from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
A good portion of the articles about India are empty articles or have
only a map or flag. They should probably be deleted. They were created
by a user whose sole aim was to increase the number of languages for
that article.

True Jesus Church has been the subject of similar efforts by an
individual, but it's not quite as bad (no empty pages and the like),
but there are a few of them that are just written in English with a
"request to be translated".

Linking to such non-articles is not constructive.

Mark

On 28/11/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> And here the pages that, as far as I could see, got the most extra interwiki
> links during these last two months. Only pages that had 1 or more interwiki
> links last time have been included, though. Also, where I found that there
> was a different page on that title 2 months ago, pages have been removed. A
> remark on the cause of the growth has been given, where I could discern it.
>
> 1. India +82 to 233
> 2. 2006 +57 to 150
> 3. Informatics +41 to 42 (other languages used to link to [[computer
> science]])
> 4. Musa (genus) +38 to 45 (got a load of links that are also linked from
> [[banana]])
> 5. Persian Empire +31 to 35 (was in a vandalised state 2 months ago)
> 6. Octave Mirbeau +31 to 46 (someone seems to have translated a stub into
> many languages)
> 7. Ban Ki-moon +30 to 35 (next secretary-general of the UN)
> 8. Frankfurt +30 to 53
> 9. Tortoise +28 to 39 (now linked to many languages that have a single
> article for turtles and tortoises)
> 10. 2005 +28 to 122
> 11. Advertising +27 to 29
> 12. September +27 to 92
> 13. Muhammad Yunus +25 to 33 (won the Nobel Peace Prize)
> 14. Korn +25 to 49 (has a new album?)
> 15. Hesse +25 to 65
> 16. Adam's Rib +24 to 26 (incorrectly linked to Adam in several languages -
> reverted)
> 17. Orhan Pamuk +24 to 47 (won the Nobel Prize for Literature)
> 18. Freedom of speech (international) +23 to 24 (linked to pages that are
> also linked from Freedom of speech)
> 19. Tributary +23 to 24
> 20. Republic of China +23 to 65
> 21. Wakker Prize +22 to 25 (mistake: had included Category:Prizes rather
> than been put in it)
> 22. Toxicity +22 to 30 (has been linked to pages on [[poison]] instead. I
> think the old links were better)
> 23. Game Boy +21 to 22
> 24. Anna Politkovskaya +21 to 28 (was murdered)
> 25. Karlstad Municipality +21 to 31
> 26. Bhopal (state) +19 to 20
> 27. Olimpia +18 to 19 (disamb; now linked to disambiguation pages Olympia as
> well as Olimpia)
> 28. Edmund Phelps +18 to 21 (Nobel Prize winner in economics)
> 29. S?gol?ne Royal +18 to 32 (French socialist presidential election
> candidate)
> 30. Battle of the Frontiers +17 to 18 (incorrectly linked to Battle of
> Jutland; reverted)
> 31. Geothermal heating +17 to 18 (linked to geothermal energy/power in many
> languages)
>
> A few more that got high because of the news:
> Grameen Bank +17 to 22 (co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize)
> Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of
> Kazakhstan +16 to 17 (film released internationally)
> Borat +16 to 23 (lead figure of aformentioned film)
> Nancy Pelosi +14 to 19 (stays Democratic leader in the House, now majority
> leader)
> Daniel Ortega +14 to 25 (winner Nicaragua presidential elections)
> Surayud Cholanont +12 to 14 (new prime minister of Thailand)
> September 2006 +12 to 16 (recent month)
> Pieter Willem Botha +12 to 23 (died)
> Robert Gates +11 to 12 (U.S. secretary of defense nominee)
> October 2006 +11 to 13 (recent month)
>
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/28/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is a discussion about wikipedia, however, and not wikinews.
> There are some subjects that an encyclopedia can not and should not
> touch because there is simply no real research on the subjects yet.

We are not applying that standard to any number of popular culture subjects,
for which there exists no serious research on the particular aspect of
popular culture.  There is research into popular culture as a whole, and
there are for example literary and sociological journals dedicated to
serious review of aspects of popular culture in many different media (one
distant electronic aquaintence has a masters degree in the literary review
of science fiction, to somewhat oversimplify).

But the vast majority of popular culture items have not been subjected to
independent research and are not documentable other than the particular item
of culture itself.

We have nearly *all* that documented, right now.

Is GNAA less notable than (example pulled via short random walk)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kanto_Gym_Leaders#Blaine ?

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


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] common and lacking interwiki links

body:
And here the pages that, as far as I could see, got the most extra interwiki
links during these last two months. Only pages that had 1 or more interwiki
links last time have been included, though. Also, where I found that there
was a different page on that title 2 months ago, pages have been removed. A
remark on the cause of the growth has been given, where I could discern it.

1. India +82 to 233
2. 2006 +57 to 150
3. Informatics +41 to 42 (other languages used to link to [[computer
science]])
4. Musa (genus) +38 to 45 (got a load of links that are also linked from
[[banana]])
5. Persian Empire +31 to 35 (was in a vandalised state 2 months ago)
6. Octave Mirbeau +31 to 46 (someone seems to have translated a stub into
many languages)
7. Ban Ki-moon +30 to 35 (next secretary-general of the UN)
8. Frankfurt +30 to 53
9. Tortoise +28 to 39 (now linked to many languages that have a single
article for turtles and tortoises)
10. 2005 +28 to 122
11. Advertising +27 to 29
12. September +27 to 92
13. Muhammad Yunus +25 to 33 (won the Nobel Peace Prize)
14. Korn +25 to 49 (has a new album?)
15. Hesse +25 to 65
16. Adam's Rib +24 to 26 (incorrectly linked to Adam in several languages -
reverted)
17. Orhan Pamuk +24 to 47 (won the Nobel Prize for Literature)
18. Freedom of speech (international) +23 to 24 (linked to pages that are
also linked from Freedom of speech)
19. Tributary +23 to 24
20. Republic of China +23 to 65
21. Wakker Prize +22 to 25 (mistake: had included Category:Prizes rather
than been put in it)
22. Toxicity +22 to 30 (has been linked to pages on [[poison]] instead. I
think the old links were better)
23. Game Boy +21 to 22
24. Anna Politkovskaya +21 to 28 (was murdered)
25. Karlstad Municipality +21 to 31
26. Bhopal (state) +19 to 20
27. Olimpia +18 to 19 (disamb; now linked to disambiguation pages Olympia as
well as Olimpia)
28. Edmund Phelps +18 to 21 (Nobel Prize winner in economics)
29. S?gol?ne Royal +18 to 32 (French socialist presidential election
candidate)
30. Battle of the Frontiers +17 to 18 (incorrectly linked to Battle of
Jutland; reverted)
31. Geothermal heating +17 to 18 (linked to geothermal energy/power in many
languages)

A few more that got high because of the news:
Grameen Bank +17 to 22 (co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize)
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of
Kazakhstan +16 to 17 (film released internationally)
Borat +16 to 23 (lead figure of aformentioned film)
Nancy Pelosi +14 to 19 (stays Democratic leader in the House, now majority
leader)
Daniel Ortega +14 to 25 (winner Nicaragua presidential elections)
Surayud Cholanont +12 to 14 (new prime minister of Thailand)
September 2006 +12 to 16 (recent month)
Pieter Willem Botha +12 to 23 (died)
Robert Gates +11 to 12 (U.S. secretary of defense nominee)
October 2006 +11 to 13 (recent month)

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [17983] trunk/phase3/includes

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

greg at svn.wikimedia.org wrote:
> +	/**
> +	 * Returns true if this database uses timestamps rather than integers
> +	*/
> +	function realTimestamps() {
> +		return $this->mRealTimestamps;
> +	}

If something like this is necessary at all, why bother with a member
variable? The function should simply be overridden appropriately.

> -	/* Offset must be an integral. */
> -	if ( !strlen( $options['offset'] ) || !preg_match( '/^[0-9]+$/', $options['offset'] ) )
> -		$options['offset'] = '';
> +	/* Offset must be an integral, unless the db is using timestamps */
> +	$dbr =& wfGetDB( DB_SLAVE );
> +	if ( !strlen( $options['offset'] ) ||
> +		( !$dbr->realTimestamps() && !preg_match( '/^[0-9]+$/', $options['offset'] ) ) )
> +	$options['offset'] = '';

This looks like it may be unsafe; the code here is pretty hairy and I
didn't see any _other_ validation of input.

1) Confirm you didn't introduce an SQL injection attack vector on PG
systems.

2) Consider simply fixing the code to properly validate input and
produce portable output, the way it's supposed to.

There should be no need to check or care what internal format the
database uses when dealing with form parameters.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFbPdVwRnhpk1wk44RAvRFAJ9VKJ8Ad222YbfLXUiR47c7fs7TsgCg3Vl8
90F2U1HzQot2lkBiKhnhcbs=
=MNOJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

>
> The reader can only supply judgment about the credibility of a source if
> there is some information upon which to exercise that judgment. The
> reason blogs get singled out as a category is not because they cannot
> ever be useful sources, but because so few of them provide the
> information a reader would need to decide how it stacks up against other
> sources. (I assume that the reader won't make the decision based on the
> fact that it's a blog, since as you rightly point out, that's only a
> label for the medium in general.)

But we can realistically say that about *any* source.  I mean, do you
really trust Reuters and their middle east coverage right now?
>
> For example, the existence of independent sources is essential, both to
> maintain a neutral presentation and to avoid gullibly repeating
> falsehoods. But when you have a blog of unknown provenance, it's
> impossible to know whether it qualifies as independent (Wal-Mart Across
> America, anyone?).

Jayson Blair?  Stephen Glass?

The only roadblock we have regarding blogs as sources is that some are
more reputable than others, and filtering the wheat from the chaff is
important.  However, we do that with magazines, books, and journals
already, so it can't be *that* difficult.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Passing variables to articles

body:
On 11/28/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
> > ...  The correct list for discussion on this is
> > mediawiki-l.
>
> What is the NNTP address for mediawiki-l?
>
> I checked:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mailing_lists
> http://dir.gmane.org/index.php?prefix=gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia

It's under Wikimedia, not Wikipedia.

http://gmane.org/info.php?group=gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki

Angela


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> I suggest "Delete anything that makes you uncomfortable."

While Cunctator and I probably see eye-to-eye on the matter of
inclusionism versus deletionism, I think that this response doesn't
really take into account the serious reasons why people did want this
article gone, reasons that had nothing to do with being uncomfortable
with the subject matter.

The problem is that this article had no legitimate sources, not even
close, and after a long period of time, no one was able to come up with
any, since there really are not any.  There is no way to write a proper
article because there is no way to find out the truth in a way that is
reliable.

There is a curious sort of backlash in many cases when the subject
matter *is* a bit uncomfortable.  If this was some obscure blog of the
same general stature, it would have been deleted without a peep.  But
because we are sooooo terrified that we might actually delete something
for the wrong reason, we end up keeping stuff for the wrong reason.

"This group is offensive and stupid and juvenile" is not a good reason
to delete anything, I agree 100%.

But, it is also not a good reason to keep anything.

It's all about whether we can write a proper article with reliable third
party sources and no original research.

--Jimbo


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
This is a discussion about wikipedia, however, and not wikinews.
There are some subjects that an encyclopedia can not and should not
touch because there is simply no real research on the subjects yet.

Some number of years from now we'll know if the GNAA was actually
notable from the serious research done on the subject. This same
research, if it exists, will enable us to write a proper article on
the subject.

There are millions of subjects which do have solid backing research
for us to write about so surely there can be no argument that we'll
run out of things to do unless we abandon verifyability... And
likewise there are plenty of great sources for rumor and opinion on
the internet which aren't wikipedia, so if we do not write about X our
readers will not be starved for information about X. (And if they are,
that's a sign that you're missing a great oppurtunity to open your
own, possibily wiki based, site on the matter)

Wikipedia is not and should not be an attempt to replace the entire
internet. We already have the entire internet and with no solid
demands on verifilibility, neutrality, or copyright non-encoumberance
we often find its utility limited... And without criteria for
inclusion, we often do find it hard to find the good content on the
internet amid a sea of spam and garbage... Google search has a brilant
multibillion dollar company behind it trying to make sure its search
results are good, and now adays they often fail.

Although some of our articles to use print sources that don't exist on
the internet.. It's far more common that our articles entirely contain
material which could be found elsewhere on the internet. Why is it
that pepople still find Wikipedia useful then?  Because of all the
things Wikipedia is not, at lest as much as because of all the things
Wikipedia is.

On 11/28/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What definition of "notable" are you using?  The only definition of that
> > word that matters at Wikipedia is: "A topic is notable if it has been the
> > subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are
> > independent of the subject itself."  That's not true of GNAA, ergo they're
> > not "notable", which simply means that it's impossible to write a properly
> > verifiable article about them.  We don't want to keep an unverfiable
> > article
> > around, no matter how much "consensus" may hoot and holler for it, so we
> > delete it.
> >
> > People who want to know about GNAA can still look them up at ED, which has
> > no problem covering topics that we eschew.
> >
>
> The problem with this trend is that it relegates certain aspects of internet
> culture which tend not to get press coverage into the dustbin.
>
> As much as I hate GNAA and everyone involved in it, it IS notable among the
> realm of internet troll activities.
>
> If we have the (harmless, real, but equally badly documented)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.fan.warlord entry....
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Jordan

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Really? I find it disgusting that it's been deleted. What this shows is
that if you try hard enough, you can indeed ignore consensus.


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Commons reuse FAQ updated

body:
  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

I've tweaked this and filled it out a bit. It's hard writing about
legal issues in very simple grammar; I'd like juriwiki-l in particular
to look over this and check that I haven't oversimplified,
particularly in the "how to comply with this licence" sections.

The only section that hasn't been written yet is content under
GPL/LGPL - anyone think they can write two simple sentences on how to
comply with this licence?

It should probably also be merged with the similar page on meta.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Arbcom-l] Fwd: simple example

body:
On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:49:51 -0700, "Rob Smith" <nobs03 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>"Nobs01 is banned for one year for personal attacks. The ban may be
>renewed for additional years by any 3 administrators after its
>expiration ..."
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others#Nobs01_banned_for_personal_attacks
>is a virtual lifetime ban if I tried to present the facts on the
>Oliver North page, that Oliver North is indeed an innocent man.

Perhaps, if your commitment to The Truth(TM) is so great, you should
have had the foresight not to engage in the kinds of personal attacks
that get you banned.  Just a thought.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being treated as
	absolute policy

body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:36:39 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>(The idea being: speedy patrollers are dealing with a firehose of
>crap, and being human will make mistakes - and that's fine. Then the
>speedy patrol patrollers check the speedies and undelete the erroneous
>speedies - and that's fine too.)

Just so.  I think I untag maybe a quarter of speedies I come to when I
visit the category, of which some are userfied as userpages created in
mainspace by mistake (FSVO mistake); some are taken to AfD as
problematic but not unambiguous; and some I fix in some way.

Having said which, I bet it's less than a quarter if I reviewed it
dispassionately.  I am a bit of a deletionist.  I tried to get an
inclusionist sysopped, to balance out all us heartless deletionists,
but was slapped down.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:41:41 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>One of the big problems with [[WP:RS]] is that it's grossly defective
>and being applied robotically and inappropriately.

At the risk of being flippant, {{sofixit}}.  We have WP:V and WP:NPOV
and WP:NOR - we absolutely must have a decent, working definition of
what defines a source, so that we can apply these.  If the current
definition is terrible, it needs to be improved, not ignored.

My view here is that it is the authority of the source that matters,
not the medium.  But that does require that we legislate Clue, to a
certain extent.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Wikipedia isn't consistent.. We shouldn't let the fact the thousands
of things are done wrong be an excuse for doing things incorrectly.

We accept open submission so if we allow the existance of examples in
wikipedia to drive our standards we will, in effect, have no
standards. I'm sure that would make some people, people editing for
their own self-interests, happy but it would not be good.

Thankfully this point is already obvious to most...

On 11/28/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > This is a discussion about wikipedia, however, and not wikinews.
> > There are some subjects that an encyclopedia can not and should not
> > touch because there is simply no real research on the subjects yet.
>
>
>
> We are not applying that standard to any number of popular culture subjects,
> for which there exists no serious research on the particular aspect of
> popular culture.  There is research into popular culture as a whole, and
> there are for example literary and sociological journals dedicated to
> serious review of aspects of popular culture in many different media (one
> distant electronic aquaintence has a masters degree in the literary review
> of science fiction, to somewhat oversimplify).
>
> But the vast majority of popular culture items have not been subjected to
> independent research and are not documentable other than the particular item
> of culture itself.
>
> We have nearly *all* that documented, right now.
>
> Is GNAA less notable than (example pulled via short random walk)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kanto_Gym_Leaders#Blaine ?
>
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:02:07 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>Everyone agrees that having no sources is, as a whole, bad.  Not everyone
>agrees that wholesale deletion is the answer, however.  It would be
>awfully nice if, instead of changing the culture to remove large swaths of
>articles, we worked on changing the culture to actually, you know,
>collaborate on getting sources.

In most of the cases flagged for speedy deletion, though, that would
be a titanic waste of time and effort.  Most of them have already
consumed more community time than they deserve simply through the
effort of tagging for deletion. I think the aggregate work that goes
into deleting a day's CSD workload almost certainly exceeds the work
that goes into creating it.

What I would like to see is the ability of a good-faith editor to
place an AfD on hold for five days while it is fixed.  Unsourced
articles need to go; those which can be sourced need to be sourced and
kept.  If some sources genuinely can be found then there is absolutely
no problem waiting for that, and then weighing up whether that makes
the article a keeper.  The problem, of course, is preventing abuse by
the POV-pushers and other assorted ne'er-do-wells who seem to think
that a Wikipedia article on their company, band or New Great Thing is
a God-given right.  Prod should (should) be kind of like this, in that
a prod tag can be removed if an article is fixed up.

Trouble is, we are so weighed down with absolute junk that some good
ones are inevitably going to be swept up with the crap.  That's why I
wanted you to have the sysop bit, so you could check deleted histories
and maybe help to rescue some of the better ones.  You can always ask
me for a history undeletion for a review, of course.  As long as it's
not a reality show contestant, of course... ;-)

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:23:38 -0700, "Rob Smith" <nobs03 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Thank you.  I've appologized but I don't suppose I'll ever live it
>down.  The unique aspect is, it was a one-time error, and not a
>manner, habit, or practice.

You could always appeal.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Really, the *entire* article was unverifiable?
That is very hard to believe.
Why were those sources called into question if it wasn't the dead tree thing
cited in an earlier email?

Mgm


body:
On 11/28/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote
>
> > I see no reason why we should be flexible about sources.
>
> I do. Inviting inflexibility on sources is to ignore 'good taste'.
>
> >If it hasn't got
> > sources it can be deleted, regardless whether this is a policy or a
> > guideline.
>
> But it need not be deleted. Especially if it is a good article, otherwise.
> If people hold back a needed article because they are afraid of deletion, we
> lose, not gain.
>
> >It may be kept if someone bothers to find the sources the author
> > should have included, but that might not happen.
>
> Certainly won't, if it's already gone.
>
> > The only way to make people use sources is hammering it in, because no
> > matter how many times it is said, people will ignore it. Perhaps
> deletion
> > will get some backsides into gear.
>
> Stick, carrot, what's the difference? Mainly stick is an easier, more
> clear-cut policy. Which will drive away people who feel they have to master
> 'reliable sources policy' (bad joke) before posting anything.
>
> Look at it this way: good Wikipedians are those that post material that
> survives into later versions of pages. Aggressive deletion of unsourced
> material cuts down the pool of 'good Wikipedians'. It has always been a bad
> idea to imply, for example, that you need an academic library handy, to work
> on scholarly topics.
>
> Charles

I'm not questioning the type of source. I'm trying to get people to source
articles to start with. Whether it's an academic library or a website. Of
course, we should make an attempt to source articles that don't have any as
I discussed in the unsourced speedy centralized discussion, but we should do
something to actively discourage a bad practice. If forcing people to write
down what they read to get the information drives people away there's
something wrong with their attitude.

Mgm


from_name: Christopher Hagar

body:
It was "are likely to be deleted" before, but this might not have been
strong enough. There is a lot of junk on New pages. Aside from the time
spent by the creator who takes the time to write the page because he wants
his favorite band on Wikipedia or whatnot, and who then complains about its
deletion because he misunderstands what Wikipedia is, it is a tremendous
amount of time wasted just deleting them all. This is first, therefore, a
discouragement against creating bad articles.

It is also an accurate description of what happens. Most new articles
without reliable published sources are deleted, typically for notability
reasons. Articles that look promising need sources added to them, but
articles which cannot possibly cite reliable published sources, for they do
not exist, are deleted.

There is a proposal to speedily delete new unsourced articles, at <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Speedy_deletion_criterion_for_unsourced_articles>.
This would be too categorical, but it comes from looking at the onslaught of
complete crap that floods new pages, especially on peak hours, in which it
is difficult to distinguish whether an article is actually about a
verifiable band or person or whether it is an article about the coolest band
ever.

A better solution is to advise users against creating junk in the first
place. Anyone who wants to create an article has or can easily find some
sources to substantiate it, and it is not too onerous to ask that they
simply provide them, or to re-consider whether there exist any sources for
making an encyclopedia article at all.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Wikipedia isn't consistent.. We shouldn't let the fact the thousands
> of things are done wrong be an excuse for doing things incorrectly.

You are presupposing that counterexamples are inherently examples of
things "done wrong." The problem is that this is far from obvious in
many cases. One can't dismiss the issue so easily.

> We accept open submission so if we allow the existance of examples in
> wikipedia to drive our standards we will, in effect, have no
> standards. I'm sure that would make some people, people editing for
> their own self-interests, happy but it would not be good.

Hey now, assume good faith. It's not just people who are editing "for
their own self-interests" that prefer as inclusive a set of standards as
possible under our policies.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Sourcing guidelines may need revision, especially for the future increase in
online news sources. In such case, however, a blog is only as reliable as
its author with regard to the subject for which it used as source. The blogs
in question for this article, while perhaps reliable on political theory or
television, were not reliable with regard to GNAA. It is pretty likely,
actually, that they got their information from Wikipedia either directly or
through the conduit of other websites. They have no expertise in Internet
troll groups.

On 11/28/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/28/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Of those that were independent, they fell into three classes: some made
> > only
> > a passing mention of GNAA, some were articles where GNAA was only
> > mentioned
> > in the message board responses at the bottom, and those that were
> actually
> > *about* GNAA were blogs (there were one or two of those).  We use plenty
> > of
> > internet sources (not the least of which is IMDb, and I've seen plenty
> of
> > citations to online mags like Salon and Slate), but blogs have been
> deemed
> > below the threshhold.
>
>
> Which is ridiculous, because blogs are a medium, not a particular source.
> Banning all blogs as sources is absurd. A much better policy, one which
> respects the reader rather than treating him like a child, is to source
> the
> articles properly. If the source is a blog, the reader can supply his
> judgment in how much credence to give the source. Similarly with say, the
> New York Times, CNN, or the Washington Times, or Pravda.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new non-stupid wiki-en thread

body:
Cool, never heard of him before! I'd use a couple less level-2
headings, but nice job.

Steve

On 11/28/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>
> > So, anyone greatly improved an article lately?
>
> [[Gilbert Murray]].
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images to
	be	deleted

body:
Hello Jimmy, i`m just a small writer from the Netherlands, and trying to
contribute in a category about fossils, and was always very happy to do so,
i have used immages from various sources, almost always products from
official institutes, like educational - and governemental, like Geological
Survey`s and state museums an d University`s from various countrys and
States of Amerika, I`m very surprised to hear that these images, no longer
are accepted, just because they are released in to the public for common
benefit, excluding the commercial ones, commercial in this optic says:
benefit from trade by one person or company,  very disappointing, because i
don`t have any pictures left, never the less,
I realy would appriciate if you could tell me the reason of this "non
acception" because i really don`t undersand this, i do understand that
pictures have to be released from copyrights, so called copyleft, ok,
otherhands i understand that institutes who have putt a lot of energy and
probably even more money to get these pictures (as a result of
investigations and / or studies, they have released these images for the
benefit of the common, and do not ask a payment for these, otherhands they
"protect" the product of these hard work, from another making a profit out
of it, i think this is judgeable, to release they work  and protecting it
from "abusing" it, all institutes work like this from Moskow to Mexico,
Universitys, researchcenters, and so-on,
At the other hand i always understand that wiki projects are a part of a
"non - commercial" institute, so by not accepting "non - commercial"
releases, I realy don`t understand this, about 120.000 images are to be
deleted ?? only in the Netherlands ther are no sustitutes for these pictures
because they are very specialised, it will cost a lot to make them
oureselves, I realy don`t see any explanation to this not-accepting, unless
somehow a part of the wiki concern do have a commercial benefit???? i`m very
concerned about this, because a lot of writers like myself - have no images
left, or have seen them "disappering" ,  if there are no images there is
nothing to write about................

like i said, i`m just a simple writer in the Netherlands, and teacher,
my English is not that well, i hope yoyu can read this,
best regards Henk Klaverkamp
h.klaverkamp at chello.nl


body:
That wording seems to change from day to day. I'm not sure where the
discussion about its wording is held. For a while it insisted on
copyright violations. Sometimes it mentions nonsense, sometimes it
does. Sometimes it says "may be deleted", other times it's "will".

We have similar messages when you attempt to create a new article,
when you save one, at WP:AFC and probably numerous other places. We
should really standardise this stuff.

Steve

On 11/28/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/11/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> > We may need to audit deletions. I'm becoming uneasy about the quick paths.
> But a great deal of discretionary deletion does need to happen.
>
>
> Are there still people keeping an eye on speedies?
>
> (The idea being: speedy patrollers are dealing with a firehose of
> crap, and being human will make mistakes - and that's fine. Then the
> speedy patrol patrollers check the speedies and undelete the erroneous
> speedies - and that's fine too.)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: ting wang

subject: [Wikitech-l] MySQL4 to MySQL5

body:
Hello All,
I am trying to *migrate* a wiki based on MySQL4 to MySQL5, the process i
have done is:
1. export all tables from MySQL4 into sql file.
2. import the sql file into MySQL5.

After that some pages in the new Wiki are empty (in revision of the page
some early revisions can be seen).
What is the problem by my process?

Mediawiki is 1.5.xx with restrict features.

any help is appreciate

Thanks

Ting
--
"The bane of my existence is doing things
that I know the computer could do for me"
                        -- Dan Connolly


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being treated
 as	absolute policy

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:02:07 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
> <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>> Everyone agrees that having no sources is, as a whole, bad.  Not everyone
>> agrees that wholesale deletion is the answer, however.  It would be
>> awfully nice if, instead of changing the culture to remove large swaths of
>> articles, we worked on changing the culture to actually, you know,
>> collaborate on getting sources.
>
> In most of the cases flagged for speedy deletion, though, that would
> be a titanic waste of time and effort.

There is no criterion for speedy deletion related to the absence of
references. Any article listed for speedy deletion on that basis should
simply be delisted.

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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/28/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suggest "Delete anything that makes you uncomfortable."
>

We are not going to delete [[Copyright]].

--
geni


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 11/28/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> That wording seems to change from day to day. I'm not sure where the
> discussion about its wording is held. For a while it insisted on
> copyright violations. Sometimes it mentions nonsense, sometimes it
> does. Sometimes it says "may be deleted", other times it's "will".

It's in [[MediaWiki:Newarticletext]]. There may be some discussion on
the talk page there.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-29

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Passed 449 of 469 tests (95.74%)... FAILED!


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
I was pretty sure that would happen if and when the article was deleted.

--Ryan

On 11/28/06, David Ashby <humble.fool at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone else amused that the GNAA doesn't even have to be here to troll
> the mailing list?  Their article (and the vagrancies of Wikipedia
> policy) is doing it for them.
>
> -Humblefool
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 11/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/11/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I see no reason why we should be flexible about sources. If it hasn't got
> > sources it can be deleted, regardless whether this is a policy or a
> > guideline. It may be kept if someone bothers to find the sources the author
> > should have included, but that might not happen.
> > The only way to make people use sources is hammering it in, because no
> > matter how many times it is said, people will ignore it. Perhaps deletion
> > will get some backsides into gear.
>
> One of the big problems with [[WP:RS]] is that it's grossly defective
> and being applied robotically and inappropriately.

Sure, and that's a reason to question whether a page that's so
disputed/unstable should be linked to from a major part of the
interface. But I think his point was something in the interface saying
that completely unsourced articles are likely to be deleted is
prudent, since everyone agrees that having no sources at all is bad.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Wikipedia isn't consistent.. We shouldn't let the fact the thousands
>of things are done wrong be an excuse for doing things incorrectly.
>
That some are done wrong is a characterization that may not be
relevant.  What may be wrong for one subject area need not be wrong for
another subject area.

>We accept open submission so if we allow the existance of examples in
>wikipedia to drive our standards we will, in effect, have no
>standards. I'm sure that would make some people, people editing for
>their own self-interests, happy but it would not be good.
>
Except for very clear POV pushers. whether some person is editing for
his "own self-interest" cannot usually be determined from the
examination of one article; it is a function of his work viewed as a whole.

>Thankfully this point is already obvious to most...
>
Obvious to you does no imply obvious to most.

Ec

>On 11/28/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 11/28/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This is a discussion about wikipedia, however, and not wikinews.
>>>There are some subjects that an encyclopedia can not and should not
>>>touch because there is simply no real research on the subjects yet.
>>>
>>>
>>We are not applying that standard to any number of popular culture subjects,
>>for which there exists no serious research on the particular aspect of
>>popular culture.  There is research into popular culture as a whole, and
>>there are for example literary and sociological journals dedicated to
>>serious review of aspects of popular culture in many different media (one
>>distant electronic aquaintence has a masters degree in the literary review
>>of science fiction, to somewhat oversimplify).
>>
>>But the vast majority of popular culture items have not been subjected to
>>independent research and are not documentable other than the particular item
>>of culture itself.
>>
>>We have nearly *all* that documented, right now.
>>


from_name: David Ashby

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Anyone else amused that the GNAA doesn't even have to be here to troll
the mailing list?  Their article (and the vagrancies of Wikipedia
policy) is doing it for them.

-Humblefool


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Because we can never know if something done in wikipedia is done right
or done wrong on the on the basis of it being 'done', you are not at
all excused from arguing your position from first principles... Just
as you would be with no examples to support you.

So while examples can be useful for clarities sake, they often cause
confusion about your argument... And as such they should be avoided.

In any case no specific examples were cited here, rather it was
asserted that something was being done wrong on the basis of there
being many counter examples. I was only pointing out that that
particular method of argument isn't likely to be too useful.

We've seen arguments in this thread that GNAA ought to have been kept
which are worth consideration, but "there are lots of examples in pop
culture" just isn't one of them.

On 11/29/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > Wikipedia isn't consistent.. We shouldn't let the fact the thousands
> > of things are done wrong be an excuse for doing things incorrectly.
>
> You are presupposing that counterexamples are inherently examples of
> things "done wrong." The problem is that this is far from obvious in
> many cases. One can't dismiss the issue so easily.
>
> > We accept open submission so if we allow the existance of examples in
> > wikipedia to drive our standards we will, in effect, have no
> > standards. I'm sure that would make some people, people editing for
> > their own self-interests, happy but it would not be good.
>
> Hey now, assume good faith. It's not just people who are editing "for
> their own self-interests" that prefer as inclusive a set of standards as
> possible under our policies.
>
>
>
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 29/11/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Although I think we'd gain more through more agressive approaches, the
>> liberal application of an unref notice would at least give much of
>> wikipedia the work-in-progress look that it deserves.
>>
>
>
> Every time I hit an article without references, sources or even
> external links listed, I put an unref tag on it.
>
Yep, and when it's one of my older efforts, written before the days when
referencing was expected, I then go and dig through my library to figure
*how* I knew what I knew. In a couple cases I had to delete some bits
because I simply couldn't come up with any evidence that it wasn't just
my own imaginings.

Stan


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being
 treated	as	absolute policy

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote
>
>
>> If forcing people to write
>> down what they read to get the information drives people away there's
>> something wrong with their attitude.
>>
>
> Sure. And wiki can't possibly work.
>
> This takes us absolutely back to basics. Wiki is about lowering the barriers to entry, right to the ground. I'm not a 'purist' - I don't say that every way in which WP practice differs from wiki theory is a blemish - but I do recognise a cost attached.
>
> There must be something wrong with _our_ attitude if RS policy is both so contentious (see another thread) and required to define where we set the bar for entry-level editing, rather than post-moderation. Not in fact a simple matter: someone writes here based on something from a blog, and they will not have a good time.
>
As Gmaxwell pointed out, WP is not the Internet - we've already got one
of those. Readers aren't going to value a WP that is no better than the
random drivel they'll find doing [[Special:Random]] on the whole net;
they want a resource that is at least a little smarter or more
knowledgeable than themselves. So the bar has to be a little higher in
some way. I see the wiki process as lowering unhelpful technical
barriers - a student with a spare moment can fix a simple grammatical
error just as easily as a high-paid professional - but that means we
have to consciously adopt policies that will counteract exploitation of
the low bar, such as libels in bios.

I wonder if one of the disconnects might be that older folks remember
the educational system of their youth, and assume that anyone past the
age of 12 "just knows" to cite their sources when writing nonfiction. My
own impression is that the whole concept of citation is not being taught
or enforced anymore, and there is now a generation perfectly happy to
play at being their own "authorities", and who get irate when anybody
questions the validity of whatever they happen to write down.

Stan


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 11/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Why is this thread being allowed to continue on this list?
>>>
>>>
>>The listmods aren't oppressive censors and/or can't be bothered doing
>>anything about it.
>>
>>
>There's no effective technical solution to a bad thread. You can't
>really ban a thread. A much better solution is what charles.r.matthews
>did: draw attention to the fact that thread is stupid, and ask people
>to drop it. Anyone can do that.
>
The most effective solution for dealing with a bad thread is the onset
of boredom.  Eventually they all come to an end.

Ec


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
Tuesday, November 28, 2006, 10:45:22 PM, Taco wrote:

> I applaud the culture shift that has taken place on Wikipedia that has
> allowed [[Gay Nigger Association of America]] to be deleted due to
> verifiability concerns--after seventeen unsuccessful deletion
> nominations.

BTW, if we started this, maybe we should delete 90% of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Webcomics and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Websites

Most of those articles cannot be verified from reliable sources.


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>> What is bad, to look at what WP:RS itself, is having material 'likely
>>  I don't agree that a page of
>> college-level calculus, known and uncontroversial for two centuries,
>> should be deleted for the pedantic reason that it isn't referenced.

Obviously, what's needed is a middle course.

a) Most of the unreferenced material in Wikipedia is accurate. What
do I mean by "most?" 90%? 95%? 99%? Something like that.

b) Most of the accurate-but-unreferenced material in Wikipedia
_could_ be referenced. What do I mean by "most" here? A somewhat
smaller percentage, but still "most." And the amount depends on the
topic area. Yes, there is a substantial amount of material in
Wikipedia that is "original research" or original observation or
direct personal experience, backed only by the testimony of the
editor that inserted it. But most of Wikipedia's content is
verifiable. The editor read it somewhere, even if it was in a
classroom years ago or even if he or she doesn't remember exactly where.

c) Everything in Wikipedia should eventually be referenced or
removed. And by "eventually" I mean in a time frame shorter than the
"eventualists." Not like "Possible-Probable, my black hen/She lays
eggs in the relative When/She doesn't lay eggs in the positive Now/
Because she's unable to postulate how." But its taken years to put
the material into Wikipedia, and it will take a long time to get it
referenced.

d) So, the unreferenced material should be tagged. That calls the
reader's attention to the fact that the material is untraceable, and
its accuracy is hard to judge. Equally important, it also calls
everyone's attention to the fact that verifiability is policy, and
that it is taken seriously.

e) Once tagged, there should be no big rush about deleting the
material, but it should not remain indefinitely, either. How long?
Assuming that there's no specific reason to doubt the material,
months and months.

The _only_ objections to this I can think of is that that the tags
are ugly--which is true but susceptible to a technical fix--or that
we are not serious about verifiability and don't truly want to
restrict Wikipedia content to things that are supported by published
material.

It should also be noted that deleted material is not lost or
suppressed or destroyed or gone. It's in the history and can be
restored at any time if someone finds a reference. And in most cases
courtesy suggests copying the unsourced material to the Talk page to
call attention to the deletion and to facilitate others in finding
references if they want to.


body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

>I will say, though, I had the same problem with the whole paragraph issue
>(my general training was to worry about new referencing when you came to a
>new statement), but the only way to solve this in any particular way would
>be to mandate a certain type of referencing, something I'm extremely
>opposed to at this point.
>
One possible solution might be to begin a reference that applies to the
whole paragraph with a paragraph symbol "?".

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
David Ashby wrote:

>Anyone else amused that the GNAA doesn't even have to be here to troll
>the mailing list?  Their article (and the vagrancies of Wikipedia
>policy) is doing it for them.
>
"Vagrancies"?  :-) Are you sure you don't mean "vagaries"?

Ec
Restricting himself to language comments about apparent malapropisms.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
Although I think we'd gain more through more agressive approaches, the
liberal application of an unref notice would at least give much of
wikipedia the work-in-progress look that it deserves.

On 11/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29/11/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
> > d) So, the unreferenced material should be tagged. That calls the
> > reader's attention to the fact that the material is untraceable, and
> > its accuracy is hard to judge. Equally important, it also calls
> > everyone's attention to the fact that verifiability is policy, and
> > that it is taken seriously.
>
>
> {{unreferenced}} isn't a horribly ugly tag, and it does serve the
> reader without gutting the article.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
Steve Block wrote:

> God yes.  I remember when I worked on the Tintin article, I had a whole
> paragraph which was all sourced from the one source, so I cited that
> source at the end of the paragraph, and someone came along and stuck a
> cite template halfway in the middle of the paragraph.  I think the best
> thing is to use the unreferenced tag and copy the sentences that one is
> questioning to the talk page, where someone can dig a source out and
> work out the best way to cite it.  I'm finding I'm writing some awful
> articles in the sense of referencing tags at the minute.  I rescued
> Kieth Chapman from csd recently, and find I reference the same source 6
> times in the one article.  It just feels like overkill, but I can't
> really work out how to best cite.

One thing I continued from college is rampant overciting, to the point
where you have articles like [[Kroger Babb]] where the <ref> tags are used
with the same book 20 times, and it's either make the reference section
100 lines long of have a half-a-page-width of letters referring to each
use of the book.

I will say, though, I had the same problem with the whole paragraph issue
(my general training was to worry about new referencing when you came to a
new statement), but the only way to solve this in any particular way would
be to mandate a certain type of referencing, something I'm extremely
opposed to at this point.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't, I suppose.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Rob Smith

body:
On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm personally finding this illuminating with respect to the evolution of
> Wikipedia's culture and norms.
>

Thank you for your patience.  This might be expected as Wikipedia
moves into the humanities.  As a non-tech head, I find the endless
discussions at WP:ATT & WP:RS fascinating, while some of the best
guidance available is under their nose at the excellant article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method#External_criticism:_authenticity_and_provenance

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method#Internal_criticism:_historical_reliability


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia (sry)

body:
I don't know how organised it is, but there is certainly a semi-united
effort against the wiki.

Most of the activity happens at the actual Wiki, with people blanking
pages and saying nasty comments on talkpages, with very little of the
activity carrying over to wikipedia-l.

The thing is, Liviu's assertions simply don't stand. It would seem
that the average Moldovan simply doesn't care. There have been several
posts about it at moldova.net. Some people are outraged, others think
it is "cool", and others don't seem to care much one way or the other.

The agitations we have seen in Wikimedia are mostly repeated attempts
from the same few people. Most of them are Romanians: Bogdan Giusca,
Ronline, Danutz, Dpotop, AdiJapan, Bonaparte, etc., all with varying
positions but all leaning towards the deletion of that Wiki.

Our lovely Moldovans here are Liviu, Vania (aka TSO1D), and Oleg
Alexandrov. Oleg Alexandrov took a very middle-of-the-road position
(he believed it should exist, but that it wouldn't ever work because
there would never be enough competent contributors), but he seems to
have given up completely any involvement he had.

Everyone else has just popped in occasionally for votes, or to make a
single comment.

Mark

On 29/11/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > I'm starting to get the feeling that these messages to the mailing
> > list are an organised campaign against mo.wikipedia.
>
> I honestly doubt about the existance of "an organised campaign against mo.wikipedia". Simply, there are people interested in this matter and that are quite not OK with the current status-quo. And they present you with their opinion.
>
> There were three-four such sparkling discussions on this list, and at least in two cases the discussions were started by persons that I've never seen neither on the list, nor on talk pages. And I'm advocating for a status-quo change for quite some time.
>
> When people see something wrong on Wikipedia (in their opinion of course;
> not to be entirely neglected in this case, as it is the opinion of people who speak this language; I am yet to see one Moldovan publicly supporting this mo.wikipedia on this list); so when there is something wrong on Wikipedia, the first natural reaction is to report it to the mailing list, with the appropriate arguments. So that I do not see anything wrong with this. If this problem isn't solved in a year or two, it's quite normal that reports will keep coming in. One way or another there will be people finding out about this Wikipedia and writing to the list.
>
> Moldovans never asked for this Wikipedia and they are quite negatively intentioned towards its existance. And it's about their language that we are talking about. But then, they cannot do much other than report. They cannot nor make a decision, nor implement existing decisions.
>
>
> My brief remarks,
> Liviu
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> George Herbert wrote:
> > On 11/28/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> What definition of "notable" are you using?  The only definition of
> that
> >> word that matters at Wikipedia is: "A topic is notable if it has been
> the
> >> subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are
> >> independent of the subject itself."  That's not true of GNAA, ergo
> they're
> >> not "notable", which simply means that it's impossible to write a
> properly
> >> verifiable article about them.  We don't want to keep an unverfiable
> >> article
> >> around, no matter how much "consensus" may hoot and holler for it, so
> we
> >> delete it.
> >>
> >> People who want to know about GNAA can still look them up at ED, which
> has
> >> no problem covering topics that we eschew.
> >>
> >
> > The problem with this trend is that it relegates certain aspects of
> internet
> > culture which tend not to get press coverage into the dustbin.
> >
> > As much as I hate GNAA and everyone involved in it, it IS notable among
> the
> > realm of internet troll activities.
> >
> > If we have the (harmless, real, but equally badly documented)
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.fan.warlord entry....
> >
>
> (Offline at the moment, so I can't read the article) - Was Warlord from
> MIT?

I don't know where he went to school, but "Warlord of the West" was Dan
Kline at (somethingorother).trw.com in the 1991 timeframe.

The newsgroup came out of UC Berkeley.  It was locally newgrouped by as far
as I recall uncredited parties (probably Shannon Appel or one of the local
BIFFsters), spread to other nearby commercial and educational institutions,
and then if I recall right I sent the first global newgroup for it on a dare
in early 1991, though I never was closely involved with the group.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Vandalism and small wikis

body:
Darko Bulatovic wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>Darko Bulatovic schreef:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Yann Forget wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi,
>>>>
>>>>Some wikis are plagued with vandalism, spams and non sense. Moldavan
>>>>Wikipedia seems the worst at this time, but there have been others too.
>>>>These projects do not bring any free knowledge to anybody, just a lot of
>>>>works for volunteers (hopefully there are great volunteers like Pill)
>>>>and stewards.
>>>>
>>>>Regarding the Moldavan Wikipedia (http://mo.wikipedia.org), the
>>>>administrators election was already cancelled twice because of massive
>>>>attacks. Sincere editors have been discouraged and have left. So the
>>>>wiki is just a battle field for vandals, trolls and sockpuppets. There
>>>>is no expected improvement in the near future because the language
>>>>itself is in the middle of a political controversy.
>>>>
>>>>I forsee the same situation for the Montenegrin Wikipedia if it is
>>>>created. These wikis only give a bad image of Wikimedia. I think that
>>>>the Foundation should take its responsibilities and take some decisions.
>>>>
>>>>Regards,
>>>>
>>>>Yann
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I cant believe my eyes that you Yann say this. How in the God sake you
>>>can forsee such thing about Montenegrin wikipedia? Montenegrin wikipedia
>>>gives bad image of Wikimedia? This statement that you did give bad image
>>>to WMF.  You don't have any  argument to say this and to support your
>>>statement.
>>>Please elaborate this on Montenegrin request for Wikipedia.
>>>
>>>Wikipedia is multilingual and multicultural project, without that WMF
>>>don't have right to use that statement. What was done with Montenegrin
>>>request is just showing what kind of lobbying is possible on WMF.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>Darko bulatovic
>>>President of IT Association of Montenegro
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Hoi,
>>Wikipedia is in its manifestations very much a multilingual project and
>>very much not a multicultural project. Cultural and political reasons
>>are not a reason to start another project. When you read the article
>>about Montenegrin, the language on the English Wikipedia, it explains
>>quite clearly that elements that are to make Montegrin special can be
>>found outside of Montenegro as well. This means that from a linguistic
>>point of view the case for a Montenegrin Wikipedia is pretty weak.
>>
>>There are languages where the cultural and political differences are
>>quite big while there is no call for a split project. The Chinese and
>>the Dutch wikipedias are good examples for this. It would be a good
>>thing if you could find it in you to consider this and retract the
>>application for a Montenegrin Wikipedia.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>Gerard,
>
>I don't understand why you mis interpret my statement. Please notice
>"and". Who advice you on this meter? Political background of languages
>is undiscussable . There must be political background of language, as
>there must be political will to make standard from people language.
>Linguistics rules are just political will on people language. If you
>ignore this your opinion will not be righteous. I will repeat my sentence:
>- Wikipedia is multilingual and multicultural project.
>
Being multilingual and multicultural does not mean that each language
needs its own Bantustan.  South Africa already showed us that apartheid
was a bankrupt system.  Post-colonial Africa had to accept that
abandoning colonial boundaries in favour of a return to tribal areas
would be a recipe for chaos.

To say that languages must be driven by politics is absurd.  Generally
it works the other way.  Tribes develop their own way of talking, and
use that as an excuse for making politics.

>As I sad, culture is connected with language, and culture is spread by
>communication, beside other ways of communication language is primary one.
>
Culture is absolutely connected with language.  But a special language
in a closed circle prevents the culture from being spread to any but
those who already know the language.

> >.When you read the article
> >about Montenegrin, the language on the English Wikipedia, it explains
> >quite clearly that elements that are to make Montegrin special can be
> >found outside of Montenegro as well.
>
>Do you know what you talk about? Do you know who write those articles?
>Do you know anything about specifics of Montenegrin dialect of south
>slavenian languages?
>
I'm glad you use the word "dialect".  If you and a Serb speak with each
other (preferably about a neutral topic) in your own dialects you each
should be able to understand most of what the other is saying.  Thus
they are dialects of the same language.  If you can't understand each
other they are different languages.

>Split of project is not our concern (As Montenegrin people are never
>participated on this projects or they tried on marginal level), you know
>well  why is was divided on Balkan, but you stay quiet on this. Special
>regarding Serbian. Wikipedia is used for spreading of nationalism and
>now when Montenegrin wish to have their own wikipedia on their own
>language, it become problem. AND yes it become POLITICAL problem for WMF
>or one part of their members. I am aware that Serbian community is very
>strong on WMF. But to this aspect of discussion is not place here. My
>question is what argument do you have on this? Did you check them or you
>just used POV to discuss on this topic?
>
Using Wikipedia to spread nationalism is absolutely contrary to a
Neutral Point of View.  Wikipedia did start in the United States, but if
the Americans who were involved at the earliest stages had insisted that
Wikipedia was there to promote US nationalism it would have failed
miserably in all other English-speaking countries.

Personally, I don't think that there should ever have been separate
Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian wikipedias.  If any of them are using
their respective projects to spread their own nationalism that is
wrong.  As long as they have their own wikis nobody from within the
Yugoslav communities will be willing to seriously criticise them for it,
and nobody from outside the Yugoslav communities will understand the
language enough to be able to do it.

I can understand that Montenegrins can feel prejudiced when the same
mistake is not made for them as was made for the Serbians.

>Please, English is not my native language, and I don't see how you could
>miss interpret my statement about multilingual and multi cultural nature
>of wikipedia. Every language bring up cultural aspect and I don't see
>how you could by-pass this.
>
Your use of English may have a few errors, but not enough to comment
about, or to leave the impression that you are not making sense.
(Neither Gerrard nor Yann are native English speakers.)  My own view of
multiculturalism is typically Canadian, and that involves appreciating
that a country is made up of many cultures that bring a rich diversity
into a country.

>And again please return to the topic explain to me how you can be that
>CLAIRVOYANCE and  assume that Montenegrin wikipedia will bring such bad
>image to WMF . You don't have arguments for that. This is just showing
>to me that you take POV. You just assume this with (for me) no
>particular reason. So I can just guess here why you are doing this.
>Please be more specific about your goals here, so I don't assume that
>you just take POV here.
>
I don't think that bringing a bad image is a factor.  It's a broader
question of linguistics.

>I am ready to participate on any level of discussion but please don't
>make assumptions as that will bring bad connotation to your willingness
>to do right thing in this case.
>
The only assumption there is that what you want is the right thing.

There is another alternative.  Start using the serbo-croatian (sh)
Wikipedia.  It was the original Yugoslav project, and is still alive and
well.

Ec


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fiction and Wikia

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 11/28/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>> - Sources of the information in the article
>> These should be placed in the References section, not the External links
>> one.
>
> Is this actually in the policy? At least once I've seen someone move
> links I've placed in the Sources section into the External Links
> section.

Last time I checked [[Wikipedia:External links]] it was the guidance
offered.

>>> - Sites that are more informative than the article (particularly where
>>> the article is very short)
>>> - Sites that represent some example of what is described in the
>>> article (eg, a ski resort, for an article about ski resorts...)
>> These should be in the External links section.
>
> Which frequently becomes an unmitigated spamfest. There should be ways
> to avoid this.

Last time I checked [[Wikipedia:External links]] it offered guidance on
avoiding that.

>
>>> - Community/portal/forum sites, where people may want to go if they're
>>> really interested in the topic..
>> These should generally not be included.
>
> To play devil's advocate, aren't we trying to be informative? Should
> we be keeping genuine sources of information away from our readers? If
> the topic is "Juggling in Copenhagen", then wouldn't a forum for
> jugglers in Copenhagen be a really appropriate link?

Last time I checked [[Wikipedia:External links]] it offered guidance to
the effect that we consider linking to an open source web directory
rather than to links for forums, personal homepages and blogs which,
whilst relevant to the article subject, aren't relevant to the article
itself.  Lines get drawn where consensus forms.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.14.19/556 - Release Date: 28/11/06


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, David Ashby <humble.fool at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm mildly sorry for taking the shortcut of asking the list about things
> I
> > could figure out by wading through the insanely complicated policy
> pages,
> > but here goes-- if you think a page that went through the AfD process
> was
> > wrongly deleted, what is the proper action?
> >
> > How wrong is it for an admin to undelete a page?
> >
> > Also, are we trying to get rid of all "list" pages?
>
> 1) [[WP:DRV]]
>
> 2) Outside of process, it's not so good.
>
> 3) Not that I'm aware of.
>

Minor followup:

As I understand it...

Undeleting outside process depends somewhat on what it was deleted by; if it
was AFDed, then DRV; if it was speedied I've seen people just put them back
(with the usual "please contact the removing admin to inform them about your
good reason" etc caveat), but DRV works too.  If it was PRODed, then I don't
know; most of those seem to uncontroversially stay dead.  DRV is almost
certainly never the wrong answer, but under some circumstances may not be
required.

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


body:
Darko Bulatovic wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>With your blanket statement that "political background of languages is
>>undiscussable" you indeed end the discussion. In this you are wrong.
>>
>>The Mapuche people are going to court because the Chilean government and
>>the Microsoft company insist on a given orthography. The Mapuche live in
>>Chile and Argentina. This proves very much that the insistence of making
>>a language a people "owned" by a country is very much not universal. If
>>your POV was shared by the Wikimedia Foundation there would be a project
>>specific to US English. By having one English Wikipedia the quality is
>>much better and the POV of the project is very much more a NEUTRAL POV
>>than it would otherwise be.
>>
>>
>Gerard you really make your position on this clear. If you check
>requirements for ISO you will see that for language code it will need a
>Government support. So language is political and ethnic question, but
>you seems that don't have that wide understanding of history of
>languages. I know the history of my language and that give me quite wide
>understanding of political background. So please don't be that narrow in
>understanding.
>
It's the global perspective that counts, not the one from the narrow
view of one language.  Most languages do not have a one-to-one relation
with any country.  If you recognize 3,000 languages and only 200
countries many would be left out.  For the endangered languages a
country devoted solely to that language would not be viable.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/29/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is GNAA less notable than (example pulled via short random walk)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kanto_Gym_Leaders#Blaine ?

With the number of those games sold there are cities that are less
notable than Kanto Gym Leaders

--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

references:
<456CF755.8090804@pobox.com>
	<5db703e66ed65a2c3be0d5afbffd7d6d@biglumber.com>
	<ekk7mj$qv9$1@sea.gmane.org>

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

Timwi wrote:
> Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>> A member variable avoids putting in any ugly "if db == postgres" lines,
>> and allows easy future handling of other date issues. I'm not sure what
>> function you are saying should be overridden?
>
> I believe the idea is to have separate _classes_ for each DB system, so
> "db == postgres" would not be necessary because you'd have a separate
> class for PostgreSQL. In that class, you should simply override the
> function realTimestamps() and plainly return true. That would be proper
> object-oriented design, and it's a very common practice.

Yep. :)

Since we've already got those separate classes, the sensible and
readable thing is for the method to simply return the correct value for
its own class, rather than schlepping around a member variable that
never changes.

Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>> 2) Consider simply fixing the code to properly validate input and
>> > produce portable output, the way it's supposed to.
>> >
>> > There should be no need to check or care what internal format the
>> > database uses when dealing with form parameters.
>
> Not clear what you mean here. Since the internal format determines the
> range of valid form input, the only other way to do it is to convert the
> timestamp to epoch, output that, and then make sure we convert it back
> after the validation but before it is passed to any queries (or make
> alternative queries).

Yes, exactly. This is how all other web I/O is done, including other
uses of timestamps.

The wfTimestamp() performs normalization of all known input formats to a
requested format for either internal processing or output.

The TS_MW format is used in most cases for web I/O; it's also used for
timestamp fields with the current MySQL classes, but you never need to
know that since it's encapsulated in the Database->timestamp() method.

Sometimes other formats are used for particular protocols that prefer
some normalized date format.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 11/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > So, anyone greatly improved an article lately?
>
> I've been adding to our forest of redirects...

I've done a few of those lately too.

I've noticed a change in my editing behavior.  Some time ago, if I hit
a redlink, my assumption was that it was because we didn't have an
article on that topic yet.  Now, if I hit a redlink, I assume we do
have the article, and we lack sufficient redirects.

-Matt


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/28/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
> The roadblock with blogs is not simply that some have shoddy
> reputations. It's that so many basically have no reputation at all, and
> no way for the reader to figure out what their reputation should be. And
> no, you can't do that for an anonymous blog the same way you would for
> material from known authors and publishers.

I can't imagine a situation where there's no way for me to figure out what
the reputation of a blog should be.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's total bullshit.

Alas, it's only a slight exaggeration of procedure-as-normal.

However, I suspect that you meant bullshit as in 'I believe you, but
it's ludicrous' rather than 'I don't believe it' ...

-Matt


body:
I'm personally finding this illuminating with respect to the evolution of
Wikipedia's culture and norms.

On 11/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >On 11/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Why is this thread being allowed to continue on this list?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>The listmods aren't oppressive censors and/or can't be bothered doing
> >>anything about it.
> >>
> >>
> >There's no effective technical solution to a bad thread. You can't
> >really ban a thread. A much better solution is what charles.r.matthews
> >did: draw attention to the fact that thread is stupid, and ask people
> >to drop it. Anyone can do that.
> >
> The most effective solution for dealing with a bad thread is the onset
> of boredom.  Eventually they all come to an end.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/29/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:28:49 -0800, "George Herbert"
> <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >the vast majority of popular culture items have not been subjected to
> >independent research and are not documentable other than the particular
> item
> >of culture itself.
>
> I quite agree.  And this is, for me, a major problem, in that it sends
> all the wrong messages about original research.
>

In particular to the editors working on those articles.

I was wondering if it would be a positive step to strongly encourage the
popular culture articles to move towards at least citing the (potentially
unreliable) primary pop culture source for various factoids (for example,
"Character did X" <ref episode XYZ>).  Whether we treat those topics as
having any reliable sources or not (by normal WP standards), referencing the
primary source extensively would set a good example.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's total bullshit.
>
> Alas, it's only a slight exaggeration of procedure-as-normal.
>
> However, I suspect that you meant bullshit as in 'I believe you, but
> it's ludicrous' rather than 'I don't believe it' ...
>

I thought I saw a tongue in cheek there, too...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm mildly sorry for taking the shortcut of asking the list about things I
> could figure out by wading through the insanely complicated policy pages,
> but here goes-- if you think a page that went through the AfD process was
> wrongly deleted, what is the proper action?
>
> How wrong is it for an admin to undelete a page?
>
> Also, are we trying to get rid of all "list" pages?

1) [[WP:DRV]]

2) Outside of process, it's not so good.

3) Not that I'm aware of.

-humblefool


body:
On 11/29/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> [...] in case some heartless deletionist
> like me gets wind of them...
>
>
There's a nice chap out at the end of the [[Yellow brick road]] who can help
with that, but beware the [[Political interpretations of The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz]].

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


from_name: Darko Bulatovic

body:
Yann Forget wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Some wikis are plagued with vandalism, spams and non sense. Moldavan
> Wikipedia seems the worst at this time, but there have been others too.
> These projects do not bring any free knowledge to anybody, just a lot of
> works for volunteers (hopefully there are great volunteers like Pill)
> and stewards.
>
> Regarding the Moldavan Wikipedia (http://mo.wikipedia.org), the
> administrators election was already cancelled twice because of massive
> attacks. Sincere editors have been discouraged and have left. So the
> wiki is just a battle field for vandals, trolls and sockpuppets. There
> is no expected improvement in the near future because the language
> itself is in the middle of a political controversy.
>
> I forsee the same situation for the Montenegrin Wikipedia if it is
> created. These wikis only give a bad image of Wikimedia. I think that
> the Foundation should take its responsibilities and take some decisions.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
I cant believe my eyes that you Yann say this. How in the God sake you
can forsee such thing about Montenegrin wikipedia? Montenegrin wikipedia
gives bad image of Wikimedia? This statement that you did give bad image
to WMF.  You don't have any  argument to say this and to support your
statement.
Please elaborate this on Montenegrin request for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is multilingual and multicultural project, without that WMF
don't have right to use that statement. What was done with Montenegrin
request is just showing what kind of lobbying is possible on WMF.

Regards,
Darko bulatovic
President of IT Association of Montenegro


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committers

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

Just added: Leon Weber (leon), Manuel Schneider (80686), working on
extensions (CategorySelect et al)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Darko Bulatovic schreef:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Some wikis are plagued with vandalism, spams and non sense. Moldavan
>> Wikipedia seems the worst at this time, but there have been others too.
>> These projects do not bring any free knowledge to anybody, just a lot of
>> works for volunteers (hopefully there are great volunteers like Pill)
>> and stewards.
>>
>> Regarding the Moldavan Wikipedia (http://mo.wikipedia.org), the
>> administrators election was already cancelled twice because of massive
>> attacks. Sincere editors have been discouraged and have left. So the
>> wiki is just a battle field for vandals, trolls and sockpuppets. There
>> is no expected improvement in the near future because the language
>> itself is in the middle of a political controversy.
>>
>> I forsee the same situation for the Montenegrin Wikipedia if it is
>> created. These wikis only give a bad image of Wikimedia. I think that
>> the Foundation should take its responsibilities and take some decisions.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Yann
>>
>>
> I cant believe my eyes that you Yann say this. How in the God sake you
> can forsee such thing about Montenegrin wikipedia? Montenegrin wikipedia
> gives bad image of Wikimedia? This statement that you did give bad image
> to WMF.  You don't have any  argument to say this and to support your
> statement.
> Please elaborate this on Montenegrin request for Wikipedia.
>
> Wikipedia is multilingual and multicultural project, without that WMF
> don't have right to use that statement. What was done with Montenegrin
> request is just showing what kind of lobbying is possible on WMF.
>
> Regards,
> Darko bulatovic
> President of IT Association of Montenegro
Hoi,
Wikipedia is in its manifestations very much a multilingual project and
very much not a multicultural project. Cultural and political reasons
are not a reason to start another project. When you read the article
about Montenegrin, the language on the English Wikipedia, it explains
quite clearly that elements that are to make Montegrin special can be
found outside of Montenegro as well. This means that from a linguistic
point of view the case for a Montenegrin Wikipedia is pretty weak.

There are languages where the cultural and political differences are
quite big while there is no call for a split project. The Chinese and
the Dutch wikipedias are good examples for this. It would be a good
thing if you could find it in you to consider this and retract the
application for a Montenegrin Wikipedia.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Greg Sabino Mullane

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

Brion Vibber asks:

> If something like this is necessary at all, why bother with a member
> variable? The function should simply be overridden appropriately.

A member variable avoids putting in any ugly "if db == postgres" lines,
and allows easy future handling of other date issues. I'm not sure what
function you are saying should be overridden?

> This looks like it may be unsafe; the code here is pretty hairy and I
> didn't see any _other_ validation of input.
>
> 1) Confirm you didn't introduce an SQL injection attack vector on PG
> systems.

Excellent point, I'll fix that up.

> 2) Consider simply fixing the code to properly validate input and
> produce portable output, the way it's supposed to.
>
> There should be no need to check or care what internal format the
> database uses when dealing with form parameters.

Not clear what you mean here. Since the internal format determines the
range of valid form input, the only other way to do it is to convert the
timestamp to epoch, output that, and then make sure we convert it back
after the validation but before it is passed to any queries (or make
alternative queries).

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200611290849
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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=Ch9s
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's total bullshit.
>
> And yet strangely causes less trouble than other systems we have
> experimented with.

One of the biggest problems with our deletion system is that the
amount of crap is so overwhelming that those who regularly participate
in the system get jaded and are sometimes unable to recognise the
situations where an exception should be made.

I suspect this is likely to follow over into any other system we
manage to devise; you can't change people as easily as procedure.

-Matt


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
On Nov 29, 2006, at 12:41 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:11:48 -0700, "Rob Smith" <nobs03 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I need an advocate to assist; can you recommend anyone?
>
> Fred said it, the AMA is a good starting point.  I'll not offer to try
> to raise this on your behalf, as I'm sure I'd only make matters worse,
> but if you have trouble with admins due to posting the request from an
> IP or alternate account, I will undertake to do my best to help.  I
> would say that appealing a block or ban, in a civil and reasonable
> manner, is an exception to the ban on using sockpuppets to evade a
> block.  In fact, I think I'll go and check [[WP:SOCK]] to ensure we
> say just that.
>
> Guy (JzG)

Limited editing for such a purpose is not an issue, IMO.

Fred


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm mildly sorry for taking the shortcut of asking the list about things I
> could figure out by wading through the insanely complicated policy pages,
> but here goes-- if you think a page that went through the AfD process was
> wrongly deleted, what is the proper action?
>
> How wrong is it for an admin to undelete a page?

It is a cardinal sin.  If a page is deleted as a result of *fD it MUST go
through DRV - despite the fact that "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy",
undeletion can only be done if the correct forms are filled out in
triplicate, lost, found again... (I can't remember the rest of how that
goes, but you end up having your house bulldozed).

In addition, DRV is the place where people comment, not on the merits of the
deletion, but on whether the deletion was "in process" or "out of process".
It doesn't matter if the article was about [[World War II]] and the
discussion only involved three people would voted delete on the grounds of
"never heard of it", DRV is supposed to comment on process, not merits of
deletion (you'll be told "that's what *fD is for, and you should have
commented when you had the chance).

Also, are we trying to get rid of all "list" pages?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Silas Snider

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm mildly sorry for taking the shortcut of asking the list about things I
> > could figure out by wading through the insanely complicated policy pages,
> > but here goes-- if you think a page that went through the AfD process was
> > wrongly deleted, what is the proper action?
> >
> > How wrong is it for an admin to undelete a page?
>
>
> It is a cardinal sin.  If a page is deleted as a result of *fD it MUST go
> through DRV - despite the fact that "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy",
> undeletion can only be done if the correct forms are filled out in
> triplicate, lost, found again... (I can't remember the rest of how that
> goes, but you end up having your house bulldozed).
>
> In addition, DRV is the place where people comment, not on the merits of the
> deletion, but on whether the deletion was "in process" or "out of process".
> It doesn't matter if the article was about [[World War II]] and the
> discussion only involved three people would voted delete on the grounds of
> "never heard of it", DRV is supposed to comment on process, not merits of
> deletion (you'll be told "that's what *fD is for, and you should have
> commented when you had the chance).
<snip />

Wait...
I went and read our policy on undeletion ([[WP:UNDEL]]) , and it
definitely lists "If the article has been wrongly deleted (i.e. that
Wikipedia would be a better encyclopedia with the article restored). "
as a valid reason for undeletion (in fact, as the first reason). Given
that we 'know' that DRV is only for process auditing, I looked farther
down... behold! there is a section entitled "To request that a page
(or image) be restored", except that this section only tells you to
list the page on DRV... Catch -22 anyone?

Either we need to change WP:UNDEL to conform to current practice, or
we need to give quite a few people a cluebat beating.

Sincerely,
Silas Snider

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silas Snider is a proud member of the Association of Wikipedians Who
Dislike Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category
of Article, and Who Are In Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad
Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They are Deletionist
(AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD) , and the Harmonious
Editing Club of Wikipedia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


body:
Matthew Brown wrote:

> I've noticed a change in my editing behavior.  Some time ago, if I hit
> a redlink, my assumption was that it was because we didn't have an
> article on that topic yet.  Now, if I hit a redlink, I assume we do
> have the article, and we lack sufficient redirects.

I'm finding myself doing that too.  But we've also more than doubled
(maybe tripled) the amount of articles we've had since I started editing,
so the ones I'm redlinking that aren't associated directly with the
subject I'm editing are more than likely ones without redirects to the
proper article.  In fact, the only redlink I came across recently that I
personally created that shocked me was [[medical reels]].  Nothing on
medical films, educational medical movies, etc.  Otherwise, it's redirect
city.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community Sanction

body:
Thanks for clearing that one up. :)

--Ryan

On 11/29/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:50:25 +1030, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
> <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >RFA as a cabalist institution is a failure; the presence of
> >inclusionists and clueless twits in the ranks of adminship is proof of this.
>
> Ah, but the clueless twits are not the inclusionists :-)
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
That's a good example of a blog used as a source appropriately.  You
can't really get much better than direct quotes from the creator of
the subject of an article.  Of course, POV is a thing to look out for,
but regardless, it still beats third-party information by a good
distance, I'd say.

--Ryan

On 11/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > Absolutely.  For many subjects, the best sources of all are not
> > traditional treeware.  It's the authority of the source that matters,
> > not the medium, in my view.
>
>
> Remember also that most of our articles are not controversial - we
> should take care not to make rules from special cases.
>
> e.g. [[EXA]] - a minor topic, though significant enough for an article
> in its tiny area (3D acceleration for the X.Org X11 server). One of
> the references is to a blog! Worse yet, it's the original developer's
> blog! Yet I submit there is no reason whatsoever to consider this any
> less reliable as a source on this particular subject than a printed
> publication would be.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Time for preformatted empty articles?

body:
This would need at least some more planning that what Wikinews offers,
since the range of article types is vastly different on Wikipedia.
But not at all a bad idea if it can be done well.

Ryan

On 11/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rather than going on a campaign to kill all new articles without
> sufficient sourcing, would it be time to introduce article prefilling,
> using the <inputbox> extension?
>
> For an example, go to en.wikinews.org, type something into the "Start
> a new article" box and hit "Create article". This example is created
> using the wikitext:
>
> <inputbox>
> type=create
> preload=Template:New_page
> editintro=Template:New_article_intro
> width=25
> bgcolor=#f0f0ff
> </inputbox>
>
> Presumably we'd need this switched on for en:wp if it isn't already.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>