body:
On 14/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, probably stupid question, but can you tell me, in the case where X
> transcludes Y which transcludes Z, then X changes, does Z have to be
> reparsed? Or is Y's cached version substituted as it is?

As far as I know, and this might have changed since I last read it,
but it's all reparsed.

> Also, what exactly is so slow about the transclusion?  Raw inclusion
> of source code from another source is not typically a particularly
> expensive operation, when thinking of C's #INCLUDE, for example. Is it
> the finding of the transcluded page by name, or what?

What part of the email I sent implies it's "so slow"?

> Or could it be theoretically possible to cache page sections rather
> than whole pages, to reduce the risk of having to reparse the whole
> page, or something?

I'm not sure that would provide a long term benefit.

> Bots going around substituting all templates wholesale just seems like
> such an undesirable thing if we could possibly avoid it...

If there's no need, then don't do it. It has been stated time and time
again that, when the development or system administration teams make
policies, they are usually going to be software enforced. If you need
something done for editorial reasons, *go ahead and do it.* It's your
job to write the damn encyclopaedia, and it's our job to worry about
the software and servers coping with it.

Need to transclude {{x}} into 30,000 pages? Do it. Utilise common
sense and avoid changing it too much, sure; but don't act like you
shouldn't actually make use of the software. That's a stupid attitude.

Rob Church


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Transclusion of formatting templates (again?)

body:
On 6/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Also, is it true to say that the transclusion only takes place the
> > next time the page is modified and resaved?
>
> When an uncached form of the parsed markup is needed, or when the
> cache expires next, the entire page will be re-parsed, during which
> time the transclusion will be parsed as well.
>
> An edit or purge before that time will cause invalidation of all the
> cached forms for that page.

Ok, probably stupid question, but can you tell me, in the case where X
transcludes Y which transcludes Z, then X changes, does Z have to be
reparsed? Or is Y's cached version substituted as it is?

Also, what exactly is so slow about the transclusion?  Raw inclusion
of source code from another source is not typically a particularly
expensive operation, when thinking of C's #INCLUDE, for example. Is it
the finding of the transcluded page by name, or what?

Or could it be theoretically possible to cache page sections rather
than whole pages, to reduce the risk of having to reparse the whole
page, or something?

Bots going around substituting all templates wholesale just seems like
such an undesirable thing if we could possibly avoid it...

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Foundation-l] A proposal for organisation

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Now, from what I understood from Lars description, I think the Apache
>>Foundation model could rather well fit us... if so, why trying to
>>reinvent the wheel ?
>>
>>
>>
>Seems reasonable to me.  Of course we don't have to copy every detail
>exactly, but as a general method of organization it both seems like a
>good idea and has a track record of success.
>
>-Mark
>
>
>
My understanding of the Apache Foundation is that it is involved with
and supported small groups of sophisticated technical developers focused
on a specific field of software development and maintenance.

Might be worth considering how the track record translates to a
Foundation attempting to attract and support the efforts of millions of
volunteers for parallel philanthropic tasks.

regards,
lazyquasar


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [Foundation-l] moving forward on article validation

body:
On 6/14/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure what you meant by your example -- for instance by 'work
> on revisions rather than articles', as the goal is still a better
> article (you can't change a historical revision) -- but this is
> effectively what the en:wp validation effort is attempting.  This
> scales in that it can be split up among topic-centered WikiProjects.
> See for instance this list:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/WikiProject_full_article_list

And the new and improved bot-assisted version, which will concievably
allow every article tagged by a WikiProject to have an associated
rating:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index_of_subjects

--
Kirill Lokshin


list: commons-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> No, you will see an "en" tab on any Image: namespace page. It's just a
> link to the same image name at English Wikipedia, because that's the
> page we need to check to see if the image is being used in that wiki.
>
Oh ... done :-)
> I also have another idea :) which will be fantastic for
> [[category:duplicate]] and [[category:incorrectly named]] (which is
> still not being used much, hm).
Done :-)
http://127.0.0.1/toys/commons_dupes.php?category=Duplicate

So far looking for templates "duplicate", "bad name", and "badname". Any
others?

>
> Just some thoughts to keep you on your toes ;)
>
Keep 'em coming! ;-)

Magnus


from_name: Zirland

subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
Magnus Manske p??e v St 14. 06. 2006 v 21:01 +0200:

> http://127.0.0.1/toys/commons_dupes.php?category=Duplicate

Is it a new trend to link localhost in mailinglist?

Zirland


list: wikien-l

from_name: Nathan - Lists

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
I've been lurking until now (just when you thought you were safe) ;)

My opinion: I agree. Opposing because of the categories is crazy.

I don't use standard warnings either (and I think if that was held against
me, it would be really silly and an unproductive use of time); I use
Ilyanep's templates but corrected for UK spelling.

- Nathan (nathanrdotcom)

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> Just when you think you've seen it all...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
>
> One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has some
> nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:
>
> Categories: Wikipedians who have a crowbar embedded in their skull |
> Wikipedians who insist that the word "lobster" be included in every
> article | Carbon-based life forms | Wikipedians who are Floyd Alvis
> Cooper | Delightfully insouciant Wikipedians | Animated cartoon
> squirrels
>
>
> Others think that his use of non-standard warnings means he doesn't
> take vandalism seriously enough (does every admin have to be at the
> forefront of the fight against vandalism?)
>
> I can understand people choosing not to vote for admins they don't
> admire, but opposing on these weird grounds is... well, weird.
>
> Guy (JzG)
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Now, from what I understood from Lars description, I think the Apache
> Foundation model could rather well fit us... if so, why trying to
> reinvent the wheel ?
>
Seems reasonable to me.  Of course we don't have to copy every detail
exactly, but as a general method of organization it both seems like a
good idea and has a track record of success.

-Mark


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] Block against

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:

>On 15/06/06, John Pozniak <gentgeen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I agree. Unless this user was blocked from all
>>Wikimedia projects by the board, a block on one
>>project shouldn't mean a block on all. After all, we
>>have very few enforced policies, and one of them is
>>"Wikibooks is not Wikipedia".
>>
>>
>
>Just an observation from a relative wikibooks-newbie, there seems to
>be a pretty hostile attitude to Wikipedia. Don't you trust the
>Wikipedia community to make the right decision?
>
>
Not for wikibooks.  They have a huge user base and edit wars and wheel
wars are common.  A common tactic built into the site unfortunately from
the start was "label and lynch".    If someone wants to bail out of that
environment in the middle of a conflict it is beneficial to everyone to
allow them to behave civilly relative to the new environment.   The
controversy goes away.   If we allow following between sites which are
inevitably starting to drift slightly in cultural matters and
operational methods then we have to deal with all of these other
projects hassles.   Some of which for us would not be hassles if people
were simply left alone to start over in a new community with a different
purpose.

Consider a troll who insists on inserting too much information for an
encyclopedia but when shows up here is creating useful content and
working well with others the enhance the collective output.

We do  not want to take this resolved situation and relaunch into a
multisite troll war.  Let sleeping dogs lie, maybe they will stay asleep.

>Coming from Commons...if a user was blocked in another project for
>copyright violations, I would be very prepared to block them if they
>did the same thing there. If an image was deleted in a project for
>having no source/being a copyright violation, I would trust that
>project's decision and delete it on Commons too, if there was no new
>compelling evidence.
>
>
If you do this at a site where I am a regular I would probably conclude
you are the problem.

So now you and I have a problem.

You and the "troll" relative to the other site have a problem.

We, you and me, are sucked into the original "troll" and the other
person from the other site who followed or stalked (see wiki stalking at
Wikipedia,  it is frowned on to follow people between topics or group
clusters at Wikipedia, they would rather have the problem go away if it
will than waste time escalating it and involving a bunch of new people)
the alleged troll who is undoubtedly presenting themselves as the
persecuted to our new site here.

See how it can escalate?

>But copyright is a different issue to what is essentially being
>blocked for social reasons (trolling)...OK it's probably not
>appropriate to just automatically block anyone who has blocked
>elsewhere. But don't you think it might be useful to find out why they
>were blocked elsewhere? If you could save yourselves a lot of
>potential hassle (some vandals are extremely disruptive), wouldn't you
>consider it at least? I mean it's not like Wikipedia is this totally
>separate thing and they're all strangers, that's all.
>
>
>
It is my conclusion that it would be more work sorting out conflicting
claims on the other site where I may be a complete stranger to their
ways and certainly do not have the historical data to figure what the
real problems might be.

Take a look at the Arbcom proceedings sometime.   You might be amazed at
the level of effort that goes into attempting to treat people in
controversal conflicts fairly.    I was amazed and impressed at the
level of effort that was going into being fair and effective and
resolving controversy somehow and taking responsibily for mandate
resolution methods to the parties.

As Wikibooks continues to grow in content and size of community and
volume of casual users and vandals or trolls it may or may not need to
emulate the Arbcom.   Keep your fingers crossed.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Wildrick Steele

subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing accesskey for wpDiff

body:
On 14/06/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/14/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> > > The English Wiktionary has the same accesskey, "d" for the Delete tab
> > > and for the Show changes button. Unlike many other accesskeys, this
> > > one is not set in MediaWiki:Monobook.js - is there another file I can
> > > edit to change the accesskey to "v" like on the English Wikipedia?
> > >
> > > (Google and Wiki searches turned up nothing)
> > >
> > > Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
> > >
> >
> > The message is MediaWiki:Accesskey-diff.
>
> Thanks. In here the key is actually set to 'v' but with the mouse
> hovering over the button
> we were seeing "Show which changes you made to the text. [alt-d]". This
> was in
> MediaWiki:Tooltip-diff
> I don't know how the got out of synch and I don't know why searching
> for the hover
> text in the MediaWiki namespace couldn't find it. But it's fixed now.
>
> Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
>
> > - --
> > #define Name RotemLiss
> > #define Mail mailSTRUDELrotemlissDOTcom
> > #define Site www.rotemliss.com
> >
> > #define KeyFingerPrint 4AFD 8579 A449 4267 BED9 38E5 6EF8 5B1F EBDE 7AC0
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
> > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> >
> > iD8DBQFEj+orbvhbH+veesARAiXdAJ4/2LWn9H/Ay9p+t/usZgNIMF1zZwCgtngx
> > zcgNWK6aAKyhUr0gKw/HtGU=
> > =89Yl
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
> http://linguaphile.sf.net
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

It's wrong by default. Only Wiktionary and Wikipedia have it corrected.

Cheers,
Wildrick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Vildricianus


subject: [Commons-l]  some statistics

body:
Speaking about statistics...

I looked on WhatLinksHere of deprecated {{PD}} tag and it gives 22.500 <
x < 23.000 links. I seriously doubt anybody can solve this manually.

Deprecated {{Redundant}} gives "only" little less than 1.000 links.

What shall we do with it?

--
Zirland


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 14/06/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Steve Summit wrote:
> >
> >
> >> (The problem's just as bad over on Wiktionary, where there are
> >> stubbornly, defiantly distinct pages for `color' and `colour'.
> >> Huge, repetitive, internecine arguments regularly erupt, whenever
> >> anyone has the temerity to suggest that the two entries be merged
> >> somehow since they're "obviously" just two spelling variants
> >> for "the same" word.)
> >>
> >>
> > It's not a problem.  The reasonable people understand that it needs to
> > be on two separate pages.
> >
> Standard practice of dictionaries, though, is to collapse trivial
> variants into one entry.  Even the OED, quite possibly the most thorough
> English-language encyclopedia in existence, does this.  What's the point
> of duplicating information?
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

It's simply not NPOV to list only one, or to list both under one title. The
OED, apart from being authoritative, is still British, while Wiktionary is
for all variants of English.

Cheers,
Wildrick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Vildricianus


subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
Zirland wrote:
> Magnus Manske p??e v St 14. 06. 2006 v 21:01 +0200:
>
>
>> http://127.0.0.1/toys/commons_dupes.php?category=Duplicate
>>
>
> Is it a new trend to link localhost in mailinglist?
>
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commons_dupes.php?category=Duplicate

for those who can't copy'n'paste ;-)

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
Wildrick Steele wrote:
> On 14/06/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Steve Summit wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> (The problem's just as bad over on Wiktionary, where there are
>>>> stubbornly, defiantly distinct pages for `color' and `colour'.
>>>> Huge, repetitive, internecine arguments regularly erupt, whenever
>>>> anyone has the temerity to suggest that the two entries be merged
>>>> somehow since they're "obviously" just two spelling variants
>>>> for "the same" word.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> It's not a problem.  The reasonable people understand that it needs to
>>> be on two separate pages.
>>>
>>>
>> Standard practice of dictionaries, though, is to collapse trivial
>> variants into one entry.  Even the OED, quite possibly the most thorough
>> English-language encyclopedia in existence, does this.  What's the point
>> of duplicating information?
>>
> It's simply not NPOV to list only one, or to list both under one title. The
> OED, apart from being authoritative, is still British, while Wiktionary is
> for all variants of English.
>

That sounds like an argument for making "hard" links where both titles
are equally authoritative---i.e. "traveling" and "travelling" are both
top-level titles, but in fact are the same page.

The current solution, making them different pages, is IMO much worse
than favoring one or the other, since it requires people to basically
copy/paste definitions across multiple pages, and make sure changes stay
in sync.  Look, for example, at "traveling" versus "travelling", which
currently actually have wildly different content despite being the same
word with a minor variation in spelling (this was the first example I
checked).

-Mark


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
Just when you think you've seen it all...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus

One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has some
nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:

Categories: Wikipedians who have a crowbar embedded in their skull |
Wikipedians who insist that the word "lobster" be included in every
article | Carbon-based life forms | Wikipedians who are Floyd Alvis
Cooper | Delightfully insouciant Wikipedians | Animated cartoon
squirrels

Others think that his use of non-standard warnings means he doesn't
take vandalism seriously enough (does every admin have to be at the
forefront of the fight against vandalism?)

I can understand people choosing not to vote for admins they don't
admire, but opposing on these weird grounds is... well, weird.

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


from_name: John Pozniak

subject: [Textbook-l] Block against

body:
There is a difference between a vandal and a troll. A
vandal is a childish user who makes himself happy by
destroying the work of others. A toll is someone who
doesn't work well with others, or is prone to attitude
problems.

Wikibooks has a very different culture than Wikipedia.
Part of that is based on how the projects see
themselves. Wikibooks "feels" like a community of
somewhat independant projects, fairly loosly
connected. Therefore, what happens in a single book
has little effect on the majority of writers and users
who will never see it as it doesn't touch what they're
working on or reading. Wikipedia sees itself as a
unified whole. Every article in the encyclopedia is a
part of a closely connected "one", so each article
impacts all the others.

Contributors who may have a tendancy to personality
conflicts will have less triggers at Wikibooks.
Hopefully, by the time they get into a potentially
troll-creating situation, they are more likely to
appriciate the wiki culture and collaborative content
creation, and be less likely to become a troll.

John (Gentgeen)

--- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:

> BTW cf.
>
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Staff_lounge#Banned_WP_editor_Primetime
> which seems to have been accepted without question.
> That's more the
> kind of thing I was talking about...(again this is
> more copyright
> related, not social behaviour, and lazyquasar made a
> good point that
> in some cases people can "start anew".) I mean yes
> each project has
> its own community but I don't think it's beneficial
> to treat them like
> strangers. In situations like this we can work
> together and save each
> other some hassle.
>
> Heh, imagine if WoW showed up at a new project and
> we had this
> attitude... "Give the man a chance! He might have
> reformed!" :)
>
> cheers
> Brianna
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/14/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Just when you think you've seen it all...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
>
> One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has some
> nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:
>
> Categories: Wikipedians who have a crowbar embedded in their skull |
> Wikipedians who insist that the word "lobster" be included in every
> article | Carbon-based life forms | Wikipedians who are Floyd Alvis
> Cooper | Delightfully insouciant Wikipedians | Animated cartoon
> squirrels
>

Probably just fallout from the usebox thing. Although it does show
that the candidate has a poor taste in skins.

>
> Others think that his use of non-standard warnings means he doesn't
> take vandalism seriously enough

Yeah well not everyone has been here long enough to remeber the hayday
of User:Grunt and User:Grunt/Blocked

> (does every admin have to be at the
> forefront of the fight against vandalism?)
>
No but historicaly most admins have had a background in vandle
fighting. Always been tricky for non vandle fighters to get through.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/14/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/14/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No but historicaly most admins have had a background in vandle
> > fighting. Always been tricky for non vandle fighters to get through.
>
> This shows an extremely short-range view of 'always' I was hitherto unaware of.
>
> -Matt

It has been an issue to some degree since at least december 2004.

--
geni


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/14/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/14/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/14/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > No but historicaly most admins have had a background in vandle
> > > fighting. Always been tricky for non vandle fighters to get through.
> >
> > This shows an extremely short-range view of 'always' I was hitherto unaware of.
>
> It has been an issue to some degree since at least december 2004.

Quod erat demonstrandum :-)

--
Sam


body:
On 6/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Also, what exactly is so slow about the transclusion?  Raw inclusion
> > of source code from another source is not typically a particularly
> > expensive operation, when thinking of C's #INCLUDE, for example. Is it
> > the finding of the transcluded page by name, or what?
>
> What part of the email I sent implies it's "so slow"?

None. However, common belief appears to be that substituting commonly
used, static templates is good for performance reasons.

> > Or could it be theoretically possible to cache page sections rather
> > than whole pages, to reduce the risk of having to reparse the whole
> > page, or something?
>
> I'm not sure that would provide a long term benefit.

No? Ok.

> If there's no need, then don't do it. It has been stated time and time
> again that, when the development or system administration teams make
> policies, they are usually going to be software enforced. If you need
> something done for editorial reasons, *go ahead and do it.* It's your
> job to write the damn encyclopaedia, and it's our job to worry about
> the software and servers coping with it.
>
> Need to transclude {{x}} into 30,000 pages? Do it. Utilise common
> sense and avoid changing it too much, sure; but don't act like you
> shouldn't actually make use of the software. That's a stupid attitude.

So, bots that transclude for performance reasons should be stopped?
All the templates that are labelled "This template is a good candidate
for subst:" should be rethought? Do you think your response represents
"the developers'" opinion in general?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another (rare) category type

body:
On 6/14/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I've noticed some of these sorts of categories before, and in a vain
> attempt to keep them in check I added a guideline to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terminology that in theory would
> prevent them from becoming like this. In practice, of course, sigh... :)
>
> I did manage to get [[Category:Computer terminology]] deleted and its
> contents merged into [[Category:Computing]] back then, though, perhaps a
> good approach for the more egregious examples that remain.

Interesting, some of these categories, such as Category:Australian
Aboriginal terms, seem quite legitimate. Others, such as
Category:Gambling terminology, don't.

Why? (thinking out loud)  Hmm. In the case of gambling "terminology",
the fact that the article is about gambling instantly tells you that
it's "gambling terminology". Perhaps a few rare cases aren't, but
basically, any article about gambling strategy is going to involve
special terminology. So, it's basically redundant.

However, adding the [[Kookaburra]] article to "Australian Aboriginal
terms" is adding information, because most bird articles do not belong
to that category. So, it cuts across other categories and actually
adds something new.

Fwiw, Wikipedia really doesn't seem to be able to make its mind up on
exactly how much "terminology" we accept. WP:NOT quite clearly says we
don't teach people how to talk like a Cockney chimney sweep. Right
after it clearly says that glossaries for specialized fields are ok.
And right before it says that articles about items of slang may be
appropriate.

Steve


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another (rare) category type

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Fwiw, Wikipedia really doesn't seem to be able to make its mind up on
> exactly how much "terminology" we accept. WP:NOT quite clearly says we
> don't teach people how to talk like a Cockney chimney sweep. Right
> after it clearly says that glossaries for specialized fields are ok.
> And right before it says that articles about items of slang may be
> appropriate.

Entirely by coincidence, I just happened across an article that seems to
me like a perfect example of the sort of "terminology" article that's
good to have in Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_the_Gulf_War>. Naturally, it wasn't
in [[Category:Terminology]] or any of its subcats when I got there. :)

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from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-06-15

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

Running test External image... FAILED!
Running test External image from https... FAILED!
Running test External links: Clickable images... FAILED!
Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!

Passed 388 of 404 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


subject: [Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>I'm curious.
>>
>>What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>
snip

>
>
>>What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>>that the present management is not?
>>
>>
>
>Some of the areas where we have been failing is in the timely
>negotiation of partnerships which are consistent with our charitable
>mission and which would both reduce our reliance on fund drives, and
>increase our abilities to meet our charitable goals.  We are doing a
>great job in some areas (English, German, French, Japanese, and several
>other European languages), a decent job in some areas (Chinese is not
>bad, Arabic shows promise), and a fairly poor job in other areas (Hindi,
>Swahili, Bengali, etc.)
>
>
>
>>If there's something that management needs to *do* which will actually be better
>>served by a new management structure or new board members, then by all means
>>let's talk about it, but let's not put the cart before the horse.
>>
>>What first, then how.
>>
>>
What is a functioning Wikiversity.

How.   Perhaps rather than simply launching our own producing some
innovation from peer based free knowledge production we should consider
canning the Wikiversity proposal and contacting these folks regarding
partnering opportunities:

http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:Staff_lounge&action=edit&section=8

They may be resistant at because it sounds line they are lining up
corporate funding to pay the content creators.   Obviously this is a bit
at odds for our type of distributed production of free content where
everyone contributes as they can and will.

However.   They may find that the production of large quantities of free
content takes a large distributed effort which they cannot afford.  In
which case they may be interested in partnering with us in getting
Wikiversity going or establishing a Denverversity with local Colorado
assets.   University of Colorado had a damn fine computer and
engineering program twenty years ago when I attended as a freshmen and
at that time they collaborated in cooperative projects with the other
state schools quite frequently.

They might be interested in providing us the infrastructure and allowing
us with our leading edge experience to take the lead in establishing the
social environment and helping define the policy issues that need to be
researched and tested to shield the state taxpayers from any liability
issues.

At a minimum I would expect an effective management group to glean some
useful intelligence regarding their thoughts on how to proceed and how
they are thinking about addressing the large issues that will face
effective Wikiversity.   Presumably we can find a way to publicly
propagate this information back to our appointed proposal development team.

An easy way might be to just give them the appropriate URLs and a
special engraved invitation to come to meta and redline all existing
proposals pages and debate as they see it.   Perhaps they could tell us
their perspective .... either as a locally uninterested ..... not
competitor they essentially have overlapping markets ... as an outside
consultant which similar experience sharing expertise and gathering
information and ideas on how we intend to initially attack the challenges.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Transclusion of formatting templates (again?)

body:
On 6/14/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images]]?

Pity it doesn't exist :(

Ok I have updated the text in the MoS - it didn't have much to say
beyond the rather outdated picture tutorial. The MoS is supposed to
offer guidance after all, not leave the door wide open...

Steve


body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>
>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>I'm curious.
>>>
>>>What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>snip
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>>>that the present management is not?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Some of the areas where we have been failing is in the timely
>>negotiation of partnerships which are consistent with our charitable
>>mission and which would both reduce our reliance on fund drives, and
>>increase our abilities to meet our charitable goals.  We are doing a
>>great job in some areas (English, German, French, Japanese, and several
>>other European languages), a decent job in some areas (Chinese is not
>>bad, Arabic shows promise), and a fairly poor job in other areas (Hindi,
>>Swahili, Bengali, etc.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>If there's something that management needs to *do* which will actually be better
>>>served by a new management structure or new board members, then by all means
>>>let's talk about it, but let's not put the cart before the horse.
>>>
>>>What first, then how.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>What is a functioning Wikiversity.
>
>How.   Perhaps rather than simply launching our own producing some
>innovation from peer based free knowledge production we should consider
>canning the Wikiversity proposal and contacting these folks regarding
>partnering opportunities:
>
>http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:Staff_lounge&action=edit&section=8
>
>They may be resistant at because it sounds line they are lining up
>corporate funding to pay the content creators.   Obviously this is a bit
>at odds for our type of distributed production of free content where
>everyone contributes as they can and will.
>
>
>
>
I forgot.   They might also be interested in mirroring our controlled
version content on their computing resources and sending editors to
us.   If this requires complicated programming beyond what our capable
developers can tackle easily given their current workloads or strange
platforms perhaps they can interest their computer departments in doing
the develop with either funded or unfunded groups.

We get free robust mirrors in exchange for managing the content
development environment.  Their departments and students are not
responsible for managing the content development issues such as the
growing troll, deeply hidden link spam, and copyright/slander issues.

Once they do the development should be plenty of  U.S. technical
universities with similar environements and walla!   Our explosive
scaling problem is over!.    We can dedicate funds to growing a small
professional staff and keeping up with the impending explosive growth in
editors.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I can understand people choosing not to vote for admins they don't
> admire, but opposing on these weird grounds is... well, weird.

If you want to start a constructive criticism about how to improve
RfA, count me in.

If you just want to whinge about it...well, count me in anyway.

Steve


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>
>>Wikiversity is a natural fit with the existing projects and the slogans
>>and bylaws yet it is not being implemented despite overwhelming
>>community support.
>>
>>
>
>It should be noted that I am a strong supporter of Wikiversity.  So,
>whatever merits the rest of your rant might have, this does not seem to
>be particularly relevant.
>
>The Wikiversity group was asked to make some relatively minor
>adjustments to the charter, adjustments which addressed the concerns
>*not of the board*, but of the people who had opposed to creation of
>Wikiversity.
>
>The board has not been presented with a followup proposal for a vote.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
You ever heard of management by walking around?

This is a farcical response to a year delay after members of your Board
of Directors presented a "freeing the curriculum" presentation.

 From 200 voting supporters and a fair amount of activity in the
temporary space we are down to a committe of five, a couple of alleged
trolls, and maybe a few editors shifting back and forth from wikibooks.

Squandering that momentum and presenting this incompetence to practicing
professionals, a few of whom definately came calling with interested
graduate students, is not our finest hour.

Fun to find we are on speaking terms again.

regards,
lazyquasar


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>
>>Wikiversity is a natural fit with the existing projects and the slogans
>>and bylaws yet it is not being implemented despite overwhelming
>>community support.
>>
>>
>
>It should be noted that I am a strong supporter of Wikiversity.  So,
>whatever merits the rest of your rant might have, this does not seem to
>be particularly relevant.
>
>The Wikiversity group was asked to make some relatively minor
>adjustments to the charter, adjustments which addressed the concerns
>*not of the board*, but of the people who had opposed to creation of
>Wikiversity.
>
>The board has not been presented with a followup proposal for a vote.
>
>
 Further.

Since when do naysayers opposing a project set policy for that project?

That is about the most idiotic thing I have experienced locally for a
few days.

Also the best illustration of why the diverging projects are inevitably
going to come to the point of self organization independently of each
other and then need to define effective interfaces just like effective
complex machines, software packages, or big international organizations.

You must be working late.   This is very substandard reasoning compared
to your usual brilliant prose.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Anthere

body:
Delirium wrote:
> (Mainly concerning wikipedia, but cross-posting to foundation-l because
> of some discussion of committees; see the end.)
>
> We've discussed on and off that it'd be nice to vet specific revisions
> of Wikipedia articles so readers can either choose to read only quality
> articles, or at least have an indication of how good an article is.
> This is an obvious prerequisite for a Wikipedia 1.0 print edition, and
> would be nice on the website as well.
>
> There is a lengthy list of proposals here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals
>
> I wanted to try to rekindle the process by summarizing some of the
> proposals, which I think can be grouped into three main types, and then
> suggest some ideas on where to go from there.
>
> Proposal #1: Fork or freeze, then bring up to our quality standards.
> ---
> Wikipedians would look around for articles that look reasonably good
> (perhaps starting with feature articles) and nominate them to be worked
> on.  Then either freeze them (by placing a notice or some sort of
> technical measure), or else fork them off to a copy.  The articles would
> then be checked for referencing, accuracy, grammar, and so on, possibly
> only by users who've met some bar for participation in the clean-up
> process, resulting in an article suitable for publication.  Forking or
> freezing is to ensure the cleanup process actually terminates rather
> than trying to clean up a moving target; there are of course pros and
> cons to forking vs. freezing.
>
> Some pros: Fairly straightforward; follows successful methods of "stable
> release" management in the software-development world; allows a certain
> amount of editorial work not normally suitable for an in-progress
> encyclopedia (like cutting out an entire section because it's too far
> from being done to go in the print version); is easy to integrate
> "expert review" into as a last vetting step before it goes out the door.
>
> Some cons: Either disrupts normal editing through a freeze, or results
> in duplicated effort with a fork.  Also is likely to result in a fairly
> slow process, so the reviewed version of each article may be replaced
> with an updated version quite infrequently; most articles will have no
> reviewed version, so doesn't do much for increasing the typical quality
> of presentation on the website.
>
>
> Proposal #2: Institute a rating and trust-metric system
> ---
> Wikipedians rate revisions, perhaps on some scale from "complete crap"
> to "I'm an expert in this field and am confident of its accuracy and
> high quality".  Then there is some way of coming up with a score for
> that revision, perhaps based on the trustworthiness of the raters
> themselves (determined through some method).  Once that's done, the
> interface can do things like display the last version of an article over
> some score, if any, or a big warning that the article sucks otherwise
> (and so on).
>
> Some pros: Distributed; no duplicated effort; good revisions are marked
> good as soon as enough people have vetted them; humans review the
> articles, but the "process" itself is done automatically; most articles
> will have some information about their quality to present to a reader
>
> Some cons: Gameing-proof trust metric systems are notoriously hard to
> design.
>
>
> Proposal #3: Extend a feature-article-like process
> ---
> Extend a feature-article type process to work on revisions rather than
> articles.  For example, nominate revision X of an article as a featured
> article; improve it during the process until it gets to a revision Y
> that people agree is good.  Then sometime later, nominate a new revision
> Z, explain what the differences are, and discuss whether this should
> supercede the old featured version.  Can also have sub-featured statuses
> like "good" or "mediocre, but at least nothing is outright wrong".  In
> principle can be done with no code changes, though there are some that
> could ease things along greatly.
>
> Some pros: Gets at the effect of proposal #2 but with a flexible
> human-run system instead of an automatic system, and therefore less
> likely to be brittle.
>
> Some cons: Will need carefully-designed software assistance to keep all
> the information and discussion manageable and avoid descending into a
> morass of thousands upon thousands of messy talk pages
>
> ---
>
> These are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  In my opinion, something
> like #3 would be best suited to marking quality of revisions on the
> website, and then the best of these could feed into a process like #1
> that would do final vetting and cleanup before a print publication (in
> addition to print-specific things like editing for space, formatting,
> image resolution, etc.).
>
> In any case, obviously proposals can come and go forever.  None are
> implemented, but that's partly because nobody wants to sink a bunch of
> time into implementing a system when there's no guarantee it will even
> be used.  My hope is to condense the discussion so we choose some
> high-level ideas on how to proceed before moving on to the inevitable
> details, and then move to implementation once we've agreed what we
> actually want.
>
> On an organizational level, it may be useful to have a working group
> sorting this out to focus the process.  It may be useful, in my opinion,
> for the Foundation to make it an official committee of sorts and
> indicate at least informally that it'll support getting its
> recommendations enacted (e.g. paying another developer if development
> resources are the bottleneck).  I would be willing to devote a
> significant amount of time to such a committee, since I think this is
> the single biggest problem holding back Wikipedia's usefulness to the
> general public, and I'm sure there are at least several other people
> with ideas and expertise in this area who would be willing to do so as well.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> -Mark

I would support that entirely. Please feel free to draft a general scope
for such a commmittee and to begin dragging people in. You may also
prefer a specific mailing list to discuss the topic ?

Today I talked with Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. With one of his project
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Monday_%28journal%29), he (they) are
working on a peer notation, with trust metrics. They would be happy to
work with us on such tool. You may wish to contact him on this issue.

Ant


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>
>>I have been eagerly awaiting Wikiversity for about three years now as it
>>was an obvious synergistic project.   I would be curious as to what the
>>real holdup is with it.   Are we afraid of hardware or bandwidth
>>limitations?  Are a bunch of self motivated learners to potentially
>>radical and threatening to the status quo?
>>
>>
>
>Perhaps the irony is that the board has deliberately chosen not to
>engage in "top down management" and to let this community "manage
>itself".  This has a lot to recommend it, because the wikiversity
>proposal is a lot stronger for it.
>
>But if you are really upset that this community-driven process takes so
>long, then instead of clamoring for the board to not micromanage, you
>should perhaps ask us to do so.  I am quite sure that we could get
>Wikiversity approved and up and running in 2-3 weeks time, if we chose
>to run roughshod over the community to do it.
>
>This is actually a very typical scenario, of course.
>
>
>
Ever consider activating the URLs which we ... sorry God King, you
control via the Foundation?

The initial development and prototyping could proceed effectively we
could be attracting participation and the Board could make it clear that
if the Wikimedia Foundation, or God King, or Community whoever is really
the driving force and final say around the Wikimedia organization and
community decided against it .... then the database would be backed up
and burned on CD or posted for download for any and all who wish to
pursue the concept elsewhere.   Then a nice clean deactivation and
delete of the prototype space could occur.

I am quite sure given the proven talent of our developments and some of
your employee something like this is possible on servers the Wikimeda
Board of Developers controls.

If it is not possible I would be interested in any perspectives from the
Board or the employees or the developers regarding why not.  It will be
helpful to any future attempts to initialize an equivalent project
elsewhere on other assets.

A calender year is not a trivial asset to retirees or people nearing
retirement in the U.S. with the kind of expertise we need to succeed
with Wikiversity.   The average U.S. male kick offs within a few years
of retirement.   It would be nice if we could keep them around for a few
years working for us creating free knowledge content that could be
delivered to the rest of the world.

Further, a calender year is not trivial to a starving entrepreneur
anywhere on this planet that just needed some information to succeed and
feed his family or a sufficient grounding in some relevant area of
knowledge or information to get gainful employment in a sweatshop paying
something instead of nothing.

As the previously designated troll and not on the current committee
appointed by the Board of Directors of the Wikimedia Foundation I hearby
request that you direct Brion to active the wiki and URL at the domain
wikiversity.org currently controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation at his
earliest efficient time on a time and material available no impact to
the rest of the operation basis with the clear understanding that if the
project is declined for support by the Wikimedia Foundation it will be
backed up, posted for download in whatever appropriate compressed format
is effective and available, and deleted from Wikimeda Foundation servers.

There.   You have a request for action from the bottom.  An easy
demonstration of bottom up methods in our peer based community and a
full CYA for later if the surging naysayers manage to convince the
community at large and/or the responsible controlling board members that
Wikiversity must not be operated by the Wikimedia Foundation and/or
community for whatever prevailing reasons or conclusion that dominate
that decision making process.

Finally.  We are on parallel top down design, bottom up optimization,
experimentation, and initiative destined to meet in the middle under the
final say of the Board and/or prevailing factions of the community at large.

Have a nice day.

regards,
lazyquaser


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>
>>You seem have odd notions about how much work, beyond babysitting
>>their pet article and windbagging on lists, that a majority of our
>>volunteers are willing to perform.
>>_______________________________________________
>>
>>
>
> Part of the problem attracting interest in what others choose to define
> as "work" is this mindset of telling others to shut up and get back to
> work or attempting to shut down information flow by calling others
> "windbags" or implying if they will not volunteer for your personally
> defined most important task they should minimize the impact on the
> mailing list.
>
> This was chanted early and often by our lead editors and founding
> members.   I arrived at 39k and counting.   Now the English wikipedia
> has well over a million articles and counting and a few people on this
> list, which as I understand it is not the wikipedia english list, are
> presenting issues around the quality of articles throughout the english
> Wikipedia as a possibly generic problem with wiki data products built by
> internet volunteers.  Shutting up and adding another article to the pile
> will not resolve this or many other issues which the Wikimedia
> Foundation is experiencing.
>
> Feel free to ignore my posts.  It will reduce the wind for the next few
> days, weeks, or months substantially.
>
> I intend to particpate heavily in this list until it becomes time to
> initialize wikiversity and I shall vamoose for a while until in my
> perception it becomes advantageous to my pet project with wikiversity to
> show up and absorb some more information regarding the politics,
> organization, and procedures that seem to be impacting my preferred
> tasks in less than optimal ways.
>
> I know little of your background but I will share with you in case it
> has escaped your attention that even when you are paying people it is
> usually counter productive to "yell shut up and get back to work" unless
> you are running an old style sweatshop or have very specific well
> defined tasks and plenty of supervisors standing around playing gestapo.
>
> Modern business practice in the U.S. has generally concluded the
> getstapo overhead is too high to remain competitive.   Perhaps this is
> true even when not paying some or most of the work force?
>
> Have a nice day.
>
> regards,
> lazyquasar

Oh, we reached the Godwin point ;-)
Well, whilst I certainly do not agree with all your points lazyquasar, I
found many insightful comments in your emails. I do not ignore your posts.

Ant


subject: [Textbook-l] Power to dictate policy (Was: Game Guides)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Wow, what a bizarre twisting of history.  I have no recollection of why
>Larry called you a troll, but I suppose I can guess.
>
>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>
>>This is all history.   A done deal.
>>
>>When Nupedia.com was in the process of flopping due to over regulation
>>and over credentialization Wikipedia.com was set up.    Eventually a
>>committment was made to the FDL which started attracting free culture
>>types to assist the large number of P'hds who came over from Nupedia.com.
>>
>>Some of us started trying to get involved in the business planning at
>>meta to assure we could buy more servers and bandwidth when the load got
>>too high on Jimbo's hobby budget.   It was at this time that I was
>>designated a troll by Langer Sanger on his way out of the project.
>>
>>Jimbo responded by always assuring the mailing that he had plenty of
>>cash and surplus bandwidth for the Wikipedia experiment.    He shifted
>>the active domain to wikipedia.org and in secret with perhaps some help
>>from a select few employees or advisers unilaterally setup the nonprofit
>>in Florida.
>>
>>He announced on the maililng his intent to stack the Board and then he
>>proceeded to do so.   It was a fait accompli or done deal and there was
>>only limited whining and complaining on the wikipedia-l mailing list.
>>
>>If you review the mailing lists since that time you will find occasional
>>nuggets where policy has been handed down ever since by the god-king.
>>There are also occasional pronouncements scattered through the various
>>policy pages.
>>
>>Since he controls the servers and bandwidth via the Wikimedia Foundation
>>which he controls there is no appeal from a "Jimmy says" flash..
>>
>>It was and is the contention of the remaining community locally that
>>adequate protection for the community from the god-king is inherent in
>>the ability to fork.   Most people dissatisfied with this state of
>>affairs tend to move on, particularly after being labeled and lynched
>>as  a "troll", "POV warrier", or other useful tag.
>>
>>The way I see it, a fork is overdue.
>>
>>Obviously a fork would have to address the issue of how the newly
>>emerging community intended to govern/manage itself.   As God-Kings go
>>Jimbo is not all that bad so there is little to be gained by exchanging
>>him for another.
>>
>>regards,
>>lazyquasar
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Textbook-l mailing list
>>Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Textbook-l mailing list
>Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>
>
Cute Jimbo.

There were witnesses and ample evidence in the emails and around the
wiki databases.  Anyone that cares to find out for themselves can check
it out or ask around.

You cannot erase the record for newcomers without severely damaging your
reputation with people and experts that are not on the fringe of the
community.

Have a nice day.

regards,
lazyquasar,
aka mirwin the lying troll


subject: [Textbook-l] the importance of writing to standards

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>At the university level, professors generally have a fair amount of
>discretion as to what textbooks to offer, and there do not generally
>exist detailed curriculum standards.  Even here, though, if one wishes
>to produce a textbook for an Introductory German course, one ought to
>follow more or less the sorts of things that professors will expect to
>find covered there.
>
>But at the grammar school level, adherence to standards is of crucial
>importance.  If a book does not adhere to standards, then school
>teachers MAY NOT use it.  Such work will then be a wasted effort in
>large part.
>
>There can of course be reasoned exceptions to the idea of writing to
>standards, but in general, it is a very good idea.  As it turns out, it
>is also quite helpful to generating and sustaining some consensus about
>what a book is to contain.
>
>What should a high school chemistry book cover?  Well, we could argue
>until the end of time about what would be a good idea from a
>philosophical point of view, and it would not be harmful to have several
>different variants.  But at the same time, if the goal is to make
>something that people will find actually useful, then adherence to
>various official standards for what belongs in such a book is a great idea.
>
>California and Florida publish very detailed standards.  I am sure many
>other US states do as well.  In the UK, I believe there are similar
>published standards.  I would assume that more or less the same thing is
>true in almost all languages.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
>
An exceptional case with regard to the above might be home schoolers.
As I understand it they are growing at a remarkable rate largely as a
result of parents perception that:

1.  Existing school standards are not an adequate grounding to excel.
2.  Some groups of people have belief systems in opposition to the
standards.  Examples might be devout  religious types or  different
economic or philosophic systems such as comunism or socialism that get
short shift in the U.S.  Perhaps capitalism in some areas of the globe
is treated impractically by U.S. text for budding entrepreneur that need
more pragmatic gritty details to deal effectively with local markets.
3.  Private schools might come to use exceptional etexts that embrace
and extend the standards or deviate substantially from in breaking out
the topics differently.

Certainly all of the above and the standards based text should be
clearly and honestly labeled and written from an NPOV as practical.
Disqualifying a text that treats Noah's flood at fact and omits
anthropological theory about it being an archtype based upon earlier
Sumerian sagas is probably asking for trouble by taking the NPOV concept
to an absurd extreme.   Obviously it should be accurately labeled and
well written from the identifed approach.

Or not.  It is wikibookeans problem after all.

Wikiversity groups who need the alternate material can alway link to it
elsewhere from within the proper context of their study materials.

regards,
lazyquasar


body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>
>>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>I have been eagerly awaiting Wikiversity for about three years now as it
>>>was an obvious synergistic project.   I would be curious as to what the
>>>real holdup is with it.   Are we afraid of hardware or bandwidth
>>>limitations?  Are a bunch of self motivated learners to potentially
>>>radical and threatening to the status quo?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Perhaps the irony is that the board has deliberately chosen not to
>>engage in "top down management" and to let this community "manage
>>itself".  This has a lot to recommend it, because the wikiversity
>>proposal is a lot stronger for it.
>>
>>But if you are really upset that this community-driven process takes so
>>long, then instead of clamoring for the board to not micromanage, you
>>should perhaps ask us to do so.  I am quite sure that we could get
>>Wikiversity approved and up and running in 2-3 weeks time, if we chose
>>to run roughshod over the community to do it.
>>
>>This is actually a very typical scenario, of course.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>Although the community should ideally decide about things it is my
>feeling that that is more often than not an utopian thought. The problem
>is everybody tries to throw their opinions in a debate and tries to get
>attention to these opinions. This usually results in an endless debate.
>Many debates within our community therefor are already going on for 2,3
>or more years. This because some people leave. Some people join and new
>views are expressed and the same debate is extended again. Because of
>this we never reach any conclusions to a debate. Which is one of the
>things that make people very tired of wikimedia (me for instance)
>
>I feel that there are 3 solutions:
>
>1) A top down approach. The community gets x time to debate an issue
>(say 1 - 3 months) after that the boards takes this debate into account
>and makes a decision and that is final
>
>2) A variant of 1) The community appoints 1 or 2 discussionleaders. They
>will guide the debate in phases. Thesis->Antithesis etc. And will write
>a conclusion to the debate at the end. And present this conclusion as
>the community consensus and the board has to accept this.
>
>3) The least feasible though I think an interesting option. People start
>to group themselves in parties and every party has 1 person as its
>spokesperson in the debate. This means that it will not become a
>cacophonia of voices and the debate might proceed faster. After 1-3
>months the  spokespersons should reach a consensus which is acceptable
>to most.
>
>Hope someone reads this
>
>Waerth/Walter van Kalken
>_______________________________________________
>
I read it.

Some mighty fine reasoning.

 From my perspective all of these approaches and variations have been
implemented from time to time locally so you are spot on.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 14/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Also, what exactly is so slow about the transclusion?  Raw inclusion
> > > of source code from another source is not typically a particularly
> > > expensive operation, when thinking of C's #INCLUDE, for example. Is it
> > > the finding of the transcluded page by name, or what?
> >
> > What part of the email I sent implies it's "so slow"?
>
> None. However, common belief appears to be that substituting commonly
> used, static templates is good for performance reasons.

Never underestimate the ability of humans to emulate that which goes "baa".

> So, bots that transclude for performance reasons should be stopped?
> All the templates that are labelled "This template is a good candidate
> for subst:" should be rethought? Do you think your response represents
> "the developers'" opinion in general?

Substituting templates should be done when the template is being used
as a boilerplate or in cases where, for instance, it'll never need to
be changed again. Something like a vandalism warning, as an example,
isn't going to need to be changed in all locations, so substituting it
is more appropriate, not to mention, if it's a "testX" template, then
the user can hit edit and start to understand how the site works, not
be confronted with a brace substitution.

Templates as tags, et al. do need to be changed so that things are
consistent, and should use regular transclusion.

I can't speak for the developers as a team. We all have our own
opinions about what's "neat" and "clean" from a technical standpoint.
For what it's worth, however, Brion Vibber has expressed a previous
opinion that fragile editorial constructs are...fragile (spoken from
the perspective of an editor, I think) and that policies shouldn't be
dictated based on what people believe the server load to be.

Rob Church


body:
Hello,

I have given a bit of thought in the issue during the past few days, in
reading all the emails on this list, and I had the opportunity today to
talk with one of the co-founder of the Apache Foundation, in particular
about the way their Foundation is organised. I put wikitech in copy,
because I am pretty sure some of the guys there know the organisation
and will be able to correct me if necessary.

I thought that his description of his Foundation... would very possibly
fit pretty well what it seems many on this list are looking for and
solve some of our current problems.

It has some points in commons with the previous Wikicouncil on which we
had worked, but one of the problems with the Wikicouncil was ... the
rather unclear role of this one.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil

Now, from what I understood from Lars description, I think the Apache
Foundation model could rather well fit us... if so, why trying to
reinvent the wheel ?

I will try to describe below, using largely what is explained on their
site + his comments. Please correct me if you view some
misunterpretations. Also, if you know the organisation from the inside,
please comment.

--------

Ant : Bare facts : their goals (please compare with our goals)

What is the Apache Software Foundation?

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit
organization incorporated in the United States of America and was formed
primarily to:

* provide a foundation for open, collaborative software development
projects by supplying hardware, communication, and business infrastructure
* create an independent legal entity to which companies and individuals
can donate resources and be assured that those resources will be used
for the public benefit
* provide a means for individual volunteers to be sheltered from legal
suits directed at the Foundation's projects
* protect the 'Apache' brand, as applied to its software products, from
being abused by other organizations

Ant : Aside from point 3, that's roughly similar to us

--------

The Foundation structure

At the time the ASF was created, there were several separate
communities, each focused on a different side of the "web serving"
problem, but all united by a common set of goals and a respected set of
cultural traditions in both etiquette and process.

Ant : in short, several projects with rather individual communities and
a common goal.

These separate communities were referred to as "projects" and while
similar, each of them exhibited little differences that made them special.

In order to reduce friction and allow for diversity to emerge, rather
than forcing a monoculture from the top, the projects are designated the
central decision-making organizations of the Apache world. Each project
is delegated authority over development of its software, and is given a
great deal of latitude in designing its own technical charter and its
own governing rules.

The foundation is governed by the following entities:

Board of Directors (board) governs the foundation and is composed of
members.

Project Management Committees (PMC) govern the projects, and they are
composed of committers. (Note that every member is, by definition, also
a committer.)

Ant : for us, we currently have the board. Something similar to the PMC
was suggested on the list recently, so as to separate more strictly
board and projects

-----------

Board of Directors (board)

The board is responsible for management and oversight of the business
and affairs of the corporation in accordance with the foundation Bylaws.
This includes management of the corporate assets (funds, intellectual
property, trademarks, and support equipment) and allocation of corporate
resources to projects.

However, technical decision-making authority regarding the content and
direction of the Apache projects is assigned to each respective project
management committee.

The board is currently composed by nine individuals, elected between the
members of the foundation. The bylaws don't specify the number of
officers that the board should have, but historically, this was the
number of the first board and it has never changed. The board is elected
every year.

Ant : note that the board is elected by the members of the Foundation
(ASF Member). Not by all developers whatever their status, but only ASF
members (see below how to get ASF member).

Ant : Lars told me that the board was entirely elected. So entirely came
from within the community.

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

Project Management Committees (PMC)

The Project Management Committees are established by resolution of the
Board, to be responsible for the active management of one or more
communities, which are also identified by resolution of the Board.

Each PMC consists of at least one officer of the ASF, who shall be
designated chairperson, and may include one or more other members of the
ASF.

The chair of the PMC is appointed by the Board and is an officer of the
ASF (Vice President). The chair has primary responsibility to the Board,
and has the power to establish rules and procedures for the day to day
management of the communities for which the PMC is responsible,
including the composition of the PMC itself.

Ant : in our case, the PMC (rather than the chair really) might have the
power to make the rules over copyright issues for example

The role of the PMC from a Foundation perspective is oversight. The main
role of the PMC is not code and not coding - but to ensure that all
legal issues are addressed, that procedure is followed, and that each
and every release is the product of the community as a whole. That is
key to our litigation protection mechanisms.

Secondly the role of the PMC is to further the long term development and
health of the community as a whole, and to ensure that balanced and wide
scale peer review and collaboration does happen. Within the ASF we worry
about any community which centers around a few individuals who are
working virtually uncontested. We believe that this is detrimental to
quality, stability, and robustness of both code and long term social
structures.

As the PMC, and the chair in particular, are eyes and ears of the ASF
Board, it is you that we rely on and need to trust to provide legal
oversight.

The board has the faculty to terminate a PMC at any time by resolution.

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

How does someone get PMC Member ?

PMC member is a developer or a committer that was elected due to merit
for the evolution of the project and demonstration of commitment. They
have write access to the code repository, an apache.org mail address,
the right to vote for the community-related decisions and the right to
propose an active user for committership. The PMC as a whole is the
entity that controls the project, nobody else.

-------

How does someone get ASF Member

ASF member is a person that was nominated by current members and elected
due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation. Members
care for the ASF itself. This is usually demonstrated through the roots
of project-related and cross-project activities. Legally, a member is a
"shareholder" of the foundation, one of the owners. They have the right
to elect the board, to stand as a candidate for the board election and
to propose a committer for membership. They also have the right to
propose a new project for incubation (we'll see later what this means).
The members coordinate their activities through their mailing list and
through their annual meeting.

Ant : note the subtle difference between an PMC member (dedicated to his
project , acquire a right to manage his project) with an ASF member
(dedicated to the Foundation or at least the general goal as opposed to
a specific project). Most people on this mailing list are typically ASF
type...

Ant : a subtility mentionned by Lars is that there is no limitation to
the members of ASF. It is a sort of confirmation process rather than
election. A person is recognised as "involved and trusted", hence she
becomes a member. So, there is not this notion we had previously thought
in the wikicouncil idea that 5 seats should be given to english
wikipedia, whilst only 3 for the french wikibooks and 1 for the catalan
wikiquote. As a result, the membership grows and grows... roughly 150
people if I remember well. Lars mentionned that when the quorum for vote
will become hard to reach, they will probably un-ASF memberise the
inactive members.

What do ASF members do ?

They elect the board...

Ant : now, think about it. If ASF members are *officially* ASF members,
they are not anonymous. All of them have their real name known. They are
real members of a legal entity. For us, anons or people refusing to give
their real names (at least privately) could not be ASF members. However,
they could elect (or support) other people to become ASF members.

Ant : another thing not mentionned on their website but which I was
explained : each project committee must mandatorily have at least 2 ASF
members on it. They also have an incubator area, where new projects are
started and tested. Similarly, these projects must be "headed" by a
committeee (elected by its own members), on which must be found at least
2 ASF members.

---------

Other Foundation Entities

After infrastructure and incubator, the foundation hosts several other
entities more or less formalized open to ASF members and to invited
experts or individuals that do not directly create code but serve for
specific purposes. They are:

the conference organizing committee (aka concom) -- responsible for the
organization of the official ASF conference (aka ApacheCon)

the security committee -- responsible for the handling of potential
security holes in the software produced by the foundation that might
impact our users. It gets contacted by the finders of the problems
before the problem report is made available to the public, to allow the
projects to provide a fix in time for the report, thus reducing
vulnerability to a minimum

the public relations committee -- responsible for the fund raising
(collaborates with the concom since the conference is one of the major
sources of income of the foundation) and public relations - including
trademark licensing and other issues regarding management of the Apache
brand, raising of funds, and is responsible for the press-related issues
like press releases for major ASF events or dispatching requests for
interviews.

the JCP committee -- responsible for the liaison between the ASF and the
Java Community Process (the ASF is a member of the JCP Executive Committee)

the licensing committee -- responsible for the legal issues associated
with licensing and license compatibilities and for the revision of the
Apache Software License

Ant : guess what ? That looks as our committees...

------

Congrats to all those who made up so far.
I summarize.

An organisation with
* a board
* members (ASF members)
* aside committees (event, public relations etc...)

ASF Members elect the board.

A collection of projects, whose participants elect ASF members.

Each project has a governing committee in charge, on which there are at
leasts 2 ASF members, and which report to the board of the ASF.

Comments ?

Ant


subject: [Wikitech-l] A proposal for organisation


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject:
[Foundation-l] Hiring of Interim Executive Director and Legal
	Counsel

body:
> On 6/14/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/13/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I agree completely.  I resist very strongly any separation of
foundation
> > > and community.
> >
> > How about a different point of view? Separated in concept, but united
> > in practice. I am aware it sounds very inclining to a certain cultural
> > background, but still daresay this idea itself can be applied to many
> > cases, specially we need to cooperate with each other.
> >
> > Separation itself is nothing wrong. Separation without communication
> > nor collaboration is bad, or useless at best, assuredly.
> >
> > If there is no separation, we require never two words or concepts: in
> > practice the community isn't involved into a certain matter which the
> > foundation cares for, and vice versa, I assume. If that sounds too
> > metaphisical or awkward, we might need another terminology, like
> distinction, instead of separation.
>
> Delphine:
> Thank you for that. This is exactly what I think we should tend towards.

'Separated in concept, united in practice'.
It would have been a great subtitle for an Alexander Dumas novel. ;)
Aphaia or Delphine can one of you explain what this means?

Let me explain what I meant with the statement that Jimmy commented on. I'll
try not to repeat myself too much, but rather to expand and explain.

The point made earlier about separation of foundation and community refers
to posts where people argue that the foundation has different
responsibilities, different legal liabilities, by necessity a different
modus operandi and even a different set of objectives, other than those of
the community. (paraphrasing here) Some made it sound as if the community
should mind its own business and let the foundation do what it knows is best
for all of us. (again paraphrasing) This is what I and others objected to.
We should not think of a foundation and a community as separate entities,
with operations that are mutually unconnected. I'm glad Jimmy endorsed this
view, though I am not sure we agree on the finer details, where decision
making dynamics are involved.

Of course foundation and community are not identical. Not a dualistic
wave/particle entity. They are different. The foundation and the board take
responsibility for judicial and administrative obligations and committments
that need to be dealt with daily. By paying our bills, signing contracts,
guarding our rights, etc they serve the community. That is all fine with me.

The crux of the debate as I see it is: Can the foundation have an autonomous
role in defining Wikimedias long term goals, and even more important the
final say? Can the CEO and/or the board formulate Wikimedia long term
strategy by itself, decide which deals to strike with what kind of
corporations on which terms, and which grants to accept on which terms,
without clear, written and binding general principles a.k.a. mandate from
the community? Can the board appoint members from outside the community
(still hypothetical but hinted to by Jimmy) and explain afterwards that this
was the perfect candidate (compare CEO), or should the board use reason and
arguments to convince the community of its wise proposal and possibly stand
corrected ?

Whether discussions on this list are representative for the vox populi is
anyones guess. If they are, about half of the community would like to see
fundamental changes in how that same community is represented. Of course
everyone may be tempted to think that the silent majority approves current
status quo by not complaining, but equally so one can think it approves
current criticism by not countering it. The silent majority is like a
portrait that smiles at you from every corner of the room, but to everyone
else at the same time. There is only one way to know what the community
really wants: let's ask them explicitly. Either by survey or plebiscite. It
would strengthen the sense of community if people cannot only express an
opinion (survey) but really exert influence (plebiscite0. Of course the
usual precautions against sock puppetry apply.

I'm in favour of chosen representatives, checks and balances, written
procedures, formally approved strategy. all of this without becoming overly
bureaucratic. Some slowing down might be inevitable but might be a good
thing when broad outlines are to be defined. I'll happily trust the board to
translate these strategical community approved outlines into daily tactical
decisons, and answer the community about them afterwards.

Erik Zachte


body:
Anthere, thank you for your very informative, thought provoking and as
always highly original contribution to the discussion :-)

Erik Zachte


body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>Now, from what I understood from Lars description, I think the Apache
>>Foundation model could rather well fit us... if so, why trying to
>>reinvent the wheel ?
>
>
> It could work, except that all the democratic bits would have to be cut out.
> I've been pushing a membership model with an elected board for a long time,
> but it's become clear that the powers that be are fundamentally opposed to
> it. The ASF model could work, with the modification that the Board would be
> appointed by Jimbo and the members wouldn't exist.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Okay

But could we discuss the impossible idealistic option nevertheless ?

ant


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

body:
Tim Starling napisa?(a):
> Anthere wrote:
>> Now, from what I understood from Lars description, I think the Apache
>> Foundation model could rather well fit us... if so, why trying to
>> reinvent the wheel ?
>
> It could work, except that all the democratic bits would have to be cut out.
> I've been pushing a membership model with an elected board for a long time,
> but it's become clear that the powers that be are fundamentally opposed to
> it. The ASF model could work, with the modification that the Board would be
> appointed by Jimbo and the members wouldn't exist.

If I may, I would like to throw in a little personal comment. Please,
don't take this personal Tim, your mail is not a reason in itself,
rather it's an excuse to say the things I've been thinking for the past
2 or 3 weeks.

Here goes...

The level of cynism in this debate is starting to get on my nerves at times.

Some of you don't like the way the Foundation works right now. I'm
perfectly OK with that.

Some people may not really dislike the way the Foundation works, but
think it could work better and are trying to change it for the better.
Great, go for it.

What I don't like is when the first group keeps saying things which I
can only summarize as "Har har har. Good one, really. You do know this
is never going to work, right?"

Please, do *not* do that. It is really annoying.

If you want things to change - help Ant and the others out. If you don't
want to change anything - say so. Or you can just sit back, relax,
*refrain from throwing in cynical remarks* and see what happens next.
There is no other option.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
?ukasz "TOR" Garczewski


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Block against

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:

>BTW cf. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Staff_lounge#Banned_WP_editor_Primetime
>which seems to have been accepted without question. That's more the
>kind of thing I was talking about...(again this is more copyright
>related, not social behaviour, and lazyquasar made a good point that
>in some cases people can "start anew".) I mean yes each project has
>its own community but I don't think it's beneficial to treat them like
>strangers. In situations like this we can work together and save each
>other some hassle.
>
>Heh, imagine if WoW showed up at a new project and we had this
>attitude... "Give the man a chance! He might have reformed!" :)
>
>cheers
>Brianna
>
>
Look, I'm not saying that actions on one Wikimedia project should be
ignored, but it is only "evidence" to help build a case against a user.
 You shouldn't have a knee jerk reaction and assume that bad actions are
going to carry over from one project to the next.  It is cause to
investigate, however, and I have reviewed the edits of Zephraim Stark on
Wikibooks in the past myself.  And carried on conversations with him on
talk pages and e-mails.

Things like open proxies and routinely abusive ip addresses (such as one
IP address from an Indian internet bar that has caused a bunch of
problems for Wikimedia projects) should be investigated and banned as
appropriate.  And have been by local admins on Wikibooks.  That is my
point as well, that Jimbo didn't need to perform this micromanagement
activity.  A warning to watch out for this user would have been more
than sufficient.  A note by admins from Wikipedia would have been more
than sufficient, if they felt it was of sufficient merit to warn other
Wikimedia sister projects.

This is one more case where I say trust the community to get it right,
as extreme micromanagement by the WMF board is going to simply cause
problems in the future.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] moving forward on
	article	validation

body:
SJ wrote:
> Note that the "Wikipedia 0.5" WikiProject on en:wp is tackling this
> issue with some energy, and could use more input and nominations:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.5_Nominations
>
I wasn't aware of that; thanks for pointing it out.  It does seem to be
tackling a different problem though.  My concern is with particular
*revisions* of articles---that a specific version of the article has
been reviewed and determined to be good.  Wikipedia 0.5 seems to be
using a process similar to feature articles where articles are tagged,
which doesn't necessarily guarantee that the current version of any
included article is actually good (although it may raise the probability).

> Naive, single-scale ratings have many problems that I don't see being
> overcome.  (The advogato suggestions are no panacaea.)  Allowing
> groups of editors (self-selecting, auto-selected by user properties)
> to provide revision metadata that others can choose to see or not see
> as they please would be more scalable and less gameable.  Some of
> these groups could provide metadata of the form 'decent and not
> vandalized content'.
>
I agree there are more things that could be presented, but I think we
need a fairly simple display for non-logged-in users to see by default.
More data available for those interested is certainly fine, but a
passerby should, IMO, be able to tell at a glance how much credence to
put in the article they're about to read.

>>> Proposal #3: Extend a feature-article-like process
>>>
>
> I'm not sure what you meant by your example -- for instance by 'work
> on revisions rather than articles', as the goal is still a better
> article (you can't change a historical revision) -- but this is
> effectively what the en:wp validation effort is attempting.  This
> scales in that it can be split up among topic-centered WikiProjects.
> See for instance this list:

The issue with revisions instead of articles is that I think there
should be some indication that a particular revision has been reviewed.
A reader can then read it in confidence that someone has checked it, or
maybe if the current version hasn't been checked even ask for the last
reviewed version.  At the moment there's no such process---even with a
feature article, I can't necessarily trust any of the facts without
reading through the history to make sure it hasn't been vandalized in
the last 10 minutes with some sneaky change, or even completely wrecked
in the days/weeks/etc. since the last review; and even if I know it's in
flux, there's no easy way for me to find the last good version without
wading through the history.

-Mark


subject: [Textbook-l] Game Guides

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>>There is a group on Wikibooks, following the textbook only philosophy to
>>an extreme, that suggests How-to books do not belong on Wikibooks
>>either, along with the removal of Video Game texts and even biographies
>>were suggested for removal.  One of the justifications for this is that
>>Wikia projects exist now for these subjects and as such they are no
>>longer needed on Wikibooks.
>>
>>
>
>This justification does not come from me and makes no sense to me.
>
>If, however, the community of Wikibooks is purging content that does not
>fit with the initial mission of Wikibooks, I see no problem with that.
>
>Please do not portray things that I have not done, am not doing, and
>have nothing to do with as being somehow things that I am doing for some
>alleged financial benefit.
>
>
>
>>What has really surprised me, and I think shows how rediculous the drive
>>to remove content from Wikibooks has gone, was the reaction I got to
>>suggesting a formal textbook about video game design focusing on Doom
>>was met with substantial resistance and even outright rejection.
>>
>>
>
>I would assume that it is quite easy to find a course on video game
>design, and then to write a textbook for that course, using Doom as an
>extended example.  Why should this be problematic?
>

Because content has been removed from Wikibooks citing your words as
justification for the action.  No community discussion was held, just
the invokation of your words and the words "not a textbook" as the only
justification.  If this doesn't come from you, then there are some
people who are taking some signficant liberties where it shouldn't
occur.  I have refused to wheel war on this topic (for the most part),
but instead let the content be deleted and try to fight its removal by
raising this as a policy discussion, in an attempt to try and "take
back" Wikibooks, hoping that other users would also agree that the
content shouldn't be indiscriminately deleted without at least a
community concensus as to what should or should not be on Wikibooks.

People are leaving Wikibooks over this issue, and I am not the only one
who has raised the question that the whole idea of what is legitimate
content on Wikibooks is being questioned.  My user talk page just had
another user ask me if I knew what could be added to Wikibooks as
something reasonable, and I couldn't give him a good answer with the
current state that Wikibooks is in.  I am not confident that even the
Wikibooks that I started that have tried to be legitimate textbooks
might be spared the wrath of deletion.

>> I even
>>cited specific univsersity courses and majors from prominent accredited
>>educational institutions to demonstrate that such a textbook would not
>>only exist, but might even be useful for teaching one of these formal
>>courses.  I still contend that content like this is being rejected
>>because of the topic alone.
>>
>>
>
>Well, I do not agree with that at all.
>
>
>
I'm glad that a bit of sanity has entered this discussion.  Thank you
for your replies on this subject.

--
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Congrats to all those who made up so far.
> I summarize.
>
>
> An organisation with
> * a board
> * members (ASF members)
> * aside committees (event, public relations etc...)
>
> ASF Members elect the board.
>
> A collection of projects, whose participants elect
> ASF members.
>
> Each project has a governing committee in charge, on
> which there are at
> leasts 2 ASF members, and which report to the board
> of the ASF.
>
> Comments ?
>
> Ant
>
>
>
>

Personally,  I  really like this model a great deal.
I like it much better as it is here than with any of
the modifications which have already been proposed.
This really could work easily without major elections
in most cases.  I think we should keep it as simple as
possible.  Start off with all current buearucrats
being Project Members ask them to immediately nominate
one(?) other person from where they are a bueruecrat
and two(?) people from a language too small to have a
buerucrat.  That is the seed membership which should
allow initial elections of officers and voting on
basic bylaws etc.  From then on any Project Member can
nominate anyone to join as in Apache, also future
buearucrats do not automatically become members.  Once
that is setup we begin to worry about how to seed the
Foundation Memebership.  I think that Foundation
Membership should be drawn from Project Members and
Chapter Members pretty much exclusively without
"making a choice" of which membership card one person
can carry.  Although I do not think *officers* at the
Project Level should hold any position on Foundation
Level commitees at the same time, I do not see a
problem with an officer being simple voting Foundation
Member.  Nor do I see a problem with Foundation
Committee members being simple voting Project or
Chapter Members.  I imagine the Foundation Membership
would be pretty self-balancing.  If for example the
Foundation Membership begins to be over weighted with
Wikipedia Project Members the Chapter Members and
other Non-pedia Project Members could easily put a
stop to more Wikipedia Projects Members being
confirmed and confirm people from other areas to
restore balance.

As to concerns that smaller languages will be left
out, and that they have different issues.  I think the
first can be easily avoided as so many people strongly
believe in promoting smaller languages.  Honestly can
they be more left out in this new system than they are
now?  That they face different challenges according to
size is even more reason to keep them together so they
can learn from each other.  A place were RC can be
checked by hand will one day grow, and to learn in
advance how to deal with libel on a larger project can
only be a benifit.  The problems faced at a smaller
languages can find many suggestions from those who
have already "been there and done that".  But I think
the Project Membership (especially non-pedia ones)
will be as concerned with common technical issues as
legal or procedural ones.  Besides that there are many
issues that *do* scale.  How to encourage people to
work on core topics, instead of pet projects for
example.  There could always be a backdoor built in to
allow the Board to appoint people from
un-representented languages to Project Membership if a
complaint comes up through the Chapters.  But I do not
think it would come to that.

Birgitte SB

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from_name: Netocrat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Section numbering

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/14/06, Netocrat ... wrote:
[>>Steve Bennett wrote:]
>> > IMHO, this kind of linking isn't that great anyawy. We should use
>> > proper anchors, as section names change so quickly (much more so than
>> > article names, at any rate), and there isn't (afaik) any way of
>> > finding out what links exist to a given section.
>>
>> And it causes unmemorable and long urls that are unsuited to Usenet
>> articles and emails.
>
> For common ones, you can set up redirects to the section heading. That
> works, thankfully.

That's welcome news: they didn't work the last time that I checked (1.5.x;
just confirmed on 1.5.6), but I see that they do on a 1.6.5 install.

>> === [[#shortid|1.1]] Heading and TOC entry ===
>
> Eep. :)

There are variations that avoid extras in the heading, but short of a core
code patch they're also flawed.

[...]

--
http://members.dodo.com.au/~netocrat


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/14/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> How does someone get ASF Member
>
> ASF member is a person that was nominated by current members and elected
> due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation. Members
> care for the ASF itself. This is usually demonstrated through the roots
> of project-related and cross-project activities. Legally, a member is a
> "shareholder" of the foundation, one of the owners. They have the right
> to elect the board, to stand as a candidate for the board election and
> to propose a committer for membership. They also have the right to
> propose a new project for incubation (we'll see later what this means).
> The members coordinate their activities through their mailing list and
> through their annual meeting.
>
> Ant : note the subtle difference between an PMC member (dedicated to his
> project , acquire a right to manage his project) with an ASF member
> (dedicated to the Foundation or at least the general goal as opposed to
> a specific project). Most people on this mailing list are typically ASF
> type...
>
> Ant : a subtility mentionned by Lars is that there is no limitation to
> the members of ASF. It is a sort of confirmation process rather than
> election. A person is recognised as "involved and trusted", hence she
> becomes a member. So, there is not this notion we had previously thought
> in the wikicouncil idea that 5 seats should be given to english
> wikipedia, whilst only 3 for the french wikibooks and 1 for the catalan
> wikiquote. As a result, the membership grows and grows... roughly 150
> people if I remember well. Lars mentionned that when the quorum for vote
> will become hard to reach, they will probably un-ASF memberise the
> inactive members.
>
>
> What do ASF members do ?
>
> They elect the board...
>
> Ant : now, think about it. If ASF members are *officially* ASF members,
> they are not anonymous. All of them have their real name known. They are
> real members of a legal entity. For us, anons or people refusing to give
> their real names (at least privately) could not be ASF members. However,
> they could elect (or support) other people to become ASF members.
>
> Ant : another thing not mentionned on their website but which I was
> explained : each project committee must mandatorily have at least 2 ASF
> members on it. They also have an incubator area, where new projects are
> started and tested. Similarly, these projects must be "headed" by a
> committeee (elected by its own members), on which must be found at least
> 2 ASF members.
>

I think this is the most interesting part of the organizational
structure.  In terms of Wikimedia, I'd like to see membership as an
extremely open thing.  But at the same time, I don't want to see it so
open as to being "members of all Wikimedia projects", as Delphine
describes it.

One potential problem is that Wikimedia is way too big to have voting
for every single member.  For this reason and also so that it remains
"no big deal" like adminship was supposed to be, I'd be strongly
opposed to voting.  Rather, there should be a clear standard for
identification and activity and anyone who meets this can apply.  Once
a member you remain a member as long as you remain active and aren't
kicked out.

The activity rules would be project specific, and should be met on a
regular basis in order to continue membership.  I'd like to see the
activity rules be somewhat tough, just editing a few times a year
shouldn't cut it.  But participation in offline activities would also
be taken into consideration.  For example if you show up to stuff
envelopes you're definitely considered active for that quarter.
Eventually there should probably be a committee which decides on the
activity rules.

Yes, this whole idea directly contradicts the ideas of some of the
people currently in power.  But unlike Tim Starling I don't think it's
an idea that should be given up.  The composition of Wikimedia's board
is not static, and neither is the opinion of any member of it.  I
think we can convince the board that this is the way to go.  Wikimedia
is a public charity, not a private foundation.  Ultimately it is
dependent on receiving a broad base of community support, not just the
support of a few insiders.

Anthony