subject:
[Wikipedia-l] What variant to use for Irish,
 Scottish and Welsh localities?

body:
>>So, why should the English name be used in this situation? Wouldn't the
>>Celtic name be more appropriate? Celtic languages are co-official in
>>Scotland and Wales, while in Ireland, Irish is the first official and
>>national language. Due to this, I would prefer to use placenames such as
>>"Corcaigh", "*An Uaimh*" (for Navan), "*Chill Dara" *(for Kildare), etc.
>>However, this sounds quite odd and are not frequently used, even though they
>>are the first official name. What do others think? I am inclined to use them
>>so that people are actually educated that there exists an Irish language as
>>the first official language of Ireland. Too often, people in Romania say
>>"the Irish speak (just) English" and stop it at that. They're surprised, for
>>example, when I tell them about Irish names such as "Baile Atha Cliath" for
>>Dublin, etc.

The classic answer is that you should use whatever is currently most
popular with Romanian speakers, if that can be determined.  Wikipedia is
descriptive, not prescriptive, about the use of language.

In some situations this will presumably not be very helpful.  Romanian
is probably not such a difficult case.  But for some very small
languages, particularly those without a strong written tradition, it
will perhaps be impossible to say what the X-language word for Y "really
is" based on existing usage.  (Because there is no existing usage, or
there is not enough written existing usage.)

Probably in such cases, "standard patterns" can be followed.  That is,
in an African language from a French colonial area, it might make sense
to use a French name for a city, whereas in an African language from an
English colonial area, it might make sense to use an English name.
(This is presuming there is no obvious choice based on existing usage.)

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny

body:
geni wrote:
>>It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy
>>and good customer service.  If you are thinking of this as "the
>>foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the
>>way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
>
> The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.

Everyone is a customer. :)

> No. Explaining how things work is probably the best responce.

It is of course *part* of the best response.

> I seem to recall the justification was something to do with legal
> worries. Are you stateing that is not the case?

Instead of "seem to recall" why don't you actually read it?  And then we
can have a coherent discussion, ok?

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Download history tool?

body:
On 3/11/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> It has been updated to animate and export a basic Excel xml:
> http://dzonux.net/wikipedia-animate-hack.user.js
>
> "Group edits" is not finished.

Awesome ;) Would it be possible to get it to include the text of each
edit? I'm starting to learn more about greasemonkey, doesn't seem like
that would be easy to do. But if it is...

Steve


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> And honestly, you should know me well enough by now.  No amount of
> political, financial, or legal leverage in the entire universe would
> persuade me to do the wrong thing by our mission.  We have, as a
> community, principles and integrity.  This is what we are all about.

You've changed a lot from the early days.  What started out as a
laissez faire "let the community decide for itself" attitude has grown
more and more despotic over time.

Anthony


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] disruptive IPs of Mark Williamson attacking users
	on Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
On 3/11/06, future civilization <future_civilization at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You see Jake, you have to speak with Mark about it. He seems not to understand and not to accept a free, democratic vote on the DELETION OF MOLDOVAN WIKIPEDIA. His tone of his messages have been utterly unacceptable. Why doesn't he respect the vote? Absolute majority of the users have voted for DELETION. This marky didn't even vote against it.

Wikipedia is not a democracy.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] What variant to use for Irish,
	Scottish and Welsh localities?

body:
On 3/11/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > For purely practical considerations, I would suggest using the English
> > > name for a Romanian audience. Chances are, if they have happened to
> > > hear of these places before, they would be more familiar with the
> > > English name, and, in addition to that, English pronunciation is more
> > > intuitive when reading Romanian than that of most Celtic languages --
> > > imagine how horribly most Romanians would mangle Caerdydd, An Uaimh,
> > > or Corcaigh.
> > >
> > > Mark
> >
> >
> > To be honest, I agree - that's what I was thinking too.
> >
> > Cormac
>
>
> But the weird thing is that the Irish name will have to be listed first in
> the infobox, since it's the first official verison. In that case, won't it
> be a bit odd to use the English variant for the title, which is really the
> "secondary" variant?
>
> So far, most admins on the Romanian Wikipedia seem to favour English names.
> I do see their point of view. I've had many personal experiences where I've
> told Romanians about visiting "Caerdydd" and they correct me "Cardiff", as
> if I didn't know how to pronounce English! My point was that such ignorance
> is really unfortunate, and should be reversed in such way. I'm not saying
> that Wikipedia should become a hotbed of Gaelic revivalist rhetoric, but we
> can at least try and teach people that there's more to these regions than
> just English!
>
> Another thing - could someone please do some recordings of Irish names.
> Celtic languages are really hard to pronounce, but they are really beautiful
> and unique languages. It would really help a lot if people could just go to
> Wikipedia to find out how to pronounce key Irish (Welsh, Scottish) toponyms.
> Hopefully we'll come back in 20 years and see a great deal more use of these
> languages.
>
> Go raibh maith agaibh!
>
> Ronline
>
> PS: Another can of worms is created by Basque toponyms. For example, should
> one use San Sebastian, Donostia, or San Sebastian-Donostia for that
> respective Basque city? How about Catalan toponyms? I think most Wikipedias
> have just taken the easy way out and chosen Spanish names, but to me at
> least, that sounds awfully superficial and ignorant.

I suppose the main point for me is that English is the 'lingua franca'
of Ireland, while Irish is the official language. (It should be
pointed out here - and you probably already know - that Irish had been
in decline before it was made the official language - an attempt to
revive it from the top down.)

I really appreciate your efforts to educate the Romanian Wikipedia
(and people), Ronline. However, i still think it would be best (or
least confusing) if the names were referred to by the names people are
familiar with - If someone saw a link on the Romanian Wikipedia to
somewhere called "Baile ?tha Cliath", they probably wouldn't know
where it was, which is a shame, because they *do* know where Dublin is
(I hope :-)). One way of keeping it less confusing while maintaining
your desire to educate people about Irish would be to include the
Irish name in each article, at the very beginning. Most English names
of places in Ireland come from the Irish anyway, so it would be a way
of giving people some context. For example, you could have:
"Ballymore, ("Baile M?r" in [[Irish]], meaning "big town) is a town in
[[County Kildare]], [[Ireland]].."; and "Kildare ("Cill Dara" in
[[Irish]], meaning "oak forest") is a [[county]] in [[Ireland]]..."
Ok, so you've never heard of that place, but you get the picture?

Likewise for the Basque names, how many people are going to have heard
of "Donostia"? But they might well have heard about San Sebastian,
and, when they go to that article, they can find out about the Basque
region, language, food etc.

Mmm, Basque food..

And also, in case you're wondering, that place is actually called
Ballymore Eustace, and it's where i'm from :-)

Is mise, le meas,

Cormac

> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andreas Vilén

body:
If the English name is the most common name in Romanian, use that one
and vice versa. It's all about the least possible surprise for the
readers. They want to find an article where they except it to be. We
don't have the article about Germany under "Deutschland" on enwiki,
even less under "Bundesrepublik Deutschland", or "United Kingdom"
under "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (rowiki:
"Regatul Unit"). Just use the common names and write the official ones
in the info box, just like with all the countries and cities with
local (Romanian) names.

I'm Swedish and would be extremely surprised and confused if the
enwiki article about Sweden would be under the official name
"Konungariket Sverige" (The Swedish Kingdom), and would in that case
very much suggest a move of the article.

/Andreas

On 3/11/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > For purely practical considerations, I would suggest using the English
> > > name for a Romanian audience. Chances are, if they have happened to
> > > hear of these places before, they would be more familiar with the
> > > English name, and, in addition to that, English pronunciation is more
> > > intuitive when reading Romanian than that of most Celtic languages --
> > > imagine how horribly most Romanians would mangle Caerdydd, An Uaimh,
> > > or Corcaigh.
> > >
> > > Mark
> >
> >
> > To be honest, I agree - that's what I was thinking too.
> >
> > Cormac
>
>
> But the weird thing is that the Irish name will have to be listed first in
> the infobox, since it's the first official verison. In that case, won't it
> be a bit odd to use the English variant for the title, which is really the
> "secondary" variant?
>
> So far, most admins on the Romanian Wikipedia seem to favour English names.
> I do see their point of view. I've had many personal experiences where I've
> told Romanians about visiting "Caerdydd" and they correct me "Cardiff", as
> if I didn't know how to pronounce English! My point was that such ignorance
> is really unfortunate, and should be reversed in such way. I'm not saying
> that Wikipedia should become a hotbed of Gaelic revivalist rhetoric, but we
> can at least try and teach people that there's more to these regions than
> just English!
>
> Another thing - could someone please do some recordings of Irish names.
> Celtic languages are really hard to pronounce, but they are really beautiful
> and unique languages. It would really help a lot if people could just go to
> Wikipedia to find out how to pronounce key Irish (Welsh, Scottish) toponyms.
> Hopefully we'll come back in 20 years and see a great deal more use of these
> languages.
>
> Go raibh maith agaibh!
>
> Ronline
>
> PS: Another can of worms is created by Basque toponyms. For example, should
> one use San Sebastian, Donostia, or San Sebastian-Donostia for that
> respective Basque city? How about Catalan toponyms? I think most Wikipedias
> have just taken the easy way out and chosen Spanish names, but to me at
> least, that sounds awfully superficial and ignorant.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>>It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy
>>>and good customer service.  If you are thinking of this as "the
>>>foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the
>>>way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
>>>
>>
>>The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
>
>
> Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people
> with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we
> have initiated a relationship.

Right.  It's probably a very "American" way of putting it.  "Good
customer service" in the case of Wikipedia should apply to everyone we
are in contact with in any way.

--Jimbo


body:
Gordon Joly wrote:
> At 10:58 -0500 11/3/06, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> [[SNIP]]
>>
>> That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.
>
>
> [[SNIP]]
>
>
> Indeed, and I agree with the sentiment.
>
> But who are the "customers"? A customer is somebody who buys something.
> Nobody buys a view of Wikipedia, because it is free.

Right.  I accidentally revealed my hopelessly American way of using
language. :)


body:
geni wrote:
> Can people make up their mind. Is the justifaction due to legal
> reasons or not?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

> Blank and delete remember?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  It depends on the case.

> A bit hard to clean up a protected article.

In most cases there will be no need to protect an article.
Semi-protection should be enough.  Conditions may vary.

Assume Good Faith, ya see.

> However WP:OFFICE actions seem desighned to maximise the number of
> people who threaten to sue us.

?  Not at all.

--Jimbo


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>>/Temp exists for such purposes. Outright blanking is pretty much
>>garenteeded to be reverted.
>>
>
> Weird, I agreed with everything Geni just wrote. :) Requiring an article
> to be rewritten from the ground up when there's nothing actually _wrong_
> with it, or at least nothing that a little editing can't fix, is silly.

And I agree with you.

> Ideally neither, of course - if the subject is tossing about legal
> threats and such a temporary blanking might be in order while that gets
> sorted out (_not_ temporary deletion - deletion is not a good way to
> "store" material out of sight for later use, as I've ranted about
> previously). But it must be dealt with in a timely manner and explained
> thoroughly and transparently to the people working on the article
> itself. A while back I restored Harlan Ellison's article several months
> after Jimbo had blanked it because there'd been no indication of any
> work being done on the dispute with Ellison since that time, not even
> after I asked for an update on Jimbo's talk page. I don't think it'd be
> appropriate to block me for taking such action today.

Agreed completely.

The best thing to happen upon _any_ WP:OFFICE action is a quick swarm of
good editors, particularly those with no prior interest in the subject.
 That hasn't always happened in the past, partly because there was no
obvious WP:OFFICE tag/template to draw people's attention to it.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Carl F?rstenberg wrote:
> I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny
> is (who is Danny?)

Danny is a longtime Wikipedia who is an admin in English Wikipedia, and
globally a steward.  He works for the foundation, primarily as my
assistant, but increasingly in working on grant applications.  At the
present time, he's on the frontline for angry and/or strange phone calls
of which the volume we get at the Foundation office I think too many
people do not fully appreciate.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>And honestly, you should know me well enough by now.  No amount of
>>political, financial, or legal leverage in the entire universe would
>>persuade me to do the wrong thing by our mission.  We have, as a
>>community, principles and integrity.  This is what we are all about.
>
>
> You've changed a lot from the early days.  What started out as a
> laissez faire "let the community decide for itself" attitude has grown
> more and more despotic over time.

In what way?  I think that's a pretty silly claim.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Francis Tyers

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] What variant to use for Irish,
	Scottish and	Welsh localities?

body:
How about for towns with two names which are similar, but spelt
differently:

e.g. Cwmbr?n (Welsh) and Cwmbran (English) in Wales.

(In case that 'a' didn't come out correct it is an a-circumflex)

Should the name /with/ diacritics be the name of the article or the name
without ?

Fran

PS. My gut reaction would be to have the English names, its whats in all
the guide books etc. But I know that its wrong, we should be using the
local names and I try to myself - even if my friends brand me
pretentious! :) I wonder if there is any guidance on this we could take
from other organisations?

On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 13:10 +0000, Cormac Lawler wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/11/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > For purely practical considerations, I would suggest using the English
> > > > name for a Romanian audience. Chances are, if they have happened to
> > > > hear of these places before, they would be more familiar with the
> > > > English name, and, in addition to that, English pronunciation is more
> > > > intuitive when reading Romanian than that of most Celtic languages --
> > > > imagine how horribly most Romanians would mangle Caerdydd, An Uaimh,
> > > > or Corcaigh.
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > >
> > >
> > > To be honest, I agree - that's what I was thinking too.
> > >
> > > Cormac
> >
> >
> > But the weird thing is that the Irish name will have to be listed first in
> > the infobox, since it's the first official verison. In that case, won't it
> > be a bit odd to use the English variant for the title, which is really the
> > "secondary" variant?
> >
> > So far, most admins on the Romanian Wikipedia seem to favour English names.
> > I do see their point of view. I've had many personal experiences where I've
> > told Romanians about visiting "Caerdydd" and they correct me "Cardiff", as
> > if I didn't know how to pronounce English! My point was that such ignorance
> > is really unfortunate, and should be reversed in such way. I'm not saying
> > that Wikipedia should become a hotbed of Gaelic revivalist rhetoric, but we
> > can at least try and teach people that there's more to these regions than
> > just English!
> >
> > Another thing - could someone please do some recordings of Irish names.
> > Celtic languages are really hard to pronounce, but they are really beautiful
> > and unique languages. It would really help a lot if people could just go to
> > Wikipedia to find out how to pronounce key Irish (Welsh, Scottish) toponyms.
> > Hopefully we'll come back in 20 years and see a great deal more use of these
> > languages.
> >
> > Go raibh maith agaibh!
> >
> > Ronline
> >
> > PS: Another can of worms is created by Basque toponyms. For example, should
> > one use San Sebastian, Donostia, or San Sebastian-Donostia for that
> > respective Basque city? How about Catalan toponyms? I think most Wikipedias
> > have just taken the easy way out and chosen Spanish names, but to me at
> > least, that sounds awfully superficial and ignorant.
>
>
> I suppose the main point for me is that English is the 'lingua franca'
> of Ireland, while Irish is the official language. (It should be
> pointed out here - and you probably already know - that Irish had been
> in decline before it was made the official language - an attempt to
> revive it from the top down.)
>
> I really appreciate your efforts to educate the Romanian Wikipedia
> (and people), Ronline. However, i still think it would be best (or
> least confusing) if the names were referred to by the names people are
> familiar with - If someone saw a link on the Romanian Wikipedia to
> somewhere called "Baile ?tha Cliath", they probably wouldn't know
> where it was, which is a shame, because they *do* know where Dublin is
> (I hope :-)). One way of keeping it less confusing while maintaining
> your desire to educate people about Irish would be to include the
> Irish name in each article, at the very beginning. Most English names
> of places in Ireland come from the Irish anyway, so it would be a way
> of giving people some context. For example, you could have:
> "Ballymore, ("Baile M?r" in [[Irish]], meaning "big town) is a town in
> [[County Kildare]], [[Ireland]].."; and "Kildare ("Cill Dara" in
> [[Irish]], meaning "oak forest") is a [[county]] in [[Ireland]]..."
> Ok, so you've never heard of that place, but you get the picture?
>
> Likewise for the Basque names, how many people are going to have heard
> of "Donostia"? But they might well have heard about San Sebastian,
> and, when they go to that article, they can find out about the Basque
> region, language, food etc.
>
> Mmm, Basque food..
>
> And also, in case you're wondering, that place is actually called
> Ballymore Eustace, and it's where i'm from :-)
>
> Is mise, le meas,
>
> Cormac
>
>
>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Please enable bot filtering on en.wp watchlists

body:
> It is easy enough to fix. It's a two-line fix, which will bring the
>watchlist back to only shoing the latest edit. What the change will
>*NOT* do, is showing the last edit by a non-robot editor. So I'm
>afraid that this will not be usefull.
>
It would be useful to people like me whose watchlists are overrun by
bots, essentially providing the same relief as the Hide Bots filter on
Recent Changes. Over half the edits currently on my watchlist are from
bots, and at worst, I've seen over 2/3 of the edits being by bots,
making the watchlist difficult to read.

brian0918


body:
-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of The Cunctator
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 2:07 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny

>Better communication from the front office would improve people's
>appreciation, naturally.

>There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front
>office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the
>pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with
>I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We
>can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going
>on.

Am I wrong, or is Jimmy the only one from the "front Office" to contribute
to this thread? I think he's been perfectly civil and not at all aggressive.

Brian


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Carl F?rstenberg wrote:
> > I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny
> > is (who is Danny?)
>
> Danny is a longtime Wikipedia who is an admin in English Wikipedia, and
> globally a steward.  He works for the foundation, primarily as my
> assistant, but increasingly in working on grant applications.  At the
> present time, he's on the frontline for angry and/or strange phone calls
> of which the volume we get at the Foundation office I think too many
> people do not fully appreciate.

Better communication from the front office would improve people's
appreciation, naturally.

There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front
office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the
pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with
I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We
can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going
on.

People talking about dickishness probably won't help either.

Apropos of nothing, it's "n'est-ce pas", not "n'est pas"...

I have to admit, I keep on seeing the "If you only understood..."
argument repeatedly made; that doesn't seem helpful. When
communication breaks down, it's the responsibility of both parties to
repair it.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Please try and refrain from making personal attacks.

Fran

On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 07:14 -0800, future civilization wrote:
> No only that Marky and try not to play who's the smart around here. You breake the decision taken by Anthere here where she told you to stop editing  and respecting the result of the vote. You're not allowed to edit that wikipedia again? Do you understand this? There was a vote about it, I don't care if you didn't vote or not. Many other people voted and now its time for you to accept it.
>
>   It's so hard for you to accept this? You must accept Anthere's decision and don't you ever edit that wikipedia again. You russian anti-romanian.
>
>
>
>
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>   The edits to which Mr Civilization is referring are a number of
> articles I created, for example http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997
>
> Now, the last time I checked, creation of stub articles is hardly a
> bannable offence.
>
> Mark
>
> On 10/03/06, future civilization wrote:
> > Several IPs coming from Phoenix, Arizona (home address of Mark W.) made several edits (and also several personal attacks) on Moldovan Wikipedia thus breaking the result of the vote to delete the Moldovan Wikipedia and decision taken to freeze/or to rapidly delete this wikipedia made here.
> >
> > A ban for Mark for about a month maybe will chill him out and stop him from doing disruptive edits any more. A respect for the result of the vote would be too much from him as he immediately lounched himself in personal attacks.
> >
> > There is no more talking about this Moldovan Wikipedia, people decided to close and delete it. Now, its your job to do it and respect the decision.
> >
> > There was a vote for a long period of time: one month. Everybody had the chance to express himself and now the result of the vote shows very clear: people want DELETION OF MOLDOVAN WIKIPEDIA. Now, put this in practice.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > future civilization wrote:
> > Yes, indeed. Mark doesn't have any authority and/or credibility, as himself admits. He is very interested in closing/opening any wikipedia but he uses a very disruptive language towards the new users. This disruptive language shows his limited comprehension on wikipedias in various languages. In this way he discourage people who are enthusiast to close/open new wikipedias. He has no power to decide for such a decision at the very least he wants to ask for attention. Maybe this is explained by his early age in life. You can't have any authority having only 16-17 years.
> >
> > His style is to demolish everything and has a strongly counter-effect, a strong negative one on what happens in Wikipedia. I checked his blocking log and shows a mean, very strong negative behaviour.
> >
> >
> > You appear to take an extremely keen interest in the closing / opening
> > of wikipedias, more so than the average poster on this list. I am just
> > worried about newcomers who are excited about creating a wikipedia
> > getting discouraged because someone, without the community's backing,
> > acted as though he had the power to approve or deny the request. This
> > came out extremely strongly in your last message to Manuel.
> >
> > I am not saying that you should stop being interested in the creation
> > and destruction of wikipedias -- I am just worried about your style of
> > discussing them.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Silas Snider wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: RIPEMD160
> >
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > >> Question:
> > >> What authority do you, Mark, have over the creation of a new wikipedia?
> > >> Are you a developer? I don't seem to ever see you contributing patches,
> > >
> > > Put simply, I don't. I have no real authority. However, I do know that
> > > I have some sway, because different people have varying degrees of
> > > respect for me in the matter of languages. There are certainly those
> > > who don't trust me at all or who think I don't know much of anything
> > > at all about languages, but I think most people believe that I know
> > > quite a bit about languages but at the same time have problems with
> > > other things about me so they take most of my opinions/advice under
> > > advisement.
> > >
> > > If some developer wants to create a Tetum WP immediately, I have no
> > > say in that. However, I'm pretty sure that the Wikimedia community as
> > > a whole will have much more enthusiasm for the creation of a Tetum
> > > Wikipedia if its test-wiki is more vibrant and is in 100% Tetum.
> > >
> > >> etc. on wikitech-l. In fact, almost all the posts that I can see of
> > >> yours involve some kind of discussion over orthography or languages in
> > >> various wikipedias, especially when discussing closing one.
> > >
> > >>From what you say here, it seems to me that you're a relative
> > > newcomer. Before the Moldovan controversy, there was almost never any
> > > discussion about closing Wikis, given that the only 2 that have been
> > > closed so far are Toki Pona and Klingon.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure what's wrong, though, with the fact that almost all of my
> > > posts are about languages -- is that a bad thing? Certainly, if you
> > > look at other posters, many of them tend to have areas of particular
> > > interest as well.
> >
> > No, its not a bad thing, I was just trying to establish why I thought
> > you were not a developer (in case it turned out that you were).
> >
> > >
> > >> My point is: on what grounds do you consider it your job to be the
> > >> arbiter of when a proposal for wikipedia creation is good enough?
> > >
> > > Who said I do consider it my job? Besides you, that is.
> >
> > You appear to take an extremely keen interest in the closing / opening
> > of wikipedias, more so than the average poster on this list. I am just
> > worried about newcomers who are excited about creating a wikipedia
> > getting discouraged because someone, without the community's backing,
> > acted as though he had the power to approve or deny the request. This
> > came out extremely strongly in your last message to Manuel.
> >
> > I am not saying that you should stop being interested in the creation
> > and destruction of wikipedias -- I am just worried about your style of
> > discussing them.
> >
> > >
> > > Mark
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Silas Snider
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
> > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> >
> > iD8DBQFEESQELeGN0GHdxM0RA1bOAJ9cv+yhyURgAsRZtglt96Iqr+4gsACfQIRl
> > hWdkEhAIf6yWdx9WCmbi3AU=
> > =K/Tl
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
> Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail  makes sharing a breeze.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front
> office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the
> pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with
> I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We
> can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going
> on.

Can you tell me about the "needlessly aggressive posture"?  Can you tell
me exactly what you would like to know, such that you feel that you're
not being told what's going on?

> I have to admit, I keep on seeing the "If you only understood..."
> argument repeatedly made; that doesn't seem helpful. When
> communication breaks down, it's the responsibility of both parties to
> repair it.

I am entirely unclear as to what else I could communicate here, nor how
much less aggressive I could possibly be.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
On 3/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > You've changed a lot from the early days.  What started out as a
> > laissez faire "let the community decide for itself" attitude has grown
> > more and more despotic over time.
>
> Microsoft probably didn't have internal policies and procedure
> documents when it was just Gates and his buddies working in their
> apartment, either.
>
> Jimbo seems to be demonstrating a responsible attitude in the face of
> one of the few threats that could really hamper Wikipedia's continued
> existence or growth. And at present, a grand total of one article is
> "office protected". Think about the Seigenthaler incident...*anything*
> that prevents that happening again is probably worthwhile, even if the
> odd toe gets stepped on, and even if we do temporarily give in to
> squeaky wheels.

Wikipedia isn't Microsoft.  There's a big difference between running a
non-profit organization and running a for-profit corporation.  Even
then, Wikipedia isn't really either.  Wikipedia, after all, has been
around before the foundation was even created.  It is in essence a
community of people, which can and will exist with or without the
foundation.  Lawsuits aren't going to tear apart Wikipedia, not unless
the community gives itself over to the foundation.

Anthony


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interlanguage Links - The Interwiki-Link-Checker

body:
Marc Dangers wrote:
> It seems that a lot of people from different Wikipedias are reading this
> list, and my post is about internationalisation of Wikipedia, so I decided I
> will try to bring a certain tool to your attention. It’s the
> Interwiki-Link-Checker
> (http://tools.wikimedia.de/~flacus/IWLC/start.php) by de:user:Flacus, a
> brilliant tool which has facilitated the generation of >100.000
> Interlanguage-Links within the last six month.
>
> As you might know, there are still lots of articles in one Wikipedia which
> have the same name as articles in aWikipedia of another language, but are
> *not* linked by an Interlanguage-Link (e.g. en-de: ~6300 articles, sv-fr:
> ~2300 articles and
> nl-pl ~1400 articles, as of the dumps from February 2006).
>
> This articles have been listed for a lot of language combinations by
> de:user:SirJective. But not all articles with identical names are about
> the same subject, so human work is needed to decide whether an
> Interwiki-Link can be automatically inserted by a bot. In order to make
> this decision easy and comfortable, there is a brilliant tool called
> Interwiki-Link-Checker written by de:Benutzer:Flacus.
>
> You might want to check the FAQ at
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Flacus/Wikipedia_Interwiki-Link-Checker/en
>
> or just try it at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~flacus/IWLC/start.php
> Thanks for your time and (maybe even) help, I can just invite you to try
> the tool, it's fun and you're reading (and editing) quite a lot of stuff
> you wouldn't stumble upon otherwise.
>
> If you do like the tool and want to spread the word, visit
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Flacus/Wikipedia_Interwiki-Link-Checker/Propaganda,
>
> help and new ideas are welcome.
>
> Cheers, de:Benutzer:Mdangers
>
>
This is an absolutely wonderful tool, both in concept and in actual
use.  Thanks for doing this!

-- Neil


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 10/03/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:

> From what I have heard (and I may be wrong), there are proposals to use the
> Celtic names in the English Wikipedia as the article title. I personally
> think the English names should stay, but that the Celtic names should be
> used in other languages. When you said that the Celtic names are mostly
> "official" over the English versions, do you mean that the Irish version is
> now used in English as well? I know that there is a movement towards this in
> Scotland, where the Outer Hebrides are now known officially in English as
> "Na h-Eileanan Siar".

Na h-Eileanan Siar (or, as 99% of people south of there call it, the
Outer Hebrides) is a special case - it's the only area of Scotland
with a Gaelic-speaking majority. In general terms, for Scotland, going
with the conventional English name is a good bet, with the "Celtic"
name as an alternative in special cases like the above. I can't speak
for Ireland or Wales, though.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
	under any circumstances

references:
<fbad4e140603101225r27d675f4i@mail.gmail.com>
	<ce4d55b80603101842h5da7b8e4yb7523fb77c246a26@mail.gmail.com>
	<kp2512h9urtieqo6o7s6uddfp4h1rvkvk2@4ax.com>
	<ce4d55b80603110201p57738c3dvb218fd695d2d55e2@mail.gmail.com>
	<npc5129rgnmkt0t2g9b03u1bjdadknpe3u@4ax.com>

body:
To be fair, the tag that geni removed was placed there by me.  Danny
had protected the article in question on February 10, inserting the
standard "protected" notice and placing the comment "[[WP:Office]]"
into the protection log.

On 8 March, I found it protected and did the normal check in the
history and the talk page.  Finding nothing special, and considering
this to be a forgotten protection, I unprotected.  When informed that
the page had been protected under [[WP:OFFICE]] I reprotected and at
that point inserted the following tag at the head of the article:

"This article was protected on 15:32, 10 February 2006 by
[[User:Danny]] as an [[WP:OFFICE|Office Action]]"
[[Category:Protected]]

After that, things seem to have become a little surreal.  Someone
removed the notice and was briefly desysopped by Danny.

I'm glad that we now have a template {{OFFICE}}.  Pages protected
under this tag are placed in the category "Office Protected", a
subcategory of "Protected", and are unlikely to be mistaken for
routing protections.  Unprotections under this tag should be cleared
with the person who performed the protection.  Only people delegated
by Jimbo to perform such protections (currently I think that is Danny)
may perform administrator actions under [[WP:OFFICE]].


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
In message
<648f108b0603100121k2d9e159fw19f370215b94b095 at mail.gmail.com>,
"Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)"
<rowikipedia-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>Hi,
>
>I'm planning to work on a number of articles related to Irish, Scottish and
>Welsh localities on the Romanian Wikipedia. I am currently in a dilemma as
>to what name to use - the Celtic variant or the English variant. I have
>realised that most non-English Wikipedias use the English variant - so that
>place names such as "Cork", "Dublin", "Edinburg" and "Cardiff" are used. For
>the exception of Dublin, perhaps, many of these place names, particularly
>smaller towns, do not have native variants in languages such as Romanian,
>German, French, etc.
>
>So, why should the English name be used in this situation? Wouldn't the
>Celtic name be more appropriate? Celtic languages are co-official in
>Scotland and Wales, while in Ireland, Irish is the first official and
>national language. Due to this, I would prefer to use placenames such as
>"Corcaigh", "*An Uaimh*" (for Navan), "*Chill Dara" *(for Kildare), etc.
>However, this sounds quite odd and are not frequently used, even though they
>are the first official name. What do others think? I am inclined to use them
>so that people are actually educated that there exists an Irish language as
>the first official language of Ireland. Too often, people in Romania say
>"the Irish speak (just) English" and stop it at that. They're surprised, for
>example, when I tell them about Irish names such as "Baile Atha Cliath" for
>Dublin, etc.

Writing from the point of view of the Welsh Wikipedia, I'd suggest using
the English name for simplicity, with the Welsh equivalent listed in the
introduction, so that your readers both know that there is a Welsh name
and what it is. Have a redirect from the Welsh name to the English one,
as I presume most Romanians are more likely to know the English name. If
you're doing a thorough list of Welsh place names the problem is fairly
limited, because most villages will only have a Welsh name, it's just
the cities and towns which may have two. There are a few places where
the Welsh name has now supplanted the traditional English name, even in
English usage - "Caernarfon" rather than "Carnarvon", and "Conwy" rather
than "Conway".

We had a similar problem in the Welsh Wikipedia - most countries in
Europe and the Commonwealth, and a few other countries, have a
traditional Welsh name, but we got into a dispute over how to name or
spell more obscure places - apply a Welsh transliteration to the English
name or not? Wsbecistan or Uzbekistan (using two letters which aren't
even in the Welsh alphabet!!). Eventually we settled on using the
country names used in the only Welsh-language atlas ever published -
which generally uses English country names! I'm not totally happy with
that decision, and some of our articles are consequently in a horrible
mess - China is at "Tsieina" with a redirect from "Tseina" which is
another popular spelling, but "Peoples Republic of China" is at
"Gweriniaeth Pobl China".  Traditional city names are used where
available - Paris, Llundain/London, Brwsel/Brussels, Rhufain/Rome, but
we had to get creative with Moscow and finally settled on "Moscfa", as
the local name transliterated. Russian names are "interesting" - Pyotr
Ilyich Tchaikovsky - should that be Tsaicofsgi? Should we change Pyotr
to Pedr? Should we change Ilyich to ap Ilia? Actually we decided to keep
the usual English spelling, recognising that few music lovers are likely
to bother trying anything else, though we did include a redirect for
Pedr I.T.!
We're very aware that as we're putting a fair volume of text online in a
language which doesn't have a very large web corpus that any wrong
decisions we take may stick, and affect the direction the language
develops in the future, so we tend to be a bit hesitant about taking
these decisions...

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


body:
On 3/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:21:03 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >Wikipedia isn't Microsoft.  There's a big difference between running a
> >non-profit organization and running a for-profit corporation.  Even
> >then, Wikipedia isn't really either.  Wikipedia, after all, has been
> >around before the foundation was even created.  It is in essence a
> >community of people, which can and will exist with or without the
> >foundation.  Lawsuits aren't going to tear apart Wikipedia, not unless
> >the community gives itself over to the foundation.
>
> How sure are you of this?  If the foundation and its assets were
> closed down tomorrow, how long would it take to rebuild Wikipedia from
> mirrors and rebuild the community?
>
Foundations with their assets don't close overnight.  Maybe the
website might go down, but that'd be a government action, a foundation
(board) action, or a computer glitch - a lawsuit would take at least a
few days before an injunction was issued.  That said, a replacement
site could be put up within hours.  The community might become
somewhat fragmented, though, although I could see some ways in which
that is actually a good thing.  In the long run a peer-to-peer system
is probably what's best for Wikipedia.

> The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced
> shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed
> irrevocably.
>
I'm sorry that I have no idea of the facts surrounding that situation,
so I can't comment.  Was h2g2 released under a free license?

> It strikes me that the foundation stands between the community and
> hostile reactions to what the community says and does.  I've seen at
> least one case where people tried to use Wikipedia to further a
> grievance, and in that case killing the content was entirely correct:
> subsequent investigation showed that it bore only the most tenuous
> relationship to the truth.
>
> I understand there is an issue with the Justin Berry article right
> now.  People are jumping up and down over it, it seems - why?  It's
> only been a couple of days.  It's like the whole Brian Peppers thing;
> in the end life's too short to worry about the *temporary* absence of
> something on Wikipedia, just go out and write an article on something
> else :-)
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Steve Bennett stated for the record:

> I'm having a little trouble picturing situations where one could
> become corrupt from this awesome power of telling people to blank
> pages and start again. Other than that, I agreed with your post :)

Well, numerous people have explained at great length how corrupt the
ArbComm is, and I can say with great certainty that it is so corrupt
that I haven't received any of my pay-offs in several years now.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Let us all go worship Loki.
 sean at epoptic.org | He's the Norse God of Chaos,
                  | Which is why this verse
                  | doesn't rhyme or scan or nuthin'.
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body:
> Writing from the point of view of the Welsh Wikipedia, I'd suggest using
> the English name for simplicity, with the Welsh equivalent listed in the
> introduction, so that your readers both know that there is a Welsh name
> and what it is. Have a redirect from the Welsh name to the English one,
> as I presume most Romanians are more likely to know the English name. If
> you're doing a thorough list of Welsh place names the problem is fairly
> limited, because most villages will only have a Welsh name, it's just
> the cities and towns which may have two. There are a few places where
> the Welsh name has now supplanted the traditional English name, even in
> English usage - "Caernarfon" rather than "Carnarvon", and "Conwy" rather
> than "Conway".

In this case would it be more trouble to standardise on Welsh (with
English redirects) or English (with Welsh redirects) regarding
cities/places with two names. You are right though, it is mainly big
places (relatively speaking) that have two names, small villages tend to
just have a Welsh name (i.e. [[en:Mwnt]] or [[en:Blaenau Ffestiniog]]).

There are even some like Wrexham, Wrecsam which are fairly mutually
intelligible and in fact the Welsh would probably be easier for
Romanians to pronounce.

Anyone fancy doing a numerical count of all the places in Wales with
names in 1. Welsh, 2. English & Welsh, 3. English :))

Fran


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Mostly, when people call us on the phone with a beef, quiet upset, they
>are not complaining about a neutral presentation of the facts.  They are
>upset because someone has written a one-sided hack job.   Often it is
>*not* libel, but just bad writing.
>
>What should we do in such a case?  Well, our fundamental goal *as a
>community* is to write a really great encyclopedia.  Being jerks toward
>people who have their feelings hurt *and* who know nothing about how we
>operate, does not strike me as a very useful way to respond.
>
>Rather, we should respond quickly and politely to their concerns,
>including in most cases, *blanking or deleting the article* and
>*starting over*, being *extremely* careful as a community to get all the
>facts right, to strike a fair and neutral tone, and to cite sources even
>more extensively than normal.
>
>
I was with you until this last paragraph, which seems to be so far off
the mark as to be ludicrous.

What we should do, of course, is what we always do.  Someone should tell
us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article.  Blanking
and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme
cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.

I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of
political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to
get staff to complain to us.  Some Chinese leader?  Sure, criticize
him.  But Harry Reid?  Hands off!

-Mark


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>
>>>>It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy
>>>>and good customer service.  If you are thinking of this as "the
>>>>foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the
>>>>way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.
>>>
>>>
>>Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people
>>with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we
>>have initiated a relationship.
>>
>>
>
>Right.  It's probably a very "American" way of putting it.  "Good
>customer service" in the case of Wikipedia should apply to everyone we
>are in contact with in any way.
>
>
Yes, but this absolutely cannot be done at the expense of our primary
customers---people who are looking for information.

-Mark


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry
> phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a
> week, or ten a day?

The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public
must be on the order of 50 per day.  The phone is constantly ringing,
say, every 10 minutes or so.  6 per hour.

That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate
estimate.

> What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems
> to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24
> hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door
> step"?

They vary widely.  Some are just inquiries.  Some are looooong
explanations of some trivial point.  Some are extremely upset.  Some say
that there is an error.  Some say libel.  Some are sane. Some are raving
lunatics.  Some are in tears.

> How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries,
> in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or
> whatever?

It varies depending on the call.


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>I have to admit, I keep on seeing the "If you only understood..."
>>argument repeatedly made; that doesn't seem helpful. When
>>communication breaks down, it's the responsibility of both parties to
>>repair it.
>>
>>
>
>I am entirely unclear as to what else I could communicate here, nor how
>much less aggressive I could possibly be.
>
>
The main lack of communication is between the front office and
Wikipedians who are editing (or interested in editing) an article when
it's protected without any explanation.

Take a look at en:Talk:Harry_Reid, for example.  There was just a
message by Danny that there were "some concerns", without any comment on
to what they were, how they might be fixed, or really anything else
besides "Harry Reid doesn't like our article".

It's hardly only newcomers who are baffled and offended by this sort of
thing, either.  Among the numerous complaintants on that talk page are
several Wikipedians who have been here for 2+ years (e.g. User:Jamesday).

-Mark


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy
> and good customer service.  If you are thinking of this as "the
> foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the
> way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
>

The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.

> What should we do in such a case?  Well, our fundamental goal *as a
> community* is to write a really great encyclopedia.  Being jerks toward
> people who have their feelings hurt *and* who know nothing about how we
> operate, does not strike me as a very useful way to respond.

No. Explaining how things work is probably the best responce.

> Rather, we should respond quickly and politely to their concerns,
> including in most cases, *blanking or deleting the article* and
> *starting over*, being *extremely* careful as a community to get all the
> facts right, to strike a fair and neutral tone, and to cite sources even
> more extensively than normal.

blanking or deleting the article= writeing off the work. Not a nice
way to treat the previous writers. Telling them what is wrong might
work better.

It is a bit difficult to tell how many references [[Jack Thompson
(attorney)]] had since two different systems were being used but it
was probably over 100 (absolute minium=99). how many do you want?

> That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.

I seem to recall the justification was something to do with legal
worries. Are you stateing that is not the case?

> Ideally, it should be thought of as an action that could and should be
> taken by any good Wikipedian in the face of a bad article.  A very firm
> "blank and rewrite with proper cites" is a perfectly valid move for
> articles like this.
>

/Temp exists for such purposes. Outright blanking is pretty much
garenteeded to be reverted.
--
geni


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> I understand there is an issue with the Justin Berry article right
> now.  People are jumping up and down over it, it seems - why?  It's
> only been a couple of days.  It's like the whole Brian Peppers thing;
> in the end life's too short to worry about the *temporary* absence of
> something on Wikipedia, just go out and write an article on something
> else :-)

Or, in the Justin Berry case, go out and write an article *on this
topic*.  It needs to be rewritten.  There's nothing stopping people from
doing it, and I would love to have a great article written quickly by
trusted Wikipedians.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Delirium wrote:
> I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of
> political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to
> get staff to complain to us.  Some Chinese leader?  Sure, criticize
> him.  But Harry Reid?  Hands off!

Not at all.  Harry Reid?  Edit it.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Take a look at en:Talk:Harry_Reid, for example.  There was just a
> message by Danny that there were "some concerns", without any comment on
> to what they were, how they might be fixed, or really anything else
> besides "Harry Reid doesn't like our article".

The Harry Reid article is no longer protected, and hasn't been for some
time.  As has been explained repeatedly, the *length* of that protection
was an error, due to Danny being out of town and us all being new to
this sort of thing.

In my opinion, there was no need to *protect* that particular article in
that particular case.  Assume Good Faith as we work out the kinks in the
process. :)

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 3/11/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:

> Yes, Ant, exactly. If this project is to be *inclusive*, then
> everybody who joins has to be brought up to speed.
>
> I have a picture of Danny in my head from Wikimania 2005, but I
> struggle to recall his surname.
>
> Using first names (or handles or nicknames) only is a method to keep
> the "in crowd" in, and the "out crowd" excluded.

Actually, Danny is also [[User:Danny]], and he makes it clear who he
is on his userpage(s). So I don't think using his first name is
intended to keep anyone out at all; unless you want to say "Danny
Wool, Wikimedia Foundation staff" every time you refer to him I think
that's the clearest way to refer to him among Wikimedians.

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]], like the sig says

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
"Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
- Leonardo da Vinci


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>Delirium wrote:
>>
>>>I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of
>>>political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to
>>>get staff to complain to us.  Some Chinese leader?  Sure, criticize
>>>him.  But Harry Reid?  Hands off!
>>
>>Not at all.  Harry Reid?  Edit it.
>
>
> Um no. It was formaly protected under WP:OFFICE and was never
> unprotected by them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OFFICE

"Current pages under protection

The following pages are currently under OFFICE protection

    * Jack Thompson (attorney) Danny 20:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

All others may be unprotected."


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>In my opinion, there was no need to *protect* that particular article in
>that particular case.  Assume Good Faith as we work out the kinks in the
>process. :)
>
>
I guess I'm unsure what the process *is*.  I've only ever encountered
the process in the form of unilateral decrees: "This article is
protected by order of the Wikimedia Foundation; don't touch!"

If it's supposed to be a softer process, why is it even a "process" at
all?  There are numerous ways in which incorrect or biased information
can be brought to the attention of editors to be fixed.  The preferred
method is to post a message on the talk page, or just be bold and edit
the article yourself.  For people not that adventurous who want to call
up the Foundation and complain by phone instead, whoever answers the
phone can pass along those complaints by posting a message on the talk
page of the article: "Harry Reid's office called us up and has issues
with the following sections/information: [x], [y], [z]; it would be
great if someone could fix this ASAP".

-Mark


body:
On 3/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Um no. It was formaly protected under WP:OFFICE and was never
> unprotected by them.
>
> That is why I suspected that Danny may forget about cases (hardly
> uncommon admins offen forget what they have protected).

So if you think he's forgotten about it (entirely possible), why not
ask him (since he's around pretty much all the time) rather than
removing a [[WP:OFFICE]] protection without discussion? If he has
forgotten I expect it wouldn't hurt to wait a short period of time
longer for a "yes, go ahead".

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
"Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
- Leonardo da Vinci


body:
On 3/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > It is not just about legalities, but also about common human courtesy
> > and good customer service.  If you are thinking of this as "the
> > foundation against the community" then you're not thinking of it in the
> > way that I'm thinking of it, so let me explain further.
> >
>
> The people we are writeing articles about are not customers.

Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people
with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we
have initiated a relationship.

We owe them a moral duty to be factual and fair, and this duty also
jibes well with our aim of writing a great encyclopedia.

In the interests of the encyclopedia, we should also take reasonable
steps to avoid any problems in our relationship with them escalating
to the point where they completely lose confidence in our willingness
to listen to their complaints.  We could, after all, be in the wrong.
Being the number one reference site in the world packs a sting, both
ways.

Wikipedia is not a news site, it has no deadline.  We can afford to
put things away temporarily in order to facilitate discussion.
Takedown is not only a recognised way of responding to legal
complaints, it's also very good practise in public relations even
where there are no legal issues.


body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry
> > phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a
> > week, or ten a day?
>
> The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public
> must be on the order of 50 per day.  The phone is constantly ringing,
> say, every 10 minutes or so.  6 per hour.
>
> That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate
> estimate.
>

Which number is that?  The one on your user page says everything but
press inquiries will be ignored.

Anthony


from_name: Michael Bimmler

body:
You can send a mail to wikipedia-l-owner at wikimedia.org to get the
attention of the list moderators.
Regards
Michael

On 3/11/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> This looks like a good time for the list moderator to step in. Who is
> currently administering this mailing list?
>
> ~Mark Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Regards
Michael Bimmler


body:
On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >In my opinion, there was no need to *protect* that particular article in
> >that particular case.  Assume Good Faith as we work out the kinks in the
> >process. :)
> >
> >
> I guess I'm unsure what the process *is*.  I've only ever encountered
> the process in the form of unilateral decrees: "This article is
> protected by order of the Wikimedia Foundation; don't touch!"
>
> If it's supposed to be a softer process, why is it even a "process" at
> all?  There are numerous ways in which incorrect or biased information
> can be brought to the attention of editors to be fixed.  The preferred
> method is to post a message on the talk page, or just be bold and edit
> the article yourself.  For people not that adventurous who want to call
> up the Foundation and complain by phone instead, whoever answers the
> phone can pass along those complaints by posting a message on the talk
> page of the article: "Harry Reid's office called us up and has issues
> with the following sections/information: [x], [y], [z]; it would be
> great if someone could fix this ASAP".
>
> -Mark

In most cases when people mail Wikimedia to complain that's exactly
what happens.

But sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get people to do that (and
it's simply unreasonable to expect Danny or anyone else answering
complaints to do all the cleanup work; the volume of complaints is too
high). And then the good editors, who know how to cite credible
sources, and how to write from an NPOV, have to battle it out with all
the people who want to add the questionable material back in.
Meanwhile, the complaining party is getting more and more upset that
the untrue/unverifiable information remains.

I note that for every WP:OFFICE protection there are loads and loads
of "sorry you're unhappy with this article, can you tell us what's
incorrect to help us fix it?" mails that no one gets much bothered
about. Office actions are for when that won't suffice.

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
"Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
- Leonardo da Vinci


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mo/Ro

body:
Mark Ryan wrote:
> This looks like a good time for the list moderator to step in. Who is
> currently administering this mailing list?
>
> ~Mark Ryan

Brion... you know, the guy who will freeze the Moldovan wikipedia and
wiktionary as soon as he gets the time :-)

Right.

1) Agreement to close the project.

The community voted on the issue. Even if I might agree with Node that
there might be some issues in the vote, I think that there was a rather
straigthforward feedback.

Angela and Jimbo are both agreeing the projects in mo should be closed.
We agreed that if there is a re-opening one day, it will be per board
decision (or any person or committee with a delegation to approve new
language opening). But right now, let the discussion on the matter be
*closed*. Give us all a break please.

2) Closing the project

We are waiting from Brion to freeze them. This is not urgent, not a
matter of vandalism.  If not done in a couple of days, please remind
Brion :-)

3) Vandalism

I would prefer that Mark stop editing the project. Now, let us be fair,
creating a bunch of articles is not vandalism. It will not either
benefit, nor hurt the project if a couple of additional pages are added
before it is closed. If you mind, just blank or delete them. More
wisely, just do not pay attention. It is no big deal.

4) Civility

Future civilization, the tone of your emails is not making people happy
on the list. I can not say if Node is making personal attack on the wiki
(I am not convinced, usually Mark is civil), but what you do here is
*exactly* personal attacks. This is not acceptable. You are on moderation.

Anthere


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 11 Mar 2006 at 15:17, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
> > There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front
> > office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the
> > pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with
> > I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We
> > can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going
> > on.
>
> Can you tell me about the "needlessly aggressive posture"?  Can you tell
> me exactly what you would like to know, such that you feel that you're
> not being told what's going on?

I think this sort of "feel" is coming from the sum total of various
postings to talk pages involved in such actions... and I don't even
know if any of the comments are actually from people speaking on the
Foundation's behalf as opposed to outside commentators, but you see
things like:

What happened is there was an issue that the m:Wikimedia Foundation
needs to handle... The details on what happened will probably not be
released publically... I cannot comment on the nature of it... We
must trust that the people at the WikiMedia Foundation know what
they're doing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jack_Thompson_%28attorney%29

For some people, this perhaps brings to mind the situations they face
with regard to other companies and organizations out in the "real
world"... their employers, for instance.  Most workplaces are
probably organized in a manner in which there is a "cabal" of
"bigwigs" in charge, and from time to time they retreat into closed-
door meetings about which it's "none of your business" what they say
or do there if you're a mere peon employee; but they just might
emerge from the meeting having made a management decision to lay off
your entire department.

And maybe there are very good reasons why things work that way, but
people get peeved at having to deal with that sort of thing anyway,
and hope for a retreat into something more congenial, run in a more
cooperative way; that's what Wikipedia probably is for many, and
that's why there's such a critical reaction to the (so far rare)
instances where things *are* imposed by management fiat.

And I apologize if anything I said implied I didn't trust you, or
that I thought you had somehow "sold out" (or were likely to do so in
the near future).  I do trust you.  It's just that personal trust in
an idealistic founder is most likely not a good permanent foundation
for an institution that's expected to endure.  I believe you hope and
expect Wikipedia to exist in some form over 100 years from now (as an
actual live, active thing, not just a fossilized static dump, though
such dumps will undoubtably be of interest to future historians
researching the culture of the early 21st century).  This requires
having a structure that can outlive its founder without becoming
corrupt and self-serving, a very difficult thing to achieve; look at
the history of the International Olympic Committee for one such "bad
example".

As it's been said, "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts
absolutely"; also, "with great power comes great responsibility."
Such is the philosophy one can learn from comic books... :-) The sort
of power where a central "office" can make arbitrary, unexplained
changes and lock them down without regard to community consensus,
while it's absolutely needed in certain situations (legal
liabilities, etc.) is also capable of enormous potential of abuse; if
the position of making and enforcing such decrees ever falls into the
hands of somebody who's just a power freak who enjoys imposing things
on people for no good reason, such powers would be greatly enjoyable
to that person at the expense of everybody else.  "Governments like
emergency powers; that's why they create emergencies!"

You're doing a great job, and you really haven't directly intervened
very often.  People are just seeing a possibly disturbing trend in
that, as Wikipedia gets more visible, the necessity of such
intervention has been a more frequent thing that it used to be (even
if still very rare).

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>I note that for every WP:OFFICE protection there are loads and loads
>of "sorry you're unhappy with this article, can you tell us what's
>incorrect to help us fix it?" mails that no one gets much bothered
>about. Office actions are for when that won't suffice.
>
>
And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases?  Does the power
and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it?  It does seem
that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere
peons when they complain...

-Mark


body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> Everyone is a customer. :)
>

Then ignoreing the work of a large number of customers simply in order
to keep one customer happy is not exactly logical

> > No. Explaining how things work is probably the best responce.
>
> It is of course *part* of the best response.
>

True. You should use the article talk page to tell editors what the
problem is. I still don't know why [[Harry Reid]] was protected
although I guess it had something to do with the whole Abramoff thing.

Protecting is bad because it means we can't fix the article. Deletion
is bad because it means we have problems getting acess to any of the
past information.

> > I seem to recall the justification was something to do with legal
> > worries. Are you stateing that is not the case?
>

> Instead of "seem to recall" why don't you actually read it?  And then we
> can have a coherent discussion, ok?
>
> --Jimbo

I have but I also read the other contents of my inbox. Strangly most
of the people yelling at me have been citing legal concerns. Probably
because they relise how weak the "we should ignore the community in
order to keep the subjects of articles happy" case is.

I'm sure you know about the fuss about the [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad
cartoons controversy]]. We know that article is upseting people
(indeed two people have been upset enough to tell me I'm going to
Hell). Should we blank and delete it?

[[David Miscavige]] will probably complain about his article as will
[[Kaz Demille-Jacobsen]] if she ever finds out about it. Blank and
delete?

[[Uri Geller]] is not going to be happy that his article states that
people think he is a con man. Blank and delete?

[[Sylvia Browne]] is unlikely to be too happy about the contents of
her article. Blank and delete?

--
geni


from_name: Gordon Joly

body:
At 10:58 -0500 11/3/06, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>[[SNIP]]
>
>That's what WP:OFFICE is all about -- good customer service.

[[SNIP]]

Indeed, and I agree with the sentiment.

But who are the "customers"? A customer is somebody who buys
something. Nobody buys a view of Wikipedia, because it is free.

I turn to a well known source for confirmation.

:-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer

"A customer is someone who makes use of the paid products of an
individual or organization. This is typically through purchasing or
renting good (economics) or services."

And this page needs a cleanup, BTW.

--
Gordo (aka LoopZilla)
gordon.joly at pobox.com
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
http://www.loopzilla.org/


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >>And honestly, you should know me well enough by now.  No amount of
> >>political, financial, or legal leverage in the entire universe would
> >>persuade me to do the wrong thing by our mission.  We have, as a
> >>community, principles and integrity.  This is what we are all about.
> >
> >
> > You've changed a lot from the early days.  What started out as a
> > laissez faire "let the community decide for itself" attitude has grown
> > more and more despotic over time.
>
> In what way?  I think that's a pretty silly claim.
>

Well, looking back, it actually isn't quite as severe as I thought.
Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=&user=Jimbo+Wales&page=&limit=500&offset=0
there does seem to be a jump in relatively recent admin actions.  And
there's the whole arbcom election fiasco and the previous appointment
of Kelly Martin.  There's the "experiment" taking away the ability for
users that aren't logged in from creating pages.  There's the banning
of anonymous proxies.  And of course now there's the whole office
action situation.

But looking back you seem to have been at least somewhat held back in
dealing with the situations, moreso than my apparently faulty memory
led me to believe.

Anthony


from_name: Manuel de Sousa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mark Williamson and the request for Tetum language WP

body:
I would just like to add my own comments on all this.

At first, by the way Mark acted, I really thought he was the one who could
decide if a new WP would be created or not. And, I agree, he was a bit harsh
on the way he expressed his opinion.

Anyway, I think his arguments are valid and I really didn?t felt threatened
or intimidated by his words. I'm already 40 years old, so I guess I don?t
get intimidated that easily...

Well, give me a few weeks and I'll come back, hopefully, with o more vibrant
test-wiki in Tetum!

But plz don?t forget that, apart form being the youngest country in the
world, East Timor is also the poorest country in Asia... So, all help is
needed!

Regards,
Manuel de Sousa

-----Mensagem original-----
De: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] Em nome de future civilization
Enviada: s?bado, 11 de Mar?o de 2006 6:39
Para: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Assunto: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Tetum language - reminder/
analogywith deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia

Yes, indeed. Mark doesn't have any authority and/or credibility, as himself
admits. He is very interested in closing/opening any wikipedia but he uses a
very disruptive language towards the new users. This disruptive language
shows his limited comprehension on wikipedias in various languages. In this
way he discourage people who are enthusiast to close/open new wikipedias. He
has no power to decide for such a decision at the very least he wants to ask
for attention. Maybe this is explained by his early age in life. You can't
have any authority having only 16-17 years.

  His style is to demolish everything and has a strongly counter-effect, a
strong negative one on what happens in Wikipedia. I checked his blocking log
and shows a mean, very strong negative behaviour.

  You appear to take an extremely keen interest in the closing / opening
of wikipedias, more so than the average poster on this list. I am just
worried about newcomers who are excited about creating a wikipedia
getting discouraged because someone, without the community's backing,
acted as though he had the power to approve or deny the request. This
came out extremely strongly in your last message to Manuel.

I am not saying that you should stop being interested in the creation
and destruction of wikipedias -- I am just worried about your style of
discussing them.

Silas Snider <swsnider at gmail.com> wrote:
  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Mark Williamson wrote:
>> Question:
>> What authority do you, Mark, have over the creation of a new wikipedia?
>> Are you a developer? I don't seem to ever see you contributing patches,
>
> Put simply, I don't. I have no real authority. However, I do know that
> I have some sway, because different people have varying degrees of
> respect for me in the matter of languages. There are certainly those
> who don't trust me at all or who think I don't know much of anything
> at all about languages, but I think most people believe that I know
> quite a bit about languages but at the same time have problems with
> other things about me so they take most of my opinions/advice under
> advisement.
>
> If some developer wants to create a Tetum WP immediately, I have no
> say in that. However, I'm pretty sure that the Wikimedia community as
> a whole will have much more enthusiasm for the creation of a Tetum
> Wikipedia if its test-wiki is more vibrant and is in 100% Tetum.
>
>> etc. on wikitech-l. In fact, almost all the posts that I can see of
>> yours involve some kind of discussion over orthography or languages in
>> various wikipedias, especially when discussing closing one.
>
>>From what you say here, it seems to me that you're a relative
> newcomer. Before the Moldovan controversy, there was almost never any
> discussion about closing Wikis, given that the only 2 that have been
> closed so far are Toki Pona and Klingon.
>
> I'm not sure what's wrong, though, with the fact that almost all of my
> posts are about languages -- is that a bad thing? Certainly, if you
> look at other posters, many of them tend to have areas of particular
> interest as well.

No, its not a bad thing, I was just trying to establish why I thought
you were not a developer (in case it turned out that you were).

>
>> My point is: on what grounds do you consider it your job to be the
>> arbiter of when a proposal for wikipedia creation is good enough?
>
> Who said I do consider it my job? Besides you, that is.

You appear to take an extremely keen interest in the closing / opening
of wikipedias, more so than the average poster on this list. I am just
worried about newcomers who are excited about creating a wikipedia
getting discouraged because someone, without the community's backing,
acted as though he had the power to approve or deny the request. This
came out extremely strongly in your last message to Manuel.

I am not saying that you should stop being interested in the creation
and destruction of wikipedias -- I am just worried about your style of
discussing them.


body:
Delirium wrote:
> And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases?  Does the power
> and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it?  It does seem
> that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere
> peons when they complain...

And it seems that you are making assertions with absolutely no facts to
back them up.

No, powerful people are *not* given more deference.  If anything, people
who are *not* powerful are given more deference.

If you want to be angry just for the sake of being angry, I can't stop
you, but what I can do is stop responding to comments like this.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>What we should do, of course, is what we always do.  Someone should tell
>>us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article.  Blanking
>>and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme
>>cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.
>>
>>
>
>That's not a reasonable request. The Jack Thomspon email is pretty
>instructive. Seems like the story goes like this:
>
>1. Wikipedia community writes an article on famous person X
>2. X's lawyers write to the Wikimedia foundation, citing vague
>"errors" and "defamatory material", and threatening to sue the arse
>off it if the article is not deleted instantly.
>3. Wikimedia foundation is supposed to cite the specific errors in the
>article, so they can be edited out, and thus play chicken with X's
>lawyers?
>
>The point is: you delete the page, the problem goes away. Any other
>solution, and the problem - X's lawyers - is still there. You can
>argue that your page is NPOV and not defamatory. But you won't be
>doing it in court - the Wikimedia Foundation will be. So, from that
>point of view, it's totally their call what to do about it.
>
>
Jimmy claims that legal threats are rarely the issue, though, so this
line of reasoning doesn't apply.  If legal issues are involved, I'm
willing to give more deference, at least long enough for the Foundation
to be able to investigate further.  But that doesn't seem to be the
problem here.

-Mark


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases?  Does the power
>>>and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it?  It does seem
>>>that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere
>>>peons when they complain...
>>>
>>>
>...
>
>
>>No, powerful people are *not* given more deference.  If anything, people
>>who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
>>
>>
>
>Heh, true, the most deference ever given to the subject of an article
>lives in a nursing home and hadn't even complained!
>
>
In that case, one of the overtly stated reasons for removing the article
was that it could bring Wikipedia bad publicity.  So, while the subject
may not be powerful, apparently there was a fear that it would offend
other people who are.

-Mark


body:
On 3/11/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> We can not leave potentially wrong, libelous, and/or slanderous text up while the article >is being reviewed and checked per an Office Action.

Can people make up their mind. Is the justifaction due to legal reasons or not?

>Everything is still in the history and all the good bits will be put
back once they are >confirmed and cited.

Blank and delete remember?

>Not doing this opens the foundation up to lawsuit by unnecessarily
pissing off the >complaining party while we clean up whatever valid
issues (if any) they have with the >article.

A bit hard to clean up a protected article.

> Without commenting on those particular references - Not all references are equal. Just >because somebody publishes a completely wrong and biased fact somewhere else does >not give us an OK to cite that information.

Depends who published it. [[Killian documents]] seems to exist.

> Good customer service is a great way to prevent pissing people off so much that they >would be willing to sue. So the two are closely linked.
>

However WP:OFFICE actions seem desighned to maximise the number of
people who threaten to sue us.

> And reverting an Office Action is pretty much guaranteed to lead to at least temporary >desysoping and blocking.

So are many things.

>We also need to feel bold enough to do the right thing when we see an
utter piece of
> POV crap and start over by blanking and verifying each and every fact.

Problem is that WP:OFFICE actions have not for the most part touched
our piles of POV crap.

> Perhaps a better way to do that is via HTML comments ; text would be commented out >until it is verified.
>
> -- mav

That is a tactic I have used from time to time.

--
geni


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 16:25:23 +0000, you wrote:

>blanking or deleting the article= writeing off the work. Not a nice
>way to treat the previous writers. Telling them what is wrong might
>work better.

I think you've rather missed the point.  An office action is a quick
and temporary  fix for an immediate problem: there is a clear
implication that the problem will be solved by the community in the
usual way we solve problems of accuracy and balance.  After the
pressing problem has been fixed.

And if the complaint was frivolous or vexatious, or was simply a
misunderstanding, there is not much point in embarrassing whoever
complained.  It's not like it happens often enough to raise concerns
over abuse, even if we didn't trust Jimbo and Danny's discretion.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
Carl F?rstenberg wrote:
> I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically
> example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about
> him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?

Of course not.  Why are you even asking me that?

--Jimbo


body:
Carl F?rstenberg wrote:
> It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation
> could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I
> think it's better to be prepared)

If George W. Bush calls and "requires" that the article about him is to
be removed indefinitely I'll laugh at him and call the New York Times.

Now, could we please get back on topic?

--Jimbo


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
On Mar 11, 2006, at 5:32 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
> If George W. Bush calls and "requires" that the article about him
> is to
> be removed indefinitely I'll laugh at him and call the New York Times.
>
> Now, could we please get back on topic?

Why the New York Times and not the Washington Post?

Oh. Wait. On topic. Sorry.

-Phil


from_name: Franz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Back-Up of a wiki --> some problems with mysqldump

body:
Hello,

I own the WikiSysop-Account of this wiki:
http://wikinition.common-culture.net/index.php/Hauptseite

I would like to make a Back-Up of it.

I've got this command:
mysqldump --host=hostname --user=username --password=userpassword --opt
name-of-database

I've put in:
mysqldump --host="http://wikinition.common-culture.net/index.php/Hauptseite"
--user="WikiSysop"
--password="mypwd"
--opt all-databases

nothing happens. I get a message how to use mysqldump. Any help?

Thank you,
Franz


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> And honestly, you should know me well enough by now.  No amount of
>> political, financial, or legal leverage in the entire universe would
>> persuade me to do the wrong thing by our mission.  We have, as a
>> community, principles and integrity.  This is what we are all about.
>>
>
> You've changed a lot from the early days.  What started out as a
> laissez faire "let the community decide for itself" attitude has grown
> more and more despotic over time.
>
> Anthony
>
>
Whoa. Despotic, you say?

Given the history of Wikipedia, Jimbo's been the most hands-off project
leader in the history of the Internet. Indeed, the community has been
left to decide almost everything for itself; and this has proved, in
almost all cases, to be the right thing to do.

Perhaps some of the current problems, such as the userbox nonsense and
general culture wars, are partly due to this -- without continual
intervention from above, many people may be unaware, or have forgotten,
that the Wikimedia Foundation and its corporate structure even exists
(and, in some cases, may also have forgotten about the whole "Wikipedia
is an encyclopedia" mission thing).

Somebody's got to deal with these problems when they happen. Who would
you prefer?

-- Neil


from_name: Carl Fûrstenberg

body:
I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny
is (who is Danny?)


from_name: Olve Utne

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Hello everyone,

First of all: Don't worry -- this is my one and only posting on this topic.

The vote, while being clear in itself, has some VERY troublesome
aspects to it. And it doesn't seem to address what ought to be the
primary concern, namely to provide information to those
Moldovan-speakers who read Cyrillic script better than Latin script.

With the risk of being called names by some (please don't), I make
the following honest proposal:

1) Let the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia be locked *but accessible* for now.

2) Install a Latin--Cyrillic converter similar to the one on SR:WP on
RO:WP. It does NOT need to be perfect, but it should render the text
REASONABLY intelligible in Cyrillic. It also (at least for now) needs
to work only from Latin to Cyrillic, since the editors seem to work
almost exclusively in Latin script.

3) Make a little snippet on the main page of :ro: to note that one
can view this WP in Cyrillic for the benefit of people in
Transdnistria and whoever else might prefer viewing the contents in Cyrillic.

4) Then -- and ONLY then --, archive the Cyrillic version and make it
an automatic redirect to :ro:.

This will *respect the decision* made in the vote, while it also
takes care of an important aspect which was left out of the process
-- namely, making the information available to ALL
Romanian-/Moldavian-speakers -- and especially those who may need
such information the most...

Respectfully,

Olve Utne

(from the admin team on Nynorsk Wikipedia)


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/11/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> You've changed a lot from the early days.  What started out as a
> laissez faire "let the community decide for itself" attitude has grown
> more and more despotic over time.

Microsoft probably didn't have internal policies and procedure
documents when it was just Gates and his buddies working in their
apartment, either.

Jimbo seems to be demonstrating a responsible attitude in the face of
one of the few threats that could really hamper Wikipedia's continued
existence or growth. And at present, a grand total of one article is
"office protected". Think about the Seigenthaler incident...*anything*
that prevents that happening again is probably worthwhile, even if the
odd toe gets stepped on, and even if we do temporarily give in to
squeaky wheels.

My only question is...who *is* Danny, and why is he blessed with
surnamelessless?

Steve


body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > Can people make up their mind. Is the justifaction due to legal
> > reasons or not?
>
> Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Not helpful. People being upset is not a reason to use admin powers.
Legit legal threat may  be.

> In most cases there will be no need to protect an article.
> Semi-protection should be enough.  Conditions may vary.
>
> Assume Good Faith, ya see.

[[Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy]] is very restictive on when
semi-protection can be used.

>
> > However WP:OFFICE actions seem desighned to maximise the number of
> > people who threaten to sue us.
>
> ?  Not at all.
>
> --Jimbo

Legal threats sent to the helpdesk mailing list jumped after the John
Seigenthaler event. Repeated WP:OFFICE actions will have a simular
effect.

--
geni


body:
On 3/11/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >>Without commenting on those particular references - Not all references are equal. Just >because somebody publishes a completely wrong and biased fact somewhere else does >not give us an OK to cite that information.
> >>
> >>
> >Depends who published it. [[Killian documents]] seems to exist.
> >
> >
> Because the publication itself turned out to be notable, but their
> contents should not be cited as fact in Wikipedia. It's not pertinent to
> the issue that we can't republish libel and excuse it by citing the
> libel to another source.
>

We've been though this WP:OFFICE extends beyond pure legal issues.

--
geni


from_name: Mark Ryan

body:
This looks like a good time for the list moderator to step in. Who is
currently administering this mailing list?

~Mark Ryan