from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Ryan,

> On 9/15/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> It frosts me when people on EITHER side make short, curt,
>> dismissive comments in AfD that consist simply of a vote and a
>> _generic_ remark, like "Delete, nn website," or "Delete,
>> [whatever]cruft," or "Keep, all [whatever] are inherently notable,"
>> or "KEEP! Of course. Why would anyone want to delete this?"
<snip />
> Count the number of articles that go up to AFD every day, and ask
> yourself if you think its reasonable that everyone write a paragraph
> - or even a short explanation - on everything they vote for. Simply
> *voting* on everything would take an hour a day at least. Demanding a
> detailed explanation from every vote would only reduce the amount of
> communication because people would stop voting. If you want to fix

Not necessarily.  My voting pattern is (largely) thus: I come across
something stupid (via RC patrol, doing the "random page shuffle", or
just browsing), add it to AfD.  While I'm there I check out some of the
other stuff nominated on that day, and vote accordingly (usually, but
not always, to delete).  It doesn't take that much time.

To refuse to take time to explain yourself --- and do the minimum of
research required to do so credibly --- is to make a stupid vote.  I've
voted (or even nominated), only to have someone point out some crucial
fact that I've misunderstood, and had to change my vote ... if I'd done
the appropriate research (or understood the appropriate policy) better,
then I wouldn't have wasted anyone's time like that.

If you don't have the time to make an informed contribution to an AfD
discussion, you probably shouldn't be recording your opinion on that
discussion.  The risk of being incorrect (and having others cite you for
their vote!), regardless of whether you want to keep or delete, is too
great.  Better, instead, to vote selectively --- only choose particular
days (as I do), or those subjects you know something about, or whatever.

> that, you either expand the CSD, so stuff that doesn't need
> deliberation won't waste everyone's time, or you implement pure wiki
>  deletion, so this whole problem goes away entirely. Right now, if

But a bunch of new problems crop up.

> band and business vanity, link spam, personal essays, and neologisms
> were all covered by CSD (which they aren't), you could cut the amount
> of articles going up to AFD by up to 1/3.

I'd say you could cut it by a lot more than that.  Plus, we'd suddenly
find out how many Rabid Deletionists(TM) were in fact Everyday Rational
Editors(TM) who happened to be voting to delete Extremely Stupid
Articles Which Are No Longer Handled By AfD Thank Goodness(TM).

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Traroth

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

body:
Yep. The inverifiability of the contributed stuff
removes almost all of the value of this idea. Sad.

Traroth

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> a ?crit :

> Traroth wrote:
>
> >Well... Why not ? Are you people OK with
> testimonies
> >like "I was there when US army shooted on Hotel
> >Palestine in Bagdad" or "I was in the jails of Abu
> >Graib" ?
> >
> >
> I think this sort of thing would be very
> problematic.  When it comes to
> contentious topics, like Israel-Palestine, people
> have repeatedly
> demonstrated that they are willing to completely
> fabricate eye-witness
> accounts to make one or the other side look bad.
>
> Published eye-witness accounts can also be
> fabricated, of course, but
> have the benefit that since they're in the public
> sphere of published
> work, the more questionable oens have often
> attracted published
> refutations.  Similarly, books on controversial
> subjects are often
> reviewed in the 'book review' sections of journals.
> A purported
> eyewitness account added directly to a wiki doesn't
> benefit from any of
> that sort of peer review.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory


list: wikien-l

from_name: Brandon Hansen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked

body:
I've recently been blocked and I feel it is unjustified and against policy.

This is how things went down:

   1. I added content to many WP articles using content from ON articles
   and subsequently cited the ON articles as references.
   2. These references were removed but the content left. I protested.
   3. A discussion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Uriah923/OmniNerd)
   was held to determine if the reference should be replaced and if content
   should remain. It was concluded that ON articles are not worthy of being
   used as references and that the content could remain. I conceded.
   4. I opened discussions on four Talk pages to determine if some ON
   articles could be included as external links. No links were placed.
   5. I was blocked by Taxman, citing linkspam and disruption.

The block certainly doesn't make sense to me, and it seems to be
specifically prohibited in the blocking policy, as Taxman was directly
involved in the dispute. Hopefully, someone will read this and be able to
objectively evaluate the circumstances. As I see it, WP has nothing to lose
from me being able to hold discussions on talk pages to determine if certain
external links are appropriate.

There are more details in a conversation I had with Taxman on my talk page.

--
-brandon
User Name: Uriah923


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
On 9/16/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/16/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 9/16/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > You have a point, but his notability or lack thereof shouldn't be
> > > decided with speedying. The no assertion of notability thing is for
> > > things like [[Sam Toupin]]. This article is basically about some 15
> > > year old girl who likes DDR.
> >
> > But... but.... I thought that "article does not assert notability" was
> > a criteria for speedy deletion? Wasn't that what you were complaining
> > about? At what level are you objecting to the policy -- the fact that
> > someone speedied something under this criteria, or the criteria
> > itself?
> >
> The Sam Toupin article would have been quietly throttled at birth six months
> ago--no CSD A7 necessary , just a commonsense attitude that, well, this is a
> guy writing about his girl.
Hmm, why didn't it get speedied then? And what good is A7?


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
On 9/16/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/16/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You have a point, but his notability or lack thereof shouldn't be
> > decided with speedying. The no assertion of notability thing is for
> > things like [[Sam Toupin]]. This article is basically about some 15
> > year old girl who likes DDR.
>
> But... but.... I thought that "article does not assert notability" was
> a criteria for speedy deletion? Wasn't that what you were complaining
> about? At what level are you objecting to the policy -- the fact that
> someone speedied something under this criteria, or the criteria
> itself?
>
>
The Sam Toupin article would have been quietly throttled at birth six months
ago--no CSD A7 necessary , just a commonsense attitude that, well, this is a
guy writing about his girl.

Two articles routinely speedied on January 27 this year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Benhooper

Ben Hooper is a great man who is always your best friend and pal, look for
him around and say "Hello Ben"

Image:Http://www.freewebs.com/postal-dude/me.JPG<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freewebs.com%2Fpostal-dude%2Fme.JPG>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Francis_Bayliss

A person who is extremely good at sport or physical activities.
Now we have CSD A7 and suddenly we're discussing whether academics with
major government positions and teaching posts in several countries are
speedy candidates.

This is not an advance. We're moving backward and engaging in pointless
arguments about articles we shouldn't even be thinking of deleting.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
On 9/16/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
> >
> >On 9/16/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > VfU is not
> > > intended to be "AfD round two";
> >
> >
> >Oh but it is. That is one of my key points: an argument improperly
> >neglected
> >(for instance, if conditions mentioned in the original nomination have
> been
> >met--which is grounds for a keep result unless there is some overriding
> >reason to delete, such as a copyright violation). Or say an editor finds
> >that an article has been deleted while he was otherwise occupied, and he
> >raises the necessary undelete quorum. Or perhaps the article was deleted
> by
> >a consensus on AfD despite the well documented fact that the subject was
> >the
> >President of Mauritania for six months.
> >
> >Some AFU participants seem to be deliberately neglecting this function. A
> >validly closed AfD *can* be challenged on AFU. Those who seek to deny a
> VFU
> >undelete on the sole grounds that the closed AfD was formally valid
> should
> >be told that their opinions will be ignored as inconsistent with deletion
> >policy.
>
> VfU is an appeals court, not "let's keep voting on this till we get the
> result we want".
>
>
I don't think that's a fair statement. You seem to be dismissing concerns
about real articles being deleted.

For instance, the other day I gave an example, the list of power ballads.
The Afd was validly closed, but I listed some legitimate objections. Firstly
the article simply didn't fall into the class of problems that may require
deletion, secondly the problems listed could easily have been remedied,
thirdly the statement that the article was unmaintainable was frankly
incredible.

But if I took this to VFU, then contrary to undeletion policy the appeal on
grounds of the merit of the content would be denied. Even if it were not,
there would be a quorum requirement of three votes plus a majority to
undelete.

It just isn't worth it. Now as a sysop I can download the list, research and
rewrite if I wish to do so. I can turn it into a pretty good list that would
be utterly bulletproof. But I don't think any of the former maintainers of
that list have any such resources. So if I decide to do something else with
my time,

The maintainers of that list have been let down by Wikipedia. A perfectly
good resource has been deleted for purely procedural reasons, and any
possible avenue of appeal is slowly but surely being sealed tight.


list: commons-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

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

body:
I am cc'ing this to commons-l, since this discussion belongs there anyway.

Laura Scudder wrote:
> For instance, for the Netscape icon
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nuvola_apps_netscape.png we
> apparently can only use it in limited cases and are supposed to
> include the text:
>
> "Netscape, Netscape Certificater Server, Netscape FastTrack Server,
> Netscape Navigator, Netscape ONE, SuiteSpot, and the Netscape N and
> Ship's Wheel logos are registered trademarks of Netscape
> Communications Corporation in the United States and other countries.
> [List other Netscape product names used in your document] are also
> trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation, which may be
> registered in other countries." (from
> http://wp.netscape.com/legal_notices/trademarks.html)
>
> So it would seem to me that we shouldn't have the trademarked images
> that we can only use in limited cases anyways.
>
>
> Laurascudder

Yes, delete it.  Stuff like this should be speedy deleted from commons,
I think.  Commons should tend very strongly towards purity, not
comprehensiveness.  There can be strong editorial reasons for including
such things in the encyclopedia itself, and "fair use" makes an
appearance there, but in commons, we should tend towards purity.  Strongly.

--Jimbo


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


from_name: Alphax

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

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Alphax wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Well, the Firefox and Wikipedia logos are both copyrighted and
>>> trademarked. Recreating them from scratch would at least solve the first
>>> issue.
>>>
>>
>> That's just wrong.  Recreating them from scratch would not solve the
>> first issue at all.
>>
>> That's like saying that if I type in all of a Harry Potter book from
>> scratch, it's no longer copyrighted.
>>
>> Please, I ask people, don't speculate on legal matters unless and until
>> you've learned more about them.
>>
>>
> The kind of thing that he may be thinking about would only operate in
> very limited circumstances, and not at all in trademarks or patents.
> If two people _independently_ produce identical pieces of work they can
> both have copyright protection, and neither has infringed upon the
> other.  The horde of monkeys who managed to reproduce the Britannica
> would not be infringing because it could probably be proven that they
> did not even know how to read the original work,  Practically, the
> situation is next to impossible in anything but the shortest works.
> Legal cases involving music copying can often hinge on whether the
> alleged infringer had the idea independently.  For Wiktionary it can
> happen when someone independently uses the same definition as appears in
> a published dictionary.  It could be the only plausible or even possible
> definition.
>

Please read my reply to Jimbo's email before you speculate on what I
might have been thinking about any further.

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

body:
Alphax wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>Alphax wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Well, the Firefox and Wikipedia logos are both copyrighted and
>>>trademarked. Recreating them from scratch would at least solve the first
>>>issue.
>>
>>
>>That's just wrong.  Recreating them from scratch would not solve the
>>first issue at all.
>>
>>That's like saying that if I type in all of a Harry Potter book from
>>scratch, it's no longer copyrighted.
>>
>
>
> Argh, I meant in the same style, not the exact same thing... so if
> someone created an image of white globe with a chunk taken out of the
> top and letters all over it, and an orange stylised fox wrapped around
> it... would that be any better?

Derivative work, it is not helpful at all, no.

> As an aside: I've replaced some of the images in question (at least on
> [[User:NSR/userboxes]] with icons from the Nuvola icon set for KDE
> (shameless plug: these are going on Commons, linked from
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nuvola), which are licensed under the
> LGPL, so if anyone wants to complain about the copyright or whatever on
> them, they can ask David Vignoni (the author) about them.

I wouldn't be so cavalier about that.  David Vignoni may not be correct
in assuming he can release these under LGPL.  Be careful.  Especially on
Commons, where we do not allow "fair use" justifications.

--Jimbo


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

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Dan Grey wrote:
>
>>
>> I have the hypothesis that "[[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:V]] dictate perfectly
>> what should and should not be in WP". Someone prove that wrong
>
>
> Suppose your hypothesis were true. Then there would be no disagreement
> on what should and should not be in WP. Contradiction. QED.
>

Where is the contradiction exactly? Metaphysical semantics?

The hypothesis was that "[[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:V]] dictate perfectly
what should and should not be in WP". Find something which fails one of
them and everyone agrees we should have an article on, and you have
disproved the hypothesis. Until then, don't waste my time or anybody else's.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Afd "votes" with no real reasons given

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Michael Turley wrote:
>
>> On 9/16/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ISRTBC HTH HAND
>>
>>
>> ISRTBC?
>> WTF?
>
>
> In sanktam regem tenet benedictus claudandus? No, seriously, I have no
> idea. I wish people would stop using such acronyms at all. I notice that
> Wikipedia articles are often full of them. Somewhere in the middle of an
> article the non-American reader is suddenly expected to know what the
> ACLU is (often much more obscure ones, this is just one that came to
> mind). It's really frustrating, especially when there is also no
> article, redirect or disambiguation page under that acronym.
>
> Searching for ISRTBC, Google asks if I may have meant "ISRC", while
> dictionary.com suggests "ASARABACCA"...
>

I got one meaningful result for ISRTBC, and it's by Phil Boswell on
[[Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text/Archive 1]]. I'm seriously
starting to wonder if this is some secret shorthand for "YHBT YHL" or
similar.

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: new request for ASL/English wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
>Alphax wrote:
>>Hi Gerard,
>>Please read further down the thread, you will see that Mark addressed
>>this issue already. There is a sizeable number of people in favour of
>>signed Wikipedias; what remains to be seen is *how* it will be done.
>
>
> I also addressed the issue of how it should be done. In short, my
> proposal was advocation of using sign synthesis software, the likes of
> which already exists.
>

Glad to hear it can be done. I'm starting to think that the easiest
short-term solution would be a Mediawiki extension.

>
>>Yet again I am forced to ask: Is there
>>any existing literature in sign language?)
>
>
> In American Signed Language, yes. That's if you define "literature" as
> written only. I personally would include the signed version of "oral
> literature" (perhaps "manual literature"?), because much more of that
> exists. However, there is printed literature in ASL. The writing
> systems used vary widely.
>

Glad to hear it. See my reply to the next section though...

>
>>Oh, and if all these people for whom sign language is their primary
>>language have only a 4th-grade reading level, how are they supposed to
>>even get on the internet and contribute to a signed Wikipedia? The last
>>time I checked, teaching literacy was *not* a primary goal of the
>>Wikimedia Foundation.
>
>
> Most people with 4th grade reading levels should be able to connect to
> the internet.
>

So where will reference material come from? Primarily translations from
texts in spoken languages?

Oh, and the next question is: What's the literacy rate of any written
forms (as in, something you can put on paper) of signed languages
amongst the deaf population? Or are the orthographies symbolic in such a
way that reading it is similar to watching someone actually sign?

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from_name: Angela

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

body:
On 9/16/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> You are kidding, right?  You want a 16MB video attached to each
> article in enwiki?  That would take up, what, about 10TB?  Are you
> going to pay for that storage array?  How about the added bandwidth?

It's likely that Ourmedia.org would be able to collaborate with us on
this and provide bandwidth via the Internet Archive. There are various
issues with a sign-language project, but storage and bandwidth need
not be one of them.

Angela.


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

body:
HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
<snip>
> Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text
> page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically
> from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is
> 16MB.
>

I'm on dialup, you insensitive clod. If videos *are* used in a signed
Wikipedia, there will never be paper copies, and you will make in
inaccessable to everyone except those fortunate enough to be on high
incomes in Europe or North America, most of whom can read well enough
that they won't go to the bother of learning how to use whatever
technology is required to produce signed articles. If this is the road
you end up going down, you can take your project, stick it in a pipe,
and smoke it.

> Making Wikipedia able to handle video will make it more up-to-date. Text
> and pictures were top-o -the-line in the '80's.
>

Text was the baseline. Today's baseline is text and pictures, not Flash
and streaming media. Go over the baseline and everyone loses.

How would you feel if the Foundation said "We're not going to have any
content in anything other than Esperanto because we think that everyone
should be capable of learning this language"?

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 9/16/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>VfU is not
>>intended to be "AfD round two";
>
>
>
> Oh but it is. That is one of my key points: an argument improperly neglected
> (for instance, if conditions mentioned in the original nomination have been
> met--which is grounds for a keep result unless there is some overriding
> reason to delete, such as a copyright violation). Or say an editor finds
> that an article has been deleted while he was otherwise occupied, and he
> raises the necessary undelete quorum. Or perhaps the article was deleted by
> a consensus on AfD despite the well documented fact that the subject was the
> President of Mauritania for six months.
>
> Some AFU participants seem to be deliberately neglecting this function. A
> validly closed AfD *can* be challenged on AFU. Those who seek to deny a VFU
> undelete on the sole grounds that the closed AfD was formally valid should
> be told that their opinions will be ignored as inconsistent with deletion
> policy.
>

Agreed. VfU is the appeals court of AfD.

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

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote:
>>
>>> Dan Grey wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have the hypothesis that "[[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:V]] dictate perfectly
>>>> what should and should not be in WP". Someone prove that wrong
>>>
>>>
>>> Suppose your hypothesis were true. Then there would be no disagreement
>>> on what should and should not be in WP. Contradiction. QED.
>>
>>
>> Where is the contradiction exactly? Metaphysical semantics?
>
>
> No, logic. Adding rigour:
>
> Suppose the hypothesis were true. Then there would be no disagreement on
> what should and should not be in WP. Then there would be no discussion
> about it. Yet AfD as well as assorted talk pages are filled with endless
> such discussions. Therefore, the hypothesis is false. QED.
>

Well, I know that the hypothesis is false at present, because we haven't
agreed that the terms outlined should be binding. How about in the
future? If overnight the it was agreed that "The critera for whether we
an article should stay or not is that it satisfies both [[WP:NOR]] and
[[WP:V]]", would the hypothesis then be true?

>> The hypothesis was that "[[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:V]] dictate perfectly
>> what should and should not be in WP".
>
>
> This hypothesis is true only if *both*
> | (A) "Everything that satisfies both [[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:V]] should be
> in WP"
> *and*
> | (B) "Everything that fails either [[WP:NOR]] or [[WP:V]] should not be
> in WP"
> are true.
>

I agree.

>> Find something which fails one of them and everyone agrees we should
>> have an article on, and you have disproved the hypothesis.
>
>
> Yes, because this disproves subhypothesis B.
>
> Alternatively, find something which *doesn't* fail *any* of the two, and
> yet *not* everyone agrees we should have an article on it, and you have
> also disproved the hypothesis (by disproving subhypothesis A). Examples
> for this exist en masse.
>

That's because we haven't tried it yet. Take a snapshot, go through and
remove everything which violates [[WP:NOR]] or [[WP:V]] (and include
everything which meets both) and tell me what you have. Then we will see
if the hypothesis is true or not.

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from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article deletion

body:
SPUI wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> SPUI wrote:
>>
>>> Stop trolling.
>>
>> Pointing out the absurdity of your argument is hardly trolling. By
>> contrast, polemic remarks such as this one are more typical of trolls.
>
> Or people that are fed up with deletionism and the shit that comes with it.

Oh, now I understand. You completely misinterpreted my posting as a
deletionist argument, therefore stamped your perception of me a
deletionist, and thus conclude that I must be trolling.

I never thought I would manage to get myself misconstrued as a
deletionist. Sometimes, I amaze myself.

Timwi


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

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language,
> to merit a Wikipedia of its own.  If ASL signers are not willing to
> accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust
> their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis
> software).

Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to
accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real human...

> It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of
> videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.

... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to
record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a
relatively small community (the blind).

Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles
should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our sound
files, the video files would be a translation of a particular revision.
When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of the article,
re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't got very far
yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.

Timwi


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 9/16/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I wasn't suggesting you restore it I was jsuting seeing how you could
>>mess with the rules to atchive odd results.
>>
>>
>
>Er, thanks but no thanks. I know VFU is a bit weird at the moment, but that
>no excuse for taking an article deleted in process through AfD again, for a
>post-mortem rerun.
>
It looks like Elf Only Inn is getting this treatment. It's in its third
VfD right now after having just been restored via VfU, and the nominator
not only didn't provide any actual basis for deletion but also didn't
even vote delete himself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Elf_Only_Inn_%283rd_nomination%29

Granted, some of the previous votes could well have resulted in
inconclusive results that left the consensus unclear. However, I
consider this VfD to be pretty fishy in its own right.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Juanma Barranquero

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Upgrading from 1.4.9 to 1.5rc4

body:
On 9/16/05, Jamie Bliss <astronouth7303 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ug. Whoever wrote that extension should remove it.

I don't understand. *I* wrote MyExtension (not the real name, of
course). It adds a special page. Before, it just worked. Now, I have
to pre-load SpecialPage.php. Why the difference? Did something change
in the way modules are loaded, or in the paths used for it?

> Write an extension function to change it after initialization.

That's a good idea. I'll try it.

--
                    /L/e/k/t/u


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>>(Also the SQL dump output needs to actually be tested before we dedicate
>>a few gigs to it.)
>
> I'm happy to be a guinea pig. Just give tell me where to get it from,
> and I'll leave it importing overnight and report back any
> errors/problems and whether it worked or not.

I haven't had a chance to upload some test conversions yet but I'd
appreciate it if you'd give a quick test of the program:
http://leuksman.com/misc/mwdumper-preview.zip

This .zip contains the compiled converter program in its present state,
with a bundled executable for Linux/x86 and as CIL assemblies for any
other OS.

The Linux binary does *not* require a Mono installation; I've tested it
on Ubuntu Hoary and Fedora Core 1. (It does require glib2, which is
probably installed by default any any modern Linux.) For other OSs
you'll need a Mono or .NET runtime to run the CIL binaries.

Run something like this to generate 1.4-format SQL:
gzip -dc pages_public.xml.gz | ./mwdumper --format=sql:1.4 > out.sql

More info on the command-line options is in the README. If you're on
Linux and the binary does or doesn't work, please let me know. (If it
fails, please include output of 'ldd mwdumper'.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
>>
>> Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language,
>> to merit a Wikipedia of its own.  If ASL signers are not willing to
>> accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust
>> their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis
>> software).
>
>
> Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to
> accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real
> human...
>
>> It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of
>> videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.
>
>
> ... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to
> record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a
> relatively small community (the blind).
>
> Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles
> should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our
> sound files, the video files would be a translation of a particular
> revision. When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of
> the article, re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't
> got very far yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.

When we decide to experiment and have a Wikipedia project in signed
languages, it will be a seperate wiki. It does not have to slavely
follow what a particular project has done because that would imply that
a signed language is considered less important than the written
language. The community of those that sign have a culture that is to a
large extend seperate from the spoken culture.

When people decide to sign articles that exist in a current project, it
means they either "finger" the text or they have to translate the text.
With fingering the sign language is not done justice, with translating
they should have the room to do a proper translation. A proper
translation does imply that the text is not literally translated but
that it is rephrased to make use of the best idiom giving the context of
the text.

It is also expected and respectable to have new articles that do not
exist in the written wikipedias. This only reflects the difference of
the culture and the signifcance given to other subjects.

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>1) Videos take up heaps more space than audio. A very short sample
>article (the English version was only 4 or 5 sentences long, a total
>of 88 words compared to the average 348.6) turned into a 1.5 minute,
>16MB video. Now, imagine a much longer article -- the average article
>on enwiki is 348.6 words long. Now, multiply that by 100000. Then, add
>to that the fact that there are over 100 signed languages in
>widespread use in the world today, and you get a perfect nightmare.
>That ends up with over 600TB of video... an astronomical amount of
>space, not to mention the bandwidth costs. Angela said that space and
>bandwidth aren't a concern -- I sincerely doubt that anybody has that
>much space to donate to such a project. And that's just the first
>hundred-thousand articles, at the level plwiki is today.
>
>
>
Mark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also
you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am
sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY
of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously
committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.

>2) It's my opinion that if Wikipedia were to be based more on spoken
>than on written materials, we should rely more on speech synthesis. Do
>some people have problems with speech synthesis? Yes. Is some software
>of better quality than other? Yes. Can some software be difficult to
>understand if you're not listening very carefully? Yes. But it's
>certainly better, I think, than having to re-record an article every
>time a revision is made.
>
>
It is your opinion, yes. But why not have the deaf decide it for
themselves. We can start a project that does not have the "ideal"
infrastructure. We have done that before with Commons and we can do it
again for signed languages. When you make the video for an article in
multiple parts, eg a paragraph at a time, the article is modularised and
only those paragraphs are replaced that need replacing. I think there
are many ways of making it work more easy. I am not going to learn
signing, but I will also not make the road to the realisation of a
signed wiki unnecessary complicated by insisting on things I am not
aware off or that are not for me to decide.

>3) What about unwritten spoken languages? Should they get their own
>Wikipedias, or should they just be uploaded as spoken translations of
>enwiki articles? It doesn't make sense to me to limit ASL to videos
>uploaded to enwiki.
>
>
Well Mark, let us cross this bridge when we meet it. The difference is
that people ARE asking for ASL.

>Mark
>
>On 16/09/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language,
>>>to merit a Wikipedia of its own.  If ASL signers are not willing to
>>>accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust
>>>their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis
>>>software).
>>>
>>>
>>Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to
>>accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real human...
>>
>>
>>
>>>It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of
>>>videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.
>>>
>>>
>>... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to
>>record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a
>>relatively small community (the blind).
>>
>>Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles
>>should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our sound
>>files, the video files would be a translation of a particular revision.
>>When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of the article,
>>re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't got very far
>>yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.
>>
>>Timwi
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Josh Gordon

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

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

Oh, perhaps. But working well with others is critical to a person's success
in a collaborative process like Wikipedia. Nobody gives a rat's ass what
you're like in the "real world"; you may be an incredibly skilled or
talented person with a huge amount to offer the world -- but if you can't
work well collaboratively in the context of Wikipedia, then you'll run into
a wall of utter resistance on Wikipedia. It's hardly bullying when you come
to a place when you come to a place where cooperation is required by the
community, refuse to cooperate, and are ostracized.

Any "judging" that has occurred has to be understood as applying only within
the context of the universe of Wikipedia editors.

jpgordon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jpgordon>*????*


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> Well Mark, let us cross this bridge when we meet it. The difference is
> that people ARE asking for ASL.

The problem is they're asking for ASL/English bilingual Wikipedia,
which is a bad idea.

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


body:
Alphax wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>1) Videos take up heaps more space than audio. A very short sample
>>>article (the English version was only 4 or 5 sentences long, a total
>>>of 88 words compared to the average 348.6) turned into a 1.5 minute,
>>>16MB video. Now, imagine a much longer article -- the average article
>>>on enwiki is 348.6 words long. Now, multiply that by 100000. Then, add
>>>to that the fact that there are over 100 signed languages in
>>>widespread use in the world today, and you get a perfect nightmare.
>>>That ends up with over 600TB of video... an astronomical amount of
>>>space, not to mention the bandwidth costs. Angela said that space and
>>>bandwidth aren't a concern -- I sincerely doubt that anybody has that
>>>much space to donate to such a project. And that's just the first
>>>hundred-thousand articles, at the level plwiki is today.
>>>
>>ark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also
>>you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am
>>sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY
>>of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously
>>committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.
>>
>
>There are also people with less than a gigabyte on their home computer,
>and dialup internet. And how you do you propose that people view these
>articles? Media policy is that all videos should be Ogg Theora, so first
>they will need software that can view the files, and if a one-paragraph
>article is 16MB, how big will a full-length article be?
>
We can only do the things we can do. When people have computers that are
not able to use particular data, then it is a shame. It is however not a
reason not to start new projects. Over time there will be more people
who can use this data.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 9/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>As for "abstain" votes on nomination for AfD, it's because there's
>>really no better place for people to say "I think there's something
>>wrong with this article, what should be done?" Just putting {{cleanup}}
>>or {{wikify}} on something won't fix it in a hurry. Putting {{afd}} on
>>it /will/.
>>
>>
>I'm in two minds about this. Should we allow the casual use of AfD as a
>cleanup resource? I think I'd be inclined to regard such use of AfD as
>borderline bad faith. If someone really thinks an article needs to be
>cleaned up, *and quickly*, he should just do a quick edit to remove whatever
>it is that makes him uncomfortable about the article from the current
>version. This should take a minute or so.
>
One unfortunate tendency is that people who want something cleaned up
expect other people to do it.  Thus they become a part of the problem.
Wikifying an article or removing something from an article (if that is
all that is required) does not require further outside resources.  If
those who recognize such problems on an article went ahead and did it
the cleanup list would be a lot shorter.  Someone else going through the
same items on the cleanup list may not even recognize what needs to be done.

Articles that need something added are a much bigger problem.  My
experience lately in Wiktionary has been with people who refuse to cite
sources, and who feel that it is the responsibility of those who reject
a word to supply the proof for them.  For them it is enough proof to say
that the word has 250 hits on Google, and it is enough to believe that
someone else will wade through all the nonsense blogs to pull out
anything of value.  I don't doubt that many of these terms would be kept
if people did their proper homework; it comes down to a question of
whose homework is it.

Ec


from_name: MAURICE FRANK

body:
>Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 17:47:28 +1000
>From: Mark Gallagher
><m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Violation of Blocking
>Policy
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID:
<432BCA10.6050306 at student.canberra.edu.au>
>Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed;
charset=UTF-8
>
>"Now, if you double-check [[WP:BLOCK]], you may find
>that editors who
>exhaust the patience of the community by
demonstrating >an unwillingness
>to work well with others ... may be blocked.
>

Throughout life, any policy of judging people by their
success in working well with others, is a blank cheque
for bullying and for it to win. If the mob for its own
reasons agrees not to work well with a targetted
individual, the solitary victim gets the blame.
Bullypedia proved conclusively.

and
"In the cases where multiple parties violate the
> rule, sysops should treat all sides equally."
Wow, isn't this a revelation, after all the admin
voices here who have denied there is any obligation to
equality and said "You are not entitled to anything",
and after my political purging was directly for the
offence of arguing that any entitlements to equality exist.

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors

body:
> there is a strong tendency
> for people to congregate there whose views seem to be untempered by any
> knowledge of deletion policy. For them "if in doubt, don't delete" sounds
> like inclusionist claptrap rather than an accurate quote from the deletion
> policy. For them, the lists of "Problems that don't require deletion" and
> "Problems that may require deletion" might as well not exist. They'll ask
> for deletion because an article is a mess, or because the content has POV
> problems, or because it's deteriorated but was once good, or because the
> subject does not merit an article (for which the remedy is of course a
> merge) . There is a serious problem here, and saying "well we don't really
> need that content, we can always rewrite it/temp undelete it/whatever"
> isn't
> really an adequate defense for what is often a quite shocking miscarriage
> of
> deletion policy.

I agree with Tony - over and over I see things on AfD which do not meet the
deletion criteria. More disturbing is the tendency to nominate an article
for deletion with the admission "I don't know anything about this topic".
IMO, if you don't know anything about a topic, then the impetus is on you to
find out, not to AfD it and hope that someone knowledgeable will come along
and educate you. Of course, THEN people come along and say "yeah, delete it"
(without doing any research).

I think that any article nominated for deletion should include reference to
the applicable deletion criteria, otherwise the noms should be deleted as
spurious.

Ian


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
> If you can narrow down the request a bit that makes it more likely we'll
> slip something into the backup script. :)
> [...snip...]
> Is that actually what people want?

Well, given the disk space limitation, straight off the bat we know
that people can't have everything they want. In particular, the
all-revisions version in SQL would be way too large I suspect (extra
>= 40 gig).

That only leaves SQL versions of pages_current.xml.gz, and
pages_public.xml.gz. If there is space for both then that would be
ideal, but I understand that may be asking too much.

Personally, although I don't want the talk pages, others might, so if
there's only space for one of these two, then I think a SQL version of
pages_current.xml.gz is the way to go (i.e. current revisions of all
pages), because it would be applicable for the widest possible
audience.

> Why do that when MediaWiki comes with an import tool built-in? ;)

Because I'm not importing it into MediaWiki. I'm importing it into a
database, to then run non-MediaWiki software analysing the data - in
particular: looking for bad wiki syntax (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Syntax ),
suggesting new useful redirects and disambigs (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nickj/Redirects ), and searching for
good potential wiki-links ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LinkBot
- [although for this one I haven't worked out how to get those
suggestions out to page authors in a really satisfactory way]). I want
to improve the Wikipedia, not mirror it.

> In which version?

Ideally something that works with MySQL 3.23.49, but if that's too old
then something that works with MySQL 4.0.24 instead.

> What about everyone
> who wants something slightly different?

But the database dumps have never tried to be all things to all people.

Rather they've been snapshots of the various Wikipedias at
semi-regular intervals of time, which you can load into a database
(specifically MySQL, but if you can get it to work in another RDBMS,
then more power to you).

I'm not asking for something entirely new, rather I'm asking for an
equivalent replacement for what we already had.

> (Also the SQL dump output needs to actually be tested before we dedicate
> a few gigs to it.)

I'm happy to be a guinea pig. Just give tell me where to get it from,
and I'll leave it importing overnight and report back any
errors/problems and whether it worked or not.

All the best,
Nick.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Using MediaWiki to do Wiki source -> HTML as a
	straight string transformation?

body:
Can I please ask a unusual question: Is there some way to get
MediaWiki to render a page from just the wiki source, and no database?

I.e.:
Input: wiki string (e.g. This ''is'' a '''test'''. [[Axiom]]atic.
[[Wiki Web|test]].")
Output: HTML string (e.g. "
This is</is> a test. Axiomatic. test.
").

Is there some way to do this using the MediaWiki software? Ideally I
want just the wiki rendering engine, without any of the other stuff,
and without having to delve deeply into the internals of how MediaWiki
works.

I'm happy for all links to either be edit links or not (i.e. no reason
to check whether a page exists or not). Also happy for any templates
or other inclusions in wiki strings to be ignored, so it's a straight
string transformation, and so that there should be no reason to
connect to or use a database.

The reason I'm asking is I'm trying to scope out if it's possible to
pass in the wiki source of an article, convert it to HTML, and then
HTML validate that output, so as to find invalid HTML and mis-uses of
HTML in wiki articles.

( Erik Zachte did something along these lines previously with invalid

 attributes - please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Syntax/HTML-table-attributes-000.txt&oldid=8029192
for some examples of output that he found previously that have been
fixed ).

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

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

body:
> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>

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

Sure it is. I think. I've used it that way myself a number of times.
I thought AfD was a place where we discuss problematical articles and
decide what should be done with them.

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

The name doesn't have to be perfect. Most articles do go on AfD
because someone thinks they should be deleted, so it's a reasonable
name. That doesn't mean that the three-word name captures the entire
range of policy governing how it can be used.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Jamie Bliss

references:
<f7ccd24b050916024254e2bc47@mail.gmail.com>	<dgf7up$spe$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f7ccd24b05091617533c20f649@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> On 9/16/05, Jamie Bliss <astronouth7303 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Ug. Whoever wrote that extension should remove it.
>
> I don't understand. *I* wrote MyExtension (not the real name, of
> course). It adds a special page. Before, it just worked. Now, I have
> to pre-load SpecialPage.php. Why the difference? Did something change
> in the way modules are loaded, or in the paths used for it?

Basically, it will try to load the file if the class doesn't exist,
based on the class name. IMHO, this is fine when you write your own
stuff and you control all the classes and file names. But in MediaWiki,
file names and class names don't always match.

The way it is done sometimes is to wrap the class definition and other
initialization bits in an extension function. (There is an example of
this at extensions/BoardVote/BoardVote.php in CVS.
<http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/extensions/BoardVote/BoardVote.php>)

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


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Criteria for deletion (was: Afd "votes" with no
	real reasons given)

body:
On 9/17/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
>
> >Ed Poor wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Can users simply:
> >>(1) Tag any article as "unmergeable" for a five-day period, to
> >>(2) Force a vote on whether it should be kept or deleted?
> >>
> >>
> >You are quite correct. I've removed ", merge" from [[template:vfd]].
> >Whoever put it there was on crack.
> >
> >
> Thanks for doing that. I was a little surprised today when I discovered
> that my attempt to boldly forge a compromise over a disputed deletion,
> by merging [[Harry Potter trolling]] to [[Internet troll]], got reverted
> - fortunately, in a polite and professional manner - on the grounds that
> this kind of resolution is not allowed while the discussion is underway.
>
>
Oddly enough, I merged the *entire contents* of that article into Harry
Potter and the Half Blood Prince a few days ago, with barely a squeak of
complaint. I've given clear instructions on the talk page of the Half Blood
Prince article to the effect that the merge is entirely reversible and
subject to acceptance by consensus, but after an initial revert (which
someone restored) it has remained in place. Of course it'll have to be
unmerged if the second AfD ends with a delete result.


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

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>>
>>>>>> I have the hypothesis that "[[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:V]] dictate perfectly
>>>>>> what should and should not be in WP". Someone prove that wrong
<snip>
>> That's because we haven't tried it yet. Take a snapshot, go through and
>> remove everything which violates [[WP:NOR]] or [[WP:V]] (and include
>> everything which meets both) and tell me what you have. Then we will see
>> if the hypothesis is true or not.
>
>
> It's your parenthesis that is the important part. I don't think there is
> much that violates NOR or V at the moment, so there's not much to
> remove. But including everything which meets both means including a lot
> of things (schools, roads, people, etc.) that people quite vocally deem
> _not notable_. NOR and V are relatively objective criteria, but
> notability is quite a lot less so, and there will never be a
> hard-and-fast rule (algorithm) that determines boolean notability.
>

Maybe we need a "notability review board" consisting of experts from
different subject areas.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Authentication (..again)

body:
I kinda figured the best way to redo sessions was to write an extension
function that set $wgUser to a new User, based on your sesssioning.
This, of course, doesn't prevent Cookie-based sessions from being used.

I'd find the bug in Mediazilla <http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/> and
attach your patch(es) to that.

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


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

body:
On 9/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Maybe we need a "notability review board" consisting of experts from
> different subject areas.
>

We don't even have a consensus on notability, outside biographical articles,
so any such review board would have few teeth. In any case I think we have
enough artificial obstacles to content as it is.

I'm in favor of a relaxed attitude to notability. Readers twenty years
hence, or two hundred, will not care much whether professor X or politician
Y was or was not considered notable in 2005, but the encyclopedia article
about him will remain a valuable resource nevertheless.


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
On 17/09/05, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If you can narrow down the request a bit that makes it more likely we'll
> > slip something into the backup script. :)

> > Why do that when MediaWiki comes with an import tool built-in? ;)
>
> Because I'm not importing it into MediaWiki. I'm importing it into a
> database, to then run non-MediaWiki software analysing the data

The point being, I take it, that your software mimics the MediaWiki
<=1.4 database schema, because it was designed to work with the old
SQL dumps? So what you're asking for, specifically, is an SQL dump
which mimics how the data would have looked in an installation of
MediaWiki <=1.4 - which, it should be noted, is *not* how it actually
looks in any database under >1.5.

Of course, with an XML dump you could always have analysis software
that used whatever schema was appropriate for the job in hand (I'm
pretty sure at least one set of tools did this *anyway*, I think it
was the Topbanana reports) and have your own import scripts, but
obviously that requires rather more effort on your part.

> > What about everyone
> > who wants something slightly different?
>
> But the database dumps have never tried to be all things to all people.
>
> Rather they've been snapshots of the various Wikipedias at
> semi-regular intervals of time, which you can load into a database

Yes, but until now, they've been snapshots from the database as used
by the software, which could be loaded into that same software. The
closest equivalent to that would be an SQL dump for v1.5, but that
would be pretty pointless given there's already an import script, and
wouldn't help people like yourself whose databases just mimic what the
old schema looked like.

There's never been such a major redesign before, so there wasn't
really a problem with whether it was all things to all people or not -
it just carried on being there.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Alphax

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

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
>>First of all ASL is only used in North America. When there will be no
>>"paper copies" there is no real loss given the current amount of paper
>>copies. So I do not know what you have been smoking and that is a *need
>>to know* in order to get a similar experience
>
>
> This is incorrect. Quite a few websites say it's also used in African
> and Asian nations as well, and one of those sites is enwiki.
>

Exactly. So how are these people going to be able to access an ASL
Wikipedia, if it's sole content is huge video files? If there was a
symbolic way of representing sign language that could be put on paper,
it wouldn't be a problem.

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Topic warriors

body:
> From: Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com>
>
> I think that any article nominated for deletion should include
> reference to
> the applicable deletion criteria, otherwise the noms should be
> deleted as
> spurious.

I think that's a really bad idea. Who gets to decide which
nominations get deleted? This is an open invitation to edit warring
over AfD nominations. And legalistic wrangling. (The main effect it
would have is that all nominators would soon learn to include the
magic words "Article is not suitable for Wikipedia," which is an
official "problem that may required deletion" according to the policy
page).

The right thing to do when you see a spurious nomination is to point
out that it is spurious and why. (In an ordinary text comment, of
course. Big honkin' garish colored boxes don't add credence.
Hypothetically, of course).

If your argument carries weight, it will influence other voters to
vote "keep." This will have three effects. First, the article will be
kept. Second, nominations that get a near unanimous string of five or
six "keeps" don't waste much time because most people can see how
things are going to go and won't bother commenting. Third, even if
all the voters remain civil, such an occurrence is pretty
embarrassing for the nominator and is likely to influence their
future behavior. Much moreso than having their nomination vanish from
the page with an edit comment like "I'm unilaterally deciding to keep
this article because I happen to think the nomination was spurious."

Finally, yes, badly reasoned votes, or votes with no reason at all,
are IMHO a problem, but I'm not at all convinced that there are
enough spurious nominations to constitute a problem.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


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

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:
> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
>>You are kidding, right?  You want a 16MB video attached to each
>>article in enwiki?  That would take up, what, about 10TB?  Are you
>>going to pay for that storage array?  How about the added bandwidth?
>
>
> If every enwiki editor opens a gmail account, we have 2.6 GB * 437,457
> users = more than a million GB, or more than 1000 TB. Should be enough
> (-;
>

I have approximately 250 invites across accounts. Who wants one?

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RSS feed not working for Google Personal

body:
On 16/09/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/16/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would it be really stupid to ask why the URL sin't presented in this form
> > on
> > the actual page?
> >
>
> I'm sure Tim or Brion know the answer to this, but I'd hazard a guess that
> the /w form bypasses the squid caches.

Actually, I think one of the prime reasons is precisely so that they
can be excluded in the robots.txt (it seems odd to me that an RSS
aggregator would read robots.txt in that way, but never mind) - any
URL with extra parameters is likely to be a view not suitable for
crawlers, being either highly transitory or a different view of
something already crawled, so those URLs aren't transformed into the
/wiki/ form. I could be wrong about this, though.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

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


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

body:
...I kick in some spare change to a month-long fund drive, the fund
drive is successful, and Wikipedia is slower than it was at the start
of the fund drive.

Just venting.

I know Brion Vibber et. al. are working hard, and I look forward to
future improvement.


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
> Mark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also
> you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am
> sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY
> of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously
> committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.

And who are these people? The last time I checked, the high-end
computers had 80 gigs. Maybe it's up to 100 or 200 now. But I
sincerely doubt a terabyte.

As I noted previously, the Sicilian Wikipedia reached over 2000
quality articles within less than a year of existance. That was with
one dedicated contributor. Now, according to the mysterious HJH, there
are tons and tons of people who can't wait to start building this
bilingual ASL + English Wikipedia. If this is the case, I'd not be
surprised if it reached over 1000 articles within a few weeks or even
a few days, and quickly surpass 10000 as well.

> It is your opinion, yes. But why not have the deaf decide it for
> themselves. We can start a project that does not have the "ideal"
> infrastructure. We have done that before with Commons and we can do it
> again for signed languages. When you make the video for an article in
> multiple parts, eg a paragraph at a time, the article is modularised and
> only those paragraphs are replaced that need replacing. I think there
> are many ways of making it work more easy. I am not going to learn
> signing, but I will also not make the road to the realisation of a
> signed wiki unnecessary complicated by insisting on things I am not
> aware off or that are not for me to decide.

This is not the first time you have assumed things about me which you
have no way of knowing.

Here you assume I'm hearing rather than deaf. What are you making this
assumption based on? You've never even met me. So stop assuming I'm a
hearing person.

And then, you say "insisting on things I am not aware of" -- what is
it here that I'm in over my head on? I knew that ASL was used in
places other than the US and Canada, when even Mr HJH didn't. I knew
about sign-synthesis programs based on autonomous signed languages
entry rather than machine translation, when he didn't.

Now, I agree that there are ways of making it easier. But sign
synthesis is certainly one of them. It saves heaps of space and
bandwidth, and you told me deaf people don't like it -- are you deaf
or HoH?

I can live with sign or speech synthesis if it saves that much
bandwidth. It's not nessecarily pleasant or perfect, but systems are
being improved, and again, if it saves that much resources, I'm
certainly willing to make the sacrifice.

You say earlier (in different wording of course) that people with
lower-end computers can go screw themselves... well, then, why can't
people not willing to tolerate sign synthesis just go screw
themselves???

> Well Mark, let us cross this bridge when we meet it. The difference is
> that people ARE asking for ASL.

Perhaps what you're not understanding here is that that was an analogy
rather than a completely unrelated question that I asked for no
reason. Why should ASL be tied to enwiki? It deserves an independent
Wikipedia, despite your continued insistence to the contrary.

Mark


from_name: Fastfission

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

body:
I added a line in [[Wikipedia:Fair use]] which says:

"Fair use" images should only be used in the article namespace. They
should not be used on templates or on user pages. They should be only
linked to from talk pages when they are the topic of discussion.
Because "fair use" images are only not copyright infringement on
Wikipedia when used for strictly encyclopedic reasons, their use in
other contexts on Wikipedia is most likely copyright infringement.

Does this sound reasonable? I also plan to create a little template
which one can drop onto a user page (replacing an existing "fair use"
image), which will say something along the lines of the above, with
instructions as to how to link to the image if desired. The goal is to
be polite but explain that the use of copyrighted images on a user
page is probably copyright infringement and not allowed on Wikipedia.

Thoughts? Objections?

FF

On 9/13/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we have an official policy on images on user pages? Correct me if I'm
> wrong, but wouldn't the use of copyrighted materials there in a way which
> did not qualify as "fair use" simply be copyright infringement, in the same
> way it would in the article namespace? Does the law make the namespace
> distinction? (That sounds like a silly question in a way, but I suppose I'm
> referencing "safe harbor" laws.)
>
>  In the end, I think this comes down to "should we allow copyright
> violations on user pages?" which sounds to me like the answer would be "of
> course not".
>
>  Boy, wouldn't it be fun to start enforcing this! Anybody in the mood to
> become "most hated user, especially among the young and brittle"? If the
> answer is definitely "no exceptions", it would be nice to have a quote from
> Jimbo Wales with his thoughts on this to use as a reference, since a lot of
> people have strong proprietary feelings about their user pages.
>
>  FF
>


from_name: Jeff Heikkinen

body:
MAURICE FRANK wrote:
>>Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 17:47:28 +1000
>>From: Mark Gallagher
>><m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Violation of Blocking
>>Policy
>>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Message-ID:
>
> <432BCA10.6050306 at student.canberra.edu.au>
>
>>Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed;
>
> charset=UTF-8
>
>>"Now, if you double-check [[WP:BLOCK]], you may find
>>that editors who
>>exhaust the patience of the community by
>
> demonstrating >an unwillingness
>
>>to work well with others ... may be blocked.
>>
>
>
> Throughout life, any policy of judging people by their
> success in working well with others, is a blank cheque
> for bullying and for it to win.

You know, this is the first intelligent thing I've seen you say.
However, it's still pretty much indispensible for a project like
Wikipedia, whatever its drawbacks. And considering the relatively high
level of tolerance Wikipedia has shown to social outcasts up to and
including Nazis and pedophiles, I really, really think you need to give
your head a shake if you think Wikipedia is especially bad in this regard.

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

This word, "prove", you use it so much. I do not think it means what you
think it means.

> and
> "In the cases where multiple parties violate the
>
>>rule, sysops should treat all sides equally."
>
> Wow, isn't this a revelation, after all the admin
> voices here who have denied there is any obligation to
> equality and said "You are not entitled to anything",
> and after my political purging was directly for the
> offence of arguing that any entitlements to equality exist.

And now you're right back to the sort of behaviour that contributed to
getting you perma-blocked... quoting out of context, crying victim at
every turn, accusing your opponents of some bizarre political agenda (as
opposed to asking you - in some cases far more nicely than you deserved
- to remove blatantly non-neutral material and cite sources, which is
what actually happened), lying your ass off about what Wikipedia's
policies are...


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

body:
Dori wrote:
> Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
> license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
> The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
> going to lose many images this way.

It is far preferable to drop material of unknown status than to keep it.
It can always be resubmitted if it's genuine.

> We don't require text to have an explicit license, why should we do
> this for images?

As a practical matter, people seem to much more commonly toss away their
brains about images; we get a lot more "I grabbed this off some web
site, so it must be free" with images than with text.

There's some cut-and-paste with text too, but it seems to be rarer (and
also much easier to tell due to formatting). For some reason people have
the idea that they shouldn't _have to_ create original images like they
should with text, or that somehow it's more acceptable to use
copyrighted images without permission than it is to cut and paste
someone's text without attribution or permission.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Dori wrote:
> Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
> license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
> The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
> going to lose many images this way.

It is far preferable to drop material of unknown status than to keep it.
It can always be resubmitted if it's genuine.

> We don't require text to have an explicit license, why should we do
> this for images?

As a practical matter, people seem to much more commonly toss away their
brains about images; we get a lot more "I grabbed this off some web
site, so it must be free" with images than with text.

There's some cut-and-paste with text too, but it seems to be rarer (and
also much easier to tell due to formatting). For some reason people have
the idea that they shouldn't _have to_ create original images like they
should with text, or that somehow it's more acceptable to use
copyrighted images without permission than it is to cut and paste
someone's text without attribution or permission.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Dori wrote:
> Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
> license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
> The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
> going to lose many images this way.

It is far preferable to drop material of unknown status than to keep it.
It can always be resubmitted if it's genuine.

> We don't require text to have an explicit license, why should we do
> this for images?

As a practical matter, people seem to much more commonly toss away their
brains about images; we get a lot more "I grabbed this off some web
site, so it must be free" with images than with text.

There's some cut-and-paste with text too, but it seems to be rarer (and
also much easier to tell due to formatting). For some reason people have
the idea that they shouldn't _have to_ create original images like they
should with text, or that somehow it's more acceptable to use
copyrighted images without permission than it is to cut and paste
someone's text without attribution or permission.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Dori wrote:
> Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
> license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
> The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
> going to lose many images this way.

It is far preferable to drop material of unknown status than to keep it.
It can always be resubmitted if it's genuine.

> We don't require text to have an explicit license, why should we do
> this for images?

As a practical matter, people seem to much more commonly toss away their
brains about images; we get a lot more "I grabbed this off some web
site, so it must be free" with images than with text.

There's some cut-and-paste with text too, but it seems to be rarer (and
also much easier to tell due to formatting). For some reason people have
the idea that they shouldn't _have to_ create original images like they
should with text, or that somehow it's more acceptable to use
copyrighted images without permission than it is to cut and paste
someone's text without attribution or permission.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: My Watchlist RSS Feed

body:
On 9/16/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/09/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Isn't it possible to just use HTTP authentication with RSS/Atom feeds?
> > Or is this a problem for some reason?
>
> *sigh*
>
> Sorry, that's a rude start, but this conversation seems doomed to go
> round in circles every few months - until someone implements a decent
> solution, I guess. See, for example,
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-December/026562.html
> - where Brion points out that even if most RSS readers can use HTTP
> authentication, MediaWiki can't, so it's not really all that helpful.

Well that could be fixed.


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I am cc'ing this to commons-l, since this discussion belongs there
> anyway.
>
> Laura Scudder wrote:
>
>> For instance, for the Netscape icon
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nuvola_apps_netscape.png we
>>  apparently can only use it in limited cases and are supposed to
>> include the text:
>>
>> "Netscape, Netscape Certificater Server, Netscape FastTrack Server,
>>  Netscape Navigator, Netscape ONE, SuiteSpot, and the Netscape N
>> and Ship's Wheel logos are registered trademarks of Netscape
>> Communications Corporation in the United States and other
>> countries. [List other Netscape product names used in your
>> document] are also trademarks of Netscape Communications
>> Corporation, which may be registered in other countries." (from
>> http://wp.netscape.com/legal_notices/trademarks.html)
>>
>> So it would seem to me that we shouldn't have the trademarked
>> images that we can only use in limited cases anyways.
>>
>>
>> Laurascudder
>
>
> Yes, delete it.  Stuff like this should be speedy deleted from
> commons, I think.  Commons should tend very strongly towards purity,
> not comprehensiveness.  There can be strong editorial reasons for
> including such things in the encyclopedia itself, and "fair use"
> makes an appearance there, but in commons, we should tend towards
> purity.  Strongly.
>

So you are saying that trademarks limit the freedom of a work and should
be removed from all Wikimedia projects, except those where Fair Use
claims can be made?

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>> 1) Videos take up heaps more space than audio. A very short sample
>> article (the English version was only 4 or 5 sentences long, a total
>> of 88 words compared to the average 348.6) turned into a 1.5 minute,
>> 16MB video. Now, imagine a much longer article -- the average article
>> on enwiki is 348.6 words long. Now, multiply that by 100000. Then, add
>> to that the fact that there are over 100 signed languages in
>> widespread use in the world today, and you get a perfect nightmare.
>> That ends up with over 600TB of video... an astronomical amount of
>> space, not to mention the bandwidth costs. Angela said that space and
>> bandwidth aren't a concern -- I sincerely doubt that anybody has that
>> much space to donate to such a project. And that's just the first
>> hundred-thousand articles, at the level plwiki is today.
>>
>>
>>
> Mark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also
> you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am
> sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY
> of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously
> committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.
>

There are also people with less than a gigabyte on their home computer,
and dialup internet. And how you do you propose that people view these
articles? Media policy is that all videos should be Ogg Theora, so first
they will need software that can view the files, and if a one-paragraph
article is 16MB, how big will a full-length article be?

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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references:
<f7ccd24b050916024254e2bc47@mail.gmail.com>	<dgf7up$spe$1@sea.gmane.org>	<f7ccd24b05091617533c20f649@mail.gmail.com>	<dghha3$lts$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f7ccd24b05091711306d17411f@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> [snip]
> The problem is *not* that SpecialMyExt is not being loaded. The
> problem is that loading of SpecialPage.php complains about a bunch of
> variables being undefined: $wgUseValidation, $wgDisableCounters,
> $wgDisableInternalSearch, $wgEmailAuthentication. At this point, all
> special pages cease to work.

When you upgraded, you upgraded all the files, correct?

> Now, these variables are defined in includes/DefaultSettings.php,
> which is included from LocalSettings.php way before the
> SpecialPage::addPage() call.
>
> So, the question remains: why the call to SpecialPage::addPage()
> worked on 1.4.9, and suddenly does not work on 1.5rc4 unless I preload
> SpecialPage.php?

At this point, it sounds a little more intricate than can be easily
discussed on a mailing list. If you can paste the code somewhere, maybe
we (I) can help you.

(Of course, if someone else knows something about this, feel free to
jump in.)

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


from_name: Dori

body:
Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
going to lose many images this way. I've already found one that got
deleted, but fortunately the author was still around and reuploaded
it:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:CMOS_NAND.png&action=history

If the auther is gone, the image is gone, and for no good reason.
Additionally, this could mean that images incorrectly tagged with the
category [[Category:Images with unknown source]] could be gone in 7
days. Are administrators going to make sure that all images in that
category are legitimate before firing away? Expect trolls to start to
take advantage of this loophole to cause data loss.

We don't require text to have an explicit license, why should we do
this for images? For no explicit license, the implicit GFDL should be
imposed unless we find otherwise. If it looks suspicious it can be put
to the vote, but I wouldn't make those speedy deletions. We'll use
many free images this way.

Dori


from_name: Phroziac

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

body:
Rename it to Articles for deletion, improvement, transwikification, and merging.
[[WP:AFDITAM]]

On 9/17/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>
> > What about when they say to themselves "I'm not really sure if this is
> > suitable but it's not complete nonsense and I'd like a second
> > opinion" -
> > is that an acceptable use of AfD?
>
> Sure it is. I think. I've used it that way myself a number of times.
> I thought AfD was a place where we discuss problematical articles and
> decide what should be done with them.
>
> > Or should we rename AfD to make this an acceptable use?
>
> The name doesn't have to be perfect. Most articles do go on AfD
> because someone thinks they should be deleted, so it's a reasonable
> name. That doesn't mean that the three-word name captures the entire
> range of policy governing how it can be used.
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Szuy and Joe Scuderi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper Blocking by Lucky 6.9

body:
I believe the blocking policy was violated by Lucky 6.9.  I posted a list of
some family members on United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed on September
11, 2001.  Lucky 6.9 deleted the wiki for "Edward Felt" one of the
passengers who died.  Lucky 6.9 then blocked me.  Felt is relevant because
he was a passenger on that flight.  The wiki was short and hardly excessive.
It was factually correct.  There was no vandalism or violation of Wikipedia
policy.

My posting id is 24.18.59.229


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Brian,
> Alphax wrote:
>>> Actually, it was. You continued to revert without discussing why
>>> you were doing so on the article's talk page, or the talk page of
>>>  the other editor who was reverting you. /That/ is why we have
>>> the 3RR
>
> Actually, it wasn't.  You should familiarize yourself with Wiki's
> policies.  The policy on blocking for "excessive reverts" reads as
> follows:
>
> "Excessive reverts Sysops may block users who violate the three
> revert rule by reverting any page more than three times within a
> period of 24 hours. In the cases where multiple parties violate the
> rule, sysops should treat all sides equally. It is helpful to leave a
>  notice of the block, with links to the differences that demonstrate
> the violation, on the user's talk page."
>
> By Phroziac's own admission, there were no 3 reverts within a period
> of 24 hours, and, hence, no basis for blocking.

Not quite.  Phroziac admits you did not revert 3 times.  That's not the
same as admitting there was no basis for blocking.

> As the matter does not fall under any other grounds for blocking in
> Wiki's Blocking Policy, and that policy is acknowledged as an
> "exhaustive list" of situations that justify blocking, Phroziac
> clearly abused his administrative authority by issuing a block in
> contravention of Wiki's Blocking Policy.  The block should be lifted
> and Phroziac should be called to the carpet for his violation of Wiki
>  policy.

Bzzt!  See [[WP:3RR]]:
   The three-revert rule is not an entitlement, but an "electric fence";
   the 3RR is intended to stop edit wars. It does not grant users an
   inalienable right to three reverts every 24 hours or endorse reverts
   as an editing technique. Persistent reversion remains strongly
   discouraged and is unlikely to constitute working properly with
   others.

Now, if you double-check [[WP:BLOCK]], you may find that editors who
exhaust the patience of the community by demonstrating an unwillingness
to work well with others ... may be blocked.

Avoiding 3RR on a technicality does not prevent you being blocked for
3RR violations.  I don't know if that's what you've done, but given
Phroiac's comment that he felt you were "gaming the system", it sounds
legitimate enough.

(And that's a non-admin's view.  Imagine what the *admins* think of you ...)

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
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from_name: Stanislav Traykov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Authentication (..again)

body:
Hi,

We're building a site which includes MediaWiki and some other tools
(Drupal, BSCW, etc.) and needs unified log-in. I've seen some posts and
code contributions on other types of authentication (not using
AuthPlugin but outright replacing Special:Userlogin) but they were a bit
too specific for some purpose and changed the main code a lot. So I
thought up yet another way to do things: why not enclose
User::loadFromSession() in Setup.php with an if:

if(!something($wgUser)) { // declare as something(&$user) to get ref
     $wgUser = User::loadFromSession();
}

This will permit an extension/plugin to load $wgUser from somewhere
else: say HTTP auth or a different set of cookies, perhaps creating the
local MediaWiki user on-the-fly. The extension can also choose to let
User::loadFromSession() do the work by returning false or dump some
error message and exit.

After some tests, I think this little change is all that's needed to get
an alternative log-in to work. The question is what should something()
really be?

1) wfRunHooks(..) might seem like a natural choice, but extention
functions are yet to be executed at this stage, so an extention wouldn't
have had a chance to register its hooks.

2) a new global, $wgUserLoadHook, is perhaps a good alternative

3) a new method, $wgAuth->userLoad($wgUser), is what I used though,
because overriding some AuthPlugin methods is all that was necessary to
get it working.

---

Working example: http://stan.gmuf.com/wik/authpatch/ contains a patch
and two plugins: one is a generic HttpAuthPlugin that can be extended,
the other is a skeleton for a plugin extending HttpAuthPlugin.

1) cd MediaWiki's dir; patch -p1 </path/to/patch
2) download the two plugins to include/
3) put require_once('BscwAuthPlugin.php') in LocalSettings.php
4) put MediaWiki's dir in a http auth protected realm
5) test: when you log in via http auth, MediaWiki recognizes you
(perhaps creating your local user on-the-fly).

Note: As expected, Special:Userlog{in,out} will not work. The skin could
hide the links.

---

What do you think, does this patch seem like a good solution which could
go into MediaWiki?

Greetings,
Stanislav


body:
On 9/17/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Dori wrote:
> > Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
> > license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
> > The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
> > going to lose many images this way.
>
> It is far preferable to drop material of unknown status than to keep it.
> It can always be resubmitted if it's genuine.

It's not unknown, as the upload dialog clearly states that what you
are uploading has to be under the GFDL. So we're now going to delete
all the images of those who thought it was understood that they would
be licensing them under the GFDL. I often didn't bother to tag (or it
was during the time when we weren't tagging) an upload, and I'm sure
many others have done the same. We'll now be undoing people's work
because of a future rule that they had no way of knowing at the time
that they submitted the work.

It can't be resubmitted if you don't know about it, or if you're no
longer editing on Wikipedia. Like I said, many of these will also be
incorrectly labeled as unknown when they are in fact GFDL. There is
also possibility of mischief, and I believe deleted images are purged
after a certain amount of time (is it true of deleted text as well)?

Dori


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: RSS feed not working for Google Personal

body:
Because of this line in robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /w/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> On 9/16/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I wasn't suggesting you restore it I was jsuting seeing how you could
>>> mess with the rules to atchive odd results.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Er, thanks but no thanks. I know VFU is a bit weird at the moment, but
>> that no excuse for taking an article deleted in process through AfD
>> again, for a post-mortem rerun.
>>
> It looks like Elf Only Inn is getting this treatment. It's in its third
> VfD right now after having just been restored via VfU, and the nominator
> not only didn't provide any actual basis for deletion but also didn't
> even vote delete himself:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Elf_Only_Inn_%283rd_nomination%29
>
>
> Granted, some of the previous votes could well have resulted in
> inconclusive results that left the consensus unclear. However, I
> consider this VfD to be pretty fishy in its own right.
>

AFAIK, the procedure for VfU is that if the request for undeletion
succeeds, the article must go through AfD again. The nominator was in
this case merely following due process.

As for "abstain" votes on nomination for AfD, it's because there's
really no better place for people to say "I think there's something
wrong with this article, what should be done?" Just putting {{cleanup}}
or {{wikify}} on something won't fix it in a hurry. Putting {{afd}} on
it /will/.

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


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Undeletion policy

body:
On 9/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> One unfortunate tendency is that people who want something cleaned up
> expect other people to do it.  Thus they become a part of the problem.

I disagree.  Back when I regularily did RC patrol (I haven't in a
while) I certainly was not going to take the time to clean up every
badly formatted article I came across; there isn't enough time to do,
not with the current rate of editing on the Wiki.  Someone who marks
an article for cleanup may not be helping the project as much as one
who actually cleans it up, but she is helping more than someone who
does nothing at all.  And we don't get to choose the amount or the
nature of the help we get from our editors: they do (or do not do)
what they want to do.

If you want something done in Wikipedia, either do it yourself or ask
other people to do it for you.  Don't whine about it not being done;
that just makes people not like you.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper Block by Lucky 6.9

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

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

I believe Lucky 6.9 is abusing his/her administration powers.  I registered
and tried to email Lucky 6.9 to resolve this but he/she does not respond.
Thank you.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper Blocking by Administrator Lucky 6.9


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

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

body:
I would think that there is a delay between the fund drive, and setting up new servers.  Besides, the fund drive was not /just/ for new servers.  :)  Nevertheless, the money was absolutely necessary, regardless of where it's going.

--Ryan

> From: "Daniel P. B. Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] I hate it when...
>
> ...I kick in some spare change to a month-long fund drive, the fund
> drive is successful, and Wikipedia is slower than it was at the start
> of the fund drive.
>
> Just venting.
>
> I know Brion Vibber et. al. are working hard, and I look forward to
> future improvement.

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
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from_name: Juanma Barranquero

references:
<f7ccd24b050916024254e2bc47@mail.gmail.com>
	<dgf7up$spe$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f7ccd24b05091617533c20f649@mail.gmail.com>
	<dghha3$lts$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 9/17/05, Jamie Bliss <astronouth7303 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Basically, it will try to load the file if the class doesn't exist,
> based on the class name.

If you're referring to the __autoload stuff, I know. I wrote that bit
of code (inspired in something I read in a document, but I understand
what it is supposed to do; autoloading is not nine o'clock news, after
all).

> IMHO, this is fine when you write your own
> stuff and you control all the classes and file names. But in MediaWiki,
> file names and class names don't always match.

Fine. But SpecialPage is loaded from a file called SpecialPage.php...

> The way it is done sometimes is to wrap the class definition and other
> initialization bits in an extension function. (There is an example of
> this at extensions/BoardVote/BoardVote.php in CVS.

OK, and I do that with my extensions. Which does not answer my
question. Let me recapitulate:

  - SpecialPage.php is MediaWiki's code, not mine

  - The file is called SpecialPage.php, and it's in includes/

  - The class inside is called SpecialPage

  - includes/ is in include_path (set in LocalSettings.php)

  - even if it weren't, I've got an autoload to load a ClassName.php
from ClassName

  - On MediaWiki 1.4.9 this code worked:

     SpecialPage::addPage(new UnlistedSpecialPage('SpecialMyExt');

  - On MediaWiki 1.5rc4, it does not work unless I do, *before*:

     require_once('SpecialPage.php')

The problem is *not* that SpecialMyExt is not being loaded. The
problem is that loading of SpecialPage.php complains about a bunch of
variables being undefined: $wgUseValidation, $wgDisableCounters,
$wgDisableInternalSearch, $wgEmailAuthentication. At this point, all
special pages cease to work.

Now, these variables are defined in includes/DefaultSettings.php,
which is included from LocalSettings.php way before the
SpecialPage::addPage() call.

So, the question remains: why the call to SpecialPage::addPage()
worked on 1.4.9, and suddenly does not work on 1.5rc4 unless I preload
SpecialPage.php?

--
                    /L/e/k/t/u


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

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

body:
Arlo Guthrie tells a story about needing to find some old magazines
that he was sure were in his basement. After all, they'd been there
for years. He couldn't find them, so he asked his wife about them.

"Oh," she said, "I cleaned those up last spring."

"They're not 'cleaned'", objected Arlo, "they're _gone!_"

"Well," said his wife, "I don't think you can get much cleaner than
'gone.'"

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/