body:
geni wrote:
>>So are the number of problem users.
>
>
> Really? The rate appears to have been pretty much constant for the
> length of time I have been around

That makes me think you haven't been around more than a few months.

>>Blocking open (not "open source") proxies is not going to get rid of CD
>>or any other miscreant on dialup.
>
>
> They are only one source of problems

But not a difficult to solve one (in fact a very easy to alleviate one,
with an open proxy check in the software; I'm not sure why one hasn't
been implemented), and not the one at issue here.

>>How do filters help?
>
>
> I can't cheack every edit on RC I have to use various methods to
> select the ones most likely to be a problem.

So your solution to volunteer burnout is to help them find more problems
to deal with?


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Chat log

body:
The "Wikinews and Blogs" chat was a big success with plenty of varied
participants from the blog and wiki worlds. Lots of interesting ideas
were exchanged, including Wikinews support for blogging tools, licensing
issues, RSS, and a potential shared space for citizen journalists from
different projects. If you missed it, you can read the log of the
discussion here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews_Chat/2005/02/05/log

Background info:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews_Chat

I'm looking forward to more open chat events like this one. Thanks to
everyone who made it possible.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Chat log


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

body:
steven l. rubenstein (rubenste at ohiou.edu) [050206 03:10]:

> But I do have another proposal for dealing with these kinds of situations:
> give the ArbCom the power to declare a user an "outlaw."
> We would need clear guidelines for how to decide who is an outlaw, but for
> one thing we must be specific that this is someone who has utter disregards
> for bans or partial bans, and who cannot effectively be blocked.
> There should be some deliberation at the ArbCom before declaring someone an
> outlaw, to ensure due process.
> The consequence of being an outlaw is this: anyone -- any editor, sysop or
> not -- can revert an outlaw's work at any time, without restriction (so if
> doing so means that they must revert more than three times in one day,
> their reverts will still be considered legitimate and they won't be
> punished).

This is similar to ban by acclamation, e.g. the Sollog pattern vandal or
Willy On Wheels - there was no ruling against either, but both have acted
with such egregius obnoxiousness that they're pretty mcuh revert and block
on sight.

> My thinking is this: in the case of CD right now, blocking is not effective
> so all we really can do is revert her work.  Right now this is being done
> primarily by sysops, and however large the list of admins are, in the case
> of someone as reckless as CD this still becomes a big job.  My idea is that
> there are some violations of behavior -- eg. when someone laughs and says
> "you can't stop me now" -- that the best thing to do is to mobilize the
> entire community to take action.

I think CD is still under her original short ban - every time she breaks
it, she restarts the clock. Then the admins come along, block the
sockpuppets and revert the edits. So the process you describe is pretty
much how things are now ;-) So I'm not sure an additional ruling in CD is
needed, particularly not one of a novel form.

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
> What choice do we have? There's no other effective way to block abusive
> users on dialups if the ISP won't get rid of them.

We handeled Mr treason. Remeber articles can be reverted and deleted
faster than they can be created

> I don't think anyone will blame us for trying to maintain the integrity
> of an encyclopedia without running everyone off.

Are we using the same internet here? You are propsing to block vast
numbers of people from editing due to the crimes of a few and you
don't think people will blame you?

--
geni


body:
> And people are going to get sick of dealing with it. Some already have.

Have we run out of people yet and are we likely to?

> Two choices:
>
> 1) Collateral damage.
>
> 2) Worthless encyclopedia.
>
> Anyone that blames us for choosing the first over the second is not
> worth worrying about.

 You can't prove the second and you have failed to show that there are
only two options.

--
geni


body:
> Here's an angle:
>
> She's been banned from Wikipedia according to policies imposed by the
> legal owners of Wikipedia's servers.  This means that she does not have
> permission to use those servers.  Doing so might actually be a criminal
> offense, depending on the laws in her jurisdiction.

As far as I have been able to figure out the laws in this area
probably not. If she was hacking someone elsees acount or using a hack
to edit from a blocked IP then it probably would be but not until
then.

--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requests for LanguageXX.php update

body:
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 00:39:56 -0500, Pierre Abbat <phma at phma.hn.org> wrote:
> Where is the proper place to ask for a language file to be updated? The page
> on meta has numerous requests which do not seem to be acknowledged.

Please see Brion's post at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-February/037175.html

Basically, you need to put them in bugzilla at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org

Angela.


body:
> I give it 12-24 months as a ballpark estimate before we're seriously
> short if action isn't taken. Maybe less -- the problem is only getting
> worse.

However our number are increaseing

> Even if we manage break even in our supply of people willing to spend
> large swaths of time performing thankless tasks for no compensation,
> it's most definitely the wrong approach. Instead of building a large and
> expanding base of volunteers, we'd be struggling to maintain the status quo.

That fact is that most vanderlism is one off. You could lock down
every major ISP and you still need people (ie the people you have just
prevented from become part of the project) to watch recent changes.

> Can you come up with a practical third?

Getting serious about blocking every opensource proxy we can find
would be a favorit. More filters on recentchages would be another.
--
geni


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this*
	project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms -
	Project	Has Been Around For A While)

body:
On Feb 6, 2005, at 6:21 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Once upon a time :-) I wrote a wikipedia mode that would display wiki
> pages (no edit), and when hitting a non-existing link as a logged-in
> user, one would get a framed (evil!) page with the matching wikipedia
> page, a small header showing an "import" button. "Import" would copy
> the
> wikipedia text to that wiki. It even did automatic image imports.
>

What is already happening is that Wikipedia is moving to a system of
experts, only they are experts not in any particular subject, but in
the ability to get wikiprivs such as admin status, telling editors to
cool down and forcing some kind of consensus. The reasons for this are
simple to outine. First, most people don't apply abstract rules such as
NPOV, no original research or encyclopediac. They apply simple social
rules: namely three reverts and don't say anything bad about someone.
Which means that many revert wars really start on talk pages open with
crypto-insults - the "fourth person derogatory" - attacks on "those
people who are ignorant about my POV".

The first wave response then isn't to negotiate - because telling an
idiotic jerk who has a thinly sourced POV to push that he is an idiotic
jerk with a thinly sourced POV counts "against" the editor who said it.
Since we've outlawed truth, the level of wikistress rises, and
eventually one side or the other tries the simple mobocracy road. Why
get someone who disagrees with you to agree with you, when all you
really need to do is get someone who agrees with you to agree with you
and vote the other person down. Since the sample size is small, and the
methodology one of agreement, there's no assurance of converging on
anything other than polarization.

At some point a revert war breaks out, because one side thinks it has
enough of a numerical advantage, and someone with admin powers comes
in, issues a bunch of warnings to everyone, the way a principle blames
every kid in a school fight, and the consensus is forced, sometimes
with the admin taking over the role of chairing the article. Depending
on the admin, this can slant the article significantly or not.

This road is the path of least resistance because at almost every step
of the way, the dominant strategy of equal "normal" editors is to
betray discussion. Since mechanisms such as mediation, RFC and
arbitrarion are slow, and generally only draw admin attention, it will
continue along these lines.

My suggestion on this matter would be to speed this process. First by
making the 3 revert rule apply to content not individuals. No more than
three reverts of a particular section, regardless of how many editors
on each side. We create a category "reverting articles", which the
person who reverts the article for a second time in a particular
direction must add as a tag - short and sweet - and then a category
"revert limit" articles. People interested in preventing revert wars,
of which there are a number, can then simply read the list, and get
involved. It won't help if they are simply members of a particular POV,
since the limit is by number.

We can even create subcategories for why there was a reversion. This
makes disputes less visible, and means that formal mechanisms are for
when there is some clear conflict which requires larger comment. It is
only slightly slower than simple reversion (one must type in a tag),
but much faster than RFC.


body:
> So are the number of problem users.

Really? The rate appears to have been pretty much constant for the
length of time I have been around

> Blocking open (not "open source") proxies is not going to get rid of CD
> or any other miscreant on dialup.

They are only one source of problems

> How do filters help?

I can't cheack every edit on RC I have to use various methods to
select the ones most likely to be a problem.
--
geni


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation committee

body:
Since there was no opposition, and several strong supports for
Jwrosenzweig as the new chair of the mediation committee, I boldly made
it so.

Kate set up a mediation mailing list, which access should be restricted
to mediators only.

Next steps are to get mediators registered to this list, and that a
moderator is named for handling registrations. Also, some candidates are
still waiting to be named mediators.

Our new mediator, Improv, is willing to make things move, and planning a
meeting with a whole lot of things to discuss. Planning a meeting on irc
is tough; so possibly, some of these things can be discussed on the new
mailing list ?
Thanks to him anyway :-)

Ant


list: wikitech-l

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,
	and image checking

body:
Angela a ?crit:
> On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 09:55:52 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>* There was no packaged way to shut down all access to the site in an emergency
>>
>
>>Developers and stewards can do this anytime.
>>Well, I never tried (suddenly wonder if I should not try to check if
>>this feature is working)
>
>
> If you mean by using [[Special:Lockdb]], then this is no longer
> available to stewards on all wikis. It will only work on wikis with
> very few articles, supposedly as a safety measure to prevent stewards
> locking non-inactive wikis. For example, it works on aawiki, but not
> on toki pona (which had 239 articles).

Good

Note that if I mentionned it, it was essentially because I was curious
of whether that worked or not.
I asked on #mediawiki and no one answered me this.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: promotional items (was no subject)

body:
Angela a ?crit:
>>I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
>>servers to host all these promotional things.
>>Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server.
>
>
> I completely agree. An easy way to implement this might be to extend
> the range of files on the upload whitelist for the foundation wiki.
> Since only trusted users can edit there, enabling .pdf, .ppt, and .sxi
> shouldn't cause any problems, and would allow anyone with an account
> there to upload leaflets and presentations.
>
> Angela.

I would prefer that this is done on meta rather than foundation.

But the foundation site is display of what we show outside.
The meta is about organisation. It seems to me to be the right place
where it should be. Leaflets, business cards and such are items for
organisation purposes.

This is also the reason why the promotion page is on meta, and not on
foundation.

Besides, there are two few people registered on the foundation for this
to be correct.
And finally, editors can promote wikipedia without necessarily be linked
to foundation.

If necessary, we can limit this ability to sysops only on meta.

Anthere


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] references

body:
Hiya

Could someone points out to me which are currently the english wikibooks
in a well developped state (developped text or comprehensive text) ?

I need this to show good examples to some possible partners of what we
can do.

Thanks

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as Developer Liaison

body:
Nod.

We plan wikipedia to be there for a very very very long time.
You may plan to be on Earth for at least 60 more years.
I am sure you can take a "serious" break and come back.
I miss you though :-(

ant


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Build it and they will come. All of em. We have yet to find a way to deal
effectively with systemic POV editing by advocacy groups.

Fred

> From: AndyL <andyl2004 at sympatico.ca>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 11:57:51 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
>
> http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
>
> "And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Nicholas Knight (nknight at runawaynet.com) [050206 03:51]:

> Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to drop her, call the upstream
> provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated with
> the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP. Wikipedia is
> getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight around when users
> are engaging in wildly abusive activities.

Contacting ISPs is a step I'm really not comfortable with. Even in the case
of Michael, when he was vandalising continuously, the only reason for
contacting AOL was that their network was effectively one large anonymiser.
CD is nothing like at that level. Also, there really is no reason to
presume an ISP will necessarily give a shit. We're not paying her fees.

At this stage I see nothing wrong with letting her bust a gut creating
sockpuppets and "editing proxies" and extending a short ban into infinity.
There are quite enough admins watching her favourite articles to keep an eye
on her while the rest of us get on with writing an encyclopedia.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

references:
<BE2BB6BF.4E5C%andyl2004@sympatico.ca>	<BE2B9F86.B5A0%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<20050206174320.GB7930@thingy.apana.org.au>

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>A swarm of Vogels would be annoying but nothing beyond what we
>routinely deal with on a regular basis.
>
They were more than annoying in the Hitchcock movie. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template madness

body:
Pete/Pcb21 (pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com) [050206 10:30]:

> I really wish someone had some proof to back up the tagists mantra that
> "if I tag this article, it will improve". People improve articles
> because they are knowledgeable about and want to write about a subject,
> not because it has a whole stack of tags from editors who want to rack
> up their edit rack but would preferable not to do any research (even of
> the type-article-name-into-google variety.

{{unreferenced}} has attracted references. Check my talk page.

- d.


from_name: Sheng Jiong

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
> > Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there
> > schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard
> > Mandrin,
>
> No, but I know plenty of HKers can write in Cantonese (with Hanzi)
> without having been taught.

But tell us how much difference are there between "Cantonese
characters" and proper Chinese characters? Aren't you still using
Chinese characters, with the addition of a few distinctive Cantonese
characters? And Hong Kong is not the only place that speaks Cantonese,
please do remember. Majority of the Cantonese speakers live in
Guangdong, and extremely few, if any, of these people can comprehend
or write. Since Wikipedia is set up based on languages rather than
countries, it is questionable if a Cantonese Wikipedia should be set
up if only a minority of the speakers can understand a non-standard
writing system created by a few people. Same objection goes for
Min-nan Wikipedia, which can only be understood by a handful
Taiwanese, while most Taiwanese and all native speakers of the dialect
in Fujian will not have a clue of what is going on.

> > are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published in large
> > numbers, is there a movement.
>
> How large is large? Does net forums count? Especially when wikipedia
> started as a Internet project? Many HKers in HK net forums/boards/bbs
> write in Cantonese.

Again, only HKers can understand your "written Cantonese"! Have you
forgotten your neighbours in Guangdong??

> > some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However, a stronger
> > case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into
> > standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole,
> > as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which,
>
> The differences aren't as minimal as the differences among dialects in
> English. And while incorporating slang words, etc. from different
> "dialects" into Mandarin is possible, that doesn't stop Cantonese/Yue
> from being something completely different from Mandarin.

There is a big difference I agree. But "completely different from
Mandarin"? I doubt if the grammar is different?

> > Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems
> > better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding
> > a means to provide that.
>
> Well, a wikipedia is a new enough concept to the potential users that I
> doubt they would be unhappy to learn that there's a Cantonese/Yue
> wikipedia, in addition to the "traditional" Mandarin vernacular one.

And I doubt how many people can really understand your Cantonese
Wikipedia? There are 77 million Cantonese living in Guangdong, and how
many of them can really understand "Cantonese characters"? If the
majority of the potential readers of your Wikipedia cannot understand
you, what position are you in to propose for a Wikipedia written in
their native languages?

[[User:Formulax]]


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
Sj wrote:
> The Main Page on en: was vandalized yesterday, when a penis image
> remained on the page for many minutes.  It was vandalized again today
> -- a goatse image remained there for almost /20 minutes/.
>
[cut]
>
> Please comment or suggest implementations.

I discovered that non-syspos can not edit a page in the
MediaWiki-namespace anymore.

If anonymous can not edit anymore the template-namespace the change of
abuse will be reduced.

Walter


body:
> I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of
> local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong
> Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the
> driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio
> station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.

So? We are discussing if we should have a Wikipedia "written* in
Cantonese or any other dialects (which all do not even have a
standardised writting system, which means that not all native speakers
can understand the written encyclopedia should we have one), not
discussing about whether we should have a spoken encyclopedia in these
dialects. I totally agree that dialects are living spoken languages in
China, but it is absurdly ridiculous to attempt to write in them, as
there is *no* **standardised** writing system for them!!

[[User:Formulax]]


body:
> > is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language,
> > and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects.
>
> ...citation? How do you know? From what studies are you pulling this
> information from? You can't just say it and assume it to be true.

>From my common sense and my frequent visits to bookshops and libraries
all around the world! I have never, in my entire life, seen a single
book that is written *completely* in any dialects in China, apart from
Mandarin. And as I have said before, apart from some tabloids in Hong
Kong, no Chinese newspapers in the world would write in dialects too!

> I mean, many printed ads in Hong Kong that are written in Cantonese/Yue,
> using puns and so on. Many slogans of those products are written in
> Cantonese/Yue. The most recent example I can think of, in fact, is a
> government ad (from the Equal Opportunity Committee) trying to
> discourage racism.

I'm not sure about that honestly. But are the books completely written
in Cantonese? Or just some puns? And slogons are quite, quite
different from encyclopedias, where millions of words have to been
written.

> > fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should
> > there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.
>
> Well, I would suggest Hanzi script first and consider whether we should
> do the romanization later on, though I think romanization would be too
> confusing to really be useful.

That is not the point! It is not important what *you* think. It is
important whether our readers can understand? Some HKers may, but how
about people in Guangdong? If you are writing an encyclopedia for them
and they have not even seen such characters, what is the point.
Reminder you one more time: There is no standardised writing system
for Cantonese/Wu/etc. dialects.

[[User:Formulax]]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: mediation committee - being arbitrator as well as
	mediator

body:
Rebecca a ?crit:
> On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:13:02 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Our new mediator, Improv, is willing to make things move, and planning a
>>meeting with a whole lot of things to discuss. Planning a meeting on irc
>>is tough; so possibly, some of these things can be discussed on the new
>>mailing list ?
>>Thanks to him anyway :-)
>
>
> That's not a bad idea, but note that some of us who've spent a lot of
> time thinking about some of the problems with mediation, such as
> sannse and I (who've both written fairly long responses on the
> matter), are no longer mediators, and thus wouldn't have access to the
> list - whereas we would probably be able to attend an IRC chat.
>
> -- ambi

The problem is that it seems organising an irc session seems VERY difficult.

On the other hand, what I can see is that currently, mails are sent to
people who resigned from the committee and perhaps do not care at all of
these mails, while possibly other persons are not reached. In sending
the recent mails, I also noticed an adress not valid anymore. Finally,
each time you want to send a mail, you need to dig in all email
adresses, which is frankly very boring to do (to the point you may end
up not writing at all).

Hence, my suggestion for a redirection mail address.
Finally, a mailing list was set. Fine as well.

Note Ambi, that if you are no more part of the committee, normally you
should not receive any more mails. So, between not receiving mails and
not be able to read archives from a mailing list, there is not much much
difference :-)

In any case, I *think* that this list should not be used for mediation
cases themselves, for which it is really best that privacy is seriously
ensured. Any mediation case should only be discussed with personal mail
adresses, NOT mailing lists.

This list should rather be for organisational discussions and the rule
of thumb would be "do not say anything on it, that you would be severaly
unhappy if it becomes public".

Now ambi, I'll be frank.
First, Sannse and you are not the only ones who have given a lot of
thoughts on the matter. I already mentionned how pissed off I was that
all the comments we made after the creation of the mc have been dumped
when the forum was closed. My memories of that time was basically taht
dozens of hours of thinking and typing have just been put in the trash.
The rest of discussions were on private mails, so are lost just as well.
And when I say pissed off, consider it an understatement.

If we set a mailing list, at least, we know the information will NOT be
lost entirely. We know that new members will be able to read discussions
afterwards.

Private mails are lost. Forum talks are dumped. Irc logs are not always
published and restrict the discussion to those available and those with
irc access. Not everyone unfortunately.

I would not oppose at all if older members of mc were part of these
discussions and consequently members of this new mailing list. But it
really depends on what other mediators think of this.

Now, *you* decided to quit the MC. You had the choice. When you were
elected to be on the AC, you resigned from the MC. I think you should
consider whether it is wise to be part of the two groups at the same
time. If you wish to 1) be on the mc mailing list 2) be part of irc
discussions on the topic, and why not 3) going on mediating between people ?

In this case, you would still be a mediator without being one ? You
would be a mediator and an arbitrator ?

I think we need to be consistent and separate both activities.

Anthere

PS : if previous mediators now arbitrators still are involved in
defining what mediation is, should be and how conflicts should be
approached and fixed, I would love that previous arbitrators, such as
The Cunctator, still be involved in arbitration as well.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
> A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study,
> for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable
> of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4";
> http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058).  This is likely
> to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of
> urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many
> members).

You are confusing Mandarin with Chinese in its written form. Yes, only
50% can speak Mandarin, but over 80% are literate and they can read
Chinese characters (although not in Mandarin). Chinese dialects have
more or less the same grammar (probably due to the interaction among
the people over thousands of years), therefore not being able to
"speak" Mandarin does not mean they cannot "read". The fact is, zh: is
a *Chinese Wikipedia*, not just a *Mandarin Wikipedia*.

[[User:Formulax]]


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Textbook-l] references

body:
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:35:14 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Could someone points out to me which are currently the english wikibooks
> in a well developped state (developped text or comprehensive text) ?
>
> I need this to show good examples to some possible partners of what we
> can do.

We have the following books, with disadvantages:
Lucid Dreaming (which is mostly done by one contributor (me) and not a
"usual"/"orthodox" textbook)
High School Extensions (for Maths) which is very good in the sections
it does have completed
Physics Study Guide (which offers more notes than full explanations,
as a study guide)
US History, which covers in detail 1492-1969 and aims to continue right to today
Cookbook (also not a "proper" textbook)
How To Build A Computer, covering the component selection well (which
is not very well formatted at the moment)
Intelligence Intensification (which, while somewhat wierd, is good in
the areas it covers)
GCSE Science (in the small area it has already covered only)

And probably more.


from_name: AndyL

body:
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563

"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
>
>"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."

Some interesting comments from different posts made there today:

"Holocaust Denial has been essentially hijacked by the jews on wikipedia,
along with many other topics, we really need more white people to sign up to
wikipedia and help to make unbiased contributions to wikipedia.com. go to
wikipedia.com now, sign up and participate."

"I am signed up, but in an environment like Wiki Holocaust Denial is the
last thing we should be bothering about."

"Any activities should be well planned and organized."

"Nevertheless, guess we can have some fun at Wikipedia. Maybe we should have
a mailinglist on this helping each other with arguments and advice."

"Several Administrators are abusing their power on wikipedia and deleting
links to holocaust revisionists sites on wikipedia.com one such individual
is named jpgordon there needs to be a mass movement of people to sign up on
this forum and bring attention to arbitration that jpgordon and several
other administrators are abusing their power and purposefully making the
holocaust denial section unballanced and biased." (the last, no doubt, a
comment by [[User:dnagod]]  in relation to this edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holocaust_denial&diff=0&oldid=10002024

Jay.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this*
	project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project	Has
	Been Around For A While)

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

Once upon a time :-) I wrote a wikipedia mode that would display wiki
pages (no edit), and when hitting a non-existing link as a logged-in
user, one would get a framed (evil!) page with the matching wikipedia
page, a small header showing an "import" button. "Import" would copy the
wikipedia text to that wiki. It even did automatic image imports.

I don't know what happened to that script, but it should be easy enough
to set up again (only the image import was a bitch).

We should run this for some time in parallel with an in-wikipedia
validation feature test. That way, we see the pros and cons of each
system right away.

Magnus

Mark Williamson schrieb:
| I agree.
|
| The "approved content" idea seems much better to me than asking
| experts to write everything - just have experts in the field check
| over the article to see if there are any inaccuracies or if there's
| something missing they would like to add, and then place it on
| Neo-Nupedia in a semi-static form (ie, so it's not directly editable,
| but corrections could still be submitted).
|
| Please note that I do not intend this to replace Wikipedia, but to
| accompany it as an experiment.
|
| Mark
|
| On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 20:49:58 +0100, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski
| <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
|
|>Maybe a new Nupedia made of approved Wikipedia content wouldn't be
|>that bad of an idea?
|>
|>--
|>Ausir
|>Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
|>http://pl.wikipedia.org
|>
|>_______________________________________________
|>Wikipedia-l mailing list
|>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
|>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|>
|
| _______________________________________________
| Wikipedia-l mailing list
| Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as Developer Liaison

body:
When I was appointed Developer Liaison in July 2004, Brion was on a
wikibreak of indefinite duration, and I was the second choice. The roles
are now reversed -- I've decided to concentrate on my academic work for
a while, and Brion is as active as he ever has been. Thus, I am
resigning as Developer Liaison effective immediately. This position
should be filled by someone able to give their full attention to the job.

This should not be construed as an indication that I intend to stay away
from Wikipedia for a longer period, it's merely a reflection of the
present situation.  Those who know me would be aware that I'm not
particularly power-hungry, hence I'm not calling this a "temporary
resignation". I'm happy to take my turn, and if need be I'll return to
this position later by the ordinary process.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Hiho,

Tim Starling wrote:
> When I was appointed Developer Liaison in July 2004, Brion was on a
> wikibreak of indefinite duration, and I was the second choice. The roles
> are now reversed -- I've decided to concentrate on my academic work for
> a while, and Brion is as active as he ever has been. Thus, I am
> resigning as Developer Liaison effective immediately.

Saying the same like the ones who posted before: Many many thanks for
all the good work you did and good luck for your PhD project.

*missing you*
elian
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body:
Hiho,

Tim Starling wrote:
> When I was appointed Developer Liaison in July 2004, Brion was on a
> wikibreak of indefinite duration, and I was the second choice. The roles
> are now reversed -- I've decided to concentrate on my academic work for
> a while, and Brion is as active as he ever has been. Thus, I am
> resigning as Developer Liaison effective immediately.

Saying the same like the ones who posted before: Many many thanks for
all the good work you did and good luck for your PhD project.

*missing you*
elian
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body:
Hiho,

Tim Starling wrote:
> When I was appointed Developer Liaison in July 2004, Brion was on a
> wikibreak of indefinite duration, and I was the second choice. The roles
> are now reversed -- I've decided to concentrate on my academic work for
> a while, and Brion is as active as he ever has been. Thus, I am
> resigning as Developer Liaison effective immediately.

Saying the same like the ones who posted before: Many many thanks for
all the good work you did and good luck for your PhD project.

*missing you*
elian
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body:
Hiho,

Tim Starling wrote:
> When I was appointed Developer Liaison in July 2004, Brion was on a
> wikibreak of indefinite duration, and I was the second choice. The roles
> are now reversed -- I've decided to concentrate on my academic work for
> a while, and Brion is as active as he ever has been. Thus, I am
> resigning as Developer Liaison effective immediately.

Saying the same like the ones who posted before: Many many thanks for
all the good work you did and good luck for your PhD project.

*missing you*
elian
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from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
> " I recommend everyone to sign up for wikipedia.com [...]"

Just redirect wikipedia.com to bnaibrith.org, they'll assume
WP has been taken over completely and give up. More ambitiously,
mirror the database from wikipedia.org, allow them all to create
accounts and edit as usual, but update articles from wikipedia.org
each night. They'll go crazy trying to figure out why only their
edits are disappearing daily, including attempts to communicate
with other users.

Even more evil, heh-heh, make them register with real name and
address and credit card number if they come in through
wikipedia.com, and charge them for editing the mirror. It's a
.com, right? and we're supposed to be filthy money-grubbing Jews,
right? Just think of the poetry in having very dumb neonazis
funding the next round of server purchases...

:-)

Stan


body:
steven l. rubenstein (rubenste at ohiou.edu) [050206 07:25]:

> Fred Bauder points out that what I suggest amounts to a permanent
> ban.  Yes, this is precisely what I mean.  I understand that many people
> might disagree with me, but this is the effect of what I proposed.  If
> Jimbo rejects it, so be it.  But to reiterate, what I am suggesting should
> only be used in the most extreme cases, and after some sort of due process.

We only give up to a year's ban, because a year is forever in Internet
time.

Also - and this is important - all banned users are theoretically
redeemable. Michael was turned form a swearword into a good editor. If that
particular miracle can happen, anything is possible.

> David Gerard points out that this is, in effect, the current situation
> concerning Cheese Dreams.  Yes, I understand that too.  But it is an
> informal and ad hoc response.  I am suggesting giving the ArbCom one more,
> formal, ultimate sanction.  I think making the sanction official will make
> it easier to enforce; having the ArbCom in charge guarantees that the
> accused will benefit from due process.

We can hand out up to a year already. Note some recent cases like Alberuni,
who got more than a year's ban total but ony a year was enactable.

> But the main point that I share with Nicholas Knight: "It's just going to
> get worse, and as legitimate users get fed up and leave, people like CD
> will turn Wikipedia into a laughing stock."

CD is the merest flea on Wikipedia. And we're already a laughing stock, ask
Larry Sanger.

> Forget about my personal gripe with CD -- forget about CD altogether.  The
> point is, we can count on situations in the future where a person given the
> most reasonable temporary ban will flout the ruling of the ArbCom, and, by
> using many sock puppets, effectively neutralize our current means of
> blocking users.  This calls for some new policy.  People now have my
> proposal and Nicholas's proposal to consider.  I really urge all committed
> Wikipedians to participate in this discussion, and perhaps develop other
> proposals worthy of consideration.

Look, the essential point is that harder and harder bans can't actually be
enforced more than the present sanctions against CD are being enforced.
It's just about impossible to keep someone off Wikipedia if they really
want to edit on it except by continuous admin vigilance. Making bans we're
comically unable to enforce is the way to make us a laughing stock amongst
those interested in trashing the place.

There is absolutely no reason to presume contacting the ISP will work in
any meaningful way. We're not paying the user's monthly fees,
they are. We have the website "anyone" can edit. To get an ISP to act, you
have to have a Terms Of Service violation. Not only that, you have to find
a TOS violation they will actually act upon, not just one that's written in
the TOS - those are two entirely different things. Spam, they act upon,
'cos otherwise everyone blocks their mail. Illegal threats, they act on
those. Editing an editable website really doesn't register on that scale.

The reason Wikipedia goes in for soft security is not just because we're so
nice and full of the wikilove, it's because the degree of hard security
being asked for in this thread, though emotionally satisfying in a
simplistic Daily Mail manner, is not actually *possible*.

- d.


body:
Additionaly thinking that if only organisation was discussed on the
mailing lists (not cases), we could very well imagine that
1) archives are open to anyone
2) people approved by the chair or committee may join the list as posters.

Depends on what other mediators think what this list should become.

Ant


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikistandards (was Requests for new Wiki projects)

body:
C T wrote:

>I am finding the real trick is to getting people involved. I have over a
>year left in this academic program, and a lot can be accomplished in that
>time frame. Especially with a classroom of participants.
>
>Besides this class and several others are in serious need of an educational
>tool. To be apart of creating such a resource would have tremendous
>benefits.
>
>If we build it, can it be integrated with something larger?
>
>Thanks,
>Craig
>
>
>
The big advantage that working with a project like this, hosted by the
Wikimedia foundation (or some other 3rd party), is that even when you
move on to bigger and better things in your career, the items that you
work on here will still be around.  I have been involved with too many
university or college projects that are really quite neat, but because
of changes in administration policy, students graduating, or professors
retiring, the servers that host these projects get turned off and the
information from the project lost.

The "Big Picture" of what I'm trying to do with Wikistandards is to
provide resources that you don't have to pay extra money for just to be
able to "peek" into how something works.  From my experience, the more
open and publicized a standard becomes, and the easier that a company or
group of individuals has to be able to find and implement that standard,
the more likely it will be used.  Unfortunately there are a number of
people who for various reasons want to shut down the spreading of
knowledge, particularly hard-won engineering knowledge that is often
supplied in standards documentation.  It is also seldom, because of NDAs
and quite expensive standards documents, that these propritary documents
will make it into an educational setting.

 From the prespective of an instructor, it would still be useful to
create specifications and standards documents in a classroom setting for
projects that the class is working on.  By having a resource like this
where these standards are archived, students from other classs, or even
other universities, could look at these ideas and build upon them.  In
some cases, perhaps you want to simplify a specification for a classroom
setting to make it easier to implement, or to emphasis a particular
design approach.  Besides, there are many situations even in private
industry where you are struggling to find and define standards for a
project similar to what you are working on.  Even if the standards
document is poorly designed, it at least gives a starting point to start
arguing what changes should be made and what things to improve.  There
is nothing worse than having a totally blank piece of paper and no
previous experience to draw upon.

I hope this is the "something larger" that you were looking for.  I see
a huge need for this as a commercial application engineer, and while my
employers were willing to pay for ISO standards, it was still a major
hassle to go through the red tape to get them purchased, especially
since they were often viewed as a "capital expense" like paying for new
compilers or design tools.  While I see the industrial applications on a
project like this, I can also see huge benefits from having educational
institutions participate as well.  I also want to point out that most of
the early RFCs that form the foundation of the internet were written by
college students, including undergraduates as well as grad students.
 Wouldn't it be neat if we could help become a catalyst for something
else like the internet?

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Hi Pablo,

Its encoding would most likely be like the current Unicode encoding of
Hangul, except probably quite a bit more complex.

Mark

On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 15:39:15 +0100, Pablo Saratxaga
<pablo at mandrakesoft.com> wrote:
> Kaixo!
>
> On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 12:31:04AM -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>
> > It is possible to write sign languages, but SignWriting involves
> > two-dimensional placement of characters in various orientations, which is not
> > easy to encode as a character stream.
>
> How complex is that space placement?
> If there is only a handful of possible placemens, then it should be
> quite easy to encode by giving a character codepoint to any of
> those places.
>
> --
> Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
> Pablo Saratxaga
>
> http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/          PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
> [you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
> [min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Good luck on your studies mate!

Waerth


body:
Good luck on your studies mate!

Waerth


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Multilingual portal vote

body:
What I don't like about the poll is that the vast, sweeping majority
of the voters are from en.wikipedia, who found the voting page because
it was listed on the village pump.

In most Meta votes, en: users do dominate, but not by such an
unrealistic margin.

In addition, I think that the concerns of some of the voters should be
explored in more depth, namely problems with Konqueror, and the books.

Also, the deadline of Feb 11 doesn't allow for a fair time for
Forseti's version or other possible opposing designs.

Mark

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:09:23 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> A vote is currently underway on the central portal page
> www.wikipedia.org, which offers a choice between different Wikipedia
> languages. I'd like to point out that User:Forseti has recently created
> a new design, which I think deserves some attention. The vote is still
> running until February 11 - I encourage everyone who has voted for
> Catherine's version (which is very nice indeed!) to take a second look.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Www.wikipedia.org_portal#Poll_on_Catherine.27s_version
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 05:41:27AM +0000, geni wrote:
> > She's been banned from Wikipedia according to policies imposed by the
> > legal owners of Wikipedia's servers.  This means that she does not have
> > permission to use those servers.  Doing so might actually be a criminal
> > offense, depending on the laws in her jurisdiction.
>
> As far as I have been able to figure out the laws in this area
> probably not. If she was hacking someone elsees acount or using a hack
> to edit from a blocked IP then it probably would be but not until
> then.

I'm not so sure.  Authorization tends to be about permission, not about
the technical capability to do something.  (For a U.S. example, consider
Perl guru Randal Schwartz's difficulties with his former employer Intel.
Schwartz clearly had the technical capability to do what he did, but --
to take Intel's side -- lacked the permission to do so.  So he was
convicted.)

Wikipedia clearly states up front that by default, "anyone can edit".
However, Wikipedia's policies -- endorsed by the owners of the servers
it runs on -- state that this permission can be withdrawn by the
Arbitration Committee in case of policy violation.  The proceedings for
doing this are clearly laid out and have been followed.  I don't see any
reason that this withdrawing of permission should be taken any less
seriously than any other.

The technical details -- usernames, passwords, IP blocks and so forth --
are peripheral.  Computer misuse laws in both the US and UK talk about
unauthorized access to computer resources -- not "hacking accounts" or
the like.  The core of the matter is that a person (a human being; not
an IP address or an account) has been told that they are not authorized
to use these computer resources ... and that the person persists in
using those resources regardless.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
Network Security -- Linux/Unix Systems Support -- Etc.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


body:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>While it would be theoretically nice from the angle of NPOV to find a
>neo-Nazi who could research and argue worth a damn, in practice being one
>seems to require being hard of thinking, and they are demonstrably unable
>to hold a coherent point in open debate on the Internet, hence retreating
>to boards like Stormfront, where they self-aggrandise to their hearts'
>content. A swarm of Vogels would be annoying but nothing beyond what we
>routinely deal with on a regular basis.  I predict the very hardest part
>will be getting checkable references out of them and getting them to
>actually accept that 2+2=4 when presented with quality references from
>those who don't agree with them.

I hope you're right.  The latest post to the thread is as follows:

"What we need is to send out a membership emailing and require that all
43,000 members of stormfront.org sign up for wikipedia.com and participate
in its development and also to get a movement on there to oust the small
minority of members, specifically jews with baby-carrot sized dicks who are
preventing specific jewish topics on wikipedia.com from being fair and
balanced.

If this does not achieve fair and balanced results then we should really
consider starting our own open source encyclopedia, which actually come to
think of it is what we should do, we certainly have the army of members to
get something like that off the ground. Something we really should consider
building.

none the less, I recommend everyone to sign up for wikipedia.com and work
towards building it and going into arbitration to help oust the small
minority of baby-carrot-dick jews on there.

go to wikipedia.com now and sign up."

I suggest that 43,000 Vogels would be hard to deal with, even for
"baby-carrot-dick jews".

Jay.


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Because the publicity would focus on our inability to effectively
>> control our content or guarantee even a minimum level of reliability.
>
>
> This would be the last step *in effectively controlling our content*.
>
> How else do you prevent people who circumvent any and all
> technological measures from editing without burning out volunteers who
> have to keep up with them?

I just thought I'd point out something from [[User:UninvitedCompany]]'s
user page - Wikipedia is a hundred times smaller than MSN. When we're
that big (which could definitely not be too far in the future), we'll
have a hundred CheeseDreams-like editors. True, we'll have a hundred
times more editors than we do now to clean up the mess, but the question
is, will we be able to put up against a hundred editors using tactics
like CheeseDreams? I am not necessarily advocating Nicholas' proposal,
but we should bear in mind that a minute saved is a minute earned. A
minute spent reverting CheeseDreams could be a minute spent adding
references to an article or a minute spent wikifying a decent new
article. CheeseDreams' tactics of attrition are wearing us down, and
it's doubtful whether a hundred times more editors would be capable of
dealing with a hundred CheeseDreams.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis attempt to stack wikivote on Jewish
	Ethnocentrism

body:
 http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1630126

 02-03-2005, 08:51 PM     ? #1
Baldrson
Forum Member
?
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 121
Location:

 Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a "web tree alert" of sorts. If you have a web site people frequent,
please put up a prominent post to alert them to get out to vote.

There is a vote going on now to keep or ban a Wikipedia article on Jewish
ethnocentrism.

To vote you must first register.

Then edit the vote discussion page by adding the following line to the end
of the discussion:

*'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~

replace ... with your reason for wanting to keep Jewish ethnocentrism as a
topic in Wikipedia. Leave the "~~~~" as it stands since that will affix your
signature to the line.
__________________
Empty the Cities

   ?
Baldrson
?
 Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Come on people!

   ?
Celtic_Frost
?

 Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check your spelling, or use the form below to create a new user account. If
there is no form below, account creation is temporarily disabled. In this
case, please accept our apologies and try again later.
cant register at the moment.

Lilith
__________________
Become a Friend of Stormfront

You knock me down, take the shirt from our backs, kick me round but you will
never stop me.
Drag me down, take the words from my mouth, kick me round but you will never
stop me. Mykind-Pitchshifter PSI

   ?
Lilith

 Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There was once a very good article about white nationalism but it was
changed to be biased against WNm and the original was transfered to wikinfo
http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php?title=White_nationalism
I've already registered and voted to keep "Jewish ethnocentrism" i hope it
will not have the same fate.

   ?
Lusitan

 Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, the Wikipedia community has a very skewed take on objective.

   ?
Celtic_Frost

 Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to
participate in voting.
__________________
   ?
WhiteBamboo

 Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteBamboo
How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to
participate in voting.

I'll just re-cap on what Baldrson said.

First, register.

Next, click here.

Finally, scroll down to the very bottom of all the text in the box, and
underneath all the other comments write:

*'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~

Of course, in place of ... you must give your reason as to why you voted to
keep the article - needless to say you should do so in a cordial manner,
those wishing to delete the article will latch onto anything they can as an
excuse to be hostile towards anybody criticising Jewish culture.

   ?
Celtic_Frost

 Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We need about 50 people from this forum to sign up to wikipedia.com and make
more than 10 contributions to wikipedia.com before voting to keep Jewish
Ethnocentrism on wikipedia. This will take a good amount of effort to get
this kind of help.


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
Kaixo!

On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 12:31:04AM -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:

> It is possible to write sign languages, but SignWriting involves
> two-dimensional placement of characters in various orientations, which is not
> easy to encode as a character stream.

How complex is that space placement?
If there is only a handful of possible placemens, then it should be
quite easy to encode by giving a character codepoint to any of
those places.

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews logo - runoff to choose final version

body:
A runoff is being held to choose the new Wikinews logo. You can vote
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews_logo_contest_voting/Runoff

Can someone please post this to the Wikinews mailing list?

Christiaan


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Angela wrote:
>>I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
>>servers to host all these promotional things.
>>Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server.
>
> I completely agree. An easy way to implement this might be to extend
> the range of files on the upload whitelist for the foundation wiki.
> Since only trusted users can edit there, enabling .pdf, .ppt, and .sxi
> shouldn't cause any problems, and would allow anyone with an account
> there to upload leaflets and presentations.

.pdf and .sxi are on the upload whitelist for all Wikimedia wikis and
have been for some time.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Angela wrote:
>>I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
>>servers to host all these promotional things.
>>Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server.
>
> I completely agree. An easy way to implement this might be to extend
> the range of files on the upload whitelist for the foundation wiki.
> Since only trusted users can edit there, enabling .pdf, .ppt, and .sxi
> shouldn't cause any problems, and would allow anyone with an account
> there to upload leaflets and presentations.

.pdf and .sxi are on the upload whitelist for all Wikimedia wikis and
have been for some time.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Angela wrote:
>>I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
>>servers to host all these promotional things.
>>Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server.
>
> I completely agree. An easy way to implement this might be to extend
> the range of files on the upload whitelist for the foundation wiki.
> Since only trusted users can edit there, enabling .pdf, .ppt, and .sxi
> shouldn't cause any problems, and would allow anyone with an account
> there to upload leaflets and presentations.

.pdf and .sxi are on the upload whitelist for all Wikimedia wikis and
have been for some time.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Angela wrote:
>>I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
>>servers to host all these promotional things.
>>Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server.
>
> I completely agree. An easy way to implement this might be to extend
> the range of files on the upload whitelist for the foundation wiki.
> Since only trusted users can edit there, enabling .pdf, .ppt, and .sxi
> shouldn't cause any problems, and would allow anyone with an account
> there to upload leaflets and presentations.

.pdf and .sxi are on the upload whitelist for all Wikimedia wikis and
have been for some time.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Actually I think we can handle this. But let's cross that bridge when we
come to it.

Fred

> From: "JAY JG" <jayjg at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 19:16:39 -0500
> To: mackensen at gmail.com, wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
>
>> Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be
>> a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or
>> articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism.
>> Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members
>> before, for making racist edits.
>
> Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels.  Even 10 would tax its
> current resources and structure.  If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and
> motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
JAY JG wrote:
>  I can see that once they figure out how to game the 3RR, permanent
> changes to article content is next.

We'll just change the rules.  I'll just start blocking Nazis at whim
if I have to.  I'll initiate legal action if appropriate.

If they want to play games with us, fine.  This is Calvinball -- we
make up the rules, so we win.  Easy.

--Jimbo


body:
Jake Waskett wrote:
> The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to
> become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These
> groups *oppose* NPOV.

Yes!

> What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not*
> *working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the
> day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit
> some activist agenda seems impossible to stop.

I am aware of only 3 instances where this (organized groups trying to
undermine NPOV editing) is a problem: LaRouche-related articles,
circumcision, and this new thing with the stormfront postings and VfD
co-ordination.

I think this is a serious problem, and one which we have long feared.
But we need not overreact.  The system *is* working in the main, and
where there are new problems (such as those aptly described by Slim
Virgin in discussion the pseudo-NPOV of the LaRouche edit warriors),
we can be confident in our ability to devise new solutions.

--Jimbo


body:
JAY JG wrote:
> Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels.  Even 10 would tax its
> current resources and structure.  If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent,
> and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.

I don't think so.  Remember my constant mantra: the purpose of our
community is to write a high quality neutral encyclopedia.  Our
openness is a means to that end, and a very excellent one we should
respect highly.

But if 43 Vogels show up, I'll personally ban them all if necessary,
and that's that.  That's not likely to be necessary, because we're
pretty good at devising community-oriented solutions to such problems.

Quality is what we're all about.  Getting it right is what we're all
about.

I've been speaking lately about some research that I've done about how
wikipedia is actually written.  It isn't the product of millions of
people writing one sentence each: it is the work of a small (in the
hundreds) and mostly close-knit community.  This community must be
(and _will be_) respected in our values of NPOV, quality, getting it
right.  And if some random Nazis have to be removed, then so be it.

No one within this community should ever think that I respect our
principles of openness more than I respect the community itself.  So I
will not ride the ship of openness to the bottom of the ocean.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Multilingual portal vote

body:
What's your point?

Mark

On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:39:48 +1100, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050207 08:07]:
>
> > What I don't like about the poll is that the vast, sweeping majority
> > of the voters are from en.wikipedia, who found the voting page because
> > it was listed on the village pump.
>
> In the time it took you to write this email, you could have listed it on
> the equivalent page on several other wikis.
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Sunday, February 06, 2005 5:41 AM, wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org <>
wrote:

> --- "Karl A. Krueger" <kkrueger at whoi.edu> wrote:
> > She's been banned from Wikipedia according to policies imposed by
> > the legal owners of Wikipedia's servers.  This means that she does
> > not have permission to use those servers.  Doing so might actually
> > be a criminal offense, depending on the laws in her jurisdiction.
>
> Anybody know if there is some case law in the U.S. about banned
> people from chat rooms / usenet? I think I remember something about
> that.

Not entirely sure about US law, but UK law (which the ISP in this case,
being British, would be more interested in) includes the Computer Misuse Act
1990 [1], which makes a criminal act of "any act which causes an
unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer" which results in
impairing "reliability of any such data". If you suggest that to BT, they
will quite possibly pay attention.

> -- mav

[1] - http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1990/Ukpga_19900018_en_1.htm

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo in Ossetian for the new Ossetic Wikipedia

body:
Hi all,

Could someone create the standard logo for the new Ossetian/Ossetic
Wikipedia to be created?

The text is at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_other_languages
already: see Ossetian (os) there. It's mostly Russian Cyrillic with
ligued "ae" of Dansk (æ).

Sl. Ivanov
--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

body:
No? Which episode is it?

Shane

> <geek>
> Does anyone remember that STTNG episode where Data was learning the sign
> languages from computer animations of hands moving?
> </geek>
>
> Magnus
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFCBlYSCZKBJbEFcz0RAgB5AJ9AHiwJtDMswLiIXvikVXDpwoC8cwCbBiOX
> qFXgmNLIhM9aGunQJaE0+Ws=
> =yEC/
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
You say that, Fred, but you don't say how. Look at the amount of work
and time it took to deal with what turned out to be one LaRouche
activist with two sockpuppets; and even then you argued that the "POV
warriors on the other side" should be dealt with too. Granted, the
Stormfront-related socks who've turned up so far are easily
identifiable by their stupidity, but it would take only a small number
of more sophisticated ones, expressing their views in a less obvious
way, to create problems - RfCs, RfDs, mediation, arbitration. You
ignore how much work this can involve, and there's never a guarantee
of getting a decent result, because the arbcom looks at behavior, not
content.

Slim

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 17:31:36 -0700, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Actually I think we can handle this. But let's cross that bridge when we
> come to it.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikinews logo - runoff to choose final version

body:
in a runoff vote, can we vote against a logo or only approve ?
May we vote for only one or several logos ?

Anthere

Christiaan Briggs a ?crit:
> A runoff is being held to choose the new Wikinews logo. You can vote here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews_logo_contest_voting/Runoff
>
> Can someone please post this to the Wikinews mailing list?
>
> Christiaan


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

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

Pablo Saratxaga schrieb:
| Kaixo!
|
| On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 12:31:04AM -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
|
|
|>It is possible to write sign languages, but SignWriting involves
|>two-dimensional placement of characters in various orientations, which
is not
|>easy to encode as a character stream.
|
|
| How complex is that space placement?
| If there is only a handful of possible placemens, then it should be
| quite easy to encode by giving a character codepoint to any of
| those places.

<geek>
Does anyone remember that STTNG episode where Data was learning the sign
languages from computer animations of hands moving?
</geek>

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCBlYSCZKBJbEFcz0RAgB5AJ9AHiwJtDMswLiIXvikVXDpwoC8cwCbBiOX
qFXgmNLIhM9aGunQJaE0+Ws=
=yEC/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Anthere schrieb:

> in a runoff vote, can we vote against a logo or only approve ?
> May we vote for only one or several logos ?

I've clarified the rules to say that you can vote for exactly one logo
and against exactly one logo.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

body:
As has been pointed out here, it is likely that many
of the "keep" votes on a certain VfD page were made at
the prompting of the lowlife Nazi scum at Stormfront.
This is highly regretable, and personally upsetting
to people like me who voted "keep" for reasons which
I believe to be legitimate.

I'd just like to point out that before Stormfront
started lobbying for votes many people were alerted
to the page via the large mailing list which a
certain Wikipedian maintains for just this purpose,
and it is reasonable to assume that many of the
"delete" votes came from recipients of that mailing.

All of which shows that the concept of "consensus"
in VfD is all but meaningless.

Zero.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com


body:
good, thanks Erik.

Ant

Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere schrieb:
>
>> in a runoff vote, can we vote against a logo or only approve ?
>> May we vote for only one or several logos ?
>
>
>
> I've clarified the rules to say that you can vote for exactly one logo
> and against exactly one logo.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be
>a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or
>articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism.
>Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members
>before, for making racist edits.

Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels.  Even 10 would tax its
current resources and structure.  If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and
motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.

Jay.


body:
We have a NPOV policy, not a majority rules policy.

Fred

> From: Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 01:58:24 +0000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
>
> Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the
> system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is
> this: what can be done about the problem?
>
> One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages,
> and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the
> article's talk page.
>
> What do others think?
>
> Jake.
>
> On Monday 07 February 2005 01:48, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>> Jake Waskett wrote:
>>> The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to
>>> become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These
>>> groups *oppose* NPOV.
>>
>> Yes!
>>
>>> What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not*
>>> *working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the
>>> day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit
>>> some activist agenda seems impossible to stop.
>>
>> I am aware of only 3 instances where this (organized groups trying to
>> undermine NPOV editing) is a problem: LaRouche-related articles,
>> circumcision, and this new thing with the stormfront postings and VfD
>> co-ordination.
>>
>> I think this is a serious problem, and one which we have long feared.
>> But we need not overreact.  The system *is* working in the main, and
>> where there are new problems (such as those aptly described by Slim
>> Virgin in discussion the pseudo-NPOV of the LaRouche edit warriors),
>> we can be confident in our ability to devise new solutions.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: AndyL

body:
on 2/6/05 7:16 PM, JAY JG at jayjg at hotmail.com wrote:

>> Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be
>> a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or
>> articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism.
>> Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members
>> before, for making racist edits.
>
> Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels.  Even 10 would tax its
> current resources and structure.  If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent, and
> motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
>
> Jay.

Perhaps we need some sort of intermediate form of ongoing protection for
certain pages. Perhaps some pages should only have registered editors able
to actively edit them with non-editors only able to make suggestions on talk
pages? Perhaps other pages should be protected on an ongoing basis and only
have admins able to edit them based on proposals on talk pages which have
achieved consensus or passed a certain standard?

Andy


from_name: Delirium

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>While it would be theoretically nice from the angle of NPOV to find a
>neo-Nazi who could research and argue worth a damn, in practice being one
>seems to require being hard of thinking, and they are demonstrably unable
>to hold a coherent point in open debate on the Internet, hence retreating
>to boards like Stormfront, where they self-aggrandise to their hearts'
>content. A swarm of Vogels would be annoying but nothing beyond what we
>routinely deal with on a regular basis.  I predict the very hardest part
>will be getting checkable references out of them and getting them to
>actually accept that 2+2=4 when presented with quality references from
>those who don't agree with them.
>
>
I don't think this is a particularly unique trait of neo-Nazis though,
merely something common to many activist groups.  Heck, I'm a member of
several environmentalist organizations, and I'd argue that the
description above applies to a large proportion of environmental
activists, and I'd similarly have low hopes for a cadre of them
successfully making NPOV edits to Wikipedia.  The circumcision-related
articles have tended to be a mess from both sides as well, including
recruitment of activists from off-wikipedia mailing lists.

-Mark


body:
>
>They have 43,000 memebers but only a small fraction of those will be
>active and even fewer are likely to answer a call to arms.
>
>--
>geni

As AndyL's e-mail points out, their first attempt was to try to stack a VfD
vote, and they managed to get 15 new members to vote on it (and counting).
15 voting to "keep" on a VfD requires at least 30 (often more) voting to
"delete"; most VfD votes don't even get 10 voters total.  At first their
votes were easy to spot, but, as you see, the Stormfront instructions got
smarter, telling them to make at least 10 edits before voting so they
wouldn't be dismissed out of hand.  I can see that once they figure out how
to game the 3RR, permanent changes to article content is next.

Jay.


from_name: Angela

body:
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:26:33 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I would prefer that this is done on meta rather than foundation.

The point of having it on the foundation wiki is that it would be very
easy to add to the whitelist the filetypes which the leaflets and
presentations are in, since only trusted users can upload there. On
Meta, anyone can upload files, so it is less likely that these
filetypes would be whitelisted there.

> Besides, there are two few people registered on the foundation for this
> to be correct.
> If necessary, we can limit this ability to sysops only on meta.

There are 41 users on the foundation wiki and 44 admins on meta, so
even if there was a way to limit uploading of certain file types to
admins, it wouldn't make much different in terms of the number of
people able to do this.

Angela.


body:
>Unfortunately, this is not the first time that an activist group has
>decided
>to target Wikipedia. I'm personally aware of one group, recruited through
>anti-circumcision activist mailing lists, that have been systematically
>pushing their POV at Wiki.

Jake is correct.  The anti-circumcision activists are a much smaller group,
yet they managed to recruit at least 4 determined, long-time editors whose
sole focus appears to be inserting their particular POV into articles of
interest to them.  The response from Wikipedia appears to be muted at best,
though it doesn't help that one of the pro-circumcision activists (not Jake)
is a particularly nasty piece of work.

Jay.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews language creation rules modified

body:
I have modified the rules at

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition

New: At least 3 signing users have to be Wikimedia regulars (>200 edits
+ 3 months participation in a project) in the language they vote on.

Now formally written down: After creation, a message will be sent to
wikinews-l, foundation-l and the Wikipedia Village Pump in that language.

If these rules are acceptable, they should be merged into the policy for
new languages. I also think the requirement of a "reporter" should be
taken out, it seems somewhat over the top.

On a different note, I am happy with the progress of the new editions.
Swedish, Spanish and Dutch now have very professional looking homepages
and a regular output of stories. Translation from one Wikinews edition
into another seems to be more common than direct translation of
Wikipedia articles.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jack Lutz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dispute receiving no attention

body:
Despite beyond posted on RfC (3 FEB), Encyclopedia Standards talk (5), and asking repeatedly over days in #wikipedia and #en.wikipedia, there is a dispute between myself and another use at [[Blitzkrieg]] which no one has responded to. The dispute involves the inclusion of material and necessity of references. I posting here to increase exposure.

If you should become involved, which I certainly hope you do, please read the initial comments about the article during 2004, before this began. The "Inaccurate changes" headings are between us, but the current discussion is at "Factual accuracy dispute."

Please note that despite his language which casts me as some kind of malicious user (he has previously called my edits vandalism[1], and me a POV-pusher[2]), I have in fact written, with references and footnotes to substantiate my edits, all but the intro, Precursors/Successors, and countertactics. This is not to claim credit, but to dispel the above argument.

I've been pulling my hair trying to get even *one person* to register a comment, and am only posting here after the failure of the above methods.

User:119

[1] [[Talk:Polish September Campaign]]
[2] Above and [[Talk:Blitzkrieg]], 'blitzkrieg according to 119'


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: promotional items (was no subject)

body:
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:54:04 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I do not think we should necessarily restrict
> communication handling to those part of foundation (hence with an account).

I agree that we shouldn't restrict communication handling to those
with accounts on the foundation wiki. It is just the upload of certain
file types which are currently disallowed that we should be
restricting. It is only the files themselves which would be uploaded
by people on that wiki. Any discussion of them etc can happen on meta.

> Basically, if we have room on servers, why could not we simply host
> these files ? Why do we need to restrict this ? Where is the problem ?

We can host them. We just can't allow anyone to upload potentially
dangerous files. See Brion's email on this when pdf was first
disallowed: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-September/025472.html

Angela.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Multilingual portal vote

body:
A vote is currently underway on the central portal page
www.wikipedia.org, which offers a choice between different Wikipedia
languages. I'd like to point out that User:Forseti has recently created
a new design, which I think deserves some attention. The vote is still
running until February 11 - I encourage everyone who has voted for
Catherine's version (which is very nice indeed!) to take a second look.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Www.wikipedia.org_portal#Poll_on_Catherine.27s_version

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Charles Fulton

body:
Stormfront as 43,000 members? That's rather disturbing. However, to be
a threat, a sizable number of them would have to be coherent or
articulate, else they'll be shot down as garden-variety vandalism.
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we've blocked stormfront members
before, for making racist edits.

Charles

> I hope you're right.  The latest post to the thread is as follows:
>
> "What we need is to send out a membership emailing and require that all
> 43,000 members of stormfront.org sign up for wikipedia.com and participate
> in its development and also to get a movement on there to oust the small
> minority of members, specifically jews with baby-carrot sized dicks who are
> preventing specific jewish topics on wikipedia.com from being fair and
> balanced.
>
> If this does not achieve fair and balanced results then we should really
> consider starting our own open source encyclopedia, which actually come to
> think of it is what we should do, we certainly have the army of members to
> get something like that off the ground. Something we really should consider
> building.
>
> none the less, I recommend everyone to sign up for wikipedia.com and work
> towards building it and going into arbitration to help oust the small
> minority of baby-carrot-dick jews on there.
>
> go to wikipedia.com now and sign up."
>
> I suggest that 43,000 Vogels would be hard to deal with, even for
> "baby-carrot-dick jews".
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] On a more positive note...

body:
On a more positive note, I am pleased to see that the newly invigorated
ArbCom has only two outstanding cases, neither more than 11 days old.  The
backlog has been cleared, and new cases are being dealt with promptly.
Kudos to all active members.

Jay.


from_name: geni

body:
> I suggest that 43,000 Vogels would be hard to deal with, even for
> "baby-carrot-dick jews".
>
> Jay.
>

They have 43,000 memebers but only a small fraction of those will be
active and even fewer are likely to answer a call to arms.

--
geni


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] mediation committee

body:
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:13:02 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Our new mediator, Improv, is willing to make things move, and planning a
> meeting with a whole lot of things to discuss. Planning a meeting on irc
> is tough; so possibly, some of these things can be discussed on the new
> mailing list ?
> Thanks to him anyway :-)

That's not a bad idea, but note that some of us who've spent a lot of
time thinking about some of the problems with mediation, such as
sannse and I (who've both written fairly long responses on the
matter), are no longer mediators, and thus wouldn't have access to the
list - whereas we would probably be able to attend an IRC chat.

-- ambi


body:
Angela a ?crit:
> On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:26:33 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I would prefer that this is done on meta rather than foundation.
>
>
> The point of having it on the foundation wiki is that it would be very
> easy to add to the whitelist the filetypes which the leaflets and
> presentations are in, since only trusted users can upload there. On
> Meta, anyone can upload files, so it is less likely that these
> filetypes would be whitelisted there.

I understand that.

>>Besides, there are two few people registered on the foundation for this
>>to be correct.
>>If necessary, we can limit this ability to sysops only on meta.
>
>
> There are 41 users on the foundation wiki and 44 admins on meta, so
> even if there was a way to limit uploading of certain file types to
> admins, it wouldn't make much different in terms of the number of
> people able to do this.
>
> Angela.

I understand that as well, but I think meta is the place where we
organise things all together. Not foundation. I wish we stick to what
sites are made for.

Second point : I do not think we should necessarily restrict
communication handling to those part of foundation (hence with an account).
Foundation is here to help wikipedia and related projects to develop,
not to to handle their promotion. I think we should not do anything that
might lead promotion to be only made by foundation people. People should
feel entitled to do so.

Third point : I just do not understand why editors could not just upload
these files on meta; I see not where the risk is.

Basically, if we have room on servers, why could not we simply host
these files ? Why do we need to restrict this ? Where is the problem ?

Ant


body:
>JAY JG wrote:
> > Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels.  Even 10 would tax its
> > current resources and structure.  If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent,
> > and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
>
>I don't think so.  Remember my constant mantra: the purpose of our
>community is to write a high quality neutral encyclopedia.  Our
>openness is a means to that end, and a very excellent one we should
>respect highly.
>
>But if 43 Vogels show up, I'll personally ban them all if necessary,
>and that's that.  That's not likely to be necessary, because we're
>pretty good at devising community-oriented solutions to such problems.

I appreciate your determination, but banning doesn't work for some people;
people with dialup accounts, for example, who are unafraid to create
multiple sockpuppets.  How many socks did Cantus use to carry on his recent
war?  How many has CheeseDreams created?

I admit I'm just projecting a doom and gloom scenario, but I think what has
saved us so far is the fact that most of the troublemakers are either stupid
or not organized or both.  That could change; in my view, it will change.

>Quality is what we're all about.  Getting it right is what we're all
>about.
>
>I've been speaking lately about some research that I've done about how
>wikipedia is actually written.  It isn't the product of millions of
>people writing one sentence each: it is the work of a small (in the
>hundreds) and mostly close-knit community.  This community must be
>(and _will be_) respected in our values of NPOV, quality, getting it
>right.  And if some random Nazis have to be removed, then so be it.
>
>No one within this community should ever think that I respect our
>principles of openness more than I respect the community itself.  So I
>will not ride the ship of openness to the bottom of the ocean.

It's very encouraging to hear that.

Jay.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
At 09:33 PM 2/6/2005 -0500, Deathphoenix wrote:

>I've only been on the mailing list a short time, but it's sure opening my
>eyes to the community and its concerns.
>
>What you're talking about is a type of "moderated articlespace". That
>could work, and in fact, would be a great idea with a proper system. You'd
>probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as
>moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much
>more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system
>is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if
>the moderators were admins, that would work. But I don't know how much
>work that would add for the admins. Perhaps moderators should be granted
>limited "admin" access to the moderated articles they are working on so
>they can edit the protected article according to the Talk pages.

I've always been a fan of the approach of marking particular revisions of
an article as "confirmed good", with "confirmed" being whatever system we
come up with for making such decisions (editorial board, voting, whatever).
Then we can have a link on each page to "view most recent confirmed
version" that will jump you back to that particular version in the
article's history. This way the working version of the article remains the
"primary" one, and there's no risk of forks developing because the
confirmed version is by definition a static historical thing, but we can
say to people who question the quality of Wikipedia that now there's a way
to make sure they aren't reading nonsense that was put in by vandals
minutes (or months) earlier.

--
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Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.5 - Release Date: 2/3/2005


from_name: Robert Brookes

body:
--- JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
>http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563
> >
> >"And this actually means we have to invade WIKI."
>
> Some interesting comments from different posts made
> there today:
>
> "Holocaust Denial has been essentially hijacked by
> the jews on wikipedia,
> along with many other topics, we really need more
> white people to sign up to
> wikipedia and help to make unbiased contributions to
> wikipedia.com. go to
> wikipedia.com now, sign up and participate."
>
> "I am signed up, but in an environment like Wiki
> Holocaust Denial is the
> last thing we should be bothering about."
>
> "Any activities should be well planned and
> organized."
>
> "Nevertheless, guess we can have some fun at
> Wikipedia. Maybe we should have
> a mailinglist on this helping each other with
> arguments and advice."
>
> "Several Administrators are abusing their power on
> wikipedia and deleting
> links to holocaust revisionists sites on
> wikipedia.com one such individual
> is named jpgordon there needs to be a mass movement
> of people to sign up on
> this forum and bring attention to arbitration that
> jpgordon and several
> other administrators are abusing their power and
> purposefully making the
> holocaust denial section unballanced and biased."
> (the last, no doubt, a
> comment by [[User:dnagod]]  in relation to this
> edit:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holocaust_denial&diff=0&oldid=10002024
>
> Jay.
>

Jay,

What is the essential difference between this new
declared "threat" to Wikipedia and the one from this
source?

http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00172.html

http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00104.html

http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00112.html

http://www.eskimo.com/~gburlin/INTACT-L/archive/0405/msg00044.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_the_Bruce/Vigilance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_the_Bruce/Need_Some_Help

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_the_Bruce/Reimer

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales stated for the record:

> If they want to play games with us, fine.  This is Calvinball -- we
> make up the rules, so we win.  Easy.

Now THAT'S an attitude I can respect!

Checklist:
# GodKing on our side -- check.
# Jawbone of an ass -- check.

Time for some smiting!

--
  Sean Barrett     | No time for goofing off, I
  sean at epoptic.com | got dawdling to do! --Tigger


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Google preventing comment spam

body:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 14:56:31 +0000, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 08:57:02 -0600, Kevin Puetz <puetzk at puetzk.org> wrote:
> > The best proposal I've seen so far is to apply it to all recently-modified
> > pages (with 'recent' determined per project by how fast you think the
> > editors will get it cleaned up - probably a day or so is reasonable). That
> > assumes that it will get cleaned up before the timeout expires, and
> > prevents it from being visible to a robot in the interim. But links that
> > survive for a while still become rankable. And it's fairly simple, unlike
> > tracking, per-link, whether or not it has been verified.
>
> Although this *seems* simple, the database request needed to determine
> "how old is this page" [snip]

This should not be an issue since this query is already made, look at
the bottom of any page on any wikimedia project, you'll see something
like " This page was last modified 00:05, 5 Feb 2005."


from_name: Deathphoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

body:
I've only been on the mailing list a short time, but it's sure opening
my eyes to the community and its concerns.

What you're talking about is a type of "moderated articlespace". That
could work, and in fact, would be a great idea with a proper system.
You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as
moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much
more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}}
system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit
it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work. But I don't know
how much work that would add for the admins. Perhaps moderators should
be granted limited "admin" access to the moderated articles they are
working on so they can edit the protected article according to the Talk
pages.

Cheers,

DP.

Jake Waskett wrote:

>Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the
>system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is
>this: what can be done about the problem?
>
>One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages,
>and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the
>article's talk page.
>
>What do others think?
>
>Jake.
>
>On Monday 07 February 2005 01:48, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>
>>Jake Waskett wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The simple truth is this: if Wiki is to
>>>become a credible, serious encyclopaedia, we *must* maintain NPOV. These
>>>groups *oppose* NPOV.
>>>
>>>
>>Yes!
>>
>>
>>
>>>What can be done about it? The present system is simply *not*
>>>*working*. It'll handle the occasional abuse here and there, but the
>>>day-by-day, determined, and methodical twisting of articles to suit
>>>some activist agenda seems impossible to stop.
>>>
>>>
>>I am aware of only 3 instances where this (organized groups trying to
>>undermine NPOV editing) is a problem: LaRouche-related articles,
>>circumcision, and this new thing with the stormfront postings and VfD
>>co-ordination.
>>
>>I think this is a serious problem, and one which we have long feared.
>>But we need not overreact.  The system *is* working in the main, and
>>where there are new problems (such as those aptly described by Slim
>>Virgin in discussion the pseudo-NPOV of the LaRouche edit warriors),
>>we can be confident in our ability to devise new solutions.
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject:
[Foundation-l] Script for transferring images from Wikipedia to
	Commons

body:
Does anyone know how we go about getting this script implemented?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Transfer_script

Can you add any thoughts to the talk page rather than here?

Thanks,
Christiaan