from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Requests page

body:
> Talking about removal...
>
> Mark... the request for permission was stating artificial languages are
> perfectly acceptable.
>
> Aphaia added a paragraph which reflected better the current most agreed
> upon idea on the topic, which is precisely that creation of artificial
> languages may indeed ... just not happen.
>
> You removed Aphaia comments.
>
> I placed them back, slightly rephrased. I hope my rephrasing is
> acceptable to you.
>
> But please, admit that the community generally do not share your opinion
> on the matter of artificial languages... and that these pages should
> reflect the reality of what is happening... rather than what you hope
> should happen. Writing down a misrepresentation will not help, but to
> confuse people.

Actually, as you can see from my vote at [[Artificial languages equal
rights]], you are right that the majority do not share my opinion. But
they also don't share Aphaia's (which is the same as mine): the
majority believe that they should in fact get equal treatment.

 > ant
>
> By the way... why does a foundation-wide vote exactly mean ?
> I must confess I am a bit worried to see you make many changes to this
> page. Generally, you confess opinions on the matter of new languages
> which are significantly different from community opinion... and I would
> prefer you avoid removing to many comments.
> For example :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_new_languages&curid=12422&diff=0&oldid=144481
>
> I confess I forgot about the Foundation wide vote on the matter of
>
> Some languages that have been decided are too similar to another
> language include a proposed [[:en:Filipino language|Filipino]] wiki
> (redundant with [[:en:Tagalog language|Tagalog]]), [[:en:Basel
> German|Basel German]] wiki (redundant with [[:en:Alemannic
> language|Alemannic]]), East German wiki (redundant with [[:en:German
> language|German]]).

No, no, I was talking about artificial languages. See [[m:Artificial
languages equal rights]] (a meta page). The majority disagrees with
the opinion shared by both Aphaia and myself that artificial languages
should not get Wikipedias.

"have been decided are too similar to another language" section I
removed, because by whom has it been decided? East German surely had a
number of comments saying it was stupid, but there was also a comment
saying that it was ambiguous. Filipino is a little bit different from
Tagalog in certain ways, but it had too few comments for anything to
have been "decided" even by popular opinion. Baseldytsch was never
completely resolved, though there was not a majority in favour of its
creation.

For my own opinion on those: I don't think there should be a separate
East German or Tagalog Wikipedia, but I think that maybe there should
be a separate Baseldytsch WP.

Mark


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] I am very concerned by the arbcomm decision against
	jguk

body:
We have been here before. We have a user who is doing something in an
obsessive way, but is otherwise a productive editor. Because they are
a "good" editor, nothing is done, or there is a slap on the wrist.
They keep on and on and we have Wik2 and Wik3 and would have had Wik4
if the whole Committee had not finally come around.

Fred

On Jun 19, 2005, at 4:24 PM, David Gerard wrote:

> Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050620 05:53]:
>
>
>> Isn't that exactly what SouthernComfort did?  He said
>> he was offended by BC/AD, and you and the rest of the
>> arbcomm said his offense is more important than
>> consensus.
>>
>
>
> Not the *entire* rest, thanks ...
>
> This is the sort of AC case that should never have been accepted,
> and I'm
> now sorry I voted 'accept' (though it already had four by the time
> I got
> there).
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: David A. Desrosiers

subject: [Wikitech-l] en old_table too large for wget or FireFox?

references:
<42B5B811.2040109@laboratoryofthestates.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61.0506191448030.17516@aphrodite.gnu-designs.com>
	<42B5C9EB.5010400@laboratoryofthestates.com>
	<42B5D86F.4090201@pobox.com>
	<42B5E6C0.3020902@laboratoryofthestates.com>

body:
> Apparently the ext3 file size limit varies dramatically with the
> blocksize. So now the question is how can I tell what the blocksize
> is of my ext3 file system?

 	That was probably specific to the 2.4 kernel, not 2.6.

David A. Desrosiers
desrod at gnu-designs.com
http://gnu-designs.com


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] EnotifWiki (e-mail notification; short news)

body:
To whom it may concern:

The page http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enotif  has been updated to
reflect all newest developments.
Best available EnotifWiki version is 3.28 , but only for the
(deprecated) MediaWiki 1.5alpha1 (current version is alpha2 ).

I'll soon try to migrate to alpha2 or better to CVS again, sorry for
that delay since May.
Wikinaut (Tom)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Boris Lohnzweiger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
I am not sure who is in fact responsible for this but I noticed no new Wikipedias have been set up for quite a few months now. The Cebuano editors are so committed. Their request should be given the highest priority. They shouldn't be kept hanging on the line anymore!

Boris
_________________________________________________________________________
Mit der Gruppen-SMS von WEB.DE FreeMail k?nnen Sie eine SMS an alle
Freunde gleichzeitig schicken: http://freemail.web.de/features/?mc=021179


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource tip

body:
Forwarded email that was originally sent to the board:

> I was reading more about the wikifoundations projects
> and wanted to pass along a tip concerning the project
> Wikisource. A dutch initiative of the University
> Leiden, the Digitale Bibliotheek Nedelandse
> Letterkunde (Digital Library of Dutch Litarary Arts)
> at www.dbnl.org has been digitising primary sources
> over the past 3 years.
>
> Perhaps this information will be of interest to wiki
> foundation.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource tip


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC numbering bug

body:
Brian wrote:
> Oops. You know, I could have swore I validated a page the other day, but it
> appears now that the w3c user agent has been blocked?

We had it whitelisted, but somebody added a blacklist before the
whitelist before the blacklist which caught it.

It's unblocked now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: walt compton

subject: [WikiEN-l] unwanted e-mails.

body:
I keep getting unwanted e-mails from people I don't know and I don't know  they are talking about. Could I PLEASE
 be removed from their e-mail mailing
 list. Thank you.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Grants -- a proposal

body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I therefore suggest that donors have the possibility of earmarking their
> donation. That is to say, they will have the ability to specify where they
> want their money to go. In that case, one donor may give specifically for
> servers, while another donor may give specifically to promote a language,
> print a  particular wikibook, or whatever.

Hm. This type of thing locks up funds and makes running organizations much more
difficult than necessary, IMO. The board in consultation with its various
officers are the body by which budgeting is done. Feedback from donors can and
should be collected in a systematic and easy to parse way, but should not tie
the hands of the board (grants excepted). That type of information should
*inform* the board's decision - not dictate it.

Most of the annual California state budget, for example, has been dictated by
various voter initiatives. Thus lawmakers have very little to work with while
crafting budgets. This is one reason often cited for California's on-going
financial crisis.

So while this at first sounds like a neat idea, in practice it just makes our
budgeting less flexible and thus less able to adapt to changing conditions,
IMO.

-- mav

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Grants -- a proposal


from_name: Jon

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: I am very concerned by the arbcomm decision against
	jguk

body:
Ambi

SouthernComfort has provided no evidence of me changing articles from one notation to another, he has merely listed my reverts. If he wants to provide evidence of me changing things he has to show that the articles always used BCE/CE notation beforehand, which he has not done. He is making the accusations, arguing that I should be banned because of them: it is for him to support them. Of course, he can't, but I see no reason why I should waste a couple of days defending in detail any diff he chooses to quote when I have already explained that it was a revert of a change he was making? (Indeed, this was the reason I left, I edited WP because it was fun to do so - I have better things to do in life than spend hours and hours defending every edit I make - by the way, this included defending [[2005 English cricket season]] against deletion, not just the ArbCom dispute.)

SouthernComfort has merely provided evidence that is entirely consistent with what I have said, namely (ignoring months-old issues that are now resolved and pre-date this dispute):

(1) Slrubenstein made a proposal that was very divisive and which failed
(2) SouthernComfort (and others) attempted to enforce that proposal
(3) I (and others) reverted them in line with the community vote
(4) I have reverted other editors making such unnecessary changes to date style before this
(5) I have copyedited articles that have used inconsistent notation so that they use consistent notation (which is consistent with good practice on style)
(6) I have not deliberately changed BCE/CE notation to BC/AD notation where the article has consistently used BCE/CE notation throughout (although I think I made one mistake in this recent dispute on [[Elamite Empire]], for which I am willing to apologise, but I do not think I should be hanged for one mistake)

I admit that I have chosen not to spend time putting together lots of diffs made by SouthernComfort as I don't think the underlying facts are really disputed. (And whilst he and others did deliberately lie to me and were deliberately offensive to me, I chose not to take that point.) Similarly, I did not choose to escalate the matter by bringing in evidence against others (including one arbitrator) who have, far more recently than me, unilaterally changed date notation for no other reason than their own personal preference. That is, I have consciously chosen not to make this case messier and more acrimonious than it already is.

The issue before the ArbCom is a straightforward one: If a policy proposal fails, some editors start implementing it anyway, and other editors revert them, what should happen? Unfortunately, it's a question ArbCom isn't even addressing.

Kind regards

Jon

Ambi wrote:

Folks, if you don't provide evidence, then don't be surprise when your
concerns aren't included in a ruling. The vast amount of evidence
there points to the conclusion I noted before - there are piles upon
piles of examples of Jguk systematically changing stuff, and about
four examples of SouthernComfort doing the same thing. We can only
consider what is put before us, and almost all of that relates to
Jguk.

-- ambi

---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos


body:
Jay jg

Making proposals for change is perfectly acceptable - and  I though it was recommended in controversial areas.

My early conflicts made me realise that it was counter-productive to change articles that always use BCE/CE notation to BC/AD notation (even though it would be preferable to user a style most commonly used worldwide - as Britannica and Encarta realise). I have therefore desisted from doing so months and months ago. And not even an ArbCom in sight then!

However, I can name at least half a dozen editors, including one arbitrator, who choose to continue making arbitrary changes on articles that already use fully consistent notation. Why single me out for edits done 7 months or so ago? (Incidentally, I mention this more to ask that you calm down on me, I don't want to widen this witchhunt to more and more people - it's messy enough already.)

Jguk

From: "JAY JG" <jayjg at hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Message-ID: <BAY107-F5F564C9A34BE27067711BB0F60 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

>From: Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk>
>
>Assuming you're not holding my newbie edits 9 months ago against me, I
very
>quickly stopped
>changing articles from BCE/CE to BC/AD notation.

What about attempting to change the MOS to reflect your views months
after
you joined Wikipedia, and had already been involved in conflicts at the
Common Era
article?[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29/proposed_revision&diff=prev&oldid=9603439]

---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos


from_name: Rebecca

body:
Folks, if you don't provide evidence, then don't be surprise when your
concerns aren't included in a ruling. The vast amount of evidence
there points to the conclusion I noted before - there are piles upon
piles of examples of Jguk systematically changing stuff, and about
four examples of SouthernComfort doing the same thing. We can only
consider what is put before us, and almost all of that relates to
Jguk.

-- ambi

On 6/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The issue here, though, is that deciding on these issues (as with
> > whether to use American or English English) comes down to the editors
> > of a particular article. There appears to be widespread agreement on
> > the particular articles involved (of which SouthernComfort was one of
> > the editors) that BCE-CE was preferable in this instance. Jguk then
> > went around changing them to his preference anyway, regardless of the
> > article consensus - and that's what isn't on.
> >
> > -- ambi
> >
>
> But this isn't true. SouthernComfort hit artices on which he had no
> previous editing history.
>
> geni
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050619 06:34]:

> This decision is apparently setting the precedent that
> if a user can claim that edits they disagree with are
> offensive to them, then their view is the only
> acceptable view and the rest of Wikipedia's editors
> can go hang.

I see some problematic areas in the proposed decision in its present state
(e.g. the statement about academic standards only applies to the US and
definitely not to the UK, and even then only certain parts of US academia)
and will hopefully find time today to put some amendments in.

- d.


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Foundation-l] Directed donations

body:
>> (daniwo59 at aol.com)
>> I therefore suggest that donors have the possibility of earmarking their
>> donation....

> (mav)
> Hm. This type of thing locks up funds and makes running organizations much
> more difficult than necessary, IMO.

Designing an organization is much like designing software: it's a big
mistake not to listen to your users, and it's a bigger mistake to do
exactly what they tell you.  In other words, your customers are
generally expressing a genuine need, but their ideas about how to
provide that need are often bad.  That's to be expected--they're not
designers, you are.  It's your job to figure out a better way to
provide their need than the one they thought of.

What the users are saying here is that they hate dumping money into
a black hole with no idea how it will be used.  And they're right--
the traditional way charities are run makes that a big problem, but
the proposed solution (earmarking) doesn't solve the problem, it
just complicates managing the foundation.

The better solution is simple: total transparency.  It's something
we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to
provide.  We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for
any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world
frequently and archive indefinitely.  Anyone who wants to know how
his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/
spent; if he likes that, he can donate.  If he doesn't, he can tell
us why and suggest how me might improve.  But in either case, he
has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't
interfere with our management needs.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


subject: [Foundation-l] Directed donations


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Validation status

body:
Brion Vibber (brion at pobox.com) [050619 19:43]:

> Just a note; the 'validation' feature will most likely not be turned on
> on en.wikipedia.org when we upgrade, since it's not currently in a
> usable state.
> Problems include, but are not limited to:
   [...]
> If anybody would like to work on it further that would be spiffy;
> otherwise it will remain in limbo indefinitely.

argh, bugger. I thought the backend was fine. Oh well.

After last night's research meetings, I have a pile of things that need
doing for the front end to list on meta and discuss with Magnus. I still
want this feature incredibly much (as everyone has probably noticed by now)
but am still not a coder yet. So, um, is there anyone else interested in
helping push this one forward in the practical lines of PHP sense? Please!

- d.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
Yes please reward our Cebuano speakers ASAP!

Walter/Waerth

> Hi Vincent,
>
> You did a lot of excellent work and you are one of the really few who
> follow the procedure for requests so well. I think it is time to
> create this Wikipedia asap!
>
> Wouter
>
>> Hello guys.
>>
>> I would like to reiterate our request to have a
>> Wikipedia in the Cebuano language. We have the minimum
>> number of supporters, and we have also promoted the
>> idea in some fora where Cebuanos frequent.
>>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Article validation probably won't be switched on for
	1.5

body:
Unfortunately, unless a lot of good coding happens in reasonably short
order, Special:Validate probably won't be enabled on en: for 1.5 (to be
released next weekend). Brion has serious concerns with the present code.

This is quite annoying, but oh well. Interested PHP coders needed!
Or it stays in limbo!

We appear to have worked out a front end for the initial test, though -
[[m:En validation topics]] has been more or less stable for the last two
weeks. The [[m:Wikimedia research team]] IRC meeting last night was
productive also; I'll be putting some stuff from it on the article
validation pages on Meta and discussing further with Magnus (who wrote the
feature).

([[m:De Validierungsthemen]] has been stable a lot longer, but is also a
lot shorter and simpler. I'm somewhat surprised the de: quality initiative
hasn't jumped on it with great glee ...)

I know several other Wikipedias are waiting to see how the test goes on en:
(and presumably de:). I also think this feature will be vastly popular in
non-Wikimedia installations of MediaWiki. If we can write it so it doesn't
kill the system ;-)

- d.

----- Forwarded message from Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> -----

From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Validation status
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 02:43:20 -0700

Just a note; the 'validation' feature will most likely not be turned on
on en.wikipedia.org when we upgrade, since it's not currently in a
usable state.

Problems include, but are not limited to:

* In various places it tries to load metadata for *every* revision of
the page. This would be fatal on the actual Wikipedia, where there are
pages with tens of thousands of revisions. There are likely other severe
performance and scalability issues with it.

* The 'management' interface for defining survey options is not locked
off properly, and is very hard to use if you do get to it.

* Lack of HTML-safety on the UI interface: as a quick hack I added
htmlspecialchars() guards, but things really should be changed to use
wikitext where appropriate; several of the UI messages are currently
displaying raw HTML tags.

If anybody would like to work on it further that would be spiffy;
otherwise it will remain in limbo indefinitely.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

----- End forwarded message -----


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
On 6/19/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> > Just because the side with the "Jesus wasn't God" POV prefer BCE/CE
> > doesn't make using BCE/CE an example of supporting a POV.
> Please don't be overly broad-brush. I am very much certainly in the former
> group, and am equally certainly not in the latter. I severly doubt that I am
> not alone in this, either.

I omitted the word '''some''' because the implication was being made
that BCE/CE itself is POV, which is clearly untrue. The confusion that
it is clearly stems from the fact that many people with a particular
pov prefer one over the other...  This certainly isn't the only
reason, as I previously mentioned, it is argued that BCE/CE isn't as
widely understood. But this is the reason that causes people to think
that the BCE/CE debate is one POV verses another POV.

Since I was specifically discussing the claim that arbcom was getting
involved with supporting one POV over another, my primary interest was
in demonstrating why BCE/CE isn't POV at all.

That is to say that arbcom may or may not be doing the right thing,
but they aren't affirming one POV over another... because if we were
to agree that one of the phrasings were non-neutral then it would be
the BC/AD nomenclature and we would have no choice but to adopt the
BCE/CE form.  Since the original post was concerned about arbcom's
involvement in deciding NPOV, I think this point is quite important.

> [Snip the rest of the argument based on this logical fallacy]

I'm sorry, because I suspect I must be a little dense here... I just
can't follow how your (quite correct) criticism of my loosely worded
claim in any way invalidates the rest of my message, and I really do
wish you had replied point by point.


subject: [WikiEN-l] I am very concerned by the arbcomm decision againstjguk

body:
On 6/19/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> What, exactly, would constitute sufficient proof that "CE" and "BCE" are not
> well-used, or even recognised, outside of the United States?

Well you could start by telling us what part of the story has been
omitted from this: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/531644
... It was somewhat hard to find that URL because google returns so
many .uk sites using the BCE/CE nomenclature.

In any case, I think this is becoming pointless rehashing of the
debate that already occurred on wikipedia. It has already been decided
that both forms are acceptable. That BCE/CE might be less well known
or even US centric has no bearing on weather or not arbcom is engaging
in affirming one POV over another.


subject: [WikiEN-l] jguk case: amended FoF brought

body:
I've noted that the proposed FoF 6 is trivially factually incorrect - it
only applies to US academia, and even then only a certain portion thereof.
It notably does not apply to e.g. UK academia. I've written a proposed FoF
6.01. Comments welcomed. (The sentence construction could almost certainly
do with improvement, for instance.)

FoF 6:

  6) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among scholars and
  those who seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out
  in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year
  of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus potentially offensive, see research by
  El_C.

FoF 6.01:

  6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain
  portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in
  inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno
  Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus
  regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does
  not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.

This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content
arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to
use in pushing a POV.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic dash conversion removed

body:
I've removed the automatic substitution of – and — for
hyphen sequences from 1.5, as it seems to simply cause a neverending
sequence of breakage of links and markup. The special cases that were
added to try to keep it from breaking (some) links and (some) markup of
course made it behave fairly inconsistently, and on the whole it seems
to have been causing trouble far outweighing the utility of making some
dashes slightly more attractive.

Perhaps some future parser that operates in a clean fashion instead of
layering regexes on top of each other will be able to do this in a
consistent, non-breaking manner. For now it doesn't seem worth it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Rick

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> Under the existing style guide that was ok. Either
> style is acceptable.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jun 19, 2005, at 2:01 PM, Rick wrote:
>
> > SouthernComfort was NOT one of the editors
> involved
> > until after he got into "change every article
> about
> > Iran to BCE" mode.  jguk was RIGHTLY changing SC's
> > edits back to what the original authors had left
> them
> > at.
> >
> > RickK

It was NOT ok.  SouthernComfort's sole edits were to
change the date formats.  This would be the same as an
editor changing all American spellings to English
spellings and getting away with it because they are
offended by American spellings.

RickK

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Discussion on English Wikipedia in languages other
	than English

body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> Rick wrote about people having discussions in
> languages other than English:
>
> > Well, for one thing, it's rude.
>
> Maybe it's just me, but my impression is that
> English speakers tend to
> find it more rude than others. *Could* be (but need
> not be) interpreted
> as anglo-chauvinism.
>
> Timwi

What a crock.  If you and I went to another language's
wiki and started writing comments in only English,
don't you think there would be objections?

RickK

____________________________________________________
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Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC numbering bug

references:
<d81fft$3nm$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d82l2t$82m$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d83m69$ilf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<b8b9a5110506070959401ad7b5@mail.gmail.com>	<d84kh0$smj$1@sea.gmane.org>	<9f02ca4c05060909194cdb2d5f@mail.gmail.com>	<d8uri1$qru$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<42B3083C.9060007@telus.net>

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> there remains a practical problem on heavily trafficked maintenance
> related articles where adding new sections will automatically add
> <h2> headings.  These need to be grouped for ease of use, and <h1> is
> the only thing available for this. Could a <h1.5> be defined as a
> compromise.

No, but maybe in addition to [edit] ("edit this section") we could have
[+] ("add a subsection to this section")...

Timwi


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] Article on LISA

references:
<42B291AC.8060606@gmail.com> <42B2B420.1020008@telus.net>
	<42B2E41A.7040906@gmail.com>
	<op.ssivn9qw2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>
	<42B56926.4060400@softhome.net>
	<op.ssm0wtal2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>
	<42B6044D.5000608@softhome.net>

body:
cookfire <cookfire at softhome.net> wrote:
> Muke Tever wrote:
>>   * Do they know whether the Hebrew definition is a translation of
>>     the French definition, vice versa, or written independently?
>
> They don't have to. They read and compare the ones they do understand.
> If they find inconsistencies they can fix them.

Here I am mostly concerned for the users here, not the editors.

> It would even be possible to mark the other definitions as 'dirty' orin need of being checked as well.

This is easily abused though.  (Had to clean up [[you]] today because of
this.  It'd been like that for a month.)

>>   * Do they have any way of knowing whether the French definition has
>>     any more or less information than the Hebrew one?
>
> Only if they click through, I guess, but that's true now as well, except
> now they don't even know if the French definition even exists.

Gerard's interwiki bot has been working well on en: for quite some
time now.

>>   * Do they know whether they are perhaps for different senses of the
>>     same word? (Did the person who added the definition in Hebrew know
>>     enough French to mark it as a translation of a French one?)
>
> The situation is worse with balkanized Wiktionaries. In the endeavour
> we're in, I am not sure perfection is possible, but things certainly can
> be improved. If a person adds a translation that doesn't  fit in one
> Wiktionary, it doesn't get seen by many people and it will take a very
> long time before anybody notices the error.
[snip]

I'm not talking about the separate wiktionaries here, but the UW's
feature of linking what is a translation of what... and I'm not talking
about errors here either.  I mean if, say, the French only defines
"financial institution" and the Hebrew only "shore of a river" under "bank".
Or if they both have "financial institution" but aren't marked as
translations of one another.  It's possible that I'm entirely missing
the mark as to the features of this feature, but I havnt been introduced
to any concrete examples here so all I have is speculation.

>>> All the translations of the content will be found in the sameplace,
>>> instead of having to hunt across all the different languageWiktionaries.
>>
>> Interwiki links do that already, and are flexible enough to handle
>> information that isn't just a translation of prior information.
>
> Take a look at bank in the English, the Dutch and the German
> dictionaries. The links are flexible, but the pages don't get updated.

Apparently because there aren't the editors to do it.

>>> It's not just about translations. Although, they too, will benefit of
>>> only having to be put in once and become available for each and every
>>> person using the Wiktionary.
>>
>> This, frankly, seems impossible, except for words with very specific
>> semantics.  I would like to see how this is supposed to be done.
>
> I'll try to give an example, but it'll take some time. Right now I need
> a way to include the contents of one page into another in the wiki
> interface.
> Anyway, please humour me and tell me what's wrong with the following:
>
> - One word/term/expression has a series of meanings
> - Each of these meanings has a list of synonyms and translations in
> different languages.
> - The translations can be given as a list with occasionally a comment
> about usage, caveats, etc.

First off, when you say an added translation will be available to each
and every user are you talking about a separate translation table for
every word, where every French user can see the Hebrew translations of
English "you", or a magic table that adheres to "you", "tu", "vous",
"o senhor", "o senhora", "???", etc. simultaneously?  Both seem impractical,
for different reasons, but it was the latter I was thinking of.

Regardless:
Second, attaching a translation table to every *sense* of a word will
be rather excessive, especially when a word has many separate senses
and the same word translates several or all of them.  Hopefully there
will be a kind of information-condensing mechanism?

Thirdly (and this a minor point) I would like to see example sentences
accompanying translations.  (This minor because eventually the
translation's own entry will have an example sentence, hopefully.)

Last, what happens to a translation table when a valid definition that's
accumulated translations is split or merged with another?  (Like what
happened with [[you]].)  Presumably some kind of dirty marking would
happen to the translations themselves, but if the translation table is
attached to the senses themselves, is there some provision for moving
it?  (It's entirely possible that this is no problem at all, but again,
there's no sense of what the interface looks like, though the impression
I get from descriptions so far is that this won't be very transparent.)

>>> I'm going to try and make an example of a common word and what it might
>>> look like in UW.
>>>
>>> Bank seems like a good candidate to do this with.
>>
>> Or maybe [[You]]. :p
>
> I'll have a look at it, but I wanted a spelling of a word that exists in
> more than one language.

[[I]] then ;) though that's a quite muddy case.

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Question about page moves

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
>
> I'm telling you, one of these days a vandal is going to realize that
> Page moves require little work to be done but can cause massive damage
> that requires lots of work to fix

You're saying that as if it hadn't already happened.


body:
On 6/19/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> > I omitted the word '''some''' because the implication was being made
> > that BCE/CE itself is POV, which is clearly untrue.
>
> No, it isn't. Were it "clearly untrue", everyone would see it immediately
> (that is, after all what those words would mean). I don't. Others don't. Or
> are we all just being difficult and stating that we fail to see the BCE/CE
> is NPOV to annoy you (what is termed "trolling")?

Well, actually, I hadn't yet seen the overt claim that BCE/CE isn't
NPOV... this is a first, more on that in a bit.

What I've seen claimed many times that that BCE/CE isn't any more or
less NPOV than BC/AD and that because of the other issues we should
prefer BC/AD.   This is an argument that I am inclined to agree with.

> Well, yes, indeed. Something that is regarded by one group of POV-holders as
> good and another as bad is, generally, well ... How to put this? So terribly
> tricky. Still, I will try: POV. Gosh. Wasn't actually so hard, when it came
> down to it.

I believe you are incorrect here.  The relationship only goes one way.
Only a POV supporter will agree with a strongly non-neutral position,
but just because someone is a POV pusher it is not necessary that
everything they support is non-neutral.

BC/BCE and BC/AD can both be NPOV even if some in the BC/BCE camp
claim that BC/AD isn't NPOV and just because some of the advocates of
either view carry some strong POVs this doesn't make it a POV issue.

You know, it is possible for people to disagree and for the argument
to have absolutely nothing to do with NPOV.

> If group A says that foo is NPOV, but group B say that it is POV, then it by
> definition cannot be NPOV - because otherwise group B would agree that it
> was.

I think you need to re-read the page on NPOV.  NPOV doesn't mean that
everyone always agrees.

> In this scenario, I think that the difficulty is that people want something
> that is, indeed, absolutely NPOV, and acceptable to everyone. However, this
> is a case, I feel, like too many others, sadly, where there is no such
> Nirvana solution; we must make do with the least POV use. "Both" sides feel
> that using "AD" and "BC" is POV, and both are right. However, where they
> differ is that one side either considers "CE" and "BCE" to be less POV than
> the others for most people, or fails to see it as POV at all, whereas the
> other finds it more POV.

>From your tone it sound like you're quite tired of this matter, ...
And I can't blame you.. As I've said, the issue has already been well
cooked on the wiki.  But I'm curious... What makes you believe that
BCE/CE isn't neutral and that it's less so than AD/BC?

I get the argument against AD/BC, that it pushes a specific idea about
the existence and role of Jesus and I get the counter arguments..
usually that common use and time have tempered the POVness to where no
one really associates it with any POV. I can also see how people may
be concerned that BCE/CE isn't in common enough use and that it may
represents a degree of national snobbery, since the usage is more
common in some English speaking nations than others.

But I simply don't see why BCE/CE isn't as neutral as any ideal
nomenclature for naming eras.

Not all disagreements are a matters of neutrality.

> > Since I was specifically discussing the claim that arbcom was getting
> > involved with supporting one POV over another, my primary interest was
> > in demonstrating why BCE/CE isn't POV at all.
> Please, do, go ahead. I await with baited breath.

Well, I've said my mind on the matter and you're still unconvinced.
... I did not claim that my demonstration would be effective. :)

> I disagree; by strongly criticising one side of a wide-ranging edit war, and
> saying nothing at all about the other, the old proposed rulings were
> impliticly condoing the POV of those not mentioned, and discarding that of
> Jguk and others.

It seems to me that arbcom was specifically acting against users who
have broken the agreement to allow both forms. In the arbcom case
there is no substantially cited history of the 'other side' following
around the people they disagree with and revising every use. If you
are aware of such a case, I highly suggest you take it to the arbcom.

 > > because if we were to agree that one of the phrasings were non-neutral
> > then it would be the BC/AD nomenclature and we would have no choice but
> > to adopt the BCE/CE form.
> I agree. However, this is not true - *both* are non-neutral, the argument is
> to the relative neutrality of them two.

Well, this is a misunderstanding on my part then.

But I still don't see that this is of merit to the arbcom issue:  If
someone has been following around editors that write using BC/AD in
articles containing mostly BC/AD and changing it, then I think they
are also deserving a reprimand and I'm confident that arbcom would
agree.

> I absolutely agree. I just disagree with your conclusion. :-)

Well, we have to start with something...

> Sorry. In future I will reply, point-by-point, with "See above.". I had
> written this  thrice before deciding to merely snip.

I certainly understand the effort that goes into writing a thought out
reply, and I promise that I am making a genuine attempt to understand
your position and not merely trolling you.  Thank you for your time
and effort.


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requests page

body:
>Hi Wouter,
>
>"Thought police" refers not to your removal of requests, but rather
>your removal of individual comments. Which you did do.

and "censor" did refer to removing requests as far as I can judge.

W.
>
>Mark
>
>On 18/06/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear fellow list subscribers,
> >
> > Yesterday I had the unpleasant experience that Mark Williamson scolded
>me
> > for "Censor" and "Thought police". The reason was that I had deleted
>some of
> > the requests on the Requests for new languages page on meta
> > (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages), and
> > subsequently he placed most of them back, along with some other ones
>that
> > had been removed by long, and not by me.
> >
> > As a matter of facts, I got /furious/ and if Mark had stood right before
>me
> > I would have spit into his face. Later however, he eludicated the reason
>why
> > he placed them back, and we seem to agree on more things than I thought
>at
> > first. The page /is/ really getting overloaded with requests and becomes
>too
> > long. The difference was, he wanted to keep them anyway.
> >
> > I may opinion, the right solution is to cut-and-paste them to an
>archive,
> > newly to be created. I could very well create it right now, but thanks
>to
> > Mark's great action I am unsure whether this wil be appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Incompetent, inautoritive censor and thought police Wouter Steenbeek.
> >
> > Btw: it seems perhaps a little inappropriate to discuss this meta topic
>on
> > the Wikipedia mailing list, but since the topic is realted to the
>creation
> > of new Wikipedias I took the liberty to post it here.
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>--
>SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
>QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
>POSSIT MATERIARI
>ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
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http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Browser breakdown?

body:
On 19/06/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:

> > I was about to quote some statistics on en:wiki about usage, and it
> > struck me that if we had a rough breakdown for wikipedia, rather than
> > relying on the wildly fluctuating ones across the web, it'd be useful
> > to know, even if no more than a vague snapshot from a year ago.
>
> From the last update in October last year:
> http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/usage_200410.html

Thanks; it's exactly the sort of thing I was after.

If anyone's interested, I was trying to gauge the usage of Opera
specifically; the stats for the last few months listed give it as
3-5%, which is higher than I anticipated.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] I will be leaving the project

body:
Silsor has blocked me from editing.  I will not accede
to this.  I am leaving the project and will not be
back.

Enjoy your lives.

RickK

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Use Yahoo! to plan a weekend, have fun online and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Bugzilla configuration

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
> First of all I'd like to remove the patch keyword

I was the one that put it in originally. I copied the concept from
LiveJournal: someone attaches a patch and sets the 'patch' keyword;
other developers search for bugs with the 'patch' but not 'reviewed'
keyword; they look at the patches, test them, make sure they work, make
sure the code is clean and everything, and add the 'reviewed' keyword.
Developers with CVS access look for 'patch'+'reviewed', commit the
patches and set the bug to RESOLVED FIXED.

I know I don't have much say in this anymore because I'm not as active
as I used to be, but I would nevertheless prefer if the 'patch' keyword
would stay (and MediaZillians would set it appropriately). There is no
way to search for patches otherwise (see below).

> instead we can use advanced search to search for
>
> * Attachment is patch => is equal to => 1
> * Attachment is obsolete => is not equal to => 1

This matches bugs that have an obsolete patch as well as a non-obsolete
non-patch attachment.

Besides, even if this would work, it is far too complex (UI-wise). Just
because it can be done doesn't mean we can't add a quick keyword to make
it easier. :)

Also, in rare cases the 'patch' keyword might be set even if there is no
patch: maybe the bug is about changing a CSS file or image file or
something and the attachment is just the new file.

Thanks for listening,
Timwi


body:
--- ultrablue at gmail.com wrote:

> So you got a 24 hour block for 3RR. Get over it and
> move on. For
> someone who so freely gives out 24 hour blocks for
> rule violations,
> you don't seem to like the rules being enforced
> against yourself.
> Hopefully when you come back (in 24 hours) you will
> be less willing to
> engage in block/unblock wars, which I'm sure
> everyone agrees are not a
> good thing.
>
> ~Mark Ryan

I won't be back.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


body:
On Sun, 2005-06-19 at 22:05 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've removed the automatic substitution of – and — for
> hyphen sequences from 1.5, as it seems to simply cause a neverending
> sequence of breakage of links and markup...

I was planning to add that feature to the parser code I'm currently
working on (as well as something for curly-quotes).  I get the
impression from your note that the problems are all related to the
current parser misinterpreting what is displayed text and what is
markup, is that right?  If so, my adding that feature to sample code
for a spec that eliminates any such ambiguity should not be a problem.
Or is there some other problem?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: tex: \cdot

body:
Johan F wrote:
> It would be nice if the could \cdot be rendered in html, as it would
> greatly reduce the number of tex snippets needing image conversion.
> Perhaps '?' could be used? (E.g. 3?4=12.)

According to texutil.ml, it seems that it already uses ⋅.

According to the HTML output, however, it seems to use ⋅.

Timwi


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Religioustolerance.org

body:
>From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
>
>Jon:
>Where exactly did you remove links to religioustolerance.org?

Primarily from the [[Common Era]] article, where the issue was much
discussed and edit-warred over.  Most recently, on the [[Jesus]] article
just before he went on his editing
haitus.[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesus&diff=prev&oldid=15030087]

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Licensing concern.

body:
en:User:UninvitedCompany has a user page which contains text with a
form much like a standard copyright grant, which makes the claim that
because wikipedia or it's articles are a collective work by many
authors that any contributor, no matter how minor (as his less than 3k
edits are quite minor compared to the size of wikipedia as a whole
which he lays claim to), is entitled to relicense the work as a whole
under any license they see fit. He then goes on to use this to grant
the entire wikipedia under CC-BY-SA because he has issues with the
GFDL.   Although he has been careful to pad his words with the
expected IANALs, it is pretty clear his intention is to circumvent the
licensing of Wikipedia and, failing that, to encourage others to
disregard our licensing.

When the issue of User:Pioneer12's non-article edits came up ... I
didn't care too much because the issue was the licensing of his work,
not mine.  In this case UninvitedCompany is making an effort to
circumvent the licensing on my work that I have chosen, by attempting
to relicense that work against my wishes. I consider this to be
profoundly anti-social.

Although uninvitedcompany has been more than polite in my discussion
with him on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:UninvitedCompany
(more polite than I for sure), he refuses to stop attempting to
relicense my work via the text on his user page.

I understand that UninvitedCompany dislikes the GFDL and that he is
not alone in that position. I, however disagree with his position on
the GFDL and his idea of what other people think of the GFDL. For
example, the position of debian legal is not as strongly negative as
he implies, because the license is setup to only have teeth against
distribution so the 'encrypted storage' issue is generally a strawman
argument.  I specifically prefer the GFDL over the CC-BY-SA because
the DRM restriction would make life hard for someone distributing my
content using a device which involuntarily locks the content with DRM
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/01/10/everything_you_ever_wanted/).
The GFDL's strong DRM terms contain an intentional side effect that
may help slow the market penetration of devices which subjugate the
users of the technology, and I strongly support this protection
because it is certan that since I use Free Software I would be unable
to access content given to me by users of CPRM devices no matter their
good intentions, and because only through creating 'licensed
publishers' can the mass-media companies completely close the hole
that allows the illegal distribution of their work. Such a future
would likely deny me the effective ability to publish altogether, as
long as you define effective to mean not providing a special playing
device with my work and publish as covering a wider audience than some
free software geeks.

... but the arguments for and against the GFDL really don't matter
here: My work is licensed under the GFDL and only the GFDL. It is
almost certainly not possible for User:UninvitedCompany or anyone else
to change that, but it is terribly impolite for him to use space on
Wikipedia (userpager or otherwise) to make such claims that disagree
with our license text and the wishes of (at least) some of the
editors.   The argument UninvitedCompany is advocating would allow any
editor to distribute wikipedia under any license he wishes no matter
how more or less restrictive.  Judging by the small number of people
who dual license their work as PD or BSD, I suspect many would
disagree.

So I'd like to ask the community at large to please ask uninvited
company to revise his user page.  I don't think his claim has any more
merit than pioneer12's disagreement with the form he submitted all his
talk text through, but I think it's all the more negative because it
purports to effect the licensing of work by authors other than him
rather than just his own.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050620 05:53]:
>
>
>>Isn't that exactly what SouthernComfort did?  He said
>>he was offended by BC/AD, and you and the rest of the
>>arbcomm said his offense is more important than
>>consensus.
>>
>>
>Not the *entire* rest, thanks ...
>
>This is the sort of AC case that should never have been accepted, and I'm
>now sorry I voted 'accept' (though it already had four by the time I got
>there).
>
>
When people can simply say that they are offended and have all sorts of
operations thus brought to a screeching halt then you know that
political correctness has run amok.  Some take it to the extent that
being offended becomes offensive.  When people use these allegedly
offensive expressions offense is often the furthest thing from their
minds; they are not being disrespectful of anybody.  Their actions
should be viewed in that light, and not in the light of someone else's
self-pity.

Ec


body:
>From: "James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org>
> > > They will probably get bored in the end.
> >
> > jguk's campaign lasted for 8 months,
>
>Indeed. And the United States was continuously at war with Germany from
>1918
>until 1945, and has been so with the United Kingdom since 1776.
>
>*yawns*
>
>[Snip]

Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of your rather "snippy" response.  The United
States has not, in fact, been continuously at war with Germany for that
perios, nor with the UK.  However, jguk did indeed make edit articles solely
for the purpose of deleting BCE/CE for 8 months, almost the entire time he
has been editing here, including deletions of BCE/CE references in every one
of those eight months.  In all it was over 1000 edits.  We've had other
editors (almost always anonymous) come in here and remove BCE/CE references
from several dozen, or even several hundred, articles over a period of a day
or two, but I've never seen one as persistent as jguk.  And by the way,
contrary to geni's contention, I've never seen an anonymous editor come in
and edit dozens or hundreds of articles solely for the purpose of converting
BC/AD to BCE/CE - the phenomenon seems to be one-way only.

Jay.


body:
David Friedland wrote:
>
> My opinion is that we should not allow or least sternly frown upon
> discussion on the English Wikipedia in languages other than English.

I don't know anything about the specific situation that led you to post
this, but in general I quite fiercely disagree with this. What are you
trying to accomplish? You can hardly force people to write in English
when they don't want to; instead they're just going to discuss things
elsewhere or not at all. In all likelihood, it will lead to decreased
productivity in the actual articles. You have not added to Wikipedia
that way.

In another posting, David Friedland wrote:
>
> a pair of editors repeatedly revert a change I make to an article,
> then post some messages in a foreign language to the article talk
> pages as well as to their own user talk pages and the "Xyz
> Wikipedians' notice board". Some of these messages clearly contain my
> user name.

Again, I don't know the specific situation, but come on, for all you
know these comments could be saying "David Friendland has a good point,
what do you all think?".

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Religioustolerance.org

body:
Jayjg questions why I oppose linking to the religioustolerance.org website, citing an Alexa ranking of 10,000 to 11,000. Let me explain why. Especially as this is the sort of thing we need content arbitration for.

Religioustolerance.org is run by a group called "Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance". Not very close inspection of their website reveals that this group has five members, none of whom have any religious training or stature in the religious community (either in Ontario or elsewhere). Almost all their essays are written by one man, who is a retired engineer who freely admits his lack of academic or religious training. This makes the site no better than a blog - after all, I could, if I were so motivated, start a website, sign up four mates, and write loads of essays. That would not make those essays quotable (or the website linkable).

It is because religioustolerance.org is a bunch of (very poorly written) essays written by a man with absolutely no training or stature in the field of religious tolerance that it is not suitable as a link. Except, of course, as an example of how a good URL can boost your number of hits - it's a very good example of that! Since the site is of no academic significance whatsoever, I do not think we should link to it.

(I add as an aside that where I have removed it I have said that I would have no objection to a site that provided similar information or arguments provided that it had some academic or religious stature. Indeed, I would prefer this option, provided the arguments used in religioustolerance.org are not so rare as for there to be no link to a site with suitable stature to replace it.)

Jguk

---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos


body:
Rick wrote about people having discussions in languages other than English:

> Well, for one thing, it's rude.

Maybe it's just me, but my impression is that English speakers tend to
find it more rude than others. *Could* be (but need not be) interpreted
as anglo-chauvinism.

Timwi


subject: [Foundation-l] Grants -- a proposal

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
>>I therefore suggest that donors have the possibility of earmarking their
>>donation. That is to say, they will have the ability to specify where they
>>want their money to go. In that case, one donor may give specifically for
>>servers, while another donor may give specifically to promote a language,
>>print a  particular wikibook, or whatever.
>>
>>
>Hm. This type of thing locks up funds and makes running organizations much more
>difficult than necessary, IMO. The board in consultation with its various
>officers are the body by which budgeting is done. Feedback from donors can and
>should be collected in a systematic and easy to parse way, but should not tie
>the hands of the board (grants excepted). That type of information should
>*inform* the board's decision - not dictate it.
>
>Most of the annual California state budget, for example, has been dictated by
>various voter initiatives. Thus lawmakers have very little to work with while
>crafting budgets. This is one reason often cited for California's on-going
>financial crisis.
>
>So while this at first sounds like a neat idea, in practice it just makes our
>budgeting less flexible and thus less able to adapt to changing conditions,
>IMO.
>
>
I very much agree that targetted funding brings its own set of
problems.  Funding with strings attached could threaten the independence
of the wiki if those funds become too important.  This doesn't mean that
all special funding should be avoided.  Microfunding articles in certain
languages could probably be handled by national chapters.  But when you
can pay $1.00 for a reasonably good article, having $1,000.00 in the
bank may bew too much.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Grants -- a proposal


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] we need responsive servers on Tuesday

body:
Dear server admins,

on Tuesday, 2005-06-21, I will do a small presentation about Wikipedia on German
television. It will be *live*, so it would be very helpful to have the servers
online and responsive at that time :-)
There might be many people from the audience trying to access the pages I
mention, I don't now if this will have any significant impact.

The presentation will be broadcast sometime between 20:00 and 21:00 German time,
that's 18:00 to 19:00 UTC, if I'm not mistaken. It'll last about 10 minutes.

More information about the presentation (in German) on
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Kurt_Jansson/GIGA_real
(You can also put your suggestions for "cool" pages that I should show there. I
assume the age of the audience will mostly be between 15 and 25.)

Kurt

--
"Reading the Wikipedia is not a substitute for first aid training."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation

Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://www.jansson.de/


body:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050620 00:58]:

> Can you actually provide any citations to support your position?

You mean, like papers using it?

> Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.
> Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.

I said it needed tweaking. Call it substantial minority. And noisy.

> In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should
> use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided
> that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.

Well, yeah. That's why I was ignoring this - as a storm in a teacup - and
why I'm appalled its advocates have tried to push it this far. Those
seeking to push a POV will not be put off by content arbitration - they'll
just try to use it as a further bludgeon for their views, as we see in the
present case.

- d.


from_name: blankfaze

body:
On 6/20/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Silsor has blocked me from editing. I will not accede
> to this. I am leaving the project and will not be
> back.
>
> Enjoy your lives.
>
> RickK

That really sucks. Thanks a lot to the jackasses responsible.

--
! blankfaze
*the good times
are killing me*


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Religioustolerance.org

body:
Jon:

> Jayjg questions why I oppose linking to the religioustolerance.org website,
 > citing an Alexa ranking of 10,000 to 11,000. Let me explain why.

I find your reasons not to be backed up by Wikipedia policy or practice.
External links in Wikipedia articles do not have to be "academic" or
even NPOV, they have to be on-topic and add value to an article. It's
perfectly fine to link to a blog if that blog posts articles exclusively
or primarily devoted to the topic of a Wikipedia article, and we have
frequently done so. Check out, as one example of thousands, the link
collection on [[Michael Moore]].

For an example of the kind of material religioustolerance.org hosts, see
their useful and well-referenced collection of information on satanic
ritual abuse:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sra_intro.htm (this is just one of
many pages devoted to the topic)

My main criticism would be that the site has become more
advertising-dependent than it used to be; this somewhat reduces its
value as a resource.

Where exactly did you remove links to religioustolerance.org?

 > Especially as this is the sort of thing we need
 > content arbitration for.

And that's exactly the reason I oppose content arbitration.

Best,

Erik


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Requests page

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
Date: 20-Jun-2005 01:38
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Requests page
To: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>

Simple German failed? I saw an awful lot of support, and it was
definitely still a hot topic.

Parseltongue, pretty much dead, yes. Pig Latin, a pretty silly request
in the first place, but you must admit it got two supporters, and the
issue was never really resolved head-on as it should've been.

Sindarin, part of an ongoing debate about artificial language
Wikipedias, can now be found at [[Requests for new languages/Tolkien
languages]], along with Quenya.

Silbo Gomero did not fail, nor was it rediculous.

Such requests as Parseltongue, or maybe even Pig Latin, do not disturb
me that much that you removed them, and I certainly would not have
added them back (well actually, I didn't add Parseltongue back, only
Pig Latin), had you not also gotten rid of scores of more questionable
cases.

As Angela noted, in the past requests have just been deleted. But they
were seldom legit requests for real languages, and when they were they
were often left up for a long time because the page never got very big
(*cough*scottgall*cough*). I don't think it was until very recently
that actual legitimate requests began being deleted, especially after
a time of less than a few months.

What should be pursued is NOT a policy of widespread deletion of
requests after time-limits, but rather of calming down the surge of
activity by somehow getting Scott Gall to request every tomian,
dickler, and harryish language he reads about on Wikipedia. He
requested an Ainu Wikipedia, and didn't even know that the Japanese
and Chinese Ainu are not related.

I left him a note on his talkpage asking him to withdraw some of his
requests, and to refrain from making so many. It seems that
NaziismIsntCool has begun to follow Scott's example and is now
requesting new WPs frequently, this should be quickly curbed with a
note on her talkpage explaining that the page is meant for serious
requests only.

Mark

On 20/06/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Yes, since a few of the Wikipedias you removed weren't because they
> >were old or because they failed, but because you decided they were
> >"rediculous".
> >
> And few did not agree with me.
>
> Judge yourself: Pig Latin, Parseltongue, Silbo Gomero, Simple German,
> Sindarin (which /nota bene/ both had my support but FAILED!), and a hell of
> a lot of mainly African languages being placed months ago, supported by
> NO-ONE, posted anonymously and even without any discussion!
>
> W.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
> http://messenger.msn.nl/
>
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: cookfire

references:
<42B291AC.8060606@gmail.com>
	<42B2B420.1020008@telus.net>	<42B2E41A.7040906@gmail.com>	<op.ssivn9qw2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>	<42B56926.4060400@softhome.net>
	<op.ssm0wtal2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> cookfire <cookfire at softhome.net> wrote:
>
>> An entry will have the 'real content' available in many languages at the
>> same time. It will be presented to you in the language of the interface
>> that you used if available in that language. There will also be icons to
>> show in what other languages this etymology or comment is available as
>> well.
>
>
> That sounds like it will be a *very* crowded interface before too long.

That may be true and the only solution there is to let the user decide
that he only wants to see those icons for the languages he knows.

>> And a button to translate it to a new  language that wasn't
>> available yet. Nothing gets provincialized.
>
>
> The provincialization remains in the fact that most people don't
> understand several languages.  So, apparently a person can see that
> a definition is given in French and Hebrew... but..
>   * Do they know whether the Hebrew definition is a translation of
>     the French definition, vice versa, or written independently?

They don't have to. They read and compare the ones they do understand.
If they find inconsistencies they can fix them. It would even be
possible to mark the other definitions as 'dirty' or in need of being
checked as well. Other people can search for places where this occurs
for languages that they are proficient at.
If you want the community of non-experts to build a dictionary you will
have to give people some credit. If it's not right from the first time,
you will have to accept that it will take a bit longer. But it will get
right in the end. It will probably take 50 or 100 years before it
reaches an acceptable level for the most common words, and even longer
for uncommon words and less spoken languages. UW will help us become
more efficient though. A lot less time will be wasted and this is
important, it will take enough time as it is.

>   * Do they have any way of knowing whether the French definition has
>     any more or less information than the Hebrew one?

Only if they click through, I guess, but that's true now as well, except
now they don't even know if the French definition even exists.

>   * Do they know whether they are perhaps for different senses of the
>     same word? (Did the person who added the definition in Hebrew know
>     enough French to mark it as a translation of a French one?)

The situation is worse with balkanized Wiktionaries. In the endeavour
we're in, I am not sure perfection is possible, but things certainly can
be improved. If a person adds a translation that doesn't  fit in one
Wiktionary, it doesn't get seen by many people and it will take a very
long time before anybody notices the error. If somebody comes by and
copies the translations wholesale to other Wiktionaries the error moves
along. Now if somebody corrects this error in the first or any of the
derivatives, the correction doesn't flow through to the original or the
other derivatives.
In the proposed scenario of UW an error can be introduced just as well
(it's the wiki way), but chances that somebody sees it and corrects it
are a lot better. Besides that, once it is corrected, it is corrected
for all the different interfaces to the UW at once. So everybody benefits.
Translations will be done just like they are done now. One meaning of a
word gets a list of possible translations in the target language. It
will be possible to add a comment and of course it will be possible to
click through to the proposed translations to check whether they fit.

Anyway, I think that a large proportion (say 20%) of people that have
computers and internet connections are at least bilingual. Of course
they can't be absolutely certain about anything they add, but that's why
we have the wiki and its community to provide feedback and many eyeballs
to eradicate incorrect stuff. It will be a lot easier if we are all
looking at one and the same version of the content.

>> All the translations of the content will be found in the sameplace,
>> instead of having to hunt across all the different languageWiktionaries.
>
>
> Interwiki links do that already, and are flexible enough to handle
> information that isn't just a translation of prior information.

Take a look at bank in the English, the Dutch and the German
dictionaries. The links are flexible, but the pages don't get updated.

>> It's not just about translations. Although, they too, will benefit of
>> only having to be put in once and become available for each and every
>> person using the Wiktionary.
>
>
> This, frankly, seems impossible, except for words with very specific
> semantics.  I would like to see how this is supposed to be done.

I'll try to give an example, but it'll take some time. Right now I need
a way to include the contents of one page into another in the wiki
interface.
Anyway, please humour me and tell me what's wrong with the following:

- One word/term/expression has a series of meanings
- Each of these meanings has a list of synonyms and translations in
different languages.
- The translations can be given as a list with occasionally a comment
about usage, caveats, etc.

>> I'm going to try and make an example of a common word and what it might
>> look like in UW.
>>
>> Bank seems like a good candidate to do this with.
>
>
> Or maybe [[You]]. :p

I'll have a look at it, but I wanted a spelling of a word that exists in
more than one language.

Polyglot


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
Do you realise that chances are, if you don't respond again, I won't
either? If you don't like getting messages from me, do you think it
helps to send such retorts?

In newsgroups this is called "flamebait".

Mark

On 20/06/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >Could you explain what you mean here?
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >
> >
> That when it comes to languages you always need to have the last word.
> And keep on going and going and going.
>
> Waerth/Walter
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Sunday, June 19, 2005 4:18 PM, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> > From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> > > Just to make it clear, for the past 9 months he has been on a
> > > campaign to remove all BCE/CE notation from Wikipedia, and has made
> > > over 1,000 article edits solely to support that campaign.
> > >
> > > Jay.
> >
> > So? There has been a few people campaining the other ways as well.

[Snip]

> > They will probably get bored in the end.
>
> jguk's campaign lasted for 8 months,

Indeed. And the United States was continuously at war with Germany from 1918
until 1945, and has been so with the United Kingdom since 1776.

*yawns*

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
On 6/20/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Silsor has blocked me from editing.  I will not accede
> to this.  I am leaving the project and will not be
> back.
> Enjoy your lives.

Oh come on, you engaged in an ugly and unsubstantiated edit war,
protected the page, blocked a random user that disagreed with you,
probably broken 3RR...

And now you complain that you received treatment not 1/8th as harsh as
you would have given any other editor without hesitation? ... Get over
it!

You'll be back, so next time spare us the hysterics.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Requests page

body:
Talking about removal...

Mark... the request for permission was stating artificial languages are
perfectly acceptable.

Aphaia added a paragraph which reflected better the current most agreed
upon idea on the topic, which is precisely that creation of artificial
languages may indeed ... just not happen.

You removed Aphaia comments.

I placed them back, slightly rephrased. I hope my rephrasing is
acceptable to you.

But please, admit that the community generally do not share your opinion
on the matter of artificial languages... and that these pages should
reflect the reality of what is happening... rather than what you hope
should happen. Writing down a misrepresentation will not help, but to
confuse people.

ant

By the way... why does a foundation-wide vote exactly mean ?
I must confess I am a bit worried to see you make many changes to this
page. Generally, you confess opinions on the matter of new languages
which are significantly different from community opinion... and I would
prefer you avoid removing to many comments.
For example :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_new_languages&curid=12422&diff=0&oldid=144481

I confess I forgot about the Foundation wide vote on the matter of

Some languages that have been decided are too similar to another
language include a proposed [[:en:Filipino language|Filipino]] wiki
(redundant with [[:en:Tagalog language|Tagalog]]), [[:en:Basel
German|Basel German]] wiki (redundant with [[:en:Alemannic
language|Alemannic]]), East German wiki (redundant with [[:en:German
language|German]]).

Mark Williamson a ?crit:
> Hi Wouter,
>
> "Thought police" refers not to your removal of requests, but rather
> your removal of individual comments. Which you did do.
>
> Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Requests page

body:
Anthere a ?crit:
> Talking about removal...
>
> Mark... the request for permission was stating artificial languages are
> perfectly acceptable.

request for new languages of course... sigh (being spoiled by steward
duties :-))


body:
On Sunday, June 19, 2005 8:53 PM, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> > No, it sets the precedent you cannot impose the
> > particular usage you prefer on the rest of the world, especially
> > on groups who are offended by that usage. It is more an
> > elaboration of our general policy on courtesy. Another aspect of
> > the decision is that you cannot unilaterally declare your
> > preference Wikipedia policy without having it adopted as an
> > actual policy.
>
> Isn't that exactly what SouthernComfort did?  He said
> he was offended by BC/AD, and you and the rest of the
> arbcomm said his offense is more important than
> consensus.

Yes, indeed, absolutely. As I said when I made my contribution to the
unfortunately divisive poll carried out on this issue, as an atheist I find
"CE"/"BCE" notation abhorrent and amazingly offensive; it suggests that my
concerns that the calendar system, based on some daft quacks' opinions on
the historical accuracy of their lore on some lackey who conned them into
believing that he was the "son" of some mythical "god"-figure invented by
tribal elders to keep their people in line, is of any relevance to the real
world, and that my life should be based on said arcane information's
"wisdom". [0]

"CE"/"BCE" notation really is religious imperialism at its very worst, and I
am saddened to see that a few odd parts of the US academic system. At least
its vileness has not (yet) spread and infected others, hood-winked into
thinking that it is "politically correct".[1] It is notable that I had never
come across it at all until coming to Wikipedia - this despite my
fascination with history and having left school but 4 years ago, so hardly
being part of an older generation, whose education was less "well-balanced"
than today's. I asked a historian friend of mine (as in, post-grad
historian) about "CE"/"BCE", who laughed and said that it was very rarely
used outside of very specialist circles, and was a very good way to make
your paper look like it was written by someone with an axe to grind.[2]

Intriguingly, those who note the absolute scarcity of use of "CE"/"BCE"
notation are now asked to prove the lack of existence of its widespread use.
Gosh. How fun. Being asked to prove a negative. Lots of critical thinking
students here, evidently.

What, exactly, would constitute sufficient proof that "CE" and "BCE" are not
well-used, or even recognised, outside of the United States?

[0] - This is not a personal attack.
[1] - Neither is this.
[2] - Yes, this is anecdotal, and has nothing like basis for an argument.
However, I am happy with it as such, because it has no stronger basis in
fact than any other argument I have yet seen (many comments written used
particular parts of this argument as "divine knowledge", self-evidently
true; this irony no doubt was sadly lost on the authors).

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anarchism

body:
There is a near perpetual crisis on talk:anarchism, usually involving
a great deal of incivility, rhetoric and failure to focus (outside of
on ad hominems ;) I would like to see some mediators, from whatever
mediation group / cabal / club, etc.. is willing to get involved in
contentious talk pages.

Jack (Sam Spade)


body:
On Sunday, June 19, 2005 9:26 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Just because the side with the "Jesus wasn't God" POV prefer BCE/CE
> doesn't make using BCE/CE an example of supporting a POV.

Please don't be overly broad-brush. I am very much certainly in the former
group, and am equally certainly not in the latter. I severly doubt that I am
not alone in this, either.

[Snip the rest of the argument based on this logical fallacy]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Grants -- a proposal

body:
Anthere wrote:
>
>
> Angela a ?crit:
...
>> Isn't there a danger of this leading to huge resources for the English
>> Wikipedia and not enough for the rest of the projects and languages
>> simply because more people visit that and therefore decide to put all
>> their donations towards that project rather than the Foundation's
>> wider goals?
>
>
> I do not think so. By projects, it does not mean "money for english
> wikipedia" or "money for the japanese wiktionary", but rather "money for
> the ultimate wiktionary", "money for wikimania", "money for bambara
> development", "money for a wikijunior set" etc...

If the pet project of a Board member isn't supported by the donors, it
shouldn't be paid for with the donors' money. The "Foundation's wider
goals" were set by Jimbo when he wrote the bylaws, to date donors have
been told they must fund all of these goals or fund none of them. This
is certainly part of the reason why I have never donated to Wikimedia,
and by extension this initiative may lead to increased donations generally.

The Board may be anxious about losing control over part of their
funding, that's understandable. But this could be considered a form of
direct democracy, and as such, desirable outcomes depend on the
competency of the donor to make budget decisions. The Board could take
on a role of persuading the donors that certain projects need funding,
rather than simply dictating a budget as they do now.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Grants -- a proposal


body:
On Sunday, June 19, 2005 9:32 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> On Jun 19, 2005, at 2:01 PM, Rick wrote:
>
> > SouthernComfort was NOT one of the editors involved
> > until after he got into "change every article about
> > Iran to BCE" mode.  jguk was RIGHTLY changing SC's
> > edits back to what the original authors had left them at.
>
> Under the existing style guide that was ok. Either style is acceptable.

Indeed. However, this misses out one very important part (paraphased,
obviously):

| Under the existing style guide, either style is acceptable. Changing an
| article with both forms to use just one is, also, acceptable, a useful
| bit of copyediting. However, changing an article from style to the other,
| in whichever direction, is not, and should be reverted.

The lack of everything after the first full stop is what is worrying in your
answers; I hope that it was missed off purely for brevity.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Article validation probably won't be switched on
	for1.5

body:
James R. Johnson (modean52 at comcast.net) [050620 01:43]:

> Where can I find out more about MediaWiki 1.5?

wikitech-l is the mailing list. http://test.leuksman.com/ is the test site.
http://www.mediawiki.org/ is the software website.

- d.


body:
-On Monday, June 20, 2005 2:52 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 6/19/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> >
> > > Just because the side with the "Jesus wasn't God" POV prefer BCE/CE
> > > doesn't make using BCE/CE an example of supporting a POV.
> >
> > Please don't be overly broad-brush. I am very much certainly in the
> > former group, and am equally certainly not in the latter. I severly
> > doubt that I am not alone in this, either.
>
> I omitted the word '''some''' because the implication was being made
> that BCE/CE itself is POV, which is clearly untrue.

No, it isn't. Were it "clearly untrue", everyone would see it immediately
(that is, after all what those words would mean). I don't. Others don't. Or
are we all just being difficult and stating that we fail to see the BCE/CE
is NPOV to annoy you (what is termed "trolling")?

> The confusion that it is clearly stems from the fact that many people
> with a particular pov prefer one over the other...

Well, yes, indeed. Something that is regarded by one group of POV-holders as
good and another as bad is, generally, well ... How to put this? So terribly
tricky. Still, I will try: POV. Gosh. Wasn't actually so hard, when it came
down to it.

If group A says that foo is NPOV, but group B say that it is POV, then it by
definition cannot be NPOV - because otherwise group B would agree that it
was.

In this scenario, I think that the difficulty is that people want something
that is, indeed, absolutely NPOV, and acceptable to everyone. However, this
is a case, I feel, like too many others, sadly, where there is no such
Nirvana solution; we must make do with the least POV use. "Both" sides feel
that using "AD" and "BC" is POV, and both are right. However, where they
differ is that one side either considers "CE" and "BCE" to be less POV than
the others for most people, or fails to see it as POV at all, whereas the
other finds it more POV.

[Snip]

> Since I was specifically discussing the claim that arbcom was getting
> involved with supporting one POV over another, my primary interest was
> in demonstrating why BCE/CE isn't POV at all.

Please, do, go ahead. I await with baited breath.

> That is to say that arbcom may or may not be doing the right thing,
> but they aren't affirming one POV over another...

I disagree; by strongly criticising one side of a wide-ranging edit war, and
saying nothing at all about the other, the old proposed rulings were
impliticly condoing the POV of those not mentioned, and discarding that of
Jguk and others.

> because if we were to agree that one of the phrasings were non-neutral
> then it would be the BC/AD nomenclature and we would have no choice but
> to adopt the BCE/CE form.

I agree. However, this is not true - *both* are non-neutral, the argument is
to the relative neutrality of them two.

> Since the original post was concerned about arbcom's involvement in
> deciding NPOV, I think this point is quite important.

I absolutely agree. I just disagree with your conclusion. :-)

> > [Snip the rest of the argument based on this logical fallacy]
>
> I'm sorry, because I suspect I must be a little dense here... I just
> can't follow how your (quite correct) criticism of my loosely worded
> claim in any way invalidates the rest of my message, and I really do
> wish you had replied point by point.

Sorry. In future I will reply, point-by-point, with "See above.". I had
written this  thrice before deciding to merely snip.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>That is because the people who are responsible for the creation of new
>Wikipedias do not keep their eye on the appropriate channels. The last
>two Wikipedias that were created, I requested personally from Brion on
>IRC (os: and fur:).
>
>The last time a Wikipedia was created quickly was for tum.wikipedia.
>And tum.wikipedia didn't have very good chances.
>
>Mark
>
>
>
Why do you always project yourself as the languageguru?

W


subject: [Wikitech-l] Web interface for EasyTimeline

body:
In South Africa in April, Angela and I met with Wayne Mackintosh, the
director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning:

http://cfdl.auckland.ac.nz/

He was quite keen on Wikiversity and has really followed up on it. He's
involved with a project called eXe, a pretty neat open source eLearning
authoring environment. One of the outcomes of him tinkering with
Wikipedia is a web interface to EasyTimeline based on eXe:

http://newped2.auckland.ac.nz/exe/exe/timeline/form.html

It really shows the potential of the toolkit, and I think we definitely
need similar widget tools for Wikiversity itself (for authoring tests
and the like). As it happens, playing with the above is a quite good way
to learn the operation of EasyTimeline: select an example and play with
the widgets.

Best,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Directed donations

body:
> The better solution is simple: total transparency.  It's something
> we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to
> provide.  We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for
> any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world
> frequently and archive indefinitely.  Anyone who wants to know how
> his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/
> spent; if he likes that, he can donate.  If he doesn't, he can tell
> us why and suggest how me might improve.  But in either case, he
> has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't
> interfere with our management needs.

I totally agree and this is something that is being worked on. We already only
have fund drives *after* we draft a budget and we advertise that budget during
the fund drive. We are now working on better ways to publish our records on
what was actually spent, on what, and when. In fact, during the last fund drive
this was in place but did not get a final OK from the board (mostly because I
did not push too hard for that). See
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bank_history/2004

But the idea of adding a pick list to the donation form asking for non-binding
input on how donors think their money should be spent, is a neat idea. The big
issue is that PayPal only allows for two options on form data sent to them. We
therefore might need to create our own form and database system to handle that
part of the donation form. The problem with that is that the data could not be
trusted since anybody could fill it out such a form, hit the send button, and
then not complete the PayPal transaction. To link donation amounts with
feedback, names would need to be cross-checked ; something I am not keen on
having to do unless it can be automated.

-- mav

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Directed donations


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Exactly.

Fred

On Jun 19, 2005, at 8:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> It seems to me that arbcom was specifically acting against users who
> have broken the agreement to allow both forms.


body:
Your statement is not based on the facts, SouthernComfort generally
was a regular  editor of the articles he changed the notation in. He
can be presumed to have decided Common Era notation was better for
that article and to have had at least the forbearance of the other
editors. With respect to American versus British English it has
always been acceptable to change to American spelling for an American
subject and vice-versa.

Fred

On Jun 19, 2005, at 11:06 PM, Rick wrote:

> It was NOT ok.  SouthernComfort's sole edits were to
> change the date formats.  This would be the same as an
> editor changing all American spellings to English
> spellings and getting away with it because they are
> offended by American spellings.
>
> RickK


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] unwanted e-mails.

body:
It would help if you told us what you are talking about.
-Mgm

On 6/20/05, walt compton <waltercompton at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> I keep getting unwanted e-mails from people I don't know and I don't know  they are talking about. Could I PLEASE
>  be removed from their e-mail mailing
>  list. Thank you.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Actually, no. I have asked  a question on the Hungarian Wikipedia in
English and been politely answers. I know from playing BatMUD for
years that almost everyone in Finland is fluent in English and would
generally not get their nose out of joint should someone (on a talk
page) made a comment in English. I also know (from playing BatMUD)
that a tiny minority might use it as an excuse to express their
"Puuh." Anyway, I don't see a problem in occasional conversations in
Turkish or Farsi. After they settle whatever issue they have with
each other they can bring it back in English for the rest of us.

On Jun 19, 2005, at 11:09 PM, Rick wrote:

> What a crock.  If you and I went to another language's
> wiki and started writing comments in only English,
> don't you think there would be objections?
>
> RickK


subject: [Foundation-l] Research meeting #2 notes

body:
The notes from the second Research Network meeting on Saturday are at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research_Network/Meetings/2005-06-18

The meeting lasted almost 3 hours, simultaneously in two separate
channels (technical and social), with lots of good ideas and
commitments. One key focus for the Research Network in the coming weeks
will be to assist Brion in the migration of Wikimedia to a single login
system, by providing GUI mock-ups and process specifications. We
discussed many details of that.

I will of course also repeat my constant call for more members:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research_Network

We are already more than 30 and still scaling well. We are really trying
to get things done, and we can use anyone with a brain and the
willingness to do work :-). Take a look at the notes and logs and you
will see that you don't have to be a developer in order to be able to
make a difference. Assistance in inviting users and researchers to join
the WRN is of course also welcome. Spread the word. :-)

Best,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Research meeting #2 notes


subject:
[WikiEN-l] I am very concerned by the arbcomm decision against
	jguk

body:
Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050620 05:53]:

> Isn't that exactly what SouthernComfort did?  He said
> he was offended by BC/AD, and you and the rest of the
> arbcomm said his offense is more important than
> consensus.

Not the *entire* rest, thanks ...

This is the sort of AC case that should never have been accepted, and I'm
now sorry I voted 'accept' (though it already had four by the time I got
there).

- d.


subject: Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Requests page

body:
Again, these are all personal judgements.

The only one I think may have been OK is Pig Latin -- all the others
were for real languages, requested by real people, and received
support or interest in some form or another. Just because something is
going off-topic, is no excuse to get rid of it -- simply add a note to
the discussion that it's getting off-topic.

Mark

On 20/06/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >Simple German failed? I saw an awful lot of support, and it was
> >definitely still a hot topic.
>
> Yes, but it was disgraced by you, among others. And I did not remove it, I
> commentified it, because the discussion was going off-topic.
> >Parseltongue, pretty much dead, yes. Pig Latin, a pretty silly request
> >in the first place, but you must admit it got two supporters, and the
> >issue was never really resolved head-on as it should've been.
> I did not remove Pig Latin until it was refused even at Wikicities.
>
> >Sindarin, part of an ongoing debate about artificial language
> >Wikipedias, can now be found at [[Requests for new languages/Tolkien
> >languages]], along with Quenya.
> Yes, but with only moral support, and again with a discussion going in the
> wrong direction.
>
> >Silbo Gomero did not fail, nor was it rediculous.
>
> Also only commentified. Show me how to write it down, please.
>
> For the rest, I agree with you.
> >Such requests as Parseltongue, or maybe even Pig Latin, do not disturb
> >me that much that you removed them, and I certainly would not have
> >added them back (well actually, I didn't add Parseltongue back, only
> >Pig Latin), had you not also gotten rid of scores of more questionable
> >cases.
> >
> >As Angela noted, in the past requests have just been deleted. But they
> >were seldom legit requests for real languages, and when they were they
> >were often left up for a long time because the page never got very big
> >(*cough*scottgall*cough*). I don't think it was until very recently
> >that actual legitimate requests began being deleted, especially after
> >a time of less than a few months.
> >
> >What should be pursued is NOT a policy of widespread deletion of
> >requests after time-limits, but rather of calming down the surge of
> >activity by somehow getting Scott Gall to request every tomian,
> >dickler, and harryish language he reads about on Wikipedia. He
> >requested an Ainu Wikipedia, and didn't even know that the Japanese
> >and Chinese Ainu are not related.
> >
> >I left him a note on his talkpage asking him to withdraw some of his
> >requests, and to refrain from making so many. It seems that
> >NaziismIsntCool has begun to follow Scott's example and is now
> >requesting new WPs frequently, this should be quickly curbed with a
> >note on her talkpage explaining that the page is meant for serious
> >requests only.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >
> >On 20/06/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >Yes, since a few of the Wikipedias you removed weren't because they
> > > >were old or because they failed, but because you decided they were
> > > >"rediculous".
> > > >
> > > And few did not agree with me.
> > >
> > > Judge yourself: Pig Latin, Parseltongue, Silbo Gomero, Simple German,
> > > Sindarin (which /nota bene/ both had my support but FAILED!), and a hell
> >of
> > > a lot of mainly African languages being placed months ago, supported by
> > > NO-ONE, posted anonymously and even without any discussion!
> > >
> > > W.
> > >
> > > _________________________________________________________________
> > > Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
> > > http://messenger.msn.nl/
> > >
> > >
> >
> >--
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> >
> >
> >--
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>
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--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE