body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> The subject line pretty much sums this note up.  I am
> frustrated with the continued lack of development
> support for anything where the propents are not
> actually developers themselves.

The purpose of the bug tracker is to do two things:

* Ensure that bug reports and feature requests are in a central, searchable
place where they will be seen and not be lost

* Ensure that there is at least some tracking of completion of issues.

As long as those are happening (and they are), then Bugzilla is *not* a failure.
If you don't believe me, look in MediaWiki's RELEASE-NOTES file and read the bug
numbers of the fixed/implemented issues per major release.

Please keep in mind what the bug tracking system replaces: a series of dozens of
wiki pages on a dozen separate wikis containing requests and complaints, which
weren't read by anyone and from which things would disappear never to be seen again.

Now, just because someone (or even several people) have requested something
doesn't mean it'll get done, any more than having several people write a letter
to a congressman or send a petition to a corporation will mean that the
government or company will do that thing.

In addition to someone, somewhere wanting it, it also has to fit with the
interests and priorities of the group that would actually effect it.

Some "neat features" may simply have no priority to the group that does the work
and runs the operations of the site. Manpower is limited, and effort goes, in
rough order, to:
1) Things that are really, really important to keep the site running
2) Things that someone writing code things are useful and/or neat

Some bugs are either very difficult to fix or have small enough effects that
someone has to decide to put in the effort to track it down and may not consider
it worth doing immediately.

>  I have aware for
> sometime that asking for anything without uploading a
> "patch" is absolutely useless.

This is false, but I realize it's easy to feel that way if your own request is
not being fulfilled. Take a peak at the thousands of other requests, and you may
notice that there are other things to do.

> I have recently realized many of developments which
> have never happened *did* have attachments (which I
> think are "patches").  The bugzilla system really must
> be broken.  Because how can these things just be
> ignored for so long?

1) Patches have to be looked at, understood, and accepted. As with pieces of
legislation "suggested" by a lobbyist group, legislators might want to take a
look at it before they vote on it.

Some patches are not good code. Some patches would damage the system or destroy
the performance of the entire site if they were simply installed.

Other times it's simply not known whether the feature *is actually desirable*.
Just because someone, somewhere wants it, even if the code *works*, it isn't
necessarily something that *should* be added.

Review may be a community or political issue as well as looking at actual code.

>  Here is the bug which had the
> most effort invested in it from WS.
>
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4375

This is "protected sections".

As I recall there is open debate about whether this is a desirable feature and,
if so, whether it should be implemented as in that code.

I don't recall anyone pushing for it in many months, though, so I assume there
is no longer any interest in it?

> There are other technical issues that have projects on
> WS at a standstill.
>
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=189

This is very low priority as there seems to be little active interest in it and
it requires a security review of third-party code which is reputed to be unsafe.
(If that's changed, we'd like to hear about it.)

> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5881

There is open debate about how this should work and what it should look like.
I've agreed in principal that we should be able to do something for this for
Wikisource but there is as far as I know no one currently attempting to reach
agreement on implementation.

Without this, having some disputed code doesn't actually mean anything will get
done.

If you're very interested, please keep bugging me about these things.

> I ask people online.   Bugs are filed.  Nothing
> happens.  I do not want to make the effort to get all
> sub-domains to show support for these new features
> when it will have no effect.  I realize that the
> developers are volunteers and are able to chose what
> interests them and where they would like to work.

Many developers are volunteers, but two of us are employed by the Foundation.
Primarily this means we have an extra commitment to site operations issues --
performance, security, etc -- but also it means we should pay more attention to
some of the Foundation's smaller sites.

Since there's a lot to do, it helps to make waves on specific issues to make
sure attention gets paid.

Foundation-L probably isn't the best place to do it, but whatever works. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Foundation-l] Does anyone else think bugzilla is a complete
 failure

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> The subject line pretty much sums this note up.  I am
> frustrated with the continued lack of development
> support for anything where the propents are not
> actually developers themselves.

The purpose of the bug tracker is to do two things:

* Ensure that bug reports and feature requests are in a central, searchable
place where they will be seen and not be lost

* Ensure that there is at least some tracking of completion of issues.

As long as those are happening (and they are), then Bugzilla is *not* a failure.
If you don't believe me, look in MediaWiki's RELEASE-NOTES file and read the bug
numbers of the fixed/implemented issues per major release.

Please keep in mind what the bug tracking system replaces: a series of dozens of
wiki pages on a dozen separate wikis containing requests and complaints, which
weren't read by anyone and from which things would disappear never to be seen again.

Now, just because someone (or even several people) have requested something
doesn't mean it'll get done, any more than having several people write a letter
to a congressman or send a petition to a corporation will mean that the
government or company will do that thing.

In addition to someone, somewhere wanting it, it also has to fit with the
interests and priorities of the group that would actually effect it.

Some "neat features" may simply have no priority to the group that does the work
and runs the operations of the site. Manpower is limited, and effort goes, in
rough order, to:
1) Things that are really, really important to keep the site running
2) Things that someone writing code things are useful and/or neat

Some bugs are either very difficult to fix or have small enough effects that
someone has to decide to put in the effort to track it down and may not consider
it worth doing immediately.

>  I have aware for
> sometime that asking for anything without uploading a
> "patch" is absolutely useless.

This is false, but I realize it's easy to feel that way if your own request is
not being fulfilled. Take a peak at the thousands of other requests, and you may
notice that there are other things to do.

> I have recently realized many of developments which
> have never happened *did* have attachments (which I
> think are "patches").  The bugzilla system really must
> be broken.  Because how can these things just be
> ignored for so long?

1) Patches have to be looked at, understood, and accepted. As with pieces of
legislation "suggested" by a lobbyist group, legislators might want to take a
look at it before they vote on it.

Some patches are not good code. Some patches would damage the system or destroy
the performance of the entire site if they were simply installed.

Other times it's simply not known whether the feature *is actually desirable*.
Just because someone, somewhere wants it, even if the code *works*, it isn't
necessarily something that *should* be added.

Review may be a community or political issue as well as looking at actual code.

>  Here is the bug which had the
> most effort invested in it from WS.
>
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4375

This is "protected sections".

As I recall there is open debate about whether this is a desirable feature and,
if so, whether it should be implemented as in that code.

I don't recall anyone pushing for it in many months, though, so I assume there
is no longer any interest in it?

> There are other technical issues that have projects on
> WS at a standstill.
>
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=189

This is very low priority as there seems to be little active interest in it and
it requires a security review of third-party code which is reputed to be unsafe.
(If that's changed, we'd like to hear about it.)

> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5881

There is open debate about how this should work and what it should look like.
I've agreed in principal that we should be able to do something for this for
Wikisource but there is as far as I know no one currently attempting to reach
agreement on implementation.

Without this, having some disputed code doesn't actually mean anything will get
done.

If you're very interested, please keep bugging me about these things.

> I ask people online.   Bugs are filed.  Nothing
> happens.  I do not want to make the effort to get all
> sub-domains to show support for these new features
> when it will have no effect.  I realize that the
> developers are volunteers and are able to chose what
> interests them and where they would like to work.

Many developers are volunteers, but two of us are employed by the Foundation.
Primarily this means we have an extra commitment to site operations issues --
performance, security, etc -- but also it means we should pay more attention to
some of the Foundation's smaller sites.

Since there's a lot to do, it helps to make waves on specific issues to make
sure attention gets paid.

Foundation-L probably isn't the best place to do it, but whatever works. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is Wikipedia a News Portal (among other things)?

body:
On 23/09/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's time consuming and difficult. It is very easy to screw up in
> scanning something like this, so all of the parts will fit except for
> one (i.e. if something is not scanned at exactly the same elevation or
> gets skewed slightly in some other way).
> It can be done. It's just not very easy. And it's certainly not fun. I
> wouldn't do it for free.
> In the end I suspect that most digitization of such things will be
> done either by countries which will try to sell access to them (i.e.
> ProQuest) or as not-for-profit grants (i.e. a university deciding to
> put its PD library online, which looks good on a yearly report even if
> it doesn't create any revenue). This sort of dull work is not the sort
> of thing that too many volunteers would be interested in doing over
> time, IMO. (Maybe I'm wrong! Hopefully!)

We'd try to get the best scans we could. But I suspect that if you put
up the raw scans and any of it could be turned to an actual use,
volunteers to do the tedious labour would turn up. I'm amazed at the
tedious jobs people do for Wikimedia projects in the cause of getting
information into the public domain.

See also discussion on wikimediauk-l (to which this is cc'd).

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Board Election 2006:
	Announcement of ...

body:
I also want to congratulate Erik and wish him all the best in his new
position.

At the same time, I want to congratulate all the other candidates, who
shared their ideas and vision with the community. I am sure that many of the
issues they raised and the solutions they offered will be at the forefront of  the
agenda for the newly constituted Board.

Danny


body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 9/23/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Foundation-L probably isn't the best place to do it, but whatever works. ;)
>
> Perhaps Birgitte SB should subscribe to Mediawiki-L, where the
> software is the focus of discussion?
>
> As an aside, is there a publically joinable WMF operations related
> list (technical site operations, networking and systems and code)?
> These are areas I am interested in possibly contributing in...

That would more or less be wikitech-l and the #wikimedia-tech channel on
irc.freenode.net. Operations and main code development are somewhat mixed.

We have an operations wiki as well, for documentation and logging rather than
discussion, which is open (but please don't abuse it):
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 9/23/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Foundation-L probably isn't the best place to do it, but whatever works. ;)
>
> Perhaps Birgitte SB should subscribe to Mediawiki-L, where the
> software is the focus of discussion?
>
> As an aside, is there a publically joinable WMF operations related
> list (technical site operations, networking and systems and code)?
> These are areas I am interested in possibly contributing in...

That would more or less be wikitech-l and the #wikimedia-tech channel on
irc.freenode.net. Operations and main code development are somewhat mixed.

We have an operations wiki as well, for documentation and logging rather than
discussion, which is open (but please don't abuse it):
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 9/23/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Foundation-L probably isn't the best place to do it, but whatever works. ;)
>
> Perhaps Birgitte SB should subscribe to Mediawiki-L, where the
> software is the focus of discussion?
>
> As an aside, is there a publically joinable WMF operations related
> list (technical site operations, networking and systems and code)?
> These are areas I am interested in possibly contributing in...

That would more or less be wikitech-l and the #wikimedia-tech channel on
irc.freenode.net. Operations and main code development are somewhat mixed.

We have an operations wiki as well, for documentation and logging rather than
discussion, which is open (but please don't abuse it):
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 9/23/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Foundation-L probably isn't the best place to do it, but whatever works. ;)
>
> Perhaps Birgitte SB should subscribe to Mediawiki-L, where the
> software is the focus of discussion?
>
> As an aside, is there a publically joinable WMF operations related
> list (technical site operations, networking and systems and code)?
> These are areas I am interested in possibly contributing in...

That would more or less be wikitech-l and the #wikimedia-tech channel on
irc.freenode.net. Operations and main code development are somewhat mixed.

We have an operations wiki as well, for documentation and logging rather than
discussion, which is open (but please don't abuse it):
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Comparison of Wikipedia Main Pages

body:
en:wp practically pales in comparison to some of the wikis. Is it just
me, or is the Nuvola icon theme used very liberally (it, eo, sl, ku,
oc, li, ast, an, possible eu, br, simple, lb, is, ar,

On 9/23/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:
> Here is a screenshot of all 230 Wikipedia Main Pages of yesterday, shrunk to
> 40% size for better comparison.
> Texts are too small to read. It is all about page layout.
>
> http://infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Gallery/Gallery.htm
>
> For a few large projects there is a comparison with earlier screenshots.
>
> http://infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Gallery/GalleryWayBack.htm
>
> Enjoy, Erik Zachte
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Schools, notability, inclusionism, deletionism, etc.

body:
On 23/09/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> So, should we be just as complete for schools, albums, songs, TV
> shows, and so on?  Would that just be duplicating IMDB, etc., or
> would it be helping to make Wikipedia a one-stop resource for more in-
> depth info (including links where appropriate to other sites like
> IMDB) on everything in each of these fields?

If it's third-party verifiable, why not?

(note: many people become AFD regulars just to enforce their
disagreement with this notion.)

- d.


from_name: David Alexander Russell

body:
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Hash: SHA1

David Gerard wrote:
> On 23/09/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
>> So, should we be just as complete for schools, albums, songs, TV
>> shows, and so on?  Would that just be duplicating IMDB, etc., or
>> would it be helping to make Wikipedia a one-stop resource for more in-
>> depth info (including links where appropriate to other sites like
>> IMDB) on everything in each of these fields?
>
>
> If it's third-party verifiable, why not?
>
> (note: many people become AFD regulars just to enforce their
> disagreement with this notion.)
>
>
> - d.

Well, now that it seems that it is possible to enforce one's bias simply
by overruling your opponents when closing an AFD (rather than convicing
others to support your point of view) why do they bother?

Cynical
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body:
On 23/09/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > If it's third-party verifiable, why not?
> > (note: many people become AFD regulars just to enforce their
> > disagreement with this notion.)

> Well, now that it seems that it is possible to enforce one's bias simply
> by overruling your opponents when closing an AFD (rather than convicing
> others to support your point of view) why do they bother?

It's possible to do all sorts of things; whether they do is another
matter, of course.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-24

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: habj

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

references:
<8C8ABB07F8C87BF-4D8-31EC@WEBMAIL-RA10.sysops.aol.com>
	<eeujpp$rl5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<73f3ff1b0609211334s32c7b67cmff177708314b2617@mail.gmail.com>

body:
2006/9/21, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com>:
>
> I prefer 1000 characters of simple english above 500 of condensed
> hard-to-read and high-level english though...

Oh yes! A handful of candidates made their statements hard to read maybe
because of tries to stay within the limit, or at least not too far above,
and maybe also partly because attempts to write more formally often result
in a style with fewer longer words rather than several shorter.

/habj


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: James Forrester

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Board Election 2006:
	Announcement of result

body:
We, the Election Officers, hereby give notice of the results of the
2006 Board of Trustees election. The winner is Erik M?ller, also known
as "Eloquence" or "Xirzon". Assuming that the Board endorses the
result and appoints M?ller, he will replace Angela Beesley, who chose
to resign [1] earlier this year. The term to which M?ller will be
appointed will cover the rest of the term for which Beesley was
elected, and will end with the ordinary 2007 election.

In total, 2347 valid ballots were cast and accepted; the specific
results are as follows:

 1st - 987 (42%) - Eloquence (Erik M?ller)
 2nd - 702 (30%) - Mindspillage (Kathleen (Kat) Walsh)
 3rd - 648 (28%) - Oscar (Oscar van Dillen)
 4th - 580 (25%) - Arnomane (Daniel Arnold)
 5th - 492 (21%) - Kim Bruning
 6th - 423 (18%) - AaronSw (Aaron Swartz)
 7th - 382 (16%) - Charles Matthews
 8th - 378 (16%) - Arno Lagrange
 9th - 375 (16%) - Cimon Avaro (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen)
10th - 356 (15%) - Zuirdj (Juan David Ruiz)
11th - 349 (15%) - Kelly Martin
12th - 346 (15%) - UninvitedCompany (Steve Dunlop)
13th - 323 (14%) - Improv (Pat Gunn)
14th - 315 (13%) - Linuxbeak (Alex Schenck)
15th - 297 (13%) - alex756 (Alex T. Roshuk Esq.)
16th - 237 (10%) - Evrik (Bruce Andersen)
17th - 109 ( 5%) - Ross.Hedvicek (Ross Hedvicek)

We would like to take this opportunity to give our thanks to all of
the developers, translators, those people who supported and promoted
the election, and all others for their support and assistance for the
election, and especial thanks to Tim Starling.

[1] - http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Angela_Beesley_resigns_from_Wikimedia_Foundation_board

Yours,

The Election Officials, Wikimedia Foundation Board Election 2006

Essjay
James D. Forrester
Kizu Naoko
Dariusz Siedlecki
Jon Harald S?by


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
2006/9/23, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>:

> One another aspect. Most of candidates show no appreciation for
> translators. I know less than five people went to their talks and
> thanked them. I am sure most of translators don't demand such, but as
> one of coordinators I have been very much embarassed with this lack of
> appreciation and respect for others by some editors.

I am not sure if the translators need appreciation from the candidates. I
think it would be more appreciated if more of them made their texts more
easy to translate. Things to avoid are things like puns: "Bored? Board
Questions for Improv." OK of course I just skipped the pun, but he risked
getting it translated to something strange in a couple of languages. So do
the people who write "endowment" rather than "finansial reserve" or
something similar (if I understood that term correct in context - I am still
not 100% sure that I did. I believe I can translate texts on proteins or
gene cloning on a professional level, but I know nothing about financial and
business vocabulary.) To write a good essay one would probably use the term
one feels is best in context, and use a subclause or so to expand on it;
that way you don't loose those who do neither know the complicated word nor
look it up in the dictionary but you don't sound like a silly person who
don't know the terminology. Trying to reduce the word count does not help
here, of course.

/habj


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
2006/9/21, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>:
>
>
> > but then allow (and encourage) candidates to post as
> > much additional material as they wish, in whatever language(s) they are
> > comfortable in, with no guarantee it will get translated.
>
> and that I object (except "no guarantee" part). As I stated before, it
> means "if you can read language A, you are provided more materials
> than language non-A speakers". On local projects, I found some signs
> some people thought such additional materials would be just a sign of
> those candidates are anglo-centric.

That was my own personal reaction too on lengthy candidate statements - and
also to those who wrote as difficult English as they could, in order to
sound like they know what they were talking about or something similar.
However, I do not think it is possible to forbid the candidates to provide
extra information. The English Wikipedia Signpost made an interview to which
all candidates replied; I am not sure if they all replied in English, if
they got someone to translate their answers for them or if the Signpost
people did but the result was of course displayed in English. Debates in IRC
have been suggested, and even if those can be held in different languages
there will be information that is not available to all voters. It is
basically a good initiative. Should we oppose to this kind of genually good
things for the sake of equality between people of different langauges? IMHO
that would be a shame.

A system with electors has been suggested. I somehow doubt this is the magic
bullet that solves the problem with language barriers, though. If I
understand correctly, the people who should read all the election material
and choose a candidate, if not all users should, need to be good at
digesting texts in English. These people are then probably users at English
speaking projects, and in not too few cases know more about these project
than of those in his or her native tongue. Alas we end up with he English
language bias anyhow.

/habj


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/24/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is a complicated issue, and "inclusionists" have a very good point:
> if it is verifiable, why not put it in the encyclopedia? It's not like
> inclusion of one article hurts another.
>
> I am sympathetic to this point, I am, but I really think that it only
> goes so far. The truth is this: we *are* an encyclopedia, and
> encyclopedias should only contain entries that pass atleast some level
> of notability. Otherwise, if we let just any school, company, band,
> movie, tv-show character, &c in, we are creating notability that
> wasn't there before. An entry in an encyclopedia gives the subject
> some inherent notability. In my opinion, this is not desirable if we
> are acheive the standard of other encyclopedias. We should be careful
> to not let ourself devolve into some mass of facts, because that does
> devalue the things that really deserve an article.
>
> What I'm saying is, on a longer timescale, using WP:V as the sole
> criteria for inclusion does hurt the encyclopedia as a whole. One mans
> opinion, anyway.

fortunetly we can mix it with NPOV to get "there must be enough stuf
from [[WP:RS]] to produce a NPOV article" which means a reasonable
number of sources.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hallmark of bad process: guideline vs didacticism

body:
Interesting and well said.

2006/9/20, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
> I've added this to my process essay (which I should declare "done"
> some time soon really). It's too long and too bitter. Your help is
> most welcomed.

Link?

/habj


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 9/24/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> There's been some discussion here lately on the desirability of
> including or deleting the article for some smallish private school.
> Actually, it's my impression that, over the couple of years I've been
> involved with the project, Wikipedia has been steadily moving in the
> direction of inclusionism in a number of subject areas, including
> schools, roads, pop music, and TV episodes.  A while back, something
> had to be highly notable to be included in those subjects, but now
> there are articles on county roads, middle schools, upcoming as-yet-
> unnamed pop albums, etc.
>
> So is this a good thing or a bad thing?  At least in some areas,
> where there are bounded categories that are (fairly) well defined
> (one can always expect there will be a few edge cases though),
> there's some value to aiming for having a complete set of articles,
> even if some of them are of marginal notability and don't have all
> that much to be said about them.  Some past U.S. vice presidents are
> pretty obscure now, but it would be good to have all of them anyway
> (do we?)  We've got articles on all the popes (and various antipopes
> as well), though some of the early ones have practically no known
> facts beyond their regnal names and (sometimes approximate) dates of
> office.  We've got all the U.S. census-listed places, thanks to an
> early "bot" run, and probably should aim to get similarly complete
> coverage of the rest of the world, even including remote villages of
> tiny population; it's useful in the aggregate to be able to look up
> any place (particularly when this is integrated into applications
> where you can click on a spot on a map for more information).
>
> So, should we be just as complete for schools, albums, songs, TV
> shows, and so on?  Would that just be duplicating IMDB, etc., or
> would it be helping to make Wikipedia a one-stop resource for more in-
> depth info (including links where appropriate to other sites like
> IMDB) on everything in each of these fields?
>
> --
> == Dan ==

It is a complicated issue, and "inclusionists" have a very good point:
if it is verifiable, why not put it in the encyclopedia? It's not like
inclusion of one article hurts another.

I am sympathetic to this point, I am, but I really think that it only
goes so far. The truth is this: we *are* an encyclopedia, and
encyclopedias should only contain entries that pass atleast some level
of notability. Otherwise, if we let just any school, company, band,
movie, tv-show character, &c in, we are creating notability that
wasn't there before. An entry in an encyclopedia gives the subject
some inherent notability. In my opinion, this is not desirable if we
are acheive the standard of other encyclopedias. We should be careful
to not let ourself devolve into some mass of facts, because that does
devalue the things that really deserve an article.

What I'm saying is, on a longer timescale, using WP:V as the sole
criteria for inclusion does hurt the encyclopedia as a whole. One mans
opinion, anyway.

--Oskar


body:
On 24/09/06, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/9/20, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:

> > I've added this to my process essay (which I should declare "done"
> > some time soon really). It's too long and too bitter. Your help is
> > most welcomed.

> Interesting and well said.
> Link?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_essay

- d.


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
A very warm congratulations, Erik M?ller!

I could not resist to do some stats: One year, one month and one week passed
since you resigned from your previous official position, stating "My small
role in the history of Wikimedia is largely over." For once you displayed a
remarkable lack of vision :-)

Erik Zachte


from_name: Delirium

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>
>> On 9/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering
>>> everything.  I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent
>>> news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover.  The
>>> solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older
>>> events more.  I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time
>>> periods!  Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered
>>> events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child
>>> kidnappings?  What about the thousands of political scandals, major and
>>> minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced
>>> cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.?  It's all good info we're missing!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering
>> your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick
>> way to scan that.
>>
>>
> This is a Wikisource function, but that dosn't make it easier.  I have
> most of the first 20 years of McClure's Magazine.  It was a monthly that
> became famous for muckraking journalism, and exposing the behaviour of
> big companies and government administration in the pre WWI era.  1,200
> pages per year for 20 years gives 24,000 pages, and is a daunting task.
> Weeklies and dailies don't make things any easier.
>

While it would certainly be nice to have it all scanned, I don't think
it's necessary.  We already cite lots of sources that aren't available
on the internet---recently published books, journal articles, etc.---so
I don't see why it would be a bigger problem that old news articles are
only available in archives, on microfilm, or via digital subscription.
Ain't nothin' wrong with citing sources that require a visit to a
library to access.

-Mark


body:
On 24/09/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> It's easy to imagine we need lots of reasonably hard rules,
> because everyone knows that people are imperfect, and that
> asking them to "be reasonable" or to "follow the spirit of the
> guidelines" doesn't always work.  So the goal is to remove
> imperfect, subjective human judgement from the equation, and
> replace it with a complete, cohesive, consistent set of nicely
> objective rules, which will ensure magnificently coordinated,
> correct behavior.
> And that might work, *if* the rules were in fact complete,
> cohesive, and consistent.

Thank you! I forgot the "grand unified process for everything" factor
when you get a bunch of aspergic geeks with an allergy for grey areas
in one place. Here's my version of that:

The grand unified process for everything!

Occasionally people come along who think it should be possible to
proceduralise and hence automate as much of Wikipedia process as
possible. Human judgement is flawed, imperfect and subject to bias.
The flaws here are:

   1. The core policies imply human judgement. You can't Taylorise clue.
   2. The rules are not complete, coherent or consistent; they cannot
be made so without a complete rewrite, which is profoundly unlikely to
achieve consensus.
   3. Humans are not robots.
         * No-one reads the whole Manual of Style before editing. Or
after. I haven't and neither have you.
         * The more hard rules, the harder it is for people to follow
them. So they won't.
   4. Grey areas are what make human interaction interesting.
Attempting to remove them will make for (a) a lot of arbitrary
decisions on black versus white (b) a lot of frustrated people who
leave.
   5. The real world contains politics. Everyone with an agenda to
push will seek to have their bias encoded. Especially those working in
the best interests of all.

In the worst case, you end up with a lose-lose situation: the rules
exact their cost (stifling initiative or creativity, taking on a life
of their own requiring significant resources to maintain, parasitizing
the rest of the enterprise), while delivering none of the benefits.
You then also bear the costs of no rules: fallible human judgement and
the anarchy of people doing what they want and fighting over whether
they're allowed to.

As WP:POINT starts: Wikipedia is inconsistent, and Wikipedia permits
things it does not condone.

- d.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject:
[Foundation-l] Does anyone else think bugzilla is a complete
	failure

body:
Yeah, the funny thing is that Wikimedia needs dev's a hell of a lot
more than it needs editors or even admins. Why are they so hard to
get? We're all geeks, right? Step up, people!

It was posted here recently that KDE (
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010129.html
) is interested in doing some training type thing with Wikiversity. I
think this is a brilliant idea. Mediawiki development was mentioned in
passing and it's a shame it probably won't happen. It doesn't really
help that the documentation is quite often all over the place, spread
over 2 wikis, sometimes without even mentioning which version is being
talked about. I found this a hassle just trying to administrate my own
wiki and frequent comments on meta show that many others do too. So to
really get into it, you have to really immerse yourself in it, which
is not really as easy as just checking your watchlist each day.

To Birgitte: I recommend befriending some developer or toolserver
types, and occasionally throw in a casual request for the status of
your latest (least) favourite bug. See if you can get someone to write
a toolserver tool that performs more or lless the same function as
MediaWiki should. This has been a remarkably successful approach at
Commons, although we'd prefer the MW solution of course. :)

Oh and voting means nothing, except for email update reminders.

That all said, I recognise the dev's face incredible demands on their
time from everyone and everything, including many 'invisible' factors
(well, invisible until they break!) and obviously worship the ground
they work on. (Please fix my bugs. Really. :))

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

On 24/09/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> How many months/years do you believe is a realistic
> expectation?
>
> Birgitte SB
>
> --- GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Most of the developers are volunteers. There is
> > certainly too much work in
> > the first place. It is a stellar performance what so
> > few people do with so
> > little investment.
> >
> > Their first priority is to keep the servers
> > operational, combine this with
> > the growth that we experience this is a big job.
> > There are several big jobs
> > that have been postponed time and again for many
> > many months (think single
> > login or the inclusion of software that has been
> > programmed and is waiting
> > for inclusion in the software).
> >
> > When you find yourself a developer to program for
> > you, it does not mean that
> > the software will be accepted; the only thing
> > achieved is that you are
> > closer to getting it accepted. This is not to say
> > that Bugzilla is busted,
> > it is that your expectations are not compatible with
> > reality.
> >
> > PS when you expect developers to reply to your
> > wishes, you have to realise
> > that that too is work..
> >
> > Thanks,
> >        GerardM
> >
> >
> > On 9/23/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > The subject line pretty much sums this note up.  I
> > am
> > > frustrated with the continued lack of development
> > > support for anything where the propents are not
> > > actually developers themselves.  I have aware for
> > > sometime that asking for anything without
> > uploading a
> > > "patch" is absolutely useless.  So I accepted
> > people
> > > that don't know what a patch is are just screwed.
> > But
> > > I have recently realized many of developments
> > which
> > > have never happened *did* have attachments (which
> > I
> > > think are "patches").  The bugzilla system really
> > must
> > > be broken.  Because how can these things just be
> > > ignored for so long?  Here is the bug which had
> > the
> > > most effort invested in it from WS.
> > >
> > > http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4375
> > >
> > > This feature was so desired by people Wikisource a
> > > show of support by 15 separte languages was
> > > orchestrated hoping it would have some effect.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Vote_on_enabling_the_ProtectSection_extension
> > >
> > > This was back in January.  Nothing ever happened.
> > The
> > > underlying problem this feature would solve will
> > now
> > > hopefully be able to be addressed by "Stable
> > version".
> > > At least I hope "stable versions" will be
> > workable.
> > > But the last email about how de.WP wants a much
> > more
> > > complicated system for this worries me.
> > >
> > > There are other technical issues that have
> > projects on
> > > WS at a standstill.
> > >
> > > http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=189
> > >
> > > http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5881
> > >
> > > I ask people online.   Bugs are filed.  Nothing
> > > happens.  I do not want to make the effort to get
> > all
> > > sub-domains to show support for these new features
> > > when it will have no effect.  I realize that the
> > > developers are volunteers and are able to chose
> > what
> > > interests them and where they would like to work.
> > But
> > > they do not even give any feedback or even tell us
> > > they will not help us and we should learn to live
> > > without it.  We just wait month upon month hoping
> > it
> > > is on someone's to-do list somewhere.  It is
> > beyond
> > > frustrating.  Has anyone else experienced these
> > > problems?
> > >
> > >
> > > Birgitte SB
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> > protection around
> > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > >
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Election query

body:
Technical aspects can be answered only by Tim Starling, I guess.

As for counting in human factors, once encrypted data are open by
Election Official(s) and sumed up. I am engaging to examine the
authentification of vote and not participating in counting precisely,
and haven't asked Tim the secret key (one cannot release the
information she doesn't know, so I don't want to know the data which I
absolutely need to know), that is all what I can tell you.

Hoping it helps to solve your worrying,

Sincerely,
Kizu Naoko,
Wikimedia Election Committee 2006

On 9/24/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> I didn't want to ask this actually while voting was open in case anyone
> got worried, but not that voting has closed I'd like to ask something.
>
> How are our votes actually counted and, more importantly, how can we each
> be certain that the votes we made are actually the ones which are being
> counted?
>
> I ask this because of the issues raised in the USA about election fraud
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold#Security_Concerns etc.) and wondered
> whether the same could happen with us, After all, the voting isn't being
> carried out on independent servers it is on Wikimedia servers and,
> presumably, a lot of people have access to those who could do things
> without leaving a trace.
>
> I am *not* meaning imply that anything has been done, but I would very
> much like to know what security voters like myself have that our votes
> have been correctly recorded and tallied.
>
> Alison Wheeler
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Election query


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Best Register article ever

body:
> Yeah. Orlowski has done a great job in collecting all the different
> qualites of the req and putting them into one article. No one could
> have done it better.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Commons request for a delinker tool running in
	every wiki

body:
Super.

In this summer "omg red link!!" case happened on the Foundation wiki
again about Commons logo. It is wonderful we are deliver from the need
of manual check and spend the time for more creative works. I fully
support this proposal of Arnomane.

One question: how does it works on the closed (private) wiki? Or
partly access restricted one(s), z.B. wikimania2005? (You need
registration to give a look to Internal namespace, or to pages not
listed on the whitelist)

Currently those wikis are not covered? Just curious.

On 9/23/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:
> Am Samstag, 23. September 2006 00:13 schrieb Erik Moeller:

> Given the fact that ensuring of free content policies is one of the *key
> missions* of the Wikimedia Foundation and CommonsDelinker is something that
> clearly adresses this topic (via a much more efficient copyvio deletion with
> less negative side effects for local wikis at the same time) I think it is
> appropriate calling for a support note.
>
> And lets not forget: This tool will touch Foundation affairs too: like Meta
> wiki, Wikimania wikis, Foundation wiki, although the probability that this
> tool will need to remove something there is much lower than in other wikis
> but not zero.
>
> By the way: The Foundation wikis need a CommonsTicker. Why? Well you all
> remember some troubles with random people overwriting logos and such. We
> Commons admins simply don't have the time watching over every file alone.
> CommonsTicker would enable you being alerted quickly on overwrite, suggested
> deletion and so forth of any logo, image, media file that is important to the
> Foundation directly. You will be surprised how much changes in Commons will
> affect Foundation wikis directly.  Many other Wikimedia wikis can confirm
> this because they got used to CommonsTicker.
>
> Wouldn't it be cool to be informed in advance that something needs your
> attention? It would save us all a lot of frustration:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker
>
> Cheers, Arnomane
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


subject: [WikiEN-l] Best Register article ever

body:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/23/wikitruth_on_sanger/

The press subcommittee might as well pack up and go home.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
Actually, I think a translation that equals "financial reserve" is as good
as can possibly be expected considering the circumstances. Any candidate who
uses many words and/or concepts that the average native English speaker does
not know well enough to give a somewhat decent explanation of, will when
translated yield some half-good and some outright wrong stuff. That is IMHO
natural, especially since we are in most cases not talking about
professional translators - but even in printed books one often can find the
most amusing translation mistakes. I expect the result of the translations
to various languages to vary. Work load also plays a part in how refined
translations will become.

As Alphaia pointed out, puns and many types of jokes are typically
impossible to translate. One has to make up a new joke - not recommended in
this context - or leave it out. Some of the statements had words in them
linked to the corresponding articles on English Wikipedia. Some of those
exist in Swedish, others do not. Linking to the sometimes small and
sometimes bad articles on the subjects in Swedish Wikipedia was hardly the
effect the author was searching for.Linking to articles in English in a text
that is supposed to the Swedish translation really shows that the candidate
only has the English-speaking voters in mind.

If you make sure not to use too difficult words, and avoid jokes at all
cost, and not even wikilink freely... you risk a bunch of pretty colourless
statement, maybe. Do we want to rob those who speak good English of the
possibilities to use the full scale of their language? Well, that is what
one does in a room where there are many non-native speakers so... maybe,
although the thought is not entirely appealing. There are ways around it,
though. Oscar very cleverly linked to Wikipedia articles in several
different languages; it was obvious that I should let the links remain as
they were., and there is no bad message to a user of any language.

I am sorry if it seems like I especially targeted Improv here. I was
certainly not trying to do that! Several candidates used the word endowment,
and his explanation on why he wanted to establish this endowment is what
helped me the most in determening its meaning in context.  Asking the
candidates to explain things might be a good idea, I never thought of that.
I regularly consulted - besides my dictionary plus the Wikipedias and
Wiktionaries - my boyfriend, who is a native English speaker and interested
in languages, the English speaking Wikipedia IRC channels (with varying
result, for instance the people I spoke to in #wikimedia immediately thought
of university colleges when they heard the word endowment; the context given
did not make them change their mind), and #wiktionary (generally with better
result than the wikipedia channels).

If you want to make a good impression on the non-English speakers, write a
statement that can be translated. OTOH, since the English speakers are the
majority of the voters I guess it does not make much of a difference for the
outcome of the election. I don't suppose it will be possible to see how the
voters from different projects voted? Not even the bigger ones?

/habj


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Whew. That was quite an exciting election. :-) Thanks to everyone who
voted for me, and special thanks to those who chose to endorse me
publicly. Winning an election is one thing; now the real work begins.

Congratulations to the runner-ups. I think the ranking should at least
alleviate fears that open elections will expose us to a takeover from
outside the community. If I hadn't run, the new Board member would now
be Kat, or Oscar, or Daniel, all of which would have been excellent
choices. Thanks for all the congratulations I have received; I may not
be able to respond to all of them.

For those who did not vote for me, or would have liked to be able to
explicitly vote against me, please give me a chance. I am honestly
interested in everyone's views on what I should or should not be doing
as a Board member, and ask only to be treated with kindness and
respect. I will always make an effort to do the same.

In the coming days, I intend to listen very carefully and accumulate
as much information as I can from many different sources about what
has gone right and what has gone wrong in the Foundation. I will also
send a separate Request for Comments. Rather than saying "I will do X"
right now, I need to get a grip on what will be feasible in the coming
months, and where the priorities should be. I hope you will be patient
with me, but please always feel free to talk to me about WMF matters.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: Key priorities for my work

body:
As I am waiting for the result to be certified, I would like to ask
all of you to send me your thoughts -- privately or publicly -- on
what you think the key priorities should be for my work as Board
member. For instance, is there a particular issue with the chapter/WMF
relation that you feel should be addressed? Is the financial reporting
lacking? Do you find some organization processes difficult to
understand?  Are there legal problems that you feel have not received
the right amount of attention? Technical issues that should be
prioritized?

Before responding, please note that the Board is not supposed to do
operational work; that is, it merely oversees and informs the work of
Foundation staff, publishes and approves reports, and makes key
structural and strategic decisions. Here is a simple overview of
typical Board responsibilities:
http://www.managementhelp.org/boards/brdrspon.htm

The Wikimedia Board, especially in this time of transition, is a bit
more active than most, but it is not an operational entitity. So I
won't fix the servers for you or block a vandal on a wiki outside
regular admin duties. :-) But I can try to help (!) make sure that
tasks are properly resourced, that reporting from the Board happens in
a timely fashion, etc.

And no, I won't forget that I'm not the only Board member ;-). All
this needs to be coordinated properly and ideally find consensus. But
your responses will help me in organizing my part of the work. I can
also suggest some of this information for the agenda in the coming
Board retreat.

Thanks in advance for any and all responses and flames. ;-)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 9/24/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I am waiting for the result to be certified, I would like to ask
> all of you to send me your thoughts -- privately or publicly -- on
> what you think the key priorities should be for my work as Board
> member.

Hi Erik,

congrats for the results of this election. You are entering a board
that has already been established with people committed to Wikimedia.
Your key priorities should be a friendly and cooperative integration
into that board. It is my understanding that you can count on the
assistance of many people working in different projects. I wish you
all the best for this task.

Mathias


subject: [WikiEN-l] Best Register article ever

body:
On 9/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/23/wikitruth_on_sanger/
>
> The press subcommittee might as well pack up and go home.

Yeah. Orlowski has done a great job in collecting all the different
qualites of the req and putting them into one article. No one could
have done it better.

Greetings,
Mathias


subject: [Foundation-l] Farewell

body:
Kizu,

please do not leave. Your work during this election has been immensely
valuable. I realize it was also extremely stressful, and perhaps some
time away from the wiki is a good idea. But please do not leave the
Wikimedia community. We all greatly value and appreciate your
contributions. Of course you didn't vandalize anything!

Know that besides the friendships you have, there's a lot of new ones
waiting to be made. I'd love to get to know you better at the next
Wikimania.

*hugs*
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Farewell


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Farewell

body:
I rarely do this, but this time I wholeheartedly agree with Erik. Kizu, please don't leave for
good. We need you here; your help with elections and translation has been completely invaluable.
That said, you certainly do deserve a WikiBreak - the stress of the past weeks must have been
enormous.

With love,

mav

--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> Kizu,
>
> please do not leave. Your work during this election has been immensely
> valuable. I realize it was also extremely stressful, and perhaps some
> time away from the wiki is a good idea. But please do not leave the
> Wikimedia community. We all greatly value and appreciate your
> contributions. Of course you didn't vandalize anything!
>
> Know that besides the friendships you have, there's a lot of new ones
> waiting to be made. I'd love to get to know you better at the next
> Wikimania.
>
> *hugs*
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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subject: [Foundation-l] Farewell


subject:
[Foundation-l] The Foundation is not a wiki (was Re: RfC: Key
	priorities for my work)

body:
-- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/24/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As I am waiting for the result to be certified, I would like to ask
> > all of you to send me your thoughts -- privately or publicly -- on
> > what you think the key priorities should be for my work as Board
> > member.
>
> A few thoughts - I realise there are lots of things missing from this
> list, but this should provide a starting point:
> ...
> Make sure committees aren't going astray.

Only where the big picture goals of the foundation are concerned; the Foundation is NOT AT ALL in
the business of community governance. Nor should it ever for legal reasons (we would lose any
pretense of ISP protections if we did, of course, IANAL).

> In conjunction with the chapter's committee, make sure every chapter
> is allowed official recognition and have a clear process for obtaining
> that (Wikimedia UK is still denied this recognition).

Perhaps through a WikiCouncil, yes.

> Expand the Board via election (possibly Wikicouncil style elections)
> and not via appointment.

Elections alone (unless they require certain expertise for the candidate to run) will not result
in a board that has the talents needed to effectively oversee the operations of the foundation.
For example, the Treasurer of the board would need to have some expertise in the financial aspects
of running a non-profit. Other board members will need expertise in the professional aspects of
fundraising. Some members will need to be cognizant of the legal aspects of running a foundation.
And on and on. An almost completely amateur board is a really, really, bad idea.

The foundation is not a wiki, nor is it a democracy. We MUST make sure our board has the right mix
of people who actually know how a non-profit foundation should be run. Of course, there will
always be room for up to one third (IMO) of an expanded board whose area of interest is to
represent the community of editors. But having a whole board composed of mostly those type of
people would be a recipe for disaster if they, as a group, did not have the right mix of
expertise.

That said, I do think it would be interesting to explore how a WikiCouncil could act in an
advisory capacity and even be a place for community reps to be developed to the point where they
would make great community reps on the board. There might even be a direct and legal link between
a WikiCouncil and the community reps on the board. But a legal review is needed before such a link
is established (again, we don't want to lose our ISP protections).

> Add an advisory Board.

*nod* but do understand that those type of bodies are typically a list of famous people who are
very busy with other things and have limited time to meet or give input to the regular board. So
we should not pretend that having experts there is a substitute for not having experts on the
regular board.

> ...
> Update and revise the bylaws with community input.

That is what the community reps on the board are for. They gather the input and present that to
the full board. Then the full board takes the report of the community rep into consideration.

> Ensure the tech committee have the authority to buy necessary hardware.

Only through an established budget process. But once a budget is passed by the board, then the
tech committee should be able to spend to that limit on hardware with the board only acting in an
oversight capacity.

> Ensure all Board members have full access to private wikis and mailing
> lists when needed (this isn't the same as expecting them to follow all
> of those lists).

That will lead to overlapping coverage by board members in some areas and no coverage in others.
Instead, it would be better if each board member were assigned to be a liaison to particular
committees; they would then have access to that committee's private wikis and mailing lists. Also,
each committee should be creating reports that are posted on InternalWiki. Once the board approves
of the report, then all or at least part of those reports would be put on a public wiki.

Eventually, I would like us to get rid of all the private wikis and just use internal but with
user group-based access controls on who can read what (a feature that Brion says will be difficult
to implement but something I think is very important for us to have). Having all these separate
wikis makes communication between the various parts of the foundation unnecessarily difficult.
Having every board member try to monitor everything is not an answer either.

-- mav

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from_name: James Hare

body:
"... we forgot Poland?"

Fucking priceless.

On 9/24/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > oscar wrote:
> >> yesterday a friend of mine gave me this (script-generated) counting of
> votes
> >> cast over the languages in the various projects so far:
> >> (this is no final result, one can count this oneself from
> >> [[Special:Boardvote/list]])
> >>
> >> english - 1003
> >> german - 320
> >> french - 124
> >> dutch - 101
> >> spanish - 89
> >> finnish - 52
> >> italian - 48
> >> japanese - 38
> >> portuguese - 37
> >> norwegian - 30
> >> turkish - 28
> >> commonswiki - 26
> >> (rest less than 25)
> >
> > I think this argues for some form of indirect democracy in order to
> > broaden the international participation in the foundation.
> >
> > Conspicuously missing, as Oscar wrote, is Japanese, but also Polish.
> >
>
> ... we forgot Poland?
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
Translating pun is well known one of most difficult part of
translation arts. Most of translations even tend to ignore them even
by professionals. If you have a foreign language version of a
Shakespeare play and English, compare two and find how many puns are
left untranslated or ignored. If I am in the position of Election
Officer, I would like to advice every such candidate to alter those,
but the requirement of neutrality made he hesitant.

Just for your information.

On 9/24/06, Pat Gunn <pgunn at dachte.org> wrote:
> habj wrote:
> >I am not sure if the translators need appreciation from the candidates. I
> >think it would be more appreciated if more of them made their texts more
> >easy to translate. Things to avoid are things like puns: "Bored? Board
> >Questions for Improv." OK of course I just skipped the pun, but he risked
> >getting it translated to something strange in a couple of languages. So do
> >the people who write "endowment" rather than "finansial reserve" or
> >something similar (if I understood that term correct in context - I am still
> >not 100% sure that I did.
>
> My apologies on that front. I assumed that the pun would simply be
> translated out by the translators -- I tried to help out in
> the translation task for a few languages which I kinda-sorta speak,
> and removed the pun in each non-English (I think). I believe I was
> the one who first introduced the idea of an endowment -- it's not quite
> exactly identical to a financial reserve, in that only interest from
> its investment flows into the general coffers of the project. My apologies
> if it wasn't exactly clear -- it's a financial-esque term. If you had asked,
> I would've explained. I do appreciate the efforts of translators though,
> especially those who had to deal with my half-baked Spanish. My thanks
> to them and to the election coordinators.
>
> ---
> Pat Gunn
> mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom
> http://dachte.org
> Yeah, I totally did the Vulcan nerve pinch on a guy once
> and it definitely worked because he said "Ow."
>         -- Seen on SomethingAwful
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
> Years of debate have only proved that, while we may know what we are
> doing, that's not because we have a theoretical criterion for inclusion.

Notability: we can't define it, but we know it when we see it.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"Daniel R. Tobias" wrote

> So, should we be just as complete for schools, albums, songs, TV
> shows, and so on?  Would that just be duplicating IMDB, etc., or
> would it be helping to make Wikipedia a one-stop resource for more in-
> depth info (including links where appropriate to other sites like
> IMDB) on everything in each of these fields?

Do the flames of the old inclusionist/deletionist wars really need fanning?

I worked out my position long ago: pretty much deletionist on the science side, for anything suspect; pretty much inclusionist in the humanities; pretty much indifferent as to pop culture where it really doesn't much matter one way or the other whether we have articles on soap actors or not.

On schools, they can be hacked back to stubs if they are full of unverifiable stuff, or, more likely, promotional material.

Charles

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body:
- Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  > Ensure the tech committee have the authority to buy necessary hardware.
>
> Since Brad has arrived, this is working pretty well. The biggest
> priority is now to ensure that we have the financial means.
>
> Fundraising drive, anyone ?

The FundCom is still being set up. We have already had two meetings and will soon have a third. So
far we are still going over organizational and procedural issues. But before we have a fundraiser
we should have a budget but at least need a report on the current financial situation so we can
create a fundraising plan that will meet and exceed our revenue needs.

A budget will be passed at the retreat, no? How about a financial report? Who is working on this
stuff now that I'm no longer CFO? It was my understanding that a staff person was hired to do
this. If not, then the responsibility reverts to the board.

-- mav

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from_name: Robth

body:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> If it's third-party verifiable, why not?
>
>
> - d.

Well, the reason that's always struck me as the most compelling,
although I don't know that I've actually heard anyone use it
(probably because I've been pretty successful in ignoring AfD),
is that if we admit everything that's third party verifiable we will
have expanded well past the point where our core group of editors
is capable of enforcing our core content policies (particularly
NPOV) on the amount of material we'll have.  We may have already
expanded to this point, for that matter; I certainly know that we've
passed the point where we're no longer able to prevent a large portion
of the articles from really sucking (see WP:CBM, especially the stuff
that's been tagged for a year or more).  This is a problem because
people who see badly written or non-neutral articles as one of the first
things they encounter at Wikipedia are probably either going to go
away and not contribute or contribute stuff that meets the same
description.

AaronSw's survey results have shown that most material is contributed
by drive-by editors, but most formatting, wikifying, etc.--i.e. actually
incorporating the new stuff into the encyclopedia--is done by core
community members.  Notability provides a method of callibrating
the amount of incoming content at a level that our existing group
of core editors can actually handle and assimilate.  The question,
in my opinion, when considering the inclusion of an article, is not
"is this subject notable enough to be worth writing/reading about",
but rather "if we include this subject and all equally notable subjects,
will our regulars be able to enforce the core policies on the resulting
influx of articles.

So, to get back to the original question of this thread, I think we
should be concerned about the dropping inclusion threshold for
pop culture at least, since that's an area where it seems to me
that the community as it exists is not successfully enforcing
important policies such as NPOV and whichever non-core-but-
still-important policy says states that we want encyclopedia
articles, not trivia piles.  Some subjects aren't a problem;
very few Rambot articles get taken over by hagiographers or
POV warriors.  A fair number of school articles do end up
contravening NPOV.  We should draw conclusions about the
effect of including these various article types based on the
current state of similar articles that we already have, and draw up
whatever standards we need to make sure that we can manage
the material we take on in that subject area in the future.

--Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> geni wrote:
> > En is the biggest project by any reasonable
> metric. Thus it seems
> > reasonable that it sould have a significant say
> over who ultimately
> > runs it.
>
> I don't think anyone would disagree with that, of
> course.
>
> The question is, how to make sure that people in
> smaller language
> projects have a proper voice.  It is not trivial to
> do this in a
> sensible way.
>
> The current situation is not horrible in this
> regard, because it does
> not matter where someone *comes from* per se, so
> long as they take a
> global approach.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________

Why do you believe low voter turnout is due to direct
elections?  Why is it not simply due to apathy or lack
of understanding about the Foundation?  To a belief
that the Foundation doesn't directly affect the
smaller projects?  Or some other reason.  Can we
conduct some polls as to why certain projects did not
vote before designing a new election system?

Birgitte SB

Birgitte SB

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Election query

body:
Alison Wheeler wrote:
> I didn't want to ask this actually while voting was open in case anyone
> got worried, but not that voting has closed I'd like to ask something.
>
> How are our votes actually counted and, more importantly, how can we each
> be certain that the votes we made are actually the ones which are being
> counted?

The voting system allows for spot-checks as follows:

* Download [[Special:Boardvote/dump]], and check that your record is there
* Check that your encrypted record has been signed with the appropriate
secret key (some votes in the first few hours of voting were signed with
the expired 2005 key, but most were signed with the 2006 key)
* Contact an election administrator, confirm your identity. Tell them
your encrypted record and who you voted for. Ask them to decrypt your
election record to ensure that the two match.

Spot checks like this provide some assurance against wide-scale
falsification of the records. However, the voting system is not
perfectly secure. For example, with root access to the servers, you
could add false votes for nonexistent people to the dump. This is
theoretically detectable, but it would be possible for such things to go
unnoticed. Small-scale fraud (small enough to escape random checks) is
also possible by compromising the client computer. And since we don't
yet use SSL, there is some vulnerability to compromise of the
communications channel.

I hope I'm not giving people a false sense of security by implementing
all this encryption stuff. The goal is only to make detection of attacks
easier, or at least theoretically possible. The absolute security of the
system still depends on the security of the constitutent parts, namely:
the election administrators, the servers, the clients and the network.
There is plenty of room for improvement in each department.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Election query


body:
On 9/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> If you can come up with a notability policy that follows obviously and
> elegantly from the one-sentence summaries of NPOV, NOR and V [*], then
> it'll definitely fly. If not, it's unlikely to.
>
>
> - d.

We should draw notability threshholds for inclusion such that our current
core
group of editors will be capable of successfully enforcing the core
policies of NPOV, NOR, and V on all the material we have.

--Robth


from_name: Stephen Streater

body:
On 24 Sep 2006, at 09:44, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

> "Daniel R. Tobias" wrote
>
>> So, should we be just as complete for schools, albums, songs, TV
>> shows, and so on?  Would that just be duplicating IMDB, etc., or
>> would it be helping to make Wikipedia a one-stop resource for more
>> in-
>> depth info (including links where appropriate to other sites like
>> IMDB) on everything in each of these fields?
>
> Do the flames of the old inclusionist/deletionist wars really need
> fanning?
>
> I worked out my position long ago: pretty much deletionist on the
> science side, for anything suspect; pretty much inclusionist in the
> humanities; pretty much indifferent as to pop culture where it
> really doesn't much matter one way or the other whether we have
> articles on soap actors or not.
>
> On schools, they can be hacked back to stubs if they are full of
> unverifiable stuff, or, more likely, promotional material.

Some of us are working on a new notability guideline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTABILITY

The key to me is that the content is reliable,
which is covered by the first two points under
Rationale:
In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough
that it will be described by multiple independent sources.
In order to have a neutral article with minimal errors, a topic must
be notable enough that there will be non-partisan editors interested
in editing it.


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 9/23/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I am waiting for the result to be certified, I would like to ask
> all of you to send me your thoughts -- privately or publicly -- on
> what you think the key priorities should be for my work as Board
> member.

1. Long term goals.  What are the foundation and the various projects
aiming for in 5 years or longer?
2. Mid term goals.  What are the foundation and the various projects
aiming for by Summer 2007?
3. Financial transparency and more regular reporting.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Laura Scudder

subject: [WikiEN-l] I've Kicked the Process Habit

body:
I, for one, welcome our new rogue admin overlords.

On 9/19/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/09/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sep 19, 2006, at 10:12 AM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > > What is the imminent danger to the encyclopedia or its core policies
> > > of Phil keeping his ops?
>
> > You ask too many questions, citizen.
> > /me bans David Gerard
>
>
> OUT OF PORCESS ROUGE ADMNIN
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

references:
<s7lah2pihqs0vqiecpaifbaphj43urt5a5@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140609230946g1506a024g26e2447a3c584abb@mail.gmail.com>
	<38a7bf7c0609231036g378bf749yc132fbfbb05dc1b2@mail.gmail.com>
	<op.tgdqbqn6r18sbe@mainframe.lan>

body:
On 9/24/06, Sherool <jamydlan at online.no> wrote:
> How do we define "school" anyway? Does every money grabbing diploma mill
> and fly-by-night private teaching institution that ever existed fall into
> this blanket inclution criterea as well as long as they refered to
> themselves as "school" in some way, or just those that are government
> aproved? There are quite a few dodgy business initiatives around the globe
> that label themselves as "school" or "academy" and such. I don't see why
> *some* form of notability cutoff for private schools would be such a bad
> thing.

Personally I think dodgy places which are not accredited, and have
articles pointing this out, are more useful to have in Wikipedia than,
say, every public school in California, with unverifiable reports of
how it is "one of the best in the county" and "is well-known for its
academic opportunities" and so forth. I find entries like [[Patriot
Bible University]] more useful in pointing out the lack of authority
an institution has than those which use utterly unconvincing peacock
terms to discuss legitimate ones.

FF


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 9/24/06, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> AaronSw's survey results have shown that most material is contributed
> by drive-by editors, but most formatting, wikifying, etc.--i.e. actually
> incorporating the new stuff into the encyclopedia--is done by core
> community members.  Notability provides a method of callibrating
> the amount of incoming content at a level that our existing group
> of core editors can actually handle and assimilate.  The question,
> in my opinion, when considering the inclusion of an article, is not
> "is this subject notable enough to be worth writing/reading about",
> but rather "if we include this subject and all equally notable subjects,
> will our regulars be able to enforce the core policies on the resulting
> influx of articles.
>
I've always found it's a much simpler task to format and wikify an
article than it is to run it through AfD.

Anthony


body:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> We'd try to get the best scans we could. But I suspect that if you put
> up the raw scans and any of it could be turned to an actual use,
> volunteers to do the tedious labour would turn up. I'm amazed at the
> tedious jobs people do for Wikimedia projects in the cause of getting
> information into the public domain.

The scanning itself is pretty tedious labor. If the map is of any size
it means you have to fold it to get the middle sections, which
increases the likelihood that things won't line up later (slightly
different angles, etc., make for very unsightly alignment problems).

Anyway, I've no doubt of the power of Wikipedians to volunteer for
boring tasks -- I've done some pretty dull ones in my day for the
project (like extracting and cropping and formatting hi-res images of
all of the major plates in Vesalius' [[De Humanis Corporis Fabrica]],
which is now at Commons), but having tried to stich together maps and
other large images from scans in the past, I have to admit I'm pretty
skeptical. It is not just boring work, it is boring work where more
often that not one just feels frustrated by it. In my experience.

But again... I'm thrilled if people want to do it! :-)

FF


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
oscar wrote:
> yesterday a friend of mine gave me this (script-generated) counting of votes
> cast over the languages in the various projects so far:
> (this is no final result, one can count this oneself from
> [[Special:Boardvote/list]])
>
> english - 1003
> german - 320
> french - 124
> dutch - 101
> spanish - 89
> finnish - 52
> italian - 48
> japanese - 38
> portuguese - 37
> norwegian - 30
> turkish - 28
> commonswiki - 26
> (rest less than 25)

I think this argues for some form of indirect democracy in order to
broaden the international participation in the foundation.

Conspicuously missing, as Oscar wrote, is Japanese, but also Polish.

--Jimbo


body:
On 9/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hitting with a verifiability hammer is a good first move for those.
> But if we start cutting subject areas because they attract POV
> warriors, then it's time to mark everything about Israel, Palestine or
> Linux for removal.
>
>
> - d.

We don't cut subject areas, we just limit our depth of coverage to
include only as many articles as we're capable of keeping in line
with our core policies.  Thus, for Israel-Palestine, we probably
wouldn't want to have articles on, say, every single jailed
Palestinian militant, since I doubt we have enough core editors
to enforce NPOV on all of them.  For schools, we wouldn't cut all
school articles, but rather see how many we seem to be capable of
maintaining in a neutral, verifiable state, and draw a line accordingly,
probably based on the amount of independently published material.
What I'm suggesting is basically to treat subject independently and
determine how much material the community of editors that works
on that subject is able to support; then come up with a notablility
threshhold based on that.

--Robth


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Sep 23, 2006, at 8:37 PM, geni wrote:
>
> fortunetly we can mix it with NPOV to get "there must be enough stuf
> from [[WP:RS]] to produce a NPOV article" which means a reasonable
> number of sources.

That would be great, except that [[WP:RS]] is a steaming pile of shit.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


subject: [WikiEN-l] Encyclopedia of Earth appears to be now online...

body:
On 9/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The GFDL is such an *awful* licence for wiki text.

Almost everybody seems to agree that the GFDL doesn't really get the job done.

Is there a reason we haven't worked to implement a new licensing
agreement for all edits this-point-on? I raised this once before but I
don't think anything ever came of it.

My suggestion: Change the edit-field notice from "You agree to license
your contributions under the GFDL." to "You agree to license your
contributions under the GFDL, or a [[similarly free]] license chosen
by the Wikimedia Foundation."

"Similarly free" would link to a page explaining that the WMF would be
given the right to re-license or multi-license content but only under
licenses which met the requirements of "free content" (which we could
outline).

We could even make it so that all users would be required to say that
all of their previous content released under GFDL was similarly open
to multilicensing.

It would only create a minor mess at first. Everything could be
assumed released as GFDL. Tools could be developed to scan an article
for content which could be released as CC-BY-SA (for example, if it
was one of the license approved by WMF).

Anyway. It's an idea. It is one which gives the WMF a lot more
flexibility than it currently has, though within the commitments of
basic "free content" guidelines which would be inflexible. It allows
for future licensing possibilities to ensure freedom and accessibility
for the long term (GFDL doesn't work well with printed photographs;
who knows what technology of the future would be tied up by some
aspect of it?). And at the bare minimum all content would still be
GFDL.

It's an idea which does the most work the sooner it is implemented, as well.

Just an idea...

FF


body:
On Sep 24, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Fastfission wrote:
>
> We could even make it so that all users would be required to say that
> all of their previous content released under GFDL was similarly open
> to multilicensing.

Which not all users would, including some major contributors.

> It would only create a minor mess at first. Everything could be
> assumed released as GFDL. Tools could be developed to scan an article
> for content which could be released as CC-BY-SA (for example, if it
> was one of the license approved by WMF).
>

Which becomes pure hell when you get to derivative works -
particularly when you start with replacing content lost to the scan,
and get into a wealth of "Was this based off of my not-CC-licensed
paragraph on this topic or not" disputes, any and all of which could
become litigious.
>

> It's an idea which does the most work the sooner it is implemented,
> as well.

I agree. We should implement this sometime around 2001. 2002 at the
latest.

-Phil


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Best Register article ever

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:
>         Wikipedia has lost a lot of contributors like me, for various
>         reasons. Not least if I write research and research something I
>         expect the copyright to remain with me not Wikipedia so on those
>         grounds alone I'd never write for it.
>
> The problem with this, of course, is that he /does/ retain the copyright
> to his works, as most of us know. Gee, if this were on a certain other
> website, someone could correct that. Oh well.

I wrote to Andrew Orlowski earlier in the week pointing this out. No
reply as yet...

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] FYI: Infiltrating politics. Definitions will greet us as
	liberators (today: iterative)

body:
(The chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Jim
Connaughton, and Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global
Affairs Dr. Paula Dobriansky will discuss the policy and
implementation committee meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on
Clean Development and Climate.)

KARSNER: Yes, I'm Andy Karsner. I'm the assistant secretary for energy
efficiency and renewable energy at the Department of Energy.

And I just overheard the last bit of your question. And I wanted to
comment because I'm rather new inside the government, but I have
extensive experience in the private sector as an international project
developer.

[...]

So you have to bear in mind, if we want to adapt our role to
catalyzing market forces to steer the capital to the desired result,
government has to have a proper perspective, which is to be iterative
and catalytic with the private sector...

QUESTION: I'm sorry, what did you say?

KARSNER: I said government must hold the...

QUESTION: But be iterative? Is that what you said?

KARSNER: Iterative, correct.

QUESTION: What's that?

KARSNER: What is iterative?

QUESTION: Iterative, in this sense.

KARSNER: Happy to give you my definition on that. You might have to
check Wikipedia in case I go awry.

Iterative means having a relationship where one reacts off of the
other as opposed to, sort of, maintaining the delusion that government
can do this all by itself. $52 million, even in Washington, is a whole
lot of money and a very, very serious commitment to being catalytic.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

body:
On 9/24/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/23/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000
> > school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp
> > ) for the US.
>
> Yes, and the US accounts for ~5% of the world population.  Assuming that
> there are 2x as many schools per capita as in the US, that means over a
> million stubs.

We have others floating suggestions of putting a stub in for every
city, town, village, and perhaps hamlet everywhere in the world.
Those are being taken positively and seriously.  I hesitate to guess
how many million stubs that will end up being.

I am not going to extend the schools argument to the whole rest of the
world.  I would assume that other english-speaking nations would want
equal inclusion, (UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc).  That's going to
less than double the potential number of school stubs.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
Stephen Streater wrote

> Some of us are working on a new notability guideline:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTABILITY
>
> The key to me is that the content is reliable,
> which is covered by the first two points under
> Rationale:
> In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough
> that it will be described by multiple independent sources.
> In order to have a neutral article with minimal errors, a topic must
> be notable enough that there will be non-partisan editors interested
> in editing it.

It all sounds much like what Jimbo took to saying on the subject. It helps to exclude some promotional and journalistic froth. Does it do much else?

Example (has happened on the site), some science competition winner, a no doubt bright teenager, gets plenty of media coverage for a ho-hum bit of work. The press release adds the usual kinds of hype (e.g. anything at all to do with a prime number gets related to public key crypto, gasp). We can cut this out as not notable, because unless it warrants the learned journal route to publication it's below threshold.

That's OK; but the learned journals contain an immense amount of the truly tedious and the me-too. Saying 'verifiable' just ducks the issue, really.

Years of debate have only proved that, while we may know what we are doing, that's not because we have a theoretical criterion for inclusion. We have numerous operational criteria.

Charles

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from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements

body:
On 9/24/06, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:

> As Alphaia pointed out, puns and many types of jokes are typically
> impossible to translate.
[...]
> If you make sure not to use too difficult words, and avoid jokes at all
> cost, and not even wikilink freely... you risk a bunch of pretty colourless
> statement, maybe. Do we want to rob those who speak good English of the
> possibilities to use the full scale of their language?

In my impression Angela Beesley has been always skillful to express
her ideas in a natural, warming and quite clear even to EFL (English
as foreign lang) speakers. It may be relevant to her experience of
working for dyslexia children and skill of writing in Simple English.
It may be not impossible to write fravored and simple statement,
however, it suggests to require training and skills.

It is true for us to be concious of our own wording. I myself have
been sometimes complainted of difficulties on my wording; too much
rhethorical, pedantic etc. But it is worthy to try if we are
interested in communicating with a broader audience.

One possible compensation for English native speakers may be
submitting two versions. Normal one and simpler ones. Consider to
write with around 3,000 word vocaburary (I admit it may sound
shabby...), for example.

During Election, we have faced some challanges on communications.
Translation and its difficulty, it is just a part of iceberg.  For
better future and sanity of our tirelessly expanding community, those
challanges will be good to be described and exmained carefully as
potential signs things we haven't been aware as total.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


subject: [Foundation-l] Candidate statements


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
A lot of verifiable material is also promotional material because not
everything verifiable is INDEPENDANTLY verifiable. And while one could
indeed create masses of stubs for everything, things like what Carl
described are better in the long run. Instead of creating stubs that cannot
grow people should try for lists and combined articles for stuff that will
never grow into a life-sized article itself.

When people cite that Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge" they
forget this is the aim for Wikimedia. Anything that doesn't fit an
encyclopedia shouldn't be here. Quotes to WikiQuote, dicdefs to Wiktionary
and so on... I'm sure there's more such things that actually don't belong in
Wikipedia.

Mgm

On 9/24/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 24 Sep 2006, at 09:44, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>
> > "Daniel R. Tobias" wrote
> >
> >> So, should we be just as complete for schools, albums, songs, TV
> >> shows, and so on?  Would that just be duplicating IMDB, etc., or
> >> would it be helping to make Wikipedia a one-stop resource for more
> >> in-
> >> depth info (including links where appropriate to other sites like
> >> IMDB) on everything in each of these fields?
> >
> > Do the flames of the old inclusionist/deletionist wars really need
> > fanning?
> >
> > I worked out my position long ago: pretty much deletionist on the
> > science side, for anything suspect; pretty much inclusionist in the
> > humanities; pretty much indifferent as to pop culture where it
> > really doesn't much matter one way or the other whether we have
> > articles on soap actors or not.
> >
> > On schools, they can be hacked back to stubs if they are full of
> > unverifiable stuff, or, more likely, promotional material.
>
> Some of us are working on a new notability guideline:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTABILITY
>
> The key to me is that the content is reliable,
> which is covered by the first two points under
> Rationale:
> In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough
> that it will be described by multiple independent sources.
> In order to have a neutral article with minimal errors, a topic must
> be notable enough that there will be non-partisan editors interested
> in editing it.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Sherool

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

body:
On Sat, 23 Sep 2006 19:36:33 +0200, George Herbert
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>
> Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000
> school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp
> ) for the US.
>
> I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include
> pseudopolicy for schools makes sense.  They're of immense interest to
> most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it,
> and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia
> into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.

Those are just the government approved ones I think, also remember that
there are a few schools outside the US too...

How do we define "school" anyway? Does every money grabbing diploma mill
and fly-by-night private teaching institution that ever existed fall into
this blanket inclution criterea as well as long as they refered to
themselves as "school" in some way, or just those that are government
aproved? There are quite a few dodgy business initiatives around the globe
that label themselves as "school" or "academy" and such. I don't see why
*some* form of notability cutoff for private schools would be such a bad
thing.

I've not been into this whole school debate so sorry if this has been
covered ad-nauseum before.

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]