from_name: Till Westermayer

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Daniel,

>I would also like to see the ability to add captions to
>non-thumbnail images. For example
>[[image:blah.jpg|right|300px|''This is a caption'']] does not
>display ''This is a caption'' as a caption - it just renders it as
>alt text. I understand why ''This is alt text'' in
>[[image:blah.jpg|''This is alt text'']] cannot be displayed as
>caption for backwards compatibility reasons. But if something like
>right|300px| is in there, then, IMO, anything after the last |
>should be rendered as a caption.

Maybe [[image:blah.jpg||''This is a caption'']] (simply: more than one
"|" -- new syntax!). Or even [[image:blah.jpg|this is alt text|this is a
caption]].
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Assassin

body:
Bouncing spam with a reply actually multiplies the spam.

We're better off "discarding" the message and "filtering" the sender.
That's what I'm gonna do on Wikien-l.

I deleted around 50 spams today. Is there I way to do this
automatically? I don't want a "hold for moderator" -- just delete each
unsubscribed message quietly and automatically.

(If a Wikipedian needs help, they can e-mail me directly or leave a note
at talk:Ed Poor)

Ed Poor
Wikien-l Admin


list: wikien-l

from_name: Nathan Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Slashdotted

body:
Wikipedia was slashdotted due to the 200,000th article, and is now apparently down.

Has anyone heard anything about when it can be expected back up?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
So what do I do? Say, "Jack, I think you're a troll and I want you to
leave. Would you like Mediation, or shall we take this straight to
Arbitration?"

Or should I just ask Erik to step on him, as Treebeard the Ent did to
the orc in LOTR?

Impatiently,

Ed Poor


from_name: Mills, Billy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is Jack a troll?

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poor, Edmund W [mailto:Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com]
> Sent: 02 February 2004 16:42
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Is Jack a troll?
>
>
> I fired this shot across JackLynch's bow:
> ----
> Jack,
>
> If you can make Tannin so angry that he swears at you, I
> can't think of
> anything but the probability that you are provoking him on purpose.
> Maybe to test the new Mediation/Arbitration system? If not, my
> apologies, but that's how it looks to me.
>
> So, please try harder to be nice! :-)
> ----
>
> Given the timing of his appearance, and the issues he focuses on, I
> think it's more likely he's a sock puppet than a newbie.
>
> Advice?
>
> Ed Poor
> One of many Wikipedia admins
>

I've had little direct contact with him, but this user seems hell bent on
pushing the limits of everything (see his voting on VfD for the last few
weeks, for instance). I consider him a troll and advise the simple expedient
of ignoring him completely from here on in.

Billy Mills

DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the
latest definitions) for all known Viruses.
The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for
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from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
Coul someone check Jack's IP address and see if it matches with any known banned users?

RickK

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
So what do I do? Say, "Jack, I think you're a troll and I want you to
leave. Would you like Mediation, or shall we take this straight to
Arbitration?"

Or should I just ask Erik to step on him, as Treebeard the Ent did to
the orc in LOTR?

Impatiently,

Ed Poor
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Jack

body:
>From one troll to another.

RickK

A [name omitted for privacy reasons] <wikilir at yahoo.com> wrote:
So far the only evidence presented, that Jack Lynch is
a "troll", is that User:Tannin swears at him. All this
gossip and blacklisting is not helping the wikipedia
become a better place.

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_______________________________________________
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WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] memory tests underway

body:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>However, the two Pentium IV servers with 4 physical gig of RAM in them
>report only 3,584MB of RAM.  I fiddled with the chips to confirm that
>each of them really is 1 Gig, and that's not it.  I also poked around
>in the bios (in an uneducated manner), but saw nothing to fix.

Step away from the BIOS *grin* That is perfectly normal.  Some chipsets
"eat" 512M for PCI I/O space.  That's where the memory went.  Consult the
motherboard manual for more.  I would suggest leaving those machines
at 3G instead of wasting 512M.

>memtest86 will run overnight, and if (as I expect) all goes well, we
>will be ready for production tomorrow.  If the machines can only
>recognize 3.5GB of RAM instead of 4, that isn't a joyful thing, but
>it really doesn't matter a LOT, I don't think.

They know it's there, but cannot map it into addressable space and
still allow you to access I/O.  The Linux highmem (>4G) might help
but PAE (36bit mode) is a bit computationally expensive -- esp. for
80$ worth of memory(?).

--Ricky


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #4

body:
> > One idea I have is a ban for one day for each time
> the perp uses the
> > words "stupid", "trash" and "crap" to describe
> another's edit. This
> > could add up to a year or two for some of these
> folks.
>
> I like the idea of short "time-out" bans. I
> suggested this a couple of
> years ago. Also, it seemed to work fairly well the
> time Erik M.
> (Eloquence) "banned" RK for just under 24 hours last
> year.
>
> My experience is that time-outs work better than
> total bans. A ban is
> like death or torture: it satisfies one party's
> desire for revenge, but
> at a terrible cost (hint: think of how the other
> party feels, waking up
> dead or maimed...)
>
> Kindly Ol' Uncle Ed

IIRC, the general concensus after that was that people
*shouldn't* do unilateral bans in the future and that
Erik should have consulted the list.

LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


subject: [Wikitech-l] New machines

body:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Ricky Beam wrote:
>> I supposed you've forgotten linux has software RAID capability.  I assure
>> you, no RAID card within your budget will outperform the system processors
>> even under load.  While I generally recommend the use of hardware RAID,
>> you don't have one of those in hand.  So, unless you're going to go buy
>> one *right now*, software RAID will do. (you *are* making backups, right?)
>
>O.k., that's a useful recommendation, even if I do feel like you're
>yelling at me.  :-)

Heh.  That's not yelling.  THIS IS YELLING YOU TWIT. *grin*  If you
check the archives (assuming it's in there), you'll see I was one of
those in favor of hardware RAID.  Software RAID is real easy to break.
Hardware RAID, not so much -- you don't get direct access to the drives.

>I have not setup software RAID in some years, but presumably it isn't
>hard?

It's not hard.  And the modern tools (mdadm) make it even easier.  The
only problem is booting from RAID5.  You'll need to create a boot
partition that's RAID1 mirrored across all the drives in the array
so you'll be able to boot if any drive fails.  Then create the RAID5
rootfs.  Rinse and repeat...

I'll dig up the raidtab.conf (whatever) from milkweed to show the madness.
(attached)

--Ricky

-------------- next part --------------
# Storage Array
raiddev /dev/md0
    raid-level              5
    nr-raid-disks           10
    nr-spare-disks          0
    persistent-superblock   1
    parity-algorithm        left-symmetric
    chunk-size              32k

    device                  /dev/sdc1
    raid-disk               0
    device                  /dev/sdd1
    raid-disk               1
    device                  /dev/sde1
    raid-disk               2
    device                  /dev/sdf1
    raid-disk               3
    device                  /dev/sdg1
    raid-disk               4
    device                  /dev/sdh1
    raid-disk               5
    device                  /dev/sdi1
    raid-disk               6
    device                  /dev/sdj1
    raid-disk               7
    device                  /dev/sdk1
    raid-disk               8
    device                  /dev/sdl1
    raid-disk               9

# Boot Array
raiddev /dev/md1
    raid-level              1
    nr-raid-disks           10
    nr-spare-disks          0
    persistent-superblock   1
    chunk-size              8k

    device                  /dev/sdc2
    raid-disk               0
    device                  /dev/sdd2
    raid-disk               1
    device                  /dev/sde2
    raid-disk               2
    device                  /dev/sdf2
    raid-disk               3
    device                  /dev/sdg2
    raid-disk               4
    device                  /dev/sdh2
    raid-disk               5
    device                  /dev/sdi2
    raid-disk               6
    device                  /dev/sdj2
    raid-disk               7
    device                  /dev/sdk2
    raid-disk               8
    device                  /dev/sdl2
    raid-disk               9


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Displaying http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:*

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Also, not being able to have links in captions is a bit annoying.

Yes, I think the same.

> But given the implementation, I can understand why this would not be
> easy to do.

But certainly doable:

    a) Count the opening brackets and DTRT for the caption.

    b) Throw away all inner matching bracket for the alt text.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:

> One more thing: Display any text on the image description page before
> displaying the image. That will negate the concerns by some that large images
> push the description down too far.

Yes, that's a good proposal.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

in_reply_to:
<401D07D0.1070501@secretlondon.me.uk> (Caroline Ford's message
	of "Sun, 01 Feb 2004 14:06:08 +0000")

references:
<001301c3e832$fb33a320$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>
	<87r7xfmrkk.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
	<001501c3e889$96be18b0$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>
	<200402011033.59747.yann@forget-me.net>
	<401D07D0.1070501@secretlondon.me.uk>

body:
Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> writes:

> I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images.

Users located in Germany must not add those images - but, surely, it
okay for US citizens to add those pictures to the de WP!

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

references:
<001301c3e832$fb33a320$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>
	<401D07D0.1070501@secretlondon.me.uk>
	<shad41v0nt.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

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

Hi,

Le Monday 02 February 2004 18:41, Karl Eichwalder a ?crit :
> Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> writes:
> > I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images.
>
> Users located in Germany must not add those images - but, surely, it
> okay for US citizens to add those pictures to the de WP!

Can you explain me why there is a different rule for different persons.
I thought the copyright rules depend on the places, not on the persons.

Thanks,
Yann

- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAHpFEm4KYjQo0y9oRAj3bAJ4xBDDp4fnmUdfyw+bxchtQRUq0uQCfd1ev
JVNZ/sF6cNTRR3OsGF7poHg=
=FTEa
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

body:
Am Montag, 2. Februar 2004 18:41 schrieb Karl Eichwalder:
> Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> writes:
> > I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images.
>
> Users located in Germany must not add those images - but, surely, it
> okay for US citizens to add those pictures to the de WP!

No, that's not ok - we will delete them if they come up. Our agreed policy is
to have no fair use images, so that *downstream users* may use all of our
pictures without having to think about if *their* use is also *fair* use and
without checking the copyright status of every single image. That policy ist
not so much because of fearing the uploader might interfere with german
copyright issues, but to make life easier for the downloader, whereever he or
she is located.

Uli


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

references:
<001301c3e832$fb33a320$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>
	<401D07D0.1070501@secretlondon.me.uk>
	<shad41v0nt.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<200402021904.53213.yann@forget-me.net>

body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> writes:

> Can you explain me why there is a different rule for different persons.
> I thought the copyright rules depend on the places, not on the persons.

Yes, but it's arguable whether the place where the server is located
preceeds over the place where the user lives.  If I as somebody who
lives in Germany can add contents to a database system in the US
according to copyright law of the US is highly arguable; I'm also bound
to German laws even if I work on database in the US.  IANAL etc. pp.

I can login from a Canadian account, to make things more interesting ;)

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Wikipedia is not about "rights". Wikipedia is about creating an
>encyclopedia. All this trolling distracts from that goal. Trolls should be
>banned quickly and painlessly as soon as an opportunity presents itself to
>get rid of them.

Just out of curiosity, is there some reason why the entry bar for
Wikipedia contributors is so low? Right now the system lets anyone
post unless someone blocks their IP number or user name. While this
has certain virtues in terms of inclusiveness, it also makes
vandalism more likely. Moreover, blocking an IP numbers has the
effect of blocking an entire class of people for the infractions of a
single individual, and it isn't even effective at blocking people who
use an anonymizer to continually change their IP number.

It seems to me that it would better to require people to register
before they can contribute. That's a fairly minor requirement, but it
would probably be enough even without a verification system to deter
some of the casual vandals and trolls, and it would also ensure that
bans only affect people who have actually done something wrong to
merit the ban.

I imagine this discussion has already happened before, but I haven't
seen it, and I'd be curious to know what the reasoning is behind the
current system.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

references:
<001301c3e832$fb33a320$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>
	<401D07D0.1070501@secretlondon.me.uk>
	<shad41v0nt.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<200402021916.57353.mail@ulrich-fuchs.de>

body:
Ulrich Fuchs <mail at ulrich-fuchs.de> writes:

> Our agreed policy is to have no fair use images,

Some of "us" disagree.  Of course, you must obey the law - but this
does not mean we must make life easy for third party users (who often
misuse WP's bandwidth for serving images, though).

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Virtual Punishment

body:
or limit the daily editing time to 30 mn for a wikiholic

or put a time stamp of 3 minutes to save an edit

(my...isn't that already happening ?)

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> All sorts of VIRTUAL disciplines are available to use. The only barrier is
> our creativity. On a mud I played on a character was converted to solid
> stone, monolith race, and couldn't move. For example we could code a 60
> second delay into any user's moves and put them on the sloth list.
>
> Fred
>
>
>>From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
>>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:10:28 -0500
>>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #4
>>
>>In the Harry Potter books, the castle caretaker longed for the old days
>>when they used to discipline students with torture. Hanged them by their
>>thumbs, they did.
>>
>>This is virtually impossible for us ;-)
>>
>>Kindly ol' Uncle Ed
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
Jack is probably not a newbie, but a sockpuppet
Jack is there to test our new processes. For this, he is using trolling
tactics, yes.

Question : do we let him help to test the system, or do we deny him that
right ?

ant

Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:
> I fired this shot across JackLynch's bow:
> ----
> Jack,
>
> If you can make Tannin so angry that he swears at you, I can't think of
> anything but the probability that you are provoking him on purpose.
> Maybe to test the new Mediation/Arbitration system? If not, my
> apologies, but that's how it looks to me.
>
> So, please try harder to be nice! :-)
> ----
>
> Given the timing of his appearance, and the issues he focuses on, I
> think it's more likely he's a sock puppet than a newbie.
>
> Advice?
>
> Ed Poor
> One of many Wikipedia admins


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

references:
<001301c3e832$fb33a320$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>
	<200402021916.57353.mail@ulrich-fuchs.de>
	<sh1xpduy2j.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
> Some of "us" disagree.
Three of us, currently:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbild_Urheberrecht

Uli


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: support for <span> tags

body:
Kelly Anderson wrote:

<snip>

> The basic premise of the new XHTML type standards is that the style
> sheet is king. Adding Div and Span tags with specific information in
> them goes against the intent of these new standards. They support the
> old stuff only for backwards compatibility (in a half sort of way).

This is not entirely true. It is perfectly legitimate and idiomatic HTML
to have a SPAN tag with style="<<<CSS>>>", especially if you don't have
access to the style sheet (which we Wikipedia contributors don't). FONT
tags, however, are deprecated from HTML, and we should not encourage
their use. Until there are style sheets with styles for everything, the
only _correct_ way to sepcify styles is in DIV and SPAN tags.

> -Kelly

I'm not entirely sure why I'm getting so much resistance. It is true
that in an ideal world, all HTML tags would be generated from the Wiki
syntax. But the Wiki syntax isn't sufficient in its current form.
Accordingly, we already allow <font> tags, they're all over the
Wikipedia, AND they're deprecated from HTML. At least <span> tags aren't
deprecated. What exactly is the problem with changing from the status
quo to the status quo plus allowing <span> tags?

- David


from_name: Ira Stoll

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am not a troll

body:
To be honest I only have a fleeting idea of what a troll is. It does have a
number of definitions, even the very loose "he who is surrounded by
conflict" which apparently I fit. However, the strict definition (as I see
it) of someone who makes trouble for troubles sake, and is inclined to
subversion and chaos, fails to fit me at all. Some seem to think I am a
test, or that I am testing you. This is not entirely far from the truth. I
am currently trying to find out if this is a place worth being. So far there
is not a consensus on this subject. It still appears to be a matter of
debate. However, with admins like those who seek my removal, I think there
is a great deal of cause for concern about the future of the wikipedia. I
agree with the spirit of the following:

>Just out of curiosity, is there some reason why the entry bar for Wikipedia
>contributors is so low? Right now the system lets anyone post unless
>someone blocks their IP number or user name. While this has certain virtues
>in terms of inclusiveness, it also makes vandalism more likely. Moreover,
>blocking an IP numbers has the effect of blocking an entire class of people
>for the infractions of a single individual, and it isn't even effective at
>blocking people who use an anonymizer to continually change their IP
>number.

>It seems to me that it would better to require people to register before
>they can contribute. That's a fairly minor requirement, but it would
>probably be enough even without a verification system to deter some of the
>casual vandals and trolls, and it would also ensure that bans only affect
>people who have actually done something wrong to merit the ban.

>I imagine this discussion has already happened before, but I haven't seen
>it, and I'd be curious to know what the reasoning is behind the current
>system.

There is a sad cultural phenomena here not entirely removed from the days of
the salem witch hunts. If one is accused of "trolling" they are guilty until
proven innocent. And yet there is no current way to be proven innocent (I
have looked into it).  I wish we could all be real editors, and focus on the
task of making a quality encyclopedia, rather than a mob of ghosts gossiping
around the water cooler. :(
Jack Lynch

_________________________________________________________________
Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up ? fast & reliable Internet access with prime
features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=dialup/home&ST=1


body:
Timwi wrote:

> David Friedland wrote:
>
>> But the Wiki syntax isn't sufficient in its current form. Accordingly,
>> we already allow <font> tags, they're all over the Wikipedia, AND
>> they're deprecated from HTML. At least <span> tags aren't deprecated.
>
>
> Can you give an example of a page other than the main page that really
> requires styling of this kind?
>
> Timwi

Well, on the pages that have statistics tables, like the countries,
languages, etc, there are portions where the font size is enlarged or
decreased or the font color is changed using a FONT tag.

See:

  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countries
  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Language_Template
  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Elements
  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._States
  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Universities

etc.

Now I'd be the first to argue that there need to be a consistent set of
styles for styling tables like these. However, such styles aren't
available and each WikiProject has devised its own method for styling
tables attractively, generally using FONT tags.

But I have run into FONT tags all over the place, probably inserted by
well-meaning contributors who didn't know how to do the wiki-styling
they wanted. Either FONT tags should be banned, or SPAN tags should be
permitted. (Or all FONT tags should be changed to SPAN tags).

-- David


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
Anthere-
> Question : do we let him help to test the system, or do we deny him that
> right ?

Wikipedia is not about "rights". Wikipedia is about creating an
encyclopedia. All this trolling distracts from that goal. Trolls should be
banned quickly and painlessly as soon as an opportunity presents itself to
get rid of them.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Menchi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A useful human relations perspective (re: Mediation)

body: Well, at least she compromises....


from_name: Libasse NIANG

subject: [WikiEN-l] false information from layene

body:
hello
I am very sorry , when i read your article to the layenne
If you want know the layenne you can visit their web site to : www.layene.sn

Libasse NIANG
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from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 7, Issue 4

body:
> From: Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
>
> If only we could get rid of all the permanent and distracting bickering
> as well !

You can talk, you can talk,
You can bicker, you can talk,
You can bicker, bicker, bicker,
You can talk, you can talk,
You can talk, talk, talk, talk,
Bicker, bicker, bicker
You can talk all you wanna
But it's different than it was!

     --Meredith Willson, "Rock Island," _The Music Man_

(Sorry, it just slipped out...)

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate:
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>Question : do we let him help to test the system, or do we deny him that
>>right ?
>>
>>
>
>Wikipedia is not about "rights". Wikipedia is about creating an
>encyclopedia. All this trolling distracts from that goal. Trolls should be
>banned quickly and painlessly as soon as an opportunity presents itself to
>get rid of them.
>
>
The problem I have with that is that it's very unclear what a "troll"
is.  Any number of Wikipedians have been accused of being "trolls" at
one point or another.  Some cases are very clear-cut, but the majority
aren't, and in many cases, "troll" becomes simply shorthand for "person
I disagree with".

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
:-)

If only we could get rid of all the permanent and distracting bickering
as well !

Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>>Question : do we let him help to test the system, or do we deny him that
>>right ?
>
>
> Wikipedia is not about "rights". Wikipedia is about creating an
> encyclopedia. All this trolling distracts from that goal. Trolls should be
> banned quickly and painlessly as soon as an opportunity presents itself to
> get rid of them.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

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

Hi,

Le Monday 02 February 2004 08:43, Michael Snow a ?crit :
> Caroline Ford wrote:
> > As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I
> > know we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the
> > same in France.
> > Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.
> > This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means
> > that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.

I think that we should use US law (fair use) as far as we can. We should also
write the images licence carefully, so that an automated selection can be
done if needed.

> > We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.
> >
> > What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I
> > understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know
> > that most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British
> > contributors are cautious because the international nature of the
> > project never seems to be considered.

I don't see how a European user can be sued for using fair use in a project
hosted in the US. This is civil law, not penal law. But IANAL of course.

> > Caroline (User:Secretlondon)
>
> Speaking only for myself, I regret that my discussion is overly oriented
> to US copyright law, because that's the law I'm familiar with. When it

Well again, US copyright law is what matters here.

> comes to the UK and others, the extent of my knowledge is having read
> some of the applicable statutes. Do we have any barristers or solicitors
> contributing who might be able to add their insight to the problem? With
> better information, we could get an idea of potential liabilities and
> not put all our eggs in the US-based "fair use" basket. For now, the
> servers are physically in the US, and the foundation is incorporated in
> the US, so any lawsuit would almost certainly be in US court using US
> law. But we're talking about jurisdiction and choice of law issues here,
> not just copyright law. And it means we need to be careful of the
> implications of creating official chapters in other countries.

And again, as long as the project is hosted in the US, I don't see how a
European chapter can have copyright problems with Wikipedia.
The day we want to have a mirror in Europe (well in France for what I know),
we will have to review everything which is under fair use, and see if we can
have it under the "droit de citation" which is the nearest equivalent of fair
use in France.

> Not being able to host a UK mirror is a problem, but I for one have no
> qualms about whether a group based in the UK can fork. For anyone who
> exercises the *right* to fork, that only means they will not be subject
> to any legal interference by Wikipedia; it doesn't protect them against
> other legal consequences. We often focus on the GFDL as a license to
> copy, but equally important is the accompanying disclaimer of
> warranties. Specifically in this case, Wikipedia gives no warranty that
> the material you copy won't infringe someone else's copyright. Anybody
> who wants to, fork at your own risk, we'll neither stop you nor protect
> you.
>
> On some of these scenarios, I'm curious as to the specifics. If
> telephone directories are copyrightable, great, but maybe the copyright
> doesn't prevent someone from independently collecting and publishing the
> same information, or does it?

What is copyrighted in telephone directories?
Is it the data or the way the data is published?

> As for pictures of public figures, that's not really about copyright law
> - a face is not itself a creative mode of expression, and taking a

A face is certainly a creative mode of expression. But does it matter here?

> picture is not making a copy (anyway, the person didn't create the face
> themselves, so shouldn't any copyright belong to their parents, or maybe
> the plastic surgeon?).

And the copyright of the Creator then? ;o)
Interesting metaphysical implications...

> We're really talking about the related issue of a
> right of publicity. But there has to be some ability to use these
> images, because the news media does, and of course paparazzi manage
> somehow. I don't know what the basis is when applying non-US law, but if
> other organizations can publish pictures of these people, there has to
> be some way for Wikipedia to do so legally as well.

I think there is a confusion here. The news medias can publish pictures only
because they got the right to do so from the photographer (against money most
of the time).
I doubt that Wikipedia could publish any picture without this right.
Or it should be under fair use. I don't see any other way out.

> --Michael Snow

Yann
- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: european miror

body: In case anyone's wondering, the TLD .ws is (Western) Samoa in the Pacific.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia PayPal donations for January are up

body:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_PayPal_donations_for_2004

Also linked from
http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

body:
>>>>> "UF" == Ulrich Fuchs <mail at ulrich-fuchs.de> writes:

    UF> No, that's not ok - we will delete them if they come up. Our
    UF> agreed policy is to have no fair use images, so that
    UF> *downstream users* may use all of our pictures without having
    UF> to think about if *their* use is also *fair* use and without
    UF> checking the copyright status of every single image.

Excellent idea.

~ESP

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


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: european miror

body:
Anthere wrote:

> What is this ???
>
> http://wikipedia.ws/

A page.

All the links on it go to Wikipedia.

No idea who made it, though ...


body:
David Friedland wrote:

> But the Wiki syntax isn't sufficient in its current form.
> Accordingly, we already allow <font> tags, they're all over the
> Wikipedia, AND they're deprecated from HTML. At least <span> tags aren't
> deprecated.

Can you give an example of a page other than the main page that really
requires styling of this kind?

Timwi


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
--- Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, is there some reason why the
> entry bar for
> Wikipedia contributors is so low?

There has been some discussion of this at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_users_should_not_be_allowed_to_edit_articles,
and its accompanying talk page.

Angela.

________________________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Free modem offer, sign up online today and save ?80 http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] european miror

body:
What is this ???

http://wikipedia.ws/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: european miror

body:
and this ?

http://int.wikipedia.ws/

???

Anthere a ?crit:
> What is this ???
>
> http://wikipedia.ws/


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am not a troll

body:
> I wish we could all be real editors, and focus on the
> task of making a quality encyclopedia, rather than a mob of ghosts
gossiping
> around the water cooler. :(
> Jack Lynch

Well, there are a couple of hundred thousand non-controversial articles out
there which you could happily edit.

It seems to me that you spend a majority of your time on non-article pages
(47 out of your last 50 edits), 'around the water cooler' if you will, time
that you could spend copy-editing actual articles as a real editor might.

I'm not commenting on your being a troll one way or the other, I'm just
saying that if you spend all your time on talk pages all you're going to see
is discussion of issues relating to Wikipedia, of which trolling and
vandalism is quite a Big Problem.

Andrew (Ams80)


from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Multiple deletions

body:
Hi,

If you look at [[Wikipedia:Deletion log]] you're likely to see some
instances of pages being "deleted" multiple times (even though they
were never recreated). ie 2 different sysops deleting the same page
at roughly the same time, and both "succeed".

Some weird timing error or something?

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I am not a troll

body:
Ira Stoll a ?crit:

> There is a sad cultural phenomena here not entirely removed from the
> days of the salem witch hunts. If one is accused of "trolling" they are
> guilty until proven innocent. And yet there is no current way to be
> proven innocent (I have looked into it).

I sadly agree with you Jack

I wish we could all be real
> editors, and focus on the task of making a quality encyclopedia, rather
> than a mob of ghosts gossiping around the water cooler. :(
> Jack Lynch

I sadly agree with you Jack


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Sunday 01 February 2004 22:12, David Friedland wrote:
> Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> > I don't think this would be desirable- all structural needs like
> > empahsizing, indenting, lists,.. are provided as wiki markup, the styling
> > should be done with a better system-wide stylesheet. Which styling
> > options do you miss?
>
> I'd like to be able to specify a specific large font size via something
> like
>
>     ʃ
>
> on the page about that character (in the example, the esh character,
> which is part of IPA), or to set one of the other font properties on a
> page about say, font properties in CSS, like
>
>     this is red text
>     and this is blue text
>
> which is the "correct" way to do it, as  tags have been deprecated
> in HTML since 1997 (7 years!), as are things like <big> and ,
> and yet these deprecated tags seem to be how such formatting is done on
> Wikipedia right now.

Why is that important? These tags are easier to use. If major browsers drop
support for them, we could easily convert them to respective span tags.

>    http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970708/appendix/changes.html
>    (note this is the oldest spec in which  and  are
>    deprecated, not the most recent version)
>
> In fact, I would argue that Wikipedia policy should be towards
> compliance with standards, and  and  tags should NOT be
> allowed, as they are deprecated from the HTML spec (and not permitted at
> all in XHTML).

I think that Wikipedia policy should be towards ease of use. Font and center
tags are de facto standard.

> Furthermore, we can already do stuff like this using
 tags, but
> each time the style changes it makes a new paragraph. While I
> wholeheartedly agree that we need more robust system-wide stylesheets,
> but when we do, the correct way to apply such styles would be via a
>  tag, as in
>
>     Text in that style
>
> or whatever. Perhaps there should be a wiki markup for  tags, but
> there isn't one yet. We already allow non-wiki formatting via
 and
>    and , and since  tags are the correct way to do
> things that we now do via  tags, I don't see the harm in allowing
>  tags.

This is an interesting feature, and I don't see why should span tags not be
added to the whitelist, though I think that there should be declared a policy
of consistence and that span tags must not be used instead font and center.

Perhaps a third type of Wiki markup (after [[]] and {{}}) could be introduced
for such purposes:

<<color=red>>
<<size=24>> (or, even better, <<size=huge>>)
<<left>>, <<right>>, <>
<


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
So you give assholes a way to screw up your status on Wikpedia, shame on
you!

Fred

> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 09:18:08 -0500
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] I propose a formula based on reverts
>
> How about a simple formula, based on what percentage of a user's edits
> are reverted by other users? (We might tweak this by discounting reverts
> from a certain class of user.)
>
> For example, if new user Blatheration is reverted 30% of the time, he
> keeps newbie status. But if new user Jim Dandy has no reverts (except
> from newbies), promote him to preferred status.
>
> My only worry is that some highly motivated user will figure out a way
> to hack this system, in order to subvert or destroy it. So at first
> anyway we should not make it automatic but we could use the statistics
> when considering the granting of sysop rights.
>
> But the good thing is that tracking each user's "revert count" would
> enable us to identify edit wars in progress or to identify Edit
> Warriors. (Yes, of course we'd have to find a way to account for
> reversions of 'simple vandalism' so this wouldn't "count against"
> someone.)
>
> Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
No, Ed, You're proposing giving power to a set of troublemakers. Many good
editors are frequently reverted if they attempt to edit hot-button issues.
As far a counting Admins, we have seldom been able to prevent elevation to
sysop status of people who regularly edit from a controversial POV.

Fred

> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 10:16:53 -0500
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] I propose a formula based on reverts
>
> Theresa wrote:
>
>> I agree, what to stop someone from following you
>> around anh reverting everything you do?
>
> The formula I propose, takes that into account.
>
> We should track the number of a contributors edits that are reverted,
> divided into:
>
> * reverted by admins
> * reverted by ordinary folk
> * reverted by suspected troublemakers
>
> Additionally, we should track reversions MADE BY EACH USER. So anyone
> who makes trouble by following around a "good" user and reverts all
> their edits would be quickly tagged as a "reverts for no good reason"
> user.
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] I propose a formula based on reverts

body:
How about a simple formula, based on what percentage of a user's edits
are reverted by other users? (We might tweak this by discounting reverts
from a certain class of user.)

For example, if new user Blatheration is reverted 30% of the time, he
keeps newbie status. But if new user Jim Dandy has no reverts (except
from newbies), promote him to preferred status.

My only worry is that some highly motivated user will figure out a way
to hack this system, in order to subvert or destroy it. So at first
anyway we should not make it automatic but we could use the statistics
when considering the granting of sysop rights.

But the good thing is that tracking each user's "revert count" would
enable us to identify edit wars in progress or to identify Edit
Warriors. (Yes, of course we'd have to find a way to account for
reversions of 'simple vandalism' so this wouldn't "count against"
someone.)

Uncle Ed


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>How about a simple formula, based on what percentage of a user's edits
>are reverted by other users? (We might tweak this by discounting reverts
>from a certain class of user.)
>
>For example, if new user Blatheration is reverted 30% of the time, he
>keeps newbie status. But if new user Jim Dandy has no reverts (except
>from newbies), promote him to preferred status.
>
>My only worry is that some highly motivated user will figure out a way
>to hack this system, in order to subvert or destroy it. So at first
>anyway we should not make it automatic but we could use the statistics
>when considering the granting of sysop rights.
>
>But the good thing is that tracking each user's "revert count" would
>enable us to identify edit wars in progress or to identify Edit
>Warriors. (Yes, of course we'd have to find a way to account for
>reversions of 'simple vandalism' so this wouldn't "count against"
>someone.)
>
This seems to be more trouble than it's worth.  To begin with we would
need an official definition of "revert".  Strictly speaking it means
reinstituting an older version of the article as found in the history of
the article.  An effective reversion can be accomplished by simply
editing an article back to its previous form based on what the person
has stored off-list in his own computer.

Ignoring reverts by newbies on others seems to create a circular
situation that depends on his having determined that someone is or is
not a newby.  Simply put, I don't think that this is workable in any
practical sense.

Ec


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>So you give assholes a way to screw up your status on Wikpedia, shame on
>you!
>
If we spend all our time looking at assholes, we're looking at the wrong
end of the project.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] memory tests underway

body:
Richard Gallagher wrote:
> My suggestion, if the 1GB from each of the 4GB machines can be
> put to good use elsewhere then do so.

Right now of the 8 Pentium IV class machines, we have:
2 at 4GB (3.5 actual) for squids
2 at 2GB for webservers
4 at 1GB for whatever

My feeling is that this is a reasonable configuration to start with
and now that it's toally no big deal for me to switch them around (as
opposed to paying Jason's salary for a whole day to just drive down to
San Diego and back, plus usually a hotel stay), we needn't worry too
much about it.

I think that the 4x1GB machines would be perfectly servicable as
webservers if we needed them.  At least 2 of them will be used for
mail and DNS, I suppose, and that certainly isn't RAM intensive.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Memory tests successful!

body:
All 9 machines ran the full battery of tests (not just the default
8 tests, but all eleven) for 24 hours without a single error on any
of the machines!  ding!

Additionally, just for fun, I stuck in some RAM from my home machine
(G5), and it works just fine, too.  This is a different brand.
Probably not all that important to know, except that with our
longstanding tradition of nightmarish RAM problems, it's nice to
already know of two brands that work perfectly fine.

--Jimbo


body:
Fred wrote:

> So you give @#$%*%s a way to screw up your status on Wikpedia, shame
on you!

Fred gets -1 point for bad language and -1 point for shaming. Please
refrain from editing Wikipedia or posting to the mailing list for 2
days. :-)

Half kidding,

Uncle Ed


body:
Theresa wrote:

> I agree, what to stop someone from following you
> around anh reverting everything you do?

The formula I propose, takes that into account.

We should track the number of a contributors edits that are reverted,
divided into:

* reverted by admins
* reverted by ordinary folk
* reverted by suspected troublemakers

Additionally, we should track reversions MADE BY EACH USER. So anyone
who makes trouble by following around a "good" user and reverts all
their edits would be quickly tagged as a "reverts for no good reason"
user.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: european miror

body:
On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 01:17:23AM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> >What is this ???
> >
> >http://wikipedia.ws/
>
> A page.
>
> All the links on it go to Wikipedia.
>
> No idea who made it, though ...

   Administrative Contact:
      Doveton, Robin  rdoveton at hotmail.com
      22 Notting Hill Gate
      London W11 3JE
      United Kingdom
      07813926881      Fax --

Hosted at:

      Hetzner Online AG
      Datacenter Nuernberg

grin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Update on RAID situation

body:
Just for fun, I tried updating the firmware so that our existing SCSI
card would support mirroring.  That did not work, so hardware RAID
is off the table for now.

In this case, given the limitations of the card, hardware RAID would
have been less desirable anyway, perhaps, because the card only
supports 0 and 1, not 5.  This would limit us to 36GB of disk space.

With software RAID, we can do RAID 5, so that our 3x36 can work as
72GB.

So, I think that's what we should do.

--Jimbo


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: european miror

body:
On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Timwi wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>> What is this ???
>>
>> http://wikipedia.ws/
>
>A page.
>
>All the links on it go to Wikipedia.
>
>No idea who made it, though ...

Not all the links to the main Wikipedia. Under the "Mirror - New Year
2004" you'll find the "English" link, that leads to a complete copy of the
english wiki. The same for the other languages.

I recognize the format: they are HTML wikipedia archives made by myself,
and linked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download .
Someone either downloaded the archives and put them online, or downloaded
the program itself and generated their own version.

Alfio


body:
Fred,

You seem to think that I'm "proposing giving power to a set
of troublemakers." But this is not what I propose. Rather,
I propose using statistics to /identify/ troublemakers.

Granted that a simplistic formula would immediately backfire.
You and Theresa have correctly pointed out that raw percentage
(of times a contributor's edits is reverted) may indicate only
that he (or she) tries nobly to settle edit wars -- rather
than that they are stirring up trouble.

You would be far off base if you thought I proposed automatic
sanctions on users who got reverted a lot. Rather, I am
proposing that we track reversions and seek to discover
whether the statistics will tell us anything useful.

Key points:

* You can observe a lot by watching.
* The truth will set you free.
* Don't shoot the messenger.

Ed Poor


body:
Chris Purcell at Meatball Wiki addresses the same
question as Theresa's.

<< You might need a trust metric to stop relatively
untrustworthy users, who have simply kept well-behaved
until then, retroactively reverting all a respectable
user's posts and thus zeroing his trust. >>

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=browse&diff=1&id=TrollDetecti
onFormula

Ed Poor


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Delirium wrote:

> The problem I have with that is that it's very unclear what a "troll"
> is.  Any number of Wikipedians have been accused of being "trolls" at
> one point or another.  Some cases are very clear-cut, but the majority
> aren't, and in many cases, "troll" becomes simply shorthand for "person
> I disagree with".
>
The term "troll" comes from the verb "to troll" as in "The fishermen
trolled for cod." Someone who trolls in a newsgroup or a forum is attempting
to get another person to bite an obviously incindinary comment.

The fact that we have a number of individuals on Wikipedia who enjoy pushing
the envelope -- for the only apparent reason that they are looking for
attention -- has made me suspicious that they might be trolls. But according
to Usenet wisdom, the best thing to do with trolls is to simply ignore the
baited hook they've put out.

Works for me. I'd rather worry about other things.

Geoff


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stop pages dedicated to personal attacks

body:
Some time ago this list decided that it was totally
inapproproate to create Wikipedia webpages criticising
Wikipedia contributors.

The purpose of Wikipedia is to create an open-course
encyclopedia. Disputes are to be brought to the attention
of this list, or to the designated mediators.

However, Martin (MyRedDice) is starting again the same
process that led to EntmootsOfTrolls being banned, namely
the setting up of webpages designed to harss a Wikipedia
user. Unless policy has been changed, this action is
forbidden.

If you allow Martin to do this, there will be no end to
number of hateful webpages that will sprout up on
Wikipedia, whenever people disagree.

We can solve things through mediation, like I have been
trying to advocate, or we can use outright censorship (by
wiping out articles like Martin keeps doing) and creating
harassment-pages (like Martin is doing and EntmootOfTrolls
kept doing). I cannot understand why the former option is
not preferable.

Robert (RK)

=====
"No one is poor except he who lacks knowledge....A person who has knowledge has everything.  A person who lacks knowledge, what has he? Once a person acquires knowledge, what does he lack?  [Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim, 41a]

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Total failure of mediation process

body:
No, Ed. Sadly, no mediation is taking place at all on the
"Palestinian views of the peace process" article.

Martin has still refused to mediate, despite his public
promises to do so; instead, on the article's Talk page he
has bizarrely stated that he has a secret agenda, and he
refuses to explain this to any moderator or to me. Then,
still refusing to discuss the issue, he set up a Wikipedia
webpage webpage designed to harass the very person he had
promised to work with. That is is a total violation of
trust and Wikietiquette. If other people adopted this
tactic, Wikipedia would soon fall apart.

I asked LittleDan to be a mediation, but he has done
nothing on the topic, except bug me about allowing Nazis to
put their views into Wikipedia. This is no joke; he
repeatedly has written that we should allow Nazis to
include their views. Frankly, I have no idea why he is
writing about this, or what this has to do with the
article.

Jimbo, what do we do in such bizarre cases?  The person I
asked for mediation with has refused to mediate, and one of
the chosen mediators hasn't said one word on the topic we
are supposed to be discussing!

Robert

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from_name: Optim

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
Summary: Current RfA ineffective. Proposed
automated software evaluation of Wikipedia
contributors. only users with high score will be
able to get lised in RfA. Please comment &
criticise.

The current RfA (Requests for adminship) process
cannot serve Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia is now
a very popular big site and I am afraid the RfA
process we are using can only support small
communities.

Currently 1 user who had less than 100 edits is
nominated. Another user with about 200 edits
requests adminship.

In the past, a user who acted in the
"politician's way" requested to become an admin
numerous times: make me admin and I will do this
and that... Of course the request was ridiculous
and nobody was taking him seriously.

Also, on January 12, 2004, a user was nominated
for adminship. A developer promoted the user to
administrator just 21 minutes after the
nomination, even before the response of the
nominated user (a nominated user has to respond
in order to accept or reject the adminship).
Although everyone, including me, supported the
nomination (after he was made an admin!), and the
admin is now good and valuable to the project, I
think the quick developer's action was
unnecessary. I say this, not in order to rise an
issue with the developer (who is useful and
valuable to the project) but only to show that
the RfA process has "holes".

The current RfA ineffectivity has been
demonstrated many times.

One of the main problems of the current RfA
system is that everyone can nominate any person,
many times not for Wikipedia's good but only for
personal reasons etc. Uneducated
nominations/requests are also common and waste
our time.

To put it in one sentence: It is very easy for
someone to nominate a user for adminship, or even
request it.

I think RfA should be more difficult, so that
whenever someone is listed on it, it will be more
or less sure that he/she is already wanted or
trusted by the community up to some degree.

Requests could be go away. Personally, I prefer
nominations. Or, the policy and the system could
be formulated in such a way that it would be more
difficult for someone to request adminship, than
to be nominated for it.

A semi-automated software system for user
evaluation may be needed, IMO. Just like most
auction sites (eBay etc): Other users will
evaluate a user's edits.

The system will work like this: In Page history,
or in the version differences page, we could have
three option boxes, one textbox and one button,
all under the caption "Evaluate this user's
edit". The option boxes will read: 1. Positive,
2. Neutral, 3. Negative. It will be required for
the evaluator to write a summary in the textbox
and justify his/her evaluation. When the user
presses the button, the system will record the
evaluation in the user's evaluation log. These
logs will be public (accessible via the user's
page), and updated/maintained by the software.

Because abuse is possible, we can have evaluation
moderators. When a new evaluation is submitted,
it will not be written in the user's log until a
moderator aproves it. The log will refer to the
particular edit and article an evaluation was
about, and it will keep some statistics, such as
how many different users made a positive or
negative evaluation. Evaluations which were not
approved by the moderators will be kept in a
separate log but not counted in the "official"
user's score.

The user's score will be calculated by software
from data gathered from the evaluation log. I
suggest the score's algorithm to pay more
"attention" on recent evaluations. For example,
evaluations one year old can be multiplied by
0.5, evaluations 6 months old by 0.75, while the
evaluations from the past 2-3 weeks will be
multiplied by 1.5. Also, evaluations from
evaluators with a high score will count more in
the final user's score (for example, multiplied
by 1.33). The number of user's edits will be
taken into account, too: The higher edits, the
higher the score. So the score is not simply the
number of positive evaluations, but it is based
on more complex analysis and considerations.

***the algorithm which calculates the score
should be published in wikipedia, written in
simple pseudocode so that non-developers will be
able to understand it***

I suggest that the moderators should be appointed
directly by Jimbo.

There will be a page called "Great contributors"
maintained by software. In this page only users
with a high score will be listed.

In RfA, a user may be nominated for adminship
*only* and *only* iff:
a) he or she is listed in the "Great
contributors" page, AND
b) the user has made at least 500 edits.
Otherwise, the nomination will be automatically
rejected.

I do not think users with less than 500 edits
should be even considered in RfA.

I ask for comments and criticism on these ideas.
Also, please, suggest your own ideas and propose
the changes you would like to see in RfA. I hope
we can built a better and more efficient RfA
system.

--Optim

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subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wrong Version (was: Troll! in the dungeon!)

body:
If you want some comic relief from quarrels and trolls and edit wars and
"conflicts between users", etc., ad nauseum....

Try reading Angela's "The Wrong Version" on meta.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version

I busted a gut and had to be rushed to St. Luke's for stitches ;-)

Uncle Ed


body:
oh, I think we proposed a similar change at the
same time!

I was busy and away from the net and just now
managed to find some time to write what I wanted
to propose:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-February/014199.html

I dont have time to read all replies to your
proposal, but maybe we could merge mine and yours
to get a more complete system. how do u think?

--Optim

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
wrote:
> How about a simple formula, based on what
> percentage of a user's edits
...

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Update on RAID situation

body:
O.k., well, yesterday the other fellow yelled at me (not really) that
I should be doing software RAID anyway.  I *can* get anything overnighted
to me, to be sure.  Should I?

Possibly that's the wisest thing to do here.

Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 10:38:00 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > So, I think that's what we should do.
>
> When will the replacement controller arrive? If it's adding a day or so
> delay it's propably not worth to bother setting up the soft raid now.
> Should be possible to get one overnight really- i can send stuff from
> Germany to any place in the US overnight, likely to work inside the US
> as well.
> --
> Gabriel Wicke
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Servers raided!

body:
Ed, don't you know that refering to "APACHE" with terms like "red
handed" is offensive these days?

Magnus Manske wrote:

> Perhaps that's why I keep getting SQUID error messages when accessing
> en.wikipedia.org...
>
> Magnus
>
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> >Hey, did you know there was a RAID at Wikipedia HQ? It was a real
> >set-up. Jimbo was caught red-handed with all the servers...
> >
> >Ed Poor
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
--- Andrew Smith <wikipediablah at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> adding extra layers of bureaucracy.

yes, it is bureaucracy. This is good and bad at
the same time :/

I think Wikipedia will need more bureucracy as
its population rises. Maybe a new RfA is not
needed at the exact moment, but I like to get
prepared for the future.

> 10-15 people
> skimming through the nominee's contributions
> and using their eyes/brain to
> form an opinion.

the software system (although I generally dislike
software automation) is an attempt to evaluate
users in a more impersonal way, without much
individual judgement.

> In one of the cases you mention, of user
> Metasquares being nominated after
> less than 100 edits

I personally think that this user will make a
good admin, but I find it impossible to support
someone with less than 500 edits.

One reason is: I find inactive sysop accounts to
be a security hole in the system. A user with 500
edits is more likely to stay in the project than
a user with 100 edits. If a user with 100 edits
gets sysop privileges and then he/she becomes
inactive, we will have a new inactive admin, thus
a new potential security hole :/

> Just my thoughts,
>
> Andrew (Ams80)

Thank you very much! don't hesitate to criticise,
criticism is good & useful.

--Optim

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from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is Jack a troll?

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Delirium wrote:
>
>
>
>>The problem I have with that is that it's very unclear what a "troll"
>>is.  Any number of Wikipedians have been accused of being "trolls" at
>>one point or another.  Some cases are very clear-cut, but the majority
>>aren't, and in many cases, "troll" becomes simply shorthand for "person
>>I disagree with".
>>
>>
>>
>The term "troll" comes from the verb "to troll" as in "The fishermen
>trolled for cod." Someone who trolls in a newsgroup or a forum is attempting
>to get another person to bite an obviously incindinary comment.
>
>
I'm aware of that; what I was saying is that it's often unclear who is
trolling and who legitimately holds incendiary opinions.  On
particularly controversial issues (Israel/Palestine, the Polish/German
naming, etc.), people often call their opponents "trolls" when it's
usually not justified.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
The basic thing wrong with all this is the illusion that sysops have a lot
of power. They don't and failures in some respect have few negative
consequences.

Fred

> From: Optim <optim81 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 13:35:22 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA
>
> Summary: Current RfA ineffective. Proposed
> automated software evaluation of Wikipedia
> contributors. only users with high score will be
> able to get lised in RfA. Please comment &
> criticise.
>
> The current RfA (Requests for adminship) process
> cannot serve Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia is now
> a very popular big site and I am afraid the RfA
> process we are using can only support small
> communities.
>
> Currently 1 user who had less than 100 edits is
> nominated. Another user with about 200 edits
> requests adminship.
>
> In the past, a user who acted in the
> "politician's way" requested to become an admin
> numerous times: make me admin and I will do this
> and that... Of course the request was ridiculous
> and nobody was taking him seriously.
>
> Also, on January 12, 2004, a user was nominated
> for adminship. A developer promoted the user to
> administrator just 21 minutes after the
> nomination, even before the response of the
> nominated user (a nominated user has to respond
> in order to accept or reject the adminship).
> Although everyone, including me, supported the
> nomination (after he was made an admin!), and the
> admin is now good and valuable to the project, I
> think the quick developer's action was
> unnecessary. I say this, not in order to rise an
> issue with the developer (who is useful and
> valuable to the project) but only to show that
> the RfA process has "holes".
>
> The current RfA ineffectivity has been
> demonstrated many times.
>
> One of the main problems of the current RfA
> system is that everyone can nominate any person,
> many times not for Wikipedia's good but only for
> personal reasons etc. Uneducated
> nominations/requests are also common and waste
> our time.
>
> To put it in one sentence: It is very easy for
> someone to nominate a user for adminship, or even
> request it.
>
> I think RfA should be more difficult, so that
> whenever someone is listed on it, it will be more
> or less sure that he/she is already wanted or
> trusted by the community up to some degree.
>
> Requests could be go away. Personally, I prefer
> nominations. Or, the policy and the system could
> be formulated in such a way that it would be more
> difficult for someone to request adminship, than
> to be nominated for it.
>
>
> A semi-automated software system for user
> evaluation may be needed, IMO. Just like most
> auction sites (eBay etc): Other users will
> evaluate a user's edits.
>
> The system will work like this: In Page history,
> or in the version differences page, we could have
> three option boxes, one textbox and one button,
> all under the caption "Evaluate this user's
> edit". The option boxes will read: 1. Positive,
> 2. Neutral, 3. Negative. It will be required for
> the evaluator to write a summary in the textbox
> and justify his/her evaluation. When the user
> presses the button, the system will record the
> evaluation in the user's evaluation log. These
> logs will be public (accessible via the user's
> page), and updated/maintained by the software.
>
> Because abuse is possible, we can have evaluation
> moderators. When a new evaluation is submitted,
> it will not be written in the user's log until a
> moderator aproves it. The log will refer to the
> particular edit and article an evaluation was
> about, and it will keep some statistics, such as
> how many different users made a positive or
> negative evaluation. Evaluations which were not
> approved by the moderators will be kept in a
> separate log but not counted in the "official"
> user's score.
>
> The user's score will be calculated by software
> from data gathered from the evaluation log. I
> suggest the score's algorithm to pay more
> "attention" on recent evaluations. For example,
> evaluations one year old can be multiplied by
> 0.5, evaluations 6 months old by 0.75, while the
> evaluations from the past 2-3 weeks will be
> multiplied by 1.5. Also, evaluations from
> evaluators with a high score will count more in
> the final user's score (for example, multiplied
> by 1.33). The number of user's edits will be
> taken into account, too: The higher edits, the
> higher the score. So the score is not simply the
> number of positive evaluations, but it is based
> on more complex analysis and considerations.
>
> ***the algorithm which calculates the score
> should be published in wikipedia, written in
> simple pseudocode so that non-developers will be
> able to understand it***
>
> I suggest that the moderators should be appointed
> directly by Jimbo.
>
> There will be a page called "Great contributors"
> maintained by software. In this page only users
> with a high score will be listed.
>
> In RfA, a user may be nominated for adminship
> *only* and *only* iff:
> a) he or she is listed in the "Great
> contributors" page, AND
> b) the user has made at least 500 edits.
> Otherwise, the nomination will be automatically
> rejected.
>
> I do not think users with less than 500 edits
> should be even considered in RfA.
>
> I ask for comments and criticism on these ideas.
> Also, please, suggest your own ideas and propose
> the changes you would like to see in RfA. I hope
> we can built a better and more efficient RfA
> system.
>
> --Optim
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
> http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: KNOTT, T

body:
I agree, what to stop someone from following you around an reverting
everything you do ?

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at ctelco.net]
Sent: 03 February 2004 14:51
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] I propose a formula based on reverts

So you give assholes a way to screw up your status on Wikpedia, shame on
you!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Servers raided!

body:
Hey, did you know there was a RAID at Wikipedia HQ? It was a real
set-up. Jimbo was caught red-handed with all the servers...

Ed Poor


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> Theresa wrote:
>
> > I agree, what to stop someone from following you
> > around anh reverting everything you do?
>
> The formula I propose, takes that into account.
>
> We should track the number of a contributors edits that are reverted...

In my country, there is an old saying
   "You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem."
--
Gareth Owen


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
> In my country, there is an old saying
>    "You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem."

> Gareth Owen

They say also 'you can lead a horse away from water, but you can't make him
stop wanting a drink'.

Charles


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
thank you for the comments.

yes the two proposals were based on the same
rationale.

it may needn't be implemented now, but we can
keep the ideas for the future, like a think tank.

a consideration is that large communities have
higher diversity indices. A high diversity index
brings disagreements, wikistress, forks, etc.
Bureaucracy, in max weber's style, may be used to
control the negative effects of a high diversity
index. however, NPOV can only be achieved with a
high diversity index.

The best way for minimising the negative outcomes
of diversity is to have a spirit of Fellowship,
fraternity, cooperation and [[WikiLove]].

Bureaucracies and policies should me implemented
only when Fraternity and WikiLove seem impossible
to work.

Can we have a spirit of Fraternity & cooperation,
as our population grows quickly? I hope so! how
do u think?

--Optim

--- Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de> wrote:
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . till we *) . . .
>
> Sorry to say this,
>
> but the RfA proposal as well as your proposal
> last week (about user
> names) all sound the same for me: we are big,
> so we need more
> bureaucracy. One of the unique selling points
> of wikipedia -- so to say
> -- is in my eyes that wikipedia works as a
> fairly big community with a
> fairly low amount of rules, bureaucratics,
> politics and organisational
> overhead. Why change this more or less anarchy
> united with more or less
> the same goal as long as it isn't necessary?
> And wouldn't it be better
> to introduce rules, scores and regulation at
> the moment they become
> necessary, but not early, creating something
> like self-fulfing
> prophecies? If you treat wikipedia as a
> bureaucratic organisation, it
> will start to become one.
>
> Regards,
>
> Till
>  __ .
>  / / / /                            ... Till
> Westermayer - till we *)
> . .
>   . mailto:till at tillwe.de .
> www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
>   . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761
> 55697152 . 0160 96619179
>   . . . . .
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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body:
RK,

You have agreed to my offer to mediate between you and Martin. Martin
apparently prefers TUF-KAT.

Is mediation proceeding?

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggested change

references:
<bvg8q6$1pf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<200401311153.04558.sascha@pantropy.net>	<bvj1q5$dv6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bvj30m$fr8$2@sea.gmane.org>	<bvj3mi$gu8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<pan.2004.02.01.14.58.39.178674@gabrielwicke.de>	<bvj5oc$j44$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20040202191139.GE30541@joey.bomis.com>

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Timwi wrote:
>
>
>>Hm. Can you simplify this for someone who doesn't really know anything
>>about CVS branches? :-) What exactly do I have to type on the command
>>line to commit this change to the correct branch? Then what do I have to
>>do to get it up on test.wikipedia.org?
>>
>>
>
>I'd second this request.  I've taught myself PHP, and I'm itching
>to start doing a little bit of development, but the next big thing
>I need to learn is CVS.
>
>
All you need for starters is here:
    http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=14033&group_id=1

Magnus


from_name: Mills, Billy

body:
Ed's idea sounds like a runner to me. The truth may not set you free, but at
least you know who chained you up.

Billy

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body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> When will the replacement controller arrive? If it's adding a day or so
> delay it's propably not worth to bother setting up the soft raid now.
> Should be possible to get one overnight really- i can send stuff from
> Germany to any place in the US overnight, likely to work inside the US
> as well.

I have ordered a RAID card for overnight delivery.  Since it is
evening now I am not sure if that means tomorrow, or the next day.
Depends on whether the merchant can it get in the hands of FedEx in
time or not.

Either way, I think it's safe to assume that we'll have it in place by
Thursday evening.

Where do we stand on going live with a 'beta'?  Is there anything that
I can do to help co-ordinate?

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Secret to a successful mediation

body:
Grandpa was celebrating his 100th birthday and everybody complimented
him on how athletic and well-preserved he appeared. "Gentlemen, I will
tell you the secret of my success," he cackled. "I have been in the open
air day after day for some 75 years now."

The celebrants were impressed and asked how he managed to keep up his
rigorous fitness regime. "Well, you see my wife and I were married 75
years ago. On our wedding night, we made a solemn pledge. Whenever we
had a fight, the one who was proved wrong would go outside and take a
walk."


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Update on RAID situation

body:
>>>>> "JW" == Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

    JW> With software RAID, we can do RAID 5, so that our 3x36 can
    JW> work as 72GB.

    JW> So, I think that's what we should do.

A couple of things:

* Software RAID in Linux is notoriously bad for disk I/O.
* It's also surprisingly intolerant of bad blocks on drives. This
  shouldn't normally be a problem, but it can be a problem if more
  than one drive in the set has a bad block (not that uncommon). My
  experience has been that if one drive fails, reassembling the RAID
  set can fail due to minor errors on the other drives.

EVMS (http://evms.sourceforge.net/) is a very nice enhancement for
Linux volume management, and may be worth looking at. It's a hassle to
set up (unless you're using Gentoo, which has it built-in), but it's
got good buzz and might be helpful. It also has bad-block reallocation
-- a nice feature.

~ESP

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


from_name: Ivan Krstic

body:
On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 14:00:58 -0800, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> O.k., well, yesterday the other fellow yelled at me (not really) that
> I should be doing software RAID anyway.  I *can* get anything overnighted
> to me, to be sure.  Should I?

I use software RAID 5 with a 2.4 kernel, and with a 4+1 120GB setup (468GB
total usable). My experiences have been mixed: nothing patently bad, but I
wouldn't exactly call it a smooth ride, either. If you can go for the
hardware controller without too much hassle, go for it.

Best regards,
Ivan


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Part of the problem here is that we don't get a lot of news out of Belarus.
So even if someone is interested and has a general opinion we may still not
know the specifics. I know not to trust anything 172 writes but can't vouch
for the factual basis of the alternative article.

Fred

> From: "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 18:57:40 -0500
> To: <anthere8 at yahoo.com>, "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko
>
> From: "Anthere" <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
>
>> Anthere a ?crit:
>>> Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
>>> between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
>>> I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
>>> december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
>>
>> Actually, I wrote this message initially to ask if some people could
>> have a look at the issue generating the conflict, but saw no effect
>> whatsoever.
>> I also listed it on [[request for comment]], where it had no result
> either.
>>
>> Sort of an experiment. Which lend me to think the step 2 of
>> Wikipedia:Conflict resolution is not very likely to lead to success.
>
> I think that you may have comments or may not, but the fact of the matter
> is that the wiki is a collaborative process open to all. We should keep that
> in mind and this step in the dispute resolution process gives input to
> anyone interested. If there is no one interested then the parties appear
> to recognize the differeing POVs and if that cannot be reconciled you
> can take the dispute resolution process further.
>
>
>> I also think that involving other people in troubled waters, is perhaps
>> asking for more troubles than not.
>
> I think that it really has to do with content and that is something that
> we can help with to one degree or another.
>
>> Perhaps, rather than public calling for help (at the risk of attracting
>> people willing to bring trouble), discreetly asking for help to specific
>> people (known for their ability to handle conflict for example)  is more
>> likely to be beneficial.
>
> If both are useful why not try posting it and soliciting comments;
> really at an early stage this could only get people interested in the
> subject
> page, that would be a good thing, no?
>
> Alex756
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
From: "Anthere" <anthere8 at yahoo.com>

> Anthere a ?crit:
> > Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
> > between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
> > I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
> > december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
>
> Actually, I wrote this message initially to ask if some people could
> have a look at the issue generating the conflict, but saw no effect
> whatsoever.
> I also listed it on [[request for comment]], where it had no result
either.
>
> Sort of an experiment. Which lend me to think the step 2 of
> Wikipedia:Conflict resolution is not very likely to lead to success.

I think that you may have comments or may not, but the fact of the matter
is that the wiki is a collaborative process open to all. We should keep that
in mind and this step in the dispute resolution process gives input to
anyone interested. If there is no one interested then the parties appear
to recognize the differeing POVs and if that cannot be reconciled you
can take the dispute resolution process further.

> I also think that involving other people in troubled waters, is perhaps
> asking for more troubles than not.

I think that it really has to do with content and that is something that
we can help with to one degree or another.

> Perhaps, rather than public calling for help (at the risk of attracting
> people willing to bring trouble), discreetly asking for help to specific
> people (known for their ability to handle conflict for example)  is more
> likely to be beneficial.

If both are useful why not try posting it and soliciting comments;
really at an early stage this could only get people interested in the
subject
page, that would be a good thing, no?

Alex756


from_name: Kent Wang

subject: [WikiEN-l] Soliciting academic research on Wikipedia sociology

body:
I remember reading somewhere on Wikipedia: that it'd be really nice for
publicity if we could have a research paper about Wikipedia published in
a peer-reviewed academic journal. I'm currently a history undegraduate
at the University of Texas - Austin and would like to "spam" some of our
school's professors about this. Is there an existing pre-formed letter
for this purpose or should I author my own? Have there been other
attempts to solicit academic research by other Wikipedians? To what
degree of success?

Kent Wang

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from_name: John C. Penta

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Total failure of mediation process"

body: Jesus Christ...Both of you, go elsewhere and argue? PLEASE?


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Battening the hatches

body:
I'm setting up iptables filtering on the new machines to keep prying
eyes outside of local services. I've noticed a couple oddities:

Lots of mysterious UDP broadcasts from 66.230.233.252. This subnet is
listed on several spam blacklists; I've just dropped all connections
from that IP to keep it out of the logs.

Every 5 seconds there's a UDP broadcast to port 712 from 66.230.230.50
and 207.142.136.94. This port is apparently for "Topology Broadcast
Based on Reverse-Path Forwarding (TBRPF)"...? I've set it to drop and
ignore these.

I also saw an ICMP type 10 ("Router solicitation message"?) or two from
10.135.1.2, which is on the reserved 10/8 network. Either they're using
the reserved network for some sort of internal routing at this place,
or somebody's spoofing. I don't really like the idea of spoofing, since
some of our internal services are authenticated partially or wholly by
IP (such as memcached) and it'd be nice to be sure that something
claiming to be in our subnet really is.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gutza

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>How about a simple formula, based on what percentage of a user's edits
>are reverted by other users? (We might tweak this by discounting reverts
>from a certain class of user.)
>
>

I like this idea. That is, as long as
(1) Nothing happens automatically due to these metrics (e.g. you fall
under a threshold, you get kicked)
(2) They are explicitly marked as what they are and no POV goes into the
explanations (e.g. calling a user's contributions/user's reverts ratio
his "WikiIQ", or explaining along with the proper rev/conv ratio that
it's recommended you stay below 0.1, or else).

I agree because I feel it would match the spirit of the Wikipedia: it's
just numbers, and they're true. If you want to interpret them in any
way, you're free to. But nobody's shoving these metrics anywhere.

I feel that opposing such metrics is somewhat like opposing the abortion
article -- the stuff is already there, we're just showing it. Yes, some
losers will definitely try to influence the results, but trying it out
would bring information on how to counter such attempts. And there are
plenty of statistical ways to deal with such issues. Not to mention the
opposite effect: I'm sure some will find improving their metrics a good
enough incentive to contribute considerably more, both in quantity and
in quality. (I know, it sounds ridiculous, but remember there's a whole
army of paying MMORPG players out there with metrics being almost the
sole incentive.)

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether the servers will be able to
crunch the numbers real-time.

--Gutza


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

body:
On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 10:38:00 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> So, I think that's what we should do.

When will the replacement controller arrive? If it's adding a day or so
delay it's propably not worth to bother setting up the soft raid now.
Should be possible to get one overnight really- i can send stuff from
Germany to any place in the US overnight, likely to work inside the US
as well.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Anthere a ?crit:
> Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
> between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
> I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
> december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.

Actually, I wrote this message initially to ask if some people could
have a look at the issue generating the conflict, but saw no effect
whatsoever.
I also listed it on [[request for comment]], where it had no result either.

Sort of an experiment. Which lend me to think the step 2 of
Wikipedia:Conflict resolution is not very likely to lead to success.

I also think that involving other people in troubled waters, is perhaps
asking for more troubles than not.

Perhaps, rather than public calling for help (at the risk of attracting
people willing to bring trouble), discreetly asking for help to specific
people (known for their ability to handle conflict for example)  is more
likely to be beneficial.

In short, I am not convinced by step 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_comment

Can the one who suggested it give his opinion perhaps ?

------

Incidentally, I suggested to the disputants to agree upon a temporary
version for the blocked page. I thought agreeing on this single point,
could be a first step to a more global agreement on the other points.

I am glad to say 172 agreed to Adam Carr version for a temporary one.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Servers raided!

body:
Perhaps that's why I keep getting SQUID error messages when accessing
en.wikipedia.org...

Magnus

Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Hey, did you know there was a RAID at Wikipedia HQ? It was a real
> set-up. Jimbo was caught red-handed with all the servers...
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Peter Bartlett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
Optim wrote:
>Summary: Current RfA ineffective.

Who is an admin and shouldn't be?
Who isn't an admin, wants to be and should be?

Let's get on with writing articles.

Pete/Pcb21


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
Optim said:
> Summary: Current RfA ineffective. Proposed...

Your system sounds like it will produce a lot of extra work not directly
related to adding content to articles. It could arguably be labelled as
adding extra layers of bureaucracy. And I'm really not sure that if this
system were implemented that some goodness rating being produced by an
algorithm would be more useful than the present system of 10-15 people
skimming through the nominee's contributions and using their eyes/brain to
form an opinion.

I don't think that there's much wrong with RfA and I agree with Fred that
there's too much of a conception that being a sysop is a Big Deal.

In one of the cases you mention, of user Metasquares being nominated after
less than 100 edits, people have roundly rejected the nomination by c-prompt
even though c-prompt knows the guy in the real world and vouches that he's
trustworthy. Personally I'm all for trusting c-prompt, what happened to good
faith in people and our motto of being bold? If in the (unlikely) event that
things go wrong then so be it, it's not like things haven't gone wrong
before.

Just my thoughts,

Andrew (Ams80)


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I propose a formula based on reverts

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>How about a simple formula, based on what percentage of a user's edits
>are reverted by other users? (We might tweak this by discounting reverts
>from a certain class of user.)

I think Ed's proposal is the germ of an idea with merit, but it needs
further refinement. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here. Maybe
we could look at Kuro5hin's system for ranking articles and see if it
could be adapted. Other models worth considering include:
Epinions.com's Web of Trust; eBay's ratings system; Slashdot.org's
Meta Moderation system. Here are a couple of URLs to articles that
discuss "reputation management" on the Internet:

http://www.shorewalker.com/pages/reputation_manager-1.html

http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/cat_the_evolution_of_reputation.html
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:

>Sorry to say this,
>
>but the RfA proposal as well as your proposal last week (about user
>names) all sound the same for me: we are big, so we need more
>bureaucracy. One of the unique selling points of wikipedia -- so to say
>-- is in my eyes that wikipedia works as a fairly big community with a
>fairly low amount of rules, bureaucratics, politics and organisational
>overhead. Why change this more or less anarchy united with more or less
>the same goal as long as it isn't necessary? And wouldn't it be better
>to introduce rules, scores and regulation at the moment they become
>necessary, but not early, creating something like self-fulfing
>prophecies? If you treat wikipedia as a bureaucratic organisation, it
>will start to become one.
>
No need to be sorry, I agree   A lot of the rule making that goes on is
based on trying to anticipate problems that may never happen.  Then
despite the fact that these problems never happen we are stuck with a
lot of rules that some feel should be applied at all times.  Some people
feel very secure when there are a lot of rules; it saves them from the
responsibility of using common sense.  Sometimes I feel that our most
valuable rule is, "Ignore all rules."

Ec


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Sorry to say this,

but the RfA proposal as well as your proposal last week (about user
names) all sound the same for me: we are big, so we need more
bureaucracy. One of the unique selling points of wikipedia -- so to say
-- is in my eyes that wikipedia works as a fairly big community with a
fairly low amount of rules, bureaucratics, politics and organisational
overhead. Why change this more or less anarchy united with more or less
the same goal as long as it isn't necessary? And wouldn't it be better
to introduce rules, scores and regulation at the moment they become
necessary, but not early, creating something like self-fulfing
prophecies? If you treat wikipedia as a bureaucratic organisation, it
will start to become one.

Regards,

Till
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] unilateral bans of controversial users

body:
In the past few days, we've had three unilateral bans of controversial
users:
  *  Lir by Hephaestos -- twice, unblocked by Tim Starling once and
Angela once
  * Wik by Hephaestos -- once so far, unblocked by me just now
  * Anthony Del Pierro by Eloquence -- twice, unblocked by me once and
by Eloquence once

I was under the impression that when the new ban functionality for
logged-in users was implemented, sysops were explicitly forbidden for
making use of it except in three cases:
 * Users Jimbo has personally said should be banned
 * Reincarnations of such users
 * Users who have no edit history except for pure vandalism

A possible fourth that has proved controversial but generally at least
tolerated is "emergency" temporary bans to stop damaging vandalism
streaks by other users (e.g. making tons of edits or moving pages around
or deleting images).

Recently, Jimbo has indicated that he wishes to stop making the banning
decisions unilaterally, and so has constituted an "arbitration
committee" to take over the responsibility of doing so when necessary.
However, I do not recall at any time there being a green light given to
all 150-something sysops at large (nor the members of the arbitration
committee, acting individually) to use their individual discretion in
banning logged-in users, but this seems to be what's happening, and not
by recently-elevated sysops either.

So I suppose my main purpose in this email is that I'd like to request
that the original guidelines be forcefully restated and that this stop
happening.  We can't have controversial users being banned without any
sort of process at all, at the sole whim of any of the 150-plus sysops,
and I'd rather this not generate into a reversion war of sorts where
some sysops ban users and others immediately unban them (and the
original sysops reban them, and so on...).

-Mark