subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al

body:
S?rgio Ribeiro wrote:
> ** OFFTOPIC **
> Since this is a little off-topic I don't want to post it one the discussion.
> With this new single login system, will be there new changes on the
> characters allowed on a username ? Like accepting underscores (_) on the
> username ?
>
> That may be the chance for me to change my nick from Get It to Get_It

Usernames must be valid page titles (so that for instance user and user
talk pages can exist). Since underscores are always normalized to spaces
in titles, the same goes for usernames.

That won't change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al

body:
S?rgio Ribeiro wrote:
> ** OFFTOPIC **
> Since this is a little off-topic I don't want to post it one the discussion.
> With this new single login system, will be there new changes on the
> characters allowed on a username ? Like accepting underscores (_) on the
> username ?
>
> That may be the chance for me to change my nick from Get It to Get_It

Usernames must be valid page titles (so that for instance user and user
talk pages can exist). Since underscores are always normalized to spaces
in titles, the same goes for usernames.

That won't change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: foundation-l

from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al

body:
There have been some great efforts to discuss and specify what a
single-login implementatoin will look like in recent months.  However,
the major disagreements form the last bout of specifications -- how to
deal with name conflicts -- have not yet been addressed.

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Single_login_specifications
and the article page itself for some of the current discussion.

The current proposal suggests that "the user under a given name with
the highest edit-count" will "Win" that name, and all other users with
that name will have a fixed period of time to find a new username.
The idea of arbitrarily forcing one user to change names seems bad and
anti-consensus to me -- if two active users have the same name, I
think they should work out something among themselves -- or be allowed
to forego the privileges of unified login.  And the idea of using edit
counts to determine "winners" is particularly unappealing to me (how
about seniority?  usefulness of edits?  current activity?).

Please check out the current specification and comment.  There will be
a lot of detailed discussion about this implementatoin at Wikimania in
August.

--
++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Single login, et al


list: wikien-l

from_name: Chip Berlet

body:
For non-profits the "benefit" can be furtherance of the stated mission,
which for many is educational. The benefit to a commercial photographer
might be getting their work and their name out for publicity value and
public exposure. A copyright holder agreeing in advance that a use is
"fair use" would make a subsequent attempt to litigate very difficult to
pursue. A note that a copyrighted image or text is used by permission
and considered "fair use" so long as it is for a non-commercial
educational purpose and properly credited should be an option on
Wikipedia.

Chip Berlet

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of James D.
> Forrester
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 5:54 PM
> To: Fastfission; English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal
>
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Fastfission wrote:
>
> [Snip]
>
> > Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to
> sue you" --
> > does that change anything? Not really. What if you changed
> your mind?
> > You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put in a less accusatory way:
> > what if your group was suddenly acquired by someone else
> who did not
> > want to honor your previous informal agreement?).
>
> Indeed; under 'Common Law' (at least in the UK, but I imagine
> that it is the same or at least very similar in the various
> districts of the United States), as contracts must have
> 'benefit' to both parties, thus promises not to sue cannot be
> contractual terms, merely nice frippery words. They are not
> legally binding in any way.
>
> [Snip]
>
> Yours,
> - --
> James D. Forrester
> Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
> E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
> IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFC0upakn3kUxZyJx0RAmWfAKCGcYwwXsnrXlFEoVWST9AbxPilZQCfeKw9
> GGGKau01l59+1M3WHgmL5fc=
> =nwgm
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improving ArbCom's lot medium-term

body:
On Jul 11, 2005, at 6:19 PM, Dan Grey wrote:
> I'd like to hear from people who want to step down - what's up? What
> would you like to see changed?

In a lot of cases, I don't know that there is anything. I mean, my
understanding is that Ambi would like to stop being charged by the
meg for Internet access...

-Snowspinner


from_name: Bennett Haselton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] collaborative editing system for controversial content

body:
Greetings everyone,

I'm a big Wikipedia fan and use it all the time to learn a little more about science or history or to find trivia about my favorite movies and TV shows.  I haven't worked as a Wiki contributor, but I've heard a lot about the problems caused by multiple users editing highly controversial articles like the one about George W. Bush, and of course the implosion that happened with the L.A. Times "wikitorial" on the Iraq war.

What I've been working on is a collaborative algorithm for editing controversial content, without back-and-forth flame wars spiraling out of control, and without aspects that many in the Wikipedia community would prefer to avoid (e.g. without rating people by their professional "credentials", and without moderators who can permanently close disputes resolving them in favor of one side or the other, which I understand many Wiki users regard as a necessary evil even when they do have to be invoked).  I'm testing it out by seeding it with some editorials that many people are sure to have strong feelings on (e.g. libertarianism, the Iraq war, and -- God help me -- Windows vs. Linux), and I'd like to see if some Wiki community members would be interested in signing up and trying it out.

The forum is at www.brainjammer.com and the "secret code" to sign up for a new account is "muskrat".

The way the forum works is simple: You can post a message, and other users can post replies to your message.  When another user posts a reply, you have several choices:
(a) Agree with their reply and modify your own post to incorporate their point.  (This is also what you can do if the user has raised an objection but you can modify your argument to answer that objection, or if they have made a request for clarification and you are updating your post accordingly.)
(b) Withdraw your own post in response to their reply, if you think that the flaw they have found in your argument is fatal.
(c) Indicate that you disagree with the reply if it's a rebuttal.  If this happens, then a "jury" of other users on the site will be selected at random to vote on who is right, in accordance with rules that are posted on the site.

So far, nothing very original.  But the key rule that governs the rebuttals and the voting, is that a rebuttal to someone's post should focus on only *one* flaw.  If someone posts a long and complex argument, and you post a rebuttal that highlights only one minor point in the argument that you think is wrong, but the original author refuses to concede the point and it goes to a "jury vote" and the jury votes in favor of your rebuttal, then the entire original post is "disqualified".  The author can, however, re-post the essay without that flaw, if they think their argument holds up without it.

Why do it this way?  My theory is that people will think (and vote) more honestly when focusing on one *highly specific* disputed point.  For example, if one user writes a pro-Bush essay and a second user posts a "rebuttal" that is just an anti-Bush essay, then if you ask people to vote on who is correct, people will pretty much just vote their original prejudices.  But if the first user writes in their essay that Bush voted in favor of a bill, and someone post a rebuttal citing a record showing that Bush actually voted against it, and the first user doesn't concede the point and it goes into a vote-off, you can be pretty sure that most users will vote in accordance with the factual record.  Similarly, the theory is that people will vote more honestly not just on questions of fact but logic as well -- for example, if one user attacks Bush for "signing such-and-such into law", and a second user replies that Bush was on record as opposing such-and-such but was part of an omnib!
us spending bill and that Bush had no choice but to sign it without shutting the government down, then if the first user refused to concede the point, I would expect most users to vote in favor of the second user's argument that the first user's statement was misleading.

My thinking is that if this works even for controversial writings like editorials for or against the war, it could help prevent vandalism and flame wars in other peer-edited systems like Wikipedia.  And the structure remains completely democratic, allowing disputes to be decided by a jury of fellow users -- on the theory that users vote honestly when voting on highly specific questions.

So, if you have a minute, please come try it out.  I've put a lot of work into this in the hopes that it could help projects like Wikipedia go even further, but I can't test it myself without a critical mass of users.

Thanks and I hope some of you are as excited about this idea as I am! :)

-Bennett


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Tagalog Wikipedia logo

body:
Joseph Ballesteros wrote:
> We have created a logo for the Tagalog Wikipedia.  It is uploaded,
> protected and ready to switch.
>
> I hope that this is the right venue to request it. My apologies if it is not.
>
> One of the administrators of the Tagalog Wikipedia project had posted
> a request here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_logos

Hello Joseph,

Logo for tl got switched to:
  http://tl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiki.png

Other logos switchs, that were waiting on meta, got switched too.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Tagalog Wikipedia logo

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> As I've also noted elsewhere, the logos on quite a few other
> Wikipedias are ready to switch, among them:
>
> am.wiki
> ba.wiki
> bo.wiki
> co.wiki
> cv.wiki
> ff.wiki
> gv.wiki
> ht.wiki
> iu.wiki
> kk.wiki
> kl.wiki
> kw.wiki
> ky.wiki
> ps.wiki
> sc.wiki
> tg.wiki
> ug.wiki
>
> there may be a few more that I've forgotten, but I'd be very grateful
> if somebody could activate these logos.

Done, all those wiki logos are now poiting to [[Image:Wiki.png]].

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Policy clarification: separate Wikipedias for
	cultures, peoples, and countries, or for languages?

body:
> > > Where has he said this? The top of
> > > http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal states very
> > > clearly that every article should be written in M?ori.
> >
> > Yes, yet he states at
> > http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:24.251.198.251 (and various
> > places on sm:) that since "English is the first language of at least
> > 80% of people of Maori descent", that English content should and will
> > be kept.
>
> Isn't he referring to content in the Wikipedia namespace there, not
> articles? Where has Robin added English content to articles?
>
> Have you discussed this with any of the people who have edited this
> Wikipedia? There are 75 registered users and 8 admins. I'm not aware
> of any of them having a problem with Robin's approach, which as far as
> I can tell simply involves adding explanations in English to some
> pages in the Wikipedia namespace, and a pointer to that explanation
> from the main page and site notice.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaMI.htm

In the last 30 days, only 3 people have been very active: Robin
Patterson with 62 edits to the article namespace in the past month,
Rocastelo with 72 edits to the article namespace in the past month,
and Vardion with 12 in the last month.

Robin Patterson is, as you know, the most prolific contributor. He is
not of Maori heritage, and his level of Maori is (self-admitted) mi-1.

Rocastelo is from the Galician Wikipedia. Nearly all of his edits
consist of adding interwiki links and, more recently, images from
commons.

Vardion used to be a bit more active on the website. As far as I know,
he is in a similar position to Robin Patterson (non-Maori), although I
think he's more fluent (not sure).

> M?ori is certainly not the only Wikipedia doing this.
> http://kn.wikipedia.org/ also has English in its site notice and that
> project has many native speakers of Kannada and is about to reach 1000
> articles. http://gu.wikipedia.org and others do the same. The Arabic
> village pump contains an English introduction, and the early
> discussion in the project was mostly English

Discussion in English is not an issue. Discussion may take place in
any language on any Wikipedia. The issue is content outside of the
Talk:, User talk:, Wikipedia talk:, etc. namespaces.

Kannada, Gujarati, and other Indian languages only have English in the
site notice for one reason: because many peoples' browsers cannot
display the languages, so it is nessecary to give installation
instructions in English. It is likely that these will not be removed
in the near future, as disemination of Indian language font technology
is relatively slow-paced.

With Maori, however, there is no such issue. Well, some people do have
troubles displaying letters with macrons. Yet, the site notice doesn't
mention that.

As Anthere mentioned here and Snowdog mentioned on my talkpage on the
Tibetan Wikipedia, increased or exclusive use of the appropriate
language in a Wikipedia is ideal, and in fact it usually attracts
contributors (Georgian, Armenian, Haitian, Limburgish, and others only
became active after I did a rough translation of the Table of
Contents).

Anyhow, I cannot emphasise enough the attitude of my Maori friend, and
the fact that most Maori speakers will be less likely to contribute to
a "Maori-language encyclopedia" if it has so much of its content in
English.

Particularly upsetting is the fact that the first words -- the very
first words -- on the mainpage are English, followed by Maori, rather
than vice-versa. This is not an atmosphere indicative to a newcomer of
an encyclopedia which aims to be in the Maori language.

Examples of him promoting English on content pages:
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taurepo&diff=7155&oldid=7152
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TTA&diff=6106&oldid=3415 (ip
is anonymous version of him, I think)
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aotearoa&diff=7157&oldid=7151
(not promoting english, but rather a site he is affiliated with... the
links were later re-removed by another anon)
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Stub&diff=1788&oldid=272
(not promoting english, but here he notes that his maori is not
fluent)

Mark


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>For non-profits the "benefit" can be furtherance of the stated mission,
>>which for many is educational. The benefit to a commercial photographer
>>might be getting their work and their name out for publicity value and
>>public exposure. A copyright holder agreeing in advance that a use is
>>"fair use" would make a subsequent attempt to litigate very difficult to
>>pursue. A note that a copyrighted image or text is used by permission
>>and considered "fair use" so long as it is for a non-commercial
>>educational purpose and properly credited should be an option on
>>Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>I think you are still unnecessarily conflating
>"fair use" with "licensing". Saying that a copyright
>holder agrees in advance that certain use is "fair
>use" is a rather convoluted way of licensing an image.
>You can simply say "I allow this image to be used for
>such and such purposes" without mentioning "fair use"
>at all.
>
>
Actually, a statement by the copyright holder that the use is considered
fair use does serve an important purpose, and is distinct from granting
a license or permission to use. The statement would probably prevent the
copyright holder, should that particular use ever be litigated, from
arguing a contrary position to the court. Effectively, the party
claiming fair use is relieved of the obligation to prove that the use is
indeed fair. See [[estoppel]]. The distinction is important because mere
licenses can often be revoked at any time if no consideration is involved.

This is why copyright owners sometimes approach people about the way
copyrighted content is being used, but still offer to give permission
for its use. Very often they know well enough that the situation would
qualify as fair use anyway, but phrase it as granting permission while
carefully insisting that "all their rights are reserved." Openly
agreeing that something is fair use is very rare, and PRA's willingness
to do so is a generous gesture.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image permissions, a case study

body:
On 7/11/05, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
><snip>
> "(c) 2005 Jakob Sigur?sson. Anyone can use this image
> for encyclopedia articles and other educational
> purposes as long as it is attributed to me."
>
> He agreed.
>
> Is this "free enough" for Wikipedia or will any
> images I upload with such a notice be deleted?
>

I don't think it is free enough. Wikipedia content can be used
commercially. I think we shall have to leave his pics. It's a shame,
but it's important that images are properly free.

Theresa
> Regards,
> Haukur
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
>> "(c) 2005 Jakob Sigur?sson. Anyone can use this image
>> for encyclopedia articles and other educational
>> purposes as long as it is attributed to me."
>>
>> Is this "free enough" for Wikipedia or will any
>> images I upload with such a notice be deleted?
>
> I don't think it is free enough. Wikipedia content can be used
> commercially. I think we shall have to leave his pics. It's a shame,
> but it's important that images are properly free.
>
> Theresa

Thank you. But the wording says nothing about
forbidding commercial usage. Encyclopedias and
encyclopedia articles, as well as other
educational materials, can certainly be sold.

It *would* forbid someone from using the pictures
without further permission to, say, advertise a
certain product or decorate a company report.
But I think this would be good enough for more
than 90% of actual downstream usage.

Any other opinions? Will the RC patrol shoot to
kill if I upload images with this license?
Should it?

Regards,
Haukur


body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>Fastfission wrote:
>
>[Snip]
>
>
>>Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue you" --
>>does that change anything? Not really. What if you changed your mind?
>>You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put in a less accusatory way:
>>what if your group was suddenly acquired by someone else who did not
>>want to honor your previous informal agreement?).
>>
>>
>Indeed; under 'Common Law' (at least in the UK, but I imagine that it is
>the same or at least very similar in the various districts of the United
>States), as contracts must have 'benefit' to both parties, thus promises
>not to sue cannot be contractual terms, merely nice frippery words. They
>are not legally binding in any way.
>
>
The general principle certainly does apply to the US. Because of the
importance placed on the availability of recourse to the legal system,
courts generally disfavor agreements to surrender that right. Even if a
promise not to sue was framed in contractual terms, it would have to be
fairly explicit.

However, back to the situation that prompted this discussion, the
statement in question is not a promise not to sue. Rather, it's a
statement that would be held against the plaintiff if they exercised
their right to sue.

--Michael Snow


body:
> At the moment I'm seriously thinking of endeavoring on an larger
> project of fair use reform -- really getting serious about explicit
> fair use tagging and reviewing and things like that, making things a
> bit easier to understand for the many users who want to upload content
> but don't really want to take the time to learn U.S. intellectual
> property law (the basics of which are much simpler than they have a
> reputation for being, but as such is still not very interesting to
> most). Anybody interested? Good idea, bad idea, waste of time?

Well, you certainly have your work cut out for you :)
And new untagged images are still being added. I just
came upon this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Holler.jpg

Earlier today this had no licensing information. I added
{{albumcover}} and {{fairusein|Holler}}.

Your plan is a worthy one.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
It is not. Although all current Arbitrators happen to be.

Fred

On Jul 11, 2005, at 8:21 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 7/11/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Only Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia that are _Administrators_
>> as at 30 November are eligible for the year end elections..."
>>
>
> I wasn't aware that there was a requirement that arbitrators be
> administrators.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jon

body:
It seems the ArbCom is in freefall - only 6 of the 12 still active. Can't say I'm surprised - I'm more surprised we found 12 volunteers to wade through the detritus that it RfAr for no pay! All I can say is that their efforts are appreciated.

Clearly something needs to be done to help the matter. I understand the remaining ArbCom members and Jimbo are discussing with others whether they would take on the role in the short term. But what can be done going forward to the end of year elections?

I don't want comments on the details (which would clearly need to be looked at in due course). But here's an idea that might be more appealing - particularly to those who find themselves on ArbCom (hopefully through volunteering):

1. ArbCom to have 24 members (ie enough to cope with absences, resignations, etc)
2. 7 Arbitrators to hear each case - the arbitrators to hear each case being decided on a taxi rank system (amongst those making themselves available in any given week or fortnight)
3. The first Arbitrator in the queue will be responsible for writing up the initial findings of fact and proposed decisions (this is both to share the workload, plus to ensure that one arbitrator does not gain undue influence by writing them all - this is not a criticism of Fred, who tends to be the first arbitrator at present to write these - more an acknowledgment that it would be better to get a variety of opinions - clearly if the other arbitrators disagree with the findings and proposed decision, it will be rejected anyway, as is the case now).
4. If the number of Arbitrators drops below a certain level - 18 maybe - more Arbitrators are to be co-opted (by three-quarters acceptance by active arbitrators, say) to bring the level up to 21, say.
5. Only Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia that are Arbitrators as at 30 November are eligible for the year end elections (to eliminate trolls and WPians that are clearly undesirable as Arbitrators from the election) - maybe a little harsh - but if publicised in advance would allow all interested candidates that aren't admins to apply for adminship.

Comments?

Jon (Jguk)

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PCcalling worldwide with voicemail


body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lars Aronsson [mailto:lars at aronsson.se]
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 11:18 PM
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] collaborative editing system for controversial	content
>
> Bennett Haselton wrote:
>
> > (c) Indicate that you disagree with the reply if it's a
> > rebuttal.  If this happens, then a "jury" of other users on the
> > site will be selected at random to vote on who is right,
>
> One reason that voting is so often avoided in online communities
> is that it is unclear who is eligible to vote.  While
> one-person-one-vote is a beautiful principle, it is not
> self-evident who can be counted as "a person".  How do you
> convince your users that the voters aren't just sock puppets, or
> that they are of a mature enough age to make an informed decision?

As to the voter-qualification issue, the theory is that voting on one fact or point of logic at a time, highly specific, will make it easier for voters to grasp what they're voting on, in addition to keeping them honest.

The trickier issue is if someone creates hordes of phantom accounts to manipulate the voting, and that's a real problem that will have to be dealt with eventually.  Adherence to Wiki-community principles means allowing users to participate anonymously, but that in turn means that one user can create many accounts.  Note that since jurors in "jury votes" are randomly selected among the entire user base, that means if the number of accounts in the system is large, you'd have to have a very large number of accounts under your control to ensure getting, say, three spots on a seven-member jury... but someone might put in that kind of effort.

For right now, my goal is to see if the system can produce useful results *with* user-verification (that is, I'll just keep track of new users and will red-flag any large group of "users" with free hotmail accounts or accounts all in the same domain).  If it can't produce useful results *with* user-verification, then it surely won't be able to produce useful results without it (since that opens up the possibility of jury abuse).  So the first stage is just to get enough users to reach critical mass where the threads stay active.

Even in the limited discussions that have taken place so far, no votes have been necessary yet; one unexpected result is that when you're disputing highly specific facts and logical inferences one at a time, that keeps the users *themselves* more honest, so that disputes don't have to go to a vote.  I hope you'll try it out if you think it sounds interesting.

-Bennett


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 7/11/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Only Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia that are _Administrators_
> as at 30 November are eligible for the year end elections..."

I wasn't aware that there was a requirement that arbitrators be administrators.

Kelly


from_name: Stephen Betts

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using Extensions within Templates

body:
On 7/11/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Stephen Betts wrote:
> > <myFirstExt>{{{1}}}</myFirstExt>
> >
> > but the problem is that I get the string '{{{1}}}' passed in to the
> > extension, rather that the value entered in the template call,
> > 'argument1' in the exampel.
> >
> > Sooo, my question is as follows: is there any way to get the value of
> > the argument into the extension?
>
> You might be able to call back into the parser to get it, but I'm not
> really sure. Extensions are taken out as one of the first stages of wiki
> processing, then their HTML output is inserted as one of the later stages.
>

Ah, okay.  I may try digging around a little there.

> > To give a little bit of background, basically I want to define a few
> > extensions, but, to get the formatting that I want, each extension
> > needs to be aware of what extensions have already been used.
>
> Parser hook extensions are assumed to follow these rules:
>
> 1) An extension should always return the same output for the same input.
>
> 2) The input consists entirely of the text inside the tag, and the
> attribute parameters on the tag.
>
> Thus it should not matter:
> * which page the extension is used in
> * what other content is on that page
> * which order hooks are run in
> * how output is cached
> etc
>
> If you stray outside that design you're heading into uncharted territory
> and surprises should not be... surprising. ;)

I consider myself warned 8-)

To be honest, I think I will keep pursuing this line for the minute as
it seems the most expedient way of getting what I want (essentially
nested custom elements, but without nesting tags - quite similar to
how the different levels of headings, ==, ===, etc., work now), but
will try to be very rigorous in my testing before upgrading.

Thanks very much for the clear and prompt response, Brion.  Yours,

Stephen.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contracts, waivers, licenses, fair use

body:
James D. Forrester said:
>Indeed; under 'Common Law' (at least in the UK, but I imagine that it is
>the same or at least very similar in the various districts of the United
>States), as contracts must have 'benefit' to both parties, thus promises
>not to sue cannot be contractual terms, merely nice frippery words. They
>are not legally binding in any way.

If both parties agree and are benefitted by the promise, it's called a
contract.  If one party unilaterally makes a promise to another party for no
consideration, it's called a waiver.  When one waives the right to sue
someone else for copyright infringement, it's called a license.  In the US,
at least, but almost certainly in the UK as well, all of these are legally
binding.  For example, according to Eben Moglen, the GFDL is not a contract,
because it is a unilateral grant of permission, but Eben Moglen isn't saying
that the GFDL is not legally binding.

Haukur said:
>I think you are still unnecessarily conflating
>"fair use" with "licensing". Saying that a copyright
>holder agrees in advance that certain use is "fair
>use" is a rather convoluted way of licensing an image.
>You can simply say "I allow this image to be used for
>such and such purposes" without mentioning "fair use"
>at all.

Agreed

Haukur also said:
>Nevertheless, even though your proposal doesn't make
>any sense to me it is actually currently in use on
>Wikipedia :) We have a tag for images that are "used
>with permission and fair use".

Yes, this points out just how strange it is that we allow so called "fair
use images" (*) on Wikipedia but don't allow "by permission images".  If
we're not going to allow by permission images, or non-commercial use only
images, then it makes no sense to allow an image which can only be used
under fair use by us, or by non-commercial entities.

I agree that allowing some fair use is inevitable.  But if a fair use
defense isn't available to commercial redistributors, then a "fair use
image" is no better than a non-commercial only image.

"Fair use", within the context of text and images allowed in Wikipedia,
should mean fair use for everyone, at least everyone producing and
distributing an encyclopedia of some sort within the United States.
Otherwise, the term is rather meaningless.

Anthony

(*) I refuse to use that misnomer of a phrase without quotes.  "Fair use" is
a description of use, not a description of a type of image.

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Heiko Evermann

body:
Hi everyone, hi Mark,

On Monday, 11. July 2005 11:06, Mark Williamson wrote:
> I have now been blocked by Robin Patterson for removing
> English-language content.
Now this is interesting. A few days ago mi.wikipedia.org and nds.wikipedia.org
were going on fine. Now Mark comes along, doing as he pleases, not caring
about existing communities and their rules, changing things the way he thinks
best, in the case of Maori without even knowing the language. His changes get
reverted. He does not care, his changes get revertet again, he does the same
thing again and gets a one-week ban in mi, and he is close to getting one in
nds, too.

If such things happen in two unrelated wikipedias, whose fault might this be?
Marks or mi/nds's?
>
> I had left him a message a few days ago, and he never answered it.
>
> One of the diffs where he added back English-language content:
> http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hau_K%C4%81inga&diff=7198&oldid=7
>192
This is not correct. It is an explanation in English to point users who know
English better than Maori (which is a basic problem for Maori people!) to a
good place to start.
>
> I do not think that somebody like this should be trusted with admin
> privelages, especially since according to him his fluency level is
> only mi-1.
I have had a look at Robin's edits. I think that he is doing a great job. I
see that he is careful which sentences he translate (when he is confident
about his language skills) and which he so far does not (because at the
moment it is beyond his language skills). I like that. It is not up to you,
Mark (you are not a Maori speaker) to decide that. If other people from
within the Maori community come and elect other Admins, it is fine, but it is
none of your business. Within 24 hours you have demanded the removal of two
admins (Robin in mi and me in nds). That, I find, is highly unusual and tells
a lot more about you than about us.

> I request immediate unbanning of myself, and immediate removal of his
> sysop privelages due to abuse (present and past).
You got banned in mi, because you just went on with your changes, even though
you were explicitly asked not to do that. You just came out of nowhere,
decided that you had a licence to kill all English content in [:mi] and went
on. The main point about this is that you did not check this with the mi
community. I think that some of these English passages were there on purpose
as a preparation to be translated into English later. The mi wikipedia
explicitly states on http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal
"This is intended to be an encyclopedia (m?t?punenga) in which every article
is written entirely in the M?ori language", so you should not worry, over
time those English passages will be translated, and it is *none of your
business* to interfere with a community that does not want your "help".

Again, as you seem to be slow to understand:
> > > Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in
> >
> > the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people,
> > and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good,
> > since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
> >
> > Wrong. Maori means Maori language, not Maori people. "English Wikipedia"
> > doesn't mean "Wikipedia for people living in England" but rather
> > "Wikipedia written in English language".
Most of the Maori people are fluent in English, but only some of them are
fluent in Maori. For a certain time English aids in this wikipedia might be
important as stepping stones towards an all-Maori encyclopedia, and it is up
to the community to decide when to do that, and not yours.

Mark, please have a closer look at one of your edits:
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hau_K%C4%81inga&diff=prev&oldid=7192

1) you deleted an explanation for English-language users, where to go within
this wikipedia in order to participate
2) you deleted content in Maori.
You did that three times. And the irony is that you got your blocking for
removal of this *Maori*content.

I think, Mark, that it might be a good idea for you to mediate about your
share of the blame and I think that a writing ban in mi might provide you
with some time that you should use for this meditation.

In summary: I fully support Robin's decision.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann
(Admin in nds.wikipedia.org)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Orthography in interwiki links

body:
Gerard, have there been complaints from Italians yet?

Mark

On 11/07/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> >A lot of languages don't write language names with capital letter at
> >the beginning. This rule includes almost all Slavic languages,
> >Italian, Hungarian (I think Norwegian) etc.
> >
> >Interwiki links are not headings and it should not be written as
> >headings. All of them are references. Even we can treat it as
> >headings, it makes a lot of confusion and bad orthography. For
> >example, Serbian interwiki link is with bad orthography ("?????? /
> >Srpski") as well as Serbo-Croatian.
> >
> >As interwiki links use natural form of language name, we should use
> >natural orthography, too.
> >
> >I think that it should be "announced" as Wikipedia policy, because it
> >seems that it is not just technical question. So, I am writing the
> >proposal here because of that.
> >
> >
> Hoi,
> I love to second this request. We also write Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew,
> Thai, Chinese and Farsi it in its script, the whole point IS that we
> write it as it is written in the script of the language, why write it
> with bad orthography?? The name of the language in Italian is:
> *italiano. *Please make it so.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> 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


body:
> For non-profits the "benefit" can be furtherance of the stated mission,
> which for many is educational. The benefit to a commercial photographer
> might be getting their work and their name out for publicity value and
> public exposure. A copyright holder agreeing in advance that a use is
> "fair use" would make a subsequent attempt to litigate very difficult to
> pursue. A note that a copyrighted image or text is used by permission
> and considered "fair use" so long as it is for a non-commercial
> educational purpose and properly credited should be an option on
> Wikipedia.

I think you are still unnecessarily conflating
"fair use" with "licensing". Saying that a copyright
holder agrees in advance that certain use is "fair
use" is a rather convoluted way of licensing an image.
You can simply say "I allow this image to be used for
such and such purposes" without mentioning "fair use"
at all.

Nevertheless, even though your proposal doesn't make
any sense to me it is actually currently in use on
Wikipedia :) We have a tag for images that are "used
with permission and fair use".

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
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Fastfission wrote:

[Snip]

> Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue you" --
> does that change anything? Not really. What if you changed your mind?
> You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put in a less accusatory way:
> what if your group was suddenly acquired by someone else who did not
> want to honor your previous informal agreement?).

Indeed; under 'Common Law' (at least in the UK, but I imagine that it is
the same or at least very similar in the various districts of the United
States), as contracts must have 'benefit' to both parties, thus promises
not to sue cannot be contractual terms, merely nice frippery words. They
are not legally binding in any way.

[Snip]

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

However, there is also a practical way to measure things. One can
assume that things he has written in English which appear that he
didn't know how to translate them, rather than that he wanted to leave
them for people whose English is better, are indicative of his level.

Most of the pages he writes in Maori are very short. See, for example,
http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiringa-%C4%81-nuku

Also, while one would expect the page on New Zealand and on Maori
people and Maori language to be of a considerable length in a
Maori-language Wikipedia, they're all very short.

See: http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aotearoa (new zealand)
http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori (this is longer than most
pages he has written; in one of the edit summaries he said he added
some text to it from a book, so this is probably why)
http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_reo_M%C4%81ori (maori language)

Compare with:
http://ch.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A5h%C3%A5n (Chamorro page about
Guam; Chamorro Wikipedia's only real Chamorro-language content)
http://nv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Din%C3%A9tah (Navajo page about Navajo
ancestral homeland; one of the longest of the 50 or so pages in the
Navajo Wikipedia)
http://xh.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMzantsi_Afrika (Xhosa page about South
Africa, one of only 18 pages on the Xhosa Wikipedia)
http://sc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinna (Sardinian page on Sardinia, one
of the largest of 36 articles in the language)
http://zu.wikipedia.org/wiki/IsiZulu (Zulu article on the Zulu
language, one of only 5 or so articles on the Zulu Wikipedia,
second-largest after the article about pottery)

It is extremely unnatural for a language to have such a large number
of pages (over 300 now) but such short pages about the nation (in this
case New Zealand) and language (in this case Maori). The only other
Wikipedia I can think of in a similar situation is the Nauruan Wiki,
which is in a similar situation -- written entirely by language
enthusiasts who aren't fluent in the language, with over 100 articles
in poorly-written Nauruan.

Besides that, I used a Maori grammar book to construct a more
appropriate stub notice on the Maori Wikipedia. That's right, the one
that's there now is of my creation. Robin Patterson's had about 4
Maori words, basically "This piece is stump - you expand it?",
followed by a 10 or so word long English sentence inviting people to
expand a stub.

Mark

On 11/07/05, Ole Andersen <palnatoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> > Robin Patterson is, as you know, the most prolific contributor. He is
> > not of Maori heritage, and his level of Maori is (self-admitted) mi-1.
> ...
>
> How precise is this level mearurement? One person's mi-1 may be better
> than another person's mi-2, if the two persons have different views of
> language abilities. Not that I know anything about Robin's (or anyone
> else's) Maori, but you cannot really use the language skill
> measurement like that.
>
> --
> http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
> CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc
> ICQ: 86989486 phone: +45 22 34 72 92
>

--
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: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage

body:
>From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>

>- Me, with a level of nds-0. Maybe able to understand nds-1, but not speak
>it.
>- Servien, with a level of nds-3. Not a native speaker.
>- HeikoEvermann, with a level of nds-3. Not a native speaker, but an
>admin and very bossy and authoritarian at that.
>- Slomox, with a level of ???. Not a native speaker.
>- Waerth, with a level of ???. Not a native speaker.
>- Wouter, with a level of ???. Maybe a native speaker.
>
>So, basically nobody here is a native speaker, except maybe Wouter?

Don't be afraid, my native language is Dutch, Dutch proper even. I would
estimate my level at nds-2, going to 3, near-fluent in Twentish. I heard the
language several times and read it quite often.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Whether you get requests or not is still beside the point: fair use is
not a license (and cannot be "granted" by the publisher), it is a
defense which claims that no license is needed. Of course, it only
comes up *if* someone sues, so getting a publisher to agree not to do
that ahead of time certainly helps! But it should not be confused with
licenses or any other agreements where you, the publisher, are giving
us some sort of right to your material. "Fair use" is just a defense
-- it is us saying, "we didn't need their permission, for X and Y
reasons" if we got sued by a publisher.

FF

On 7/11/05, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> Actually, as a publisher, PRA gets people who ask us if we think a
> particular use of our copyrighted material is "Fair Use" all the time.
> If Wikipedia asserts a "Fair Use" and PRA recognizes this claim and
> agrees with it, there is no copyright violation. If PRA later changes
> its mind and asks that something be removed, it could not effectively
> argue that the prior use was not appropriate, because it had agreed to
> it. All archived pages would be covered by that prior use authorization.
>
> Chip
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fastfission
> > Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:37 PM
> > To: English Wikipedia
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal
> >
> >
> > The problem here is that you can't "give" fair use
> > privileges. Fair use is a defense, not a form of permission.
> > When we post a fair use tag, it is really a pre-emptive
> > statement that says, "If you sue us, this is what we'll say
> > in court, and we think we'll win."
> >
> > Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue
> > you" -- does that change anything? Not really. What if you
> > changed your mind? You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put
> > in a less accusatory way: what if your group was suddenly
> > acquired by someone else who did not want to honor your
> > previous informal agreement?).
> >
> > So whether or not the usage of the materials is "fair use" is
> > totally unrelated to whether or not your group approves. The
> > transference of privileges you are talking about is really
> > just a form of licensing, which is *not* what fair use is about.
> >
> > Whether that means we can or can't use your content depends
> > on its use. I suspect it would still be mostly fair -- a
> > picture of you and a simple table don't sound like things
> > which are going to defraud anybody. And if we trust you not
> > to sue, that would probably bend the "is it fair?"-ometer
> > towards the "not going to sue us" section of things, so it
> > probably isn't a problem. But it isn't so simple as just
> > "granting" fair use -- it is not a license, it is a defense
> > against allegations of violating a license. That's an
> > important difference!
> >
> > FF
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
> Hoi,
> Yes, and from Sicilians and from others and from myself as well. Then
> again what is it to you. Do you need to reply to everything? Are you
> "the keeper of our collective conscience"??

"And from myself as well" -- yes, but you're not Italian, are you? I
don't see what's wrong with asking a question that is quite relevant.
I don't reply to everything, only those topics which I have a question
about.

Surely, it didn't hurt for you to respond to my question. And, I'm
sure that everybody will be more open-minded to your request now that
we know that there has been input from real, living, Italian people,
instead of only you.

> And to be absolutely plain about it, you are not the only one speaking
> about languages with other people. I at least have the courtesy of
> keeping almost all of it of this or any other list. I need to learn
> about languages and I do but your learning process if way too public.

I will remind you that intlwiki-l was merged into this list. Thus, all
posts here about languages, no matter how off-topic they may seem for
"wikipedia-l", are more on-topic because this is also where what once
would've gone on intlwiki-l should go. If you don't want that much
public discourse about language and linguistics with regards to
Wikipedia, then you are welcome to campaign for the re-separation of
the mailinglist.

But you have already indicated that you are against a re-separation --
anything that affects policy or creates a new Wikipedia should go on
this list, right? Then, stop whinging about it.

> On the subject of interwiki links, both no and nb give the same name for
> the language in the Interwiki links. This does not work out well in
> Wiktionary where you find no and nb often side by side.

This is true. The recommended practice is to replace links to no: with
links to nb:, if I recall correctly.

Thanks
Mark


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trey Stone

body:
andyl2004 at sympatico.ca wrote:

>I see that Trey Stone is still active. As I recall, he was tempbanned a few months ago and persisted in circumventing the ban. I would have thought this would have resulted in a longer, if not indefinite ban, being implemented against him. Can anyone bring me up to speed on his case?
>
Trey Stone is currently the subject of an RfC, opened 9 May:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Trey_Stone

and an ArbCom case, opened a few days later:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Trey_Stone_and_Davenbelle

that is currently in the voting stage, and one of the proposed remedies
is a year-long ban from editing articles related to politics. Based on
my only earlier direct experience with the ArbCom, the case of
Lance6Wins, the process may take four months, hence I would expect a
decision in late August or early September.

V.


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 11/07/05, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> It seems the ArbCom is in freefall - only 6 of the 12 still active. Can't say I'm >surprised - I'm more surprised we found 12 volunteers to wade through the >detritus that it RfAr for no pay! All I can say is that their efforts are appreciated.
>
>
> Jon (Jguk)

Looking at the arbcom page does suggest a problem developing.

I'd like to hear from people who want to step down - what's up? What
would you like to see changed?

Dan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Special:Disambiguations fixed !

body:
Hello !

I have put back Special:Disambiguations in 1.5, it was broke since the
schema change. It works in a different way now, hopefully it will be
easier to maintain disambiguations.

Let's see how things worked before 1.5:

When someone created a disambiguation page, he had to put the
{{disambig}} template then edit a page listing all disambiguation page.
Special:Disambiguations will then find the pages pointing to an article
in that big page list.
Some problems happened: people often forgot to add or remove the
disambiguation page in the list. It took a long time to generate.

New system (commited to cvs and live on WikiMedia servers):

A page need to be configured as being a disambiguation marker. This is
done by editing [[MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage]].
Every page linking to that marker will be considered by
Special:Disambiguations as a disambiguation page. The output is then a
concatenation of "whatlinks here".

How can it be set on wikipedia ?

Most projects, if not all, use a template to mark disambiguation pages
as such. A sysop should then edit [[MediaWiki:Disambiguation]] and
replace the text there by the article name used to flag disambiguation
pages.

I asked sysops on FR,ES and EN to make the change:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage
  http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage
  http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage

The same change should be made on all projects to correctly generate the
disambiguation list.

IMPORTANT:
[[Special:Disambiguations]] uses a cache. Once a sysop changed the
[[MW:]] message, you will have to wait for the page to be regenerated.
Developers in #wikimedia-tech will be able to regenerate "on demand" so
you can check if everything is correct.

Note for developers to regen enwiki:
 php maintenance/updateSpecialPages.php enwiki --only=Disambiguations

Please spread the word, specially for small wikis.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Demonstrable Abuse of Admin powers

body:
On 11/07/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that it is a clear abuse of admin powers, and it is hard to
> see any evidence of good faith on jtdirls's part. I'd like to see him
> explain his actions, admit his errors and apologise to those he has
> wronged.
>
> --
> Peter in Canberra

Now, while I believe  from what I know that jtdirls "got it wrong", he
is also a human being and therefore falliable, so I see no reason to
pursue this further.

Pwqn was unblocked by another admin, that's all that matters. Proof
the admin system works, and works well.

If jtdirls starts blocking left right and centre then open an RfC on
him, but until then, move on.

Dan


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 7/11/05, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> It seems the ArbCom is in freefall - only 6 of the 12 still active. Can't say I'm surprised - I'm more surprised we found 12 volunteers to wade through the detritus that it RfAr for no pay! All I can say is that their efforts are appreciated.
>
> Clearly something needs to be done to help the matter. I understand the remaining ArbCom members and Jimbo are discussing with others whether they would take on the role in the short term. But what can be done going forward to the end of year elections?
>
> I don't want comments on the details (which would clearly need to be looked at in due course). But here's an idea that might be more appealing - particularly to those who find themselves on ArbCom (hopefully through volunteering):
>
> 1. ArbCom to have 24 members (ie enough to cope with absences, resignations, etc)
> 2. 7 Arbitrators to hear each case - the arbitrators to hear each case being decided on a taxi rank system (amongst those making themselves available in any given week or fortnight)
> 3. The first Arbitrator in the queue will be responsible for writing up the initial findings of fact and proposed decisions (this is both to share the workload, plus to ensure that one arbitrator does not gain undue influence by writing them all - this is not a criticism of Fred, who tends to be the first arbitrator at present to write these - more an acknowledgment that it would be better to get a variety of opinions - clearly if the other arbitrators disagree with the findings and proposed decision, it will be rejected anyway, as is the case now).
> 4. If the number of Arbitrators drops below a certain level - 18 maybe - more Arbitrators are to be co-opted (by three-quarters acceptance by active arbitrators, say) to bring the level up to 21, say.
> 5. Only Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia that are Arbitrators as at 30 November are eligible for the year end elections (to eliminate trolls and WPians that are clearly undesirable as Arbitrators from the election) - maybe a little harsh - but if publicised in advance would allow all interested candidates that aren't admins to apply for adminship.
>
> Comments?
>
> Jon (Jguk)

While I agree that the Arbitration Committee probably needs to be
expanded, your point #5 is only going to feed the trolls that say that
administrators are a power clique.  (I assume that "administrator" is
your desired eligibility criteria, as it doesn't quite make sense as
written.)

If you're afraid that an expanded Arbitration Committee will be ruined
by the presence of one or two elected "undesirables", they I don't
think you have enough faith in the rest of the arbitrators, and
probably don't see the value of having a free radical or two in the
mix.  Unless you don't trust the community not to vote for a whole lot
of radical, "undesirable" candidates, I don't think that rule #5 will
help more than it will appear to taint the process.

Personally, I'd rather see a little *more* variety in the Arbitration
Committee, not less (which restriction to administrators would give).
In fact, I'd support choosing one user at random from a pool of
volunteers to serve on each case.  I am not floating this as a serious
idea, though.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


body:
Hi everyone,

just for the record and for the slow in hearing,

> I find it interesting that you refer to the Sass orthography, when
> Heiko recently reverted changes by Reinhart Hahn to attempt to bring a
> page into accordance with the Sass orthography.
This is not correct. Sass states different in all changes in question.
>
> "Der neue Sass" makes a few important phonetic distinctions that you
> guys don't make. When Ron added them, as well as fixing you guys' poor
> grammar, his changes were reverted by HeikoEvermann.
No, it does not make these distinctions. The interesting feature about the new
Sass is that it lists variants of the main entries in the dictionary, and the
"important phonetic destinction" can only be *inferred* from whether or not
certain variants are given, or not. We have decided as nds.wikipedia.org
community to write according to Sass and in the case of variants this means
to go by the first one.

Just one example:
*  engl: "many" => "veel (v??l)". So Sass favours "veel" ?ver "v??l" and
states that veel is to pronounce "eintonig" and not as a diphtong like
"veyl".

Nevertheless Mark changed "veel" into "v??l". I then reverted it. In general
Sass favours "e" ?ver "?". Mark does otherwise. He changed a lot of "e"s into
"?"s. I do not consider that an improvement.

>
> Re running down admins... Slomox, both you and HeikoEvermann state
> very clearly that your native language is Hochdeutsch, not Platt.
> Important decisions such as orthography shouldn't be made by
> second-language speakers only, and neither should the entire interface
> be translated and thousands of articles created mostly by
> second-language speakers (look at na: for a worst-case scenario; ga:
> still has problems because much of its initial content, and the user
> interface, was written in poor Irish by a second-language speaker).
We have decided to go according to the main Low Saxon orthography that is in
use in Germany, and such a decision is certainly within our language
competence.

> The solution to this problem as I see it: Fix the grammatical problems
> with nds.wiki which are the result of contributor incompetency. Add
> nessecary orthographic distinctions. Introduce orthographic converter
> based on the model I constructed.
1) We have been tidying up a lot recently, but Mark fails to notice. He just
comes along, has an idea, does not ask the community about its customs and
just does whatever he has in mind. He gets reverted, does it again and gets
into trouble. This is egotism. Wikipedia however is supposed to be a
community project.
2) Whether or not these phonetic distinctions are neccessary or not is not
just for me or for Mark to decide. The main orthography (according to Sass)
thinks otherwise. And therefore it is fine not to make that distinction.
3) That also means that his orthographic converter will not be needed. Unless,
of course, a community process over time comes to a different conclusion.
>
> And then, after this, there needs to be a recognition that nds.wiki at
> the current time can only be for Northern and Western Low Saxon, ie
> excluding Plautdietsch, Westphaelsch, Eastphaelsch... otherwise we
> open the Pandora's box of incomprehensibility.
Yes, this is indeed the case. But these variants of Low Saxon are different no
matter what orthography you use. Nordneddersassisch is one of the variants
within Low Saxon that developed into a standard. (BTW: Harry Potter vol 1+2
were translated into Low Saxon, guess into which version... Right:
Nordneddersassisch)

As a last word I want to apologizw to the mailing list for bothering you with
these problems.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


from_name: Sérgio Ribeiro

subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al

body:
** OFFTOPIC **
Since this is a little off-topic I don't want to post it one the discussion.
With this new single login system, will be there new changes on the
characters allowed on a username ? Like accepting underscores (_) on the
username ?

That may be the chance for me to change my nick from Get It to Get_It

Cheers,

On 7/11/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There have been some great efforts to discuss and specify what a
> single-login implementatoin will look like in recent months. However,
> the major disagreements form the last bout of specifications -- how to
> deal with name conflicts -- have not yet been addressed.
>
> See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Single_login_specifications
> and the article page itself for some of the current discussion.
>
> The current proposal suggests that "the user under a given name with
> the highest edit-count" will "Win" that name, and all other users with
> that name will have a fixed period of time to find a new username.
> The idea of arbitrarily forcing one user to change names seems bad and
> anti-consensus to me -- if two active users have the same name, I
> think they should work out something among themselves -- or be allowed
> to forego the privileges of unified login. And the idea of using edit
> counts to determine "winners" is particularly unappealing to me (how
> about seniority? usefulness of edits? current activity?).
>
> Please check out the current specification and comment. There will be
> a lot of detailed discussion about this implementatoin at Wikimania in
> August.
>
> --
> ++SJ
>

--
Edit this page @ http://pt.wikipedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On 12/07/05, Heiko Evermann <heiko.evermann at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> > > Nevertheless Mark changed "veel" into "v??l". I then reverted it. In
> > > general Sass favours "e" ?ver "?". Mark does otherwise. He changed a lot
> > > of "e"s into "?"s. I do not consider that an improvement.
> >
> > I've said before and I'll say again, those changes were originally
> > made by Ron Hahn. You reverted them, and then I reverted you. So they
> > do not originate from me.
> Maybe. But after all, anonymous edits are living a dangerous life. As I said
> somewhere else: I use the recent changes patrol flags to check each and every
> edit in nds.wikipedia.org. Anonymous edits are something I check twice.

Perhaps you didn't also notice that, besides changing the orthography,
he also fixed the poor grammar, and made it sound more "Platt" and
less "Patentplatt"?

> > > 1) We have been tidying up a lot recently, but Mark fails to notice. He
> > > just comes along, has an idea, does not ask the community about its
> > > customs and just does whatever he has in mind. He gets reverted, does it
> > > again and gets into trouble. This is egotism. Wikipedia however is
> > > supposed to be a community project.
> >
> > If it's supposed to be a community project, then why are you excluding
> > opinions such as Servien's and Ron's as if they were from outside,
> > even though these people tried to contribute?
> I have had a long discussion with Servien. The result of which is that we
> would like to have two different wikipedias: nds and nds-nl, and we perfectly
> agree. The problem with you is just that you do as you please, and when
> someone disagrees, you just go on as you please. Again: "respect the
> community". And a further piece of information: community is those people who
> were already there. If someone comes to join, the best way to earn respect
> within a community is by doing good work. Good work being work that the
> community that is already there likes. If however someone comes and just
> changes things without caring about previous discussions, then this is what
> might happen:
> 1) the changes happen to be in line with previous decisions. Good luck.
> Respect points earned.
> 2) the changes happen to go against local policy. Bad luck. No respect points
> earned.
> 2.1) the changes were anonymous. Community suspects some kind of vandalism.
> Quick revert. Such things happen at least twice a week. The problem with
> anonymous users is that you cannot even drop them a note. Hence the quick
> revert.
> 2.2) the changes were made by a logged in user. Community might complain. A
> discussion starts. Changes may or may not be reverted.
>
> The first edits of the article about "Katt" were anonymous and they did not
> fit into our local policy. They got reverted. Then you stepped in and just
> did the same thing. And that brought you into trouble.

No, the first edits were fixing grammar. Only later did Ron modify the
orthography. It wasn't even to his ANS, but rather to a version of the
normal German orthography that makes the important phonetic
distinctions.

> > > 2) Whether or not these phonetic distinctions are neccessary or not is
> > > not just for me or for Mark to decide. The main orthography (according to
> > > Sass) thinks otherwise. And therefore it is fine not to make that
> > > distinction. 3) That also means that his orthographic converter will not
> > > be needed. Unless, of course, a community process over time comes to a
> > > different conclusion.
> >
> > How is the conclusion about an orthographic converter even RELATED to
> > your other conclusion??
> We do not need your orthographic converter, because we are not converting from
> Sass to Ron's spelling.

Perhaps you haven't tried my orthographic converter? It's not for
converting from Sass to Ron's spelling. It's for converting from Sass
to Netherlands spelling, and vice-versa. I have said that a few times,
and it was always there for you to try.

> > > > And then, after this, there needs to be a recognition that nds.wiki at
> > > > the current time can only be for Northern and Western Low Saxon, ie
> > > > excluding Plautdietsch, Westphaelsch, Eastphaelsch... otherwise we
> > > > open the Pandora's box of incomprehensibility.
> > >
> > > Yes, this is indeed the case. But these variants of Low Saxon are
> > > different no matter what orthography you use. Nordneddersassisch is one
> > > of the variants within Low Saxon that developed into a standard. (BTW:
> > > Harry Potter vol 1+2 were translated into Low Saxon, guess into which
> > > version... Right: Nordneddersassisch)
> >
> > What is your point here? That's basically what I said.
> My point is that you seemed to present your point in a way that suggests that
> this decision is deplorable. I said. Yes! This is the way it is.

What I said is, is that it needs to be made VERY CLEAR that since
Plautdietsch, (West&East)phaelsch, and other smaller varieties of Low
German are very difficult to understand with North and West Low Saxon,
that the nds.wikipedia does not allow them, and that if you want to
write in them, you need to request a new Wikipedia. Currently, it is
ambiguous -- it just says it's a Wikipedia for Platt.

It should say that clearly on the mainpage.

Mark


body:
Ultimately the issue is: Is there still a demand, from native
speakers, for it to be changed?

Sabine is obviously a native (I think? if not, at least very fluent)
speaker of Italian, and so is in a position to tell us what should be
done here.

Gerard says there is demand from Italian speakers, and since he is a
fairly honest and respectable fellow (I don't much like him, I will
admit, but it doesn't mean he's not a good person), I believe him when
he says this.

Mark

On 11/07/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> We talked about this time ago - and then we also said that if all are
> capitalised Italian of course can be capitalised as it is then part of a
> list where ALL interwikilinks are capitalised.
>
> And for example the language names for the interwiki links on the Main
> Page of en.wiktionary are not all capitalised, so the ones that should
> go with a lower case should be adapted accordingly.
>
> And I remember that even then you told Gerard that he is not Italian and
> that he could not tell this. And I remember someone saying that in
> Italian schools kids are taught to write Italian "italiano" since it is
> correct ortography.
>
> Now there's the big question on why for example I don't start such
> discussions (that's quite easy): a simple thing like this one starts a
> never ending discussion and really I don't have much time - so I prefer
> to use my time working on wiktionary instead.
>
> Going back to work.
>
> Ciao, Sabine
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
> http://mail.yahoo.it
> _______________________________________________
> 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


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Special:Disambiguations fixed !

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> I have put back Special:Disambiguations in 1.5, it was broke since the
> schema change. It works in a different way now, hopefully it will be
> easier to maintain disambiguations.
...
> A page need to be configured as being a disambiguation marker. This is
> done by editing [[MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage]].
> Every page linking to that marker will be considered by
> Special:Disambiguations as a disambiguation page. The output is then a
> concatenation of "whatlinks here".

Is there any possibility to mark links to disambiguation page with CSS
in a different color? This is a feature I am waiting for since years!
People tend to link at disambiguation pages and nobody notices but if
you mark the links (let's say orange or green) you see it like linking
to missing articles.

Greetings,
Jakob


from_name: Angela

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different
> cultures and peoples rather than languages?

No it isn't. I agree with what Jimmy, Anthere, and others have already
written in reply to this.

> Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in
> the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people,
> and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good

Where has he said this? The top of
http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal states very
clearly that every article should be written in M?ori.

Guaka wrote:
> When applying for Bambara Wikipedia administratorship I explicitely
> mentioned that I'll drop my administratorship as soon as there are some
> native speaking folks active as administrator. I think that should be a
> general policy for administrators who have only a very small knowledge
> of a language.

I think that's fine. I see no need to prevent people from being admins
because they don't speak the language when there are no active users
that do speak the language.

Mark Williamson wrote:
> I have now been blocked by Robin Patterson for removing
> English-language content.

Really? The block log claims he blocked you for removing M?ori content.

> I had left him a message a few days ago, and he never answered it.

Perhaps you could have waited a bit longer for a reply before
contining to revert the main page.

> I do not think that somebody like this should be trusted with admin
> privelages, especially since according to him his fluency level is
> only mi-1.

I disagree. Since this is the only case I am aware of where there has
been any suggestion of a problem, desysopping seems too extreme a
reaction.

Heiko Evermann wrote:
> I have had a look at Robin's edits. I think that he is doing a great job.

I agree. He has also made efforts to attract a wider community of
M?ori speakers to the wiki.

Anthere wrote:
> Something which was not clear in your message : Is Robin admin there, or has he tried to apply for adminship ?

Yes, he's been an admin since Perl/Aplank made him one in April 2004.

Angela.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] collaborative editing system for controversial
	content

body:
Bennett Haselton wrote:

> (c) Indicate that you disagree with the reply if it's a
> rebuttal.  If this happens, then a "jury" of other users on the
> site will be selected at random to vote on who is right,

One reason that voting is so often avoided in online communities
is that it is unclear who is eligible to vote.  While
one-person-one-vote is a beautiful principle, it is not
self-evident who can be counted as "a person".  How do you
convince your users that the voters aren't just sock puppets, or
that they are of a mature enough age to make an informed decision?

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Orthography in interwiki links

body:
On 12/07/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Ultimately the issue is: Is there still a demand, from native
> > speakers, for it to be changed?
>
> No, the question is:
>
> a) is it a good idea?
> b) is someone prepared to do the research, change all the necessary
> entries in languages/Names.php, make a patch and submit it to bugzilla?
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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


body:
a) is basically the same as what I said.

It would not be a good idea if native speakers did not want it.

Mark

On 12/07/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Ultimately the issue is: Is there still a demand, from native
> > speakers, for it to be changed?
>
> No, the question is:
>
> a) is it a good idea?
> b) is someone prepared to do the research, change all the necessary
> entries in languages/Names.php, make a patch and submit it to bugzilla?
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 12/07/05, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/05, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > 5. Only Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia that are Arbitrators as
> > at 30 November are eligible for the year end elections (to eliminate
> > trolls and WPians that are clearly undesirable as Arbitrators from
> > the election) - maybe a little harsh - but if publicised in advance
> > would allow all interested candidates that aren't admins to apply
> > for adminship.
>
> I don't understand what you mean here. Are you saying that in your
> proposal, only people who are currently Arbitrators can be elected as
> Arbitrators at the year end elections? Or that only current
> Arbitrators can vote in the year end elections (election by peers, so
> to speak)?

>From the reference in the last part to "apply[ing] for adminship", I
assumed that he meant to write:

"Only Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia that are _Administrators_
as at 30 November are eligible for the year end elections..."

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


from_name: Cyberjunkie

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Demonstrable Abuse of Admin powers

body:
On 11/07/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
>I must stress this point. Zero connection.
>Zero communication. Not a sockpuppet, not a friend, not anything at
>all.

I must say, you really can't blame anyone for being suspicious given
your intimation that you would indeed use "a different IP address every
day" and find "some other editor(s) to present the same facts." I
certainly believe those comments to be more than mere braggadocio.

>I would like to know what is going on,
>because it looks to me like an editor in good faith has been treated
>very poorly indeed, and that both he and I deserve apologies,
>especially from the admin who blocked him.

I think it's plainly obvious to you what is going on, and your
involvement is not something that can be ruled out just because you say
so. However, I do believe Jtdirl may have unintentionally jumped the
gun. On the face of it, I suspect that because Jtdirl joined the
discussion after the obvious sock puppetry of one "Kangaroopedia", he
mistook both Kangaroopedia and Pwqn to be incontestable sock puppets,
not knowing of Pwqn's history. I don't believe Pwqn is a sock puppet.
Nevertheless, I do find it entirely strange that s/he would just,
completely out-of-the-blue, and in contrast to prior edits, edit an
obscure topic on Australian government and rehash the same flawed
understanding as Skyring. We can all draw conclusions, but I don't
suppose there is anyway prove such duplicity. It is good that Pwqn has
been unblocked, and s/he does deserve an apology of sorts from Jtdirl.
Skyring doesn't.

>I see his intemperate and abusive blocking of a good faith
>editor as something warranting discussion.

I encourage everyone to recognise the emotiveness of this seemingly
irrelevant issue.  The harassment Jtdirl was subjected to should be
considered, and he ought to be given a little bit of leeway. If Pwqn and
Kangaroopedia are in some way linked to Skyring, then his actions would
be perfectly justifiable. As it is, such a link may not exist or may and
not be proven. But let's be clear, there was no abusiveness here and it
is bad faith to assume bad faith.

Cyberjunkie


body:
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Where has he said this? The top of
> > http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal states very
> > clearly that every article should be written in M?ori.
>
> Yes, yet he states at
> http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:24.251.198.251 (and various
> places on sm:) that since "English is the first language of at least
> 80% of people of Maori descent", that English content should and will
> be kept.

Isn't he referring to content in the Wikipedia namespace there, not
articles? Where has Robin added English content to articles?

Have you discussed this with any of the people who have edited this
Wikipedia? There are 75 registered users and 8 admins. I'm not aware
of any of them having a problem with Robin's approach, which as far as
I can tell simply involves adding explanations in English to some
pages in the Wikipedia namespace, and a pointer to that explanation
from the main page and site notice.

M?ori is certainly not the only Wikipedia doing this.
http://kn.wikipedia.org/ also has English in its site notice and that
project has many native speakers of Kannada and is about to reach 1000
articles. http://gu.wikipedia.org and others do the same. The Arabic
village pump contains an English introduction, and the early
discussion in the project was mostly English
(<http://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project:%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86/%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%B4%D9%8A%D9%81&oldid=10984>).

Angela


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mark watch out you are trolling!

body:
> Dear Mark,
>
> This morning I came back to my computer after only 11 hours of absence and
> my mail box was filled with 29 new messages of which no less than 13 were
> yours. I have to warn you: you are flooding this mailing list, as 40% of all
> messages are yours. Imagine every subscriber being as active as you are: I
> would either end my life or my subscription to this list. It took me more
> than half an hour only to read your messages. Unlike you, most people have
> other things to do than writing to this mailing list, learning languages and
> mingling into whatever Wikipedia attracting your intention, such as work,
> study, and friends other than those you me(e)t on the internet. Any
> discussion topic attracting more than 10, 15 e-mails contains your
> contribution. You are streching those topics to a really undesirable length,
> often changing the subject radically and to a point where it becomes quite
> irrelevant for this mailing list (though I have to admit a few other posters
> occasionally also behave that way).

I remind you, once again, that intlwiki-l and wikipedia-l were merged
by choice. People not interested in languages would do well to request
the split of the two if they are annoyed by a volume, or to just deal
with it.

> Many of your contributions are relevant, and often I can second them. But
> very often you are quite trolling, not only here but also on Wikimedia or
> some Wikipedias. WHenever it comes to anything concerning languages, you
> jump onto it, and always you are right and the others are wrong. It is not
> your vision itself, but your apparent belief that you are always right that
> brings you in trouble. I would, as well as you, abhor any regional language
> being corrupted by people who want to speak it, and I think English content
> on non-English Wikipedias is intolerable. But no other well-intending (or so
> I suppose) contributor but you would ever achieve being blocked at two
> Wikipedias of which the languages are spoken at almost perfectly antipode
> places in the world. Perhaps you are getting too deep in Wikipedias where an
> adolescent boy from Arizona (or a student from the Netherlands, for that
> matter), unable to speak the language normally has no business. You blamed
> Gerard in the interwiki matter to speak for the Italians: he could not do so
> because he was not one himself. Then a logical conclusion would be that you
> stay away at least at some places, wouldn't it?

So, if an adolescent boy from Arizona unable to speak the language
normally has no business editing at the Maori Wikipedia, what business
does a white New Zealander who is unable to speak the language
normally doing as a sysop?

I emphasise that I have never been banned at a Wikipedia (save once or
twice on en.wiki for breaking the 3RR once, and the other time against
regulations for... i don't recall what) except these where the people
do not speak the language. In fact I am not banned at nds.wiki, just
threatened. To their credit, the sysops at nds.wiki obviously speak
Platt much better than Robin Patterson speaks Maori.

In addition, I was banned from yi.wiki by Danny a long time ago, but
that's a different story for another time. Actually, the majority of
the content on yi.wiki now is my contribution, using either the acc't
[[User:Node ue]] or [[User:Nod]] (transliterated from the Yiddish
alefbeys), or various others I racked up due to banning.

If I was banned for scaring away native speakers, and this ban was
agreed to afterwards by Jimbo, perhaps Robin Patterson should be
banned from mi.wiki for 'scaring away' my Maori friend?

 > I cannot emphasise enough how much I appreciate your sense-making
> contributions, but I have to warn you that many of your contributions are
> not so positive and that the trolls are gradually overshadowing your good
> actions. I know there are many more, both on this list and elsewhere, who
> have similar views.  Yann made a similar, albeit briefer, remark on your
> meta talk page. A member of the Wikimedia Foundation answered, when asked
> what they would do if they got a $2 million donation, that "we should use it
> to pay trolls like Mark Williamson to go away". A prominent contributor
> e-mailed to me, when I mentioned our personal discord originating in the
> Requests page matter: "Don't take it to heart. Mark is constantly boasting
> around and pretends the languages are all his. Most people have quitted to
> take him seriously for a long time." Another prominent user siad to me in
> personal communication: "one of the reasons I haven't joint the Wikipedia
> mailing list (so far) is that I do not want to receive five (or more)
> e-mails by Node every day".

Rather than sticking up for somebody, the thing I would do is forward
all such messages to the object of the attack and remind the person
that it is extremely rude to talk about people behind their backs. I
have only once talked about someone behind his back, and I think he
already knew very much my opinion of him (this is "Raul" from
en.wiki). If you look at usage statistics for the ML, you'll find that
prior to the nds.wiki discussion/argument/war, my posts were rather
infrequent.

I would, however, like to remind people that records of foundation
chats are public, and I have read some things people have said about
me that they may or may not have wished to conceal.

I recommend to people who are annoyed by even five e-mails in their
inbox each day from one person to use g-mail. It uses a threaded
e-mail system whereby you will not see each new response as a separate
message, but rather as part of a thread. If this doesn't suit you, you
can subscribe to the digest where you will get all the messages in one
single e-mail, and ignore those you choose to.

> When saying things like these, I usually defend you by pointing at your good
> contributions. I do not share the view that you be a troll. That's why I
> urge you to take this council: Stop trolling, just because you aren't one!

While I do appreciate that some of the things I've said are perhaps a
bit overboard, I think that sheer volume is not trolling, and as
stated at the en.wiki article [[Internet troll]], people often label
controversial opinions as trolling when in fact they're actual
opinions.

People (especially Walter) have claimed that I am bossy and dominant
regarding languages. This is because I feel they are an area I know a
lot about. Similarly, Tim and Brion will talk more about a matter
involving programming than I will, because they have a higher level of
expertise.

I certainly do not believe that I am right and everybody else is
wrong... well, I do, but it is an opinion easily changed by solid
evidence -- Boris did a very good job of presenting real evidence, and
convinced me partially. I still haven't been able to sort out:
1.Differences caused by the use of Patentplatt, 2.Differences caused
by orthography, and 3.Genuine differences between linguistic
varieties. Servien, Boris, and others have tried to untangle this, but
it is a very finely-woven web and the only way out is to see what
happens if we fix the first two problems. See,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/nds-nl/Katt -- it is Real Platt
(as fixed by Ron Hahn), originally using German orthography, which I
used my beta-version orthographic converter to make into
Netherlands-orthography. If this page doesn't make sense to, say, a
speaker of Achterhoeks, then I can certainly reconsider my opinion.
But it is extremely unclear at the moment, and it does not help when
people like Walter say nasty things and others say "You don't know the
language. Go away" or similar things, rather than engaging in
intelligent, logical discourse.

Mark


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Kangaroopedia, Pwqn, Skyring

body:
Cyberjunkie (swatso at optusnet.com.au) [050712 03:32]:

> I think it's plainly obvious to you what is going on, and your
> involvement is not something that can be ruled out just because you say
> so. However, I do believe Jtdirl may have unintentionally jumped the
> gun. On the face of it, I suspect that because Jtdirl joined the
> discussion after the obvious sock puppetry of one "Kangaroopedia", he
> mistook both Kangaroopedia and Pwqn to be incontestable sock puppets,
> not knowing of Pwqn's history. I don't believe Pwqn is a sock puppet.
> Nevertheless, I do find it entirely strange that s/he would just,
> completely out-of-the-blue, and in contrast to prior edits, edit an
> obscure topic on Australian government and rehash the same flawed
> understanding as Skyring. We can all draw conclusions, but I don't
> suppose there is anyway prove such duplicity. It is good that Pwqn has
> been unblocked, and s/he does deserve an apology of sorts from Jtdirl.
> Skyring doesn't.

Well, not really. I just checked the IPs (since Skyring on Australian
government topics has been a matter of AC interest) and while Pwqn and
Kangaroopedia are definitely the same person, they are *not* also Skyring,
unless the box in question is an open proxy. Which I wouldn't assume from
the evidence to hand.

> >I see his intemperate and abusive blocking of a good faith
> >editor as something warranting discussion.

> I encourage everyone to recognise the emotiveness of this seemingly
> irrelevant issue.  The harassment Jtdirl was subjected to should be
> considered, and he ought to be given a little bit of leeway. If Pwqn and
> Kangaroopedia are in some way linked to Skyring, then his actions would
> be perfectly justifiable. As it is, such a link may not exist or may and
> not be proven. But let's be clear, there was no abusiveness here and it
> is bad faith to assume bad faith.

I can't say there's *no* link, but I can say the IP evidence doesn't
suggest any link, fwiw. However, Kangaroopedia is a sock of Pwqn, and Pwqn
deserves at the absolute least a stern word for blatant sockpuppeteering.

- d.


from_name: Henry Kissinger

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 8th Duke of Wellington image crisis

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list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Forking of Wikipedia content on Wikibooks

body:
kelvSYC wrote:

>> I guess that I'm trying to modify the deletion policy somewhat to
>> allow *some* forking of Wikipedia content, provided that the  content
>> on Wikibooks really is an expansion of the Wikipedia  article and not
>> just some POV fight or fork of Wikipedia content.   The nature of
>> Wikibooks certainly allows almost any article on  Wikipedia to be
>> turned into a book, provided there are interested  parties willing to
>> write the content.  Forbidding any fork would,  in effect, kill
>> almost any Wikibook stub right now.
>
>
> We do not allow any content that isn't considered to be instructional
> material.  The spirit of WB:WIN is that if you want to expand a WP
> article, then do it on WP.  Personally, I am opposed to any Wikipedia
> forking in general because of the fact that I consider encyclopedia
> articles are not by itself instructional material.  Based on your
> post, [[The Biography of Nikola Tesla]] would have been deleted
> whether we have the changed policy or not, due to it originating from
> an edit war.
>
> I have to say that, to some real extent, the "books" part of
> Wikibooks is really a misnomer: it's not clearly intuitive that we
> are writing textbooks of instructional material on this wiki.
>
 From following discussion on Foundation-l, it seems as though a number
of people at Wikipedia and Meta have a very different opinion of what
Wikibooks is all about, and it seems as though Wikibooks has in effect
been turned into a general repository of non-fiction book-length topics.
 In particular, discussions around
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects seem to
indicate a more general attitude toward Wikibooks.

One of the problems that Wikibooks is suffering from right now is that
Wikiversity is not really a successful project in itself.  Yes, there is
content there, but even project like Virtual University
(http://www.vu.org/) show more of a real academic environment.  Another
one is Diversity University (http://www.du.org/).  Even if Wikiversity
were brought up to these somewhat modest standards, the auxuallary role
of Wikibooks would be considerably more apparant.  Instead, Wikibooks is
percieved as an auxuallary role to Wikipedia and the other "sister
projects" of the Wikimedia Foundation, which has in effect a broading of
scope effect to Wikibooks.

On Wikibooks itself I've been involved with a minor edit war where some
people have tried to come into one of the Wikibooks I've created and try
to turn it into a subject-based Wikipedia, and I've resisted the effort,
particuarly on the talk pages.  Somehow the idea that content on
Wikibooks should be a book rather than a bunch of web pages loosely
connected does not always get across.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Wikibooks is drifting from its
original and noble foundations, and I really don't see significant
effort to try and go back to those roots.  Nor do I see any desire by
the newer Wikibookians to try and follow that ideal, at least to the
letter as supplimental materials to Wikiversity or to support specific
academic standards requirements.  Let me put it more directly and
specifc then:  How many Wikibooks that can be used as a textbook for any
major college or university, or follows state or national academic
requirements to be used as the basis for curriculm development as a
textbook?  The FHSST books are based on this type of standard, but that
does come from outside Wikibooks to at least get it started.  Books like
"How to Build a Pykrete Bong" are more typical to Wikibooks, unfortunately.

I fail to see what the origin of motivation for creating a Wikibook has
to do with if it gets deleted or not.  It should IMHO (and apparently
this opinion is not shared) stand on its own merits independently of
other content on other Wikimedia projects.  I have posted requests for
deletion for content that seems to be a pure fork of Wikipedia content
(and nothing added) to Wikibooks, and there are several Wikibook modules
that really do need to be deleted on this basis.

There really isn't an effort on Wikipedia to allow book-length material
either, which is one reason why the Nikola Tesla information was put
here on Wikibooks.  While part of an edit war, it seems as though
contributors at Wikipedia are being told to go away, and that some
admins at Wikibooks are saying the same thing.  This is not a good thing
to do in either case, and weakens both communities as a result.  If, as
you seem to suggest, that Wikibooks should be for pure textbook content,
perhaps Wikibooks itself needs to fork and a separation between academic
books and other non-fiction materials needs to take place.

--
Robert Scott Horning