from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
Okay, maybe some people are unaware of CheeseDreams exponential use of sock
puppets to get around the ArbCom's one year ban on Jesus (or is it
Christianity?) related articles.  I know I am partisan, but I think we can
fairly say Cheese Dreams is now out of control:

>Cheesedreams is now editing under User:Cheese-Dreams. I thought all the
>sockpuppets were blocked? I've blocked this one now anyway. --fvw* 23:44,
>2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
>This is just a new sock. Sigh - I don't think CD gets it. --mav
>Darling, your so wrong, I get it very well, I just ignore you, darling.
>CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
>The other note is that CheeseDreams uses a dialup and this makes it
>impossible to block her IP range. She can redial as many times as she
>likes, and she doesn't need to use open proxies. Rhobite 04:28, Feb 1,
>2005 (UTC)
>LOL, you cant stop me now, darling. CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As Rhobite points out, it will be very difficult if not impossible to block
CheeseDreams.

I know there has been much discussion of ways to get around the
difficulties in blocking someone whose IP address is shared, or who can
easily move from one IP address to another.  I happen to know next to
nothing about computers, so all I can say is I trust the people working on
this problem and wish them luck.

But I do have another proposal for dealing with these kinds of situations:
give the ArbCom the power to declare a user an "outlaw."

We would need clear guidelines for how to decide who is an outlaw, but for
one thing we must be specific that this is someone who has utter disregards
for bans or partial bans, and who cannot effectively be blocked.

There should be some deliberation at the ArbCom before declaring someone an
outlaw, to ensure due process.

The consequence of being an outlaw is this: anyone -- any editor, sysop or
not -- can revert an outlaw's work at any time, without restriction (so if
doing so means that they must revert more than three times in one day,
their reverts will still be considered legitimate and they won't be punished).

My thinking is this: in the case of CD right now, blocking is not effective
so all we really can do is revert her work.  Right now this is being done
primarily by sysops, and however large the list of admins are, in the case
of someone as reckless as CD this still becomes a big job.  My idea is that
there are some violations of behavior -- eg. when someone laughs and says
"you can't stop me now" -- that the best thing to do is to mobilize the
entire community to take action.

Okay, I know that this sounds off the wall.  Please just think about it,

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
Bill Konrad wrote:

> BTW, I agree that this proliferation of tags on the article page is
> not particularly helpful for readers.

Agreed, and I think this expresses very well the principle that should
guide whether a given tag goes on the article itself or the talk page.
If a tag is necessary or helpful for the reader, it should be placed on
the article, but the number of such tags should be limited. A protection
notice or dispute tag would qualify. VfD notices too, since they imply
that the article may not belong at all. Virtually all of the rest are
either primarily meta-information (which belongs on the talk page the
way featured article tags are already done) or else they are poor
attempts at categorization (which should be handled through, shockingly
enough, categories).

--Michael Snow


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Zigger

subject: [Wikitech-l] anyway to download just the metawiki help pages?

body:
No, the Help namespace is not available separately from the rest of "meta".

For me, the easiest solution was to redirect the Help:Contents and
Help:Editing pages in local installations to the same pages on
meta.wikipedia.org.

Using part of the database dump could mean having to identify, extract
& insert the useful pages (some of which are in the main namespace),
check for inappropriate edits if your site is sensitive, find a way to
merge updates from meta, and isolate the Help pages for copyright
reasons where the GFDL is not used on the local wiki.

Also, the Help pages use templates from the Template namespace, and
there is some useful information on various Talk pages.  The Category
namespace is also used.

-- Zigger

On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 17:20:40 +0000 (UTC), Godfrey Lee wrote:
> Could you reply by e-mail?
>
> mailto:godfrey.lee at cognos.com
> ...


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

body:
Rhobite wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 08:50:51 -0800, Nicholas Knight
> <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
>
>>Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to drop her, call the upstream
>>provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated with
>>the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP. Wikipedia is
>>getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight around when users
>>are engaging in wildly abusive activities.
>
>
> That's one way to do it. At some point, someone official may want to
> contact BT and see about getting her warned, although it's hard to

BT? As in British Telecom? That's terrific! More customers means more
complaints and more bad publicity.

> believe that they'll drop her from the service for this. The tactics
> you describe are used by the anti-spam movement, but is her conduct as
> damaging as that of a spammer? Assuming that BT doesn't drop her, is
> Wikipedia prepared to embrace the "collateral damage" philosophy of
> the antispammers? It's controversial. I won't get into the pro/con
> arguments, but the debate is pretty heated. I'm not sure if this

I'm familiar with the debate in anti-spam circles, and I fall into
roughly the middle (blocking of an entire ISP should be used only in the
most extreme cases where the ISP clearly has no interest in stemming the
tide of spam). We're not cutting off a major avenue of day-to-day
communication here, though. We're trying to write an encyclopedia.

> response fits in with Wikipedia's philosophy. Blocking all BT dialups
> would block many legitimate users.

Which is exactly the point. Legitimate users will dislike being blocked,
and we'll direct their wrath to the appropriate party: the irresponsible
ISP.

At this point, Wikipedia has NO paid staff, and may well never have any
real paid staff other than sysadmins and/or devs. Volunteers are going
to get sick of not getting anywhere with abusive users.

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose editing has significantly dropped
off because every time they come across a page they might be able to
contribute something to, they have to worry about POV warriors and other
uncooperative users that effective action is never taken against.

It's just going to get worse, and as legitimate users get fed up and
leave, people like CD will turn Wikipedia into a laughing stock.

Either tough and effective action is taken, or Wikipedia is going to die.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Felix Wan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
On Fri, February 4, 2005 11:27 pm, Mark Williamson said:
> Please don't use the term "dialect" or "language" in this case without
> understanding the background.
>
[snipped]

Thank Mark for the accurate description of the situation of Chinese
speeches. Much misunderstanding has been caused by the translation:
yu3yan2 <-> language
fang1yan2 <-> dialect
Usually words in unrelated dialects cover different semantic spaces.

Let me explain some more to the list.

When I use the word "language" and "dialect", I try to be careful to
stick to its definition in English. So I say "Chinese languages". But
to avoid controversy with Chinese speakers, I will say "Chinese
dialects", but not the inaccurate "One Chinese language".

The concept that "Chinese is a group of related but different languages"
can be represented as "Chinese consists of many related dialects that
are not mutually intelligible among each other", and I believe no one
will object to the second statement.

The current situation of Chinese is more complicated because all spoken
varieties share a common formal written language. See [[en:Chinese
Language]]. It is comparable to the time when all Romance languages
shared Latin, when serious literature should all be written in Latin.

Now, there is a growth in number and extent of publications in some local
Chinese vernaculars, and some of those speakers requested for their own
Wikipedias. How should we respond?

I have started an experiment without requesting too much resources. I
say: let them try and see what happens. Meanwhile we can think about
the possibility of setting up a fair language policy.

Felix Wan


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
I see nothing wrong with any of those templates.  It's on VfD  because someone thought it wasn't worth keeping as an article, but if it's decided to keep, it still needs to be cleaned up and the POV cut down.  What's wrong with that?  The VfD template says "you are welcome to continue editing this article and improve it".

Why can't cleanup proceed if the person who initially created it thinks it can be kept?  Do we just totally ignore the appearance of articles listed on VfD, or do we have to wait till the article is cleaned up before we put it on VfD?

Or would you prefer we have no VfD at all, which is probably where you're aiming.

RickK

Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
Take a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921

How many different ways do we need to express that an article should be
edited? When did Wikipedia become about editing pages to tell others how
to edit pages?

I would support either radically cutting down the number of these
templates, or limiting their use by policy to two total top-level boxes
per page. Templates would be ordered by priority, so something
ridiculous like "POV check" wouldn't have a chance if there are two
important templates on the page already.

More controversially, I would even say that there's no point in an
article being on Cleanup and VfD at the same time. Both are instruments
of exposure, it's enough to use one of them and hope people fix the
article because they see it there. Otherwise people will just keep
adding Cleanup to any article on VfD out of fear that it will otherwise
not get fixed before being deleted.

Regards,

Erik
_______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
'Tis a pity inclusionists feel the need to make personal attacks all the time.

RickK

Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
David Gerard stated for the record:

> It's such a pity {{toomanyboxes}} fell to [[WP:TFD]].

'Tis a pity deletionists have no sense of humor.

--
Sean Barrett | Johnnie's in the basement
sean at epoptic.com | mixin' up the medicine,
| I'm on the pavement
| thinkin' 'bout the government.
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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Erik Moeller (erik_moeller at gmx.de) [050205 11:30]:

> Take a look at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921
> How many different ways do we need to express that an article should be
> edited? When did Wikipedia become about editing pages to tell others how
> to edit pages?

It's such a pity {{toomanyboxes}} fell to [[WP:TFD]].

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
There was originally a single Cleanup tag, which pointed to the Cleanup page, and the person who put it there could explain in detail what needed to be done.  Then, for some reason (and I never saw a vote on the issue), that became unacceptable, and tons of Cleanup tags were created.  So instead of one, and a link where the person tagging could explain all of the reasons that the article needed Cleanup, we're now required to put a separate tag for each reason.  I would much prefer going back to the original way of doing things.

RickK

slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
But due to an unfortunate oversight, I see the "cite sources" and
"unreferenced" tags are missing. ;-) ~~~~

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 01:32:25 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921
> How many different ways do we need to express that an article should be edited?
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from_name: Reinhardt Wiewe

subject: [Wikitech-l] Who could write some simple MediaWiki extensions

body:
Dear firends,

I need some (4-5) simple [[meta:Write your own MediaWiki extension]]s.

One example:

<UNDERSCORES> respektive </UNDERSCORES> to replace all spaces in a text with underscores. The result would be used in same context as {{PAGENAMEE}} for the generation of direct links to existing MediaWiki functions.

Please let me know in which of the following languages you would like to have the specifications, explanations etc.:

English, German, Esperanto, Romanian.

Thanks in advance for your efforts

Regards

Reinhardt [[User:Gangleri]]


from_name: sannse

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Main Page vandalism, emergency modes, and image
	checking

body:
Anthere wrote:
>
>
> Sj a ?crit:
>
>> The Main Page on en: was vandalized yesterday, when a penis image
>> remained on the page for many minutes.  It was vandalized again today
>> -- a goatse image remained there for almost /20 minutes/.
>>
>> Today it happened during a particularly slow time of the morning,
>> around 14:35 UTC, perhaps in combination with other use of the site
>> that slowed it down.  It was noticed quickly, but it took a good 17
>> minutes for it to be successfully deleted once the problem had been
>> announced on IRC, by the seemingly-omniscient Jimmy Wales.
>>
>> While everyone was fretting over the site's slowness, a few problems
>> presented themselves:
>
>
> I am perplex. Is not the main page protected ?

The main page is - templates on the main page were not.  This allowed
all users to update sections such as "In the News", while still giving
the appearance of a protected page to the casual viewer.  Sadly, our
regular vandals are not casual viewers, and too many know of this route
to editing the page.  the result was goatse multiple times over the
whole main page (and recent changes - which is annoying, but less of a
concern)

>> * There was no one-click way to remove or delete an image
>
>
> Two clicks

Plus those needed to load the page containing the image, in order to get
to the image page - and to load the image page itself.  All of these
were taking a great deal of time.

>> * There was no packaged way to shut down all access to the site in an
>> emergency
>
> ?
> Developers and stewards can do this anytime.
> Well, I never tried (suddenly wonder if I should not try to check if
> this feature is working)

That might have helped - depending on how it worked, but the time issue
is there again, if this happens at a time when the needed people happen
to be off-line.

>> * There was no way to bring the site[s] to (or restart the site in) an
>> 'emergency mode' that only allowed limited access (say, by logged-in
>> users)
>
> Well, this would not remove the bad pictures to readers.

The thought here was that it might speed the site enough for those
people to get to the images to delete it.  From what's been said, I
don't think it would have helped in this case anyway.

>> ** Even had there been such a way, there were few (only 1-2) people
>> with shell access who would have been able to run shell scripts, and
>> it took an extra minute or two to get someone's attention.
>> * There were a limited number of ways to reach the collection of devs
>> to let them know there was an emergency.
>>
>> This was not the worst emergency in the world, so the last point in
>> particular was not as big a deal as it might have been.

This was a pretty big deal in my eyes - this was goatse spread all over
our most public face.  It was offensively bad, and viewed by enough
people for us to receive several complaints (including one from a
teacher who was showing Wikipedia to her class).

> Basically, something must truely escape me. How come an image cannot be
> deleted in less than 20 minutes ????
>
> Any sysop can do this. 200 or 300 people on english wikipedia;
>
> What am I missing here ???

There was a severe site slow down at the time - this was unrelated, but
meant that we just couldn't load the necessary pages to fix the problem.
  This would also have reduced the number of people who viewed the
images, but didn't prevent all access (except, it seemed, to those of us
trying to fix the damn thing.)

The current result is that all templates used on the main page are
protected.  This isn't ideal, but IMO very necessary until there are
other solutions available.

--sannse

--
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from_name: Rhobite

body:
On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 08:50:51 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
> Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to drop her, call the upstream
> provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated with
> the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP. Wikipedia is
> getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight around when users
> are engaging in wildly abusive activities.

That's one way to do it. At some point, someone official may want to
contact BT and see about getting her warned, although it's hard to
believe that they'll drop her from the service for this. The tactics
you describe are used by the anti-spam movement, but is her conduct as
damaging as that of a spammer? Assuming that BT doesn't drop her, is
Wikipedia prepared to embrace the "collateral damage" philosophy of
the antispammers? It's controversial. I won't get into the pro/con
arguments, but the debate is pretty heated. I'm not sure if this
response fits in with Wikipedia's philosophy. Blocking all BT dialups
would block many legitimate users.

Rhobite


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Rick stated for the record:

> 'Tis a pity inclusionists feel the need to make personal attacks all the time.
>
> RickK
>
> Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> David Gerard stated for the record:
>
>
>>It's such a pity {{toomanyboxes}} fell to [[WP:TFD]].
>
>
> 'Tis a pity deletionists have no sense of humor.
>

A personal attack, tautologically, must be directed at a person.
Which person do you think I am attacking?

--
  Sean Barrett     | It's just as bad to move your fingers
  sean at epoptic.com | fast near sharp objects as it is to move
                   | sharp objects fast near your fingers.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Anybody who disagrees with you, obviously.

RickK

Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
Rick stated for the record:

> 'Tis a pity inclusionists feel the need to make personal attacks all the time.
>
> RickK
>
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> David Gerard stated for the record:
>
>
>>It's such a pity {{toomanyboxes}} fell to [[WP:TFD]].
>
>
> 'Tis a pity deletionists have no sense of humor.
>

A personal attack, tautologically, must be directed at a person.
Which person do you think I am attacking?

--
Sean Barrett | It's just as bad to move your fingers
sean at epoptic.com | fast near sharp objects as it is to move
| sharp objects fast near your fingers.
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from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Hi Felix,

as regards what term can be used in English without causing
controversy, I would say "Chinese speech variety" instead of
"Dialect", or "Shanghai speech" or "The speech of Shanghai" instead of
"Shanghai dialect" or "Shanghainese language".

Also possible to use is "regional speech variety", a more literal
translation of fangyan, which translates the Chinese intent and
meaning more accurately: it doesn't suggest how similar or unsimilar
this speech is with other related varieties, it merely distinguishes
it from others as "Shanghai regional speech variety" vs "Guangzhou
regional speech variety".

This can even be used to refer to different languages, such as
"Tibetan regional speech variety" or "Nei Menggu regional speech
variety", or "Japan regional speech variety" and it is still an
accurate description - it is the speech variety unique to that region.

As far as the expiriment you've set up, it doesn't seem anybody has
written yet. Maybe Alex and co. are away on the weekend? Do you know
any Cantonese to write a sample article, Felix?

Mark

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 11:27:36 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> On Fri, February 4, 2005 11:27 pm, Mark Williamson said:
> > Please don't use the term "dialect" or "language" in this case without
> > understanding the background.
> >
> [snipped]
>
> Thank Mark for the accurate description of the situation of Chinese
> speeches. Much misunderstanding has been caused by the translation:
> yu3yan2 <-> language
> fang1yan2 <-> dialect
> Usually words in unrelated dialects cover different semantic spaces.
>
> Let me explain some more to the list.
>
> When I use the word "language" and "dialect", I try to be careful to
> stick to its definition in English. So I say "Chinese languages". But
> to avoid controversy with Chinese speakers, I will say "Chinese
> dialects", but not the inaccurate "One Chinese language".
>
> The concept that "Chinese is a group of related but different languages"
> can be represented as "Chinese consists of many related dialects that
> are not mutually intelligible among each other", and I believe no one
> will object to the second statement.
>
> The current situation of Chinese is more complicated because all spoken
> varieties share a common formal written language. See [[en:Chinese
> Language]]. It is comparable to the time when all Romance languages
> shared Latin, when serious literature should all be written in Latin.
>
> Now, there is a growth in number and extent of publications in some local
> Chinese vernaculars, and some of those speakers requested for their own
> Wikipedias. How should we respond?
>
> I have started an experiment without requesting too much resources. I
> say: let them try and see what happens. Meanwhile we can think about
> the possibility of setting up a fair language policy.
>
> Felix Wan
>
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this*
	project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project
	Has Been Around For A While)

body:
I agree.

The "approved content" idea seems much better to me than asking
experts to write everything - just have experts in the field check
over the article to see if there are any inaccuracies or if there's
something missing they would like to add, and then place it on
Neo-Nupedia in a semi-static form (ie, so it's not directly editable,
but corrections could still be submitted).

Please note that I do not intend this to replace Wikipedia, but to
accompany it as an experiment.

Mark

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 20:49:58 +0100, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski
<fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> Maybe a new Nupedia made of approved Wikipedia content wouldn't be
> that bad of an idea?
>
> --
> Ausir
> Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
> http://pl.wikipedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: WikiUser

body:
I haven't seen CheeseDreams' proposal so perhaps it's the same as this one; but why not just have say 3 to 5 links at the bottom of every article marked "alternative article"? Then users of the wikipedia could use the version of the article they find they prefer. The editors of that version will also be much more likely to agree on editing its content. This wouldn't be difficult software-wise.

As almost all disagreements on the wikipedia are about/caused by disagreements on an article version this would solve a lot of problems. People who impose a final version of an article, hold it captive to their group view, forget that there might be plenty of readers out there who don't agree with their view of what should be the "consensus" article version.

This also takes into account that there are millions of people using te web who might have the bad luck to find the wikipedia and edit it, and this proposal would help to deal with the dfferent backgrounds and views of these people.-WikiUser.

----- Original Message -----
From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 03:10 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

 Okay, maybe some people are unaware of CheeseDreams exponential use of sock
 puppets to get around the ArbCom's one year ban on Jesus (or is it
 Christianity?) related articles.  I know I am partisan, but I think we can
 fairly say Cheese Dreams is now out of control:

 >Cheesedreams is now editing under User:Cheese-Dreams. I thought all the
 >sockpuppets were blocked? I've blocked this one now anyway. --fvw* 23:44,
 >2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
 >This is just a new sock. Sigh - I don't think CD gets it. --mav
 >Darling, your so wrong, I get it very well, I just ignore you, darling.
 >CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 >The other note is that CheeseDreams uses a dialup and this makes it
 >impossible to block her IP range. She can redial as many times as she
 >likes, and she doesn't need to use open proxies. Rhobite 04:28, Feb 1,
 >2005 (UTC)
 >LOL, you cant stop me now, darling. CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 As Rhobite points out, it will be very difficult if not impossible to block
 CheeseDreams.

 I know there has been much discussion of ways to get around the
 difficulties in blocking someone whose IP address is shared, or who can
 easily move from one IP address to another.  I happen to know next to
 nothing about computers, so all I can say is I trust the people working on
 this problem and wish them luck.

 But I do have another proposal for dealing with these kinds of situations:
 give the ArbCom the power to declare a user an "outlaw."

 We would need clear guidelines for how to decide who is an outlaw, but for
 one thing we must be specific that this is someone who has utter disregards
 for bans or partial bans, and who cannot effectively be blocked.

 There should be some deliberation at the ArbCom before declaring someone an
 outlaw, to ensure due process.

 The consequence of being an outlaw is this: anyone -- any editor, sysop or
 not -- can revert an outlaw's work at any time, without restriction (so if
 doing so means that they must revert more than three times in one day,
 their reverts will still be considered legitimate and they won't be punished).

 My thinking is this: in the case of CD right now, blocking is not effective
 so all we really can do is revert her work.  Right now this is being done
 primarily by sysops, and however large the list of admins are, in the case
 of someone as reckless as CD this still becomes a big job.  My idea is that
 there are some violations of behavior -- eg. when someone laughs and says
 "you can't stop me now" -- that the best thing to do is to mobilize the
 entire community to take action.

 Okay, I know that this sounds off the wall.  Please just think about it,

 Steve

 Steven L. Rubenstein
 Associate Professor
 Department of Sociology and Anthropology
 Bentley Annex
 Ohio University
 Athens, Ohio 45701
 _______________________________________________
 WikiEN-l mailing list
 WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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Is this Spam? If so, report it!


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
No action is taken when no action is taken.

You have to use the dispute resolution procedure. Complaining on the mailing
list does not deal effectively with individual violators.

Fred

> From: Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 11:23:12 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy
>
> POV warriors and other
> uncooperative users that effective action is never taken against.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
sannse wrote:

>
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Sj a ?crit:
>>
>>> The Main Page on en: was vandalized yesterday, when a penis image
>>> remained on the page for many minutes.  It was vandalized again today
>>> -- a goatse image remained there for almost /20 minutes/.
>>>
>>> Today it happened during a particularly slow time of the morning,
>>> around 14:35 UTC, perhaps in combination with other use of the site
>>> that slowed it down.  It was noticed quickly, but it took a good 17
>>> minutes for it to be successfully deleted once the problem had been
>>> announced on IRC, by the seemingly-omniscient Jimmy Wales.
>>>
>>> While everyone was fretting over the site's slowness, a few problems
>>> presented themselves:
>>
>>
>>
>> I am perplex. Is not the main page protected ?
>
>
>
> The main page is - templates on the main page were not.  This allowed
> all users to update sections such as "In the News", while still giving
> the appearance of a protected page to the casual viewer.  Sadly, our
> regular vandals are not casual viewers, and too many know of this
> route to editing the page.  the result was goatse multiple times over
> the whole main page (and recent changes - which is annoying, but less
> of a concern)
>
>
>>> * There was no one-click way to remove or delete an image
>>
>>
>>
>> Two clicks
>
>
> Plus those needed to load the page containing the image, in order to
> get to the image page - and to load the image page itself.  All of
> these were taking a great deal of time.
>
>>> * There was no packaged way to shut down all access to the site in
>>> an emergency
>>
>>
>> ?
>> Developers and stewards can do this anytime.
>> Well, I never tried (suddenly wonder if I should not try to check if
>> this feature is working)
>
>
> That might have helped - depending on how it worked, but the time
> issue is there again, if this happens at a time when the needed people
> happen to be off-line.
>
>>> * There was no way to bring the site[s] to (or restart the site in) an
>>> 'emergency mode' that only allowed limited access (say, by logged-in
>>> users)
>>
>>
>> Well, this would not remove the bad pictures to readers.
>
>
> The thought here was that it might speed the site enough for those
> people to get to the images to delete it.  From what's been said, I
> don't think it would have helped in this case anyway.
>
>>> ** Even had there been such a way, there were few (only 1-2) people
>>> with shell access who would have been able to run shell scripts, and
>>> it took an extra minute or two to get someone's attention.
>>> * There were a limited number of ways to reach the collection of devs
>>> to let them know there was an emergency.
>>>
>>> This was not the worst emergency in the world, so the last point in
>>> particular was not as big a deal as it might have been.
>>
>
> This was a pretty big deal in my eyes - this was goatse spread all
> over our most public face.  It was offensively bad, and viewed by
> enough people for us to receive several complaints (including one from
> a teacher who was showing Wikipedia to her class).
>
>> Basically, something must truely escape me. How come an image cannot
>> be deleted in less than 20 minutes ????
>>
>> Any sysop can do this. 200 or 300 people on english wikipedia;
>>
>> What am I missing here ???
>
>
> There was a severe site slow down at the time - this was unrelated,
> but meant that we just couldn't load the necessary pages to fix the
> problem.  This would also have reduced the number of people who viewed
> the images, but didn't prevent all access (except, it seemed, to those
> of us trying to fix the damn thing.)
>
> The current result is that all templates used on the main page are
> protected.  This isn't ideal, but IMO very necessary until there are
> other solutions available.
>
> --sannse
>
>
Hoi,
Why do we not go to the police because of this vandalism. The argument
that there is no financial harm done is wrong. It does hurt our public
image. It makes for the developers changing the login methodology and it
does break our legitimate bots. It really hurts and it really costs.

Do not forget that we ARE a top hundred website in English and the
vandalism done has impacted in a non-trivial manner.

Thanks,
    A really angry GerardM


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Sat, 5 Feb 2005, steven l. rubenstein wrote:

[snipping details concerning a known problem contributor]
>
> As Rhobite points out, it will be very difficult if not impossible to block
> CheeseDreams.
>
> I know there has been much discussion of ways to get around the
> difficulties in blocking someone whose IP address is shared, or who can
> easily move from one IP address to another.  I happen to know next to
> nothing about computers, so all I can say is I trust the people working on
> this problem and wish them luck.
>
> But I do have another proposal for dealing with these kinds of situations:
> give the ArbCom the power to declare a user an "outlaw."
>
There may come a time when we need to start declaring users outlaws, but
in this situation, invovling CheeseDreams, I'm convinced that it won't
work.

CD's behavior has always been aggressive. She marked a number of Bible-related
articles as NPOV without explaining why. When questioned, she responds
aggressively -- if not with hostility -- as if out of reflex. When
approached in a way that could be seen in any possible way as hostile,
she responds with escalated hostility. (She seems to spend more effort
into her aggression than into the logical strength of her convictions.
Which is sad, because many of the POVs she advocates do have some
support amongst authorities; she make a lot more positive contributions
to Wikipedia were she to engage in reasoned exchanges instead of stirring
up trouble.) And she's well aware that behavior antagonizes people --
witness the comment on her User page: "I edit controversial articles. They
are more controversial after I'm finished with them."

In short, CD *wants* to stir up trouble & get people angry at her. (I have
an idea why, but it's not directly relevant to my point.) And if we
declare her an "Outlaw", it will just encourage her to more extreme
displays of aggression & rule-breaking. Right now, she's under a ban from
Wikipedia, which I fully expect her to keep breaking & thus restart the
ban again. If need be, I'm sure a petition to the ArbCom about her abuse
of sock puppets would result in getting her banned for a year -- which
would result in the same penalties as being declared an "Outlaw".

And unless I'm mistaken, by being banned, any changes she makes to WP --
whether under her own name, thru a proxy, or from an IP -- are subject to
immediate rollback, regardles of the quality of the material. It's
what happened to Michael & Lir, & should be aplied to her until her ban
has been expired.

And if this is not enough, perhaps we should bring her behavior to the
notice of BT. Wikipedia has enough credibility & stature now in the "Real
World" that leads me to assume contact with an ISP would result with her
internet account being terminated, & likely those of her friends. There
would be no need to threaten an embargo against BT; after a few of her
friends lost their 'Net accounts because of their involvement with her,
she'd be forced to use public kiosks like libraries or Internet Cafes --
& I doubt she'd be much of a threat if limited to hour-long sessions
online.

In other words, let's try this series of options before we start resorting
to new ones. Hmm. IIRC, some of the steps I listed above have never been
attempted, although they have been discussed on this mailing list. But then,
CD has managed to achieve a new low that prior problem users failed to
reach. :-(

> We would need clear guidelines for how to decide who is an outlaw, but for
> one thing we must be specific that this is someone who has utter disregards
> for bans or partial bans, and who cannot effectively be blocked.
>
> There should be some deliberation at the ArbCom before declaring someone an
> outlaw, to ensure due process.
>
> The consequence of being an outlaw is this: anyone -- any editor, sysop or
> not -- can revert an outlaw's work at any time, without restriction (so if
> doing so means that they must revert more than three times in one day,
> their reverts will still be considered legitimate and they won't be punished).
>
> My thinking is this: in the case of CD right now, blocking is not effective
> so all we really can do is revert her work.  Right now this is being done
> primarily by sysops, and however large the list of admins are, in the case
> of someone as reckless as CD this still becomes a big job.  My idea is that
> there are some violations of behavior -- eg. when someone laughs and says
> "you can't stop me now" -- that the best thing to do is to mobilize the
> entire community to take action.
>
> Okay, I know that this sounds off the wall.  Please just think about it,
>


body:
Due to extensions this results in a permanent ban.

Fred

> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 15:15:08 -0500
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy
>
> where banning and blocking are
> ineffective and scoffed at by the person blocked.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bots and wpEditToken

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> I can't get the bot to handle wpEditToken correctly. It worked
> correctly before, but now it always gets preview instead of submit
> pages.
>
> I added code to find the wpEditToken, and to send it with the post,
> but that had no result.
>
> Here are the data that were sent in one attempt:
>
> wpSave=1&wpPreview=0

Why are you sending wpPreview=0? The presence of wpPreview will engage
preview mode; don't send it at all.

(Processing of save vs preview mode has changed a bit from how it used
to be in changes unrelated to wpEditToken.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution

> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 15:15:08 -0500
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy
>
> Or
> should we create some page on Wikipedia where people can discuss proposals
> (if so, what page?  Where?)


body:
Hi Lars,

It should also be noted that in addition to lacking the types of
important articles you mention, we have some fairly fluffy articles
not usually found in encyclopedias.

Most of our "list" pages, of which there must be some thousands on
en:, are not to be found in an encyclopedia and can be somehow merged
with a relevant page.

Having articles for each separate Pokemon, or each separate character
on every popular situational comedy, or separate articles for
"Demography of Sweden" (as opposed to the sub-articles where they
really should be) but with all the information there just ripped
directly from the CIA factbook and relatively uninformative (a link to
the CIA factbook would probably be better), are what inflates our
article count to such an incredible number when we still lack
important articles on important historical, literary, cultural, and
scientific topics.

Why is it that we have [[Blastoise]] but not [[Abdominal muscles]]?

Mark

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 21:28:11 +0100 (CET), Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Stirling Newberry wrote:
> > Sanger's points do have merit, however, before taking measures of
> > the kind he proposes, we should continue to place faith in the
> > mechanism of participatory dialectic that has produced more than
> > most people would have thought possible in a very short time.
>
> Suppose Wikipedia were to introduce some restrictions, for example
> that you would have to register a name before you could edit, or that
> you would have to have your uploaded images "approved" by an
> administrator before they can be displayed in articles.  How could we
> measure (in numbers) the effects of such a policy change?  How much is
> creativity reduced and how much is vandalism reduced by the
> restriction?  Can we measure this?  If we can, wouldn't it be
> interesting to try such a restriction for a limited time (say, a
> week), while doing the measurement?  Do we have any numbers of the
> amount of vandalism or quality of contributions today?
>
> Two and a half years ago, I introduced the "Biggest Wiki" page on
> Meatball and pushed the "comma count" (number of articles) as the
> ultimate ranking of wikis, but I guess we are past that stage now, at
> least for the Wikipedias with more than 100,000 articles.  In July
> 2002, the English Wikipedia had 35,324 articles.  Today it has 467,237
> articles, more than any printed encyclopedia, and still none of them
> gives a decent overview of "Czech literature" from Jan Hus to Karel
> Capek, Vaclav Havel and today.  Instead of wish-listing for individual
> articles, how can we measure the overall article quality?  Just
> looking for stubs is not good enough, since [[Czech literature]] is
> more than a stub, but less than expected from an encyclopedia.
>
> In 1919, this Swedish encyclopedia used two and a half pages of fine
> print to cover Czech literature, http://runeberg.org/nfci/0108.html
> The supplement in 1926 adds half a page that mentions Karel Capek,
> http://runeberg.org/nfcr/0476.html -- for a total of 3,000 words.
> But Vaclav Havel has of course been added after that.  The Swedish
> encyclopedia's division of Czech literature history into three coarse
> periods 900-1400, 1400-1770 and 1770-1919 is probably obsolete. The
> Czech Wikipedia's article on Czech literature has a more modern
> chronological division into sections and separate articles.
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Wikipedia talk:Dispute resolution might work out a little better.

Fred

> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 13:40:29 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy
>
> Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution
>
>> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 15:15:08 -0500
>> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy
>>
>> Or
>> should we create some page on Wikipedia where people can discuss proposals
>> (if so, what page?  Where?)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
Fred Bauder points out that what I suggest amounts to a permanent
ban.  Yes, this is precisely what I mean.  I understand that many people
might disagree with me, but this is the effect of what I proposed.  If
Jimbo rejects it, so be it.  But to reiterate, what I am suggesting should
only be used in the most extreme cases, and after some sort of due process.

David Gerard points out that this is, in effect, the current situation
concerning Cheese Dreams.  Yes, I understand that too.  But it is an
informal and ad hoc response.  I am suggesting giving the ArbCom one more,
formal, ultimate sanction.  I think making the sanction official will make
it easier to enforce; having the ArbCom in charge guarantees that the
accused will benefit from due process.

By the way, although I do think CheeseDreams would be a perfect candidate
for this sanction, my main point was not to orchestrate some consensus that
she is an "outlaw" -- that would make this just another ad hoc
response.  My main interest is in creating an ultimate sanction the ArbCom
can apply in the most extreme cases, where banning and blocking are
ineffective and scoffed at by the person blocked.  Put another way, I am
suggesting a new protocol for enforcing permanent bans; the protocol
amounts to asking all editors to be on the lookout for activity by the
person banned and known (it has to be official) sock puppets, and to
reverse edits without any fear of violating the three revert rule.

Nicholas Knight suggests another strategy for handling this, and Rhobite
has some concerns.  I am neutral, but do hope that there will be vigorous
discussion about Nicholas's proposal.  It may be more effective than mine
-- or less effective; perhaps both proposals have merit and can work in
concert.

But the main point that I share with Nicholas Knight: "It's just going to
get worse, and as legitimate users get fed up and leave, people like CD
will turn Wikipedia into a laughing stock."

Forget about my personal gripe with CD -- forget about CD altogether.  The
point is, we can count on situations in the future where a person given the
most reasonable temporary ban will flout the ruling of the ArbCom, and, by
using many sock puppets, effectively neutralize our current means of
blocking users.  This calls for some new policy.  People now have my
proposal and Nicholas's proposal to consider.  I really urge all committed
Wikipedians to participate in this discussion, and perhaps develop other
proposals worthy of consideration.

Should such a discussion occur primarily on this list-serve, for now?  Or
should we create some page on Wikipedia where people can discuss proposals
(if so, what page?  Where?)?

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,
	and image checking

body:
On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 09:55:52 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > * There was no packaged way to shut down all access to the site in an emergency

> Developers and stewards can do this anytime.
> Well, I never tried (suddenly wonder if I should not try to check if
> this feature is working)

If you mean by using [[Special:Lockdb]], then this is no longer
available to stewards on all wikis. It will only work on wikis with
very few articles, supposedly as a safety measure to prevent stewards
locking non-inactive wikis. For example, it works on aawiki, but not
on toki pona (which had 239 articles).

It wouldn't have been suitable in the case of unreverted vandalism
anyway, since it locks the site to editing, not viewing. As far as I
know, stewards have no way to prevent actual access to the wikis.

Angela.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bots and wpEditToken

body:
I can't get the bot to handle wpEditToken correctly. It worked
correctly before, but now it always gets preview instead of submit
pages.

I added code to find the wpEditToken, and to send it with the post,
but that had no result.

Here are the data that were sent in one attempt:

wpSave=1&wpPreview=0&wpSummary=robot%20%20Erbij%3Aen%2Cja%2Cda&wpTextbox1=%27%27%27Lord%20Howe-eiland%27%27%27%20is%20een%20%5B%5Beiland%5D%5D%20van%20%5B%5BAustrali%EB%5D%5D%20en%20werd%20in%20%5B%5B1982%5D%5D%20op%20de%20%5B%5BWerelderfgoedlijst%5D%5D%20geplaatst%20vanwege%20zijn%20zeldzame%20collectie%20van%20planten%2C%20vogels%2C%20zeeleven%20%28%5B%5Bkoraal%5D%5D%29%2C%20en%20uitzonderlijke%20natuurlijke%20schoonheid.%0D%0A%0D%0AHet%20is%20%E9%E9n%20van%20slechts%20vier%20eilandengroepen%20die%20tot%20%5B%5BWerelderfgoed%5D%5D%20is%20uitgeroepen.%0D%0A%20%0D%0AHet%20eiland%20is%20te%20bereiken%20door%20een%20vliegreis%20van%202-uur%20vanaf%20%5B%5BSydney%5D%5D%20of%20%5B%5BBrisbane%5D%5D.%0D%0A%0D%0A%3D%3DExterne%20link%3D%3D%0D%0A%2Ahttp%3A//www.lordhoweisland.info/%0D%0A%0D%0A%5B%5Bcategorie%3AAustrali%EB%5D%5D%0D%0A%5B%5Bcategorie%3AEiland%5D%5D%0D%0A%5B%5Bcategorie%3AWerelderfgoed%5D%5D%0A%0D%0A%5B%5Bda%3ALord%20Howe%20Island%5D%5D%0D%0A%5B%5Ben%3ALord%20Howe%20Island%5D%5D%0D%0A%5B%5Bja%3A%26%2312525%3B%26%2312540%3B%26%2312489%3B%26%2312539%3B%26%2312495%3B%26%2312454%3B%26%2323798%3B%5D%5D%0D%0A&wpSection=&wpEdittime=20050204103625&wpMinoredit=1&wpWatchthis=0&wpEditToken=16061ded2f1a5b0b

Andre Engels


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: promotional items (was no subject)

body:
> I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
> servers to host all these promotional things.
> Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server.

I completely agree. An easy way to implement this might be to extend
the range of files on the upload whitelist for the foundation wiki.
Since only trusted users can edit there, enabling .pdf, .ppt, and .sxi
shouldn't cause any problems, and would allow anyone with an account
there to upload leaflets and presentations.

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Angela wrote:
>> I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
>> servers to host all these promotional things.
>> Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server.
>
> I completely agree. An easy way to implement this might be to extend
> the range of files on the upload whitelist for the foundation wiki.
> Since only trusted users can edit there, enabling .pdf, .ppt, and .sxi
> shouldn't cause any problems, and would allow anyone with an account
> there to upload leaflets and presentations.

Please do that. For users without account we can also publish an email
contact address there to which they can send stuff and someone who has a
wiki account checks the files and uploads them.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Nicholas Knight (nknight at runawaynet.com) [050206 03:51]:
>
>
>>Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to drop her, call the upstream
>>provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated with
>>the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP. Wikipedia is
>>getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight around when users
>>are engaging in wildly abusive activities.
>>
>>
>Contacting ISPs is a step I'm really not comfortable with. Even in the case
>of Michael, when he was vandalising continuously, the only reason for
>contacting AOL was that their network was effectively one large anonymiser.
>CD is nothing like at that level. Also, there really is no reason to
>presume an ISP will necessarily give a shit. We're not paying her fees.
>
>
The one situation in which I could imagine an ISP being willing to
cancel the account of a banned user is if it's being used for something
illegal. A simple example would be uploading child pornography. So it
might work against the likes of Brother Larry (or whatever name the
diaper guy was using last), but not against CheeseDreams.

Complaining to an ISP that they're allowing somebody to edit Wikipedia
while banned would only produce incredulous responses like, "Well, you
do let anybody edit, what did you expect?" They won't think it's any of
their business to enforce our internal rules for us. Nor do I think
Wikipedia has any real weight to throw around here; if we tried to make
a public issue out of it, the publicity would do more damage to
Wikipedia than to the ISP.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Christof Damian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Block table optimisation (backport from HEAD)

body:
On Sat, 05 Feb 2005, Frank v Waveren wrote:
> Ok, how about this? It turns out the wheel has already been
> invented, so I'm using $wgDBmysql4.

that looks good.

> With a little code ugliness you could fix it to use separate
> selects on 3.x, but I'm assuming nobody runs a serious Mediawiki
> on MySQL 3.x anymore.

no :-) as soon as krass.com get serious I will upgrade.

cheers,
christof

--
Christof Damian
christof at damian.net


subject: [Wikitech-l] New table  required for Head?

body:
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005, Rich Holton wrote:
> In trying to run the code currently in HEAD, I find that it needs a
> table called "group". Is there a mechanism for building this table?
> Barring that, is there information on what the table is supposed to
> look like?

i used the setup with the browser, which did the upgrade of the tables
ok.

last time i tried the shell update script it didn't work.

christof

--
Christof Damian
christof at damian.net


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as Developer Liaison

body:
-- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> When I was appointed Developer Liaison in July 2004, Brion was on a
> wikibreak of indefinite duration, and I was the second choice. The roles
> are now reversed -- I've decided to concentrate on my academic work for
> a while, and Brion is as active as he ever has been. Thus, I am
> resigning as Developer Liaison effective immediately. This position
> should be filled by someone able to give their full attention to the job.

You will be sorely missed Tim. Good luck on your PhD and hurry back (at least
during school breaks). :)

Your friends here will be waiting for your return.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> No action is taken when no action is taken.
>
> You have to use the dispute resolution procedure. Complaining on the mailing
> list does not deal effectively with individual violators.

I said *effective* action. Lots of action has been taken, much of it
ineffective.


body:
geni wrote:
>>BT? As in British Telecom? That's terrific! More customers means more
>>complaints and more bad publicity.
>
>
>
> It means you are likely to affect admins who can and will unblock
> themselves. Would you be happy if your ISP was blocked for a couple of

As I recall, registered users are already exempt from IP blocks. The
only change needed is to prevent blocked IPs from creating new accounts.

> weeks (even suposing the ISP choses to take actionm which it quite
> well may not)? The number of complaints would be pretty low anyway we

It's a wholly moot point for me, anyway, I'm on a range of static IPs,
and those on dynamic IPs at my ISP rarely get new IPs (and it's not as
simple as disconnecting and reconnecting, you'd have to be disconnected
for many hours if not days).

> may get a lot of readers but editors are far smaller in number. We
> would be the ones on the reciving end of bad PR for hopelessly over
> reacting.

What choice do we have? There's no other effective way to block abusive
users on dialups if the ISP won't get rid of them.

I don't think anyone will blame us for trying to maintain the integrity
of an encyclopedia without running everyone off.


from_name: geni

body:
> BT? As in British Telecom? That's terrific! More customers means more
> complaints and more bad publicity.

It means you are likely to affect admins who can and will unblock
themselves. Would you be happy if your ISP was blocked for a couple of
weeks (even suposing the ISP choses to take actionm which it quite
well may not)? The number of complaints would be pretty low anyway we
may get a lot of readers but editors are far smaller in number. We
would be the ones on the reciving end of bad PR for hopelessly over
reacting.

geni


body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Nicholas Knight (nknight at runawaynet.com) [050206 03:51]:
>>
>>
>>> Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to drop her, call the upstream
>>> provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated
>>> with the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP.
>>> Wikipedia is getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight
>>> around when users are engaging in wildly abusive activities.
>>>
>>
>> Contacting ISPs is a step I'm really not comfortable with. Even in the
>> case
>> of Michael, when he was vandalising continuously, the only reason for
>> contacting AOL was that their network was effectively one large
>> anonymiser.
>> CD is nothing like at that level. Also, there really is no reason to
>> presume an ISP will necessarily give a shit. We're not paying her fees.
>>
>>
> The one situation in which I could imagine an ISP being willing to
> cancel the account of a banned user is if it's being used for something
> illegal. A simple example would be uploading child pornography. So it

Since when is trespassing not illegal?

> might work against the likes of Brother Larry (or whatever name the
> diaper guy was using last), but not against CheeseDreams.

ISPs have a long history of terminating users that violate their user
agreements.

 From BT's TOS:

10.1 You must take all reasonable precautions to ensure that no one
(including you) uses the service:
...
     (b) to send, knowingly receive, upload, download or use any
material which is offensive, abusive, indecent, defamatory, obscene or
menacing, or in breach of copyright, confidence, privacy or any other
rights;

     (c) to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
...
     (e) in an unlawful manner, in contravention of any legislation,
laws, licence or third party rights or in contravention of our
Acceptable Use Policies located at http://www.abuse-guidance.com as may
be amended from time to time (The Acceptable Use Policies also specify
actions we may take to ensure your compliance and by accepting these
terms you authorise us to take such actions);
...

> Complaining to an ISP that they're allowing somebody to edit Wikipedia
> while banned would only produce incredulous responses like, "Well, you
> do let anybody edit, what did you expect?" They won't think it's any of

Only if you contact management instead of someone with a brain.

Senior system and network admins in large ISPs have a great deal of
power to terminate abusive users.

> their business to enforce our internal rules for us. Nor do I think

It is their business to enforce basic netiquette, as ISPs have been
doing for years.

> Wikipedia has any real weight to throw around here; if we tried to make
> a public issue out of it, the publicity would do more damage to
> Wikipedia than to the ISP.

How?


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> geni said:
>
>>>BT? As in British Telecom? That's terrific! More customers means more
>>>complaints and more bad publicity.
>>
>>
>>It means you are likely to affect admins who can and will unblock
>>themselves. Would you be happy if your ISP was blocked for a couple of
>>weeks (even suposing the ISP choses to take actionm which it quite well
>>may not)? The number of complaints would be pretty low anyway we may
>>get a lot of readers but editors are far smaller in number. We would be
>>the ones on the reciving end of bad PR for hopelessly over reacting.
>>
>
> the admins would not be able to unblock themselves from a website-wide
> block (just a line in an http config file).  I don't know whether we

Who said anything about going outside MediaWiki to do the block?

> should go head-to-head with ISP's yet, but we could.  We should certainly
> consider some kind of working relationship with AOL, if we don't already
> have one, if only because of their unusual caching arrangements.


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> steven l. rubenstein (rubenste at ohiou.edu) [050206 07:25]:
>
>
>>Fred Bauder points out that what I suggest amounts to a permanent
>>ban.  Yes, this is precisely what I mean.  I understand that many people
>>might disagree with me, but this is the effect of what I proposed.  If
>>Jimbo rejects it, so be it.  But to reiterate, what I am suggesting should
>>only be used in the most extreme cases, and after some sort of due process.
>
>
>
> We only give up to a year's ban, because a year is forever in Internet
> time.
>
> Also - and this is important - all banned users are theoretically
> redeemable. Michael was turned form a swearword into a good editor. If that
> particular miracle can happen, anything is possible.

Michael's behaviour was clearly (to me, at least) a symptom of some sort
of emotional or psychological issue. The people I'm worried about are
just malicious.

>>But the main point that I share with Nicholas Knight: "It's just going to
>>get worse, and as legitimate users get fed up and leave, people like CD
>>will turn Wikipedia into a laughing stock."
>
>
>
> CD is the merest flea on Wikipedia. And we're already a laughing stock, ask

CD is just the current convenient example of a larger problem that
desperately needs fixed.

> Larry Sanger.

Larry's recent rant really isn't at issue here.


from_name: Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski

body:
Maybe a new Nupedia made of approved Wikipedia content wouldn't be
that bad of an idea?

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


body:
> Please note that I do not intend this to replace Wikipedia, but to
> accompany it as an experiment.

And just as we have boxes with links to Wikisource, Wikiquote etc. we
could have similar ones near the top with "an approved version of this
article is available at Nupedia".

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


from_name: kylelutze

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

Good luck Tim, and hope you succeed (and put your knowledge to good use
writing wikipedia article of course ;) ). Hope to see you back
Kyle

Tim Starling wrote:
| When I was appointed Developer Liaison in July 2004, Brion was on a
| wikibreak of indefinite duration, and I was the second choice. The roles
| are now reversed -- I've decided to concentrate on my academic work for
| a while, and Brion is as active as he ever has been. Thus, I am
| resigning as Developer Liaison effective immediately. This position
| should be filled by someone able to give their full attention to the job.
|
| This should not be construed as an indication that I intend to stay away
| from Wikipedia for a longer period, it's merely a reflection of the
| present situation.  Those who know me would be aware that I'm not
| particularly power-hungry, hence I'm not calling this a "temporary
| resignation". I'm happy to take my turn, and if need be I'll return to
| this position later by the ordinary process.
|
| -- Tim Starling
| _______________________________________________
| foundation-l mailing list
| foundation-l at wikimedia.org
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
|
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCBacUqTDXh8jUGRYRAvRoAKCNUb8A90akO62WtmrmnQ298NB2FwCgwHor
h3BZxxdEuYGvW2YiMEUyLwg=
=sWYX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
geni wrote:
>>What choice do we have? There's no other effective way to block abusive
>>users on dialups if the ISP won't get rid of them.
>
>
> We handeled Mr treason. Remeber articles can be reverted and deleted
> faster than they can be created

And people are going to get sick of dealing with it. Some already have.

>>I don't think anyone will blame us for trying to maintain the integrity
>>of an encyclopedia without running everyone off.
>
>
> Are we using the same internet here? You are propsing to block vast
> numbers of people from editing due to the crimes of a few and you
> don't think people will blame you?

Two choices:

1) Collateral damage.

2) Worthless encyclopedia.

Anyone that blames us for choosing the first over the second is not
worth worrying about.


body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> So there is no point in using tactics that are designed to (A) shun ISPs
> who are complicit in criminal activity that causes us problems, or (B)
> press awareness of that complicity onto the ISPs' other customers.  ISP
> complicity is simply not evident here.

I'd like to point out, lest someone forget or fail to notice, that my
suggestion was predicated on ISP complicity. The idea is that this is
done AFTER attempts have been made to work with the ISP AND the ISP's
upstream provider(s).


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this*
	project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project Has
	Been Around For A While)

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
> Sanger's points do have merit, however, before taking measures of
> the kind he proposes, we should continue to place faith in the
> mechanism of participatory dialectic that has produced more than
> most people would have thought possible in a very short time.

Suppose Wikipedia were to introduce some restrictions, for example
that you would have to register a name before you could edit, or that
you would have to have your uploaded images "approved" by an
administrator before they can be displayed in articles.  How could we
measure (in numbers) the effects of such a policy change?  How much is
creativity reduced and how much is vandalism reduced by the
restriction?  Can we measure this?  If we can, wouldn't it be
interesting to try such a restriction for a limited time (say, a
week), while doing the measurement?  Do we have any numbers of the
amount of vandalism or quality of contributions today?

Two and a half years ago, I introduced the "Biggest Wiki" page on
Meatball and pushed the "comma count" (number of articles) as the
ultimate ranking of wikis, but I guess we are past that stage now, at
least for the Wikipedias with more than 100,000 articles.  In July
2002, the English Wikipedia had 35,324 articles.  Today it has 467,237
articles, more than any printed encyclopedia, and still none of them
gives a decent overview of "Czech literature" from Jan Hus to Karel
Capek, Vaclav Havel and today.  Instead of wish-listing for individual
articles, how can we measure the overall article quality?  Just
looking for stubs is not good enough, since [[Czech literature]] is
more than a stub, but less than expected from an encyclopedia.

In 1919, this Swedish encyclopedia used two and a half pages of fine
print to cover Czech literature, http://runeberg.org/nfci/0108.html
The supplement in 1926 adds half a page that mentions Karel Capek,
http://runeberg.org/nfcr/0476.html -- for a total of 3,000 words.
But Vaclav Havel has of course been added after that.  The Swedish
encyclopedia's division of Czech literature history into three coarse
periods 900-1400, 1400-1770 and 1770-1919 is probably obsolete. The
Czech Wikipedia's article on Czech literature has a more modern
chronological division into sections and separate articles.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

>> if we tried to make a public issue out of it, the publicity would do
>> more damage to Wikipedia than to the ISP.
>
> How?

Because the publicity would focus on our inability to effectively
control our content or guarantee even a minimum level of reliability.
The ISP's reluctance to help us enforce a ban on some obnoxious user
would be ignored.

--Michael Snow


body:
--- "Karl A. Krueger" <kkrueger at whoi.edu> wrote:
> She's been banned from Wikipedia according to policies imposed by the
> legal owners of Wikipedia's servers.  This means that she does not have
> permission to use those servers.  Doing so might actually be a criminal
> offense, depending on the laws in her jurisdiction.

Anybody know if there is some case law in the U.S. about banned people from
chat rooms / usenet? I think I remember something about that.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Rick said:
> I see nothing wrong with any of those templates.  It's on VfD  because
> someone thought it wasn't worth keeping as an article, but if it's
> decided to keep, it still needs to be cleaned up and the POV cut down.
> What's wrong with that?  The VfD template says "you are welcome to
> continue editing this article and improve it".

If the templates belong there, and it survives VfD, some or all of them
will reappear on the article and it will get the attention it needs.


body:
geni wrote:
>>And people are going to get sick of dealing with it. Some already have.
>
>
> Have we run out of people yet and are we likely to?

I give it 12-24 months as a ballpark estimate before we're seriously
short if action isn't taken. Maybe less -- the problem is only getting
worse.

Even if we manage break even in our supply of people willing to spend
large swaths of time performing thankless tasks for no compensation,
it's most definitely the wrong approach. Instead of building a large and
expanding base of volunteers, we'd be struggling to maintain the status quo.

>>Two choices:
>>
>>1) Collateral damage.
>>
>>2) Worthless encyclopedia.
>>
>>Anyone that blames us for choosing the first over the second is not
>>worth worrying about.
>
>
>
>  You can't prove the second and you have failed to show that there are
> only two options.

Can you come up with a practical third?


body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Because the publicity would focus on our inability to effectively
> control our content or guarantee even a minimum level of reliability.

This would be the last step *in effectively controlling our content*.

How else do you prevent people who circumvent any and all technological
measures from editing without burning out volunteers who have to keep up
with them?


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bots not working

body:
On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 09:02:57 +0100, Sabine Cretella
<sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Hi, I was wondering quite a lot when yesterday my bot for the Italian
> wiktionary did not work anymore ... then I heard about problems witn
> "one" user - vandalism of course.

To expand on Andre's answer: As I understand it, from lurking on
various mailing lists, it's not that bots have been blocked as such,
but that new security features have been added to the software to
prevent certain kinds of attack. Unfortunately, these also impact
legitimate automated access, in that bots will have to jump through a
few extra hoops to prove that they are making "legitimate" edits, and
there seem to be "teething problems" getting the pywikipediabot to
jump through those hoops.

I hope I've understood this right, and wish Andre [and/or any other
coders] luck in getting the bots back up and running soon.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
I echo everything that Mav said. It is great to see you getting on with your
life and your PhD, but we all hope to see you here every now and then.

Danny


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 11:06:55 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there
> > > schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard
> > > Mandrin,
> >
> > No, but I know plenty of HKers can write in Cantonese (with Hanzi)
> > without having been taught.
>
> But tell us how much difference are there between "Cantonese
> characters" and proper Chinese characters? Aren't you still using
> Chinese characters, with the addition of a few distinctive Cantonese
> characters? And Hong Kong is not the only place that speaks Cantonese,
> please do remember. Majority of the Cantonese speakers live in
> Guangdong, and extremely few, if any, of these people can comprehend
> or write. Since Wikipedia is set up based on languages rather than
> countries, it is questionable if a Cantonese Wikipedia should be set
> up if only a minority of the speakers can understand a non-standard
> writing system created by a few people. Same objection goes for
> Min-nan Wikipedia, which can only be understood by a handful
> Taiwanese, while most Taiwanese and all native speakers of the dialect
> in Fujian will not have a clue of what is going on.

So what? Does that mean that those speakers who DO have an idea what
is going on, shouldn't be allowed to have a Wikipedia?

I recently read a testimonial from somebody, and let me tell you it
really surprised me, who said they don't really know Peh-oe-ji but
they picked it up fast enough sounding out pages on the Minnan
Wikipedia and now read that Wikipedia regularly (although they don't
write in it).

Why would the people in Guangdong have no idea what is going on?

Most of the characters used are already known by everybody, it is just
that their position and use is different - grammar between Chineses is
very different, as is vocabulary (Mandarin, for example, is often
disyllabic where southern sinitic varieties are monosyllabic, this is
due largely to the greater loss of tones Mandarin had under Manchurian
and Mongolian influence, than the southern varieties which mostly
still have 6 or 7 or sometimes even 15 tones). For example in
Shanghai, you say "??????" where in Beijing you say "???????" where in
those two phrases, only 3 out of all the characters are the same, and
there are some very important differences: Mandarin and Baihuawen use
"shenme", a two syllable, two character word, where Shanghai uses
"saa", a one-syllable word.

In more complex discourse, many other differences become readily
apparent. I don't want to detail all of them here, but I will give a
few examples.

(from zoenghee syangkho deeu, ??????

mevong kajyi ngu jyeeu teuq ngugeuq bangyeeu nieung veuqwe tugeuq,
tseo tu khaveuq coeku seegeuq nieung daka daq chyaqdaqco toe syangkho
qyi beuq syang.

???????????????,??????????????????????.

Now, every "?" is a word that doesn't have a cognate in Mandarin. Even
if you filled those in (mostly grammatical markers), it still wouldn't
be proper Baihua.

Also, you say "proper Chinese characters". This suggests to me you
have some sort of contempt for fangyan in general.

> > > are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published in large
> > > numbers, is there a movement.
> >
> > How large is large? Does net forums count? Especially when wikipedia
> > started as a Internet project? Many HKers in HK net forums/boards/bbs
> > write in Cantonese.
>
> Again, only HKers can understand your "written Cantonese"! Have you
> forgotten your neighbours in Guangdong??
>
> > > some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However, a stronger
> > > case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into
> > > standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole,
> > > as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which,
> >
> > The differences aren't as minimal as the differences among dialects in
> > English. And while incorporating slang words, etc. from different
> > "dialects" into Mandarin is possible, that doesn't stop Cantonese/Yue
> > from being something completely different from Mandarin.
>
> There is a big difference I agree. But "completely different from
> Mandarin"? I doubt if the grammar is different?

As I demonstrated above, the grammar is very different. Are you sure
you speak Shanghai speech variety?

> > > Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems
> > > better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding
> > > a means to provide that.
> >
> > Well, a wikipedia is a new enough concept to the potential users that I
> > doubt they would be unhappy to learn that there's a Cantonese/Yue
> > wikipedia, in addition to the "traditional" Mandarin vernacular one.
>
> And I doubt how many people can really understand your Cantonese
> Wikipedia? There are 77 million Cantonese living in Guangdong, and how
> many of them can really understand "Cantonese characters"? If the
> majority of the potential readers of your Wikipedia cannot understand
> you, what position are you in to propose for a Wikipedia written in
> their native languages?

Again you bash this proposal with no considerance for fact. Nobody
here is proposing to write this Wikipedia in an alien writing system.
You are taking remarks out of context. What Alex meant is that
Cantonese is often written in a Hong Kong context and people are able
to read it without any special training (ie, the characters they learn
at school for baihua is enough), by extension the same should apply to
Guangdong. http://cantonese.org.cn is based in Guangzhou.

> > I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of
> > local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong
> > Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the
> > driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio
> > station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.
>
> So? We are discussing if we should have a Wikipedia "written* in
> Cantonese or any other dialects (which all do not even have a
> standardised writting system, which means that not all native speakers
> can understand the written encyclopedia should we have one), not
> discussing about whether we should have a spoken encyclopedia in these
> dialects. I totally agree that dialects are living spoken languages in
> China, but it is absurdly ridiculous to attempt to write in them, as
> there is *no* **standardised** writing system for them!!

Where do you get the idea there is no standardised writing system?
People write in these languages all the time, millions every day.

Yes, there is no official standardised writing system, but there are
literary standards that have been set (especially for Cantonese) and
what is most important is that PEOPLE CAN READ WHAT EACH OTHER WROTE.

> > > is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language,
> > > and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects.
> >
> > ...citation? How do you know? From what studies are you pulling this
> > information from? You can't just say it and assume it to be true.
>
> From my common sense and my frequent visits to bookshops and libraries
> all around the world! I have never, in my entire life, seen a single
> book that is written *completely* in any dialects in China, apart from
> Mandarin. And as I have said before, apart from some tabloids in Hong
> Kong, no Chinese newspapers in the world would write in dialects too!

Apparently you haven't been very far around the world. There are many
books (off the top of my head, "Diarie of a Yuppie" comes to mind),
tabloids, and magazines written in colloquial Cantonese. There are a
few books in Wu, too.

> > I mean, many printed ads in Hong Kong that are written in Cantonese/Yue,
> > using puns and so on. Many slogans of those products are written in
> > Cantonese/Yue. The most recent example I can think of, in fact, is a
> > government ad (from the Equal Opportunity Committee) trying to
> > discourage racism.
>
> I'm not sure about that honestly. But are the books completely written
> in Cantonese? Or just some puns? And slogons are quite, quite
> different from encyclopedias, where millions of words have to been
> written.

Yes, entire books. Imagine that.

What makes you think an encyclopedia can't be written in Sinitic
vernaculars? Do you doubt their viability for use as written languages
in a modern context? Do you think, that it's not possible to write
doctoral dissertation in Cantonese or Wu?

Did you know how many times this same things has been said to minority
languages such as Hawaiian, Maori, Basque, Catalan, and do you know
what? Every time, they have proved opponents as "wrong". You can find
now text on computer science in Catalan (even a Wikipedia in Catalan),
a Wikipedia in Maori, one in Basque, and the beginnings of one in
Hawaiian, as well as many other texts in modern topics in these
languages.

If these people want so much to write an encyclopedia in their
language, and you are SO SURE they will fail, why can not let them
try, and if you are so smart your point will be proved and it will be
failure and these projects will be shut down? Or are you afraid to be
wrong?

> > > fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should
> > > there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.
> >
> > Well, I would suggest Hanzi script first and consider whether we should
> > do the romanization later on, though I think romanization would be too
> > confusing to really be useful.
>
> That is not the point! It is not important what *you* think. It is
> important whether our readers can understand? Some HKers may, but how
> about people in Guangdong? If you are writing an encyclopedia for them
> and they have not even seen such characters, what is the point.
> Reminder you one more time: There is no standardised writing system
> for Cantonese/Wu/etc. dialects.

Wah lau!!! So pushy what! Always yelling one, a bit the loud lah.

Now anyways back to what we talk about. The majority will be able to
read Cantonese in Hanzi. It is not difficult, if you already have some
basic characters knowledges, or especially if you can read Baihua,
even just a little

> > A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study,
> > for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable
> > of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4";
> > http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058).  This is likely
> > to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of
> > urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many
> > members).
>
> You are confusing Mandarin with Chinese in its written form. Yes, only
> 50% can speak Mandarin, but over 80% are literate and they can read
> Chinese characters (although not in Mandarin). Chinese dialects have
> more or less the same grammar (probably due to the interaction among
> the people over thousands of years), therefore not being able to
> "speak" Mandarin does not mean they cannot "read". The fact is, zh: is
> a *Chinese Wikipedia*, not just a *Mandarin Wikipedia*.

This is a common myth circulated between monolinguals speakers of
Mandarin. Grammr is not the same, it is very different between them.
If you know Shanghai speech as you said, why do'nt you try to read out
the text with Mandarin character but Shanghai reading, and see if it
sound right? It sound unnatural, forced, and sometimes impossible to
make sense.

If it is such a "Chinese Wikipedia", how will you feel if I post a new
article in the Cantonese or the Wu? It will be either deleted, or the
text will be "corrected" to Mandarin.

Mark
Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Yes, that is why I advocate Stokoe.

Mark

On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 00:31:04 -0500, Pierre Abbat <phma at phma.hn.org> wrote:
> On Thursday 27 January 2005 21:01, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Signed languages are not, as many believe, mere gestural equivalents
> > of the national spoken language, rather they have different
> > grammatical structures, different idioms, and different semantic
> > categories. Thus, conversion between English and ASL is nothing les
> > than machine translation, except that you also need a synthesizer for
> > the signs.
>
> It is possible to write sign languages, but SignWriting involves
> two-dimensional placement of characters in various orientations, which is not
> easy to encode as a character stream.
>
> phma
> --
> .i le babzba ba zbasu
> lo jbazbabu lo babjba
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
Gee, another personal attack on other people's actions and motives.  Have you interviewed anybody who puts tags on articles to ask their motives?  I don't give a flying f*ck about my edit count, I have no clue what it is.  I put tags on articles A LOT, because they need to be fixed.  Not necessarily need to be looked up and more information added, but need to be wikified and the grammar fixed.  And after you've done about 20 of those in a row, it gets old and you want to move on to other things.

But such an idea is beneath those like you who feel that the only valued Users in wikipedia are those who write a hundred stubs with one sentence to them in poor grammar, rather than those of us who go around cleaning up after them.

Why do I even subscribe to this list?  It's turned into nothing but people writing about how they are so much better than everybody else.

RickK

Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Rick said:
>
>>I see nothing wrong with any of those templates. It's on VfD because
>>someone thought it wasn't worth keeping as an article, but if it's
>>decided to keep, it still needs to be cleaned up and the POV cut down.
>>What's wrong with that? The VfD template says "you are welcome to
>>continue editing this article and improve it".
>
>
> If the templates belong there, and it survives VfD, some or all of them
> will reappear on the article and it will get the attention it needs.

I really wish someone had some proof to back up the tagists mantra that
"if I tag this article, it will improve". People improve articles
because they are knowledgeable about and want to write about a subject,
not because it has a whole stack of tags from editors who want to rack
up their edit rack but would preferable not to do any research (even of
the type-article-name-into-google variety.

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this*
	project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms -
	Project Has Been Around For A While)

body:
Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) [050205 09:24]:

> I think there is a good deal of substance in Larry Sanger's and Robert
> McHenry's criticism.  They are correct as long as they describe the
> problem they see.  However, the outsider's perceived anti-elitism
> doesn't necessarily originate from an intentional anti-elitism in the
> community.  And since it isn't intentional, it is quite impossible to
> "abandon" this anti-elitism, so Larry fails provide a solution.  He
> suggests a fork of the project.  Yes, maybe he should try this.

He specifically didn't suggest a fork, as far as I can see - he wanted to
change *this* project's working methods.

The thing is, it's blindingly obvious that Wikipedia is going to be THE
encyclopedia. Wikipedia, not some other open-content web-based
encyclopedia, will have the brand identification Britannica had in the 20th
century. We are it. We are the one. Anyone else catching up is as unlikely
as FreeBSD taking over market share from Linux, even as its fans swear by
it.

The annoying aspect of this is that (a) the POV warriors have a point: this
is the popular one they need to hit to push their POV as NPOV; (b) people
annoyed at Wikipedia don't form a fork with different policies, they're
going to try to change this project instead. So Larry Sanger doesn't talk
about forming another project with policies to his liking - he talks about
how to put a spanner in the works of this one before it's too late.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Rick said:
>
>>I see nothing wrong with any of those templates.  It's on VfD  because
>>someone thought it wasn't worth keeping as an article, but if it's
>>decided to keep, it still needs to be cleaned up and the POV cut down.
>>What's wrong with that?  The VfD template says "you are welcome to
>>continue editing this article and improve it".
>
>
> If the templates belong there, and it survives VfD, some or all of them
> will reappear on the article and it will get the attention it needs.

I really wish someone had some proof to back up the tagists mantra that
"if I tag this article, it will improve". People improve articles
because they are knowledgeable about and want to write about a subject,
not because it has a whole stack of tags from editors who want to rack
up their edit rack but would preferable not to do any research (even of
the type-article-name-into-google variety.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
Rick wrote:

>
> Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:

>> Rick stated for the record:

>>>'Tis a pity inclusionists feel the need to make personal attacks all the time.

 >>
 >> A personal attack, tautologically, must be directed at a person.
 >> Which person do you think I am attacking?
 >>

 > Anybody who disagrees with you, obviously.
 >
 > RickK

So, err, its _not_ personal then?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bots and wpEditToken

body:
Brion:
> Why are you sending wpPreview=0? The presence of wpPreview will engage
> preview mode; don't send it at all.
>
> (Processing of save vs preview mode has changed a bit from how it used
> to be in changes unrelated to wpEditToken.)

In a first attempt to resolve the problems, I thought that I now had
to send all elements of the form, so I gave them all values...

After removing it, I don't get any preview pages any more, however, I
am now getting "500 Internal server error" error messages. I'll be
checking again tomorrow, but for 'normal' editing, Wikipedia seems to
be rather well-behaved at the moment.

Andre Engels


from_name: Sj

body:
First, we can whitelist anyone with an existing account from range blocks.
Then people that already edit and love Wikipedia won't be affected by this.

Once that is done, we could further display a big, bold "request an
account" link next to the "blocked" message.  Following this link
would allow users to request addition to the whitelist.  It would take
longer than the 15 seconds that creating a normal account takes --
more like minutes or hours.  You would have to wait for some other
user  to notice the request and act on it.  But that would greatly
slow down the process of repeated logins, and add a layer of human
filtering which would see through attempts to mass-create sockpuppet
accounts.  At the same time, it would avoid totally turning away users
in the same IP range who honestly want to edit.
  [ Alternately, we could just make users from that range wait a
certain amount of time to receive their account; perhaps requiring a
valid email address and mailing them a password after a short delay.
The delay could even be adjustable based on the amount of trouble
we're having from that IP range. ]

+sj+

On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 04:23:06 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What choice do we have? There's no other effective way to block abusive
> > users on dialups if the ISP won't get rid of them.
>
> We handeled Mr treason. Remeber articles can be reverted and deleted
> faster than they can be created
>
>
> > I don't think anyone will blame us for trying to maintain the integrity
> > of an encyclopedia without running everyone off.
>
> Are we using the same internet here? You are propsing to block vast
> numbers of people from editing due to the crimes of a few and you
> don't think people will blame you?
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
John Lee wrote:
> like CheeseDreams? I am not necessarily advocating Nicholas' proposal,

And I'm *very* anxious to hear any practical alternatives. I do not like
the idea of large-scale blocks, but I'm at a loss for better ideas.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiportals

body:
After the idea has spread from German Wikipedia to French, Polish,
Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese and Danish ones, I made the first Wikiportal
at En dedicated to Biology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biology

I hope more portals will follow and that participants of the
biology-related WikiProjects will help :). Here's the main page for
Wikiportals:

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

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


body:
geni said:
>> BT? As in British Telecom? That's terrific! More customers means more
>> complaints and more bad publicity.
>
>
> It means you are likely to affect admins who can and will unblock
> themselves. Would you be happy if your ISP was blocked for a couple of
> weeks (even suposing the ISP choses to take actionm which it quite well
> may not)? The number of complaints would be pretty low anyway we may
> get a lot of readers but editors are far smaller in number. We would be
> the ones on the reciving end of bad PR for hopelessly over reacting.
>
the admins would not be able to unblock themselves from a website-wide
block (just a line in an http config file).  I don't know whether we
should go head-to-head with ISP's yet, but we could.  We should certainly
consider some kind of working relationship with AOL, if we don't already
have one, if only because of their unusual caching arrangements.


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Sat, Feb 05, 2005 at 12:11:17PM -0500, Rhobite wrote:
> That's one way to do it. At some point, someone official may want to
> contact BT and see about getting her warned, although it's hard to
> believe that they'll drop her from the service for this.

Here's an angle:

She's been banned from Wikipedia according to policies imposed by the
legal owners of Wikipedia's servers.  This means that she does not have
permission to use those servers.  Doing so might actually be a criminal
offense, depending on the laws in her jurisdiction.

Most ISPs do have acceptable-use policies that specifically exclude
breaking the stated rules on other sites.  BT states that users "must
not gain or attempt to gain unauthorised access to any computer systems
for any purpose" [1] -- which would seem to include setting up sock-
puppet accounts to gain access to Wikipedia editing after being banned.

Setting up an account -- or, indeed, clicking on an edit link -- is
certainly an instance of "gaining access".  If the person doing so has
been banned, that access is unauthorized.  If they've been informed of
the ban, they certainly can't rest upon ignorance.  Open and shut case,
no?

[1] http://www.abuse-guidance.com/ -- yes, BT puts their AUP on its own
    freakin' domain.  Weird!

> The tactics you describe are used by the anti-spam movement, but is
> her conduct as damaging as that of a spammer? Assuming that BT doesn't
> drop her, is Wikipedia prepared to embrace the "collateral damage"
> philosophy of the antispammers?

Ignoring the question of whether "the collateral damage philosophy" is
mischaracterized, it is not appropriate for Wikipedia.  We do not have
an abuse problem comparable in scale or ind degree of criminality with
the e-mail spam problem.  Nor do we have a systematic problem of ISPs
ignoring abuse reports or allowing privileged customers to abuse
Wikipedia with impunity [2].

So there is no point in using tactics that are designed to (A) shun ISPs
who are complicit in criminal activity that causes us problems, or (B)
press awareness of that complicity onto the ISPs' other customers.  ISP
complicity is simply not evident here.

[2] Some ISPs -do- apparently allow privileged customers to spam with
    impunity.  http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=158

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


body:
geni wrote:
>>I give it 12-24 months as a ballpark estimate before we're seriously
>>short if action isn't taken. Maybe less -- the problem is only getting
>>worse.
>
>
> However our number are increaseing

So are the number of problem users.

>>Even if we manage break even in our supply of people willing to spend
>>large swaths of time performing thankless tasks for no compensation,
>>it's most definitely the wrong approach. Instead of building a large and
>>expanding base of volunteers, we'd be struggling to maintain the status quo.
>
>
> That fact is that most vanderlism is one off. You could lock down
> every major ISP and you still need people (ie the people you have just
> prevented from become part of the project) to watch recent changes.

But one-off vandalism (even chronic simple vandalism) isn't the target
here. The target is chronic problem users like POV warriors who
repeatedly evade blocks. And then only after their ISP has refused to act.

>>Can you come up with a practical third?
>
>
> Getting serious about blocking every opensource proxy we can find

Blocking open (not "open source") proxies is not going to get rid of CD
or any other miscreant on dialup.

> would be a favorit. More filters on recentchages would be another.

How do filters help?


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
On Thursday 27 January 2005 21:01, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Signed languages are not, as many believe, mere gestural equivalents
> of the national spoken language, rather they have different
> grammatical structures, different idioms, and different semantic
> categories. Thus, conversion between English and ASL is nothing les
> than machine translation, except that you also need a synthesizer for
> the signs.

It is possible to write sign languages, but SignWriting involves
two-dimensional placement of characters in various orientations, which is not
easy to encode as a character stream.

phma
--
.i le babzba ba zbasu
lo jbazbabu lo babjba


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requests for LanguageXX.php update

body:
Where is the proper place to ask for a language file to be updated? The page
on meta has numerous requests which do not seem to be acknowledged.

phma
--
1 m = 3*3*5*7*47*44351/73/293339 * Cs133