from_name: Theresa Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Please forgive me if this has already been suggested; I only just
subscribed to this list yesterday.

I think the 3-revert should be a guideline, with a direct warning on the
user's talk page when it is violated.  If the user continues to revert the
page, and doesn't at that point start having a sane conversation about how
to deal with the issue, then the person is being obsequious and
uncommunicative and that is ample reason for a 24-hour ban.

moink

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Bjorn Lindqvist wrote:
> > When *I* voted on that poll some week ago, the poll was about whether
> > there should be a *guideline* that reads "do not do more than three
> > reverts" or not. Nowhere on that page did it say that the poll really
> > was about whether to allow admins to block a user that reverts three
> > times or not.
> >
> > Many of the 51+ persons that has voted probably did not either
> > understand that the vote was about bannings. If that is what the vote
> > is about and not just a guideline.
>
> I share Bjorn's concern.
>
> It's one thing to say that we have a very strong community guideline
> or norm that says 3 reverts in a day is enough.  It's quite another
> thing to introduce an entirely new paradigm in which 24 hour bans are
> made for things that are not really emergency situations.
>
> I'm not 100% opposed to the idea, but my foot dragging on making any
> sort of decree about this is grounded in the fact that I see this as a
> rather radical departure from past practice.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brian Corr

subject: [WikiEN-l] 66.185.84.208

body:
The Anome blocked this IP for repeated policy violations for apparent
copyright violations, and for vandalism -- see the talk page
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:66.185.84.208>

Thanks,
Brian

Magnus wrote:
>I found this in my inbox today:
>
>I'm a user who has the number 66.185.84.208.
>I've found myself blocked on the accusation of vandalism and
>plagarism.  Can you please unblock me?
>Please note that this is the 4th time in 5 months and I hope this is the
>last time.
>
>I quickly scanned through his contributions, and there are quite a few.
>Some of his new articles had a leftist bias, and he seems to be
>pro-Palestine, but I didn't see real vandalism. Some of his edits might be
>a little weird, though.
>
>But, if he was really banned 4 times already, I probably missed something.
>
>Magnus


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: An Idea for a Wiki Project

body:
John Davenport wrote:

> Agreeing with Timwi, that would be a copyright violation, but older
> public domain lyrics could be posted over at:
>
> http://sources.wikipedia.org
>
> The wikisources project is a great idea and could use some more
> contributers/articles in general if anyone's interested.

Speaking as an active Wikisourceror I would have no objection to the
general idea of including song lyrics.  Although GFDL material and rules
are just as applicable to Wikisource as to the other sister projects,
the practical developments have led to a much higher proportion of
public domain material.  That's fine.

My concern is that many contributors are oblivious to copyright.  Even
as a person who would be willing to push the envelope on copyright, I
feel that it is still necessary for a contributor to accept
responsibility for what he enters.  Simple information about when
something was first published goes a long way in this, as would the same
simple information about a translation.  Considering only the most basic
criterion in U.S. copyright law, (i.e. was it published before 1923) I
have found that many of these unidentified contributions are indeed in
the public domain.  Others are unclear, and even after some searching
remain unclear.  I suspect that they are in the public domain, but
cannot be certain.  To compound the problem, many of these things are
put up by anonymous contributors who are difficult or impossible to
contact.  When I have a contributor name I can contact the person, and
the problem is often easily resolved.

In other contexts I have expressed myself as a philosophical
inclusionist, and in Wikisource I often end up needing to do research
myself to save a contribution.  That research is not always successful.
 Other criteria are available for declaring that something is in the
public domain, but the responsibility of the contributor to establish
that such an other criterion applies is even greater, and he should at
least express what criterion he is trying to apply.

I look forward to opinions for practical solutions.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: automatic PDF generation from WP articles

body:
Stephan Walter wrote:

>The script is now permanently available at:
>
>http://lart.info/~stw/wiki2pdf/

I tested it on the Wikipedia article [[Sheldon Rampton]] and found a
couple of bugs. The article contains the following lines of wiki
markup:

*With [[Liz Chilsen]]:
**''[[Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities]]'' ([[1987]])
*With [[John Stauber]]:
**[http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy.html Toxic Sludge Is Good For
You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry] ([[1995]])

Elsewhere in the article, the parser correctly converted  double
square brackets into hyperlinked text pointing to Wikipedia articles,
but it failed to do so for the double square brackets around "Friends
In Deed." I think it must have been thrown off by the double foot
marks before and after the double square brackets.

Also, it failed to correctly convert the URL pointing to "Toxic
Sludge Is Good For You. The correct URL is:

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy.html

Instead, the PDF turned it into the following:

file:http%3A//www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy.html

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] 66.185.84.208

body:
I found this in my inbox today:

I'm a user who has the number 66.185.84.208.
I've found myself blocked on the accusation of vandalism and plagarism.  Can you please unblock me?
Please note that this is the 4th time in 5 months and I hope this is the last time.

I quickly scanned through his contributions, and there are quite a few. Some of his new articles had a leftist bias, and he seems to be pro-Palestine, but I didn't see real vandalism. Some of his edits might be a little weird, though.

But, if he was really banned 4 times already, I probably missed something.

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I agree that these matters need to be considered on a case-by-case
>> basis.  A person who engages in a protracted revert war on a single
>> article is very different from one who repeatedly does this across a
>> broad range of articles.
>
> I guess I don't see what the problem with solving them all in the same
> way is.  A person who engages in a protracted revert war on a single
> article will get a single 24-hour ban, which is not really the end of
> the world.  A person who repeatedly does this across a broad range of
> articles will be repeatedly banned for 24-hour periods, resulting in
> effectively a permanent ban until they decide to stop engaging in
> revert-wars.

OK!  But if we're going to do that, it has to apply to both parties in
an edit war, even when the dispute involves an acknowledged idiot versus
a respected sysop. :-)   Every edit war has at least two participants.

Ec


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I thought I was paying pretty close attention to Wikipedia -- But this
>is the FIRST I EVER HEARD ABOUT THIS!!!!
>
>
Given that there've been at least a few dozen posts about it spanning
the past three months, I find that somewhat odd...

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Delirium wrote:
>
>> I guess I don't see what the problem with solving them all in the
>> same way is.  A person who engages in a protracted revert war on a
>> single article will get a single 24-hour ban, which is not really the
>> end of the world.  A person who repeatedly does this across a broad
>> range of articles will be repeatedly banned for 24-hour periods,
>> resulting in effectively a permanent ban until they decide to stop
>> engaging in revert-wars.
>
>
> OK!  But if we're going to do that, it has to apply to both parties in
> an edit war, even when the dispute involves an acknowledged idiot
> versus a respected sysop. :-)   Every edit war has at least two
> participants.

Yes, that's what I envisioned.  All parties who revert 3 or more times,
anyway.

-Mark


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Pedro Fortuny

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers should mind their own business

body:
I agree with Tim. This reminds me of the "three powers" (and I know this
is not a State and there is no such thing as a "government"). *Division*
of work and functions is

	a) more transparent (there is not even the remote possibility
		of dictatorship, and mistakes are mistakes in only one
		part of the project).
	b) easier to maintain (someone with just one function may be
		removed as there will easily be substitutes. Someone for
		just one function is more easily found than for two).
	c) easier to work in (the person needs only care about "one"
		aspect of the project).

My 2c. I probably ought to have quoted Tim, but my mail client is far away
and editing is a pain....

Pedro.

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 66.185.84.208

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Brian Corr wrote:
>
>> The Anome blocked this IP for repeated policy violations for apparent
>> copyright violations, and for vandalism -- see the talk page
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:66.185.84.208>
>
> I thought we had established that non-logged-in users never get the
> "You have new messages" notice, and so never have their attention
> drawn to their IP's talk page?

Since he communicated with and has the confidence of Magnus perhaps
Magnus should write back to encourage him to adopt a real user name
while assuring him that his identity is actually safer if he does so.
 If it's impossible to have a way to contact somebody, it's to be
expected that they will receive much less latitude than a logged-in
user.  We don't know if a compromise is even possible.

Ec

>


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 1729

body:
Timwi wrote

> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
> > I wrote
> >
> >>I have intervened in the endless 1729 edit war, splitting the page into
> >>three. Now [[1729 (number)]] and [[1729 (anecdote)]] are protected,
since
> >>[[User:Wik]] is reverting again.
> >
> > Well, Wik nominated me for de-admin on the strength of this.
>
> It appears that you protected a page on which you were involved in an
> edit war yourself. This is generally considered abuse of sysop power. Do
> not do this again if you don't want to appear [[Wikipedia:Requests for
> de-adminship]] again ;-)

Yes, some broad-minded people have been explaining that.  If the definition
of 'edit war' is drawn up so rigorously as to include what I did, I quite
see why some reasonable people do feel that way.  My side is that others in
an edit war had created a Gordian knot.  I was immediately attacked by both
sides in that war; given the personalities I assumed I had done something
right; but perhaps I was in the wrong nonetheless, and their private battle
should have been left to run its course.  I saw no reason to be bounced by a
de-admin request/hassle-and-hustle user page barrage pincer movement, but
today I'm unwinding this as best I can.

Charles


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> Or better yet, couldn't we even get rid of the bureaucrat account type by
> requiring at least 3 admins to approve bureaucrat+-type actions? Kinda like
> requiring two keys turned by two people at once and having to enter the correct
> codes in order to launch a nuke.

Might work on en: and de: and nl:, but it would have ridiculous
consequences to use this kind of rule on smaller Wikipedias. fy:
has 3 admins, one of which has not been around for a few months
now. af: has zero admins. And those are small, but not the smallest.

Andre Engels


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] French Wikipedia decided to switch to UTF-8 !

in_reply_to:
<00c001c405be$c1093df0$d100a8c0@arcsy.co.jp> (Guillaume
	Blanchard's message of "Tue, 9 Mar 2004 19:10:31 +0900")

body:
>>>>> "GB" == Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> writes:

    GB> The only concerns relate to tell users how to get a Unicode
    GB> compliant browser and fix eventual problem the switch may
    GB> generate.

    GB> Can you please switch French Wikipedia to UTF-8?

    GB> If we need to make some manual change in articles, please tell
    GB> us. We have 2 bots that can make this kind of work.

Ha! Man, I love democracy.

Whoever is going to do this: I actually moved Wikitravel to UTF-8. I
outlined a procedure here:

         http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2003-December/000066.html

It worked, as best as I can recollect. Anyone who'd do this job would
probably know what to do better than me, but I figured I'd point it
out.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Three-reverts and you're blocked

body:
Mark (Delirium) wrote:

> Given that there've been at least a few dozen posts
> about it spanning the past three months, I find that
> somewhat odd...

The part I'm quite familiar with is the idea of defining an
edit war in terms of the number of reversions, i.e., three
per person per day.

The part I never heard about was the idea of authorizing admins
to block users who violate the rule.

A long time ago, I originally proposed that some users other than Jimbo
be given the delegated authority to give "time-outs" to users who
violate Wikipedia policy. I still favor the idea, but think that it
should not be Proclaimed as Policy by our PhilosopherKing and founder.
Rather, it should be discussed fully, voted on freely and fairly by the
user community -- and adopted as policy only if there is widespread
support.

In other words, I'm for it -- but let's vote first.

Ed Poor
Somewhere in Vacationland, USA


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tables for chess diagrams (Was: LaTex chess support)

in_reply_to:
<20040307162120.A16940@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in>;
	from arvindn@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in on Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at
	04:21:21PM +0530

body:
Hi,

I've been playing around with making chess diagrams using a table, and
it seems to work fine. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arvindn/Chess
for an example and rationale.

I'm planning to do diagrams this way, and although it is perfectly usable as
it is, I've found it helpful to use a small script (attached) to generate the
table from a simpler text description. It would be nice to see something
like this integrated into the backend, so that anyone can easily create/
modify a diagram without needing to run the script.

It should also be simple to generate a table from a ChessTex-like notation
or from [[PGN]], and I'm willing to write these too if necessary.

So, could we have this incorporated into MediaWiki?

Thanks
Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me
-------------- next part --------------
#!/usr/bin/python
#chessgen.py - trivial script to generate wiki source for a chess position from
#a description like
#
#rnbqkbnr
#pppppppp
#........
#........
#........
#........
#PPPPPPPP
#RNBQKBNR
#
#Author: Arvind Narayanan [[User:Arvindn]]
#License: Public domain
#Usage: give the description in standard input
#

import sys

bg = 'l'

size = 40
prefix = '[[Image:chess_'
suffix = '.png]]'

print '
' %(8*size, 8*size)
print '
\n'

for line in sys.stdin:
	line = line.strip()
	print '
'
	for ch in line:
		if ch == '.':
			ch = ''
		else:
			if ch.islower(): ch = ch + 'd'
			else: ch = ch.lower() + 'l'
		ch = ch + bg
		print '%s%s%d%s	' % (prefix, ch, size, suffix)
		if bg == 'd': bg = 'l'
		else: bg = 'd'
	if bg == 'd': bg = 'l'
	else: bg = 'd'
	print '
\n'

print '
\n'
print '
'


subject: [WikiEN-l] Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
This thing has really gotten out of hand.

Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on
so-called soft security.

A small community like Ward's Wiki (which is  chiefly about software
development) or MeatBall (which is about creating online communities)
which has a HIGH RATIO of readers to writers, can rely on soft security.
Every change is read by dozens of Recent Changes junkies.

The days when a single admin (like Maveric in his heyday) could be "on
duty" for several hours at a time and single-handedly hold back the tide
of vandalism -- well these days are forever gone, my friends.

Sorry, but we are the victims of our own success. And it takes the full
attention of a dozen admins to counter one determined troublemaker.

The arbitration committee was created, not for vandals and
troublemakers, but for long-running personality conflicts or
style/content disputes. But when there's a troll loose in the dungeon,
we need to the authority to act quickly and quarantine the problem.

I did not plan to be the one to force the issue; I had hoped to avoid
even the slightest hint of "unilateral action", but todays' crisis
seemed to call for what we might call "citizen's arrest". Responding to
repeated calls for help, I blocked a user and all his known puppet
accounts. This action requires immediate review by the Arbitration
Committee.

If the committee wants to unblock him before making a decision, that's
fine. That's what Fred and all them are supposed to do: figure out how
to handle a case where everyone else has given up. If they want to keep
the block in place while they investigate and make up their minds,
that's fine too.

Ed Poor


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 3-revert rule: technical fix?

body:
Is it feasible/reasonable to ask for the mediawiki software, not to enforce, but to _notify_ the editor when the 3-revert rule is being broken?

I'm thinking of something along the lines of what the old newsreader software used to do when you posted something for world distribution and it gave you that warning message about your action "costing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars" to the Net.

No action, no enforcement, no locking out... just a little notice saying "this is the sixth revert you've made on this article today. Usually we try not to do more than three."

(Similarly, I've often wished that the express lines in supermarkets had a nice big electric sign that would display the item count. If the person buying sixteen items in the "twelve items or fewer" lane saw that the count was sixteen and knew that the checker and the people behind him could see that the count was sixteen, nothing would need to be said).


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Tim-

> There is no sense in giving developers administrative power.

I tend to agree, although I think it's not a matter of ability (I do not
share the "programmers are good at this, not at that" belief; programmers
are human beings like anyone else) but a matter of scalability. We can't
make everyone a developer for security reasons. Encapsulating community
functions like desysopping in the "bureaucrat" flag seems like the most
reasonable way forward to me.

That of course does not address the question what these bureaucrats are
*allowed* to do.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] The bird squawks

body:
I don't need this kind of abuse: I'm trying to take a vacation. --Ed

----

Ed Poor you are a malicious vigilante who is easily swayed by group
pressure to avoid the difficult work of examining the accuracy and
provenance of what is contributed to an open document. If a band of
thugs have formed a neighborhood safety committe and now wants to
arbitrate to whom this document is open adn to whom it is not, go ahed
and try, because one, you can't keep anyone from editing, and two, the
more times you thugs say "open except to that person and that one and
that one" the more rediculous becomes the claim that this is an open
document.

You claimed to be on vacation but just couldn't avoid the chance to feed
when you smelled blood in the water. If this matter is important to you,
kindly post links to your so called "Arbitrary Committee" so I can tell
them to thier face they are a bunch of thugs with no legitimacy, no
democratic foundation and no purpose but to exclude effective criticisms
from this liberal propaganda effort.

If I recall, you have been the target of repeated complaints about your
abuse of authority. Why don't you honor your promise and go on vacation.
The people on the mailing list were spending their time slandering Bird
rather than edit articles and improve the accuracy of the encyclopedia.
If that is the game you play that is fine because it is easy to expose
there is no way you can prevent further exposure, or recruitment of
others who will even more scornfully ridicule the malicious games you
play in the name of producing and educational document. USER:BIRD

----


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: French Wikipedia decided to switch to UTF-8 !

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

> Can you please switch French Wikipedia to UTF-8?
>
> PS : The discussion (in French):
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Prise_de_d%E9cision/UTF-8

To be entirely honest, it doesn't seem like everybody is aware of the
consequences of such a switch. Unless extra mechanisms are introduced in
the software to handle this, all articles will have broken accents
everywhere. To fix all that would be a task for life, and you can't even
be sure if you've caught everything.

Personally, I think it would make sense to add something to the DB to
specify that an article is still in Latin-1, and let the software
convert it to UTF-8 whenever it is saved. However, this would take time
to program.

YMMV.

Timwi


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia down (Server problem)

body:
On Mar 9, 2004, at 04:42, Timwi wrote:
> Now I get this error:
>
> 	Forbidden
> 	You don't have permission to access /upload/wiki.png on this
> 	server.
>
> 	Apache/1.3.29 Server at en.wikipedia.org Port 80
>
> when trying to access the logo...

We're not quite sure why this started happening, but Gabriel's resolved
it. Apache decided it didn't want to follow symlinks anymore...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia down (Server problem)

body:
Hi,

it seems that I'm suddenly getting empty pages from the Wikipedia
server. Here's an HTTP response:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 12:25:47 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) PHP/4.3.4
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.4
Content-Type: text/html
X-Cache: MISS from wikipedia.org
Connection: close

and then the connection closes after this...

Thanks,
Timwi


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Tables for chess diagrams (Was: LaTex chess
	support)

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've been playing around with making chess diagrams using a table, and
> it seems to work fine. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arvindn/Chess
> for an example and rationale.

Hm, can we use Wiki table syntax for this?...

I've changed your page; it would be nice if you would update your script
accordingly.


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
OK

i think you are nuts. seriously. But you have something. and I like
it...

How fast is that wiki->PDF script?

I mean.. after the kinks are worked out I would be very willing to
download a dump,
mod the program a bit to grab the stuff from the DB directly, and
generate a couple of
hundred thousand Wikipedia articles in PDF. I could tar and gz these
and offer them as a single
download or just put them on a couple of file sharing programs under
the names
  wikipedia_$articlename.PDF   I mean I have no clue why anyone would
want these since you can
just go to the website and see a (most likely) newer and more correct
article.. but it'd be a fun experiment
Direct Connect, fast track, and gnutella come to mind.... and I mean I
guess they could be published to freenet.. although I dont know what
the deal is with freenet and PDF...

If someone thinks this is a good idea, tell me please.

I mean as a start we could do it with Brilliant Prose articles.. or
whatever they are called now. These could be PDF'd and packaged as "the
best of Wikipedia" or they could be made into a PDF "book".   As the
selection grows we could put them in categories and organize them
better and publish this "book" in PDF format every 2 months or so...
Hell, if one topic was covered well enough it might even be worth
printing a couple of hundred copies and submitting them to college
libraries to raise awareness of the Wikipedia in higher learning
environments

Lightning

On Mar 9, 2004, at 11:19 AM, Itai Fiat wrote:

> Hello,
>
> This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at
> that. I
> recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of
> reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion?s sake, the
> content
> of the article will not be recounted here). While I have no problem
> developing this myself, I was wondering if anybody has any objections
> - or,
> better yet, suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in advance.
>
> - Itai
>
> (If you wish to contact me directly, use either
> itai at mail.portland.co.uk or
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Itai .)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Timwi wrote:

> it seems that I'm suddenly getting empty pages from the Wikipedia
> server.

Seems to work again, suddenly. :)


body:
Now I get this error:

	Forbidden
	You don't have permission to access /upload/wiki.png on this
	server.

	Apache/1.3.29 Server at en.wikipedia.org Port 80

when trying to access the logo...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: redirecting to user pages

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Why is there such urgency about deleting the page with the redirect?
> What harm does it cause?  Will anybody be hurt if it is still there at
> this time next year?  Reading 'Dilbert' should be mandatory.

100% agree :-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers should mind their own business

references:
<404D7287.8000206@hotmail.com> <94YIuicSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<c2kfl8$cq1$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mar 9, 2004, at 05:09, Tim Starling wrote:
> Erik Moeller:
>> That of course does not address the question what these bureaucrats
>> are
>> *allowed* to do.
>
> I tried to make the bureaucrat access work across wikis but Brion was
> livid.

Not exactly. When we first set up the 'bureaucrat' system, somebody
(snok?) snuck in interwiki control to it. This made the Sysop Cabal
refuse to *allow* the people who needed it to get it (sysops on smaller
wikis to manage their own affairs) on the fear that Some Bad Person
would use sock puppet accounts on small wikis, trick people into
getting bureaucrat access, and then make sysops on the English
Wikipedia to do Bad Things.

Later, Tim tried to hack it back in. In addition to the fact that
having it destroys the entire point because of the reaction (see
above), the code was tied to Wikipedia's setup and not a clean thing to
have in the general code.

> I tested the water on giving bureaucrats the power to desysop on
> #wikipedia,
> and the answer I got was firmly negative. What I'm proposing is a
> minimal
> change, by replacing developer power with the power of a small set of
> users
> who are selected by an appropriate process. Currently, any software
> engineer
> can get shell access by putting in a few hours of work, or by bringing
> a
> unique skill to the group. It's hardly a good way to select the
> management
> of an organisation.

As developers we do *not* manage the social structure of the wiki. We
are servants. We try to keep the servers running smooth and clean and
improve the functioning of the wiki. I'm not sure I understand what
you're suggesting be _changed_.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Visual suggestion; Straw Poll

body:
Angela wrote:

> May I please suggest in future people use talk pages
> rather than the mailing list to announce such changes.

Angela, this is neither an announcement nor a decision to change
anything. Please read the subject line on this thread as well as the
original message. I'm only wanting to find out what people think.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 66.185.84.208

body:
David Speakman wrote:

> The person may be using
> a temporary IP address that once belonged to a vandal or troll.

Magnus specifically mentioned that he did have a look at the
contributions list for the IP address and did not find any real
vandalism or trollage.

Timwi


from_name: Robert Michel

body:
Salve!

I already posted this alternative idea for the administrative power on the
German mailinglist because I have the experiances of some radiostations:

Radio/TV stations have one "Chef vom Dienst" (CvD) (Wiktionary is needed, I
had to call www.dw-world.de for thier offical translation): "chief duty
editor"(duty=liability). The chief duty editor has only a special task during
his shift, he does not play a special role in the hirachy nor in conferences.
He is a journalist like the other editors, but in his shift as chief duty
editor he cares about the administration stuff: what breaking news is
important, which editor cares about which story, the timetable... so during
his shift he is to busy to write own storrys/news.

Often this job is rotaiting, so an editor takes this role as chief duty editor
only once a week.

Why do I proposed this idea for the Wikipedia to think about this modell?

Because in my eyes (as normal Wikipdianer) I found > 50 administrators not
transparent. Would someone ask me next time to become admin, I would reject
this, because I think this system is sub-perfect. I do not use my PC with
root-rights, especialy not for internet communication, so why should I use
wikipedia everytime as administrator?
When I would be an admin an d write an articel and have a dispute with other
users - there is the danger that I nor the user user could seperate between
my admin function and my normal subjective wikipedia-work.

==Reducing the power to bann IPs/user==
Going on with this idea I came to the point, that the right to ban IPs and
user should have only one person at once. Image all experienced trusted user,
which would become admin today are canditated for the "chief duty editor".

1. When a trusted user logs in he can declare that he would candidate for
chief duty editor in that session.

2. The first candidate who logged in become the demand note by the Wikipedia
System to be the "chief duty editor" for the next 2 hours. (He can accept or
reject, for example when he is drunk at that time).

3. When two or more candidates are online they have to agree who takes the
job, in case of a stalemate (stand-off) an algorithmus like the one with the
most edits since be the last time chief duty editor could help.

4. In case that one chief duty editor time of 2 hours are finish, he goes
offline before or he does not answer on requests to ban one IP/User inbetween
3 minutes, the system calls again all candidates to find one new chief duty
editor

5. In case that no candidate is only all trusted users become a message
(pop-up) to become candidate inbetween next 2 minutes ;)

6. On a populare wikipedia page is shown who is chief duty editor right now
and has a log of all shifts, with all action in the name of chief duty
editor.

7. The chief duty editor use his special account only for administration and
statments as administrator, but not for normal editings - for that he must
use his normal account, but he should work full time with reading, giving
comments on disscussion pages and delete nonsens, and not try to write or
change own article during his shift.

8. In case that the chief duty editor is going mad, every trusted user can
request a despose of the chief duty editor but the one who request this can`t
become chief duty editor for next 24h. If  he has to argue well and to try to
solve the problem in dialog with the chief duty editor before and every
trusted wikipedian who is online become a call to vote. The one who lost this
vote lost his status trusted wikipedian after a final voting inbetween 48h
clears this case.

==Reducing the power to delete==
At the moment we have lists where we propose candidats for deleating, these
have to be deleted 7 days after the proposel. But also some trolls and stupid
articles, which have to deleated instancely. IMHO it would be nice to see how
many people does care about this work at this time. When > 50 admins does
care about this job, but also write artikles at the same time, this isn`t
very systematic.
So I would like to see an algorithmus, but more easy like I proposed for the
chief duty editor that every trusted wikipedian could choose if he
concentrate on doing administration work, or just only work on articles of
his interest.

The admins will complain now, but I be admin honorable and I do like to work
on articles on my interests - write, edit and when I think there is one
article bullshit, I deleat it. THATS the point that I whant to avoid, because
this is subjective work and will bring confilcts with other non-admin users,
especialy when the number of admins will grow.

I think I would be better when admins would more split their work, the normal
contributings and the administration stuff. Those who say, I like to do
administration stuff when they log in should take more responsability than
only to check their wathchlist.
Mybe by an algrorithm that admins/editors are supported by a softwaretool that
they have to read systematicaly every new article and every changed articel
once a month.

But admins should think about the option to do not work as admin and
concentrate on what they like to do. Sure, you would say you have already the
freedom as admin to do this. But so we have no systematic, no overview how
works as admin today - 50? 30? 10? none?

Am Dienstag, 9. M?rz 2004 08:30 schrieb Tim Starling:
> There is no sense in giving developers administrative power. Developers
> are good at programming, not management of a community.
Am Dienstag, 9. M?rz 2004 09:51 schrieb Pedro Fortuny:
> I agree with Tim. This reminds me of the "three powers" (and I know this
> is not a State and there is no such thing as a "government"). *Division*
> of work and functions is
>
> 	a) more transparent (there is not even the remote possibility
> 		of dictatorship, and mistakes are mistakes in only one
> 		part of the project).
> 	b) easier to maintain (someone with just one function may be
> 		removed as there will easily be substitutes. Someone for
> 		just one function is more easily found than for two).
> 	c) easier to work in (the person needs only care about "one"
> 		aspect of the project).

This is funny, the admins are working with root-account for deleating and ban
users and get in trouble with normal users, because they mix thier admin role
and their subjective wikipdianer role and argue that developers can`t have
the softskill to manage social conflicts. With this arguments a,b,c you be in
favor that admins are not allowed to write or edit articles. *g*

I want the admins to have no admin rights from time to time, e.G. every second
week, because than they reflect more their skills of social managment.
Probably it is more work to argue and request other admins to take final
action, but in this situation admins learn to reflect and to argue why an
other admin should take action. Secondary effect is that there isn?t a two
class comunity in todays way that more rights are linked to a person, it
would be more transparent that it is linked to a task and trusted
wikipedianer takeover the task from time to time (or you can say monarchie
vers. democraty) And finaly I would like see a general and a personal log of
admin action, to see what is done, not only to controll admins, also to see
who does honorable good work.

On the other hand, one developer could learn, too when he works as admin from
time to time to see how it works and to get ideas how to make the software
better. But this period should be only like stagiers for developers and
during their stagiers they should not have the access to the webserver to
find out more than normal admins know.

Think about this point: every article could be modified, why not also who is
admin today?

I would like to become admin one day, but only when I have the right to say, I
do not be admin today. Someone said becoming admin can`t harm, but I beleave
that a high number of admins and the mixing of personal and admin task/role
harm already, and will be a growing problem.

Till now I got ony 3 contras like "don`t/(no need) to change the status quo"
in Germany, instead of finding people how like to go on with thinking about
an alternative solution. Probably the normal reaction when someone propose to
reduse the power of other people. But my aime is not bureaucracy or to make
it more compicated than neccessary, I want to avoid the office admin and like
to replace it with the task admin, that some user can take as (full)job from
time to time, like a "chief duty editor":
-one "chief duty admin"
-and some "duty admins"
recruted day by day, hour of hour from a number of trusted wikipedianers
(wikpedians).

Anyone who likes this idea and likes to go on to think about alternativities?

rob


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
> I did not plan to be the one to force the issue; I had hoped to avoid
> even the slightest hint of "unilateral action", but todays' crisis
> seemed to call for what we might call "citizen's arrest". Responding to
> repeated calls for help, I blocked a user and all his known puppet
> accounts. This action requires immediate review by the Arbitration
> Committee.
>
> If the committee wants to unblock him before making a decision, that's
> fine. That's what Fred and all them are supposed to do: figure out how
> to handle a case where everyone else has given up. If they want to keep
> the block in place while they investigate and make up their minds,
> that's fine too.

I vote to ratify/endorse/support/agree-with Ed's bans.  Bird and its
sock puppets have explicitly announced its intentions of doing harm to
Wikipedia.  It needs to be restrained while its allegations are
evaluated.

--
 Sean Barrett     | Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in
 sean at epoptic.com | rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The bird squawks

body:
> I don't need this kind of abuse: I'm trying to take a vacation. --Ed
>
> ----
>
> Ed Poor you are a malicious vigilante who is easily swayed by group

...

It is now calling itself [[User:Face down a mob]].


subject: [WikiEN-l] The bird squawks

in_reply_to:
<200403092113.i29LDODh026880@orwen.epoptic.com> (message from
	Sean Barrett on Tue, 9 Mar 2004 13:13:24 -0800)

body:
> It is now calling itself [[User:Face down a mob]].

And [[User:Handle this]].


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>Why not just add all those abilities to bureaucrat accounts?
>
>Because I tried to do that and I was shouted down from all
>sides, that's why.

I hope I wasn't one of the people doing the shouting because I now see your
point.

>That's far more complicated to implement,...

Fair enough.

>Of course, sorry if I offended you.

No Tim - you did not offend me at all. You in fact gave me a great compliment.
Thank you for that! :)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Brian Corr

subject: [WikiEN-l] Problem with User:Bird is getting worse

body:
This is growing into a bigger problem.

I think it would be good if a people could pitch in and help Maximus Rex
and others stay on top of this.

This user has at least 7 accounts and now seems to searching for articles
to argue about -- and is adding NPOV headers and removing "incorrect" or
"contested" information. E.g.,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Microsoft_antitrust_case&action=history>

Here's the section at Vandalism in progress:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress#User:Bird,User:Raptor_and_various_other_incarnations>

Rick wrote:
>A User who went by the name of Bird has gone on a vandalism rampage,
>blanking several articles he/she worked on, claiming that everything he
>included in Wikipedia was either made up or plaigarized.  I'm wondering if
>someone got ahold of the user's account and is causing problems, or if
>this person has had this in mind from the time he/she first logged
>in.  Regardless, it seems that the user claims that he will be issuing a
>"press release" pointing out how flawed Wikipedia is.
>
>See [[User:David Newton/Bird Dispute]] for more detail.
>
>RickK


subject: [WikiEN-l] Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
Ed Poor wrote:
>The days when a single admin (like Maveric in his heyday)
>could be "on duty" for several hours at a time and single-
>handedly hold back the tide of vandalism -- well these
>days are forever gone, my friends.

This is true. I used to be able to scan/review an entire day's edits (all 800
of them!) in a couple hours and help mediate many of the daily disputes. Now I
have trouble keeping up with my watchlist and a few hours of the anon recent
changes.

>I did not plan to be the one to force the issue; I had hoped
>to avoid even the slightest hint of "unilateral action", but
>todays' crisis seemed to call for what we might call "citizen's
>arrest". Responding to repeated calls for help, I blocked a
>user and all his known puppet accounts. This action requires
>immediate review by the Arbitration Committee.

I have not be able to properly review the situation yet, but if what you say is
an accurate picture of what happened (and I have no reason to believe that you
would misrepresent this situation), then I fully endorse your actions as
necessary emergency measures. IMO, the Arbitration Committee should also
consider a review of the situation.

Creating sock puppet accounts in connection with trolling is not acceptable
behavior, IMO.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism Rampage

body:
I blocked the following usernames:

User:Bird
User:Raptor
User:Accuracy dispute
User:B.ird
User:SoCal
User:Bad faith
User:Reality check

Ed Poor
Bureaucrat


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 66.185.84.208

body:
That's incorrect. They do.

Just to make sure, I did a test. I just opened different browser, made sure
I was logged out, and edited my talk page so I could see the IP. I then
left a message on the IP's talk page while logged in on the first browser.
I *did* get the notice that I had new messages for the anon IP.

Thanks,
Brian

Timwi wrote:
>I thought we had established that non-logged-in users never get the "You
>have new messages" notice, and so never have their attention drawn to
>their IP's talk page?


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
The situation as I see it is - If we have guilines with no means of punishing people who willfully break them then there is no incentive for them not to break them and edit wars will still happen. OTOH if admins have the power to ban people there may be situations where admins apply the rule more forcefully then they should. Sometimes people can be very rigid when applying rules. Also I can see a situation where admins are chastised by non admin users for not banning someone who broke the rule. I don't want a situation where wik for example says I am in the wrong for not banning Anthony etc.

I think the best way to go, is to produce guidelines for admins as to what to do when they see a rule broken. Such as - "If you think it was a newbie error -inform the newbie and wait 1 week to see if they take any notice" or "if its 4-6 reverts and the user has not had an edit war on any other articles, protect the page, and warn the user to stop."

That sort of thing.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: 09 March 2004 13:51
To: bjrn.lindqvist at telia.com; English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

Bjorn Lindqvist wrote:
> When *I* voted on that poll some week ago, the poll was about whether
> there should be a *guideline* that reads "do not do more than three
> reverts" or not. Nowhere on that page did it say that the poll really
> was about whether to allow admins to block a user that reverts three
> times or not.
>
> Many of the 51+ persons that has voted probably did not either
> understand that the vote was about bannings. If that is what the vote
> is about and not just a guideline.

I share Bjorn's concern.

It's one thing to say that we have a very strong community guideline
or norm that says 3 reverts in a day is enough.  It's quite another
thing to introduce an entirely new paradigm in which 24 hour bans are
made for things that are not really emergency situations.

I'm not 100% opposed to the idea, but my foot dragging on making any
sort of decree about this is grounded in the fact that I see this as a
rather radical departure from past practice.

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


from_name: Weeger Nicolas

subject: [Wikitech-l] 'INSTALL' instructions

body:
>I'd highly recommend trying MediaWiki 1.2.0rc3 instead.
>I've tested it
>briefly on Windows (WinXP, Apache 2.0.48, PHP 4.3.4, and
>a MySQL 4 on
>one of my Unix boxes), and it seems to work... :)

<snip>

Guess I'll try that release candidate, then ^_-
Or even cvs, why not...

>Note however that both installers may get confused if you
>only have a
>partial database, such as if you imported just a 'cur'
>table into an
>otherwise blank database. The correct way to do this is
>to install
>MediaWiki into a blank database, *then* import the dumped
>tables (which
>will delete and overwrite the tables initially created by
>the
>installer).

This should, imo, be specified in the install document (or maybe it is already :)), since that's an important topic.

>Yes, iirc these are both resolved in 1.2.0rc3.

I'll try it & report any bug i find ^_-

>>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Thanks for your quick reply

Nicolas


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Jimmy-
> Well, Erik, I'm sympathetic to that, but I'm not sure that a 24-hour
> ban power for sysops is the minimally intrusive solution.

It's not supposed to minimally intrusive. It's supposed to be effective.
Right now we have the situation that there is a set of users who are quite
productive, but who use edit warring as a technique to get an article into
the revision they want it to be in.

That is so much in contradiction with everything we stand for that we
should take immediate countermeasures. It creates a very bad impression
for newbies if we let people get away with that kind of behavior without
an immediate reaction.

A 24 hour ban is not the same as a regular ban in the effects on the user.
We can come up with a nice, friendly standard text, basically telling the
user to calm down and when they are ready to respect our policies, please
return to editing. It won't develop into the kind of problems we had with
Lir, because there's no incentive to create another identity if you can
just keep editing under your regular one 24 hours later. We could even add
a clause that if they pledge to stop edit warring immediately, they can be
unbanned immediately (of course if they break that pledge, they will be
rebanned).

Now some people will bring up the issue of "rights" and "speech". But edit
warring is an effective method to suppress other people's speech and to
abuse other people's rights. It's like shouting over whatever someone else
tries to say. The other person can either also start shouting, or give up
in frustration.

In any civil discussion in the real world, you would tell someone who
tries to shout down everyone else to leave until they calm down. All I,
and many others, are asking for is to apply that same principle to
Wikipedia.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 66.185.84.208

body:
Timwi wrote:

> David Speakman wrote:
>
> > The person may be using
> > a temporary IP address that once belonged to a vandal or troll.
>
> Magnus specifically mentioned that he did have a look at the
> contributions list for the IP address and did not find any real
> vandalism or trollage.
>

IIRC vandalism on pages that are later deleted doesn't show up on
contributions list.  Maybe this needs changing so that events are more
easily tracked.

(I don't know whether this is relevant in this particular case or not)

--sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tech proposal for 3-revert rule

body:
Jimmy-
> I have an idea for an abstract generalization of the ban/throttle/
> page protection concepts, unifying them in a single table with great
> flexibility.  Details at the bottom, but first some quick motivation.

I'm all for more fine-grained solutions. What I propose is a compromise.
*Until* we have these solutions, sysops should be allowed to use the
privileges which they have *today*. Then those who do not like 24 hour
bans have a motivation to lobby for implementing these solutions, or to
implement them themselves. We would always acknowledge that 24 hour bans
are not optimal.

In other words, I don't want to have to tolerate edit warring another
month just because we don't get this implemented and tested until then.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 3/9/04 2:28 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
>
>>This thing has really gotten out of hand.
>>
>>Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on
>>so-called soft security.
>>
>>A small community like Ward's Wiki (which is  chiefly about software
>>development) or MeatBall (which is about creating online communities)
>>which has a HIGH RATIO of readers to writers, can rely on soft security.
>>Every change is read by dozens of Recent Changes junkies.
>>
>>The days when a single admin (like Maveric in his heyday) could be "on
>>duty" for several hours at a time and single-handedly hold back the tide
>>of vandalism -- well these days are forever gone, my friends.
>>
>>Sorry, but we are the victims of our own success. And it takes the full
>>attention of a dozen admins to counter one determined troublemaker.
>>
>
>Time to don the jackboots, my friends. When will we learn that violence
>begets violence?
>
And your idea is? Ed is right, there are an amazing number of vandals
out there, and they seem to have not the slightest hesitation in doing
violence to us 24 hours a day.

Stan


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote

> Despite the impression,
> Wikipedia is not an anarchy nor a "free speech zone" (in that sense).
> It's an encyclopedia project.

As we speak, Wik and Anthony Di Pierro have both reverted [[interesting and
uninteresting numbers]] three times - within a total time of 19 minutes.

Assuming this is not a circus, we need to have the three-revert rule to deal
with these clowns, and really as soon as possible.

Charles


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

> Whoever is going to do this: I actually moved Wikitravel to UTF-8. I
> outlined a procedure here:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2003-December/000066.html

This is actually quite a good idea. This will probably work, of course
with the only caveat that the site will be unavailable (or at least
uneditable) during this time.

Timwi


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Theresa Robinson wrote:

> Please forgive me if this has already been suggested; I only just
> subscribed to this list yesterday.
>
> I think the 3-revert should be a guideline, with a direct warning on the
> user's talk page when it is violated.  If the user continues to revert the
> page, and doesn't at that point start having a sane conversation about how
> to deal with the issue, then the person is being obsequious and
> uncommunicative and that is ample reason for a 24-hour ban.
>
While I don't entirely agree with you, Theresa, I've seen some evidence
that supports your POV:

* Sometimes even the most veteran & patient of contributors gets her/his
button pushed & lapses into a reversion war. (Of course, said contributor
shuld immediately step away form the computer & get involved in Real Life
for the next 24 hours, but I know I can take Wikipedia too seriously at
times.)

* A poor contributor was single-handedly fighting vandalism on
[[Saint Peter]], & left a thoughtful comment on the third reversion. I'm
sure other people fighting vandals feel the same way.

*I've seen statements from some contributors that they know they are likely
to get banned, & all a 24-hour ban will do is make them wait 24 hours
before continuing to revert.

I just wish there was a better way to ensure that (to use terms from
Transactional Analysis) people working on Wikipedia were listening to their
adult, & not their child. Enforcing a 3-revert rule right now seems to
be the easiest first step.

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Changing attribution for an edit

body:
Hi,

it seems that nobody is willing to take care of [[Wikipedia:Changing
attribution for an edit]].

Would it be feasible for me to get developer access temporarily to take
care of it?

Timwi


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

> Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
>
>> Can you please switch French Wikipedia to UTF-8?
>>
>> PS : The discussion (in French):
>> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Prise_de_d%E9cision/UTF-8
>
> To be entirely honest, it doesn't seem like everybody is aware of the
> consequences of such a switch. Unless extra mechanisms are introduced in
>  the software to handle this, all articles will have broken accents
> everywhere. To fix all that would be a task for life, and you can't even
>  be sure if you've caught everything.
>
> Personally, I think it would make sense to add something to the DB to
> specify that an article is still in Latin-1, and let the software
> convert it to UTF-8 whenever it is saved. However, this would take time
> to program.

This would only be a temporary solution. I think that the proper way is to
use a bot to convert the faulty characters.

> YMMV.
>
> Timwi

Yann

--
http://non-violence.org Site coop?ratif sur la non-violence
http://forget-me.net Alternatives et non-violence
http://fr.wikipedia.org Encyclop?die libre
http://forget-me.net/pro/ Formations et services Linux


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 66.185.84.208

body:
Brian Corr wrote:

> The Anome blocked this IP for repeated policy violations for apparent
> copyright violations, and for vandalism -- see the talk page
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:66.185.84.208>

I thought we had established that non-logged-in users never get the "You
have new messages" notice, and so never have their attention drawn to
their IP's talk page?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tech proposal for 3-revert rule

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Here's a table to show what I mean:

   restr_user        restr_article   restr_num
> Jimbo Wales      -   Oregon    -     3 # Jimbo throttled on this article
> Jimbo Wales      -   Cats      -     0 # Jimbo per-article banned
> *                -   DNA       -     1 # everyone throttled here
> *                -   Judaism   -     0 # same as protected
> Wik              -   *         -     3 # Wik throttled everywhere
> Plautus          -   *         -     0 # Plautus banned
   *                -   *         -     0 # Mwahahahaa! ;-)

Seriously:

This smells a bit of database problems. In order to determine if someone
can edit an article, you would have to:

- query this table you've suggested:
     SELECT restr_num FROM retrictions
     WHERE restr_user IN ('User Name', '*')
       AND restr_article IN ('Article title', '*')

- query both cur and old to see how often they have already edited it:
     SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur
     WHERE cur_user=$userid AND cur_timestamp < $twentyfourhoursago
       AND cur_title='Article title' AND cur_namespace=0
     SELECT COUNT(*) FROM old
     WHERE old_user=$userid AND old_timestamp < $twentyfourhoursago
       AND old_title='Article title' AND old_namespace=0

and then compare.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but I have my suspicion that this is
going to slow things down even more.

Timwi


body:
On Mar 9, 2004, at 17:11, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
>> Evan Prodromou wrote:
>>> Whoever is going to do this: I actually moved Wikitravel to UTF-8. I
>>> outlined a procedure here:
>>>
>>>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2003-December/
> 000066.html
>>
>> This is actually quite a good idea. This will probably work, of course
>> with the only caveat that the site will be unavailable (or at least
>> uneditable) during this time.
>>
>> Timwi
>
> At what time (GTM) can you try to switch? About how long it may take?
> Bots will convert accents in articles after the switch, but do we need
> some
> change in LanguageFr.php ?

Bots cannot make the necessary changes.

The entire database needs to be dumped, converted, and re-imported.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
On Mar 9, 2004, at 12:35 PM, Lightning wrote:

> OK
>
> i think you are nuts. seriously. But you have something. and I like
> it...
>
> How fast is that wiki->PDF script?
>
> I mean.. after the kinks are worked out I would be very willing to
> download a dump,
> mod the program a bit to grab the stuff from the DB directly, and
> generate a couple of
> hundred thousand Wikipedia articles in PDF. I could tar and gz these
> and offer them as a single
> download or just put them on a couple of file sharing programs under
> the names
>  wikipedia_$articlename.PDF   I mean I have no clue why anyone would
> want these since you can
> just go to the website and see a (most likely) newer and more correct
> article.. but it'd be a fun experiment
> Direct Connect, fast track, and gnutella come to mind.... and I mean I
> guess they could be published to freenet.. although I dont know what
> the deal is with freenet and PDF...
>
> If someone thinks this is a good idea, tell me please.
>
> I mean as a start we could do it with Brilliant Prose articles.. or
> whatever they are called now. These could be PDF'd and packaged as
> "the best of Wikipedia" or they could be made into a PDF "book".   As
> the selection grows we could put them in categories and organize them
> better and publish this "book" in PDF format every 2 months or so...
> Hell, if one topic was covered well enough it might even be worth
> printing a couple of hundred copies and submitting them to college
> libraries to raise awareness of the Wikipedia in higher learning
> environments
>
>

Ok let me rephrase:

As a certain category or a certain topic is populated with articles of
a high caliber it might be fun to release
PDF formatted "books" or mini encyclopedias of this topic. These could
be polished, and put out every couple of months. These files which
would be formatted in a manner suitable for printing and stand alone
use could be in turn distributed in a limited fashion to certain
educational institutions in order to raise awareness of the project.

Imagine this scenario.. a copy falls on the hand of a certain professor
who as an assignment makes his students write a paper on a certain
topic. Instead of what usually happens with papers (boxed and forgotten
about) he might suggest that if students want to contribute they submit
their papers to wikipedia. This content would now be opened and
improved upon. Many scenarios come to mind, especially architecture. I
know many architecture students and they are always writing papers
about a certain important building or another. If these could be
incorporated into wikipedia it would make research for architects or
people interested in the subject MUCH easier. I bring this topic up
especially because documentation on buildings is hard to come across in
a digital format.

People in college have lots of time and ideals. They are the kind of
people who love to advocate their ideas too. Younger contributors from
non-tech related areas could really help with the widespread awareness
of wikipedia and what we have to offer

Lightning

>
> Lightning
>
>
> On Mar 9, 2004, at 11:19 AM, Itai Fiat wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at
>> that. I
>> recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame
>> of
>> reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion?s sake, the
>> content
>> of the article will not be recounted here). While I have no problem
>> developing this myself, I was wondering if anybody has any objections
>> - or,
>> better yet, suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in
>> advance.
>>
>> - Itai
>>
>> (If you wish to contact me directly, use either
>> itai at mail.portland.co.uk or
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Itai .)
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Salve Tim,

Am Dienstag, 9. M?rz 2004 14:36 schrieb Tim Starling:
> Yes, that's a very nice fantasy. Are you going to program it?

Well, I know that it would not be easy to explain another system,
in short: the answer would be - not possible
in detail: the answer would be - to complicated
Or just "Are you going to program it".

I think you mean "very nice fantasy" in a ironic way
> Because I have better things to do.

Ok, it`s up to you to deside to
> My objective has always been to produce a
> practical model, one which I can code in a few hours of my spare time.

A lot of software can`t be programmed in few hours steps. But also for small
stepps an utopie could be an aim. For a free project it is ok that you say
you will not spend time in this idea - its up to you - and I did not wrote my
idea is perfect and you have to progamm it.

But to write "that`s a very nice fantasy. Are you going to program it?"
isn`t this a bit unfair? Programing is more than to code it, and why killing
an just buting idea?

> We
> can all dream up fantastic power models, but they lead to nothing but
> stalling and tangential unproductive debate.

This is my time that I spend into the idea to make it better and that I
haven`t enthuse you to find a new better working model, and to find a
solution to code it is already clear.

> Maybe some programmer will come along wanting to spend weeks coding a power
> model which will quite possibly meet strong opposition from the users.
Which user, the admin or the normal users?
And BTW do I`m on the software-developer mailinglist or on the user mailing
list?

> I would advise such a programmer....
Ahh, here comes your message - there are a lot of more important, burning
problems waiting for to less developers and because of this you judge that it
would be inproductive to go on with my idea.

Ok, I can live with this, I already expected it.

I?m interrested in raising the reliability of the wikipedia project, server
response will not influence this IMHO importend point very much.
I also beleave that admins could work more efficent when they do not work
everytime as user and admin - to have a short (self choosed) admin shift and
than spare time for own articles could rise the produtivity of the admins.

At last, consider that the number of articels, the popularity of the project,
the request/second and also the number of users has grown rapid. So the
problem of administration has grown in the same way as the caching problem.
Like the caching problem, only new and faster server does not solve the
problem, in the same way the social and content administration of all new
articles and users is not solveable with only more admins. ;)

So with more people it is possible to take care about more details at once -
nobody is stopping people "waisting" their free time for interviews or to
preparing a WikiReader, one printed extract of the Wikipedia. New
wikipedia-user could care about new ideas - that?s the way it goes.

When some old/urgend problems are unsolved, raise your voice for help.

I does only raise my voice to support developers who want to become admin for
getting experiances - and to get feedback from users if someone understund
the advantage of an admin shift with a chief duty admin (like the
professional radiostations works) and if some user/admins agree that this
would be a possible way for a big wikiwiki like ours.

greetings
rob

PS: Be carefull with provoking others with words like "very nice fantasy" the
most likly reaction will be that the other person will do everythink to make
this fantasy come true - Or was this your intention - a skill from a workshop
"modern motivation strategies for top manager"? ;-)

Don`t get me wrong (this was a kind of joke) and I do not take our thread
personal - I just think you have good resons, and so do I - you try to make
the wikipedia better - and so do I :)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
On 3/9/04 2:28 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> This thing has really gotten out of hand.
>
> Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on
> so-called soft security.
>
> A small community like Ward's Wiki (which is  chiefly about software
> development) or MeatBall (which is about creating online communities)
> which has a HIGH RATIO of readers to writers, can rely on soft security.
> Every change is read by dozens of Recent Changes junkies.
>
> The days when a single admin (like Maveric in his heyday) could be "on
> duty" for several hours at a time and single-handedly hold back the tide
> of vandalism -- well these days are forever gone, my friends.
>
> Sorry, but we are the victims of our own success. And it takes the full
> attention of a dozen admins to counter one determined troublemaker.

Time to don the jackboots, my friends. When will we learn that violence
begets violence?


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

in_reply_to:
<c2kddu$6ub$1@sea.gmane.org>;
	from timwi@gmx.net on Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 12:30:44PM +0000

references:
<20040307162120.A16940@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in>
	<20040309112206.A5004@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in>
	<c2kddu$6ub$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 12:30:44PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've been playing around with making chess diagrams using a table, and
> > it seems to work fine. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arvindn/Chess
> > for an example and rationale.
>
> Hm, can we use Wiki table syntax for this?...
It would be nice to, but there's a little problem. The generated html
has spaces within the <td>...</td> tags, causing MSIE to put spaces
between the images (Gecko works fine). Look at your version of the page
(I'm reverting now, but keeping your change of removing the div) in MSIE:
there are gaps between the rows of the board. There's more experimentation
at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Paddu/sandbox

Arvind
>
> I've changed your page; it would be nice if you would update your script
> accordingly.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
>>>>> "IF" == Itai Fiat <itai at mail.portland.co.uk> writes:

    IF> Hello, This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a
    IF> presumptuous one at that. I recently had an idea, and have
    IF> written an written a short (the frame of reference being the
    IF> Magna Carta) article describing it at
    IF> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusions
    IF> sake, the content of the article will not be recounted
    IF> here). While I have no problem developing this myself, I was
    IF> wondering if anybody has any objections - or, better yet,
    IF> suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in advance.

So, I added comments on-site, but here's my feeling:

I think a p2p distribution mechanism for Wikipedia is an EXCELLENT
idea. It would/could do a lot to lower the load on the main servers.

I also think that if I had a fancy new-generation p2p client, I'd make
a go of re-distributing Wikipedia content. It would be a great way to
promote my network, especially if it has support for in-network
Websites (like Freenet does).

But I don't think this is core functionality for Wikimedia, and I
doubt that it'll get a lot of support around here. I think probably
the best idea is to download the database dumps, and maybe experiment
from there.

You may want to shop this idea with one of the open source P2P network
groups, to see what they think about it. Frankly, there's more
benefit for a P2P network than there is to Wikipedia, so they'll
probably be more interested.

Anyways, good idea. You're gonna need to stick with it to see it
happen, though. The best ideas are like that.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Itai Fiat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
Hello,

This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that. I
recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of
reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion?s sake, the content
of the article will not be recounted here). While I have no problem
developing this myself, I was wondering if anybody has any objections - or,
better yet, suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in advance.

- Itai

(If you wish to contact me directly, use either itai at mail.portland.co.uk or
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Itai .)


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
There is no sense in giving developers administrative power. Developers
are good at programming, not management of a community. By wrapping up
their ability to contribute with their ability to rule, they are made
effectively unaccountable. Nobody wants to remove someone's developer
access if it means they can't do much needed progrmaming work.
Administration of the encyclopedia also distracts them from programming,
a task which they have a rare skill and motivation for.

Wikipedia should not be a technocracy, ruled by those with knowledge of
computer systems. Wikipedia should be a democracy. Those in power should
be accountable to the community at large, and ideally selected from and
by the community at large.

I have written a feature giving people with the "developer" flag set in
their wiki user accounts a level of administrative ability similar to
what developers with shell access are capable of. Specifically, such
users are able to set arbitrary user rights for any user on any
Wikimedia project. They may create sysops, desysop, create bureaucrats
or other developers, or any other user-rights operation you care to
mention. This feature is operational right now, and I've been using it
for the last couple of weeks to make bureaucrats on various wikis.

The feature is easy to use and does not carry the security risks of
write-access to the database. At the moment, it is not possible to
rename user accounts or change the history of articles through the web
interface, but such features are planned.

I suggest we use this feature to split the roles of developer and site
administrator. Specifically, here is what I think should happen:

1. A policy should be instituted disallowing any developer from using
their power for administrative purposes, except where there is no other
way to perform the relevant operation. New developers applying for shell
access should be made aware of this policy.

By "administrative purposes", I mean exercises of power for any other
purpose than testing and implementing software.

2. A small number of users should be made "honorary developers" (perhaps
a better title can be found). These users should be selected by putting
forward nominations and then conducting a vote, similar to the vote now
conducted at the English Wikipedia for sysop access.

3. These "honorary developers" can lose their developer access by a
community vote giving a majority in favour, by an arbitration committee
ruling, or by Jimbo's decree.

It should be possible for a developer to hold both shell access and
community blessing. Such people would take the role of both programmer
and administrator. However as I said above, we really have a lot of
programming work to do.

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

I'll also take this opportunity to drop a few subtle hints.

Maveric149

Wikipedia's most active contributor, Maveric149 has done a tremendous
amount of work for Wikipedia over the last two years. Mav is always cool
and rational when dealing with a dispute, and works hard to find a
compromise amenable to all parties. Respect for him in the community is
universal.

Angela

Angela has been extremely active in the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk
namespaces over the last 6 months, organising the formation of many
policies. In her enthusiasm for weeding and quality control, she has
edited almost every functioning Wikimedia wiki. She also lives in a
different time zone to Mav, so she'll be able to deal with situations
arising when Mav is unavailable.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Stephan Walter

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: automatic PDF generation from WP articles

body:
Hi,

Quoting Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>:

> Elsewhere in the article, the parser correctly converted  double
> square brackets into hyperlinked text pointing to Wikipedia articles,
> but it failed to do so for the double square brackets around "Friends
> In Deed." I think it must have been thrown off by the double foot
> marks before and after the double square brackets.

No, it was in fact the ":" in the Link. I didn't expect normal Wiki links to
have colons, so I blocked these. Should be fixed now.

> Also, it failed to correctly convert the URL pointing to "Toxic
> Sludge Is Good For You. The correct URL is:

Too much of all that string encoding and decoding... fixed now.

Regards,
Stephan


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
(I read all your post about this subject, but I'm not sure to have
understood all)

Derivations are allowed on fair used image?

If the answer is "derivation is allowed as long as the derivation still
fairs", I don't think it is a real freedom.

I don't want a freedom which could depend on the way in which an American
court of justice could interpret the fairness of my work.

Fair use don't exist in many country, I really think it's a worse choice
that CC-ND.

Furthermore, we can't use a high resolution picture as Fair use, isn't it?
We may not have this kind of constraint with CC-ND.

In all case, GFDL must be privileged, but CC-ND may allow us to get legally
some pictures that may never being released under GFDL (logo, celebrity,
etc.).

Aoineko


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
At 09:43 AM 3/9/2004 -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>OK!  But if we're going to do that, it has to apply to both parties in an
>edit war, even when the dispute involves an acknowledged idiot versus a
>respected sysop. :-)   Every edit war has at least two participants.

If it really is an acknowledged idiot, it shouldn't be too hard to get
three respected sysops (or anyone else who happens along for that matter)
to each perform a single revert.


body:
Some weeks ago, we restarted speak to switch the French Wikipedia to UTF-8.
The discussion deadline was schedule to yesterday and a very large consensus
is achieved:

* For: 27,

* Neutral: 1,

* Against: 0.

The only concerns relate to tell users how to get a Unicode compliant
browser and fix eventual problem the switch may generate.

Can you please switch French Wikipedia to UTF-8?

If we need to make some manual change in articles, please tell us. We have 2
bots that can make this kind of work.

Regards,

Aoineko

PS : The discussion (in French):
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Prise_de_d%E9cision/UTF-8


subject: [WikiEN-l] Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
On 3/9/04 6:25 PM, "Stan Shebs" <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> And your idea is? Ed is right, there are an amazing number of vandals
> out there, and they seem to have not the slightest hesitation in doing
> violence to us 24 hours a day.
>
It doesn't amaze me. The insistence on figuring out ever-more complex and
punitive strategies to deter juvenile behavior leads inevitably to a ramping
up of that behavior. The whole "vandal" label is, as I've said before, not
helpful.

More important, I should think, would be to ensure that standards and
mechanisms are put in place so that it's as easy for people to improve
entries as it is for people to worsen them.

I'm going to continue to be a believer in atomization as a way of
maintaining quality.

For example, I would consider it a much higher development priority to set
up permalinks than it would be to develop baroque ban/stall mechanisms.

I would consider it a much higher development priority for the discussion
mechanisms to be better integrated into Wikipedia (a web-based bulletin
board which uses wiki-formatting within individual posts).

There will always be an amazing amount of stupidity and misinformation on
Wikipedia. But it will also be better than the world at large.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Gnutella

body:
Itai Fiat wrote:

> This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that. I
> recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of
> reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion?s sake, the content
> of the article will not be recounted here).

Both this article you wrote, and this mailing list message you wrote,
are pretty weird. What is this about? What is it for? Why are you trying
to sound like a mediocre comedian?

If you have any real proposal to bring forward, you should probably make
more sense and be more serious about it.

I imagine you may have received similar comments on the IRC channel. If
this is what you call "being shouted at", then I'm really sorry, but
that's really not my fault.

Timwi


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
Well, that lets me out.  Do I hear the sound of applause?

RickK

Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> wrote:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on
>so-called soft security.

I agree. Here's my solution:

(1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address
that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing.
(Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a
non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] The Birds

body:
User:Bird and all of his massive sock puppets and anonymous addresses is making a massive attack on Wikipedia.  We need to contact ISPs and get this person banned from every ISP he is posting from.  A nice message to User:Bcorr: ""You are a dangerous cult asshole Bcorr who tries to use force to prevent free speech. I hope you choke in your own vomit. I have eternity and a day to confront pukes like you.""

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster.
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l French Wikipedia decided to switch
	toUTF-8 !

body:
> Is my vote included here ?

You didn't express any opposition, just ask to create help page (that we all
agree). You didn't vote, so how your vote may be included!? That doesn't
mean we didn't hear your arguments, but if you don't express clearly any
opposition, how can we guess?

> I hope you will not follow the opinion of some to just ban and
automatically revert those using non utf browsers as some users were
suggesting :-)

Anyone is free to express his own suggestion; that don't make them rules.
I'm personally fully against this idea.

> Was the page of explanation for these unfortunate users set as suggested
before the switch ?

We are working on:

* http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Unicode

* http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Unicode/Test

* http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Test_Unicode_arabe

* http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Navigateur

If you want more, help us ;o)

Anyhow, it will be easier to surround all problems after the switch. How to
speak about problem we don't have yet?

I don't understand why you wait the discussion is done to express you? You
just want to express your disgust about a too pretty consensus? ;o)

Aoineko


subject: [WikiEN-l] Bird

body:
Bird's latest contribution:

You can either start allowing open discussion within the Wikipedia namespace, allow writers to rework or totally repudiate their earlier work, and deal with me as a surly collaborator, or you can deal with my effort from outside your so-called community for a long, long time. And it appears you have the hard part of the bargain, because all I have to do is watch and decide if I will make quality contributions that advance human understanding or if I will battle this collectivity to my last breath because I have found it to be a dangerous authoritarian cult.  + +If you don't like being pushed around and feel you have the moral high ground, I know how you feel. Because I am absolutely confident of my stern approach, am completely fatigued of a mealy mouthed lies from educators who are trying to make knowledge a trade secret, and I have little to loose and everything to gain by fighting with all of my might wherever the battle might present.

RickK

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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on
>so-called soft security.

I agree. Here's my solution:

(1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address
that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing.
(Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a
non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)

(2) Unambiguously authorize sysops to take immediate, unilateral
action against egregious abusers (with clear definitions of
"egregious abuse").

(3) Use mediation/arbitration as both an appeals process for users
who feel that have been wrongfully banned, and as a method of dealing
with disputes and allegations of abuse that don't meet the standard
of "egregious abuse."

Finally, I think we should think seriously about the "democracy" part
of "WikiDemocracy." Democracy is a system of governance. It is not
anarchy. There are rules and rulers. It's a better system generally
than dictatorship, but it isn't simply laissez-faire.

I've been doing a bit of experimentation lately with using wikis to
facilitate decision-making within some nonprofit organizations in
which I am active. In that context, I've come to the conclusion that
wikis should be used primarily for facilitation of the process rather
than for decision-making per se. For example, I sit on a committee
that makes decisions about lending policy and loans to low-income
communities in Nicaragua. We're going to try to use a wiki as an way
to formulate and revise proposals, but once a proposal has been
formulated, we'll still need to the committee to vote up or down on
it in the tradition one person-one vote manner.

As a practical matter, Wikipedia doesn't have a way of enabling
voting by the entire community of Wikipedians, but there are a couple
of reasonable approximations that we could attempt:

(1) Have Jimbo appoint a governing committee. This would inevitably
be a non-representative subset of the entire community, but having
Jimbo as our benevolent dictator is also non-representative. The
advantage of a governing committee is that it could be SOMEWHAT more
representative of the entire committee than just Jimbo by himself,
and it could also take some of the work off his shoulders.

(2) Establish a voting system, through which a large subset of the
entire Wikipedia community is authorized to vote. Obviously we'll
need some way to exclude spam-voting by anonymous abusers, but if we
gave a vote to everyone who has supplied a unique and verified email
address, that would be a close enough approximation to universal
enfranchisement for practical purposes.

(3) Use the voting system to create a "parliament" of elected
representatives, whose members are charged with setting policies on
behalf of the entire community.

(4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries,"
through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to
participate in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy
juries work, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy

  --Sheldon Rampton


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=62126

RickK

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from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule - protect or ban?

body:
> *Until* we have [fine-grained] solutions, sysops should be allowed
> to use the privileges which they have *today*.

One special sysop super-power that sysops have *today* is the ability to protect a
particular version of a page. Protecting the version preferred by those following our
guidelines on reverts would be an effective alternative to a temporary ban in many
cases. Since pages with edit wars tend to get protected anyway, this would be
minimally intrusive.

Naturally, discussion on the matter is taking place at [[wikipedia:revert]].

-Martin


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Some clarifications and comments (maybe unneeded, *shrug*)

> [I could] say that it's policy with a capital P, [and] repeated
> violations are grounds for the arbitration committee to do
> something about it

Of course, the arbitrators are able to enforce all kinds of policies, guidelines, common
practices, etc, regardless of capitalisation, but very much regarding community support
and so forth, at least according to our current rules.

> All parties who revert 3 or more times, anyway.

As [[wikipedia:revert]] was and is written, it is a guideline against reverting *more than
three* times, not *three or more* times.

> That'll work for Wik.

There are a fair number of Wikipedians who are not Wik. It's not all about the worst
cases.

> *          -   *         -     0 # Mu-ha-ha

Though this was funny, there's a good case for "* - * - 100 # surge protecter" to block
against rogue bots and other flooding.

> If we have guidelines with no means of punishing people who willfully break them
> then there is no incentive for them not to break them.

There are other incentives, besides punishment. Politeness. Sociability. Respect. A
quiet life. Peer pressure. Friendship. Influence. Fewer revert wars, both globally and
personally. We have lots of guidelines that work perfectly well without punishment, for
just this reason.

> I propose that we announce this vote in the mailing list

Better to announce it on [[wikipedia:current polls]].

-Martin


body:
Timwi wrote:
> This smells a bit of database problems. In order to determine if someone
> can edit an article, you would have to:
>
> - query this table you've suggested:
>     SELECT restr_num FROM retrictions
>     WHERE restr_user IN ('User Name', '*')
>       AND restr_article IN ('Article title', '*')
>
> - query both cur and old to see how often they have already edited it:
>     SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur
>     WHERE cur_user=$userid AND cur_timestamp < $twentyfourhoursago
>       AND cur_title='Article title' AND cur_namespace=0
>     SELECT COUNT(*) FROM old
>     WHERE old_user=$userid AND old_timestamp < $twentyfourhoursago
>       AND old_title='Article title' AND old_namespace=0
>
> and then compare.
>
> I'm not saying it can't be done, but I have my suspicion that this is
> going to slow things down even more.
>
> Timwi

Technical point of view: In Jimbo's proposal, an admin would explicitly
flag a user for throttling.

Thus very few users would ever be throttled and all the querying you
suggest would be inside a big if( is_throttled($userid) ), which is
false for a massive majority of edits.

Practical point of view: The number of disruptive users is still
relatively small. (There are only three users I would ban today if I
were GodKing that aren't banned already). Speedy use of current
technology and processes (Arbitration) would solve these issues.

Pete


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Gnutella

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 10:26 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Gnutella

> Itai Fiat wrote:
>
> > This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that.
I
> > recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of
> > reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at
> > http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion?s sake, the
content
> > of the article will not be recounted here).
>
> Both this article you wrote, and this mailing list message you wrote,
> are pretty weird.

Not to worry. If you read between the lines, or every third line, you'll get
it eventually.

> What is this about? What is it for? Why are you trying
> to sound like a mediocre comedian?

Well, I am a mediocre comedian. As to the first two questions, I suppose I
could provide a better answer. (Indeed, already have.) It is not entirely
impossible to modify an existing, GPL Gnutella client (there is no shortage
of the like) to serve Wikipedia articles (dynamically generated from the
MySQL database, very much like MediaWiki and Apache do for HTTP requests)
over Gnutella. Imagine saving all existing Wikipedia articles into a single
directory and then sharing them using a client of your choice. That should
answer the first question. As for what is it for, that's something I did my
best to answer in the Meta article. A far more interesting question is
whether this should (assuming I can get the "can" worked out) be
implemented. As the propagator of this idea, I obviously believe it should,
but it would be nice to know I have some backing before plunging into
development.

-- Itai


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bird

body:
Rick wrote:
> Bird's latest contribution:
>
> You can either start allowing open discussion within the Wikipedia
namespace, allow writers to rework or totally repudiate their earlier work,
and deal with me as a surly collaborator, or you can deal with my effort
from outside your so-called community for a long, long time. And it appears
you have the hard part of the bargain, because all I have to do is watch and
decide if I will make quality contributions that advance human understanding
or if I will battle this collectivity to my last breath because I have found
it to be a dangerous authoritarian cult.  + +If you don't like being pushed
around and feel you have the moral high ground, I know how you feel. Because
I am absolutely confident of my stern approach, am completely fatigued of a
mealy mouthed lies from educators who are trying to make knowledge a trade
secret, and I have little to loose and everything to gain by fighting with
all of my might wherever the battle might present.

Interesting rant. Sounds like he's on the right side, for the most part, but
is too fanatical to help, and is attacking allies. He needs to find a better
target. I've seen this before, and most of the time they're too paranoid and
blinded by their own certainty to be brought around. More patient people are
welcome to try to reform him on their own, but I think we're best off just
shutting him down.

-- Jake


subject: [Wikitech-l] Image:Bill Clinton.jpg

body:
Could a developer please have a look at Image:Bill Clinton.jpg?

It seems that this image history is undeletable?


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Great idea Tim! I don't care much for the name - "developer" has been used
for
> a long time to refer to those blessed and wonderful code junkies that hang
out
> on WikiTech-l and play with MediaWiki. Replacing their title with
> site-administrator will add more confusion as well. Why not just add all
those
> abilities to bureaucrat accounts?

Because I tried to do that and I was shouted down from all sides, that's
why.

> Or better yet, couldn't we even get rid of the bureaucrat account type by
> requiring at least 3 admins to approve bureaucrat+-type actions? Kinda
like
> requiring two keys turned by two people at once and having to enter the
correct
> codes in order to launch a nuke.

That's far more complicated to implement, that's the main argument against
it. It also slows down response times. Additionally, people are generally
opposed to giving sysops power which stretches across multiple wikis. Key to
this proposal is that it allows for interwiki administration, a power
formerly only given to data-processing specialists.

> The idea of adding yet another level of hierarchy to our community doesn't
rub
> me the right way...

It's not another level. One level is deleted, another is created in its
place. The number of levels is the same. All I want is for non-programmers
to take over certain jobs from programmers.

> >Respect for him in the community is universal.
>
> If true, which I don't think it is, then I would be very uncomfortable
with
> that - I don't want my words to have disproportionately more force than
their
> actual content and inherent merit.

Of course, sorry if I offended you.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Erik Moeller:
> Tim-
>
> > There is no sense in giving developers administrative power.
>
> I tend to agree, although I think it's not a matter of ability (I do not
> share the "programmers are good at this, not at that" belief; programmers
> are human beings like anyone else) but a matter of scalability. We can't
> make everyone a developer for security reasons. Encapsulating community
> functions like desysopping in the "bureaucrat" flag seems like the most
> reasonable way forward to me.
>
> That of course does not address the question what these bureaucrats are
> *allowed* to do.

I tried to make the bureaucrat access work across wikis but Brion was livid.
I tested the water on giving bureaucrats the power to desysop on #wikipedia,
and the answer I got was firmly negative. What I'm proposing is a minimal
change, by replacing developer power with the power of a small set of users
who are selected by an appropriate process. Currently, any software engineer
can get shell access by putting in a few hours of work, or by bringing a
unique skill to the group. It's hardly a good way to select the management
of an organisation.

-- Tim Starling