subject:
[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects (was
	Vote to create Wikiversity Vote)

body:
> Anyway, I can't edit on meta, and you seem to have a much different
> idea of an incubator wiki anyway.  Besides, the idea has been floating
> around for months already.  The cynic in me thinks that the red tape
> to create a project is probably too great, especially a project which
> threatens to "end up being a fork of" Angela's website.

Are you suggesting Wikimedia *should* become a general wiki hosting
site? Wikicities already has a policy to not create encyclopedias in
languages supported on Wikimedia, and not to create projects that
duplicate existing Wikimedia ones, so I don't see any likely overlap,
and any content currently at Wikicities can easily move to Wikimedia,
if the community supports that, for as long as they share the same
license. A wiki used as a Wikimedia version of the WikiLabs at
scratchpad.wikicities.com should obviously only contain things that
have some chance of becoming Wikimedia projects or languages. This is
what the community approval that you call "red tape" would be for if
this site is launched. Otherwise, you're just wasting people's time by
telling them to contribute to a wiki that is never going to be moved
to an official Wikimedia domain.

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Angela


list: wikien-l

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
On 11/14/05, ABCD <en.abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
> are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
> although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
> something be done about this?
>
> ABCD

makeing the edit this page tag bigger than the others and makeing it
coloured perhaps?

--
geni


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
Indeed, it should never be forgotten that the target audience for
encyclopedias is skewed towards younger people. Encyclopaedias have
traditionally been marketed as an investment in your childs future.

Articles on Pokemon and suchlike may be of much more interest to teenagers
than to many on this forum but it should never be forgotten that these
things are of interest to many people.

One of the reasons for Wikipedia's success in my view is that we cover stuff
that other encyclopedias don't. According to the Yahoo Buzz Index, (
http://buzz.yahoo.com/overall/) the top five searches are: Paris Hilton, 50
Cent, Lost, Mariah Carey and Harry Potter.

We have articles on those topics. The traditional encyclopedias don't.
That's one of the reasons why we're the most popular encyclopedia in the
world.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old

User:Capitalistroadster

On 11/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/13/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > And if not, well, we'll have the best encyclopedia of anime and
> > computer games in the world. There's something to be said for that.
> > [[Exploding sheep]] is a fascinating article, for example.
>
> And there's always the possibility that, as so many people want to
> *write* these articles, just some may want to _read_ them.
>
> Just a possibility, mind.
>
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

body:
--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Wikijunior is not just another Wikibook on Wikibooks.  If the Wikibooks
> community decided to VfD Wikijunior, there would be a torrent of hate
> e-mail on this list and elsewhere that would only be equal to what
> happened to Wikiversity.

What? I don?t recall such a reaction when Wikiversity was kicked out of
Wikibooks. Wikiversity has a much larger scope than a textbook-creating or for
that matter an encyclopedia or dictionary-creating projects have. It is a
super-project that will use parts of all the existing Wikimedia projects. So
hosting it one project would not make much sense.

> And that would have nothing to do with the
> quality of the material but because of the way that the project started.
>  Again I add that Wikibooks should not be the incubator wiki, unless
> that is precisely the role that the Wikimedia Foundation board wants it
> to become.

It is not. It is a place to develop textbooks, manuals and related reference
books. Wikibooks fits that bill.

> Wikijunior was added to Wikibooks as if Wikibooks was the
> incubator wiki, and it should have been a new project proposal on Meta
> instead.  That such proposals seemingly never get approval is a reason
> why nobody wants to throw an idea into that dustpile of ideas and
> instead try to sneak the projects through a back door like Wikijunior
> has done.

Oh please. Stop the theatrics.

Wikijunior has specific rules for a set of pages. That is not unlike a
WikiProject on Wikipedia. Each book needs to have its own style guide to retain
coherence anyway. The other issues that pertain to ?protecting? minors are
misplaced since minors should only be viewing WikiJunior from a static snapshot
at wikijunior.org.  Some Wikibooks are getting to the point were they are
publishable on such a site. But they don?t seem to be ready yet. Publishing the
result at a kid safe domain will fulfill our part of the grant (normally a
WikiProject would not get such special treatment, but no other WikiProject has
a $10,000 grant). Approved static snapshots of other textbooks could be
published at wikiversitity.org.

Wikijunior is a set of textbooks for kids. Textbooks are developed at
Wikibooks, so having a separate place to develop textbooks for kids would be
infringing on the Wikibooks mandate and forking that project. Also, the effort
to create such a narrow-focused set of items would not be viable all on its own
and starting down the road of forking off each new set of Wikibooks textbooks
would kill the project. If Wikibooks gets its own wiki then why not any other
set of textbooks on Wikibooks?

-- mav

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


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

Replace
> If Wikibooks gets its own wiki then why not any other
> set of textbooks on Wikibooks?

With
> If Wikiiunior gets its own wiki then why not any other
> set of textbooks on Wikibooks?

-- mav

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


from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation website

body:
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005, Anthere wrote:
> We then go back to the idea of the blog or of commenting spaces.
>
> The current most pressing point imho is that editors can not directly comment
> on news or even on pages. It would be helpful that talk pages are opened to

This is the trouble with trying to have active information flow on closed
wikis.  How about an open wiki, with protected pages, and protected
page-creation?

I would like to see a foundation-website which was an analogue to
Wikisource -- with mission statements, founding papers, official presskits
and bios, the latest brochures and publications and presentations -- and a
well-ordered section of meta (a new namespace?  perhaps just an excellent
portal) devoted to the Foundation.

One reason that the meta main page hasn't developed as beautifully as
other main pages is that it's hard to pin down what it does -- meta has so
many faces.  Something like the eve-online.com main page would be a worthy
experiment, with both foundation meta-info, community info and project
features, statistics, and outside-world news (trophy box notes, press
clippings -- btw, can we move on to a trophy shelf now? )

> Fact is, if nothing is written at all, either the opinion will be that we do
> nothing, or it will be that we are not transparent.

Yes, the best intentions of transparency are only as good as the quality
and quantity of information flow.  Most important is definitely to
encourage more writing, by more people, about more subjects.

SJ


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy

body:
No

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:22 AM, ecemaml @ es.wikipedia wrote:

> Is it sensible to be an administrator and not
> accepting mails?


from_name: Carbonite

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocked for nonexistent "3RR vio"

body:
>
> I think you didn't follow this thread in its entirety. This was about
> SPUI removing an entry from AfD that was an obvious speedy keep. If
> people had acknowledged that this was right, instead of insisting that
> everything must go strictly according to protocol and norm, then there
> would never have been any reverting, no 3RR violation and no edit war.

 For an "obvious speedy keep" it's sure getting a lot of delete votes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Interchanges_on_Ontario_provincial_highway_401

This is exactly why we have the 3RR; different people have different
opinions and revert warring won't solve anything.
 Carbonite


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] why blocked?

body:
On 11/13/05, Adam Johnston <adam_johnston_oktoberfest at hotmail.com> wrote:
> my IP address (66.241.130.66) has been blocked from editing. it is however a
> college network and so should not be blocked just because of one person's
> vandalism when there are many more people wishing to use it.
>
> The reason given is:
> Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
> "Vfdgfdsgfsdg".

I've unblocked the user name so I think you'll be able to edit now,
though I couldn't see an autoblock. Perhaps someone else removed it
and I shouldn't have unblocked the user account. Please e-mail me
offlist if the account needs to be blocked again, or Adam, if you
still can't edit.

Sarah


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

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

David Gerard stated for the record:

> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>
>
>>As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge private
>>information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to having
>>a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
>>checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?
>
>
>
> What, like all the devs, you mean? The volunteer sysadmins? I'd weigh
> up the possibility they'd say "buggre alle this" and just walk. Don't
> let me hold you back from this excellent and cautious idea, though.

Being less eloquent that David (and , my reply would involve a
description of what to pound and where to pound it.  I'm already doing
an unpleasant job for you, and I'm arrogant enough to think that you
should be saying "thank you, is there any way I can make it easier for
you?" rather than "you vill zign zee paper volunteering to have your
life and your family's life ruined if we don't like the way you do this
unpleasant task you volunteered to do for us."

- --
 Sean Barrett     | You are trapped in a maze of screens and
 sean at epoptic.org | ssh sessions all alike. It is dark, and you
                  | are likely to log off the wrong account.
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from_name: Autymn D.C.

subject: [WikiEN-l] disputing block: 69.108.172.162, lysdexia

body:
On 14 Nov 2005, at 05.00, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> By your own admission: YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Informing people is not losing.  If the law worked here as it did on
Wp, then some admin could've banned you indefinitely for trolling.  I
still want back on.  Why is no one doing anything for me?

On 12 Nov 2005, at 08.35, Rowan Collins wrote:
> So do you see language change as a constant decline away from some
> historical perfection? I admit that there are changes which leave
> languages "poorer", but there are plenty which - however accidental -
> make them far more powerful and useful at their purpose of
> communication and expression. And I am very firmly of the conviction
> that there is not some historical point at which language in general,
> or any "separate" language in particular, attained some state of
> "completeness" deserving of preservation.

If the changes don't rob the language, then it isn't made less perfect.
  I should know: I wrote most of [[Elision]] before some linguists took
out the goods.  I've been dealing with lowly authorities all of my
life; this is why I'm against them having any power not backed up by
their mind.

What would you know?

>> The rules should if the changes should, not if the changes do.  And
>> only if there is something /wrong/ with the earlier rules.  Otherwise,
>> the language should grow like any person or nation would and not, like
>> a cancer, grow everywhich way so that it eats and poops itself and
>> eats
>> that.
>
> I would argue that the above is, in a subtle way, contradictory:
> people, nations (and, the underlying metaphor, plants) do not grow
> "only if there is something wrong". They grow dynamically, complexly,

Your understanding is contradictory because you cannot read.  I did not
say that; I even said the opposite.

> by trial and error, and with natural checks and balances. Essentially,
> the process is one of evolution, as currently understood by mainstream
> science: random changes occur, and may or may not die out; those which
> are harmful are *more likely* to die out, and those which are
> beneficial *more likely* to spread, but it all comes down to chance,
> not certainty. What's more, there's no outside definition of "better"
> or "beneficial" which governs these chances, because that depends on
> the circumstances. Still, *in general*, life evolves to be better at
> passing on its genes, and language evolves to be better at allowing
> communication.

Harm and health in the growth of choice go on ease--convenience--and
don't directly care about consistency or accuracy or precision.
"Better" is objective: quality (howness, suchhood) and quantity
(whitness, muchhood).

>> Anglo-Saxon?  No, it's English.  What people speak today is a mutt of
>> English, Latin-French-English, and Greek-Latin-English.  And I'd write
>> "pure" as "sheer".
>
> So, like I say, the argument comes down to different definitions of
> "English": what I call "English", you would call
> "Greek-Latin-French-English" or somesuch; what you call "English", I
> would call something like "artificial Anglo-Saxon". However, when the
> average person who considers themselves an "English speaker" says
> "English", their meaning will be a lot closer to mine than to yours.
> And, crucially, when en.wikipedia.org calls itself "the English
> Wikipedia", it is using "English" in this popular sense, which is why
> your edits are being rejected as inappropriate.

What do /you/ know about English anyway?  Anglo-Saxon looks and sounds
nothing like English.  Those edits were truer to English than anything
else, and weren't as controversial as "riht" is.  If we were talking
about popular (vulgar) English, then maybe I should change all
instances of "its" in Wikipedia to "it's"?, seeing that most people are
illiterate?  They're innumerate too, as they think that someone is a
"they" rather than a "one".  They're ineducate too, as they think that
the sky is blue, when the sea is blue, and it's nearer to cuan (cyan).
They're incorrigate too, as whenever I correct them they often get
hostile and defend their stupidity; many discussion group owners have
banned me for correcting people's spelling /offlist/.  Such people must
be taken down.

>> A lone language has only one word for the same
>> meaning.
>
> Well, I've never heard of a "lone language" before, but I can't
> imagine this claim has ever been true for any natural language.

as opposed to many languages.  Can you prove that?  Different words in
the same language have different meanings.

>> But none of writing this is making me feel better
>> for being wrongfully kicked off Wikipedia by a liar for doing what I
>> hold is riht.
>
> Just because you hold it to be "riht" doesn't mean that it is in the
> interests of the Wikipedia project, or that other contributors to that
> project are somehow compelled to agree with you. Your input is
> welcome, but only if you are willing to co-operate, compromise, and
> welcome the input of others.

They are not willing to do it for me, immediately dismissing my reasons
and ignoring my explanations, thinking that they know better.  They
give wrong reasons that I had already dealt with.  They ban me because
I am and do controversial and dispopular.

>> I didn't say that it /wasn't/ others' article.  I said it was my
>> article.  Logic goes over most people's head.
>
> Well, "my" certainly implies some sort of ownership or possession; I
> suppose you could argue that there is a sense in which all Wikipedia
> articles "belong to" everybody, but that would seem to render the "my"
> logically true, but somewhat redundant. The problem is not that logic
> goes over our heads, but that it is not logic we use to communicate in
> every day situations, it is expressive, sometimes ambiguous, language.

It implies relation too--as in "my kind" or "my child".  Shutting down
my use of "my" when I was talking about an article I wrote is lame and
mindless.

>> Were we talking about English?  I was using a Greek word.
>
> Yes, we were talking about content on the English Wikipedia, which is
> (except when specifically discussing foreign languages) in English.
> Specifically, the English word "kinetic", which is based on a Greek
> word only ever spelled in a different alphabet, is *not* generally
> spelled "cinetic". Once again, I'm using "English" to mean the
> language spoken by millions of people the world over, which is
> inherently *not* logical, and does *not* conform to historical or
> logic rules. You can argue that it *should* (though I would disagree),
> and demonstrate how it might look if it did, but the English Wikipedia
> is not the place to do so; maybe you should join the community around
> artificial languages like "Lojban"?

You disagree why?  Corrupting languages is harmful to readers.  The
illiterate have criticized my use of "lige" and "lyging" instead of
"lie" and "lying".  Yet, if I used the latter, the meaning is ambiguous
and could not be drawn from the context in most cases.  Many speakers
complain about the inconsistent spelling and pronunciation in English
because of such corruption; much of it's not even English.  I defy you
to find a source that says that "kinetic" is an English word, rather
than a word that's used with English.  What, are you afraid that if I
write "cinetic", that a bunch of other people will also?  That's a Good
Thing.  They already write cinema, cinematic, and cinematics.

-Aut


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

David Gerard stated for the record:

> Chris Jenkinson
>
>
>>I think this is largely irrelevant. If we aren't going to take the
>>trouble to be careful when dealing with personal information, then no
>>one should have access to it. Taking shortcuts on it is just foolish.
>
>
>
> You mean, anyone who doesn't sign a legal document promising to pay a
> notable penalty if the Foundation decides they've broken the privacy
> policy should not be allowed access to the data? That sounds like a
> great idea. We'll have an all-paid sysadmin team before you know it,
> because every volunteer will get up and *leave*. Did that bit occur to
> you?
>
>
> - d.

Let me be the next to queue up.  Why in, as Pogo used to say, the
ever-lovin' blue-eyed world would I want to agree to your terms, Chris?
 What are you going to do if I refuse?  Fire me?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | You are trapped in a maze of screens and
 sean at epoptic.org | ssh sessions all alike. It is dark, and you
                  | are likely to log off the wrong account.
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from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
How about just bolding it?

--gkhan

On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, ABCD <en.abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
> > are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
> > although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
> > something be done about this?
> >
> > ABCD
>
> makeing the edit this page tag bigger than the others and makeing it
> coloured perhaps?
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please moderate your moderators

body:
I am very sorry this happened. We are open to all the world and folks
do log on who are unable due to lack of maturity (not always due to
being a child) are unable to immediately catch on to what is expected
of them. In the case of children, they can, of course, eventually
learn if you are patient with them, but that is not always readily
apparent. Our policy is to be courteous to all users and to "not bite
the newbies".

Please accept this apology on behalf of Wikipedia.

I will forward this email to Danny.

If he does not unblock you, please correspond with me and I will,
after checking into exactly what happened.

Fred Bauder

On Nov 13, 2005, at 9:24 PM, Jacob Kingston wrote:

> Dear Wikipedia Administrators,
>
> I do not appreciate the comments made towards my son earlier this
> evening while he was trying to create a new page on your site.  He
> is doing a project for his fifth grade art class and wanted to put
> some of his information on your website.  I am not entirely sure
> what happened because one of your administrators blocked our
> computers e-mail address and said my son was being a "pain in the
> ass".  This language is far from acceptable, especially since the
> boy is so young.  I could not create a profile, as that was what I
> was prompted to do, I assume because of the block placed on our "IP
> address".  I would however like this "danny" to at least apologize
> to my son, the block can stay if it was placed for a reason, but
> certainly there is no acceptable reasoning behind calling a fifth
> grader a pain in the ass.  I expect to hear from your staff
> promptly on this matter.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jacob Kingston
>
> PS Here is part of what my screen showed my son:
>
> Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Danny.
> The reason given is:
> pain in the ass
> You can email Danny or one of the other administrators to discuss
> the block. You may also edit your user talk page if you wish. If
> you believe that our blocking policy was violated, you may discuss
> the block publicly on the WikiEN-l mailing list. Note that you may
> not use the "email this user" feature unless you have a Wikipedia
> account and a valid email address registered in your user preferences.
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>  Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
On 11/14/05, ABCD <en.abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
> are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
> although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
> something be done about this?

Is the problem really that they can't find it, or just that they don't
know what it means? I remember seeing that link in early 2003 and I
had no idea at all that it actually meant *I* could edit that page,
though luckily I tried it anyway. :)

I don't know how to get across to people that they actually can edit
Wikipedia without introducing instruction creep onto every page. The
link is already expanded from the default "edit" to "edit this page"
and it now appears in bold text. I think the issue is more the concept
of an editable website that is difficult - not the format of the link.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
On 11/14/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about just bolding it?
>
> --gkhan
>

Ohh, it is already bolded..... Silly me..... I'm with Alphax, make it blink!

--gkhan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy

body:
Ok, did a little work on this (others will need to follow up as I
have a nasty schedule today). Look at this block log:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:
80.58.11.42

It seems the address you are using is being used by some sort of bot,
an internet robot. I don't want to be responsible for unblocking this
address without knowing more about the situation.

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:22 AM, ecemaml @ es.wikipedia wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> this is the first time I post a message here. I'm a legitimate user in
> en.wikipedia and nowadays I'm currently blocked.
>
> The messages I get are the following:
>
> *Your IP address is 80.58.11.42 <http://80.58.11.42>. Please
> include this
> address, along with your username, in any queries you make.*
>
> Your user name or IP address has been
> blocked<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>by
> Curps <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Curps>.
>
> The reason given is:
> *Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
> "NSMC58577107<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=User:NSMC58577107&action=edit>".
> The reason given for NSMC58577107's block is: "user...".
> *
>
>
>  Furthermore, the block is infinite.
>
> Although my main target is nowadays getting unblocked, what I'd
> like to know
> is whether an administrator may not provide any means to get in
> contact with
> him (he doesn't accept mail). Is it sensible to be an administrator
> and not
> accepting mails?
>
> Many thanks in advance
>
> // ecemaml
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy

body:
Well my work wasn't very good. The link shows that this address is
unblocked. Unless an autoblock would not show up, but it should,
shouldn't it?

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 6:50 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

> Ok, did a little work on this (others will need to follow up as I
> have a nasty schedule today). Look at this block log:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/
> block&page=User:80.58.11.42
>
> It seems the address you are using is being used by some sort of
> bot, an internet robot. I don't want to be responsible for
> unblocking this address without knowing more about the situation.
>
> Fred
>
> On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:22 AM, ecemaml @ es.wikipedia wrote:
>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> this is the first time I post a message here. I'm a legitimate
>> user in
>> en.wikipedia and nowadays I'm currently blocked.
>>
>> The messages I get are the following:
>>
>> *Your IP address is 80.58.11.42 <http://80.58.11.42>. Please
>> include this
>> address, along with your username, in any queries you make.*
>>
>> Your user name or IP address has been
>> blocked<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>by
>> Curps <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Curps>.
>>
>> The reason given is:
>> *Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
>> "NSMC58577107<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
>> title=User:NSMC58577107&action=edit>".
>> The reason given for NSMC58577107's block is: "user...".
>> *
>>
>>
>>  Furthermore, the block is infinite.
>>
>> Although my main target is nowadays getting unblocked, what I'd
>> like to know
>> is whether an administrator may not provide any means to get in
>> contact with
>> him (he doesn't accept mail). Is it sensible to be an
>> administrator and not
>> accepting mails?
>>
>> Many thanks in advance
>>
>> // ecemaml
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>
>


body:
On 11/14/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > Would anyone favour the idea of me just handing back the CheckUser
> > bit? I'm this >< close.
>
> No! We need you! You're sane! You know network stuff!
>
Is that honestly the nicest thing you can think of to say about David
-- that he's sane? Mind you, on Wikipedia, that counts for a lot.

Sarah


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 11/14/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> I think this is largely irrelevant. If we aren't going to take the
> trouble to be careful when dealing with personal information, then no
> one should have access to it. Taking shortcuts on it is just foolish.

We have been careful.  The people selected to have CheckUser rights
are all people who are aware of the issues involved and are (in the
opinion of the Committee) unlikely to release personal information
inappropriately.

Kelly


from_name: M. Creidieki Crouch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser tool

body:
David,

I appreciate your comments.  It's quite possible that you're right,
and that having these logs available would be more trouble than it's
worth.

> A. 1. It would be a gross and blatant violation of the privacy policy.
> Note that your privacy is not being breached by having a developer or
> a checkuseruser look up your IP, but only by it being revealed.

I wasn't suggesting that the *result* of the check be available on the
public log.  Simply the admin's username, the user who was checked,
the timestamp, and the admin's stated reason.

> 2.  it would be utterly poisonous to the community. Merely being
> checked on would be seen as a black mark (c.f. geni's attacks on Kelly
> Martin's character in this thread).

I think that this danger would be minimized if the admin explained the
reason for the check, ideally with a link to something that would be
considered "reasonable evidence".

> 3. It's a sysadmin level function, allowing certain people to assist
> the devs so they can get on with running the actual servers. No-one
> using a website can seriously expect the sysadmins will *not* check
> their IP, usage patterns, etc. as is necessary for good functioning of
> the site.

I'm worried about "you should have expected it" as a rationale for
revealing personal information, but perhaps.

> 4. There's a log the other checkuser users can see and keep an eye on
> each other. If you react "ZOMG CABAL!!!", you can say that to the devs
> next, because they can check this stuff too, and do as they see fit.
> With no logs at all.
>

Does this log contain explanations or comments on why a specific check
was done?  This certainly would prevent an admin from doing a check on
everyone they came in contact with.  But if you see one or two checks
a week on users you've never heard of, are you going to track down the
admin and ask about it?

I'm sorry to be contributing to the already-long discussion against
this.  I'm not at all convinced that checkuser is a bad idea.  But I
want to make sure that we've thought about the best way of
implementing it.

-- Creidieki


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [Wikitech-l] Desperate for a linkification expert

body:
FxParlant wrote:

>hi,
>
>I did something wrong, and now I end up with :
>
>src="<a href="http:
>
>in some links.
>
>I've also noticed the **class='external free'** attribute in these
>catastrophic links. Can someone tell me in which function the 'external
>free" attribute is set ?
>
>
class 'external free' would appear to come from:
  Parser::replaceFreeExternalLinks()
    Linker::makeExternalLink()
      Linker::getExternalLinkAttributes()


from_name: ecemaml @ es.wikipedia

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy

body:
Hi all,

this is the first time I post a message here. I'm a legitimate user in
en.wikipedia and nowadays I'm currently blocked.

The messages I get are the following:

*Your IP address is 80.58.11.42 <http://80.58.11.42>. Please include this
address, along with your username, in any queries you make.*

Your user name or IP address has been
blocked<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>by
Curps <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Curps>.

The reason given is:
*Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
"NSMC58577107<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:NSMC58577107&action=edit>".
The reason given for NSMC58577107's block is: "user...".
*

 Furthermore, the block is infinite.

Although my main target is nowadays getting unblocked, what I'd like to know
is whether an administrator may not provide any means to get in contact with
him (he doesn't accept mail). Is it sensible to be an administrator and not
accepting mails?

Many thanks in advance

// ecemaml


from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] <link> elements for interlanguage link information

body:
On 11/14/05, Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
> I think it'd be useful for most multilingual MediaWiki installations
> that use interlanguage links to have such hidden <link> elements. <link>
> elements aren't rendered in most browsers (Mozilla 1.5+, I think, will
> show links in a menu on the toolbar), but as mentioned they do provide
> some guidance to bots and spiders.
>
> The downside is that they still take up network bandwidth, and for
> oft-interwikied pages on big sites (e.g. Wikipedia) this section could
> run to the 5-10kB size range. (My off-the-cuff estimate for, say,
> articles where each <link> is about 100B, and  there are 50-100
> interwiki links.)

What problem is this change trying to fix?  I'm not sure I see the
pros outweighing the cons...


body:
On 11/14/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Of course it did. The consequences of it don't matter. What matters is
> that we treat personal information with the respect it deserves.

As one of the people trusted to keep private information confidential,
I am somewhat offended that you think that we don't.

Kelly


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikijunior and Wikibooks - not so perfect together?
	(was Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects)

body:
On 11/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> As long as Wikijunior was only for producing age-appropriate textbooks
> for children it was probably fine in Wikibooks.  Something, however,
> which specifically seeks the participation of children is something
> else.  I think that the participation level may be easy to attain.  A
> far more worrisome problem would be what kind of people are involved.
> If parents start to see it as a haven for predators the damage could be
> severe.  Security standards need to be much higher than in the other
> projects.
>
> Ec

I thought that was the original idea of Wikijunior (creating
age-appropriate
books/encyclopedias/wikireaders/whateveryouwanttocallthem).  That
said, now that I hear from Jimbo that Wikibooks is supposed to be only
for textbooks, and not any type of book, maybe junior.wikipedia.org
would have been a better place from the get-go.

Anyway, apparently that isn't the case any more.  I haven't really followed.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderate your moderators

body:
My name is Danny and I am the administrator who made the block last
night. I would like to explain the circumstances of the block.

I did delete one personal page because it was created by the person
about himself. Creating such pages is not allowed on Wikipedia and I
noted the reason for deletion as "vanity."

At the same time, I also reverted a several instances of vandalism and
blocked the user, who had received adequate warning. This included a
rewrite of the Wizard of Oz article to say "book sucks. good movie" and
two redirects of our article on the Holocaust to an article about the
Marvel Comics hero, The Thing. I have no doubt you will agree that such
egregious edits should be eliminated immediately and that the people
who are trying disrupt the efforts of many dedicated contributors
should be blocked. I also have no doubt that you will appreciate the
frustration that many editors feel to see their work tarnished like
that.

Of course, I am not saying that your son did these edits. Many Internet
users have what an IP address that changes frequently. I do, because I
use an AOL account,  and frequently find myself blocked as well because
of the vandalism of other AOL users. Just today, our mailing list
contains complaints from other users, who found that they were blocked
unjustly.

If it was not your son who made the vandalism, I apologize to him and
you for the block and the comment. I also encourage him to learn more
about Wikipedia, particularly about what can and cannot be posted on
our website. We have had many valuable contributors his age, including
one who became an administrator.

All the best,

Danny Wool


body:
On 11/14/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Wikijunior is a set of textbooks for kids. Textbooks are developed at
> Wikibooks, so having a separate place to develop textbooks for kids would be
> infringing on the Wikibooks mandate and forking that project.

I think it's interesting to note that the same argument could be made
for Wikipedia and Wiktionary.  Aren't they just projects to make
educational books?  Sep11, simple, wikispecies.  I'm not sure where
you draw the line between what goes in Wikibooks and what shouldn't.
Wikinews is clearly separate, but other than that...

This probably has something to do with the reason that people see
wikibooks as an incubator wiki.

Wikiversity might be even worse in this sense - as I see it it would
be essentially a superset of Wikibooks anyway.

Anthony


from_name: Peter Shaw

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
On Monday 14 November 2005 05:39, ABCD wrote:
> Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
> are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
> although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
> something be done about this?
A solution I can think of, is that wikipedia leaves a cookie that says ?this
person is not a competely and utter noob?. If such a cookie does not exist
yet, a big fat, blinking (ok, maybe not blinking) box is displayed which
tells you how to stop being very lost. It would also contain a link to never
ever display this box again. A smart implementation would be to use this only
for Windows/Mac users coming on the page with either IE, Firefox or <Standard
Mac Browser>
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>
>In a message dated 11/13/2005 10:13:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>robert_horning at netzero.net writes:
>
>That  such proposals seemingly never get approval is a reason
>why nobody wants  to throw an idea into that dustpile of ideas and
>instead try to sneak the  projects through a back door like Wikijunior
>has  done.
>
>
>
>Excuse me, but Wikijunior was never snuck through a back door. In fact, it
>is probably one of the most relevant projects to Wikibooks in that it is
>developing age-appropriate educational material. As I recall, that was the
>objective of Wikibooks. Looking at it, it seems to have developed quite nicely.
>
>Danny
>
>
If it was such a useful project, why didn't anybody follow the New
Project Guidelines, as approved by the Wikimedia Foundation board, for
Wikijunior?  Like I said, it doesn't follow any standard procedures on
Wikibooks, and doesn't even try to be like another Wikibook.  It stands
out from everything else there in part because it is a different
project.  It is even listed in several places as a Wikimedia sister
project, seperate and distinct from Wikibooks.  That is my beef, and in
that respect, yes it was snuck through the back door to become an
independent project.

There is all this talk about how useful Wikijunior is.  There is a
domain for http://wikijunior.org  (try it if you don't believe me).
 There isn't something comparable for Wikicalculus, where the Calculus
Wikibook is available on a seperate domain, nor am I asking for it
either.  The point is that Wikijunior is a seperate project using
Wikibooks as an incubator, and was not started by regular Wikibooks
contributors.  It is also bypassing the New Project Guidelines, which
were established prior to the creation of Wikijunior as well.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
On 11/13/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyway, I can't edit on meta, and you seem to have a much different
> > idea of an incubator wiki anyway.  Besides, the idea has been floating
> > around for months already.  The cynic in me thinks that the red tape
> > to create a project is probably too great, especially a project which
> > threatens to "end up being a fork of" Angela's website.
>
> Are you suggesting Wikimedia *should* become a general wiki hosting
> site?

No, of course not.  Wikimedia should stick to creating and
distributing informational materials.  There are wikis on Wikicities
which qualify, though.  The poker one comes to mind (because that's
one of the few I've actually participated in).

> Wikicities already has a policy to not create encyclopedias in
> languages supported on Wikimedia, and not to create projects that
> duplicate existing Wikimedia ones, so I don't see any likely overlap,
> and any content currently at Wikicities can easily move to Wikimedia,
> if the community supports that, for as long as they share the same
> license.

If there's no likely overlap, then an incubator wiki isn't going to
become a fork of Wikicities.

> A wiki used as a Wikimedia version of the WikiLabs at
> scratchpad.wikicities.com should obviously only contain things that
> have some chance of becoming Wikimedia projects or languages. This is
> what the community approval that you call "red tape" would be for if
> this site is launched. Otherwise, you're just wasting people's time by
> telling them to contribute to a wiki that is never going to be moved
> to an official Wikimedia domain.
>
> Angela.

I don't understand any of this.  Is scratchpad.wikicities.com a
Wikimedia project?  Community approval can take different forms.
Requiring a project-wide vote and then board approval to create a new
project is "red tape", as I see it.  If people want to spend time
creating a project in the spirit of Wikimedia, and it turns out that
project never gets its own domain name, 1) that isn't a waste of time,
it's productive, and it's productive specifically to the purposes for
which Wikimedia was created, and 2) to the extent that it's a waste of
time, people choose to "waste their time", I don't see the problem.

The process to create a new project is far too difficult.  An
incubator wiki would facilitate that process.  The fact that
Wikicities is already doing something which you feel has overlap (but
then later say wouldn't have any overlap), is really irrelevant.

Anthony


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Boycot

body:
On 11/14/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Milos says the point is to not boycott me, but he is clearly ignoring
> all of my e-mails, 100%.

I don't ignore you. I just don't know what to say to you.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>I absolutely do think that acquisition of huge numbers of additional
>stubs on increasingly narrow topics ought not to be a priority, and
>certainly ought not to be allowed to get in the way of quality
>improvement on existing articles.
>(At the same time, of course, it's worth pointing out that there's an
>easy mental trap to fall into... assuming that time people are spending
>working on obscure fancruft could in any way be diverted into increasing
>the quality of other articles.  That's probably not true.)

That's absolutely and incredibly not true. They write a verifiable
article about something they know, get abusive comments on AFD (for
some reason, civility and assume good faith don't work there ... the
reason AFD is so damn poisonous to the community is that it blatantly
encourages participants to assume *bad* faith) and *leave*.

They're volunteers, not employees. They will write about what they
want to write about, not what someone else wants them to write about.
You can drive them away very easily (does anyone on AFD actually want
to do this? I'd hope not), but I would say this is not a good thing.

- d.


from_name: Pentti Mannonen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] HTML

body:
How to include my already made html file witm pictures in Wikipedia
without retyping it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>Wikipedia needs to do something to reign in the delete
>brigade. Deletion used to be used to keep up
>standards. Now it is bringing down standards, doing
>damage to content and design and seriously pissing off
>users who are doing serious work and have to spend
>their days fighting off attempts to delete things.

But don't forget! If you don't want them to trash your hard work, it's
up to *YOU* to spend three hours a day going through all the deletion
pages! %-D

I'm surprised AFD doesn't seem to acknowledge that driving off
contributors or making them not bother is actually a bad thing.

> The
>final twist is that many of the most fanatical
>deleters seem to be down damn all writing themselves,
>simply proposing large numbers of things for deletion
>all the time, irrespective of quality, usefulness or
>benefit to Wikipedia.

I'd like to see numbers on that before agreeing.

- d.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
I was pointed to this section of the HTML 4.0 spec ("Notes on helping
search engines index your Web site") at W3C recently:

        http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4

I was specifically interested in this section, which I quote in full:

        Specify language variants of this document

                If you have prepared translations of this document into
                other languages, you should use the LINK element to
                reference these. This allows an indexing engine to offer
                users search results in the user's preferred language,
                regardless of how the query was written. For instance,
                the following links offer French and German alternatives
                to a search engine:

                <LINK rel="alternate"
                         type="text/html"
                         href="mydoc-fr.html" hreflang="fr"
                         lang="fr" title="La vie souterraine">
                <LINK rel="alternate"
                         type="text/html"
                         href="mydoc-de.html" hreflang="de"
                         lang="de" title="Das Leben im Untergrund">

I think it'd be useful for most multilingual MediaWiki installations
that use interlanguage links to have such hidden <link> elements. <link>
elements aren't rendered in most browsers (Mozilla 1.5+, I think, will
show links in a menu on the toolbar), but as mentioned they do provide
some guidance to bots and spiders.

The downside is that they still take up network bandwidth, and for
oft-interwikied pages on big sites (e.g. Wikipedia) this section could
run to the 5-10kB size range. (My off-the-cuff estimate for, say,
articles where each <link> is about 100B, and  there are 50-100
interwiki links.)

Barring objections I'm going to add a feature to HEAD to render these
<link> elements, controlled by a variable $wgInterLanguageLinkElement ,
default to false.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
>They usually do it without
>even informing the creators of the work of their
>proposed deletion

I suggested on AFD talk that when nominating an article for deletion,
you contact the creator. They decided this was too much like effort.

(This was after I wrote [[Danese Cooper]] and it survived deletion
while I wasn't looking. A classic case of "delete because I'm ignorant
of the subject.")

> and go ballistic if their
>pseudo-policy is questioned.

This is readily apparent too.

Oh, wikien-l is apparently enemy territory of AFD now for discussing
the matter. Assume Bad Faith!

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Horrible Grammar

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>I don't completely disagree with the idea of having grammar
>specialists.  They do need the ability to pay attention to detail, but
>also need the flexibility to understand that there is more than one way
>of doing things.  We have long recognized that British and American
>English will vary according to vocabulary and spelling, but it is also
>important to remember that this also applies to the less well understood
>domain of grammar.

We have them. They're called "editors who like copyediting" and they
roam from article to article, fixing crappy prose as they spot it ;-)

(I haven't been a paid editor in ten years ... my red-pencil finger
still twitches reliably.)

- d.


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>I temporarily withdrew with the hope that delaying the request with
>relation to me would perhaps allow it to go through with respect to
>the others.  I see no reason why I should not have CheckUser, and did
>not withdraw the request permanently.  I am aware of no credible claim
>raised against my qualifications to use the CheckUser tool.

FWIW: Of the new five, Kelly is probably the first I would have chosen
myself. And unless the moon falls out of the sky in the next two
months, keeping the power after Dec 31st as well.

- d.


body:
M. Creidieki Crouch wrote:

>I'm afraid I'm only recently following these policy discussions.  Is
>there a publically available log showing which administrators have run
>checkuser checks on which users?  The feature seems to be designed for
>times when there's a public perception that someone is a sockpuppet,
>so I'd imagine that that log wouldn't be a privacy violation on the
>people who get checked out.

I can see I'm going to have to write a FAQ.

Q. Why isn't there a public log?

A. 1. It would be a gross and blatant violation of the privacy policy.
Note that your privacy is not being breached by having a developer or
a checkuseruser look up your IP, but only by it being revealed.
2.  it would be utterly poisonous to the community. Merely being
checked on would be seen as a black mark (c.f. geni's attacks on Kelly
Martin's character in this thread).
3. It's a sysadmin level function, allowing certain people to assist
the devs so they can get on with running the actual servers. No-one
using a website can seriously expect the sysadmins will *not* check
their IP, usage patterns, etc. as is necessary for good functioning of
the site.
4. There's a log the other checkuser users can see and keep an eye on
each other. If you react "ZOMG CABAL!!!", you can say that to the devs
next, because they can check this stuff too, and do as they see fit.
With no logs at all.

- d.


body:
geni wrote:
>On 11/13/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Public perception is not required.

>However it normaly exists. I can't at short notice think of any cases
>involveing it's use where no one had raised any questions.

You have that backwards: the cases are already questionable, then I do
a checkuser. There are lots and lots and lots you don't see.

Read the FAQ I just posted: Q. Why aren't there public logs?

- d.


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Wikijunior has specific rules for a set of pages. That is not unlike a
>WikiProject on Wikipedia. Each book needs to have its own style guide to retain
>coherence anyway. The other issues that pertain to protecting minors are
>misplaced since minors should only be viewing WikiJunior from a static snapshot
>at wikijunior.org.  Some Wikibooks are getting to the point were they are
>publishable on such a site. But they dont seem to be ready yet. Publishing the
>result at a kid safe domain will fulfill our part of the grant (normally a
>WikiProject would not get such special treatment, but no other WikiProject has
>a $10,000 grant). Approved static snapshots of other textbooks could be
>published at wikiversitity.org.
>
>Wikijunior is a set of textbooks for kids. Textbooks are developed at
>Wikibooks, so having a separate place to develop textbooks for kids would be
>infringing on the Wikibooks mandate and forking that project. Also, the effort
>to create such a narrow-focused set of items would not be viable all on its own
>and starting down the road of forking off each new set of Wikibooks textbooks
>would kill the project. If Wikibooks gets its own wiki then why not any other
>set of textbooks on Wikibooks?
>
>-- mav
>
>
I dare you to name one single Wikibook that has its own page on Meta. Or
any other Wikibook that has as complex set of internal policies as
Wikijunior. Or has people advocating for it to be moved onto a seperate
domain for any purpose. This is the first time I've heard Wikiversity
even being suggested to host "snapshots" of Wikibooks texts and
Wikibooks is far more than the textbook publishing arm of Wikiversity
anyway, and something I would in general advocate against.

While there are textbooks on Wikibooks, it is far more than that if you
have paid attention to the community there at all. Wikibooks is about
non-fiction books, and that takes many very unique forms.

In addition, some editor/contributors are advocating that Wikijunior
become more than just "textbooks for kids". Most sections of Wikijunior
read like Wikipedia entries anyway, and I have yet to see a real "book"
be written for Wikijunior that isn't a macropedia and couldn't otherwise
be served as a specialized Wikiproject on Wikipedia right now, except
for violations of forking policy, and even that could be dealt with on
Wikipedia right now as well. Wikibooks is just the platform chosen to
host this project and to give it a place to grow.

Mind you, I'm not advocating that Wikibooks get rid of Wikijunior. I'm
just trying to point out that no other similar project should ever be
started on Wikibooks, and I have been vocal when I've seen things come
close to doing that. Wikijunior also causes confusion already with new
Wikibooks contributors, seeing the Wikijunior policies, and thinking
that they also apply to the rest of Wikibooks. Trying to explain to
these new Wikibooks users that Wikijunior is a special exception to all
of the rules on Wikibooks usually lets them understand that there are
other standards and guidelines for the rest of Wikibooks as well.
Macropedias in particular should be Wikiprojects on Wikipedia with a
portal page to link all of the encyclopedic entries together that are of
a topical nature. This is where Wikijunior especially causes confusion
with new contributors to Wikibooks.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Andalusian

body:
Sorry, I don't have much time to answer with a long explaining mail.

Maybe some links help

http://www.studiesabroad.com/programs/country/spain/city/sevilla/duration/19/program/47/session/ISVF2305/viewCourses/17934

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3849/paper_andalusia.html

http://www.estepa.com/ing/cultura/cult3.htm

http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/search/detailedlanguagerecord?ethnocode=XASP

http://www.afotoh.com/english.html

http://www.trustedtranslations.com/castilian_spanish.asp

Just search for Andalusian + language in google and you get 205.000
answers (of course not all are "good answers). Whoever speaks
Andalusian: just search for electronic texts online - they are there for
sure. I know there is literature, songs etc. in Andalusian or start
adding contents to wikisource in Andalusian +add Andalusian terminology
to wiktionary (if the actual Wiktionary does not allow to contribute
Andalusian language since they state that it is not a language, please
let me know - there is a place, always GFDL that will help you). Search
for Yahoo groups about the Andalusian language. Search for Spanish
heritage groups - they will be of help - there you can find people who
maybe speak Andalusian, but don't speak Spanish.

I know that Andalusian is different from Spanish (I was in Andalusia and
my Spanish did not help quite much to understand people talking (well
when they talked with me they then used Spanish)  ...  some Neapolitan
words instead did help .... well of course if you go back centuries
there's a reason for that).

Ciao,

Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
>On 11/12/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

>> The log is at
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CheckUser

>Fred, that page is only visible to people who have CheckUser rights.

Anyone who wants to know how CheckUser works and what it actually
tells you, check the help page:

[[m:Help:CheckUser]]

- d.


body:
On 11/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >I also don't see why a wiki for game cards or for elementary schools
> >or for (to use another example) dead people wouldn't make a good wiki.
> > In fact, at some point or another I've proposed the latter two as
> >projects.
> >
> As far as I'm concerned, whatever we have on these belongs in Wikipedia.
> We only need bold and courageous action to deal with the deletion madness.
>
I probably agree with you.  But there is pretty strong opposition to
Wikipedia being a phone book, a knowledge base, a geneology website,
or a memorial website, though I think these all fit clearly within the
scope of Wikimedia (and in fact much of "What Wikipedia is not" does).
 I seriously doubt the scope of Wikipedia is going to be expanded to
include these things.

Anthony


body:
BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:

>The solution to
>the problem of exposing IP:s is to proxy them via an proxy-to-IP
>mapping which looks something like this:
>"anon1" => "34.19.215.33"
>"anon2" => "179.55.66.77"
>"anon3" => "215.108.3.2"
>Checkuser would still work, but instead of returning an IP as a result
>could return "user: [[foobar]], [[barfoo]] and [[anon9512]] shares an
>IP address." Etc. There are technical solutions.

I can see this will have to be a FAQ too. You're the third or fourth
person to suggest this one.

Q. Why don't you write some software to tell someone if there is a
match, without revealing the IPs?

A. Because detecting sockpuppets knowing only the IPs and the edit and
its time is an art, not a process susceptible to [[Taylorisation]]. If
you think otherwise, write the code and show it works reliably in the
cases we're interested in, including dynamic IPs assigned from a /12.
So far, the only process we've found is to find people who are
trustworthy and then trust them all the way. Much as we do with
developers.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser tool

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

>As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge private
>information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to having
>a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
>checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?

What, like all the devs, you mean? The volunteer sysadmins? I'd weigh
up the possibility they'd say "buggre alle this" and just walk. Don't
let me hold you back from this excellent and cautious idea, though.

Would anyone favour the idea of me just handing back the CheckUser
bit? I'm this >< close.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re: Zlatiborian]

body:
Well seeing this ongoing and never ending thread the other day I sent
some e-mails to people living in Zlatibor asking for help.

This is the first answer I got. I hope others will follow. (see below)

This answer comes from the public library. Please note that I deleted
the e-mail address since I do not know if they would agree to give it out.

Well: whoever wants the Zlatiborian Wikipedia can work the same way:
contact people, collect literature and whatever can testimony the
"existance" of that language, create your project on a private website
for now. It could well be that it is a dialect spoken  by only a few
people, just like the people of a little town near Rodach in Germany who
speak a very different "dialect" that almost cannot be understood by
neighbouring towns. If this is the case there must be documents: get
these out on the web and work on that. If you really want it and it is a
"reality" you must work on getting documents out, even official ones -
no-one says it is easy, but you cannot expect people to support your
project if there is no proof that this language really exists.

And please: unless you cannot proof the existance consider your project
a very personal one and do not expect people to jump on each train that
is around ...

If you need help, I mean real help on strategies, ideas and whatsoever:
you can of course contact me.

I'll send other eventual answers to this list.

Best wishes,

Sabine

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: Zlatiborian
Date: 	Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:35:46 +0100
From: 	radionicaKRUG
To: 	Sabine Cretella <s.cretella at wordsandmore.it>
References: 	<43746CE2.40105 at wordsandmore.it>

Dear Sabine,
is no Zlatiborian language, language is serbian.

Regards,
Aleksandra

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sabine Cretella" <s.cretella at wordsandmore.it>
To:
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 11:05 AM
Subject: Zlatiborian

> Dear Sirs,
>
> my name is Sabine Cretella, an admin of the Neapolitan Wikipedia.
> Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia on the internet available in many
> languages http://wikipedia.org.
>
> Now there was a request to open a Wikipedia in Zlatiborian language and
> there are some supporters and many opposers saying that there is no
> Zlatiborian language. Now being a public library I suppose you can help
> me with that matter and tell me if this language really exists - I don't
> find information on the internet.
>
> And if it exists, could you please help me out with some contacts of
> people caring about that language? Institutions or whatsoever?
>
> I really hope you can help me to clarify this point. Wikipedia aims to
> protect minority languages so if Zlatiborian is one: it makes sense to
> me to help these people.
>
> I hope to hear from you soon.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Sabine Cretella
> s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
> skype: sabinecretella

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: JAY JG

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for languagereasons.

body:
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>>Even then the majority was queuing up to insist the
>>French name be kept, no matter what. But a closer look
>>showed that a large number of those voting to keep the
>>French name were French speakers!
>>
>This is a racist slur for which you owe everyone an apology.

Can we ratchet down the rhetoric please?  "Racist" has a meaning, let's not
use it carelessly, or it will cease to have a meaning.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
>From: Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie>
>
>--- Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I tend to the conclusion that what I really dislike
> > about the deletion
> > pages is the attempt to make policy in them.  Policy
> > issues should not
> > be decided lynch-mob fashion under a deletion
> > deadline.  In this way,
> > those who frequent the deletion pages - no matter
> > what "side" they're
> > on - are trying to set Wikipedia policy for the
> > community as a whole,
> > without attempting to involve the wider community in
> > that "consensus
> > building".
> >
> > -Matt (User:Morven)
>
>I agree. The problem is that one fanatical deletionist
>can propose vast numbers of deletions. The same group
>of like minded individuals can all en block vote for
>deletion. Then when someone comes along and says 'hey,
>this is ridiculous in this case' the chorus jumps up
>and says 'that's policy. We've deleted 'x' number on
>these grounds. If you oppose this you are opposing
>policy'.

That argument works both ways; when I looked over AfD recently I saw a
number of voters whose predictable vote was "Keep. We always keep this kind
of article".  And keep in mind, given AfD policy's inherent conservativsm
(i.e. bias towards keeping articles), you need 3 "deletionists" for every
"inclusionist" for this to happen, so this strategy works far better for
"inclusionists" than for "deletionists".

And finally, again, please ratchet down the rhetoric; use of adjectives like
"fanatical" (or frankly, even nouns like "inclusionist") cheapens the level
of discourse.

Jay.

Jay.

Jay.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> While there are textbooks on Wikibooks, it is far more than that if you
> have paid attention to the community there at all. Wikibooks is about
> non-fiction books, and that takes many very unique forms.

And Wikijunior is certainly a non-fiction book. Since you keep on repeating the
same rants I?m going to ignore your future posts on this topic. You?ve been
heard.

-- mav

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


body:
>From: Autymn D.C. <lysdexia at sbcglobal.net>
>
>Check my note at Talk:Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.  I'm arguing that it's
>good to know that the language is full of duplicate words and which and,
>where possible, to fling away (centrifuge) the Latin and Greek from the
>English and to think harder about how to put down (deposit) these words
>without downputting (decreasing) the lot (number) of English whims (ideas).
>
>>And, while "riht" may have been the correct spelling of that word in
>>the form of English spoken 500 years ago, this too has changed, and
>>it is now considered wrong.
>
>I know how it's /considered/.  Already now, people within the same language
>speak and write differently.  Even if they agree that they should write
>however the greatest dole does, it will have several kinds of rhetoric and
>dialect.  That they can't live together means that their agreement is on
>the wrong grounds and they don't know what they're doing.  Knowing what
>one's doing and putting it distinctly is how to deem objectively.

I think it would make more sense for you to start your own Wikipedia, and
re-write it into your language, whatever that is.

Jay.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Status of Wikimedia

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>I want to use a hypothetical example so as to avoid the risk of speaking
>ignorantly on any particular case.  There is no need for a Wikipedia to
>save the "Bostonian" language, because there is no such language.  There
>is, most likely, a Bostonian _accent_, or perhaps (if we are generous) a
>Bostonian _dialect_, but there is no Bostonian _language_.
>This is particularly true if we are speaking of formal written
>Bostonian, the written language of the people of Boston.  It might be
>hard for me to understand the slang of some cabdrivers and bartenders in
>Boston, but I can read their newspapers just fine.

English is, I think, a special case. Look at some newspaper articles
from Jamaica:

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20051114/flair/flair7.html

Are those quotes in English, a dialect or a language? It's just thrown
in the middle there with the expectation that the English-speaking
readers will take it in their stride. I'd go "huh?" but evidently I'd
be wrong to do so.

Half the local dialects in England would probably qualify as European
minor languages if they hadn't been swamped by the south-eastern
version via the BBC.

- d.


from_name: charles matthews

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
"Tom Cadden" wrote

> Absolutely not. It is a fact that an article is being
> kept in a location against the explicit rules in the
> MoS but a vote of users of one particular language,
> many of whom seem intent on putting their defence of
> that language above Wikipedia's own rules.

Are you familiar with the idea of 'consensus'?

The 'users' of a particular language - would that include anyone (like me),
an anglophone who happens to have reasonably fluent French?

The trouble with the acrid tone of all this campaigning is three-fold:

- firstly, demonising anyone who happens to speak French is clearly going to
be more damaging than any _conceivable_ gain;

- secondly if the CIA says CI and the Library of Congress IC/CI then there
is probably something on both sides, but in no way justifying a
'steamroller' voting process which will not do any consensus-building (as a
name CI -brackets-IC might);

- thirdly, this is all one of Ed Poor's maleducated mares-nests anyway,
designed to split people along wacky doctrinaire lines.

Charles


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:[Wikipedia-l] Re: New Language

body:
Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:

>I think the dialect vs language debate is
>basically about which languages are fixed and which aren't. Dialects
>generally don't tend to be standardised and recognised, whereas languages
>are.

e.g., English. Er, hold on ...

- d.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language
	reasons.

body:
Tom Cadden wrote:
> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Unlike many
>>other French-speaking
>>countries the official name for English purposes is
>>the French one.  See
>>the member list for the United Nations at
>>http://www.un.org/Overview/unmember.html  This does
>>not mean that other
>>French speaking countries follow the same practice.
>>The Central African
>>Republic does not appear as R?publique
>>Centraficaine.
>
> That is irrelevant. The official name of the Republic
> of Ireland is Poblacht na h?ireann. We do not use it.
> Nor do we use the official name in French of the
> French Republic. We do have have the article on
> Germany at the Federal Republic of Germany, let alone
> the German language version of the name.
>
> WP does not use official names are article titles.
> With countries it uses common names, and puts the
> official name at the top of the article's infobox.
>

My understanding was that the Official Name in English, /as requested by
the Government of C?te d'Ivoire/, was C?te d'Ivoire. Not "Ivory Coast".
They changed their name to C?te d'Ivoire. End discussion. That's their
name. Use it. Redirects are cheap.

>>Maybe the US State Department is just following the
>>UN lead on this.
>>The proportion of newspapers and websites using the
>>English name is
>>irrelevant.  The position of official Ivoirian sites
>>is more influential.
>
>
> The position of Ivoirian sites is irrelevant. This is
> not an Ivoirian encyclop?dia but an English language
> one that does not write its articles to suit
> governments and official sites.
>

Are you suggesting we should get rid of diacritical marks in article
names when the devs struggled so hard to make them work in the first place?

>>>Even then the majority was queuing up to insist the
>>>French name be kept, no matter what. But a closer
>>
>>look
>>
>>>showed that a large number of those voting to keep
>>
>>the
>>
>>>French name were French speakers!
>>>
>>
>>This is a racist slur for which you owe everyone an
>>apology.
>
>
> Absolutely not. It is a fact that an article is being
> kept in a location against the explicit rules in the
> MoS but a vote of users of one particular language,
> many of whom seem intent on putting their defence of
> that language above Wikipedia's own rules.
>

I don't speak French. I voted for the "French" name. What does this say
about your logical phallacy?

>
>>>What is WP policy when language is used to a block
>>>vote to force the MoS and NC to be ignored in an
>>>article's name?
>>>
>>
>>Please avoid the use of abbreviations.  They only
>>make your comments
>>more difficult to read.
>
>
> People on WP regularly use MoS for Manual of Style and
> NC for Naming Conventions.
>

Go read BEANS then. Just because you /can/, doesn't mean you /should/.

>
>>Determining the official name of a country is not a
>>matter for voting.
>>It is a sure way of having facts overwhelmed by
>>ignorance.
>
> I'm surprised you don't know that WP policy IS to
> decide the location of an article by voting. It is
> done through requesting moves and voting on them. It
> is a standard procedure used throughout WP.
>
>

[[m:Voting is evil]].

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re: Zlatiborian]

body:
As Zlatiborian speech is almost the same as Serbian Iyekavian
standard, when we finish some software issues, it would be the first
dialect version on Serbian Wikipedia (we would have four standard
versions and the fifth "dialectic" where people would be able to
choose their own dialect if it exists). In this group we would be able
to add any Neo-Shtokavian dialect/speech which has some kind of formal
description ("this word instead of that", "this suffix instad of that"
etc.).

Maybe this idea can be interesting to you? :) (For Italian linguistic
area, of course.)

BTW, I also asked some Zlatiborians because I left possibility that I
am not well introduced. All of them were laughing to me :)

On 11/14/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Well seeing this ongoing and never ending thread the other day I sent
> some e-mails to people living in Zlatibor asking for help.
>
> This is the first answer I got. I hope others will follow. (see below)
>
> This answer comes from the public library. Please note that I deleted
> the e-mail address since I do not know if they would agree to give it out.
>
> Well: whoever wants the Zlatiborian Wikipedia can work the same way:
> contact people, collect literature and whatever can testimony the
> "existance" of that language, create your project on a private website
> for now. It could well be that it is a dialect spoken  by only a few
> people, just like the people of a little town near Rodach in Germany who
> speak a very different "dialect" that almost cannot be understood by
> neighbouring towns. If this is the case there must be documents: get
> these out on the web and work on that. If you really want it and it is a
> "reality" you must work on getting documents out, even official ones -
> no-one says it is easy, but you cannot expect people to support your
> project if there is no proof that this language really exists.
>
> And please: unless you cannot proof the existance consider your project
> a very personal one and do not expect people to jump on each train that
> is around ...
>
> If you need help, I mean real help on strategies, ideas and whatsoever:
> you can of course contact me.
>
> I'll send other eventual answers to this list.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Sabine
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:        Re: Zlatiborian
> Date:   Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:35:46 +0100
> From:   radionicaKRUG
> To:     Sabine Cretella <s.cretella at wordsandmore.it>
> References:     <43746CE2.40105 at wordsandmore.it>
>
>
>
> Dear Sabine,
> is no Zlatiborian language, language is serbian.
>
> Regards,
> Aleksandra
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sabine Cretella" <s.cretella at wordsandmore.it>
> To:
> Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 11:05 AM
> Subject: Zlatiborian
>
>
> > Dear Sirs,
> >
> > my name is Sabine Cretella, an admin of the Neapolitan Wikipedia.
> > Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia on the internet available in many
> > languages http://wikipedia.org.
> >
> > Now there was a request to open a Wikipedia in Zlatiborian language and
> > there are some supporters and many opposers saying that there is no
> > Zlatiborian language. Now being a public library I suppose you can help
> > me with that matter and tell me if this language really exists - I don't
> > find information on the internet.
> >
> > And if it exists, could you please help me out with some contacts of
> > people caring about that language? Institutions or whatsoever?
> >
> > I really hope you can help me to clarify this point. Wikipedia aims to
> > protect minority languages so if Zlatiborian is one: it makes sense to
> > me to help these people.
> >
> > I hope to hear from you soon.
> >
> > Best wishes,
> >
> > Sabine Cretella
> > s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
> > skype: sabinecretella
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
> http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Jack Lynch wrote:
> I personally am perfectly willing to pay a fee for expert adminship.
> Have you seen the recent fund-drives? I've never donated money (just
> time) to the wikipedia, but I would for paid admins I could trust.
>

You mean yourself.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "How to get a girl"

body:
On 11/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> It is a blatant violation of the charter of Wikibooks and takes the
> project in a completely wrong direction.  Wikibooks is not the place for
> any random concept of a book that people may have.  It is a place for
> _textbooks_, and the defining rule needs to be the ability to point to a
> specific course at the early childhood, kindergarten, elementary, junior
> high, high school, or university level in which such a _textbook_ is
> _currently_ used.

I don't know how firmly this policy is followed; there have been
ongoing debates on this point for a while, and the policy could be
clearer.  There are arguments to be made for having scholarly or
practical texts which are not in standard 'textbook' format, including
instruction-manuals for software and tools, biographies, other
book-length treatments of specific subjects (there is no place for
"Macropedia" style articles in WP at the moment), &c.   There are also
arguments against these inclusions, and we should have these
arguments, and perhaps discuss projects that could supplement a
textbook-only wikibooks.

The case you  mention, however, is not a random idea for a book; the
subject is repesented by courses in many continuing/community
education programs, in courses on dating - sometimes specifically for
a narrow audience (specific gender or age).  There are a handful of
such courses going on around Boston at any given moment.

Some random googlable examples : The whole "Skills with Dating" course
set at (Fondation Course, Intro workshop, 'for Teens and their
Parents') at Strathfield CC in Oz, semanticist Steve Stockdale's
"lucid dating" classes at SMU, ... in Boston:
 http://www.bcae.org/SearchECat?Open&Query=dating
 http://www.ccae.org/catalog/courses/course_details.php?id=524452

Not to mention all of the self-help and life-improvement courses one
can take outside of universities, complete with dozens of sessions and
texts and audiotapes.

Is this a naming issue?  Would you feel better if the "How to get a
date" wikibooks were renamed to "Dating skills", or became a section
of longer books with titles such as "Developing healthy
relationships"?

I can't say what kinds of texts these courses should use if any; most
courses use the teacher's class notes because they're cheaper.  Of
course having access to a good free textbook might change that...

SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Help needed for helpdesk-l

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:
> On 11/13/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>More here:
>>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department
>>
>>Thanks, found the link to the OTRS -- but it asked me for a
>>username/password, didn't accept my normal Wikipedia log-in, and didn't
>>provide a mean to create a new account. How are users supposed to ask a
>>question on this?
>
>
> A question on what? On the OTRS self, or about Wikipedia/media? The
> meta page lists all the contacts.
>
> All of the "departments" listed there are
> <insert-prefix-listed-on-meta-page-here>@wikimedia.org or
> wikipedia.org addresses, advertised on various wikis and places and
> end up on the OTRS.
>
> If you are ready to help and want an account there, ask the people in
> charge of the queue you can help with (ie. probably info-en in your
> case).
>
> Enquiries ending up in the OTRS vary from "we'd like to give you a
> million servers" to "Have you noticed your site is editable?". In
> between, the usual copyvios and libel claims...
>

We get the same stuff on helpdesk-l too, but due to the lack of help,
the list admins were forced to turn off moderation. Now that we have a
few more list admins (myself included), I believe we've turned it back
on again...

> Note that to have an account on OTRS, you must be ready to use "a"
> real name and not disclose sensible information that may go through
> the wrong queue.
>

You *don't* need a Real Name on helpdesk-l :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 11/13/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>I can't believe that Wikimedia is still having problems grasping the
>>wiki concept. Why should I even need an account? Why do I need to ask
>>any people for any kind of access, including even just READING the
>>questions?
>
>
> Because people writing to the Wikimedia Foundation don't expect their
> messages being read by the whole world, for one thing.  As to write
> access being restricted, imagine the fun some of our favorite trolls
> would have, answering Wikipedia's email.
>

On helpdesk-l they already can... of course, the more people that join
and send *good* information, the less harm that will be caused by the
*bad*...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Try out the rating scheme

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Wikiacc wrote:
>
>> I have contacted the owner of the development version of WikiTree
>> (which runs 1.5) for possible use.
>>
>>
> Any word on whether he's interested?
>
> I'm hoping this isn't going to just slip away into forgotten-land again.
> Just earlier today I had yet another conversation with someone online in
> which they said "Wikipedia's nice and all, but you can never tell if
> someone's just inserted a load of nonsense into it." With this feature
> I'd finally have a snappy comeback to that. And having just dipped my
> toes into AfD for a few days, I'd love to see anything that might
> alleviate it. :)
>

I'm surprised you've still got any toes left.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
>
>>Good point. I also have had several ... not-quite-fights ... with users who
>>either attempt to replace free-licensed pictures with supposedly 'better'
>>"fair use" pictures, or who object to my removing a fair-use picture in
>>favor of a free one. They complain that the free ones look 'amateurish'
>>because they're not studio shots.
>
>
> Then I think that you and I are in total agreement on this issue. :-)
>
> Fair use is a good legal doctrine.  It says "look here, the extent of
> copyright has limits".  We should support that and rely on it as needed.
>
> We should also reward people emotionally for doing great original work
> and releasing it for free.
>

cf. The Photographer's Barnstar.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Matt Brown

body:
If someone entering either name gets to the right page, and if both
names are bolded in the first line of the article, I'm not sure why
it's so important which name is the official page name.

-Matt


from_name: Brown, Darin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
Jimbo said:

> Fair use is a good legal doctrine.  It says "look here, the extent of
> copyright has limits".  We should support that and rely on it as needed.
>
> We should also reward people emotionally for doing great original work
> and releasing it for free.
>
> --Jimbo

I agree that there is a lot to be gained by rewarding people for original
work.  Still, I think each case should probably be decided on its own
merits, case by case. I can imagine a case where there was a free image
available, and also a clearly superior fair use image where the fair use
issue was not in doubt. In that case, I would find it hard to justify using
an inferior free image simply because it was free? I know this runs counter
to pure open-source thinking, but I keep thinking our primary goal is to
make the best encyclopedia possible, and if that means occasionally favoring
fair use to free images, then I don't see a problem. But if the images are
even roughly equivalent in quality, certainly the free should win out.

darin


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fancruft"

body:
On 11/14/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> Given this fact, and the fact that I have several friends who spend a lot of
> time on MMORPG as a hobby, I think this is enough to discount the article as
> just "fancruft". Arguably, there are more people who care about World of
> Warcraft than about some of the more esoteric math articles I've written.

Personally, what makes an article fancruft is treatment, not subject.

For me, a fancruft article is one that is useless to anyone who
doesn't already know about the subject.  It assumes context, assumes
one is already a fan; it's treating Wikipedia as a fan site.

To correct that, the article needs to be worded with the non-fan in
mind.  It needs to explain why the subject is important.  It needs to
explain where the subject sits in relation to its context.  It needs
to explain context, or at least point to well-written articles on
general terms and ideas. If the subject simply has too little that can
be said about it to flesh out an article by itself like this, it
should be subsumed into an article with a larger scope (of the [[Minor
characters in X]] type).

IMO, articles on almost any subject can become fancruft when they are
useless to the average intelligent non-expert.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
Forgive me if I'm not acknowledging future posts. For some reason, there was
about a dozen digests over a single weekend, and I don't see why I should
have to wade through all of them first, losing train of thought.

Jimbo said:

> Terry Foote (who works in the office with me) loves baseball.  He goes
> to a lot of baseball games and takes pictures of players.  He then puts
> those photos into Wikipedia.  A great hobby, a great thing to do.
>
> It's always a little disappointing to him, though, when he goes to put
> in a photo and sees a "fair use" photo already there.  He'd like for his
> work to be making Wikipedia a lot better, and of course it *does*.
>
> There are many cases like this, in my opinion, where we are currently
> relying on (perfectly valid) fair use claims, but in which those photos
> are discouraging people from developing alternatives.
>
> This is a balancing act.

It is a balancing act. I would say that free images definitely have a
priority, and the burden of the doubt should be on the fair use images to
prove their superiority. And it depends what level both images are at. Say,
on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being pathetic, and 10 being super-professional
shot, the difference between 2 and 4 is a lot more than difference between 7
and 9. At the lower end of the scale, a difference in quality could justify
using fair use, whereas it's much harder for me to justify giving up a free
image just to go from 7 to 9. In other words, if a fair use image raises
quality from abysmal, say 2, to at least adequate, say 4, that's one thing.
But, if there's a studio shot at 9 (near-professional) but a skillfully done
free image of slightly less quality, at 7, I would choose the free image.

darin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
> Yes sir, those fanatical deletionists are out to destroy the Wikipedia
> again. Those like-minded thugs are the definition of evil.
>
> There's an "ad-hoc" policy that every single school gets kept, thanks to
> "fanatical inclusionists" who as a "group of like-minded individuals can all
> en block vote" to keep them. "Then when someone comes along and says 'hey,
> this is ridiculous in this case' the chorus jumps up and says 'that's
> policy. We've kept 'x' number on these grounds. If you oppose this you are
> opposing policy'. Others then think that if it is policy it must have been
> defined and discussed somewhere, so they, even though it seems illogical,
> don't stand up to the block, meaning more and more articles get kept in
> effect by an ad hoc policy set by a few likeminded individuals who are
> always on the page voting."
>
> See how that works the other way too?
>

I do. We end up deleting information and keeping crap.

End result: the encyclopedia sucks. We still make the internet not suck,
but it could suck even less if were sensible about it.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fancruft"

body:
> Message: 5
> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:52:58 -0600
> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4376B89A.1020000 at wikia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Justin Cormack wrote:
> > Ok, just had a chance to go through your list, and yes the World of
> > Warcraft
> > article is fancruft. But it has been edited by 6 people. If people  afre
> > going to
> > write this much it is hard to recommend merging.
>
> And there's no obvious way that I can think of to persuade these people
> to do something more "serious" with their time.  They want to write
> about World of Warcraft, so that's what they'll write about.  We can
> hold them to NPOV and all that good stuff, and that'll be fine.
>
> It'd be a fine thing if all the authors of waaaaaay too many Pokemon
> articles turned their attention to more "serious" endeavors, but there's
> no way to make that happen.
>
> --Jimbo

I think it's a slippery slope trying to decide what's "fancruft". One
person's obscure hobby is another's love affair. Chacun a son gout. I'm not
into role-playing games myself, but the article does mention:

"World of Warcraft is the most popular MMORPG in the world"

Given this fact, and the fact that I have several friends who spend a lot of
time on MMORPG as a hobby, I think this is enough to discount the article as
just "fancruft". Arguably, there are more people who care about World of
Warcraft than about some of the more esoteric math articles I've written.

darin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Horrible Grammar

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
<snip>
> I don't completely disagree with the idea of having grammar
> specialists.  They do need the ability to pay attention to detail, but
> also need the flexibility to understand that there is more than one way
> of doing things.  We have long recognized that British and American
> English will vary according to vocabulary and spelling, but it is also
> important to remember that this also applies to the less well understood
> domain of grammar.
>
> In the article on "that" the New Fowler goes on to say, "Some there are
> who follow this principle now, but it would be idle to pretend that it
> is the practice either of most or of the best writers."
>

</yoda>

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

body:
On 11/14/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> There is all this talk about how useful Wikijunior is.  There is a
> domain for http://wikijunior.org  (try it if you don't believe me).
>  There isn't something comparable for Wikicalculus, where the Calculus
> Wikibook is available on a seperate domain, nor am I asking for it
> either.  The point is that Wikijunior is a seperate project using
> Wikibooks as an incubator, and was not started by regular Wikibooks
> contributors.  It is also bypassing the New Project Guidelines, which
> were established prior to the creation of Wikijunior as well.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

You say this as though it was something done intentionally to get
around the new project guidelines.  I followed the early discussions
about Wikijunior, and this doesn't coincide with my memory.  When
Danny announced on this very mailing list that "the Wikijunior project
has moved to its natural home on Wikibooks" it struck me as the
perfect place for it.  Looking at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikijunior#Relationship_to_Wikibooks
seems to confirm this.

Wikijunior may have grown beyond the scope of Wikibooks, or maybe the
idea of putting it on Wikibooks in the first place was a bad idea, but
the *intention* was never to use Wikibooks as an incubator project.
We can discuss whether or not, in hindsight, it was a good idea, but
saying it was "snuck through the back door" implies things that just
don't seem to be true.

Anthony


from_name: Juraj Bednar

subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki dump html fix and few questions

body:
Hello,

  I tried dumping local Wikipedia to HTML using dumpHTML.php and I found
two bugs:

  - the most important one is in includes/Title.php in getHashedDirectory
    function. When the $dbkey contains characters such as ".", it is
    used, so for example if $dbkey is "1. ", then the generated directory
    name is "1/./_/", which of course is only "1/_" and all links in that
    file stop working (assuming I'm using depth of 3).

    The fix is easy (borrowed from getHashedFilename). Just adding

    $chars[$i] = strtr( $chars[$i], '/\\*?"<>|~.', '__________' );

    to the else part of if in the for cycle fixes the problem.

  - When generating specials (I suggest generating also Special:Allpages,
    not only categories), we should either make it possible to navigate
    through the result set using static HTML, or (for smaller wikis)
    getting rid of limits and navigation alltogether. I worked around
    this problem by increasing limits and deleting forms from the
    particular pages.

  Also, the generation is painfully slow, is it possible to speed it up
somehow? I had to rerun it on Sun Fire V20 with two processors to get at
least a little bit reasonable time for generation (two hours for sk and
cs wikipedia).

  One last question: how to get rid of interwiki links to different
language mutations? They don't work in local wikipedia of course...

     Sincerely,

       Juraj Bednar.