from_name: Peter Ansell

body:
On 05/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/09/06, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is,
> > no doubt, better than using edit counts.  But it is also may not be the best
> > approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over
> > quantity" mentality.  At the least, there should be careful choices about
> > what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results
> > like these.  My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a
> > significantly larger portion of established editors as the main
> > contributors, even by the word count metric.
>
>
> That's because it's bloody impossible to get through them without
> being fabulous at the politics, even for experienced editors. FAC in
> particular is a great example of gratuitous requests for shrubberies
> BY POLICY!!!
>

Do we have to run the gauntlet of knights who say "ni!" ?

Peter Ansell


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in fact
	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
On 05/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> David points out correctly that FA is a political game and thus favors
> the established.  Good Articles started off as an idea to get away
> from this and actually identify informally what's actually pretty well
> done, but it has now turned into mini-FA.

I had an article rejected from GA on two grounds, its statistics
weren't referenced, which is fine, I will have to look into that. And
two, it didn't have a picture!!! Of all things you think they would be
lenient on a picture. Not to sound overly harsh on the policy stuff
but thats going a bit too far.

Peter Ansell


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
> > How do we get across to the CVU that they can't vote amongst
> > themselves to dispose of Assume Good Faith? Which is, ahh, a *policy*.
> > Telling them they can't has had no effect.
>
> Well of course not because they will just cite WP:IAR. Then they could
> go on the argue that policy is descriptive not proscriptive and throw
> in the words "common sense" a few times.
>

Hmm. Maybe we could try speedy-deleting their project page.

> Sorry sorry sorry.

Cheers.
Dan


body:
> How do we get across to the CVU that they can't vote amongst
> themselves to dispose of Assume Good Faith? Which is, ahh, a *policy*.
> Telling them they can't has had no effect.

Hmm. Revoke the CVU's ability to block users for username violations?

Dan


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 05/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Guettarda wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
>>>NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
>>>Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
>>>NPOV policy asks.
>>>
>>>
>>That's a disingenuous presentation of the problem.  Can you show a
>>single instance where your assertion that Jesus is Messiah/God is
>>required, and that is not a part of someone's argument against BC/AD?
>>The use of BC/AD merely requires that there may have been an historical
>>Jesus who was born at or near a time that is reasonably consistent with
>>the dating system.  The idiotic assertion that Jesus was God is irrelevant.
>>
>>
>Anno Domini. "In the year of the Lord..."
>
I'm aware of the etymology, and I don't think that Cicero and Ovid were
referring to Jesus when they used "dominus to refer to a husband or
lover or to an owner or proprietor.  Could one argue that a person who
put himself under the control of a _dominatrix_ was receiving his
pleasure from God?

Or maybe we should stop using the Gregorian calendar because it was
promoted by Pope Gregory, and somehow that would mean that we are
expressing a POV in support of the Roman Catholic Church.

>(I don't agree with Guettarda - I feel using BCE/CE is as much making
>an explicit point as using BC/AD is - but I do suspect the above is
>kind of his point)
>
Good.  I think writers should feel free to use whichever form they
prefer without being beset by the obsessives in either camp.

Ec


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cluesticks needed regarding WP:BLP and WP:RS

body:
Of course I fully support the spirit and motives behind BLP and
obviously I see the urgent need to make sure serious allegations
against living people are fully and reliably sourced.  But people are
stretching BLP far beyond what it should be used to combat - unsourced
and unreliable assertions.  Now people are using it to remove all
sorts of critical information that would reasonably be included and to
further their own ideological agendas.  Some examples, all typed in
with presumably a straight face.

* A man who posted nude pictures of himself on websites whose domains
he registered advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay prostitute can
not be identified as a prostitute.
* The Financial Times cannot be used as a source in an article about a
journalist because they "report on finances issues" and thus are
"unreliable" when it comes to other matters.
* The Columbia Journalism Review is a reliable source.  A blog run by
the Columbia Journalism Review on the website of the Columbia
Journalism Review is not.
* The New Republic, among other reputable, long-standing publications,
cannot be used as a source because they are "too partisan".
* Partisan organizations and publications, even long-standing and
reputable ones, cannot be used in an article at all, even to
substantiate the fact that there is partisan criticism of the subject
of the article.  I'm not taking about someone objecting to "John Doe
did this bad thing", I'm talking about people objecting to the article
saying "X, Y, and Z criticize John Doe, saying this thing he did may
have been bad."

In addition to well-intentioned people wildly misapplying BLP and RS,
we may have handed a powerful new weapon to POV warriors, who wish to
sanitize all the articles about their ideological fellow travelers.  A
well-meaning user has created the "Libel Protection Unit", but this is
the same person who thinks that you are libeling someone by quoting
something said by the "unreliable" Financial Times, and among the
people he's unwittingly recruited for his new group and have eagerly
signed up are some notorious POV warriors and at least one certified
troll.  I realize that what I'm writing may not show much good faith,
but based on what I've seen from some of these folks and the
statements I've noted above, I fear that this LPU will do much to
remove legitimate material from the encyclopedia and do little to
protect us from actual libel.  Some people have weighed in with
sensible remarks, like Jmabel at [[Wikipedia talk:Libel-Protection
Unit]], but I think more people should do so before this gets out of
hand.


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 9/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 16:35:01 -0400, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >* A man who posted nude pictures of himself on websites whose domains
> >he registered advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay prostitute can
> >not be identified as a prostitute.
>
> Seemingly absurd, but actually fixable as long as reliable secondary
> sources call him that.

I'd suspect the problem is that the original primary source no longer exists?

> >* The Columbia Journalism Review is a reliable source.  A blog run by
> >the Columbia Journalism Review on the website of the Columbia
> >Journalism Review is not.
>
> Seems fair.

Hmm?  Some blogs are trustworthy, some are not, despite what some
people want WP:RS to read (generally, they want an 'All blogs are
untrustworthy' stance, despite the evidence).  I'd say an official
blog of an organisation is trustworthy.  Blogs where we can be sure of
the author and that their opinions are notable are also reliable, at
least for that individual's thoughts and opinions.

> >* The New Republic, among other reputable, long-standing publications,
> >cannot be used as a source because they are "too partisan".
>
> Reliable in respect of one party's view of something and if balanced
> from the other perspective, I'd say.

Many (most?) sources are partisan one way or another; it's our job to
strive for NPOV, regardless.  (And NPOV does not mean 'balanced' in a
journalism sense; we don't have to give equal airtime to unequal
opinions).

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] My irrelevant hatnote disambiguation policy

body:
What about changing hatnotes to something like a wikiquote box?  Stick
it in the upper right hand corner of the article and have it read
something like the standard generic hatnote does now.  It still gets
people to the article they need but removes notices about Britney
Spears songs and Law and Order episodes across the tops of science
articles.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam: How to delete all users with no edits

body:
Do you know if the user_touched has been set to anything other than
null for these accounts?

Something like

DELETE FROM user, user_rights WHERE ur_user = user_id AND user_id NOT IN
 (SELECT UNIQUE(rev_user) FROM revision)

Although I'm totally not responsible if this blows away users that
have registered. :)

Travis

On 9/5/06, HeinzJ <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
> At the moment we have a spam-problem. People or PCs are adding dayly
> users with no edits. Mostly they look like TheUserViagra with the Email
> TheUserViagra at someGMX.net
>
> I would like to delete all users with no edits before updating to
> mediawiki 1.71 and adding a CAPTCHA into the add new user dialog.
>
> Who have some Ideas?
>
> - SQL clauses
> - ....
>
>
> THX, HeinzJ
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Leaving the project

body:
On 9/4/06, John Lyden <rasputinaxp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey gang,
>
> I'm pretty burned out on Wiki, and I don't anticipate coming back
> anytime soon, if at all. Please desysop me (and yes, it was me who
> blanked my User and Talk pages).
>
> Thanks,
> John "RasputinAXP" Lyden
>
> --
> John Lyden - rasputinaxp at gmail.com
> "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
> live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
> time..." -Kerouac
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Sorry to hear this, but I can understand.

Good luck with real life.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Does openness dull the bleeding edge?

body:
On 8/31/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/08/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase
> > away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science
> > articles?
>
>
> No, no and furthermore definitely not. You've been around Wikipedia
> long enough to know that NOR was specifically invented to keep the
> physics cranks at bay. Anything that hasn't at least seen
> referenceable peer-reviewed publication doesn't belong here.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I think that, quite often, professional physicists have a lower
exposure and awareness of the pervasiveness and often quite insane
energy levels some of the physics cranks project.

These people, while limited in number to probably the same magnitude
as actual degreed practicing physicists, are often insanely publically
active in forums which will let them.  A lot of Usenet groups suffered
greatly from their depradations over the years.

If someone can't get it into even one of the Letters journals... no,
please, keep it far away.

Normal people generally see 9/11 conspiracy kooks for what they are,
but often don't spot the physics kooks, and unwrapping the damage can
take forever.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia vs. Ebay on Alexa

body:
Your in famous prediction, eh? I predict that, by the end of the year,
the number of edit conflicts will be growing exponentially.

On 9/5/06, Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> > I am going to Alexa whenever Wikimedia servers have a problems :)
> >
> > It seems that my prediction (I am sure that I am not the only one)
> > that Wikipedia will be inside of top 10 sites at the end of this year
> > -- will be correct :)
> >
> > Also, if everything is going well (i.e., fundraising, servers etc.) I
> > think that at the end of 2007 Wikipedia will be at the fourth place
> > (after top three: Yahoo, Google, MSN) and at the end of 2008 Wikipedia
> > will reach the first place.
> >
> > Hehe... I started to think as a company's manager: may we give to our
> > users some more services so we can make our growth better? ;)
>
> <infamous_prediction>
> Wikipedia will never be in the top 5 most popular sites on the internet
> </>
>
> Gerrit.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
On 05/09/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:

> For the purposes of evaluating possible solutions, I think one key
> question recently brought up here has been under-discussed:  how often
> will this be used?  If this will be used very frequently, then the
> solution will have to be more streamlined and efficient than than if
> it's going to get less usage.

I think if you give people this sort of combinable tagging, not mere
categories as we have them, they'll go wild with it. So assume it will
be popular.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Foundation-l] Translation of "A Wikimedia project" and
 "Powered by MediaWiki" images

body:
Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Some French-language Wikipedians would like to translate the text of the two
> images at the bottom of each page: "A Wikimedia project" and "Powered by
> MediaWiki". To answer them I would like to know:
> * if it is technically possible;
> * what people from the Foundation think about it.

There is no reason why we couldn't do this. All we need to do is have
those two images access an actual wiki image, just like the logo in the
top-left corner is actually [[Image:Wiki.png]] (correct me if I'm
wrong). Granting access to change those images to sysops only is way
enough to ensure that any necessary restrictions are met (e.g. the
MediaWiki one must mention MediaWiki and must not change the MediaWiki
logo).

Timwi


list: wikimedia-l


subject:
[Wikitech-l] MediaWiki:Sidebar - PROs and CONs - Why not using
	Wikisyntax

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> HeinzJ wrote:
>
>>What would be best way to add additional menu-blocks?
>>Just a copy of the "sidebar"-code and renaming "sidebar" to something
>>else e.g 'AnotherMenu'?
>
> You can already add as many blocks as you like, as for instance at:
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar
> http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar

How would one specify keyboard shortcuts for those?


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Edits by project and country of origin

body:
Aphaia wrote:

>I talked with Indian editors why they prefered Enwiki and not so much
>Hindi, which population is very large.
>
>
Thanks for the survey, Aphaia!

I'll add my very small sample size of two Indian Wikipedians I'm friends
with,

* One major reason they edit Wikipedia is to spread Indian culture and
history, and that's most effective in English.
* Their university education is all in English, as with most prestigious
universities in India.  Therefore when editing articles on technical
subjects they have expertise in, they're most comfortable with
English---they don't even know how to say some technical things in Hindi.
* From a language-pride perspective, they don't have any interest in
Hindi, and actually some mild hostility---it's not their native
language, and English is actually preferable because it's "neutral" from
the perspective of domestic language politics.
* They do have more pride in their native languages (two different
ones), but say it's "not practical" to write encyclopedias in them---and
they know even fewer technical words in those languages than in Hindi.
Plus they're even more useless for spreading Indian culture and history,
since nobody can read them except the people who already are part of the
culture.

(Obviously the usual caveats due to exceedingly small sample size.)

-Mark


body:
writely.com has good real time collaborative editing too. However, the
client side needs are simply too much for Wikipedia; currently, even
non-css browsers can use Wikipedia. If we were to suddenly start
demanding javascript and a constant internet connection we would lose
many valuable editors. In addition, many copy the article text into a
third party application (word - spellchecking, or notepad++ - macros;
i am guilty of using both these apps for editing at some point), make
what edits they wish and then copy it back. How do we handle this?

On 9/5/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Your in famous prediction, eh? I predict that, by the end of the year,
> > the number of edit conflicts will be growing exponentially.
>
> There's a solution to edit conflicts: real-time collaborative editing.
> http://synchroedit.com/
> http://darcs.0x539.de/trac/obby/cgi-bin/trac.cgi
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
But doesn't that defeat the purpose, to some extent?

On 9/5/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> would still trigger an edit conflict if an "old style user" is editing the page at the same time
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Ongoing hybrid development (was Re: Want to
 collaborate on writing a feature?)

body:
Felipe Sanches wrote:
> After all these 42 messages, is there anybody working on this feature at all?

No. Only Nick Jenkins was actually interested in doing anything, in the role
of UI designer, and even he didn't go as far as the original post called
for. Given my failure to convince anyone to work on one of my ideas, I've
been taking a different approach over the past week or so: supporting
existing development efforts on the client side.

There is a lot of pure client-side development going on, based on
modifications to site or user javascript. I'm attempting to improve those
client-side features by adding customised server-side interfaces for them,
essentially turning them into hybrid client/server features. Then, if the
client-side developer will allow me to, I can move the client side component
into the extensions module as well, thereby creating a hybrid extension
which will work on all MediaWiki wikis with minimal installation effort.

The extensions which I am working on are:

* ProofreadPage. This is an extension to support transcription of scanned
images on Wikisource. The client-side developer is ThomasV. It is mostly
complete, and currently enabled on fr.wikisource.org.
* PicturePopups. This is an AJAX-based extension to display image licensing
information in a popup over the image. The client-side developer is zocky.
Work is ongoing.
* JOrbisPlayer. Greg Maxwell is the client-side developer, he has created a
demo on the toolserver at http://tinyurl.com/fsbu7 . We are in the
specification development stage.

These have all come about because the client-side developers have approached
me on IRC, asking some question about server interfaces or performance. In
the future, I may approach the developers of popular client-side features
myself, with a proposition to bring their feature to a wider audience. Lupin
in particular is on my list, although he may not know it yet.

So although we may not be getting dynamic editor lists on edit pages any
time soon, all is not lost in the realm of collaborative development. There
are lots of exciting opportunities.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 05/09/06, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I do think that many times such notes can be wildly out of place. A
> > perfect example somebody mentioned eariler is this thread is
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beirut&diff=21961432&oldid=21810147
> >
> > Clearly an inappropriate "hatnote"
> >
> > But, again. make a disambig-page and you're fine. No need for anything
> > else.

> That example didn't require a disambiguation note. Who would mistakenly go
> to Beirut when looking for "Beer Pong"? Assuming good faith, whoever placed
> this "hatnote" has a serious misunderstanding of the concept.

Presumably, someone who knows the game is called "Beirut" but has
never heard of "Beer Pong". Drinking games tend not to have very
well-standardised nomenclature.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
I agree that WikiData is a good idea, but what will it take for the
developers to implement this? Are wikitech-l subscribers subscribed to
wikipedia-l as well?

On 9/5/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Francis Tyers wrote:
> >
> >
> >> In fact, this brings up an interesting point, having <book> and
> >> <article> for specifics (they tend to be long), and then having
> >> <ref> for miscellaneous stuff.
> >>
> >
> > When anybody says we "have to" introduce completely new markup or
> > we "have to" wait for Wikidata to be implemented, then I know it's
> > just an excuse for doing nothing.
> >
> Hoi,
> Based on what ? WiktionaryZ is developing nicely, it is based on
> Wikidata. Versioning is expected to make it's first apearance (Erik
> willing) this week. This hardly qualifies as nothing happening. As to
> Wikiauthors, there has been some deep thinking about what it needs to do
> by people who met IRL and the chances of something happening in this
> space is better than 89%.
> > Suppose you define a way to identify a pre-defined reference, .....
> For me there is little reason to suppose anything... Wikidata rocks.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

references:
<44FD30F5.2050208@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<44FD99A1.60603@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<6ab3ffc80609050937h1c14ab00y56eb38e27ece2226@mail.gmail.com>
	<44FDAAF0.2040401@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<353e9f360609051024n27d94d54y670489868d692886@mail.gmail.com>
	<44FDB3B6.3070508@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<35be2a710609051042v50f32093la3d04f07c68722db@mail.gmail.com>
	<44FDB75A.5030101@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<fbad4e140609051320n7ff347apbdc7d48437a8b0a0@mail.gmail.com>
	<44FDE369.4010503@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
On 9/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:

(...)

It affects our efforts more directly since we provide the ability to
> sync and seed new communities with entire full mirrors of wikipedia
> that actually work and can resync with the Foundation. I certainly did
> not want to create hurt feelings and my suggestion about a
> business related list was to take many of these issues into another
> forum so the Foundation could manage them separately. I have been
> working very hard on these projects to help the Foundation and your
> assessment is very accurate and informed.
>
> Jeff
>

I have a nicely private working wiki with the last dump of Portuguese
Wikisource for personal tests and research using MediaWiki 1.>>8alpha<< (and
some extensions) sincronized from subversion repository in a Ubuntu Linux
machine and I never needed to ask something in foundation-l or in any
another mail listing on how to get it working (the only know issue is the
non display of Commons media, but this isn't a bug, is only a limitation).
My real work isn't related to IT, I'm a historian. Jeff, please STOP talking
about your efforts related to translation machines on this list. I and
anothers spend only free time to devote to Wikimedia projects and these
off-topic messages is time spendend in non-Wikimedia efforts in a Wikimedia
only list.

If you (or anothers) need to reply something to me about this message, do it
only privately.

Thanks for you attention and understanding


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


body:
On 05/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Guettarda wrote:
>
> >Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> >NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> >Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> >NPOV policy asks.
> >
> That's a disingenuous presentation of the problem.  Can you show a
> single instance where your assertion that Jesus is Messiah/God is
> required, and that is not a part of someone's argument against BC/AD?
> The use of BC/AD merely requires that there may have been an historical
> Jesus who was born at or near a time that is reasonably consistent with
> the dating system.  The idiotic assertion that Jesus was God is irrelevant.

Anno Domini. "In the year of the Lord..."

(I don't agree with Guettarda - I feel using BCE/CE is as much making
an explicit point as using BC/AD is - but I do suspect the above is
kind of his point)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 9/5/06, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 1) Ignore wikilinked dates that contain explicit display text, leaving
> them untouched.
> 2) Change all wikilinked dates and associated display text according
> to user preferences.
> 3) Encourage a mass renaming of year articles from (e.g.) [[1984]] to
> [[AD 1984]].
>
> Even though option 3 is completely unrealistic, I mention it because
> it actually makes the most sense (how did we get started having bare
> numbers assumed to be a date by default, anyway?).  That said, I think
> option 2 is the best bet, so long as it's considered more important to
> have consistent date formatting than to honor the display text put in
> place by editors.

I vote for option 3. There are only 2006 or so of them.

Steve


from_name: Alexandre Gattiker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different class for [edit] links to Templates

body:
Hello,

I'm designing a wiki where pages follow a standard layout. Certain
templates are used to insert <h1> and simultaneously an floating
information box with some links (that depend on the content of the
<h1>). So, pages include the template then the text corresponding to the
content and everything is very simple.

However the [edit] links are now quite useless (and very confusing to
users) because they will edit the template instead of the page content.

I don't suppose that there is a workaround for this except to hide those
links. I changed the code as follows, and main.css appropriately.

in editSectionLinkForOther in Linker.php:
return "<div class=\"editsection editsectionother\" ...

Maybe you'd be interested to include this in the main trunk to as to
simplify such a setting. Also, the default skin might display such
'other' links somewhat differently.

Best
Alexandre


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

references:
<44FD30F5.2050208@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<fbad4e140609050443h71304002qfbb37c9de6ba08e0@mail.gmail.com>
	<44FD99A1.60603@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<6ab3ffc80609050937h1c14ab00y56eb38e27ece2226@mail.gmail.com>
	<44FDAAF0.2040401@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
On 9/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Luiz Augusto wrote:
>
> >Sorry Jeffrey V. Merkey but all of your messages related to machine
> >translations in a project >OUTSIDE< of Wikimedia Foudation is reported as
> >Spam by me, using "Report Spam" button on Gmail system.
> >
> >
> As said, A business related list is needed. This posting is a good
> example why...
>
If you have a high-priority and/or important business question, which
you want to be answered by nobody but Foundation officials, why don't
you just write an email to the Foundation? There is board at wikimedia
dot org and bpatrick at wikimedia dot org (Brad Patrick, general
counsel & Interim Executive Director WMF) for your convenience. I
don't think that you can prohibit community members from expressing
themselves when using a mailing list. There is private email for
business purposes.
Michael
> Jeff
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


from_name: ScottL

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in
 fact	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
Sage Ross wrote:
> On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 04/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> "Who Writes Wikipedia?" ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
>> )
>>
>>> "This fact does have enormous
>>> policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional
>>> contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more
>>> rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze
>>> more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to
>>> broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit.
>>> Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional
>>> contributors, their opinions aren't heard by the current Wikipedia
>>> process. They don't get involved in policy debates, they don't go to
>>> meetups, and they don't hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that
>>> might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they're even
>>> proposed."
>>
>> This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need
>> to be more newbie-friendly.
>>
>> This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
>> and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
>>
>> Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard
>> Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own
>> software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give
>> it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be
>> waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to
>> decalcify Wikipedia policy?
>
>
> Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is,
> no doubt, better than using edit counts.  But it is also may not be the best
> approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over
> quantity" mentality.  At the least, there should be careful choices about
> what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results
> like these.  My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a
> significantly larger portion of established editors as the main
> contributors, even by the word count metric.
>
> -Ragesoss

   FA's and to some extent Good Articles are not the reason that we are
#17 on the most visited sites.  If those were the only articles we had I
doubt we would have 1% of the readership that we currently enjoy.  I
think articles past a specific size or maybe size and age woudl be a
better metric, though a random sampling of 10k non-stub articles woudl
probbly give us what we want.

SKL


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
Off-list-reply, following Aphaia's plea

On 9/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Michael Bimmler wrote:
>
> >
> >If you have a high-priority and/or important business question, which
> >you want to be answered by nobody but Foundation officials, why don't
> >you just write an email to the Foundation? There is board at wikimedia
> >dot org and bpatrick at wikimedia dot org (Brad Patrick, general
> >counsel & Interim Executive Director WMF) for your convenience.
> >
> I do this all the time with Brad and those emails dont make it to this list.
>
Well, okay, so you can handle your questions with Brad and everything
is fine. Why do send them to the list then?
> >I
> >don't think that you can prohibit community members from expressing
> >themselves when using a mailing list. There is private email for
> >business purposes.
> >
> >
>
> I am not trying to prohibit anyone from expressing themselves, in fact,
> it's the other way
> around, I am often the target of folks oppressing my expressions for
> purely political reasons.
It might rather be for on-/offtopic reasons...

> I have no problem using the foundation list for progress on African
> languages and other programs, but a business
> oriented list would be a better solution. The problem with the community
> moderator concept
> here is there may be other businesses spring up and when a non-employee
> threatens to moderate
> or does moderate someone on such a list, there are some issues
> potentially created for the foundation.
> Issues I would rather not deal with.
>
I beg your pardon? Are you implying that the foundation may get legal
problems (my translation of your word "issue") as they allow
experienced members (not everybody gets list-moderator...) to moderate
the mailinglists? If the Foundation decides. that its mailing list
shall rather be administered by volunteers chosen by them than by e.g.
office employees, I don't see any problem in that solution. And if
these volunteer admins hence moderate or threaten to moderate posts to
the lists, they are just using the powers given to them by the
Foundation. If serious concerns about the actions of a list admin are
raised, they will reach the foundation and the foundation *might* if
they deem it appropriate consider the removal of the administrator
functions of the user in question. As said, this is quite unlikely, as
the list administrators are without exception distinguished users.
So I see no problem whatsoever with having non-foundation-employees
administering this list.

Michael


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
Uh, if you mark something as "off-list" you should maybe also not send
it to the list afterwards. Sorry for having continued this thread, I
shall shut up now.

On 9/5/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Off-list-reply, following Aphaia's plea
>
> On 9/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> > Michael Bimmler wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >If you have a high-priority and/or important business question, which
> > >you want to be answered by nobody but Foundation officials, why don't
> > >you just write an email to the Foundation? There is board at wikimedia
> > >dot org and bpatrick at wikimedia dot org (Brad Patrick, general
> > >counsel & Interim Executive Director WMF) for your convenience.
> > >
> > I do this all the time with Brad and those emails dont make it to this list.
> >
> Well, okay, so you can handle your questions with Brad and everything
> is fine. Why do send them to the list then?
> > >I
> > >don't think that you can prohibit community members from expressing
> > >themselves when using a mailing list. There is private email for
> > >business purposes.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > I am not trying to prohibit anyone from expressing themselves, in fact,
> > it's the other way
> > around, I am often the target of folks oppressing my expressions for
> > purely political reasons.
> It might rather be for on-/offtopic reasons...
>
> > I have no problem using the foundation list for progress on African
> > languages and other programs, but a business
> > oriented list would be a better solution. The problem with the community
> > moderator concept
> > here is there may be other businesses spring up and when a non-employee
> > threatens to moderate
> > or does moderate someone on such a list, there are some issues
> > potentially created for the foundation.
> > Issues I would rather not deal with.
> >
> I beg your pardon? Are you implying that the foundation may get legal
> problems (my translation of your word "issue") as they allow
> experienced members (not everybody gets list-moderator...) to moderate
> the mailinglists? If the Foundation decides. that its mailing list
> shall rather be administered by volunteers chosen by them than by e.g.
> office employees, I don't see any problem in that solution. And if
> these volunteer admins hence moderate or threaten to moderate posts to
> the lists, they are just using the powers given to them by the
> Foundation. If serious concerns about the actions of a list admin are
> raised, they will reach the foundation and the foundation *might* if
> they deem it appropriate consider the removal of the administrator
> functions of the user in question. As said, this is quite unlikely, as
> the list administrators are without exception distinguished users.
> So I see no problem whatsoever with having non-foundation-employees
> administering this list.
>
> Michael
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
On 9/5/06, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> I hadn't thought that far ahead! What license are Wikipedia extensions
> usually released with? GPL?

All MediaWiki extensions have to be GPLd.  Possibly altogether, but
definitely if you want them on SVN/Wikimedia projects.  AFAIK.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
On 9/5/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> For the purposes of evaluating possible solutions, I think one key
> question recently brought up here has been under-discussed:  how often
> will this be used?  If this will be used very frequently, then the
> solution will have to be more streamlined and efficient than than if
> it's going to get less usage.

I'm guessing very high usage.  A category such as "American people" is
fairly worthless by itself, after all.

> we really need a MySQL expert to comment on the performance
> issues with the join/if exists/group by and count solutions

Well, Domas certainly qualifies as a MySQL expert.


body:
CVU?

geni wrote:
> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> And to think I almost answered the second part of the question without
>> noting that "outlaw the CVU" is a straw man characterisation itself,
>> and gets more meaningless as a statement the closer you look at it.
>>
>
> Not remotely. We have two policies writen by people who appear to be
> in favor of the destuction of the CVU
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RBI
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_is_not_a_game
>
> Both were writen after the attempt to speedy the CVU had failed. The
> only difference between these pages and [[WP:DENY]] is they also
> attempt to outlaw the CVU directly ([[WP:DENY]] has some effect on
> some of it's aactivies but nothing of significance).
>
>
>>> What happened to blanking all AFDs?
>>
>> Good bloody question. Presumably it was voted out with a HUNDRED
>> PERCENT CONSENSUS of three against and no for.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>


body:
On 9/5/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> How would one specify keyboard shortcuts for those?

JavaScript, the way we specify most of our shortcuts.  They're
automatically assigned id's.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

references:
<d45df5100608310836s1b2a4293nbf4f0af267f3e8d9@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKMEMDIMAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<d45df5100609050805q325b5986y14565ed2b3f87004@mail.gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20609051655s35c52d71sac58a05bcd1003e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<edl3gc$rt4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 9/5/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> Actually, I'm not sure that's true.  So long as your extension doesn't
> include any MW (or other GPL) code then it can be distributed under whatever
> license you like.

Probably.  I'm a bit hazy on what exactly constitutes a "derivative work".


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>> On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need
>>> to be more newbie-friendly.
>>>
>>> This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
>>> and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
>>>
>>> Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard
>>> Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own
>>> software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give
>>> it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be
>>> waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to
>>> decalcify Wikipedia policy?
>>>
>>>
>> You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious
>> amount of policy.
>> If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have
>> degenerated into flame wars with no way out. Newbies do face a steeper
>> learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the
>> project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
>>
> Spoken like a true religious zealot!  It's characteristic of straw man
> arguments to take a situation where there is a clear policy need, and
> extrapolate that to apply to all sorts of unrelated matters.
>
> Saying that living person bios must be verifiable is a simple and
> straightforward statement of policy.  How does one get from there to "a
> serious amount of policy"?
>
> Ec

   The thing that alarmed/amused me the most was "If we stop
***adding*** policies  ...." (my stars obviously).  That combined with
the notion that all policies (and I presume processes) are needed gives
me much fear for the future.

SKL


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 9/5/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that the NPOV argument is rock-solid, it isn't NPOV to refer
> to years as AD. I remember hearing a debate a while ago that people
> had on the Arabic wikipedia. I don't know if it was a big thing, or if
> it was even that big of a deal, but I think it serves well to put some
> perspective on why people might not like AD. The thing was that on the
> Arabic wp, people tended to write PBUH in Arabic everytime a martyr or
> prophet was mentioned. Incase somebody doesn't know, PBUH means Peace
> be upon him. One could argue for allowing that under NPOV using
> basically the same argument that's used for AD, saying that it's
> "common practice" and using that convention less people will be
> confused/offended /whatever.

There's a huge difference here.  Use of PBUH is limited to Muslims.
Use of AD is not limited to Christians (anyone who says it is needs to
check which orifice they are speaking from).

The problem really is that making a policy here requires us to make a
decision.  Yes, *us*.  This is enormously different to normal article
writing, where we just report what others have said.  We have to make
a decision about which is correct, yet we can't, because to do so
would be to break our principle of neutrality (though not NPOV, which
is related but different).

In short, we're stuffed.

--
Sam


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?

body:
What a great idea -- "kids" meeting "kids" they found on the Internet.

Sarcasm aside, this sounds like a good idea. Though my personal preference
would be to go to Wikimania itself. But I'm not normal in too many ways.

On 9/5/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just an idea, and probably not a new one:
>
> I'm consistently amazed by the amount of participation by young people
> in our projects. Ranging from featured article writing to
> organizational tasks, their participation covers the whole gamut of
> activities Wikimedia has to offer -- and many of them do it with
> passion and skills that should make any adult blush.
>
> Would it be worth considering to organize national (perhaps also
> annual) conferences specifically targeted at youths participating in
> Wikimedia, and those who might do so in the future? Such a venue would
> be very different from the more serious Wikimania. It could be a
> summer camp, with music and some non-wiki activities (films, sports,
> ..).
>
> Topics would be handled in a more participatory, workshop style manner
> than typical conference sessions. They could include:
> - How to write really good articles?
> - How to do research in libraries?
> - What is this copyright stuff all about?
> - My POV, your POV, NPOV?
> - Where's Willy? How to find and fight vandals
> - Jimbo's campfire stories
> - Write your own news with Wikinews
> - Celebrity hunt: Wikimedia Commons needs you
> - Everything you know about Pokemon, and where to put it
>
> OK, perhaps I'm not really good at defining the topic scope. But you
> get the idea. ;-)
>
> Ideally, workshop leaders themselves should be youths with experience
> in Wikimedia, with some adult help to explain the more complex issues
> of law, policy and technology.
>
> If we consider this a good idea, another question is whether we should
> do it in conjunction with other organizations like Creative Commons or
> the FSF. The closest thing to such an event I've participated in was
> the "Berlin 05" youth festival last year, where both Wikimedia and the
> Chaos Computer Club were present. (See
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_05 for brief information about
> that event in German.)
>
> A festival or camp might have more of a long term future with support
> from multiple organizations, an international make-up, and an annual
> schedule like Wikimania. A "Free Culture Youth Festival" might be a
> suitably generic framework. But a more focused Wiki-Camp might have
> its benefits, too.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?


body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/5/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I do think that many times such notes can be wildly out of place. A
>>> perfect example somebody mentioned eariler is this thread is
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beirut&diff=21961432&oldid=21810147
>>>
>>> Clearly an inappropriate "hatnote"
>>>
>>> But, again. make a disambig-page and you're fine. No need for anything
>>> else.
>
>> That example didn't require a disambiguation note. Who would mistakenly go
>> to Beirut when looking for "Beer Pong"? Assuming good faith, whoever placed
>> this "hatnote" has a serious misunderstanding of the concept.
>
> Presumably, someone who knows the game is called "Beirut" but has
> never heard of "Beer Pong". Drinking games tend not to have very
> well-standardised nomenclature.
>

   I would say that classifying that hatnote as "inappropriate" smacks
of not being sufficiently NPOV.  It is us expressing a POV that such a
game should not be referred to by that name.  That we find it
"inappropriate".  We are in the business of writing an encyclopedia not
editorializing on the appropriateness of what people name things (even
obscure second albums from a band that was successful some number of
years ago).

SKL


body:
On 9/5/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/4/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps "mock" is the wrong word.  I agree with Steve that seeing a
> > reference to some obscure band's second album or some equally obscure
> > video game character on almost every science or history article is
> > highly annoying and detracts from the seriousness of the subject.
>
> I don't get this 'detracts from the seriousness of the subject'.  Do
> science or history articles get all embarassed to be in the same
> encyclopedia as more "trivial" subjects?  Do the writers of such
> articles, or the readers?

No, it just looks silly. :-)

--
Sam


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> >
> > When anybody says we "have to" introduce completely new markup or
> > we "have to" wait for Wikidata to be implemented, then I know it's
> > just an excuse for doing nothing.
> >
> Based on what ? WiktionaryZ is developing nicely,

Gerard, your promotion of Wikidata is as predictable as a Swiss
watch.  I admire your optimism.  In this case, however, I was
talking about the tendency to use its name as an excuse for not
doing something else.  In the case of Wikicat, I don't think it's
the Wikidata technology component that is lacking.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Use of Wikimedia-Logo's in articles

body:
On 9/4/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would have to shoot you for that except that I never realised we had
> > a Wikipedia OS-tan. What a great idea!
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan_sockpuppet_show.png
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan_head.png
>
> unfortunetly there is a dark side:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cvutan.png

I really like this. :-)

--
Sam


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
>> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
>> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what
>> the
>> NPOV policy asks.
>>
>
>
> No, it merely requires our readers to assume Jesus was born in the year 0.
> The dating method doesn't state anything about his supposed
> God/Messiah-ness.
>
> Mgm
>

Except, of course, that...

...no-one should believe that Jesus was born in year zero, since there
was no year zero in the Anno Domini scheme, that no-one used the Anno
Domini scheme until the middle of the sixth century CE, that the best
known estimates for Jesus' birth put it round about 4 BCE, and that CE
and BCE mean "Common Era" and "before the Common Era" respectively.

Perhaps we should just use  TAI or JD(UT1), and eliminate all ambiguity.

-- Neil, on Julian day 2453984


from_name: Scott Zager

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?

body:
I think that is an absolutely wonderful idea.  The free culture has greatly
affected me for about four years now (I'm 17 at the moment).  Initially it
was just that I didn't have a job, so I didn't have the money to pay for
anything.  But eventually I got caught up in the spirit and philosophy of
the whole thing.

Besides myself, I personally know quite a number of others that have had
similar experiences.  The prime example being Wikipedia.  A youth festival
type event, I believe, would harness the attention of many that timidly use
and participate in the free culture to immerse themselves more into the
projects.

The FSF has also come to attention of many youths (including myself).  I
cannot tell you the satisfaction I feel when I tell somebody that Linux or
any other GPL'd software is not only free in price, but free as in liberty.
It sparks quite a discussion about the entire philosophy of free information
and a free culture.

A festival targeted for the youth would definitely be rewarding to both
those who attend and the community.

--
-Scott Zager


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?


body:
On 9/5/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Perhaps we should just use  TAI or JD(UT1), and eliminate all ambiguity.

I'd prefer ab urbe condita.

--
Sam


body:
  Well, thought you passioned debate you have all convinced me!

  Technical solution anyone?

SKL

Death Phoenix wrote:
> (sorry for once again diving into this debate)
>
> And I'm one of those non-Christians who feels that BC/AD is more
> appropriate. We use BC/AD in normal conversation. This is one of those
> things where, if the typical Wikipedia reader were to see "BCE", he would
> wonder "what the hell is BCE?". I certainly wondered that the first several
> times I saw it. I see it as a sad sign of political correctness that is
> creeping into our content, but I'm in the minority (and yes, I'm also aware
> of the fact that Jesus was likely actually born between 4 and 6 BC).
>
> BC/AD has been in use for centuries. Why wipe out history in the space of a
> year or two? I don't even know who, when, or how BC/BCE came to replace
> BC/AD, and it's certainly not in widespread use.
>
> On 9/5/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm one of the Christians who feels that BCE is more appropriate (though I
>> still use BC/AD in common conversation). My reason, however, is that if
>> one
>> looks at the historical context of Jesus' life (things like the reign of
>> Herod), you'd find that he was actually born approx. 4-6 BCE, which if we
>> use BC/AD convention means that Jesus was born a few years "Before
>> Christ."
>> So, I support BCE more from a standpoint of language precision. By using
>> (B)CE for the date convention, it removes tying the dating system to a
>> specific event, such that any evidence which might effect the actual
>> timing
>> of events does not invalidate the system.
>>
>> Carl
>>
>> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied
>>>> religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of
>>>> users supported BC, while the other half did not.
>>>
>>> While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines -
>>> many
>>> people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the
>>> half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV.  The problem with
>>> accepting
>>> a POV in dating systems is that we would have to support ALL dating
>>> systems.  Only supporting BC/AD and BCE/CE is to codify systemic bias.
>>> However, adding other dating systems isn't easy, because lunar calendars
>>> (for example) don't match precisely with solar ones.  So if we allowed a
>>> user to pick a preferences of say, the Islamic calendar or the old
>> Russian
>>> calendar, many year-only dates would become ambiguous.
>>>
>>> However, you have a
>>>> point, NPOV means BCE.
>>>
>>> BC means "Before Christ", and that (obviously) refers to Jesus of
>>> Nazareth.
>>> So if you say "before Christ" in reference to him, you are asserting
>> that
>>> Jesus is the Messiah (Christ is the Greek version of the
>>> word).  Similarly,
>>> if you say "in the Lord's year" and the reference is unequivocally to
>>> Jesus,
>>> then you are asserting that Jesus is Lord (which, in this context, has
>>> come
>>> to mean God)
>>>
>>>
>>> Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
>>>> Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the
>>>> calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be,
>>>> if he existed when he supposedly did).
>>>
>>> As above, Christ means Messiah, so you can't separate the two.  On the
>>> other
>>> hand, BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) meet the
>> requirement
>>> of NPOV by describing the current state of affairs in which the dating
>>> system is based around the birth of Jesus, without actually asserting
>> that
>>> he is the Messiah or God.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
>>>> violates
>>>>> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is
>>> the
>>>>> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does
>>> what
>>>> the
>>>>> NPOV policy asks.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like
>> MoS
>>>>>> anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
>>>>>> regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings)
>>> shouldn't
>>>>>> go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too
>> much
>>>>>> content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
>>>>>> list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
>>>>>>>> that must be the most concise decision ever :)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I am simplifying greatly ;-)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> - d.
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> 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
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
On 05/09/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> >> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> >> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what
> >> the
> >> NPOV policy asks.
> >>
> >
> >
> > No, it merely requires our readers to assume Jesus was born in the year 0.
> > The dating method doesn't state anything about his supposed
> > God/Messiah-ness.
> >
> > Mgm
> >
>
> Except, of course, that...
>
> ...no-one should believe that Jesus was born in year zero, since there
> was no year zero in the Anno Domini scheme, that no-one used the Anno
> Domini scheme until the middle of the sixth century CE, that the best
> known estimates for Jesus' birth put it round about 4 BCE, and that CE
> and BCE mean "Common Era" and "before the Common Era" respectively.
>
> Perhaps we should just use  TAI or JD(UT1), and eliminate all ambiguity.

There was someone who, in all seriousness, wanted us to get around the
AD/CE thing by converting to the Holocene Era system:

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

(Carnildo's comment was that we should just go with AUC, so as not to
"piss off the bible literalists"...)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
   I thought it was original research (or perhaps revisionist history)
to claim that Christianity was not (at least sufficiently) dominant for
BC/AD to be the norm for a very long time and thought out most of the world?

   As to Arabic, Chinese etc. calenders.  I thought just assumed that
those would be used on the wikipedias in those languages.  Is using
English POV, what about the norms (the result of history) of the English
speaking world?

SKL

Akash Mehta wrote:
> But isn't that taken for granted, that we must blindly accept, while
> accepting as little as possible, that Christianity is the dominant
> religion?
>
> On 9/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
>>> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
>>> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
>>> NPOV policy asks.
>>>
>> Falls appart when you considder the islamic calender and the like
>> cuases simular problems for CE.
>>
>>
>> --
>> geni
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?

body:
Couldn't agree more. It'll look good on my college r?sum? when they see I
did great stuff in the world of wiki.

On 9/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/6/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thoughts?
>
> I tend to feel that one of the major attractions of wikipedia to
> younger people is that we treat them like everyone else regardless of
> age.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?


from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anons banned from creating articles

body:
On 9/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Right after we can sign up another thousand admins to deal with the
> flood-tide of crap articles that anons create?

Personally I feel that any user we can trust, has a fair bit of
experience and a few thousand edits should be a sysop anyway, but
thats just my opinion.


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?

body:
On 9/5/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> What a great idea -- "kids" meeting "kids" they found on the Internet.
>
> Sarcasm aside, this sounds like a good idea. Though my personal preference
> would be to go to Wikimania itself. But I'm not normal in too many ways.

I think it's a great idea, and is somewhat like what I've helped
organize with another nonprofit membership organization. One thing we
do is the week before the actual annual conference, have that be the
time to fly in students/youth to do the "camp" part, so that they can
also benefit from attending the big conference.

So in a similar way, we could have a week before Wikimania where we
gather the youth to have a special camp, which takes advantage of
Wikipedians who might be able to show up.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?


from_name: Bill Clark

body:
On 9/5/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>   Technical solution anyone?

Well, there is the patch I submitted that started this whole argument..

The only issues I can see are:

1) What to do about AD/CE, and wikilinked dates with explicit display
text in general, e.g. [[July 4]], [[1776|AD 1776]] -- the existing
code won't reformat such dates according to user preferences as it is,
so this isn't just a problem with the patch.

2) What to do about the non-English wikipedias.  That's something I
didn't think to test on my local installation (to be honest I'm not
even sure how to change the language.. I assume it's just a value in
LocalSettings.php but since I've never tried it...) and I'm not sure
that my patch behaves nicely if the appropriate values aren't defined
in languages/MessagesEn.php.

The default setting in my patch is to simply leave BC/BCE as they are,
i.e. "No Preference."  If people think it'll become a point of
contention, then we can simply wait a while and look at the statistics
of what preferences people actually set.  If 90% of the English
Wikipedia users set their preference to BCE, well then that would be a
good argument in favor of making that the default.  At least we'd
actually have some numbers to go on, rather than just arguing about
whether BC is religious POV or BCE is Political Correctness run amock
or an Americanism or what.

-Bill


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 05/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem really is that making a policy here requires us to make a
> decision.  Yes, *us*.  This is enormously different to normal article
> writing, where we just report what others have said.  We have to make
> a decision about which is correct, yet we can't, because to do so
> would be to break our principle of neutrality (though not NPOV, which
> is related but different).
> In short, we're stuffed.

Oh, I dunno. I understand there's a technical solution^Wworkaround on offer ...

- d.


body:
Guettarda wrote:
> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> NPOV policy asks.

   If I am not mistaken the beginning and ends of the months etc were
originally set up based on astrological principals.  Would it violate
NPOV (since we would then be making astrological assertions) to keep
using months?

SKL


body:
On 05/09/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> There was someone who, in all seriousness, wanted us to get around the
> AD/CE thing by converting to the Holocene Era system:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar

Time as signed integer in seconds from the Unix epoch! A system nobody
uses but the machines do. Then display as date or year per user's
options.

- d.


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus is dying...

body:
The "definitive threshold" suggestion was meant specifically for counting sources, not to editor voting.  Editor voting at an article level is original research.

It's best viewed as setting a 3RR threshold to content sources.  If the threshold isn't met, then it's simply up to the users that want the change to find additional repubtable/reliable sources, not to re-argue endlessly or to find more puppets to vote for their cause.

So whether or not there is a really good point is left to the external sources, not to a group of editors of unkown expertise.

Because the threshold would be preset, there would be no arguing over whether or not x% represents consensus every time.  We would count up the reputable/reliable sources for any proposed change to see if the threshold is reached.  If reached, then change.

To put it another way, we, or more likely Jimbo and higher-level admins or the same group that arrived at 3RR, would define a set level at which to decide whether there is a consensus of sources for any given article.  From there, that threshold would be used like 3RR for any change to any article.  If the source level is reached, that change would be made.  No voting.  Just counting the sources.

I think this would take care of the ongoing libel issue too.  You really don't have to create yet another policy.  If 90%, or 80%, of verifiable sources say somebody said "macaca", then the libel is with the sources, not somebody reporting what the sources are saying, which is the somebody Wikipedia is supposed to be.  You may, however, still need some monitoring mechanism, other than the supposed efficiency of the grand "Wiki way".

Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

>But what did you intend as a definitive threshold? To ensure accuracy
>for any important decision it would have to be around 90%. Surely if
>one person raises a valuable point, and one that is worth voting 'not
>yet' for, at least 10% will follow. But 90% will help reduce the
>effect of mild sockpuppet use etc. Then again, if we allow experienced
>users to strike votes, we should be going for 95%...

>On 9/3/06, Cheney Shill wrote:
>> >On 9/1/06, Angela wrote:
>> >> On 9/1/06, Cheney Shill wrote:
>> >> > User voting, whether by poll or by discussion until one side stops
>> >> > discussing (aka, into the ground), is original research. So, yes,
>> >> > consensus applied this way should die.
>> >>
>> >> Perhaps consensus polling should be tried instead.
>> >>
>> >> http://icannwiki.org/Consensus_Polling
>> >>
>> >Perhaps we should stop calling it consensus in those places where
>> >there is no desire to find a solution everyone can agree upon.
>>
>> The main problem is that it is still original research. That's fine for a group of experts deciding whether to call Pluto a planet, call it something else, or to simply describe it without any name. In terms of the encyclopedia, it leaves the decision to the editors, not the sources.
>>
>> I do like the Yes/Not Yet concept. I wish that a definitive yes/not yet threshold would be defined in determining whether something is sourced (and therefore can be included in the article) or not yet adequately sourced (and therefore left out).

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.net/index.php?title=User:Pro-Lick

--spam may follow--

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


body:
On 05/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems that we constantly assume 'Vandal!' in this case.

How do we get across to the CVU that they can't vote amongst
themselves to dispose of Assume Good Faith? Which is, ahh, a *policy*.
Telling them they can't has had no effect.

- d.


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The problem really is that making a policy here requires us to make a
> > decision.  Yes, *us*.  This is enormously different to normal article
> > writing, where we just report what others have said.  We have to make
> > a decision about which is correct, yet we can't, because to do so
> > would be to break our principle of neutrality (though not NPOV, which
> > is related but different).
> > In short, we're stuffed.
>
>
> Oh, I dunno. I understand there's a technical solution^Wworkaround on offer ...

Yes, it's a great workaround... until people say "but this article
displays BC[E] when users aren't signed in.  THAT'S AN ABUSE OF NPOV."

Neat as this technical workaround is, it's nowhere close to a solution
and indeed will not be.

--
Sam


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 05/09/06, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, but I'm sure there will be "bickering" over
> the default setting of any UI option we come up with. After all, the default
> will determine what those who are not logged-in or who have not modified
> their preferences will see.

As an idle datapoint, complaints to OTRS about AD/CE conventions are
about equal either way, generally by people who haven't noticed we use
a mix (invariably casual readers).

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 05/09/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:

> Some will be improved with good promotion, others will need efforts
> extended from our virtualworld community. And it would be a possible
> task and challange for the Foundation, but for that, a careful and
> thoughtful approach, collaboration of other organizations both local
> and global etc will be expected.

Has anyone asked Free Software Foundation India if they're interested
in this? It's not absolutely part of their primary mission, but open
content is quite related to open software, and it's under the GFDL,
which is an FSF licence; and pride in local content can be developed
into pride in local software (under a free licence), not least in
helping Mediawiki localisation.

- d.


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Hoi,
The great thing is you can observe how WiktionaryZ is doing, that may prove
that my optimism can indeed be compared to the reliable Swiss watch.

You deny the argument for Wikicat to need Wikidata. I wonder what you base
this on. It is given what it aims to do perfectly reasonable.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 9/5/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > >
> > > When anybody says we "have to" introduce completely new markup or
> > > we "have to" wait for Wikidata to be implemented, then I know it's
> > > just an excuse for doing nothing.
> > >
> > Based on what ? WiktionaryZ is developing nicely,
>
> Gerard, your promotion of Wikidata is as predictable as a Swiss
> watch.  I admire your optimism.  In this case, however, I was
> talking about the tendency to use its name as an excuse for not
> doing something else.  In the case of Wikicat, I don't think it's
> the Wikidata technology component that is lacking.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It seems that we constantly assume 'Vandal!' in this case.
>
>
> How do we get across to the CVU that they can't vote amongst
> themselves to dispose of Assume Good Faith? Which is, ahh, a *policy*.
> Telling them they can't has had no effect.

Well of course not because they will just cite WP:IAR. Then they could
go on the argue that policy is descriptive not proscriptive and throw
in the words "common sense" a few times.

Sorry sorry sorry.

On a more serious note you could try telling them why it is a bad idea
and come up with alturnatives.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
I'm somewhat puzzled at the response to this thread. I appreciate Mr
Merkey has greatly annoyed many people in the past, but I know he's
putting in effort to work better with others now; and I'm not saying
Assume Good Faith In The Face Of All Reason (there are many people
whose names I never want to see in my Wikipedia email ever again) -
but that first mail read to *me* like a Wikimedia bug report (problems
reading data dumps), which only needs redirection to wikitech.

So, um, could everyone please just take a deep breath? And if there's
a problem with the current dumps, I'm sure the devs would rather know
than not know, and politely directing people to the right list is a
better response even if it was sent by Lir or Wik or Plautus Satire or
something.

(And I know I'm way guilty of blowing my top inappropriately on the
lists of late and do apologise again and will calm down and settle
into middle-aged suburban existence soon, I swear.)

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


body:
On 9/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well of course not because they will just cite WP:IAR. Then they could
> go on the argue that policy is descriptive not proscriptive and throw
> in the words "common sense" a few times.

If anyone can justify, using "common sense" and "the good of the
project", ignoring AGF, they deserve a prize.

> On a more serious note you could try telling them why it is a bad idea
> and come up with alturnatives.

This is always a sensible way of doing things.  :-)

--
Sam


body:
On 9/5/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well of course not because they will just cite WP:IAR. Then they could
> > go on the argue that policy is descriptive not proscriptive and throw
> > in the words "common sense" a few times.
>
> If anyone can justify, using "common sense" and "the good of the
> project", ignoring AGF, they deserve a prize.
>

You don't phrase it like that. You talk about obvious cases and how we
need the abilty to react faster (dig up the excuses for the various
anti terriousm laws that have been brought in lately and apply). You
talk about how it is nessacery to protect the project from those who
wish to hurt it (at this point you may wish to insinate that those
opposeing you support willy on wheels or lack determination in keeping
wikipedia copyvio free)

Further you can add that those who oppose you have lost sight of the
true goals of the project (useful since it is a pain to dissprove and
pretty much forces your oponents onto the defensive)

It is really very simple.

> This is always a sensible way of doing things.  :-)

90% of the time it causes pointless time wasteing. The trick is
knowing where that 10% is.

--
geni


body:
Well, the E should really be an option for political correctness, but
at the same time we can't force it upon users since there must be many
Christians out there who believe that 'before christ' is more
appropriate than 'before common era'. If there was an option in
preferences, and the <bc> / <ad> tags displayed the correct variation
appropriately it would be best.

On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh yes, please stop that eternal useless bickering!
> I have never seen the use of adding another E to BC and give it another name
> when in fact you count with the same year numbering. But if we can have
> a technical solution so we can have both I'd go for it.
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The vexed question may be solved by technical means!
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk>
> > Date: 05-Sep-2006 08:41
> > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names
> > To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> >
> >
> > Bill Clark wrote:
> > > I've added the ability to specify a preference (or no preference) for
> > > era names in dates (BC vs. BCE).  I've also fixed a couple bugs in the
> > > regular expressions that match for dates, that were preventing the
> > > parser from recognizing (and converting) dates that ended in BCE or
> > > which were written in ISO format and fell between -999-01-01 and
> > > 999-12-31 (i.e. had a one-, two-, or three-digit year).
> > >
> > > I'm not an actual committer so I'm submitting this as a diff -ru to
> > > the mailing list.  I'm sure that's the wrong procedure and I'll be
> > > scolded for it, but hey I'll learn.
> > >
> > > I've tested this and it works on my local version (checked out of svn
> > > a few hours ago) but I imagine it should be tested more.
> > >
> > > -Bill Clark
> > >
> > >
> > That's a great idea. It might also be useful to make the code also
> > switch 'AD' and 'CE', for dates such as, for example, 4 AD / 4 CE.
> >
> > -- Neil
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-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
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Shouldn't the default be neutral (i.e. 'BC(E)' / 'BC|BCE' etc.)
anyway? There's not much of a choice there. Then again, if users have
a problem with the mere use of a 'BC' instead of 'BCE' when BC has
been widely accepted for so long, then so be it.

On 9/5/06, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Oh yes, please stop that eternal useless bickering!
> > I have never seen the use of adding another E to BC and give it another
> > name
> > when in fact you count with the same year numbering. But if we can have
> > a technical solution so we can have both I'd go for it.
> >
> > Mgm
>
>
> Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, but I'm sure there will be "bickering" over
> the default setting of any UI option we come up with. After all, the default
> will determine what those who are not logged-in or who have not modified
> their preferences will see.
>
> -Rich
> [[W:en:User:Rholton]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
maru dubshinki wrote:
> On 9/5/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>> Guettarda wrote:
>>> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
>>> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
>>> Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
>>> NPOV policy asks.
>>  If I am not mistaken the beginning and ends of the months etc were
>> originally set up based on astrological principals. Would it violate
>> NPOV (since we would then be making astrological assertions) to keep
>> using months?
>>
>> SKL
>
> But those astrological measurements are objective and empirically
> verifiable in a way that AD/BC is not, and often track significant
> events, such as the changing of the pole star.
>
> ~maru

   According to [[March]], the month is named after Mars the god of war.
  The fact that he is the god of war is empirically verifiable?

SKL


body:
Yes, thats criterion for, say, [[en:WP:RFA]], but at the same time RfA
voters are being relatively critical and perfectly good candidates are
being denied the position. In addition, users simply won't accept that
times are changing and sometimes users can get the experience they
need in far less time than previously required, i.e. 4 months can be
enough for sysopship when a user makes 20 reasonable edits a day (i.e.
2400 edits), plus many more minor edits.

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > > Right after we can sign up another thousand admins to deal with the
> > > flood-tide of crap articles that anons create?
>
> > Personally I feel that any user we can trust, has a fair bit of
> > experience and a few thousand edits should be a sysop anyway, but
> > thats just my opinion.
>
>
> Well, that's *supposed* to be the criterion ...
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
"whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
that must be the most concise decision ever :) ArbCom should penalise
people. WP:NOT :: i.e. people shouldn't choose one or the other
because they feel like it. Add it to an article, leave it as it is is
the simplest way.

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Shouldn't the default be neutral (i.e. 'BC(E)' / 'BC|BCE' etc.)
> > anyway? There's not much of a choice there. Then again, if users have
> > a problem with the mere use of a 'BC' instead of 'BCE' when BC has
> > been widely accepted for so long, then so be it.
>
>
> It eventually came down to a US vs UK argument, which is why the MOS
> says "whatever it is now, leave it kthx." The Arbitration Committee
> has had to penalise people for edit-warring on the subject.
>
> (Wikipedia! No stakes too insanely small for a battle to the death!)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: HeinzJ

body:
HeinzJ schrieb:
> I added this to monobook.php for creating additional sidebar-blocks:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Navigation_bar#Customizing_monobook.php
>
>
>   +

>   +
<?php $this->msg('navigation') ?>

>   +

>   +       <?php $this->msgWiki( 'AnotherMenu' ) ?>
>   +

>   +

>
> Are there any CONs against this?
> Imho the solution above is able to use more complicated
> sidebar-construction than MediaWiki:Sidebar doas
>
> HeinzJ

Ok it works with Sidebar. Do'nt know what happened here ....

Thx to all


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
On 05/09/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:

> I appreciate your professional anbd courteous response.

I'm working more on holding my tongue, having posted a few too many
"WHAT THE F- CRACK ARE YOU ON" style posts of late ;-p

> It affects our efforts more directly since we provide the ability to
> sync and seed new communities with entire full mirrors of wikipedia
> that actually work and can resync with the Foundation.

Well, yes - mirrors and reuse are a good thing. I know there's been a
few issues with dumps. Basically, the devs' priority is keeping the
sites running, and dumps are secondary. This is way less than ideal,
but we're a top-20 website with NO MONEY and NO STAFF. Everyone else
in the top 20 has a huge technical team and an actual budget ... we
have two technical employees and still I think run under $1m a year,
which is chickenfeed for what we serve. This is not an excuse, just
stating the reason.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


body:
Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like MoS
anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings) shouldn't
go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too much
content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
>
>
> I am simplifying greatly ;-)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 05/09/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:

> What about changing hatnotes to something like a wikiquote box?  Stick
> it in the upper right hand corner of the article and have it read
> something like the standard generic hatnote does now.

{{otheruses}} is a template; it's used in RATHER A LOT of places, so I
wouldn't mess with it without checking with the devs that something
nasty wouldn't happen to the database (I remember when someone changed
{{stub}} and everything ground to a halt for a while), but if you
think something non-ugly can be done that would get consensus, then
fine.

Personally, I think it's fine as is - an italicised single line saying
"look here for other meanings" - and should be left the heck alone.

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, it's a great workaround... until people say "but this article
> displays BC[E] when users aren't signed in.  THAT'S AN ABUSE OF NPOV."

Yeah, but that's OTRS' problem in practice, and we already know it's
equal between them ;-p

- d.


body:
At the moment we have a spam-problem. People or PCs are adding dayly
users with no edits. Mostly they look like TheUserViagra with the Email
TheUserViagra at someGMX.net

I would like to delete all users with no edits before updating to
mediawiki 1.71 and adding a CAPTCHA into the add new user dialog.

Who have some Ideas?

- SQL clauses
- ....

THX, HeinzJ


body:
On 05/09/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Of course I fully support the spirit and motives behind BLP and
> obviously I see the urgent need to make sure serious allegations
> against living people are fully and reliably sourced.  But people are
> stretching BLP far beyond what it should be used to combat - unsourced
> and unreliable assertions.  Now people are using it to remove all
> sorts of critical information that would reasonably be included and to
> further their own ideological agendas.  Some examples, all typed in
> with presumably a straight face.

Can I just say "I told you so." Kthx.

- d.


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Yes, it's a great workaround... until people say "but this article
> > displays BC[E] when users aren't signed in.  THAT'S AN ABUSE OF NPOV."
>
>
> Yeah, but that's OTRS' problem in practice, and we already know it's
> equal between them ;-p

"People" was intended to mean "complete idiots who get into pointless
debates for the sake of it".  I am not majorly concerned about the PR
side of things -- I'm sure that can be handled.  I just don't think
this can change the edit-warring side of things.

--
Sam


body:
Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied
religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of
users supported BC, while the other half did not. However, you have a
point, NPOV means BCE. Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the
calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be,
if he existed when he supposedly did).

On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> NPOV policy asks.
>
> On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like MoS
> > anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
> > regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings) shouldn't
> > go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too much
> > content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
> > list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
> >
> > On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > > > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
> > >
> > >
> > > I am simplifying greatly ;-)
> > >
> > >
> > > - d.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > 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
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 05/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> "People" was intended to mean "complete idiots who get into pointless
> debates for the sake of it".  I am not majorly concerned about the PR
> side of things -- I'm sure that can be handled.  I just don't think
> this can change the edit-warring side of things.

I'm pretty sure nothing can. "Politics happens with two people in a
room. Sometimes less." - me.

- d.


body:
Hold on... if BC is the commonly accepted version, then wouldn't
differing from the norm and adopting BCE assume that we are
disregarding any potential existence of Jesus?

On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied
> religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of
> users supported BC, while the other half did not. However, you have a
> point, NPOV means BCE. Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
> Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the
> calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be,
> if he existed when he supposedly did).
>
> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> > NPOV policy asks.
> >
> > On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like MoS
> > > anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
> > > regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings) shouldn't
> > > go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too much
> > > content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
> > > list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
> > >
> > > On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > > > > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I am simplifying greatly ;-)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > - d.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > 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
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>


body:
But isn't that taken for granted, that we must blindly accept, while
accepting as little as possible, that Christianity is the dominant
religion?

On 9/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> > NPOV policy asks.
> >
>
> Falls appart when you considder the islamic calender and the like
> cuases simular problems for CE.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 05/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What about changing hatnotes to something like a wikiquote box?  Stick
> > it in the upper right hand corner of the article and have it read
> > something like the standard generic hatnote does now.
>
>
> {{otheruses}} is a template; it's used in RATHER A LOT of places, so I
> wouldn't mess with it without checking with the devs that something
> nasty wouldn't happen to the database (I remember when someone changed
> {{stub}} and everything ground to a halt for a while), but if you
> think something non-ugly can be done that would get consensus, then
> fine.

Plus this would just be patchy - there's about four or five different
{{otheruses}} variants, and a vast number which are manually styled.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 05/09/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> BTW, I just looked at that article ([[Beer Pong]], that is), and it's
> a freakshow! It's got diagrams and everything, and it is rivaling many
> featured articles in length. Either someone has waaaaaaaaaay to much
> time on their hands, or something very fishy is going on. I'm tempted
> to put a comment in the wikitext that says "Attention! Many other
> articles need help! Don't waste time here!" or something ;)

Just be a reference obsessive ;-p

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 1) Ignore wikilinked dates that contain explicit display text, leaving
>> them untouched.
>> 2) Change all wikilinked dates and associated display text according
>> to user preferences.
>> 3) Encourage a mass renaming of year articles from (e.g.) [[1984]] to
>> [[AD 1984]].
>>
>> Even though option 3 is completely unrealistic, I mention it because
>> it actually makes the most sense (how did we get started having bare
>> numbers assumed to be a date by default, anyway?).  That said, I think
>> option 2 is the best bet, so long as it's considered more important to
>> have consistent date formatting than to honor the display text put in
>> place by editors.
>>
>
>
>
> I vote for option 3. There are only 2006 or so of them.
>
> Steve
>
>
Oh, please, please, don't even _think_ about option 3. You are now
required to chant WP:LAME backwards whilst throwing salt over your left
shoulder.

-- Neil, on baktun 12 katun 19 tun 13 uinal 11 kin 1.