from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
kelvSYC wrote:

> The original concept for Wikibooks, according to its founder,
> [[User:Karl Wick]] I believe, is a wiki for building textbooks.
> However, Wikipedians for some odd reason decided to offload their
> unwanted goods to Wikibooks: for examples, the VFD precedent there
> regarding recipes has largely been the driving force behind
> [[Cookbook]], even though a cooking textbook should focus little on
> recipes and more on general cooking techniques.  Many of the books
> here have since defied their original intent: for example, [[Computer
> and video games bookshelf]] (originally [[Game Guides and Strategy]])
> - a textbook on beating a computer game sounds ludicrous to me.
>
> Wikibooks also suffers from the fact that there are few active admins
> and few active users of action (and thus suffering from repeated
> vandal attacks).  Prior to myself becoming an admin, there were over
> 200 pages on speedy deletion, some of them being marked for months
> (although half of these were due to technical constraints).  There
> are possibly another 200 pages that could be easily moved out of en:
> and onto their respective Wikibooks if only Special:Import was
> complete (or someone did hard transwiking).  Because of this, few
> Wikibookians are willing to put down concrete policies that are
> followed and enforced (consider that key pages such as [[WB:HNS]],
> [[WB:FP]] and even [[WB:WIN]] were in constant flux).  Furthermore,
> Wikibookians tend to be within their own group of books, and rarely
> venture into collaborating in other books (this is perhaps due to a
> lack of a consistent Manual of Style).  This makes it difficult to
> judge the purpose of Wikibooks.  Only recently have users decided to
> put their foot down in respect to what Wikibooks is about, and what
> it is about is instructional material.  It could very well be the
> case that longtime existing books such as [[Jokebook]] could be put
> up in VFD for not being instructional material.
>
I do think that this problem will eventually solve itself.  Wikibooks,
by its nature, takes a little more time for just about everything to
happen, and in general cooler heads prevail on just about all editing
issues compared to Wikipedia.  In stead of featured article and article
of the day, we do article of the month, and it takes about a month to
decide... as an example.

I've been doing an Alexa scan of Wikibooks, however, and it is showing
proportional growth to Wikipedia, although admittedly Wikipedia is an
order of magnitude more active.  Indeed this seems to be the problem as
Wikibooks is the baby sister of Wikipedia, and moderately new users from
Wikipedia checking out Wikibooks have a hard time telling the
difference.  I'll admit that I'm still trying to get a handle on the
internal politics of Wikimedia projects, and I'm just barely starting to
understand the overall differences between each of the projects at any
reasonable depth.  An example of this is the 1911 Wikipedia, which I
have somewhat successfully moved to Wikisource (although from a certain
point of view could be called hijacked...as it is really taking off over
there).

I have complained enough on Foundation-l that I was shut up and had
content put on [[meta:New Project proposals group]].  The talk page has
one of the e-mails I threw to Foundation-l, with one point in particular
that many people on Meta consider that Wikibooks to be a dumping ground
for many new project ideas that are book lengths in nature, or that they
should take their marbles and simply go to Wikicities instead with what
could be some good suggestions that could help Wikimedia projects in
general.  The educational component of Wikibooks really needs to be both
demonstrated better and described in more detail at the other Wikimedia
projects somehow.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
I've just spotted this on the talk page of a user: "I will revert all
edits to all articles on my watchlist by the LaRouche cult "editor"
Cognition, or any other recognisable LaRouche editor. I will do this
until either the LaRouche cultists are banned from Wikipedia or I am.
I don't much care which, since an encyclopaedia which allows crackpot
cultists to edit its articles is not worth writing for."

Now, to my poor understanding, this user is threatening to revert any
edits made to any article on his 1000+ witchlist, regardless of merit,
so long as that edit is made by someone he identifies as a particular
sort of crackpot.

What I know about LaRouche could be summed up in one word, but surely
Wikipedia is not going to be destroyed by the presence or absence of
one particular editor?

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Long-time lurker, first-time poster

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: disclaimer at the bottom of pages

body:
Mark Ryan <ultrablue at ...> writes:
> I think it would be better to have some sort of link so that "if you
> are the copyright owner of infringing material and would like it
> removed, click here....". We shouldn't be making it difficult for
> people to get material they own removed from the history.

See also
[[Wikipedia talk:Copyrights#Making life easier for new users]]


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and Reverting all edits (was: Odd)

body:
I have never agreed with the practice of "reverting all edits" by a
particular user. Either ban them outright, or take each edit on its
merits.

We need to improve the integrity of Wikipedia policy. Now that we have
the ability to communicate with blocked users via their user talk page,
things are different. And we need to relate this to our NPOV policy,
which has never really taken hold.

We say we want neutrality in the articles, but in the special cases
where NPOV *most* needs application, we tend to surrender to
POV-pushing. This is an egregious lapse, and is retarding Wikipedia's
acceptance as a reliable and authoritative source.

It's not the fact that "anyone can edit any time" which makes librarians
and college professors shun our work. It's that there is insufficient
dedication to policy enforcement. No one is really worried about "stray
marks" on the page. There are enough eyes to deal with simple vandalism.
It's the long-term errors of bias which hurt us.

Take for example, the Jerusalem article. A friend of mine who is a
PhD-holding religious scholar told me that it was riddled with subtle
digs, and thinly veiled (supposedly neutral) "historical" observations,
and language style, all meant to make some person's case or another,
over historical right to the land, specific religious sites and so
forth.

It's the same with countless other articles. I stopped even trying to
list them, long ago. It's like indexing a book. If there's only a few
references, you list them by page number. When something's mentioned all
throughout, you just say "passim".

So many times I get frustrated with the bias in the articles. I'm
especially frustrated because the problem could be solved so easily.
Simply adopt the following policy:

* Any addition to an article, which 1 or more users label as an "NPOV
violation", may be moved from the article into the text page.
* It must not be replaced, until there is sufficient agreement that an
accurate description of the dispute has been crafted.

Forget 3RR. It's mechanical and therefore (nearly) senseless. Let's
start using our judgment. We are all smart enough to do that.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
On 7/13/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Note: For some reason, often when I mean to write "encourage," I write
> "behoove" instead. I'm not sure why this is, but it has happened a
> number of times. So please, read it as "encourage". Theoretically I'm
> aware that "behoove" does not mean the same thing, though I seem to
> screw it up quite often in practice!

Behoove is such a great word. Just to have the phrase "it ill behooves
us to offer feedback following meals" roll merrily off the tongue,
oooh, it gives me a thrill.

Phil has used this particular case in his Wikimediation page, and it
should be a good test to see if an apparently insoluble problem works
out.

As for LaRouche, it sounds like one of those nutty cult things that
don't add up. Like Christianity, I guess.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Timo Ahokas

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freeware Speech and navigating program to Wikipedia

body:
WikiTalk TL 1.00 is a freeware program for Wikipedia users to make
Searches
from Wikipedia and to Speak the search result

WikiTalk Features:

Talking head
Speak Several different languages
Text to wav
Text to MP3
Clipboard to wav
Clipboard to MP3
Controls Internet Explorer and Acts as Wikipedia navigator and shows
the founded page by IE.
Planned so that also persons with limited sense of sight can use it
easily
WikiTalk TL 1.0 needs an Internet connection(SDL)to work.
Tested with IE6 and XP
Program is available in address:  <http://www.bercutfinland.com>
www.bercutfinland.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Writing with our readers in mind

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson (haukurth at hi.is) [050713 05:36]:

> > It seems to me that the central difference between a dictionary and an
> > encyclopedia is that a dictionary is about the language, whereas an
> > encyclopedia is about the world.

> Indeed. We have an article on [[fuck]], though :)
> Do we have a criterion for determining when a word
> is notable enough in itself and independently of
> the phenomena it describes to deserve an article?

The word must survive trial by ordeal on VFD, apparently!

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderated Article Development (was: Wikimediation)

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: steve v [mailto:vertigosteve at yahoo.com]

> Having no binding authority, and otherwise bogged down
> with a "mutual acceptance" policy (now experimentally
> being torched BTW), the result has been a bit
> disorganized, and slow.
[snip]
> Then what should the current MC committee do? Oversee
> the open committee? I dont know. Ive suggested an NPOV
> committee would be useful, which sort of interprets NPOV
> issues case by case, and makes a centralized reference
> database for how to approach these cases. Depending on your
> view of disputes on WP and the disruptiveness of these toward
> articles and their improvement, then you can say an NPOV
> committee is either a great thing or waste of time.

I'm starting some experiments on Moderated Article Development. William
Connolley are trying this (as peers) with climate change. I've also
started
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Inde
mnity_Act/moderated and I hope to start a similar page for Terry
Schiavo.

The rules are:

1. Anyone may take out anything they disagree with - provided
   they discuss it. (I call this a "text move")
2. Nobody is allowed to revert a text move. (I call this the zero-RR)

Ed Poor


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Milos Rancic

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

body:
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> "This means that  should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not
> be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it.
> So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution,
> but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly
> against."
>
> I took this to mean that all language names should by default be small
> letters, and it can be changed later if it is a problem. Is that what
> you were saying?

Only where it is according to orthograpy rules.


body:
I asked for information on village pumps of:

Bulgarian, Bosnian, Czech, Croatian (we was talking about that
before), Hungarian, Latin, Norwage (on no: for Norsk and Bokmal),
Polish, Russian, Sicilian, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian
and Swedish Wikipedia. (I didn't ask Italians because Sabine told that
it should be.)

Negative answer: Latin

Positive answers: Italian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish and Czech

Positive answers (but need to be more clarified): Norsk (Bokmal and
Nyorsk) and Bosnian.

Need to be clarified: Sicilian, Polish and Hungarian.

Waiting for: Bulgarian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimediation

body:
You're exactly right, Sannse, and you summed that up
much much more clearly than I would have. My theory
was that the codified isolation of MC and its results
was based in a fear that MC should be AC like -- which
is still my (vague) memory of it. But in any case,
your right -- ancient motivations are now irrelevant,
and whats left is the results, and the need for
reevaluation and restructuring.

S

--- sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

> steve v wrote:
> > WP:MC was originally built in as an
> > afterthought to the AC, and to assert a finer
> > difference, some strict bounds were implemented,
> > because 1) it was thought that mediators should be
> > prevented from becoming like the Arbcom, and 2) so
> > that somehow through strict WMIN (~WWIN)
> definitions,
> > its role would be more defined and sensible. IMHO
> > whats happened is that its generally been a bit
> > confused. MC was defined relative to AC, but
> without a
> > clear vision to what MC could do that would
> persist
> > through WPs since quadrupling in size and users.
> > Having no binding authority, and otherwise bogged
> down
> > with a "mutual acceptance" policy (now
> experimentally
> > being torched BTW), the result has been a bit
> > disorganized, and slow.
>
> This is a very distorted history of the mediation
> committee.  The
> original committee was created at the same time as
> the arbitration
> committee, and we decided on our rules and
> procedures independently.
> One of the decisions we made was that each mediation
> would be carried
> out independently and confidentially by a single
> mediator.  This had two
> negative effects: the mediator did not have the
> support needed to
> perform this difficult role, and any successes (and
> despite what has
> been said there /were/ some successes) became
> invisible.
>
> It's easy enough to burn out on the arbitration
> committee, where
> problems can be talked through with the rest of the
> team - it's even
> easier on the mediation committee where each
> mediator works alone.
>
> Snowspinner's idea of a more open version of
> mediation is one I support
> fully.
>
> --sannse
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 7/13/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
...cut...
> Take for example, the Jerusalem article. A friend of mine who is a
> PhD-holding religious scholar told me that it was riddled with subtle
> digs, and thinly veiled (supposedly neutral) "historical" observations,
> and language style, all meant to make some person's case or another,
> over historical right to the land, specific religious sites and so
> forth.
>
> It's the same with countless other articles. I stopped even trying to
> list them, long ago. It's like indexing a book. If there's only a few
> references, you list them by page number. When something's mentioned all
> throughout, you just say "passim".
>
> So many times I get frustrated with the bias in the articles. I'm
> especially frustrated because the problem could be solved so easily.
> Simply adopt the following policy:
>
> * Any addition to an article, which 1 or more users label as an "NPOV
> violation", may be moved from the article into the text page.
> * It must not be replaced, until there is sufficient agreement that an
> accurate description of the dispute has been crafted.
>
> Forget 3RR. It's mechanical and therefore (nearly) senseless. Let's
> start using our judgment. We are all smart enough to do that.
>
> Ed Poor

If the [[Jerusalem]] article is so full of little NPOV issues and
needling attacks, why haven't you applied the {{POV}} template to it?
You can think of the templates only as editors' tools, or you can take
the broader view, and see that they also serve as warning posts to
potential readers.

Readers deserve to know when they are reading an article subject to
POV manipulation.  If you wouldn't trust a naive fifteen year old to
at least know about the POV issues contained, then you should apply
the POV template.

I also posted a message to the [[Template talk:POV]] page requesting
that we reference the article's history in the POV template in the
same way we reference the talk page.  Since it is up to the reader to
determine the "correct" POV for them, we should make the availability
of our articles' histories more clear when there are POV
uncertainties, as other POVs are usually contained there as well as
the talk pages.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I have never agreed with the practice of "reverting
> all edits" by a
> particular user. Either ban them outright, or take
> each edit on its
> merits.

Hear hear.

> ...things are different. And we need to relate this
to our NPOV policy...
This kind of policy lag is of course widespread. Its
almost too big to look at now, and major overhauls
(revolution) can be more harmful than the status quo.

> We say we want neutrality in the articles, but in
> the special cases where NPOV *most* needs
application, we tend to surrender to POV-pushing. This
is an egregious lapse, and is retarding Wikipedia's
> acceptance as a reliable and authoritative source.

This is a fact which eventualism explains and
considers -- and a kind of de-facto NPOV enforcement,
where anyone can  (If theres POV in the woods, and
theres noone around to read it, does it make a
grinding sound?)

> It's not the fact that "anyone can edit any time"
> which makes librarians
> and college professors shun our work. It's that
> there is insufficient
> dedication to policy enforcement. No one is really
> worried about "stray
> marks" on the page. There are enough eyes to deal
> with simple vandalism.
> It's the long-term errors of bias which hurt us.

I think "insufficient dedication to policy" could be
translated to insufficient editorial guidance. The
answer to which would be to craft an editorial or NPOV
board for oversight specific to bias handling.

> For example, the Jerusalem article...[lots of weasel
terms]...all meant to make some person's
> case or another,
> over historical right to the land, specific
> religious sites and so
> forth.

Yes, but academic specifics can be just as
meaningless. "Historical right" is so utterly
subjective a term that it can be explained and debated
ad infinitum, and doesnt really require any comment
here. "Specific religious sites" are likewise
subjective, and overlapping in that area. Does
tradition dating ~2500 years ago naturally supercede
traditions that date ~500 years? If yes, then by that
logic, traditions of ~3500 years supercede those, dont
they? So, just going by what you just wrote, I'm
skeptical of that criticism. The tendency toward
detail often glosses over the need to be removed and
generalistic, and vice versa. Its a balance.

> It's the same with countless other articles. I
> stopped even trying to
> list them, long ago. It's like indexing a book...
> ...So many times I get frustrated with the bias...

> * Any addition to an article, which 1 or more users
> label as an "NPOV
> violation", may be moved from the article into the
> text page.
> * It must not be replaced, until there is sufficient
> agreement that an
> accurate description of the dispute has been
> crafted.

Basically, what I think youre saying is there needs to
be another layer, besides the visible article, and the
talk page. Ive been using <!-- comments --> more and
more these days in cases where I think something needs
to be cut, but I know there could be an argument
against it. I recommend using these. In the future,
perhaps an annotation system which shows/hides these
comments will be implemented.

Ed frustration: WP is too big for any person to
regulate in terms of its nuance and detail. Whats
important now is growing the core of NPOV oriented
people, and distinguishing NPOV from other
institutions like adminship, mailing lists, etc. Is WP
a glass half full or half empty. I dont know. A
"random page check" can be dissapointing though, if
youve a tendency to niggle.

> Forget 3RR. It's mechanical and therefore (nearly)
> senseless. Let's
> start using our judgment. We are all smart enough to
> do that.

Forget 3RR? In favor of what? Subjective judgement?
Eriks idea was simply to institute a simple and
straightforward guideline -- netural in its
application to all parties, and where any case by case
details can be sorted by the Arbcom. It was a great
idea then, and remains a great idea now. The move
toward subjective judgement policy only works when
those sujective powers are given to a small set of
people -- which has its own problems.

~S

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>The problem here is that you can't "give" fair use privileges. Fair
>use is a defense, not a form of permission. When we post a fair use
>tag, it is really a pre-emptive statement that says, "If you sue us,
>this is what we'll say in court, and we think we'll win."
>
I agree that you can't "give" fair use privileges.  I see it primarily
as neither a defense nor a permission, but a right.  The precise
phrasing of the law in section 107 is important. "Notwithstanding the
provisions of sections 106
<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106> and 106A,
<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106a> the fair use of a
copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or
phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for
purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including
multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
infringement of copyright."

The Supreme Court of Canada gave an interesting analysis of a similar
point in Canadian law in CCH Canadian v. Law Society of Upper
Canada:http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/2004/2004scc13.html

> 48     Before reviewing the scope of the fair dealing exception under
> the Copyright Act, it is important to clarify some general
> considerations about exceptions to copyright infringement.
> Procedurally, a defendant is required to prove that his or her dealing
> with a work has been fair; however, the fair dealing exception is
> perhaps more properly understood as an integral part of the Copyright
> Act than simply a defence. Any act falling within the fair dealing
> exception will not be an infringement of copyright. The fair dealing
> exception, like other exceptions in the Copyright Act, is a user's
> right. In order to maintain the proper balance between the rights of a
> copyright owner and users' interests, it must not be interpreted
> restrictively. As Professor Vaver, supra, has explained, at p. 171:
> "User rights are not just loopholes. Both owner rights and user rights
> should therefore be given the fair and balanced reading that befits
> remedial legislation."

Where  your approach goes wrong-headed is in considering a fair-use tag
as a "pre-emptive statement" rather than an exercise of user rights.  We
should not be looking at every such instance out of fear that it might
land us in court.  That is the essence of legal chill, of which
copyright paranoia is a subset.  This is all a question of attitude.  A
sense of rightness and a fear of the law indicate separate paths which
will most often lead us to the same place

In the same decision Madame Justice McLaughlin quotes Lord Denning in
the 1972 British case of Hubbard v. Vosper about fairness:

>  It is impossible to define what is `fair dealing'. It must be a
> question of degree. You must consider first the number and extent of
> the quotations and extracts. Are they altogether too many and too long
> to be fair? Then you must consider the use made of them. If they are
> used as a basis for comment, criticism or review, that may be a fair
> dealing. If they are used to convey the same information as the
> author, for a rival purpose, that may be unfair. Next, you must
> consider the proportions. To take long extracts and attach short
> comments may be unfair. But, short extracts and long comments may be
> fair. Other considerations may come to mind also. But, after all is
> said and done, it must be a matter of impression. As with fair comment
> in the law of libel, so with fair dealing in the law of copyright. The
> tribunal of fact must decide

The machine that can be applied to every instance to determine fair use
does not exist.  A "non-commercial use" permission can still be fair use
in a commercial context.  It is our own collective attitude toward
fair-mindedness that matters, and that needs to be applied at each step
of the process.  There are ample opportunities to do this, so let's not
be in a hurry to beat down the courtroom doors to defend a case that has
not been filed.

>Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue you" --
>does that change anything? Not really. What if you changed your mind?
>You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put in a less accusatory way:
>what if your group was suddenly acquired by someone else who did not
>want to honor your previous informal agreement?).
>
This is a question of permissions and contracts.  If there is a
permission in place, and we want to invoke it as a defence, we need to
have our documentation in order or that defence will be much tougher
than invoking fair use.  We better be ready when the copyright holder's
grandson decides to make a claim 50 years from now.

>So whether or not the usage of the materials is "fair use" is totally
>unrelated to whether or not your group approves. The transference of
>privileges you are talking about is really just a form of licensing,
>which is *not* what fair use is about.
>
OK

>Whether that means we can or can't use your content depends on its
>use. I suspect it would still be mostly fair -- a picture of you and a
>simple table don't sound like things which are going to defraud
>anybody. And if we trust you not to sue, that would probably bend the
>"is it fair?"-ometer towards the "not going to sue us" section of
>things, so it probably isn't a problem. But it isn't so simple as just
>"granting" fair use -- it is not a license, it is a defense against
>allegations of violating a license. That's an important difference!
>
>
"Granting fair use" is as valuable as giving you the rights that you
already have.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimediation

body:
--- Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:

> We need, rather, more people getting involved. If
> more people
> responded to RfCs in a constructive, mediative
> manner, we'd probably
> see fewer cases going to 'official' mediation and
> even the Arbcom.

Right. And 'official' mediation never had a
pre-process anyway. And because RFM would need to work
differently and more formally than a pre-process
(Moderation would be a better term to use), then some
changes need to be made to MC as well. I.e. an
RFM-like process will naturally effect RFM, but may be
it will be positive.

S

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


body:
On 7/13/05, ????????? ??????? <alexander.sigachov at gmail.com> wrote:
> About name of Russain language in Russain
>
> Yes, we write "??????? ????" in text (with small letter at
> the beginning), but about list it's unclear. Variants:
>
> List with semicolons:
> *???????????;
> *???????;
> *????????;
> *?????????.
>
> List with points (the list item is sentence consisting of one word):
> *???????????.
> *???????.
> *????????.
> *?????????
>
> But in the text-design purposes it is possible to clean both points,
> and semicolons.

The same situation is in the most of languages which write language
name with small letter at the beginning (Italian, Swedish, Czech,
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Norwegian...). The point is that this is
the simple list with references (with semicolons), not the list with
sentences (with dots).


body:
I see. So "no revert" doesnt mean that it cant go back
in, but it just means it needs to be discussed. And if
its being supervised, then POV tag-teaming wont work.

And mediatior conflicts would be handled by the MC?
Hm.

S

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> I'm starting some experiments on Moderated Article
> Development. William
> Connolley are trying this (as peers) with climate
> change. I've also
> started
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Inde
> mnity_Act/moderated and I hope to start a similar
> page for Terry
> Schiavo.
>
> The rules are:
>
> 1. Anyone may take out anything they disagree with -
> provided
>    they discuss it. (I call this a "text move")
> 2. Nobody is allowed to revert a text move. (I call
> this the zero-RR)
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Hi Milos,

>Need to be clarified: Sicilian, Polish and Hungarian.
>
>
as for Sicilian language names are written lower case - the same is
valid for Furlan - I suppose most minor Italian languages.

Ciao, Sabine

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
On 7/13/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Skyring wrote:
>
> > I've just spotted this on the talk page of a user: "I will revert all
> > edits to all articles on my watchlist by the LaRouche cult "editor"
> > Cognition, or any other recognisable LaRouche editor. I will do this
> > until either the LaRouche cultists are banned from Wikipedia or I am.
> > I don't much care which, since an encyclopaedia which allows crackpot
> > cultists to edit its articles is not worth writing for."
> >
> > Now, to my poor understanding, this user is threatening to revert any
> > edits made to any article on his 1000+ witchlist, regardless of merit,
> > so long as that edit is made by someone he identifies as a particular
> > sort of crackpot.
> >
> > What I know about LaRouche could be summed up in one word, but surely
> > Wikipedia is not going to be destroyed by the presence or absence of
> > one particular editor?
> >
> Well, I happen to know that a case came before the ArbCom concerning
> LaRouche followers who tried to add citations from their leader to a
> number of unrelated articles, which resulted in a decision that was not
> in their favor.
>
> And I seem to remember that one of the editors involved in limiting
> their attempts to flood Wikipedia with pro-Larouche citations was Adam
> Carr. These wouldn't be Carr's words, would they?

They would indeed. However, who said them is essentially irrelevant.
What is important is the attitude behind making such a statement.

> I suggest you do more research: the ArbCom concluded these people
> were POV-pushers, & a danger to Wikipedia. I doubt you will find much
> support criticizing the person wrote this, no matter how ill-tempered
> that editor might be.

I'm not for a moment trying to support LaRouche POV pushers. Seems to
me that the system is working as intended to limit their penetration
to the extent allowed by agreed wikipolicy i.e. not a lot.

What bothers me is the fact that long established editors seem to get
to a point where they can't continue any longer and go off the rails
and off the rules. Adam Carr isn't the first to do so in the six
months or so that I've been here.

I mentioned earlier that his "ultimatum" sounded like a teenager's
statements just before an unsuccessful suicide attempt. A plea for
attention. This in itself is a fairly serious thing to do, indicating
that the person making such a statement has reached the end of his own
resources and needs external help. But I know for a fact that Adam has
his own wikisupport network in place.

If these sorts of dramatic exits are common on Wikipedia, then I
venture to suggest that something should be done to reduce their
recurrence. I don't want to feel in a year or so that I can't go any
further and that Wikipedia is doomed and that I'm following in the
footsteps of a large number of burnt-out editors.

Regardless of my own differences with Adam (and those have almost
always been over attitude rather than content), he made a valid point
about a system that allows vandals and cranks to have a significant
impact. If the cost of defending against people who dedicate their
existence to pushing a POV is a string of burnt-out editors, then it
may be too high, especially as nobody here is being paid for their
time. Can we really expect unpaid volunteers to put themselves under
heavy and unrelenting pressure?

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
Up to date list with answers. (Correct me if I am wrong.) I'll send
the same question to other Wikipedias during the day or tomorrow.

Negative answer: Latin

Positive answers: Italian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Czech,
Bulgarian,  Slovak, Polish.

Positive answers (but need to be more clarified): Norsk (Bokmal and
Nyorsk) and Bosnian.

Shoud be (but communities didn't asked/answered): Sicilian, Frulian

If this is the rule, then it should be: Croatian, Russian.

Should to be clarified: Hungarian.

Waiting for:  Slovenian, Albanian


subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
I accidentally replied only to Chris previously, a fact he has kindly
and gently pointed out to me. In view of recent developments, I'm
posting it to the list.

On 7/13/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> (why did you reply to the 'disclaimer at the bottom of wikipedia pages'
> thread?)

Because I'm using GMail, which threads messages based on subject line.
For me to start a new thread on a new topic, the easiest way to do so
is to reply to an existing message and change the subject line. My
apologies if this has confused you (or anyone else). I might be a bit
less lazy in future!

> Who is this user who has made this statement? The only reason, I can
> see, for someone to make reverts to every edit a person makes is if that
> person is hard-banned. I'm guessing (maybe hoping) that the person who
> said this is just in a bad mood.

He's ALWAYS in a bad mood. He's threatening (and making) reverts to
the edits of any editor in good standing whom he considers to be a
member of a particular group, whether they edit on controversial
subjects or articles or not. Fix a spelling mistake and this editor
will revert the edit.

My take is that he's not serious, but rather is making a plea for
attention and wants to be talked out of his threat. It's the sort of
thing a teenager would say before a failed suicide attempt.

Whether or not he means what he says, this sort of thing is pretty
disturbing. Is announcing with pride the number of your edits the
immediate precursor to a breakdown?

There's a link to the page here: http://tinyurl.com/cgpbc

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
On 7/13/05, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 7/12/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > As for LaRouche, it sounds like one of those nutty cult things that
> > don't add up. Like Christianity, I guess.
>
> I find it odd that atheists, while supposedly the "rational" ones,
> feel the need to employ invective against people who disagree with
> them whenever possible. But I'm just a redneck, bucktoothed
> Jesuslander. What do I know?

If those comments were aimed at me, I'm not an atheist and I don't
"feel a need" to employ invective against those who disagree with me.
Toleration and moderation in all things.

But Christianity is indeed a cult and the purpose of my remarks was to
contrast the size and public acceptance of the two extremes.

Seems to me that the right way for LaRouche folk to gain more ground
in WP is to gain more ground in the general community. As Christianity
itself has done from small and tenuous origins.

Not that I'm advocating this, mind!

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Skyring wrote:

> On 7/13/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Skyring wrote:
> >
> > > I've just spotted this on the talk page of a user: "I will revert all
> > > edits to all articles on my watchlist by the LaRouche cult "editor"
> > > Cognition, or any other recognisable LaRouche editor. I will do this
> > > until either the LaRouche cultists are banned from Wikipedia or I am.
> > > I don't much care which, since an encyclopaedia which allows crackpot
> > > cultists to edit its articles is not worth writing for."
> > >
> > > Now, to my poor understanding, this user is threatening to revert any
> > > edits made to any article on his 1000+ witchlist, regardless of merit,
> > > so long as that edit is made by someone he identifies as a particular
> > > sort of crackpot.
> > >
> > > What I know about LaRouche could be summed up in one word, but surely
> > > Wikipedia is not going to be destroyed by the presence or absence of
> > > one particular editor?
> > >
> > Well, I happen to know that a case came before the ArbCom concerning
> > LaRouche followers who tried to add citations from their leader to a
> > number of unrelated articles, which resulted in a decision that was not
> > in their favor.
> >
> > And I seem to remember that one of the editors involved in limiting
> > their attempts to flood Wikipedia with pro-Larouche citations was Adam
> > Carr. These wouldn't be Carr's words, would they?
>
> They would indeed. However, who said them is essentially irrelevant.
> What is important is the attitude behind making such a statement.
>
> > I suggest you do more research: the ArbCom concluded these people
> > were POV-pushers, & a danger to Wikipedia. I doubt you will find much
> > support criticizing the person wrote this, no matter how ill-tempered
> > that editor might be.
>
> I'm not for a moment trying to support LaRouche POV pushers. Seems to
> me that the system is working as intended to limit their penetration
> to the extent allowed by agreed wikipolicy i.e. not a lot.

It appears that you are reading my response as a defense of Carr --
which was not my intent, & your misunderstanding was likely due to how
I expressed myself. So let me explain further.

It's apparent from your posts that you want Adam Carr censured for his
incivility. And it is apparent from the responses to your posts that
his incivility is widely acknowledged -- & likely makes any accusation
you make of him suspect.

And there is a further point that has emerged from the submissions to
this list: let's make the job of the ArbCom *simpler*. In other words,
instead of finding hard cases where a plausible argument can be made
to defend his behavior, find a clear case of Carr acting incivilly --
like a bully to a newbie, say -- that is not defensible.

And to be honest, while the language in the above sample you provide
comes close to the line, not only does it not cross that line it is
something that I can fully imagine any editor saying to a troublemaker
in a moment of frustration. And I've seen worse said to people who
sound eager to wind up before the ArbCom.

[snip]
>
> I mentioned earlier that his "ultimatum" sounded like a teenager's
> statements just before an unsuccessful suicide attempt. A plea for
> attention. This in itself is a fairly serious thing to do, indicating
> that the person making such a statement has reached the end of his own
> resources and needs external help. But I know for a fact that Adam has
> his own wikisupport network in place.

I didn't get the same message, & suicide is a matter that I've
unfortunately have had too much experience with.
>
> If these sorts of dramatic exits are common on Wikipedia, then I
> venture to suggest that something should be done to reduce their
> recurrence. I don't want to feel in a year or so that I can't go any
> further and that Wikipedia is doomed and that I'm following in the
> footsteps of a large number of burnt-out editors.

One of the drawbacks of Wikipedia is in the effect conflicts have on
its volunteers. (No one seems to have studied this angle, so what I
am about to write is largely based on my unrepresentative sample of
experience.) It seems that every editor eventually encounters a major
struggle over content, which usually results in one of two responses:
either the editor develops an extremely thick skin to further criticism
& a very short temper with other people, or retreats off to work on
one of the 90+% of articles that attract little attention due to
their obscure or esoteric nature. In either case, the editor begins
a gradual process of consciously isolating her/himself from the rest
of Wikipedia -- which means that they are less likely to intervene &
help resolve conflicts sucessfully elsewhere on Wikipedia. (This
point was made to me some months ago in almost these exact words when
I posted a note about a potential troublemaker on the admin bulletin
board, & I suspect that this admin is not the only one who does not
want to get involved in conflicts unless there is a clear "bad" guy &
a clear "good" guy.)

And by isolating oneself here on Wikipedia, one loses out on the
positive reinforcement that should come from working with other
people for a common good. We have very few mechanisms on Wikipedia
to break through this isolation, either intentional or accidental,
& when some are used -- Barnstars & FAC nominations for example --
too often they also produce jealousy amongst other contributors,
who then begin to suspect that there is a cabal -- or at the least
a gang of cool kids who tell each other just how hip they are --
that they are not part of.

I have no good solution for this problem -- although I feel
Wikimeetups are a good step. I'm not even certain whether this is
a problem for more than a few people on Wikipedia -- which is why
I mentioned that this is an issue worth some attention from the
appropriate experts. Even though this would be a distraction from
our goal of creating an encyclopedia.

Geoff


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

body:
About name of Russain language in Russain

Yes, we write "??????? ????" in text (with small letter at
the beginning), but about list it's unclear. Variants:

List with semicolons:
*???????????;
*???????;
*????????;
*?????????.

List with points (the list item is sentence consisting of one word):
*???????????.
*???????.
*????????.
*?????????

But in the text-design purposes it is possible to clean both points,
and semicolons.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Orthography in interwiki links

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

> And for example the language names for the interwiki links on the Main
> Page of en.wiktionary are not all capitalised, so the ones that should
> go with a lower case should be adapted accordingly.

I have no problem with this.  For Italian the link currently appears as
"Italiano (Italian)", and this should probably be changed to "italiano
(Italian)" with the name in English remaining capitalized.
Nevertheless, if a change is to be made it will be on a language by
language basis, and no one person is likely to know the rule for each
language.  This is especially problematical with the more obscure
languages where it could very well be that no standards exist.  Keeping
them all capitalized at least has the advantage of consistency.

Ec


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

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> We have restricted the amount that can be presented. But what is
> really needed is better organized evidence. Most time and energy
> expended by Arbitrators goes into trying to figure out what is
> significant.

I would venture to say that some people get into trouble when they can't
organize their thoughts in the first place; they are still the same
people when confronted with the task of organizing evidence. ;-)

Ec


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>>This means that  should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not
>>be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it.
>>So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution,
>>but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly
>>against.
>>
>>
>Millosh, with this you are making the assumption that it is correct
>orthography for all those languages -- including some you've probably
>not heard of, like Venda, Herero, and Chamorro -- and this is not the
>case. In some cases it is correct orthography, HOWEVER in others it is
>not. It should be on a case-by-case basis, rather than switching all
>to lowercase.
>
>Obviously you know best about Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and
>Bosnian, but instead of changing all Wikipedias we should have a vote
>at each one, or find if it is correct orthography.
>
>
Using votes to determine proper capitalization of language names strikes
me as absurd.  A pre-literate culture with a newly written language will
likely take on the standards of its colonizing masters, and retain those
practices when the colonizers leave.  Imposing a "correct" orthography
puts us in the same boat as those colonizers who made a habit of
ignoring the Prime Directive.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] disclaimer at the bottom of pages

body:
Anthere wrote:

>While I was reading a protected article, I discovered at the bottom of the page the following disclaimer
>
>This work may be protected by copyright. Please see 17 USC 108.
>This version of the article has been subsequently revised.
>Besides normal editing, the reason for revision may have been that this version contains
>factual inaccuracies, vandalism, or material not compatible with the GFDL.
>
>----------------
>
>I am *very* perplex. There are MANY reasons why an article can be protected on Wikipedia, and I would dare saying that having part of its content under copyright is probably the least probable reason for it to be restricted in edition. Protection is most of the time against vandalism or to cool down spirits. On the contrary, if an article contains factual inaccuracies or copyrighted material, it should be OPEN to editing so that it can be fixed as quickly as possible.
>
>I perceive this disclaimer as possibly be meant to protect ourselves... but also as giving a very inacurate reason why we protect articles...
>
>Second, WHY this reference to the US law code here?
>
Section 108 deals with the special rights available to libraries and
archives.  AFAIK There has been little if any discussion of whether we
fall into that category of institution.  This could eventually be a
factor for Wikisource, but my first impression is that this citation is
misplaced.

Ec


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

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
>
>
>>Imagine every subscriber being as active as you
>>are: I would either end my life or my subscription to this list.
>>
>>
>Why would you need to read every single message that is sent to the
>list? If you think Mark is writing too many e-mail messages, it's simple
>to skip and not read them.
>
I quickly delete many of them without reading

>>It is not
>>your vision itself, but your apparent belief that you are always right that
>>brings you in trouble.
>>
>>
>Well, if someone defends a point of view, it's natural that he/she
>believes to be correct. I don't think he/she would defend the point of
>view if this was not the case.
>
If one accepts the premise that Mark is a troll, ( :-) ) this sounds
very much like troll-feeder philosophy.

Ec


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimediation

body:
steve v wrote:
> WP:MC was originally built in as an
> afterthought to the AC, and to assert a finer
> difference, some strict bounds were implemented,
> because 1) it was thought that mediators should be
> prevented from becoming like the Arbcom, and 2) so
> that somehow through strict WMIN (~WWIN) definitions,
> its role would be more defined and sensible. IMHO
> whats happened is that its generally been a bit
> confused. MC was defined relative to AC, but without a
> clear vision to what MC could do that would persist
> through WPs since quadrupling in size and users.
> Having no binding authority, and otherwise bogged down
> with a "mutual acceptance" policy (now experimentally
> being torched BTW), the result has been a bit
> disorganized, and slow.

This is a very distorted history of the mediation committee.  The
original committee was created at the same time as the arbitration
committee, and we decided on our rules and procedures independently.
One of the decisions we made was that each mediation would be carried
out independently and confidentially by a single mediator.  This had two
negative effects: the mediator did not have the support needed to
perform this difficult role, and any successes (and despite what has
been said there /were/ some successes) became invisible.

It's easy enough to burn out on the arbitration committee, where
problems can be talked through with the rest of the team - it's even
easier on the mediation committee where each mediator works alone.

Snowspinner's idea of a more open version of mediation is one I support
fully.

--sannse


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Again, I would like to use this as an opportunity to plug G-mail
(http://gmail.google.com/).

As of right now, you are allowed 2390 megabytes for your e-mail; I
believe there is now POP access; and most importantly if you are
subscribed to mailinglists, its threaded-message system: anything that
is a reply to another message will be added to a thread, so if you get
50 responses to one message, you only click on the thread and you can
read them all sequentially.

Mark

On 13/07/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Gerrit Holl wrote:
>
> >Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Imagine every subscriber being as active as you
> >>are: I would either end my life or my subscription to this list.
> >>
> >>
> >Why would you need to read every single message that is sent to the
> >list? If you think Mark is writing too many e-mail messages, it's simple
> >to skip and not read them.
> >
> I quickly delete many of them without reading
>
> >>It is not
> >>your vision itself, but your apparent belief that you are always right that
> >>brings you in trouble.
> >>
> >>
> >Well, if someone defends a point of view, it's natural that he/she
> >believes to be correct. I don't think he/she would defend the point of
> >view if this was not the case.
> >
> If one accepts the premise that Mark is a troll, ( :-) ) this sounds
> very much like troll-feeder philosophy.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


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

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> In real life such "flunkies" are called lawyers, on Wikipedia
> Advocates. We could require advocates. However our experience with
> advocates is that they pay no attention to presenting evidence, a
> real lawyers actual function, but engage in weird Wikilawyering that
> harms their clients cause. Challenging our jurisdiction and demanding
> that we all recuse ourselves is not going to work.

It sounds like they're getting the kind of avocado they paid for. :-)

Ec


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
> So many times I get frustrated with the bias in the articles. I'm
> especially frustrated because the problem could be solved so easily.
> Simply adopt the following policy:
>
> * Any addition to an article, which 1 or more users label as an "NPOV
> violation", may be moved from the article into the text page.
> * It must not be replaced, until there is sufficient agreement that an
> accurate description of the dispute has been crafted.

I don't think this would be a useful policy,
or an easy solution to a difficult problem.
I think implementing this policy on the Jerusalem
page would create inertia to any changes and
further enshrine an imperfect status quo that
has been haphazardly arrived at.

> Forget 3RR. It's mechanical and therefore (nearly) senseless. Let's
> start using our judgment. We are all smart enough to do that.

Agreed.

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal to modify / supplement request: request for Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Drèents, Tweants, and Achterhooks Wikipedias.

body:
After much thought, I have had a change-of-heart regarding separate
Wikipedias for Low Saxon.

HOWEVER, I still believe it is wrong to divide on national borders.


from_name: Pat Carr

subject: [WikiEN-l] Running the asylum?

body:
--- Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are various reasons for people to oppose WMC's
> nom for
> adminship.  Some of them are perfectly valid - I
> feel differently, but
> they are still rational and valid.  Some I disagree
> with on principle
> - I don't think that the ArbComm should impose
> sanctions without there
> being any finding of fact against William, so if
> people vote oppose on
> the basis of the ArbComm injunction then I disagree
> with the basis of
> their opposition.  But it's still a perfectly
> logical reason to
> oppose.
>
> And then there are the people who oppose because (a)
> he knows too much
> about the subjects about which he edits, and now (b)
> because...
>
>  "Being an 'active' contributor I would see possible
> conflicts of
> interest if he would be an admin too"
>
> When did being an "active contributor" make you
> ineligible to be an
> admin?  Here I was thinking this project was about
> writing an
> encyclopaedia.  Am I going crazy, or has the world
> gone nuts?

That is a strange statement. One possible
interpretation is that the user is concerned with
possible conflicts of interest if/when WMC uses admin
powers on articles he's actively involved in editing.
Maybe I'm way off though...

Carbonite

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Mark Ryan

body:
I think it would be better to have some sort of link so that "if you
are the copyright owner of infringing material and would like it
removed, click here....". We shouldn't be making it difficult for
people to get material they own removed from the history.

And in many cases we can quite easily remove material infringing
someone's copyright from the page history, by using the selective
undelete feature. The only problem area is where the
copyright-infringing material has been incorporated into many
revisions of an otherwise legitimate article since then.

~Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] full text search not working

body:
Rune H?jsgaard wrote:
> Im having trouble with MediaWiki 1.4.6 full text search.
>
> If im searching for FooBarBas, it returns pages with FooBarBas, but if I
> search for FooBar*, I get no hits. None of the other MySQL Boolean
> Full-Text search operators work either (+, -, <, >, etc.).

Indeed they're not.

See past mailing list posts for how to try adding them to the allowed
search character set, which may or may not work correctly. (google with
site:mail.wikipedia.org)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Dan Grey

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

body:
On 13/07/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> A lot of people think the AC should be delivering punishment. The important
> thing, though, is what does the project good.
>
>
>
> - d.

I do. And I'd see that as doing the project good. Maybe if more people
knew they weren't going to get away with trouble-making, they may be
more reluctant to do it.

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimediation

body:
I suspect people may have missed the point of my earlier mail :-).

We now have some seven or so dispute resolution channels. That's
probably more than the number of editors willing to get stuck in and
mediate at any one time. We're spreading a very small resource ever
more thinly.

We need, rather, more people getting involved. If more people
responded to RfCs in a constructive, mediative manner, we'd probably
see fewer cases going to 'official' mediation and even the Arbcom.

Dan


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Charles Matthews (charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com) [050713 18:27]:
>
>
>>Redress - my heart sinks every time someone says 'redress' -
>>
Instructions for Hans Christian Andersen's emperor.

>>the mission is
>>not to redress things but to encyclopedicate the planet.
>>
>>
>"Encyclopedicate the planet!" Don't invent words like that when I'm editing
>[[Space opera in Scientology doctrine]] and choking on Hubbardisms as well
>as my coffee ;-)
>
>
You are just a Gilbert looking for his Sullivan. :-)

Ec


from_name: Anthere

body:
I am not really convinced. In many cases, the material stayed in many
versions and we should not delete them just for this reason. As for
removing specific parts of text, developers are really not keen to do
that. I think I had a couple of requests in the year and it was never
done. So, we should not make people believe it is just simple to ask and do.

I'd rather that people forget about a bit of infringment lost in
history, than seeing the board list flooded with people requesting
complete removal :-)

ihmo

ant

Mark Ryan a ?crit:
> I think it would be better to have some sort of link so that "if you
> are the copyright owner of infringing material and would like it
> removed, click here....". We shouldn't be making it difficult for
> people to get material they own removed from the history.
>
> And in many cases we can quite easily remove material infringing
> someone's copyright from the page history, by using the selective
> undelete feature. The only problem area is where the
> copyright-infringing material has been incorporated into many
> revisions of an otherwise legitimate article since then.
>
> ~Mark


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Again, I would like to use this as an opportunity to plug G-mail
>(http://gmail.google.com/).
>
>As of right now, you are allowed 2390 megabytes for your e-mail; I
>believe there is now POP access; and most importantly if you are
>subscribed to mailinglists, its threaded-message system: anything that
>is a reply to another message will be added to a thread, so if you get
>50 responses to one message, you only click on the thread and you can
>read them all sequentially.
>
Oh no! Please Mark! Don't try to make up your whole 2390 Mb allocation
on this list. :-)

Ec


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Running the asylum?

body:
There are various reasons for people to oppose WMC's nom for
adminship.  Some of them are perfectly valid - I feel differently, but
they are still rational and valid.  Some I disagree with on principle
- I don't think that the ArbComm should impose sanctions without there
being any finding of fact against William, so if people vote oppose on
the basis of the ArbComm injunction then I disagree with the basis of
their opposition.  But it's still a perfectly logical reason to
oppose.

And then there are the people who oppose because (a) he knows too much
about the subjects about which he edits, and now (b) because...

 "Being an 'active' contributor I would see possible conflicts of
interest if he would be an admin too"

When did being an "active contributor" make you ineligible to be an
admin?  Here I was thinking this project was about writing an
encyclopaedia.  Am I going crazy, or has the world gone nuts?

Ian (Guettarda)


from_name: ilooy

body:
2005/7/13, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> Again, I would like to use this as an opportunity to plug G-mail
> (http://gmail.google.com/).
>

Thanks Mark,
You're right on this one Gmail is definitely
an awsome email reading and writing
program, it has a slick interface and is
available in several languages.

If anyone on Wikipedia-l wishes to give
it a try send me a note privately at:
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com
with the heading "Hi Jay, I want to try Gmail"
and I'll send an invitation. BTW I am not
getting paid for this ;-)

But for email lists it certainly helps, especially
if you're subscribed to several of the Wikimedia
email lists, it's a way of keeping things nice and
orderly.

With best regards to all Wikipedians,
Jay B.
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com
en:User:ILVI


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Using Wikipedia for Education?

body:
2005/7/12, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>:
> Andy Carvin writes about using Wikipedia productively for K-12
> classes; both to help them learn to research and to help fact-check
> the encyclopedia.

Hi all,
I can vouch for the excellent response
from K-12 schools in using Wikipedia
for research and teaching.

Of the three School Districts I work with
two of them are already actively using it
and have enjoyed using it this past year!
Both Marlborough and Westmoreland
School Districts in New Hampshire, USA
are making good use of Wikipedia articles!

Way to go Wikipedians!

With regards,
Jay B.
en:User:ILVI


from_name: Matt Mozer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Media wiki coloring tabs

body:
Hi, I have a question regarding the

Default Style Sheet behavior: The internal wiki links in MediaWiki are
either blue (click to view an existing article) or red (click to edit
a new article). This coloring applies to the tabs at the top as well.
We have a number of stub articles in our wiki that are showing their
discussion tabs as red, even though the discussion does in fact exist.

It is only happening on the articles tab (discussion is red in color
when it is not new) but it doesn't happen for any other tabs.

Here's an example:  http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/IRS_Enrolled_Agent_Exam

Thank you.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Announcing $wgExtensionCredits

body:
On 7/13/05, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > Where $type is one of 'specialpage', 'parserhook', or 'other'.
>
> What is the difference between these types?

It identifies what type of extension it is, currently this is used to
put extensions under different subheadings in Special:Version.


body:
On 7/13/05, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> Btw, it would be cool if the extension could also include a version
> number.

Doh, I knew I forgot something, I'll implement that later, thanks.


from_name: Tels

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Wednesday 13 July 2005 01:54, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Per the suggestion of Tim Starling I implemented a way for extensions
> to display their credits on Special:Version ( see it live at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Version ), to add your
> credits to the page just include the following in your extension:
>
> $wgExtensionCredits[$type][] = array(
>         'name' => 'Example extension',
>         'author' => 'Foo Barstein',
>         'url' => 'http://wwww.example.com/Example%20Extension/',
> );
>
> Where $type is one of 'specialpage', 'parserhook', or 'other'.

What is the difference between these types?

Otherwise, way cool, wikimedia-graph will have this soon. Thanx!

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Jul 13 18:39:19 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 I'm a Wei-wei-wei-wei-wei-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wizzzaahrd...

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subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal to modify / supplement request: request for Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Drèents, Tweants, and Achterhooks Wikipedias.

body:
On 13/07/05, Heiko Evermann <heiko.evermann at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> > After much thought, I have had a change-of-heart regarding separate
> > Wikipedias for Low Saxon.
> That is a surprise.
>
> >
> > HOWEVER, I still believe it is wrong to divide on national borders.
> > From what I can tell, Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Dreents, Tweants, and
> > Achterhooks are all different enough from one another to warrant
> > separate Wikipedias.
> The national border is a border of spelling.

Servien claims that the national border is entirely based on
vocabulary. If it is, however, based as you say on spelling, then it
can easily be remedied by a converter between Netherlands and Germany
spelling, similar to the converter used at the Chinese and now the
Serbian Wikipedias (similar converters are tested for Kashmiri, Low
Saxon, and even English right now).

> > Sample:
> >
> > Stellingwarfs: Et doempien hadde zien nust in et waegenhokke. Op een
> > keer weren beide oolden uutvleugen. Ze hadden eten haelen wild veur de
> > jongen en hadden de jonkies hielendal allienig laoten.
> > Grunnegers: t Was ain van de schierste zummers sinds joaren. n Steltje
> > keudeldoemkes haren heur nust baauwd in de woagenschure stoef achter
> > de baanderdeure. Op n dag sluigen baaide ollen de vleugels uut. Ze
> > wollen veur de jongen wat te bikseln hoalen en luiten doarom de lutjen
> > hailendaal allind achter.
> ...
>
> Well, these different texts are not direct translations of each other. There
> is a lot of paraphrasing in them.

While this is certainly true, if one looks at individual words, you
can see apparent differences (the words for "[he] said", are one
example).

I was unable to find a better sample; however it became rapidly clear
that they're different.

> The main question here is: how different are theses 5 dialects of Low Saxon
> from each other from their own perspective. In other words: I think it is up
> to those people from this area to just tell us what they want. My guess is
> that they will feel that they can work together in one wikipedia. After all
> they did not ask for 5 new wikipedias, but just for one.

Each of these websites refers to its dialect/language as a language.
Cf "drentsetaol", etc. The publishing of separate translations of both
religious (the Bible) and secular (Asterix) literature indicates that
there are indeed significant differences.

In addition, there was only one requester for this Wikipedia. As far
as I know, none of the supporters speak Low Saxon, or if they do they
are not from the Netherlands (for example you and Slomox are from
Germany).

I suspect that if people from the websites I linked in a previous
message were to see this discussion, they would jump on Servien's
message and request instead separate Wikipedias.

And, unlike him, these organisations are founded and maintained by
native speakers, which as far as I know are a bit more abundant in the
Netherlands than in Germany (in the Netherlands, they are closer to
Dutch which is more closely related to Low Saxon than German is, so
some speak of "diglossia" rather than "bilingualism", similar to how
true Japanese dialects are strong still but the Okinawan language is
in poor health because it is not mutually understandable with Tokyo
Japanese).

...

Current policy, so far, has been to wait for native speakers before
starting  a new Wikipedia. This is not a written policy, but it seems
to be the case as there was created Voro, Scots, Kapampangan, and
Cebuano Wikipedias, where native speakers were involved, but not
Sranang Tongo or Papiamentu, where there was a lot of support but no
native speakers.

Best wishes;
Mark


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Wednesday 13 July 2005 18:40, Tels wrote:
> Moin,
>
> On Wednesday 13 July 2005 01:54, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> > Per the suggestion of Tim Starling I implemented a way for extensions
> > to display their credits on Special:Version ( see it live at
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Version ), to add your
> > credits to the page just include the following in your extension:
> >
> > $wgExtensionCredits[$type][] = array(
> >         'name' => 'Example extension',
> >         'author' => 'Foo Barstein',
> >         'url' => 'http://wwww.example.com/Example%20Extension/',
> > );

Btw, it would be cool if the extension could also include a version
number.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Jul 13 19:20:12 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Trust us, Duke Nukem Forever will rock when it comes out next year." -
 Joe Siegler, 1999 (http://tinyurl.com/6m8nh)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Zlatiborian Wikipedia: request for comments

body:
2005/7/12, Dejan Cabrilo <dcabrilo at gmail.com>:
> On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have been asked to advocate for the creation of a Zlatiborian Wikipedia.
>[...] Pronunciation of words is different (different stresses, accent,
> etc.), but so is between people from Belgrade and people from Novi
> Sad, or New York and San Francisco (when I first went to New York, I
> couldn't understand anything, but they still spoke English and after a
> few hours, I got a hold of it).[...]

Hi Dejan et al.,
It seems that the differences in dialects is
even more minor than that between Castillian
and Mexican varieties of Spanish, and yet
http://es.wikipedia.org isn't divided into different
spellings. I guess what would do it for me
would be if the language were given it's own
ISO tag. For example, Ladino is recognized as
a separate language from Castilian Spanish
even though it derives from it, but Andalusian
is not, even though the accent and pronunciation
differs from Standard (Castilian) Spanish. Ladino
has its own ISO tag but Andalusian does not.

BTW it's time we set up the sub-domains for
Ladino isn't it ;-) hint, hint!

With best regards to all,
Jay B.
en:User:ILVI


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
Maybe some of you noticed that I made the page [[:m:Capital and small
letters for interwiki]].

I found that I would have to spam the list if I would try to keep you
up to date :) But, we have a wiki ;)

Feel free to correct my English on the page. I finished with 10.000a+
Wikipedias (French orthography says that the language name should be
written with small letter at the beginning!). I think I'll finish
today with 10.000a+ Wikipedias.

Maybe I should ask Chinese, too? ;)

On 7/13/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Up to date list with answers. (Correct me if I am wrong.) I'll send
> the same question to other Wikipedias during the day or tomorrow.
>
> Negative answer: Latin
>
> Positive answers: Italian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Czech,
> Bulgarian,  Slovak, Polish.
>
> Positive answers (but need to be more clarified): Norsk (Bokmal and
> Nyorsk) and Bosnian.
>
> Shoud be (but communities didn't asked/answered): Sicilian, Frulian
>
> If this is the rule, then it should be: Croatian, Russian.
>
> Should to be clarified: Hungarian.
>
> Waiting for:  Slovenian, Albanian
>


body:
I finished with 50.000a+ Wikipedias, not 10.000a+...

On 7/13/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe some of you noticed that I made the page [[:m:Capital and small
> letters for interwiki]].
>
> I found that I would have to spam the list if I would try to keep you
> up to date :) But, we have a wiki ;)
>
> Feel free to correct my English on the page. I finished with 10.000a+
> Wikipedias (French orthography says that the language name should be
> written with small letter at the beginning!). I think I'll finish
> today with 10.000a+ Wikipedias.
>
> Maybe I should ask Chinese, too? ;)
>
> On 7/13/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Up to date list with answers. (Correct me if I am wrong.) I'll send
> > the same question to other Wikipedias during the day or tomorrow.
> >
> > Negative answer: Latin
> >
> > Positive answers: Italian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Czech,
> > Bulgarian,  Slovak, Polish.
> >
> > Positive answers (but need to be more clarified): Norsk (Bokmal and
> > Nyorsk) and Bosnian.
> >
> > Shoud be (but communities didn't asked/answered): Sicilian, Frulian
> >
> > If this is the rule, then it should be: Croatian, Russian.
> >
> > Should to be clarified: Hungarian.
> >
> > Waiting for:  Slovenian, Albanian
> >
>


body:
Jay, unfortunately chances are there will be no Ladino or Chinook
Jargon Wikipedias until such time as they reach a level of support
similar to that enjoyed by the Scots Wikipedia proposal or the Cebuano
Wikipedia proposal.

Mark

On 13/07/05, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2005/7/12, Dejan Cabrilo <dcabrilo at gmail.com>:
> > On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I have been asked to advocate for the creation of a Zlatiborian Wikipedia.
> >[...] Pronunciation of words is different (different stresses, accent,
> > etc.), but so is between people from Belgrade and people from Novi
> > Sad, or New York and San Francisco (when I first went to New York, I
> > couldn't understand anything, but they still spoke English and after a
> > few hours, I got a hold of it).[...]
>
> Hi Dejan et al.,
> It seems that the differences in dialects is
> even more minor than that between Castillian
> and Mexican varieties of Spanish, and yet
> http://es.wikipedia.org isn't divided into different
> spellings. I guess what would do it for me
> would be if the language were given it's own
> ISO tag. For example, Ladino is recognized as
> a separate language from Castilian Spanish
> even though it derives from it, but Andalusian
> is not, even though the accent and pronunciation
> differs from Standard (Castilian) Spanish. Ladino
> has its own ISO tag but Andalusian does not.
>
> BTW it's time we set up the sub-domains for
> Ladino isn't it ;-) hint, hint!
>
> With best regards to all,
> Jay B.
> en:User:ILVI
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


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

body:
Yes, but the mainpage on the Nahuatl Wikipedia has Nahuatl at the very
top, you have to scroll to see Spanish content.

I would not encourage the addition of non-Nahuatl content to the
Nahuatl Wikipedia, especially by a prominent user such as yourself,
but I don't think it needs to be deleted unless it's 1) a long page or
2) one of many.

Also, the Nahuatl Wikipedia is written mostly in Nahuatl -- no
obnoxious notes at the beginning and end of all pages, no commented
translations (well, very few; I removed many months back since a
Nahuatl version existed), instead of having a sentence in Nahuatl and
then 3 or 4 sentences in English, most articles are Nahuatl-only
stubs.

The sentences are so short that the quality of the Nahuatl is
virtually guaranteed.

However, none of this is true with the Maori Wikipedia.

If you show me a Wikipedia that has a site notice in the "wrong
language" for a purpose other than correcting display problems (see
many Indian languages), I will be very surprised (this of course
excludes mi.wiki).

The most recent Wikis to become active -- Armenian, Georgian, Maltese,
Friulian... all became active ONLY after *I* /translated the TOC/.
This attracts people better than a website only in English that says
"Add something here", or something that has an English-language
sentence as the first sentence of a page and places English very
prominently.

In the past, of course, languages have surely become active with prior
text in the "right" language, but I think it takes a more motivated
person. There are no recent examples of this; I think most of the
larger Wikipedias probably had this though.

Yet, the fact that only Wikipedias for which I translated the ToCs
have become active recently is, I think, a testament to the importance
of native-language content presence. Surely, the Navajo Wikipedia,
with its medium-quality Navajo used thruought, will be more
appreciated than the Maori Wikipedia, with its medium-quality Maori
mixed frequently with English.

I would like to close this letter by reminding you --and everybody
else -- that Maori is not Robin Patterson's first language, __AND HE
HIMSELF CLAIMS TO *NOT* BE FLUENT__.

Yet, this is my situation with Navajo, and that Wikipedia is mostly
the fruit of my labour (as with mi.wiki, Rocastelo is a primary
contributor, however he has mostly added interwikis and images rather
than actual Navajo-language content), yet I have written none of it in
English (granted, I did not translate the entire interface, but much
of it is translated, and there is no English on the pages).

Robin Patterson has not deleted entire pages added by others in
English, and in most cases he has not made an attempt to translate
them. I also don't see why the note has to be *at the top of the
mainpage* in English, and *in the site notice* -- Robin Patterson's
reason is that 80% of all Maori speak English, and similar reasons.
This points to a Wikipedia for a peoples or a culture rather than a
language --- why is it a concern what percent of Maori _people_ speak
English, if it's a Wikipedia for the Maori _language_?

Would a Maori speaker who is a primary speaker of English agree with
the primary postition of English on the Maori Wikipedia? No, Maori is
the language in all contexts where it would be expected: Te marae, te
iwi... even people who don't speak Maori will try in the marae.

Mark

On 13/07/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/11/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > M?ori is certainly not the only Wikipedia doing this.
> > http://kn.wikipedia.org/ also has English in its site notice and that
> > project has many native speakers of Kannada and is about to reach 1000
> > articles. http://gu.wikipedia.org and others do the same. The Arabic
> > village pump contains an English introduction, and the early
> > discussion in the project was mostly English
> >(<http://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project:%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86/%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%B4%D9%8A%D9%81&oldid=10984>).
>
> Thank you for pointing this out.  The Nahuatl wikipedia likewise has a
> good bit of both Spanish and English.   (you can see the 100th
> "article" here, just a Spanish stub:
> http://nah.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaloc ; I imagine node would argue for
> deleting or blanking it, but I only added interlanguage links to
> highlight the existence of much better Spanish content.  Eventually a
> "needs translation" tag should be devised.  [when was the first such
> tag used on en?] )
>
> Every small project grows and finds initial contributors in its own
> way; I'm not sure it would be wise to impose some universal rules on
> how new languages should go about this.
>
> This debate about whether non-local (english, french, spanish) content
> should be allowed to help seed new articles feels a lot like the
> debates about whether or not to allow substubs to exist.  I find both
> types of seed content useful for small projects.
>
> --
> ++SJ
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

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


from_name: Rune H�jsgaard

body:
Hello all,

Im having trouble with MediaWiki 1.4.6 full text search.

If im searching for FooBarBas, it returns pages with FooBarBas, but if I
search for FooBar*, I get no hits. None of the other MySQL Boolean
Full-Text search operators work either (+, -, <, >, etc.).

Im running it on a FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE, Apache+mod_ssl 1.3.33+2.8.22,
php4.3.11_1 and MySQL 4.1.12. I've also tried with MySQL 4.0.something.

-MediaWiki:
 I've run maintenance/rebuildall.php
 and in LocalSettings.php I've set:

 $wgDBmysql4 = true;

-MySQL:
 I've set the following in /etc/my.cnf  (only changes, based on
my-medium.cnf)
 [mysqld]
 ft_min_word_len=3

 [isamchk]
 ft_min_word_len=3

 [myisamchk]
 ft_min_word_len=3

Thanks, with regards,

Rune H?sjgaard
rune at hojsgaard.dk
http://rune.iversen-net.dk


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd

body:
> Can we really expect unpaid volunteers to put themselves under
> heavy and unrelenting pressure?

We can, do, and should.

How do you think we got this far?

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com


body:
On 7/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I have no problem with this.  For Italian the link currently appears as
> "Italiano (Italian)", and this should probably be changed to "italiano
> (Italian)" with the name in English remaining capitalized.
> Nevertheless, if a change is to be made it will be on a language by
> language basis, and no one person is likely to know the rule for each
> language.  This is especially problematical with the more obscure
> languages where it could very well be that no standards exist.  Keeping
> them all capitalized at least has the advantage of consistency.

But, "Suomi" means "Finland" (not "Finnish") and Francais means
"Frenchman" (not "French")...


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Sabine Cretella wrote:
>
>> And for example the language names for the interwiki links on the
>> Main Page of en.wiktionary are not all capitalised, so the ones that
>> should go with a lower case should be adapted accordingly.
>
>
> I have no problem with this.  For Italian the link currently appears
> as "Italiano (Italian)", and this should probably be changed to
> "italiano (Italian)" with the name in English remaining capitalized.
> Nevertheless, if a change is to be made it will be on a language by
> language basis, and no one person is likely to know the rule for each
> language.  This is especially problematical with the more obscure
> languages where it could very well be that no standards exist.
> Keeping them all capitalized at least has the advantage of consistency.
>
> Ec

Hoi,
When we find that what we do is wrong, we can mend our ways. When we
learn that particular words are to be written in a particular way we
have to change things, that is progress for you. When we find that there
is no standard (highly unlikely) we have the option to go either way.
And as to "italiano (Italian)" that is a practice of the English
wiktionary. There are many projects where the local word for a language
is not given at all.

It may be consistent, true, but it is also consistent incorrect for
languages like Italian.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Charles Matthews (charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com) [050713 18:27]:

> Redress - my heart sinks every time someone says 'redress' -

A lot of people think the AC should be delivering punishment. The important
thing, though, is what does the project good.

> the mission is
> not to redress things but to encyclopedicate the planet.

"Encyclopedicate the planet!" Don't invent words like that when I'm editing
[[Space opera in Scientology doctrine]] and choking on Hubbardisms as well
as my coffee ;-)

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Media wiki coloring tabs

body:
Matt Mozer wrote:
> Hi, I have a question regarding the
>
> Default Style Sheet behavior: The internal wiki links in MediaWiki are
> either blue (click to view an existing article) or red (click to edit
> a new article). This coloring applies to the tabs at the top as well.
> We have a number of stub articles in our wiki that are showing their
> discussion tabs as red, even though the discussion does in fact exist.
>
> It is only happening on the articles tab (discussion is red in color
> when it is not new) but it doesn't happen for any other tabs.
>
> Here's an example:  http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/IRS_Enrolled_Agent_Exam

That is pretty weird.

However I notice you're running a pretty old version of MediaWiki:
http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php?title=Special:Version shows 1.4.1.
We've released several bug fixes and security updates since; I strongly
recommend you update your code to the 1.4.6 release before continuing.

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

body:
On 7/11/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

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

Thank you for pointing this out.  The Nahuatl wikipedia likewise has a
good bit of both Spanish and English.   (you can see the 100th
"article" here, just a Spanish stub:
http://nah.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaloc ; I imagine node would argue for
deleting or blanking it, but I only added interlanguage links to
highlight the existence of much better Spanish content.  Eventually a
"needs translation" tag should be devised.  [when was the first such
tag used on en?] )

Every small project grows and finds initial contributors in its own
way; I'm not sure it would be wise to impose some universal rules on
how new languages should go about this.

This debate about whether non-local (english, french, spanish) content
should be allowed to help seed new articles feels a lot like the
debates about whether or not to allow substubs to exist.  I find both
types of seed content useful for small projects.

--
++SJ


from_name: Heiko Evermann

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Creation of nds-nl (Low Saxon wikipedia,
	"Dutch" version)

body:
Hi everyone,

for quite some time we have had a discussion about the pros and cons of a
separate wikipedia in Low Saxon for the "Dutch" spelling.

I would like to summarize the main points.

1) Low Saxon on both sides of the Dutch-German border differs
1.1) in the spelling up to a point of being unrecognizable for the average
user.
1.2) in the vocabulary, where Low Saxon (due to its decline over the
centuries) does not have words of its own, or where these original words were
forgotten. In such cases there has been a steady import of German words (in
the eastern part) and of Dutch words (in the western part). This too leads to
words that make the text "from the other side" difficult to understand.
2) We have had a discussion in nds.wikipedia.org about this and came to the
conclusion that these two variants of Low Saxon are too different to be
mixed. Otherwise there would be a continous quarrel over article titles and
article content. Both sides (the "eastern fraction" and the "western
fraction") agreed about this and came up with the idea to have two different
wikipedias, just like Norwegian and Romanian wikipedias come in two different
versions for two different language forms.
3) We proposed this in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Dutch-Low_Saxon
where we have gathered the neccessary amount of supporters. This has caused a
wild discussions about language variants, language competence of the people
involved etc. Apart from one lonly cruisader (node_ue) there has been a lot
of support and the tally is 9 ayes against 1 nay (guess from whom).
4) In the meantime a main page for the proposed nds-nl.wikipedia.org was
written. It can be found in
http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde and besides, it
shows that the two variants of Low Saxon (see nds.wikipedia.org for the
"eastern" version) are quite a lot apart.

In order to put an end to the discussion and in order to allow everyone to
calm down and get back to work, I would therefore like to request the
immediate creation of nds-ln.wikipedia.org and I propose to make Servien (who
has put a lot of effort into this) a temporary Administrator of nds-nl to be
able to
1) install the basic pages and
2) organize a vote about Adminship.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


list: foundation-l

from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikibooks and its purpose

body:
As you all know, Wikibooks was originally intended for textbooks and
other instructional material.  But why do many users (meta and
wikipedians in particular) think that Wikibooks is a dumping ground
for all their book-length stuff even if it is non-instructional in
nature (which would be grounds for deletion on [[WB:WIN]])?

It's an interesting discussion on Wikibooks right now about how
Wikibookians see ourselves vs how others see Wikibooks, all having
started from the controversial deletion of a book, itself forked from
Wikipedia over an edit war, which also raised the question on whether
Wikibooks should allow limited forms of Wikipedia forking as a book
foundation (currently this is not allowed due to [[WB:WIN]] - WB is
not an in-depth encyclopedia on any subject).

It also ties in to the question of how effective Wikibooks is in
enforcing its policies: WB has about 9000 users (as listed by the
special page), but only 25 are admins (and among the 25, 2 are
bureaucrats).  Even if 1000 users are active on WB (a very
conservative estimate), that's still too much for 25 users (assuming
they are all active) to handle.  Making things noticeably worse is
that policies on WB are either unilaterily implemented or are stuck
in a limbo since few will make a consensus (there are also many
issues on WB that the MediaWiki software cannot address, such as
finding the book that a given module is associated with).

Anyways, I want the Wikimedia community at large to comment on how
they think of Wikibooks and its purpose, and that's why I've posted a
message here.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Kate

subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle support

body:
hi,

for those interested, i have begun adding support for Oracle database backend
to 1.5, in a separate branch.  at present it's somewhat usable (editing
mostly works), but many things are unimplemented or broken.  to check out a
copy of the source:

  >cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs at cvs.defau.lt:/root login
    (press enter for password)
  >cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs at cvs.defau.lt:/root co -rORACLE_WORK phase3

there's no installer support, so you'll need to create a LocalSettings.php
manually (easiest is to install it under MySQL and copy the file).  set
$wgDBserver to any non-empty string, $wgDBtype to 'oracle' and $wgDBname to
your Oracle SID.  run "@maintenance/oracle/tables.sql" from SQLPlus to import
the table definitions.  to make a user into a sysop after installation:

  SQL> CALL add_user_right('Username', 'sysop')
  SQL> CALL add_user_right('Username', 'bureaucrat')

please file bugs related to Oracle support in bugzilla, blocking #652.

kate.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Running the asylum?

body:
Guettarda wrote:

>Am I going crazy, or has the world gone nuts?
>
>
Yes.
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from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Media wiki coloring tabs

body:
That is very strange.

http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/IRS_Enrolled_Agent_Exam

shows the red discussion

clicking on discussion takes you to

http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php?title=Talk:IRS_Enrolled_Agent_Exam&action=edit

changing that url to

http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php?title=IRS_Enrolled_Agent_Exam&action=edit

reveals the correct article page with a blue discussion link.

removing &action=edit gives

http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php?title=IRS_Enrolled_Agent_Exam

which has a blue discussion link

I think you just need to start from scratch ^_^

/Alterego

On 7/13/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Matt Mozer wrote:
> > Hi, I have a question regarding the
> >
> > Default Style Sheet behavior: The internal wiki links in MediaWiki are
> > either blue (click to view an existing article) or red (click to edit
> > a new article). This coloring applies to the tabs at the top as well.
> > We have a number of stub articles in our wiki that are showing their
> > discussion tabs as red, even though the discussion does in fact exist.
> >
> > It is only happening on the articles tab (discussion is red in color
> > when it is not new) but it doesn't happen for any other tabs.
> >
> > Here's an example:
> http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/IRS_Enrolled_Agent_Exam
>
> That is pretty weird.
>
> However I notice you're running a pretty old version of MediaWiki:
> http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php?title=Special:Version shows 1.4.1.
> We've released several bug fixes and security updates since; I strongly
> recommend you update your code to the 1.4.6 release before continuing.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com <http://pobox.com>)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Ros’ Haruo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: initial letter case in glottonyms

body:
To date there does not appear to be a Lushootseed (Puget Sound Salish)
Wikipedia, but if such ever comes to be, the question will arise whether
language names should have their first letters underlined: Lushootseed does
not use capital letters ? its standard orthography is a variety of North
Americanist IPA ? but the first letters of the names of persons are often
underlined. (Sentence-initial letters are not underlined, however. In
English (which is the first written language of virtually all Lushootseed
speakers/readers) both sentence initials and name initials are capitalized.
In Lushootseed in my experience language names in text are not underlined,
but it remains an open question how the community feels about lists
(bulleted, semi-coloned or whatever).

Haruo


body:
Hi Mark,
> After much thought, I have had a change-of-heart regarding separate
> Wikipedias for Low Saxon.
That is a surprise.

>
> HOWEVER, I still believe it is wrong to divide on national borders.
> From what I can tell, Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Dreents, Tweants, and
> Achterhooks are all different enough from one another to warrant
> separate Wikipedias.
The national border is a border of spelling.
>
> Sample:
>
> Stellingwarfs: Et doempien hadde zien nust in et waegenhokke. Op een
> keer weren beide oolden uutvleugen. Ze hadden eten haelen wild veur de
> jongen en hadden de jonkies hielendal allienig laoten.
> Grunnegers: t Was ain van de schierste zummers sinds joaren. n Steltje
> keudeldoemkes haren heur nust baauwd in de woagenschure stoef achter
> de baanderdeure. Op n dag sluigen baaide ollen de vleugels uut. Ze
> wollen veur de jongen wat te bikseln hoalen en luiten doarom de lutjen
> hailendaal allind achter.
...

Well, these different texts are not direct translations of each other. There
is a lot of paraphrasing in them.

The main question here is: how different are theses 5 dialects of Low Saxon
from each other from their own perspective. In other words: I think it is up
to those people from this area to just tell us what they want. My guess is
that they will feel that they can work together in one wikipedia. After all
they did not ask for 5 new wikipedias, but just for one.

Kind regards,

Heiko


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimediation

body:
It's probably worth noting that my original conception of
Wikimediation was as a revamp of the RfC procedure. I decided that it
would be easier to try it and then unleash it if it's successful, and
let it peter off if it's not. So my hope is that we'd have some
consolidation. I also hope that the mediation committee will get
itself together and start working well, and we might be able to
consolidate the mediation bits.

-Snowspinner

On Jul 13, 2005, at 9:35 AM, Dan Grey wrote:

> I suspect people may have missed the point of my earlier mail :-).
>
> We now have some seven or so dispute resolution channels. That's
> probably more than the number of editors willing to get stuck in and
> mediate at any one time. We're spreading a very small resource ever
> more thinly.
>
> We need, rather, more people getting involved. If more people
> responded to RfCs in a constructive, mediative manner, we'd probably
> see fewer cases going to 'official' mediation and even the Arbcom.
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>