body:
Well, this is similar to what I was trying to do, and got stuck doing,
mostly because I'm still quite a PHP novice.

I was thinking of modifying Special:Userrights to allow users with varying
degrees of permission to make user group changes. For example, you could
allow sysops to assign a few permissions (e.g. rollback, autoconfirmed, or
even a "validate" group for stable versioning), but not allowed to revoke
them; then, bureaucrats would be able to grant additional privileges, but
not be able to revoke a few, if needs warrant. Finally, stewards would be
able to change everything.

The way I had been going at it is to declare those in an array in
LocalSettings.php. For example, I had:

$wgGroupPermissions['*'  ]['validate']   = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*'  ]['changeuserprivs']   = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['validator'  ]['autoconfirmed']   = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['validator'  ]['validate']   = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop'  ]['changeuserprivs']   = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat'  ]['changeuserprivs']   = true;

This would define a "validator" group for stable versioning, and a
"changeuserprivs" permission to reach the hacked version of Userrights.
Then, I declared an array, which says who can change what:

$wgUserPrivsArray['validate'  ] = array('sysop,bureaucrat,steward',
'sysop,bureaucrat,steward');
$wgUserPrivsArray['rollback'  ] = array('sysop,bureaucrat,steward',
'bureaucrat,steward');
$wgUserPrivsArray['bot'       ] = array('bureaucrat,steward',
'bureaucrat,steward');
$wgUserPrivsArray['sysop'     ] = array('bureaucrat,steward', 'steward');
$wgUserPrivsArray['bureaucrat'] = array('bureaucrat,steward', 'steward');
$wgUserPrivsArray['steward'   ] = array('steward', 'steward');

The key name is the name of the permission to grant; the first entry in the
key array is who is allowed to grant the permission, and the second is who
is allowed to revoke it. For example, bureaucrats could be created by other
bureaucrats and stewards, but only stewards could revoke bureaucrat rights.
Now, this allows for customizing and extending user privileges in a single
place.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: Simetrical [mailto:Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 8:15 AM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

On 8/15/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly my thought of a month ago:
> http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6711

Ack, seems this comment is a few hours out-of-date.  Multiple threads!
 Confusing! . . . er, anyway, good job Rotem, now wikis that want them
can assign rollback and stuff if Brion's okay with this change.  See
the two bugs depending on the above.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikibooks texts and Wikiversity

body:
On 15-Aug-06, at 12:24 PM, Craig Spurrier wrote:

> I would assume that they were referring to moving the content in the
> Wikiversity namespace (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity).
> There
> is plenty of content that is not appropriate for Wikibooks in this
> namespace. AFAIK no one wants to delete actual textbooks from
> Wikibooks.

Thanks for clarifying that. I note, however, that this is not what
was said in IRC. Specifically, the discussion was about textbooks on
Wikibooks. It was not about project pages, or the Wikiversity namespace.

Amgine

-------------- next part --------------


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Statistics?

body:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 03:50:25PM +0200, Jan Kulveit wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 02:04:37PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> >
> > Than, there must be some flaw in the implementation. Othervise the
> method
> > (running some client-side javascript contacting statistics server) is
> > industry standard (e.g. Google Analytics works this way).
> >
> > Moreover, it could be easily done with modest hardware and existing
> > statistics software.  It's unnecessary to process the whole huge dataset
> -
> > it would be enough to process random selection. Which can be easily done
> > with JS ... the JS code would contact the statics server if some
> $random>0.999
> > for example.
>
> That's exactly how the JS for the German wiki works and that's also why
> it doesn't work. With only a few requests you can fake the statistics,
> since every hit on the statistics server counts as 1000 page views.
>
> Hmm... You'd have to purposefully hack the javascript, otherwise those
"few requests" would have a slim chance of being the 1 in a 1000 that gets
posted.  So that must mean there is someone maliciously messing with the
statistics?  Okay, so instead, and only slightly more expensive, go ahead
and hit the counter, but the counter does the randomization check - if it's
the 1 in 1000, run the code that posts to the database.  You could even have
the counter script that gets run every time be very, very slim:  just a
random number generator and an if statement, then do an include if the
condition is met (so you don't even load all the code into memory).  You
could also opt to send back no response, and that saves some bandwidth too
(doesn't it?)...  So you'd hit the server with a zillion GET requests, but
it wouldn't have to do much to deal with them.

Also... unless they're so determined that they're using a proxy to spoof the
statistics, you could look for an unusual number of hits from specific
IPs...

Aerik


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Financial Times column on open content

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:

>On 8/15/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
><charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>"maru dubshinki" wrote
>>
>>
>>>In comparison to normal human writing, this stuff's positively antipodean.
>>>
>>>
>>That would be why Gerard goes for it. I hear their screens scroll the other way, Down Under.
>>
>>Charles
>>
>>
>He would.  There's a reason Dante located the exit of Hell and the
>mountain of Purgatory in the Southern Hemisphere...
>
Hmmm!  Dante (1265-1321), Galileo (1564-1642). ;-)

Ec


list: commons-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] Editorial use vs commercial exploitation

body:
On 8/15/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> GFDL is in fact really strong. If a GFDL image was used to advertise Coke,
> then the whole advertisement could be claimed to be under GFDL

This is, in fact, a common misunderstanding with copyleft licenses.
If coke managed to make a derived work from a strongly copyleft image
their choices are to copyleft their derived work, to distribute the
work in violation of copyright law, or to not distribute it at all.

Nothing about a copyleft license can cause an accidental loss of the
protect privileges of another copyright holder.

[snip]
> Plus, not
> allowing fair use, thus saying "the only way to have this on wikipedia" is
> also a good wayy of receiving images that would be otherwise forced to the
> fair use.

This is quite true.

Because of automatic copyright protection the vast majority of
copyrighted works are materials which no one has any need or desire to
protect through copyright. Friction, both in the form of the
acceptance policies of popular forums (like wikipedia) and in the
requirements for derived works in copyleft licenses, is useful to
encourage people to release otherwise exclusive rights for their works
which they do not actually want or need.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] yeehah, another POV-pushing team

body:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/wikiconspiracy.php

Anyone spotted these at work?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 15/08/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I suspect that this idea may be easier to implement once single sign-on
>>is active.  This should not prevent us from having separate talk pages
>>on each project that interests us.
>>
>>
>Mm. I tend to note on my talk pages elsewhere to leave me messages on
>my en: talk page so I'll ever see them.
>
There is a great deal of personal preference involved.  Sometimes the
things that people add on talk pages aren't very clear. :-)    By having
separate pages for each project I at least have a clue regarding what
project they're talking about. :-)

Ec


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using dvipng in texvc

body:
Jan-?ke,

> a) render.ml isn't used anymore now that WikiTeX exists

Did you do any benchmarks? Because that's what I thought we'd do
before rolling it live on wikipedia ;-)
How much faster is the dvipng approach?

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


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
On 8/15/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just got back 4 weeks ago from a 12-month trip from Mexico to Panama and
> back again. Being an Internet and wiki junky I used dozens of different internet
> cafes in this time. The Spanish keyboard has a smaller left shift key and a
> smaller enter key. There is an extra key between the left shift key and the z
> key which has < and > - one is accessed by holding the shift key. With a US
> keyboard this key is absent and neither character is possible. I even tried to
> add them to MediaWiki:Edittools but they produced < and > so I had to
> resort to cut and paste!

Weird. Normally a "US keyboard" the < is on top of the comma (shifted)
and the > is on top of the dot. I understand that the combined <> key
doesn't exist on the US keyboard. Apart from the Romanian keyboard I
can't see any at keyboards at [[Keyboard layout]]  with no < and >
keys at all.

Steve


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 09:22:00AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Simetrical wrote:
> > Do cell-phones correctly use stylesheets that are declared for
> > @mobile?  Because if they do use those, then that should help at least
> > as much as switching to Simple, provided someone wants to write up
> > mobile CSS (do we have some already?)  Of course, ideally we'd also
> > want to cut back on image resolution and whatnot (for which UA strings
> > would presumably be needed if we wanted to skip preferences).
>
> I just got a sidekick 3 phone, which has a nice big screen.  Wikipedia
> does not look good on it.  One problem is
> that I have to scroll through far too much auxiliary stuff before I can
> see the articles.
>
> I have no idea what the answer to this is, but it would be cool if it
> worked better. :)

Oddly, I would bet that your phone's browser *is* trying to interpret
CSS, and that's why it looks bad: our layout puts the article first,
and the navigation at the bottom, then relies on CSS to pull the nav up
where it "belongs". Check to see if your browser has a "turn CSS off"
knob, and see if turning it off helps any.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 15/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> I suggest to completely change the meaning
> of WP:OWN.
> The Remedy I suggest is to have multiple versions
> of an article about the same topic, written each
> by different sets of people. In the way that
> NPOV on a controversial subject cannot be achieved
> in a single article, but only by using multiple
> articles that are each WP:OWNed by different sets
> of people.

http://www.wikinfo.org/

I think a better idea is to write NPOV articles, not to mess up the
encyclopedia to appease those editors who are here to push a POV.

> Alternative, turn wikipedia into a metawikipedia that
> just contains links to other free online encyclopedia's
> entries. Its about the same thing, just the branding
> is different.

So why not do this elsewhere, rather than using Wikipedia's name?

- d.


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
On 8/15/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>"I now understand why the GFDL is a bad license." Eben Moglen,
> >>Wikimania 2006
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Which doesn't mean that it cannot be improved. There's a real effort
> >underway to do so.
> >
> >I'm not sure GFDL is the best license for Wikiversity. It depends on
> >the amount of content mixing with other projects that is desired. I
> >suspect that imports from other projects will be likely to create
> >educational materials of different kinds, such as instructional
> >devices embedding Wikipedia articles. From that perspective, the
> >compatibility advantage of GFDL could be a compelling argument.
> >
> >I do agree that the Wikiversity community should discuss the issue, in
> >a similar way it was discussed on Wikinews after the project was set
> >up.
> >
> >Erik
> >
> >
> I will say that by its nature Wikiversity is going to be mixing content
> from all of the Wikimedia projects (including presumably Wikinews as
> well at some point).  In this regard, I would suspect that Wikiversity
> should remain GFDL for this reason alone.
>
> The other huge issue is that most of the Wikiversity content was started
> on Wikibooks under the GFDL, and by abandoning the GFDL it is also
> abandoning all of the effort that went into Wikiversity on Wikibooks.
> That is a considerable amount of content and not something to be
> discarded lightly.  This isn't like Wikinews that didn't have
> substantial content already developed prior to its creation.
>
> This is, however, one reason why I think the license issue on the
> incubator ought to be discussed, as going from the GFDL to another
> license can't be done.  At the very least the incubator ought to be
> dual-licensed or have some more thought put into it in that regard.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I think that the number of contributors to content of Wikiversity is low
enough that a large portion of it may be able to be released under another
license.  All doing that requires is getting affirmative assent of all the
contributors to a page / article / book / whatever that they are ok with a
new license.

The time to start doing that is now, however.  And the question of what
other license to use is a good one... if one hasn't been selected soon, it
will be practically too late.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

body:
Since the talks have continued in wikitech-l, I'll reply there.

I think this is a great idea and would be of great help to big local
communities as well as some kind of relief for stewards. I absolutely
agree that local Bureaucrats can be trusted enough to use this function
wisely. On the other hand, as for the technical aspect, I concur with
Rob Church - all the special pages dealing with userrights should be
merged and robchurch seems to be the perfect guy for that ;)

Filip

Andrew Garrett wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> Hi there,
>
>
>
> I've today developed an extension based on Special:Makesysop that may be a
> solution to the problems (at least on en: ) with the process of gaining
> adminship. Part of the problem with adminship is that it is somewhat
> difficult to remove. This extension may change that. The extension, as
> currently configured, allows local bureaucrats to desysop a user. I believe
> that this is sensible. If we can trust bureaucrats to set the sysop bit, why
> shouldn't we trust them to remove it? Additionally, desysopping is quite a
> political issue, and generally requires the intervention of somebody
> *familiar with the situation*, not an outsider who has simply been informed.
> Therefore, I suggest that we use this extension to allow Bureaucrats to
> desysop users in serious cases of abuse of powers. A different process for
> desysopping may need to be developed to accompany this - and a policy on
> when bureaucrats may use this ability.
>
>
>
> Questions, comments and requests for demonstrations are more than welcome.
>
>
>
> Andrew Garrett (Werdna)
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)
>
> iD8DBQFE4aI7ehR2FitQhwARAmX5AKCtfLYt961WAwv0rikgfmbbqqP9SwCgo/0P
> UHgmSXxVjXYcgxG5H+AS5qA=
> =9mLX
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Or using wgUserPrivsArray (or some other name) instead? Instead of defining
user groups granting by attaching a permission to the granter, why not grant
it to the privilege? I mean, instead of saying "sysops can give rollback"
say "rollback can be given by sysops, bureaucrats and stewards"?

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: Simetrical [mailto:Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 12:57 PM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

On 8/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> That will confuse the existing code handling it. I maintain it would
> be better to split up the variables; the purpose is too broadened
> otherwise.

Not really.  There's certainly no mileage in having a standard
permission to the effect of "can change groups", and then some other
variable saying what groups each specific group-changing group can
change; the former is implicit if you're included in the latter.

It makes more sense to keep all group permissions in
$wgGroupPermissions.  That's what it's there for.


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
The various Wikia Wikis have an option in preferences under "User profile >
E-mail":

E-mail me on page changes
E-mail me wheb my user talk page is changed
E-mail me also for minor edits of pages
Enable e-mail from other users

The second option is of particular interest. I use it on my two
rarely-visited Wikia Wikis, and it's worked for the one user talk message
I've received since enabling it. I'm assuming this feature is being
beta-tested in Wikia and will eventually make its way to Wikipedia and the
various sister projects.

On 8/15/06, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What many editors do is put a soft redirect on their other pages, asking
> that questions be put on [[en:User_talk:Userid]].  If we ever get SSO this
> may get workable.
>
> xaosflux
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 5:33 AM
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages
>
>
> > On 8/15/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Sorry if this is something I should know already.
> >>
> >> I find it tedious to keep watch over my talk pages at en.wiki,
> >> commons, wikiquote, etc.  I was thinking that a nice facility would
> >> be if all my talk pages could be in my watchlist at en.wiki.
> >> Then whenever I'm in en.wiki, which is most of the time, I will
> >> see that one of my other talk pages has been editted.
> >
> > There are various tools around that will automatically monitor the
> > pages of your choice on the web, wherever they are. I think there are
> > even tools that turn those changes into an RSS thread.
> >
> > Actually, for that matter, I have a vague recollection MediaWiki can
> > generate an RSS feed from changes to pages, but I can't find any more
> > info on that atm.
> >
> > Steve
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Simetrical

body:
On 8/15/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do cell-phones correctly use stylesheets that are declared for
> @mobile?

Whoops, that should be @media handheld.  And no, we don't have a
handheld stylesheet.  http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7020


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> James Hare wrote:
>> You'd think that Wikiversity would be tested on Incubator...
>>
> The incubator was set up because of Wikiversity (and other similar
> issues).  It was the spark that was one of the things that helped create
> the idea of an incubator, as it was "incubated" on Wikibooks instead.

The incubator was set up to keep the "test Wikipedias" in various languages from
cluttering up meta. No particular relation to Wikiversity.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> James Hare wrote:
>> You'd think that Wikiversity would be tested on Incubator...
>>
> The incubator was set up because of Wikiversity (and other similar
> issues).  It was the spark that was one of the things that helped create
> the idea of an incubator, as it was "incubated" on Wikibooks instead.

The incubator was set up to keep the "test Wikipedias" in various languages from
cluttering up meta. No particular relation to Wikiversity.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> James Hare wrote:
>> You'd think that Wikiversity would be tested on Incubator...
>>
> The incubator was set up because of Wikiversity (and other similar
> issues).  It was the spark that was one of the things that helped create
> the idea of an incubator, as it was "incubated" on Wikibooks instead.

The incubator was set up to keep the "test Wikipedias" in various languages from
cluttering up meta. No particular relation to Wikiversity.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> James Hare wrote:
>> You'd think that Wikiversity would be tested on Incubator...
>>
> The incubator was set up because of Wikiversity (and other similar
> issues).  It was the spark that was one of the things that helped create
> the idea of an incubator, as it was "incubated" on Wikibooks instead.

The incubator was set up to keep the "test Wikipedias" in various languages from
cluttering up meta. No particular relation to Wikiversity.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 15/08/06, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Since the talks have continued in wikitech-l, I'll reply there.
>>
>> I think this is a great idea and would be of great help to big local
>> communities as well as some kind of relief for stewards. I absolutely
>> agree that local Bureaucrats can be trusted enough to use this function
>> wisely. On the other hand, as for the technical aspect, I concur with
>> Rob Church - all the special pages dealing with userrights should be
>> merged and robchurch seems to be the perfect guy for that ;)
>>
>
> Me and my big fucking mouth.
>
> It'll have to wait, then. Although, wasn't Rotem Liss doing something
> in a branch?
>
>
> Rob Church
>
Well, Werdna also displayed interest, so you just might be off the hook
for now.

But this whole thing got me thinking: what we basically want is what
already exists: Special:Userrights, where bureaucrats can give/revoke
every userright possible.

Now if you/anyone finetune(s) that special page, and Brion gives
consent, voila!

Filip


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
I looked at my accounts. Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikibooks don't have the
option, while Wikia and Meta do. I think it's just a matter of what version
of MediaWiki is being run.

On 8/15/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The various Wikia Wikis have an option in preferences under "User profile
> > E-mail":
>
> E-mail me on page changes
> E-mail me wheb my user talk page is changed
> E-mail me also for minor edits of pages
> Enable e-mail from other users
>
> The second option is of particular interest. I use it on my two
> rarely-visited Wikia Wikis, and it's worked for the one user talk message
> I've received since enabling it. I'm assuming this feature is being
> beta-tested in Wikia and will eventually make its way to Wikipedia and the
> various sister projects.
>
>
> On 8/15/06, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > What many editors do is put a soft redirect on their other pages, asking
> > that questions be put on [[en:User_talk:Userid]].  If we ever get SSO
> > this
> > may get workable.
> >
> > xaosflux
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 5:33 AM
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages
> >
> >
> > > On 8/15/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >> Sorry if this is something I should know already.
> > >>
> > >> I find it tedious to keep watch over my talk pages at en.wiki,
> > >> commons, wikiquote, etc.  I was thinking that a nice facility would
> > >> be if all my talk pages could be in my watchlist at en.wiki.
> > >> Then whenever I'm in en.wiki, which is most of the time, I will
> > >> see that one of my other talk pages has been editted.
> > >
> > > There are various tools around that will automatically monitor the
> > > pages of your choice on the web, wherever they are. I think there are
> > > even tools that turn those changes into an RSS thread.
> > >
> > > Actually, for that matter, I have a vague recollection MediaWiki can
> > > generate an RSS feed from changes to pages, but I can't find any more
> > > info on that atm.
> > >
> > > Steve
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Invited by admin to leave en if concerned about free
	reusability

body:
On 8/15/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> * Speedy deletion (it's vanity!  You must speedy it!)
CSD A7

> * Image copyright (if you tag it as "fair use" it can't be deleted!)

Fortunetly there is a loophole in the current set up with no one
appears to have found a way to close.

--
geni


body:
On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/wikiconspiracy.php
>
> Anyone spotted these at work?
>
>
> - d.

No but it can be amusing to watch the pro alt med/ anti-vac people
trying to claim to neutral on the issue. Or when they found out that
they didn't know quite as much as they thought they did.

--
geni


body:
On 15/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> No but it can be amusing to watch the pro alt med/ anti-vac people
> trying to claim to neutral on the issue. Or when they found out that
> they didn't know quite as much as they thought they did.

Yeah. Mr-Natural-Health vociferously arguing that Richard Dawkins is
not a significant scientist.

- d.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposal for an improved user rights page

body:
On 15/08/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> * Checkboxes instead of lists, mainly because it's possible to disable
> them separately while it's not possible in lists.

Just omit printing out the <option value=""... tag, then. A metric ton
of checkboxes will *not* lead to a neat UI, nor a usable one. Lists
have their own problems, but it's the lesser of two evils.

Rob Church


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 8/15/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "maru dubshinki" wrote
> > In comparison to normal human writing, this stuff's positively antipodean.
>
> That would be why Gerard goes for it. I hear their screens scroll the other way, Down Under.
>
> Charles

He would.  There's a reason Dante located the exit of Hell and the
mountain of Purgatory in the Southern Hemisphere...

~maru


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Dartmouth College incident

body:
On 8/15/06, wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > >On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > A couple years ago a professor at Dartmouth had his students put
> > articles on Wikipedia as part of a class project. These kids promprtly
> > fell into the notability meat grinder. While it would obviously benefit
> > Wikipedia to generate articles from that list, I don't think that that
> > many of these kids are ready for some of the abuse that's so frequently
> > doled out. Such abuse does nothing to encourage co-operative work among
> > people who might never edit Wikipedia anyway.
>
> That is emphatically not what happened. The professor was Peter C. Wayner, by the way...
>
> What happened is that the class instructions specifically told students to stay "within the definition" and gave a link to WP:NOT. Approximately FOUR HUNDRED articles were submitted. Most of them had no obvious connections with Dartmouth College and passed more or less unnoticed.
>
> One example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautifull_Cassandra , an article about a piece of juvenalia by Jane Austen. You'll notice it was never nominated for deletion.
>
> Despite being told to read WP:NOT, perhaps forty articles were submitted dealing with fairly subtrivial aspects of Dartmouth life, such as entire articles on one relatively less notable a capella singing group, drinking games specific to one particular Dartmouth fraternity, etc. Many of these articles were written in breezy, promotional language.
>
> Indeed, there was bad behavior on the Wikipedian side. One notably brusque admin famous for nominating many articles for deletion made snide remarks in many of the nominations, and by the time uncivil AfD-ers had gone through half a dozen of them, many people started using dismissive language. If I recall correctly an article on something about DartMOOR in England got some comment about "they're at it again." Very unpleasant. But only about 10% of the students fell into the "meat grinder," and fewer would have if they had followed the professor's directions.
>
> Of the subtrivial articles, many of them were de-breezed and boiled down and merged into the Dartmouth College article.
>
> Far from being discouraged, Wayner repeated the exercise the following summer. There was a little more preparation at both the Dartmouth and Wikipedia ends and there were no problems.

If the second time was even more successful than the first, why did he stop?

~maru


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Amgine wrote:
>
>
>>A comment in IRC yesterday raised a concern for me which I would like
>>to see addressed.
>>
>>Cormac mentioned that he and Mr Horning had discussed moving
>>textbooks and curricula from en.Wikibooks to en.Wikiversity. He was
>>unsure if this meant the textbooks would be deleted from
>>en.Wikibooks, but he was sure any contributors who preferred working
>>on en.Wikibooks would be able to copy them back to that project.
>>
>>This seems extremely odd to me, that deleting a textbook from
>>Wikibooks would even be contemplated. Educational materials are,
>>after all, the mission of the project. And dividing a textbook
>>between projects seems to be forking, both of the book in question
>>and the potential contributors as well, again something which should
>>not even be contemplated in my opinion.
>>
>>Could the Wikiversity project please clarify this?
>>
>>Amgine
>>
>>
>We are not talking about moving the textbooks from Wikibooks, but rather
>just about everything that is in the "Wikiversity" psuedonamespace on
>Wikibooks, and some of the content on Wikibooks that is more for
>organization and teaching of Wikiversity courses that is not strictly a
>textbook, per se.  We are not in any way trying to fork Wikibooks in
>this respect, but rather trying to make a distinction between the two
>projects.
>
>Much of this is likely to be dealt with in the VfD pages of Wikibooks,
>as Wikibooks admins try to come to a grip with what Wikiversity content
>is successfully moved to the new Wikiversity site and what is to be left
>behind.  And as with much of Wikibooks content that has been added over
>the years, there is some that has been added and will be added that
>really does need to be on other projects and will be done through a
>normal transwiki.  Wikiversity content will be no different in this context.
>
>I guess in this regard, this is essentially as if the VfD for
>Wikiversity is finally successful, but the transwiki is finally taking
>place today.  It will take some time to deal with the fine details, however.
>
I can't see why people are in such a hurry to dump this stuff onto
Wikiversity.  Wikibooks has rightly complained before when Wikipedia
editors dumped material on Wikibooks just to get rid of it.  It would
probably be advisable to at least wait until Wikiversity is out of Beta
before doing this.  The Wikiversity community still needs to build its
core before having to devote a lot of time coping with data dumps.

Ec


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Amgine wrote:

> A comment in IRC yesterday raised a concern for me which I would like
> to see addressed.
>
> Cormac mentioned that he and Mr Horning had discussed moving
> textbooks and curricula from en.Wikibooks to en.Wikiversity. He was
> unsure if this meant the textbooks would be deleted from
> en.Wikibooks, but he was sure any contributors who preferred working
> on en.Wikibooks would be able to copy them back to that project.
>
> This seems extremely odd to me, that deleting a textbook from
> Wikibooks would even be contemplated. Educational materials are,
> after all, the mission of the project. And dividing a textbook
> between projects seems to be forking, both of the book in question
> and the potential contributors as well, again something which should
> not even be contemplated in my opinion.
>
> Could the Wikiversity project please clarify this?
>
>
> Amgine

We are not talking about moving the textbooks from Wikibooks, but rather
just about everything that is in the "Wikiversity" psuedonamespace on
Wikibooks, and some of the content on Wikibooks that is more for
organization and teaching of Wikiversity courses that is not strictly a
textbook, per se.  We are not in any way trying to fork Wikibooks in
this respect, but rather trying to make a distinction between the two
projects.

Much of this is likely to be dealt with in the VfD pages of Wikibooks,
as Wikibooks admins try to come to a grip with what Wikiversity content
is successfully moved to the new Wikiversity site and what is to be left
behind.  And as with much of Wikibooks content that has been added over
the years, there is some that has been added and will be added that
really does need to be on other projects and will be done through a
normal transwiki.  Wikiversity content will be no different in this context.

I guess in this regard, this is essentially as if the VfD for
Wikiversity is finally successful, but the transwiki is finally taking
place today.  It will take some time to deal with the fine details, however.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
Craig Spurrier wrote:

>I would assume that they were referring to moving the content in the
>Wikiversity namespace (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity). There
>is plenty of content that is not appropriate for Wikibooks in this
>namespace. AFAIK no one wants to delete actual textbooks from Wikibooks.
>
>The note on Wikibook's Wikiversity page states:
>"Material not in the "Wikiversity:" namespace should not be deleted off
>this server unless it has undergone an official transwiki AND it has
>been confirmed by Wikibookians that it does not meet Wikibooks'
>inclusion criteria."
>
>I believe this notice accurately reflects the views of the Wikibooks
>community.
>
>Craig
>
>
One admin on Wikibooks actually put a speedy delete on the Wikiversity
pages a few weeks ago, which was the reason for this notice.  I don't
know the motivation behind that, but I think it is more people just
trying to be anxious about moving stuff around and not knowing quite how
it was going to be accomplished.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
James Hare wrote:

>You'd think that Wikiversity would be tested on Incubator...
>
>
>
The incubator was set up because of Wikiversity (and other similar
issues).  It was the spark that was one of the things that helped create
the idea of an incubator, as it was "incubated" on Wikibooks instead.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/64167124-263d-11db-afa1-0000779e2340.html

Full of useful phrases!

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>As far as Wikiversity goes I am not sure what their
>equivalent of NPOV or "Completeness" will be, but I
>think it can be found by looking at the same issues
>that lead to biased articles at WP and excerpted texts
>being put up on the internet.  If we can outline the
>problems, then we may be able to form a policy that
>works to counteract them.
>
To be sure, the interpretation of NPOV must vary according to the
project.  It needs to allow for exploration outside the box in what may
initially seem to be very much POV.  Any scientific hypothesis starts
from a POV, and approaches NPOV through a succession of tests, reviews
and reformulations.  It would be a shame if these intermediate steps
were too quickly dismissed as some kind of policy violation.

>If someone wanted to research the orgins of Macedonian
>Nationalism what problems would you expect to
>encounter?
>
Are you referring to contemporary Macedonian nationalism or the
Macedonian nationalism of classical Greek times?  ;-)

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Dabljuh

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:04:56 -0700 (PDT)
stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:

stevertigo, I am *very* with the problem you
are describing. I don't think WP:CITE itself
is the cause of the problem. WP:OWN is.
The cause of the problem is Article Squatters.

I suggest to completely change the meaning
of WP:OWN.

The Remedy I suggest is to have multiple versions
of an article about the same topic, written each
by different sets of people. In the way that
NPOV on a controversial subject cannot be achieved
in a single article, but only by using multiple
articles that are each WP:OWNed by different sets
of people.

So, say you're writing about, uh, bunnies, and
MisterX joins in and you quickly figure out that
you cannot work together, then instead of sinking
into this HELLHOLE of edit warring, you'd each get
[[bunnies_(by_stevertigo)]] and [[bunnies_(by_misterX)]]

and [[bunnies]] itself being no more than a disambiguation
page.

Alternative, turn wikipedia into a metawikipedia that
just contains links to other free online encyclopedia's
entries. Its about the same thing, just the branding
is different.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>"I now understand why the GFDL is a bad license." Eben Moglen,
>>Wikimania 2006
>>
>>
>
>Which doesn't mean that it cannot be improved. There's a real effort
>underway to do so.
>
>I'm not sure GFDL is the best license for Wikiversity. It depends on
>the amount of content mixing with other projects that is desired. I
>suspect that imports from other projects will be likely to create
>educational materials of different kinds, such as instructional
>devices embedding Wikipedia articles. From that perspective, the
>compatibility advantage of GFDL could be a compelling argument.
>
>I do agree that the Wikiversity community should discuss the issue, in
>a similar way it was discussed on Wikinews after the project was set
>up.
>
>Erik
>
>
I will say that by its nature Wikiversity is going to be mixing content
from all of the Wikimedia projects (including presumably Wikinews as
well at some point).  In this regard, I would suspect that Wikiversity
should remain GFDL for this reason alone.

The other huge issue is that most of the Wikiversity content was started
on Wikibooks under the GFDL, and by abandoning the GFDL it is also
abandoning all of the effort that went into Wikiversity on Wikibooks.
 That is a considerable amount of content and not something to be
discarded lightly.  This isn't like Wikinews that didn't have
substantial content already developed prior to its creation.

This is, however, one reason why I think the license issue on the
incubator ought to be discussed, as going from the GFDL to another
license can't be done.  At the very least the incubator ought to be
dual-licensed or have some more thought put into it in that regard.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>The problem with "Acedemic Freedom" is it essentionaly
>means "Freedom for the Academics".  It basically says
>"you have passed the bar for entry into acedemia you
>may now do pretty much as you like".  Wikiversity does
>not have a bar for entry so it will need more
>restrictive policies than general academia.
>
I guess that means that Wikiversity won't be granting tenure any time
soon. :-)

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Statistics?

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 01:56:13PM -0700, Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> Do I correctly remember that mediawiki projects do not keep log files and
> statistics and stuff (other than the ones that can be gleaned from the
> database itself) to reduce server load?  I think I remember somebody saying
> the even log files are not kept... or that could have been some other
> reality.

Well, it's the reality I'm in. No log files are being written on the
squids or the apaches.

> I found
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
> and
> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
>
> And a few other things, but nothing that looks like it would answer some of
> the questions being asked.
>
> So - hitting an external log with the standard client issued image /
> javascript type counter thingy would get some of that.  More data could be
> gleaned by combining that with the info available from the database.
>
> Has this already been discussed/beaten to death?  Is it a dumb idea?

Some Wikipedias have systems like this set up. According to the
statistics of the German Wikipedia, a user's discussion page is the
second most visited page, with 10% less hits than the main page. So,
apparently this method is not producing very reliable data.

The most accurate method would be to make the squid servers send short
UDP messages to a central log server. This would not hit the performance
of the squids very much, and the log server could aggregate data before
writing it to disks from time to time.

Regards,

JeLuF


body:
On 8/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> In all seriousness, phone browsers are *hard* to deal with, since there's huge
> huge variance in how much of which standards they obey, or try to fake, and it
> seems to be hard to test on them if, well, you don't have one handy.
>
> In an ideal world, the vendors should have fully-capable emulators available for
> free download and evaluation by web developers, so their products will actually
> be useful to the public. I'm not sure that's the case, though, at least the last
> time I checked. If someone has more experience in this regard, please let us know.

Isn't Opera one of the leaders of the cell phone browser market?  It
has pages on designing stuff for its small-screen browsers:
http://my.opera.com/community/dev/


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>On 8/15/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>>>I'm not sure GFDL is the best license for Wikiversity. It depends on
>>>the amount of content mixing with other projects that is desired. I
>>>suspect that imports from other projects will be likely to create
>>>educational materials of different kinds, such as instructional
>>>devices embedding Wikipedia articles. From that perspective, the
>>>compatibility advantage of GFDL could be a compelling argument.
>>>
>>The other huge issue is that most of the Wikiversity content was started
>>on Wikibooks under the GFDL, and by abandoning the GFDL it is also
>>abandoning all of the effort that went into Wikiversity on Wikibooks.
>>That is a considerable amount of content and not something to be
>>discarded lightly.  This isn't like Wikinews that didn't have
>>substantial content already developed prior to its creation.
>>
>>--
>>Robert Scott Horning
>>
>
>I think that the number of contributors to content of Wikiversity is low
>enough that a large portion of it may be able to be released under another
>license.  All doing that requires is getting affirmative assent of all the
>contributors to a page / article / book / whatever that they are ok with a
>new license.
>
>The time to start doing that is now, however.  And the question of what
>other license to use is a good one... if one hasn't been selected soon, it
>will be practically too late.
>
>
I wish that were the case, but the number of significnat contributors to
Wikiversity content exceeds 100 individuals even now, many of which used
anonymous IP addresses.  If you are talking those who have contributed
to the en.wikiversity website, yeah, you might be correct at the moment.
 We can change the license for that content, but not for everything that
needs to be moved over.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>>James Hare wrote:
>>
>>
>>>You'd think that Wikiversity would be tested on Incubator...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>The incubator was set up because of Wikiversity (and other similar
>>issues).  It was the spark that was one of the things that helped create
>>the idea of an incubator, as it was "incubated" on Wikibooks instead.
>>
>>
>
>The incubator was set up to keep the "test Wikipedias" in various languages from
>cluttering up meta. No particular relation to Wikiversity.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
While that may have been your personal justification for making it, the
idea of an incubator project for developing proposed Wikimedia projects
like Wikiversity has been kicking around Meta for more than a year, and
discussion even made it into board meetings as recorded on the minutes.
 Indeed a problem still exists where because of the way that the
incubator wiki was set up, that the idea of hosting anything other than
wikipedia tests still is brought into question, and there is yet to be a
serious project that has used the incubator as a test project besides
these test wikipedias.

See Wikikernel, Wikilabs, and Seedwiki on Meta for more details.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
On 8/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I just got a sidekick 3 phone, which has a nice big screen.  Wikipedia
> does not look good on it.  One problem is
> that I have to scroll through far too much auxiliary stuff before I can
> see the articles.
>
> I have no idea what the answer to this is, but it would be cool if it
> worked better. :)

Hmm, try installing Opera on your phone.  It actually does an
excellent job at displaying Wikipedia pages.  You do have to scroll
past infoboxes and images, but I can't think of anywhere else it could
put them, so fair's fair.  (You can test this with recent versions of
desktop Opera: it has a "small screen" mode that emulates its mobile
version's rendering.)

Maybe enwiki should class infoboxes and hide them by default in its
handheld stylesheet, hmm.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>I think that the number of contributors to content of Wikiversity is low
>enough that a large portion of it may be able to be released under another
>license.  All doing that requires is getting affirmative assent of all the
>contributors to a page / article / book / whatever that they are ok with a
>new license.
>
>The time to start doing that is now, however.  And the question of what
>other license to use is a good one... if one hasn't been selected soon, it
>will be practically too late.
>
>
>
>
The Foundation should propose one as a draft and let the community vote
in it since trademarks of the foundation may be involved
in hard copy works. Additionally, the current way WP works doesn't 100%
adhere to the GFDL in all cases and putting stuff in
hard cover print looses all protections under DCMA and CDA. The
publisher of these books becomes liable for the content. There
should be some consideration for a publisher taking these risks. For the
Cherokee textbooks, less of a problem, since we are the only
consumers. English versions and more ubiquitous languages need some
protection and concessions. It should be a top-down program.

The publisher is the one left holding the bag if there are IP,
copyright, and trademark issues. At a minimum, the Foundation should be
entitled to royalties and the publisher for assuming this liability.

Allowing the community to retain some copyright rights is also a good
idead, but only with the Foundation as their official agent and
holder of all right, title, and interest on behalf of the community.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It could be easy to make it. Let's say you have a bot proxy scanning ips
>> that are being blocked on any project.
>
> My impression is that portscans are sometimes grounds for IP-blocking,
> at least by firewalls.  (Personally I think this behavior is
> completely stupid, but I can only turn it off for myself, so . . .)
> If there's actually no technical problem with our checking for open
> proxies/Tor exit nodes ourselves (dedicated IP?), then okay, that
> could be fairly easy.

We can use a dedicated IP for scanning, to make automatic blocking of that
IP by firewalls irrelevant, and we can set up an informative reverse DNS
entry and a webserver on that IP, to ward off some of the abuse complaints.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>George Herbert wrote:
>
>
>
>>I think that the number of contributors to content of Wikiversity is low
>>enough that a large portion of it may be able to be released under another
>>license.  All doing that requires is getting affirmative assent of all the
>>contributors to a page / article / book / whatever that they are ok with a
>>new license.
>>
>>The time to start doing that is now, however.  And the question of what
>>other license to use is a good one... if one hasn't been selected soon, it
>>will be practically too late.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>The Foundation should propose one as a draft and let the community vote
>in it since trademarks of the foundation may be involved
>in hard copy works. Additionally, the current way WP works doesn't 100%
>adhere to the GFDL in all cases and putting stuff in
>hard cover print looses all protections under DCMA and CDA. The
>publisher of these books becomes liable for the content. There
>should be some consideration for a publisher taking these risks. For the
>Cherokee textbooks, less of a problem, since we are the only
>consumers. English versions and more ubiquitous languages need some
>protection and concessions. It should be a top-down program.
>
>The publisher is the one left holding the bag if there are IP,
>copyright, and trademark issues. At a minimum, the Foundation should be
>entitled to royalties and the publisher for assuming this liability.
>
>

And the publisher **MUST** be required to indemnify the Foundation for their
right to publish the works produced under the Wikiversity program. In
other words, the
publisher, in being granted the right to put "Wikipedia Wikiversity"
trademarks on the
pubished works **MUST** assume all legal costs which may arise out of
their activities
of publishing the content for profit.

>Allowing the community to retain some copyright rights is also a good
>idead, but only with the Foundation as their official agent and
>holder of all right, title, and interest on behalf of the community.
>
>Jeff
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 15/08/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> -- Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Assuming good faith does not go so far as to say that we assume
> > perfection of edits. As long as the person is civil and not abusive of
> > the editor who put in the unverified statement it should fit within
> > all the policies.
>
> And so... do you agree that a modus operandi of blanket tag-team reverts
> while making obtuse references to various policies is... incivil?
>
> -Stevertigo

If what you are refering to is bullying of users than I definitely do
not agree to it happening.

However, this situation has to be contrasted against the fact that
Wikipedia should only contain what someone can verify using outside
sources. Making Wikipedia into anything else is not what it was
designed to be, and from the viewpoint of the reverters they are
simply keeping Wikipedia in a verifiable (or at least noting where
verification is needed) state.

Using obtuse references to policies is not what I would say referring
to the Verifiability policy is. I would say that a direct reference to
a core policy, which when stated objectively does not go against the
civility policy.

Peter Ansell


from_name: Brad Patrick

body:
Good gracious!  Projects pillaging from another whilst still in Beta?
*DELETING* content (not sharing it) and popping it in elsewhere?

That's a serious, serious problem, if true.  I tend to think of removal
of benign content as somewhat heretical, bordering on anarchic.  Please
help me understand where we have failed if that is what people think is
acceptable practice.

-B

Amgine wrote:
> A comment in IRC yesterday raised a concern for me which I would like
> to see addressed.
>
> Cormac mentioned that he and Mr Horning had discussed moving textbooks
> and curricula from en.Wikibooks to en.Wikiversity. He was unsure if
> this meant the textbooks would be deleted from en.Wikibooks, but he
> was sure any contributors who preferred working on en.Wikibooks would
> be able to copy them back to that project.
>
> This seems extremely odd to me, that deleting a textbook from
> Wikibooks would even be contemplated. Educational materials are, after
> all, the mission of the project. And dividing a textbook between
> projects seems to be forking, both of the book in question and the
> potential contributors as well, again something which should not even
> be contemplated in my opinion.
>
> Could the Wikiversity project please clarify this?
>
>
> Amgine
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Statistics?

body:
"Platonides" wrote:

> > Okay, so instead, and only slightly more expensive, go ahead
> > and hit the counter, but the counter does the randomization check - if
> > it's
> > the 1 in 1000, run the code that posts to the database.
> But then we fail in the original problem. A server with billions of
> conections... die.
>

Okay - honestly, I don't have experience with anything approaching that kind
of volume, so I can't speak intelligently about it.

I suppose it would be possible to, instead, only include the counter
javascript in the page (from the server serving the page)  one time in 1000,
and use some kind of a shared key system to validate in the counter script.
But at that point, we're adding overhead to the mediawiki server, which is
exactly what we're trying to avoid.

I think it'd be better (and possible) to heuristically identify bad entries
getting posted by malicious users who hack the javascript (although the
shared key solution would be fun to design).

Just to enlighten me:  would a gazillion GET requests take down a server
that quickly?  I guess it takes a non-insignificant amount of processing
power just to handle the requests...

Aerik


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
GFDL is really the best choice because everyone other one of our Wikimedia
project does it (except Wikinews).

On 8/15/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
>
> There might be already a discussion about this somewhere, dunno:
>
> Before wikiversity really starts, it might make sense to think  about the
> license. There could be better choices than GFDL for such a project.
>
> greetings,
> elian
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: Craig Spurrier

body:
I would assume that they were referring to moving the content in the
Wikiversity namespace (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity). There
is plenty of content that is not appropriate for Wikibooks in this
namespace. AFAIK no one wants to delete actual textbooks from Wikibooks.

The note on Wikibook's Wikiversity page states:
"Material not in the "Wikiversity:" namespace should not be deleted off
this server unless it has undergone an official transwiki AND it has
been confirmed by Wikibookians that it does not meet Wikibooks'
inclusion criteria."

I believe this notice accurately reflects the views of the Wikibooks
community.

Craig

Amgine wrote:
> A comment in IRC yesterday raised a concern for me which I would like
> to see addressed.
>
> Cormac mentioned that he and Mr Horning had discussed moving textbooks
> and curricula from en.Wikibooks to en.Wikiversity. He was unsure if
> this meant the textbooks would be deleted from en.Wikibooks, but he
> was sure any contributors who preferred working on en.Wikibooks would
> be able to copy them back to that project.
>
> This seems extremely odd to me, that deleting a textbook from
> Wikibooks would even be contemplated. Educational materials are, after
> all, the mission of the project. And dividing a textbook between
> projects seems to be forking, both of the book in question and the
> potential contributors as well, again something which should not even
> be contemplated in my opinion.
>
> Could the Wikiversity project please clarify this?
>
>
> Amgine
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Rotem Liss

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

In the previous discussion (about Special:Desysop), it was proposed to
merge the user rights pages (Special:Userrights, Special:Makesysop,
Special:Makebot, Special:GiveRollback, and now also Special:Desysop)
into the page Special:Userrights, using configuration settings. It seems
to be a good time to propose it:

I've merged these special pages to Special:Userrights using
configuration settings in
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/rotem/userrights ,
which is an improved user rights page.

This proposed system adds the following features to Special:Userrights:
* Flexible configuration settings for a limited interface ? for example,
you can allow bureaucrats to grant only these permissions and revoke
only those permissions, and allow the stewards to do everything.
* Checkboxes instead of lists, mainly because it's possible to disable
them separately while it's not possible in lists.
* Changing the permissions of remote users for stewards, controllable by
a permission ("userrights_remote"), like in the stewards interface of
Special:Makesysop.
* Log comment, to explain the change, like in Makebot.

You can either download and test it directly, or watch the following images:

http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mediawikinewuserrightsbureaucratslm9.png
The limited interface for bureaucrats, like it can be set in Wikimedia
sites.

http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mediawikinewuserrightsstewardsgg7.png
The full interface for stewards, like it can be set in Wikimedia sites,
editing a remote user.

This change should deprecate Makesysop, Makebot, GiveRollback and
Desysop and make them implementable by using only configuration
settings. However, these extensions may be kept for old versions, and
for sites which were not updated. (There seems to be a compatibility
issue with Special:Makesysop because one of its core functions
(HTMLSelectGroups) was removed, but it can be defined in
SpecialMakesysop.php or SpecialMakesysop_body.php as a class function.)

Additional technical information may be found in
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Rotemliss/User_rights_suggestion#How_to_use_it
. You can also read the other parts of the page, but it's a bit old and
not updated in some parts. You can also ask here about anything unclear.

What do you think about this implementation? Which changes should be
done? Do you think some features should be added, or dropped?

Thank you very much for the feedback.

- --
#define Name RotemLiss
#define Mail mail-AT-rotemliss-DOT-com
#define Site www.rotemliss.com

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from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
--- Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/15/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > > NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course
> > > context matters in how we
> > > understand and apply it.
> > >
> > > For example, a course which is highly biased and
> > > pushing some POV should
> > > be fixed, as we would quite
> > > properly consider it to be broken.
> > >
> > > But of course, as Cormac points out, some of
> what
> > > Wikiversity is going
> > > to be about is explorations of
> > > research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV
> > > applies, but it applies
> > > in a way that makes sense for this
> > > type of content.
> > >
> > > The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not
> > > apply" is that we would
> > > thereby open the door to lunatics
> > > (and there are lunatics!) trying to push
> extremely
> > > biased courses.  We
> > > can do better than that.
> > >
> > > --Jimbo
> > >
> >
> >
> > I think everyone is not quite on the same page
> here.
> > Although neutrality is going to be an important
> aspect
> > of Wikiversity.  WP:NPOV is not going to be the
> policy
> > in use there.  Mainly this is becuse Wikiversity
> is
> > not writiing encyclopedia articles.  Bias will
> take a
> > subtley different form on that project.  Just like
> > bias rears its' head on Wikisource in the form of
> > altered texts.  I do not believe it was something
> > people thought of early on at Wikisource, but it
> is
> > certainly what has transpired.  I am just trying
> to
> > guess as to how bias will try and work its way
> into
> > Wikiversity.  It may not be possible, we might
> have to
> > wait and find out when it happens.  WP:NPOV is
> about
> > how to counteract bias on WP.  I do not believe
> anyone
> > is suggesting counteracting bias at WV is not of
> the
> > utmost importance, just that WV will have approach
> it
> > in a unique way.
> >
> > Birgitte SB
> >
> >
>
>
> Yes, I think you've got me, Birgitte :-). I just
> think that NPOV (as I
> conceptualise it) is not a useful concept to apply
> to Wikiversity.
> Don't get me wrong - I wince just as much as anyone
> if someone will
> try to teach people that the world began 10,000
> years ago ;-), but
> surely the point of education is to try to get
> people to think for
> themselves? I see no problem with provocative, even
> biased,
> educational materials - so long as people are given
> the wherewithal to
> critically evaluate them. I think we need an analogy
> to NPOV -
> "completeness" sounds better, but just not catchy
> enough :-)
>
> Cormac
>

Yes I agree and your response just sparked in my mind
a very realistic example.  I always thought WV would
find an audience developing homeschooling materials.
Now in the US many people who homeschool do this
because they do not like the lack of religion in
public schools.  How will WV handle the develpoment of
science teaching materials for homeschoolers which are
based in "creationism"?

Birgitte SB

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> Deon Wentworth wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Forgive me.. perhaps I missed something.. but what does this have to do with
>>> medical advice?
>>>
>>>
>> Ray just likes trolling me.
>>
> Get it right!  That comment of yours to which I responded had nothing to
> do with medical advice to start with; I have no idea where you got the
> subject line from.
>

Perhaps you could try the archives.

On 2006-07-28, zero 0000 wrote:
> Sorry if this has been discussed before.  I just noticed
> that [[Abdominal thrusts]] gives detailed advice on how to
> perform a medical procedure.  Maybe there are other such
> articles too.  Given the fashionable practice of filing
> suit whenever a medical procedure fails to work, it seems
> to me that this is rather dangerous for Wikipedia.
> Wouldn't it be legally safer (and more likely to be
> medically correct) if the actual procedure in such articles
> was presented as a direct quotation from a named medical
> authority?   With permission, of course.  Maybe there should
> also be a disclaimer.
>

A few hours later, Fred Bauder wrote:
<snip quote>
>
> This is the Heimlich Manoeuvre and it would be very irresponsible not
> to have detailed advice.
>

A few hours after that, I wrote:
<snip quote>
<snip other stuff>
> The last sentence of the lede,
>
<snip>

Fred Bauder replied, silently "fixing" the word "lede", after which
Steve Bennett wrote:
<snip quote>
> It actually can be spelt "lede".
>

At this point some discussion followed about whether it was a valid word
or not; because he's such a fan of mine and likes to troll me, Ray dug
it up again after two and a half weeks.

--
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: Simetrical

body:
A problem with Rotem's implementation is that it allows at most two
levels of privilege assignment: one that abides by the permissions
whitelists, and one that doesn't.  If you want another level, that's
impossible.

I still prefer my syntax for deciding assignment rights, namely

$wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['sysop'] = true;
$wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bureaucrat'] = true;
$wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bot'] = true;
$wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['remgroup']['bot'] = true;

or something to that effect.  It's completely flexible, and
significantly simpler (if I do say so myself) than Titoxd's.  If for
one or more groups of the current user 'addgroup' or 'remgroup' is
non-false, then Special:Userrights would become available; to
determine what groups are available on each side, you'd merge the
arrays from all the user's groups (conflict for a key would default to
true) on each side and then foreach.  The 'userrights' permission
would remain, and would have the same function as now.  Rotem's
'userrights_remote' would also be present, but his other three would
be redundant.

Thoughts?


body:
You'd think that Wikiversity would be tested on Incubator...

On 8/15/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Craig Spurrier wrote:
>
> >I would assume that they were referring to moving the content in the
> >Wikiversity namespace (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity). There
> >is plenty of content that is not appropriate for Wikibooks in this
> >namespace. AFAIK no one wants to delete actual textbooks from Wikibooks.
> >
> >The note on Wikibook's Wikiversity page states:
> >"Material not in the "Wikiversity:" namespace should not be deleted off
> >this server unless it has undergone an official transwiki AND it has
> >been confirmed by Wikibookians that it does not meet Wikibooks'
> >inclusion criteria."
> >
> >I believe this notice accurately reflects the views of the Wikibooks
> >community.
> >
> >Craig
> >
> >
> One admin on Wikibooks actually put a speedy delete on the Wikiversity
> pages a few weeks ago, which was the reason for this notice.  I don't
> know the motivation behind that, but I think it is more people just
> trying to be anxious about moving stuff around and not knowing quite how
> it was going to be accomplished.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject: [Wikitech-l] Statistics?

body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 02:04:37PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 01:56:13PM -0700, Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> > Do I correctly remember that mediawiki projects do not keep log files and
> > statistics and stuff (other than the ones that can be gleaned from the
> > database itself) to reduce server load?  I think I remember somebody saying
> > the even log files are not kept... or that could have been some other
> > reality.
>
> Well, it's the reality I'm in. No log files are being written on the
> squids or the apaches.
...
> > So - hitting an external log with the standard client issued image /
> > javascript type counter thingy would get some of that.  More data could be
> > gleaned by combining that with the info available from the database.
> >
> > Has this already been discussed/beaten to death?  Is it a dumb idea?
>
> Some Wikipedias have systems like this set up. According to the
> statistics of the German Wikipedia, a user's discussion page is the
> second most visited page, with 10% less hits than the main page. So,
> apparently this method is not producing very reliable data.
>

Than, there must be some flaw in the implementation. Othervise the method
(running some client-side javascript contacting statistics server) is
industry standard (e.g. Google Analytics works this way).

Moreover, it could be easily done with modest hardware and existing
statistics software.  It's unnecessary to process the whole huge dataset -
it would be enough to process random selection. Which can be easily done
with JS ... the JS code would contact the statics server if some $random>0.999
for example.

Jan Kulveit


body:
On 8/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/08/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I still prefer my syntax for deciding assignment rights, namely
> >
> > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['sysop'] = true;
> > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bureaucrat'] = true;
> > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bot'] = true;
> > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['remgroup']['bot'] = true;
>
> I don't, it's too easily confused with $wgGroupPermissions and the two
> aren't compatible.

D'oh.  I *meant* $wgGroupPermissions.  That is, 'addgroup' and
'remgroup' would be group permissions.


body:
On 8/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> That will confuse the existing code handling it. I maintain it would
> be better to split up the variables; the purpose is too broadened
> otherwise.

Not really.  There's certainly no mileage in having a standard
permission to the effect of "can change groups", and then some other
variable saying what groups each specific group-changing group can
change; the former is implicit if you're included in the latter.

It makes more sense to keep all group permissions in
$wgGroupPermissions.  That's what it's there for.


body:
On 8/15/06, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about completely rewriting the permissions system? I mean, while
> you're doing all of this, you might as well do something a bit harder,
> but better (in wider perspective). The current system can lead to
> confusion and it has some setbacks (e.g. rights are additive) and the
> new system would be totally flexible and prone to all variations. If I
> knew PHP, I'd write it ;)

The rights-are-additive setback is hard to address altogether--you'd
probably want to introduce "magnitudes" of permission or somesuch,
maybe false being negative and true being positive, so you can add
together all the magnitudes to get the result, but that's totally
overkill.  Unless you want to merge the blocking system with the
permissions system, I suppose . . . in principle that could be handy
to some degree (e.g. blocking someone just from uploading files), but
it's almost certainly not worth the effort unless someone's going to
totally rewrite one or both of the systems anyway.  We don't need such
granularity with blocking, I don't think: verbal "bans" that are
enforced by total blocks work fine on enwiki, certainly.

Are there any other particular failings of the current system?


body:
On 8/15/06, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Or using wgUserPrivsArray (or some other name) instead? Instead of defining
> user groups granting by attaching a permission to the granter, why not grant
> it to the privilege? I mean, instead of saying "sysops can give rollback"
> say "rollback can be given by sysops, bureaucrats and stewards"?

I don't know.  That just seems unintuitive to me.  Backwards, you
know?  x -> y, not y <- x.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
James Hare wrote:

>Well-Roundedness.
>
>Fairness.
>
>WV:NOT operated by a greedy corporation with an agenda
>
>That's just a start.
>
>HAPPY WIKIVERSITY DAY!
>
>

Well, I don't have any agenda other than getting the books in print for
our language preservation -- and that costs money. And once in print,
I will have to take any heat for stuff put into them that's not allowed
or subject to claims. I certainly hope people don't think I'm greedy...

Jeff

>On 8/15/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 8/15/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course
>>>>context matters in how we
>>>>understand and apply it.
>>>>
>>>>For example, a course which is highly biased and
>>>>pushing some POV should
>>>>be fixed, as we would quite
>>>>properly consider it to be broken.
>>>>
>>>>But of course, as Cormac points out, some of what
>>>>Wikiversity is going
>>>>to be about is explorations of
>>>>research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV
>>>>applies, but it applies
>>>>in a way that makes sense for this
>>>>type of content.
>>>>
>>>>The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not
>>>>apply" is that we would
>>>>thereby open the door to lunatics
>>>>(and there are lunatics!) trying to push extremely
>>>>biased courses.  We
>>>>can do better than that.
>>>>
>>>>--Jimbo
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I think everyone is not quite on the same page here.
>>>Although neutrality is going to be an important aspect
>>>of Wikiversity.  WP:NPOV is not going to be the policy
>>>in use there.  Mainly this is becuse Wikiversity is
>>>not writiing encyclopedia articles.  Bias will take a
>>>subtley different form on that project.  Just like
>>>bias rears its' head on Wikisource in the form of
>>>altered texts.  I do not believe it was something
>>>people thought of early on at Wikisource, but it is
>>>certainly what has transpired.  I am just trying to
>>>guess as to how bias will try and work its way into
>>>Wikiversity.  It may not be possible, we might have to
>>>wait and find out when it happens.  WP:NPOV is about
>>>how to counteract bias on WP.  I do not believe anyone
>>>is suggesting counteracting bias at WV is not of the
>>>utmost importance, just that WV will have approach it
>>>in a unique way.
>>>
>>>Birgitte SB
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Yes, I think you've got me, Birgitte :-). I just think that NPOV (as I
>>conceptualise it) is not a useful concept to apply to Wikiversity.
>>Don't get me wrong - I wince just as much as anyone if someone will
>>try to teach people that the world began 10,000 years ago ;-), but
>>surely the point of education is to try to get people to think for
>>themselves? I see no problem with provocative, even biased,
>>educational materials - so long as people are given the wherewithal to
>>critically evaluate them. I think we need an analogy to NPOV -
>>"completeness" sounds better, but just not catchy enough :-)
>>
>>Cormac
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 06:43:27PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> We used to use SORBS to blacklist open proxies, but that's pretty
> dodgy (requiring a $50 donation to remove an IP).  Now we don't use
> anything, which means that admins have to manually block thousands of
> IPs if some spammer or vandal starts attacking from open proxies.  See
> bug 6988: http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6988.  An admin
> from kuwiki just came on #mediawiki asking how to block *all*
> anonymous users due to the severity of the onslaught (see
> http://ku.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taybet:Recentchanges&hideliu=1).
>  Similar issues on a lesser scale occur on many projects, which is why
> we have the open-proxy-blocking policy in the first place.
>
....

this was allredy disscussed in June
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-June/036633.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-June/036590.html
...

I believe there is simple solution
- on mediawiki part, its easy to re-enable the existing SORBS code, pointin it
to Wikimedia inhouse DNSBL

-how to develop the rbl ... I think it could be done the wiki way

*develop some mechanism how to distinguish "trusted users" - could be
** admin on project + would have to prove some technical knowledge of IP protocol
** checkusers are probably supposed to have some knowledge of proxies etc.
and are trusted enough by wikimedia
** stewards
** ...

*let the users do the list management
** tor exit nodes are know and the list is auto-generated and auto-updated,
someone familiar with with tor could setup a bot to do tor-realted
management
** for example, I would be willing to run a but which would take some
external list, run proxyscan on the list from an ip devoted to that purpose,
and feed such re-checked results to wikimedia list
**...

the advantages are obvious, Wikimedia would be spared the effort and
wouldnt have to do things viewd as problematic, such as portscannig.

The only necessary wm effort would be to setup the list - with almost no
developement it could be simply a wiki,  page=ip, "trusted users" could
edit and delete, pagelist=blocklist, periodical re-checking or delisting
can be scheduled by use of categories.

Jan Kulveit


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/64167124-263d-11db-afa1-0000779e2340.html
>
> Full of useful phrases!
>

Dear God!

"However, this is not a vindication of folk wisdom over the
pointy-heads. The deviations from "rational behaviour" were not the
wonderful cornucopia of humanist motivations you might imagine."

I'm in fustian circumlocution hell!

--Oskar


body:
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Hash: SHA1

Rob Church wrote:
> On 15/08/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
>> * Checkboxes instead of lists, mainly because it's possible to disable
>> them separately while it's not possible in lists.
>
> Just omit printing out the <option value=""... tag, then. A metric ton
> of checkboxes will *not* lead to a neat UI, nor a usable one. Lists
> have their own problems, but it's the lesser of two evils.
>
>
> Rob Church
>

Here is an example of this suggestion:

http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mediawikinewuserrightsbureaucrats2en7.png
The limited bureaucrats interface, like the first image.

http://img66.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mediawikinewuserrightsstewards2ca7.png
The full stewards interface editing a remote user, like the second image.

In the limited interface, it's a bit odd to see nothing in "Member of:",
and can cause some confusion. However, I agree that there is a problem
with a long list of groups.

I think that the select lists may be better than the long list of
checkboxes (especially when there are many groups), and I've replaced
the first interface to the second one. However, another possibility is
using a checkboxes list in columns of 6 groups each, if the list is too
long.

Thanks for the feedback.

- --
#define Name RotemLiss
#define Mail mail-AT-rotemliss-DOT-com
#define Site www.rotemliss.com

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from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"maru dubshinki" wrote
> In comparison to normal human writing, this stuff's positively antipodean.

That would be why Gerard goes for it. I hear their screens scroll the other way, Down Under.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 15/08/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I just got a sidekick 3 phone, which has a nice big screen.  Wikipedia
> does not look good on it.  One problem is
> that I have to scroll through far too much auxiliary stuff before I can
> see the articles.

You should see links at the top of the page which allow jumping to
content or navigation.

Rob Church


from_name: Tom Holden

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
I would like to tentatively suggest that a link between paying money and
membership need not be a bad thing, before this idea is permanently dropped.
I apologize in advance if I'm saying things that have already been
said/rejected.

For me personally membership is about one thing and one thing only: giving
donators something for their money. As it currently stands people are
expected to cough up money with no guarantee as to what purpose their money
will be put, and no guarantee of any future input to the project. Yes there
are currently mechanisms by which any WP/WB/WC etc user has some input
(board elections), but short of a legal guarantee that the bylaws will not
be changed without a community referendum, this does not count for much.
Certainly instituting such a guarantee is one option, but my hunch is that
legally the "community" is on pretty shaky ground.

I know my contributions to Wikimedia projects are safe because of the
license. If the board did suddenly turn evil my contributions would not have
been wasted, as there's a high chance WP/WB/WC etc. would all fork into a
Wikimedia (now evil) branch and Newikimedia (good) branch.
At present though, as far as I can see there is no similar guarantee that my
money will be put to good use. I am sure I am not the only person this has
dissuaded from donating.

Wikimedia can currently be thought of as akin to a corporation in which
shareholders have no right to vote in AGMs, but the board members do conduct
opinion polls of their customers, some of which will no doubt also be
shareholders. Not a particularly good way to run a company, I'd suggest.

Some of the arguments why editing should not automatically result in
membership have already been made. Firstly the user base would be gigantic,
which dilutes the utility of the legal fall back provided by Florida law.
Secondly being an editor, even a competent one, does not go hand in hand
with understanding Wikimedia and what is necessary for its continued
existence and success. Thirdly, setting any kind of equivalence between
edits and paid membership is economically equivalent to paying people to
edit. (Say I have an account with an enough edits to be eligible for
membership. I can sell my membership (or my votes, same thing), for 1c less
than the going rate and be fairly sure of a buyer if there are any
unscrupulous forces trying to buy votes.) As I'm sure you can imagine this
is a bad idea in many ways, not least that it actually provides an economic
incentive for useless edits in the far from impossible situation of
individuals being prepared to pay for votes. (An intermediary stage of
userdom between joining and being an admin has been proposed, which relied
on community support for your edits, and yes if membership was linked to
this stage this problem would be ameliorated. However the concept of having
"community support for your edits" is surely on even shakier legal ground
than the community. The potentials for abuse of such a guideline and
resulting big law suits are not really sound legal grounds for an
organization.)

OK so you are now thinking, but what about the community? We surely do not
want Wikimedia to be controlled by those with money rather than those who
work on it. But this need not be the case even with a paying membership.

There are several ways of giving both the community and the membership
power. For example a community election of the current form could first be
held, with the total number of votes for each candidate being recorded. Each
member would then be asked to veto as many candidates as they deemed
inappropriate. Any candidate having received veto votes from over 50% of the
members who voted would be removed from the running. Of the remaining
candidates, the one(s) with the highest number of community votes would be
deemed to have been elected.

The community gets the principal say; the members get to remove
inappropriate candidates. Based on the discussions in this thread I think I
am not the only one who would view this as the "best of both worlds".

What is more, because of the membership the community have a guarantee that
their right to vote etc. will be protected by the board, as the membership
will largely be from the community (though I do not pretend it will be a
statistically random sample necessarily), and as members of the community
always have the option of becoming members if their rights are in danger.

As a final note many of mentioned the unfairness of membership dues on the
unemployed/those in third world countries etc. This is certainly a solvable
problem. (Indeed it is one that almost every multinational charity has
solved.) It is common practice to have an "unwaged" rate, and to adjust
membership fees in line with PPP adjusted GDP per head. The data's ready and
waiting on en.wikipedia...

Anyway just my two cents, sorry for contributing to what is already an
overcrowded discussion.

Tom (User:Cfp everywhere)


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

. The scope of the
> project should be
> "educational materials with a scientific grounding"

I do not think the scope can be so narrow.  I imagine
there is a place for art and music at WV.

BirgitteSB

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 8/15/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> maru dubshinki wrote:
>
> >On 8/15/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> ><charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>"maru dubshinki" wrote
> >>
> >>
> >>>In comparison to normal human writing, this stuff's positively antipodean.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>That would be why Gerard goes for it. I hear their screens scroll the other way, Down Under.
> >>
> >>Charles
> >>
> >>
> >He would. There's a reason Dante located the exit of Hell and the
> >mountain of Purgatory in the Southern Hemisphere...
> >
> Hmmm! Dante (1265-1321), Galileo (1564-1642). ;-)
>
> Ec

Are you accusing me of not knowing my Dante?

"The two poets escape by climbing the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing
through the center of the earth, emerging in the southern hemisphere
just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath a sky studded with stars."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy#Purgatorio

~maru


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Well-Roundedness.

Fairness.

WV:NOT operated by a greedy corporation with an agenda

That's just a start.

HAPPY WIKIVERSITY DAY!

On 8/15/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/15/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > > NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course
> > > context matters in how we
> > > understand and apply it.
> > >
> > > For example, a course which is highly biased and
> > > pushing some POV should
> > > be fixed, as we would quite
> > > properly consider it to be broken.
> > >
> > > But of course, as Cormac points out, some of what
> > > Wikiversity is going
> > > to be about is explorations of
> > > research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV
> > > applies, but it applies
> > > in a way that makes sense for this
> > > type of content.
> > >
> > > The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not
> > > apply" is that we would
> > > thereby open the door to lunatics
> > > (and there are lunatics!) trying to push extremely
> > > biased courses.  We
> > > can do better than that.
> > >
> > > --Jimbo
> > >
> >
> >
> > I think everyone is not quite on the same page here.
> > Although neutrality is going to be an important aspect
> > of Wikiversity.  WP:NPOV is not going to be the policy
> > in use there.  Mainly this is becuse Wikiversity is
> > not writiing encyclopedia articles.  Bias will take a
> > subtley different form on that project.  Just like
> > bias rears its' head on Wikisource in the form of
> > altered texts.  I do not believe it was something
> > people thought of early on at Wikisource, but it is
> > certainly what has transpired.  I am just trying to
> > guess as to how bias will try and work its way into
> > Wikiversity.  It may not be possible, we might have to
> > wait and find out when it happens.  WP:NPOV is about
> > how to counteract bias on WP.  I do not believe anyone
> > is suggesting counteracting bias at WV is not of the
> > utmost importance, just that WV will have approach it
> > in a unique way.
> >
> > Birgitte SB
> >
> >
>
>
> Yes, I think you've got me, Birgitte :-). I just think that NPOV (as I
> conceptualise it) is not a useful concept to apply to Wikiversity.
> Don't get me wrong - I wince just as much as anyone if someone will
> try to teach people that the world began 10,000 years ago ;-), but
> surely the point of education is to try to get people to think for
> themselves? I see no problem with provocative, even biased,
> educational materials - so long as people are given the wherewithal to
> critically evaluate them. I think we need an analogy to NPOV -
> "completeness" sounds better, but just not catchy enough :-)
>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Amgine

body:
On 15-Aug-06, at 5:27 PM, James Hare wrote:

> That's what I was thinking: Wikiversity hosts the lesson plans, and
> the
> lesson plans are based on books (courtesy of Wikibooks).

Lesson plans, multi-media content, workbooks, experiment suggestions,
even art materials are all a part of modern textbooks. Usually these
are a companion cd/dvd, or sold as "Teacher's book" or "Curriculum
kit" by the publisher. Unless Wikibooks has defined itself
exclusively as the dead-tree only textbook project, I can't imagine
why these would not be hosted Wikibooks.

Amgine

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