body:
Oy, Neuro-linguistic programming.

k

On 2/10/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [[Neuro-linguistic_programming]] has 259
>
> On 2/10/06, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> >
> > At time of writing, [[Medical analysis of circumcision]] has 150 inline
> > refs.
> >
> > On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 08:39 +0100, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > > [[Katie Holmes]]
> > >
> > > 85 footnotes and a similar number of "bibliography" entries.
> > >
> > > Can anyone top that? :)
> > >
> > > Steve
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] nobs on moderation

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Guettarda

> On 2/9/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> I always get worried when I see that word in one of your posts, David.
> > Nothing personal, but the thought of you in drag makes my
> blood run cold.
>
> On 2/9/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > I can vouch for this. David's a fair man, but hard.
>
> I think we're learning more than we want to about your and
> Davd's relationship ;)

An edgy one, to be sure! Perhaps I'm overly fond of wordplay, but honestly,
the first time I saw David's Travelcard photograph and realised that "Red
Drag Diva" was more than just an anagram, I shivered!

To explain further, David is a LiveJournal blogger, and he writes a witty,
entertaining and literate journal that reveals just how little of a life I
have in comparison. I occasionally dip into his blog but I think we're on
very different wavelengths.

By way of example, here's David's selection of userpics:
http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=reddragdiva

And here's mine. Who has the richer, more fun-filled life, I ask? And the
more entertaining way of describing it?

Peter (Skyring)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: IM interface

body:
"admin Yellowikis" <yellowikis at gmail.com>
wrote in message
news:40b4c2310602092357v74ace663g3d65303cd8b9eed7 at mail.gmail.com...
> I just stumbled upon this chat interface to Amazon and the BBC:
> Simply add:
> chat at insidemessenger.com to your MSN
> Messenger (or AOL) and start chatting.
> Something like this might make a cool way to search Wikipedia -
> especially if disambiguation pages could be integrated.

Gmane has munged whatever that email-like address you posted was.

Could you try again, in a format that won't get munged?

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] nobs on moderation

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Guettarda
>
> Yeah, I've seen David's blog.  My comment was just a bad
> joke, reading bothcomments as sexual innuendos.

Always a wise move with my throwaway lines!

Pete, raising a titter


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Guardian article: Doctoring the past
 - Wiki style (Patrick Barkham)

body:
Angela's mum saw me on Channel 4. :)

David Gerard wrote:
> Today's Guardian article is up:
>
>     http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1706597,00.html
>
> Not bad at all. Even my quote is accurate :-)
>
> Did anything hit TV news at all?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l at wikimedia.org
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: admin Yellowikis

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: IM interface

body:
Add:

chat (at) insidemessenger.com

as a contact in your MSN/AOL chat client.

Start a conversation, "Hello" will do.

It asks some simple questions and posts a link to the appropriate page
from amazon or the BBC.

Paul

On 2/10/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> "admin Yellowikis" <yellowikis at gmail.com>
> wrote in message
> news:40b4c2310602092357v74ace663g3d65303cd8b9eed7 at mail.gmail.com...
> > I just stumbled upon this chat interface to Amazon and the BBC:
> > Simply add:
> > chat at insidemessenger.com to your MSN
> > Messenger (or AOL) and start chatting.
> > Something like this might make a cool way to search Wikipedia -
> > especially if disambiguation pages could be integrated.
>
> Gmane has munged whatever that email-like address you posted was.
>
> Could you try again, in a format that won't get munged?
>
> HTH HAND
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Yellowikis is to Yellow Pages, as Wikipedia is to The Encyclopedia Britannica


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Captcha on nds.wikipedia.org

body:
> > Could somebody with the right for it please deactivate the Captcha at the new
> > users registration page on nds.wikipedia.org like it is deactivated on other
> > wikipedias? There is everyday activity on the wiki and we can handle good
> > with the incoming spam and vandalism. There is no need for this kind of
> > barrier.

Have you tried requesting this at bugzilla.wikimedia.org? The mailing
list isn't the best place to get issues like this resolved.

Angela.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Guardian article: Doctoring the past - Wiki style
	(Patrick Barkham)

body:
I find this a bit unfair:

>But Jimmy Wales, the Florida-based founder who was embarrassingly
exposed for tweaking his own entry,

For all the other examples, they cited the exact changes (removing
broken promises etc). We never said people couldn't modify their own
entries, after all.

Steve

On 2/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Today's Guardian article is up:
>
>     http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1706597,00.html
>
> Not bad at all. Even my quote is accurate :-)
>
> Did anything hit TV news at all?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK press: Guardian tomorrow

body:
On 2/10/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> but let the rest of us massage your edits into a usable form. This is
> how my interpretation of IAR differs from most: I actually think that
> we're *supposed* to ignore NPOV much, if not most of the time.

I agree with your interpretation. I recently wrote an intro for
[[Freddie Mercury]], which basically focuses on his good points. I
simply didn't have anything bad to add. I was presuming at the time I
added it that someone else would take the shine off, if needed.

I'd generally rather see a slightly positively-biased addition than no
addition at all. And probably the same for a slightly negative
addition.

Maybe we need a list of priorities for edits.
Number one priority: no copyvio
Number two: no vandalism

etc etc

Is this feasible?

Steve

> Contributing information and making sure that information is written
> from a NPOV are two separate tasks. Give us information in whatever
> form you're best able to and let other editors make sure it conforms
> to NPOV. (Writing polemics doesn't help us much, and neither does
> writing polemics but prefacing each point with "some say". On the
> other hand, if you write "the Spanish-American war was primarily
> caused by U.S. expansionism" and are able to give a source, we don't
> need to beat you over the head with a stick because we can rephrase
> it ourselves.)
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK press: Guardian tomorrow

body:
On 2/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe we need a list of priorities for edits.
> Number one priority: no copyvio
> Number two: no vandalism

Actually number two would be no libel, wouldn't it.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Nathan Carter

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipubs Project Proposal.

body:
I am not trying to shoot the idea down, it does have some merit, but if
you are going to put the proposal to the community and foundation (I am
not 100% sure of the project approval process) then that is the first
question you are going to be asked.
Cheers,
Nathan.

GerardM wrote:

>Hoi,
>It is not nice to say "RTFA" but it is said that the software DOES
>meet the requirements. Now there is information that would be nice to
>have; things like GPS information. It is also nice to know for pubs
>what they have on draught. This is something where a database makes
>sense.. So yes, the software may suffice but it is not difficult to
>come up with functionality that would enhance the product.
>
>Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>On 2/9/06, Nathan Carter <magnaboy at westnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>
>>What sort of information is on the site that could not be published on
>>Wikipedia, a project already ran by the Foundation?
>>Cheers,
>>Nathan
>>
>>admin at wikipubs.org wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>Yes the site currently exists, however this site was designed as a
>>>prototype to see if the mediawiki software and the wiki-type directory
>>>was appropriate. I have found that the software easily meets the
>>>requirements of the proposal and hence would be a possible future
>>>project. The demo site, email addresses and domains were purchased
>>>when I first came up with the idea and now am putting this forward for
>>>discussion as project proposal.
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>James.
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>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
>>
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-02-10

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brion Vibber schrieb:
>> This is outputting a <table> with no contents, which is technically invalid
>> HTML. The output fails the W3 validator. The fix is incomplete.
>>
> If you try a test page, you'll see that
> {|
> |}
> works just fine. What I tried to ask in my original mail was
> * is "{||}" (in one line) even correct syntax?
> * should we care? AFAIK, the line after "{|" may only contain parameters
> for <table>. So, ignoring "|}" and trying to close the table later is
> the correct behaviour.

We definitely care! The parser should never produce invalid HTML output, if it
does that's a bug.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060210/e0ac12b9/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Michiel van Hulst

subject: [Wikitech-l] IM interface

body:
Paul,

I recently posted a message to this mailinglist containing a status
question on the plans for a mediawiki API. With a API its possible to
develop all kind of programs, including chatsbots to interact with mediawiki(wikipedia).

But for sure, chatting your way trough wikipedia would be super!, I've
had some ideas about a chat interface against mediawiki.

To do so an API is mostlylikely needed in my opinion.

I will have a look at the possibility and the time effort corresponding to
the development of a wiki API.

Cheers,

Michiel

--
M.P.A. (Michiel) van Hulst

e: michiel at vanhulst.nu
w: http://michiel.vanhulst.nu

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006, admin Yellowikis wrote:

> I just stumbled upon this chat interface to Amazon and the BBC:
>
> Simply add:
> chat at insidemessenger.com to your MSN Messenger (or AOL) and start chatting.
>
> Something like this might make a cool way to search Wikipedia -
> especially if disambiguation pages could be integrated.
>
> Paul
>
> --
> Yellowikis is to Yellow Pages, as Wikipedia is to The Encyclopedia Britannica
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom has completely lost its mind

body:
On 2/10/06, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 04:01 +0000, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > On 2/10/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >
> > (I wrote:)
> > > >
> > > > Could we get out of the "Wikipedia is America" thing?
> > >
> > > Sure, as soon as St. Petersburg, Florida secedes from the Union.
> > >
> >
> > Um, what?
>
> I believe what he's getting at is the fact that the Wikimedia
> Foundation's database servers all reside in St. Petersburg, and the
> content on them is thus subject to United States and Florida law.

My suggestion pertained to a discussion of whether it was against the
law to advocate the use of illegal drugs in a userpage or userbox.  It
depends more the jurisdiction in which the person making the statement
resides at the time, than on the location of the server that carries
the statement.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Australian IRC channel: #wikimedia-au

body:
On 2/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> #wikimedia-au on Freenode has just been created, for Australians and
> Australian topics on, relating to, around and with even the vaguest
> tangential link to Wikimedia.

More specifically, it's for discussion about the proposed Australian
chapter of the Foundation:

[[m:Wikimedia Australia]]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
brion at pobox.com schrieb:
> An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:
>
> Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
> Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
>
I fixed these two a few days ago so they generate additional

 elements. Can someone please confirm that it works OK
now, so owe can fix parserTests.php to recognize that?

Note: This
{|
|}
now generates a (blank) table, while this
{||}
still wraps the whole rest of the text into a table in an attempt to
"rescue" the unrecognized table closing. What to do?
> Running test Simple category... FAILED!
>
This seems to work as well.

Magnus

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060210/aa624828/attachment.pgp>


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Let's consider this in context.  Your original article text was:

---

A '''Cart00ney''' (usually spelled with two zeroes) is a [[neologism]]
originallly coined in the [[Usenet]] [[newsgroup]]
[[news.admin.net-abuse.email]] to describe both [[spammer]]s who
threaten legal action to prohibit being described as spammers —
for example, being added to [[blacklist]]s — as well as the
threats themselves.

The use of the term is no longer restricted to spammers; it has expanded
from its orignal meaning to include, for example, those who threaten
[[Wikipedia]] administrators for taking action against them.

==External links==
*[http://www.spamfaq.net/terminology.shtml#cartooney Definition at
Spamfaq.net]
*[http://www.cart00ney.org/ a list of cart00neys]

{{compu-stub}}
{{vocab-stub}}

---

Savidan probably didn't recognize your name.  The article, as written,
did little to establish notability.  We delete dozens of articles on
neologisms every day, most of them by people who misunderstand the
nature of the project.  Many of them get speedied.

It's the authors responsibility to establish notability in the first
revision of new articles.  We don't have "patrolled edits" or any sort
of queues for RC patrollers to use to check back to see if an article
gets better after 30 minutes.

--
The Uninvited Co., Inc.
(a Delaware Corporation)


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?

body:
On Feb 10, 2006, at 3:10 AM, Mark Gallagher wrote:

> Except ... well ... what if they say "I'm a troll"?  Note that we
> have several users who do exactly that ...

I see nothing wrong with saying, "I'm a troll; that's my pastime, but
I don't engage in it on Wikipedia."

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


from_name: Jake Waskett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Most referenced article ever?

body:
At time of writing, [[Medical analysis of circumcision]] has 150 inline
refs.

On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 08:39 +0100, Steve Bennett wrote:
> [[Katie Holmes]]
>
> 85 footnotes and a similar number of "bibliography" entries.
>
> Can anyone top that? :)
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> brion at pobox.com schrieb:
>>
>>> An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:
>>>
>>> Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
>>> Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
>>>
>>>
>> I fixed these two a few days ago so they generate additional
>>

 elements. Can someone please confirm that it works OK
>> now, so owe can fix parserTests.php to recognize that?
>>
>
> How do you know you fixed it if it doesn't pass the parser test?
>
Because I looked at the HTML output of a test page?
> There are several possibilities:
> * The fix is wrong
> * The fix is incomplete, and didn't cover the test case
> * The test case is wrong
> * Differences in configuration or software versions cause different results in
> your run of the parser tests and my run of the parser tests.
>
And because of these possibilities, I asked someone to verify my findings.
>
> For reference, here's the long output from these two tests:
>
> Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
> --- /tmp/mwParser-913954976-expected    2006-02-10 11:02:44.000000000 +0000
> +++ /tmp/mwParser-913954976-actual      2006-02-10 11:02:44.000000000 +0000
> @@ -1 +1,3 @@
> +

> +

>
> This is outputting a
 with no contents, which is technically invalid
> HTML. The output fails the W3 validator. The fix is incomplete.
>
If you try a test page, you'll see that
{|
|}
works just fine. What I tried to ask in my original mail was
* is "{||}" (in one line) even correct syntax?
* should we care? AFAIK, the line after "{|" may only contain parameters
for
. So, ignoring "|}" and trying to close the table later is
the correct behaviour.
>
> Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
> --- /tmp/mwParser-1216448957-expected   2006-02-10 11:02:44.000000000 +0000
> +++ /tmp/mwParser-1216448957-actual     2006-02-10 11:02:44.000000000 +0000
> @@ -1,6 +1,4 @@
>

>
 caption
> -

> -

> -
> -

> +

> +
>
> This looks like it has all the right pieces, but the difference in whitespace
> arrangement causes the comparison to the expected output to fail. Fix the test
> case's expected output.
>
See, wasn't that hard :-)
>
>>> Running test Simple category... FAILED!
>>>
>>>
>> This seems to work as well.
>>
>
> Running test Simple category... FAILED!
> --- /tmp/mwParser-579799119-expected    2006-02-10 11:02:49.000000000 +0000
> +++ /tmp/mwParser-579799119-actual      2006-02-10 11:02:49.000000000 +0000
> @@ -1 +1 @@
> - User's Guide">MediaWiki User's Guide
> +MediaWiki_User's_Guide
>
> It looks like this test is trying to read from an internal structure which
> changed format. It probably needs to be fixed up somehow.
>
I'll have a look.

Magnus

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060210/0d07da28/attachment.pgp>


body:
On 2/10/06, Mark Gallagher > Ahh ... "I'm an X" is not blockable, but
trolling *is*.  I like your
> proposal.
>
> Except ... well ... what if they say "I'm a troll"?  Note that we have
> several users who do exactly that ...

Well, this has been discussed a bit in this thread. The short answer
is, as soon as they start acting as a troll, start treating them like
a troll. The complexity is whether loudly stating "I AM A TROLL SO
THERE" counts as trolling. Definitely a judgment call.

Steve


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

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

MacGyverMagic/Mgm stated for the record:

> Anyway. Sean, did you tag your in progress article with {{inuse}}?
> Upon returning did you talk to Savidan about his actions?

Answer One: No, I didn't tag it.  Frankly, I didn't think of it.  I
literally: realized my coffee cup was empty; stood up, realized I was
using my Windows box so I was in danger of crashing and losing my work,
bent over, threw an edit summary in the box, and hit "save."  When
returned after getting my coffee, I hit "edit," and saw the deletion
verbiage at the top of the edit box.  Nine (9) minutes had elapsed.
Thank Cthulhu Savidan got there before ten minutes had elapsed: all of
Wikipedia might have been destroyed.

I have learned from that mistake.  Never again will I add an article to
Wikipedia that is not completely and entirely perfect, with multiple
insistences of notability and scores of footnotes in place.  Wikipedia
does not allow works-in-progress; all contributions must be camera-ready
for world-wide publication or they will be obliterated on sight.

Answer Two: Yes, I left a note on his talk page, and he replied on mine.
 What difference does that make?  Does the burden of defending
information against obliteration fall on me, the contributor?  Or is the
burden on the obliterater to demonstrate why that particular information
should be deleted?  Actually, the answers to those questions are
disgustingly obvious; what I should be asking is /should/ the burden of
defending information be placed on the one building Wikipedia?
/Shouldn't/ the one who wants to obliterate information be required to
at least attempt to communicate with the one who wants to add it?

> The thing is, he can't mindread and it's not uncommon for people to leave
> things unfinished. If you're patrolling Recentchanges or Newpages, you don't
> have the time, to recheck if someone finished their article. It will take
> the speed out of your work.

0 NO3Z!!11!  DON'T TAKE THE SPEED OUT!!!11!!eleventy-one

> If you tag it with {{inuse}} or work on it in your userspace, you've got a
> lot lower chance of it getting deleted.

If I never contribute anything until it is utterly perfect, I'll have a
lower chance (maybe not a lot lower, I admit) of it getting deleted.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Careful. We don't want to
 sean at epoptic.org | learn from this. --Calvin
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD7QPTMAt1wyd9d+URAgptAJ99GLsvPU2tl+snA+mIiZJQtICrdACfZJN2
+m5VdSqf5qGMwWKGkqti81w=
=Y9sW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Delirium

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>>There's something sad about a situation where PR becomes the driving
>>force behind what we do.  It's equally disturbing when a bunch of
>>hypocrites loudly shout "IANAL", and then proceed in an attempt to
>>enforce the law that they don't know anything about.
>>
>>
>
>The good of the project is the driving force.  Of course PR has an effect.
>
>
This depends on what you define as contributing to "the good of the
project".  I would define it as something like contributing to the
ability to write a high-quality Free encyclopedia.  In that case, it's
unclear to what extent policing what sort of people contribute, and who
they may say they are, is a positive.  It's conceivable that we could
lose some good contributors who refuse to contribute to a project that
has neo-Nazi contributors (or Satanist contributors, or Stalinist
contributors), but it's also conceivable that we could lose some good
contributors who refuse to contribute to a project that has that sort of
vetting (or even themselves run afoul of it).

My personal opinion, as is probably obvious, is that it does the project
no good to wade into the morrass of trying to determine which opinions
are "across the line" and which are "offensive to me personally but not
bannable".

-Mark


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Google AdWords to promote Wikimedia sites

body:
Apparently it has already been decided to use the adwords to direct to
our fundraising pages, because Wikipedia is already known well enough.
I would like to disagree with this. My preference would be to use it
to attract people to some of the smaller Wikipedias (say, 1000 to 5000
articles). Those could really use some more people, and I think there
will be enough people who don't know that Wikipedia exists in their
own language, and not just in English, German and French.

Andre Engels

2006/2/8, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de>:
> Hi!
>
> Wikimedia Germany has been offered to participate in the Google Grants
> International-Programm. We can kidnly use Google AdWords to promote
> Wikimedia sites. Suggestions are needed to reasonably benefit:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_Grants
>
> Final dealine for suggestions is February 14th.
>
> Greetings,
> Jakob
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Kai Hüner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Add script to header

body:
Hello,

I'm trying to add a new javascript to the header block. I want to use the
function "addScript(...)" of the File "OutputPage.php" in an extension which
uses the hook "ParserAfterStrip". All this is working fine: While debugging,
I can see the given text is stored in the member "$this->mScripts" and I can
read the given text by using "getScript()".

The function "getScript(...)" is only used one time in the function
"outPage()" of the file "SkinTemplate.php" in this way:

$tpl->set('headscripts', $out->getScript());

But here the script is seen for the last time! It is NOT added to the
output.

I have no idea how to handle this, since to use this function
"addScript(...)" seams to be the right way for an extension. Please help me
to find my problem.

Best regards,
Kai Huener


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>Answer Two: Yes, I left a note on his talk page, and he replied on mine.
>
How come you didn't use your Staff of Arbcom to turn him into a
tiny little pile of ashes? 1/2 :-) We've got way too many noobs
running around pretending to be knowledgeable, and there seems to
be no incentive for them to learn.

Stan


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 2/10/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If we merge [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]] we get 45 +
> 169 + 54 + 72 + 32 = 372

But how many are duplicates?  I would guess that a lot of references would
be shared between the articles.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

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

Stan Shebs stated for the record:

> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>> Answer Two: Yes, I left a note on his talk page, and he replied on mine.
>>
> How come you didn't use your Staff of Arbcom to turn him into a
> tiny little pile of ashes? 1/2 :-) We've got way too many noobs
> running around pretending to be knowledgeable, and there seems to
> be no incentive for them to learn.
>
> Stan

I would have, but I've loaned my staff to Orrie while his is in the shop
for a tune-up.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Careful. We don't want to
 sean at epoptic.org | learn from this. --Calvin
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD7Q/zMAt1wyd9d+URAtffAJ45SToSvrbo7jzAdiQ/dt/UdNBG1ACeK4ie
QXDKHCykAJ8UD0xk42YyFMI=
=8qhy
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creating guidelines

body:
Habj (sweetadelaide at gmail.com) wrote:

>How do you do it on the other wikipedias? Do people just think to themselves
>"this is a good page, we need it, people should have this in mind" and then
>label it "guideline" to see if someone reverts? Are there formal procedures?
>Input from as many 'pedias as possible would be appreciated.

At some stage I will be going through as many as possible of the
guidelines on en: and rewriting them for clarity - and I encourage
others to do so (taking due care with talk page discussion,
ascertaining consensus, not getting radical, etc).

The basic notion I'm using is: guidelines require editorial judgement,
which is something you can't legislate. So you should aim guidelines
at clueful editors of good will, because editors of bad will won't
care, and editors who are clueless wouldn't understand them anyway.

As far as I can tell, one of the greatest sources of [[m:instruction
creep]] in guidelines on en: is when people put in sentences to try to
hit bad editors over the head with. This makes the guidelines so
bloated the good editors don't even look at them, and the bad ones
keep ignoring them anyway.

(A notable example is the Manual of Style on en: - it's so long and
detailed that the only use it gets is (a) editors who can't tolerate
any ambiguity or inconsistency writing to it; (b) editors quoting it
to try to battle other editors they disagree with. No-one actually
uses it as a reference because it's not possible.)

So. Guidelines: helpful guides for sensible editors of good will,
because no-one else cares.
Policy: things that have to be a certain way for things to work at
all. That's a VERY small set. NPOV, No Original Research, No Personal
Attacks ... 3RR on en: ....

How does that sound to you?

- d.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
On Tue, 2006-07-02 at 18:37 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> > without requiring a big name-clash-fixing step when the
>
> That step is inherent in the requirement of a single namespace.

It is (at least, now it is), which is why I think forcing a single
namespace is a mistake. Setting up a single namespace when multiple
wikis first started would have been great; right now, as you pointed
out, there are 600+ user namespaces, and a big untangling step is going
to be necessary to unify them.

I realize you think it will bring the entire Wikimedia community closer
together, but I'm dubious. Wikimedia projects have always had a very
wide berth as far as policy is concerned; my guess is that this top-down
social engineering effort is going to be poorly accepted. Most people's
first and perhaps only experience with the feature will be finding out
that their username has been taken away.

It also seems unfair that the people who benefit from the minor
convenience of not using a prefix won't actually be paying the price for
unifying the user namespace. I don't think people are going to like
losing their user names just so that I can feel like part of the gang by
logging in as Evan instead of meta:Evan on Ossetian Wikibooks. For my
part, I don't want to pretend that I'm just another user on Javanese
Wikisource or Kashubian Wiktionary; I'm simply and utterly not. I think
it's a benefit for people to know at a glance what language I normally
speak and what project(s) I'm most familiar with. It also makes it
significantly easier for other users to check my edits on my "main" wiki
and evaluate what kind of contributor I am.

I think loosely-coupled authentication with namespace-prefixed IDs is a
very realistic reflection of the current social environment in
Wikimedia. I think the trade-offs (prefixed user names vs. people losing
their accounts) are waaaay in favor of prefixes. I think that OpenID
single-sign-on would be a very, very big improvement for people who have
a lot of accounts. I also think that users who want to associate with
Wikimedia as a whole could easily use their user names from meta: or
commons:. And I think that single-sign-on techniques that require Web
servers to have database access to a global account DB (or -- nightmare!
-- to 600+ local account dbs) unnecessarily constrain server deployment
and will probably negatively impact performance.

Anyways, thanks for hearing me out. I know you've thought this through a
lot, and I realize you've already started cutting code on the
one-big-namespace feature. A lesser programmer wouldn't entertain other
options; I'm glad you took the time to respond.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
geni wrote:

>On 2/10/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>Does the burden of defending
>>information against obliteration fall on me, the contributor?
>>
>
>To a degree. There is a certian minium standard that the article is
>expected to meet (ie is expected not to look like a speedy candidate).
>Above that the burned heavily falls on anyone trying to delete the
>thing
>
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that AfD nominators
recognize the names of the longtime active editors, and to guess
that there might be a good reason for the article being in such
a state. I just don't see how someone with all of three weeks of
WP experience is going to have developed a good sense for what
should be in or out.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
geni wrote:

>On 2/10/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that AfD nominators
>>recognize the names of the longtime active editors, and to guess
>>that there might be a good reason for the article being in such
>>a state.
>>
>
>How many of the names on the admin list do you recognise?
>
All of them, of course - don't you? :-) The name of the editor is
the most useful way to triage a long list of changes - known
trustworthy editors almost always make good edits, everybody else
needs a closer look.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>Hi,
>  What I see wrong in this process is that the original author
>couldn't/wasn't willing to "save" the article.  This seems like the
>right order of events in these situations:
>
>Author writes hacky article
>RC patrol tags it as crap
>Author sees it tagged, sighs with indignation, removes tag, keeps working.
>
Current process doesn't allow for that however - once afd tag is
added, it's supposed to stay on until all the randoms get a chance
to vote on the article in its unfinished state. Even if you fix up
the article, most people don't go back and update their votes.
Even worse, if the vote is to delete, people will point to that as
a reason not to re-create a completed article later.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK press: Guardian tomorrow

body:
On 2/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The UK media has discovered the US Senate story and today is Media
> Batshit Day. I just did a Guardian interview for tomorrow (to be in
> both paper and online - the online version is 3x the size of the paper
> version, so it's always a good idea to ask!). So look out for it.

The Australian press has discovered it too:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18101931-2,00.html

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Peter Mackay

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Philip Welch
> Sent: Friday, 10 February 2006 14:56

> > Could we get out of the "Wikipedia is America" thing?
>
> Sure, as soon as St. Petersburg, Florida secedes from the Union.

Is this likely to happen again?

Pete, whistling dixie


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 2/10/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>
>>What about common bloody sense?
>>
>>
>
>As far as I can tell, many people have replaced IAR with ICS (Ignore
>Common Sense).  Either that or they have real difficulties.
>
>Yes, this is the policy I'd like, and that I use.  But that doesn't
>mean I think it's realistic.  After all, we do live in a real world.
>
When we start describing common sense as unrealistic we have a problem.

Ec


from_name: SP

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:PROD]] - a lightweight deletion process

body:
I used PROD this week to help a new user. Their very  first article was
speedy del. I switched the tag to PROD. Less WP:BITE. Before I could
leave a message on both editor's pages someone had fixed the article.
Found references, re-named it, and took the PROD tag off. The editor
that nom for speedy was nice about it. Seems like a good process. Better
way of communicating about borderline articles that need some investigation.

Sydney aka FloNight

David Gerard wrote:

>Interesting. Have a look. So far 52 people have signed up to watch it
>closely. Only objection I can think of is that it still doesn't
>involve notifying the article creator. But it strikes me as a damn
>good idea for getting the obvious off AFD and helping alleviate
>AFD-fatigue.
>
>
>- d.
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
I lack a sufficiently colourful oath to express my reaction. 259!

Steve

On 2/10/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Neuro-linguistic_programming]] has 259


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
I suppose the thing that surprises me about this is the fact that people tag
work without taking a look at who the author is.  Sure, if you see something
brand new by an anon or by a redlinked name, you may want to take a careful
look at it.  If, on the other hand, you see something by Sean, you take for
granted that established contributors tend not to write "selfref
neologisms".  If you see something like that from someone like Sean (or like
Dunc, which was what sparked a mess a few months ago) you give them the
benefit of the doubt - bookmark the page, maybe add it to your "to do" list
- but don't afd it.  To be honest, if you see something brand new by a new
author you give them a chance to clean it up as well.  Shooting first and
asking questions later is bound to only cause bad blood.  In Sean's case, it
isn't going to drive him away, but a new editor could easily be driven off.

Ian

On 2/10/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> >Answer Two: Yes, I left a note on his talk page, and he replied on mine.
> >
> How come you didn't use your Staff of Arbcom to turn him into a
> tiny little pile of ashes? 1/2 :-) We've got way too many noobs
> running around pretending to be knowledgeable, and there seems to
> be no incentive for them to learn.
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Gareth Hughes

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
I sympathize, but, in the end, we can only judge articles by what they
are now and what's in their history. We can hazzard a guess that an
article is going to improve rapidly into an encyclopaedic golden
apple, but the chance of that happening seems less likely when the
article is called [[cart00ney]] (with two zeros). I'm not saying that
we can't have good articles with names like this, but, on average,
this stuff isn't. If I had Savidan's watchlist, I might have done the
same.

And the moral of the story is: don't press that 'Save page' button
until your article looks like it's going somewhere good.

Alternative solution: create a 'Gone for coffee, back in 10' template.
Unfortunate side-effect of such an alternative: out of the AFD into
the TFD!

Gareth Hughes.

On 10/02/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> This morning I began the process of writing [[cart00ney]] (with two
> zeros).  I saved my work when I got up to refill my coffee, and when I
> returned, [[User:Savidan]] had nominated my incomplete stub for deletion
> with the cryptic reason "apparent nn selfref neologism."  The article
> had existed for a grand total of nine (9) minutes.  Savidan made no
> attempt to contact me, and made no effort to discuss the obviously
> in-progress article on its talk page.
>
> Perhaps the full article would still be an "apparent nn selfref
> neologism," whatever that is.  Perhaps the full article would deserve to
> be obliterated with all the contempt that the AfD regulars regularly
> heap on articles they don't understand or simply dislike.  Perhaps it
> would belong in Wikipedia.  You'll never know now.  Nine (9) minutes
> after it was begun, Savidan eagerly began the process of destroying it
> before its creation had completed.
>
> I don't really think we needed further demonstrations of the
> disgustingly toxic assumptions of bad faith that are inextricably
> integral to the entire AfD process, but I will take this opportunity to
> thank Savidan for yet another demonstration of how despicable it is.
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | Careful. We don't want to
>  sean at epoptic.org | learn from this. --Calvin
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFD7LcPMAt1wyd9d+URAtJMAJ9xLtS51w8hdfghMtSTT24rB11OOQCfYym7
> u5pBgyHNRl3q4+N10pBbQG4=
> =9qCT
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
It seems the next policy must be [[Wikipedia:Avoid
over-verifiability]] ([[WP:AOV]])!

Gareth Hughes.

On 10/02/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we merge [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]] we get 45 +
> 169 + 54 + 72 + 32 = 372
>
> On 2/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I lack a sufficiently colourful oath to express my reaction. 259!
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > On 2/10/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > [[Neuro-linguistic_programming]] has 259
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I don't see why the RC patrol should not tag it as crap, if, indeed,
> it was crap. I don't think Sean is disputing that his article was
> crap, just that he was planning on making it better. If he doesn't put
> an in progress tag on it (and I've never actually seen one, to be
> honest), then it's not unreasonable that he has to fish his
> half-finished crap out of the bin before he can keep turning it into a
> masterpiece.
>
> Steve

Actually, it wasn't crap.  Have a look at the stub that was {{afd}}'d
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cart00ney&oldid=39073156

It's tagged as a stub, it's referenced - it's far from being an FA, but it's
nowhere near "crap" (not in a general Wikipedia context)

Ian


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 2/10/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> On 8 Feb 2006 at 22:49, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 2/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > > But you would impose US law even in a country where smoking weed is legal.
> >
> > Given that most of our users and most significant press coverage is
> > American, yes.  That is why I drew the line there.  Yes, I know it
> > isn't perfect.  But it's better than anything else I've seen.
>
> But it's not against U.S. law to discuss, or advocate, smoking weed.
> After all, "High Times" magazine is published in the United States.
> Some of the government's drug warriors have wished they could ban all
> advocacy of drug use as well as the drug use itself, but so far the
> First Amendment has stopped them.

No.  But it's bad publicity to say that we accept people who break the
law and proclaim it proudly.  No, it's not a legal necessity.  But it
is a public relations matter, and I see no reason why it should not be
applied.

Can anyone think of an alternative line to draw?

--
Sam


body:
On 2/10/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 8 Feb 2006, at 22:10, Sam Korn wrote:
> >
> > I'd go as far as saying that all content saying that someone breaks US
> > law should be forbidden as well.
>
> Why? Not only do we have articles about people who have broken US (and
> other countries) law, we can expect contributors who have too. After
> all [[Civil disobedience]] is important, just to mention one thing.
> I dont expect most people who have broken US law to write about the
> laws they have broken and be irredeemably NPOV. In fact I wonder how
> many excellent contributors we have in prison - it is contributions
> that count (in fact if I was incarcerated at Her Majesty's Pleasure
> right now it would give me far more time to work on wikipedia -
> maybe I should go and rob a bank).

Obviously there are times when this is not applicable.  But, in the
majority of cases, it is not useful to Wikipedia for users to proclaim
that they break the law.  It's a public relations exercise, not a
legal necessity.  And to say that you are in prison is quite different
from saying "I break the law regularly".

--
Sam


from_name: Carl Fûrstenberg

body:
If we merge [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]] we get 45 +
169 + 54 + 72 + 32 = 372

On 2/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I lack a sufficiently colourful oath to express my reaction. 259!
>
> Steve
>
> On 2/10/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [[Neuro-linguistic_programming]] has 259
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Hello,
  To slightly play devil's advocate, I was recently playing with the
anti vandalism tools and several times came across new articles that
had been created. One was [[Gortex]], clearly a mis-spelling for
[[Gore-Tex]]. So I wiped it and replaced it with a redirect. Fair
enough, right?

Another was an apparent copyvio - I added a copyvio template. Still ok?

Then I came across [[GoogLunaPlex]] (sp?) It sounded like some sort of
April Fool's joke or hoax or something. I put {deletebecause|probably
hoax} or something on it. The trouble is, I wasn't really sure. What
would be nice if there was a tag that said "At first glance, this is
junk. Can someone please check this, and either remove this template,
or complete the nomination". Instead, the only tag I know of basically
says "This evil piece of trash needs to die now".

Hence your hurt feelings.

There are a lot of crap articles that created. I don't think tagging
them for deletion is necessarily "assuming bad faith" - I believe the
Gortex example was an editor working in good faith. It's simply a
necessarily brusque way of dealing with a large number of articles of
questionable worth.

I did come across another article called "Hook-catch" or something
which I probably could have given your description of "apparent nn
selfref neologism." It sounded like some term that a couple of kids
had made up to describe getting their genitals caught in something -
at first glance. I labelled it for deletion, but again, would have
been very happy for someone to unlabel it if they had the faintest
clue what it was actually about.

Steve

On 2/10/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> This morning I began the process of writing [[cart00ney]] (with two
> zeros).  I saved my work when I got up to refill my coffee, and when I
> returned, [[User:Savidan]] had nominated my incomplete stub for deletion
> with the cryptic reason "apparent nn selfref neologism."  The article
> had existed for a grand total of nine (9) minutes.  Savidan made no
> attempt to contact me, and made no effort to discuss the obviously
> in-progress article on its talk page.
>
> Perhaps the full article would still be an "apparent nn selfref
> neologism," whatever that is.  Perhaps the full article would deserve to
> be obliterated with all the contempt that the AfD regulars regularly
> heap on articles they don't understand or simply dislike.  Perhaps it
> would belong in Wikipedia.  You'll never know now.  Nine (9) minutes
> after it was begun, Savidan eagerly began the process of destroying it
> before its creation had completed.
>
> I don't really think we needed further demonstrations of the
> disgustingly toxic assumptions of bad faith that are inextricably
> integral to the entire AfD process, but I will take this opportunity to
> thank Savidan for yet another demonstration of how despicable it is.
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | Careful. We don't want to
>  sean at epoptic.org | learn from this. --Calvin
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFD7LcPMAt1wyd9d+URAtJMAJ9xLtS51w8hdfghMtSTT24rB11OOQCfYym7
> u5pBgyHNRl3q4+N10pBbQG4=
> =9qCT
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Brion Vibber

body:
Jitse Niesen wrote:
> On 2/10/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> We definitely care! The parser should never produce invalid HTML output, if it
>> does that's a bug.
>
> This relates to a problem that I'm having. At the moment, MediaWiki
> relies on HTML Tidy to close HTML tags if necessary.

The optional use of tidy is a temporary hack that got put in rather than fix up
the parser's own HTML balancing code, which is a horrible piece of crap that I
wrote in 2002 when I didn't know what the hell I was doing. :)

If you'd like try rewriting it so it balances end tags properly, detects illegal
nesting cases, and understands MathML, that would be super awesome.

This is part of Sanitizer::removeHTMLtags() (which has two branches, one which
runs the old fixup code and one which leaves nesting issues for tidy to poke at
later).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060210/94841904/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK press: Guardian tomorrow

body:
On 2/10/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is hardly exempt, as we all know. However, there's always that
> [edit] button, and how often do we wish that there was something similar for
> newspaper sites, eh?

Not just newspaper sites - pretty much every document I come across
anywhere I wish I could edit. Then again, I am (as of a month ago) a
professional technical writer...:)

Steve


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards better 404s on a personal MediaWiki site?

body:
Hi All,

I'm trying to come up with a better 404 response for a small personal
homepage site that runs on MediaWiki 1.5.6.

At the moment in the .htaccess I have this:
=============================================
[holt]$ cat .htaccess
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?title=404_Not_Found
[holt]$
=============================================

And in the "404_Not_Found" article I have this:

=============================================
Whatever you were looking for, it's not here any more.

To find it, please try the [[Main Page|homepage]], or see the
[[Special:Allpages|site map]] below, or use the search option on the
left.

----

{{Special:Allpages}}
=============================================

It's better than nothing, but it's not ideal, for 2 reasons:
* It also shows the "Display pages starting at:" and "Namespace:"
query parts of the "Special:Allpages" form, and I do wish it wouldn't.
* It doesn't search on the terms of the 404. Ideally I would want it
to be like the user searching on the missing page, and include the
"Article title matches" and the "Page text matches" sections of the
search result (if any), but again without the "Search in namespaces"
form stuff.

So basically:
* Few sentences of blurb explaining it's missing.
* Search results based on the URL of what they search for (only if
there were search results), without the Search form.
* Then a list of Allpages (but without the form).

Without writing a new "Special" page, is there any way to do something
like this? Or would it have to be done via a special page? Or is there
something that would do one of the above two things (either Allpages
inclusion without form, or search results inclusion without form)
without having to make a new special page?

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
> I like it. I still prefer pure wiki deletion, but this is pretty
> similar in
> a lot of important respects. I'd endorse it as a complete
> replacement of
> AFD.

That's impossible--PROD can't handle contested deletions, only
uncontested.

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


body:
>> That's impossible--PROD can't handle contested deletions, only
>> uncontested.
>
> Any particular reason why?

All you need to stop PROD is one person to remove the tag. In a
dispute, people would edit war over the PROD tag until finally
settling down and having a consensus-finding discussion?i.e.,
engaging in the AfD process.

This is why PROD is only a partial replacement. That said, we can
reform AfD so that we don't launch headfirst into the voting (yes.
VOTING)  process and actually discuss our concerns first, with the
help of an impartial admin-facilitator whose job is to carry out the
ultimate decision. This sounds laborious but if PROD can handle most
of the load we can spare the resources.

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


body:
On 2/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Why should drawing a line be so important?  Giving users the maximum
> flexibility to express who they are is good for everybody, because the
> whole world then has a transparent view of where that individual is
> coming from.

OK, with the premise that some line needs to be drawn to regulate the
content of userpages, can anyone think of a better line to be drawn?

> Nobody is even promoting that people should proclaim that they are
> breaking the law.  It's a big leap from someone saying that he smokes
> weed to his proclaiing that he is breaking the law.  If what people say
> is tantamount to admitting to breaking the law we can offer them no
> protection against self-incrimination.

I didn't use this example.

> There's something sad about a situation where PR becomes the driving
> force behind what we do.  It's equally disturbing when a bunch of
> hypocrites loudly shout "IANAL", and then proceed in an attempt to
> enforce the law that they don't know anything about.

The good of the project is the driving force.  Of course PR has an effect.

> A better approach might be to put a disclaimer at the top of every user
> page saying that the page represents the views of the user alone, and
> that we collectively accept no responsibility for what this person says
> even though it may sometimes be outrageous.

Where does that get the encyclopaedia?

> Wikipedia got where it is by applying a vision boldly, not by engaging
> in a PR paranoia game.  To be sure being bold puts the leaders on a
> media hotseat. The media thrive on confrontationist journalism, but
> respecting free speech is not a defect.   They should be encouraging
> free speech, not manipulating interviewees into making distorted and
> compromising statements.  Sometimes what is written or spokend does
> ignite the passions of the ignorant into stupid action, but if we allow
> that argument to hold sway we are dumbing down our efforts for the sake
> of pandering to our societies' lowest common denominators.  We end up
> sacrificing NPOV because we are afraid that some of the constituents
> that must be balanced to achieve neutrality are too embarassing or too
> contentious.

Somehow we got onto talking about NPOV.  As has been declared so loud,
so often recently, NPOV need not apply to userpages.  Thus we can
censor however we like.

--
Sam


body:
>>>> That's impossible--PROD can't handle contested deletions, only
>>>> uncontested.
>>>
>>> Any particular reason why?
>>
>> All you need to stop PROD is one person to remove the tag. In a
>> dispute, people would edit war over the PROD tag until finally
>> settling down and having a consensus-finding discussion?i.e.,
>> engaging in the AfD process.
>
> You are aware that bald reversion is not allowed and that rules like
> [[WP:3RR]] -- or any admin with sense -- will stop it, right? Do
> you know
> that this is exactly the same kind of canned non-objection that an
> uninitiated person makes against the very idea of an encyclopedia that
> anyone can edit?

Right?and the reason we're disallowed from edit warring is because we
make those decisions from consensus-finding discussions, which is the
entire part of what I said that you just completely ignored in favor
of making a personal attack. Charming.

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


body:
>>> You are aware that bald reversion is not allowed and that rules like
>>> [[WP:3RR]] -- or any admin with sense -- will stop it, right? Do
>>> you know
>>> that this is exactly the same kind of canned non-objection that an
>>> uninitiated person makes against the very idea of an encyclopedia
>>> that
>>> anyone can edit?
>>
>> Right?and the reason we're disallowed from edit warring is because we
>> make those decisions from consensus-finding discussions, which is the
>> entire part of what I said that you just completely ignored in favor
>> of making a personal attack. Charming.
>
> I didn't make a personal attack. I attacked your objection.

Fine, but you still ignored the main point of my argument which was,
and I quote, "until finally settling down and having a consensus-
finding discussion?i.e., engaging in the AfD process."

To repeat myself, any dispute over placement of a PROD tag would
ultimately result in "finally settling down and having a consensus-
finding discussion?i.e., engaging in the AfD process."

In other words, just as normal edit wars are discouraged in favor of
"settling down and having a consensus-finding discussion", edit wars
over PROD tags would *ideally* be replaced with "settling down and
having a consensus-finding discussion" would, in the case of a PROD
dispute, constitute, in effect, "engaging in the AfD process".

In summary, any dispute over the placement of a PROD tag would, at
best, result in "having a consensus-finding discussion?i.e., engaging
in the AfD process".

(I hope that was clear.)

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


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Jesse W wrote:
> On Feb 9, 2006, at 11:39 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>> [[Katie Holmes]]
>>
>> 85 footnotes and a similar number of "bibliography" entries.
>>
>> Can anyone top that? :)
>
> Pardon the shameless plug, but
>
> [[Warren Beatty/References]] probably has more.
>

I thought I moved that somewhere. Oh well.

--
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 556 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060210/134630a2/attachment.pgp


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: UK press: Guardian tomorrow

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 2/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Maybe we need a list of priorities for edits.
>>Number one priority: no copyvio
>>Number two: no vandalism
>>
>>
>Actually number two would be no libel, wouldn't it.
>
>
Actually, no. No libel is #1. No copyright infringement is #1A. But if I
had to prioritize, for both legal and PR reasons I would put eliminating
libel first. No vandalism is a distant #3, assuming the vandalism
doesn't put anyone in legal jeopardy.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikipedia-l] So much for GFDL compatibility with cc-by-sa

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
<snip>
> The resulting confusion caused by CC's mix of vastly different
> licenses has cause a project which had the potential to increase the
> free content out there to actually decrease it.
>

So at what point can we expect the FSF to release a statement entitled
"Creative Commons Considered Harmful"?

--
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 556 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20060210/30dd36cc/attachment.pgp


body:
On 2/10/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> What about common bloody sense?

As far as I can tell, many people have replaced IAR with ICS (Ignore
Common Sense).  Either that or they have real difficulties.

Yes, this is the policy I'd like, and that I use.  But that doesn't
mean I think it's realistic.  After all, we do live in a real world.

Even with "edit this page".

--
Sam


body:
Interesting. Have a look. So far 52 people have signed up to watch it
closely. Only objection I can think of is that it still doesn't
involve notifying the article creator. But it strikes me as a damn
good idea for getting the obvious off AFD and helping alleviate
AFD-fatigue.

- d.


body:
On 2/10/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, with the premise that some line needs to be drawn to regulate the
> content of userpages, can anyone think of a better line to be drawn?

I proposed disallowing potentially controversial opinions. Or some
phrasing that discourages people from "hit and run" type statements
that can't be debated by virtue of user pages being off limits.

Sorry to say I don't see what smoking marijuana has to do with
anything, or why it would be a problem that someone proudly proclaims
to be a marijuana smoker on their user page.

Steve


from_name: Jesse W

body:
On Feb 10, 2006, at 1:19 AM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

> Jesse W wrote:
>> On Feb 9, 2006, at 11:39 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>> [[Katie Holmes]]
>>>
>>> 85 footnotes and a similar number of "bibliography" entries.
>>>
>>> Can anyone top that? :)
>>
>> Pardon the shameless plug, but
>>
>> [[Warren Beatty/References]] probably has more.
>
> I thought I moved that somewhere. Oh well.
You did; I just forgot to call it Talk:Warren Beatty/References

Jesse W


from_name: Giuseppe Delfino

subject: [Wikipedia-l] (no subject)

body:
Hello,i would to create a wikipedia version in Griko,that is a greek dialect
spoken in Southern Italy.It is disappearing and i hope to save and spread
it...i'll wait for your reply

_________________________________________________________________
Personalizza MSN Messenger con sfondi e fotografie!
http://www.ilovemessenger.msn.it/


body:
On Feb 10, 2006, at 3:37 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Not  a bad idea. It gives people time to work on an article and
> doesn't get
> the immediate hit your article is being AFDed, but is there some
> safeguard
> in place against people removing the tag?
>
> If someone removes an AFD tag, you still have the central listing. What
> happens if they remove a prod tag? Do I have to watchlist it and hope
> it is
> the last edit on the article if I check it?
There is a log of the current status of any article which has had the
PROD tag added to it at any time; i.e. if someone removes the tag, it
shows up in this log - with the username, edit summary, and the current
status of the article(AfD'd, deleted, copyvio, etc) visible in the log.
  That log is here:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/queries/en_prod_history

Also, there is the currently tagged log (
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/queries/
en_proposed_deletion ), which lists the time the article was tagged,
the article name, the reason provided, and the number of hours
remaining before the article can be deleted.  Overall, there is *more*
information available about a PROD'ed article than is available about a
AfD'ed article, although we could of course fix this with proper
coding.

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 10 Feb 2006, at 20:01, David Gerard wrote:

> Interesting. Have a look. So far 52 people have signed up to watch it
> closely. Only objection I can think of is that it still doesn't
> involve notifying the article creator. But it strikes me as a damn
> good idea for getting the obvious off AFD and helping alleviate
> AFD-fatigue.

I looked through the articles and it all seemed reasonable. Will
have another scan soon.

Lets see how it affects AfD.

Notify author would be nice - I hope people do it even if its optional.

Justinc


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Then I came across [[GoogLunaPlex]] (sp?) It sounded like some sort of
> April Fool's joke or hoax or something. I put {deletebecause|probably
> hoax} or something on it. The trouble is, I wasn't really sure. What
> would be nice if there was a tag that said "At first glance, this is
> junk. Can someone please check this, and either remove this template,
> or complete the nomination". Instead, the only tag I know of basically
> says "This evil piece of trash needs to die now".

There's already such a template it's called {{afd}}.
Anyway. Sean, did you tag your in progress article with {{inuse}}?
Upon returning did you talk to Savidan about his actions?

The thing is, he can't mindread and it's not uncommon for people to leave
things unfinished. If you're patrolling Recentchanges or Newpages, you don't
have the time, to recheck if someone finished their article. It will take
the speed out of your work.

If you tag it with {{inuse}} or work on it in your userspace, you've got a
lot lower chance of it getting deleted.

Mgm


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
I like it. I still prefer pure wiki deletion, but this is pretty similar in
a lot of important respects. I'd endorse it as a complete replacement of
AFD.

Ryan

On 2/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Interesting. Have a look. So far 52 people have signed up to watch it
> closely. Only objection I can think of is that it still doesn't
> involve notifying the article creator. But it strikes me as a damn
> good idea for getting the obvious off AFD and helping alleviate
> AFD-fatigue.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 2/10/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> That's impossible--PROD can't handle contested deletions, only
> uncontested.

Any particular reason why?


body:
Watchlist. That's how I knew that someone was working on the article I
listed.
Sydney aka FloNight

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 2/11/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 2/11/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Not  a bad idea. It gives people time to work on an article and doesn't
>>>
>>>
>>get
>>
>>
>>>the immediate hit your article is being AFDed, but is there some
>>>
>>>
>>safeguard
>>
>>
>>>in place against people removing the tag?
>>>
>>>If someone removes an AFD tag, you still have the central listing. What
>>>happens if they remove a prod tag? Do I have to watchlist it and hope it
>>>
>>>
>>is
>>
>>
>>>the last edit on the article if I check it?
>>>
>>>
>>>From the proposal page, it seems that removing the tag is the method
>>for contesting deletion. The remover is advised to improve the
>>article, to tag it for cleanup or similar, or to send it to AfD, but
>>these are all suggestions.
>>
>>Much of it would seem to depend on the person who first addresses the
>>tag, and on which of these courses of action they choose. Hopefully
>>people will choose wisely!
>>
>>
>
>
>But suppose for a moment this is someone with no intention of improving the
>article or taking it to AFD because they think they own the article. How
>would one notice?
>
>Mgm
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


body:
On 2/10/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> >> That's impossible--PROD can't handle contested deletions, only
> >> uncontested.
> >
> > Any particular reason why?
>
> All you need to stop PROD is one person to remove the tag. In a
> dispute, people would edit war over the PROD tag until finally
> settling down and having a consensus-finding discussion?i.e.,
> engaging in the AfD process.

You are aware that bald reversion is not allowed and that rules like
[[WP:3RR]] -- or any admin with sense -- will stop it, right? Do you know
that this is exactly the same kind of canned non-objection that an
uninitiated person makes against the very idea of an encyclopedia that
anyone can edit?

This is why PROD is only a partial replacement. That said, we can
> reform AfD so that we don't launch headfirst into the voting (yes.
> VOTING)  process and actually discuss our concerns first, with the
> help of an impartial admin-facilitator whose job is to carry out the
> ultimate decision. This sounds laborious but if PROD can handle most
> of the load we can spare the resources.

I'm willing to listen to any ideas about reforming AFD, but I tend to think
that the whole idea of AFD is like putting a round peg in a square hole, and
that it is probably a better idea to just scrap the whole thing rather than
waste time fixing something that is fundamentally broken.

Ryan


body:
On 2/10/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> > You are aware that bald reversion is not allowed and that rules like
> > [[WP:3RR]] -- or any admin with sense -- will stop it, right? Do
> > you know
> > that this is exactly the same kind of canned non-objection that an
> > uninitiated person makes against the very idea of an encyclopedia that
> > anyone can edit?
>
> Right?and the reason we're disallowed from edit warring is because we
> make those decisions from consensus-finding discussions, which is the
> entire part of what I said that you just completely ignored in favor
> of making a personal attack. Charming.

I didn't make a personal attack. I attacked your objection.

Ryan


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/10/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Thank Cthulhu Savidan got there before ten minutes had elapsed: all of
> Wikipedia might have been destroyed.
>

Nine minutes is unacceptably slow for NP patrol. Looks like we may
need more recurets

>Does the burden of defending
> information against obliteration fall on me, the contributor?

To a degree. There is a certian minium standard that the article is
expected to meet (ie is expected not to look like a speedy candidate).
Above that the burned heavily falls on anyone trying to delete the
thing

--
geni


from_name: Kai Hüner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding "onmouseover" in extension

body:
Hello,

I'm trying to create an extension which has a tooltip to show information.
To show the tooltip, I need an "onMouseOver" to call the
javaScript-Function. But when I try my hook to return a string like

"Hello World!" this string is escaped like "<a
onMouseOver ... </a>". What can I do??? If I try to use a -Tag,
the "onMouseOver"-Attribute is not shown (Why this???)

Please tell me how to handle this.

Best regards,
Kai Huener


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Steve,

>   Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.

A noble sentiment, to be sure.  Personally I'd like to see paedophiles
gone from the site, but I accept that I don't actually have a logical,
unemotional argument to back me up, so I'm not going to run around
advocating such.

> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.

Ahh ... "I'm an X" is not blockable, but trolling *is*.  I like your
proposal.

Except ... well ... what if they say "I'm a troll"?  Note that we have
several users who do exactly that ...

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.4/255 - Release Date: 9/02/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/10/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that AfD nominators
> recognize the names of the longtime active editors, and to guess
> that there might be a good reason for the article being in such
> a state.

How many of the names on the admin list do you recognise?

>I just don't see how someone with all of three weeks of
> WP experience is going to have developed a good sense for what
> should be in or out.
>
> Stan

which is why they don't have the delete button.

--
geni


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] (no subject)

body:
Hi Giuseppe,

I was about this some time ago - I have some contacts when it comes to
Griko there are already some communities caring about it - the thing is:
you need to get them to co-operate and you will really have a great success.

I am copying this message to the Italian wikipedia list and to Lucia
Clark who time agou helped me with the contacts. If we could get this
going, that would be great.

Ciao, Sabine

Giuseppe Delfino wrote:

> Hello,i would to create a wikipedia version in Griko,that is a greek
> dialect spoken in Southern Italy.It is disappearing and i hope to save
> and spread it...i'll wait for your reply
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Personalizza MSN Messenger con sfondi e fotografie!
> http://www.ilovemessenger.msn.it/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice: chiama da PC a telefono a tariffe esclusive
http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/10/06, Mark Gallagher > Ahh ... "I'm an X" is not blockable, but
> trolling *is*.  I like your
>
>>proposal.
>>
>>Except ... well ... what if they say "I'm a troll"?  Note that we have
>>several users who do exactly that ...
>
>
> Well, this has been discussed a bit in this thread. The short answer
> is, as soon as they start acting as a troll, start treating them like
> a troll. The complexity is whether loudly stating "I AM A TROLL SO
> THERE" counts as trolling. Definitely a judgment call.
>

Is mentioning the GNAA (and AFDing it) Wikipedia's equivalent of
invoking Godwin's Law?

--
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 556 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060210/8984e7ca/attachment.pgp


body:
On Feb 10, 2006, at 10:33 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> A few thoughts on the matter:
>
> - Complementary to the {{prod}} tag is {{prod-2}}, which says "I agree
> with this nomination".
{{prod-2}} is depreciated by many users/supporters of PROD.  Either the
person adding it thinks it is controversial(i.e. someone will want to
keep it), in which case it should be listed on AfD, or they don't think
anyone will disagree with their view on it(i.e. that it should be
deleted) in which case tagging it with {{prod-2}} is redundant and a
waste of time.  (All this is my opinion only of course)

> - For articles that have been tagged with {{prod}}, but the deletion is
> disputed for reasons which cannot immediately be expressed in the
> article, {{hangon}} (currently used to contest CSDs)
No.  This is really seriously wrong.  (pardon the caps, but this is
important) *If The Deletion Is Disputed For Any Reason, The PROD Tag
Should Be Removed*.  That's fundamental to the process - there is no
such thing as different classes of disputes with the deletion - anyone
who thinks the article should not be deleted(for any reason or no
reason) should remove the tag.  PROD is for uncontroversial deletions,
AfD(or some other process) is for controversial ones.  It is really
important to keep these separate.

Jesse Weinstein


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Actually, you should both communicate - which you have done. It's simply not
practical to contact someone for every deletion you want to do especially if
you believe it breaks the rules (which I would when you start an article
with "X is a neologism...". But really who starts isn't really important.

I think this was simply a misunderstanding on Savidan's part which wouldn't
have happened if you ran out of coffee. Just an unfortunate get together of
circumstances.

I'm still wondering why it matters if someting is tagged within 9 minutes of
its creation or after 30 minutes, 3 days, or 6 months. The point of
recentchanges patrol is to get to stuff that needs to be deleted before too
many people see it. People who want to delete something need to give a
reason why (which was probably "non-notable neologism" in this case).
Creators need to make sure they establish notability early on, preferably in
their first edit.

I think you can continue editing without running into any problems with
half-finished articles by simply tagging them. You can't overlook an
{{inuse}} tag and it's easy to apply.

It would be a shame to see someone stop contributing less than perfect
articles over one incident.

Mgm

On 2/10/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm stated for the record:
>
> > Anyway. Sean, did you tag your in progress article with {{inuse}}?
> > Upon returning did you talk to Savidan about his actions?
>
> Answer One: No, I didn't tag it.  Frankly, I didn't think of it.  I
> literally: realized my coffee cup was empty; stood up, realized I was
> using my Windows box so I was in danger of crashing and losing my work,
> bent over, threw an edit summary in the box, and hit "save."  When
> returned after getting my coffee, I hit "edit," and saw the deletion
> verbiage at the top of the edit box.  Nine (9) minutes had elapsed.
> Thank Cthulhu Savidan got there before ten minutes had elapsed: all of
> Wikipedia might have been destroyed.
>
> I have learned from that mistake.  Never again will I add an article to
> Wikipedia that is not completely and entirely perfect, with multiple
> insistences of notability and scores of footnotes in place.  Wikipedia
> does not allow works-in-progress; all contributions must be camera-ready
> for world-wide publication or they will be obliterated on sight.
>
> Answer Two: Yes, I left a note on his talk page, and he replied on mine.
> What difference does that make?  Does the burden of defending
> information against obliteration fall on me, the contributor?  Or is the
> burden on the obliterater to demonstrate why that particular information
> should be deleted?  Actually, the answers to those questions are
> disgustingly obvious; what I should be asking is /should/ the burden of
> defending information be placed on the one building Wikipedia?
> /Shouldn't/ the one who wants to obliterate information be required to
> at least attempt to communicate with the one who wants to add it?
>
> > The thing is, he can't mindread and it's not uncommon for people to
> leave
> > things unfinished. If you're patrolling Recentchanges or Newpages, you
> don't
> > have the time, to recheck if someone finished their article. It will
> take
> > the speed out of your work.
>
> 0 NO3Z!!11!  DON'T TAKE THE SPEED OUT!!!11!!eleventy-one
>
> > If you tag it with {{inuse}} or work on it in your userspace, you've got
> a
> > lot lower chance of it getting deleted.
>
> If I never contribute anything until it is utterly perfect, I'll have a
> lower chance (maybe not a lot lower, I admit) of it getting deleted.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | Careful. We don't want to
> sean at epoptic.org | learn from this. --Calvin
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFD7QPTMAt1wyd9d+URAgptAJ99GLsvPU2tl+snA+mIiZJQtICrdACfZJN2
> +m5VdSqf5qGMwWKGkqti81w=
> =Y9sW
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: Using MWdumper

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Hope you don't mind, but I grabbed the README and copied it to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MWDumper , and then I added
> some bits that I thought were missing.

I think I'd rather see that at www.mediawiki.org, as the tool is not specific to
English-language Wikipedia.

(Incidentally, a basic GUI for importing direct to a database now works in CVS.
When I get a chance I'll poke it up to be able to create tables, and release a
friendly package.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060210/e885a515/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Hi,
  What I see wrong in this process is that the original author
couldn't/wasn't willing to "save" the article.  This seems like the
right order of events in these situations:

Author writes hacky article
RC patrol tags it as crap
Author sees it tagged, sighs with indignation, removes tag, keeps working.

However, if as in most cases, the author never comes back, then a week
later or whatver it is removed.

I don't see why the RC patrol should not tag it as crap, if, indeed,
it was crap. I don't think Sean is disputing that his article was
crap, just that he was planning on making it better. If he doesn't put
an in progress tag on it (and I've never actually seen one, to be
honest), then it's not unreasonable that he has to fish his
half-finished crap out of the bin before he can keep turning it into a
masterpiece.

Steve

On 2/10/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose the thing that surprises me about this is the fact that people tag
> work without taking a look at who the author is.  Sure, if you see something
> brand new by an anon or by a redlinked name, you may want to take a careful
> look at it.  If, on the other hand, you see something by Sean, you take for
> granted that established contributors tend not to write "selfref
> neologisms".  If you see something like that from someone like Sean (or like
> Dunc, which was what sparked a mess a few months ago) you give them the
> benefit of the doubt - bookmark the page, maybe add it to your "to do" list
> - but don't afd it.  To be honest, if you see something brand new by a new
> author you give them a chance to clean it up as well.  Shooting first and
> asking questions later is bound to only cause bad blood.  In Sean's case, it
> isn't going to drive him away, but a new editor could easily be driven off.
>
> Ian
>
> On 2/10/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> >
> > Sean Barrett wrote:
> >
> > >Answer Two: Yes, I left a note on his talk page, and he replied on mine.
> > >
> > How come you didn't use your Staff of Arbcom to turn him into a
> > tiny little pile of ashes? 1/2 :-) We've got way too many noobs
> > running around pretending to be knowledgeable, and there seems to
> > be no incentive for them to learn.
> >
> > Stan
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Hmm, the article contained a self-reference as well, goodie :)

Steve
> The use of the term is no longer restricted to spammers; it has expanded
> from its orignal meaning to include, for example, those who threaten
> [[Wikipedia]] administrators for taking action against them.


from_name: Jitse Niesen

body:
On 2/10/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> We definitely care! The parser should never produce invalid HTML output, if it
> does that's a bug.

This relates to a problem that I'm having. At the moment, MediaWiki
relies on HTML Tidy to close HTML tags if necessary. Unfortunately,
tidy does not understand MathML (this is recorded as bug #3504
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3504 ). To be more
precise, tidy can be made to accept MathML tags but, as far as I know,
there is no way to configure it to accept MathML entities.

When you say that the parser should never produce invalid HTML, is
this before or after tidy (which is not enabled in the default
installation)? I'm asking because I have a vague recollection of
having heard that one of the plans is to remove tidy from MediaWiki.
Is this indeed the case, and if yes, is this feasible?

Cheers,
Jitse


from_name: Guy Chapman

body:
>But suppose for a moment this is someone with no intention of improving the
>article or taking it to AFD because they think they own the article. How
>would one notice?

Watchlist of the nominator?

Guy


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: Using MWdumper

body:
Kernigh wrote:
> Also, are you sure that the README is under GNU Free Documentation License?
> It might be some incompatible license such as GNU General Public License.

I hereby declare it GFDL and RTFM-compatible. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060211/f37cf95b/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/10/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >Hi,
> >  What I see wrong in this process is that the original author
> >couldn't/wasn't willing to "save" the article.  This seems like the
> >right order of events in these situations:
> >
> >Author writes hacky article
> >RC patrol tags it as crap
> >Author sees it tagged, sighs with indignation, removes tag, keeps
> working.
> >
> Current process doesn't allow for that however - once afd tag is
> added, it's supposed to stay on until all the randoms get a chance
> to vote on the article in its unfinished state. Even if you fix up
> the article, most people don't go back and update their votes.
> Even worse, if the vote is to delete, people will point to that as
> a reason not to re-create a completed article later.
>
> Stan

1. AFDs don't have to keep running if the nominator retracts their
nomination and if you can get keep votes from all the other participants.
2. The speedy rule is "substantially similar content. Once AFDed for being
unfinished, doesn't mean no article should ever be there.

Mgm


body:
On 2/10/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 10 Feb 2006, at 20:01, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > Interesting. Have a look. So far 52 people have signed up to watch it
> > closely. Only objection I can think of is that it still doesn't
> > involve notifying the article creator. But it strikes me as a damn
> > good idea for getting the obvious off AFD and helping alleviate
> > AFD-fatigue.
>
> I looked through the articles and it all seemed reasonable. Will
> have another scan soon.
>
> Lets see how it affects AfD.
>
> Notify author would be nice - I hope people do it even if its optional.
>
> Justinc

Not  a bad idea. It gives people time to work on an article and doesn't get
the immediate hit your article is being AFDed, but is there some safeguard
in place against people removing the tag?

If someone removes an AFD tag, you still have the central listing. What
happens if they remove a prod tag? Do I have to watchlist it and hope it is
the last edit on the article if I check it?

Mgm


body:
On 2/11/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/11/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Not  a bad idea. It gives people time to work on an article and doesn't
> get
> > the immediate hit your article is being AFDed, but is there some
> safeguard
> > in place against people removing the tag?
> >
> > If someone removes an AFD tag, you still have the central listing. What
> > happens if they remove a prod tag? Do I have to watchlist it and hope it
> is
> > the last edit on the article if I check it?
>
> >From the proposal page, it seems that removing the tag is the method
> for contesting deletion. The remover is advised to improve the
> article, to tag it for cleanup or similar, or to send it to AfD, but
> these are all suggestions.
>
> Much of it would seem to depend on the person who first addresses the
> tag, and on which of these courses of action they choose. Hopefully
> people will choose wisely!

But suppose for a moment this is someone with no intention of improving the
article or taking it to AFD because they think they own the article. How
would one notice?

Mgm


body:
On 2/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Sam Korn wrote:
>
> >On 2/10/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>What about common bloody sense?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >As far as I can tell, many people have replaced IAR with ICS (Ignore
> >Common Sense).  Either that or they have real difficulties.
> >
> >Yes, this is the policy I'd like, and that I use.  But that doesn't
> >mean I think it's realistic.  After all, we do live in a real world.
> >
> When we start describing common sense as unrealistic we have a problem.
>
> Ec
>

The term "common sense" is meaningless so it doesn't really matter how
you describe it.

--
geni


body:
No one appears to be screaming about it yet so it appears so far to be a sucess.

--
geni


from_name: Kernigh

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikipubs Project Proposal.

body:
There are some users at Meta who think that the "Wikipubs" proposal is
illegitimate. Thus the proposal page [1] has entered requests for deletion
at Meta.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipubs

I had the impression that when working on a project proposal, starting a new
wiki (such as http://wikipubs.org/) outside of the Wikimedia Foundation was
preferable to past tactics such as borrowing Wikipedia language subdomains
(ps.wikipedia.org for Wikisource and qo.wikipedia.org for Wikiquote).

However, there is a valid concern here, which is that hundreds of wikis from
the Internet will create pages for themselves at meta.wikimedia.org, simply
by pretending that they want to become Wikimedia Foundation projects.

-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Juriwiki-l] Re: Copyright complaints

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> ... If this is correct, the consequence would be
> that material that is not available under the GFDL should not be
> included in a WMF project. ...

No. Assuming that "a WMF project" = any Wikimedia Foundation project, there
are ways to insert non-GFDL content into such projects, and not only
non-GFDL images (like CC-BY-SA) at Commons, en.Wikibooks, or elsewhere.

Read http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Copyright

"If you contribute source materials written by someone else to Wikisource
you thereby warrant that the source material is either public domain in the
United States or that you have permission from the copyright holder to
place the work on Wikisource."

I possibly misunderstood it, by I think that if I have some noncommercial or
no-derivates license (such as CC-BY-NC-ND), then I am allowed to upload
that source text to en.Wikisource.

-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]


body:
On 2/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> - Inspired by DFA, AfD should be changed from 7 days of voting to 5 days
> of *discussion* followed by 2 days of /straw polling/; remember,
> [[m:Voting is evil|]].

I think I'm not understanding the difference between a straw poll and a
vote. And it still doesn't address concerns that the editors who frequent
AFD may not be representative of wikipedia consensus on deletion.

Ryan


subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: Using MWdumper

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:

> Hope you don't mind, but I grabbed the README and copied it to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MWDumper, and then I added
> some bits that I thought were missing.

Wrong wiki? If you had used en.wikibooks.org, then I would have marked the
page for transwiki to meta.wikimedia.org (though I suppose
www.mediawiki.org would also work) and deletion from Wikibooks. I am not
familiar with most Wikipedia policy, but I guess that en.wikipedia.org is
probably the wrong wiki.

Also, are you sure that the README is under GNU Free Documentation License?
It might be some incompatible license such as GNU General Public License.

-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] UK press: Guardian tomorrow

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge

> It's an interesting example of how errors manage to creep in.
>  The article states that Meehan is a Senator; he's a
> Representative.  It also states that he had planned to limit
> himself to four years in Congress; that should read four
> terms.  These are innocent errors that do not affect the
> impact of the article.  It's easy to spot these when you are
> familiar with the issue, but it leaves one wondering about
> fact checking and the reliability of what we read in the
> newspapers. ;-)

When a newspaper publishes an article on some area of my oarticular
interest, written by a regular journalist, they INVARIABLY get some
important (to me) facts wrong. I've lost count of how often I've seen an APC
or SPG misidentified as "a tank" in photograph captions, for example.

Wikipedia is hardly exempt, as we all know. However, there's always that
[edit] button, and how often do we wish that there was something similar for
newspaper sites, eh?

Peter (Skyring)


body:
On 2/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Who /is/ representative of Wikipedia consensus on deletion?

No one -- which is why I object so strongly to the idea that deletion should
be treated differently from other edits; or that deletion should be regarded
as "final" because of an AFD, as if "the community" has decided that an
article should be deleted. That is a farce. An AFD means that the people who
happened to be looking at AFD at the time thought the article should be
deleted. Those people can and do make mistakes, which is why those mistakes
should be easily reversible.

No edit on Wikipedia, including deletion, should be regarded as final or as
having a mandate from some immutable process. There is no good reason to
treat deletion differently than any other edit.

Ryan