subject: [WikiEN-l] Telgur the Trollslayer

body:
The point was not whether there was a sockpuppet, but
whether the sockpuppet was a previously banned user.
Nobody questioned the assumption that they were.
Mark

--- Martin Harper <martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk>
wrote:
> > I remeber that brief furore - [Telgur the
> Trollslayer] was a user
> > who should have known better pretending to be a
> sockpuppet of
> > some other 'troll' user - nobody was prepared to
> > entertain the idea that it was not a sockpuppet.
>
> Uh, Telgur WAS a sock puppet. To quote from user
> talk:
>
> > "Hi there, I'm a disused sockpuppet widely
> considered to have been a bad joke."
>
> So, when we thought that Telgur was probably a sock
> puppet, we were right. While
> there was a theoretical possibility that there was
> actually a Mr. Telgur Trollslayer
> wandering the streets of Bromsgrove, this turned out
> not to be the case. Yeay for us.
>
> Unless I miss my mark, nobody ever blocked Telgur.
> Two people (count 'em) said that
> they thought Telgur was a sock puppet of our
> life-banned friend. So we did the "ask
> politely" thing. Then, Mkweise came clean and
> apologised. Thus our policy on
> reincarnations worked wonderfully, and we avoided
> accidentally blocking a non-banned
> user. Yeay for us again.
>
> In other words, our approach worked then, as it has
> worked in other cases. Our
> collective judgement has avoided making mistakes
> thus far, and long may it continue to
> do so.
> -Martin
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Richards

subject:
Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence presented. Re: [WikiEN-l] Yes,
	A Reincarnation

body:
Leo Trollstoy
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Sorry, but who is LT?
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:19:53 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence
> presented. Re: [WikiEN-l] Yes, A
> > Reincarnation
> >
> >
> > Well, assuming you have access to more information
> > than I do, because what has been published is
> precious
> > flimsy, I'm prepared to take your word for it on
> JRRT,
> > but what about LT? I see no connection in edits.
> > Mark
> >
> > --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >> I have finally looked at this and the evidence is
> >> clear. JRR Trollkien is
> >> The Cave Troll is EntmootsofTrolls. There is no
> >> reasonable scenario which
> >> would result in someone reposting that stuff and
> >> calling it a minor edit. I
> >> believe, based on that evidence alone, any
> >> adminstrator may within Wikipedia
> >> policy ban JRR Trollkien as a reincarnation and
> >> revert any edit he makes. Or
> >> am I going too far?
> >>
> >> I still think any user who has "troll" in their
> name
> >> should be summarily
> >> banned, after a request to change their name just
> in
> >> case a mistake has been
> >> made in choosing a name. However when this kind
> of
> >> edit is made the chance
> >> of that is vanishingly small.
> >>
> >> Fred
> >>
> >> From: John Robinson <john at freeq.com>
> >> Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >> Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 17:24:19 -0500
> >> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't look for trouble.
> (was
> >> Re: Blocking without
> >> following policy)
> >>
> >>
> >> I find the idea of a popularity contest to see
> >> whether
> >> someone is returning user bizarre. In fact, I
> find
> >> the
> >> whole idea of returning users bizarre. If the
> user
> >> needs to be banned, ban them on the basis of the
> >> edits
> >> they make, there is no need to speculate on
> whether
> >> they are returning.
> >> If they don't do anything worth banning, so much
> the
> >> better. Don't provoke conflict unless it is
> >> necessary
> >> - I think there is a word for that.
> >> Mark R
> >>
> >> Here is JRR Trollkien's first edit:
> >>
> >>
> >
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Political_dispute&diff=
> >> 2878571&oldid=2754803
> >>
> >> I find it bizarre that you think it is someone
> >> besides this
> >> previously-banned user who is attempting to
> "provoke
> >> conflict". Even more
> >> bizarre than the fact that this user is still
> >> posting three months later.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: Strawmen (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Trollinator 3)

body:
As far as I can tell, this is an entirely fictitious
straw man. Yes, there are clear cut cases, but most
are not.
Mark
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> This is not necessary when the "Trollinator 3"
> immediately goes to work
> restoring the deleted material previously posted by
> "Trollinator 2" and
> "Trollinator 1".
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:15:39 -0700
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Red faction and the
> Legion of Trolls
> >
> > If you suspect that someone is a reincarnation
> have the logs and other
> > technical information checked, and bring back that
> information.  That
> > will be the basis for the appropriate decision.
> The incessant
> > gnattering about whether someone's edits resemble
> those of a banned user
> > serves no useful purpose.
> >
> > There is a serious need for some people to start
> understanding what
> > standards of proof are all about.
> >
> > Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] UTF-8 on English Wikipedia?

body:
Nathan Hamblen wrote:
> Will the English Wikipedia be moving to UTF-8? I think it's appropriate,
> seeing how often non-Western European characters need to be represented
> in it.

We'd love to, but we need to either a) take it offline for a few days or
b) invent a way to convert the database without data loss or damage
while keeping it online.

-- brion vibber (brino @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] br.wikipedia.org broken (database not backed up)

body:
brwiki didn't get added to the proper database lists, so wasn't included
in the backups used to rebuild the database after last week's crash.

It should be recoverable from the old database files, but this will
require being very very careful. Rather than risk blowing up suda, I'll
try moving the files somewhere else and working with it isolated.

(I'll also be able to recover the archive and imagelinks tables while
I'm in there.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] How do I recognize bots?

body:
Shaihulud wrote
"Wikimedia looks in user table. in user_rights there's a flag 'bots'"

Well, I have no access to the user table from the stats scripts, just the
dumps.

If someone has some time to spare, would it be possible to add a SQL task at
the start of the stats job which extracts a list of bots from the user
tables and dumps them in csv format? Is not a load-heavy query I presume.
Per line one bot: language code, 'user' name. Thanks in advance.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trollinator 3

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>This is not necessary when the "Trollinator 3" immediately goes to work
>restoring the deleted material previously posted by "Trollinator 2" and
>"Trollinator 1".
>
>
Fair enough.  In this example there is a direct link in the actions of
the two (or three) on the same article.  It's not an effort in trying to
analyze editing style or similarity of contents and ideas.

Ec


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Red faction and the Legion of Trolls

body:
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 21:11:14 -0500, Phil Sandifer
<sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> That's not to say that I think RF poses any sort of meaningful "threat"
> - simply put, they're kind of too scrawny to be worth worrying about.
> But I think that they make a pretty good bellweather. That is, if you
> don't have time to form a full opinion on an issue, you could do worse
> than looking at RF's opinion and voting exactly opposite them.
>

Darn. And to think that User:Plato (aka ComradeNick) voted for my
adminship... and awarded me a barnstar. Maybe I should go around there
and trash the page just to make sure I don't end up on the wrong side
of the fence! What do you say, Nick? Which one of your friends should
I beat up this evening? ;)

Not really very serious,
~~~~


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere has abused her authority

body:
In a message dated 6/13/2004 5:53:24 PM Eastern Standard Time,
rkscience100 at yahoo.com writes:
Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority.
As of today, Anthere has quite a bit more authority than you care to imagine.
Pick your enemies wisely, Robert. I wouldn't go launching attacks on the
Board if I were you.

Danny
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere is a wonderful person

body:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 16:00:58 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Blah, blah, blah Robert. You cry wolf so often that I just delete your messages
> without ever reading them anymore. I'm sure many other people do the same.

I don't know about this guy in particular, but when I see a message
that long accusing high-profile wikipedians of general evil due to
theoretical reasons. then I have a tendency to think "probable troll"
and just move along. Nothing personal... now, if other people show up
supporting the analysis I'll go back and review it, of course.


from_name: Magnus Link

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's coverage of 1973 Chilean coup

body:
 --- "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
schrieb:

> Since I happen to be a U. S. citizen who believes
> that the USA almost certainly did back the coup
> against Allende, and since I have been utterly
> uninvolved in any articles about that subject, I
> decided to see whether there really is a problem
> with Wikipedia's coverage of the topic. I typed
> in "Allende," it redirected to "Salvador Allende,"
> and under "The coup" I read:

(a rather good sumary)

It's one of the interesting aspects of Wikipedia that
conflicts on wordings often are focused to one or a
few articles at a time. One must guess that in the
long run the articles on [[Augusto Pinochet]] and
[[1973 Chilean Coup]] would be put in harmony with the
article on [[Salvador Allende]]; but the fierce
reversion wars (and actually also fierce debate at
[[Talk:Augusto Pinochet]], which is a good sign after
all) makes me wonder whether the article on Salvador
Allende is next in turn to be "sanitized".

> Libertarian, why do you suggest that the admins are
> "not allowing the point" to be made? It seems to me
> that the point_is_ being made.

I think administrators' role is exaggerated by
Libertarian. But we have to be aware of Wikipedia's
inherent US-centricism, and how this may be a serious
disadvantage for Wikipedia's credibility outside of
the Anglo-Saxon world.

/M.L.

Bestellen Sie Y! DSL und erhalten Sie die AVM "FritzBox SL" f?r 0?.
Sie sparen 119? und bekommen 2 Monate Grundgeb?hrbefreiung.
http://de.adsl.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About Chinese government's blocking Wikipedia

body:
this blocking is terrible bad news, but I'll see also the good side of it.
That means they realised the impact the project may have.

I'd like to insist that we should absolutely not do anything public for
now, like a press release, or anything like calling a lawyer to fight on
legal grounds. That would prevent the CNSB from keeping face, and they
would not be able to back up gracefully if it becomes public that the
ban was made on purpose. We should first assume "good faith" (perhaps a
mistake, or a decision taken too quickly, or unwisely) and let room for
a solution which will allow all parties to solve the issue in a clean way.

Things do not work in every country in the same way. Chinese
participants will know best what is likely to be very wrong. They must
first try to see which solution is best, and other help us if needed.
Please, no hastiness :-(

yuanml wrote:
> Chinese government had blocked Chinese Wikipedia for a week now,
> and they blocked the whole Wikipedia project since 9 June at least
> in Beijing. By now we have confirmed that Wikipedians in Beijing,
> Shanghai, Hunan, He'Nan, Sichuan can't access Chinese Wikipedia;
> obviously it is a national-wide ban.
>
> I'm the first contributor of Chinese Wikipedia and an administrator
> of it; I'm very worry about the situation now. The fast growth of the
> Chinese Wikipedia before the ban showed that Wikipedia project have
> been accepted by the Chinese people, but now how can you image that
> the door lead to the interesting Wiki world which had opened to us must
> be closed so easily. It's really a pity for us.
>
> My ISP is the top-level sub-node of the CERN (Chinese Education and
> Research Network). I had visited administrators there. They told me that
> the Chinese National Security Bureau is responsible for such ban issues,
> but they only give you an order to ban, and you have no way to give them
> feedbacks. We, administrators of Chinese Wikipedia in Beijing, decided to
> contact the administrators of the whole CERN this week, and if it is
> needed we will try to contact the Chinese National Security Bureau.
> Before we get more information about the ban, please don't release a
> press about it, maybe it is only a several-weeks ban.
>
> Formulax and Daniel Mayer hopes that a press release will make them feel
> shame and then cancel the ban. I really don't think so. Maybe an unthoughtful
> press release will make things worse and worse.
>
> If the worst happens, the ban is a long-term policy; I think we still have a
> choice: we can setup a mirror inside P.R.China. The mirror uses the mediawiki
> software, and is under GNU FDL also. Because the wiki page is editable, we must
> develop some tools to keep the mirror and the Chinese Wikipedia consistent each
> other. The mirror is under the management of the Mediawiki Foundation also. To
> assure the accessibility to the Chinese people, we had to filter out some
> sensitive information from the mirror. It is not idealistic, but it is realistic.
>
> Mountain


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikipedia-l] asinah.net ; bad compliance with GFDL

body:
This set of site use whole Wikipedias content but doesn't comply with the GFDL.
Can someone deal with them?

* http://francais.asinah.net/
* http://england.asinah.net/
* http://espaniol.asinah.net/
* http://deutsch.asinah.net/
* http://japanese.asinah.net/ (not really sure, I don't read japanese (yet))
* http://5189.asinah.net/ (not sure)
* http://www.asinah.net/nl/wikipedia/l/la/landen_van_de_wereld.html (better compliance ?)
* http://www.asinah.net/sv/wikipedia/h/hu/huvudsida.html (better compliance ?)

-- Looxix


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hello! New commiter, new code :)

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:

>Hi,
>
>As some of you have already seen, I'm a new commiter and I haven't been
>idle theese days.
>With my systems experience hat on and wikipedia loving heart inside I
>started porting Mediawiki software to PostgreSQL.
>
>Well, the starting (and telling out) point is already kind of working
>Mediawiki 1.3 installation on http://ph3.defau.lt/. Most of it is
>commited already into project CVS, but some broken (and already fixed)
>parts are awaiting 1.3 official release, so I could break things again
>(oops, it isn't my mission :), as I've already did, and thanks to Tim
>and Brion for quick fixes. Some critical patches are in
>http://dammit.lt/pgwiki/20040613-diff.txt.
>
>For people, not familiar with PG I can do some easy marketing :)
>1. It's fast. Well, if you've heard stories about slow elephant
>(represented by logo:), it has really changed. Modern PG versions are
>fast. Especially under high concurrent loads. It also greatly performs
>in joins - may use more than one index, has intelligent query optimiser,
>etc.
>2. It has features. Stable ones :) Triggers, stored procedures,
>subselects, ...
>3. It is stable enough.
>
>Anyway. Right now I started a testbox, on which I do some performance
>testing, I started posting the results of tests on
>http://ph3.defau.lt/index.php/Performance_testing. I'd be glad to find
>out what queries you would like to observe on this testbox, so please
>leave comments everywhere :)
>
>The production-quality PG port is not too far away. :)
>
>Cheers,
>Domas
>
>
>

Domas,

This is excellent news! PG may well provide the extra scalability that
Wikipedia will need soon.

Regards,

-- Neil


from_name: Charles Podles

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK's latest complaint

body:
So, first a brief summary for those who couldn't stand

to read the entire whinge:

RK thinks that Anthere protected
[[Palestinian views of the peace process]] on
[[m:The Wrong Version]], as hard as she could, on
purpose, for no reason, and now he's telling on
her.

Before I begin with the specifics, and the
vitriolic sarcasm, I'll just note that Anthere's
only edit to the page since its creation was her
addition of the protection message, and her only
edit to its talk page was this:

"Hi. Sorry guys, but it seems to me reversion war was
not a very good choice. Hence the protection.
SweetLittleFluffyThing 14:37, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)"

which edits seem to be entirely
in line with [[Wikipedia:Protection policy]], and
furthermore demonstrated good judgement by heading
off an incipient revert war between yours truly
and RK.

Now then:

Robert wrote:
"Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority.
She has picked one version of an article which deleted
and censored all info which did not agree with her her
anti-Zionist views, and then she protected the page.
This is outrageous behaviour from a Sysop."

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version,
item 7: Anthere protected my revision of the
article because we are both eeeevil anti-Zionists,
and. . .

Robert wrote:
"I understand that many people here hate Israel and
Jews who support it, that much has been clear for some
time. But such hatred is rarely so blatant as this: To
falsify history by deleting entire historical accounts
and quotes, to spin a fantastic pro-Arab, anti-Zionist
storyline, and to lock the article, is just too much."

. . . we both hate Israel, Jews, and truth itself.
Of course. And I only reverted RK's edits to the
article because of my extremist pro-Arab viewpoint;
I certainly didn't revert him because he annihilated
all but one of the dozens of edits made since
January 20:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=4070021&oldid=2223337

thus destroying the good-faith edits of numerous
contributors, none of whom were or are vandals. No,
my extreme pro-Arab opinions were the only reason
for my reverts.

Moving on:

Robert wrote:

(<snip> a lengthy quote from Jimbo Wales, Supreme and
Final Arbiter of All Article Content Disputes)

"It is a total violation of Wikipedia NPOV policy to
only mentioning viewpoints from a limited number of
people, in a limited number of situations. Palestinian
viewpoints that Anthere and Mirv disagree with, even
if they are majority views, are censored and deleted.
That is outrageous and dishonest."

That's one way of looking at it; other ways can
be found on [[Talk:Palestinian views of the peace
process]] and its numerous archives.

Robert wrote:
"It is also anti-Palestinian; Anthere and Mirv
are effectively saying 'You Palestinians can go fuck
yourselves'; we'll tell the world what you believe,
even if we have to erase your own quotes.'"

Wait. . . I thought I held extremist *pro*-Arab views?

Robert wrote:

"In contrast, the material they censored shows a wide
range of views from a wide range of Palestinian
leaders, so that Wikipedia readers can read the range
of views and make up their own mind. That, by
definition, is Wikipedia NPOV policy."

Perhaps we are using wildly different definitions of
"a wide range of views from a wide range of
Palestinian leaders", but the current (wrong)
version of the article states everything from

"The stated goal of Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad is to overthrow Israel
and replace it with an Islamic theocracy
or Islamist state."

to

"Arafat stated that 'The PLO recognizes
the right of the State of Israel to exist
in peace and security.'"

which seems, to my extremist pro-(or was it
anti(?))-Arab eyes, to be a fairly wide range indeed.
But article content disputes belong on the article's
talk page, not the mailing list, eh. I'll see you
there, RK.

P.S. the proper place to discuss abuse of
administrative powers (if you had any complaint
worth making, which you don't) is either
[[Wikipedia:Requests for review of administrative
actions]], [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment]], or
(best of all) the sysop's talk page.

--C. Podles ([[en:user:Mirv]])

__________________________________
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http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] IP lookups for stewards

body:
>Speaking of which, it would be nice for stewards to have the ability to check
>those logs in these cases. Our developers seem to be overworked as it is.
>
>-- mav

Seconded, definitely.  I've bugged Tim Starling quite enough already
about these, and I doubt I'm alone in that.

-Hephaestos
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from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hi,

As some of you have already seen, I'm a new commiter and I haven't been
idle theese days.
With my systems experience hat on and wikipedia loving heart inside I
started porting Mediawiki software to PostgreSQL.

Well, the starting (and telling out) point is already kind of working
Mediawiki 1.3 installation on http://ph3.defau.lt/. Most of it is
commited already into project CVS, but some broken (and already fixed)
parts are awaiting 1.3 official release, so I could break things again
(oops, it isn't my mission :), as I've already did, and thanks to Tim
and Brion for quick fixes. Some critical patches are in
http://dammit.lt/pgwiki/20040613-diff.txt.

For people, not familiar with PG I can do some easy marketing :)
1. It's fast. Well, if you've heard stories about slow elephant
(represented by logo:), it has really changed. Modern PG versions are
fast. Especially under high concurrent loads. It also greatly performs
in joins - may use more than one index, has intelligent query optimiser,
etc.
2. It has features. Stable ones :) Triggers, stored procedures,
subselects, ...
3. It is stable enough.

Anyway. Right now I started a testbox, on which I do some performance
testing, I started posting the results of tests on
http://ph3.defau.lt/index.php/Performance_testing. I'd be glad to find
out what queries you would like to observe on this testbox, so please
leave comments everywhere :)

The production-quality PG port is not too far away. :)

Cheers,
Domas

P.S. I don't use MW for any other than wikipedia's purposes, so please
note, that without wikipedia's feedback I don't be able to fix things :)


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia board of trustees / La fondation Wikimédia

body:
Hello dear all,

I?d like to close these elections by making a few
comments, some of them for the past (thoughts on these
elections), some for the future.

quelques commentaires....

Merci ? Danny et Imran pour avoir fait du bon boulot
dans l'organisation des ?lections.

First, I?d like to thanks Danny and Imran, who, to my
opinion, handled this election well. They were
helpful, without being heavy, without being strict
:-). Organising it all certainly took a good bunch of
hours to both of them, and was a bit tough on them
sometimes, so I would really like that we are thankful
to them that all went well.
On top of it, Danny had to take care of my questions,
comments and worries during all the election time, so
I would like to give him a particular thank you note
for being so patient and caring :-)

Merci ? Tim Starling ?galement :-)

Second, I?d like to thank Tim, for the neat voting
option he set for this election :-) I think it a very
good tool for wikimedia-wide decision making. It is
great that all results are displayed on all wikis,
that we can confortably vote locally, that
translations could be provided and so on. Good job :-)

Merci bien sur ? tous ceux qui m'ont soutenu.

Third, I would like to thank the numerous wikimedians
who offered me their support. It is really warming me
up. Now, there really is a lot to do, and I hope Angel
and I will help you to achieve our common dream. As
usual, it is a team work, and I would like to remind
you, that we will be here to represent all of you. We
won't be there to decide instead of you. We are all
part of a really great project, and everyone has room
to participate. None of us know everything, but each
of us knows something and can bring his part to the
global scheme.

-----

I?d be happy to suggest an improvement or two for the
next elections :-) But since this mail is long, I will
post them later on the election feedback page.

J'ai quelques suggestions d'am?lioration pour de
prochaines ?lections.  Je les posterais sur meta.

-----

Je suis ravie de l'?lection d'Angel. Et puis, deux
femmes au board...

I am very happy that I will have the opportunity to
work with Angel. Well, we already know each other
quite well, from irc discussion, from our implication
in the mediation committee on en, for the time we both
spend on meta, for both being steward and ambassadors.
Though we both have disagreements sometimes, we manage
them.

I am glad the german chapter was created this week
end, and hope the french one will be soon.

A propos d'organisations locales, l'association
germanophone a ?t? fond?e ce week end. J'esp?re que
nous aurons un feedback d?taill?e, mais je signale en
particulier la nomination de Elian au sein du conseil,
en tant que secr?taire. Pour rappel, Elian parle le
fran?ais.
Pour l'association francophone, il est bien entendu
que j'esp?re sa cr?ation sous peu. Je souhaite faire
partie du comit? de pilotage, ? priori comme simple
membre, ? la fois par int?r?t propre dans
l'association, et pour aider la cr?ation d'autres
associations ult?rieurement. J'attend avec impatience
notre rencontre ? Paris, avec Jimbo et j'esp?re, le
plus grand nombre possible de Wikip?diens.

Finally, I would like to repeat something I said on my
candidate statement : " I would like that we build a
Wikimedia-wide culture of love and respect; and,
whoever the candidates elected are, I hope that most
people listed here become active participants of the
Foundation itself." I think each candidate had a
different approach, and these different approaches
hold a great diversity which will greatly benefit the
project. So, I certainly hope and intend to make it
possible, that several of them become heavily
implicated in the Foundation itself.

There is a lot of work to do. And the good news is
that there really is work for every one who feels like
doing something ! We have the members fees system to
organise, copyright issues to fix, fundraising to
develop, quality control to established on print
copies, local chapter setting up, etc...

We need a little bit of time to organise ourselves
with Angela (who is probably on her plane back) and
with Jimbo (now, nearly on holidays but for the french
meeting... Jimbo, you need some real holidays...).

My talk pageS (now, I really need that global watch
list feature :-)) and my mail adress are open to you.
IRC is also a great way to directly discuss. Please do
not hesitate to do so.

Thanks again for your support :-)

Florence/Anthere

__________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
When can we expect to see a formal announcement of the board election
results on the election page, etc?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
When can we expect to see a formal announcement of the board election
results on the election page, etc?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
When can we expect to see a formal announcement of the board election
results on the election page, etc?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
When can we expect to see a formal announcement of the board election
results on the election page, etc?

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] China ban confirmed

body:
On 06/13/04 20:40, Pratyeka wrote:

> Can someone please check out our user histories and figure out
> the likely time period for the ban, re-instate the news on
> 'Current Events' and the 'China internet censorship' article.

I took it off [[Current events]] as unconfirmed. I left it off
because of discussions here on the best way to proceed. Is wide
publicity most likely to get access unlocked? If so, tell the
world.

- d.


from_name: Rick Schwarz

subject: [WikiEN-l] IP lookups for stewards

body:
IP lookups for stewardsIs it just me or did anyone else have a problem
reading John Robinson's
posted message?

Rick Schwarz (aka Misterrick)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: UTF-8 on English Wikipedia?

references:
<caih7c$gru$1@sea.gmane.org> <40CCF36E.5060200@pobox.com>
	<cajfgg$vvr$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Nathan Hamblen wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> We'd love to, but we need to either a) take it offline for a few days
>> or b) invent a way to convert the database without data loss or damage
>> while keeping it online.
>
> I wonder if we just flipped the switch without making database changes?
> I could be wrong, but I don't think that the ISO-8859-1 super-ASCII
> characters are very common in the Wikipedia. People would probably
> prefer to make the required changes themselves rather than not have an
> editable Wikipedia for a few days. Also, bots could help.

They are used in many thousands of articles. Bots can't edit the page
history. Bots can't fix user names, comments, and page titles.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: yuanml

subject: [Wikipedia-l] about Chinese government's blocking Wikipedia

body:
Chinese government had blocked Chinese Wikipedia for a week now, and they blocked the whole Wikipedia project since 9 June at least in Beijing. By now we have confirmed that Wikipedians in Beijing, Shanghai, Hunan, He'Nan, Sichuan can't access Chinese Wikipedia; obviously it is a national-wide ban.

I'm the first contributor of Chinese Wikipedia and an administrator of it; I'm very worry about the situation now. The fast growth of the Chinese Wikipedia before the ban showed that Wikipedia project have been accepted by the Chinese people, but now how can you image that the door lead to the interesting Wiki world which had opened to us must be closed so easily. It's really a pity for us.

My ISP is the top-level sub-node of the CERN (Chinese Education and Research Network). I had visited administrators there. They told me that the Chinese National Security Bureau is responsible for such ban issues, but they only give you an order to ban, and you have no way to give them feedbacks. We, administrators of Chinese Wikipedia in Beijing, decided to contact the administrators of the whole CERN this week, and if it is needed we will try to contact the Chinese National Security Bureau. Before we get more information about the ban, please don't release a press about it, maybe it is only a several-weeks ban.

Formulax and Daniel Mayer hopes that a press release will make them feel shame and then cancel the ban. I really don't think so. Maybe an unthoughtful press release will make things worse and worse.

If the worst happens, the ban is a long-term policy; I think we still have a choice: we can setup a mirror inside P.R.China. The mirror uses the mediawiki software, and is under GNU FDL also. Because the wiki page is editable, we must develop some tools to keep the mirror and the Chinese Wikipedia consistent each other. The mirror is under the management of the Mediawiki Foundation also. To assure the accessibility to the Chinese people, we had to filter out some sensitive information from the mirror. It is not idealistic, but it is realistic.

Mountain


subject: [WikiEN-l] IP lookups for stewards

body:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 23:07:27 -0400, Rick Schwarz <misterrick at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> IP lookups for stewardsIs it just me or did anyone else have a problem
> reading John Robinson's
> posted message?

Well, it is in a miniscule font. =b

He said:
>Speaking of which, it would be nice for stewards to have the ability to check
>those logs in these cases. Our developers seem to be overworked as it is.
>-- mav

Seconded, definitely.  I've bugged Tim Starling quite enough already
about these, and I doubt I'm alone in that.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About Chinese government's blocking Wikipedia

body:
Chinese government had blocked Chinese Wikipedia for a week now,
and they blocked the whole Wikipedia project since 9 June at least
in Beijing. By now we have confirmed that Wikipedians in Beijing,
Shanghai, Hunan, He'Nan, Sichuan can't access Chinese Wikipedia;
obviously it is a national-wide ban.

I'm the first contributor of Chinese Wikipedia and an administrator
of it; I'm very worry about the situation now. The fast growth of the
Chinese Wikipedia before the ban showed that Wikipedia project have
been accepted by the Chinese people, but now how can you image that
the door lead to the interesting Wiki world which had opened to us must
be closed so easily. It's really a pity for us.

My ISP is the top-level sub-node of the CERN (Chinese Education and
Research Network). I had visited administrators there. They told me that
the Chinese National Security Bureau is responsible for such ban issues,
but they only give you an order to ban, and you have no way to give them
feedbacks. We, administrators of Chinese Wikipedia in Beijing, decided to
contact the administrators of the whole CERN this week, and if it is
needed we will try to contact the Chinese National Security Bureau.
Before we get more information about the ban, please don't release a
press about it, maybe it is only a several-weeks ban.

Formulax and Daniel Mayer hopes that a press release will make them feel
shame and then cancel the ban. I really don't think so. Maybe an unthoughtful
press release will make things worse and worse.

If the worst happens, the ban is a long-term policy; I think we still have a
choice: we can setup a mirror inside P.R.China. The mirror uses the mediawiki
software, and is under GNU FDL also. Because the wiki page is editable, we must
develop some tools to keep the mirror and the Chinese Wikipedia consistent each
other. The mirror is under the management of the Mediawiki Foundation also. To
assure the accessibility to the Chinese people, we had to filter out some
sensitive information from the mirror. It is not idealistic, but it is realistic.

Mountain


from_name: Nathan Hamblen

body:
Will the English Wikipedia be moving to UTF-8? I think it's appropriate,
seeing how often non-Western European characters need to be represented
in it. Also, it would be helpful for dashes, of all things. Last week I
proposed UTF-8 as a solution to that never-ending debate. Two people
agreed, and zero people said "the double-hyphen (--) will live forever!!!":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Dashes

Nathan


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Telgur the Trollslayer

body:
> I remeber that brief furore - [Telgur the Trollslayer] was a user
> who should have known better pretending to be a sockpuppet of
> some other 'troll' user - nobody was prepared to
> entertain the idea that it was not a sockpuppet.

Uh, Telgur WAS a sock puppet. To quote from user talk:

> "Hi there, I'm a disused sockpuppet widely considered to have been a bad joke."

So, when we thought that Telgur was probably a sock puppet, we were right. While
there was a theoretical possibility that there was actually a Mr. Telgur Trollslayer
wandering the streets of Bromsgrove, this turned out not to be the case. Yeay for us.

Unless I miss my mark, nobody ever blocked Telgur. Two people (count 'em) said that
they thought Telgur was a sock puppet of our life-banned friend. So we did the "ask
politely" thing. Then, Mkweise came clean and apologised. Thus our policy on
reincarnations worked wonderfully, and we avoided accidentally blocking a non-banned
user. Yeay for us again.

In other words, our approach worked then, as it has worked in other cases. Our
collective judgement has avoided making mistakes thus far, and long may it continue to
do so.
-Martin
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> When can we expect to see a formal announcement of the board election
> results on the election page, etc?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

A per wiki breakdown with percentages would also be nice.

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Bug in categories: sorted under wrong letter

references:
<cachh5$l4d$1@sea.gmane.org> <cacm9r$4bn$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cad85h$k3m$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 10:28:13PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>
> >Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>Not that I'm particularly interested in Pok?mon or anything, but I
> >>wonder: How come a number of articles are listed under "C" even though
> >>they don't begin with C?
> >
> >There was a bug that sorted all category into the "C" section of a
> >category list. This bug have been fixed.
> >The trouble now, is that all articles that some (all?) articles that
> >have been added to a category are listed in the "C" section !!!
>
> Ah, I see. This is like the links table bug: Even when it's fixed, it
> has permanent effects that need to be fixed separately. (Not saying that
> the links table bug has completely been fixed, but I can understand if
> all the developers are pretty much stumped at it, because it's not
> reproducible.)

Hi,

sorry, I didn't read the mailing list during the Berlin meeting. The bug
is fixed. If any other strange things happen, please drop a note at the
sourceforge bug tracker.

	Regards,

		jens


from_name: Tony

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML tags: is there any reason NOT to allow <span>?

body:
Subject says it all.

Currently (MediaWiki 1.3 beta 3) DIV is an allowed HTML tag, but SPAN is not allowed. Adding "span" to line 1528 of
Parser.php allows the end user to do things like:

<span class="reptile"> some text </span>

- assuming, of course, that someone with access to the css has defined class "reptile" already. Seems to work just fine.

Is this unsafe? Or something I can do happily?

Thanks

Tony (Tannin)


from_name: Brion Vibber

references:
<caih7c$gru$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40CCF36E.5060200@pobox.com>	<cajfgg$vvr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40CD41CA.80403@pobox.com>

body:
I've started on a conversion script which might be able to bring the
site back online before all the grunt work is done, with appropriate
locking of the incomplete pages. We'll see how it turns out... Obviously
this is something I'll want to test first. :D

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Request that 'libertarian' be banned

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> To whom it may concern,
>
> I would like to request that 'libertarian' be banned from this mailing
> list, as he is incapable of engaging in civilized discussion.
>
> Certainly disagreements are acceptable, but repeatedly referring to
> other users as "morons" and declaring that one is superior to all other
> participants in the discussion is unacceptable.

I agree with this 100%.

--mav

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from_name: Guttorm Flataboe

subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing serverfarm with OpenMosix

body:
Hi all,

I've been lurking around for a while in digest mode and since it hasn't
been mentioned before, I thought I'd suggest that the server-admins to
take a look at www.openmosix.org

It is a very easy to use clustering solution for Linux where servers
with high load can get help from servers with low load. It is applied
as a kernel patch (there are RPMs available too) but unfortunately the
latest kernel you can use is 2.4.22-3.

As I understand it, processor-power is one of the bottlenecks in the
system, and even though you use load-balancing the load isn't even. I
haven't tried this patch myself, but from what I read it is very easy
to implement and use.

I suppose this is no straightahead thing, but in case you weren't aware
of it...

-- Guttorm Flataboe


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Looking up IP addresses of logged in users

body:
I appreciate the difficulties involved, and I do not feel particularly
concerned about my privacy on Wikipedia, but I understand that there are
others who may feel differently.

One suggestion might be to do it only for flagged users.  All users
banned banned for more than 24-hours would be flaqgged, and a special
database of their edit history from that moment on (including their AC
appeals correspondence) would be created.  If there is a complaint that
User:New Troll is a reincarnation of User:Banned Troll then New Troll
will also be flagged.  Of course this will only be effective for New
Troll's edits after that moment, but that's OK.  If he makes no edits
after he has been flagged it only means that he is observing the ban,
which was the intent in the first place.

Ec

Tim Starling wrote:

> Summary: It's no longer practical for developers to look up the IP
> addresses of logged in users, so I want to implement a method which
> will make it much easier. Comments?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Developers used to be able to look up the IP addresses of logged in
> users, by searching the apache logs. However over the past year, due
> to the increased complexity of our cluster setup and the increased
> traffic, this has been getting more and more difficult. For example,
> it took me 3 or 4 hours to determine the identities of several sock
> puppets when asked to do so by the arbitration committee in relation
> to the Wik case. The basic difficulties are:
>
> 1. Clock lag. The time in the squid logs is not necessarily the same
> as the time in the database. Under heavy load, the difference can
> change from edit to edit by 30s or so.
> 2. Edit conflicts and previews are indistinguishable from saves
> 3. Large amount of data makes searching slow
> 4. Recent edits, less than 1-1.5 days old, have logs spread across 3
> squid servers
>
> The first two items combine to make it difficult to assign IP
> addresses to users, if the users are involved in a rapid edit war.
>
> We had some difficulty recently merging and splitting the squid logs.
> A large amount of recent log data was lost, when they almost filled up
> the disk on zwinger. With this and the points listed above, I'm
> inclined to declare the task of determining the IP address of a logged
> in user impractical. It could potentially take hours to check if a
> given user is a sock puppet, and even if I spent hours, I couldn't
> guarantee that I could give any useful information even if they were
> using the same IP address.
>
> The reason we don't log IP addresses in a readable format is for
> privacy. The idea is to discourage "casual snooping" by developers.
> Perhaps this was appropriate 6 months ago, but the current setup makes
> any kind of IP lookup impractical.
>
> I'm of the opinion that checking the identity of sock puppets or
> trolls is important for preserving the mental health of our regular
> contributors. Hence I am proposing to store IP addresses of logged-in
> users in the recentchanges table. This table has one entry per edit,
> and older entries are automatically deleted. It is not available for
> public download. This will make it easy for developers to match a
> username to an IP address, for anyone who has edited the wiki recently.
>
> Since this constitutes a weakening of the effective level of privacy
> for contributors, it may be that some people will be opposed to this
> feature. That's why I'm writing this post -- to find out what everyone
> thinks of this. Is determining the identity of trolls important? Or
> would you prefer to have IP addresses unlogged? Please speak up.


from_name: Delirium

body:
To whom it may concern,

I would like to request that 'libertarian' be banned from this mailing
list, as he is incapable of engaging in civilized discussion.

Certainly disagreements are acceptable, but repeatedly referring to
other users as "morons" and declaring that one is superior to all other
participants in the discussion is unacceptable.

Thank you,
Mark
[[en:User:Delirium]]

[some quotes from a single email below, and there are plenty more where
those came from]

libertarian wrote:

>You must be an ignorant American.
>
>
>...
>You are either a liar or an ignorant fool.
>
>
>...
>Shows the typical American ignorance again.
>Besides, none of you American morons, nor the kids knew anything
>about India before 1990 and were learning from my posts.
>
>
>
>I am superior and you are inferior.
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proof of Mark Richards' ignorance

body:
libertarian wrote:

>Americans are ignorant people brainwashed by Fox TV and go by stereotypes
>
I begin to question whether someone who both uses an obvious stereotype
and then complains about the use of stereotypes all within the space of
a dozen words is actually speaking with a straight face.

-Mark


body:
libertarian wrote:

>>I begin to question whether someone who both uses an obvious
>>stereotype and then complains about the use of stereotypes all
>>within the space of <br>a dozen words is actually speaking with a
>>straight face.
>>
>>
>
>I did that to see if there would be protests at such usage when
>Americans are at the receiving end.
>
>You still haven't answered my question: Is VR Krishna Iyer a
>Communist or not? Here is the part from my mail you conveniently
>snipped out.
>
>The question is whether VR Krishna Iyer is a Marxist or not.
>Of course he was a Minister in a Communist Government and he was the PResidential candidate of the Communist Party, but here is more stuff.
>
>
Nobody is disputing the fact that Krishna Iyer has at some time been a
member of at least one faction of the Communist Party of India.  We're
just saying that that fact does not have the overwhelming importance
that you seek to attach to it.

Ec


from_name: libertarian

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pants on Fire!

body:
Reply to Fred Bauder's mail:0

Fred neither knows history nor understands academic
rigor. If he used his brains, he would have asked himself how
Jews and Parsis live peacefully in India while Muslims do
not. He doesn't understand that Muslims have special rights
in India and have ethnically cleansed Kashmir of Hindus,
do you?

He comes across as an ignorant person by insisting that a person
who served as a Minister in a Communist Government, was the
Presidential candidate of the Communist Party and spews Marxist
rhetoric is not a Communist! You guys are truly ignorant.

BTW, I see a lot of Americans resort to branding others as
"nationalists" when they run out of logical arguments, but will
never accept it when they are called White nationalists. Seems
like the indoctrination is complete.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


body:
For the ignorant Americans: Even though I'm indulging in an
exercise as silly as "proving" that John F Kennedy belonged to
the Democratic Party, I'm placing evidence on this list since
most Americans are ignorant people brainwashed by Fox TV and
go by stereotypes and get easily exploited as it has happened in
this case.

The question is whether VR Krishna Iyer is a Marxist or not.
Of course he was a Minister in a Communist Government and he was the PResidential candidate of the Communist Party, but here is more stuff.

Maharshi means "great sage."
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/br/2001/11/27/stories/2001112700100400.htm
It is thus clear to those who take a serious view of the values of human existence, not a flippant abuse of religion or bigoted allergy to Marx, that Maharshi Marx (a profound expression used by Swami Ranganathananda) and the divinity of finer theology have no hostility, both being bed-rocked in humanity in the highest dimension.

http://www.hindu.com/2004/05/17/stories/2004051709801200.htm
The current situation involves providing a new direction to economic development and dismantling the ideological structure created by communalism and ``the Left can undertake the task only as a part of the government and not by supporting it from outside ,'' said the `appeal' addressed to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, and his Communist Party of India (CPI) counterpart, A.B. Bardhan, as well as to the policy making bodies of the two parties that are currently in session to decide on the nature of support to the Government.

Among the signatories were K. N. Panikkar, Namwar Singh, U.R. Ananthamurthy, V.K. Krishna Iyer, A. K. Hangal, Asghar Ali Engineer, Praful Bidwai, Baba Azmi, Nandita Das, Govind Nihalani, Prof. Yashpal, Anand Patwardhan, Habib Tanveer, Saeed Mirza and Shabana Azmi.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


subject:
[WikiEN-l] VR Krishna Iyer's message to a militant Communist
	organization expressing support for violence

body:
To pre-empt the ignorant Americans who will now tell me that Mumbai
Resistance (i.e., if they have even heard of it) is not a Communist
organization, he is an extract from their own website.

http://www.mumbairesistance.org/
We call on all those in favour of a militant and sustained struggle against imperialist globalisation and war to join this process.

And here is VR Krishna Iyer's (who according to Wikipedia sysops is not a Communist!) message to the organization:

http://www.mumbairesistance.org/Messages/justice%20vrkrishna.htm
Message of Justice V R Krishna Iyer

The new millennium is a militant challenge for the people?s earth to battle for survival against the militarist establishment fuelled by the multinational corporations, whose only appetite is ruthless aggrandizement of wealth and power. The poor perish with none to shed a tear. The rich rush to make more wealth on an exploitative basis. This basic contradiction between humanity on the one side and deprivation of people?s resources on the other must end. Struggle is the only way we can assert human rights against ??dollar? dominated people, non-entities cruel social order. For this global operation we need unity integrity and fearless firmness with one goal before us-we shall overcome. As Victor Hugo put it once ?Not all the armies of the world will win against an idea, whose time has come. It is now for us to prove that the idea of human liberation has come

ARISE, AWAKE AND STOP NOT TILL THE GOAL IS REACHED.
I AM OLD AND WEAK BUT MY HEART AND SOUL ARE WITH YOU.

Let us be together in our MARCH FORWARD.

Ernakulam
21.12.2003                                                                  Justice V R Krishna Iyer
--------------------------------------------------------
-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


body:
Delirium,

How about addressing my points in an academic fashion instead
of suppressing those who document their claims?
See my previous mail about VR Krishna Iyer's message to a
Communist organization.

Obviously, my style is an expression of frustration at seeing
Communists being able to succeed with their propaganda. All I
want is honest and constructive discussion.

BTW, branding me a "Hindu Nationalist" is an insult. How come
you don't protest that?

Again, check out the evidence I posted, viz, VRK's message to
Mumbai Resistance and answer me honestly if he is not a Communist.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


body:
> I begin to question whether someone who both uses an obvious
> stereotype and then complains about the use of stereotypes all
> within the space of <br>a dozen words is actually speaking with a
> straight face.

I did that to see if there would be protests at such usage when
Americans are at the receiving end.

You still haven't answered my question: Is VR Krishna Iyer a
Communist or not? Here is the part from my mail you conveniently
snipped out.

The question is whether VR Krishna Iyer is a Marxist or not.
Of course he was a Minister in a Communist Government and he was the PResidential candidate of the Communist Party, but here is more stuff.

Maharshi means "great sage."
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/br/2001/11/27/stories/2001112700100400.htm
It is thus clear to those who take a serious view of the values of human existence, not a flippant abuse of religion or bigoted allergy to Marx, that Maharshi Marx (a profound expression used by Swami Ranganathananda) and the divinity of finer theology have no hostility, both being bed-rocked in humanity in the highest dimension.

http://www.hindu.com/2004/05/17/stories/2004051709801200.htm
The current situation involves providing a new direction to economic development and dismantling the ideological structure created by communalism and ``the Left can undertake the task only as a part of the government and not by supporting it from outside ,'' said the `appeal' addressed to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, and his Communist Party of India (CPI) counterpart, A.B. Bardhan, as well as to the policy making bodies of the two parties that are currently in session to decide on the nature of support to the Government.

Among the signatories were K. N. Panikkar, Namwar Singh, U.R. Ananthamurthy, V.K. Krishna Iyer, A. K. Hangal, Asghar Ali Engineer, Praful Bidwai, Baba Azmi, Nandita Das, Govind Nihalani, Prof. Yashpal, Anand Patwardhan, Habib Tanveer, Saeed Mirza and Shabana Azmi.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


from_name: Pratyeka

subject: [Wikipedia-l] China ban confirmed

body:
NatKrause emailed me on Sunday morning to ask if it was just his
connection.  I confirmed the news from here from another part
of China.

Nat suggests the ban has been in place since early June 9 or late
June 8, China time.  If you look at his and my user histories
(except for my proxy login yesterday) it should narrow down the
timeframe.

Yesterday I posted the news to Current Events but it was removed
due to being 'unconfirmed'.

Please consider this news confirmed.

I don't think there's any doubt now.

The ban affects all languages, and has been in place for at least
three days, by Nat's suggestion possibly five.

Can someone please check out our user histories and figure out
the likely time period for the ban, re-instate the news on
'Current Events' and the 'China internet censorship' article.

AFAIK none of us are in Beijing.

- Pratyeka
   Administrator, English Wikipedia


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Well done, Anthere

body:
On 06/13/04  at 05:20 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> said:

> Could you please give us the name of the article?

[[Palestinian views of the peace process ]]

Looks to me that Anthere stepped in at precisely the right moment; the two editors had both used up their 3 reverts...

V.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anthere has abused her authority

body:
Hmmm

The *2 of you* had been doing exactly *3 reverts*.
Plus, there was not much discussion in the talk page.
There was *no reason* to think discussion would start eventually,
without a little bit of help.
Plus, I had never edited that article.
So, I think I was acting fairly.

Robert, I would like to clarify something.
I have nothing against your faith.
You would be amazed at the depth of my ignorance with regards to the
Palestinian conflict and various positions on the matter. I think you
would not find anyone more neutral than I on all Wikipedia :-)

Please, do believe I know you are undoubtely more knowledgeable than I
on the topic. I am convinced of your expertise.

Now, I think the right place for you to head to is the discussion page :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3APalestinian_views_of_the_peace_process
and the right thing to do is to go on with the discussion with your peers.

Perhaps a neutral mediator might help all of you to reach an
understanding ? Would anyone feels like helping Robert and Mirv ?

Robert wrote:
> Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority. She has
> picked one version of an article which deleted and censored
> all info which did not agree with her her anti-Zionist
> views, and then she protected the page. This is outrageous
> behaviour from a Sysop.
>
> I understand that many people here hate Israel and Jews who
> support it, that much has been clear for some time. But
> such hatred is rarely so blatant as this: To falsify
> history by deleting entire historical accounts and quotes,
> to spin a fantastic pro-Arab, anti-Zionist storyline, and
> to lock the article, is just too much.
>
>
> Recall that on Fri Jan 9 14:48:08 Jimbo Wales writes about
> this very situation:
>
> "But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem.
> There is no question that a full understanding of the
> Palestinian situation requires understanding what
> Palestinian views of the peace process actually are. There
> is no question that one point of contention is whether
> Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process
> as "permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they
> view it merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a
> longterm effort to destroy Israel. Simply omitting
> information on that question is unacceptable. This is an
> important part of one of the major questions of our time."
>
>   He is right. That is what Martin (MyRedDice) had been
>   doing, and that is now what Mirv and Anthere are doing.
>
> It is a total violation of Wikipedia NPOV policy to only
> mentioning viewpoints from a limited number of people, in a
> limited number of situations. Palestinian viewpoints that
> Anthere and Mirv disagree with, even if they are majority
> views, are censored and deleted. That is outrageous and
> dishonest.  It is also anti-Palestinian; Anthere and Mirv
> are effectively saying "You Palestinians can go fuck
> yourselves'; we'll tell the world what you believe, even if
> we have to erase your own quotes."
>
>
> In contrast, the material they censored shows a wide range
> of views from a wide range of Palestinian leaders, so that
> Wikipedia readers can read the range of views and make up
> their own mind. That, by definition, is Wikipedia NPOV
> policy.
>
> In support of the range of views presented within the
> article, Jimbo writes:
>
> "The text could be improved, of course. But it is very good
> precisely becasue it presents "balanced and balancing
> viewpoints with the proper historical context". The quotes
> are dated and exact references are given. Alternative views
> and background information is given.
>
> Many in the West are uncomfortable with this kind of
> information because it doesn't comport well with the
> prevailing liberal view that the Palestinians are solely
> victims. Rationally, of course we can say that Palestinians
> are indeed victims while simultaneously holding and
> expressing reprehensible views. What we must not do is
> simply omit information about Palestinian attitudes because
> it doesn't match up too our rosy view of noble rebels
> fighting a racist apartheid state. What I'm primarily
> arguing, though, is not the content of the material. I
> think that the material is good, though not excellent, but
> my real point is that it can in no way be characterized as
> something that ought to be simply *deleted* outright. It
> should be *improved*.
>
> In the present case, we see why deletion is bad. We are
> left with a horribly broken presentation in which readers
> are unable to discover why it might be that, despite the
> PLO officially no longer calling for the destruction of
> Israel, and Arafat himself announcing a right to exist, the
> majority of Palestinians polled support the destruction of
> Israel.
>
> We can only come to understand that better when we come to
> understand Arafat's duplicity, and the anti-Israel
> propaganda that is rampant in the Palestinian culture. But
> because some supporters of Palestine are uncomfortable with
> that material, it is censored from Wikipedia. No, I don't
> think censorship is too strong a word."
>
>    Jimbo is correct. Stop the censorship, and stop the
>    explicit and outrageous violation of Wikipedia NPOV
>    policy. If your hatred of Israel gets in the way of
>    following NPOV, then I would suggest working on other
>    articles.
>
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Chinese block

body:
It appears that en.wikipedia.org has a few addresses, all of
which are blocked.  I have not tried resolving other
languages' domains but they are also blocked.  I guess
they resolve similarly.

en.wikipedia.org addresses checked & blocked:
  207.142.131.235
  207.142.131.236
  207.142.131.245
  207.142.131.246
  207.142.131.247
  207.142.131.248

At least these addresses in that net are NOT blocked:
  207.142.131.234
  207.142.131.237
  207.142.131.244
  207.142.131.249

I suggest a covert 'extra IP' for Chinese contributors, which
can be mailed out using the existing email list.  Users can
add this to their own DNS own windows using 'hosts.txt' and
using 'hosts' on unix.

- Pratyeka (en.wikipedia.org administrator)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Block specificity

body:
It's very specific (WWW IPs listed in xx.wikipedia.org DNS only).

- Walter


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 23:52:59 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A per wiki breakdown with percentages would also be nice.

I'm not an authoratitative source on this, but apparently there will
be NO release of figures (!), even on a sitewide basis, according to
directives by Jimbo, for some sort of fear that it will hurt peoples'
feelings? potentially provide statistics which might perhaps in the
future maybe damage their potential standing in future elections? I
have no idea, some sort of excuse of that nature... This is what I
hear in the IRC channel, anyway, would anyone here (Jimbo? etc) care
to confirm or deny it in a less transient medium?

Jun 12 23:11:25 <dannyisme>	 i was originally against making them
public, and jimbo, without knowing my opinion, concurred in a private
email

I completely disagree with this decision, and note that this probably
should have been decided and made clear prior to the election. Hmm.


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


body:
On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 03:16:54 -0400 (EDT), libertarian
<libertarian at myway.com> wrote:
> Delirium,
> How about addressing my points in an academic fashion instead
> of suppressing those who document their claims?

See, we like to try and keep it friendly on these-here mailing lists.
That way no one we really like leaves in disgust. Your points are not
currently in question; besides, the mailing list is not a place to
"address points in an academic fasion"- perhaps you're looking for the
article talk pages in question, and perhaps you're coming down with
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_standards_disease ...

... and this isn't helping your cause.


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> We'd love to, but we need to either a) take it offline for a few days or
> b) invent a way to convert the database without data loss or damage
> while keeping it online.

I wonder if we just flipped the switch without making database changes?
I could be wrong, but I don't think that the ISO-8859-1 super-ASCII
characters are very common in the Wikipedia. People would probably
prefer to make the required changes themselves rather than not have an
editable Wikipedia for a few days. Also, bots could help.

That's kind of a haphazard non-method, but the longer we wait to do the
change the bigger the change is going to be, and the more users it will
affect.

Nathan


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bug with images

body:
Kaixo!
Li Fri, 11 Jun 2004 05:13:39 +0100,
 Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> scrijheut:

>>   ( compare [[Image:foo.png|thumb|]] and [[Image:foo.png|thumb|aaa]] )

 T> OK, that's a bug, but shouldn't images always have a caption?

Well, in some cases a caption is useless and uglifies the page layout;
for example a page about a given city, with a small image of the
city coat of arms; does it adds anything to put a lable on a gray frame
to tell "coat of armas of xxxx"?

> * when using "framed" it isn't possible to resize the image
>   (eg: [[Image:foo.png|framed|150px|left]] doesn't work; is it on
>   purpose?)

 T> Interesting. I didn't know about "framed". What does that do? Is it the
 T> same as "thumb|none"? If so, why not use that? :)

framed doesn't have the small "maximize/minimaze" looking image, for
a frame without caption it is nicer to avoit that small icon, as it
makes extra frame width on the bottom that is not filled with any text.

--
? bient?t,
Pablo Saratxaga           PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: br.wikipedia.org broken (database not backed up)

body:
Kaixo!
Li Sun, 13 Jun 2004 17:42:09 -0700,
 Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> scrijheut:

Kaixo!

 BV> brwiki didn't get added to the proper database lists, so wasn't included
 BV> in the backups used to rebuild the database after last week's crash.

So, there actually was a breton wikipedia started?
The topic arised here:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro#Langue_bretonne_pas_disponible.3F

Could I tell (or better, maybe you can write it) that the
br.wikipedia.org is not "currently inexistent" but "currently not
restored from backup"?

PS: it would be nice if the internal wiki tags could use title
anchoring, eg having
[[Wikip?dia:Le Bistro#Langue bretonne pas disponible?]]
currently it doesn't work, you have to manually encode the escaped
codes, eg ".3F" instead of "?".
For latin languages it gets ugly and cumbersome, but for non latin ones
it is much worst: it is simply useless.

While I'm at it, the html anchors should exclude non visible text,
look at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_other_languages
for examples; titles are like:

== [http://az.wikipedia.org/ Azeri (az)] ==

it should be possible to link to it with simply
[[Wikipedia in other languages#Azeri (az)]]
insted of currently including the "http://az.wikipedia.org/" part
(in fact it is even uglier, as escaped chars have to be told in
their escaped form, so it comes as:

[[Wikipedia in other languages#Azeri .28az.29 .28http:.2F.2Faz.wikipedia.org.2F.29]]

can we seriously expect people to type *that*?

While I'm still at it, is still the same, non breakign space (  in
HTML, or 0x00a0 in unicode) should be treated in links the same as a
normal space (that is, produce a "_" for the url);
eg, both [[foo !]], [[foo !]] and [[foo?!]] (that last using the
numeric value) should produce the same string "foo_!" in the url.

Thanks

--
? bient?t,
Pablo Saratxaga           PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/


from_name: Guido Holz

subject: [Wikitech-l] adapt database from Version 1.2.6 to phase3

body:
Hi guys...

Exist an adapt-script or workaround from mediawiki 1.2.6 to pahse3? So
in phase3 are more tables and columns as in 1.2.6...

Thanks for any help..

regards guido


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

references:
<caih7c$gru$1@sea.gmane.org> <40CD41CA.80403@pobox.com>
	<40CD51B4.8070002@pobox.com>

body:
On Monday 14 June 2004 09:20, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've started on a conversion script which might be able to bring the
> site back online before all the grunt work is done, with appropriate
> locking of the incomplete pages. We'll see how it turns out... Obviously
> this is something I'll want to test first. :D

Couldn't the database be converted online? I am thinking about a script which
would be doing something like this:

for cur_id=1 to x
	Protect page cur_id
	Convert page cur_id and its edit history to UTF-8
	Write cur_id to "ConversionStatus.php"
	Unprotect page cur_id
next

and then, I'm not sure where, probably in Article.php, $wgOutputEncoding could
be set to UTF-8 if cur_id of the displayed article < one in
ConversionStatus.php and left ISO-8859-1 if it's not.

(Of course, the script would have to check if the article was already
protected and not unprotect it in that case but I didn't want to complicate
the pseudocode.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere has abused her authority

body:
On Monday 14 June 2004 01:08, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 6/13/2004 5:53:24 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> rkscience100 at yahoo.com writes:
> Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority.
> As of today, Anthere has quite a bit more authority than you care to
> imagine. Pick your enemies wisely, Robert. I wouldn't go launching attacks
> on the Board if I were you.

Now what kind of dictatorship is this? Are you saying that the Board will
revenge for attacks or what?

(I'm not against Anthere in any way, but would of course be against such abuse
of privileges if it would to happen.)


subject:
Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence presented. Re: [WikiEN-l] Yes,
	A Reincarnation

body:
On Sunday 13 June 2004 21:19, Mark Richards wrote:
> Well, assuming you have access to more information
> than I do, because what has been published is precious
> flimsy, I'm prepared to take your word for it on JRRT,
> but what about LT? I see no connection in edits.

In this and future cases, would this formula be acceptable as an evidence?

Wikipedia has n users which have "Troll" in their username, and exists for
time t.

Therefore, on average, user with "Troll" in its username is created every t/n.

If an user with "Troll" in it username is created let the T be the time
between its creation and banning of the last user with "Troll" in its
username.

Then, p=((t/n)/2)/T represents probability that the user is previous user.

If the probability is higher then some value (say 10), ban the user. There's
only 10/p chance that you are wrong.

(I am not a statistician but surely someone can check and improve this.)


body:
On Monday 14 June 2004 08:50, Tim Starling wrote:
> Summary: It's no longer practical for developers to look up the IP
> addresses of logged in users, so I want to implement a method which will
> make it much easier. Comments?

I think that IP address of every edit should be logged, but only available to
the most trustworthy users. phpBB, for example, does this.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: experimental whysiwyg/syntax highlighted
	editor	for wikimedia

body:
I'd like to point out this page for those interested in WYSIWYG:

    http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor

There are WYSIWYG HTML editors built into the two main browsers, which
have been used successfully for a few CMS servers. This is probably a
more fruitful path to follow than developing a custom Java applet.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Jim Higson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: experimental whysiwyg/syntax highlighted editor
	for wikimedia

body:
On Saturday 12 June 2004 18:41, Finlay McWalter wrote:
> Jim Higson wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > I'm testing the ground for writing a java aplet based mini-editor for
> > mediawiki (and maybe other wikis, although the lack of a standard makes
> > that difficult).
> >
> > What I have in mind is a relatively light applet - a more specialised
> > version of the generic text input, that creates well formatted wiki
> > markup, by allowing a syntax highlighted or whysiwyg view of the article.
> >
> > This wouldn't require comunication with the server, other than uploading
> > the article, as happens now.
> >
> > The program would be GPL, and as far as possible be designed to work with
> > the GNU classpath.
> >
> > What do you think of this idea? My main aim is to make editing easier for
> > non-technical users.
> >
> > Jim
>
> It's a noble idea, but doing it properly (where it could replace the
> normal mode of editing on a mature wiki like wikipedia) is *hard*.

Agreed, but I've got a year and want a good hard project :)

> Doing basic wysiwyg stuff (bold, italic, links, paragraphs) is fairly
> straightforward (particularly if classpath's implementation of swing's
> rich text edit thingy is in good shape).  Byt wysiwyg editing of hard
> stuff like floating images and tables essentially entails reimplementing
> rather a lot of the browser's display code in java.

It all depends how intact the GNU classpath is, but the javax.swing.text
packages are very full for this kind of thing, floating images shouldn't
really be a problem. There are quite a few ways I could tackle it.

When I was first researching the idea (when I saw 'export as XML' on the wiki)
I thought the wikitext must be converted to an intermediatory XML format, and
then to HTML/PDF/whatever via XSL. I see that this isn't the case, which
makes the applet a lot harder, I'd have to reproduce the function of the PHP
in Java and can't help but be a step behind.

> Even then,
> everytime your conception of how things will look and the browser's
> conception differ, you're no longer remotely wysiwyg. And then there's
> stylesheets.  So I think a full-featured solution is essentially
> impractical, and certainly not worthwhile.

Yes, I've been thinking the same thing myself, it certainly makes the project
very difficult that the user could have a css defined. True wysiwyg in the
sense that the article looks exactly how it will when submitted is probably
impossible (well, unless browsing in HotJava...). But the user should not
rely on the oddities of their browser's rendering anyway, since the page will
look different to people with other browsers. A 'wysiwyg' editor that showed
how the page will end up in some generic, W3C compliant browser might be
helpful.

I don't think I can automatically pick up the user's css, but I could provide
them with an option to select some local file and use that.

> What is practical, and I think is worthwhile, is using the browser's
> rendering engine itself for wysiwyg editing (or, in the interim, wysiwyg
> preview).  Implement the editor using DOM (which I fear means "in
> javascript" too, in practice).  I think there's enough support in DOM2
> to do everything necessary, and you can realistically hope to handle
> advanced stuff like images, tables, etc.
>
> I don't know how it will work on broken browsers like IE.
> FIn


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
--- "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> Personally I have absolutely nothing against knowing how much I suck.
> Please uncover the stats.

I would be interested in at least seeing the number of candidates who received
a majority of approval and the actual percentages (names not needed). I assume
there were at least two. If names are provided, then perhaps those who did
receive a majority of approval but who did not win could be considered for
officer positions.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: irc: #mediawiki split

body:
On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, Tim Starling wrote:
>MediaWiki developers
>should be interested in Wikipedia server administration and similarly
>it's hard to talk about Wikipedia server administration without getting
>onto the subject of the only significant thing those servers do.

Yes and no.  I think there should be an isolated channel for purely
administrative chatter.  I don't know if there's enough of that chatter
to justify the channel, 'tho.  There's certainly been a lot of server
work in the last few weeks (and will continue for a few more weeks at
least.)

I'm parked in both channels, but only really watching #wikitech (12 lines
to 5 :-))

--Ricky


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Inaccessible In China

body:
WIKIPEDIA Inaccessible In China
ChinaTechNews.com - Beijing,China
According to several Internet reports both the Chinese and English-language
versions of Wikipedia have now been blocked and are inaccessible from
the Chinese ...

http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1316

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error message

body:
I keep getting

    Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and
cannot contact the database server.

intermixed with normal function. Maybe one of the apaches really doesn't
find the database?

This is especially annoying when previewing pages, as "back" in the
browser (Firebird) sometimes doesn't work correctly.

Magnus


from_name: Mikhail Capone

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: UTF-8 on English Wikipedia?

references:
<caih7c$gru$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40CCF36E.5060200@pobox.com>	<cajfgg$vvr$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40CD41CA.80403@pobox.com>
	<40CD51B4.8070002@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've started on a conversion script which might be able to bring the
> site back online before all the grunt work is done, with appropriate
> locking of the incomplete pages. We'll see how it turns out... Obviously
> this is something I'll want to test first. :D
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Maybe this is just a crazy idea, but the script could convert the
articles in order of popularity so that the most popular articles are
unlocked as fast as possible and those that stay locked longer are those
that don't get as much traffic.

--
Mikhail / http://MikeCapone.blogspot.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Inquirer responds to mav's email

body:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16564
RickK

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from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error message

body:
>
>I keep getting
>
>    Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and
>cannot contact the database server.
>
>intermixed with normal function. Maybe one of the apaches
>really doesn't
>find the database?

They find the database, but the max_connections on mysql is hit (300 actually). If we increase this number, the requests could become very very slow.

Shaihulud


body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> On Monday 14 June 2004 01:08, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>>In a message dated 6/13/2004 5:53:24 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>>rkscience100 at yahoo.com writes:
>>Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority.
>>As of today, Anthere has quite a bit more authority than you care to
>>imagine. Pick your enemies wisely, Robert. I wouldn't go launching attacks
>>on the Board if I were you.
>
>
> Now what kind of dictatorship is this? Are you saying that the Board will
> revenge for attacks or what?
>
> (I'm not against Anthere in any way, but would of course be against such abuse
> of privileges if it would to happen.)

The Foundation is also here to ensure the core values of the
organisation are preserved, just as Jimbo himself has been doing for now
3 years and a half. These core values are among others : neutrality,
copyright respect, openness, love for others and genuine concerns for
the diversity of opinions.

Should someone *greatly* put into danger these values, I think it is the
board role to act to limit damage, IF the community did not act BEFORE
(or if it is slow to act, or if the community does not dare acting for
any reason, such as fear of legal threats). In this type of extreme
situation, it is within the board authority to exclude a participant
from the project.

See for references :

Section 4.3. REMOVAL FOR CAUSE. Members of any classification may be
removed from all membership categories for cause by a four-fifths vote
of the Board of Trustees, such decision shall be final and unappealable.
For any cause, other than non-payment of dues, removal shall occur only
after the member against whomever the complaint was made, has been
advised of the complaint and has been given reasonable opportunity for
defense before a committee to be formed and convened only should the
occasion arise. The Board of Trustees, at it's sole discretion, may
maintain or remove any such user's account from any of its projects upon
such removal for cause which may also be for successive membership terms
(i.e. numbers of years); such removal shall mean said individual shall
not be allowed to contribute to any Wikimedia project until said time is
completed. This removal process shall not be the same as the process of
temporary (long or short term) suspension of member editing privileges
on any Wikimedia project.

So, from a practical perspective, what Danny said has sense.

------

However,

First, I do not think such a situation applies to RK. If editors have
issues with RK, they should first seek to solve the issue with him
directly, or ask help from a mediator, or go to the arbitration committee.

Second, I got to know RK in the past months, and I am now used to his
rather hot way of speaking. I really wish he be more polite with me,
just because I am a human being. Not because I am a board member. I
really wish he be less sensitive on all jewish related topics.

Third, and this is the most important point of all, if the foundation
has to maintain the integrity of the whole project, it has not to be
implicated in every day management of each project, where there are
plenty of good people to do so.

Last, I may be a board member, I am also just an editor. And as an
editor, I may do wrong, I may be biased, I may delete something too
quickly, I may be impolite, I may infringe copyrights by mistake, I may
get upset when talking about politics, I may just have a bad hair day. I
will try to avoid all this the best I can.
But if that happen, this day, anyone may complain and not fear I will
have revenge desire :-)

Angela and I are here to represent you, Nikola, not to police you :-)


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject:
[Wikitech-l] experimental whysiwyg/syntax highlighted editor
	for wikimedia

body:
On Sat, 2004-06-12 at 12:00 +0100, Jim Higson wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'm testing the ground for writing a java aplet based mini-editor for
> mediawiki (and maybe other wikis, although the lack of a standard makes that
> difficult).
>
> What I have in mind is a relatively light applet - a more specialised version
> of the generic text input, that creates well formatted wiki markup, by
> allowing a syntax highlighted or whysiwyg view of the article.
>
> This wouldn't require comunication with the server, other than uploading the
> article, as happens now.
>
> The program would be GPL, and as far as possible be designed to work with the
> GNU classpath.
>
> What do you think of this idea? My main aim is to make editing easier for
> non-technical users.

In case you didn't come across it so far, you might also want to check
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor. There are a few html to
wiki converters around now, a tidy function is in the parser, and the
Epoz 0.74 editor has the xml-rpc/client side things ready. Uses the
browser widgets in Moz/IE and supports the site stylesheet. The tricky
bit is the handling of special wiki things like template includes etc-
those would need to be passed around as comments..

Gabriel Wicke


subject: _[Foundation-l]_Wikimedia_board_of_trustees_/_La_fondation_Wikim�dia

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Congratulations to Florence and Angela for being elected to the board. I
> am sure they will both do their best to represent the interests of the
> community. Thanks to everyone who voted for me, many of them in spite of
> differences that we may have had in the past.

I've already expressed congratulations privately to Florence and Angela but
would like to add public congratulations as well. I would also like to thank
everyone who voted for me.

> The full election results absolutely should be published. Everything else
> would be a travesty.

I agree but I would not like to see this happen too quickly if there are
objections from any candidate. So far, however, I count three candidates who
want the figures published and none so far who don't. Let's see what the others
have to say.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Inaccessible In China - story hits the
	news cycle

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote on WikiEN-l:
> WIKIPEDIA Inaccessible In China
> ChinaTechNews.com - Beijing,China
> According to several Internet reports both the Chinese and English-language
> versions of Wikipedia have now been blocked and are inaccessible from
> the Chinese ...
>
>
> http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1316

They specifically mention that the Wikimedia Foundation has not responded yet.
Could somebody who can speak for the foundation do that? I have a feeling that
this story may get big due to the recent rash of censorship in China. Wikipedia
could be lead part of many of those stories since it is hard to feel sorry for
blocked porn and gambling sites but Wikipedia is cute and cuddly and now the
Chinese version has been effectively squashed (with about a hundred
contributors not able to contribute and many thousands disconnected from their
favorite reference site - not to mention hundreds of millions of potential
readers who will never know of us if this block is permanent). I think it is
fairly serious when a very substantial part of the world's population is cut
off from us.

So we should have an official statement about this before the media starts to
demonize the PRC's censorship policies. IMO, such a statement would need to say
something to the effect that "Wikimedia wants to work with the PRC and we think
that our NPOV policy should take care of any fears the PRC may have." Hopefully
that will give the Chinese contributors a chance to work this out in a soft way
first and give the PRC a way to back off without losing face. We could very
well have been blocked due to bureaucratic misjudgment.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Chinese block

body:
On Mon, 2004-06-14 at 07:14 +0800, Pratyeka wrote:
> It appears that en.wikipedia.org has a few addresses, all of
> which are blocked.  I have not tried resolving other
> languages' domains but they are also blocked.  I guess
> they resolve similarly.

You could try the non-virtual ips of the squids: 207.142.131.230,
207.142.131.229, 207.142.131.238.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've already expressed congratulations privately to Florence and
> Angela but
> would like to add public congratulations as well. I would also like
> to thank
> everyone who voted for me.

Likewise, Angela and Florence: Cheers!

>
> I agree but I would not like to see this happen too quickly if
> there are
> objections from any candidate. So far, however, I count three
> candidates who
> want the figures published and none so far who don't. Let's see
> what the others
> have to say.

no objections.

I was expecting the results to be made public at the same time as any
announcement, actually.

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

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from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 07:58:37AM -0400, Fennec Foxen wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 23:52:59 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > A per wiki breakdown with percentages would also be nice.
>
> I'm not an authoratitative source on this, but apparently there will
> be NO release of figures (!), even on a sitewide basis, according to
> directives by Jimbo, for some sort of fear that it will hurt peoples'
> feelings? potentially provide statistics which might perhaps in the
> future maybe damage their potential standing in future elections? I
> have no idea, some sort of excuse of that nature... This is what I
> hear in the IRC channel, anyway, would anyone here (Jimbo? etc) care
> to confirm or deny it in a less transient medium?

Personally I have absolutely nothing against knowing how much I suck.
Please uncover the stats.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Translating month names

body:
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
> Hi all.
> I have been helping for a while to translate the interface of the Greek
> wikipedia with much success due to the namespace feuture of the wiki
> software.
> There are though some things that cannot be translated via this interface
> (or so I believe) like month names?
> Can somebody point me to the correct procedures for changing such items
> that are not included in the namespace?
> Thanx

Hello,

As far as I know, they are hard set in the LanguageXX.php, the El one is
actually empty and default to the Utf8 one or maybe english.

Can you provide us a list of weekdays name (sunday, monday ..), months
names (january, february ...) and month abbreviations (jan, feb ...) in
your language ?

A dev (me for example) can then puts that in the LanguageEl.php, tests
it and adds it to the mediawiki software. Then the wikipedia server
operators will be able to enable it on the Greek wikipedia.

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid logfile rotation

body:
Hi,

since the access.log of maurus hit 2^32-1 bytes, squid died. Apparently
access.log was not rotated. The cron jobs are there, but the logrotate
settings where default ones. I changed them to the values browne is
using:

/var/log/squid/*.log {
#    size 200M
    rotate 24000
    compress
    delaycompress
#    compresscmd /usr/local/bin/nicebzip2
#    uncompresscmd /usr/bin/bunzip2
    postrotate
   /usr/local/squid/sbin/squid -k rotate
    endscript
}

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Andreas Kasenides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Translating month names

body:
Hi all.
I have been helping for a while to translate the interface of the Greek
wikipedia with much success due to the namespace feuture of the wiki
software.
There are though some things that cannot be translated via this interface
(or so I believe) like month names?
Can somebody point me to the correct procedures for changing such items
that are not included in the namespace?
Thanx
--

Andreas Kasenides
e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy
<mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy>
(replace the _at_ above with @)

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from_name: Anthere

body:
> I've already expressed congratulations privately to
> Florence and Angela but
> would like to add public congratulations as well. I
> would also like to thank
> everyone who voted for me.

:-)

Well, thanks to all the candidates who expressed
congratulations. As I already said yesterday, I hope
we can all work together to make the Foundation truely
real.

> > The full election results absolutely should be
> published. Everything else
> > would be a travesty.
>
<> I agree but I would not like to see this happen too
> quickly if there are
> objections from any candidate. So far, however, I
> count three candidates who
> want the figures published and none so far who
> don't. Let's see what the others
> have to say.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I have been thinking about that very carefully today,
to check if what I was thinking a little while ago was
really a good opinion or not a good opinion.

I also read one morning, the discussion which occurred
on irc on the topic. I tried to weight all arguments.

And after careful consideration, I think the results
should be released entirely (but for the smallest
wikipedias, as it would remove anonymisation of the
vote when only 1 to 5 people voted).

If only for one reason : transparency. We should not
build the Foundation upon bricks of secret.

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from_name: Delirium

subject: _[Foundation-l]_Wikimedia_board_of_trustees_/_La_fondation_Wikimédia

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>I agree but I would not like to see this happen too quickly if there are
>objections from any candidate. So far, however, I count three candidates who
>want the figures published and none so far who don't. Let's see what the others
>have to say.
>
>
I'd certainly like the figures published, if only out of curiosity to
see how many people voted for me (and how many people voted for everyone
else as well; I'm a rather curious person and like statistics).

Publishing a detailed breakdown would be neat too, as, again, I like
statistics, but that might need some safeguards to avoid giving away
individual votes (for example, publishing vote totals for a language
from which only a handful of people voted would probably be bad).

-Mark