from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:
	[19667]	trunk/extensions/NewestPages/NewestPages.i18n.php

body:
Hoi Rob,
What you read suggests to me that I should understand what you write. I
however do not.. What is a lint ??
Thanks,
    Gerard

Rob Church schreef:
> On 26/01/07, brion at svn.wikimedia.org <brion at svn.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> another dutch masquerading as english
>>
>
> In one of mine, too.
>
> A possible reason it's not immediately obvious with a "brief test" is
> because a "brief test" probably consists of accessing the extension
> page or whatever with uselang=XX applied. However, if someone
> overwrites the English messages, which act as a fallback, then
> uselang=XX will fall back to the "English", which of course, will
> contain whatever they just added, and it'll all appear to work.
>
> I suggest that people extend their testing to *at the very minimum*:
>
> * Do a lint (php -l blah.i18n.php)
> * Check the thing still works as expected in English and ideally
> another of the pre-existing languages
> * Check the newly-added language works properly
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Rob Church
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] David is on Channel 4 tonight re MS issue

body:
On 1/26/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 26/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I was thinking of something different over the weekend.  A Wikipedia
> >> Article Subjects Noticeboard, where people or organizations could post
> >> things which they object to (short of what the Office would *have* to
> >> deal with) and editors can watch and respond to normally.
> >
> >
> > That's the sort of idea I was thinking of.
> >
> > Would enough regular editors actually respond? That's the only thing
> > I'm wondering about.
>
> I don't dislike it, but I do fear established editors with
> anti-pay-for-edits axes to grind trying to deny things left and right.
> Then there's the whole inclusionist/deletionist thing, and I see some
> messes.

We can fight those battles if they come up, but I think that what this
does is give a process to make the issues completely transparently
visible, where everyone can see what's going on and comment if they
care.

Better that, and find out what's going on, than having it happen in the shadows.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that
>>underly Wikipedia.
>>
>>"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the
>>key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the
>>thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
>>
>>
>The key underlying principle is making a free encyclopedia available
>to everyone. "Anyone can edit" is simply a means to an end - it is
>secondary to the goal of making an encyclopedia.
>
>We should be working to make things better for the readers, not the
>contributors. Relaxing our rules on using reliable sources would be
>great for the contributors, but makes the website pretty much useless
>for the readers.
>
Whether this makes sense depends on how you envision the reader.  The
endgame of "Anyone can edit" is "Everyone can edit". At that point the
reader and the contributor are synonymous.  In our goal of making an
encyclopedia we are also revolutionizing the notion of an encyclopedia.
Our encyclopedia is not just the passive paper encyclopedia of old where
the reader could look through a chosen article, and be sated with what
he took in.  We want readers who will think critically and will leave
with questions instead of answers.

I would question the consumerist model of an encyclopedia.  We need to
remember that that model was based on a circumstance where the means of
production were not readily available to the users.  A simple reversal
of that circumstance is having far reaching effects.  We can now
consider options that the technology did not allow us to consider
before.  No "fact" is beyond question, and we cannot allow ourselves to
be lulled into the false security that having a source means that all's
well with the 'pedia.  The editors who will do best are those with the
skill to thrive in uncertainty, and who perhaps have come to terms with
the theology of the trickster.

Ec


body:
George Herbert wrote:

>On 1/25/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
>
>>From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable
>>and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not
>>added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were
>>added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories,
>>from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of
>>accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
>>
>>
>From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally
>very accurate and moderately precise.  When I find them in areas for
>which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I
>will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as
>time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with
>appropriate references.
>
Time spent doing this is far more productive than time spent complaining
about what others don't do.

Ec


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>Citations, fact checking, and minor corrections are EXCELLENT things
>>to leave for others, or for later review by yourself.
>>
>>
>
>Leaving citations for someone else is complete nonsense. It shows that
>you didn't understand the paragraph of mine you quoted. A citation
>says where you got the source from. If you write and article, and then
>I come along, I have no idea where you got the source from, it is
>impossible for me to add the citation. I can add a link to somewhere
>that says the same thing, but that's not citing sources, because
>whatever I link to probably wasn't actually the source. Me adding
>sources to your article is basically me rewriting the article - your
>work becomes nothing more than copyediting that happened to be done
>before I wrote the article (and yes, that doesn't make sense - that's
>the point I'm trying to make).
>
We are a tertiary resource.  If two Wikipedians used different sources
to arrive at the same place it makes no difference in the way that it
would for a secondary source.  Your argument is just strange.  It seems
to make the specific source more important than the information itself.

Ec


body:
Michael Hopcroft wrote:

>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>
>>Susan does 90% of the work. The hardcore do about 10% of the work, a
>>lot of which is cleaning up after Susan. But that's still a massive
>>net amount of work being done by Susan. Who does not show up on this
>>mailing list to offer her viewpoint, which is why we need to take
>>care to stop and think about Susan (and, of course, the other
>>thousands of casual editors.)
>>
>>
>It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia --
>"An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best
>encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore
>impossible to achieve.
>
>To exclude "Susan" would defeat the purpose of Wikipedia. To NOT exclude
>"Susan" would ALSO defeat the purpose of Wikipedia.
>
>There is no way to use a rational means to achieve an irrational goal.
>
I'm happy to see that you get it.  There's no rule in life that says
that everything must be rational.  Let's keep looking for the best way
to live with this paradox.

Ec


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/26/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We never allowed edit wars.
> >
>
> There were some pretty impressive revert wars though

Indeedy!

> The US flag as our logo?
> >
> > Wha?
>
> I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first
> thing jimbo could get his hands on.

Old-timer.


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica.
>>Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
>>
>>
>We know who wrote Britannica. We can (or at least, should be able to -
>let's not get into a discussion about the actual reliability of
>Britannica) trust that their authors really do know what they're
>talking about, and even if they are writing from memory, their memory
>is more reliable than that of a random Wikipedia user we know nothing
>about. (Not necessarily more accurate, but it is more reliable.)
>
I think the term for what you say is "double standard".  Are Wikipedia
editors really that much more prone to Alzheimer's?

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 26/01/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:

> Typical complaints: an article (or a former version thereof) will, in
> increasing order of severity:
> * Contain true, but anecdotal or biasedly presented information on the
> school. (Example: three years ago, there was a party where students were
> drunk. Who cares? This happens everywhere.)
> * Contain false allegations against the school. Example: the school is a
> known drug trafficking spot.
> * Contain information on the private life of named individuals,
> especially minors. Example: calling a certain female student a slut,
> saying that such or such teacher is homosexual, or similar.
> * Contain libellious accusations against named individuals. Example: the
> principal was accused of statutory rape.
> That kind of things probably comes from students or former students.
> They may stay for days because these articles are largely unpatrolled. I
> suspect those who do that do not quite understand the severity of what
> they do, that they can create real harm, especially when individuals are
> named.
> Complaints come from school administrators or parents.

The on-wiki way to deal with this is let people in the schools project
know there's a serious problem and these articles need serious
patrolling, with the level of concern of living biographies. (I say
the schools project because that's where the school entry advocates
gather.)

Anyone from the schools project on wikien-l? Can you get some
patrolling together?

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough


from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brandchannel claims hi brand marks for WP, YT

body:
Worth a quick read.  Ranked by votes from a few thousand "branding
professionals and students".

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070126/wr_nm/brands_global_winners_dc

++SJ


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Boris Eetgerink

subject: [Wikitech-l] New hook: BeforeTemplateExecution

body:
For a MediaWiki modification I'm working on I added a hook to the
SkinTemplate.php file and specifically the outputPage function. As the
name implies I inserted it before the execute() function is called. The
code now looks like this:

$tpl->set( 'sidebar', $this->buildSidebar() );
$tpl->set( 'nav_urls', $this->buildNavUrls() );

// Hook that allows last minute additions to the
// template, before it is executed.
wfRunHooks( 'BeforeTemplateExecution', array( &$tpl ) );

// execute template
wfProfileIn( "$fname-execute" );
$res = $tpl->execute();
wfProfileOut( "$fname-execute" );

This allows me to add a function to the hook in LocalSettings.php the
normal way:
$wgHooks['BeforeTemplateExecution'][] = 'fnExtendTemplate';

The function looks like this:
function fnExtendTemplate( &$tpl ) {
     $tpl->set( 'mainmenu', buildMainMenu() );
     return true;
}

And the buildMainMenu function, which is also added to the
LocalSettings.php file:
function buildMainMenu() {
     return "Hello World!";
}

With these functions I can simply add the following line to the Skin file:
<?php print($this->data['mainmenu']); ?>

I made this because I have a mainmenu and a submenu on the site I'm
working on, located on different places in the HTML part of the site.

The buildMainMenu and the buildSubMenu function both call a function
that gets the content of the menu structure (similar to
MediaWiki:Sidebar) and parses it. buildMainMenu and buildSubMenu then
render their part of the menu, depending on the page title.

This hook is useful to me, because it lets me add elements to the
template in a quick, clean and simple way. Is this also useful to the
developers community?

Boris


from_name: Rich Holton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Gosh darn it,
 those spammers^Wmarketers will show us what for

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 1/27/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Wikipedia is not a web directory. There are (or were, at least) people
>> who condense Wikipedia on CD/DVDs for use by those who don't have
>> (reliable) internet access. This sort of distribution is a fundamental
>> objective of the project. Suggesting that we don't need to include
>> information because it's available elsewhere on the web suggests a
>> misunderstanding of the project.
>
> "Don't need to" is terribly simplistic. We don't have infinite
> resources, or infinite time. If we did, everything would be simple.
> But given that I can spend only finite per time working on Wikipedia,
> where would you, the hypothetical pointy-haired boss of Wikipedia want
> me to spend my time? Creating 10 stubs with 1 external link each, or
> creating 1 article with 10 lines of text?
>
> There are endless ways of contributing to Wikipedia. Just because one
> chooses not to take up one of them doesn't mean one isn't
> contributing...
>

I don't care whether you add stubs, "micro-stubs", or featured-article
quality articles. This isn't about what _you_ decide to work on.

Going back to your post that I was replying to:

<quoted text>
Have a look at [[Club skifield]] (which I wrote). Follow the external
link. Is it really worth our (my) while attempting to write something
that surpasses the link in terms of quality, depth, comprehensiveness
of coverage? Practically speaking, who is going to be reading
Wikipedia that doesn't have access to the net, but needs that
information?
</quoted text>

I took this to be a suggestion that it isn't worth your (our) effort to
include or better content that is found elsewhere on the net. And I
wanted to make sure that you (we) understood that there _are_ people who
will use Wikipedia without having access to the web.

And I don't appreciate your painting me as some sort of self-appointed
Wikipedia manager. There was nothing in my post to suggest that I
objected to your efforts. What I objected to was what I perceived as
your limited understanding of the nature of the project.

-Rich


body:
On 1/26/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> >>There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica.
> >>Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
> >>
> >>
> >We know who wrote Britannica. We can (or at least, should be able to -
> >let's not get into a discussion about the actual reliability of
> >Britannica) trust that their authors really do know what they're
> >talking about, and even if they are writing from memory, their memory
> >is more reliable than that of a random Wikipedia user we know nothing
> >about. (Not necessarily more accurate, but it is more reliable.)
> >
> I think the term for what you say is "double standard".  Are Wikipedia
> editors really that much more prone to Alzheimer's?

It's fair to point out that WP editors aren't vetted experts.

Even vetted experts make mistakes, as the accuracy research indicates
with Britannica.

That is actually the one thing that I'd say pretty much answers the
ultimate question here - WP's existing methods, and existing editors,
produced content which was independently measured to be comparably
accurate to the work of selected, vetted experts.

All of the complaints about our process fundamentally don't change
that the result has been a success.

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


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 1/26/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> What, if any, are the notability criteria for schools?

The word "school" appears somewhere in the article.

Seriously.  There was a VfD a couple years back that garnered a large
number of "keep, schools are inherently notable" votes, even though
the article was a hoax and the school in question did not actually
exist.  Another VfD from around that time resulted in a "keep" for the
same reasons, when article was actually a vanity piece about a
one-person business that happened to have "school" as part of its
name.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


body:
George Herbert wrote:

>My concern is that "the average reader" will be overwhelmed by it.
>There's a reason that there's a spectrum of writing, from informal
>blogs, to popular magazines and newspapers, more formal magazines,
>expert magazines, professional journals, and then things like PhD
>thesies and the like.  Most normal people stop reading a paragraph or
>less into the type of article that you see in professional journals.
>The style and info density is not something they want to deal with.
>Compare and contrast "Popular Science", "Scientific American" and
>"Nature" (or worse, a less-overview specialist journal in any field).
>
>Somewhere between PopSci and Scientific American tends to be at what I
>suspect "the right level" is for Wikipedia, though the articles in the
>latter are generally longer than ours should be.
>
>This will vary wildly from field to field and topic to topic.  All
>generalizations are false.  8-)
>
It is ironic to observe that the relative roles of "Popular Science" and
"Scientific American" are reversed from what they were in the 19th
century.  At that time "Scientific American" was emphasizing newsy
reports on new inventions that were going through the US Patent Office;
"Popular Science" was producing long thoughtful articles about
significant questions in science.  The 1873-4 series of articles by
[[John Stallo]], "The Priimary Concepts of Modern Physical Science" is
only one example in a magazine that is far diffeent from what we know today.

Ec


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>There needs to be more visibility into these problems by the community
>at large.  First I'd heard that OTRS was seeing lots of school-related
>complaints.
>
>
There is a special queue called "schools".

>Can you describe in more detail what types of complaints?
>
>
Typical complaints: an article (or a former version thereof) will, in
increasing order of severity:
* Contain true, but anecdotal or biasedly presented information on the
school. (Example: three years ago, there was a party where students were
drunk. Who cares? This happens everywhere.)
* Contain false allegations against the school. Example: the school is a
known drug trafficking spot.
* Contain information on the private life of named individuals,
especially minors. Example: calling a certain female student a slut,
saying that such or such teacher is homosexual, or similar.
* Contain libellious accusations against named individuals. Example: the
principal was accused of statutory rape.

That kind of things probably comes from students or former students.
They may stay for days because these articles are largely unpatrolled. I
suspect those who do that do not quite understand the severity of what
they do, that they can create real harm, especially when individuals are
named.

Complaints come from school administrators or parents.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who is "the Internet's premiere free encyclopedia"?

body:
> Turns out it's www.encyclopedia.com. Anyone know what "premiere" means?
>
> Steve

The first sentence of their article "Mathematics":

mathematics deductive study of numbers, geometry, and various abstract
constructs, or structures; the latter often "abstract" the features common
to several models derived from the empirical, or applied, sciences, although
many emerge from purely mathematical or logical considerations.

That's barely coherent!

We should buy their domain and redirect it to Wikipedia :-)

--Mets501


list: foundation-l

from_name: phoebe ayers

subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania

body:
On 1/25/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Gil, Angela and I are excited to announce that KJ will be spending 50%
> of her work time at Wikia over the next 6 months as a dedicated
> volunteer for Wikimania 2007.  KJ will be one of the main organizers of
> Wikimania 2007 and is responsible for Wikimania sponsorship. KJ is
> responsible for preparing sponsor proposals and will be spending time
> visiting the sponsors to discuss their proposals.
>
> Part of my goal with Wikia is to build a commercial enterprise that
> could contribute back to the foundation and I'm excited to see that
> starting to happen.
>
> --Jimbo

This is great news; I'm glad that KJ will be able to be dedicated to
sponsorships, which are a crucial part of making the conference happen. Many
thanks to Wikia and KJ.

-- phoebe
--
phoebe ayers | brassratgirl /at/ gmail.com


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 207

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> So, regular editors. How do we set up a page or forum where companies
> and people written about can express editorial concerns (rather than
> e.g. legal ones), such that they know people will at least look over
> them with thought and improve the articles from there?

Dare I play the devil's advocate here and say that we should allow this sort
of thing?

Hear me out: all we need to do is say that we do not condone, promote,
discourage, or prohibit paid editing by firms, but make it explicitly clear
that such edits are, at best, treated as any other, and, at worse, watched
closer than other edits by the general community.  All edits must still
conform to [[WP:V]], [[WP:NPOV]], must be licensed via the GFDL, and may be
rejected completely if [[WP:C|consensus]] is as such, regardless.

It's an interesting situation.  On one hand, we have a pile of posts on the
en mailer talking about the necessity for accuracy and citation.  On the
other hand, we're quite militant about not letting third parties commission
other third parties to provide information that may not be as easy for Joe
Sixpack to grab and add to an article.

And yes, I know, MyWikiBiz, etc - I'm not convinced it was handled properly,
but this isn't the thread for that discussion - but I'm not sure we
shouldn't be tolerant of this sort of thing.  After all, Microsoft merely
got caught - it's likely happening anyway without our knowledge.
-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: PeruvianLlama

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Well gee, abusive admins, abusive editors,
 and you don't care about the rules at all.

body:
Michael Smith wrote:

<snippity>

> Happy now? Fun to beat up on someone who can't fight back? Great. Fuck you
> too.

If the point of writing to this list was to bring the situation to the
attention of a wider audience, then you're sabotaging your own attempt
when you tell us to collectively fuck off. I'm not familiar with the
goings-on you mention, but I think George's comment earlier about taking
a short break to calm down would do a world of good. There are lots of
people around here who are willing to help. I don't know of any who feel
inspired to do so after being insulted by a stranger.

 - PeruvianLlama


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> So, regular editors. How do we set up a page or forum where companies
> and people written about can express editorial concerns (rather than
> e.g. legal ones), such that they know people will at least look over
> them with thought and improve the articles from there?

Apologies if this posts twice...

Dare I play the devil's advocate here and say that we should allow this
sort of thing?

Hear me out: all we need to do is say that we do not condone, promote,
discourage, or prohibit paid editing by firms, but make it explicitly
clear that such edits are, at best, treated as any other, and, at worse,
watched closer than other edits by the general community.  All edits must
still conform to [[WP:V]], [[WP:NPOV]], must be licensed via the GFDL, and
may be rejected completely if [[WP:C|consensus]] is as such, regardless.

It's an interesting situation.  On one hand, we have a pile of posts on
the en mailer talking about the necessity for accuracy and citation.  On
the other hand, we're quite militant about not letting third parties
commission other third parties to provide information that may not be as
easy for Joe Sixpack to grab and add to an article.

And yes, I know, MyWikiBiz, etc - I'm not convinced it was handled
properly, but this isn't the thread for that discussion - but I'm not sure
we shouldn't be tolerant of this sort of thing.  After all, Microsoft
merely got caught - it's likely happening anyway without our knowledge.

-Jeff
--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 26/01/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dare I play the devil's advocate here and say that we should allow this
>> sort of thing?
>
> I see your point, but I'm imagining what the sort of minds who filled
> our pages with linkspam till we had to switch on nofollow, and who are
> now whining that we must switch it off again *because* we owe them a
> living, would do with such a permission, however sensibly worded.

And that's fair as well.  I do think that we're being naive with the way
we handle this sort of "conflict of interest."  The situation you describe
helps no one, the situation with Microsoft, at least in theory, helps
everyone.  I still think it's better to approach it from the vantagepoint
that we can get a very strong benefit than to assume that anything that
could be construed as a COI is inherently bad, which is the attitude that
I get.

I had an off-wiki conversation with someone about a similar issue earlier,
so it's interesting that it comes up again here.  At the end of the day,
shouldn't we worry more about the quality of the contributions in terms of
benefit to the encyclopedia (even the poorly written ones) as opposed to
who's contributing it?  If paying someone $100 to add information to a
stubby, but necessary, article improves the quality of the encyclopedia,
why are we standing in the way?

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: SPUI

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> It's more than just that. I recently wrote a stub on [[Wingan Inlet]].
> I know the place exists: I went there. Do I have a source? No. Am I
> confident that a source exists? Yes. Would I rather create an
> unsourced stub, or leave a hole in our encyclopaedia? Unsourced stub,
> with fries.

I think this says it well - if you have no reason to believe something
is false, and believe that it is verifiable (insert whatever definition
of verifiable/reliable source here), don't remove it. The second part is
to keep people from doing certain kinds of original research, generally
things that might be worth mentioning but are unlikely to have been
reported by other sources. This is probably a pretty thin line, and
maybe general editorial discretion would cover it, but it's always nice
to have something to cite for why you're removing someone's work.
Something like which station a transit company installed a new type of
turnstile at might fall in this area; it might be useful on the article
about that station (or even the fare collection section of the system's
article), but might be minor enough that it hadn't been mentioned in the
media.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>> I'd be similarly shocked if one could write a good article on high
>> temperature physics or group theory while being totally dependent on
>> published reliable sources, because those sources were never written
>> for the purpose of being used to explain the concept to novices.
>>
> The best sources for general topics are textbooks actually; reliable,
> and written to explain concepts. I find the introductions to
> monographs
> and papers as useful for WP as the bodies; at least the more
> articulate
> writers manage to get in a few words intelligible to the
> nonspecialist. :-)

I picked those examples precisely because there weren't good or
usable textbooks for them. (Or, at least, I asked a random chemistry
grad student I had nearby for two topics that would fit that bill and
that's what she gave me. Damned if I know what the hell group theory
is.)

-Phil


from_name: Tangotango

subject: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software

body:
Although I didn't have any plans to make the image search into a MediaWiki
extension (the original concept was rather different), your proposal is
certainly interesting and useful (not to mention not too outlandish), so I
will keep it in mind.

The reliability of the toolserver is a real issue, but one of the strengths
of coding a standalone toolserver tool versus coding a MediaWiki extension
is that developers get more freedom tweaking and improving the code
(sometimes on a whim), which means new features can suddenly crop up
overnight. With MediaWiki, you have to make sure the thing actually works ;)

Cheers,

Tangotango

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brianna Laugher [mailto:brianna.laugher at gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 6:12 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software
>
> A lot of attention suddenly. :) Any chance you could make it a
> full-blown extension rather than a toolserver job? (
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8738 )
>
> We already have a lot of super-useful/critical tools relying on the
> toolserver, and as we can well see, it's not always so
> reliable...anything super-useful/critical is best off ultimately as
> part of MediaWiki.
>
> Wait, that was the original point to my post! ;)
>
> Anyway I and the other Commoners will await such developments with
> interest.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna


subject: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software


body:
I'm just getting ready for C4 to pick me up, take me to their office
and interview me for tonight's news re: the Microsoft-Wikipedia issue.
If someone could record it and throw us an MPEG afterwards, that would
be most helpful!

Now to get tarted up for the camera ...

- d.


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
> Leaving citations for someone else is complete nonsense. It shows that
> you didn't understand the paragraph of mine you quoted. A citation
> says where you got the source from. If you write and article, and then
> I come along, I have no idea where you got the source from, it is
> impossible for me to add the citation. I can add a link to somewhere
> that says the same thing, but that's not citing sources, because
> whatever I link to probably wasn't actually the source. Me adding
> sources to your article is basically me rewriting the article - your
> work becomes nothing more than copyediting that happened to be done
> before I wrote the article (and yes, that doesn't make sense - that's
> the point I'm trying to make).

That's nonsense that smacks of rules lawyering. You're putting too much
stock into the behind-the-scenes process and not enough into the
tangible product, which is equivalent no matter who adds a source that
backs up the statement.


from_name: Omegatron

body:
On 1/26/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Then, add an entry to the top of the list below
> with template {{Subjectnotice|articlename}}, add some comments, and
> sign it...

Are there any alternatives to templates for stuff like this?  Don't we have
a special feature that allows HTML INPUT elements that can be used for stuff
like this now?  I've seen it around though I don't know how it works.  But
it's gotta be frustrating for people completely new to wiki who have to cut
and paste templates into textareaas.  Then again, it's certainly better than
the pre-template days.


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 26/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I was thinking of something different over the weekend.  A Wikipedia
>> Article Subjects Noticeboard, where people or organizations could post
>> things which they object to (short of what the Office would *have* to
>> deal with) and editors can watch and respond to normally.
>
>
> That's the sort of idea I was thinking of.
>
> Would enough regular editors actually respond? That's the only thing
> I'm wondering about.

I don't dislike it, but I do fear established editors with
anti-pay-for-edits axes to grind trying to deny things left and right.
Then there's the whole inclusionist/deletionist thing, and I see some
messes.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


body:
On 26/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm just getting ready for C4 to pick me up, take me to their office
> and interview me for tonight's news re: the Microsoft-Wikipedia issue.
> If someone could record it and throw us an MPEG afterwards, that would
> be most helpful!

News is 7-7:30pm. C4 apparently do video streaming off their site as well.

> Now to get tarted up for the camera ...

Suit looks like it was hit by a truck, so leather jacket and Rollins
shirt it is!

- d.


body:
On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
> >
> > "We did", you mean.
>
> I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited
> reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?

Of course I am implying that this relatively recent change to our
policies should not have happened.  (And we should repeal it.)

But that's another thread...


body:
On 1/26/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>

> I had an off-wiki conversation with someone about a similar issue earlier,
> so it's interesting that it comes up again here.  At the end of the day,
> shouldn't we worry more about the quality of the contributions in terms of
> benefit to the encyclopedia (even the poorly written ones) as opposed to
> who's contributing it?

Yes.  Quality of contribution should not be determined by who is
contributing.  This is not a new stance; this has been a rule of thumb
since the first trolls were allowed to stay and continue editing.

> If paying someone $100 to add information to a
> stubby, but necessary, article improves the quality of the encyclopedia,
> why are we standing in the way?

I don't know.  Something about it feeling wrong, driving people from
writing about what is important to writing about what is supported by
patrons.  I do think that edits themselves should be allowed or not
based on their quality -- something that would rule out many would-be
paid contributions.

SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
On 1/25/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't there some way we can get this list in HTML or at least rich text?

I wish.  Given the type of people who contribute to things like this,
it's extremely unlikely, however.

Ah, living in the past...

> I guess I want it so I can express myself too with font sizes/faces/colors,
> etc. :-)

Well now you've just ensured that it will never happen!  That's
exactly what they don't want.  :-)


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki 2.0 Development

body:
If a user (like myself) happened to take it upon himself to begin work on
coding brand new wiki software based on MediaWiki, and released it under a
free license, and made it fairly easy to upgrade to on a server running a
MediaWiki database (i.e. just change all the PHP files), and it was (assume
this) in fact much better than MediaWiki 1.10a, would the Wikimedia
Foundation adopt it for its projects?

Just a question. Because MediaWiki 2.0 would be pretty sexy, but no one
seems to be proactive about it. And I'd like to be.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> News is 7-7:30pm. C4 apparently do video streaming off their site as well.

Damn, I'm going out tonight... I'll miss it. Hopefully I can get a
copy of someone...

Break a leg!


body:
> > I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited
> > reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?
>
> We never allowed edit wars.

Indeed. Just because we didn't have a specific limit on how many
reverts doesn't mean we allowed an unlimited number. It was left to
common sense and the judgement of admins, I guess (I wasn't very
active in those days) - the site has grown since then, and common
sense doesn't work as well as it used to...


body:
On Jan 26, 2007, at 2:14 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>>
>> I picked those examples precisely because there weren't good or
>> usable textbooks for them. (Or, at least, I asked a random chemistry
>> grad student I had nearby for two topics that would fit that bill and
>> that's what she gave me. Damned if I know what the hell group theory
>> is.)
>>
> Group theory is math, and I personally have three textbooks left over
> from my younger days, any of which would be quite suitable. Perhaps
> the
> grad student was wishing for one that tied into crystallography
> applications better. :-)

Knowing the grad student well enough to be marrying her in the fall,
yes, I would assume that she was looking for an article on that
aspect of group theory. :)

-Phil


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikimediauk-l] David is on Channel 4 tonight re MS
 issue

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

David Gerard stated for the record:
> Probably C4 or ITN will use the tape in six months as a [[dead
> donkey]] ;-) Might end up on lunchtime news, watched avidly by bored
> housewives and students. Perhaps we'll draw in a few more Susans.
>
>
> - d.

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Modern art is what happens when painters stop
 sean at epoptic.com | looking at girls and persuade themselves
                  | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi
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from_name: Sage Ross

body:
On 1/26/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> This was a MAJOR news story and it came completely out of the blue.
> But it is an ongoing problem for Wikipedia - we don't want companies
> fearful of dealing with us in case they get the sort of bad press this
> issue got Microsoft and Doug Mahugh. How can we get better at this,
> quickly?
>
>
> - d.

Check out this article:

http://www.tmcnet.com/news/2007/01/26/2285485.htm

Apparently Mathias Schindler has been in contact with MS, giving a
different line.

For what it's worth, I don't see that Microsoft did anything obviously
wrong.  At this point, we definitely need a clear and responsive
system for coordinating paid editing.  We've recognized for a while
now that paid editing will happen.  It will definitely be in our best
interest to set up a system to facilitate it and give a sense of
fairness to entities like MS who want to do things above-the-board.

-Sage


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/26/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first
> > > thing jimbo could get his hands on.
> >
> >
> > Old-timer.
>
> You pre-date me.

Oh, you're relying on the histories. I only got to Wikipedia around June
2001; the flag wasn't around by then.


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wider than we need to get the message out to companies and goverments
> (did you get asked about the NIDA edits btw?) the first port of call
> for complaints should be the talk page.

That's an obvious answer, but doesn't address how *we* find the complaint...

Without a tag or category, or a central mechanisms, there's no way
that I can think of for the volunteers to know a request was filed.

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


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

David Gerard stated for the record:
> On 26/01/07, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>> David Gerard stated for the record:
>
>>> Probably C4 or ITN will use the tape in six months as a [[dead
>>> donkey]] ;-) Might end up on lunchtime news, watched avidly by bored
>>> housewives and students. Perhaps we'll draw in a few more Susans.
>
>> Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.
>
>
> IT DOES NOW!!
>
> *ahem*
>
>
> - d.

So ... C4 or ITN will use the tape in six months as a situation comedy
from the 1990s?  I guess I'm missing something (which seems all too
often to be the case when British humo(u)r is involved).

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Modern art is what happens when painters stop
 sean at epoptic.com | looking at girls and persuade themselves
                  | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 1/26/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 1/25/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>"We did", you mean.
>>>
>>>
>>I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited
>>reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?
>>
>>
>We never allowed edit wars.
>
>The US flag as our logo?
>
>Wha?
>
I don't remember that either, but then I've only been here for five years.

Ec


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:02:01 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>This is hardly true.  There's no reason why an article on an independent
>rock band should be held to the same sourcing standard as a European king
>from the 1700s.

No indeed.  The independent rock band should be deleted unless it has
reliable sources, because most articles on independent rock bands are
vanity spam; the king will have reliable sources somewhere even if
they are not cited yet.  A different standard indeed.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Turns out it's www.encyclopedia.com. Anyone know what "premiere" means?
>
> Steve
>

see [[premiere]]?

In this case first, leading or greatest.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:57:14 -0500, "Mets501" <mets501wiki at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Isn't there some way we can get this list in HTML or at least rich text?

I hope not.  My mail client converts everything to plain text, and the
format "rich" messages occasionally end up royally screwed as a
result.

Bring back the teletype.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> We never allowed edit wars.
>

There were some pretty impressive revert wars though

> The US flag as our logo?
>
> Wha?

I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first
thing jimbo could get his hands on.

--
geni


body:
On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/27/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Wider than we need to get the message out to companies and goverments
> > > (did you get asked about the NIDA edits btw?) the first port of call
> > > for complaints should be the talk page.
> >
> > That's an obvious answer, but doesn't address how *we* find the complaint...
> >
> > Without a tag or category, or a central mechanisms, there's no way
> > that I can think of for the volunteers to know a request was filed.
>
> Issue a press release fast (while there is still media interest)
> anounceing the email address for companies to complain to.

Hmm.  Who in the foundation would need to approve doing this?

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


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
>
>> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>>
>>
>>> We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They
>>> have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources
>>> to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are
>>> never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The
>>> result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
>>>
>>>
>> In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk.
>>
> The problem with this kind of argument as the very first one in a series
> of comments is that it makes me feel blackmailed by whatever follows.

The problem with this line of argument is that it doesn't develop the
debate in a fruitful manner.  My suggestion would be to either ignore
the comment or to consider it in the context of the posted subject
header.  However, I am terribly sorry for the offence it caused, and for
reacting emotively to Phil's suggestion and conveying the level of my
reaction.  Maybe I'll move to a list where people don't make me feel
like a retard simply for posting my opinion.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.12/653 - Release Date: 26/01/07 11:11


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Articles that do not cite reliable published
	sources will be deleted."

body:
On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Saw this when creating a redirect. Aren't we a little early for April Fool's?
>
> Steve
>

Eh it's been a fairly standard reason to use it prods for some time
roughly translates as "we don't belive the author of this article.
--
geni


from_name: Gary Kirk

body:
Is the new 4 On Demand (4od) service for the news too? Might be able
to catch it tomorrow on that.

Good luck indeed!

On 1/26/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > News is 7-7:30pm. C4 apparently do video streaming off their site as well.
>
> Damn, I'm going out tonight... I'll miss it. Hopefully I can get a
> copy of someone...
>
> Break a leg!
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Gary Kirk


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has
>>>>to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing
>>>>precious seconds of Susan's time.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's
>>>time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article
>>>is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky
>>>enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch
>>>of random half-remembered bits.
>>>
>>>
>>This is one of those half-empty or half-full kinds of arguments.
>>Without Susan's edit her idea might never have been raised.  What she
>>sees as half-full you see as half-empty.  You evidently enjoyed your
>>half-hour of research, or you would not have done it.  The point that
>>she made was worth that much of your time.  At least you researched it.
>>The one who simply dismisses her comments out of hand and without
>>comment is really committing the same error that she did.
>>
>>
>That's not a very good line of reasoning - vandalism sprees must also be
>good things, because we spend a lot of time cleaning up after them, so
>we must be enjoying doing so? I don't think so.
>
Vandalism sprees, which are need to spread the same kind of stupidity
across a number of articles to be efficient, are quite different in
character from a newbie's efforts.  A simple review of Susan's edit
history should reveal that.

>No, when I clean up
>after someone who didn't take the trouble to find out if a statement is
>actually true, that person has just wasted my time.
>
You have the choice between cleaning up, advising someone else, or doing
nothing.

>I used to watch a
>lot of articles (19,000 at the high point), and it was multiple hours of
>drudgery each day; eventually I cleared the list.
>
It seems that by doing so you made a great contribution to your own
personal well-being. :-)

>Casual editors adding
>bad material from memory is actually a worse problem for good articles
>than vandalism, because it's good-faith and often looks plausible; it
>can get by you and mislead readers for months, and worse, start seeping
>into connected articles as others "correct" them to be consistent.
>
That risk is definitely there.  By the same token the editor who takes
unsourced material from one Wikipedia article, and injects it into
another article as "corrections" is just as guilty of adding unsourced
material as the original editor.

Ec


body:
> For what it's worth, I don't see that Microsoft did anything obviously
> wrong.  At this point, we definitely need a clear and responsive
> system for coordinating paid editing.  We've recognized for a while
> now that paid editing will happen.  It will definitely be in our best
> interest to set up a system to facilitate it and give a sense of
> fairness to entities like MS who want to do things above-the-board.
>
> -Sage

I don't know about that...
I would steer clear of all paid editing in any way, shape, or form.
It just creates problems when the article is edited or deleted and a
company is outraged because they paid good money for that very article.
--Mets501


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] question regarding page_restrictions table

body:
On 26/01/07, Peter <ipbwiki.list at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there any reason why you work with pre-defined levels for page protection
> (default, block unregistered users, users with the sysop right), why not
> base the protection on the available groups available in the user_groups
> table?

It works based off a combination of $wgProtectionActions and
$wgProtectionGroups or somesuch, I believe.

Part of the reason user_groups isn't used is because implicit
membership isn't stored there, so protecting against anonymous
editing, or autoconfirmed editing, wouldn't work.

Rob Church


body:
Steve Block wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Steve Block wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They
>>>>have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources
>>>>to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are
>>>>never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The
>>>>result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk.
>>>
>>>
>>The problem with this kind of argument as the very first one in a series
>>of comments is that it makes me feel blackmailed by whatever follows.
>>
>>
>The problem with this line of argument is that it doesn't develop the
>debate in a fruitful manner.  My suggestion would be to either ignore
>the comment or to consider it in the context of the posted subject
>header.  However, I am terribly sorry for the offence it caused, and for
>reacting emotively to Phil's suggestion and conveying the level of my
>reaction.  Maybe I'll move to a list where people don't make me feel
>like a retard simply for posting my opinion.
>
I don't know if offence was the right word for the way I reacted, but I
certainly accept your apology in the spirit in which it was intended.
Ignoring the rest of that message was as much as could reasonably be
done in the circumstances.  I would not have applied this to later messages.

Ec


body:
> Turns out it's www.encyclopedia.com. Anyone know what "premiere" means?

Says who?


body:
On 1/26/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > For what it's worth, I don't see that Microsoft did anything obviously
> > wrong.  At this point, we definitely need a clear and responsive
> > system for coordinating paid editing.  We've recognized for a while
> > now that paid editing will happen.  It will definitely be in our best
> > interest to set up a system to facilitate it and give a sense of
> > fairness to entities like MS who want to do things above-the-board.
> >
> > -Sage
>
> I don't know about that...
> I would steer clear of all paid editing in any way, shape, or form.
> It just creates problems when the article is edited or deleted and a
> company is outraged because they paid good money for that very article.
> --Mets501

The argument has been made many times, but I'll make it again.  The
people at Microsoft knew what they were getting into by trying to hire
an independent writer to improve articles: edits are only likely to
stick around if they bring Wikipedia articles closer to the ideal of
verifiable, neutral, well written information.  It's only in a
group/individual/company's best interest to pay for editing if getting
closer to neutral point of view is beneficial for them; obviously it
is beneficial to us.

If introducing bias is what they want to do through paid editing, they
aren't likely to use official channels even if they are available.
But if we did have a system for coordinating and monitoring such
activity, it would put that much more social obligation on
(financially powerful) groups who feel wronged by Wikipedia content to
respect our editorial policies.  If there is no recourse but secret
paid editing, then they are already going against us; there is little
to discourage the further step of attempting to whitewash their
articles

-Sage


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Well, we could say "Articles that do not cite reliable published
sources might be deleted." But that's no incentive to actually cite sources.
It's sad to see it makes no difference whatsoever.

Mgm

On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Lol.
>
> On 1/27/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Saw this when creating a redirect. Aren't we a little early for April
> Fool's?
> > >
> > Welcome to the shiny new perfect Wikipedia.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>
>>If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any
>>abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these
>>policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think
>>I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
>>
>>
>But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is
>larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing
>to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite
>their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally
>playing catch-up.
>
The situation is a fact of life that I'm prepared to live with.  This
does not change the ideal of having well sourced articles.  It only
accepts natural limitationsd.

Ec


from_name: Peter

body:
Is there any reason why you work with pre-defined levels for page protection
(default, block unregistered users, users with the sysop right), why not
base the protection on the available groups available in the user_groups
table?

cheers,
Peter.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania

body:
This is a very good news :-)

Thank you to Wikia and KJ.

Ant

Hsiang-Tai Chien wrote:
> Good to see it happen. :)
>
> H.T.
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
>>[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf
>>Of Jimmy Wales
>>Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 2:22 PM
>>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>>Subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania
>>
>>Gil, Angela and I are excited to announce that KJ will be
>>spending 50% of her work time at Wikia over the next 6 months
>>as a dedicated volunteer for Wikimania 2007.  KJ will be one
>>of the main organizers of Wikimania 2007 and is responsible
>>for Wikimania sponsorship. KJ is responsible for preparing
>>sponsor proposals and will be spending time visiting the
>>sponsors to discuss their proposals.
>>
>>Part of my goal with Wikia is to build a commercial
>>enterprise that could contribute back to the foundation and
>>I'm excited to see that starting to happen.
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________
>  ??????? ? ????????????????
>  http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Articles that do not cite reliable
 published	sources will be deleted."

body:
Gary Kirk wrote:
> You could say something at MediaWiki_talk:Newarticletext I suppose?

Done, and I also reverted to the previous less-absolute message while I
was there. [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced
articles]] hasn't passed consensus and last I checked looked unlikely to
do so any time soon, so if nothing else the message was simply inaccurate.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 26/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I'm just getting ready for C4 to pick me up, take me to their office
> > and interview me for tonight's news re: the Microsoft-Wikipedia issue.
> > If someone could record it and throw us an MPEG afterwards, that would
> > be most helpful!

> News is 7-7:30pm. C4 apparently do video streaming off their site as well.

Sit down, camera rolls.

"Okay. What was Microsoft's crime?"
"Well, I wouldn't call it a *crime* ..."

Talked about how it was a conflict of interest and that's bad, how "I
said this can only damage their good name and then it damaged their
good name". What OOXML is (the Office 2007 file format) and why it's
greatly contentious (competition from OpenDocument and OpenOfficeorg).
How Doug Mahugh is on the talk page now and that's good and Rick
Jelliffe will hopefully contribute his expertise and that's good. So
that's the current problem pretty much dealt with.

They have no idea how much will be used tonight, "between five seconds
and five minutes." It depends whether e.g. John Reid says something
particularly stupid in the next hour ;-)

The issue now, the real problem, is how Wikipedia deals with this sort
of thing in the future. We have procedures for actual legal problems,
but not yet for this sort of editorial problem. Something where
companies with issues with content can say so, and where the regular
volunteers will take an interest and look into improving articles
based on that.

We don't have that yet. I said we'd probably work out something over
the weekend.

So, regular editors. How do we set up a page or forum where companies
and people written about can express editorial concerns (rather than
e.g. legal ones), such that they know people will at least look over
them with thought and improve the articles from there?

This was a MAJOR news story and it came completely out of the blue.
But it is an ongoing problem for Wikipedia - we don't want companies
fearful of dealing with us in case they get the sort of bad press this
issue got Microsoft and Doug Mahugh. How can we get better at this,
quickly?

- d.


body:
You could say something at MediaWiki_talk:Newarticletext I suppose?

On 1/26/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Saw this when creating a redirect. Aren't we a little early for April
> Fool's?
>
> And, once again, it links to the guideline [[Wikipedia:Citing sources]]
> as part of this absolute statement. I complained about something similar
> back in November and it got taken out pretty quick. At least this time
> there isn't also a link to [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources]].
>
> Is there some place where changes to this statement are discussed that
> I'm unaware of, or is it just being jerked back and forth at individual
> whim?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Gary Kirk


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Gosh darn it,
	those spammers^Wmarketers will show us what for

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Have a look at [[Club skifield]] (which I wrote). Follow the external
> link. Is it really worth our (my) while attempting to write something
> that surpasses the link in terms of quality, depth, comprehensiveness
> of coverage? Practically speaking, who is going to be reading
> Wikipedia that doesn't have access to the net, but needs that
> information?

The external link in question is:
http://forum.ski.com.au/scripts/ultimatebboard/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=004535;p=0#000000

It leads to a post on a web-based forum. That's potentially pretty
ephemeral, isn't it? What happens if the site goes down, the forum gets
discontinued, they change forum software and the old posts aren't
compatible, or they simply decide to prune old posts to "save space"?
The post is copyrighted and not under a free licence, so an interested
party can't just save a copy and post it somewhere else if that happens.

Also, what happens if the information in that post turns out to have an
error, or becomes obsolete with time? There's no way to update it. It
was written by someone who claims the title "Broken River Advocate", and
I presume "Broken River" is the name of some ski facility somewhere.
What if the post is POV?

So even assuming everyone reading Wikipedia's contents has full live
access to the rest of the web (an assumption Rich Holton questioned in
another post), there's still a major benefit in bringing this
information into Wikipedia's database and under Wikipedia's free licence.


list: commons-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Commons-l] Correo de Wikimedia Commons

body:
Hello,

LASSARI a ?crit :
> Dear Yann--
>
> You have blocked us from uploading images because of copyright violations.  We have the rights the use these photos of Juan Carlos Salazar.  His photographer, Miss. Beverly Brosius has given us authorizations to use these pictures for any purpose as long as we give her credits for this.
>
> We are trying to improve the article about Juan Carlos Salazar by uploading relevant related to his musical career.
>
> All his pictures have been used on his CD covers becaue of the graning of rights.  We also hold the rights to Juan Carlos Salazar's CD's, so we can use the images of the CD covers any way we would want to.
>
> We created his website (www.juancarlossalazar.com), and used the same images we are trying to upload to Wikipedia.
>
> We would like for you to please allow to do so, so the page looks more professional and it is more complete.
>
> Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ana Briceno
> LASSARI

Ok, I unblocked you.
Please provide the source and the licence for all images you upload.

These two images do not have a source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:JCS_con_cuatro.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:JCS_closeup.jpg

Thanks,

Yann


body:
On 26/01/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Turns out it's www.encyclopedia.com. Anyone know what "premiere" means?

I saw "Over 57,000 articles" and my first thought was "hmm, midsize
wikipedia, hopefully getting somewhere."

- d.


body:
On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, we could say "Articles that do not cite reliable published
> > sources might be deleted." But that's no incentive to actually cite sources.
> > It's sad to see it makes no difference whatsoever.
>
> Is this what we've come to? Being honest with our contributors doesn't
> work, so we attempt to scare them with hollow threats? FFS.

Whack someone over the head with [[WP:BITE]] ?

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] fwd: Developer help needed for General User Survey

body:
Forwarded for Piotrus:

Help needed with posting to wikitech-l

I have a serious case of gremlins - tried several ways of posting to
that list for a week and nothing works. Sigh. I see you are one of the
contributors to that mailing list: could I ask you to repost my
letter? It can be copy&pasted easily from
User:Piotrus/Sandbox#letter.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus |
talk 18:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello guys,

The General User Survey project (survey of Wikipedia users, see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_User_Survey) is in dire need of
somebody who would help us with the coding part - the questions for
the survey have been mostly ready for months, but we cannot implement
the survey with our (lack of) technical skills.

It was suggested (at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Researching_Wikipedia)
that our close-to-2-years (!) delay in getting General User Survey
project up and running is due to researchers discussing the issue
among themselves on a forum nobody else reads (i.e. Wiki-research-l) -
so I am bringing the issue here.

Finishing the GUS project would give us not only a better theoretical
understanding of ourselves (demographics, motivations, etc.) but also
generate reliable practical information on how Wikimedia software and
procedures are valued by the users.

Thank you for your help,

PS. I've tried sending this message to the list few days ago but I am
pretty sure it got eaten by some net bug along the way, so I am trying
it again. I apologize if it anybody receives it the second time.

PS2. Just recently another interesting research project did cross a
milestone: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiXRay

-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus


body:
On 26/01/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

> Dare I play the devil's advocate here and say that we should allow this
> sort of thing?

I see your point, but I'm imagining what the sort of minds who filled
our pages with linkspam till we had to switch on nofollow, and who are
now whining that we must switch it off again *because* we owe them a
living, would do with such a permission, however sensibly worded.

It's hard to get a clue across to people who think their income
depends on not getting the clue in question.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 1/26/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, the good thing is that both those of us who would like to get
> rid of many of these articles and those of us who would like to keep
> them, agree that AfD isn't working :-)
>
> Mark
>
> On 26/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 26/01/07, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 1/26/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > What, if any, are the notability criteria for schools?
> >
> > > The word "school" appears somewhere in the article.
> > > Seriously.  There was a VfD a couple years back that garnered a large
> > > number of "keep, schools are inherently notable" votes, even though
> > > the article was a hoax and the school in question did not actually
> > > exist.  Another VfD from around that time resulted in a "keep" for the
> > > same reasons, when article was actually a vanity piece about a
> > > one-person business that happened to have "school" as part of its
> > > name.
> >
> >
> > Yeah. It's an unfortunate reaction to various concerted efforts to
> > purge the school articles. This is part of why the structure of en:wp
> > AFD is demonstrably problematic.

AFD illustrates a number of things, one of which is that there's no
consensus on notability on a number of topics.

I detest having to follow AFD closely to see if someone's trying to
try another "establish a new consensus by deleting a bunch of things"
runs.  I often forget to for a week and then find that something
horrible happened while my attention was elsewhere.

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


from_name: Szépszivy Ásér

subject: [WikiEN-l] about my tragic "ban"

body:
Hello. I'm a Japanese man worked at Wikipedia:en, de.

I was "banned" because an ":w:en:-administrator" :User:Kusma's erroring.

Please relese me! ("unblock"), help me!, now.

And, can you tell me the Kusma's e-mail address?

-- by, User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg, the fighter, semi-linguist,
semi-Hebraist ?http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg,
or  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg ?


body:
On 26/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was thinking of something different over the weekend.  A Wikipedia
> Article Subjects Noticeboard, where people or organizations could post
> things which they object to (short of what the Office would *have* to
> deal with) and editors can watch and respond to normally.

That's the sort of idea I was thinking of.

Would enough regular editors actually respond? That's the only thing
I'm wondering about.

> I was thinking that the process could be something like "First, please
> post a comment on the article talk page with a detailed explanation of
> what you object to and why, and identifying who you are and what your
> official standing is.  Then, add an entry to the top of the list below
> with template {{Subjectnotice|articlename}}, add some comments, and
> sign it...  Please do so from a logged in account so that people can
> respond on your talk page as well as the article talk page."
> I haven't created the template (I have no idea how they work).
> Does anyone think this is a bad idea?  Positive comments?

It sounds n00b-hostile. What's the lightest-weight process from both
sides that would do the job?

- d.


from_name: · Firefoxman

body:
On 1/26/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Would enough regular editors actually respond? That's the only thing
> I'm wondering about.
>

I would. Look at how many people respond to WP:DESK. I don't think we will
have any problem with staffing the page.

--
-Firefoxman


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
Well, the good thing is that both those of us who would like to get
rid of many of these articles and those of us who would like to keep
them, agree that AfD isn't working :-)

Mark

On 26/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/01/07, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/26/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > What, if any, are the notability criteria for schools?
>
> > The word "school" appears somewhere in the article.
> > Seriously.  There was a VfD a couple years back that garnered a large
> > number of "keep, schools are inherently notable" votes, even though
> > the article was a hoax and the school in question did not actually
> > exist.  Another VfD from around that time resulted in a "keep" for the
> > same reasons, when article was actually a vanity piece about a
> > one-person business that happened to have "school" as part of its
> > name.
>
>
> Yeah. It's an unfortunate reaction to various concerted efforts to
> purge the school articles. This is part of why the structure of en:wp
> AFD is demonstrably problematic.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


body:
On 1/26/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it would be less frustrating than a lot of other admin stuff
> people do.  I'd watch the page.  I can't speak for others, though.
>

If it were companies like microsoft who are likey to have well thought
out complaints it probably wouldn't be too bad.

Unfortunely it would be not be. It would mostly be small companies
either going Waaa you deleted our article or complaining that we don't
say how brilliant product X is. Did you ever see this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:NewsMax_Media#Proposed_article_text

How much time do you want to spend dealing with people who think that is NPOV?

--
geni


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we not link to videos with musical soundtracks?

body:
On the article [[Rotherhithe Tunnel]], an editor removed the link to
this video "because the soundtrack is a copyright violation":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqTUEkju5j0

It's a video of driving through the tunnel, on top of the audio of
which the maker of the video has sardonically overlaid "Road to Hell"
by Chris Rea, which is faintly amusing.

[[WP:C]], quoted at the top of [[WP:EL]], says: "If you know that an
external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's
copyright, do not link to that copy of the work." Is using music on a
video "a violation of the creator's copyright", or even "a work" in
which the quoted wording was intended to refer to?

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


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 1/27/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Is there some place where changes to this statement are discussed that
>> I'm unaware of, or is it just being jerked back and forth at individual
>> whim?
>
> Individual whim trumps consensus for GUI messages for some reason.
> Something I abhor, as admins are *not* supposed to use their power in
> this way.

I hope my recent reversion of this message back to the previous version
doesn't count as abhorrent too. :)

Personally, I think that if a message like this is to have links to
policy pages they should only be to the high-level ones such as
[[Wikipedia:Verifiability]]. That way new editors can get a general
overview that's got both general consensus and official fiat on its
side, rather than being dumped into the battlegrounds of the
more-specific but less-binding guideline pages.


from_name: Samuli Lintula

subject: [Commons-l] Correo de Wikimedia Commons

body:
On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:18:47 +0200, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> LASSARI a ?crit :
>> Dear Yann--
>>
>> You have blocked us from uploading images because of copyright
>> violations.  We have the rights the use these photos of Juan Carlos
>> Salazar.  His photographer, Miss. Beverly Brosius has given us
>> authorizations to use these pictures for any purpose as long as we give
>> her credits for this.
>
> Ok, I unblocked you.
> Please provide the source and the licence for all images you upload.

Only for the list: Let's not forget OTRS,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:OTRS

--
Yst?v?llisin terveisin,
Samuli Lintula


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

body:
David Gerard wrote:
<snip>
> The General User Survey project (survey of Wikipedia users, see
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_User_Survey) is in dire need of
> somebody who would help us with the coding part - the questions for
> the survey have been mostly ready for months, but we cannot implement
> the survey with our (lack of) technical skills.
<snip history stuff>

Hello,

Basicly this project seems to be yet another survey. There are probably
ton of softwares to create surveys, analyze the data for you and output
cool looking histograms.

Since I am lazy, I relied on google with the keywords "php survey". The
really first link is a link too google answer giving ton of links:

   http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=311751

The first link gives out "PHP Questionnaire" (french word for "survey"):
   http://www.chumpsoft.com/products/phpq/ . The screen shots look cool,
but the software comes at a price 200US$ (that's less than the price of
half a day of work).

Another one is NaboPoll : http://www.nabocorp.com/nabopoll/shots.php .
Looks simple enough, can probably be easily skinned to looks like
wikipedia website.

Hmm lets google for "Mediawiki poll" and we have an extension to add
polls in MediaWiki :

   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Poll from there we get straight to
some source code:
   http://nl.free2xs.net/Projects/MediaWiki/extensions/Poll
   http://wikipoll.free.fr/mediawiki-1.6.5/index.php?title=Source_code

So now devs can have a look at both extensions, check the licence,
contact the authors and add the extension in SVN. Then we all work on
the issue, produce a clean and secure extension and deploy it on
wikimedia.org or somewhere else.

I am sure we can do it by March 2007.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 25/01/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some people had (have?) public watchlists - a page that lists articles they
> are watching, which others can also watch by clicking on [related changes].

It would be nice to have a switch to make one's watchlist public if so
desired. Or is that too "social software"-esque?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] about my tragic "ban"

body:
We can't share private details like email addresses. If you want to email an
administrator you should confirm your email address on the site and click
the "Email this user" link to send them an email.

On 1/26/07, Sz?pszivy ?s?r <j.milgromski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello. I'm a Japanese man worked at Wikipedia:en, de.
>
> I was "banned" because an ":w:en:-administrator" :User:Kusma's erroring.
>
> Please relese me! ("unblock"), help me!, now.
>
> And, can you tell me the Kusma's e-mail address?
>
> -- by, User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg, the fighter, semi-linguist,
> semi-Hebraist ?http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg,
> or  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg ?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] about my tragic "ban"

body:
For the convenience of people willing to respond to this, he's already been
blocked before by several other administrators for a variety of different
reasons. I doubt Kusma was in error.

 07:34, August 30, 2006 Kusma <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kusma> (
Talk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kusma> |
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kusma>|
block <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Blockip/Kusma>) blocked "
Sheynhertz-Unbayg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg> (
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sheynhertz-Unbayg>)"
with an expiry time of indefinite (persistent block evasion and refusal to
communicate, will post at WP:AN <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN>)
07:33, August 30, 2006 Kusma <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kusma>
(Talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kusma>|
contribs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kusma> |
block<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Blockip/Kusma>)
unblocked Sheynhertz-Unbayg<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg>(
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sheynhertz-Unbayg>)
(to change duration)
06:52, August 30, 2006 Kusma <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kusma>
(Talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kusma>|
contribs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kusma> |
block<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Blockip/Kusma>)
blocked "Sheynhertz-Unbayg<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg>(
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sheynhertz-Unbayg>)"
with an expiry time of 48 hours (creation of bad interwikis despite numerous
warnings, previous blocks, refusal to communicate)
10:17, August 27, 2006 Misza13 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Misza13> (
Talk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Misza13> |
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Misza13>|
block <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Blockip/Misza13>) blocked "
Sheynhertz-Unbayg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg> (
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sheynhertz-Unbayg>)"
with an expiry time of 24 hours (disruption of MfD)
09:07, August 24, 2006 Kusma <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kusma>
(Talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kusma>|
contribs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kusma> |
block<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Blockip/Kusma>)
blocked "Sheynhertz-Unbayg<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg>(
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sheynhertz-Unbayg>)"
with an expiry time of 24 hours (constant misuse of {{intranslation}}
template, not cleaning up after himself, was warned)
14:55, July 29, 2006 Xoloz <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xoloz>
(Talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Xoloz>|
contribs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Xoloz> |
block<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Blockip/Xoloz>)
blocked "Sheynhertz-Unbayg<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg>(
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sheynhertz-Unbayg>)"
with an expiry time of 1 hour (persistent incivility)
22:07, June 2, 2006 Kungfuadam<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kungfuadam>(
Talk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kungfuadam> |
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Kungfuadam>|
block <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Blockip/Kungfuadam>) blocked "
Sheynhertz-Unbayg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg> (
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sheynhertz-Unbayg>)"
with an expiry time of 3 hours (bad faith reditrects)

On 1/26/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We can't share private details like email addresses. If you want to email
> an administrator you should confirm your email address on the site and click
> the "Email this user" link to send them an email.
>
> On 1/26/07, Sz?pszivy ?s?r <j.milgromski at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello. I'm a Japanese man worked at Wikipedia:en, de.
> >
> > I was "banned" because an ":w:en:-administrator" :User:Kusma's erroring.
> >
> >
> > Please relese me! ("unblock"), help me!, now.
> >
> > And, can you tell me the Kusma's e-mail address?
> >
> > -- by, User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg, the fighter, semi-linguist,
> > semi-Hebraist ? http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg,
> > or  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg ?
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] about my tragic "ban"

body:
On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/27/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 27/01/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Community bans have been around for a while.
> >
> > Yeah, but there's no indication on the block log that it's a community
> > ban, when there's (I think) a rule that you notate it when you block
> > them.
> >
> > ~Mark
>
> Problem is that a lot of blocks become post facto community bans.

It might be good if the policy was that they can't become post facto
without being made official and documented and posted to ANI and such.

I don't mind a block going from normal to community ban - but it needs
to get documented and be through the review process as it is, IMHO.

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


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Well gee, abusive admins, abusive editors,
	and you	don't care about the rules at all.

body:
on 1/26/07 8:09 PM, Mark Ryan at ultrablue at gmail.com wrote:

> After that incident, I have absolutely no interest in investigating
> this person's complaints any further. But could someone else look into
> it, just so we can't give them the satisfaction of being able to say
> we've ignored their request for help?

Would that person need to be an admin?

Marc Riddell


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] The downside of creating perfect articles

body:
On 1/26/07, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be awfully nice if there were some simple differentiation in
> skin that could distinguish articles at different stages of
> development, so that leaving questions and unfinished statements in an
> article would not be unexpected or 'unprofessional' in an article
> written on lightly crumpled recycled paper; and unfinished ideas would
> not be unespected on some slightly grenapkin paper...

I suggested something like this once, whereby there are classes of
articles, and what you can do to do an article depends on what class
it is. Add an unsourced statement to an FA? No way, Jos?. Add
"(Probably similar situation in Europe, but I'm not sure.)" to a stub
class article? Sure.

Then the idea is that articles should over time ratchet up from low
quality to high quality, and can't be dragged down by adding poor
quality material.

Steve


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Should we not link to videos with musical
	soundtracks?

body:
On 1/26/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> On the article [[Rotherhithe Tunnel]], an editor removed the link to
> this video "because the soundtrack is a copyright violation":
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqTUEkju5j0
>
> It's a video of driving through the tunnel, on top of the audio of
> which the maker of the video has sardonically overlaid "Road to Hell"
> by Chris Rea, which is faintly amusing.
>
> [[WP:C]], quoted at the top of [[WP:EL]], says: "If you know that an
> external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's
> copyright, do not link to that copy of the work." Is using music on a
> video "a violation of the creator's copyright",

Unless you have permission yes.

> or even "a work" in
> which the quoted wording was intended to refer to?
>

Eh probably. Might be able to get the author to give us a copy without
the added soundtrack and we could host it localy.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

body:
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first
> > thing jimbo could get his hands on.
>
>
> Old-timer.

You pre-date me.

--
geni


body:
On 1/26/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cor, that's demoralising. (Though I think their name-syntax may be a
> little off in some cases)

Heh, yeah, I just "fixed" a huge number of redlinks by changing
"Religion of X" to "Religion in X" :)

Steve


from_name: Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

body:
Parker --

Are you pretending to be a different person again? The blunder in an
e-mail earlier this month
(http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/060314.html)
pretty much established that you are 75.178.235.28 and a checkuser
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/RunedChozo>
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/RunedChozo)
indicated it was /likely /that 75.178.235.28 and RunedChozo are the same
person. Add to that your vehement defense of RunedChozo last month and
your sudden return now... hmm... something doesn't seem right.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

P.S. Would you please tell RunedChozo to quit calling me an Islamist?
There are so many other insults with which he can throw at me and that
one has /really /lost its meaning.

Parker Peters wrote:
> George,
>
> I find it funny that we have someone who's engaged in wikistalking who's not
> blocked, while the victim is blocked for two weeks. It seems they have good
> reason to complain.
>
> Parker
>
> On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 1/25/07, Michael Smith <runechozo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  Gee - ZakuSage abuses me, and what happens when I respond? Assterion
>>>
>> blocks
>>
>>> me for 2 weeks, and his ass buddy Yamla locks my user page?
>>>
>>> You are a real fucking laugh riot, Zakusage I guess really owns that PSP
>>> page huh.
>>>
>>> RunedChozo
>>>
>> Last night, I and others asked you both nicely to take a wikibreak and
>> leave it alone.  Neither of you did that.
>>
>> I'm going to go have some stern words with ZakuSage about wikistalking
>> people, but you need to take responsibility for having chosen to
>> continue engaging in a hostile, uncivil manner rather than back off
>> and calm down.  If you'd stopped last night this would be very
>> different today.
>>
>> If you cannot control your temper enough to act in a reasonable and
>> civil manner even when someone is provoking you, you're going to get
>> yourself in trouble and thrown off Wikipedia sooner or later.  People
>> have told you this before.  Please listen this time.
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert at gmail.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] table text is full

body:
We have reached the maximum table size limit of 4GB for our text table
- what's the best way around or to fix this?

Travis


from_name: J.L.W.S. The Special One

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
What, if any, are the notability criteria for schools?

P.S. Remember that notability is subjective, and if improperly
applied, may lead to systemic bias.

On 1/26/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/01/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
> > Typical complaints: an article (or a former version thereof) will, in
> > increasing order of severity:
> > * Contain true, but anecdotal or biasedly presented information on the
> > school. (Example: three years ago, there was a party where students were
> > drunk. Who cares? This happens everywhere.)
> > * Contain false allegations against the school. Example: the school is a
> > known drug trafficking spot.
> > * Contain information on the private life of named individuals,
> > especially minors. Example: calling a certain female student a slut,
> > saying that such or such teacher is homosexual, or similar.
> > * Contain libellious accusations against named individuals. Example: the
> > principal was accused of statutory rape.
> > That kind of things probably comes from students or former students.
> > They may stay for days because these articles are largely unpatrolled. I
> > suspect those who do that do not quite understand the severity of what
> > they do, that they can create real harm, especially when individuals are
> > named.
> > Complaints come from school administrators or parents.
>
>
> The on-wiki way to deal with this is let people in the schools project
> know there's a serious problem and these articles need serious
> patrolling, with the level of concern of living biographies. (I say
> the schools project because that's where the school entry advocates
> gather.)
>
> Anyone from the schools project on wikien-l? Can you get some
> patrolling together?
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Actually, that would be a good policy page. [[Wikipedia:Bite the
>> process junkies]]
>>
>
> [[Wikipedia:Just try and get along]]
>
>

[[Wikipedia:Ban them all]]

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

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from_name: Aude

subject: [Foundation-l] need assistance for spam blacklist

body:
I tried the spam blacklist and looking at recent changes, but the response
on meta is still slow.

I'm new to IRC, trying to figure out what various channels are, and get the
hang of it.  According to Wikipedia, "
mIRC<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRC>is the most popular IRC client
on Windows based systems
[ *citation needed* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources>]."
Is this true?

I have looked over the list of channels,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_channels  #wikimedia seems like the place
to get hold of foundation/metawiki folks, though I see little activity
there.

Also have seen discussion on enwiki about the IRC admin channel, and really
don't get it.  Are there really any benefits of joining that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IRC_admin_channel

And, what do you mean by "!admin"?  the admin channel? or is that some IRC
command?

I'm generally tech savvy, but perhaps somewhat older than most folks on
wikipedia.  Trying to find my way on IRC and figure it out is intimidating,
as is the discussion on the admins noticeboard.  So, apologies if these
sound like dumb questions. :)

-Aude

On 1/26/07, Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
>
> IRC is pretty efficient as !admin will grab people pretty quickly.
> Alternatively you could use recent changes and look at the folk who
> seem to be editing quite a bit, and see if they're sysops - it's
> likely.
>
> However, IRC is definately the best way.
>
> On 1/26/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Need assistance from any meta admin available to add two sites to the
> spam
> > blacklist
> >
> > See:
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#supermortgagerate.info_and_besttradelink.info
> >
> > On enwiki, there is a proxy spammer right now, spamming links with an
> edit
> > summary "Online Forex Trading - Free Practice Account - All Resurse"
> >
> > For example:
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norwest&curid=3346024&diff=103386601&oldid=100720621
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Noel_Ahern&curid=1387412&diff=103386365&oldid=90258330
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nonrecourse_debt&curid=2844943&diff=103386260&oldid=61231347
> >
> > Is there is a faster way to get track down a meta admin?  I don't have
> IRC
> > here and not sure who hangs out there anyway.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > --
> > Aude
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> ?Sean Whitton (Xyrael/xyr)
> sean at silentflame.com
> http://xyrael.net/
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Aude


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Who is "the Internet's premiere free encyclopedia"?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Turns out it's www.encyclopedia.com. Anyone know what "premiere" means?

Yet another Columbia mirror. Hardly something to get excited about. You
can find dozens Wikipedia mirrors calling themselves the greatest thing on
the net, they're nothing to get excited about either.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Sean Whitton (Xyrael)

body:
IRC is pretty efficient as !admin will grab people pretty quickly.
Alternatively you could use recent changes and look at the folk who
seem to be editing quite a bit, and see if they're sysops - it's
likely.

However, IRC is definately the best way.

On 1/26/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:
> Need assistance from any meta admin available to add two sites to the spam
> blacklist
>
> See:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#supermortgagerate.info_and_besttradelink.info
>
> On enwiki, there is a proxy spammer right now, spamming links with an edit
> summary "Online Forex Trading - Free Practice Account - All Resurse"
>
> For example:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norwest&curid=3346024&diff=103386601&oldid=100720621
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Noel_Ahern&curid=1387412&diff=103386365&oldid=90258330
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nonrecourse_debt&curid=2844943&diff=103386260&oldid=61231347
>
> Is there is a faster way to get track down a meta admin?  I don't have IRC
> here and not sure who hangs out there anyway.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Aude
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
?Sean Whitton (Xyrael/xyr)
sean at silentflame.com
http://xyrael.net/