from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: VfD is broken

body:
John Lee wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Rebecca wrote:
>>
>>> The very essence of what makes Wikipedia work is consensus.
>>
>> Fine!  Then why are we bothering with votes?
>
> I don't understand. Voting gauges whether there is a consensus or not.

You obviously don't understand consensus.  Votes polarize opinions and
destroy consensus building.

>>> People have put things on VFD before that I've agreed with. I've
>>> argued a case that they shouldn't be deleted, and it's very rare that
>>> such an article has then gone ahead and be deleted. If you put up an
>>> argument, and the majority *still* think that it should be deleted,
>>> then tough. That's the way it works.
>>
>> Maybe that's the way you wan't it to work.  Why should I need to put
>> together an argument about something that I know nothing about just
>> to try to convince someone who knows even less about the subject that
>> it's worth keeping?
>
> You don't need to. You can research it on Google, or let somebody else
> handle it. If nobody does, perhaps that's an indication the article's
> not notable enough to be encyclopedic. The audience on VfD is large
> enough for somebody to respond sooner or later, despite your argument
> that the majority of the community doesn't visit it.

Google is only part of the needed research.  Finding a Google link
doesn't proof a damn thing.  If nobody researches it that says nothing
about the article except that it has a limited audience.  That's clearly
not an argument for deleting it.  The sooner or later response may be
months away.  What you mean by a large enough community is a large
enough group of the like-minded.  I'm sure that all the visitors to VfD
don't edit it.  A detailed statistical analysis would be revealing.

>>> VFD *is* growing too large to be maintainable, but that's a result of
>>> our continued growth, rather than some evil plan by the deletionists
>>> to go on an annihilating spree. A solution to that needs to be found,
>>> and I'm not sure what, but allowing junk to remain in the pedia is not
>>> the answer.
>>
>> Much of this so-called "junk" is perfectly harmless.  General growth
>> is only part of the reason.  Nobody is suggesting that the
>> deletionists are even capable of concocting an evil plan.  I find
>> them more like a Dr. Strangelove who will struggle for survival even
>> if it kills him.  The delusional missions of zealots are always
>> pursued with the best of intentions ... a phalanx of perfectionists
>> in chasing the impossible.
>> Many of the disputed articles are stubs, and even in their totality
>> will likely take less space on the server than the verbiage about
>> whether to delete them.
>
> Stubs yes, but their notability and/or verifiability is another. What
> will people think of how trustworthy our information is if we permit
> rubbish such as a biased advertisement for a discussion forum to
> languish on Wikipedia?

Your "notability" criterion is what irritates people.  In that context
talking about biased ads is a straw man argument.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Hidden/protected page in MediaWiki

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Jakob Voss wrote:
>
>> You can use a Wiki inside an intranet or protected by a password.
>
> Bingo! Problem solved.

The fact that the internal Wiki of Wikimedia Germany where we store a
list of members, copyrighted press cuttings, personal adresses etc. has
not been edited for a week may have different reasons. But one is that
you have to log into yet another Wiki installation.

If you could drive multiple Wikis with one user table in MediaWiki and
some of them were restricted that would solve the problem to.

By the way: does the import-function work yet?

Greetings,
   Jakob

P.S: Of course there are other problems more important. I do not want to
complain.


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD is broken

body:
John Lee wrote:

> Eric B. and Rakim wrote:
>
>> 1. There is no reason to delete any of the pages there at all.
>> Copyvios already has a special page. And there is also already
>> candidates for speedy deletion and simple vandalism that is deleted
>> on sight.
>
> Please provide examples. Speedy deletions are for contributions that
> don't make sense. VfD is for those that do but aren't encyclopedic.

And "encyclopedic" is a subjective judgement where the deletionist
support a very narrow interpretation.

>
>> 4. Articles about "non-notable" stuff does not hurt Wikipedia. Since
>> noone cares about the stuff, noone will link to it and noone will
>> search for it and NOONE will ever see it!
>
> A keyword search can easily bring up non-notable articles. When
> somebody sees an entry resembling a blog posting, what will they think
> of Wikipedia?

A person looking for "non-notable" articles can certainly find them, but
casual visitors would not be the ones making such searches.  The "What
will they think ...?" question is nothing but a scare tactic.  It is
speculative and based on no evidence whatsoever.

>> 7. The Wikipedia concept is that anyone can edit a page and that only
>> those who edits a page gets to determine what information goes into a
>> page. Its like "do it yourself cause you can't tell anyone else what
>> to do cause there is no way to force them to do it." Now that concept
>> doesn't work with vfd cause someone can say "uuuh.. delete unless it
>> is improved in a week.". That person basically forces those who care
>> about the article to write what they know about it or it will be
>> killed. It is not fair at all.
>
> Well, honestly, tell me, what is there to write about someone's smelly
> socks?

So what's the link to the smelly sock article, or is this just another
straw man?

> If it's a notable article, it will be improved anyway. Are you
> suggesting we tolerate garbage just because the garbage's topic is
> something notable?

Nobody has suggested tolerating garbage.  You're just making that up so
you can have something to argue against.

> Honestly, if I had to pick between deleting a (hypothetical) article
> on Ronald Reagan which is full of unrelated nonsense about doing drugs
> or keeping it in the hopes somebody would improve it, I'd do the
> former without skipping a beat. Having an article only gives the
> impression to readers that we tolerate junk. I'd rather receive
> complaints from readers that we don't have an article on Ronald Reagan
> than complaints that our article of Ronald Reagan is useless, which in
> turn will lead to questioning the credibility of other innocent articles.

Arguing about hypothetical articles is arguing about articles that don't
exist.  You can go ahead and delete all the non-existing articles that
you want.  If the Ronald Reagan article contained all your speculative
nonsense it would be fixed, not deleted.  Why can't you treat the other
articles in the same way?

> You are missing the whole point of VfD. The point is to ask a wide
> audience - that "thousand people" - "Is this article worth keeping, or
> do we move it elsewhere/delete it?". The point of VfD is consensus.
> Placing the request on the Talk leads to a very very limited audience
> - how many Wikipedians read Talk pages on a regular basis? And
> unitarily moving it is even worse.

What kind of wider audience?  One composed of people who know as little
about the subject as you?  At least those who respond on the talk page
will have some interest in the subject..  Consensus is hard work about
finding a solution that will please most people.  A simple (or
simplistic) delete or keep solution does not leave room for consensus.

Ec


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer payment

body:
Timwi a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> The plain idea is * that the opportunity is taken to clean up and
>> organise better a couple of pages (such as
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks)
>> [...]
>> **If a developer is ready to take care of a matter,
>> just mentions it on development task. If he would be
>> interested by getting in contract, please mentions it
>> on [[development payment proposal]] (or any title you think best)
>
>
> You have made no mention of MediaZilla, which saddens me a bit.  I don't
> know about others, but personally, I would find a wiki page quite
> difficult to keep overviewable and organised, which is why I helped
> install MediaZilla.  I think it is easier to prioritise individual items
> in MediaZilla, or break them up into constituent parts, etc.  A
> developer can express their wish to take care of a particular bug or
> feature by simply assigning the item to themselves.  The board can
> express their offer to pay for a particular feature or bug by simply
> adding a keyword (and perhaps leaving a comment with the amount).  It
> can't really get any easier than this.
>
> Timwi

Hu ?

I did not put it in the tasks because I understood it had already been
set up. In your mail, you mention BugZilla, not MediaZilla, but I
understood it was the same... just a better name :-)

If MediaZilla is already set, it is no more a task to do, if not
entirely set, of course, you are free to add it.

Note that in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks#Recent_list_of_tasks.2C_unsorted,
your name is listed in front of BugZilla.

This is *typically* a task which you would have to explain better. If
you want to propose something, you can add it to Development_tasks
Proposal (or whatever title you think of) and explain exactly what it is
about.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: developer bios. Please do not be shy

body:
Ashar Voultoiz a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_activity
>>
>> Here is a beginning for developer bios. I just added a few names
>> amongst those who answered to the poll, but I hope ALL those who
>> answered and well as others who did not, will complete the page.
>>
>> Please do not be shy and add your name and a bit about you.
>>
>> This has two goals. First just to have such a page on meta will get
>> people to know your development activity better. Also, a new developer
>> might get a better idea who he can ask things to, when he is
>> interested in a specific task.
>>
>> The second goal will be to add part of this to the WMF website. I
>> consequently also needs things such as your paypal address and such.
>>
>> I might add that I would like very much that you add your country of
>> origin (and why not the languages you manage). Knowing the language
>> you manage may be interesting for the new developer. Knowing that
>> developers come from all over the world is in itself a very valuable
>> information as well.
>>
>> So, please modify and correct what I already added, and just add
>> yourself if you are not yet there.
>>
>> Thanks :-)
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I added myself, certainly need grammar review though.

Cough... not from me certainly :-)

> As for the paypal link. I am not sure yet I will accept any donations, I
> am not sure anyone will be willing to give me cash anyway. Probably to
> redirect cash directly to the wikimedia foundation :o)

Nod. This can be mentionned on the page.

Merci Hashar :-)

Thanks Andr? as well; imho, if you feel that you belong here, then you
belong here.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meetings in Europe

body:
On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 03:27:09 -0700 (PDT)
  Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_meetup
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_meetings_in_Europe
>
>Many meetings took place in Europe and US. Some are
>reported on meta, but not all of them. Could those who
>participated to these meetings list them on meta
>(place, date and notable events if appropriate, plus
>relevant links to local project with all the great
>pictures and name of participants) so we could track
>of all this ?

The page says that it is for meetings in June and July 2004. Where should we
put earlier and later meetings?

Andre Engels


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Jakob Voss wrote:
>>> You can use a Wiki inside an intranet or protected by a password.
>>
>> Bingo! Problem solved.
>
>
> The fact that the internal Wiki of Wikimedia Germany where we store a
> list of members, copyrighted press cuttings, personal adresses etc. has
> not been edited for a week may have different reasons. But one is that
> you have to log into yet another Wiki installation.

That doesn't sound like an open community wiki (where constant editing
from discussion would be expected), but rather a data store. Is there
anything wrong with it not having been edited for a week?

> If you could drive multiple Wikis with one user table in MediaWiki and
> some of them were restricted that would solve the problem to.

This is already available in 1.4, I believe.

> By the way: does the import-function work yet?

No. Are you volunteering to work on it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Matthias Pospiech

subject:
[Wikitech-l] structure of main links (use of wiki similiar to CMS
	system)

body:
I would like to set up a wiki with rather structured content.
A guiding structure with Toplinks/Sublinks seems to be missing from what I
could see so far.

What I would like to do, is to introduce/implement a navigation bar, which
contains all the Top- and Sublinks. And if possible the active link
(current site) should be highlighted.
This should thereby _not_ be part of the content area but on the side.

This may be rather a CMS approach than what a wiki system is designed for,
therefore I would like to hear from you experts if this is possible at all.

To give you an idea what I mean (though this side will definetly not be a
wiki in the future, just the technique)
http://www.cqa.de/weiterbildungsangebote/

Matthias

---------------------------------
www.matthiaspospiech.de


from_name: John

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Accuracy Heuristics

body:
On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 23:37:44 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it would be a good idea to have the information in a tab
> called "Metrics", which could have those numbers, as well as the
> number of unique authors, and number of edits. (And of course some
> heuristic to filter out effects from edit wars, etc.)
>
> BTW, this is the recent experiment that has caused the latest buzz:
> http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E652809545/index.html
>
> Note that each of the five articles used in this person's experiment
> are very low traffic - one had only three authors and four edits,
> another had two authors and two edits. Certainly it was not
> Wikipedia's finest hour, but he certainly chose (and if an appropriate
> word, cherrypicked) the right ones to highlight the weaknesses.
>
> Articles were: Layzie Bone; Magni; Empuries; Philipsburg, PA; Bernice
> Johnson Reagon

I would see a much bigger problem with this and that is that the story
was posted on Slashdot. This is going to encourage many more people to
try similar experiments.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/05/1339219&tid=146&tid=1


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration

body:
I entered the request at [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RickK vs. Guanaco]] in order to deal with the problem of Guanaco repeatedly making unilateral unblocks of blocked users.  This problem finally came to a head when he was not only unblocking Michael, even though Jimbo had asked him not to, but he was reverting my reversions and deletions of Michael's creations under Mike Grant even though this was in contravention of the decision that Michael was on hard ban and immediate revert.  Five members of the arbitration committee accepted the arbitration.

Instead, this arbitration has turned into an ad hominem attack on me personally, and has been perverted into having nothing to do with Guanaco's actions, but entirely about me.  Fred Bauder, a member of the arbitration committee, has not only manufactured evidence which is not germane to the situation, but actively participates in the creation of information attacking me which has nothing to do even with me OR Guanaco.  I have asked him to recuse himself from the arbitration because of his collusion in this manufacturing of false evidence, but he has refused.  Instead, he has posted Jimbo's letter to the mailing list announcing his decision to unban Michael.  This mailing came after the creation of my request for arbitration and after Guanaco's unilateral unblockings, and therefore is irrelevant.  He is not only allowing, but encouraging, people not associated with the arbitration to post information which has no bearing on the arbitration, and when I attempted to delete it, he
 repeatedly re-posted it.  As I said, with the active participation of Fred Bauder, the arbitration has become a completely different situation from what was voted on.  To my thinking, this means that the members of the arbitration committee should be requested to re-vote on whether or not to hear the case, since what they voted on is not what the case has turned into.

I have repeatedly said that the arbitration process does not work.  The ONE previous time in which I bothered to participate, not only was the person against whom the arbitration was asked for (Wik) allowed off without so much as a slap on the wrist, but Hephaestos and I, the people who requested the arbitration in the first place, were admonished for our "bad behavior".  I vowed never to participate in the arbitration process again, but Guanaco's outrageous behavior caused me to rethink my position.

Seeing how the process has become perverted into something it was not meant to be, I will once again say that I will no longer participate in this process, and I hereby repudiate the case which has my name on it, until such as time as Fred Bauder recuses himself and either the so-called evidence page is turned into evidence about the case that the members of the committee voted to hear, or they are allowed to take a revote.

For the final time, I will no longer participate in this process.  It is not only unworkable, but too easily perverted into what it was not intended to be.

RickK

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: VfD is broken

body:
Unfortunately, the things which CAN be quickly deleted are very limited.  Right now, there is a huge number of pages written by a troll named [[El Coronado]] which are obvious fiction, but they are not allowed to be speedy deleted, because obviously false information is not an acceptable condition (by some) for speedy deletion.  Instead, we have to go through the cumbersome VfD process to get rid of them.  If obviously false information was an accpetable criterion, then we could have gotten rid of all of this user's creations already, and we wouldn't have several different entries on VfD for them.

If there were no VfD, what would be the inclusionists' acceptable process for getting rid of this false information?

Currently, there is a VfD entry for someone name [[Paul Buissonneau]].  At the time of its adding to VfD, the article consisted of:
"Paul Buissonneau gave lessons to the great Yvon Deschamps as well as Claude Jasmin and Robert Charlebois. Paul Buissonneau was born in France in 1926. He then came to Canada. He is still alive.".

It took a great deal of work and research by several people actively involved in the VfD process to make this into a useable article.  Would those of you objecting to VfD actually have preferred that it have remained as it was in its original state?

I am an active participant in [[Cleanup]].  But there are hundreds of articles listed there that never get worked on.  By putting a 5-day deadline on them on the VfD page, we get some very reasonable articles, which then get kept.  VfD is NOT just a "deletionist" playground, it's a serious effort by many people to make decent articles, or to figure out what to do with articles that aren't decent.

RickK

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Meetings in Europe

body:
change june and july in -----> summer 2004 :-)

Andre Engels a ?crit:
> On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 03:27:09 -0700 (PDT)
>  Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_meetup
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_meetings_in_Europe
>>
>> Many meetings took place in Europe and US. Some are
>> reported on meta, but not all of them. Could those who
>> participated to these meetings list them on meta
>> (place, date and notable events if appropriate, plus
>> relevant links to local project with all the great
>> pictures and name of participants) so we could track
>> of all this ?
>
>
> The page says that it is for meetings in June and July 2004. Where
> should we put earlier and later meetings?
>
> Andre Engel
> s


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Automatic minor edits

body:
all edits by anon are major.

What do I win ?

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
> Brilliant response, Brion.  Minor edits can _not_ be detected
> algorithmically, at least not until our robot overlords take over the
> writing for us.  :-)
>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>Chris Wood wrote:
>>
>>>Rules for marking minor edits could go something like this:
>>>1) All edits by anonymous users are minor (same rule as now)
>>>2) A change of 5 words or less, not next to each other or in the same
>>>sentence, is major.
>>>3) Any number of formatting changes (italics, tables, header levels etc) is
>>>major.
>>>4) Everything else is minor.
>>
>>Pop quiz: what's wrong with the above text?
>>
>>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikitech-l mailing list
>>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
And what do we do about articles which CAN'T be "improved"?  What do we do with such articles as [[Demish ]], [[Anarcho Coronado de Murillo ]], [[Eckvic Culture]], [[Eckvic (god)]], [[Eckvic]], [[Anarcho Coronado de Murillo ]], [[Francisco V?squez de Coronado]], [[Political Leader of The United Socialist Union ]], [[United Socialist Union]] and [[Coronadists]]?

RickK

Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
Rebecca wrote:
>
> allowing junk to remain in the pedia is not the answer.

Nobody is suggesting to "allow junk to remain in the pedia". People are
instead suggesting to get rid of the junk by improving it rather than
deleting it.

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Denni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re:VfD is broken

body:
Chris Wood wrote

> A good number of people may and do vote "delete" on inappropriate listings.
> A cadre of deletionists aren't always right.

While this may be true, an equal number of inclusionists vote to keep whatever falls out of someone's pocket. I'm very discouraged by the deletionist-bashing I've seen here the last few. For the most part, it has been divisive and mean-spirited. Deletionists are part of the natural spectrum of editorial
consciousnesses we see at Wiki, and help to ensure that my dog Spot does not have an article of his own.

A comment was made that the number of articles voted for deletion has soared in the past few months. I have noted the same, but I have also noted that, relative to six months ago, the number of articles arriving which are personal vanity pages, joke pages, and advertising pages has also soared. I would
suspect that a numerical analysis would show no greater percentage of pages being deleted than before. I find it much harder to work on VfD these days exactly because of all the personal crud I must plow through - it seems that the disclaimer on the Create and Article page only encourages people to try to
get their own sad history onto Wiki.

The deletionist argument is a red herring. I'm sure most people here do as I do - try to ensure a healthy balance between votes to keep and votes to delete, which are based on a careful read of the article before a decision is reached. Or am I too optimistic?

Denni

--

"The opinions expressed here are entirely those of the author, though the management has been paid to keep its mouth shut if he says something they don't like."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration

body:
My mistake.  I wrote Mike Grant, it's really Mike Garcia.

The problem is that Jimbo's unblocking occurred AFTER Guanaco's actions, and while Jimbo still had a message on Mike Garcia's user page saying that he had NOT been unbanned and should not be posting.  Note that five members of the arbitration committee voted to hear the case.

RickK

Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
I don't understand this. Michael was explicitly unbanned. The account
[[User:Mike Grant]] was created in order to allow him to make edits
again, and everybody was explicitly asked *not* to revert him (except,
of course, whenever he posts rubbish).

I don't know how the arbitration went, and I have no interest in looking
at it to find out, but clearly your initial request for arbitration
against Guanaco, who did was Jimbo *did* ask us to do, was pointless.
And I'm saying that solely from the contents of your e-mail; I haven't
checked (and can't be bothered to check) whether it really was Guanaco
who unbanned him, and when, and anything else.

Timwi

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer payment

body:
Elian explained to me the difference between Bugzilla and Mediazilla.
But I still do not see well where the problem was :-(

Anthere a ?crit:
>
>
> Timwi a ?crit:
>
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>> The plain idea is * that the opportunity is taken to clean up and
>>> organise better a couple of pages (such as
>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks)
>>> [...]
>>> **If a developer is ready to take care of a matter,
>>> just mentions it on development task. If he would be
>>> interested by getting in contract, please mentions it
>>> on [[development payment proposal]] (or any title you think best)
>>
>>
>>
>> You have made no mention of MediaZilla, which saddens me a bit.  I
>> don't know about others, but personally, I would find a wiki page
>> quite difficult to keep overviewable and organised, which is why I
>> helped install MediaZilla.  I think it is easier to prioritise
>> individual items in MediaZilla, or break them up into constituent
>> parts, etc.  A developer can express their wish to take care of a
>> particular bug or feature by simply assigning the item to themselves.
>> The board can express their offer to pay for a particular feature or
>> bug by simply adding a keyword (and perhaps leaving a comment with the
>> amount).  It can't really get any easier than this.
>>
>> Timwi
>
>
>
> Hu ?
>
> I did not put it in the tasks because I understood it had already been
> set up. In your mail, you mention BugZilla, not MediaZilla, but I
> understood it was the same... just a better name :-)
>
> If MediaZilla is already set, it is no more a task to do, if not
> entirely set, of course, you are free to add it.
>
> Note that in
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks#Recent_list_of_tasks.2C_unsorted,
> your name is listed in front of BugZilla.
>
> This is *typically* a task which you would have to explain better. If
> you want to propose something, you can add it to Development_tasks
> Proposal (or whatever title you think of) and explain exactly what it is
> about
> .


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
That's a rather tall order for pages such as [[Eckvic (god)]] and [[Anarcho Coronado de Murillo]], which are about subjects that apparently exist nowhere except in the mind of El Coronado.

--Slowking Man

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Timwi<mailto:timwi at gmx.net>
  To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org<mailto:wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
  Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 1:56 PM
  Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

  Rick wrote:

  > Right now, there is a huge number of pages written by a troll named [[El
  > Coronado]] which are obvious fiction, but they are not allowed to be
  > speedy deleted, because obviously false information is not an acceptable
  > condition (by some) for speedy deletion.  Instead, we have to go through
  > the cumbersome VfD process to get rid of them.

  Your logic is really weird. "We have to go through the cumbersome VfD
  process to get rid of them." Have you thought about fixing them? ;-)
  Remove the fiction and replace it with facts (even if few).

  Timwi


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The deletion of not used pictures

body:
On nl:wikipedia a valid reason for the deletion of pictures is that they
are not used. I have asked at "the kroeg" that they should not be
deleted in anticipation of WikiCommons.

Andre Engels asked me why I thought that there will be a WikiCommons as
both he and I have so far been given the cold shoulder treatment on
WikiCommons. His question is fair. What do I base my trust on that there
will be in the near future a WikiCommons ?

Question:
*Should these pictures be deleted from nl:wikipedia ?
*When will there be a place where we can upload material that is not
used on nl:wikipedia and that will be eventually available in WikiCommons ?

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
Except that it's often difficult to determine whether something is nonsense or not. Putting it on Vfd instead of flagging it for speedy deletion allows the community to develop a consensus on whether it is valid. Take [[Paul Buissonneau]], which RickK mentioned, as an example. I listed this on Vfd because it sounded like either vanity or a fictional person. Now, the subject has been verified as a real person, the article has been rewritten, and I have motioned to keep the article. If I had just flagged it as a speedy delete candidate, an administrator would probably have given me the benefit of the doubt and deleted it, preventing Wikipedia from gaining another informative article.

--Slowking Man

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Timwi<mailto:timwi at gmx.net>
  To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org<mailto:wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
  Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 2:00 PM
  Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

  Rick wrote:

  > And what do we do about articles which CAN'T be "improved"?  What do we
  > do with such articles as [[Demish]], [...]

  I haven't had a look at the others, but ... wow. This really is some
  interesting piece of fiction. :-) Now, of course, the question is, is
  there actually such a thing as "Demish" (language or anything else)?

  If not, then I agree it should be a speedy deletion candidate.

  If yes, then it should be replaced with a stub about the Real Thing?.

  Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another troll "testing" Wikipedia

body:
http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E652809545/index.html

RickK

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
How do you "fix" something about a fictional person?

RickK

Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
Rick wrote:

> Right now, there is a huge number of pages written by a troll named [[El
> Coronado]] which are obvious fiction, but they are not allowed to be
> speedy deleted, because obviously false information is not an acceptable
> condition (by some) for speedy deletion. Instead, we have to go through
> the cumbersome VfD process to get rid of them.

Your logic is really weird. "We have to go through the cumbersome VfD
process to get rid of them." Have you thought about fixing them? ;-)
Remove the fiction and replace it with facts (even if few).

Timwi

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
Attempts to delete such fictional information have been rejected repeatedly as an unacceptable use of the speedy deletion process.

RickK

Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
Rick wrote:

> And what do we do about articles which CAN'T be "improved"? What do we
> do with such articles as [[Demish]], [...]

I haven't had a look at the others, but ... wow. This really is some
interesting piece of fiction. :-) Now, of course, the question is, is
there actually such a thing as "Demish" (language or anything else)?

If not, then I agree it should be a speedy deletion candidate.

If yes, then it should be replaced with a stub about the Real Thing?.

Timwi

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list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Jo

subject: [Wiktionary-l] The need for XML in a wiktionary context

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> The current format is adequate.  Your proposal makes no mention of
>> the possible sacrifices in terms of ease of editing, a key feature in
>> all the wikis.  How will flexibility of format be maintained?
>
>
> XML is not to edited by hand. You are absolutely right about that.
> However, the current format is not without its problems. At this
> moment an English word cannot be re-used easily in other languages.
> Things are free formatted at the moment. It would be a good thing if
> we start thinking about creating some database structures for use
> within wiktionary. It would rid us of these dratted templates like
> {{en}} and {{-en-}}. They work, it is the best thing around but they
> are ugly.
>
> What I propose at this time is to get us thinking about importing and
> exporting in an XML format. And considering changes to enhance the
> functionality within all wiktionaries and the functionality to the
> outside world.
>
> One of the aims of wikimedia is to create open content. By having our
> data in our proprietary format, we do not achieve what can be achieved.

Being able to extract the data from the English Wiktionary is something
that has always been on my mind. It is one of the considerations. Ease
of editing is another. That's why the entries in Wiktionary may not look
very pretty, but they are built up in a very logical way. It is
possible, although probably not trivial, to process them with a script.

If XML is not to be edited by hand, then how are we going to edit it? Is
it compatible with the Wiki concept?

If you want database structures, I can give you those. I have been
designing a relational database capable of storing everything that is
relevant for a dictionary. The problem is in the user interface. That's
where I'm stuck. Another problem is how to keep a history of what was
changed. Another thing is that I don't have any idea how performant my
database would be. Building a presentable report for an entry involves
solving relations between many, many tables.

Anyway, if you're interested in having a look at it, I will gladly send
you the OpenOffice.org drawing with the table structures.

Polyglot


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration

body:
All this is about is Rickk's attempt to delete evidence, which may or may
not be relevant evidence, from the /Evidence page of his arbitration case.
Participants in arbitration need to leave whatever others post on the
/Evidence page alone. I also put a copy of Jimbo's post regarding Michael in
the case for reference. I have never engaged in a dispute with Rickk, to my
memory, and have no feeling one way or the other regarding his arbitration
case.

Fred

> From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 12:58:39 -0700 (PDT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration
>
> I entered the request at [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RickK vs.
> Guanaco]] in order to deal with the problem of Guanaco repeatedly making
> unilateral unblocks of blocked users.  This problem finally came to a head
> when he was not only unblocking Michael, even though Jimbo had asked him not
> to, but he was reverting my reversions and deletions of Michael's creations
> under Mike Grant even though this was in contravention of the decision that
> Michael was on hard ban and immediate revert.  Five members of the arbitration
> committee accepted the arbitration.
>
> Instead, this arbitration has turned into an ad hominem attack on me
> personally, and has been perverted into having nothing to do with Guanaco's
> actions, but entirely about me.  Fred Bauder, a member of the arbitration
> committee, has not only manufactured evidence which is not germane to the
> situation, but actively participates in the creation of information attacking
> me which has nothing to do even with me OR Guanaco.  I have asked him to
> recuse himself from the arbitration because of his collusion in this
> manufacturing of false evidence, but he has refused.  Instead, he has posted
> Jimbo's letter to the mailing list announcing his decision to unban Michael.
> This mailing came after the creation of my request for arbitration and after
> Guanaco's unilateral unblockings, and therefore is irrelevant.  He is not only
> allowing, but encouraging, people not associated with the arbitration to post
> information which has no bearing on the arbitration, and when I attempted to
> delete it,
> he
> repeatedly re-posted it.  As I said, with the active participation of Fred
> Bauder, the arbitration has become a completely different situation from what
> was voted on.  To my thinking, this means that the members of the arbitration
> committee should be requested to re-vote on whether or not to hear the case,
> since what they voted on is not what the case has turned into.
>
> I have repeatedly said that the arbitration process does not work.  The ONE
> previous time in which I bothered to participate, not only was the person
> against whom the arbitration was asked for (Wik) allowed off without so much
> as a slap on the wrist, but Hephaestos and I, the people who requested the
> arbitration in the first place, were admonished for our "bad behavior".  I
> vowed never to participate in the arbitration process again, but Guanaco's
> outrageous behavior caused me to rethink my position.
>
> Seeing how the process has become perverted into something it was not meant to
> be, I will once again say that I will no longer participate in this process,
> and I hereby repudiate the case which has my name on it, until such as time as
> Fred Bauder recuses himself and either the so-called evidence page is turned
> into evidence about the case that the members of the committee voted to hear,
> or they are allowed to take a revote.
>
> For the final time, I will no longer participate in this process.  It is not
> only unworkable, but too easily perverted into what it was not intended to be.
>
> RickK
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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> Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
As long as they fix whatever they have done after the "test" I see no harm.

Fred

> From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 14:19:21 -0700 (PDT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Another troll "testing" Wikipedia
>
>
> http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E652809545/index.html
>
> RickK
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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> Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Paypal in French

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Is there something we need to do to enable this, or does it just work
> automatically?

It should work as is with our current account. What we need is HTML support for
the WMF wiki so that the already translated donation pages could be hosted
there.

-- mav

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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Paypal in French


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer payment

body:
Timwi wrote:
>> You have made no mention of MediaZilla, which saddens me a bit.

Anthere wrote:
> I did not put it in the tasks because I understood it had already been
> set up.

I think Timwi meant that MediaZilla should be used to organize the
developer payments, not that it is a candidate for payment. This means
that the a tag is added to bugs or feature requests that tells anyone
looking at MediaZilla that a bounty is available, and the developer
can choose to accept it by noting this in MediaZilla itself, rather
than on the wiki.

Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer payment


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic minor edits

body:
On Sun, 5 Sep 2004, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Brilliant response, Brion.  Minor edits can _not_ be detected
> algorithmically, at least not until our robot overlords take over the
> writing for us.  :-)

I for one would welcome them.

--
Daniel Mikkelsen
Copyleft Software AS


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: VfD is broken

body:
The very essence of what makes Wikipedia work is consensus.
It concerns me that a handful of inclusionists, who realise that their
views are not shared by the majority of the community, simply turn to
claiming that "VFD is broken", because it does not get their desired
results.

People have put things on VFD before that I've agreed with. I've
argued a case that they shouldn't be deleted, and it's very rare that
such an article has then gone ahead and be deleted. If you put up an
argument, and the majority *still* think that it should be deleted,
then tough. That's the way it works.

VFD *is* growing too large to be maintainable, but that's a result of
our continued growth, rather than some evil plan by the deletionists
to go on an annihilating spree. A solution to that needs to be found,
and I'm not sure what, but allowing junk to remain in the pedia is not
the answer.


body:
I guess what I suggest is that we thank them for whatever data they collect
and use it to correct any problems they find to the extent we can without
disrupting the Wiki mechanism. If Wikipedia can stand amateur editors it can
stand amateur researchers, especially if we welcome whatever they discover.

Good ideas have already come out of these researches.

Fred

> From: ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004 00:15:31 +0200
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Another troll "testing" Wikipedia
>
> The harm is that everyone and their brother is trying to be a smart
> ass by posting these "researches" and "investigations into the
> effectiveness of the wiki system" on their stupid blogs and its
> turning into some lame trend of late.


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The deletion of not used pictures

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> On nl:wikipedia a valid reason for the deletion of pictures is that they
> are not used. I have asked at "the kroeg" that they should not be
> deleted in anticipation of WikiCommons.
>
> Andre Engels asked me why I thought that there will be a WikiCommons as
> both he and I have so far been given the cold shoulder treatment on
> WikiCommons. His question is fair. What do I base my trust on that there
> will be in the near future a WikiCommons ?
>
> Question:
> *Should these pictures be deleted from nl:wikipedia ?

Hello,

It's up to the community to make a choice about that. On fr: we have lot
of flowers pictures that are included in a wikipedia:project page for
future usage. I would say : create articles so the pictures can be used.

> *When will there be a place where we can upload material that is not
> used on nl:wikipedia and that will be eventually available in WikiCommons ?

Maybe we should start to gather needs, thinks about how we can reuse
part of MediaWiki code to build the wikicommon engine and then start
coding it.

Some changes will have to be made to MediaWiki to be able to use a
second database for pictures :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Danny from harassing me.

body:
This issue is really getting tiresome.  Danny, a Wikipedia
administrator, is again harassing me.  Danny keeps jumping
into articles where a discussion about the content is
taking place...and instead of offering constructive
criticism about how the article should be changed, he makes
multiple ad homenim attacks towards me.

For instance, consider the recent issue over what should be
mentioned in the article on [[Maimonides]] (Rabbi Moses ben
Maimon.)  I have been doing a lot of reading on this issue
for a number of years.  I am trying to have the points of
view of several mainstream Maimonidean scholars included in
the article. Here is the situation, pre-Danny:

I brought forth quotes and citations to illustrate the
point of view of these people, who are generally regarded
as experts in the field.  In contrast, Jayjg won't let me
quote anybody, and is making the claim that this is part of
some Orthodox versus non-Orthodox struggle (It isn't, and I
do not understand where his idea comes from; ironically, I
haven't quoted any figures from non-Orthodox schools of
thought!)  I have repeatedly told Jay that I would be happy
for this article to include points of view from people with
other views, and I am still waiting for him to bring
examples.  He hasn't offered any at all.

Thus, the only points of view mentioned so far are the ones
from the sources I brought.

JFW had a different complaint. He says that he believes
that somewhere, some Orthodox rabbis must have written on
this topic, and that we should include their views as well.
This isn't a problem, as I totally agree with JFW. I would
be very happy if brought forth their views on these issues.
So far he hasn't. But I look forward to learning from any
other points of view that JFW may yet find.  This is how
Wikipedia articles grow and improve. No problem, right?

But into this Danny started making ad homenim attacks.
Danny interjected:

 > Oh, but RK, you mentioned that you frequent the
 > JTS library. They certainly have an Or Sameach, as
 > would any yeshiva in New York and Westchester. For
 > people who are genuinely intersted in Jewish
scholarship,
 > they are far more accessible than any journal you can
quote.
 > Or are you incapable of conducting "scholarship" that
does
 > not support your POV

This personal attack is a violation of Wikipedia standards,
yet Danny uses his position as an administrator to get away
with repeated personal abuse. He is saying that I am
dishonestly not reporting points-of-view that I do not
agree with.

(A) That is a total lie, and a defamation of character.

(B) Curiously, Danny is unable to disagree with a single
sentence I contributed; he himself offers no reason to
doubt that the quotes I offered are accurate.  He certainly
offers no other citations.

(C) If Danny thinks that other important points of view
exist, then by all means go find them and help contribue to
the article. But do not slander a Wikipedia contributor for
not including points of view that they are not even aware
of!  We have thousands of contributors who bring new points
of view every day. Do we harass them for not bringing
counter-points-of-view?  No! We'd drive away all of
contributors if we did this! If we think something is
missing, we simply add it. Is this unreasonable?

(D) Danny is lying about my ability to go to a library and
look up the specific Hebrew sources that JFW requested.
See, Danny and I have spoken on the telephone many times,
and he knows that I do not speak Hebrew.  When I want to
understand what a Hebrew text means, I go to established
authorities known for expertise in translation, and I do
not attempt to translate it myself.  Danny certainly had no
problem with any other user on Wikipedia doing this. Why am
I the only person who has to read ancient Hebrew in order
to write on Judaica articles? Do all of our contributors to
Christianity articles have to read ancient Greek? That is
just insane.

(E) Danny writes "As for the topic at hand, RK, since the
vast majority of material on this topic is in Hebrew, as
are all the primary sources, you seem incapable of
conducting any 'serious scholarship.' "  There are two huge
problems with this personal attack

* Danny is confused about the difference between original
scholarship, which we DO NOT accept on Wikipedia, and
describing the views of scholars, which is encouraged. I am
quoting established authorities and summarizing their
views, as is standard for Wikipedia. If he really disagrees
the views that I have described, then he is free to look
for other views to add. Isn't that always the standard
operating procedure?  He should not dishonestly attribute
what I am writing as my own original research, in order to
impugn the views of scholars he may disagree with.

* Danny is making factualy false claims.  A huge amount of
scholarship on this topic is in English, by many of the
world's leading scholars. Any claim to the contray is a bad
joke.  Just go to the huge JTS or HUC libraries in
Manhattan, and you will see that half of their collections
are in the English language, including many fine scholarly
journals.  In fact, more Judaica is written in English than
in any other language in the world.  Danny's factually
false claim to the contrary does not improve the article,
it is just more harassment of me.

Danny's personal attacks have been a long-term problem, and
we really need to do something about this. He needs to stop
following me around from article to article making ad
homenim comments.  Being a Wikipedia administrator means
being a role model, not someone who uses a personal grudge
to harass users.

Robert (RK)

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from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer payment

body:
Angela_ wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>>You have made no mention of MediaZilla, which saddens me a bit.
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>I did not put it in the tasks because I understood it had already been
>>set up.
>
> I think Timwi meant that MediaZilla should be used to organize the
> developer payments, not that it is a candidate for payment.
> This means that a tag is added to bugs or feature requests that tells
> anyone looking at MediaZilla that a bounty is available, and the
> developer can choose to accept it by noting this in MediaZilla itself,
> rather than on the wiki.

This is entirely correct (i.e. this is what I meant); thank you for
clarifying this for me.  Sorry I wasn't sufficiently clear about it.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re:VfD is broken

body:
On Mon, 6 Sep 2004 13:50:43 +1200, Chris Wood <standsongrace at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Deletionism is a problem because it is against current Wikipedia policies.

Both extremes - extreme deletionism, and extreme inclusionism - are
against current Wikipedia policies.

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
John Lee wrote:

>> 4. Articles about "non-notable" stuff does not hurt Wikipedia. Since
>> noone cares about the stuff, noone will link to it and noone will
>> search for it and NOONE will ever see it!
>
> A keyword search can easily bring up non-notable articles. When somebody
> sees an entry resembling a blog posting, what will they think of Wikipedia?

They will think "Whee! There's stuff to improve!" and become a contributor.

> If it's a notable article, it will be improved anyway.

An article goes through VfD for how long? 5 days? 7 days? Hardly enough
to give people time to improve a bad article on an obscure topic.

> Honestly, if I had to pick between deleting a
> (hypothetical) article on Ronald Reagan which is full of unrelated
> nonsense about doing drugs or keeping it in the hopes somebody would
> improve it, I'd do the former without skipping a beat.

Of course, that is an extreme example. How about Anthere's recent example:

	The '''medlar''' is a [[fruit]].

Admittedly, this article is:
* short
* incomplete

However, it is also:
* factually accurate
* NPOV
* actually something I didn't know!

Hence, it is useful.

> Having an article only gives the impression to readers that we tolerate junk.

Which is good.  If we give the impression to readers that we tolerate
only full-grown complete articles, we will detract contributors who are
perhaps not quite as good a writer as they would like to be.

> I'd rather
> receive complaints from readers that we don't have an article on Ronald
> Reagan than complaints that our article of Ronald Reagan is useless,
> which in turn will lead to questioning the credibility of other innocent
> articles.

The missing of an article on Ronald Reagan would similarly lead to
questioning the completeness of other innocent articles.

Now, please don't get me wrong; I am not a complete inclusionist,
either.  For example, I too don't think it would make sense to have a
separate article on every single school anyone ever went to. However, I
have been wanting to contribute to advanced topics in Computation Theory
and Complexity Theory, but have been a bit hesitant to do so because
some of the things I want to write about would start out as simple stubs
and risk being deleted.

Timwi


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> On nl:wikipedia a valid reason for the deletion of pictures is that they
> are not used. I have asked at "the kroeg" that they should not be
> deleted in anticipation of WikiCommons.

Certainly if you want to keep the images just in case there will be a
WikiCommons sometime in the future, you can easily save them on your
local hard disk until such time?  :-)

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 14

body:
Rick K wrote:

> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 13:23:56 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <20040905202356.58062.qmail at web60604.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> And what do we do about articles which CAN'T be "improved"?  What do we do with such articles as [[Demish ]], [[Anarcho Coronado de Murillo ]], [[Eckvic Culture]], [[Eckvic (god)]], [[Eckvic]], [[Anarcho Coronado de Murillo ]], [[Francisco V?squez de Coronado]], [[Political Leader of The United Socialist Union ]], [[United Socialist Union]] and [[Coronadists]]?
>
> RickK
>
> Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Rebecca wrote:
> >
> > allowing junk to remain in the pedia is not the answer.
>
> Nobody is suggesting to "allow junk to remain in the pedia". People are
> instead suggesting to get rid of the junk by improving it rather than
> deleting it.
>
>

Often, improved junk is still junk. Trying to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse usually results in a fancy sow's ear. Painting the Lada does not make it any less a Lada. Moreover, I do not detect a rapid move by either oldtimers or newbies to clean up the junk, which will languish in wiki's pages until the packrats (sorry - I mean the preservationists) take a holiday.

--
? "The opinions expressed here are entirely those of the author, though the management has been paid to keep its mouth shut if he says something they don't like."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Visit my Wikipedia user page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3ADwindrim
Do you ICQ? I do - 276534369 Magpie


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> On nl:wikipedia a valid reason for the deletion of pictures is that
>> they are not used. I have asked at "the kroeg" that they should not
>> be deleted in anticipation of WikiCommons.
>>
>> Andre Engels asked me why I thought that there will be a WikiCommons
>> as both he and I have so far been given the cold shoulder treatment
>> on WikiCommons. His question is fair. What do I base my trust on that
>> there will be in the near future a WikiCommons ?
>>
>> Question:
>> *Should these pictures be deleted from nl:wikipedia ?
>
>
> Would people insist on deleting them if they are linked from your
> user page? Lots of people on en: have personal galleries of
> images, not all of which are presently being used in articles.
> They're useful as "placeholders", so other people can just include
> them, instead of duplicating effort by uploading their own pictures
> of the same things.
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
These pictures have nothing to do with me. I have my own pictures
waiting for the big decision. What I want to know is when are we going
to have Wikicommons.
What is the point of there being personal galleries ? What is the point
of having these pictures on my hard drive ? Does it help someone who is
looking for some pictures ?
The question is, what is to be done, what timeframe until there is a
WikiCommons ?

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration

body:
Rick wrote:

> I entered the request at [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RickK vs.
> Guanaco]] in order to deal with the problem of Guanaco repeatedly making
> unilateral unblocks of blocked users.  This problem finally came to a
> head when he was not only unblocking Michael, even though Jimbo had
> asked him not to, but he was reverting my reversions and deletions of
> Michael's creations under Mike Grant even though this was in
> contravention of the decision that Michael was on hard ban and immediate
> revert.

I don't understand this. Michael was explicitly unbanned. The account
[[User:Mike Grant]] was created in order to allow him to make edits
again, and everybody was explicitly asked *not* to revert him (except,
of course, whenever he posts rubbish).

I don't know how the arbitration went, and I have no interest in looking
at it to find out, but clearly your initial request for arbitration
against Guanaco, who did was Jimbo *did* ask us to do, was pointless.
And I'm saying that solely from the contents of your e-mail; I haven't
checked (and can't be bothered to check) whether it really was Guanaco
who unbanned him, and when, and anything else.

Timwi


body:
As I posted in the other thread about this; "experiments" of this
nature are very dangerous to the Wikipedia project, why? There is no
assurance people will revert their false and "experimental" edits from
articles after they have finished their "experiment". Secondly, these
so called experiments are getting more publicity and could encourage
more people to do the same.

Example, a story about this experiment was published on Slashdot today.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/05/1339219&tid=146&tid=1


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> What is the point of there being personal galleries ? What is the point
> of having these pictures on my hard drive ? Does it help someone who is
> looking for some pictures ?

People trying to use Wikipedia just to find images deserve to not find
any. The purpose of having them on your hard disk is that you can upload
them when a relevant article is written. The point of having "personal
galleries" is essentially the same, but more convenient because then the
image is already uploaded, and anyone can add it to a relevant article
(and remove it from the gallery).

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer payment

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Now, will the developer be also able to note on mediazilla his
> availabilities, the amount proposed, the time it will take, the amount,
> etc...

Of course! Anyone can leave any kind of comment on any bug/item.

(At first I didn't think this was necessary because I thought the Board
would dictate the amount of money spent on each item.)

We could also introduce keywords such as:

"payment-offered"     (the Board offers a certain sum for this item,
                       but nobody has accepted the offer yet)
"payment-requested"   (someone would like to fix this bug/code this
                       feature, but not for free)
"payment-agreed"      (the item is assigned to a developer who has
                       come to an agreement with the Board as to the
                       amount of money paid for completion)

If you wish, we could also enable the (currently disabled) "Status
Whiteboard" feature (simply a text box where you can enter some text,
e.g. "?30, 21.Okt 2004" or something) which would allow us to note the
agreed amount and timeframe for each item (so people wouldn't have to
search through the comments if there are many).

> I mean, just putting a tag to say "I will do it" will not be enough.

It was enough on LiveJournal, but okay :) I don't think there will be
any problem with any of this on MediaZilla.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
Rick wrote:

> Right now, there is a huge number of pages written by a troll named [[El
> Coronado]] which are obvious fiction, but they are not allowed to be
> speedy deleted, because obviously false information is not an acceptable
> condition (by some) for speedy deletion.  Instead, we have to go through
> the cumbersome VfD process to get rid of them.

Your logic is really weird. "We have to go through the cumbersome VfD
process to get rid of them." Have you thought about fixing them? ;-)
Remove the fiction and replace it with facts (even if few).

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
Rick wrote:

> And what do we do about articles which CAN'T be "improved"?  What do we
> do with such articles as [[Demish]], [...]

I haven't had a look at the others, but ... wow. This really is some
interesting piece of fiction. :-) Now, of course, the question is, is
there actually such a thing as "Demish" (language or anything else)?

If not, then I agree it should be a speedy deletion candidate.

If yes, then it should be replaced with a stub about the Real Thing?.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: VfD is broken

body:
How did something which was only first created on August 26 suddenly become policy without a vote or an open discussion?

And if you think that inclusionists haven't been arguing to get rid of VfD, then you obviously haven't been reading all of the posts.

RickK

Chris Wood <standsongrace at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, the things which CAN be quickly deleted are very limited.
Right now, there is a huge number of pages written by a troll named [[El
Coronado]] which are obvious fiction, but they are not allowed to be speedy
deleted, because obviously false information is not an acceptable condition
(by some) for speedy deletion. Instead, we have to go through the
cumbersome VfD process to get rid of them. If obviously false information
was an accpetable criterion, then we could have gotten rid of all of this
user's creations already, and we wouldn't have several different entries on
VfD for them.
>
> If there were no VfD, what would be the inclusionists' acceptable process
for getting rid of this false information?

I don't think any "inclusionists" have argued to get rid of VfD. We're just
saying it isn't working like it was originally designed to. I don't have an
alternative process, just a recommendation that people actually follow
policy on which articles should be listed on VfD - this is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Importance

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:

> That's a rather tall order for pages such as [[Eckvic (god)]] and [[Anarcho Coronado de Murillo]], which are about subjects that apparently exist nowhere except in the mind of El Coronado.

Yes, sorry; I didn't think it'd be *that* bad. Of course, those kinds of
contributions should be speedy deletion candidates.

Timwi


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Developer payment

body:
Angela_ a ?crit:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>>>You have made no mention of MediaZilla, which saddens me a bit.
>>
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>I did not put it in the tasks because I understood it had already been
>>set up.
>
>
> I think Timwi meant that MediaZilla should be used to organize the
> developer payments, not that it is a candidate for payment. This means
> that the a tag is added to bugs or feature requests that tells anyone
> looking at MediaZilla that a bounty is available, and the developer
> can choose to accept it by noting this in MediaZilla itself, rather
> than on the wiki.
>
> Angela.

hummmm, okay !

Now, will the developer be also able to note on mediazilla his
availabilities, the amount proposed, the time it will take, the amount,
etc...

I mean, just putting a tag to say "I will do it" will not be enough.

But either place will be fine.


from_name: Eric B. and Rakim

subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD is broken

body:
> > 1. There is no reason to delete any of the pages there at all.
> > Copyvios already has a special page. And there is also already
> > candidates for speedy deletion and simple vandalism that is deleted on
> > sight.
>
>Please provide examples. Speedy deletions are for contributions that
>don't make sense. VfD is for those that do but aren't encyclopedic.

Examples of what? Examples of what would happen in the theoretical situation
that articles wasn't deleted due to VfD?

> > 2. Everyone using that page to delete articles is sabotaging Wikipedia
> > and should be blocked.
>
>I will not argue with trolls, I will not argue with trolls, I will not
>argue with trolls...

I'd like to retract that statement because "sabotaging" implies intent.
However, the outcome is unfortunately the same even if the intention is
good.

> > 4. Articles about "non-notable" stuff does not hurt Wikipedia. Since
> > noone cares about the stuff, noone will link to it and noone will
> > search for it and NOONE will ever see it!
>
>A keyword search can easily bring up non-notable articles. When somebody
>sees an entry resembling a blog posting, what will they think of Wikipedia?

Really? Looking at VfD I couldn't find very many articles that probably had
been indexed by Google.  But the article Puchland that most on the people on
VfD wants to delete ought to have been indexed because it has been there
since 2003.

Google can't bring it up somehow. Yahoo can, but wont unless the search is
specific ("israel forum" works i.e.). And if I made such a search, I'm sure
I would be more satisfied with a decent description of an online-forum than
no hits at all.

Hypothetically, if every person that lists an article on VfD also listed how
they encountered the article, what would be the most common methods of
encountering for those articles that ALSO are deleted? I guess:

1. Recent changes 90%
2.  Checking user contributions of specific users. 7%
3. Links from specific user's pages. 3%

And maybe once in a blue moon someone would say "encountered it while
searching for something else". Wikipedia is very good at organising itself
automagically and that is why VfD is not needed.

If there was a function that counted page hits this assertion could be
proven. Especially if it only counted page hits from users that are not
logged in. Then maybe people would realise it is not worth the time, effort
and flames to save a handful of people from visiting a page that they might
or might not wanted to see.

Btw, if you are sure that there is a method that "can easily bring up
non-notable articles", please explain what it is. Lets also say that
"easily" in this context means:

1. Does not involve the "Wikipedia:" or "Special:"-namespace.
2.  A sucess rate of 5% (debatable) or higher.
3. The method is not restricted to a certain area of Wikipedia.

Tricky, isn't it? :)

> > 6. And cause those articles are never read by anyone it doesn't hurt
> > to remove them from Wikipedia. But that's not why vfd is sabotaging
> > Wikipedia. It is because 50-80% of the articles listed there should
> > not and will not be deleted. The authors of those articles are forced
> > to defend their work to people that just haven't got a clue and never
> > will. Then they have to engage in more pointless arguing with the
> > deletionists just to prevent them from destroying Wikipedia!
>
>Please provide examples. A good deal of the time, the authors don't
>defend their works. Contrary to common belief, very few people who visit
>VfD are rabid deletionists who will vote delete for an arbitrary reason.
>Most of us actually take the time to Google the article's subject, etc.
>The author doesn't have to do much. I've VfDed a lot of articles in my
>time, and a lot of them were kept, not thanks to the author's
>intervention, but the research of other kind-hearted Wikipedians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vfd#Maine_Mall_--_Add_to_this_discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vfd#Gay_Nigger_Association_of_America__--_Add_to_this_discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vfd#Pyle_MS_--_Add_to_this_discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vfd#Dan_O.27Connor_--_Add_to_this_discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vfd#Most_visited_websites_--_Add_to_this_discussion

etc...

1. A lot of time was wasted by the persons listing those pages.

2. Some voluntarily wastes their time by voting. Their life, their problem.

3. VfD's problem is that XX% of those that voted "keep" did not do it
because they enjoy wasting time but because they feel that they are forced
to defend good articles from being destroyed. Atleast poor "anthony (see
warning)", who voted "keep" 38 times, didn't really seem to enjoy the
process.

> > 7. The Wikipedia concept is that anyone can edit a page and that only
> > those who edits a page gets to determine what information goes into a
> > page. Its like "do it yourself cause you can't tell anyone else what
> > to do cause there is no way to force them to do it." Now that concept
> > doesn't work with vfd cause someone can say "uuuh.. delete unless it
> > is improved in a week.". That person basically forces those who care
> > about the article to write what they know about it or it will be
> > killed. It is not fair at all.
>
>Well, honestly, tell me, what is there to write about someone's smelly
>socks? If it's a notable article, it will be improved anyway. Are you
>suggesting we tolerate garbage just because the garbage's topic is
>something notable? Honestly, if I had to pick between deleting a

1. You believe there is a defintion for what garbage is. There is not. What
you call garbage is what others call stubs.

2. If we didnt allow garbage, Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is. If we do not
continue to allow garbage, Wikipedia will not grow.

>(hypothetical) article on Ronald Reagan which is full of unrelated
>nonsense about doing drugs or keeping it in the hopes somebody would

Is this a straw man? Anyway, I find it easier to do: click edit, select all,
press delete, write "Ronald Reagan was USA:s president 1984-1992", press
save than to do: search for a non-existant article about an American
president, click edit, write the same stuff, press save.

Especially the searching  and finding of non-existant articles about stuff
I'm not at all interested in is so annoying.

>improve it, I'd do the former without skipping a beat. Having an article
>only gives the impression to readers that we tolerate junk. I'd rather

We do tolerate "junk". And if you mean that VfD is somehow effecting the
"junk"-level of Wikipedia then you are wrong.  There are so many articles
that could have been listed on VfD but aren't just because there are so many
articles that is added each day.

You also sound very arrogant when you use the words "junk" and "garbage" in
these contexts.

> > 8. As an example:
> >
> > NASA Project Gemini Familiarization Manual -- Add to this discussion
> >
> > The flight manual for the Gemini spacecraft - excellent Wikisource
> > material. Transwiki and delete --Rlandmann 00:33, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
> >
> >    * Transwiki and delete. Geogre 00:54, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
> >    * Transwiki and delete. GeneralPatton 00:55, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
> >    * Have moved article to Wikisource. Please Delete DarylC 2 Sep 2004
> >
> > Which of these comments is a total waste of everyones time?
> > Rlandmann's is because despite the fact that he had an excellent idea
> > he was to damn lazy to carry it out himself as he easily could. Geogre
> > and GeneralPatton just seem to show off their excellent talents in
> > agreeing. Finally, DarylC, the primary author of the page actually
> > does some work and moves the article. Very good DarylC.
> >
> > The problem with this is that atleast thousand people have been forced
> > to read this meaningless junk because Rlandmann didn't place the
> > suggestion to transwiki on the article's talk page which would have
> > been the right thing to do.
>
>You are missing the whole point of VfD. The point is to ask a wide
>audience - that "thousand people" - "Is this article worth keeping, or
>do we move it elsewhere/delete it?". The point of VfD is consensus.
>Placing the request on the Talk leads to a very very limited audience -
>how many Wikipedians read Talk pages on a regular basis? And unitarily
>moving it is even worse.

1. Rlandmann asked thousand people if NASA Project Gemini Familiarization
Manual should be "transwikied"... 3 people responded. Doesnt seem very
efficient.

2. To WHO does it matter what happens with NASA Project Gemini
Familiarization Manual? To the ones who read that article's talk page.

3. If someone gets a consensus consisting of the article's talk page's
audience which includes the primary author of the page. Wouldn't then that
consensus have as much if not more weight than a consensus received from
VfD?

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

To those who believe that VfD is flawed, could this idea or some alteration
of it be a way to improve it?

> > 10. The only way to fix vfd would be to allow people to cast the
> > identical vote on range of articles listed there.  Then you would be
> > able to vote "keep doesn't hurt wikipedia" (or whatever) on each and
> > every article.

_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to
get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD is broken

body:
Eric B. and Rakim wrote:

> 1. There is no reason to delete any of the pages there at all.
> Copyvios already has a special page. And there is also already
> candidates for speedy deletion and simple vandalism that is deleted on
> sight.

Please provide examples. Speedy deletions are for contributions that
don't make sense. VfD is for those that do but aren't encyclopedic.

> 2. Everyone using that page to delete articles is sabotaging Wikipedia
> and should be blocked.

I will not argue with trolls, I will not argue with trolls, I will not
argue with trolls...

> 3. The page itself should be deleted since it just can't be fixed.

See above.

> 4. Articles about "non-notable" stuff does not hurt Wikipedia. Since
> noone cares about the stuff, noone will link to it and noone will
> search for it and NOONE will ever see it!

A keyword search can easily bring up non-notable articles. When somebody
sees an entry resembling a blog posting, what will they think of Wikipedia?

> 5. Except for people that actually  GO AND LOOK for useless articles.
> But if you do, it's your own fault that you find them. Casual surfers
> and non-wikipedians wont find them.

See above.

> 6. And cause those articles are never read by anyone it doesn't hurt
> to remove them from Wikipedia. But that's not why vfd is sabotaging
> Wikipedia. It is because 50-80% of the articles listed there should
> not and will not be deleted. The authors of those articles are forced
> to defend their work to people that just haven't got a clue and never
> will. Then they have to engage in more pointless arguing with the
> deletionists just to prevent them from destroying Wikipedia!

Please provide examples. A good deal of the time, the authors don't
defend their works. Contrary to common belief, very few people who visit
VfD are rabid deletionists who will vote delete for an arbitrary reason.
Most of us actually take the time to Google the article's subject, etc.
The author doesn't have to do much. I've VfDed a lot of articles in my
time, and a lot of them were kept, not thanks to the author's
intervention, but the research of other kind-hearted Wikipedians.

> 7. The Wikipedia concept is that anyone can edit a page and that only
> those who edits a page gets to determine what information goes into a
> page. Its like "do it yourself cause you can't tell anyone else what
> to do cause there is no way to force them to do it." Now that concept
> doesn't work with vfd cause someone can say "uuuh.. delete unless it
> is improved in a week.". That person basically forces those who care
> about the article to write what they know about it or it will be
> killed. It is not fair at all.

Well, honestly, tell me, what is there to write about someone's smelly
socks? If it's a notable article, it will be improved anyway. Are you
suggesting we tolerate garbage just because the garbage's topic is
something notable? Honestly, if I had to pick between deleting a
(hypothetical) article on Ronald Reagan which is full of unrelated
nonsense about doing drugs or keeping it in the hopes somebody would
improve it, I'd do the former without skipping a beat. Having an article
only gives the impression to readers that we tolerate junk. I'd rather
receive complaints from readers that we don't have an article on Ronald
Reagan than complaints that our article of Ronald Reagan is useless,
which in turn will lead to questioning the credibility of other innocent
articles.

> 8. As an example:
>
> NASA Project Gemini Familiarization Manual -- Add to this discussion
>
> The flight manual for the Gemini spacecraft - excellent Wikisource
> material. Transwiki and delete --Rlandmann 00:33, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
>
>    * Transwiki and delete. Geogre 00:54, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
>    * Transwiki and delete. GeneralPatton 00:55, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
>    * Have moved article to Wikisource. Please Delete DarylC 2 Sep 2004
>
> Which of these comments is a total waste of everyones time?
> Rlandmann's is because despite the fact that he had an excellent idea
> he was to damn lazy to carry it out himself as he easily could. Geogre
> and GeneralPatton just seem to show off their excellent talents in
> agreeing. Finally, DarylC, the primary author of the page actually
> does some work and moves the article. Very good DarylC.
>
> The problem with this is that atleast thousand people have been forced
> to read this meaningless junk because Rlandmann didn't place the
> suggestion to transwiki on the article's talk page which would have
> been the right thing to do.

You are missing the whole point of VfD. The point is to ask a wide
audience - that "thousand people" - "Is this article worth keeping, or
do we move it elsewhere/delete it?". The point of VfD is consensus.
Placing the request on the Talk leads to a very very limited audience -
how many Wikipedians read Talk pages on a regular basis? And unitarily
moving it is even worse.

> 9. Example2: SimonP decided to list Puchland. Puchland seem to be a
> minor webforum that nobody cares about. Because of point 4 above, this
> listing too, is completele useless. And as in point 8 the proper way
> would have been to propose deletion on that articles talk page. Noone
> but those concerned should be the ones taking the decision.

See above.

> 10. The only way to fix vfd would be to allow people to cast the
> identical vote on range of articles listed there.  Then you would be
> able to vote "keep doesn't hurt wikipedia" (or whatever) on each and
> every article.  However, the deletionists would never allow such an
> option because it only takes a handful of people to vote in that way
> for the whole system to break down.

As an unabashed "deletionist", I'd oppose that because that doesn't make
sense.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: VfD is broken

body:
I'm not Rebecca, but please allow me to try addressing some of your
queries...

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Rebecca wrote:
>
>> The very essence of what makes Wikipedia work is consensus.
>>
> Fine!  Then why are we bothering with votes?

I don't understand. Voting gauges whether there is a consensus or not.

>> People have put things on VFD before that I've agreed with. I've
>> argued a case that they shouldn't be deleted, and it's very rare that
>> such an article has then gone ahead and be deleted. If you put up an
>> argument, and the majority *still* think that it should be deleted,
>> then tough. That's the way it works.
>>
> Maybe that's the way you wan't it to work.  Why should I need to put
> together an argument about something that I know nothing about just to
> try to convince someone who knows even less about the subject that
> it's worth keeping?

You don't need to. You can research it on Google, or let somebody else
handle it. If nobody does, perhaps that's an indication the article's
not notable enough to be encyclopedic. The audience on VfD is large
enough for somebody to respond sooner or later, despite your argument
that the majority of the community doesn't visit it.

>> VFD *is* growing too large to be maintainable, but that's a result of
>> our continued growth, rather than some evil plan by the deletionists
>> to go on an annihilating spree. A solution to that needs to be found,
>> and I'm not sure what, but allowing junk to remain in the pedia is not
>> the answer.
>>
> Much of this so-called "junk" is perfectly harmless.  General growth
> is only part of the reason.  Nobody is suggesting that the
> deletionists are even capable of concocting an evil plan.  I find them
> more like a Dr. Strangelove who will struggle for survival even if it
> kills him.  The delusional missions of zealots are always pursued with
> the best of intentions ... a phalanx of perfectionists in chasing the
> impossible.
> Many of the disputed articles are stubs, and even in their totality
> will likely take less space on the server than the verbiage about
> whether to delete them.

Stubs yes, but their notability and/or verifiability is another. What
will people think of how trustworthy our information is if we permit
rubbish such as a biased advertisement for a discussion forum to
languish on Wikipedia?

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:

> Except that it's often difficult to determine whether something is
> nonsense or not.

No offence, but this sounds a bit like your thinking is a little black
and white.  Either speedy-delete everything or nothing.  Of course, if
it is difficult to determine whether something is nonsense or not, then
obviously it should not be a speedy deletion candidate, because
community input is necessary.

The "Demish" article, however, is easy for me (as a languages
enthusiast) to dismiss as nonsense.  Hence, I (being a sysop) should be
allowed to speedy-delete it.

Maybe it should be made possible to list something on VfD to bring it to
the community's attention, but then allow sysops who are knowledgeable
in the relevant field to delete both the article and the listing.

Timwi


from_name: Stephen Adair

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD is broken

body:
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from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
I think it would be a good idea to have the information in a tab
called "Metrics", which could have those numbers, as well as the
number of unique authors, and number of edits. (And of course some
heuristic to filter out effects from edit wars, etc.)

BTW, this is the recent experiment that has caused the latest buzz:
http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E652809545/index.html

Note that each of the five articles used in this person's experiment
are very low traffic - one had only three authors and four edits,
another had two authors and two edits. Certainly it was not
Wikipedia's finest hour, but he certainly chose (and if an appropriate
word, cherrypicked) the right ones to highlight the weaknesses.

Articles were: Layzie Bone; Magni; Empuries; Philipsburg, PA; Bernice
Johnson Reagon

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 11:20:05 -0400, Alex Krupp <amk63 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> On the top of each Wikipedia article should be two things: The time
> since each article was last edited and the average number of views
> that article gets per day. This would form a rough system of
> accountability for every article. For example, a page that hasn't
> been edited in twenty days and gets over a hundred views per days
> would be likely to contain fewer errors than a page that was last
> edited three days ago and gets four views per day.
>
> This way one could even come up with a simple heuristic combining the
> two statistics so that editors could surf through articles looking
> for the ones most likely to contain mistakes. One could also surf
> through the articles least likely to contain mistakes as an
> admittedly imperfect although useful way of finding articles  to
> nominate for 1.0. I know you can check all of the edits and their
> dates through the edit history, but there is no easy way for the
> average user to check how many views any given page gets. This could
> potentially go a great way for increasing the amount of faith the
> average population has in Wikipedia.
>
> Also, I should mention this has been inspired by the recent
> controversy involving the article by Al Fasoldt and the subsequent
> discussion on this list and now slashdot.
>
> Alex Krupp
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Accuracy Heuristics


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing Wikibookclub

body:
Hello

Some of us have decided to try a new experiment with Wikipedia and Wikibooks:
the Wikipedia Bookclub. Interested participants will read the same book and
discuss it on mIRC, then work together to write an an article about the book
and potential study guides for Wikibooks. I'd like to invite everyone to join
in, pick new books, start new book clubs if you dont like the book this one is
reading, and help make this an enjoyable experiment in producing information
through community cooperation.

The first book we will read is "Andersonville" by MacKinlay Kantor, a
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the infamous prison camp for Confederate officers
and political figures after the U.S. Civil War.

For more information, to sign up, to suggest books, or to form parallel clubs
to read other books, go to [[Wikipedia:Wikibookclub]].

Thanks

Danny


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
The harm is that everyone and their brother is trying to be a smart
ass by posting these "researches" and "investigations into the
effectiveness of the wiki system" on their stupid blogs and its
turning into some lame trend of late.

On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 15:33:23 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> As long as they fix whatever they have done after the "test" I see no harm.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 14:19:21 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Another troll "testing" Wikipedia
>
>
> >
> >
> > http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E652809545/index.html
> >
> > RickK
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kiss All

subject: [Foundation-l] a proposal about sharing free ideas

body:
share ideas and coordinate their implementation

Link to request on mailing list: [1] (http://mail.wikipedia.org/)

Naming suggestions: Share your ideas

Domain name: http://ideas.wikimedia.org

Scope: Good ideas are much more important than just knowledge. We are
already trying to share valuable knowledge nowadays, but how about the
invaluable ideas? We, human beings in this plantet, should share any
ideas beneficial to ourselves by posting it right after it flashes in
your mind, discuss it with others, and even find a way to realize it.
Isn't it great!

Details: share your ideas
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/share_your_ideas
Proposer:kissall
People interested joining:
kissall
Relevant links:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kissall

--
Be good....


from_name: J.F. de Wolff

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop Danny from harassing me

body:
The Maimonides issue has spun completely out of control, like many other
pages where RK decides to take over. He deposits a lot of research, most of
which is only of marginal relevance to the issue, and causes long and
heated debates on talk pages whether these insertions are justified. Often,
vital POVs are not represented, because RK favours particular sources for
his research and (?conveniently) forgets to mention that these POVs exist.

I do not argue with Robert over pages that don't have my interest, but we
recently had a major flurry over [[Artscroll]], a Jewish publisher of
religious texts. Robert wanted to insert allegations expressed on mailing
lists concerning the historicity and factuality of the content of many of
these books. While some of these allegations came from respectable sources,
some others were simple paranoid mumblings by mailinglist contributors.

And so it carries on. RK moves his focus to a different page, annoys a few
vested contributors, and spins off another discussion. This has been the
stuff of various mediation and arbitration requests, including a pending
one, and I'm seriously wondering where this is heading.

[[User:Jfdwolff]]

------------------------------------
    jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk
------------------------------------


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Danny could be more courteous.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 18:05:31 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Danny from harassing me.
>
>> Oh, but RK, you mentioned that you frequent the
>> JTS library. They certainly have an Or Sameach, as
>> would any yeshiva in New York and Westchester. For
>> people who are genuinely intersted in Jewish
> scholarship,
>> they are far more accessible than any journal you can
> quote.
>> Or are you incapable of conducting "scholarship" that
> does
>> not support your POV


body:
It's headed for trouble, but how would you characterize what RK does in
terms of Wikipedia policies? What Wikipedia principles does he violate? And
if that search proves difficult, what policies need to be made?

Fred

> From: "J.F. de Wolff" <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2004 03:41:52 +0100
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org, daniwo59 at aol.com
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop Danny from harassing me
>
>
>
>
> The Maimonides issue has spun completely out of control, like many other
> pages where RK decides to take over. He deposits a lot of research, most of
> which is only of marginal relevance to the issue, and causes long and
> heated debates on talk pages whether these insertions are justified. Often,
> vital POVs are not represented, because RK favours particular sources for
> his research and (?conveniently) forgets to mention that these POVs exist.
>
> I do not argue with Robert over pages that don't have my interest, but we
> recently had a major flurry over [[Artscroll]], a Jewish publisher of
> religious texts. Robert wanted to insert allegations expressed on mailing
> lists concerning the historicity and factuality of the content of many of
> these books. While some of these allegations came from respectable sources,
> some others were simple paranoid mumblings by mailinglist contributors.
>
> And so it carries on. RK moves his focus to a different page, annoys a few
> vested contributors, and spins off another discussion. This has been the
> stuff of various mediation and arbitration requests, including a pending
> one, and I'm seriously wondering where this is heading.
>
>
> [[User:Jfdwolff]]
>
>
> ------------------------------------
> jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk
> ------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Paypal in French

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>Is there something we need to do to enable this, or does it just work
>>automatically?
>
>
> It should work as is with our current account. What we need is HTML support for
> the WMF wiki so that the already translated donation pages could be hosted
> there.
>
> -- mav

Mav is correct.

Looxix already translated the form.
What we need is HTML support for the WMF wiki

...


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Paypal in French


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
The mailing list is not the place to air these grievances, Robert.
I recommend that you try formal mediation, it worked very well for
you in the past, and I am confident that Danny and you will both
approach it in a spirit of friendliness and seeking a positive way
forward.

If that fails, and I hope not, then there is arbitration.

But posting requests on the mailing list is just the wrong place.

--Jimbo


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 09/05/04 16:51, John wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 23:37:44 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

>>BTW, this is the recent experiment that has caused the latest buzz:
>>http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E652809545/index.html

> I would see a much bigger problem with this and that is that the story
> was posted on Slashdot. This is going to encourage many more people to
> try similar experiments.
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/05/1339219&tid=146&tid=1

More, it was submitted to Slashdot by the vandal in question.

"In this experiment, I painted graffiti on the walls of the local school.
It's not vandalism, though, as I'm blogging about it. It was just to test
the response times of the janitorial staff. I suggest you all try what I
did to prove it for yourself."

- d.