from_name: Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

body:
And they're both Houston, Texas IP addresses... (see WP:ANI post under
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ANI#RunedChozo_.28talk_.E2.80.A2_contribs.29_blocked,
earlier e-mail). The coincidences seem just too many.

Luna wrote:
> George Herbert wrote:
>
>
>> As far as I can see, it's entirely over his editing of his talk page,
>> removing unblock request refusals and re-unblock-requesting, plus
>> arguing with people there.
>>
>> As a personal opinion - lengthening blocks due to ongoing argument
>> ONLY on a blockee's talk page is among the worst abuses that a pack of
>> administrators can commit, ganging up on someone.
>>
>> RunedChozo came into the argument with a bunch of abuses he'd
>> committed counting against him, and certainly was being disruptive on
>> several levels.  He did have one point that I see - Itaquallah did use
>> inappropriate edit summaries and remove material with source info
>> claiming it's unsourced.  There was a two-sided abusive edit war going
>> on; Itaquallah was not an innocent party there, and should have been
>> warned against that.
>>
>> It's hard to see this and not wonder if RunedChozo is too disruptive
>> to be a Wikipedia participant, but a bunch of admins have gone and
>> collectively beaten up on someone in a way which is not called for or
>> appropriate.  If someone can't stop being a dick on their talk page
>> while they're blocked, admins need to just walk away and let them cool
>> down.
>>
>> Bad day.
>>
>
>
> All in all, I like that post. I don't think we'll all completely agree on
> everything, but you're attempting to be fair and objective, and I like that.
>
>
> Moving on to the checkuser results -- Essjay reports that it's "possible"
> RunedChozo and 70.114.237.14 are the same person.
>
> "Possible" means just that. It's objectively possible that it's the same
> person, but also objectively possible that it's not -- meaning that there
> are other people active in this IP range, most likely. We're probably not
> going to get a solid result, through checkuser; that evidence seems
> circumstantial.
>
> George Herbert brings up an interesting point -- RunedChozo has a strong
> tendency to edit at about 10:00-15:00 (my time), but 70.114.237.14 was
> editing only between 20:00-23:00 (my time). I can only find two exceptions
> to this, in RunedChozo's edit history:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:RunedChozo&diff=prev&oldid=88763202
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:RunedChozo&diff=prev&oldid=88763010
>
> Both were on 18 November, at about 22:40. This seems to hint away from
> RunedChozo being 70.114.237.14, but given such a brief sampling, it's
> difficult to be entirely certain. We know that he *can* stay up until
> whatever time that is, locally, but also that he does so rarely.
>
> 70.114.237.14 has two main "periods" -- once, at 20:16-20:34 on 10 December
> (about half a day before RunedChozo's block @ 11:45, 11 December), where the
> primary activity was apparently trolling at Striver. It's possible this was
> another user, or also possible it was a registered user logging out to
> attempt to avoid responsibility for attacks. The IP's second block of edits
> comes at 21:32-22:34, 11 December (about 10 hours after RunedChozo's block),
> and the first edit again attacks Striver. The IP then proceeds to the AN/I
> thread RunedChozo started, and makes some more attacks before being blocked,
> at which point it continues at its talk page.
>
> Given the IP started its second block by attacking Striver, I think we can
> at least assume the 70.114.237.14 was the same user, both days.
>
> So, I decided to check if RunedChozo has had any previous interaction with
> Striver. He has. On 14 November, he made two edits to Striver's talk page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Striver&diff=prev&oldid=87786569
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Striver&diff=prev&oldid=87795801
>
> They appear to have been clashing over these:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Beit_Hanoun_November_2006_incident
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Israeli_shelling_of_Beit_Hanoun
>
> This evidence doesn't seem to clearly pin RunedChozo as 70.114.237.14, but
> it does establish that he had an antagonistic relationship with Striver, and
> we do know that 70.114.237.14 attacked Striver's userpage.
>
> I can see a few other similarities between RunedChozo and 70.114.237.14.
> Both consider Striver to be an anti-Israeli POV-pusher and/or anti-semite.
> Both consider the Muslim Guild to be a group of meatpuppets or some other
> form of conspiracy.
>
> They both refer to Future Perfect as a "tool"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=prev&oldid=93636099
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Future_Perfect_at_Sunrise&diff=prev&oldid=93633482
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=93753665
>
> Both call Tariqabjotu and Itaqallah "liars" frequently
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:RunedChozo&diff=prev&oldid=93664423
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:RunedChozo&diff=prev&oldid=93688036
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=93760600
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=93628825
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=93761034
>
> And as is no doubt obvious to any interested party by this point, they both
> seem to have a high interest in the exact same AN/I thread and the same
> article (Beit Hanoun November 2006 incident).
>
> So, what do we think?
>
> -Luna
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


list: textbook-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stanley "Toshmann" Ozoemena

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikimedia Open Access Chat

body:
I'll try all that I can to be there for the chat, Erik.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Thanks for inviting me.

Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:  I would like to invite you to join a chat about the relationship
between the Wikimedia community and the Open Access movement in
scientific publishing. This will explore issues of licensing, content
sharing, technology, and hopefully result in mutual commitments to
collaborate.

In a nutshell: December 17, 2006; irc.freenode.net; 21:00 UTC; #openaccess

Please see:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Open_Access_chat

for more (including a link to a web interface for accessing the IRC
channel). I would appreciate it if you would add yourself to the "I
want to attend!" list on the page, so we have an idea how many people
are coming.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
_______________________________________________
Textbook-l mailing list
Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l

---------------------------------
Have a burning question? Go to Yahoo! Answers and get answers from real people who know.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Dec 13, 2006, at 6:59 AM, Jim wrote:

> Without opining on the appropriateness of the MONGO case - about
> which I
> know too little - I do want to comment on this.
>
> If the findings of fact do not support the decision then they
> should change.
> The evidence page is for the different parties to present their
> view, the
> findings should then identify that evidence which demonstrates the
> question
> at issue, the principles should be stated, and then the decision
> should
> apply the principles to the findings. It is wasteful and wrong to
> have to
> completely review the evidence as well as the findings. Anyone can
> propose
> findings of fact - they just need to be endorsed by the arbcom - if
> there
> are aggregious examples they should be in the findings not buried
> on the
> evidence page.
>
> My suspicion is that if the alleged evidence is not in the findings
> because
> there is some dispute as to the meaning or intepretation of that
> evidence.
> Thus they were not proposed as a finding since they would likely
> not gain
> the requisite support from members of the arbcom. Which is how it
> should be.

I think the more likely cause is that I did not explain myself well
enough in making the findings of fact, giving appropriate example, etc.

Fred


subject:
[WikiEN-l] (offlist) Re: Admins who pretend to quit (was Re:
	MONGO and the ArbComm)

body:
On Dec 12, 2006, at 11:27 PM, Parker Peters wrote:

> I'm going to mention that you wrote "offlist" in subject, but still
> sent
> this here.
>
> Why you thought a simple support should be offlist, I'm not sure. It
> certainly doesn't sound like something that ought to be hidden...?
>
> Parker
>

Nobody's hiding anything. Sarah and I have had adventures about these
issues.

Fred

> On 12/12/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 12/12/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't like this. First, because I would have been desyopped,
>>> second, because very upsetting things happen in the normal course of
>>> events and having been worked over once, they would under that
>>> policy
>>> be worked over twice. The people who get upset are often our very
>>> best. How could you not get upset at some of the nonsense?
>>>
>> Well said, Fred.
>>
>> Sarah
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:13:32 -0800, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>There was a poll a couple of years ago which found that 40% of the
>population of New York City thought that there was something that had been
>covered up about the official 9/11 story, though support for the individual
>specific conspiracy theories was lower.

Depends who wrote the question, usually, doesn't it?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

references:
<5cosn2he24nt57ntjdorgog081p8pjsbph@4ax.com>
	<A3D73CA7-306E-4C3A-B200-0DB3E3A10DA2@waterwiki.info>
	<mqftn2lcfma5bm1dg7tjjnkg2gmbocjo8h@4ax.com>
	<35C63923-9D4B-45B7-86E2-6D8B609F939D@waterwiki.info>
	<f80608430612120812h2848f5c6g6f767d4ea6143bea@mail.gmail.com>
	<8448DB0E-94EF-41C4-A955-3E4929BC9872@waterwiki.info>
	<457EFDF2.5030905@KillerChihuahua.com>
	<BFED0585-0D94-43FA-B5BB-5E22A12B5104@waterwiki.info>
	<lo0un252neiq4cchotk8qkd0ob78976qug@4ax.com>
	<457F5066.7030507@gmail.com>

body:
On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:29:18 +1030, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Why?  Dismissing it outright is what any rational human being does.

>NPOV says otherwise.

Not so.  We can document it, in terms which make it abundantly clear
that *this is simply not true* even though some people are determined
to believe it.  NPOV would not, of course, allow the mad theory to
creep into the main article.

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Firefox 2.0 spell checking

body:
The new version 2.0 of the (Mozilla) Firefox web browser supports
spell checking in web forms.  This is a new feature with some
obvious deficiencies that might be improved in coming versions.

Has there been any discussion, proposal or attempts to adopt
Firefox' spell checker to Wikipedia's needs? Currently, wiki
syntax is not recognized, and the language needs to be set
manually.  If I go to nl.wikipedia.org and click edit, I want the
browser to automatically select the Dutch spelling dictionary.
And there is no need to apply spell checking to interwiki links,
external URLs, template names or template parameter names.
Perhaps the website needs to communicate this to the browser by
some tags to the HTML, e.g. <textarea lang=nl syntax=mediawiki>?

Currently the language support in Firefox is only a spell checker.
As a comparison, OpenOffice also offers automatic corrections (if
I type "abotu", this can automatically be corrected to "about"),
hyphenation, and a thesaurus.  I have no idea what is planned, but
I guess these features will eventually creep into Firefox too.

One option offered by the interaction between browser and website
is that the spelling dictionary could be maintained and updated
online.  For example, if I spell "abotu", a word not found in the
browser's built-in dictionary, the browser could send a request to
Wiktionary (-Z) for advice on that word.  This option is not so
obvious to developers of OpenOffice as it should be to developers
of Firefox.  This opens up a new can of legal worms: Should
Wiktionary offer spelling help only for documents that are
released under a free license?

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


from_name: Jim

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On 12/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/12/06, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have reviewed Radiant!'s analysis of the findings.  It independently
> > corroborates much of Durin's analysis posted to the talkpage of
> /Proposed
> > Decision today.  I have also posted my own thoughts to the talkpage of
> > the /Proposed Decision.
>
> Both you and Radiant! limited your comments solely to the few
> citations in the arbcom finding and ignored the evidence page
> (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Seabhcan/Evidence
> )
> which has  dozens of examples.

Without opining on the appropriateness of the MONGO case - about which I
know too little - I do want to comment on this.

If the findings of fact do not support the decision then they should change.
The evidence page is for the different parties to present their view, the
findings should then identify that evidence which demonstrates the question
at issue, the principles should be stated, and then the decision should
apply the principles to the findings. It is wasteful and wrong to have to
completely review the evidence as well as the findings. Anyone can propose
findings of fact - they just need to be endorsed by the arbcom - if there
are aggregious examples they should be in the findings not buried on the
evidence page.

My suspicion is that if the alleged evidence is not in the findings because
there is some dispute as to the meaning or intepretation of that evidence.
Thus they were not proposed as a finding since they would likely not gain
the requisite support from members of the arbcom. Which is how it should be.

"Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
- Neal A Maxwell-


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Admins who pretend to quit (was Re: MONGO and the
	ArbComm)

body:
On 12/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Let each case be judged on its merits, in accordance with the
> Clue-based principles on which the whole edifice is after all founded.

The principles of Wikipedia are based upon Clue?  Well, then, I say
it was Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with a candlestick.

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


from_name: Parker Peters

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Completely unreasonable block and behavior by
	admin friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
Jim,

I have no stake in this beyond the fact that it is clear to me that abuses
are taking place. Please don't try to put words into my mouth.

What I am stating is that whenever there is a possible appearance of
conflict of interest, it should be avoided. The very same principle applies
in journalism, in politics, and pretty much anywhere else as well.

Parker

On 12/13/06, Jim Schuler <jim62sch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/12/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/12/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 12/12/06, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > However, I don't appreciate the accusations (not from
> > > > you, George) of this being some Muslim Guild conspiracy. It's not;
> I'm
> > > > not even a member of the Muslim Guild.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Lest anyone misunderstand on that point, I fully agree that claims of
> a
> > > conspiracy starting this are clearly unreasonable, and help show why
> > Runed
> > > may not have the temperment to be a productive WP editor.
> > >
> > > I don't agree with Parker Peters that it is a conflict of interest for
> > > Muslim admins to react to abuse issues on Islam related pages.
> > >
> > > I think that it is a generally tendentious and unhelpful thing to do.
> >
> > In cases where a Muslim editor is in an edit conflict with another
> editor
> > on
> > an Islam-related topic, a third admin who just "happens" to be Muslim is
> > definitely going to raise questions over conflict of interest,
> especially
> > when both sides are accusing each other of POV pushing and the Muslim
> > admin
> > sides with the Muslim editor.
> >
> > Parker
>
>
> I see.  So if a Christian editor and an unspecified editor are duking it
> out
> on the Creation article, whatever admin decides to step in can't be
> Christian because of potential COI, especially if he happened to agree
> with
> the Christian editor?  OK, so if the other editor is an atheist, then I
> suppose an atheist admin would be blocked from acting for the same reason.
> But since Muslims and Jews are "of the Book", as Guy said, and since both
> believe in a Creation myth, they couldn't step in either so I guess we
> would
> need to search for a Hindu or Buddhist or Shintoist, yes?  At what point
> does the lunacy end?  Or, could it be that Peter Parker or Parker Peters
> or
> whatever simply has a visceral hatred for and innate suspicion of Muslims?
>
>
> --
> > Jim
> > http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
	friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
I am here PRECISELY to discuss and remedy problems with Wikipedia.

Please remember that.

Parker

On 12/13/06, Jim Schuler <jim62sch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Tired retort.  It has naught to do with agreeing or disagreeing, it has to
> do with what you post and how you post it.  You aren't really here to
> discuss or remedy anything, are you?
>
>
> On 12/12/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > And once again, the "anyone who doesn't agree with me is a troll"
> attitude
> > rears its ugly head.
> >
> > sigh.
> >
> > Parker
> >
> > On 12/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:43:02 -0600, "Parker Peters"
> > > > <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Does anyone know why this "Parker Peters" is not on mod by now?
> > > >
> > >
> > > It's much more credible when trolls are defeated by sound reasoning
> > > rather than outright censorship.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> > > Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> > > "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> > > Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jim
> http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: commons-l

from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] ImportFreeImages Extension

body:
2006/12/13, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:
> On 13/12/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/12/06, Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I do not think this is good enough to celebrate. I'd welcome a tool that
> > > > would allow us to move properly licensed free images from wikipedias to
> > > > commons. Now I'd celebrate then.
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > *ahem*
> > > >
> > > > http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/pushforcommons.php
> > >
> > > Is there a way, to have the one-click upload feature in the ImportFreeImages
> > > extension made available in the pushforcommons as well?
> >
> > PushForCommons uses CommonsHelper, which already has that option. But,
> > it is currently hidden, as all one-click uploads are then attributed
> > to a Commons upload bot. There was concern it might be abused. Now, if
> > there were consensus to enable this publicly, and if the toolserver
> > databases were back...
>
> I will continue to push very strongly that any toolserver-based tool,
> which does not require any kind of Wikimiedia login, should never
> allow essentially anonymous uploads to Commons, as this would. Many,
> many many Wikimedia wikis have lax, nonexistent or not-inforced image
> use policies. If we were to enable this all sorts of shit would be
> transferred and we would have no way of even identifying who had
> transferred it. All the cleanup and even no one specific to blame. ;)
> Not cool.
> So probably any tool like this should be part of MediaWiki. So we know
> what that means, chaps: settle in for a good long wait, or else write
> it yourself (and then settle back for that wait anyway...).
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise

Sad but true - I would be same as with LonardoG, who was ''only''
moving ''free'' images from his own wiki, but we blamed him for
copyvios (I think we were 100% right).

I someone gives to everyone such toy, he MUSTto know, that he takes
responsibility for that (cause of that my IRC bot interface needs
authorization and userrights  for uploading).

AJF/WarX


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
Steve,

It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and
their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much
unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within
Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take
a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused,
objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use ?
starting with, of course, its very purpose.

I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I
include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would
like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who
thinks it?s wrong.

Marc

> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:19:43 +1100
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
>
> On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> It is beginning to dawn on me (perhaps the sun rises later here) that there
>> is/would be a great difference between categorizing biographical articles v.
>> non-biographical ones. The biographical would require much less complex
>> layers. Any thoughts on this?
>
> I don't think there are any simple dichotomies in this. Different
> kinds of stuff have different kinds of categorisational needs.
>
> We have a current trend towards splitting big categories. We prefer a
> single category "Dutch authors" rather than adding two massive
> categories to an article: "Dutch people" and "Authors". However this
> approach is pretty clearly a dead-end: how many times can we split?
> What do we split on next, "Dead Dutch authors"? Good category
> intersections would really help that one...
>
> I guess you're right in that people are just made up of attributes:
> where/when they're born/died, what field they were primarily in etc,
> all of which could be much more complex trees.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Steve,
>
> It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and
> their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much
> unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within
> Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take
> a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused,
> objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use ?
> starting with, of course, its very purpose.

It didn't evolve into an unfocused mess -- it started as an unfocused
mess. As did Wikipedia. We don't necessarily need a small committee of
experts to "fix" the "problems" of Wikipedia.

One of the things that makes Wikipedia great is its flexibility.

>
> I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I
> include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would
> like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who
> thinks it?s wrong.

Don't.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems of
Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos
then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.

Marc

> From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:41:32 -0500
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
>
> On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Steve,
>>
>> It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and
>> their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much
>> unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within
>> Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take
>> a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused,
>> objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use ?
>> starting with, of course, its very purpose.
>
> It didn't evolve into an unfocused mess -- it started as an unfocused
> mess. As did Wikipedia. We don't necessarily need a small committee of
> experts to "fix" the "problems" of Wikipedia.
>
> One of the things that makes Wikipedia great is its flexibility.
>
>
>>
>> I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I
>> include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would
>> like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who
>> thinks it?s wrong.
>
> Don't.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On 12/12/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
wrote:
>
>
>
> the large amount good you do isn't going to make a lick of difference if
> people perceive the very small amount of bad a certain way, fair or not.
>
> -Jeff

Someone suggested starting a biographical page about a source I used to
bolster my case a year ago; I thought "hell no", I wouldn't dream of
exposing someone's impecible credentials to the slanders and trolls existing
policy now allows, just to save my own ass.

nobs


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories

body:
Stan,

You're absolutely right (on most counts ;). The one I have trouble getting
my mind around is, "this ain't ever going to happen". Crowds, noise and,
yes, the occasional violence have always been crucial in bringing attention
to the need for change. But, what always has ultimately brought about that
change is a small group of dedicated, focused people coming together to plan
the substance of that change.

Marc

> From: Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 06:48:00 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories
>
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> Steve,
>>
>> It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and
>> their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much
>> unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within
>> Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take
>> a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused,
>> objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use ?
>> starting with, of course, its very purpose.
>>
> Hate to be a downer, but this ain't ever going to happen. Just when you
> think it's all figured out, a new group comes along and undoes
> everything, all the while declaiming about how awful your system is.
> Categories are one of those things that editors can do without having
> any writing ability, or even much subject-matter knowledge, so the pool
> of categorizers is quite large.
>> I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I
>> include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would
>> like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who
>> thinks it?s wrong.
>>
>>
> Although we don't have much consensus on categories, the "no supercats"
> rule is pretty broadly followed. It would be less work to change
> MediaWiki, even if you're not a programmer. :-)
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 13/12/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 12/12/06, Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I do not think this is good enough to celebrate. I'd welcome a tool that
> > > would allow us to move properly licensed free images from wikipedias to
> > > commons. Now I'd celebrate then.
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > *ahem*
> > >
> > > http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/pushforcommons.php
> >
> > Is there a way, to have the one-click upload feature in the ImportFreeImages
> > extension made available in the pushforcommons as well?
>
> PushForCommons uses CommonsHelper, which already has that option. But,
> it is currently hidden, as all one-click uploads are then attributed
> to a Commons upload bot. There was concern it might be abused. Now, if
> there were consensus to enable this publicly, and if the toolserver
> databases were back...

I will continue to push very strongly that any toolserver-based tool,
which does not require any kind of Wikimiedia login, should never
allow essentially anonymous uploads to Commons, as this would. Many,
many many Wikimedia wikis have lax, nonexistent or not-inforced image
use policies. If we were to enable this all sorts of shit would be
transferred and we would have no way of even identifying who had
transferred it. All the cleanup and even no one specific to blame. ;)
Not cool.
So probably any tool like this should be part of MediaWiki. So we know
what that means, chaps: settle in for a good long wait, or else write
it yourself (and then settle back for that wait anyway...).

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

references:
<20061212151004.86573.qmail@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<lgitn2h9bim02a5bh63c5abv2e9ghjvgs2@4ax.com>
	<47683e960612120739n799486d7te398217cd947c2af@mail.gmail.com>
	<4761.63.151.8.141.1165938329.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<2rltn2lo8cmh6emcuopmh6h4vtrnprfai7@4ax.com>

body:
On 12/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

>   It is quite possible to have a legitimate
> difference of opinion while still respecting each other, but in some
> cases false inferences (and in other cases legitimate ones) can be
> drawn.

This can be refered to as "assigning motives" which can then place you in an
ideological block.  The myth can be rapidly spread from there.

nobs


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
Chaos?

On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems
> of
> Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos
> then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
>
> Marc
>
> > From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:41:32 -0500
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
> >
> > On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >> Steve,
> >>
> >> It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of
> Categories and
> >> their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much
> >> unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within
> >> Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to
> take
> >> a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused,
> >> objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its
> use ?
> >> starting with, of course, its very purpose.
> >
> > It didn't evolve into an unfocused mess -- it started as an unfocused
> > mess. As did Wikipedia. We don't necessarily need a small committee of
> > experts to "fix" the "problems" of Wikipedia.
> >
> > One of the things that makes Wikipedia great is its flexibility.
> >
> >
> >>
> >> I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I
> >> include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I
> would
> >> like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another
> editor who
> >> thinks it?s wrong.
> >
> > Don't.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
Is it even legal for them to use the stashed copy? That seems to potentially
violate the GFDL in any number of ways.

On 12/13/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > We (and they) are in a rock-and-a-hard-place situation.  It's
> > good that they're working from their own stashed copy instead of
> > hitting us live, because I doubt our servers could handle their
> > users' load.  But of course on the other hand it's supremely
> > annoying that they're working from their own stashed copy,
> > because (as you note and I emphatically agree) our lovely
> > instantaneous wiki-quick edit-save-test loop is broken.
>
> Why can't we have the best of both worlds? They get the co-ordinates
> from the database dumps, but when a user clicks on the globe icon they
> get the live page. We should be able to handle the load if our servers
> are only hit when a user actually tries to read the page.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

references:
<457E4A5C.1060904@wikia.com>
	<5cosn2he24nt57ntjdorgog081p8pjsbph@4ax.com>
	<A3D73CA7-306E-4C3A-B200-0DB3E3A10DA2@waterwiki.info>
	<mqftn2lcfma5bm1dg7tjjnkg2gmbocjo8h@4ax.com>
	<35C63923-9D4B-45B7-86E2-6D8B609F939D@waterwiki.info>
	<f80608430612120812h2848f5c6g6f767d4ea6143bea@mail.gmail.com>
	<8448DB0E-94EF-41C4-A955-3E4929BC9872@waterwiki.info>
	<457EFDF2.5030905@KillerChihuahua.com>
	<BFED0585-0D94-43FA-B5BB-5E22A12B5104@waterwiki.info>
	<lo0un252neiq4cchotk8qkd0ob78976qug@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 12:20:59 -0700, Fred Bauder
> <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>> The problem is that many of the users pushing this stuff believe it.
>> The discussion needs to address sources, not simply dismiss it outright.
>
> Why?  Dismissing it outright is what any rational human being does.

NPOV says otherwise.

--
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] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
 friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:43:02 -0600, "Parker Peters"
> <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know why this "Parker Peters" is not on mod by now?
>

It's much more credible when trolls are defeated by sound reasoning
rather than outright censorship.

--
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] Hello

body:
For Wikipedia's purposes, it would be much better to work on computation to
"translate" the text.

One of the fundamental tenets of wikis is that they remain as close to
natural language and markup as possible -- the wiki format should remain
readable.

This:

Paris is a [[type:=city]] in
[[located in::France]], with a population of
[[population:=1,000,000,000]].

is not.

On 12/13/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
>
> On 12/12/06, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is
> > not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a
> > subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in
> > [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is
> > in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which
> > ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
> >
> > But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
> >
> > Categories as implemented now have mixed meanings: they can describe
> > "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" connections. See earlier
> > discussions on this list in September 2004 and June 2006
> > (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-June/048183.html
> ).
> >
> > Eugene
>
> This is a real problem, which an extension, semantic mediawiki,
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki) was made to solve.
> It's definitely worth taking a look at for situations like this. It
> allows you to do things like say, "Paris is a [[type:=city]] in
> [[located in::France]], with a population of
> [[population:=1,000,000,000]].  You can then do fun things like say,
> show me all the cities with populations over 20 etc.
>
> For this original example, Fred is a [[profession::writer]] who
> committed [[type of death::suicide]]. [[Category:People]]  etc. You
> could then query all the writers who's type of death was suicide
> without having to have one million categories for every possible
> union. I hope one day we can (maybe cross your fingers) use some of
> this on the main wikipedia. It's usefulness as a replacement for a lot
> of categories is one of the biggest benefits.
>
> Judson
> [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] can I add parameters to hooks used by two
 extensions (spellchecker and svn blame-like view)

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

Dave Grogan wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>> I regularly see things identified by color codes which are
>> insufficiently distinguishable from one another.  Past 9 or 10, it can
>> get rough...
>
> Yeah, there are only about 8 good ones that are really distinctive, and
> then after about 20 you can get into some hairy situations.  It's not
> that bad though because usually an off-green is next to an off-red or
> something.  It's only bad when a color and two of its off-colors are all
> close.

Let's not forget the color-blind and the monochrome screen-users.

> I might have it wrap after 10 but add a hover feature that will
> pop up the contributor's name.

I would strongly suggest using such a hover feature. Pop-ups with links
to details might be rather more useful, actually, enabling popping over
to the specific diff that made the change.

I do fear how this stuff is going to work on pages with tens of
thousands of edits, but... ;)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
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iD8DBQFFgFfgwRnhpk1wk44RAlnbAJ9LPKFclhT2MF8hnMN/t0yPuPdoiwCfc7oT
lTgGpH5degU0gvKWFPUnlsg=
=IkA8
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
They're certainly not acting as a mirror.

On 12/13/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/13/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Is it even legal for them to use the stashed copy? That seems to
> potentially
> > > violate the GFDL in any number of ways.
> >
> > How? It's no different to any other mirror. As long as they give
> > appropriate credit and link back to the original (technically, they
> > just have to supply a copy of the original wikicode, I think, but
> > linking back is the standard way to do that) they're fine.
>
> They have to credit the authors.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 12/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>>> On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:43:02 -0600, "Parker Peters"
>>> <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Does anyone know why this "Parker Peters" is not on mod by now?
>>>
>> It's much more credible when trolls are defeated by sound reasoning
>> rather than outright censorship.
>
>
> You should try to avoid labelling people.
>

Sorry. I'll rephrase that:

It's much more credible when arguments from throwaway email accounts are
defeated by sound reasoning rather than outright censorship.

--
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: David Grogan

subject:
[Wikitech-l] can I add parameters to hooks used by two extensions
	(spellchecker and svn blame-like view)

body:
I've co-authored two extensions that need an additional hook and
additional parameters to two existing hooks.  I am requesting commit
access so that I may upload the extensions and amend the hooks.

The first is a spellchecker that I posted here a few months ago:
http://code.google.com/p/wikimediaspellchecker/
along with some contributed improvements that I've received.

I understand (based on reading the archives) that this won't be
included on wikipedia but it is useful for people who have their own
mediawiki installations, at least until ff 2.0 or ie7 become standard
everywhere.  Some users of our wiki prefer this spellcheck extension
over the browser spell checkers and google spell check because of its
UI and ability to have separate custom dictionaries per wiki.

Ideally I'd like to commit this to the extensions directory so that it
can be more easily improved by interested persons.  If that isn't
possible I'd like to at least commit a hook addition so that users of
this extension don't have to change the mediawiki source every time
they download a new version of mediawiki.

The second is a "track changes" / "svn blame" view that shows who is
responsible for what portions of an encyclopedia entry.

Here are some screenshots:
http://people.virginia.edu/~kjl3d/newlinks.png
http://people.virginia.edu/~kjl3d/trackchangesview.png

This is not ready for wikipedia yet but is, again, useful for smaller
local instances of mediawiki.  Ideally I'd like to get this checked in
to the extensions directory so that parties interested in improving it
can do so.  I'll be updating and improving it for a while but it is
usable (and being used locally) as is.  I'd also like to commit some
additional parameters to a few hooks that this extension uses for the
reasons outlined above (users don't have to change the mediawiki
source every time they update their mediawiki version).

Therein lies my request for commit access.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Admins who pretend to quit (was Re: MONGO and the
 ArbComm)

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 12/12/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> We do have an Arbitration principle that those who give up admin
>> powers while 'under a cloud' cannot expect to resume them without
>> confirmation.
>
> Since when did arbcom set precedent?
>
> Leaving, .. no problem. Using threats of leaving to manipulate and
> otherwise spread ill will.. very uncool.
>
> I like the notion of automatic desysoping for anyone who 'quits'
> simply because we can handle it in a straightforward and dispassionate
> way. It will give people cause to pause for a moment before they bring
> out the hysterical reaction. ... but until we become more fair about
> resysoping people, I'm not sure that the results would be good.
>

And, we've then got less potential disgruntled former admins running
around screaming "omg censorship". Why is is that adminship on en: is
effectively for life? While I don't think that they need to be
reconfirmed, certainly people should lose it if they're inactive.

--
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: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 12/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is it even legal for them to use the stashed copy? That seems to
>> potentially violate the GFDL in any number of ways.
>
> Do they give credit in any way shape or form?

Absolutely, and quite adequately, IMO.
I've placed a screenshot at http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/GEWiki.jpg
for those who are curious.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 12/12/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
><charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>I like the notion of automatic desysoping for anyone who 'quits'
>>>simply because we can handle it in a straightforward and dispassionate
>>>way. It will give people cause to pause for a moment before they bring
>>>out the hysterical reaction. ... but until we become more fair about
>>>resysoping people, I'm not sure that the results would be good.
>>>
>>>
>>Define 'quits'. I can't, or don't want to. It certainly has no status as a concept.
>>
>>
>Be reasonable, someone who says "I quit" and deletes their userpage,
>and then returns should qualify as someone whos engaging in overly
>dramatic and manipulative behavior. Don't call it 'quitting' if it
>bugs you, since it isn't...
>
Such actions are certainly dramatic, but too emotional to be
manipulative.  If they have really quit they aren't around to "cause
trouble", and no harm will be caused by waiting for a sensible time
before taking administrative action.  It's in the nature of hysterical
actios to NOT pause before acting; waiting will help to sort out those
that really mean what they say.  It's generally not considered to be
socially acceptable to say "Go ahead" when someone threatens suicide.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>Steve Summit wrote:
>> We (and they) are in a rock-and-a-hard-place situation.  It's
>> good that they're working from their own stashed copy instead of
>> hitting us live, because I doubt our servers could handle their
>> users' load.
>
> Why can't we have the best of both worlds? They get the co-ordinates
> from the database dumps, but when a user clicks on the globe icon they
> get the live page. We should be able to handle the load if our servers
> are only hit when a user actually tries to read the page.

No, that's just what I doubt we could handle.  We're on the edge
of our capacity a lot, these days, I think, and while I don't
know how many Google Earth users there are out there and how
often they're going to be clicking on these new Wikipedia
placemarks, it could be a *lot*.


subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
Looking at the screenshot and reading GFDL 1.2 it looks like they should
just a) have a link on each page to the authors/article history and b)
release the code for their modified version of the pages. Not sure how
appropriate it is for them to use the logo.

On 12/13/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
> > On 12/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Is it even legal for them to use the stashed copy? That seems to
> >> potentially violate the GFDL in any number of ways.
> >
> > Do they give credit in any way shape or form?
>
> Absolutely, and quite adequately, IMO.
> I've placed a screenshot at http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/GEWiki.jpg
> for those who are curious.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
I'd respond to this, as I think this is a very good point, but the
censorists have decided my messages shall all vanish into the ether.

Parker

On 12/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/13/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In the abstract, I agree that we need to find ways to apply
> > directional advice to project participants (editors and admins) which
> > reduces the spectacular flameouts which have become popular of late.
> > These are not doing anyone, or the project, any good.
>
> We agree.
>
> > That said, I think that your idea for how to do that is
> > counterproductive and dangerous.  This particular aspect of it is, in
> > my opinion, harmless to moderately beneficial, and a minor symptom.
>
> Okay, I don't see it your way but I respect your position.
>
> I think that, as a result of our environment, far too many people feel
> like they are the sole defenders of the Wiki. I think the
> impossibility of success as a sole defender is causing people to
> exhibit a pattern of volatility and highly emotional responses which
> are counter productive, something of a sole defender syndrome.
>
> I think that whatever the causes, we should be desysoping people once
> they have become clearly burnt out. We will probably disagree on that,
> and thats okay with me.  Perhaps we could find more consensus on
> approaches to avoiding the burn out before it happens?  What could we
> change overall to reduce this?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Claudi Meneghin

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE : The uploading robot

body:
Thank you all so much.
Cheers, Claudi

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>On 12/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:29:18 +1030, "Alphax wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>Why?  Dismissing it outright is what any rational human being does.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>NPOV says otherwise.
>>>
>>>
>>Not so.  We can document it, in terms which make it abundantly clear
>>that *this is simply not true* even though some people are determined
>>to believe it.  NPOV would not, of course, allow the mad theory to
>>creep into the main article.
>>
>>
>Guy, I hope it's obvious that I respect you quite a lot, but as much
>as I agree with you that the ideas the conspiracists put forth are
>intellectual garbage, I really very badly think that this attitude
>ultimately encourages them and (much worse) public perceptions of
>them.
>
>We can't make the lunacy go away; if we really want to minimize the
>encouragement we give them, let the light of neutral open review of
>their ideas expose them as garbage.  People are much less likely to
>believe conspiracy theories when the whole situation is laid
>dispassionately out for them to see what kooks the kooks are.
>Anything else ends up encouraging them.
>
When you start by calling the conspiricists kooks, and their theories
garbage you have indeed succeeded in encouraging them.  If an
alternative non-mainstream theory has enough of a following to make it
notable it needs to be dealt with fairly.  That can involve diverting it
from major articles by treating it there in links to relevent
alternative theories.  The introduction there can briefly describe what
the theory says, and make a simple statement that the idea is
controversial.  We can then have a section where the theorists have a
relatively free hand to develop their ideas without non-believers trying
to tell them what they believe.  A further section would give the
critics an equally free reign.  The article would not really reach
conclusions, but it would be subject to referencing.

When dealing with such subjects it is important to allow for the
possibility, however remote, that there may be an element of sense in
the theory.  We have no idea where that sense may lie or that it may
ever be discovered at all.  The burden of proof remains with the
proponents, but a failure to carry that burden should not be read as a
proof that the theory is wrong.  It's perhaps in that leap of faith
where those opponents who cannot bear loose ends go off the track.

Ec


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
On 12/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking at the screenshot and reading GFDL 1.2 it looks like they should
> just a) have a link on each page to the authors/article history and b)
> release the code for their modified version of the pages. Not sure how
> appropriate it is for them to use the logo.

>From that page you are two clicks from the history. Images link to the
image pages. They are only truncating the pages.. no material changes
to the text, to whatever extent you could call their display a change,
the output on your screen would be the preferred form.  They also omit
unfree images, at least in so far as they can identify them as such.

The use of the logo was negotiated.

As Thomas Dalton suggested earlier in the thread, their behavior is
similar to any of the more conformant mirrors.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 12/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>It pretty much defeats the purpose of having subcategories.
>>
>>By putting an article into a subcategory, you are effectively putting it
>>into the parent category.
>>
>>Maybe we should figure out a way to make that more obvious.
>>
>>
>There is absolutely nothing at all in MediaWiki that makes a page in a
>subcategory behave like it's also in the parent category. Nothing.
>It's completely and utterly a construct in the mind of the user.
>
That sounds like a good argument for uprading the software.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> The use of the logo was negotiated.

Glad to hear it.  In answer to geni's earlier question whether
they were giving credit in any way shape or form, it seemed to
me that their use of the logo was a good way *to* give credit,
not something for us to be jealous of.

To anyone out there who's worried about this: I'm just one guy,
but from where I sit, this is a *very* nice tie-in, and we stand
to gain at *least* as much from it as Google does, and quite
possibly much more.


subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
On 12/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Looking at the screenshot and reading GFDL 1.2 it looks like they should
> > just a) have a link on each page to the authors/article history and b)
> > release the code for their modified version of the pages. Not sure how
> > appropriate it is for them to use the logo.
>
> >From that page you are two clicks from the history.

The history on our servers. Where's their copy?

Images link to the
> image pages. They are only truncating the pages.. no material changes
> to the text, to whatever extent you could call their display a change,

Truncating is modifying.

the output on your screen would be the preferred form.  They also omit
> unfree images, at least in so far as they can identify them as such.
>
> The use of the logo was negotiated.

Ah. Can you show me a link to that?

As Thomas Dalton suggested earlier in the thread, their behavior is
> similar to any of the more conformant mirrors.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Htdig, mailman & broken links

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

Michael Bimmler wrote:
>> Michael Bimmler wrote:
>>> Quite easy to reproduce:
>>> Go to http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l
>> You're at the wrong place, you want to be at:
>> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/
>>
> And I thought, I couldn't emphasize the anticipated-response-bit more...
> Yes, I know, that I most likely wouldn't be there. But if I for some
> reason go to this page (maybe somebody gave me this wrong link) and if
> there appears neither a 404 error nor a 403 error nor a 501 error, I
> should also be able to expect the links not to be broken.

Bluhhh, sorry, brainfart. :P

Ok, the fun thing:

When you follow links from the search engine results you end up at
individual message links through htdig's dir like here:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2003-November/008257.html

All the archive links in there seem to work ok... _but_ if you strip off
too much from the URL you might find yourself at pseudo-directories like
this:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2003-November

where you're actually supposed to be here:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2003-November/

With the final / missing, the relative links in the HTML go bonkers.
With it present, everything works fine.

Now when going directly to the pipermail URLs:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-November

you get forwarded straight to the right place:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-November/

and everything works.

Possible solution options:
* tell people not to go to the wrong links ;)
* hack the mailman htdig interface to forward correctly
* hack the mailman htdig interface to just send to the regular pipermail
urls (why doesn't it by default?)
* rip out the whole archive system with something that actually works
the way we'd like it in the first place ;)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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xrYmWopVA+eqZ6dk1gVf+Bo=
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Michael Bimmler

body:
It is in my opinion absolutely inacceptable, that you forward a
private email of mine to the list without my permission, no matter
what it's content is. This is a blatant violation of Netiquette. I
think it is definitely time to set you on moderated now, not as a form
of censorship, but as a reproach / punishment for repeated bad
behavious.
EOD from my part
Michael

On 12/12/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com>
> Date: Dec 12, 2006 4:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
> friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute
> To: Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com>
>
>
>
> On 12/12/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 1. I'm not the list moderator. I'm merely reporting, so that we don't
> > have 10 people asking "please moderate him"
> > 2. He should maybe get a bit more calm... Words as "dick" and
> > "bullshit" simply don't help your cause.
> > michael
>
>
> No, they don't. But the utterly dismissive attack rhetoric that's been
> heaped on him, both here and on wikipedia? The fact that I'm the only person
> it seems who's even bothered to check the merits of his complaint?
>
> I can see where someone would start to get really angry, and throwing oil
> onto fire doesn't help.
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
On 13/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Purely and simply, categories are useful for many things they weren't
> designed for or intended to do. Remember, they were a cute hack
> invented by Magnus a couple of years ago in the face of some pretty
> serious skepticism.

To give credit where credit is due, categories were actually invented
a decade ago by Stan Silver for the WikiWikiWeb [1]. The difficulties
of indicating "isness" and hierarchical category structure have been a
topic of much discussion ever since. [2,3]

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/19961129234150/c2.com/cgi/wiki?AboutCategoriesAndTopics
[2] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiIsNotaTree
[3] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LimitsOfHierarchies

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


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category Intersections (again)

body:
Hi everybody.  I'd love to get some feedbback on my proposal to create a
separate MyISAM table for fulltext searches of categories, to enable easy,
efficient category intersection searches.  Based on the numbers I throw out
yesterday, the number of writes to the table shouldn't cause a problem.
Based on testing I did, the query performance is quite good.  I'm going to
mangle a copy of the categorylinks table to create a fulltext index on
millions of small records, and I'll test it further, but I feel quite
positive right now.

What I think woud have to happen, is that we'd compare the new version of an
aritcle to the old one to see if the categories have changed.  I'm pretty
sure the a comparison is already being done somewhere between the old and
new versions, so this would be minimal additional overhead added at that
point.  If the categories are changed, then we'd write the new categories to
the new table in an update operation.

If we're really terrified of a MyISAM table crashing (I'm not, but you guys
are the pros), we could keep a copy the same data (the categories) in the
text table as well, to be able to easily recreated teh search table.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Aerik


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>> I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I
>> include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would
>> like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who
>> thinks it?s wrong.
>
> Don't.

   I disagree.  The answer is "it depends", and what it depends on is
utility in navigation.  There are a number of cases where people have
managed to do this and it was the right decision.  But, in every case
you will have to win a small war over it.

   In general if all of the non-sub-category members of a category can
be placed in a sub-category then they should, and you should not try and
do both.

   I think the special case of putting an article in both is when there
is a compelling reason for navigation purposes.  While not common right
now because of the way we do it and because few people have put time
into making the Category system an interface to the site, this could
become common that someone would use the category tree to "browse".  In
such a case they should be able to find articles with basic knowledge of
the subject.  Take for example [[Chess]], did you know it is in the
[[Chaturanga|Chaturanga game family]] and therefor [[Category:Chaturanga
game family]].  This category being on the article us useful for people
already at the article, they learn something new.  But for the person
who is navigating the category tree this is almost with out value unless
he happens to know that the chaturanga game family is and that Chess is
a part of it.  The person using the Category system (our veriosn of an
index) will get as far as [[Category:Abstract strategy games]] and not
know where to go.  To solve this problem [[Category: Chess]] is a
subcategory of both of these even though one is a subcategory of the
other.  And the article [[Chess]] has all three (though I am inclined to
say that [[Category:Abstract strategy games]] should be removed form the
article itself.

   There is another great example I think involving articles n the
individual members of the Beatles and weather they should be included in
a category as being members of the Beatles and also as being musicians.

    Somethign I wrote about this when I first became a wikipedian comes
to ming so I dug it up.  It was in the form of a proposal (I do not
expect it to be accepted which is why I never formalized it) but I think
it is worth thinking about on this issue.

This is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Categorization&oldid=12687247#Proposed_Guidelines

Proposed Guidelines

I have run into this issue a few times in my very short stay (so far) on
Wikipedia and did some thinking about the situations where I think an
article should be in a category as well as a sub-category. I came up
with two guidelines and wanted to see if other people had similar ideas
or if I am smoking crack. This seems to be the best place to get
opinions on this issue so here I go ....

Qualitative vs. Quantitative

If the articles in a category are fundamentally the same type of article
(i.e. about people or places etc.) and the difference between the
category and sub-category is fundamentally qualitative then the article
should only be listed in the sub-category. This is the example from the
main page: Queen Elizabeth should not be listed directly under People,
but Queens of England might be a good place for her. To say it a
different way Queen Elizabeth would not be put in "Queens of England"
just because she was a better/more famous/more notable person. The other
side of this is when the difference is primarily quantitative. The
example than I ran into that is good here, is the category "Chess
grandmasters" and "Chess players". A person DOES go from being 'just' a
chess player to being a Chess grandmaster by being a better chess
player, so the difference is primarily quantitative and the article
should be listed in both. A good way to tell if you are in this
situation is: If the sub-category were deleted and all its contents
imported into the super-category would it significantly reduce the
usefulness of the super category? This brings me to the second guideline.

[However I now think this should be modified by the notion that if all
the articles of a specific type, in a category can be put into
subcategories they should and the super-category should be dropped from
the articles.  Using the same example is a set of acceptable and
inclusive sub-categories (grandmasters, International masters, masters,
... , unrated) could be agreed on so that no people articles remained
then that should be done and the category [[Chess: chess players]]
should be restricted to non-people articles. (a good example of this is
[[Category:Magnet schools]] which has the schools themselves in sub-cats
and only has a few articles on the topic itself in the category.)]

<SNIP OUT MY NAVIGATIONAL UTILITY SECTION AS ITS THE SAME AS WHAT I
WROTE AT THE TOP>

Summary: I hope this is the right place for this, and as a clueless
newbie I hope I am not re-hashing something that has already been
discussed into the ground and resolved. If so and there has been some
succinct treatment of the issue somewhere a pointer on my talk page
would be awesome, even though I put "Proposed guidelines" above I am
really just asking since I keep running into this and I am a but of a
meta data freak. Dalf | Talk 02:18, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

SKL


body:
On 12/13/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> In the abstract, I agree that we need to find ways to apply
> directional advice to project participants (editors and admins) which
> reduces the spectacular flameouts which have become popular of late.
> These are not doing anyone, or the project, any good.

We agree.

> That said, I think that your idea for how to do that is
> counterproductive and dangerous.  This particular aspect of it is, in
> my opinion, harmless to moderately beneficial, and a minor symptom.

Okay, I don't see it your way but I respect your position.

I think that, as a result of our environment, far too many people feel
like they are the sole defenders of the Wiki. I think the
impossibility of success as a sole defender is causing people to
exhibit a pattern of volatility and highly emotional responses which
are counter productive, something of a sole defender syndrome.

I think that whatever the causes, we should be desysoping people once
they have become clearly burnt out. We will probably disagree on that,
and thats okay with me.  Perhaps we could find more consensus on
approaches to avoiding the burn out before it happens?  What could we
change overall to reduce this?


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:23:53 -0800, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>We can't make the lunacy go away; if we really want to minimize the
>encouragement we give them, let the light of neutral open review of
>their ideas expose them as garbage.  People are much less likely to
>believe conspiracy theories when the whole situation is laid
>dispassionately out for them to see what kooks the kooks are.
>Anything else ends up encouraging them.

Obviously I am putting it badly, because that is precisely what I am
suggesting.  Instead of the mass of what looks suspiciously like OR in
the (long) article on controlled demolition hypothesis, for example,
we should say that this is a hypothesis of Steve Jones, that it has
been authoritatively rebutted by respected experts (including
demolition experts), that his claims is such-and-such, and *leave it
at that*.  The problems start when we start allowing the parties to
start arguing their case in Wikipedia.  That is not what Wikipedia is
for, is it?

The references list for the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition_hypothesis_for_the_collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center
is informative.  Where are the reliable sources for the hypothesis?
Not for its having been advanced, but for the hypothesis itself?  That
is a recurrent problem.  We can sometimes fix it, as with Time Cube,
by showing that it's a meme not a valid theory, but we don't seem to
be doing that with the 9/11 conspiracy meme.

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


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" images of living people

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> As far as PR goes... The fair use issue is mostly "sausage making"
> which is intersting to us but not interesting or even confusing to
> outsiders.  I think it would be better to instead say "We need
> photographers and other people with the skills required to make
> quality illustrations."

That was kind of my point, that Jimmy bang the drum for the fact that
it's just not text that is used in Wikipedia, but all those old family
photographs which would enhance the commons and wikipedia no end.  I
mean, there is a real possibility to create an open source image
library/photographic archive, and that would help Wikipedia and could
well be something that would generate press attention. It doesn't have
to cover the fair use issue at all, just a simple hey, you know that
picture your mum took of Elvis in 1960?  How would your mum feel to see
that illustrate an encyclopedic article on Elvis?  Why not pop along to
Wikipedia and ask how we can make that possible.  Something like that.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.15.18/584 - Release Date: 12/12/06


from_name: Luna

subject:
[WikiEN-l] quick question: different policies for different
	namespaces?

body:
I don't believe there's any individual page which describes these
differences, but many policy  and guideline pages either describe their
relation to various namespaces, or make their relationships obvious, by
their very nature ([[Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines]] as an obvious
example).

Talk pages and articles are obviously subject to vastly different attitudes
and policies. The extent to which the same is true of project space is
probably a bit of an open question. Talk, use common sense, find common
ground (sounds so easy!).

Mebbe I should go and have a look at that, though. Sounds interesting.

-Luna

On 12/13/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> Can someone remind me where it's stated how our policies are
> applied differently for different namespaces, and how many of
> those differences there are?  I'm pretty sure the rules for talk
> pages are different, but are there also significant differences
> between "project" pages and the main namespace (i.e. ns:0)?
>
> (I ask because I'm becoming embroiled in a delightful -- not! --
> tempest-in-a-teapot over proposed sweeping new policies for the
> Reference Desks, and one of the sticking points seems to be the
> extent to which core policies such as WP:NOR and WP:V should be
> applied there.  But I mention this only for information; I'm not
> trying to extend the RD debate to this mailing list.)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation's help to the projects

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I think that there are several areas where the projects would benefit
>from a more proactive help from the Foundation. I will speak about two here:
>
>1. Legal counselling.
>
>Some projects (mainly Commons and Wikisource) need more input about
>copyright issues from knowledgeable persons. I have asked twice to
>juriwiki-l specific issues for Wikisource without receiving an answer,
>even an acknowledgement that my request was received. Another concrete
>example: Commons and Wikisource would benefit most from a cross table
>about copyright rules, which countries use "most favourable rule apply",
>etc.
>
>
Attorneys are  barred from giving legal advice unless they represent you
by the rules of
professional conduct.  This one is kind of problematic.  They can,
however, publish
guidelines of sorts.

>2. Helping small projects. It seems that some projects have a difficult
>start. Indian languages projects are my first examples. I will go to
>India in January, and I would like to use this opportunity to recruit
>new contributors. The Foundation could help coordinate this kind of
>recruitement.
>
>
I have someone working on Sanskrit already, but not hindi.   Someone
needs to get
a good hindi project going.

Jeff

>Best regards,
>
>Yann
>
>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
I. Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title, and add
   to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
   publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page.  If
   there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one
   stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as
   given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified
   Version as stated in the previous sentence.

On 12/13/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The history on our servers. Where's their copy?
>
> Why do they need a copy? It doesn't matter where the history is
> hosted, as long as it is linked to.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 02:41:57PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Can you please make http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l
> return a 404 or some other error if it's not supposed to be correct?

Well, perhaps there was a transient failure.  That URL returns the
Archive index page to me now.

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] can I add parameters to hooks used by two
	extensions (spellchecker and svn blame-like view)

body:
On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 11:50:30AM -0500, David Grogan wrote:
> The second is a "track changes" / "svn blame" view that shows who is
> responsible for what portions of an encyclopedia entry.

Technical derail: I'm curious: what is your list of colors for
identifying contributors?  Specifically: *how deep is it*?  :-)

I regularly see things identified by color codes which are
insufficiently distinguishable from one another.  Past 9 or 10, it can
get rough...

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


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

references:
<5cosn2he24nt57ntjdorgog081p8pjsbph@4ax.com>
	<f80608430612120812h2848f5c6g6f767d4ea6143bea@mail.gmail.com>
	<8448DB0E-94EF-41C4-A955-3E4929BC9872@waterwiki.info>
	<457EFDF2.5030905@KillerChihuahua.com>
	<BFED0585-0D94-43FA-B5BB-5E22A12B5104@waterwiki.info>
	<lo0un252neiq4cchotk8qkd0ob78976qug@4ax.com>
	<457F5066.7030507@gmail.com>
	<picvn2htapil2hktq8a2qftpns7uk09g4m@4ax.com>
	<38a7bf7c0612130123k34e5ad32l4aff73e249bc001f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4580625E.4060203@telus.net>

body:
On 12/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> George Herbert wrote:
> >On 12/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >>On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:29:18 +1030, "Alphax wrote:
> >>>NPOV says otherwise.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Not so.  We can document it, in terms which make it abundantly clear
> >>that *this is simply not true* even though some people are determined
> >>to believe it.  NPOV would not, of course, allow the mad theory to
> >>creep into the main article.
> >>
> >>
> >Guy, I hope it's obvious that I respect you quite a lot, but as much
> >as I agree with you that the ideas the conspiracists put forth are
> >intellectual garbage, I really very badly think that this attitude
> >ultimately encourages them and (much worse) public perceptions of
> >them.
> >
> >We can't make the lunacy go away; if we really want to minimize the
> >encouragement we give them, let the light of neutral open review of
> >their ideas expose them as garbage.  People are much less likely to
> >believe conspiracy theories when the whole situation is laid
> >dispassionately out for them to see what kooks the kooks are.
> >Anything else ends up encouraging them.
> >
> When you start by calling the conspiricists kooks, and their theories
> garbage you have indeed succeeded in encouraging them.

Please note that the terms I used here on this list are NOT appropriate for
in-wiki discussions or inclusion in pages.  I know that and differentiate
how I approach the conversations.  Those are biased and loaded terms, and
shut down any ability to rationally discuss the situation.

 If an
> alternative non-mainstream theory has enough of a following to make it
> notable it needs to be dealt with fairly.  That can involve diverting it
> from major articles by treating it there in links to relevent
> alternative theories.  The introduction there can briefly describe what
> the theory says, and make a simple statement that the idea is
> controversial.  We can then have a section where the theorists have a
> relatively free hand to develop their ideas without non-believers trying
> to tell them what they believe.  A further section would give the
> critics an equally free reign.  The article would not really reach
> conclusions, but it would be subject to referencing.

Agreed.

When dealing with such subjects it is important to allow for the
> possibility, however remote, that there may be an element of sense in
> the theory.  We have no idea where that sense may lie or that it may
> ever be discovered at all.  The burden of proof remains with the
> proponents, but a failure to carry that burden should not be read as a
> proof that the theory is wrong.  It's perhaps in that leap of faith
> where those opponents who cannot bear loose ends go off the track.
>

Agreed.

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


body:
On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 07:54:30PM +0100, Michael Bimmler wrote:
> On 12/13/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 02:41:57PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> > > Can you please make http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l
> > > return a 404 or some other error if it's not supposed to be correct?
> >
> > Well, perhaps there was a transient failure.  That URL returns the
> > Archive index page to me now.

> Sure it returns the same output as
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/pipermail/wikien-l but with broken
> links.

So it does, but "please make the URL return 404 *instead of a page witn
inoperative links" is a different trouble report.

:-)

And indeed, the URL with *pipermail* in it currently *is* returning 404.

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


from_name: Dave Grogan

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 11:50:30AM -0500, David Grogan wrote:
>> The second is a "track changes" / "svn blame" view that shows who is
>> responsible for what portions of an encyclopedia entry.
>
> Technical derail: I'm curious: what is your list of colors for
> identifying contributors?  Specifically: *how deep is it*?  :-)

I believe it is 64 deep.

> I regularly see things identified by color codes which are
> insufficiently distinguishable from one another.  Past 9 or 10, it can
> get rough...

Yeah, there are only about 8 good ones that are really distinctive, and
then after about 20 you can get into some hairy situations.  It's not
that bad though because usually an off-green is next to an off-red or
something.  It's only bad when a color and two of its off-colors are all
close.  I might have it wrap after 10 but add a hover feature that will
pop up the contributor's name.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
"Matthew Brown" wrote

> Some admins seem to want Arbcom decisions to be purely a mechanical
> application of rules, purely based on the evidence set forth, and with
> a very laid down set of penalties for various violations of the rules.
>  I do not, personally, agree with that.

Nor do I. Tariffs for things are wrong in principle. We have to look at intention, we have to weigh advantage and harm to the project.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
On 12/13/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> By which I mean, the argument usually boils down to trying to
> decide precisely whether category membership is supposed to
> denote an "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationship.
> But that can't be answered, so the arguments can never really be
> resolved, and people have to fall back to using categories not
> to implement rigid OO-like inheritable hierarchies, but rather,
> looser collections where the only semantic attached to category
> membership is "is-kinda-related-to".  Some categories and the

Well, yeah, unfortunately this is basically true. We should have a
well-defined category structure, or use really loose and flexible
keywords...we sort of have the worst of both worlds here.

> "Category:Arrondissements in Paris" and "Category:Topics relating
> to Paris", rather than just "Category:California" and
> "Category:Paris".  And we're probably doing a lot of that today.

The downside is it's much easier to guess "Paris" as a category name
than "Topics relating to Paris". What would actually be good would be
stronger, semi-automated systems for funnelling people's guesses into
the right names. There's nothing wrong with someone guessing "Paris"
if a bot can then channel that into the correct name - or at least
highlight it for human recategorisation. Just like we don't "object"
to people adding {{stub}} - we have people that come along and do the
stage two recategorisation.

Wikis work very well when you tolerate this kind of behaviour - don't
ask for perfection up front, but instead appreciate every
micro-improvement.

> But there are still (and will always be) lots of problems when
> categories contain other categories, and we'll always be
> wondering whether category membership is or isn't or should or
> shouldn't be transitive, and it's these larger-scale questions
> which we can't (under the current architecture) ever fully
> satisfactorily resolve.

Well we've discussed this at length, and I think we can go some way
towards resolving it through either naming conventions or some other
way of formally describing categories. Good rules might be "This
category should not directly contain pages.", "This category is a
geographical hierarchy.", "This category is thematic" etc.

Steve


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] text/x-wiki vs. firefox

body:
Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Upon being sent
> Content-Type: text/x-wiki; charset=utf-8
> How can one get firefox to act like it was sent
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8?
>
> That way I could finally browse action=raw files.

Install this extension:
http://www.spasche.net/mozilla/

That lets you do this with anything, not just Wikipedia's action=raw.


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trial of Harry Dexter White


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Firefox 2.0 spell checking

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> This opens up a new can of legal worms: Should
> Wiktionary offer spelling help only for documents that are
> released under a free license?

I believe this would count as "use" rather than as "creation of a
derivative work".  Copyleft licenses, as a rule, do not in any way
restrict the way a copy of the work may be used by its owner -- indeed,
I believe at least the GPL (not sure about the GFDL) even explicitly
forbids creators of derivative works from imposing such restrictions.

Of course, if such a feature were to be implemented, we could certainly
choose to restrict the use of our server resources in any way we'd like.
  But someone else could always download a database dump and use that as
they will.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Michael Bimmler wrote:
>
>>Quite easy to reproduce:
>>Go to http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l
>
> You're at the wrong place, you want to be at:
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/

Brion,

I realise you may have a busy day or whatever, but that's really no
excuse for replying to an e-mail (or posting) without reading it.

Can you please make http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l
return a 404 or some other error if it's not supposed to be correct?

Timwi


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
David,

I read it. A crowd can never come to a decision about anything; they can
only make enough noise to call attention to the fact that a decision needs
to be made. At some point, very early in its history, there was no Wikipedia
crowd. How, and by whom, were the decisions made that evolved into what
Wikipedia is now?

Marc

> From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:56:09 +0000
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
>
> On 13/12/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems of
>> Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos
>> then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
>
>
> The trouble is that this trick never works. See [[WP:PRO]] for an explanation.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Trial of Harry Dexter White

body:
Appologies. I hit the send to address.  I'm an idiot.  Thanks.

On 12/13/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is nice, but before I start reading a 80-pages-thesis, I would
> greatly appreciate an explanation why I should do this (i.e. why you
> posted this links on wikien-l and whether they are in any way related
> to Wikipedia)
> Michael
>
> On 12/13/06, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:6H382o49RFkJ:etd-db.uno.edu/theses/available/etd-12092004-104621/unrestricted/2004_ma_adams_tom.pdf+%22eduard+mark%
> <
> http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:6H382o49RFkJ:etd-db.uno.edu/theses/available/etd-12092004-104621/unrestricted/2004_ma_adams_tom.pdf+%22eduard+mark%22%2B%22san+fransisco%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2
> >
> >
> http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:6H382o49RFkJ:etd-db.uno.edu/theses/available/etd-12092004-104621/unrestricted/2004_ma_adams_tom.pdf+%22eduard+mark%22%2B%22san+fransisco%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2
> > 22%2B%22san+fransisco%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2<
> http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:6H382o49RFkJ:etd-db.uno.edu/theses/available/etd-12092004-104621/unrestricted/2004_ma_adams_tom.pdf+%22eduard+mark%22%2B%22san+fransisco%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)

body:
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> David,
>
> I read it. A crowd can never come to a decision about anything; they can
> only make enough noise to call attention to the fact that a decision needs
> to be made. At some point, very early in its history, there was no
> Wikipedia
> crowd. How, and by whom, were the decisions made that evolved into what
> Wikipedia is now?

Essentially there's always been a Wikipedia crowd; by that I mean decisions
have never been terribly top-down. Larry Sanger was the master herder of the
early decision-making.

http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia unfortunately lacks a full
history (a good project for the Foundation to tackle) but you can see a
relatively well-formed set of early policies.

See also http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_commentary

In November Sanger started segregating policy suggestions he liked from
those he didn't to create meta.wikipedia.com (well, it's more complicated
than that, but that was part of the impetus).

This is also a good early page:
http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia/Our_Replies_to_Our_Critics

Click around and learn more.

Marc
>
> > From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:56:09 +0000
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
> >
> > On 13/12/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >> I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the
> problems of
> >> Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to
> chaos
> >> then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
> >
> >
> > The trouble is that this trick never works. See [[WP:PRO]] for an
> explanation.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>