from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On 6/8/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Eh, it's quite possible, .. for example in making a example for a math
> article you might stumble on something somewhat novel, but often in
> mathematics we can empirically confirm the truth of something in a way
> which doesn't assert POV. So you might say that NOR is less important
> in articles about math. ... but at the same time, it's not like
> placing something in an article gets people to test the proof, so NOR
> is still potentially valuable there because the majority of 'great new
> mathematical ideas' are actually wrong. :)

Yes, and even when the result is true, it may not be especially new
(by itself) or important.  Convincing mathematical cranks that an
apparently-new true result they've found is not the most sensational
result of modern mathematics seems to be harder than convincing them
that an false claim is false.

Determining what ought to go in a WIkipedia article about a
mathematical seems to me to be as subjective as any discipline.

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom a sham

body:
Uh, no. It's kind of rude to jump to conclusions. There have been no
backroom deals. Adam's views are only known because he's been around a
long time and has made his views on editing Wikipedia and experts well
known - through many a dispute and the occasional arbitration case.
He's also known to not be fond of the arbitration process - hence the
brevity of his "evidence".

-- ambi

On 6/8/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Skyring/Evidence
> you will see an ArbCom hearing proceeding in the evidence-gathering
> stage. It was my naive belief that the process was as fair and open as
> need be. However, anybody knowing anything about this case will see
> that one party has conspicuously failed to show on the evidence page
> apart from a brief appearance at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_arbitration%2FSkyring%2FEvidence&diff=14745252&oldid=14736222
>
> I chipped him about this on the talk page, saying it looked as if he
> was squibbing his chance to give evidence. His response? "My views are
> well known to the ArbCom."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Skyring/Evidence&diff=prev&oldid=14863796
>
> Is this *really* how it works? The whole process is a sham and it all
> depends on backroom deals?
>
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andreas H�rstemeier

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion lag times

body:
> Brion Vibber knows.  He was one of those abusing me on
> Village Pump.
Maybe he was still tired from the server movement. But as a very active
speedy deletor that problem as been getting more and more annying recently,
and today it has become virtually impossible to delete anything. Maybe
after one hour of retrying the deletion it finally works, but that's
unacceptable. But it already has a bug in bugzilla (2195) about it, it is
mentioned in the Administrators Noticeboard and the Village Pump, that
should be enough hint for the developers that the problem really exists.

Bye,
   [[User:Ahoerstemeier]]


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> I never understood why so many people oppose votes. It's an easy way
> to see how the land lies and what the general opinion is. In my
> opinion that's helpful.

A lot of people, including me, would draw a distinction between a "vote"
and a "poll".  A "vote" is generally considered to be binding in some
fashion, whereas a "poll" is a means of generating consensus because as
you put it so well, it helps us to "see how the land lies and what the
general opinion is".

Erik's proposal to have a binding community vote to determine what
articles should say is one which I will never support.

That is not to say that polls/votes can't play any role in the process,
nor is it to say that we don't need to advance the state of the art in
dealing with such cases.  But introducing binding votes destroys some of
 what is most essential about the interaction between the wiki process
and the generation of high quality neutral content.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> The ArbCom already tries to enforce our content-related policies. What I'd like
> to do is have subject-area subcommittees to consult when alleged violations of
> our content-related polices like NPOV or NOR come before us (the ArbCom). As it
> is, only the most blatant POV and original research-pushing people are
> sanctioned due to the simple fact that the ArbCom does not know everything
> about everything and thus can't spot more subtle violations of our
> content-related polices. We have tried, but this results in cases that take
> months and inadequate remedies.

I think this is exactly right.

I have not yet had a change to read the exact proposals, but I think it
is clear that in many cases, subject-area expertise has to be introduced
into our disciplinary processes in a more systematic way.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Interwiki articles without en: (another one
	forMark)

body:
On Wed, 8 Jun 2005, Andreas Hoerstemeier wrote:

>Walter van Kalken wrote:
>> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardus_Johannes_Alfrink
>Sorry Walter, but that one just received the missing interwiki link the
>original author forgot to add. Now you have to find a new example :-)

it: has about 8,000 articles about italian administrative regions, kinda
like Rambot entries. pt: has recently added the same 8,000 articles.

Interwikis are being added to some of these articles. So there are lots of
articles with interwikis between it: and pt:, but no other wikipedia. For
example:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant%27Anastasia
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollena_Trocchia
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peccioli
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottaviano_%28NA%29

(most are stub articles)

Alfio


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Scheduled global downtime

body:
ultrablue at gmail.com a ?crit:
> Sorry I couldn't actually throw together the multilingual page, but I
> was studying for exams and will be for the next couple of weeks.

Hi

Do not worry. Exams are more important.

But
> once that's finished, I want to get back on track and complete putting
> together multilingual server error messages. I don't think it's
> acceptable on a site as multilingual as Wikipedia (and the other
> Wikimedia projects too) to only give English language error messages.
> I was hoping to get some help scripting a page with mechanics similar
> to the Wikipedia preferences page, whereby clicking a link changes the
> content, but where the content still displays correctly on older
> browsers. I started doing this about a month ago, but other things got
> in the way. We would have to decide which languages to include. In my
> semi-working prototype, I included only the top 5 languages, which I
> think were English, French, German, Swedish and Japanese. If we
> include too many languages, we run a risk of placing extra strain on
> the servers because the file size will inflate. Anyway, tell me what
> you think of my idea.

Sounds good. I cant judge myself on the extra strain, but the more
languages we can cover the better. Note that this is as much a technical
issue than a translation issue :-)

But thanks a lot for doing this Mark. It will be much appreciated.

Ant

> ~Mark Ryan
>
> On 6/8/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>ultrablue at gmail.com a ?crit:
>>
>>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean you're shifting the
>>>servers across the street at 3AM? That's got to look suspicious :-)
>>>
>>>If you're setting up a downtime page on the Paris squids, I recommend
>>>not including a link to Openfacts.berlios.de. Every time Wikipedia has
>>>even a mild downtime (i.e. about 3 minutes or less) that site gets
>>>overwhelmed and goes down itself. I don't think it's fair on whoever
>>>owns that site.
>>
>>Well, your wishes were obeyed. The Paris squids showed to everyone
>>accessing wikipedia, that we again had a crash, were trying to fix it,
>>and would be back soon.
>>
>>It was not a maintenance page which was shown, but a crash page.
>>Not sure it is exactly good for our image.
>>
>>Ant
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Homosexuals and other groups overrepresented
 here(was: sco/fiu-vro in danger)

body:
Wouter Steenbeek a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Autism can go to being extremely asocial (such as not speaking,
>> reacting violently to touch, refusing exchange with other individuals,
>> having repetitive behavior... these autists are unlikely to have a job
>> or a family) to having light troubles in interacting with others.
>>
>> An autist is more likely not to have a love relationship with someone
>> else. But even if he does, he can be someone who will not be very warm
>> toward spouse, perhaps not appreciate physical touch a lot. I guess
>> this can be a the same time an issue both in terms of verbal and non
>> verbal communication.
>>
>> I guess they are often qualified nerds because they deeply engaged
>> themselves in activities which do not require to much human contact,
>> or, at least activities where they can choose to be in contact or
>> *not* in contact with others (single game playing, stamp gathering,
>> gardening...). I think for most autists, the vibes sent by other
>> humans have a huge impact and are very overbearing. They sort of flood
>> their mental and prevent them from properly functionning. In front of
>> this, an extreme solution is to build barriers, refuse contact
>> entirely, to the point of not understanding the society. A less
>> extreme relief solution is to give time to activities which can
>> relieve them from the psychological pressure provided by other human
>> beings. A sort of blank out relief. A routine activity helps forget
>> the environmental noise.
>>
>> I do not think that means they cant have a boyfriend/girlfriend, but
>> it is likely they will get one not requiring too much interaction from
>> them. I'd say the spouse should probably understand the need of the
>> autist to have times of isolation and his requirement for a very
>> regular life. Anything getting largely out of the routine seems to be
>> very hard to handle for the autist.
>>
>> ant
>>
> Thanks Anthere, couldn't have explained it better. I must emphasise
> however that not all of them suffer from the same symptoms, but need for
> occasional isolation is indeed very common. On the other hand, I
> personally feel the need of contact with other people as well, as I am a
> member of a student fraternity, for example. But... one remains strange
> anyway...:)
>
> Wouter

Nod. Agreed. Very diverse lot. I do not think generalization is
possible. Only trends; but trends help others to understand a bit.

ant


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Leuch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Downtime message modifications & improvments

body:
David Monniaux <David.Monniaux <at> ens.fr> writes:

>
> Kate Turner wrote:
>
> >you can preview the current version at
> ><http://www.knams.wikimedia.org/downtime/>.
> >
> >
> Dunno who wrote the French version but it sounds like some bad machine
> translation.

+1

Where's the wiki or CVS I can correct it ?


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Indian languages and grants (was Re: Combined
	effort)

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I just put my hand on a collection of essays by Ivan Ilich, "Celebration
> of Awarenes", published in 1971.  I looked at one in particular:
> "Planned Poverty: The End Result of Technical Assistance."   Among other
> things that he says:  "the plough of the rich can do as much harm as
> their swords."  "As the mind of a society is progressively schooled,
> step by step their individuals lose their sense that it might be
> possible to live without being inferior to others."

Time for a plug of my own. The most enlightening book on poverty that
I've read was "Age of Consent" by George Monbiot. He puts the blame
squarely on the financial system, explaining that it has been engineered
to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. He kind of lost it
towards the end, IMHO, preconditioning his clever and plausible solution
for third world debt on an apparently ludicrous environmental scheme. Oh
well, still a good read.

I think Wikipedia's role is to educate, so that the people living in
abject poverty may be able to understand their condition and begin to
formulate ways to correct it. According to Monbiot, the political will
for such action must come from the poor countries themselves, since the
democracies of developed countries are dominated by self-interest.

I think it is horrible to equate ignorance with individuality. We're not
running some sort of anthropological zoo, where cultures must be
preserved in their present state for the amusement of Western tourists.
Let them decide how they want to live their life, and give them what
they need to make that decision rationally.

Now I'm ranting against a point you didn't really make... I'll stop
here. Except to say that the above paragraph was partly inspired by
Polly Toynbee's essay in the book "On the Edge".

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
I have to say, I disagree pretty heavily with the interpretation of
both NPOV and NOR you are putting forward here.

Let us take a concrete example -- say, German's wartime project to
develop nuclear weapons/energy. What should the article say on the
subject, in an ideal world? There are at least two separate scholarly
narratives on the subject (one which says "the scientists purposely
didn't built Hitler an atomic bomb" and one which says "the scientists
just didn't get around to it for various reasons, but weren't taking a
strong moral stance"), and while I think one is more popular than the
other (the latter mentioned) among scholars, there is no clear
understanding of consensus or even which has the more prominent
scholars behind it (there are sharp and well-respected people behind
both approaches, and of course a requisite middle ground where most
people live).

How to proceed? In my understanding of NPOV, the article should do a
good job of representing both scholarly opinions and the evidences
both cite. It should mention that there is a scholarly debate. It
should perhaps mention a brief history of the debate, if germane (i.e.
Heisenberg's misquoted letter in Jungk's book, Bohr's angry reply,
leading all the way up up to the _Copenhagen_ play).

There are, of course, more fringe theories all over the internet, as
there are with anythign relating to Nazis, atomic bombs, or physics.
These don't have any currency in mainstream sources and there is not
even a consistent fringe conspiracy theory. As such, I don't think
they should be represented in the article -- they are not
"significant" POVs, which is to say, they are not "POVs significantly
represented in the public understanding of this subject." If there
were one overriding or popular conspiracy theory, it should get a
mention commensurate with its representation in the larger community
of knowledge (i.e., the Apollo moon landing conspiracy is a well-known
phenomena in and of itself, so it gets it own article).

That's MY understanding of NPOV, which reduces knowledge and truth
statements to sociological statements -- who says what, how
representative the statement is of other actors, etc.

With this understanding of NPOV, then NOR falls into a similar spot
(and almost becomes No Original Opinions as well). If a source is not
accessible, it is likely not part of the mainstream understanding,
however you define "mainstream." Obscure sources, by their very
definition, are likely not part of this sociological understanding of
NPOV. Again, concurring with Matt Brown, if I found something that I
think was wrong about the mainstream historical account, I shouldn't
try to use Wikipedia as the staging point for this new understanding
-- I should try to publish it in a scholarly journal! After all, isn't
that what their domain is for? That is, I should turn the statement
into a "mainstream statement" (under a loose definition of
mainstream), at which point it becomes potentially subject for
Wikipedia inclusion.

I don't think Matt Brown meant "reporting the consensus" to mean
"creating a sense of consensus if there is none." I think he meant
more what I mean when I say "mainstream" -- statements or
understandings which have either enough "followers" (in a Latourian
sense) or have generated enough "attention" to warrant inclusion. The
"consensus in the field" on the German atomic bomb is a number of
stories which disagree with each other, in this model -- it is not one
of the stories over any other.

NOR (or again, NOO) means, along with the idea that I can't present my
own private "data", that I can't read a book on the subject, come to
radically different conclusions than the author, and then try to have
those (non-mainstream) conclusions represented in an encyclopedia
article. We rely on other sources (journals, academic disciplines,
communities of fringe believers) to develop their own "regimes of
truth" in the Foucauldian sense -- we only report on the "truth
statements" they generate, if their communities are "notable" enough
to warrant inclusion. (Such notability, as always, will be somewhat
arbitrary and will always be in flux, but that's not new to this
question.)

At least, that's how I understand the policies.

FF

On 6/7/05, steven l. rubenstein <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote some thoughtful comments, some of which I deeply disagree
> with:
>
> >MO, those would only be legitimate sources to cite if the subject
> >itself is obscure and known only to specialists.  If it's a well-known
> >subject, it would make more sense to use mainstream sources on the
> >subject.
>
> Yes and no.  One reason for citing sources is so that readers who want to
> know more (or check facts) can go to the sources.  In this sense, I do
> agree with Matt that it is important to provide sources that anyone who is
> on-line and has access to Amazon.com, or access to a good library, can find.
>
> But I disagree with Matt's distinction between "obscure subject" and other
> subjects.  A subject that is not obscure, for example the Holocaust or the
> Bible or the U.S. Civil War, obviously has loads of popular and easily
> acceptable sources we can cite.  But there is always ongoing academic
> research, and much important and relevant information will come from
> relatively obscure sources.  This is precisely the material we want to
> include in a high-quality encyclopedia, even if the cited sources are hard
> to find.
>
> >If the obscure source is indeed important, it will at least
> >have been cited by someone else.  If, for example, you find an obscure
> >source on the Holocaust that is not cited in any mainstream work on the
> >Holocaust, it would be original research to begin to build an argument
> >based on it.
>
> Matt, this is just 100% wrong.  You simply do not understand our NOR
> policy.  It would violate our policy to "build an argument" on any source,
> "mainstream" as well as "obscure."  But adding material, including
> published data, published explanations, published interpretations, is NOT
> "original research" if it comes from sources that are, however obscure,
> reputable.
>
> >   (If you thought mainstream Holocaust historians were
> >ignoring some obscure but credible and important source, that would be
> >an issue to take up with them; we're just here to report the consensus
> >in the field, not to create it.)
>
> Again, 100% wrong.  We are not here to report the consensus.  As a matter
> of fact, one of the most important functions of our NPOV policy is to
> ensure that diverse views (and if they are diverse, they obviously do not
> represent a consensus) .  We report on different views, provide the proper
> sources, and any context about the sources that can help readers evaluate
> the views being represented.  "Consensus" hotonly has nothing to do with
> it, it is antithetical to what we stand for.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Compulsory Mediation,
	Was Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
On 6/7/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I would be happy to have a legal person give his opinion here.
>
> In real life, mediation is essentially a choice, not a
> requirement/obligation.
> I am a little dubious of the deep underlying significance of being
> punished for refusing mediation when in conflict. I also fear "refusing
> cooperation" in mediation would have to be a decision of the mediator...
> which implies a loss of neutrality... as well as requires a mandatory
> report of the mediator to the arbcom... possibly fueling a bad
> relationship between the mediator and the people in conflict.
> Since the relationship should be first based in confidence, I am perplex
> of the implications it might result to.
>

In contract law (at least in Australia, and I think in the United
States too) courts will find that parties have a duty to negotiate in
good faith. This is somewhat of a nebulous concept, but essentially
what it requires is that the parties demonstrate a genuine, honest
attempt to negotiate fruitfully with other parties. They aren't
required to concede any ground, or act contrary to their interests,
just participate honestly.

This would be the obligation facing a party to compulsory mediation,
to at least attempt to negotiate an outcome, and at least be open to
resolving the dispute.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] My views on policies and debates over content

body:
Clearly the lack of rules are ''also'' being abused by the ill intentioned.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 6/8/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The concern that some feel about this is not, I believe, based on
> their misunderstanding of Wikipedia's fundamental policies.  Rather,
> it is about how those policies should be interpreted, enforced, and
> utilised.
>
> Personally, my concern is that policy interpretations based on highly
> contentious articles may lead to poor general rules: "Hard cases make
> bad law".  I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules,
> procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to
> rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.
>
> Every rule set down in stone is a rule behind which a troll can hide.
> Or turn into a club to beat those they want to antagonize.
>
> Every time we are tempted by instruction-creep, we should think "How
> will this rule be abused by the ill-intentioned?"
>
> -Matt (User:Morven)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sulev Iva

subject: [Wikipedia-l] addind new language into wikipedia

body:
Hi Arns,

I'm happy to see activity on Samogitian language modernization.
You have very good article about Samogitian in enWikipedia.
I think Samogitian is worth to have its own Wikipedia.
You should add your request to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
But it seems to be very hard to establish Wikipedia in a new language.
I requested for creating V?ro language Wikipedia in January and there are very many
other wikis that are waiting to be created, but as much as I know
only one - Ossetian Wikipedia - has been created in this year.
So you must be ready for very long waiting.
Good luck to Samogitian!

Your (almost) neighbour
from V?romaa (South Estonia)
Sulev Iva

5.06.2005 18:18:30, Zordsdavini iz Litvy <zordsdavini at gmail.com> kirot':

>hello world,
>I want to start new language (Samogitian) in wikipedia. Where are
>about 0.5 million samogitians in west Lithuania and about another 0.5
>million understand. The 3 letter language code for Samogitian could be
>"smg" so the URL should be http://smg.wikipedia.org. I am a native
>speaker and know the requirement for samogitian in web. It would be
>good start for computerisation this language :-D
>
>Arns
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zordsdavini
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
<rant>

There's been much talk about content, and sources, and whatnot. I
think alot of this debate has been caused by confusion over some of
WP's fundamental policies, particularly WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that WP:NPOV has *always* had a
threshold to it. People are getting all worked up about a content
cabal over nothing. Exclusion of minority opinions has always been
policy. Not every theory can get in just because someone published a
paper on it. Scroll down to the second heading and read the quote from
Jimbo:

"If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be
easy to name prominent adherents; If a viewpoint is held by an
extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in
Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of
whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it
or not."

If, out of a collection of say 100 scholarly articles, less than 5 of
them represented a particular POV, that POV does not deserve
inclusion. Of course people will quibble over what "minority" means,
but we can always have a vote on the talk page to see whether people
consider a source to be a minority source.

Many of the examples discussed here are trivial and not the kind of
disputes which actually happen. Re trains: it's ok to cite some not
particularly well known train-related archive, as long as train buffs
know about it. WP:V says:

"In general, consider the sorts of people who are likely to edit the
article in question: the article should be verifiable by these people.
Therefore, an article on a sociology topic might include content that
can only be verified by a sociologist."

The problem articles are generally not the ones with little
information available about them. Generally, they aren't contentious,
and if they are, they probably fall under WP:V or WP:NOR, in which
case they can be dealt with quite easily.

No, the problem articles are the ones where one large body of people
coming from one POV are confronting another large body coming from
another POV. But of course it is not WP's role to solve these
disputes, merely discuss them. Some people seem to forget this. If the
process of WP:NPOV (weed out the minority sources) cannot arrive at a
consensus set of facts, then that's fine. If we can't, then the real
world probably can't either. We just present the opinions and move on.

All that is necessary for POV to prevail is for good Wikipedians not
to read/enforce WP:NPOV properly.

Now it's late and I'm going to bed. Apologies for taking up so much inbox space.

</rant>

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Angela

body:
On 09/06/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> Os.wikipedia was requested around the same time as the V?ro kiil`
> Wikipedia, but it was created sooner. One possible reason is that they
> had an off-site Ossetic version of Wikipedia that they set up, which
> might've helped increase the apparent urgency for a developer (the
> sooner you set it up, the less likely they are to remain at a separate
> website, etc).

Since V?ro is already being edited as part of the Test-wp on meta, I
don't think a separate site would help here.

> I don't know if it's exactly legal to use the name "wikipedia" for an
> off-site version, in fact I'm betting it's not, but the foundation has
> plenty of more important things to worry about than costly legal
> battles over whether or not such sites should be able to use the name,
> especially if it's only temporary.

Please don't do this. Violating the Foundation's trademarks is hardly
a good start to getting your wiki accepted within the project. If it
needs to be off-site, you should choose another name for it until it
is officially a Wikipedia.

Is there actually any objection to V?ro being created now at fiu-vro?

Angela.


from_name: michaelturley at myway.com

body:
I see absolutely no need to arbitrate, mediate, or otherwise rule on appropriate content.

Attempting to do so is like trying to nail warm Jell-O to the wall.  Wikipedia articles are fluid and constantly changing.  Any version of an editorial board could only fix an article's state at one specific point in time, and the "approved" version would probably be long out of date by the time the ruling was formulated and agreed upon.

The only real solutions are:
1. to recruit more intelligent, reasonable editors by offering a welcoming, respectful community atmosphere,
2. to cite our sources more thoroughly and properly, and let the reader decide their individual credibility
3. to recruit as many editors as possible to make use of the watchlist feature for each contended article
4. to use NPOV tags and their derivatives to warn readers of disagreements over content.

Our mistakes at this time may be not giving the readers a full sense of just how much disputed Wikipedia articles can change over short time periods, and not making clear enough just what NPOV means.

Perhaps we need a stronger, more explicit NPOV tag, or variants thereof, for some articles.  We could also make it more clear that our readers can browse the history of any article to gain insight by reviewing its creation process.  We can also slow the process of the change even more, to encourage a more thoughtful process, like was done with the introduction of the 3 revert rule, and like is done every day with temporary edit locks.

But attempting to vet content through a review board of any kind is folly for a wiki encyclopedia.  The active community IS the review board on a wiki.

The only oversight that is proper is that which is necessary to ensure that everyone participates fairly and generally on equal terms according to behavior rules.

Michael Turley
User:Unfocused

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way  your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On Jun 8, 2005, at 8:46 PM, Stephen Forrest wrote:

> On 6/8/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Eh, it's quite possible, .. for example in making a example for a math
>> article you might stumble on something somewhat novel, but often in
>> mathematics we can empirically confirm the truth of something in a way
>> which doesn't assert POV. So you might say that NOR is less important
>> in articles about math. ... but at the same time, it's not like
>> placing something in an article gets people to test the proof, so NOR
>> is still potentially valuable there because the majority of 'great new
>> mathematical ideas' are actually wrong. :

If you do find something new, then publish. Once published it can be
included.

The creative effort of wikipedia is the synthesis - it is that which is
our "original research", namely, the creation of a consensus statement
of the state of knowledge as it can be documented. This is original -
it does not exist any place else. If working on wikipedia advances
original research, then channel that into the appropriate place, namely
the testing ground for knoweldge. If it then comes back, it is a
success.

It might even be interesting to document cases of publishable material
whose origin was on wikipedia as the author did his background work in
preparation.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Board question

body:
Dear Board,

the current Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws specify that, if one of the
board seats should become vacant, the remaining Board can appoint
someone to fill these seats.

I'd like to ask the Board what its intentions are
- should one of the community-elected trustees resign
- should one of the non-elected positions (Tim and Michael) become vacant.

The reason I raise this question is simple. Many potential candidates
have stated that they will not stand for election because they support
the current Board as it is, however, that they would stand if more than
2 seats were available. For this reason, I believe it would be bad if,
as per the Bylaws, the Board were to appoint someone (whoever comes in
third in this year's election, or whoever they trust the most, or
anything like that) should one of the seats become vacant. This is
especially true if, as has been suggested, Board terms are extended to
two years.

I would therefore appreciate assurance that any community members of the
Board will be again chosen by the community in an election should such a
situation arise -- perhaps with one notable exception: if someone were
to resign shortly before an election (i.e. within 3 months), it would be
undesirable, I think, to have all the organizational overhead of a
separate election just for that brief period. However, in such a
situation, my preference would be to leave the seat vacant, or, if it is
necessary for legal reasons, to appoint a trusted person purely for the
purpose of filling the seat (and perhaps breaking ties in votes).

I would like to know what your thoughts are on the matter.

Thanks,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Board question


subject: [Foundation-l] Board question

body:
> I'd like to ask the Board what its intentions are
> - should one of the community-elected trustees resign
> - should one of the non-elected positions (Tim and Michael) become vacant.

Speaking for myself, not the board, since it's not something we've
discussed, I think this would have to depend upon when the seat became
vacant. I don't think it would be practical to hold a separate
election for one seat within three months of the next election.

> The reason I raise this question is simple. Many potential candidates
> have stated that they will not stand for election because they support
> the current Board as it is, however, that they would stand if more than
> 2 seats were available. For this reason, I believe it would be bad if,
> as per the Bylaws, the Board were to appoint someone (whoever comes in
> third in this year's election, or whoever they trust the most, or
> anything like that) should one of the seats become vacant.

I don't really see how appointing someone to the board in the event of
a seat becoming vacant relates to the upcoming election. If we were to
appoint someone, I see no reason we'd simply appoint whoever came
third in this election.

> I would therefore appreciate assurance that any community members of the
> Board will be again chosen by the community in an election should such a
> situation arise

I'd be happy for that to happen as long it was more than three months
before the following election. If you want real assurance of this, the
bylaws would need to change since they currently specify that the
Board would make an appointment in such a situation. Asking for
assurance from the current Board without changing the bylaws won't
give you much of a guarantee since two of those members could be
replaced in the upcoming election.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Board question


body:
Hi Mark,

Thank you for good advises! Actually the temporary
V?ro off-site Wikipedia already exists as a group of test pages in Wikimedia:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-vro/ (now with about 15 articles).
Fully translated V?ro language interface is available:
http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageVR.php
or http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=418&action=view.
And of course I will continue what I'm doing :)

Sulev

9.06.2005 1:25:39, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> kirot':

>Hi Sulev,
>
>Whether or not it's hard to begin a new Wikipedia really depends.
>
>Tumbuka was created very rapidly with very little discussion, and now
>lies totally inactive with under 50 pages (more like 17).
>
>The people who requested its creation simply floated away after they
>got what they wanted.
>
>Os.wikipedia was requested around the same time as the V?ro kiil`
>Wikipedia, but it was created sooner. One possible reason is that they
>had an off-site Ossetic version of Wikipedia that they set up, which
>might've helped increase the apparent urgency for a developer (the
>sooner you set it up, the less likely they are to remain at a separate
>website, etc).
>
>Sometimes Wikipedias are created quickly and with little or no fuss,
>and other times they take a very long time and have lots of argument.
>
>My recommendations: Set up an off-site "V?ro kiilne Vikipeedia" (?),
>possibly with the help of Amikeco (I don't know if he's willing to
>help or not). Once you have 30~50 articles there and a fully
>translated interface, ask a developer to create the Voro Wikipedia. If
>they hesitate tell them about the off-site version, and if nothing
>happens just keep doing what you're doing on your off-site
>free-encyclopaedia with the same name.
>
>I don't know if it's exactly legal to use the name "wikipedia" for an
>off-site version, in fact I'm betting it's not, but the foundation has
>plenty of more important things to worry about than costly legal
>battles over whether or not such sites should be able to use the name,
>especially if it's only temporary.
>
>Mark
>
>On 08/06/05, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:
>> Hi Arns,
>>
>> I'm happy to see activity on Samogitian language modernization.
>> You have very good article about Samogitian in enWikipedia.
>> I think Samogitian is worth to have its own Wikipedia.
>> You should add your request to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
>> But it seems to be very hard to establish Wikipedia in a new language.
>> I requested for creating V?ro language Wikipedia in January and there are very many
>> other wikis that are waiting to be created, but as much as I know
>> only one - Ossetian Wikipedia - has been created in this year.
>> So you must be ready for very long waiting.
>> Good luck to Samogitian!
>>
>> Your (almost) neighbour
>> from V?romaa (South Estonia)
>> Sulev Iva
>>
>> 5.06.2005 18:18:30, Zordsdavini iz Litvy <zordsdavini at gmail.com> kirot':
>>
>> >hello world,
>> >I want to start new language (Samogitian) in wikipedia. Where are
>> >about 0.5 million samogitians in west Lithuania and about another 0.5
>> >million understand. The 3 letter language code for Samogitian could be
>> >"smg" so the URL should be http://smg.wikipedia.org. I am a native
>> >speaker and know the requirement for samogitian in web. It would be
>> >good start for computerisation this language :-D
>> >
>> >Arns
>> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zordsdavini
>> >_______________________________________________
>> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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: Stephen Adair

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion lag times

body:
Wooooohoooo!!!  I just went screaming through [[Category:Candidates
for speedy deletion]] at high speed.  Less lag than I've had in a very
long time.  There was a long list, but I handled almost everything,
passing on just a couple.  From the edit summaries left, I could see
that RickK wasn't the only admin tagging articles rather than trying
to delete them.  I especially liked the edit summary "Garbage, but I
don't wanna try 10-30 times before the delete actually works--I hope
they fix this soon, or we're gonna be swamped."  Someone did
something, and did it right.  Deletion is no longer a frustrating
hassle.

Stephen W. Adair
User:SWAdair

On 6/8/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes, it's been really bad the last couple of days.  I
> have made ten attempts at some deletions and have
> finally given up, just put the {{delete}} header on
> the page for later deletion when the process actually
> works.  Of course, when I brought it up on the Village
> Pump, I was ridiculed instead of given any
> constructive advice.
>
> RickK
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Discover Yahoo!
> Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out!
> http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] dumps

body:
Bonjour,

I had a suggestion. It was shortly discussed on irc the other day, but I do not have certainty if this would be easy to implement, easy to handle afterwards or just a good idea or not. I just give the idea. Since I do not exactly know how such things are handled, I might also say stupidities in the way :-)

I would like to suggest that we make 2 dumps rather than 1. One will be standalone, but essentially focus on the "real content" space (for wikipedia, the encyclopedic space), while the other one will contain all other spaces (and in particular wikipedia: or user: spaces) (or all spaces ?)

As some people reacted on the fact that all content is open so should be downloadable, I want to insist that the issue is not to prevent people from getting dumps of certain spaces, but rather to improve services, for our mirrors, for our editors and those studying the community.

1) in most cases, mirrors are only interested in encyclopedic content. Their goal is to provide information to their readers, not discussions on the wikipedia: pages nor user stuff. They have no use of user or wikipedia stuff. Encyclopedic only dumps might be lighter.
In extreme cases, mirrors handle global dumps rather badly (see the Izynews mirror)

2) though user space is gfdl, many editors only mildly appreciate to see their user page in hundred of copies on our mirrors, in particular because they can not edit them, and these might not reflect their opinion any more. Not to mention cases when the page was vandalised just before the dump was done, thus resulting in a very poor page being stored by many mirrors for a long time (not all mirrors are frequently updated). Even though all pages are GFDL, user or wikipedia space are for most part our internal kitchen.

3) user space, wikipedia space are of interest mostly to those trying to study wikipedia and wikipedia social dynamics. Those are the main ones likely to be interested in the "community"  space. Why not having a dump essentially aiming at them ?

It might be here that we should begin to make the difference between our goal (making an encyclopedia and making it available to all) and making all information available to anyone anytime, whatever its relevance... just because by principle, information should be open.

So, here is my idea. What do you think ? Would there be technical or human limitations to this ?

ant

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] User groups changed again

body:
I've reworked the user_groups system, again, into something that seems
to actually more or less work for now.

* user_groups ur_group is now a short string key ('sysop' etc)
* groups table is gone
* user_rights table is gone
* Permissions for groups are for now set in $wgGroupPermissions.
An in-database management system could be re-added in the future
if it's really needed, but for now it's mostly just been screwing
things up.
* Group.php and Special:Groups are deprecated; will probably die.
* User group memberships are set explicitly through addGroup and
removeGroup methods instead of being re-saved on every change to
the user record.

In 1.4, the group keys are in a comma-separated list in the user_rights
table (in 1.3 and earlier the user_rights field in the user table).
They're now split to individual rows in user_groups; this means you can
for instance easily grab a list of all sysops without a nasty LIKE clause.

On an upgrade from 1.4 or older, the user_rights data should be
automatically migrated. When updating an existing 1.5 alpha wiki, the
previous user_groups table will be renamed and a clean one simply added;
due to the various funkadelic problems before I don't think there's much
point trying to migrate automatically -- the user_rights fields were
overwritten with garbage and I wouldn't trust the contents fo the old
user_groups.

So when you update your alpha wiki, be sure to add yourself a sysop
back, something like:

   INSERT INTO user_groups values (1,'sysop'),(1,'bureaucrat');

The good news is, the sysop user created at installation should actually
work now... :D

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki and google - summer of code

body:
Hi,

is there any special reason why mediawiki is not part of the google - summer
of code?

http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html

best regards,
  Marco


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles

body:
Jimmy Wales:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>Wikimania should get a dedicated press release when we have finalized
>>the programme. We can mention the "2 million articles" number in that,
>>but it shouldn't be the focus. It seems unlikely that anyone who would
>>not care about Wikimania itself would care about yet another Wikipedia
>>milestone.

> I think the opposite in this case.  The press will care about 2 million.
>  They will not care about Wikimania.  Using 2 million as the hook to get
> attention to Wikimania makes sense.

Perhaps it makes sense to distinguish different types of media.
Heise.de, Slashdot.org, Kuro5hin.org, CNET and other media outlets who
have in the past frequently reported about Wikimedia events are
different from, say, the New York Times or USA Today.

Kuro5hin and heise.de both reported about the 100K Commons uploads.
However, in both cases, there were many reader comments of the type "Yet
Another Wikimedia Number" (YAWN). I think that for a "2 million
articles" press release, the reaction might be similar, especially
because Wikimedia Commons is a new project most people haven't heard of,
while all of these outlets have repeatedly reported about Wikipedia
itself. On the other hand, I expect that all of them might find
Wikimania interesting.

More simply put, if you're a geek, you don't need to hear this number,
so geeky news sources might be less inclined to report it. A traditional
newspaper like the NYT, however, might see a major milestone like this
as a good opportunity to report about Wikipedia again (and hence
Wikimania). The only problem I see with these mega-milestones is that
the numbers are just getting too large. :-) When you say "The German
edition of Wikipedia has surpassed Brockhaus" or "The English edition
has surpassed Britannica", you give people a perspective. When you say
"All editions together have surpassed 2 million articles", it's not a
number people can do anything with, or imagine the significance of. In
fact, for many people who have never used WP, the immediate reaction
will be an incredulous "But how many of them are any good?"

That is to say, I think that when a Wikipedia language has surpassed all
existing encyclopedias in quantity, the focus of our media work should
shift to quality: number of reviewed articles, results of quality
comparisons, and so on. As for the combined press release at 2M, as
noted above, I believe that using different media strategies for
different outlets might be a good idea: focus on the major milestone for
the traditional ones and on the exciting conference for the techy/geeky
ones.

Best,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Downtime postmortem notes, part I

references:
<42A6355F.6060801@pobox.com> <1724616.TPrX4uBIcP@rose.local>
	<1624594.z2uRFGBJAt@rose.local>

body:
Kate Turner (keturner at livejournal.com) [050608 22:28]:
> Kate Turner wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> > regarding the downtime page, i've put it in CVS as /tools/downtime/,
> > because we've had such a notice at least twice now, and it seems wise to
> > have a standard, translated message for use in the future.

> you can preview the current version at
> <http://www.knams.wikimedia.org/downtime/>.

Surely the versions in languages other than English should link to mirrors
in the language in question, not mirrors of en:?

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] User groups changed again

body:
Dori wrote:
> On 6/9/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>I've reworked the user_groups system, again, into something that seems
>>to actually more or less work for now.
>>
>>* user_groups ur_group is now a short string key ('sysop' etc)
>
> I think it'd probably be better to get rid of the strings and use
> levels instead. Level 0 (reader), level 10 (editor), level 20 (page
> mover), level 30 (can protect pages) level 40 (can block) etc.

While that sounds like it might be simple and convenient at first
glance, I think it would be a big step backwards.

For an example off the top of my head, it wouldn't be able to handle
things that we use in the default configuration on Wikipedia, such as
the bot group. Bots aren't a level between regular accounts and sysops;
it's a distinct, disjoint property.

You can build levels on top of groups if you want to, but you can't
build groups on top of levels.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] User groups changed again

body:
Lane, Ryan wrote:
> When you say levels, you do mean 30 would have the privileges of 0 and 10 as
> well as the privilege to protect pages? Wouldn't it be better to be able to
> define groups with different sets of privileges? I know someone was working
> on a more fine grained permission system, is that now dead in the water?

There are three parts:

1) Assigning group memberships to users
2) Assigning permission sets to groups
3) Having useful permissions in the first place :)

In the old code, 1) was stored as a comma-separated list in user_rights.
Now it's a slightly different format in user_groups, but it's basically
the same. The set of groups is open-ended; you can add keys in
$wgGroupPermissions and they should show up in the Special:Userrights
interface.

2) was implicit through 1.3, with a few hardcoded checks in various
places in the code for particular group names ('sysop', 'bureaucrat',
etc). In 1.4 some bits of this were genericized, with the
User::isAllowed() function; this is more genericized in 1.5. Currently
the set of permissions conferred by a group membership are set in a
global config variable, $wgGroupPermissions.

As for 3), for particular checks it depends on the code that's using it.
Things check for named permissions like 'move', 'protect', etc.

When you get into things like 'can this user edit or view this
particular page' it's a little hazier; the protect/unprotect system is a
fairly blunt instrument and doesn't currently allow you to, say,
indicate that a page is supposed to be editable by anyone in the
'marketing' or 'management' groups but not by anyone else.

In theory the backend *does* let you do exactly that if you set
page_restrictions right -- having the restriction key in your group
membership gives you permission to edit the page while people who don't
have a matching key can't edit it. However I haven't tested it for
non-default keys and it may be broken. If it's broken it probably should
be fixed, but someone wanting 'fine-grained permissions' meaning
'marking aprticular pages as editable' would also need a UI front-end
for dealing with that, which we don't have now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Determining an "approved version" of an article is not contemplated
under any proposal. What is contemplated is ruling on disputes
regarding content which occur from time to time. In most instances
resolution will be found by restating the NPOV policy as it applies
to the particular matter.

Fred

On Jun 8, 2005, at 10:46 PM, michaelturley at myway.com wrote:

> the "approved" version


from_name: Lane, Ryan

subject: [Wikitech-l] User groups changed again

body:
When you say levels, you do mean 30 would have the privileges of 0 and 10 as
well as the privilege to protect pages? Wouldn't it be better to be able to
define groups with different sets of privileges? I know someone was working
on a more fine grained permission system, is that now dead in the water?

Ryan Lane

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [SMTP:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dori
> Sent:	Thursday, June 09, 2005 7:57 AM
> To:	Wikimedia developers
> Subject:	Re: [Wikitech-l] User groups changed again
>
> On 6/9/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > I've reworked the user_groups system, again, into something that seems
> > to actually more or less work for now.
> >
> > * user_groups ur_group is now a short string key ('sysop' etc)
>
> I think it'd probably be better to get rid of the strings and use
> levels instead. Level 0 (reader), level 10 (editor), level 20 (page
> mover), level 30 (can protect pages) level 40 (can block) etc. It's
> going to be a lot more work to get this to work, but as long as it's
> getting reworked. Optionally another table could have mappings that
> are easier to understand: i.e. sysop <= 50,  bureaucrat <= 100, etc
> for backwards compatibility.
>
> Maybe it would be too much for getting this release ready though...
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Matt Brown (morven at gmail.com) [050609 07:42]:

>   I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules,
> procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to
> rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.

Yes. That's precisely my uneasy feeling about this discussion. POV pushers
won't go away, they'll adapt to circumstances. If a hundred editors say
Rush Limbaugh outdraws a peer-reviewed scientific paper as a reference on
science, do they win the vote 100-1?

Also, I've seen no plans for when such content decisions are reviewable.
Never? Once you win, is the question officially fixed?

> Every rule set down in stone is a rule behind which a troll can hide.
> Or turn into a club to beat those they want to antagonize.
> Every time we are tempted by instruction-creep, we should think "How
> will this rule be abused by the ill-intentioned?"

"This proposal will create a stick for idiots." i.e. an idiot stick. Yep.

- d.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
> The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an
> encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded. The
> way we do that is by assessing how much (academic) support
> they have, in terms of the context and subject matter.
> There's no need for content committees, as long as consensus
> decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and
> enforced (arbitration).
>
> --
> Stephen Bain

If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much
support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip of
unpopular views.

* We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of
  scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC)
  disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions
  are causing excessive atmospheric warming.

* If a religion is branded a "cult" (and enough people share
  this view), then the "excluded POVs policy" would forbid
  ANY mention of reasons why some people think the religion
  is bona fide.

In short, Wikipedia would become the "liberal encyclopedia", replacing
the NPOV *policy* with the liberal *POV*. I don't think Jimbo would like
that.

Jimbo, please comment.

Ed Poor


body:
On 6/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Matt Brown (morven at gmail.com) [050609 07:42]:
>
> >   I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules,
> > procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to
> > rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.
>
>
> Yes. That's precisely my uneasy feeling about this discussion. POV pushers
> won't go away, they'll adapt to circumstances. If a hundred editors say
> Rush Limbaugh outdraws a peer-reviewed scientific paper as a reference on
> science, do they win the vote 100-1?
>
> Also, I've seen no plans for when such content decisions are reviewable.
> Never? Once you win, is the question officially fixed?
>
>

I purposely didn't want to say a number for this reason. What I was
trying to illustrate was the point in WP:V that the article in general
should be verifiable by people who are likely to edit that article. So
for an article on science, if a source is questionable, we ask some
scientists, either literally ask some, or think like a scientist
would. In either case, your example would probably be resolved in
favour of the peer-reviewed paper.

As for reviewable decisions, I don't think there's an answer to that,
party because Wikipedia is a wiki, and is always flexible and
changing. I don't believe that flexibility should be abused, or in any
way twisted to be an unfair advantage. As it says at
Wikipedia:Consensus, consensus should not trump NPOV (or any other
policy). Sometimes it may happen, and that's a bad thing, but
sometimes that's just the price of being a wiki. Too many rules (as
opposed to policies for editors to follow) reduce the wikiness.

The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and
that some POVs have to be excluded. The way we do that is by assessing
how much (academic) support they have, in terms of the context and
subject matter. There's no need for content committees, as long as
consensus decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and
enforced (arbitration).

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> You still end up with at least some level of credentialism because
> users would presumably have to prove their credentials before being
> admitted to the consultative body.

Most often that will be to list a bunch of articles in the relevant field that
they have substantially contributed to. Only if that person does not edit much
in an area would they need to present anything that would normally be
considered 'credentials.'

-- mav

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out!
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from_name: ABCD

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion

body:
It has been proposed that [[Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion]]
([[WP:SFD]]) go live.

For more information, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Stub_types_for_deletion .

ABCD


body:
On 6/8/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I would like us to look together
> > for a solution that is compatible with our ideals and dreams of
> > openness and cooperation in good faith, rather than one that takes us
> > down the road of credentialism and hierarchy.
>
> I fail to see how having a consultive body to the ArbCom would do that. They
> would not have any power of their own and there will be checks and balances.
> I'd just like to be able to ask groups of respected and vetted users who have
> demonstrated some competence in certain areas questions from time to time as
> needed.

You still end up with at least some level of credentialism because
users would presumably have to prove their credentials before being
admitted to the consultative body.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
--- Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem is that we have a whole bunch of cases that are currently
> being heard by the arbitration committee - such as the climate change
> dispute, which *do* need to be dealt with, but why I - and others -
> believe shouldn't be dealt with by a system of paroles, bans,
> limitations and punishment. What Unfocused suggests is effectively
> just the status quo - which, in my book, is going to see good editors
> leave because we end up having to limit their editing rights instead
> of solving the blasted dispute, once it has gone on for long enough.

Exactly. All I want are groups of people that the ArbCom can consult to help it
determine just who is and is not following our content-related policies like
NPOV and NOR. Going back to an old example; I simply don't know enough about
advanced mathematics to know if a person is pushing a POV in that area or is
engaging in original research except in the most blatant of cases. It would
help arbitration a great deal if the ArbCom could ask a panel of non-involved
and vetted users who *could* tell one way or the other.

Thus my idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/RFC#Alternate_solution_.239_by_mav._Content_subcommittee

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Puddl Duk

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: www.biography.ms is illegally using Wikipedia
	content

body:
On 6/7/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Funny that you mention it. Yesterday, I was looking for an old pdf
> version of Donella Meadows work. Had a hard time finding it because all
> what was on the net about her was copies of the wikipedia articles (mine
> in good part, so this was not what I was looking for). One of the most
> proeminent copy was precisely this website.
>
>
> It was also one of the first time I regretted articles existed in
> wikipedia... because I could not find the original paper I was looking
> for, because the web was so much infested by the wikipedia articles...
>
> I suddently regretted Google was not able to distinguish that all the
> articles were the same, and hidding other articles which are unique, but
> simply less visible. I actually wonder if this is not a bit problematic.
> It looks as if the search system was not able to handle this properly
> any more.
>
>
> Ant

Google search string;

"Donella Meadows" pdf  -wikipedia


body:
What I am suggesting, not necessarily advocating, is to take into
consideration at the arbitration stage whether the user engaged in
mediation in good faith. If they just messed around and stalled (or
whatever) that would be reported and considered. The theory,
basically is that if they have energy to repeatedly revert in order
to get their way with respect to an article, they should also have
the time and energy to discuss the matter in good faith or they ought
to lose the privilege of editing.

Fred

On Jun 8, 2005, at 8:50 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 6/7/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> In real life, mediation is essentially a choice, not a
>> requirement/obligation.
>>
>
> I've been in mandatory mediation twice (once on a court order, once on
> my request).  The mediator, in both cases, had only the authority to
> report on what agreement, if any, was reached during the mediation.
> Matters discussed but not agreed upon would not be included in the
> report.  (In one case, we agreed on most, but not all issues; in the
> other we agreed on nothing.)  I think it's important that those acting
> as mediators keep the bulk of the mediation in confidence, reporting
> only that mediation occurred and on what was actually agreed upon, if
> anything, during the mediation.  If either party refuses to mediate in
> good faith, then the mediator should simply bring mediations to a
> close and report back that no agreement was reached without explaining
> why.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
>
>On 6/6/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > it was never intended. When it is pointed out that obvious arguments
>will be
> > cited *somewhere*, the response is that some things are so obvious (e.g.
> > "like the fact that the sun rises in the east") that it would actually
>be
> > hard to find someone specifically stating them!
>
>Hm. I'm the only person in recent memory who has made such a claim, so
>should I be offended that you appear to be binning me in with crackpot
>theorists?

Nothing personal; you're just the latest in a long line.  And the people who
insist their original research isn't original aren't always crackpot
theorists; more often they're fairly normal people who have some strongly
held beliefs.

>For the record, I've never been a party to a content dispute on wikipedia.

For the record, I can't make the same claim; not by a long shot. :-)

>I've discussed NOR because I believe it's a fundamentally weak idea at
>its core but it functions as a bandaid to solve many problems *now*...
>but long term we need process in place to accept and reject new
>research in a way which keeps out most of the crackpots (or at least
>mitigates their harm) and doesn't break NPOV.

I think the exact opposite; that it's a brilliant policy, especially when
combined with other policies, particularly NPOV.  While it was intended to
deal with crackpots, what it is also good at (when used properly) is from
stopping highly charged articles from descending into warring opinionfests.

>Already wikipedia has become a better (more complete, more neutral,
>more verified and reviewed) corpus than some of the sources we cite,
>simply because our process are our contributors pretty good for some
>things... or alternatively, because other places are so bad. :)  In
>any case we're weaving an odd world where wikipedia will become a
>default source of reliable general material... but to insert something
>new you must first publish it someplace less reliable.

I haven't seen evidence that Wikipedia is more reliable than the sources it
cite; the contributer process is highly variable, and I've seen some rather
absurd claims successfully defended in articles by large groups of people.

>... The point is that in the process of reinventing the encyclopedia
>we are also reinventing peer review. The logical conclusion is that
>while the encyclopedia should not be a repository for original
>research (because it's an encyclopedia), we will ultimately end up
>building such a repository because our process is superior and because
>we will eventually need it as a reference once we've put everyone else
>out of business. ;)    Which is why I proposed wikiviews as a first
>cautious step in that direction.

There already is a huge repository for original research that is easily and
readily available. It's called the Internet, and 90% of the original
research you find on there is utter crap.  I'm not sure why you'd want to
transfer that crap into a Wiki that has to be paid for in some way.

Jay.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion lag times

body:
Great to hear, SWAdair!
Thanks for cleaning up that cat.

--Mgm

On 6/9/05, Stephen Adair <swadair at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wooooohoooo!!!  I just went screaming through [[Category:Candidates
> for speedy deletion]] at high speed.  Less lag than I've had in a very
> long time.  There was a long list, but I handled almost everything,
> passing on just a couple.  From the edit summaries left, I could see
> that RickK wasn't the only admin tagging articles rather than trying
> to delete them.  I especially liked the edit summary "Garbage, but I
> don't wanna try 10-30 times before the delete actually works--I hope
> they fix this soon, or we're gonna be swamped."  Someone did
> something, and did it right.  Deletion is no longer a frustrating
> hassle.
>
> Stephen W. Adair
> User:SWAdair
>
> On 6/8/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Yes, it's been really bad the last couple of days.  I
> > have made ten attempts at some deletions and have
> > finally given up, just put the {{delete}} header on
> > the page for later deletion when the process actually
> > works.  Of course, when I brought it up on the Village
> > Pump, I was ridiculed instead of given any
> > constructive advice.
> >
> > RickK
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Discover Yahoo!
> > Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out!
> > http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Maury Markowitz

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: www.biography.ms is illegally
	usingWikipediacontent

body:
I notice a recent change to the pages, including a boilerplate link to the
wikipedia as a whole. This means the site remains non-compliant. I will
contact them again.

Maury


from_name: ultrablue at gmail.com

body:
That's true, I had envisaged the one (rather bulky) HTML page
containing all the different languages' error messages, and people
could switch the language of the error message by clicking the desired
language's name. I didn't think we'd be able to get different error
pages for the different language wikis, since every single Wikimedia
site gets served the same error message at the moment. But if it's
technically possible to do this then it would be much better.

We could do a combination of both: have the host language show up as
the central/main language on the error page, but also have the top
5/10/... languages hidden in the HTML so the user can switch to that
language error message if necessary. Or just English, if people feel
that's an adequate secondary error message for non-English language
wikis.

~Mark Ryan

On 6/9/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Also, I (and Mark) had pictured it differently (or so I presume - we
> may have the same name but that doesn't mean I can speak for Mark) -
> one page for everybody rather than multiple pages being based on
> accept languages.
>
> Host language is a better idea, I think, and we really should look
> into it because many peoples' computers are set with, say, English as
> the accept language but would prefer to see the message in, say,
> Chinese.
>
> Mark
>


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
--- Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree completely with this. Content decisions
> should be made by the
> widest group possible. That is the fundamental
> nature of wiki.

Isn't the problem users not following WP:NPOV, WP:NOR
and WP:V? And what to do about them?

Mav's idea of finding people who have a good
understanding of a field, who then assess a disputed
article in the light of those three core policies and
report to the Arbcom (that's right, yeah Mav?) is
growing on me, despite some issues, as a 'last
resort'.

However I think the _first_ intervention should be
mediation, explaining those policies and educating
users (who simply may not be aware of them) where
needed. That can be done by 'amatuer' mediators like
myself responding to RfCs and 3Os, or by 'official'
mediators such as a revived Medcom.

But I suppose that's just not going to work everytime,
and we perhaps need a final, binding, resolution
process.

Dan

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Dori

subject: [Wikitech-l] User groups changed again

body:
On 6/9/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> I've reworked the user_groups system, again, into something that seems
> to actually more or less work for now.
>
> * user_groups ur_group is now a short string key ('sysop' etc)

I think it'd probably be better to get rid of the strings and use
levels instead. Level 0 (reader), level 10 (editor), level 20 (page
mover), level 30 (can protect pages) level 40 (can block) etc. It's
going to be a lot more work to get this to work, but as long as it's
getting reworked. Optionally another table could have mappings that
are easier to understand: i.e. sysop <= 50,  bureaucrat <= 100, etc
for backwards compatibility.

Maybe it would be too much for getting this release ready though...


from_name: Taco Deposit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Help me figure something out

body:
I found http://www.answers.com/topic/nuremberg-defense which is supposedly
copied from Wikipedia, but I can't find any article at [[Nuremburg defense]]
(or [[Nuremburg defence]]).  I also couldn't find at [[Special:Log/delete]]
where it had been deleted.  What am I missing?

TD


subject: [WikiEN-l] Help me figure something out

body:
Never mind, it was my spelling error.  I have now created redirects.

TD

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Taco Deposit
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 1:16 PM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Help me figure something out

I found http://www.answers.com/topic/nuremberg-defense which is supposedly
copied from Wikipedia, but I can't find any article at [[Nuremburg defense]]
(or [[Nuremburg defence]]).  I also couldn't find at [[Special:Log/delete]]
where it had been deleted.  What am I missing?

TD
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Pawel 'Ausir' Dembowski

body:
> it: has about 8,000 articles about italian administrative regions, kinda
> like Rambot entries. pt: has recently added the same 8,000 articles.

Wouldn't it be good to run the same bot also at en:?

--
Ausir


body:
>From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
>
>One really annoying form of
>original research is to present an idiosyncratic and novel opinion then
>supply a pile of references for the facts but not the opinion. Cranks have
>references out to *here*, but it's still original work. That's really not
>an encyclopedia's job.

That's *exactly* what I was complaining about, and see all the time!

Jay.


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
I agree completely with this. Content decisions should be made by the
widest group possible. That is the fundamental nature of wiki.

On 6/9/05, michaelturley at myway.com <michaelturley at myway.com> wrote:
>
> I see absolutely no need to arbitrate, mediate, or otherwise rule on appropriate content.
>
> Attempting to do so is like trying to nail warm Jell-O to the wall.  Wikipedia articles are fluid and constantly changing.  Any version of an editorial board could only fix an article's state at one specific point in time, and the "approved" version would probably be long out of date by the time the ruling was formulated and agreed upon.
>
> The only real solutions are:
> 1. to recruit more intelligent, reasonable editors by offering a welcoming, respectful community atmosphere,
> 2. to cite our sources more thoroughly and properly, and let the reader decide their individual credibility
> 3. to recruit as many editors as possible to make use of the watchlist feature for each contended article
> 4. to use NPOV tags and their derivatives to warn readers of disagreements over content.
>
> Our mistakes at this time may be not giving the readers a full sense of just how much disputed Wikipedia articles can change over short time periods, and not making clear enough just what NPOV means.
>
> Perhaps we need a stronger, more explicit NPOV tag, or variants thereof, for some articles.  We could also make it more clear that our readers can browse the history of any article to gain insight by reviewing its creation process.  We can also slow the process of the change even more, to encourage a more thoughtful process, like was done with the introduction of the 3 revert rule, and like is done every day with temporary edit locks.
>
> But attempting to vet content through a review board of any kind is folly for a wiki encyclopedia.  The active community IS the review board on a wiki.
>
> The only oversight that is proper is that which is necessary to ensure that everyone participates fairly and generally on equal terms according to behavior rules.
>
> Michael Turley
> User:Unfocused
>
> _______________________________________________
> No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
> Make My Way  your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Andybnyork at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a link on your license plate page

body:
Hello! My name is Andy and am webmaster for THE PLATE HUT at
_www.platehut.com_ (http://www.platehut.com) , I am interested in having a  link added to your
license plate page. Would you be interested in this. I  apologize if I have
contacted the wrong person here.

Thank you very much,

Andy Bernstein
THE PLATE HUT


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] dumps

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>> Would there be technical or human limitations to this ?
>
> mysqldump(1) doesn't allow selective dumps of table contents.

Actually, it does -- you can supply a where clause as an option.

We won't be using mysqldump for main content dumps under 1.5, though;
we'll be generating dumps from dumpBackup.php. Adding a restricted-
namespace cur-only dump to the others would be easy.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] substr vs mb_substr

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Without having actually looked at the code but it should be using the
> truncate() function from the language class, however the Language.php
> version of that function is not Unicode aware so stuff like this will
> continue happening until bug 2069 is solved
> (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2069)

I don't understand this claim. The LanguageUtf8 truncate *is* already
UTF-8 aware; 2069 is a code layout issue only and does not affect
functionality.

If there's a bug here, it's from failing to call the function in the
first place and letting the database crop the field.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Some Wikipedian misinformation got temporarily lodged in
	my brain

body:
This is NOT a big deal, but it occurred to me that I should mention it.

My car had about 140,000 miles on it and I was about ready for a new one. I
like Toyotas and I wanted good mileage, and I checked Consumer Reports and,
for me, the choice sort of came down to a $14,000 Echo or a $22,000 Prius. A
colleague at work owns _two_ Echoes and likes them.

But... I had recently run across this item in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=List_of_commercial_failures&oldid=12519168

"List of commercial failures: Toyota Echo - Sales of the US version of the
Yaris subcompact car fell from 50,000 in 2000 to just 3400 in 2004. Sales in
Canada of both the sedan and hatchback versions remain strong." The
referenced article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Vitz , says:

"The initial year of almost 50,000 sales was promising, but after the Echo
sold just half that many for 2003, the product was no longer stocked at
dealerships. Sales for much of 2004 have reached just 3,593, with another
year of production left before the product is replaced."

So... I crossed the Echo off my mental list.

I remember my wife saying to me at one point "Weren't you thinking about the
Echo" and replying "Well, I was, but I guess it was a big flop and is
probably not even available this year."

As I started to get more serious about the car-shopping process I did a
little more checking.

As nearly as I can tell, that statement is just plain wrong. Consumer Reports
said nothing about the product being replaced. As of 2005 a local Toyota
dealer had them in stock, and other dealers were advertising them. There were
no firesale prices to get rid of them. There is a 2005 Toyota Echo website at
www.toyota.com/echo/ and a review at http://cars.about.com/od/2001/fr/
05_echo_tst.htm that gives no hint of it being replaced or not stocked.

I removed the item from the Flops article and left a query on the talk page,
so far unanswered. (I suppose I should do something in the Toyota Vitz
article too).

I'm 99% sure it's misinformation. (Possibly a result of confusion between the
sedan and hatchback models?)

It's not like it ruined my life or even affected my buying decision. Hey, it
was really the Prius I wanted, anyway. Having the Echo still available just
meant I needed to work harder to find a rationalization for the Prius.

But it does give me pause to realize that a little tidbit of Wikipedian
misinformation actually got past my BS filter and lodged itself in my brain,
even if only briefly.

How many bits of Wikipedian misinformation have gotten past my BS filter and
_stuck,_ I wonder?

Oh, well, in my life I'm sure I've absorbed quite a bit of misinformation
(it's dangerous to go swimming for thirty minutes after you eat... you need
to drink 64 ounces of water every day... suntans are healthy... the
continents don't drift...). A little bit more can't hurt.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Board Meeting, May 24

body:
I had hoped Jimmy's proposal about Wikicouncil would be public before
I published these notes, but since that hasn't happened and there has
now been another meeting since this one, I wanted to make sure these
notes were published before those of the meetings held this week.

A Board meeting was held on IRC on May 24
(<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/May_24%2C_2005>) with
Jimmy Wales, Florence Devouard, and Angela Beesley, primarily to
follow up on discussions about the upcoming elections and official
positions that were discussed on May 16
(<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/May_16%2C_2005>).

    * There is a proposal for a Wikicouncil which Jimmy is going to
post to the mailing list. Florence, Jimmy, Arne, Elisabeth, and
Delphine met on IRC last week to discuss the roles of the council and
whether chapters should be represented on it.
    * Angela proposed having an executive board of five members, with
an additional three members that would be elected. The three
non-executive board members would be involved in basically everything,
but the executive could overrule them where necessary. Jimmy found
this concept interesting, but was unsure of the legality of it. It was
put forward that since this would require a change of the bylaws upon
which legal advice would need to be sought, that the next board will
remain at 2 elected members.
    * Known objections to official positions were discussed.
    * Potential candidates for positions were discussed. Jimmy will
make appointments taking into account this discussion. Potential
positions put on hold for now included Quarto editor, Partnerships,
and Translation.
    * The next meeting will be Tuesday 7 June at 20:00 UTC.

If you would like to comment on this meeting or discuss any of the
points raised here, please do so at [[meta:talk:Wikimedia Board
meetings]] or on this list.

Angela

Angela Beesley
Wikimedia Foundation


from_name: Rowan Collins

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

references:
<d81fft$3nm$1@sea.gmane.org> <d82l2t$82m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d83m69$ilf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b8b9a5110506070959401ad7b5@mail.gmail.com>
	<d84kh0$smj$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 07/06/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am using it semantically.
>
> == Major Header
> (=== generic explanations) // hidden header
> ==== quick explanation 1 // which applies to all sub-header sections
> ==== quick explanation 2 // which applies to all sub-header sections
> === Sub-header 1
> === Sub-header 2
>
> I don't want that first "===" header to show because it breaks up the flow:
> it's not uniform with the rest of the "===" headers.

Well, logically it *is* "uniform with" those headers, because it's at
the same level. I think I agree with those saying that you shouldn't
"skip" heading (or rather, section) levels in this way. In general,
nothing but the very introductory lead-in of an article should be
headerless, assuming headers are going to be used at all.

Consider the following example which has an "implicit" sub-head which
I guess you'd call "2.0". Is the text at D on a par with that at A or
that at B, C and F? In other words, does it belong to section "2" or
section "2.0"? Surely the clearest structure is obtained by simply
rearranging the text to make the answer explicit.

== Head 1
A
=== Sub-head 1.1
B
=== Sub-head 1.2
C
== Head 2
D
==== Sub-sub-head 2.0.1?
E
=== Sub-head 2.1
F

However, if it can be done without too much of a hack, I guess a
feature that numbers as though such "implicit" headers were actually
there would be reasonable as a better guess at user intention.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
No, there is no objection, and I don't think there ever has been.

The same seems to be true with Amis, except that Amis doesn't have a
suitable language code.

If it would be OK, an agreement was reached among the involved parties
that amis.wiktionary.org would be suitable. (they wanted a Wiktionary
created, and maybe a Wikipedia at some future date).

Otherwise, xxx-amis, i-amis, x-amis, or anything like that might be OK.

Amis will actually have a code in the new version of the ISO
three-letter codes, but it hasn't been finalised yet (I for one think
it's horrible -- it's based almost entirely on the Ethnologue, which
means they combine languages which shouldn't be combined and divide
languages which shouldn't be divided, and exclude some languages
altogether).

There haven't been any objections to the Sa--whatsit Wikipedia, but
then there are no good code suggestions either.

Also, a Scots Wikipedia (among others) has been requested and has a
test Wikipedia that seems to be working a bit. I  don't recall any
objections to Scots either, and it has an iso code, sco:

Mark

On 08/06/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/06/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Os.wikipedia was requested around the same time as the V?ro kiil`
> > Wikipedia, but it was created sooner. One possible reason is that they
> > had an off-site Ossetic version of Wikipedia that they set up, which
> > might've helped increase the apparent urgency for a developer (the
> > sooner you set it up, the less likely they are to remain at a separate
> > website, etc).
>
> Since V?ro is already being edited as part of the Test-wp on meta, I
> don't think a separate site would help here.
>
> > I don't know if it's exactly legal to use the name "wikipedia" for an
> > off-site version, in fact I'm betting it's not, but the foundation has
> > plenty of more important things to worry about than costly legal
> > battles over whether or not such sites should be able to use the name,
> > especially if it's only temporary.
>
> Please don't do this. Violating the Foundation's trademarks is hardly
> a good start to getting your wiki accepted within the project. If it
> needs to be off-site, you should choose another name for it until it
> is officially a Wikipedia.
>
> Is there actually any objection to V?ro being created now at fiu-vro?
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
I don't see why we would need any error message other than that in the
language of the specific Wiki - why would anybody requesting a page on
ca: need to see the message in English, or Spanish, or German?

For languages where we can't get a translation, it should be based on
the language. Arabic is not in the top 5, but for a language like
Somali chances are anybody requesting a page there would be able to
read Arabic.

Mark

On 08/06/05, ultrablue at gmail.com <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's true, I had envisaged the one (rather bulky) HTML page
> containing all the different languages' error messages, and people
> could switch the language of the error message by clicking the desired
> language's name. I didn't think we'd be able to get different error
> pages for the different language wikis, since every single Wikimedia
> site gets served the same error message at the moment. But if it's
> technically possible to do this then it would be much better.
>
> We could do a combination of both: have the host language show up as
> the central/main language on the error page, but also have the top
> 5/10/... languages hidden in the HTML so the user can switch to that
> language error message if necessary. Or just English, if people feel
> that's an adequate secondary error message for non-English language
> wikis.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
>
> On 6/9/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Also, I (and Mark) had pictured it differently (or so I presume - we
> > may have the same name but that doesn't mean I can speak for Mark) -
> > one page for everybody rather than multiple pages being based on
> > accept languages.
> >
> > Host language is a better idea, I think, and we really should look
> > into it because many peoples' computers are set with, say, English as
> > the accept language but would prefer to see the message in, say,
> > Chinese.
> >
> > Mark
> >
>

--
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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Namespace in Friulian Wiki

body:
On 08/06/05, A. Decorte <klenje at adriacom.it> wrote:
> Ok, so I'll try the 'hard way'. Can I just take an existent language file (for
> example French, since it uses the same characters of Friulian) and change inside
> it the lang code? Is this enough? Thanks

Yes. Note that once you've done some translating in the web interface
you can click the "PHP" link at the top of Special:Allmessages and
copy and paste that into the appropriate bit of your LanguageXx.php
file.

Note also that there's a hack in the LanguageFr.php file that you
probably don't need - so if you copy that one, search for and delete
the following lines:
        if( 0 == strcasecmp( "Wikipedia", $text ) ) return 4;
        if( 0 == strcasecmp( "Discussion_Wikipedia", $text ) ) return 5;
[Note to anyone with CVS access - these need removing from
LanguageOc.php, and probably the CVS copy of LanguageFr.php itself]

The advantage of creating an up-to-date and "clean" php file like this
is that you can then put it in CVS and anyone else who happens to want
a wiki in Friulian will be able to use it.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
I'm all for keeping some things private. But how can we avoid people
actively avoiding mediation so they can keep POV pushing. If someone
isn't willing to mediate in good faith, I think that should be
reportable. How is keeping such a thing confident helping the
community?

--Mgm

On 6/8/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/7/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In real life, mediation is essentially a choice, not a
> > requirement/obligation.
>
> I've been in mandatory mediation twice (once on a court order, once on
> my request).  The mediator, in both cases, had only the authority to
> report on what agreement, if any, was reached during the mediation.
> Matters discussed but not agreed upon would not be included in the
> report.  (In one case, we agreed on most, but not all issues; in the
> other we agreed on nothing.)  I think it's important that those acting
> as mediators keep the bulk of the mediation in confidence, reporting
> only that mediation occurred and on what was actually agreed upon, if
> anything, during the mediation.  If either party refuses to mediate in
> good faith, then the mediator should simply bring mediations to a
> close and report back that no agreement was reached without explaining
> why.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 6/9/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> What I am suggesting, not necessarily advocating, is to take into
> consideration at the arbitration stage whether the user engaged in
> mediation in good faith. If they just messed around and stalled (or
> whatever) that would be reported and considered. The theory,
> basically is that if they have energy to repeatedly revert in order
> to get their way with respect to an article, they should also have
> the time and energy to discuss the matter in good faith or they ought
> to lose the privilege of editing.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jun 8, 2005, at 8:50 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> > On 6/7/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
Yes, you said it much better than I did.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Interwiki articles without en: (another one
	forMark)

body:
On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Pawel 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:

>> it: has about 8,000 articles about italian administrative regions, kinda
>> like Rambot entries. pt: has recently added the same 8,000 articles.
>
>Wouldn't it be good to run the same bot also at en:?

I don't know if pt: used a bot. The Italian articles were added
semi-manually, copying&pasting into the edit box a pre-generated text and
modifying some numbers by hand.

Alfio


from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Some Wikipedian misinformation got temporarily lodged
	in my brain

body:
The problem with the Toyota Echo is that Toyota launched its new Scion
brand, with heavy advertising, competing directly against the Echo.
The Scions give you more car for the money, and a bit more style, so
it's no wonder Echo sales collapsed.

-Matt


from_name: Roger Luethi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyright violations at download.wikimedia.org

body:
On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 21:59:40 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/6/05, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:
> > * Make the copyvio warning on the edit page more visible. I notice that
> >   the German WP comes with a warning in a fat box with a red border. It
> >   is so cheap I am positive it will pay for its cost.
> >   Scroll to the bottom of this page to see how it looks like:
> >   http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Saint-Cloud&action=edit
>
> This is great, we also need to make it a practice of asking uploaders
> if *they* are the copyright holder.

I put a proposal up on [[en:MediaWiki talk:Copyrightwarning]].

Roger


from_name: Anthere

body:
Puddl Duk a ?crit:
> On 6/7/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
> Google search string;
>
> "Donella Meadows" pdf  -wikipedia

/me is astonished. I just did not *think* of adding the "pdf" in the
search area. This is perfect. Thanks :-)

ant


from_name: Pawe³ 'Ausir' Dembowski

body:
> "* [[:de:Zeug]] has no image, but its equivalent at [[:en:Stuff]] does"
> Then go and upload suitable images on commons, and add them to the
> imageless articles.
> Magnus

It would also have to check the license first.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Namespace in Friulian Wiki

body:
Thanks, that was useful, I've copied succesfully messages from Allmesages. I
have still a couple of questions:
Where is Wikipedia: namespace defined? And the wgSitename variable? Cuz I would
like to change them to Vichipedie. And also a small request: could you test my
translation when it's ready? Because I can't install php (so Wikipedia) on my pc
Thanks