subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The clitoris guy

body:
On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 01:00, Anthere wrote:
>         Some parents and some schools may prefer not to let the kids
>         see nudity.
>
>         It is perhaps up to us to give them the ability to give access
>         or not to give access to religious topics/political
>         topics/sexuality topics...but it is not up to us to decide for
>         them what they should do. By restricting information offered,
>         one decide for others instead of letting people decide for
>         themselves. Very bad.

Hear, hear!

While I'm not convinced that the particular image under discussion is
the most appropriate, _some_ image is necessary to make that particular
article complete and informative. An article with no photo will be
limited in education value, and an article with no illustration at all
will be sorely crippled.

When it comes to censorship and Wikipedia, there are a few things to
remember:

* The GFDL license means that it's redistributable and modifiable.
Groups who may be interested in providing a "safe", "fact-checked", or
"family-friendly" version of Wikipedia and promote it to censor-happy
schools are free to do this. The main Wikipedia site doesn't *have* to
cater directly to the censorware-limited market in order to be available
there.

* Erik and other have advocated building a "certification team" system
directly into Wikipedia, such that groups or individuals could verify
certain versions of various articles as being good (for whatever their
criteria are), and people could choose to view only the articles marked
by some particular group. This could be useful here as well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030516/8d5a6506/attachment.pgp


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A vision for wiki syntax, documented

body:
>> Yeah, that nested table is a nuisance. I'll have to
>> think about that.

> There are two nested tables; the obvious one in the
> isotopes section and the navigation nested table in
> the first cell of the larger table (which in turn has
> an image embedded in it). Both are necessary to the
> functioning of the table and are not a "nuisance" at
> all.

No, I meant it's a nuisance to come up with a way to do
it simply; yes, it's certainly useful.

> Do you have /any/ idea about how much work would be
> undone and have to be redone in a diminished format if
> the document as is were implemented? Thousands of
> pages will be broken and many users, including me, may
> get fed-up with Wikipedia and leave.

I don't plan to break hundreds of pages. Yes, that would
be a bad thing. But I'm trying to plan long-range here.
The fact is, regardless of how much work went into those
pages, they don't work. They don't serve Wikipedia's
goal. They have to change eventually, hopefully gradually,
and hopefully with automated processes that don't throw
away the work that has been done.

If we can come up with a way to do what those tables do
in a way that's editable, and in a way that can be created
automatically from the existing code, everybody wins. It
may not be possible to do that, so we may have to figure
out some way to compromise, or change gradually, or allow
special-case exceptions. But I'm not going to just say
it's too hard and give up. Something great /can/ be done
here to fix these monsters.

> A table is going to be dense and intimidating to
> nontechnical users no matter what but tables are very
> useful when it comes to effectively presenting tabular

I don't buy that tables /have/ to be anywhere near as
complex as they are now.

> How the page functions for the reader is just as
> important as how it functions for the writer.
> as different writers have different abilities to
> contribute prose to an article, we have different
> coders with different abilities to add markup
> to articles.

I agree; I still think it's possible to come up with
a method by which coders can create the table and newbies
can still edit the textual content of the table. I
refuse to believe it can't be done until I try to do it.

> Why in the world is it necessary to break so many
> things and therefore create so much added work? The
> negative side-effects of the proposed WikiSyntax will
> cause far more problems than it purports to solve, IMO.

Who said anything was going to be broken? Please don't
argue against something I never had any intention of
doing. That's why I called this syntax a "vision"--that's
what it is, a vision of what might be. Now is the time
to think of what the obstacles are and what the path
might look like. I appreciate your feedback, and I take
it seriously.

> Please replicate in WikiCode the HTML we currently
> support (well, maybe not the obscure stuff that is
> hardly ever used) and/or create a table:namespace.

One thing that might happen is to add the new table
syntax while allowing TABLE, TR, TD, and TH tags, with
no attributes, and discourage their use except in
those rare cases like nested tables. Then if we figure
out a way to get the nested tables in too (perhaps
transclusion or a new markup), then we can phase those
out as well. The functions of attributes can all be
done with styles (colors, boders, etc.)

> PS - We've seem to have done fine during the past 2+
> years with tolerating HTML where it makes sense (such
> as tables).

I agree it's not a big problem, but it is a problem,
and it will only get bigger as more time passes.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
> (Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de>):
>
>

> [[Image:%%Image%%]]

>
> ''%%Label%%''
>
>

>
> In an article, it can be used by its name:
>
> {{ImageFloatingRight
> Image=Eiffel tower.jpg
> Label=The Eiffel Tower in Paris
> }}

That's about 10 times more complex than

  {{floatright}}[[image:usa.png]]

but I am intrigued by the idea of parameterized transclusions.
Another, perhaps simpler, way to do it is to use existing link
syntax with an "include" namespace:

  [[include:snippet1 | val1 | val2 |
  namedvar1=val | namedvar2=val]]

> This is more flexible than just stylesheets:

Then you obviously don't know stylesheets well. Besides, they give
a much better separation of content and style, and are a performance
boost because the style code doesn't change among pages often, and
so doesn't have to be reloaded by the client.

> Possible later additions:
> - Factsheet wizard that users without HTML-Skills can use to generate
>   the normal factsheet tables used in so many variants
> - Fill-in wizard that shows the rendered snipplet and has input fields
>   where the variables are.

I'm not opposed to the ideas of GUIs in general either; but there's
a lot to be said for a content model and text-based interface simple
and universal enough to not require one.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
> (Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz>):
>
> I suggest that we look at some way of introducing classes based on
> the semantics of the data. For example, a wiki-method of entering
> <span class="species"> - although if we go that far we may as well
> look at an xml-based wiki (<species>) using server-side XSLT with
> a range of standard and personal-choice stylesheets.

Did you read the proposal? I suggest doing exactly that with a
very simple syntax. Re-read it:

  <http://www.piclab.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Wikipedia_Text_Syntax>

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The clitoris guy

body:
> When it comes to censorship and Wikipedia, there are
> a few things to
> remember:

I feel very depressed. Very. No, I really mean *very*.
To a certain point, a nudity picture censored, I care
little.
Far worse is censorship on points I can't even begin
to understand. Some time ago, the french wikipedia was
censoring articles under the reason the term didnot
existed (for exemple, racialisme), then it censored
article under the reason the content added could be
liable by the french law, and today, it is censoring
an article because it is reporting french law
condemned someone for doing illegal actions and
explain the reason why it was considered illegal by
french law.

For those understanding french, the censored part is
there

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Jos%E9_Bov%E9&diff=47546&oldid=47513

Honest, I do not get it.

You would not believe it, there was even a comparison
with the article on [[Adolph Hitler]]. What is that
law's name already ? I fail to see the comparison
between Adolph Hitler and Jos? Bov? :-(((

Hmmmm...the english wiki is willing to report law
condemnation and to censor erotic picture. The french
wiki is censoring law condemnation explanation, but
keeping erotic picture.

Look...maybe...merging articles, we could happen to do
something proper ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mailing lists on ibiblio?

body:
We don't want the servers on ibiblio, but how about the mailing lists?
Putting all your eggs in one casket .. basket .. is never a good idea, no?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] JohnQ / MaryMary - the clitoris guy

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-05-15 at 17:45, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> > That's exactly what I mean. Just imagine if AOL's
> > filters decided to block wikipedia?
>
> Don't get our hopes up, man -- that would block a
> large portion of our
> vandals. :)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

Some of our best contributers use AOL. I remember a
little while ago, you suggested (perhaps jokingly)
that we should block all of AOL to keep out the
vandals. Then somebody (but I cant remember who, I
think a sysop) responded that he uses AOL. Just
because you don't like AOL doesn't mean you should
keep up  with this empty critisism.

--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysop Status - CatherineMunro

body:
On Thu, 2003-05-15 at 16:46, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 07:10:52AM -0700, Catherine Munro wrote:
> > I've occasionally wondered if it's been wise to use my real name as my
> > username, given how easily unpleasantness can arise at Wikipedia and
> > argumentative trolls can cause trouble for real people, but if people like
> > Brion Vibber can do so, I suppose I can too.  Just for my own curiosity,
> > would it be possible to change my username without creating a new account,
> > and retain my watchlist etc.?
> >
> It is possible to change the username. What's difficult to change are the
> signatures you made to Talk:-page contributions. While the username is only
> one field in the database that can be easily changed by a developer, the
> signatures are text in the middle of an article. It would take very long
> to replace all those.

Old signatures can of course simply be left as is, and the user page
redirected to the new name.

> Requesting a user name change should not be done easily. We currently need
> our developers time to improve wikipedia's performance!

Well, I'd prefer not to be _inundated_ with name-changes, but I'm happy
to make such changes on request from those unsatisfied with their
present identities. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030516/cf6ea535/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

body:
Like I said before: *in theory*, wikipedia is a great
educational source, but *in practice*, no one believes
it. Wikipedia does have its flaws that I believe could
be solved by this.

--LittleDan

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I believe it already is a "valid educational
> source".
>
> Waiting for approval from educational bureaucrats,
> and being restricted
> by their political whims would destroy Wikipedia as
> we know it.  The
> scrutiny would be not just on an article by article
> basis, but on a
> school district by school district basis.  The range
> of these from
> permissive open-minded to Christian or Islamic
> fundamentalist is so wide
> that we would never have the resources to do all the
> needed editing.
>
> Wikipedia's primary value is not as a static source
> in the way that a
> printed book or CD wuld be.  It is as a growing,
> dynamic and editable
> source.  In the perpetual battle between the
> irresistable force and the
> immovable object we are on the side of the
> irresistable force.  Here in
> British Columbia the provincial department of
> education (at least in
> theory) bases education on three principles of
> learning.  The one that
> is relevant in this context is that education
> requires the active
> participation of the learner.  The learner is not
> there to just
> passively vacuum up knowledge; he needs to
> contribute to that knowledge
> interactively.  The old model based on respecting
> the elders who
> painstakingly amassed a precious body of knowledge
> is not working as
> well as it used to.
>
> In the economic terms of supply and demand the
> supply of knowledge has
> been made higher than ever by electronic means.  The
> last time knowledge
> got such a boost came with Gutenberg in the 15th
> century.  Taking an
> example from a modern 18th century democracy like
> the United States, we
> have the Electoral College.  It reflects a time when
> Gutenberg's
> revolution had taken hold, but before the
> revolutions in transportation
> of the 19th century.  Communicating the results of
> elections from
> Georgia and New Hampshire was not a simple task.  It
> would have
> stretched the imagination of the drafters of the
> constitution to
> conceive that some day a far larger and more
> populous country would be
> able to have all the results in one place before the
> end of voting day.
>   (The Florida anomaly would have been no less
> baffling to them as to the
> modern person.)
>
> Returning to education, the opportunity that we
> offer is in dynamically
> learning the skills of democratic participation.
> Focusing on the
> negative act of controling sexually explicit
> material or the positive
> act of promoting religious or patriotic values would
> both have us
> missing the opportunity.  Part of the skill too is
> learning to cope with
> the disruptive elements in the society.
>
> I could maintain this rant a lot longer! :-)
>
> Eclecticology
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound powers, and not abuse them?

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> I wholeheartedly agree. Only if someone is
> persistent for several days
> (or is slamming the server) should one consider
> banning the ip.

Has anyone ever slammed the server before? (on a side
note, please sign your letters)

--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Note that if I see quite well what children porn can
> be, I am still wondering how these states define
> softcore porn from hardcore porn. Is this soft porn
> then ? (I get it what you label soft is erotic ?)

Once again, it varies. The book I read didn't define
any of the terms, probably for this reason.

--LittleDan

PS. Could everyone please sign their letters?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
> >You're missing MY point. From a relistic
> perspective,
> >sexually explicit images are in a different
> category
> >than articles describing christianity in Western
> >culture. I know it is POV, but I think it is
> >nessessary in a situation like this.
> >
> Each category has its own range for what is
> objectionable.  "Sexually
> explicit" runs from suggestive almost nudity to
> goatse.cx.  Others might
> find the extreme views of "creation science" and
> "holocaust denial" to
> be just as objectionable.
>
> Ec

Creation science and holocaust denial are
objectionable, but they are presented as opinion, not
fact. That is the main difference. You cant make an
NPOV photograph.

--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 05:20, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Just because you don't like AOL doesn't mean you should
> keep up  with this empty critisism.

Unfortunately yes, some blighted souls use AOL. That is punishment
enough for them. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030516/b75b594a/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The clitoris guy

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I strongly object to this characterization. The
> picture was not removed
> for being explicit, it was removed because the
> copyright status was
> unclear and the picture itself not particularly
> helpful. A different photo
> under the FDL or in the PD would be perfectly
> acceptable.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

PD?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

body:
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 05:24:46 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education
>
> Like I said before: *in theory*, wikipedia is a great
> educational source, but *in practice*, no one believes
> it. Wikipedia does have its flaws that I believe could
> be solved by this.
>
> --LittleDan

It is in practice too. We share our library here with the local Charter
School and I have set in the computer room watching and helping a student
research a paper using Wikipedia. Educators have no particular axe to grind
with the bulk of our articles (other than being nonexistant or incomplete).

Another activity I have noted is using editing a wikipedia article as a
class project. You can see the results of one effort in the first paragraph
of the [[bear]] article.

The only reason Wikipedia is not used more by students and in the classroom
and in homework assignments is that most folks haven't heard of it. But
anyone who uses google and does research will eventually find us.

There is some risk to teachers using or recommending Wikipedia, but as has
been pointed out santitizing the entire encyclopedia to satisfy all possible
conservative viewpoints is both impractical and undesirable.

Fred


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists temporarily down

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> In the fun and excitement it seems we've broken the mailing lists. :)
>
> This should be fixed shortly; in the meantime you can send mail on the
> lists by adding a "pliny." in front of the wikipedia.org in the address.

Good time for getting Jason to create a 'mail.wikipedia.org' DNS entry and
fix this a proper way. If we then move the lists to another host it will be
    less complex.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> In the fun and excitement it seems we've broken the mailing lists. :)
>
> This should be fixed shortly; in the meantime you can send mail on the
> lists by adding a "pliny." in front of the wikipedia.org in the address.

Good time for getting Jason to create a 'mail.wikipedia.org' DNS entry and
fix this a proper way. If we then move the lists to another host it will be
    less complex.

PS: Of course I missed to add pliny first time I tryed. Too early in the
morning disease ;)

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] My identity is being used by another and Aoineko is totally out of his wits

body:
Aoineko blew it definitly today. He is insulting people and refusing to talk to them, under the motive the user is using the same nickname than another person.

Since he was totally refusing dialogue, I created two pages to promote discussion on the french wiki

The first one was to ask other opinions about usage of the nicknames (such as should someone be allowed to use the same nickname than another, should the usage of nicknamed to allowed at all)

The second page was about the usage of swear words and insults on the french wikipedia. I ask other people opinions about that.

These pages were very proper and general in their intention

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

My proposition was followed by the following points

1. Aoineko moved the above stated articles to stupid names, soclearly showing he was totally refusing dialogue. He wrote on these articles signing with my name as a nickname. I restored some of them

2. Second, my account was stolen again (I say again since it already happened on the 1rst of january as Brion would remember I guess). So any edits made under my name after 14h00 french hour on any wikipedia are not by me, but a vandal.

Here http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikip%E9dia:Cas_de_l%27utilisation_par_Athyvement_du_pseudo_de_Athymik_pour_justifier_un_biaisage_d%27article&action=history you can see two edits were made by Anthere

None were me. This can be checked with the log I guess. I would like to know the ip under which these edits were made.

My edits were under the ip 81.49.198.47

I insist again that none of the others are by me.

I think this will clearly show the non reliability of the log in system.

I don't think it is necessary I change my password since it is obvious it does not prevent others to use my login name

3. For the above reason, I ask that please a study be made to see who is the author of the theft could be Aoineko.

4. For the above reasons also, (insults, abusive reversion, swear words, refuse to dialog), I hereby indicate I consider Aoineko should be given a break from sysophood to give him the time to recover. I think his behavior is right now being very detrimental of the project. Giving very poor view of the encyclopedia, driving editors away, and censuring those he does not agree with. On top of that, my own reputation will clearly suffer from that, as the one who stole my account is saying bad things.

I cannot even try to put that back, since others users will be confused between who is me and who is not me

Please

5. I also ask shelter from the english wikipedia.

At least , this is my email. Let's pray nobody steal it. Only words said here are mine

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030516/163bf036/attachment.htm


from_name: Richard Grevers

body:
On Thu, 15 May 2003 14:26:53 -0400, steven l. rubenstein
<rubenste at ohiou.edu> gave utterance to the following:

>
>
> 64.163.22.53 has been vandalizing French Revolution.  At what point
> should I block the user?  I understand that this number IDs a computer,
> not a person, and non-vandals may use this computer.  Can someone give me
> the basic policy?
>
A tool like samspade ( http://www.samspade.org ) can provide more data on
which to base a decision: Performing an IP-block search on that IP results
in:

Pac Bell Internet Services PBI-NET-8 (NET-64-160-0-0-1) 64.160.0.0 -
64.175.255.255
The Charter School of San Diego SBCIS-100920-135815 (NET-64-163-22-0-1)
64.163.22.0 - 64.163.22.255

In which case the chances of that 1 computer being one person's are slim.
But it is highly likely that the computer has a permanent connection and
will retain its IP. (Banning a dialup user is like catching water in a
seive - they will be assigned a new IP every time they connect)
In this case, a scenario of one or more kids thinking this is a cool trick
seems likely, and a ban ought to be effective. If they are in a computer
lab, we probably just need to watch the adjacent IP's.
--
Richard Grevers
Two most common elements in the universe: Hydrogen & Stupidity.


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The clitoris guy

body:
On Fri, 16 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 06:04:26 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: The clitoris guy
>
> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
<snip>
> > helpful. A different photo
> > under the FDL or in the PD would be perfectly
> > acceptable.
>
> PD?

Public Domain

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Because I'm a freakin' genius, _that's_ why!!
				--John Owens


body:
On Fri, 16 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 05:36:20 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] JohnQ / MaryMary - the clitoris guy
>
> --- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Note that if I see quite well what children porn can
> > be, I am still wondering how these states define
> > softcore porn from hardcore porn. Is this soft porn
> > then ? (I get it what you label soft is erotic ?)
>
> Once again, it varies. The book I read didn't define
> any of the terms, probably for this reason.
>
> --LittleDan
>
> PS. Could everyone please sign their letters?

I'll make you a deal: I'll always sign mine, if you'll always set quoted
text off consistently. ;)

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Commander Ivanova:	Always finding good in every situation, Captain?
Captain Sheridan:	Absolutely.  If I didn't, I might end up like
			you.
Ivanova:	Hey, what's that supposed to mean?  Did anyone else hear
		that?


body:
Looking again, I must say the issue is probably not my name directly, but maybe rather usage of accents. I would like to know the ip or the user under all these names be looked at nevertheless. Under one of these names, it was written I said Aoineko was a "connard". I would never have said such a thing. I would also appreciate these user names to be permanently deleted from the database.

I would also appreciate that french speaking users give their opinion on these two pages, as regards usage of swear words and insults, and possible changes of policy or software concerning nicknames. If none of these pages are given more consideration than the insults and defacements put by Aoineko, I indicated I will consider stopping any activity on the french wiki, as it will be clear to me no discussion is possible if the only reaction to an issue are reversion and insults.

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030516/fd702a62/attachment.htm


body:
On Fri, 16 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 05:38:49 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] JohnQ / MaryMary - the clitoris guy
>
> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> >
> > >You're missing MY point. From a relistic
> > perspective,
> > >sexually explicit images are in a different
> > category
> > >than articles describing christianity in Western
> > >culture. I know it is POV, but I think it is
> > >nessessary in a situation like this.
> > >
> > Each category has its own range for what is
> > objectionable.  "Sexually
> > explicit" runs from suggestive almost nudity to
> > goatse.cx.  Others might
> > find the extreme views of "creation science" and
> > "holocaust denial" to
> > be just as objectionable.
> >
> > Ec
>
> Creation science and holocaust denial are
> objectionable, but they are presented as opinion, not
> fact. That is the main difference. You cant make an
> NPOV photograph.
>
> --LittleDan

So, umm, just what opinions does a photograph have? As long as they aren't
doctored or staged, photographs are about as NPOV as it gets around here.
You _can_ make a POV photograph, but you have to try.
The inclusion or not is where the POV usually starts to creep in. And it
seems to be trying to do so now.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Understanding is a three-edged sword.
				--Kosh Naranek


body:
On Thu, 15 May 2003 11:23:14 -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
gave utterance to the following:

>> I agree - but when you said "ALL HTML is forbidden" I went ahead and
>> looked at the table specification part of your document and saw some
>> things that seem rather Spartan to me. For example, the document doesn't
>> indicate whether or not nested tables would be allowed and it doesn't
>> seem to say how one would do bgcolor-type cell fills, or how to set
>> border width.
>
> There's no provision for nested tables. I don't think there's a good
> enough
> case for their necessity. Cell backgrounds and borders can be done with
> styles.
>
>> So if the table at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium cannot be
>> replicated pretty much as-is in wikicode then I for will have a fit (I'm
>> sure many others will join me).
>
> Yeah, that nested table is a nuisance. I'll have to think about that.
That nested table could be a separate table, particularly if we used a
wrapper div and performed the float on that.

I suggest that we look at some way of introducing classes based on the
semantics of the data. For example, a wiki-method of entering  - although if we go that far we may as well look at an
xml-based wiki (<species>) using server-side XSLT with a range of standard
and personal-choice stylesheets.

Whatever we do, the aim must be to produce valid (x)HTML and CSS,
maximising the chances of consistent behaviour across platforms and
browsers.
No inserting of

 to generate space below headers (etc).
--
Richard Grevers
Two most common elements in the universe: Hydrogen & Stupidity.


body:
You are strongly not ok Aoineko.

You are insulting people. You are reverting articles just because of the author. You are not respecting the very concept of wikipedia because of your own bias. You are behaving very bad with users you don't agree with, refusing discussion and reverting without giving justification. When I make the effort to create pages to discuss these points, you move them under ridiculous names, you fuck (used on purpose as an exception) my identity, write insulting comments (toward you) pretending to be me. You are trying to convince everyone my input here is only to support fachistes, nazi and otherwise supposed weirdos (I repeat, there is nothing badly wrong about this Atyvement article).

And as many abusers, you don't even see what is wrong.

The history of several perfectly decent articles is now a mess, there is a place somewhere I (supposingly) say you are a "connard", and you think you are perfectly ok ???

That is ok to play a bit Aoineko, but when you say Atyvement has gone after a threshold, you might well do to consider yourself. You may play a bit with my identities, why not ? You can keep them if you want. If you consider it can give you fun. But, do not try write insults toward you to try to destroy the little respect others have for me. *This*, I think, is illegal.

The only good point I see with you is that in spite of insults, agressivity and bad plays, you do not abuse too much your sysop power. However, I consider you abuse your editor power. The power of working in harmony and with respect to others.

Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
I'm still ok :o)
Anthere defended someone who used someone else nickname to make multi no-npov modification on a article. So, for joke I created an account named "Anth?re" (with accent). Now she seem to care about someone else nickname use ;o) I did no vandalisme with her nickname, just move articles about "nickname usage" and "vulgarity usage" in the right place (in french wikipedia: "wikipedia:Prise de descission, xxxx"). This accout password is "wikipedia" and you can delete it as you want.

Aoineko

----- Original Message -----
From: Anthere
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org ; wikifr-l at wikipedia.org
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 11:49 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] My identity is being used by another and Aoineko is totally out of his wits

Aoineko blew it definitly today. He is insulting people and refusing to talk to them, under the motive the user is using the same nickname than another person.

Since he was totally refusing dialogue, I created two pages to promote discussion on the french wiki

The first one was to ask other opinions about usage of the nicknames (such as should someone be allowed to use the same nickname than another, should the usage of nicknamed to allowed at all)

The second page was about the usage of swear words and insults on the french wikipedia. I ask other people opinions about that.

These pages were very proper and general in their intention

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

My proposition was followed by the following points

1. Aoineko moved the above stated articles to stupid names, soclearly showing he was totally refusing dialogue. He wrote on these articles signing with my name as a nickname. I restored some of them

2. Second, my account was stolen again (I say again since it already happened on the 1rst of january as Brion would remember I guess). So any edits made under my name after 14h00 french hour on any wikipedia are not by me, but a vandal.

Here http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikip%E9dia:Cas_de_l%27utilisation_par_Athyvement_du_pseudo_de_Athymik_pour_justifier_un_biaisage_d%27article&action=history you can see two edits were made by Anthere

None were me. This can be checked with the log I guess. I would like to know the ip under which these edits were made.

My edits were under the ip 81.49.198.47

I insist again that none of the others are by me.

I think this will clearly show the non reliability of the log in system.

I don't think it is necessary I change my password since it is obvious it does not prevent others to use my login name

3. For the above reason, I ask that please a study be made to see who is the author of the theft could be Aoineko.

4. For the above reasons also, (insults, abusive reversion, swear words, refuse to dialog), I hereby indicate I consider Aoineko should be given a break from sysophood to give him the time to recover. I think his behavior is right now being very detrimental of the project. Giving very poor view of the encyclopedia, driving editors away, and censuring those he does not agree with. On top of that, my own reputation will clearly suffer from that, as the one who stole my account is saying bad things.

I cannot even try to put that back, since others users will be confused between who is me and who is not me

Please

5. I also ask shelter from the english wikipedia.

At least , this is my email. Let's pray nobody steal it. Only words said here are mine

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030516/189f2e31/attachment.htm


body:
Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:I'm still ok :o)
Anthere defended someone who used someone else nickname to make multi no-npov modification on a article.

Ah yes. I defend the right to anyone to edit, including that specific editor.
This said, I may defend his edits, but I have stated in the page I created on nicknames, I wanted the nickname system to be removed.
But here you say I am supporting this system. I am not.

Either you are lying about my support to avoid facing the fact I support the article, not the author, or you are entirely confused between all the edits you made under Anth?re, Anth?re, Anth?re, Antherement and so on.

Which proves my point when I say people will also believe I called you a "connard" when I *never* did.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030516/91933ca4/attachment.htm


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The clitoris guy

body:
At 06:23 PM 5/15/03 -0700, Little Dan wrote:
>Toby said:
>I have no idea, but then I have little idea
>why the photo offends in the first place.
>
>People (parents and schools mostly) wont come or let
>people come to this site if nudity is on it. Be
>realistic.

That doesn't answer Toby's question, which is *why* people are
offended by the photo.

Also, by listening to the people who are offended by nudity, we
remove a resource not only for adults, but for students whose
parents think realistic information about human anatomy is a
good and useful thing.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Experimental page caching in cvs, online

body:
I've finally gone ahead and hacked up that preliminary page caching I've
been talking about; see new changes to Article.php & co. As an emergency
measure I've put it up on larousse/www.wikipedia.org with only minimal
testing. So far it's working great -- system load is way down, response
time seems good.

Presently it operates only on regular page views by users who are not
logged in. I've tweaked the header in the corner so it no longer shows
the IP address, so every anon's page will appear the same. (If someone's
added to their talk page, this is detected and the cache is disabled, so
the 'You have new messages' link will show and take them to the talk
page.

For pages that are determined cacheable, we check a cache directory for
a file: if it exists and is not obsoleted by the 'last touched'
timestamp already established for dealing with browser caching, we just
load it up and pass it straight through. If there's no file or it's
obsolete, we install an output buffer handler, and at the end we catch
the whole page output and save it to the file.

Caveats:

- Invalidation of cached pages is controlled by the same mechanism that
invalidates browser caches, and will be subject to some of the same bugs
there. Problem areas may include undeletion, the talk/article page
links, and anywhere where the link tables are broken. Some redirects may
be funny, but hopefully not. :)

- I'm pretty sure I excluded all the non-cacheable page view variants. I
might have missed something, in which case bad pages could crop into the
cache space.

- There's a site-wide cache invalidation date settable in localsettings.
I haven't actually tested it :) and there should probably be a sysopable
or developerable clear-all-caches special page. This also needs to be
worked in to affect the browser cache as well.

- It should also be possible to explicitly clear the cache of a page and
force it to regenerate in case it's screwed up. Perhaps a little button
or something.

- Some pages, like the main page, should be invalidated periodically or
else never cached, because they contain special variables (time, article
count) which may change.

- This only affects non-logged-in users so far. But that makes up the
greater part of our traffic, so that's okay for now. It makes the server
faster for the rest of us. :)

- The cache directory is divided up like the upload directory is; so
there should be 4096 separate dirs. Should be plenty for keeping ext3
from going mad and killing us all for a while yet.

Other notes:
- Hypothetically we could fall back on cached pages if unable to contact
the database.

- Cache files are not deleted on invalidation; they're just assumed
obsolete, and replaced when needed.

- There's a fun new bug where logouts (or perhaps timeouts) leave a
session in a funny state where the interface works as not-logged-in, but
edits are saved with the formerly used user name (but still with 0 as
the user id, so contribs doesn't work).

See our now much happier servers:

[brion at larousse w]$ uptime
 15:26:42  up 14:57,  3 users,  load average: 7.36, 9.50, 7.76
[brion at larousse w]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1030952     996824      34128          0     176848     554108
-/+ buffers/cache:     265868     765084
Swap:      1020088      72416     947672
[brion at larousse w]$ vmstat 1 15
   procs                      memory      swap          io     system      cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id
 1  0  0  72416  34104 176848 554248    0   10     8    88  393   210 73  3 24
 0  0  0  72428  34020 176848 554300    0  172     0   172  761   394 60  6 34
 0  0  0  72428  34636 176848 554312    0    0     0   616  380   187 30  1 69
 0  0  0  72428  34644 176848 554356    0  156     0   156  496   338 43  4 53
 0  0  0  72416  34480 176852 554416    0    0    28     0  512   308 64  2 34
 1  0  0  72420  34472 176852 554456    0  200     0   200  479   274 48  2 50
 2  0  2  72420  34472 176852 554464    0    0     0   208  527   341 82  6 12
 3  0  0  72392  34712 176852 554512    0  204     0   536  552   420 55  4 41
 1  0  0  72392  34720 176852 554548    0    0     0     0  436   287 42  0 58
 1  0  0  72372  34732 176852 554564    0  208     0   208  536   315 32  8 60
 2  0  0  72368  34568 176852 554612    0    0    20     0  521   320 53  3 45
 1  0  0  72380  33980 176852 554620    0  224     0   840  491   318 29  6 65
 1  0  0  72384  33716 176856 554688    0  108    12   108  487   302 55  1 44
 2  0  0  72384  33856 176856 554712    0    0     0     0  410   237 38  0 62
 0  0  0  72384  33836 176856 554724    0  192     0   192  299   163 14  2 84

[brion at pliny brion]$ uptime
  3:28pm  up 4 days,  5:28,  1 user,  load average: 2.46, 3.49, 3.13
[brion at pliny brion]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2068912    1973376      95536          0      35360    1155584
-/+ buffers/cache:     782432    1286480
Swap:      2047992     436568    1611424
[brion at pliny brion]$ vmstat 1 15
   procs                      memory    swap          io     system         cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache  si  so    bi    bo   in    cs  us  sy  id
 0  0  0 436568  95020  35392 1155900  12   8    41     7   18    43  47   5  47
 3  2  0 436568  90744  35444 1156460   4   0   572   728  477   730  36   5  59
 2  4  1 436568  89072  35508 1157508   0   0  1084  1012  754   866  38   7  55
 4  0  0 436568  88900  35516 1157696   0   0   180    60  515   656  37   3  60
 5  0  0 436568  84020  35540 1157808   0   0   104   444  477   815  51   6  43
 2  0  0 436568  80556  35544 1157816   0   0     0   204  401   596  47   3  50
 1  0  0 436568  79796  35556 1157860   0   0    56   124  394   378  19   2  78
 2  0  0 436568  79756  35560 1157900   0   0    32   180  513   655  23   7  70
 0  1  0 436568  79740  35604 1157924   0   0    24  1165  377   357  34  10  56
 1  0  0 436568  76008  35612 1157996   0   0    72    16  383   366   7   2  90
 3  0  0 436568  67984  35616 1158148   0   0   152     0  380   391  14   3  83
 0  1  0 436568  64404  35632 1158560   0   0   416   132  401   504  26   4  70
 2  1  0 436568  67392  35692 1159556   0   0   992   856  538   639  13   6  82
 1  5  3 436568  66912  35704 1159808   0   0   240  1782  573   737  59   6  35
 0  1  1 436568  66880  35732 1159928   0   0   116  2194  707   732  43   9  48

Pliny's got room to expand, and Larousse's end still has optimization
that can be done. So things are looking good!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20030516/f1425a27/attachment.pgp>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound powers, and not abuse
	them?

body:
On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 08:31, steven l. rubenstein wrote:
> Thanks -- but how do I know (from the identifying user number) whether
> it is an AOL address? Sorry if this is an obvious question,

I recommend this page: http://www.arin.net/whois/

Paste in an IP address, it'll tell you what organization the network
belongs to.

It can also be useful to do a reverse DNS lookup; on Unix you'd do this
with the "host" or "nslookup" command... on at least some verions of
Windows you can run "nslookup" from a command prompt.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030516/5cff8717/attachment.pgp


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Two issues here: what is legal to have on the
 server and what is legal in the user's nation

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> A more tricky issue is postings that are legal elsewhere but not
> legal in California, such as the posting of information that is
> public domain in places whose legislature isn't owned by Disney.
> We probably have to supress such information, which is a shame.
>

But we can solve this in a tricky way: installing
"Wikipeda-Foreign-Law-Server". Articles about Disney you store and serve
from somewhere outside of California and so on ... ;-) Possibly some
island ;) It's done with money, and thats more complicate to transfer
than wikipedia articles ;)

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The clitoris guy

body:
Anthere said:

> > When it comes to censorship and Wikipedia, there are
> > a few things to remember:
>
> I feel very depressed. Very. No, I really mean *very*.
> To a certain point, a nudity picture censored, I care little.
> Far worse is censorship on points I can't even begin
> to understand. Some time ago, the french wikipedia was
> censoring articles under the reason the term didnot
> existed (for exemple, racialisme), then it censored
> article under the reason the content added could be
> liable by the french law, and today, it is censoring
> an article because it is reporting french law
> condemned someone for doing illegal actions and
> explain the reason why it was considered illegal by
> french law.
>
> For those understanding french, the censored part is
> there
>
>
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Jos%E9_Bov%E9&diff=47546&oldid=47513
>
> Honest, I do not get it.
>
> You would not believe it, there was even a comparison
> with the article on [[Adolph Hitler]]. What is that
> law's name already ? I fail to see the comparison
> between Adolph Hitler and Jos? Bov? :-(((
>
> Hmmmm...the english wiki is willing to report law
> condemnation and to censor erotic picture. The french
> wiki is censoring law condemnation explanation, but
> keeping erotic picture.
>
> Look...maybe...merging articles, we could happen to do
> something proper ?

How can reporting the law and the opinions of the people be considered
something that should be subject to censorship?  I know there is the
European HR tradition of limiting free speech for specific reasons, but such
censorship of legal opinions and legal arguments goes to the core of one's
conception of a free and democratic society. I completely agree this is
shocking Anthere! Maybe there should be articles about these taboo French
subjects on English pages.  My French is good enough to translate into
English, I am sure there are others who could help translate (even maybe
getting it started with machine translation, that would be allowed under the
open content license no? Perhaps you could put the banned French versions on
English talk pages make a list called [[List of banned French pages
translating into English]] and then we can built up the pages as people have
time to translate them into English. Wouldn't it be o.k. to keep the French
texts on the talk pages? As far as the _very_ strict puritanic tradition in
the US, perhaps there should be a wiki server in Canada or some other
country that is more liberal minded in some respects about allowing people
to discuss and publish/broadcast "taboo" subjects.

Alex756


body:
Well, you don't, it just won't do any good to ban a user number from AOL
since it will change every time they log on. It will soon become obvious
since he'll be back on with a slightly different number right away, So then
go ahead and lift that first ban so you are not banning AOL or other big isp
users at random. BTW is this guy still messing around? If he has quit by now
that might as well be the end of it.

Fred

From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 11:31:50 -0400
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound powers, and not abuse them?

Thanks -- but how do I know (from the identifying user number) whether it is
an AOL address? Sorry if this is an obvious question,

Steve

At 01:23 PM 5/15/2003 -0600, you wrote:

Adding "my ass-crack will suffer the consequences of the bong-hole!" to an
article on the French Revolution is well beyond the limits of any doubt. The
only thing that might hold back a ban is if that is the address of AOL, MSN
or some similar large isp.

Fred
         From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> Reply-To:
wikien-l at wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 14:26:53 -0400 To:
wikien-l at wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound powers,
and not abuse them?

French Revolution

---
Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com
<http://www.grisoft.com/> ).
Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003
Steven L. Rubenstein
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030516/2a205eba/attachment.htm


from_name: cprompt

body:
John R. Owens wrote:

>On Fri, 16 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
>
>
>>Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 05:38:49 -0700 (PDT)
>>From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] JohnQ / MaryMary - the clitoris guy
>>
>>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>You're missing MY point. From a relistic
>>>>
>>>>
>>>perspective,
>>>
>>>
>>>>sexually explicit images are in a different
>>>>
>>>>
>>>category
>>>
>>>
>>>>than articles describing christianity in Western
>>>>culture. I know it is POV, but I think it is
>>>>nessessary in a situation like this.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Each category has its own range for what is
>>>objectionable.  "Sexually
>>>explicit" runs from suggestive almost nudity to
>>>goatse.cx.  Others might
>>>find the extreme views of "creation science" and
>>>"holocaust denial" to
>>>be just as objectionable.
>>>
>>>Ec
>>>
>>>
>>Creation science and holocaust denial are
>>objectionable, but they are presented as opinion, not
>>fact. That is the main difference. You cant make an
>>NPOV photograph.
>>
>>--LittleDan
>>
>>
>
>So, umm, just what opinions does a photograph have? As long as they aren't
>doctored or staged, photographs are about as NPOV as it gets around here.
>You _can_ make a POV photograph, but you have to try.
>The inclusion or not is where the POV usually starts to creep in. And it
>seems to be trying to do so now.
>
The [[Rachel Corrie]] article had POV problems resulting from the
inclusion or exclusion of a certain type of photo, or a certain quanitty
of photos. Also, some of the photos were misleading. In one, Rachel was
standing in front of the bulldozer in plain site of the person operating
it. However, the question arises at what time was it? If it was "moments
before her death" as some argued, then the person operating the
bulldozer knew she was there. Otherwise, she may have not been visible
at the time of her death. I don't want to dredge all of this up again,
but photos, maps, and diagrams can be just as POV as statistics and quotes.


body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm not sure is the right place to discuss, is it ?
> ;o) Don't you feel odd that 2 french speaker are
> speaking in english !?

I am writing here, because I want to know how many
people did Anth?re, Anth?re, Antherement, Anth?re,
Anth?re and co

And this, a french sysop cannot know

> I never refuse discussion with you, and I only
> create the Anth?re account.

Yes. I believe you; It was ok to create that account.
But what is not ok is what you wrote under that
account. This is a sample :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikip%E9dia:Cas_de_l%27utilisation_par_Athyvement_du_pseudo_de_Athymik_pour_justifier_un_biaisage_d%27article&diff=47606&oldid=47603

That is my point.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>There is some risk to teachers using or recommending Wikipedia, but as has
>been pointed out santitizing the entire encyclopedia to satisfy all possible
>conservative viewpoints is both impractical and undesirable.
>
>Fred
>
>
You are correct, but that risk is no greater than allowing students to
access Google. The problem is that schools that use something like N2H2,
which maintains a database of blocked sites, sorted by the category they
were blocked under (pornographic, tasteless, drug related, gambling
related, etc.) they might have no other way of filtering out the parts
of Wikipedia they don't agree with other than to block the domain. I
think we might be able to avoid this by using Nudity somewhere in the
URL (maybe [[Image:Nudity/Peyronie_disease.jpg]]), so they can filter
out specific portions of the encyclopedia. I see this as akin to the
practice of masking nude images behind a link with a warning. This is
just a warning for filtering software.

--cprompt


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks

body:
On 5/15/03 6:15 PM, "james duffy" <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> There is no point in clogging up the wiki list with a constant re-analysis
> of the [[Communist state]] debate. But for the record, The Cunctator's
> statement that his "impression was that 172 and Jtdirl were upset by the
> claims about Communist states Fred was making and that they
> then decided to use the argument that they knew what "Communist state" meant
> and Fred and anyone who disagreed with them didn't" is factually incorrect.
> I made it clear on over thirty occasions (if not forty occasions - I stopped
> counting after a while) on the talk page that my problem was that Fred was
> adding in material to the wrong page. I said it. 172 said it. Tannin said.
> Tarquin said. Others said it too. If I was trying to censor Fred, I would
> not have created a linked page containing his text.

Erm. Wasn't the argument that Fred's text was on the wrong page that he
didn't understand what "Communist state" meant?

> That there was a problem with Fred's text was admitted by Fred himself who
> called it "unbalanced". I deliberately did not intervene in the debate on
> the linked page. My only interventions there were in fact to recreate it
> when The Cunctator decided to remove it and plonk it back on the wrong page.
> The issue Fred was writing about was about a practical analysis of how how
> communist governments behaved. That is an issue worthy of in depth
> discussion, and has been discussed on the linked page, on which Fred and
> others contributed. As that page would not exist if it was not for me, I can
> hardly be accused of censoring Fred's opinions. All I did, as other people
> did, was to point out that Fred was putting his text on the wrong page and
> put it onto the right one.

And writing

"reverting to Shino's version to remove Fred's POV vandalism."

"reverting to Pratyeka's last version to remove Fred Bauder's constant POV
vandalism of this page. Do it again Fred and you'll be put on the annoying
users page"

"THIS IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT A POLITICAL SCIENCE DEFINITION. IT IS NOT ABOUT
COMMUNISM. ATTEMPTS BY FRED BAUDER TO ADD IN POV ANTI-COMMUNIST RANTS WILL
CONSTANTLY BE REVERTED"

"dumping more of Fred Bauder's vandalism. If he keeps this up he will have
to be banned from wiki"

"PLEASE BAN FRED BAUDER FOR CONTINUOUS VANDALISM OF THIS ARTICLE. HIS
VANDALISM HAS HAD TO BE REVERTED NEARLY 20 TIMES HERE. HE HAS DONE THE SAME
ELSEWHERE"

"deleting irrelevant POV rubbish. How many times does Fred Bauder have to
vandalise this article before he is banned?"

"Is there any chance that Fred Bauder might some day grasp what NPOV means."

"THE STUFF YOU KEEP PUTTING IN IS ALREADY IN ANOTHER ARTICLE. STOP SCREWING
UP EVERYONE ELSE'S WORK TO PUSH YOUR OWN AGENDA"

to just name the comments used in your edit summaries. I can't help but
think that's something more than "All I did, as other people  did, was to
point out that Fred was putting his text on the wrong page and put it onto
the right one." But maybe that's a blatant misrepresentation.

> Now can we all please move on to other issues, and stop having to respond to
> blatent mispresentations of what happening and wild, unsubstantiated and
> demonstrably untrue accusations.

Are you saying I'm making wild, unsubstantiated and demonstrably untrue
accusations? Good way to work constructively with others.

By the way, I didn't accuse anyone of censorship, even though you seem to be
implying that I did ("I can hardly be accused of censoring Fred's
opinions").


body:
On 5/16/03 8:33 AM, "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
>> I wholeheartedly agree. Only if someone is
>> persistent for several days
>> (or is slamming the server) should one consider
>> banning the ip.
>
> Has anyone ever slammed the server before? (on a side
> note, please sign your letters)
>
Mainly just people with good intentions running bots without warning.


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A vision for wiki syntax, documented

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> writes:

> HTML fails to meet at least some of those criteria (notably ease of
> editing).

As often, I disagree.  It would be much better to go for a subset of
HTML "tags" plus shortcuts for [[links]].  Basically, H1-Hx, simple
lists, CODE, EM, B, I, P, BLOCKQOUTE, and PRE would do the trick.  Plus
tables, where necessary.  Plus BR, maybe.

Things like ==...==, ''...'' and the list codes in combination with the
line ending restrictions are not that easy to learn.  And don't for get
the indentations tricks.  Once the user gets these cryptic control code,
he must learn to use them properly!  And the nice thing about wikis is,
their is more than one, thus you are force to get used to more than one
wiki format ;-)

I'm pretty sure, HTML 2 (plus simple table tags) are not difficult
_and_ more rubust.  TEI-like tag names would even be better :)

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote (much snipped):

>LDC wrote:
>
>>There's no provision for nested tables. I don't think
>>there's a good enough case for their necessity. Cell
>>backgrounds and borders can be done with styles.
>>
>
>Well I and many other very hard-working Wikipedians
>think there is a very real need for nested tables.
>They are used in each these converted articles;
>organisms (that nested table has a border=0),
>countries, heads of state, elements, and sub-national
>entities. And this list doesn't include the many other
>non-project related nested tables.
>
>>>So if http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium
>>>cannot be replicated pretty much as-is in wikicode
>>>then I for will have a fit (I'm sure many others
>>>will join me).
>>>
>>Yeah, that nested table is a nuisance. I'll have to
>>think about that.
>>
>
>There are two nested tables; the obvious one in the
>isotopes section and the navigation nested table in
>the first cell of the larger table (which in turn has
>an image embedded in it). Both are necessary to the
>functioning of the table and are not a "nuisance" at
>all.
>
>>>An alternative solution is to only allow HTML
>>>syntax to be rendered if it is in a table:namespace
>>>page. As I said before, I want to eliminate the complexity,
>>>not just move it around. I want newbies to have some
>>>chance of being to edit the table as well as the
>>>prose around it.
>>>
>
>Do you have /any/ idea about how much work would be
>undone and have to be redone in a diminished format if
>the document as is were implemented? Thousands of
>pages will be broken and many users, including me, may
>get fed-up with Wikipedia and leave.
>
>A table is going to be dense and intimidating to
>nontechnical users no matter what but tables are very
>useful when it comes to effectively presenting tabular
>data (something we have a lot of). Thus putting this
>complexity on a separate page seems to be a good
>compromise between preventing newbies from not being
>intimidated by hordes of markup and allowing more
>seasoned users the ability to present tabular data in
>a table.
>
>How the page functions for the reader is just as
>important as how it functions for the writer. And just
>as different writers have different abilities to
>contribute prose to an article, we have different
>coders with different abilities to add markup
>to articles.
>
>We don't dumb down the prose of articles to reach the
>lowest common denominator reader/writer (except for
>intro paragraphs) and we should not similarly dumb
>down the markup just to make things a bit easier for
>the lowest common denominator coder.
>
>PS - We've seem to have done fine during the past 2+
>years with tolerating HTML where it makes sense (such
>as tables).
>
I want to put myself on the record as mostly supporting Mav's view on
this.  I say this as a person whose knowledge of HTML can politely be
described as "limited"  I have done a little work on some of the tables,
and that was a learning experience.  If I worked on nested tables I
didn't realize that I was doing it.  On the [[Fidel Castro]] article I
tried to figure out how to centre the caption under the picture of him
hugging the Chinese premier.  I didn't succeed and by default it's still
left justified, but that's OK; that's consistent with the principle of
leaving something undone, and someone feeling inspired to make such a
minor adjustment will do it.  I don't feel bad about my lack of success.

I've always avoided style sheets.  They give me the feeling of somebody
trying to force me into his way of presenting things, even when I agree
that the style in question might be appropriate.  Others will embrace
style sheets, and that's fine too -- for them!

To me dumbing down means depriving people of their own challenges in
life, and doing things for them that they should be doing for
themselves.  Mothers do this all the time when they compulsively pick up
their children's things; the result is children who never learn to pick
for themselves - much to the irritation of their eventual spouses.  The
educational component of Wikipedia is not just about content and the
process of making that content satisfy NPOV.  The same process can also
apply to article stucture and markup.  Need the Wiki vs. HTML dynamic be
any different than the one about American vs. British English.

Most of our edits must be and are with wiki-markup.  That's good.  It
serves most contributors well.  If there is an option of using
Wiki-markup or HTML to accomplish the same thing then Wiki-markup
should definitely be preferred   If someone has used HTML in an article
where I am working I'll make the change (if I understand it) but I'm not
going to whine and complain about somebody else's markup choice.  It
worked.  Having options for how we treat less frequent events gives more
room for growth.

Eclecticology


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
Thanks -- but how do I know (from the identifying user number) whether it
is an AOL address? Sorry if this is an obvious question,

Steve

At 01:23 PM 5/15/2003 -0600, you wrote:

>Adding "my ass-crack will suffer the consequences of the bong-hole!" to an
>article on the French Revolution is well beyond the limits of any doubt.
>The only thing that might hold back a ban is if that is the address of
>AOL, MSN or some similar large isp.
>
>Fred
>           From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 14:26:53 -0400
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound powers, and not abuse them?
>
>French Revolution
>
>---
>Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
>Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
>Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003

Steven L. Rubenstein
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030516/490001f4/attachment.htm
-------------- next part --------------

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>It is in practice too. We share our library here with the local Charter
>School and I have set in the computer room watching and helping a student
>research a paper using Wikipedia. Educators have no particular axe to grind
>with the bulk of our articles (other than being nonexistant or incomplete).
>
Self-esteem is very important in some educational circles.  Where
children are able to fill in some of Wikipedia's inevitable gaps, and
have their work treated with the same value and respect as the work of a
university professor it will be a tremendous boost to self-esteem.

>Another activity I have noted is using editing a wikipedia article as a
>class project. You can see the results of one effort in the first paragraph
>of the [[bear]] article.
>
That's exactly the kind of thing we want to happen.

Ec

>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound powers, and not abuse
  them?

references:
<BAE9454D.215F%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
 <5.1.0.14.2.20030515142501.02e4aaa0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
 <BAE9454D.215F%fredbaud@ctelco.net>

body:
Thanks -- I do appreciate your advice, and Fred's as well.

At 11:25 PM 5/15/2003 +0200, you wrote:

>On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 01:23:25PM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
> > Adding "my ass-crack will suffer the consequences of the bong-hole!" to an
> > article on the French Revolution is well beyond the limits of any
> doubt. The
> > only thing that might hold back a ban is if that is the address of AOL, MSN
> > or some similar large isp.
> >
> > Fred
>
>If it's only one edit, don't ban. He just tried whether he can hit the
>"Save"-button. A ban only raises the vandals interest in messing around
>even more. I usually open a "User contributions" page and reload it after
>5 to 10 minutes. If the user has made more edits, I revert them. I repeat
>this 2 or 3 times. If he's still around, I ban him. This is less work
>then looking up the IP and check whether it's a permanent or dynamic IP
>or a web proxy or so.
>
>Regards,
>
>         jens
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>---
>Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
>Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
>Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003

Steven L. Rubenstein
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
-------------- next part --------------

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003


body:
John R. Owens wrote:

>On Fri, 16 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
>>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Each category has its own range for what is
>>>objectionable.  "Sexually
>>>explicit" runs from suggestive almost nudity to
>>>goatse.cx.  Others might
>>>find the extreme views of "creation science" and
>>>"holocaust denial" to
>>>be just as objectionable.
>>>
>>>Ec
>>>
>>Creation science and holocaust denial are
>>objectionable, but they are presented as opinion, not
>>fact. That is the main difference. You cant make an
>>NPOV photograph.
>>
>>--LittleDan
>>
>
>So, umm, just what opinions does a photograph have? As long as they aren't
>doctored or staged, photographs are about as NPOV as it gets around here.
>You _can_ make a POV photograph, but you have to try.
>The inclusion or not is where the POV usually starts to creep in. And it
>seems to be trying to do so now.
>
Yes the choice of photos can be a POV act.

Consider a penis as a flagpole for the American flag.  Is that POV enough?
Ec


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Chat about Wikipedia performance?

body:
> > > Wiki syntax is a line-based syntax. There is /no/ wiki markup that
> > > spans lines. It makes editing much simpler: if you make a mistake and
> > > forget to close something, it gets closed off quickly. HTML is not
> > > designed to be human-editable; wiki syntax is.

I'm having a bit of trouble implementing the C parser because the
Wikitext parser has a lot of quirks.  For example, you say that no wiki
markup spans lines, but if you take a look at:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Marumari/Wikitext_Rendering_Quirks
you can see that headers do span lines.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


body:
> >So, umm, just what opinions does a photograph have?
> As long as they aren't
> >doctored or staged, photographs are about as NPOV
> as it gets around here.
> >You _can_ make a POV photograph, but you have to
> try.
> >The inclusion or not is where the POV usually
> starts to creep in. And it
> >seems to be trying to do so now.
> >
> Yes the choice of photos can be a POV act.
>
> Consider a penis as a flagpole for the American
> flag.  Is that POV enough?
> Ec

Well, that would have to be staged.

I guess I phrased myself wrong. But I wasn't saying
that pictures are POV, I was saying that _if we use_
photographs in the way we might, it could be
considered POV. But that doesn't really make sense,
what I'm saying. It's kinda meta-POV; I can't explain
it. But the issue here isn't really POV. The atribute
of POV or NPOV can't be applied to pictures like this
(with yours as an exception), just how we use them.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

body:
I agree, but many kids think the oposite way: "Hey, if
I put false information or just a random vandalisation
attack here, it'll be regarded just as good as
anything a professor writes!" At least one person who
I told about wikipedia has vandalised it, probably
more, but the only do that once.

--LittleDan

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Self-esteem is very important in some educational
> circles.  Where
> children are able to fill in some of Wikipedia's
> inevitable gaps, and
> have their work treated with the same value and
> respect as the work of a
> university professor it will be a tremendous boost
> to self-esteem.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Including parametrized snipplets

body:
--- Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de> wrote:

> There would be another namespace
> for HTML-Snipplets. Those snipplets can contain variables, e.g.
> enclosed by %%. A snipplet might be a piece of code to include an
> image with a label, it might be a table, or a boilerplate text.

> The snipplet
> ImageFloatingRight
> might perhaps look like this:
>
>

> [[Image:%%Image%%]]

>
> ''%%Label%%''
>
>

>
> In an article, it can be used by its name:
>
> {{ImageFloatingRight
> Image=Eiffel tower.jpg
> Label=The Eiffel Tower in Paris
> }}
>
> A Countrybox might start like this:
> {{CountryFactBox
> Flag=usa.png
> Motto=In God We Trust
> Capital=Washington D.C.
> ...
> }}

I find this approach very simple and elegant. The Countrybox code above
is self-explanatory and can be immediately edited by anyone; the
implementation of the snipplet in the snipplet namespace would be
rather technical, would involve colors, nested tables etc., would
rarely have to be edited, and could be safely ignored by most. As an
additional benefit, all country pages would look exactly alike.

This approach is clearly superior to pushing the complete table into
its own namespace, because then only technically proficient users could
savely edit the table contents.

We could even use simplified wiki Table syntax in the main namespace
and restrict the use of HTML tables (and other fancy HTML features) to
the snipplet namespace, since virtually all current uses of complicated
HTML tables belong to similar project pages that would benefit from
unifying snipplets.

> This is more flexible than just stylesheets:
> - More features of HTML can be used.
> - More users can edit the HTML snipplets than edit the CVS-based
> stylesheets.
> - It's easier to edit than having various stylesheet elements in the
> text.
> - Layout and Content are strictly divided.

Yup.

Axel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
--- "John R. Owens" <jowens.wiki at ghiapet.homeip.net>
wrote:
> On Fri, 16 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
> > Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 05:38:49 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] JohnQ / MaryMary - the
> clitoris guy
> >
> > --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > > Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> > >
> > > >You're missing MY point. From a relistic
> > > perspective,
> > > >sexually explicit images are in a different
> > > category
> > > >than articles describing christianity in
> Western
> > > >culture. I know it is POV, but I think it is
> > > >nessessary in a situation like this.
> > > >
> > > Each category has its own range for what is
> > > objectionable.  "Sexually
> > > explicit" runs from suggestive almost nudity to
> > > goatse.cx.  Others might
> > > find the extreme views of "creation science" and
> > > "holocaust denial" to
> > > be just as objectionable.
> > >
> > > Ec
> >
> > Creation science and holocaust denial are
> > objectionable, but they are presented as opinion,
> not
> > fact. That is the main difference. You cant make
> an
> > NPOV photograph.
> >
> > --LittleDan
>
> So, umm, just what opinions does a photograph have?
> As long as they aren't
> doctored or staged, photographs are about as NPOV as
> it gets around here.
> You _can_ make a POV photograph, but you have to
> try.
> The inclusion or not is where the POV usually starts
> to creep in. And it
> seems to be trying to do so now.
>
> --
> John R. Owens

Sorry, I misphrased myself. What I mean was that you
cant take a photo and make it unobjectionable.

--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
> (Nick Reinking <nick at twoevils.org>):
> > > > Wiki syntax is a line-based syntax. There is /no/ wiki markup that
> > > > spans lines. It makes editing much simpler: if you make a mistake and
> > > > forget to close something, it gets closed off quickly. HTML is not
> > > > designed to be human-editable; wiki syntax is.
>
> I'm having a bit of trouble implementing the C parser because the
> Wikitext parser has a lot of quirks.  For example, you say that no wiki
> markup spans lines, but if you take a look at:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Marumari/Wikitext_Rendering_Quirks
> you can see that headers do span lines.

It's not easy, I agree. I wasn't aware that headers could span lines;
I'm not sure whether or not I like that. I don't think so offhand.
You'll also notice that I changed my mind about quotes--I think it's
probably true that users will be somewhat surprized by forcing quotes
to close on every line break, so in my long-range vision I closed
them only at paragraph end.

My suggestion to an implementor is this: if the current code has
quirks, it's largely because the expected behavior is undefined, so
don't be afraid to define it yourself--if your definition makes
sense, and doesn't screw up too many existing pages, it will likely
be adopted.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker schrieb:
> Indeed, I would consider it heroic to violate local laws to post
> useful information on Wikipedia, such as first-hand descriptions of
> the acts of despotic governments, or information about how to
> defeat net access restrictions.

Me too. How about not showing IP addresses on the Chinese Wikipedia and
some others?

> A more tricky issue is postings that are legal elsewhere but not
> legal in California, such as the posting of information that is
> public domain in places whose legislature isn't owned by Disney.
> We probably have to supress such information, which is a shame.

BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or
are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.

Kurt


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
I am for ease of use. I am against reduced functionality.
When both objectives collide functionality should take prevalence.
As someone said we should not make the lowest common denominator coder
the norm. A separate table namespace seems a good compromise.

I am curious how these controversies are resolved nowadays in this
community. A few people state their opinion and developers make the
final decision?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Getting rid of nicknames

body:
If my understanding is correct, at least part of the recent conflict
between Anthere and Guillaume has to do with two people using the same
nickname. I will take the opportunity to reiterate my plea to get rid
of the nickname feature altogether.

The main reason is that nicknames make discussions harder to follow,
especially if people keep changing them or use ones with undisplayable
symbols.

Since the initial user name is already completely self-chosen, I can't
see any justification for an additional nickname layer.

If I remember correctly, we initially implemented nicknames to
accomodate users with offensive user names. This issue is now moot,
since by consensus offensive user names are not allowed anymore.

Axel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Creation science and holocaust denial are
> objectionable, but they are presented as opinion, not
> fact. That is the main difference. You cant make an
> NPOV photograph.

With Photoshop (or GIMP for the MS/Mac-Impaired), you can definitely
make a photo POV.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Procedural default" (was My identity...)

body:
I don't speak much French, so I am unqualified to judge the merits
of the argument going on at the French wiki now. But let me offer an
opinion that may help guide those who do understand:

In the American legal system (and probably others), you can win or
lose a case on its merits, but you can also lose by not following
the rules of the system. This is called "procedural default", and is
necessary to keep the system working: if a party refuses to show up
for court, or complains to the wrong court, or doesn't respond
properly to the court's questions, etc., then the court will not
waste its time digging further into the issues of the case--it will
simply declare that the uncooperative party loses. If someone wants
a dispute resolved, it falls upon him to ensure that he treats the
resolution system seriously and follows the process, otherwise
there's no point in having a system at all. In extreme cases, if a
litigant actively interferes with or subverts the process itself,
casuing the court to waste its time and money, the party can even
be sanctioned or charged with contempt of court.

When Wikipedia admins are called upon to resolve disputes, they
should have the same powers. If it's something like a dispute over
naming or content, a user who ignores legitimate questions posed
to him, argues in the wrong place, and so on, should not be
surprized when a sysop rules that his opponent's argument wins
simply because his opponent behaved in a more civilized,
productive manner. Likewise, there are some offenses that are
so egregious as to merit sanctions: editing other people's quotes
to misrepresent their opinions (but not just spelling mistakes
and such), deliberate deception or dishonesty of other kinds,
like lying about what one has said previously, or about what
someone else has said.

I don't put mere hot-headedness into any of those categories:
people get excited and say nasty things, and I don't have a problem
with that as long as they keep the system working. But when they
actively work to defeat the system, they need to lose, or the
system stops working.

So, those admins who want to take some responsibility for the
foreign wikis, do it. Don't be afraid to tell an uncooperative
user that he is losing precisely because he refuses to cooperate.
Block users, temporarily or permanently if necessary, if they
actively work to subvert the system. If you need more technical
assistance to exercise those powers, ask for it. Take control.
Do what's necessary. We'll probably support you unless a dozen
reasonable-sounding users give us good reasons not to.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
I assume s/he has stopped -- but I still appreciate all the input as I
imagine something like this will happen in the future, and know I will be
better prepared to know how to handle it.  Thanks,

Steve

At 10:02 AM 5/16/2003 -0600, you wrote:

>Well, you don't, it just won't do any good to ban a user number from AOL
>since it will change every time they log on. It will soon become obvious
>since he'll be back on with a slightly different number right away, So
>then go ahead and lift that first ban so you are not banning AOL or other
>big isp users at random. BTW is this guy still messing around? If he has
>quit by now that might as well be the end of it.
>
>Fred
>From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 11:31:50 -0400
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound powers, and not abuse them?
>
>Thanks -- but how do I know (from the identifying user number) whether it
>is an AOL address? Sorry if this is an obvious question,
>
>Steve
>
>At 01:23 PM 5/15/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>
>Adding "my ass-crack will suffer the consequences of the bong-hole!" to an
>article on the French Revolution is well beyond the limits of any doubt.
>The only thing that might hold back a ban is if that is the address of
>AOL, MSN or some similar large isp.
>
>Fred
>
>         From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> Reply-To:
> wikien-l at wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 14:26:53 -0400 To:
> wikien-l at wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] How do I use my newfound
> powers, and not abuse them?
>
>French Revolution
>
>---
>Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
>Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com
><http://www.grisoft.com/> ).
>Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003
>Steven L. Rubenstein
>Assistant Professor
>Department of Sociology and Anthropology
>Bentley Annex
>Ohio University
>Athens, Ohio 45701
>
>---
>Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
>Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
>Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003
>
>
>
>---
>Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
>Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
>Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003

Steven L. Rubenstein
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030516/eaf10324/attachment.htm
-------------- next part --------------

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003


body:
Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
>>I am curious how these controversies are resolved nowadays in this
>>community. A few people state their opinion and developers make the
>>final decision?
> Sure - in the end they will do the programming, not the users. Any user is
> free to share in as Phase III Software developer. However, if our developers
> are good developers (and I bet they are), they will listen to what the people
> actually using their software will state as their requirements ;-)

And that a (or better _the_) developer posted such a vision for starting
discussions before he starts coding seems to proof this.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Two issues here: what is legal to have on the server and what is legal in the user's nation

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>A contributor from France can decide what risk she wants to take
>>in posting potentially illegal material while in that country.
>>But I shouldn't use my influence on Wikipedia policy to stop her.
>>(I don't know if this paragraph is in disagreement with you or not.)

>Why do you use a "she" ?

As you suspected,
because you were the first French contributor to come to mind.
But of course I don't mean to imply that I mean you specifically,
just as writing "he" would not have implied that I meant Aoineko
(the first male French contributor to come to my mind just now).

I wrote "she", thought ?That "she" is because of Anthere, isn't it??,
decided ?Well, it's no worse than "he" and better than "ze".?, and kept it.
But really, I should have changed it to "they".

-- Toby


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

body:
Hi Dan,

I have to disagree a bit I'm afraid. Before I discovered Wikipedia my
internet maths bible was  www.mathworld.wolfram.com, a pretty comprehensive
maths encyclopaedia. Now, revising for my final university maths exams I
probably use both Wolfram and Wikipedia with about equal frequency. I trust
Wikipedia's content because I know that lots of the maths related articles
have been looked over (or created) by users like Michael Hardy and Axel
Boldt. From their contributions it's clear that they know what they're
talking about (there's other users I could mention here).

I'm not convinced that Wikipedia's fallability is such a bad thing, it's a
good demonstration of the fact that you should never base something entirely
on one source. If I'm trying to understand a maths topic I'll generally look
it up on Wikipedia, Wolfram, the books on my shelves and the notes from my
lectures. None of these sources are perfect (sadly, especially my lecture
notes) but often the different explanations between the four can shed light
on the topic.

Also, I don't really have any idea how, for example, Britannica writes their
maths articles. Do they actually employ mathematicians to write them? Do
they get a list of Topics in Maths and do some googling? It's probably true
that Britannica have a lower error/article ratio than Wikipedia but it
doesn't mean I should have blind faith in them. In fact, I expect that the
more esoteric the topic, the more likely it is to have errors in it as it's
more difficult to check. Another example could be biographies of long dead
people, how much effort do they put into looking through contemporary
research on the person and how much do they, in effect, just reprint out of
date versions from years ago?

Anyway, I'm beginning to ramble so I'll wrap this up. My point is that used
properly (the same as every other resource) I believe that Wikipedia is a
useful educational resource.

Cheers,

Andrew (Ams80)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 1:24 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

> Like I said before: *in theory*, wikipedia is a great
> educational source, but *in practice*, no one believes
> it. Wikipedia does have its flaws that I believe could
> be solved by this.
>
> --LittleDan
>
> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > I believe it already is a "valid educational
> > source".
> >
> > Waiting for approval from educational bureaucrats,
> > and being restricted
> > by their political whims would destroy Wikipedia as
> > we know it.  The
> > scrutiny would be not just on an article by article
> > basis, but on a
> > school district by school district basis.  The range
> > of these from
> > permissive open-minded to Christian or Islamic
> > fundamentalist is so wide
> > that we would never have the resources to do all the
> > needed editing.
> >
> > Wikipedia's primary value is not as a static source
> > in the way that a
> > printed book or CD wuld be.  It is as a growing,
> > dynamic and editable
> > source.  In the perpetual battle between the
> > irresistable force and the
> > immovable object we are on the side of the
> > irresistable force.  Here in
> > British Columbia the provincial department of
> > education (at least in
> > theory) bases education on three principles of
> > learning.  The one that
> > is relevant in this context is that education
> > requires the active
> > participation of the learner.  The learner is not
> > there to just
> > passively vacuum up knowledge; he needs to
> > contribute to that knowledge
> > interactively.  The old model based on respecting
> > the elders who
> > painstakingly amassed a precious body of knowledge
> > is not working as
> > well as it used to.
> >
> > In the economic terms of supply and demand the
> > supply of knowledge has
> > been made higher than ever by electronic means.  The
> > last time knowledge
> > got such a boost came with Gutenberg in the 15th
> > century.  Taking an
> > example from a modern 18th century democracy like
> > the United States, we
> > have the Electoral College.  It reflects a time when
> > Gutenberg's
> > revolution had taken hold, but before the
> > revolutions in transportation
> > of the 19th century.  Communicating the results of
> > elections from
> > Georgia and New Hampshire was not a simple task.  It
> > would have
> > stretched the imagination of the drafters of the
> > constitution to
> > conceive that some day a far larger and more
> > populous country would be
> > able to have all the results in one place before the
> > end of voting day.
> >   (The Florida anomaly would have been no less
> > baffling to them as to the
> > modern person.)
> >
> > Returning to education, the opportunity that we
> > offer is in dynamically
> > learning the skills of democratic participation.
> > Focusing on the
> > negative act of controling sexually explicit
> > material or the positive
> > act of promoting religious or patriotic values would
> > both have us
> > missing the opportunity.  Part of the skill too is
> > learning to cope with
> > the disruptive elements in the society.
> >
> > I could maintain this rant a lot longer! :-)
> >
> > Eclecticology
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
> http://search.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote in part:

>Things like ==...==, ''...'' and the list codes in combination with the
>line ending restrictions are not that easy to learn.  And don't forget
>the indentations tricks.  Once the user gets these cryptic control code,
>he must learn to use them properly!  And the nice thing about wikis is,
>their is more than one, thus you are force to get used to more than one
>wiki format ;-)

I think that the list markup is quite intuitive and easier than HTML.
Other than that, I'm inclined to agree with you.
Still, "''" is shorter than "<em>" (and usually more correct than "<i>"),
as well as well known to writers of wikis other than ours,
so we should still allow it.

One change that we really need to make in PediaWiki, however,
is to not allow things like <span onmouseup="...">.
This can be done by explicitly parsing all apparent HTML encountered --
if the parser renders it into HTML exactly the same as the source,
then that's no loss, but it should still be parsed.

-- Toby


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote in part:

>BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or
>are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.

Not laws primarily, but industry self-regulation.
That said, the self-censorship began to avoid the imposition of laws.

-- Toby


body:
Thomas Corell wrote:

>And that a (or better _the_) developer posted such a vision for starting
>discussions before he starts coding seems to proof this.

Right.  It's highly unlikely that Lee will edit the PediaWiki code
in such a way that advanced table features will no longer work,
simply because this is proving to be quite unpopular.
However, there's no guarantee that he'll edit the code
to allow, say, a [[table:]] namespace, even if everybody else wants it --
some other developer may have to do that instead, if it happens at all.

-- Toby


body:
Anthere wrote:

>5. I also ask shelter from the english wikipedia.

Sorry, I don't understand this.

-- Toby