body:
On 13/02/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> >i.e., it needs to be taken up with nl:wp. No-one here who isn't an
> >nl:wp admin can do anything.

> nl-wikipedia has this feature as well. It is just that the mod who is
> autoblocking all open proxies (the vast majority of Thai ISP's) is NOT
> blocking with this switched on, he is hardblocking. He has been asked
> many times not to do this also in Dutch villagepump. But he still does
> it. Also having to ask this xx's of times in a short space is really
> getting on my nerves. Everytime it is promised the mod will change his
> ways everytime he doesn't.

Surely nl:wp has procedures to deal with admins that the nl:wp
community feel are running rogue, if that is what you are in fact
alleging.

(I think anyone coming to this list and alleging an en:wp admins was
running rogue would be told "wrong list, go to wikien-l" in very short
order. Is there a mailing list for nl:wp?)

- d.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

references:
<bd4c411e0702090937y3482dadcm2a9d0f99b70eefd3@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqiicb$7rs$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8731ce350702091249m7dda10a8xa245add927a07f64@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0702091255t504a9529q90b208eec594f2a6@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqlnhi$e7d$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<a4359dff0702101634vc91aa8bp558a0fe5075abdb3@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqqcu3$4mo$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a4359dff0702121159x7e25ef0ah751b53dd48d68d52@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqqs35$bnf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 12/02/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> You're also forgetting that Wikipedia is not the only wiki, and that
> MediaWiki is not the only wiki engine. Most other wiki engines do not
> have an "admin" user level at all, and last I checked the Pattern
> Repository was still working just fine.

As much as it saddens me to do so, I have to make a correction on that
point. A couple of years back, we started getting our first dedicated
abusive users on the WikiWikiWeb, after a decade of largely peaceful
existence. Since then, Ward has implemented a steward privilege level
with certain administrative abilities, issued to some specific invited
users (full disclosure: including me). They deal with the occasional
odd extreme case that WhyWikiWorks[1] can't deal with.

I think the PPR community has been lucky over the years to have not
attracted the attention of the fringe too much, probably because the
we have a very narrow scope. A generalist site such as Wikipedia is
going to appeal to a much wider audience, and draw more fire as a
consequence. Still, that it took over ten years for us to have to
implement an "admin" user level says a lot about the strength of the
wiki principle.

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks - relevant to a large part of
this thread.

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


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
Cool Cat wrote:
> We do have different opinions on what the category system should be used for
> and thats the root of the problem. Wikipedia is based on consensus and there
> is no process for consensus aside from cfd. Unlike articles, the creation of
> categories should be based on a consensus not someones belief system.

I don't understand. The content of articles and the content of
categories are both established "by consensus" in the sense that anyone
can edit them, argue about their contents on various talk pages, etc.

The existence or nonexistence of articles is decided by their respective
fD processes - AfD for the articles, CfD for the categories. I'm not
seeing a fundamental difference here, and I don't see how articles
should be based on someone's belief system (I'm not even sure what that
means). The biggest difference I can think of is purely technical -
categories can't be renamed or redirected, so it requires a lot of bot
busywork to shuffle things around. I can't think of a way to fix this by
non-technical means, though I have occasionally moved the contents of
small categories around "manually" without bothering CfD about it.

> Today, any random newbie can invent his/her categorization scheme. We are
> categorizing people by their appetite by nationality today
> ([[Category:Vegetarians by nationality]]). Someone not being tagged by a
> category as a vegetarian does not make them a carnivore.

How does it imply that? There are other options than just "vegetarian"
and "carnivore", I'm an omnivore myself. And what does nationality have
to do with it? Wouldn't the same issue exist with just plain
[[Category:Vegetarians]]?

> Or how about
> [[Category:Terrorists by nationality]]? I could list more problematic
> examples.

I see nothing problematic about [[category:Terrorists by nationality]]
that isn't already inherent in having a separate [[Category:Terrorists]]
and [[Category:People by nationality]]. Once one has determined (by
whatever means) that someone is both a "terrorist" and an "Elbonian",
what problems arise from putting them into "[[Category:Elbonian
terrorists]]"?


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] In hospital

body:
On 13/02/07, Joshua Brady <somitho at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/13/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Why in the world did the mods let this through?

> Why did you have to reopen this?

"The list moderators cannot undertake to insulate readers of the list
from human stupidity."

- d.


from_name: Cool Cat

body:
Yes but when nominated for deletion such categories are sometimes defended
by a flock of people. That particular category might stay forever if fans of
Jimi Hendrix monopolize the cfd. In the light of overcategorization of
course it has a "subjective inclusion criteria" as well as "trivial
insertion" applies.

In my view [[Wikipedia:Overcategorization]] should be applied before the
creation of categories. Category schemes (not individual categories unless
there is a spesific reason) should be proposed. Also sometimes we have
duplicate categories or poorly named ones.

What I am saying is any new subcategory to [[Category:Categories by
country]] for example should be discussed prior to every country getting
tagged by the new thing (much like stub templates in a sense). If it makes
sense consensus would agree with it. Else it could be either discussed
further or dropped. This is far more constructive than creation then
deletion discussion (current process).

    - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Cool Cat" wrote
>
> > Especially if a person does not understands the spirit of NPOV, we end
> up
> > having categories with not very objective titles and a subjective
> inclusion
> > criteria.
>
> Well, categories should be verifiable. If not verifiable, the category
> itself is at fault, I think. [[Category:Guitarists influenced by Jimi
> Hendrix]] we can do without.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
You misunderstand.

We can have [[Category:Jew (religon)]] [[Category:Jew (ethicity)]] and not
[[Category:Jew]].

The thing is category should be used for one thing. The term being a
confusing one only supports this separation.

    - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/12/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This actually points out the real problem rather well.
>
> I have no idea what you mean; what "problem" does it "point out... rather
> well"?
>
> > Categorization should
> > be done carefully. Mixing religion with ethnicity is just asking for
> trouble
> > in categorization.
>
> Categories have to mirror real-life though, and Jews don't fit the
> neat separations of ethnicity and religion that you might prefer in
> some "ideal" world.
>
> Jay.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
The wiki way is consensus. Being bold is fine. Anyone can boldly suggests a
new categorization scheme.

There needs to be a way to regulate bold decisions that affects tens to
hundreds of articles. If you have a better suggestion feel free to suggest
it.

   - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Cool Cat" wrote
>
> > This is far more constructive than creation then
> > deletion discussion (current process).
>
> Maybe so. But it is much less like the 'wiki way', or 'be bold', and
> suffers from the general dislike of adding bureaucratic hurdles.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Cool Cat wrote:
> I guess I am taking things for granted too fast... Any recent US president
> has way too many categories. They are merely the example symptoms of the
> problem.

But what exactly is "too many categories"? _Why_ is that number of
categories "too many"? The only times I can recall encountering articles
and thinking "this article has too many categories" it was because the
article was redundantly categorized, not because of just the raw number.

> Getting rid of some of these excess categories is something hard to do. Of
> course this isn't a battle, but people are often emotionally motivated on a
> number of topics and they sometimes create categories for that end.
> Especially if a person does not understands the spirit of NPOV, we end up
> having categories with not very objective titles and a subjective inclusion
> criteria.

Categories with bad titles or inclusion criteria should be renamed or
deleted, true, but this is a separate issue from how many categories in
total there are.

> An average cfd discussions get very little attention unless it is on a
> controversial issue. In your average cfd on a potentially controversial
> issue, people tend to vote based on their belief system and not based on
> stuff like usefulness/objectivity/subjectivity of the  inclusion criteria of
> the category in question. For example, although a word to avoid,
> [[Category:Terrorists by nationality]] has been around for quite sometime.

I've just read a bunch of the CfDs in this area (I'm sure you have too
since you initiated several of them, but for the benefit of other
editors see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Terrorists>)
 and I'm wondering how you're determining whose "votes" are based on
their belief systems and whose are based on usefulness/etc. I've seen
several opinions supporting keeping the category that appear to me to be
based on usefulness etc.

But we seem to be straying from the original subject here, which is the
"too many categories" thing. Or are you suggesting that the reason we
have too many categories is because it's too hard to delete them via
existing mechanisms? If so, it looks like the old
deletionism/inclusionism dilemma transported to another namespace.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Mayflower: Wikimedia Commons media search

references:
<280A126F-DB3B-4709-BF83-5CB7EACE3FC2@wikignome.net>
	<eqtcn0$nlr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0702131412o51e4ecal1a99e2d4e3ce5f4f@mail.gmail.com>
	<85f46e6f0702131531x53c9c3e0na6d4caa6ff9f31f7@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 2/13/07, Husky <huskyr at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> * Having the license beneath the image would be very handy. Even more handy
> would be an option to do an 'advanced search' for a specific license (e.g.
> only PD images)

PD! Sure lets just use the template links table to find all the images
that transclude a template that starts with PD- ... Such as...
{{PD-CAGov}} (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov)

Hard problem. :(

Even our most machine readable metadata isn't very machine readable. :(

Brilliant solutions welcome.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"Cool Cat" wrote

> You misunderstand.
>
> We can have [[Category:Jew (religon)]] [[Category:Jew (ethicity)]] and not
> [[Category:Jew]].
>
> The thing is category should be used for one thing. The term being a
> confusing one only supports this separation.

Assuming better spelling, this is still a can of worms, of course.

I'm really not happy with ethnicity categories, as a whole. Is 'ethnicity' verifiable? Sounds unscientific, anyway. Of ourse we can have 'self-identified ethnicity'. I'm glad to see [[Terence Tao]] is back to identification as 'Australian mathematician'. There was a time when he was categorised as 'choose any two' out of Chinese, American and Australian.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] How to edit wikipedia when stupid
 mods block all Thai ip addresses

body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 13/02/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>> Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>
>
>>> [[WP:NPA]] -- you're not going to get anyone's sympathy nor their
>>> attention if you call people stupid.
>>> [[WP:OWN]] -- you don't own any of the articles you wrote. You gave up
>>> all rights to the text when you submitted them to Wikipedia. They will
>>> not be deleted.
>>>
>
>
>> I would like to see how that would stand up in a court if wikipedia is
>> denying me access without a valid reason (not a vandal etc).
>>
>
>
> Sue and see if the GFDL holds up in court.
>
>
> - d.
Hoi,
This has nothing to do with the GFDL. You know that.
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 13/02/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>
>
>
>>> i.e., it needs to be taken up with nl:wp. No-one here who isn't an
>>> nl:wp admin can do anything.
>>>
>
>
>> nl-wikipedia has this feature as well. It is just that the mod who is
>> autoblocking all open proxies (the vast majority of Thai ISP's) is NOT
>> blocking with this switched on, he is hardblocking. He has been asked
>> many times not to do this also in Dutch villagepump. But he still does
>> it. Also having to ask this xx's of times in a short space is really
>> getting on my nerves. Everytime it is promised the mod will change his
>> ways everytime he doesn't.
>>
>
>
> Surely nl:wp has procedures to deal with admins that the nl:wp
> community feel are running rogue, if that is what you are in fact
> alleging.
>
> (I think anyone coming to this list and alleging an en:wp admins was
> running rogue would be told "wrong list, go to wikien-l" in very short
> order. Is there a mailing list for nl:wp?)
>
>
> - d.
Hoi,
There are two lists. One of them, for this the most relevant is only for
admins. It is not certain that all admins read this other list.
Thanks,
   GerardM


body:
"Cool Cat" wrote

> The wiki way is consensus. Being bold is fine. Anyone can boldly suggests a
> new categorization scheme.
>
> There needs to be a way to regulate bold decisions that affects tens to
> hundreds of articles. If you have a better suggestion feel free to suggest
> it.

There doesn't 'need to be' that. I have gone into mathematics categories with a couple of hundred articles and subdivided them on the fly. This has improved the encyclopedia, and if I had had to await some sort of approval (from whom?) I would not have bothered.

The wiki way is certainly not bound by pre-arranged consensus; much more characteristic of good Wikipedians is how they react to those who find fault with what they do (namely, to take it well).

-----------------------------------------
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Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unneeded disambiguation

body:
On 2/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/14/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ah, now I know what you mean, you are talking about the duplication in the
> > notices.
>
> Is he? I think he's saying that it makes sense that [[Barrel]] links
> to [[Barrel (disambiguation)]], that [[Barrel (disambiguation)]] links
> to [[Barrel (unit)]], but that there's no need to link from [[Barrel
> (unit)]] back to [[Barrel (disambiguation)]].
>
> I believe that the general pattern is for *those* links to not be
> added, but I could be wrong.

Keep in mind that not everyone is arriving at these articles through
an internal link.  If a reader searches for "barrel" on Google and
happens to click on the link to [[Barrel (unit)]], there should be an
obvious way for him to find the other meanings of the term once he
realizes that he's at the wrong article.

Kirill


body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Please demonstrate some harm caused by having "excessive" categories
>> on an article. Assume that all the categories are correctly used: the
>> article belongs to the category, and none of the categories are
>> mutually redundant.
>>
>> Steve
>
> View [[George H. W. Bush]] in the classic skin but that is rather an
> exceptional example.

By this standard there are also far too many interwiki links for this
article. We should get rid of some. :)

On a serious note, though, I happen to use the Classic skin as my
default and I don't have any problem with this at all. If this sort of
thing _was_ sufficiently annoying to me I could put "#catlinks
{display:none}" in my custom CSS like what I did to get rid of the stub
templates, or just switch to one of the other skins that puts the
catlinks at the bottom. Wikipedia's display format is highly
configurable so I don't consider this to be a paprticularly strong
example of "harm".


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Allowed use of list email addresses

body:
I can confirm that I did. To be fair, the archive is available publicly, so
by contributing to this you're letting everyone know your email address.

On 13/02/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Did anyone else receive an email recently with the subject
> ''Requesting to make comments for e-learning wiki''? I did, from a
> student in Thailand, and I found it rather rude. Surely people are not
> supposed to randomly grab addresses from mailing lists they subscribe
> to?
> --
> Gary Kirk
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Joshua Brady schreef:
> On 2/13/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>> Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> [[WP:NPA]] -- you're not going to get anyone's sympathy nor their
>>> attention if you call people stupid.
>>> [[WP:OWN]] -- you don't own any of the articles you wrote. You gave up
>>> all rights to the text when you submitted them to Wikipedia. They will
>>> not be deleted.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I would like to see how that would stand up in a court if wikipedia is
>> denying me access without a valid reason (not a vandal etc).
>>
>
> Quite well, show me where you have a "right" to use a free service.
> Try contacting your ISP abuse department and asking them to be more
> proactive on handling abuse.
>
>
>> Waerth
>>
>
> - Josh
Hoi,
When an organisation can discriminate without justification, it takes a
risk that it will get its actions challenged in court. This is very much
the American way. Walter's well rehersed argument is that this is not a
new situation at all. This is indeed a story that sadly does not go away.

You go to an ISP when you are abused from someone who hides behind that
ISP. Walter does not suffer in that way; it is the ISP itself that could
do better.

Please understand the situation a little bit better before you say the
things that you do. I do not mind to explain things, but it is rather
obvious.

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
Cool Cat wrote:
> Do you have a better idea? Please, enlighten us.

One shouldn't have to provide a better idea in order to oppose the
implementation of something that one considers to be a bad idea.
Especially not when we can simply continue doing what we're currently
doing without needing to implement a new idea at all.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout (deputy admins)

body:
> What evidence do you have of this.  Speculation is not evidence

This entire discussion is speculation, that's what you get when you
discuss a plan. You can't say what has happened because the plan
hasn't been implemented yet. At best you can have indirect evidence to
support views, generally you just have logical arguments.

> I'm glad to see that you are finally moving out of Utopia (=Nowhere)
> into the real world.  Your conversion to logic would be welcome.

That reads like an ad hominem attack, although I have no idea what you
are getting at. For a start, there is a difference between an
unachievable ideal place and "nowhere". I can't see how anything I've
said could be taken to be nieve, which is the only interpretation I
can come up with for your first sentence, and I have no idea what you
think I've been basing my arguments on if it isn't logic. To convert
to something, you have to convert from something.


body: Wikipedia is not an experiment - the scientific method does not apply.


body:
"Cool Cat" wrote

> You should be seeking consensus. Waiting a day or week to determine the best
> way to categorize will save you and everyone else significant amount of
> time. Are you 100% certain that the mathematics categories are the most
> effective to navigate the articles?

Bad argument. I'm not 100% certain. I know enough about it, though, and enough about Wikipedia in general, and enough about how to deal with issues that may arise. Timidity in the face of a pile of grunt work to do has never been the WP way.

> Categorization should not be rushed. Approval is not the case. See how stub
> template proposals are handled at wikiproject:stubs

The fact that particular areas deserve close attention, to prevent avoidable annoyance, is not a general argument. Evolving fine-tuned sets of rules is sometimes a solution, but arguably sometimes part of the problem. This type of discussion (why don't we micromanage everything with a rulebook and experts?) constantly recurs in different forms.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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body:
Thomas Dalton" wrote

> Wikipedia is not an experiment - the scientific method does not apply.

Work on it, and you might get some [[gnomic poetry]]. At present I don't that it scans.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] An idea for deletions

body:
Just an idea I have been bouncing around for deletion nominations.

If a user, any user either with an account or anonymous wants to
nominate an article for deletion. Instead of posting directly to AFD,
he instead enters the name of the article and the reason he thinks it
needs to be deleted into a web form. The nomination then goes to a
"deletion preview" team who can take one of several actions...

1. Speedy delete. Only for obvious no doubt speedy deletion
candidates, nonsense pages and troll pages. Example "Jimbo Wales is a
bonehead" or "list of glups that glip".

2. Speedy keep. Article is definitely not a candidate for deletion ie
some bozo nominates "George W. Bush" or "Star Wars". Also could be
used to keep articles with a strong keep consensus from being
constantly renominated by a troll.

3. Bounce back. The nominator (if a registered user) will be asked to
resubmit the nom. ie "please be more specific then "fancruft" or
"unencyclopedic""

4.Pass to ADF. Only then does the nomination go to AFD and only then
does the article get tagged.

5. Rewrite by previewer. The nomination as written is invalid but the
previewer notices something else about the article that bugs him.

I think such a system would reduce the load on AFD but still allow us
to deal with problem articles promptly.


body:
Cool Cat wrote

> Yes. Thats the idea here. BEFORE creation some sort of process. We lack that
> completely.
>
> Lets brainstorm the issue please and not oppse it since the current system
> is clearly failing.

Well, I'm fundamentally opposed. The lurch from the apocalyptic claim to the bureaucratic solution is not a recipe for good policy.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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from_name: effe iets anders

subject:
[Foundation-l] How to edit wikipedia when stupid mods block all
	Thai ip addresses

body:
For the record, this is about open- and exit proxies. See for a little
wikimedia backgroundinfo too http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:NOP .
(without trying to make a point)

Effe

2007/2/13, geni <geniice op gmail.com>:
>
> On 2/13/07, Walter van Kalken <walter op vankalken.net> wrote:
> > The issue has been raised over 10 times and everytime it is happening
> > again. I want someone to toss some heads finally ot I will want all my
> > 1000 + articles I wrote deleted as I cannot edit them anymore.
> >
>
> Not something the foundation would generaly get invovled in. En
> currently soft blocks the IPs which wouls allow you to continue to
> edit. It would be posible for .nl to addopt a simular practice. I've
> talked to the .nl people on IRC but I don't know exactly which IPs
> need to be delt with.
>
> --
> geni
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
For the record, this is about open- and exit proxies. See for a little
wikimedia backgroundinfo too http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:NOP .
(without trying to make a point)

Effe

2007/2/13, geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>
> On 2/13/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> > The issue has been raised over 10 times and everytime it is happening
> > again. I want someone to toss some heads finally ot I will want all my
> > 1000 + articles I wrote deleted as I cannot edit them anymore.
> >
>
> Not something the foundation would generaly get invovled in. En
> currently soft blocks the IPs which wouls allow you to continue to
> edit. It would be posible for .nl to addopt a simular practice. I've
> talked to the .nl people on IRC but I don't know exactly which IPs
> need to be delt with.
>
> --
> geni
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
"Cool Cat" wrote

> You are missing the point and issue. Are you suggesting that we should
> continue the way we are doing things right now? What is your standpoint, I
> do not understand at all. If you have a better idea to deal with the problem
> feel free to propose it, please do not ask us to continue the non-working
> system as already demonstrated.

You are projecting some sort of false dichotomy here. If the issue is newbies creating unsuitable categories, there are certainly solutions that fall short of proposals that every category creation has to go through some process/discussion. For example, you could theoretically say that you have to edit for a month before starting on creating new categories.

The idea that all editors, however experienced, competent, informed and responsible, should be penalised by a bureaucratic ruleset, because you detect some issues (which may not actually be very new), is not likely to gain general support, is it? The formation of policy is supposed to help the project; not to solve management issues in a heavy-handed way.

I think people in touch with the realities of editing at WP understand when it is you need to discuss stuff, and when you just go ahead. That has always been one of the salient points. Perhaps someone should put a post-it note on WP:BOLD saying 'still relevant in 2007'.

Charles

>

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] How to edit wikipedia when stupid
	mods block all Thai ip addresses

body:
On 2/13/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:

> You can't imagine seriously that Walter, an average non-Thai citizen,
> would have any influence on the Thai government, which, to top it, is
> not exactly democratic? Since this is unrealistic, what you're doing is
> just inflammatory irony, and it does not help.

In 2004, I fixed the South Korean government (in a collaborative
effort), while I was not even living there. There is no reason not to
at least try it.

Mathias


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 2/14/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, categories should be verifiable. If not verifiable, the
>> category itself is at fault, I think. [[Category:Guitarists
>> influenced by Jimi Hendrix]] we can do without.
>
> Influences can be verifiable. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_%28band%29#Influence_on_other_musicians
>

Perhaps he meant the problem was that you'd arguably have to include
every rock guitarist since 1969 in the category.

--Michael Snow


body:
You should be seeking consensus. Waiting a day or week to determine the best
way to categorize will save you and everyone else significant amount of
time. Are you 100% certain that the mathematics categories are the most
effective to navigate the articles?

Categorization should not be rushed. Approval is not the case. See how stub
template proposals are handled at wikiproject:stubs

     - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Cool Cat" wrote
>
> > The wiki way is consensus. Being bold is fine. Anyone can boldly
> suggests a
> > new categorization scheme.
> >
> > There needs to be a way to regulate bold decisions that affects tens to
> > hundreds of articles. If you have a better suggestion feel free to
> suggest
> > it.
>
> There doesn't 'need to be' that. I have gone into mathematics categories
> with a couple of hundred articles and subdivided them on the fly. This has
> improved the encyclopedia, and if I had had to await some sort of approval
> (from whom?) I would not have bothered.
>
> The wiki way is certainly not bound by pre-arranged consensus; much more
> characteristic of good Wikipedians is how they react to those who find fault
> with what they do (namely, to take it well).
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

body:
> It appears to me that the vocal representatives of the current crop of
> admins (meaning those who have become admins within the last year or so)
>   have left far behind the idea that being an admin is "no big deal".
> They see being an admin as a big deal, and want things to remain that way.

I think adminship is a big deal. The amount of time we devote to
talking about it is evidence to that. Things have changed a lot since
Jimbo made that famous comment.

> As I understand things, these admins view themselves as the
> indispensable shield between Wikipedia and the world, which is full of
> devious and persistent vandals. Without them (the admins), Wikipedia
> would fail utterly. Essentially, they carry the weight of the survival
> of Wikipedia on their shoulders.

And it's probably true. Of course, admins aren't the only such group.
Wikipedia would fail utterly without people who write new articles,
without people who do copyediting, without non-admins that fight
vandals, without the people that do newpage patrol, without the people
that help mediate disputes, etc. etc. etc. Wikipedia needs a very
large number of different people, all of which are indispensable.

> Each new admin, having just gone through a "rigorous" application and
> approval process, has essentially been selected for taking this sort of
> view. And each new admin has every good reason for maintaining or
> increasing the requirements for successive admins. In this respect, it
> becomes very like the process of hazing found in many clubs and
> exclusive organizations). This trend toward ever more "rigorous"
> requirements has led to cases of hazing on some US university campuses
> that were so severe the "applicant" died as a result.

Admins aren't a self-selecting group. Anyone can !vote on RfA. I don't
know what percentage of RfA !votes are cast by admins, although I'd be
interested if anyone has the statistics. Perhaps non-admins need to be
encouraged to participate in RfA more to make sure such
self-perpetuating requirements don't have such a strong effect.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] How to edit wikipedia when stupid mods block all
	Thai ip addresses

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

> Read Thai fora and websites over Thailand. It will not work. providers
> do not care as there are just a few foreigners suffering from this.
> Most Thais only visit Thai websites.

The Thai Wikipedia has just over 19,000 articles, and according to
Alexa, wikipedia.org is the 15th-most-popular website in Thailand. Even
with the standard caveats about Alexa data, that can't all be Thai
expatriates elsewhere and only foreigners in Thailand.

--Michael Snow


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

body:
On 2/13/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Given the recent discussions on this list, and the continuing increase
> in de-facto requirements for new admins, I have to wonder if we are not
> now well on the way to the creation of an elite class on Wikipedia.
>

We already have it.

> It appears to me that the vocal representatives of the current crop of
> admins (meaning those who have become admins within the last year or so)
>   have left far behind the idea that being an admin is "no big deal".
> They see being an admin as a big deal, and want things to remain that way.
>

Don't try and blame it on the new admins. It is nothing new.

> As I understand things, these admins view themselves as the
> indispensable shield between Wikipedia and the world, which is full of
> devious and persistent vandals. Without them (the admins), Wikipedia
> would fail utterly. Essentially, they carry the weight of the survival
> of Wikipedia on their shoulders.
>

It is true that admins as a group are the thin nerdy line between
Wikipedia and the less pleasant parts of the net.

> Each new admin, having just gone through a "rigorous" application and
> approval process, has essentially been selected for taking this sort of
> view. And each new admin has every good reason for maintaining or
> increasing the requirements for successive admins. In this respect, it
> becomes very like the process of hazing found in many clubs and
> exclusive organizations). This trend toward ever more "rigorous"
> requirements has led to cases of hazing on some US university campuses
> that were so severe the "applicant" died as a result.
>

Not so much. See the problem with increasing standards is it means
future admins will be better than you are and you end up looking at
massive backlogs. There is enough work to go around.

and in [[user:Llama man]]'s RFA less than 40% of those !voteing are admins.

> Of course, the admins point to the very real challenges that vandals
> pose as the reason for the rigor of the application process. They reject
> any proposal that might place Wikipedia is peril.
>

Of course. Admins tend to play things safe. There would be serious
objections if we did otherwise.

> Perhaps the solution will require a complete re-thinking of how "special
> rights" are allocated on Wikipedia, or even a complete re-thinking of
> how vandalism is handled. But unless those involved are willing to
> perceive the problem, and willing to engage the problem, nothing will
> happen towards solving the problem.
>

Look at the talk archives of [[WP:RFA]].

--
geni


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

body:
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:24:10 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>You're not wrong, and I'm of the opinion that we are in a situation where
>we have an elite class already.  The problem is twofold:

Whoa there.  Wikipedia is reputation based.  We have editors who have
a firm place in whatever elite one might infer we have, by dint of
their contributions, but who are not and never will be admins.  And
that's before we get to Giano...

>1) Adminship *is* a big deal, whether we want it to be or not.  We trust
>them to do too much, expect a lot of them, and it's very difficult to
>remove or sanction an administrator who acts inappropriately.

Ah, but...

No, it's not a big deal.  The RFA queue always includes a steady
stream of people who get through on the nod.  Perversely, the longer
you've been around, and the higher your profile, the harder this gets.
The threshold (leaving aside the perennial demands for shrubberies) is
making a decent number of edits without making waves.  Mind you, I
would not be sysopped if I went for RFA now, but maybe it's *good*
that these days we don't want bad-tempered argumentative opinionated
old farts to be admins.

No, it's not hard to sanction an admin.  All they have to do is
something stupid.  The big problem is that there is a reluctance to
bring those sanctions before the community.  We seem to have nothing
between "ZOMG! He deleted my article on my band I just formed last
week!  Rouge admin abuse!" and total meltdown.  The main problem, I
think, is that there is no calm atmosphere for discussing the
performance of admins (and that brings us back to the thread earlier
about admin meltdown).  I seriously do believe there should be a place
for admins to discuss their actions and quietly admonish each other
for being bloody silly *without* making it a three-ring circus.  And
yes, that goes against the Wiki ethos, but the problem with openness
is that there are a lot of POV-pushers out there just looking for
chinks in the armour.  I'd hope the need for privacy would be
temporary, but I perceive it as being there.  I also believe that
trusted non-admins should be allowed to take part.  Just not
any-old-editor coming to take the next pot-shot at whatever admin
stepped in to stop their particular content dispute.

Then again, in other ways, it is a big deal - but only when you don't
get it or when it's taken away.  Funny business.  We've lost a  number
of decent people because they found being voted down at RFA too
bruising.  So being promoted sysop is the only thing that makes the
process of an RFA bearable.

>2) More importantly, adminship is viewed as a reward rather than a
>responsibility, thus creating a protector group of admins.  There's one
>recently-promoted admin in particular who embodies this concept, but there
>are many like him.

You might want to run that past a few admins and see how loudly they
laugh.  Seriously, anyone who wants to be an admin should try it for a
couple of weeks and see how they like it.

Some people get the God complex on promotion, but I don't see it
lasting long.  Everyone grows up.

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


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] An idea for deletions

body:
On 2/13/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just an idea I have been bouncing around for deletion nominations.
>
> If a user, any user either with an account or anonymous wants to
> nominate an article for deletion. Instead of posting directly to AFD,
> he instead enters the name of the article and the reason he thinks it
> needs to be deleted into a web form. The nomination then goes to a
> "deletion preview" team who can take one of several actions...
>
> 1. Speedy delete. Only for obvious no doubt speedy deletion
> candidates, nonsense pages and troll pages. Example "Jimbo Wales is a
> bonehead" or "list of glups that glip".
>
> 2. Speedy keep. Article is definitely not a candidate for deletion ie
> some bozo nominates "George W. Bush" or "Star Wars". Also could be
> used to keep articles with a strong keep consensus from being
> constantly renominated by a troll.
>
> 3. Bounce back. The nominator (if a registered user) will be asked to
> resubmit the nom. ie "please be more specific then "fancruft" or
> "unencyclopedic""
>
> 4.Pass to ADF. Only then does the nomination go to AFD and only then
> does the article get tagged.
>
> 5. Rewrite by previewer. The nomination as written is invalid but the
> previewer notices something else about the article that bugs him.
>
> I think such a system would reduce the load on AFD but still allow us
> to deal with problem articles promptly.

I really don't see how this reduces the load on AFD.  As it stands now any
admin can speedy delete an article on AFD, and a speedy keep is usually
pretty obvious.  What makes me uncomfortable about this proposal is that it
removes these powers from the community at large and puts it in the hands of
a special team.

It certainly makes deletion a lot more difficult.  As I understand it, too
much crap is more of a problem than too much unsupervised deletion.  AFD is
tends to get overwhelmed - making everything go through a few hands before
getting to AFD will only make this problem worse.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

body:
> I think admins play it too safe.

I agree. There are many cases when what the community wants isn't in
the encyclopaedia's best interest. The concept of consensus seems to
take precedence over doing what's right. Unfortunately, it's very
difficult to define when it is appropriate for an admin to just do
what's right and when they should listen to the community.

I think it boils down to: When does community opinion on a specific
situation outweigh community opinion on the general policy that is
relevant to that situation? It's a tricky question to answer.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Exporting sections of pages

references:
<mailman.34414.1149630568.4497.wikitech-l@wikimedia.org>
	<20070213211417.9519.qmail@web26611.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<eqtd9t$qqt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b8ceeef70702131830t1ed46259h3ccf6c79a422fcf@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 2/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps the "section=" parameter could work for viewing as well as editing:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bundesautobahn_1&action=view&section=3
>
> With section preview on you effectively can view just one section, but
> you get the edit box as well.

Interesting idea.  We could have an option to make the TOC be real
links, too, not just anchors.


from_name: Claudi Meneghin

body:
Hi all,
is there a way to export section of articles by the 'special:export' feature, please?

I.e., I would like to export the sections named ''Exit list'' from the articles 'Autobahn A(number)' from English wikipedia. (Of course I can manage to develop some kind of macro to do that, if this feature is not available).
Anyway, the obvious attempt to export
Autobahn A1#Exit list
via the special:export page yields the entire page exported as a result.
Many thanks,
Claudi

---------------------------------
 D?couvrez une nouvelle fa?on d'obtenir des r?ponses ? toutes vos questions ! Profitez des connaissances, des opinions et des exp?riences des internautes sur Yahoo! Questions/R?ponses.


body:
Unless they get the addresses from actually READING the messages ;)

On 13/02/07, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Gary Kirk wrote:
> > Did anyone else receive an email recently with the subject
> > ''Requesting to make comments for e-learning wiki''? I did, from a
> > student in Thailand, and I found it rather rude. Surely people are not
> > supposed to randomly grab addresses from mailing lists they subscribe
> > to?
>
> Yes. I've just checked the list settings, and unless one of the other
> listmods has recently changed the settings, only list admins can see the
> subscribers.
>
> --
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


body:
Yes. Thats the idea here. BEFORE creation some sort of process. We lack that
completely.

Lets brainstorm the issue please and not oppse it since the current system
is clearly failing.

    - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/13/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You should be seeking consensus. Waiting a day or week to determine the
> best
> > way to categorize will save you and everyone else significant amount of
> > time. Are you 100% certain that the mathematics categories are the most
> > effective to navigate the articles?
> >
> > Categorization should not be rushed. Approval is not the case. See how
> stub
> > template proposals are handled at wikiproject:stubs
>
> Discussion and consensus is not the same thing as bureaucracy and red
> tape.  It's perfectly possible -- preferable, even! -- to come to a
> consensus decision on how something (e.g. categories) should be
> structured without the need to go through umpteen formal proposals,
> nominations, processes, listings, reviews, and so forth.
>
> Kirill
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/11/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The general principle of avoiding excessive categories is sound.  The
> art is in getting cleaning up the excesses without upsetting a lot of
> people, and causing a lot of flame wars.  Patience can be your friend.

Please demonstrate some harm caused by having "excessive" categories
on an article. Assume that all the categories are correctly used: the
article belongs to the category, and none of the categories are
mutually redundant.

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Gary Kirk wrote:
> Did anyone else receive an email recently with the subject
> ''Requesting to make comments for e-learning wiki''? I did, from a
> student in Thailand, and I found it rather rude. Surely people are not
> supposed to randomly grab addresses from mailing lists they subscribe
> to?

Yes. I've just checked the list settings, and unless one of the other
listmods has recently changed the settings, only list admins can see the
subscribers.

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

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from_name: Cool Cat

body:
You are missing the point and issue. Are you suggesting that we should
continue the way we are doing things right now? What is your standpoint, I
do not understand at all. If you have a better idea to deal with the problem
feel free to propose it, please do not ask us to continue the non-working
system as already demonstrated.

Not a bad argument at all. So if your idea breaks at a point we will end up
with hundreds of improperly tagged math related articles. We have over
1,500,000 articles so we better not screw up in mass categorizing them.
Cleaning up the mess is very tiresome.

Rulebooks and experts are not part of my or anyones proposal so far. In fact
I am not in any way proposing rules or guidelines. What I am proposing is a
discussion of any new categories.

    - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Cool Cat" wrote
>
> > You should be seeking consensus. Waiting a day or week to determine the
> best
> > way to categorize will save you and everyone else significant amount of
> > time. Are you 100% certain that the mathematics categories are the most
> > effective to navigate the articles?
>
> Bad argument. I'm not 100% certain. I know enough about it, though, and
> enough about Wikipedia in general, and enough about how to deal with issues
> that may arise. Timidity in the face of a pile of grunt work to do has never
> been the WP way.
>
> > Categorization should not be rushed. Approval is not the case. See how
> stub
> > template proposals are handled at wikiproject:stubs
>
> The fact that particular areas deserve close attention, to prevent
> avoidable annoyance, is not a general argument. Evolving fine-tuned sets of
> rules is sometimes a solution, but arguably sometimes part of the problem.
> This type of discussion (why don't we micromanage everything with a rulebook
> and experts?) constantly recurs in different forms.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Do you have a better idea? Please, enlighten us.

  - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> Cool Cat wrote
>
> > Yes. Thats the idea here. BEFORE creation some sort of process. We lack
> that
> > completely.
> >
> > Lets brainstorm the issue please and not oppse it since the current
> system
> > is clearly failing.
>
> Well, I'm fundamentally opposed. The lurch from the apocalyptic claim to
> the bureaucratic solution is not a recipe for good policy.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Save me the spelling lessons... :P

I am inclined to agree, nationality itself is quite a mess alone even when
verifiable (in the case of Einstein for example). Of course if I cfd'ed
ethnicities the cfd would fail almost automatically. It is not like we have
another body to discuss such issues (the parallel discussion).

We should probably focus on a scheme based on country for people rather than
ethnicity.

Was there ever a discussion on why we should categorize African Americans
and Danish Americans differently? What role does ones ethnicity play in
fields of science for example?

     - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Cool Cat" wrote
>
> > You misunderstand.
> >
> > We can have [[Category:Jew (religon)]] [[Category:Jew (ethicity)]] and
> not
> > [[Category:Jew]].
> >
> > The thing is category should be used for one thing. The term being a
> > confusing one only supports this separation.
>
> Assuming better spelling, this is still a can of worms, of course.
>
> I'm really not happy with ethnicity categories, as a whole. Is 'ethnicity'
> verifiable? Sounds unscientific, anyway. Of ourse we can have
> 'self-identified ethnicity'. I'm glad to see [[Terence Tao]] is back to
> identification as 'Australian mathematician'. There was a time when he was
> categorised as 'choose any two' out of Chinese, American and Australian.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

body:
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:38:55 -0600, "Pedro Sanchez"
<pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:

>I do concurr with jeff this time.

I agree with Jeff on almost everything apart from actual deletions :-)

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


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Foundation-l] Set up a daily-image-l mailing list?

body:
pctdayelise would be a good list admin.

On 2/13/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Happy to set it up, gimme a list admin's address to deal with the poor
> thing. :)
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFF0gZ8wRnhpk1wk44RAiRmAJ97TVTKIhn+qQMcxitlCXsfzgvvVwCg07gD
> d49IusBwes8iSsY/kD/y/r8=
> =/+sv
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
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> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
I am getting extremely impatient with RonaldB he seems to have a fetish
for blocking Thai IP addresses on the Dutch wikipedia and he doesn't
answerd emails send to him. I cannot even edit when I am logged in, not
from a friends computer which uses a different provider. Is it the
wikimedia foundations goal to block me??

The last two weeks I have found the IP adresses of my provider
constantly blocked, pre-emptively by RonaldB without any sign of
vandalism by those IP adresses. Wikipedia can be editted by anyone? Not
by me!

Waerth


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] How to edit wikipedia when stupid mods block all Thai
	ip addresses


subject:
[Foundation-l] How to edit wikipedia when stupid mods block all
 Thai ip addresses

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 13/02/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I am getting extremely impatient with RonaldB he seems to have a fetish
>>for blocking Thai IP addresses on the Dutch wikipedia and he doesn't
>>answerd emails send to him. I cannot even edit when I am logged in, not
>>from a friends computer which uses a different provider. Is it the
>>wikimedia foundations goal to block me??
>>
>>
>
>
>Yes, every attempt at blocking a Thai IP is a PERSONAL AFFRONT to you.
>This is listed in the Foundation's 501(c)(3) filing with the IRS. HTH!
>
>
>
>
If this just happened once or twice then it would be ok. But when it
happens everyday how would you feel? How would you react? The same
idiocy seems to be goin on on the english wikipedia. anybody wonder why
there are only a few Thai editors there? Then I forgot you seem to have
no feelings and not to care about other people.

Waerth


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 02:55:20PM +1100, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/14/07, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In the short term we need to wrap each section and
> > subsection in a div with a class name which reflects
> > the heading. In the long term we need to provide accessor
> > functions that can manipulate sections in a way similar
> > to the DOM. See bug 6104.
>
> Yeah, I understand that we can now transclude sections of other pages.
> But if it's controlled by section heading or section number, that's a
> method very prone to breaking. Also, it would be good to be able to
> demarcate sections of a page *other* than through headings, if
> possible.
>
> Do you have any proposed syntax or other solution?

Well, my snap reaction is 'microformats'.

If you're going to try to make picking a section out of a different
page reliable, then neither section number nor name seems like a good
choice of (sub-)address; one is an accident, and the other intended for
humans.

I think that there should be some way (and perhaps this is as easy as
puting an "<a href="thisisatag"> link in after the section header.

Isn't there some pipe-y syntax that already does something akin to this
and tracks the section header?

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


from_name: Platonides

body:
Has the look of a commercial engine. Not sure if it's good or not, but
seems 'profesional'.
Instead of Copyright... Copyleft? ;)


body:
The real people out there want reliable ways of navigating categories. A one
week discussion propr to mass categorization is a necesary evil IMHO. I do
not believe it is reasonable to suggest otherwise.

Yes. we can't have such discussions because we do not have a median for it.
Country categories are generally have been consistent and we do not have a
lot of problems there since we have been following a solid and well
discussed pattern. There is no rule book, though there is a vague guideline.

As for people categories, we currently have a mountain load of useless
categories. And over-all they are a mess. CfD has tens of cases every day.

 -  Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/13/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are missing the point and issue. Are you suggesting that we should
> > continue the way we are doing things right now?
>
> Um, yes.
>
> > Not a bad argument at all. So if your idea breaks at a point we will end
> up
> > with hundreds of improperly tagged math related articles. We have over
> > 1,500,000 articles so we better not screw up in mass categorizing them.
> > Cleaning up the mess is very tiresome.
>
> Better is the enemy of good enough.  Keep in mind that readers (you
> know, those people we're actually writing the encyclopedia for) are
> browsing through categories *right now*.   It's nice, of course, to
> take a few months for an extensive discussion of how a particular
> category tree should be structured -- WP:MILHIST does this all the
> time -- but it's important that this not prevent the creation of a
> flawed, but *good enough for the reader* scheme in the interim.
>
> > Rulebooks and experts are not part of my or anyones proposal so far. In
> fact
> > I am not in any way proposing rules or guidelines. What I am proposing
> is a
> > discussion of any new categories.
>
> The vast majority of new categories are "duh, obvious".  For example,
> if an editor sees a "Battles involving France" category and a "Battles
> involving Germany" category, but no "Battles involving Italy"
> category, they really don't need to discuss the issue beforehand in
> order to create it; the number of errors you get by simply extending
> existing schemes to encompass all countries/states/etc. is so low that
> they can be quite neatly handled after the fact.
>
> Massive reorganizations should, generally speaking, be discussed
> beforehand; but do people actually undertake them without discussion
> in practice?  I haven't really encountered that sort of thing.
>
> Kirill
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
The issue has been raised over 10 times and everytime it is happening
again. I want someone to toss some heads finally ot I will want all my
1000 + articles I wrote deleted as I cannot edit them anymore.

Waerth

>The Foundation is deliberately restrained from managing the community
>and content of Wikimedia projects. This separation exists for many
>reasons. You should raise this issue with the community of the Dutch
>Wikipedia.
>
>Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>
>>I am getting extremely impatient with RonaldB he seems to have a fetish
>>for blocking Thai IP addresses on the Dutch wikipedia and he doesn't
>>answerd emails send to him. I cannot even edit when I am logged in, not
>>from a friends computer which uses a different provider. Is it the
>>wikimedia foundations goal to block me??
>>
>>The last two weeks I have found the IP adresses of my provider
>>constantly blocked, pre-emptively by RonaldB without any sign of
>>vandalism by those IP adresses. Wikipedia can be editted by anyone? Not
>>by me!
>>
>>Waerth
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
jayjg wrote:

>On 2/11/07, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Yonatan Horan wrote:
>>
>>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Specific_diseases
>>>
>>>I suggest you look at that. In addition to that, I remember seeing some
>>>research papers published on Ashkenazi Jews and will look for them if you
>>>really see the need. Just to support the above point, my cousin who is an
>>>Ashkenazi Jew has Familial Dysautonomy and my other cousin who is also an
>>>Ashkenazi Jew has Crohn's Disease.
>>>
>>>On 2/9/07, Mets501 wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>Jewish is not only a religion but also a race. Someone can be an atheist and
>>>>>still Jewish. For example, I personally don't really believe in god but I'm
>>>>>still a Jew.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Judaism is not a race.  There is nothing biologically which separates a
>>>>Jew(ish person) from a non-Jew(ish person).
>>>>It is OK to call it a culture, but not a race.
>>>>
>>>>
>>I respectfully hold that treating Jews as a race is fraught with
>>problems.  The epidemiological evidence cited may very well suggest
>>racial characteristics among the Ashkenazim, but that says nothing
>>about the Sephardim.  To what extent do they share the same congenital
>>diseases?  I would even suggest that Ashkenazim and Sephardim are
>>racially more different than Catholics and Protestants.
>>
>>
>You'd be wrong, though.
>
>http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/12/6769
>
>
Thanks.  Rather than venturing forth with foolish responses, I will need
to study the article in greater detail before pursuing this line of
thought, and its implications.

Ec


body:
Offer a solution. Please.

   - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Cool Cat" wrote
>
> > You are missing the point and issue. Are you suggesting that we should
> > continue the way we are doing things right now? What is your standpoint,
> I
> > do not understand at all. If you have a better idea to deal with the
> problem
> > feel free to propose it, please do not ask us to continue the
> non-working
> > system as already demonstrated.
>
> You are projecting some sort of false dichotomy here. If the issue is
> newbies creating unsuitable categories, there are certainly solutions that
> fall short of proposals that every category creation has to go through some
> process/discussion. For example, you could theoretically say that you have
> to edit for a month before starting on creating new categories.
>
> The idea that all editors, however experienced, competent, informed and
> responsible, should be penalised by a bureaucratic ruleset, because you
> detect some issues (which may not actually be very new), is not likely to
> gain general support, is it? The formation of policy is supposed to help the
> project; not to solve management issues in a heavy-handed way.
>
> I think people in touch with the realities of editing at WP understand
> when it is you need to discuss stuff, and when you just go ahead. That has
> always been one of the salient points. Perhaps someone should put a post-it
> note on WP:BOLD saying 'still relevant in 2007'.
>
> Charles
>
>
> >
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Claudi Meneghin wrote:
> Hi all,
> is there a way to export section of articles by the 'special:export' feature, please?
Special:Export doesn't allow section-exporting. Plus, MediaWiki doesn't
choose sections by name, but for number.

You can browse to teh article, click the section edit and copy&paste. Or
you could make a script to strip everything from the article but the
Exit list section.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

body:
> More tricky when those policies involve matters outside wikipedia. For
> instance, when there're legal issues involved, and the community wants
> to do it the other way

If there are definite legal issues then it's easy - the law definitely
takes precedence over consensus. Possible legal issues (ie. lots of
comments starting: "IANAL") are quick tricky to handle. Chances are
there is no legal issue and you should go with the community, but if
you're wrong, the consequences could be nasty.


from_name: Aphaia

body:
On 2/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/02/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Would there be any objection to setting up a daily-image-l mailing
> > list akin to English Wikipedia's daily-article-l, but for featured
> > pictures from Commons?
> > Of course, for bandwidth reasons, we would only link to the image,
> > instead of emailing it to each subscriber :) with brief multilingual
> > labels and copyright credit.
>
>
> Sounds great to me!
Me too.
Go, Commons go!
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Hi,
>
>[[WP:NPA]] -- you're not going to get anyone's sympathy nor their
>attention if you call people stupid.
>[[WP:OWN]] -- you don't own any of the articles you wrote. You gave up
>all rights to the text when you submitted them to Wikipedia. They will
>not be deleted.
>
>
>
I would like to see how that would stand up in a court if wikipedia is
denying me access without a valid reason (not a vandal etc).

Waerth


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unneeded disambiguation

body:
I think an "Other uses of X" link is a good thing, but it should
probably come under See Also, rather than at the top.


body:
Well... Currently we do not have a second of discussion, thats clearly not
better now is it?

Obvious cases fit an existing scheme.

  - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/13/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The real people out there want reliable ways of navigating categories. A
> one
> > week discussion propr to mass categorization is a necesary evil IMHO. I
> do
> > not believe it is reasonable to suggest otherwise.
>
> A week-long discussion is unnecessary for the obvious cases, and far
> too short for the complex ones.  If people really think that a week is
> enough to hash out all the issues with a reasonably large and
> convoluted category tree, that may explain why so many things show up
> on CFD.  In my experience, the only thing that can be done in a week
> is a reasonably straightforward mass renaming/renesting/etc. of a set
> of structurally equivalent categories (although even that is pushing
> it); actually figuring out, from a chaotic state, how to arrange a
> large category scheme generally takes several months.
>
> Kirill
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

body:
I think admins play it too safe.

    - Cool Cat

On 2/13/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/13/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Given the recent discussions on this list, and the continuing increase
> > in de-facto requirements for new admins, I have to wonder if we are not
> > now well on the way to the creation of an elite class on Wikipedia.
> >
>
> We already have it.
>
> > It appears to me that the vocal representatives of the current crop of
> > admins (meaning those who have become admins within the last year or so)
> >   have left far behind the idea that being an admin is "no big deal".
> > They see being an admin as a big deal, and want things to remain that
> way.
> >
>
> Don't try and blame it on the new admins. It is nothing new.
>
> > As I understand things, these admins view themselves as the
> > indispensable shield between Wikipedia and the world, which is full of
> > devious and persistent vandals. Without them (the admins), Wikipedia
> > would fail utterly. Essentially, they carry the weight of the survival
> > of Wikipedia on their shoulders.
> >
>
> It is true that admins as a group are the thin nerdy line between
> Wikipedia and the less pleasant parts of the net.
>
> > Each new admin, having just gone through a "rigorous" application and
> > approval process, has essentially been selected for taking this sort of
> > view. And each new admin has every good reason for maintaining or
> > increasing the requirements for successive admins. In this respect, it
> > becomes very like the process of hazing found in many clubs and
> > exclusive organizations). This trend toward ever more "rigorous"
> > requirements has led to cases of hazing on some US university campuses
> > that were so severe the "applicant" died as a result.
> >
>
> Not so much. See the problem with increasing standards is it means
> future admins will be better than you are and you end up looking at
> massive backlogs. There is enough work to go around.
>
> and in [[user:Llama man]]'s RFA less than 40% of those !voteing are
> admins.
>
> > Of course, the admins point to the very real challenges that vandals
> > pose as the reason for the rigor of the application process. They reject
> > any proposal that might place Wikipedia is peril.
> >
>
> Of course. Admins tend to play things safe. There would be serious
> objections if we did otherwise.
>
> > Perhaps the solution will require a complete re-thinking of how "special
> > rights" are allocated on Wikipedia, or even a complete re-thinking of
> > how vandalism is handled. But unless those involved are willing to
> > perceive the problem, and willing to engage the problem, nothing will
> > happen towards solving the problem.
> >
>
> Look at the talk archives of [[WP:RFA]].
>
> --
> geni
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Thanks for your reaction, I would like to know how you would react if
you were editting for years and this is happening every 2 or 3 weeks.
And nobody reacts anymore. This whole pre-emptive blocking has blocked
most of the Thai IP's on nl.wikipedia without there being any vandalism
from those ip's.

Waerth

>It would stand up very poorly, as its an international issue and I'm
>not sure they made an expressed guarantee to you.
>
>Look, just be patient, get ahold of people who can effectively deal
>with your problem and keep a cool head
>
>Or keep blowing up at the list. Eventually we'll get bored.
>
>-S
>
>On 2/13/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>[[WP:NPA]] -- you're not going to get anyone's sympathy nor their
>>>attention if you call people stupid.
>>>[[WP:OWN]] -- you don't own any of the articles you wrote. You gave up
>>>all rights to the text when you submitted them to Wikipedia. They will
>>>not be deleted.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I would like to see how that would stand up in a court if wikipedia is
>>denying me access without a valid reason (not a vandal etc).
>>
>>Waerth
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

subject:
[Foundation-l] It is the foundations responsibility .........
	How to edit wikipedia when stupid mods block all Thai ip addresses

references:
<45D1DDB6.7000907@vankalken.net>
	<45D1DFD8.3060200@fourkitchens.com> <45D208CF.8040001@vankalken.net>

body:
On 2/13/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> It is the foundation who laid this policy on the communities in 2004!
> See Meta. It was a rule placed upon the communities by the foundation so
> if it flukes you cannot all of a sudden place the responsibility with
> the local community.

Enough already.

*PLONK*

--
?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski


from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Elitism

body:
Flame Viper wrote:
> I recently was engaged in an encounter with a particularly troublesome admin. He blocked me and when I attempted to contact him through e-mail, he made ad hominem personal attacks and generally condescended to me. Now I can assure you this is the only time an admin has ever personally attacked me, but I have repeatedly encountered the seemingly glaring obviousness that is admin elitism.
>
> Wikipedia editors, or regular users, usually create and edit articles, sometimes reverting vandalism or dealing with formal Wikipedia business. And once an editor has performed a large enough amount of good deeds, they can be nominated for administrator. An RfA is a harsh process which yields few admins, and this would seem to make them an exclusive group (which they are indeed). Many people (or at least me) seem to regard adminship as a sort of trophy rather than advanced tools. And it would be intuitive to think that. On almost all websites, being made a moderator (or other "elevated user right status") is a gesture of great respect, trust, and exclusivity. This is because moderators are the "high lords" of the website, much like mayors or representatives.
> So why shouldn't adminship be a trophy?
>

Forgive me if I've misread this, but you seem to be simultaneously
complaining about admin elitism and saying there's nothing wrong with it.

Adminship is a set of advanced tools. Some people use it like a trophy.
There isn't an awful lot that can be done about that. And if it really
results from "good deeds" then some people have a very odd definition of
"good deeds".

Don't read too much into the "standards" applied at RfA. All sorts of
arbitrary metrics and irrelevant judgements are made there. More
worryingly, the "standards" are being raised progressively higher, to
the point that nobody who would make a good administrator can be one.

I took a glance at the RfA page today to see what was what. It seems
that two popular reasons to oppose at the moment are "doesn't need the
tools" and "doesn't do enough work on articles".

Just wait... before long people will start applying BOTH those criteria
simultaneously. Then *nobody* will pass.

-Gurch


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 13/02/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>>[[WP:NPA]] -- you're not going to get anyone's sympathy nor their
>>>attention if you call people stupid.
>>>[[WP:OWN]] -- you don't own any of the articles you wrote. You gave up
>>>all rights to the text when you submitted them to Wikipedia. They will
>>>not be deleted.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>I would like to see how that would stand up in a court if wikipedia is
>>denying me access without a valid reason (not a vandal etc).
>>
>>
>
>
>Sue and see if the GFDL holds up in court.
>
>
>
>
Yes mister Gerard why should you help a fellow wikipedian out I wonder.

Waerth


body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

>On 2/13/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>The issue has been raised over 10 times and everytime it is happening
>>again. I want someone to toss some heads finally ot I will want all my
>>1000 + articles I wrote deleted as I cannot edit them anymore.
>>
>>
>
>Hi Walter,
>
>I would like to ask you to donate at least 10% of your efforts which
>are usually spent on this list by you to convince the Thailand
>government or the Thai ISPs to fix their internet access so we might
>be able to ban "just the right people" in the future. 10% should be
>more than enough to convince them.
>
>
>
Read Thai fora and websites over Thailand. It will not work. providers
do not care as there are just a few foreigners suffering from this. Most
Thais only visit Thai websites.

Waerth

Waerth


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unneeded disambiguation

body:
Ah, now I know what you mean, you are talking about the duplication in the
notices.
The disambiguations themselves are needed, but the wording could indeed
improve. I think it's often a leftover from when there's just one other
article to disambiguate with, in which case this is a common wording. Not
sure what's wrong with the wording on the barrel one. The unit and the
actual metal barrel object are different things that can have their own
article.

Mgm

On 2/13/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
> I noticed that on some pages with very clear titles we can find
> disambiguation notices, like these ones:
>
> <<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_(software)
> "This article is about software. For other uses, see Beagle
> (disambiguation)."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis_(island)
> "This is an article about island named Vis. For the town with the same
> name, see Vis_(town)."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_(unit)
> "See Barrel (disambiguation) for other uses."
> >>
>
> The point of disambiguation notices is to resolve conflicts when the
> title is shared by more than one meaning.
>
> But the title "Beagle (software)" is not at all ambiguous! From the
> title anyone can tell it's about a piece of software not a dog or a ship.
> The same with "Vis (island)", "Barrel (unit)" and thousands of other
> articles.
>
> Then why do we have them?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Age uses Wikipedia logo for Wikia

body:
On 2/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Not sure how long their front page will show this, but The Age
> newspaper (theage.com.au) is linking to a story about some
> magazine-style wikis at wikia.com with the Wikipedia logo. They do
> clarify the distinction between wikia and Wikipedia, but it's still a
> bit...odd. I wonder what it means...is the Wikipedia logo now
> associated with wikis in general?
>
> Steve

The article does begin with "The people behind Wikipedia bring their
user-driven publishing model..." and does make numerous comparisons (ads,
public confidence, etc.) with Wikipedia.

Not to mention the Wikipedia logo is much more recognizable than the Wikia
one...

-- Jonel


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-14

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19926).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 13/02/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>>Sue and see if the GFDL holds up in court.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>Yes mister Gerard why should you help a fellow wikipedian out I wonder.
>>
>>
>
>
>I happily help people who don't *start* with screaming and shitting on
>the wrong list.
>
>
>
>
This is about the 4th or 5th time in a year that this is happening so
may I be tat pissed of. and in all those times I can only remember you
as the least co-operative of all and the most aggressive.

Waerth


list: commons-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Commons-l] Definition of Free Cultural Works 1.0 Released

body:
Hello all!

I'm happy to announce that version 1.0 of the Definition of Free
Cultural Works has been released. This definition is directly
referenced in the draft Wikimedia licensing policy and is likely to
become our future guideline to distinguish free and non-free content.
The definition itself is developed using a wiki process & a group of
moderators (see below), so I'd appreciate "bug reports" on the wiki.

Specifically for the Wikimedia Commons folks:
We're developing a set of buttons to identify free licenses, using our
own "Free Cultural Works" logo. Any contribution here would be
welcome.

Full announcement & links below. Please forward & distribute to
relevant mailing lists.

- - - -

New "Definition of Free Cultural Works" Challenges Authors to Rethink
Copyright Law

''The Internet, February 14, 2007.''
A diverse group of writers has released the first version of the
"Definition of Free Cultural Works." The authors have identified a
minimum set of freedoms which they believe should be granted to all
users of copyrighted materials. Created on a wiki with the feedback of
Wikipedia users, open source hackers, artists, scientists, and
lawyers, the definition lists the following core freedoms:

* The freedom to use and perform the work
* The freedom to study the work and apply the information
* The freedom to redistribute copies
* The freedom to distribute derivative works.

Inspired by the Free Software Definition and the ideals of the free
software and open source movements, these conditions are meant to
apply to any conceivable work. In reality, these freedoms must be
granted explicitly by authors, through the use of licenses which
confer them. On the website of the definition,
<http://freedomdefined.org/>, a list of these licenses can be found.
Furthermore, authors are encouraged to identify their works as Free
Cultural Works using a set of logos and buttons.

The definition was initiated by Benjamin Mako Hill, a Debian GNU/Linux
developer, and Erik M?ller, an author and long-time Wikipedia user.
Wikipedia already follows similar principles to those established by
the definition. Angela Beesley, Wikimedia Advisory Board Chair and
co-founder of Wikia.com; Mia Garlick, general counsel of Creative
Commons; and Elizabeth Stark of the Free Culture Student Movement
acted as moderators, while Richard Stallman of the Free Software
Foundation and Lawrence Lessig of Creative Commons provided helpful
feedback.

As more and more people recognize that there are alternatives to
traditional copyright, phrases like "open source," "open access,"
"open content," "free content," and "commons" are increasingly used.
But many of these phrases are ambiguous when it comes to
distinguishing works and licenses which grant all the above freedoms,
and those which only confer limited rights. For example, a popular
license restricts the commercial use of works, whereas the authors
believe that such use must be permitted for a work to be considered
Free. Instead of limiting commercial use, they recommend using a
clever legal trick called "copyleft:" requiring all users of the work
to make their combined and derivative works freely available.

M?ller and Hill encourage authors to rethink copyright law and use one
of the Free Culture Licenses to help build a genuine free and open
culture.

== Links ==

* http://freedomdefined.org/ - Official homepage of the definition
* http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses - Information about specific licenses
* http://freedomdefined.org/Logos_and_buttons - Logos and buttons for
identifying free cultural works

== Contact ==

* Erik M?ller - eloquence (at) gmail (dot) com - +49-30-45491008
* Benjamin Mako Hill - mako (at) atdot (dot) cc

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Definition of Free Cultural Works 1.0 Released


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

body:
On 13 Feb 2007 at 19:57, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

> Thomas Dalton" wrote
>
> > Wikipedia is not an experiment - the scientific method does not apply.
>
> Work on it, and you might get some [[gnomic poetry]]. At present I don't that it scans.

I prefer [[Nomic]] poetry... that's the sort where you get to change
the rules as you go along.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Husky

subject: [Foundation-l] Mayflower: Wikimedia Commons media search

references:
<280A126F-DB3B-4709-BF83-5CB7EACE3FC2@wikignome.net>
	<eqtcn0$nlr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0702131412o51e4ecal1a99e2d4e3ce5f4f@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Wow, this is really good! I can finally find something on Commons without
having to click trough a list of images or browsing categories :)

Just some small recommendations:
* I would give the 'x results found' a colourful background (maybe purple)
to separate the search box from the thumbnail view. You could also move the
search box to the right of the logo and use the dotted grey bar as a
separator.
* Having the license beneath the image would be very handy. Even more handy
would be an option to do an 'advanced search' for a specific license (e.g.
only PD images)
* Maybe the colours should be a little more Wikimedia-like (green, blue,
red) and the imagery could be more related to Wikimedia Commons to refer to
the connection between the two. I attached an example logo (just an idea).

Anyway, great job! With some more work Mayflower could be a great
replacement for the current Commons search.

-- Hay Kranen / [[User:Husky]]

On 2/13/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/13/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Has the look of a commercial engine. Not sure if it's good or not, but
> > seems 'profesional'.
> > Instead of Copyright... Copyleft? ;)
>
> But copyleft wouldn't be accurate for much of the media. I think that
> when this is 'done' the best thing would be to display license with
> the image... in due time, in due time.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Keitei

body:
On Feb 13, 2007, at 14:41, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> I'm glad to see that you are finally moving out of Utopia (=Nowhere)
>> into the real world.  Your conversion to logic would be welcome.
>
> That reads like an ad hominem attack, although I have no idea what you
> are getting at. For a start, there is a difference between an
> unachievable ideal place and "nowhere". I can't see how anything I've
> said could be taken to be nieve, which is the only interpretation I
> can come up with for your first sentence, and I have no idea what you
> think I've been basing my arguments on if it isn't logic. To convert
> to something, you have to convert from something.

"Utopia (from Greek i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist")"
I think maybe it was a joke? A continuation of the original punning?
I didn't see it as an attack, at the least.

--keitei


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] How to edit wikipedia when stupid
 mods block all Thai ip addresses

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 13/02/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Can we end this feud?
>>What is the state of things? "Too bad so sad" or is there a way to
>>appeal this problem?
>>
>>
>
>
>en:wp has the ability to block only for IP users, not for logged-in
>users. I'd be surprised if nl:wp lacks this.
>
>i.e., it needs to be taken up with nl:wp. No-one here who isn't an
>nl:wp admin can do anything.
>
>
>
>
nl-wikipedia has this feature as well. It is just that the mod who is
autoblocking all open proxies (the vast majority of Thai ISP's) is NOT
blocking with this switched on, he is hardblocking. He has been asked
many times not to do this also in Dutch villagepump. But he still does
it. Also having to ask this xx's of times in a short space is really
getting on my nerves. Everytime it is promised the mod will change his
ways everytime he doesn't.

Waerth


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unneeded disambiguation

body:
I noticed that on some pages with very clear titles we can find
disambiguation notices, like these ones:

<<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_(software)
"This article is about software. For other uses, see Beagle (disambiguation)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis_(island)
"This is an article about island named Vis. For the town with the same name, see Vis_(town)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_(unit)
"See Barrel (disambiguation) for other uses."
>>

The point of disambiguation notices is to resolve conflicts when the
title is shared by more than one meaning.

But the title "Beagle (software)" is not at all ambiguous! From the
title anyone can tell it's about a piece of software not a dog or a ship.
The same with "Vis (island)", "Barrel (unit)" and thousands of other
articles.

Then why do we have them?


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 13/02/07, Tangotango <tangotango at wikignome.net> wrote:

> Any comments and/or suggestions would be most welcome.

Very funky.

Would it be possible to have an option to restrict it only to image
files? Some searches bring up quite a few .ogg files stored on
Commons, which are not desperately useful for most people using the
search...

The thumbnailing is sometimes a bit unexpected. For example,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Tromboon.jpg is displayed as
just the top fraction of the image - a plain brass U-bend and nothing
else. Is it possible to do a full-article thumbnail?

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Tangotango

subject: [Commons-l] Mayflower: Wikimedia Commons media search

body:
Hi, this is a follow-up to my posts regarding "The Ideal Wiki
Software" on foundation-l, from late January.

I've uploaded my Wikimedia Commons image/media search tool, dubbed
"Mayflower",  to the toolserver; it's available at http://
tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/.

Just to recap, this tool allows full-text searching of the Commons
database, returning a gallery-based results page, much like Google
Images and similar services. The main goal was to make a user-
friendly interface, so that even non-Wikimedians can take advantage
of it.

As I said back in January, I'm still interested in Brianna Laugher's
idea of making a gallery-based, full-text search feature available as
a MediaWiki extension, so that it can take advantage of the existing
MediaWiki search index and the stability of the main servers.

Any comments and/or suggestions would be most welcome.

(Sorry if this looks like an advertisement; I don't usually advertise
new tools, but I thought the foundation-l and commons-l communities
would be interested.)

Cheers,

Tangotango


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Foundation-l] It is the foundations responsibility ......... How
 to edit wikipedia when stupid mods block all Thai ip addresses

body:
It is the foundation who laid this policy on the communities in 2004!
See Meta. It was a rule placed upon the communities by the foundation so
if it flukes you cannot all of a sudden place the responsibility with
the local community.

Waerth.

>The Foundation is deliberately restrained from managing the community
>and content of Wikimedia projects. This separation exists for many
>reasons. You should raise this issue with the community of the Dutch
>Wikipedia.
>
>Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>
>>I am getting extremely impatient with RonaldB he seems to have a fetish
>>for blocking Thai IP addresses on the Dutch wikipedia and he doesn't
>>answerd emails send to him. I cannot even edit when I am logged in, not
>>from a friends computer which uses a different provider. Is it the
>>wikimedia foundations goal to block me??
>>
>>The last two weeks I have found the IP adresses of my provider
>>constantly blocked, pre-emptively by RonaldB without any sign of
>>vandalism by those IP adresses. Wikipedia can be editted by anyone? Not
>>by me!
>>
>>Waerth
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Commons-l]  Mayflower: Wikimedia Commons media search

body:
On 2/13/07, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
 > Fantastic. It would probably be useful to include the image page
 > wikitext in the result.. even if it lowered the density of the
 > results.
Unfortunately, that's not currently possible due to the structure of
the index... (it only stores words and a reference to the pages on
which that word can be found) However, an extension version of this
tool would be able to do that, as can Special:Search.

 > should have a "Images and other content are copyright their
respective
 > owners" or the like. :)
Fixed :) Thanks for pointing that out.

Cheers,

Tangotango


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] The Communist Vandal Trashed the Dine (Navajo)
	Wikipedia

body:
The Communist Vandal trashed the entire Dine (Navajo) Wikipedia at
nv.wikipedia.org sometime earlier today.

I have reverted all of his edits -- it took a while.  He managed to
vandalize every single article on this wiki in a matter of minutes.

Jeff


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
Earle Martin wrote:
> It would be useful if there were preference switches for what one
> wanted to see, i.e. "Don't show: [ ] article categories [ ] stub
> messages ...",  and so on, a la the kind of display configuration you
> get on Slashdot and similar sites, that would set user CSS
> appropriately. While technical users such as ourselves may be
> comfortable with editing CSS files, many other users are not.

This sort of customizability could go a long way towards resolving some
of the deep philosophical differences some groups of users have over
formatting issues by giving each group their preferred view of the
underlying data. Perhaps some day we'll be able to use a version
flagging system to flag articles as "webcomic" or "school" and allow
people to completely ignore whole classes of articles whose existence
offend them. :)


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
There are quite a few sound files and there will be many more given that
some great functionality is developed in the "Shtooka" software. The
notion that these files are not desperately useful for some.. is also
true the other way around. For some the images are not desperately
useful and it is the sound files that are of interest.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Andrew Gray schreef:
> On 13/02/07, Tangotango <tangotango at wikignome.net> wrote:
>
>
>> Any comments and/or suggestions would be most welcome.
>>
>
> Very funky.
>
> Would it be possible to have an option to restrict it only to image
> files? Some searches bring up quite a few .ogg files stored on
> Commons, which are not desperately useful for most people using the
> search...
>
> The thumbnailing is sometimes a bit unexpected. For example,
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Tromboon.jpg is displayed as
> just the top fraction of the image - a plain brass U-bend and nothing
> else. Is it possible to do a full-article thumbnail?
>
>