body:
On 10/1/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> This is an eloquent expression of ongoing problems with process creep.
> Not everything needs to be codified in a strict policy involving a 5 day
> voting procedure.
>

This would be why we have prod.

> One thing to remember is that deletions can be undone.  Deleting an
> article is really no big deal.
>

If you are not an admin it is.

> As far as not biting the newbies, well, of course I agree.  A kind and
> loving template which says "Thanks so much for your submission to
> Wikipedia, but it was deleted.  Before submitting again, please read
> <this>, <that>, and <the other> policy, and if you have questions,
> please raise them at <an appropriate page>."

Cold and impersonal.

If admins are going to operate outside the system it hardly seems
acceptable to comunicate to those they effect as if they were part of
such a sytem. No statements about personalised deletions should be
personalised in term.

--
geni


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Call for volunteers for OTRS permissions queue

body:
The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
> If you are an admin on ENWP and are interested in copyright and
> permissions issues, I would like to encourage you to become involved in
> the permissions OTRS team.  For an idea of what's involved, take a look
> at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/permissions-en-guide.
>
> Participants must understand copyright issues as they affect Wikipedia,
> understand and support the project's position on copyright and fair
> use, and have a history of keeping their cool.
>

*bump*

Seriously, we need more people for this. Anything not processed within a
few days just gets difficult, because the procedure for dealing with
copyvios tends to be "nuke it after 5/7 days". I'm finding tickets that
are almost 2 months old and the article/image has been deleted already.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

body:
I noticed that there's a user who is making minor changes, then adds a
template which links his website, claiming that the article uses
content from his website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Routledge&diff=59143473&oldid=53310531
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Palpitation&diff=next&oldid=57357638
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pain_disorder&diff=57152420&oldid=43473655
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emotion_and_memory&diff=58912687&oldid=58596625
etc.

He also created some pages on his wiki, then he copy-pasted them to
wikipedia, while adding the same template.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfcare_skills
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(therapy)
etc.

Do we have a policy against this? I mean, everyone could claim that
his new articles were first published on his website and each such
page would have a spam link to a website. (links from Wikipedia are
very useful for increasing the Google PR)


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

body:
On 01/10/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > As I said, a competitive process will be inherently
> > damaging. If
> > there's really no other way than a competitive
> > process, then fine, but
> > don't be surprised when it has the side effects it's
> > *obviously* going
> > to have.

> I intially disagreed with you, david, but now I am
> coming around to your way of thinking.   Everyone is a
> volunteer doing there best in this.  I do not doubt
> that this is true.  But I am beginning to think a
> competitive process requires a higher level of
> professionalism than can be provided by volunteers
> doing their best.

Unfortunately, I can't see another way than a competitive bid either,
so the people saying this are right too. How annoying ...

> Not that I think people should continue fighting over
> the Wikimania 2007 selection.  But we should not stop
> talking about this process.  We should start talking
> about how future Wikimania's should be selected.
> Perhaps the first task is to really define the
> relationship between Wikimania and Wikimedia.  Is it
> dealt with through a commitee?  Are there any Board
> Resolutions that pertain to Wikimania?  What exactly
> is the connection?

That is a very interesting and deep question - i.e., what are the
assumptions each person (or team or project) have made so far?

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


list: commons-l

from_name: peter green

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play.
	WeneedYouTube-styleFlash streaming video.

body:
> The single most common cause of failure to play is that around 20% of
> the users whom have Java have a version of java which is so old that
> it doesn't have JavaSound (which is needed to produce anything other
> than 8bit, 8khz audio).  Microsoft clients appear to be the most
> frequent victims of this.
the problem is that many IE users will be using it with the msjvm, which as
you say is rather aged (due to the ms v sun legal issues).

maybe make the player downsample to 8 bit 8khz audio and put up a warning
banner saying "you are using a very old version of java, sound quality will
be degraded", or find a ms specific way to play audio (if that is possible
from an unsigned applet without breaking use on more modern jvms).


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] URL to force sidebar language

body:
On 10/1/06, Dan Jacobson <jidanni at jidanni.org> wrote:
> How can I link to a wikimedia page to get its sidebar etc. in zh-tw
> instead of en without having the user first get an account and
> register preferences? I am talking about linking from outside
> wikimedia.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pressed_flowers?uselang=zh-tw

Angela


from_name: River Tarnell

subject: [Wikitech-l] maintenance notice

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

> at about 13:00 UTC on Sunday the 1st we will be performing some
> maintenance on our network during which the site will be offline.

this was completely successfully.  there was a few minutes of
unexpected downtime due to a line card crash.

	- river.
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4p9NxVaGYtf27UWCSqg/kVc=
=sEiN
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subject: [Foundation-l] List Summary Service

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 01/10/06, Pat Gunn <pgunn at dachte.org> wrote:
>
>> I've started to summarise this list for people who don't want
>> to slog through the whole thing (and to make it easy for translators
>> to easily make foundation-l transparent to non-English speakers).
>> To get the swing of it, I summarised all of September in my first
>> go -- please see
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Improv/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_9_2430_wo
>
>
> Good one!
>
> (And that reminds me that I did in fact email juriwiki-l on the Soviet
> PD question and, true to its reputation, juriwiki-l proved to be a
> black hole for questions. Hooray. What was its purpose again?)
>

... to be a working example of [[Write-only memory]]?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Foundation-l] List Summary Service

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 01/10/06, Pat Gunn <pgunn at dachte.org> wrote:
>
>> I've started to summarise this list for people who don't want
>> to slog through the whole thing (and to make it easy for translators
>> to easily make foundation-l transparent to non-English speakers).
>> To get the swing of it, I summarised all of September in my first
>> go -- please see
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Improv/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_9_2430_wo
>
>
> Good one!
>
> (And that reminds me that I did in fact email juriwiki-l on the Soviet
> PD question and, true to its reputation, juriwiki-l proved to be a
> black hole for questions. Hooray. What was its purpose again?)
>

... to be a working example of [[Write-only memory]]?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Foundation-l] List Summary Service

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 01/10/06, Pat Gunn <pgunn at dachte.org> wrote:
>
>> I've started to summarise this list for people who don't want
>> to slog through the whole thing (and to make it easy for translators
>> to easily make foundation-l transparent to non-English speakers).
>> To get the swing of it, I summarised all of September in my first
>> go -- please see
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Improv/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_9_2430_wo
>
>
> Good one!
>
> (And that reminds me that I did in fact email juriwiki-l on the Soviet
> PD question and, true to its reputation, juriwiki-l proved to be a
> black hole for questions. Hooray. What was its purpose again?)
>

... to be a working example of [[Write-only memory]]?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Foundation-l] List Summary Service

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 01/10/06, Pat Gunn <pgunn at dachte.org> wrote:
>
>> I've started to summarise this list for people who don't want
>> to slog through the whole thing (and to make it easy for translators
>> to easily make foundation-l transparent to non-English speakers).
>> To get the swing of it, I summarised all of September in my first
>> go -- please see
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Improv/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_9_2430_wo
>
>
> Good one!
>
> (And that reminds me that I did in fact email juriwiki-l on the Soviet
> PD question and, true to its reputation, juriwiki-l proved to be a
> black hole for questions. Hooray. What was its purpose again?)
>

... to be a working example of [[Write-only memory]]?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

body:
Delirium <delirium at ...> writes:
> David Russell wrote:
>

While I support the option of expert review of Wikipedia article revisions, I
think Delirium misunderstood the point of referencing. ...continued below...

> >Delirium wrote:
> >
> >>They certainly don't look the same, unless the person "reviewing" the
> >>article utterly lacks any competence to review the article, in which
> >>case they should kindly refrain from doing so.  Anyone who has even very
> >>basic competence knows what is an uncontroversial statement that appears
> >>in numerous textbooks in their field.
> >>
> >>I don't agree with the expert-centric approach Larry Sangers advocates,
> >>but we don't have to have only people who have *no* idea what they're
> >>doing editing our articles either.
> >
> >We are talking about /readers/ here, not Wikipedia editors. If a
> >/reader/ sees a particular unreferenced statement on Wikipedia, they do
> >not know whether the statement is unreferenced because:
> >a) Some idiot has made it up without any factual basis
> >b) It is 'widely accepted as a fact'
> >
> >Your 'people familiar with the field will recognise it as a well-known
> >fact' argument doesn't really wash in this situation. The reason a
> >person would be reading a Wikipedia article on a subject is because they
> >_don't_ know enough about the subject. What may appear as a 'widely
> >accepted fact' to someone writing a Wikipedia article on a subject may
> >be nothing of the sort to an uninformed person seeking to use Wikipedia
> >to expand his/her knowledge (which is, after all, what we're for).
> >
> Well, that's why I think we *should* have review processes of some
> sort.  Then if a reader sees an unreviewed article, they are indeed in
> the situation you describe.  But if a reader sees an article that has
> been reviewed as at least "pretty good" by people who know something
> about the field, then they can rest assured that nothing obvious is
> wrong about it.  For what it's worth, I do think we should have a
> different process of reviewing than good/featured, but that's been
> talked about at length before.
>
> In any case, given references doesn't solve the problem you describe
> either, because then the reader still can't determine without some
> background knowledge whether this is a mainstream/reliable reference, or
> a reference to a book written by someone with a decidedly minority
> view.
Not exactly, no.  To determine if a fact is "well known to be true" requires
subject specific knowledge; to determine if a source is mainstream requires more
general skills at judging sources *in general*; while subject familiarity is one
way to judge a source's reliability it is not the only method.  With the
exception of deductive or indutive logic, subject specific knowledge is the only
way to verify a specific fact.
  That's why I think we should help readers out by having people
> with at least some knowledge in the area the article's about give the
> reader some indication of how good the article is---delegating all the
> fact-checking to every individual reader simply doesn't work.

In any case, having expert review or not is a distraction from the purpose of
referencing.  The most important point of referencing, for our readers, is to
allow them to tell *where* our claims come from.  Even if a lay reader can't
tell if "Prof. John McManins, published in the National Dynamic Society Journal"
is a reliable source, if they tell someone who does know the subject - "X is
true because McManis said it." the knowledgable person will have something to go
on.  If they just say "X is true because Wikipedia said it." this is useless;
there's nothing further to say.  Referencing encourages our readers to pay
attention to where something comes from, not just take it on faith.  This is
critical.

References shouldn't be *required* - I think the GA and FA requirements of
references are more or less misplaced (esspecially in the case of GA), but any
amount of references should be *allowed*, and appreciated.

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

body:
On 10/2/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> For example, the PR around Citizendium has had various Wikimedians
> saying this is fine since Wikipedia can benefit from any improvements
> to the content which that project makes, but that may involve linking
> to it with these sorts of templates.

I think that would be fine if Citizendium gains critical mass. I have
more of a problem when the appearance is that it is used to _build_
critical mass.

> Some way of adding attribution on the history page (which isn't
> indexed by Google and therefore useless to spammers) may be a better
> solution than adding these to the article. It probably also makes more
> sense in terms of the GFDL if the history is all on the history page
> and not partly there, partly on the talk page, and partly on the
> article itself.

Perhaps, if it is only and very specifically used for contributions
from external sources. A sort of "External History:" namespace whose
contents are shown and linked to on top of the history might be
workable.  Right now I'm not sure the problem is prevalent enough to
justify prioritizing such a change.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 02/10/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > So en.WP has many, many of "their" volunteers.
> > Manpower that is unbelievable to the wider
> Wikimedia
> > community.  But now, and this just not about
> > Porchesia, when en.WP has a problem.  When en.WP
> has
> > this problem it is brought straight to this list
> to
> > ask the attention and help of this wider Wikimedia
> > community.  Now any other project, tries their
> hardest
> > to solve a problem themselves before coming here.
> But
> > en.WP with their massive resources and manpower.
> > en.WP skips the step of working on the problem
> within
> > the project and comes straight here to use the
> > resources of the wider Wikimedia community.  And
> the
> > wider Wikimedia community is supposed to work on
> this
> > with the hope there might be some carryover to
> their
> > own home project.  Still when the home project has
> a
> > problem, they are not given answers and solutions.
>  I
> > was told to "adjust my expectations to reality".
> Many
> > others are told that they must figure it out
> "within
> > the community".  But no one except en.WP comes
> here
> > until they exhausted the ability of thier home
> > community.  I am just asking that en.WP approach
> this
> > list as every other project in the wider Wikimedia
> > community does.
>
>
> You speak as if Danny's message going here was
> anything to do with
> some implied collective laziness on the part of
> en:wp as an amorphous
> mass, rather than entirely Danny's own personal
> decision. Me, I'm
> somewhat surprised he didn't send it to wikien-l at
> all.
>
>
> - d.

I speak as if it is part of a pattern, this thread had
been a prime example of the pattern when I first
commented.  I think this is sign of how much all the
political stuff has consumed us, that so many people
can only see this thread as an attack on Danny,
instead of an honest disscussion on an issue.  I don't
know.  I suppose all the board elections talk had me
into believing many people were sincerely interested
in en.WP dominance issues.  I suppose that was really
all just politics.  I will say no more on this issue,
and instead simply remain silent on threads I believe
belong elsewere.  I am truly sorry for causing all the
drama here, I misread the situation.

Birgitte SB

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] No references in the "end product?"

body:
> Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 23:07:53 -0500
>
> That's true, but is also misleading.
> You don't see those references in the *end product*.

Oh? Take a look at the article on "Radioactivity" in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, 11th edition.

It contains fifty-four inline references. It also mentions five
"general treatises."

And the stuff in between is credited to a known individual, "E. Ru."
with the Encyclopedia Britannica editors implicitly vouching both for
his identity and his competence. However, if I want to check his
competence for yourself, I flip to the front of volume 22, p. vii and
look up E. Ru. who happens to be some guy named "Ernest Rutherford,
F. R. S., D. Sc. LL. D., Ph. D., Langworthy Professor of Physics,
University of Manchester, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1908, Author of
Radio-Activity; Radio-Activity Transformations; etc."

So, depending on what you think of his character or his credentials,
I can judge whether or not to rely on the stuff that's in between
those citations.

A point that people seem to continually miss in comparing Wikipedia
to other scholarly activities is that, to the extent that our
contributors are less identifiable and less authoritative than those
of the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition or scholarly works,
we _need_ to  have _denser_ citations than these endeavors. For
example, our article on "Radioactivity" ought to have _more_ than
fifty-four inline citations.

It presently has...

... _zero_ references. No inline references, nothing like the five
"general treatises" E. Ru. provides (i.e. no "references" or
"bibliography" section). Seven "see alsos" and seven "external links."

Most recent edits are by Bovineone, KaiserbBot, FocalPoint, Peyre,
and 165.107.9.47. Not obvious who their real-world identities are,
but even assuming you take their user pages at face value, which I
do, their credentials and achievements are:
"I currently live in Austin, Texas, but I am originally from
Pasadena, California" (and has a barnstar); a bot with an emergency
shutoff button; "One more user who believes that Wikipedia is a
really really good idea;" "Wikipedia does not have a user page with
this exact name;" and no account.

  For all I know, 165.107.9.47, _may_ be a Nobel Laureate, but...
should I trust the unreferenced material in this article as much as I
trust the unreferenced material in the Britannica article credited to
E. Ru.?


body:
Three minor clarifications... first, our article on radioactivity is
a redirect to "Radioactive decay,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay

and that's the article to which my comments apply.

Second, the Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition's article on
"Radioactivity" is considerably _longer_ than ours, so an equivalent
citation density in ours would be less than fifty-four inline
citations... I haven't got time to do the math right now but since
our article has zero citations the ratio is still the same.

Third, no, just for the record, I don't think E. Ru.'s 1911 article
would be the best article to rely on, as of 2006, as one's sole
source of information on radioactivity, a few things having been
learned in the last century....


from_name: David Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Interesting article on Alexa

body:
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Minh Nguyen wrote:
>
> Unlike Alexa, the thing with Google is that you can skim through some of
> the results and see if a lot of them are the result of spamming or
> googlebombing. If so, you can often refine your search to exclude such
> pages. I use Google a lot in getting an idea of how notable the subject
> of a new article is, because I can see what kinds of sites mention it.
>

The other difference being that, although Alexa and Google are probably
each as vulnerable to being gamed, Google has a substantially larger
number of users and a substantially better database (speaking
personally, Googlebot is my website's top robot visitor whereas A9/Alexa
doesn't even register).

Cynical
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from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the  Terms
> of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own
> Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies  this.

My own ?0.02 is that we should steer away from Byzantine and restrictive
'terms of service' for contributors as much as possible. Part of the
point of Wikipedia is, as ever, that 'anyone can edit' and I'm wary of
things that may discourage people from doing that.

I also wonder if more expansive terms of service would actually do
anything to deal with the problem here (which I presume is that of
commercial organisations using Wikipedia for what amounts to
advertising). If, as you surmise, few users will read them, why bother
creating them? Advertising is already covered by Wikipedia policy.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 02/10/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:

> My own ?0.02 is that we should steer away from Byzantine and restrictive
> 'terms of service' for contributors as much as possible. Part of the
> point of Wikipedia is, as ever, that 'anyone can edit' and I'm wary of
> things that may discourage people from doing that.
> I also wonder if more expansive terms of service would actually do
> anything to deal with the problem here (which I presume is that of
> commercial organisations using Wikipedia for what amounts to
> advertising). If, as you surmise, few users will read them, why bother
> creating them? Advertising is already covered by Wikipedia policy.

Yes. What is the point of such a rule in a TOS? It won't stop
deliberate violation. So how is it planned to enforce it?

"Wikipedia: The encyclopedia anyone can edit if they click OK to a
multi-page contract of adhesion of the sort no-one ever reads anyway."

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 02/10/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> So en.WP has many, many of "their" volunteers.
> Manpower that is unbelievable to the wider Wikimedia
> community.  But now, and this just not about
> Porchesia, when en.WP has a problem.  When en.WP has
> this problem it is brought straight to this list to
> ask the attention and help of this wider Wikimedia
> community.  Now any other project, tries their hardest
> to solve a problem themselves before coming here.  But
> en.WP with their massive resources and manpower.
> en.WP skips the step of working on the problem within
> the project and comes straight here to use the
> resources of the wider Wikimedia community.  And the
> wider Wikimedia community is supposed to work on this
> with the hope there might be some carryover to their
> own home project.  Still when the home project has a
> problem, they are not given answers and solutions.  I
> was told to "adjust my expectations to reality".  Many
> others are told that they must figure it out "within
> the community".  But no one except en.WP comes here
> until they exhausted the ability of thier home
> community.  I am just asking that en.WP approach this
> list as every other project in the wider Wikimedia
> community does.

You speak as if Danny's message going here was anything to do with
some implied collective laziness on the part of en:wp as an amorphous
mass, rather than entirely Danny's own personal decision. Me, I'm
somewhat surprised he didn't send it to wikien-l at all.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 02/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes. What is the point of such a rule in a TOS? It won't stop
> deliberate violation. So how is it planned to enforce it?
> "Wikipedia: The encyclopedia anyone can edit if they click OK to a
> multi-page contract of adhesion of the sort no-one ever reads anyway."

To expand on this:

What it appears Danny would like is a rule that people would have to
agree to such that they would behave. But you can't legislate against
misunderstanding or malice. What effective penalty can we apply? We
can't even stop people editing if they really want to.

Adding a new rule, or a TOS or whatever, won't change malicious
behaviour a dot, and will hamper the good editors. No rules can ensure
quality, no rules can ensure neutrality, no rules can prevent
cluelessness and no rules can prevent malice.

The solution to bad behaviour is as unlikely to be "let's add LOTS of
new rules" as it is to be "let's add a new rule" when the problem is
editors who don't care about existing rules.

- d.


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

body:
IMHO it could be very important to have you in Italy in summer 2007.

Ilario
~~~~~~~~~~
President of Wikimedia CH
Member of Wikimedia Italy
~~~~~~~~~~

----Messaggio originale----
Da: jwales at wikia.com
Data: 01.10.06 19.33
A: <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com>, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing
List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

Alison Wheeler wrote:
> Brad's support for Torino during the selection period, and
Jimbo's recent
> comment here are, to my mind, very out of place and could easily
suggest
> to many that there is pressure being brought on them.

Allow me to clarify that I did not vote in this years selection
process,
and have no intention of voting in next years.  My comment about
Torino
was based on two things: the closeness of the competition this
year, and
my own love of visiting Italy in the summer, which I don't get to
do
very often.  It was intended as a personal remark only... to cheer
up
the Italians. :)

--Jimbo

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


body:
I strong support three different Wikimania: one for Europe/Africa,
one for Asia/Australia, one form America.

The Asia has got many problems and one Wikimania cannot solve them,
but also the core of Wikipedians are in the Europe, but also the
Digital Divide is a big problem in Africa, etc.

Any choose will be always a "long long" discussion.

Ilario

----Messaggio originale----
Da: saintonge at telus.net
Data: 02.10.06 2.19
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

Birgitte SB wrote:

I support the principle of rotating Wikimania around three broad
geographical regions (Europe/Africa, The Americas, Asia/Australia),
but
this should not create a situation where we must accept a city's
clearly
inferior bid just because it is the only one from its region.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Hoi,
Considering that you think tiny equals pathetic, I would not trust it
near any of them.
Thanks,
   GerardM

James Hare wrote:
> Another thing we could do is get something like Tawkerbot2 (for those who
> don't know, Tawkerbot2 is the most prolific anti-vandal bot) and have it set
> up for all those tiny, pathetic wikis.
>
> On 10/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> --- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> In any case, I think this is interesting at a global
>>> level because the
>>> Wiki's at greatest risk of collecting garbage are
>>> often the ones with
>>> the least activity.
>>>
>>> After seeing that one of the Wikipedias had its main
>>> page changed to
>>> say "Welcome to the Runescape trading forum", I
>>> wondered if it would
>>> be useful to setup a bot to check recent changes on
>>> all the smaller
>>> wikis for insertions of English text. .. With the
>>> hope that the worst
>>> of the junk on small wikis would be in inappropriate
>>> languages.
>>>
>>> It would be really nice if we had a single
>>> recentchanges page that
>>> aggregated all the low activity wikis.
>>>
>> I think this is a great idea.  Is it possible to set
>> up several RC bots (in different wiki's) to work in a
>> single RC channel?  If this could be done with the
>> bots displaying a snippet of any added text, it should
>> be easy to recognize any english which does not
>> belong.
>>
>> Birgitte SB


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>> Yes. What is the point of such a rule in a TOS? It won't stop
>> deliberate violation. So how is it planned to enforce it?
>
> What it appears Danny would like is a rule that people would have to
> agree to such that they would behave. But you can't legislate against
> misunderstanding or malice. What effective penalty can we apply?

Well, realistically, there is another potential beneficial side
effect of "terms of service" agreements like that, even if no one
has read them, which is that they can -- maybe -- make it easier
to deal with idiots after they've been discovered.

If you're merely "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit", and
you ban or severely sanction someone, he may then engage you in
a 3-month-long harangue and argument about how he had every right
to do what he did and you had no right to ban him for it.  But
if you can whip out the densely-cribbed TOS agreement and point
at subparagraph VII.6.b.iv which specifically prohibits (say)
adding commercial external links, then even if the miscreant had
never read this, he will (so the theory goes) realize that he
could/should have, and will stalk off, duly chastised.  It might
or might not make a difference if there's also a top-level
paragraph II.3 which specifically states that we can ban you
for violating any of the rules in section VII.

(My point is not that densely-cribbed TOS agreements are
wonderful or that we should have one, but merely that, depending
on your enforcement model, they can have value in making your
enforcements stick.)


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. What is the point of such a rule in a TOS? It won't stop
> deliberate violation. So how is it planned to enforce it?

Right now we're hardly even telling advertisers no.

There are many organizations with reputations and pocketbooks that
they need to protect... the first step in keeping their behavior
acceptable is giving them clear direction.

You're right, we can't stop bad people from being bad, but that
doesn't mean that we can't keep employ measures to encourage the
honest people to stay honest.

Or are you also opposed to doors that lock?  ... with the exception of
high security doors, a locked door actually does fairly little to
prevent a determined attacker from getting inside, and yet locked
doors have been demonstrated over and over again to be effective.

Or another way of looking at it:   One of the more clearly stated
arguments against us running advertising on Wikipedia ourselves is the
potential creation of bias, or at least the creation of the appearance
of bias.   It strikes me as odd that people will scream so loudly
against the introduction of advertising which would bring us lots of
useful money without a definite introduction of bias, and yet folks
are not willing to take maximal measures against the abuse of
Wikipedia as an astroturfed advertising medium... when the latter does
create a clear bias in our content.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> What it appears Danny would like is a rule that people would have to
> agree to such that they would behave.

I don't know if thats what danny was advocating, but it sounds good to me.

> But you can't legislate against
> misunderstanding or malice. What effective penalty can we apply? We
> can't even stop people editing if they really want to.

You are correct that there are some bad people that we can't stop.
But everyone that causes us problems isn't a judgement proof 14 year
old kid jumping coffee shops...

The reality is that a nontrivial number of our problem causers are
corporations which don't have the sort of immunity which makes the TOS
irrelevant.

It would be really nice that on the third time some foolish
advertising company calls us up threatening to sue because we deleted
their drivel that we can turn around and say "No, we're going to sue
you..." :)

And really, if we don't make it clear to all that we respect
ourselves... we can't expect other people to respect us.

It would be hard to actually prevent people spraypainting ads on the
side of a public library,  and yet incidents of people doing that are
unheard of...

[snip]
> The solution to bad behaviour is as unlikely to be "let's add LOTS of
> new rules" as it is to be "let's add a new rule" when the problem is
> editors who don't care about existing rules.

There is no one solution, there are only improvements.


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
rational holds, the bible is banned book).

Could some people deal with this list?

Kim
--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] *spork*

body:
Nick Boalch wrote:
> I think this is probably something cyclical:
>   1) IAR starts short and simple;
>   2) IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
>   3) IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and
>      corollories to the previous additions;
>   4) IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity...

I've never paid much attention to IAR's convolutions or its talk
page, so this may have been tried already, but I wonder if it
would work if part of the capsule description were along the
lines of, "Ignore any rule you can get away with."  That is,
rather than trying to prescriptively limn which rules can't be
broken versus which ones can, and how (an approach which really
does seem to demolish both the spirit and the letter of IAR,
and especially that letter A), the notion would be that you
can ignore any rule you want to when it's reasonable to do so
and when it helps the project.  How do you know whether it's
truly reasonable and helps the project?  If people thank you
afterwards.  What feedback mechanism is there to assist aspiring
rule-ignorers who don't yet have decent intuition about what is
and isn't reasonable, and are therefore liable to screw up and do
something grossly unreasonable without realizing it?  Why, the
recriminations and flamewars that spring up whenever anyone does
that, of course.  Fearing those recriminations, a reasonable and
conscientious editor will naturally and automatically shy away
from dangerous rule-ignoring actions that they can't be sure
would meet consensus.

Now, someone's going to say, "That's fine, but it only works
for editors who *care* about not pissing people off, and who
are interested in learning from their mistakes.  It doesn't
do anything to stop anarchic renegades."  And that's true.
But it's only the conscientious editors who would have read and
tried to follow any detailed prescriptive rules and guidelines
anyway -- the renegades would just ignore those, too.

(I realize I haven't said anything here that wasn't implicit --
or maybe even explicit -- in the IAR policy since day 1.
I guess the point is to keep reminding ourselves, and the
policy's critics, that yes, you really can ignore any rule when
doing so helps the project, and yes, this is potentially a
horribly dangerous policy which a determined rule-ignorer could
really abuse, but no, that doesn't mean we're going to try to
castrate the policy in order to prevent abuse; what we're going
to rely on to prevent abuse is people's being reasonable,
and the knowledge that most things can be undone.  And it's true,
people won't always be reasonable, but we'll deal with that as it
happens, because trying to absolutely prevent it would cause more
problems than it would solve.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/2/06, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Sorry if I *do* contradict you. You are one of the most reasonable
> people on wikipedia, so I would hope that you would take my
> contradiction of what you said above in the same spirit. I wish to
> reason with the unreasonable statements in the paragraph above.
>
> Advertisements are *not* useful money. They detract from our mission,
> and the value that is added to our content by people who do not feel
> advertisements are useful. I *will* argue the point if needed. But I
> think I have argued that already in another place.

I did not intend to advocate accepting advertising but rather make the
point that so many of us are so aggressive at rejecting paid
advertising, which is a subject that reasonable people can disagree
on, ... and that we should be no less aggressive in our rejection of
the abuse of our service for advertising.

No matter what arguments can be made FOR us running ads, none apply to
turning a blind eye to the abuse of our service. ... and yet almost
all of the arguments against running ads apply to tolerating the
inclusion of advertising.

I would argue that we are already fairly intolerant of advertising, at
least when a Wikipedian sees it... but until we ensure that we can
back up our good community practices with legal recourse against
repeated offenders it can still be easily argued that we are fairly
tolerant.


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/2/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> If you're merely "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit", and
> you ban or severely sanction someone, he may then engage you in
> a 3-month-long harangue and argument about how he had every right
> to do what he did and you had no right to ban him for it.  But
> if you can whip out the densely-cribbed TOS agreement and point
> at subparagraph VII.6.b.iv which specifically prohibits (say)
> adding commercial external links, then even if the miscreant had
> never read this, he will (so the theory goes) realize that he
> could/should have, and will stalk off, duly chastised.

I doubt anyone inclined to engage in a 3-month-long harangue would
care what subparagraph VII.6.b.iv says.


from_name: Stephen Streater

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 2 Oct 2006, at 07:55, David Gerard wrote:

> On 02/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes. What is the point of such a rule in a TOS? It won't stop
>> deliberate violation. So how is it planned to enforce it?
>> "Wikipedia: The encyclopedia anyone can edit if they click OK to a
>> multi-page contract of adhesion of the sort no-one ever reads
>> anyway."
>
>
> To expand on this:
>
> What it appears Danny would like is a rule that people would have to
> agree to such that they would behave. But you can't legislate against
> misunderstanding or malice. What effective penalty can we apply? We
> can't even stop people editing if they really want to.
>
> Adding a new rule, or a TOS or whatever, won't change malicious
> behaviour a dot, and will hamper the good editors. No rules can ensure
> quality, no rules can ensure neutrality, no rules can prevent
> cluelessness and no rules can prevent malice.
>
> The solution to bad behaviour is as unlikely to be "let's add LOTS of
> new rules" as it is to be "let's add a new rule" when the problem is
> editors who don't care about existing rules.

We should be making at easy as possible
for good editors to take part and learn how
things work. This includes making it as easy
as possible to get started.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding Ogg Theora and its file extension;
	should it be changed on the commons?

body:
On 10/2/06, Ivo Emanuel Gon?alves <justivo at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Unofficially, the .ogm extension is used for Theora in many places
> over the Internet, and this is a good idea, because many video players
> can recognize this extension as theirs.

No. OGM files are used for MPEG4 video (patented) + Vorbis wrapped in OGG.

The better solution for this, esp for video, is Michael Dales inline
player for Mediawiki.

For the purposes of usability going half-way just doesn't provide the benefits.


from_name: Felipe Ortega

subject: [Wikitech-l] new dumps ?

body:
Well, I think Nick proposal would be a big improvement indeed...

 Presently, the Python tool I' m developing for quantitative analysis based on db dumps has to loop searching the latest valid dump for any given wikipedia (trying every posible date in the url until I find the correct file...).

 Despite that, reading Erik's comments I' ve realized that I should also check the size of dumps looking for odd values. But... who knows the "correct" size of a certain dump? (ok, other than enwiki).

So info about dates, size, and md5 sum for every valid dump is *really* interesting.

Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> escribi?: > > The "latest" directory is not useful for this purpose (e.g. http://download.wikipedia.org/enwiki/latest/ points to
> > files from approx
> > Aug-17, which looks to be the latest dump where everything reported as succeeded;
>
> Right, for consistency.

Yes, but how often does somebody intentionally download and use every single file from a dump? Most people need either one or two of
the dump files; the rest are simply irrelevant to them.

The latest directory is using a lowest-common-denominator approach (latest run where everything succeeded). This file would
essentially be a highest-common-denominator approach (latest successful version of each individual file). Maybe both have their
place.

However, I've realised it would be useful to include for each data type the date on which the dump run was started, e.g.:
---------------------------------------

      A few statistics such as the page count.
      http://download.wikipedia.org/enwiki/20060925/enwiki-20060925-site_stats.sql.gz
+     20060925
      451
      2006-09-24T16:29:01Z
      e4defa79c36823c67ed4d937f8f7013c

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

.. that way anyone that needs multiple files can hold off downloading them until all the "dump_run" fields match up, so as to more
easily avoid problems of mixing files from different dumps. (It's true that this field can currently be pulled from the directory in
the  field, but if a different field is used then the url can point just about anywhere, such as potentially using different
hostnames for different dumps, or changing directory structure.)

Anyway, it's just a suggestion, and if you don't like it, well, there's not much I can do about it ;-)

All the best,
Nick.

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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

LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y m?viles desde 1 c?ntimo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com


from_name: rfrangi at libero.it

body:
Sorry, since it was the only logo I saw on the two pages, I incorrectly presumed that Gattonero was referring to it.

He was speaking about the similarity between the two headers with "Wikimania2007Torino" and "Wikimania2007Taipei".

Roberto (Snowdog)

> I wish to let you know that the logo is the official logo of Wikimania,
> which you can find in
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_(blue-red).svg
>
> H.T.
>

------------------------------------------------------
Mutuo da 200.000?? Spread scontati da +0.69%. Solo per richieste online. www.mutuionline.it
http://click.libero.it/mutuionline


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

body:
Steve Summit wrote

> Phil Sandifer wrote:
> >On Oct 1, 2006, at 4:50 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> >> I hear you.  Perhaps that long discussed speedy criterion for
> >> "advertisements masquerading as articles" should be introduced.

> > Oh God, please no.
> > You have no idea what that would become in the hands of some of our
> > admins.
>
> Is there anything we can do about *that* problem?  If we can't
> at least document our norms for fear of the documentation being
> misused, that sounds like a precarious situation.

In general, I agree. Reprimand and then cull admins who can't get it right, rather than distort policy in defensive mode. Recall that most admin actions are reversible. (Not against people, true, but that's where we have been hardest in the past.)

Charles

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body:
I reply as the previous year... it depends.

How many persons must make a long journey? How many persons are
lucky?

I said that the previous year about the choose of Boston: how many
participants has had Wikimania 2006?

To partecipate is important but not mandatory.

Ilario

----Messaggio originale----
Da: stephen.bain at gmail.com
Data: 02.10.06 11.10
A: <valdelli at bluemail.ch>, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

On 10/2/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
>
> To go in Taipei or in Boston or in Sidney is very expensive for
a
> wikipedian, and most of all wikipedians are students with a
little
> bit of money.

"For a Wikipedian"? I presume you meant to say "for a Wikipedian
in
Europe". There are plenty of contributors in other parts of the
world,
including an emergent community across Asia for whom Taipei is a
highly accessible location.

It's expensive both ways to travel long distances, remember, so
choosing location based on population is a surefire way to
guarantee
that huge numbers of Wikimedians will never attend a Wikimania.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> /me thinks we might need a "list of reputable textbooks which can be
> used as inline references" somewhere in Wikipedia: space...

I think such a list would be as useless as a "list of copyrighted images
which can be fairly used in Wikipedia articles." Which articles are they
reputable sources for, and for which facts within those articles?

Let's say we had a textbook that's been written by creationists as a
tool to undermine the teaching of evolution in high school biology, and
everyone knows it - it's a clumsy hack job. Obviously isn't a "reputable
source" for information about evolution. But it's a great source to cite
in [[Creationism]], or even in [[Evolution#Controversy]] (if such a
section exists). So how does it get listed? I think it'd be much easier
to just let people cite whatever they want and then if other editors
have a problem with it they can work it out on the relevant article's
talk page on a case-by-case basis.

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body:
On 10/2/06, Ivo Emanuel Gon?alves <justivo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gregory, thanks for the reply.
>
> On 10/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No. OGM files are used for MPEG4 video (patented) + Vorbis wrapped in OGG.
>
> Are you sure about this?  I've not seen this in the wild as of yet.

Yes.  Perhaps you just didn't realize the OGM files you saw contained
propritary codecs. Most software that will play Ogg/Theora will also
play the Ogg/Xvid.

Even Wikipedia knows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_Media

> > The better solution for this, esp for video, is Michael Dales inline
> > player for Mediawiki.
>
> Does this player work well?  Could you offer a link?  I've not see it
> in action yet.

It's checked into SVN, at least partially. It's not done yet. It was
demonstrated at Wikimania.  Google for Michael Dale SOC or something
like that. :)

> > For the purposes of usability going half-way just doesn't provide the benefits.
>
> Agreed, but I thought something had to be done.  Thus, this discussion.
>
> Maybe this discussion will lead to something else: another solution,
> an improved solution, or probably one more solution.

Sounds good to me.


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote
> As long as that is the case, we're in the unfortunate position where
> it's entirely likely the god-given common sense a user comes to the
> project with is going to do them more good than our policy pages.

"Plus ?a change" versus "nous avons chang? tout cel?", IOW. Amateurs can draft encyclopedic pages with greater ease than legalistic documents. All true, but this comes with the territory.

I think the right conclusion is not so much that the way things are done just fundamentally sucks; but that this issue, of accessibility of 'policy', preferentially will put off those who want solid understanding of everything involved in editing. I have never felt I understood all aspects of enWP.

Charles

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Porchesia

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>I have posted this to foundation, but for those who do not know--
>
>Today I deleted the article [[Porchesia]], which was created on November  23,
>2005, i.e., 10 months ago. The article described an island off the coast of
>Lebanon with a population of over 300,000. The languages are Arabic, Greek,
>and  English.
>
>I will gladly restore the article when someone finds me one source  verifying
>the facts of this article. You might start by finding Porchesia on a  map.
>
>
Must be used for top-sekrit research - with Google Earth you can clearly
see places where fishing boats and sunlit waves have been photoshopped
over what's really there... :-)

On a more serious note, this was an article created by a new user, with
no links from anywhere (so no watchlists to be triggered). Seems
bot-detectable, at least to flag for closer inspection.

Stan


from_name: Alison Wheeler

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On Mon, October 2, 2006 02:30, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Zhaladshar is the only non-bot account with more edits than you on
> enwikisource, Danny.

Anything which counts edits is generally a waste of time anyway - good
editors use [preview] a lot until they are happy with what they are about
to commit, bad editors commit every bit of punctuation separately ...

and Danny is a good editor ;-P

Alison Wheeler


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On Mon, October 2, 2006 06:10, Walter van Kalken wrote:
> I think this would be impossible. I signed up, like many, to certain
> ''terms of service'' and now all of a sudden they would get changed
> after 3+ years of actively participating. I feel that you would open up
> a Pandora's box if you did that.

Whilst not directly camparable, LiveJournal did exactly that earlier this
year. It changed the ToS and, basically, said that continued use after
such and such a date, was explicit acceptance of those changed ToS. There
were a few complaints but, in the end, people realised that the service
they loved and used was the more important thing and they stayed.

Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth we
haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.

Alison Wheeler


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
> > A TOS doesn't necessarily have to be dense.
>
> I'm having a dense case of TOS - TLA Overload Syndrome - quietly in a corner
> over here.
>

Terms Of Service.

Which segues into my question: what Services can we possibly set the Terms for?
What are we willing to come out and say we are providing?

"The privilege of contributing to our encyclopedia?" Sounds like a one-sided
contract.

Or are we actually going to come right out and say: "in exchange for getting
your company's name on the whatever'th most popular website..."

Regards,
Dan


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:

> Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth we
> haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
> few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
> well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.

So how to enforce it?

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to
 play.	WeneedYouTube-styleFlash streaming video.

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 10/1/06, peter green <plugwash at p10link.net> wrote:
>> maybe make the player downsample to 8 bit 8khz audio and put up a warning
>> banner saying "you are using a very old version of java, sound quality will
>> be degraded", or find a ms specific way to play audio (if that is possible
>> from an unsigned applet without breaking use on more modern jvms).
>
> I'd rather not.
>
> 1) The time it would take to code the downsampling and switching could
> be better spent on other parts of the code.

Cortado (which is used in Michael's work) is claimed to work on the old MS VM.
If you have access to a computer with this limitation, can you please test and
confirm?

> 2) As a contributor I would be upset that users are being given a poor
> quality version of my contribution rather than being asked to install
> improved software.

Well, that's pretty silly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Pat Gunn

subject: [Foundation-l]  Re: List Summary Service

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>I should mention also: it's an ongoing issue on the Foundation
>committee lists to get someone willing to summarise them. How much
>work was this for you?

It was, admittedly, a lot of work, but that was at least partly
because I summarised an entire month over the course of a few days.
If I do it weekly, it should be a lot less work, and I'm also
going to experiment with ways to optimise the workflow. I can
probably take on another list or two if they're lower volume than
foundation-l, or possibly one more list if it's higher volume but
not insanely so. Anything more, and I'll have to cut back on
my efforts to learn OTRS and ramp up my involvement there and some
other projects. If there's a list (or two, depending on size) that
are particularly worth it, point me at their html archives (providing
credentials as needed), and I'll add them to the queue. I should
reiterate that I'd be interested to talk with people who would
be up for translating the summary. If we get a few more people
willing to do this kind of thing, we could swap off weekly on
the larger lists..

---
Pat Gunn
mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom
http://dachte.org
If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones
	-- Voltaire


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comments on the new wikipedias

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Minh Nguyen wrote:
>  > Maybe someday; I still remember going to
>  > "en2.wikipedia.org" way back when, so the URLs certainly aren't permanent.
>
> That was crude load-balancing before we had something better set up. :) It's
> redirected if you've got really old URLs from that period.

I think Minh Nguyen's point was that subdomains can and do change. If we
make up a non-standard code for a language, and a standard code either
already exists or is added later, then we can move the wiki fairly easily.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 09:46:34AM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 10/2/06, Ivo Emanuel Gon?alves <justivo at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > Unofficially, the .ogm extension is used for Theora in many places
> > over the Internet, and this is a good idea, because many video players
> > can recognize this extension as theirs.
>
> No. OGM files are used for MPEG4 video (patented) + Vorbis wrapped in OGG.
>
> The better solution for this, esp for video, is Michael Dales inline
> player for Mediawiki.
>
> For the purposes of usability going half-way just doesn't provide the benefits.

That answer *sounds* like it implies that such a server-provided player
would *override* a locally installed player, thus (as so often happens)
penalizing the smart people in favor of the stupid ones.

Is that actually what it implies?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	"That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
	  they stop having sex with you."  -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_


body:
On Mon, October 2, 2006 11:12, David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
>> Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth
>> we
>> haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
>> few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
>> well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.
> So how to enforce it?

It is already being enforced; something of this nature though would enable
a 'delete on sight' rather than the extra delay going through AfD causes,
even though it is clear that deletion will be the result. (remember that
thing about 'process'?)

Alison Wheeler


subject: [WikiEN-l] *spork*

body:
Someone's trying to cure [[WP:IAR]] with instruction creep again.
They're already trying to tell people who think the change is
ridiculous not to intrude on the process. Pick today's process!

- d.


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/2/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > I speak as if it is part of a pattern, this thread
> had
> > been a prime example of the pattern when I first
> > commented.  I think this is sign of how much all
> the
> > political stuff has consumed us, that so many
> people
> > can only see this thread as an attack on Danny,
> > instead of an honest disscussion on an issue.  I
> don't
> > know.  I suppose all the board elections talk had
> me
> > into believing many people were sincerely
> interested
> > in en.WP dominance issues.  I suppose that was
> really
> > all just politics.  I will say no more on this
> issue,
> > and instead simply remain silent on threads I
> believe
> > belong elsewere.  I am truly sorry for causing all
> the
> > drama here, I misread the situation.
>
> What I see is a pattern of paranoia about enwiki
> dominance.
>
> It' is insulting that you'd believe my
> interpretation of events was
> based on a misguided belief that there was any
> political assault on
> Danny.  I said exactly what I meant: it's foolish
> for anyone to claim
> that the thread arose out of an over emphasis on
> enwiki because the
> person who started it is one of the top contributors
> on a non enwiki
> project.
>
> In any case, I pointed out how I sincerely believe
> that this example
> is important for all our projects, although it
> happened to be one that
> happened on our largest project.
>
> It seems to me that we can best address issues of
> "en.WP dominance" by
> communicating and being sensitive to and aware of
> the challenges that
> participants in each project face... I don't see how
> silencing
> discussion is going to further that goal.
>
> In any case, I welcome you to configure your mail
> client to ignore my
> messages ...  Although I have no intention of doing
> the same to you: I
> have a real interest in hearing about the problems
> you faced and the
> solutions you use to address them.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I believe you must be badly misinterpreting me to
think I would wish to ignore your messages.  However I
replied off-list as I don't think evryone else wants
to read another long email from me.

Birgitte SB

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


body:
On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> On Mon, October 2, 2006 11:12, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:

> >> Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth
> >> we
> >> haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
> >> few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
> >> well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.

> > So how to enforce it?

> It is already being enforced; something of this nature though would enable
> a 'delete on sight' rather than the extra delay going through AfD causes,
> even though it is clear that deletion will be the result. (remember that
> thing about 'process'?)

I mean an arguably odious "terms of service" clickthrough. As we can
already see, it's the sort of idea that makes people cough up
hairballs. This suggests it may be problematic to inflict upon the
community.

- d.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 10/2/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
 > That answer *sounds* like it implies that such a server-provided player
> would *override* a locally installed player, thus (as so often happens)
> penalizing the smart people in favor of the stupid ones.
>
> Is that actually what it implies?

Yuck, no.

The extension gives you the option to play in your browser, the click
to download/play locally link will remain.

If you have the appropriate extension for native inline playing (the
VLC extension, or some future firefox Ogg support that we muse about
getting mozilla to include) it will be used when you activate the
inline player.   Iff you ask for inline playback and you do not have
the approiate extension installed you will then be given the server
provided Java based player.

For most of Wikimedia's uses inline use is probably the most useful
and expected behavior (since the audio / video is part of the content
of the pages, just like with images)... but it wouldn't make any sense
to change things in a way which precludes non-inline use and it
certantly wouldn't make any sense to use a java based player over a
native one.


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

body:
On 10/2/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> I noticed that there's a user who is making minor changes, then adds a
> template which links his website, claiming that the article uses
> content from his website

I've emailed Joe Kiff, the user who was adding these links, so he may
be able to explain why he was adding them. All of the templates have
now been removed by Tawker's bot.

I expect the confusion about the need to attribute the wiki came from
the large number of similar templates. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Attribution_templates for a
collection of these. Wikia has similar templates for content from
Wikipedia: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Wikipedia

The difference in this case is that the template was not legally
necessary since Joe was the author of the original content anyway.
I've added a note about this to Wikia's copyrights policy to make it
clearer for other Wikians wanting to copy their own content to
Wikipedia: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_copyrights#Attribution_templates

I'm not aware of any Wikipedia policy on using these attribution
templates. In some cases the spam policy may apply but there are
certainly cases where it doesn't and where these need to be used. I
think this needs to be looked into, especially if Wikipedia wants to
benefit from content of other wikis and even from forks from itself.
For example, the PR around Citizendium has had various Wikimedians
saying this is fine since Wikipedia can benefit from any improvements
to the content which that project makes, but that may involve linking
to it with these sorts of templates.

Some way of adding attribution on the history page (which isn't
indexed by Google and therefore useless to spammers) may be a better
solution than adding these to the article. It probably also makes more
sense in terms of the GFDL if the history is all on the history page
and not partly there, partly on the talk page, and partly on the
article itself.

Angela


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
I think it is evry good to orginize local events. As well national (as
the polish did, the Dutch and the chinese this year at least)  but
maybe also per continent. But that has to be *besides* the Wikimania,
as it is another type of event imho. It would be nice to have one
event in august, one in november, december (national?) and one in
march (continental?). Then you spread it, and people can go where-ever
they want. It is of course a question whether there will be enough
people attending then. As people can only spend their money once...

effe

2006/10/2, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch>:
> I strong support three different Wikimania: one for Europe/Africa,
> one for Asia/Australia, one form America.
>
> The Asia has got many problems and one Wikimania cannot solve them,
> but also the core of Wikipedians are in the Europe, but also the
> Digital Divide is a big problem in Africa, etc.
>
> Any choose will be always a "long long" discussion.
>
> Ilario
>
>
> ----Messaggio originale----
> Da: saintonge at telus.net
> Data: 02.10.06 2.19
> A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007
>
> Birgitte SB wrote:
>
>
> I support the principle of rotating Wikimania around three broad
> geographical regions (Europe/Africa, The Americas, Asia/Australia),
> but
> this should not create a situation where we must accept a city's
> clearly
> inferior bid just because it is the only one from its region.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the  Terms
>of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial  than our own
>Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies  this.
>
>Danny
>
I think this would be impossible. I signed up, like many, to certain
''terms of service'' and now all of a sudden they would get changed
after 3+ years of actively participating. I feel that you would open up
a Pandora's box if you did that. I am not a lawyer but I could see that
my edits which I contributed under the previous term of service I would
now actually have to give you permission again to keep them on the site
or else I would be able to have them withdrawn, because I wouldn't agree
to you using them under the new terms of service. Can you imagine the
chaos from this?

Also you say you sincerely doubt that people read the terms of service
...... that is true most probably because they are to long and written
in legalish. A language only known to a few people and not to poor
Englishspeakers like myself. So what would be the use of new terms of
service that no-one would read and if they read it they wouldn't
understand it anyway. Leaving the board in a position to do what they
want when they want it. I am sure many including myself didn't get
involved on the projects just to start having a big brother being able
to yank us of at will and still use our years of sweat we put into this.
Speaking for myself if such a thing would happen I would pursue every
legal way possible to get all of my edits removed from the projects.

Waerth


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] *spork*

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Someone's trying to cure [[WP:IAR]] with instruction creep again.
> They're already trying to tell people who think the change is
> ridiculous not to intrude on the process. Pick today's process!

I think this is probably something cyclical:

  1) IAR starts short and simple;

  2) IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;

  3) IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and
     corollories to the previous additions;

  4) IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity;

  5) someone sane comes along and makes it short and simple again;

  6) we have a big bunfight about what the role of IAR is, generally
     vastly complicated by people who don't understand what the point
     of it is and are resistant to having it explained to them;

  7) see (1)

The 'Brainstorming' page appears to be a rather more organised attempt
at step (2), but I can't see that it has any realistic chance of
breaking the cycle.

Some Wikipedians always seem to want to artificially restrict IAR with
examples, procedures and so on, because they are worried that 'IAR will
be abused'. What I think we need to remind these people of frequently is
that it really doesn't matter all that much if IAR *does* get 'abused'
(whatever that is taken to mean), since this is still a Wiki and almost
any change is trivially undoable.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


body:
 "Laura Scudder" wrote

> I'm am very pro-citation when it helps us build a better encyclopedia,
> but I'm anti-"let's footnote everything even though it appears in any
> textbook on the subject and is totally uncontroversial, just to
> satisfy a process decision".

I think it's a horrid idea to have any policy on this which would allow people to spam us with inline references, for example, to their version of The Great American Calculus Text.

Those books _all_ follow the pattern set down by Thomas of MIT in the 1950s. They are alike as two peas in a pod. They are written for money, and contain material that has all been known for 150 years.

Charlee

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/2/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> As long as that is the case, we're in the unfortunate position where
> it's entirely likely the god-given common sense a user comes to the
> project with is going to do them more good than our policy pages.

The evidence suggests otherwise. Or why does stuff keep turning up at
[[CAT:CSD]]?

> Or,
> rather, we're in the unfortunate case of trying to have policy pages
> replace that common sense.

Since common sense has a slight tendency to produce seriously flawed
results I'm failing to see a problem with that.

--
geni


body:
On 10/2/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> Oh? Take a look at the article on "Radioactivity" in the Encyclopedia
> Britannica, 11th edition.
>
> It contains fifty-four inline references. It also mentions five
> "general treatises."
>
> And the stuff in between is credited to a known individual, "E. Ru."
> with the Encyclopedia Britannica editors implicitly vouching both for
> his identity and his competence. However, if I want to check his
> competence for yourself, I flip to the front of volume 22, p. vii and
> look up E. Ru. who happens to be some guy named "Ernest Rutherford,
> F. R. S., D. Sc. LL. D., Ph. D., Langworthy Professor of Physics,
> University of Manchester, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1908, Author of
> Radio-Activity; Radio-Activity Transformations; etc."
>

That is an exceptional example most were written by somewhat lesser individuals

>   For all I know, 165.107.9.47, _may_ be a Nobel Laureate, but...
> should I trust the unreferenced material in this article as much as I
> trust the unreferenced material in the Britannica article credited to
> E. Ru.?

Depends. Given at the point he must have writen it Rutherford would
either have been just pre his atomic model or just post it. Since his
model of the atom doesn't really work and at that point he hadn't
considered neutrons I might go for something a bit more up to date.

--
geni


list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook style

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that
>our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.
>
>Suppose I want to learn from a wikibooks textbook. I open a chapter
>(sorry, a "module";-) and it looks like wikipedia. That is not bad in
>itself, however, IMHO it has some drawbacks. First, I'm distracted by
>the sidebar. If I want to learn about a topic, I don't want to go to
>the "staff lounge" or the "community portal". And when I scroll down,
>the sidebar is replaced by - a really blank space. That's all fine on
>wikipedia, where you come to be part of the experience, or to look up
>some topic, then leave. Learning from a textbook is another process
>altogether.
>
>
>
This is something I've fought against in many instances, and it should
be pointed out that the MediaWiki software that we have tends to
encourage this kind of behavior if only because it has been tweaked and
specialized explictly for the creation of encyclopedic entries.

Furthermore, a very large portion of the users that come to Wikibooks
have mainly experience with Wikipedia (although there are some "home
grown" Wikibooks users that hardly touch Wikipedia).  Into that
viewpoint, it is hardly surprising that many of the modules (not all of
them) tend to have a look and feel very similar to Wikipedia articles,
and are often even written in a fashion similar to a major "A-grade"
Wikipedia article.  Indeed, the Wikijunior pages (to give a specific
example) almost all have a strong feel of being individual articles very
loosly tied together by topic.

Keep in mind, please, that Wikibooks is still trying to define some of
these concepts that you are complaining about here.  While in a few
cases we actually have sufficient content together to actually have
something strongly resembling a textbook, clearly we need to move on and
try to go beyond the basic concepts found on Wikipedia for article
navigation.

Another huge issue is that on Wikibooks each seperate book almost takes
on a sense of being its own seperate Wikimedia project, if sufficient
numbers of people are involved.  This said, the more mature Wikibooks
tend to have a unique style almost unto themselves.  This also includes
often navigation sidebars and more.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook style

body:
Manuel Gomez wrote:

>The real missing thing in Wikibooks is a way to define the structure of
>the book, in a way understood by the software. Currently the only notion
>of structure for MediaWiki is the parent-page/subpage relation, but this
>is clearly insufficient. All the book contents, the ordering of chapters
>(next, previous chapter), even the chapter hierachy if present (up, down
>chapter), should be provided using wiki syntax and then profited by the
>software in several ways. This is something I think comes implicit in
>Magnus' proposal. As I see it, the important concept of his idea is that
>of structure and navegability rather than the  viewing mode. The later
>is something obvious once you have the first point implemented.
>
>There is an extension already developed and available in [1] for
>implementing this concept. Once we had the book structure defined,
>MediaWiki and external tools, could make use of it for several
>applications: better printable version, automated all-content pages,
>automated TOC for the whole book, etc. I definitely think this is
>something missing in MediaWiki for clearly fitting the Wikibooks goal.
>
>Regards,
>
>ManuelGR
>
>[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nigelk/Nav
>
>
>
I disagree that this necessarily requires extensions and changes to the
MediaWiki software.  Many of the navigation tools that you are
suggesting can be accomplished through the judicious use of templates
add adding structures such as a table of contents module for each book.
 Now writing those templates is not always a trivial task and does take
some digging around reading up on template syntax, but it is something
that has been used on many Wikimedia projects including Wikibooks,
including for more than just adding "post-it notes" across pages as you
are editing them.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Nyenyec N wrote:
> On 9/29/06, Mak <makwik at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Inline citations have now been added to Dido and Aeneas, easily enough
>> (there are no page numbers given, because Grove online doesn't have page
>> numbers, and this particular article is short enough to not have
>> sub-sections). The point is that if reasonable references are given, inline
>> citations should not be necessary for uncontroversial facts. If you look at
>> actual encyclopedias, you will notice that they don't have inline
>> references, especially for generally accepted facts.
>
> That's true, but is also misleading.
> You don't see those references in the *end product*.
>
> But encyclopedia's do check the sources of their statements. I highly
> recommend that you listen to this:
>
> http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives
> Validation on Wikipedia: How do I know this article is accurate?
>
>
> 1) An expert writes an article.
> 2) A fact checker checks *every statement* in the article from at
> least 2 reliable sources and documents all of them on a newspaper
> sized sheet where the article text is in the middle of the sheet and
> the rest contains the references, annotations, recommended changes.
> All this material is kept for later editors. (Forward to 27:00 in the
> MP3).
>

Excellent. Where do I sign up?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 10/2/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I speak as if it is part of a pattern, this thread had
> been a prime example of the pattern when I first
> commented.  I think this is sign of how much all the
> political stuff has consumed us, that so many people
> can only see this thread as an attack on Danny,
> instead of an honest disscussion on an issue.  I don't
> know.  I suppose all the board elections talk had me
> into believing many people were sincerely interested
> in en.WP dominance issues.  I suppose that was really
> all just politics.  I will say no more on this issue,
> and instead simply remain silent on threads I believe
> belong elsewere.  I am truly sorry for causing all the
> drama here, I misread the situation.

What I see is a pattern of paranoia about enwiki dominance.

It' is insulting that you'd believe my interpretation of events was
based on a misguided belief that there was any political assault on
Danny.  I said exactly what I meant: it's foolish for anyone to claim
that the thread arose out of an over emphasis on enwiki because the
person who started it is one of the top contributors on a non enwiki
project.

In any case, I pointed out how I sincerely believe that this example
is important for all our projects, although it happened to be one that
happened on our largest project.

It seems to me that we can best address issues of "en.WP dominance" by
communicating and being sensitive to and aware of the challenges that
participants in each project face... I don't see how silencing
discussion is going to further that goal.

In any case, I welcome you to configure your mail client to ignore my
messages ...  Although I have no intention of doing the same to you: I
have a real interest in hearing about the problems you faced and the
solutions you use to address them.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
On 02/10/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nevermind, a block won't help either. I'll just get more fucked up.
> Sorry to bother you.

This seems quite out of character. Your account hasn't been hacked?
Discussion of concerns has always been a strongpoint for Wikipedia. In
my personal experience, although things can get heated, flames are few
and far between.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] dev blog to announce new features

body:
On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 08:53:40PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Just an idea
> > http://blog.netvibes.com/
> > A blog to announce new and pending features. As well as to update on big
> > network changes. Or new hardware.
> > Audience: public at large.
> > Would not that be cool ?
>
>
> http://wikitech.livejournal.com/
>
> Has been updated, er, twice in the last six months ... but it's there
> and listed on the blogs list on Meta! [[m:Wikipedians who blog]]
>
> Perhaps it needs a revival ...

I think it needs a non-LJ form so that stuff like a tag cloud,
trackback/pingback functionality, and better access control can be had.
That's only if you're serious about a devblog, though.  Considering the
lack of use it has seen, I'm not sure that's warranted.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);


from_name: Kim Bruning

subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 02:19:34PM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
> Please block me! Hard!

Errr, ok, why?

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

David Gerard stated for the record:
> Now, now. Tag with {{fact}} and move the unsourced ones to talk. Be
> hardarsed about letting anything back in without sources.
>
>
> - d.

I've added several dozen {{fact}}s as well as {{unsourced}} and {{hoax}}.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Bad: all life stopping instantaneously,
 sean at epoptic.com | and every molecule in your body
                  | exploding at the speed of light.
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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8Am6+ohsZgHLr6B4+vv1tGk=
=EBkQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
On 02/10/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/10/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Nevermind, a block won't help either. I'll just get more fucked up.
> > Sorry to bother you.

> This seems quite out of character. Your account hasn't been hacked?
> Discussion of concerns has always been a strongpoint for Wikipedia. In
> my personal experience, although things can get heated, flames are few
> and far between.

You do realise of course that Mailman believes whatever the "From:"
header tells it.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Sean Barrett stated for the record:

> David Gerard stated for the record:
>
>>>Now, now. Tag with {{fact}} and move the unsourced ones to talk. Be
>>>hardarsed about letting anything back in without sources.
>>>
>>>
>>>- d.
>
>
> I've added several dozen {{fact}}s as well as {{unsourced}} and {{hoax}}.

Geni, why did you remove all my {{fact}} tags?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Bad: all life stopping instantaneously,
 sean at epoptic.com | and every molecule in your body
                  | exploding at the speed of light.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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=9kig
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 02/10/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > But you can't legislate against
> > misunderstanding or malice. What effective penalty can we apply? We
> > can't even stop people editing if they really want to.

> You are correct that there are some bad people that we can't stop.
> But everyone that causes us problems isn't a judgement proof 14 year
> old kid jumping coffee shops...
> The reality is that a nontrivial number of our problem causers are
> corporations which don't have the sort of immunity which makes the TOS
> irrelevant.
> It would be really nice that on the third time some foolish
> advertising company calls us up threatening to sue because we deleted
> their drivel that we can turn around and say "No, we're going to sue
> you..." :)

... hmm.

Hmm. I'm liking this idea.

...

(The liking I'm getting for it is that it's fatally clever. That's a
bad sign. But hmmm.)

- d.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
Please block me! Hard!

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


subject: [WikiEN-l] *spork*

body:
On 02/10/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> (I realize I haven't said anything here that wasn't implicit --
> or maybe even explicit -- in the IAR policy since day 1.

Hence my suggestion of a "Commentaries on IAR" page.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
2006/10/2, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl>:
> On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 02:19:34PM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
> > Please block me! Hard!
>
> Errr, ok, why?

I'm of the opinion that some things should not be on Wikipedia. That
seems to be a minority position for which you may be flamed. Rather
than getting those flames over me, I prefer to not be on Wikipedia any
more. Besides, be honest, you all hate me, right?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


subject: [WikiEN-l] *spork*

body:
On 02/10/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:

> I think this is probably something cyclical:
>   1) IAR starts short and simple;
>   2) IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
>   3) IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and
>      corollories to the previous additions;
>   4) IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity;
>   5) someone sane comes along and makes it short and simple again;
>   6) we have a big bunfight about what the role of IAR is, generally
>      vastly complicated by people who don't understand what the point
>      of it is and are resistant to having it explained to them;
>   7) see (1)
> The 'Brainstorming' page appears to be a rather more organised attempt
> at step (2), but I can't see that it has any realistic chance of
> breaking the cycle.
> Some Wikipedians always seem to want to artificially restrict IAR with
> examples, procedures and so on, because they are worried that 'IAR will
> be abused'. What I think we need to remind these people of frequently is
> that it really doesn't matter all that much if IAR *does* get 'abused'
> (whatever that is taken to mean), since this is still a Wiki and almost
> any change is trivially undoable.

Please do add this text to said talk page ;-)

- d.


from_name: Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves

body:
Hi,

I started a discussion at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Media but I decided to
re-post it here and see what should or should not be done about it.

I believe Ogg Theora files in commons should have their extension
changed.  I've seen that some users have a lot of problems when
dealing with Theora video files, one of the biggest is the file
extension. The .ogg file extension normally applies to audio, so in
most operating systems a user downloads the file and the audio player
starts it, because .ogg is associated with it. This is a big problem,
because the average user won't know s/he should be using a video
player instead.

Unofficially, the .ogm extension is used for Theora in many places
over the Internet, and this is a good idea, because many video players
can recognize this extension as theirs.

I believe this issue should at least get a voting, if not a proper
discussion. Should Jimbo Wales be contacted?

Regards,
Ivo Emanuel Gon?alves


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
Nevermind, a block won't help either. I'll just get more fucked up.
Sorry to bother you.

2006/10/2, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>:
> 2006/10/2, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl>:
> > On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 02:19:34PM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
> > > Please block me! Hard!
> >
> > Errr, ok, why?
>
> I'm of the opinion that some things should not be on Wikipedia. That
> seems to be a minority position for which you may be flamed. Rather
> than getting those flames over me, I prefer to not be on Wikipedia any
> more. Besides, be honest, you all hate me, right?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
That would amount to deleting around 90% of the article as unsourced........

Kim

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce?
> Have them remove any uncited crap.
> If ALA 2000 is a specific list with set entries, remove anything that
> shouldn't be there.
> Be bold!
>
>
> On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
>> challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
>> many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
>> the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
>> they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
>> rational holds, the bible is banned book).
>>
>> Could some people deal with this list?
>>
>> Kim
>> --
>> http://www.kimvdlinde.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
On 10/1/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

>
> One thing to remember is that deletions can be undone.  Deleting an
> article is really no big deal.
>

Okay. Given that line, I cannot resist the following. (so sue me, some
straight lines really need to be punched on)

Please (pretty please, with cherry on top) go on the record saying
that undeletion is no big deal. I dare you, I double dare you.

Glossing on...  (you may want to disregard the following, the point is
all above, what follows is just driving it into the ground; pounding a
dead horse, choose your
metaphor for explicating things plain as pikestaffs)

Just because one *can* do something (or in this case _undo_) it does
not mean that doing that is easy/costless/(or likely to happen in any
significant majority of cases).

Undeleting articles does happen, but it does not make deleting
articles a trivial act. "Big deal" really needs to be deprecated
around wikipedia, as a term in general. Because it gives out the
appearances that wikipedia is still a Ben&Jerry operation, when
clearly it is not. (And yes, I could go on and on on this subject, but
I think the point is made.)

--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]