from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] MySQL

body:
I have recently started with an advanced MySQL book, and though I'm far
from through with it (still missing replication, among others), it got
me thinking on how to improve our DB server setup. I have some ideas
that I would like to share with you. Note that I didn't run any tests to
prove they're wise ;-)

It might be of use to add a single harddrive to each DB slaves, and use
it exclusively for temporary tables. That way, I/O won't have to wait
for other things, and many queries that don't use temporary tables will
run faster. Some (used) IDE drive might do.

 From what I can see on meta, at least bacon has a RAID that can be
fitted with a battery. This will not only improve data safety, it will
also speed up writes, as a disk write can already be handeled as written
even if it only in the RAID write cache.

After a quick look at the indices (indexes?) on the MySQL tables, these
seem fine, although there are quite a lot of them. Once the new database
schema is in place, we might want to look into index usage again. If we
could rewrite some queries, we might be able to get rid of one or the
other index, which will not only save disk space, but RAM as well,
reducing the chances of Linux swapping indexes to the disk.

Also, we currently leave the choice which index to use entirely up to
MySQL, as far as I can tell. Enforcing the use of one index, depending
on the query of course, might prevent strange side effects if MySQL
choses to use the wrong index which would result in a slow query.

I take it that we have a slow query log. Do we also have a "slow page"
log from within MediaWiki? That might give us more insight into what
pages really s**k performance-wise.

There's more, but I'll stop for now. If I'm talking BS here, just tell
me ;-)

Magnus


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia France

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Possibly netherlands, or belgium, or italy ?
>
> Where do more contributors live apart from germany and france, in europe
> I'd say England (in geographical Europs)
>
> Ant

I am not sure of it is usefull for small countries to create there own
wikimedia foundation.

To create and maintain a foundation you need people, money and
knowledge. That is a burden for small communities.

Walter Vermeir

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia France


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: ilooy

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Has someone done a presentation on Wikipedia to a
	large group?

body:
Hi fellow Wikipedians,

I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for
the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT
Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks
and was wondering if anyone else has done
a presentation to a large group... what features
would be good to highlight... and what seems
to work well with a group that has not heard
much about the project yet.

If you have some ideas as to what might
be good points to bring out please let me
know. I appreciate any insights you may
offer on this subject.

with sincere regards,
Jay B.
[[w:en:User:ILVI]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Presentation on Wikipedia and the Foundation

body:
Hi,
I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia and would
like to say a few things about it's beginnings and
its workings. How it is maintained and how the
foundation was set up.

Would someone have ideas as to what could
be good talking points to bring out concerning
the Wikimedia foundation and what kind of
pitch to throw in for support?

Any help with this subject would be appreciated.

With regards,
Jay B.

[[User:ILVI]]


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Conference presentation and setting up a local wiki

body:
Can I come back to you Real Soon Now on this? (ie. at a SIGNIFICANTLY
later date)
I've not really got the time at present to delve back into my MediaWiki
install and was thinking of getting back to it only when 1.4 is out --
HOWEVER: I too have a MAJOR interest in getting this to run properly
and securely on Mac OS X and *BSD (I think my host uses FreeBSD).

I'll save this email outside of my regular queue/archive and I'll try
get back to you if that's ok.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 25 Oct 2004, at 19:27, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Oct 25, 2004, at 9:26 AM, Jens Ropers wrote:
>> I've personally installed MediaWiki on Mac OS X and it can be got to
>> run with quite moderate effort and even with a limited skillset (such
>> as mine). There is a decent walkthrough at:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Running_MediaWiki_on_Mac_OS_X .
>> However: I am not so sure how complete it is in terms of the
>> "securing Apache" section -- I personally haven't yet figured that
>> one out. So you want some old pro to check things in terms of
>> security. (That actually goes for installs on all OSes.) Neither have
>> I gotten URL rewriting to work. So Mac OS X is not perfect either.
>
> In what way does it not work?
>
> (I do most of my MediaWiki development on Mac OS X, so I have some
> interest in it working smoothly. ;)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Countering the "Just as bad" tactic

body:
Sj wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 09:28:26 -0400, Poor, Edmund W
> <edmund.w.poor at abc.com> wrote:

>>I would like the arbcom to apply swift and short bans. Or change the
>>system so that any admin can apply a ban of up to 7 days, subject to
>>arbcom review.

> I just want to second the first sentence here.  The social feedback
> resulting from frequent, reliably swift, and relatively temporary
> judgments, is greatly needed.

Yep. Attitude readjustment is created with *reliable* sanction, not
necessarily *strong* sanction.

> Danny suggested the other night that the AC be encouraged to
> produce some sort of initial response/ruling within a short period
> of time, allowing for more detailed arbitration after a few months
> of deliberation if necessary.  This might be one way to strengthen
> the AC--community feedback loop.

Definitely.

- d.


from_name: NSK

subject: [WikiEN-l] Viewing deleted pages

body:
On Monday 25 October 2004 22:46, Mark Richards wrote:
> Can someone explain why giving access to deleted

In my understanding if you receive a DMCA takedown notice you need to disable
access to the infringing material. If you "delete" the page but users can
still see it, then you haven't properly disabled access. So, even if you
implement this feature, you need to be able to "flag" some pages for
complete/proper deletion. Of course you can always manually manipulate the
database.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
In a message dated 10/25/2004 9:51:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
andrew.lih at gmail.com writes:
> I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for
> the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT
> Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks
> and was wondering if anyone else has done
> a presentation to a large group...
One thing you might look into discussing a little is the upcoming Wikijunior
project (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior). We could certainly use
help from teachers in getting this moving. Their input would be invaluable, and
it could be a good way to allay any fears they might about online information,
while at the same time getting them involved.

I would be happy to discuss it with your further if you are interested.

Danny


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia France

body:
Hello,

We elected the board of Wikimedia France today.

The board members are
     * Anthere
     * Jeffdelonge
     * Phe
     * Ryo
     * Sam Hocevar
     * Semnoz
     * Shaihulud
     * Soufron
     * Yann

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip??dia:Wikim??dia_France_(CA)

Elections took place in a small room (understand an irc channel) with
representants of three continents to be voting officers : Britty, Tipiac
and SJ. Thanks for them.

I hope non elected participants will join us in the activity. There is
work for everyone.

President, treasurer and secretary will be elected on thursday.

Candidates are

     * Pr?sident
           o Nicolas Weeger (Ryo)
           o Yann
     * Secr?taire
           o Yann
           o Sam Hocevar
           o Soufron
     * Tr?sorier
           o Shai
           o Soufron

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia France


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting history entries

body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 01:56:29 +0300, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> I need this feature in the software: The ability to delete specific History
> versions of an article.
>
> Are you plan implementing it in MW1.4? If not I would welcome if some
> developer would volunteer to make this work for me.

As it happens, this feature has long been requested for the purpose of
excising copyright violations from the database. I searched mediazilla
and turned up http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/507 - which is a rather
lateral-thinking solution, which allows the *undeletion* of specific
revisions (e.g. all except the one you want to permanently delete).
According to the comments there, it's been committed for HEAD (1.4
pre-alpha), and there's a patch to backport to 1.3.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS 1.4 Sysop WITHOUT RIGHTS ????

body:
On Oct 26, 2004, at 12:21 AM, Thomas Gries wrote:
> I work with the recent CVS 1.4 - fresh installation, fresh database -
> but have NO ADMIN rights with the recent CVS version.
>
>   Special Page Admin List shows: (none)
>
> Is it due to the recent introduction of user_rights table ?
> But how to set up the rights and where to find the documentation about
> this new feature ?

Installation isn't yet putting in all the right data for user groups.
To make your user a sysop, do something like this:
INSERT INTO user_groups (ug_user,ug_group) VALUES (1,3);

where you would use the user_id and group_id values for the appropriate
user and group. The default 'Sysops' group presently is id number 3.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Viewing deleted pages

body:
On Monday 25 October 2004 23:17, Mark Richards wrote:
> material that we were not legally required to remove.

I am sorry I sometimes write my responses so quickly that I don't answer
completely.

If you want to maintain the serious aura of an encyclopedia like Encyclopaedia
Britannica you might want to delete articles you consider non-encyclopedic.
However, I would not expect to find [[Slashdot trolling phenomena]] in
Britannica, but this is exactly the reason why I do not read Britannica: It's
too serious and full of general info without much trivia.

If you want to be a knowledge base then you should keep all legal information
that is submitted to you. This is what I do at http://jnana.wikinerds.org

The point is, not all information is legal, so you need to have the ability to
completely delete some articles.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] bug?

body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 01:48:18 +0300, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On this page
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Interwiki_links
>
> I see this text:
> < style="font-size:80%;">< align="right">< title="Help:System admin"> </>>
> Edit system admin toc

I think I've fixed this.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Admin_handbook_sidebar was
using an odd mixture of a table with both HTML attributes and CSS
styles, plus a <div> in the single cell of that table (which includes
a further template). I replaced the whole lot with a <div> using only
CSS styles, and the problem went away.

For some reason, however,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Interwiki_links didn't reflect my
removal of <div align="right"> from the final nested template until I
used &action=purge. I guess a template-change invalidating a template
doesn't then invalidate pages using that template. Erk. (This is
probably a known bug, but I'm too tired to search now)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Drive-by deletion

body:
Then that's wrong, obviously. I don't really understand what point
you're trying to make here.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Mark Richards wrote:

>Perhaps it would help if someone deleted the
>blueprint?  Or, after everyone had agreed to use
>bricks, someone started pulling them out, because a
>small group of builders decided that, although bricks
>were on the blueprint, they would rather not have
>them.
>Mark
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Viewing deleted pages

body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 00:42, Mark Richards wrote:
> My question is: Information that is blanked is still
> not visible to the reader unless they choose to see
> the history page. What is the advantage in not making
> the history page of deleted articles available to
> anyone who wants to see it, so long as there is no
> legal reason why we cannot display it?

Ok now I see your point:) I think that your idea of blanking instead of
deleting is very good and should be implemented. Great suggestion.

Will it be visible to search engines?

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Integration of Multimedia Editing in MediaWiki

body:
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:27:31 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> This has certainly been discussed before; it is a much-needed
> extension of the wiki concept beyond the realm of text.  One might
> start by incorporating simple image-editing, before moving on to
> video, but to each his own.

Of course, the problem is, how do you "diff" a single-frame
(bitmapped, binary, probably compressed) image? At least with video
you can abstract to the set-of-frames level (given the ability to
uncompress things first), and treat the frames like you'd treat words
in a "normal" diff. I guess SVGs are pretty diff-able: not only do
they consist of vectors, but they're conveniently described with text;
so all you need is some way of visualising the resultant diff...

> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 20:18:07 -0500, Andrew Davis
> <andrewdavis at nicetry.net> wrote:
> > I realize that average internet access speeds are not up to the task of
> > transferring such large files at this time, and I also realize that
> > coding such a system could take quite a long time, but perhaps the
> > system could be finished and integrated into MediaWiki by the time such
> > transfer speeds are commonly available.
>
> I like this kind of long-term planning  :-)  A modification that makes
> it easy to associate an item in the Mediawiki db with a browser plugin
> that launches when it is 'edited', rather than the textarea used for
> text, might be a start [...]

It might also be worth looking at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia - it's mainly about how best
to include sounds and videos within Wikimedia projects, and some of it
is about policies and Help: pages which aren't necessarily relevant
here; but it also touches on some of the possible ways in which the
software should be made more "aware" of these media.

Perhaps the upload==Image structure could be completely replaced with
something more thoroughly planned, so that it could eventually provide
a framework for treating these files as "first-class citizens"
complete with history information and a built-in "knowledge" of "what
they are" (i.e. code that treats sounds different from bitmaps
different from vector images, far beyond just sending an appropriate
MIME-type)...

*/me dreams...*

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Viewing deleted pages

body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 02:23:13 +0200, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski
<fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> When there is no page, I want to see red links, not blue ones, because
> some nonsense that was there was deleted.

Yes. Hence the need for a software feature that allows for "soft
deletion", where any user can see the history of the deleted article;
I don't think anyone is advocating just inserting a blank article in
such cases. As I understand it, admins can already request the history
for a non-existent page, and thus see those revisions that have been
deleted; I'm not entirely sure how that interface works, and how it
interacts with any non-deleted history, but if it works in a fairly
sane way then it could presumably be extended to all logged in users.

On a quick side-note to which, there's probably going to be a more
flexible permissions system in the software soon, so it ought to be
possible to assign this ability to a subset of users distinct from the
subset assigned general "admin" privileges.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikitech-l] bug?

body:
Hi,

On this page

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Interwiki_links

I see this text:

< style="font-size:80%;">< align="right">< title="Help:System admin"> </>>
Edit system admin toc

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Viewing deleted pages

body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 01:08, Mark Richards wrote:
> 'history' versions are not trawled by search

This depends on the Apache web server configuration via the robots.txt file.

I am not sure what rules Wikipedia defines in robots.txt but I think it
doesn't allow search indexing of history pages. However, according to your
proposal, if useful/interesting content is available via history pages then
it will not get indexed if your robots.txt disallows that, so users will be
unable to search for it. I wonder whether there is any way to disallow
indexing only for certain history pages...

In my wikis ( http://jnana.wikinerds.org , http://maatworks.wikinerds.org ,
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org , http://adapedia.wikinerds.org ) I have noticed
that some search engines crawl my edit and history pages but I should change
my robots.txt to disallow that.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting history entries

body:
Hi

I need this feature in the software: The ability to delete specific History
versions of an article.

Are you plan implementing it in MW1.4? If not I would welcome if some
developer would volunteer to make this work for me.

Thanks,

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation

body:
Dear friends,

I have some wikis that will soon host very interesting content, including
scientific topics.

You have an Interwiki map at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map

I propose to have some form of cooperation by allowing our communities to link
to each other via easy interwiki links.

If you like this idea please add my wikis to the Interwiki map and I will
update my own interwiki table to allow interwiki linking to the English
Wikipedia and perhaps other projects of Wikimedia.

These are my wikis that can be added to your Interwiki map:
http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org and
http://jnana.wikinerds.org

In the future Wikinerds.org will host much more wikis on scientific and
educational subjects so I think this kind of cooperation can be beneficial
for both communities.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki Cooperation


from_name: Pawe³ 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Viewing deleted pages

body:
When there is no page, I want to see red links, not blue ones, because
some nonsense that was there was deleted.

--
Ausir
mailto:fallout at lexx.eu.org
http://fallout.scifi.pl
ICQ 41090834 GG 2730728


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting history entries

body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 02:17, Rowan Collins wrote:
> there's a patch to backport to 1.3.

That's great. Does this mean that MW1.3.8 or 1.3.9 will have this feature? Or
will I need to port it manually?

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


from_name: Sj

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Despite growing pains,
	users hope for dominance of Wiktionary, Mediawiki

body:
Yesterday, the O'Reilly Network's Scott Hacker addressed the end-user
experience of setting up and customizing a wiki (with some eloquent
commentary by visitors at the end) :
_Where's the Movable Type of the Wiki World?_    (
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/5794 )

Hacker suggests the Wiki world needs its own elegant, soup-to-nuts
wikiproject, comparing the chaos of wiki communities and documentation
to that of the blogging world pre-Movable Type.  He shopped around for
a wiki to use for an educational project (which was inspired by
WikiPedia, retro camel caps and all), and finally settled on MediaWiki
as the best choice.  Unfortunately, its "scattered and obtuse"
documentation, "stupidly difficult" customizations, and lack of an
off-wiki user manual,  left him cold.  He notes he'd be willing to pay
 on the order of $100 for an actively developed, well-supported
solution.

---

U.Penn student Swarat Chaudhury, writing for India's venerable paper /
The Statesman / , was more openly optimistic:
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=24&theme=&usrsess=1&id=58137

"Wikipedia has spawned a sister project called Wiktionary
(http://www.wiktionary. org), a collaborative multilingual dictionary
with pronunciations, etymology and quotations. The grand ambition of
these projects is nothing short of letting the demos beat the experts
at their own game... Personally, I still rely on the OED most of the
time, but I also look forward to a day when Wiktionary beats it hands
down."

+sj+


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Drive-by deletion

body:
A non-exhaustive list does not imply that the absence of a concept means
its automatic inclusion.  I agree that assuming that a contentious item
is included by its absence is indeed revisionism.  Omissions from a
non-exhaustive list should be treated conservatively.  If additonal
reasons are assumed they must not be so wide ranging as to make the
original list pointless.  If the guidelines "say nothing about taking
into account invalid reasons", then we don't take them into account;
they simply remain invalid and the VfD proposal is simply void.  I also
agree with you that adding a provision similar to the one found in the
blocking policy would go a long way toward clarifying the problem.

Ec

Phil Sandifer wrote:

> No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on
> any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant
> to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually
> says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The
> deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for
> administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons
> for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons for
> listing.
>
> You are citing policy that does not exist.
>
> If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to
> engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
>
> But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
>
> -Snowspinner
> On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
>
>> Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for
>> deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy me,
>> or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to gain
>> consenus for it.
>> Mark
>>
>> --- Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>> No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing makes
>>> NO CLAIMS to be a
>>> "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list you
>>> cite is a single
>>> entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about
>>> which page to send
>>> things to. It is less a list of critieria for
>>> deletion on VfD and more
>>> a list of things that are not speedy deletion
>>> criteria, and it's
>>> absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort of
>>> declaration of the
>>> only reasons one can delete an article.
>>>
>>> -Snowspinner
>>>
>>> On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is lunacy. You are arguing that, althoughthere
>>>
>>>> is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and
>>>> 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added toit
>>>
>>>> because there is no concensus, this does not inany
>>>
>>>> way indicate that non-notablity is not a reasonfor
>>>
>>>> deletion?
>>>> If that's really what you are arguing, then Idon't
>>>
>>>> think there is anything that will convince you,
>>>> because you are clearly not interested incommunity
>>>
>>>> concensus building.
>>>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting history entries

body:
NSK wrote:

>I need this feature in the software: The ability to delete specific History
>versions of an article.
>
>Are you plan implementing it in MW1.4? If not I would welcome if some
>developer would volunteer to make this work for me.
>
Given the repeated disputes over deletion the right to change history
shold be limited to very few people with proven wisdom and maturity.
There are too many gunslinger sysops in whose hands this tool would not
be appropriate.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikijunior - Wikispecies, Mk 2?

body:
Rebecca wrote:

>The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
>accepted to found a Wikijunior project. Now, while I can understand
>that it wasn't entirely initiated by the board, being approached by an
>outside foundation at all, it seems that once again, it's been decided
>at a board-level, and there's going to be no discussion in the
>community as to whether we actually should have a Wikijunior project
>at all. If I remember correctly, this has been discussed many times
>before - and has not generally received a good response. Yet now I
>hear that it's going ahead anyway.
>
>
It does seem like a waste of valuable resources.

Ec


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] More anti-US bias in Current Events

body:
Today, the main page's current event box had this for its lead story:

> Nearly 380 tons of explosives are missing from an Iraqi site
> meant for Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear program but never
> secured by the U.S. military.

It took me less than 5 minutes of googling to find the opposite POV:

> An NBC News crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the
> Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the
> liberation of Iraq. According to NBC News, the HMX and RDX
> explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

So it is not accurate to assert that the explosives were "never
secured", as the US Democratic Party and its liberal media allies
complained.

Rather, the article should say that:

* US Democrats blamed the army for "not securing" the explosives

AND THAT:

* An NBC News report says that the explosives were already missing when
the American troops arrived.

It's very cumbersome to fix Wikipedia's front page, so Raul or whoever
maintains it, please fix this error.

Ed Poor


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation

body:
This is starting to look a little like spam.
Ec

NSK wrote:

>Dear friends,
>
>I have some wikis that will soon host very interesting content, including
>scientific topics.
>
>You have an Interwiki map at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map
>
>I propose to have some form of cooperation by allowing our communities to link
>to each other via easy interwiki links.
>
>If you like this idea please add my wikis to the Interwiki map and I will
>update my own interwiki table to allow interwiki linking to the English
>Wikipedia and perhaps other projects of Wikimedia.
>
>These are my wikis that can be added to your Interwiki map:
>http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org and
>http://jnana.wikinerds.org
>
>In the future Wikinerds.org will host much more wikis on scientific and
>educational subjects so I think this kind of cooperation can be beneficial
>for both communities.
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Creative Writing

body:
Wikipedia was recently quoted in a New York Times piece, "Buzzing the Web on
a Meme Machine" at

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/arts/26meme.html?th

Here's the quote:

'Wikipedia, the free collaborative online encyclopedia, calls the Internet
"the ultimate meme vector."'

This is from [[Meme#Can memes be resisted?]].

What is of interest here is that this nice piece of writing is most likely
"original research". After all where is the established knowledge which
would back up this rather commonplace but bright turn of phrase?

Thank God, the deleters and reverters haven't gotten around to trashing it
and replacing it with "memes spread rapidly on the internet".

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] SADJ censorship

body:
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Current_events&diff=6874302&o
ldid=6874231 for censorship of my correction to the Iran explosives news
story.

(Okay, it wasn't 10 minutes later, it was 30 minutes later -- but it
still pisses me off.)

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Copyright problems need attention

body:
That was an auto-response from the mailing-list server. I'm not sure
what content type (US-ASCII, Unicode or whatever) your mail program
was sending it didn't like. Hand-forwarded to wikien-l.

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Adair <swadair at computermail.net>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:17:02 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Copyright problems need attention
To: wikien-l-owner at wikipedia.org

Thank you for the quick response, but I don't understand it.  What do
you mean when you say that

the "content type was not explicitly allowed ?"  Thank you.

Stephen W. Adair

--- wikien-l-owner at Wikipedia.org wrote:

From: wikien-l-owner at Wikipedia.org
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 03:00:54 +0000
To: swadair at computermail.net
Subject: Copyright problems need attention

The message's content type was not explicitly allowed

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Adair <SWAdair at computermail.net>
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 20:00:51 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Copyright problems need attention

Calling all admins!  :-)  There is an area that could use a little
more attention to clean up the

backlog.  On 13 OCT 04 I had marked [[Open University Malaysia]] as
copyvio.  Tonight I found a

message waiting on me, asking if the re-written version could be made
the official version, as it had

been over a week.  I checked, and sure enough, there are a lot of
items over 7 days waiting to be

cleared from [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].  If each admin reading
this takes care of only one

item, the backlog will be clear in no time.  Thank you for your
consideration (and help, hopefully).

Stephen W. Adair (User:SWAdair)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikijunior - Wikispecies, Mk 2?

body:
I would like to perhaps make a comment on it, which I hope you will not
find rude.

One of the mission of the board is to find money. This money is not
meant to party, it is meant to make the project work and proceed.

One of the way we can do this is by going for grants.

As such, some dedicated users who care for the project and want it to go
forward (in this case Danny, who is NOT a member of the board) are using
their free time and energy to ask for grants.

Some foundation offered us money to us, for a project that many editors
found great. So, we accepted.

Danny wrote a proposal here : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior
And invited people to register. And several people already gave their
support. As far as I can see, no one opposed. I do not even see your
opposition.

You are most welcome to discuss the issue over there.

Rebecca a ?crit:
> The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
> accepted to found a Wikijunior project. Now, while I can understand
> that it wasn't entirely initiated by the board, being approached by an
> outside foundation at all, it seems that once again, it's been decided
> at a board-level, and there's going to be no discussion in the
> community as to whether we actually should have a Wikijunior project
> at all. If I remember correctly, this has been discussed many times
> before - and has not generally received a good response. Yet now I
> hear that it's going ahead anyway.
>
> I just hope that this isn't going to be a repeat of the Wikispecies
> saga. If we are going to fork the project,  it is not that hard to
> throw together a proposal, ala Wikinews - or at least publicly discuss
> the darn thing first.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior

> -- ambi


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Ed,

I wish you'd stop referring to real or percieved liberal bias as anti-US
bias, it only makes matters worse. You don't have to be anti-US to be
against Bush's little Iraq escapade.


body:
Good work, Ed, but we can't run ahead of the news media without a
professional like you on the case. CNN has picked up your point now so it
can go in Wikipedia. As a derivative site, we're going to get fooled with
the rest of em until we begin to do research.

Fred

> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 05:42:43 -0700
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] More anti-US bias in Current Events
>
>
> Today, the main page's current event box had this for its lead story:
>
>> Nearly 380 tons of explosives are missing from an Iraqi site
>> meant for Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear program but never
>> secured by the U.S. military.
>
> It took me less than 5 minutes of googling to find the opposite POV:
>
>> An NBC News crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the
>> Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the
>> liberation of Iraq. According to NBC News, the HMX and RDX
>> explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.
>
> So it is not accurate to assert that the explosives were "never
> secured", as the US Democratic Party and its liberal media allies
> complained.
>
> Rather, the article should say that:
>
> * US Democrats blamed the army for "not securing" the explosives
>
> AND THAT:
>
> * An NBC News report says that the explosives were already missing when
> the American troops arrived.
>
> It's very cumbersome to fix Wikipedia's front page, so Raul or whoever
> maintains it, please fix this error.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship of Current Events

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> To make it worse, 10 minutes after I corrected the liberal bias in the

Quite frankly, your edit referring to "The New York Times and other
liberal media" was more biased than the original entry, which at least
reflected what was being widely reported elsewhere, so forgive me if I
don't feel too much sympathy.

> Missing Explosives story some anonymous IP user deleted the entire day
> -- wiping out 1/2 hour of my work.

This is simple vandalism from some random anon user, and there is no
evidence whatsoever of any particular motive behind it; they appear to
have just hit the "edit" link by the October 25 header and overwritten
the content with gibberish. This happens all the time on Wikipedia on
many articles, and it could have been reverted in less time than it took
you to write indignant complaints about it.

> How can we be accurate or neutral, with this sort of thing going on?

WHAT sort of thing? We have random vandals all the time on Wikipedia,
have since the site launched. I don't understand why you're making such
a big deal out of it. Shit happens, it gets reverted.

> I think the news sidebar needs a manager, just like our Featured Article
> sidebar has a manager.

This isn't a bad idea, though perhaps more than one manager, due to the
higher volume and 24-hour nature.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship of Current Events

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

> This is simple vandalism from some random anon user, and there is no

THIS, on the other hand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Current_events&diff=0&oldid=6874941

was clearly not random (I've already reverted it).


subject: [WikiEN-l] NY Times partisan advocacy on Missing Explosives in Iraq

body:
A recent NY Times article which "broke" the story about Missing
Explosives in Iraq reads more like an editorial than straight news.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html

* The article conceals the Pentagon statement that "no explosives had
been found in QaQaa.

* The article questions whether Bush had been informed, but ignores an
Associated Press report quoting  White House press secretary Scott
McClellan as saying that Rice DID inform Bush.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAQ_TIMELINE?SITE
=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

I think we should downgrade our estimation of the NY Times. They are not
an objective news source: they mix straight reporting with
editorializing.

Or, if Wikipedia cannot "endorse or condemn" anyone or anything, then at
least we should prominently document the fact that the NY Times article
omitted these 2 crucial pieces of news information.

We don't want to let Wikipedia be used to manufacture an October
surprise, do we?

Ed Poor  <- trying hard to be non-partisan when writing articles


subject: [Wikitech-l] is this a bug?

body:
In http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning

I Cannot use:
*list item 1
*list item 2

I also cannot use:
LINK

For the bullets, I need to use

list item 1

list item
2

for the links, I need to have [http://target.tld LINK].

is this the correct behaviour? It's MediaWiki 1.3.7

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki Cooperation

body:
Dear friends,

I have some wikis that will soon host very interesting content, including
scientific topics.

You have an Interwiki map at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map

I propose to have some form of cooperation by allowing our communities to
 link to each other via easy interwiki links.

If you like this idea please add my wikis to the Interwiki map and I will
update my own interwiki table to allow interwiki linking to the English
Wikipedia and perhaps other projects of Wikimedia.

These are my wikis that can be added to your Interwiki map:
http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org and
http://jnana.wikinerds.org

In the future Wikinerds.org will host much more wikis on scientific and
educational subjects so I think this kind of cooperation can be beneficial
for both communities.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent changes vs. What's New

body:
Hi,

Have a look at my wikis where I changed "Recent changes" to "What's New":
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org or http://jnana.wikinerds.org

I suppose that Wikipedia should do the same because most web surfers are
familiar with the "What's New" link but they may not clearly understand what
"Recent changes" is about.

Also, I think that the "Community portal" link could be just "Community".
Shorter, simpler and less clutter.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


from_name: Rebecca

body:
The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
accepted to found a Wikijunior project. Now, while I can understand
that it wasn't entirely initiated by the board, being approached by an
outside foundation at all, it seems that once again, it's been decided
at a board-level, and there's going to be no discussion in the
community as to whether we actually should have a Wikijunior project
at all. If I remember correctly, this has been discussed many times
before - and has not generally received a good response. Yet now I
hear that it's going ahead anyway.

I just hope that this isn't going to be a repeat of the Wikispecies
saga. If we are going to fork the project,  it is not that hard to
throw together a proposal, ala Wikinews - or at least publicly discuss
the darn thing first.

-- ambi


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 02:09, Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:27:31 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This has certainly been discussed before; it is a much-needed
> > extension of the wiki concept beyond the realm of text.  One might
> > start by incorporating simple image-editing, before moving on to
> > video, but to each his own.
>
> Of course, the problem is, how do you "diff" a single-frame
> (bitmapped, binary, probably compressed) image? At least with video

Two frames animgif, one frame for each version.


from_name: Thomas Gries

body:
I work with the recent CVS 1.4 - fresh installation, fresh database - but have NO ADMIN rights with the recent CVS version.

   Special Page Admin List shows: (none)

Is it due to the recent introduction of user_rights table ?
But how to set up the rights and where to find the documentation about this new feature ?

Who can assist ?


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't care
about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care about
a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon
characters, I don't care about Indian villages.
Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out. Obscure
varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong companies
are out.

The question is not 'are people within their "rights"'
to delete things that don't interest them, but does it
serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope
encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because
(mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.

That's what really bothers me.

Mark

--- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:

> I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted
> [[What Wikipedia is
> not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by
> any means.
>
> In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to
> delete schools, there
> is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who
> are listing them
> are acting within their rights, because schools
> aren't covered by any
> policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis.
> Democracy is always
> unfair to someone, but if there was a real
> miscarriage of justice, how
> come much of the community doesn't care we're
> deleting oh so important
> articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high
> schools? (Of course,
> there's the issue of whether there was true
> consensus; in quite a few,
> there hasn't been any.)
>
> It so happens that most people on VFD are
> deletionists. Inclusionists
> argue this is unfair as important articles are
> unfairly deleted.
> However, this calls to mind a recent post to this
> list by, if I'm not
> mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong
> neutral" on these; they
> don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am
> of the same opinion.
> If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd
> either pack up and
> leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt
> their existence) or
> complain. So far the only people complaining are
> those from the extreme
> inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community
> couldn't care less
> about the fate of school articles. Delete all
> articles with the word
> "green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly
> be livid. Delete all
> school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean,
> would you delete an
> article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep
> schools?). Delete an
> article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most
> wouldn't and don't care.
>
> The community is fine with the current practice,
> whether it's in line
> with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist
> to serve the
> community. They are the means to an end. Not an end
> in themselves.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
> > I am not sure how to respond to this, beyond to
> note that you seem to
> > be demonstrating comparable skill in reading my
> posts that you are in
> > reading the deletion policy.
> >
> > -Snowspinner
> >
> > On Oct 25, 2004, at 7:08 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
> >
> >> This is just pants.
> >> It is clear that these are the reason for
> deletion,
> >> not just some 'ideas to use as a springboard for
> your
> >> deletion antics'.
> >> Mark
> >>
> >> --- Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> No. It is a list of "Problems that may require
> >>> deletion." Nowhere on
> >>> any deletion policy page, however, does it say
> that
> >>> the list is meant
> >>> to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking
> policy,
> >>> which actually
> >>> says "Blocking should not be used in any other
> >>> circumstances." The
> >>> deletion policy does not say that. The deletion
> >>> guidelines for
> >>> administrators say nothing about taking into
> account
> >>> invalid reasons
> >>> for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing
> about
> >>> invalid reasons for
> >>> listing.
> >>>
> >>> You are citing policy that does not exist.
> >>>
> >>> If you want to change the rules, more power to
> you.
> >>> If you want to
> >>> engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for
> it.
> >>>
> >>> But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
> >>>
> >>> -Snowspinner
> >>> On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards
> wrote:
> >>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship of Current Events

body:
To make it worse, 10 minutes after I corrected the liberal bias in the
Missing Explosives story some anonymous IP user deleted the entire day
-- wiping out 1/2 hour of my work.

How can we be accurate or neutral, with this sort of thing going on?
When I've brought this up previously, people ask me to provide examples.
I have. Today I've done so again.

These are not isolated examples. And now on MediaWiki I find that
someone wants to create news articles which CANNOT EVER BE EDITED AGAIN.
Well, that would be nice if they are vetted for accuracy and neutrality
first.

We cannot side with the Kerry campaign and refer to the explosives as
having "not been secured or guarded" properly. That's merely their
CLAIM. Two other sources (one media, one military) say that NOBODY ever
saw any such explosives other than UN inspectors BEFORE the invasion.

I hate to sound shrill, but this sort of bias is endemic -- and I just
don't have the 8 hours a day it would take to counter it by myself.

I think the news sidebar needs a manager, just like our Featured Article
sidebar has a manager.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Angela

body:
Rebecca wrote:
> The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
> accepted to found a Wikijunior project.

The proposal is still under discussion. Whether Wikijunior will be a
separate project has not been decided by the board. The only thing the
board has approved was the proposal that was sent to the Beck
Foundation, and the only commitment mentioned in that was to:

"release a pamphlet of 48 full-color pages (8?" x 11") on a topic
related to animals by December 2005."

This is currently no more than a Wikireader, something that does not
need a project-wide vote in my opinion. There have already been
various print projects not formally approved by the board, and I don't
view Wikijunior _at this stage_ as anything more than that. There is a
possibility it could be more, and that it might end up being a
separate site, but whether than happens ought to be subject to the
same conditions that Wikinews and other proposed projects will be.
Having said that, I'm not sure starting a children's Wikipedia would
be a separate project any more than starting new language Wikipedias
are, and those are decided at the moment by developers, not by the
board. There was certainly no board approval for the recently started
projects in Old English or Gothic.

Angela.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Drive-by deletion

body:
Well, OK, let me clarify. They say nothing about the invalidity of
reasons at all.

-Snowspinner

On Oct 26, 2004, at 7:26 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> A non-exhaustive list does not imply that the absence of a concept
> means its automatic inclusion.  I agree that assuming that a
> contentious item is included by its absence is indeed revisionism.
> Omissions from a non-exhaustive list should be treated conservatively.
>  If additonal reasons are assumed they must not be so wide ranging as
> to make the original list pointless.  If the guidelines "say nothing
> about taking into account invalid reasons", then we don't take them
> into account; they simply remain invalid and the VfD proposal is
> simply void.  I also agree with you that adding a provision similar to
> the one found in the blocking policy would go a long way toward
> clarifying the problem.
>
> Ec
>
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>> No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on
>> any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant
>> to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually
>> says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The
>> deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for
>> administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons
>> for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons
>> for listing.
>>
>> You are citing policy that does not exist.
>>
>> If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to
>> engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
>>
>> But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
>>
>> -Snowspinner
>> On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
>>
>>> Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for
>>> deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy me,
>>> or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to gain
>>> consenus for it.
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> --- Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing makes
>>>> NO CLAIMS to be a
>>>> "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list you
>>>> cite is a single
>>>> entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about
>>>> which page to send
>>>> things to. It is less a list of critieria for
>>>> deletion on VfD and more
>>>> a list of things that are not speedy deletion
>>>> criteria, and it's
>>>> absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort of
>>>> declaration of the
>>>> only reasons one can delete an article.
>>>>
>>>> -Snowspinner
>>>>
>>>> On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This is lunacy. You are arguing that, althoughthere
>>>>
>>>>> is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and
>>>>> 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added toit
>>>>
>>>>> because there is no concensus, this does not inany
>>>>
>>>>> way indicate that non-notablity is not a reasonfor
>>>>
>>>>> deletion?
>>>>> If that's really what you are arguing, then Idon't
>>>>
>>>>> think there is anything that will convince you,
>>>>> because you are clearly not interested incommunity
>>>>
>>>>> concensus building.
>>>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:18:33 -0400, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks....

Some resources you might find helpful:

An outline of the presentation Jimbo and I did in London earlier this
year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/BBC_talk

Notes from a presentation Anthere made (in French):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/table_ronde

Some of Jimbo's slides:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/BBC_talk_slides.

The text of a short presentation written by User:Ppareit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Presentation.

Angela.


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Quoted in New York Times


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] tvl Tuvaluan

body:
As I have added a new language to the list, I do like to notify you
about this.Another user started adding languages so I now have Tuvaluan
as well,

I checked the code with the official ISO 639 list. If someone has
translations, I would be obliged. I have nl en fr

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Despite growing pains,
	users hope for dominance of Wiktionary, Mediawiki

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I'll use this as an opportunity to promote again the help effort on Meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents

While our documentation isn't great yet, I think it is pretty darn good now and
was a bit surprised by the recent article that bashed it. I think the real
issue is that our documentation is

1) kinda hard to find and
2) only hosted on a Wikimedia website (he mentioned that he had to copy and
paste material to the wiki he set-up).

So what we need is for each version of MediaWiki to come with its own version
of the documentation in the help: namespace. Most of these pages would be
static and replaced with a new version the next time that person upgrades. This
would require the creation of a process by which new static versions are
generated from the development version on Meta. But other open source projects
have to deal with that already - why not us?

The only issue I see is licensing since the FDL and GPL and not compatible. But
if the FDL material were already in a MySQL database and downloaded as such,
then I don't see much of an issue.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths
and computing subjects more interesting than real
places. This would be fine if they simply ignored what
they were interested in, but when a minority of people
who are interested in real places start writing
articles, and the majority of geeks insist on deleting
them (while keeping articles about Tolkein places) it
seems destructive. Carrying out this culture war on
vfd is extremely disruptive.
Mark

--- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:

> But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind
> these American geeks
> deleting them. And if you're going to claim that the
> rest of Wikipedia
> are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do
> geeks make up a
> substantial amount in our community? Yes. However,
> the ratio of geeks to
> non-geeks has been going down in the past few years.
>
> While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most
> people would agree that
> our goal of building an encyclopedia is not
> drastically hurt by the
> deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually
> we will be able to
> have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to
> serve our audience,
> which does not appear to mind the lack of school
> articles much, if at
> all. Currently, few people are really worried about
> school articles.
> That may change in the future, but until it does, we
> must work with the
> community, even if you think it's an unreasonable
> one.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
>
> Mark Richards wrote:
>
> >The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't
> care
> >about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care
> about
> >a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon
> >characters, I don't care about Indian villages.
> >Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out.
> Obscure
> >varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong
> companies
> >are out.
> >
> >The question is not 'are people within their
> "rights"'
> >to delete things that don't interest them, but does
> it
> >serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope
> >encyclopedia. We are removing content simply
> because
> >(mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
> >
> >That's what really bothers me.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >--- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted
> >>[[What Wikipedia is
> >>not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by
> >>any means.
> >>
> >>In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to
> >>delete schools, there
> >>is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those
> who
> >>are listing them
> >>are acting within their rights, because schools
> >>aren't covered by any
> >>policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case
> basis.
> >>Democracy is always
> >>unfair to someone, but if there was a real
> >>miscarriage of justice, how
> >>come much of the community doesn't care we're
> >>deleting oh so important
> >>articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high
> >>schools? (Of course,
> >>there's the issue of whether there was true
> >>consensus; in quite a few,
> >>there hasn't been any.)
> >>
> >>It so happens that most people on VFD are
> >>deletionists. Inclusionists
> >>argue this is unfair as important articles are
> >>unfairly deleted.
> >>However, this calls to mind a recent post to this
> >>list by, if I'm not
> >>mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong
> >>neutral" on these; they
> >>don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am
> >>of the same opinion.
> >>If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd
> >>either pack up and
> >>leave (those who have done this are so few, I
> doubt
> >>their existence) or
> >>complain. So far the only people complaining are
> >>those from the extreme
> >>inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the
> community
> >>couldn't care less
> >>about the fate of school articles. Delete all
> >>articles with the word
> >>"green"? If they found out, they'd almost
> certainly
> >>be livid. Delete all
> >>school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean,
> >>would you delete an
> >>article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep
> >>schools?). Delete an
> >>article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most
> >>wouldn't and don't care.
> >>
> >>The community is fine with the current practice,
> >>whether it's in line
> >>with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist
> >>to serve the
> >>community. They are the means to an end. Not an
> end
> >>in themselves.
> >>
> >>John Lee
> >>([[User:Johnleemk]])
> >>
> >>
> >>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Mark Richards wrote:

> encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because
> (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.

*cough* I'm an American techie, and I very much disagree with some of
the stuff that's getting deleted, thank you. I daresay experienced
techies are probably among the least likely people to advocate
deletionism, having an inherent predisposition toward being packrats and
a great appreciation of the fact that modern technology renders concerns
about storage space and related issues largely moot.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
It?s time I step in with some basic thoughts on the grant process in general and Wikijunior in particular.

I want to start by saying that my position with regard to the Wikimedia Foundation is that our objective is to collect and disseminate knowledge in all its forms. This is our goal. The sense of community and camaraderie that derive from this are wonderful, but our goal is to collect and present the sum of human knowledge in a way that is freely accessible to people anywhere, whether in print or online. That is why we have so many different languages and projects. When deciding on new projects, our criteria should be this goal alone: does it assist in the collection and/or dissemination of knowledge to a specific community?

Our grant process, which is still in its infancy, should respond to that. Our purpose is not to bolster some virtual playground, where people can play around with their favorite topics. In fact, this is the basis of the criteria for inclusion: ?Is it encyclopedic?? Our grants should focus not just on getting new servers, but on finding ways to make the Wiki projects accessible and friendly to the most divergent audiences. I think Anthere said it best when she wrote:?It is not a party.? We are committed to the serious work of creating an encyclopedia.

Of course, this is totally in character with what funders are looking for. No one wants to give money so that some random group of people can get together on the Internet. They want to see bang for their buck (pardon the Americanism). They want to see that their money is invested wisely in creating something. Any grant we receive will want to see some outcome. They have a right to demand a product that is created as a result of their funding. If not, they will not give funding.

At this point, perhaps I should clarify regarding a misconception in an earlier post. The NEH grant was not dropped because people opposed it. We simply weren?t ready for it this time around. I hope that next time we will be.

We are now in the process of requesting substantial grant moneys. It is no exaggeration to say that the sums are of the six and seven digit kind. That kind of money will empower us to do quite a lot. However, it also commits us to doing what we promise.

I myself am opposed to open discussion of this process. While this may sound un-wikilike, it is obvious to me that the discussion leading up to grant proposals will be done in a casual, informal style. Things may be said that we do not want the potential grant-givers to hear. If it is open to the kind of public debate that is typical of Wikipedia, we are seriously endangering our chances of receiving those grants.

I also believe that grants should be coordinated. Grants involve making promises (that we can stick to). The grant process is not panhandling. Uncoordinated grant applications could mean that six or seven people approach a certain group (let?s say UNESCO), asking for different things and making different promises. It certainly impinges on our credibility, especially when some of those same groups may well be coming to us at the same time (and yes, we have been approached by some major charitable organizations). At the same time, we do not want to be seen as being in a position of turning down grants and perhaps burning bridges with organizations in whose good graces we will want to be, if only at a later date.

To me, approval of grant requests means board approval. Believe it or not, there are some people who do see a larger picture and know what is going on in various competing spheres. I certainly don?t know everything that is going on, so when I ask for a grant, I turn to them to inform various considerations I might have. That is not hierarchy. That is informed decision-making based on consultation.

Back to Wikijunior. An organization approached us. It is a relationship we would like to foster. The objectives of their request clearly meet our own goal of creating and disseminating knowledge. In fact, it is a wikibook (or series of wikibooks) for a younger audience. I don?t know when that idea was ever rejected, and the fact is that people have shown quite a bit of enthusiasm for the idea. Obviously, it needs some working out still. It is not a fork, just as Wiktionary or Anglo-Saxon are not forks. It will be the same people working on the same material. I also believe that it will benefit our other projects as well, both in terms of information offered and dissemination. If anything, I would hope that people welcome the idea of developing educational materials for younger children, whether they plan to work on them or not.

I am anxious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

Danny


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Mark Richards wrote:

> You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths
> and computing subjects more interesting than real
> places.

I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is making here, and add to
it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online about technical
subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to finding information about
real places that aren't ultra-famous and other non-technical subjects.

If I'm looking for information on a technical subject, I head to google,
and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out to be hard to find (at which
point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any useful information on it, but
sometimes I get lucky).

If I'm looking for information on a country or a person, I go straight
to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me started, at least. If it
had information on every local school in the world, it'd be even more
useful.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Today, the main page's current event box had this for its lead story:
>
>
>
>>Nearly 380 tons of explosives are missing from an Iraqi site
>>meant for Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear program but never
>>secured by the U.S. military.
>>
>>
Well, this story shouldn't have even been there to begin with.  The
point of the Current Events section on the front page is to highlight
quality Wikipedia articles of timely interest, not necessarily to put
the most breaking news of the day.  The article that story linked was
not very good, and at least when I last checked it, there was very
little information on this topic in it---essentially one bullet point in
a timeline repeating that exact sentence.  We should only link articles
on the front page when they've been updated with significant information
on the story, such that a user clicking through actually finds something.

Similarly, there was an item on verdicts in the Pitcairn trial, but the
story it linked to at the time hadn't actually been updated with the
verdicts, and was littered with future tense of "will be decided" and so on.

I think in many cases it's not really people deliberately doing this,
but just not realizing what the main page section is for.  It's *not*
for whatever is the most newsworthy item of the day, but for newsworthy
items *on which we have the best articles*.  I think a good general
guideline is to not add anything to "in the news" unless you've
personally edited the page you're linking to make sure it's up to date
and contains a reasonable amount of relevant information.

-Mark


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
I've done a number of presentations about WP. Depending on whether you
have a 'net connection or not, there are different things to do.

* Screen shots of WP's pages help to illustrate the wiki concept.
Start with a page relevant to your audience and shows off WP's
strengths. (For example, I use [[Octopus card]] for locals here.) Show
the history page, the "Edit this page" button, and what wiki markup
looks like.

* Show WP's growth against WP's competitors, such as Britannica and
Bartleby. The Alexa graph helps illustrate this. See:
http://tinyurl.com/49pyb

With a live Internet connection:

* Find something relevant to create live in front of the audience.
When blogger Dan Gillmor and I were at the civic journalism conference
earlier this year, he talked about Wikipedia on a panel, and I
immediately created the entry for [[Participatory journalism]] right
before the audience.

* Show the #enrc.wikipedia IRC channel, which has a live display of
Recent Changes.

Good luck.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:18:33 -0400, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi fellow Wikipedians,
>
> I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for
> the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT
> Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks
> and was wondering if anyone else has done
> a presentation to a large group... what features
> would be good to highlight... and what seems
> to work well with a group that has not heard
> much about the project yet.
>
> If you have some ideas as to what might
> be good points to bring out please let me
> know. I appreciate any insights you may
> offer on this subject.
>
> with sincere regards,
> Jay B.
> [[w:en:User:ILVI]]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Just a thought... I think setting up an approval voting limit at simple
> majority to conclude a project is supported does not strike me as being
>   a consensual decision.
>
> I think we still need to think better how to start/decide new projects.

Yes, simple majority is *not* an acceptable level of support. We work by
consensus here and thus must develop proposals that a supermajority of people
support. If only a simple majority supports something, then we must go back to
the people who voted against the issue and ask what else needs to be done to
change their minds.

-- mav

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from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
I've got this hunch that a (hypothetical) Wiki-kid-pedia would be of
remarkably high philosophical and scientific quality, whereas a
Teeniepedia would largely consist of "J45ON WINSCOTTLE ISA WANKARRR!!",
"I LuV mArY JaNe." and "BENNIE {heart} SIMONE!!!"
Maybe we should bar participation from anyone between ages 10 and 20?
(I'm joking.)

On 26 Oct 2004, at 10:39, Angela wrote:

> Rebecca wrote:
>> The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
>> accepted to found a Wikijunior project.
>
> The proposal is still under discussion. Whether Wikijunior will be a
> separate project has not been decided by the board. The only thing the
> board has approved was the proposal that was sent to the Beck
> Foundation, and the only commitment mentioned in that was to:
>
> "release a pamphlet of 48 full-color pages (8?" x 11") on a topic
> related to animals by December 2005."
>
> This is currently no more than a Wikireader, something that does not
> need a project-wide vote in my opinion. There have already been
> various print projects not formally approved by the board, and I don't
> view Wikijunior _at this stage_ as anything more than that. There is a
> possibility it could be more, and that it might end up being a
> separate site, but whether than happens ought to be subject to the
> same conditions that Wikinews and other proposed projects will be.
> Having said that, I'm not sure starting a children's Wikipedia would
> be a separate project any more than starting new language Wikipedias
> are, and those are decided at the moment by developers, not by the
> board. There was certainly no board approval for the recently started
> projects in Old English or Gothic.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki licensing (and other NSK replies)

references:
<EPEJIODJLBDLEHGHIEADOEFABEAB.gbildson@limepeer.com>
	<200410230216.07863.nsk2@wikinerds.org>	<clc6rd$ugk$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<200410230310.30530.nsk2@wikinerds.org>  <clco29$qbj$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Sat, 2004-23-10 at 14:53 +1000, Tim Starling wrote:

> I wrote an experimental system for history compression based on
> concatenating and gzipping, last weekend. I might do a diff-based one
> this weekend.

That's a splendid idea. Let me know if there's anything I can do to
help.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou                  .O.
http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/       ..O
evan at bad.dynu.ca                OOO


body:
Wikipedian, s. A subspecies of homo sapiens sapiens. Wikipedians are
indistinguishable from ordinary humans on grounds of their outward
appearance, but they can be easily identified as all Wikipedians will
only ever own a limited set of cutlery in their households. That's
because Wikipedians have a congenital aversion of forks.

On 26 Oct 2004, at 10:39, Angela wrote:

> Rebecca wrote:
>> The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
>> accepted to found a Wikijunior project.
>
> The proposal is still under discussion. Whether Wikijunior will be a
> separate project has not been decided by the board. The only thing the
> board has approved was the proposal that was sent to the Beck
> Foundation, and the only commitment mentioned in that was to:
>
> "release a pamphlet of 48 full-color pages (8?" x 11") on a topic
> related to animals by December 2005."
>
> This is currently no more than a Wikireader, something that does not
> need a project-wide vote in my opinion. There have already been
> various print projects not formally approved by the board, and I don't
> view Wikijunior _at this stage_ as anything more than that. There is a
> possibility it could be more, and that it might end up being a
> separate site, but whether than happens ought to be subject to the
> same conditions that Wikinews and other proposed projects will be.
> Having said that, I'm not sure starting a children's Wikipedia would
> be a separate project any more than starting new language Wikipedias
> are, and those are decided at the moment by developers, not by the
> board. There was certainly no board approval for the recently started
> projects in Old English or Gothic.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Countering the "Just as bad" tactic (was: Objecting to
	hatespeech is grounds forbeing banned?)

body:
The threshold to capture the attention of enough arbitrators to do
anything has been pretty high. There's three or four who do the job,
but how many cases have been sitting open, with half-voted-upon
proposals, for *months* now, because none of the other arbitrators
will stop by and vote/discuss?

It's not fair to those that have to put up with said users - and nor
is it fair to the user with the axe hanging above their head for
months.

Anything to speed this up would be a step in the right direction

-- ambi

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:20:13 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> We can make emergency (temporary) orders, but so far the threshold to
> capture the attention of enough arbitrators to do this has been pretty high.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
> > Reply-To: Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> > <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:34:42 -0400
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Countering the "Just as bad" tactic (was: Objecting to
> > hatespeech is grounds forbeing banned?)
>
>
> >
> > Danny suggested the other night that the AC be encouraged to
> > produce some sort of initial response/ruling within a short period
> > of time, allowing for more detailed arbitration after a few months
> > of deliberation if necessary.  This might be one way to strengthen
> > the AC--community feedback loop.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rick

body:
It is worth noting that, despite requests from four different posters, NSK has still to respond to us with the User ID he/she uses on Wikipedia.  Could it possibly be that NSK does not post at all on Wikipedia and is, in fact, a troll?

RickK

NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
Hi,

Have a look at my wikis where I changed "Recent changes" to "What's New":
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org or http://jnana.wikinerds.org

I suppose that Wikipedia should do the same because most web surfers are
familiar with the "What's New" link but they may not clearly understand what
"Recent changes" is about.

Also, I think that the "Community portal" link could be just "Community".
Shorter, simpler and less clutter.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
_______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Well, the problem is that contributors are writing
articles on schools, and people who are not interested
in them keep deleting them.
Mark

--- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:

> I won't touch the school issue anymore because it's
> so damn
> controversial, but...
>
> I'd like to note that any deficiency in information
> on locations on
> Wikipedia does not stem from most deletionists. Even
> RickK votes to keep
> articles on places, no matter how small in terms of
> area or population.
> Rather, the problem stems from a lack of
> contributors from other countries.
>
> Addressing issues such as deficiencies in several
> non-geek areas is
> beyond the purview of any deletion debate (except,
> maybe on schools).
> It's more of an issue about attracting non-geek
> contributors.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
> > Mark Richards wrote:
> >
> >> You're right, the majority of users find obscure
> maths
> >> and computing subjects more interesting than real
> >> places.
> >
> >
> > I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is
> making here, and add to
> > it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online
> about technical
> > subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to
> finding information
> > about real places that aren't ultra-famous and
> other non-technical
> > subjects.
> >
> > If I'm looking for information on a technical
> subject, I head to
> > google, and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out
> to be hard to find
> > (at which point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any
> useful information
> > on it, but sometimes I get lucky).
> >
> > If I'm looking for information on a country or a
> person, I go straight
> > to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me
> started, at least. If it
> > had information on every local school in the
> world, it'd be even more
> > useful.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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body:
Watch out! They're under your bed too Rick!

--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It is worth noting that, despite requests from four
> different posters, NSK has still to respond to us
> with the User ID he/she uses on Wikipedia.  Could it
> possibly be that NSK does not post at all on
> Wikipedia and is, in fact, a troll?
>
> RickK
>
> NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Have a look at my wikis where I changed "Recent
> changes" to "What's New":
> http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org or
> http://jnana.wikinerds.org
>
> I suppose that Wikipedia should do the same because
> most web surfers are
> familiar with the "What's New" link but they may not
> clearly understand what
> "Recent changes" is about.
>
> Also, I think that the "Community portal" link could
> be just "Community".
> Shorter, simpler and less clutter.
>
> --
> NSK
> Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
> Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
> Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We
> finish.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Has any of the email admins asked Mark Richard to rein in his POV pushing on this issue as was done to me and a couple of others?  If so, could they please re-admonish him?  If not, why has he been left off the list of admonishees?

RickK

Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths
and computing subjects more interesting than real
places. This would be fine if they simply ignored what
they were interested in, but when a minority of people
who are interested in real places start writing
articles, and the majority of geeks insist on deleting
them (while keeping articles about Tolkein places) it
seems destructive. Carrying out this culture war on
vfd is extremely disruptive.
Mark

--- John Lee wrote:

> But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind
> these American geeks
> deleting them. And if you're going to claim that the
> rest of Wikipedia
> are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do
> geeks make up a
> substantial amount in our community? Yes. However,
> the ratio of geeks to
> non-geeks has been going down in the past few years.
>
> While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most
> people would agree that
> our goal of building an encyclopedia is not
> drastically hurt by the
> deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually
> we will be able to
> have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to
> serve our audience,
> which does not appear to mind the lack of school
> articles much, if at
> all. Currently, few people are really worried about
> school articles.
> That may change in the future, but until it does, we
> must work with the
> community, even if you think it's an unreasonable
> one.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
>
> Mark Richards wrote:
>
> >The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't
> care
> >about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care
> about
> >a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon
> >characters, I don't care about Indian villages.
> >Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out.
> Obscure
> >varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong
> companies
> >are out.
> >
> >The question is not 'are people within their
> "rights"'
> >to delete things that don't interest them, but does
> it
> >serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope
> >encyclopedia. We are removing content simply
> because
> >(mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
> >
> >That's what really bothers me.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >--- John Lee wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted
> >>[[What Wikipedia is
> >>not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by
> >>any means.
> >>
> >>In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to
> >>delete schools, there
> >>is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those
> who
> >>are listing them
> >>are acting within their rights, because schools
> >>aren't covered by any
> >>policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case
> basis.
> >>Democracy is always
> >>unfair to someone, but if there was a real
> >>miscarriage of justice, how
> >>come much of the community doesn't care we're
> >>deleting oh so important
> >>articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high
> >>schools? (Of course,
> >>there's the issue of whether there was true
> >>consensus; in quite a few,
> >>there hasn't been any.)
> >>
> >>It so happens that most people on VFD are
> >>deletionists. Inclusionists
> >>argue this is unfair as important articles are
> >>unfairly deleted.
> >>However, this calls to mind a recent post to this
> >>list by, if I'm not
> >>mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong
> >>neutral" on these; they
> >>don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am
> >>of the same opinion.
> >>If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd
> >>either pack up and
> >>leave (those who have done this are so few, I
> doubt
> >>their existence) or
> >>complain. So far the only people complaining are
> >>those from the extreme
> >>inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the
> community
> >>couldn't care less
> >>about the fate of school articles. Delete all
> >>articles with the word
> >>"green"? If they found out, they'd almost
> certainly
> >>be livid. Delete all
> >>school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean,
> >>would you delete an
> >>article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep
> >>schools?). Delete an
> >>article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most
> >>wouldn't and don't care.
> >>
> >>The community is fine with the current practice,
> >>whether it's in line
> >>with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist
> >>to serve the
> >>community. They are the means to an end. Not an
> end
> >>in themselves.
> >>
> >>John Lee
> >>([[User:Johnleemk]])
> >>
> >>
> >>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
??
POV Pushing?
List of adminishees?
Re-admonish him?

Are you off your meds?
Mark

--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Has any of the email admins asked Mark Richard to
> rein in his POV pushing on this issue as was done to
> me and a couple of others?  If so, could they please
> re-admonish him?  If not, why has he been left off
> the list of admonishees?
>
> RickK
>
> Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You're right, the majority of users find obscure
> maths
> and computing subjects more interesting than real
> places. This would be fine if they simply ignored
> what
> they were interested in, but when a minority of
> people
> who are interested in real places start writing
> articles, and the majority of geeks insist on
> deleting
> them (while keeping articles about Tolkein places)
> it
> seems destructive. Carrying out this culture war on
> vfd is extremely disruptive.
> Mark
>
> --- John Lee wrote:
>
> > But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind
> > these American geeks
> > deleting them. And if you're going to claim that
> the
> > rest of Wikipedia
> > are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do
> > geeks make up a
> > substantial amount in our community? Yes. However,
> > the ratio of geeks to
> > non-geeks has been going down in the past few
> years.
> >
> > While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most
> > people would agree that
> > our goal of building an encyclopedia is not
> > drastically hurt by the
> > deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually
> > we will be able to
> > have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to
> > serve our audience,
> > which does not appear to mind the lack of school
> > articles much, if at
> > all. Currently, few people are really worried
> about
> > school articles.
> > That may change in the future, but until it does,
> we
> > must work with the
> > community, even if you think it's an unreasonable
> > one.
> >
> > John Lee
> > ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> >
> >
> > Mark Richards wrote:
> >
> > >The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't
> > care
> > >about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care
> > about
> > >a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon
> > >characters, I don't care about Indian villages.
> > >Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out.
> > Obscure
> > >varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong
> > companies
> > >are out.
> > >
> > >The question is not 'are people within their
> > "rights"'
> > >to delete things that don't interest them, but
> does
> > it
> > >serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope
> > >encyclopedia. We are removing content simply
> > because
> > >(mostly) American techies think it is
> unimportant.
> > >
> > >That's what really bothers me.
> > >
> > >Mark
> > >
> > >--- John Lee wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >>I believe in one of my more recent mails, I
> quoted
> > >>[[What Wikipedia is
> > >>not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list
> by
> > >>any means.
> > >>
> > >>In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus
> to
> > >>delete schools, there
> > >>is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those
> > who
> > >>are listing them
> > >>are acting within their rights, because schools
> > >>aren't covered by any
> > >>policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case
> > basis.
> > >>Democracy is always
> > >>unfair to someone, but if there was a real
> > >>miscarriage of justice, how
> > >>come much of the community doesn't care we're
> > >>deleting oh so important
> > >>articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high
> > >>schools? (Of course,
> > >>there's the issue of whether there was true
> > >>consensus; in quite a few,
> > >>there hasn't been any.)
> > >>
> > >>It so happens that most people on VFD are
> > >>deletionists. Inclusionists
> > >>argue this is unfair as important articles are
> > >>unfairly deleted.
> > >>However, this calls to mind a recent post to
> this
> > >>list by, if I'm not
> > >>mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong
> > >>neutral" on these; they
> > >>don't care whether these articles stay or go. I
> am
> > >>of the same opinion.
> > >>If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd
> > >>either pack up and
> > >>leave (those who have done this are so few, I
> > doubt
> > >>their existence) or
> > >>complain. So far the only people complaining are
> > >>those from the extreme
> > >>inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the
> > community
> > >>couldn't care less
> > >>about the fate of school articles. Delete all
> > >>articles with the word
> > >>"green"? If they found out, they'd almost
> > certainly
> > >>be livid. Delete all
> > >>school articles? Lots probably would care (I
> mean,
> > >>would you delete an
> > >>article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep
> > >>schools?). Delete an
> > >>article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most
> > >>wouldn't and don't care.
> > >>
> > >>The community is fine with the current practice,
> > >>whether it's in line
> > >>with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD
> exist
> > >>to serve the
> > >>community. They are the means to an end. Not an
> > end
> > >>in themselves.
> > >>
> > >>John Lee
> > >>([[User:Johnleemk]])
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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> Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download
> now.
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> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> ---------------------------------
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>
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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Viewing deleted pages

body:
NSK wrote:
> On Tuesday 26 October 2004 01:08, Mark Richards wrote:
>
>>'history' versions are not trawled by search
>
>
> This depends on the Apache web server configuration via the robots.txt file.
>
> I am not sure what rules Wikipedia defines in robots.txt but I think it
> doesn't allow search indexing of history pages. However, according to your
> proposal, if useful/interesting content is available via history pages then
> it will not get indexed if your robots.txt disallows that, so users will be
> unable to search for it. I wonder whether there is any way to disallow
> indexing only for certain history pages...
>
> In my wikis ( http://jnana.wikinerds.org , http://maatworks.wikinerds.org ,
> http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org , http://adapedia.wikinerds.org ) I have noticed
> that some search engines crawl my edit and history pages but I should change
> my robots.txt to disallow that.

No, MediaWiki disallows indexing using meta tags. Both history pages and
old revisions have the following tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />

All search engines that I'm aware of respect these tags. Our robots.txt
just sets some directories to be off limits, and asks certain user
agents to stay away.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More anti-US bias in Current Events

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Today, the main page's current event box had this for its lead story:
>
>>  Nearly 380 tons of explosives are missing from an Iraqi site
>>  meant for Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear program but never
>>  secured by the U.S. military.
>
>It took me less than 5 minutes of googling to find the opposite POV:
>
>>  An NBC News crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the
>  > Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the
>>  liberation of Iraq. According to NBC News, the HMX and RDX
>>  explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.
>
>So it is not accurate to assert that the explosives were "never
>secured", as the US Democratic Party and its liberal media allies
>complained.

It took me less than 5 minutes of Googling to find a number of
distortions in what Ed wrote:

* According to a Fox News (hardly a "liberal media ally" of the
Democratic Party), Al Qaqaa "was placed under U.S. military control
but repeatedly has been looted, raising troubling questions about
whether the missing explosives have fallen into the hands of
insurgents battling coalition forces." Ed is therefore inserting his
own bias when he states that Democrats and the liberal media are
exclusively responsible for making the the claim that the explosives
were never secured. And if the weapons facility has "repeatedly been
looted," this suggests that the security measures put in place after
American troops arrived were not adequate.

* CNN and other media have quoted Mohammed Abbas, Iraq's director of
planning, as saying much the same thing. He stated that the material
disappeared sometime after Saddam's regime fell in April 2003, which
he attributed to "the theft and looting of the governmental
installations due to lack of security." Mohammed Abbas is not a
Democrat or a member of the "liberal media" either. He is a member of
the provisional government installed by the U.S. under the leadership
of George W. Bush.

* Finally, it is rather bizarre to give this thread a title of "More
anti-US bias." Even if Ed were right instead of wrong about this
story all being cooked up by Democrats and their liberal media
lackeys, there's still no evidence of "anti-US bias." Ed seems to
have forgotten that the U.S. Democratic party is based in the United
States and that its members are U.S. citizens. Even if this story
were driven by anti-BUSH bias, that's not the same thing as bias
against the UNITED STATES.

References to the stories cited above are as follows:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136466,00.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] NY Times partisan advocacy on Missing Explosives inIraq

body:
Professor Lih wrote:

> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 11:31 AM

> If you expect to cite only "objective" news sources, it will
> be an empty page. No credible news organization can ever
> claim to be objective. One should evaluate it against the
> spectrum of other sources, and determine whether it is fair
> and balanced.

Yes, you are right. But I think we could highlight cases where a news
organization OMITS easily obtainable information that contradicts the
slant of its story. There's supposed to be a difference between
commentary (like editorial, or an op-ed column) and straight news.

As I said later in the post you responded to, Wikipedia cannot condemn
any news source, any more than it can endorse one. But I can WISH for
objectivity, can't I?

A very idealistic Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship of Current Events

body:
The version Nicholas reverted STILL omitted both the IAEA evaluation
that Saddam's men moved the munitions, and AGAIN deleted the Pentagan
assertion that US troops searched the facility and found no such
munitions.

I hope we don't have to start 'protecting' the Current Events page.
Can't we just all follow the NPOV rules?

I have corrected these ommissions for the second or third time now....

Ed

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nicholas Knight [mailto:nknight at runawaynet.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 10:28 AM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Censorship of Current Events
>
>
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
> > This is simple vandalism from some random anon user, and there is no
>
> THIS, on the other hand:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Current_events&diff=0&oldid=6
874941

was clearly not random (I've already reverted it).