from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2007/2/9, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com>:
>
>
> Il giorno 09/feb/07, alle ore 00:15, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:
>
> > Yes, although I should make sure to be really clear.  (2) is only okay
> > if (4) would be possible. The reason for this is that we want the
> > material submitted to itwikis to be maximally free in the rest of the
> > world.
>
> That's silly. Fair use is not maximally free "in the rest of the
> world". Fair use is "maximally free" only in such countries where
> fair use/fair dealing exist.
> Which are...? United States, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia,
> India... Commonwealth?
>
> But not in Czech. Nor in Nederlands. And the other countries?
> Why are you talking "for the rest of the world" is fair use is usable
> only by fair-use-countries?
>

I don't know about the Czech Republic or Italy, but I'm quite surprised that
you mention the Netherlands here. Perhaps it is because Dutch Wikipedians
tend to loudly proclaim there is no concept of fair use in the Netherlands.
And they're right. However, the Netherlands do have a 'right to citation'
(or however it is called in English), and at least some of the fair use
cases under discussion here would be well within the Dutch citation
paragraph - it even *explicitly* says that for photographs and drawings,
showing the whole work can be an allowed citation (under certain conditions,
one of which is that the copy is 'in size or manner of production' has a
clear difference with the original work).

Somehow the nl: community seems to accept that this state exists, but not
that we can use it. "Fair use does not exist in the Netherlands, so we
cannot use fair use images" is what is always said. Although we don't have
US style fair use, that doesn't mean any fair use is impossible, the rules
are just different - usually stricter.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies


list: wikien-l

from_name: Deathphoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Taco Deposit <tacodeposit at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/9/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > > How does the Community define a "quality admin"?
> >
> > Duh. 100% edit summaries. 3000 edits, well distributed across article
> > space, project space and article talk space. Never having pissed
> > anyone off. Ever.
> >
>
> And you can't have made the 3000 edits over too long or too short a period
> of time.
>

If you want find an admin who's nifty,
First you ask these questions fifty.


from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:00, geni wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests;
>> you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.
>>
>
> Never really run across that one.

. . .If the janitors with mops are to make some vital "decisions" in
this temple of knowledge, I will be the first to walk away. Admins
are not priests but janitors. When janitors prevent priests from
performing their duties (i.e., editors from writing the articles),
priests should evacuate the temple. --Ghirla -????- 08:56, 23
December 2006 (UTC)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/
IncidentArchive167)


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record
> and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must
> jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets
> along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin,
> one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted
> their page, trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers
> pissed that one has protected their page, users insistent that one is
> just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust
> and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that
> one is abusing one's powers, and "valued contributors" insistent that
> one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much
> more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.

We should put this on a plaque and hand it out to every new admin with
their mop, bucket, and hazmat suit.


list: foundation-l

body:
2007/2/9, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>:

> I have occasionally considered the idea of promoting an OrphanWiki.
> Because of the potential legal implications this would need to be a
> separate project.  Such a Project would include certain works which are
> strictly speaking still protected by copyright, but whose owners are
> unknown.  What the project is doing would be flagrantly publicized in
> the hopes of flushing out the owner.  If nothing at all is heard for
> three years the work could be treated as having gone into the public
> domain by abandonment.
>

I'm sorry, but that does fly right in the face of existing laws - searches
on both Wikipedia and Google tell me that legal abandonment of copyright
only occurs when one explicitly confers material to the public domain. If
you don't hear anything from the copyright holder in a reasonable term, that
can be implicitly an acquiescence to your usage of the material. It does not
remove any rights they have against others.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>> On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> How does the Community define a "quality admin"?
>>
>> on 2/9/07 8:10 AM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Never having pissed anyone off. Ever.
>
>
> Steve,
>
> Are you really serious about this one?

He's not wrong.

-Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:39, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:50:04 -0500, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record
>> and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time.
>
> Not so.  I was invited a couple of times before I finally accepted a
> nomination, I never aimed for it.  Who would?  They'd be mad.

A lot of people do... c.f. Editor review. However, I meant that in
order to get the edit summary percentage right, and the proper
namespace distribution, the right total number of edits, edits per
day, all the ridiculous arbitrary things, one pretty much has to be
aware of these arbitrary measures and aiming to reach them. Which is
a horrible, horrible thing because we get those people who come to
Wikipedia just to be admins and aren't really in sync with the mores
of the project and all that jazz. Well, theoretically we do at least.

--keitei


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
>
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>> How does the Community define a "quality admin"?
>>>
>>> on 2/9/07 8:10 AM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Never having pissed anyone off. Ever.
>>
>>
>> Steve,
>>
>> Are you really serious about this one?

on 2/9/07 9:31 AM, Jeff Raymond at
jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
>
> He's not wrong.
>
> -Jeff

Wow! That's a tough one.

Marc


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
On 2/9/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> jayig my nomination was to maintain consistency. It wasn't a political
> message of any sort. You are welcome to use the word Jew on any article but
> when it comes to categorization "people" should be used with it for
> consistency among other reasons.

Is "X people" really a circumlocution? There are lots of examples
where X people is somehow more acceptable than "Xs": Blacks, whites,
gays, Asians - all these sound better as "... people". This may be an
Australian thing, but I was certainly taught that it's better to use
an adjective rather than a noun when describing people. Describing
someone as "a gay" seems to subconsciously imply that they're not a
person - instead, they're something different. It's not perfect though
- "Lesbian person" sounds bizarre to me.

In summary: to me this has more to do with aesthetics than any racist
undertones.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> What you've done is great. However, I did discover an issue (you may
> already be aware of this)...If the transcluded disambig page has
> sections, then those sections show up in the TOC of the transcluding page.
>
> No obvious solution comes to mind, short of eliminating sections from
> disambig pages.

I think it's fairly clear that we could not immediately take every
disambig page and just declare it suitable for transclusion at the top
of the relevant pages. Most will need minor reformatting, even if it's
just sticking <noinclude> around certain bits of text like section
headings and what-not.

As a slightly separate issue, more advanced transclusion methods would
certainly be beneficial, and I did raise a bugzilla bug over this
once. The ability to transclude text without categories was a key
issue, and references was another issue. To solve the
disambig-template issue, perhaps we would need to be able to mark a
template as only being transcludable for N levels (disambig page can
transclude {{disambig}}, but another page that transcludes the
disambig page doesn't transclude it), but that sounds really
complicated and confusing.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/9/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> That is a problem with using only wikicode. I'd suggest instead using
> an ajaxy (not really, but kinda) solution where a javascript loads the
> HTML from the target page and displays it in the box (I'm thinking of
> the popups addon, it does that, right?) That would ensure that the
> headings doesn't appear in the article, since it is added after the
> page has been rendered by mediawiki.

Yeah, I was originally thinking of that kind of solution, like with
GreaseMonkey or something. But then transclusion is so easy :)

Presumably this could be done by inserting code into common.js?

Would you want to load the disambig page when the main page loads, or
only when the user clicks "show"? In the first case, you're loading
two pages every time you load one page (much more work than
transcluding). In the second, you lose some of the time saving that
we're trying to gain with this whole scheme.

Steve


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

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

Moin,

On Friday 09 February 2007 00:25:19 Nick Jenkins wrote:
> > > > > That's six CSS files for most desktop browsers, and seven if
> > > > > you're using IE.
> > > >
> > > > Actually just four and five, respectively.  The media-specific
> > > > stylesheets will probably not be loaded by clients that aren't
> > > > using that medium.
> > >
> > > I can only speak to what Firefox and IE are actually doing.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > I.e. both browsers fetch all 3 media variant stylesheets, at least on
> > > a full refresh.
> > >
> > > ... and exactly why both browsers feel the need to load a
> > > media="handheld" stylesheet whilst running on a distinctly
> > > non-handheld device is a question that's probably best directed at
> > > the authors of those browsers ;-)
> >
> > Have you filed bug reports with them? :)
>
> For Firefox:
> See: "Bug 79021 - All stylesheets are loaded regardless of rendering
> media" https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79021
> [Open 5.5 years, no activity in past 3.5 years]

I didn't want to sound rude, just making sure it's actually filed as bug :)
Maybe someone should reply to this bug report along the lines of "this
wastes a lot of bandwidth on sites like wikipedia"

> For IE:
> Don't care - reporting bugs to MS is an exercise in pain and frustration,
> involving having to provide your credit card details to do their QA for
> them on their products (and then they say "sorry, we can't help" -
> completely useless), or if you use the web feedback forms they just
> ignore you for 9 years (at which point they discontinue the product)
> even though it was clearly a 1-line trivial fix ... or at least these
> have been *my* experiences reporting bugs to MS. And as the
> piece-de-resistance, their IE bug database is now closed (
> https://connect.microsoft.com/IE ) to both reads and writes. Nope - I'm
> leaving this one to a masochist.

I completely understand. You might as well talk to the trees. At least the
wind makes them sway understandingly.

Just for a laugh I tried the page you gave, and it redirects you to:

	http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/iefaq.mspx

And when you click there on "Internet Explorer Support", it goes to:

	http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/tab2

Which can not be found. I rest my case.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Feb  9 10:13:45 2007 with key 0x93B84C15.
 View my photo gallery: http://bloodgate.com/photos
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Look, I'm about to buy me a double barreled sawed off shotgun and show
 Linus what I think about backspace and delete not working." -- some
 anonymous .signature

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subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
On 2/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I quite agree.  Pride is a fine thing, but I remain unconvinced that
> many people want a navigational aid to all the notable people who are
> or might have been gay / Jewish / Methylated Wesletarian / whatever;
> much more likely that they will go along thinking "I am gay / Jewish /
> Methylated Wesletarian / whatever, show me that lots of famous people

Obviously they're not useful as navigational aids. They're intended as
*tags*. But since MediaWiki doesn't do tags, categories are the best
we have. I would suggest keeping them on until we have a better
solution - whether useful for navigating or not.

Steve


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> > > > That's six CSS files for most desktop browsers, and seven if you're
> > > > using IE.
> > >
> > > Actually just four and five, respectively.  The media-specific
> > > stylesheets will probably not be loaded by clients that aren't using
> > > that medium.
> >
> > I can only speak to what Firefox and IE are actually doing.
> [snip]
> > I.e. both browsers fetch all 3 media variant stylesheets, at least on a
> > full refresh.
> >
> > ... and exactly why both browsers feel the need to load a
> > media="handheld" stylesheet whilst running on a distinctly non-handheld
> > device is a question that's probably best directed at the authors of
> > those browsers ;-)
>
> Have you filed bug reports with them? :)

For Firefox:
See: "Bug 79021 - All stylesheets are loaded regardless of rendering media"
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79021
[Open 5.5 years, no activity in past 3.5 years]

For IE:
Don't care - reporting bugs to MS is an exercise in pain and frustration,
involving having to provide your credit card details to do their QA for
them on their products (and then they say "sorry, we can't help" -
completely useless), or if you use the web feedback forms they just
ignore you for 9 years (at which point they discontinue the product)
even though it was clearly a 1-line trivial fix ... or at least these have
been *my* experiences reporting bugs to MS. And as the piece-de-resistance,
their IE bug database is now closed ( https://connect.microsoft.com/IE )
to both reads and writes. Nope - I'm leaving this one to a masochist.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/8/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> > break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
> >
> > We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> > ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> > need to learn to do right?
>
>
> Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think,
> healthy.

Turnover isn't a bad thing.  People go from active, to inactive and back to
active all the time.  But burnout is a problem when it comes from conflict
and causes a person to leave feeling upset and ill-served by the community.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/9/07 9:36 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:

> There is a culture of baiting these admins until they crack.  A recent
> example was MONGO.  There are others.
>
> Guy (JzG)

As I suggested in a post a while back, perhaps there needs to be an
identified, organized support system within WP that an embattled admin can
turn to for encouragement and perspective. In this way they may not feel
they are so alone in a given situation.

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] "About Wikipedia" in navigation sidebar

body:
On 2/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The link goes to [[Wikipedia:About]]. I ask the august embattled

Omg, [[Wikipedia:About]] is like a clone of [[:Wikipedia]]. But not.
So similar. Yet different. It even randomly links to the encyclopaedia
article in the text. How horrendously confusing. We should replace the
graphic in the top right with some sort of navigational box to make it
look less like an encyclopedia article. Maybe a vertical version of
the template at the bottom of [[WP:LOP]].

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/8/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 2/8/07 10:34 PM, Michael Snow at wikipedia at earthlink.net wrote:
>
> > We are supposed to be focusing on quality, not quantity, with respect to
> > the encyclopedia articles. It's high time we did the same for
> > administrators.
>
> A resounding YES!
>
> Marc

I'd have to say a resounding NO.  The article quality philosophy says that
we have enough articles and we should put higher priority on improving the
ones we have than adding new ones.  That philosophy isn't workable with
admins.  The more popular Wikipedia gets, the more crap there is to deal
with.  With a few notable exceptions, the people who do most of the admin
work burn out in a few months.  Managed well, they go back to being
productive editors.  Managed poorly, they quit the project.  "Quality over
quantity" would demand more of these people who are willing to do think kind
of work, which would probably mean that they are more likely to quit than to
return to the pool of editors (where they are still available to do admin
tasks).

While I agree that admins can do an immense amount of damage
(unintentionally or maliciously), we have raised some standards too high,
while neglected others.  Edit counts are almost meaningless, but the
baseline keeps going up.  That's fine for people who go AWB and get a few
thousand edits moving the stub template below the cats & interwiki links and
calling it "cleanup"...but that means that people who took the time to learn
about the community by editing articles and interacting with people on talk
pages, and thereby learning about policy and being socialised to the
community, are at a disadvantage.

I know lots of people who have been around a couple years, accumulated
2-4000 edits over than time, who know policy and help out newbies, who
contribute content...but who have little chance of being an admin because
people expect huge edit counts.  On the other hand, when the hyper-active
editors, who do 2-3000 edits per month for 6 months become admins they (a)
may not know policy all that well, and (b) may be reaching the end of their
brief, hot flame of contributions.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Mail archives

body:
I agree with his reason..

Why don't you try another approach and find us a better search engine?
You can dl the archives for testing.

If you do this everyone will be happy.

On 2/8/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Timwi wrote:
> >>David Gerard wrote:
> >>
> >>>The messing about with archives and the INCREDIBLY AWFUL htdig search
> >>>are causing problems ...
> >>
> >>Yeah, I still don't get why you guys are blocking Google from indexing
> >>it.
> >
> > Maybe you should see a doctor about your memory problem? :)
>
> There is no problem with my memory. You just haven't provided any good
> reason for it. All you said is that you're tired of complaints from
> stupid people who post personal information. That is not a good reason
> at all to remove the most useful functionality for all the hundreds of
> people who would use it. I keep saying that and you keep ignoring me.
>
> Timwi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Timwi

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> Ahhhh, so providing a reason you disagree with is the same as not
> providing a reason. I see.

"Hey, why did you hit me on the head with this hammer?" - "Because
you're stupid." - "That's not a good reason to hit someone with a
hammer!" - "Ah, so providing a reason you disagree with is the same as
not providing a reason. I see."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Pilotguy <pilotguy.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> The close-knit community of yesterday is gone, and I want it back. Less
> bitching, more supporting.

In my experience, the days of a close-knot community were long gone by the
time you joined.  I'd hate to think what Stevertigo or David or Ed think of
as "the days of the close-knit community"


list: textbook-l

from_name: Martin Swift

subject: [Textbook-l] Offer to upload a book, subject to conditions

body:
On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 03:18:16PM -0500, Simetrical wrote:
> But this is hopefully not an argument we need to continue, because I
> think everyone will be happy with Wikibooks having a modifiable copy
> and linking prominently to the main copy.

Yes, I believe that would be very acceptable to everyone (wish I'd
come up with the idea myself ;-).

I'm sorry for what may appear like a hostile tone in parts of this
discussion. I would like to point out that there is some background to
why the community is so strictly defending the collaborative control.
We aren't just blindly following the old means, but also trying to
protect the ends.

In the Wikibooks community, it is practically near impossible to
attribute a contributor with status of "main editor" and give that
user more editorial control than others. This /has/ been suggested and
discussed in the past and the community found that the drawbacks and
pitfalls were to many and too severe to accept this.

I don't think anyone would contend to say that some books wouldn't
benefit from a main author. But because of the current structure of
the project it is unfeasable.

Similar arguments apply to the topic of "free webhosting". I certainly
don't think that your friend was looking to leach of Wikibooks. Most
academics that I've interacted with are deeply dedicated to their
field, and to furthering our collective understanding of the topic.
Still, while your friend most likely has the best of intentions, at
Wikibooks we don't allow conditions set on content.

Again, it's not because we're hard headed and unwilling to deliberate
the options. It's because we're an open community without any formal
ranks (e.g. admins have no more authority in discussion and disputes).
If your friend is looking to publish in a community with control based
on expertese, she might want to - ehemm - look to academia...

More seriously; your friend might actually want to explore whether
there is some project like MIT's OpenCourseWare open to her:
  <http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm>
  "a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students,
  and self-learners around the world."

I have no delusions about the superiority of Wikibooks over academia.
It's just one method of content creation and still in it's infancy.

Thank you for contributing,
Martin Swift

--
\u270C


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] In hospital

body:
In hospital. Only get a couple minutes, but I may be able to get a laptop or
something later if they will allow it.

There's a trucking company from arkansas named C Bean that needs to be run
out of business. Their trucker actually tried to tell the cop it was my
fault when he merged into the left most lane, crushing my car between his
trailer and the concrete barrier. I'm just lucky it was rush hour traffic
and we were moving 25 rather than 60.

wife says i'm going to have a 'really sexy scar pattern' when i recover.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

references:
<eqhtc4$e5m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<C1F1E8C3.1671%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>
	<eqi6cr$k0k$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Yes, as long as we get the "no big deal" message across (like we have been
since the inception of Wikipedia) and admins have no greater power than,
blah blah blah, all we really need to do is prevent the bad admins from
getting it. Almost all actions that admins take are reversible anyway, all
we need is an RfA that ensures that the mediocre admins can still get the
bit while we can successfully "fail" the bad admins. I don't even bother
checking RFA anymore, it's almost as painful reading through all the
questions as it is to actually vote, I know I'd think thrice before
accepting an RFA nomination if I were to get it in this day and age.

On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
> >>>How does the Community define a "quality admin"?
> >
> >>Why do you need such a definition?
> >
> > I would think for the same reason that, before you decide something is
> > substandard, you would first need to define what the standard is.
>
> Hm, this sounds like you didn't read the rest of my posting, but maybe I
> didn't make it clear enough, so I'll try again.
>
> I believe that current Wikipedia practices implement the following
> mindset:
>
> You don't need to define what constitutes a "good quality" editor
> because the "medium quality" editors can edit just as much as the "good
> quality" editors. You only need to define "bad quality" editors because
> those are the ones you need to find in order to block them from editing.
> "Bad quality" can be determined on the basis of specific incidents (e.g.
> continued vandalism).
>
> Similarly, I am advocating that the same should apply to admins:
>
> You don't need to define "good quality" in this case because the "medium
> quality" admins can stay just as much as the "good quality" admins. You
> only need to define "bad quality" admins because those are the ones you
> need to find in order to demote them. "Bad quality" can be determined on
> the basis of specific incidents (e.g. continued disruptance).
>
> Why do we allow everyone to edit even though people vandalise pages all
> the time? Of course, it's because the constructive edits from passers-by
> outweigh the work required to clean up after vandals. The RfA system is
> analogous to having all users blocked by default and requiring them to
> apply for editing privileges first. Then you'd get people voting
> "oppose" because the user makes spelling mistakes in their blog or
> something, thereby missing out on potentially useful contributions like
> uploading selfmade pictures or organising categories.
>
> Wikipedia claims to have a system in place that finds "good quality" (or
> at least "good enough quality") admins -- it's called RfA. What I'm
> saying now is that this search for "good enough quality" admins is
> misguided because the ones you need to identify are the "bad quality"
> ones. Although the current system makes it difficult for a genuinely
> bad-quality user to become admin, it also misses out on "good enough
> quality" admins because of specious criteria like "not enough edits".
> This way (potentially) hundreds of users are prevented from helping
> constructively.
>
> Timwi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/8/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?

Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think,
healthy.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/9/07, James Forrester <jdforrester at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Fully agreed. It seemed to work with many, including me (well, I'll
> > leave that judgement to the reader ;-)); the current system seems to
> > be negatively selecting against people who will "be bold" or "ignore
> > all rules", too, which suggests a slow corruption of our community's
> > spirit (note that I do not suggest that this is in any way
> > deliberate).
>
> Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do
> before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and
> not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped.
>
> So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe
> admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means
> electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.

Or simply make admin powers an automatic process after hitting some
reasonable editing benchmarks.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fluctuating Google result count with Firefox

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I know we're all a fan of Googlecounting results. But this is weird:
> When I search for a term in Firefox's Google box, the result count is
> exactly 200% what it should be.
>
> 1. Search for "Wikipedia is great" in the FireFox search box.
> 2. Mostly (but not always), Google reports 29,600 matches.
> 3. Repeat the search just by pressing Google's "Search" button.
> 4. Google reports 14,800 matches.

It's because every search request is routed to a randomly-selected
Google server farm. Some of those farms may be running on the newest
index, while some may still be waiting for the latest index update. This
effect is not unique to the search query you entered; lots of people
keep noticing it and wondering about it. I'm pretty sure there is an
entry about it in one of Google's many FAQs, but I couldn't find it.

Timwi


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Subject: Re: Project as namespace

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/10/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The cynical side of my says that is more to do with people wanting job
>> security. Mind you I have the same view about much of copyright law.
>>
>
> Eh, no. If you want job security you redesign everything you can get
> your paws on, so you're the only one who understands how everything
> works. Leaving things alone makes you replaceable.
>

Yeah, you're right, it's just fear. Fear and laziness.

The few programmers I've met who are both entirely cynical about their
work and socially adept enough to be manipulative don't seem to want to
code their way into a lifetime of bug fixes. Instead, they'll become
evil managers or jealous guardians of key knowledge. But they won't
intentionally make a mess.

Interestingly, and bringing this almost back on topic, it's our own Ward
Cunningham who gave me my best tool in fighting that death-by-cruft
pattern: the concept of code debt.

The people paying the bills don't care much about abstract notions of
quality, especially the sort of mysterious under-the-hood quality that
they can't see. But if you talk about programmers building up debt, and
the interest you pay in having to touch high-debt code, they start to
get it. And then when you tell them that if the total debt ever rises
above the value of the code, that's when you have to declare project
bankruptcy and start from scratch, that really makes their eyes light up.

Suddenly, instead of bad code being a vague problem for programmers to
deal with by working harder, it's a financial issue, a debt that is
getting in the way of something they want.

William


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?

You can't prevent burnout.

What you're doing wrong is you're making it too hard for new admins to
fill up the "vacancies".


from_name: Cool Cat

body:
True, but waiting makes things worse. Similar categories are morphed because
the category exists. In that sense we do have a deadline.

Maybe a "Wikiproject Categorization" would be a better solution... Any
opinions? Does such a wikiproject exist?

   - Cool Cat

On 2/9/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> Cool Cat wrote:
> > So do you have a suggestion to tackle/quick attack the problem? CfD is a
> > slow and inefficient procedure to get rid of nonsense. Too many
> > panic/contradictory "Keep" votes just pile up in almost an instant.
>
> How do you distinguish the "panic/contradictory" keeps from the
> "reasoned/consistent" keeps?
>
> If you really think a category should go, take the time to write a full
> argument for it and don't worry so much if the CfD ends up going the
> other way. There was once a category on Wikipedia that I felt was
> deserving of deletion and I spent a lot of effort banging my head
> against a wall on CfD trying to convince some "keep" voters of my
> correctness, without success. But ultimately a year or so later, after
> everyone had wandered off to other things, someone else came along and
> CfDed it again and the category quietly passed away. If a category is
> truly deserving of deletion then eventually it's going to happen. We're
> not on a deadline.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

body:
In Wikien-l, you wrote:

I've already explained this elsewhere, so I'll only give a quick summary
here. Wikipedia does something _right_ by letting everyone edit. The
underlying philosophy is that everyone starts out as innocent, and is
blocked from editing only if they show misbehaviour. Adminship is the
wrong way around. Users start out as being viewed with caution and
suspicion, and must "earn" their admin "privileges" by fulfilling some
ridiculous set of criteria. The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.

Have you seen my proposal for adminship?  It's on my blog at
http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2006/10/proposal-for-adminship-on-english.html

Kelly


from_name: Pilotguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Wow, look at all these messages. I don't have time to read them all, so I'll
probably be saying more of the same, but here my perspective on this.

Being an admin is not what it is made out to be. People think, once you are
an admin, you get a big office on the top floor with a massage chair. This
is not the case, especially for the more hardworking ones like (in my
opinion) Alkivar and others. The situation is that we do something like
clear out hundreds of pages in CAT:CSD, and instead of getting support and
encouragement for doing a task that's a pain in the ass, we get yelled at by
everyone. Whether we delete pages, or even remove CSD tags, we get harassed,
threatened, and yelled at, sometimes by established editors who know better.

My point? The hardworking admins who help clear the backlogs and do
janitorial work get zilch, while the rest go about their daily business
without being worried whether some pissed off lunatic is going to call them
while they're at work and frighten them.

The close-knit community of yesterday is gone, and I want it back. Less
bitching, more supporting.

On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
> >
> > Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted
> hurts.
>
> Think about this a bit more. Being blocked hurts. Is it so much of a
> stretch of imagination to realise that (for some if not most people)
> being excluded from adminship also hurts? It is, after all, functionally
> the same as being "blocked" from the extra features.
>
> People probably don't realise this readily because it's a qualitatively
> different kind of hurting -- it's not a singular event like being
> blocked or a page being deleted, which is like a stab in the chest which
> may (or may not) heal. This is different; it's more like a nagging
> headache that doesn't go away.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Pilotguy
pilotguy.wikipedia at gmail.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pilotguy

http://pilotguy.wordpress.com


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yeah, there is the "more and more crap" problem ... what would people
>> suggest removing, if anything?
>>
>
> Well here's my 2 cents:
>
> Main page: scrap it, it's redundant. That's what clicking on the ball does.

A friend of mine recently redesigned a well-known website and got rid of
the textual home page link. In the user testing here in the San
Francisco area, it worked fine. When the site launched, it was their
number one usability problem, because many people don't know that a site
logo is a magic home link.

They wanted to make it more obvious that the logo was something special,
but didn't want to do anything as gauche as putting a blue border around
it. Their final solution was to make the logo highlighted on mouseover,
so that mere mortals could learn that it was a link to the home page.

William


from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Keitei wrote:
> > On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
> >
> >>Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted
> >>hurts.
> >
> > Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you
> > do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow
> > to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal.
> > Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and
> > nothing happens.
>
> Being blocked hurts simply because it is a slap-in-your-face message
> that someone doesn't like you, and uses force to keep you out of
> somewhere. Many users get blocked but don't realise that they were
> violating some policy. Many users appear to regard the conflicts they
> get into as a mere disagreement with some opinion, and then if they get
> blocked it easily seems like the person is using their power unfairly to
> enforce their opinion and to suppress the user's. If you were a new user
> and you were to get that impression, I'm quite sure you'd feel hurt.
>
> Timwi

Other newusers, when they get blocked for doing exactly what an adminisrator
and long-time user do, get angry that Wikipedia policies are biased to favor
established users and administrators over newbies.  After all, when the
established user and adminsitrator do something and get away with it, what
right does any administartor have to expect that a newbie shouldn't act
exactly how they were shown to act?

Wikipedia has a lot of unwritten rules, number one of which seems to be post
more than humanly possible for anyone who knows any subject outside of
Wikipedia.

The trick to getting administrators to stay is to stop proliferating the
exact same type of administrators who already own all of Wikipedia, namely
editors who have endless time to do nothing but edit Wikipedia.  An
encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a brilliant idea, one of the leading
ones of the Cyberspace era.  But an encyclopedia created and edited and
administrated entirely by folks who live in Cyberspace 24 hours a day is a
prescription for a crappy encyclopedia.

A variety of administrators, limited time as an admin before you have to get
revoted (make it a year, it's no big deal, after all, so why should it be
dictatorship for life?), and limited admins with limited hoops to jump to
gain it, like admins with ISP blocking powers, again for one year.

Again, if it's no big deal, why is it such an exclusive club for only those
welded to cyberspace?  If it's no big deal, why is it granted for life?  If
it's no big deal, why can't anyone get it?  Especially anyones who don't
edit 24/7/365?  Thanks to God (insert diety of choice or remove as
necessary) for leap years.

KP


from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?
>

Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard
of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things; and unbelievable
though it may sound, it is more important to us than this stupid little
website, and we just have to call it quits. Like adminship itself, this
should be no big deal.

The way to deal with this is to stop imposing such preposterous
requirements at RfA. Most (not many, MOST) of the current admins don't
measure up to the standards being imposed on new candidates. The supply
of new administrators should be compensating for the departure of old
ones whilst keeping pace with the growth of the project.

-Gurch


body:
I know we're all a fan of Googlecounting results. But this is weird:
When I search for a term in Firefox's Google box, the result count is
exactly 200% what it should be.

1. Search for "Wikipedia is great" in the FireFox search box.
2. Mostly (but not always), Google reports 29,600 matches.
3. Repeat the search just by pressing Google's "Search" button.
4. Google reports 14,800 matches.

Strangely, the difference in count seems to correspond to a difference
in layout. The 14,800 count groups related matches by indenting. (The
second match is [[All your base are belong to us]], indented under
[[WIkipedia:Why Wikipedia is so great]].) The 29,600 match shows no
indenting.

FYI, here's the URL I'm using.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22wikipedia+is+great%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

Constantly pasting that into FireFox, sometimes I get 29,600,
sometimes I get 14,800. Pasting into IE7 I always get 14,800. Anyone
have an explanation?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > On 2/8/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> >>break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
> >>
> >>We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> >>ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> >>need to learn to do right?
> >
> > Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think,
> > healthy.
>
> I can't speak for George (the OP), but I don't think I'm working from
> the assumption that we're doing anything wrong. I come to the conclusion
> that we do.

Okay,  how have you come to that conclusion?


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

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

Nick Jenkins wrote:
>> At least this explains why we have half as many CSS loads as page views. :)
>
> Actually, I think 20% is an *underestimate* of the CSS & JS loads. The way it's being measured is like this:
> =======================================================
> +	("upload", re.compile(r"^http://upload.wikimedia.org/")),
> +	("article", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/wiki/")),
> +	("wikifiles", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/w/")),
> +	("skins-css", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/skins-1.5/.*\.css")),
> +	("skins-js", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/skins-1.5/.*\.js")),
> +	("skins-image", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/skins-1.5/.*\.(?:png|gif|jpg)"))]
> =======================================================
>
> Now, for me, 4 of the 7 CSS stylesheets I'm loading would be counted as "wikifiles" :

Irrelevant, since I was measuring the CSS and JS *files* specifically.

Those put out through the wiki are already compressed.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> on 2/9/07 9:36 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>> There is a culture of baiting these admins until they crack.  A recent
>>> example was MONGO.  There are others.
>>>
>>> Guy (JzG)
>>>
>>
>> As I suggested in a post a while back, perhaps there needs to be an
>> identified, organized support system within WP that an embattled admin can
>> turn to for encouragement and perspective. In this way they may not feel
>> they are so alone in a given situation.
>>
on 2/9/07 10:54 AM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs at earthlink.net wrote:

>>
> It would be continuously attacked, as proof positive of the evil admin
> cabal. That's all part of the baiting culture. There are also quite a
> few editors who are inclined to regard admins unfavorably to begin, as
> tiny manifestations of the The Man(tm), and who I'm sure are secretly
> gleeful when admins are taken down. It's not an organized program of
> divide-and-conquer, but the net effect is the same. One of the reasons I
> don't do more admin work is that I see what happens to other admins who
> stick their necks out, and it's just not worth it to me.

Stan,

I hear ya. But, by not having such an organized support system for the
reasons you stated, don't the wackos win? Who gives a damn if they see it as
a cabal or whatever, the benefits can far outweigh the bullshit. I don't
mean to belabor this, but, as you might guess, I'm a great believer in
interpersonal support systems.

Marc

--
If you're restricted to what is - you are cut off from - - what could be.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Phil Boswell wrote:
> Nick Jenkins wrote:
>> That's six CSS files for most desktop browsers, and seven if you're using
>> IE.
>>
> Is there a particular reason why the "IE Fixes" files are loaded separately?
> Would it be feasible to conflate them into a single ifle, with the selectors
> for particular versions *inside* that file, and then simply load that one
> file for IE users?

a) there isn't a CSS selector for "MSIE versions 5.5 and above but below
6.0" etc, whereas there are conditional comments in MSIE's HTML parser

b) there's no reason to make everyone else load four or five
MSIE-version-specific style sets

c) it's easier to maintain with them separate

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On 2/9/07, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> Maybe someone should reply to this bug report along the lines of "this
> wastes a lot of bandwidth on sites like wikipedia"

No!  Bad Tels!  No bugspam!

On 2/9/07, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a particular reason why the "IE Fixes" files are loaded separately?
> Would it be feasible to conflate them into a single ifle, with the selectors
> for particular versions *inside* that file, and then simply load that one
> file for IE users?

No, because the IE comment conditionals only work in HTML comments,
not CSS comments.  (Ref: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html.)


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
>
> [...] But, by not having such an organized support system for the
> reasons you stated, don't the wackos win? Who gives a damn if they see it as
> a cabal or whatever, the benefits can far outweigh the bullshit. I don't
> mean to belabor this, but, as you might guess, I'm a great believer in
> interpersonal support systems.
>
If it was just a matter of wackos, then yeah, we would just ignore them.
But there seem to be a bunch of otherwise-rational editors who would
make trouble over it as well, and would take mutual support as a reason
to escalate the whole thing into "impending destruction of WP by
power-hungry admins". Just look at Cunctator's one-liner here - an admin
leaves in pain, and his response is "well, a little churn is good". I
encourage you to try designing a support system though, WP can't afford
to lose all its admins to "churn".

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] WYSIWYG (or WYSIWYM or WYSIWYM) status?

body:
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Matthew Simoneau wrote:
> A page on Meta <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor> lists
> several experiments and implementation ideas, but is anyone seriously
> tackling this problem?  Should we take up a collection to hire a
> developer to work on this?  Or maybe to offer X PRIZE style bounty for a
> successful implementation?  I'm in for $25!

These are dead-ends, don't waste your time or money on anything that
tries to tack on an HTML editor widget and requires translating back and
forth (an inherently lossy operation which will never work correctly
over thousands of edits of an article's lifetime).

Something like WikiWizard is more interesting:
(http://jspwiki.org/wiki/WikiWizard site seems down at the moment)

A proper wysiwyg system either needs to be built around the wiki markup
directly -- in which case you need a proper definition of the markup and
a standard, clean parser if you want to do anything more than syntax
highlighting and such pretties that WikiWizard does -- or else the
markup needs to be built around the editor -- such as dumping the wiki
syntax entirely and using an HTML-based markup directly. (I believe a
number of the 'intranet'-oriented wiki-like systems do this.)

We're not likely to dump our markup in the next few years. Nothing else
is likely to happen without the markup being formalized.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
  The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
> who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.

And who would be empowered to de-admin people?  Those people would
become the cabal with the "special" "privilieges" instead of admins.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
>
> We are supposed to be focusing on quality, not quantity, with respect to
> the encyclopedia articles. It's high time we did the same for
> administrators.

The big problem with this sentiment is that you think that quantity gets
in the way of quality. That is a major mistake, because it will stop you
from promoting people to adminship who would later turn out to be
high-quality admins.

You can still demote the very-low-quality admins. You are under the
impression that once someone is an admin, they can wreak havoc at will,
but this is precisely the misconception that stops you from having
enough good admins.

Timwi


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:48:21 +0000, Gurch
<matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:

>Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard
>of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things

What is this real life of which you speak, and where can I download
it?

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


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Marc Riddell wrote:
> >
> > [...] But, by not having such an organized support system for the
> > reasons you stated, don't the wackos win? Who gives a damn if they see it as
> > a cabal or whatever, the benefits can far outweigh the bullshit. I don't
> > mean to belabor this, but, as you might guess, I'm a great believer in
> > interpersonal support systems.
> >
> If it was just a matter of wackos, then yeah, we would just ignore them.
> But there seem to be a bunch of otherwise-rational editors who would
> make trouble over it as well, and would take mutual support as a reason
> to escalate the whole thing into "impending destruction of WP by
> power-hungry admins". Just look at Cunctator's one-liner here - an admin
> leaves in pain, and his response is "well, a little churn is good". I
> encourage you to try designing a support system though, WP can't afford
> to lose all its admins to "churn".
>
> Stan

Let me follow that up a bit.  I think a little churn is good, too.
But there's a difference between "Joe's taking a break right now and
will be back later" and someone getting so frustrated that they start
getting abusive and then leave with no intent to return.

The difference between a break, or even taking a sabattical from admin
stuff while still contributing, and a burnout is rather clear.

People taking breaks is healthy and good.  Burnouts aren't.  I would
be extremely happy if we could figure out a consistent way to convert
impending burnouts into breaks.

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


list: commons-l

from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
On 2/8/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> * Introduce user recognition system.
> We are all volunteers, but there's no reason we can't develop an award
> system that aims to recognise the time-intensive effort and/or
> outstandingly high-quality contributions that longterm users have
> made. The benefits of such a system are two-fold: they give the
> contributors in question tangible, public and formal recognition of
> their efforts, which thanks and encourages them; and it offers
> concrete examples to other users of what kind of conduct is
> appreciated and needed.
> I have started writing about this on my user page, but I have some
> more ideas in my head, that I hope the community will welcome when I
> finally write them down. :)
>
 Yes, people like being thanked for their work. I think that this is a
very good idea!

Bryan


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Joshua Brady wrote:

> >  * Wikipedia doubles every 6 months, we need an admin pool to
> compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin
> issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So
> lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his
> contributions and WILLINGNESS.

Here is this wrong sentiment again. Just because you need admins who
"will focus on handling admin issues", you are (incorrectly) concluding
that people who only "waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue
use" are somehow worthless and therefore shouldn't be made admins. Even
if someone helps out with some admin tasks for only 2 months, surely
they're worth more than they would be if they couldn't do any of it
because they're denied access to the admin functions. You never know if
one of them stays on and becomes the focussed admin you need.

Timwi


body:
Timwi wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>>I know we're all a fan of Googlecounting results. But this is weird:
>>When I search for a term in Firefox's Google box, the result count is
>>exactly 200% what it should be.
>>
>>1. Search for "Wikipedia is great" in the FireFox search box.
>>2. Mostly (but not always), Google reports 29,600 matches.
>>3. Repeat the search just by pressing Google's "Search" button.
>>4. Google reports 14,800 matches.
>
> It's because every search request is routed to a randomly-selected
> Google server farm. Some of those farms may be running on the newest
> index, while some may still be waiting for the latest index update. This
> effect is not unique to the search query you entered; lots of people
> keep noticing it and wondering about it. I'm pretty sure there is an
> entry about it in one of Google's many FAQs, but I couldn't find it.

Turns out the proper term is "Google Dance", and googling for that gives
us an interesting blog entry. http://dance.efactory.de/


subject: [Commons-l] Commons Picture of the Year 2006

body:
The final has been postponed 2 days, for maintenance purposes: We want
to ensure that the votes are counted correctly and that we have enough
time to prepare the final. The final will run from 17th to 28th
February.

Bryan

On 1/31/07, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Commons Picture of the Year 2006 will be chosen in February.
> Participate by voting for a picture out of the featured pictures
> promoted in 2006. This vote is open to every established Wikimedian.
>
> The election has two phases. In the first phase, taking place from 1st
> to 14th February 2007, the ten best pictures will be chosen among all
> 2006 Featured Pictures.
>
> At the end of phase 1, the top 10 images by number of votes will go to
> phase 2 (the final). Only images with 3 or more votes are eligible for
> phase 2.
>
> During the final, to take place from 15th February to 28th February,
> the Commons Picture of the Year 2006, and the two runners-up, will be
> chosen from the eligible images.
>
> The three winning pictures will be displayed on the Main Page and
> enter the History Books of Wikimedia Commons forever :-)
>
> Participate! The election is open from tomorrow on
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2006 !
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Commons Picture of the Year 2006


from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
 (some important points)

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>There are other copyright loopholes which we explicitly reject. For
>example, we do not accept copyrighted works from Iran except which we
>can make a fair use claim for...  We could legally do so, because as a
>non-signature to any of the international copyright treaties, their
>copyright law (which is very similar to that of most countries) is not
>enforceable outside of Iran.
>
>
>
But you use copyrighted work from Europe (some paintings by Picasso) on
en.wiki because you use a copyright loophole that they're PD in the US.
You don't consider these fair use, but PD.

Marco (Cruccone)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/02/07, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> >   The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
> > > who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.
>
> > And who would be empowered to de-admin people?  Those people would
> > become the cabal with the "special" "privilieges" instead of admins.
>
>
> The ArbCom does this now.

Of course, but they'd hardly be able to handle the extra workload in
their current form.


from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:

> Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted
> hurts.

Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you
do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow
to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal.
Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and
nothing happens.

I think that probably punitive blocks would have less drama and be
better received overall. Currently blocks mean "this person is a
danger to the community." A punitive block would just mean "this
person did such and such" and would both prevent further unwanted
actions and not stigmatize it more than needed. But I will not be
pushing for a rewrite of the blocking policy. I just think it really
ought to be no big deal.

--keitei


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>> At least this explains why we have half as many CSS loads as page views. :)
>
> Actually, I think 20% is an *underestimate* of the CSS & JS loads. The way it's being measured is like this:
> =======================================================
> +	("upload", re.compile(r"^http://upload.wikimedia.org/")),
> +	("article", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/wiki/")),
> +	("wikifiles", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/w/")),
> +	("skins-css", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/skins-1.5/.*\.css")),
> +	("skins-js", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/skins-1.5/.*\.js")),
> +	("skins-image", re.compile(r"^http://[^/]+/skins-1.5/.*\.(?:png|gif|jpg)"))]
> =======================================================

The MIME type in the response is logged, to me that would be the obvious
way to distinguish between CSS and HTML.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Rich Holton wrote:
> I propose an experiment:
>
> Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make
> them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship
> without prejudice.
>
You left out the three months of impassioned debate about a) the
selection process, b) the minimal criteria, c) the number of editors to
be selected, d) the connotations of the term "probationary", and e) the
very concept of doing an experiment in the first place.

:-)  (I  hope)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I propose an experiment:
>>
>> Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make
>> them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship
>> without prejudice.
>>
>>
>
> So we increase the number of paper admins in return for what? Risk
> benefit analysis doesn't look good.
>
[...]

OK, so I guess I wasn't joking after all!

Stan


from_name: Cool Cat

body:
Based on this discussion I wrote an Essay, feel free to comment/expand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_write_articles_using_categories

  -Cool Cat

On 2/9/07, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/8/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > While it's easy to agree that there are a lot of useless and lame
> > categories, it's also the case that campaigns to purge these categories
> > do more to create friction than to solve problems.  With patience those
> > with an identity crisis will eventually go away at which time the
> > pointless categories can be removed without much fuss.
> >
> > BTW, Methylated Wesletarian (who are dead) need to be distinguished from
> > Ethylated Wesletarians, who are merely drunk.  This must be divided into
> > two categories. :-)
>
>
> That's being unnecessarily categoristic - youre chauvinistic categorism is
> no doubt
> motivated by a nefarious desire to destroy the fragile compact that holds
> the various
> tangential and differentiated branches of the Methylated Wesletarian
> community together
> under a single monicker.
>
> -SV , (human)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> The messing about with archives and the INCREDIBLY AWFUL htdig search
> are causing problems ...
>

I've generally found the MARC search engine to be useful. Gmane is
sometimes OK as well.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/
http://search.gmane.org/

-- Tim Starling


from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Use of logos within Wikimedia sites

body:
On 2/9/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since we also have the benefit of an official Foundation logo, perhaps
> the project logos can themselves be open-use.  What are the problems we
> are trying to avoid, and what things that we want are being held back
> due to licensing issues?
>

the foundation wishes to be able to raise money by lisenceing the use
of the logo to third parties

> For the latter point, there is a joy of creativity and
> project-identification when a WikiProject develops its own visual
> identity, whether that is in the form of style guidelines, unified
> template or infobox format, or icons and logos.  And there is a wider
> remix culture around a project that is encouraged by incorporating
> community icons into images and other media in innovative ways.
>
Community icons yes. The logo no unless you ask permission.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > ?you end up with resentment against the lucky
> > ones.
>
> After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin
> Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen" as
> one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The
> whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the
> job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough
> masochists out there to fill the positions?

Why is anyone contributing to Wikipedia at all?

Answer: I think we all buy the premise that we're producing something
really good here.  There are different facets of "producing", from
contributing articles, to watching for abuse and vandalism and
protecting against it, and figuring out the shape and structure of
what we're trying to do.

All are important.  All are valued.  Some are more thankless than others.

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


subject:
[Foundation-l] Four Questions About Freedom (was: Clearing up
	Wikimedia's media licensing policies (some important points))

body:
On 2/9/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 1) Making the division clearer. One way to do so would be to caption
> every image that is used under an exemption doctrine with a notice to
> that effect, e.g. "Copyright (C) XYZ. Used under fair use. [[About
> fair use in Wikipedia]]" That latter link could explain our policies,
> our desire for replacements, and the general free culture philosophy
> underlying this framework.
>

Rather a lot of the time we don't know exactly who XYZ is.
>
> 2) Liberation of non-free works. For many pictures, liberating them
> will be a matter of paying a certain amount to the copyright holder.
> So perhaps what is needed is a Content Liberation Group, either a
> point of contact within WMF, or a separate non-profit which seeks to
> raise funds to free existing works. I would favor the second option,
> as it could then be generalized to non-free software, and other works
> which are not as relevant to us.

There are various projects floating around to do this.

>
> Such a CLG could also systematically contact copyright holders of
> works which are no longer financially relevant. It could develop tools
> that make this process efficient and scalable. As Board member, I
> would be in favor of the WMF bootstrapping such a thing, even if it
> becomes a separate organization.
>

Problem is most of these works are not in a digital form and we have
no way of scanning in bulk.

> 3) The permanently non-free. Here I'm not referring to Mickey Mouse.
> Mickey is non-free, but it could theoretically be bought, or its
> copyright could expire (it would have if not for Disney's purchase of
> politicians to prevent it from happening).

That was more to do with bringing the US in line with most of the rest
of the planet.

> Even Wikimedia does not put its logos under an existing free license.
> I don't like the Debian approach of using two logos much because it
> tends to lead to either confusion or dominance of one over the other
> (who even knows the non-free Debian logo?). And this is one instance
> where there has been infighting within the free culture movement --
> Debian shouting at Mozilla and vice versa. A Firefox fork named
> Iceweasel. Silliness.

A rational response to the situation. It is not unreasonable for those
who want to stuff to be free to take steps to make sure it is.

>
> I think we may have to sit down with the CC folks, the FSF, Debian,
> and other stakeholders and try to develop an "Identifying Works
> License" or something like that, a license which grants certain
> liberties, as long as the use identifies only the desired entity and
> _nothing else_.

FSF and Debian will likely say no given that it runs against their
core philosophy. CC will probably produce half a dozen licences by
lunchtime.

>It might permit modifications if they used only for
> commentary and nothing else, and so on. It might even have to make
> explicit reference to commercial vs. non-commercial use.
>

Please don't suggest this to RMS in person I don't want to have to
hold an election for a replacement board member.
--
geni


subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
Florian Straub wrote:
> My additional wish would be a way to contact one time contributers. There
> are several ways to achieve this:
> * Creating a field "home wiki" on the resistration form.
> * Making email adresses mandatory & auto activate email notification
>
So why do you think people won't create throwaway email addresses? They
do that all the time now.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 2/9/07 7:05 AM, Timwi at timwi at gmx.net wrote:
>
>>The big problem with this sentiment is that you think that quantity gets
>>in the way of quality. That is a major mistake, because it will stop you
>>from promoting people to adminship who would later turn out to be
>>high-quality admins.
>
> How does the Community define a "quality admin"?

Why do you need such a definition?

What you need a definition for is a "low-quality admin", because those
are the ones that you want to demote.

While I don't claim that "low-quality admin" is easier to define, I
think that common sense can go a long way there. If an admin performs
controversial actions regularly, then you might consider they cause more
disruption than they benefit the project. Etc.

Timwi


body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>The messing about with archives and the INCREDIBLY AWFUL htdig search
>>are causing problems ...
>
> I've generally found the MARC search engine to be useful. Gmane is
> sometimes OK as well.
>
> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/
> http://search.gmane.org/

But Google is obviously better...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, James Forrester <jdforrester at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fully agreed. It seemed to work with many, including me (well, I'll
> leave that judgement to the reader ;-)); the current system seems to
> be negatively selecting against people who will "be bold" or "ignore
> all rules", too, which suggests a slow corruption of our community's
> spirit (note that I do not suggest that this is in any way
> deliberate).

Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do
before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and
not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped.

So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe
admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means
electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.

>Let's do it - if it doesn't work, we can always return to
> the era of the Spanish Inquisition RfA.

It is already the de-facto standard that every oppose has to give a
reason. It changes nothing.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests;
> you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.
>

Never really run across that one.

> In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record
> and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must
> jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets
> along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin,
> one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted
> their page,

Their feelings can be understood although in some cases their
behaviour can be kinda cute.

>trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers
> pissed that one has protected their page,

These form a fairly minor part of admin tasks. the number of pages
protected per month to stop edit waring is pretty low.

>users insistent that one is
> just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust

That was the general theory.

> and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that
> one is abusing one's powers,

Fairly easy to deal with.

> and "valued contributors" insistent that
> one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much
> more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.
>

Generaly there are few reasons to have dealings with such users beyond
those required by policy.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to
> illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?

Userboxes. Take admin powers out of that fight and things would have
been a lot less ah dramatic.

Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders
troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those
involved are still admins.

--
geni


from_name: Matthew Simoneau

body:
Hi all,

First of all, I'm sending a big thank you to everyone who contributes
code to MediaWiki.  You all make this social revolution possible.

Based on Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote and other sources, I know that
much of the community recognizes WYSIWYG editing as an important feature
for enabling greater participation.  There's a comment, however, from
Brion on the discussion page of the MediaWiki roadmap
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_roadmap> that it isn't in their
immediate plans.

A page on Meta <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor> lists
several experiments and implementation ideas, but is anyone seriously
tackling this problem?  Should we take up a collection to hire a
developer to work on this?  Or maybe to offer X PRIZE style bounty for a
successful implementation?  I'm in for $25!

Sincerely,
Matthew Simoneau
http://www.matthewsim.com/


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] Dual-Licensing Commons

body:
On 2/9/07, nilfanion wiki <nilfanion at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I had a random thought today and think it is worth a cursory consideration.
> Would it be (1) desirable, (2) technically feasible and (3) legal to
> relicense Commons under a dual GFDL / Creative Commons license as opposed to
> the current GFDL state?
>
> I don't no strong feelings about this, but I feel it is worthy of a
> discussion. If it IS possible and legal (I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if
> it is possible or not), I think there might be beneficial effects of it. For
> example, imagine the following scenario:
>
> An image is uploaded to Commons as CC-by-sa-2.5. A third party then makes
> use of the image, under the terms of the CC license. In addition to the
> image, they copy the description on the Image: page to use as their caption.
> As the text of the page is licensed under the GFDL, would this downstream
> user have violated the GFDL?
>
> If the answer to this question is yes, then there could be significant
> benefits to a dual-licensing of Commons itself. If this went anywhere, I'd
> imagine the final decision would be made by the Foundation, but the
> community ought to think it over first...
>
> What do people think? (If its daft, don't hold your punches I don't mind)

/me punches
*WHAM*   :)

I think the biggest reason that this wouldn't be a huge point would be
because most image pages should not be substantial enough to be
copyright deserving.

In whatever cases they are, they probably have copied wikipedia
text... which would complicate things.

Any finally, I'm not all that convinced that an additional complex
license for the image page would make a lot of sense.  I'm no fan of
creating additional market place confusion by promoting the Creative
Commons any more than we must, ... if we really have cause to think
the license of image pages is a problem for folks we should request
instead that people release their image page edits into something
effectively equal to the public domain.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 09/02/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests;
> > you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.

> Never really run across that one.

Giano and team.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
On 09/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe we should start using some sort of place-holder image for living
> people without free images. It could show a typical generic shadow bust,
> with "No free image available" written in bold letters.

PERFECT!

- d.


subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
Florian Straub wrote:
> "Stan Shebs" <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote on Friday, February 09, 2007
> 10:35 PM:
>
>
>> Florian Straub wrote:
>>
>>> My additional wish would be a way to contact one time contributers. There
>>> are several ways to achieve this:
>>> * Creating a field "home wiki" on the resistration form.
>>> * Making email adresses mandatory & auto activate email notification
>>>
>>>
>> So why do you think people won't create throwaway email addresses? They
>> do that all the time now.
>>
>
> Then we might also have to activate email confirmation.
>
People throw it away after receiving the confirmation, or when they're
done with uploads.

Exactly what problem are you proposing to solve, anyway? If it's
identity, then you're talking government-issued IDs, and I'm pretty the
Foundation doesn't want to be in the business of collecting and securing
all that personal information. If it's verifiability, then if I stole
the picture the first time, I'll just keep up the pretense in subsequent
email inquiries.

Stan


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
K P wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Keitei wrote:
>>> On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
>>>
>>>> Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted
>>>> hurts.
>>> Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you
>>> do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow
>>> to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal.
>>> Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and
>>> nothing happens.
>> Being blocked hurts simply because it is a slap-in-your-face message
>> that someone doesn't like you, and uses force to keep you out of
>> somewhere. Many users get blocked but don't realise that they were
>> violating some policy. Many users appear to regard the conflicts they
>> get into as a mere disagreement with some opinion, and then if they get
>> blocked it easily seems like the person is using their power unfairly to
>> enforce their opinion and to suppress the user's. If you were a new user
>> and you were to get that impression, I'm quite sure you'd feel hurt.
>>
>> Timwi
>
>
> Other newusers, when they get blocked for doing exactly what an adminisrator
> and long-time user do, get angry that Wikipedia policies are biased to favor
> established users and administrators over newbies.  After all, when the
> established user and adminsitrator do something and get away with it, what
> right does any administartor have to expect that a newbie shouldn't act
> exactly how they were shown to act?
>
> Wikipedia has a lot of unwritten rules, number one of which seems to be post
> more than humanly possible for anyone who knows any subject outside of
> Wikipedia.
>
> The trick to getting administrators to stay is to stop proliferating the
> exact same type of administrators who already own all of Wikipedia, namely
> editors who have endless time to do nothing but edit Wikipedia.  An
> encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a brilliant idea, one of the leading
> ones of the Cyberspace era.  But an encyclopedia created and edited and
> administrated entirely by folks who live in Cyberspace 24 hours a day is a
> prescription for a crappy encyclopedia.
>
> A variety of administrators, limited time as an admin before you have to get
> revoted (make it a year, it's no big deal, after all, so why should it be
> dictatorship for life?), and limited admins with limited hoops to jump to
> gain it, like admins with ISP blocking powers, again for one year.
>
> Again, if it's no big deal, why is it such an exclusive club for only those
> welded to cyberspace?  If it's no big deal, why is it granted for life?  If
> it's no big deal, why can't anyone get it?  Especially anyones who don't
> edit 24/7/365?  Thanks to God (insert diety of choice or remove as
> necessary) for leap years.
> \ia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I propose an experiment:

Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make
them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship
without prejudice.

Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they
abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed.
Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a
"probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive.

If this works, then after 3 months we do it again. And again every three
months. Soon, adminship loses almost all of its "status" appeal. It's
just something you'll get if you hang around and keep your nose clean.

Of course, you can still apply through RfA. But I predict that RfA will
quickly become much less political and controversial.

*My suggestion for "minimal criteria":
    At least 50 edits to at least 10 different non-own-user pages for
each of the past three months, and
    No blocks in the past three months

Essentially, just enough to give a good indication that the user is
involved and isn't a trouble-maker. Nothing more.

Comments? Flames?

-Rich Holton
(user rholton)

	the


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:17:48 -0500, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

>How does the Community define a "quality admin"?

Badly, for the most part :-)

The admins considered good by other admins are the ones who are
prepared to take on the difficult tasks.  A small but very vocal group
of non-admins considers these to be the *worst* admins, because they
are typically the ones who delete things like Encyclopedia Dramatica,
myg0t and GNAA.

There is a culture of baiting these admins until they crack.  A recent
example was MONGO.  There are others.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:06:46 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders
>troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those
>involved are still admins.

We don't require people to be infallible, only to acknowledge when
they are wrong.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:50:04 -0500, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com>
wrote:

>In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record
>and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time.

Not so.  I was invited a couple of times before I finally accepted a
nomination, I never aimed for it.  Who would?  They'd be mad.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Given that the issue was unimportant one way or the other, I don't see
> where the massive damage comes from.

Community relations. The anger. The blocks. Take out the admin powers
and it would have been just another minor spat. It was the involvement
of the admin powers that caused the damage to the community. At lost
of the distrust of admins comes from that event.

> I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've
> heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?
>

It resulted in the brief deletion of the counter vandalism unit see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism_Unit_%28third_nomination%29

> This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause
> underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no
> permanent damage is possible,

Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.

> but POV-pushers and other miscreants have
> learned that they can get their way by blowing everything way out of
> proportion, accusing admins of tyranny and cabals and bla bla bla, so
> that the reasonable people get tired of it all and walk away.

I suspect there are other reasons.
>
> It's kind of a clever way for POV-pushers to get control of WP actually;
> raise the bar for new admins, drying up the supply, and drive the old
> ones away with continual harassment.

The role of admins in dealing with POV pushers is little different
from the role of non-admins.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:06:46 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders
> >troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those
> >involved are still admins.
>
> We don't require people to be infallible, only to acknowledge when
> they are wrong.
>

The various guides to stepping outside policy and IARs to a large
extent biol down to "be right" the further you step away from policy
the more important it is the be right. Or not get caught either will
do.

--
geni


body:
On 2/9/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> A bit off topic, but...
> There must be a contrary saying somewhere.

A stich in time saves nine

>My day job currently
> involves undoing the progressive harm caused by generations of
> programmers refusing to touch a running system, instead preferring to
> add layer upon layer of workaround. If only they'd had the guts to
> actually rewrite the system each time rather than ph33ring it, we
> would have ended up with one single program of 200 lines of code,
> rather than 5 programs in 5 different languages each of 200 lines of
> code.
>
> Steve
>

The cynical side of my says that is more to do with people wanting job
security. Mind you I have the same view about much of copyright law.

--
geni


from_name: Yonatan Horan

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Specific_diseases

I suggest you look at that. In addition to that, I remember seeing some
research papers published on Ashkenazi Jews and will look for them if you
really see the need. Just to support the above point, my cousin who is an
Ashkenazi Jew has Familial Dysautonomy and my other cousin who is also an
Ashkenazi Jew has Crohn's Disease.

-Yonatan

On 2/9/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Jewish is not only a religion but also a race. Someone can be an atheist
> and
> > still Jewish. For example, I personally don't really believe in god but
> I'm
> > still a Jew. Heh, I was about to automatically add ~~~~...
> >
> > Yonatan
>
> Judaism is not a race.  There is nothing biologically which separates a
> Jew(ish person) from a non-Jew(ish person).
> It is OK to call it a culture, but not a race.
> --Mets501
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


references:
<b8ceeef70702081648p6918a82end972e6598db5d0e9@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqhm3o$2fk$1@sea.gmane.org> <eqhont$s6i$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<b8ceeef70702090440l196f72fdpe6e2c4a8d4012c26@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Probably because when you go to http://www.google.com/ it goes to one server
but when you use the firefox search box (http://firefox.google.com/ or
whatever) it goes to another one.
-Yonatan

On 2/9/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > > It's because every search request is routed to a randomly-selected
> > > Google server farm. Some of those farms may be running on the newest
> > > index, while some may still be waiting for the latest index update.
> This
> > > effect is not unique to the search query you entered; lots of people
> > > keep noticing it and wondering about it. I'm pretty sure there is an
> > > entry about it in one of Google's many FAQs, but I couldn't find it.
> >
> > Turns out the proper term is "Google Dance", and googling for that gives
> > us an interesting blog entry. http://dance.efactory.de/
>
> Ah, randomly selected servers - that explains it perfectly. But I
> wonder why I don't get the effect with IE. Maybe IE caches the
> server's IP or something.
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:48:45 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>The various guides to stepping outside policy and IARs to a large
>extent biol down to "be right" the further you step away from policy
>the more important it is the be right. Or not get caught either will
>do.

This is true.  Being right mainly involves thinking first and foremost
about whether a given action makes a better encyclopaedia.  Of course,
some people confuse a better encyclopaedia with one which better
reflects their personal interests.

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


body:
Timwi wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>> The messing about with archives and the INCREDIBLY AWFUL htdig search
>>> are causing problems ...
>> I've generally found the MARC search engine to be useful. Gmane is
>> sometimes OK as well.
>>
>> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/
>> http://search.gmane.org/
>
> But Google is obviously better...

Not in my experience. Both MARC and Gmane allow you to narrow down your
search by list, author and date, which gives them an advantage over a
simple keyword search in certain situations. Even when Google was indexing
the lists, I found it to be pretty poor by comparison.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Cheney Shill

body:
--- Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've already explained this elsewhere, so I'll only give
> a quick summary
> here. Wikipedia does something _right_ by letting
> everyone edit. The
> underlying philosophy is that everyone starts out as
> innocent

This is equivalent to saying existing users have superior
knowledge to new users.  That may be in terms of wikitech,
wikilawyering, wikipolitics, etc., but not knowledge of
whatever articles they happen to be editing.  You're
claiming that the same thing you claim is wrong about the
admin approval, to be suspicious of the admins intent,
reliability, and knowledge, is actually being applied, at
the very least, to every new user.

It seems the ruling policy, NPOV, is inherently suspicious
and it's not really a problem to be suspicious from the
ground up.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

____________________________________________________________________________________
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
> >
> >>I can't speak for George (the OP), but I don't think I'm working from
> >>the assumption that we're doing anything wrong. I come to the conclusion
> >>that we do.
> >
> > Okay,  how have you come to that conclusion?
>
> I've already explained this elsewhere, so I'll only give a quick summary
> here. Wikipedia does something _right_ by letting everyone edit. The
> underlying philosophy is that everyone starts out as innocent, and is
> blocked from editing only if they show misbehaviour. Adminship is the
> wrong way around. Users start out as being viewed with caution and
> suspicion, and must "earn" their admin "privileges" by fulfilling some
> ridiculous set of criteria. The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
> who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being
> constructive.

Oh, I agree with that. I just was saying I don't think admins getting burned
out and taking a wikibreak is necessarily a huge problem.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Marc Riddell wrote:
> > >
> > > [...] But, by not having such an organized support system for the
> > > reasons you stated, don't the wackos win? Who gives a damn if they see
> it as
> > > a cabal or whatever, the benefits can far outweigh the bullshit. I
> don't
> > > mean to belabor this, but, as you might guess, I'm a great believer in
> > > interpersonal support systems.
> > >
> > If it was just a matter of wackos, then yeah, we would just ignore them.
> > But there seem to be a bunch of otherwise-rational editors who would
> > make trouble over it as well, and would take mutual support as a reason
> > to escalate the whole thing into "impending destruction of WP by
> > power-hungry admins". Just look at Cunctator's one-liner here - an admin
> > leaves in pain, and his response is "well, a little churn is good". I
> > encourage you to try designing a support system though, WP can't afford
> > to lose all its admins to "churn".
> >
> > Stan
>
> Let me follow that up a bit.  I think a little churn is good, too.
> But there's a difference between "Joe's taking a break right now and
> will be back later" and someone getting so frustrated that they start
> getting abusive and then leave with no intent to return.
>
> The difference between a break, or even taking a sabattical from admin
> stuff while still contributing, and a burnout is rather clear.
>
> People taking breaks is healthy and good.  Burnouts aren't.  I would
> be extremely happy if we could figure out a consistent way to convert
> impending burnouts into breaks.

Wait until they come back?


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
George Herbert wrote:

> People taking breaks is healthy and good.  Burnouts aren't.  I would
> be extremely happy if we could figure out a consistent way to convert
> impending burnouts into breaks.

Sometimes you just need a night to sleep things off.  My burnout became a
short break this week after I took a day and just didn't think about
Wikipedia.

Another is to give the opportunity to fix the problem that's being caused.
 Even if the resolution isn't to your liking, the ability to be heard when
you feel like you aren't being head often does wonders.

-Jeff