body:
G'day Steve,

> --- Mark Gallagher
> <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>Well, folks and folkettes, we always have a long
>>wait for these things,
>>but it looks like we've finally found another
>>violation of WP:POINT.
>
> Since when does WP:POINT trump WP:NPOV? I will never
> apologise for "violating" POINT if its to make a stand
> for NPOV - particularly in light of a leadership
> vacuum wherin clear NPOV violations are by "consensus"
> allowed to stand.

WP:POINT doesn't trump WP:NPOV, and I never said it did.  One is a core
principle, the other is a page which, like many of our policies, acts
only to restate "don't be a dick" in more socially acceptable language.
  Now, there are multiple ways of making a point.  Some of them involve
being a dick.  You appear to be choosing one of those ways, as WP:POINT
makes clear.  It would be nice if you could restrain yourself.

>>For what it's worth, I do agree with you:
>>[[Category:Anti-Semitic
>>people]] a) does not appear to serve a useful
>>purpose, b) is not exactly
>>neutral, c) could well be described as a lawsuit
>>waiting to happen, if
>>applied improperly.
>
> I disagree with the lawsuit paranoia, and dislike is
> usage as a crutch in arguments wherin a plain
> application of basic bonehead-level NPOV will suffice.

Like Ilmari the other day, I just threw that in for discussion's sake.
Discussion is this thing we have occasionally although, I admit, not
very often.

> Your agreement is noted, but is it counted?

You've never made a habit of counting others' opinions.  It's one of the
reasons that ... ahh, but who wants to go *there*?

>>You could do with being a little less strident about
>>it, though.  Your
>>comment on that TfD wasn't going to change anyone's
>>mind: it looks quite
>>logical to someone who already agrees with you, but
>>that's not as
>>beneficial as you might think.
>
> I dont know what else to say. Either we have a culture
> which respects NPOV or we do not.

You think the category is incompatible with NPOV.  I think you're right.
  There are those, however, who do not (or who have not considered the
issue, and gone along with the cat because it's there).  There are two
ways for you to get your way: you can either convince them you're right,
or you can grind their faces into dust.  Now, you're not in much of a
position these days to do any face-grinding, so we're just left with the
former option.

The traditional approach taken when trying to change someone else's mind
is, "your opinion differs from mine.  How can I best state my message to
convince you I'm right?"  The approach *you* are taking is, "your
opinion differs from mine.  How can you be *so stupid* as to disagree
with me?  Can't you idiots see the bleeding obvious?  I'm disgusted with
the lot of you!"

You may feel that this strategy is one likely to bring success.  If so,
I have some bad news.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> (There are, of course, extreme cases, such as [[Darth Vader]], but
> these tend to be quite rare and can be handled as exceptions to the
> general rule.)

That's such a famous case, and honestly, since when did the plot of
Star Wars affect anyone's enjoyment of it? Similarly, I don't see how
you can "spoil" the plot of a Friends episode.

The cases that bug me more are long books, where knowing the ending
would really put you off reading it. Or certain films like Fight Club,
the Sixth Sense, Unbreakable etc...it's not so much "knowing how the
film ends", but "knowing the secret that totally changes your
interpretation of the film".

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Native Cherokee XML Dumps 20060619 Posted

body:
The Native Cherokee Language Translation Project has posted XML dumps
against enwiki 06-19-2006 at

ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki

Please feel free to download and review. This translation is using
conjugation, and verb stem decomposition and reconstruction.
Translation runs are posted in Sequoyah Syllabary and text phonetics.
This release has improved the XML parser to support
translation and auto-link generation, Image translation parsing, and
templates.   Since the English Wikipedia XML dumps appear to
be supporting multilanguage tags, this version of the translator has
been enabled to convert them into English and then Cherokee
for image control statements (right, rucht, etc.).

The www.wikigadugi.org website has been used for XML translation import
testing for the past several weeks while I corrected
 and added support for link translations and tuned the AI engine to
compress, conjugate, and decompose and reconstruct verb stems and
tensing, but the site is fully populated and will remain updated from
now on.

The current translation is up to 92% Cherokee with only less than a 20MB
word list left to be translated and tensed.

There have been several enhancements to the translation to detect and
correct language drift between the various dialects.

There are four dialects of the Cherokee Language:

Otali (Overhill) - spoken in Oklahoma, 30,000 native speakers
Giduwa (Keetoowah) - spoken in North Carolina, 5,000 native speakers
Southern - formerly spoken in Southern Alabama, Southern Georgia and
Florida (Extinct)
Ahniyvwiya - spoken in New Mexico and Missouri (AniKutani), 500 native
speakers (this dialect is the ancient written
form of the Cherokee Language which uses the AniKutani Syllabary, and is
used by the religious organization
for record keeping.  Since this dialect was written and numerous ancient
texts exist, the modern spoken form has not
experienced language drift.  The Otali dialect has drifted due to
English influences and sentence structure in the
Otali dialect more resembles English than any of the other Cherokee
dialects).

Of the four dialects, only the Giduwa and Ahniyvwiya dialects  are still
100% mappable to the Sequoyah Syllabary.
The Otali dialect is approximately 98% mappable however, Otali has
contracted verb roots to the point they are
no longer recognizable in their original form in many words due to
language drift and synthesized newer sounds
and hybridization with English.

"do" is now spoken "to" in many words in Otali
"du" is now spoken "tu" in many words in Otali
"l" has replaced "i" and in some words is a new consruct in the language
as a result in Otali
Many original inflections are now contracted and use English sounds
rather than Syllabary constructs.

The Cherokee New Testament translated by Elias Boudinet and his
associates in the early 1800's is one of the
few surviving documents written in the Giduwa dialect and published
before the language drift began in
Oklahoma, and this older dialect is the most common dialect still
understandable by most modern speakers who speak
in Otali.  This dialect forms the basis of this translation with common
words from the Otali dialect
which are still mappable to the Syllabary and corrected words with the
original verb roots.     This project has an
additional purpose of forcing  stnadardization in our immersion efforts
to prevent further language drift by
restandardizing all written works into the Giduwa dialect and conversion of
non-conforming Otali words back to the Sequoyah Syllabary.  Most of the
modern
Cherokee Language spoken in Oklahoma now uses an English Phoetics System
devised by Cherokee Linguist
Dr. Durbin Feeling of  Oklahoma University in order to be written
properly to reflect the modern spoken form and
no longer are mappable to the Syllabary.

Internal discussions with Dr. Feeling and other members of this project
have resulted in the conclusion that written Cherokee must use
the Sequoyah Syllabary and we are planning to force standardization to
correct this language drift in all translations.  There have been
several committees proposing expanding the syllabary to incorporate the
new sounds, but these efforts may not address the issues of
language drift.  When a language is written and forced to use a standard
alphabet or syllabary it typically does not drift much.

These translations now provide the following additional files which
address these issues for our project folks and to force
retranslation of Otali words into Ahniyvwiya or Giduwa dialects.  Many
of the words have been resynthesized into
their original forms in order to be mapable to the Syllabary:

Each file set corresponds to a translation run of the wikitrans Cherokee
Machine Translator.

cherokee-syntax-errors-<date>.txt.bz2  - words in Otali dialect not
mappable to the syllabary but displayed in text phonetics in the translation
phwiki-<date>-pages-articles.xml - text phonetic translation
sylwiki-<date>-pages-articles.xml - Sequoyah Syllabary translation
untranslated-log-<date>.txt.bz2 - words not yet translated or mapped to
a thesaraus for their Cherokee equivalents

The end goal is to reduce the untranslated log file output to zero and
achieve 100% by the end of the summer.   There has been a lot of debate on
the translation and which  dialect structure would have the broadest
coverage.    Corrected Otali and Giduwa combined which remap to the
syllabary have been chosen as the current standard for this effort.

The Machine translation is a work in progress.

Jeff Merkey

>
>


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Poem extension on Wikisource

body:
On 23/06/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> All it's lacking is a title! I propose "Brion's Poem".
> It should get a reading at the next Wikimania too.

That one shouldn't.
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Benutzer:Brion_VIBBER should, though. :)

Rob Church


from_name: Klaas

subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki

body:
If there would not be an article about the Simpsons
why not just create it eventually in your userspace
first if you're not sure enough? The sandbox can be
used
for this purpose as well.

I see no use for a seperate waiting room which may be
filled with a lot of stuff that is barely organized.

Patio (Pationl on w:en)

--- James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> Despite not being within the bounds of Wikimedia
> projects, certain things
> can still be useful for other non-Wikimedia projects
> to pick up in the
> future. To accomodate such pages, we could start up
> a "waiting room" wiki
> that would reside there until they can be exported
> somewhere. For example,
> let's say someone writes a very crufty article about
> The Simpsons. However,
> if there isn't a Simpsons-Wiki yet, then the page
> can be exported to the
> waiting room wiki in the meantime. This way, when a
> Simpsons-Wiki comes to
> existence, they can search through the waiting room
> for content they can
> use. They can then export it (conserving the edit
> history) and import it
> onto their wiki.
>

Groets / Ciao,
Klaas e/o Paola
home www.innocentisart.nl

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 23/06/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking for someone who will state what they believe the
> likelihood of this happening, and what the practical consequences
> might be.

I guess deletion/selective undeletion in itself has GFDL consequences.
But then again, there is a log given for deletions by admins.

> I'm not under any "mistaken delusions". :-)   Nevertheless, the
> community has shown significant support for many of the members,
> particularly in the recent elections.  Of course, every member elected
> also got oppose votes, so distrust (at least by the opposers) is
> inevitable.
>
> How were the developers elected, and what made you trust them?

The developers were not elected (and neither, technically, was the
ArbCom either). Brion is an employee of Wikimedia, and therefore is
subject to actual legal duties relating to the carrying out of his
functions. Tim Starling I have known for over 3 years and has always
displayed the utmost integrity, particularly when dealing with
situations involving the removal of sensitive information from the
'pedia.

But that is beside the point. It still hasn't been explained why the
Arbitrators were selected as the main repositories of these powers.
Does the removal of revisions crop up frequently in arbitrations
undertaken by the ArbCom? Or has the ArbCom somehow morphed into
something more than an Arbitration Committee, to be some sort of
Content Management Committee?

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines 'arbitrator' as "an
independent person or body officially appointed to settle a dispute".

Also, [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee]] says nothing about the
ArbCom having any role beyond resolving disputes.

> Are content implications more serious than privacy implications?

No. I'm saying the opposite. The reason the CheckUser logs are private
is because of the significant privacy implications involved in
accessing our server data. Only those Officially appointed by the
Wikimedia Foundation should be able to access such data/logs.

On the other hand, the question of revision content is not immediately
related to the questions of privacy laws.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-06-24

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!

Passed 394 of 407 tests (96.81%) FAILED!


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
On 6/23/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> For now, it is no big deal, but we may have to think about adding a
> paragraph about that tool, once the way it works has been "permanently"
> fixed. Right now, it seems to early.

Some language (new) versions have appeared; is it okay even before
July 1st? (Till the end of month, "outdated" versions are official in
fact, I understand)

By the way, if we can say "the English version is one and only one
official version", we need disclaimers in each language, or not?

I am not sure such disclaimers should be considered a part of policy
itself, but methinks legal people would be better than me to draft and
put English version* on meta served for translators.
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Are they paying us..?

Yes.

--
geni


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki

body:
Despite not being within the bounds of Wikimedia projects, certain things
can still be useful for other non-Wikimedia projects to pick up in the
future. To accomodate such pages, we could start up a "waiting room" wiki
that would reside there until they can be exported somewhere. For example,
let's say someone writes a very crufty article about The Simpsons. However,
if there isn't a Simpsons-Wiki yet, then the page can be exported to the
waiting room wiki in the meantime. This way, when a Simpsons-Wiki comes to
existence, they can search through the waiting room for content they can
use. They can then export it (conserving the edit history) and import it
onto their wiki.

Another example is if someone writes an article, say, "List of sex symbols."
Obviously not within Wikipedia's goals, however may prove useful for someone
else in the future. In the meantime, it can be exported to the lovely
dumping ground that is the Waiting Room Wiki. Once someone starts some sex
symbol project, they can export the page and use it.

Keep in mind that this is not a Wikimedia project like Wikinews and
Wiktionary are, but something more like the Incubator which is used for our
purposes.

Cheers,
MessedRocker.
(Or James Hare)


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>That sounds like an argument for making "hard" links where both titles
>>are equally authoritative---i.e. "traveling" and "travelling" are both
>>top-level titles, but in fact are the same page.
>>
>>The current solution, making them different pages, is IMO much worse
>>than favoring one or the other, since it requires people to basically
>>copy/paste definitions across multiple pages, and make sure changes stay
>>in sync.  Look, for example, at "traveling" versus "travelling", which
>>currently actually have wildly different content despite being the same
>>word with a minor variation in spelling (this was the first example I
>>checked).
>>
>>
>I do wonder why they don't simply redirect both to [[traveling,
>travelling]].  Of course, I'm not an active wiktionarian, so I wouldn't
>know.  It sounds so obvious that it's probably a perennial proposal.
>
It might work with "travel(l)ing", but not with "colo(u)r" since "color"
is also used in Spanish, but "colour" is not.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >   Readers object to spoilers..? What does that have to do with us..? Are they paying us..?
>
> They don't have to.  This is a project to distribute a _free_
> encyclopedia, remember?
>

However we also host it which costs money.

--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Cross-Site-Scripting arbitrary JavaScript
 execution and HTML insertion vulnerability in the live Wikipedia.

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Please note that MediaWiki 1.6 (current stable) does NOT appear to be affected. However current SVN and the live Wikipedia are
> affected by this vulnerability.

As I understand it, this was fixed a few hours ago, and was present for just a
few hours before that; so if you updated from SVN trunk in the last day, make
sure you update again. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] DjVu image file uploads

body:
Files in DjVu format may now be uploaded to Wiki*edia. For now there is no
inline rendering (eg thumbnails), so it's only really suitable for archival data
such as the scans of books that go into Wikisource.

DjVu is a compressed image file format targeted at electronic versions of
documents, including multi-page and machine-readable text support. As an open
format which handles scanned documents better than PDF, it's used for a number
of online library projects and similar. For more background, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu

Files are checked for validity on upload, and the pixel resolution of the first
page is recorded as the file's size. (See DjVuImage.php for implementation. As
with SVG, you still have to whitelist the .djvu extension manually on third-
party MediaWiki installations and make sure your web server is configured to
serve the proper MIME type, image/vnd.djvu.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Wikipedia and the Future of the Past"

body:
For those who have not yet seen it:

----

http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42

Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past
Roy Rosenzweig

This article was originally published in The Journal of American
History Volume 93, Number 1 (June, 2006): 117-46.

----

Interesting reading, nice and long and chewy.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimarkup request: -- to em-dash

body:
> No other wiki markup used in article space works that way.[1]
>
> Steve
> [1] except subst:

and ~~~ / ~~~~ / ~~~~ . oh wait, article space.
*mutters* technicality!

Brianna


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR policy proposal: No "Gotcha" rule

body:
On 6/23/06, Warren Blanco <fireislandparadise at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > WP:3RR was changed (without there first being consensus) back in April so
> > that reverts count towards the 3RR even if they are unrelated. This has
> > resulted in some editors playing "gotcha" by invoking the 3RR without first
> > giving a warning.
>
>
>
> I'd like to propose the following exception to the 3RR policy:
>
> Exception:
>
> Lack of warning
>
> A 3RR ban cannot be imposed against an editor who has not been warned that
> he or she is in danger of violating the 3RR. A ban can only be imposed when
> an editor violates the 3RR after receiving a warning even if he or she has
> already tecnically violated the 3RR prior to receiving a warning.

There is no exception to the "three revert rule".  If you are
reverting more than *once* in twenty-four hours, I suggest that you
aren't editing very well.  Rather than seek exceptions, let us simply
resolved to avoid edit warring.


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki

body:
The Incubator is more for things that are allowable under Foundation bylaws
that will spin off into a new project if popular enough.

The Waiting Room Wiki would be used for things that are highly unlikely to
used in a Wikimedia project, so they sit and wait until claimed by someone
else. At least this way, the article can be preserved and maybe cleaned up
in the process.

On 6/24/06, Klaas <patio_nl at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> If there would not be an article about the Simpsons
> why not just create it eventually in your userspace
> first if you're not sure enough? The sandbox can be
> used
> for this purpose as well.
>
> I see no use for a seperate waiting room which may be
> filled with a lot of stuff that is barely organized.
>
> Patio (Pationl on w:en)
>
> --- James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Despite not being within the bounds of Wikimedia
> > projects, certain things
> > can still be useful for other non-Wikimedia projects
> > to pick up in the
> > future. To accomodate such pages, we could start up
> > a "waiting room" wiki
> > that would reside there until they can be exported
> > somewhere. For example,
> > let's say someone writes a very crufty article about
> > The Simpsons. However,
> > if there isn't a Simpsons-Wiki yet, then the page
> > can be exported to the
> > waiting room wiki in the meantime. This way, when a
> > Simpsons-Wiki comes to
> > existence, they can search through the waiting room
> > for content they can
> > use. They can then export it (conserving the edit
> > history) and import it
> > onto their wiki.
> >
>
>
> Groets / Ciao,
> Klaas e/o Paola
> home www.innocentisart.nl
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki

body:
Yes... a Wiki Waiting Room. Like the Scratchpad! I should've known better.
Thank you for your time, anyways.

On 6/24/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If those things are not in the scope of the Foundation, I don't see
> why we should put them in the Wikimedia space in the first place.
> Perhaps Wikia would be a better place.
>
> Cheers
>
> On 6/24/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The Waiting Room Wiki would be used for things that are highly unlikely
> to
> > used in a Wikimedia project, so they sit and wait until claimed by
> someone
> > else. At least this way, the article can be preserved and maybe cleaned
> up
> > in the process.
> >
>
> --
> Larry Lo
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> Tel: +852 95825791
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki


body:
On 6/24/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is no exception to the "three revert rule".  If you are
> reverting more than *once* in twenty-four hours, I suggest that you
> aren't editing very well.  Rather than seek exceptions, let us simply
> resolved to avoid edit warring.

There is of course an exception for reverting blatant vandalism.

In practice we generaly like to warn new users but it is up to the
judgement of the admin.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l]And you thought Pokémon was trivial...

body:
On 6/24/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, I'm just generally not comfortable with the situation that the
> Foundation Office wants things one way, but everyone else seems to
> want them another way (and everyone else is winning)...
>
> Steve

Fairly common with orders from various higher ups. Moveing things over
to commons is another example.

--
geni


body:
On 6/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
Some people do
> indeed get blocked under 3RR without having any idea what it is.

If they are blocked, they would presumably be aware that they had been
engaged in edit warring.  It's pretty difficult to get oneself blocked
if one persistently fails to misbehave.


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/24/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >[...]  Even
> > good authors are prevented from editing semi-protected pages if they
> > don't have an account.
>
> This is a pretty trivial barrier to entry...

"Sign here and come back in 4 days" isn't that trivial. You can open a
bank account quicker than that. Hell, you can probably get a loan
quicker than that.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/24/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do like semi-protection as a defense against the hordes of drive-by
> vandals who come by in bursts for some reason or another. But I think
> we should keep it to a minimum, and be careful not to use protection
> -- full or semi -- where it has not been shown to be needed.

Probably better tools (preferably trigger-based, rather than
poll-based) to automatically and accurately detect vandalism would be
good. Then allowing open access to articles would not be such a
burden, as only a few edits would have to be checked by hand.

Steve


body:
On 6/24/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> As I've argued before when this sort of suggestion has come up, we can't
>  let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Articles lacking sources
> aren't unacceptable, IMO, they're simply _unfinished_. They'd need to be
> properly verified before they were accepted for any sort of polished
> compilation, sure, but Wikipedia as a whole is not that compilation. It
> is the raw materials for one.

This is where the divide seems to hit. Those who work in the
Foundation Office, and receive complaints from the outside world, tend
to have a harsher view of things, arguing that all unsourced
statements about living people, for instance, should be immediately
removed. Those who do a lot of editing without hearing from the
outside world tend to find this position untenable and impractical.
Worse, they (we?) tend to just ignore it, since the number of people
advocating it is tiny, and they haven't really made much significant
noise about it yet.

I'm yet to see any meaningful common ground found between these
positions, but I'm optimistic we can find a solution.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Given that the consensus forming around the new fiction MoS guideline
> (can't recall what the exact name was) to reduce plot summary in favor
> of more real-life information, this should begin to be less of a
> problem.  Certainly, even for something like the Sixth Sense, it
> should be possible to discuss casting, production, critical reception,
> and so forth without needing to reveal anything; only the section
> dealing with the plot itself -- and possibly only a part of that --
> would be eligible for these tags.

I think any discussion of a film with a "surprise ending" would be
seriously remiss if it *didn't* discuss that ending. Hell, The Empire
Strikes Back was notable *because* of the surprise.

I haven't seen any articles about films or books where the plot
summary was excessively detailed. It's mostly TV episodes where that
happens - mostly because of a total lack of anything else to say about
them.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  Its somewhat similar to the premise of a mother giving her lad a jacket  in the wintertime without asking him if he desired one. Do we really  assume our readers are that stupid...? If you see a header called  "Plot" and there's three pharagraphs below it, then its obvious what  lies within. This template is incredibly redundant.

Yes, you totally expect the plot. But, how would you know if the
surprise ending is going to be revealed? How would you know that there
*is* a surprise ending? Currently, you end up skipping the entire
section (or the article) just to be sure.

It's really not redundant. Some films and books contain events that
"spoil" the book once they're revealed. Some don't.

>  If there were previously some sort of a mass request where millions of  readers requested this nonsense, advocating it assisted them in the  informative reading of an encyclopedia, then I could possbily  understand. Currently, it gives the entirely wrong impression of what  an encyclopedia is and what its attempting to convey. This isn't a  networking site.

Yes, wikipedia isn't myspace.com. So what's your point?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> The dichotomy of "editors" not being "users" is false.  We're a subset
> of readership.  We should not use our judgement to assume what readers
> want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different.  Spoiler

Of course we should. We're here to write an encyclopaedia. For
readers. Who will never tell us what they want. We have to make
thousands of assumptions in that process. What fonts to use? Unicode
or ASCII? Should [[Georgia]] be about the US state or the country? Or
neither? Are photos or diagrams better? Should we use thumbnails or
larger images?

A bit of intuition, discussion, and yes, common sense, go a long way
in answering these quetsions.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  As I recall making a comment earlier on the wikipeida talkpage, none of  the defensive editors could answer ethier. "I'm sorry, but most people  like them". I don't paticularly concern myself too much in the practice  of  the matter on an emotional level, but I am very inclined to  question the relevance. As of my most recent e-mail, I asked how the  template assisted the encyclopedia or its goals or if there were any  edvidence of its informative capacity. The questions still haven't been  answered. -Zero

The template assists the encyclopaedia and its goals as follows:
* It builds trust in our readership - trust that we value them and
their enjoyment of reading us
* It would allow us to collect information on which movies/books/tv
shows are deemed "spoilable"

It is informative as follows:
* It describes the specific presence and nature of a spoiler within a
given article
* It permits a separation of the plot, separating that which spoils
from that which doesn't.
* It allows readers who do not wish to be "spoilt" to read the whole
rest of the article without fear.

Steve


body:
On 6/23/06, Warren Blanco <fireislandparadise at gmail.com> wrote:
> Lack of warning
>
> A 3RR ban cannot be imposed against an editor who has not been warned that
> he or she is in danger of violating the 3RR. A ban can only be imposed when
> an editor violates the 3RR after receiving a warning even if he or she has
> already tecnically violated the 3RR prior to receiving a warning.

Strongly oppose. Admins should use discretion in not blocking unwarned
users, but they shouldn't be prevented from doing so. 3RR is already
subject to gaming, and it only works because it's so strict. Giving
more escape clauses is a bad idea.

Steve


body:
On 6/24/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> The inside text is wikitext, but line breaks and initial spaces are preserved.
> Output is wrapped in a <div class="poem">, so you can do global styling of poems
> per-wiki.
>
> Additionallly you can add other allowed HTML attributes on the <poem> tag just
> as you would for a <div> or <pre>, such as setting one-off custom styles or
> additional CSS class names.

Silly question, but is this really only useful for poems? Would it not
be useful at en.wp for other stuff too? I'll have to have a play and
see what else it could be good for...

Steve


body:
On 6/24/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's plenty of common ground- this is an immediatist/eventualist
> split, after all, and we all know that one day the Immediate moment
> will have become the eventual. (In other words, as time passes and
> articles improve, this issue will become less and less important until
> it only makes sense in rare individual articles).

Uh, is it not true that the number of bad articles is growing faster
than the number of good articles? I'd always taken that as a given,
based on our still rapid growth in sheer number of articles.

Also, I'm just generally not comfortable with the situation that the
Foundation Office wants things one way, but everyone else seems to
want them another way (and everyone else is winning)...

Steve


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 11:16:11AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> > Silly question, but is this really only useful for poems? Would it not
> > be useful at en.wp for other stuff too? I'll have to have a play and
> > see what else it could be good for...
>
> Please don't use it for something else, even if it seems somewhat useful
> for another purpose. It is _designed_ for poems, and it is supposed to
> mark up only poems. If you find another use, a new tag can be introduced
> that behaves in a very similar way.

Why?  That seems needlessly complex.  If one has need for the same
functionality for multiple purposes, it doesn't strike me as a net win
to have eight different syntaxes to do the same thing.  Is there some
specific reason that it should be divided by intent rather than purpose,
thusly?

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Hello everybody,

Remember, you decided to leave the Moldovan wikipedia freezed, but not completely deleted. Now, its unique contributor [[:en:User:Node_ue]], is back (probably on school holiday), with his anti-Romanian edits. I cite from [[:mo:Wikipedia_talk:Administrator]]:

<i> Please don't write in Romanian here, write Moldovan. Every time you write Romanian on the Moldovan wikipedia, god kills a kitten. </i>

No to mention that he initiated a vote to become again sysop, then tried to falsify the results (because they were not favourable). The current version of the page [[:mo:Wikipedia:Administrator]] is that rigged by Node_ue, but take a look at the history on the vote page [http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator&oldid=11594], which shows the true result of the vote according to the original rules set by Node_ue.

After this, he managed to invite the entire Russian wikipedia to take position on a language they know nothing about here: [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects]]. Take a look at his post here [[:ru:??????????????????:??????????/??????????????#Moldovan]], and notice the blatant lie concerning the cyrillic script (whereas the problem is in fact the absence of Moldovan editors).

In the meantime, Node_ue is copying articles from ro.wiki to mo.wiki and pretends they are in a different language.

It must be noted that he is the only one on the entire wikipedia (all wikipedias took together) to pretend speaking a "Moldovan language" different from the Romanian one. Just take a look at [[:en:Category:User mo]], [[:mo:Category:User mo]], [[:ro:Category:User mo]], [[:ru:Category:User mo]].

Moreover he himself places himself at level mo-2. I can assure you this guy isn't able to write correct text in Moldovan. Any native Moldovan can tell you the same  (in fact, this is why he keeps copying articles from ro.wiki).

While no native Moldovan editor exists, the Moldovan wikipedia will continue to be a political statement that exacerbates nationalisms from Romania, Russia, and Moldova itself, and a playground for clever and stupid trolls.

It should be closed until a native Moldovan editor requires its re-opening and assumes admin rights.

This argument has already been put forward here [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects#What decision makers need to know]].

Yours sincerely,
[[:en:User:Dpotop]], [[:ro:User:Dpotop]]

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
> Remember, you decided to leave the Moldovan wikipedia freezed, but not completely deleted. Now, its unique contributor [[:en:User:Node_ue]], is back (probably on school holiday), with his anti-Romanian edits. I cite from [[:mo:Wikipedia_talk:Administrator]]:

No -- that was the decision of a single person, Anthere.

> <i> Please don't write in Romanian here, write Moldovan. Every time you write Romanian on the Moldovan wikipedia, god kills a kitten. </i>

Oh no! Anti-Romanian! And in case you lost your sense of humour during
your little outing last night, I shall inform you: that was a joke.

> No to mention that he initiated a vote to become again sysop, then tried to falsify the results (because they were not favourable). The current version of the page [[:mo:Wikipedia:Administrator]] is that rigged by Node_ue, but take a look at the history on the vote page [http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator&oldid=11594], which shows the true result of the vote according to the original rules set by Node_ue.

Oh noes! Rigged voting! That stinks of... wait for it... Moldovans!
Since, of course, your favourite Moldovan, Pavel, did that himself by
removing all opposing votes at your favourite election.

But wait! The "original rules" set by me included, in no particular
order -- voters must be ACTIVE USERS, and the vote lasted no longer
than 1 day. All oppose votes were placed by INACTIVE USERS or
NONUSERS, and AFTER the voting period had elapsed.

On the contrary, all SUPPORT votes were placed by ACTIVE USERS before
the period had elapsed.

> After this, he managed to invite the entire Russian wikipedia to take position on a language they know nothing about here: [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects]]. Take a look at his post here [[:ru:?????????:?????/???????#Moldovan]], and notice the blatant lie concerning the cyrillic script (whereas the problem is in fact the absence of Moldovan editors).

OH NOES!!! Surely, Romanians know more about Transnistrian linguistic
issues than Russians do? Since, of course, Cluj is SOOO MUCH CLOSER to
Dubasari than ANY Russian city.

Then notice, with a machine translator, that the RUSSIANS DID NOT CARE
whether the problem was as I said, or as you said.

And obviously, it's as you said -- nearly everyone was all "BOO HOO!!!
Cyrillic is an insult to Moldovans!". Only a handful of people said
"We want Moldovan editors."

> In the meantime, Node_ue is copying articles from ro.wiki to mo.wiki and pretends they are in a different language.

Show me a single copied article. You need to read up some more on
English -- when you copy something, you copy it. I did not "copy" any
article. Copy, means lift directly. And nobody asked me what language
any of the newest articles were in.

> It must be noted that he is the only one on the entire wikipedia (all wikipedias took together) to pretend speaking a "Moldovan language" different from the Romanian one. Just take a look at [[:en:Category:User mo]], [[:mo:Category:User mo]], [[:ro:Category:User mo]], [[:ru:Category:User mo]].

How do you know that there aren't any people claiming to speak
Moldovan at, say, the Gujarati Wikipedia? Did you check? (to save you
some time, the answer is, no, there aren't, but then, there are over
200 Wikipedias)

> Moreover he himself places himself at level mo-2. I can assure you this guy isn't able to write correct text in Moldovan. Any native Moldovan can tell you the same  (in fact, this is why he keeps copying articles from ro.wiki).

"Correct text" is what you would expect from someone that claims mo-4
or mo-5. "Intelligible text" is what you should expect from someone
who claims mo-2.

> While no native Moldovan editor exists, the Moldovan wikipedia will continue to be a political statement that exacerbates nationalisms from Romania, Russia, and Moldova itself, and a playground for clever and stupid trolls.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. And what did our Moldovan friends who DID
actually edit, do? They fixed and/or posted articles in Cyrillic, with
the exception of Pavel. How is it any more of a playground now than it
was then?

> It should be closed until a native Moldovan editor requires its re-opening and assumes admin rights.

The majority of voting Wikimedians disagree.

> This argument has already been put forward here [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects#What decision makers need to know]].

Sorry, but votes is votes.

I seem to remember before when you were whinging about how mo.wiki
should be closed because a fair and democratic vote said it should be.
But now, you're saying we should toss out democracy because it doesn't
agree with you.

Hey, at least I could claim the vote was rigged because it restricted
people on unfair grounds, but you... no... all Wikimedians are allowed
to participate here.

Your only protest seems to be, "The voters aren't smart enough to make
an informed decision. Thus, you should listen to me, and not them."
Way to go. I thought you liked democracy, what with you and all your
friends telling me how I was anti-democracy and how evil that is...
but apparently, you like rigged elections too.

Mark


body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 02:10:12PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> Moin,
>
> On Saturday 24 June 2006 13:33, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 11:16:11AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> > > Steve Bennett wrote:
> > > > Silly question, but is this really only useful for poems? Would it
> > > > not be useful at en.wp for other stuff too? I'll have to have a
> > > > play and see what else it could be good for...
> > >
> > > Please don't use it for something else, even if it seems somewhat
> > > useful for another purpose. It is _designed_ for poems, and it is
> > > supposed to mark up only poems. If you find another use, a new tag
> > > can be introduced that behaves in a very similar way.
> >
> > Why?  That seems needlessly complex.  If one has need for the same
> > functionality for multiple purposes, it doesn't strike me as a net win
> > to have eight different syntaxes to do the same thing.  Is there some
> > specific reason that it should be divided by intent rather than
> > purpose, thusly?
>
> Maybe the name of the tag (<poem>) is a big hint. You don't mark bold text
> with <i style="font-weight: bold; font-style: normal;">bold</i>,
> right? :)

Considering that the reason this question came up was someone else's
question about whether it should be renamed to something other than
"poem", I don't think that statement was very helpful.  Thanks for
playing, though.  You'll get a consolation prize at the door.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to
build programs out of the wrong concepts." - Paul Graham


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Having said that, I should add that the majority of people in both
votes who voted to delete this Wiki came from the Romanian Wikipedia.

So don't accuse me of playing unfairly. This is a vote for
Wikimedians. Russian Wikipedians are just as good of voters are you
Romanian and your buddies.

Mark

On 24/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everybody,
>
> Remember, you decided to leave the Moldovan wikipedia freezed, but not completely deleted. Now, its unique contributor [[:en:User:Node_ue]], is back (probably on school holiday), with his anti-Romanian edits. I cite from [[:mo:Wikipedia_talk:Administrator]]:
>
> <i> Please don't write in Romanian here, write Moldovan. Every time you write Romanian on the Moldovan wikipedia, god kills a kitten. </i>
>
> No to mention that he initiated a vote to become again sysop, then tried to falsify the results (because they were not favourable). The current version of the page [[:mo:Wikipedia:Administrator]] is that rigged by Node_ue, but take a look at the history on the vote page [http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator&oldid=11594], which shows the true result of the vote according to the original rules set by Node_ue.
>
> After this, he managed to invite the entire Russian wikipedia to take position on a language they know nothing about here: [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects]]. Take a look at his post here [[:ru:?????????:?????/???????#Moldovan]], and notice the blatant lie concerning the cyrillic script (whereas the problem is in fact the absence of Moldovan editors).
>
> In the meantime, Node_ue is copying articles from ro.wiki to mo.wiki and pretends they are in a different language.
>
> It must be noted that he is the only one on the entire wikipedia (all wikipedias took together) to pretend speaking a "Moldovan language" different from the Romanian one. Just take a look at [[:en:Category:User mo]], [[:mo:Category:User mo]], [[:ro:Category:User mo]], [[:ru:Category:User mo]].
>
> Moreover he himself places himself at level mo-2. I can assure you this guy isn't able to write correct text in Moldovan. Any native Moldovan can tell you the same  (in fact, this is why he keeps copying articles from ro.wiki).
>
> While no native Moldovan editor exists, the Moldovan wikipedia will continue to be a political statement that exacerbates nationalisms from Romania, Russia, and Moldova itself, and a playground for clever and stupid trolls.
>
> It should be closed until a native Moldovan editor requires its re-opening and assumes admin rights.
>
> This argument has already been put forward here [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects#What decision makers need to know]].
>
> Yours sincerely,
> [[:en:User:Dpotop]], [[:ro:User:Dpotop]]
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
I don't see how the status quo has hurt anyone, if you don't count
people's egos.

Some people may claim it is "an insult to Moldovans everywhere", but
that claim doesn't hold much credence.

Given that we now have two opposing votes -- the first vote, for this
Wikipedia to be closed, and the second, for it to stay open -- I think
we have an outstanding mandate in favour of the status quo.

This Wikipedia was created, and nobody can seem to agree on whether to
close it or not.

Some people might argue that it should be closed, but I don't think
there's a single reasonable argument that it _needs_ to be closed
_now_.

Francis, would you disagree with this? Certainly, you may believe that
the Wikipedia will never amount to anything, or that it shouldn't be
open, but do you honestly think it *needs* closing?

In its current form, the only problem it ever actually caused, was to
anger some Romanians (and a handful of Moldovans), who eventually in
their turn angered some Russians and Serbians (and a Moldovan or two).

Despite your belief that I am outright lying to you, we have had
native-speaking contributors, although we don't have any at the moment
(well, Vania Tractoristu did correct a single spelling mistake on a
page yesterday, but I don't know if we can count that).

They are:

Oleg Alexandrov (made some corrections)
Vertaler (made many, many corrections)
Elnoel (only IP contributions, I believe, although he does have a
registered username)
Dmitriid (made some corrections)

There are other native speakers, but none of them, to my knowledge,
ever actually helped any, with the exception of a single recent
contribution from Vania Tractoristu, despite our tractorist's stated
desire to blow the Wikipedia to oblivion.

Mark

On 24/06/06, Francis Tyers <spectre at ivixor.net> wrote:
> Agree with this statement. Absurd vote stacking on both sides has left
> us with this impossible situation. It shouldn't have been closed the
> first time (even though it was voted as such) and it should be closed
> now (even though it hasn't been voted as such). Oh the wonderful
> confusion.
>
> If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> anywhere by 'discussing' this).
>
> Fran
>
> On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 06:15 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Having said that, I should add that the majority of people in both
> > votes who voted to delete this Wiki came from the Romanian Wikipedia.
> >
> > So don't accuse me of playing unfairly. This is a vote for
> > Wikimedians. Russian Wikipedians are just as good of voters are you
> > Romanian and your buddies.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 24/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello everybody,
> > >
> > > Remember, you decided to leave the Moldovan wikipedia freezed, but not completely deleted. Now, its unique contributor [[:en:User:Node_ue]], is back (probably on school holiday), with his anti-Romanian edits. I cite from [[:mo:Wikipedia_talk:Administrator]]:
> > >
> > > <i> Please don't write in Romanian here, write Moldovan. Every time you write Romanian on the Moldovan wikipedia, god kills a kitten. </i>
> > >
> > > No to mention that he initiated a vote to become again sysop, then tried to falsify the results (because they were not favourable). The current version of the page [[:mo:Wikipedia:Administrator]] is that rigged by Node_ue, but take a look at the history on the vote page [http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator&oldid=11594], which shows the true result of the vote according to the original rules set by Node_ue.
> > >
> > > After this, he managed to invite the entire Russian wikipedia to take position on a language they know nothing about here: [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects]]. Take a look at his post here [[:ru:?????????:?????/???????#Moldovan]], and notice the blatant lie concerning the cyrillic script (whereas the problem is in fact the absence of Moldovan editors).
> > >
> > > In the meantime, Node_ue is copying articles from ro.wiki to mo.wiki and pretends they are in a different language.
> > >
> > > It must be noted that he is the only one on the entire wikipedia (all wikipedias took together) to pretend speaking a "Moldovan language" different from the Romanian one. Just take a look at [[:en:Category:User mo]], [[:mo:Category:User mo]], [[:ro:Category:User mo]], [[:ru:Category:User mo]].
> > >
> > > Moreover he himself places himself at level mo-2. I can assure you this guy isn't able to write correct text in Moldovan. Any native Moldovan can tell you the same  (in fact, this is why he keeps copying articles from ro.wiki).
> > >
> > > While no native Moldovan editor exists, the Moldovan wikipedia will continue to be a political statement that exacerbates nationalisms from Romania, Russia, and Moldova itself, and a playground for clever and stupid trolls.
> > >
> > > It should be closed until a native Moldovan editor requires its re-opening and assumes admin rights.
> > >
> > > This argument has already been put forward here [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects#What decision makers need to know]].
> > >
> > > Yours sincerely,
> > > [[:en:User:Dpotop]], [[:ro:User:Dpotop]]
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------
> > > Do you Yahoo!?
> > >  Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
And, should you say that it *does* need to be closed, by chance...

Does it need closing much more than, say, the Tajik, Nauruan, Kanuri,
Venda, Xhosa, or Twi Wikipedias?

Mark

On 24/06/06, Francis Tyers <spectre at ivixor.net> wrote:
> Agree with this statement. Absurd vote stacking on both sides has left
> us with this impossible situation. It shouldn't have been closed the
> first time (even though it was voted as such) and it should be closed
> now (even though it hasn't been voted as such). Oh the wonderful
> confusion.
>
> If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> anywhere by 'discussing' this).
>
> Fran
>
> On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 06:15 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Having said that, I should add that the majority of people in both
> > votes who voted to delete this Wiki came from the Romanian Wikipedia.
> >
> > So don't accuse me of playing unfairly. This is a vote for
> > Wikimedians. Russian Wikipedians are just as good of voters are you
> > Romanian and your buddies.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 24/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello everybody,
> > >
> > > Remember, you decided to leave the Moldovan wikipedia freezed, but not completely deleted. Now, its unique contributor [[:en:User:Node_ue]], is back (probably on school holiday), with his anti-Romanian edits. I cite from [[:mo:Wikipedia_talk:Administrator]]:
> > >
> > > <i> Please don't write in Romanian here, write Moldovan. Every time you write Romanian on the Moldovan wikipedia, god kills a kitten. </i>
> > >
> > > No to mention that he initiated a vote to become again sysop, then tried to falsify the results (because they were not favourable). The current version of the page [[:mo:Wikipedia:Administrator]] is that rigged by Node_ue, but take a look at the history on the vote page [http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator&oldid=11594], which shows the true result of the vote according to the original rules set by Node_ue.
> > >
> > > After this, he managed to invite the entire Russian wikipedia to take position on a language they know nothing about here: [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects]]. Take a look at his post here [[:ru:?????????:?????/???????#Moldovan]], and notice the blatant lie concerning the cyrillic script (whereas the problem is in fact the absence of Moldovan editors).
> > >
> > > In the meantime, Node_ue is copying articles from ro.wiki to mo.wiki and pretends they are in a different language.
> > >
> > > It must be noted that he is the only one on the entire wikipedia (all wikipedias took together) to pretend speaking a "Moldovan language" different from the Romanian one. Just take a look at [[:en:Category:User mo]], [[:mo:Category:User mo]], [[:ro:Category:User mo]], [[:ru:Category:User mo]].
> > >
> > > Moreover he himself places himself at level mo-2. I can assure you this guy isn't able to write correct text in Moldovan. Any native Moldovan can tell you the same  (in fact, this is why he keeps copying articles from ro.wiki).
> > >
> > > While no native Moldovan editor exists, the Moldovan wikipedia will continue to be a political statement that exacerbates nationalisms from Romania, Russia, and Moldova itself, and a playground for clever and stupid trolls.
> > >
> > > It should be closed until a native Moldovan editor requires its re-opening and assumes admin rights.
> > >
> > > This argument has already been put forward here [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects#What decision makers need to know]].
> > >
> > > Yours sincerely,
> > > [[:en:User:Dpotop]], [[:ro:User:Dpotop]]
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------
> > > Do you Yahoo!?
> > >  Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
> ... it should be closed now

Amen !
(I cut the oppinion of Francis Tyers out of a context that hides it).

> If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> anywhere by 'discussing' this).

Well, **you** of all are non-involved. And after following this discussion for a **long** time you ended with the same conclusion: Regardless of what the Moldovan language is or is not, there are no native contributors, and there is one single contributor overall (who actually cannot contribute because he is at level mo-2). Isn't this enough?

Dpotop

---------------------------------
Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
If that's the real issue here, why didn't you vote to delete the
Kanuri Wikipedia?

Face it: the real issue here is Cyrillic. You're trying to mask it.

As it is, the Moldovan Wikipedia is growing weekly. I have heard vague
complaints that there are "too many mistakes", but the people who say
such things never give examples when asked to elaborate, leading me to
believe that they are just full of hot air.

Also, check out http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesBytesPerArticle.htm

The Romanian Wikipedia may pretend to be huge, but most of it's stubs
and one-word articles. You have 1407 bytes per article.

The Moldovan Wikipedia, on the other hand, weighs in at 2491 bytes per article.

...and, if I were administrator right now, I would've deleted all of
the empty and spam articles, substantially increasing that number.

Your Wikipedia may be larger than ours, but ours is higher quality.
Maybe we should delete the Romanian Wikipedia instead? As you can see,
it is clearly substandard -- the only Wikipedia of its size with less
bytes per article is the Swedish Wikipedia. No other Wikipedia is as
low, until you get down under 7000 articles.

Mark

On 24/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> > ... it should be closed now
>
> Amen !
> (I cut the oppinion of Francis Tyers out of a context that hides it).
>
> > If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> > 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> > of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> > course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> > anywhere by 'discussing' this).
>
> Well, **you** of all are non-involved. And after following this discussion for a **long** time you ended with the same conclusion: Regardless of what the Moldovan language is or is not, there are no native contributors, and there is one single contributor overall (who actually cannot contribute because he is at level mo-2). Isn't this enough?
>
> Dpotop
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Do you really honestly think that the Moldovan Wikipedia would ever be
re-opened, even if the entire population of Tighina showed up to
demand it? The Romanians would find some cute little way to keep it
closed.

Mark

On 24/06/06, Francis Tyers <spectre at ivixor.net> wrote:
> Well, I'm not in a position to "hand down the law" so to speak ;) It
> bothers me that certain people are so eager to close it, and it also
> bothers me that once it is closed, should sufficient interest be shown,
> the same people who voted 'close' here would 'oppose' re-opening it.
>
> I think that would be highly unfair. _If_ it is closed, there has to be
> the possibility of it being re-opened provided there is interest.
>
> Mark, I think that any Wikipedia without native contributors should be
> closed after a certain period. By closed I mean as I proposed here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#Collective_failure_to_get_the_point
>
> The current content archived and a placeholder put in place. I don't
> think the "offensive" thing is important at all, I voted for keeping the
> Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, even though (allegedly) it offended a lot of
> Balkanians. The point there was there were native speakers really eager
> to contribute. I'm just not seeing that here.
>
> As I have expounded on the same page here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#General_discussion_about_small.2C_inactive_wikis
>
> I think having very low quality small Wikipedias harms more than helps.
> I think that a Moldovan Wikipedia could certainly in its current form
> have a place in something like Sabines suggestion. With regard to the
> Tajik, Nauruan, Kanuri, Venda, Xhosa, and Twi Wikipedias, the same
> applies.
>
> In short, I stand by my previous proposal, and would add that it should
> definately _not_ be voted on to be re-opened, it should only take ~9
> native speakers to request it. _Definately no vote_ -- We'll just get
> adorable Romanians pushing their brand of "democracy", and the ensuing
> clown parade.
>
> Fran
>
> On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 08:07 -0700, Jacky PB wrote:
> >
> > > ... it should be closed now
> >
> > Amen !
> > (I cut the oppinion of Francis Tyers out of a context that hides it).
> >
> > > If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> > > 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> > > of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> > > course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> > > anywhere by 'discussing' this).
> >
> > Well, **you** of all are non-involved. And after following this discussion for
> > a **long** time you ended with the same conclusion: Regardless of what the Moldovan
> > language is or is not, there are no native contributors, and there is one single
> > contributor overall (who actually cannot contribute because he is at level mo-2). Isn't this enough?
> >
> > Dpotop
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Okay, this is interesting -- a new user just showed up.

http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=%D0%9F%D1%8D%D0%B4%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%8E%D0%BB

Their username is written in Moldovan Cyrillic. I don't know whether
or not they're a native speaker, but they are the first person in a
while besides me to create new pages in correctly-spelt Moldovan.

I know I will get accusations from the Romanian camp of sockpuppetry;
I assure you this is not my sockpuppet, you may check if you would
like.

Whoever this is, though, they've certainly made this whole thing more
interesting for me, at least.

Mark

On 24/06/06, Francis Tyers <spectre at ivixor.net> wrote:
> Well, I'm not in a position to "hand down the law" so to speak ;) It
> bothers me that certain people are so eager to close it, and it also
> bothers me that once it is closed, should sufficient interest be shown,
> the same people who voted 'close' here would 'oppose' re-opening it.
>
> I think that would be highly unfair. _If_ it is closed, there has to be
> the possibility of it being re-opened provided there is interest.
>
> Mark, I think that any Wikipedia without native contributors should be
> closed after a certain period. By closed I mean as I proposed here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#Collective_failure_to_get_the_point
>
> The current content archived and a placeholder put in place. I don't
> think the "offensive" thing is important at all, I voted for keeping the
> Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, even though (allegedly) it offended a lot of
> Balkanians. The point there was there were native speakers really eager
> to contribute. I'm just not seeing that here.
>
> As I have expounded on the same page here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#General_discussion_about_small.2C_inactive_wikis
>
> I think having very low quality small Wikipedias harms more than helps.
> I think that a Moldovan Wikipedia could certainly in its current form
> have a place in something like Sabines suggestion. With regard to the
> Tajik, Nauruan, Kanuri, Venda, Xhosa, and Twi Wikipedias, the same
> applies.
>
> In short, I stand by my previous proposal, and would add that it should
> definately _not_ be voted on to be re-opened, it should only take ~9
> native speakers to request it. _Definately no vote_ -- We'll just get
> adorable Romanians pushing their brand of "democracy", and the ensuing
> clown parade.
>
> Fran
>
> On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 08:07 -0700, Jacky PB wrote:
> >
> > > ... it should be closed now
> >
> > Amen !
> > (I cut the oppinion of Francis Tyers out of a context that hides it).
> >
> > > If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> > > 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> > > of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> > > course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> > > anywhere by 'discussing' this).
> >
> > Well, **you** of all are non-involved. And after following this discussion for
> > a **long** time you ended with the same conclusion: Regardless of what the Moldovan
> > language is or is not, there are no native contributors, and there is one single
> > contributor overall (who actually cannot contribute because he is at level mo-2). Isn't this enough?
> >
> > Dpotop
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote: Okay, this is interesting -- a new user just showed up.

http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=%D0%9F%D1%8D%D0%B4%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%8E%D0%BB

Really!
I suggest innocent bystanders to take a look at the edits of this "new editor". Nothing longer than one line, and with errors (yes, it is possible). :)

Dpotop

---------------------------------
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from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
* Kat Walsh wrote:
> On 6/17/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> since when have admins had "authority to exercise editorial control"?
>
> I'm particularly disappointed by that statement, considering I spent a
> fair bit of effort in the interview explaining how and why they don't.

In my opinion this is slowly becoming little more than a fiction we tell
ourselves. Recently an admin labeled a user changing his wording of, "Some
conspiracy theorists disagree..." to "Some disagree..." as "vandalism" and
placed a 48 hour block after edit warring with the user (and others) over
this phrase.

To me that looks like the >admin< was violating NPOV by trying to write
the article from the 'most popular point of view' rather than the NEUTRAL
point of view... but in any case it certainly wasn't "vandalism" and
admins aren't supposed to block over content disputes. Particularly
content disputes they are involved in.

So what do you suppose came of it?

When the user put the 'unblock' template on their page it was denied by
another admin who was involved in the same edit war and then the user's
talk page was protected by yet another admin to prevent them from
requesting unblock again. And when his objection was raised at AN/I? Yet
more admins lined up to say that the action was entirely proper. All this
against a user who has been on Wikipedia for nine months (~350 edits) and
never been blocked or cited as a 'troublemaker' before.

We SAY that admins do not have authority to exercise editorial control,
but, given the fact that we don't enforce it, the reality is quite different.

I think the blocking admin's message to the user illustrates how far lost
the 'no editorial control' concept has become;

"If unblocked and you revert me one more time, I'm going to block you for
a week."

Those are words that NO admin would ever be able to utter if the principle
you cite above had ANY meaning. But the fact is that a dozen other admins
looked on and said that it was just fine.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
How would you know whether or not there are "errors"? Did you study
Moldovan Cyrillic in school? Wait for some real Moldovans to check
this. And if they see errors, they can point them out.

Mark

On 24/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote: Okay, this is interesting -- a new user just showed up.
>
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=%D0%9F%D1%8D%D0%B4%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%8E%D0%BB
>
> Really!
> I suggest innocent bystanders to take a look at the edits of this "new editor". Nothing longer than one line, and with errors (yes, it is possible). :)
>
> Dpotop
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Groups gets better. Check out the new email design. Plus there's much more to come.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
How would you know whether or not there are "errors"? Did you study
Moldovan Cyrillic in school? Wait for some real Moldovans to check
this. And if they see errors, they can point them out.

Mark
It's easy, I'll explain it to you on an example.
Let's take the following page edited by your new editor

http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BB

It's the longest one, with 3 lines of text.

Now, first remark. Cyrillic Moldovan and Latin Moldovan are the same with the exception of a transliteration detailed in [[:en:Moldovan language]]. Note that the transliteration is deterministic, so that working on the Latin version is exactly the same. Now, I transliterate here the three lines to Latin, so that wikipedia-l does not make everything a mess (I forget diacritics not to clog the text) :

Line 1. Grigoriopol este un oras in Transnistria pe malul sting al Nistrului. Orasul este situat 45 km nord-vest de la Tiraspol.

Line 2. Grigoriopol a fost fondat in anul 1792 si a fost numit in onoarea printului  Frigore Potiomkin.

Line 3. Primarul orasului este Ion Tinnic. Populatia orasului este aproape 20000 de oameni.

Now, grammar: in Moldovan, like in Romanian, like in French, you do not say
  "Orasul este situat 45 km nord-vest de la Tiraspol." (in Line 1)
but
  "Orasul este situat la 45 km nord-vest de Tiraspol."
Or, in French
  "La ville est situee a 45 km nord-ouest de Tiraspol"

It's easy:
  - La ville = orasul = the city, articulated noun
  - est = este = is
  - situee = situat = placed
  - a = la = at
  - 45km  = 45km = 30 miles or so
  - nord-ouest = nord-vest = north-west
  - de = de = from
  - Tiraspol = Tiraspol = Tiraspol

This error makes me believe that the editor is English-speaking, because the erroneous topic is English. It looks a lot like:

  "The city is placed 45km north-west of Tiraspol"

Now, we go to line 3. There, you don't say:
  "Populatia orasului este aproape 20000 de oameni."
but:
  "Populatia orasului este de aproape 20000 de oameni."
Or, in French
  "La population de la ville est de presque 20000 personnes."

Hints:
  - orasului =  de la ville = of the city

If someone does not believe me, please take a manual of Moldovan language and check.

Just a final note: this is not about the cyrillic script. Cyrillic or latin, they are the same language, by construction.

I'm fluent in cyrillic, BTW, and I did read Soviet-time Moldovan books in original.

So, 2 errors in 3 lines. Moreover, these are errors a 5-year old Moldovan would not do, because it's not spelling, but basic grammar.

Dpotop

---------------------------------
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from_name: Zero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzeo521 at yahoo.com> wrote:  On 6/24/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email)  wrote:
>
> Garion1000 wrote:
>
> > FWIW, I also really would like the spoiler templates to be killed.
> > Especially when I saw the [[Romeo and Juliet]] article.
>
> See also: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Template:Spoiler
>
> --
>> That was Great - Garion.

  Oh yes! That should be policy!  - Zero
_______________________________________________
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---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:  On 6/24/06, Garion  wrote:

  >FWIW, I also really would like the spoiler templates to be killed.  Especially when I saw the [[Romeo and Juliet]] article. But consensus  definitely seems be to that they should stay. It is possible to do  without though. Like mentioned earlier, the german wikipedia doesn't  has them and Ibelieve the opera's project doesn't use them.

  >But sometimes you also just have to accept that you can't convince  people (can't imagine why anyone would not agree with me though :).  Hey, if it were up to me I also would kill 90 % of the use of the  current templates. And some of the infoboxes. I guess I just don't like  many templates. I don't know if this page was mentioned before but see  also [[User:Shanes/Why tags are evil]]. But like I said, sometimes you  just have to accept the fact that they are going to stay. But please do  try to change consensus. :)

Garion

  I'm trying. Although I'm okay if they stay, I really think it destroys  the point of an encyclopedia which is what we're supposed to be doing.  I'm currently discussing this on the [[Wikipedia:Spoiler warning]]  talkpage and on [[User talk:Megaman Zero]].

  The main reasoning provided is its "courteous". According to policy  established and the spririt of the wiki this isn't paticularly  senseful. See [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not  censored]].

  Wikipedians are generally a good lot. I don't expect to change heads  anytime soon but I think it is obvious the usefulness of this template  is clearly not in view of building the encyclopedia. I'm hopeful, that,  in the future this can come out to sensible agreement. Currently, I  will continue discussion on the matter. - Zero

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subject: [Foundation-l] open ID

body:
shi zhao wrote:
> see http://www.openidenabled.com/
>
> we can use on user page ?

OpenID will likely be supported later this year.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] open ID

body:
shi zhao wrote:
> see http://www.openidenabled.com/
>
> we can use on user page ?

OpenID will likely be supported later this year.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] open ID

body:
shi zhao wrote:
> see http://www.openidenabled.com/
>
> we can use on user page ?

OpenID will likely be supported later this year.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] open ID

body:
shi zhao wrote:
> see http://www.openidenabled.com/
>
> we can use on user page ?

OpenID will likely be supported later this year.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-stuff (was Re: New York Times article)

body:
On 6/24/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It was. Then, astonishingly, it turned into an exact mirror of the FA
> > process. In fact, there's very little difference between an FA and a
> > GA as far as I can tell, except that a short article can be a GA but
> > not an FA.
> >
>
> That's insane. Soon you'll need to go through five days of discussion
> and achieve a majority poll before you can edit an article...

More likely, we'll have a new level "OK articles" which will then go
through the same process, so we'll introduce "Not-too-bad articles"...

I need to go and take my anti-cynicism pills now.

Steve


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

references:
<d45df5100606210816la98bb75k1819a1a91eb31ec3@mail.gmail.com>	<m3zmg5dwag.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>
	<e7hc2b$rp$1@sea.gmane.org> <m3bqsjd85l.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>

body:
Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
> Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
>
>>Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
>>
>>> I'd be happy to see the code for that. Patrolling 15 edits after an
>>>editor who is hit by the mysterical "No preview button" bug, can be a
>>>chore.
>>
>>You mean 15 edits to the same article?
>>
>>You do know that you can view diffs between revisions that are several
>>edits apart, right?
>
> Sure, but can I patrol them?

Clearly more enhancements to the patrolling feature are needed :-)

Maybe the whole system should be rethought. How about:
- instead of flagging each and every revision as "patrolled", maybe each
   article should only have one attribute, "latest patrolled revision"
- then we need a feature to easily access the diff between the last
   patrolled revision and current
- then marking this as patrolled simply sets the "latest patrolled
   revision" to the current one.
- (For database efficiency, one might additionally add a boolean flag
   that states whether the "latest patrolled revision" is the current
   one. That would make it easier to find unpatrolled edits.)


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/24/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>The inside text is wikitext, but line breaks and initial spaces are preserved.
>>Output is wrapped in a <div class="poem">, so you can do global styling of poems
>>per-wiki.
>>
>>Additionallly you can add other allowed HTML attributes on the <poem> tag just
>>as you would for a <div> or <pre>, such as setting one-off custom styles or
>>additional CSS class names.
>
> Silly question, but is this really only useful for poems? Would it not
> be useful at en.wp for other stuff too? I'll have to have a play and
> see what else it could be good for...

Please don't use it for something else, even if it seems somewhat useful
for another purpose. It is _designed_ for poems, and it is supposed to
mark up only poems. If you find another use, a new tag can be introduced
that behaves in a very similar way.


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
At 09:01 AM 6/24/2006, Conrad Dunkerson wrote:

>We SAY that admins do not have authority to exercise editorial control,
>but, given the fact that we don't enforce it, the reality is quite different.

It's the old principle of "dog don't eat dog". Physicians don't
criticize each other's treatments in front of their patients, police
officers don't testify against each other, professors don't disagree
with the grades their colleagues give...

This social principle develops in any group that is for life. Having
term limits would be the only way around it.

         Chl


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 24 Jun 2006, at 04:01, maru dubshinki wrote:
>
> Yeah, but our growth in articles is also slowing down from the
> exponential growth rates we'd previously enjoyed (or so my tea-leaf
> reading of the statistics would indicate).

Figures for this?

It might just be a side effect of the restrictions on new article
creation of course.

But it would be interesting if we were approaching the point where in
some areas we have at least a stub for "everything".

Justinc


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Native Cherokee Lexicons 20060619 Posted

body:
I have received several inquiries and requests from Wikimedia community
members for release of the Cherokee lexicons for incorporation into
the Wiktionary and several adjunct projects which support Wiktionary
projects for the Native Cherokee Language.

Cherokee Language Lexicons have been released and posted to

ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki/lexicon

otali-20060619.lex.bz2
giduwa-20060619.lex.bz2

The released lexicons are in text format and follow the format

<english>:Cherokee

for individual words.

These lexicons do not contain the verb parsing and decomposition rules
for pure translation of the 14 tenses, and are simply
dictionaries of common words used by most modern speakers. Complex
sentence construction requires the AI inference
engine which reorders english sentences into Cherokee contructs, then
synthesizes the verb stem and pronoun modifiers
for each phrase. These lexicons are however, an ideal beginning for
contruction of a Wiktionary for the Cherokee Language.

Jeff V. Merkey


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/24/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But that is beside the point. It still hasn't been explained why the
> Arbitrators were selected as the main repositories of these powers.
> Does the removal of revisions crop up frequently in arbitrations
> undertaken by the ArbCom? Or has the ArbCom somehow morphed into
> something more than an Arbitration Committee, to be some sort of
> Content Management Committee?

It's not a function of the ArbCom per se, it's an ability that has
been given to all of the current members of the ArbCom because they
happen to be some of the most trusted and experienced users on the
wiki. That reasoning is clear because the ability was given to Essjay
too.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Cross-Site-Scripting arbitrary JavaScript execution
	and HTML insertion vulnerability in the live Wikipedia.

body:
Hi All,

There is a Cross-Site-Scripting user-specified arbitrary JavaScript and HTML injection vulnerability in MediaWiki.

This differs from the XSS vuln noted earlier this month, but the basic concept is the same: malicious data is injected into a
specific value which is not sanitized / escaped before being echoed back to the user's browser.

Please note that MediaWiki 1.6 (current stable) does NOT appear to be affected. However current SVN and the live Wikipedia are
affected by this vulnerability.

No extension need to be installed, and the user does not need to be logged in.

Proof-of-Concept details have been emailed to Brion / Tim / Rob Church; These details will be released to the public on
http://nickj.org/MediaWiki after a suitable delay.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I noticed this the other day, when I saw someone removing the tag from
>> an article because "it hadn't passed through the Good Articles process
>> properly".  And here I was thinking that the point of the thing was
>> that it was to be a largely process-free way of tagging articles that
>> seemed reasonably good.
>
> It was. Then, astonishingly, it turned into an exact mirror of the FA
> process. In fact, there's very little difference between an FA and a
> GA as far as I can tell, except that a short article can be a GA but
> not an FA.
>

That's insane. Soon you'll need to go through five days of discussion
and achieve a majority poll before you can edit an article...

>> Generally because certain people can never see a good idea that they
>> don't think could be improved with more process, formality, forms and
>> bureaucracy.
>
> There is that. Also, is there a Wikipedia law yet that says "whenever
> a process is introduced that rates anything according to some
> criteria, its standards will rise faster than the standards of the
> things being rated"?
>
> Seems to be true for RfA, FPC, FAC, GAC...
>

Add it to [[WP:RAUL]].

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

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from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

On Saturday 24 June 2006 13:33, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 11:16:11AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
> > > Silly question, but is this really only useful for poems? Would it
> > > not be useful at en.wp for other stuff too? I'll have to have a
> > > play and see what else it could be good for...
> >
> > Please don't use it for something else, even if it seems somewhat
> > useful for another purpose. It is _designed_ for poems, and it is
> > supposed to mark up only poems. If you find another use, a new tag
> > can be introduced that behaves in a very similar way.
>
> Why?  That seems needlessly complex.  If one has need for the same
> functionality for multiple purposes, it doesn't strike me as a net win
> to have eight different syntaxes to do the same thing.  Is there some
> specific reason that it should be divided by intent rather than
> purpose, thusly?

Maybe the name of the tag (<poem>) is a big hint. You don't mark bold text
with <i style="font-weight: bold; font-style: normal;">bold</i>,
right? :)

best wishes,

tels

--
 Signed on Sat Jun 24 14:07:51 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 This email violates U.S. patent #5,978,791 <http://tinyurl.com/5t6ft>

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body:
Moin,

On Saturday 24 June 2006 14:14, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 02:10:12PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> > Moin,
> >
> > On Saturday 24 June 2006 13:33, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 11:16:11AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> > > > Steve Bennett wrote:
> > > > > Silly question, but is this really only useful for poems? Would
> > > > > it not be useful at en.wp for other stuff too? I'll have to
> > > > > have a play and see what else it could be good for...
> > > >
> > > > Please don't use it for something else, even if it seems somewhat
> > > > useful for another purpose. It is _designed_ for poems, and it is
> > > > supposed to mark up only poems. If you find another use, a new
> > > > tag can be introduced that behaves in a very similar way.
> > >
> > > Why?  That seems needlessly complex.  If one has need for the same
> > > functionality for multiple purposes, it doesn't strike me as a net
> > > win to have eight different syntaxes to do the same thing.  Is
> > > there some specific reason that it should be divided by intent
> > > rather than purpose, thusly?
> >
> > Maybe the name of the tag (<poem>) is a big hint. You don't mark bold
> > text with <i style="font-weight: bold; font-style: normal;">bold</i>,
> > right? :)
>
> Considering that the reason this question came up was someone else's
> question about whether it should be renamed to something other than
> "poem",

I didn't see that question. And even if it would be renamed, then we would
now miss a way to tag poems as poems, and not as "something usefull
including poems, cook recipes and whatever". :)

So, Use <poem> for poems, and invent something else for, well, something
else :-D

Hm, of couse you could do:

<somethingusefull type="poem">
</somethingusefull>

But I don't think this is better as the much shorter <poem> tag.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Sat Jun 24 14:44:16 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "MY CAUSE IS JUST... MY WILL IS STRONG... AND MY GUN IS VERY VERY
 LARGE!" - The Doom Guy

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from_name: Lorenzarius

subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki

body:
Hmmmm you mentioned "the Incubator", then how is your proposal
different from the existing incubator wiki at
http://incubator.wikimedia.org?

Cheers

On 6/24/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Keep in mind that this is not a Wikimedia project like Wikinews and
> Wiktionary are, but something more like the Incubator which is used for our
> purposes.

--
Larry Lo
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
Tel: +852 95825791


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 05:33:41AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > Please don't use it for something else, even if it seems somewhat useful
> > for another purpose. It is _designed_ for poems, and it is supposed to
> > mark up only poems. If you find another use, a new tag can be introduced
> > that behaves in a very similar way.
>
> Why?  That seems needlessly complex.  If one has need for the same
> functionality for multiple purposes, it doesn't strike me as a net win
> to have eight different syntaxes to do the same thing.  Is there some
> specific reason that it should be divided by intent rather than purpose,
> thusly?

[ looks a second time ]

That's *you* asking that, Chaper?

Semantic markeup, of course.

What's needlessly complex is deciding that such a new tthing which isn't
a poem but might look the same now should then look different...

after 10,000 non-poem things have been tagged <poem>.

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

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

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zerot <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:  On 6/24/06, Zero  wrote:
>  Wikipedians are generally a good lot. I don't expect to change heads  anytime soon but I think it is obvious the usefulness of this template  is clearly not in view of building the encyclopedia. I'm hopeful, that,  in the future this can come out to sensible agreement. Currently, I  will continue discussion on the matter. - Zero

>>I've provided several reasons why they contribute to our chief goal.
You haven't provided any evidence that they interfere with our chief
goal.

>>Steve

  Please. The value and spirit of the encyclopedia comes before the  community every time. The spirit of the encyclopedia is the sharing of  knowledge and the freedom of this information unhindered by the source  material in any capacity. Sticking silly labels on articles created by  hard sweat doesn't fullfill that spirit. Making assumptions on the  basis of a networking site must not be mistaken for the the production  and flourishing of the encyclopedia. - Zero

---------------------------------
Ring'em or ping'em. Make  PC-to-phone calls as low as 1?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki

body:
If those things are not in the scope of the Foundation, I don't see
why we should put them in the Wikimedia space in the first place.
Perhaps Wikia would be a better place.

Cheers

On 6/24/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Waiting Room Wiki would be used for things that are highly unlikely to
> used in a Wikimedia project, so they sit and wait until claimed by someone
> else. At least this way, the article can be preserved and maybe cleaned up
> in the process.
>

--
Larry Lo
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
Tel: +852 95825791


subject: [Foundation-l] "Waiting Room" Wiki