from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
> Christopher and Kelly,
>
> I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the
> Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or
> being on the hook legally.
>
> But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls --
> "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the
> bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its
> quality standards to match.
>
> I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting
> in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we
> have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

I have long said that Quality (i.e., accurate, unbiased articles) will
be our main challenge. Not finding enough volunteers.

As we scale, our processes will have to change. Letting any anonymous
person with Internet access edit "any page, any time" is an important
egalitarian value. But it conflicts with our obligations to our readers.

At the very least, we need a smoother, more effective mechanism for the
targets of "slam biography" articles to remove misinformation. It should
not take an article in USA Today and several days of legal action.

Our own internal squabbles seem also to require massive publicity (this
list, IRC, web site notices like RFC) and lengthy quasi-legal arbcom
procedures. Even for non-libel issues, like whether evolution should be
considered an "unguided" process.

The idea that anyone's opinion is potentially as good as any one else's
is a GOOD IDEA. But the idea that everyone's opinion is always just as
good as any one else's is a BAD IDEA. Some people just don't know as
much - or as well - as others.

We need to find a way to deal with this situation. Holding a straw poll
on the talk page, and calling it a "consensus", and giving a small ad
hoc group the power to enforce their "consensus view" (merely because
they show up and vote) is a formula for failure. It lets a small group
of people act like a mob and suppress all mention of points of view held
by people who refuse to accept the "consensus".

Censorship is not the answer. Neither is suppressing dissent by main
force. So what *IS* the answer.

Ed Poor
(taking a wiki-break until he gets his head straight)


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poe, Marshall

subject: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
Kelly wrote:
>I find it ironic that this guy founded the "Freedom Forum First
Amendment Center".
>Sounds like he doesn't really care that much about the First Amendment.

Re the first amendment, and the authors failure to edit his own article,
etc.

The Wikipedia project itself bears some responsibility here. If you are
going to provide a soapbox for folks to stand on and exercise their
first amendment rights, you are in part responsible for what they say.
This is common sense, and SOP in all "establishment" (read "trusted")
print publications.  The editors stand behind what the authors say.  As
Mr. Seigenthaler says, his bio, which was broadcast from our soapbox,
was full of errors, some of which (by his accounting, and hopefully not
that of any court) were libelous. Alas (and in distinction to
traditional print publications with bylines), Mr. Seigenthaler has no
recourse, because he can't really find out who wrote the words that he
finds offensive so that he might take legal action. These are serious
ethical issues, and I don't think we should dismiss them.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
On 11/30/05 12:19 AM, "Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/30/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In light of the recent USA Today article:
>>
>> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>> sourced.
>>
>> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
>> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
>> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
>> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
>> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
>> do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
>> information that we can verify ourselves.
>
> It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
> such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
> function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
> flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>

Doubt it would be ignored, you can cite and then be accused of doing
original research, how fun.

I had a cited source for John Dean's article and the minute John Dean cried
about it in his column on Salon.com it was immediately changed anyway.  I
think CITE is a start but it needs to be fleshed out more because even
amongst sources you have varying degrees of reliability.

--Guy (User:Wgfinley, still on Wikibreak because of junk like this)


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
Article version validation and import (was Re: [Foundation-l] Most
	read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia)

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> The validation system will, no doubt, suffer from two "flaws" in the
> regard of offering reliability:
> 1. Anyone (at least, anyone with a username, if we turn off anons) can
> "validate"

Reads outnumber edits at least 200 to 1. Thus there is a HUGE potential
resource of readers we can draw on to validate articles. I therefore think that
when/if this feature goes live it should allow anon validation. But validators
should also be able to rate the ratings of others (ala 'did you find this
rating useful'). I also assume that comments will be collected. If problems
arise, we could implement a trust matrix system for validators (anons could be
nothing more than lowest rated though; their only effect would be in numbers).

> 2. Validations will have to be interpreted to simplify them to a
> good/suspicious/bad rating

A simple star system for a few different areas:
1) Completeness
2) Accuracy
3) Readability

> There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks
> ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing
> editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.
> As the imported articles are not editable at all, they do not represent
> a fork, merely a static wikipedia snapshot, alas per article and not for
> the whole wikipedia. Such a system would allow imports only for
> logged-in users, and be invite-only.

Logged-in users should only be able to import the highest-rated version of
articles that have at least x number of validations. That would negate the need
to create a new user class. But if/when that is abused, then we may need to use
a trust matrix system for users and only allow trusted users to import
validated article versions. A hack would be to add a new user class and an
admin-like community approval process. But I don't think that will scale fast
enough.

> Individuals could then chose which "issue" to read, and mirrors could
> decide if they want to go for "slow quality" or "fast unreliability"...

Heck - why not just automatically add a prominent link at the top of each page
that says 'Read the highest-rated version of this article' and mark those
versions in the database so mirrors can choose to just display those versions?
Then there would be no need for manual import. But it still may be a good idea
to have trusted humans doing final reviews of reader-validated content.

Either way works for me so long as the most up-to-date version of articles are
displayed by default (as is now the case). Logged-in users should be able to
change their preferences so they only see the highest rated version of articles
if available.

> Yes, a few people (compared to Wikipedia editors) will take a long time
> to check/fix/import all Wikipedia articles. Also, the imported versions
> will soon be outdated compared to Wikipedia. So what? This site will be
> for reliability; Wikipedia is for development and current events coverage.

A validation feature could feed an import queue: Article versions that reach a
certain rating threshold could go into an RC-like list. Then a group of
logged-in users check the queue and give the final go ahead for that article
version to be marked as the 'Highest rated version' for that article.

> I would see such a site working in parallel to the validation feature.
> Some might argue that this would "split out forces", with some people
> validating and some importing. OTOH, a little friendly compedition might
> do good for motivation.

Readers validate and editors import. I don't see how that is splitting out
forces when readers do so little as is.

> Lastly, there is one major reason to deploy such a site: Because it will
> undoubtedly be deployed, by someone, sooner or later; I'd rather it's us
> doing it than some company.

I completely agree. We need to control this.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Most read US newspaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
If we all do it suddenly, it would obviously not go well, but if we
all start gradually insisting on sources or removal it might
establish a new standard of work.

Fred

On Nov 30, 2005, at 7:56 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> I wonder
> how it would go if I summarily reverted all unsourced edits??
>
> Stan


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] moderation of mark williamson

body:
> > First of all, there are quite a few other users who support the
> > existance of that Wikipedia, most nostably Gabix, Russ, Vertaler,
> > Ronline, and I believe Iulian U.
> Not denying the support for this Wikipedia from others, still you were
> the only one that supported it with great fervor. I also have the
> impression that the supporters of Moldovan Wikipedia are somewhat in
> minority compared to those desiring that it don't exist.

Landroni, some time ago there was a vote on the existence of that WP,
and those supporting its existence were in the majority there.

And the reason I was the only one who supported it with great fervor
is that I had put a great deal of work into it, and there you and your
cronies were saying "Who cares about the work you've done, we're not
happy about this WP, so we want it deleted".

What about "live and let live"? How does the existence of that WP *hurt* you?

> > Despite the fact that until recently, 99% of the articles on that
> > Wikipedia were entirely due to my effort? (more recently, other users,
> > especially Russ, have stepped up the effort).
> Mark, the fact that you are the only actual contributor (till lately)
> to Moldovan Wikipedia is undenyable. Still, you are not nor Moldovan,
> nor Romanian. You have not lived there, you have never spoken Romanian
> or "Moldovan". I admire your efforts to write articles in a very

And you know this how? I have made a number of statements to the
contrary and I think that by now I have proved to a satisfactory
degree taht you are wrong.

You are the one who thought I was russian, and wrote to me in Russian,
and then got all confused when I couldn't understand. So don't go
around telling me which languages I can and cannot speak.

> foreign language, but I regard these as somehow being in vain. Apart
> from some passionate contributors and supporters, no one will ever
> find use for Moldovan Wikipedia other than to make (to himself or to
> others) a false idea about Moldova, the language spoken there and its

What about those people who prefer Cyrillic? You have belittled them,
but you did not deny they exist. They are people too. And you seem to
have a very polarised view of the situation in Transnistria.

> links to Russia(n). And I reiterate that you are not in knowledge of
> the cause (I hope this is the correct English expression). I come from
> Moldova, I lived there all my life apart from the previous year. No
> one, but no one uses Cyrillic alphabet for Romanian language. In the

no one, except for...

> villages, yes, maybe, but only by the retired and the almost
> illiterate. Otherwise villages are empty - everyone works either in

So some people do use it? Is it then your assertion that these people
don't matter, or that they should be ignored?

Wikimedia is a not-for-profit organisation. There is no concept of
"marketability" involved. A Wikipedia was recently created for the
Pitkern/Norfuk language, which has only a couple of thousand speakers
at maximum perhaps. Moldovan in Cyrillic has wider currency than that.

So, as long as _some_ people use it, you'll need better reasons than
the ones you've given so far to suppress it.

Some people have mentioned having conversion on ro.wiki between Latin
and Cyrillic, but as Ronline said, that is almost definitely never
going to happen for reasons of collective Romanian nationalist
sentiment -- think of all the angry vandalism that would happen by
people upset that somebody was writing their "glorious beautiful
language" in the "ugly russian alphabet" (somebody actually used
phrases like this on the Moldovan WP).

If you have any better ideas to accomodate these people, other than
_ignoring them_, I'll be happy to consider them. But to say that we
should ignore them because you don't like Cyrillic Moldovan is a bit
selfish.

> the capital, either at black in Europe or Russia. Transnistria - they
> keep Moldovan language in Cyrillic only from political reasons.
> Otherwise, only Russian is used there. Go to the Police and speak in
> Romanian (Moldovan, if you prefer) they will not understand one word.
> You'll have to switch to Russian.

Not sure that's got anything to do with anything. The undeniable fact
is that at this very moment, thousands of children in Transnistria are
getting an education in Moldovan Cyrillic using Soviet textbooks with
poor information. The only hope is that in the future, these kids can
read Wikipedia, and get the truth.

> > No, not really. Perhaps you perceived it that way -- yes, for a while,
> > there were arguments going on. But they were isolated points in the
> > history of mo.wiki -- for the last couple of months, there hasn't been
> > any real argument, and it's just been slow growth.
> Agreed with this. But at that time it was endless.

"Endless" means it doesn't have an end, but it's ended, so it isn't
endless and it never was.

> Regarding Bonaparte, I have already understood my mistake. The next
> time I will inform myself more. Mark, and regarding this reaction it
> was probably exagerated, but I was still driven by sentiments from
> previous debates on mo.wiki.

If I recall correctly, you participated in a very minimal capacity in
debates at mo.wiki. You voted for some things, posted a couple of
paragraphs, but other than that never said anything. That pales in
comparison to Duca, Goie, and Mihaita, all of whom are Romanians...

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
Brian wrote:

> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
> sourced.

I don't know about enforcing it ... but, on en: at least, the
{{unreferenced}} tag (which {{unsourced}} redirects to) is there for
anyone who wants to use them. I put it on articles I happen across that
are (a) not a stub (b) don't have even an external link somewhere.

> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
> do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
> information that we can verify ourselves.

It's hard to *enforce*. It's already good practice per
[[:en:Wikipedia:Verifiability]].

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts
	Wikipedia

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

> I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the
> Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on
> the hook legally.
> But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT"
> does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of
> a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.

The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or
early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black
"UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.

There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community operations
of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to
the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have
specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to bother
starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote
from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't
understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand specialist
subjects.

> I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the
> wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get
> closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.

There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either. There
is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but mostly
composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that,
because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.

I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not flavour of
the month.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:

> Give the guy a brake. He was accused of being involved in JFK's
> assaniation when he was one of the polebearers. He's understandablly
> hurt. It just isn't good enough. We need to do something about getting
> wikipedia 1.0 up and running.

Get the de: DVD and translate it to English! :-D

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
Brian wrote:

> I don't think it would be too hard to enforce. To start, a bot can look
> for any external links in the article, or for use of one of the common
> reference templates. Either that, or search for a section called
> "References", "Sources" or "External links". To enforce image tagging,
> we have appropriate image templates which are flagged/ignored by a bot.
> We need only do the same thing with article templates.

OK, a semi-automatic bot-assisted {{unreferenced}}-tagging. That'll find
them. We can then run "find the sources" drives. Sound workable?

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
On 11/30/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> This case Slim Virgin mentions is in arbitration now and a blatant
> example of gaming Google by associating the name of the person with a
> lot of accusations he has only a marginal connection with ...
> At a minimum we need to not allow Google to index our talk pages. We
> talk about a lot of things. They may be about information but they
> are not encyclopedic.

Fred, the case I was referring to isn't the one that's in arbitration,
though I know the one you mean, and it's quite similar. I'm starting
to wonder whether this is happening a lot: that troublemakers see our
talk pages as a sort of Trojan horse. They pretend to be having an
innocent conversation designed to sort out the good from the bad
material, whereas in fact the discussion is only a vehicle being used
to spread the bad stuff, which they know won't survive in our
articles.

Sarah


from_name: sockmonk at gmail.com

body:
On 11/30/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We should look again at allowing anonymous edits, This seems to have been
> the root of the problem.
>
> Blogs and webforums have more rigorous requirements to leave remarks than
> we
> do. I acknowledge that most anonymous editors contribute in good faith but
> many do not.
> Further, the cost of cleaning up after the ones who do not detracts from
> the
> main work of writing the encyclopedia. I am not calling for credentialism
> but registering as a user.
>
> It also means that many users are blocked for 24 hours as a result of
> sharing an IP with a vandal. I had to change my ISP last year because of
> vandalism from someone else. We also have had rogue registered users but
> at
> least we have procedures to deal with those.
>
> Further, the anonymous nature of the edits means that many edits are
> unfairly discounted because people can't be sure of the value of the
> edits.
> As a volunteer of the help desk, I am aware of at least two professors who
> have tried to edit but have had their edits removed. That may have been
> fair
> enough in one case but the point remains. A point made by Professor X
> carries much more weight than a point made by IP 123.xx.
>
> A similar problem occurs with copyvios. On a couple of occasions, people
> have uploaded material from their personal webpages which have been speedy
> deleted as copyvios. If they were identified, there would have been a
> greater chance that their right would have been recognised.
>
> We need to do a cost/benefit analysis showing what we gain from allowing
> anonymous edits compared to the losses of cleaning up vandalism from
> anonymous edits.
>
> Regards
>
>
> Keith Old
>
> Keith Old
> User:Capitalistroadster
>

I wholeheartedly agree. I think allowing anonymous edits causes more
problems than it solves. Registering is easy, and should not be a big
deterrent to anyone for any reason I can think of. While I'm sure there are
benefits, as Keith said they have to be seriously weighed against the
disadvantages.

--
User:Wesley


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: moderation of mark williamson

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:
> Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
>>I usually don't read the postings of Mark Williamson (only the answers
>>to his) but now I accidentally saw that he has forwarded the private
>>email of another wikipedian to the list. Add to this the frequent
>>flame-wars and attacks on people... Watching the list degrade into
>>endless fights about absurd language proposals, in my opinion it's
>>enough. I switched his account to moderated now.
>
>
> In my opinion moderation is not at all necessary. It was at least two
> sides that were behaving impolite. FWIW, I disagree with this decision.
>
> Gerrit.

I am not very happy with this decision either.

Granted, Mark is flooding us sometimes and I wish he refrains himself a
bit in the amount of mails. Mark, could you really *try* please not to
flood us ?

Also, some of his recent past mails were frankly borderline as far as
politness goes. So, giving him a break to notify disapproval is fair and
I agree with Elian decision to put him on moderation.

Now... I went to the moderation interface. There are 4 mails of Mark
there. This does not qualify as spam in terms of amount. None of the
mails are abusive in any way. Still, none of the mails have been posted...

So, what is exactly moderation ? If mails are not posted, it is not
moderation, it is censorship. So, I release the mails and will remove
the moderation block soon.

Ant


body:
 Marshall wrote:
> Re the first amendment, and the authors failure to edit his own
> article, etc.
> The Wikipedia project itself bears some responsibility here. If you
> are going to provide a soapbox for folks to stand on and exercise
> their first amendment rights, you are in part responsible for what
they say.

Pawel responded:
>>Many Wikipedians live in countries with no "first amendment".

And that, we all agree, is a shame.  Free speech should be protected
everywhere, period.  But it also needs to be used responsibly
everywhere, period.

So the point is the same: if you are going broadcast someone's speech
(free or not), you are in part responsible for what they say.  I'm not a
lawyer, but Wikipedia *seems* to be acting as a publisher and perhaps
editor. What will Wikipedia (or the Wikimedia Foundation) do if it is
sued for libel? Could this happen?

All the Best,

Marshall Poe
The Atlantic Monthly
www.memorywiki.org


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] How to develop policy in a multilingual
	organization

body:
On 11/30/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> "If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every
> word you post publicly."
>
> german translation:
> "Wenn Sie zu den Wikimedia-Projekten beitragen, ver?ffentlichen Sie
> jedes Wort, das sie abschicken, ?ffentlich."
>
> That's the second sentence of our privacy policy, to be found on
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
> and inspires me to loose a few words on how policy writing should be
> handled in a multilingual project:
>
> * Decide on the core principles of the policy - the essential rules
> * Create a nice, elaborate page in english which you place on the
> Foundation wiki as the official policy
> * Ask the community to create inofficial translations based on the
> essential rules - they may want to phrase a few things differently, some
> things may need longer or shorter explanations depending on culture,
> country or project. They may translate the english version word by word
> but are free to formulate the essential rules in their own words if they
> prefer.
> * Each translation should have a note on top that in doubt the english
> version is the valid one.
>
> In the case of the privacy policy, I decided to act on these principles.
>
> The german privacy policy at
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenschutz tries to say the same
> as the english one but in own words. Some paragraphs and sentences which
> are not part of the core rules were shortened for the sake of clarity
> and readability.
>
> If you disagree with this you may want to find community members who
> will create a literal translation. My feel for language and style
> doesn't allow me to do so.

I like the idea, because I believe we need to pay more attention to
those "cultural differences". And I am not for literal translations
either, because

However, where possible, I really think we should make the
translations of policies as "official" as possible, especially for
things as important as the privacy policy.

I would hate us to fall in the GFDL pit of having one unintelligible
policy in English and arguing that it was the only valid one. For some
languages (unfortunately not for all), we probably have enough people
with the skills to make sure the policy has the same core meaning as
the English one, that it takes into consideration the specificities of
one language and/or culture. If it can be approved by the relevant
people and made official, all the better. Creative Commons did it...
if anyone else, I think *we* can do it too. ;-)

But still, I think your idea is a good one, and should be adopted widely.

Best,

Delphine
--
~notafish


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Using Talk pages to influence Google results (Most
	read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia)

body:
They think it is or they wouldn't do it.

Fred

On Nov 30, 2005, at 9:30 AM, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu wrote:

>   I wasn't aware that Google results were influenced by material on
> Talk pages.
> If this is true, it explains instances in which I have seen anons
> post some
> ideological screed in the article, have it removed, and then re-
> post it
> repeatedly into the article's Talk page.  Is this actually that
> effective a
> tactic for using Wikipedia as a soapbox?
>
>                                   Jason
>
>
>
> Quoting slimvirgin at gmail.com:
>
>
>> On 11/30/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>>
>>> This case Slim Virgin mentions is in arbitration now and a blatant
>>> example of gaming Google by associating the name of the person
>>> with a
>>> lot of accusations he has only a marginal connection with ...
>>> At a minimum we need to not allow Google to index our talk pages. We
>>> talk about a lot of things. They may be about information but they
>>> are not encyclopedic.
>>>
>>
>> Fred, the case I was referring to isn't the one that's in
>> arbitration,
>> though I know the one you mean, and it's quite similar. I'm starting
>> to wonder whether this is happening a lot: that troublemakers see our
>> talk pages as a sort of Trojan horse. They pretend to be having an
>> innocent conversation designed to sort out the good from the bad
>> material, whereas in fact the discussion is only a vehicle being used
>> to spread the bad stuff, which they know won't survive in our
>> articles.
>>
>> Sarah
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Swiftboating article

body:
FYI,

Wikipedia has been caught in the crosshairs over the article
[[Swiftboating]]. Two influential US political blogs Talking Points
Memo and RAW Story have pointed to a vandalized version of the
article.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007128.php
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Wikipedia_gets_Swift_Boated_1129.html

It appears they don't quite exactly know how Wikipedia works, as the
latter referred to WP as . But looking at the edit history, there was
indeed a flurry of anonymous edits in the last few days, perhaps a
concerted efforted by a group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swiftboating&limit=250&action=history

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'

body:
May I add my: I need something like that as well here? I'd like to
involve the local scools in some way.

Thanks, Sabine

Domas Mituzas wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I really really need some big whitepapers on Wikipedia and other
> wikimedia project usage in schools (pros, cons, aims, analysis,
> possibilities).
> Our aim is to build a big document and use it in governmental affairs.
> If anyone has such papers prepared in major languages, let me know,
> thanks!
>
> Domas

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


subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Xed Mac

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem importing using importDump.php

body:
Hi all. Newbie here.

I've setup up MediaWiki on OS X using the arcane
instructions here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Running_MediaWiki_on_Mac_OS_X

The Wiki works fine. Tested it by creating pages and
uploading images etc.

Then I wanted to import articles from Wikipedia. So I
downloaded  the latest "articles only" dump
(20051127_pages_articles.xml.bz2), and then performed
a bzip2 -d on it. Then I renamed it as "articles.xml"

Next I tried to import it.
I went to my wikis direcotory and renamed
AdminSettings.sample as AdminSettings.php and changed
$wgDBadminuser and $wgDBadminpassword to what I had
specified when setting up the wiki (DB username and DB
password on the Site Config screen)

Then, after going to the maintenance directory, I
wrote this in the terminal:
php importDump.php /Users/xed/Desktop/articles.xml

It spits out this error:

Testpedia
has a problem

Sorry! This site is
experiencing technical
difficulties.

Try waiting a few minutes
and reloading.

(Can't contact the
database server: Client does not support
authentication protocol requested by server; consider
upgrading MySQL client (localhost))

I thought it might have something to do with the size
of the "articles.xml" file (nearly 4GB), but when I
tested it on a single exported page from Wikipedia, it
does the same thing.

I'm running:
MediaWiki: 1.5.2
PHP: 5.0.4 (apache)
MySQL: 5.0.16-standard

Thanks

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Model Search 2005 - Find the next catwalk superstars - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hot/model-search/


from_name: Aron Rubin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Math

body:
== in includes/SpecialPage.php ==
	'Math'		=> new IncludableSpecialPage( 'Math' ),

== in includes/SpecialMath.php ==
<?php
/**
 * @package MediaWiki
 * @subpackage SpecialPage
 */

/**
 * Entry point : initialise variables and call subfunctions.
 * @param string $par Becomes "FOO" when called like Special:Math/op,a,b
(default NULL)
 */
function wfSpecialMath( $par=NULL, $specialPage ) {
	global $indexMaxperpage, $toplevelMaxperpage, $wgRequest, $wgOut,
$wgContLang;
	# Config
	$indexMaxperpage = 960;
	$toplevelMaxperpage = 50;
	# GET values
	$oprnd_a = $wgRequest->getVal( 'a' );
	$oprnd_b = $wgRequest->getInt( 'b' );
	$oprtr   = $wgRequest->getInt( 'op' );

	if( $par ) {
	  list( $oprtr, $oprnd_a, $oprnd_b ) = explode( ",", $par, 3 );
	}
	switch( $oprtr ) {
	case "add":
	  $result = $oprnd_a + $oprnd_b;
	  break;
	case "sub":
	case "subtract":
	  $result = $oprnd_a - $oprnd_b;
	  break;
	case "mlt":
	case "multiply":
	  $result = $oprnd_a * $oprnd_b;
	  break;
	case "div":
	case "divide":
	  $result = $oprnd_a * $oprnd_b;
	  break;
	}
	if( isset($result) ) {
	  //$wgOut->setArticleBodyOnly( true );
	  $wgOut->addHtml( $result );
	}
}

== Problem ==
Why does this produce "
5
" instead of "5" when included in a page
like so:
{{Special:Math/add,2,3}}

Aron


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'

body:
On 11/30/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> May I add my: I need something like that as well here? I'd like to
> involve the local scools in some way.
>
> Thanks, Sabine
>
> Domas Mituzas wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I really really need some big whitepapers on Wikipedia and other
> > wikimedia project usage in schools (pros, cons, aims, analysis,
> > possibilities).
> > Our aim is to build a big document and use it in governmental affairs.
> > If anyone has such papers prepared in major languages, let me know,
> > thanks!
> >
> > Domas

Hi,

in addition to Elisabeth's links above, and slightly more general, see
Jakob Voss (et. al's) Wiki Research Bibliography, which blows the meta
page out of the water (but which seems to be temporarily broken at the
moment):

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~voj/bibliography/index.php?action=frontNoMenu

You could also try some posts from the blogosphere:

http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2005/07/turning_wikiped.html
http://technorati.com/tag/wikipedia%20in%20the%20classroom

Cheers,
Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hi!

> But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT"
> does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of
> a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.

Top30. Nearly. :) Anyway, from a majority view of non-contributing
users (or AApatheticW) site is good as is. This is the content trade
off and it will always be. Accepting possibility of being wrong is
charm, and it attracts more and more users. Because they find
information, even when it is wrong. It could be top3 website and
still have accidental asspuss images on mainpage.  It shows strength
of a project, not weakness.

Our rating systems would always be public and open source, and if
anyone wished, they could always abuse them.

People working on content shouldn't be forced to work on ratings or
validation. It is a waste of time for what was nearly efficiently
handled before. And there's something worse than non-rated content,
it's wrongly rated content. Who is going to rate those who do
ratings? A regular contributor may not have power and resources to
establish ratings for his version, when a PoV pusher applies some new
methodology of rating manipulation.

Personally I see it as a complex issue, in community, software and
hardware. I'd be happy if anyone could change my views. ;)

Domas

P.S. We should better preach gospels: http://www.forbes.com/lists/
2005/14/CH0027.html


from_name: Jason Holt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Authentication using nym

body:
I just added this proposal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Privacy_protecting_authentication_via_nym

I assume that's the best place to discuss it, but if it's more appropriate for
this list, let me know and I can redirect.

==Executive summary==

* I've built a software package called nym which could be used to allow users
of anonymizing networks and shared-IP networks like schools to edit Wikipedia.
Privacy would be preserved, yet admins would still be able to block IPs of
vandals.

* The software includes patches to WikiMedia, which I have submitted to
MediaWiki's patch-review system.

* Wikipedia needs to decide whether to accept my proposal and patches. The
patches are small and easy to implement; mainly it's a question of whether the
admins are willing to try it out.

 						-J


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

body:
  I wasn't aware that Google results were influenced by material on Talk pages.
If this is true, it explains instances in which I have seen anons post some
ideological screed in the article, have it removed, and then re-post it
repeatedly into the article's Talk page.  Is this actually that effective a
tactic for using Wikipedia as a soapbox?

                                  Jason

Quoting slimvirgin at gmail.com:

> On 11/30/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > This case Slim Virgin mentions is in arbitration now and a blatant
> > example of gaming Google by associating the name of the person with a
> > lot of accusations he has only a marginal connection with ...
> > At a minimum we need to not allow Google to index our talk pages. We
> > talk about a lot of things. They may be about information but they
> > are not encyclopedic.
>
> Fred, the case I was referring to isn't the one that's in arbitration,
> though I know the one you mean, and it's quite similar. I'm starting
> to wonder whether this is happening a lot: that troublemakers see our
> talk pages as a sort of Trojan horse. They pretend to be having an
> innocent conversation designed to sort out the good from the bad
> material, whereas in fact the discussion is only a vehicle being used
> to spread the bad stuff, which they know won't survive in our
> articles.
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rob

body:
I suspect the crap information inserted into the John
Seigenthaler article was part of a general trend of a
group of JFK conspiracy theorists who have used
Wikipedia as a dumping ground for their more
farfetched speculations.  I've spend a good chunk of
my WP time over the last year cleaning up as much of
this stuff as I could possibly stand, and in fact
rewriting much of the Lee Harvey Oswald article was my
first major WP project.

Even if this has nothing to do with the conspiracy
buffs, it is part of a much larger problem, which is
that every unsourced text dump by an anon seems to be
treated as holy writ and uncritically accepted.  While
we should apply WP:accept good faith to editors, we
should apply a lot more skepticism to unsourced info
dumps, the source of many problems involving libel and
copyright violations and just good old fashioned
inaccuracy. We have a culture of openness and DIYism
and all those good things, but I'm not convinced we
have a culture of quality control yet. How could any
halfway decent editor see a passage like "For a brief
time, he was thought to have been directly involved in
the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his
brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven" and not think
"Hmmm, something's wrong here, at the very least it is
totally unsourced".

Maybe the problem is simply that an article like John
Seigenthaler Sr. is too obscure to get a lot of eyes
on it.  It appears that between the crap insertion and
the insertion of a copyvio bio (possibly by
Siegenthaler himself?) months later, only one editor
edited the article.  Perhaps we could just chalk this
all up to obscurity, but there are too many of the
same type of problems with articles that aren't as
obscure that we shouldn't just write this one off as
an anomaly.

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


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 30 Nov 2005, at 08:33, David Gerard wrote:
>
> There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community
> operations
> of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to
> the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have
> specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to
> bother
> starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote
> from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't
> understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand
> specialist
> subjects.
>

Its a real pity that people think that stuff will be deleted. Generally
I dont think it is the case. I have had to defend articles I wrote from
AfD, but there has not been a problem (the hardest ones in some ways
are incomplete attempts to be comprehensive; I had a couple of articles
from [[Category:French wine AOCs]] up for AfD; while on their own they
might not all be that interesting, having all 500 odd will be really
useful. The best solution is to just write lots of stuff. And I
sometimes
  write stuff thats quite obscure eg [[Metropolitan Drinking Fountain
and
Cattle Trough Association]]. Defending things has a place.

>
>> I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the
>> wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get
>> closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
>
>
> There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either.
> There
> is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but mostly
> composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that,
> because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.
>
> I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not
> flavour of
> the month.

I actually think that its too early to think about the mythical 1.0.
There is far too much missing. We should put a beta notice in, its
very fashoinable (friendster, gmail, flickr etc).

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: yet another image lost for posterity

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

Thanks for restoring them Anthony

I talked to hubby yesterday and his comment was roughly "what the f***",
so I put them under GFDL.

Meanwhile, Submarine explained to me how to use an upload tool, with
automated tagging on commons. It works pretty well and is a huge relief
compared to using our current system. So, some good comes out of all
this :-)

Cheers

Ant


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
Mike Finucane wrote:

> In reply to:
> > Because Wikipedia is free as in freedom.  Your pictures are not free
> > (though apparently they are gratis); you are limiting who can
> distribute
> > them.  Please re-evaluate contributing to Wikipedia if you are
> unwilling
> > to support freedom.

That last sentence is an arrogant and insulting non-sequitur.  What may
very well be an unwillingness to support one aspect of freedom should
not be used as a straw man to impugn a person's support of freedom in
general.

> My answer is that I do not see how enriching private corporations
> furthers freedom.  My pictures are indeed gratis.
> The only objection I have is to allowing others to make profits from
> my work.  That definition of freedom isnt in my dictionary.
> Ask the Java community how they feel about Gates embracing and
> extending their freedoms.

The objective should not be to prevent corporations from using the
material, but to create a situation where use of the material could
taint the copyrightability of the context in which they place it

> When freedom is defined by the ability of corporate persons to enrich
> themselves at the expense of the community, whether thats by patenting
> life forms, folk medicine, or whatever, then we have truly lost the
> idea of freedom.  It is of interest that the images allowable are
> still restricted - by for example the "by" atrribution.  Its only the
> "nc" that seems to draw howls of protest.

I don't disagree with your analysis of intellectual property abuse by
corporation, but it's na?ve to think that simply denying them the
freedom to use the material will accomplish anything toward your goal.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
Good move, but take it easy.

Fred

On Nov 30, 2005, at 11:07 AM, Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> I've now started removing any additions to pages I have on my
> watchlist which I do not think are common knowledge and have no
> source for the claims, and I have asked contributors to cite where
> they are getting this information from.
>
> Chris


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


body:
Oooops. missing part of a sentence.

On 11/30/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> I like the idea, because I believe we need to pay more attention to
> those "cultural differences". And I am not for literal translations
> either, because...

...because those, as you pointed out, do not take into consideration
concepts, ideas, core values that a language carries, and even
sometimes possible interpretations due to the language that would
change the meaning entirely.

>
> However, where possible, I really think we should make the
> translations of policies as "official" as possible, especially for
> things as important as the privacy policy.
>
> I would hate us to fall in the GFDL pit of having one unintelligible
> policy in English and arguing that it was the only valid one. For some
> languages (unfortunately not for all), we probably have enough people
> with the skills to make sure the policy has the same core meaning as
> the English one, that it takes into consideration the specificities of
> one language and/or culture. If it can be approved by the relevant
> people and made official, all the better. Creative Commons did it...
> if anyone else, I think *we* can do it too. ;-)
>
> But still, I think your idea is a good one, and should be adopted widely.

Delphine

--
~notafish


from_name: normannormal at gmail.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Introduction

body:
Great! Thanks, I'll pick a couple of bugs to start with :)

Luis


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper
	blasts	Wikipedia

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or
>early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black
>"UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
>
>
I agree with this fairly strongly---Wikipedia is a work in progress, and
not currently intended to be a drop-in replacement for traditional
encyclopedias.  It is already very useful, but nobody should assume it
is done or even at some reasonable checkpoint (we're still, after all,
trying to figure out how to set up a checkpointing/rating system).

Anything that would compromise the general principles that have made
Wikipedia succeed for the sake of "right now" quality would be
disastrous, IMO.  Continuing to work on processes to produce levels of
vetting for articles (like the sifting or rating features) is of course
compatible with this.

-Mark


from_name: Fastfission

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org> <dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<98dd099a0511281145w7ca9346cp1ebcd176125d5823@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfru9$nle$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<98dd099a0511281726m7d77d95bqcc0d0c81139694d6@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmh3qp$sp4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 11/29/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Personal file server ?

You seem to be saying that the images were not used in articles for
quite some time, were labeled as being used without a license (fair
use), but because they were images personally important to you, they
should be kept on Wikipedia servers forever. To me, that sounds like a
"personal file server" -- a place to keep images for yourself, with no
substantive relation to the Wikipedia project.

> Again, maybe you may not really realised, but when I uploaded these
> images, Commons did not existed. So, it was perfectly understandable
> that an editor with a bunch of images that could be useful for the
> encyclopedia would upload them where it was possible to upload them.

The images in question, I thought, were tagged as "fair use". Which
would not be allowed on Commons anyway. Nobody is deleting PD images
which are unused, to my knowledge. The entire discussion is about the
deletion of images labeled as "fair use" which are unused. If that's
*not* what you are talking about then I suppose I (and others) have
been confused about what you are complaining about from the beginning.

Maybe there is a language barrier here, because I'm not quite following you.

FF


body:
Legal liability (which we would be foolish not to minimize) and doing
what is responsible and considerate are two different things. For one
thing we need some kind of hot line (not the overloaded Help-l) for
collecting and dealing with this sort of complaint. Once alerted, we
could do a fact check and delete material that is unsourced, or phony-
sourced. This should not require a lot of rigamarole, after all, it
is a part of regular editing to remove information that can't be
verified.

Fred

On Nov 30, 2005, at 11:35 AM, Poe, Marshall wrote:

>
>
>
> Mark wrote:
>
>
>> And in this case, I don't see how ethical issues enter into it at
>> all.
>>
>
> Like this: deciding what you are going to say and what you aren't
> going
> to say is on some level an ethical or moral decision.  Similarly,
> deciding what you are going publish and what you aren't going to
> publish
> is an ethical or moral decision.  Now, we can deny this, but denial
> doesn't make it so.  In the case of the offended party in USAToday, WP
> (whoever that is) facilitated the publication of arguably libelous
> statements. Those statements harmed that individual. I can't speak for
> you, but this makes me uncomfortable.
>
>
>> If the biography is inaccurate, it should be edited, and in fact
>> anyone
>>
> (including the
>
>> offended person) can do so.  The ability to sue whoever first made it
>>
> inaccurate is
>
>> superfluous.
>>
>
> Maybe, but as someone said earlier, what if he hadn't found the
> article?
> What if it had seriously damaged his reputation? What if this damage
> extended to his ability to make a living and support his family?  The
> point about slander and libel is that the damage it does is very
> hard to
> undo.  Would correcting the article get this man his reputation
> back? I
> doubt it.
>
> The basic problem here is that no one stands behind the factual claims
> on Wikipedia--no publishers, no editors, no authors, just some
> amorphous
> and constantly changing "community." I should add that I say this as a
> *big fan* of WP. It worries me.
>
> Best,
>
> Marshall Poe
> The Atlantic Monthly
> www.memorywiki.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Poe, Marshall wrote:

>Re the first amendment, and the authors failure to edit his own article,
>etc.
>
>The Wikipedia project itself bears some responsibility here. If you are
>going to provide a soapbox for folks to stand on and exercise their
>first amendment rights, you are in part responsible for what they say.
>This is common sense, and SOP in all "establishment" (read "trusted")
>print publications.  The editors stand behind what the authors say.  As
>Mr. Seigenthaler says, his bio, which was broadcast from our soapbox,
>was full of errors, some of which (by his accounting, and hopefully not
>that of any court) were libelous. Alas (and in distinction to
>traditional print publications with bylines), Mr. Seigenthaler has no
>recourse, because he can't really find out who wrote the words that he
>finds offensive so that he might take legal action. These are serious
>ethical issues, and I don't think we should dismiss them.
>
I don't see how that differs from UseNet, which has for decades allowed
anonymous postings, with no editor to stand behind them.  If you get
libeled on usenet, well, that's just too bad, eh?  Post a rebuttal.

And in this case, I don't see how ethical issues enter into it at all.
If the biography is inaccurate, it should be edited, and in fact anyone
(including the offended person) can do so.  The ability to sue whoever
first made it inaccurate is superfluous.

-Mark


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
I am responding to nobody in particular, because there's such a wide
variety of hysteria to respond to that I can barely choose.

The objection that Seigenthaler is having to Wikipedia is not even to
the process or to the speed at which we fix vandalism. It is not to
our current quality, it is not to anything fixable.

The fundamental objection that Seigenthaler has is that we allow
people to post freely. His objection is to the belief that we ought
not carefully monitor our users and that we ought avoid turning them
in to the legal authorities in a dispute. His assumption that the
article was posted by a vandal is dodgy at best - I would be shocked
if he were not the subject of some conspiracy theory or another, and
if whoever posted the article were anything more than a particularly
stupid POV pusher. If Wikipedia were to in any way assist with
turning a mere stupid POV pusher in to legal authorities, I know my
support for the site would drop off swiftly.

The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness. That opens
us to stupidity, and we have an obligation to deal with the
stupidity. And if Seigenthaler wanted to criticize us for our
failings in reverting this stupidity and to the process that let it
sit there for 153 days, he'd be right. But to criticize us for being
open and free in the first place is not a problem we can or should
fix. And to my mind, it is a problem that puts Seigenthaler so far
outside of any of the core beliefs of this project that the point is
only narrowly worth debating.

A final comment - we have been adamant and active about finding ways
for our Chinese contributors to participate even as their government
tries to shut them down. On what possible grounds can we even
consider acquiescing to an argument that amounts to "It should be
easier to sue if I don't like my Wikipedia article." Think of what
would have happened in the Bogdanov Affair, or with John Byrne, or
with dozens of other cases if what Seigenthaler were calling for were
to come true.

-Phil


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee elections,
	2005 - still no information!

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>Only in a legalistic sense.  The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership
>>would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to
>>write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.
>>
>>
>Exactly.  And I consider my leadership of the community to be a more or
>less entirely separate matter from any legal arrangements of any kind.
>For example, I would imagine that if the foundation were to fall prey to
>some extremely unjust lawsuit or political action, I could successfully
>lead the community to another place under another name.
>
Moses leading his people out of Egypt! :-)

>Leadership of a volunteer community doesn't come from power, it comes
>from having the cautious wisdom to lead the community where it wants to
>go.
>
Even when it doesn't know where it wants to go.

>I am not perfect,
>
That's disappointing.

> but I try.
>
>
There's still light at the end of that 100 year long tunnel.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] extremely weak dispute resolution mechanisms

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 11/27/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Good faith communication among admins is critical to this sort of thing.
>>
>> In such a case, NiceGuy should try to contact HardAss beforehand to get
>>agreement on the strategy.  Or _even better_, HardAss admins should seek
>>out NiceGuy admins and say to them "Look here, I've been bonking this
>>guy on the head for a bit, to minimal effect, but if you want to come in
>>and befriend him and try and turn him about, I'm happy to lay off."
>>
>>
>True. How is it you always make such good points, Jimbo?
>Anyway, we should take caution that we don't keep the cycle going
>forever. If people "Newbie" is still spouting personal attacks after
>three warnings, they should be blocked with clear note in the reason
>field so fellow admins know what's going on. If someone is willing to
>unblock them, they should also make the effort to guide whoever they
>are unblocking on their way to being a good user.
>
The problem with this mindset is that it focuses on a punitive horizon
point.  The reference to three warnings suggests that you are focused on
what can go wrong rather than what can go right.  If NiceGuy is asked to
intervene he will know what to do without somebody looking over his
shoulder waiting for the unblock to go wrong.  Even the notes in the
reason field can poison the atmosphere.

Ec


from_name: Poe, Marshall

body:
Mark wrote:

>And in this case, I don't see how ethical issues enter into it at all.

Like this: deciding what you are going to say and what you aren't going
to say is on some level an ethical or moral decision.  Similarly,
deciding what you are going publish and what you aren't going to publish
is an ethical or moral decision.  Now, we can deny this, but denial
doesn't make it so.  In the case of the offended party in USAToday, WP
(whoever that is) facilitated the publication of arguably libelous
statements. Those statements harmed that individual. I can't speak for
you, but this makes me uncomfortable.

>If the biography is inaccurate, it should be edited, and in fact anyone
(including the
>offended person) can do so.  The ability to sue whoever first made it
inaccurate is
>superfluous.

Maybe, but as someone said earlier, what if he hadn't found the article?
What if it had seriously damaged his reputation? What if this damage
extended to his ability to make a living and support his family?  The
point about slander and libel is that the damage it does is very hard to
undo.  Would correcting the article get this man his reputation back? I
doubt it.

The basic problem here is that no one stands behind the factual claims
on Wikipedia--no publishers, no editors, no authors, just some amorphous
and constantly changing "community." I should add that I say this as a
*big fan* of WP. It worries me.

Best,

Marshall Poe
The Atlantic Monthly
www.memorywiki.org


from_name: kosebamse at gmx.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or
>early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black
>"UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.

The even more basic problem is everybody and their dog laments about article
quality, yet nobody is bold enough to tell the world that we have already
way too much garbage and can't even tell what is garbage and what is not. It
has long been obvious to the insiders, and I am actually amazed that the
rest of the world is only now beginning to realize it. Wikipedians need to
realize that no amount of mediocre-to-shitty articles can compensate for a
lack of quality content.
A helpful approach would be to stop accepting new articles, take our
content, scrutinise it and rewrite it from zero. Rewrite the encyclopedia
and let the warriors/nutters/clueless kids have their fun, but not on our
servers. Ah, the charm of radical solutions.

Kosebamse

--
Highspeed-Freiheit. Bei GMX superg?nstig, z.B. GMX DSL_Cityflat,
DSL-Flatrate f?r nur 4,99 Euro/Monat*  http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
Christopher and Kelly,

I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the
Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on
the hook legally.

But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT"
does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of
a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.

I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the
wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get
closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 11/30/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
>
> Talk amongst yourselves.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 11/30/05, kosebamse at gmx.net <kosebamse at gmx.net> wrote:
> A helpful approach would be to stop accepting new articles, take our
> content, scrutinise it and rewrite it from zero.

It's a wiki.  Dozens of good quality articles are written from scratch
every single day, and ceasing to accept such new articles would not
help to get the encyclopedia written.

Meanwhile if you can compile a list of important articles that have
not fared well under the wiki (I submit that this could be a fairly
brief list, perhaps 1,000 or so) perhaps a team of interested
individuals can take those articles off the main wiki and hothouse
them for a while--or even, as you suggest, rewrite from scratch.  I'd
be interested to see if this approach produces significantly better
articles.


from_name: Liviu Andronic

body:
On 29/11/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> First of all, there are quite a few other users who support the
> existance of that Wikipedia, most nostably Gabix, Russ, Vertaler,
> Ronline, and I believe Iulian U.
Not denying the support for this Wikipedia from others, still you were
the only one that supported it with great fervor. I also have the
impression that the supporters of Moldovan Wikipedia are somewhat in
minority compared to those desiring that it don't exist.

>
> > of Latin alphabet in schools). And all this although he is not linked
> > directly what-so-ever nor to Romanians, nor to Moldovans, nor to
> > Russians, and thus not in knowledge of the cause. The debate on
>
> Despite the fact that until recently, 99% of the articles on that
> Wikipedia were entirely due to my effort? (more recently, other users,
> especially Russ, have stepped up the effort).
Mark, the fact that you are the only actual contributor (till lately)
to Moldovan Wikipedia is undenyable. Still, you are not nor Moldovan,
nor Romanian. You have not lived there, you have never spoken Romanian
or "Moldovan". I admire your efforts to write articles in a very
foreign language, but I regard these as somehow being in vain. Apart
from some passionate contributors and supporters, no one will ever
find use for Moldovan Wikipedia other than to make (to himself or to
others) a false idea about Moldova, the language spoken there and its
links to Russia(n). And I reiterate that you are not in knowledge of
the cause (I hope this is the correct English expression). I come from
Moldova, I lived there all my life apart from the previous year. No
one, but no one uses Cyrillic alphabet for Romanian language. In the
villages, yes, maybe, but only by the retired and the almost
illiterate. Otherwise villages are empty - everyone works either in
the capital, either at black in Europe or Russia. Transnistria - they
keep Moldovan language in Cyrillic only from political reasons.
Otherwise, only Russian is used there. Go to the Police and speak in
Romanian (Moldovan, if you prefer) they will not understand one word.
You'll have to switch to Russian.

>
> > Moldovan Wikipedia has definitely degraded into an  endless fight,
> > that  has advanced till the English Wikipedia. As I was informed
>
> No, not really. Perhaps you perceived it that way -- yes, for a while,
> there were arguments going on. But they were isolated points in the
> history of mo.wiki -- for the last couple of months, there hasn't been
> any real argument, and it's just been slow growth.
Agreed with this. But at that time it was endless.

>
> > recently by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bonaparte, "It seems
> > that user Node deletes systematic an important part of the text."
>
> Please see the block log history of Bonaparte, and his contributions.
> He is relatively new to Wikipedia and already he has caused quite a
> bit of upset.
Regarding Bonaparte, I have already understood my mistake. The next
time I will inform myself more. Mark, and regarding this reaction it
was probably exagerated, but I was still driven by sentiments from
previous debates on mo.wiki.

--
Liviu


body:
J.F. de Wolff wrote:

> Fred is suggesting a para-wiki where arcticles are fact-checked before
> they go live. I would like to propose that as soon as an article
> reaches featured article status, it is semi-protected. Only registered
> users (or even registered users with a good track record) can edit
> those pages. Changes can be proposed on talk by anons and then be
> effectuated by registered users. This will put an editing funnel on
> our most prized content.

I agree that the most obvious place to start is by in a sense protecting
the articles that are deemed to be pretty good and therefore less in
need of edits---these are the ones where the ratio of destructive to
constructive edits tends to be higher.  I would prefer a system that
fell short of *actually* protecting the pages by limiting edits to a
certain group of people, though.  If the issue is whether people will
see vandalism before it's reverted, this can be accomplished through the
proposed rating system in a number of ways.  For example, articles that
have a version rated above some threshold may be default display that
version to non-logged-in users, rather than more recent versions.  If
changes are made that do indeed improve the article, there would be a
lag until the new version is recognized as also high-quality and
displayed; if they were destructive changes, the new version would not
get displayed in the first place.

There are a number of issues for how to work this out, both in terms of
community and logistics, but I do think a way to go is to introduce a
display lag of some sort on articles deemed "already very good", but
*without* actually restricting.edits---instead merely delaying their
general visibility.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
On 11/30/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
> In light of the recent USA Today article:
>
> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
> sourced.
>
> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
> do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
> information that we can verify ourselves.

It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

>
> brian0918
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


body:
Poe, Marshall wrote:

>Mark wrote:
>
>
>
>>And in this case, I don't see how ethical issues enter into it at all.
>>
>>
>
>Like this: deciding what you are going to say and what you aren't going
>to say is on some level an ethical or moral decision.  Similarly,
>deciding what you are going publish and what you aren't going to publish
>is an ethical or moral decision.
>
The problem with this view is that Wikipedia by nature cannot "decide"
what to publish---we "publish" anything that anyone posts, automatically
and without review, because that is how wikis work.  What we *continue*
to publish is the result of the consensus of editors.

I don't, in general, see a problem with this.  If something is incorrect
in any way, it should be corrected or removed (whether it is libelous or
not is irrelevant---non-libelous misinformation has no place either).
The "what if [x]" scenarios seem pretty far-fetched.

-Mark


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> What if he had never found it?
>
> We need more fact checking.

The validation system will, no doubt, suffer from two "flaws" in the
regard of offering reliability:
1. Anyone (at least, anyone with a username, if we turn off anons) can
"validate"
2. Validations will have to be interpreted to simplify them to a
good/suspicious/bad rating

There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks
ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing
editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.
As the imported articles are not editable at all, they do not represent
a fork, merely a static wikipedia snapshot, alas per article and not for
the whole wikipedia. Such a system would allow imports only for
logged-in users, and be invite-only.

I am aware that this is the complete opposite of the wiki principle. But
maybe this is what is needed here - a counterweight, to balance that
dreadful freedom of the wiki ;-)

Individuals could then chose which "issue" to read, and mirrors could
decide if they want to go for "slow quality" or "fast unreliability"...

Yes, a few people (compared to Wikipedia editors) will take a long time
to check/fix/import all Wikipedia articles. Also, the imported versions
will soon be outdated compared to Wikipedia. So what? This site will be
for reliability; Wikipedia is for development and current events coverage.

I would see such a site working in parallel to the validation feature.
Some might argue that this would "split out forces", with some people
validating and some importing. OTOH, a little friendly compedition might
do good for motivation.

Lastly, there is one major reason to deploy such a site: Because it will
undoubtedly be deployed, by someone, sooner or later; I'd rather it's us
doing it than some company.

Magnus


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Edits from bayle.wikimedia.org??

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Doing a CheckUser, I saw someone as coming from 207.142.131.239.
> That's bayle.wikimedia.org ... how does that show up as the IP an
> edit's coming from?

Recently, a long time ago?

There were known misconfigurations some time in the past. Details are required,
please.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I don't, in general, see a problem with this.  If something is
> incorrect in any way, it should be corrected or removed (whether it is
> libelous or not is irrelevant---non-libelous misinformation has no
> place either).

I should add that, from both an ethical and legal perspective, this is
pretty much exactly how all other publicly-editable forums works.  If
someone posts a libelous message on an AOL message board, or in a
livejournal, or anywhere else, it will be removed by the service
provider upon complaint, but if nobody complains, there is no editorial
mechanism that vets such messages and proactively removes them.
Wikipedia is much the same---we just make the process easier by letting
you go in and remove the offending message yourself rather than forcing
you to file a formal complaint.

Now in the future we do want to start marking articles with some
indication of how much they've been vetted, so it will be easier to
figure out whether an article's status is more like "nobody has even
looked at this except the person who posted it, and it may well be
completely made-up" to "a few hundred trusted editors have looked at
this and believe it is, to the best of our knowledge, accurate, so there
is a pretty good chance it is at least mostly accurate".

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
Brian wrote:

> In light of the recent USA Today article:

What article?  Would it not be better if you followed your own rules
about citing something before you go around spreading panic.

> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags
> using a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out
> by placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and
> then, if it is not sourced in a week, create something like the
> {{copvio}} page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire
> article), explaining with a detailed message that the article must be
> thoroughly sourced.

This is absolutely unrealistic.  The image tagging project has been
going on for perhaps a year (?), and it's gradually getting to where we
want it.  No reliable editor opposes the idea of having pages properly
referenced, and ever since having referenced pages became the norm there
has been great progress in that area. Now because of one alleged
newspaper article you expect several hundred thousand articles to be
repaired in a week.  If not you will on your own initiative have a bot
go through and delete any material that YOU find inappropriate.

Perhaps you should start by showing a little trust in your fellow
editors rather than begin with a series of hostile enforcement actions.

> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since
> we do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based
> on information that we can verify ourselves.

Although I agree that the text in articles is more important than the
images, which are mostly only there to make things look pretty, I also
think that two years might be a more realistic time frame for cleaning
this up.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


from_name: stevertigo

body:
--- Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:

> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3303
>
> would be in my opinion much more useful than a
> complicated article
> validation form anyone can manipulate.

For a second there, it looked like someone was
suggesting Siegenthaller should file his complaint at
Bugzilla! Which, might not be a bad idea, were it not
that bad press is good press (especially when written
by apparently old instututional fogies concerned with
an issue indiscernable from vanity.)

Again, it would seem that there are indeed only two
kinds of people in the world... Anyway, let it not be
said that were concerned, for indeed we have no
obligation to jump when the critics say 'jump,' just
because they happen to have just discovered 'the
internet.'

Stevertigo

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


from_name: Fl Celloguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
Does anyone here subscribe to USA Today? If so, would anyone be willing to
write a letter to the editor expressing our apologies and highlighting our
strenths? (Quite frankly, I would also be outraged if I stumbled upon
blatantly incorrect and misleading information on Wikipedia.)

Thanks.

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

body:
> Re the first amendment, and the authors failure to edit his own article,
> etc.
> The Wikipedia project itself bears some responsibility here. If you are
> going to provide a soapbox for folks to stand on and exercise their
> first amendment rights, you are in part responsible for what they say.

Many Wikipedians live in countries with no "first amendment".

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


body:
Mark wrote:
>The problem with this view is that Wikipedia by nature cannot "decide"
>what to publish---we "publish" anything that anyone posts,
automatically and without review, because that >is how wikis work.  What
we *continue* to publish is the result of the consensus of editors.

Well, yes and no.  True, the WP community doesn't control the posting of
content, so "it" (whatever it is) can't decide, initially.  But (and let
me stress, I'm no lawyer), there is something and someone behind WP: the
Wikimedia Foundation and Jimmy Wales.  I'm not sure what the *exact*
relationship between the Foundation, Wales and WP is, but I would guess
that in the case of a suit the Foundation and Wales would be named as
defendants, for they in effect publish WP.

>I don't, in general, see a problem with this.  If something is
incorrect in any way, it should be
>corrected or removed (whether it is libelous or not is
irrelevant---non-libelous misinformation has no
>place either).  The "what if [x]" scenarios seem pretty far-fetched.

"Should" is the operative word here. Yup. The problem is that such
misinformation, often, is not changed. WP has one of the same problems
as communism: everything is everyone's responsibility, so everything is
no one's responsibility. So what "should" be done often isn't. Far
fetched?  I imagine Mr. Seigenthaler has already contacted his lawyer
(but I hope not).

Best,

Marshall Poe
The Atlantic Monthly
www.memorywiki.org


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Doing a CheckUser, I saw someone as coming from 207.142.131.239.
That's bayle.wikimedia.org ... how does that show up as the IP an
edit's coming from?

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
Brian wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Brian wrote:
>>
>>> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>>> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>>> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>>> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>>> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>>> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>>> sourced.
>>
>> I don't know about enforcing it ... but, on en: at least, the
>> {{unreferenced}} tag (which {{unsourced}} redirects to) is there for
>> anyone who wants to use them. I put it on articles I happen across that
>> are (a) not a stub (b) don't have even an external link somewhere.
>
> I agree about that, but I think the templates currently aren't taken
> too seriously. People will be motivated to cite/reference with this
> proposed system, or something like it. And it seems like something
> that we should automatically be requiring. Peer-reviewed encyclopedias
> do not require this, because they have trusted, known contributors.
> Our contributors are not known in anything like the same sense, so we
> have to show the public that our content is based on verifiable
> information.

Templates aren't taken too seriously because there are too many of
them.  There is no motivation in your scheme.  If your {{unsourced}}
template is only going on the articles most people won't notice it, and
won't notice anything is wrong until they have need to visit the article
only to find the information is gone.

Why shouldn't peer reviewed encyclopedias be put to the same standard.
What makes our long standing contributors any less trusted?  Many of us
do not accept this kind of elitism.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks
> ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing
> editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.

This'll be a complete waste; no one will ever look at the "frozen" wiki and
it'll be ignored. (Being 'wiki' or not is not relevant; it'll simply never ever
been seen. To be useful, the stable versions need to be right out front and
fully integrated into *.wikipedia.org where people are already looking.)

What we need is a tagging system within the wiki, for a review team to use to
mark certain revisions in certain states.

Articles with verified revisions will show those by default to the public, with
a notice at the top of the screen about their status and if there are newer
edits available.

Articles without verified revisions will have a notice at the top that they
haven't been reviewed, making clear the 'in-progress' state of the system.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks
> ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing
> editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.

This'll be a complete waste; no one will ever look at the "frozen" wiki and
it'll be ignored. (Being 'wiki' or not is not relevant; it'll simply never ever
been seen. To be useful, the stable versions need to be right out front and
fully integrated into *.wikipedia.org where people are already looking.)

What we need is a tagging system within the wiki, for a review team to use to
mark certain revisions in certain states.

Articles with verified revisions will show those by default to the public, with
a notice at the top of the screen about their status and if there are newer
edits available.

Articles without verified revisions will have a notice at the top that they
haven't been reviewed, making clear the 'in-progress' state of the system.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks
> ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing
> editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.

This'll be a complete waste; no one will ever look at the "frozen" wiki and
it'll be ignored. (Being 'wiki' or not is not relevant; it'll simply never ever
been seen. To be useful, the stable versions need to be right out front and
fully integrated into *.wikipedia.org where people are already looking.)

What we need is a tagging system within the wiki, for a review team to use to
mark certain revisions in certain states.

Articles with verified revisions will show those by default to the public, with
a notice at the top of the screen about their status and if there are newer
edits available.

Articles without verified revisions will have a notice at the top that they
haven't been reviewed, making clear the 'in-progress' state of the system.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks
> ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing
> editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.

This'll be a complete waste; no one will ever look at the "frozen" wiki and
it'll be ignored. (Being 'wiki' or not is not relevant; it'll simply never ever
been seen. To be useful, the stable versions need to be right out front and
fully integrated into *.wikipedia.org where people are already looking.)

What we need is a tagging system within the wiki, for a review team to use to
mark certain revisions in certain states.

Articles with verified revisions will show those by default to the public, with
a notice at the top of the screen about their status and if there are newer
edits available.

Articles without verified revisions will have a notice at the top that they
haven't been reviewed, making clear the 'in-progress' state of the system.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: geni

body:
On 11/30/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/30/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > This case Slim Virgin mentions is in arbitration now and a blatant
> > example of gaming Google by associating the name of the person with a
> > lot of accusations he has only a marginal connection with ...
> > At a minimum we need to not allow Google to index our talk pages. We
> > talk about a lot of things. They may be about information but they
> > are not encyclopedic.
>
> Fred, the case I was referring to isn't the one that's in arbitration,
> though I know the one you mean, and it's quite similar. I'm starting
> to wonder whether this is happening a lot: that troublemakers see our
> talk pages as a sort of Trojan horse. They pretend to be having an
> innocent conversation designed to sort out the good from the bad
> material, whereas in fact the discussion is only a vehicle being used
> to spread the bad stuff, which they know won't survive in our
> articles.
>
> Sarah

I'm seeing it a fair bit in certain areas. I haven't seen linkspam
hitting talkpages yet but it probably will soon. The problem is that
it will be most effective on low profile talk pages (ie ones likely to
be at the top of google searches) where we are least likely to notice.

--
geni


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
I think there is a good deal of un-necessary panic going around about
this USA Today thing.  Did it really tell us anything new?  No.
Misinformation in rarely visited articles has ALWAYS been a problem.

It's also not nearly as amenable to any kind of automated process as
image tagging.

Let's not run around like headless chickens because some journalist
found that conspiracy-theorist things had been put into his Wikipedia
article.

Fact is: Wikipedia's improving.  At quite a tremendous rate, in fact.
It's easy to forget (a) the magnitude of the task, and (b) how bad we
were even a year ago.

-Matt


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Meanwhile if you can compile a list of important articles that have
>not fared well under the wiki (I submit that this could be a fairly
>brief list, perhaps 1,000 or so) perhaps a team of interested
>individuals can take those articles off the main wiki and hothouse
>them for a while--or even, as you suggest, rewrite from scratch.  I'd
>be interested to see if this approach produces significantly better
>articles.

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

We don't even need to disrupt normal operation of the wiki - we need
people to get all those articles up to Featured quality and hopefully
actual Featured Article status.

(And the same for other languages.)

All those who talk about how we need to stop writing stuff and just
polish up what we have: there's a starter list, a bit over 0.1% of the
articles on en: . Start a WikiProject for it. It's thoroughly
worthwhile work and needs people to slog through it.

- d.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper
	blastsWikipedia

body:
> I am responding to nobody in particular, because there's such a wide
> variety of hysteria to respond to that I can barely choose.
>
> The objection that Seigenthaler is having to Wikipedia is not
> even to
> the process or to the speed at which we fix vandalism. It is not to
> our current quality, it is not to anything fixable.
>
> The fundamental objection that Seigenthaler has is that we allow
> people to post freely. His objection is to the belief that we ought
> not carefully monitor our users and that we ought avoid turning them
> in to the legal authorities in a dispute. His assumption that the
> article was posted by a vandal is dodgy at best - I would be shocked
> if he were not the subject of some conspiracy theory or another, and
> if whoever posted the article were anything more than a particularly
> stupid POV pusher. If Wikipedia were to in any way assist with
> turning a mere stupid POV pusher in to legal authorities, I know my
> support for the site would drop off swiftly.
>
> The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness. That opens
> us to stupidity, and we have an obligation to deal with the
> stupidity. And if Seigenthaler wanted to criticize us for our
> failings in reverting this stupidity and to the process that let it
> sit there for 153 days, he'd be right. But to criticize us for being
> open and free in the first place is not a problem we can or should
> fix. And to my mind, it is a problem that puts Seigenthaler so far
> outside of any of the core beliefs of this project that the point is
> only narrowly worth debating.
>
> A final comment - we have been adamant and active about finding ways
> for our Chinese contributors to participate even as their government
> tries to shut them down. On what possible grounds can we even
> consider acquiescing to an argument that amounts to "It should be
> easier to sue if I don't like my Wikipedia article." Think of what
> would have happened in the Bogdanov Affair, or with John Byrne, or
> with dozens of other cases if what Seigenthaler were calling
> for were
> to come true.
>
> -Phil

Agree 100% with both points:

1. We should not help people punish stupid or POV-pushing contributors.

2. We should facilitate contributions from (and access by) people
suffering under dictorial regimes which censor "anti-government" POV.

Ed Poor


body:
kosebamse wrote:

>We waste our time
>trying to catch up with a steady inflow of obvious vandalism, cluelessness,
>crackpottery, editwarring etc., amassing ever more content of doubtful
>quality, while our foremost priority should be to produce quality articles.

So score some Featured Articles and brag about them on your user page.
I have four so far ;-D

(Actually getting an article through FAC is a hell of a lot of work
and you get some really *silly* objections sometimes. But I think
anyone who thinks they can write and wants quality in Wikipedia should
put a few through the process.)

- d.


body:
> And that, we all agree, is a shame.  Free speech should be protected
> everywhere, period.  But it also needs to be used responsibly
> everywhere, period.
> Marshall Poe

Sure, I'm just saying that the name "first amendment" does not apply.
Many Americans tend to use it also in non-US context.

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


from_name: edward molasses

subject: [Wikitech-l] switched from 1.4.6 to 1.5: extension now gives error

body:
Hello,

I had been using an extension with MediaWiki 1.4.6 but after installing
it in MediaWiki 1.5, I get the following error when using the extension:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: fetchobject() in c:\program
files\easyphp1-7\www\latest\extensions\DocumentExport.php on line 460

It appears to be having trouble with the function fetchobject() in
Database.php. But I looked at that function in 1.4.6 and 1.5 and they
both look identical. I was wondering if anyone knew what has changed in
the way that function ( fetchobject() ) is used that might cause this
error? Any help help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Andrew.


from_name: Justin Cormack

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90511280852l6a3bd510qa48bd6c5933ecaee@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmjvt9$fbb$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 11:46 +0100, Anthere wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> Thanks for restoring them Anthony
>
> I talked to hubby yesterday and his comment was roughly "what the f***",
> so I put them under GFDL.
>
> Meanwhile, Submarine explained to me how to use an upload tool, with
> automated tagging on commons. It works pretty well and is a huge relief
> compared to using our current system. So, some good comes out of all
> this :-)

I am glad everything is ok. Its good to have them on Commons.

Justinc


body:
edward molasses wrote:
> I had been using an extension with MediaWiki 1.4.6 but after installing
> it in MediaWiki 1.5, I get the following error when using the extension:
>
> Fatal error: Call to undefined function: fetchobject() in c:\program
> files\easyphp1-7\www\latest\extensions\DocumentExport.php on line 460
>
> It appears to be having trouble with the function fetchobject() in
> Database.php. But I looked at that function in 1.4.6 and 1.5 and they
> both look identical. I was wondering if anyone knew what has changed in
> the way that function ( fetchobject() ) is used that might cause this
> error? Any help help would be much appreciated.

You've probably got an object that isn't a database object. Make sure you
retrieved it from wfGetDB() and that it's not encountering some error.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>edward molasses wrote:
>
>
>>I had been using an extension with MediaWiki 1.4.6 but after installing
>>it in MediaWiki 1.5, I get the following error when using the extension:
>>
>>Fatal error: Call to undefined function: fetchobject() in c:\program
>>files\easyphp1-7\www\latest\extensions\DocumentExport.php on line 460
>>
>>It appears to be having trouble with the function fetchobject() in
>>Database.php. But I looked at that function in 1.4.6 and 1.5 and they
>>both look identical. I was wondering if anyone knew what has changed in
>>the way that function ( fetchobject() ) is used that might cause this
>>error? Any help help would be much appreciated.
>>
>>
>
>You've probably got an object that isn't a database object. Make sure you
>retrieved it from wfGetDB() and that it's not encountering some error.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
Thanks for the help! I will see if i can hunt down the problem...