subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/16/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/16/05, Brian Haws <brian at bhaws.com> wrote:
> > I agree, this insistance on process and instruction over common sense in VFU is very disheartening to me. And the proposed Deletion Review doesn't seem to be concerned about this, the goal seems to be making it as easy as possible to keep things deleted.
>
> well yes the alturnative is that any AFD that decides to delete will
> be listed on VFU by it's supporters.
>

Why is this a problem?


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> VfU has never once seen "any" AfD that decides to delete, nor even
> "most" VfUs that decide to delete get brought up there. This is a
> complete straw man argument.
>
> -Snowspinner

Unless you consider the reason for this may a combination of low
profile and the knowlage amoungst those that do know about it that
they would be wasteing there time. Any article that is so important
that it must be included in wikipedia this year is unlikely to get
wiped out through AFD.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/16/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why is this a problem?

extends the conflict. Means that as well as watching AFD you have to
watch VFU. It's bad enough that we don't have a "don't list an article
on AFD more than once a year" policy without opening another arena for
conflict.

--
geni


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
I think the problem with the Wolters deletion is that nobody was
around at the time who could be bothered to actually check.  Sometimes
you get that--people who just sit around and vote delete without even
looking.

We don't normally delete articles (non-vanity) published authors. We
don't normally delete full professors (except maybe American ones
because apparently the word "professor" means something different
there).  There was no reason to delete this article.

Perhaps Wikipedia's guidelines are too strongly oriented towards
American assumptions.  Outside the US, a professor is definitely
someone you want to know about.  Within the US, I think I'd need to
see strong evidence that the professor in question really was just a
guy with a PhD and a part time job.


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Strange and unfair RfC/user process

body:
-------------- Original message --------------

> to revert the changes (=minor corrections and updates) that he's
> talking about, accused User:172 repeatedly of vandalism for making

Here are the changes you are calling "minor", you are a party
to the RfC remember.   Have you even looked at them?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_comment%2FSilverback&diff=25680123&oldid=25678864

You haven't explained by the certified text can't
remain intact while, the reponses (and these are
changes in response to my response) can be
made in a separate section, as is the custom
on evidence pages.

If there is going to be a process like this
evidently intended to lead to ARBCOM,
it should be "due process."

   -- Silverback


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is this a problem

body:
>From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>
>On 10/17/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>The fact that is was deleted
> > in the first place means (in 99.9% of cases) that there was consensus to
> > delete.
>

>why is you
>rationale an excuse for the repetition of the false claim that the
>content of an article should not be taken into consideration in
>undeletion, which has taken such a hold on VFU that we have ridiculous
>situations like this that require someone like me to take his
>reputation into his own hands simply to secure the undeletion of a
>perfectly good article about a published author who has appeared on
>Nova documentaries as an expert?

I haven't made any excuses or rationales or repeated any "false claims".
You stated that "We should undelete unless there is a consensus to delete.";
I pointed out that the fact that an article was deleted by AfD in the first
place means there was "consensus to delete", so your condition would never
hold.

As for VfU, until now it has served as an appeals court, dealing with policy
issues.  You obviously want to change that, but seem unable to get consensus
for that change. Describing de facto policy as a "false claim" doesn't
really help - if you want policy changed, you know what you need to do, get
consensus for that change, rather than trying to impose your will on other
admins via various sorts of reversions (in this case, reversions of articles
that were deleted because of consensus at both AfD and VfU).

Jay.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is this a problem

body:
> Unless the rules for VfU and AfD are asymmetrical, than VfU becomes a
> pointless waste of time.

It's not a waste of time to undelete an article which shouldn't have been
deleted in the first place.

Discussion of the merit and content of the article should not be
> mechanically excluded from VfU. But it should be limited to cases
> where it can convincingly be shown _something has changed_ between
> AfD and VfU that would lead one to believe that the people taking
> part in AfD would probably have voted otherwise had they had known.

Why should those taking part in the initial AFD get the final say on things?
That is exactly what's so horrible about VFD - if you don't incessantly
monitor the page to ensure that no mistakes are made, it's assumed that you
automatically cast a vote to delete.

That gives way too much power to a tiny tiny fraction of interested
Wikipedians.

Articles that are _genuinely_ and _substantially_ rewritten just
> before close of AfD (e.g "delete, delete, delete, delete, delete,
> delete, delete, delete, comment: rewritten, keep, keep") would be one
> example.

Seems like an example of something which shouldn't have been deleted in the
first place.

Or "Har Gobind Korhana is so kewl! I love his lecutres" followed by a
> string of delete, non-notable prof", closed for deletion, someone
> points out that it's a misspelling of Har Gobind Khorana who won a
> Nobel prize.

You're saying the article said "Har Gobind Korhana is so kewl! I love his
lecutres"? What in the world is the point of undeleting that?

Whatever the rules and practices are, VfU should be _different_ from
> AfD and involve _different_ considerations. It should not just be
> mechanical re-run of AfD to see whether the percentage of people who
> think Jenny MacNabb is notable will turn out to be different.

It inherently is *different*, but the consideration should be exactly the
same: should the article be in Wikipedia, or not? I find it disturbing that
anyone should think otherwise, as that would imply that we should have a
process in place which either keeps articles which shouldn't be in the
encyclopedia, or which deletes articles which should be in it.

I agree it shouldn't be a mechanical re-run, and the percentage of people
who think something is irrelevant. Rather, if a VFU discussion shows that
there isn't actually a consensus to exclude an article from Wikipedia, then
that article should be undeleted.

VFU is really more of a reopening of the discussion than a re-run of the
vote. Someone should have a good reason to want to reopen the discussion,
but we shouldn't limit the participants to those who initially participated.

For those who are worried about having to vote all over again, there is a
reasonable solution. Carry the delete votes from the initial VFD over to the
VFU. People could still change them, and more recent votes would be more
heavily weighted if there were significant changes, but this would greatly
reduce the incentive to nominate an article for undeletion without some sort
of new argument.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
>From my talk page:

== [[Albert M. Wolters]] Talk page ==

Just curious: why wasn't [[Talk:Albert M. Wolters]] undeleted in
addition to undeleting the article?  Is the discussion there now
irrelevant? --[[User:Tabor|Tabor]] 19:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually I'd no idea that it had been deleted. I don't think it's
normal practice to delete talk pages, except for mischievous pages.
I'll undelete it and merge in my comment. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony
Sidaway]][[User talk:Tony Sidaway|Talk]]
21:12, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

:That's my fault, I deleted the talk page when I deleted the article
per AfD. In hindsight it was a mistake - indeed deleting the article
was probably a mistake since the AfD consensus was illogical. Tony, I
do think we need a mechanism to review bad AfD decisions (like this
one) and not just the process. But, for the record, I'm a little
uncomfortable with you unilaterally restoring this - are you now the
last court of appeal in any process! [[User:Doc glasgow|Doc]] [[User
talk:Doc glasgow|(?)]] 21:27, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Doc.  I know it's uncomfortable, but IAR is like that.  A
corollary of IAR is that I'm putting my reputation on the line.  If
this article is deleted I personally will not undelete again, but I
rely on others who think the article is a worthwhile one to undelete
it. I am pretty sure we can ensure that way that there is a clear lack
of consensus to delete. Deletion policy has this: ''if in doubt, don't
delete''.  Honestly we should not be deleting good stuff, because it's
a stupid thing to do. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]][[User
talk:Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 21:50, 16 October
2005 (UTC)


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
VFU should concern the content of the article. You can't decide
whether the article was right- or wrongfully deleted without actually
looking at it. And additional evidence that a subject is worth an
article that was not discussed in the AFD should be reason to rethink
the initial deletion debate.

As I said it before. An AFD closure may be totally correct at the
time, but VFU also concerns articles when situations have changed.
"The Jar" webcomic is a good example. It was deleted for lack of
notability because no one could find any information to verify the
info in the article.

If someone comes in with information from the Wayback Machine Internet
archive showing it was a popular comic when it was still active that
should b enough info to argue an undeletion even when the AFD was
correctly closed at the time.

I think VFU should be used to reconsider deletions when certain
important info was not included in the final judgement. That's why the
justification is so important.

--Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/16/05, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/16/05 1:10 PM, "Bryan Derksen" <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> > I'm more concerned with the votes
> > themselves; a string of "delete, nn" or "keep, notable" can swing the
> > outcome of a vote but provides no actual basis for it ("me too" votes
> > provide a basis by proxy, but don't themselves add anything new to the
> > discussion).
>
> Why should there be a requirement that someone has to waste time by
> repeating the explanations given by other people for deleting an article?

I think the issue is when *no one* gives an explanation for the deletion.

If an article is non-notable, it's non-notable. There is no requirement that
> anyone who votes has to write explanations for anything. When you have 150
> AFD noms per day, it is absurd to suggest that there is some sort of
> obligation to explain votes, especially when so many nominations are
> uncontested junk.

If I recall correctly, there used to be a requirement to explain all votes,
and admins were supposed to weight unexplained votes accordingly. And if you
don't have the time to explain your reasoning 150 times, then you shouldn't
be voting on 150 nominations. If you don't have the time to explain your
reasoning, then you didn't have the time to read the article and do a bit of
basic research into the topic you're voting on. Please, if you're going to
be uninformed, don't bother voting.

-FCYTravis @ en.wikipedia
>


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

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

Tony Sidaway wrote:
> So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been
> processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.
>
> Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to
> delete come from?
Sometimes admins either don't pay attention or do stupid things when
closing AFDs...

- --
Phroziac
Encrypted Email Preferred
OpenPGP key ID: 0x8DA573EA

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] I've been blocked by an involved admin (was Strange
	and unfair RfC/user process

body:
Redwolf24 just blocked me, allegedly for 3RR on the RfC
page against me where he had taken a voting position
against me.   We really need to develop a fair process.

                 -- Silverback
-------------- Original message --------------

> -------------- Original message --------------
>
> > to revert the changes (=minor corrections and updates) that he's
> > talking about, accused User:172 repeatedly of vandalism for making
>
> Here are the changes you are calling "minor", you are a party
> to the RfC remember. Have you even looked at them?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_comment%2FSil
> verback&diff=25680123&oldid=25678864
>
> You haven't explained by the certified text can't
> remain intact while, the reponses (and these are
> changes in response to my response) can be
> made in a separate section, as is the custom
> on evidence pages.
>
> If there is going to be a process like this
> evidently intended to lead to ARBCOM,
> it should be "due process."
>
> -- Silverback
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> In which case your real argument is that we don't need VFU because
> AfD is flawless - an argument that is not so much a straw man as self-
> evidently absurd.
>
> -Snowspinner

Don't claim it is flawless. I just tend to feel it it is good enough.
Probably because I take a longer term view. VFU's (why isn't that
AFU?) main function should be makeing sure closeing admins are
following procedure and that people are not abuseing speedies. If no
one who cared enough about an article to make a case for it on AFD
visted it in 5 days I tend to feel that says something about the
article. If new information comes to light that changes everything
write a version includeing that information then point out the
pesumebrly substantial change to anyone who tries to speedy it.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In which case your real argument is that we don't need VFU because
> AfD is flawless - an argument that is not so much a straw man as self-
> evidently absurd.
>

Quite.

We have long ago reached the point where AfD closers sometimes felt
that they had to close an article as a deletion, even though, in Doc's
words,  "the AfD consensus was illogical." I mean, this was the actual
opinion of the guy who pulled the plug.

Doc has even greater reservations about my unilateral action, but fuck
it, this isn't about me. It's about a screwed-up process that is not
remedying blatantly bad decisions.

Doc says: "I think you could at least have waited to see if the VfU
process would have come to the right result."

Well no.  Because a number of VFU regulars continue to claim loudly,
if falsely, and to the point where anyone who claims otherwise is
treated as a heretic, that content must not be considered as a reason
for undeletion.

When I quoted the actual undeletion policy (which says the opposite)
this text was removed from the page on the grounds that practice
dictated policy.  In other words, those who couldn't be bothered to
check the policy falsely claimed that their ignorant actions
constituted de facto policy.

There's something deeply wrong with this.  If some people see the
Wolters article as a vanity article, they're entitled to their
opinion, but please, let's not permit such thinking to cause articles
to be deleted.


from_name: Bishonen

body:
chris at starglade.org wrote:

 >>actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
 >> The signed the statement of Dispute and then notified me.  They
shouldn't be
 >> changing it underneath my responses.  Yes, I could quote them,
because they might
 >> delete from underneath me, but what is an RfC/user doing lacking
even the basic
 >> integrity of a talk page.  You were right the first time.  It is
a blockable >>offense.   But I wanted >you to know that some of the
community seems to think >>nothing of this behavior.
 >                  -- Silverback

 >(could you turn on word wrap in your email client please).

 >It is a blockable offence to modify other users' statements, not your
 >own. It is definitely dubious if people modify their original
statements
 >to make replies by another person sound out-of-place, but not
blockable.

 >I think you should quote the original version of the text you are
 >replying to, adding it into your statement. I suggest you ask the
people
 >who are changing the text to stop, but I would caution against
accusing
 >them of trying to make your replies out-of-context (question the
action,
 >not the motive). This also assumes good faith, if you request
politely.

 >Chris

Er. Yes, that would assume good faith, wouldn't it. I like your
advice, Chris, but it's been kind of mooted by Silverbacks recent
editing on the wiki. He has been edit warring aggressively on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Silverback

to revert the changes (=minor corrections and updates) that he's
talking about, accused User:172 repeatedly of vandalism for making
them, posted {{test3}} vandalism warnings on the talk pages of 172
and User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, and, believe it or not, posted  a
"severe vandalism" report about the issue on [[WP:VIP]], here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress&diff=25667676&oldid=25666928#RU_Se
vere

Please see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/
Silverback

where he is still expressing outrage and condemnation, if you're
interested. I had already recommended Silverback to write something
like what you suggest in his own RfC statement--apart from
considerations of courtesy it just seems a much *simpler* thing to do
than all the reverts and threats and accusations--but I guess he
doesn't want to.

I hope the wrapping doesn't break my links, or that they won't be
really hard to fix if it does, sorry I'm not good at these things.

Bishonen


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/16/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
VFU's (why isn't that
> AFU?) main function should be makeing sure closeing admins are
> following procedure and that people are not abuseing speedies.

Well actually a bad speedy can be remedied by any admin.

So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been
processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.

Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to
delete come from?

About 25-30% of all nominations to AfD fail to result in deletion.

Get over it.

VFU's function is not to deal with those problems.  Its function is to
look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually
good articles.

And undelete them!

Why doesn't it do its job?


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/16/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/16/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > In which case your real argument is that we don't need VFU because
> > AfD is flawless - an argument that is not so much a straw man as self-
> > evidently absurd.
> >
>
> Quite.
>
> We have long ago reached the point where AfD closers sometimes felt
> that they had to close an article as a deletion, even though, in Doc's
> words,  "the AfD consensus was illogical." I mean, this was the actual
> opinion of the guy who pulled the plug.

So? I've blocked people under the 3RR than gone in and taken up thier case.

>
> Doc has even greater reservations about my unilateral action, but fuck
> it, this isn't about me. It's about a screwed-up process that is not
> remedying blatantly bad decisions.
>
> Doc says: "I think you could at least have waited to see if the VfU
> process would have come to the right result."
>
> Well no.  Because a number of VFU regulars continue to claim loudly,
> if falsely, and to the point where anyone who claims otherwise is
> treated as a heretic, that content must not be considered as a reason
> for undeletion.
>
> When I quoted the actual undeletion policy (which says the opposite)
> this text was removed from the page on the grounds that practice
> dictated policy.  In other words, those who couldn't be bothered to
> check the policy falsely claimed that their ignorant actions
> constituted de facto policy.
>

Umm that is pretty much how most of our policy turns up. All this
formalised voteing stuff is pretty recent

> There's something deeply wrong with this.  If some people see the
> Wolters article as a vanity article, they're entitled to their
> opinion, but please, let's not permit such thinking to cause articles
> to be deleted.

Vanity is a legit reason for deletion. So in this case they were wrong
how about explain that to those who voted delete? Until you added a
link to [[Redeemer University College]] (which is also on cleanup) the
article had no incomeing links so it's lose for 6 months or so is not
something I'm too concerdened about. Perhaps it is however it is time
to sort out [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of
biographies/Academics]] (although I'm haveing a hard time figureing
out how you can make it to the level of professor without publishing
in an international recognised journal).

--
geni


body:
Look again bratsche, you just reverted the page, putting the edits of an uninvolved user, over the signatures of 4 people.

It doesn't matter what excuse redwolf24 used, he is an
involved admin, he'd already reached the conclusions below
yesterday per his "outside" view on the page.  Note that he
gave no edits or specifics in support of his "view" either.

You might want to note also, that 172 went to his talk page
about this issue, right after voting for him for bureaucrat.
                         -- Silverback

-------------- Original message --------------

> First off, we need get the facts straight here. The block log shows not a
> 3RR violation, but something else. Let's take a look:
>
> 18:22, October 16, 2005
> Redwolf24blocked "
> User:Silverback " with an
> expiry time of 24 hours (reverts incessantly, removing information from his
> RfC ,
> has been attacking 172 a lot lately, hasn't been too civil, hopefully this
> block will turn him around.)
>
> This doesn't seem to be much of a 3RR block, but more of a block for
> disruption, violating [[WP:NPA]], and removing comments from the RfC without
> reason.
>
> --[[:en:User:Bratsche|Ben]]
>
> On 10/16/05, actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
>
> > Redwolf24 just blocked me, allegedly for 3RR on the RfC
> > page against me where he had taken a voting position
> > against me. We really need to develop a fair process.
> >
>
> --
> Bratsche-It means "viola!"
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well actually a bad speedy can be remedied by any admin.
>

Technicaly true but if your not an admin VFU is probably where you are
going to end up

> So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been
> processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.
>
> Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to
> delete come from?

Every action on wikipedia should be subject to oversite by the
community. You know this.

> About 25-30% of all nominations to AfD fail to result in deletion.
>
> Get over it.
>

Doesn't bother me one iota. 70-75% get over it.

> VFU's function is not to deal with those problems.  Its function is to
> look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually
> good articles.
>

Since when?

> And undelete them!
>
> Why doesn't it do its job?

Since people redifined its job.

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Peter Jacobi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Unicode sorting - language specific?

body:
Will the upgrade to MySQL 5 give us (within the limits of Wikipedia per
language) culture correct sorting or just the default Unicode collation?

Peter

--
Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko!
Satte Provisionen f?r GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > VFU's function is not to deal with those problems.  Its function is to
> > look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually
> > good articles.
> >
>
> Since when?

SInce it was designated as the forum for undeletion.

>
> > And undelete them!
> >
> > Why doesn't it do its job?
>
> Since people redifined its job.

No we didn't.


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> No we didn't.

The consensus appears to be against you on that one.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] I've been blocked by an involved admin

body:
------------- Original message --------------
> Silverback,
>
> If you want someone on this mailing list to do something about it,
> you'll have to explain why the block is not warranted - in other words,
> why the block reason that whoever blocked you is given is incorrect in
> each point mentioned.
>
> The reason you have to explain why you have not done the things you are
> supposedly blocked for is that admins tend to trust each other's
> judgments and are reluctant to get involved in cases where they are
> unfamiliar with the circumstances.
>
> If you can provide me with reasoning, supported by links to diffs on
> Wikipedia which I can validate your reasoning against, and if the people
> who are 'opposed' to you in this dispute do not respond adequately, in
> my opinion, to your comments, I will unblock you (and talk to the other
> people involved in the dispute about it).

Fair enough,  here are the reasons given for the block:

 >(reverts incessantly, removing information from
> his RfC , has been attacking 172 a lot lately, hasn't
> been too civil, hopefully  this block will turn him around.)

Firt of the alleged incivility and attacks are what the RfC
is supposed about, and those are in the past.  There was
not any of that today.  So Redwolf24 is preempting
the process and the community.   The merits of those
RfC allegations are themselves in doubt, because they
aren't the usual "namecalling", but are actually alleged
abuses and POV warrioring type of allegations that
are perfectly permissable on an RfC.  I happen to
confront people with them outside an RfC, so I think
there is some question whether the community will
consider them "personal attacks", in addition 172
takes some things personally that weren't even
referring to him at all.

The reverts and the removing info from the RfC
are related to 172s changing allegations in the
certified section that I had already responded to.
In fact he was responding to my responses, but
making them look like they were his initial allegations.
I discussed this thoroughly on the talk page, and in
edit summaries, and on the 3RR page and on the
vandalism in progress page and I think there is a good case
that this is vandalism,  or at least something so
unfair that the community will decide it should
not be part of the process.   Vandalism that changes
the meaning of things in ways that might decieve people
is considered "severe"

I was being bold,
yes, but at the same time being reasonable, because
I allowed in Lulu's elaboration of a point I hadn't
responded to yet, and I informed 172 that I had
no problem with him put his responses to my
edits into the RfC, just not undermining my
responses, or deleting what his initial charges
were.  Note that I am being called the "subject"
of this RfC.

I think that addresses Redwolf24s stated reasons.
Note that he has actually authored one of the
sections of the RfC.  Note also these four edits
in a row from 172s contributions:

16:55, October 16, 2005 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Redwolf24 (??Silverback RfC)
16:55, October 16, 2005 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Redwolf24
16:54, October 16, 2005 (hist) (diff) User talk:Redwolf24 (??An Award Regarding Your RfB)
15:52, October 16, 2005 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Redwolf24 (??Redwolf24)
15:48, October 16, 2005 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Redwolf24 (??Redwolf24 - support)
He goes straight from voting for Redwolf24,  for
bureaucrat to request assistance on Redwolf24's
talk page.  Redwolf 24 is involved in ways that he
shouldn't be if he is going to be the admin taking
action on this.
    -- Silverback


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > No we didn't.
>
> The consensus appears to be against you on that one.

Absolutely not.  When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting
articles should not undelete articles?


body:
------------- Original message --------------

> I don't think you have a right to remove comments on your own RfC. A request
> for comment is just that: a chance for those both involved and uninvolved to
> comment on an article or user's situation. [[User:Fawcett5]]'s comments was
> also at the end of a list, not above signatures. If there is confusion, look
> at the timestamp on the sigs. That's why we have them.

The signatures are four or five sections BELOW her insertion.  And what you reverted was not the insertion of her "correction",
but was the insertion of both the error and the correct, and was
a total null effect that did not belong in the RfC at all, and
definitely not in the section signed by others.
                                          -- Silverback


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Absolutely not.  When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting
> articles should not undelete articles?

Is that a strawman?

It would appear that you can't get the version of policy you want to
stick therefor it would appear that what you think should be policy is
not in accordence with what the community thinks.

--
geni


body:
------------- Original message --------------
> actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> > Fair enough, here are the reasons given for the block:
>
> [...]
>
> Do you have any appropriate links to diffs on Wikipedia to support your  statements?

Diffs to show that I didn't do personal attacks today?
Diffs to show that I wasn't uncivil today?

It is tough to prove a negative.  Outside of the RfC,
we interacted as editors here on this talk page,
it was quite constructive, in fact 172 made some
good edits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ANeoconservatism_in_the_United_States&diff=25651440&oldid=25647850

All my interaction on the RfC talk page was civil,
with no attacks.  As as part of the reporting of
vandalism, I was required to post warnings on his
and Lulu's talk pages.  172 accused me of harassing
him.  I asked him not to personally attack me,
that this was just a required step.  Here is that
diff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A172&diff=25679840&oldid=25679582

Let me know if you find something that can be
characterized as uncivil or an attack.  You are welcome
to review all my contribs and edit summaries.

        -- Silverback


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> Look again bratsche, you just reverted the page, putting the edits of an uninvolved user, over the signatures of 4 people.
>
> It doesn't matter what excuse redwolf24 used, he is an
> involved admin, he'd already reached the conclusions below
> yesterday per his "outside" view on the page.  Note that he
> gave no edits or specifics in support of his "view" either.
>
> You might want to note also, that 172 went to his talk page
> about this issue, right after voting for him for bureaucrat.
>                          -- Silverback

Silverback,

If you want someone on this mailing list to do something about it,
you'll have to explain why the block is not warranted - in other words,
why the block reason that whoever blocked you is given is incorrect in
each point mentioned.

The reason you have to explain why you have not done the things you are
supposedly blocked for is that admins tend to trust each other's
judgments and are reluctant to get involved in cases where they are
unfamiliar with the circumstances.

If you can provide me with reasoning, supported by links to diffs on
Wikipedia which I can validate your reasoning against, and if the people
who are 'opposed' to you in this dispute do not respond adequately, in
my opinion, to your comments, I will unblock you (and talk to the other
people involved in the dispute about it).

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
Yet again, somebody who puts process before content has deleted this
perfectly valid article, contrary to the fundamental axiom of our
deletion policy: *if in doubt, don't delete*.  Somebody please
undelete it.

Why do we have to go through this clownish pantomime every time some
ignoramuses delete a good article?


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Yet again, somebody who puts process before content has deleted this
> perfectly valid article, contrary to the fundamental axiom of our
> deletion policy: *if in doubt, don't delete*.  Somebody please
> undelete it.
>
> Why do we have to go through this clownish pantomime every time some
> ignoramuses delete a good article?

I was originally in agreement with you concerning the existence of the
article but insulting the 'other side' is hardly a good way to get other
people to sign up to your philosophy on this matter.

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Undeleted.
>
> -Snowspinner
>

Be glad Ed Poor isn't a steward any more. *beaks out popcorn*

--
geni


body:
------------ Original message --------------
> I apologize: I have the information slightly wrong. Fawcett5 was adding some
> informatino to the page, then corrected her mistake. Still, there is no
> reason to remove her statements. Doing it yourself on your own RfC makes it
> seem slightly suspicious.

I don't think she would have a problem if you deleted it,  I think
it was just because it was me, which is a surprise, because
I don't recall ever interacting with her.  She might have
a connection to one of the other parties.    I offered to let it
go in someplace else completely unopposed.  I have not
tried to suppress any information.   Frankly it is the type
of minor change that doesn't undermine anything I have
already responded to, that if the 4 certifiers wanted kept
in for some strange reason.  That would be fine.  I think
everyone would wonder why it is left in.

She may have been trying to cause a violation of the 3RR,
rule by putting it back in after I removed it.  But that is the
very issue I am being bold on and am vulnerable on.  The
community may very well take the position that it doesn't
want the kind of fairness I think is a basic requirement.
Communities can do that.

But noone can claim I am trying to suppress information,
quite the contrary, I am trying to preserve it and a process
with some kind of integrity.

              -- Silverback


body:
actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> Fair enough,  here are the reasons given for the block:

[...]

Do you have any appropriate links to diffs on Wikipedia to support your
statements?

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> I was originally in agreement with you concerning the existence of the
> article but insulting the 'other side' is hardly a good way to get other
> people to sign up to your philosophy on this matter.
>

Are we writing an encyclopedia or running a beetle drive?  We have
somehow arrived at a system that pits well-meaning, bureacratic
ignorance against the only force that can ever gainsay it: pure
self-absorbed, unflappable belief that good stuff shouldn't be
deleted.

The unanimous vote to delete that article can only possibly mean one
thing: we've got a real problem on AfD. it's become a means by which
information is removed from Wikipedia for no other reason that brute
ignorance.

If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry.  There is no pleasant way
to put that bad news.


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry.  There is no pleasant way
> to put that bad news.

My original statement was that I disapprove of you insulting the other
side while criticising their actions. It's unnecessary. I am not
offended by your opinions on the issue (and I'm not quite sure how you
got that idea from my previous comment).

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are we writing an encyclopedia or running a beetle drive?  We have
> somehow arrived at a system that pits well-meaning, bureacratic
> ignorance against the only force that can ever gainsay it: pure
> self-absorbed, unflappable belief that good stuff shouldn't be
> deleted.
>
> The unanimous vote to delete that article can only possibly mean one
> thing: we've got a real problem on AfD. it's become a means by which
> information is removed from Wikipedia for no other reason that brute
> ignorance.
>
> If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry.  There is no pleasant way
> to put that bad news.

We've got problems everywhere. The question is which ones to worry
about the most and how bad the side effects of adopting certian
solutions would be.

Incerdently the article has been deleted again (take one sip). Did we
ever decide if the 3RR applies to deletion?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry.  There is no pleasant way
> > to put that bad news.
>
> My original statement was that I disapprove of you insulting the other
> side while criticising their actions. It's unnecessary. I am not
> offended by your opinions on the issue (and I'm not quite sure how you
> got that idea from my previous comment).
>

Question: was the unanimous decision to delete an informed one, or was
it an uninformed one?

In this case, we have overwhelming evidence that it was uninformed.

We're letting articles be deleted because the editors who happened to
look at a nomination were ignoramuses.  I don't mean that they were
uninformed, but that *they failed to inform themselves*.

Why do we have a process that is biasds towards taking into account
the opinions of people who clearly do not make an effort to inform
themselves?

And then in the VFU phase we have people who utterly refuse to take
into account the content of the article and its value to Wikipedia,
and in fact go so far as to claim falsely that it would be wrong to do
so.

Again, wilful ignorance.

I cannot put it any other way.

Wikipedia deletion policy is being traduced by ignoramuses.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is this a problem

body:
On 10/17/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> then the result would be that an article could not be deleted unless
> it had basically been voted for deletion TWICE: once in AfD by 2/3
> majority, then a second time in VfU by simple majority.

No, that would be silly.  VFU should not try to gainsay deletion
policy.  We should undelete unless there is a consensus to delete.

Again and again I see people bring perfectly good articles for
undeletion, only for people who, for reasons of good faith, I have to
assume are completely ignorant both of the purpose of Wikipedia and of
the deletion policy and of the undeletion policy, falsely claim that
the content of the article must not be taken into account, in order to
prevent the undeletion of good articles.

Why is such bureaucreatic idiocy  tolerated?

We'll get to the matter of hordes of useless deleted articles being
relisted on VFU (and this being a problem) if ever it should come to
that.

I can only imagine that it would be a glorious change to the stupid
situation that pertains at present.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is this a problem

body:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can only imagine that it would be a glorious change to the stupid
> situation that pertains at present.

Nah at the moment people are only really getting anoyed with the
system. In the senario outlined you have a much greater scope for
things becoming personal. The page would also become far more active
witch almost garentees more trouble.

--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
Appalling yes, but not at surprising.  If I have no idea who this person
is I'm not going to be motivated to take the time to learn enough about
him to make an informed vote.  I've got other things to keep me busy.
Most of us are unaware that a deletion is being considered until after
the deed is done.

Ec

Snowspinner wrote:

> Rightly so - this was a slam-dunk keep, and I'm appalled that it got
> no keep votes.
>
> On Oct 16, 2005, at 2:52 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> AfD sometimes makes mistakes, and VFU is supposed to correct them.
>> For some reason it signally fails to--often point blank refuses
>> to--carry out this task.
>>
>> The article on Professor Albert Wolters was delete a few days ago.
>> The usual false pretexts are being posed as excuses for not
>> immediately undoing this travesty.
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is this a problem

body:
On 10/17/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
The fact that is was deleted
> in the first place means (in 99.9% of cases) that there was consensus to
> delete.

99.9% of statistics are wrong. Bogus statistics aside, why is you
rationale an excuse for the repetition of the false claim that the
content of an article should not be taken into consideration in
undeletion, which has taken such a hold on VFU that we have ridiculous
situations like this that require someone like me to take his
reputation into his own hands simply to secure the undeletion of a
perfectly good article about a published author who has appeared on
Nova documentaries as an expert?


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
Until now its
> mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process

That is utterly, completely, false.  Why are these utter falsehoods
always tramped out to defend the failure of VFU to do a proper job of
fulfulling the undeletion policy: to decide whether Wikipedia is
better off with or without an article?


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/17/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Until now its
> > mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process
>
> That is utterly, completely, false.

To wit:

Article wrongly deleted (ie that Wikipedia would be a better
encyclopedia with the article restored)


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Making Wikipedia cacheable, without altering current
	behaviour

references:
<dipuv8$tk3$1@sea.gmane.org>	<4351394C.7030208@tonal.clara.co.uk>	<disbk4$ag2$1@sea.gmane.org>	<4352232B.2070106@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<diu4tc$a14$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Neil Harris wrote:
>
>
>>The advantage of the streaming approach is (as I understand it)
>>* to eliminate the need for HEAD requests
>>
>>
>
>No, intermediate caches can't be relied on to do that kind of
>revalidation, only browsers can. Wikipedia sends "Cache-Control:
>private,must-revalidate" which disables intermediate caches entirely.
>The point of the streaming approach is to allow an intermediate cache at
>all, that's why it was developed concurrently with our initial
>deployment of squid.
>
>Maybe implementing the kind of revalidation you're talking about would
>be a useful step.
>
>
>
Ah. There's more to this than I had realised. I hadn't realised that was
the case -- but I can see that it makes sense, since Wikipedia may serve
up different content to different users for the same URL.

How about _eliminating_ this behaviour, by having two possible URLs for
each page "/wiki/X" and "/dynwiki/X", serving exactly the same content
as a /wiki/ URL serves now?

/wiki/ URLs would be for general readers, and marked as "public,
must-revalidate", and would serve the same content to every user.

/dynwiki/ URLs would be for readers who may recieve content which may
vary from the normal appearance sent to anons, (anons with messages, and
all logged-in users) and are marked as "private, must-revalidate".

Both classes of URLs would internally be rewritten to exactly the same
internal URLs, and call the same code, as at present: the difference is
that /dynwiki/ pages would be non-cachable versions of the same content.
Effectively, the difference between the two URLs is only a hint to any
caches in the way as to whether the page is cacheable.

When we get the conditional GET which every hit will generate, we can work out which page to serve based on the message flag for anons, and the presence of user cookies for logged-in users. If you access a /wiki/ page, and you should be getting /dynwiki/ content, you will be redirected to the corresponding /dynwiki/ URL. Similarly if you are accessing dynamic content, and should be getting the static content. All of the links on a page would belong to the same base URL as the transmitted page, so the dynamic-state would be "sticky", and there would not need to be many redirects: generally, only one for every change of state from dynamic to static or vice-versa for a given user.

Web crawlers, and the rest of the world, will generally see only the /wiki/ URLs and content. Only logged-in users and anons with messages would see the /dynwiki/ content.

If this works as I imagine, it would have the effect of rendering the entire Wikipedia cachable for the (I imagine) 90%+ of readers who are not logged in. Conditional GETs would still be needed for every page, but the bulk of the data would not need to be shifted whenever there is a hit. If this works, it could substantially reduce the average number of bytes shifted per page hit.

This would also have the effect of making third-world cached sites behind thin pipes far more efficient.

It's late here, and I'm tired, and this seems too good to be true, so it probably isn't. I'll think about it again in the morning.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
> > Why doesn't it do its job?
>
> You've already said why, repeatedly.  Somewhere along the way it stopped
> being a last-gasp "hang on we missed something" effort and became an
> appeals court.  "Dost thou have a point of law to make?  Then begone!"

Well no. That's how some people treat it. But that isn't its mandate,
nor does it have anything to do with the undeletion policy.

In short, it's  bloody broken.  That people hang around there and make
comments disturbingly similar to your parody above is only the final
nail in the coffin.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Idea for faster,
	cheaper access to Wikipedia   in   poorer countries

references:
<dipuv8$tk3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4351394C.7030208@tonal.clara.co.uk>	<disbk4$ag2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4352232B.2070106@tonal.clara.co.uk>

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> I'm not suggesting the log files should be polled in real-time: that
> would be silly.

That was my understanding also. I mentioned polling in the context of
constructing log files, not reading them.

> Rather, the URL invalidation file needs to be pulled
> down only once per batch pre-fetch session, a total of perhaps 6 Mbytes
> per day for each client site, assuming 60 chars per log entry and
> 100,000 edits a day. This assumes no compression: this file should gzip
> extremely efficiently due to the strong repetition in both URLs and
> timestamp strings, so the file might be only 2 or 3 Mbytes long if
> dowloaded with gzip on-the-fly compression.
>
> For a remote site, Wikipedia traffic will only form a small proportion
> of overall traffic. A cache issuing an HTTP HEAD request to check
> freshness will return a tiny fraction of the number of bytes that an
> HTTP GET will: if the data is stale, a full GET will be required,
> regardless of whether the cache invalidation is done on-demand at page
> fetch time or by real-time streaming.

Caches use ICP, not HTTP HEAD. The only clients that use HEAD are link
checkers. Browsers use a GET method with a Last-Modified header.

> The advantage of the streaming approach is (as I understand it)
> * to eliminate the need for HEAD requests

No, intermediate caches can't be relied on to do that kind of
revalidation, only browsers can. Wikipedia sends "Cache-Control:
private,must-revalidate" which disables intermediate caches entirely.
The point of the streaming approach is to allow an intermediate cache at
all, that's why it was developed concurrently with our initial
deployment of squid.

Maybe implementing the kind of revalidation you're talking about would
be a useful step.

> * to push some of the GET requests into the off-peak time, which is a
> win providing the page is not touched between the off-peak fetch and a
> user's on-peak access to the same page (but a loss if the page is edited
> between then and the user access, as it simply wastes off-peak bandwidth
> to no useful effect).
[...]

That's ancillary, and it hasn't been developed yet.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Any File

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Idea for faster,
	cheaper access to Wikipedia in poorer countries

body:
Is it possible to have the logged-in-user page view cached too?

What is the ratio of logged-in-user/total page request (among viewing of normal, cacheble page)

For a fixed skin and language what are the things that change on a logged-in user?

*the name of the user and the link to his/her user page (and similar)
*the move link (but this is always the same)
*the watch/unwatch link

Is there something more?

One more question: which is the part (Apache, Squid, Database, etc) which is at the moment the limiting factor in the MediaWiki cluster?

AnyFile

--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation

body:
So...

I have worked a bit in the past 2 weeks in refactoring the Foundation Home Page, to merge it with Quarto.

PLEASE, do not consider the graphical aspect of it, it can LOOK different. I am very bad at graphics, so do not take this as the final look.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Anthere/home

What I would like to have feedback on is

* the content of the new page

* the way information is organised

* adding logos of sponsors or not (depending on how much they gave or how recently it was...)

* etc...

The main idea is to merge Quarto in the Foundation site, in such a way that

* most big categories are kept (so, it is not too difficult to "create" a pdf Quarto from the content from time to time if we have the will and energy...)

* topics normally edited by board members or officers will be directly editable on the website. Each officer will for example have a report page associated and this one will always be the same.

For example : for the hardware officer : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Hardware_and_hosting_report

I kept Jimbo's letter (and whatever big messages he wishes to share with the community), while the board letter may contain a overview of WMF over time (organisation, collaborations etc...)

Each officer will have his own report page, which he can edit alone or with anyone he wishes (some links might be missing right now; I mostly want to give the idea)

* topics which can be created/offered by anyone will be created on meta. So fully editable. They will be later copied on the Foundation site or not.

For example, by Alterego (copied on the WMF site) : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Projects/An_exciting_growth_%21

We can also include here all Specials, which might be report on Wikimania (no one feels like doing it it seems though) or Interviews etc...

I would love to see there stuff like [[How to use and reuse our content]] or [[All you ever wanted to know on our licences...]]

* A controversial point to validate : I would like that we introduce a "opinion area" or a "essay area" for personal texts of some of our proeminent members. These will be clearly labelled "not Foundation approved"... but naturally, we'll not let crazy text settle here :-)

* I left a prize and award which might be nicely featured in a special area with what often goes with it.... a picture of the prize... Currently, it is just a paragraph to suggest it should be here

* The road ahead will be mostly to announce major events (such as Wikimania, or WSIS ?) and planning.

* Controversially, I added a special area for donations and sponsorship... with some logos....

* And I finished with a little bit of corporate details, which might certainly be improved.

The right side is still allocated with current news...

---------------

When you go down in reports, you'll notice a [[archive]] link, which allow to go back in the past. See for example : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report

As well as put some atemporal links (such as the link to the budget).

All reports might be categorized to better find them back as well.

Of course, all officers will be free to fill these quartely reports in the way that seems best to them. Imho, in most cases, a global report per quarter is best, but in some cases, adding information little by little when new stuff get done might be good as well.

I mostly wish/hope that information gets there...

Of course, most content is right now outdated. This is mostly to show what it could be. So do not complain about that please :-)

----------------

Now, I would love some feedback on all this. If no one says anything (as most of the time :-(...), I'll consider it an agreed and will put it on the main page soon (likely next week end).

Otherwise, please comment here, or on irc, or on the talk page if you can or wherever...

Thanks

Ant

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
Folks,

I have looked at the article and it is in good shape at the moment. Mind
you, that isn't to say that it was a one-line stub at the start.

I will vote to keep it if further discussion ensues. Could someone drop me a
line at the Capitalistroadster username if it does just in case I am aware
of it.

Regards

Keith

On 10/17/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rightly so - this was a slam-dunk keep, and I'm appalled that it got
> no keep votes.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
> On Oct 16, 2005, at 2:52 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> > AfD sometimes makes mistakes, and VFU is supposed to correct them.
> > For some reason it signally fails to--often point blank refuses
> > to--carry out this task.
> >
> > The article on Professor Albert Wolters was delete a few days ago.
> > The usual false pretexts are being posed as excuses for not
> > immediately undoing this travesty.
> >
> > I am therefore taking the unusual step of undeleting this article.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: [F/OSS-Community] Stockholm Challenge Award 2006

body:
Begin forwarded message:

> From: Yong Liu <classicalliberalism at gmail.com>
> Date: October 17, 2005 7:25:47 AM MDT
> To: community at opensource.mit.edu
> Subject: [F/OSS-Community] Stockholm Challenge Award 2006
> Reply-To: liuyongaijiujiu at gmail.com
>
>
> *Please circulate widely and apologies for cross-posting*
>
> I hope this will be of interest to you.If you have questions or
> comments, please contact Earl Mardle at
> earl.mardle at stockholmchallenge.se or Ulla Skid?n at
> ulla.skiden at stockholmchallenge.se.
>
> Best,
>
> Yong Liu
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
> The Stockholm Challenge Award 2006 is open for entries
>
> THE STOCKHOLM CHALLENGE AWARD 2006 invites excellent ICT projects
> from all over the world to compete for the prestigious Challenge
> trophies. The Challenge is searching for the best initiatives that
> accelerate the use of information technology for the social and
> economic benefit of citizens and communities. The objective is to
> help local entrepreneurs, who work to close the digital divide, by
> bringing in research communities, development organisations and
> strong corporate initiatives.
>
> THE AWARDS WILL BE HANDED OUT IN SIX CATEGORIES in the City Hall -
> on May 11, 2006. Special focus will be on projects in countries and
> regions with the greatest needs. There will also be an
> international Challenge conference in Stockholm on issues related
> to the role of ICTs in global development work.
>
> THE AWARD IS OPEN FOR ENTRIES until December 31st 2005. The
> application form is easily accessible on the home page.
>
> The Stockholm Challenge is headquartered at the IT University - a
> joint initiative by KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology) and
> Stockholm University . It is managed by a consortium that also
> includes the City of Stockholm, Ericsson and Sida, the Swedish
> International Development Cooperation Agency.
>
> For more information, please contact:
> Project Manager
> Ulla Skid?n
> ulla.skiden at stockholmchallenge.se
> Telephone: + 46 8 7904469
> Cell: +46 70 678 72 82
>
> www.stockholmchallenge.se
>
>
> Rules for participation in the Stockholm Challenge Award 2006
>
> These are the basic rules for the participation in the Stockholm
> Challenge Award. All competing projects must:
>
> 1. Include ICT
> Illustrate how ICT is used to create new or better traditional
> services and/or products, which are beneficial for human and social
> development.
>
> 2. Be implemented
> All competing projects must be up and running. They should be
> implemented/piloted since no less than three months. The Stockholm
> Challenge Award does not accept drafted concepts and ideas only.
> The jury will only evaluate and compare projects that can show
> measurable outcomes and impact.
>
> 3. Be linked to and/or supported by an established private or
> public organisation.
>
> 4. Be verifiable, i.e. able to present credible references.
>
> 5. Be free from religious, political or other personal beliefs.
>
> To be noted:
>
> Projects that have won one of the Challenge categories in previous
> years cannot enter the competition again.
>
> All applications must be in English
>
> Evaluation criteria
>
> Innovation, creativity and the convergence of ICT with many
> different disciplines are some of the qualities that are looked for
> in the competing projects. The jury, a group of international
> senior experts, base their evaluation on the following criteria,
> most of which all Challenge projects should meet:
>
> Innovation
> Competing projects should illustrate new and innovative ways of
> using ICT to improve the living and economical conditions
> especially of those with great needs.
>
> Convergence
> The addition of ICT as a tool to traditional development work can
> improve and widen the scope of the project impact. Projects should
> show successful convergences of different disciplines and sectors.
>
> Inclusion
> It is favourable for the competing projects to show that they bring
> individuals, groups and local organisations into larger communities
> ? national and global - such as medical, government, educational
> and cultural networks, as well business environments.
>
> Equal Opportunity
> It is important that the initiatives counteract inequality related
> to the likes of gender, origin, age, physical and/or mental
> disabilities.
>
> Sustainability
> An important factor is sustainability. Not only economic
> sustainability, i.e. how long the project will last and bring
> benefits to its users. Sustainability also includes the
> contribution of the project to a sustainable society and
> environment at large.
>
> Opportunities
>
> To enter a project in the Stockholm Challenge Award is not only to
> participate in a prestigious international ICT competition - it is
> also a way to join networks of some of the best ICT entrepreneurs
> and pioneers in the world. Testimonials from many of the projects,
> which have competed in their respective categories over the years,
> say that it is the inspiration, the new ideas, contacts and
> partners that are the greatest rewards for a Challenger.
>
> The Stockholm Challenge represents excellent marketing through the
> exposure to media, and to private and public organizations that are
> involved in ICT work and implementations. It gives promotional
> opportunities for entrepreneurs, universities, cities, cities and
> regions. The Stockholm Challenge Final Events include a Best
> Practice Exhibition and a Conference. It is a meeting place for
> some the world's most successful IT entrepreneurs.
>
> Winners and finalists of the Stockholm Challenge are global role
> models for cities, companies, organisations, schools and others who
> are involved in adapting and spreading the use of ICT.
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Silverback, indefinite block in order?

body:
You need to back off on the indefinite blocks a bit. The ArbCom can
ban for a maximum of a year. You have had good luck so far (and might
succeed with Silverback) but simply relying on the fact that someone
is so disliked that no other administrator will unblock them is very
shaky ground. I think you are on the verge of putting yourself into
avoidable trouble.

Fred

On Oct 16, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Mattwolf Binder wrote:

> I am not involved, and 172 supporting my RfB has nothing to do with
> it. In fact if you check the arbcom pages you'll see I opposed 172.
> But after seeing all this crap he puts up with I think that I'll
> end up supporting. Silverback has been attacking 172, trolling,
> being a level 19 revert warrior, and is all around raising the
> stress for everyone involved. In fact he'll probably end up in
> front of the arbcom, and I'm tempted to indefinitely block just to
> save them work. He's turning into another Tern, a user who I block
> for a short period of time, whines on the mailing list, doesn't
> seem to let up anything, and will probably end up blocked
> indefinitely. I'm also really tired of the political hatred and
> right wing POV pushing by Silverback. Would anyone object to
> indefinitely blocking him?
>
> --Redwolf24
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: dumps failing for en.wp

body:
Jochen Magnus wrote:
> Brion,
>
> I think that not only en dumps failed. I found some errors in the most
> recent de dump (20051017_pages_articles.xml): As far as I inspected the
> xml file manually, I saw several <title>'s which do not belong to the
> comtent. I.e.:
>
> <title>Vitruvius</title> contains an article about the planet Venus
> <title>Indianische Fl?te</title> contains the history of Poland
> <title>Marlon Brando</title> contains Madonna (sic!)
> and so on

Hmm, that shouldn't happen. I'll have to debug it. Sigh.

> Besides, there a many articles which exceptionally length in the dump,
> which are not belonging into Namespace #0.

?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Infinite Block by Abusive
	Admin/Extortion/Harassment/Fraudulent use of Wikipedia Abuse Emails

body:
How about an agreement that you would cease editing the article on
yourself and quit threatening legal action regarding it and other
matters. (This would need to be worked out in detail and signed by
both parties). I thought your Cherokee related articles were
wonderful. Then we could unblock you and possibly look into these
other matters. Although I don't know that the Arbitration Committee
would accept the case. My impression so far is that you are very
litigious. It is only common sense to avoid more mutual damage and
that means disengagement, not continued editing with its attendant
opportunities for more misunderstandings.

Fred

On Oct 15, 2005, at 3:51 PM, jmerkey wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> Frank V Waveren has been using his wikipedia admin powers to extort
> content removal on other websites.  Legal Threats have been
> withdrawn and I have been editing pages on the Cherokee Culture.  I
> was contacted by Comcast, my ISP indicating Fvw was emailing
> threats to them and bogus abuse reports.  They have restored my
> home service and are blocking Fvw's ability to send any more
> emails.  He has now blocked my accounts and set them to Infinite on
> Wikipedia in a childish fit of rage.
> This constitutes abuse and interference with my editing and other
> projects.  While wikipedia can limit user access to its site based
> on abuse, I have committed no such abuse.  What I have done is
> offend an abusive and childish admin.  His blocks were an attempt
> to stop me from filing against him with the Arbcom.
>
> I have not made any legal threats, nor have I engaged in
> disruption, or harassment on this site.  Only Fvw has been doing
> any harassing conduct.  It's immoral and illegal to revoke or block
> my accounts on this site as a form of "extortion" to get me to take
> down other sites on the internet and filing false reports on behalf
> of wikipedia to my ISP and account providers.  I have received
> several emails from Fvw threatening to block my accounts
> permanently unless I take down other websites on the internet which
> discuss his conduct.  These websites are not wikipedia or
> affiliated with them.  I
>
> This admin needs revocation of his admin status for abuse, and I
> have more articles to complete on the Cherokee culture.  I would
> like for him to leave me alone on this site.
>
> I would appreciate a response from this site about what you plan to
> do about this abusive person.
>
> Thanks
>
> Jeff V. Merkey
> Gadugi
> 67.137.28.187
> 67.177.35.211
> 67.177.35.25
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Grease Monkee wrote:
> > AFD functions well,
>
> My bullshit detector just went off...
>

Personally, my sarcasm detector went off.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
"function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been processed
properly but shouldn't have been deleted"

Huh? What kind of process can be followed properly, yet produce an
incorrect result? I bet that C. Edwards Deming is rolling in his grave
over this one.

Quality results come from people at the top, carrying out their
responsibility.

If our system is broken, "consensus" (i.e., bottom-up, let's vote on it)
thinking is not going to fix it.

I didn't delete VFD just to have fun. The system is broken and must be
fixed. We need to come up with One Workable Plan and lobby the community
to accept it.

Uncle Ed


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation

body:
To answer Gerard's concern ("why only these two sponsors and not others")

I only put two to show how we could feature them. That does not mean others could not be featured as well, Yahoo and Kennisnet being the two obvious ones.
But I did not want to lose my time looking for Kennisnet logo... while I am not certain putting logos in the main page will be acceptable.
So, I want to first test the reactions to the idea of putting their logo on the main page. Quite obviously, it implies us asking ourselves the question
* who do we feature there ?
* for which amount ?
* how long ?

If these questions are too hard to answer, then no logo should be on the first page.

--------------

To answer Dan comments ("there should be an explanation of what the board is at the top")

Why not... I feared it was a bit too boring for the top possibly....
What do other people think ?

To answer Dan comments ("I think the existing front page is quite good, and the oldQuarto material could have it's own page within the site. A lot of thematerial is already very dated, and shouldn't be on the front page.Or just cut out the bits more than a couple of months old...maybe...")

This is correct. As I said in my email, I mostly used some previous content to show what could be done. Obviously, before putting it in the front page, the old content will be removed and archived. Only new content will be left... However, it is very difficult to put new content before it exists... and right now, I do not have a lot of new content to put :-)

I am *waiting* for new content mostly

------------

To answer Dan comments ("I do not think it is a good idea to merge the main page with Quarto")

I would like to be crystal clear about something, and I *really* mean it.

It is my belief there should be information in that website. This information is basically the information which is currently in the Quarto.
As far as I can see it, we have three options
* Option 1 : keep things as they are (ie, Quarto slowly built in meta, then slowly translated, then slowly copied in WMF, only when fully translated)
* Option 2 : move Quarto entirely to the Foundation website and dig it in the website (ie, keep the main page of the Foundation as it is now) (this implies a Quarto no more accessible to most editors and completely hidden)
* Option 3 : merge at least the main features of Quarto in the Foundation website. The main benefits I see is improving the speed at which the information is offered to editors. Giving the information even when not translated. Making it easier to edit the articles as each is independant.

I am not sure everyone realise, but doing Quarto is taking a lot of time. Clearly Sj is no more willing or does not have enough time any more to participate to its edition. It is not a reproach to him, but only a fact. I understand. But I was nearly alone to set up the whole structure of the last edition. I contacted at least 15 people at least one time to get articles done. How many answered ?

Jimbo was suggested twice to add a letter. Nothing was done.
Amongst officers, only one has taken the time to put a text (Delphine).
Only two chapters have added a small report.
I have I believe 4-5 texts from the projects (thank you very much to the editors who took the time to update us, me included :-)).
Not even ONE line was written about the last Wikimania, which I find absolutely of the latest sadness. I think it would not be difficult to the organisation team to draft even a 40 lines reports to give direct links to presentations, to movies, etc... but nothing nothing nothing was done. And *I* will not do it.
I know I would have to write myself the entire general report, as well as a good part of the officer reports if I ever want the issue published.
There is no more update of planning done.
Other editors consider it is enough to put 5 words in the draft page saying "adding information about blablabla". But it still requires somebody to understand what is this blablabla, explore the issue not to write stupid things, and then write the report.

Now, this would not be very bad... if to publish a quarto, all these sections had to be mandatorily filled up. As long as one section is missing, we wait for publishing, ask again to editors, then wait, then ask again, then wait again, then finish writing ourselves a poor and bugged approximated text. And when all is finally done, only then, we can start translating.

Consequently, there is absolutely NO chance a Quarto can be published in less than 6 months.

And I can *not* do that alone.
For one editor who make the effort to write all by himself an article, there are 5 editors we have to contact several times to ask again and again for content.
And 5 others who just put 5 telegraphic words and expect someone else will miraculously do the job. This is just NOT an option.

I raised, I believe, the issue, several times. The last time was really the last.

The change I suggest is at least
* making it easier for people to edit on the spot and be published within a week.
* not blocking the whole information procedure because we are constantly waiting for others to put their own stuff
* allowing an information to be published in a non english language, even though other information is not translated.
* makes the current main page a little bit more alive than it is right now.

So, to make myself very very very crystal clear, there will no more Quarto in the current form, because I am not a cop and I am tired of constantly waiting for people to put information for others. I do not want to ask them over and over and over again. I *intimately* feel that we should inform others, but it seems not everyone is intimately as convinced as I am. So... in the current structure, people have room to put information. But if they do not put information, at least that does not impair others to do so.

I am ready to discuss the current state of my proposal, more stuff, less stuff, different stuff on the main page. Whatever.
But you must *know* that if we keep the *current* structure of the main page and the current structure of Quarto, I will not take care of Quarto any more, either dispersed on meta, or hidden in the website. This is not a threat to push you in a decision, just a bare fact. I do not want to be treacherous here :-)

ant

PS : Now, if you have another solution, please give it. I will fully listen.

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/17/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why would it be a redirect to his college especially as that article may
> contain nothing relevant to his work and as academics often leave their
> university to work elsewhere. If it had been merged, where is the
> appropriate place to merge it?

 I agree here. People shouldn't be redirected to places - that's just
confusing. And redirects shouldn't be made except to articles which mention
the other subject anyway.
 I don't see what the big deal is with keeping an article on an
inconsequential college professor. The mere fact that the guy is
inconsequential is probably useful information to anyone typing that
person's name into the search field.
 Anthony


from_name: Jonathan ILIAS

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding page view restrictions

body:
MaPhi Werner a ?crit :
> Whoever is interested in this kind of feature might want to take a look
> at the inofficial patch:
>
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1924

Great !

Thank you, i've bookmarked it ;)

--
Jonathan ILIAS, assistant p?dagogique
http://www.eseo.fr/~jilias/
ESEO
4, rue Merlet de la Boulaye
BP 30926 - 49009 ANGERS cedex 01 - FRANCE
t?l : 02 41 86 67 60


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/16/05, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
>When you have 150
> AFD noms per day, it is absurd to suggest that there is some sort of
> obligation to explain votes, especially when so many nominations are
> uncontested junk.

"Uncontested" != "junk"

We just had an uncontested deletion of an article, and VFU was about
to treat the application for undeletion with its usual feckless "the
process was followed so keep deleted" idiocy.

Yes, people who think that an article *must* be deleted *should* be
required to explain why.

Every single time.

Why is this a problem?

If this professor Wolters really had been such an inconsequential
fellow, the article should have been redirect to the article about his
college.  If he was more important but still not for an article of his
own then the article could have been merged.

Why are we going around deleting articles like this?  Why are people
seriously suggesting that we're doing it in such numbers that nobody
need even give a reason any more?  That's utterly bonkers.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Uncontested" != "junk"
> >
>
> However it does mean that for five days no one who visted the article
> thought it was worth keeping

> Why are we going around deleting articles like this?
>
> Becuase aprently no one cares about them.

 No one who "visted the article" in 5 days is not equivalent to "no one",
even "aprently". Even then, there are usually people who "vist" articles who
don't know how to vote, don't care to vote, or aren't allowed to vote.

> Why are people
> > seriously suggesting that we're doing it in such numbers that nobody
> > need even give a reason any more? That's utterly bonkers.
>
> Time use of course it would be fairly trival to create with {{agree}}
> (argee with nominator) so if comments were really required it wouldn't
> do any good.

 That would imply that the nominator actually gave a reason, though. If
that's true, and the person making the comment actually does his/her own
check to see if the nominator was correct, then yeah, I guess that fact is
useful.
 But if all the nominator has come up with is the circular argument that the
article should be deleted because it isn't notable, then saying that you
agree with such a vacuous statement is meaningless.

--
> geni

 Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/17/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why would it be a redirect to his college especially as that article may
> contain nothing relevant to his work and as academics often leave their
> university to work elsewhere. If it had been merged, where is the
> appropriate place to merge it?

That's an editorial decision.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
Silverback wrote:

>Do you know if it is just dial-up users going through AOL, or do
>broadband and DSL customers who add AOL on and use the AOL
>browser, end up going through the anonymizing proxy too?

Every single page view from AOL may go through a different AOL proxy.
It's a major pain in the arse.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] NTL (was ANON watchlist?)

body:
jtkiefer wrote:

>If you are even pseudo anonymous using an IP and it isn't because you're
>using AOL or NTL or another ISP that uses sick and twisted router

Note that the NTL problem has been solved (presumably through some
horribly ugly special cases in the MediaWiki code) - now, NTL users
should see their real IP, the one they see with ipconfig or ifconfig.
Could some NTL users please test this?

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Categories, Portals, Wikiportals,
	Wikiprojects and Notice Boards

body:
ilyanep wrote:

>I agree that Categories and Portals can share jobs in some cases...

Ideally, a category tree should be sufficiently well-organised that
people don't need a portal, a "list of" article, article series
templates and so forth - you should be able to start at the main
category and find what you need, or stumble upon an article in a
subcategory and find your way through a well-organised category tree.
We're trying to do this with WikiProject Scientology - organise it in
an NPOV presentation without having to use project-specific style
guidelines. Having to use these is IMO a failure. Not always a major
or avoidable one, but a failure nevertheless.

- d.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 10/16/05, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>When you have 150
>>>AFD noms per day, it is absurd to suggest that there is some sort of
>>>obligation to explain votes, especially when so many nominations are
>>>uncontested junk.
>>>
>>>
>>"Uncontested" != "junk"
>>
>>
>>
>
>However it does mean that for five days no one who visted the article
>thought it was worth keeping
>
>
At the time of this writing en has 776,230 articles. By definition, the
articles we're talking about are generally not "popular" - there are
only a few people interested in them one way or another. It's very easy
to overlook an AfD in all that for a five-day period, I managed to miss
the entire existence of the "The Jar" article from its creation through
to its deletion over a much longer period than that.

>You don't think the template namespace is has enough rubish in it already?
>
>
Bit of a topic shift there. The template namespace is very different
from the article namespace and is not addressed by AfD. There's TfD for
that, with its own separate set of criteria for template deletion.

>>If this professor Wolters really had been such an inconsequential
>>fellow, the article should have been redirect to the article about his
>>college.  If he was more important but still not for an article of his
>>own then the article could have been merged.
>>
>>
>
>People move around
>
>
Redirects can be changed. This is kind of a side-issue, though, specific
to this one particular article.

>>Why are we going around deleting articles like this?
>>
>>
>
>Becuase aprently no one cares about them.
>
>
But you're only basing that on the results of an AfD, and a major point
of this discussion is that some of us are arguing that some AfDs are not
receiving the sort of attention that they should be.

Here's another idea that just occurred to me to toss into the pot, how
about leaving AfDs open for a much longer period of time, like a month
or so? Before reacting that this would make AfD's backlog enormous, bear
in mind that it wouldn't affect the rate at which articles enter AfD and
are deleted from AfD, and thanks to each day having its own page it'd be
just as easy to handle the housekeeping. There'd just be 30 day-pages in
the queue in front of /old rather than 5. This doesn't address the issue
of unsupported votes, but it would be a step towards getting more votes
from people who read the articles as opposed to those who specialize in
reading the AfD listings.

>>Why are people
>>seriously suggesting that we're doing it in such numbers that nobody
>>need even give a reason any more?  That's utterly bonkers.
>>
>>
>
>Time use of course it would be fairly trival to create with {{agree}}
>(argee with nominator) so if comments were really required it wouldn't
>do any good.
>
>
I really don't see any difference between a vote that's explained with a
useless "nn" and a vote that's explained with {{nn}} which expands into
a paragraph-long genereric dissertation on the subject of notability.
Typing those curley brackets doesn't require any extra thought and
provides no extra information.


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arrgh! Please proofread your emails!

body:
Okay, I'm probably asking to get flamed by writng this, but
would people *please* make an effort to check their spelling
& grammar before they post here? In the haste to contribute to
an ongoing conversation, sometimes the result can be, well,
incoherent, as shown by the quoted passages below.

(I've stripped out the identifying information because my point
is not to target any one person, but to address everyone in general.)

> > VfU has never once seen "any" AfD that decides to delete, nor even
> > "most" VfUs that decide to delete get brought up there. This is a
> > complete straw man argument.
> >
I've spent several minutes trying to parse these sentences, & I'm still
not sure what is being said in the first sentence. Obviously, "VfU"
has not seen "any" items that are somehow related to "AfD", which is
then qualified as "nor even 'most'" of those items. But what are those
implied items? From the context of discussion, it would appear that we
are talking about deleted articles -- yet even if this is the case,
the odd progression from (paraphrasing here) *not any* of these items
to *even most* suggests that the author had in mind some specific
subgroup of these deleted articles.

Then there is a glaring grammatical error. The subject of the verb
"decides" appears to be "AfD", but from the context "AfD" is clearly
the direct object of "has never once seen".

The confusion in this sentence is only compounded by the second one,
where the author describes the situation in the first sentence as a
"complete straw man argument". Here I must ask,"what argument": does
the first sentence describe an actual condition or does it describe
a possible one, & if so who originated this condition?

Maybe I just need more caffeine to understand this -- no one else
seems confused by this paragraph -- but I honestly have no idea what
is being said here.

> Unless you consider the reason for this may a combination of low
> profile and the knowlage amoungst those that do know about it that
> they would be wasteing there time. Any article that is so important
> that it must be included in wikipedia this year is unlikely to get
> wiped out through AFD.
>
I wouldn't say anything about this paragraph, had it not appeared
in the same post, because despite having a college degree in English,
I still manage to misspell words. However, it borders on parody to
find one statement with 3 glaring misspellings follow an incoherent
one. I like to think that the people who post here on a regular
basis are some of the brightest & most articulate (& yours truly)
members of Wikipedia; seeing the above, I have to strongly reconsider
that assumption. Typos & misspellings only undercut the power & logic
of a writer's arguments, which is why I struggle to keep them out
of what I write. (And an old Usenet rule dictates that at least one
of these can be found in my email.)

To repeat myself, if you believe your opinion is important enough to
be put into an email to this list, then it is important enough to
proof-read that email before you send it to this list. I may be wrong
to say this, but any topic will wait a minute or two while you
perform this simple task.

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] NTL (was ANON watchlist?)

body:
On 10/17/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Note that the NTL problem has been solved (presumably through some
> horribly ugly special cases in the MediaWiki code) -

My understanding is that NTL passes the client IP via a standard
protocol and MediaWiki simply interprets it in the standard manner.
The only place where it gets hairy is that, as I understand it, some
anonymizing proxies also use this protocol and forward a spoofed IP,
so you do need to maintain a list of proxies that can be trusted.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Does 1.5 still allow file system cache?

body:
John Grohol wrote:
> I've enabled file system caching in my LocalSettings.php (and just to be
> safe, in the DefaultSettings.php too) file:
>  $wgUseFileCache = true;
> $wgFileCacheDirectory = "/home/wiki/tmp";
>  but it is not creating the files in that directory as my older version of
> MediaWiki did.

As far as I know it still works. You need to turn off the IP address
display for anonymous users for the file cache to work; I don't recall
the exact variable name. This is the same as in previous versions.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: MAURICE FRANK

body:
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 01:24:41 +0100
From: Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] I've been blocked by an
involved admin
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Message-ID: <4352EF49.1070203 at starglade.org>
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format=flowed

> admins tend to trust each other's
>judgments and are reluctant to get involved in cases
>where they are
>unfamiliar with the circumstances.

Aha! This is a total admission of a corrupt system:
among the worst of all human traits is "closing ranks"
or "ganging up".

This totally disproves everything that has often been
said here before, about how you can find another admin
to unblock you and how if you can't then your block is
impartially upheld and must be proved fair!

System caught out as weighted in its own favour.

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Frieda Brioschi

subject: [Wikitech-l] rename user

body:
What happens to rename user?

Ciao,
Frieda

2005/10/10, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be>:
> The option "rename user" is disappeared. Any hope we will see it return?
> --
> Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
> http://www.wikipedia.be
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
___________________________________________
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Frieda


body:
> Jochen Magnus wrote:
>> I think that not only en dumps failed. I found some errors in the most
>> recent de dump (20051017_pages_articles.xml): As far as I inspected the
>> xml file manually, I saw several <title>'s which do not belong to the
>> comtent. I.e.:
>>
>> <title>Vitruvius</title> contains an article about the planet Venus
>> <title>Indianische Fl?te</title> contains the history of Poland
>> <title>Marlon Brando</title> contains Madonna (sic!)
>> and so on
>
>
> Hmm, that shouldn't happen. I'll have to debug it. Sigh.

Ok, confirmed on dewiki dump; here's a fragment example:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Crap

Obviously there's a synchronization bug in my prefetch code. I'll try
and debug this today or tonight and restart the dumps tonight/tomorrow.

Don't use any of the 20051017 dumps; they're all suspect.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Size of all dumps

body:
On 10/17/05, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Once there was the size of all Wikipedia database dumps at
> download.wikipedia.org.

I was just pondering this yesterday.  Samuel is master with 6x73 GB=
438 GB.  Of course, that's not in dump form.

Jakob, this ties in with the earlier request for wikipedia-by-mail.  I
was thinking of doing a Fundable.org drive for an array so that I
could serve those requests, but perhaps using the Tool server makes
more sense...


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
Division into Wikiportals and Portals is an artificial one. When I
created the first portal, I just used the name used in Polish
Wikipedia (Wikiportal), even though the Polish ones were originally
based on the concept of Portals from German Wikipedia. All Portals
*should* be aimed at both readers and editors.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Geoff Burling stated for the record:

> I may be wrong
> to say this, but any topic will wait a minute or two while you
> perform this simple task.

d nn.


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

body:
-------------- Original message --------------

> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 01:24:41 +0100
> From: Chris Jenkinson
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] I've been blocked by an
> involved admin
> To: English Wikipedia
> Message-ID: <4352EF49.1070203 at starglade.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1;
> format=flowed
>
> > admins tend to trust each other's
> >judgments and are reluctant to get involved in cases
> >where they are
> >unfamiliar with the circumstances.
>
> Aha! This is a total admission of a corrupt system:
> among the worst of all human traits is "closing ranks"
> or "ganging up".
>
> This totally disproves everything that has often been
> said here before, about how you can find another admin
> to unblock you and how if you can't then your block is
> impartially upheld and must be proved fair!
>
> System caught out as weighted in its own favour.
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo!
> Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: John Grohol

body:
I've enabled file system caching in my LocalSettings.php (and just to be
safe, in the DefaultSettings.php too) file:
 $wgUseFileCache = true;
$wgFileCacheDirectory = "/home/wiki/tmp";
 but it is not creating the files in that directory as my older version of
MediaWiki did. I've checked and double-checked all of my permissions, and
everything appears to be setup just as the old version was. Except it's not
creating the cached files on the file system. Which makes me wonder,
can 1.5still use the file system cache?
 Thanks!
John


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Grease Monkee wrote:
> > > AFD functions well,
> >
> > My bullshit detector just went off...
> >
>
> Personally, my sarcasm detector went off.

 Regardless, I think there are good points being made. No matter how the
specifics of VFD/AFD/VFU/whatever you want to call it are changed, it's
never going to be a fun and efficient process. I think the key is to make
the process easier to ignore. In my opinion, the way to do that is 1) allow
any user to view the content of deleted pages, and 2) not make an ordinary
deletion decision set a binding precedent upon those who didn't participate
in the discussion.
 With those simple modifications, I think a lot of people would learn to
ignore the minutiae and focus on the larger issues.

-Matt (User:Morven)

 Anthony