from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit conflict

body:
Bill Clark wrote:
> Actually, it looks like the timestamps are simply getting all screwed up in
> Article.php for some reason.
>
> What's really weird is that the timestamp seems to be losing exactly one
> hour between the $this->loadLastEdit() line in getTimestamp() and when it's
> actually returned. Nothing is happening in the code between those two lines,
> yet somehow the timestamp changes. This makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly
> I'm misunderstanding something here.

Is this on every page or some particular page?

When was the page last edited? Was it during a daylight saving time
transition in your server's timezone?

Some versions of PHP have a bug where timestamps going through
gmmktime() and gmdate() get converted to/from local time internally,
which can corrupt them if they occur during a daylight saving time
transition (hence ambiguous timezone); the result is a time that's one
hour off, and matching timestamps no longer match.

If you're experiencing this, try adding in your LocalSettings.php:

putenv("TZ=UTC");

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD for a second opinion

body:
On 9/17/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rename it to Articles for deletion, improvement, transwikification, and
> merging.
> [[WP:AFDITAM]]

Merges don't require admin intervention - there already is a page to list
merges. Also - if every page needing improvement was listed there we would
end up with thousands of stubs, etc. Perfectly good stubs and articles in
need of wikification would be caught up in the feeding frenzy of deletion
and be voted for deletion. Articles nominated for deletion need to be
nominated, with clear criteria for deletion. Merges should never enter the
page unless you need to do a history merge and deletion. And until history
merges can be undone, I don't think we should use them if we can avoid doing
so.

Ian


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit conflict

body:
On 6/15/05, Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brentdax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/14/05, Philipp <wikilist-1 at e-something.de> wrote:
> > in the past few days the following problem occurred in a local mediawiki
> > installation: When opening an article for edit, everything seems in
> order.
> > Showing the preview also works and the change applied to the article is
> shown.
> > But when trying to submit, one gets the
> other-user-edits-conflict-warning and
> > in the preview field there is the old unchanged version.

The first step in troubleshooting this sort of problem is to take a
> good, long look at the server's clock. Is it correct (within a few
> minutes, at least)? Was it recently changed? Does the database have
> absurd timestamps in it? If the web and database servers are
> separate, do their clocks pretty much agree?

What's the second step in troubleshooting? I have the same problem and my
clock is correct (ntpdate keeps it so) and the webserver and database both
live on the same machine (and the database knows the correct timezone). The
timestamps in cur look fine (so long as they're actually supposed to be GMT,
which is what I'm assuming). I have MW 1.4.9 installed on a FreeBSD
5.2.1-RELEASE server running Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) PHP/4.3.4 mod_ssl/2.8.16
OpenSSL/0.9.7c (I suppose I need to upgrade some things now that I'm
noticing... :)

I have similar configurations running the same version of MW, with no
problems. This is a new one for me. I've wiped the wiki directory and
dropped the database, done a re-install of MW, and gotten the same exact
results. I can create new pages, but anytime I try to edit an existing page
(no matter what user I am, WikiSysop or not) I get an "Edit conflict" that
it won't let me resolve.

The only thing I'm doing on this machine that's out of the ordinary is
connecting to it via an ssh tunnel (it's behind a firewall that won't allow
port 80 traffic through from outside the local network). I don't see how
that could affect anything but I figured I'd mention it for completeness.

Any suggestions?

-Bill Clark


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

body:
Extreme lesbian support!
sounds like a good idea to me.

On 9/17/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I added a line in [[Wikipedia:Fair use]] which says:
>
> "Fair use" images should only be used in the article namespace. They
> should not be used on templates or on user pages. They should be only
> linked to from talk pages when they are the topic of discussion.
> Because "fair use" images are only not copyright infringement on
> Wikipedia when used for strictly encyclopedic reasons, their use in
> other contexts on Wikipedia is most likely copyright infringement.
>
> Does this sound reasonable? I also plan to create a little template
> which one can drop onto a user page (replacing an existing "fair use"
> image), which will say something along the lines of the above, with
> instructions as to how to link to the image if desired. The goal is to
> be polite but explain that the use of copyrighted images on a user
> page is probably copyright infringement and not allowed on Wikipedia.
>
> Thoughts? Objections?
>
> FF
>
>
>
> On 9/13/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Do we have an official policy on images on user pages? Correct me if I'm
> > wrong, but wouldn't the use of copyrighted materials there in a way which
> > did not qualify as "fair use" simply be copyright infringement, in the same
> > way it would in the article namespace? Does the law make the namespace
> > distinction? (That sounds like a silly question in a way, but I suppose I'm
> > referencing "safe harbor" laws.)
> >
> >  In the end, I think this comes down to "should we allow copyright
> > violations on user pages?" which sounds to me like the answer would be "of
> > course not".
> >
> >  Boy, wouldn't it be fun to start enforcing this! Anybody in the mood to
> > become "most hated user, especially among the young and brittle"? If the
> > answer is definitely "no exceptions", it would be nice to have a quote from
> > Jimbo Wales with his thoughts on this to use as a reference, since a lot of
> > people have strong proprietary feelings about their user pages.
> >
> >  FF
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit conflict

body:
On 9/17/05, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:

> I can create new pages, but anytime I try to edit an existing page (no
> matter what user I am, WikiSysop or not) I get an "Edit conflict" that it
> won't let me resolve.
>

Some initial testing indicates that these lines in Article.php are the
problem:

1077 if( $dbw->affectedRows() == 0 ) {
1078 /* Belated edit conflict! Run away!! */
1079 $good = false;

Investigating further...

-Bill


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New Proposal: WikiMemory (slightly OT)

body:
On 9/17/05, Poe, Marshall <MPoe at theatlantic.com> wrote:
<snip />
> 4. Why a Wiki (or, To edit or not to edit)?
> To me, this is the most interesting question of all because it points up a
> conflict between two principles.  On the one hand, we want to be open and
> allow everyone to edit all content.  On the other hand, we want to gather
> and disseminate the sum of human knowledge to everyone, free.  In the case
> of Wikimemory (and several other wikis), these principles run up against one
> another.  Let me try to explain.
> It seems to me that there are two kinds of wikis, differentiated by the kind
> of data they gather. What might be called "scientific" wikis record the
> present state of *human knowledge*, that is, metadata or secondary sources.
> I have in mind Wikipedia, Wikispecies, etc. In contrast, what might be
> called "documentary" wikis gather, preserve and disseminate *artifacts*,
> that is, data or primary sources.  I have in mind 911Wiki, Wikisource,
> Wikiquote, Wikicommons, and Wikimemory.
>
> Now here's the interesting part: the scientific wikis can be expected to
> become more valuable in an opensource environment as they are edited, but
> the documentary wikis can be expected to become less valuable as they are
> edited.  For example, the Wikipedia *entry* on the "Magna Carta" will
> improve as we learn more about the document and its context, but the
> Wikisource *edition* of the "Magna Carta" will only become less valuable as
> it is edited further away from its original, canonical state (the words as
> they were written in 1215).  Or to take a hypothetical example from
> Wikimemory, the Wikipedia *entry* on "Abu Graib Prison" will get better as
> historians uncover more about what happened there, but a Wikimemory *memoir*
> by one of the prisoners will only lose value if it is changed from its
> original disposition (that is, if it is vandalized).
> And here's where we run into a contradiction of principles or aims. If we
> stick to the open-source principle, then we won't be able to present
> historical artifacts, because they may be inaccurate reflections of the
> originals (due to vandalism). This contradicts the all-human-knowledge
> principle.  If, in contrast, we prioritize the all-human-knowledge
> principle, then we'll probably be forced to make finished entries on
> "documentary" wikis read-only. This violates the open-source principle.
>
> Which is the superior principle?  I'd say it's the all-human-knowledge
> principle.  There's a lot to be gained by relaxing our stand on open-source
> here.  For this reason I propose that discuss making the finished content on
> Wikimemory read-only in some or most cases. Moreover, we can still be true
> to our open-source principles by allowing users edit metadata (explanatory
> information about the memoirs) to the site. To return to our example, a
> well-annotated Magna Carta is much easier to understand than a Magna Carta
> in isolation.  And such annotations would be (in the sense meant before)
> "scientific," they would improve as we learned more.
>
> All the Best, Marshall

I think you are mixing up your terms. Wikis are editable. That is what
makes them wikis and not forums (where anyone can contribute, but
editing can only be done by a very select group of admins), blogs, and
other "open" publishing methods. The wiki principle is far more than
just the open source principle.

Anyway, this raises the interesting point that more and more of the
things we are doing (such as commons, wikisource, and to some extent
wikiquote) do not gain from universal editablitly. This means we need
to do some naval gazing about what we are doing and where we are
going. If we are to go outside of the realm of wikis (as we already
have to some extent) then our software and methods need to change with
it. I think wikidata is a step towards this - moving beyond the
traditional wiki paradigm. Of course, changing software isn't easy and
can stray into the area of bloatware or featureitus. Maybe a whole new
piece of software is needed for these new ideas? Maybe aswell as
regular requests to the wikimedia community for donnations of money,
we should have a programming drive, to encourage those who use the
wikimedia to donate time to coding (or for those who can't code to
learn to code). This would perhpas lead to probs with quality control.
I dont know... just a random suggestion.
</OT rambalings>

paz y amor,
-rjs.

--
Show me the way to go 127.0.0.1, i'm tired and i want to go to bed...

Hit me: <robin.shannon.id.au>
Jab me: <robin.shannon at jabber.org.au>
Upgrade to ubuntu linux: <http://www.spreadubuntu.org/>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 9/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>As for "abstain" votes on nomination for AfD, it's because there's
>>really no better place for people to say "I think there's something
>>wrong with this article, what should be done?" Just putting {{cleanup}}
>>or {{wikify}} on something won't fix it in a hurry. Putting {{afd}} on
>>it /will/.
>>
>>
>
> I'm in two minds about this. Should we allow the casual use of AfD as a
> cleanup resource? I think I'd be inclined to regard such use of AfD as
> borderline bad faith. If someone really thinks an article needs to be
> cleaned up, *and quickly*, he should just do a quick edit to remove whatever
> it is that makes him uncomfortable about the article from the current
> version. This should take a minute or so.
>

What about when they say to themselves "I'm not really sure if this is
suitable but it's not complete nonsense and I'd like a second opinion" -
is that an acceptable use of AfD?

Or should we rename AfD to make this an acceptable use?

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit conflict

body:
On 9/17/05, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:

> Investigating further...

Actually, it looks like the timestamps are simply getting all screwed up in
Article.php for some reason.

What's really weird is that the timestamp seems to be losing exactly one
hour between the $this->loadLastEdit() line in getTimestamp() and when it's
actually returned. Nothing is happening in the code between those two lines,
yet somehow the timestamp changes. This makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly
I'm misunderstanding something here.

Investigating yet further...

-Bill


subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit conflict

body:
On 9/17/05, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:

> Investigating yet further...

I found the problem: wfTimestamp is adding an hour to the timestamp on my
system for some unknown reason.

I fixed it by making the following changes to Article.php (not in diff -u
format because this is really just a temporary workaround until I figure out
the 'real' source of the problem, and I don't expect anybody to consider
this a patch that should be shared):

425c425
< $this->mTimestamp = $s->cur_timestamp;
---
> $this->mTimestamp = wfTimestamp(TS_MW,$s->cur_timestamp);
630c630
< $this->mTimestamp = $s->cur_timestamp;
---
> $this->mTimestamp = wfTimestamp(TS_MW,$s->cur_timestamp);
1073c1073
< 'cur_timestamp' => $this->getTimestamp()
---
> 'cur_timestamp' => $dbw->timestamp($this->getTimestamp())
1096d1095
< 'old_timestamp' => $this->getTimestamp(),

As best I can tell, there's not really any reason to use wfTimestamp() (or
timestamp() -- which is just a wrapper for wfTimestamp()) in these cases
anyway, since the value of cur_timestamp was pulled straight from the
database in the proper format in the first place.

I'm through with this for now, since I have a viable workaround for my
system. When I have the time I'll look into it further, in case anybody is
interested.

-Bill


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikiquote e-mail

body:
For information.

Anthere

--- JarlaxleArtemis <jarlaxleartemis at msn.com> wrote:

> Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:37:39 GMT
> To: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Wikiquote e-mail
> From: JarlaxleArtemis <jarlaxleartemis at msn.com>
>
>
> fucking bitch
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: All information?

body:
The mere fact we're getting unexpandable dictionary definitions,
memorial articles and all the kind of crap described in WP:NOT makes
it clear to me we still need it.
I don't really see it as contradiction to WP:V and WP:NOR but as an
addition to explain those policies to non-Wikipedians in plain
English.

--Mgm


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arlo Guthrie's wife, on "cleanup"

body:
On 9/18/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
> "Well," said his wife, "I don't think you can get much cleaner than
> 'gone.'"
>
>
Please, our RC patrollers really *don't* need a patron saint right now.


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/18/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please, our RC patrollers really *don't* need a patron saint right now.

No decent RC patroler would take years to get round to doing
something. btw speedy critia have just been expanded again. I think my
delete button may be melting.

--
geni


from_name: Roberto Frangi

subject: [Foundation-l] Speedy deleting images w/o explicit license

body:
I agree completely with Brion. On it.wikipeida we have recently agreed
on a proposal to remove all unverified images and also a lot of fair use
images (or should I call them fair abuse?). No matter what the upload
dialog states, people seems to be struck by selective blindness when it
comes to uploading images. I had to put a warning just above the "Source
fimename:" box. It's written in red and with a bigger font size. It says
somithing like: "Warning: Files lacking an indication of the source and
the licence under which  are released will be deleted!". Well, seems
that some people still are unable to read it (even if they are less than
in the past). Is there any way  to make  the phrase blinking?

I've spent the last three weeks deleting images from it.wikipedia and i
can tell you 90% of images are just grabbed somewhere else. You can tell
the difference,  genuine images are usually bigger in size.

Roberto Frangi (Snowdog)


from_name: wmf at timshell.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Notes and comments from fundraising meeting

body:
Comments and conclusions from the Sept. 17 fundraising meeting are posted
here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2005

Please add your own comments.

A log of the meeting is available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2005_Log

for those of you who could not attend, or for those who could attend and
wish to relive the fond memories.

Tim Shell


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Dori wrote:
> It's not unknown, as the upload dialog clearly states that what you
> are uploading has to be under the GFDL. So we're now going to delete
> all the images of those who thought it was understood that they would
> be licensing them under the GFDL.

If you look at the category in question, there is almost nothing in
there which could possibly be under the GFDL.  The bulk of it is the
sort of stuff which is _legal_ for us to use under "fair use" but
_undesirable_ for us to use under "fair use".  (And _impossible_ for us
to use under fair use, if it isn't properly sourced.)

> I often didn't bother to tag (or it
> was during the time when we weren't tagging) an upload, and I'm sure
> many others have done the same.

Well, I've been warning about this for a long time.  We used to have a
lot more untagged images, and a huge and ongoing project got rid of the
problem for almost all of the good stuff.  What's left is... well, most
of it has to go away.

--Jimbo


body:
Roberto Frangi wrote:
> I agree completely with Brion. On it.wikipeida we have recently agreed
> on a proposal to remove all unverified images and also a lot of fair use
> images (or should I call them fair abuse?). No matter what the upload
> dialog states, people seems to be struck by selective blindness when it
> comes to uploading images. I had to put a warning just above the "Source
> fimename:" box. It's written in red and with a bigger font size. It says
> somithing like: "Warning: Files lacking an indication of the source and
> the licence under which  are released will be deleted!". Well, seems
> that some people still are unable to read it (even if they are less than
> in the past). Is there any way  to make  the phrase blinking?
> I've spent the last three weeks deleting images from it.wikipedia and i
> can tell you 90% of images are just grabbed somewhere else. You can tell
> the difference,  genuine images are usually bigger in size.

The main thing to look out for is that too strong an encouragement may
encourage some people to lie.  People found lying about image sources
should be blocked from editing.

It might be better to let them upload and then delete it, rather than
set up incentives for people to lie.  (This is harder for us to detect
than if there is no source at all!)

--Jimbo


list: commons-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Commons-l] Introducing FlickrLickr

body:
I've created a frontend and backend for selecting freely licensed photos
from Flickr to be uploaded to the Commons:

	http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr

Using the Flickr API, I am building a database of free photos from
Flickr, and users can apply for access to the frontend to review slices
of 1,000 photos each. After a slice is finished, I review it and run the
upload bot to upload the selected photos to the Commons. See the above
page for more information.

There are currently almost half a million CC-BY photos on Flickr, and
new ones are uploaded every day. I hope that a systematic effort to
review these photos will greatly enrich the Commons.

Please help by applying for access to a slice of Flickr. Best send me a
private email with a link to your username so I can look at your past
contributions.

Best,

Erik


from_name: Kyle Lutze

subject: [Foundation-l] External site using Wikinews logo

body:
Dan Grey wrote:

>--- Samuel Klein <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>>>That seems rather uncalled for.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Protecting copyright is uncalled for?
>>>
>>>
>>Considering the origins of that site, and the people
>>using it, your
>>reaction is a bit on the touchy side.
>>
>>
>>
>>>I'm not sure how that justifies a private site
>>>
>>>
>>using a
>>
>>
>>>copyrighted Wikimedia logo without permission.
>>>
>>>
>>Private in the loosest possible sense.  And what
>>does it mean for a
>>project people are still working on to be 'dead in
>>the water'?  In any
>>case, I would feel better about this thread if it
>>had been started by
>>someone with no private bone to pick with said site
>>operator; but you
>>don't like him at all.  Perhaps you can find someone
>>else to help you
>>advocate your points.
>>
>>SJ
>>
>>
>
>This mail has finally arrived through Yahoo :-)
>
>Just for the record: the operator of that site and I
>get along very well - we chat most days in IRC. After
>reading Angela's response to this issue, he closed the
>site and apologised profusely.
>
>You may wish to hesistate before leaping to
>conclusions about people's motivations.
>
>
>Dan
>
>
>
OK, I thought I would update you guys on this as I am part of that
project, freematrix networks. Nick Gerda [User:NGerda] wanted to work
with us on doing a daily news update from information on
en.wikinews.org. kyelewis and I, the two most active freematrix staffers
at the time helped him out in getting lined up to do the updates on air,
and worked with him on creating a site on a subdomain of ours to get
ready to promote it.

There was no harm meant in using the logo here. The hope was to make
wikinews into more of an actual news network type thing, even with video
broadcasts of news updates on the hour, once a day, or however you
wanted to do it.

As for us causing harm, I don't see why we would? after all freematrix
is the one that broadcasted wikimania to the masses.

Side note: we still need editors for those files so we can post them to
commons! they are stored as one long file, so they need to be chopped
up, metadata edited, and permissions and copywrites found for what they
will be released under (such as the speech given by the chineese member
is not able to be published). I should also post this as another thread
here soon, just forgot about it and didn't know which mailing lists to
post it to.

Kyle


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 9/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>As for "abstain" votes on nomination for AfD, it's because there's
>>really no better place for people to say "I think there's something
>>wrong with this article, what should be done?" Just putting {{cleanup}}
>>or {{wikify}} on something won't fix it in a hurry. Putting {{afd}} on
>>it /will/.
>>
>>
>>
I didn't write this, and I am diametrically opposed to this view so
please be more careful with attributions. VfD is not cleanup, if this is
really in the standard procedure for an undeleted article then it sounds
like VfU's policy is screwed up too. "Okay, we just decided that this
article shouldn't have been deleted. So now let's automatically propose
that it be deleted!". Huh?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Speedy deleting images w/o explicit license

body:
Dori wrote:

> On 9/17/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>Dori wrote:
>>
>>>Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
>>>license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
>>>The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
>>>going to lose many images this way.
>>
>>It is far preferable to drop material of unknown status than to keep it.
>>It can always be resubmitted if it's genuine.
>
>
> It's not unknown, as the upload dialog clearly states that what you
> are uploading has to be under the GFDL. So we're now going to delete
> all the images of those who thought it was understood that they would
> be licensing them under the GFDL. I often didn't bother to tag (or it
> was during the time when we weren't tagging) an upload, and I'm sure
> many others have done the same. We'll now be undoing people's work
> because of a future rule that they had no way of knowing at the time
> that they submitted the work.
>
> It can't be resubmitted if you don't know about it, or if you're no
> longer editing on Wikipedia. Like I said, many of these will also be
> incorrectly labeled as unknown when they are in fact GFDL. There is
> also possibility of mischief, and I believe deleted images are purged
> after a certain amount of time (is it true of deleted text as well)?
>
> Dori

I agree with Dori.

I'll further add that even when the author is not gone, he is not always
told the images lack label and will be soon deleted.
It is killing motivation to discover two months later than some of your
images have been deleted, while they were uploaded LONG before tags even
existed and while when uploading them, you explicitely agreed to put
them on gfdl licence (according to upload message at least).

Ant

PS : I was happy of the existence of mirrors to retrieve my own deleted
images.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia faces key test: corruption in wikipedia

body:
http://www.bopnews.com/archives/004956.html#4956

People may have noticed a troll by the name of "Ray Lopez". Many have
written about the offensiveness of his comments. The reason they were
being allowed to accumulate is because "Ray Lopez" is part of an
organized group of hard right wingers on wikipedia. However, these
individuals are not merely organized editors, but have backing from
people with trusted status on Wikipedia.

Now, I have proof of it.


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

body:
> I agree with Dori.
> I'll further add that even when the author is not gone, he is not always
> told the images lack label and will be soon deleted.
> It is killing motivation to discover two months later than some of your
> images have been deleted, while they were uploaded LONG before tags even
> existed and while when uploading them, you explicitely agreed to put
> them on gfdl licence (according to upload message at least).
> Ant
> PS : I was happy of the existence of mirrors to retrieve my own deleted
> images.

At pl: a bot put a list of untagged images on every uploader's talk
page.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Laura Scudder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping inactive admins

body:
He meant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Desysopsing_inactive_admins

On 9/18/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> URL doesn't work, can't find any obvious variations that do. And
> remember to change spaces to underscores in urls ;)
>
> On 9/18/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just to advertise a current proposal:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Desysopsing inactive admins
> >
> > There are no set proposals yet, but it would be useful to have wider
> > community input into the proposal.
> >
> > Sam
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


from_name: Szuy and Joe Scuderi

subject: [WikiEN-l] 24.18.59.229 Block

body:
Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and then immediately (in a few minutes) blocked
24.18.59.229
because I created a wiki entry for a victim of 9/11 (passenger Edward Felt
on Flight 93).  I understand that listing every victim with a page is not
practical.  Nevertheless the entry was justified because it was short and to
the point and his family has recent commented on events involving that
Flight.

Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and before I could even respond (it was a matter
of minutes) blocked me.  I had renewed the Edward Felt page once thinking
that the original posting had not gone through (I did not even realize at
that point Lucky 6.9 had deleted it).  Otherwise I would have contacted
Lucky 6.9
first and explained my position

I believe Lucky 6.9 is abusing his/her administration powers in blocking
users without good cause.
I registered and emailed Lucky 6.9 to resolve this but he/she does not
respond.
Thank you.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I hate it when...

body:
It did not really help that one of our two major databases crashed
*during* the fundraising...

See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home for a bit more information.

Ant

Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

> ...I kick in some spare change to a month-long fund drive, the fund
> drive is successful, and Wikipedia is slower than it was at the start
> of the fund drive.
>
> Just venting.
>
> I know Brion Vibber et. al. are working hard, and I look forward to
> future improvement.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Commons-l] Introducing FlickrLickr

body:
I would be interested in helping out.

Andre Engels

On 9/18/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I've created a frontend and backend for selecting freely licensed photos
> from Flickr to be uploaded to the Commons:
>
>         http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr
>
> Using the Flickr API, I am building a database of free photos from
> Flickr, and users can apply for access to the frontend to review slices
> of 1,000 photos each. After a slice is finished, I review it and run the
> upload bot to upload the selected photos to the Commons. See the above
> page for more information.
>
> There are currently almost half a million CC-BY photos on Flickr, and
> new ones are uploaded every day. I hope that a systematic effort to
> review these photos will greatly enrich the Commons.
>
> Please help by applying for access to a slice of Flickr. Best send me a
> private email with a link to your username so I can look at your past
> contributions.
>
> Best,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

> http://www.bopnews.com/archives/004956.html#4956
>
> People may have noticed a troll by the name of "Ray Lopez". Many have
> written about the offensiveness of his comments. The reason they were
> being allowed to accumulate is because "Ray Lopez" is part of an
> organized group of hard right wingers on wikipedia. However, these
> individuals are not merely organized editors, but have backing from
> people with trusted status on Wikipedia.
>
> Now, I have proof of it.

Hyperbolize much?

Occam's razor might suggest that Brion manually doing DB queries to
insert pornographic images in your name is not the most likely
explanation.  You picking a bad password is a more likely one, among
many others.

But in any case, with the world ending [1], don't you have more
important things to attend to?

-Mark

[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/12/82421/9419


from_name: Jim Mahoney

subject: [Wikitech-l] loading data

body:
Nick,

I've been trying to get on our web site and it keeps telling me that I
cannot find a server or the web site is down.  Either way, it doesn't work.
Could you please e-mail me with an answer so that I can work with it today.

Thanks,

Jim

James E. Mahoney, Jr.

Media Matchmaker, Inc.

13101 W. Washington Blvd

Suite 211

Culver City, CA 90066

Office: (310) 432-6388

Fax:    (310) 432-6383

jmahoney at mediamatchmaker.com


body:
On Sep 18, 2005, at 10:53 AM, Delirium wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
>
>> http://www.bopnews.com/archives/004956.html#4956
>>
>> People may have noticed a troll by the name of "Ray Lopez". Many
>> have  written about the offensiveness of his comments. The reason
>> they were  being allowed to accumulate is because "Ray Lopez" is
>> part of an  organized group of hard right wingers on wikipedia.
>> However, these  individuals are not merely organized editors, but
>> have backing from  people with trusted status on Wikipedia.
>>
>> Now, I have proof of it.
>>
>
> Hyperbolize much?
>
> Occam's razor might suggest that Brion manually doing DB queries to
> insert pornographic images in your name is not the most likely
> explanation.  You picking a bad password is a more likely one,
> among many others.
>

You didn't check carefully - the edit history shows that the image
was last updated in March, when, in fact, the pornographic image has
only been in place for a few hours. Or do you think that it would
have been left on my user page for months with no one commenting on it?


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Sample ASL/English entry

body:
Arbeo M wrote:

>> Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles
>> should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia.
>
> This indeed seems to be the most sensible approach.

No, no, no!

If I were saying 'I think French translations of Wikipedia articles
should be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia' everyone would be looking
at me as if I were insane.

Frankly the gross ignorance about language bursting out of the seams of
this thread is very, very disturbing.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Arbeo M

body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> schrieb:

> Personally I think videos of ASL translations of
> Wikipedia articles
> should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia.
> Just like our sound
> files, the video files would be a translation of a
> particular revision.

This indeed seems to be the most sensible approach. In
my opinion a project "Signed Wikipedia" (starting with
ASL and adding more sign languages later if there is
sufficient interest) is a much more promising option
than trying to cobble together a hybrid ASL-English
encyclopedia.

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
This link, the revision history from a Wikipedia mirror, may be of
interest. (Warning, to view this link you will be forced to see the
pornographic image too!)

http://www.algebra.com/algebra/about/history/Image%3APub.jpg.wikipedia

I haven't figured out how to interpret it yet, but it differs from the
revision history on main Wikipedia.

Your username is still the first uploader, but there is then a
revision by the obvious troll user "StirIing Newberry".  Note that the
fifth character is an uppercase i, not an l; this is best viewed in a
serifed font.  Then there is a revision by "Gmaxwell" reverting that.

Both of these revisions apparently happened today, but neither appears
on main wikipedia, unless I'm misinterpreting something.

Steve


subject: Ant:  Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Sample ASL/English entry

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

> 3) What about unwritten spoken languages? Should
> they get their own
> Wikipedias, or should they just be uploaded as
> spoken translations of
> enwiki articles? It doesn't make sense to me to
> limit ASL to videos
> uploaded to enwiki.

It's not a question if they should or not. It's simply
impossible to create an encyclopedia on the internet
based on the wiki system without writing and reading.

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de


body:
On 9/18/05, Stephen Forrest <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:

> Both of these revisions apparently happened today, but neither appears
> on main wikipedia, unless I'm misinterpreting something.

Odd, the 'history' info on the page for the file itself is now okay,
but the actual history link,
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Pub.jpg&action=history,
is still showing the wrong information.  Anyway, likely a
glitch/refresh problem since the data is consistent everywhere else.

Steve


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Modification Navigation et ToolBox

body:
Roth Philippe wrote:
> J'ai vu aussi qu'il est possible d'ajouter l'option "Version Imprimable". Comment peut-on ajouter cette option?
> Existe-t-il d'autres options? Lesquelles? Sont-elles r?f?renc?es? O??

Le lien "Version imprimable" visible sur http://fr.wikipedia.org/ est
disponible ? partir de la version 1.5 (qui devrait sortir bient?t).

Tout les param?tres de configuration disponible sont dans le fichier
./includes/DefaultSettings.php , pour les modifier il suffit de les
copier dans le fichier LocalSettings.php puis faire la modification.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: mirror the talks in a mailing list?

body:
Uwe Brauer wrote:
> Sorry if that message has been already sent, but I can't see it in the
> gmane interface.
>
> Hello
>
> I apologise if this question has already has been asked or is
> elementary, but is there any possibility that the discussion, the
> talks about a specific topic could be mirrored in a mailing list or
> newsgroup? For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sumer

Talk pages are considered as one block of text and nothing in the
database store them as separate messages. Any new modification can add
several replies and even modify an existing message. Looks a bit hard to
implement that actually (need parsing, ability to changes previous
messages in nntp / cancel messages etc..).

> It seems that I can contribute to that discussion, after having logged
> in, but I would prefer a more familiar interface such as the emacs
> editor.  If such discussions were mirrored in a mailing list, I could
> use that editor for this purpose.

In preferences: "Editing" > check "Use external editor by default" ,
will send you the file for editing in whatever editor. Not sure how it
works exactly though ;)

> Now I see for example the daily-article mailing list which is mirrored
> in gmane as gmane.org:gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia but there
> seems no response posted.

The daily-article group in gmane is just a moderated mailing list where
emails are sent by one person. So it is in no way an automatic feature
of MediaWiki :p

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia faces key test: corruption in
	wikipedia

body:
On Sep 18, 2005, at 12:20 PM, Tim Starling wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
>> You didn't check carefully - the edit history shows that the
>> image  was
>> last updated in March, when, in fact, the pornographic image has
>> only
>> been in place for a few hours. Or do you think that it would  have
>> been
>> left on my user page for months with no one commenting on it?
>>
>
> No, the image description page was last updated in March, the image
> itself has been changed three times in the last day. Uploading a new
> version of an old image does not cause an entry to be placed in the
> history of the image description page. And as Stephen Forrest pointed
> out, the upload was performed by an imposter with a homographic
> name. No
> secret sysadmin powers required.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

Then that is a huge user interface and security hole - because
someone looking at the history of the image would think that the
original uploader uploaded the image. In an organization that relies
on users being able to track and document problems this is gap in
that ability.


body:
On Sep 18, 2005, at 11:53 AM, Rob Brewer wrote:

> On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
>
>> You didn't check carefully - the edit history shows that the image
>> was last updated in March, when, in fact, the pornographic image has
>> only been in place for a few hours. Or do you think that it would
>> have been left on my user page for months with no one commenting
>> on it?
>>
>
> The edit history that I see at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pub.jpg shows a 19 February version
> uploaded by you, a pornographic version uploaded by an impostor today,
> and reverts by GMaxwell and TenOfAllTrades.
>
> The impostor is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StirIing_Newberry
> with capital I in place of the lowercase l.
>
> It is possible that the edit history was confused by delays in syncing
> the slave database. That is, for a while after the porno version was
> uploaded, it was the current version of the image, and appeared on the
> page, but the image history was being read off the slightly
> out-of-date slave database.
>
> Does that make sense?

Yes actually it does. Post updated with a direct quote of this.

>
> Rob
> [[User:Rbrwr]]
>
> --
> Rob Brewer rob at rbrwr.org rbrwr.org at gmail.com http://www.rbrwr.org
> "I could have been like Lou Barlow, but I'm more like Ken Barlow"
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


body:
On Sep 18, 2005, at 12:33 PM, Sam Korn wrote:

> On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
>> Then that is a huge user interface and security hole - because
>> someone looking at the history of the image would think that the
>> original uploader uploaded the image. In an organization that relies
>> on users being able to track and document problems this is gap in
>> that ability.
>>
>
> Look at the bottom of the image page.  There is your file history.
>
> Sam

It should be the other way around - people clicked to get the image
history, not the image description history.


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikiquote e-mail

body:
I believe that there now exists a community consensus to ban JarlaxleArtemis.

Kelly

On 9/18/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> For information.
>
> Anthere
>
>
>
> --- JarlaxleArtemis <jarlaxleartemis at msn.com> wrote:
>
> > Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:37:39 GMT
> > To: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Wikiquote e-mail
> > From: JarlaxleArtemis <jarlaxleartemis at msn.com>
> >
> >
> > fucking bitch
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Sep 18, 2005, at 11:56 AM, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 18, 2005 at 11:19:35AM -0400, Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
>> On Sep 18, 2005, at 10:53 AM, Delirium wrote:
>>
>>> Hyperbolize much?
>>>
>>> Occam's razor might suggest that Brion manually doing DB queries to
>>> insert pornographic images in your name is not the most likely
>>> explanation.  You picking a bad password is a more likely one,
>>> among many others.
>>>
>>
>> You didn't check carefully - the edit history shows that the image
>> was last updated in March, when, in fact, the pornographic image has
>> only been in place for a few hours. Or do you think that it would
>> have been left on my user page for months with no one commenting
>> on it?
>>
>
> Nothing to see, please move along.
>
> The comments for the blog entry explain that it was just
> a very bad misinterpretation of the facts by Stirling.
>

Or conversely - the exploitation of well known bad presentation of
the facts by wikipedia.

> The only reason it was interesting was a possible existence
> of an MediaWiki exploit in the wild. Nothing in this case even
> remotely suggests it, however.


body:
Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:

>> Frankly the gross ignorance about language bursting out of the seams of
>> this thread is very, very disturbing.
>
> What is really disturbing here is the fact that you are accusing people that
> don't share your view of being ignorant.

The people who seem to think that ASL is just a signed variant of
English *are* ignorant.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] A hearty welcome to Danny!

body:
I am pleased to announce that Danny Wool has accepted my offer of a job
at the Wikimedia Foundation to be the Executive Assistant for the
foundation.  This job will primarily entail removing work from me so
that I can better focus on the parts of my job that I am best at.

Danny has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector and has been our
(volunteer) grant co-ordinator for some time.  I have worked with Danny
on many projects and we are an excellent working team with a fine
personal relationship.

It is envisioned that Danny's staff role as my assistant will be
temporary as he comes in and sets up professional systems for our work
and begins to look for a replacement Executive Assistant (sometime
within a year, depending on the flow of events) so that he can focus
more and more over time in writing grant proposals.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Assistant has a very very
cursory look at the position.

--Jimbo


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [Foundation-l] Guidelines for Latest news on WMF wiki?

body:
It's just occured to me that now I've an account there, I could help
keep it up to date :o). But I it would certainly help me and maybe
others if we had some guidelines for what should and should not be
listed there. I think the emphasis should be on what effects/could
effect users.

As a starting point:
1. new equipment news (purchases, bits going on-line etc)
2. board meeting reports going out
3. Officer appointments/changes
4. Budget announcements
5. Specific technical incidents that affected site

These are pretty much what's going on there now. What else could be
suitable? What sort of things shouldn't go on there? Perhaps any
issue/event that doesn't effect *all* projects?

Dan


from_name: Boris Lohnzweiger

body:
Nick Boalch wrote:

> Frankly the gross ignorance about language bursting out of the seams of
> this thread is very, very disturbing.

What is really disturbing here is the fact that you are accusing people that don't share your view of being ignorant.

______________________________________________________________
Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS!
Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193


from_name: Jamie Bliss

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> In preferences: "Editing" > check "Use external editor by default" ,
> will send you the file for editing in whatever editor. Not sure how it
> works exactly though ;)

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

Basically, you associate a program (currently a perl script) with the
application/x-external-editor MIME type.

-- Jamie
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://endeavour.zapto.org/astro73/
Thank you to JosephM for inviting me to Gmail!
Have lots of invites. Gmail now has 2GB.


from_name: Poe, Marshall

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New Proposal: WikiMemory (repost)

body:
Hi Folks:
I'm reposting this because I messed up the formatting when I first posted it (making it very hard to read--sorry).

Best, MP

First, thanks to everyone for the input. As a newbie, I really appreciate it.
Let me address some of the good points you made.

1. How does Wikimemory fit Wikimedia?s mission?
        As I understand it, Wikimedia?s mission is to present the sum of
human knowledge (and, more generally, ?content?) to all of humanity,
free, by means of wikis.  The ?data? that will be gathered on Wikimemory
 is part of human knowledge--it?s the part we use to understand the past.
Empirically speaking, historical artifacts such as memoirs *are* the past, or
at least the only evidence we have of it. You can?t see the past, or go visit;
you can only look at what?s survived until the present. Moreover, if we don?t
gather all these memories, they will be lost (they are recorded presently in
peoples? heads and nowhere else). For the first time in history we
have the ability to easily record and store the memories of a huge section
of humanity.  If we do it, the future will be richer for it (e.g., bad actors won?t
 be able to deny their bad deeds?it?s be on the record for everyone to see).

2. How is Wikimemoir different from Wikimemorial
In terms of purpose, the two are different: Wikimemorial memorializes tragedies,
while Wikimemoir records significant firsthand accounts of important events.
In terms of data-type, Wikimemory?s content is similar to *part* of the content
on Wikimemorial (or 911wiki), namely, memoirs.  There will be no memorials
on Wikimemory, at least as I conceive it.  The only metadata will be commentary
on the primary sources (see below).

3. How?s it different from Wikipeople?
        Apart from the commentaries on the memoirs,
Wikimemory is all data and no metadata; Wikipeople
is all metadata (biographies). Put another way, Wikimemory
 is a primary source; Wikipeople is a secondary source.
Both are very valuable, and neither can really exist without the other.

4. Why a Wiki (or, To edit or not to edit)?
To me, this is the most interesting question of all because it points up a conflict
between two principles.  On the one hand, we want to be open and allow everyone
 to edit all content.  On the other hand, we want to gather and disseminate the sum
 of human knowledge to everyone, free.  In the case of Wikimemory (and several other
] wikis), these principles run up against one another.  Let me try to explain.
It seems to me that there are two kinds of wikis, differentiated by the kind of data
they gather. What might be called ?scientific? wikis record the present state of *human knowledge*,
 that is, metadata or secondary sources.  I have in mind Wikipedia, Wikispecies, etc.
In contrast, what might be called ?documentary? wikis gather, preserve and disseminate
*artifacts*, that is, data or primary sources.  I have in mind 911Wiki, Wikisource, Wikiquote,
Wikicommons, and Wikimemory.

Now here?s the interesting part: the scientific wikis can be expected to become more valuable
 in an opensource environment as they are edited, but the documentary wikis can be expected
 to become less valuable as they are edited.  For example, the Wikipedia *entry* on the ?Magna Carta?
will improve as we learn more about the document and its context, but the Wikisource *edition* of
the ?Magna Carta? will only become less valuable as it is edited further away from its original, canonical
state (the words as they were written in 1215).  Or to take a hypothetical example from Wikimemory,
the Wikipedia *entry* on ?Abu Graib Prison? will get better as historians uncover more about what happened
 there, but a Wikimemory *memoir* by one of the prisoners will only lose value if it is changed from its
original disposition (that is, if it is vandalized).

And here?s where we run into a contradiction of principles or aims. If we stick to the open-source
principle, then we won?t be able to present historical artifacts, because they may be inaccurate
reflections of the originals (due to vandalism). This contradicts the all-human-knowledge principle.
If, in contrast, we prioritize the all-human-knowledge principle, then we?ll probably be forced to
make finished entries on  ?documentary? wikis read-only. This violates the open-source principle.

Which is the superior principle?  I?d say it?s the all-human-knowledge principle.  There?s a lot to be
 gained by relaxing our stand on open-source here.  For this reason I propose that discuss making
the finished content on Wikimemory read-only in some or most cases. Moreover, we can still be true
to our open-source principles by allowing users edit metadata (explanatory information about the
 memoirs) to the site. To return to our example, a well-annotated Magna Carta is much easier to
understand than a Magna Carta in isolation.  And such annotations would be (in the sense meant
before) ?scientific,? they would improve as we learned more.

All the Best, Marshall


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New Proposal: WikiMemory (17 reasons)

body:
More pitch.  Just tell me if this is horribly annoying (or ignore it)... Best, Marshall.

17 Reasons Why I Think WikiMemory is a Good Idea

1. When you die, all your memories vanish.  That's a boatload of lost information.
2. It's good to know about the past, and this would help (not us, maybe, but the future).
3. People see and do really interesting stuff; I'd like to read about it (and so would a lot of others).
4. Some people have seen what I've seen; I'd like to get their POV.
5. Some people lie (especially politicians), and this might be a way to stop them, a little.
6. People are basically honest; they aren't going to lie, especially when there is no reason to.
7. Readers aren't stupid--they'll know to take any memoir about a very controversial issue with a grain of salt.
8. If you carefully compare accounts of the same event, you often can determine which one is more accurate.
9. If you check the proported facts in an account against some other source, you can often determine if the writer
 knows what the hell he is talking about.
10. And you can always ask someone who was there. Just email them.
11. Besides, even if they lie, the way they lie will tell future historians something about them.  That's valuable info.
12. Journalists know that they should check their sources (at least the good ones do).
13. There is some great undiscovered memoir writer out there, and I'd like to find him or her.
14. In a hundred years, historians everywhere will use this site, and praise us (alas, we'll be dead...)
15. Nothing like this exists.
16. Nothing like this has ever existed.
17. For the first time in human history, we could pass our very memories on to future generations.  Wow.

Marshall Poe


subject: [WikiEN-l] help improper blocking by Lucky 6.9

body:
I am registered as Norweigian Forest.

Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and then immediately (in a few minutes) blocked
24.18.59.229
because I created a wiki entry for a victim of 9/11 (passenger Edward Felt
on Flight 93).  I understand that listing every victim with a page is not
practical.  Nevertheless the entry was justified because it was short and to
the point and his family has recent commented on events involving that
Flight.

Lucky 6.9 sent me a warning and before I could even respond (it was a matter
of minutes) blocked me.  I had renewed the Edward Felt page once thinking
that the original posting had not gone through (I did not even realize at
that point Lucky 6.9 had deleted it).  Otherwise I would have contacted
Lucky 6.9
first and explained my position

I believe Lucky 6.9 is abusing his/her administration powers in blocking
users without good cause.
I registered and emailed Lucky 6.9 several time to resolve this but he/she
does not
respond.

Thank you.


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Desysopping inactive admins

body:
Meta does it with 50 posts/year if under.

Don't really have an opinion myself yet.

On Sunday, September 18, 2005, at 03:18  PM, Ryan W. (Merovingian)
wrote:

> It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
>
> 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> 2, If the admin in question requests it.
>
> --Ryan

Thanks,
RN


from_name: DF

subject: [WikiEN-l] AFD 100 days

body:
Having tired of listening to arguments about what goes
on at AFD but having little data, I decided to engage
in a little experiment to analyze voting patterns at
AFD.  I wrote a computer script to parse over 100 days
of AFD logs and compile a variety of statistics by
looking at the bold faced terms (eg. keep, delete,
merge, etc).

Obviously this is imperfect since AFD is suppose to be
about discussion and consensus building (somehow
despite somehow having 100 noms and 875 votes cast a
day), but it is good enough to reveal some interesting
patterns.  For example, I would not have guessed that
on a forum with 7200 participants over 100 days that
the top 5 would account for 10% of all votes.  Or that
for all articles with 2/3 of the votes cast favoring
deletion, only 6 would also have 10 or more keep
votes.

However, I am not all that surprised that regulars
cast delete votes 76% of the time whereas occasional
participants (the vast majority of all voters) say
delete only 56% of the time.

The full listing of statistics compiled so far can be
seen at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AFD_100_days

Things are still somewhat preliminary as I may yet try
to further improve the parser and the last three days
of my AFD sample have not entirely closed, but I doubt
those things with substantially change the patterns.

Anyway, I hope this provides a better grounding for
some of the endless discussions about what to do with
AFD (and whether or not it has serious problems).

-Dragons flight

PS. I need to get back to real life now, so if there
are questions/requests/complaints, it will probably be
several hours or a day before I get back to respond to them.


subject: [WikiEN-l] AFD 100 days

body:
> Anyway, I hope this provides a better grounding for
> some of the endless discussions about what to do with
> AFD (and whether or not it has serious problems).

Wow... I didn't realize I had a 77% delete (I'm #107, whee!)... of
course that includes my early "deletionist" days so it's not too
surprising.

Etacar has a 95.9% delete rate... my word :).

That's the coolest thing ever... thanks DF!!!

Thanks,
RN


from_name: Zephram Stark

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Violation of Blocking Policy

body:
Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
"'Making up rules' is allowable under [[WP:IAR]]"

For editors who treat each other with respect, the Wikipedia: Ignore All Rules policy is a way of saying, "No rules are necessary for you."  Since every rule of Wikipedia is made to enable and promote mutual respect and consensus, those who seek consensus naturally need no Wikipedia rules.

In no way, can the [[WP:IAR]] be expanded to mean: make up and enforce any rule that you want.  In fact, for an administrator to do so would be in direct contradiction to the promise we essentially make editors in the [[WP:IAR]] that they need only worry about making good, NPOV articles.

Zephram Stark zephramstark at yahoo.com
432-224-6991

---------------------------------
Yahoo! for Good
 Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping inactive admins

body:
URL doesn't work, can't find any obvious variations that do. And
remember to change spaces to underscores in urls ;)

On 9/18/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just to advertise a current proposal:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Desysopsing inactive admins
>
> There are no set proposals yet, but it would be useful to have wider
> community input into the proposal.
>
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
It's fine the way it is.

On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Sep 18, 2005, at 12:33 PM, Sam Korn wrote:
>
> > On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Then that is a huge user interface and security hole - because
> >> someone looking at the history of the image would think that the
> >> original uploader uploaded the image. In an organization that relies
> >> on users being able to track and document problems this is gap in
> >> that ability.
> >>
> >
> > Look at the bottom of the image page.  There is your file history.
> >
> > Sam
>
> It should be the other way around - people clicked to get the image
> history, not the image description history.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Ruy or Ray? Ruy is left-wing.

Fred

On Sep 18, 2005, at 8:01 AM, Stirling Newberry wrote:

> http://www.bopnews.com/archives/004956.html#4956
>
> People may have noticed a troll by the name of "Ray Lopez". Many
> have written about the offensiveness of his comments. The reason
> they were being allowed to accumulate is because "Ray Lopez" is
> part of an organized group of hard right wingers on wikipedia.
> However, these individuals are not merely organized editors, but
> have backing from people with trusted status on Wikipedia.
>
> Now, I have proof of it.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Rob Brewer

body:
On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:

> You didn't check carefully - the edit history shows that the image
> was last updated in March, when, in fact, the pornographic image has
> only been in place for a few hours. Or do you think that it would
> have been left on my user page for months with no one commenting on it?

The edit history that I see at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pub.jpg shows a 19 February version
uploaded by you, a pornographic version uploaded by an impostor today,
and reverts by GMaxwell and TenOfAllTrades.

The impostor is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StirIing_Newberry
with capital I in place of the lowercase l.

It is possible that the edit history was confused by delays in syncing
the slave database. That is, for a while after the porno version was
uploaded, it was the current version of the image, and appeared on the
page, but the image history was being read off the slightly
out-of-date slave database.

Does that make sense?

Rob
[[User:Rbrwr]]

--
Rob Brewer rob at rbrwr.org rbrwr.org at gmail.com http://www.rbrwr.org
"I could have been like Lou Barlow, but I'm more like Ken Barlow"


from_name: Anthere

body:
Pawe? Dembowski wrote:

>>I agree with Dori.
>>I'll further add that even when the author is not gone, he is not always
>>told the images lack label and will be soon deleted.
>>It is killing motivation to discover two months later than some of your
>>images have been deleted, while they were uploaded LONG before tags even
>>existed and while when uploading them, you explicitely agreed to put
>>them on gfdl licence (according to upload message at least).
>>Ant
>>PS : I was happy of the existence of mirrors to retrieve my own deleted
>>images.
>
>
> At pl: a bot put a list of untagged images on every uploader's talk
> page.
>

This is a good idea...

Ant


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping inactive admins

body:
Just to advertise a current proposal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Desysopsing inactive admins

There are no set proposals yet, but it would be useful to have wider
community input into the proposal.

Sam


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Guidelines for Latest news on WMF wiki?

body:
Dan Grey wrote:

> It's just occured to me that now I've an account there, I could help
> keep it up to date :o). But I it would certainly help me and maybe
> others if we had some guidelines for what should and should not be
> listed there. I think the emphasis should be on what effects/could
> effect users.
>
> As a starting point:
> 1. new equipment news (purchases, bits going on-line etc)
> 2. board meeting reports going out
> 3. Officer appointments/changes
> 4. Budget announcements
> 5. Specific technical incidents that affected site
>
> These are pretty much what's going on there now. What else could be
> suitable? What sort of things shouldn't go on there? Perhaps any
> issue/event that doesn't effect *all* projects?
>
>
> Dan

Jeee, if you could help here, I would be more than happy.
I am slowly getting discouraged in trying to get information to put it
there. I copied the previous to last on wikitech. And got the last one
from Dammit on irc. Not to mention the appointement of Delphine which I
finally put after having hoped dearly someone else would...

All the points you mention are worth of noting.
I would possibly add other items, such
* big meetups announcement (such as Wikimania)
* press releases announcements (such as Yahoo's servers offer)
* creation (or closure) of projects
* major donation or agreements. Or a grant being accepted
* creation of a new chapter
* fundraising announcement (or closure feedback announcement)

etc...

Ant


body:
On 9/18/05, Stephen Forrest <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> Odd, the 'history' info on the page for the file itself is now okay,
> but the actual history link,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Pub.jpg&action=history,
> is still showing the wrong information.  Anyway, likely a
> glitch/refresh problem since the data is consistent everywhere else.

I believe the &action=history file only includes changes to the text.

Sam


from_name: Ben E.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikiquote e-mail

body:
And I see that he has been indefinitely blocked from all English-speaking
projects by Linuxbeak and Anthere. That just about settles it.

--[[en:User:Bratsche|Ben]].

On 9/18/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> same.
>
> On 9/18/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/18/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I believe that there now exists a community consensus to ban
> > > JarlaxleArtemis.
> > >
> > >
> > I certainly have no objection. Suggest you put it to [[WP:ANI]] or
> [[WP:VP]]
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

body:
It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:

1. An inactive account was hacked into.
2, If the admin in question requests it.

--Ryan

> From: Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping inactive admins
>
> Just to advertise a current proposal:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Desysopsing inactive admins
>
> There are no set proposals yet, but it would be useful to have wider
> community input into the proposal.
>
> Sam

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


from_name: steve v

body:
Yet another citation of the WP:IAR non-policy as being
a policy-like basis for a policy-covered decision.

Wonderful.

SV
"This is not 'Nam, Smokey. This is bowling. There are
rules."

--- Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:

> As you can see, I have not paid a lot of attention
> to this thread.
> "Making up rules" is allowable under [[WP:IAR]].
> Remember, I only
> blocked one person for this, I have not unilaterally
> started forcing
> any "made up rules" on everyone. I also have
> absolutely no interest in
> the article I blocked him for reverting, and I don't
> even remember
> what it was. Sure, I'd like to see it be featured on
> the main page,
> but I'm not interested in directly contributing to
> it.
>
> Also, I'm pretty sure there's a few things in the
> blocking policy and
> 3rr policy that say things  such as, "you are not
> entitled to three
> reverts per day", and that you can be blocked for
> "excessive"
> reversions. 3RR is not a hard limit, and you can
> even break it and not
> get blocked at all, depending on what the admin who
> responds to the
> situation feels would be best. We don't even have an
> exhaustive list
> of everything that can be blocked for.
>
> Desysopping me over one possible policy breach would
> be kinda silly.
> Nobody has ever been desysopped for that. The amount
> of admins who
> have ever lost their privileges can be counted on
> one human hand. Also
> note that no admin that I am aware of UN blocked
> Brian...we have like
> 600 of them.
>
> Oh, and don't forget that the block has expired
> quite a while ago, and
> if for some technical reason it lasted longer then
> exactly 24 hours,
> we're sorry. And i'm sorry if the term "gaming the
> system" has
> offended anyone here. Maybe that term was too harsh
> for the situation.
>
> I could make a huge rant about this, but I'm sure
> you would rather not read it.
>
> On 9/17/05, Zephram Stark <zephramstark at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com>
> wrote:
> > >[[WP:NOT]] overly legalistic or bureaucratic.
> That's what
> > >[[WP:IAR]] is for.  Nobody's going to "call to
> the carpet"
> > >Phroziac for issuing a perfectly respectable
> block against
> > >someone who is clearly gaming the system. You
> still haven't
> > >explained why you kept unilaterally removing
> information
> > >without ever discussing anything. As I said, the
> ultimate check
> > >on blocking is that there are more than 500
> Wikipedia admins
> > >capable of blocking and unblocking. The fact that
> not one of
> > >them has done anything speaks volumes about your
> case,
> > >or lack thereof.
> > >-FCYTravis @ en.wikipedia
> >
> > I wouldn't say that despondency speaks volumes
> about Mr. Brockmeyer's case.  I think it says more
> about degradation in our system.  Wikipedia was
> founded on the concept of the best article naturally
> rising to the top.  Now we see administrative power
> artificially influencing which article become
> permanent.  Mr. Brockmeyer is naturally confused
> because Wikipedia purports itself to be a society of
> equals, and he doesn't feel like an equal.  He
> played within the rules, just like the administrator
> that blocked him, but that administrator made up a
> new rule: Thou shalt not game the system.  Where is
> gaming the system on the "exhaustive list of the
> situations that warrant blocking?"
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#When_blocks_may_be_used
> > It's not there.  It's one that Phroziac made up.
> How can he do that?!!  It's easy in an overgrown
> hierarchical system like this one.  The guy on the
> top simply cannot keep up with all of the complaints
> about his administrators, so he can no longer stem
> corruption.  It's why every hierarchical system in
> history has failed.
> >
> > Societies of equals endure as long as they can
> keep anyone from gaining power over the system.  In
> my opinion, getting Wikipedia back to the concept of
> a society of equals must be our number one priority
> if we are to be considered a reliably and NPOV
> resource.  I realize that different people have
> different jobs, like sysop and administrator, but
> the tools available for those jobs must not be
> allowed to influence the articles.  When there is
> evidence of this, no matter how much we love
> Phroziac, we must take away his tools for the
> sustainability and reliability of this incredible
> project.  If he wants to run for administrator again
> in the future, I would love to entertain his
> application.
> >
> > If the administrators can't monitor themselves,
> the only alternative I can see is of creating a
> secret ballot system for votes of no confidence
> available to all editors.
> >
> > Zephram Stark
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Yahoo! for Good
> >  Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina
> relief effort.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping inactive admins

body:
On 9/18/05, Laura Scudder <laurascudder at gmail.com> wrote:
> He meant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Desysopsing_inactive_admins
>
> On 9/18/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > URL doesn't work, can't find any obvious variations that do. And
> > remember to change spaces to underscores in urls ;)

mea maxima culpa.  And I didn't make the spelling.

Sam


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I am pleased to announce that Danny Wool has accepted my offer of a job
> at the Wikimedia Foundation to be the Executive Assistant for the
> foundation.  This job will primarily entail removing work from me so
> that I can better focus on the parts of my job that I am best at.
> ...
> It is envisioned that Danny's staff role as my assistant will be
> temporary as he comes in and sets up professional systems for our work
> and begins to look for a replacement Executive Assistant (sometime
> within a year, depending on the flow of events) so that he can focus
> more and more over time in writing grant proposals.

Thank heavens. Hiring somebody to fill this role, IMO, has occurred at least 4
months later than it should have been. It will be very nice to have somebody
consistently in the office during normal business hours.

Much good will come of this. I'm sure of it.

Congratulations Danny!

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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body:
On 9/18/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> Then that is a huge user interface and security hole - because
> someone looking at the history of the image would think that the
> original uploader uploaded the image. In an organization that relies
> on users being able to track and document problems this is gap in
> that ability.

Look at the bottom of the image page.  There is your file history.

Sam


from_name: Brandon Hansen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked

body:
And it doesn't appear you are very well versed in the situation, either. So
let's just leave it at that.

--
-brandon

How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?

On 9/18/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/17/05, Brandon Hansen <buhansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've recently been blocked and I feel it is unjustified and against
> policy.
> >
> >
> > This is how things went down:
> >
> > 1. I added content to many WP articles using content from ON articles
> > and subsequently cited the ON articles as references.
> > 2. These references were removed but the content left. I protested.
> > 3. A discussion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Uriah923/OmniNerd)
> > was held to determine if the reference should be replaced and if content
> > should remain. It was concluded that ON articles are not worthy of being
> > used as references and that the content could remain. I conceded.
> > 4. I opened discussions on four Talk pages to determine if some ON
> > articles could be included as external links. No links were placed.
> > 5. I was blocked by Taxman, citing linkspam and disruption.
> >
>
> There is a reason that all the discussion was collected into one
> place, to produce one consensus. After a decision was reached which
> you didn't like, you continued to spruik your site on four separate
> talk pages, presumably to try to get around this consensus.
>
> Your behaviour falls within the bounds of link spamming, and
> disruptive behaviour, and the block appears justified to me (although
> I am not an admin).
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reboots of doom

body:
We've had our main fileserver (zwinger) accidentally rebooted a couple
of times during configuration of new servers today, resulting in downtime.

Everybody, PLEEEEEEEASE be careful when rebooting that you're typing in
the window you think you are.

And when the site *does* blow up in some new and inventive way, don't
forget to log it on the admin log at http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log

That is all.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Sun, Sep 18, 2005 at 11:19:35AM -0400, Stirling Newberry wrote:
> On Sep 18, 2005, at 10:53 AM, Delirium wrote:
> >Hyperbolize much?
> >
> >Occam's razor might suggest that Brion manually doing DB queries to
> >insert pornographic images in your name is not the most likely
> >explanation.  You picking a bad password is a more likely one,
> >among many others.
>
> You didn't check carefully - the edit history shows that the image
> was last updated in March, when, in fact, the pornographic image has
> only been in place for a few hours. Or do you think that it would
> have been left on my user page for months with no one commenting on it?

Nothing to see, please move along.

The comments for the blog entry explain that it was just
a very bad misinterpretation of the facts by Stirling.

The only reason it was interesting was a possible existence
of an MediaWiki exploit in the wild. Nothing in this case even
remotely suggests it, however.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Desysopping inactive admins

body:
That's certainly interesting.  I can understand on the Meta, but I'm less certain about on the various language editions.

--Ryan

> From: Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Desysopping inactive admins
>
> Meta does it with 50 posts/year if under.
>
> Don't really have an opinion myself yet.
>
> On Sunday, September 18, 2005, at 03:18  PM, Ryan W. (Merovingian)
> wrote:
>
> > It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
> >
> > 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> > 2, If the admin in question requests it.
> >
> > --Ryan
>
> Thanks,
> RN

--
___________________________________________________________
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body:
> Throughout life, any policy of judging people by their
> success in working well with others, is a blank cheque
> for bullying and for it to win.

Unfortunately all alternatives end up with a peer evaluating you...

> If the mob for its own
> reasons agrees not to work well with a targetted
> individual, the solitary victim gets the blame.

If you're referring to wikipedia, then of course this is going to
happen because beneath all the glittery stuff it is just another
private company.

> Bullypedia proved conclusively.

Well... uh... the point is that you don't HAVE to come to wikipedia.
You can start your own wiki, go to another community etc.. Heaven knows
there are many out there.

>
> and
> "In the cases where multiple parties violate the
>> rule, sysops should treat all sides equally."
> Wow, isn't this a revelation, after all the admin
> voices here who have denied there is any obligation to
> equality and said "You are not entitled to anything",

That's a rather loose argument there :).

> and after my political purging was directly for the
> offence of arguing that any entitlements to equality exist.

Po*lit*i*cal pur*ging
1. Personal Attacks
2. Legal Threats
3. Linkspam
4. Edit warring to keep the linkspam in

Thanks,
RN


body:
On Sun, Sep 18, 2005 at 12:47:20PM -0400, Stirling Newberry wrote:
> >The comments for the blog entry explain that it was just
> >a very bad misinterpretation of the facts by Stirling.
>
> Or conversely - the exploitation of well known bad presentation of
> the facts by wikipedia.

The interface is indeed confusing.

Both problems of image history display and imposter
accounts can be solved by technical means.

The former by displaying changes to both uploaded image
and its description on the same page, or as a stop-gap
measure by changing the relevant MediaWiki: messages,
to it more apparent history of what is being displayed.

The latter by implementing apropriate heuristics
in a bot - one that would parse new users log (on
IRC RC channel or some other way) and report suspicious
accounts. They usually involve mixed latin-cyrillic scripts,
added accents or similar letters (l<->I), so that's
easy to detect and post relevant information on Wikipedia.
However, as the problem is widely known,
there's little need for urgent action here.

If you want to see those things fixed faster, please code.

Confusing interface notwithstanding, you should be more careful
with such accusations. If you actually asked someone before
posting, you would probably find that you're wrong.
Scientific integrity requires evidence proportional
to the boldness of your claim and it doesn't seem you tried
hard enough to find the problems with yours.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikiquote e-mail

body:
same.

On 9/18/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/18/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I believe that there now exists a community consensus to ban
> > JarlaxleArtemis.
> >
> >
> I certainly have no objection. Suggest you put it to [[WP:ANI]] or [[WP:VP]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jack & Naree

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Wikipedia Anglo-Saxon?! Wikipedia Middle English?!! Wikipedia Scot's
English?!!!
 I want Wikipedia English English!!!


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikiquote e-mail

body:
On 9/18/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I believe that there now exists a community consensus to ban
> JarlaxleArtemis.
>
>
I certainly have no objection. Suggest you put it to [[WP:ANI]] or [[WP:VP]]


from_name: Roberto Frangi

subject: [Foundation-l] Speedy deleting images w/o explicit license

body:
I prefer to handle a few liars (and they are blocked of course), instead
of keeping on asking and explaining to people that just.... uploads images.

Roberto (Snowdog)

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
>The main thing to look out for is that too strong an encouragement may
>encourage some people to lie.  People found lying about image sources
>should be blocked from editing.
>
>It might be better to let them upload and then delete it, rather than
>set up incentives for people to lie.  (This is harder for us to detect
>than if there is no source at all!)
>
>--Jimbo
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] On speedying "halfway decent stubs"

body:
On 16/09/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> <snip>
> > For instance today's front page contains an article about the
> > Krag-Petersson repeating rifle which doesn't manage to give any dates
> > at all until the second paragraph (and then only the date of adoption
> > by the Norwegian Navy), although the most significant thing about the
> > rifle is that it was "the first repeating rifle adopted by the armed
> > forces of Norway"  How did the editors manage to miss the date out of
> > the first sentence?  How did it pass FA in that state?
> >
>
> Vote stacking on IRC.
>
> /me runs

I've read some "featured articles" and wondered how on earth they got
that status... Probably because our "peer review" rarely really is
"peer" review, more often
other-editors-who-don't-know-the-subject-having-a-glance-and-thinking-that-looks-nice
review.

Not a complaint, just an observation :-)

Dan


from_name: SPUI

body:
steve v wrote:
> Yet another citation of the WP:IAR non-policy as being
> a policy-like basis for a policy-covered decision.
>
> Wonderful.

Agreed. IAR has its uses, but blocking should not be one of them.


body:
Well, there aren't that many inactive sysops, are there?

--Ryan

> From: Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Desysopping inactive admins
>
> On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
> >
> > 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> > 2, If the admin in question requests it.
> >
>
> The only reason I can think of would be that having inactive admins on
> the books might inflate admin numbers, but we already have [[WP:LA]],
> which is split into "active", "semi-active" and "inactive" groups as
> it is.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com

--
___________________________________________________________
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body:
Valid points, both.  Other than what I've already brought up, I don't see any need for a desysopping system.  There are, IMO, much more important things to be taken care of.  For example, that "AfD" thing.  :)

--Ryan

PS.  I still call it VfD.  >_>

> From: Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Desysopping inactive admins
>
> On 9/18/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > It's not a bad idea, but I don't see it as necessary unless:
> > 1. An inactive account was hacked into.
> Being inactive makes you less visible. I think one of the active
> admins is MUCH more likely to get hacked. If the "hacker" really knows
> anything, they would try to hit the SQL servers, and delete a few
> databases... Deleting that much data might even crash the machines,
> causing a long fsck to be needed..
> Or hack the SQL and make it look like all the admins are vandalizing...
>
> > 2, If the admin in question requests it.
> We already desysop you on request, as long as you can prove you're who
> you claim to be to a steward.
>
> > --Ryan
> --Phroziac

--
___________________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: All information?

body:
I understand Timwi's point - my hypothesis fails practically because
that's not what's happening. So would this be a better hypothesis:

"Notability - and hence what is and is not included in Wikipedia - is
decided by whoever is voting on AfD at any given moment."

This isn't a hidden dig or anything - I'm just trying to reach the
core of some of these issues.

Dan

PS: "NOR and V are relatively objective criteria, but
notability is quite a lot less so, and there will never be a
hard-and-fast rule (algorithm) that determines boolean notability." -
how I wish there was :-). My brain seems to like things like that more
than "softer" rules.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 15/09/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> On the other hand, the only problem that PWDS seems to fix in my
> opinion is that nominations could be extended where useful debate was
> progressing.  Maybe that is a decent way to help things.  PWDS just
> has too many rough edges.

I just really like the idea of having the debates on the talk page,
rather than in a central place. Which do you prefer?

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/18/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just really like the idea of having the debates on the talk page,
> rather than in a central place. Which do you prefer?

A centralised place, so that debates, and similarities between them,
can most easily be spotted.

Methinks you and I shall have to amicably disagree here!

Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 18/09/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/18/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I just really like the idea of having the debates on the talk page,
> > rather than in a central place. Which do you prefer?
>
> A centralised place, so that debates, and similarities between them,
> can most easily be spotted.

I don't know if you're looking at the "All information" thread, but
I'm currently forming the idea that what's in/what's out is decided
purely by whoever is voting on AfD at any given moment. I'm just not
comfortable with that - it's not very "wiki" - so I'd like to see the
debates held on talk pages. Just explaining my PoV, like :-).

>
> Methinks you and I shall have to amicably disagree here!
>

Aye :-)

Dan


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked

body:
And ON would be? As for the policy, note [[WP:IAR]]. We're all allowed
to ignore rules as long as it's reasonable for the situation, and you
can actually defend yourself on it and not look like an idiot. And I'm
not sure, but I think in the admin power policies, they say you
*SHOULD NOT* use them in articles/disputes/whatever, but not that you
absolutely must not. Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, but I tend
to ignore those and do what is right for the situation..

On 9/17/05, Brandon Hansen <buhansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've recently been blocked and I feel it is unjustified and against policy.
>
>
> This is how things went down:
>
>    1. I added content to many WP articles using content from ON articles
>    and subsequently cited the ON articles as references.
>    2. These references were removed but the content left. I protested.
>    3. A discussion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Uriah923/OmniNerd)
>    was held to determine if the reference should be replaced and if content
>    should remain. It was concluded that ON articles are not worthy of being
>    used as references and that the content could remain. I conceded.
>    4. I opened discussions on four Talk pages to determine if some ON
>    articles could be included as external links. No links were placed.
>    5. I was blocked by Taxman, citing linkspam and disruption.
>
> The block certainly doesn't make sense to me, and it seems to be
> specifically prohibited in the blocking policy, as Taxman was directly
> involved in the dispute. Hopefully, someone will read this and be able to
> objectively evaluate the circumstances. As I see it, WP has nothing to lose
> from me being able to hold discussions on talk pages to determine if certain
> external links are appropriate.
>
> There are more details in a conversation I had with Taxman on my talk page.
>
> --
> -brandon
> User Name: Uriah923
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
As you can see, I have not paid a lot of attention to this thread.
"Making up rules" is allowable under [[WP:IAR]]. Remember, I only
blocked one person for this, I have not unilaterally started forcing
any "made up rules" on everyone. I also have absolutely no interest in
the article I blocked him for reverting, and I don't even remember
what it was. Sure, I'd like to see it be featured on the main page,
but I'm not interested in directly contributing to it.

Also, I'm pretty sure there's a few things in the blocking policy and
3rr policy that say things  such as, "you are not entitled to three
reverts per day", and that you can be blocked for "excessive"
reversions. 3RR is not a hard limit, and you can even break it and not
get blocked at all, depending on what the admin who responds to the
situation feels would be best. We don't even have an exhaustive list
of everything that can be blocked for.

Desysopping me over one possible policy breach would be kinda silly.
Nobody has ever been desysopped for that. The amount of admins who
have ever lost their privileges can be counted on one human hand. Also
note that no admin that I am aware of UN blocked Brian...we have like
600 of them.

Oh, and don't forget that the block has expired quite a while ago, and
if for some technical reason it lasted longer then exactly 24 hours,
we're sorry. And i'm sorry if the term "gaming the system" has
offended anyone here. Maybe that term was too harsh for the situation.

I could make a huge rant about this, but I'm sure you would rather not read it.

On 9/17/05, Zephram Stark <zephramstark at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
> >[[WP:NOT]] overly legalistic or bureaucratic.  That's what
> >[[WP:IAR]] is for.  Nobody's going to "call to the carpet"
> >Phroziac for issuing a perfectly respectable block against
> >someone who is clearly gaming the system. You still haven't
> >explained why you kept unilaterally removing information
> >without ever discussing anything. As I said, the ultimate check
> >on blocking is that there are more than 500 Wikipedia admins
> >capable of blocking and unblocking. The fact that not one of
> >them has done anything speaks volumes about your case,
> >or lack thereof.
> >-FCYTravis @ en.wikipedia
>
> I wouldn't say that despondency speaks volumes about Mr. Brockmeyer's case.  I think it says more about degradation in our system.  Wikipedia was founded on the concept of the best article naturally rising to the top.  Now we see administrative power artificially influencing which article become permanent.  Mr. Brockmeyer is naturally confused because Wikipedia purports itself to be a society of equals, and he doesn't feel like an equal.  He played within the rules, just like the administrator that blocked him, but that administrator made up a new rule: Thou shalt not game the system.  Where is gaming the system on the "exhaustive list of the situations that warrant blocking?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#When_blocks_may_be_used
> It's not there.  It's one that Phroziac made up.  How can he do that?!!  It's easy in an overgrown hierarchical system like this one.  The guy on the top simply cannot keep up with all of the complaints about his administrators, so he can no longer stem corruption.  It's why every hierarchical system in history has failed.
>
> Societies of equals endure as long as they can keep anyone from gaining power over the system.  In my opinion, getting Wikipedia back to the concept of a society of equals must be our number one priority if we are to be considered a reliably and NPOV resource.  I realize that different people have different jobs, like sysop and administrator, but the tools available for those jobs must not be allowed to influence the articles.  When there is evidence of this, no matter how much we love Phroziac, we must take away his tools for the sustainability and reliability of this incredible project.  If he wants to run for administrator again in the future, I would love to entertain his application.
>
> If the administrators can't monitor themselves, the only alternative I can see is of creating a secret ballot system for votes of no confidence available to all editors.
>
> Zephram Stark
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> // O/S is Debian Woody 3.0r6 GNU/Linux, with a backport of the 2.6.7
> kernel, so it's semi-modern (i.e. not truly ancient, but definitely
> not cutting edge either - more kind of middle-aged, with a few grey
> hairs, and driving a station wagon or mini-van).

URRRGGGGGG!

Debian Woody is my mortal enemy. I thought it was dead finally, but no...

I'll see what I can whip up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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