subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 10/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I don't suppose you've ever seen that Gothic revival monstrosity in the
> > middle of London? ;)
> > [I cite this thread as an example of how humour can be beneficial to
> > process.]

> It can't possibly be any worse than the unfathomably ugly room that we
> call our Riksdag:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Riksdag_assembly_hall_2006.jpg

Wanna bet? [[Erotic gherkin]]

- d.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising season launch

body:
It is very nice to know we will get detailed financial information in days.
Regarding disclosure, I would like to point two things:

On 10/10/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ours is a community where saying "trust me" is not the same as "show
> me".  I look forward to being able to demonstrate the financial
> picture of the Foundation as soon as possible.

1. In the past fundraisings, we had multiple questions / requests for
detailed budget, expenses etc on talk pages. Some were really severe
criticisms in my impression. So I think, it will be better to provide
such information before we start a new round.
2. Concerning comments on past fundraisings, not every donors of us
didn't seem parts of editing community and some thought themselves not
parts of the community but just visitors/users. Before starting a new
fundraising campaign, we are better to remind whom we will ask a help.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 10/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Note however that due to a lack of "humor" he may not be comprehensible
> by 'Merkins.

FLORIDA, Tuesday (Wikinews) ? In a move to enhance the civility of the
editing environment on top-10 collaborative social networking site
Wikipedia, sarcasm has been banned from all Wikipedia editing spaces
as incivil.

"I was voicing my strong disapproval of a bad policy, as it was
obvious that the proponents were absolutely acting as Hitler would
have," said editor Harrison Bergeron. "Then they started quoting
Uncyclopedia article web addresses at me! Even after I'd alerted them
to their violation of Godwin's law! Well. That sort of thing is
unacceptable. It creates a bad working environment for everyone. We
obviously needed a new rule immediately."

Wikipedia God-King Jimbo Lear was quick to back the move. "We already
have a guideline against stupidity, which actually worked to abolish
all stupidity on Wikipedia and therefore removed any reasonable
motivation editors may have had to resort to sarcasm, even in cases of
extreme provocation, as all editors are now extremely clueful and on
the ball."

The move has been hailed in vigorous, blunt, strident, robust and bold
tones by many Wikipedians.

"I must say, I'm glad I have this rule to helpfully point out to those
rude assholes whenever they tell me that some say that critics hold my
writing to be excessively verbose, convoluted, overly redundant and
also tautological as well," said an editor who deleted his name from
the original version of this page. "They should just shut the fuck
up."

Wikipedia User:JSwift1729 was quick to add important proposals against
other antisocial behaviour on the wiki, such as smarminess, passive
aggression, satire and humour. Humor is also under consideration.
"It's really helpful that we can change people's thoughts, opinions
and behaviour by changing text on a policy page," Swift modestly said.
"We're also looking into banning smarty-pants, people who assume bad
faith by saying that a deletion nominator needs to learn about the
world outside Google, and people who make the grossly offensive
personal attack of saying that Michael Crichton novels and Rush
Limbaugh radio shows aren't as good reference sources on global
warming as peer-reviewed scientific papers. And it's against
neutrality, too. After we're done with them, we'll be taking on the
people who think they're better writers than others."

Some have resisted the changes. "Fortunately," said Bergeron,
"edit-warring the policy page back to my consensus version put paid to
them. Edit-warring is considerably less damaging to editing than
saying something someone thinks is mean. Your rights end where my
feelings begin. We're building a social networking site here."

==Sources==

* Harrison Bergeron "Mommy! He was *mean* when I called him a Nazi!".
WT:BLP, October 8, 2006
* Harrison Bergeron "No, really! *Really* mean! Punch the *shit* out
of him, Mommy!". WT:CIVIL, October 9, 2006

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Online_encyclopedia_Wikipedia_bans_sarcasm

- d.


from_name: mingli yuan

subject: [Foundation-l] Unblock for English Wikiepdia in China

body:
Good news!!

Many people reported that English Wikiepdia is unblocked in China.
We are waiting for more infomation about the unblock.

User:Mountain


subject: [WikiEN-l] All in VAIN?

body:
On 10/10/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> It has been pointed out to me that the is a, well, conflict now, with the old WP:VAIN now called Wikipedia:Conflict of interest being more than somewhat adjacent to Wikipedia:Conflicts of interests.
> Is this going to be a merge? Cleaning up a guideline page is one thing. Assuming I'm up to merging hot-potato policies is another ...

Um, yeah, I pointed that out to Radiant! at the time ...

I'm sure we can work something out. Maybe a new name! What's the
occasional double or triple redirect between editors?

- d.


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources: problems with [[WP:RS]]

body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Sarah wrote:

> and that of the editors who support WP:V.

Wikipedia without [[WP:V]] is not an option worth considering. Hope
that all respected editors that have seen what it takes to fight POV
pushers, trolls, and the likes, would not be inclined to reduce the
strength of that policy.

My not so humble opinion.

-- Josi


from_name: Jim Redmond

references:
<egd7co$vj2$1@sea.gmane.org> <452AB443.3080108@telus.net>
	<52BFEA5F-ED3E-4874-8F59-4545A5AE991D@scrubnugget.com>
	<egfrc8$4bm$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Ant wrote:
>> Under US law, the Foundation is required to provide copies of its
>> three most recent 990s* to anyone who requests them.  It should be
>> trivial to post them in PDF format on the Foundation site as
>> other .orgs have done.
>
> Good idea :-)
> Can you request those ?

I can.  There are also a couple sites like www.guidestar.org (free
registration required) which list 990s for many non-profits, WMF included.

I just think it would be nice to have them readily available on the
Foundation wiki because
a) the Foundation is already required to complete one,
b) the Foundation is already required to make it available, and
c) even if a potential donor is not in the US, the information therein
could be very useful.

The Form 990 won't help people who want to know how the chapters handle
their money, but at least it's a start.

--
Jim Redmond
jim at scrubnugget.com


from_name: shi zhao

body:
Yes. only zh wp blocked.

2006/10/10, mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com>:
> Good news!!
>
> Many people reported that English Wikiepdia is unblocked in China.
> We are waiting for more infomation about the unblock.
>
> User:Mountain
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
CNBlog: http://blog.cnblog.org/weblog.html
Social Brain: http://www.socialbrain.org/default.asp
cnbloggercon: http://www.cnbloggercon.org/

[[zh:User:Shizhao]]


from_name: A. Özgür Erdemli

body:
In general we should be aware of upcomming financial shortages and we should
aware of upcomming needs so we can create a plan and work on it in advance.
All these reminds me the importance of "Financial
committee"<http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Financial_committee&action=edit>and
"Fundraising
committee <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee>", so
everything could be in order.

Dbl2010

On 10/10/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Erik, I have to agree with Danny we need to not get ahead of ourselves
> here.
>
> But in round numbers, just as a *starting point* -
>
> If we have +/- 250 servers running now
> *and we double in traffic every four months
> *and the costs per server (for round number purposes, including racks,
> power, etc.) are $4000
> *we are talking about *starting* with a $1M computer order being
> fulfilled before March 1.
>
> If we add to that the next 500 computers, at the same rate, we are
> talking about a batch of $2M beyond that.  /me's head spins.
>
> Let's say we disagree and growth levels out at the same rate we are at
> now, it is still another several hundred thousand dollars to get ahead
> of the curve.  For that assumption to hold, however, many, many things
> would have to be wrong with our predictions about expanding smaller
> wikis, etc.  And the rest of the stuff on your list would have been
> for no effect in terms of growth.
>
> Even purchasing rack after rack after rack, these technical operations
> challenges are daunting, and cannot be ignored.  They *are* the most
> important thing, whether you choose to put your head in the sand about
> the facts or not.  If there is one thing I have come to appreciate
> even more than I did at Hacking Days, it is that the technical
> component will come back to bite us even harder if we neglect it like
> we did this summer.  We must purchase capacity on at least a 3x per
> year basis, with linear or geometric assumptions.
>
> -Brad
>
> On 10/10/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > Slow down a bit. Let's start with the basics. For various
> technical  reasons,
> > a fundraiser should not start at the beginning of the month.
> >
> > Befpre deciding that the fopcus shoudl not be servers, decide what the
> real
> > needs are. If servers happen to be the primary cost, then that should be
> the
> > focus.
> >
> > I am wary of turning this into an OLPC/Wikimedia fundraiser, even if
> just  by
> > tying the two organizations together. It may also run counter to our 501
> c 3
> > status, but of this I am not sure.
> >
> > Will the money go to chapters or to the Foundation? Can the chapters
> > transfer money to the foundation if needed?
> >
> > How will funds donated be processed? Who will process them? How will we
> > recognize donors, both by what is required by law and by what is simply
> a nice
> > way to recognize them? This is an enormous amount of work.
> >
> > Just some thoughts.
> >
> > Danny
> >
> > In a message dated 10/10/2006 3:27:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> > erik at wikimedia.org writes:
> >
> > On  10/9/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > As an individual  (not board member), I would like to ask if it were
> > > possible that the  spin around the fundraising, focuses a bit on the
> > > other projects,  perhaps the notion of virtual library, with the
> > > wikicommons and  wikisource. We have the recent report of the german
> > > digitization to  show up as an example as how we could push things
> > > forward in realm of  digital libraries.
> >
> > Yes, it seems absolutely essential to me that the  communication
> > strategy is carefully planned _before_ we ask for  money.
> >
> > What have the Foundation and the Chapters accomplished so far?  What is
> > the status of our work to bring Wikimedia to developing  countries?
> > What have our expenses been? (Get audited financial reports  out.) What
> > expenses do we foresee? What strategic projects are around the  corner?
> > What is the state of the projects besides Wikipedia, the  small
> > languages?
> >
> > The last thing I want is another "WE NEED MORE  SERVERS" fundraiser.
> >
> > So, in order to do this properly:
> >
> > Brad -  can we assume that the financial statements will be published
> > before Nov 1?  Can you work on outlining some expenses over the next 6
> > months you see as  critical, in broad terms (staff, hardware, etc.)?
> >
> > Tim - when are the  static dumps going to be ready?
> >
> > Samuel - can you pass on some  promotional materials re: the OLPC
> > partnership to the Fundraising  Committee?
> >
> > Delphine - can you compile a report on chapter activity (max  10K,
> > pictures would be nice)? What projects were completed, what  chapters
> > were set up?
> >
> > Jimmy, Florence - shall we prepare a detailed  vision statement on
> > Board Wiki? I volunteer to take a first stab at the  structure.
> >
> > Sabine - could you write a little report regarding  translation
> > projects, and future activities you can envision in this  area?
> >
> > I would suggest early November as a launch of the fundraising  drive. I
> > would like to see some new functionality implemented for  this
> > fundraising drive as well, e.g. the ability to donate directly  from
> > any Wikimedia project page, as well as a more prominent display  of
> > donor comments above a certain amount.
> >
> > Most importantly, however,  I want us to start working very soon on a
> > decent appeal for support and  report of activity so far. I understand
> > that donor attention is limited, so  we need to have a very short
> > general appeal, but those who care should be  able to find detailed
> > information about what we are doing and why we need  support.
> >
> > Ideally, the information we compile here should be useful to  approach
> > organizations and wealthy individuals, beyond just a general  appeal to
> > the masses.
> >
> > Does that sound reasonable? :-)
> > --
> > Peace & Love,
> > Erik
> >
> > Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of  Trustees
> >
> > DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions  expressed
> > in this message are solely my own and do not represent an  official
> > position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of  Trustees.
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l  mailing  list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Brad Patrick
> General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> bradp.wmf at gmail.com
> 727-231-0101
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 10/10/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was speaking on the level of the organisation, not the individuals who
> make it up - over-PC, fear of anything which might offend, quick to
> prosecute, &c.
>
> I find it's the lion tamers that tend to be grey and dull.

>From what I've seen of the British government, they're a riot. I mean,
come on, booing in the parliament! That's awesome! You should see how
it is over here, it's all touchy-feely crap and bad architecture.

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 10/10/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > You should see how
> > it is over here, it's all touchy-feely crap and bad architecture.
>
>
> I don't suppose you've ever seen that Gothic revival monstrosity in the
> middle of London? ;)
>
> [I cite this thread as an example of how humour can be beneficial to
> process.]

It can't possibly be any worse than the unfathomably ugly room that we
call our Riksdag:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Riksdag_assembly_hall_2006.jpg

(note: it used to look even worse! )

The worst part is, it looks really nice from outside!

--Oskar


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
>
>
>
> More than three people have exhibited concern abount the action here
> on this list.  It is rude and insulting TO US to blow off the concerns
> in this manner.

I second that motion.

In fact, that's one of the reasons I have given up. Honest dissent is met by
dismissal of concerns at best, and outright hostility at worst.

My past few days sending emails this way have been enlightening, and I'll
probably be dropping out completely in a couple more the way things are
going.

Parker


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 10/10/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Getting back to the original point, there's actually far more scope for
> sarcasm when you are forced to call someone "the honourable gentleman from
> foo".  Sadly, they don't seem to utilise that opportunity as well as they
> might.
>
> Ian

We do.Try reading the test templates sometime.

--
geni


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] All in VAIN?

body:
It has been pointed out to me that the is a, well, conflict now, with the old WP:VAIN now called Wikipedia:Conflict of interest being more than somewhat adjacent to Wikipedia:Conflicts of interests.

Is this going to be a merge? Cleaning up a guideline page is one thing. Assuming I'm up to merging hot-potato policies is another ...

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > I think that a significant amount of the confusion here has to do with
> > it being a little unclear whether this was intended as a WP:OFFICE act.
> >   It was done under Danny's normal account, with no reference to
> > WP:OFFICE, so I think it is safe to assume this was Danny acting in his
> > capacity and a long standing and widely respected editor exercising
> > editorial judgment in a manner consistent with our longstanding policies
> > of being bold.
> >
>
> No. The guideline is "be bold in updating articles". It doesn't really
> apply to admin actions.

Yes, the guideline does say that.  The guideline that editors should
be bold is for newbies who need help in understanding how WIkipedia
works (i.e. not by a horrendous editorial system).  The principle[1]
that *all* editors (including admins) should be bold in their actions
where to do so would be to the project's benefit is so obvious that it
doesn't need stating.

Or does it?

[1] Principle is my word for basic policies, as the word "policy" has
been tainted.

--
Sam


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.8.0 released

body:
Great job Brion. I'll upgrade everything later this evening.

Jeff

Brion Vibber wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>October 10, 2006
>
>This is the quarterly release snapshot for Fall 2006. While the code
>has been running on Wikipedia for some time, installation and upgrade
>bits may be less well tested. Bug fix releases may follow in the coming
>days or weeks.
>
>
>MediaWiki is now using a "continuous integration" development model with
>quarterly snapshot releases. The latest development code is always kept
>"ready to run", and in fact runs our own sites on Wikipedia.
>
>Release branches will continue to receive security updates for about a year
>from first release, but nonessential bugfixes and feature development happen
>will be made on the development trunk and appear in the next quarterly release.
>
>Those wishing to use the latest code instead of a branch release can obtain
>it from source control: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN
>
>
>== Configuration changes ==
>
>* $wgUseETag, to enable/disable sending of HTTP ETag headers
>  (default: disabled)
>* $wgLegalTitleChars now includes '+' by default for better compatibility
>  with importing data dumps from Wikipedia
>* $wgDefaultUserOptions now includes all default option settings instead
>  of only overrides.
>
>
>== Major new features ==
>
>* (bug 7098) Add an option to disable/enable sending of HTTP ETag headers,
>  as it seems to result in broken behaviour in combination with Squid 2.6
>  (disabled by default).
>* (bug 550) Allow blocks on anonymous users only.
>* (bug 6420) Render thumbnails for DJVU images, support multipage DJVU display
>  on image pages. Added new 'page=' thumbnail option to select a page from a
>  multipage djvu for thumbnail generation.
>* Full Postgres support is now enabled. It requires version 8.1 or better, and
>  needs to have both plpgsql and tsearch2 already installed.
>* (bug 6386) fix grammatical errors in danish naming of talk namespaces.
>
>
>
>Full release notes:
>http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/tags/REL1_8_0/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES
>http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/tags/REL1_8_0/phase3/HISTORY
>
>Download:
>http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.8.0.tar.gz
>
>MD5 checksum:
>9141eba6b8faf17fe80edeb7699cfca4  mediawiki-1.8.0.tar.gz
>
>SHA-1 checksum:
>28084a2a1c307e558fa5e99975d3a3dbee2e9586 mediawiki-1.8.0.tar.gz
>
>
>Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
>http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:FAQ
>
>Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
>(Please subscribe to receive announcements of security updates.)
>http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
>
>Wiki admin help mailing list:
>http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>
>Bug report system:
>http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
>
>Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
>#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net
>
>- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin)
>Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
>iD8DBQFFLCV1wRnhpk1wk44RAoUcAJ9cGr304axlxgLLUWMwwfd4K8tR/ACgj12i
>K8n5h25gWOLReeSsjdzBPlg=
>=ceUE
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
On 10/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/10/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> > <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > > geni wrote
>
> > > > More arbcom members in future can be arranged.
>
> > > You can bring a horse to water, but can you make it drink?
>
> > Past experence suggests no after the first month.
>
>
> Lots of people want to be on the arbcom, but the job *sucks*: dredging
> through the worst stupidity on the wiki (one or both participants),
> writing up something that would pass sanity check (wouldn't make
> anyone looking at it cough up a hairball) and dealing with flak from
> all sides. It's a job custom-made for burnout.
>
> And the people you see in AC elections who give you the first thought
> "OH GOD NO" and make you vote for *anyone* else.
>
> And we're about to become a top 10 website. w00t!
>
> Committees don't scale too well in general on the wiki.
>
> Hey, AC. How's it been going this year?

Stressful and time-consuming; that's one of the reasons almost half
the members are currently inactive.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/10/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, the guideline does say that.  The guideline that editors should
> be bold is for newbies who need help in understanding how WIkipedia
> works (i.e. not by a horrendous editorial system).  The principle[1]
> that *all* editors (including admins) should be bold in their actions
> where to do so would be to the project's benefit is so obvious that it
> doesn't need stating.
>
> Or does it?

That principle would be flawed on a number of levels. You can undo the
fact that someone has been blocked. Most editors can't undo deletions.
Screwing up certain things in the mediawiki namespace is bad. The
amount of damage an editor can do is the for the most part minimal.
The amount of damage an admin can do both to wikipedia and other
editors is rather more significant.

> [1] Principle is my word for basic policies, as the word "policy" has
> been tainted.

Has anyone got around to creating a wikipediaese to English dictionary yet?

--
geni


from_name: Sarah

body:
Phil, I don't want to defend RS, bcause I think it's a silly page, but
I do defend V, which is the policy. I'm concerned about your attempts
to rewrite RS given that you recently wanted to add material to an
article using a post on a talk page, and I wondered if you could
explain your position on that more fully.

My understanding is that the long-term professional partner of [[Dave
Carter]], an American folk singer posted to the talk page of his
article that he had sought a sex-change operation just before he died.
This had not been published anywhere, not even on the partner's (Tracy
Grammer's) own website.

You verified that it really was the partner who had made the post to
the talk page, and proceeded to add it to the article. When you were
reverted because you had no reliable published source, you said you
had spoken to the Foundation who said you could add it. It turned out
that you had spoken to User:Amgine, who subsequently posted that she
wasn't in a position to speak on behalf of the Foundation, and was
only giving a personal view.

You then said you'd spoken to Jimbo and that his advice was to add the
material first to Wikinews, and then to use Wikinews as a source,
which you did. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dave_Carter&diff=75998688&oldid=75928996
This was also reverted, for the same reason: no reliable published
source.

Can you explain why you think we should be able to use posts made on
talk pages as sources?  Do you think we should be able to use Wikinews
as a sole source, given that anyone can edit it? Is it true that Jimbo
thinks Wikinews should be used a source for Wikipedia?

I think if you could explain your views on this it would help to
illuminate what the differences are between your position and that of
the editors who support WP:V.

Sarah


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] What to do with wikimedia.com/.org

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> 1) a link to the Foundation website
>> 2) links to the chapter websites (slightly smaller)
>> 3) links to the projects (slightly smaller still).
>>
>>
>
> There should be a donation link there somewhere.
>
>
>> The site itself should avoid language, but I'm sure we can make it
>> spiffier than the current one.
>>
>> Is this general pattern acceptable? If so, I suggest we launch and
>> advertise a design contest.
>>
>
> No. Tried that before it doesn't work. It sort of works for single
> images but for entire layouts you are probably looking for ways to get
> people to colaberate.
Hoi,
Currently the only options we have is to have a user and consequently
the addressing of people in their user language or people are completely
anonymous and they are addressed in English. When single login is
finally getting priority, a site like wikipedia.org or wikimedia.org
will be able to make use of what we already know from users. Having text
will therefore be less of an issue.

I would advocate to have a halfway house between a user and the current
standard address in English. I would like people to opt for there
anonymous usage of our services by just indicating a language
preference. This would be associated with that user on a platform and
consequently they will get a user interface (when we have it) for that
language on any of our projects. In my opinion, this would be a great
help for many people. This would also make the step that people have to
take a lot less steep. I know that many English wikipedians would like
less people contributing, this feature is not for them. This feature
will help people who do NOT speak English as their first language.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposed guidelines in our IRC channels

body:
Greetings,

As some are aware, I recently started up #wikimedia-ops as an attempt
to organise op activity across the network. I think what we have going
works - although so far there have been few issues that have needed
the co-ordination (that I've seen, anyway), the idea is there and the
opportunity for help is being advertised. IRC is a powerful resource
that as an organisation we use well, but there is room for
improvement.

When someone is kicked rem'med from a channel, there are usually
arguments between the op and the user or publically in the channel
over the validity of their removal. It was recently pointed out to me
by a fellow freenode staffer that 'you can't keep chasing an unwritten
[guideline]', and I decided to start an initiative to write one.
Obviously, this will be a community effort, and so I created a page
over on meta at [[m:IRC guidelines]], which I invite you to
participate in. At the time of writing there isn't anything real
there, but I invite people to build it up.

For the moment, I have no idea how enforcable/!official these
guidelines are going to be. I suggest that we worry about that after
we actually have some, because the channel operations structure is too
ad hoc to make assumptions on how it will work. This is just an idea,
something that I hope people will adopt.

There are several pages on the freenode website which may be of
interest. WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL and a few others may also be of use.
http://freenode.net/philosophy.shtml
http://freenode.net/freenode_and_irc.shtml
http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml
http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml

I look forward to receiving comments on this through this list, IRC
(#wikimedia-irc/#wikimedia-ops) or the talkpage of the guidelines
page. Let's try and develop some rough standards to improve the IRC
experience. Thank you for your time.

S

--
	?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:
> Isn't the measure of the over-beaurocraticisation (forgive me this) of an
> organisation its loss of a sense of humour? See, eg. the British government.

Wikipedia has reached this stage a long time ago with the introduction
of humour warnings (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Humorantipolicy and others).

greetings,
elian


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 09/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> As an individual (not board member), I would like to ask if it were
> possible that the spin around the fundraising, focuses a bit on the
> other projects, perhaps the notion of virtual library, with the
> wikicommons and wikisource. We have the recent report of the german
> digitization to show up as an example as how we could push things
> forward in realm of digital libraries.

It's like those charity mailshots you get. "Whilst a new database
server costs ten thousand dollars, a donation of just five dollars
will allow us to do ----" ;-)

I agree that bringing up examples of smaller-scale projects is a good
idea - if nothing else it'll help publicise them.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 7:11 PM, Jossi Fresco wrote:

>
> On Oct 9, 2006, at 4:06 PM, Matt Brown wrote:
>
>> I disagree.  Lots of editors disagree.  Because, if you look closely,
>> the reliability of a source has more to do with who is writing it and
>> their reputation, how well they are trusted, and the nature of the
>> subject matter, than defining something simply by what medium it
>> appeared in.
>
> Sure...
>
> Just tell me *how* can you verify *who* is the author of a USENET
> post.

Depends entirely on the author. Did you have one in mind?

-Phil


body:
On 10/10/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 10, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Sarah wrote:
>
> > I think if you could explain your views on this it would help to
> > illuminate what the differences are between your position and that of
> > the editors who support WP:V.
>
> I don't think there's a difference between my position and the
> position of editors supporting WP:V, except insofar as I don't think
> WP:V should rely on such an obviously broken page as WP:RS (Something
> you apparently agree about). Once the problems with our definitions
> of sources are settled, I may be able to more usefully articulate
> this. But as long as there's such serious doubt over our definition
> of WP:RS, we have to recognize that WP:V is, while necessary, also
> not currently in a functional form.
>
WP:V doesn't rely on WP:RS, and I don't know why anyone thinks it
does. WP:V is the policy. WP:RS is just a set of opinions; it arguably
shouldn't even be a guidline, because anything decent in it is just
copied from V, and anything else is confusing nonsense.

WP:V, however, is very much in functional form and does a lot to keep
the project safe.

Can you say a bit more about your position on the post from the folk
singer's partner? That caused a lot of confusion, especially the bit
about Jimbo saying Wikipedia should use WikiNews as a source (which
just pushes the sourcing problem back a stage, given that anyone can
edit WikiNews just as they can Wikipedia). The position you took on
that does put you at odds with many, probably most, editors, so it's
worth explaining, and you were pretty irritated about it at the time,
which I couldn't understand.

Sarah


body:
On 10/10/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> WP:RS is just a set of opinions; it arguably
> shouldn't even be a guidline, because anything decent in it is just
> copied from V, and anything else is confusing nonsense.
>
Sorry, I shouldn't have expressed that so strongly. There's some
decent advice in WP:RS about how different subject areas approach the
issue of sourcing. It's just that overall I find the tone
condescending; obvious things are made more complicated than they need
to be; and there's a huge amount of fluff that just confuses people.

Sarah


from_name: Jossi Fresco

body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 5:09 PM, Phil Sandifer wrote:

> But as long as there's such serious doubt over our definition
> of WP:RS, we have to recognize that WP:V is, while necessary, also
> not currently in a functional form.

I respectfully disagree. [[WP:V]] can stand alone and it is
functional with or without the help of [[WP:RS]]

-- Jossi


body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 5:28 PM, Phil Sandifer wrote:

> "Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in
> articles if they have already been published by reliable and
> reputable sources."

That sentence stands alone, Phil.

Unless you think that understanding what is a reliable and a
reputable source is difficult thing for our readers to understand....

Most readers will understand what that means *without* any further
explanations.

-- Jossi


body:
On 10/10/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 10, 2006, at 8:21 PM, Sarah wrote:
>
> >>
> > WP:V doesn't rely on WP:RS, and I don't know why anyone thinks it
> > does.
>
> I think it's something about how the first link in the policy page,
> in the second sentence, is a link to WP:RS.
>
> "Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in
> articles if they have already been published by reliable and
> reputable sources."
>
By all means unlink it, then. But there being a link to another page
doesn't mean the policy relies on that page.

Sarah


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:RS rewrite proposed

body:
On 10/10/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wow, David, I've just seen your personal attacks on me on the RS talk page.
> I wish you'd stop assuming that you and only you understand how to
> write and do research.

I still have the emails you sent when you started the page, and the
second set you sent as if you hadn't read anything I'd said in the
first.

- d.


body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 5:48 PM, Sarah wrote:

> Phil, you could remove every reference and link to RS from WP:V and it
> would not change V one iota. You're mistaking overlinking for actually
> saying something.

Agree 100%.

Try delinking it and read the policy with an open mind. You will be
surprised how well it works without the fluff at [[WP:RS]]

-- Jossi


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam, Office et al

body:
On 10/10/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
wrote:
>
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
> > Danny did not make this decision in a vacuum. There were a series of
> > emails over the course of six months leading up to this; there was also
> > an IRC discussion lasting at least half an hour in which Danny discussed
> > the details of those emails.
>
> None of these were on the wiki, however, making those of us that were not
> privy or aware of such discussions to view these as being in a vacuum.
>
> > >
> > AD-VER-TISE-MENT. Spam. Deletable under the new speedy deletion criteria
> > for spam which Brad had made not long earlier.
>
> Yes, an "advertisement" in their mind that had survived an AfD through the
> community, a group of editors who believed that the article merited
> inclusion. Thus, the spam should have been edited, period, not deleted as
> it was.
>
> This is the part people seem to be failing to grasp here from my end.
> This wasn't some completely unknown product that no one ever saw, edited,
> or AfD'd.  It would be entirely uncontroversial and no one would care in
> the least if it were.  This was an article that had community approval,
> and should have never gotten to this point.  Danny, who was working as
> just another administrator in this case, decided that the consensus (you
> know, the way we do things) didn't matter, and just acted.  Not a good
> thing.
>
> It's bad enough we rushed into a bad spam CSD policy.  It's worse when we
> try to justify obviously poor decisions based around it.
>
> -Jeff
>
> --
> If you can read this, I'm not at home.
>
>
Surely this is just another symptom of the fact that the "majority view" or
consensus of the community can sometimes be wrong? Nevermind the fact that
it is only a handful of editors (relative to the whole editing community)
who are party to any given issue. OK - perhaps you disagree in this instance
- but can you really not imagine a similar situation where one or two people
are in the right, and most people involved are flat out wrong?

I am firmly of the belief that there are fundemental flaws with Wikipedia's
modus operandi. The whole "consensus approach" to things like AFD are
entirely capable of producing undesirable results. They'll continue to do so
too. We will continue to have rubbish of all varieties kept, and
ill-written, obscure, disliked, inaccurate (not necessarily incorrect) and
unfortunate content deleted. And that's just the stuff that reaches AFD!

Sorry for being harsh - but I'd really like to see some attempt to deal with
these fundamental problems that Wikipedia has!

Zoney
--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


body:
On 10/10/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:

> For the moment, I have no idea how enforcable/!official these
> guidelines are going to be. I suggest that we worry about that after
> we actually have some, because the channel operations structure is too
> ad hoc to make assumptions on how it will work. This is just an idea,
> something that I hope people will adopt.

I understood the Foundation or Jimbo or someone had expressly disowned
#wikipedia as the hellhole it is (but a sorta comfy hellhole all the
same, y'know) but that the Foundation is, for Freenode purposes, the
controlling organisation for everything else starting #wikipedia or
#wikimedia. I could of course be dead wrong on this, but if I am I'd
welcome correction.

- d.


body:
On 10/10/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Entire sections of it amount to "see [[WP:RS]]," Sarah. This isn't a
> simple matter of delinking. The two have grown entwined. Separating
> them requires major revision to policy. Fixing RS does not.
>
Phil, you could remove every reference and link to RS from WP:V and it
would not change V one iota. You're mistaking overlinking for actually
saying something.

Sarah


body:
JamesF is basically the 'uberop' for the channels; he can get network
staff to do whatever he deems necessary. Under that, organisation is
thin on the ground as JamesF delegates the jobs to high-access
chanops. This makes sense so that he can handle hostname cloaks, and
is the idea of a group contact from freenode's perspective.

I hadn't heard Jimbo's statement before now. #wikipedia can be rough,
but there are a lot of good people in it too. We can improve!

S

On 10/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
>
> > For the moment, I have no idea how enforcable/!official these
> > guidelines are going to be. I suggest that we worry about that after
> > we actually have some, because the channel operations structure is too
> > ad hoc to make assumptions on how it will work. This is just an idea,
> > something that I hope people will adopt.
>
>
> I understood the Foundation or Jimbo or someone had expressly disowned
> #wikipedia as the hellhole it is (but a sorta comfy hellhole all the
> same, y'know) but that the Foundation is, for Freenode purposes, the
> controlling organisation for everything else starting #wikipedia or
> #wikimedia. I could of course be dead wrong on this, but if I am I'd
> welcome correction.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
	?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews language coordinator needed

body:
On 10/10/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, the logo has to be "Image:Wiki.png" therefore it can only be on the wiki
> itself.

Actually, no.  See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:%24wgLogo

--
Sam


body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Sarah wrote:

> I think if you could explain your views on this it would help to
> illuminate what the differences are between your position and that of
> the editors who support WP:V.

I don't think there's a difference between my position and the
position of editors supporting WP:V, except insofar as I don't think
WP:V should rely on such an obviously broken page as WP:RS (Something
you apparently agree about). Once the problems with our definitions
of sources are settled, I may be able to more usefully articulate
this. But as long as there's such serious doubt over our definition
of WP:RS, we have to recognize that WP:V is, while necessary, also
not currently in a functional form.

-Phil


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
When we are seriously going to ask for money for specific purposes, you may
want to read what was written already a long time ago. The idea is that not
everybody is able to support specific parts of our project in the
traditional way but is able and willing to help financially what is of
specific interest to them.

A good example of this were these people who spammed our mailinglist but
were willing to donate to Wikinews, something that is not really possible
right now..

Thanks,
    GerardM

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Donations:Putting_your_money_where_your_mouth_is

On 10/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 09/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > As an individual (not board member), I would like to ask if it were
> > possible that the spin around the fundraising, focuses a bit on the
> > other projects, perhaps the notion of virtual library, with the
> > wikicommons and wikisource. We have the recent report of the german
> > digitization to show up as an example as how we could push things
> > forward in realm of digital libraries.
>
> It's like those charity mailshots you get. "Whilst a new database
> server costs ten thousand dollars, a donation of just five dollars
> will allow us to do ----" ;-)
>
> I agree that bringing up examples of smaller-scale projects is a good
> idea - if nothing else it'll help publicise them.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Kpjas

subject:
[Foundation-l] Ensuring veracity of articles based on print
	sources

references:
<43348cda0610030916r78dede3am497bba63bbdbfa5f@mail.gmail.com>
	<ce38f57f0610050039g624dfcdm380b72040acdf222@mail.gmail.com>
	<egfct2$i9n$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 10/10/06, Jonathan Leybovich wrote:
> Kpjas wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've followed closely the thread about verifying content and citing
> > (book) sources.
> >
> > My comment would be that obviously not all (book) sources that have
> > even been proven to exist are credible and reputable.
> >
> > As I am a believer in "Work through WikiProjects" motto I think
> > WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable printed sources in
> > different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a given source.
> >
> > In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are vivacious and full of
> > "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be directed towards
> > WikiProjects for verification.
> >
> >
>
> This brings up an important issue- that of source criticism.  A
> nominally accurate citation is still not worth much if the underlying
> source is not authoritative in the field.  This can be measured, though,
> by starting to map the authority relationships within a literature,
> capturing not only how many citations are made of a particular work, but
> also what TYPE:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTextrose#Citation_Analysis
>
> For example, a work that is cited dozens of times is not necessarily
> more authoritative than one that is cited less frequently if more than
> half of those citations are negative and attack its claims.  Building
> such a database would allow non-experts to quickly orient themselves to
> what is state-of-the-literature and act without the oversight of
> WikiProject experts (not to mention create a resource that, in time,
> could be very useful in its own right).

Very interesting ideas. But how to make them doable ? It'll require a
significant effort and determination.

> Not that such WikiProjects
> could not be useful as well, only that they are inherently non-scalable,
> and certainly more inegalitarian in their effect than I think is
> necessary- elevating certain users to the role of oracle rather than mentor.

I believe our experts that have been in the project for a long time
had somehow to come to terms with getting along with regular users.
They know to to take part in a WikiProject in a sensible way - showing
and arguing their arguments with scientific expertise and not
preaching ex cathedra.

I think that openness is a feature that is of fundamental importance
for Wikipedia and a vital part of the success. There's a place for
everyone who wants to cooperate with others in a civil and
constructive way. Only that experts and academics who want to join in
have usually hard time establishing themselves  in the project.
I was wondering how WikiProjects could remain egalitarian and operate
in a wiki-way and at the same time work out ways to embrace "our"
experts and try to reach out to external experts as well.

Regards,
Kpjas.

--
http://kpjas.p5.org.uk/ http://kpjas.blogsome.com/
Wikipedia - World's Greatest http://www.wikipedia.org


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Mark Wagner wrote:
>
> The problem is that the consequences of guessing wrong about if a
> particular edit by the [[User:Danny]] account is a WP:OFFICE action
> being kept discrete or not are so severe that nobody wants to risk it.
> As a result, any sudden, wildly-out-of-process action by either
> account is assumed to be Office-related.
>

Simple solution: Danny should not perform ANY admin action on EITHER
account OTHER than WP:OFFICE actions. Harsh, but if that's what is
necessary to prevent another shitstorm like this then that is what needs
to happen. A 'long standing and widely respected editor' (Jimbo's words,
not mine) is expected to show MORE respect for the community, not less.
Otherwise Citizendium will gain more contributors than it deserves.

Cynical
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body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 8:21 PM, Sarah wrote:

>>
> WP:V doesn't rely on WP:RS, and I don't know why anyone thinks it
> does.

I think it's something about how the first link in the policy page,
in the second sentence, is a link to WP:RS.

"Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in
articles if they have already been published by reliable and
reputable sources."

-Phil


body:
On Oct 10, 2006, at 8:31 PM, Sarah wrote:

>>
> By all means unlink it, then. But there being a link to another page
> doesn't mean the policy relies on that page.

Entire sections of it amount to "see [[WP:RS]]," Sarah. This isn't a
simple matter of delinking. The two have grown entwined. Separating
them requires major revision to policy. Fixing RS does not.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/10/06, David Alexander Russell <david at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:

> Simple solution: Danny should not perform ANY admin action on EITHER
> account OTHER than WP:OFFICE actions. Harsh, but if that's what is
> necessary to prevent another shitstorm like this then that is what needs
> to happen. A 'long standing and widely respected editor' (Jimbo's words,
> not mine) is expected to show MORE respect for the community, not less.
> Otherwise Citizendium will gain more contributors than it deserves.

A solution with a major pitfall. Danny handles a lot of work that
needs doing - dealing with complaints, mainly, and tidying up related
problems, many of which require admin rights. We've only just
surmounted a several-month backlog of these issues thanks to
remarkable volunteer effort*; we don't have the available manpower to
take the only person paid to do it consistently away.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

* Not by me, I hasten to add; I've been out of this loop recently due
to work pressures.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> A solution with a major pitfall. Danny handles a lot of work that
> needs doing - dealing with complaints, mainly, and tidying up related
> problems, many of which require admin rights. We've only just
> surmounted a several-month backlog of these issues thanks to
> remarkable volunteer effort*; we don't have the available manpower to
> take the only person paid to do it consistently away.
>

There has to be something wrong. It's not as if the complaints hotline
has suddenly appeared - complaints have been getting handled
successfully for months without so much as a talkpage complaint. However
in this case, it was either an error of judgement on Danny's part (hey,
I'm trying to AGF here), in which case he should acknowledge his mistake
and list the article on Afd, or a contempt for the Wikipedia community
(remember those three Keep Afds?) which is much more worrying.

Given what you've said it would obviously be better for Danny to still
perform admin actions, but if it's a choice between an OTRS backlog and
Danny thinking he can do what he wants and to hell with everyone else,
I'm sorry but OTRS doesn't win.

Cynical
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from_name: Chad Perrin

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding Ogg Theora and its file extension;
	should it be changed on the commons?

body:
On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 09:19:40PM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> [snip]
> > * Momentum, existing standards, support for legacy systems, etc.
> > * Branding. We all love open source and want to make sure everyone knows
> > that we're using it. There are lots of codec names which can also be used
> > for branding, such as Theora and Vorbis, but Ogg is the umbrella brand.
>
> Well proposing a nonstandard extension (like OGV, or worse one which
> is 'standard' for propritary video) certantly won't help with user
> confusion or branding...
>
> How about  filename.video.ogg as a compromise?

On the other hand, I still don't see a downside to using .ogv for Ogg
video formats, .oga for Ogg audio formats, and .ogg for uncategorized
stuff.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to
build programs out of the wrong concepts." - Paul Graham


subject: [WikiEN-l] Inclusion of unmaintainable articles

body:
Here's a question which has been (to my mind, at least) raised by the
recent Fleshlight debate...

...should Wikipedia keep articles which the community is unwilling to maintain?

I haven't checked that article's history, so I don't know if it was in
that class or not, but examples certainly exist. There's plenty of
articles which are festering cesspits, one or two pathological editors
warring over them, and no-one trying (or caring) to "make it good".
Many of these, if taken to AFD, will survive with a "notable topic,
keep, cleanup", and the situation will return to the status-quo, with
the vague possibility that One Day a good and hard-working editor will
come along and adopt it.

Is this sort of thing a net gain or a net loss for the encyclopedia?
Thoughts appreciated.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
(apologies to David, who gets this twice)

On 10/10/06, David Alexander Russell <david at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:

> There has to be something wrong. It's not as if the complaints hotline
> has suddenly appeared - complaints have been getting handled
> successfully for months without so much as a talkpage complaint.

This, perhaps, indicates that "delete, the chances of anyone kicking
up a fuss are low" is actually a perfectly accurate estimation of the
situation in 99% of the time!

(I've done plenty of out-of-process deletions handling complaints
mail. All of it was, to my eye, fine in principle. I've rarely had
grumbling result from anyone who wasn't insisting on their right to do
something idiotic)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 10/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There's plenty of articles which are festering cesspits, one or two
> pathological editors
> warring over them, and no-one trying (or caring) to "make it good".
>

The benefit of having an article to read will always outweigh the problem of
it putting a slight strain on Wikipedia. I think one can always find some
willing editor to come along and fix an article (do something to it at
least). It's just a matter of improving our mechanisms of sorting out
POV-pushers and of article improvement.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

references:
<dc107ee70610020633n1b9a1501l398313b052dfe125@mail.gmail.com>
	<e692861c0610020646j2db51573ue88280925ceeaae6@mail.gmail.com>
	<efsb7o$of6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0610021834yae5c193ge83ad907d6748bef@mail.gmail.com>
	<efsjf0$a34$1@sea.gmane.org> <egegpm$4bm$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<eghghg$mn$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 10/10/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
[snip]
> * Momentum, existing standards, support for legacy systems, etc.
> * Branding. We all love open source and want to make sure everyone knows
> that we're using it. There are lots of codec names which can also be used
> for branding, such as Theora and Vorbis, but Ogg is the umbrella brand.

Well proposing a nonstandard extension (like OGV, or worse one which
is 'standard' for propritary video) certantly won't help with user
confusion or branding...

How about  filename.video.ogg as a compromise?


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 10/9/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> As an individual (not board member), I would like to ask if it were
> possible that the spin around the fundraising, focuses a bit on the
> other projects, perhaps the notion of virtual library, with the
> wikicommons and wikisource. We have the recent report of the german
> digitization to show up as an example as how we could push things
> forward in realm of digital libraries.

Yes, it seems absolutely essential to me that the communication
strategy is carefully planned _before_ we ask for money.

What have the Foundation and the Chapters accomplished so far? What is
the status of our work to bring Wikimedia to developing countries?
What have our expenses been? (Get audited financial reports out.) What
expenses do we foresee? What strategic projects are around the corner?
What is the state of the projects besides Wikipedia, the small
languages?

The last thing I want is another "WE NEED MORE SERVERS" fundraiser.

So, in order to do this properly:

Brad - can we assume that the financial statements will be published
before Nov 1? Can you work on outlining some expenses over the next 6
months you see as critical, in broad terms (staff, hardware, etc.)?

Tim - when are the static dumps going to be ready?

Samuel - can you pass on some promotional materials re: the OLPC
partnership to the Fundraising Committee?

Delphine - can you compile a report on chapter activity (max 10K,
pictures would be nice)? What projects were completed, what chapters
were set up?

Jimmy, Florence - shall we prepare a detailed vision statement on
Board Wiki? I volunteer to take a first stab at the structure.

Sabine - could you write a little report regarding translation
projects, and future activities you can envision in this area?

I would suggest early November as a launch of the fundraising drive. I
would like to see some new functionality implemented for this
fundraising drive as well, e.g. the ability to donate directly from
any Wikimedia project page, as well as a more prominent display of
donor comments above a certain amount.

Most importantly, however, I want us to start working very soon on a
decent appeal for support and report of activity so far. I understand
that donor attention is limited, so we need to have a very short
general appeal, but those who care should be able to find detailed
information about what we are doing and why we need support.

Ideally, the information we compile here should be useful to approach
organizations and wealthy individuals, beyond just a general appeal to
the masses.

Does that sound reasonable? :-)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

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


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Belarusan problem

body:
Hi all,

The Belarusan Official-orthography Test WP is growing very quickly. It
currently has probably over 2000 pages. (this is compared to 5000 on
current Belarusan Wikipedia, which has existed for over two years now)

Belarusan orthographical issues have been discussed on this list
before, but I feel it needs to be brought up again.

The reason is that these pages are quickly filling Incubator. The
original intention of Test Wikis was to be a place to test the
viability of a new language Wiki prior to its creation. It was agreed
by most that once any of them surpassed about 100 articles, their Wiki
should probably be created.

However, the Belarusan Test is growing at such a rate that it has
already dwarfed most of the other current tests on Incubator.

But its future is uncertain. Currently it appears that Belarusan
Official-orthography will not be approved for a new Wikipedia, and
besides, people don't agree on the solution (should it be overwritten
onto existing be.wp, should it be given the domain bel.wp, or what?).

But the question of its future remains unanswered. Incubator cannot be
its permanent home.

Mark


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I'm wondering if the long-promised version-marking system will help,
> once it's finally activated. It could go a long way toward helping us
> identify which articles might be in need of maintenance and which have
> had at least some degree of checking done on them.

*nod* It will be a bit of a culture change; people will start to review the history of an article
more before editing for fear of getting their edits reverted along with vandalism/POV previously
put in since the last checked version. Users will certainly do a bit of checking before they state
their reputation in the community by saying an article is 'free of vandalism' or has 'been
reviewed'. Thus the idea of checked snapshots is great.

I think this will be a good change.

-- mav

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


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:58:23 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> That's an appeal-to-motive fallacy. Even if this were true (and don't
>> forget to assume good faith) and it's the reason Phil is complaining,
>> it's still entirely possible that the "reliable sources" guideline is
>> still flawed and Phil's arguments sound.
>
> Of course.  It's just a bizarre coincidence that every time an article
> on something from teh internets is deleted as unverifiable, it's
> always our policies which are wrong, and never the users arguing for
> the retention of stuff which is discussed exclusively by other people
> like them.

But you just used the exact same fallacy again. What does it matter what
the motive is (which, BTW, you're still only making guesses at) when the
argument itself is still sound?

> Sometimes I think it would be good to move all pop culture stuff to a
> sister project where rampant fandom and scatalogical humour will
> present less of a problem.

A fork of that magnitude would cleft Wikipedia in twain, and I doubt
either half would be the better for it. It'd be a toss-up which one gets
to be called "Wikipedia" at any rate.

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body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> Here's a question which has been (to my mind, at least) raised by the
> recent Fleshlight debate...
>
> ...should Wikipedia keep articles which the community is unwilling to maintain?

I just read an interesting thread on Usenet where someone "tested"
Wikipedia by going back to articles in his area of expertise that he'd
worked on six months ago and checking to see whether they'd improved,
remained the same, or degraded in quality since then. (message ID
1160450561.103548.50770 at c28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com if anyone's
interested). It was an impromptu "study", but he made a pretty good case
suggesting that the article on [[Leon Trotsky]] had degraded
significantly since he'd worked on it; in particular it was apparently
targeted by [[User:Wumbo]], a subtle vandal who carefully inserted false
information that still hadn't been cleaned out despite being exposed as
a vandal months ago based on his work on other articles.

Is [[Leon Trotsky]] less maintainable than [[Fleshlight]], and should we
therefore get rid of it?

I'm wondering if the long-promised version-marking system will help,
once it's finally activated. It could go a long way toward helping us
identify which articles might be in need of maintenance and which have
had at least some degree of checking done on them.

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from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:58:23 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>That's an appeal-to-motive fallacy. Even if this were true (and don't
>forget to assume good faith) and it's the reason Phil is complaining,
>it's still entirely possible that the "reliable sources" guideline is
>still flawed and Phil's arguments sound.

Of course.  It's just a bizarre coincidence that every time an article
on something from teh internets is deleted as unverifiable, it's
always our policies which are wrong, and never the users arguing for
the retention of stuff which is discussed exclusively by other people
like them.

Funny, that.

Sometimes I think it would be good to move all pop culture stuff to a
sister project where rampant fandom and scatalogical humour will
present less of a problem.

For the avoidance of doubt this is absolutely not directed at Phil,
who is as far as I can tell a perfectly reasonable bloke.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Absolutely amazing...

body:
On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:36:25 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>I think backlogs in CSD are caused by one of three things:
>1) Too little admins online to work on it.
>2) Mass creation of deleteable articles after press attention.
>3) Mistagging for speedy when it should be deleted with an alternative
>procedure.

Or indeed all three :-)

Being based in the UK I often find a backlog at CSD.  Some of them are
far from unambiguous and require some thought as to whether to untag,
AfD, PROD or what.  I guess I could simply bounce it back to the
tagging editor.  Maybe I will next time.

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


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users' behaviour

references:
<452AE1BE.20901@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKCEDBJAAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20610092336n6578989awb1e02082b2d4552e@mail.gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140610100023w28fd2a0ata405696ca35b6ff3@mail.gmail.com>
	<f1c3529e0610100034y1a149c8ai8217c559e5f55143@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> (if I were an admin) :)

>From the musical "Wikipedian on the roof".

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> That principle would be flawed on a number of levels. You can undo the
> fact that someone has been blocked. Most editors can't undo deletions.
> Screwing up certain things in the mediawiki namespace is bad. The
> amount of damage an editor can do is the for the most part minimal.
> The amount of damage an admin can do both to wikipedia and other
> editors is rather more significant.

It is not a contradiction to say that you should always be careful in
being bold.  Such care should be in direct proportion to a) how
important the action is and b) how irreversible it is.

Of course admins have to be bold in their actions.  They don't have to
be reckless (they don't even have to ignore *any* rules).  But admins
absolutely do have to be bold, they have always had to be bold and it
is necessary that they are bold so that the project does not get
entrenched.

Wikipedia would not work if its admins were not bold.

--
Sam


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam, Office et al

body:
Anthere wrote:
> A lot of the bad atmosphere with regards to the Fleshlight is due to a
> confusion between whether Danny is acting independantly or acting as
> WP:Office.
>
> It is confusing for wikipedians naturally.
> It is confusing for Danny as well, who is pressured by the phone calls
> and otrs messages. Who is either left alone making a decision, and later
> is blamed by Jimbo, Brad or whoever. Or who acts under Jimbo or Brad
> supervision, but is the one to receive the blame from the community
> later on.
>

There are a few things I want to point out here:

Danny did not make this decision in a vacuum. There were a series of
emails over the course of six months leading up to this; there was also
an IRC discussion lasting at least half an hour in which Danny discussed
the details of those emails. It basically came down to:

- People complaining that their linkspam was being reverted
- The company complaining that their carefully crafted advertisement was
being damaged during the course of regular editing and demanding
complete editorial control of the page because it was causing "customer
confusion"

Now, in case you missed it the first time:

THE COMPANY WERE COMPLAINING THAT THEIR *ADVERTISEMENT* WAS BEING
EDITED.                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Note the word ADVERTISEMENT.

In case you missed it again:

AD-VER-TISE-MENT. Spam. Deletable under the new speedy deletion criteria
for spam which Brad had made not long earlier.

Was the declaration of what became CSD G11 an OFFICE action? Perhaps.
Had the use of it prior to this point been claimed to be an OFFICE
action? Not that I'm aware of. Did Danny use his OFFICE account
([[User:Dannyisme]])? No, he used his "I am an average Wikipedian"
account. Was anyone desysopped for restoring the page? No. Did Danny act
unilaterally in deleting this? No, he had the support of several people
who were discussing this with him at the time.

Was it an OFFICE action? No.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 10/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Getting back to the original point, there's actually far more scope for
> > sarcasm when you are forced to call someone "the honourable gentleman from
> > foo".  Sadly, they don't seem to utilise that opportunity as well as they
> > might.
> >
> > Ian
>
> We do.Try reading the test templates sometime.

I have a feeling Ian was referring to the British House of Commons
rather than Wikipedia...

In reply to the whole thread, the problem with banning sarcasm is that
it would prevent a good proportion of British editors from editing at
all.  Sarcasm is not inherently impolite (though of course it *can*
be) and is an absolutely crucial part of British humour and indeed
regular speech.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
Guettarda wrote:
> Why do I read David's posts?

Sometimes I ask myself the same thing. Must be the liquor talking. Oh,
wait...

<snip>
> David's writing is funny, sarcastic and ironic. All indications that
> he has a brain and a sense of humour.

Note however that due to a lack of "humor" he may not be comprehensible
by 'Merkins.

> Should be ban humour next?  After all, someone may feel like they are
> being made the butt of a joke, and that would be so much worse for
> the morale of the project than would be the ban on humour.
>

Golly, that's a bit harsh... or maybe you're not going far enough... why
don't you just, er... make a militaristic anti-humour campaign? You
could have badges and a logo and IRC channels and bots and everything!

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: geni

body:
On 10/10/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > There's plenty of articles which are festering cesspits, one or two
> > pathological editors
> > warring over them, and no-one trying (or caring) to "make it good".
> >
>
> The benefit of having an article to read will always outweigh the problem of
> it putting a slight strain on Wikipedia. I think one can always find some
> willing editor to come along and fix an article (do something to it at
> least).

if something = shove yet another cleanup tag on it maybe otherwise no.

>It's just a matter of improving our mechanisms of sorting out
> POV-pushers and of article improvement.
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
geni


from_name: bksimonb

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Where to discuss best approach to deal with defamitory
	article?

body:
I've been tasked to deal with a defamitory article written about the
organisation of which I am a member.

I tried reasoning with the main editor but as I, and others who have tried,
have found that the guy acts like a tyrant and won't budge an inch. Even to
the extent of reverting NPOV warnings.

Obviously I am looking into all available routes to restore some kind of
balance on the page. I raised a Wikiettiquette alert now the next stop seems
to be mediation, which I am planning now. However there is absolute carnage
going on in the discussion page with other editors. Can't bear to look!

Right now I just want to talk with other more experienced Wikipedians who
can just help me to streamline my approach. This whole thing is taking a lot
of energy and is very damaging to the organisation. We are encountering
questions all the time from people who have read the article. Certainly we
are not expecting the article to be a glowing glorification of the
organisation but would gladly settle for a less hateful and a more neutral
account.

I have a hunch this isn't the best forum to discuss this but would
appreciate any pointers. I found an alt group but they seem to be focussed
on gripes and Wikipedia controversy more than mutual help.

Thanks & regards.
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Where-to-discuss-best-approach-to-deal-with-defamitory-article--tf2421558.html#a6751264
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia:Attribution]]: a proposal

body:
In response to the concerns about Wikipedia:Reliable sources and
previous concerns expressed about NOR and V, I've put up a proposal
that No original research and Verifiability be combined into one new
content policy: [[Wikipedia:Attribution]].

The policy in a nutshell would be that "All material published by
Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source."

The introduction makes it plain that not all material must actually be
attributed. It must simply be capable of being atttributed. That is,
it must not be original research.

I think this would get rid of a lot of the confusion that surrounds
what "verifiability" means, and what the relationship is between V and
NOR.  I've also proposed that we rename RS to "How to find reliable
sources" and that it become a page of advice about where to look for
good sources (not a guideline or policy).

The proposal is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Attribution

David and Phil, and others who have expressed concern about RS, I hope
you'll take a look at it and explain where it might cause problems,
because I'm pretty certain any concerns could be ironed out.

Sarah


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 10/10/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:

> If we have +/- 250 servers running now
> *and we double in traffic every four months
> *and the costs per server (for round number purposes, including racks,
> power, etc.) are $4000
> *we are talking about *starting* with a $1M computer order being
> fulfilled before March 1.
> If we add to that the next 500 computers, at the same rate, we are
> talking about a batch of $2M beyond that.  /me's head spins.

Heh. What's the upfront and service contract on an IBM minicomputer -
make that two clustered in different cities - running as many copies
of Linux/390 as we need?

(I wonder if IBM would sponsor that, just to say they had.)

- d.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam, Office et al

body:
On 10 Oct 2006 at 23:09, "Alphax (Wikipedia email)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> THE COMPANY WERE COMPLAINING THAT THEIR *ADVERTISEMENT* WAS BEING
> EDITED.                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Edited, perhaps, into something that was no longer an advertisement
(and hence the complaints from the marketing types who didn't like
this development)?

> Was it an OFFICE action? No.

This seems to be something that people have to guess and infer,
during and after the action occurs, with possible drastic penalties
for those who guess/infer wrong.  See, for instance, the incident
cited in this week's Signpost (Eloquence interview, question 4).

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 10/10/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Will the money go to chapters or to the Foundation? Can the chapters
>>transfer money to the foundation if needed?
>>
>>
>This is a big open question. As I understand it, the current arrangement is:
>1) Most money goes directly to WMF.
>2) Chapters act as local fundraising agents, e.g. in Germany, where
>many people don't have credit cards, a bank transfer directly to the
>German chapter can be made. Some individuals might also choose to
>support a chapter instead of the WMF for other reasons.
>3) Some or all of the money raised through 2) (is supposed to) go back
>to the WMF.
>
>Is this correct? What is the precise status on 3)? My view is that
>chapters should retain a substantial amount of donations for local
>projects and infrastructure. How do we decide that amount? What is the
>best strategy for transferring funds to the WMF -- could royalties for
>the trademark/logo work?
>
National laws need to be considered.  Under Canadian law maintaining
charitable status depends on spending a nearly all the money for
charitable purposes in the country.  If we ever get to that stage
domestic projects should be considered.  In some cases receiving
royalties as business income could be considered as taxable income.

Ec


from_name: Anthere

body:
 > Jimmy, Florence - shall we prepare a detailed vision statement on
 > Board Wiki? I volunteer to take a first stab at the structure.

The vision and mission is listed in the programm of the board retreat.
The board retreat start next week.
I think we best wait till the board retreat to start working on it.
of course, it would be real cool if you can take a first stab at it !

 > Samuel - can you pass on some promotional materials re: the OLPC
 > partnership to the Fundraising Committee?

I am not favorable to the concept of making a joint fundraising with
another organisation. As for OLPC, they were already part of our last
press release in august...

ant

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 10/9/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>As an individual (not board member), I would like to ask if it were
>>possible that the spin around the fundraising, focuses a bit on the
>>other projects, perhaps the notion of virtual library, with the
>>wikicommons and wikisource. We have the recent report of the german
>>digitization to show up as an example as how we could push things
>>forward in realm of digital libraries.
>
>
> Yes, it seems absolutely essential to me that the communication
> strategy is carefully planned _before_ we ask for money.
>
> What have the Foundation and the Chapters accomplished so far? What is
> the status of our work to bring Wikimedia to developing countries?
> What have our expenses been? (Get audited financial reports out.) What
> expenses do we foresee? What strategic projects are around the corner?
> What is the state of the projects besides Wikipedia, the small
> languages?
>
> The last thing I want is another "WE NEED MORE SERVERS" fundraiser.
>
> So, in order to do this properly:
>
> Brad - can we assume that the financial statements will be published
> before Nov 1? Can you work on outlining some expenses over the next 6
> months you see as critical, in broad terms (staff, hardware, etc.)?
>
> Tim - when are the static dumps going to be ready?
>
> Samuel - can you pass on some promotional materials re: the OLPC
> partnership to the Fundraising Committee?
>
> Delphine - can you compile a report on chapter activity (max 10K,
> pictures would be nice)? What projects were completed, what chapters
> were set up?
>
> Jimmy, Florence - shall we prepare a detailed vision statement on
> Board Wiki? I volunteer to take a first stab at the structure.
>
> Sabine - could you write a little report regarding translation
> projects, and future activities you can envision in this area?
>
> I would suggest early November as a launch of the fundraising drive. I
> would like to see some new functionality implemented for this
> fundraising drive as well, e.g. the ability to donate directly from
> any Wikimedia project page, as well as a more prominent display of
> donor comments above a certain amount.
>
> Most importantly, however, I want us to start working very soon on a
> decent appeal for support and report of activity so far. I understand
> that donor attention is limited, so we need to have a very short
> general appeal, but those who care should be able to find detailed
> information about what we are doing and why we need support.
>
> Ideally, the information we compile here should be useful to approach
> organizations and wealthy individuals, beyond just a general appeal to
> the masses.
>
> Does that sound reasonable? :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> That principle would be flawed on a number of levels. You can undo the
> fact that someone has been blocked. Most editors can't undo deletions.
> Screwing up certain things in the mediawiki namespace is bad. The
> amount of damage an editor can do is the for the most part minimal.
> The amount of damage an admin can do both to wikipedia and other
> editors is rather more significant.

We do try to give our admins a basic sanity screen, and peer pressure
works better than I'd have expected.

(Although I've been going 'wtf' at some of the more ridiculous RFA
requirements^Wrecommendations, I must admit you're probably right when
all other systems are anticipated to be worse. If we can get the
shrubbery requesters to calm down ... as far as I can tell, having x
featured articles has *nothing* to do with admin-worthy stability
levels, either way.)

> > [1] Principle is my word for basic policies, as the word "policy" has
> > been tainted.

> Has anyone got around to creating a wikipediaese to English dictionary yet?

I thought we were going to redefine English usage to match our jargon,
much as the word "Wiki" in casual conversation (with an implied
capital, as far as I can tell) now means Wikipedia.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam, Office et al

body:
On 10/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > I would like to suggest that office actions - normally under Brad
> > responsability - be actually done by Brad himself or by a future new
> > employee, who should NOT be a wikipedian.

> If we are talking about the ideal person you missed "must be able to
> speak English, German, French, Japanese, dutch, Italian, Portuguese,
> Swedish and spanish".

I think the basic job requrement is "must have been rocketed from
Krypton as an infant; please bring proof of space capsule."

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
On 10/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > geni wrote

> > > More arbcom members in future can be arranged.

> > You can bring a horse to water, but can you make it drink?

> Past experence suggests no after the first month.

Lots of people want to be on the arbcom, but the job *sucks*: dredging
through the worst stupidity on the wiki (one or both participants),
writing up something that would pass sanity check (wouldn't make
anyone looking at it cough up a hairball) and dealing with flak from
all sides. It's a job custom-made for burnout.

And the people you see in AC elections who give you the first thought
"OH GOD NO" and make you vote for *anyone* else.

And we're about to become a top 10 website. w00t!

Committees don't scale too well in general on the wiki.

Hey, AC. How's it been going this year?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 11/10/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> In reply to the whole thread, the problem with banning sarcasm is that
> it would prevent a good proportion of British editors from editing at
> all.  Sarcasm is not inherently impolite (though of course it *can*
> be) and is an absolutely crucial part of British humour and indeed
> regular speech.

See, that's just your imperialist thinking, trying to get one up on
Johnny Foreigner by a warp in procedure to allow "humour" and not just
humor. You can't fool Americans - they *know* King George III is still
hiding out in Argentina. AND THEY WON'T REST UNTIL HE'S CAPTURED.

- d.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-11

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 420 of 437 tests (96.11%) FAILED!


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> On 10/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Civility#The_use_of_sarcasm
>>
>> It may be bad practice, but making a rule is nonsensical. Unless
>> smarminess and passive aggression are to be made blockable offences.
>
> My god, this sounds like an Onion article:
>
> "Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia bans sarcasm"
>>From the article:
> "... In a comment wikipedia user Jonathan Swift claims that satire
> should  be next..."
>
> Look, if a wikipedia user is uncivil, he's uncivil. We are all
> relatively intelligent people, we know when a person is uncivil,
> whether he uses hyperbole, sarcasm, satire, iambic pentameter, or
> whatever. A blanket ban on sarcasm seems outrageously misguided.
>
> I mean, show me an example of a user that's mean in a sarcastic way.
> Doesn't that ALREADY fall under WP:CIVIL? Talk about instruction
> creep.
>
> --Oskar

   I think this is a F$Cking BRILLIANT idea!!!! :-|

SKL


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> If we have +/- 250 servers running now
>> *and we double in traffic every four months
>> *and the costs per server (for round number purposes, including racks,
>> power, etc.) are $4000
>> *we are talking about *starting* with a $1M computer order being
>> fulfilled before March 1.
>> If we add to that the next 500 computers, at the same rate, we are
>> talking about a batch of $2M beyond that.  /me's head spins.
>>
>
>
> Heh. What's the upfront and service contract on an IBM minicomputer -
> make that two clustered in different cities - running as many copies
> of Linux/390 as we need?
>
> (I wonder if IBM would sponsor that, just to say they had.)
>
>
> - d.
>
>

IBM don't sell their mainframes as low-cost compute farms, and that's
because mainframes simply aren't _that_ powerful relative to their
price; what they are useful for is consolidating lots and lots of
relatively lightly-loaded services into one _highly_ reliable and
maintainable system. That reliability and maintainability is what you
pay for when you buy a mainframe; and if you really need it, you need to
get a mainframe. (There are, for instance, stories of mainframes being
rebuilt like George Washington's axe until none of the original machine
was left, whilst still in service, without stopping any programs from
running or taking any filesystems down: they were simply shifted from
processor to processor, and disk to disk, with the system still running.)

For example, a fully-loaded 54-CPU top-of-the range IBM z9-109
"enterprise-class" mainframe is claimed to be able to do "a billion
transactions per day". Now, if we assume that each of those transactions
is equivalent to serving a Wikipedia hit, that's about 11000 hits per
second, about 60% of the load of 18000 hits per second currently served
by the several hundred CPUs in the Wikipedia cluster. However, if the
price list below is anything to go by, it'll set you back about $22M for
the privilege, which is considerably more than the entire Wikimedia
Foundation budget to date.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/lsan6euhj9?OpenDocument&Site=swzseries

http://www.tech-news.com/publib/pl2094.html

However, if you wanted a high-price/performance-ratio compute farm from
IBM, I'm sure they could oblige in other ways: for example, they
currently hold the first, second, and third places in the TOP500
supercomputer listing with their closely-coupled cluster systems, so I
would imagine they could probably quote you for a web server farm.

You could always ask them for a quote: as a high-prestige project,
there's always a possibility they might be inclined to do a good deal on
it for the PR benefit... but I'm willing to bet they'll try to sell you
a cluster system rather than a mainframe.

-- Neil


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Where to discuss best approach to deal with
 defamitory article?

body:
Sorry, I didn't want to use this forum as a way to draw attention to an
article until I was sure it was appropriate to do so here.

The article is here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma_Kumaris_World_Spiritual_University

My own attempt to speak to the main editors is archived here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brahma_Kumaris_World_Spiritual_University/Archive02

Thanks & regards

Sarah-18 wrote:
>
> On 10/11/06, bksimonb <simon at bkinfo.net> wrote:
>>
>> I've been tasked to deal with a defamitory article written about the
>> organisation of which I am a member.
>>
> Which article is it?
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Where-to-discuss-best-approach-to-deal-with-defamitory-article--tf2421558.html#a6751935
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 10/11/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
[snip]
> I suspect they are routinely confused, the players will obviously be happy
> either way. If we can find enough evidence that .ogm is routinely used for
> Ogg/Theora, then that would be my choice.

Enough?  Can you find any at all?

Most of the OGM playing software I've seen (including mplayer with the
default compile options) can't even play theora...  (or on windows
platforms, can't play without downloading a seperate codec).

As the Wikipedia article says: "OGMs most often carry video encoded in
the XviD format and audio in Vorbis or AC-3 (Dolby Digital)."   The
Wikipedia article also links to several OGM tools... and the ones I
checked do not support Theora.

(Note that Xvid is an open source implimentation of MPEG4, like Lame
is an open source implimentation of MP3)

It's all sort of a silly argument when there are quite a few .OGG
videos on commons which are nothing other than AVIs renamed to ogg.
(I really should see if I can easily identify them from the mime type
field on the image table and just go mass convert them)..


body:
On 11/10/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> My day job is a consultant in systems architecture and project management
> for UNIX and Linux.  I've designed and built and operated similarly sized
> sites before.  I would like to help with this area, from systems
> architecture through operational management and documentation (and hands on
> admin if need be).  Where do I start?

Email wikitech-l, which is the tech list for the Wikimedia servers,
introducing yourself. Presumably chat to the devs on IRC on
#wikimedia-tech, fix a bug or two. (Database programming on a
soon-to-be-top-10 web site, that's a CV builder!) I *think* that's it.
I do know Wikimedia is perpetually desperate for good devs. Where
"dev" can mean all sorts of things. I'm sure Tim will be along
shortly.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
On 11/10/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> How bad is it for moving forwards if arbcom members are functionally
> inactive?  Is it then just an issue of bandwidth, or do you have to spur
> some of the inactive ones to participate to get proposed decisions voted out
> and official?

I always found the hardest bit was pushing myself to spend several
hours a week on a deeply unpleasant and complex job requiring the best
thinking I could manage. I always felt I wasn't doing enough, and am
somewhat amazed anyone manages it at all. Fred is unstoppable, but he
used to be a lawyer so did stuff well above this level of complexity
daily for a living. Future AC members with combat lawyer experience,
please run!

- d.


body:
On 11/10/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:

> What may work for [[Spoo]]  may not work for [[New_anti-Semitism]].
> The main issue here is if we are dealing with a controversial topic,
> a biography of a living person, or an ongoing enterprise. In these
> cases, the need for reliable sources is paramount. In the case of
> Spoo,  if we do not have the article 100% verifiable to reliable
> sources, nobody will be harmed, really.

I think we could all agree it varies with subject area. That's one of
the problems with WP:RS - it attempts a one-size-fits-all solution
that doesn't vary per subject area.

- d.