subject:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_[Wikipedia-l]_Wiki_China:_Problem_with_the_site,
	=09att?= ention and action from the board requested

body:
> As for the GFDL. As I mentioned above. These are not some amatuers or
> startup companies. These are professionals. I think they know quite well
> what GFDL means. But on the other hand. They can also say: well, GFDL is an
> american licence, it has no meaning in China. So we don't need to mention it
> or to obay it.

Actually China is now a member of the Bern Convention. Thus they respect
copyright, even foreigner's copyrights.
  Then, the GFDL can have full effect in China.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Martin Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>>How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
>>logged-in users?
>>This would act as a minimal speedbump which is probably just enough to
>>discourage many (most?) drive-by junk page creators, whilst still
>>allowing anons to edit any existing page as freely as before.
>>This could be applied only to the main article space, thus allowing
>>anons to create talk pages as before.
>>This would be similar to the current restriction of image uploads to
>>logged-in users.

David wrote:
> Sounds plausible. What are the numbers on the problem? What percentage
> of anon page creations are shoot-on-sight?

I was only talking about the general principle, but yeah Neil's idea is
probably better,

David, this is an extract from my user page (it isn't particularly
interesting at the moment, I keep meaning to do more samples, but it's
better than nothing);
I selected 4 random pages of 50 newpages, then deleted what was obviously
speedy deletable, here are the statistics;

  a.. 200 new articles total.
  b.. 89 were from anonymous IP users.
  c.. 41 anonymous IP articles were deleted.
  d.. 0 registered articles were deleted.
21% of all new articles were easily deletable (all from anonymous users),
46% of all IP user articles were deleted.

Note 1: More of the anonymous IP user's articles could have been deleted,
but not strictly under the speedy deletion criteria, and they will
eventually be deleted through AFD or edited to remove all the original
content anyway. Some registered users articles will probably suffer the same
fate, although none met the speedy delete criteria.

Note 2: 200 articles isn't a very big sample, but it is probably enough to
be representative.

Note 3: There could have also been other admins deleting articles, so it is
possible that an even greater proportion of them were speedy deletable.

> _______________________________________________
> 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: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More fodder for your editcountitis

body:
On 11/1/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> I have been looking at this for a while now, something that is clear is that
> virtually all (as in ~95%) of the deleted articles (especially speedies) are
> from anonymous users, and a lot of which aren't tests, but plain old
> vandalism. I really think we need some kind of "votes for creation" or
> "approved creation" or something, maybe not soon as there are still vast
> quantities of topics we don't cover (see [[Wikipedia:Wikiproject Missing
> encyclopedic articles]] for ~150,000 examples), but maybe a in year or so
> from now I dont think we will have much choice.
>
> Martin

There is a proposal I made somewhere to limit the creation of orphan
articles. From what I recall nocking out rubish on new pages was't a
problem.

Incerdetnly do new pages turn up in Recent changes a fraction before
they turn up on new pages?

--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] first vandalism in Võro wiki

body:
Sulev Iva wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Today there was first act of vandalism in V?ro Wikipedia.
>Somebody 219.78.127.224 deleted contents of 25 articles.
>I rolled all articles back and blocked this user for one day.
>(http://fiu-vro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist)
>
>Should I block this user for longer time or do something else?
>
>V?rok
>
>
>
Hi,
  if it is a dynamic IP, it makes little sense to block it for more than
one day,you have a high chance of blocking someone else. If it is a
static one, you may consider a longer block.
Cruccone


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
On 01/11/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:

> Note 2: 200 articles isn't a very big sample, but it is probably enough to
> be representative.
>
> Note 3: There could have also been other admins deleting articles, so it is
> possible that an even greater proportion of them were speedy deletable.

>From personal experience, by the time you've gone most of the way down
a single fifty-entry first page of [[Special:Newpages]], a good few of
the speedy candidates have gone (at least, they have if you're awake
at the right time). Might be worth checking only the first ten and
doing it more times... I'll see if I can remember to try some later.

My gut feeling is that "auto-speediable" is closer to 40% than 20%.

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


from_name: charles matthews

subject:
Article creation (was Re: [WikiEN-l] More fodder for
	youreditcountitis)

body:
Neil Harris wrote

> How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
> logged-in users?

No, no and three times no!

Do we want people to try test edits of [[World War II]] rather than creating
[[pancakesMMM!!!]] as a sandbox/test edit.  No we don't.

I find that many anons are graduate students very much able to help with
developing WP.  We need these guys!  We need them to understand that 'libre
et gratuit', as the French helpfully put it, is exactly that.  We ask no
more than that you come and edit; we put no barriers in place; we are
geniunely open to business to IP numbers.  We want people's toes in the
water and don't put up signs saying 'Private Beach'.

Charles


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More fodder for your editcountitis

body:
<uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote in message
news:20051031122656.ee5e00744b2f04e7bbe11a66c07e9501.e348be17b6.wbe at email.email.secureserver.net...
> There are 661 admins on en.wikipedia.  Of these, 461 were active during
> the month of October, 2005.  They deleted 60313 pages, blocked 12854
> vandals, trolls, and socks, and protected 1227 pages.  691 pages were
> undeleted.

I'm not even on the list...I must be wielding my janitor's broom in the
wrong corridor :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Nathan Reed

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

body:
en.Wikinews has a process for "accrediting" Wikinewsies, though there
has been some debate concerning our authority to accredit anyone and
our authority to issue badges using the Wikinews logo.

See the following:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy

-N.

On 11/1/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Ah, OK, I didn't know that.
>
> I still maintain that press-badge-generating bureaucracy will be easier
> to penetrate with Wikinews as an excews - er, excuse :-) - than Wikipedia.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
>Neil Harris wrote

>> How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
>> logged-in users?

>No, no and three times no!
>Do we want people to try test edits of [[World War II]] rather than creating
>[[pancakesMMM!!!]] as a sandbox/test edit.  No we don't.

You have a point there ;-) The sandboxing will happen as long as anons can edit.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
David wrote:
> You have a point there ;-) The sandboxing will happen as long as anons can
> edit.

hhmmmm, maybe we could at least have a better message for anonymous users
about to create a new page, warning them politely that their article will be
quickly deleted if it isn't encyclopedic.


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Privacy policy and editing
	anonymously notice.

body:
On 11/1/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Once again, the disclaimer must be clear about the fact that the user
> agrees to the use of his personal data by wikimedia.
>

Why should such huge message be on every page? I don't see any such message
here on gmail (or on any other server I am able to think of), just a link to
Privacy Policy. Or, the other way around, if the message is necessary, it
would have to be included on _every_ page, not just on edit pages, wouldn't
it?

I think a link to privacy policy in the page footer should be enough (IANAL,
of course), the warning about publicly displaying the IP address of
anonymous contributors is IMHO a bit different case, not a fulfillment of a
legal requirement, just a politeness to the contributors.

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: Brown, Darin

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Verification

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> It's actually not easy to verify that. It's easier to just point to a
> published resource by a reputable press, which is a lot harder to
> fake. We reach outside the internet for our verification, in the end,
> because we know that the internet is unreliable. It's an interesting
> model of digital epistemology, is it not?

Yes, I know.  Math is like French or German, though -- one often has to be
able to speak, before one is even able to "check the literature", so in many
cases, offering someone non-internet verification amounts to "Here's a
textbook...go home, read chapters 4-7 until you understand them, then come
back and see that the results at the end of chapter 7 justify the argument."
The real "verification" is in the understanding of chapters 4-7.  Now, if
someone isn't willing to take the time to learn chapters 4-7, (which may
itself require previous years of training even to consider tackling), then
the person could conceivably say, "That's not a reference, just an appeal to
authority."  In fact, this is precisely the response of the typical crank
(as opposed to the knowledgeable but mistaken person, which has been myself
on more than one occasion).

Of course, I'm sure other subjects are not so simple, either...imagine
chemistry, archaeology, law, e.g.!  If I asked for a reference for something
in law, I wouldn't be surprised to hear, "Here's a law textbook...go home,
read pages 200-400 until you understand them, and then see that the statutes
on page 385-395 apply."  Even in areas like history or lit crit, the same
could apply (ever try to verify that Derrida or Habermas made a certain
claim on page 352 of such-and-such?)  My point is that "verification" always
requires some amount of prior intangible expertise, and not all references
to the literature will be "checkable" by everyone.

> Of course, in general. But when there are real disputes, where the
> answer is not self-evident to most editors (such as the use of "there"
> vs. "their"),

That's not self-evident?!  What are they teaching in schools today? :-)

darin


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Article creation

body:
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:20:25 +0000
> From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <dk84ka$8q1$1 at sea.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
> > How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
> > logged-in users?
>
> Just because most junk creations are from IPs, doesn't mean most
> creations from IPs are junk.
>
> What is the name of that fallacy?

[[Affirming the consequent]] (more or less)

darin


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Lane, Ryan

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads [WAS: Re: the discussion page:
	summary and better display of the treats, mbox format?]

body:
Timwi <timwi at ...> writes:

>
>
> > I do think these are two seperate points:
> >
> > * how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
> > * whether each author own his/her comment or not.
>
> But the point is that the answer to the second influences whether the
> solution proposed for the first is seen as an "improvement". I feel that
> if the ability to edit other people's comments is taken away from me, I
> can't label it an "improvement".
>

You may not label it an improvement, but there are others who definately
would.

> > Discussions, OTOH, also involve personal opinions. Danger lies ahead
when
> > the opionion can be changed, but is still labeled (or signed, if you
> > wish) with the original authors name.
>
> We already have this "danger", and we've had it since the beginning of
> Phase II, and it has not turned out to be a great problem, so this is
> not an argument.
>

I've had people complain to me about moving their comments around on my LDAP
patch's page on meta. I erased one person's edit because it was a
non-working
solution, and had a complaint about that.

Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a
problem.
I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid
argument.

> > Just imagine that this discussion we have is on a wiki, this is the
latest
> > edition (you would need to check the history, aka mailing list archives
> > to see the full revisions) and it contained:
> >
> > On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:36, Timwi wrote:
> >>>Any model, if over applied, is harmful.
> >>Agree.
> >>I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
> >
> > See the danger?
>
> A fallacious argument by false dilemma, or by lack of imagination, or
> whatever you wanna call it. You almost provided the answer to this one
> yourself:
>
> > (for the record, the above quote of three lines was
> > written/shortened by me, not Timwi).
>
> And that is what it should say.
>
> 	COMMENT #328645		by [[User:Timwi]]
>
> 	Agree. I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
> 	(This comment was last edited by [[User:Tels]] <date/time>.)
>
> If <date/time> is a minute ago, I better check the diff. If it was an
> hour ago, I can probably assume that your edit was harmless.
>
> Therefore, again, your "danger" is not an argument against the ability
> to edit comments.
>

Why can you assume that the edit was harmless? During katrina, I had no
internet
access for weeks. If someone maliciously edited some of my comments during
that
time, would you assume that what was there is actually what I wrote?

Ignoring catastrophies like a large blackout, or a hurricane: say someone
goes
on vacation, or simply hasn't checked his discussions recently, or if an
article's discussion page hasn't been updated in a long while, and someone
stops
checking it as often; in these cases, vandalism may go unnoticed for QUITE a
while, where readers may be seeing the vandalised version for the entire
time.

In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.

> > If we can improve the discussion page itself, *and* prevent
> > misrepresentation at the same time, well, that would be great :)
>
> It's really easy.
>
> Timwi
>

I think the original idea of LiquidThreads is a good solution for the
problem. I
don't believe the implementation would be easy though ;).

Ryan Lane


from_name: Christopher Granade

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads [WAS: Re: the discussion page:
 summary and better display of the treats, mbox format?]

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

Timwi wrote:
> So far I have addressed only the "problem" of people not knowing
> whether what they are reading is really what the author wrote. People
>  complaining about edits is a whole other matter. To address that
> problem, we must think about why they are complaining. I am convinced
>  that the large majority of such complaints are solely out of
> irrational, thoughtless behaviour: people just assume that they "own"
> their comments by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering"
> even when it's perfectly legitimate if they thought about it for only
> a second. Surely you can't agree to let this kind of stupidity take
> precedence over our wiki philosophy.

I have two major issues with this comment. First, your tone is very
confrontational, and is far more aggressive than the situation calls
for. Please, let's keep civil here.

Second, I think we can let "this kind of stupidity" take precedence.
This is exactly the kind of thing I meant earlier when I warned about
over applying models. The Wiki model applies to collaborative documents.
No one works with me to create a "better comment," but rather I write a
comment so as to communicate what *I* am saying to someone else. In that
sense, I *should* own comments, or there should be a large, loud
disclaimer on every single page in the Talk namespace that comments may
not belong to their professed authors. If you think this is too obvious,
remember that irons often come with warning labels these days stating
that one shouldn't iron clothes that they are currently wearing.

- --Chris
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list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject:
[Juriwiki-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Trademark violation of
	our	'MediaWiki' mark

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>> Is there an officer who either is tasked with this type of thing or can
>> appoint someone to be? A request really needs to come from someone acting as
>> an agent of the foundation, and having it come from 50 different wannabies
>> is going to be counter-productive.
>
> Having an intellectual property officer was part of my platform in the first
> board election. This person would be the official point-of-contact for the
> foundation on these matters. I think it is high time we create such a position
> as part of the legal department. We *don?t* want to be trademark and copyright
> Nazis, but at the same time we do need to have somebody who is tasked with
> representing the foundation on these matters when needed (as a final step in
> the illegal mirror review process and as one of the first steps in the
> trademark protection process; of course, asking nicely at first, yada, yada).
>
>> According to the US Code, a work made by an employee within the scope of his
>> employment is *always* a work made for hire. The copyright may have been
>> transfered (and that transfer can be terminated after 35 years), but AFAIK
>> you can't change the authorship of a work.
>
> Perhaps. But my gut feeling is that only really applies when a specific work is
> commissioned... That is not the case with almost all of what Brion does. He is
> pretty much paid to do what he thinks is best (that itself, may or may not be
> legal). Either way, copyright ownership is a transferable asset, so if needed
> we?d just need to draw-up a contract whereby the foundation gives ownership of
> his paid copyrighted work as part of his compensation.
>
> This is a very important point that we need to work out; if Brion?s work is
> owned by the foundation, then the foundation may need to account for that as an
> asset (this part of the law confuses me though since some types of software
> fall under it and others do not). Since I don?t yet know how to do that and I?m
> the CFO, I?d much rather have Brion retain ownership of all his work if it
> means less work for me. :-) I wonder how free/open source software companies do
> this. For that matter, how the FSF does this since they like to have GNU
> software copyright assigned to them (I don?t recall if that means transfer of
> ownership).

Well, being the Legal Officer I think it should be my job.

With one master in IP law, and another master in contracts, having
worked for IP Law Firms in France and in Japan, working for the EU
commission on licenses, etc.
I guess I have all the required credentials.

And much of the work I do on juriwiki-l and on IRC already concentrates
around IP issues of Wikimedia projects (licenses compatibility,
copyright violations, trademarks, public domain, etc.)

This said, from my point of view, I don't think there is a real need
for a designated IP officer today.

To be efficient, answering trademark issues must follow some sort of
3-steps process :

1. At a primary level, answering trademark issues is only about getting
information and asking politely for explanations and changes. Only very
simple knowledge of law is required at that step. It can be easily done
by any officer of the Foundation, or local chapter representative.

2. But then, it is possible that things become more complicated and that
Officers and local boards would need some help. In that case, I can
easily intervene directly as the Legal Officer of the foundation, and
draft beautiful
legal letters ; or stay in the background and give them a few advices on
what to say and not to say. It is also easy to send a mail to the
juriwiki-l mailing list and get some helps from these legal professionals.

3. Finally, there could be some rare cases when it would be necessary to
act judicially. That would mean to rely not only on Foundation Officers
but also on some actual Law Firm.

This process is what I think to be the most efficient solution and it
would simply rely on good communication between Officers.

If necessary, the board could easily make the role a bit more precise by
pointing out
  that the legal officer of the Wikimedia Foundation is especially
charged with IP issues related to Wikimedia projects.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron,
cersa-cnrs paris 2


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Mihai Floran

subject: [Foundation-l] stewards and bot flagging

body:
>> Why could not bureaucrat set bot flags on their
projects.
I support this idea of Anthere especially for the fact that is really hard for stewards to know the local reality of the project and in many cases by not knowing the language is hard to know if they have community approval for using that bot.
Bureaucrats are elected persons which are most entitled to do this and they can know if the user can be entrusted and if he/she has the community approval.
Also, according to the fact that bureaucrats can make or not admins in their wiki, which is more important than adding bot flag I think that they can be entrusted for do this also.
Michael


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Privacy policy and
	editing	anonymously notice.

body:
Why not, but a link is not enough. It should be written like :

By editing, you agree with the [[privacy policy]].

Petr Kadlec wrote:
> On 11/1/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Once again, the disclaimer must be clear about the fact that the user
>> agrees to the use of his personal data by wikimedia.
>>
>
> Why should such huge message be on every page? I don't see any such message
> here on gmail (or on any other server I am able to think of), just a link to
> Privacy Policy. Or, the other way around, if the message is necessary, it
> would have to be included on _every_ page, not just on edit pages, wouldn't
> it?
>
> I think a link to privacy policy in the page footer should be enough (IANAL,
> of course), the warning about publicly displaying the IP address of
> anonymous contributors is IMHO a bit different case, not a fulfillment of a
> legal requirement, just a politeness to the contributors.

It is a legal requirement.

For more information, read my paper about it :

http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=103


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
On Nov 1, 2005, at 2:50 PM, Matt Brown wrote:

> Pruning Newpages is fairly easy. I don't think anyone has
> demonstrated that
> keeping up with the flow of junk articles is yet a problem, and
> certainly
> not one big enough to take such a radical step.
>
> And I regularly come across good articles created by anon users.
> Bear in
> mind that there are some long-term users who edit anonymously by
> choice and
> may leave if we require login.
>
>

Isn't it a Foundation issue that we don't do this, in fact?

-Phil


from_name: Sulev Iva

body:
Hi,

Today there was first act of vandalism in V?ro Wikipedia.
Somebody 219.78.127.224 deleted contents of 25 articles.
I rolled all articles back and blocked this user for one day.
(http://fiu-vro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist)

Should I block this user for longer time or do something else?

V?rok


subject: [WikiEN-l] Freezing articles/Stable versions

body:
For those interested in stable versions of articles, you might want to
see Ta bu shi da yu's "Baseline revision" idea:

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

And you should browse [[Category:Wikipedia 1.0]] in general:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_1.0

- d.


from_name: Timwi

references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es>
	<87d5llaiex.fsf@mat.ucm.es>	<dk5svb$5jd$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<200511010004.37975@bloodgate.com>

body:
> OTOH, the currenty wikipages are not really suited to discussions at all -
> I'd rather not have someone edit my "posts" - whether it be for fixing
> the speling or whatever.

Well, I for one would object to any system that doesn't allow me to edit
other people's comments. It's too useful to let traditionalism and
conservatism ruin it. It's not just about fixing atrocious spellings,
it's also about removing objectionable parts of comments without
removing the entire comment, or about summarising an unnecessarily long
piece of prose. I don't see any point in listing the advantages here
since wikis have shown time and again that they work, and Wikipedia
wasn't the first. Yes, it defies the well-established and widely loved
web forum paradigm where everyone "owns" their own comments, but we're
not a web forum, we're a wiki, and wiki is our paradigm.

Timwi


list: commons-l

from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Commons-l] Introducing FlickrLickr

body:
Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> writes:

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

> There are currently almost half a million CC-BY photos on Flickr, and
> new ones are uploaded every day.

Do you also harvest CC-BY-SA photos?  Is it possible to select photos
by user name?  I'd like to copy my own photos to the commons server
using a batch upload tool.

If selecting photos by user name is not possible I could provide a
filename list alternatively.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>
>>A striking number, i.e. 2000 per day.  More than the amount of honest page
>>creation.  AfD is only around 5% of that.  Presumably there is something
>>behind the four-figure numbers some admins clocked up.  My 20 or so seems
>>strangely inadequate if not.
>
> Go do [[Special:Newpages]] patrol some time. (Sunday afternoon and
> evening US time are "good" for this.)  MY GOD, THE AVALANCHES OF CRAP!
> I can fully believe we have ~2000 shoot-on-sight new page creations a
> day.

Don't forget that this number varies widely depending on the ideology of
the person doing the patrol. Indeed, my very first contribution ever --
which was creating a page titled [[Extrema]] containing the text "Plural
of [[extremum]]." -- was deleted when it should have been turned into a
redirect. Several further contributions of mine were deleted when
another action would have been obviously more sensible. It feels to me
more like an avalanche of rampant admins than an avalanche of crap.

That said, I have done Newpages patrol in the past and I too encounter a
lot of "shoot-on-sight" pages (I particularly don't get why people
create pages where the content is a copy of the title)...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
> How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
> logged-in users?

Just because most junk creations are from IPs, doesn't mean most
creations from IPs are junk.

What is the name of that fallacy?


body:
> A few more of us did more page Unprotect's than page Protects:
>
> Shanes
> BrokenSegue
> Dante_Alighieri
> Tony_Sidaway
> Ixfd64
> RobertG
> Mirv
> Chuq
> Cdc
> Dmcdevit
> Ed_Poor
> Phroziac

I'm not in the list although I fit the criterion. (Not that I care, just
saying the list is incomplete.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
Martin Richards wrote:
> David wrote:
>
>> You have a point there ;-) The sandboxing will happen as long as anons
>> can edit.
>
> hhmmmm, maybe we could at least have a better message for anonymous
> users about to create a new page, warning them politely that their
> article will be quickly deleted if it isn't encyclopedic.

That's obviously not going to stop them from creating it when what they
want is just to test if they really can; in fact, it may even encourage
them to create it, knowing it will be deleted and so they've done little
to no harm with their test.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

body:
Jason Y. Lee wrote:
> Do we have any way to issue Wikipedians press badges?  There are a
> lot of events that could be covered by Wikipedian photographers that
> would allow the whole mess of copyrights... since Wikipedian
> photographers are likely to copyleft than copyright....

Actually, use Wikinews as the excuse, not Wikipedia. Not only is this
closer to being eligible for a press badge, but also it will mean the
images will be public domain! :-)

Timwi


references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es>	<87d5llaiex.fsf@mat.ucm.es>	<dk5svb$5jd$2@sea.gmane.org>	<200511010004.37975@bloodgate.com>	<dk8225$vc3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dk83h4$4hr$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> Any model, if over applied, is harmful.

Agree. But you didn't elaborate on this fully. Discussion threads and
wiki are not mutually exclusive models.

I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads as long as it doesn't let users
claim ownership over "their" comments (which the current proposal
proposes to do).

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Indexing Wikisource

body:
> It was only this summer that wikisource.org was split into
> language subdomains like de.wikisource.org and en.wikisource.org,
> so it is understandable that pages in the new subdomains still
> have a low Google rank.  However, this is the same for all
> languages, and doesn't explain the difference that I see between
> the German and the English language subdomain.

This is wrong; it is not the same for all languages. The English one is
privileged because wikisource.org/wiki/Anything redirects you to it.

Therefore, from Google's point of view, de.wikisource.org is "new", but
en.wikisource.org is just a new name of a site that is "old".

Hence, I'm not surprised that the Google spider gives more priority to
de.wikisource.org. In fact, it may still have been in the process of
spidering the site when you put the stuff up, and then the spider may
have come across a link to it, while Google might be thinking that it
has finished an indexing run of the English one, thus taking a break
before giving it another go.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The promise is "edit this page"

body:
>>I find that many anons are graduate students very much able to help with
>>developing WP.  We need these guys!  We need them to understand that 'libre
>>et gratuit', as the French helpfully put it, is exactly that.  We ask no
>>more than that you come and edit; we put no barriers in place;
>
> We promise that you can "edit this page," not "create an article." The policy
> is "zero-threshold editing," not "zero-threshold article creation.'

This is just hair-splitting. Just because we've never mentioned page
creation in any sort of "promise", doesn't mean we should stop offering it.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Indexing Wikisource

body:
As I have reported earlier on wikide-l and wikipedia-l, I
digitized two small encyclopedias in September and early October,
one in German and one in English, and made them available on
Wikisource for proofreading and reference.  Every book page has a
wiki subpage of its own, presenting the scanned image and the OCR
text.

Since then I have monitored how fast Google has been to index
these titles.  More than half of the German pages were indexed
within a few weeks, which is in line with my experience of how
fast Google can be.  But to my surprise, only very few of the
English pages have yet been indexed.

It was only this summer that wikisource.org was split into
language subdomains like de.wikisource.org and en.wikisource.org,
so it is understandable that pages in the new subdomains still
have a low Google rank.  However, this is the same for all
languages, and doesn't explain the difference that I see between
the German and the English language subdomain.

Today de.wikisource.org reports to having 2311 articles and 4638
pages.  A word that occurs on every page is "letzte" ("recent" in
Recent Changes) and Google gives 770 hits for the search
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ade.wikisource.org+letzte

Of the 4638 pages, 443 are subpages to
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Meyers_Blitz-Lexikon
and Google finds 418 of them,
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ade.wikisource.org+%22Meyers+Blitz-Lexikon%22

This means 17% of the de.wikisource pages are indexed, but 94% of
the pages from the book I scanned.

En.wikisource.org today has 19,006 articles and 23,780 total
pages.  A word that occurs on every page is "recent" and Google
givs 12,500 hits for the query
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aen.wikisource.org+recent

Of the 23,780 pages, 2791 are subpages to
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work
but Google only finds 4 of them,
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aen.wikisource.org+%22The+New+Student%27s+Reference+Work%22

This means 53% of en.wikisource.org articles are indexed, but only
0.14 % of the book pages I scanned.

I can understand that some enthusiastic Germans have linked to
"Meyers Blitz-Lexikon" and increased its Google rank.  But it also
seems that there is a negative Google rank for "The New Student's
Reference Work".  Has it been trapped in some spam filter?

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


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Jason Y. Lee wrote:
> > Do we have any way to issue Wikipedians press badges?  There are a
> > lot of events that could be covered by Wikipedian photographers that
> > would allow the whole mess of copyrights... since Wikipedian
> > photographers are likely to copyleft than copyright....
>
> Actually, use Wikinews as the excuse, not Wikipedia. Not only is this
> closer to being eligible for a press badge, but also it will mean the
> images will be public domain! :-)

Err, no it won't. PD isn't the licensing for Wikinews any more; it moved
to CC-BY-SA 2.5 a while ago. And it wouldn't "mean that", it just that
we would unnecessarily (and in many countries, illegally) force users to
rescind their copyright claims, and so reduce the number of images that
could possibly be used.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Idea re: Template cruft

body:
Great. I hammered it out when still a bit bashed and
Im pleased now to see what I wrote was essentially
coherent and actionable.

So Ill start a page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editor_tags
and pitch it a bit more, start implementing in on some
articles which suffer from template madness or
long-term controversial tags. The idea is that the
shortcut-like tag could even be 'permanent' for
articles with recurring issues of an apparently
eternal nature.

Sincere regards,
SV

--- Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> steve v wrote:
> > The 'added whitespace' flaw when category tags are
> > placed at the top of articles may be a way to
> solve
> > the template cruft problem, while still showing a
> > visible change on the article itself (i.e the
> extra
> > line of whitespace). In otherwords, corrections
> > templates (cleanup - merge - delete - etc) needing
> to
> > be made can be hidden in the article, and can be
> seen
> > by editors when they click the edit link.
> >
> > If that's too subtle and difficult (ie links dont
> > work) a simple edit issues box (like a
> {{shortcut}}
> > box) could  give everybody note that there are
> issues
> > regarding the article, and link to the talk page
> where
> > people can stick any number of templates they
> want.
> >
>
> I like this idea. Many of our existing templates say
> "this article is
> $1; see talk".
>
> - --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon
> Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML
> email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird -
> http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
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> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
I kind of agree with Charles in the sense that some
institution computers dont allow cookies to cache -
meaning all edits must be IP edits (dont use term
'anon').

It would be interesting to hear from the regular IP
community what their concerns are - anonymity,
caching, too busy to log in, dont care to have a web
ident, dont want to get personal, etc?

SV

--- charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

> Neil Harris wrote
>
> > How about the much simpler approach of restricting
> page creation to
> > logged-in users?
>
> No, no and three times no!
>
> Do we want people to try test edits of [[World War
> II]] rather than creating
> [[pancakesMMM!!!]] as a sandbox/test edit.  No we
> don't.
>
> I find that many anons are graduate students very
> much able to help with
> developing WP.  We need these guys!  We need them to
> understand that 'libre
> et gratuit', as the French helpfully put it, is
> exactly that.  We ask no
> more than that you come and edit; we put no barriers
> in place; we are
> geniunely open to business to IP numbers.  We want
> people's toes in the
> water and don't put up signs saying 'Private Beach'.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
On 11/1/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> It would depend on the circumstances of the conflict, wouldn't it? In
> cases where there's genuine debate going on, it doesn't make sense to
> arbitrarily cut it off at some deadline rather than letting it continue
> until a clear decision is reached. If it stalemates then perhaps a
> deadline can come into play but it shouldn't be required as a universal
> solution.

Stalemate is a subjective judement.

> "Conflict" is not inherently bad, it's part of how disagreements can be
> resolved.

Heated conflict is.

--
geni


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Timwi" wrote

> (I particularly don't get why people create pages where the content is a
> copy of the title)...

More often a question of copy-and-paste the nearest thing than writer's
block (I've got the title, now I just need the characters and plot), I
imagine.

Charles


from_name: Dan Grey

subject:
[Juriwiki-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Trademark violation of our
	'MediaWiki' mark

body:
On 31/10/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It was crystal clear to me the very first time I read it that the
> > company are just offering MediaWiki installs in their hosting plans,
> > which afaik they're perfectly entitled to do.
>
> Then you should read it again. It clearly says that they are launching Media
> Wiki <full stop>. They can't launch something that already exists.

I've read it several times, thanks. If one tries to misread it hard
enough they'll come up with your interpretation; otherwise I think
people (especially the vaguely web-savvy who are likely the only
people who will see it) know exactly what they mean.

But if you care so much about this, have you written them a letter
yet? Or who are you expecting to do what?

Dan


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
If, as appears here, at least half of our anonymously created articles
are *not* speedied, then we'd lose articles by blocking article
creation by anon IPs.

As someone else has remarked, most of the rest can be put down to
sandboxing, which as a wiki we encourage.

The wiki isn't broken, so we don't need to fix it.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>Pruning Newpages is fairly easy. I don't think anyone has demonstrated that
>keeping up with the flow of junk articles is yet a problem, and certainly
>not one big enough to take such a radical step.
>
>
I agree with this.  I actually kind of like doing Newpages patrol, and I
don't think it's a huge burden on admins in general.  There are actually
probably more admins doing it now than strictly necessary---if you go
past the newest 50 pages or so, most of the obvious junk pages have
already been taken care of by another admin.  It would have to be a much
bigger problem than it is now to be worth changing something major like
disallowing new page creation by anons.

-Mark


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unblocking

body:
What is the policy on other Wikipedias concerning unblocking users. In
particular, does a sysop have the right to unblock an IP another sysop
blocked, if he thinks the block was unreasonably long?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Tels

references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <dk8225$vc3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dk83h4$4hr$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:01, Christopher E. Granade wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
> >> OTOH, the currenty wikipages are not really suited to discussions at
> >> all - I'd rather not have someone edit my "posts" - whether it be
> >> for fixing the speling or whatever.
> >
> > Well, I for one would object to any system that doesn't allow me to
> > edit other people's comments. It's too useful to let traditionalism
> > and conservatism ruin it. It's not just about fixing atrocious
> > spellings, it's also about removing objectionable parts of comments
> > without removing the entire comment, or about summarising an
> > unnecessarily long piece of prose. I don't see any point in listing
> > the advantages here since wikis have shown time and again that they
> > work, and Wikipedia wasn't the first. Yes, it defies the
> > well-established and widely loved web forum paradigm where everyone
> > "owns" their own comments, but we're not a web forum, we're a wiki,
> > and wiki is our paradigm.
> >
> > Timwi
>
> Any model, if over applied, is harmful. Making things into discussion
> fora that do not lend themselves to such a model can only result in the
> imposing of restrictions upon content which are harmful to the
> capability of the model.
>
> Thus, in applying a model, it is important to recognize what it was
> intended for, and what it is good at doing. A Wiki model is good for
> quasi-static documents (depends on time of access, but not on query),
> whereas a forum is good for an ongoing discussion.

I have to stongly agree. Part of the problems with the current discussions
are:

*people editing other people's comment, making it appear that person X
said Y, while they instead did say "!Y". (I can see lawsuits happen
already... )
* people forgetting to sign their name/date, re-arrangement of comments
any any other things that make it virtually impossible to reconstruct a
discussion (remember, a discussion not only needs to track who said what,
but also when, e.g. in which order where things said)

Yes, all changes are theoretically in the history, but good luck in
reconstructing the page after some amounts of edits.

* you cannot collapse parts of a discussioin thread, because there is no
structure/tree/thread etc - it is all a flat text.
* likewise, seeing hat changed last on the discussion page involves the
cumbersome history - you cannot simple read the last entries on a long
page after some time because they are all merged into the same flat text.

A discussion thread is simple not the same as an article, and I think the
wiki principle cannot work good for it. However, see below:

> What about a
> discussion that is itself a document? I see two approaches to this
> problem: 1) Implement the new LiquidThreads model, which combines the
> two models. 2) Add discussion-specific metadata syntax to the Wiki
> syntax to allow for specialized handling of discussions.

What I had in mind that the discussion page could be constructed from a
series of "posts". Each post would be a wiki-mini-article in itself. Thus
you get the tree structure (can collapse threads sort them etc), plus the
"show me the latest posts", and you still have the "edit other people's
text" feature. You need no new markup, it probably suffices to have a
front-end that can collect the posts (all articles in name-space
"MyArticle::Discussion::Post?) and display them on one page, with edit
buttons etc per post.

You could even make it so that when the original author requests this,
only admins can edit/delete this post (in case of trouble). If the author
does request it, anybody can edit the text.

You could even have a "this post was last edited by XYZ on ABC" - thus
showing immidiately that the original author wasn't the last one to touch
the text and thus giving you a hint to look at the history.

Currently you would need always check the history to spot malicous
modifications.

Threading by subject, time etc are all possible because these are just
rearangements of the post articles.

Btw, even if the main wikipedia does not use this new discussion style, a
lot of small wikis could benefit greatly from an improved discussion
page. The current model ends in quite a chaos after a while.

> Expanding on this second point, consider something like this:
>
> Current format:
> ==NPOV Complaint==
> This page is not NPOV! --Someuser
[snip]

> Proposed format:
> @topic ==NPOV Complaint==
> @comment This page is not NPOV! --Someuser @/comment
> @c:Why not? --Author @/c
> @c::Because of... @/c
> @c:We need more justification than that. --Otheruser @/c
> @c::Well, there's... @/c
> @/topic
>
> where @c is shorthand for @comment, and the colons following the @c
> tell MW how nested it is. If you find this markup ugly, suggest
> something else; I thought of this off the top of my head.

Oh, please not more markup to remember, parse and translate. I think a
real one-article-per-post model would solve the problem more elegant. ;)

Btw, I do not know what Liquidthreads is, but if it works like what I
proposed, just count me in favour of it :)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Nov  1 17:43:13 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy,
 the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese,
 the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of
 arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most
 powerful men in America are named 'Bush', 'Dick', and 'Colon'. Need I
 say more?" -Chris Rock

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references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <dk83h4$4hr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dk85j5$c6m$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:36, Timwi wrote:
> > Any model, if over applied, is harmful.
>
> Agree. But you didn't elaborate on this fully. Discussion threads and
> wiki are not mutually exclusive models.
>
> I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads as long as it doesn't let
> users claim ownership over "their" comments (which the current proposal
> proposes to do).

I do think these are two seperate points:

* how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
* whether each author own his/her comment or not.

Thinking about this, a wiki article is "owned" by multiple authors, none
of which are readily apparent (you have to check the history and even
than it is hard to track who "owns" what). OTOH, it is written in NPOV,
and checked by a lot of people.

Discussions, OTOH, also involve personal opinions. Danger lies ahead when
the opionion can be changed, but is still labeled (or signed, if you
wish) with the original authors name.

The current model doesn't even have a way to handle this, let alone to
prvent it (if you wanted to prevent it).

Just imagine that this discussion we have is on a wiki, this is the latest
edition (you would need to check the history, aka mailing list archives
to see the full revisions) and it contained:

On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:36, Timwi wrote:
> > Any model, if over applied, is harmful.
> Agree.
> I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.

See the danger? (for the record, the above quote of three lines was
written/shortened by me, not Timwi).

The current model only relies on "Prinzip Hoffnung", e.g. that is you
*hope* that the reader checks the history, or someone checks and edits
the discussion page back.

If we can improve the discussion page itself, *and* prevent
misrepresentation at the same time, well, that would be great :)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Nov  1 18:20:44 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law. Right
 now, any professor can show a complete movie in his classroom without
 paying a dime - that's fair use. What is not fair use is making a copy
 of an encrypted DVD, because once you're able to break the encryption,
 you've undermined the encryption itself." - Jack Valenti

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references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <200511011756.19482@bloodgate.com>
	<dk87sq$jkp$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 01 November 2005 18:16, Christopher E. Granade wrote:
> Tels wrote:
> > Oh, please not more markup to remember, parse and translate. I think
> > a real one-article-per-post model would solve the problem more
> > elegant. ;)
> >
> > Btw, I do not know what Liquidthreads is, but if it works like what I
> > proposed, just count me in favour of it :)
> >
> > Best wishes,
> >
> > Tels
>
> I only said it was a solution- not a good one.

:)

> BTW, LiquidThreads is documented at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads

So far, it seem a sensible proposition. The technical details are of
course, technical details.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Nov  1 18:31:10 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Ich bin mit der Gesamtsituation unzufrieden!

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from_name: Alphax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Andre Engels wrote:
> 2005/10/31, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>:
>
>>Timwi wrote:
>>
>>
>>>    Your [[IP address]] will be recorded when you click 'Save'. If
>>>    you are not [[Special:Userlogin|logged in]], it will be shown
>>>    publicly. See [[Wikipedia:Privacy policy|privacy policy]].
>>
>>To make it even less scary, how about:
>>
>>:Unless you are [[Special:Userlogin|logged in]] your edit will be signed
>>with your [[IP address]] when you click 'Save'. See our
>>[[Wikipedia:Privacy policy|privacy policy]].
>
>
> This does not say that IP addresses will also be logged, but not
> published if one edits while logged in.
>

We can put that information at [[Wikipedia:Privacy policy]]. It's *very*
rare that websites don't log your IP; if you want your IP to be hidden
you should use an anonymiser.

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

subject: [Foundation-l] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote

body:
On 11/1/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> This is a reminder/formal notice that the voting period for the creation
> of Wikiversity is now over, and that the proposal to create Wikiversity
> as a new Wikimedia sister project is now being submitted to the
> Wikimedia Foundation board for a formal review..[snip]

I'd just like to thank you Robert for all the work you've put into
this proposal, timetable, vote etc. I've been meaning to write up a
proposal to the community on this, as Wikiversity is something that
really energises me at the moment (mentally at least). (My lack of)
time at the moment forbids me from going into everything I'd like to
say about Wikiversity, but I'd liek to make some brief points.

It is clear that many people are afraid that the idea is too
half-baked or not ready enough to be started. This is currently true -
Wikiversity exists as many different ideas in many people's heads,
with plenty of enthusiasm but not much to actually to show for it. But
my counter argument to this is: *every* wiki project has developed
from a similar position. Every wiki is an idea which is generated and
created through the combined energy of its participants - you only
have to look at the various listings of people at the vote or on the
proposed projects page or on the meta Wikiversity talk page amongst
others, to see that there is so much energy there waiting to be
tapped, and rearing to go. That, surely, is the main thing. I think
the crucial point is that Wikiversity, if created now, will not (in
the main) be ready to actually go live as a learning centre *just
yet*. It needs to have a creation period, it needs to be widely known
about to generate a learner base - and *then* it can flourish. Just
don't expect results yet (though some courses could be created quite
quickly - and who's to say that we need to constuct whole courses in
the first place? What about single lesson plans? What about
collections of flash cards? etc.)

Another major concern is resources - both human and electronic (ie.
financial). I don't know about the latter part (and I'd really like
someone to tell us how much it would cost in server/work hours terms
to set up a new project in comparison to what it would cost to set up
a new language project on any other WMF project - hence crossposting
to wikitech). But on the human resources side - i think, on the
contrary, this will be an excellent opportunity for the projects to
cross-pollinate (Wikipedia and Wikibooks especially) and draw in a
huge sector of people that may have erstwhile have remained on the
periphery of especially Wikipedia. I have a hunch that not only could
we get a whole lot more poeple involved in setting up this project,
but we could also get some major funding. UNESCO's ecucation for all
campaign comes to mind - and I'd appreciate any other suggestions.

That's all time permits me to say for now, but suffice to say that i
have been reading around Wikiversity for a few months now and, for
one, am highly motivated to get this off the ground. I know of quiet a
few more and I know that it could really take off. So if we could have
some very clear technical issues that need to be dealt with, I think
that's where we should be focussing our attention, rather than the
fact that it isn't ready/finished yet - because it just needs a bit of
time, space, and a steady stream of energy that i know exists.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cormac / Cormaggio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/1/05, Lane, Ryan <laner at navo.navy.mil> wrote:
> Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a
> problem.
> I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid
> argument.

Hm. Whatever credibility this thread had previously has now been lost,
at least in my opinion.

If you're so worried about such activity, encourage people to read
using the history tab, or better: find another project so you don't
taint this one with mistrust and litigiousness.

It's very hard for me to see through arguments like what I quoted
above and stay focused on the real technical merits of more software
facilitation on our discussion pages, so I'm just going to ignore the
thread... but as I go here is a potentially useful idea:  There is a
lot of thought and work going into how we can merge Wikipedia with a
(semi-)structured backend database for the sort of material that fits
that model well. It seems to me that a sufficiently generalized system
for such applications would also be useful to facilitate greater
mediation with threaded discussion, if it had the right UI sugar added
on top. Perhaps a middle ground between pure-wiki and threaded
discussion is possible.


from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Request for (Spanish) mediation on the Spanish
	Wikipedia + culture differences on different wikis

body:
Bjarte S?rensen wrote:

>Dear all,
>
>On my meta user pages I received a request from a frustrated
>wikipedian for assistance in a dispute on the Spanish Wikipedia
>regarding (among other things) uncommented deletions of his (?her)
>contributions. It seems like the user doesn't feel he is getting
>anywhere through negotiation with the other parts. The other parts are
>administrators, and he has now been blocked from editing, something
>which he of course finds frustrating and he feels that they abused
>their power.
>
>
>
If that can help, he/she posted the same message on the Italian village
pump (in Spanish)
Cruccone


references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es>
	<dk83h4$4hr$1@sea.gmane.org>	<dk85j5$c6m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<200511011826.56652@bloodgate.com>

body:
> I do think these are two seperate points:
>
> * how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
> * whether each author own his/her comment or not.

But the point is that the answer to the second influences whether the
solution proposed for the first is seen as an "improvement". I feel that
if the ability to edit other people's comments is taken away from me, I
can't label it an "improvement".

> Discussions, OTOH, also involve personal opinions. Danger lies ahead when
> the opionion can be changed, but is still labeled (or signed, if you
> wish) with the original authors name.

We already have this "danger", and we've had it since the beginning of
Phase II, and it has not turned out to be a great problem, so this is
not an argument.

> Just imagine that this discussion we have is on a wiki, this is the latest
> edition (you would need to check the history, aka mailing list archives
> to see the full revisions) and it contained:
>
> On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:36, Timwi wrote:
>>>Any model, if over applied, is harmful.
>>Agree.
>>I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
>
> See the danger?

A fallacious argument by false dilemma, or by lack of imagination, or
whatever you wanna call it. You almost provided the answer to this one
yourself:

> (for the record, the above quote of three lines was
> written/shortened by me, not Timwi).

And that is what it should say.

	COMMENT #328645		by [[User:Timwi]]

	Agree. I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
	(This comment was last edited by [[User:Tels]] <date/time>.)

If <date/time> is a minute ago, I better check the diff. If it was an
hour ago, I can probably assume that your edit was harmless.

Therefore, again, your "danger" is not an argument against the ability
to edit comments.

> If we can improve the discussion page itself, *and* prevent
> misrepresentation at the same time, well, that would be great :)

It's really easy.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Edit bailouts

body:
> Still, I can say with some confidence that of non-spider hits on our
> edit pages, only about 25% result in a "submit" post afterwards.
> Although I think there are a lot of people who click "edit" without the
> idea of seriously contributing (the aforementioned spiders; people who
> are curious to see what will happen; people who hit edit by mistake),
> this still seems quite high.

No, I think it's quite plausible. I wouldn't be surprised if most people
click "edit" to see what happens, and then bail out because the edit box
looks completely different from the rendered article, and they think
they don't have the technical knowledge to make an edit (meaning: they
don't know the syntax).

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Actually, use Wikinews as the excuse, not Wikipedia. Not only is this
>> closer to being eligible for a press badge, but also it will mean the
>> images will be public domain! :-)
>
> Err, no it won't. PD isn't the licensing for Wikinews any more; it moved
> to CC-BY-SA 2.5 a while ago.

Ah, OK, I didn't know that.

I still maintain that press-badge-generating bureaucracy will be easier
to penetrate with Wikinews as an excews - er, excuse :-) - than Wikipedia.


from_name: Angela

body:
>  I don't understand how you can expect to maintain a trademark without
> someone authorized to make decisions about what is OK and what isn't.

As the Foundation's legal co-ordinator, I'm sure Jean-Baptiste Soufron
can handle this, with help and advice from the members of "juriwiki",
our legal mailing list. Jimmy could appoint a new position if the
matter gets too much for one person to deal with, and in future, we
might want to consider making an IP officer a paid position, but for
now, I've not seen any problems with continuing the current process of
having Jean-Baptiste deal with enquiries and problems in this area.

Angela.


from_name: Timwi

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
>>>From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
>>>We promise that you can "edit this page," not
>>>"create an article." The policy
>>>is "zero-threshold editing," not
>>>"zero-threshold article creation.'
>
>>This is just hair-splitting. Just because we've never mentioned page
>>creation in any sort of "promise", doesn't mean we should stop offering it.
>
> We should stop offering it because IMHO a very small threshold for creating
> an article--such as creating a free, anonymous account--would be more helpful
> to our goal of building "a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" than a
> zero threshold for creating an article.

We have already established elsewhere in this thread that you're wrong.
A number of good and useful contributions are made by non-logged-in
people. Experience shows that if we require them to register, they just
won't, hence we lose out on those contributions. Therefore, erecting a
barrier to article creation, no matter how small, is NOT "helpful to our
goal of building an encyclopedia".

> And my point is that we would not breaking any explicit or implied
> promise by so doing.

Which, as I mentioned, is not a reasosn for doing it.

> I heard Grace Hopper talk once, and she said "I am going to give you a gift.
> For the rest of the life, every time you say the words 'because we have
> always done it that way,' my ghost will appear and haunt you for twenty-four
> hours.'"

This is the fallacy fallacy, or argument by fallacy. Just because "we've
always done it that way" is a fallacious argument, doesn't mean it's
wrong to continue doing something as before.

Timwi


body:
On 11/1/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> This is a reminder/formal notice that the voting period for the creation
> of Wikiversity is now over

Thanks for the reminder, Robert. There's a lot of worthwhile comments
for us to look through on both sides of the debate. I don't think
protecting the pages is necessary since we can look at the version in
history for when the vote ended, and people might still want to check
the voters and strike out invalid ones now that the voting period is
over. We're waiting for Tim Shell to organise the next Board meeting,
so I can't give an exact date for when a decision will be made, but it
will certainly be on the agenda for the next meeting.

Angela.


from_name: Ryan Lane

references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es>
	<87d5llaiex.fsf@mat.ucm.es>	<dk5svb$5jd$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<200511010004.37975@bloodgate.com> <dk8225$vc3$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi <timwi at ...> writes:

>
>
> > OTOH, the currenty wikipages are not really suited to discussions at all -
> > I'd rather not have someone edit my "posts" - whether it be for fixing
> > the speling or whatever.
>
> Well, I for one would object to any system that doesn't allow me to edit
> other people's comments. It's too useful to let traditionalism and
> conservatism ruin it. It's not just about fixing atrocious spellings,
> it's also about removing objectionable parts of comments without
> removing the entire comment, or about summarising an unnecessarily long
> piece of prose. I don't see any point in listing the advantages here
> since wikis have shown time and again that they work, and Wikipedia
> wasn't the first. Yes, it defies the well-established and widely loved
> web forum paradigm where everyone "owns" their own comments, but we're
> not a web forum, we're a wiki, and wiki is our paradigm.
>
> Timwi
>

Who are you to decide what is objectionable, or unnecessarily long, especially
in someone's opinion based comment? This is EXACTLY what a lot of people are
talking about when they dislike the idea of someone editing their comments.

Just because something is status quo doesn't mean that it is working. The
discussion pages are probably one of the worst features of mediawiki IMO. I hate
the idea of someone editing my comments. 99% of the time, people who are reading
the discussion section will NOT check the history to see if what someone said is
really what someone said.

I believe the proposed idea is quite a good balance between the current model,
and a traditional forum/thread style model. It still allows editing (when users
allow it), and refactoring. But it could also allow an easier model to track
threads, reply to comments, get notification when a person responds to your
posts/replies, etc, etc...

I think your objection to a new system is conservatism at its best. The new
model could offer quite a bit of benefit.

Ryan Lane


from_name: Jason Y. Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

body:
The Accreditation policy below requires someone to be a writer for
several articles on Wikinews.  It doesn't quite fit for any person who
wants an accreditation for a press badge as a photographer.  The reason
behind my wondering over press badges is that I live in Southern California,
a place where there is opporunity to meet a celebrity.  I have no doubt,
the same applies to anyone living in other parts of the world when it comes
to sports figures and the like.  The thing is that a photograph of a famous
person on the English Wikipedia is usually a press or licensed photograph
from a professional photographer... unless the copyright has previously
expired on the photograph or they are a public figure of government, which
of course means their photograph we get is public domain.  But how do deal
with trying to get a photograph of a television star without having any of
the copyright restrictions?  The only answers I can think of is to ask the
publication to copyleft it, or take a picture of your own.

--
Jason Y. Lee
AKA AllyUnion

> Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:14:37 -0600
> From: Nathan Reed <nathanreed at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<fadaa0570511011214j31ba07fbp4d695e0c4d0856ef at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> en.Wikinews has a process for "accrediting" Wikinewsies, though there
> has been some debate concerning our authority to accredit anyone and
> our authority to issue badges using the Wikinews logo.
>
> See the following:
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy
>
> -N.
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Please see
>http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-October/032025.html
>
>Why could not bureaucrat set bot flags on their
>projects.
>They know the rules better than any steward. Would not
>that make sense ?
>
>
>
Yes Anthere that would definately make sense :)

Waerth/Walter


body:
On 11/1/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Please see
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-October/032025.html
>
> Why could not bureaucrat set bot flags on their
> projects.
> They know the rules better than any steward. Would not
> that make sense ?

There was an objection to this last time it was raised
(<http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-Otober/032050.html>),
but the main reason it's not possible seems to be technical; there is
currently no interface for bureaucrats to be able to do this
(<http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3855>).

Angela.


body:
> There was an objection to this last time it was raised
> (<http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-Otober/032050.html>),
> but the main reason it's not possible seems to be technical; there is
> currently no interface for bureaucrats to be able to do this
> (<http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3855>).

A letter disappeared from that URL. The correct link was meant to be
<http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-October/032050.html>.

Angela.


from_name: John Ky

subject: [Wikitech-l] One wiki, multiple websites

body:
Hello,

I want to setup up a number of websites which share a single
wiki underneath.  The only difference between the websites
will be:

* The URI used to access the website
* The main page
* The navigation links

Is it possible, and how much work is involved in configuring
such a wiki.

Thanks

-John


references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es>	<87d5llaiex.fsf@mat.ucm.es>	<dk5svb$5jd$2@sea.gmane.org>	<200511010004.37975@bloodgate.com>
	<dk8225$vc3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<loom.20051101T210117-325@post.gmane.org>

body:
> Who are you to decide what is objectionable, or unnecessarily long,
> especially in someone's opinion based comment?

Strawman argument: I didn't say I "decide" anything. If anyone can edit,
anyone can revert; the "decision" is ultimately that of the community,
not of any individual. The purpose of the comment is (and will always
be) to reflect a given user's opinion, and the community will ensure
this will be met.

On the contrary, who are you to decide that nobody should be allowed to
edit something, ESPECIALLY in a system where you are perfectly free to
simply NOT SUBMIT whatever it is you don't want edited? We already have
mailing lists where you can publish stuff that you don't want edited.

> This is EXACTLY what a lot of people are talking about when they
> dislike the idea of someone editing their comments.

And the fact that it is a fallacy is EXACTLY what I'm talking about when
I dislike the idea of giving in to it.

> Just because something is status quo doesn't mean that it is working.

Nor does it mean that it is _not_ working. I see very little of the
problems you have described, and even the problems that you have
described are false dilemmas, i.e. they can perfectly well be addressed
without preventing anyone from editing something. Example:

> 99% of the time, people who are reading the discussion section will
> NOT check the history to see if what someone said is really what
> someone said.

Right, so it needs to be made easier to check this, and/or there needs
to be some sort of visual indication that there is a chance that it
might not be what someone said. Both is addressed by my suggestion of
adding a little "This comment was last edited by <username> <date/time>"
with a link to a diff between the comment's original author's latest
revision and the current revision. It surely does not mean it's
necessary to make editing of any comment impossible.

> I believe the proposed idea is quite a good balance between the
> current model, and a traditional forum/thread style model.

The proposed idea *is* a traditional forum/thread style model, with only
two additional features (users can allow other users to edit their
comments, and the concept of "channels"). It is to the wiki philosophy
like Everything2 is to Wikipedia.

Ideologically, it's kind of like allowing people to submit articles and
then keep them protected so only they can edit them. You're going to
tell me that it's not the same thing because comments express a person's
opinion, but this is why I added the word "ideologically". If it was
just about letting people's paranoia free reign, then we could as well
just use a box-standard web forum. In fact, it would already be possible
_theoretically_ to move all discussions to a mailing list and use the
Talk namespace only for the summaries/refactorings. Why don't we do
this? Because IT'S NOT WIKI.

> I think your objection to a new system is conservatism at its best.

It would be conservatism if I was an avid Talk-page participant. However
you will notice that I am actually quite a bit more active on the
mailing lists than the Talk pages.

> The new model could offer quite a bit of benefit.

You have not convinced me of such a "benefit" of making it completely
impossible to edit some comments. You have shown some drawbacks of the
current system, but as I said, concluding from it that editing needs to
be made impossible is a false-dilemma fallacy.

Timwi


from_name: hideki yukawa

subject: [WikiEN-l] block

body:
Hi,
I would like to propose that the Wikipedia blocking
policy was violated.

In summary, this is the situation.
I posted once to Bektashi::Talk to discuss why
freestylefrappe removed a certain section from the
article.  This was due to the Bektashi page being on
the list of pages requiring moderation, and I wanted
to add to the discussion.

freestylefrappe sent me a msg to the following effect
on my talk page:

I suspect you are a sockpuppet of Aldirma's. However,
in the offchance that you are not, if you go back and
look at the different versions of the page you'll
notice that he is trying to paste in the entire
Bektashi jokes page. Assuming good faith, happy
editing. freestylefrappe 04:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I responded to his msg to the following effect on his
talk page:

I suspect you start all your messages with offensive
accusations like "I suspect you're a sock puppet of
so-and-so." That being said, no, I'm not a sock-puppet
of Aldiramal or whatever his name is. If he is
copypasting verbatim, then it violates copy-right and
is not in line with this being an encyclopedia
article. However, inclusion of a jokes section with
paragraph explaining the role of jokes, and including
one joke, would seem fair. Happy editing to you
too.Wilgamesh

After this short exchange, Wikipedia indicated that I
was "blocked for personal attacks" by freestylefrappe.
 Relevant IP info given below.

Any ideas?  I suggest that freestylefrappe didn't like
the fact that I pointed out his message implicating
users being sock-puppets is HIGHLY OFFENSIVE, as
reputability is the only thing sustaining most users'
viability on wikipedia, and in a annoyance, moved to
block me.

I would enjoy a discussion.

best,
Wilgamesh

Your IP address is 128.103.96.115. Please include this
address, along with your username, in any queries you make.

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


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Skyring has been allowed back on

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard

> Skyring (Peter Mackay) has promised to play well with the
> other kids, so I'm letting him back on wikien-l, though he's
> still moderated for now. His arbcom ban on en: itself is
> still in effect.

Thanks, David!

I appreciate this. I've been a real jerk recently, and I'd like to take this
opportunity to apologise to everyone who has suffered unnecessary stress as
a result.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Verification

body:
On 11/1/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> Of course, I'm sure other subjects are not so simple, either...imagine
> chemistry, archaeology, law, e.g.!  If I asked for a reference for something
> in law, I wouldn't be surprised to hear, "Here's a law textbook...go home,
> read pages 200-400 until you understand them, and then see that the statutes
> on page 385-395 apply."  Even in areas like history or lit crit, the same
> could apply (ever try to verify that Derrida or Habermas made a certain
> claim on page 352 of such-and-such?)  My point is that "verification" always
> requires some amount of prior intangible expertise, and not all references
> to the literature will be "checkable" by everyone.

True, but philosophy is a good case in point. I've gotten in
discussions on the talk page of philosophers before (i.e. [[Thomas
Kuhn]]) where one user seems to have read a completely different text
than I did and come to completely different conclusions about it. How
to resolve this? Do I reason through Kuhn's argument and come up with
my own interpretation? Do I try and create a synthetic argument
buffetted by quotations? It's a legitimately difficult thing to do, as
anyone who has read some philosophy and discussed it with others would
know, especially with a character like Kuhn whose interpretations vary
and historically varied quite widely with one another (some saw him as
an unabashed relativist, others saw him as a form of Cold War
reaffirmation of science, some saw him as painfully unoriginal, etc.).
In the end, you hope for a very conservative, "just the facts, ma'am"
reading of the text itself, with perhaps a section featuring various
prominent interpretations properly attributed to their best-known
articulations.

Will there always be involved an element of subjective, individual
authority? Of course. But in such instances one can only try one's
best. But shifting the burden to other, attributed opinions is one way
to stay in the clear on it. But such an attempt is hard work, hence
the Kuhn article isn't really in an "ideal" state of the sort I
described.

> > Of course, in general. But when there are real disputes, where the
> > answer is not self-evident to most editors (such as the use of "there"
> > vs. "their"),
>
> That's not self-evident?!  What are they teaching in schools today? :-)

Ah, I think I was not clear: that was my example of when something
*was* self-evident. What I meant by "such as" was "unlike"; not quite
the same thing, I must admit!

FF


from_name: Mihai Floran

subject: [Foundation-l] Vlax Romany Wikipedia

body:
At http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Vlax_Romany_.2810_support.2C_0_oppose.29 there is a request with 10 users supporting and no oppose for the creation of Vlax Romany Wikipedia. There was also a survey at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vlax_Romany_Survey in which some native speakers and persons which know the language added themselfs. The results for a week are: 7 readers, 5 writers and 3 native speakers. Almost all of them are from Romania as territory.
There is also a First Page almost translated at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/rmy/


subject: [Foundation-l] Vlax Romany Wikipedia


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/1/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>It would depend on the circumstances of the conflict, wouldn't it? In
>>cases where there's genuine debate going on, it doesn't make sense to
>>arbitrarily cut it off at some deadline rather than letting it continue
>>until a clear decision is reached. If it stalemates then perhaps a
>>deadline can come into play but it shouldn't be required as a universal
>>solution.
>>
>>
>
>Stalemate is a subjective judement.
>
>
So? Subjectivity is going to come into play _somewhere_ in the midst of
all this, even if it's in the process of setting up objective standards
in the first place.

>>"Conflict" is not inherently bad, it's part of how disagreements can be
>>resolved.
>>
>>
>
>Heated conflict is.
>
>
There's already a very well-established policy against personal attacks,
so I don't see how this is relevant. Not all conflict is heated.


body:
Lane, Ryan wrote:
> Timwi <timwi at ...> writes:
>
>>>I do think these are two seperate points:
>>>
>>>* how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
>>>* whether each author own his/her comment or not.
>>
>>But the point is that the answer to the second influences whether the
>>solution proposed for the first is seen as an "improvement". I feel that
>>if the ability to edit other people's comments is taken away from me, I
>>can't label it an "improvement".
>
> You may not label it an improvement, but there are others who definately
> would.

I know that. I was only pointing out that the two points mentioned above
(can't check who they were from because you haven't replied to the
thread properly and have instead started a new one) aren't separate.

>>We already have this "danger", and we've had it since the beginning of
>>Phase II, and it has not turned out to be a great problem, so this is
>>not an argument.
>
> I've had people complain to me about moving their comments around on
> my LDAP patch's page on meta.

There are also complaints about edits to articles that are accurate and
NPOV. That doesn't mean they (the ones complaining) have a right to
claim ownership over something. Ignore them and get over it.

> Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't
> a problem.

So far I have addressed only the "problem" of people not knowing whether
what they are reading is really what the author wrote. People
complaining about edits is a whole other matter. To address that
problem, we must think about why they are complaining. I am convinced
that the large majority of such complaints are solely out of irrational,
thoughtless behaviour: people just assume that they "own" their comments
by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering" even when it's
perfectly legitimate if they thought about it for only a second. Surely
you can't agree to let this kind of stupidity take precedence over our
wiki philosophy.

> I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is
> definately a valid argument.

I'm finding your "lawsuits" claim highly dubitable, and your repeated
misspelling of "definitely" quite irritating. Are you a lawyer? (You're
clearly not an English teacher, so the chances of you being a lawyer are
somewhat higher.)

> Why can you assume that the edit was harmless? During katrina, I had
> no internet access for weeks. If someone maliciously edited some of
> my comments during that time, would you assume that what was there is
> actually what I wrote?

And you think you're the only reasonable person in the world and
everyone else only makes bad-faith edits and vadalises your comments.
Get real. People already _do_ malicious editing, and other
(well-meaning) people revert it. It's already happening, on all wikis.
It's one of our very own Replies to Common Criticisms?!

> In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.

You haven't shown any, except for the possible "lawsuits" claim. Do you
have anything substantial to back that up?

> I think the original idea of LiquidThreads is a good solution for the
> problem. I don't believe the implementation would be easy though ;).

I believe a rudimentary implementation would be relatively easy, but it
would be laborious, and so, few people will be willing to work it
through until the end, and so, it will likely not get done very soon. A
_good_ implementation (UI-wise as well as performance-wise) is quite a
bit more challenging, so it will likely not get done at all.

Timwi


body:
charles matthews wrote:
> "Timwi" wrote
>
>> (I particularly don't get why people create pages where the content is
>> a copy of the title)...
>
> More often a question of copy-and-paste the nearest thing

That doesn't explain it, because the "nearest thing" (assuming you mean
the page heading in large letters) is "Editing [title]", not just the
title...

Timwi


from_name: Mark Jaroski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Edit bailouts

body:
Timwi wrote:
>
> >Still, I can say with some confidence that of non-spider hits on our
> >edit pages, only about 25% result in a "submit" post afterwards.
> >Although I think there are a lot of people who click "edit" without the
> >idea of seriously contributing (the aforementioned spiders; people who
> >are curious to see what will happen; people who hit edit by mistake),
> >this still seems quite high.
>
> No, I think it's quite plausible. I wouldn't be surprised if most people
> click "edit" to see what happens, and then bail out because the edit box
> looks completely different from the rendered article, and they think
> they don't have the technical knowledge to make an edit (meaning: they
> don't know the syntax).

At least some of the edit hits which don't result in submits
are due to work-arounds for Cache404.  Sometimes if there's
something wrong with a cached page I'll click edit, and then
edit the URL instead of the article, eg, clicking edit for
Florence puts this in the location bar:

  http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Florence&action=edit

but what I really want to do is re-cache the page, so I do
this:

  http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Florence

-mark

--
--
=================================================================
-- mark at geekhive dot net --


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia & Original Research

body:
Obviously photos by individuals used to make *novel* points or to
unfairly underscore POV claims should not be allowed. But this is just
a standard interpretation of WP:NPOV applied to this medium, yes? I'm
not sure this is a source-based issue, it reads like a straightforward
NPOV question to me.

Images can be highly deceptive, as any student of media knows. I'm not
sure that fact changes our policy in any way, though -- it would seem
implied in it that POV is POV, whether expressed in text, image,
audio, etc. Images can have POV, with or without a caption -- if it
can't be attributed to a notable source and discussed ("Famous Soviet
photographer so-and-so set up this image to make it look as though the
Soviets were just now conquering Berlin, though we now know etc.
etc.") then it can't be allowed in, same as anything else.

FF

On 10/31/05, rex <rex at x234.com> wrote:
> I think that photos, which are intended to make a specific point, should not be uploaded to Wikipedia unless they have been previously published by a disinterested, reputable 3rd party.
> Flikr.com, weblogs, partisan political web sites (dailykos, freerepublic, etc) and such are not acceptable, but commercial news organizations and commericial publishers and to a lesser extent, non-profits would be ok. There is simply too much opportunity out there to stage photos, for example:
>
> Supporters of Candidate A take Candidate B's signs and make a big mess in a parking lot with them and leave also a lot of trash like water bottles and sandwich wrappers.... the Wiki caption for this reads, "trash left behind after local rally for B".
> Clearly it's a staged photo intended to make a point. If the control parameter of "intended to make a point" is not enforced, the excuse regarding the above scenario would be "I found the trash & signs in the parking lot and merely snapped the photo". Such assertions could not be disproved, opening a pandora's box of scheming opporunities.
>
>
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>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Ratings again

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>> P.S.: I think I actually found a *real* bug; it seems anyone can change
>> the list of topics. I'll have to restrict that to sysops.
>>
>
>
> I'd expect on Wikipedia that'd be a steward-level thing. Remember that
> after the testing phase, it's unlikely to change very often if at all,
> and then only with the consent of the wiki's community.
>
>
As the selection of topics/ranges is a per-wikipedia thing, wouldn't
that be more suitable for a buerocrat?

OK, the real reason I'm asking is that I can easily check for bureocrat
status, but didn't find the steward-check yet ;-)

Magnus


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Magnus Manske wrote:
>>
>
>
>>> I still prefer a 0-10 range of ratings.  I think a decimal
>>> normalization would be easier to work with in any subsequent analysis
>>> of results.
>>>
>
>
>> One can set the range for each topic individually.
>>
>
>
> Mmm. See discussion at [[m:En validation topics]] and its archive -
> too many choices of rating is probably a bad thing, because it's hard
> to agree what a given value means. The test plan so far includes
> probably far more variables than we'd want in any case ...
>
I already tried to cut down the number of topics by merging them some
time ago. But, for the initial test scenario, better too many topics
than too few, IMHO.

Magnus


body:
>>  there is
currently no interface for bureaucrats to be able to do this

But is not imposible to have it!


subject: [Foundation-l] Vlax Romany Wikipedia

body:
At http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Requests_for_new_languages/Vlax_Romany there is a request with 10 users supporting and no oppose for the creation of Vlax Romany Wikipedia. There was also a survey at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vlax_Romany_Survey in which some native speakers and persons which know the language added themselfs. The results for a week are: 7 readers, 5 writers and 3 native speakers. Almost all of them are from Romania as territory.
There is also a First Page almost translated at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/rmy/


subject: [Foundation-l] Vlax Romany Wikipedia


from_name: AXC

subject: [Wikipedia-l] (no subject)

body:
__________________________________________________
Correo Yahoo!
Espacio para todos tus mensajes, antivirus y antispam ?gratis!
Reg?strate ya - http://correo.espanol.yahoo.com/


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] More fodder for your editcountitis

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

David Gerard wrote:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>
>>A striking number, i.e. 2000 per day.  More than the amount of honest page
>>creation.  AfD is only around 5% of that.  Presumably there is something
>>behind the four-figure numbers some admins clocked up.  My 20 or so seems
>>strangely inadequate if not.
>
>
>
> Go do [[Special:Newpages]] patrol some time. (Sunday afternoon and
> evening US time are "good" for this.)  MY GOD, THE AVALANCHES OF CRAP!
> I can fully believe we have ~2000 shoot-on-sight new page creations a
> day.
>
>

That rougly corresponds to the number of AOL users right? :)

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

body:
> Err, no it won't. PD isn't the licensing for Wikinews any more; it moved
> to CC-BY-SA 2.5 a while ago.

It's CC-BY, not BY-SA. The license doesn't require share alike, which
makes the content usable in Wikipedia (though not vice versa).

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Copyright

Angela.


body:
In this case we have to possible solutions:
1. Somebody will write the necesary interface so that bureaurcats may add bot flags.
My idea for this is that Meta MakeSysop interface may be transfered to bureaucrats
with limited groups. (just Sysop, Bureaucrat and Bot flag - for now)

2. We shall have - as I already proposed in a discution at meta - a new election for
stewards which can help the existent ones in their job. Most of them have many things
to do and no time for this kind of issues and at least one of elected stewards in may
is not and was not active. There are many unsolved requests at meta and persons
must wait a lot of time for a steward to have time to answer to their request.

M


from_name: SJ

references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <dk8225$vc3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dk83h4$4hr$1@sea.gmane.org> <200511011756.19482@bloodgate.com>

body:
On 11/1/05, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
>
> What I had in mind that the discussion page could be constructed from a
> series of "posts". Each post would be a wiki-mini-article in itself. Thus
> you get the tree structure (can collapse threads sort them etc), plus the
> "show me the latest posts", and you still have the "edit other people's
> text" feature. You need no new markup, it probably suffices to have a
> front-end that can collect the posts (all articles in name-space
> "MyArticle::Discussion::Post?) and display them on one page, with edit
> buttons etc per post.
<
> You could even have a "this post was last edited by XYZ on ABC" - thus
> showing immidiately that the original author wasn't the last one to touch
> the text and thus giving you a hint to look at the history.
<
> Threading by subject, time etc are all possible because these are just
> rearangements of the post articles.

Yes and yes.  I would dearly like to see the above implemented.  A
system optimized for threaded discussions, rather than what one could
hack up with the current transclusion implementation.

SJ