from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 04:34:20PM +0100, Zach Alexander wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
> >Er, the Kate Winslet nude is only marginally "nude". If it's such a
> >problem, use a tabbed browser or disable images.
>
> "Marginally nude" is still nudity. One breast counts as nudity.

In some cultures, exposure of the female *face* in public is "nudity".

> You can argue that nudity should be allowed on Wikipedia, and I might
> even agree with you, but a spade's a spade.

Of course nudity should be allowed on Wikipedia, just as explicit
pictures of tomatoes should be allowed.  After all, the world contains
both nudity and tomatoes, and Wikipedia's job is to describe the world.

> And you can't seriously mean that disabling images is a real solution
> to the problem. We'd have to have a notice on the main page, e.g.
> "Note: Nudity may appear in any entry. If you are offended by nudity,
> please disable images in your browser." I don't think that would go
> over well.

We already have a [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]] linked from the main
page.  It is at least as prominent as other quasi-legal notices posted
on other Web sites, which purport to advise the reader of site policies
-- for instance, privacy policies on many commercial Web sites.

> How hard would it be to add to Mediawiki the option to tag explicit
> images, and have an option in the preferences to not see them? A la
> Google SafeSearch. This might be a win-win (aside from the programming
> work) solution.

This has been brought up time and again here.

Censorware tagging on Wikipedia is a little bit like "email postage" as
an anti-spam solution -- it can't work; there are reasonably clear
reasons it can't work; but it keeps getting proposed anyway.

(The chief reason "email postage" can't work as an anti-spam solution is
that spammers already steal other people's computing resources to send
spam, e.g. using virus-infected computers, and would quite readily adapt
to foist the "postage" cost off on innocents similarly.  Ordinary mail
users would be stuck with the "postage" while spammers would keep
screwing over everyone else, just as they have always done.  And all
non-commercial mailing lists, such as this one, would be destroyed.)

What's wrong with censorware tagging?  Where to start?  Here's the
biggie:  tagging is incompatible with Wikipedia's existing commitments.

No system of tags is compatible with Wikipedia's commitment to
neutrality.  The dimensions, biases, and extremes of any system of tags
are created from a particular non-neutral point of view.  Wikipedia is
categorically forbidden from taking on such a point of view as its own.

By "dimensions" I mean the types of material that are considered worth
tagging -- e.g. nudity; violence; religion.  The reason that commercial
censorware products have an "explicit nudity" dimension and not a
"explicit Christianity" dimension should be tolerably obvious in the
marketplace -- but Wikipedia does not have any business deciding for its
readers that "nudity" is problematic and needs to be a filtering option
but "Christianity" doesn't.

By "biases" I mean the inherent bigotries that will be encoded into any
particular category.  A system which considers female breasts to be
"nudity" but male chests not to be is sexist by nature.  (And anyone who
thinks that female breasts are "sexual" but male chests are not simply
has not asked enough straight women or gay men for their opinion on the
issue.)

By "extremes" I mean the judgment as to what is the "mildest" category
of "objectionable content" which still merits tagging -- and what
constitutes "mild" or "extreme".  A system which tags exposure of the
female breast, but not of the female ankle or face expresses a POV as to
what is "acceptable" exposure.  A system which tags explicit sexual
activity but does not consider a homosexual kiss to be "explicit sexual
activity" expresses a bias about an issue that many people apparently
find offensive.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
> Absolutely not.  He specifically said that he "recognized" that people
> were doing something with the deliberate intention of breaching policy.  I
> see no room for misinterpretation.   Having no evidence to show, it seems
> to me that the assumption of bad faith , and a massive, obvious one at
> that, is on his part.  I'm revolted by this.  I see no apology.  I see no
> withdrawal, only weaseling and wriggling.  A disgusting accusstion,
> disgusting behavior in continuing with it.  He has now confirmed his
> accusation of bad faith against a specific, named editor.

Kevin inadvertetly made a paralipsis,
http://www.wordsmith.org/words/paralipsis.html. A paralipsis is
basically a way of trying to state something without having to back it
up. It is another rhethorical trick that is very hard to counter
because the speaker makes sure it is not he who is stating it.

"I've come to the realization that
people are searching out nude pictures to put in the 'pedia. They are looking
to stir up trouble, mostly to make a point."

This is a bad paralipsis that Tony rightly objected to. Kevin IS
definitely asserting a fact here. He could have gotten away with it by
instead of saying "I've come to the realization that..." say "I have a
feeling that..." or "Someone told me that..." or "I've heard that..."
or "It might be that..." If he would have phrased his paralipsis like
that, Tony would probably appear as a petty troublemaker that
questions something unessential. Still, since noone except Tony has
opposed Kevin's statement, and people have questioned Tony's motives
for "nitpicking," it shows how effective this rhethorical trick is.
Tony has lost, but atleast he got people to question the validity of
Kevin's statement.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Faraaz Damji

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
No, Wikipedia will never be completely safeguarded, just like it will
never be completely finished.  But if we use a keyword system (either
instead of or complementary to a rating scheme), then images can have
metadata that users can filter out.  So if people are offended by images
of women's face, then they can block "girls, women, etc."

The best thing about this is that it won't interfere with normal users,
since people will have to opt IN to it.

A tagging system shouldn't claim to be 100% complete, it's just an
attempt to help people avoid viewing offensive images.  It doesn't have
to be complete- barely anything on Wikipedia is ever truly 'complete.' A
tagging system especially should never advertise to be complete, because
there will always be the possibility of somebody uploading a new image
that isn't tagged as offensive when it may be.

--
Blog: http://frazzydee.ca

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS d? s:- a--- C+++ UL++ P+ L+ E---- W++ N+ o+ K+ w+
O? M-- V? PS++ PE Y PGP++ t 5-- X+ R tv b++ DI++ D+
G++ e- h! !r !z
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Jack Lutz wrote:
> The people or organizations likely to want content tagging would require
> complete tagging, or else it would be useless to them, right? Yet being a
> wiki and volunteer, Wikipedia could never be "safeguarded" to their
> satisfaction. Is this not a useless discussion?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
And while I haven't given a whole lot of thought to this, a keyword
scheme in addition to a rating categorization scheme could also have
other benefits, like being able to search through images better.

I don't see why a rating categorization scheme (and maybe a keyword
system, not too sure about that one) it should be avoided if it doesn't
harm anybody, and only offers optional positive enhancements to users
who want it.

--
Blog: http://frazzydee.ca

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS d? s:- a--- C+++ UL++ P+ L+ E---- W++ N+ o+ K+ w+
O? M-- V? PS++ PE Y PGP++ t 5-- X+ R tv b++ DI++ D+
G++ e- h! !r !z
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Faraaz Damji wrote:
> No, Wikipedia will never be completely safeguarded, just like it will
> never be completely finished.  But if we use a keyword system (either
> instead of or complementary to a rating scheme), then images can have
> metadata that users can filter out.  So if people are offended by images
> of women's face, then they can block "girls, women, etc."
>
> The best thing about this is that it won't interfere with normal users,
> since people will have to opt IN to it.
>
> A tagging system shouldn't claim to be 100% complete, it's just an
> attempt to help people avoid viewing offensive images.  It doesn't have
> to be complete- barely anything on Wikipedia is ever truly 'complete.' A
> tagging system especially should never advertise to be complete, because
> there will always be the possibility of somebody uploading a new image
> that isn't tagged as offensive when it may be.
>
> --
> Blog: http://frazzydee.ca
>
> -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
> Version: 3.1
> GCS d? s:- a--- C+++ UL++ P+ L+ E---- W++ N+ o+ K+ w+
> O? M-- V? PS++ PE Y PGP++ t 5-- X+ R tv b++ DI++ D+
> G++ e- h! !r !z
> ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
>
> Jack Lutz wrote:
>
>>The people or organizations likely to want content tagging would require
>>complete tagging, or else it would be useless to them, right? Yet being a
>>wiki and volunteer, Wikipedia could never be "safeguarded" to their
>>satisfaction. Is this not a useless discussion?
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Encarta goes wiki - sort of...

body:
Alphax wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Magnus Manske wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> You can mow add to Encarta articles online. After a review by the M$
>>> staff, your edit may be added to the Encarta.
>>
>>
>>
>> I don't believe that the purpose of adding this feature was to allow
>> users to improve Encarta. Though of course that's what everyone thinks.
>>
>> I do believe that they added this feature due to a growing public
>> awareness of Wikipedia, and in an effort to retain a certain amount
>> of market share. I believe that they are explicitly trying to reduce
>> faith in Wikipedia or wiki projects in general, thereby implicitly
>> increasing faith in proprietary encyclopedias (or strengthening the
>> superior faith that already exists).
>>
>> At the same time, they are probably trying to show that they are
>> "ahead" of other proprietary encyclopedias by being the first to
>> introduce a significant feature, and that they are more
>> customer-oriented by making it look like they allow feedback to reach
>> them.
>>
>> That's what I think,
>> Timwi
>>
> Ah, but only one way to test it....
>
> Make a contribution. Suitably minor, of course, so that you can write
> it off as a public domain minor edit.
>
A couple of attempts at contributing (perfectly reasonable) test edits
to Encarta have resulted in nothing at all happening to the articles in
question. I'm not impressed.
The whole experience is extraordinarily lacking in incentive for Encarta
contributors, who will effectively see a brick wall, if my experience is
anything to go by. Combined with the fact that it will dawn on them that
all they are doing is enriching Microsoft, with nothing back in return,
this is unlikely to gain a loyal user community.

Has anyone observed _any_ Encarta user edits actually becoming visible?

-- Neil


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Suggestions for a work-safe encyclopedia

body:
Zach Alexander wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> But wouldn't it be better if we let people choose which types of images
>> they wanted to display? Turning off all images removes all the images in
>> the article, while a content-filtering system would be specific to
>> images deemed offensive by the reader.
>
>
> This really is the only long term solution. We add some buttons in
> Special:Preferences, and have two or three options -- e.g.
> uncensored/moderate/strict. Explicit content would automatically be
> filtered from then on, or not.
>
> It would involve more work coding, and more work maintaining tags on
> explicit content, and arguments about whether [[Image:Y]] should get
> tagged as explicit or not, and so on. But there's no other long term
> solution I can think of, because we do need to have boobs and clitorises
> in the appropriate places, but people do need to have a way not to see
> them if they'd rather not. (Making the user disable images doesn't count
> as a solution.) A fork on the basis of censorship would be unlikely
> after then.

"Explicit" is majorly POV. However, it would be possible to have NPOV
labels like "bare female breasts" and "human blood". There's been some
discussion at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_image_suppression .


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
Just a problem to be advised of. I was advocating much the same
position as the person who I replied to, and most people who objected
to it objected for this reason.

The second point isn't that major. Feel free to disregard it. :)

Chris

On 4/14/05, Tom Haws <hawstom at sprintmail.com> wrote:
> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>
> >Actually, we were discussing this very issue on IRC earlier. The main
> >problem we found with this was that it would be a new target for
> >vandals - to recategorise various images into unrelated categories.
> >
> >
> Please forgive me, but this sounds weak.  Was this merely a problem to
> be advised of or a deal-breaker?
>
> >Also, when going through the filter to select categories that they do
> >not wish to see, people might find it objectionable to have content
> >like beheadings or sexual activity available for people to view. I'm
> >assuming of course that all 'categories' of images like this would be
> >on by default - also, this would only be practical if it were for
> >registered users, of which the vast majority of visitors aren't
> >
> Can you explain this again?  This went right over my head.
>
> Tom
>
>

--
Chris Jenkinson
http://talrias.net/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Foundation-l] Online Information Conference 2005

body:
Hi,

Has anybody registered for the Online Information Conference in London
(November 29th till December 1st) yet? Have a look at the Conference
themes to see why Wikimedia must be presented:

http://www.online-information.co.uk/ol04/conf_prog/conf_themes.html

The call for papers deadline in April 29th. I'd like to participate (if
someone pays conference fee and has a place for me to stay in London)
but probably it easier for a native speaker living in London. Or is
Jimbo already invited as Keynote speaker? ;-)

Greetings,
Jakob

P.S: By the way: Is there a page to collect conference participations
and things like that? In German Wikipedia we have a timetable
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Wikipedia-Terminkalender
I also speak at the 10th International Conference of the International
Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. My paper has just been
published as preprint: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00003610/


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Conflict between two Wikipedias

body:
On 4/14/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mark, you said:
> "But I think that the majority of users of
> mo.wikipedia will, no matter
> what, always be primarily users of Cyrillic, and I
> think that it
> should be dominant there until such time as there are
> more Moldovan
> users there who use Latin, if that is ever the case."
>
> I think that is not at all right. I mean, Cyrillic is
> a minority script in _all_ circumstances. Only 10% of
> speakers of Moldo-Romanian in Moldova use it, and only
> around 33% of people who say they speak Moldovan use
> it. So those who say they speak Moldovan, will be
> looking actually mostly for Latin content, especially
> since many of the Cyrillic speakers are also used to
> Latin content because that's the script they use in
> public institutions, at work, etc.

Yes, but the thing is, most of the Moldovans who claim to speak
"Moldovan" only see it as an issue of naming of the same language. It
is a nationalistic matter - they don't want to call their mother
tongue after a foreign country. But the vast majority of these people
already go to "Romanian" websites, check out "Romanian" books from the
library, have told at least one person that they speak "Romanian", and
don't deny that the languages are almost exactly the same.

As I have noted before, I think the use of the name "Romanian" all
over ro.wikipedia is very biased and cruel. 1 million people speak
Moldovan. That is 1/28th of the population. A minority, yes, but that
doesn't mean they shouldn't be represented. It is even plastered all
over your Wikipedia that Romanian is spoken in Moldova, that it is
official in Moldova, etc, all calling it "Moldovan", and nearly all
people from Moldova are placed in dual categories - one for "Moldovan
Poets" and another for "Romanian Poets" - and I hope you realise that
this alienates an entire nation (with the exception of Romanian
reunificationists - note that, in addition to patriots and
nationalists, it also alienates moderates who at least feel they are
"Moldovan" but not "Romanian"). And 1/28th is not as small a minority
as 1/100 (the ratio of Romanian/Moldovan speakers who use Cyrillic).

I don't see mo: as the Moldovan Wikipedia. I see it as the Moldovan
Cyrillic Wikipedia, which is the only script used extensively there
because the Moldovan Latin Wikipedia, written in the official,
majority script, is located at the exact same location as the Romanian
Latin Wikipedia - and for good reason.

Even very few of those 33% of "Moldovan" speakers who use Cyrillic
would deny that Romanian and Moldovan are basically one language,
although the percentage would be higher than among other "Moldovan"
speakers because anti-Romanian feeling is greater among Cyrillic
users.

> Also, "since we already have two separate
> Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script
> content, and
> mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content"
>
> I've kept on saying that this is a practical solution,
> but it isn't really a correct solution - While the
> interesting context of the Moldo-Romanian language
> would state that a mo.wiki in Cyrillic only would be
> the most practical solution, it would basically be
> very biased, despite the prominent link. The prominent
> link is just a redirect, the interface would still be
> in Cyrillic, the interwiki links would still go to
> Cyrillic articles. We can't nominate a Wikipedia for
> Cyrillic content, even though the case of
> Moldo-Romanian would say that perhaps logically it is
> a way to go, simply because we can't nominate a
> language subdomain for a certain script when that
> script is a minority script.

So what if it is "correct"? So far, nobody who claims to speak
"Moldovan" as their mother tongue has challenged it. All of the
visitors this year, to the best of my knowledge, are Cyrillic users or
from ro.wikipedia. You and your ro.wikipedian goon squad may care, but
so far nobody else has. My guess is that the first time an actual
"Moldovan" speaker who wants to view content in the Roman alphabet
visits mo.wikipedia, they won't give a second thought to it and will
click the link as instructed. This remains to be seen, so I still
think we should wait to see if what you are saying will happen
actually ever does happen, and if it does, we can deal with the
problem then.

 > That's what needs to be understood here - Cyrillic is
> a minority script in all cases - for Moldo-Romanian
> speakers worldwide, for Moldo-Romanian speakers in
> Moldova and for Moldovan speakers in Moldova. So we
> need content to first cater for the majority, which
> could be either at mo.wiki or ro.wiki, but I think
> ro.wiki would be the more practical solution, unless
> some Moldovans would actually have a problem with
> being redirected to a Romanian Wikipedia, which they
> might have. We need to hear their side of the story
> too, but there are as of yet barely any Moldovan Latin
> users. There should be a very prominent link on the
> mo.wiki page redirecting Cyrillic users to their
> subdomain. Interwiki links would then go to mo-cyr:
> and be put in the form of "Moldoveaneasc?
> (Chirilic)" in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Why not "Moldoveneasca" in the Cyrillic alphabet? Only a dunce would
think, without some prior experience, that a link to "Moldoveneasca",
/in the Cyrillic alphabet/, would get them to non-Cyrillic content.
You may counter that the same is true vice-versa - but it was not
requested by the mo.wiki community that interwiki links read
"Moldoveana" in the Roman alphabet.

>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?

Sort of - I have a Y!IM account which I rarely use anymore, and I have
a couple of different e-mail addresses there. However, to be fair, I
go to the Taiwanese Yahoo! site more often than the English, and when
I do it's for convenience.

> Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
> http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

No thanks, I don't own or work for a small business.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Alexa.com blogs about Wikipedia

body:
Well, you know California is the home to the Silicon Valley, and we
all know about Bomis' prior business experience with silicon valleys.

Mark

On 4/14/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 04:39:07PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > It would be especially neat if we could get at least a little bit of
> > server space somewhere in Africa, Australia, and South America.
> >
> > Having said that, it would also be easy/nice to get server space in
> > California or somewhere else in the Western US (Google would be
> > California, would it not?)
> >
>
> I vote Washington state.  I'd kinda like to move there, eventually,
> anyway.
>
> Ha ha, only serious.
>
>
> > I think that it's always best to have everything distributed over
> > multiple locations in case of a disaster, natural or otherwise (this
> > way, we won't have to worry about Wikipedia in hurricanes, and if one
> > location gets broken into/burns down/explodes/disappears mysteriously
> > in a puff of steam, Wikipedia will not have problems because of it).
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 4/14/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > Andrew Lih wrote:
> > >
> > > >The lead blog story on Alexa's front page today is about Wikipedia
> > > >surpassing NY Times in terms of traffic rank. Traffic has spiked
> > > >upwards in the last month, and sits at #66 for today.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > I've just ordered another 20 servers for our Florida cluster, and with
> > > the recently announced Yahoo deal, as well
> > > as deals we are working on with some European educational/governmental
> > > organizations and another major search
> > > engine, we will within the next few months more than double our total
> > > capacity, and expand from 2 data centers
> > > (Florida, Paris) to 5 or 6 (Florida, somewhere in Asia, Amsterdam,
> > > Brussels, Paris, and another).
> > >
> > > Pretty neat.
> > >
>
> --
> Chad Perrin
> [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] logos

body:
Erik said

In the long term, I think having a standard logo *with* a text like this
would be useful for all Wikimedia projects -- then people can use e.g. a
"Powered by Wikipedia" logo on a CD or printout without there being a
misconception that it is a Wikimedia-approved endeavor. (Note that
"Powered by" has the problem that it is frequently used for software.)

I also think there *should* be a process for establishing real
partnerships that can be labeled as such, though I'm not sure whether
TWF is a candidate for that or not (they're not explicitly free content).

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

This point is precisely why we started the juriwiki list. We are aware we need to start such a process and this is currently under discussion. Note that the need for this process was presented in this very list about 1 week ago when I annnounced the juriwiki list.

I think that absolutely *no one* should have the right to *unilaterally* decide who is a partner and who can use our logos on their website. It should be a community approved decision. Possibly an approval by a limited number of people to represent the community (we are not gonna vote for any logo use), but never a *one* person decision.

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. Learn more.


subject: [Foundation-l] logos


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: foundation-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 12

body:
>I think I can confidently say that Florence's talk was the best received and
>the most relevant to the audience, at the end of the day. She's an excellent
>speaker, by the way.
>
>
I can second this.  Anthere is amazing.  In Holland, Angela and I -- who
had far more experience talking about
Wikipedia, especially having spent the entire previous week giving
delightful (*g*) presentations at the BBC -- did
a fine job,  but Anthere really captivated the audience (well, me at
least, but I think others would agree).

--Jimbo

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

Hiya. Well thanks a lot for all the nice comments, Steve report as well.
Well, right, this was not the first time I talked about wikipedia, but the first time in english definitly ;-)

I could meet two finnish editors yesterday, as it was a lighter day.

Incidently, the fi wikipedia just enjoyed a little bit of advertisment in the country, as they reported a story about a famous politician who apparently copied his phd thesis on another person work, possibly 10 years ago. His diploma was not removed, but I assume this is quite bad in terms of image;

An ip recently started removing this information from the article; it was restored; THe ip removed it again.... the page is now protected.

The funny thing is that the ip removing the information was tracked... and ended up giving the address of the ... finnish parliament itself.

The story made up in the journal (apparently a big one as it was the one distributed in the plane and everyone here knows about the story). The finnish wikipedia hence got free advertisment and enjoys new editors :-)

Anthere

off for the day

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
Andy Roberts wrote:

>On 4/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>But there's still the difference of "expectation". You can't go to an
>>>article about private parts and expect to see no pictures.
>>>
>>>The Titanic article is a whole different story, though I think some
>>>people are really overreacting about this. What about the famous "King
>>>of the World"-scene. Shouldn't that make for a nice image to add to
>>>the article?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Yes. That or a scene of the ship breaking up on end (not that I've seen
>>the movie).
>>
>>
>
>I haven't seen it yet and now you've spoiled the ending!
>
>
>
It's about the Titanic. It sinks.

AFAIK, the movie is not about the Titanic sinking, it's about the
aforementioned (hemi-demi-semi)nude Kate Winslet.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Suggestions for a work-safe encyclopedia

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>>>Perhaps we can identify some reasonable notion of "work-safeness"
>>>
>>>
>>No.  It's a dumb term only used by people who can't operate a web browser.
>>
>>
>
>Wow, that's an amazingly helpful comment, Tony.  I'm so glad you're
>here; you're such a valuable contributor to this project.
>
>
>
That's enough, both of you. Sollog is winning. I'm not calling either of
you Sollog; but this is *exactly* the kind of thing that the detractors
of the Wikipedia want - for the project to fall apart through petty
flame wars. We'll already lost enough valuable contributors - we don't
need you to go as well. Now take a deep breath, and forget about this
whole thing. It's not worth it. The topic of content suitability has
been raised before, will be raised again, and I suggest that we all
ignore it until a suitable proposal from the Wikimedia foundation is put
forth.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FOLDOC, acknowledgments and GFDL

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Denis Howe wrote:
>
>> I am very happy to have any kind of acknowledgement or back link on
>> FOLDOC based
>> articles in Wikipedia.  I would be almost as happy just to have a single
>> acknowledgement on some suitable global page.  I would not be at all
>> happy to
>> have no acknowledgement at all but I'd just cry quietly to myself at
>> night about
>> it. :-)
>
>
> /me idly envisions a [[Category:Articles based on FOLDOC]], but then
> keeps quiet for fear of the anti-Categories league.
>
>
[[Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:FOLDOC]]

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Faraaz Damji (frazzydee at spymac.com) [050414 08:08]:
>
>
>
>>I don't think that there will be dedicated editors like there are on
>>Wikipedia, and like there were on Nupedia, since encarta is completely
>>for profit- they're in it for the money and NOT for providing free
>>access to "the sum of all human knowledge." There might be some casual
>>editors who, upon finding something that wasn't previously there, will
>>submit it (eg. if somebody died).  There is little reason I see for
>>anybody going on the site for the purpose of improving it.
>>
>>
>
>
>It might keep the POV-pushers occupied. Then maybe they'll bother us less.
>(I can only hope.)
>
>
>
[[Template:Encarta]] (to be placed on User_talk: pages)

Dear contributor,

Wikipedia is a two-bit piece of &@!#. Nobody reads it. Since you know
*the truth* about {{{1}}}, please stop wasting your time here. Try
[[Encarta Wiki]] instead. Thanks, ~~~~

Oh, and:

[[Template:Uncyclopedia]] (to be placed on User_talk: pages)

Dear contributor,

Since Wikipedians are far too stupid to understand the breeding habits
of dust bunnies, I suggest you try [[Uncyclopedia]] instead. The editors
there will be a lot more receptive to your vast wealth of knowledge.
Thanks, ~~~~

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
BJ?rn Lindqvist said:
>
> This is a bad paralipsis that Tony rightly objected to. Kevin IS
> definitely asserting a fact here.

Yes.

> Tony has lost,

We'd all lost the minute that unsupported statement was made by a person
who apparently believed he could get away with it.
 but atleast he got people to question the validity of
> Kevin's statement.

Then he didn't get away with it.

The next person who wants to throw slurs like that around on this mailing
list may think twice.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Lucene search

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:

> various opensource software - snowball (http://snowball.tartarus.org/).
> It has English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch,

I have made bad experiences with Snowball for the german language. I.e.
  the word "Vater" (father) becomes "vat" (a whisky label :-), Mutter
(mother) morphes into "mutt" (a mail program), M?ller (miller) changes
into "mull" or - converting the umlaut '?' into "ue" - into "muell"
(waste). These are rediculous sematic results, which unsharpen search
results considerably.

On the other hand many plural word like "Autos" or "Fotos" (cars,
photos) do not change into the desired singular form by Snowball.

Therefore I decided to do my fulltext database "joda" without stemming.
The cost is low: Only some megabytes more of disk space is needed for
the BTree which deals the first level of the retrieving process. The
performance loss is nearly immeasurable. Search results are considerably
  better (sharper).

For retrieving, a wildcard at the end of a word (*) helps in most cases
(at least in German) and is a tool which every user understands and
accepts. Maybe there are better stemming tools like snowball for the
german language, but in practice there is no big need for them: Please
note, that most search items are substantives or proper names which
often needs no stemming or are even intolerat to any stemming.

Cheers

jo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Sean Barrett said:
>> >>>> Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.
>> >>>
>> To quote Bob Hope and Lucy Ricardo, "I may be dumb, but translate
>> chum.   In English Please Sen~or."  Thank you.
>
> Cut'n'paste from Google language tools:
> "About which one cannot speak, over it one must be silent."

Roughly correct.  "Whereof we cannot speak, we must forever remain silent."

I felt that it was an apt encapsulation of the dilemma faced by a man who
has opinions on subjects whose names he cannot bring himself even to type.


body:
Faraaz Damji said:
> It seems that there are some who want to keep Wikipedia work-safe, and
> others who want to avoid censorship.

Not really.  There are those who promote the concept of "work safe" and
those who use their browsers in a manner that does not conflict with their
employers' standards.  Censorship has nothing to do with it.


body:
Tom Haws said:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> I'm describing the realities
>> of the workplace - responsible adults with mortgages and families
>> depending on them don't get themselves fired just to make a free
>> speech point.

>
> Tony,
>
> Do what I did here.  Take away the personal attack from Stan's message,
>  and then read the rest.  Stan is simply telling the truth.
>

I don't accept that you have removed the personal attack.  There is still
the blatantly false claim that people who disagree with X or Y's
deletionist argument are implicitly "trying to make a free speech point".
I do not argue for free speech, ever--the concept is virtually unknown in
my country and not one that I consciously espouse.
This is simply a matter of employees falsely claiming that Wikipedia must
change in order to solve their own personal communication and web
navigation problems.


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Zzzzzzz

On 14 Apr 2005, at 8:45 pm, David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:

>> Absolutely not.  He specifically said that he "recognized" that people
>> were doing something with the deliberate intention of breaching
>> policy.  I
>> see no room for misinterpretation.   Having no evidence to show, it
>> seems
>> to me that the assumption of bad faith , and a massive, obvious one at
>> that, is on his part.  I'm revolted by this.  I see no apology.  I
>> see no
>> withdrawal, only weaseling and wriggling.  A disgusting accusstion,
>> disgusting behavior in continuing with it.  He has now confirmed his
>> accusation of bad faith against a specific, named editor.
>
> Kevin inadvertetly made a paralipsis,
> http://www.wordsmith.org/words/paralipsis.html. A paralipsis is
> basically a way of trying to state something without having to back it
> up. It is another rhethorical trick that is very hard to counter
> because the speaker makes sure it is not he who is stating it.
>
> "I've come to the realization that
> people are searching out nude pictures to put in the 'pedia. They are
> looking
> to stir up trouble, mostly to make a point."
>
> This is a bad paralipsis that Tony rightly objected to. Kevin IS
> definitely asserting a fact here. He could have gotten away with it by
> instead of saying "I've come to the realization that..." say "I have a
> feeling that..." or "Someone told me that..." or "I've heard that..."
> or "It might be that..." If he would have phrased his paralipsis like
> that, Tony would probably appear as a petty troublemaker that
> questions something unessential. Still, since noone except Tony has
> opposed Kevin's statement, and people have questioned Tony's motives
> for "nitpicking," it shows how effective this rhethorical trick is.
> Tony has lost, but atleast he got people to question the validity of
> Kevin's statement.
>
> --
> mvh Bj?rn
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Are you bringing anything to this discussion other than literary
> analysis?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user report

body:
On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 12:13:47AM -0400, Rex wrote:

[snip]

>
> For example, it's been almost a year, but JamesMLane has NEVER answered the question which I posed to him on at least 10 occasions; yes or no, is it true that John Kerry's first wound was "minor"? The amount of fighting I was forced to endure trying to get and answer to that (or alternatively, get that word into the article) was enormous. Frankly, I don't see how one can care about all the irrelevant minutiae which is included in the Kerry article, but still be so opposed to allowing the word "minor" in to describe an injury which required no stitches and caused no loss of duty. How much less consequential of an injury can one get?
>

[snip]

I can't really comment on the circumstances to which you refer, in
general, because I've not been privy to them and, frankly, I'm not
interested in investigating it at this time (though I well might at a
later date).  That said, I do have a question for you:

Have you tried inserting the word "minor" by way of stating that the
wound in question has been called "minor" by some people, with
corroborating sources ready to back this claim up?  I ask this only
because calling it "minor", no matter how accurate in practical terms,
is a judgment call.  I happen to agree that what you describe is a
"minor" wound, but I would not call it such as a statement of fact in a
Wikipedia article because it's a statement from personal perspective.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
On 4/14/05, Zach Alexander <zdalexander at gmail.com> wrote:
> Faraaz Damji wrote:
>
> > No, Wikipedia will never be completely safeguarded, just like it will
> > never be completely finished.  But if we use a keyword system (either
> > instead of or complementary to a rating scheme), then images can have
> > metadata that users can filter out.  So if people are offended by
> > images
> > of women's face, then they can block "girls, women, etc."
> >
> > The best thing about this is that it won't interfere with normal users,
> > since people will have to opt IN to it.
>
> Exactly, this is the way to go. I just wrote pretty much the same thing
> in another email.

I don't think there's anything wrong with allowing arbitrary tagging.
There may be something wrong with any particular filtering system, and
I'm not sure we should support any one in particular.   Offering
people the ability to edit metadata tags, without making some Official
Policy concerning how they will be used, would be a useful addition to
the wiki-toolbox.

These tags/keywords could be optionally shown at the top of each page
and at the bottom of each image,  for editors who wanted to see it...
or just shown in a separate section linked to at the bottom of each
article/image page.

SJ

ps - there was a similar outcry about the possible introduction of
Categories; with some people insisting that since there was no One
Good Way to categorize things, cats would just be a mess, would be
pov, etc.


from_name: geni

body:
> Not really.  There are those who promote the concept of "work safe" and
> those who use their browsers in a manner that does not conflict with their
> employers' standards.  Censorship has nothing to do with it.

Prove it. You have already claimed that they don't know how to use
thier browesrs without providing any evidence.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

<snip>

>If we write an article on [[nudity in American film]], then the picture
>would be an excellent illustration. It's not really representative of
>Titanic, as the article stood yesterday. "King of the world" gets my
>vote instead.
>
>
Well said.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Alexa.com blogs about Wikipedia

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Oh, one last thing:
>
> Looking at the recent Alexa traffic graphs reminded me of the recent
> E-mail to Wikitech-l, telling the developers that the Wikipedia
> infrastructure was (and I quote)
>
>   "U N S C A L A B L E"
>
> I think that should now read "unscalable, apart from the ever-improving
> performance and continued exponential growth in load", or something?

I wasn't reading wikitech-l at that time, I had to look up the archives
to find out what you were talking about. I for one was originally
worried about the lack of scalability inherent in MySQL, but those fears
seem to have been unfounded. Any of our database servers can keep up
with Wikipedia's write load several times over, and we've been able to
distribute the read load effectively to maintain good performance.
Growing at this rate, Wikipedia will see market saturation within the
next year or two, and I'm confident we won't hit a performance brick
wall before then.

>
> By the way, what _has_ caused the recent traffic spike? Added hardware?
> Software improvements? Better load-balancing? Something else?

According to [[Wikipedia:Announcements]] for April 2:

"Traffic continues to skyrocket, with Wikipedia's daily Alexa ranking
peaking at a daily rank of 89 and a weekly average rank of 97. Several
key placements on search engines have aided in the encyclopedia's
popularity, such as #2 for online poker, #3 for Terri Schiavo, and #9
for Pope John Paul II."

Since then we've been given special placement in Google's definition and
Q&A services, and better placement in Yahoo. The timing of this increase
in demand was fortuitous, since we solved some performance problems at
about the same time -- we took load off the image server (albert) by
moving backups to benet and implementing a metadata cache, and we added
another perlbal server, which seemed to be a bottleneck. Domas deserves
special credit, for analysing our performance problems, fixing some of
them and providing excellent advice on how to fix others.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Friday, April 15, 2005 12:31 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Not really.  There are those who promote the concept of "work safe" and
> > those who use their browsers in a manner that does not conflict with
> > their employers' standards.  Censorship has nothing to do with it.
>
> Prove it. You have already claimed that they don't know how to use
> thier browesrs without providing any evidence.

Geni, dear, the point that he is so obviously making with a subtlety that
even surpasses a hoard of rhinos charging and engaging with an ocean liner
perched on a precipice, but that you seem fixated on requiring him to spell
out in big flashing shiny letters is that, were one able to "know how to
user their browsers" (by which it is meant, were one aware of and able to
use some form of functionality in their browser that prevented images from
being downloaded unless specifically requested), then one desirious of not
being surprised by images being loaded that one did not want would, indeed,
engage such a device.

Happy?

Please stop this tiresome pettiness in demanding "answers" to rhetorical
questions.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
Might you mean this?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_is_more_popular_than...

On 4/15/05, mbecker ? <wikimb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really should make a wikipedia page for these :)


body:
geni wrote:

>>That's enough, both of you. Sollog is winning. I'm not calling either of
>>you Sollog; but this is *exactly* the kind of thing that the detractors
>>of the Wikipedia want - for the project to fall apart through petty
>>flame wars. We'll already lost enough valuable contributors - we don't
>>need you to go as well. Now take a deep breath, and forget about this
>>whole thing. It's not worth it. The topic of content suitability has
>>been raised before, will be raised again, and I suggest that we all
>>ignore it until a suitable proposal from the Wikimedia foundation is put
>>forth.
>>
>>
>
>Forget about it? Are you seriously suggesting that the [[NSFW]]
>article is accepterable? It is barely even a stub.
>
>
I meant the argument about people knowing how to use their browsers -
possibly the argument about the image as well - but articles always need
improving, and that is the point of Wikipedia, *not* flame wars about
who's pictures are showing what. Since [[NSFW]] is a stub, I invite
everyone to improve it - heck, nominate it as COTW even.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 08:45:27PM +0100, David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:
> > Absolutely not.  He specifically said that he "recognized" that people
> > were doing something with the deliberate intention of breaching policy.  I
> > see no room for misinterpretation.   Having no evidence to show, it seems
> > to me that the assumption of bad faith , and a massive, obvious one at
> > that, is on his part.  I'm revolted by this.  I see no apology.  I see no
> > withdrawal, only weaseling and wriggling.  A disgusting accusstion,
> > disgusting behavior in continuing with it.  He has now confirmed his
> > accusation of bad faith against a specific, named editor.
>
> Kevin inadvertetly made a paralipsis,
> http://www.wordsmith.org/words/paralipsis.html. A paralipsis is
> basically a way of trying to state something without having to back it
> up. It is another rhethorical trick that is very hard to counter
> because the speaker makes sure it is not he who is stating it.
>
> "I've come to the realization that
> people are searching out nude pictures to put in the 'pedia. They are
> looking
> to stir up trouble, mostly to make a point."
>
> This is a bad paralipsis that Tony rightly objected to. Kevin IS
> definitely asserting a fact here. He could have gotten away with it by
> instead of saying "I've come to the realization that..." say "I have a
> feeling that..." or "Someone told me that..." or "I've heard that..."
> or "It might be that..." If he would have phrased his paralipsis like
> that, Tony would probably appear as a petty troublemaker that
> questions something unessential. Still, since noone except Tony has
> opposed Kevin's statement, and people have questioned Tony's motives
> for "nitpicking," it shows how effective this rhethorical trick is.
> Tony has lost, but atleast he got people to question the validity of
> Kevin's statement.

It's pretty clear that Kevin's statement isn't factually supportable
with evidence at hand, but that doesn't change the fact that what could
easily be a mere bit of sloppy phrasing was instead treated by Tony as a
deliberate and specific accusatory attack.  As I've tried to convey,
more than once, I don't think that Kevin's statement provides a very
realistic impression of events at hand, the evidence to support Tony's
accusations of bad faith on Kevin's part is simply lacking.

I'm not even sure Kevin's statement strictly qualifies as a paralepsis
(at least, not without some caveats), whereas your misdirection of the
attention of the reader away from Tony's assumptions of bad faith are
more likely to be definable as paralepses.  In particular, you present
as a given the notion that Tony's statements constitute an objection to
the use of paralepsis when, in fact, they simply accuse Kevin of making
wild accusations.  What Kevin actually did is 1) fail to identify a
difference between inference and deduction, and 2) overgeneralize,
unless Kevin does indeed have some kind of statistical "proof" of the
factual accuracy of his statements (a patently ludicrous idea, in my
opinion).  Anything else that either you or Tony has said about Kevin's
perfidies seems to this reader at least to be nothing but unfounded
speculation.

Note: To satisfy the requirements of a paralepsis, Kevin's statements
would have to include an apparently primary assertion and the
rhetorically obfuscated assertion, where the former acts to obscure the
latter, as the latter is embedded within a downplaying bit of phrasing.
Contrary to your claim that Kevin's statements satisfy the terms of a
paralepsis, they in fact make central the point you seem to think obscured
by trickery.  I agree that there is something wrong with Kevin's
statements, but (assuming good faith, among other reasons) neither your
interpretation of what is wrong nor Tony's seems a likely accurate
description of the actual problem.

This is getting long-winded.  I'll cut it short.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:50:01PM +0100, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> We'd all lost the minute that unsupported statement was made by a person
> who apparently believed he could get away with it.

Again:  Where's the assumption of good faith?  Where NPOV is "law" in
judging the content of Wikipedia, assumption of good faith applies in
judging the metadiscussion that occurs behind the scenes.  I don't think
it is in any way necessary to assume he thought he "could get away with"
anything.  Perhaps he just phrased something very poorly.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Timwi

body:
Alphax wrote:
>
> And since when is {{FOLDOC}} big?

Indeed, it is not as big as it was when I last checked (which was a long
time ago, I admit). Still, though, it feels to me like baggage that the
article would carry around forever. Category tags are different because
I somehow don't view them as part of the article (maybe because my CSS
nicely tucks them away in a corner, or perhaps because they're easy to
filter out of the wiki source text algorithmically). Hence also why
adding a category tag to the template doesn't really make it any better.


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Alphax wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote:
>>
>>> Denis Howe wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am very happy to have any kind of acknowledgement or back link on
>>>> FOLDOC based
>>>> articles in Wikipedia.  I would be almost as happy just to have a
>>>> single
>>>> acknowledgement on some suitable global page.  I would not be at
>>>> all happy to
>>>> have no acknowledgement at all but I'd just cry quietly to myself
>>>> at night about
>>>> it. :-)
>>>
>>>
>>> /me idly envisions a [[Category:Articles based on FOLDOC]], but then
>>> keeps quiet for fear of the anti-Categories league.
>>>
>> [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:FOLDOC]]
>
>
> Well, duh. That requires the presence of {{FOLDOC}} in the article.
> And it's not very useful because it also lists talk pages that just
> happen to link to it (as opposed to transcluding it).
>
> Yeah, I know, my Category proposal also requires the presence of
> [[Category:Articles based on FOLDOC]], but at least it wouldn't
> generate such a big box that would need to be carried around with the
> article forever.
>
How about a FOLDOC article listing all it's entries and articles based
on them?

And since when is {{FOLDOC}} big?

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


body:
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 05:30:08PM +0100, geni wrote:
> > Precisely. You're blaming Wikipedia for your boss's cluelessness.
>
> IT departments exist for a reason. I supose that you are going to try
> and use your learn to use your browser argument again. Unfortuently

Let's step back a moment and look at this from a more "principles of the
discussion" perspective.  I think you're both responding based on being
too close to the details of the landscape, and missing the "big picture"
panorama before you.

1.  Tony Sidaway supports the idea that Wikipedia should be technically
effective, and to heck with social factors that interfere with that in
any way.

2.  geni supports the idea that Wikipedia, to maximize opportunity for
survival and growth, must pay homage to social conventions that demand
certain (effectively arbitrary) limits on technical implementation.

My personal sympathies lie pretty well perfectly aligned with Tony's
stance.  I'm very much a "technical accuracy first, social pandering if
we have time later" sort of person.  Yes, I phrased that pejoratively,
because that's how I tend to think of it.  That doesn't mean I don't see
the point of geni's stance.

Both are absolutely correct within the realm of their primary concerns
in this debate.  There are two constructive approaches that come
immediately to my mind for resolving the matter:

1.  We can take the organic growth approach, and try to just balance the
two as well as we can by (very) rough consensus.  This is what we're
already doing.  The big downside is that these arguments will continue
indefinitely.  I'll leave upside(s) as an exercise for the reader.

2.  We can draft a set of guiding principles by which such matters will
be judged, beginning with a logical progression from the core purpose of
the project as a whole.  My knee-jerk sympathies lie with this option,
for much the same reasons that they lie as well with the "technical
accuracy" approach above, but the big downside to this approach is the
fact that, ultimately, such principles have to come from SOMEwhere, and
in a very democratic ("mob rule") and consensus-driven environment there
is little hope that the guiding principles will be decided for the right
reasons, regardless of whether the right principles are chosen for the
most part.  Again, I'll leave upside(s) as an exercise for the reader.

So.  Armed with this semipretentious breakdown of the conditions of the
argument, do you think we might take a more productive approach to
discussing the matter than oblique sniping?

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>> Make a contribution. Suitably minor, of course, so that you can write
>> it off as a public domain minor edit.
>
> A couple of attempts at contributing (perfectly reasonable) test edits
> to Encarta have resulted in nothing at all happening to the articles in
> question. I'm not impressed.

How long ago have you made those edits? Even if their claims of having
an editorial board check every submitted edit are true, it would
probably take on the order of weeks or months for your edit to appear.

> The whole experience is extraordinarily lacking in incentive for Encarta
> contributors, who will effectively see a brick wall, if my experience is
> anything to go by.

I'm afraid this sounds a lot like bias from your experience with
Wikipedia. You are used to your edits appearing immediately, so in
comparison to that, Encarta naturally feels like a "brick wall". It is
doubtful that the same kind of feeling will be experienced by casual
users who are unfamiliar with "open-content encyclopedias that post
their users' edits immediately". Even if they have vaguely heard of it,
they will probably still readily accept a considerable delay in the
processing of their contributions in return for what they perceive as
superior factual accuracy.

> Combined with the fact that it will dawn on them that
> all they are doing is enriching Microsoft, with nothing back in return,
> this is unlikely to gain a loyal user community.

This, in turn, exhibits your anti-Microsoft sentiment. Most casual users
are not like that and view Microsoft as neutral or even friendly, and
even if it occurs to them that they will be enriching Microsoft, they
are unlikely to see anything wrong with it. As for "getting something
back in return", they do, and it's the same thing you get on Wikipedia:
some sort of satisfaction that you have helped improve something. I can
even imagine that most will feel it to be more "worth it" to help
Encarta because it feels somehow more important or more substantial or,
dare I say it, more accurate.

> Has anyone observed _any_ Encarta user edits actually becoming visible?

They have a "What's New" section where articles are listed that have
recently changed (or so they claim). However, there is no way to see
what exactly has changed in each article, much less does it say who
suggested the change. Indeed for 99% of them you can't even view the
article unless you pay.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 04:39:07PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> It would be especially neat if we could get at least a little bit of
> server space somewhere in Africa, Australia, and South America.
>
> Having said that, it would also be easy/nice to get server space in
> California or somewhere else in the Western US (Google would be
> California, would it not?)
>

I vote Washington state.  I'd kinda like to move there, eventually,
anyway.

Ha ha, only serious.

> I think that it's always best to have everything distributed over
> multiple locations in case of a disaster, natural or otherwise (this
> way, we won't have to worry about Wikipedia in hurricanes, and if one
> location gets broken into/burns down/explodes/disappears mysteriously
> in a puff of steam, Wikipedia will not have problems because of it).
>
> Mark
>
> On 4/14/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Andrew Lih wrote:
> >
> > >The lead blog story on Alexa's front page today is about Wikipedia
> > >surpassing NY Times in terms of traffic rank. Traffic has spiked
> > >upwards in the last month, and sits at #66 for today.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > I've just ordered another 20 servers for our Florida cluster, and with
> > the recently announced Yahoo deal, as well
> > as deals we are working on with some European educational/governmental
> > organizations and another major search
> > engine, we will within the next few months more than double our total
> > capacity, and expand from 2 data centers
> > (Florida, Paris) to 5 or 6 (Florida, somewhere in Asia, Amsterdam,
> > Brussels, Paris, and another).
> >
> > Pretty neat.
> >

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 12:35:30AM +0930, Alphax wrote:
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >If we write an article on [[nudity in American film]], then the picture
> >would be an excellent illustration. It's not really representative of
> >Titanic, as the article stood yesterday. "King of the world" gets my
> >vote instead.
> >
> >
> Well said.

Agreed.  The matter seems to be settled, somewhat, by now with a
close-up of Winslet that doesn't challenge sensibilities, though.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Zach Alexander

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> But wouldn't it be better if we let people choose which types of images
> they wanted to display? Turning off all images removes all the images
> in
> the article, while a content-filtering system would be specific to
> images deemed offensive by the reader.

This really is the only long term solution. We add some buttons in
Special:Preferences, and have two or three options -- e.g.
uncensored/moderate/strict. Explicit content would automatically be
filtered from then on, or not.

It would involve more work coding, and more work maintaining tags on
explicit content, and arguments about whether [[Image:Y]] should get
tagged as explicit or not, and so on. But there's no other long term
solution I can think of, because we do need to have boobs and
clitorises in the appropriate places, but people do need to have a way
not to see them if they'd rather not. (Making the user disable images
doesn't count as a solution.) A fork on the basis of censorship would
be unlikely after then.

Zach


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> Stan Shebs said:
>>
>>> It's not so much whether people know how to operate the web
>>> browser, it's that it makes referring to WP an unduly risky
>>> activity. For instance, suppose I'm in the office of a less-clueful
>>> boss, and am trying to get the boss to understand a detail, and I
>>> know WP has a good explanation; it's not going to help my case if
>>> I have to ask the boss to turn off image display before I have
>>> him/her bring up a WP page.
>>>
>>
>> Precisely. You're blaming Wikipedia for your boss's cluelessness.
>>
>>
> Are you fifteen years old or what? I'm describing the realities
> of the workplace - responsible adults with mortgages and families
> depending on them don't get themselves fired just to make a free
> speech point. You can fulminate about it all you want, but that's
> not going to change anything.
>
The only workable solution is to get a text-only version.

> A WP with nudity on every page (which sounds great to me actually,
> much more interesting than what we have now :-) - I can contribute
> scans of my "nudes on postage stamps") is certainly doable, and
> will no doubt have a contingent characterizing the result as a
> "great encyclopedia", but its readership will be rather limited.
> You can expect to see a great many forks at that point, and most
> editors will likely migrate to one of them, because they're going
> to go where the readers are to be found. So the situation will
> resolve itself in favor of a somewhat restrictive image policy
> sooner or later; just a question of whether you want to do it now,
> or after a painful forking process.
>
Forking for nudity would essentially create pornopedia - and then that'd
fork to...

The reality of the stupid, hypocritical world some people live in -
anyone remember the Superbowl thing? Imagine if that'd been (any image
discussed on this mailing list). Now stop it, before you raise my
wikistress any further.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>>
>> You can mow add to Encarta articles online. After a review by the M$
>> staff, your edit may be added to the Encarta.
>
>
> I've thought about this some more, and I have come to a number of
> conclusions.
>
> I don't believe that any noticeable fraction of submissions is even
> looked at by a human. I cannot believe that a commercial organisation
> could or would spend the resources necessary to do that.
>
> I don't believe that the purpose of adding this feature was to allow
> users to improve Encarta. Though of course that's what everyone thinks.
>
> I do believe that they added this feature due to a growing public
> awareness of Wikipedia, and in an effort to retain a certain amount of
> market share. I believe that they are explicitly trying to reduce
> faith in Wikipedia or wiki projects in general, thereby implicitly
> increasing faith in proprietary encyclopedias (or strengthening the
> superior faith that already exists).
>
> At the same time, they are probably trying to show that they are
> "ahead" of other proprietary encyclopedias by being the first to
> introduce a significant feature, and that they are more
> customer-oriented by making it look like they allow feedback to reach
> them.
>
> That's what I think,
> Timwi
>
Ah, but only one way to test it....

Make a contribution. Suitably minor, of course, so that you can write it
off as a public domain minor edit.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
Kevin Rector wrote:

>So, I just now, like a bolt of lightning caught the irony that this
>image and the fuss over it is on the "titatic" article. Get it....
><i>tit</i>anic.
>
>HA HA.
>
>-Kevin
>
>
>Alphax wrote:
>
>
>>>Andy Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>I haven't seen it yet and now you've spoiled the ending!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>It's about the Titanic. It sinks.
>>>
>>>AFAIK, the movie is not about the Titanic sinking, it's about the
>>>aforementioned (hemi-demi-semi)nude Kate Winslet.
>>>
>>>
>>Ahhh!  I think I'm beginning to understand.  It's about the tragedy of
>>sinking breasts that comes with aging. :-)
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>>
I was trying to be serious....

Hrm, Uncyclopedia entry for [[Titanic (movie)]] anyone?

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> What's wrong with censorware tagging?  Where to start?  Here's the
> biggie:  tagging is incompatible with Wikipedia's existing commitments.
>
> No system of tags is compatible with Wikipedia's commitment to
> neutrality.  The dimensions, biases, and extremes of any system of tags
> are created from a particular non-neutral point of view.  Wikipedia is
> categorically forbidden from taking on such a point of view as its own.
>
> By "dimensions" I mean the types of material that are considered worth
> tagging -- e.g. nudity; violence; religion.  The reason that commercial
> censorware products have an "explicit nudity" dimension and not a
> "explicit Christianity" dimension should be tolerably obvious in the
> marketplace -- but Wikipedia does not have any business deciding for
> its
> readers that "nudity" is problematic and needs to be a filtering option
> but "Christianity" doesn't.
>
> By "biases" I mean the inherent bigotries that will be encoded into any
> particular category.  A system which considers female breasts to be
> "nudity" but male chests not to be is sexist by nature.  (And anyone
> who
> thinks that female breasts are "sexual" but male chests are not simply
> has not asked enough straight women or gay men for their opinion on the
> issue.)

You're absolutely right, but you're also wrong.

First of all, on a minor note, you overstate the NPOVness of Wikipedia.
There is no "view from nowhere." Every edit is POV -- so called NPOV
just means arriving at POVs by consensus if possible and majority if
not. It would be no different for breasts/Christianity/homosexuality
tags than it is for anything else that we argue about.

But you are right about it being problematic, or excessively POV-laden,
to have any simple criteria like I was suggesting, or just suggested on
the other thread. (E.g. having "sexual content/nudity" being the
"dimension" and only two or three options on that dimension.) As you
point out there are many kinds of "objectionable" subject matter and
many degrees within each.

But the solution is not to throw up our hands and sacrifice Wikipedia's
success because NPOV supposedly ties our hands -- the solution would be
to **leave the choice of objectionable content in the hands of the end
user**. We create [[Special:Censorship]]. If a user blanks it,
Wikipedia is uncensored. If a user puts the tags {{img.genitals}},
{{img.femalebreasts}}, and {{paganism}} on it, he doesn't see genitals
or Kate Winslet, or even see articles about pagans. If another user
puts {{img.malechests}}, {{img.ankles}}, and {{christianity}}, she
doesn't see pictures of those things or articles on Christianity.

A setup more or less like this would make things more complicated, and
like all things Wikipedia would never be completely finished, but it
would solve the problem, and it is immune to Karl's objection. People
would generally put {{img.femalebreasts}} tags on things like Kate
Winslet, and people at work, etc. could set up their
[[Special:Censorship]] page and that would be that.

Of course, most people would realize it's not worth the trouble trying
to protect yourself/kids from homo kisses and pagans and boobies. But
until everyone grows up, it's probably either "fork" (so to speak, via
what I just described) or be forked (eventually).

Zach


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Faraaz Damji wrote:

> No, Wikipedia will never be completely safeguarded, just like it will
> never be completely finished.  But if we use a keyword system (either
> instead of or complementary to a rating scheme), then images can have
> metadata that users can filter out.  So if people are offended by
> images
> of women's face, then they can block "girls, women, etc."
>
> The best thing about this is that it won't interfere with normal users,
> since people will have to opt IN to it.

Exactly, this is the way to go. I just wrote pretty much the same thing
in another email.

Zach


body:
SPUI wrote:

> Zach Alexander wrote:
>> We add some buttons in Special:Preferences, and have two or three
>> options -- e.g. uncensored/moderate/strict. Explicit content would
>> automatically be filtered from then on, or not.
>> It would involve more work coding, and more work maintaining tags on
>> explicit content, and arguments about whether [[Image:Y]] should get
>> tagged as explicit or not, and so on. But there's no other long term
>> solution I can think of, because we do need to have boobs and
>> clitorises in the appropriate places, but people do need to have a
>> way not to see them if they'd rather not. (Making the user disable
>> images doesn't count as a solution.) A fork on the basis of
>> censorship would be unlikely after then.
>
> "Explicit" is majorly POV. However, it would be possible to have NPOV
> labels like "bare female breasts" and "human blood". There's been some
> discussion at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_image_suppression .

You're right -- I realized there was some POV there, but didn't realize
just how much, until Karl explained why on the other thread. In my
reply to him I said something along similar lines to what you seems to
be suggesting.

Zach


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conflict between two Wikipedias

body:
Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050415 04:04]:

> And I would also like to add the same for the Indonesian/Malaysian
> Wikipedias. I think it's sad that these nearly-identical languages are
> spreading their resources thin over multiple projects based more on
> nationality than actual linguistic differences.

Indonesian and Malaysian actually have a fair bit more difference, don't
they? (Oversimplification: Indonesian = Malay + Dutch words; Malaysian =
Malay + English words.) It's not a political difference thing per se, as
with Romanian/Moldovan or the former Yugoslav language of Serbo-Croatian
situation.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in today's Guardian - twice

body:
Charles Matthews (charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com) [050415 03:38]:

> The Online supplement in today's London Guardian features not only a brisk
> Jimbo interview, but a use of WP as benchmarl for Uncyclopedia (which
> apparenty is funnier, if having less useful factual content).

I strongly question that last assertion!

    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/KITTENHOEFFER_magazine_stand

NPOV can only give so much of the truth.

- d.


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikinews-l] Chinese Wikinews: board action
	required

body:
There's no consensus within the board either. In a discussion last
month, Anthere said the Chinese community should decide, I said the
whole community should decide, Tim Shell said it should be started,
Jimbo said it shouldn't, and Michael Davis didn't respond to my email
about it.

Considering the complete split of opinions, both in the original vote,
the recent Chinese vote, and within the board, I think we need to
consider alternative options to the simple question of whether we
start it or not. One solution could be for Wikimedia to support the
project being hosted elsewhere without it being an official Wikimedia
project, if any of the supporters of the project wanted to find
alternative hosting for it. It wouldn't be able to use the Wikinews
trademarks, but would mean that those who want to work on it could do
so, and if there is ever a consensus for the project within Wikimedia,
we could move it back here then.

Angela


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
Tony may have confused "garland fig-leafing" with "flat-chestedness":

* The female centaurs in that sequence were originally bare-breasted,
but the Hays office insisted that discreet garlands be hung around
their necks.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100422

(I guess it helps if you've actually seen the movie.)

... Hey, how about the mermaids in Disney's Peter Pan? (And Tinkerbell's

figure leaves little to the imagination; and wasn't there an erotic
spanking
scene, which caused her to shed fairy dust?)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Sidaway [mailto:minorityreport at bluebottle.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 7:39 AM
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated
>
>
> Poor, Edmund W said:
> >> the semi-fig-leafed scene where
> > Jack draws his new girlfriend, are not central to the movie. Even
> > though they are real crowd-pleasers, the plot would not
> have suffered
> > by editing the car scene so that the frantically-excited couple are
> > merely shown getting into the car and doing some intense necking
> > (leave something to the imagination). And the drawing scene
> would have
> > worked just as well with PG-type fig-leafing instead of the
> > tantalization of "Ohmygosh, is she really showing her wobbly bits?"
> >
>
>
> In my opinion, it would have severely dented the credibility
> of the director to have given in more than he did to the
> puritan sensibilities of the US domestic audience.  Further
> fig-leafing would have been as distracting to most audiences
> as those disturbingly flat-chested female centaurs in Fantasia.
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Karl A. Krueger said:
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 04:34:20PM +0100, Zach Alexander wrote:
>
>> And you can't seriously mean that disabling images is a real solution
>> to the problem.

It works for me, especially if I'm browsing from work.

> We'd have to have a notice on the main page, e.g.
>> "Note: Nudity may appear in any entry. If you are offended by nudity,
>> please disable images in your browser." I don't think that would go
>> over well.
>
> We already have a [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]] linked from the main
> page.

It is linked from every single page on Wikipedia.


body:
Faraaz Damji said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> Not really.  There are those who promote the concept of "work safe"
>> and those who use their browsers in a manner that does not conflict
>> with their employers' standards.
>
> But wouldn't it be better if we let people choose which types of images
> they wanted to display?

We could not stop them doing so if we tried.


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Enotif - sent to Sysops for any new page ?

body:
I would like to know, whether you also like a new feature

- additional user option for Sysops, Developers and Bureaucrats (SDBs)
- configurable through a regular expression (RE) - per SDB.

which sends an Enotif (e-mail notification) to the SDBs on creation of a
new page - if the RE matches.
It can now easily be included in my Enotif 3.x for Mediawiki REL1_4 (1.4.1).

Tom

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enotif


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
--- Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
>The matter seems to be settled, somewhat,
> by now with a
> close-up of Winslet that doesn't challenge
> sensibilities, though.

It's only settled because the image was bowdlerized
while the ifd discussion was still going on.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


from_name: Philipp

subject: [Wikitech-l] "target=_blank"-behaviour for external links?

body:
Hi,

first I thought this might be a frequently asked question but I researched half
an hour and it also appears not to be a frequently answered question. So -
subject says it already:

Is there a possibility/parameter (or patch) which opens a new window when
left-clicking something like [http:/www.domain.tld/directory/filename.html Click
here]?

Just like Click here?

Cheers
 Philipp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
Tony argued that:

> Further
> fig-leafing would have been as distracting to most audiences
> as those disturbingly flat-chested female centaurs in Fantasia.

If you think your taste is representative of "most audiences",
then you'll L-O-V-E this:

http://www.nerve.com/Dispatches/Rogers/japanimation/main.asp

Imagine if the centaurs in Fantasia abandoned their chaste
little picnic and erupted into a wild orgy. The younger, more
girlish colts might not be as into it, so they'd get tied up.
Then a 1,000-foot high robot in samurai armor locked in battle
with an equally huge demon that squirts fire out of tentacles
... might crash into the scene, killing all the centaurs. Or
maybe the male centaurs would all die horribly but quickly,
while the female centaurs would live long enough to be raped
...

(But don't forget the distinction between "if" and "since"!)

Ed Poor

P.S. I found this lovely little snippet of "middle-of-the-road"
fantasy by googling for "female centaurs in Fantasia".


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Legal threats by proxy (was Suggestions for a work-safe
	encyclopedia)

body:
Karl A. Krueger (kkrueger at whoi.edu) [050415 05:47]:

> I have another related concern.  People seem to occasionally bring up
> these purported legal risks as an attempt to get their way on an issue
> of Wikipedia governance or policy.  While this is clearly not a
> violation of the _letter_ of the [[Wikipedia:No legal threats]] policy,
> it seems to me to border on infringement of the _spirit_ of that policy.

> In these cases, the contributor is not *themselves* threatening to sue
> if they don't get their way.  Rather, they are claiming that if they do
> not get their way, that *someone else* is likely to sue.  This seems to
> me to be a "legal threat by proxy" or some such, and it does not seem
> like a very honorable way to go about a policy discussion.

Seconded. Cut this crap without some really quite solid backing.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
--- Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 09:07:48AM -0700, Rick
> wrote:
> >
> > --- Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> > >The matter seems to be settled, somewhat,
> > > by now with a
> > > close-up of Winslet that doesn't challenge
> > > sensibilities, though.
> >
> > It's only settled because the image was
> bowdlerized
> > while the ifd discussion was still going on.
> >
>
> Do you think the new image doesn't serve the
> purposes of the article as
> well as the old image?  If so, I encourage you to
> support that opinion
> and, if I find myself in agreement, I'd throw my
> support behind your
> opinion insofar as I'm willing to even be involved
> in the discussion.  I
> haven't heard/seen any indication that anyone thinks
> this new image is
> worse than the previous, and the consensus seems
> (from my extremely
> limited investigation) to be that it's actually a
> better image, with the
> possible exception of this one comment from you.
> Please correct me if
> I'm wrong.

Honestly, no, the censored image does not serve a more
useful function.  The scene of DiCaprio's character
sketching a semi-nude Winslet character is integral to
the plot of the story.  A cropped photo of Winslet's
face may be fine as an illustration of the [[Kate
Winslet]] article, but not for the Titanic article.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
wrote:
>Having
> said that, I was also
> utterly baffled by the fuss over the 2004 Superbowl,
> as were most of my
> countrymen.

So were many Americans.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


body:
Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050415 07:20]:
>Stirling Newberry:

> >Wikipedia is an increasingly hostile environment. Don't dismiss
> >alternate venues because the wave is cresting on wikipedia.

> For me, the important question is: how do we prevent Wikipedia from
> becoming an "increasingly hostile environment".
> My own view is that we should trust the ArbCom to rid us more quickly of
> poisonous personalities.  Of course this is
> non-trivial, etc.

We're really trying very hard to achieve this in the face of Wikipedia's
remarkable popularity, honest!

>  But we really do put up with an astounding amount of
> absurd behavior in the name of openness.

Personally, one thing I'd hope to achieve from the arb com is sufficiently
neutralising the toxic contributors enough that contributors like Stirling
Newberry don't say "to hell with it."

This is actually ridiculously tricker than it may look from outside.

- d.


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: dumps

body:
>Of course we can split en: (by namespace, by first letter, by whatever
>you want).

Sure. Such splitting assumes that we'd be able to do multiple-server joins.
Wiki has quite a lot of relations inside, and even having interwiki is quite a PITA.
On the other hand, if we 'split' and use other database engines, we may not use
relational databases at all. Those were designed for relations, we need storage.

> What was the purpose of this dismissive remark? It is clearly better
> than Wikipedia's current state, judging from the server speed and the
> Frequency of database error messages.

It has different task to deal with. If we had to deal with wiki pages as separate
entities without too many connections with outside world, having more async
information paths, etc, we could work with far less servers. But it's collaboration
platform, and requires what collaboration needs - real time information
management. And sure, some more async stuff should come in future, but that
could mean moving lots of tasks from relational databases to various event brokers, etc.

And yes, we could serve HTML dump with extreme performance.
There'd be no database errors, and you'd love the speed. Single p4
may handle 4000reqs/s :) That's far surpassing our current cluster speed ;-)

Domas


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
Rick wrote:

>Honestly, no, the censored image does not serve a more
>useful function.  The scene of DiCaprio's character
>sketching a semi-nude Winslet character is integral to
>the plot of the story.  A cropped photo of Winslet's
>face may be fine as an illustration of the [[Kate
>Winslet]] article, but not for the Titanic article.
>
I personally wouldn't feel right telling the rest of the Wikipedia
community not to include an image they felt was best to illustrate a
movie, and was actually from the movie.

On the other hand, I harbor this vague hope that Wikipedia might become
useful for my family, friends, church, etc.  It sure would be nice to
come up with some a la carte way to bring up a
family/church/etc.-friendly GDFL encyclopedia.

I had been of the mind that this was largely an issue for the
developers; that this issue was merely an extension of the article
quality selection issue.  But reflection on recent suggestions is
convincing me that a wiki solution with minimal developer action is best.

Let the Wiki solve the Wiki's needs.  Let the Wikicategories, and
Wikitags roll.

Tom


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Chinese Wikinews: board action required

body:
Hi,

Le Friday 15 April 2005 05:33, Andrew Lih a ?crit :
> Perhaps it's apparent to all parties, but could somone elaborate on
> "Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already"?
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

I think that Jimbo refers to the French Wikinews which is still in beta with
no real participant. There is still no consensus on what to do with this
project within the French community. Some people proposed to close it untill
there is a wider consensus.

Regards,

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Kevin Rector

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Dear Tony et al.,

I am sometimes clumsy. I generally have a fairly strong grasp of the
English language, but sometimes I pick the wrong words to convey the
sentiments or ideas that I wish to communicate. A reality of language is
that the words we say are not always the words we mean.

I made a statement that several people have gone on and on about. Was it
an accusation, was it an opinion, was it vile, was it insupportable, was
it factual, was it a paralipsis, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Let me say, once and for all that I am sorry. I am genuinely sorry. I
chose my words carelessly. I never intended to make an accusation,
particularly about any individual people or groups. My statement was an
observation based on a general opinion, which in retrospect was not very
accurate.

Again, I'm sorry for any grief that I've caused anyone along the way.

Now, I think it would be ideal if we could move on to something more
productive.

This --will-- be my last post to this thread, so if you want to keep
talking about me I suppose you can, but I won't be involved.

-Kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-
> bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway
> Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 9:21 AM
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture
>
> Chad Perrin said:
> >
> > It's pretty clear that Kevin's statement isn't factually supportable
> > with evidence at hand, but that doesn't change the fact that what
could
> > easily be a mere bit of sloppy phrasing was instead treated by Tony
as
> > a deliberate and specific accusatory attack.
>
>
> It's quite clear that the intent was to discredit those who disagreed
with
> Kevin by questioning their motives and directly attacking their good
> faith.  It was a vile accusation, insupportable and unworthy of this
list.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Zach Alexander said:
>
>
>>SPUI wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"Explicit" is majorly POV. However, it would be possible to have NPOV
>>>labels like "bare female breasts" and "human blood". There's been some
>>> discussion at
>>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_image_suppression .
>>>
>>>
>>You're right
>>
>>
>I don't get this. Explicit is just a synonym for "overt".  In the picture
>we've been discussing, Kate Winslet's left breast is explicitly bare,
>whereas her left breast is only bare by implication.  It's a completely
>neutral word, though its meaning in the phrase "explicit content" is
>difficult to decipher.   This reader is left scratching his head and
>wondering if the phrase has something to do with dark matter.
>
I'm all for good use of language, and it would seem that SPUI has let
"expkicit" run adrift.  Even to say that it is a synonym for "overt"
does not say the whole story since there is also the meaning of
something being clearly stated or demonstrated.  If the picture clearly
shows Miss Winslet's left breast it is explicitly demonstrated.  The
picture, however, does not show her right breast which would be in a
darkened part of the picture.  The absence of clothing and her general
posture might lead one to conclude that her right breast is implicitly bare.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Apology to Erik

body:
Yesterday I was pretty firm about not liking that Erik told this other
site that they could display our logo in a certain way.  As it turns
out, I misunderstood what had happened.  All he did was point them to a
page on meta.  They did overstep what I consider is proper for logo use,
but it was minor and anyhow of course not Erik's fault at all.

Erik, I'm sorry about that.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Apology to Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Tony may have confused "garland fig-leafing" with "flat-chestedness":
>
>* The female centaurs in that sequence were originally bare-breasted,
>but the Hays office insisted that discreet garlands be hung around
>their necks.
>
>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100422
>
>(I guess it helps if you've actually seen the movie.)
>
>... Hey, how about the mermaids in Disney's Peter Pan? (And Tinkerbell's
>
>figure leaves little to the imagination; and wasn't there an erotic
>spanking
>scene, which caused her to shed fairy dust?)
>
Since we're on to fig leaves, it might not be a bad idea to have
removeable fig leaves over the naughty bits.  These could have a smiley
face and the words "click here" on each leaf.  Clicking would expose
what's beneath the leaf.  This could all be in a Monty Python style.

Ec


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Foundation-l] TheWorldForum.org adds Wikinews logo

body:
Erik Moeller schrieb:
> In the long term, I think having a standard logo *with* a text like this
> would be useful for all Wikimedia projects -- then people can use e.g. a
> "Powered by Wikipedia" logo on a CD or printout without there being a
> misconception that it is a Wikimedia-approved endeavor. (Note that
> "Powered by" has the problem that it is frequently used for software.)

"Fed by Wikimedia"? :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Rebecca said:
>
>
>>I really think this comes down to an issue of accessibility. If we're
>>aiming to build a large, open and accessible encyclopedia, then I
>>don't think it helps that cause to effectively limit its readership to
>>the most extremely liberal people on the planet - which rules out a
>>vast amount of our potential readers and contributors.
>>
>>
>There are no a priori access restrictions on Wikipedia.  If the pictures
>offend you, don't download them.
>
But often a person has no way of knowing whether a picture will be
offensive until he has seen it.  We can only suggest that a picture
*may* be offensive to some, perhaps with some offensiveness rating.
That can still give the user the option to set his own tolerance level.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Dear Tony et al.,

I am sometimes clumsy. I generally have a fairly strong grasp of the
English language, but sometimes I pick the wrong words to convey the
sentiments or ideas that I wish to communicate. A reality of language is
that the words we say are not always the words we mean.

I made a statement that several people have gone on and on about. Was it
an accusation, was it an opinion, was it vile, was it insupportable, was
it factual, was it a paralipsis, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Let me say, once and for all that I am sorry. I am genuinely sorry. I
chose my words carelessly. I never intended to make an accusation,
particularly about any individual people or groups. My statement was an
observation based on a general opinion, which in retrospect was wrong
<strike>not very accurate</strike>(edited).

Again, I'm sorry for any grief that I've caused anyone along the way.

Now, I think it would be ideal if we could move on to something more
productive.

This --will-- be my last post to this thread, so if you want to keep
talking about me I suppose you can, but I won't be involved.

-Kevin

(I sent this once but it didn't seem to go through sorry if you get it
twice but I wanted to make sure everyone got it. Also I edited it for my
second sending as noted above)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Encarta goes wiki - sort of...

body:
On 4/15/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > The whole experience is extraordinarily lacking in incentive for Encarta
> > contributors, who will effectively see a brick wall, if my experience is
> > anything to go by.
>
> I'm afraid this sounds a lot like bias from your experience with
> Wikipedia. You are used to your edits appearing immediately, so in
> comparison to that, Encarta naturally feels like a "brick wall". It is
> doubtful that the same kind of feeling will be experienced by casual
> users who are unfamiliar with "open-content encyclopedias that post
> their users' edits immediately".

Timwi, certainly you can see why users will not get that "rush" that
Wikipedia is famous for and gets people hooked. Encarta Feedback
doesn't inspire the same sense of reward of a commons-based peer
production site like WP. So what type of gratification does it
provide?

> This, in turn, exhibits your anti-Microsoft sentiment. Most casual users
> are not like that and view Microsoft as neutral or even friendly, and
> even if it occurs to them that they will be enriching Microsoft, they
> are unlikely to see anything wrong with it. As for "getting something
> back in return", they do, and it's the same thing you get on Wikipedia:
> some sort of satisfaction that you have helped improve something. I can
> even imagine that most will feel it to be more "worth it" to help
> Encarta because it feels somehow more important or more substantial or,
> dare I say it, more accurate.

You don't have to be MS-hostile to have those feelings. Problem is, in
[[Coase's Penguin]], Yochai Benkler identified the problem as the
[[jalt]], or the jealousy/altruism factor. Why should folks donate
their own free time and effort to enrich the pockets of not only a
corporation, but perhaps one of the most dominant and profitable ones
in the history of American business, with little to no reward for
themselves?

If Encarta had any of the following features or incentives, it might
be a more balanced relationship and provide a social or hedonic
reward.
- Notification of acceptance of edits
- Attribution/credit for contributor edits
- Community site for discussing articles
- Free Encarta subscription after ''n'' number of accepted contributions

They currently do not do any of them.

The five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and,
acceptance) have been boiled down into two for Microsoft - "embrace
and extend."

They've officially embraced a small part of the wiki model. Stay tuned
for the "extend." But if their sentiment about [[CBPP]] is anything
like their treatment of open source software, this will be a
half-hearted "me too" approach.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mediawiki and mysql 5

body:
Tom Cherry wrote:
> # Connected as root (automatic)
> # Connected to database... 5.0.2-alpha; enabling MySQL 4 enhancements
[snip]
> Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot
> contact the database server.

Please read the section in RELEASE-NOTES about MySQL 4.1.

Note also that MySQL 5.0 is an early beta version; you should not be
using it unless you're deliberately testing bleeding-edge code.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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