the peace process.  That has no place in an encyclopedia
(and, indeed, does not appear in any other mainstream encyclopedia).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete vs salvage

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>There are two reasons I don't do anything, once an article makes its way
>to VfD:
>
>1. The matter will be decided by a vote.
>2. The vote will ignore what I do to fix the article.
>
>
That's not true at all.  I've fixed dozens of articles that have
appeared on VfD, left a note there saying "I rewrote it; keep the
rewritten version", and it has been kept.  Seems pretty simple to me.

-Mark


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations feature?

body:
--- Graham Burnett <grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
 Iyt would be nice to have a
> 'citation' feature that linked to quoted sources, much as the end
> of a
> chapter in an academic book has a 'notes' section at the end...

put them at the bottom of the article, under Extternal links, under
References. Then reference them in the text as you would in a english
composition class paper.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 07:39:19 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> (I was unable to replicate your price.  I get $1498 for this
> configuration, or $1298 for a Celeron 2.0.)

Did you untick the Windows license? One of the servers had it selected by
default. It's right here in my 'shopping basket', so i'm shure it's no
error.

> Very interesting.  Earlier I said rack space is not an issue, but we
> are constrained to rackmount servers.

Ok. The price difference isn't that big- the rackmount ones have 1Gig ram.

> Replicating as close I can the configuration you have above, I
> find:
>
> Silicon Mechanics - $1179 P4 2.6, $1038 Celeron 2.4 - non-ECC ram
> Penguin Computing - $1211 P4 2.66, $1102 Celeron 2.7 - ECC ram

Afaik the Dells all have ECC ram. A P4 should be significantly faster than
a Celeron at the same rate. They all seem to be more expensive than Dell.
There have to be some cheaper companies than Dell in the US- otherwise
there would be a decent business opportunity ;-)

> (Penguin doesn't have the slower processors.)
>
> Lots and lots of ram is usually good for webserving, though? (Although I
> guess it's much more important for the squids?)

The Apaches get their data from the database and from the fileserver
(might be the same machine). They don't serve anything from their local
disk (where a lot of ram would help as disk buffer- more than half of
larousse's ram is used for it). All they do is burning cpu cycles on
templates.

Database connection result caching (if there is any in php by default)
will be part of Apaches's memory footprint which is 900 Megs at the moment
for dual CPU. So with 1 Gig ram there should be roughly 400 Megs of free
memory.

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD

body:
Rick wrote:
> Fine.  I give up.  I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and
>I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to
>Wikipedia.

When I see obvious vandalism, I revert. If a newbie creates an experimental
page  "fgh" etc. I just delete. No need to go through VfD for that sort of
thing. Everything else should be cleaned up, not deleted.

 When I was a newbie, I had some of my stuff listed on VfD because I didn't
understand the way things are done around here - It's not nice to have you
work criticized in this manner. It is off-putting, fortunately I'm thick
skinned but others are not so. I've seen lots of things put on VfD because
they are deemed "trivial". This is insulting to the people who put their
time and effort into writing the "not important" article. Obviously the
article was important to at least one person.

I've seen a large number of How-to type articles listed on VfD because they
are "not encyclopaedic". Although I agree that this type of article is not
what you find in a paper encyclopaedia it is often useful knowledge that
potential users of Wikipedia may very well want to know, recently some
people have been moving the how-to pages over to Wikibooks, which is a much
more suitable place for this type of article IMO but if the deletionists got
their way , much of the material may have been lost in the meantime.

Most worryingly of all. I've seen some syops delete pages based on as
majority rather than a consensus. The page is broke and can't be fixed :-(

Let's have [[newbie tests]] so that non sysops can bring "hello! Paul is
gay!" type pages to a sysop attention.

And [[Pages that need to be moved to other wikis]] for wikionary quotes etc

And [[Vanity pages]] for suspected vanity pages

And have everything else go to [[cleanup]]

If it doesn't work out after a while, we can always bring back VfD

Theresa

Proposal copied to talk:VfD please answer there.

Theresa


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK)

body:
Jimbo,

I am in the uncomfortable and for me highly unusual position of completely
disagreeing with your assessment of the situation.

I was the one who listed the original article, [[Palestinian views of the
peace process]], on VfD in mid-December. I had encountered the article
last summer and was appalled by it, and made a mental note to try to
salvage what little of value was in the article and merge it somewhere
else. However, I never got around to it -- nor did anyone else -- and
finally I thought the best thing would be to give the thing  a quick and
decent burial. The vote if I recall correctly was nearly unanimous; six or
eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a POV rant that was
hopelessly beyond salvation, as you will see from the VfD vote. Sometimes
it really is better to wipe the slate clean and begin anew.

(As an aside, I would like to add that I agree with the shortcomings of
VfD; I also think it should be abolished and Cleanup as a process further
enhanced, but this is a separate issue which should be discussed
elsewhere.)

At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor the scholarly
resources to offer a detailed explanation as to why the material in that
article was so bad: suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of
quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context, obviously (to
some of us at least) manipulated solely as a way of discrediting the
Palestinian cause. It failed to take into consideration that there is a
broad range of opinion among Palestinians; the
radical/fundamentalist/militarist POV is but one.

The PLO -- representing the Palestinians but not necessarily reflecting
ALL of Palestinian opinion -- did indeed at one time have as a goal the
destruction of Israel. This goal was renounced at the PNC meeting in 1988
if I recall correctly. Perhaps our coverage of the evolving Palestine
perspective could be expanded in the main article or one of its offspring
-- the issue is not "omitting" any information or censoring any POV -- it
is presenting balanced (and balancing) viewpoints with the proper
historical context, something the above-mentioned text failed utterly to
do.

I support Danny and Zero on this one 100%. I find it particularly ironical
and completely hypocritical that RK now positions himself as the
"defender" of Palestinians from "censorship". Have you no shame RK?

On 01/09/04  at 06:48 AM, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> said:

> But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem.  There is no
> question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation requires
> understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process actually are.
> There is no question that one point of contention is whether Palestinian
> leaders, in particular, view the peace process as "permanent and
> irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it merely as a short-term
> negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to destroy Israel.

> Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable.  This is
> an important part of one of the major questions of our time.

V.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Why can't I ban Michael on Meta?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Every time I try it says "No user exists by that name". Interesting message
> considering this 'non-user' has an edit history on Meta (most of his edits
> have been to articles that are now deleted, however):
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Michael
>
> Also whenever I ban an IP on Meta the ban seems to auto-expire after a very
> short time and does not seem to leave any mention of the un-banning in any
> log I could find.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Wikipedia will forever be haunted by problems such as these, since, at
Anthere's request, I turned username blocking off by default. I'll turn
it on at meta. Are there any other wikis you want it enabled at, while
I'm at it? How about simple, wikibooks and wiktionary?

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Pliny etc

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 08:36:51 -0500, Evan Prodromou wrote:

> Gotta replace the disk. Modern hard disks mark bad sectors internally,
> and remaps requests to "spare" sectors. Only when a disk runs out of
> spare sectors will it report any sectors as "bad".
>
> So, if you're getting bad sector errors, this means the disk has
> seriously degraded, and it's time to replace it.

XFS is a good thing to move to once you're at it- much less disk trashing,
better performance than ext2 and ext3, and very stable. Not as quick as
ReiserFS at accessing small files but more stable than all other
filesystems. I'm running it on all my machines, never had any trouble.
Even on a notebook that often gets a mistreatment ;-)

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Representing all P'sOV is important; "balance" isn't.

body:
The essence of censorship, and of social thought control, is the suppression
of alternative points of view to the point where the average member of
society literally does not know that the point of view exists. Orwell,
insanity is a minority of one. The goal is to get people with doubts or
tendencies to inquiry to believe "I am _the only person in the world_ who
believes this."

This sort of censorship can exist even when more than one point of view is
represented.  For example, in the United States, there is a tendency by the
mainstream media to give the impression that everyone is _either_ a
Republican or a Democrat. (I often think it comical, fa lal lal, fa lal lal,
that every boy and every gal who's born into this world alive is either a
little Liberal or else a little Conservative...) Or, that everyone is either
a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Jew.

The strength of this sort of thought suppression is almost entirely sapped
when even the slightest hint of the existence of the suppressed point of view
slips through. Many of us have felt the intense liberating effect of the
discovery that we are _not_ the only [agnostics, Democrats, people who can't
abide twelve-tone music, whatever] in the world

The important thing is that the points of view be presented. And, that they
be labelled and attributed so that the reader has an opportunity to judge
their credibility.

Whether the presentation is balanced is _far_ less important. The reader can
see and judge the balance for himself. If the article gives great weight to
one set of views and little weight to another, that will be obvious to the
reader, who will be able to sense the author's point of view. That's OK. It's
not important that the author's point of view not leak through (and it's
impossible to prevent). What's important is that the other points of view be
present. _Even if_ they are given short shrift, or accurately or inaccurately
presented as less authoritative.  "You'll believe this, and no authority
supports it, but there IS this kook named Copernicus who thinks the Earth
isn't the center of the universe" is more than enough to open the mind and
trigger the "Wow! is that _possible_?" response.

An article that truly presents a single point of view ex cathedra is bad.
But I think even a sentence or two labelling it "this is the XYZ point of
view put forth by ABC. QQXXZZ, however, counters (one sentence summary)"
"neutralizes" it almost completely. Later, if someone wants to write a longer
section dealing with the QQXXZZ viewpoint, they can.

That's my point of view, anyway.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Call for Configurations

body:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 07:39:19AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> > otherwise rackmount 1U:
> > Dell PowerEdge 650
> > Intel Pentium 4, 2.4GHz, 512K, 533MHz, with Floppy /CDROM
> > 1.0GB DDR,266MHZ,2X512MB DIMM
> > Price:$1,098.00
>
> (I was unable to replicate your price.  I get $1498 for this
> configuration, or $1298 for a Celeron 2.0.)
>
> Very interesting.  Earlier I said rack space is not an issue, but we
> are constrained to rackmount servers.
>
> Replicating as close I can the configuration you have above, I
> find:
>
> Silicon Mechanics - $1179 P4 2.6, $1038 Celeron 2.4 - non-ECC ram
> Penguin Computing - $1211 P4 2.66, $1102 Celeron 2.7 - ECC ram
>
> (Penguin doesn't have the slower processors.)
>
> Lots and lots of ram is usually good for webserving, though?
> (Although I guess it's much more important for the squids?)

Dell does not include Rails by default. SM and PC do.
You've to add that to the Dell price listed above. 179$ for
Dell boxes.

The comparable SM box (SM-1151A, 2,6GHz P4, 2*512MB RAM, Seagate 40GB,
no CD, Rack mount kit, 3yr warranty) is at $1104
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i1158/p4-server.php

JeLuF


from_name: libertarian

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views

body:
> In an NPOV encyclopedia, we do not take sides with one
> group or another. Rather, we show the range of positions
> that exist, we document these positions with quotes and
> sources, and allow readers to make up their own minds.

Which is the problem when it comes to facts. If flat-earth theory
is given the same legitimacy as what science accepts the shape of
the earth to be, Wikipedia loses its credibility.

Wikipedia is full of conspiracy theories and claims which science
would consider to be rubbish.

He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that
it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like
USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full
of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a
dangerous path.

It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried mediating on
at least one issue (their mind was made up already but they were
pretending to mediate), but when I confronted them with FACTS and
EVIDENCE, they quietly withdrew from the mediation. This is a
clear case of dishonesty, but never mind.

The point is that Wikipedia is full of errors (even in areas where
I wasn't involved in any confrontation) and the reason is that it
allows those with the loudest voice to win.
How about new words - Wikipolice and Wikicop? A Wikicop is one who
solves problems by judging someone a winner in a shouting match.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Introducing My Way - http://www.myway.com


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Nonsense. I have done no original research at all. My only "sin" is that I
> made available very well known quotes that Danny and Zero want to hide. Thus
> the censorship.

No Robert.  Your sin (besides the fact you called me a Nazi, for which I will
not forgive you) is that you wrote the article as an entirely accurate piece
of propaganda.  As Ed sagely said, people -- yeah, even politicians -- say
different things to different and what you did in this article was gather all
the worst things Palestinian leaders said and dump them in one place.

Arafat has (many times) said terrible things about Israel and cynical things
about the Peace Process.  He has also said conciliatory things about both.

Your original draft of this article was composed of as many of the former as
you could muster, and none of the latter.  Then you represented these views as
if they were the incontrovertible and steadfast beliefs of the entire
Palestinian population (can you imagine an article entitled "US views of the
Iraq Conflict" that suggested such a united front -- laughable.)

You did these things because you are -- like all of us -- are utterly
incapable of being impartial in things that concern you closely.

That's why it was POV.

That's also why it shouldn't have been deleted.  Theres a good article in
there, showing how the stated views of the Palestinian leadership have changed
over time -- and a corresponding one showing the vicissitudes of the Israeli
leadership.

You and your various antagonists are *not* the people who should write them.

--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:06:20 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:

> Dell does not include Rails by default. SM and PC do.
> You've to add that to the Dell price listed above. 179$ for
> Dell boxes.
>
> The comparable SM box (SM-1151A, 2,6GHz P4, 2*512MB RAM, Seagate 40GB,
> no CD, Rack mount kit, 3yr warranty) is at $1104
> http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i1158/p4-server.php

That's non-ECC ram though and no cdrom. The rail costs 49$ at
siliconmechanics.
Newbie question: Is the rail like a drawer so that you can pull the server
out of the rack? I've never physically seen my servers up to now...

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Tim-

> Wikipedia will forever be haunted by problems such as these, since, at
> Anthere's request, I turned username blocking off by default. I'll turn
> it on at meta. Are there any other wikis you want it enabled at, while
> I'm at it? How about simple, wikibooks and wiktionary?

I sympathize with Anthere's concerns. If there are no clear policies on
banning in one language, sysops might feel encouraged to ban signed in
contributors for non-vandalism. This would clearly be problematic and
difficult to resolve from outside.

However, I think the right thing to do is to inform all Wikipedias about
this pending change, and to set a clear policy on banning that is valid
across all Wikipedias. Having inconsistent configurations is a very bad
thing for a multitude of reasons.

To this end, I think it is absolutely necessary to merge the wikipedia-l
and intwiki-l mailing lists. intwiki-l is effectively a ghetto for the
non-English lists, and people from the non-English wikis complain that
they haven't heard about policy decisions on wikipedia-l. There's really
no good reason to have two different lists here.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD

body:
Teresa-

I think your concerns that VfD puts off contributors who might otherwise
become valued long term members are very legitimate.

There is another side to the issue, though, and this is already touched
upon in your post -- this attitude that just because one person cares
about an article, it somehow has a place in Wikipedia. This is not the
case. Wikipedia is not Everything2. There are limits to the type of
content we allow -- these limits have been enumerated on [[What Wikipedia
is not]] and other pages.

Already it is often very difficult to get rid of pages that contain
nothing but trivia. You may feel that enumerating all the things in the
world in which the number "101" appears is valuable, I think it is
worthless trivia. I think that my view is supported by every legitimate
philosophical understanding of the terms "knowledge" and "encyclopedia"
(the latter being a sum of the former).

If we remove the VfD process entirely it will become even more difficult
to remove these pages, and we will stray away even further from our goal
of being an encyclopedia. Instead, our new goal will then be to be a loose
collection of provably true statements. E.g. it is a true statement that
the number 101 apperas in the film title "101 Dalmatians", but it is
hardly of encyclopedic value. Such a collection is much harder to maintain
and much more likely to be inconsistent than a true encyclopedia, and I
also believe it tarnishes our reputation, because we claim to be something
which we are clearly not.

Removing VfD is the wrong answer to a real problem: How do we communicate
to contributors what kind of content is acceptable and what isn't? I think
the real solutions are different:
- improving and standardizing welcome messages
- improving VfD headers and communicating with users in cases where their
pages have been listed
- solidifying certain policies so that they can be referred to as strict
rules, rather than "rules to consider"
- generally, dispelling the popular notion that Wikipedia is a place
without rules by including appropriate notices on the edit pages etc.

As for the VfD process itself:

VfD is like a servant working for two masters. One master believes in
rules and due process, the other believes in creative chaos and consensus.
As a result, the VfD page is very confused and occasionally inconsistent.
Depending on which sysop makes the final decision and which users
participate in the debate, the outcome may be entirely different.

We need to make a decision as to what we want VfD to be:

1) a voting page
2) a discussion page where consensus has to be reached.

If we want it to be a voting page, then we need to set a clear threshold
at which deletion can be allowed. We need to make rules as to who is
allowed to vote.

If we want it to be a discussion page, we should be allowed to ignore
"votes", that is, comments that merely express a preference, but not a
reason. If I write a long explanation why I think a page should be
deleted, I don't want the page to remain in the system just because
someone quickly dropped by, looked at the page and posted a "Keep."
comment. I want my arguments to be logically and soundly refuted. I want
people to put up or shut up.

Given that we do not have a defined decision making process within
Wikipedia, such a decision can only be made in two ways:

1) Jimbo makes it
2) Jimbo authorizes a process or a person to make it.

Until then, VfD is indeed broken, but it would hardly be fair to remove it
entirely just because we haven't fixed it yet.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Delirium wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine.  Do those who
> think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator
> excepted, because I know he does)?
>
Speaking as one who hasn't been part of this discussion, I haven't taken
part in VfD for quite a while because I found it difficult to get my 2
cents in (I frequently have the page changed on me while I'm trying to
edit over a dial-up connection), the conversations move too quickly for
me to check in only once or twice a day, & putting this page on my watchlist
is of little use.

Participating in the forum at [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] at least allows me
to help keep some of the potential candidates for VfD from appearing there.
It's not only the newbies who find the wrangling over form & content
confusing &/or off-putting.

Geoff


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
Delirium wrote:
> [[JumpTheCroc]], an idiosyncratic term coined on Wikipedia
> [[Mac OS XI]], a made-up mac rumor that even the mac-rumor sites don't
> carry
> [[The mo]], an animal invented by the submitter with a somewhat amusing
> backstory
> [[Soylent Greens]], a fictitious political party invented by the submitter

I think that all of those deletions are perfectly fine.  So when I say
that the process is broken, I don't mean to say that we should not
have a process.  I mean that the process is clearly going astray when
a page like the one we've been discussing on Palestinian views on the
peace process are deleted.

(Turns out, of course, that it wasn't actually deleted, but
redirected, which is better, but only slightly so.)

--Jimbo


body:
Ed-
> This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same:

>      LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z.

Yes, that is the basic premise of NPOV. I think everyone understands that.
The problem is that NPOV is not very clear on other matters, such as
balance and level of detail. So people keep arguing about the same things
over and over again.

Articles often get listed on VfD because they (allegedly) *selectively*
attribute points of views to their adherents. You know that you've started
quite a few such articles yoruself, Ed. Similarly, in the case of the
[[Mother Teresa]] article, I added a lot of critical information about
her, properly attributed.

Many people feel that in such cases, the information should either be
split away or removed, and only a "balanced" article would be legitimate.
Of course what is and isn't balanced is different to different people.

Personally, I think that if the statements in an article are correct,
encyclopedic and relevant to the article's subject, they should remain,
and the article should be expanded (or summarized) by those who feel that
certain views or facts are missing (or overly detailed).

Some people may feel that this gives advocates of one stripe or another a
blanket check to insert their point of view ("propaganda") into Wikipedia
as long as it is properly attributed. Indeed it does. That is not a bad
thing, though. We need to get away from the notion that articles have to
be perfect shining diamonds at any given time, and if they are not, they
should be deleted. That's not how articles grow and evolve on Wikipedia.

To put things into perspective, most of our information about foreign
countries currently comes from the CIA World Factbook and the State
Department. This information looks more or less NPOV, but it obviously
omits essential historical details. For example, most of our articles
about African countries make no mention of the corporations and banks that
have business operations in these countries, or of the mercenaries they
hire. Most conflicts are described as "ethnic" rather than economically
motivated. There is little information about how governments and media are
bribed into supporting pro-western policies. And we don't learn why
western governments ignore (or actively support) genocides in some
countries (Rwanda) and invent them in others (Congo).

Yet few people challenge these articles. Why? Because they're nicely
written and look as if they are complete. Yet, in terms of true NPOV, they
are among the worst material we have on Wikipedia. Even in these cases,
however, I think it is better to edit the articles than to delete them.

Regards,

Erik


body:
libertarian wrote:
> Wikipedia is full of conspiracy theories and claims which science
> would consider to be rubbish.

Can you give me an example?

> He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that
> it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like
> USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full
> of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a
> dangerous path.

Can you give me an example?

> It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried mediating on
> at least one issue (their mind was made up already but they were
> pretending to mediate), but when I confronted them with FACTS and
> EVIDENCE, they quietly withdrew from the mediation. This is a
> clear case of dishonesty, but never mind.

This sounds like an example, can you give more details?  What page?

--Jimbo


body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> > That's non-ECC ram though and no cdrom.
>
> What do you need a CDROM for if you've got a NIC?

I think he just meant that the price comparison wasn't 100%
fair, which is correct.

I'm planning to not buy CDROMs for the bulk of machines, because they
cost $68 each (varies with vendor, of course), and they aren't much
use in our kind of application.  It's convenient for reinstalling the
os from scratch, but if I'm doing that, I've already had a hardware
failure or something, presumably.

On the other hand, a floppy is still useful as a quick way to boot
an otherwise totally dead machine.  And they cost very
little.

--Jimbo


body:
Graham Burnett wrote:
> "External links within the article are against wiki policy."

Earlier today I used external links in an article, but I didn't
really like it.  And I found myself doing something really bad --
but I caught myself.

I wrote something like...

In [http://www.whatever.com/ this article], so-and-so says such-and-such.

that's really bad because when the content is repurposed, that sentence
will make no sense at all.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Celeron vs. p4

body:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 10:31:09 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Can anyone give me some perspective on this celeron vs p4 issue?
>
> For equivalent ghz, what's the difference likely to be *from
> the perspective of webserving*?

Dunno, but quote from http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8700:
"Now, with the P4 Celly, Intel has managed a processor that sometimes
can't even touch 70% of the P4's performance. Truly an engineering marvel.
All of this doesn't mean the Celly doesn't have its uses, but it does
guarantee that enthusiasts will be steered towards the P4 line rather than
the Celeron, as most of the tasks the P4 stomps the Celeron at are
multimedia/gaming based."

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs PIV

body:
Celeron seems to be very crap according to Anandtech :

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927&p=4

Flash needed I think

Shaihulud


body:
On 01/09/04  at 05:26 AM, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> said:

> Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, openly, and it's affecting his editing.

Danny has an agenda? This is laughable. What is it? That he is
pro-Palestinian? I have yet to see a shred of evidence of this. His major
failing appears to be that he is not uncritical enough of Israel in the
Manichean worldview of RK and his ilk. A pretty strange accusation when
you think about it; Danny lived in Israel for many years, served in the
IDF, and speaks both Hebrew and Arabic. In their own ways, both Danny and
Zero are extremely well-informed and have a far subtler grasp of the
complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than RK. And rightly so,
they both strongly -- and at times inelegantly -- resist RK's efforts to
insert blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda in Wiki articles.

V.


subject: [Wikitech-l] more google system quotes for the inclined

body:
From
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:kVfI1Wb2qmIJ:www.computer.org/micro/mi2003/m2022.pdf

"To provide sufficient capacity to handle query traffic, our service
consists of multiple clusters distributed worldwide. Each cluster has
around a few thousand machines, and the geographically distributed setup
protects us against catastrophic data center failures (like those arising
from earthquakes and large-scale power failures). A DNS-based
load-balancing system selects a cluster by accounting for the user?s
geographic proximity to each physical cluster. The load-balancing system
minimizes round-trip time for the user?s request, while also considering
the available capacity at the various clusters."

Sounds like they're running a sort of Super Sparrow as well...

Some strange pics:
http://backrub.nerisoft.com/May1998/hardware.htm

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD

body:
Sorry to send so many replies in one email but as all are related to VfD, it seemed silly to send them separately. This is in reply to Danny, Jimbo, Erik, Optim, Rick, Ed and Theresa.

>Danny thought that "[[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed on Votes for deletion and deleted."

It was never deleted as two people on VfD suggested that at least some of the content was salvageable and ought to be merged elsewhere. Please see [[Talk:Palestine]].

>Jimbo wrote "I think that was obviously a mistake and is a good example of what's broken about the VfD concept."

Had it been deleted, that might have been a mistake, but as it wasn't, perhaps it's a sign that VfD is not as broken as many people seem to think. VfD brought new ideas to the problem, with people previously uninvolved suggesting potential solutions which are now documented on the talk page. This often happens at VfD with poor articles being saved as a direct result of being listed. I can't understand why people keep overlooking this huge benefit of the page and doing nothing but criticising the process.

>Erik wrote some very sensible things regarding the role of VfD in eliminating the articles which reflect [[What Wikipedia is not]] and suggested "communicating with users in cases where their pages have been listed"

Contacting the author(s) of a listed page is important, but not absolutely essential. The deletion process does not have to be final. There is [[Votes for undeletion]] should someone find out later their page was deleted without their knowledge. I think it would be nice if people were informed, but I don't think people should start ranting if it doesn't happen.

>Erik also proposed "solidifying certain policies"

This is an excellent suggestion and would largely eliminate the need for VfD, which at the moment is being used to debate the same policies every single week.

>Optim proposed "a new VfD system which uses Scientific Management principles".

So instead of training newbies to understand the deletion process and how our policies apply to articles to be deleted, you want to punish them for not already having this information? An article wrongly listed is not the end of the world. It won't be deleted, so no harm done, and hopefully the person who listed it and others that read the resulting comments on why such an article ought not be deleted will have learnt something.

>Rick wrote "I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia."

Rick, please stop saying this. I believe you are doing a great job defending Wikipedia from vandals and listing something on VfD that others think should be kept is hardly a crime.

>Ed suggested "we have too many crucial, urgent pages about articles and people...All we need is vandalism in progress and pages requiring attention."

Such a page would very quickly become hundreds of kilobytes long and unusable. You might find the "Things to watch" and "Problems in need of fixing" sections of [[Wikipedia:Utilities]] useful.

>Theresa said "let's have [[newbie tests]] so that non sysops can bring "hello! Paul is gay!" type pages to a sysop attention. And [[Pages that need to be moved to other wikis]] for wikionary quotes.

We already do. Please see [[Wikipedia:deleted test]], [[Wikipedia:Pages to be moved to Wiktionary]] and [[Meta:Transwiki]].

Angela.

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from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD

body:
Erik said some very insightful stuff about our current deletion process, but I would
like to take issue with:

> One master believes in rules and due process, the other believes
> in creative chaos and consensus

I think it is more accurate to suggest that one master believes in rules, another
believes in votes, and a third believes in consensus. There actually is a lot of
support, even a near consensus, behind the "due process" side of things, which is
why there's always so much fuss if a sysop deletes a page in a way that isn't strictly
supported by our deletion policy.

Currently we fudge the three viewpoints by essentially allowing the sysop/user taking
the decision to decide on what basis to take it - "rough consensus" covers a
multitude of sins. While clearly non-ideal, it's not as bad as it sounds - we're
empowering those who take the decisions, and since they're the ones who get the
flak, that seems kinda fair.

-- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Conflict resolution and text orientation (Was Effective
	bullying strategy)

body:
Hi.

I would like to comment on one aspect of our collective behaviour in these cases:
We're focusing on the text that is being disputed, rather than focusing on the conflict
generated by the text. This seems to be quite common, and I believe it was first
noted by "Louis Kyu Won Ryu" in relation to the conflict over Mother Teresa. People
who comment start talking first about whether the disputed text is accurate or not,
and the conversation revolves around text.

There is some logic to this: often, improving the text resolves the dispute, and
particularly for smaller scale incidents, many of us have realised than ten minutes of
research is worth ten hours of edit war and debate. So this text orientated approach
has its place. That place is on the relevant talk page, or the article itself, not on this
mailing list. Also, note that while editing the disputed text is often effective, telling
someone else to edit the disputed text has a long and distinguished history of
abysmal failure.

However, I wonder whether this approach is perhaps overused. Sometimes disputes
can be resolved or prevented by focusing on the people, rather than the text.
Sometimes a dispute may not be resolvable right now, and we need to take a
"damage limitation" approach, while we wait for someone to come along with the
time, knowledge, and wisdom to solve the problem at text level. In this case, if the
problem could be easily resolved at the text level, surely one of the frequent
contributors to the Isr/Pal pages would have done so - if they've failed to do so, is it
reasonable to hope that we can do so?

I think we should recall that Danny didn't come to this list asking us to write the
perfect account of Palestinian views of the peace process. Indeed, I would imagine
that the person most capable of writing such an account would be Danny! Rather,
Danny came here to discuss the "bullying strategy" that he felt that Robert Kaiser
was using. The same focus on behaviour is evident with most of the cases raised on
the mailing list, which I think underlines my feelings.

WikiLove,
-- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy

body:
Hi

I would first suggest to Danny and Robert Kaiser that, since they feel unable to reach
a direct resolution with each other, it might well be appropriate for one of them to
request formal mediation. I'm sure the mediation group will be delighted to intervene,
and I wish them the very best of luck.

I do not intend to get deeply involved in this conflict at this stage. However, I note a
comment from RK to Danny that "your repeated mass deletions are censorship and
may get you banned", which reminds me of similar statements by him in the past. I
would like to remind Robert that it is the sysops who decide whether pure vandalism
warrants a ban, and (now) the arbitration committee which decides whether other
behaviour warrants a ban. Speculation about such decisions has a poor record in the
promotion of WikiLove.

Cheers,
-- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedic knowledge

body:
> I think the concept of what is "encyclopedic
> knowledge" needs to be made more explicit

Encyclopedic knowledge is verifiable and informative, amongst other qualities.

[[wikipedia:verifiable]]

[[wikipedia:informative]]

We're slowly and quietly amassing quite a wealth of information on how to decide
what should and should not be deleted. (though I will probably now discover that one
or both of these articles has been deleted!)

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD

body:
On 01/09/04  at 08:07 PM, erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) said:

> Already it is often very difficult to get rid of pages that contain
> nothing but trivia. You may feel that enumerating all the things in the
>  world in which the number "101" appears is valuable, I think it is
> worthless trivia. I think that my view is supported by every legitimate
>  philosophical understanding of the terms "knowledge" and "encyclopedia"
>  (the latter being a sum of the former).

> If we remove the VfD process entirely it will become even more difficult
>  to remove these pages, and we will stray away even further from our
> goal   of being an encyclopedia. Instead, our new goal will then be to
> be a loose   collection of provably true statements. E.g. it is a true
> statement that   the number 101 apperas in the film title "101
> Dalmatians", but it is   hardly of encyclopedic value. Such a collection
> is much harder to maintain   and much more likely to be inconsistent
> than a true encyclopedia, and I   also believe it tarnishes our
> reputation, because we claim to be something   which we are clearly not.

These are excellent points. I think the concept of what is "encyclopedic
knowledge" needs to be made more explicit. For my part, I feel I know it
when I see it -- and correspondingly I know unencyclopedic material when I
see it but I can't rationally explain what the difference it is -- it is
an inituition. I've taken information out of articles which I consider
"unencyclopedic" but when confronted about this I can't explain why.

V.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Delete vs salvage (was: Context and POV (was: Effective
	bullying strategy))

body:
On 01/09/04  at 11:58 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said: >
Viajero,

> List me as "abstaining" from the VfD vote: so it wasn't
> unanimous, there was at least one abstention. If I thought  VfD was a
> helpful process, I'd have voted "keep".

> I agree that the article wasn't well written, but I don't
> think /voting to eliminate it/ is the answer. Perhaps
> BLANKING the content and starting fresh, with a stub would  be better.

Ed,

In THEORY I agree with what you say.

In PRACTICE however I have problems with your ideas.

First, that article was listed for a week or so. Neither you nor any other
of the half dozen or so people who have said on this list today that the
article shouldn't have been deleted took the trouble to try to salvage it.
Neither did I. I simply didn't have the time or energy for it. Previous to
that, it lay in the gizzard of WP for a good three, four months untouched.

It is fine in principal to be against deleting articles but that implies
ACTION in concrete terms, but since we are a collection of volunteers,
this doesn't always follow. While I have nothing against incomplete
articles, of which there are obviously many in WP, I am strongly against
have genuinely *bad* articles -- such as the Palestinian viewpoints
article -- in the encyclopedia. They should be fixed immediately or
deleted -- one or the other.

Not having a mechanism for deleting "bad" articles places the onus on the
WP community to fix them. Any crank can come along and write up some nutty
POV and leave it for the rest of us to deal with. Maybe for 99% of the
articles in WP that is acceptable; for the remaining 1% on controversial
subjects such as the Middle East, it isn't.

To repeat what I said above: I could have devoted an afternoon or an
evening to salvage the article; so could have you, or Danny, or Zero or
another user. But no one volunteered. At the risk of offending the author,
it was better that it was deleted.

Pragmatically yours,

V.


from_name: susan allen

subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth'

body:
ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye!  The following is a quote from another subscriber:

"He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that
it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like
USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full
of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a
dangerous path."

Susan Allen

PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it
is so terribly lame!
--
Susan Allen, Associate Dean
Instructor of Harp & Improvisation
School of Music
California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, CA  91355
phone (661) 222-2780
fax (661) 255-0938

Founding Director, Susan Allen's Summer Harp Course, Inc.
and from Paris to the Pyr?n?es: the Harp and Art in France & Spain
email:  susie at shoko.calarts.edu
websites:  http://shoko.calarts.edu/~susie
and  http://www.summerharpcourse.com


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:

>On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>For equivalent ghz, what's the difference likely to be *from
>>the perspective of webserving*?
>>
>>
>
>Very little.  Simple web serving is just reading crap from a disk and
>putting out through the network.  There's not a lot of complex computation
>involved.
>
>--Ricky
>
>
>
Not necessarily when the server concerned is running the PHP script.
Celerons are crippled by design: don't use them.

-- Neil


from_name: Nick Hill

subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:

> Very little.  Simple web serving is just reading crap from a disk and
> putting out through the network.  There's not a lot of complex computation
> involved.
I agree.

If we are talking about straightforward web serving, CPU is of little
importance, AIUI particularly if bus mastering on the NIC is available.

If you are running PERL, then this changes things substantially.
Interpreted languages are CPU intensive. I have found the AMD athlon
processors twice as powerful with equal Ghz to Pentium III. I have not
tried with P4. I have written a test suite to act as a comparison but
not yet run it on P4.

As we already know, database apps benefit from lots of memory and I/O
speed. CPU not really important.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Celeron vs. p4

body:
Nick Hill wrote:
> I have found the AMD athlon
> processors twice as powerful with equal Ghz to Pentium III.

I need to qualify that- AMD Athlon 4 twice as fast as P3 for a given Ghz
when running PERL. I would expect similar with PHP.


subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth'

body:
As usual, I must ask for specifics.

susan allen wrote:

> ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye!  The following is a quote from another
> subscriber:
>
> "He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that
> it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like
> USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full
> of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a
> dangerous path."
>
> Susan Allen
>
> PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it
> is so terribly lame!
> --
> Susan Allen, Associate Dean
> Instructor of Harp & Improvisation
> School of Music
> California Institute of the Arts
> 24700 McBean Parkway
> Valencia, CA  91355
> phone (661) 222-2780
> fax (661) 255-0938
>
> Founding Director, Susan Allen's Summer Harp Course, Inc.
> and from Paris to the Pyr?n?es: the Harp and Art in France & Spain
> email:  susie at shoko.calarts.edu
> websites:  http://shoko.calarts.edu/~susie
> and  http://www.summerharpcourse.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andrew Cleveland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal advice

body:
User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements
that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not releasing the entirety of
an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore) including images, some of which
may have been used under fair use. The images were included after his
modifications. He claims the entire article, including images, must be
released under GFDL to avoid breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm
just confused (heh) and worried that this may become a problem.. probably
just me being weird.

- Evil saltine

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete vs salvage

body:
Ed Poor wrote
> >There are two reasons I don't do anything, once an
> article makes its way
> >to VfD:
> >
> >1. The matter will be decided by a vote.
> >2. The vote will ignore what I do to fix the
> article.

As Eloquence once said on my talk page, "keep in mind
that, while 'Votes for deletion' has votes in the
title, it is not a formal vote."

I've explained in the past on [[Wikipedia
talk:Deletion policy]] that there is far more to VfD
than votes. Actions such as the article being
rewritten obviously need to be taken into account by
the sysop making the decision as to whether to delete
an article. Often "votes" made prior to the rewriting
will need to be discounted. If you feel there are
sysops who are making deletion decisions without
taking this into account, you need to address this
with them, but I haven't seen any evidence of this
happening. Rewritten articles are generally removed
from VfD fairly soon after they have been rewritten.

Angela.
-------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela/Deletion

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body:
Libertarian wrote
>It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried
>mediating on at least one issue (their mind was made
>up already but they were pretending to mediate), but
>when I confronted them with FACTS and EVIDENCE, they
>quietly withdrew from the mediation. This is a
>clear case of dishonesty, but never mind.

This is not true. All I did was?initiate the mediation
by suggesting that Brian help with it as he had been
the one to list it on [[Wikipedia:Current disputes
over articles]]. I was not involved in the mediation
myself. Your suggestion that my mind was already made
up is also untrue as?I've not even read the article
and therefore have no view on it.

Libertarian wrote
>He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia.

Not necessarily the loudest, but there have certainly
been suggestions in the past that whoever shouts the
longest will win. The problem is we have no policies
for dealing with people who continue to do this.

Angela.

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from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD

body:
I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is wrong.  And now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is attacking me for what I thought was right.  Well, I must be wrong, then, so why should I continue doing what is obviously wrong?

RickK

Angela <sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>Rick wrote "I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia."

Rick, please stop saying this. I believe you are doing a great job defending Wikipedia from vandals and listing something on VfD that others think should be kept is hardly a crime.

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from_name: Graham Burnett

body:
Hi all- on the Anarchism talk page jack lynch has stated;

"External links within the article are against wiki policy."

To which I replied;

"PS. Where is it wiki policy not to use external links in articles? I always
thought citations were a standard way of referencing, if it is policy it
should be changed forthwith."

Which admit I wrote whilst feeling a bit snotty towards this individual,
however, I've never seen anything which says external links are against
'policy', I use them all the time in much the same way i'd use citations,
and can't see what's wrong here, please can i have some clarification from
the rest of the community.

Personally i'd like to see MORE external links/citations, and was even
thinking of proposing a feature for including citations or attributiuons
within articles (for example, I've used some stuff that has been told go me
personally by people (ie, by ex-members of Crass for the Crass article,
which can't be verified by Google, but is none the less useful and
encylopedic (or even vice versa- Micheal claimed someone from Crass was in a
band called Trapeze- google verified this because someone else had written
it on a dodgy unresearched website, but my primary source (ie, the people
themselves) confirmed it was bollocks. Iyt would be nice to have a
'citation' feature that linked to quoted sources, much as the end of a
chapter in an academic book has a 'notes' section at the end...

Cheers Graham burnett (quercus robur)

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from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 06:24:20PM +0100, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:06:20 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:
>
> > Dell does not include Rails by default. SM and PC do.
> > You've to add that to the Dell price listed above. 179$ for
> > Dell boxes.
> >
> > The comparable SM box (SM-1151A, 2,6GHz P4, 2*512MB RAM, Seagate 40GB,
> > no CD, Rack mount kit, 3yr warranty) is at $1104
> > http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i1158/p4-server.php
>
> That's non-ECC ram though and no cdrom.

What do you need a CDROM for if you've got a NIC?
And wasn't it you who said we won't need redundancy? Then why ECC?

> The rail costs 49$ at siliconmechanics.

The config tool states that "2 Piece Ball Bearing Rail Kit" is
included. You can buy differrent rail kits from them for 49$,
but the default one will do the job.

> Newbie question: Is the rail like a drawer so that you can pull the server
> out of the rack? I've never physically seen my servers up to now...

Look at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/image_cache/item.1517.main.160x75.q60.o0.jpg
One of them is mounted to each side of your server.

Regards,

	JeLuF


subject: Distributed database (was: Re: [Wikitech-l] Call for Configurations)

body:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 10:17:33AM -0500, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> So, MediaWiki has internal code to differentiate read and write
> database requests.

Yes, it is well prepared for this. It would require some changes,
but for my test setup I didn't have to change more than about 30
lines and most changes were minor.

> I'm not sufficiently familiar with mySQL replication to recommend or
> anti-recommend it. But if it works as advertised, it seems like a good
> configuration would be to have one master database server that takes all
> write requests, and one slave database server per Web server for read
> requests.

I would consider this "step II". According to the numbers I've seen from
geoffrin, it wasn't heavily loaded, neither CPU nor I/O were high.
So if it is back soon (tomorrow I've heard), the DB will not be
the bottleneck for at least the next 4-6 months.

I would be conservative in this respect. First, introduce the squids. This
should solve the most pressing issues. Adding more and especially more stable
apaches will help, too. A distributed DB would be the thing to do if DB
performance starts being an issue.

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal advice

body:
Andrew Cleveland wrote:

> User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright
> infringements that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not
> releasing the entirety of an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore)
> including images, some of which may have been used under fair use. The
> images were included after his modifications. He claims the entire
> article, including images, must be released under GFDL to avoid
> breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm just confused (heh) and
> worried that this may become a problem.. probably just me being weird.

This seems reasonable, and could be problematic.  If I release an
article under the GFDL, and you republish it with additions, you have to
let me (and everyone else) use the additions under the GFDL.  So it
would be against the GFDL for a commercial company to take our articles,
add proprietary images to them, and publish, not allowing us to copy
their derived work because of the copyright images.  I think the
Wikipedia case is probably similar, except it's us that's doing it.
(But IANAL).

-Mark


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Call for Configurations

body:
On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 01:22:25 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:

> What do you need a CDROM for if you've got a NIC?
> And wasn't it you who said we won't need redundancy? Then why ECC?

Don't know, somebody said it was better, and the price seemed to be the
same. I didn't know the rails were necessary- sorry.

> The config tool states that "2 Piece Ball Bearing Rail Kit" is
> included. You can buy differrent rail kits from them for 49$,
> but the default one will do the job.

Yes, i was just thinking about using the siliconmechanics kit on a Dell
server (i wonder how dell makes up such a ridiculous price...).

Guess we'll play with the silicons soon- hehe.

I like your proposal to start off with the squids. We should start to
prepare the purge script asap, then there's very little work left. I'm not
familiar with the mediawiki code- could you help me out? We should discuss
how the list of Squids should be maintained (textfile, one line per ip i
guess), then we can start to hack out the script and integrate it into the
save routines. Tomorrow or later- too tired now...

Nice dreams ;-)

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: A

from_email: A

subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
The pages on genetalia should not contain images of
genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we
should make some attempt to respect.

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subject: Squid purge (was Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Call for Configurations)

body:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 02:05:05AM +0100, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 01:22:25 +0100, Jens Frank wrote:
>
> I like your proposal to start off with the squids.

Mine? wasn't it you proposing squid while everyone else said "loadbalancer"?

> We should start to
> prepare the purge script asap, then there's very little work left. I'm not
> familiar with the mediawiki code- could you help me out?

Several places would need a purge. I spot at least those two:
* Article changes
* Image uploads

> We should discuss
> how the list of Squids should be maintained (textfile, one line per ip i
> guess),

LocalSettings.php would be the place where I would put it. No need to parse
a file. Make a thread for each purge and another thread doing a sleep() and
killing any purge that didn't return.

> then we can start to hack out the script and integrate it into the
> save routines. Tomorrow or later- too tired now...
>
> Nice dreams ;-)

Same to you :-)

JeLuF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Felching

body:
or should I upload the pictures I took at the 2003
North American Felching Convention?

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subject: [WikiEN-l] the proliferation of ridiculous titular naming schemes

body:
Among many other examples, if a reader were looking for the person
commonly known as [[Robert Harley]], on Wikipedia they'll be pleased to
find them under the ridiculous title of [[Robert Harley, 1st Earl of
Oxford and Mortimer]], a name not used except in the context of giving
his title.  Now, while the said Robert Harley may indeed have been 1st
Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, it's nonetheless a plain fact that his name
was Robert Harley, and it is by this name that he is and was commonly
called.

This seems to be a proliferation on Wikipedia, and indeed there is a
proposal, currently with a wide degree of support, being discussed on
[[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] to make this official Wikipedia
policy: where someone holds a title, it must be part of their name,
without exceptions.  At least for British titles; perhaps other
countries' titles will be dealt with more vaguely.

I'd argue that simply using peoples' names, except where their titles
are commonly used or necessary for disambiguation purposes, is best in
keeping with our standard "use the most common name in English" naming
policy, and far preferable to the one currently being proposed.

In either case, those of you with an opinion might wnat to head on over
to [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] and vote.

-Mark


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
>So, isn't the whole point of Wikipedia to create and distribute free
>information? I mean, yes, downstream publishers should -- no, *must*
>-- comply with the GFDL, but besides that, shouldn't we be _happy_
>that someone's redistributing the encyclopedia?

The GNU FDL has a strict author credit requirement. We make things /very/ easy
of downstream users by stating that a link-back to the particular article
copied fullfills this requirement. Given this, and since Wikipedia is a
collective work, it is not much to also ask for a mention of our project's
name.

>We need to make it _easier_ for people to re-publish the encyclopedia
>in a way that complies with the GFDL -- not punish them for doing so.

OK, how does that relate to what I said? I'm all for making it easy to use our
content. But I also think that we should be properly cited since we do not
ask that any /individuals/ get author credit. Again since Wikipedia articles
are collective works, I think that since individuals are not credited in
third party copies, that the project should.

Otherwise downstream users can state only '[This article] is licensed under
the [GNU Free Documentation License]' with [This article] being a link to the
Wikipedia article and [GNU Free Documentation License] being a link to the
GNU FDL (with no underlines under [This article] or [GNU Free Documentation
License] to indicate that those are hyperlinks).

I've seen this on at least one website and I don't like it - it does not give
readable credit to the collective work and is not a proper citation - it
gives the impression (just by reading the message) that the article was
written at that website and that that website somehow owns the copyright.

>That said, it's probably a good idea to ask for links back to
>xx.wikipedia.org. Not to promote the site (hell, it's plenty popular),
>but to make it easier for readers to contribute and fix errors in
>articles.

??? OK, what about the author requirement? The only alternative is for them to
list 5 authors of every article.

-- mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Anthere wrote:
>I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that
>article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a
>difficult word to spell).
>
>If no one does it, I will (open threat :-))

Leave the photo of the circumsized penis at [[penis]]. Nothing wrong with it
being there as a compare/contrast photo set with uncircumcised penis. You
also allude to a very important point - a great many men (perhaps most) in
the U.S. are circumsized and it has nothing to do with religion.

-- mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Anthere wrote:
>Yes, on an article about human, it is perfectly logical to see a human
>in its natural state : nude.

Yes - there should be a photo with a naked man and naked women just standing
side by side. I think Erik mentioned he knew of a public domain photo like
that that was on a one of the gold plates on either a Pioneer or Voyager
mission....

>See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

Yes - some photo is needed. I would suggest a photo of an African tribesman
and a female companion in their traditional clothes since humans looked
pretty much like that for most of our history. That would negate the need for
completely naked photos too.

>In this case, the topic of the article is the *penis*

And as already has been stated, a large number of penises are circumcised -
especially in the United States.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
This is a difficult problem. If they deserve an article they have probably
done something under their name (without title), but we have a faction that
honestly believes that all members of the titled British nobility deserve an
article based on their title. Long ago someone said, "Well, they appear in
Who's Who"

Fred

> From: Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 03:05:31 -0600
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] the proliferation of ridiculous titular naming schemes
>
> Among many other examples, if a reader were looking for the person
> commonly known as [[Robert Harley]], on Wikipedia they'll be pleased to
> find them under the ridiculous title of [[Robert Harley, 1st Earl of
> Oxford and Mortimer]], a name not used except in the context of giving
> his title.  Now, while the said Robert Harley may indeed have been 1st
> Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, it's nonetheless a plain fact that his name
> was Robert Harley, and it is by this name that he is and was commonly
> called.
>
> This seems to be a proliferation on Wikipedia, and indeed there is a
> proposal, currently with a wide degree of support, being discussed on
> [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] to make this official Wikipedia
> policy: where someone holds a title, it must be part of their name,
> without exceptions.  At least for British titles; perhaps other
> countries' titles will be dealt with more vaguely.
>
> I'd argue that simply using peoples' names, except where their titles
> are commonly used or necessary for disambiguation purposes, is best in
> keeping with our standard "use the most common name in English" naming
> policy, and far preferable to the one currently being proposed.
>
> In either case, those of you with an opinion might wnat to head on over
> to [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage]] and vote.
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Nikos-Optim

body:
> I'm planning to not buy CDROMs for the bulk of
> machines, because they
> cost $68 each (varies with vendor, of course), and
> --Jimbo

$68 for a CDROM????? IDE (ATAPI) or SCSI? In Greece we
pay 30 Euro for DVDROMs and less than 20 Euro for IDE
(ATAPI) CDROMs. Second-hand CDROMs cost no more than
10 Euro (I recently sold a dozen of them at that
price)

AFAIK Linux can be installed from FTP or NFS (I have
never tried that). So even if you like to reinstall
the OS, the CDROM is not absolutely needed if you have
network connectivity and another server which will
serve the Linux installation files.

If the machines can boot from a USB flash disk, you
may consider it as an alternative to the floppy;
although the floppy is superb when you don't have to
use it very often.

with Best Wishes for Peace Profound,
--Optim

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from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] External links and attributions

body:
> From: "Graham Burnett" <grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations
> 	feature?

> Personally i'd like to see MORE external links/citations, and was even
> thinking of proposing a feature for including citations or attributiuons
> within articles.
>
> From: Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>
>
> put them at the bottom of the article, under Extternal links, under
> References. Then reference them in the text as you would in a english
> composition class paper.

I would really like to see more use of attributions, references, citations
within Wikipedia.  Traditional encyclopedias don't do very much of this, but
I think this is a serious weakness on their part.  The traditional
encyclopedia simply speaks _ex cathedra_, and the only reason you have for
believing it is that "they wouldn't print it if it weren't true." Even if
(reportedly) the U. S. version of Microsoft Encarta says the light bulb was
invented by Edison, and the British version says it was Swan. (The old
Britannica used to at least have the articles initialed, so you at least knew
that "well, Lord Rayleigh thinks so.")

I remember being shocked in high school when I learned for the first time
that an encyclopedia could not be referenced in a scholarly article because
it didn't meet scholarly standards for attribution.

I don't know why print encyclopedias don't choose to reference their sources.
Presumably it's limited space, and/or a desire not to clutter up the article
with footnotes. Or perhaps it's a feeling that for the stubby two-paragraph
articles the article-to-references ratio wouldn't be very high.  Wikipedia
has fewer space limitations.

However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and
citations.  In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the best
of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can be
made visible if you want to trace the authority for something.

I agree that there's nothing to stop anyone from doing what Christopher Mahan
suggests.  And that would be a good thing.

But at the very least, I'd like to see a convenient way of doing an inter-
page link, so that you can put a citation in the text that is just an
unobtrusive thing like a single character, such that clicking on it takes you
to the reference in the references section--AND automatically puts a RETURN-
link in the reference. I believe you can do this today with hand-tuned HTML,
but...

It seems to me that a policy that encourages the inclusion of references, and
a markup mechanism that makes them easy to write and read, would support in
the spirit of NPOV and "X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z."


subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth'

body:
I agree, it's lame, but it's a baby, two years old. Wikipedia is, unless we
do something grossly wrong, destined to become a major human institution,
used and potentially participated in by most of the human race. Think 5
years, 10 years out, 25 years out, 100, 300. Winning by intimidation works
fine with a two year old and I think Jimbo has a blind spot in this area,
but we are all learning and this is just one problem which is solvable. The
trivia problem, like the urban legend of cow tipping, I'm afraid will always
be with us.

It's funny. I wrote the article, [[cow tipping]], one of the most ridiculous
articles and notions imaginable. (It might have been deleted long ago). At
the time I lived out in the ranch land west of Crestone. Would have been
easy to test it out. But it is such nonsense that I didn't bother. Yet I
think it's a good article and I had fun writing it. The thought of actually
stomping around in the brush trying to get close enough to one of a herd of
wild cows in the middle of the night and pushing on it...

Fred

> From: susan allen <susie at shoko.calarts.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 22:14:38 -0800
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] the 'truth'
>
> ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye!  The following is a quote from another
> subscriber:
>
> "He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that
> it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like
> USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full
> of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a
> dangerous path."
>
> Susan Allen
>
> PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it
> is so terribly lame!
> --
> Susan Allen, Associate Dean
> Instructor of Harp & Improvisation
> School of Music
> California Institute of the Arts
> 24700 McBean Parkway
> Valencia, CA  91355
> phone (661) 222-2780
> fax (661) 255-0938
>
> Founding Director, Susan Allen's Summer Harp Course, Inc.
> and from Paris to the Pyr?n?es: the Harp and Art in France & Spain
> email:  susie at shoko.calarts.edu
> websites:  http://shoko.calarts.edu/~susie
> and  http://www.summerharpcourse.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Just look at RK's activities with respect to the article, Chiropractic
medicine.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:29:32 -0800
> To: libertarian at myway.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views
>
>> He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that
>> it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like
>> USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full
>> of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a
>> dangerous path.
>
> Can you give me an example?


subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
--- A [name omitted for privacy reasons] <wikilir at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The pages on genetalia should not contain images of
> genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we
> should make some attempt to respect.
>

if this post is not a joke, I suppose you are
referring to pages like
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis

I see no problem. however, I would not have objections
to the replacement of the photographs with diagrams,
although I still don't see where the problem is.

--Optim

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subject: [WikiEN-l] invisible footnotes (comments)

body:
You can use comments within the text.

<!--
Put source info here.
-->

> From: "Graham Burnett" <grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 12:56:16 -0000
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] footnotes and citations
>
>
>
>>
>> However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and
>> citations.  In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the
> best
>> of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can
> be
>> made visible if you want to trace the authority for something.
>>
>
> This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, but didn't express too well
> due to the imbibing of far too much home-made wine last night ;-)
>
> Graham (Quercus robur)
>
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.554 / Virus Database: 346 - Release Date: 20/12/2003
>
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let the article say that X reports Y about Z

body:
Ed Poor and others wrote:
> This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always
> the same:
> LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z.

Mav and others repeatedly claim to agree:
> Exactly!

However, I am beginning to question the sincerity of my
critics on this issue. The fact remains is that the deleted
material *did* do precisely this.

Danny and Zero simply didn't want this information made
available. They have an anti-Zionist agenda (which is their
right), and they do not want quotes from Palestinian
leaders made available at all, if it hurts their political
views (which is not their right.) To claim that they don't
have anti-Zionist agendas is untenable; they are very clear
on these issues.

As for the repeated claim that every single quote was taken
out of context, that is just wishful thinking.

First off, please stop misrepresenting the content of the
articles. It does _not_ claim that every Palestinian leader
says the same thing; it quotes from a variety of leaders, a
variety of sources, and provides a variety of views.

Secondly, when someone repeatedy says that they want to
destory Israel, and they repeatedly admit that they lied to
the Israelies, and that they have no intention of ever
having a real peace with them, we are obligated to report
these facts. We may not censor these facts and claim that
"Those silly Arabs don't really mean what they sa".  When
we do this, we push am obviously anti-Israeli agenda, and
we also infantilize Arabs. We may agree or disagree with
them, but let's stop treating them like children incapable
of expressing simple thoughts.

There has developed two standards of intellectual integrity
among the Wiki-En contributors. One standard is for Arabs,
and the other standard is for the rest of the world. This
double-standard must end if Wikipedia wants to be taken
seriously outside left-wing circles.

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia articles could use more primary references

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net writes:

> I would really like to see more use of attributions,
> references, citations within Wikipedia.  Traditional
> encyclopedias don't do very much of this, but I think
> this is a serious weakness on their part.  The
> traditional encyclopedia simply speaks _ex cathedra_,
> and the only reason you have for believing it is
> that "they wouldn't print it if it weren't true."
> ...
> I remember being shocked in high school when I learned
> for the first time that an encyclopedia could not be
> referenced in a scholarly article because it didn't meet
> scholarly standards for attribution.

I agree; this is why I usually try to cite sources,
articles, interviews, etc. This fits in well with our NPOV
policy. Person X says Y about subject Z.

See, for example, our article on [[The Bible and history]],
which has a fairly extensive bibliography. More Wikipedia
articles need to refer readers to primary sources.

> I don't know why print encyclopedias don't choose to
> reference their sources. Presumably it's limited space,
> and/or a desire not to clutter up the article with
footnotes.

I am sure that this is precisely the problem they faced.
However, Wikipedia has no limitations on text; we have room
to document every important point in every article. We don
not even need to clutter up the main article to do so; if
footnotes or references ever get too long, we can add them
as a footnotes page, such as (proposed):

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_footnotes
  or
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History (footnotes)
  or
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History/footnotes

Robert (RK)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs

body:
Erik writes:
> However, I think we should be very careful with such
> taboos, and only apply them when there is almost
> universal agreement to do so. In other words, when
> there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images,
> then we can do without them.

So far, so good. I agree.

> This is not the case for genitalia -- I think pictures
> of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small
> segment of the population

I disagree. A very large number of Americans will refuse to
use Wikipedia if it contains color photographs of penises,
vaginas, anal sphincters, etc.  If we do not have at least
some level of protection, then we will become one of
America's most-blocked site on home and school Internet
filters.

(On the other hand, such blocking might occur because we
have NPOV discussions of God and religion, which is a
threat to many Americans as well...)

Perhaps main articles should have no such images, but can
contain a link to a related article with such photos. That
way even if pages are blocked due to certain images, the
main articles would still be available to be read in most
homes and schools.

Robert (RK)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Partisanship and Neutrality (was: Effective bullying

body:
strategy)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:52:54 -0800
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Poor Edmund wrote:
>...
>Some other respected contributors, recognizing the difficulty
>they have writing neutrally on subjects they feel passionately
>about, avoid those topics altogether. Daniel Mayer (Maveric)
>sets the best example I'm aware of, in this respect.

NOTE: I'm speaking in generalities here (meaning I'm not alluding to the
current conflict between RK and Danny et al.)

Thanks for the compliment. :-) However, I happen to be interested in many
different things, so changing direction away from my own POV landmine fields
is easier for me than I suspect it is for many people (who may be primarily
interested in contributing to areas they may not be able to easily write
neutrally on). I also edit and add content to relax, believe it or not. Edit
wars in which the content I add is reverted into a page's history is not what
I would call relaxing.

>The two best things I've found to help me avoid partisan
>fighting at Wikipedia are:
>
>1. Summarize the POV of my "opponent" /TO HIS SATISFACTION/ !!!

This is often difficult, but can also be fun so long you are not too close the
subject. I like your advice of editing slowly and reacting deliberatively
when editing articles whose topics are close to you.

Big changes to articles on hot topics often result in some sort of conflict.

>2. If one of my contributions is reverted (even once), take
>  this as a signal that I'm NOT DOING AN ADEQUATE JOB of
>  reflecting POVs other than my own.

This is true, to an extent. Sometimes the other person is not reasonable and
in fact doesn't want an NPOV article, but one that pushes a certain POV (and
this can even be on a subconscience level where the other person can't even
see their own POV as POV but instead view their POV as fact).

So sometimes forcing edit warriors to slow down is what is needed. It is near
impossible to write toward NPOV during an edit war because emotions get in
the way and cloud people's judgment.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
At 02:42 AM 1/10/04 -0800, Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>The pages on genetalia should not contain images of
>genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we
>should make some attempt to respect.

Taboos vary widely from one group to another. An
encyclopedic article on anatomy needs illustrations, and
human anatomy is a subject that an encyclopedia should,
and this encyclopedia does, cover.

Anyone likely to be offended by an image of a penis, clitoris,
or vagina is likely to be offended by the rest of the article, and
has the option of not reading it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.

Since some people seem to have problems with photos, I
agree to replace them with diagrams, find some other
solution, but I also think it wouldn't hurt if we left
the article unchanged - except if lots of people
consider it offensive. --Optim.

PS> Below I wrote some comments, my POV, feel free to
ignore or left unread:

It is really a surprise for me to see such a
discussion in Wikipedia during ***2004***... (POV
follows) I thought the dark ages were past. (POV
ended) I know however that my liberal standards are a
bit higher than most people, and I do admit that
during reading this discussion on this subject I
laughed many times thinking about the development of
human spirit, (POV follows) from my point of view I
find it ridiculous (POV ended) and it makes me to feel
sad.

Anyway, if pictures of sexual organs really offend
some people, we should take care of this. As an
encyclopedia, Wikipedia should not be offensive.
Better to use diagrams. I hope nobody will find them
offensive!

(humour follows)
Now, I would like to make my own addition to the
"offensive material" issue. Article [[Child]] has an
offensive photograph! It is the photo of a White
child. But not all children are white. There are black
and yellow children too! So this article is offensive
to non-Whites and it is written from a White's Point
Of View, which is against the NPOV spirit! I strongly
suggest to remove this photo and replace it with a
photo showing three children: one white, one black and
one yellow, representing the friendship between the
races and the unity of humanity! (in case you are
wondering, I am White).
(humour ends)

(more humour, dont read it)
And additionally the current [[Penis]] article says
"The penis is capable of erection for use in sexual
intercourse." but this is POV, because erection is
also used in [[Masturbation]]. So Masturbators would
find this article offensive and POV! :)
(more humour ends, continue reading below)

***Let's replace quickly the "questionable images"
with diagrams or find some other solution which will
keep everyone happy, and stop wasting our time with
penises!***

with Best Wishes for Peace Profound (an unknown
concept to humans),
--Optim

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from_name: Arnaud G

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Call for Configurations

body:
If you have one nic you can use PXE to boot and reinstall everything.
You just need to add bootserver service to one of the box.

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Jens Frank wrote:
>
>
>>>That's non-ECC ram though and no cdrom.
>>>
>>>
>>What do you need a CDROM for if you've got a NIC?
>>
>>
>
>I think he just meant that the price comparison wasn't 100%
>fair, which is correct.
>
>I'm planning to not buy CDROMs for the bulk of machines, because they
>cost $68 each (varies with vendor, of course), and they aren't much
>use in our kind of application.  It's convenient for reinstalling the
>os from scratch, but if I'm doing that, I've already had a hardware
>failure or something, presumably.
>
>On the other hand, a floppy is still useful as a quick way to boot
>an otherwise totally dead machine.  And they cost very
>little.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 25

body:
> Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.

I would favour diagrams, not for reasons of prudishness (for christ's sake,
nearly everyone has one or the other) but because they have the advantage of
not having any skin colour or ethnicity. It seems a little odd that all of
the body parts we have photos of, to my knowledge, are photos of white
people (except the 'eyes' article).

Matt


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 10:41, Anthere wrote:
>
> If so, let's change the picture legend.
>
> We put at the top of the article the natural picture of a penis, with a
> legend stating "this is a penis"
>
> Then, much more at the bottom of the article, we indicate that some
> people have their penis transformed, and we put the relevant picture
> with a label "circonsized penis"
>
> Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV.
I recall reading that in the United States, most men are circumcised,
and in the rest of the world, most men aren't. Since both circumcised
and uncircumcised are fairly common, it makes sense to have them
side-by-side for comparison. Since men with pierced penises (ouch) are
rather uncommon (so I would think), if we were to have a picture of one,
I'd agree it shouldn't receive the same attention as the pictures on the
top of the article.

As for having photos on the Wikipedia at all, I really see no reason we
should go around getting rid of photos of genitalia. If someone is
offended by a photo of a penis at [[Penis]], I have to wonder why they
were going to that article in the first place.


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures

body:
On the whole discussion on pictures:

What about pictures of:
  Dead, bloody people (common on european TV)
  Drug paraphenalia
  Step by step bomb making
  Dangerous animals
  Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments
  Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads
disfigured)
  Medical pictures of diseased bodypart
  Election proceedings (hello PRC)
  War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a
vietnamese during the vietnam war?)
  Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps, bondage,
etc.
  Domestic violence
  Aborted Foetuses

To paraphrase the founder of the nizkor project in a persional email:

  Don't censor yourself. Plenty others will censor you for free.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Felching

body:
Adam-
> or should I upload the pictures I took at the 2003
> North American Felching Convention?

Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx.

Obviously there is a gradation of offensiveness -- a point at which we
decide that not offending readers is more important than NPOV. For
example, there may be a few felching fans who would feel that it is POV
not to show such images in the article. We would overrule these readers on
grounds of offensiveness.

However, I think we should be very careful with such taboos, and only
apply them when there is almost universal agreement to do so. In other
words, when there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images, then we
can do without them. This is not the case for genitalia -- I think
pictures of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small segment of
the population, whereas a relatively large segment feels that they *are*
offensive to a large segment (simply because they are never shown in the
mainstream media), but still maintains that they *themselves* are not
offended by them.

Regards,

Erik