body:
NSK (nsk2 at wikinerds.org) [041027 10:11]:
> On Tuesday 26 October 2004 22:26, David Gerard wrote:

> > what was your Wikipedia username again?

> The reason I have not answered that question is because it was first asked by
> a person who offended me ("as faulty as your logic", 23 October 2004).

Therefore it can never be asked again by anyone else ever? I used to have a
girlfriend like that. Used to.

> That said, I also don't understand why I need to answer this question. Is it
> some kind of policy in Wikipedia to say your user names in emails? I notice
> many people post without mentioning their usernames and I wonder why you
> picked me specifically.

Because I'm trying to work out how much credibility to assign to your
radical and jarring ideas for the project.

> > Do you in fact edit on Wikipedia at all?

> Does it matter? I cannot understand why you ask this question. Are your
> mailing lists restricted only to your members? I don't think so, because it
> was very easy for me to register (if that's not the intended behaviour, you
> need to configure your Mailman installation).

It matters in terms of how seriously your suggestions are going to be
taken. The reason I ask is to know whether you  have *any* experience of
this wiki, the one you're advancing the ideas for. Your messages so far
seem to indicate you don't actually understand much of Wikipedia culture;
with a username, it would be possible to see what your edits are like, what
you do and so on and get more of a handle on where you're coming from.

> You can find me in many mailing lists or fora, including FSF-GNU/GNOME/CC/AMD,

It's not a True Name thing (that being no secret), but your persona within
Wikipedia - if any.

The essential point I'm trying to get across is that you're starting from a
position of no credibility. If that's fine by you, then continue as you
are; however, if you wish to be taken seriously and (as I tried to explain
before) your ideas gain traction, I suspect it won't be adequate.

> and I am lurking on many other mailing lists and communities, while I have
> also joined projects such as Drupal.org and OpenFormats.org and very soon I
> will join KDE. Slashdot has published stories written by me (KDE/FSF's
> WIWO...) and my karma there is Good. My university dissertation is on wikis.
> I notice some people refer to me as "he/she" and I wonder whether they have
> noticed who am I.

Then surely you see what I meant about the phenomenon that although an
outside perspective is good, you need to be able to explain it in insider
terms for traction. Per project. This being not just any wiki, but the
biggest by a long shot. Ask [[User:Kate Turner]] about the difference in
feel between a small wiki and Wikipedia.

> participate in your mailing lists as a representative of a friendly website
> which seeks to have relations, cooperation and knowledge sharing with
> Wikimedia. But if WMF does not wish to cooperate or thinks I am a
> "competitor", then you can just say so and I will leave.

I wouln't say that at all (speaking only for myself).

> Finally, I would like to know how we can implement interwiki links to each
> other and whether WMF is interested in this kind of linking.

That would be a nice thing. At present it's largely hackable through
templates in the 'External links' section of articles.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation; NSK


list: wikien-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysops

body:
NSK wrote:

>AFAIK when someone becomes sysop [s]he remains sysop forever.
>
>I propose sysops should be evaluated every 3-6 months; during the eval people
>will vote on which sysops should be kept and which should become again users.
>
>
The idea is that there should be a relatively low bar to sysopship, and
so anyone who wants it that's been around long enough to know how things
work should get it, barring some reason not to give it to them.  Then
once they have it, they should keep it unless some reason comes up for
them not to have it.

-Mark


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content

body:
As the english committee ever given as one of the arbitration decision
"revert this article to this person version which is the neutral one" or
"delete this article as being inaccurate and irrelevant".

If you did so, how does the community feel with the AC deciding alone
what is correct from what is not, and what is done afterwards if another
unrelated editors revert back to the version you considered incorrect.

If you did not do so, do you think you might do it one day ? And how are
things handled for now ?

ant

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> What happens in practice during arbitration on the English Wikipedia is that
> disputes over content are handled by treating those who insist on putting a
> certain point of view across as violating [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is
> not]], the section on propaganda and advocacy. As POV warriors often engage
> in frantic reverting and personal attacks, policies which address those
> problems are also often involved.
>
> NPOV policy theoretically permits both sides of a controversy to be included
> in an article, disputes over content are usually encountered in situations
> where a POV warrior insists on both his side being included and the other
> viewpoint excluded.
>
> There is the viewpoint perhaps best represented by Larry Sanger, but by a
> few others that views on a subject currently held by academic professionals
> trumps other viewpoints. We have never resolved that issue.
>
> Fred, Arbitration Committee
>
>
>>From: "Jean-Christophe Chazalette" <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net>
>>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:44:02 +0200
>>To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>Subject: [Foundation-l] Arbitration committe and content
>>
>>French Wikipedia has chosen to set up an arbitration committee by a vast
>>majority of 85,24 % (pros 52 people, cons 9 people) during a poll that took
>>place from sept.19 to oct. 24. There is now a second and last poll about the
>>arbitration rules.
>>
>>Point 10 of the current poll offers people to vote for one of the following
>>: "The arbitration does not relate on the relevance or the validity of the
>>articles but only to individual behaviors (10.A)" or "the arbitration can
>>relate with all the conflicts without distinction and can relate directly to
>>the relevance or the validity of the articles (10.B)."
>>
>>There were in the past some serious edit wars about various topics or
>>articles, often related to religion or eco-sciences.
>>
>>The current poll is expected  to last until nov. 7 and could lead to
>>enforceable rules if at least 20 have voted.
>>
>>Now, I am told that the alternative 10.B is completely out of the line
>>regarding wiki philosophy. An arbitration committee could never settled a
>>dispute in giving a mandatory point of view regarding an article. That makes
>>sense to me. But yet, 6 people voted in favor of 10.B.
>>
>>Anthere seems to see a very serious risk of "fork" here. Even if I support
>>her point of view I'm wondering if it's not a big fuss out of a small thing.
>>So in the same time I'm trying to make things clear on the French Village
>>pump, I'd  like to have some feedback from everybody in the foundation,
>>especially from the wiki veterans, not to mention Jimbo himself of course.
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>villy
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Interwiki Cooperation; NSK


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: Lists,  was Re: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>
>- lists directly help navigation, reducing the count of hyperlinks to the
>Main Page
>
>
?

Stan


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] list of ISO 639 in Polish :)

body:
Thanks tsca.
http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikis%C5%82ownik:Kody_j%C4%99zyk%C3%B3w
GerardM


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

body:
Delirium (delirium at hackish.org) [041027 12:30]:
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> >I think we need to be a lot more careful with terminology.  Not every
> >new thing is a "fork".

> Well, insofar as it's a fork of the community's development effort---a
> diversion of work that would otherwise go into one of the other
> projects---it could be considered such.  Whether that's the case is
> arguable, of course.

Highly. Although there will be some competition in effort (if I had 48
hours a day to edit Wikipedia ...), in the end volunteers do what they want
to do; all a project leader can do is entice them in a particular
direction. When herding cats, find something that works like tuna. Also,
it's not like there aren't thousands and millions of people who could be
drawn into the project - large as Wikimedia is, I think we've hardly
scratched the surface of the possible contributor pile.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> In the course of a Canadian Broadcating Corporation program on the US
>> election it reported on a survey of whom Canadians would vote for if
>> they could.  80% favored Kerry.  That's an astounding ratio, but I
>> suspect that a similar result would be found in many countries.  The
>> damage that Bush has done to the reputation of the United States may
>> take at least a generation to repair.  No US president has been so
>> widely reviled around the world as the current one.
>
> Well, if you were to take a survey of what US citizens thought about
> other countries' elections, I would suspect you'd find similar ratios
> against many of Europe's current ruling governments (how many US
> citizens do you think would vote for a party named any of "Socialist
> Party", "Labour Party", or "Democratic Socialists"?).  But as far as
> international support of the US goes, I think you're forgetting the
> Vietnam War.  Lyndon Johnson was widely reviled both inside and
> outside the US, as the popular chant "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did
> you kill today?" captures.  And in that war, the US didn't even have
> the few allies it has in this war---Canada even went so far as to
> offer asylum to US citizens avoiding the Vietnam draft, on the basis
> that it was an illegal war.

Americans are rarely aware when elctions are happening in other
countries.  Canada did have an election in June. It's right next door to
the U.S. but that probably went mostly unnoticed.  The difference
between U.S. elections and those in other countries is U.S. policies
have a significant  effect on life in those other countries, and nobody
feels comfortable sleeping beside an elephant with nightmares..  People
outside of the U. S. resent dominance by the United States every bit as
much as the Massachusetts colonists resented the tea tax.

Yes, I remember the slogans about that other Texan.  I also remember
watching the Republican convention on TV when Goldwater pronounced his
famous comment about extremism.  There wasn't much to choose from in
1964; the challenger looked like he was about to get the world into an
even bigger mess.  The big surprise was that it was a Republican who
finally got them out of there.  One would have thought that they would
have learned their lesson.  One big difference between the Vietnamese
and Iraqi situations is that the former was a matter of a slow build up
until they realized during LBJ's time that they were in a jackpot; no
initial invasion was involved.  I agree too that the U. S. had even
fewer allies in that conflict, though the Aussies have been there both
times.

As to Canada's role, there was nothing to apologize for.  If a draft
were reinstituted we should certainly be open to accepting refugees from it.

Ec


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Preliminary Deletion

body:
[Evil top-posting and over-quoting counter-surgency attempted ;-)]

On Wednesday, October 27, 2004 11:23 PM, RickK wrote:

> John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
> > Sannse suggested to me on IRC that we conduct a trial run of
> > this policy before a permanent implementation. Do you guys
> > agree? And if yes, how long would you suggest it should be?
> >
> > John Lee
> > ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
> Has there been a vote?

Err. This is a proposal. First there is a general notice as to whether
people think it's a good idea, and if no-one objects (in a forum as large as
this, real consensus is... rare), it is implemented; only if there are any
direct objections, or there is indirect worry of others' such concerns
under-represented here, should there be anything as crude and anti-Wiki as
"a vote". This is known as "the Wiki way". No?

> RickK

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | james.forrester at orange.net
      csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk || [[en:User:Jdforrester]] on Wikipedia
IM  : ICQ:15108888 | MSN:jamesdforrester at hotmail.com | YM:Jdforrester


from_name: Tomasz Sienicki

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: list of ISO 639 in Polish :)

body:
 Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Thanks tsca.
> http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikis%C5%82ownik:Kody_j%C4%99zyk%C3%B3w

 :-) You're welcome.

--
 tsca * Tomasz Sienicki


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
> Thanks tsca.
> http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikis%C5%82ownik:Kody_j%C4%99zyk%C3%B3w
>
Great :-)) I'll add the names to the table.

Ciao, Sabine


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Triantos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sortable tables

body:
I'm thinking about trying to implement sortable tables in mediawiki.
I'd probably try to make the table headers pass some parameter through
to the rendering engine by attaching some &T1=col1 or something similar
to the URL.

Any opinions?  Great idea?  Stupid idea?  Someone else working on
something similar?

-Nick


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sysop vs. admin

body:
NSK wrote:

> What are the differences between the terms "sysop" and "admin" and which one
> do you think is better and why?

At present I favour "armed janitor".

- d.


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sysop vs. admin

body:
NSK wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What are the differences between the terms "sysop" and "admin" and which one
> do you think is better and why?

Don't you have a dictionary ?
In which way does your question relate to wikipedia project ?

Administrator:
   Some one who direct and manage an organisation, a community.

Sysop:
  Means "SYStem OPerator" an administrator of a computer service, be it
a server, a forum or a wiki.

Basicly administrator is used widely, whereas sysop is almost only used
in the computer field.

See also:
   http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Administrator
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysop

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion as POV

body:
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:26:53 -0400, Anthony DiPierro <anthonydipierro at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Like you, I want to stop the incessant arguing on VFD.  But the only way to
>do that is to reach a compromise.  That doesn't mean we keep X and delete Y.
>It means we consider the point of view of all parties.  Deletionists don't
>want random page filled with non-famous things.  Inclusionists don't want
>useful information destroyed.  Surely there are solutions which can give
>both sides what they want.

How about keep the articles in the database, but don't display them
when viewed from a deletionist's account? That way everyone gets to
see the Wikipedia they want.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sysop vs. admin

body:
Hi,

What are the differences between the terms "sysop" and "admin" and which one
do you think is better and why?

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Success! Setting up MediaWiki for use in
	Presentation to Conferences

body:
On Wednesday 27 October 2004 23:04, NSK wrote:
> > http://linspiron/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

A general note: To get rid of index.php see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rewrite_Rules

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


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] wikibrowser

body:
Last year, I tried feeding a subset of a few thousand Wikipedia pages
and links into TG Java applet, and it choked. But you are indeed on
the right track, and it would be cool to have a dynamic network graph
navigation of WP articles.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 13:48:18 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Kai Kumpf wrote:
>
> >hi everybody
> >has anyone of you heard of or played around with touchgraphs wikibrowser
> >(http://www.touchgraph.com/TGWB_101_SS.html)? this is a great step
> >forward to intuitive wiki navigation!
> >i really wonder why this hasn't come up onto the agenda long ago. all it
> >takes for the current version of tgwikibrowser is a plaintext list of
> >immediate links from one page (or all the pages in sorted order). this
> >is accomplished by most wiki implementations by giving the url
> >http://wikiurl/mainpage?action=links&mimetype=text/plain or something
> >similar.
> >to start with, mediawiki doesn't seem to know such a feature. why?? if
>
> That would be 380,000 http requests to generate the English navigation
> tree, and more than a million for a complet set. I think it would be
> easier to parse a database dump (download.wikimedia.org) and feed the data
> to touchgraphs in some way.
>
> Does touchgraphs scale to 100,000s of pages? Maybe selecting some subset
> would be better (say, a major category and all the articles in that
> category and subcategories).
>
> Alfio
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology for "anti-US" remark

body:
On 27 Oct 2004, at 22:56, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Jens Ropers wrote:
>
>> On 27 Oct 2004, at 17:53, Delirium wrote:
>>
>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 10/27/04 9:32 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, Jeff, I wrote hastily. I should have said "Anti-US
>>>>> Military" bias
>>>>> or "Anti-Bush Administration bias". I apologize for my offensive
>>>>> wording.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> You keep on digging the hole deeper. How was it "anti-US military"
>>>> bias?
>>>>
> I find this issue of semantics is kind of annoying, because although
> I'm a strong Bush opponent, I tend to agree with Ed's phrasing.  It is
> not *in principle* "anti-US" or "anti-US-military" bias, but I'd argue
> that *in practice* many people do have an anti-US bias that leads them
> to look for and promote stories that make the US look bad.  This has
> nothing to do with anti-Bush bias---it was the same people doing the
> same thing when Clinton was president and bombing Kosovo.
>>>
>>> -Mark
>>
>>
>> With the possible difference being that a complaint that others are
>> biased against you just sounds so much more convincing if you're not
>> engaged in an illegal war at the same time.
>
> Careful on the nationalism thing

Huh?
What nationalism thing???
And why should I be careful about it??

> - every nation has much to
> criticize. Germans especially should not be lecturing anybody
> about "illegal wars"...

Let me say I'm talking from experience (secondhand experience actually,
I'm not an octogenarian). Read [[Oradour-sur-Glane]]. As I recently
contributed the German POV it really struck me as I typed how it all
sounded so awfully familiar in terms of some more recent events.
Oradour-sur-Glane may been much more outrageous than than any single
killing of civilians in Iraq, but, well, what can I say? It appears
that 60 years on the ''excuses'' are still the same.

> I hate Bush as much as anybody, but if Europeans and USians
> are not in agreement, it's as much a failure of the Europeans
> to sell their ideas in Iowa as it is of the US to sell its ideas
> in Belgium. Bush would get even more votes if the average US
> voter got a look at how much anti-US sneering by Europeans is
> found on WP talk pages.

True, and both any sneering and the defiant "hurt pride" protest vote
for Bush are unconsidered, immature reactions. However, IMHO Ed's
initial post clearly shows that there are Americans who already are so
much in defiant denial mode that they will perceive even factual NPOV
points argued against "their guy" as "sneering". I mean. Ed's outraged
initial post sounded as if there was an evil Democratic conspiracy to
loot and kill.
Did "liberals" make up this story? No. (They merely recounted and
editorialized.) Does it really matter whether the explosives
technically went missing under Iraqi or American watch? They were known
about and sealed and accounted for before the invasion and went missing
at some stage during the invasion, which may or may not have been
before U.S. troops had a chance to properly protect them. But really.
There are over 10,000 civilian dead and what Ed chooses to scream
murder about is how unjustly it was claimed (wrongly or correctly; it's
still far from clear) that the U.S. military (and by extension the
current administration) could be faulted for them going missing. This
is a theoretical dispute about whether or not this rather futile "blame
pinning" exercise was grounded in reality. Don't we have more pressing
things to worry about? Especially as regards Iraq?

Or let me put it like this:
It appears that in recent times the GOP got insufficient intelligence
which they overexploited to illegally invade a sovereign country.
It appears that more recently the Dems got insufficient intelligence
which they overexploited to try and make Bush look bad.

Ed chose to scream murder about the Dems trying to make Bush look bad.
Words fail.

Oh, and Ed:
As regards international attitudes towards the US:
You cannot tell somebody to f*ck off and then complain of them dissing
you.

Remember the famous "You're either with us or against us"? Now Bush
said that to America's allies and old friends as they moved to indicate
that they would not join the Iraq endeavour. In diplomatic terms said
phrase was absolutely lethal because as said allies were indicating
that they would not join Bush was effectively saying that he thus
considered them opponents. In other words: "You don't wanna join us?
Well f*ck off then. U R teh enemeh." That did not go down well with the
international public, foreign governments and international diplomats
(including U.S. diplomats, many of which have since resigned for being
"unable to do their job").
And again, most people of most other countries now preferring to shun
and defile the U.S. may not be the righteous thing to do, but it's a
quite understandable human reaction to being told to f*ck off. So don't
complain. You've got no one to blame for that but your own
administration and its "diplomacy".

> Not setting much of an example for
> international cooperation!

Oh, but we are! We Wikipedians are actually talking. Which is ''way''
better than doing a "Freedom Fries" routine or accusing all Americans
of being daft, respectively.

> Stan

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


from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Templates and key-value pairs

body:
I know that this idea, as is, will probably be rejected on the grounds
of it being applicable to only a small minority of articles on en (or
any other pedia) and of little use in any other Wikimedia project, but
if I throw it out here, perhaps some generalization of this idea could
be created.

Here goes:

In the world of sports, teams are often abbreviated in some manner.
For example, in the [[National Hockey League]], LA refers to the [[Los
Angeles Kings]] while in [[Major League Baseball]], LA refers to the
[[Los Angeles Dodgers]].  Because of the recent proliferation of stuff
that requires an abbreviation be linked to a team (eg. such as an
article about a sporting event), you'd like abbreviations be linked to
a team's article (ie. in an article about baseball, you'd want [[Los
Angeles Dodgers|LA]]).  However, this can be cumbersome and
time-consuming, especially for large amounts of articles or teams (eg.
the ongoing project where one article is given for each World Series).
What I propose is some form of "key-value pairing" to the way templates
work.  Granted, all this can be done without the use of this "switch
statement" by the use of multiple template pages, so this is in the
interest of "keeping it all in the same page" or "keeping things
relatively compact".

The way it would work is if you have a template such as {{MLB|LA}}, for
example, the template would expand to [[Los Angeles Dodgers|LA]].  In
each template page, you'd have a set of keys and a set of values that
these keys would refer to.  For example:

Template:MLB
{{{
ANA -> [[Anaheim Angels|ANA]],
BOS -> [[Boston Red Sox|BOS]],
...
TEX -> [[Texas Rangers|TEX]],
TOR -> [[Toronto Blue Jays|TOR]]
}}}

Then, when a template is called, a key is specified, and the wiki
software would print the value associated with the key.  Should no key
be specified, or an invalid key is specified, some kind of fallback
behaviour would kick in.

You can, of course, have additional template parameters in the normal
sense.  For example,

Template:a
{{{b -> [[B|{{{c}}}]]}}}

You could have something like {{a|b|c=foo}}} and it would print out
[[B|foo]].

As I have stated above, this is completely optional and can be
implemented in other ways, but this idea is just for the sake of
convienience.  What are your thoughts on this idea?


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysops

body:
"So you mean this had been already discussed?"

...repeatedly. And it repeatedly gets shot down because an overwhelming number
of people are against it.

--Mark


body:
Nod, to me, what delirium and you describe seem fair.

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> What we do is ban the POV warrior from the area they are focusing on. And
> invite them to edit other areas. We don't get into the content of the
> article. We let that take care of itself. Often we don't even seriously look
> at it. What we look at the the POV warrior's edits as he deletes others
> points of view and continually inserts his own.
>
> Fred
>
>
>>From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 23:21:04 +0200
>>To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content
>>
>>As the english committee ever given as one of the arbitration decision
>>"revert this article to this person version which is the neutral one" or
>>"delete this article as being inaccurate and irrelevant".
>>
>>If you did so, how does the community feel with the AC deciding alone
>>what is correct from what is not, and what is done afterwards if another
>>unrelated editors revert back to the version you considered incorrect.
>>
>>If you did not do so, do you think you might do it one day ? And how are
>>things handled for now ?
>>
>>ant
>>
>>
>>Fred Bauder a ?crit:
>>
>>>What happens in practice during arbitration on the English Wikipedia is that
>>>disputes over content are handled by treating those who insist on putting a
>>>certain point of view across as violating [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is
>>>not]], the section on propaganda and advocacy. As POV warriors often engage
>>>in frantic reverting and personal attacks, policies which address those
>>>problems are also often involved.
>>>
>>>NPOV policy theoretically permits both sides of a controversy to be included
>>>in an article, disputes over content are usually encountered in situations
>>>where a POV warrior insists on both his side being included and the other
>>>viewpoint excluded.
>>>
>>>There is the viewpoint perhaps best represented by Larry Sanger, but by a
>>>few others that views on a subject currently held by academic professionals
>>>trumps other viewpoints. We have never resolved that issue.
>>>
>>>Fred, Arbitration Committee
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>From: "Jean-Christophe Chazalette" <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net>
>>>>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>>>Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:44:02 +0200
>>>>To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>>>Subject: [Foundation-l] Arbitration committe and content
>>>>
>>>>French Wikipedia has chosen to set up an arbitration committee by a vast
>>>>majority of 85,24 % (pros 52 people, cons 9 people) during a poll that took
>>>>place from sept.19 to oct. 24. There is now a second and last poll about the
>>>>arbitration rules.
>>>>
>>>>Point 10 of the current poll offers people to vote for one of the following
>>>>: "The arbitration does not relate on the relevance or the validity of the
>>>>articles but only to individual behaviors (10.A)" or "the arbitration can
>>>>relate with all the conflicts without distinction and can relate directly to
>>>>the relevance or the validity of the articles (10.B)."
>>>>
>>>>There were in the past some serious edit wars about various topics or
>>>>articles, often related to religion or eco-sciences.
>>>>
>>>>The current poll is expected  to last until nov. 7 and could lead to
>>>>enforceable rules if at least 20 have voted.
>>>>
>>>>Now, I am told that the alternative 10.B is completely out of the line
>>>>regarding wiki philosophy. An arbitration committee could never settled a
>>>>dispute in giving a mandatory point of view regarding an article. That makes
>>>>sense to me. But yet, 6 people voted in favor of 10.B.
>>>>
>>>>Anthere seems to see a very serious risk of "fork" here. Even if I support
>>>>her point of view I'm wondering if it's not a big fuss out of a small thing.
>>>>So in the same time I'm trying to make things clear on the French Village
>>>>pump, I'd  like to have some feedback from everybody in the foundation,
>>>>especially from the wiki veterans, not to mention Jimbo himself of course.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>villy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-
>
> l


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Board meeting

body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Angela reminded me today we had agreed on an open board meeting early
>> november.
>>
>> So... Here it is.
>>
>> You are warmly welcome in #wikimedia for a tea-party (or a brunch, or
>> an after-dinner liquor, just pick up depending on your time-zone).
>>
>> Date : Saturday the 6th of november
>> Hour : 20 UTC
>> Place : irc.freenode.net#wikimedia
>> Who : everyone interested in wikimedia projects future (trolls not
>> welcome though)
>> Why : brainstorming session on the future
>> Topic : see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda
>
>
> Hmmm! Just when I'm in my car driving to the Seattle regional meeting. :-)
>
> Ec

hmmmm, you can also come to chat any time (or most of the time at least)
on this same channel. I would welcome you, and we would spoil the place
in talking in french :-)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Board meeting


body:
NSK wrote:

>On Wednesday 27 October 2004 22:33, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Wikisource has agreed to accept dissertations, but for the protection of
>>the GFDL we do ask that those people identify themselves.
>>
>>
>I do support GFDL but I doubt I would allow commercial exploitation and
>modification of my dissertation, unless you can offer me very good arguments
>in support of this.
>
I was only pointing out that the option was available.  Although
Wikisource documents are open to be edited, very little substantive
editing of texts actually happens.  Commercial exploitation can happen,
but the exploiters also have to follow the GFDL rules.  They have no
right to claim that they have the copyright on your dissertation.

>Has Wikimedia examined other licensing options? I know there are many people
>who mostly support CC et cetera.
>
The subject comes up from time to time, but the difficulty is obtaining
permissions to change the licensing for existing articles.  Many of the
contributors are no longer available, or anonymous.


body:
On the other hand if NSK is what he appears to be, ie, a simple visitor
interested in knowing more of Wikipedia, how do you think he perceives a
total lack of reaction of the community in front of Rick accusing him of
being a troll ?

Of course, complaining to Rick is bordering feeding a troll.
But doing "as if" it was normal behavior is hardly polite to an outsider.

Mark Richards a ?crit:
> Just an observation, I have never seen Rick in
> anything but 'attack dog' mode, and, in the last
> couple of weeks alone I think I have seen him accuse
> nearly everyone he disagrees with of being 'trolls'
> (which is, of course, the only real definition of the
> word).
>
> Probably best to not feed him.
>
> Mark
>
> --- Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Rick wrote:
>>
>> > Gee.  Somebody who never posts on Wikipedia (as I
>>suspected) making
>>
>>I got the impression he does edit some.
>>
>> > demands that Wikipedia policy be changed.  And
>>does anybody wonder why
>>
>>I saw no demands or anything remotely resembling a
>>demand, only suggestions.
>>
>> > I think he's probably a troll?
>>
>>Your apparent definition of "troll" is completely at
>>odds with any I am
>>familiar with. NSK has merely tried to be helpful,
>>and has been entirely
>>cordial.
>>
>>You are being incredibly hostile for no discernable
>>reason other than
>>you happen to disagree with some of the things NSK
>>has said. Others have
>>also disagreed with some of the things NSK has said
>>(I disagree with
>>some of them myself), but none have been rude or
>>hostile except for you,
>>and there is no reason to be rude or hostile.
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>
>
>
> 		__________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Preliminary Deletion

body:
Sannse suggested to me on IRC that we conduct a trial run of this policy
before a permanent implementation. Do you guys agree? And if yes, how
long would you suggest it should be?

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

John Lee wrote:

> This proposed policy ([[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]]) isn't
> probably very well named, but it seems to have been well accepted,
> although I am perturbed by the lack of discussion on the talk page
> despite being advertised on the pump, community portal and RFC.
> Anyway, in case anyone here hasn't read the proposal yet, please do.
>
> I've drafted the proposed questions and answers for the poll already.
> Can someone more experienced in these matters please double-check them
> for compliance with the guidelines?
>
> Also, comments/brickbats on the proposal would be very welcome,
> especially from the inclusionist side (although you may be pleased to
> hear RickK is of the opinion that this proposal won't change anything).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
(A) Such a thing would be, almost by definition, unverifiable; and
(B) The damage down by the very existance of such articles, in drowning out 'useful'
articles, far outweighs the potential utility they have.

--Mark


body:
On Wednesday 27 October 2004 22:33, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Wikisource has agreed to accept dissertations, but for the protection of
> the GFDL we do ask that those people identify themselves.

I do support GFDL but I doubt I would allow commercial exploitation and
modification of my dissertation, unless you can offer me very good arguments
in support of this.

BTW most of my wikis allow every author to choose any licensing they like and
I have received good comments about this. For example:
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php?title=User_talk:MattisManzel&curid=933&diff=0&oldid=2088

Has Wikimedia examined other licensing options? I know there are many people
who mostly support CC et cetera.

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


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
John Lee wrote:

> Once more inclusionists impress me with their pedantry. By places, I
> generically mean human settlements.

And we could have known this how?

> A definition of "Encyclopedic" should not be based on what other

Just what IS your definition of "Encyclopedic"? Defining it by saying "X
is encyclopedic, Y is not" doesn't count.


subject: [WikiEN-l] If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

body:
On Thursday 28 October 2004 00:46, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> I'm taking a week off from Wikipedia. Too much stress.

I am sorry for saying that, but if Wikipedia creates stress to its members,
then something doesn't work in the right way.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

references:
<BAY10-DAV20zRPTNZSt00004cdc@hotmail.com>	<4180BDBD.9080603@gawab.com>	<4180BF0A.20709@runawaynet.com>
	<4180C083.90206@gawab.com>

body:
John Lee wrote:

> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
>> John Lee wrote:
>>
>>> Once more inclusionists impress me with their pedantry. By places, I
>>> generically mean human settlements.
>>
>>
>>
>> And we could have known this how?
>
>
> Considering the topic was Rambot articles...

John, seriously, you need to learn to think carefully about what you
say, because we had *NO WAY* of knowing you wanted "places" interpreted
only as "human settlements". Describing a human settlement as a place is
fine, but it doesn't work the other way around. The word "place" is not,
by any definition I'd ever seen before yours, restricted to a human
settlement. You are using words in unusual ways expecting others to
understand, but we can't understand, because we aren't mind readers.

>> Just what IS your definition of "Encyclopedic"? Defining it by saying
>> "X is encyclopedic, Y is not" doesn't count.
>
>
> Independently verifiable knowledge. This of course, includes schools,
> etc., but like I've said, I don't dispute we should keep information on
> them. I do dispute them having separate articles when they are not
> necessarily well-known on their own.

Then it seems to me it would take about the same amount of effort for
someone to move a substub to an appropriate parent article and place a
redirect to that parent article as it does to go through the initial VFD
song and dance. Certainly *less* effort than it takes to actually *get*
the article deleted.


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] three lefts = right

body:
RickK writes:

>So what is the grounds for giving Mark Richards so much slack?

I've often wondered the same thing myself. Does he spend more time on
Wikipedia trying to improve it, or more time on talk pages and the
mailing list trying to drag it down?

Simple, honest question.

-Hephaestos


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sysop vs. admin

body:
On Thursday 28 October 2004 00:53, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> In which way does your question relate to wikipedia project ?

I have noticed both terms used for people mentioned at
[[Wikipedia:Administrators]].

> Basicly administrator is used widely, whereas sysop is almost only used
> in the computer field.

I know how it's used generally, but I wanted to know how Wikipedia community
uses these terms.

BTW Thanks for replying.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Actually, when voting for an article, I take as many circumstances as
possible into account. A school is borderline encyclopedic; George
Bush's socks obviously aren't (at the very least, they don't deserve a
separate article). A substub school article just makes the case for
deletion sealed for me. If the article's well-written, though, I'm
strongly tempted to keep the article.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Mark Richards wrote:

>No, it really isn't. Although most of the time
>deletionists get to them before they manage to get
>beyond being 'sub-stubs', they've made it quite clear
>that an article on a school that they are not
>interested in would still be deleted if it were large
>and factual, simply because they don't think it is
>'notable'.
>Mark
>
>--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>So you don't see how we'd lose from deleting 90% of
>>>
>>>
>>the articles we have?
>>
>>
>>I don't think anyone is arguing that we should
>>delete 90% of the
>>articles we have.  The articles in question are
>>maybe 1-2%, and
>>certainly no more than 10%.
>>
>>Much of the argument, and what prompted this, isn't
>>even about strictly
>>whether we should have certain articles, but whether
>>we should delete
>>particular poor instantiations of articles
>>(substubs).  It's basically
>>an argument over whether a substub is better or
>>worse than a red link,
>>which I'm decidedly neutral on (both are bad, and
>>instead of wasting
>>time arguing over it, people on both sides ought to
>>spend the time
>>writing good articles in their place).
>>
>>But I doubt you'll find even the most ardent
>>deletionist who wants to
>>delete any significant fraction of current articles,
>>so I'm not sure who
>>you're arguing against.
>>
>>-Mark
>>
>>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

><snip>
>Rambot articles are of disputable encyclopedicness.
>
Places are certainly encyclopedic.

>  Pokemon articles are of
>disputable encyclopedicness.
>
Yes, that's definitely disputable.

>  Articles on years and numbers, and lists are
>of disputable encyclopedicness.
>
Depends on the subject. Most of them are encyclopedic, though (I don't
really understand why we need lists now when we have categories, though).

>  But none of these are listed on VFD.
>
>
Some of them are occasionally. Most are kept. In some cases, I disagree
with the resolution.

>Perhaps 90% was a slight overestimate, but I don't think there are many
>articles which are "indisputably encyclopedic".   But let's look at some
>real numbers.  Britannica has 120,000 articles.  We have 380,000.  So right
>there our idea of encyclopedic is 3 times as broad as Britannica (68% of our
>articles aren't encyclopedic by the Britannica standard) and we don't even
>cover all of the articles Britannica has, so this number is an
>underestimate.
>
It just means Britannica is paper. Wikipedia is not. Statistics can be
twisted to back any argument. Since Wikipedia is not paper, we can
afford more articles.

>  In the period from October 22-26 inclusive (UTC), 200
>articles were listed on VFD, and 4300 were created.  So by ignoring VFD
>we're cutting out 5% of our encyclopedia.
>
I did not argue for an ignorance about what goes on in VFD; what I was
saying is that much of the articles on which there is such heated
argument (most common example: schools) are often not as relevant to the
creation of an enyclopedia. Schools are relevant only to the population
of a certain area. Obscure mathematical or scientific concepts, or an
obscure architect, etc., on the other hand, probably have contributed
more to the world than any one school. Perhaps using the word
"indisputably" was a mistake. The phrase "almost certainly" is probably
closer to what I was trying to say. It's just an exaggeration for a
statement, much like your estimate of 90%.

>  Considering that these articles
>are probably those on which the world has the least free information, this
>is a significant loss in my opinion.  And that doesn't even factor in the
>question of what the deletionists would come up with to start cutting out if
>they had no one opposing them.  Until a compromise is reached, this can't
>just be ignored.
>
The relevance of the articles to the world in general should be
examined. I've seen some great school articles which were kept because
despite their lack of impact beyond their community, the school's
article was well-written. On the other hand, a substub for a
mathematician, even if poorly written (thus not betraying the
scientist's impact), may be more relevant to an encyclopedia, and should
be rewritten. In short, school articles are nice to have, but higher
priority should be given to those who have done things on a
global/national/state-level basis.

What I'm trying to say is: We need to learn to differentiate between
articles that are nice to have and essential. A substub article on, say,
Henry Ford, should be kept and rewritten, because it's important. A
school substub, should be deleted, and kept if (and only if) rewritten.
Having substub school articles makes us look bad. Having well-written
school articles make us look good. A substub article on Henry Ford makes
us look even worse, but since information about him is easier to find,
it's easy to rewrite the article. Often, doing so for schools is much,
much harder.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sysop vs. admin

body:
On Thursday 28 October 2004 04:10, Andrew Lih wrote:
> The two terms (sysop and admin) are used interchangeably in the

Thanks. Do you think people will get confused in my community if I decide to
use the two terms for different access levels? Or should I use them
interchangeably like you?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysops

body:
AFAIK when someone becomes sysop [s]he remains sysop forever.

I propose sysops should be evaluated every 3-6 months; during the eval people
will vote on which sysops should be kept and which should become again users.

(and no, I do not require it, it's just an idea and you can use it if you
like, and feel free to disagree, but dont bite me)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> With the year pages I can see your point, I guess.  They're similar to
> lists, which even though I think they're clearly unencyclopedic, should

I don't look at these kinds of pages so much as part of the
encyclopedia, but more as a navigation aid, kind of like the index in a
book, but more informative and flexible.

They're kind of an artifact of "inadequate" software, really. They'll be
unneccessary when someone comes up with an AI good enough to generate
such things on the fly to a user's specifications, complete with annotation.


subject: [Wikitech-l] development decisions

body:
Hi

I am curious to learn how the mediawiki community decides what features will
be implemented in the next release and what solutions you have found in
development collaboration. How much do you rely on sf.net and, according to
your experience, do you believe that it is beneficial to the wikipedia
community to allow non-developers view development-related discussions or
vote/feedback on them? is the MW development community-driven?

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


subject: [Wiktionary-l] search function

references:
<417CB8C9.1030804@yahoo.it>
	<opsgfimagw2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>	<417FF3CC.5030909@yahoo.it>
	<opsgj7linz2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>

body:
> If it helps any, here is the translation of the box one gets when one
> searches for "absentia", which does not yet exist in the Latin
> Wiktionary:
>
> "Wiktionary does not yet have an article about "absentia", trying full
> text search.
> Do you wish to create a new article "absentia"?
> If you look at links to "absentia", maybe you will find out something
> about this word.
> Maybe there is an article "absentia" in other Wiktionaries:
> "absentia" in English | Polish | Dutch | German | French Wiktionary"
>
> And the links, in order:
> * to create a new article "absentia"
> * view pages that link to "absentia"
> * http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/absentia
> * http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/absentia
> * http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/absentia
> * http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/absentia
> * http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/absentia
>
> I include the link to "what links here" because usually words in
> Wiktionary are linked because they are being defined (e.g. in
> translations lists) or are used to define something else (in
> definitions of foreign words).
>
> I do think now it'd be a better idea to link to the "Go" search
> instead of the article directly.  Especially since users expect search
> to be case-insensitive and if e.g. "Absentia" is capitalized on a
> non-capitalizing wiktionary (if there is a German word "die Absentia",
> I suppose) the link to "absentia" will take them to an empty page, and
> not tell them that "Absentia" exists.  I will change it tonight.
>
> By the way, is there a list of wiktionaries by size?  It might be most
> productive for the list of links to be to the five or so largest ones;
> I'm not sure whether these are those.

Thank you for the translation :-) this helps. I'll try to create this on
the Italian wiktionary as well. If it doesn't work I'll ask (but it can
take me some days to try out).

I also just had a look at the English version - there doesn't seem to be
a list of the largest wiktionaries.

>
>> Linking to other search results would be OK, but not to another search
>> window to be compiled - so if you think about a page that shows the
>> different search results on other wiktionaries I think this would be OK,
>> otherwise I prefer the link how you  did it now.
>
>
> I'm not sure I understand what is being said here.  I can link to
> searches on other wiktionaries but I don't think I can display the
> search results all on the same page.

You understood it right - that's what I thought - you can only link to
the search page, but not to the results - for now I would not use this
option it would become too confusing. If one day we should have one huge
database where all wiktionary interfaces retreive their data from,
automatically the research will be easier as it can be carried out on
the whole of the database.

Thank you!!

Ciao, Sabine


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing

body:
For my own blog, Joi Ito convinced me (quite easily, once he explained
it) to use CC-BY-2.0.  This is the attribution-only license, which
allows derivative works, and which is not a copyleft license.

The key point that he made is that if newspapers want to reprint some
editorial that I write in my blog, copyleft can cause them some fears
and headaches.  I was also considering a no-derivs license (after all,
what I write in my personal blog is personal opinion, and do I really
want people modifying my personal opinion and redistributing it?), but
then he pointed out that translations are a derivative work, and of
course I want people to translate what I write on my blog, since I'm
always trying to speak from a global perspective to a global audience.

Some of this same reasoning applies to wikinews.  But for wikinews, a
really *big deal* is compatibility with Wikipedia.  (Or, am I wrong
about that?  How often will a news story really need to have content
from wikipedia that exceeds ordinary fair use or quotation rights?)

I don't know of any clever solution which gets us both advantages.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
John Lee stated for the record:
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>> John Lee wrote:
>>> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>>>> John Lee wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Once more inclusionists impress me with their pedantry. By places,
>>>>> I generically mean human settlements.
>>>>
>>>> And we could have known this how?
>>>
>>> Considering the topic was Rambot articles...
>>
>> John, seriously, you need to learn to think carefully about what you
>> say, because we had *NO WAY* of knowing you wanted "places"
>> interpreted only as "human settlements". Describing a human settlement
>> as a place is fine, but it doesn't work the other way around. The word
>> "place" is not, by any definition I'd ever seen before yours,
>> restricted to a human settlement. You are using words in unusual ways
>> expecting others to understand, but we can't understand, because we
>> aren't mind readers.
>
> Unusual ways? Maybe. I guess it depends on your brain wiring, because
> when I refer to articles on places, I tend to think of the articles we
> already have, i.e. Rambot articles, not potential articles which don't
> necessarily exist yet.

I too find your definition of "places" as "human settlements" to be odd.
  Antarctica is not a place?  The Marianas Trench is not a place?  Mars
is not a place?


from_name: Harry Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Problematic behavior and ad hominem attacks

body:
What is the proper way of dealing with this type of
behavior?

:::Your statements are accurate and clear but it won't
matter. Even if there was a massacre, the Zionist
[[hasbara]] campaigners will spin the description of
events until it bears no resemblance to reality. See
what they did to [[Muhammad al-Durrah]]. To these
extremists, Arab civilians killed by the Israeli
military do not constitute evidence of a massacre.
Like the Nazis who said "the Jew is a parasite, the
only good Jew is a dead Jew", the extremist Zionists
believe, "'Palestinians' are terrorists, they hide in
refugee camps, Israel is just defending herself." All
crimes are absolved. Destroy the enemy. Blame the
victim. Repeat until death. It's the nature of the
conflict. --[[User:Alberuni|Alberuni]] 01:20, 28 Oct
2004 (UTC)

taken from Talk:Operation Defensive Shield

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


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Stan Shebs wrote

>. But yeah, an
> un-annotated alphabetical list that is completely filled in has
> little reason to continue to exist.

Strong objection to this.  Especially as a remark embedded in an
interminable thread devoted to something else.  The 'cuckoo in the nest'
aspect of categories is not acceptable to me.  There is absolutely no
justification for running down a list just because there happens to be a
closely matching category.

Any number of reasons:

- lists directly help navigation, reducing the count of hyperlinks to the
Main Page
- someone else may come along tomorrow and upgrade the list
- one can pull out a sublist with easy editing, while refining a category
takes work on each page separately.

Etc. Etc.

Charles


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews & Wikinerds

body:
Hi,

I noticed you were discussing about Wikinews some time ago. Because I do
something similar, I give you my experiences & ideas so that you can benefit
from them if you think they can/should be applied in your project (and BTW,
good luck with Wikinews!)

In one of my wikis I write news stories like this:
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/News2004:Mozparty or
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/News2004:Hans_Bakker_died  (these are
the only links I include because I don't want my msgs to be misunderstood for
advertising)

There is a separate namespace for each year, so I have namespaces like
News2004: and News2005:

The separate namespace model allows the users of the wiki to limit their
search in specific years.

Each news story had one or two maintainers who find references, copyedit the
story, check for copyright violations etc.

News stories are mentioned in [[Current events]], sorted by date. the [[Main
Page]] also has a list of the most important stories (not just the most new),
by using a template [[Template:Newspicks]]. Most stories are also mentioned
in Wikinerds Portal, our Drupal installation which serves as the homepage of
the site. The Portal aggregates news stories and new article submissions,
together with announcements and its own stories from all projects of
Wikinerds. The Portal does not duplicate stories but just provides an
introduction and a link to the story in the wiki.

Many stories can lead to interesting discussions, so there is a web forum
based on phpBB. For most stories, I create a phpBB thread where anonymous
users can post their messages. Each news story in NerdyPC and in Wikinerds
Portal may have a "Discuss in Wikinerds Forum" link where directs the user to
that thread. Talk pages are not used for communication but we have renamed
them to Test pages and are used for developing articles or testing layout, et
cetera. The Discuss link is always the last so users can find it easily.

Articles like [[27 October]] or [[2004]] are our almanac where we can list
events happened on that date.

Every news story includes background information. When we refer to "GNU/Linux"
we don't expect the user to click on the link to find out what GNU is but we
explain it at the end of the article (See for example how most corporate
press releases are structured).

The initial author of each news story decides on the copyright terms of that
story and subsequent authors are expected to use the same license.

News stories always include external links in bullet format:
* link 1
* link 2
* link 3
etc

If the external links are too many, we categorise them. There is no limit on
how many links can be included in each story and we try to include links to
all Internet pages discussing relevant things.

News stories have this format:

[START]
{CYCLE:
=====URL======
----DATE-----
____TITLE____
(text)
* external links
REPEAT CYCLE AS NECESSARY}
(authors)
(license)
[END]

So, you see: A news story IS NOT attached to a specific date (only to a
specific year) and the URL is not the same as the story title.

This means we can have [[News2004:SCO vs. IBM]] and update that page every day
according to fresh news.

An example:

------------------------------
[[News2004:SCO vs. IBM]]
20 October 2004
SCO says that
blah-blah-blah
* ext link
18 October 2004
IBM says that
blah-blah-blah
*ext link
10 October 2004
...
Authors: NSK
License: CC
-----------------------------

That means the reader can read just one page and learn the news regarding a
single issue.

So, in [[News2004:MediaWiki 1.3.7]] for example, we can include there a new
bug or security issue if it gets spotted after the release. It's like
including two or more small stories in one bigger page. It's very convenient.

Every news story contains a link to [[Current events]] which has a list of all
current stories. We have a standard legal notice in template
[[Template:Legal]] which says things like "trademarks are property of their
owners" et cetera. The notice always goes at the bottom.

What I haven't found a good solution, is the archiving of [[Current events]].
I wonder whether I should just move its contents to pages like [[October
2004]] or create an [[Archive:]] namespace and have [[Archive:September
2004]]? What's the solution found in WP and how will you approach this
problem in Wikinews?

You could use a wiki-only solution or use a Drupal frontpage for the
publication of articles and a background wiki for the devlopment.

I hope the description of my approach to news was useful to you and of course
I welcome any suggestion you would have to make regarding my approach. I
think knowledge/ideas sharing among wiki communities is very important.

Oh, and BTW you can see my Wikinews coverage at
http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/75

I also performed a search for "wikinews" and I noticed many blogs and
newssites discussing your new project. I think this project must start soon
and I am sure it will be a success.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews & Wikinerds


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysops

body:
On Thursday 28 October 2004 06:34, Andrew Lih wrote:
> sysop. The debates on RfA show otherwise, but even so, there has been
> little interest in instituting a reaccreditation system.

So you mean this had been already discussed?

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sysop vs. admin

body:
NSK wrote:

>On Thursday 28 October 2004 04:10, Andrew Lih wrote:
>
>
>>The two terms (sysop and admin) are used interchangeably in the
>>
>>
>Thanks. Do you think people will get confused in my community if I decide to
>use the two terms for different access levels? Or should I use them
>interchangeably like you?
>
>
In a new system it's much easier to set ground rules like that from the
beginning.  Most users of the net understand that each system has it's
own definitions and jargon.  They adjust.  The sort of terminology that
is bound to get you into trouble would be anything counter-intuitive
where it conflicts with a usage that they commonly find in their normal
life.

Ec


body:
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 02:52:16 +0300, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> I am sorry for saying that, but if Wikipedia creates stress to its members,
> then something doesn't work in the right way.

NSK, it's comments like these that people consider "troll-like,"
because it is unsubstantiated accusation that only feeds bad feelings.
This is where credibility comes into play (ie. your Wikipedia
contributions, identity, etc)

Wikipedia, and wikis, work by this direct contact between ideas and
opinions. It is an inevitable part of collaboration and consensus. For
someone doing his "dissertation" on wikis, it's puzzling how this is
not recognized.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
>>>>Rambot articles are of disputable encyclopedicness.
>>>Places are certainly encyclopedic.
>>Places are no more indisputably encyclopedic than schools or people.
> Once more inclusionists impress me with their pedantry. By places, I
> generically mean human settlements.
You're accusing the wrong person of pedantry.  Human settlements are no more
indisputably encyclopedic than schools or people.

>>Can you point to a single encyclopedia that has articles on years?  What
>>about non-cardinal numbers?  Lists I think are clearly unencyclopedic.
>A definition of "Encyclopedic" should not be based on what other
>encyclopedias do.

> Encyclopedic is not necessarily "topics most encyclopedias cover".

On the other hand, maybe I should be pedantic, because you seem to be making
up random definitions of words.  Unlike many other inclusionists, I think
one can meaningfully talk about whether or not a topic is "encyclopedic",
because I think a common definition of "encyclopedic" is "similar [in topic]
to what traditional encyclopedias include".  But, if you're going to define
"encyclopedic" as "something which Wikipedia should include", you should be
aware that that term has very little useful meaning in terms of an inclusion
argument (as it commonly turns into a fallacy of begging the question).  At
the very least if you're going to make up a definition to fit your argument,
make up a new term so as not to confuse people into thinking you're talking
about the word which already has a definition.  Maybe "Wikipedic".

> They're relevant, but tell me why I should value a school substub more
> than a substub about the Prime Minister of Thailand.

I never said you should.  I just don't think either is useless, or that we
should delete either.  But once again you talk about school substubs, while
the vast majority of deleted articles on schools are not substubs, and the
rest would have easily become more than substubs if being a substub was all
that was objected to (I've fixed a number of substubs myself, but I
generally don't do so when I feel that the article is likely to be deleted
anyway).

> Yes, I agree. I personally have no problem with having school substubs
> merged into their town articles.

Then it seems we are in heated agreement, because I have no problem with
this either.  In fact, in the case of substubs, that's what I *prefer* we do
with them (and sometimes I actually favor merging and deleting).

Now, you and I may disagree about what constitutes a substub, but even with
school articles bigger than a substub I still wouldn't mind merging and
redirecting.  I'd prefer that we keep them, so that's how I "vote", but
would it make more sense if I just copy pasted something like "I'd prefer
that we keep this but merging and redirecting would also be acceptable"?

The amazing thing is, merging and redirecting doesn't even require an admin,
and so it can be done without even touching VFD.  Adding to VFD has gotten
complicated to the point where it's probably just as much work, too.
Sometimes I wonder if the deletionists just have more fun playing on VFD,
and that's why they choose this method to "improve Wikipedia".

>>And you want to talk about substubs?  Rambot articles have less useful
>>information than most school articles.
>Population, maps, location, etc. I'd say most Rambot and school articles
>are nearly equal, but the Rambot articles at least contain some relevant
>information.
Here's what I find useful in the bare Rambot articles.  County, population,
latitude and longitude.  Note that the bare rambot articles (and there are
many of them) don't even have maps.  So if it were up to me, I'd strip the
articles of all but that information (unless it was particularly atypical,
95% white or 90% black or whatever), and then I'd merge and redirect with
the county article and include a link to the demographics (either on the
census site or on wikisource).

But looking at school articles, most of them have at least this much useful
information.  City, state, number of students, principal, and in many the
ones I've verified, latitude and longitude.  The vast majority of them have
even more information than that.

So even if you're going to define "encyclopedic" as "should be in
Wikipedia", I think almost every school article which is deleted is more
useful than [[Mount Vernon, Illinois]].

Of course, if we were really looking to end this constant bickering and make
a better encyclopedia, we could combine the two, at least as a default.
Redirect school articles to the city, and talk about both there.  I've said
this a number of times on VFD.  I don't think it's reasonable to have to say
it every single time, but maybe I should set up a template response.  This
does bring me back to the point that VFD is set up extremely poorly, and
that it in fact hinders a reaching of consensus.

>  It's a manner of organisation. The information within is encyclopedic.

With the year pages I can see your point, I guess.  They're similar to
lists, which even though I think they're clearly unencyclopedic, should
probably stay in Wikipedia anyway.  I stand by my belief that [[163
(number)]] should be tossed, though.

> I think the real debate here is organisation. I don't think school
> substubs deserve a separate article - Mark Richards and anthony do.

Actually, I don't.  But I think we have a different concept of what a
substub is.

> But we agree that they should be in the encyclopedia. We just disagree
over
> where they should be.

You and I might agree with this (after all, we're both neutral, right), but
the deletionists want this information completely removed.  That's the
purpose of VFD, after all, not to merge things into other articles, which
doesn't require admin powers, and which neither I nor any of the other
"inclusionists" would likely object to.

> Yes, deleting them will cause no harm. A school article is nice to have,
> but if it's a substub, I see no reason for it to have its own article.

If you mean that the information should be kept somewhere else instead, then
we are in complete agreement.

> I laugh at your exaggerated statement. Movies and actors - if they have
> an entry on IMDB, they absolutely should be kept. They are verifiable.

You're starting to sound like an inclusionist now.  Many movies and actors
on IMDB are deleted.

But, I actually disagree that movies and actors on IMDB are all verifiable.
I know people with movies on IMDB, and I know what kind of verification was
done.  Virtually none.  That said, most movies and actors on IMDB are
verifiable.

> If their articles are deleted, it's a shame. I think few deletionists
> would agree [you mean disagree?] with me. Sometimes inclusionists just
love giving
> deletionists positions they don't hold.

Movie articles are regularly *speedy deleted*.  I'm certainly not giving
anyone a position they don't hold.  After this conversation, I'm not giving
you any position, because I really can't figure out what your position is.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Solving the US-centrism problem

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>NSK wrote
>
>
>>I have noticed that many people believe that a number of Wikipedia articles
>>
>>
>>are very US-centric and I think in some occasions this is true. I would say
>>
>>
>>that you might need more non-US contributors.
>>
>>
>That's truly amazing!  Why has no one ever come up with this idea before,
>even if they live in Canada, UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany, Russia,
>India, Australia or other countries that provide many contributors to
>Wiki-en?
>
>Or could it be that we often have this in mind, and it is simply a fact that
>US academia is so large that it provides a quite high proportion of our more
>learned posters?
>
More to the point is a general antipathy toward advertising of any kind.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:

> Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
>
>> The relentless discussion about deletion that I am just catching up
>> with on this mailing list prompted to review a deletion decision that
>> got on my nerves back in June. "Full nice handbag co" was a pathetic
>> little article about a textile company in Hong Kong. It was never
>> much of an article, but it was real, neutral, factual, verifiable. It
>> was very narrowly VfDed (with a small majority of about 55-60% voting
>> delete) on grounds of non-notability. Following deletion, I objected
>> at VfU - my grounds for undeletion were that the reasons for deletion
>> were so tenuous (see below) and the majority so small that we should
>> have erred on the side of caution and kept the article
>>
>> Notability is extremely subjective. To my mind, a manufacturing
>> company of twelve years standing is more notable than a minor
>> character in a Lord of the Rings book. But others disagree. The VfU
>> eventually failed - both to get the article undeleted and to raise
>> the issues about systematic biases of domain of knowledge of editors
>> affecting deletion.
>>
>> Perhaps I shouldn't have, but I came to the conclusion that I would
>> be helping Wikipedia if I was bold and reinstated the article anyhow.
>> Unfortunately good old RickK got in a right tizz about this. Rick and
>> I have exchanged words that just about stay civil on our talk pages,
>> and Theresa Knott helpfully suggested I come here to the mailing list
>> (a kind of higher court than VfU if you will, and one arena more open
>> to more philosophical/esoteric debates) to see if I want did was
>> reasonable.
>>
>> So here I am, throwing myself open to community opinion,
>>
>> Pcb21
>
>
> Out of interest, exactly why is that article notable? Serious question.

Notability is irrelevant.  There's bugger-all that's serious about that
question.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Rick is right. The "stupid and inconsistant" talk is inappropriate.
The timeout was for "Anthony, Rick and others." It was for everyone
who has fed this running battle.

Please take this to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion

Thanks.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:17:27 -0700 (PDT), Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Personal attack by Mark Richards.  Who's going to be the first to jump on the "Mark, you should stop making personal attacks" bandwagon?  Wanna bet not a single solitary person?  Where's the admin suggesting that Mark stop posting about this?  I refrained for several days, because I was asked to, but I'm not going to keep refraining when I'm the subject of attacks like this and NSK's, and dont' have the right to defend myself, and when Mark keeps churning out the same arguments.
>
> RickK
>
> Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Rambot articles are certainly controversial, as are
> schools. There are schools that you have deleted that
> are attended by more people than live in some of the
> Rambot towns that have been kept.
>
> He is pointing out how stupid and inconsistant your
> ideas of 'notablity' and 'encyclopedic' are.
>
> Mark
>
> --- Rick wrote:
>
> > What odd comments coming from someone who wants to
> > keep everything.
> >
> > How can articles about cities and towns possibly be
> > considered nonencyclopedic?
> >
> > RickK
> >
> > Anthony DiPierro
> > wrote:
> > Rambot articles are of disputable encyclopedicness.
> > Pokemon articles are of
> > disputable encyclopedicness. Articles on years and
> > numbers, and lists are
> > of disputable encyclopedicness. But none of these
> > are listed on VFD.
> >
> > Anthony
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We
> > finish.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I believe complete coverage of such events may require setting forth several
points of view at some length. It would be nice if there were no Zionists
who have such views, but such is not the case nor is it the case that
extermination is not the view of some Palestinians.

Fred

> From: Harry Smith <lance6wins at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 07:02:52 -0700 (PDT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Problematic behavior and ad hominem attacks
>
> What is the proper way of dealing with this type of
> behavior?
>
> :::Your statements are accurate and clear but it won't
> matter. Even if there was a massacre, the Zionist
> [[hasbara]] campaigners will spin the description of
> events until it bears no resemblance to reality. See
> what they did to [[Muhammad al-Durrah]]. To these
> extremists, Arab civilians killed by the Israeli
> military do not constitute evidence of a massacre.
> Like the Nazis who said "the Jew is a parasite, the
> only good Jew is a dead Jew", the extremist Zionists
> believe, "'Palestinians' are terrorists, they hide in
> refugee camps, Israel is just defending herself." All
> crimes are absolved. Destroy the enemy. Blame the
> victim. Repeat until death. It's the nature of the
> conflict. --[[User:Alberuni|Alberuni]] 01:20, 28 Oct
> 2004 (UTC)
>
> taken from Talk:Operation Defensive Shield
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
Yes, anything verifiable and factual should. 'Notable'
is just someones POV about what they think is
important.

Mark

--- "csherlock at ljh.com.au" <csherlock at ljh.com.au>
wrote:

> John Lee wrote:
> > Wow, no inclusionist's jumped on you for that yet?
> Inclusionists believe
> > anything *verifiable* should be in an
> encyclopedia, notability be damned.
> >
> > John Lee
> > ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
> That was not helpful.
>
> TBSDY
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing

body:
> I point out, in case this isn't clear, that dual licensing would very
> likely prevent the direct inclusion of materials from other Wikimedia
> projects, although not the other way around.

However, this isn't the case if you use "Contributor licensing", which is
the seventh choice.  Under this everything is licensed under the GFDL, but
articles can also be dual licensed as determined by the original
contributor.

> > You could allow every contributor to choose the license of his
> > choice. So, ever page would have a different license. That's what I
> > do in some of my projects.

> Would you please try to understand how and why wikis work - especially
> the most successful one - before annoying us with ideas from your
> recently started projects?

Is Wikinfo not a wiki?  Not the most successful one, for sure, but the whole
point of Erik's comment is that we're considering doing something
*different* from the rest of our projects for Wikinews.  And my point of
bringing up Wikinfo is that that's what they do (although it's restricted to
a set of licenses).

> > I am very interested in learning more about your reasoning on public
domain
> > and why it's your favourite.

> 1) It's compatible with everything.

That's why I support it as my first choice in this case.  I believe in
copyleft, but for a collaborative project like Wikinews it's too much of a
headache.  If I'm making a site by myself, I'm going to choose copyleft,
because if someone comes along and wants to negotiate a separate copyleft
with me it's really easy, there's one person to contact.  Dual-licensing (or
really multiple licensing) can do this to some extent, for licenses already
created, but it doesn't help for licenses (as opposed to license versions)
not yet created.  So you get into the real situation where just about no one
objects to Wikitravel including content from Wikipedia and vice-versa, but
it's illegal to do so without contacting every single contributor and asking
for permission.

This problem is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Wikinews articles are
likely to have far fewer contributors than Wikipedia articles.  But that's
why I also support "contributor licensing", which is similar to "allow every
contributor to choose the license of his choice."  But I've added the caveat
that there must be a single license which everyone can use for every
article, to facilitate mass redistribution.  But maybe that isn't even
needed.  Whatever, so far no one has voted for my idea, possibly because not
many people understand it, but no one has even commented on it or asked
about it.

It should also be noted that "compatibility" with public domain is only in
one direction.  So while we can include parts of news stories in Wikipedia
(which seems unlikely to be very useful), we can't include parts of
Wikipedia in the news stories (which seems much more useful).  That's why
when I proposed "contributor licensing" I chose the GFDL to be the standard
license that every article is licensed under.  This way parts from Wikipedia
can be used in articles which don't add the option of others.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
I called the idea stupid, not you.
It still is,
you are not.

Mark

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

> Calling me stupid isn't a personal attack?
>
> RickK
>
> Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry Rick, I don't see the personal attack.
>
> Mark
>
> --- Rick wrote:
>
> > Personal attack by Mark Richards. Who's going to
> be
> > the first to jump on the "Mark, you should stop
> > making personal attacks" bandwagon? Wanna bet not
> a
> > single solitary person? Where's the admin
> > suggesting that Mark stop posting about this? I
> > refrained for several days, because I was asked
> to,
> > but I'm not going to keep refraining when I'm the
> > subject of attacks like this and NSK's, and dont'
> > have the right to defend myself, and when Mark
> keeps
> > churning out the same arguments.
> >
> > RickK
> >
> > Mark Richards wrote:
> > Rambot articles are certainly controversial, as
> are
> > schools. There are schools that you have deleted
> > that
> > are attended by more people than live in some of
> the
> > Rambot towns that have been kept.
> >
> > He is pointing out how stupid and inconsistant
> your
> > ideas of 'notablity' and 'encyclopedic' are.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > --- Rick wrote:
> >
> > > What odd comments coming from someone who wants
> to
> > > keep everything.
> > >
> > > How can articles about cities and towns possibly
> > be
> > > considered nonencyclopedic?
> > >
> > > RickK
> > >
> > > Anthony DiPierro
> > > wrote:
> > > Rambot articles are of disputable
> > encyclopedicness.
> > > Pokemon articles are of
> > > disputable encyclopedicness. Articles on years
> and
> > > numbers, and lists are
> > > of disputable encyclopedicness. But none of
> these
> > > are listed on VFD.
> > >
> > > Anthony
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > >
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------
> > > Do you Yahoo!?
> > > Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We
> > > finish.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > >
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We
> > finish.
> > http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Precisely, let's frame this.
Mark

--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> Rick wrote:
>
> >So is every building in the world, every park in
> the world, every street in the world, every tree in
> the world.  Should we have articles on every one of
> those things?
> >
> Why not? There are biologists who would give their
> left pinkie
> fingers to have a complete and verifiable
> description of every
> tree in the world. Realtors, homebuyers, and
> residents would
> love to know more about particular streets, and
> buildings too
> for that matter. Parks are already well on the way
> to coverage.
>
> WP's own definition of encyclopedia says "written
> compendium of human
> knowledge", and doesn't limit it to "notable topics
> only". Printed
> encyclopedias had to start pinching down on their
> content when the
> excessive physical size would have bankrupted the
> publisher, not
> because of any desire to reduce coverage.
>
> So it's a little anachronistic to try to prune out
> "non-notable"
> things just because print encyclopedias have done so
> as part of
> making more money.
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] three lefts = right

body:
Drag it down?
I am forced increasingly to spend more time on vfd
than I want to, and consequently on the mailing list
trying to deal with what I see asa major threat to wp,
but drag it down? I really don't know what you mean.
Mark

--- John Robinson <john at freeq.com> wrote:

> RickK writes:
>
> >So what is the grounds for giving Mark Richards so
> much slack?
>
> I've often wondered the same thing myself. Does he
> spend more time on
> Wikipedia trying to improve it, or more time on talk
> pages and the
> mailing list trying to drag it down?
>
> Simple, honest question.
>
> -Hephaestos
> _______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
It doesn't matter, because notability has never been a
criteria for keeping something. It is factual and
verifiable.
Mark

>
> Out of interest, exactly why is that article
> notable? Serious question.
>
> TBSDY
>
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sysop vs. admin

body:
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 03:50:19 +0300, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
>
> I know how it's used generally, but I wanted to know how Wikipedia community
> uses these terms.

The two terms (sysop and admin) are used interchangeably in the
Wikipedia user space. They both mean someone who as gone through
[[Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship]] successfully, and can delete and
protect pages, and block IPs/names.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


body:
Stan Shebs wrote

> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
> >
> >- lists directly help navigation, reducing the count of hyperlinks to the
> >Main Page
> >
> >
> ?

It is not a metric that is much talked about in relation to WP, I think.
But it is a basic way of looking at access to pages of a web site: if I
arrive at the Front Page, and start following hyperlinks, how many times is
the minimum I need to get to a given page/a typical page/all pages that
aren't orphans.  A well-designed site has a median value of 4 or 5 at most,
for this. Therefore I think cutting down on lists, even if their current
main function is to be on a 'list of lists', is perverse.

You can argue if you like that people can bridge the gaps via categories: if
they happen to know in advance that this is the right way to find the
shortest path.  Well, mostly they don't know this.  And I don't think we
should remove the low-cost bus just because there may be a train on the
route.  This goes to usability of the site, in particular by those new to
it.

Charles


body:
NSK wrote

> I have noticed that many people believe that a number of Wikipedia
articles
> are very US-centric and I think in some occasions this is true. I would
say
> that you might need more non-US contributors.

That's truly amazing!  Why has no one ever come up with this idea before,
even if they live in Canada, UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany, Russia,
India, Australia or other countries that provide many contributors to
Wiki-en?

Or could it be that we often have this in mind, and it is simply a fact that
US academia is so large that it provides a quite high proportion of our more
learned posters?

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jew Watch

body:
I would simply delete it and move on unless it is repeated. Although, as
vandalism, it is at the level of a banable offense.

Fred

> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:49:45 -0400
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Jew Watch
>
> On Oct. 26 UncleBungle made the following contribution to the Jew Watch
> talk page:
> "I'm not going to start an edit war User:Slrubenstein."
> I don't really like other people posting comments to pages in my name.  Is
> this something I just have to watch out for and delete, or do we have some
> policy on this?  Clearly it is not at the level of a banable offense -- I
> am not even sure if it is enough to ask for mediation.  Still, it is wrong
> and I wonder if there is some community response.  I appreciate any
> suggestions/thoughts,
>
> 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
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing

body:
> Some of this same reasoning applies to wikinews.  But for wikinews, a
> really *big deal* is compatibility with Wikipedia.  (Or, am I wrong
> about that?  How often will a news story really need to have content
> from wikipedia that exceeds ordinary fair use or quotation rights?)

> I don't know of any clever solution which gets us both advantages.

License stories which use Wikipedia content under the GFDL, and license
those that don't under CC-BY.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Some of this same reasoning applies to wikinews.  But for wikinews, a
> really *big deal* is compatibility with Wikipedia.  (Or, am I wrong
> about that?  How often will a news story really need to have content
> from wikipedia that exceeds ordinary fair use or quotation rights?)

Well the ability to use Wiknews content to update Wikipedia articles is more
important than using Wikipedia content in Wikinews articles (quoting and/or
framing of Wikipedia content should be enough), IMO. Wikipedia should
concentrate on background, giving Wikinews the ability to concentrate on the
news.

That said I don't think we should abandon copyleft for any project. Thus I
support dual-licensing under CC-by-sa and FDL for Wikinews. The FDL is simply
impractical to use in a print publication like a newspaper since it would
require too much of third parties (like printing the whole license in the
paper!). They could use the cc-by-sa which basicly requires a by-line and
mention of the license (which would affect any improvements they made to the
article as well). The FDL part is just to be one-way compatible with other
Wikimedia projects.

But the cost to third parties using Wikimedia content should continue to be the
passing on of the same freedoms we give them to others that use their
derivative works. This ensures positive feedback.

Yes it is coercion, but it is just asking others to be as nice as we have been
to them. I don't think that is too much to ask for. All PD and attribution-only
does is give proprietary content providers a free lunch. Copyleft helps to
change the world by making sure that those who use it share their improvements.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing


from_name: NSK

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Drive-by deletion

body:
On Thursday 28 October 2004 09:35, csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:
> More links:

Thanks! I bookmarked the links and will write a short article when I have
time.

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


body:
We do have a way to decide using [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]]. All
significant points or view are to be included in the article. There are fine
points to be decided, such at how much proportional space viewpoints are to
be alloted but our policy is quite clear on the main point. Most POV
disputes are centered around censoring opposing viewpoints and almost all
POV warriors are in the wrong.

The loudest and most determined?

Sometimes in default of anyone doing anything about it, yes, but not policy.

Majority?

On many subjects majority decisions return faulty decisions simply because
there is almost always knowledge most people either don't or won't grasp.

Most civil?

Being polite is not rationally related to command of knowledge.

Selected, non-involved editors?

If they were interested or competent with respect to the subject they would
be involved.

Fred

> From: Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing
> List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 17:50:14 +0200
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content
>
> Well, very simply speaking, we have to have _some_ way to decide what
> an article is going to look like in the case of conflict. There are
> various possibilities for that:
> * We take the POV of the one who shouts loudest
> * We take the POV of the majority of editor
> * We take the POV of the person with the longest breath
> * We take the POV of the most civil person
> * We take the POV of a group of selected editors not involved in the conflict
> * and perhaps a number more


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing

body:
There's currently a non-binding straw poll about the licensing of Wikinews
articles, should the project launch under the Wikimedia umbrella:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll

I'd like to know two things:

1) What is the position of the board on projects using a licensing option
other than the GFDL? Specifically, what is the opinion of the board on
dual-licensing GFDL and CC-BY, and possibly other licenses?

2) Would a real vote on the license, if the project launches, be
acceptable?

The reason this has come up is that some people feel that the GFDL does
not allow for large enough use of Wikinews articles, and that dual
licensing would address this. Personally, I'm not a big fan of dual (or
multi) licensing, but will accept whatever the community decides.

I point out, in case this isn't clear, that dual licensing would very
likely prevent the direct inclusion of materials from other Wikimedia
projects, although not the other way around.

So I'd like to know where the Foundation stands on this issue. I'm mostly
interested in moving forward on this point, not in any particular option
(my personal favorite, the public domain, has relatively little support).

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews licensing


subject: Lists, was Re: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Rebecca wrote

> For once, I strongly agree with Charles.

Not a unique occasion, in fact.

> I've never understood the "kill-the-index-phenomenon". Lists, like
> indexes, are used to find other articles. Occasionally, there'll be a
> particularly stupid one, but for the most part, they're extremely
> useful.

This has been argued before on this list: see

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-June/028724.html

for an old thread.  I think my concerns of June were well-founded.  I have
been debating this on [[Talk:List of glossaries]] recently.

Charles


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jew Watch

body:
On Oct. 26 UncleBungle made the following contribution to the Jew Watch
talk page:
"I'm not going to start an edit war User:Slrubenstein."
I don't really like other people posting comments to pages in my name.  Is
this something I just have to watch out for and delete, or do we have some
policy on this?  Clearly it is not at the level of a banable offense -- I
am not even sure if it is enough to ask for mediation.  Still, it is wrong
and I wonder if there is some community response.  I appreciate any
suggestions/thoughts,

Steve

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