subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
I have looked a little bit. Perhaps breaking the sexual scandals off into a
separate article would help.

Fred

> From: Michael Becker <wikipedia at jumpingjackweb.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 23:13:40 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war
>
> There is an edit war in process at
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism.  Could someone please protect
> it?  Things have gotten way out of hand!  Unfortunately, I have taken
> sides on the issue, so I must request that someone else protect it.  A
> mediator that is not Christian would also be appreciated.
>
> --
> Michael Becker
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
I did not check the content yet

But I would like to say something

172 took the decision to protect the page. After he
himself reverted two times the content.

Comment on the talk page

BTW, one asked for protection for someone who isn't a
Christian. Well, that's me.  [[User:172|172]]

perhaps, but you should not protect it yourself if you
are one reverting someone else job. That would be
inappropriate. Anthere

:But it would be a worse idea to protect it with
irrelevant, non-encyclopedic content posted in the
article. 172

::this is '''totally wrong'''. Someone included in an
edit war should not protect it. I am deeply concerned.
 Anthere

If this is OK and accepted with no comment, I guess I
know what I will do next time I am in a conflict with
a non sysop.

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> No, its not acceptable. Bad form, Don't do it.
>
> Fred

I addressed the issue creatively :-)

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
Tomasz-
> * only "important" links in quickbar are in bold

Different people think different things are important. Some people never
use RC, I never use "Random page". If you think something needs to be
highlighted more, I'd suggest playing with its position instead of its
font style.

Also, if you want to turn underlining off for CB, the font color for links
needs to be distinguishable from normal text color. Currently it barely
is.

> Patch applied to test.wikipedia.org.

This is in violation of our development policy. I understand that you have
no alternative since you don't have CVS access, so I have asked Brion,
Magnus and Lee to give it to you.

This is also a good example why changing test.wiki without discussion is
bad; there is currently a discussion on wikipedia-l about slight changes
to the default skin. Users who will try to review these changes will now
see the Cologne Blue skin instead, and may assume that these are in fact
the changes that we are talking about. I have therefore changed the
default skin back to "Standard" on test.wiki and flushed the page cache.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
Provocatrice is even better :-)

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Provocateur is a French word
>
> > From: Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 04:29:59 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war
> >
> >
> > --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >> No, its not acceptable. Bad form, Don't do it.
> >>
> >> Fred
> >
> > I addressed the issue creatively :-)
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site
> design software
> > http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 04:41:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz-
> > * only "important" links in quickbar are in bold
>
> Different people think different things are important. Some people never
> use RC, I never use "Random page". If you think something needs to be
> highlighted more, I'd suggest playing with its position instead of its
> font style.

Without that it was much less readable. Edit is obviously more important
than "Editing help", and RC and "Special pages" are obviously more important
than "Image list" or "New pages"

> Also, if you want to turn underlining off for CB, the font color for links
> needs to be distinguishable from normal text color. Currently it barely
> is.

Looks different enough to me, maybe it should be a little bit lighter.

> > Patch applied to test.wikipedia.org.
>
> This is in violation of our development policy. I understand that you have
> no alternative since you don't have CVS access, so I have asked Brion,
> Magnus and Lee to give it to you.

No, this new policy is plain breaindead. There just has to be some wiki for
random code changes, and test. has always been the one. If you want test.
to be used for testing code meant to go to Wikipedias, some new wiki
has to be started.

> This is also a good example why changing test.wiki without discussion is
> bad; there is currently a discussion on wikipedia-l about slight changes
> to the default skin. Users who will try to review these changes will now
> see the Cologne Blue skin instead, and may assume that these are in fact
> the changes that we are talking about. I have therefore changed the
> default skin back to "Standard" on test.wiki and flushed the page cache.

We need more test wikis, that's the problem. Now can I please get test.
for one more day back ? Testing is not over.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
No, its not acceptable. Bad form, Don't do it.

Fred

> From: Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 03:40:04 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war
>
> I did not check the content yet
>
> But I would like to say something
>
> 172 took the decision to protect the page. After he
> himself reverted two times the content.
>
> Comment on the talk page
>
> BTW, one asked for protection for someone who isn't a
> Christian. Well, that's me.  [[User:172|172]]
>
> perhaps, but you should not protect it yourself if you
> are one reverting someone else job. That would be
> inappropriate. Anthere
>
> :But it would be a worse idea to protect it with
> irrelevant, non-encyclopedic content posted in the
> article. 172
>
> ::this is '''totally wrong'''. Someone included in an
> edit war should not protect it. I am deeply concerned.
> Anthere
>
>
>
>
> If this is OK and accepted with no comment, I guess I
> know what I will do next time I am in a conflict with
> a non sysop.
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
Tomasz-
> Without that it was much less readable. Edit is obviously more important
> than "Editing help", and RC and "Special pages" are obviously more important
> than "Image list" or "New pages"

Actually, the latter is not obvious. The most important page from "Special
pages" is already in the quickbar (Preferences), the rest is of limited
interest to most users. I have no idea why "Image list" is in the quickbar
at all, and "New pages" is used quite a lot by some people.

> No, this new policy is plain breaindead. There just has to be some wiki for
> random code changes

Why? I frankly don't see the reason. If you want to make "random code
changes", there's no need to use the Wikimedia servers. Use your own
machine. If you want to demonstrate and test reasonably complete changes,
commit to CVS unstable and update the test.wiki accordingly.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
Provocateur is a French word

> From: Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 04:29:59 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war
>
>
> --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> No, its not acceptable. Bad form, Don't do it.
>>
>> Fred
>
> I addressed the issue creatively :-)
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
On 22 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Actually, the result of the discussion on wikitech-l is that we would keep
> the option enabled (as it was always been; the anchors have just not been
> generated and had to for the TOC) and to set the rules for when to use
> anchors as policies.

Okay, thanks for telling me. (I don't read wikitech-l.) I was referring to
messages on wikipedia-l, such as this one by me:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-May/010411.html

and this one by Kurt Jansson:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-May/010418.html

So if we're going to set a policy, I think the best policy would be not to
use such links in articles, apart from in the tables of contents.

> Headlines are not supposed to dominate the entire page, they are
> supposed to give the viewer a quick overview of the different sections.
> The important thing is not to use the same font size/style for totally
> different things.

I agree, but I don't think the headings do dominate the page as they are.

About the faint horizontal rules below the headings:
> Wikipedia allows users to insert other types of large font text into pages
> besides headings, such as <font..> formatted text, CSS formatted text etc.
> These lines help to distinguish between the two, which is important for
> seeing why certain lines don't show up in the TOC, for knowing which
> sections can be edited with the new right click feature etc. Of all the
> ways to separate headlines from other large font text I've tried, I like
> this one the best. Feel free to make alternative suggestions.

Using font size alone to distinguish headings from ordinary text is pretty
common elsewhere, so I think the onus should be on the person proposing
something extra to demonstrate a need for that something extra. Just
because Wikipedia *allows* users to insert other types of large font text
into pages besides headings, it doesn't mean that they should. They might
do so to demonstrate font sizes in an article about font sizes, for
example, but illustrative examples should be clearly marked as such, so
that no-one is confused. If an article uses large font sizes but doesn't
make it clear what those large font sizes are being used for, then that is
a problem with the article, and the article needs to be made clearer. I
don't see the need for a technical solution to this.

The lines intefere with tables, anyway. See:

http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be

I haven't checked how they interact with pictures, but I imagine it
wouldn't look nice.

About the "Post a comment" feature:
> It appends text directly to the page instead of requiring you to load and
> save the whole page, which can be very large.

Okay, so it makes appending comments slightly quicker, but is it worth the
extra hassle of having a new (and not very wiki-like) feature to learn?

> Because only your comment appears in the preview, the preview is much
> faster and it is easier to see the effect of formatting, links etc.
> because you don't have to scroll to your comment every time you preview
> it. Having users not always unnecessarily load and save text that they
> don't need anyway should also help server performance.

Okay, this is true...

> Also, newbies often are confused by the concept of editing a page to
> comment it, and they will likely expect such a link.

I strongly disagree with this. The wiki way of editing pages is quite easy
to learn, and obviously *needs* to be learnt by anyone wishing to
contribute! At the moment this is pretty much consistent over the whole
Wikipedia, with the exceptions of protected pages and special pages, which
aren't editable by new people at all. Adding the rule that *some* pages
are editable in two different ways will just confuse people. If they have
two links that both change the page, they won't know which to pick, and
what the difference is. It's simpler to have the same rules for article
pages as for talk pages, because then once you know the rules for one, you
know the rules for the other. We should aim for simplicity if we want to
attract people to the project.

> Furthermore, as you know, some browsers have problems editing large
> pages; this feature allows users of such browsers to post comments
> without loading the content of the entire page into the edit window.
> This is also convenient for normal users.

I was thinking of bringing this up myself, but not as a point in your
favour! Making it more convenient to add content to pages over 32 KB in
size is not a good thing. It would just make the problem worse. Adding a
feature to partially automate the archiving process would be good, though.
Perhaps when editing a large page, the software could pick out sections
(in the same way that the "Table of contents" feature does) and ask if you
want to archive them before adding new content. Just a thought...

> This feature could also be the first stage of a more sophisticated
> discussion system, where the next stage would be auto-appending signatures
> and providing a "Reply to this" link after each comment.

I really don't think that making the Wikipedia more complicated, as many
of your innovations seem to do, is the right way to go. Simplicity is
good.

> As for the headings, we should make it a convention that each discussion
> thread should have a heading, as this makes it much easier to participate
> in discussions using the "Edit section" feature, providing many of the
> same above advantages.

This sounds like a good idea. It would also make it easier to partially
automate the archiving process, which might be nice.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject:
[WikiEN-l] A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology and
 Geography

body:
A useful book that has been put on-line at:

http://www.ClassicalDictionary.bravepages.com/


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
On 22-07-2003, Stephen Gilbert wrote thusly :
>
> Rotem Dan wrote:
>
> > I have hand-coded from scratch a concept demo of the phase IV new
> > dynamic layout I'm thinking of. This should be XHTML 1.1/CSS compatible.
> >
> > http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/phase4-concept-demo.htm
> >
> > NOTE: please view with Mozilla (tested on 1.4), IE doesn't display the
> > widths correctly (though it does work somehow) and the transperant logo.
> > I haven't had the time to tweak it for IE yet.
>
> It looks really nice. It doesn't display properly in Opera 7, either, for
> the record.

I agree. It is really nice and way to go. Please keep on working.
Although people should have a variety of choices.

BTW Lynx reports "Bad HTML".

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
At 08:13 PM 7/22/2003, you wrote:
>There is an edit war in process at
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism.  Could someone please protect
>it?  Things have gotten way out of hand!  Unfortunately, I have taken
>sides on the issue, so I must request that someone else protect it.  A
>mediator that is not Christian would also be appreciated.
>
>--
>Michael Becker

I've protected the page. I have no interest in getting involved in the
dispute, so consider me a third party.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal for new default skin

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:17:19 +0100, tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>
> gave utterance to the following:
>
>> Our default skin is terrible.
>
> What precisely is terrible about it?
> IMO...
> - It leaves the user in control of font family and size, which is very
> good.
> - It is white-on-black, which is too contrasty for optimal reading for
> me - bad.
> - When not logged in, do we really need the redundancy of certain
> links which are on the left as well as at top and bottom? (I would
> suggest left and bottom only, putting the article higher, the biggest
> problem being the width of the special pages selectbox.

I have already said what is terrible about it.
I don't want to repeat myself. Read the archive.

I *had* thought that we needed to rethink our skin system from scratch.
If everybody else is happy to keep making tweaks and not address the
main problems, fine.

I've just wasted my weekend working on designs, but never mind.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[WikiEN-l] A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology
 and Geography

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>A useful book that has been put on-line at:
>
>
>http://www.ClassicalDictionary.bravepages.com/
>
Nice, but bear in mind that the work dates from 1852, before
Schliemann's unearthing of Troy for instance, and it mentions
scholars disputing location possibilities; but the question
has been settled for decades.  This is more useful as a cross
check, or as a source of old spellings for redirs.

Stan


from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikitech-l] Feature? Printable version only of current version

body:
Hello,

I just noticed that when you try to get the Printable
version of an old revision. you get the current
version.

Is that intended to be so?

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Oliver-
> The lines intefere with tables, anyway. See:

Alright, that's a killer argument against them. Gone are the lines. I also
tested in Konqueror and noted that the "dotted" CSS instruction looks
quite ugly in that browser, so perhpas we saw different things. Maybe we
can just agree to phase out unnecessary formatting -- lots of articles use
bold for headlines, <font...> for table headers etc. This confuses the
"edit section" feature, which (correctly) is not triggered on these
instructions.

>> Also, newbies often are confused by the concept of editing a page to
>> comment it, and they will likely expect such a link.

> I strongly disagree with this. The wiki way of editing pages is quite easy
> to learn

Not easy enough. A couple of days ago someone edited their *own* user talk
page to comment on a completely unrelated article. I asked them what page
they were referring to, and they *emailed* me in response -- the idea of
article/talk page separation is simply too complex to grasp immediately
for many people. The idea of editing a page to write a comment is even
more complex and deviates from standard commenting procedures on other
websites.

Not everyone *wants* to contribute, some people just want to provide
feedback. That's what "Post a comment" is for -- an easy to understand,
immediately usable link that allows people to quickly post their thoughts
on an article without learning everything about wikis. From understanding
that, however, it's a small step to understanding whole-page-editing,
because it happens through essentially the same interface. That way people
can learn to *gradually* become wiki contributors, instead of being thrown
into the cold water. But "Post a comment" is useful even for long-time
contributors because it saves time and energy. I personally saw two long
pages today where I would have commented if the feature had already been
available, but did not because I did not want to bother to load and go
through the whole large talk page.

Where were you anyway in the large discussion about whether we should
switch the entire discussion system to a BBS? I almost single-handedly
defended the wiki way in that discussion. If I hadn't done so, someone
might have set up a BBS already by now. One argument for not using a BBS
was that we could simplify talk pages by making them more like common
threaded discussions. If people like you oppose such a change, I might as
well join the ranks of BBS supporters and rally behind those who want to
dump talk pages altogether.

> I was thinking of bringing this up myself, but not as a point in your
> favour! Making it more convenient to add content to pages over 32 KB in
> size is not a good thing. It would just make the problem worse.

That's silly, because the people who would benefit from the feature could
not help in the archiving process anyway -- they could not edit the page
at all! At least now they can say "Post a comment"->"Someone needs to
archive this talk page. I can't edit the whole page anymore." Furthermore,
if eventually it becomes reasonably possible to participate in 100K
discussions because the interface allows it (by editing sections, replying
to individual comments and appending new comments at the bottom), what
exactly is the problem? We're not Microsoft -- we don't need to hardcode
the 32K limit.

> Perhaps when editing a large page, the software could pick out sections
> (in the same way that the "Table of contents" feature does) and ask if you
> want to archive them before adding new content. Just a thought...

So lang as we don't end up with dumb automatic archives like [[/Archive
1]], that's fine with me. However, it astonishes me that someone who
whines^Wcomplains^Wtalks as much about "simplicity" would propose a
feature that would substantially complicate the editing process.

> I really don't think that making the Wikipedia more complicated, as many
> of your innovations seem to do,

You are completely mistaken in your belief that wiki-editing discussions
is "simple". It's complex and needs to be made easier, if we want to keep
this method of discussing at all. Wading through 20 comments in a small
edit window just to find the one you want to reply to is not simple, it is
time-consuming. Having to deal with "edit conflicts" because someone
commented at the same time is incredibly annoying and confusing, and who
knows how many comments were discarded because of it. (We can gradually
fix this by eliminating edit conflicts when people are editing different
sections, and eliminating them altogether for append edits.) And not being
able to just start a new discussion without having to load discussions
that may have happened months earlier into the edit box is quite
braindead.

Alongside the wiki world, powerful and easy to use discussion systems have
emerged. They are used daily by thousands and thousands of average,
clueless Windows users. Sit one of them in front of a wiki discussion and
they will look at you with glassy eyes and ask you where the "Post
comment" or "Reply to this" links are, and how to produce an animated
smiley with a beer keg. We won't give them the animated smileys, but we
should give them a navigational structure that is reasonably similar to
the systems they are familiar with. We should learn from other projects,
exactly *because* we should make things as simple as possible.

Regards,

Erik


body:
tarquin-

> I've just wasted my weekend working on designs, but never mind.

Whether you have wasted your weekend depends on
- whether someone else implements your skin, or
- whether we come up with a new skin system that is based on page
templates instead of code/HTML mix, so that you can do it yourself.
Personally, I don't consider that a development priority, and it's
unlikely that it will happen anytime soon.

Whether your skin becomes the *default* is a separate matter, and I think
we should vote on the default skin ever so often. I'm reasonably fond of
the standard skin after my tweaks, but I also liked some of your ideas,
and the UnrealWiki definitely looks quite impressive.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
--- Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
wrote:
> At 08:13 PM 7/22/2003, you wrote:
> >There is an edit war in process at
> >http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism.  Could
> someone please protect
> >it?  Things have gotten way out of hand!
> Unfortunately, I have taken
> >sides on the issue, so I must request that someone
> else protect it.  A
> >mediator that is not Christian would also be
> appreciated.
> >
> >--
> >Michael Becker
>
> I've protected the page. I have no interest in
> getting involved in the
> dispute, so consider me a third party.

I am confused Dante.

I think that when I put the edit war header, that page
was protected. Then why did Rmhermen edited it to
remove the controversial content if it was protected ?
And why did you need to protect it again ? Who removed
the protection ??? Are the ones not included in the
edit war authorized to edit it ? (I feel lost
here...could not there be a log of
protection/unprotection ?)

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from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial spelling of the word "Contraversial"

body:
In the body text is fine people, dont do it in lights.

-s-

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial edit war

body:
Since the edit war is between a regular editor and
several sysops, is it ok to protect it, and that some
people (not included in the edit war) go on editing it
 ?

I looked for guidelines about this, and found none.
Just guidelines asking sysops included in the war to
please not edit the page. I found nothing about what
'other' sysops "proper" (with quotes) behavior should
be. What is the usual on the matter ? Is this ok that
controversial content is removed when the page is
protected (fortunately to be moved where it probably
belongs in this case, but with no consensus with the
one holding the generally-thought wrong opinion) ?

Why do we protect ? Is it the best choice in all
situations ? Did a protect/unprotect war already
happen ? Is it desirable ?

on a lighter note, do you like my new logo suggestion
?

http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/c/ca/Tetra2%28L%29.png

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Well, most of our regular contributors are sysops,
> so can edit if we choose.
> I doubt protecting it was that wise.
>
> Fred Bauder
>
> http://wwww.internet-encyclopedia.org
>
> > From: Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:25:01 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war
> >
> >
> > --- Dante Alighieri
> <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
> > wrote:
> >> At 08:13 PM 7/22/2003, you wrote:
> >>> There is an edit war in process at
> >>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism.
> Could
> >> someone please protect
> >>> it?  Things have gotten way out of hand!
> >> Unfortunately, I have taken
> >>> sides on the issue, so I must request that
> someone
> >> else protect it.  A
> >>> mediator that is not Christian would also be
> >> appreciated.
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Michael Becker
> >>
> >> I've protected the page. I have no interest in
> >> getting involved in the
> >> dispute, so consider me a third party.
> >
> > I am confused Dante.
> >
> > I think that when I put the edit war header, that
> page
> > was protected. Then why did Rmhermen edited it to
> > remove the controversial content if it was
> protected ?
> > And why did you need to protect it again ? Who
> removed
> > the protection ??? Are the ones not included in
> the
> > edit war authorized to edit it ? (I feel lost
> > here...could not there be a log of
> > protection/unprotection ?)
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site
> design software
> > http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
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from_name: Richard Grevers

body:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:17:19 +0100, tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> gave
utterance to the following:

>
>> I think that saying it is "a new default skin" is not the way to go.
>> Rather, first implement it as an alternative skin, and only then start
>> seeing whether people want it as the default skin.
>>
>> Andre Engels
>>
>>
>>
> No.
> Our default skin is terrible.
What precisely is terrible about it?
IMO...
 - It leaves the user in control of font family and size, which is very
good.
 - It is white-on-black, which is too contrasty for optimal reading for me -
 bad.
 - When not logged in, do we really need the redundancy of certain links
which are on the left as well as at top and bottom? (I would suggest left
and bottom only, putting the article higher, the biggest problem being the
width of the special pages selectbox.

--
Richard Grevers


subject:
[WikiEN-l] A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography,
	Mythology and Geography

body:
Although it has been reprinted as late as 1988, it dates from 1852. Which
edition was scanned for the website is unknown but the typography and layout
of the page says much. Perhaps Laurence Wright at
laurence at cornishroots.co.uk could tell you. I am simply going on its obvious
age.

Fred Bauder

http://wwww.internet-encyclopedia.org

> From: Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:37:53 +0200
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology
> and Geography
>
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 07:03:52AM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> A useful book that has been put on-line at:
>>
>>
>> http://www.ClassicalDictionary.bravepages.com/
>>
> Do you know the legal state of this dictionary?
>
> I don't find any year of print or similar on the above
> page.
>
> Regards,
>
> JeLuF
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
On 23 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Alright, that's a killer argument against them. Gone are the lines.

Hurray! :)

> Maybe we can just agree to phase out unnecessary formatting -- lots of
> articles use bold for headlines, <font...> for table headers etc. This
> confuses the "edit section" feature, which (correctly) is not triggered
> on these instructions.

Yes, phasing out unnecessary formatting sounds like a good idea.

> Not easy enough. A couple of days ago someone edited their *own* user
> talk page to comment on a completely unrelated article. I asked them
> what page they were referring to, and they *emailed* me in response

Okay, I hadn't taken into account the fact that people might overlook or
fail to understand the "Discuss this page" link. But then again, if they
couldn't even get to the right talk page, they wouldn't be able to access
any new features on that talk page either... So I'm not sure that
*anything* can be done for people in the position of your unfortunate
correspondent!

> Where were you anyway in the large discussion about whether we should
> switch the entire discussion system to a BBS? I almost single-handedly
> defended the wiki way in that discussion. If I hadn't done so, someone
> might have set up a BBS already by now.

I must admit I wasn't paying much attention. I thought that was just about
replacing the mailing lists, and I thought the idea was bad enough that it
would be dismissed by everyone, so I pretty much ignored the thread. I
didn't realise it was only you doing most of the dismissing. Sorry about
that...

> That's silly, because the people who would benefit from the feature
> could not help in the archiving process anyway -- they could not edit
> the page at all! At least now they can say "Post a comment"->"Someone
> needs to archive this talk page. I can't edit the whole page anymore."

Well, that's why I suggested a feature for making archiving easier. It's
an alternative way of solving the same problem, but the end result is that
the page is shorter, rather than longer. I think that would be preferable.

> Furthermore, if eventually it becomes reasonably possible to participate
> in 100K discussions because the interface allows it (by editing
> sections, replying to individual comments and appending new comments at
> the bottom), what exactly is the problem? We're not Microsoft -- we
> don't need to hardcode the 32K limit.

Well, people might find it annoying to have to wait for a 100K page to
load up, and then scroll through it to find the section they want to
contribute to.

> So lang as we don't end up with dumb automatic archives like [[/Archive
> 1]], that's fine with me. However, it astonishes me that someone who
> whines^Wcomplains^Wtalks as much about "simplicity" would propose a
> feature that would substantially complicate the editing process.

I'm just here to be as awkward as possible. ;) Well, no, I only suggested
the archiving idea because it would overcome the problem of people not
being able to edit long pages by giving them a mechanism to shorten them.
It's true that your proposal would also work, but I think that keeping
pages short is generally a good practice, and that making it easier to add
to long pages will discourage people from doing that. So maybe I'm saying
that editing should be made complicated for people who want to add to long
pages, so that they are encouraged to shorten them. :)

Oh, I know, we could just have an "Archive this section" link. When you
click on it, ping! the whole section in [[Talk:Joe Bloggs]] headed "Joe
Bloggs and New Imperialism" is replaced by the line, "Discussion moved to
[[Talk:Joe Bloggs/Joe Bloggs and New Imperialism]]", and that new page is
created at the same time. I think that would be as easy to use as your
features, and although it would complicate the user interface (which I am
generally opposed to) it would simplify talk pages in the sense that they
would end up free of clutter in the form of out-of-date discussions.

> You are completely mistaken in your belief that wiki-editing discussions
> is "simple". It's complex and needs to be made easier, if we want to
> keep this method of discussing at all. Wading through 20 comments in a
> small edit window just to find the one you want to reply to is not
> simple, it is time-consuming.

Oh all right, you've convinced me. Maybe reforming how the talk pages work
is a good idea after all. But I'm not convinced that a feature to add new
sections should be one of those reforms. Most additions to talk pages will
be to ongoing discussions anyway, so the feature would rarely need to be
used. Before you decided to remove all criticism of your feature from
[[m:Layout vote]], Bdesham suggested that it would encourage people to
ignore threading, which sounds a good argument to me.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
Robert wrote:
> I am, however, opposed to what the U.S. State Department
> condemns as Palestinian terrorism...and this last fact
> alone has caused me to be repeatedly slandered as a bigot,
> as a racist, etc. And no one on Wikipedia objects to these
> false characterizations of me.

For whatever it is worth, I object to those false characterizations
of you.  And for two reasons:

1.  These characterizations are, as far as I can tell, completely
false and without merit of any kind.

2.  And in *any event*, characterizations of this sort have no place
in the neutral wikipedia community, whether true or false.  It's just
not the kind of environment that we want to foster.

On the other hand, I will say that I sometimes find RK's
characterization of the harassment he has personally received to be a
bit overstated.

Of course, different people will evaluate these things differently,
and it's easy for me to stand *outside* RK's situation and say "Oh, it
isn't as bad as all that."  I understand that.

Even so, I think it's worth remembering what we're all here for, and
that Wikipedia Is Not Usenet.  We fundamentally aren't about flame
wars and personal slams, at least we should try hard not to be about
that.  The medium in which we are working (wiki) pushes us to a different
kind of interaction, interaction which is co-operative rather than
competitive.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Robert, if you can't be nice, take your marbles to the other side of
> the playground.
>
> By the way: It is completely acceptable for people to hold their own
> opinions and express them. It's called freedom of speech.

It is acceptable for people to hold their own opinions and express
them -- but not in an inappropriate forum.  One of the cardinal
principles of Wikipedia is respect for others, even others with whom
we have significant political or other disagreements.

So, it isn't appropriate for people to "Jew bait" RK, nor to bring up
the Israeli-Palestinian debate on completely unrelated pages, nor to
attempt to engage him in political debates that he isn't interested
in.

RK is abrasive at times, and he knows I think so, and I think he knows
that it contributes to his difficulties.  But he does have a point,
and I think we should listen to it and respect it.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial edit war

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I looked for guidelines about this, and found none.
> Just guidelines asking sysops included in the war to
> please not edit the page. I found nothing about what
> 'other' sysops "proper" (with quotes) behavior should
> be. What is the usual on the matter ?

Sysops should generally not edit a page that has been protected due to
a dispute, whether or not they were involved in the edit war to start
with.  I say "generally not" because of course there can be
exceptions, for example rolling back to a version before the edit war
might be useful in some cases, or attempting a one-shot temporary
compromise.

Certainly, protecting the page and then having sysops continue a
high-power-wizards edit war with each other isn't really helpful, if
that were to ever happen.

When we wear our 'sysop' hats, we are supposed to be removed from
editing.  And protection is supposed to be very temporary in cases
like this, just to allow tempers to cool, and only when really
necessary.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
Well, most of our regular contributors are sysops, so can edit if we choose.
I doubt protecting it was that wise.

Fred Bauder

http://wwww.internet-encyclopedia.org

> From: Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:25:01 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war
>
>
> --- Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
> wrote:
>> At 08:13 PM 7/22/2003, you wrote:
>>> There is an edit war in process at
>>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism.  Could
>> someone please protect
>>> it?  Things have gotten way out of hand!
>> Unfortunately, I have taken
>>> sides on the issue, so I must request that someone
>> else protect it.  A
>>> mediator that is not Christian would also be
>> appreciated.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Michael Becker
>>
>> I've protected the page. I have no interest in
>> getting involved in the
>> dispute, so consider me a third party.
>
> I am confused Dante.
>
> I think that when I put the edit war header, that page
> was protected. Then why did Rmhermen edited it to
> remove the controversial content if it was protected ?
> And why did you need to protect it again ? Who removed
> the protection ??? Are the ones not included in the
> edit war authorized to edit it ? (I feel lost
> here...could not there be a log of
> protection/unprotection ?)
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] Little Dan?

body:
When is Little Dan supposed to be back, does anyone know?

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Erik wrote:
>...
>"Post a comment" is really only part
>of a larger puzzle. "Edit section" is
>part of the same puzzle and also makes
>discussions a lot easier. However,
>that's primarily intended for articles;
>what we really need is a "Reply" function
>to complement the "Post a comment"
>function. This is tricky to implement,
>because you need to auto-render the reply
>links somehow (my idea is to use the sigs
>as markers, but these are sometimes also u
>sed in a non-comment context). At that
>point we can also auto-sign comments that
>are entered using either feature, so we
>won't have to teach newbies the meaning of
>the four tildes anymore. This, however, will
>only be possible if we retain the "Post a
>comment" functionality, because that is one of
>the two ways to participate in a discussion
>-- reply in an existing thread or start a
>new one.
>....

Interesting idea - let's see how this works. :)

We don't allow ads in articles and are pretty good at
enforcing this policy even though it is /very/ easy to
post add links in articles. So just because the
technical limitations regarding editing a really long
page are taken away doesn't necessarily mean that
really long articles and talk pages will be more
common. We just need to establish a cultural norm that
articles and talk pages should not be larger than
30KB. There are very valid reasons to have such a
"policy" that do not touch on the technical
limitations. The most important of which is that we
are an encyclopedia and having articles of that length
are exhausting to read through and difficult to add
information to. In short, we need to encourage people
to summarize article topics and create daughter
articles that expand on particular points.

Our Germany article on en.wiki does this well;
[[Germany]] is a broad overview of all major aspects
of Germany. In that article is a short very broad
overview of German history and a link to [[History of
Germany]]. That article is fully devoted to a broad
overview of German history. And each of the sections
of that article have links to individual articles that
expand on the topic of that section (not to mention
the regular wiki links to individual topics). This
allows the reader to get a good idea of the various
topics without forcing them to read too much about
topics they are not interested in. This allows the
contributor to quickly skip past the overviews and get
to a particular article that is only about one part of
German history so that they can add to it (very large
articles are rarely so well organized that sections
could play the same role - but TOCs should help that
situation a bit...).

>...
>Discussions should not be endless, but they
>should also not be cut short by an immediate
>call to the polling box. That's just
>frustrating for everyone involved and will
>not produce good results, because we need
>to listen to each other before we can really
>make a decision based on more than just gut
>feelings.
>...

I agree. We furthermore need an established process to
decide when to vote and how to set up votes. Right now
the decision to have a vote is rather arbitrary and
the votes are very often /horribly/ set-up (the count
reform vote is a notable exception) and the results
very confused and open to drastically different
interpretations (like the date format vote). IMO
voting is next to the last thing we should try to
resolve issues (the last being reliance on our
benevolent dictator to make a decree - Hi Jimbo!). We
should bend over backwards to reach a consensus first.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

body:
I'm not apologizing. My protection of the page was justified. It received support beforehand and I have since noticed that it has been defended.

BTW, this comment on the mailing list by Jimmy Wales seems to support my action: "Sysops should generally not edit a page that has been protected due to

a dispute, whether or not they were involved in the edit war to start

with.  I say "generally not" because of course there can be

exceptions, for example rolling back to a version before the edit war

might be useful in some cases, or attempting a one-shot temporary

compromise."

What I did followed the guidelines, according to the exceptions Mr. Wales explained above. My edits only rolled back to a version before the edit war, the version without the incoherent, poorly written essay. Before the edit war, I had not even read the page, let alone edit it.

When my sysop privileges are reinstated, I promise to continue following the protected page guidelines.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

body:
--- Abe Sokolov <sokolov47 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I'm not apologizing. My protection of the page was
> justified. It received support beforehand and I have
> since noticed that it has been defended.
>
>
>
> BTW, this comment on the mailing list by Jimmy Wales
> seems to support my action: "Sysops should generally
> not edit a page that has been protected due to
>
> a dispute, whether or not they were involved in the
> edit war to start
>
> with.  I say "generally not" because of course there
> can be
>
> exceptions, for example rolling back to a version
> before the edit war
>
> might be useful in some cases, or attempting a
> one-shot temporary
>
> compromise."

Cp of what I put on Erik page

:Sorry 172. But what you did was neither reverting to
a version *previous* to the edit war (which was 51
edits ago
[http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Catholicism&oldid=1178359])
nor an attempt in compromise in any way (since it just
consisted in reverting all the other editor edits).
What you did was not following these two guidelines
Jimbo mentionned. Don't try to mislead us here please.
We can all make mistakes from time to time. Especially
in an edit war with heated spirits. That is no big
deal in the end.[[user:Anthere]]

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Oliver-
> Okay, I hadn't taken into account the fact that people might overlook or
> fail to understand the "Discuss this page" link.

The problem is that this page does not actually take you anywhere obvious.
Even if you find the link, you may be perplexed as to what to do next.

> Well, that's why I suggested a feature for making archiving easier. It's
> an alternative way of solving the same problem, but the end result is that
> the page is shorter, rather than longer. I think that would be preferable.

How short can you get? We don't want to have just one thread per page. 30K
seems like a reasonable length to me even for people with slow modems.
Even at that length, however, the current system is inconvenient to use
because you have to load the entire discussion into an edit window. That
simply makes no sense.

> Well, people might find it annoying to have to wait for a 100K page to
> load up, and then scroll through it to find the section they want to
> contribute to.

True, so you would have a new upper bound at which you would want to
archive the page. But pushing the limit upwards is not necessarily a bad
thing.

> Oh, I know, we could just have an "Archive this section" link. When you
> click on it, ping! the whole section in [[Talk:Joe Bloggs]] headed "Joe
> Bloggs and New Imperialism" is replaced by the line, "Discussion moved to
> [[Talk:Joe Bloggs/Joe Bloggs and New Imperialism]]", and that new page is
> created at the same time.

Yes, I thought of that. The only problem is that it would be virtually
impossible to move only the history of that specific section (edits don't
have a section flag, some edits concern several sections etc.), so you
would end up with the equivalent of copy & pasting the section without the
history. Not good. The only way to preserve the page history is to move
the page and then replace the resulting redirect with the new talk page.
Then you can at least do

 [[/Archive Dec. 2002 - June 2003]] contents:
 * Should Lir be banned?
 * Should Lir be re-banned?
 * Should Lir be unbanned?
 * Should Lir be renamed?

This kind of archive could be automatically generated from the section
headings.

> Oh all right, you've convinced me.

Yay!

> But I'm not convinced that a feature to add new
> sections should be one of those reforms.

Grr...

> Most additions to talk pages will
> be to ongoing discussions anyway, so the feature would rarely need to be
> used. Before you decided to remove all criticism of your feature from
> [[m:Layout vote]], Bdesham suggested that it would encourage people to
> ignore threading, which sounds a good argument to me.

Newbies will certainly use it this way -- they will click "Post a comment"
and refer to a comment somewhere else in the discussion at the bottom of
the page. Just like they do now: Newbies don't know how to change the
indendation level, where to insert comments etc. But the problem will be
more visible, because people who previously did not figure out how to
comment will now do so. Instead of blaming the fact that newbies behave
this way on the new feature, blame it on the real cause: It's damn
difficult to properly post a reply. It tookm -me- a while to figure it
out, and I consider myself an advanced user. And I -still- find it
annoying to set the indentation level for each frelling paragraph that I
type.

"Post a comment" is really only part of a larger puzzle. "Edit section" is
part of the same puzzle and also makes discussions a lot easier. However,
that's primarily intended for articles; what we really need is a "Reply"
function to complement the "Post a comment" function. This is tricky to
implement, because you need to auto-render the reply links somehow (my
idea is to use the sigs as markers, but these are sometimes also used in a
non-comment context). At that point we can also auto-sign comments that
are entered using either feature, so we won't have to teach newbies the
meaning of the four tildes anymore. This, however, will only be possible
if we retain the "Post a comment" functionality, because that is one of
the two ways to participate in a discussion -- reply in an existing thread
or start a new one.

So it is really part of a larger scheme which I am working on, and any
arguments you will come up with will be outweighed by far by the benefits
of an overhauled discussion system. In any case, I would much appreciate a
general attitude of "Interesting idea - let's see how this works" over
"Terrible idea - let's vote on taking out this feature right now."
Furthermore, I have always been a proponent of voting, but only within a
proper process -- voting should be used when there has been a reasonable
discussion period and a search for compromise, when most arguments have
been presented and no consensus could have been reached.

The silliness of the whole thing is quite obvious from the fact that
several of the voting options are not even relevant anymore -- the box is
gone, the underlining is gone, the background is changed -- so what's the
point of voting? Mav made a suggestion, I agreed to it, we try the new
variant, talk about it, see if everyone can live with that, set it up,
exchange arguments etc. Discussions should not be endless, but they should
also not be cut short by an immediate call to the polling box. That's just
frustrating for everyone involved and will not produce good results,
because we need to listen to each other before we can really make a
decision based on more than just gut feelings.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] 172 sysop status temporarily revoked

body:
Because he protected a page in an edit war/heated discussion in which he
was involved -- see [[Talk:Catholicism]] -- I have temporarily revoked
172's sysop privileges. I would not have done so if he had followed my
advice not to do it again, but after I unprotected the page he immediately
reprotected it, and there is no point in engaging in "protection wars" --
we should be clear about the guidelines we follow.

Note that I was not substantially involved in the relevant discussion, but
I am generally on 172's side; the edits were desperately in need of work.
However, sysops are not editors, and should not use their privileges to
enforce their own views. If the page should have been protected, it should
have been done by an independent third party. This is what our protected
page policy has said for months.

I am also concerned by the definitely non-Wikiquette tone in the above
discussion.

Unless there are any objections, I will only reinstate 172's sysop status
if he agrees to follow our protected page guidelines.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

body:
Well, Abe, the only concern is that the exception I outlined only
applies to sysops who legitimately step in to protect a page in the
first place.

The decision tree looks like this:

Q1.  Have I been involved in the edit war?

A1.  Yes --> don't protect the page, and it's probably best to let the
other person win for today to end the edit war, and if the remaining
participants keep having an edit war, ask another uninvolved sysop
to protect the page.

A2.  No --> protect the page, proceed to Q2.

Q2.  Is there some edit that needs to be urgently made to fix the
page, or is there some very cautious thing I could do that's likely
to help for now?

A2.  Cautiously make the edit.

Abe Sokolov wrote:

>
> I'm not apologizing. My protection of the page was justified. It received support beforehand and I have since noticed that it has been defended.
>
>
>
> BTW, this comment on the mailing list by Jimmy Wales seems to support my action: "Sysops should generally not edit a page that has been protected due to
>
> a dispute, whether or not they were involved in the edit war to start
>
> with.  I say "generally not" because of course there can be
>
> exceptions, for example rolling back to a version before the edit war
>
> might be useful in some cases, or attempting a one-shot temporary
>
> compromise."
>
>
>
> What I did followed the guidelines, according to the exceptions Mr. Wales explained above. My edits only rolled back to a version before the edit war, the version without the incoherent, poorly written essay. Before the edit war, I had not even read the page, let alone edit it.
>
>
>
> When my sysop privileges are reinstated, I promise to continue following the protected page guidelines.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>tarquin-
>
>
>
>>I've just wasted my weekend working on designs, but never mind.
>>
>>
>
>Whether you have wasted your weekend depends on
>- whether someone else implements your skin, or
>- whether we come up with a new skin system that is based on page
>templates instead of code/HTML mix, so that you can do it yourself.
>Personally, I don't consider that a development priority, and it's
>unlikely that it will happen anytime soon.
>
My idea for a roadmap was this:

1. Create a new default skin that is more friendly to newcomers & casual
readers. (Maybe even alter eveyone's preferences so people on Phase3
skin stay on Phase3 skin.) I don't think that what registered users like
is as important as what is sound design and clear for unregistered
users. Check my earlier post on "Lusers' eyes glaze over when faced with
Wikipedia pages".
2. I can cope with PHP well enough to program this under the current
skin system.
2b. Tweak the Phase3 skin so it's a little better.
3. (long term) Work on a template system
4. recode existing skins as templates and add new ones

In the meantime, please could someone answer my question:
I have CVS access. How do I put things on the text server?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial edit war

body:
For the record, the page was unprotected immediately prior to my protecting
it a few hours ago. That is not to say that it wasn't protected earlier,
but just that when I went to look, it was NOT protected. It is now.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>tarquin-
>
>
>>1. Create a new default skin
>>
>>
>
>Well, you may have noticed that even minor changes to the skin meet with
>quite strong resistance and have to be defended individually.
>Realistically, you will have to defend your new skin, and it will probably
>end up being voted on, before it is made the new default.
>
>
Well so far I've been happy to read people's comments and criticisms and
make changes. (see the comment pages on Meta).
I'm quite prepared to do that -- go through many cycles of development,
comments, development, comments.
I *did* say early that my intention was that we'd keep Phase3 skin as
one of the user preferences. But we *badly* need a more n00b-friendly
skin. (For example: I have been trying to get Wikipedia bookmarked in
all libraries across my area, but the way it looks at the moment, most
people just find it too confusing -- people have to remember: lusers
start reading at the top left and keep going. At the moment, they think
our site is called "Main Page <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>
| Recent changes <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges> |
Edit this page
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=edit> |
Page history
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=history>")

However, if this turns into Yet Another Vote In Which Nothing Gets
Decided, then I think my time is better spent .... hmmm... playing
Solitaire.

Instead of many skins competing for votes, I would rather have a small
core of designers work on one project, and get feedback from wikipedians
at large to gradually reach something we're happy with.
(I don't recall we voted on Magnus' PHP script, or Lee's Phase 3. ;) )

>
>
>>In the meantime, please could someone answer my question:
>>I have CVS access. How do I put things on the text server?
>>
>>
>
>Just commit it to the unstable branch (it's the default branch) and it
>will get in with the next update. Please don't commit unfinished stuff.
>
>
>
Thanks.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 05:20:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz-
> > Without that it was much less readable. Edit is obviously more important
> > than "Editing help", and RC and "Special pages" are obviously more important
> > than "Image list" or "New pages"
>
> Actually, the latter is not obvious. The most important page from "Special
> pages" is already in the quickbar (Preferences), the rest is of limited
> interest to most users. I have no idea why "Image list" is in the quickbar
> at all, and "New pages" is used quite a lot by some people.

Cologne Blue has no special pages combobox, so it needs big link to Special Pages.
Anyway, whatever the selection of links, using different fonts greatly improves
readability.

> > No, this new policy is plain breaindead. There just has to be some wiki for
> > random code changes
>
> Why? I frankly don't see the reason. If you want to make "random code
> changes", there's no need to use the Wikimedia servers. Use your own
> machine. If you want to demonstrate and test reasonably complete changes,
> commit to CVS unstable and update the test.wiki accordingly.

Testing is part of developement process, not something to be done after
developement is finished.

Sure I could use one of my machines for testing, but it has been always
done on *.wikipedia.org, so why suddently change it ?


body:
tarquin-
> 1. Create a new default skin

Well, you may have noticed that even minor changes to the skin meet with
quite strong resistance and have to be defended individually.
Realistically, you will have to defend your new skin, and it will probably
end up being voted on, before it is made the new default.

> In the meantime, please could someone answer my question:
> I have CVS access. How do I put things on the text server?

Just commit it to the unstable branch (it's the default branch) and it
will get in with the next update. Please don't commit unfinished stuff.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
Tomasz-
> Cologne Blue has no special pages combobox,

Neither does Standard after my last update.

> so it needs big link to Special
> Pages.

That's not a logical conclusion. Whether links should be emphasized should
depend on their frequency of use. You can't judge this frequency since it
varies from user to user. Therefore any emphasis you add will likely piss
off some users who have different priorities.

> Testing is part of developement process, not something to be done after
> developement is finished.

True, and I expect you to test the code you write before committing it to
CVS. Test.wiki is only for the final stage of testing by a larger
audience, and certainly not for committing unfinished stuff. Otherwise we
just end up with incomplete code like the interlanguage links, the
category system etc.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

body:
I'd like to respond to the guidelines that Mr. Wales laid out. I am certain that I acted according to those guidelines.

"Q1.  Have I been involved in the edit war?

A1.  Yes --> don't protect the page, and it's probably best to let the
other person win for today to end the edit war, and if the remaining
participants keep having an edit war, ask another uninvolved sysop
to protect the page."

*I had never edited the page prior to this edit war and I have never added content to the page. The article's history demonstrates that I only restored versions, which were to be protected, that did not contain the content responsible for the edit wars. Personally, I was the ideal person to stabilize the page, being of no faith and never having participated in topics pertaining to the sex-abuse scandal. I have not contributed a word to the article.

A2.  No --> protect the page, proceed to Q2.

Q2.  Is there some edit that needs to be urgently made to fix the
page, or is there some very cautious thing I could do that's likely
to help for now?

*Yes, there was an urgent need to edit the page. Due to Nostrum's repeated refusals to cooperate with the other contributors, I was forced to restore the latest version not to include the unacceptable content.

A2.  Cautiously make the edit.

*And that's what I did until Eric overreacted, probably unaware at the time that I was not involved in the edit war, have never expressed any strong feelings about the subject, had been asked to protect the page, have read requests to protect the page, waited cautiously while the article was stable before protecting the page, warning all involved contributors that I'd be willing to protect the page, and finally unaware of the unacceptable quality of the text.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 02:58:00PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz-
> > Cologne Blue has no special pages combobox,
>
> Neither does Standard after my last update.

Then you're the one who's going to piss many users ;-)

> > so it needs big link to Special
> > Pages.
>
> That's not a logical conclusion. Whether links should be emphasized should
> depend on their frequency of use. You can't judge this frequency since it
> varies from user to user. Therefore any emphasis you add will likely piss
> off some users who have different priorities.

It's seriously much less individual issue that you claim it to be.
Show me a person who uses "Edit help" more often than "Edit", and
"List images" more often than "Recent Changes". Well, boldening link
to Special pages may be debatable, but I don't see any good reasons against it.

In any case it looks much better than "everything bold".

> > Testing is part of developement process, not something to be done after
> > developement is finished.
>
> True, and I expect you to test the code you write before committing it to
> CVS. Test.wiki is only for the final stage of testing by a larger
> audience, and certainly not for committing unfinished stuff. Otherwise we
> just end up with incomplete code like the interlanguage links, the
> category system etc.

If you meant testing if it doesn't throw PHP parse error, then yeah,
I've done that on local machine. But for styles you need lot of wide audience
testing, and modify it in process.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
Tomasz-
>> Neither does Standard after my last update.

> Then you're the one who's going to piss many users ;-)

I distracted them with useless style changes.

> It's seriously much less individual issue that you claim it to be.
> Show me a person who uses "Edit help" more often than "Edit",

Edit is generally bolded, even in the standard skin. We can agree on that.

> and "List images" more often than "Recent Changes".

Cunctator said, IIRC, that he almost never uses RC. There are probably
others. I guess you don't really need it if you only care about your own
edits and a few subjects in your watchlist. As I said, I think there's no
point of image list being in the quickbar at all.

> If you meant testing if it doesn't throw PHP parse error, then yeah,
> I've done that on local machine. But for styles you need lot of wide
> audience testing, and modify it in process.

Maybe, but if you want a major test and feedback cycle, then we should at
first finish the current cycle so that we can get all wikis running the
latest code.

Regards,

Erik


body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 02:20:26PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
> However, if this turns into Yet Another Vote In Which Nothing Gets
> Decided, then I think my time is better spent .... hmmm... playing
> Solitaire.

Could we please stop voting ?
The only vote so far, about article counters, resulted in total
disaster when we lost quite meaningful counting system to something
that explicitely includes every stub.


body:
Tomasz-
> Could we please stop voting ?
> The only vote so far, about article counters, resulted in total
> disaster when we lost quite meaningful counting system to something
> that explicitely includes every stub.

It counted stubs before as well. Virtually every stub has a comma.
Furthermore, the old method broke several non-English counts, which is why
we changed it. Many people simply disagree that stubs should not be
counted, so they have voted accordingly. The new method only counts stubs
that are wikified. You are free to disapprove of the result, but you are a
small minority.

Regards,

Erik


body:
JT wrote:
>172 commented: 'I know that I've been warned against
>this, but I'd be tempted to protect this page from
>that garbage.' -172
>
>Mav's response was - 'I tend to agree.'

Whoa! I think there is a /huge/ misunderstanding here.
My response was to 172's comment that ended with
"Second, it's hideously written and full of
grammatical errors. These people, seeking to have this
low-brow polemic inserted in such a crucial article,
are making a mockery of Wikipedia, which is striving
to be a good, scholarly source of reference." NOTE: I
moreso agreed with the text before that somewhat harsh
sentence.

See:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Catholicism&oldid=1183464

Here is the diff for my edit:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Catholicism&diff=1183487&oldid=1183486

When I submitted my comment I got an edit conflict so
I pasted my response right after 172's sig. JT's quote
of 172 was appended by 172 in the edit just before
mine; that is what caused the edit conflict. I didn't
check to see what caused the conflict - that's my
fault and I apologize. To be clear I did /not/, at
all, in any way "tend to agree" that the page should
have been protected. Again it is my fault for not
properly handling the edit conflict.

But the fact remains that it did look like I indicated
agreement with page protection. Apparently my opinion
on things carries some of weight with at least with
172 so I can see some logic in his assertion that he
had support. All this should be taken into
consideration.

Erik wrote:
>....
>People come to Wikipedia and are amazed by
>being able to add information. We encourage
>them to do so. Be bold!, we say. So they add
>what they believe is right, at the best of
>their ability. ...
>WikiLove is about giving people the benefit
>of the doubt, and not attributing to malice
>what can be explained with simple ignorance.
>...

Very wise words.

>When dealing with people, you should give
>them a way out. A way to agree with you
>without hurt feelings.

Bing, bing, bing! Give this man a prize!

>I'm not saying we should embrace people
>like DW even after they give us constant
>abuse. I'm saying we should be tolerant
>of newbies, tolerant of young Wikipedians
>who don't have the knowledge we expect of
>them. We should be teachers and models,
>not arrogant editors who chase away the
>meddling kids.

Yes, I think that is a very good attitude to have
toward newbies. I can't really say more since you
covered the topic so well.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] BitTorrent for db dumps?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Found this on SourceForge:
>    http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/
>
> Would that work with our up-to-the-second articles, or is it for
> large, static files only?

Maybe we should set up an optional torrent for the db-dumps? It doesnt
seem like a bad idea. I mean it can't hurt, itakes just a second to set
up and in case a couple of people are downloading the dumps at the same
time it could be useful and save some bandwidth. even if it is not our
main concern to save bandwidth, it never hurts.

Lightning


from_name: Adam

from_email: Adam

subject: [WikiEN-l] Erik Mollers comment

body:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-July/005414.html

Erik Moller said: You add a little stuff and immediately people tell you that you're worthless, your edits are bullshit, crap, nonsense etc. Your heart starts racing:
these guys attacked you. Nobody should talk to you like that. So you write
a hasty response without even thinking about it. Then you come to your
senses and try to understand what these people are babbling about. Your
edits improve somewhat, but people are still in a frenzy. Now suddenly you can't write anything at all. But hey- some  people still can. You're a second class user now. Aha: Wikipedia is not an open project as it claims.

Boy, that sure sounds familiar....

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subject: [Wikitech-l] BitTorrent for db dumps?

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>We have plenty of bandwidth on wikipedia.org,

For now at least. But the various Wikimedia projects are together creating new
pages at an exponential rate that are in turn being viewed by an
exponentially increasing number of readers.

We have been very fortunate to have a bandwidth sugar daddy (hi Jimbo!) so far
but we should not assume that Bomis will be able to foot the bill when our
popularity (measured in hits/bandwidth consumption) becomes comparable to
websites like Slashdot.org or even Yahoo.com.

At some point we are going to have to economize our bandwidth usage.
BitTorrent is one of those possibilities (mirrors are another) and IMO it is
better to start thinking about this now rather than when bandwidth gets more
limited. I have, however, no opinion on this particular technology though.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 04:13:00PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz-
> > Could we please stop voting ?
> > The only vote so far, about article counters, resulted in total
> > disaster when we lost quite meaningful counting system to something
> > that explicitely includes every stub.
>
> It counted stubs before as well. Virtually every stub has a comma.

Given that number of "articles" jumped some 20% with new counters, your statement
is outright false.

> Furthermore, the old method broke several non-English counts, which is why
> we changed it.

"Old method" was to use different counter for CJK wikipedias, don't you remember ?

> Many people simply disagree that stubs should not be counted, so they have
> voted accordingly. The new method only counts stubs that are wikified.
> You are free to disapprove of the result, but you are a small minority.

They didn't disagree - they didn't *understand* the issue.
It's technical decision, so it doesn't matter who's a minority, but who's right,
and for counting "articles" old method was clearly superior.

But then, English Wikipedia has already history of counterfeiting stats,
with Rambot.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology and Geography

body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 07:03:52AM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
> A useful book that has been put on-line at:
>
>
> http://www.ClassicalDictionary.bravepages.com/
>
Do you know the legal state of this dictionary?

I don't find any year of print or similar on the above
page.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Tomasz-
> Given that number of "articles" jumped some 20% with new counters, your
> statement is outright false.

6.43% on en:, actually, and that doesn't count the new articles that were
created between May 14 and May 25. The new count system simply gets more
articles which are not in prose format but which do contain links, such as
lists.

> "Old method" was to use different counter for CJK wikipedias, don't you
> remember ?

What I remember is that people on some Wikipedias inserted commas into
articles to have them counted.

> But then, English Wikipedia has already history of counterfeiting stats,
> with Rambot.

That, again, is a matter of opinion. You will have to live with the fact
that not everyone agrees with yours.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Rotem Dan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mork work on the demo

body:
I have made a number of changes to the demo. Most of them are "behind
the scenes" regarding the use of tables, and browser compatibility.

Version 1.1 of the demo:
http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/phase4-demo-v1-1.htm

phase4-metallic.css (if you want to make a new skin or modify the
current one): http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/phase4-metallic.css

Main points changed:
* Completely table free, uses only <div> and <span> tags for
positioning. I made the right column (article, discussion etc.) appear
first on the HTML code (using absolute positioning) and the left to
appear second. As a consequence, it will be more friendly to text
browsers, speech browsers etc.

Current problems: Absolute positioning looks incorrect on Opera browser.
(a bit too much to the top left), I will try to investigate this..

* "From wikipedia..", Other languages, Watch this page, Move this page,
Delete this page, Search link, etc. added.

* Post a comment (for discussion). Problem: I haven't figured out how to
use the "width: 100%" property without the extreme page widening on IE.
will be solved.

* Minor changes to skin. Note: this is just the "metallic" skin! copy
"phase4-metallic.css" from the link I gave above, edit it, and presto,
you have a new skin! (content is completely separated from layout using
CSS and strict XHTML, I was very careful in this).

It works with Mozilla (tested 1.4) and Explorer (tested 6.0) and
positioning has a slight problem with Opera (tested 7.11). I also tried
them on 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions and they both look the same.

Regards,
Rotem


subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

body:
JT wrote:
Way too many "/you/s"

In the name of all things wiki ; please don't inflame the situation by making
things personal.

I think all those involved should apologize for all actual or perceived
wrongs. But demanding an apology is a sure way of getting a slap in the face
in return instead of what you really want.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Small change in "print page" template request

body:
Maybe this would be better posted at SourceForge but ....

The current print page function is real neat but at the bottom of pages there
is no link or even mention of GNU FDL. And the url of the Wikipedia page is
not an active link.

This is an issue for anybody wanting a clean HTML version of one of our
articles. Recently a copy of such an article was found here:
http://www.uwm.edu/~okun/341/set12.htm

It would be nice if people could copy the source HTML of our printable
versions and not have to add anything in order to comply with our license.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikis and uniformity

in_reply_to:
<MPG.19878a6953ead4c11e1a307@smtp.nbnet.nb.ca> (Stephen
 Gilbert's message of "Tue, 22 Jul 2003 18:53:21 -0300")

body:
Stephen Gilbert <sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca> writes:

> "Easy" and "difficult" are subjective.

:) Yes, you are right.

> The main point is that it raises the bar for participation. Yu could no
> longer just drop by and make edits; you would first have to learn about
> the markup language before doing anything. As it stands, you don't have
> to know about the wiki syntax to do most things.

Perhaps.  But people destroy lists all the time: adding innocent line
break or new line and with a sudden you broke one list into two lists.

Or they write "See [[xxx]]" or "''See also:'' [[xxx]]", etc.  Providing
appropriate "tags" like "<seealso>" can help for better uniformity.

> I think that if Wikipedia ever puts out a "stable" version for
> distribution, the articles should be structured with XML. That's a job
> for dedicated editors with a good knowledge of document structure.
> Forcing it on the live wiki would, in my unproven opinion, by harmful.

Perhaps.  Nevertheless, I'd like to give it a try; I'm seriously
interested in a Wiki using the TEI DTD as its markup language.
Unfortunately, my resources (time, knowlegde in hacking) are too
limited to such a project come true on my own.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article about Wikipedia published on major Israeli newspaper

body:
DR wrote:

P.S: Hebrew wikiepdia's userbase jumped from 30 to 52
today. Article
count is currently at 115. I guess that's a good sign
;-)

Congratulations on healthy delivery.
-S-

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subject: [WikiEN-l] The Status of Abe

body:
Having not been involved in the Edit war -- and simply
dealing with the issue of Abe's status -- it seems
rather like Abe didnt cross the real hard-and-fast
line -- any more than other sysops have in the past.

While its a good sign that there seems to be some
developing sense of accountability for sysops, and
that these are being finalized into some explicit laws
of conduct, and being enforced.  Im not sure if theyre
applied in an absolutely even manner -- but who cares
-- as Jim is fond of saying -- "everybody cut each
other some slack."

This particular case seems to be cleared up. I would
advocate that Abe be reinstated, if hes not already --
that this be about a clarification of the laws of
sysopdom, and not about a submission to authority --
which many good people find difficult if its beyond
reason.  But I only speak from ignorance of all
concerned details.

Objectively,
-S-

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

body:
Michael Becker wrote:
>I would like to point out that Mav never asked for an apology!
>For some reason people think he is making attacks, he is just
>making statements, ...

I'm confused (shocking I know) - don't you mean "Erik"? I don't recall anybody
thinking I was attacking anyone else (at least for this issue).

--mav


from_name: james duffy

body:
>
>Because he protected a page in an edit war/heated discussion in which he
>was involved -- see [[Talk:Catholicism]] -- I have temporarily revoked
>172's sysop privileges. I would not have done so if he had followed my
>advice not to do it again, but after I unprotected the page he immediately
>reprotected it, and there is no point in engaging in "protection wars" --
>we should be clear about the guidelines we follow.
>
>Note that I was not substantially involved in the relevant discussion, but
>I am generally on 172's side; the edits were desperately in need of work.
>However, sysops are not editors, and should not use their privileges to
>enforce their own views. If the page should have been protected, it should
>have been done by an independent third party. This is what our protected
>page policy has said for months.
>
>I am also concerned by the definitely non-Wikiquette tone in the above
>discussion.
>
>Unless there are any objections, I will only reinstate 172's sysop status
>if he agrees to follow our protected page guidelines.

I think Erik's decision is misguided and wrong, as he would have realised if
he followed the debate in detail. The problem arose when on person tried to
insert a semi-literate POV rant against catholicism onto the page.

The stuff this user tried to include included such nonsense as stating that

1. 10% of popes were paedophiles;
2. Mormons are catholics;
3. Born Again Christians are called 'New Born Christians;

The semi-literate nature of the rant can be judged by the following lines
from it.

- Many people in such competition claim they castigate the group that has
lesser dedication and rules, rules that are not as strict as the ladder.

- One could look at the branching and creation of different ideals such as
Christianity, New Born Christians, Mormon, and so on. These divergences in
the religion have support the belief that Christianity has divided into a
group of sects

- There is much evidence to show the Catholic church has had sexual
offenders as it's heads.

- This degradation could be supported through the change of the puritan
ways, as seen in the history of America.

The author outrageously also equated paedophilia with homosexuality.

An indication of Nostrum's agenda and anti-catholic agenda can be seen in
his comment to Pizza Puzzle - '' It seems everyone is against the truth. I
suppose the breeders want their kids molested.'' And he told 172 that '' Oh,
and if you're wondering, the reason my coments seem so outragous is because
I'm an ignorant athiest. I really don't know much about the Bible, simply
because I've only read about 2 pages.''

I removed the nonsense he kept putting in the article and put a critique of
it on the talk page. JHK, referring to the additions, commented 'BTW, I also
find Nostrum's stuff unreadable and his posture amusing.' Harris7 in one
revertion "Substantial excision of anti-catholic rant" and in another case
'The recent mods were highly POV and rather nonsensical '' Nostrum's
justifications included ''added overbearing proof to people who would like
to live in big holes under bridges, Say hi to sammy for me'' ''If you think
there is POV in homosexual abuse in Catholocism then take it out, don't
delete it, remember, fix, not censor, otherwise I will list you as a censor
and you don't want to be on my bad side''

172 is not a religious believer but came to the page because of the edit war
and like most people was horrified at the sheer awfulness of the text which
this one user /kept/ over and over again trying to insert, each time
insisting it was NPOV. (The user, Nostrum, also insisted on putting it near
the top of the article, giving it more importance that such things as the
Catholic belief in sacraments, the liturgy etc.)

172 commented: 'I know that I've been warned against this, but I'd be
tempted to protect this page from that garbage.' -172

Mav's response was - 'I tend to agree.'

No-one urged him not to, in fact many openly agreed. Protection had also
been requested on the wiki-list.

172 then wrote

'After hearing support that this page be protected, I agreed to do it only
when the garbage was restored. The page was stable for a couple of hours or
more, but then it reappeared. Hence the protection.' 172

As no sysop who had not taken part in the debate or expressed an opinion
chose to impose the necessary protection and stop the illiterate POV
nonsense from being inserted, 172 did what had to be done, which was to
protect the page, having given people advanced notice and received no
opposition at the time. What should have happened is that he then contact an
independent third party with sysop powers when one came on and asked for
them to remove his own temporary protection and insert their own indepedent
one but due to an oversight that was not done.  172 simply did what someone
had to do but which no-one was available to do.

In the circumstances I think Erik's response was an over-reaction. It wasn't
as if 172 unilaterally decided to use his sysop powers in a row he was a
longterm participant in. He simply did what had to be done on the page and
which no-one else at the time was available to do. If he hadn't wiki would
have had an article (one the major articles in any encyclopaedia) turned
into a garbled, POV anti-catholic rant in pidgin english.

In an attempt to NPOV Nostrum's stuff (if you could work out what it meant)
I wrote an additional section on the issue of clerical child abuse but that
didn't stop Nostrum added his strange stuff. In an attempt to create an
agreement, having protected the page, 172 wrote to Nostrum saying

''Due to all the problems with the text at question that have been
identified, please post the portions that you want to have added on a talk
page. They will be reviewed promptly by those who have actively contributed
content to Catholicism-related topics and topics pertaining to the sex abuse
scandal. If they meet encyclopedic standards, a place will be found for
them.'' 172

One of Nostrum's responses was ''who are you to say your opinions of
standards are higher than mine? You're gone boi.'' Nostrum

Furthermore Erik's decision to leave the page unprotected was clearly wrong.
What he should have done is put his own protection on in place of 172's,
not leave it unprotected when the user planting the anti-catholic rant had
already indicated his intention to insert the rubbish over and over again.
In the circumstances, it was perfectly understandable that 172 would
reinsert the protection. What else did Erik expect to happen if a page that
/has/ to be protected if left wide open for Nostrum to return for the
umpteenth time and add it in? It had to to be protected. It should have been
protected by someone not connected to the date. They didn't come to do it
and when someone did come they left it unprotected. 172 acted to stop the
clear vandalism on the page, nothing more.

JT

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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

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

> It is acceptable for people to hold their own opinions and express
> them -- but not in an inappropriate forum.  One of the cardinal
> principles of Wikipedia is respect for others, even others with
> whom
> we have significant political or other disagreements.

Absolutely. Even more so, in my opinion, of lont-time contributors.

> So, it isn't appropriate for people to "Jew bait" RK, nor to bring
> up
> the Israeli-Palestinian debate on completely unrelated pages, nor
> to
> attempt to engage him in political debates that he isn't interested
> in.

True. That behavior is also totally reprehensible.

> RK is abrasive at times, and he knows I think so, and I think he
> knows
> that it contributes to his difficulties.  But he does have a point,
> and I think we should listen to it and respect it.

I agree, and I can sympathise with him. And I do listen to him (I
don't just blindly delete his list messages). But I do want him to
know that I think that the way he expresses himself in the heat of
"righteous outrage" is a bit detrimental to his reputation as far as
I am concerned.

Anyway, back to my aviation articles...

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] BitTorrent to reduce server load?

body:
Found this on SourceForge:
    http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/

Would that work with our up-to-the-second articles, or is it for large,
static files only?


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 10:09:46PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Found this on SourceForge:
>    http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/
>
> Would that work with our up-to-the-second articles, or is it for large,
> static files only?

It's for large static files (filesets to be more exact - 50 kB files are OK,
if you always want the same collection of 10000 such files) only.
And it's not bandwidth that's our main problem.


from_name: Michael Becker

subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

body:
I would like to point out that Mav never asked for an apology!  For some
reason people think he is making attacks, he is just making statements,
you people are taking this too personally, and being very rude about it!
All I ever asked for was for some intervention, b/c people were
reverting without even looking at content, and people were biting the
newbie.  You people are lucky that I have talked with him extensively,
and supported his effort, otherwise we might have another newbie leaving
mad.  I am really sick of this type of behavior!

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 9.59
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Catholicism

JT wrote:
Way too many "/you/s"

In the name of all things wiki ; please don't inflame the situation by
making
things personal.

I think all those involved should apologize for all actual or perceived
wrongs. But demanding an apology is a sure way of getting a slap in the
face
in return instead of what you really want.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] BitTorrent for db dumps?

body:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 04:27:37PM -0400, Lightning wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> >Found this on SourceForge:
> >   http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/
> >
> >Would that work with our up-to-the-second articles, or is it for
> >large, static files only?
>
> Maybe we should set up an optional torrent for the db-dumps? It doesnt
> seem like a bad idea. I mean it can't hurt, itakes just a second to set
> up and in case a couple of people are downloading the dumps at the same
> time it could be useful and save some bandwidth. even if it is not our
> main concern to save bandwidth, it never hurts.

We have plenty of bandwidth on wikipedia.org, and most people who
are going to download don't ave that much, so it's going to only worsen
situation.