from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Reponse to troll [[The Enforcer]]

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>3.  There are no current plans for salaries for anyone.  In the
>future, I do intend that as we grow, we will become a large
>organization patterned after the National Geographic Society, the
>International Red Cross, and so on.  This will eventually necessitate
>employees, etc.  But for now, any suggestion that I am personally
>trying to get money from Wikipedia is beyond ludicrous.

Even if Jimbo *were* currently drawing a salary from the Wikimedia
Foundation, it wouldn't exactly be a scandal. Frankly, I think the
Wikimedia Foundation *should* have paid staff, and as soon as
possible. A project as substantial as the Wikipedia can't run on
volunteer sacrifices forever.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, May 2004)
--------------------------------


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Default Style/Theme

body:
On May 3, 2004, at 21:39, JDK wrote:
> This seems like something that should be pretty straight forward, but
> I'll be darned if I can find it.  How do I set the defeult theme?  I've
> found how to change it in user preferences, but cannot find where to
> set
> the default.

Sorry, it's a little non-obvious.

In languages/Language.php, find this bit:

/* private */ $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn = array(
	"quickbar" => 1, "underline" => 1, "hover" => 1,
	"cols" => 80, "rows" => 25, "searchlimit" => 20,
	"contextlines" => 5, "contextchars" => 50,
	"skin" => 0, .......

It's that 0 after "skin" you want to change:

0: Standard
1: Nostalgia
2: Cologne Blue

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: <span>

body:
Since there have been several requests for <span> tags not only from me
over the past several months, but also from other users, most recently
twice this week on the Village Pump, I have opened

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Span_tags_poll>

to let the people speak on whether or not they want to allow <span>
tags. I hope that if there is a consensus to support <span> tags, then
the developers will enable them.

- David


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: HTML to wiki(pedia) toy

body:
On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 04:11:43PM -0400, David Friedland wrote:
> I want to try to connect this somehow to a CGI to make a webpage where
> people can paste in HTML and get wikitext out by clicking a button. This
> would make it easy to convert HTML tables I run across to wikitables
> quickly, by just a couple copy and pastes.

Try the tremendous table2wiki.py from the pywikipediabot at
http://pywikipediabot.sf.net

At best copy the html-table into wikipedia and run the bot over it.
ciao tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet - bald im Duck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


from_name: JDK

subject: [Wikitech-l] Default Style/Theme

body:
This seems like something that should be pretty straight forward, but
I'll be darned if I can find it.  How do I set the defeult theme?  I've
found how to change it in user preferences, but cannot find where to set
the default.

Thanks,
jdk


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] irresponsible practices, vandalism by sysops,
	misleading funding calls re: "third world" wikipedia

body:
Anti Angela wrote:
> These were unilaterally deleted by "User:Angela"...

No, they were not deleted. They were moved to the talk
page of the user who wrote them, as fictional stories
are not appropriate in the main namespace of an
encyclopedia.

> Bad policy decisions were
> made, such as failing to recognize the most common
> 2000 words as a desirable threshold...

No such policy has been made yet. Discussions as to
what counts as "Simple English" are still ongoing
within the project.

--Anti-Anti-Angela.

____________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
your friends today! Download Messenger Now
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons & Single Sign On

body:
I have created a more detailed proposal on the Wikimedia Commons (shared
media wiki):

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons

I have added a mock-up of a redesigned upload form which addresses the
copyright issue, IMHO in a smarter way than the simple multiline upload
form that is currently active on test.wikipedia.org.

The page also includes an implementation strategy for single sign-on. If
we implement the commons, that would also be the logical time to implement
SSO, as the requirements are related and the Commons would obviously
benefit from it.

I hope we can move forward with this, but I need volunteers:
* people who are willing to help with the implementation
* people who improve the proposal and related documents
* people who spread the word about this proposal and get other people
involved.

If you think you can do any of this, or anything else, please add your
name in the "Who wants to help?" section. If I have to do it alone I'll do
it, but in that case I won't do single sign-on and most of the advanced
stuff that is discussed on the page.

If we do this together, I suggest adding the relevant changes to the
MediaWiki roadmap for 1.4.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia Commons & Single Sign On


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: evan at wikitravel.org

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information

body:
Anthere said:

> * When a soft improvement is done to fit legal
> requirements, please, could it be discussed on
> foundation-l to check if that complies with the legal
> requirements ?

I'm wondering if you're still obliquely talking about the contributors list.
I'd love to hear that you read and understood my response to your questions.

I agree that it's a good idea for there to be more communication between the
Wikimedia community and the volunteer developers. I think there are a lot of
areas that could be improved -- streamlining the way bug reports and feature
requests work is one of them. Having a community leader like yourself take
the initiative to make this work well would be a great help to everyone.

I'd also like to say that I feel comfortable right now adding features or
fixing bugs in MediaWiki that may or may not be useful for Wikimedia
projects. There's an awful lot of code in MediaWiki that's not enabled for
Wikipedia.

I've tried to make a point of:

1) Noting these changes on tech lists and marking them as non-Wikimedia ones.
2) Making them disabled by default.

If you think there's a problem with having features in MediaWiki that are
disabled for Wikimedia projects, that's a development direction issue that
should probably be discussed. I'd be somewhat unhappy doing a private fork
of MediaWiki, since I'd like to give back any improvements to the code as a
thank you to the Wikimedia community. But of course I'd be happy to make the
effort if that was what the community wanted.

~ESP


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Congratulations!

body:
Congratulations to all Wikipedians on winning the Prix Ars Electronica for
Digital Communities in 2004!

	http://www.aec.at/en/prix/

Thanks again for setting such an excellent example for Open Content and
community on the Web.

~ESP


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information

body:
On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:19:00PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I made this edit to reflect plans to fund a printed "WikiReader" (a
> compilation of selected articles on a topic) from foundation money. These
> WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians, and Jimbo and
> TomK32 have been in discussions to fund such a reader (on the subject
> "Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS conference in June. The last
> result of these discussions was that this was pretty firmly planned, but
> Jimbo obviously hasn't announced it yet.

BTW: What's the current state in that? I'm waiting for both, you and
the printer to get more active...

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet - bald im Duck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information


from_name: Alex Regh

body:
Hi!

On Mon, 3 May 2004 21:55:17 -0500, Sheldon Rampton wrote:

>Even if Jimbo *were* currently drawing a salary from the Wikimedia
>Foundation, it wouldn't exactly be a scandal. Frankly, I think the
>Wikimedia Foundation *should* have paid staff, and as soon as
>possible. A project as substantial as the Wikipedia can't run on
>volunteer sacrifices forever.

While I do agree that eventually paid staff should and will come, drawing from
the donations now, which, as far as I know, were made mostly or exclusively
for hardware upgrades, would be not a good idea at all. Not only would feel
many of the donors feel duped (and it would prevent many people from making
donations in the future as well), there would most likely also be legal
problems arising from that.

So if there are paid employees ever for the foundation, that needs a legal
framework first. Which I would not mind.

Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wiktionaries and interwiki

body:
On May 4, 2004, at 06:57, Tomasz Sienicki wrote:
>  However, I have a suggestion. Wiktionary interwikis always link to
>  pages of the same name:
>
>  [[pl:Hund]] [[en:Hund]] [[da:Hund]] [[de:Hund]] [[ru:Hund]] etc
>
>  It's really redundant to type 'Hund' 150 times; perpahs we could
>  solve this by simplifying these links to [[pl:]] [[en:]] [[de:]].
>  etc... (or whatever syntax) or even generating them automatically?

A SisterSites-style mechanism would be much better, where it
automatically shows links to same-named pages that exist on the sister
wikis without any need for explicitly adding the link.

Volunteers?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Wiktionaries and interwiki


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Registering Wikimedia trademarks

body:
Michael Snow wrote in part:

>One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
>because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
>The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
>are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
>sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
>to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
>legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.

Hum.
So how easy is it to keep track of these announcements of applications?
(I assume that we'd be in a good position to object to registration.)
And how easy is it to keep track of applications in other countries,
such as the European Union?

-- Toby


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Anti Angela wrote:

> > WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians,
>
> This is false.  "Simple English Readings in SUBJECT" were being
> written on the Simple English Wikipedia before they appeared in
> German.  They covered such subjects as Cosmology & Health, and were
> designed to be useful as staged readings for people who were learning
> English - proceeding from simpler to more complex articles &
> vocabulary.  Some "Simple English User Stories" were included, a
> standard technique to illustrate some ways in which the articles might
> be used by real developing-world end users.  So, what happened to all
> this?  Vandalism, basically:
>
> These were unilaterally deleted by "User:Angela" as part of a "clear
> cut" of policy issues and staging and other material that was clearly
> directed towards developing-world users.

142 has had his writing deleted from more wikis than I care to count.
Angela was hardly doing something extraordinary. And we do have a policy
of deleting anything written by hard-banned users.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:
>
> Please fix MediaWiki:All messages generator script as it links to
> wikipedia.org and not wiktionary.org.

Actually the script wasn't used to generate those pages, they were just
copied from the associated wikipedias.

 > [about links from wikipedia to wiktionaries]
 >
 >
 > How am I supposed to link from hu.wikipedia to hu.wiktionary? I'd say
 > [[wiktionary:word]] but it links to http://wiktionary.org/..word instead.
 >
 > Additionally [[wiktionary:fi:kukkala]] should redirect to fi.wiktionary
 > which it doesn't do yet.
 >

All this is fixed now. The "Wiktionary:" prefix still links to the
English Wiktionary, but a new "wikt:" prefix has been introduced which
links laterally to the wiktionary of the same language. An extra feature
has been added to MediaWiki allowing "diagonal" linking, with the help
of redirects. A link reading [[wikt:fi:kukkala]] on the German Wikipedia
will link to http://de.wiktionary.org/fi:Kukkala, which will redirect to
http://fi.wiktionary.org/Kukkala .

 > Which language.php does it use? It should be updated as well.

It uses the same language as the associated Wikipedia

 > Which list shall I use for further questions?

It's probably more relevant to foundation-l.

Tomasz Sienicki wrote
 > While it works on some wiktionaries, it doesn't on pl.wiktionary.org
 >
 > [[w:entry]] points to www.wikipedia.org (should be pl.wikipedia)
 > [[de:entry]] points to de.wikipedia (should be de.wiktionary).

This was just a caching problem.

 > [[Wikipedia:de:entry]] does not work at all

Fixed as noted above.

 > Also, the updated lng file for the Polish Wiktionary was uploaded to
 > http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageWiktionaryPL.php a month ago.

I'll look into that.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia mysql dump

body:
On May 4, 2004, at 12:12, Miran Bozicevic wrote:
> I would like to get hold of a current dump of the Wikipedia data for
> research
> purposes; Jim Wales said I could just download it from somewhere.
> Could anyone
> let me know where that would be?

http://download.wikimedia.org/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tomasz Sienicki

body:
 Tim Starling wrote:

> All this is fixed now.

 It works great; thank you.

 However, I have a suggestion. Wiktionary interwikis always link to
 pages of the same name:

 [[pl:Hund]] [[en:Hund]] [[da:Hund]] [[de:Hund]] [[ru:Hund]] etc

 It's really redundant to type 'Hund' 150 times; perpahs we could
 solve this by simplifying these links to [[pl:]] [[en:]] [[de:]].
 etc... (or whatever syntax) or even generating them automatically?

--
 tsca * Tomasz Sienicki


subject: [Wikitech-l] Hardware updates

body:
We've moved everything on Zwinger from the 80gb drive to the 250gb
drive. The 80 is still in there, so if anyone needs files that were
changed in the couple hours between starting the copy and finishing up,
give a shout.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Walloon Wikipedia

body:
The Walloon Wikipedia has been moved from outside hosting to our main
servers, at http://wa.wikipedia.org/

Links should be updated.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Centerfielder

subject: [Wikitech-l] index.php/Main_Page style URLs

body:
I've installed MediaWiki on an ISP's servers and had no trouble.  Recently
I built a RedHat box for an internal wiki at work, and URLs of the form

   http://internal.domain/index.php/Main_Page

result in a 404 error.  I've applied the suggested RewriteEngine rules
specified at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_config#mod_rewrite to
a .htaccess file where index.php is, but that didn't help.  Any suggestions?


body:
On May 4, 2004, at 18:07, The Centerfielder wrote:
> I've installed MediaWiki on an ISP's servers and had no trouble.
> Recently
> I built a RedHat box for an internal wiki at work, and URLs of the form
>
>   http://internal.domain/index.php/Main_Page
>
> result in a 404 error.  I've applied the suggested RewriteEngine rules
> specified at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_config#mod_rewrite
> to
> a .htaccess file where index.php is, but that didn't help.  Any
> suggestions?

Some PHP configurations don't allow using extended path information
after the script name; in particular when configured as CGI or
'apache2handler' it will fail. The (web-based) install tries to detect
known-bad configurations, but it might have missed yours or if you
installed 1.2.4 it won't have had the apache2handler detection in yet.

Add this to LocalSettings.php:
$wgArticlePath = "$wgScript?title=$1";

and if necessary this:
$wgUsePathInfo = false;

Now make sure your rewrite configuration is using the long-form URLs
for the destination (/index.php?title=Main_Page)

Can you run the following short script to check if it's something new
we have to check for?

<?php print "PHP server API is: " . php_sapi_name(); ?>

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Wikipedia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Please have a look on the script, because instead of having yellow pages for Wiktionary: we have that for Wikipedia:. In romanian, we replaced Wiktionary with Wictionar (please see this page:  http://ro.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wik%C5%A3ionar:Bun_venit ), and we hope that this pages will become yellow, like in French wiktionary happened.

I hope you know what I meen.

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Companion - Scarica gratis la toolbar di Ricerca di Yahoo!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] The proliferation of article series boxes - a Proposal

body:
Hi!

After much debate on the subject, [[User:Hyacinth|Hyacinth]] suggested
creating clear guidelines for writing and placing boxes in
[[Talk:Heteronormativity]], which is a good idea, in my opinion. Here,
therefore, my attempt can be found: [[User:AlexR/Article series boxes]]

I hope that this might move the debate somewhat forward.

Greetings,
Alex

--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


from_name: Miran Bozicevic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia mysql dump

body:
Hi everybody,

I would like to get hold of a current dump of the Wikipedia data for research
purposes; Jim Wales said I could just download it from somewhere.  Could anyone
let me know where that would be?

Many thanks,

Miran Bozicevic


body:
Thanks for the fast response.  I'll give all this a try when I get to
work tomorrow;  I do know the web install complained of an older version
of PHP, but I was unable to find the latest version as an .rpm, so went
with the default.

And thanks for the fine software;  it's very impressive.

brad

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On May 4, 2004, at 18:07, The Centerfielder wrote:
>
>> I've installed MediaWiki on an ISP's servers and had no trouble.
>> Recently
>> I built a RedHat box for an internal wiki at work, and URLs of the form
>>
>>   http://internal.domain/index.php/Main_Page
>>
>> result in a 404 error.  I've applied the suggested RewriteEngine rules
>> specified at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_config#mod_rewrite to
>> a .htaccess file where index.php is, but that didn't help.  Any
>> suggestions?
>
>
> Some PHP configurations don't allow using extended path information
> after the script name; in particular when configured as CGI or
> 'apache2handler' it will fail. The (web-based) install tries to detect
> known-bad configurations, but it might have missed yours or if you
> installed 1.2.4 it won't have had the apache2handler detection in yet.
>
> Add this to LocalSettings.php:
> $wgArticlePath = "$wgScript?title=$1";
>
> and if necessary this:
> $wgUsePathInfo = false;
>
> Now make sure your rewrite configuration is using the long-form URLs for
> the destination (/index.php?title=Main_Page)
>
> Can you run the following short script to check if it's something new we
> have to check for?
>
> <?php print "PHP server API is: " . php_sapi_name(); ?>
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
>


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Congratulations! OPEN THE CHAMPAGNE!!!!

body:
For those who didn't realize:

We just won a Golden Nica - one of the most famous prizes in electronic arts!

What is even greater news: The prize will be honored with 40.000 Euros -
however we will have to share with a second winner, a dutch/ugandian internet
project. Those two golden Nicas and the Awards of Distinction in the "Digital
Communities" category will be presented at a special ceremony, hosted by Ars
Electronica and SAP, held in New York in June 2004. Since the winners of the
Golden Nicas must be commited to accept their prizes at the "Digital
Communities" Gala in June 2004 in person: Jimmy, June will be a month in
plane for you!

Congratulations to all!

Am Dienstag, 4. Mai 2004 16:44 schrieb evan at wikitravel.org:
> Congratulations to all Wikipedians on winning the Prix Ars Electronica for
> Digital Communities in 2004!
>
> 	http://www.aec.at/en/prix/
>
> Thanks again for setting such an excellent example for Open Content and
> community on the Web.
>


body:
> winners of the Golden Nicas must be commited to accept their prizes at the
> "Digital Communities" Gala in June 2004 in person: Jimmy, June will be a
> month in plane for you!

Just found out when and where:

http://www.sap.com/text/company/events/prixarselectronica.asp

The Prix Ars Electronica Awards Ceremony
Event: Prix Ars Electronica 2004
 Date: June 23, 2004
 Time: 7:00 p.m.
 Venue: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, New York City

Uli


body:
> What is even greater news: The prize will be honored with 40.000 Euros -
> however we will have to share with a second winner, a dutch/ugandian
> internet project.

To be more precise:

Two Golden Nicas will be awarded with 10,000 Euro each and
4 Awards of Distinction with 5,000 Euro each and up to 14 Honorary Mentions.

So just 10.000 EUR for us....

Uli


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another one bites the dust

body:
Well, the trolls have driven off another valuable contributor.  [[User:Tannin]] is gone.  See his User page for the reasons.

If we DO NOT get our act together and make it more difficult for the trolls and hatemongers to post, instead of bending over backwards to make it easier, Wikipedia is doomed.

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
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from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
	Foundation

body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
	Foundation

body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
-------------- next part --------------
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body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
-------------- next part --------------
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from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

body:
Just in case this thread would discuss that point furthermore, and in case
people would ignore it, the World Intellectual Property Organization
(http://www.wipo.int/index.html.en) has probably every answers to your
questions, not to mention the questions you would never have thought to ask.
The USA are one of the 180 members of the organization. And if you're not a
specialist of patents, you can browse the site for hours. For legal issues
regarding the WikiMedia Foundation, you should always ask yourself : is this
question special to WikiMedia because it is a unique project or, by any
chance, is this a question truly common for any kind of activities including
internet non-profit structures ? 95 % of the time you don't have to be
creative because for 200 years, legal people have been working, alas. Just a
question of : where's the info ?

Jean-Christophe Chazalette
aka Aurevilly

----- Original Message -----
From: "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 8:26 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Registering Wikimedia trademarks

> Michael Snow wrote in part:
>
> >One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
> >because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
> >The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
> >are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
> >sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
> >to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
> >legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.
>
> Hum.
> So how easy is it to keep track of these announcements of applications?
> (I assume that we'd be in a good position to object to registration.)
> And how easy is it to keep track of applications in other countries,
> such as the European Union?
>
>
> -- Toby
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[Foundation-l] Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
	Foundation

body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
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body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040504/0d91a648/attachment-0001.htm


body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040504/0d91a648/attachment-0002.htm


body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040504/0d91a648/attachment.html>


body:
Hello Everyone,

We have launched the Election Campaign for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation. This is an important step forward in our emergence as a
Foundation, and your participation is crucial.

The election is for two seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation:

1) Contributing Active Member Representative;
2) Volunteer User Representative.

I quote Jimbo in saying that:

"The role of the board is *not* generally to get involved in the day-to-day
operation of the website.  The board is a legal entity entrusted with ultimate
decision making for the Foundation.  Website governance is a different matter
altogether.  I don't anticipate that
the board will be a difficult or demanding position."

In the future, only Members who have paid dues to the Wikimedia Foundation
will be eligible to run for the Contributing Active Member Representative. All
Users will be eligible to run for the Volunteer User Representative. However,
since the dues infrastructure is not yet in place, we have decided that all
Users who have been with the project for at least three months will be eligible
to vote and run for both seats on the Board. Candidates must be prepared to
identify themselves by name and geographic location in order to participate in
the election. Verification of their identities will be required to either of the
Co-Chairs of the Wikimedia Election Committee. Complete confidentiality is
ensured by us.

A FAQ regarding the roles of the Board of Trustees, electoral procedures, and
other information is forthcoming.

Elections are scheduled to be held from midnight (GMT), Saturday, 30 May 2004
to midnight (GMT), Saturday, 5 June 2004. All candidates must have been
registered by then. midnight (GMT), 29 May 2004. The 24-hour interval will allow us
the necessary time to verify the candidates' identities and make a final
determination whether they are eligible to run.

This is not a popularity contest. Please avoid adding comments to the List of
Candidates Page, such as "Great Contributor!" "Good choice!" "Troll" etc. All
such comments will be removed immediately.

We encourage the candidates to create pages where voters can ask them
questions.

It is important that participants in all languages and on all projects
participate in this election. If you speak a language other than English, please
translate the election notice that appears on the top of the English-language
"Recent Changes" page and post it in a prominent location on the respective
project. There is a link for you to follow in the notice to inform us that you have
done so. This way, we will make sure that projects in all languages have been
informed.

Apart from the translations, we ask that the Notices not be edited or changed
in any way except by or with the express permission of either [[User:Danny]]
or [[User:Imran]]. While this is exceptional for Wikipedia, it will ensure
that this election is conducted fairly. Please address all your questions and
concerns to the Talk Page of the Election FAQ, which is linked from the Notice.

Note that all election materials except for the notices and possibly the
candidates' information pages will be located on Meta. This is done so as not to
favor one language over another. In the future, we hope to have greater
flexibility with regard to other languages, but as for now, initial election
information will be posted in English.

More information is forthcoming, both on the Mailing Lists and on the
Respective Pages. This is the first time that such an election is being held, so
please bear with us.

May the best WikiCandidates win.

Imran and Danny
Co-Chairs, Wikimedia Election Committee
-------------- next part --------------
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from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikiDE-l problems

body:
There seems to be a strange problem with wikiDE-l: I didn't get any
messages from April 17 to 20. Another person reported the same. And
yesterday someone said he didn't get any digests since May 1.

Could someone please look into this? Thanks!

Kurt

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Walloon Wikipedia

body:
Kaixo!

On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 05:27:25PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> The Walloon Wikipedia has been moved from outside hosting to our main
> servers, at http://wa.wikipedia.org/

Thank you very much.
I did some testings and everything seems working correctly (apart
from passwords problems, requesting new ones is needed).

> Links should be updated.

I would like to keep the domain "wikipedia.walon.org" working (as there
is already a lot of links using it).
I changed my DNS to point to the new address, but the html server
at wikipedia.org doesn't know about "wikipedia.walon.org" yet;
who should I ask about it?

Thanks again

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information

body:
Message: 6
Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 07:41:09 -0700
From: evan at wikitravel.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <20040504144109.GA10352 at pigdog.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Anthere said:

> * When a soft improvement is done to fit legal
> requirements, please, could it be discussed on
> foundation-l to check if that complies with the legal
> requirements ?

>I'm wondering if you're still obliquely talking about the contributors
>list.
>I'd love to hear that you read and understood my response to your
>questions.

I have understood your explanations Evan.
Well, I hope I did :-)

I understood I think that your features were currently on wikimedia 1.3 (not yet released, and time of release not known). I understood there were meant to provide a mean to comply with gfdl (or Wikitravel license) requirements, which requires this contributors list; This is good.
I understood adding a real name field is meant to provide possibility to some editors, to have credit (for their edition on articles), while keeping a little bit more of privacy as participants (pseudo displayed).
I understood you developed these thinking a lot of Wikitravel, and that these are disabled for Wikipedia right now.

Here are my feelings on these two features themselves :

I personally do not think adding a "real name" field is a very good idea for Wikipedia; I do feel that if people want public recognition, then, they should register under their real name. If they prefer to sign comments under a pseudonyme, then, they can have a nickname; This already exist. This said, I understand your opinion, which is to say that people might want public recognition, but not want to work on wikipedia under their real name. It just seems a bit unefficient to me, that we have
* one field for real name
* one field for pseudo name (which may be real or not real)
* one field for nick name (which may be real or not real)
But if people want that, and feel it is great to have this real name field on Wikipedia, then there is no reason why your work should stay only on Wikitravel and not be benefiting on Wikipedia. I do not want to undermine your efforts here, it is great that people improve the mediawiki ;-)
But the fact is, we currently do not know if people would like it or not...

Perhaps, one thing that I heard may be problematic, is simply that "real name" is basically any name you put here. There is no control whatsoever of what our identity is. That means that adding this real name thing is also a door to a sort of sneaky vandalism. I am not sure I understood this well, so please tell me if I am wrong here. See, if a bad user add your real name to his preference pages, he will do bad edits, which will appear under your name; If these are not easily trackable, this user could spoil a lot of articles, but making bad edits, which will then appear to be your edits (edits under your real name). We could then get credit for really bad moves. While if tomorrow, a user appears under your real name, you might see it quite quickly, and perhaps you could do something about it.

If  we use such a feature, in the clear objective to give credit to people, then we must
1) have a way to change this attribute (ie, to edit the attribution page)
2) easy way to track this (ie, the credit given to a real name should for example be visible in recent changes)

I am not sure you understand what I mean. Just tell me if not.

The second point is about the list of contributors appearing in the article page. It is not obvious wikipedians would agree with this, as someone mentionned, they never asked for this. Still, we need (perhaps) a way to have a list of contributors (expecially for printed versions). For this reason, your feature is very likely useful. I know not if the current proposition is best, but it is probably better than nothing. Hence, I think it important to be discussed. Again, I do not want to undermine your efforts here, I do believe this is an important legal point, and it is really nice that someone works on it. It is just that I regret this is not adverstised more widely.

>I agree that it's a good idea for there to be more communication
>between the
>Wikimedia community and the volunteer developers. I think there are a
>lot of
>areas that could be improved -- streamlining the way bug reports and
>feature
>requests work is one of them.

I agree with all what you are saying Evan. Though I understand very little of technical things, I have to follow loosely wikitech, or sometimes hang around mediawiki just to know what is going on; I deeply regret this. Because as I can't understand details, I would prefer just one lign formula of what is going on. Something I could quickly understand. Just sometimes to know that good people are taking care of something, and one line to say what is going on, is enough for happiness. One line, and a link to the relevant place is usually enough. If the person is interested, he can follow the link for more.

---------

Example (I try to be practical here). When a down time is planned for technical reasons, what we saw recently is appearing usually at the last minute "servers will be down in a few minutes"

* setting up a feature that allow this little red message appearing on wikipedia to be in the current language and not english per default (If necessary, we can set a collection of preformated messages, so that the little messages on top may be automatically translated very quickly)

* instead of writing "will be down in a few minutes", writing something a bit more specific
** starting down time expected between 19h and 20h UTC (I guess everyone knows it may be fluttery, but it is more precise than "in a few minutes")
** expected down time for technical update : 5 hours (we also know that it may last longer if things go bad, but saying expectation is around 30 mn compared to expectation is around 5 hours IS information and IS important. If expected time is 5 hours, people do not hang around bugging developers to know more, they just go to the restaurant instead)
** indicate the reason why the servers are down (simply, just say, installing new "this")
** put this message several hours before hand, 12 hours for example.

There is no need to go in length and to be very specific, just warning people before, and giving them a bit of info will show you care, will keep them reassured, and will avoid that they come messing the mediawiki channel :-))))

-----------------------

Recently, I looked at the bug report on fr:, and I saw an awful mess, that was going up to october 2002, where we were switched to phase III. There was no way to know what was still valid, and what was not (it has been cleaned now). Similarly, I have little idea what is on mediawiki1.3. Most of the time, it does not matter; we just know you all do the best, and likely it is the best. And best that everyone takes care of what he can understand, and not of what he can not understand.
Still....yup...more communication would be real nice.

Is there somewhere a page listing what is currently planned on mediawiki1.3 so that I can add the link to goings-on on meta ?

> Having a community leader like yourself
>take
>the initiative to make this work well would be a great help to
>everyone.

hum, perhaps. But I know so little of technical things, that I really cannot help here. It is also up to you guys to use the channels that we try to outline. Most of the time, when you report an information, it has no feedback whatsoever, but once in a while, it has. So, it is worth doing it. But people should try to make effort to report information they have. Please.

>I'd also like to say that I feel comfortable right now adding features
>or
>fixing bugs in MediaWiki that may or may not be useful for Wikimedia
>projects. There's an awful lot of code in MediaWiki that's not enabled
>for
>Wikipedia.
>I've tried to make a point of:
>1) Noting these changes on tech lists and marking them as non-Wikimedia
>ones.
>2) Making them disabled by default.
>If you think there's a problem with having features in MediaWiki that
>are
>disabled for Wikimedia projects, that's a development direction issue
>that
>should probably be discussed. I'd be somewhat unhappy doing a private
>fork
>of MediaWiki, since I'd like to give back any improvements to the code
>as a
>thank you to the Wikimedia community. But of course I'd be happy to
>make the
>effort if that was what the community wanted.

I think most people would find a mediawiki fork very unfortunate. Those working on improvements are precious; it is perhaps not good to divide efforts. Anyway, that is up to the team to say what would be best. I have myself no idea how much of the code is for Wikipedia, and how much for other projects. What I mean is that if you announce it on wikitech, then it is probable that it is also meant potentially for Wikipedia; And if it is potentially for Wikipedia, we must find a way for people to know about it, and say "yes, right, we need that" or "no, not at all" or "why not if we change this...".

What I mostly mean to say Evan, is that you did nothing wrong, quite the opposite. You did good things for Wikitravel, and potentially interesting things for Wikipedia. That is all. I do not entirely agree with them, no big deal. What I am bugged with, is that feeling that there are higher barriers to information flow than before. That is logical, we are more numerous, bigger, people may focus more and more on a limited number of fields, and have less and less chance to catch up by chance a discussion on a specific issue.
What is bad is that that may lead to a feeling of frustration, when decisions are taken, or features implemented, that someone has never ever heard about. That is not a transparent process. Would have they known, these people might have said nothing at all (silence might mean they do not care, or silence mean they just agree), but they would have chosen not to say anything.

Now, is there a page reporting what is going on on mediawiki 1.3 for example ?
* minor fixes
* major fixes
* and *mostly* features

----

personal warning red line

Personal downtime  starting today
Duration expectation : a few days
Reason : my computer is basically RIP. I am paralyzed at the idea of trying to save all its content, reinstalling system, defragmenting, reinstalling software, fixing updates, prefs, extensions, putting back net connection specifs and co :-(

Anthere

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information

body:
Erik Moeller schrieb:

> I made this edit to reflect plans to fund a printed "WikiReader" (a
> compilation of selected articles on a topic) from foundation money.

I'm not sure what "to fund" means, but I think the money will just be
lend to TomK32 who assumes the full risk. The Foundation woun't be
acting as publisher.

> These WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians,

At least of some of them :-)

> and Jimbo and
> TomK32 have been in discussions to fund such a reader (on the subject
> "Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS conference in June. The last
> result of these discussions was that this was pretty firmly planned, but
> Jimbo obviously hasn't announced it yet.

I have started a discussion on wikiDE-l if the WikiReader shall be
presented to the public as an official product of the Wikipedia
community (with or without a big warning label that it might contain
errors), or just as a product of some people (who happen to be Wikipedians).

I'm very much in favour of the second option, because the review
procedures don't suffice my standards for a print edition. I fear that
we might be gambling with our name here. But there doesn't seem to be a
consensus about this jet.

Another interresting question is how much the demand will be for the
WikiReaders. I'm also skeptic here, but on the other hand there are
always people who are skeptic, it's better you don't listen to them and
just give it a try ;-)

Kurt

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information

body:
Anthere wrote:
> * setting up a feature that allow this little red message appearing on
> wikipedia to be in the current language and not english per default (If
> necessary, we can set a collection of preformated messages, so that the
> little messages on top may be automatically translated very quickly)

Yes, agreed! Please collect translations here for the moment:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_outage_message

Suggestions for other messages to add are welcome there.

> Now, is there a page reporting what is going on on mediawiki 1.3 for
> example ?
> * minor fixes
> * major fixes
> * and *mostly* features

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_roadmap
and
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two users left because of Wik

body:
User:Tannin and User:Kosebamse left, in large part because of Wik's
extremely aggressive behavior (continued reverts on many pages: he now has
a list of pages he reverts daily to be in compliance with the arbitration
ruling of not reverting the same page more than three times a day; he also
calls many users "morons" on his user page in clear violation of
Wikiquette).

Tannin and Kosebamse were both great and highly productive users. I don't
want to compare them against Wik, and I have nothing against Wik
personally, but if he can't learn to cooperate and keeps driving valued
contributors away, he has to go, period. In fact I suspect that he is
*trying* to get himself banned to play the victim.

Wik is currently in arbitration again. I urge the AC to speed up their
negotiations on this matter as every single day increases the risk of
losing more people. The least severe punishment I would find acceptable is
to forbid Wik from reverting edits entirely for a substantial amount of
time. If he has to revert something, he can try to convince someone else
to do it. At this point I would not rule out a temporary ban, however.

My gut feeling is that the arbitrators will be too lenient again. I have
to say that if they cannot solve this problem, I must consider the
arbitration process broken, and will strive for a complete reform. I
respect all of the arbitrators, of course, but I believe so far this
process has been far too slow and ineffective. Even Jimbo was faster and
less lenient.

Regardless of any AC reforms, I definitely think that we need an acting
body which can say things like
- "Wik, take these insults down or you will be banned"
- "Wik, justify your edits on the discussion page X before you revert
again, or you will be banned"
- "Wik, because of your behavior, you may not edit article Y for the next
week"
*quickly*. Such decisions can be the result of a poll among sysops, a
committee, individual appointed users, I don't care. But we definitely
need something that *works* before we lose more people and reputation. I
know we have quite a few hardcore anarchists, but as [[Wikipedia is not]]
states, we are not a vehicle for testing anarchism. We are an encyclopedia
and a community, and we need to develop realistic and effective ways of
dealing with problem users.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I can't believe he left on that account. I think it was more the general
athmosphere. The process with Wik will probably go for several rounds and
drag on for 6 months. This is linked to the substantial support system Wik
has among other users many of who would rebel on the other side if the
arbitrators were seen to deal pre-emptively with him.

Fred

> From: "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 08:29:47 +0100
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Two users left because of Wik
>
>
> I agree with Erik in virtually everything he says. The AC process is too slow.
> It's not the arbitrators fault, anything done by a committee is always very
> slow. But we _must_ fix it. I cannot believe we can lose a user like Tannin.
>
> Theresa
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik and a not-quite-proposal for constitutional change

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> I can't believe he left on that account. I think it was more the general
> athmosphere. The process with Wik will probably go for several rounds and
> drag on for 6 months. This is linked to the substantial support system Wik
> has among other users many of who would rebel on the other side if the
> arbitrators were seen to deal pre-emptively with him.

Where is that support system?  Who supports him?  Can they be
encouraged to pressure him into better behavior?

I don't see any reason for the process to go on for several *more*
rounds and for 6 *more* months.  At some point, very soon, he just
needs to be banned, and that's that.

I share the concerns that people have expressed about the speed (or
lack thereof) of our current processes.  I do not have a good idea for
a solution, but I think that quickpolls do offer us one promising
alternative, one that is currently growing "organically" because it
works.

I'm not (quite) making a proposal here, but just tossing out an idea
that I've been mulling over for a few days.

We could change the role of the arbitration committee to be more of a
'Board of Appeals'.  The purpose of the board of appeals would be to
potentially overturn decisions made by quickpolls.  Then quickpolls
could be used for rapid banning, and people who feel that they have
been unjustly banned could appeal to the board of appeals.

The issue of burden of proof would not change.  That is to say, the
appeals board, as with the current arbitration committee, would be
obliged to approach each case with an 'innocent until proven guilty'
mentality.  Their range of options as to actions to take would remain
the same.

What would be different is how users are dealt with during the
intermediate period between the trouble starting and final
adjudication.  If a quickpoll indicates a ban, the user is banned
unless and until the appeal is successful.

A successful appeal might not overturn the quickban, exactly, but
rather be our institutional method of accepting a person's promise to
change their behavior in specific ways.

Legitimate appeals might be "I didn't do it," or "I did it, but it
wasn't against the rules," or "I did it, and I'm sorry, I won't do it
again."

--Jimbo


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Ligo al Reta Vortaro / Link to Reta Vortaro

body:
Arnaud LAGRANGE wrote:
> En iuj wikimedia projektoj  [[ReVo:titol]] ligas al la  artikolo de Reta Vortaro ( http://www.uni-leipzig.de/esperanto/voko/revo/ ) kun titolo "titol", sed ne jam el eo.wiktionary.org !
>
> Cxu developisto povas ripari tion ?

Farite.

Estas kelkaj aliaj strangajxoj pri eo.wiktionary.org, mi jxetos okulon...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
I observe that Wik's supporters generally haven't had their work
erased by him, and cheer him on as a sort of energetic proxy. But
I'll bet not a single person will actually quit WP if he is banned;
people quit when they've had their hard work undone, not because
some person is gone.

Stan

Fred Bauder wrote:

>I can't believe he left on that account. I think it was more the general
>athmosphere. The process with Wik will probably go for several rounds and
>drag on for 6 months. This is linked to the substantial support system Wik
>has among other users many of who would rebel on the other side if the
>arbitrators were seen to deal pre-emptively with him.
>
>Fred
>
>
>>From: "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk>
>>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 08:29:47 +0100
>>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Two users left because of Wik
>>
>>
>>I agree with Erik in virtually everything he says. The AC process is too slow.
>>It's not the arbitrators fault, anything done by a committee is always very
>>slow. But we _must_ fix it. I cannot believe we can lose a user like Tannin.
>>
>>Theresa
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Two users left because of Wik

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> The arbitration committee does not have to be like Jimbo; always
> hesitant to act except in the most egregious cases.

I agree, and I also want to lend moral support to the idea that times
are changing, and times have changed.  Early in the project, in order
to be sure to achieve the critical mass for success, it was absolutely
important (in my mind) to be as open and accepting as possible... we
needed the people, even ones who were kind of a pain in the ass.

That is not as true now, and has not been as true for a long time.

There's a delicate balancing act here -- being open to newcomers is
crucial for the preservation of neutrality and quality.  We are a very
diverse group politically and religiously and philosophically and so
on, and we want to keep it that way.  But even maintaining that, we
could be guilty of cabalism, of being cliquish and closed, of refusing
to listen to new advice that makes us uncomfortable.

At the same time, though, it must be stated that we have much less
danger of that at the present time, than we have of being unbalanced
in a different way, i.e. having the community become unpleasant and
unco-operative over time as attrition tends to leave an increasing
ratio of jerks to kindhearted, helpful, thoughtful, loving, respectful
people.

> The community will squabble amongst itself forever about whether
> users should be kept on or banned. This bickering damages the
> community. What I want from the arbitration committee is decisive
> leadership aimed at the betterment of the encyclopedia project.  I
> don't want a legalistic process or proof beyond reasonable doubt.

What do you think of my idea of changing our "constitution" so that
quickpolls can be more broadly used for temp-bans, such that the
arbitration committee can be more of an appeals board?

I think what works for me about this idea is this.  If 80% + 8 vote
minimum of users in a 24 hour period think that someone should be
banned, and then if ultimately after a couple of weeks of evidence
gathering and talking to all the parties involved, the user is allowed
back in, then IN THAT CASE, the punishment will *still* fit the crime,
since annoying enough people to get an 80% majority for a ban
certainly warrants a 2 week cooling off period at a minimum.

> Of course it's true that you can't really keep anyone out of a wiki if
> they're determined to circumvent technical measures. The value of leadership
> is to end the in-fighting, and to avoid the sense of betrayal so many
> Wikipedians feel when they are attacked for defending the community against
> a troll.

That's right.

I should point out, not in support of Wik, but just by way of comment,
that the great irony about Wik is that he's sort of an anti-troll
troll.  He claims, and I have little reason to doubt his sincerity of
belief, that his annoying actions are just proper responses to various
troublemakers on the site.

--Jimbo


body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote
> > Where is that support system?  Who supports him?  Can they be
> > encouraged to pressure him into better behavior?
>
> I think finger-pointing is not a good idea in this case.  Let's say that he
> has apologists, who may very well be acting in perfectly good faith and be
> valued community members in their own right.

Oh, you're absolutely right.  I didn't mean my questions in a
fingerpointing way, but rather I genuinely want to know what arguments
are being made in his favor, and by whom, and for what reason.  And,
if Wik has supporters, then they are going to be the people most
likely to be able to get him to change.

I absolutely think that people who defend Wik could very well be
acting in perfectly good faith and be valued community members in
their own right.  Indeed, I'm the first to say based on my
conversations with Wik that I think he really sincerely has a beef
with a bunch of trolls, and thinks he's doing good by battling them.

The problem here is ironic.  We let trolls go on a bit too much.  Then
someone like Wik sticks his neck out to fight them, but *also* in the
process makes himself extremely annoying to other users.  If we had
already gotten rid of the original problem users, then maybe Wik
wouldn't have felt compelled to behave badly.

--Jimbo


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
"Erik Moeller" wrote

> he also
> calls many users "morons" on his user page in clear violation of
> Wikiquette).

Yes, clear violation.  This kind of systematic personal attack cannot be
acceptable.

Charles


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jail

body:
In the Western movies the good sheriff would go after the bad guy and
bring him in, throw him into the jail house, and then the court would
set up a trial.

Of course, if the guy resisted the sheriff's arrest attempts, the
sheriff would get rough, puching and kicking and throwing a bar stool
or two around. And if the guy resisted the sheriff with a pistol, the
sheriff wouls simply take out his own in faster-than-light speed
(don't you love the magic of movies?) and put blow him away.

What's my point?

We don't have enforcers. We just let the
robber/vandal/please-mommy-help-me-i-m-innocent-crybaby run amok
while we try to get a jury pool together.

I say throw him/her in wikiJail: No edit rights, a gag order (no
mailing lists), and access to ONE court appointed
wikilawyer/mediator, via email only.

Then, a court date, a judge, jury, and decision within 24 hours.

If the jailed person decides to try to escape the constrains of
confinement, then he/she will receive an immediate and automatic X
year(s) ban. X determined by the judge.

Wikipidia editing is a Privilege, not a Right.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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from_name: KNOTT, T

body:
I agree with Erik in virtually everything he says. The AC process is too slow. It's not the arbitrators fault, anything done by a committee is always very slow. But we _must_ fix it. I cannot believe we can lose a user like Tannin.

Theresa


body:
> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 06:24:22 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik and a not-quite-proposal for constitutional change
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> I can't believe he left on that account. I think it was more the general
>> athmosphere. The process with Wik will probably go for several rounds and
>> drag on for 6 months. This is linked to the substantial support system Wik
>> has among other users many of who would rebel on the other side if the
>> arbitrators were seen to deal pre-emptively with him.
>
> Where is that support system?  Who supports him?  Can they be
> encouraged to pressure him into better behavior?

Wik is relatively popular and people came forward and defended him. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Wik/Evidence
#Evidence_in_favour_of_Wik
[[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik/Evidence]]
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Wik#Statemen
ts_by_others
[[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik]]

The decision in the first Wik case included the following:

3. The above three findings nothwithstanding, we do acknowledge that Wik has
been a long-time and prolific contributor to Wikipedia, and that a great
many of his edits that did not involve edit wars constitute valuable
contributions to the encyclopedia.

Accepted 7-2, with one de facto abstention.

See: [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik]]

Certainly Wik's supporters could put their energy into working with Wik
instead of supporting him in his quarrels.

>
> I don't see any reason for the process to go on for several *more*
> rounds and for 6 *more* months.  At some point, very soon, he just
> needs to be banned, and that's that.

This is just my prediction and is based on the, hopefully false, assumption
that Wik will just keep on with his aggressive behavior and we can look
forward to Wik3 and Wik4. Most of the arbitrators do not share my pessimism
and are proposing relatively mild sanctions for this round.

> At some point, very soon, he just
> needs to be banned, and that's that.

There seems to be substantial disagreement with this conclusion. I think
those who disagree need to come forward with some theory of change that
would avoid coming to this pass. I fear the only theory out there now is
because he does so much "good" we ought to be willing to live with whatever
harm he does.

>
> I share the concerns that people have expressed about the speed (or
> lack thereof) of our current processes.  I do not have a good idea for
> a solution, but I think that quickpolls do offer us one promising
> alternative, one that is currently growing "organically" because it
> works.

Because of the support someone like Wik has, quickpolls are generally
inconclusive. It is a spiderweb that works good on flies but hawks fly
through.
>
> I'm not (quite) making a proposal here, but just tossing out an idea
> that I've been mulling over for a few days.
>
> We could change the role of the arbitration committee to be more of a
> 'Board of Appeals'.  The purpose of the board of appeals would be to
> potentially overturn decisions made by quickpolls.  Then quickpolls
> could be used for rapid banning, and people who feel that they have
> been unjustly banned could appeal to the board of appeals.

The actual results at quickpolls are not that good, indeed the process is
often abused for use in petty quarrels. see [[Wikipedia:Quickpolls/Archive]]

The debate on [[Wikipedia talk:Quickpolls]] may eventually be productive but
is quite involved and inconclusive as it stands now.

>
> The issue of burden of proof would not change.  That is to say, the
> appeals board, as with the current arbitration committee, would be
> obliged to approach each case with an 'innocent until proven guilty'
> mentality.  Their range of options as to actions to take would remain
> the same.
>
> What would be different is how users are dealt with during the
> intermediate period between the trouble starting and final
> adjudication.  If a quickpoll indicates a ban, the user is banned
> unless and until the appeal is successful.

This is a substantial increase in penalty, from a 24 hour ban to an ban
which whill stretch on til there is a decision from the arbitrators, who
already seem to be stretched a bit.

> A successful appeal might not overturn the quickban, exactly, but
> rather be our institutional method of accepting a person's promise to
> change their behavior in specific ways.
>
> Legitimate appeals might be "I didn't do it," or "I did it, but it
> wasn't against the rules," or "I did it, and I'm sorry, I won't do it
> again."
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
I first noticed this long watchlist. I take it to be evidence of a certain
over-involvement. Certainly keeping 10,000 articles, "straight" doesn't
leave much time for conversation with other users about changes and
reversions.

Fred

> From: "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 16:07:37 +0100
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wik and a not-quite-proposal for constitutional change
>
> Fennec Foxen wrote
>
>>> Has anyone suggested Wik simply be denied watchlist rights?  With the
>>> servers groaning, a watchlist of 10000+ pages is surely greedy for
>>> resources.
>>> Charles
>>
>> Is there software in place to allow denials such as this?
>
> I have no idea.  It is surely technically possible to clear the list.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: FW: [WikiEN-l] Wik and a not-quite-proposal for constitutional change

body:
----------
From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 08:58:24 -0600
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wik and a not-quite-proposal for constitutional
change

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 06:24:22 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik and a not-quite-proposal for constitutional change
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> I can't believe he left on that account. I think it was more the general
>> athmosphere. The process with Wik will probably go for several rounds and
>> drag on for 6 months. This is linked to the substantial support system Wik
>> has among other users many of who would rebel on the other side if the
>> arbitrators were seen to deal pre-emptively with him.
>
> Where is that support system?  Who supports him?  Can they be
> encouraged to pressure him into better behavior?

Wik is relatively popular and people came forward and defended him. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Wik/Evidence
#Evidence_in_favour_of_Wik
[[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik/Evidence]]
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Wik#Statemen
ts_by_others
[[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik]]

The decision in the first Wik case included the following:

3. The above three findings nothwithstanding, we do acknowledge that Wik has
been a long-time and prolific contributor to Wikipedia, and that a great
many of his edits that did not involve edit wars constitute valuable
contributions to the encyclopedia.

Accepted 7-2, with one de facto abstention.

See: [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik]]

Certainly Wik's supporters could put their energy into working with Wik
instead of supporting him in his quarrels.

>
> I don't see any reason for the process to go on for several *more*
> rounds and for 6 *more* months.  At some point, very soon, he just
> needs to be banned, and that's that.

This is just my prediction and is based on the, hopefully false, assumption
that Wik will just keep on with his aggressive behavior and we can look
forward to Wik3 and Wik4. Most of the arbitrators do not share my pessimism
and are proposing relatively mild sanctions for this round.

> At some point, very soon, he just
> needs to be banned, and that's that.

There seems to be substantial disagreement with this conclusion. I think
those who disagree need to come forward with some theory of change that
would avoid coming to this pass. I fear the only theory out there now is
because he does so much "good" we ought to be willing to live with whatever
harm he does.

>
> I share the concerns that people have expressed about the speed (or
> lack thereof) of our current processes.  I do not have a good idea for
> a solution, but I think that quickpolls do offer us one promising
> alternative, one that is currently growing "organically" because it
> works.

Because of the support someone like Wik has, quickpolls are generally
inconclusive. It is a spiderweb that works good on flies but hawks fly
through.
>
> I'm not (quite) making a proposal here, but just tossing out an idea
> that I've been mulling over for a few days.
>
> We could change the role of the arbitration committee to be more of a
> 'Board of Appeals'.  The purpose of the board of appeals would be to
> potentially overturn decisions made by quickpolls.  Then quickpolls
> could be used for rapid banning, and people who feel that they have
> been unjustly banned could appeal to the board of appeals.

The actual results at quickpolls are not that good, indeed the process is
often abused for use in petty quarrels. see [[Wikipedia:Quickpolls/Archive]]

The debate on [[Wikipedia talk:Quickpolls]] may eventually be productive but
is quite involved and inconclusive as it stands now.

>
> The issue of burden of proof would not change.  That is to say, the
> appeals board, as with the current arbitration committee, would be
> obliged to approach each case with an 'innocent until proven guilty'
> mentality.  Their range of options as to actions to take would remain
> the same.
>
> What would be different is how users are dealt with during the
> intermediate period between the trouble starting and final
> adjudication.  If a quickpoll indicates a ban, the user is banned
> unless and until the appeal is successful.

This is a substantial increase in penalty, from a 24 hour ban to an ban
which whill stretch on til there is a decision from the arbitrators, who
already seem to be stretched a bit.

> A successful appeal might not overturn the quickban, exactly, but
> rather be our institutional method of accepting a person's promise to
> change their behavior in specific ways.
>
> Legitimate appeals might be "I didn't do it," or "I did it, but it
> wasn't against the rules," or "I did it, and I'm sorry, I won't do it
> again."
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jail

body:
This is good, for a laugh anyway. How about suspending editing for all
participants in arbitration (except on the arbitration and evidence pages)
until the case is decided?

Fred

> From: Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 08:03:46 -0700 (PDT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Jail
>
> In the Western movies the good sheriff would go after the bad guy and
> bring him in, throw him into the jail house, and then the court would
> set up a trial.
>
> Of course, if the guy resisted the sheriff's arrest attempts, the
> sheriff would get rough, puching and kicking and throwing a bar stool
> or two around. And if the guy resisted the sheriff with a pistol, the
> sheriff wouls simply take out his own in faster-than-light speed
> (don't you love the magic of movies?) and put blow him away.
>
> What's my point?
>
> We don't have enforcers. We just let the
> robber/vandal/please-mommy-help-me-i-m-innocent-crybaby run amok
> while we try to get a jury pool together.
>
> I say throw him/her in wikiJail: No edit rights, a gag order (no
> mailing lists), and access to ONE court appointed
> wikilawyer/mediator, via email only.
>
> Then, a court date, a judge, jury, and decision within 24 hours.
>
> If the jailed person decides to try to escape the constrains of
> confinement, then he/she will receive an immediate and automatic X
> year(s) ban. X determined by the judge.
>
> Wikipidia editing is a Privilege, not a Right.
>
>
>
> =====
> Christopher Mahan
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> 818.943.1850 cell
> http://www.christophermahan.com/
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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