subject:
[WikiEN-l] Personal Attacks Intervention Noticeboard up for
	deletion

body:
"I'll be bold by the end of the month."

Interesting typo:)....Nina

On 1/9/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Personal attack intervention
> noticeboard]]
>
> No, no, no! This is the 4th time I'm tearing my hair out over a deletion
> debate. At this rate, I'll be bold by the end of the month.
> Dealing with personal attacks is an essential part of Wikipedia and
> deleting
> this is like telling trolls it's okay to attack people.
>
> The arguments to delete aren't convincing to me:
> 1. "It encourages biting."
> It actually gives people the chance to ask for help before they blow up
> and
> start biting. Some people aren't good at dealing with attacks, so an
> organized effort to help such people is a good thing.
>
> 2. "It performs much the same function as WP:ANI."
> WP:ANI is overburdened and regularly reaches massive sizes. Keeping this
> separate makes these pages easier accessible and easier to read.
>
> Finally, I'd like to note that telling people who attack others to cease
> and
> desist or to block them for repeat violations is NOT the same as biting.
> It
> is entirely supported by policy.
>
> I really want people to be productive and create instead of destroying
> things. If you think something is broken, create an alternative, before
> deleting the original.
>
> Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Nina Stratton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Using paragraphs from wikipedia on other websites

body:
On 1/9/07, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/8/07, mwookie <peter at iriselements.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Ok, I know this has probably been addressed 100 times, but I can't make
> > sense
> > of it all. I am created a directory site for my state (New Mexico). I
> > would
> > like to use wiki information about each city on the site. I don't want
> to
> > include the whole articles (mirror like). But I am quoting verbatim
> text.
> >
> > Questions:
> > 1) If I include several paragraphs from the text in my website, does my
> > entire site need to be licensed under the GFDL or just that page, or
> just
> > the "text" versus the layout, links, etc.?
> >
> > 2) What is an appropriate link,citation? I have heard or ready that I
> must
> > link the history page of the document.
> >
> > 3) Any question that I should be asking, but don't know to ask :)
> >
> > Well, anyhow. I have read all the reusing content stuff on wikiepedia
> and
> > I
> > understand 70% of it, but want to get some more input
> >
> > An example or what I am thinking of doing is at:
> > http://newmexicodirect.net/other-nm-cities/artesia/ The majority of the
> > quoted text is near the bottom of the page.
> >
> > Also, if you have links to other discussions on the subject, I would
> love
> > to
> > see more. Thanks in advance.
> >
> >
> > --
> > View this message in context:
> >
> http://www.nabble.com/Using-paragraphs-from-wikipedia-on-other-websites-tf2943552.html#a8231036
> > Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> 1) None of the text you write yourself has to be under the GFDL, only the
> text that you quote.
>
> 2) Linking the article page should be fine, since the history page is just
> one click away from there anyway. You can link the history too if you
> want.
>
> 3) You probably don't need to have a copy of the entire GFDL on your site,
> as you could easily assert fair use and you'd most likely win, but if you
> really want to comply more than you need to, you should have a page with
> the
> GFDL and link to that everywhere you quote something from WP.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Consider helping out on Wikia, as well:).Nina


list: wikitech-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki as a Wikimedia project

body:
On 09/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects.
> In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin
> work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and
> Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential
> group of people.

Mmm. There's talk of my company selling my services to a customer as a
MediaWiki sysadmin, as they have several installs with *no sysadmin
responsible* ... and I'm going to have to learn to code soon whether I
like it or not ...

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
 World

body:
I can speak a bit about what we have tried to do on it.wikipedia. I
guess a few things are being done on en.wikipedia as well, but since
this is not the en.wikipedia ml, other projects may be interested as
well. We managed to set some criteria for notability, although not for
everything (e.g. a sportsman must have played for a first league team or
something like that); however we do allow some flexibility so at the end
of the day we still have to discuss, sometimes quite fiercely. We have
some kind of bias towards Italy, because our community is much less
international than other communities. At the same time, we have also
less pressure with "foreign" topics of not so clear notability, mainly
because not many people learn Italian as a second language. If we can,
we try to contact the communities where it is likely to find someone who
knows, I understand this is more difficult for en.wikipedia if the doubt
is about a topic related to a Third World English-speaking country.
About googlehits, they are useful, but we generally say "Google is not
the Bible" (you can substitute with any book that contains rvealed
truth). This is particularly true for Third World topics (or possibly
even topics that come from a different language with a different script).

Marco (Cruccone)

J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:

>If I wanted to write an article on, say, a chess site, but was not
>sure whether it was notable, is there a place to post a request for
>others to check whether its notable? If not, perhaps I could propose
>such a place be created?
>
>I agree that two problems with AFD need to be dealt with:
>1) Systemic bias. Articles on American topics are less likely to be
>nominated than, say, articles on Singaporean topics. In addition,
>certain topics are more likely to be nominated than others.
>2) Anti-elitism. If Wikipedia's article on Xiaxue were to be nominated
>for deletion, the views of Singaporeans, and those familiar with the
>blogosphere, should carry more weight. However, this isn't the case.
>
>
>


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] New bot up for RFA

body:
> >I'm sure if you asked the guy he'll give you the code, but keeping the code
> >concealed may be a good thing because it'll stave off the bot being
> >compromised for some time.
>
> Yup.  You really think that Wiki folks would keep it quiet if there
> wasn't a plausible reason?  Come on!
>

We already have several open bot frameworks, it's purportedly an easy task to
whip up a vandalbot. There's even a similar transclusion-checking bot that was
made open source. And surely making MediaWiki itself open source was even more
dangerous, and yet, there you go.

And finally of course there's argumentum ad Jimbo.

Dan


from_name: bb_tech at kanka.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Print stylesheet: Fixed font size hinders scaling

body:
Hello,

On Tue, January 9, 2007 00:49, Brion Vibber wrote:
...
> I asked you what *you* were running so I could try to reproduce the
> problem *you* described.

Ok, so I answered and I added some remarks about OS-es.

>>> Sounds like a bug in Firefox; ...
>>
>> No, really, Firefix works just as designed and as specified.
>
> Well, that would be a surprise; can you show me the design
> specifications for Firefox's print scaling feature? :)

Ok, there is not a clear standard. But the tendency to interpret CSS more
strict was encouraged by Mozilla / Firefox, and rendering a fixed font
size _as_ a fixed font size seems like a reasonable decision in this
context.

> In fact, a quick search through bugzilla shows that this is a known bug:
>
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205001
> .. 153080 .. 177805

That some people consider this to be a "bug" doesn't mean that other
people before have not thoroughly discussed this point - and decided to
code it the way it works now.

> .. Scaling, by definition, would need to
> change the logical resolution of those document absolute units as well.

It might make sense in some applications to have a font-size that will not
be scaled - and giving a css designer the choice makes sense as well.

> (And in fact the behavior is correct when printing from Firefox on Mac
> OS X, so the bug appears limited to the printing subsystem on some other
> platforms.)

The Mac OS, when I remember correctly, has its own font system that might
take the decision how to render fonts completely out of the applications
hands.

...
>>   http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?41
>> .. and you fill not one font-size in 'pt', only percent, ems ..
>
> I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. If you're trying to
> convince us that the use of different units in one of our style sheets
> means that there is not a bug in Firefox's printing modules on some
> platforms, I don't think I'm convinced. ;)

I was trying to say that the designers of monobook.css were wise not to
use 'pt' at all.
And that this kind of wisdom should be applied to commonprint.css as well.

> Just because I ask you questions about a bug I can't reproduce on my
> system without more information from you doesn't mean I'm out to get you.

Hey, we're in a mailing list - how should someone "get" someone else?
;-)

// Bernd


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
On 1/8/07, mwookie <peter at iriselements.com> wrote:
>
>
> Ok, I know this has probably been addressed 100 times, but I can't make
> sense
> of it all. I am created a directory site for my state (New Mexico). I
> would
> like to use wiki information about each city on the site. I don't want to
> include the whole articles (mirror like). But I am quoting verbatim text.
>
> Questions:
> 1) If I include several paragraphs from the text in my website, does my
> entire site need to be licensed under the GFDL or just that page, or just
> the "text" versus the layout, links, etc.?
>
> 2) What is an appropriate link,citation? I have heard or ready that I must
> link the history page of the document.
>
> 3) Any question that I should be asking, but don't know to ask :)
>
> Well, anyhow. I have read all the reusing content stuff on wikiepedia and
> I
> understand 70% of it, but want to get some more input
>
> An example or what I am thinking of doing is at:
> http://newmexicodirect.net/other-nm-cities/artesia/ The majority of the
> quoted text is near the bottom of the page.
>
> Also, if you have links to other discussions on the subject, I would love
> to
> see more. Thanks in advance.
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/Using-paragraphs-from-wikipedia-on-other-websites-tf2943552.html#a8231036
> Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

1) None of the text you write yourself has to be under the GFDL, only the
text that you quote.

2) Linking the article page should be fine, since the history page is just
one click away from there anyway. You can link the history too if you want.

3) You probably don't need to have a copy of the entire GFDL on your site,
as you could easily assert fair use and you'd most likely win, but if you
really want to comply more than you need to, you should have a page with the
GFDL and link to that everywhere you quote something from WP.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 08/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for
>> one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has
>> realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other
>> project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki
>> and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF
>> developed functionality is.
>>
>
>
> I stand corrected :-) Is as much of this as possible in the main line
> of development, or regularly merged?
>
OmegaWiki makes use of the MediaWiki SVN. The code is therefore first
entered in SVN before it is applied to our environments. (Yes, we have
some test environments, and one production environment). The software is
in its own SVN branch. I understand that the software will be merged
with the cutting edge release as used by the WMF but you have to ask
Erik about the precise details.
>> As to distributed MediaWiki, as you may remember the Vrije Universiteit
>> of Amsterdam (Andrew Tannenbaum's department) is actively working on a
>> distributed Mediawiki and is particularly interested in the distributed
>> network functionality that is required. This includes things like making
>> sure the content is near to where it is requested.
>>
>
>
> Excellent!
>
>
>
>> The WMF could provide a meeting place for organisations that use
>> MediaWiki stimulate cooperation. The WMF can provide a developer that
>> has as his task to mentor new developers,  particularly students from
>> Universities that  want to be technically involved in MediaWiki
>> projects.
>>
>
>
> That's the sort of thing I mentioned. Trouble being that would take an
> experienced MW coder who wants to do that and can do that as well as
> code.
>
Well, this is an investment. First you invest, then you profit. It takes
money to realise this. The profit is in the expanded base of coders.
>> My expectation is that it will be possible to do some 50
>> projects in a half year (only the MW support .. not supporting the
>> content part of the project) this is likely to lead to a retention of
>> developers of in between five to ten percent and will as a consequence
>> be a good investment.
>>
>
>
> Yep.
>
>
>
>> The organisations that develop MediaWiki may also
>> need support to build extensions so that their code can be part of the
>> main MediaWiki code. This can be a paid for service. When it is not the
>> WMF who does this, another organisation may be willing to provide this
>> service ...
>> I am sure there are more things that can be done when MediaWiki has its
>> organisational part developed it may even generate money for the Foundation.
>>
>
>
> I wonder if there's any money in MediaWiki programming consultancy as yet.
>
>
> - d.
ABSOLUTELY .. There are regularly tasks that need coding .. Experienced
developers have a distinct advantage. For OmegaWiki we have introduced
several people both professionals and "amateur" developers into the
vagaries of both MediaWiki and Relational MediaWiki. I can tell you that
we have sunk substantial amounts of money in the development of
OmegaWiki and this is likely to continue.

We also have several students who have a place for their thesis who will
be working on content related technology. We are working with the
University of Bamberg on a project to internationalise educational
content that will use data from OmegaWiki. This will also require some
software and that is in their budget as software development. The point
here is that as we are willing to cooperate and acknowledge our
partnering, we are able to realise OmegaWiki in a way that is not really
open to the WMF projects because of the way organisations like Virgin
Unite are treated.

By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects.
In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin
work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and
Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential
group of people.

Thanks,
     GerardM

PS We have regularly a need for more developers...


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> Do I understand correctly that you are saying that yes/no
> questions can only be answered mechanically?

No, I wasn't referring to *how* we answer the question.  But the
*answer* is itself a "mechanic" yes or no. You either have the
article, or you don't.  This is not a fuzzy thing that can be
discussed in terms of feelings or "quality", the existence of the
article is only a quantity: 0 (doesn't exist) or 1 (does exist).
The question needs an answer, we cannot leave it undecided,
because we cannot "maybe" have an article. Since I'm an
inclusionist rather than a deletionist, I'm looking for ways to
formulate successful arguments for keeping articles, and since the
answer needs to be mechanic, it can be helpful to use mechanic
reasoning, such as the population of a city.  Anyway, that would
be better than using the Google hit count.  You could try to use
other (less mechanical) arguments for keeping an article, but I
think it would typically be more difficult.

> I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion is
> that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of 2,000
> or 5,000.

Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.

The notability issue is related to another question that I have:

In linguistics, it is known that some words appear more often than
others, and useful statistics can be based on a large corpus of
text.  If we have a dictionary of 80,000 words, we can check it
against a corpus of text to see if those are the 80,000 most
commonly occurring words or if the dictionary is missing some
frequent words that it should contain.  I wish we could apply the
same kind of statistics to encyclopedias as well.  If we have a
large corpus of text, how much of its meaning is explained by
Wikipedia?  Which concepts are more common than others, and is
Wikipedia missing some of them?  We can do word frequency
statistics, but how can we count the concepts that occurr in a
text?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] New bot up for RFA

body:
Gary Kirk wrote:
> This just occurred to me. I'm probably wrong, but there you go...
> This bot is on RfA. So surely, whatever it does, it needs sysop
> privileges. Therefore, releasing the code does nothing to help vandals
> as vandals don't have sysop accounts...
> Or is that just misguided?

Well, the code theoretically could be used to circumvent the bot, so the
argument goes.

I mean, I can't see the code, so I can't verify that, but still...

-Jeff


from_name: Yedidia Klein

subject: [Wikitech-l] https auth on wiki logon

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:

> Yedidia Klein wrote:
>>
>> first: Firefox tells me that the page is partially encypted - and I
>> can't find which object isn't encrypted (see wiki.jct.ac.il login page)
>
> You should be able to determine that with "View page info"; look under
> the "Media", "Scripts" and "Style sheets" tabs.  As far as I can tell,
> _all_ the images, scripts and style sheets on that page are being sent
> unencrypted.
>
as i wrote only the login page is over https here:

https://wiki.jct.ac.il/index.php?title=%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%95%D7%97%D7%93:Userlogin&returnto=%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93_%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D7%99
I know that it's the wrong mailing list - but i'm just answering...

--Y


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
	feedback please?

body:
Samuel Wantman wrote:

Very interesting, but what puzzling results.  I tried intersections of some
> of the largest categories I could think of and got wildly different
> results.  The first time I tried American actors intersected with Living
> people the results took 1.5 seconds the next time I tried it it was 0.0011
> seconds.

I think a lot of the variation is due to server load - this is running on a
shared webhost FYI (I'm too cheap for a dedicated server right now).

What does this mean?  Is the long result because of server
> traffic?  Is the short result close to the time that it actually
> took?  Are
> the results being cached?

They were, but I've added SQL_NO_CACHE so the query runs live all the time.

Also, the intersection of large categories with
> numerous articles common to both seems to take longer than categories of
> similar size with no common articles.  This is not what I expected.  If
> you
> are just looking for the first 30 results, I'd expect the first case to be
> faster.  The second has to look through the entire category for a match.

Hmm... I don't know.  When I query "+Living_people +Frogs" it returns no
results and takes about 2.5 seconds...

My question to developers is what is the criteria for an acceptable
> solution?  How much time can an intersection be allowed to take?  How
> often
> do we think people will be looking for intersections?

I think the consensus is that once we have this, it will be very popular
(from previous discussions on the mailing list).  I asked Brion about this
performance expectations once, and he said something like that he'd like to
see it run in less than a second. I'm thinking that if it runs in 1 second
+/- .5 secs, it might be okay, and having a ajax interface would make it
palatable to the user experience (somehow waiting for a div to load seems
less maddening than waiting for the whole page... plus, it might reduce some
overhead associated with rendering the mediawiki page.  OTOH... not friendly
for mobile users etc... Hmm...)

Can we save the
> results of a popular intersections (like American people intersected with
> Actors) so that the intersection is updated less frequently?

Yes, but then we have to add caching logic.  You wouldn't want to save it
too long, because then it becomes outdated.

User:Rick Block, User:Radiant! and I have been discussing ways to optimize
> or limit intersections so that server load will be less of a problem and
> hopefully doable.  Please see our discussions at [[en:User
> talk:Radiant!]]  Also, if anyone hasn't seen it, we've done quite a bit of
> work on possible user interfaces.  These are at [[en:Wikikpedia:Category
> intersection]].

Yes, I've been following ideas for reducing server load, but I am really
putting all my effort in to finding the fastest realistic implementation - I
want to see what we can do, and hopefully have as few limits as possible.
>From the experimenting I'm doing, I'm getting FAR better (10x or better)
results from the fulltext index than from hitting the categorylinks table.

There are many ways intersections can be constrained to put less of a load
> on the servers.  I'm hoping that we can implement this at some level
> soon.  The categorization system is being turned into a database search
> system.  (snipped for brevity)  The longer we wait for this to be
> implemented,
> the more broken up categories will become (at least on en: German
> Wikipedia
> doesn't seem to have this problem).

I couldn't agree with you more!  I'm absolutely convinced that this
(intersections/math/whatver) is a much more natural way to organize and find
information.

Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Thanks!  I'm going to (meant to do it by now) add some logging functionality
to my test script so we can get some performance statistics.  As soon as I
do that, I'll point to it from En:Category_intersection to get more
interested testers.  (If I can find the time, I'll enhance the UI too.)

Once I've got some statistics, we can have a meaningful discussion about the
viability of this approach.  If this doesn't perform fast enough, I'll
thinking I'll do zend/lucene index (never done that before, it would be
interesting)  - but then as I understand it, the reindex process can be
rather lengthy.  At any rate, that would probably fit will into existing
processes since we're using lucene from general search, and this would just
require maintaining and indexing the extra table field for the list of
categories.  We'll see... I still want to give MySQL's Fulltext index a good
try because it's so much simpler to implement and would be easy to roll up
into the general mediawiki app.

Thanks again for the feedback,
Aerik


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising and site notice

body:
On 1/9/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony schreef:
> > I was stripped of my membership in the Foundation a month or so ago.
> > It's not US.  It's them (the board).
> Hoi,
> When this is your attitude, I will not bother to convince you.  Because
> they are not your projects nor is it your foundation that we are talking
> about. I am also of the opinion that you just disqualified yourself to
> have relevance on the foundation-l.
>
> I am glad to associate myself with the Wikimedia Foundation even when I
> do not agree with all of the things it does.. However it provides a
> resource that is really important to me.
>

I don't think it has to be my foundation in order to have an interest
in it.  I'm very much committed to the vision of "a world in which
every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of
all human knowledge".  And I think the Foundation has done a lot of
things that have helped move toward that vision.  But it's not my
Foundation.  I participate in this mailing list as an interested
person, and as someone willing to help out.

But why should I waste my breath?  If you'd prefer to avoid continuing
this discussion by attacking me personally instead of responding to my
points, that's your perogative.

Anthony


list: wikimedia-l


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
	World

body:
On 09/01/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:

> On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an article
> about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My town
> and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population of
> 1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size of
> mine.

Rambot has written articles about towns with zero inhabitants.

This is not a bad thing - it's not like completeness of coverage costs
us paper, and we can claim to cover EVERY settlement known to the US
Census.

> *And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
> about every country

One of the reasons for the popularity of en:wp (still 54% of all
wikipedia.org traffic) is its breadth. Far too often, I have trouble
convincing non-English-native-speakers that their native language
Wikipedia is worth their close attention. en:wp's ridiculous breadth
seems to add perceptible value in practice.

- d.


from_name: David Goodman

body:
As for what I find,
I only look on speedy or prod for things that I can quickly spot as
possible without opening them: anything that sounds like real science,
any corporate name I recognize, any research organization name I
recognize, anything that looks like a non-UK/US author or scientist.
These arent many, and I open 20 and get maybe 5 a day worth keeping.
The problem is the personal names I do not recognize. If I have time
to do them, I find another 5/day . Of these 10, usually 1 is absurd
enough that I keep a record of it--the time someone tried to delete
JISC (the major UK interuniversity consortium) or
James Bonner, the very famous biologist, with 3 honorary degrees and a
chair at an ivy.  If people with other backgrounds looked, and every
one was checked by an intelligent person, I think about 10% would be
worth keeping or at least discussing in AfD.

I remove the tag, make a quick fix, say so, and try to notify the main
or only editor. There's an automatic template for the purpose, and the
person placing the delete is supposed to notify the author--they do
about half the time. I add a line or two  of suggestions beyond the
template

For both speedy and prod, anyone other than the author can remove the
tag, and say so with a reason on the edit summary and the talk page.
That automatically stops the process. It is not necessary to be an
admin.

The problems are that: 90% are 1-line autobios or bios of one's
girlfriend or paragraphs naming the teachers in their elementary
school; 5% are long meaningless autobio; 5% are worth thinking about.

As for automatic criteria, it isnt even safe to delete the 1-liners
because some are a start  for a person worth doing. I prefer
intelligent humans. All US/UK villages even have long been entered
from the census returns. Same could be done elsewhere.

I am not concerned about AfDs. Once something is there, it gets at
least a few people.
I haven't kept track, but I think most are rightly decided.  There's
about 100 discussions a day. Join those 1 or 2 you think you could
really help. Learn the language that works, be realistic, avoid lost
causes, and earn respect from the others.

I do not think structural change is hopeless; but we shoudn't wait for
it. Direct action is the way.  WP like most large organizations is run
by a very small number of the members, but, unlike most, anyone with
time to particpate can join in that number. --David G.

On 1/8/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good. Thank you.
>
> I'm outlining it for brevity:
>
> 1) Bookmark and check [[Category:Candidates for speedy deletion]] regularly.
> Make it part of that hour or so per day when you're aimlessly clicking
> around the internet.
>
> 2) Even though you shouldn't have to, source to the point of compensation.
>
> 3) Call for back-up. Deletionists routinely summon their cheerleaders when
> things aren't going their way. Do the same.
>
> 4) Structural change -- fuggetaboutit.
>
> -S
>
> I am curious. About how many articles per day/week do you salvage from
> speedy del, David?
>
> On 1/8/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, there is a very definite tendency for deletion of anything about
> > a non UK/US person or institution, or an academic, or a classical
> > musician, or someone or something not recent enough to have material
> > on Google. The reason given is always "notability not asserted" and
> > people are actually marking for deletion anything which does not
> > literally countain the word "notability" in the first paragraph. This
> > is worst in speedy, because there are only a few hours at most to
> > review tthe listed items, and there's an ongoing discussion on the
> > talk page of WP:CSD.
> >
> > Ways to deal with it are well known, but I'm outlining it for clarity.
> > More people must to make the very considerable effort of reviewing at
> > least some of the deletions.  For speedys, they're at
> > [[Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion]]. Twice a day is not too
> > often.  Then there's  [[Category:Proposed deletion]] every few days is
> > enough, and similarly at AfD. You'll see me there-- I'm DGG.
> >
> > AfD is the easy part, because if an article gets to AfD, there are
> > enough people watching to speak up, and enough time to improve the
> > article.
> >
> > I'm not hopeful on structural change, because no structural change can
> > stand up to people wantonly ignoring the meaning of the rules.  But WP
> > is after all a cooperatively edited project, and individual people
> > joining in can make a difference.  To return to the original posting,
> > if a number of other people familiar with Indian material support
> > worthy articles, it will work.
> >
> > For individual articles, the way to do it is to put in a clearly
> > sufficient number of citations. from printed works. (accompanied by
> > English translations if necessary). I've found that specific citations
> > from peer-reviewed journals do help, if they are at all pertinent. So
> > do Ph.d. theses and even Masters theses.
> >
> > The other specific tactic some like-minded people are using is to
> > write the article on their user page, and invite comment individually
> > from people likely to be active in AfD.
> > Format does matter.
> >
> > -- David Goodman
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/8/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > My are these slopes slippery this time of year. And me without my sled.
> > >
> > > -S
> > >
> > > On 1/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > That's a big hypothetical - if he had been born there, how much and
> > what
> > > > would he have written? Having somehting un-notable may not be a grave
> > > > error,
> > > > but having thousands of un-notable things clogs Wikipedia, makes
> > > > fact-checking harder and opens the doors wide to usage of Wikipedia
> > for
> > > > advertisement.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/5/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > What happens when webpages are replaced by GopherNG? ;)
> >
> > Well, we're not saying anything about the web, we're saying
> > "Internet". In that respect, "multilingual wiki projects" is much more
> > tech-centric. But either seems fine with me; if these solutions become
> > outdated, we will simply update our mission statement, as we've done
> > before. It's the vision statement which should be timeless.
>
> Same argument applies. I don't see how the internet is important to
> our mission. It's the best tool for the job today, sure, but it's not
> our mission. Sure we can revise it.. but why bother mentioning it. Our
> mission is providing effective support for the creation and
> propagation of this free content. That we use the Internet is true
> today, but it's not at all fundimental ... it simply adds length
> without adding clarity.

I would respectfully disagree -- some degree of specificity in mission is a
Good Thing. The *vision* statement is deservedly as broad as possible. I
think focusing on the Internet in the mission is good.

We can offset the additional length by removing the free-beer aspects
> of the current draft. I believe the free-beerness of Wikimedia itself
> is a natural side effect of our mission of wide propagation but not in
> and of itself a fundamental goal.

Considering how many people in the world are poor, and that our intended
audience is the whole world, maybe it should be a fundamental goal.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
On Sun, 7 Jan 2007, Florence Devouard wrote:

> Second, the fundraiser is not over. It will be over on Wikipedia day. It
> may be that at some point in the coming week, we change the site notice
> to put links to thank donators etc...
>
> Third, this fundraiser has been the most successful of our history by
> far, until now. When we really think about it, it is fabulous. We can do
> even better in the last week.

This has certainly been a successful fundraiser.  It seems to me that the
projects can grow quite a bit more and still be sustainable entirely by
voluntary community donations.

More regular fundraisers will help; the community has been hoping for a
fundraiser since the late spring. And more targeted messaging could make
the fundraiser more successful, as a source of funds and as an event
around which the community can rally and grow.

It would help as the fundraiser ends to have some explicit idea that
we are pushing towards a goal, and a request to help meet that goal.

It would help to have a sitewide notice that acknowledges and supports our
strong open community, saying something like
  "The Wikimedia projects are written and sustained by you, our readers and
   editors. [[How you can help|Help us grow in 2007]]."

(Or s/grow/improve stability/ as the case may be.)

SJ


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites

body:
Robth wrote

>  Taking a lassez faire approach to article quality (and
> specifically, reference quality) will ensure that our average article
> remains rather poorly referenced, and strikes me as a sure way to at
> best delay the development of a higher quality encyclopedia, and at
> worst lastingly sidetrack the project.

You have a point. However the 'average article' is a somewhat problematic concept. For several reasons, in fact. One could weight any 'average' (mean) according to the word count of articles: so that large, well-referenced articles count for more than stubby ones. Following up that idea, one could realise that we do hypertext, not individual articles, and an unreferenced stub created to fill in a red link is still more to go on than the red link qua title. (It is a node, can gather up redirectsm, and so on.) What is more, under a hypothetical feature that hid stubs from people who didn't want them, it might all look rather better on a random sample.

In other words, the status quo says 'please judge us as a hypertext work in progress'. Adding references is in many cases (not all) a type of clean-up; we have always had clean-up to do.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/9/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 1/5/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > > On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > What happens when webpages are replaced by GopherNG? ;)
> > >
> > > Well, we're not saying anything about the web, we're saying
> > > "Internet". In that respect, "multilingual wiki projects" is much more
> > > tech-centric. But either seems fine with me; if these solutions become
> > > outdated, we will simply update our mission statement, as we've done
> > > before. It's the vision statement which should be timeless.
> >
> > Same argument applies. I don't see how the internet is important to
> > our mission. It's the best tool for the job today, sure, but it's not
> > our mission. Sure we can revise it.. but why bother mentioning it. Our
> > mission is providing effective support for the creation and
> > propagation of this free content. That we use the Internet is true
> > today, but it's not at all fundimental ... it simply adds length
> > without adding clarity.
>
>
> I would respectfully disagree -- some degree of specificity in mission is a
> Good Thing. The *vision* statement is deservedly as broad as possible. I
> think focusing on the Internet in the mission is good.
>
> We can offset the additional length by removing the free-beer aspects
> > of the current draft. I believe the free-beerness of Wikimedia itself
> > is a natural side effect of our mission of wide propagation but not in
> > and of itself a fundamental goal.
>
>
> Considering how many people in the world are poor, and that our intended
> audience is the whole world, maybe it should be a fundamental goal.

What percentage of those poor even have Internet access?  It seems to
me that Wikimedia content will *always* be available for no cost over
the Internet, and in fact the Foundation couldn't even stop this from
happening if they wanted to.  Granted, this content might not
necessarily be available *ad-free* over the Internet without
Foundation support, but this isn't even part of the mission as
currently stated.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On Tue, 9 Jan 2007, The Cunctator wrote:

> On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I would respectfully disagree -- some degree of specificity in mission is a
> Good Thing. The *vision* statement is deservedly as broad as possible. I
> think focusing on the Internet in the mission is good.

Without specificity, it is difficult to be effective, and difficult to
evaluate success.

> We can offset the additional length by removing the free-beer aspects
>> of the current draft. I believe the free-beerness of Wikimedia itself
>> is a natural side effect of our mission of wide propagation but not in
>> and of itself a fundamental goal.
>
> Considering how many people in the world are poor, and that our intended
> audience is the whole world, maybe it should be a fundamental goal.

The free-beer aspects are certainly fundamental to my understanding of
the project goals.  It would be disappointing to see that change.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: JePe

subject: [Wikitech-l] New ipblock-exempt permission

body:
>I've just committed a change that allows users with the permission key
>'ipblock-exempt' to be exempted from ALL forms of IP blocks, including those
>which come from DNSBLs.

>This permission is by default assigned to the Sysop group, although it can
>be, as usual, applied to any group using $wgGroupPermissions.

>(See bug 3706 and r18904)

How can we on a wikimedia project enable this for a user? There aren't added or
changed any Mediawiki messages in r18904.

Hans (JePe)


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 1/9/07, JePe <jepe at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> How can we on a wikimedia project enable this for a user? There aren't added or
> changed any Mediawiki messages in r18904.

Make them a sysop.  ;)  If you want all autoconfirmed users or
something to be exempt, that strikes me as possibly a bad idea, but
you can file a bug at bugs.wikimedia.org asking for it if you like.
Since we don't yet have a flexible userrights system, no, you can't
make a specific group for this and add only specific users to it.


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
>> I can find no such option in Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Mac OS X. What operating
>> system are you running?
>
> Windows XP, sorry for being a bit autistic - I have no other OS with a gui
> running here and assumed Firefox would have the same features on every platform.

If it helps, I think the problem that he's describing can be shown with these two annotated screenshots:
http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/Print-preview-30-percent-scaling.png
http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/print-preview-200-percent-scaling.png

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
I personally disagree with the idea that the way to change anything in
Wikipedia seems to be 'delete it'.  I don't think *FD is the best
place to decide on policy or procedure.

-Matt


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] I appeared to be banned from Wikipedia.

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> wikispeaker at gmail.com isn't Jimbo's email address...
>>
>> Or is there some underlying joke that I'm not getting because I'm
>> unbelievably daft?
>
> Also, Jimbo's grammer is better than that. Parts of that email were
> almost completely incoherent, but I've never had any trouble
> understanding Jimbo before...
>
> Is this a joke by RCT or on RCT?
>

Either way, reposting a "private" email is extremely bad netiquette.
Consider this your (RCT) last warning; the "from" name in your email
(RCTLocoWikiSpam) is borderline at best.

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

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from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wiki violation that did NOT happen, man!

body:
> As they didn't request any unblocking, I get a message that sayd "This user
> is no longer a member of Wikipedia." They said it's against Wikipedia policy
> to remove any semi-protected tags while still protected in this park as the
> Wikipedia police still have not got back to me about my so call wiki
> violation in the park.

I have no idea what you are trying to say - that paragraph is not in English.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 09/01/07, pekka.gronow at yle.fi <pekka.gronow at yle.fi> wrote:

> NOT NECESSARILY. If an article is based on oral sources, you could at
> least make a note that "the information is based on interviews with 100
> people, made in the village of X between dates y and z. Copies of
> interviews are deposited at m." Then we'd know what is the factual basis,
> and the article could be useful as such.

On en:wp, this will promptly get zapped as original research.

- d.


body:
On 09/01/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been working on an article on a Singaporean movie - I Not Stupid.
> It's close to GA status, but there is very little referenced
> information on the production of the film. My friend suggested I
> interview Jack Neo - my idol, who wrote the movie. Since his child
> studies in my school, getting an interview is not out of the question.
> The problem is: how do I publish it?

Publish it on a site yourself and get someone else to write the parts
of the article based on it.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] A quiet,
	peaceful email list for experienced en contributors?

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote
>
>> Isn't that what the mailing list moderators are supposed to keep an
>> eye on?
>
> I'm all for much more pro-active moderation here (previous comments
> of mine). That would be better than a new list, IMO. But as I'm not
> prepared to moderate in that fashion

No, but some of the moderators might be willing to go BOFH on the
idjits. Quoth the mailing list info page:

"Users are generally expected to follow good practice similar to
Wikiquette: assume good faith and be polite and constructive. Users who
are extremely disruptive or uncivil may be moderated or banned from the
mailing list by the administrators."

Unfortunately, this is almost impossible to implement. Any and all
complaints to wikien-l-owner at lists dot wikimedia dot org, please.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Help!

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>> From: Simetrical <Simetrical+wikienl at gmail.com>
>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:16:29 -0500
>> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Help!
>>
>> This should now be fixed.  Please confirm.
>
> Yes!! It is working fine now. Thank you very much for your patience and your
> tolerance. I do realize, now, how outdated the version of Internet Explorer
> I'm using is. I can also see where it could prove to be a real pain in the
> ass for developers like yourself who are trying to constantly upgrade the
> system. I'm really sorry about that. I'm planning to do something about it
> soon.
>

For future reference, the correct list for these sort of problems is
wikitech-l (http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l).

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

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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal Attacks Intervention Noticeboard up for deletion

body:
[[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Personal attack intervention
noticeboard]]

No, no, no! This is the 4th time I'm tearing my hair out over a deletion
debate. At this rate, I'll be bold by the end of the month.
Dealing with personal attacks is an essential part of Wikipedia and deleting
this is like telling trolls it's okay to attack people.

The arguments to delete aren't convincing to me:
1. "It encourages biting."
It actually gives people the chance to ask for help before they blow up and
start biting. Some people aren't good at dealing with attacks, so an
organized effort to help such people is a good thing.

2. "It performs much the same function as WP:ANI."
WP:ANI is overburdened and regularly reaches massive sizes. Keeping this
separate makes these pages easier accessible and easier to read.

Finally, I'd like to note that telling people who attack others to cease and
desist or to block them for repeat violations is NOT the same as biting. It
is entirely supported by policy.

I really want people to be productive and create instead of destroying
things. If you think something is broken, create an alternative, before
deleting the original.

Mgm


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Anthony schreef:
> On 1/7/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Oldak Quill schreef:
>>
>>> On 07/01/07, Florence Devouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hello everyone.
>>>>
>>>> Just for a head up (or down)
>>>>
>>>> First, I wanted to announce to all that there will be no more matching
>>>> donors in that fundraiser.
>>>> This is due to a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, the
>>>> reaction of some members in the community.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Regardless of whether I agreed with the Virgin notice or not, this is
>>> an excellent move on behalf of the Foundation. It demonstrates the
>>> Foundation's responsiveness to Wikimedians and that there is no
>>> bureaucratic disconnect (which is always a worry when a project like
>>> ours begins to organise into formalised institutions and structures).
>>>
>>> Thanks Florence and the rest of the team. You're doing an excellent job.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> I am afraid you did not read the whole of Florence her e-mail, or you
>> only read what you want to read.. "Fourth, we'll go on with limited
>> funds. Limited means we'll go delaying certain issues. That's life !"
>>
>> This means that things that are deemed necessary will not happen or will
>> not happen in the near future for lack of funds.
>>
>
> Ant didn't say anything about the issues which were delayed being
> *necessary*.  Framing it that way seems unfair.
>
Hoi,
Anthere is quiet explicit: "Limited means we'll go delaying certain
issues". It means that things that are deemed to be necessary by the
board will be postponed. In my opinion it is unfair that you do not
accept that the lack of funding inhibits what the Wikimedia Foundation
is able to do. It is quite obvious that lack of funding is holding us back.
Thanks,
      GerardM


from_name: David Monniaux

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

>The whole problem with the deletion process. Not just on the English
>wikipedia, is that people who do not know anything about the subject get
>to judge. So many times you will see reasonings like ... I do not know
>about it so it isn't notable ...
>
"I've never heard about it (but I don't know the topic anyway) and I
don't see it much on Google, therefore it's not notable."

And agreed with Waerth, one big problem on Wikipedia is that it makes it
too easy for people who lack proper judgment about the worth of their
opinions (that is, who think they may have opinions on topics they don't
know about) to have a voice in the matter.

Recently I've came across criticism on an article about a French
politician: according to the critics, one issue was that many of the
references were in French! It's a bit like criticizing an article about
physics because the references are to physics books and not to the
science column of the local newspaper. Sure, it's less accessible; but
it's also probably much more accurate.

Again, this seems to come from a bogus assumption that anybody can judge
the worth of any article without knowing the issue, simply by using
formal criteria like Google hits or numbers of citations. This just does
not work.


from_name: Sue Reed

body:
Thank you very much for this message. I fully admit that I may have missed it somewhere along the way, but I appreciate the succinct reasoning. I did go back and look at this is way at the bottom of the "why we need money" page, but I appreciate you posting about it here.

Sue Anne
sreed1234 at yahoo.com

----- Original Message ----
From: Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>

Beg your pardon ?

Financial statements go from june to june. So, "new" is at least 7
months ago.

7 months ago, we had a "cash at the end of the year" of 500 000 dollars.

Our auditors recommanded to increase cash reserve to at least 3
($875,000), preferrably 6 months ($1,650,000) of operating expenses for
fiscal security.

In june 2006, we were NOT overfunded, we were precisely within security
limits, with something like 3 to 6 months of operations in reserve.

Right now, we are VERY underfunded.

Anthere

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


from_name: pekka.gronow at yle.fi

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the
	Third	World

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

Well, what if I know the truth, but it is not written anywhere? What
if I interview 100 people to make sure they agree, and they do? What
if it is common knowledge in my village, which nobody will challenge?

The answer: it will be labeled "unverifiable" or "non-notable" and
deleted.

NOT NECESSARILY. If an article is based on oral sources, you could at
least make a note that "the information is based on interviews with 100
people, made in the village of X between dates y and z. Copies of
interviews are deposited at m." Then we'd know what is the factual basis,
and the article could be useful as such.

Pekka Gronow


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
The whole problem with the deletion process. Not just on the English
wikipedia, is that people who do not know anything about the subject get
to judge. So many times you will see reasonings like ... I do not know
about it so it isn't notable ... . I know it is impossible, but ideally
only people with knowledge about the subjectarea(s) that the articles
topic would fall under would be the ones who should judge these things.
Not everybody. But unfortunately this will never be the case.

Waerth

>I'm afraid I've seen this also.  Non-US articles appear much more likely
>to come up for AfD.
>
>But it's not just geographic.  The Maui Cluster Scheduler actually came up
>for deletion with a result of "no concensus".  This is a piece of software
>that is an integral component of high performance clusters the world over.
>One voter apparently wanted it deleted because it was not useful for his
>home PC.  At the very best this is parochial.
>
>I'm glad this topic has come up for discussion.  IMHO the entire deletion
>process (including speedy deletion) needs to come up for review.  It's too
>easy for articles to come up for AfD.
>
>It was interesting to sit in a Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group
>meeting recently and hear people list many (IMHO) reasonable articles that
>had been deleted.  This was a spontaneous discussion.  I bet if so many
>people in Toronto are concerned about the deletion process that we aren't
>alone.
>
>Rob
>
>
>


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 1/9/07, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> Once I've got some statistics, we can have a meaningful discussion about the
> viability of this approach.  If this doesn't perform fast enough, I'll
> thinking I'll do zend/lucene index (never done that before, it would be
> interesting)  - but then as I understand it, the reindex process can be
> rather lengthy.

Rebuilding an inverted index on gigabytes of text is going to be
somewhat slow slow. Rebuilding one on the far smaller category dataset
is fast.


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
"David Monniaux" <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote in
message news:45A3923F.1010602 at free.fr...
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
> >The whole problem with the deletion process. Not just on the English
> >wikipedia, is that people who do not know anything about the subject get
> >to judge. So many times you will see reasonings like ... I do not know
> >about it so it isn't notable ...
> >
> "I've never heard about it (but I don't know the topic anyway) and I
> don't see it much on Google, therefore it's not notable."
>

There also seem to be a lot of "Ah! So-and-so thinks we should delete it,
and they've made a persuasive argument about it, so I'll add my vote to
their cause", without the voter doing any investigation of their own.
Perhaps a more structured AFD process, where people fill in table cells
would be a good move:

  Name
  Vote
  Reason for vote
  Evidence

e.g.
  HappyDog
  Delete
  Non-notable
  Found no evidence on Google.

Then at least we would know why any item is deleted and avoid lots of votes
from different people for the same reason.  E.g. if 50 people say
'non-notable' because it is not on Google, and 1 person says 'notable'
because it is in a prominenet textbook relating to the subject, then surely
it is notable.  Without seeing people's reasoning this will simply be 50 to
1, delete.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Andrew Whitworth

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibook User Arbitration

body:
>The problem as I see it is that Johnny became a party to the fight, even
>if that was not his intention.  And he engaged directly with Panic to
>argue on fine points.

After the initial moderation, Panic brought the fight to Johnny, not the
other way around. Panic is petulant, something he's admitted to several
times before. Johnny became a moderator at Panic's request, and when Panic
didn't get what he wanted, he started a new argument with a new target. The
fact that the target of Panic's aggression changed (from Darklama to Johnny)
doesnt change Johnny's initial ruling in the moderation case, nor does it
excuse Panic from the results of that moderation. It was decided that Panic
could not continue to behave the way he had been, and when he did, Johnny
blocked him.

Consider a parallel with you involved. If Panic loses this round of
arbitration, he is going to start a fight with you as well. Is somebody
going to jump in and say "Let's overturn Rob's decision, because he was
engaged in a personal fight with Panic"? You may not care about your
membership at wikibooks, but I for one would feel the loss if you stopped
contributing all together (blocked or pushed out).

>The main thing I wanted to do here is to
>avoid the same sort of mistakes that Johnny made, particularly as I
>don't think doing a user block is necessarily the best course of action
>when dealing with an edit war, except perhaps to cool things down a bit
>and make people pause to think for a moment.

The edit war wasn't the main rationale for the block anyway. Panic has a
long history of biting newbies, being uncivil, and starting fights.
Somewhere you have to draw the line and realize that wikibooks is about
collaboratively authoring textbooks, not about dealing with Panic's
particular brand of bullshit on a daily basis. We are all just volunteers
trying to write textbooks, and people who can't follow the rules shouldnt be
here in the first place.

>As far as appealing up the food chain, so to say, that has always been
>an option.

My point was that it's a bad option. In general, I would prefer for
wikibook's problems to be solved by wikibookians. Look at what happens when
people from outside wikibooks try to "help" us: The portal is moved to meta
where it's broken and unfixable, the logo is changed to something we dont
need or want, etc. Look also at what has happened in the past when Jimbo has
come in to mandate something or another: I would hardly say his ruling on
the videogame guides was "absolute". If panic raises a big enough stink to
these people, they will come in and take action (not likely in panic's
benefit), but that can't be a good thing for our project in any way.

>BTW, no, I don't think that my being involved here is going to have my
>adminship challenged if I recommend that Panic's account be reblocked,
>or set up some other sort of set of "probationary" conditions for him.

Not what Johnny thought either, and look at him now. This whole situation is
poison in the water, and we risk losing some genuinely helpful people. What
I dont want to see is Wikibooks get hurt any more then it needs to. Helpful
and friendly contributors are the only thing that we have, and the numbers
are preciously small.

--Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight)

_________________________________________________________________
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body: At the same time, we get "keep" on articles about obvious hoaxes.


body:
Anthony schreef:
> On 1/9/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Anthony schreef:
>>
>>> Ant didn't say anything about the issues which were delayed being
>>> *necessary*.  Framing it that way seems unfair.
>>>
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> Anthere is quiet explicit: "Limited means we'll go delaying certain
>> issues". It means that things that are deemed to be necessary by the
>> board will be postponed.
>>
>
> Well, I don't see where you're getting the fact that those "things"
> were "deemed to be necessary by the board".
>
Hoi,
I am sorry that this is not obvious to you. The Wikimedia Foundation has
a budget. This budget includes what is deemed to be necessary. The WMF
does not borrow money, so when there is not enough money for what the
WMF plans to do, it cuts back to the bare essentials. It is quite
elementary ...
>
>> In my opinion it is unfair that you do not
>> accept that the lack of funding inhibits what the Wikimedia Foundation
>> is able to do.
>>
>
> I do accept that.  Well, probably.  It's always possible that the lack
> of funding will instead cause the Wikimedia Foundation to spend its
> money more intelligently.  For instance, instead of continuing to
> acquire brand new $3000 servers they might instead choose to rent less
> expensive ones.  That wouldn't inhibit anything.  But that's more of
> wishful thinking than a real prediction.
>
Hoi,

This is pure wishful thinking. What is intelligent in buying less
expensive servers when our own developers recommend specific hardware.
Do you really think that the specifications are in a way that cheaper
alternatives do the same quality job? Mind you, our servers are pushed
hard.
>> It is quite obvious that lack of funding is holding us back.
>>
>
> "Lack of funding" (failure to reach an arbitrary goal) is certainly
> going to hold some people back from whatever it is they would have
> otherwise done with the money.  That's quite obvious.  What effect
> it's going to have on the foundation is much less clear.  In fact, it
> doesn't seem to have been decided just yet.
>
> Anthony
I think you badly underestimate the efforts that have gone into creating
a budget when you call them "arbitrary goals". You assume that there is
no planning, that no time was spend on what is needed for the Foundation
and why. Your observation that the effect on the Foundation of
continually being underfunded is unclear is correct, that is something
that only the future will learn, but how do we compare? You do not have
to be Einstein to understand that things that are beneficial will not
happen. I am also surprised that you think it will hold some "people"
back. It holds US back; we are the Foundation, they are our efforts, it
is our projects that will be held back. When you mean that some people
far away will be held back, then sure.. I do not want to argue what I
think of that.

The problem is that the underfunding of the foundation is consistently
belittled. This is made worse because no credible alternatives are
provided that will help us raise funds in the future, a future that will
only require more money.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

body:
On 1/9/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I do accept that.  Well, probably.  It's always possible that the lack
> of funding will instead cause the Wikimedia Foundation to spend its
> money more intelligently.  For instance, instead of continuing to
> acquire brand new $3000 servers they might instead choose to rent less
> expensive ones.  That wouldn't inhibit anything.  But that's more of
> wishful thinking than a real prediction.
>
 There is a reason that so much money is spent on the servers. That is
because it is needed.

Bryan


from_name: Yorian

subject: [Foundation-l] List of patrollers

body:
Hi,

We on the Dutch Wikipedia have a problem since a month or two: we work
with the marked as patrolled system and normally this works fine, but
since a few months there are some anonymous changes who are bad, but are
marked as patrolled. We don't know what causes this problem, (a vandal,
an ignorant user, just some mistakes?) but we would like to find it out.
In order to do that we must know who marked which changes, so it would
be great if we could see this. In short: we want some sort of "recent
marked" list and a link in the difference page to the person who marked
a change. Is this easy to implent in a short time?

Thanks in advance,

Yorian


subject: [Foundation-l] List of patrollers


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the
	ThirdWorld

body:
Frederick, I think one important anchor for third-world topics is
interwiki collaboration.

Currently, creation of new Wikipedias is at a standstill...

I'm curious though... why the main page of the Konknni Test WP is not
a proper main page but actually the article about Goa, with some
sayings at the end?

Some new Wikis are sure to hit the ground running:

http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/dsb (Lower Sorbian)
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/stq (Saterlandic)
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/qya (Quenya)
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-WP/kb (Tripuri)
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/zb (Uzican)

It tends to be that quality standards on smaller Wikipedias are lower.
You may write material unhindered by the deletionists at AfD. Later,
this material can be reused to translate or to write new material for
en.wp, and can be used as a source in itself if necessary - interwiki
links provide some degree of credibility.

Mark

On 09/01/07, Frederick Noronha <fred at bytesforall.org> wrote:
> Marek makes some great points. I couldn't agree with him more.
>
> If anyone convinces Wikipedia that it needs to be "more like the real
> thing" (whatever that is, including mainstream, printed encyclopedias
> or Encarta), it would be a great loss for the attempt to build
> alternatives. Likewise, it would be hardly helpful if anyone convinces
> Wikipedia that it should focus on the "standard and quality
> information" argument (whatever that is supposed to mean!) over all
> other strengths of the Wikipedia experiment.
>
> For someone like me, the strength of the Wikipedia lies mainly in the
> fact that it has space also for my village of 8000 to be written about
> for a global audience (in a factual manner, of course). If things that
> are important to me are going to be seen as "peripheral" (just because
> they lack size or not being visible enough in cyberspace), then in
> what way is it different from the mainstream... that has kept me out
> in the cold for so long, anyway?
>
> Just the other day, a speaker here in Goa, India was describing
> "remote" communities, and pointing out that the term is misleading in
> itself. As he put it, the logic of "remoteness" is always connected to
> our definition of what is the centre (of the world, of the nation
> state, or whatever). "For people out there, their own location, of
> course, is the centre of the world, as far as they go," he said.
>
> Can we encourage the diversity of the planet to flower in the
> Wikipedia, as it really should? --Frederick "FN" Noronha, Independent
> Journalist, Goa, India.
>
> On 10/01/07, Marek Najmajer <marqoz at wp.pl> wrote:
> > I've been reading some of your meassages or votes for entry deletion, and
> > I'm getting more and more sad.
> >
> > You are trying to have a 'clean' worthfull encyclopaedia with assurance
> > there is no meaningless article in it.
> > It could be understood in case of written, printed book which looks great in
> > the bookshelf (I like books anyway)....
> --
> FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
> http://fn.goa-india.org  http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Gary Kirk

subject: [WikiEN-l] New bot up for RFA

body:
This just occurred to me. I'm probably wrong, but there you go...
This bot is on RfA. So surely, whatever it does, it needs sysop
privileges. Therefore, releasing the code does nothing to help vandals
as vandals don't have sysop accounts...
Or is that just misguided?

On 1/9/07, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
> > >I'm sure if you asked the guy he'll give you the code, but keeping the
> code
> > >concealed may be a good thing because it'll stave off the bot being
> > >compromised for some time.
> >
> > Yup.  You really think that Wiki folks would keep it quiet if there
> > wasn't a plausible reason?  Come on!
> >
>
> We already have several open bot frameworks, it's purportedly an easy task
> to
> whip up a vandalbot. There's even a similar transclusion-checking bot that
> was
> made open source. And surely making MediaWiki itself open source was even
> more
> dangerous, and yet, there you go.
>
> And finally of course there's argumentum ad Jimbo.
>
> Dan
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Gary Kirk


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Oversight-l] Also, once you begin the process,
	You will not make payments on your Account s06x15 c8w

body:
On 1/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > At the moment none at all. Most of our lists are for subscribers only.
>
>
> O rly? I recall the old box had various spamfiltering set up on it.
> SpamAssassin with a pretty high threshold set.
>
> (I was about to suggest greylisting, but that's probably a really bad
> idea for oversight-l ...)

It would certainly make the moderators' job much easier if there was
less spam coming in. We probably miss quite a few good messages in the
quagmire of spam, and end up discarding the lot.

Steve


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 1/9/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
> >>The problem is that the underfunding of the foundation is consistently
> >>belittled.
> >
> >
> > As of the last audited financial report, the foundation was quite
> > overfunded, not underfunded.  If it is now underfunded, that is a new
> > thing.
>
> Beg your pardon ?
>
> Financial statements go from june to june. So, "new" is at least 7
> months ago.
>
No, "new" is *at most* 7 months ago.

> 7 months ago, we had a "cash at the end of the year" of 500 000 dollars.
>
Plus $78,415 in Google stock.  Plus $50,000 in accounts receivable.
Plus $400,000 in computer equipment and software.

> Our auditors recommanded to increase cash reserve to at least 3
> ($875,000), preferrably 6 months ($1,650,000) of operating expenses for
> fiscal security.
>
> In june 2006, we were NOT overfunded, we were precisely within security
> limits, with something like 3 to 6 months of operations in reserve.
>
7.58 months of operating expenses, even if you ignore all the assets
but the bank accounts (12*500,000/791,907), which, you might note, is
not between 3 and 6.

> Right now, we are VERY underfunded.
>
> Anthere
>


body:
Anthony schreef:
> I was stripped of my membership in the Foundation a month or so ago.
> It's not US.  It's them (the board).
Hoi,
When this is your attitude, I will not bother to convince you.  Because
they are not your projects nor is it your foundation that we are talking
about. I am also of the opinion that you just disqualified yourself to
have relevance on the foundation-l.

I am glad to associate myself with the Wikimedia Foundation even when I
do not agree with all of the things it does.. However it provides a
resource that is really important to me.

Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: teun spaans

body:
GerardM,

could you pls remain polite and kind?

thx,
teun

On 1/9/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony schreef:
> > I was stripped of my membership in the Foundation a month or so ago.
> > It's not US.  It's them (the board).
> Hoi,
> When this is your attitude, I will not bother to convince you.  Because
> they are not your projects nor is it your foundation that we are talking
> about. I am also of the opinion that you just disqualified yourself to
> have relevance on the foundation-l.
>
> I am glad to associate myself with the Wikimedia Foundation even when I
> do not agree with all of the things it does.. However it provides a
> resource that is really important to me.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Peter

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.0rc1 available for testing

body:
everything seems to be working fine, had to apply a few low level fixes in
my external authentication hack because of the changed user class, but apart
from that had no issues. Been testing it through the day and it looks pretty
stable.

Peter.

On 1/9/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I've made a snapshot release candidate from 1.9 branch; this is a chance
> to get a few more possible installation/upgrade regressions tested and
> fixed.
>
> A more widely announced 'final' 1.9.0 release will come after another
> day or two.
>
> Full release notes:
>
> http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_9_0RC1/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES
>
> Download from:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=34373&package_id=93103
>
> MD5 checksum: 55eb83d15a95db85ed002aace93a18d9
> SHA-1 checksum: 1ee7d5ddc5b356288f7bdaa9b5800cb89a461216
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFFov17wRnhpk1wk44RAm0NAJ9cCdwCyI05uxYzub91uU19NYEu8ACfWSsB
> 1vXMvKj5Q3Hhb6h0gLphWWA=
> =fhhJ
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 1/9/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Our auditors recommanded to increase cash reserve to at least 3
> ($875,000), preferrably 6 months ($1,650,000) of operating expenses for
> fiscal security.
>
By the way, I have no idea where those two numbers came from.  I've
seen http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for,
but nowhere on that page do I see where the monthly operating expenses
are budgeted at $275,000.

Does the board plan on following the auditor's recommendation, and if so, how?

Anthony


from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] One way inter-languages links?

body:
howard chen wrote:
> Currently, I found quite a lot of one-way inter-languages links,
>
> e.g.
>
> langA -> langB
>
> but you can't go from
>
> langB -> langA
>
>
> are there any method to improve this suitation?

There are some automated bots that look for such things and add the
appropriate links, but they don't operate on all languages, especially
not the smaller ones. If you spot such a situation, adding the
appropriate link yourself would be appreciated; unfortunately, I doubt
anyone has the time to hunt down an entire wiki's worth of missing links.

-Gurch


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
I regret your style of discussing: both on Anthony (with whom i
disagree) and on me your result in personal attacks. Could you please
refrain from them?

Or is this attitude customary on wikimedia mailing lists?

thx
teun

On 1/8/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> You make the issue too simple. When I am to be asked if I want
> advertisements, than the answer is no. When /you /are to be asked do you
> want response times that are on average 50 seconds, than the answer is
> likely to be no as well.
>
> When you say that billions are spend on adverts, then you hit the
> jackpot. This is indeed one place where we can find the money to
> continue the upward trend that we have both in content, in bandwidth, in
> people using our content/people contributing to our content, in
> languages and in projects. My problem with your stance is that you
> provide no credible alternative in the face of a demonstrated need for
> money. The current budget ignores all the things we could do if we had
> indeed more money than needed for our immediate requirements.
>
> To demonstrate that you can think differently; in a contract for adds,
> you could specify that organisations can not advertise on their own page
> and on the page of their competitor. This would wipe away your Micro$oft
> inspired comment.
>
> PS When will you start taking the real issue seriously? The issue is we
> need MORE money and we will need EVEN MORE money given our growth rate.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
> teun spaans schreef:
> > Thx,
> >
> > Indeed, I'd like to make clear that our vision should encompass both
> > kinds of "free".
> >
> > Advertisements are likely to tarnish the strictly neutral image of our
> > projects. take the example of the Microsoft articles on wikipedia.
> > Microsoft the company, and articles on their products.
> > Using the google context ad-aware system, the most logical ads would
> > be for exactly ... uh, these microsoft products. You cant fool me -
> > even if the people could easily distinguish articles and ads,
> > unconsciously they would be influenced.
> >
> > Waerth en GerardM argued that people ignore ads. If they were right,
> > companies would no longer spend a dime on ads. But they are spending
> > billions on them.
> >
> > teun
> >
> > On 1/6/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On 1/5/07, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Anthony,
> >>>
> >>> what, according to you, is the place to speak up?
> >>>
> >>>
> >> This thread is certainly a good place.  If you think "without
> >> advertisements" should be added to the mission statement, suggest it.
> >> It would be interesting to see who, if anyone, objects.
> >>
> >>
> >>> I have considered this mailinglist as the place to speak up, anywhere else?
> >>>
> >>>
> >> There's a talk page for that mission statement draft.  Not sure where
> >> else it's being discussed.
> >>
> >> Anthony
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 1/9/07, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Simetrical wrote:
> > Make them a sysop.  ;)  If you want all autoconfirmed users or
> > something to be exempt, that strikes me as possibly a bad idea, but
> > you can file a bug at bugs.wikimedia.org asking for it if you like.
> > Since we don't yet have a flexible userrights system, no, you can't
> > make a specific group for this and add only specific users to it.
>
> ...or rather, I expect you can, if you manage to persuade a server admin
> to do it for you.  Good luck with that.  :-)

Nope.  There's not yet any interface to add such usergroups unless
you're a steward, so no usergroups are added other than the standard
set.


body:
howard chen wrote:
> On 1/10/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
>> howard chen wrote:
>>> Currently, I found quite a lot of one-way inter-languages links,
>>>
>>> e.g.
>>>
>>> langA -> langB
>>>
>>> but you can't go from
>>>
>>> langB -> langA
>>>
>>>
>>> are there any method to improve this suitation?
>> There are some automated bots that look for such things and add the
>> appropriate links, but they don't operate on all languages, especially
>> not the smaller ones. If you spot such a situation, adding the
>> appropriate link yourself would be appreciated; unfortunately, I doubt
>> anyone has the time to hunt down an entire wiki's worth of missing links.
>>
>> -Gurch
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
> i just thought that, since all the inter-lang links are stored in the
> database, so either the links exist or not, I don't know why there
> will be one-way link.
>
> this problem has nothing to do with small language or not, since if
> small_language -> english, we can always find the reverse, i don't
> think that wikipedia need a bot to discover that? since the data are
> in the DB already, isn;t?
>
> regards,

Unfortunately it's not quite that simple; at the moment, each wiki is
effectively separate at the database level. Right now, the developers
are working on something called "Single User Login", which will allow
all Wikimedia wikis to share a common user account system. This means
people will be able to create one user account and use it on every
Wikimedia wiki, rather than having to register a separate account on
each wiki they want to use.

Given that Single User Login is five months overdue already, I imagine
trying to integrate the interwiki links would also take quite a while.

-Gurch


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
Hoi Teun,
In my honest opinion I have not attacked you personally. What I have
done off list, and someone who can read Dutch may verify that for me, is
explain why I come to my conclusion. If you sees this as a personal
attack, I apologise as I do not have an issue with you
Thanks,
    GerardM.

teun spaans schreef:
> I regret your style of discussing: both on Anthony (with whom i
> disagree) and on me your result in personal attacks. Could you please
> refrain from them?
>
> Or is this attitude customary on wikimedia mailing lists?
>
> thx
> teun
>
> On 1/8/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> You make the issue too simple. When I am to be asked if I want
>> advertisements, than the answer is no. When /you /are to be asked do you
>> want response times that are on average 50 seconds, than the answer is
>> likely to be no as well.
>>
>> When you say that billions are spend on adverts, then you hit the
>> jackpot. This is indeed one place where we can find the money to
>> continue the upward trend that we have both in content, in bandwidth, in
>> people using our content/people contributing to our content, in
>> languages and in projects. My problem with your stance is that you
>> provide no credible alternative in the face of a demonstrated need for
>> money. The current budget ignores all the things we could do if we had
>> indeed more money than needed for our immediate requirements.
>>
>> To demonstrate that you can think differently; in a contract for adds,
>> you could specify that organisations can not advertise on their own page
>> and on the page of their competitor. This would wipe away your Micro$oft
>> inspired comment.
>>
>> PS When will you start taking the real issue seriously? The issue is we
>> need MORE money and we will need EVEN MORE money given our growth rate.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>>
>> teun spaans schreef:
>>
>>> Thx,
>>>
>>> Indeed, I'd like to make clear that our vision should encompass both
>>> kinds of "free".
>>>
>>> Advertisements are likely to tarnish the strictly neutral image of our
>>> projects. take the example of the Microsoft articles on wikipedia.
>>> Microsoft the company, and articles on their products.
>>> Using the google context ad-aware system, the most logical ads would
>>> be for exactly ... uh, these microsoft products. You cant fool me -
>>> even if the people could easily distinguish articles and ads,
>>> unconsciously they would be influenced.
>>>
>>> Waerth en GerardM argued that people ignore ads. If they were right,
>>> companies would no longer spend a dime on ads. But they are spending
>>> billions on them.
>>>
>>> teun
>>>
>>> On 1/6/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 1/5/07, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Anthony,
>>>>>
>>>>> what, according to you, is the place to speak up?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> This thread is certainly a good place.  If you think "without
>>>> advertisements" should be added to the mission statement, suggest it.
>>>> It would be interesting to see who, if anyone, objects.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I have considered this mailinglist as the place to speak up, anywhere else?


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: J.L.W.S. The Special One

body:
If I wanted to write an article on, say, a chess site, but was not
sure whether it was notable, is there a place to post a request for
others to check whether its notable? If not, perhaps I could propose
such a place be created?

I agree that two problems with AFD need to be dealt with:
1) Systemic bias. Articles on American topics are less likely to be
nominated than, say, articles on Singaporean topics. In addition,
certain topics are more likely to be nominated than others.
2) Anti-elitism. If Wikipedia's article on Xiaxue were to be nominated
for deletion, the views of Singaporeans, and those familiar with the
blogosphere, should carry more weight. However, this isn't the case.

On 1/9/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/8/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > Frederick Noronha wrote:
> >
> > > Maybe we should use some discernment, instead of the mechanical rule
> > > of 'number of links' on Google or where-ever.
> >
> > The question if a topic is notable enough to deserve an entry, can
> > only be answered with "yes" or "no", and this is pretty much
> > "mechanical", so you cannot really escape the mechanics.
>
> I think the idea that one could come up with a formula, a machine into
> which one could put an subject and turn the handle and get a 'yes' or
> 'no' answer, to rule on inclusion in Wikipedia is fundamentally
> wrong-headed.  It reflects a certain 'computer-science' way of
> thinking that I feel is flawed - as someone said, expecting to be able
> to fix social problems in software is a loser's game.
>
> To some, I feel, such a definitive process would be desirable since
> they think it would solve the rancor over inclusion - even if it made
> some less-than-perfect decisions, they like the speed and finality and
> definitiveness of such.  I think it would only increase the rancor.
> There is disagreement about inclusion not because we've not yet
> perfected the formula, but because there is deep-seated division on
> what we're trying to do and what should be included.  Furthermore,
> inclusion doesn't seem suited to binary logic - it's a problem in
> which the answers do include definitive 'yes' and 'no' regions but a
> substantial fuzzy zone of 'maybe'.
>
> Answering that 'maybe' is the hard part.  Myself, I feel that the
> deciding factor, once verifiability is out of the way (and answered
> positively) is simply whether anyone is interested/able to make a
> worthwhile article out of it.  In practice, well-written, substantial
> articles rarely get deleted no matter what the subject.
>
> -Matt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
gwern branwen wrote:

>On 1/9/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I've been working on an article on a Singaporean movie - I Not Stupid.
>>It's close to GA status, but there is very little referenced
>>information on the production of the film. My friend suggested I
>>interview Jack Neo - my idol, who wrote the movie. Since his child
>>studies in my school, getting an interview is not out of the question.
>>The problem is: how do I publish it?
>>
>>
>And you can always keep a backup in your userspace - if userspace
>cannot be used for backing up primary materials used in articles and
>to which you hold the copyright, then IMO we've gone way too far in
>restricting its usage.
>
>And there's always Wikisource, but I guess you would have to ask
>someone else to upload it. I think they bar original works created by
>contributors, but I'm not sure.
>
The latter is a theoretical possibility, vut I'm afraid that this
prospect would have a very high noise to signal ratio.  Wikisource had
to deal with this problem at a very early stage of its development.  It
took a long time to get rid of some of the attempts that were bing made
to archive computer code files that were utterly meaningless in isolation.

Authentic iInterview files would be useful in the circumstances
mentioned in this thread, but I'm not sure where; nor do I have any
ideahow the real might be sorted from those conducted in a s?ance or the
ones that entirely fictitious.

Ec


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>3) Among the population of the Earth, a very, very large portion live
>in societies that are not highly literate or which don't place a high
>importance on writing. Most societies don't record every aspect of
>life the way we do. Yes, there are newspapers in India (although to
>the best of my knowledge there are no newspapers in Igbo or Aymara or
>Afar), there are books in Nepal, but if you look it up, the sheer
>volume of materials published in the First World per-capita far, far,
>far, far exceeds that of anywhere else.
>
>Here, if someone sees an insect doing something strange, they write a
>paper or a book about it, and if they don't, somebody else will! But
>in most countries, this is not the case. Books cost money to make.
>People in developing countries often don't have this money. There are
>no or (comparatively) few publishers there, and those that do exist
>cannot afford to put out the sheer volume of books put out by
>publishers here because the demand tends to be much lower (especially
>for non-fiction books). They do not have Amazon.com or massive
>real-life bookstores, so "specialty" books would not sell because they
>would have no way to reach their intended audience!
>
Most of us in developed counties would take the costs of producing a
small pamphlet for granted.  We might consider that spending $20.00 to
produce 500 copies of a pamphlet on matters of local concern to be a
bargain.  In some third world countries that's equivalent to two months
of income.  500 copies is already too many to reproduce with
[[hectograph]]y.  There may indeed not be someone close-by with the
equipment to do the job.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creation of nds wikisource

body:
How about a Singlish Wikipedia and Singlish Wiktionary?

On 1/9/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Two things:
>
>    1. This is the wrong mailing list to ask this.
>       foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org is the correct list.
>    2. The current nds.wikipedia insists on just one specific German
>       oriented orthography. This resulted in the creation of two
>       Wikipedias. With Wikisource, are you going to insist that material
>       has to be in this same orthography? If so, you do not deserve imho
>       a nds.wikisource and I would vote with the no-voters.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
>
> Heiko Evermann schreef:
> > I would like to know your opinion about the creation of a Low Saxon
> > nds.wikisource.org.
> >
> > We already have a nds.wikipedia.org (two, to be more precise:
> > nds.wikipedia.org and nds-nl.wikipedia.org), and a wiktionary at
> > nds.wiktionary.org
> >
> > We then asked for the creation of nds.wikisource.org at
> > http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Language_domain_requests#Domain_requests_.28nds.wikisource.org.29
> >
> > Several people from the nds.wikipedia.org voted in favour of this project. I
> > then went to http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7855 to formally
> > request the creation on November 9th, 2006. Then for some time nothing
> > happened. In December several people from the German wikisource objected. It
> > was only after that that somebody in bugzilla.wikimedia.org decided to care
> > about our request. He concluded that there was no consensus and decided not
> > to create this wikisource.
> >
> > Some people from de.wikisource.org say that Low Saxon is only a dialect of
> > German and that all our texts are welcome in their wikisource. They also want
> > us to be included in their project due to a lack of resources.
> >
> > This now is a peculiar situation:
> > * Low Saxon is recognized as regional language: see
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German
> > "Low German has been recognised by the Netherlands and by Germany (since 1999)
> > as a regional language according to the European Charter for Regional or
> > Minority Languages. Within the official terminology defined in the charter,
> > this status would not be available to a dialect of an official language (as
> > per article 1 (a)), and hence not to Low German in Germany if it were
> > considered a dialect of German. With the ratification of the charter at the
> > latest, Germany would appear, therefore, to have at least implicitly adopted
> > the stance that Low German is not a dialect of the German language."
> > * we have a wikipedia
> > * we have a wikitionary
> > * we have a wikibooks
> > * we even have a wikiquote (which we will not use due to German copyright
> > problems with collections of quotations)
> > * but we do not have a wikisource because some people from de.wiktionary.org
> > managed to collect a huge number of no-votes.
> >
> > I think that there should be a Low Saxon wikisource, but due to about 8 no
> > votes of people who just want all our content to be included into their
> > wikisource just to make theirs bigger and more beautiful, we cannot get one.
> >
> > What do You think about that?
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Heiko Evermann
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> i just thought that, since all the inter-lang links are stored in the
> database, so either the links exist or not, I don't know why there
> will be one-way link.

They're not stored directly in the database, they're stored in the
source code for the articles just like links within one wiki. The only
way one wiki code detect the links to their article on other languages
articles would be to read every single article on that wiki. Not
practical.

The bots do quite a good job on the large wikis, I think.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
 World

body:
Michael Billington wrote:
> However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red links,
> such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no reliable
> sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers (at
> least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing list
> happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper?
>
Larger libraries pride themselves on extensive newspaper subscriptions,
anybody in Boston or London should have no problem finding Sudanese
papers. I note this particular list is itself unsourced, so there's no
way to tell whether the people are articleworthy, even in Sudan.

It's still the case that I can go to my smallish university library,
pick a random volume about an obscure country, and find it covering
hundreds of topics not mentioned anywhere in WP. If the information is
literally sitting on a shelf downtown being ignored, I don't think we're
anywhere close to worrying about oral histories and storing interviews -
it's more a matter of getting people to use the books that already
exist. And on that note, I have three new books to start working from...

Stan