subject: [Wikitech-l] bug 550

body:
On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>
You may want to add a throttle here on the rate of account creations
from a single IP -- again, only for this class of soft-blocked IPs,
perhaps at most two every five minutes.
</snip>

Currently, there is a 6 account per day per IP limitation. (per Raul654's on
wiki comments)

Essjay

On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/22/06, Gregory Price <gprice at hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Here's one proposal.  Please comment.
> >
> > In any case, we leave in place the option to block an IP entirely.
> > Whatever other, softer notion of blocking we introduce is
> > just another option, to be used as a first choice but with
> > hard blocking available as always if necessary.
>
> Makes sense.
>
> > or with a bot.  So we can say that to edit from a
> > soft-blocked IP, you must have two "real user" bits set:
> >  - you've confirmed an email address
> >  - you've passed a captcha[1]
> > The captcha makes it very difficult for a bot
> > to make accounts that can edit from behind a soft-block.
> > The email confirmation makes it take a couple of minutes
> > to make each account by hand.
> > If necessary we can add a couple more provisos:
>
> You may want to add a throttle here on the rate of account creations
> from a single IP -- again, only for this class of soft-blocked IPs,
> perhaps at most two every five minutes.
>
>
> > None of this need affect people who just want to make an account,
> > to read logged in, or set their preferences; the only thing
> > an account that hasn't met the conditions need be barred
> > from doing through a soft-block is editing.
>
> I like this part.
>
> SJ
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Joseph Reagle

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] "Fatally Flawed" -- Internal
	Britannica Review Tackles Nature Methods

body:
On Wednesday 22 March 2006 10:41, SJ wrote:
> Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
> customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
> accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.  A more detailed
> review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
> and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.

Interestingly, while I agree the study was very limited, all of the
methodological concerns Encyclopaedia Britannica raises could have also
affected the analysis of Wikipedia. In any case, the import of this
response is it took them more time to send a response to some of their
customers about the study than it took for all of the errors identified to
be corrected in the Wikipedia!


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] "Fatally Flawed" -- Internal Britannica Review
	Tackles Nature Methods


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Fatally Flawed" -- Internal Britannica Review
	Tackles Nature Methods

body:
On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
> customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
> accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.  A more detailed
> review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
> and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.

This is pretty important and from all I've read so far, one could be
in the situation to support Britannicas call to Nature to retract the
story and make a better one.

Mathias


body:
On 3/22/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
> > customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
> > accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.  A more detailed
> > review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
> > and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.
>
> Where?

http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki converter (follow-up)

body:
I have added an option to Special:Export that will add a list of all
contributors of a page to the XML output. The list is distinct (each
contributor mentioned only once). I also expanded the XML converter to
use this. (Brion et al.: please put the new Special:Export on the live
sites soon)

For my local test site, where the new Special:Export is running, it will
now add a list of all contributors to the output (IPs are omitted). It
will even add people who worked on a template that is used in the
document ;-)

Next stop: OpenOffice .ODT output...

Magnus

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body:
On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
> customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
> accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.  A more detailed
> review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
> and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.

Those of you who are interested in the topic should come to
#wikipedia-britannica on Freenode IRC.

We might be able to form an response to this which could be productive.

Mathias


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On Mar 22, 2006, at 1:51 PM, Dan Jacobson wrote:

> P> You have images turned off in your browser? Are you using Netscape
> P> 4.7 or something?
> I am using firefox and wwwoffle, but with costly modem line, so last
> year I turned images off.

First, where are you accessing from? Reading the website at your
domain it looks like Taiwan. Is it difficult for you to find high-
speed access there? I was under the impression that Taiwan was rather
developed so that surprises me.

Secondly, doesn't Firefox let you selectively turn on images?

> P> Supporting 1990's era web browsing is not one of them.
>
> I could have been visually impaired.
> OK, no big deal.

In either case, as you may be aware, we do have a help desk you can
contact.  It's just that this is a rare enough occurrence that it's
not an effective use of developer time and effort to implement a non-
image-based captcha for these occurrences.

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


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radio Wales interview as ogg

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

David Gerard stated for the record:

> For those who missed it, I've put my segment up:
>
> http://static.rocknerd.org/david/radiowales-q0-mono.ogg
>
> Ogg Vorbis, 2,311,827 bytes.
>
>
> - d.

I just can't get over the way they named a whole country after Jimbo.
Now THAT'S fame!

- --
 Sean Barrett     | We must all make sacrifices, Pinky.
 sean at epoptic.org | You may be next. --The Brain
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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FxWFj088Vft8zkAC+zs0oeI=
=244b
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from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/22/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I have added an option to Special:Export that will add a list of all
> contributors of a page to the XML output. The list is distinct (each
> contributor mentioned only once). I also expanded the XML converter to
> use this. (Brion et al.: please put the new Special:Export on the live
> sites soon)
>
> For my local test site, where the new Special:Export is running, it will
> now add a list of all contributors to the output (IPs are omitted). It
> will even add people who worked on a template that is used in the
> document ;-)

I don't suppose there's any way of removing vandals from that list...?

Steve


from_name: charles matthews

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Fatally Flawed" -- Internal Britannica
	ReviewTackles Nature Methods

body:
 "Steve Bennett" wrote

>> Britannica also made repeated attempts to obtain from Nature the original
> data on which the study's conclusions were based. We invited Nature's
>> editors and management to meet with us to discuss our analysis, but they
>> declined.

>If true, that's very poor on Nature's part.

Well, I have read the detailed analyses of errors, with the names of the
reviewers, in a document a link to which was posted to this list.  I wonder
what more they wanted.

There's an odd idea in the EB document.  They had 'peer review', except that
of course it wasn't: those reviewing would for the most part be of greater
academic distinction than those writing the articles.  Now they want to
second-guess all that.  But not by getting a 'better' peer review done.
More by meeting with Nature, and trying for retractions.

Rather short-sighted, in fact, in that alienating Nature probably is more
likely to make it repeat the exercise.

Charles


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Answers.com software patents lawsuit

body:
(I am copying this to wikien-l, since the 1-Click-Tool is relevant
specifically to the English Wikipedia. However, this is a Foundation
issue.)

Apparently Answers.com has filed a lawsuit against Babylon, a
competitor creating an innovative (if proprietary) software product --
see atttached message. Answers.com claims Babylon violates one of its
patents.

The Wikimedia Foundation has business relations with Answers.com.
Answers.com, which mirrors Wikipedia content, has provided funding to
Wikimania and Wikimedia, and there was an announcement last year for a
new partnership about a Wikipedia-branded version of Answers.com's
"One-Click-Answers":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/1-Click_Answers

This announced partnership, while initially controversial, as of the
last message from Jimmy Wales is scheduled to go ahead:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-February/006055.html

Certainly, it is not practical to only engage in business partnerships
with companies whose behavior in its entirety our community in its
entirety considers ethical. We are partnering with Yahoo!, in spite of
their cooperation with the Chinese regime, for example. However, the
proposed 1-Click-Answers partnership would go further than that, since
the patents covering this exact tool are apparently at the heart of
this lawsuit. From the article excerpted below:

  The technology is used in one of Answers' core software products,
  1-Click Answers, which can be downloaded for free from its Web site,
  said Jay Bailey, Answers' marketing director.

Babylon makes a one click answer tool, which as of recently integrates
Wikipedia content. I am a former Babylon user; their software made
huge waves when it first was released for Windows many years ago due
to it being fairly clever at identifying words on the screen even in
images (you then see translations, definitions, etc.). The Answers.com
patent in question was only granted in 2004 according to the article,
and Babylon claims they got a similar patent in 2001 already. It seems
very much like a predatory bad faith lawsuit to me, and an abuse of
exactly the kind of patents that software patent critics oppose, but
that is my personal judgment. In general, it is considered good form
in the IT industry these days to use software patents only
defensively.

>From the information I have seen so far, it seems to be entirely
within the realm of possibilities that Answers.com would also sue an
open source project which is allegedly in violation of its patents. I
have known about these patents for some time, so I have asked Jimmy
months ago to ask Bob Rosenschein of Answers.com for an affirmation
that they would use patents only defensively; Jimmy promised to ask,
but I have not heard from him since then.

Now, our own philosophy on these matters is clear. Wikimedia is
entirely running on free software and does not even allow the use of
patent-encumbered file formats like MP3. It does not therefore seem
proper to me to engage in a partnership with regard to the
1-Click-Answers tool. It would be like becoming friends with someone
while you watch them point a gun at someone else; the next bullet
might be for you. I don't have a strong opinion on the other
partnerships with Answers.com, but I think this specific one should be
cancelled ASAP.

This is especially true as the details of the deal -- how we highlight
the existence of this tool -- were highly controversial to begin with.
I have also seen no actual revenue projections which would indicate
this is a compelling idea, and I doubt such projections can be made
with any accuracy.

I would be interested in what others think, and in any missing pieces
of information. Failing this, I strongly suggest that the issue is put
before a Board vote if it is still relevant, given this fundamentally
new situation.

Erik

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com>
Date: Mar 22, 2006 10:08 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] [Slightly OT] Answers sues Babylon
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>

(...)

http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/news.cms?id=13132

Answers.com owner sues Israeli tech firm
by Amanda Fung

Answers Corp., the Manhattan-based creator of Answers.com, said
Wednesday that it sued an Israeli company to stop it from using
technology that links a user's computer with a central database over
the Internet.

The lawsuit, filed with the Tel-Aviv District Court, claims that
Babylon Ltd. infringed on Answers' Computerized Dictionary and
Thesaurus Applications patent. Answers got the patent in 2004, nine
years after it first applied.

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/tm.site/news/BREAKING%20NEWS/190036/
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060308/ukw014.html?.v=45
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Answers.com software patents lawsuit


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creating an account and legal stuff

body:
On 3/22/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> In the UK (EU?), it would be required upon us (the Foundation) to
> require users (even anons) to explicitly accept the privacy implications
> of their actions, and this is almost (?) always carried out with a
> non-automatically set selection box on registration. Not sure if there's
> any case law either way, but if there is and it is the only possible
> way, then running a MediaWiki installation with anon editing, or user
> editing without such a selection box or "I agree" button may well fall
> foul of Data Protection legislation.

In the US, where our servers are located, there is no such law, I believe.

Indeed, we have no hard and fast privacy policy for Wikipedia editors
and admins to follow.  The policy we have is for the foundation and
the software, not the users.  I suspect also the Foundation is very
unkeen to do anything that implies a binding relationship between it
and the users/admins.

-Matt


body:
On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Those reports were wrong, however, because Nature's research was invalid. As
> our editors and scholarly advisers have discovered by reviewing the research
> in depth, almost everything about the Nature's investigation was wrong and
> misleading. Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to the Britannica were not
> inaccuracies at all, and a number of the articles Nature examined were not
> even in the Encyclop?dia Britannica. The study was so poorly carried out and
> its findings so error-laden that it was completely without merit.

I'm surprised how vague this is. Later he complains that the source
data is not available. But here he just refers to "dozens of
inaccuracies"...hmm.

> *       Rearranging, reediting, and excerpting Britannica articles. Several
> of the "articles" Nature sent its outside reviewers were only sections of,
> or excerpts from Britannica entries. Some were cut and pasted together from
> more than one Britannica article. As a result, Britannica's coverage of
> certain subjects was represented in the study by texts that our editors
> never created, approved or even saw.

That seems like a lot of hot air over a small issue. Claiming that
their editors "never created, approved or even saw" the particular
compilation is really piling on strong words to make an impact.
Whereas what they're actually denying is much weaker. Kind of like "I
did *not* have sexual relations with that woman..."

> *       Mistakenly identifying inaccuracies. The journal claimed to have
> found dozens of inaccuracies in Britannica that didn't exist.

Well, I've had a look at some of their claimed inaccurate inaccuracies
and I'm not that sure. It's very much "No it's not / Yes it is".

> *       Reviewing the wrong texts. They reviewed a number of texts that were
> not even in the encyclopedia.

Do they get more specific than this? "A number" probably turns out to
be 3. Or existed in some previous version of the encyclopaedia that
was outdated 4 days before the survey. I'm suspicious.

> *       Failing to check facts. Nature falsely attributed inaccuracies to
> Britannica based on statements from its reviewers that were themselves
> inaccurate and which Nature's editors failed to verify.

Well, details, please.

> *       Misrepresenting its findings. Even according to Nature's own
> figures, (which grossly exaggerated the number of inaccuracies in
> Britannica) Wikipedia had a third more inaccuracies than Britannica. Yet the
> headline of the journal's report concealed this fact and implied something
> very different.

I vaguely recall they had some sort of weird logarithmic scale, so I
would tend to agree with this one. But actually...wasn't the final
number something like "4 errors per article compared to 3 errors per
article"? Whether 33% more is a lot or not is purely subjective. I
would definitely say it's the same ballpark.

> Britannica also made repeated attempts to obtain from Nature the original
> data on which the study's conclusions were based. We invited Nature's
> editors and management to meet with us to discuss our analysis, but they
> declined.

If true, that's very poor on Nature's part.

> Whatever may have prompted Nature to do such careless and sloppy research,
> it's now time for them to uphold their commitment to good science and
> retract the study immediately. We have urged them strongly to do so.

Uh, a commitment to good science would be publishing the data and
their method so that people can attempt to reproduce it. I tend to
agree that Nature's method was optimistic. Surely more than one
reviewer for each article shoul have been appointed...even better
would have been an open forum where many experts could pick through
each article and argue amongst themselves.

> We have prepared a detailed report that describes Britannica's thorough
> (7,000 words) analysis of the Nature study. I invite you to download it from
> our Web site at www.eb.com.

A lot of it seems to be "We reject this criticism. We have asked our
adviser, and he says we're right." Not exactly convincing stuff.
Particularly when they complain that the original study failed to cite
sources - and with few exceptions, the EB rebuttal doesn't either.

Example: "Britannica response: We do not accept these criticisms
(which are really just one criticism, not two). We have published a
revision of this article that retains the emphasis on supersaturation
rather than the transitional stage of saturation."

By this standard, Wikipedia should reply to nature and say "Thanks for
the criticisms. Our community rejects them. We stand by our original
version". However, we didn't - as I understand, we actually took the
criticisms on board and worked with them. Which kind of demonstrates
the real strength in Wikipedia. Instead of simply "not accepting"
every criticism (as EB does 22 times in their response) to protect our
good name, we, without ego, simply make it better.

I also sort of feel that as an attempted model of good science or
whatever, EB should not be attacking the entire Nature study as
totally "without merit".

Sorry I can't join the IRC chat.

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Foundation-l] A notice on external links to old revisions,
	thoughts.

body:
Right now it is possible for someone to criticize Wikipedia for
mistakes and vandalism in ancient versions... perhaps mistakes they
inserted themselves which were reverted later.  Although I think it is
important that our readers understand the nature of Wiki and that such
things can happen, the ability for external sites to deep link our old
revisions at will when combined with our relaxed presentation of old
content makes it quite easy to misrepresent the situation and creates
a greater risk that users will be directed to stale and incorrect
content which we've since corrected.

I'd like to know what people think of the following proposal.

When a non-logged in user visits an old Wikipedia revision via a link
from a third party website, we first display a notice that on enwiki
might say something like:

'''Please note:'''  You have requested an old version of the article
{{{PAGENAME}}} from {{{rev timestamp}}}. A more current version of the
article is [[{{cur}}|available here]]. You may also [[{{{diff
page}}|view the differences]] between the version you requested and
the current version, or [[{{{hist page}}}|view the entire history]] of
this article.    The old revision is available [[{{{old
revision}}}|here]].

We could decide to display this notice either to people who followed a
link from another site only, or those users plus ones who directly
typed in or followed a bookmark to the old revision.   Since logged in
users are far more likely to understand Wikipedia, we could probably
skip the notice for them.

Thoughts?


from_name: freakofnurture

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and "X-Forwarded-For"

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>
> Well, for what my opinion is worth (I'm not a Wikimedia admin, but I've
> been on the net for about 23 years) the writer doesn't sound like a) an
> idiot, or b) a kook.  He may be slightly uninformed technically (though
> I'm not sure I even think that), but...
>
> Let me make sure I'm following your perception: he says the HTTP proxy
> which is blocked a) isn't his, b) isn't easily avoidable  c) causes
> collateral damage and d) is "safe", and you believe one or more of
> those assertions to be factually inaccurate?
>

a) I am assuming that mr. wwwwolf is in fact a legitimate user of the ISP
that he describes.
b) I am assuming this is his only ISP, i.e., he doesn't have access to an
alternate ISP for purposes of editing wikipedia.
c) I have, at this time, no reason to believe he's a vandal, therefore I
assume denial of service to him would be considered collateral damage, yes.
d) I know for a fact that anybody in the world can configure his or her web
browser to use his IP address (213.216.199.14, just as I did to in the
[[Wikipedia:Sandbox]] to find out [1] what the IP was, and [2] whether or
not it had already been blocked) without any authentication or
accountability whatsoever, so I would not consider it "safe" by any means.

I count 3 out of 4 to be inaccurate.

--freakofnurture
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tor-and-%22X-Forwarded-For%22-t1325932.html#a3545275
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and "X-Forwarded-For"

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>
> This sounds quite plausible.  I've encountered a similar situation with
> 213.42.2.11 and 213.42.2.21, which are proxies used by a large ISP in
> the United Arab Emirates.  Some customer of that ISP apparently has a
> proxy trojan on their computer, and so we keep getting open proxy
> vandalism from those IPs, which can't be blocked without major
> collateral damage.
>
> I believe MediaWiki does have a list of "known" proxies that can be
> trusted to supply a valid X-Forwarded-For header.  As the whois records
> for 213.216.199.14 seem legit, and the proxy appears to provide the
> necessary headers, I personally see no reason not to add it to the list.
>
So what should I tell the guy?

--freakofnurture
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tor-and-%22X-Forwarded-For%22-t1325932.html#a3545291
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:52:09 +1100, you wrote:

>Britannica must be struggling. I recently got a letter offering me a free
>Britannica CD-ROM (basic edition) if I subscribed. I don't think that is a
>good sign.

I thought that was a pretty old offer?  I seem to recall something
similar at least five years back.  Could be wrong, of course.

I think these days anybody selling access to information is
struggling.  Too much of it is free.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
It could hardly be "totally without merit". Most of those disputed
facts are really "he said, she said" situation where not even the
experts agree. Stubbornly sticking to your guns and using loaded words
without going into details as to where specific details come from is
-- well let's not use mean words.

Basically what they're saying is that Nature messed up and that
Wikipedia has more errors than Nature claimed. "internet database
anyone, without specific qualifications can edit" is a jab at
Wikipedia's open community" for no other reason than making themselves
look good.

I'm having a hard time with the idea of sending them a "nice" message.

Mgm


subject: [Wikitech-l] Workflow

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Does it necessarily include the "review" feature, or are they separate?
>
They are separate, I just have so many extensions under development to
show...

You can find the extension in MediaWiki CVS at SourceForge, module
"extensions", in the "Tasks" directory.

Magnus


body:
On 3/22/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> This confirms it. We have reached GandhiCon 3:

Nice term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/GandhiCon

Steve


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/22/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>> I have added an option to Special:Export that will add a list of all
>> contributors of a page to the XML output. The list is distinct (each
>> contributor mentioned only once). I also expanded the XML converter to
>> use this. (Brion et al.: please put the new Special:Export on the live
>> sites soon)
>>
>> For my local test site, where the new Special:Export is running, it will
>> now add a list of all contributors to the output (IPs are omitted). It
>> will even add people who worked on a template that is used in the
>> document ;-)
>>
>
> I don't suppose there's any way of removing vandals from that list...?
>
I plan on writing an automatic vandal detector right after the finishing
touch on Duke Nukem Forever ;-)

Seriously, I think it's a Bad Idea to allow the automatic removal of
usernames, e.g. by a blacklist. But once I've got ODT export, you can
eliminate them yourself manually (by "eliminate" I merely refer to
removing their names, of course...)

Magnus


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/22/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:52:09 +1100, you wrote:
>
> >Britannica must be struggling. I recently got a letter offering me a free
> >Britannica CD-ROM (basic edition) if I subscribed. I don't think that is a
> >good sign.
>
> I thought that was a pretty old offer?  I seem to recall something
> similar at least five years back.  Could be wrong, of course.
>
> I think these days anybody selling access to information is
> struggling.  Too much of it is free.
> Guy (JzG)

Journals appear to be doing ok.

--
geni


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Fatally Flawed" -- Internal Britannica Review
 Tackles Nature Methods

body:
SJ wrote:
> Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
> customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
> accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.

It might be interesting to invite Nature to do a new comparison -- this
time of our response to their article [1] with Britannica's [2]...

Cheers,

N.

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_peer_review/Nature_December_2005/Errors
[2] http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


body:
> I think these days anybody selling access to information is
> struggling.  Too much of it is free.

> Guy (JzG)

Indeed, the fun part is compiling the encyclopedia.  The unfun part is the
sales side.  We get that right.

Charles


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] hosting problems

body:
Well, phpShell works for me and MediaWiki's maintenance scripts don't
seem to care about the apparent web request.

Rob Church

On 22/03/06, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi,
>
> i have already tried phpshell, but as it not exactly a shell, mediawiki
> still thinks the request comes from the web. so the maintenance scripts do
> not function. regarding the location, it will be very difficult to find a
> good host in India.
>
> thanks for the help.
>
> vedant
>
> On 3/22/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Depends on your location, in my opinion. For instance, I prefer using
> > a UK-based host because I live there.
> >
> > As a stopgap measure, if you don't have shell access, try phpShell
> > (http://mgeisler.net/php-shell) which provides a wrapper/emulator.
> > However, it might be your crappy host doesn't allow the functions this
> > needs in order to work.
> >
> >
> > Rob Church
> >
> > On 21/03/06, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > hi,
> > >
> > > My hosting provider is very crappy. One of the basic things, i.e. shell
> > > access, is not available. This has many disadvantages because I cannot
> > > run almost
> > > any maintenance scripts. I found that I could use cron scripts to
> > replace a
> > > shell, (it does what I would do in a shell), but it is very tedious and
> > has
> > > been the cause of many problems. I had to import something to the wiki
> > and
> > > ran the scirpt through a cron script but forgot to remove it and it kept
> > > importing it over and over till i saw that some pages that were deleted
> > > again came up.
> > >
> > > moreover, the server is in such a location that cvs update is
> > > neversuccessful. In my computer, cvs update updates the code within 20
> > > or 30
> > > times, but in that server, it has never updated. I made a script to keep
> > > updating it till it succedded and it updated only once in 24 hours. This
> > > definately caused problems to the host, and they temporarily suspended
> > my
> > > account. So I see no way out of this except change my hosting provider.
> > >
> > > Does anybody know a good hosting provider that suites my needs?
> > >
> > > vedant
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: M. Creidieki Crouch

body:
> '''Please note:'''  You have requested an old version of the article
> {{{PAGENAME}}} from {{{rev timestamp}}}. A more current version of the
> article is [[{{cur}}|available here]]. You may also [[{{{diff
> page}}|view the differences]] between the version you requested and
> the current version, or [[{{{hist page}}}|view the entire history]] of
> this article.    The old revision is available [[{{{old
> revision}}}|here]].

Could we just put a similar message in [[MediaWiki:Revisionasof]]?  I
don't understand quite how the MediaWiki-namespace messages are
included in the page rendering, but it would also need to be a much
larger font than it currently is.

-- Creidieki M. Crouch
User:Creidieki


body:
On 3/22/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> Seriously, I think it's a Bad Idea to allow the automatic removal of
> usernames, e.g. by a blacklist. But once I've got ODT export, you can
> eliminate them yourself manually (by "eliminate" I merely refer to
> removing their names, of course...)

Hmm. I'm thinking of classic articles like GWB that have been "worked
on" by thousands of contributors. Of course, some of those
contributors "worked on" it by "contributing" "bush is GAY" etc.

On the other hand, people sometimes do "contribute" without ever
editing the article, by suggesting ways of restructing on the talk
page, doing a peer review etc.

This isn't a criticism of your feature, more of the GFDL requirements
in general.

Steve


body:
On 3/22/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Well, I have read the detailed analyses of errors, with the names of the
> reviewers, in a document a link to which was posted to this list.  I wonder
> what more they wanted.

They wanted access to the actual documents constructed by Nature, on
which it based its review. Apparently, Nature cobbled together bits
from various different articles to produce "comparable" articles.
Wanting access to those new documents seems reasonable to me.

> There's an odd idea in the EB document.  They had 'peer review', except that
> of course it wasn't: those reviewing would for the most part be of greater
> academic distinction than those writing the articles.  Now they want to
> second-guess all that.  But not by getting a 'better' peer review done.
> More by meeting with Nature, and trying for retractions.

Yes, I don't believe that scientific studies are generally
"retracted". If they were really science-friendly, they would be
asking someone else to repeat the experiment, or at the least review
it. Rather than simply attacking it themselves and asking nicely for
it to be buried under the carpet.

> Rather short-sighted, in fact, in that alienating Nature probably is more
> likely to make it repeat the exercise.

Yes. "We love nature. That's why we're suing the World Nature Fund..."

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
On 3/22/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting ruling from the High Court in England, which could have
> implications for our talk  pages.
> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1737001,00.html
>
> Sarah

It only really applies to UK editors and since in the UK sending a
libelus claim on a postcard is enough to trigger a case it is hardly
an unexpected extension of the law.

--
geni


from_name: spectre at ivixor.net

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] "Fatally Flawed" -- Internal Britannica Review
 Tackles Nature Methods

body:
Haha,

"We do not accept this criticism of our short article on this specific
plant family. We are not a botanical encyclopedia and do not pretend to
be."

Our Encyclopaedia is limited, we don't except the fact that it is limited
as a criticism.

Very telling ^____^

Some fair points, but come on, what was that about spilt milk?

Fran

> Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
> customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
> accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.  A more detailed
> review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
> and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.
>
>
> ================================================>> Because you're a valued
> Britannica customer, I'm writing to you today about
> a subject that has received widespread news coverage - it is a subject
> that's being taken very seriously by all of us at Encyclop?dia Britannica
> and one on which we have worked extensively with our editors,
> contributors,
> and advisors for many weeks.
>
> In one of its recent issues, the science journal Nature published an
> article
> that claimed to compare the accuracy of the online Encyclop?dia Britannica
> with Wikipedia, the Internet database that allows anyone, regardless of
> knowledge or qualifications, to write and edit articles on any subject.
> Wikipedia had recently received attention for its alleged inaccuracies,
> but
> Nature's article claimed that Britannica's science coverage was only
> slightly more accurate than Wikipedia's.
>
> Arriving amid the revelations of vandalism and errors in Wikipedia, such a
> finding was, not surprisingly, big news. Perhaps you even saw the story
> yourself. It's been reported around the world.
>
> Those reports were wrong, however, because Nature's research was invalid.
> As
> our editors and scholarly advisers have discovered by reviewing the
> research
> in depth, almost everything about the Nature's investigation was wrong and
> misleading. Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to the Britannica were not
> inaccuracies at all, and a number of the articles Nature examined were not
> even in the Encyclop?dia Britannica. The study was so poorly carried out
> and
> its findings so error-laden that it was completely without merit.
>
> Since educators and librarians have been among Britannica's closest
> colleagues for many years, I would like to address you personally with an
> explanation of our findings and tell you the truth about the Nature study.
>
> Almost everything Nature did showed carelessness and indifference to basic
> research standards. Their numerous errors and spurious procedures included
> the following:
>
> *       Rearranging, reediting, and excerpting Britannica articles.
> Several
> of the "articles" Nature sent its outside reviewers were only sections of,
> or excerpts from Britannica entries. Some were cut and pasted together
> from
> more than one Britannica article. As a result, Britannica's coverage of
> certain subjects was represented in the study by texts that our editors
> never created, approved or even saw.
> *       Mistakenly identifying inaccuracies. The journal claimed to have
> found dozens of inaccuracies in Britannica that didn't exist.
> *       Reviewing the wrong texts. They reviewed a number of texts that
> were
> not even in the encyclopedia.
> *       Failing to check facts. Nature falsely attributed inaccuracies to
> Britannica based on statements from its reviewers that were themselves
> inaccurate and which Nature's editors failed to verify.
> *       Misrepresenting its findings. Even according to Nature's own
> figures, (which grossly exaggerated the number of inaccuracies in
> Britannica) Wikipedia had a third more inaccuracies than Britannica. Yet
> the
> headline of the journal's report concealed this fact and implied something
> very different.
>
> Britannica also made repeated attempts to obtain from Nature the original
> data on which the study's conclusions were based. We invited Nature's
> editors and management to meet with us to discuss our analysis, but they
> declined.
>
> The Nature study was thoroughly wrong and represented an unfair affront to
> Britannica's reputation.
>
> Britannica practices the kind of sound scholarship and rigorous editorial
> work that few organizations even attempt. This is vital in the age of the
> Internet, when there is so much inappropriate material available. Today,
> having sources like Britannica is more important than ever, with content
> that is reliable, tailored to the age of the user, correlated to
> curriculum,
> and safe for everyone.
>
> Whatever may have prompted Nature to do such careless and sloppy research,
> it's now time for them to uphold their commitment to good science and
> retract the study immediately. We have urged them strongly to do so.
>
> We have prepared a detailed report that describes Britannica's thorough
> (7,000 words) analysis of the Nature study. I invite you to download it
> from
> our Web site at www.eb.com.
>
> =================================================_______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Solution to the Image Problem

body:
On Mar 22, 2006, at 11:30 AM, Mark Wagner wrote:
> Wikipedia's got a problem with images.  2000 of them are uploaded
> every day, and most of them have inadequate source information, an
> incorrect license tag, or an invalid fair-use claim.

I think this is a little premature.  It is really important to remember
that, with our current methods - *The Number Of Untagged Images Is
Going Down*.  The images tagged as lacking source or license info no
longer *have* a backlog(due to the change in CSD policy allowing them
to be deleted, and the hard work of a number of Wikipedians), and the
backlog of Un-tagged images *is going down*.  Not by much; about 300
per day on average, but it *is going down*.

Give us working on the untagged image project time to get the backlog
cleared up, and then we can see the problem more clearly.  Quite
possibly, the rate of new unacceptable images is not too great for us
to handle.  Maybe it is, but the current facts don't seem to show that.

It's also important to note that 95% of the images on the english
wikipedia do have tags (although many may be wrong, it's true).

Jesse Weinstein


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 21:20:56 +0100, you wrote:

>Just because a single admin can cause problems doesn't mean there's an
>"admin problem". That implies all of them abuse their powers which is
>totally untrue.

And anyone who disagrees gets an indef-block.  OK?

Bugger, how do I subst the humour template in an email?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

>
>When we say "that's policy", what we're *really* saying is "because I
>and a few other people said so".  Learning the *reason* why we do
>things, so that a) we can do them properly, and b) we can explain them
>to others, is vital.
>
The image use policy page said all that three years ago when I
started at WP, and it still does; I didn't have any trouble
understanding it after working on WP for a couple weeks. The
upload page has all manner of links and warnings, which link
to even further explanations, eventually going back to first
principles for those that want to learn all about copyright law.

While I want to assume good faith in all of this, in actually
looking through a random swath of recent untagged uploads, the
explanations that come to mind are either that we have many
editors with the IQ of a turnip, or they are deliberately
ignoring the policy and explanations we're putting in front
of them. Whichever the case, their uploads are not helping
build the encyclopedia, and we need to stop making excuses
for them.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Let's start by renaming that thread.
Just because a single admin can cause problems doesn't mean there's an
"admin problem". That implies all of them abuse their powers which is
totally untrue.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radio Wales interview as ogg

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

Mark Gallagher stated for the record:

> (If my bloated corpse is found buried in a cwm somewhere, assume that
>   Telsa caught up with me and inflicted a punishment I richly deserve.)

Well, being a native USian, I wouldn't know a cwm from a hole in the
ground, so someone else will have to find your bloated corpse -- sorry!

Now if'n they jest dump it down in the holler, it would be more fittin',
Jimbo (and I) having being raised in a place that has such features.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | We must all make sacrifices, Pinky.
 sean at epoptic.org | You may be next. --The Brain
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEIjDSMAt1wyd9d+URAt45AJ0fSCflS5RlJVetKNkn2bYOS70TZQCfRHi0
cnG1AMrRfr763ezkH8oUNEo=
=6NkH
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Rudy Koot

body:
Mark Wagner wrote:
> Wikipedia's got a problem with images.  2000 of them are uploaded
> every day, and most of them have inadequate source information, an
> incorrect license tag, or an invalid fair-use claim.
>
> A quick and easy way to reduce the flood of images would be to remove
> the link to Special:Upload from the sidebar, and instead point the
> "upload file" link to [[Wikipedia:Image use policy]].  If users have
> to hunt around for a bit for the actual upload link (and hopefully
> read some of the page), they're less likely to upload every image they
> can find on Google Image Search.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Given the experience I just had with a new user, I'd think that
disabling uploading for users without a userpage and/or new users (1
month?) would be a good idea.

Ruud


body:
On 3/22/06, M. Creidieki Crouch <creidieki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > '''Please note:'''  You have requested an old version of the article
> > {{{PAGENAME}}} from {{{rev timestamp}}}. A more current version of the
> > article is [[{{cur}}|available here]]. You may also [[{{{diff
> > page}}|view the differences]] between the version you requested and
> > the current version, or [[{{{hist page}}}|view the entire history]] of
> > this article.    The old revision is available [[{{{old
> > revision}}}|here]].
>
> Could we just put a similar message in [[MediaWiki:Revisionasof]]?  I
> don't understand quite how the MediaWiki-namespace messages are
> included in the page rendering, but it would also need to be a much
> larger font than it currently is.

I'd agree that we should have a more obious notice in the common case
as well, but the challenge would be that a a sufficently loud notice
on every such page would be an unacceptable annoyance to the huge
number of users who know what they are doing. At least, that was my
thought.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Bullet point:

Wikipedia  is on the map.

Britannica's response seems to be well reasoned.

But does Wikipedia plan to be around in fifty years time?

Britannica does.


body:
Can't we just start by asking for a software upgrade that doesn't
accept images without a source? Hiding the link also makes uploading
harder for regular contributors who don't remember links and use the
side bar for easy access and for newbies who do care abou copyrights.

Mgm

On 3/22/06, Rudy Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
> Mark Wagner wrote:
> > Wikipedia's got a problem with images.  2000 of them are uploaded
> > every day, and most of them have inadequate source information, an
> > incorrect license tag, or an invalid fair-use claim.
> >
> > A quick and easy way to reduce the flood of images would be to remove
> > the link to Special:Upload from the sidebar, and instead point the
> > "upload file" link to [[Wikipedia:Image use policy]].  If users have
> > to hunt around for a bit for the actual upload link (and hopefully
> > read some of the page), they're less likely to upload every image they
> > can find on Google Image Search.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > --
> > Mark
> > [[User:Carnildo]]
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> Given the experience I just had with a new user, I'd think that
> disabling uploading for users without a userpage and/or new users (1
> month?) would be a good idea.
>
> Ruud
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 3/22/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bullet point:
>
> Wikipedia  is on the map.
>
> Britannica's response seems to be well reasoned.
>
> But does Wikipedia plan to be around in fifty years time?
>
> Britannica does.

Wikipedia?  I don't know, and, to be honest, I'm not that worried.
But Wikipedia's articles will be, and that is what we are working for.

--
Sam


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikitech-l] bug 550

body:
I believe it is 6 accounts per IP per day (per project). That was my
understanding of the comments made at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN#what_gives.3F

Essjay

On 3/22/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
>
> - Essjay - schreef:
> > On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > <snip>
> > You may want to add a throttle here on the rate of account creations
> > from a single IP -- again, only for this class of soft-blocked IPs,
> > perhaps at most two every five minutes.
> > </snip>
> >
> > Currently, there is a 6 account per day per IP limitation. (per
> Raul654's on
> > wiki comments)
> >
> > Essjay
>
> Do you mean that now on all Wikimedia wikis there is a limit of 6 new
> accounts created a day for a specific ipadres?
>
> If so, that must give problems on the bigger projects.
>
> --
> Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
> Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


body:
The "create account" currently currently does not display any (lack of)
rights people are entitled to when they create an account. Shouldn't
this screen at least need to display that accounts will not be deleted
and may be even have a box that needs to checked, stating that people
accept Wikipedia's privacy policy?

Cheers,

Ruud


body:
On 3/22/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> But does Wikipedia plan to be around in fifty years time?

Does anything on the internet? Shear bulk means something will be
around in 50 years but if it will be a long dead hulk or a distant
ansestor of whatever it evolves into remains to be seen

>Britannica does.

So have many things. Considering the ammount information transmission
has changed over the last 100 years I doubt anything longer than say a
decade can be reasonably planed.

--
geni


from_name: Mak

body:
On 3/22/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>
> This sort of thing used to irk me terribly, until I stumbled across
> something approaching Enlightenment.  If we assume good faith, the
> answer is obvious: the user isn't lying in a desperate attempt to
> violate copyrights and get us in trouble; he's (it is usually a he)
> merely confused and caught up in process fetishism.
>
> Images aren't deleted because they don't have a tag: they're deleted
> because they have no source and their copyright status is unclear, and
> we've decided not to take the risk of keeping such images around for no
> good purpose.  But if I, or any other person trying to crack down on
> copyvios, try to explain the situation to a newbie, we say: "you need to
> place a tag on this image".  Is it any *wonder* he gets confused?  What,
> will any tag do?  Any source is appropriate, right, even if that source
> says "all rights reserved, do not steal our images or we'll steal your
> thumbs, and what use will your precious Gameboy be then, eh?"?
>
> We confuse what the tags mean with the tags themselves.  I have the same
> problem with other templates, like the {{testn}} warnings: we aren't
> warning people, we're slapping a template on their page
> (congratulations!  You're the 100th RC patroller to tag this page this
> year!  Has it occurred to you that this talkpage already contains 99
> identical boilerplate warnings, and what effect that has on a growing
> lad?), and likewise with images.

This process is called reification, which happens to be one of my favorite
words. It  could  be translated  "thingification", and you're right, it's a
problem.
Mak


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 01:33:42PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
> > I have added an option to Special:Export that will add a list of all
> > contributors of a page to the XML output. The list is distinct (each
> > contributor mentioned only once). I also expanded the XML converter to
> > use this. (Brion et al.: please put the new Special:Export on the live
> > sites soon)
>
> That would be way too expensive, no can do.

Since I'm about to develop an interest in Magnus's translator, a)
magnus: can you expand on what you need the new Export for, and brion,
b) is there any chance it will go in the mainline distro, even if it's
too expensive for the WMF sites?

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and "X-Forwarded-For"

references:
<3538731.post@talk.nabble.com>
	<20060322204447.GD7291@cgi.jachomes.com>
	<3545275.post@talk.nabble.com>

body:
On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 06:24:13PM -0800, freakofnurture wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Well, for what my opinion is worth (I'm not a Wikimedia admin, but I've
> > been on the net for about 23 years) the writer doesn't sound like a) an
> > idiot, or b) a kook.  He may be slightly uninformed technically (though
> > I'm not sure I even think that), but...
> >
> > Let me make sure I'm following your perception: he says the HTTP proxy
> > which is blocked a) isn't his, b) isn't easily avoidable  c) causes
> > collateral damage and d) is "safe", and you believe one or more of
> > those assertions to be factually inaccurate?
>
> a) I am assuming that mr. wwwwolf is in fact a legitimate user of the ISP
> that he describes.
> b) I am assuming this is his only ISP, i.e., he doesn't have access to an
> alternate ISP for purposes of editing wikipedia.
> c) I have, at this time, no reason to believe he's a vandal, therefore I
> assume denial of service to him would be considered collateral damage, yes.
> d) I know for a fact that anybody in the world can configure his or her web
> browser to use his IP address (213.216.199.14, just as I did to in the
> [[Wikipedia:Sandbox]] to find out [1] what the IP was, and [2] whether or
> not it had already been blocked) without any authentication or
> accountability whatsoever, so I would not consider it "safe" by any means.
>
> I count 3 out of 4 to be inaccurate.

Ok.  Clearly I read you backwards.

So your problem is that his ISP doesn't limit use of their proxy to
their own customers, then?  If that's the case, and, as he notes, it's
unlikely to be possible to make them change it (though you never know),
then it does appear to be a dilemma.

If the situation occurs often (ISP-run open proxies which must be
edit-blocked), then perhaps a redirect to a "your ISP runs an open
HTTP proxy at $IP_ADDRESS; if you want to contribute, you'll need to
find a different way to get here, or pressure them to restrict the
proxy to only their customers" page might be hacked in...

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] bug 550

body:
- Essjay - schreef:
> On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> You may want to add a throttle here on the rate of account creations
> from a single IP -- again, only for this class of soft-blocked IPs,
> perhaps at most two every five minutes.
> </snip>
>
> Currently, there is a 6 account per day per IP limitation. (per Raul654's on
> wiki comments)
>
> Essjay

Do you mean that now on all Wikimedia wikis there is a limit of 6 new
accounts created a day for a specific ipadres?

If so, that must give problems on the bigger projects.

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


from_name: Nathaniel Sheetz

body:
On 3/22/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
>
> On Mar 22, 2006, at 11:30 AM, Mark Wagner wrote:
> > Wikipedia's got a problem with images.  2000 of them are uploaded
> > every day, and most of them have inadequate source information, an
> > incorrect license tag, or an invalid fair-use claim.
>
> I think this is a little premature.  It is really important to remember
> that, with our current methods - *The Number Of Untagged Images Is
> Going Down*.  The images tagged as lacking source or license info no
> longer *have* a backlog(due to the change in CSD policy allowing them
> to be deleted, and the hard work of a number of Wikipedians), and the
> backlog of Un-tagged images *is going down*.  Not by much; about 300
> per day on average, but it *is going down*.
>
>
In that case, anyone want to help over at commons?  Don't worry, we've got
plenty of backlog to go around.

Nathaniel


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-23

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

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Parser hook: static parser hook inside a comment... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 275 of 297 tests (92.59%) FAILED!


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 3/22/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia's got a problem with images.  2000 of them are uploaded
> every day, and most of them have inadequate source information, an
> incorrect license tag, or an invalid fair-use claim.
>
> A quick and easy way to reduce the flood of images would be to remove
> the link to Special:Upload from the sidebar, and instead point the
> "upload file" link to [[Wikipedia:Image use policy]].  If users have
> to hunt around for a bit for the actual upload link (and hopefully
> read some of the page), they're less likely to upload every image they
> can find on Google Image Search.

Making the upload file link a little less obvious is a brilliant and
reasonable soft-security method for reducing unwanted images.

Making arbitrary cut-offs for new users (or users without a homepage)
is a hard-security method that seems unnecessary.


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Workflow

references:
<BAY105-F34223EB0C296F9FF90BC1DC2D90@phx.gbl>
	<dvrgcq$fq$1@sea.gmane.org> <44214BAF.60009@web.de>
	<dvrnf0$snp$1@sea.gmane.org> <44218B5D.6070003@web.de>

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> Phil Boswell wrote:
>> Does it necessarily include the "review" feature, or are they separate?
>>
> They are separate, I just have so many extensions under development to
> show...
>
> You can find the extension in MediaWiki CVS at SourceForge, module
> "extensions", in the "Tasks" directory.
>

I'm still having problems with the "stable version" feature...see
<http://www.magnusmanske.de/wikipeerdia/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&curid=1344&action=history>
and then take a look at the page.

If the stable version is being displayed, which doesn't include my edits,
then why is the link to the "draft version" the exact same URL?
--
Phil
(posted experimentally through <www.nabble.com>)
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Workflow-t1323317.html#a3548041
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article violates patent?

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Jonathan (dzonatas at dzonux.net) [060321 02:25]:
>
>
>>As I looked at slashdot.org today. I saw a message yesterday about the
>>possible patent violation when  a lack of B12 to homocysteine is mentioned.
>>Here is the wikipedia article that follow the claim:
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_nutrition
>>The quote is simple: "Vitamin B12 destroys Homocysteine, a neurotoxin
>>the body naturally produces."
>>The patent would make it invalid to include such claim without royalty.
>>The news article is entitled "The essay breaks the law" by Michael Crichton.
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19crichton.html?ex=1300424400&en=9addb806498d2739&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
>>
>>
>I see nothing more suitable for us to do than directly ignore any such
>patent.
>
Wondering if this is the same Crichton who holds US patent 6,785,977, a
device for levelling pictures on a wall. :-)

Of course to the extent that the text of all US patents appear on the
USPTO website http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html it would seem that
it could be freely reprinted.

Ec


from_name: James D. Forrester

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

Matt Brown wrote:

> On 3/22/06, Rudy Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
>
> > The "create account" currently currently does not display any (lack of)
> > rights people are entitled to when they create an account. Shouldn't
> > this screen at least need to display that accounts will not be deleted
> > and may be even have a box that needs to checked, stating that people
> > accept Wikipedia's privacy policy?
>
> Wikipedia's privacy policy applies to the Wikimedia Foundation itself
> and its employees and agents.  It does not apply to Wikipedia users
> and editors.
>
> I don't think we need such a thing.

In the UK (EU?), it would be required upon us (the Foundation) to
require users (even anons) to explicitly accept the privacy implications
of their actions, and this is almost (?) always carried out with a
non-automatically set selection box on registration. Not sure if there's
any case law either way, but if there is and it is the only possible
way, then running a MediaWiki installation with anon editing, or user
editing without such a selection box or "I agree" button may well fall
foul of Data Protection legislation.

As to whether we need such a thing... eh. I wouldn't be a terrible idea,
but certainly it's not necessary (we have no need of such enforceable
contracts with users; asking them to agree to our "AUPs" would create a
tool with which we could sue so as to transfer liability, but I fail to
see a possible benefit for such a thing, much less a likely situation in
which we would pursue it).

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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from_name: Vedant Lath

subject: [Wikitech-l] hosting problems

body:
hi,

i have already tried phpshell, but as it not exactly a shell, mediawiki
still thinks the request comes from the web. so the maintenance scripts do
not function. regarding the location, it will be very difficult to find a
good host in India.

thanks for the help.

vedant

On 3/22/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Depends on your location, in my opinion. For instance, I prefer using
> a UK-based host because I live there.
>
> As a stopgap measure, if you don't have shell access, try phpShell
> (http://mgeisler.net/php-shell) which provides a wrapper/emulator.
> However, it might be your crappy host doesn't allow the functions this
> needs in order to work.
>
>
> Rob Church
>
> On 21/03/06, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > My hosting provider is very crappy. One of the basic things, i.e. shell
> > access, is not available. This has many disadvantages because I cannot
> > run almost
> > any maintenance scripts. I found that I could use cron scripts to
> replace a
> > shell, (it does what I would do in a shell), but it is very tedious and
> has
> > been the cause of many problems. I had to import something to the wiki
> and
> > ran the scirpt through a cron script but forgot to remove it and it kept
> > importing it over and over till i saw that some pages that were deleted
> > again came up.
> >
> > moreover, the server is in such a location that cvs update is
> > neversuccessful. In my computer, cvs update updates the code within 20
> > or 30
> > times, but in that server, it has never updated. I made a script to keep
> > updating it till it succedded and it updated only once in 24 hours. This
> > definately caused problems to the host, and they temporarily suspended
> my
> > account. So I see no way out of this except change my hosting provider.
> >
> > Does anybody know a good hosting provider that suites my needs?
> >
> > vedant
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] hosting problems

body:
but this is what i get:
$ php generateSitemap.php vedant.lath.in
This script must be run from the command line

i run the CVS version of mediawiki. it was last updated on mar 3. it's on
http://vedant.lath.in/icse/Special:Version

this is not a good maintenance script, but i think it includes
commandLine.inc, the common include file for maintenance scripts.

vedant

On 3/23/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, phpShell works for me and MediaWiki's maintenance scripts don't
> seem to care about the apparent web request.
>
>
> Rob Church
>
> On 22/03/06, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > i have already tried phpshell, but as it not exactly a shell, mediawiki
> > still thinks the request comes from the web. so the maintenance scripts
> do
> > not function. regarding the location, it will be very difficult to find
> a
> > good host in India.
> >
> > thanks for the help.
> >
> > vedant
> >
> > On 3/22/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Depends on your location, in my opinion. For instance, I prefer using
> > > a UK-based host because I live there.
> > >
> > > As a stopgap measure, if you don't have shell access, try phpShell
> > > (http://mgeisler.net/php-shell) which provides a wrapper/emulator.
> > > However, it might be your crappy host doesn't allow the functions this
> > > needs in order to work.
> > >
> > >
> > > Rob Church
> > >
> > > On 21/03/06, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > hi,
> > > >
> > > > My hosting provider is very crappy. One of the basic things, i.e.
> shell
> > > > access, is not available. This has many disadvantages because I
> cannot
> > > > run almost
> > > > any maintenance scripts. I found that I could use cron scripts to
> > > replace a
> > > > shell, (it does what I would do in a shell), but it is very tedious
> and
> > > has
> > > > been the cause of many problems. I had to import something to the
> wiki
> > > and
> > > > ran the scirpt through a cron script but forgot to remove it and it
> kept
> > > > importing it over and over till i saw that some pages that were
> deleted
> > > > again came up.
> > > >
> > > > moreover, the server is in such a location that cvs update is
> > > > neversuccessful. In my computer, cvs update updates the code within
> 20
> > > > or 30
> > > > times, but in that server, it has never updated. I made a script to
> keep
> > > > updating it till it succedded and it updated only once in 24 hours.
> This
> > > > definately caused problems to the host, and they temporarily
> suspended
> > > my
> > > > account. So I see no way out of this except change my hosting
> provider.
> > > >
> > > > Does anybody know a good hosting provider that suites my needs?
> > > >
> > > > vedant
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radio Wales interview as ogg

body:
For those who missed it, I've put my segment up:

http://static.rocknerd.org/david/radiowales-q0-mono.ogg

Ogg Vorbis, 2,311,827 bytes.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
On 3/21/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > If Darwin was responding to the work of others than his book can no
> > longer be considered a primary source.
>
> "Primary" and "secondary" refer to how information is used. And most
> secondary sources become primary sources over time, anyway (Darwin's
> _Origin_ is now taken less as a scientific work than as an artifact of
> the 19th century evolutionary thought).
>
> > I think you have it all backwards.  I do agree that reading the original
> > is often much more difficult, and that secondary works fulfill a
> > simplifying function.  But any secondary interpretation imposes
> > additional views, or creates distortions of the original material, or
> > begins the cherry-picking process.
>
> Of course it does. The goal is that the *experts* should be the ones
> doing the distortion and cherry-picking of the source material, not
> the hundreds of thousands of Wikipedians. That's the point of WP:NOR.
>
That might be a side effect on the ban on original research, but it's
not the point. The point of banning original research is to ensure
verifiability.

Having "experts" cherry-pick and distort (and I know you're being
facetious here) may be your goal, but it's certainly not a consensus
view.

I don't agree with the concept that Wikipedia's quality is dependent
on there being experts to filter the content, whether as part of the
editing process or through a ban on primary sources. I've found that
consensus editing does an equivalently good job of filtering,
especially when the line between expert and non-expert is deliberately
left vague. For example, in articles about musical technique,
scholars, practicing musicians, and music teachers all may be
considered experts or non-experts considering what metric to apply,
but all have important views and information to impart. Similarly with
politics and yes, even history to some degree (depends especially how
recent. I'd trust the analysis of medieval European history more from
someone who can read medieval Latin.)

Now, string theory or elliptical curves or anaplerotic reactions are
another matter.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Subpages in main namespace?

body:
But there's certainly nothing wrong with implementing subpages in the
main space if that fits your wikineeds.

On 3/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> At Wikipedia-en there is a policy against it. For a human-readable
> encyclopaedia it's a bit of a tacky way of organising sub topics.
>
> Steve
>
> On 3/22/06, Birger <bweynants at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why is the option to make subpages in the main namespaces not enabled by
> > default? Is there something wrong with making subpages into the main
> > namespace?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Access the Content of Wikipedia from extern

body:
On 3/21/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> G at B wrote:
> > The constellation would be: Fill a Form (Text Area) with the Word I am
> > searching for in my Website or a program or something like this. This
> > Website, Program, etc.. connects (however) to the Wikipedia website
> > and returns the content (if the word is specific enough) to the
> > website, program, etc...
> > I hope I formulate the case in a understandable way. Now the concrete
> > questions are:
> >
> > - Is there a Wikipedia API-Specification in order to reach my goal?
>
> Not at this time.
>
> > - If no, which alternatives are there?
>
> If you're a nice person: open a web browser and point it at Wikipedia.
>
> If you're a very nice person: run your own mirror of the database and search &
> format data however you like, see http://download.wikimedia.org/
>
If you're a VERY nice person, work on a Wikipedia API...


body:
Joseph Reagle wrote:

>On Wednesday 22 March 2006 10:41, SJ wrote:
>
>
>>Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
>>customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
>>accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.  A more detailed
>>review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
>>and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.
>>
>>
>Interestingly, while I agree the study was very limited, all of the
>methodological concerns Encyclopaedia Britannica raises could have also
>affected the analysis of Wikipedia. In any case, the import of this
>response is it took them more time to send a response to some of their
>customers about the study than it took for all of the errors identified to
>be corrected in the Wikipedia!
>
I don't think they have much experience in this kind of hand-to-hand
confrontation.  The more they say, the more they dig themselves into a hole.

I took not of their comments regarding Dolly and Wolfram that they do
not consider the Yearbooks as part of their encyclopaedia, and that
those editors have a wider scope in what they do.  The Yearbooks have
been sold with the EB as an extension for keeping the set up-to-date, a
perfectly rational solution for a dead wood product.  In the public mind
the Yearbooks are seen to be as much a part of the EB as the numberred
volumes.  It comes as a shock to now realize that they are less reliable.
Ec


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> Hmm. I'm thinking of classic articles like GWB that have been "worked
> on" by thousands of contributors. Of course, some of those
> contributors "worked on" it by "contributing" "bush is GAY" etc.

One could ignore edits that have been reverted.  Detecting reverts, in
the strict sense of the word, is easy: all you need is a hash value for
each revision.

Of course, this wouldn't be perfect.  But it'd be as close to perfect as
any automated system can be.  And it _would_ skip most vandals.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and "X-Forwarded-For"

body:
freakofnurture wrote:
> ----
> On 3/22/06, Wwwwolf wrote:
>
> All right, so my guess is there's some Bloody Idiot in the neighborhood who
> runs a Tor node, 80/tcp traffic comes out of that host and gets intercepted
> and forwarded by the ISP's proxy (that *every* customer is forced to use, I
> remind you again).
>
> In other words, the blocked IP is, in my educated guess, *not* the Tor node.
> It just unwittingly hides a Tor node behind it.

This sounds quite plausible.  I've encountered a similar situation with
213.42.2.11 and 213.42.2.21, which are proxies used by a large ISP in
the United Arab Emirates.  Some customer of that ISP apparently has a
proxy trojan on their computer, and so we keep getting open proxy
vandalism from those IPs, which can't be blocked without major
collateral damage.

I believe MediaWiki does have a list of "known" proxies that can be
trusted to supply a valid X-Forwarded-For header.  As the whois records
for 213.216.199.14 seem legit, and the proxy appears to provide the
necessary headers, I personally see no reason not to add it to the list.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Workflow

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> Phil Boswell schrieb:
>> I'm still having problems with the "stable version" feature...see
>> <http://www.magnusmanske.de/wikipeerdia/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&curid=1344&action=history>
>> and then take a look at the page.
>> If the stable version is being displayed, which doesn't include my edits,
>> then why is the link to the "draft version" the exact same URL?
>
> Because I didn't update it to the latest software version ;-)
>
> Should work now.
>

Top man: works fine as far as I can tell from a quick look.

Excellent stuff, thanks.

So what is the current situation with adding this to the main site?
--
Phil
...finding Nabble an excellent tool already :-)
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Workflow-t1323317.html#a3549358
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>> That would be way too expensive, no can do.
>>
> "SELECT DISTINCT rev_user,rev_user_text FROM revision" for a single page
> is too expensive? Come on, article history is probably more expensive
> than that!

Well, we've got this site called "Wikipedia", which has a lot of pages with tens
of thousands of revisions on them. ;)

Whenever we have a feature that allows going wild on all of them and allow
people to use it, it bogs down the databases until we have to remove it. You
need to take these into account *first*.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] ROUGE ADNMIN - the game

body:
On 3/23/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > http://common-lisp.net/project/lifp/rouge.htm
>
> I went on a deletion rampage and scored 998 rouge with -997 karma before eventually meeting my
> demise in a wheel war against an angry admin. What I want to know is, why didn't Jimbo show up to
> save the day? Not very realistic if you ask me.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

Most wheel wars are not ended by jimbo intervention. With the current
setup an admin is enough to stop a deletion spree (Just sit on the
block page reblocking them every few seconds). In the past deadmining
has generaly fallen to devs and perhaps stewards (I think there was a
case over at the hebrew wikipedia).

In terms of realism welcomeing newbies was overstated in importance
and takeing down vandals understated.

Rouge admin could make an interesting RPG. Perhaps someone familia
with GURPS could come up with something.

--
geni


from_name: Rich Morin

body:
At 2:32 AM -0800 3/23/06, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Whenever we have a feature that allows going wild on all of
> them and allow people to use it, it bogs down the databases
> until we have to remove it. You need to take these into
> account *first*.

Is there (could there be) a machine that is used for stress
testing of new features such as this?  This might let them be
tried out under real use, without endangering the performance
of Wikipedia.

-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development


from_name: Rudy Koot

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 3/22/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
>
>>In the UK (EU?), it would be required upon us (the Foundation) to
>>require users (even anons) to explicitly accept the privacy implications
>>of their actions, and this is almost (?) always carried out with a
>>non-automatically set selection box on registration. Not sure if there's
>>any case law either way, but if there is and it is the only possible
>>way, then running a MediaWiki installation with anon editing, or user
>>editing without such a selection box or "I agree" button may well fall
>>foul of Data Protection legislation.
>
>
> In the US, where our servers are located, there is no such law, I believe.
>
> Indeed, we have no hard and fast privacy policy for Wikipedia editors
> and admins to follow.  The policy we have is for the foundation and
> the software, not the users.  I suspect also the Foundation is very
> unkeen to do anything that implies a binding relationship between it
> and the users/admins.
>
> -Matt

Why I was asking this was because a user insisted that I deleted his
account, which is technically impossible. He could only have known that
if he had read the privacy policy, which is only linked, in  a really
tiny font, all the way at the bottom.

Ruud


from_name: Birgitte Arco

subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation project taglines

body:
I had previously wrote an email suggesting we
standardize the tag lines accompanying the logos at
meta.  The problem surfaced at EN Wikipedia when after
six months of reading Wikisource The free library, the
tag line was changed during the Main Page redesign.
At the time I wrote I had thought the situation was
cooled off.  It seems that was premature.  Things have
flared up now at Template talk:WikipediaSister.
Neither side is going to convince the other at this
point.  Truly how the projects are represented is a
Foundation decision.  This situation will not be
resolved until the Foundation makes that decision, or
declares who the decision should be delegated to.

Birgitte SB

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

> On 3/23/06, Birgitte Arco <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > I had previously wrote an email suggesting we
> > standardize the tag lines accompanying the logos
> at
> > meta.  The problem surfaced at EN Wikipedia when
> after
> > six months of reading Wikisource The free library,
> the
> > tag line was changed during the Main Page
> redesign.
> > At the time I wrote I had thought the situation
> was
> > cooled off.  It seems that was premature.  Things
> have
> > flared up now at Template talk:WikipediaSister.
> > Neither side is going to convince the other at
> this
> > point.  Truly how the projects are represented is
> a
> > Foundation decision.  This situation will not be
> > resolved until the Foundation makes that decision,
> or
> > declares who the decision should be delegated to.
> >
> > Birgitte SB
>
>
> Hi Birgitte,
>
> I don't see how the decision can be meaninfully made
> by anyone *but*
> the community themselves, ie in this case,
> Wikisource. But I don't
> know who would make this decision at the Foundation
> level, maybe the
> board, maybe Jimbo himself.
>
> I don't want to re-ignite the debate, but I'll make
> my own comment. I
> followed the discussion more or less before and I've
> read the page you
> linked to. I liked the 'compromise' of "free-content
> library", but
> then I realised that all Wikimedia projects are free
> content. "The
> free library" is fine, and, bottom line, it's what
> Wikisource have
> already agreed on. If/when they agree on another,
> it'll be changed, as
> has already been said.
>
> Cormac

I am not sure how it the decision would come about
either.  Of course I agree with your assement of the
situation, but others don't.  Until one side or the
other hears something authoritative I am afraid this
will be unsettled.

Birgitte SB

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from_name: Keith Old

body:
 On 3/23/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> >
> > MacGyverMagic wrote:
> > > "internet database anyone, without specific qualifications can edit"
> > > is a jab...
> >
> > Notice how they carefully don't refer to WP as an "encyclopedia"
> > at all.
> >
> > > I'm having a hard time with the idea of sending them a "nice" message.
> >
> > But that's the point.  The nastier someone is, the more
> > devastating it can be to be nice in return.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>  Folks,

Britannica must be struggling. I recently got a letter offering me a free
Britannica CD-ROM (basic edition) if I subscribed. I don't think that is a
good sign.

Regards

Keith Old


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and "X-Forwarded-For"

references:
<3538731.post@talk.nabble.com> <4421E514.2000009@vyznev.net>
	<3545291.post@talk.nabble.com> <dvt3an$u20$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> I recently documented Wikipedia's X-Forwarded-For setup, at:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project
>
> I would appreciate some help in advertising that meta page on Wikipedia,
> could you add links
> wherever it's relevant? Requests for adding proxies to the list can be
> made on the talk page, or to
> me by email.
>

So when someone is blocked because they are working through an open proxy,
do we currently inform them of the admirable "XFF Project"?

Should we?
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tor-and-%22X-Forwarded-For%22-t1325932.html#a3551513
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Ben Yates

body:
I've HTML-ized the Britannica PDF, if anyone's interested:
http://benyates.info/Britannica/

On 3/23/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Joseph Reagle wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday 22 March 2006 10:41, SJ wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its
> >>customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
> >>accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica.  A more detailed
> >>review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
> >>and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.
> >>
> >>
> >Interestingly, while I agree the study was very limited, all of the
> >methodological concerns Encyclopaedia Britannica raises could have also
> >affected the analysis of Wikipedia. In any case, the import of this
> >response is it took them more time to send a response to some of their
> >customers about the study than it took for all of the errors identified to
> >be corrected in the Wikipedia!
> >
> I don't think they have much experience in this kind of hand-to-hand
> confrontation.  The more they say, the more they dig themselves into a hole.
>
> I took not of their comments regarding Dolly and Wolfram that they do
> not consider the Yearbooks as part of their encyclopaedia, and that
> those editors have a wider scope in what they do.  The Yearbooks have
> been sold with the EB as an extension for keeping the set up-to-date, a
> perfectly rational solution for a dead wood product.  In the public mind
> the Yearbooks are seen to be as much a part of the EB as the numberred
> volumes.  It comes as a shock to now realize that they are less reliable.
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
P> You have images turned off in your browser? Are you using Netscape
P> 4.7 or something?
I am using firefox and wwwoffle, but with costly modem line, so last
year I turned images off.

P> Supporting 1990's era web browsing is not one of them.

I could have been visually impaired.
OK, no big deal.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and "X-Forwarded-For"

references:
<3538731.post@talk.nabble.com> <4421E514.2000009@vyznev.net>
	<3545291.post@talk.nabble.com> <dvt3an$u20$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<3551513.post@talk.nabble.com> <4422C157.6040003@vyznev.net>

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>
> Phil Boswell wrote:
> [snip]
>> So when someone is blocked because they are working through an open
>> proxy,
>> do we currently inform them of the admirable "XFF Project"?
>> Should we?
> It might be useful to add a mention to the {{SharedIP}} template.  To
> make the change effective, we'd also need to have a bot fix all the
> substed instances of that template.
>

This is where I manfully suppress my opinion of the mad rush to SUBSTitute
every damn template on the wiki...

Does anyone recall what the actual point of having templates was?

Oh yes: so we could update stuff in a single place and have it propagate
automatically.

ObSheesh: sheesh!
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tor-and-%22X-Forwarded-For%22-t1325932.html#a3554503
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Jonathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about article - encyclopedic entry?

body:
I saw this added recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Stewart

Consider how some other articles like this were blanked or changed, what
is appropriate here?

Jonathan


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject:
[Wikitech-l] MediaWiki converter to Plain Text, XML, DocBook,
	PDF

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> A long, long time ago, I started writing a PHP script to convert
> MediaWiki markup into XML.

I am looking forward to this feature. I use and promote the use of
wikis  in corporate environments, and one of the problems is that
there is no easy way to publish a wiki to paper.

As you may know, corporations love paper copies.

Ultimately, the paper version won't be used very much, but having the
ability to produce it would go a long way towards the suits saying
aye.

Thanks again Magnus for your hard work.

Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> I have added an option to Special:Export that will add a list of all
>> contributors of a page to the XML output. The list is distinct (each
>> contributor mentioned only once). I also expanded the XML converter to
>> use this. (Brion et al.: please put the new Special:Export on the live
>> sites soon)
>>
>
> That would be way too expensive, no can do.
>
"SELECT DISTINCT rev_user,rev_user_text FROM revision" for a single page
is too expensive? Come on, article history is probably more expensive
than that!

I didn't check if you reverted it already (you seem to have a bot
running to revert my commits), but you can just turn it off in
SpecialExport.php by commenting out a single line, or making it an
option. You *did* see that, instead of mindless reverting, did you?

Magnus

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/3/23, Rudy Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl>:

> Why I was asking this was because a user insisted that I deleted his
> account, which is technically impossible. He could only have known that
> if he had read the privacy policy, which is only linked, in  a really
> tiny font, all the way at the bottom.

So what? Suppose it had been written down nowhere at all, would this
user have any legal ground to oblige you or us to do so? I don't see
any. In my opinion, registering an account neither gives a user any
rights nor deprives them of any they would have had otherwise, and as
such there isn't anything for them to undersign.

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


body:
The Cunctator schrieb:
> On 3/21/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> G at B wrote:
>>
>>> The constellation would be: Fill a Form (Text Area) with the Word I am
>>> searching for in my Website or a program or something like this. This
>>> Website, Program, etc.. connects (however) to the Wikipedia website
>>> and returns the content (if the word is specific enough) to the
>>> website, program, etc...
>>> I hope I formulate the case in a understandable way. Now the concrete
>>> questions are:
>>>
>>> - Is there a Wikipedia API-Specification in order to reach my goal?
>>>
>> Not at this time.
>>
>>
>>> - If no, which alternatives are there?
>>>
>> If you're a nice person: open a web browser and point it at Wikipedia.
>>
>> If you're a very nice person: run your own mirror of the database and search &
>> format data however you like, see http://download.wikimedia.org/
>>
>>
> If you're a VERY nice person, work on a Wikipedia API...
>
*I* would work on a Wikipedia API, but it would only be reverted by
Brion for being too expensive, or for putting spaces between ")" and ";"
in the source, or some other very important reason.

Magnus

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Greasemonkey script to filter the watchlist page

body:
I added a little comment to the top of the script to install it:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dzonatas/script/history

You might want to move those over to Meta since they are more general
than Wikipedia.

Steve Bennett wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s&title=User:Stevage/EnhanceHistory.user.js
>
>This one displays diffs in the history of an article (get GreaseMonkey
>to make it work).
>
>Still a bit buggy but results are promising.
>
>Steve
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Birger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hierarchical navigation bar?

body:
Does anyone know whether it is possible to implement a hierarchical
navigation bar in Mediawiki like e.g.:

* CASES
** BUSINESSCASES-URL | BUSINESSCASES
*** BCASE1-URL | CASE1
*** BCASE2-URL | CASE2
** TECHNICALCASES-URL | TECHNICALCASES
*** TCASE1-URL | CASE1
*** TCASE2-URL | CASE2

Has somebody experience with this?

Thanks in advance for any help!


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
It could be expanded to include the evidence presented and the
defenses raised. It would be inappropriate to identify the mother or
the child.

Fred

On Mar 23, 2006, at 9:05 AM, Jonathan wrote:

> I saw this added recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Stewart
>
> Consider how some other articles like this were blanked or changed,
> what
> is appropriate here?
>
> Jonathan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>