list: commons-l

subject:
[Commons-l] Cookie based blocking and bug #3233. A quick hack
	implimented on commons.

body:
A cookie is a piece of data stored by a website in your web browser
and made available to that site when you use the site.  (see [[HTTP
cookie]] for more info)

For a while people have thought it would be useful to use cookies as
part of our blocking system.  The idea is that when a user is blocked,
mediawiki would give them a cookie to indicate that they are blocked.
This would then inhibit them from editing even if they changed IPs.
The primary limitation to this approach is that any terminologically
savvy user could easily remove the cookie.

There is a request filed for this feature
(http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3233) along with a
patch, but this patch has not yet been merged into mediawiki.

Because interest for this feature keeps reoccurring, I threw together
a quick hack using javascript. This method of implementation allows us
to experiment and gauge the value of the approach without distracting
the core developers with more code to merge and support.

This could be implemented by any admin on an of our wiks.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monobook.js&diff=prev&oldid=3757203

Like all cookie based solutions, it is easy to bypass. Its primary
disadvantage compared to the mediawiki patch is that it is not
integrated with the block page, to activate a cookie based block you
must make a separate edit to the target user's javascript.

The current behavior blocks all uploads and edits by the impacted
browser, but it would be fairly trivial to make the function more like
regular blocking... or even more fine grained with per-namespace or
per article blocks. The current behavior also renews the block for 24
hours every time the user *views* a page while logged in as the
blocked user. This too could be trivially changed.

If anyone tries this out or improves it, please let me know. I pretty
much learned javascript in order to do this.. and it only took about
15 minutes to do, so don't expect it to work miracles but it should
work as advertised.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cookie based blocking and bug #3233. A quick hack
	implimented on commons.


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation templates s__k

body:
> Huh -- is there a good reason to split first and last into seperate
> parameters, in that case? I'm not sure why we couldn't just use a single
> parameter for the name. Maybe I'm missing something, though.

At the moment, it probably doesn't have any benefit, but it could be
useful in future to be able to search by surname, for example.

It should be easy enough to add a "name" parameter and design the
template so if the name parameter exists, it uses it, if it doesn't,
it uses the first and last parameters (otherwise it ignores them).
It's a pretty simple #if statement, it doesn't break existing use of
the template and makes the template easier to use in non-standard
cases.

I would add the field myself, but it's probably better if someone
familiar with this particular template does it, as it's rather
complicated and I'd have to read through the whole thing to make sure
I wasn't breaking something.

(The "last" parameter can be used in this way already, I think, but it
would be good to know when something isn't actually a surname.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The vexed issue of sources

body:
> Reference librarians are very accommodating, but I don't think I
> could ask the Penn reference librarian to go there and take a
> snapshot of it for me. (Although you never know, and I admit that I
> haven't actually tried).

However, there is no reason why someone who's already there couldn't
take a picture and upload it, and use that as the source. (I don't
know what the copyright is on walls, but it should be fair use if it
isn't free)


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] The vexed issue of sources

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>> From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net>
>>
>> How exactly is the writing on the wall different from a book?
>> (Sure, not
>> every Wikipedian can go read the writing, but not every Wikipedian
>> has access
>> to a particular book either.)
>
> ... my library's  interlibrary loan network.
>
> Actually if my library can't get it...
>
> ...the Boston Public Library, the Commonwealth's  "library of last
> resort." The Boston Public Library has fourteen  million volumes...
>
> ...interlibrary loan networks are not unique to my region of the U. S.
>
> ...sent to me by interlibrary loan.
>
> Reference librarians are very accommodating...

Libraries are wonderful things, but a scholar who believes that "the sum
of all human knowledge" is to be found in the library alone is like a
medieval monk who believes that the same is to be found only in the
monastery. Though I think a more serious concern for our project is
those people who limit themselves to what's available on the Web.

I worry that the demand for "easy verifiability" in our culture is too
strong, fueled by contributors too lazy to look beyond the first page of
results in a Google search. Fact-checking is work, and while we
shouldn't make it unnecessarily onerous, there's no need to be
apologetic if it does in fact require real effort. We need to expect
more such effort, and we would have better articles and less of the
donated junk from people cleaning out their mental closets of
misremembered trivia.

Some people seem to have misconceptions about this. For example, a
source in a foreign language is not unverifiable for lack of a
translation. In the end, you can always learn the language (unless it's
something not yet deciphered, like [[Indus script]]). Similarly, even if
a source cannot be brought to you, it could still be verifiable if you
can go to the source - literally, not just as a figure of speech. It's
the possibility of access that makes something verifiable, not the
medium, ease, or breadth of distribution.

> I don't think I  could ask the Penn reference librarian to go there
> and take a  snapshot of it for me. (Although you never know, and I
> admit that I  haven't actually tried).

Is a snapshot of a wall plaque different because it's taken by a
reference librarian as opposed to a Wikipedian?

--Michael Snow


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to clear a backlog

body:
theProject wrote

> I see there are a lot of ideas for how to prevent future backlogs, but I was
> also hoping to encourage discussion as to how we can deal with the backlogs
> (all of the large ones) we've got right now.

Well, I started looking at the month-by-month, from start of 2006. The numbers of articles there are quite small, initially. A small sample suggests that many of the merge notices relate to merges that have had significant opposition. I took down a couple.

Rather than quoting a figure of 10000 in total, which no one feels they could have much impact in clearing, you might do better to look at older subcategories.

Charles

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Javascript to make references work better?

body:
Personally, I just use the Back button, but this would still be nice,
especially for articles without much after the footnotes: that means
that jumping down to the footnote won't put it at the top of the page,
so you have to remember the number and hunt for it.

On 12/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Should I enter this into mediazilla?

Sure.


from_name: Michael Noda

subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
On 12/9/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > If you use Google Earth, check out the brand-new "Geographic Web" layer.
> > Did we have anything to do with that?
>
> Yes.
>
> Like it?

Absolutely.  But how often are they checking for new data?  Every
database dump?  How soon after one does the new data propogate?


from_name: Minh Nguyen

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hi,
>   Would it be possible to improve the "user clicks on footnote"
> workflow by using JavaScript? Currently it goes something like this:
>
> 1) User clicks on a footnote in some text, like the [1] in "Wikipedia
> is great.[1]"
> 2) The view suddenly jumps down to the bottom of the page.
> 3) User attempts to remember the number of the footnote they clicked
> on, and locate the corresponding number in the list. In some cases,
> this footnote will be at the very top of the current viewing window.
> Text looks like "1. ^ http://www.someurl.com"
> 4) User clicks on a web link, if applicable.
>
> How about:
>
> 1) User clicks on a footnote in some text, like [1]
> 2) The footnote expands in place to contain the full text of the
> footnote: [1 - http://www.someurl.com]
> 3) User can click on the web link, if applicable
> 4) Clicking on the [1 -, or the trailing ] (hopefully in a different
> colour from the contents of the footnote) collapses it again.
>
> Is this desirable and possible?
>
> Steve

The Vietnamese Wikipedia currently uses the following CSS code to make
it a little easier:

/* Highlight focused footnotes and references */
sup.reference:target, ol.references li:target {
     background-color: #ffffcc;
}
sup.reference:target {
     font-weight: bold;
}

I don't think it works in IE (including IE7), but it works just fine in
Mozilla-based browsers and Safari, and it's incredibly simple.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
On 12/11/06, Michael Noda <michael.noda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Absolutely.  But how often are they checking for new data?  Every
> database dump?  How soon after one does the new data propogate?

They are doing batch updates from dumps. .. I can find out exactly
what their update schedule looks like.

In the meantime, we should do some work making our georeferencing more
consistent. They capture many of the ways which we geocode, but not
all of them. As someone who has tried to do stuff with out geodata
previously, I can sympathize with the challenges Google has faced in
this project.

You can see my post on the subject at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates#Machine_readability_of_Wikipedia.27s_geocoding


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] new Google Earth tie-in (!!)

body:
Greg Maxwell wrote:
> In the meantime, we should do some work making our georeferencing more
> consistent.

Absolutely.

> You can see my post on the subject at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates#Machine_readability_of_Wikipedia.27s_geocoding

Thanks.  I had some posts on this same issue a while ago; I'll
try to figure out where they were.

Google aside, this stuff needs cleaning up.  For example, it's
not at all uncommon to have a {{coor title d}} saying one thing
at the top of the page, and another {{coor dms}} in-line in the
article text, with slightly (or significantly) different
coordinates.

If we can figure out a better scheme, I'm definitely up for some
creative bot work to implement the migration.


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cookie based blocking and bug #3233. A quick
 hack implimented on commons.

body:
A better solution is to embed the MAC address of the workstation into
the cookie itself, so you can track someone no matter what account
or IP they use.

Jeff

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>A cookie is a piece of data stored by a website in your web browser
>and made available to that site when you use the site.  (see [[HTTP
>cookie]] for more info)
>
>For a while people have thought it would be useful to use cookies as
>part of our blocking system.  The idea is that when a user is blocked,
>mediawiki would give them a cookie to indicate that they are blocked.
>This would then inhibit them from editing even if they changed IPs.
>The primary limitation to this approach is that any terminologically
>savvy user could easily remove the cookie.
>
>There is a request filed for this feature
>(http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3233) along with a
>patch, but this patch has not yet been merged into mediawiki.
>
>Because interest for this feature keeps reoccurring, I threw together
>a quick hack using javascript. This method of implementation allows us
>to experiment and gauge the value of the approach without distracting
>the core developers with more code to merge and support.
>
>This could be implemented by any admin on an of our wiks.
>http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monobook.js&diff=prev&oldid=3757203
>
>Like all cookie based solutions, it is easy to bypass. Its primary
>disadvantage compared to the mediawiki patch is that it is not
>integrated with the block page, to activate a cookie based block you
>must make a separate edit to the target user's javascript.
>
>The current behavior blocks all uploads and edits by the impacted
>browser, but it would be fairly trivial to make the function more like
>regular blocking... or even more fine grained with per-namespace or
>per article blocks. The current behavior also renews the block for 24
>hours every time the user *views* a page while logged in as the
>blocked user. This too could be trivially changed.
>
>If anyone tries this out or improves it, please let me know. I pretty
>much learned javascript in order to do this.. and it only took about
>15 minutes to do, so don't expect it to work miracles but it should
>work as advertised.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki

body:
Hoi,
For your information, the language sub committee has been asked to come
up with an advise about the mo.wikipedia.

 From my perspective, the first thing that will be required to come to a
solution is to first clean up the mo.wikipedia by normalising it. This
should lead to a situation where it is discussed how we can come to an
integration where both Romanian in Cyrillic and Latin will have there
place. Effectively the mo.wikipedia has not been closed and, certainly
not all wikipedians of the world agreed on this.

Having a standard main page for the mo.wikipedia like any other project
is a good first step for some normalisation. I do welcome Yann's courage.

Thanks,
     GerardM

ro.wiki schreef:
> I'll like to report an abuse on mo.wiki. This came from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Yann (Yann). As it seems he edited http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page to redirect to http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D3%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%87%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8D . I guess he also changed the default entry page (the first page that apairs when entering mo.wikipedia.org in the adress bar) from http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page to http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D3%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%87%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8D . This changes should be reverted as the decision taken some while ago was to block this Wikipedia, and as he recognised on this page , there was no discussion to change that in anyway. Moreover it was decided finaly that this Wikipedia should be closed, but Yann chose unilateraly to break the decision taken by Wikipedians all over the world.
>
> Regards, Danutz


body:
On 12/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is interesting.
>
> A comment in the code says "If the user logs on while this is in their
> js, their browser gets a 24hour cookie block." which seems rather
> different to "The current behavior also renews the block for 24 hours
> every time the user *views* a page while logged in as the blocked
> user." The latter comment I don't entirely understand. Is it that the
> block is only activated once they log in? If so, I think that could be
> a very useful feature for Commons, where users don't always regularly
> log in. Short blocks are good to get a user's attention (generally re:
> uploading copyivos), but if they don't even try to log in while
> they're blocked then they go basically unnoticed.

If they view a page while logged and while the block is still in their
monobook.js, the block is extended.  Unfortunately if they leave
before they are blocked and never log back in, we can't currently do
anything about them.

However, a simmlar approach could be used for that application.
If every time a user uses commons while logged in we could set a
cookie "lastcommonsuser=username".  Then a sitewide js could be
implimented which pops up message to users who have been naughty.

 > If this could be changed to create permanent (or timed) uploading-only
> blocks, Commons would start using this straight away, I feel certain.
> :) ( http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4995 )

Commenting out one line of the code would turn it into an upload only block.

Alternatively with a few more lines of code we could make the sort of
cookie block selectable by the blocking admin.

> BTW: I think something like this would be good in its own MediaWiki
> page, it is easier to track changes to it and refer to it instead of
> jumbled in Monobook.js.

Anyone is welcome to move it... I'm working on another project at the
moment, if no one has touched it when I'm done, I'll come back and
brush it up some.

Thanks for your interest.


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation templates s__k

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
> I use the "cite book" template a lot.
>
> It's a mess.
>

I suggest you join the discussion at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Cite_book and raise your
concerns there, so we can keep the discussion on-wiki and in one place.

Please also take a look at the archives there.

And beware of consensus. That thing has a history.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-12-12

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

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

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

Passed 451 of 471 tests (95.75%)... FAILED!


from_name: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki

body:
> As I have indicated before, the Moldovan language
> entity will be part of
> future development of the ISO-639. I have inside
> information to this
> effect from the ISO-639-6 standard that is under
> development.

Can you tell us more on these developments? Are there
publicly-available documents?

I'm interested in one main point: is Moldovan going to
be Latin-scripted, or Cyrillic-scripted?
This is important, because the choices are:
1. Moldovan is the latin-scripted language of the
Republic of Moldova, in which case there is no
regulatory board. Or, more precisely, there is one
(the Academy of Moldova), but it says "standard
Moldovan = standard Romanian".
2. Moldovan is the cyrillic-scripted language of
Transnistria, an entity recognized by nobody. BTW, who
regulates this language in Transnistria?
3. Moldovan is copied from old standards, maybe
without any assumption as to what it is, leaving it as
an object of contention and a relic of the cold war.

Dpotop

____________________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
I would be much more inclined to intervene if you were willing to put
your reputation on the line and make the defense publicly, rather than
under a pseudonym and throwaway email address.

Concerned Wikipedian wrote:
> Mr Wales,
>
> I am hereby writing to you to express my displeasure and discontent at
> "your" Arbitration Committee's decision to desysop MONGO, one of the most
> dedicated and resilient users Wikipedia has ever seen.
>
> MONGO has had to put up with every kind of harassment you could think of; by
> definition of [[WP:HA]], a number of users that have forced him into his
> mental decline should have been blocked and/or banned ages ago.
>
> So, I officially protest this decision, and wish you to evaluate it. Given
> your ability to veto any decision made by the AC, I hereby request that if
> you agree with my sentiment, you use this to stop Wikipedia from losing yet
> another prolific administrator and user to the abyss of trolls and vandals -
> RickK springs to mind as another.
>
> Last time I checked, MONGO wasn't the only administrator who could, on
> occasion, skirt the guidelines of civility. I could name 15 or so who do it
> worse than he does, and yet it is him who takes the fall.
>
> MONGO stood up for NPOV, something you yourself should extremely proud of -
> Wikipedia wouldn't be Wikipedia without servants like MONGO who try to keep
> unverified rubbish out, in accordance with "What Wikipedia is not", as well
> as "Neutral Point of View". Further, your relentless push of making
> Wikipedia fully verified through "Verifiability" and "Reliable Sources",
> which I commend you for emphasising, was one of MONGO's ideals, and
> something he sought to try and create under your direction.
>
> There is no denying that MONGO may have overstepped his mark once or twice;
> I would be a fool to say so. What I will say, however, is your ArbCom has
> previously found that "occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with [the
> role] ? administrators are not expected to be perfect". I believe that,
> given the crap, for want of a better word, that MONGO has had to deal with
> in his fight to uphold your, and Wikipedia's, values, he should be given
> leeway in this precedent.
>
> You yourself said that "The Arbitration Committee [...] can impose a
> solution that I'll consider to be binding, with of course the exception that
> I reserve the right of executive clemency and indeed even to dissolve the
> whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster. But I regard that as unlikely,
> and I plan to do it about as often as the Queen of England dissolves
> Parliament against their wishes, i.e., basically never, but it is one last
> safety valve for our values". I feel that it is your turn to stand up and be
> counted, Jimmy, to stand up for our values. Wikipedians are not perfect;
> administrators are not perfect, by the same token; nor should administrators
> be expected to be unflappable in the face of persistent, ridiculous trolling
> and harassment that MONGO has had to.
>
> Cometh the hour, cometh the man; will you be the man, or will the hour slip
> you by? I hope you can see the devastation that this would cause Wikipedia
> should you decide that the Arbitration Committee, which is becoming more and
> more dissented by members of the community as segregated, has somehow got
> this one right.
>
> The question you must ask yourself, in the spirit of IAR: If this decision
> will be detrimental to improving or maintaining Wikipedia more than the
> opposite decision will be, ignore it. You made this official policy on
> August 19, 2006 stating "IAR is policy, always has been". I feel that this
> is as good a time as any to apply its' principle.
>
> -- Concerned Wikipedian
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki

body:
> Your question of "who regulates this language in
> Transnistria" assumes
> that a language needs regulation. This is not
> necessary at all...

Right. But a **standard**, like ISO-????, is about
**standardisation**. That is, some form of standard
language different from other standard languages in
the dialect continuum. My question is: what will be
the characteristics of Standard Moldovan, as defined
by the standard?

You brought this standard in the discussion saying
that it will close the Romanian vs. Moldovan
discussion. I hope it will, but can't help asking
myself how. Just assigning language codes is not
sufficient. Someone has to say: this is standard RO,
this is standard MO, beat off. Can you? Is ISO-????
going to define this? Or just follow, I repeat, old
Soviet practices, by saying: On our side of the
fronteer the language is called Moldovan with code MO,
on yours it is called Romanian with code RO, and they
are different?

Dpotop

The whole discussion here

What you say about not needing regulatory bodies is
simply that they are going to adopt the appro

 many
> languages are recognised some are more like a
> language continuum.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

____________________________________________________________________________________
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Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [18274]
	trunk/phase3/includes/Parser.php

body:
On 11/12/06, sanbeg at svn.wikimedia.org <sanbeg at svn.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> +                               $assocArgs = $this->createAssocArgs($args);

If that's going to be a static function, it might be a bit nicer to call it as

self::createAssocArgs( $args );

Use of the SRO reminds people reading the code that what's being
called is static.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] ImportFreeImages Extension

body:
On 11/12/06, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> Thankfully since it's in SVN if someone feel particularly strong about
> something like this - they have the option of implementing it themselves.

Oooh, whipping out the old {{sofixit}} again?

Rob Church


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] A first Board retrospective

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
.
>
> - QA / stable version. This is a short term process
> where the Board
> needs to have some involvement to ensure that we're
> not quietly
> becoming Nupedia. ;-) We've reached agreement now
> that this will be
> done by an outside developer if at all possible, to
> allow Brion and
> Tim to focus on day-to-day operations and the big
> single login
> transition. It will probably be implemented in such
> a way that
> individual projects have a reasonable amount of
> flexibility in the
> configuration.
> - Better process for outside parties to use
> Wikimedia trademarks,
> including non-commercial entities. Perhaps develop a
> free content
> approach to trademarks/logos.
> - Establish mid term and long term strategy with
> regard to project and
> business development. Project charters.
> - Make processes multilingual. There are some good
> technical
> developments here (both Multilingual MW and
> LiquidThreads are under
> active dev.), but we really need to factor this into
> our core
> organizational strategy.
> - Better event strategy. The EventsCom is still
> dysfunctional.
> - Systematic approach to spam/SEO/self-promotion.
> Will hopefully
> relate to whatever new QA tools we develop.
> - Help establish community structures for developing
> sound
> project-level legal policies.
> - Better speaker/contacts coordination. This is
> really needed both for
> conferences and for our developing efforts to
> involve schools,
> libraries and universities.
> - Research. It's on my to-do list to redefine the
> CRO role and propose
> a candidate, hopefully before the end of the year.
> - Volunteer coordination. We need to do a much
> better job telling
> people how they can help, i.e. a kind of open task
> database with clear
> instructions for participating.
> - Awareness. In general, there are a million things
> we can do to make
> people aware of what WMF is, what chapters are, etc.
> We should start
> doing a few of them soon. ;-)
>
> Again, Board role is to make sure that these things
> (can) happen, not
> to implement them directly in most cases.
>
> 5) Final thoughts. I do believe we're on track to
> becoming a mature
> and scalable organization. The expanded Board, Tim
> Shell's resignation
> and Jimmy's choice to nominate Florence as Chair
> reflect our
> commitment to not being a "one man show," but a
> community-driven
> effort. Jimmy deserves our gratitude for taking
> things into this
> direction, and for his continued commitment and
> leadership. I remember
> well when Wikipedia was at wikipedia.com and it was
> very much an open
> question for me whether there was an IPO in its
> future. Now we're one
> of the most fascinating charitable organizations on
> the planet.
>
> The WMF does not exist in "Internet time", and it
> has taken years for
> it to grow up (and will still take a few more). This
> can be
> frustrating given the exponential growth of WP in
> particular.  But I
> think we will be able to keep up eventually, as long
> as we don't
> suffer the illusion that all it takes is to expand
> the Board to 7, 9,
> 11 members -- it's the organization itself which
> needs to become
> scalable. On the positive side, we've been
> incredibly efficient with
> our finances so far.
>
> I personally hope that the WMF can become a model
> how non-profits of
> this type _should_ be run, and that more essential
> Internet
> infrastructure will move into the non-profit sector
> in the long run.
> It is my conviction that society will be better off
> if we can
> emphasize cooperation over competition, and the
> needs of the many over
> the wants of the few.
>
> The free content and open source movements reflect
> this cooperative
> model. While they allow competitive forking, such
> forking is generally
> considered unproductive and discouraged unless
> absolutely necessary.
> While the needs of individuals are resolved (by
> acting on them),
> social structures and funding models evolve to
> address the needs of
> the many with priority. I long for a world which
> follows these ideals
> consistently, and hope that we can be leaders to
> show that it is
> possible.
>
> Lastly, and importantly, in spite of frequent and
> generally
> constructive disagreement, I believe the Board is
> becoming a solid
> team that can "get stuff done." The word "community"
> is becoming a lot
> more real to us as the years go by.  When it counts,
> we will be there
> for each other, and for you.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 12/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this desirable and possible?

It's certainly possible, and I think it would work well. The old style
listing could be preserved for printing, screen readers, and
JavaScript-disabled browsers. There's really no particular reason to
literally transport the traditional footnote metaphor to the web.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki

body:
For the record: You did not answer my questions
concerning the ISO standard you commented upon as a
solution to the MO-RO problem.

> The WMF has been great in allowing people to use
> their own language.
> When the language is mutually understandable, like
> for American and
> British English (and all the other variations) we
> have a history of
> keeping things together.

Do you imply that MO and RO are not mutually
understandable?

> The
> politics around the
> Moldovan project make that people do not accept that
> some need Cyrillic
> content. The arguments used are political and have
> nothing to do with
> linguistics.

More than 6 months ago, I said that I will drop my
case as soon as *one* native moldovan supports a
cyrillic mo.wiki. As of today, I still have to see one
on wikipedia.

So, in a sense, we do agree: As soon as Cyrillic
content is needed, it should be provided. The
difference between you and me is that I seem to note
that there's currently no need for such content.

> In my personal opinion, the
> quality of both the
> mo.wikipedia and the ro.wikipedia cannot be
> considered good when it is
> impossible to integrate and to serve the needs that
> are expressed by the
> existence of both projects.

I'm sorry, but I do not understand your point.
You are talking of integration. But what better
integration do you seek, when the rogue editors that
created mo.wikipedia resorted to simply copying
articles from ro.wikipedia and claiming they are in a
different language?
You also talk of needs. The needs expressed by
ro.wikipedia are clearly materialized in the 40000+
articles it generated. But whose needs are represented
in mo.wikipedia? Where is the community?

Dpotop

____________________________________________________________________________________
Have a burning question?
Go to www.Answers.yahoo.com and get answers from real people who know.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki

body:
To follow your analogy, the difference between
Romanian and Moldovan is exactly that between Finnish
and Karelian. standard Moldovan = standard Romanian
written with a special cyrillic script.

As to standards, this was the subject of my remarks
and questions to GerardM. If standard Moldovan were
defined, maybe with several scripts, etc, one could
how the languages are different.

Dpotop

--- pekka.gronow at yle.fi wrote:

> Although I have nothing useful add on mo.wiki, I am
> tempted to comment on
> the situation in a more general may.
>
> As some participants have noted, it is not an easy
> thing to say what is a
> language and what is not. The Norwegian linguist
> Einar Haugen used to say
> that a language is a dialect which has its own army.
> The question has been
> studied a lot in Norway, because the country uses
> two official variants of
> Norwegian which are quite close to each other (from
> an outsider's
> viewpoint).
>
> Swedish is both the national language of Sweden and
> the second official
> language of Finland. Although spoken Swedish in
> Finland differs somewhat
> from the Swedish spoken in Stockholm, the written
> languages are officially
> the same.
>
> In addition to Finland, Finnish is also spoken in
> Sweden and Russia. The
> language spoken and written by the original
> Finnish-speaking population of
> Lappland is called "me?nkieli", and its ortography
> differs considerably
> from standard Finnish. In this form, it has a legal
> minority language
> status in Sweden, although most Finns in Finland
> would consider it just
> another dialect. You might say that this was a
> political decision to
> create a new language, but I would certainly welcome
> a wikipedia in
> me?nkieli.
>
> Finnish is also spoken in Russia, but c. 1939 the
> Soviet government
> decided that the language should be written in
> cyrillic script and called
> Karelian. This experiment was abandoned after the
> war.
>
> If Moldovan is just the same as Romanian, then it is
> like Swedish in
> Finland. If it differs in some respects from
> Romanian, but uses the same
> script, then it is like me?nkieli. When it is
> written in Cyrillic, it is
> like Karelian.  If Moldova decides to accept all of
> them, then it would be
> like Norway. The problem with standards is that
> someone can always
> introduce a new standard.
>
> Pekka Gronow
>
>
>
>
> Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com>
> Sent by: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> 12.12.2006 12:22
> Please respond to
> wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
>
> To
> wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> cc
>
> Subject
> Re: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Your question of "who regulates this language in
> > Transnistria" assumes
> > that a language needs regulation. This is not
> > necessary at all...
>
> Right. But a **standard**, like ISO-????, is about
> **standardisation**. That is, some form of standard
> language different from other standard languages in
> the dialect continuum. My question is: what will be
> the characteristics of Standard Moldovan, as defined
> by the standard?
>
> You brought this standard in the discussion saying
> that it will close the Romanian vs. Moldovan
> discussion. I hope it will, but can't help asking
> myself how. Just assigning language codes is not
> sufficient. Someone has to say: this is standard RO,
> this is standard MO, beat off. Can you? Is ISO-????
> going to define this? Or just follow, I repeat, old
> Soviet practices, by saying: On our side of the
> fronteer the language is called Moldovan with code
> MO,
> on yours it is called Romanian with code RO, and
> they
> are different?
>
> Dpotop
>
>
> The whole discussion here
>
> What you say about not needing regulatory bodies is
> simply that they are going to adopt the appro
>
>
>
>
>  many
> > languages are recognised some are more like a
> > language continuum.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
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> Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail
> beta.
> http://new.mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
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>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

____________________________________________________________________________________
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Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
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from_name: Jim Schuler

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
I am inclined to agree with Guy on all of his points.

On 12/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 01:21:16 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
> wrote:
>
> It's not me, Jimmy, but I will put my name to it.  MONGO should go on
> a Wikibreak but should absolutely not be hounded out of the project
> (which is in effect what has happened).  He has dealt tirelessly with
> the 9/11 "truthers", whose tactics begin in the sewer and get steadily
> worse over time.
>
> This is, without question, a victory for the trolls.
>
> Of course MONGO should have held back, and we, his friends and fellow
> admins, should have helped him to do that, but I suspect that the
> decision is not going to be a popular one.  A one month block to cool
> off?  I could get behind that.  Desysopping?  I don't think I can
> agree with that. Maybe time will lend perspective, but right now it
> looks like kicking a man while he's down.
>
> >I would be much more inclined to intervene if you were willing to put
> >your reputation on the line and make the defense publicly, rather than
> >under a pseudonym and throwaway email address.
> >
> >Concerned Wikipedian wrote:
> >> Mr Wales,
> >>
> >> I am hereby writing to you to express my displeasure and discontent at
> >> "your" Arbitration Committee's decision to desysop MONGO, one of the
> most
> >> dedicated and resilient users Wikipedia has ever seen.
> >>
> >> MONGO has had to put up with every kind of harassment you could think
> of; by
> >> definition of [[WP:HA]], a number of users that have forced him into
> his
> >> mental decline should have been blocked and/or banned ages ago.
> >>
> >> So, I officially protest this decision, and wish you to evaluate it.
> Given
> >> your ability to veto any decision made by the AC, I hereby request that
> if
> >> you agree with my sentiment, you use this to stop Wikipedia from losing
> yet
> >> another prolific administrator and user to the abyss of trolls and
> vandals -
> >> RickK springs to mind as another.
> >>
> >> Last time I checked, MONGO wasn't the only administrator who could, on
> >> occasion, skirt the guidelines of civility. I could name 15 or so who
> do it
> >> worse than he does, and yet it is him who takes the fall.
> >>
> >> MONGO stood up for NPOV, something you yourself should extremely proud
> of -
> >> Wikipedia wouldn't be Wikipedia without servants like MONGO who try to
> keep
> >> unverified rubbish out, in accordance with "What Wikipedia is not", as
> well
> >> as "Neutral Point of View". Further, your relentless push of making
> >> Wikipedia fully verified through "Verifiability" and "Reliable
> Sources",
> >> which I commend you for emphasising, was one of MONGO's ideals, and
> >> something he sought to try and create under your direction.
> >>
> >> There is no denying that MONGO may have overstepped his mark once or
> twice;
> >> I would be a fool to say so. What I will say, however, is your ArbCom
> has
> >> previously found that "occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with
> [the
> >> role] ? administrators are not expected to be perfect". I believe that,
> >> given the crap, for want of a better word, that MONGO has had to deal
> with
> >> in his fight to uphold your, and Wikipedia's, values, he should be
> given
> >> leeway in this precedent.
> >>
> >> You yourself said that "The Arbitration Committee [...] can impose a
> >> solution that I'll consider to be binding, with of course the exception
> that
> >> I reserve the right of executive clemency and indeed even to dissolve
> the
> >> whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster. But I regard that as
> unlikely,
> >> and I plan to do it about as often as the Queen of England dissolves
> >> Parliament against their wishes, i.e., basically never, but it is one
> last
> >> safety valve for our values". I feel that it is your turn to stand up
> and be
> >> counted, Jimmy, to stand up for our values. Wikipedians are not
> perfect;
> >> administrators are not perfect, by the same token; nor should
> administrators
> >> be expected to be unflappable in the face of persistent, ridiculous
> trolling
> >> and harassment that MONGO has had to.
> >>
> >> Cometh the hour, cometh the man; will you be the man, or will the hour
> slip
> >> you by? I hope you can see the devastation that this would cause
> Wikipedia
> >> should you decide that the Arbitration Committee, which is becoming
> more and
> >> more dissented by members of the community as segregated, has somehow
> got
> >> this one right.
> >>
> >> The question you must ask yourself, in the spirit of IAR: If this
> decision
> >> will be detrimental to improving or maintaining Wikipedia more than the
> >> opposite decision will be, ignore it. You made this official policy on
> >> August 19, 2006 stating "IAR is policy, always has been". I feel that
> this
> >> is as good a time as any to apply its' principle.
> >>
> >> -- Concerned Wikipedian
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] The vexed issue of sources

body:
> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:06:50 -0800
>
> Is a snapshot of a wall plaque different because it's taken by a
> reference librarian as opposed to a Wikipedian?
>
> --Michael Snow

Well, that was a jocular aside, my point being that the wall plaque
is very significantly harder for me to obtain than any of fourteen
million-odd books in my state's "library of last resort."

But in fact there _is_ an _obvious_ difference, and it is much the
same difference that exists between a contributor to the Britannica
or _Nature_ or the New York Times. A reference librarian is a) a
known person with a known real-world identity, with b) professional
credentials and a code of ethics. (One to which, of course, an
individual librarian may or may not adhere).


from_name: Puppy

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
I didn't write the email, but I strongly second and support the
statements made here.

It is clear the concerned individual is making an open request using
anonymity in order to protect him or her self. As most of Wikipedia is
anonymous, as usual should we not consider the content and not the
author? The content is valid.

-KillerChihuahua

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I would be much more inclined to intervene if you were willing to put
> your reputation on the line and make the defense publicly, rather than
> under a pseudonym and throwaway email address.
>
> Concerned Wikipedian wrote:
>
>> Mr Wales,
>>
>> I am hereby writing to you to express my displeasure and discontent at
>> "your" Arbitration Committee's decision to desysop MONGO, one of the most
>> dedicated and resilient users Wikipedia has ever seen.
>>
>> MONGO has had to put up with every kind of harassment you could think of; by
>> definition of [[WP:HA]], a number of users that have forced him into his
>> mental decline should have been blocked and/or banned ages ago.
>>
>> So, I officially protest this decision, and wish you to evaluate it. Given
>> your ability to veto any decision made by the AC, I hereby request that if
>> you agree with my sentiment, you use this to stop Wikipedia from losing yet
>> another prolific administrator and user to the abyss of trolls and vandals -
>> RickK springs to mind as another.
>>
>> Last time I checked, MONGO wasn't the only administrator who could, on
>> occasion, skirt the guidelines of civility. I could name 15 or so who do it
>> worse than he does, and yet it is him who takes the fall.
>>
>> MONGO stood up for NPOV, something you yourself should extremely proud of -
>> Wikipedia wouldn't be Wikipedia without servants like MONGO who try to keep
>> unverified rubbish out, in accordance with "What Wikipedia is not", as well
>> as "Neutral Point of View". Further, your relentless push of making
>> Wikipedia fully verified through "Verifiability" and "Reliable Sources",
>> which I commend you for emphasising, was one of MONGO's ideals, and
>> something he sought to try and create under your direction.
>>
>> There is no denying that MONGO may have overstepped his mark once or twice;
>> I would be a fool to say so. What I will say, however, is your ArbCom has
>> previously found that "occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with [the
>> role] ? administrators are not expected to be perfect". I believe that,
>> given the crap, for want of a better word, that MONGO has had to deal with
>> in his fight to uphold your, and Wikipedia's, values, he should be given
>> leeway in this precedent.
>>
>> You yourself said that "The Arbitration Committee [...] can impose a
>> solution that I'll consider to be binding, with of course the exception that
>> I reserve the right of executive clemency and indeed even to dissolve the
>> whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster. But I regard that as unlikely,
>> and I plan to do it about as often as the Queen of England dissolves
>> Parliament against their wishes, i.e., basically never, but it is one last
>> safety valve for our values". I feel that it is your turn to stand up and be
>> counted, Jimmy, to stand up for our values. Wikipedians are not perfect;
>> administrators are not perfect, by the same token; nor should administrators
>> be expected to be unflappable in the face of persistent, ridiculous trolling
>> and harassment that MONGO has had to.
>>
>> Cometh the hour, cometh the man; will you be the man, or will the hour slip
>> you by? I hope you can see the devastation that this would cause Wikipedia
>> should you decide that the Arbitration Committee, which is becoming more and
>> more dissented by members of the community as segregated, has somehow got
>> this one right.
>>
>> The question you must ask yourself, in the spirit of IAR: If this decision
>> will be detrimental to improving or maintaining Wikipedia more than the
>> opposite decision will be, ignore it. You made this official policy on
>> August 19, 2006 stating "IAR is policy, always has been". I feel that this
>> is as good a time as any to apply its' principle.
>>
>> -- Concerned Wikipedian
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The vexed issue of sources

body:
> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:06:50 -0800
>

> Libraries are wonderful things, but a scholar who believes that
> "the sum
> of all human knowledge" is to be found in the library alone is like a
> medieval monk who believes that the same is to be found only in the
> monastery.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and an encyclopedia _is_ a distillation
of things to be found in libraries.

Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are published in peer-
reviewed journals, not encyclopedias. Wikipedia is not a peer-
reviewed journal. And journals have their own requirements, which in
fact are more stringent than those for an encyclopedia, one being
reproducibility of results. That's the "new-knowledge" equivalent of
what we call "verifiability" and it is _much_ harder to do.

Which is why writing an encyclopedia article takes on the order of
weeks while writing a research paper takes on the order of years.

Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are also published in
popular magazines, books by any publisher that thinks they can make
money by selling them, self-published, published on the web, etc.
Whether these are to be called "knowledge" depends on which
definition of "knowledge" you use. In the Britannica's slogan, "The
sum of human knowledge," they likely meant AHD4's meaning number 4,
"4. Learning; erudition: teachers of great knowledge." It is, after
all, an encyclo-PAEDIA.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Dec 11, 2006, at 11:30 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

> 1. Where's the arbcom decision?

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Seabhcan/Proposed decision

Fred


from_name: Mongo Montana

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Thanks...I don't feel I am in serious trouble or that actions I have taken are deserving of a desysopping. My evidence and that submitted by Muscial Linguist and others clearly shows that the pages I protected/unprotected or changed to semi-protection were not policy violations. I made a bad block six months ago that was brought to an Rfc in which I agreed with most who stated I shouldn't block anyone I could be seen as being in a conflict dispute with. I also made a dumb threat to block another user recently that was reviewed at AN/I...

  In another example, I blocked another editor (Miltopia) who was stalking my edits as shown under the section of the same name in my evidence section. Musical Linguist and others also tried to explain this to arbcom. Other admins simply would not agree that I was correct in my stalking comments, and apparently neither does arbcom.

  There really is never an excuse for not following policy to a tee, but then again, I have yet to see a perfect admin...some simply deal with less than I have had to deal with. Those unfamiliar with my case will no doubt have difficulty understanding all the events. However, arbcom has a thankless job, but a job that needs to be done correctly or not at all and when the letter of the law is applied so unevenly from one case to another, I question where the justice is. I guess more than 200 article starts, 4 that I helped get to featured level and more than 26,000 edits are my legacy.

  On a final note, when a person is "right" more than 99% of the time in the real world, they get a promotion. On wikipedia, if someone sifts through your entire contributions history and finds that 1% and posts it on an arbcom hearing...you get desysopped.

---------------------------------
Check out the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Dec 12, 2006, at 1:05 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 01:21:16 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
> wrote:
>
> It's not me, Jimmy, but I will put my name to it.  MONGO should go on
> a Wikibreak but should absolutely not be hounded out of the project
> (which is in effect what has happened).  He has dealt tirelessly with
> the 9/11 "truthers", whose tactics begin in the sewer and get steadily
> worse over time.
>
> This is, without question, a victory for the trolls.
>
> Of course MONGO should have held back, and we, his friends and fellow
> admins, should have helped him to do that, but I suspect that the
> decision is not going to be a popular one.  A one month block to cool
> off?  I could get behind that.  Desysopping?  I don't think I can
> agree with that. Maybe time will lend perspective, but right now it
> looks like kicking a man while he's down.

He may immediately apply to be an administrator again; however, I
think he has lost broad community support. The Arbitration Committee
proposals are harsh, but there are serious problems with the way he
acts. He responds poorly to harassment, and he is quite dismissive of
his opponents with respect to content. "Nonsense" is frequently used.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Dec 12, 2006, at 4:58 AM, Puppy wrote:

> Is desysopping the answer? Is it appropriate to desysop, generally
> reserved for abuses of /admin/ functions,  for incivility, which is an
> /editor/ action, and usually is addressed with either a caution or
> probation?

Did that.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Dec 12, 2006, at 5:04 AM, NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:

> I'm not asking them to reveal their name, am I? Just their Wiki
> handle. It
> may just be me (although I suspect many, many more people do too), but
> anyone under a name "Concerned Wikipedian" doesn't earn any points
> in my
> book. Especially relevant, given we're talking about privacy (I
> wouldn't put
> it past WikiReview idiots to be using such handles).
>
> On-topic, though, I see no reason not to go through with it. I cannot
> believe people are using the mailing list to appeal to Jimbo to
> lighten a
> sentence on an admin - being handled by the ARBCOM - for something
> which is
> obviously de-sysop-able for. Others haven't gotten that
> consideration, so
> why start now? The ArbCom are technically independent from Jimbo,
> and I
> don't see why he should intervene.

Feedback is good.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
NSLE: I suggest you reconsider your position with this in mind - your
name is almost certainly not NSLE or Chacor. I know my r/w name is not
KillerChihuahua. The majority of Wikipedians and Wikipedia
administrators do not contribute under their real names, and for good
reason. The same logic which makes using a "handle" on Wikipedia in
general a Good Idea also applies here. MONGO has been the target of
massive trolling and harassment. It shows good sense to try to insulate
oneself from becoming a target of the same people, and the Concerned
Wikipedian is doing precisely that. I fail to see how that makes his or
her concern any less valid. How precisely are you defining this as
"trolling"? I see no trolling, and would appreciate it if you would
share your logic with me and the others on this list, as apparently I
have missed something.

NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> Hear, hear. Good decision. Seriously, the second I saw "Concerned
> Wikipedian" as the person I knew that this would be something trollish like
> this. Seriously now, make the plea openly instead of hiding behind
> "Concerned Wikipedian".
>
> On 12/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> I would be much more inclined to intervene if you were willing to put
>> your reputation on the line and make the defense publicly, rather than
>> under a pseudonym and throwaway email address.
>>
>> Concerned Wikipedian wrote:
>>
>>> Mr Wales,
>>>
>>> I am hereby writing to you to express my displeasure and discontent at
>>> "your" Arbitration Committee's decision to desysop MONGO, one of the
>>>
>> most
>>
>>> dedicated and resilient users Wikipedia has ever seen.
>>>
>>> MONGO has had to put up with every kind of harassment you could think
>>>
>> of; by
>>
>>> definition of [[WP:HA]], a number of users that have forced him into his
>>> mental decline should have been blocked and/or banned ages ago.
>>>
>>> So, I officially protest this decision, and wish you to evaluate it.
>>>
>> Given
>>
>>> your ability to veto any decision made by the AC, I hereby request that
>>>
>> if
>>
>>> you agree with my sentiment, you use this to stop Wikipedia from losing
>>>
>> yet
>>
>>> another prolific administrator and user to the abyss of trolls and
>>>
>> vandals -
>>
>>> RickK springs to mind as another.
>>>
>>> Last time I checked, MONGO wasn't the only administrator who could, on
>>> occasion, skirt the guidelines of civility. I could name 15 or so who do
>>>
>> it
>>
>>> worse than he does, and yet it is him who takes the fall.
>>>
>>> MONGO stood up for NPOV, something you yourself should extremely proud
>>>
>> of -
>>
>>> Wikipedia wouldn't be Wikipedia without servants like MONGO who try to
>>>
>> keep
>>
>>> unverified rubbish out, in accordance with "What Wikipedia is not", as
>>>
>> well
>>
>>> as "Neutral Point of View". Further, your relentless push of making
>>> Wikipedia fully verified through "Verifiability" and "Reliable Sources",
>>> which I commend you for emphasising, was one of MONGO's ideals, and
>>> something he sought to try and create under your direction.
>>>
>>> There is no denying that MONGO may have overstepped his mark once or
>>>
>> twice;
>>
>>> I would be a fool to say so. What I will say, however, is your ArbCom
>>>
>> has
>>
>>> previously found that "occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with
>>>
>> [the
>>
>>> role] ? administrators are not expected to be perfect". I believe that,
>>> given the crap, for want of a better word, that MONGO has had to deal
>>>
>> with
>>
>>> in his fight to uphold your, and Wikipedia's, values, he should be given
>>> leeway in this precedent.
>>>
>>> You yourself said that "The Arbitration Committee [...] can impose a
>>> solution that I'll consider to be binding, with of course the exception
>>>
>> that
>>
>>> I reserve the right of executive clemency and indeed even to dissolve
>>>
>> the
>>
>>> whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster. But I regard that as
>>>
>> unlikely,
>>
>>> and I plan to do it about as often as the Queen of England dissolves
>>> Parliament against their wishes, i.e., basically never, but it is one
>>>
>> last
>>
>>> safety valve for our values". I feel that it is your turn to stand up
>>>
>> and be
>>
>>> counted, Jimmy, to stand up for our values. Wikipedians are not perfect;
>>> administrators are not perfect, by the same token; nor should
>>>
>> administrators
>>
>>> be expected to be unflappable in the face of persistent, ridiculous
>>>
>> trolling
>>
>>> and harassment that MONGO has had to.
>>>
>>> Cometh the hour, cometh the man; will you be the man, or will the hour
>>>
>> slip
>>
>>> you by? I hope you can see the devastation that this would cause
>>>
>> Wikipedia
>>
>>> should you decide that the Arbitration Committee, which is becoming more
>>>
>> and
>>
>>> more dissented by members of the community as segregated, has somehow
>>>
>> got
>>
>>> this one right.
>>>
>>> The question you must ask yourself, in the spirit of IAR: If this
>>>
>> decision
>>
>>> will be detrimental to improving or maintaining Wikipedia more than the
>>> opposite decision will be, ignore it. You made this official policy on
>>> August 19, 2006 stating "IAR is policy, always has been". I feel that
>>>
>> this
>>
>>> is as good a time as any to apply its' principle.
>>>
>>> -- Concerned Wikipedian
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Hear, hear, well put.  :\

Even *with* a handle, a number of Wikipedians have been outted re their r/w
identities -- something that clearly precludes using one's real name,
especially as some of the more
I'm-going-to-stick-my-nose-in-your-private-life employers frown on Wikipedia
for a variety of reasons.  Thus, anonymity is no excuse for not heeding a
person's concerns -- in fact, in the real world, some of the best tips
received by law enforcement, tax administration, SEC violations, etc., are
anonymous.  As KC noted earlier, it is the content that matters not the
source, and in this case the content is valid.

I too, am desirous of an explanation on how CW's post could, by any stretch
of the definition and imagination, be considered trolling.  CW raises a very
real problem, to call it trolling or to dismiss it outright because it is
anonymous is simply a matter of "let's intimidate CW into divulging his/her
real name or else just sweep yet another problem under the rug".  This is
simply unacceptable.

On 12/12/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>
> NSLE: I suggest you reconsider your position with this in mind - your
> name is almost certainly not NSLE or Chacor. I know my r/w name is not
> KillerChihuahua. The majority of Wikipedians and Wikipedia
> administrators do not contribute under their real names, and for good
> reason. The same logic which makes using a "handle" on Wikipedia in
> general a Good Idea also applies here. MONGO has been the target of
> massive trolling and harassment. It shows good sense to try to insulate
> oneself from becoming a target of the same people, and the Concerned
> Wikipedian is doing precisely that. I fail to see how that makes his or
> her concern any less valid. How precisely are you defining this as
> "trolling"? I see no trolling, and would appreciate it if you would
> share your logic with me and the others on this list, as apparently I
> have missed something.
>
> NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> > Hear, hear. Good decision. Seriously, the second I saw "Concerned
> > Wikipedian" as the person I knew that this would be something trollish
> like
> > this. Seriously now, make the plea openly instead of hiding behind
> > "Concerned Wikipedian".
> >
> > On 12/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I would be much more inclined to intervene if you were willing to put
> >> your reputation on the line and make the defense publicly, rather than
> >> under a pseudonym and throwaway email address.
> >>
> >> Concerned Wikipedian wrote:
> >>
> >>> Mr Wales,
> >>>
> >>> I am hereby writing to you to express my displeasure and discontent at
> >>> "your" Arbitration Committee's decision to desysop MONGO, one of the
> >>>
> >> most
> >>
> >>> dedicated and resilient users Wikipedia has ever seen.
> >>>
> >>> MONGO has had to put up with every kind of harassment you could think
> >>>
> >> of; by
> >>
> >>> definition of [[WP:HA]], a number of users that have forced him into
> his
> >>> mental decline should have been blocked and/or banned ages ago.
> >>>
> >>> So, I officially protest this decision, and wish you to evaluate it.
> >>>
> >> Given
> >>
> >>> your ability to veto any decision made by the AC, I hereby request
> that
> >>>
> >> if
> >>
> >>> you agree with my sentiment, you use this to stop Wikipedia from
> losing
> >>>
> >> yet
> >>
> >>> another prolific administrator and user to the abyss of trolls and
> >>>
> >> vandals -
> >>
> >>> RickK springs to mind as another.
> >>>
> >>> Last time I checked, MONGO wasn't the only administrator who could, on
> >>> occasion, skirt the guidelines of civility. I could name 15 or so who
> do
> >>>
> >> it
> >>
> >>> worse than he does, and yet it is him who takes the fall.
> >>>
> >>> MONGO stood up for NPOV, something you yourself should extremely proud
> >>>
> >> of -
> >>
> >>> Wikipedia wouldn't be Wikipedia without servants like MONGO who try to
> >>>
> >> keep
> >>
> >>> unverified rubbish out, in accordance with "What Wikipedia is not", as
> >>>
> >> well
> >>
> >>> as "Neutral Point of View". Further, your relentless push of making
> >>> Wikipedia fully verified through "Verifiability" and "Reliable
> Sources",
> >>> which I commend you for emphasising, was one of MONGO's ideals, and
> >>> something he sought to try and create under your direction.
> >>>
> >>> There is no denying that MONGO may have overstepped his mark once or
> >>>
> >> twice;
> >>
> >>> I would be a fool to say so. What I will say, however, is your ArbCom
> >>>
> >> has
> >>
> >>> previously found that "occasional mistakes are entirely compatible
> with
> >>>
> >> [the
> >>
> >>> role] ? administrators are not expected to be perfect". I believe
> that,
> >>> given the crap, for want of a better word, that MONGO has had to deal
> >>>
> >> with
> >>
> >>> in his fight to uphold your, and Wikipedia's, values, he should be
> given
> >>> leeway in this precedent.
> >>>
> >>> You yourself said that "The Arbitration Committee [...] can impose a
> >>> solution that I'll consider to be binding, with of course the
> exception
> >>>
> >> that
> >>
> >>> I reserve the right of executive clemency and indeed even to dissolve
> >>>
> >> the
> >>
> >>> whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster. But I regard that as
> >>>
> >> unlikely,
> >>
> >>> and I plan to do it about as often as the Queen of England dissolves
> >>> Parliament against their wishes, i.e., basically never, but it is one
> >>>
> >> last
> >>
> >>> safety valve for our values". I feel that it is your turn to stand up
> >>>
> >> and be
> >>
> >>> counted, Jimmy, to stand up for our values. Wikipedians are not
> perfect;
> >>> administrators are not perfect, by the same token; nor should
> >>>
> >> administrators
> >>
> >>> be expected to be unflappable in the face of persistent, ridiculous
> >>>
> >> trolling
> >>
> >>> and harassment that MONGO has had to.
> >>>
> >>> Cometh the hour, cometh the man; will you be the man, or will the hour
> >>>
> >> slip
> >>
> >>> you by? I hope you can see the devastation that this would cause
> >>>
> >> Wikipedia
> >>
> >>> should you decide that the Arbitration Committee, which is becoming
> more
> >>>
> >> and
> >>
> >>> more dissented by members of the community as segregated, has somehow
> >>>
> >> got
> >>
> >>> this one right.
> >>>
> >>> The question you must ask yourself, in the spirit of IAR: If this
> >>>
> >> decision
> >>
> >>> will be detrimental to improving or maintaining Wikipedia more than
> the
> >>> opposite decision will be, ignore it. You made this official policy on
> >>> August 19, 2006 stating "IAR is policy, always has been". I feel that
> >>>
> >> this
> >>
> >>> is as good a time as any to apply its' principle.
> >>>
> >>> -- Concerned Wikipedian
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Concerned Wikipedian wrote:

> MONGO has had to put up with every kind of harassment you could think of; by
> definition of [[WP:HA]], a number of users that have forced him into his
> mental decline should have been blocked and/or banned ages ago.

As someone who came extremely close to throwing in the towel because of
Mongo's continued abuses and incivility, at some point something has to
give.  He went through some serious shit with the ED stuff, and ArbCom
gave him a pass for going overboard.  When he continues to do it, he
should keep getting the free pass?

I certainly hope not.

I can only think of maybe two administrators at this point who have a
poorer record in similar regards to Mongo, and two others that were
worse resigned not too long ago.  This needed to happen a while ago, and
I was surprised when I saw the proposed decisions this week, because
I've been building my own separate case for when I had some significant
time to work on it.

> The question you must ask yourself, in the spirit of IAR: If this decision
> will be detrimental to improving or maintaining Wikipedia more than the
> opposite decision will be, ignore it. You made this official policy on
> August 19, 2006 stating "IAR is policy, always has been". I feel that this
> is as good a time as any to apply its' principle.

Don't believe the hype.  Mongo does great things for NPOV and for
defending some terrible POV pushers at the 9/11 articles.  But that
doesn't excuse him.

-Jeff

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

<snip>
> Mongo's continued abuses and incivility
<snip>
> Don't believe the hype.  Mongo does great things for NPOV and for
> defending some terrible POV pushers at the 9/11 articles.  But that
> doesn't excuse him.
>
> -Jeff
>
Is desysopping the answer? Is it appropriate to desysop, generally
reserved for abuses of /admin/ functions,  for incivility, which is an
/editor/ action, and usually is addressed with either a caution or
probation?

Guy suggests a month long enforced break, which seems reasonable to me.
-kc-


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Puppy wrote:

> Is desysopping the answer? Is it appropriate to desysop, generally
> reserved for abuses of /admin/ functions,  for incivility, which is an
> /editor/ action, and usually is addressed with either a caution or
> probation?

If it were one singular time, with one singular person?  No, it wouldn't
be the answer.  If it was a series of abuses  stemming back over six
months, even if you eliminate the ED bullshit?  Absolutely.

He effectively got his probation with the "No action is taken for the
excessive zeal" thing.  How many more probations does he need?  If
regular users can't get some sort of recourse through the proper
channels, what the hell else is supposed to go on?
>
> Guy suggests a month long enforced break, which seems reasonable to me.

Truly, that suggestion (not enforced) should have come after the ED
thing, so he could step back a little bit and perhaps not continue to
act out and assume everyone who disagrees with him is either a) a troll,
b) harassing him, or c) supporting those who troll or harass him.  Have
you read the evidence in the case at all?

-Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l]  MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
>Hell, I'm villified by a large portion of the community simply because I
>had an association with the group that's been trolling him.  I've written
>an FA, created over 250 articles, and I have 10k edits to my name, but
>that doesn't change anything in a number of people's minds.

  You can run for admin anytime you want and I will abstain from voting. I dropped out of the arbcom race since I had no chance of success..a number of others did as well. I counted 10 opposers that were in some way affiliated with ED in some manner or another, and with an open arbcom hearing, I saw no reason to continue.

---------------------------------
Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Puppy wrote:
>
>
>> Is desysopping the answer? Is it appropriate to desysop, generally
>> reserved for abuses of /admin/ functions,  for incivility, which is an
>> /editor/ action, and usually is addressed with either a caution or
>> probation?
>>
>
> If it were one singular time, with one singular person?  No, it wouldn't
> be the answer.  If it was a series of abuses  stemming back over six
> months, even if you eliminate the ED bullshit?  Absolutely.
>
> He effectively got his probation with the "No action is taken for the
> excessive zeal" thing.  How many more probations does he need?  If
> regular users can't get some sort of recourse through the proper
> channels, what the hell else is supposed to go on?
>
>> Guy suggests a month long enforced break, which seems reasonable to me.
>>
>
> Truly, that suggestion (not enforced) should have come after the ED
> thing, so he could step back a little bit and perhaps not continue to
> act out and assume everyone who disagrees with him is either a) a troll,
> b) harassing him, or c) supporting those who troll or harass him.  Have
> you read the evidence in the case at all?
>
> -Jeff
>
>
Yes, I have.
The month long break did /not/ come after the ED thing; "what might have
been" is not something we can work with.
-kc-


from_name: Phil Boswell

body:
Minh Nguyen wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>   Would it be possible to improve the "user clicks on footnote"
>> workflow by using JavaScript? Currently it goes something like this:
> [snip]
> The Vietnamese Wikipedia currently uses the following CSS code to make
> it a little easier:
> [snip]
> I don't think it works in IE (including IE7), but it works just fine in
> Mozilla-based browsers and Safari, and it's incredibly simple.
>
I went looking for information about this trick and it seems like a good
idea (although since I'm using IE6 I haven't been able to see exactly how it
works yet ;-). It is apparently not that difficult to emulate the effect in
Javascript for those older browsers which don't implement CSS that new (it's
apparently in the CSS3 draft, and one site said it wouldn't work for IE<6.5
:/).

Maybe this combined method would be the way to go?
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Javascript-to-make-references-work-better--tf2805333.html#a7835371
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


body:
I wanted to give everyone a heads up what things have been like for me
on the Board for the last 2 1/2 months. This may also help orientation
of new members. This is going to be shorter than I'd like it to be --
stuff keeps piling up and if I spend too much time on this people will
start shouting at me for not doing other things. ;-)

The Board is a group and acts as such, so I will use the "we" word a
lot. It's really hard to take credit for anything in such an
environment, which in some ways is very wiki-like.

1) Workload. Board is a _lot_ of time commitment at the moment. To
give you an idea, there have been 760 messages exchanged on the Board
level since September 26. In addition, there's internal-l (chapter and
committee people as well as some trusted individuals, more below)
which gets about 150 messages per month, foundation-l (500-1000
messages per month), and the various project lists which we of course
cannot follow completely.

We now have weekly IRC meetings (participation optional but
encouraged) and have had two face-to-face meetings since I joined (in
Frankfurt in October and in St. Petersburg in November). What's all
this communication good for? WMF is a very young organization that
needs to define its structures, its place in the world, and needs to
find ways to sustainably operate. Think of it as a continuous
brainstorming process with concrete outcomes.

As the Board expands we try to identify individual responsibilities so
we can share work  and ignore e-mails that are not relevant to us.

2) Results. I'm fairly happy with progress we've made in the last few
months. The Frankfurt Retreat was an effective meeting to build trust
and relationships with the chapters. We also agreed upon some key
strategic outcomes, which have been reported on here.

Of these, the following have been achieved:
- audited financial statements
- revised bylaws
- first phase of Board expansion
- chapter agreement

The following is well on the way:
- Advisory Board
- revised Mission/Vision
- trademark registration process / three-tiered trademark policy
- domain name workgroup
- fundraiser (hopefully this month), probably including matching gifts
- CEO search
- MediaWiki long term strategy / tech meeting
- Staff planning, but this will depend a lot on how much money we can raise.

Hopefully we'll also get a budget sorted out soon. Mind you, the Board
isn't "doing" all these things, it is mostly making sure that they get
done according to an agreed upon strategy. It's our staff (Brad,
Danny, Carolyn, Barbara, the tech team ..) that is doing much of the
implementation work. Of course, they get paid for this while we don't.
:-)

3) Committees and openness. One of the big scary open tasks is "fixing
the committees." We have a consensus on the Board+ED-level now that
the current system doesn't work well -- it is too closed and stagnant.
We need to get fresh people involved on a regular basis, and work
towards dynamic task-oriented groups rather than expecting a small
core group of people to do everything and be trusted with anything.

Anthere and I have differing views on the concrete steps that need to
be taken, and we'll try to reach an agreement in the coming weeks (now
hopefully also involving the new Board members).

In terms of openness and transparency, we've also reached agreement
that the internal list and wiki (internal-l and
internal.wikimedia.org) need to become open to people who are not part
of a committee or chapter, but highly trusted regardless. Having
countless separate private lists doesn't really work well except for
the aforementioned taskforces, so we're trying our best to have one
large, private group with well-defined processes of joining and
leaving.

It is now possible for people on internal to suggest members and vote
on them in  RfA style. Perhaps we will also allow an outside
application process, but that does not exist yet.

Delphine has managed to somewhat convince me that task-oriented groups
benefit from a certain amount of privacy; that is, if you are focused
on solving a particular problem, and you are productive, it doesn't
help for completely uninvolved people to chime in randomly. Rather, it
is crucial that these groups _report_ on their outcomes regularly and
openly. In other words, we do not always need to expose our intestines
as long as it is clear to everyone what we are doing.

4) Various to-do. These are necessarily incomplete; I'm focusing on
items that were brought up in my initial RfC as well as at the Board
retreat.

- QA / stable version. This is a short term process where the Board
needs to have some involvement to ensure that we're not quietly
becoming Nupedia. ;-) We've reached agreement now that this will be
done by an outside developer if at all possible, to allow Brion and
Tim to focus on day-to-day operations and the big single login
transition. It will probably be implemented in such a way that
individual projects have a reasonable amount of flexibility in the
configuration.
- Better process for outside parties to use Wikimedia trademarks,
including non-commercial entities. Perhaps develop a free content
approach to trademarks/logos.
- Establish mid term and long term strategy with regard to project and
business development. Project charters.
- Make processes multilingual. There are some good technical
developments here (both Multilingual MW and LiquidThreads are under
active dev.), but we really need to factor this into our core
organizational strategy.
- Better event strategy. The EventsCom is still dysfunctional.
- Systematic approach to spam/SEO/self-promotion. Will hopefully
relate to whatever new QA tools we develop.
- Help establish community structures for developing sound
project-level legal policies.
- Better speaker/contacts coordination. This is really needed both for
conferences and for our developing efforts to involve schools,
libraries and universities.
- Research. It's on my to-do list to redefine the CRO role and propose
a candidate, hopefully before the end of the year.
- Volunteer coordination. We need to do a much better job telling
people how they can help, i.e. a kind of open task database with clear
instructions for participating.
- Awareness. In general, there are a million things we can do to make
people aware of what WMF is, what chapters are, etc. We should start
doing a few of them soon. ;-)

Again, Board role is to make sure that these things (can) happen, not
to implement them directly in most cases.

5) Final thoughts. I do believe we're on track to becoming a mature
and scalable organization. The expanded Board, Tim Shell's resignation
and Jimmy's choice to nominate Florence as Chair reflect our
commitment to not being a "one man show," but a community-driven
effort. Jimmy deserves our gratitude for taking things into this
direction, and for his continued commitment and leadership. I remember
well when Wikipedia was at wikipedia.com and it was very much an open
question for me whether there was an IPO in its future. Now we're one
of the most fascinating charitable organizations on the planet.

The WMF does not exist in "Internet time", and it has taken years for
it to grow up (and will still take a few more). This can be
frustrating given the exponential growth of WP in particular.  But I
think we will be able to keep up eventually, as long as we don't
suffer the illusion that all it takes is to expand the Board to 7, 9,
11 members -- it's the organization itself which needs to become
scalable. On the positive side, we've been incredibly efficient with
our finances so far.

I personally hope that the WMF can become a model how non-profits of
this type _should_ be run, and that more essential Internet
infrastructure will move into the non-profit sector in the long run.
It is my conviction that society will be better off if we can
emphasize cooperation over competition, and the needs of the many over
the wants of the few.

The free content and open source movements reflect this cooperative
model. While they allow competitive forking, such forking is generally
considered unproductive and discouraged unless absolutely necessary.
While the needs of individuals are resolved (by acting on them),
social structures and funding models evolve to address the needs of
the many with priority. I long for a world which follows these ideals
consistently, and hope that we can be leaders to show that it is
possible.

Lastly, and importantly, in spite of frequent and generally
constructive disagreement, I believe the Board is becoming a solid
team that can "get stuff done." The word "community" is becoming a lot
more real to us as the years go by.  When it counts, we will be there
for each other, and for you.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 01:21:16 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

It's not me, Jimmy, but I will put my name to it.  MONGO should go on
a Wikibreak but should absolutely not be hounded out of the project
(which is in effect what has happened).  He has dealt tirelessly with
the 9/11 "truthers", whose tactics begin in the sewer and get steadily
worse over time.

This is, without question, a victory for the trolls.

Of course MONGO should have held back, and we, his friends and fellow
admins, should have helped him to do that, but I suspect that the
decision is not going to be a popular one.  A one month block to cool
off?  I could get behind that.  Desysopping?  I don't think I can
agree with that. Maybe time will lend perspective, but right now it
looks like kicking a man while he's down.

>I would be much more inclined to intervene if you were willing to put
>your reputation on the line and make the defense publicly, rather than
>under a pseudonym and throwaway email address.
>
>Concerned Wikipedian wrote:
>> Mr Wales,
>>
>> I am hereby writing to you to express my displeasure and discontent at
>> "your" Arbitration Committee's decision to desysop MONGO, one of the most
>> dedicated and resilient users Wikipedia has ever seen.
>>
>> MONGO has had to put up with every kind of harassment you could think of; by
>> definition of [[WP:HA]], a number of users that have forced him into his
>> mental decline should have been blocked and/or banned ages ago.
>>
>> So, I officially protest this decision, and wish you to evaluate it. Given
>> your ability to veto any decision made by the AC, I hereby request that if
>> you agree with my sentiment, you use this to stop Wikipedia from losing yet
>> another prolific administrator and user to the abyss of trolls and vandals -
>> RickK springs to mind as another.
>>
>> Last time I checked, MONGO wasn't the only administrator who could, on
>> occasion, skirt the guidelines of civility. I could name 15 or so who do it
>> worse than he does, and yet it is him who takes the fall.
>>
>> MONGO stood up for NPOV, something you yourself should extremely proud of -
>> Wikipedia wouldn't be Wikipedia without servants like MONGO who try to keep
>> unverified rubbish out, in accordance with "What Wikipedia is not", as well
>> as "Neutral Point of View". Further, your relentless push of making
>> Wikipedia fully verified through "Verifiability" and "Reliable Sources",
>> which I commend you for emphasising, was one of MONGO's ideals, and
>> something he sought to try and create under your direction.
>>
>> There is no denying that MONGO may have overstepped his mark once or twice;
>> I would be a fool to say so. What I will say, however, is your ArbCom has
>> previously found that "occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with [the
>> role] ? administrators are not expected to be perfect". I believe that,
>> given the crap, for want of a better word, that MONGO has had to deal with
>> in his fight to uphold your, and Wikipedia's, values, he should be given
>> leeway in this precedent.
>>
>> You yourself said that "The Arbitration Committee [...] can impose a
>> solution that I'll consider to be binding, with of course the exception that
>> I reserve the right of executive clemency and indeed even to dissolve the
>> whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster. But I regard that as unlikely,
>> and I plan to do it about as often as the Queen of England dissolves
>> Parliament against their wishes, i.e., basically never, but it is one last
>> safety valve for our values". I feel that it is your turn to stand up and be
>> counted, Jimmy, to stand up for our values. Wikipedians are not perfect;
>> administrators are not perfect, by the same token; nor should administrators
>> be expected to be unflappable in the face of persistent, ridiculous trolling
>> and harassment that MONGO has had to.
>>
>> Cometh the hour, cometh the man; will you be the man, or will the hour slip
>> you by? I hope you can see the devastation that this would cause Wikipedia
>> should you decide that the Arbitration Committee, which is becoming more and
>> more dissented by members of the community as segregated, has somehow got
>> this one right.
>>
>> The question you must ask yourself, in the spirit of IAR: If this decision
>> will be detrimental to improving or maintaining Wikipedia more than the
>> opposite decision will be, ignore it. You made this official policy on
>> August 19, 2006 stating "IAR is policy, always has been". I feel that this
>> is as good a time as any to apply its' principle.
>>
>> -- Concerned Wikipedian
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

references:
<114a29870612112213m4301a16dia56f79cfc34209d6@mail.gmail.com>
	<457E4A5C.1060904@wikia.com>
	<5cosn2he24nt57ntjdorgog081p8pjsbph@4ax.com>
	<A3D73CA7-306E-4C3A-B200-0DB3E3A10DA2@waterwiki.info>
	<mqftn2lcfma5bm1dg7tjjnkg2gmbocjo8h@4ax.com>

body:
On Dec 12, 2006, at 7:43 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> I'll tell you one thing: I won't be the one going after the truthers,
> because they are nasty - evil, underhand and quite definitely not
> above taking real-world action against those who try to undermine
> their abuse of Wikipedia to further their own ends.  MONGO was braver
> (and had his real-world identity better hidden).

I think that is the most important thing any of us can do here,
insist on verifiable information from reliable sources.

Fred


from_name: Brian Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
>
>> Of course MONGO should have held back, and we, his friends and fellow
>> admins, should have helped him to do that, but I suspect that the
>> decision is not going to be a popular one.  A one month block to cool
>> off?  I could get behind that.  Desysopping?  I don't think I can
>> agree with that. Maybe time will lend perspective, but right now it
>> looks like kicking a man while he's down.

>He may immediately apply to be an administrator again; however, I
>think he has lost broad community support. The Arbitration Committee
>proposals are harsh, but there are serious problems with the way he
>acts. He responds poorly to harassment, and he is quite dismissive of
>his opponents with respect to content. "Nonsense" is frequently used.

>Fred

I don't think he's lost broad community support at all, if you look at his
talk page and the talk pages on the ArbCom case, I think you'll see just the
opposite. And when re-applying for RFA, you don't need to have lost broad
support, just a small group (15% or so) of committed opposers will be enough
to block it. Other high profile admins have gotten much longer leashes than
this...

Brian
--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.15.16/582 - Release Date: 12/11/2006
4:32 PM


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On 12/12/06, Concerned Wikipedian <concernedwikipedian at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Last time I checked, MONGO wasn't the only administrator who could, on
> occasion, skirt the guidelines of civility. I could name 15 or so who do it
> worse than he does, and yet it is him who takes the fall.
[snip]

There are many factual errors in Wikipedia...
There are many copyright violations at any moment.

The existence of many examples of a wrong is not cause to refuse to
correct any of them.

Your own complaint admits that MONGO has been suffering with some
serious trouble.

We need to stop regarding adminship as a pure reward and its removal
as some terrible punishment. We should thank MONGO for his efforts,
and look forward to the day when he can again be claimed as an example
for the community.

Deadminship is a break which many should welcome. We should offer it
more freely.


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On 12/12/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> Is desysopping the answer? Is it appropriate to desysop, generally
> reserved for abuses of /admin/ functions,  for incivility, which is an
> /editor/ action, and usually is addressed with either a caution or
> probation?
>
> Guy suggests a month long enforced break, which seems reasonable to me.

I do think it's reasonable and expected to hold admins to a higher
civility standard. This used to be consensus, has that changed? I hope
not...

But in any case, the arbcom found that MONGO did abuse his admin functions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Seabhcan/Proposed_decision#MONGO_misuses_his_admin_tools

I'm completely ignorant to the case other than what I've read on the
page, but it would seem to me that some of the support emails here are
operating in an even greater information vacuum.

After reviewing the material there, I really do believe we're doing
MONGO a favor although it might be too late in any case...  There have
been many "Sole defenders of the  Wiki" who completely burned out when
they realized that the community, in fact, would not let them get away
with anything, such as RickK.


subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Brian Haws wrote:

> I don't think he's lost broad community support at all, if you look at his
> talk page and the talk pages on the ArbCom case, I think you'll see just
> the
> opposite.

And why, pray tell, would anyone who supports the decision dare go to his
userpage and tell him, especially given his record of threatening blocks?
Furthermore, why would any otherwise sane individual go and rub salt in
the wound if he's that disturbed by the result of the RfAr by gloating
about it?  I'd like to think that most of the people who feel this is the
proper outcome aren't interested in dancing around about it.

Any time someone leaves the project who's built a relationship with other
editors, there's many pleas for them to reconsider.  I don't necessarily
take that as evidence of anything.

> And when re-applying for RFA, you don't need to have lost broad
> support, just a small group (15% or so) of committed opposers will be
> enough
> to block it. Other high profile admins have gotten much longer leashes
> than
> this...

I think the evidence of lost support may, in fact, come from the results
of the aborted arbcom election vote.  Whether he acted correctly or ended
up with the correct result (both of those are separate things) 99%, 75%,
whatever of the time, I'm not sure that the trust of the general community
exists anymore because of that percentage of being wrong.

Hell, I'm villified by a large portion of the community simply because I
had an association with the group that's been trolling him.  I've written
an FA, created over 250 articles, and I have 10k edits to my name, but
that doesn't change anything in a number of people's minds.  As a whole,
we're not defined by the 999 things we do right, but the 1 thing that
people think we did wrong, and it doesn't matter who you are.

-Jeff