list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Andre Engels [mailto:andreengels at gmail.com]
>Sent: Saturday, March 3, 2007 03:07 AM
>To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Intervening in an edit war
>
>I have been asked to look at a page where there has been an edit war for
>half a year as an 'impartial outsider'. Does anyone have experience with
>doing that? I have not started yet, but I fear that the outcome will be one
>of the following three:
>
>* I consider myself too little known about the subject to say anything
>useful
>* I agree with one of the parties, and get shit on by the other parties
>* I agree with neither party, and get shit on by both.
>
>--
>Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
>ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels

The first thing to do is take a long look at the editing history of both the article and its talk page (reading the cited references helps too). The theory behind this is that the more information you have, the better you can do with the situation. Likewise, without taking sides, let each party tell their side to you. They will probably do that if you email them and ask them about what is going on. Your course after you gain information depends on what you find out. If the parties are reasonable they may listen to suggestions based on what you have learned. If they are determined, come hell or high water, to get their way, they won't, but you won't know that without patient investigation and patient attempts to make helpful suggestions.

Work from the assumption that they are both trying hard to to the right thing and trying to follow Wikipedia policies as they understand them. Often there is considerable misunderstanding of our policies and practices as applied to specific issues. Perhaps you can clear these up.

Fred


list: wikien-l

from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
I was unaware Essjay used fake credentials in content disputes, but seeing
as that appears to be confirmed now, I think a resignation is in order.
Still, I don't think the community noticeboard vote and incivil comments
were not the way to go about this. I would've waited for a decree from
Jimbo, and now we have one.

Mgm


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<0ggiu2dr3qqm6qq762vbj3i0b4hpuum7mi@4ax.com>
	<20070303105539.88290.qmail@web35204.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
> Actually most of the community did the smart thing and completely
> ignored this teapot tempest, but the reaction was in the main
> hysterical and, yes, stupid.
>
> Do you think that the presence of a baying mob materially affected the
> outcome?  I don't.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --

Yes but the question has always been what is the reaction outside the
community, not inside.


from_name: Pilotguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<0ggiu2dr3qqm6qq762vbj3i0b4hpuum7mi@4ax.com>
	<20070303105539.88290.qmail@web35204.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<45E96F19.1020803@gmail.com>
	<794ju2dbks12tc9q8aodse31ietrm85h6h@4ax.com>
	<45E9BDA5.8080807@fas.harvard.edu>
	<a3f807830703031056p12364542me938f02d6c13c6fd@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 3/3/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote: Essjay
situation? Why is this even in discussion? I'd consider the matter
closed the second it was mentioned. I do not know the details of the actual
matter...

No wonder.

On 3/3/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Essjay situation? Why is this even in discussion? I'd consider the matter
> closed the second it was mentioned. I do not know the details of the
> actual
> matter but this entire thread is nothing but gossip. Let's focus on
> something that is actually productive and not potentially inflammatory.
>
>     - Cool Cat
>
> On 3/3/07, Christopher G. Parham <cparham at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I don't meant to characterise all concerned as a mob, by the way -
> > > several people while taking some part in the process did their level
> > > best to make it less hostile, and I salute them.  Nor does that mean
> > > the concerns expressed are not valid.
> > >
> > > Guy (JzG)
> > >
> > Unfortunately I'm not sure that individuals attempting to make it less
> > hostile can possibly have much effect. No matter how reasonable and
> > careful everyone is being with their statements, the scale from Essjay's
> > perspective must be daunting.
> >
> > "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly
> > would still have been a mob."
> >
> > --Chris
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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

http://pilotguy.wordpress.com


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<0ggiu2dr3qqm6qq762vbj3i0b4hpuum7mi@4ax.com>	<20070303105539.88290.qmail@web35204.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<45E96F19.1020803@gmail.com>

body:
On Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:50:33 -0500, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-
<tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Do you think that the presence of a baying mob materially affected the
>> outcome?  I don't.

>I do, although I'd compare this to a large peaceful protest rather than
>to a violent riot that your "baying mob" characterization makes this out
>to be. Oh, I love how semantics can so easily twist a situation... Those
>who were incivil throughout this were wrong, but the rest were more than
>entitled to voicing their opinions and probably had some effect on the
>change in Jimbo's position and/or, perhaps, Essjay's imminent
>resignations. The large number of established users denouncing Essjay's
>actions (as evidenced through the RfC and other media) certainly had to
>mean something.

Did you see the "straw poll" on sanctions?  A lot of the agitation
came from people he's had past disputes with.  I found the hostility
and above all the haste to be distinctly inappropriate - like the
tabloids descending on a politician after his opponents have dug up
some dirt.

I don't think the loudness or the baying for blood helped in any way.
I do think that enough people will have had quiet words in Jimmy's ear
that he'd have come to the same conclusion anyway.  I believe Jimmy is
more inclined to listen to measured words than petitions of the
disgruntled.

I don't meant to characterise all concerned as a mob, by the way -
several people while taking some part in the process did their level
best to make it less hostile, and I salute them.  Nor does that mean
the concerns expressed are not valid.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 14:08:24 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>If it wasn't for the CN noticeboard stuff it is doubtful the relivant
>difs would have come to light.

I dispute that.  I think that people would have done the digging
anyway.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 09:07:13 -0500, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
wrote:

>Yes, I think his recent statement was about right on.  Not too harsh,
>but still recognizing of the fact that a serious breach of trust took
>place.  World order has once again been restored for those of us who,
>like Larry Sanger, were shocked not by the incident, but by the
>apparent ho-hum reaction to it by Jimmy Wales.

Yes, exactly that.  Sorrow, but recognition that there is an issue of
trust.  It did not need to be rammed home with a brick.

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


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On 3/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 14:08:24 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >If it wasn't for the CN noticeboard stuff it is doubtful the relivant
> >difs would have come to light.
>
> I dispute that.  I think that people would have done the digging
> anyway.
>

Experence suggests otherwise. It didn't happen when the story first
broke And remeber this ah "mob" appears to broadly support essjay
hanging onto his adminship.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Correction to New Yorker Article

body:
On 3/1/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/1/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was most amused to see Daniel Brandt ranting about it, considering
> > that avoiding Brandt's blatant stalking and harassment of editors was
> > one of the main reasons for Essjay doing it.
>
> Nyet. Page on Brandt first appeared18:46, 28 September 2005
>
> First claims to degrees appeared 07:58, 10 May 2005 and the full story
> was in place by September.
> --
> geni

So the question here again, Why did Brandt feel the necessity to "stalk and
harass" editors?


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
Since I can't seem to get any edits through right now, I'll respond here:

Jimbo, thanks for clearing this up on your end, and thank you for taking the
time to reply to my email. I'm glad that you don't condone this. This has
been a troublesome period, but hopefully everyone can move on, and Essjay
will eventually get what positions he needs back.

On 03/03/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> I have just posted this on my talk page:
>
> I have blanked my entire talk page to make sure this statement gets
> adequate attention.  Hopefully someone more clueful than me :-) can
> archive things properly.
>
> I have been for several days in a remote part of India with little or no
> Internet access.  I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false
> credentials in content disputes.  I understood this to be primarily the
> matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely
> understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and
> not a matter of violation of people's trust.  I want to make it
> perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully
> based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.  Even now, I
> have not been able to check diffs, etc.
>
> I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the
> community.  In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I
> advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach.
>   From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been
> contrite and apologetic.  People who characterize him as being "proud"
> of it or "bragging" are badly mistaken.
>
> On a personal level, EssJay has apologized to me, and I have accepted
> his apology on a personal level, and I think this is the right thing to
> do.  If anyone else feels that they need or want a personal apology,
> please ask him for it.  And if you find it to be sincere, then I hope
> you will accept it too, but each person must make their own judgments.
> Despite my personal forgiveness, I hope that he will accept my
> resignation request, because forgiveness or not, these positions are not
> appropriate for him now.
>
> I still have limited net access... for a couple of hours here I will be
> online, and then I am offline until I am in Japan tomorrow morning.  I
> beleive I will have a fast and stable Internet connection at that time,
> and I will deal with this further at that time.
>
> Wikipedia is built on (among other things) twin pillars of trust and
> tolerance.  The integrity of the project depends on the core community
> being passionate about quality and integrity, so that we can trust each
> other.  The harmony of our work depends on human understanding and
> forgiveness of errors.
>
> --~~~~
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stephen Park

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On 3/3/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:  >
> Wikipedia is built on (among other things) twin pillars of trust and
> tolerance.  The integrity of the project depends on the core community
> being passionate about quality and integrity, so that we can trust each
> other.  The harmony of our work depends on human understanding and
> forgiveness of errors.

The problem isn't that Essjay created a false biography in order to
protect himself from real life harrassment. I don't think anyone would
have a problem if all he did was say he lives in a different state
etc. The problem is he lied about his credentials and used those false
credentials in order to give himself a false authority in a certain
field (religion and theology) and used that false authority to his
advantage when editing articles in that field. Indeed, claiming you
have a PhD when you are not gives you a certain credibility even
outside the field your PhD is supposedly in.

If Essjay just didn't want people to know who and where he was he
could have said he works as a cashier in Seattle or a farmhand in
Wisconsin. Instead he chose to give himself a PhD in Theology and make
himself a professor. In the real world of research and writing if
someone were to fake their credentials in such a way they'd be fired.
In the world of Wikipedia you're elevated to the highest echelons and
given a full time paid job.

Jimbo, when did you know about this deception and why did you minimize
it when you talked to the New Yorker?

Those comments to the New Yorker have done much more to harm
Wikipedia's reputation than Essjay's original offence. It's good that
Essjay has apologized to  you. When is he going to apologize to ther
est of the wikipedia community and when, for that matter, are YOU
going to apologize. You must have known the truth when you hired him
at Wikia. Why did it take bad press to make you realize there was a
problem with this?


from_name: Sage Ross

subject: [WikiEN-l] Straw poll on what to do with WP:Notability

body:
There is a straw poll going on to move the discussion of WP:N forward.

The main categories are:

Keep (with the possibility of promoting it to policy),
Discuss (to make slight adjustments and regain consensus)
Revise (to create a consensus version, which may never have existed)
Rebuild (either start over from scratch or demote it back to a
descriptive, rather than prescriptive, essay)
Discard (Notability?  We don't need no stinkin' Notability)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability#Straw_Poll

A straw poll is neither a straw nor a pole.  Discuss.


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On 3/3/07, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 3, 2007, at 7:22 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
> >
> > Yes, exactly that.  Sorrow, but recognition that there is an issue of
> > trust.  It did not need to be rammed home with a brick.
>
> True leadership in difficult moments are measured by statements like
> the one made by Jimbo. Clear, forceful enough, but with an attitude
> and tone that demonstrate kindness and understanding of human nature.
> Well done.
>
> -- Jossi

And how does this comment show any "true leadership"? To me it sounds
like minimization and an evasion of responsibility:

"I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it."


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] 7zip dump format

body:
Stian Haklev wrote:
> Dear all, thank you for your feedback. I have been sick for a few
> days, but I'm back :) And I just released 0.22 of the software, which
> is a bit more robust - the 7zip issue is still unresolved though.
> (http://houshuang.org/blog/wikipedia-offline-server).

It has some kind of regression:
While with 0.21 i coud do wiki-html.rb path/to/wiki.7z with 0.22 i
can't. The server starts, but the dump is not loaded.

> I tried looking at the 7zip code again, but it's still too
> complicated, with too many files involved, for me to understand
> anything. However, it makes all the sense in the world to me that
> building up an index beforehand of file names and blocks (possibly
> using 7za l -slt), and then feeding the block number to the 7z
> extracter, and having it jump directly there. (or if it needs more
> specific information, making a lister that outputs that information,
> and then feeding that).

> Platonides: I don't know if having 7z run constantly is a good idea.
> While I am not wedded to Ruby, it makes it very easy to do regexps,
> add small features, and the built-in webserver is very nice (includes
> threading)! However, if you got this to work, I'd love it. Personally
> I think it's all about building an index. By putting 2 million
> filenames + block locations into for example an indexed mysqlite3
> database, it should be able to extract one of them in milliseconds.
> However, what 7zip does does not seem optimized - what I saw was a
> simple for-next loop of all the filenames (and this is being done by
> looping the data on disk, not on a model in memory)...

Well, it isn't exactly 7z. It's a server which instead of reading the
files from the local filesystem, reads them from a "7z filesystem".
By doing everything in the same process, it keeps the index open in
memory. No need to cache block locations it outside and pass it in and out.
In fact, it isn't caching anything. The article nevers goes through the
filesystem, fixing the bug whith non-ASCII7 characters.
It also avoids the cgi-wrapping of articles and thus the url-rewrites.

Efficience is quite good. Reading everything from the 7z file i get the
page in about 2 seconds. And there are a lot of queries (favicon,
article, skin, and one for each image).

With proper rewriting, i got even images working! ...provided that you
are online, of course. You could point the images to an intermediate
proxy of your lan.

The main problem I found is that it can take quite a lot of memory (some
buffer of uncompressed data, i guess). HTTP handling is very basic, but
good enough for the intended use.

If you want to try it out, drop me a line and i'll send you the source
code / the binary for Windows/Linux. I'm still thinking where to publich
it. Don't know if Brion may like having it on mediawiki's SVN.

------

While doing this i also found some bugs in the static dumps:
-There are on the articles calls to
w/extensions/wikihiero/img/hiero_XXX.png but the extension images are
not on the 7z. Probably worth adding it for the 'pedias.
-Paths of commons images are redirected to /upload/shared/... but images
included from commons descriptions have an absolute path
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/... (visit
Image:PD-icon.svg for example).
-TeX images point to a math/ folder, which is not included on the 7z.
Any hope of them being added?
-The included /skins/common/wikibits.js uses wgBreakFrames but articles
doesn't include the javascript properties. Added while making the dump?

Note: I'm using a december 2006 dump.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
> I have been for several days in a remote part of India with little or no
> Internet access.  I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false
> credentials in content disputes.  I understood this to be primarily the
> matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely
> understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and
> not a matter of violation of people's trust.  I want to make it
> perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully
> based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.  Even now, I
> have not been able to check diffs, etc.

I was hoping that was all that was behind your dismissal of the issue.
I think that should put to rest the (few, admittingly) calls for your
resignation...

> I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the
> community.  In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I
> advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach.

Good call.

>   From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been
> contrite and apologetic.  People who characterize him as being "proud"
> of it or "bragging" are badly mistaken.

I'm not sure I agree. There may be some things EssJay has said that
I've missed, but none of the things I've seen looked like a genuine
apology to me. In order to apologise, you have to admit that you were
wrong, I haven't seen him do that yet. (If I have indeed missed the
appropriate message, I would appreciate being linked in the right
direction.)

> Despite my personal forgiveness, I hope that he will accept my
> resignation request, because forgiveness or not, these positions are not
> appropriate for him now.

Indeed, there is a difference between forgiveness and trust.
Forgiveness is a personal thing and carries with it no real risks,
trust is quite a different matter.

And to those in this thread commenting on how different Jimbo's
reaction has been to everyone else, I'll point out the main thing
Jimbo did that no-one else did: He officially requested EssJay's
resignation. No-one else did that because no-one else could - everyone
else was limited to expressing their opinions on the matter, and as
that was all they could do, they did it a lot.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
andrew.cady at gmail.com wrote:

>On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 05:53:22PM -0800, Luna wrote:
>
>
>>On 1/31/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>One point which for me makes "Be civil" preferable to "Don't be
>>>a dick" is that it advocates something that people should be in
>>>preference to what they should not be.  It has a more positive
>>>outlook.
>>>
>>>
>>Besides that, I can't remember a *single* occassion where linking
>>[[m:DICK]] has ever done anything to calm a situation down. Of
>>*course* the other person is going to be offended, and anyone
>>linking this in a heated dispute is a fool to expect otherwise --
>>at the very least, get somebody neutral to do the linking. When the
>>directly involved (and most biased) parties start giving each other
>>dick/civility scoldings, it rarely ever calms anything down.
>>
>>If we want the level of discourse to be more civil, we must first
>>ourselves behave in a civil manner. Nine times out of ten, that
>>precludes linking [[m:DICK]] in my opinion.
>>
>>
>
>Besides their relative rudeness as rebukes, there is a substantial
>difference between the *meaning* of the two phrases.  "Don't be a dick"
>is a far more broad concept, and makes greater reference to motives
>and meaning; "civility" is more about style and form.
>
Quite the contrary.  If you're telling someone to not be a dick that
presumes that he was being one in the first place.

>For example, a
>dismissive, one-line response to a carefully considered five paragraph
>argument is a "dick move" even if perfectly civil.
>
Not always.  Sometimes it just keeps the heat from being cranked up.

>An exasperated
>ejaculation of emotion may be incivil but is not a dick move
>
Dicks don't ejaculate???? =-O

>--a dick
>does not act out of desperation or express vulnerability.
>
Sounds like they drive a hard bargain. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<37003.90584.qm@web35214.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<iipju29qs4ca7rsb1l71ev96o5esu46otf@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031334i5a45592q38e511badd77a86d@mail.gmail.com>
	<qhtju2tj7nvv5bh2lgn34e9e3acp0lm65b@4ax.com>

body:
Enough is enough.  This has to stop already.  I refer everyone to Giano's
post on Jimbo's talkpage.

Newyorkbrad

On 3/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 21:34:01 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> >> Do you think that the presence of a baying mob materially
> >> >> affected the outcome?  I don't.
> >> >Who did the research then?  Where did Jimmy learn that
> >> >Essjay was using his "credentials" to influence content
> >> >decisions instead of just as a pseudonym?  From the JzG
> >> >Admin Research Foundation?
> >> You are assuming that only a baying mob would do such research.
> >No one did before the "baying mob" turned up.
>
> Or the mob turned up while they were checking.  Or the mob caused it
> to be done hours if not days earlier.
>
> When did Jimmy become stupid, exactly?
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stian Haklev

subject: [Wikitech-l] 7zip dump format

body:
Dear all, thank you for your feedback. I have been sick for a few
days, but I'm back :) And I just released 0.22 of the software, which
is a bit more robust - the 7zip issue is still unresolved though.
(http://houshuang.org/blog/wikipedia-offline-server).

7Zip blocksize: Initially I was looking into whether this was the
problem (suggestion from Igor Pavlov, the developer), but I think we
can conclude that this is not the problem, since the block size is
already quite small. Also, this doesn't make sense since the time it
takes to uncompress files is proportional to the number of files - on
my old computer, 15 seconds for Indonesian (60MB), 30 seconds for
Norwegian (120MB), 150 seconds for Chinese (250MB), too long for
French (500MB)! Whereas I tried to zip a GB of 1MB pictures, and
unzipping just one of them, even if it was in the 700th MB, was
snappy.

I tried looking at the 7zip code again, but it's still too
complicated, with too many files involved, for me to understand
anything. However, it makes all the sense in the world to me that
building up an index beforehand of file names and blocks (possibly
using 7za l -slt), and then feeding the block number to the 7z
extracter, and having it jump directly there. (or if it needs more
specific information, making a lister that outputs that information,
and then feeding that).

Platonides: I don't know if having 7z run constantly is a good idea.
While I am not wedded to Ruby, it makes it very easy to do regexps,
add small features, and the built-in webserver is very nice (includes
threading)! However, if you got this to work, I'd love it. Personally
I think it's all about building an index. By putting 2 million
filenames + block locations into for example an indexed mysqlite3
database, it should be able to extract one of them in milliseconds.
However, what 7zip does does not seem optimized - what I saw was a
simple for-next loop of all the filenames (and this is being done by
looping the data on disk, not on a model in memory)...

If you had any chance to have a look at this and try it out, I would
be eternally grateful! Try downloading a bigger dump file
(Chinese/Norwegian whatever), and you should very clearly see the
speed hit. Try manually inserting what information it needs (for
example block location) for a specific file, and see if it then
extracts that file very fast - if yes, we can make it a cmd-line
argument.

Thanks a lot
Stian


from_name: Jaap Vermeulen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic
	conflict of interest?

body:
I posted the following here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Editing_for_payment:

"I have recently been approached by an organisation to improve articles
related to the organisation in question (not create new ones). I would
receive money for doing so. I am an administrator and am aware of the
policies and guidelines that govern Wikipedia. The organisation understands
that it is not acceptable to whitewash any articles and that criticism
should be included in the article. For them it is a matter of improving the
quality of the articles, not to whitewash them. Is this acceptable? Should I
decide to go ahead with this I would do so in full disclosure, since I
believe doing so without the community being aware would not be ethical,
especially since as an admin the community has placed trust in me that I
would not want to abuse."

I'd appreciate further feedback, since I'm not sure how I should proceed
here.

Jaap Vermeulen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jacoplane


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 03/03/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Did EssJay lever his stated credentials into a position of authority?

Well, um, no. EssJay came by his assorted jobs by a process of working
on Wikipedia for ages and having jobs land on his head for his
flagrant and continued cluefulness in public. That's not
credentialism, that's noticing actual ability in action.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
Rob Smith wrote:

>On 3/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Actually most of the community did the smart thing and completely
>>ignored this teapot tempest, but the reaction was in the main
>>hysterical and, yes, stupid.
>>
>>Do you think that the presence of a baying mob materially affected the
>>outcome?  I don't.
>>
>>
>Yes but the question has always been what is the reaction outside the
>community, not inside.
>
It's really a question of which of the two you consider more important.
I would normally consider the one inside the community more important
because it affects how editors relate with each other.  With good
co-operation there is little to worry about outside.

The outside reactions will mostly be short-term reflecting the outrage
of the moment.  Those reactions will come even when we do everything
right.  That goes with the territory of being big.  If we put so much
emphasis on, "What do the neighbours think?" we can too easily lose
focus on what we are about.

Ec


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please don't read this post about an AFD

body:
This has to be the first time someone nominates an article for
deletion and at the same time begs and pleads that it not be deleted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/August_Donnelly

"DO NOT DELETE This page is most certainly of a notable artist for which
I can vouch. I created this entry at his request from an article written by the
signed author. Albeit true that he is up and coming and certainly not widely
known yet, it is indeed very petty and immature to make unfounded
commentary simply because you may not be familiar with the artist in
question"


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

>stvrtg wrote:
>
>
>
>>4. If Essjay misrepresented himself in any substantial way in arguments
>>related to his claimed expertise, how is it that noone qualified in that
>>area suspected he wasnt a Phd/Thd?  I suspect the reason is because his
>>ventures into misrepresentation were quite limited to the cantankerous. I
>>suspect also that this fact might bother people who might have thought they
>>could tell just by looking at someones pixels.
>>
>>
>
>Because, generally, we don't expect people to lie about their academic
>credientials.  How many editors in that area who would know if he were
>making it up do we even have?  And, again, Essjay was (yes, the word is
>now was) a very trusted member of the community - he kept the charade up
>enough where few, if any, would bother questioning him anyway.  That's a
>problem, and it's disturbing that you don't recognize it.
>
>

But we don't just defer to experts, even trusted ones, especially in
situations where other people are also experts.  If I came across
another person claiming to be an expert in artificial intelligence, I
would still check their edits, and sometimes contest them---whether
they're telling the truth about their credentials is actually pretty
irrelevant, because there are plenty of CS PhDs with non-mainstream POV
views on the subject.  I'd imagine theology is similarly contentious.

In fact wasn't this exactly what Larry Sanger criticized us for a while
back---that we *don't* actually defer to experts?

-Mark


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
> An exasperated
>> ejaculation of emotion may be incivil but is not a dick move
>>

on 3/3/07 8:20 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge at telus.net wrote:

> Dicks don't ejaculate???? =-O

Only if provoked.

Marc


from_name: Cool Cat

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<0ggiu2dr3qqm6qq762vbj3i0b4hpuum7mi@4ax.com>
	<20070303105539.88290.qmail@web35204.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<45E96F19.1020803@gmail.com>
	<794ju2dbks12tc9q8aodse31ietrm85h6h@4ax.com>
	<45E9BDA5.8080807@fas.harvard.edu>

body:
 Essjay situation? Why is this even in discussion? I'd consider the matter
closed the second it was mentioned. I do not know the details of the actual
matter but this entire thread is nothing but gossip. Let's focus on
something that is actually productive and not potentially inflammatory.

    - Cool Cat

On 3/3/07, Christopher G. Parham <cparham at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > I don't meant to characterise all concerned as a mob, by the way -
> > several people while taking some part in the process did their level
> > best to make it less hostile, and I salute them.  Nor does that mean
> > the concerns expressed are not valid.
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
> >
> Unfortunately I'm not sure that individuals attempting to make it less
> hostile can possibly have much effect. No matter how reasonable and
> careful everyone is being with their statements, the scale from Essjay's
> perspective must be daunting.
>
> "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly
> would still have been a mob."
>
> --Chris
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 3/3/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> It was just someone adding their comment in the wrong place. The
> nominator wasn't the anon making that comment.

Yea I kinda feel stupid now. Was wondering how an anon got an AFD page created.

Also I noticed that [[Double posting]] is up for its second
nomination. If "Top posting" is ever nominated, will someone find a
way to make it always appear at the top of the AFD page for that day?


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
> And how does this comment show any "true leadership"? To me it sounds
> like minimization and an evasion of responsibility:
>
> "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it."

Have you even read Jimbo's email? He wasn't in full possession of the
facts when he said that and has since withdrawn it (at least to us, I
don't know if he's contacted the journalist again). Jimbo made a
mistake by saying that and has now corrected that mistake - what more
do you want?


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On 03/03/07, Stephen Park <stephenpark15 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/3/07, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mar 3, 2007, at 7:22 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Yes, exactly that.  Sorrow, but recognition that there is an issue of
> > > trust.  It did not need to be rammed home with a brick.
> >
> > True leadership in difficult moments are measured by statements like
> > the one made by Jimbo. Clear, forceful enough, but with an attitude
> > and tone that demonstrate kindness and understanding of human nature.
> > Well done.
> >
> > -- Jossi
>
> And how does this comment show any "true leadership"? To me it sounds
> like minimization and an evasion of responsibility:
>
> "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it."

That was his *first* comment. The one in question is at the top of the
thread you're replyinf to...

:: I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false
:: credentials in content disputes.  I understood this to be primarily the
:: matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely
:: understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and
:: not a matter of violation of people's trust.  I want to make it
:: perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully
:: based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.

(...)

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


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Remote loader

body:
This site is remote loading the Italian wikipedia:

http://wikipedia.sapere.alice.it/wikipedia/wiki/Special:RecentChanges

and adding a topbar (it's not an html frame).

Incidentally, it's a subsite of a major Italian telecom company... do
they have some kind of agreement?

Ciao,
Alfio


body:
William Pietri wrote:

>Hi, Ray. I enjoy your posts, so it pains me to disagree with you, but I
>can't avoid it here. Sorry for the length of this, but I couldn't find a
>way to do it and still be as clear as I wanted.
>
Disagreements are a necessary part of synthesizing agreement.  You do
disagree respectfully so I can't complain.

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>stvrtg wrote:
>>
>>
>>>[...] Is the credibility of the site somehow diminished due to
>>>one editor's mistake in misrepresenting himself? Nonsense.
>>>
>>>
>>I very strongly agree with stvrtg.  This has been an incredible exercise
>>in making a mountain out of a molehill.  We have verifiability standards
>>for article pages.  We do not have them for user pages, and it does not
>>strike me as irregular that a fictitious persona would have a fictitious
>>biography.  [...]
>>
>>[...] Now that we see "the truth" there is a massive
>>rush to look for scapegoats for our own stupidity in taking such a claim
>>seriously.  We need a Lord of the Flies to whom we can pay homage.
>>Brilliant minds often forget how close to the surface lies the descent
>>to barbarism.
>>
>>Should EssJay have revealed the truth about himself?  Perhaps.  But
>>when?  And how should that transition be made?  I hardly see the need to
>>retroactively correct all the inaccuracies of the last two years.  I see
>>the real biography on Wikia as a good faith attempt to begin setting the
>>record straight.  It should be viewed in that way, and not as an excuse
>>for digging up every bit of dirt on EssJay for the last two years.
>>
>>Instead of making a mountain out of a molehill when such issues come up
>>we really need a mechanism to get over it.
>>
>>
>
>I would like to feel that way, but I can't. Looking at the root of this
>deception, among his very first edits on Wikipedia he falsely claimed
>credentials in an effort to win a content dispute. A dispute about
>which, it turns out, he was wrong. Even so, had it ended there, I think
>this would be more anthill than molehill.
>
That would be unethical, though I don't have the intention to review the
facts at [[Imprimatur]], which is the article to which I presume you refer.

>Unfortunately, he continued, both expanding the deception and using it
>in other on-WP discussions. Even there, I think we get somewhere above
>the molehill size, but only modestly. Again, had he stopped here, I'd be
>in the so-what camp. For me, though, it's the next three issues that
>make it a pretty big deal.
>
>First, he contacted real-world professors, representing himself as a
>fellow professor and Wikipedia administrator, to advocate for Wikipedia.
>He specifically suggests they look at his claimed credentials to bolster
>his standing. Committing fraud (by which I mean misrepresentation for
>gain) while citing his administrative position is to me a big violation
>of the trust that adminship represents.
>
>Second, he appears to have actively deceived a top reporter and a fact
>checker in an on-the-record interview as a leading member of Wikipedia.
>(I'm basing that on this bit: "He often takes his laptop to class, so
>that he can be available to Wikipedians while giving a quiz [...]" The
>reporter could have made that up and tricked the fact-checker, but I'm
>going to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.) This has caused
>actual harm to Wikipedia's reputation. [1] As well, you can bet that any
>journalist who has done a Wikipedia story quoting an anonymous user
>broke out in a cold sweat when they read about this. Any future articles
>about Wikipedia will surely be much more skeptical of anything said by
>an anonymous admin, making it harder for people who are using anonymity
>legitimately to serve as sources.
>
That may end up a good thing.  In the short run there is apparent harm
to Wikipedia's reputation.  If the result is that reporters become more
circumspect about what they write that's not entirely bad.

>Third, he tried to cover this up through further deception. From Jimbo's
>statements, it's clear that Essjay was not frank with him. Essjay was
>certainly not frank with others in his explanations of this, at least
>the ones on Wikipedia that I've read. This caused further harm to
>Wikipedia externally and internally. As the Washington mantra goes,
>"It's not the crime, it's the cover-up."
>
I agree that he may not have told everything to Jimbo; however, Jimbo
has accepted his apologies, and his Wikia page had already begun the
path to getting the proper information on record.

>Now personally, I feel terrible for Essjay in this. I can only dimly
>imagine the awfulness of having such big portions of one's personal and
>professional lives come crashing down like this. Especially when it's
>all due to a stupid mistake that snowballed out of control. I wish him
>only the best in recovering from this. I look forward to him having a
>successful RfA in a few months and resuming his position as, by every
>account, a whirlwind of positive contribution.
>
It is about recovery and healing, not about blame and punishment.  How
much effect this has had on his personal credibility outside Wikipedia
remains to be seen..  There may be others who have lied about their
credentials, but who have flown beneath the radar because they didn't
have the ambition.  At what threshhold do they come clean, and when they
do how can they avoid the overreaction by some members of the
community?  Anticipation of such reactions can make these admissions
more difficult than thye should be.

>I also don't think this is anywhere mountain-sized. This will pass, and
>I expect it will be much less of landmark than, say, the whole
>Seigenthaler thing was. As you point out, articles were generally not
>harmed in the making of this, and there have been no credible claims of
>abused powers. And certainly, some portion of the people talking about
>this are failing to stay cool, creating unnecessary froth.
>
Sure, but mountains crafted from molehills are most often illusions
anyways.  The froth gives such an issue a longer life and more exposure
than it could everhave garnered on its own.

>But to my mind, it's no molehill either. The community placed a lot of
>trust in Essjay. Very regrettably, he betrayed part of that trust, and
>betrayals always hurt. Making the both project and Jimbo look bad in
>public [2] is no small thing to me. More objectively, Jimbo asking
>somebody to resign as an administrator, bureaucrat, checkuser, and
>member of ArbCom is a sign that this is not a molehill.
>
Fair enough.

>P.S. Maybe part of the difference in reactions here is that I look at a
>lot of the comments and I tend to automatically discount the very
>emotional ones? Doing that and trying to pull some consensus position
>out of the RFC gives me some comfort, as I feel like it's not far from
>what Jimbo decided to do.
>
>[1] If you're not sure about this, see the commentary in reaction to
>this. For example, from the Chronicle of Higher Education: "But the
>incident is clearly damaging to Wikipedia's credibility -- especially
>with professors who will now note that one of the site's most visible
>academics has turned out to be a fraud."
>
>[2] For example, this quote from Stephen Dubner, co-author of
>Freakonomics: "This is hardly a felony, but it does make you wonder
>about what else happens at Wikipedia that Jimmy Wales doesn?t have a
>problem with."
>
It's not just a matter of Jimbo "not having a problem".  It's impossible
for him to keep fully in touch with every potential problem, and still
do a good job at the things he does best.

Ec


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 12:21:46 -0800 (PST), Cheney Shill
<halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:

>> Do you think that the presence of a baying mob materially
>> affected the outcome?  I don't.

>Who did the research then?  Where did Jimmy learn that
>Essjay was using his "credentials" to influence content
>decisions instead of just as a pseudonym?  From the JzG
>Admin Research Foundation?

You are assuming that only a baying mob would do such research.

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


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<37003.90584.qm@web35214.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<iipju29qs4ca7rsb1l71ev96o5esu46otf@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 12:21:46 -0800 (PST), Cheney Shill
> <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> Do you think that the presence of a baying mob materially
> >> affected the outcome?  I don't.
>
> >Who did the research then?  Where did Jimmy learn that
> >Essjay was using his "credentials" to influence content
> >decisions instead of just as a pseudonym?  From the JzG
> >Admin Research Foundation?
>
> You are assuming that only a baying mob would do such research.
>

No one did before the "baying mob" turned up.

--
geni


body:
On 03/03/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:

> P.S. Maybe part of the difference in reactions here is that I look at a
> lot of the comments and I tend to automatically discount the very
> emotional ones? Doing that and trying to pull some consensus position
> out of the RFC gives me some comfort, as I feel like it's not far from
> what Jimbo decided to do.

People were deleting comments from the RFC they felt "didn't help"
matters, i.e. were not sufficiently negative toward Essjay. So I would
discount it as a test of public opinion.

- d.


body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 22:01:45 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>People were deleting comments from the RFC they felt "didn't help"
>matters, i.e. were not sufficiently negative toward Essjay. So I would
>discount it as a test of public opinion.

Who?  If that's the case (and I have not checked yet) then they should
at the very least be slapped with a wet trout.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<37003.90584.qm@web35214.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<iipju29qs4ca7rsb1l71ev96o5esu46otf@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031334i5a45592q38e511badd77a86d@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 21:34:01 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>> >> Do you think that the presence of a baying mob materially
>> >> affected the outcome?  I don't.
>> >Who did the research then?  Where did Jimmy learn that
>> >Essjay was using his "credentials" to influence content
>> >decisions instead of just as a pseudonym?  From the JzG
>> >Admin Research Foundation?
>> You are assuming that only a baying mob would do such research.
>No one did before the "baying mob" turned up.

Or the mob turned up while they were checking.  Or the mob caused it
to be done hours if not days earlier.

When did Jimmy become stupid, exactly?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 13:40:33 -0800 (PST), Cheney Shill
<halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:

>I'm asking who did the research that you claim was done
>outside the "baying mob" (aka, the community).

Not all the community were part of the baying mob.  Most were not.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On 3/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Or the mob turned up while they were checking.  Or the mob caused it
> to be done hours if not days earlier.
>

nyet. If it was going to happen days before ti should already have happened

> When did Jimmy become stupid, exactly?

jimbo has better things to do with his time than did through 10s of Ks of edits.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Remote loader

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> This site is remote loading the Italian wikipedia:
>
> http://wikipedia.sapere.alice.it/wikipedia/wiki/Special:RecentChanges
> and adding a topbar (it's not an html frame).
>
> Incidentally, it's a subsite of a major Italian telecom company... do
> they have some kind of agreement?

It's a really good integration (probably a skin). Following the "Alice e
wikipedia" from the added topbar it seems there is an agreement with
Wikimedia Italia.

I translate it below:

 >Il Portale Alice e Wikimedia Italia hanno dato vita lo scorso luglio
 >2006 a una collaborazione finalizzata a rendere immediatamente
 >disponibile l'enciclopedia online realizzata da Wikipedia anche
 >direttamente dal canale Sapere del portale Alice
 >(http://sapere.alice.it).

Alice portal and Wikimedia Italia have a colaboration which shows
wikipedia at http://sapere.alice.it

 >L'intero sito di Wikipedia ? quindi raggiungibile per gli utenti di
 >Alice anche all'indirizzo:
 >http://wikipedia.sapere.alice.it/wikipedia
 >senza alcuna modifica rispetto a quanto disponibile su
 >http://it.wikipedia.org e con la sola aggiunta di una piccola barra di
 >navigazione di Alice per rendere possibile ai suoi utenti un agevole
 >ritorno agli altri contenuti del portale.

The Wikipedia content can be accesed by their users at
http://wikipedia.sapere.alice.it/wikipedia, without changes from
http://it.wikipedia.org, only adding a little Alice navigation bar, to
allow thwe user to return to the (Alice) portal content.

 >Nessun banner o altra forma di pubblicit? viene posta all'interno
delle >pagine in quanto l'unico fine dell'iniziativa ? quello di far
conoscere >e rendere immediatamente disponibile un servizio che viene
ritenuto >eccellente e innovativo come quello di Wikipedia agli utenti
di Alice, >aumentando cos? la notoriet? e la sempre maggiore diffusione
del >servizio stesso.

It's not a banner nor another advertising method. It only wants to make
known and available an excellent and innovative service as Wikipedia for
Alice users, improving service's notoriety and diffusion.


body:
On 03/03/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 22:01:45 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> wrote:

> >People were deleting comments from the RFC they felt "didn't help"
> >matters, i.e. were not sufficiently negative toward Essjay. So I would
> >discount it as a test of public opinion.

> Who?  If that's the case (and I have not checked yet) then they should
> at the very least be slapped with a wet trout.

I did in fact slap the person who did so with a wet trout. It was
certainly a remarkable new application of "IAR" to my experience at
least.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

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

Added Ryan Lane (laner), who has been working on the LDAP authentication
plugin for some time.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF6kj7wRnhpk1wk44RAhXFAKCk+g71faCHm43lfE1l06DPPgHlQACfY9XE
89KzHAsQmlqWFz9DzbFpycY=
=2KsG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad UTF-8

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Hypothetically, almost anyplace that crops strings or otherwise does
>internal string manipulation other than with Language::truncate() could
>end up spitting out bad UTF-8. :P
>
>Web POST and GET input is sanitized (normalized and bad character
>stripped) at the WebRequest level, but internal processing is not always
>pure, and in most cases output is not sanitized either. Incorrect
>cropping of long values in limited-length database fields is another
>possibility.
>
>(Note that XML dump generation specifically runs a UTF-8 cleanup step on
>output; the XML dump output is thus guaranteed to be UTF-8-clean and NFC.)
>
>
This statement is true. I have never seen an XML dump with unicode errors.

Jeff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad UTF-8

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Hypothetically, almost anyplace that crops strings or otherwise does
>internal string manipulation other than with Language::truncate() could
>end up spitting out bad UTF-8. :P
>
>Web POST and GET input is sanitized (normalized and bad character
>stripped) at the WebRequest level, but internal processing is not always
>pure, and in most cases output is not sanitized either. Incorrect
>cropping of long values in limited-length database fields is another
>possibility.
>
>(Note that XML dump generation specifically runs a UTF-8 cleanup step on
>output; the XML dump output is thus guaranteed to be UTF-8-clean and NFC.)
>
>
This statement is true. I have never seen a Wikipeida XML dump with
unicode errors.

Jeff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Remote loader

body:
On 3/3/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> > This site is remote loading the Italian wikipedia:
> >
> > http://wikipedia.sapere.alice.it/wikipedia/wiki/Special:RecentChanges
> > and adding a topbar (it's not an html frame).
> >
> > Incidentally, it's a subsite of a major Italian telecom company... do
> > they have some kind of agreement?
>
> It's a really good integration (probably a skin). Following the "Alice e
> wikipedia" from the added topbar it seems there is an agreement with
> Wikimedia Italia.

Oops.. that's what I get for not doing proper research...

Ciao,
Alfio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad UTF-8

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

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> One problem I seem to run into over and over again while working with
> data from our projects is invalid UTF-8 sequences that litter our
> output. I could go on about how doing this is a horrible offense
> against man, but my main concern is to simply get around these issues
> in my own code.
[snip]
> Simply striping the bad characters on the serialized output frightens
> me because I worry that eventually I'll strip an adjacent delimiter
> and make the output unparsable.  It would at least be useful to know
> all the places I could expect to find junk like this. :)

Hypothetically, almost anyplace that crops strings or otherwise does
internal string manipulation other than with Language::truncate() could
end up spitting out bad UTF-8. :P

Web POST and GET input is sanitized (normalized and bad character
stripped) at the WebRequest level, but internal processing is not always
pure, and in most cases output is not sanitized either. Incorrect
cropping of long values in limited-length database fields is another
possibility.

(Note that XML dump generation specifically runs a UTF-8 cleanup step on
output; the XML dump output is thus guaranteed to be UTF-8-clean and NFC.)

Running UtfNormal::cleanUp() or similar should guarantee well-formed
UTF-8 output. Any invalid bytes will be replaced with the Unicode
replacement character U+FFFE which is reserved for this purpose.

Thanks to UTF-8's structured value space, accidentally removing ASCII
field delimiters in the cleanup step isn't possible -- the ASCII byte
cannot be confused with a trailing byte for a longer sequence -- so in
theory it should be safe to run a single step at the end instead of many
individual cleanup checks.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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d1QkBzfToD01f0Ljgl+Y7EY=
=txlC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Is wikipedia using MogileFS?

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

howard chen wrote:
> On 2/27/07, Domas Mituzas wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>>> I found a php class in the SVN which is MogileFS client, so it that
>>> mean wikipedia is using MogileFS?
>> we're not using it.
>>
>> In theory it could be nice, but in reality not that many people here
>> speak that kind of Perl. ;-)
>>
>
> so what kind of hardware/software are being used by wikipedia to host
> images or other resources?

NFS -> a box with a lot of disks -> lighttpd -> squid

Terrifying, isn't it? :D

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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mdWQftr8MULM+hx0D4MF+WE=
=kdGh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ajax Search

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

DaBuum wrote:
> is there any reason why wfSajaxSearch is casesensitive and limited to
> namespace 0? I just wondered if I can get this nifty feature to show me the
> same results as the normal search without hacking core-code or using runkit
> functions to redefine wfSajaxSearch?

Well, it's case-sensitive because the title fields are case-sensitive.
So a case-insensitive search will need an appropriate database table
supporting it. (You'd probably also want to normalize whitespace and
punctuation and accents and such.)

Supporting other namespaces would in theory not be too hard; just
recognize them on the input and mix in the results, perhaps? Or else
stick that in with the rest on the above support table.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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cAbUTtTQq6cOqt73/UegYzI=
=zNeI
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] shared db for images?

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

Travis Derouin wrote:
> I'm pretty sure nothing like this exists, but I thought I'd confirm
> before running off to setup a shared wiki for uploads, but is there a
> similar feature to wgSharedDB for images that allows a user to upload
> an image without leaving the wiki and share it with other wikis in the
> same group?

Not exactly as such; the shared upload feature (which we use for
Commons) allows you to *use* any image from the shared image wiki on any
of the other local wikis transparently.

What you can do easily is replace the upload link to point you over to
the common upload wiki. (It's a config var to override the URL for the
link.)

If you want the shared upload form to appear *in each individual local
wiki* then you'd have to do a little more work, I guess, to make sure
things are saved and logged in the right places.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 15:35:45 -0700, "Rob Smith" <nobs03 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>So the question here again, Why did Brandt feel the necessity to "stalk and
>harass" editors?

Because he's an obsessive, and given his occupation why would that
surprise us?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<37003.90584.qm@web35214.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<iipju29qs4ca7rsb1l71ev96o5esu46otf@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031334i5a45592q38e511badd77a86d@mail.gmail.com>
	<qhtju2tj7nvv5bh2lgn34e9e3acp0lm65b@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031430i65fd6ec7pbdaf79f0f7325b54@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 22:30:44 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Or the mob turned up while they were checking.  Or the mob caused it
>> to be done hours if not days earlier.
>nyet. If it was going to happen days before ti should already have happened

Why?  It was only slashdotted a day or so back.

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia Search on Mobile] Technical Contact
 Window for Nokia Taiwan

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

Simetrical wrote:
> On 3/2/07, Hsiang-Tai Chien <htchien1225 at yahoo.com.tw> wrote:
>> On behave of Wikimania organization team seeking for sponsorship, we have got an request from Nokia Taiwan to seek for a technical contact window for Wikipedia Search on Mobile Devices. Is there anyone know whom we could provide to Nokia Taiwan for this request? And what's the opinion on this from the Foundation?
>
> Brion is currently the CTO, so you should probably ask him.

That has a certain logic to it. :)

- -- brion
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VgO46h2eP4kvKhl+tHN2p2g=
=Q+5h
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<37003.90584.qm@web35214.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<iipju29qs4ca7rsb1l71ev96o5esu46otf@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031334i5a45592q38e511badd77a86d@mail.gmail.com>
	<qhtju2tj7nvv5bh2lgn34e9e3acp0lm65b@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031430i65fd6ec7pbdaf79f0f7325b54@mail.gmail.com>
	<p83ku2lq1eefsk1jkrc4kraf6j9lcbl4j2@4ax.com>

body:
Could we all stop please?

The moon has returned.

Repeat: THE MOON HAS RETURNED.

The particularly bloody sacrifice of Essjay was successful in
appeasing the Great Red Monster In The Sky that Ate The Moon.

There is no need to continue further. Or the monster might come back
and eat YOU.

Thanks.

- d.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-04

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20133).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

references:
<kumiu2t550gdnt9bnj2dp3ssmqp7g54sln@4ax.com>
	<37003.90584.qm@web35214.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<iipju29qs4ca7rsb1l71ev96o5esu46otf@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031334i5a45592q38e511badd77a86d@mail.gmail.com>
	<qhtju2tj7nvv5bh2lgn34e9e3acp0lm65b@4ax.com>
	<f80608430703031430i65fd6ec7pbdaf79f0f7325b54@mail.gmail.com>
	<p83ku2lq1eefsk1jkrc4kraf6j9lcbl4j2@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140703031611p3c15b0det46c28de732572f36@mail.gmail.com>

body:
> Could we all stop please?
>
> The moon has returned.
>
> Repeat: THE MOON HAS RETURNED.
>
> The particularly bloody sacrifice of Essjay was successful in
> appeasing the Great Red Monster In The Sky that Ate The Moon.
>
> There is no need to continue further. Or the monster might come back
> and eat YOU.
>
> Thanks.

Pure genius, thank you!


from_name: Angela

body:
On 3/4/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> This has to be the first time someone nominates an article for
> deletion and at the same time begs and pleads that it not be deleted.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/August_Donnelly
>
> "DO NOT DELETE...

It was just someone adding their comment in the wrong place. The
nominator wasn't the anon making that comment.

Angela


subject:
[Wikitech-l] mwdumper solation for Fedora Core and Redhat Linux
	Distributions

body:
Changing the following variable in the /etc/my.conf file for mysqld
appears to get around the problems with mwdumper failing to complete
importing of the XML dumps:

set-variable = max_allowed_packet=20M

mwdumper does not always return errors in this case when this value is
not set correctly, but mysqld will display errors in this case provided
it is invoked
from the command line without piping the input to the program.
Fedora Core users are advised to review these settings if they encounter
problems importing with mwdumper on these platforms.

Jeff


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Sanger weighs in on the Essjay incident

body:
On 3/3/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> As in Chinese Democracy, the Guns n. Roses album that has been 15 years in
> the making and still hasn't been released.

Ah. That interpretation did actually cross my mind. But I dismissed it
as farfetched :)

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Commons image archive

body:
On 3/4/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> So what's going on? Will this archive appear on download.wikimedia.org
> as well or not? I think it should be made available as a 'plain' zip
> download as well.

I recommended against that on the basis of the frequent and incessant
advocacy of BitTorrent as a cure all for our bandwidth related issues,
and that we couldn't have a better fit for BitTorrent than this
application.

>And the torrent is not being hosted on Wikimedia
> servers, which it should be for reliability at least. (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2006/archive

Yes it is.  Where did you get the idea that it was not?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Commons image archive

body:
On 3/4/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I recommended against that on the basis of the frequent and incessant
> > advocacy of BitTorrent as a cure all for our bandwidth related issues,
> > and that we couldn't have a better fit for BitTorrent than this
> > application.
>
> Wouldn't offering it as both be a good way to see what users will prefer?

Users would probably prefer the http/ftp download link option. It's
simple, easy and fast.. at least it is so long as we have enough
bandwidth to support it.

I don't believe that anyone thinks otherwise. But user preference is
irrelevant if the cost of bandwidth causes us to choose to not make
such things available.

The open questions are: 1) can we continue to support large files with
our existing model and 2) what alternative exist and what are their
limitations.

A lot of the bittorrent software is fairly buggy, ... after the time I
spent on it today I would have much rather forgone the BT software and
worked on something else... but I do think that it is important that
we gain some concrete and direct experience with it.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally	problematic
 conflict of interest?

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 3/4/07 8:28 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:
>
>
>> Because he who pays the piper calls the tune.
>>
>
> That is an incredibly broad statement, Guy. If the persons who pay me called
> the tune, they would not receive what they are paying for. And, besides, if
> they tried - it would fall on deaf ears.
>
You're one in a million, and that's not flattery. :-) While it's
theoretically possible to have unbiased edits from a paid source, in
practice it hasn't gone well so far, and in these days of corporations
looking for every imaginable advertising venue, people are ultra-paranoid.

I think if a leading historian were to announce that he had received a
commission to work on a company's WP article, editing under his own
name, people would struggle with that one. The historian's overt
participation would be a boost to WP's credibility, and the historian is
putting personal reputation on the line, but it's also setting a
precedent to later accept paid edits from a less-leading historian, then
the underpaid instructor at the community college, then the "Company
Historian" in the marketing department.

Stan


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally
	problematic	conflict of interest?

body:
>>
>> On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 19:38:37 +0100, "Jaap Vermeulen"
>> <jaap.vermeulen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I have recently been approached by an organisation to improve articles
>>> related to the organisation in question (not create new ones). I would
>>> receive money for doing so.

 On 3/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>>
>> Ask them for the sources form which this should be drawn, post them to
>> the Talk pages, and request that the company donate the money to the
>> Foundation.  How would that do?
>>
>> Guy (JzG)
>> --
on 3/4/07 7:24 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm at macgyvermagic at gmail.com wrote:

> If they are as aware of the rules as they appear to be, there's little
> problems, but you have to be very careful with your editing. And yes, do it
> in full disclosure. I like the idea JzG posted better though. Even good
> editors can lose their neutrality when money is involved.
>
> Mgm

Huh!?!

How would giving away the money you are paid for doing work make that work
any more credible? What about the credibility and integrity of the person
doing that work? Ever hear of trust!?!

As for "good editors losing their neutrality when money is involved" - to
make this statement work you need to remove the word "good".

Marc Riddell


body:
on 3/4/07 7:51 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:

> On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 07:42:40 -0500, Marc Riddell
> <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> How would giving away the money you are paid for doing work make that work
>> any more credible? What about the credibility and integrity of the person
>> doing that work? Ever hear of trust!?!
>
> Because (a) you would not be doing the work (just posting the sources
> and allowing others to do it) and (b) you would not personally
> benefit, the foundation would.  So it's pretty much completely clean.
>
> Guy (JzG)

Guy,

I feel you are missing my point. Why would being paid money for any
contribution I made to a project make that action unclean?

Marc


from_name: William Pietri

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> Huh!?!
>
> How would giving away the money you are paid for doing work make that work
> any more credible? What about the credibility and integrity of the person
> doing that work? Ever hear of trust!?!
>
> As for "good editors losing their neutrality when money is involved" - to
> make this statement work you need to remove the word "good".
>

Absolutely. That's why journalists regularly take payments from people
they are covering in the news. A "good" journalist would have no problem
writing a fair article, no matter who's giving them money. We trust
them, so there's no problem.

Wait, no. It's just the opposite. That's called a conflict of interest.
And behavior like that is strictly forbidden by any journalistic code of
ethics I've ever seen. E.g.:

    Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than
    the public's right to know.

    Journalists should:

        * Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
        * Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise
          integrity or damage credibility.
        * Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment,
          and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public
          office and service in community organizations if they
          compromise journalistic integrity.
        * Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
        * Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power
          accountable.
        * Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests
          and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
        * Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money;
          avoid bidding for news.

(from the "Act Independently" section of http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)

We ignore their historically evolved and time-tested solution at our
great peril.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


body:
on 3/4/07 8:28 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:

> Because he who pays the piper calls the tune.

That is an incredibly broad statement, Guy. If the persons who pay me called
the tune, they would not receive what they are paying for. And, besides, if
they tried - it would fall on deaf ears.

Marc


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Soft deletion

body:
For me, I would just state that the current proposal as enunciated by
Erik appears on the face of it an endorsement of open season on
articles. I don't like the idea one bit.

I am not sure if Erik remembers the intricate shenanigans used to try
to erase all knowledge of Catholic Priests Pedophilia from wikipedia
(or at the very least attempting to orphan the article with the
details). In any case my personal position is that although we should
emphasize improving what we have, over adding more minutiae, we should
also emphasize *keeping* what we have, over erasing it, when what we
have is of value.

On 3/1/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > And I thought someone just claimed notability was reasons for
> > instant-keep, not reasons to delete.
>
> That was me - and I was stating the way I thought things SHOULD be,
> not the way they are currently applied.
>
> -Matt
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]


body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>> (from the "Act Independently" section of http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)
>>
>>
>> We ignore their historically evolved and time-tested solution at our
>> great peril.
>>
>
> We seem to have strayed from Jaap Vermeulen's original inquiry. I still
> support his ability to receive compensation for his editing. As always, I am
> going to assume good faith.
>

Sorry, but I guess I wasn't clear enough.

Jaap's question is, as the subject line says, whether editing for
payment of articles related to the payee is a fundamentally problematic
conflict of interest. My answer is yes, absolutely.

Further, in many ways, we are in the same situation as journalists. Our
product only has value to the extend that we have the trust of the
public. That means that we need both to actually be trustworthy and to
avoid situations whose appearance would undermine trust. Journalists
have been wrestling with these issues for many decades, and we can and
should learn from them. That's why I posted the relevant snipped from
the SPJ ethics code.

Unfortunately, the assumption of good faith isn't relevant when making
this decision. That's a mechanism to defuse conflict and build working
relationships. Jaap is obviously acting in good faith. But I have even
talked with PR people who were spamming Wikipedia in good faith. They
honestly thought that their links and promotional text were true and
useful to readers, so there was no harm in including them. The
assumption of good faith means that we should be kind to them, to treat
them amicably, and to educate them. But it does not and must not mean
that we allow the integrity of the encyclopedia to be compromised.

By the way, Jaap, many thanks for being very public about this. A fine
demonstration not just of good faith, but good sense.

William

P.S. For those curious, I ran across a nice collection of journalistic
ethics codes:

http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?id=387

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


body:
on 3/4/07 8:37 AM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp at gmail.com wrote:

> If a company pays someone, such as
> an employee, to edit an article on their behalf, then that's an issue
> between them. Our issue is to keep all articles NPOV, whether they
> were written on commission or not.

Yes, I agree with you.

There also seems to be, in the original argument of this thread, a desire to
yield to the larger sociocultural ethic that money is the root of all. Can't
we rise above that here?

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
gjzilla at gmail.com wrote:
> On 3/4/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Any reason why Essjay's talk page hasn't been protected yet? It's over.
>> He's
>> gone.
>>
>>
>
> Because we're open people. ~~~~

Speaking of which, whether that gets protected or not, I'd implore
people not to delete the history of his talk page.

In a month or so I'm hoping we will come back to this and see what
lessons there are to learn. Personally, my top item is to learn how to
handle problems in ways that are more civilized.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


body:
on 3/4/07 9:37 AM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs at earthlink.net wrote:

> You're one in a million, and that's not flattery.

I hope I'm not one in a million. If I am, the profession is really in
trouble! Let me be absolutely clear about what I was saying. My work is in
psychotherapy; if you came to me and insisted on telling me how to do the
work, and what you will and won't discuss (calling the tune) you would have
to go somewhere else.

Marc


from_name: Guettarda

references:
<m5glu2phmvoeoa6nkcljb1fhtff2ui99vm@4ax.com>
	<C2102D85.1E97%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>
	<8ailu2loper3oul762am70n5ksm17t8385@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 08:02:13 -0500, Marc Riddell
> <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >I feel you are missing my point. Why would being paid money for any
> >contribution I made to a project make that action unclean?
>
> Because he who pays the piper calls the tune.  See my comment
> elsewhere in this thread: what would you do - and what would they do -
> if your researches showed that the CEO eats babies?

It's all a matter of how you do it.  If someone asked you to write an
article in a format that is acceptable to Wikipedia (wikicode, NPOV, etc.),
I don't see anything wrong with them compensating you for your time.  On the
other hand, if someone asked you to write the article, post it under your
own name, and defend it, then we have a problem.  The difference is, are
they asking for your service as a writer who knows how to write a
WP-acceptable article, or are they trying to rent your reputation in
Wikipedia?  The former is no big deal, the latter is a problem.


body:
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 19:38:37 +0100, "Jaap Vermeulen"
<jaap.vermeulen at gmail.com> wrote:

>I have recently been approached by an organisation to improve articles
>related to the organisation in question (not create new ones). I would
>receive money for doing so.

Ask them for the sources form which this should be drawn, post them to
the Talk pages, and request that the company donate the money to the
Foundation.  How would that do?

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


from_name: Simetrical

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [20075]
	trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialContributions.php

body:
On 2/27/07, aaron at svn.wikimedia.org <aaron at svn.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Revision: 20075
> Author:   aaron
> Date:     2007-02-27 14:17:35 -0800 (Tue, 27 Feb 2007)
>
> Log Message:
> -----------
> * Allow /16 and /24 CIDR ips
>
> Modified Paths:
> --------------
>     trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialContributions.php
> Modified: trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialContributions.php
> ===================================================================
> --- trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialContributions.php      2007-02-27 22:06:53 UTC (rev 20074)
> +++ trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialContributions.php      2007-02-27 22:17:35 UTC (rev 20075)
> @@ -71,13 +71,18 @@
>                 if ( $this->username == 'newbies' ) {
>                         $max = $this->dbr->selectField( 'user', 'max(user_id)', false, 'make_sql' );
>                         $condition = '>' . (int)($max - $max / 100);
> +               } else if ( preg_match("/^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\/(24|16)/", $this->username) ) {
> +                       $abcd = explode( ".", $this->username );
> +                       if( substr( $this->username, -2 ) == 24 ) $ipmask = $abcd[0] . '.' . $abcd[1] . '.' . $abcd[2] . '.%';
> +                       else $ipmask=$abcd[0] . '.' . $abcd[1] . '.%';
> +                       $condition = 'rev_user_text LIKE ' . $this->dbr->addQuotes($ipmask);
>                 }
>
>                 if ( $condition == '' ) {
>                         $condition = ' rev_user_text=' . $this->dbr->addQuotes( $this->username );
>                         $index = 'usertext_timestamp';
>                 } else {
> -                       $condition = ' rev_user '.$condition ;
> +                       #$condition = ' rev_user '.$condition ;

Is it just me, or is this broken?  The prefixing of rev_user later was
removed, but the original instance of $condition didn't have the
prefixing added.  It seems to me that you'll get conditions like
"WHERE > 12345", which is obviously a syntax error.  The patch that
this was copied from didn't have this issue, changing the "$condition
= ..." line to include " rev_user".  And commenting out lines rather
than removing them is probably not generally good.

Incidentally, why is this still using the old 1% method of calculating
newbies?  Shouldn't it use user_registration?


from_name: Bartning at aol.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic
	conflict of...

body:
In a message dated 3/4/2007 12:30:11 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
jaap.vermeulen at gmail.com writes:

I'd  appreciate further feedback, since I'm not sure how I should  proceed
here.

Jaap Vermeulen
I brought up Wikipedia on a nonprofit org list.  It was after I was  unfairly
blocked, and I get a lot of awkward and/or inappropriate arguments from
those in power at Wikipedia, but I also get ignored and see them elsewhere - or
something like them.  However, the subject came up regarding how  corporations
pay and even involve their legal teams on Wikipedia articles.

I do want to say that it's questionable to have good faith when you see a
lot of stuff wrong, including using good faith like a religion.  However,  from
what I see, at least you have ethics as an editor (and administrator no
less).  I think Wikipedia needs more checks on admins, and there's a lot of
unfairness in the process right now.

Vincent Bartning
UN: John Wallace Rich

**************************************
 AOL now offers free
email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at
http://www.aol.com.


body:
In a message dated 3/4/2007 6:39:10 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
stanshebs at earthlink.net writes:

You're  one in a million, and that's not flattery. :-) While it's
theoretically  possible to have unbiased edits from a paid source, in
practice it hasn't  gone well so far, and in these days of corporations
looking for every  imaginable advertising venue, people are ultra-paranoid.

I think if a  leading historian were to announce that he had received a
commission to  work on a company's WP article, editing under his own
name, people would  struggle with that one. The historian's overt
participation would be a  boost to WP's credibility, and the historian is
putting personal  reputation on the line, but it's also setting a
precedent to later accept  paid edits from a less-leading historian, then
the underpaid instructor at  the community college, then the "Company
Historian" in the marketing  department.

Stan

Yes, I think that being paid to write articles should be against the  rules.
It's ironic that I have gotten flak writing about a subject I don't  get paid
for but work with.

Vincent

**************************************
 AOL now offers free
email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at
http://www.aol.com.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Tim Starling

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

body:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
> Dear Wikimedians,
>
> The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2006 competition is now
> over, and the winner has been selected. Thank you for voting.
> Of the 662 Wikimedians who voted, 83 selected 'Aurora Borealis' [1]
> as the 'Wikimedia Commons Picture of 2006'.

Has anyone attempted to contact the photographer, Joshua Strang? He
probably didn't even know it was on Commons; he might be interested to
know it was voted picture of the year.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 3/4/07 11:29 AM, William Pietri at william at scissor.com wrote:

> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> Huh!?!
>>
>> How would giving away the money you are paid for doing work make that work
>> any more credible? What about the credibility and integrity of the person
>> doing that work? Ever hear of trust!?!
>>
>> As for "good editors losing their neutrality when money is involved" - to
>> make this statement work you need to remove the word "good".
>>
>
> Absolutely. That's why journalists regularly take payments from people
> they are covering in the news. A "good" journalist would have no problem
> writing a fair article, no matter who's giving them money. We trust
> them, so there's no problem.
>
> Wait, no. It's just the opposite. That's called a conflict of interest.
> And behavior like that is strictly forbidden by any journalistic code of
> ethics I've ever seen. E.g.:
>
> Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than
> the public's right to know.
>
> Journalists should:
>
> * Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
> * Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise
> integrity or damage credibility.
> * Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment,
> and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public
> office and service in community organizations if they
> compromise journalistic integrity.
> * Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
> * Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power
> accountable.
> * Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests
> and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
> * Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money;
> avoid bidding for news.
>
>
> (from the "Act Independently" section of http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)
>
>
> We ignore their historically evolved and time-tested solution at our
> great peril.
>
>
> William
>
>

We seem to have strayed from Jaap Vermeulen's original inquiry. I still
support his ability to receive compensation for his editing. As always, I am
going to assume good faith.

Marc Riddell


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Experts (Was Correction to New Yorker Article)

body:
On 3/2/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mar 2, 2007, at 7:35 AM, stvrtg wrote:
>
> 1) It was never blind argument - it used its credentialism as a
> supporting detail, not as the whole argument.
> 2) It was never totally wrong. He may not have a PhD in theology, but
> he demonstrated that he knows his stuff.
>
> This is an interesting situation. It suggests to me that, in fact, we
> probably can [[WP:AGF]] when people cite credentials, take them
> seriously as credible, smart, dedicated users, pay heed to their
> arguments, etc. We have to resist letting them just dictate the
> content of our articles. We have to also listen to people who go
> "Look, I'm sure you do know your stuff here, but you did just make
> this error: [cites source]."

But those are safeguards we'd put
> into place even if we knew absolutely that Stephen Hawking were
> editing [[Black hole]].
>
> This ties in with another interesting point. It may be my limited
> experience, but it seems like most times experts have intervened as
> experts have been something like this.
>
> Expert: This article/policy/whatever is complete crap.
> Other editor: What? No it's not!
> Expert: Look. I have a PhD in field X and have published articles
> about Y. This is complete crap.
>
> That is to say, it's not that we tend to have experts slipping
> information in with no justification other than "I'm an expert. I
> know stuff." Their contributions as experts are more subtle, and, I
> would wager, less dangerous.
>
> What Essjay's case suggests, which is striking, is that the
> safeguards of not letting expertise be the sole reason for something
> and of still taking seriously arguments against experts, particularly
> when they cite source are actually all we need in order to be able to
> deal with being respectful towards claimed experts and take seriously
> their critiques of articles.
>
> -Phil

In otherwords, just cause somebody may be an "expert", or actually hold a
Ph.D., this still doesn't preclude them from being a "POV warrior".


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Commons image archive

body:
On 04/03/07, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've hacked BitTornado such that it has become almost a one click
> dowload program. Unfortunately I forgot to pack it with gdiplus.dll,
> so it is not working on all Windows pc's. As I am writing this, I
> don't have access either to gdiplus, so I cannot currently fix it.
> Hope to have it done this evening, or find a way to make wxPython
> independent of gdi+.

Those of us using modern Linux distros will find that just clicking on
a torrent link will start the BitTorrent download working in a
completely transparent manner. Which is nice. Are things really that
bad on Windows and Mac?

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Our server setup in a sentence (was Is wikipedia using
	MogileFS?)

body:
On 04/03/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> howard chen wrote:

> > so what kind of hardware/software are being used by wikipedia to host
> > images or other resources?

> NFS -> a box with a lot of disks -> lighttpd -> squid
> Terrifying, isn't it? :D

I got asked by a journalist to describe our technical setup the other
day (after I'd pointed out we're the only top-20 website hosted by a
nonprofit with therefore no resources by definition).

I said "In Tampa there's lots of big disks, these go to three big
database servers - one for English Wikipedia, two for the other 200+
projects - and these go to hundreds of webservers and caches and
proxies in Tampa, Paris, Amsterdam and Seoul."

Is that about right as a one-sentence description of our setup?

- d.


body:
on 3/4/07 12:03 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:

> Actually it's the love of money that is the root of all evil.

I stand corrected on this.

There's
> rather a nice little article at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_of_all_evil

Thanks for citing this. When I first read it I stumbled over the term,
"Premature optimization". At first glance I thought we were back to a recent
thread on being a dick :-).

Marc


from_name: gjzilla at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

body:
On 3/4/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Any reason why Essjay's talk page hasn't been protected yet? It's over.
> He's
> gone.
>

Because we're open people. ~~~~