from_name: Corum O' Fallamhain

body:
I've noticed that quite a few people here (I won't name names) accuse anyone
who dislikes the idea of a seperate ML of being sexist and bigoted, or at
the very least, "dismissive of women's concerns". Allow me to point out that
from my perspective anyway, you (the people that are coming up with a
sex-segregated list) are being sexist (and not only against men, but also
against their very own gender), not me. To suggest that to want discussion
to take place solely in an unsegregated forum is sexist is completely
upside-down. I think that a lot of feminists would be appalled by the fact
that some women seem to think that the best way of dealing with sexism is to
go hide away in some seperate discussion form. To but it quite bluntly: I'm
on the side of gender equality: you (Wikichix founders) are not. To seperate
the "poor, gentle womenfolk" from the rest of the community is part of the
same tradition that brought us sex-segregated universities, becuase after
all, it was common knowledge back then that women were poor, gentle, but
also unfortunately rather feeble-minded creatures who wouldn't be able to
handle the more rigourous real academic world. You people who want a
segregated forum are embarassingly playing up to extremely sexist, 19th
century Victorian stereotypes. As someone who believes in true equality,
this idea for a ML genuinely offends me. It is as though you feel that women
are not capable of discussing things in the same environment as men. Which
is quite ridiculous: of course you can.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Introducing a new mailing list


list: wikien-l

from_name: Robth

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images to
	be deleted

body:
On 12/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/6/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia wants the option to use the encyclopaedia for commercial
> > purposes at some point in the future (for example, selling a printed
> > version, perhaps). By refusing images with non-commercial licenses, we
> > leave our options open.
>
> Why do we have fair use images then?
>
> Steve

For depicting subjects where the creation of a free image would be
impossible or very unlikely.  A non-commercial image would be
acceptable for these subjects as well, but should have a fair use
rationale explaining why it meets Wikipedia's criteria for using
unfree images (i.e. why a free image is not a viable alternative).

--
Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
Wikipedia wants the option to use the encyclopaedia for commercial
purposes at some point in the future (for example, selling a printed
version, perhaps). By refusing images with non-commercial licenses, we
leave our options open.


from_name: David Boothroyd

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion patrol

body:
I agree with this. A few days ago I created [[338171]]. Being rather
bored at the time I gave a facetious edit summary which claimed the
article was all about the number 338,171. It was swiftly tagged with
a speedy delete tag, and then deleted (despite me having quickly put
a {{hangon}}).

The article was actually a redirect to T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of
Arabia"). Wanting privacy, in later life Lawrence re-enlisted in the
RAF as an Aircraftsman (equivalent of Private in the Army), and was
given 338171 as his service number. He often signed himself "338171
A/C Shaw", prompting Noel Coward to ask him "May I call you 338?".

It was quite obvious on reading the article that it was actually a
redirect. If the admin had checked the article to which it was
redirected he would have found the reason explained there. So while
it's legitimate to claim to have been misled by the edit summary,
that really doesn't justify mistakenly speedying a perfectly good
redirect. I appreciate that speedy deletion patrollers are often
overworked but overwork is not an excuse for lack of common sense.
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi userboxes

body:
> There's a huge difference between discrimination done by the government and
> discrimination done by private individuals or entities.

Yes, but it's not difficult to manipulate one into the other. A clever
government can have significant control over apparently private
entities.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Time for preformatted empty articles?

body:
On 12/2/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Those go in ==References== sections too. It's not just for cite.php...

Maybe this is my "academic training", such as it is. The references
section was where you put sources you had explicitly referred to. The
bibliography, if you had one, was other sources that you had used but
which were not attributable to individual quotes or ideas.

To make one last pitch for "sources" over "references": privately, we
call them sources. We ask people to cite sources. Would it not help if
we explicitly, publicly called them sources as well?

Steve


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] What does the "undo" link do?

body:
On 12/5/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ask the developer (Werdna) who implemented the feature. Like all good
> developers, I am 100% confident he added a little documentation
> somewhere on MediaWiki.org. If not, then I'm sure some bright spark
> would be able to work out how the thing works, and provide some.

Should I have posted to mediawiki-l instead?

> If it's the latest edit, than a (more expensive) undo operation is not
> needed; a manual revert would have the same effect, or a rollback
> would undo the series of edits. So in short, the rollback feature is
> more appropriate in those cases.
>
> The moment people suggest trialling rollback for everyone (where
> everyone, I usually hope, means all autoconfirmed users), a Holy War
> starts.

Yes, this is clearly the weird sort of situation that arises when
politics meets technology.

Q1) What is "undo"?
A) Rollback for any revision.

Q2) Why doesn't it show up for the current revision?
A) Because "rollback" is more efficient for that case.

Q3) So I should use rollback instead?
A) No, because only admins are allowed to rollback stuff.

Q4) So I should use undo instead?
A) No, see Q2.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: elvis at chan.de

subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?

body:
Quoting galwaygirl <user.galwaygirl at gmail.com>:

> I just came across this worrying news item:
> http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170209/microsoft-looking-windows-olpc
>
> Does anyone know more about this? Is it really true?

it should not be such a big problem since (afaik) the hardware is
compatible to other pc and there are "system builder versions"* of
windows where you can "click together" your own windows without all
the clutter.

it is quite some work but possible. i think the guys from ms could do
it in very short time if they need not to write new drivers.

*i am not sure if this is the real name of it, never did it myself,
just stood behind someone doing it.


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?


body:
On 12/5/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com>:
> For the latest edit, it is not needed, because you get exactly the same
> behaviour from the "edit this page" link.

That's an even bizarrer rationale. Making GUI behaviour inconsistent
to avoid perceived redundancies in specific cases?? It would be like
making Alt+F4 not work on any application that had a File|Exit
menu....

Selecting "undo" on the latest revision is a hell of a lot more
intuitive than having to find the prevision revision and selecting
"edit" on that. And less error prone - it's not that easy to be sure
that you have the penultimate revision. Take this example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foo&diff=88844959&oldid=76923077

If I click on the "edit" link on the left hand side, exactly how many
revisions am I rolling back? This isn't indicated anywhere in the
GUI...

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/5/06, Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Wikipedia has so far followed the approach of scaling out instead of up,
> and that with commodity hardware. If you believe this approach is
> mistaken, you'll need to explain what you know about scaling server
> farms that Google doesn't.

I think you meant "that WikiMedia doesn't". We don't have access to
Google's technology. We don't have [[MapReduce]].

Steve


list: commons-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Blind move

body:
Artur Fija?kowski wrote:
> The main problem with moving images using bot is it's blindness...
>
> Mentioned user copied some copyvios from pt.wiki licensed as CC-BY-SA
> because he didn't watch those images, but probably simple move images
> using linked to license template :(
>
> And this thing I want you to remember:
>
> Never, never, never do this!
>
> We had 2-3 months ago same problem with move of PD images from fr.wiki
> - wrong PD template (deprecated {{PD}}), no categories, galleries,
> lots of duplicates of images that were already on commons with other
> names, overwriting existing images with unrelated content with same
> name  ...
>
> Bot is good and nice toy, but it's very dangerous in unexperienced hands...
>

That's a good point: did they get approval to use the bot? If not, why
weren't they blocked for running an unauthorised bot?

--
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: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 12:46:31PM -0700, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Ivan Krsti?? wrote:
>
> >Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> >
> >
> >>You may wish to consider ordering more powerful platforms. I run 6
> >>instances of the entire Wikipedia on a single Solera Appliance.
> >>These servers have throughput of 875 megabyte per second
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I run a Wikipedia instance on the 366MHz OLPC XO-1
> >(http://dev.laptop.org/~krstic/xo); it works because I'm the only user.
> >Neither storage nor disk throughput help when your problem is sheer
> >load, and you're computationally-bound.
> >
> >
> >
> I also have proxy servers setup and I get about 2000 visitors a day and
> over 300,000 hits per day.

Just as a comparison: Wikipedia serves 22'000 requests per second and
over 100 Million visitors per month.

Regards,

jeluf


subject: [Commons-l] Image ID. Looking for community input.

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> On 12/5/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Someone came to me with an image they believed they obtained from
>> commons but where unsure of exactly where they found it...
>>
>> I was eventually able to locate the image, but it took a lot of work.
>>
>> Had the image been deleted for copyright problems it would have been
>> nearly impossible but it is in exactly that sort of situation which we
>> may need the ability to find the image the most.
>>
>> I have locally a database of image fingerprints (quantized color
>> histograms) which could be used to locate images... it didn't work for
>> this case because the image was newer than our last image backup
>> (which was last year). It might be useful but it's not a complete
>> solution.
>
> A few hours ago, I wrote about adding an MD5 hash (or the like) to
> each image entry in the database. That would have helped finding the
> image in question as well, except if it has been altered.
>

A Google search for "image hash" gives 878 results (curses, [[Image:Hash
function.svg]] shows up several times); surely there's a good one with a
free implementation /somewhere/?

--
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: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?

body:
galwaygirl schreef:
> Hi,
>
> I just came across this worrying news item:
> http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170209/microsoft-looking-windows-olpc
>
> Does anyone know more about this? Is it really true?
>
> Galwaygirl
Hoi,
There are two sides to this story. The standard hardware that runs the
OLPC software nicely will not run the Windows software. Consequently
many of the advantages of using this system go out of the window (pun
intended) because extra hardware will require more power and it is
exactly the low power functionality that makes this system shine. The
only "dark" side that I see, is that as the system can be made to run
such extended services, it will become more of an object people are
willing to steal. The bright side is that when it can run Windows, there
is room for extending the functionality of the hardware. This may make
the system also more interesting for the western market where the superb
ability to run with limited power is less relevant.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?


body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> You are absolutely right that what is damaging to the community should
>> not be allowed. What you fail to do is show why and how the community is
>> damaged. It is far easier to show how our community will be strengthened
>> by the Wikichicks. Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups.
>
>
> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it, tell
> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along with
> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us do
> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
> together.
>

If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
to hear it, is he still a misogynist?

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

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> You are absolutely right that what is damaging to the community should
>> not be allowed. What you fail to do is show why and how the community is
>> damaged. It is far easier to show how our community will be strengthened
>> by the Wikichicks. Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups.
>
>
> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it, tell
> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along with
> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us do
> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
> together.
>

If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
to hear it, is he still a misogynist?

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

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> You are absolutely right that what is damaging to the community should
>> not be allowed. What you fail to do is show why and how the community is
>> damaged. It is far easier to show how our community will be strengthened
>> by the Wikichicks. Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups.
>
>
> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it, tell
> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along with
> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us do
> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
> together.
>

If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
to hear it, is he still a misogynist?

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

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> You are absolutely right that what is damaging to the community should
>> not be allowed. What you fail to do is show why and how the community is
>> damaged. It is far easier to show how our community will be strengthened
>> by the Wikichicks. Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups.
>
>
> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it, tell
> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along with
> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us do
> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
> together.
>

If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
to hear it, is he still a misogynist?

--
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: Michael Snow

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

> There is, I think, a strong argument that notes such as Michael's
> should be sent *privately*, rather than to the list.  Certainly on
> occasions -- and I think this could be one of them -- it can be useful
> to emphasise a remark like this, especially as it is in the context of
> the greater discussion.
>
> But generally, if you want to invite someone to deport themselves
> better on a mailing list (or indeed on a wiki), it is much more
> friendly and likely to get a better response to send them a private
> email.

Traditional list etiquette encourages that approach, yes, although
really I think the odds have more to do with how the message is crafted
than with whether it is delivered publicly or privately. Here it was a
difficult balancing act. It is evident that at least some people do not
see much of a problem, perhaps not surprising since bias and
discrimination often operate in subtle and systemic ways. As a result,
it is sometimes necessary to publicly call out examples.

However, Snowdog is a valuable part of the community and has a good
reputation, so I wasn't happy to be so critical. I did try to "play the
ball, not the man" (sexist idiom, but the right gender in this case) by
focusing on the comment itself and what was offensive about it. I am
thankful that he continues to participate, with good grace and in a
constructive fashion. A "botched joke" may cost John Kerry the chance to
run for President again, but it shouldn't cost anyone the chance to post
again to this list.

--Michael Snow


body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
<snip>
> If this list is a kitchen,
<snip>
> A moderator (kitchen cleaner?)

What?

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

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body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
<snip>
> If this list is a kitchen,
<snip>
> A moderator (kitchen cleaner?)

What?

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

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body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
<snip>
> If this list is a kitchen,
<snip>
> A moderator (kitchen cleaner?)

What?

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

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body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
<snip>
> If this list is a kitchen,
<snip>
> A moderator (kitchen cleaner?)

What?

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

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>:
>
>>> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it,
>> tell
>>> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along
>> with
>>> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
>>> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us
>> do
>>> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
>>> together.
>>>
>> If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
>> to hear it, is he still a misogynist?
>>
>
>
> What the hell does that have to do with my remark???
>

"If a man says something in a forest but there are no women to hear it,
is he still wrong?"

...

Yes, putting all the women on one list and all the men on another is
/such/ a good idea. Then it doesn't matter what the men say, they won't
be offending any women, will they. </sarcasm>

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

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>:
>
>>> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it,
>> tell
>>> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along
>> with
>>> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
>>> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us
>> do
>>> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
>>> together.
>>>
>> If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
>> to hear it, is he still a misogynist?
>>
>
>
> What the hell does that have to do with my remark???
>

"If a man says something in a forest but there are no women to hear it,
is he still wrong?"

...

Yes, putting all the women on one list and all the men on another is
/such/ a good idea. Then it doesn't matter what the men say, they won't
be offending any women, will they. </sarcasm>

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

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>:
>
>>> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it,
>> tell
>>> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along
>> with
>>> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
>>> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us
>> do
>>> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
>>> together.
>>>
>> If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
>> to hear it, is he still a misogynist?
>>
>
>
> What the hell does that have to do with my remark???
>

"If a man says something in a forest but there are no women to hear it,
is he still wrong?"

...

Yes, putting all the women on one list and all the men on another is
/such/ a good idea. Then it doesn't matter what the men say, they won't
be offending any women, will they. </sarcasm>

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

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>:
>
>>> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it,
>> tell
>>> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along
>> with
>>> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
>>> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us
>> do
>>> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
>>> together.
>>>
>> If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
>> to hear it, is he still a misogynist?
>>
>
>
> What the hell does that have to do with my remark???
>

"If a man says something in a forest but there are no women to hear it,
is he still wrong?"

...

Yes, putting all the women on one list and all the men on another is
/such/ a good idea. Then it doesn't matter what the men say, they won't
be offending any women, will they. </sarcasm>

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

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body:
On 12/6/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why do we need to resort to fair use if we have permission to use the
> image anyway? Surely "permission for non-commercial use" images are
> preferable to "fair use" images...if nothing else, we can use them at
> full resolution.
>
> Steve

The confusion here originates in the fact that Wikipedia uses the term
fair use to refer to two different things.  First is the legal concept
of fair use.  Second is our "fair use policy", which should properly
be called our "unfree image policy" or something similar.  You are
correct that with permission, non-commercial, and no derivatives
images have, for our immediate usage, certain advantages over images
used only under (legal) fair use.  They still, however, require a
"fair use rationale"--that is, an explanation of why they are
compliant with our standards for using unfree images, which are based
not only on immediate legal requirements but also on other concerns,
such as the legal concerns of reusers of our content and the goals of
the project.

It would be sensible, of course, if we are going to have these two
distinct concepts, to separate them out in our nomenclature, but a
recent proposal to do this seems to be running into appreciable
opposition from folks who support basing our unfree image policy only
on immediate legal concerns.
--
Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi userboxes

body:
Earle Martin wrote:
> On 30/11/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The userboxes aren't templates, so they don't fall under T1. The US has
>> nearly total protection of free speech, so espousing beliefs, even Naziism,
>> isn't illegal.
>
> As far as I am aware, neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation
> are the United States.
>

In the immortal words of Essjay,
> Wikipedia has no right to free speech. The First Amendment says
> "Congress shall make no law..."; we are not Congress, we are the
> cabal.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Introducing a new mailing list

body:
Puppy wrote:
> Reverse discrimination would be (for example) if women admins were
> promoted on a basis of lower community support, in order to achieve a
> more balanced ratio - a process often referred to as affirmative action,
> and strongly supported by many.

There is a comparatively higher concentration of women in the cab^W^W
leadership positions on Wikipedia than throughout the project in
general. AFAICT it is through merit, not so-called "affirmative action"
- which, like all discrimination, I find objectionable.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Request to mailing list Wikichix-l rejected

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>> Subscription request
>> has been rejected by the list moderator.  The moderator gave the
>> following reason for rejecting your request:
>
>> "Hi Cunctator. We're only accepting women at this time. I suggest you
>> comment on the existing Wikimedia lists instead. This presence of this
>> list isn't meant to prevent men commening - which you can still do on
>> wikien-l etc."
>
> Maybe we should have a mailing list just for men, too! And a mailing list
> for British people where no Americans are allowed! Or a mailing list
> just for atheists where no Christians would be accepted!
>

... a mailing list for homosexual African-Americans from planets other
than earth?

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

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Case sensitivity in article headings?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I see that in the last few weeks, [[:en:Template:lowercase]] has been
> updated to actually display the title in lowercase with a JavaScript
> hack.

Stolen from Uncyclopedia, of course. (Or did they use a CSS hack?)

--
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: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?

body:
galwaygirl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just came across this worrying news item:
> http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170209/microsoft-looking-windows-olpc
>
> Does anyone know more about this? Is it really true?
>
> Galwaygirl

Uh ???
But...
How disappointing if true. And what about the cost of the windows
licence on top ?

Maybe sj has a clue ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?


from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?

body:
On 12/6/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Presumably, if the OLPC project actually agrees to run Windows, Microsoft
> would have to have donated it anyway.

Not at all. Sell cheap upgrade kits which consitist of a hard drive
with a locked down stipped down version of say windows 2000. Throw in
encarta and  people will want to buy it. People you would not normaly
have been able to sell software to.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?


body:
On 11/28/06, h.klaverkamp <h.klaverkamp at chello.nl> wrote:
> only in the Netherlands ther are no sustitutes for these pictures
> because they are very specialised, it will cost a lot to make them
> oureselves,

We have people around the world to make images. If you provide some
details of the type of images involved perhaps something can be done.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Discrimination on Wikipedia

body:
Gregory Kohs wrote:
> Jim Schuler wisely stated:
>
>> Might depend on tax law.  If I remember correctly (it's been 15 years since
>> I dealt with this), 501(c) and 501(c)(3) tax-exempt and private foundations
>> can run afoul of the IRS if there is a clear indication of active
>> discrimination.
>
> But then also stated:
>
>> In this case, I don't see any evidence of an active policy
>> of discrimination...
>
> There actually *is* a fairly active policy of discrimination that's been
> carried out for the
> past few months.
>
> Employees of public relations firms are not allowed to edit Wikipedia.
>

Wrong. Spam and POV hagiographies are banned, *regardless* of who posts
them.

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

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body:
It's not that I don't understand where the people who support this
idea are coming from; I do. The fact is, though, that I don't like it.
So a few people (and from what I have seen, it is just a few people)
are being a**holes. That's no reason to start segregating the MLs.
Personally, I don't think heavily moderating the list is practicable,
nor is banning people for sexist comments, since there is no
universally accepted definition of what is and what is not a sexist
comment. Different people have different ideas about gender and gender
issues; and I don't see why that has to be a reason for a new
segregated ML to be established. What may be regarded as unenlightened
attitudes towards women is a societal issue which will inevitably be
reflected in some of the comments on this ML. The answer is neither to
be Nazis about it and start banning people, nor is it the solution for
some women to go hide out in some other ML because they don't like
some people's attitudes. There are a lot of people on this ML from all
kinds of social, political and religious backgrounds, we're not all
going to have the same ideas and attitudes towards everything, and
this will of course inclide gender. If there are problems, we can deal
with them on an individual basis. I can't see that any good will come
out of a segregated ML.


from_name: rfrangi at libero.it

subject: [Foundation-l] Gender issues, a short analysis

body:
[snip]
> In sum, female participation in the german wikipedia seems appallingly
> low, however we find a slightly higher ratio of women in "higher"
> ranks like admins, jury members than the overall participation numbers
> would suggest.
[snip]

I did a very very quick check on the italian Wiki.

Admins: 8 out of 71 are female (11,3%)
Bureaucrats: 2 out of 5 (40%)
Check Users: 0 out of 3 (0%)
Board of WMI 1 out of 5 (20%, but she is the chairwoman)

Regarding sexist remarks I can't remember any relevant episode, nor any complaint by women. The fact that I don't remember doesn't means that it never happened, but being pretty active on it.wiki pratically from the beginning, I'm confident to say that is not a problem. I will ask to the ladies on it.wiki their opinion anyway.

One consideration. In my experience, whenever computer are involved, be it my class at University, workplace, Wikipedia, or spending the evening playing with PlayStation with my friends, the female population drops to 20% of the total.

It has been like this in the last 20 years. I don't know why this happens, but there are chanches that this percentage is endemic.

Roberto (Snowodog)

------------------------------------------------------
Ordina subito la scintillante lampada a forma di Renna di Babbo Natale
lascerai i tuoi ospiti... a bocca aperta !


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 26/11/06, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:

> A little grist for the mill, blog posts by feminist academics who are
> Wikipedia outsiders or near outsiders:
> http://badgerbag.typepad.com/badgerbag/2006/08/feminist_histor.html
> http://smg.typepad.com/smg/2006/09/wiki_wiki.html

Ah, thank you so very much. These are just the sort of things I was
looking for. I'll see what can be done to round up contributors to
alleviate the systemic bias.

- d.


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 12/6/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, I guess I'm mostly sympathetic to that view. I didn't think the
> creation of free images was a core goal of Wikipedia. Rather, having a
> ready supply of usable images - free or otherwise - was. I don't feel
> strongly about it as long as the effort of producing free images
> doesn't distract us too much.

::just about falls over::

Yes, the creation of free images is a core goal of Wikipedia. It even
says so in the mission statement on wikimediafoundation.org: "The
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an international nonprofit organization
dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of
free, multilingual content..." Images are content, too, and judging by
the debate over this I'd say it's considered a fairly important part
of it!

There are plenty of reference materials on the web available at no
cost to view; what makes Wikipedia's mission different and important
is its being free-as-in-speech rather than simply at no charge.

I don't propose that we get rid of *all* unfree or insufficiently-free
content; there are cases where our use is legitimately fair. But we do
use it far more than we ought to, without sufficient justification,
and I think it hurts the goal of "growth, development, and
distribution" of truly free content to use it where a replacement
could reasonably be found. (I know at least a few people who are not
motivated to take their own photos for an article if they see the
article has one already; do you check the copyright status of images
every time you browse to see if one may be something you ought to
replace?)

We don't just use *text* on subjects that are hard to research from
accessible sources, even should they give permission to reprint on
Wikipedia or noncommercial use only. Why don't we, if our goal really
is simply a steady supply of articles? I can only say that it isn't.
We quote fairly from works where we need to in order to write about
them, but otherwise are strictly free content.

Being free of immediate legal concerns is a bare minimum, but if
that's all we're doing I think we're failing at our mission.

-Kat
who is, unfortunately, not a very good photographer

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu  |  Support Wikimedia: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org


body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> "The Cunctator" wrote
>
>> Wikichix should not be on the wikimedia servers.
>
> No one yet suggested Wikihunx, the men-only list?
>

I think you're on it. *kicks toolsever*

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/wikicharts/index.php?lang=en&wiki=enwiki&ns=all&limit=100&month=11%2F2006&mode=view

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?

body:
Rory Stolzenberg schreef:
> On 12/5/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If these computers were to be equipped with Windows, they wouldn't be the
>> $100 laptops, they'd be the $400 laptops.
>>
>> On 12/5/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> galwaygirl schreef:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I just came across this worrying news item:
>>>>
>>>>
>> http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170209/microsoft-looking-windows-olpc
>>
>>>> Does anyone know more about this? Is it really true?
>>>>
>>>> Galwaygirl
>>>>
>>> Hoi,
>>> There are two sides to this story. The standard hardware that runs the
>>> OLPC software nicely will not run the Windows software. Consequently
>>> many of the advantages of using this system go out of the window (pun
>>> intended) because extra hardware will require more power and it is
>>> exactly the low power functionality that makes this system shine. The
>>> only "dark" side that I see, is that as the system can be made to run
>>> such extended services, it will become more of an object people are
>>> willing to steal. The bright side is that when it can run Windows, there
>>> is room for extending the functionality of the hardware. This may make
>>> the system also more interesting for the western market where the superb
>>> ability to run with limited power is less relevant.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>     GerardM
>>
>
>
>
>
> Presumably, if the OLPC project actually agrees to run Windows, Microsoft
> would have to have donated it anyway.
Hoi,
There is a difference between the hardware being able to run Windows and
the OLPC project running Windows. What the OLPC project develops is
hardware that runs Linux and software that runs on top of Linux.

Pro memore, the standard OLPC hardware needs a hardware extension to run
Windows in the first place.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?


from_name: phoebe ayers

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" - how to find 'em (was guideline
	being treated as absolute policy)

body:
On 11/28/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I see no reason why we should be flexible about sources. If it hasn't got
> sources it can be deleted, regardless whether this is a policy or a
> guideline. It may be kept if someone bothers to find the sources the
> author
> should have included, but that might not happen.

<snip>
I agree. As a matter of practicality, finding sources after the fact of
writing, especially if you're not intimately familiar with the topic, is
much more difficult than just including the original sources in the first
place, and is probably less accurate. Even a 'further reading' section is
more helpful than no sources whatsoever. I've been working on sourcing old
articles on and off for a while, and it's an uphill battle; there are plenty
of people willing to tag articles as unverified, but far fewer it seems are
willing to sit down & do the research to come up with sources.

At any rate, this seems like a good time to remind people of the resources
for sourcing that exist:

* [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check]] provides links to the
unsourced catagories, discussion & directions
* [[Wikipedia:Citation_templates]] -- some templates for sources, which I
haven't seen in wide use yet; a corollary to
* [[Help:Footnotes]] fun with footnotes
* [[Wikipedia:Newspapers_and_magazines_request_service]] -- participants
will try and get you an electronic copy of an article, if you come up with
the citations, can also do some database checking as well (this project
needs to have life breathed into it again, and more participants)
* [[Wikipedia:Research_resources]] is marked as "historical", but there are
still many good resources there for research on many topics; should be
expanded & made current.

If there are other relevant pages (besides the policies themselves) I would
love to know about them.

And finally, don't forget that fact-checking questions -- "I need a reliable
source to find out exactly when General Custard died" and so on -- are
precisely the sort of thing reference librarians tend to thrive on. And more
and more public libraries are offering chat reference nowadays...
-- phoebe


from_name: Christophe Henner

body:
Creating a gender-free list isn't a way to solve the problem, it's
just a way to run from it. Gender bias isn't only on the ml but on
projects, so what's the next step? Making a gendre free project?

There's a problem, I must say I never noticed it before this thread,
and since I 've readen this thread, I've looked for bias. And in fact
I found many, especially in a RfA, where the contributors had comments
a male would never had...

We are a comunity, and we have comunities problemes. Now it's about
gender, I'm pragmatic, I don't think it would change in an instant. In
fact it won't change in wikipedia till it doesn't change in real life.
It's really sad to say a such thing, but I do think it's true. So, we
must keep on speaking about this problem, but if female wanna have a
restricted mailing list, why not, the only thing I'd like is not to
open it only to female, let everyone be on this list, but ban those
who make seixsts comments.
--
schiste


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
Hi!

> Well, obviously BigTable depends on GFS, now that I'm looking at
> it, but
> it's not a "we could use GFS for GFS'es sake" situation, unless I
> am missing
> something.

If BigTable (whatever it is) would be some magic silver bullet,
Google would not use InnoDB or MySQL or whatever.

> And as I mentioned, BigTable seems not useful as long as our
> indexes fit in
> RAM, which I hope is the case.

We have few hundred gigabytes of RAM available in cluster. I hope we
fit. :)

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Jeezzzz over 100 emails today and all of that just because some people
want a more private mailinglist. Let them have it!!

Why not? If people want a more private place to discuss things they
should be able to have it, it is a fact of life that people need this
sometimes no matter if they are (fe)male or red, or white, or black, or
gay etc. It is sometimes just nicer to be able to talk about things with
people you share a bond with, it talks easier and keeps the noise away
usually. It is a human being thing.

If everybody respected eachothers rights and personal space a bit more
we wouldn't be having these kind of genderissues or racialissues.

Walter


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
Hi!

> That depends on how you define "scale up"; when database limits
> start to be
> the problem, quite a large number of sites scale up to centralized
> large SMP
> systems running Oracle or something of that ilk quite
> successfully.  I have
> done website systems and network architecture work for some very large
> websites (WebEx and Blockbuster.com among others) and sold hardware to
> people building others.

Indeed, selling big iron is more profitable for vendors than those
commodity pizza boxen.

> For the most part, web applications have a highly effectively
> paralleliseable app and web layer, but the database on many of them
> doesn't
> scale horizontally as well.  It's not unusual around here to see
> sites buy a
> clustered pair of big Sun boxes (or more rarely, IBM or HP) and
> switch to
> Oracle as they grow past what MySQL and Linux servers can handle,
> if they're
> DB limited.

It all depends on data layout, structure, application design. Any
application out of the box may have scaling issue, but sometimes it
is possible to do some horizontal magic and you're given lots of
fresh air to breathe.
Oddly enough, I've heard quite a lot of stories where maintaining
oracle environment was too expensive and switching to mysql was the
solution.

> All of that said, I really don't numerically understand the loads
> on the
> Wikimedia Foundation servers, or the details of the architecture
> well enough
> now to give specific advice.

There's nothing really interesting - lots of requests are being
served even in front of application layer. Out of what is left is
being handled by lots of apaches and quite distributed data system.
We don't do much edits, so there're no more than few hundred update
queries per second (really active updating happens in lossy
databases, e.g. memcached). Replication works, and we send MySQL read
queries to slaves. We do up to 40000 db requests per second.

> There are large websites where the actual sustained DB load is low
> enough
> that a farm of Linux/MySQL servers is an adequate, reliable
> solution.  And
> despite having worked at a Sun / Oracle VAR I have also deployed
> several
> thousand linux boxes in horizontal scaled website farms.

We do not have enough of funding to have thousands of linux boxen, so
we end up doing what we can with current resources.

> Or for a counterexample, Friendster.  I know the poor guy who was
> doing site
> architecture there for a while, screaming at his bosses that they
> needed to
> get off MySQL and get a Sun/Oracle box in, and doing unholy things
> to MySQL
> to try and keep it going, until he just walked away.  Their site
> performance
> implosion is near-legendary...

*shrug*, they had performance issues, but IIRC they solved them.

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


body:
I don't think statistics are so usefull. In fact the main problem is a
daily comments problem. In fact, it's more in some sentences we think
meaningless. Jokes and little sentence hurts women on a long term, I
don't think this is the answer to one or two sentence, it's more the
answer of days and days of those "meaningless" sentences. A friend of
mine just told me, there's rarely big sexism problems BUT there's a
LOT of answers in discussion that ARE sexist, but not like "You're a
women you're not allowed to speak", it's just a difference in
comportment. A really good exemple. On a RfA for a man:
#supporte, even if you have a bad temper you will make a great job.
for a woman:
#oppose, even if you would make a great job, you'va a bad temper.

On nearlly the same ground, it's just like in real life, the women
have to prove the double they deserve responsabilities.

Anthere highlighted it, Angela and here made and make a great job for
the wikimedia foundation. But even making a great job, there's people
to say they are on the board only cause they are female.

This is the problem, the main problem, our comportment is different
for a m?an and a woman. We ask to woman to be tempered, nice, polite,
and so on, or we won't give her responsabilities. But a bad tempered
contributors, making the same job as the woman, will have the sysop
status... his bad temper forgiven... only because he is a man...

Men, just imagine a sec, you found a project really great, you help at
it. more than 80% are female. Every day you can read some little
"meaningless" sexist sentence. The day you ask for responsabilities,
we ask you to provide double work. And when you point that there's a
sexism problem... you have sexist jokes? What would you do?
--
schiste


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
Hi!!!!!

> The DB clusters are systems running slave copies of the same master
> MySQL
> databases; what matters is RAM per system (or, per database)....

Well, this is why we end up with different slave copies of different
masters. Oh, and wait, we even end up with different load patterns.
Different storage patterns. And we still don't buy 32GB machines. \o/

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: DaB.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump for the toolserver

body:
Hello folks,

the database at zedler is unuseable at the moment. I try all
recovery-level but nothing work :(. So I guess that we need a new
full-non-en-dump from the wikimedia-server-admins to rebuild the
database from scratch. There is a backup (4th dec 4:04 UTC) of your
user-databases so there will be no or only few data lost.

I CC this eMail to the wikimedia-server-admins. Perhaps somebody there
make a nice dump for me :).

Good night,

DaB.
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from_name: Stephanie Erin Daugherty

subject:
[Foundation-l] Concerns over en.wikipedia.org ArbCom Election
	Process

body:
Having not participated in last years ArbCom elections, I was quite
shocked to see, that with the important role the Arbitraton Committee
has in safeguarding the ideals and policies of the English wikipedia,
these elections are being held with an open ballot.

I cannot have any confidence in such an election. Open ballots bring out
the worst in politics - bullying, fear of retaliation, groupthink, and
voting with the hope to gain political favor in the future. While an
open ballot appears open on the surface, as history has demonstrated, it
is anything but.

There is a reason that most free elections use secret ballots. Only in
secret can someone make their true opinion known, without fear of
bullying, fear of retaliation, undue influence of others, or hurt
feelings.

Secret ballots also allow for good judgement to be exercised in cases
where a moral dilemma would otherwise exist - how do you deal with
voting against someone who you are close friends with, or who is in a
position of power over you, be it actual or percieved? In an open
ballot, this at the very least means either hurt feelings, or votes that
do not reflect one's true beliefs as to right choice to make in an
election.

We have facilities for secret ballots and approval voting. Those
facilities work well, as demonstrated in the last board elections.
Why on-wiki voting was chosen in favor of this, I don't know, to me it
defies logical sense.

In conclusion, I condemn this election in the strongest possible terms,
as being flawed, subject to tampering, and as being anything other than
a free election. I would hope that I'm not the only person that it this
way, but even if I am, I know that I cannot in good concience stand for
such an unjust and flawed process.

I would encourage anyone else that feels strongly about this to make
their voice heard, and loudly, so that future elections do not follow
the same flawed path, and so that we can have confidence in our
elections process.

--
Stephanie Daugherty
stephanie at sosdg.org
User:Triona on en.wikipedia.org


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikichix-l] Moderating an open list

body:
One of my deep sorrow and worriness on this mailinglist is I need to
bear full of swears and sexism even if subtle if I would like to
follow the discussion. It makes me feel there no serious discussion
without mocking is possible. A discusssion place without such people,
heuristically males, could be a solution for such discouragement.

On 12/6/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>:
>
> > That last remark was made jokingly.
>
>
> Well, it wasn't fully jokingly. It showed how much I felt being attacked
> myself. And how I overreacted. Because I have indeed broken some pieces of
> furniture over this discussion. I know I shouldn't, and yet I do. Maybe
> fucking off isn't such a bad idea after all. But where should I go then?
>
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion patrol

body:
> From: David Boothroyd <david at election.demon.co.uk>
>
> I agree with this. A few days ago I created [[338171]]. Being rather
> bored at the time I gave a facetious edit summary which claimed the
> article was all about the number 338,171. It was swiftly tagged with
> a speedy delete tag, and then deleted (despite me having quickly put
> a {{hangon}}).
>
> The article was actually a redirect to T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of
> Arabia"). Wanting privacy, in later life Lawrence re-enlisted in the
> RAF as an Aircraftsman (equivalent of Private in the Army), and was
> given 338171 as his service number. He often signed himself "338171
> A/C Shaw", prompting Noel Coward to ask him "May I call you 338?".
>
> It was quite obvious on reading the article that it was actually a
> redirect. If the admin had checked the article to which it was
> redirected he would have found the reason explained there. So while
> it's legitimate to claim to have been misled by the edit summary,
> that really doesn't justify mistakenly speedying a perfectly good
> redirect. I appreciate that speedy deletion patrollers are often
> overworked but overwork is not an excuse for lack of common sense.

Good intentions are not an excuse for disrupting Wikipedia to
illustrate a point.


from_name: matthew.britton at btinternet.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion patrol

body:
As the administrator responsible, I apologize. This happened a couple of
days ago; the user did indeed leave a polite note, for which I am grateful,
to which I responded with a note about facetious edit summaries. This was an
error of judgement on my part; probably because I had spent too long
deleting articles that day, for which I also apologize. I shall find
unwilling victims to shunt the workload onto in future.

-Gurch

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Luna
Sent: 06 December 2006 06:33
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion patrol

If this is an isolated incident, it's probably easier to deal with it by
leaving the particular admin a polite note explaining the misunderstanding,
or by working through deletion review (WP:DRV). Unless you're trying to get
at some greater trend or history of bad decisions. I know I've made a few
mistakes, but once they're pointed out to me, I'm usually willing to correct
them, or at least request/accept review from the community.

Just a thought,
-Luna

On 12/5/06, David Boothroyd <david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I agree with this. A few days ago I created [[338171]]. Being rather
> bored at the time I gave a facetious edit summary which claimed the
> article was all about the number 338,171. It was swiftly tagged with a
> speedy delete tag, and then deleted (despite me having quickly put a
> {{hangon}}).
>
> The article was actually a redirect to T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of
> Arabia"). Wanting privacy, in later life Lawrence re-enlisted in the
> RAF as an Aircraftsman (equivalent of Private in the Army), and was
> given 338171 as his service number. He often signed himself "338171
> A/C Shaw", prompting Noel Coward to ask him "May I call you 338?".
>
> It was quite obvious on reading the article that it was actually a
> redirect. If the admin had checked the article to which it was
> redirected he would have found the reason explained there. So while
> it's legitimate to claim to have been misled by the edit summary, that
> really doesn't justify mistakenly speedying a perfectly good redirect.
> I appreciate that speedy deletion patrollers are often overworked but
> overwork is not an excuse for lack of common sense.
> --
> David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
> david at election.demon.co.uk (home) dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk
> (council) _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

body:
But separatist action just doesn't seem to me like a wiki-friendly
concept.  That said, I don't have any problem with WikiChix or its
mailing list, especially now that the latter is no longer hosted by
the WMF.

--Ryan

On 12/6/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Dec 6, 2006, at 12:25 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> > On 12/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Personally, like others, I'm slightly saddened that there is a need
> >>> for this. However, there *being* a need for it, satisfying that need
> >>> is the right thing to do. Hopefully one day the list will disband
> >>> from
> >>> lack of use.
> >>>
> >>
> >> ... whoa. Care to rephrase that?
> >
> > Hopefully one day the women in the Wikipedia community will no longer
> > feel threatened on the main list, and will thus not need their own
> > list. That is, if their list is a cure, I hope the ailment goes away.
>
> Well put. Allow me to briefly put my gender privilege to good use and
> to engage in some of the flaming that Tim Starling has observed that
> I, as a male, am apparently more likely to enjoy.
>
> I have never been so disgusted with this community as I am right now,
> and particularly with Greg and The Cunctator, both users I have in
> the past had tremendous respect for. Greg's public shunning of the
> idea of gendered discussion and The Cunctator's stunt of subscribing
> to the list so he could play martyr were bald-faced power moves that
> had no content other than sending a clear message to female
> contributors that they'd better not get out of line. They were
> shameful power plays. And if anyone fails to understand why that is,
> I can only say that you are why this list needs to exist, and why it
> needs to be female-only.
>
> We do not get to define the terms of the gender debate. We do not get
> to insist that we have a gender-neutral space, or a sufficiently
> gender-neutral space that it is clear that any discussion of gender
> can happen publicly. We, in short, do not get to dictate to women how
> they ought to feel about the systemic bias we've set up.
>
> Is it useful to completely exclude us from the conversation? Probably
> not, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening. What's happening
> is that there's a desire on the part of some women to be able to have
> a conversation amongst the people who get to define the problem,
> instead of amongst the people who don't. When the problem is defined,
> some aspects of the solution will probably have to include men. But
> men don't get to define sexism. You can't both cause the problem and
> define it for the people you're affecting.
>
> Why is the list not open to men? Because there are men like The
> Cunctator and Greg, who are happy to declare that they know how
> discrimination should be talked about, and anybody who feels
> uncomfortable talking to them can go to hell. (One wonders, of
> course, why anyone in their right mind would feel comfortable talking
> to them after that.) And men who will deny the very existence and
> possibility of the systemic bias every time it comes down, struggling
> mightily to shut down the discussion. Because there are complaints,
> frustrations, and problems that people want to express without having
> a chorus of men commenting on it and denying it. Because one of the
> first steps in healing a community with broken gender relations is to
> give women (it is, sadly, always women) a forum where they can
> express things and get a response of "God, yes, I know what you mean.
> I thought it was just me!" instead of some form of "I don't think
> that's valid."
>
> As for the Wiki Chix (A great name, by the way), sorry I haven't been
> more active in this discussion (either this one or the systemic bias
> one), and sorry the situation is such that the separatist move is
> necessary. If there's anything I can do to help the cause, let me
> know. And if there's nothing whatsoever I can do to help the cause,
> well, good luck.
>
> Best,
> Phil Sandifer
> sandifer at english.ufl.edu
>
> You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
> boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
>
>  >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brad Patrick

body:
The answer to "why" is discussed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-11-13/Arbitration_series
:

Prior elections had used approval
voting<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting>,
but Jimbo Wales <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales> had
expressed interest in using an open method. In response to questions over
which method would be used this year, Jimbo replied:

*I have no objection in principle to a secret
ballot<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot>,
but the standard wiki voting system is much more in line with our traditions
and appears to produce better results. When we used [private voting], we saw
a significant amount of trolling <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling> and
negative campaigning <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_campaigning>.
... Additionally, even though [private voting] is theoretically "approval
voting", the fact of the matter is that people have tended to use it
incorrectly (in my opinion) leading to very low rates of approval. Wiki
voting tends to produce high levels of support, and this is important for
the confidence and credibility of the committee.

*Also, you may wish to reflect on the tradition of good faith and trust that
is at the core of what Jimbo is trying to reinforce here.  I utterly despise
approval voting, as it runs against everything in my political science
background (as an American lawyer, no less).  My Aussie friends just shake
their heads and laugh at me.  You may come to believe the same about open
elections for Arbcom, but keep in mind this is for a very different kind of
position than board or steward.  Discourse is required of these folks, as is
a cool head under fire.

Respectfully, I suggest gritting your teeth and voting the best way you can.

On 12/6/06, Stephanie Erin Daugherty <stephanie at sosdg.org> wrote:
>
> Having not participated in last years ArbCom elections, I was quite
> shocked to see, that with the important role the Arbitraton Committee
> has in safeguarding the ideals and policies of the English wikipedia,
> these elections are being held with an open ballot.
>
> I cannot have any confidence in such an election. Open ballots bring out
> the worst in politics - bullying, fear of retaliation, groupthink, and
> voting with the hope to gain political favor in the future. While an
> open ballot appears open on the surface, as history has demonstrated, it
> is anything but.
>
> There is a reason that most free elections use secret ballots. Only in
> secret can someone make their true opinion known, without fear of
> bullying, fear of retaliation, undue influence of others, or hurt
> feelings.
>
> Secret ballots also allow for good judgement to be exercised in cases
> where a moral dilemma would otherwise exist - how do you deal with
> voting against someone who you are close friends with, or who is in a
> position of power over you, be it actual or percieved? In an open
> ballot, this at the very least means either hurt feelings, or votes that
> do not reflect one's true beliefs as to right choice to make in an
> election.
>
> We have facilities for secret ballots and approval voting. Those
> facilities work well, as demonstrated in the last board elections.
> Why on-wiki voting was chosen in favor of this, I don't know, to me it
> defies logical sense.
>
> In conclusion, I condemn this election in the strongest possible terms,
> as being flawed, subject to tampering, and as being anything other than
> a free election. I would hope that I'm not the only person that it this
> way, but even if I am, I know that I cannot in good concience stand for
> such an unjust and flawed process.
>
> I would encourage anyone else that feels strongly about this to make
> their voice heard, and loudly, so that future elections do not follow
> the same flawed path, and so that we can have confidence in our
> elections process.
>
> --
> Stephanie Daugherty
> stephanie at sosdg.org
> User:Triona on en.wikipedia.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 12/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, thank you so very much. These are just the sort of things I was
> looking for. I'll see what can be done to round up contributors to
> alleviate the systemic bias.

The postings are also interesting from the point-of-view of finding
what turns off qualified people from contributing Wikipedia.

Unsurprisingly, both blogs mention that the whole 'notability' mess is
a big barrier, and a big part of our systemic bias.  We keep things
that appeal to the average Wikipedian and try to delete things the
average Wikipedian has never heard of.  Sure, most of the time an
expert new editor will be able to save their new article with
sufficient argument and sourcing, but the prospect of that argument
being necessary is enough to turn people off.

The "West of the Moon: blog entry also mentions some other aspects.
It confirms my suspicions that infoboxes and tables are off-putting to
those not familiar with them (or at least, not used to editing
structured markup) - she mentions wanting to fix the [[Alabama]]
infobox.  Advanced markup appeals to the established contributor and
the computer-geek, but the more complicated the markup the more
challenging it is for outsiders to make the first steps to becoming
Wikipedia contributors.

In both cases, having to deal with the petty squabbling puts them off.
 I'm not sure whether this can easily be fixed, though.

-Matt


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Block message

body:
On 06/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=Can%27t+sleep%2C+clown+will+eat+me&page=

I would *suggest* encouraging administrators to use whole "units" of
time when issuing blocks. No technical reason for this, but that block
log looks random and on first glance, suggests that someone's taking
blocking to be a bit of a joke. Since those blocks *sound* legit to
me, we obviously wouldn't want anybody getting the wrong idea about
the user...

...using sane block units also makes it easier for other
administrators to review in case of problems or appeals, etc.

The immediate treatment for this particular case might be a quick slap
round the face with a cluestick, to remind the administrator that we
can see what he's doing.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Block message

body:
On 06/12/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 06/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> >http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=Can%27t+sleep%2C+clown+will+eat+me&page=

> I would *suggest* encouraging administrators to use whole "units" of
> time when issuing blocks. No technical reason for this, but that block
> log looks random and on first glance, suggests that someone's taking
> blocking to be a bit of a joke. Since those blocks *sound* legit to
> me, we obviously wouldn't want anybody getting the wrong idea about
> the user...

I believe several en:wp admins routinely use odd block times for
repeat vandals so they don't just come back same time next day. e.g.
that's why "31 hours" is one of the listed times on
[[Special:Blockip]] on en:wp. See the other blocks for that IP by
Clown - it's not a routine thing.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 12/6/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> If you target the systemic bias thing, it is fairly clearly the case of not enough 'minority interest'
> articles created, rather than too many deleted, though.

I do think there is significant systemic bias in terms of what things
tend to be nominated for deletion, however.  Not the biggest source of
systemic bias by any means, as you point out.

-Matt


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?

body:
On 06/12/06, elvis at chan.de <elvis at chan.de> wrote:
> Quoting Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:

> > Pro memore, the standard OLPC hardware needs a hardware extension to run
> > Windows in the first place.

> what kind of hardware is missing?

They put an SD card slot on the side. (The laptop only has 512MB of
flash; Windows needs just a little more these days. And flash is
getting cheaper all the time.)

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?


subject: [Foundation-l] Community project?

body:
Further to many discussions and mails (especially the wikicouncil one)
I noticed once more there's not enough communication between the
different projects. In fact each project develop his own tools or
robots and many would be useful to every community, but because of
this lack of communication they mostly remain used only by the
original project.

Since I noticed that i was thinking of creating a new
project/community/whatever the name will be, in order to centralise
tools and robots.

Few days ago, on the main project where I contribute we had a little
problem, and I went to some other wikipedia IRC channels to ask how
it's going on there project and what do they think about our problem,
and even if they had solutions to propose. It happens that was really
constructive, and so if we create a new project/community/whatever the
name will be, why can't we expand it to a "big interactive FAQ" too. A
place divided in three parts. First one for the robots, second one for
tools, and the last one for the "FAQ".

As I was thinking about this project I though of making something
wider. One of the biggest lack in communication between projects, it's
about the board and the Wikimedia Foundation. Few really know about
it, they know it exists but not how it works etc... I know if they
want there are mailing lists, but wouldn't it be more effective to
publish once a month a summary of Foundation activities?

They're already some stuff set up to do this, but I think 1) it's not
enough 2) Nothing really coordinate it. So that would be a part of
this project/community/whatever the name will be.

== Goal ==
Precision of the goals:
*Create an active group of person creating bridge between the communities
*Spread informations about meta. and the foundation to other communities
*Create somewhere to concentrate tool creation and improvement.

== Organisation ==
That's the hardest part of the reflection. How could it be organised?
Composed only with elected members? That would "secure" the content
but this kind of project/community/whatever the name will be needs
many active members from a lot of different projects, moreover
elections would give a lot of work. Volunteers, it would be easier to
have plenty of members, but anybody could come and do stuff in his
way. So I though of a solution between those two. We set the project
up, and when it's done we inform the main projects of the creation of
this. Then they would have x weeks to sign up to the project, at the
end of these time, they choose coordinators which would keep the
project clear and correct.

== Project organisation ==
There would be some "official" pages, mainly updated by coordinators .
And anyone who wants to add something, would do it on a sub page or
talk page, and if it's ok, it's added.

== Conclusion ==
I don't know what people will think about this project. I do think it
would be on one hand really useful but on the other it will need a lot
of work, especially on the beginning. For the beginning we could
launch it on incubator, and once it has proved it's useful we can
import it on meta.

Finally, what do you think about it? In what I explained, what are
your ideas to improve it? Would you like to participate?

Thanks for your answers. All of this is on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/community

--
schiste


subject: [Foundation-l] Community project?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletion patrol

body:
On 06/12/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:

> If this is an isolated incident, it's probably easier to deal with it by
> leaving the particular admin a polite note explaining the misunderstanding,
> or by working through deletion review (WP:DRV). Unless you're trying to get
> at some greater trend or history of bad decisions. I know I've made a few
> mistakes, but once they're pointed out to me, I'm usually willing to correct
> them, or at least request/accept review from the community.

An erroneous speedy doesn't need DRV - any admin can restore it. (This
is so that speedy patrollers don't have to be infallible.) This is of
course problematic for non-admins.

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 12/6/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Tim's been poking at it, it should be live soon enough.

Awesome. Then I guess we can replace the contents of {{Lowercase}}
with the magic word.

Steve


body:
On 12/6/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd support adding a "dumb" undo link for current revisions that links
> to the edit page for the previous revision...at least, for non
> administrators. Rollback should probably take precedence when it's
> available.

Yay.

Steve


from_name: Finne Boonen

body:
On 12/5/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
>
> > It was about a solution to women not being comfortable on WP due to
> > bias. Whether that solution is a good one or not was /not/ being
> > addressed.
>
>
> Well, I felt it was, but maybe it just means I and others have not been
> clear in our arguments. I think it would be a very bad solution, because it
> would not help one iota. If we want to make Wikipedia more woman-friendly,
> then Wikipedia is the place to work. That might sound like a triviality, but
> someone who finds Wikipedia an unhospitable place for them, will still find
> it unhospitable if there is a small secluded corner to talk with others of
> the same feeling.

Indeed, however having this small corner to return to to get recharged
with the original enthusiam you brought to wikipedia means you won't
burn out because of the bad apples.  There are ppl on the wikipedia
that I prefer not spending 1-1 time with, there are ppl on the
mailinglist that I prefer not spending 1-1 and there are ppl in
various irc channels concerning wikimedia by now that I don't prefer
spending 1-1 time with!

What my experience with linuxchix&Systers has thought me is that on
these mailinglist explicit problems are ussually not discussed, ppl
don't complain about person X or person Y, instead they talk about
general things that happened, I feel threatened/I feel that I'm always
ignored/We've got a few ppl insulting others randomly/.. what's a good
way to handle this? ....

The ultimate goal for linuxchix for instance is having no members left
because there is no need for this. I expect similar ideas for this new
list.

btw, interesting things to read on this subject, even tho they're
focused on IT/linux
*howto encourage Women into Linux (already mentioned)
*Unlocking the clubhouse (by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, MIT Press)

henna
--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Final call: Mission & Vision statement

body:
Please take another look at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision

and the respective "unstable" versions:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission/Unstable
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision/Unstable

as well as their discussion pages. Let's have another week or so of
edits and discussion, and then try to finalize things.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi userboxes

body:
On 12/5/06, Jim Schuler <jim62sch at gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess all of us non-old-timers (under two years or so?) are guilty then --
> pretty much all of us refer to it as Wiki.

No.

Steve


from_name: elvis at chan.de

subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?

body:
Quoting Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:

> Pro memore, the standard OLPC hardware needs a hardware extension to run
> Windows in the first place.

what kind of hardware is missing?


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows?


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] wgBlockOpenProxies

body:
Hey,

I've been playing  around with this setting and can't seem to get it to
work. Although I've set it in LocalSettings and made sure the open proxies
I've tested with are through ports set in wgProxyPorts, I can still edit
pages without a problem.

Any ideas?
Travis


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Dec 6, 2006, at 12:25 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 12/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Personally, like others, I'm slightly saddened that there is a need
>>> for this. However, there *being* a need for it, satisfying that need
>>> is the right thing to do. Hopefully one day the list will disband
>>> from
>>> lack of use.
>>>
>>
>> ... whoa. Care to rephrase that?
>
> Hopefully one day the women in the Wikipedia community will no longer
> feel threatened on the main list, and will thus not need their own
> list. That is, if their list is a cure, I hope the ailment goes away.

Well put. Allow me to briefly put my gender privilege to good use and
to engage in some of the flaming that Tim Starling has observed that
I, as a male, am apparently more likely to enjoy.

I have never been so disgusted with this community as I am right now,
and particularly with Greg and The Cunctator, both users I have in
the past had tremendous respect for. Greg's public shunning of the
idea of gendered discussion and The Cunctator's stunt of subscribing
to the list so he could play martyr were bald-faced power moves that
had no content other than sending a clear message to female
contributors that they'd better not get out of line. They were
shameful power plays. And if anyone fails to understand why that is,
I can only say that you are why this list needs to exist, and why it
needs to be female-only.

We do not get to define the terms of the gender debate. We do not get
to insist that we have a gender-neutral space, or a sufficiently
gender-neutral space that it is clear that any discussion of gender
can happen publicly. We, in short, do not get to dictate to women how
they ought to feel about the systemic bias we've set up.

Is it useful to completely exclude us from the conversation? Probably
not, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening. What's happening
is that there's a desire on the part of some women to be able to have
a conversation amongst the people who get to define the problem,
instead of amongst the people who don't. When the problem is defined,
some aspects of the solution will probably have to include men. But
men don't get to define sexism. You can't both cause the problem and
define it for the people you're affecting.

Why is the list not open to men? Because there are men like The
Cunctator and Greg, who are happy to declare that they know how
discrimination should be talked about, and anybody who feels
uncomfortable talking to them can go to hell. (One wonders, of
course, why anyone in their right mind would feel comfortable talking
to them after that.) And men who will deny the very existence and
possibility of the systemic bias every time it comes down, struggling
mightily to shut down the discussion. Because there are complaints,
frustrations, and problems that people want to express without having
a chorus of men commenting on it and denying it. Because one of the
first steps in healing a community with broken gender relations is to
give women (it is, sadly, always women) a forum where they can
express things and get a response of "God, yes, I know what you mean.
I thought it was just me!" instead of some form of "I don't think
that's valid."

As for the Wiki Chix (A great name, by the way), sorry I haven't been
more active in this discussion (either this one or the systemic bias
one), and sorry the situation is such that the separatist move is
necessary. If there's anything I can do to help the cause, let me
know. And if there's nothing whatsoever I can do to help the cause,
well, good luck.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Discrimination on Wikipedia

body:
"Gregory Kohs" wrote

> The more excuses and explanations that the community comes up with, the more
> obvious it is that you're avoiding the real issue.

The more often you bring up exactly the same points here, the more obvious it is how little support you have.

> Wikipedia unilaterally
> has chosen to discriminate against non-volunteer activity in the article
> space, despite the fact that the credentials and income sources of 99% of
> editors are never questioned or verified.

Why should not Wikipedia, #12 website in the world right now, decide 'unilaterally' (i.e. on the basis of its interests, rather than yours) how to set policy?

>I would argue that if you looked at the
> original authors of the New Pages in Wikipedia, 90% had some financial or
> career "conflict of interest" that could be found if everyone was exposed to
> a background check.

Original research! Original research! Can you find a reliable source for this outrageous claim?

> People who have never purchased or sold a pet skunk are unlikely to start an
> article about [[Pet skunks]].  They don't seem to get banned, though.

You mean 'on the Internet, no one knows you're a pet skunk'?

Even if your claim on 'some financial or career "conflict of interest"' had any foundation, you are lawyering wildly to connect ownership of a skunk with such a conflict. You'd have to be a career skunk breeder promoting skunk ownership for your woefully scant reasoning to have any traction.

Strangely enough, Wikipedians generally don't accept such chop-logic; and especially not arguments on conflict-of-interest policy from those lobbying against having any such thing.

Charles

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from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN:  [18194] trunk/phase3

body:
vyznev at svn.wikimedia.org schrieb:
> Revision: 18194
> Author:   vyznev
> Date:     2006-12-06 00:28:44 -0800 (Wed, 06 Dec 2006)
>
> Log Message:
> -----------
> (bug 5485) Show number of intervening revisions in diff view.

>
> Modified: trunk/phase3/includes/DifferenceEngine.php
> ===================================================================
> --- trunk/phase3/includes/DifferenceEngine.php	2006-12-06 06:58:50 UTC (rev 18193)
> +++ trunk/phase3/includes/DifferenceEngine.php	2006-12-06 08:28:44 UTC (rev 18194)

> +
> +		if ( $n == 1 )
> +			$msg = wfMsg( 'diff-multi-rev' );
> +		else
> +			$msg = wfMsg( 'diff-multi-revs', $n );
> +
> +		return wfMsgExt( 'diff-multi', array('parseinline'), $msg );

Isn't it possible to use one message with the PLURAL function only?

> Modified: trunk/phase3/languages/messages/MessagesEn.php
> ===================================================================
> +'diff-multi-rev' => "One intermediate revision",
> +'diff-multi-revs' => "$1 intermediate revisions",

Could be combined to:

'diff-multi-revs' => "{{PLURAL:$1|One intermediate revision|$1
intermediate revision}}",

Raymond.

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from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
On 12/5/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> Stated another way, not only does a poorly-composed fan shot of
> an author at a book signing trump a professionally-photographed
> headshot,

Maybe.  From a licensing perspective, sure.

an imageless article trumps that headshot, too.
>

That is a profoundly dangerous opinion.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia first,
and an exercise in aggressive social change via copyleft second.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
 "Sage Ross" wrote
> A little grist for the mill, blog posts by feminist academics who are
> Wikipedia outsiders or near outsiders:

>http://badgerbag.typepad.com/badgerbag/2006/08/feminist_histor.html

> http://smg.typepad.com/smg/2006/09/wiki_wiki.html

The second strikes me as more thoughtful. It does illustrate a few general points (not specific to feminist issues).

People who scan WP and say 'change that, or that, or that ...' may never actually get into the pool and edit. The learning curve is probably much less steep on the non-core articles, rather than articles on the 'major topics' (I wouldn't advise anyone to start on any of the top few hundred articles by hits.)

Another thing: this collection of comments does pick up on the spottiness of the 'notability' criteria.

Charles

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from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows

body:
Hello, briefly:

On 12/5/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> galwaygirl wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I just came across this worrying news item:
> > http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170209/microsoft-looking-windows-olpc
> >
> > Does anyone know more about this? Is it really true?
> >
> > Galwaygirl
>
> Uh ???
> But...
> How disappointing if true. And what about the cost of the windows
> licence on top ?
>
> Ant

That article is misleading.  OLPC has an open hardware model; MS and other operating system developers are welcome to make their systems run on the OLPC laptops.  The article makes a big deal of Negroponte's quip that an SD slot was added to the design just for Microsoft; but there were many good reasons to have an expansion slot, and it has been in the design for a while.

Gerard writes:
> > Pro memore, the standard OLPC hardware needs a hardware extension to run
> > Windows in the first place.

> what kind of hardware is missing?

No missing hardware; though any OS will have to develop the necessary drivers and power management libraries.  (It would be nice to see more attention paid to power managment by just about everyone.)

-- SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] OLPC & Windows


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
geni wrote:
>On 12/5/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>> Not quite.  The current climate is that we accept nothing but
>> free images.
>
> This is not the case on en.

I should have said, the current attitude of a significant number
of active admins is that we accept nothing but free images.  See for
example some of the arguments at [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fair_use]].
See also [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Chowbok]], and especially
the outside view by Jimbo Wales.  (Most of these arguments are
nominally about fair-use images, but they're being interpreted
to apply to other kinds of nonfree content, such as promotional
photos.)

>> I'm sure magazine covers and DVD packages will be next.
>
> We've been through magazine covers once already.

And I'm guessing that we'll be going through them again soon.
(We didn't get the You-know-who Association of America article
deleted on the first try, either. :-) )


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

body:
dmehkeri at swi.com wrote:

> No really, I think people doing their own small samples of Special:Random
> is a
> great idea. Truly random sampling is more "scientific" than you might
> realize. I
> am not a statistician, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but if
> all
> you're trying to do is rule out the <20% and/or the >80% claim, then 25
> clicks
> on Special:Random ought to be more than enough, 19 times out of 20.

In the spirit of this, I did my own Special:Random sample of 30.  I found:

Unsourced: 13
1 Working External link/reference: 6
Printed only: 2
Multiple References: 8

Of the 13 unsourced articles, 3 were lists (and I didn't check the
articles they were linking to for sources) 9 stubs, and only one was a
full-blown article lacking sourcing.  I may be in a minority on this one,
but I find unsourced stubs much less problematic than unsourced
''articles'', so my personal findings gave me a lot more hope than I
thought.

-Jeff

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