subject: [WikiEN-l] A note on how the list moderation works

body:
We had some confusion over this (Sydney Poore's post being delayed), so
here is how it works.

* Anyone can join wikien-l. You get all posts from that moment. If you
make a post, it's moderated by default.
* When we go through the mod queue (I hit it most weekdays), we take any
first posts and (in general) accept the post and unmoderate the poster.
* If it happens no mod looks at the post ... it sits there until one does!
* The spam still comes in by the SHITLOAD. Our sincere apologies if
anything gets lost by accident ... it's rare but it happens.

We don't have a moderators' rota, it's pretty ad-hoc. But if one of the
others could check the queue Saturday and Sunday that'd be helpful ;-)

This is more work than it should be. But moderating people's first posts
has been fantastically useful in keeping the trolls at bay, particularly
the ones kicked off the list repeatedly.

- d.

w


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: V. Ivanov

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan,
	are written in cyrillic ?

body:
2005/12/4, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de>:
>  - Nevertheless,  on Wikipedia's homepage "Moldovenească" in not written in Latin script, like the Moldovan society has determined but in Cyrillic script like it was decreed in the unfree days of the Soviet union when the people of Moldova was not allowed to decide for themselves.

You probably don't know the history of the language well. In fact both
Romanian and Moldovans has been Orthodox Christians and used Cyrillic
script for several ages. The modern Latin script is relatively a news
in both lands. So one can's speak in such a self-confindent way about
Moldovan Cyrillics as "decreed in the unfree days". By the way, do you
know much about the unfree days? They were not totally that "unfree".
:) Be more neutral. ;)

>  - This gives the Moldovan internet user a bad impression of Wikipedia and irritates him or her because they can think that Wikipedia ignores what the independent nation of Moldova decides and rather goes by the standard from the Soviet era.

Maybe it would be a good choice just to move the whole thing to
__mo-cyr.wikipedia.org__, leaving at [[:mo:]] the two links -- to the
Romanian and to the old-fashioned Cyrillic-written Moldovan.

Sl.

--
Esperu cxiam!


list: wikien-l

from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
The scaling problem is classically hairy. A rating system should help; it's
a similar response to the one eBay had as it grew from a tiny community to
a  mob (on the way to becoming a visible slice of the universe) -- feedback.
Feedback itself had to be conditioned after a while, too, and I imagine the
rating system will need continuous re-evaluation. Likewise, this experiment
makes sense, to see if slight tweaks to the essentially no-holds-barred
editing-without-accountability paradigm can help produce the best
encyclopedia; I'm skeptical as to whether slight tweaks can suffice; it only
takes a tiny number of jerks to render such an environment too painful to
use. See "usenet".

jpgordon

On 12/5/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Delirium wrote:
> > So, more interesting would be to address the fundamental problem---that
> > is, mark revisions that have been reviewed by [n] people.
>
> Totally.   I think we'll be experimenting a lot in coming months,
> especially in en where it seems to me that a lot of time-honored
> processes are starting to be overwhelmed by sheer volume.
>
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: sydney poore

subject: [WikiEN-l] David Hager is listed as convicted rapist

body:
Hello folks,

I agree that there is more to this issue than sourcing.

 From a legal point of view, it is common for the prosecution, victim,
and defendant to agree to plea bargain of a lesser charge than rape to
keep the victim off the witness stand. The crime will be much lower
status with the defendant avoiding jail time, permanent sex register,
loss of state licenses (eg. medical license), etc. But from a
medical/health point of view, nothing has changed. The rapist and victim
need psychological/medical assistance tailored to the actual event.

This makes if more difficult for the media to describe the nature of the
actual events, but we need to try. If the proper context can't be
described due to space (or whatever) than its better to say nothing.

Sydney Poore

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Matt Brown wrote:
>
>> On 12/4/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> And that takes care of that.
>>>
>>
>> Not exactly, but it renders it a much more complicated case than ones
>> where negative statements about a public figure are unsourced.  Since
>> they are sourced in this case, the question becomes: does this article
>> meet NPOV?  I haven't researched the article or the subject enough to
>> know for sure.
>>
>>
> In some respects the Seigenthaler case is easier to deal with,
> *because* it was anonymous and unsourced.  We don't even have evidence
> that there were rumours circulating at the time.
>
> Sourced stories of an accusations are a bigger problem.  A newspaper
> may report a perfectly verifiable fact that someone was arrested for
> rape.  When he is released after spending one night in jail no
> newspaper reports it.  There is no subsequent trial so there is
> nothing to report there.  There is more to this issue than sourcing.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 12/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com>
> What about, say, a criminal was killed before conviction by a court - say
> [[Michael Robert Ryan]]?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jay.

If the person is dead, they certainly can't sue us for libel (of
course, they can't sue *us* for libel anyway, only the person who
actually added the libelous statement).

But the NPOV issues are more serious.  I don't see how a category such
as "criminals" can possibly be NPOV.  "Convicted criminals" maybe.
"Indicted criminals" might be possible.  "Alleged criminals" would
probably be way too broad (might as well redirect it to "List of
people").

Anthony


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.

Last Sunday at the wikimeet in London, there was some informal
discussion in which David Gerard referred to the new pages patrollers as
being very brave people (which they are) standing in front of a firehose
of nonsense (which it can be).

If we diagnose what went wrong in the Seigenthaler case, this seems like
a very opportune place to try a small change of policy.

1. First, the Seigenthaler article was created by an anon.

2. Then, a patroller simply corrected a spelling error and wikified the
entry a bit, but did not recognize the spurious claim.  This was a
regrettable error, but one which we can understand in retrospect as
being a byproduct of the sheer volume of work.

3.  Because the entry was never well-linked from related articles, the
subject-area sorts who would have spotted the dubious claim likely never
saw it.

----

It seems to me that the first thing we can do is try to reduce the
workload on the people doing new pages patrol.  A fairly extensive
monitoring and survey of new pages conducted by me over the past few
days, coupled with discussions with several people who keep an eye on
such things, suggests that we can have a substantial improvement here by
eliminating the ability for anons to make new pages.

There are some potentially negative side-effects, which is why I call
this an experiment:

1. Annoying anons may simply decide to create accounts and make annoying
nonsense pages anyway.  This will certainly be true in some cases, but
it is an empirical question as to how many.

2.  We will lose good new pages created by anons of good will.  This may
cause the growth of English Wikipedia (in terms of the number of
articles) to slow a little bit.  With 800,000+ articles, and
ever-increasing traffic to the website, this seems to be a worthwhile cost.

----

Notice that anons can still edit.  I am a firm believer in the validity
of allowing anons to edit.  Most anon edits are good, and done "on
impulse".  We would most of the good edits from anons if we did not
allow anon edits, but we would probably not lose most of the vandalistic
anon edits.  So the net effect of forbidding anon edits would likely be
negative.

But preveneting anons from creating new pages is a different matter, and
it seems a worthy time to make an experiment of it.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] A bold fix needed to the "omg backlog" problem

body:
On 12/4/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> My personal answer is that we should make it harder to create new
> articles in the first place. Probably by restricting the creating of
> orphans. Don't ask me how to do that though.
>
>
> --
> geni

We could have a group of people dedicated to going through every
single new article which is created and then they could either destroy
that information or nominate it for destruction.  We could call these
people "firemen", and we could call the process "new page patrol".

Anthony


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
You said you moved to Moldova in 1991, so excuse me but how is it
"your language"?

Mark

On 05/12/05, Field Nothing <fieldtheory2 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >You probably don't know the history of the language well. In fact both
> >Romanian and Moldovans has been Orthodox Christians and used Cyrillic
> >script for several ages.
>
> Alexandru Niculescu: "Romanian is the only Romance language which has
> developed in the Eastern part of Latin Europe"
> Niculescu, Alexandru. Outline History of the Romanian Language. Bucharest:
> 1981
>
> The first known text appeared in writing in 16th century  (1521) which was
> written in a _variant_ of old cyrillic alphabet and it was used in Walachia
> and Moldova until the Re-Latinization in 1850s. Note that in the rest of
> Romania starting from the late 16th century, _LATIN_ alphabet was used with
> Hungarian spelling conventions (and switched to Italian spelling in 18th).
>
> So let me count it...Uhm...It seems just in Walachia and Moldova until 1850
> what you said is true, as for the rest of Romania - false, it has used latin
> script since the 16th century. So even for Moldova region of Romania it has
> been over 150 years since a variant of cyrillic alphabet has been used.
>
> >The modern Latin script is relatively a news in both lands.
>
> Oy vey, 150 years is new for sure. So I guess that makes my mobile phone as
> modern as one could possibly imagine.
>
> >So one can's speak in such a self-confindent way about
> >Moldovan Cyrillics as "decreed in the unfree days". By the way, do you
> >know much about the unfree days? They were not totally that "unfree".
> >:) Be more neutral. ;)
>
> I know about those days, we've studied about them in school, I've talked to
> older people about them as well as discussed the matter with some professors
> from university, they were forced to know russian, the only books they had
> access to were russian, go figure how free and open is that.
>
> >Maybe it would be a good choice just to move the whole thing to
> >__mo-cyr.wikipedia.org__, leaving at [[:mo:]] the two links -- to the
> >Romanian and to the old-fashioned Cyrillic-written Moldovan.
>
> No, people from Moldova should have control over mo.wikipedia.org, having a
> link on the main page to cyrillic is not acceptable, it's not our language,
> why should we put links to another language on the main page ? Let them have
> their weirdlanguage.wikipedia.org , but we shouldn't have any obligations to
> put a link to it.
>
> >Esperu cxiam!
>
> Saluton.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
On 12/5/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
> anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.
>
I applaud Jimbo for taking this bold move.  Experiments like this can
prove to be very useful, and the potential for harm is very small.

[snip]

> It seems to me that the first thing we can do is try to reduce the
> workload on the people doing new pages patrol.  A fairly extensive
> monitoring and survey of new pages conducted by me over the past few
> days, coupled with discussions with several people who keep an eye on
> such things, suggests that we can have a substantial improvement here by
> eliminating the ability for anons to make new pages.
>
Have you written up a summary of the monitoring and survey you've
performed?  One thing that's useful in "experiments" is metrics.  It'd
be nice to see just how this change does affect things, rather than
speculating about it.

[snip]


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Wiki meritocracy

body:
"J.F. de Wolff" <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk> wrote in
message news:6.2.3.4.0.20051204201345.02894650 at mail1.doctors.org.uk...
[marvelous stuff snipped with a heavy heart]
> Wikipedia is not wiki. Indeed it is not. It is not a wiki like usemod and
> Ward's wiki etc. It has ceased being egalitarian. The reason is: because
> it is an encyclopedia. It aims at being an encyclopedia, not just a
> collection of information for everyone to wade through without any
> moderation, guidelines, structure or policy. [...] Because in the end the
> main aim of Wikipedia is to produce an encyclopedia. Neutral. Verifiable.
> Referenced. Coming to a mirror near you.

Hear, hear! Throw that editor a peanut! Heck, a bucket of peanuts :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
We briefly crossed paths, maybe, 30 years ago. Other than editing
Wikipedia we have no current contact or connection. It is proposed
that he use caution in editing the article on himself and to avoid
personal attacks. When he asked to have you banned from the articles
you are currently in dispute with him over he was told, "Negotiate
politely".

Fred

On Dec 5, 2005, at 8:59 AM, Sam Spade wrote:

>  I understand Cberlet is your friend and colleague, but for the
> sake of integrity, please hold us to the same standard.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] Jihad in Defense of Objectivity (Was: Enforcing
	WP:CITE)

body:
Jonathan Leybovich wrote:
> All-
>
> The last several dozen messages on this list regarding
> Wikipedia citation policy were prompted by Brian's
> re-posting of a message I had sent earlier in the week
> proposing a change to the page renderer whereby all
> factual assertions within an article would
> automatically be flagged (say, using red high-lights)
> if they were un-sourced.  I am truly gratified by the
> huge debate which this suggestion has already
> generated, and especially grateful to Brian for seeing
> enough value in my idea to bring it again to every
> one's attention.
>
> This exchange has been truly productive, and the
> disagreements that have been aired are, I think, more
> apparent than real.  One common misconception is that
> those of us who are pushing for stronger citation
> standards are doing so because we believe in citation
> for its own sake, or because we want to blindly mimic
> "real encyclopedias", or else because we are in some
> way elitist or credentialist and always believe in
> deferring to expert opinion.
>
There is a difference between stronger citation standards and better
citation technology. I am all for better citation technology. I am
completely against raising the entry level of people to contribute to
the Wikipedia project. I do believe that citing sources has its place.
It may prove valuable to make content more NPOV and by minimising
conflicts.
> What has gotten lost in the exchange, I think, is the
> fact that those of us advocating a strong citation
> policy are doing so only as a means to an end, with
> that end being objectivity.  The point of an
> encyclopedia is to contain objective knowledge,
> knowledge which any reasonable person could
> potentially confirm by visiting the evidence provided
> for it.  Ideally such evidence should be as unmediated
> and "direct" as possible, but in practice this often
> means deferring to an expert authority, because we
> either lack the means or skill to reproduce or
> interpret this evidence ourselves.  This is a
> necessary evil, but greatly ameliorated by the fact
> that all reputable scholars meticulously document
> their results, allowing anyone to reproduce their
> evidence later on.  Anyone who's read scholarly
> journals or monographs knows it is not uncommon for
> the footnotes and bibliography (i.e. the evidence) to
> take up more pages than the actual text (i.e. the
> interpretation)!
>
Problematic in you approach is that you are talking about "reputable
scholars"; we are not. We do not pretend to be scholars, that is exactly
what distinguishes our way of producing Wikipedias and other content
from how the traditional publications produce its content. It is also a
line of defence against people who want to sue us for content that is
wrong. We clearly state that our content may not be right and we are
willing, we can and we do either as individuals or as an organisation
improve our content where and when needed.
> Now, just because I think it's valuable to replicate
> academic standards of evidence and objectivity does
> not mean I think we should blindly reproduce academic
> visual/typographic conventions.  Just because scholars
> put bibliographical/reference sections at the end of
> their articles, or make their text unreadable with
> lots of footnotes does not mean I think Wikipedia
> should also.  Let's collect the same data, but think
> of better ways to present it.  Isn't it ironic that,
> memex, the forerunner of hypertext, was thought up
> because of the limitations of paper-based scholarship,
> and yet we're still talking about how to reproduce
> those same limitations within the web browser?
>
When we find the technology to facilitate better standards, it means
that it will be more easy, more inviting to add these sources. When you
insist on these sources to be there you go too far and you kill the
participation from many many people. The secret of our success is in
enabling people to contribute their knowledge. Most people have never
quoted sources. That is something that is done almost exclusively by
academically trained people. When you say memex I do a [[memex]] and do
not find an article.

I want to point out to you, again, that Wikipedia is a success because
of its inclusive nature. And I want to point out to you, again, that
Nupedia was build to academic standards and a complete failure. When you
want to go over the existing articles and start adding sources you do
something that I applaud. When we insist on "objective" standards, we
make Nelson Mandela a criminal because he was convicted by a lawful
court and send to jail.
> I'm sorry if a lot of this is obvious, but hopefully
> the next point is less so- which is that objectivity,
> which requires evidence, one means to which happens to
> be citation- is not just a scholarly imperative, but
> also a moral one.  Without objectivity, and the faith
> that other people experience the world in roughly the
> same ways we do, cooperation and this thing we call
> community is impossible.  Everyone just does whatever
> it is they want and never stop to consider how this
> affects other people because without objectivity
> knowledge of other people is by definition impossible.
>
The consequences of your point of view are not obvious at all. Your
faith that people experience things in a similar way is wrong. When I
see documentaries on TV and I see all these people make their faith
central to their lives, I only wonder. Given that people deny as a
result evolution, find objection to other ways of thinking and have
their big libraries that "prove" their point of view, I fear that you
only raise vandalism to the next level as you will make Wikipedia an
even more fertile battle ground for debaters and POV pushers.
> To those who thus maintain that greater standards of
> objectivity will damage community within Wikipedia, I
> ask you to explain the [[Jihad]] article on the
> English language site.  This is not an obscure
> article; it has gone through 100's, if not 1000's, of
> edits and is in the top-10 results list when Googling
> on its keyword.  Yet this article is a perfect example
> of community dysfunction; it is reverted constantly;
> it is locked almost weekly; and yet despite all this
> activity it is getting worse over time.  Because there
> is no agreement on what this term even means, the
> article is getting shorter and shorter as more and
> more of its "controversial" material is shunted off to
> sub-articles, where the process repeats itself (see
> [[Rules of war in Islam]], under a neutrality alert as
> I write).  The problem here (leaving aside anonymous
> vandals), is not community, it is objectivity.  The
> warring editors behave unconstructively not because
> they mean badly, necessarily, but because they're
> trapped in an epistemological hell.  It's not only
> that there's not enough objective evidence provided
> for each assertion, it's that people have no idea
> where to find such evidence, or even have the basis
> with which to recognize it as such.  Thus the
> impossibility of consensus, and a continuing edit war
> until the article is whittled down to a links page.
> Yet isn't the damage done to community, here- in terms
> of anger and frustration, in terms of factionalism, in
> terms of loss of goodwill and trust- even greater than
> that done to knowledge?
>
Other articles come to mind and yes they are frustrating, I have been
involved in "fundamentalism" and I have given up because some Christian
warriors claimed the exclusive right to that name. Now do you really
think that showing sources saves the day for this article? Are you not
aware that for every article that "proves" a point an other article
"disproves" the same point? Do you not agree you get into a situation
where the discussion degenerates into a fight about the relative merits
of given sources ?

Again, I applaud better functionality and I think we should provide
sources for further reading. But believing that by providing sources we
will provide objectivity is naive. If there is one area where
traditional thinking and an overly reliance on previous thinkers has
proved to be the undoing of progress it is science.
> I've been working on a new project proposal which I've
> deferred announcing on this list partly because I
> wanted to do some more polishing to it, but mainly
> because it relied upon an enhancement to the software
> (i.e. [[m:Wikidata]]) whose completion date was still
> a ways off.  However, now seems as good a time as any
> to make an announcement, so let me provide an
> overview.  Much of it is identical to SJ's proposal
> here and in [[m:Wikicite]].
>
I am well aware of what Wikidata is. Wikidata is the implementation of
relational technology within the Mediawiki software. Off itself it
provides you with no functionality. A database design is necessary to
consider if it possible to create the functionality that you describe.
The design of such is database is probably more complicated than the one
of the Ultimate Wiktionary. It is also vital to find people to
understand any proposed design because this designs assumptions define
its function. What I read in the parts below have more to do with
building wonderful functionality than with actual database design.. You
cannot build the code if you have no underlying structure.

Given its complexity and given how hard it is to define this
functionality in a way that makes sense to someone who could make a
database out of it like me, I wish you luck and hope that the
functionality of Wikidata proves useful for showing sources and further
reading as well.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wikimedia-l


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

body:
John Lee wrote:
> Why were Wikipedians the last to know about this? I only saw some
> discussion on the mailing list about this, but nothing final. Why do we
> have to learn of this from the media instead of straight from Jimbo?
> This is really disturbing.

I told the reporter "hopefully by Monday" and only learned from Brion
this morning that the feature is ready.

Sorry about the confusion.

--Jimbo


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please unblock me

body:
He said he'd subscribed to the mailing list, but in fact did not (at
least under this email address).

~Mark Ryan
WikiEN-l admin


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
This is all theoretically very interesting, and I cannot oppose it.
Nevertheless until someone is ready to code this it won't happen .
Meanwhile, many of us who concern ourselves with content still have to
go on with life without waiting for you to do the coding, which could
take a long time.

What would you suggest that we non-technical people do in the meantime?

Ec

Jonathan Leybovich wrote:

>All-
>
>The last several dozen messages on this list regarding
>Wikipedia citation policy were prompted by Brian's
>re-posting of a message I had sent earlier in the week
>proposing a change to the page renderer whereby all
>factual assertions within an article would
>automatically be flagged (say, using red high-lights)
>if they were un-sourced.  I am truly gratified by the
>huge debate which this suggestion has already
>generated, and especially grateful to Brian for seeing
>enough value in my idea to bring it again to every
>one's attention.
>
>This exchange has been truly productive, and the
>disagreements that have been aired are, I think, more
>apparent than real.  One common misconception is that
>those of us who are pushing for stronger citation
>standards are doing so because we believe in citation
>for its own sake, or because we want to blindly mimic
>"real encyclopedias", or else because we are in some
>way elitist or credentialist and always believe in
>deferring to expert opinion.
>
>What has gotten lost in the exchange, I think, is the
>fact that those of us advocating a strong citation
>policy are doing so only as a means to an end, with
>that end being objectivity.  The point of an
>encyclopedia is to contain objective knowledge,
>knowledge which any reasonable person could
>potentially confirm by visiting the evidence provided
>for it.  Ideally such evidence should be as unmediated
>and "direct" as possible, but in practice this often
>means deferring to an expert authority, because we
>either lack the means or skill to reproduce or
>interpret this evidence ourselves.  This is a
>necessary evil, but greatly ameliorated by the fact
>that all reputable scholars meticulously document
>their results, allowing anyone to reproduce their
>evidence later on.  Anyone who's read scholarly
>journals or monographs knows it is not uncommon for
>the footnotes and bibliography (i.e. the evidence) to
>take up more pages than the actual text (i.e. the
>interpretation)!
>
>Now, just because I think it's valuable to replicate
>academic standards of evidence and objectivity does
>not mean I think we should blindly reproduce academic
>visual/typographic conventions.  Just because scholars
>put bibliographical/reference sections at the end of
>their articles, or make their text unreadable with
>lots of footnotes does not mean I think Wikipedia
>should also.  Let's collect the same data, but think
>of better ways to present it.  Isn't it ironic that,
>memex, the forerunner of hypertext, was thought up
>because of the limitations of paper-based scholarship,
>and yet we're still talking about how to reproduce
>those same limitations within the web browser?
>
>I'm sorry if a lot of this is obvious, but hopefully
>the next point is less so- which is that objectivity,
>which requires evidence, one means to which happens to
>be citation- is not just a scholarly imperative, but
>also a moral one.  Without objectivity, and the faith
>that other people experience the world in roughly the
>same ways we do, cooperation and this thing we call
>community is impossible.  Everyone just does whatever
>it is they want and never stop to consider how this
>affects other people because without objectivity
>knowledge of other people is by definition impossible.
>
>To those who thus maintain that greater standards of
>objectivity will damage community within Wikipedia, I
>ask you to explain the [[Jihad]] article on the
>English language site.  This is not an obscure
>article; it has gone through 100's, if not 1000's, of
>edits and is in the top-10 results list when Googling
>on its keyword.  Yet this article is a perfect example
>of community dysfunction; it is reverted constantly;
>it is locked almost weekly; and yet despite all this
>activity it is getting worse over time.  Because there
>is no agreement on what this term even means, the
>article is getting shorter and shorter as more and
>more of its "controversial" material is shunted off to
>sub-articles, where the process repeats itself (see
>[[Rules of war in Islam]], under a neutrality alert as
>I write).  The problem here (leaving aside anonymous
>vandals), is not community, it is objectivity.  The
>warring editors behave unconstructively not because
>they mean badly, necessarily, but because they're
>trapped in an epistemological hell.  It's not only
>that there's not enough objective evidence provided
>for each assertion, it's that people have no idea
>where to find such evidence, or even have the basis
>with which to recognize it as such.  Thus the
>impossibility of consensus, and a continuing edit war
>until the article is whittled down to a links page.
>Yet isn't the damage done to community, here- in terms
>of anger and frustration, in terms of factionalism, in
>terms of loss of goodwill and trust- even greater than
>that done to knowledge?
>
>I've been working on a new project proposal which I've
>deferred announcing on this list partly because I
>wanted to do some more polishing to it, but mainly
>because it relied upon an enhancement to the software
>(i.e. [[m:Wikidata]]) whose completion date was still
>a ways off.  However, now seems as good a time as any
>to make an announcement, so let me provide an
>overview.  Much of it is identical to SJ's proposal
>here and in [[m:Wikicite]].
>
>Phase 1: Toward a more reliable Wikipedia
>
>Citation mark-up is introduced which holds a pointer
>to an enclosed factual assertion's proof; proof is
>provided via either reference to another work, or with
>direct evidence (a photograph, eye-witness testimony,
>etc.) when appropriate for the claim.  The article
>renderer then highlights "evidence holes" with a
>distinct, attention-grabbing style that alerts both
>readers  and editors.  Such "footnotes" may be hidden
>in the main article, but visible through a new tab
>which renders them in a useful graph format.  Perhaps
>as part of article rating, citations must be confirmed
>by the checker; data regarding which assertions were
>verified is stored with other article rating
>attributes.
>
>Phase 2: Creation of a citation database/authority
>text map
>
>Each citation within a Wikipedia article is now
>automatically saved within a [[m:Wikidata]] text
>relationship database.  A text relationship joins two
>"[[w:texts]]", and among its other attributes has one
>called TYPE.  In the case of a Wikpedia citation, TYPE
>is by default a positive evidentiary citation- the
>Wikipedia article uses the cited book, document,
>photograph, etc. as proof of some fact.  Yet there are
>many other sorts of text relationships, the most
>obvious kind being negative citations- one work
>attacks the authority of another.
>
>As Wikipedia editors do their research and follow the
>citations of those works which they themselves cite,
>they are able to create "authority maps" for
>literature within various scholarly fields.  What is
>considered authoritative? What is considered outdated?
>They record this information into the text
>relationship database.  They are not merely copying
>other's footnotes, though, since a text relationship
>does not have to be "verbalized" within a text.  If
>they know a particular work contradicts some evidence,
>for example, let them record it and so rightly
>diminish the work's authority.
>
>Eventually the Wikidata text relationship database
>becomes a hugely valuable scholarly tool in its own
>right, and acts as the first resort for Wikipedia
>editors doing  research.  Formulas are developed which
>rate sources/evidence: incoming positive citations are
>good; incoming negative ones are bad.  Lots of less
>obvious factors like age are considered- a 50 year old
>work that's still constantly invoked is probably
>particularly sound.  Other formula factors are
>identified, though anyone can potentially create their
>own formulas to run against the data.
>
>Phase 3: The honing of Wikipedia
>
>Using the text relationship database, editors can now
>see at a glance what is authoritative within a
>particular literature.  The article renderer now takes
>source quality (generated by the formulas discussed
>above) into consideration when rendering each section
>of an article.  Those parts of the article relying on
>weak, discredited, or out-dated sources are flagged
>with one style, while perhaps especially credible
>sources are "commended" using another.  Hopefully  a
>virtuous circle begins- a citation based upon a work
>of popular history is exchanged for one relying upon a
>more specialized work, which is later exchanged for a
>scholarly monograph or journal article, which in turn
>encourages reference to primary sources, etc.  By this
>process Wikipedia becomes not just accurate, but
>scholarly and state-of-the-knowledge.
>
>Please see the following for more details about this
>project:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTextrose
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicite
>
>Thank you for your time and sorry for the long e-mail.
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Please wait til the next round. Meanwhile do what you can to ensure
that there is no next round. Negotiate politely with Cberlet
regarding any disputes which arise.

Fred

On Dec 5, 2005, at 9:26 AM, Sam Spade wrote:

> I don't dispute any of that. My concern is that Chip is not being held
> to the same standard as others in this case. His NPOV violations and
> personal attacks are prolific. The evidence is overwhelming. I could
> spend a year investigating his edits, and write you a book on Cberlet
> and his intense POV. That said, I think the few scraps (During exams
> and a trip to france no less) I came up w are pretty clear. If not,
> please give us more time to gather more evidence, if you feel its
> needed...
>
> Sam Spade
>
> On 12/5/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> We briefly crossed paths, maybe, 30 years ago. Other than editing
>> Wikipedia we have no current contact or connection. It is proposed
>> that he use caution in editing the article on himself and to avoid
>> personal attacks. When he asked to have you banned from the articles
>> you are currently in dispute with him over he was told, "Negotiate
>> politely".
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> On Dec 5, 2005, at 8:59 AM, Sam Spade wrote:
>>
>>
>>>  I understand Cberlet is your friend and colleague, but for the
>>> sake of integrity, please hold us to the same standard.
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: New proposal for summary eletion of
	non-copyrightinfringing material, on suspicion

body:
"Matt Brown" <morven at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:42f90dc00512040220l5885ed5bwdbe8a0b755a341c8 at mail.gmail.com...
> Where is this proposal listed?
> The problem with this is we already frequently bite the newbies with
> respect to people uploading stuff they own that's already published on
> another website.  Being accused of copyright infringement and having
> the article blanked is bad enough for them; having them deleted will
> make people not come back.

I got bitten like this quite early on in my Wikipedia career.

I created [[Sharon Lee]] from material provided to me by the author, and her
husband ([[Steve Miller (writer)]] and it was almost immediately torn down
as a copyvio. I tried to point out that I had permission, and that the
reason it was so similar to biographies on other websites, including that of
the author herself, was that they all came from the same original source, to
no avail. There was some delay in contacting the author because she was in
the middle of a mad publishing rush. Not everybody works to Wikipedia's
tight schedules: sometimes it can take a while to contact somebody.

I believe it's still a redlink. I might go back and try again some day...

The ironic thing is that Steve's article is almost, but not quite identical,
and didn't get the same treatment: it's still there last I looked :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
On 12/5/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Anthony DiPierro stated for the record:
> > On 12/4/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>My personal answer is that we should make it harder to create new
> >>articles in the first place. Probably by restricting the creating of
> >>orphans. Don't ask me how to do that though.
> >>
> >>
> >>--
> >>geni
> >
> >
> > We could have a group of people dedicated to going through every
> > single new article which is created and then they could either destroy
> > that information or nominate it for destruction.  We could call these
> > people "firemen", and we could call the process "new page patrol".
> >
> > Anthony
>
> Award yourselves a bonus point if you get the /Fahrenheit 451/ reference....

To be fair, most of the work done by the new page patrol is productive.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Sam, I think a lot of the problem is that you think the ArbCom is
handling the CONTENT DISPUTE between Cberlet and other editors.

The arbcom, as presently structured, does not handle content disputes.
 They only handle behavior and policy.

Thus your dissatisfaction with the way the arbcom is handling the
content dispute.

-Matt


from_name: Keith Old

body:
Jay,

Conviction is the most verifiable form of evidence re crime there is.
However, we can report doubts over a conviction reported in reputable
sources as part of NPOV.

We shouldn't have editors playing amateur detective, however.

Regards

*Keith Old*

Keith Old

On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>
> >
> >I responded to this user previously on the helpdesk.  The issue is
> >that David Hager was accused of marital rape by his former wife, who
> >got an article published in The Nation about this, among other places.
> >  Thus the allegations, true or not, are documented and citable, and
> >thus cannot be removed as unsourced attacks.
> >
> >However, he should NOT be listed in any categories that imply he has
> >been convicted of a crime, because he has not.
>
> I've been have a months-long debate with another editor on this
> topic.  I've
> been stating that we include people in "Criminals" categories if they have
> been convicted of a crime by an independent judiciary.  The other editor
> insists that we have to decide (by some means) whether or not they have
> actually committed a crime, conviction is not enough a good enough
> yardstick.  I'd be interested in other thoughts here.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] If in doubt, don't delete

body:
On 12/5/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Dec 2005, Snowspinner wrote:
> >
> > I point out that the editor in question is subject to an arbcom case
> > right now regarding deletion and the railroading of "policy" to "win"
> > debates. I think this incident would prove valuable evidence in that
> > case.
> >
> I admit I'm too busy trying to actually work on Wikipedia materials to
> know anything about this case, but I feel confident in saying that whatever
> cause Tony has been hauled before the ArbCom over is irrelevant to his
> point here -- which is to argue that when in doubt, don't delete.

You've misread Phil's words.  He is not referring to mem, and I
haven't been "hauled up before arcom".


body:
sydney poore wrote:

> I agree that there is more to this issue than sourcing.
>
> From a legal point of view, it is common for the prosecution, victim,
> and defendant to agree to plea bargain of a lesser charge than rape to
> keep the victim off the witness stand.

In the case of a plea bargain all we can conclude is that he was
convicted of whatever lesser crime was agreed.  We can say that he was
charged with something more serious, but we cannot presume the
motivations that resulted in a lesser conviction.

> This makes if more difficult for the media to describe the nature of
> the actual events, but we need to try. If the proper context can't be
> described due to space (or whatever) than its better to say nothing.

The media have more investigative resources than we have, and we are not
in a position to do the original research that would allow us to say more.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A bold fix needed to the "omg backlog" problem

body:
On 12/5/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/5/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> > I guess this would prohibit the creation of articles that are created
> > casually, a few sentences about something the author cares about. But I
> > think the effect would be smaller for larger junk -- text copied from
> > homework essays or personal webpages for example. The contributors are
> > probably more motivated in that case.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
>
> No so much. The idea is to limit the creation of articles no one cared
> about. If an article is not an orphan then hopefully it means that at
> least one other person though wikipedia should have the article.
>
> --
> geni

I think it'd be a good feature to have, though I don't think it'd
solve many of the problems this thread is talking about.  There really
isn't any point in having an orphaned article.  If you can't find
*somewhere* to create a link from (at least a list or something), then
why have an article in the first place?  Making contributors more
motivated - that's *usually* a good thing, right?

One caveat, though.  This would probably be best implemented only in
the article namespace.  Orphaned user pages, for instance, make a lot
more sense.

Anthony


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 12/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>What about, say, a criminal was killed before conviction by a court - say
>>[[Michael Robert Ryan]]?
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Jay.
>>
>>
>If the person is dead, they certainly can't sue us for libel (of
>course, they can't sue *us* for libel anyway, only the person who
>actually added the libelous statement).
>
That's a poor criterion for justifying our actions.  It may be legally
correct, but ethically it sucks.

Ec


from_name: Oleg Alexandrov

body:
> I'll suggest to remove the mo. subdomain at all, moving it to
> mo-cyr.wikipedia.org would look like you'll save that actually-bad
> joke with the hosting at the biggest free encyclopedia.

I am also from Moldova, but unlike the poster I am replying to, I did
get to write in Cyrillic in school, being a bit older. :)

I perfectly agree that the Cyrillic version needs to be moved to
mo-cyr.wikipedia.org or something similar. It is not right that the mo
domain which is meant to stand for Moldova is used as a gateway to the
Cyrillic version which is not used in the country, and which is
associated with the abuses Moldova undertook as part of Soviet Union
after World War II.

Oleg Alexandrov, postdoc, UCLA


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: "Peter Mackay" <peter.mackay at bigpond.com>
>
>
>If a person had admitted guilt, then there is no problem. We may describe
>them as a criminal. But if they maintained their innocence and were found
>guilty instead of pleading guilty, then we should use conventional phrasing
>to indicate this, by describing someone as a convicted rapist, rather than
>a
>rapist.

People also falsely confess to crimes; there have been many famous cases of
this which have actually been later overturned (and one must assume even
more cases which have not been overturned).  If we start trying to second
guess legal systems, then all we'll be left with is original research to
determine if someone is a criminal.

Jay.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>But preveneting anons from creating new pages is a different matter, and
>it seems a worthy time to make an experiment of it.
>
>
I suppose I'm not really sure what this will buy us.  It only takes away
the class of problems: "page doesn't exist, anon creats a bad one".
These are actually among the easiest to spot.  Much harder are: "page
exists as a stub, anon adds a sentence to it that is bad".  These are
harder to spot, and this does not address that; in fact, it will
encourage troublesome anons to just find existing articles to put
misinformation into, rather than creating new ones.  I think, on the
whole, that would be *more* of a problem.

-Mark


body:
I think these are some great ideas.  In fact, I think some time in the
future we'll see a lot of them implemented.

The problem, I think, is that they are such a radical departure from
the normal wiki process.  Wiki markup is currently fairly simple.
There are some more complicated add-ons, such as tables, but for the
most part it's not hard to read and edit wiki-text after a basic
introduction.

Introducing detailed citation features would require either abanoning
that simplicity or abandoning the concept of writing the wikitext
directly.  Both of these would be significantly detrimental to the
Wikipedia project in the short term.

I think there needs to be a proof of concept created first.  Later,
I'm talking on the order of years, Wikipedia might be able to
incorporate many of the features into the mediawiki software.  I think
a nice WYSIWYG editor is a prerequisite though.

In the mean time, Wikipedia articles are GFDL.  There's no problem
with copying them, running them through a citation check, making
fixes, and then merging back.

Anthony

On 12/4/05, Jonathan Leybovich <jleybov at yahoo.com> wrote:
> All-
>
> The last several dozen messages on this list regarding
> Wikipedia citation policy were prompted by Brian's
> re-posting of a message I had sent earlier in the week
> proposing a change to the page renderer whereby all
> factual assertions within an article would
> automatically be flagged (say, using red high-lights)
> if they were un-sourced.  I am truly gratified by the
> huge debate which this suggestion has already
> generated, and especially grateful to Brian for seeing
> enough value in my idea to bring it again to every
> one's attention.
>
> This exchange has been truly productive, and the
> disagreements that have been aired are, I think, more
> apparent than real.  One common misconception is that
> those of us who are pushing for stronger citation
> standards are doing so because we believe in citation
> for its own sake, or because we want to blindly mimic
> "real encyclopedias", or else because we are in some
> way elitist or credentialist and always believe in
> deferring to expert opinion.
>
> What has gotten lost in the exchange, I think, is the
> fact that those of us advocating a strong citation
> policy are doing so only as a means to an end, with
> that end being objectivity.  The point of an
> encyclopedia is to contain objective knowledge,
> knowledge which any reasonable person could
> potentially confirm by visiting the evidence provided
> for it.  Ideally such evidence should be as unmediated
> and "direct" as possible, but in practice this often
> means deferring to an expert authority, because we
> either lack the means or skill to reproduce or
> interpret this evidence ourselves.  This is a
> necessary evil, but greatly ameliorated by the fact
> that all reputable scholars meticulously document
> their results, allowing anyone to reproduce their
> evidence later on.  Anyone who's read scholarly
> journals or monographs knows it is not uncommon for
> the footnotes and bibliography (i.e. the evidence) to
> take up more pages than the actual text (i.e. the
> interpretation)!
>
> Now, just because I think it's valuable to replicate
> academic standards of evidence and objectivity does
> not mean I think we should blindly reproduce academic
> visual/typographic conventions.  Just because scholars
> put bibliographical/reference sections at the end of
> their articles, or make their text unreadable with
> lots of footnotes does not mean I think Wikipedia
> should also.  Let's collect the same data, but think
> of better ways to present it.  Isn't it ironic that,
> memex, the forerunner of hypertext, was thought up
> because of the limitations of paper-based scholarship,
> and yet we're still talking about how to reproduce
> those same limitations within the web browser?
>
> I'm sorry if a lot of this is obvious, but hopefully
> the next point is less so- which is that objectivity,
> which requires evidence, one means to which happens to
> be citation- is not just a scholarly imperative, but
> also a moral one.  Without objectivity, and the faith
> that other people experience the world in roughly the
> same ways we do, cooperation and this thing we call
> community is impossible.  Everyone just does whatever
> it is they want and never stop to consider how this
> affects other people because without objectivity
> knowledge of other people is by definition impossible.
>
> To those who thus maintain that greater standards of
> objectivity will damage community within Wikipedia, I
> ask you to explain the [[Jihad]] article on the
> English language site.  This is not an obscure
> article; it has gone through 100's, if not 1000's, of
> edits and is in the top-10 results list when Googling
> on its keyword.  Yet this article is a perfect example
> of community dysfunction; it is reverted constantly;
> it is locked almost weekly; and yet despite all this
> activity it is getting worse over time.  Because there
> is no agreement on what this term even means, the
> article is getting shorter and shorter as more and
> more of its "controversial" material is shunted off to
> sub-articles, where the process repeats itself (see
> [[Rules of war in Islam]], under a neutrality alert as
> I write).  The problem here (leaving aside anonymous
> vandals), is not community, it is objectivity.  The
> warring editors behave unconstructively not because
> they mean badly, necessarily, but because they're
> trapped in an epistemological hell.  It's not only
> that there's not enough objective evidence provided
> for each assertion, it's that people have no idea
> where to find such evidence, or even have the basis
> with which to recognize it as such.  Thus the
> impossibility of consensus, and a continuing edit war
> until the article is whittled down to a links page.
> Yet isn't the damage done to community, here- in terms
> of anger and frustration, in terms of factionalism, in
> terms of loss of goodwill and trust- even greater than
> that done to knowledge?
>
> I've been working on a new project proposal which I've
> deferred announcing on this list partly because I
> wanted to do some more polishing to it, but mainly
> because it relied upon an enhancement to the software
> (i.e. [[m:Wikidata]]) whose completion date was still
> a ways off.  However, now seems as good a time as any
> to make an announcement, so let me provide an
> overview.  Much of it is identical to SJ's proposal
> here and in [[m:Wikicite]].
>
> Phase 1: Toward a more reliable Wikipedia
>
> Citation mark-up is introduced which holds a pointer
> to an enclosed factual assertion's proof; proof is
> provided via either reference to another work, or with
> direct evidence (a photograph, eye-witness testimony,
> etc.) when appropriate for the claim.  The article
> renderer then highlights "evidence holes" with a
> distinct, attention-grabbing style that alerts both
> readers  and editors.  Such "footnotes" may be hidden
> in the main article, but visible through a new tab
> which renders them in a useful graph format.  Perhaps
> as part of article rating, citations must be confirmed
> by the checker; data regarding which assertions were
> verified is stored with other article rating
> attributes.
>
> Phase 2: Creation of a citation database/authority
> text map
>
> Each citation within a Wikipedia article is now
> automatically saved within a [[m:Wikidata]] text
> relationship database.  A text relationship joins two
> "[[w:texts]]", and among its other attributes has one
> called TYPE.  In the case of a Wikpedia citation, TYPE
> is by default a positive evidentiary citation- the
> Wikipedia article uses the cited book, document,
> photograph, etc. as proof of some fact.  Yet there are
> many other sorts of text relationships, the most
> obvious kind being negative citations- one work
> attacks the authority of another.
>
> As Wikipedia editors do their research and follow the
> citations of those works which they themselves cite,
> they are able to create "authority maps" for
> literature within various scholarly fields.  What is
> considered authoritative? What is considered outdated?
> They record this information into the text
> relationship database.  They are not merely copying
> other's footnotes, though, since a text relationship
> does not have to be "verbalized" within a text.  If
> they know a particular work contradicts some evidence,
> for example, let them record it and so rightly
> diminish the work's authority.
>
> Eventually the Wikidata text relationship database
> becomes a hugely valuable scholarly tool in its own
> right, and acts as the first resort for Wikipedia
> editors doing  research.  Formulas are developed which
> rate sources/evidence: incoming positive citations are
> good; incoming negative ones are bad.  Lots of less
> obvious factors like age are considered- a 50 year old
> work that's still constantly invoked is probably
> particularly sound.  Other formula factors are
> identified, though anyone can potentially create their
> own formulas to run against the data.
>
> Phase 3: The honing of Wikipedia
>
> Using the text relationship database, editors can now
> see at a glance what is authoritative within a
> particular literature.  The article renderer now takes
> source quality (generated by the formulas discussed
> above) into consideration when rendering each section
> of an article.  Those parts of the article relying on
> weak, discredited, or out-dated sources are flagged
> with one style, while perhaps especially credible
> sources are "commended" using another.  Hopefully  a
> virtuous circle begins- a citation based upon a work
> of popular history is exchanged for one relying upon a
> more specialized work, which is later exchanged for a
> scholarly monograph or journal article, which in turn
> encourages reference to primary sources, etc.  By this
> process Wikipedia becomes not just accurate, but
> scholarly and state-of-the-knowledge.
>
> Please see the following for more details about this
> project:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTextrose
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicite
>
> Thank you for your time and sorry for the long e-mail.
>
>
>
> __________________________________________
> Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
> Just $16.99/mo. or less.
> dsl.yahoo.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: commons-l

from_name: Jacques

subject: [Commons-l] [fr] Changement de licence Creative Commons

body:
Bonjour,

Je suis nouveau sur Wikimedia Commons. Pour la question concernant les licences, je suis all? un peu vite. Avant d'importer 2 fichiers audio, je suis all? sur le site de Creative Commons o? j'ai choisi des licences trop restrictives ( Pas d'utilisation commerciale, pas de modifications). Sur le site Wikimedia Commons, j'ai compris que ?a n'allait pas et j'ai chang? les licences des 2 fichiers en CC-BY-SA 2.5.
Je viens de r?pondre aux 2 mails de Creative Commons en leur demandant d'annuler ces licences qui ?taient trop restrictives.
Si j'ai bien compris, ? l'avenir, si j'importe un fichier audio, je n'ai qu'? choisir une des licences propos?es par la page Upload de Wikimedia Commons et n'ai donc m?me pas besoin d'aller sur le site de Creative Commons.
Qu'en pensez-vous?
Merci par avance d'?clairer ma lanterne!
Jacques
maurice7 at cegetel.net
05/12/2005


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] If in doubt, don't delete

body:
On Dec 5, 2005, at 4:59 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> You've misread Phil's words.  He is not referring to mem, and I
> haven't been "hauled up before arcom".
>

Which still shocks me. ;)

But yeah - Tony's fine - it's the person removing the phrase that is
already in front of the arbcom on deletion issues.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I suppose I'm not really sure what this will buy us.  It only takes
> away the class of problems: "page doesn't exist, anon creats a bad
> one".  These are actually among the easiest to spot.  Much harder are:
> "page exists as a stub, anon adds a sentence to it that is bad".
> These are harder to spot, and this does not address that; in fact, it
> will encourage troublesome anons to just find existing articles to put
> misinformation into, rather than creating new ones.  I think, on the
> whole, that would be *more* of a problem.

To clarify (I should've put this in my initial message), I think the
fundamental problem is un-vetted anonymous edits (or edits in general,
but most problematic ones are anonymous), and taking away the class of
edits that occur at page titles that don't yet exist isn't much of a
gain, because there are over 100,000 obscure stubs on the English
Wikipedia that provide a vast array of extant page titles to choose
from.  In this case it just happened that the page didn't yet exist, but
it could just as easily have happened that someone created an obscure
1-line stub, and then the anonymous user came by later to edit the
stub---it would still be an obscure article that nobody would find,
because the person isn't all that notable, and the edits would have a
pretty good chance of remaining there.

So, more interesting would be to address the fundamental problem---that
is, mark revisions that have been reviewed by [n] people.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The difficulty of retaining volunteer writers

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>> From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>>
>> I feel there is a general direction for failing to support the
>> "victim" during the conflict, either by lack of time, or by lassitude
>> (because we have seen that happening so many times) or by fear, to
>> support her only at the last point (when she is threatening to leave).
>>
>> Sadly, most editors actually support the person inside themselves,
>> but do not say so either because they believe the "victim" is strong
>> enough, or because they fear becoming targets themselves.
>
> Or because they fear being accused of being part of a cabal,
> "meatpuppets", etc.

The lack of time argument is probably the strongest.  The output from
the mailing lists is huge.  When a particular communication begins with
A complaining about B's behaviour the delete button looks very
attractive, especially if the complaint involves a long-winded rant.

If I want to fairly consider FuelWagon's actions, I need to consider how
long it's going to take me to get up to speed on what's been happening.
How much unpleasant nonsense will I need to wade through to get at the
truth.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> But preveneting anons from creating new pages is a different matter, and
>> it seems a worthy time to make an experiment of it.
>>
>>
> I suppose I'm not really sure what this will buy us.  It only takes away
> the class of problems: "page doesn't exist, anon creats a bad one".
> These are actually among the easiest to spot.  Much harder are: "page
> exists as a stub, anon adds a sentence to it that is bad".  These are
> harder to spot, and this does not address that; in fact, it will
> encourage troublesome anons to just find existing articles to put
> misinformation into, rather than creating new ones.  I think, on the
> whole, that would be *more* of a problem.

Yes.  I think there are many different kinds of troublesome anons.  I
think a part of what will help in this case is to reduce the overall
volume of *noise* that people patrolling have to deal with, which will
give them more time to look at those stubs.

But, it's an experiment.  We all have a priori views on what will or
won't be the consequences, and at least we should proceed experimentally
to see if this helps or not.  If not, we try something else.  Calvinball.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] RfC regarding technical problems of
	Wikipedia	(Mediawiki ??)

body:
Andy Rabagliati wrote:
> Folks,
>
>   I hope I am not off-topic to refer this RfC to the mailing list.
[snip]

Wikipedia articles are all works-in-progress. To date there is not yet a system
for formal review and fact-checking, so there are no public-ready articles at
this time, only drafts.

Do keep this in mind; people seem to forget it, especially those who go hopping
off to the press.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Delirium wrote:
> So, more interesting would be to address the fundamental problem---that
> is, mark revisions that have been reviewed by [n] people.

Totally.   I think we'll be experimenting a lot in coming months,
especially in en where it seems to me that a lot of time-honored
processes are starting to be overwhelmed by sheer volume.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Openness is a means to an end. Nothing more

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>And what Delirium is talking about is how we care about the _free_
>encyclopedia (emphasizing gnu-freedom) more than we care about our crazy
>open wiki way of making it.
>
>I think everyone in the core community is on board with those two
>concepts in a major way.  And all of us love the wiki ways, but not at
>the expense of those two goals.
>
>
Yes, perhaps so.  I may have misread, but I read mav as suggesting that
the reason we are a gnu-free encyclopedia is as a practical
means-to-an-end matter: We want to create an encyclopedia that reaches
everyone, and this helps us do it.  I disagree with that view---*even*
if there were some way to create a non-Free encyclopedia that allowed
the Wikimedia Foundation to give it to everyone on the planet (but
restricted what others could do with it), I would still want to work on
a Free encyclopedia project that allows anyone to use it for essentially
any purpose (and it's not all that farfetched a scenario---Wikipedia
could probably have still attracted a lot of contributors under some
non-Free license, like one that restricted 3rd-party use to
non-commercial and academic/educational users; in fact some people have
actually been surprised and/or upset that we *do* permit 3rd-party
commercial use).

Basically, in a sort of big-picture sense, I see Wikipedia as a project
to give to humanity as a whole an unencumbered body of work.  Everything
else sort of follows naturally from that, because once it exists, people
*will* find plenty of interesting things to do with it (just look at all
the interesting ways Project Gutenberg texts are used).

-Mark


body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> We can tell fairly easily whether a page will be an orphan before it is
> created, it's an indexed query. So we could, say, prevent creation of
> orphans by anons. I'm not sure what the effect would be. I can tell you that
> currently, 205 of the 1498 articles in [[Category:Articles that need to be
> wikified]] are orphans, I don't know how many were orphans when they were
> created.

I would say that whether or not the experiment beginning today on
preventing anons from creating *any* articles works, we might try this
one as well (after a couple of weeks, say) as a "softer" solution.

> I guess this would prohibit the creation of articles that are created
> casually, a few sentences about something the author cares about. But I
> think the effect would be smaller for larger junk -- text copied from
> homework essays or personal webpages for example. The contributors are
> probably more motivated in that case.

Yes.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> SPUI wrote:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>> Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
>>> anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.
>>
>> Does this apply to all pages, or just articles? It seems that IPs should
>> still be able to create talk pages, both for articles and for users.
>
> We'll have to ask Brion, but what you say sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Talk pages are separately controlled, and anons can indeed still create them.

I've gone ahead and turned on the restriction mode, per Jimmy's order. Notes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Anon_page_creation_restriction

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Jay,

Ideally, in those cases of a murder suicide, we should cite reliable sources
showing the basis for the claims.

We should make sure as far as possible that any claims we make of criminal
conduct or suspicion of are very soundly based. We should also make sure
that the offence is significant enough to warrant an article if the person
is not known for something else.

Verifiability is particularly important when we are dealing with claims of
criminal conduct.

Regards

*Keith Old*

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster

On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From: Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com>
> What about, say, a criminal was killed before conviction by a court - say
> [[Michael Robert Ryan]]?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jay.
>
> >
> >Jay,
> >
> >Conviction is the most verifiable form of evidence re crime there is.
> >However, we can report doubts over a conviction reported in reputable
> >sources as part of NPOV.
> >
> >We shouldn't have editors playing amateur detective, however.
> >
> >Regards
> >
> >
> >*Keith Old*
> >
> >
> >Keith Old
> >
> >
> >On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > >From: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>
> > > >
> > > >I responded to this user previously on the helpdesk.  The issue is
> > > >that David Hager was accused of marital rape by his former wife, who
> > > >got an article published in The Nation about this, among other
> places.
> > > >  Thus the allegations, true or not, are documented and citable, and
> > > >thus cannot be removed as unsourced attacks.
> > > >
> > > >However, he should NOT be listed in any categories that imply he has
> > > >been convicted of a crime, because he has not.
> > >
> > > I've been have a months-long debate with another editor on this
> > > topic.  I've
> > > been stating that we include people in "Criminals" categories if they
> >have
> > > been convicted of a crime by an independent judiciary.  The other
> editor
> > > insists that we have to decide (by some means) whether or not they
> have
> > > actually committed a crime, conviction is not enough a good enough
> > > yardstick.  I'd be interested in other thoughts here.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > Jay.
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Chip Berlet

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Asking that people look into and comment on the arbitration is appropriate.  Bringing the arbitration issues here, and expanding them to content disputes, is not.  I have already agreed to stop all edits on Wikipedia until the arbitration is over--relying solely on a few discussion page comments when I feel it is important.  Obviously I disagree with the way Sam Spade presents the matter, but this is simply not the place to have the conversation. I note only that Fred Bauder and I MAY have had a brief conversation many years ago.  Maybe not. That we both once belonged to the same national organization with thousands of members, is hardly significant.

For details, by all means visit the arbitration and make comments.

Cberlet

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Sam Spade
Sent: Mon 12/5/2005 10:59 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

I'm sorry to say, you appear to be making my case "you can't
legitimately argue about
something you can't or won't look at."

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Evidence#Cberlets_POV_forks_.2F_incivility

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ARight-wing_politics&diff=29933639&oldid=29931256

When asked for cites, I provided them. They were of course ignored. I
didn't ignore Cberlets cites, I explained to him that by his own
words, they failed to justify his claims. Even if I lived in NYC and
had access to every book he mentions, I only have so much time in the
day. I assume good faith regarding his excerpts and such, but he never
claimed evidence that [[Extreme right]] is different enough a term, w
a specific enough a meaning to justify a fork from far-right.

As far as Nobs, I have gotten to know him by email due to this case.
He is a man w a legitimate vendetta against Cberlet. He feels Cberlet
is guilty of treason and complicit in murder, based on his work with
the Covert Action Information Bulletin outing of CIA agents (some of
whom were killed shortly thereafter). I think Nobs could have been
made less angry, and less a threat to Chip Berlet by a fair hearing on
the wikipedia. I get the impression he will be spending the time he
used to spend editing exposing Chip's objectionable past, attempting
to have him audited and etc... A different sort of trial might have
had a more calming effect. Nobs is not concerned about wiki-verdicts
against him, but would likely have responded better to a different
approach.

I, for my part, made an error on Political correctness. I didn't
understand that this error had occurred until just recently, because
it had never been properly explained to me. Apparently after having
read and cited William Lind, I inadvertently quoted him without clear
attribution in the 1st sentence of [[Political correctness]]. That was
unfortunate, but not in my opinion ''as'' unfortunate as the
incoherent and unhelpful way it was responded to. The matter is a
complex one, w many easily misunderstood subtleties.

I am also willing to admit that at least one of my statements to
Cberlet was incivil. I insist however that these minor infractions
(out of some 30,000 edits on my part) are not notable enough for a
RfC, much less ArbCom censure. Additionally, they wither before the
scale of Cberlets POV pushing, ignoral of consensus, and incivility
(he has personal attacks less than a week old). I am not saying he
should be "more" NPOV than me (lol!), I am saying he should obey the
NPOV policy! Please, ArbCom, review the evidence and rethink your
results. This purging of the "right wingers" is not what the ArbCom is
for. I understand Cberlet is your friend and colleague, but for the
sake of integrity, please hold us to the same standard.

Sam Spade

On 12/5/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> You need to look no further then Talk;Chip Berlet and User:Nobs01 to
> see that Nobs01 is not being railroaded but being sanctioned for
> personal attacks. Talk:Chip Berlet has been spammed with a large
> volume of material regarding other people and other activities based
> on Chip's membership in the National Lawyer's Guild. It is like
> blaming any one who is a member of the Democratic Party for Clinton's
> sex adventures. User:Nobs01 starts off: "The Extremist Personality"
> then proceeds to link the "twenty-two common traits of extremists" to
> edits of Cerlet. The policy of the arbitration committee is not to
> carefully investigate the truth of personal attacks but to sanction
> the attacker. The reason a lengthy ban is proposed in the case of
> Nobs01 is that when it seemed he would be sanctioned with a one month
> ban for one attack he responded with another lengthy attack.
>
> No one is giving authority to Cberlet to make thing ups and then cite
> them. He would probably be wise not to cite himself extensively, but
> anyone else is free to, as in a limited area, right wing and
> totalitarian movements in the United States, he is a generally
> recognized expert.
>
> As to the article, Chip Berlet: he has been criticized, for example
> by David Horowitz, and under our NPOV policy, reports of those
> criticism may be legitimately included in the article on him.
> Deciding what criticisms and how extensive they ought to be is up to
> the normal editing process.
>
> Chip Berlet is no more neutral than Sam Spade and he need not be. As
> a Wikipedia editor the requirement is that he respect our policies
> and abide by them which he more or less does.
>
> He did initiate the arbitration case, but that is trouble which we
> welcome as opposed to endless edit warring and personal attacks. When
> his claims were investigated, we found no conspiracy but a lot of
> piling on by various POV editors with a right wing perspective.
> Looked at individually, they were engaged in a number of combative
> activities which are mentioned in the proposed decision. Sam Spade,
> for example, seems to not have access to adequate sources but is
> inclined to argue about the sufficiency of sources put forward by
> others. This is a dead end because you can't legitimately argue about
> something you can't or won't look at.
>
> Fred
>
> On Dec 4, 2005, at 8:46 PM, Sam Spade wrote:
>
> > The results are one sided. There is a mountain of evidence. Nobs is
> > being railroaded, and Cberlet appears about to be given authority to
> > cite himself whenever and wherever he might find an opinion, based on
> > his "expert" status. I don't contest that he merits an article (altho
> > it is a bit of a resume), but I do contest his neutrality and range of
> > expertise. That, combined w the mountains of evidence against him and
> > the conflict he has fostered (5 people he rounded up and shoved
> > together just in this one case!) should provide all the proof you need
> > of the difficulty he presents.
> >
> > Sam Spade
> >
> > On 12/4/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>> From what I can see, the arbitrators are doing quite well with a
> >>> difficult case.
> >>>
> >>
> >> -Matt
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [Wikitech-l] FW: Whitelisting 'members'

body:
This question belongs here, I believe. Would such a patch be possible?

----- Forwarded message from Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> -----

Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 11:12:36 +0100
Subject: Whitelisting 'members'
From: Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org>
To: helpdesk-l-owner at wikimedia.org
Cc: helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org
User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i
Lines: 32

Gerrit Holl wrote:
> After Christmas I might have time to help in creating such a software
> patch, it should not be too difficult and it would probably make a lot
> of difference in the moderation queue work.

I might have time before as well. What version of mailman do the
mailinglist servers run?

Is read-only access to the database available from the mailinglist
server? It would require but a single SQL query:

select "" from user where user_email=email_address limit 1;

If this has a result, the e-mail is let through.
If it has not, it is moderated.

Almost all, if not all, of those e-mails will be good faith. A few lines
of code added to Mailman/Handlers/Moderate.py function process would do
the trick, I think before line 93 or 109: hold for approval if the action for
non-members is 'hold'. We could change that into: hold for approval if
the address does not occur in the enwiki database, and is not a member
of the mailing list, and the mailing list default is set to 'hold'.

What do you think?

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-05 10:49:53   -4.5 degrees Celsius ( 23.8F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.

----- End forwarded message -----

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-05 11:19:50   -4.5 degrees Celsius ( 23.9F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject: [Wikitech-l] FW: Whitelisting 'members'

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:
> This question belongs here, I believe. Would such a patch be possible?

Is there some context? I have no idea what's being requested.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] the road to stability

body:
Kai Kumpf wrote:
> this is a forwarded (and typo-cleaned) version of an earlier posting to
> the general list

For what it's worth; try to use paragraph breaks. It'll make your messages a lot
easier to read, and will make it more likely that people will read and respond.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
>From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>
>I feel there is a general direction for failing to support the "victim"
>during the conflict, either by lack of time, or by lassitude (because we
>have seen that happening so many times) or by fear, to support her only at
>the last point (when she is threatening to leave).
>
>Sadly, most editors actually support the person inside themselves, but do
>not say so either because they believe the "victim" is strong enough, or
>because they fear becoming targets themselves.

Or because they fear being accused of being part of a cabal, "meatpuppets",
etc.

Jay.


subject:
[Foundation-l] board manual and where information about the WMF
	should really be

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> There has been a bit of discussion recently about Non Profit
> Foundations and their organisation. Michael Davis has been discussing
> a lot in the past few days with a lawyer we are working with, and
> amongst various conclusions, it was recommanded that we try to
> anticipate the best we could our growth curve and to get a strong
> legal framework in place asap. Which seems to involve good functioning
> structure... and sticking a bit more to traditional board governance
> procedures, with some evolution in the way we handle agendas, minutes,
> bylaws, resolution, board manual, insurance and so on.

It's hard to know when an exponential growth curve will level off.  Thus
far we all stand in amazement at the growth.  Generally this is a step
in the right direction.

> We are currently working on all this very much. Each according to its
> own ability.
> Some of this can only be done by board members proper, other tasks can
> also be supported by officers, and some can involve anyone who is
> serious and supportive.
>
> Amongst the tasks I will try to take care of in the next few weeks (or
> months...) is documentation, such as typically board manual. Michael
> has provided us with some documentation (such as
> http://www.boardsource.org/FullAnswer.asp?ID=98) and I gathered some
> more as well. Most of what is typically required on a board manual, we
> already have, but it is dispersed on at least 3 different wikis and
> poorly organised. This is unfortunate.

I would suggest beginning with a Table of Contents or site map for the
Manual.  This would be helpful in monitoring the development of this
project.

> Board governance is not something new and there is no reason for us to
> reinvent the wheel. When I looked at some of these pages, I recognised
> areas where we have indeed tried to reinvent the wheel... other areas
> we have never explored at all, areas where we found our own balance
> and areas which are still a mess :-)
>
> I invite you to join and help the way you can if you have such a
> desire. Either help to organise the structure of the future document
> (and more generally Foundation website), help to gather what already
> exist, help write what does *not* exist, help fix poor english, help
> translate (much later) some of the pages.
>
> If you are interested, please, let's talk about this on meta or by
> irc. I presume this will be very boring for most editors here, so it
> will probably rarely be mentionned on the list, but if you wish to
> help, please jump in any time.

I object to your saying that such a task would be boring. ;-)    Where
on meta?

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Question about Size of Wikipedia

body:
Martina Greiner wrote:
>> Shouldn't the database size be roughly the size of the uncompressed
>> xml file? You can look at that and see if it is similar.
>
> The size of the uncompressed files is roughly 100 GB.

The actual database will include indexes, padding, etc which increases the
amount of space used.

Currently the dump importer doesn't support compressed text storage in the
database; if added this could reduce the amount of disk space required (but of
course it'll be harder to work with).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid configuration problem

body:
Travis Derouin wrote:
> Hey,
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions about configuring Squid in reverse proxy
> for MW? We're seeing that our articles aren't being cached and Squid is
> still making several requests per second for the same article, despite
> configuring Squid as instructed at meta.wikimedia.org. Here are our
> settings:
>
>  $wgUseSquid = true;
>  $wgUseESI = false;
>  $wgInternalServer = $wgServer;
> $wgSquidMaxage = 18000;
> $wgSquidServers = array('10.234.169.202');
> $wgSquidServersNoPurge = array();
> $wgMaxSquidPurgeTitles = 400;
> $wgSquidFastPurge = true;
>
> Squid and Apache are running on different machines, and we're seeing several
> 200 response codes for unchanged articles from Apache, even in a small time
> span of a few minutes. While the apache load has been reduced, we should be
> seeing Squid handling more of the serving of normal article pages, instead
> of forwarding the request to Apache almost 100% of the time.

Can you confirm that anonymous users have no cookies? If you manually hit the
server with manual HTTP can you confirm cache hits/misses?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
>From: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com>
>
>Please, ArbCom, review the evidence and rethink your
>results. This purging of the "right wingers" is not what the ArbCom is
>for.

Do you think that the Commitee is trying to "purge right wingers"?  Do you
imagine that there are no "right wingers" on the committee itself?

>I understand Cberlet is your friend and colleague, but for the
>sake of integrity, please hold us to the same standard.

Yes, this is exactly the kind of innuendo which has tainted this (and
related) cases - the implication being that the Committee is making
decisions based on alleged friendships.  Why would you insinuate that
Cberlet is any more the "friend and colleague" of members of the Arbitration
Committee than any of the other parties to the case?

Jay.


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
> anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.

Does this apply to all pages, or just articles? It seems that IPs should
still be able to create talk pages, both for articles and for users.


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Wiki meritocracy

body:
On 12/5/05, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Are you saying that now that I have a F.A. I have a chance to become an
> admin?
>
> Sam Spade

IMO, you qualified long ago.


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject:
[Wikitech-l] RfC regarding technical problems of Wikipedia
	(Mediawiki ??)

body:
Folks,

  I hope I am not off-topic to refer this RfC to the mailing list.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Roylee

  Please direct all discussion to the Talk page above, and not to this list ?

  I include a little context below.

Cheers,    Andy!

Purpose of this RfC

   Personally, I am not interested in sanctioning the editor Roylee.
What I think is most important, and accordingly what should be the
aim of this RfC, is finding a solution to the underlying social and
technical problems of Wikipedia as exposed by this issue. As BanyanTree
said here, "it took over a hundred edits before Mark began to reel
Roylee in. Is there another user whose made 50 similar edits, who has
not been discovered? Are there a hundred such users?"

   Simple-minded Linus's law-derivates are not the answer here. Many
   eyes have looked at the articles that were affected, and did not
   recognize any problems. More paradoxically, if literally everyone
   would have assumed good faith, only brute force fact-checking could
   have detected the problem eventually. This is profoundly worrying.
   Quite frankly, all this has made me doubt, maybe for the first time,
   the long-term viability of Wikipedia as a trustworthy resource. --
   mark 14:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

          A clever manipulator will always be able to insert unwarranted
          material into Wikipedia for a time, but many eyes eventually
          discover even believable nonsense. This issue is a case in
          point. The principle of caveat lector should not be restricted
          to elite education: we should all have been raised as doubters
          of text, right from the start. Even the Encyclopaedia
          Britannica. As for me, so far am I from continuing to Assume
          Good Faith, in the face of bad edits, when I find a vandal I
          try to check through that IP's contributions, and sometimes
          discover previously unnoticed vandalism.

          The question remains, how many of these bad edits remain in
          Wikipedia articles? --Wetman 03:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

                I disagree with your first point ("many eyes eventually
discover..."), which is of course a truism among Wikipedians as an
extension of the proposition that vandalized articles constitute a
fraction of one percent of all articles. This case appears to indicate
that "believable nonsense" can remain on Wikipedia for unacceptably long
periods. Cases such as the long-lasting misinformation found recently
on John Seigenthaler Sr. can perhaps be written off as "believable
nonsense" that was missed because the vandal did not edit a number of
articles, which has a better chance of rousing suspicion and being
reverted (another truism of vandal fighting). This is not the case with
Roylee, who created believable nonsense in self-supporting webs of
article across the normal Wikipedian topics of specialization over a
period of months.

     This simply shouldn't have have been possible, and that fact that
     it did happen indicates that Wikipedia's processes are not as
     robust as they are advertised. As I mention in the post that Mark
     links to above, Roylee throws any blanket reassurance given for
     Wikipedia's credibility into doubt. - BanyanTree 19:59, 4 December
     2005 (UTC)

  Wikipedia has credibility? Have you seen pages like Nietzsche or Khmer
Rouge? Wikipedia has many, many roadblocks to overcome before it has any
hint of credibility collectively. I think currently, each article has
to prove it's own credibility, it's not simply inherited because it's a
Wikipedia article. (Bjorn Tipling 21:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC))

  I basically concur (see Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia, largely
written by me and Dan Keshet), but the goal is to work toward having
credibility, and it looks like Roylee's contributions have been a
detriment. And that is what this RfC is about, no? -- Jmabel | Talk
03:53, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

  This is especially the case as we cannot be sure if he is unique
or if his detection is unique, e.g. are there numerous users adding
misinformation using similar patterns? I would like to think not, but I
don't know how anyone can guarantee it. I had hoped to hear a solution
to the problem from people reading this RfC, and the lack makes me think
that the problem is structural rather than individual. I would love to
be proved wrong on this. - BanyanTree 19:59, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question about Size of Wikipedia

body:
On 12/5/05, Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Shouldn't the database size be roughly the size of the uncompressed
> xml file? You can look at that and see if it is similar.

No, it's not that simple. There is non-insubstantial overhead from the
database, but gzip compression on the larger revisions.


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> People also falsely confess to crimes; there have been many famous cases of
> this which have actually been later overturned (and one must assume even
> more cases which have not been overturned).  If we start trying to second
> guess legal systems, then all we'll be left with is original research to
> determine if someone is a criminal.
>
> Jay.

The problems is that you're trying to apply a fundamentally
20th-century view of legal systems across the board.  Only recently
have the majority of criminals begun to appear before courts; in
earlier periods, it was quite common for them to simply be killed, or
to kill themselves.

What about cases like [[Marcus Junius Brutus]]?  There is little, if
any, doubt about his role in Ceasar's death; should we then refrain
from adding him to the Assassins category merely because he was never
convicted in a court?

Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
On 12/5/05, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Are you saying your my friend or colleague? Are you a member of the
> USAF? Just what exactly do we have in common, outside of our long
> history of bitter conflict?

At risk of sounding corny, I'd say that Sam and Jay have one very important
thing in common - uncommon dedication to this project of ours to make a free
encyclopaedia.  So yeah, I'd say that makes you colleagues, if not friends.


from_name: sydney poore

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Hello,

Excellent experiment. This gets to the root of Wikipedia's problem; lack
of source, unverifiable material. Fixing this upstream is much easier
than downstream. Before starting an article, the verifiable sources
should be in hand. By encouraging them to register, it possible for
current editors to reach out to new editors and teach them this
important Wikipedia value.

Also, there is a difference between starting an article vs. fixing typos
or inserting a simple fact into a pre-existing article. This experiment
recognizes it.

Regards,
Sydney Poore

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
>anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.
>______________________________________________
>
snip

>_
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Nathaniel Sheetz wrote:

> On his userpage, George argues this better than me, but basically the
>
>argument is that sometimes, nothing is better than something.  I'm sure that
>many of the articles in that backlog actually do more damage than good to
>the project, because someone who finds them is going to judge the quality of
>wikipedia as a whole based on those articles.  Not finding anything, on the
>other hand, will probably not result in as great a negative reaction.
>
This is pure speculation

>That said, I'm not sure what should be done about it.  Deletion is tempting,
>but shouldn't be applied haphazardly.  I wouldn't be opposed to the creation
>of an AfD criterion (not CSD) that allowed for the deletion of truly
>unorganized and difficult to use text.
>
The implication is that sufficient information is already there, but
it's badly written.  It sounds like the article is a candidate for
rewriting and reorganization rather than deleting.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>So, more interesting would be to address the fundamental problem---that
>>is, mark revisions that have been reviewed by [n] people.
>>
>>
>
>Totally.   I think we'll be experimenting a lot in coming months,
>especially in en where it seems to me that a lot of time-honored
>processes are starting to be overwhelmed by sheer volume.
>
>
That makes sense, although I prefer to view it as incrementally
improving what already works, rather than ditching processes and
bringing in new stuff.  For example, "in the beginning", we just looked
at every edit on recent changes by someone we didn't recognize.  Now
there are far too many edits, so we need some better way of organizing
them, and marking which edits have been checked and which still need to
be looked at.  Not really a fundamental shift in how Wikipedia works,
just adding some tools to help us deal with things.

Slightly more fundamental would be displaying to users that a particular
revision has a certain level of confidence.  This is already implicit
for experienced Wikipedians---I think most of us know almost immediately
whether a particular article is trustworthy or not, based on patterns
like what the prose looks like, how wikified it is, how many people have
edited it, what subject area it's in, etc.  But formalizing that a bit
and making it explicit for newcomers and casual readers can't hurt---we
all know that an unwikified page just created by 1 person and not edited
by anyone else should be read with a grain of salt, but we can point
that out to others in some automated way.  Again, just kind of
incrementally improving how things work.

For the most part, I think we're doing pretty well, and there are lots
of good ways to incrementally improve what's already gong well, it's
just that period media frenzies kind of catch us when we're not yet ready.

-Mark