from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Google Summer of Code 2006

body:
Ahh, just beat me to it :-)

They're not taking applications yet, and the #summer-discuss IRC
channel is inexplicably hosted on SlashNET, but that's extremely cool.
 Congrats to Brion and everyone working on this... last year, Google
sponsored an average of 10 students per project/org on their list.

Huzzah!,
    SJ

* likewise Creative Commons, One Laptop Per Child (which is doing cool
things with wikis and wants to fit Wikimedia content on its laptops),
and Xiph.org, which is moving closer to providing a truly robust free
audio and video toolchain.  A reason to smile...  :-)

On 4/23/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> after wandering through the archive of those lists, it seems that
> nobody has yet mentioned that Wikimedia was accepted as a mentoring
> organisation for the Google Summer of Code 2006.
>
> http://code.google.com/soc/wikim/about.html
>
> Students may apply for this in the first 8 days of May.
>
> Please have a look at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2006 for suggestions
> regarding possible projects.
>
> It would be a great opportunity for us, yadda yadda etc. please apply.
>
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
++SJ


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Google Summer of Code 2006


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google Summer of Code 2006


list: wikien-l

from_name: Stephane Charette

subject: [WikiEN-l] problem with wrongful block

body:
My username is S_charette:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:S_charette

My talk page:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:S_charette

There is another Wikipedia editor who didn't like the standard infobox template I added to a Canadian school article (his old high school -- he seems to feel he owns the article), and my edit kept getting reverted with highly suspicous edit summary tags.  I've tried discussing this with him in several places:

1) the school's talk page
2) the user's talk page
3) my own talk page
4) the education in Canada project talk page

My comments were reverted.  Today, that user posted my username on WP:AIV.  I've been blocked ever since by Royboycrash.  This isn't right, for several reasons:

1) I'm not a spammer or a vandal, which is the initial reason given for the block
2) I'm a regular contributor, vandalism patroller, and I've '''never''' been given a single warning prior to an immediate block today.

Needless to say, my feeling towards the wikipedia experience took a big dive today.  :(

Any help appreciated.  Yes, I would like to do whatever is necessary to take this to the next step, to get a proper review of what happened and determine how 1 disruptive user can successfully manipulate Wikipedia to get a valid contributor blocked.

Sadly,

Stephane Charette


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked by Administrator (abuse of power)

body:
On 4/23/06, cwarner <cwarner at kernelcode.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 13:08 +0100, geni wrote:
> > On 4/23/06, cwarner <cwarner at kernelcode.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I'm not sure this is true anymore. I'm banned based on the 3RR rule
> > > except the fact is that an Administrator disregarded other rules in
> > > order to do so. It's easy for me though, I simply no longer need to
> > > participate on Wikipedia and will make sure others know of my experience
> > > by pointing them to the relevant links.
> >
> > The only exection to the 3RR is correcting vandalism.
>
> Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lou_Dobbs

What am I meant to be seeing? are you claiming there was vandalism per
[[Wikipedia:Vandalism]]?

--
geni


from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject: [Wikitech-l] 2006 Apr 20 drastic slowdown postmortem

references:
<4448F04B.2040406@gmail.com>
	<e2de51$ts7$1@sea.gmane.org>	<444AEBB2.60400@gmail.com>
	<e2f6o6$as3$1@sea.gmane.org>	<444B6C1F.5080500@gmail.com>
	<m37j5guyh5.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>

body:
Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
>  With all due respect for your qualifications, you lack the prime
> skill needed: Know who and what you are dealing with, before trying to
> change things.
>
So far, I've not asked for a specific change.  I've been asking for
pointers to documentation and monitoring, and posting my observations.

The other items you mentioned are more appropriate to a gang, kinda like
a bad movie: "You don't know who you're dealing with, kid."

>  Not knowing domas does not exactly qualifies for preferential treatment.
>
That's out of line.  Nobody has asked for preferential treatment.  I came
willing to spend my copious amounts of free time reading documentation,
looking at logs, and trying to figure out solutions.  Instead, I got a
lecture on "respect".

There are some mighty thin skins around here....

Rob Church wrote:
 >...
 > No doubt I left bits of the description out; feel free to amend it. :)
 >
Thank you, Rob.  It doesn't explain the 3rd hand "high reliability"
conclusion, but helps keep previous comments in perspective.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
In terms of egregious violations, sure, it's fine to act swiftly and doesn't
necessarily require consultation.  But people do this even with garden
variety actions, which just isn't necessary.

I always make it a point to express my reservations and give the original
administrator the courtesy of reversing his or her decision as a result,
rather than me doing it for them.  Obviously everybody thinks they're doing
the right thing, but in this instance I think more administrators would do
well to adopt this model.  Having an article protected an extra 5 hours
while the protecting administrator, for instance, evaluates your objections,
isn't going to bring Wikipedia crashing down.  It is, however, a much better
way to treat our peers.

k

On 4/23/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Katefan0 wrote:
>
> >Ugh, when do we get to the part where I have to figure out whether a car
> >loaded with apples going north can beat a train loaded with figs going in
> >the same direction?
> >
> Elementary!  Since apples have smoother skins than figs there will be
> less friction and that train will go faster. :-)
> The problem where there are pears instead of figs is more difficult
> because the skins are similar.  We would need to study the relative
> aerodynamics of the two forms.
>
> >The basic problem is one of ego. For a place that prides itself on
> >collegiality among editors, and particularly among administrators, we
> simply
> >step on one another's toes too often. I don't see why we need to have all
> >this parsing and ABC'ing when what we really need is to tug on a few ears
> >and remind each other that it's rarely polite to undermine someone
> without
> >so much as a word.
> >
> Sure.  If the original administrator to take action feels undermined by
> a single reversal it is a matter of putting his ego ahead of the good of
> the community.  The reverter should explain what he is doing, but at
> this stage an explanatory note with the revert will suffice.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
>
> >On 4/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>* Steve Bennett wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>Funnily enough, my definition works here as well. Someone whose
> >>>judgment is being questioned will accuse their reverter of wheel
> >>>warring. Someone who made a mistake won't.
> >>>
> >>>In other words: If the person you reverted accuses you of wheel
> >>>warring, then you wheel warred.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I almost agree, but in some cases that person might still be operating
> >>under mistaken assumptions. Say they found some evidence which suggested
> >>that a particular user was a sockpuppet of a blocked user and placed a
> >>block on the 'sockpuppet' as a result. However, the second admin then
> >>uncovered proof that the person wasn't a sockpuppet and unblocked. The
> >>first admin might well accuse the second of 'wheel warring' and reblock,
> >>but only because of a failure of communication. The second admin wasn't
> >>'opposing the judgement' of the first, they were just working off a
> >>different set of facts. The second admin shouldn't have to discuss the
> >>matter before taking an action they know to be correct... though it would
> >>be a good idea to send the first admin a note to fill them in on the details.
> >>
> >>
> >No, what the second admin should do is discuss the case with the first
> >admin, rather than unblocking.  Maybe the first admin has evidence
> >that the second admin is unaware of.  If the second admin has
> >conclusive evidence, then the first admin will undoubtedly unblock. If
> >not, then there is a dispute, and the second admin should not wheel
> >war.  In any event, admins should not act under the bad faith
> >supposition that *they know better*; that is what starts the wheel
> >war.
> >
> Maybe the second admin has evidence that the first admin is unaware of.
> Maybe the first admin was just acting in the heat of RC battle.  It
> folows that it is perfectly valid to act under a good faith supposition.
>
> It would not be appropriate to say that all these reversions are done in
> bad faith  That would in itself be assuming bad faith.

One can posit all sorts of "maybes", but the fact remains that
reverting the first admin assumes the first admin is incorrect.
Instead of assuming, contact them first, and find out for sure.  It's
quite simple, and it astonishes me that anyone would defend summarily
reverting an admin action over communicating with them first and
building a consensus.  This is not an emergency, and almost never is.

Jay.


subject: [Wikitech-l] 2006-04-21T02:30 drastic slowdown postmortem

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> The only person who lives near the servers is Kyle, and he was hired as a
> hardware tech for that exact reason. The servers all have their clocks set
> to UTC, and we use UTC in logs and communications.
>
That would be the standard practice, but....

As noted in the message itself, I used the time listed in the log on the
external monitoring site, http://www.thewritingpot.com/wikistatus/ garnered
from the recent message of garion1000 at gmail.com, and named the subject line
accordingly.  Later, I also included the words:

# There's no corresponding admin log for 2:30 UTC....

Sorry that you found the subject line misleading, I'll try to do better in
the future....

> William Allen Simpson wrote:
>> The time was 02:30+ UTC.
>
> Ah, well in that case, I can tell you exactly what happened. The hero of the
> day was Zsinj, a canny newbie who had his eye on the relevant monitoring
> graphs, and alerted us to the problem immediately, using very specific
> terms, allowing us to track down and fix it rapidly.
>
> Log extract from #wikimedia-tech follows, times are UTC+10.
>
Ah, another place that doesn't use UTC logs....

Anyway, thank you for following up.  I still don't understand how the SQL
spike affected network performance, and have not yet found the switch and
router graph with IP subnet assignments.

And thanks to my questions, more of us know where to find the graphs!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why the uproar over wikitruth

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 4/22/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>The Prodigy case is irrelevant, because the CDA was passed after that
>>case.  In fact, section 230 of the CDA was created in large part as a
>>response to the Prodigy case.  See [[Section 230 of the Communications
>>Decency Act]].
>>
>>
>Well, almost.  The common law elements of the Prodigy case stand if
>the elements of the statutory exemption of CDA 230 are not satisfied.
>It is *probably* the case that Wikipedia can *sometimes* satisfy CDA
>230, but not always.  If someone is trusted with access to sensitive
>information in order to facilitate the smooth running of Wikipedia and
>then proceeds to publish that information, then a plaintiff, having
>notified Wikipedia of defamation and then seen the defamation
>published via a leak by a Wikipedia administrator to WikiTruth
>*might* argue that Wikipedia did not take all reasonable steps to
>limit damage, and a court might accept this as a prima facie case for
>third party liability.
>
>This is hypothetical, but I think it demonstrates that Wikitruth, if
>its purported evidence of Wikipedia admin collusion is correct,
>represents a fairly serious problem for Wikipedia.
>
Very hypothetical.  I grant that it's a lawyers job to stretch given
ridiculous facts as much as is necessary to satisfy the desires of the
claimant.  There is always a chance that a ridiculous claim will
succeed.  No position is ever safe in the courts.  In some cases
wheel-war logs might be enough to dispel any allegation of admin collusion.

With 800 administrators how can you possibly determine the level of
trust that we can put in each.  And there have been arguments made that
we need more admins.  The mantra is that being an admin is no big deal.
Once a person is an admin he has the technical ability to put the
goatse.cx image on the main page, but we trust him not to do that.  An
agent acts with the authority of Wikimedia in an external environment;
is there any evidence that any ordinary admin is acting  on behalf of
Wikimedia when he is dealing with the real world?  Agency is often
linked with employment, but none of our admins are being paid to do that
job.  Nobody is required to sign an agreement saying that they won't
give away secrets or even defining what would be a secret.

I think it would be a safe bet that in the more than 1,000,000 articles
that we now have on the English Wikipedia (perhaps 4,000,000) when we
combine all the projects defamatory statements continue to exist; they
just haven't been identified.  We have no control over who can initiate
a suit; a determined but penniless nutcase can keep you tied up in
expensive court action for years.  He may have no realistic chance of
winning, but you have no chance of recovering legal costs.  Where do you
set the risk bar?  Surely it can't be set so low that you are at the
mercy of the nutcases.

Ec


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The image fileserver is currently a potential problem, as the application
> servers use NFS to manipulate files on it. NFS is notoriusly tempermental, and
> if the server goes down it tends to hang for long periods of time, with similar
> problem results.
>
Well, I'll stop by and ask the fellow in charge of this for the Linux kernel,
possibly tomorrow, or maybe 10am donuts on Weds.

> Improvements to this could include minimizing our contact with the file server
> (avoid unnecessary reads and checks for file existence; we've got a damn
> database) and potentially using some more explicit file upload protocol which
> can fail gracefully.
>
Both sound like good ideas.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> jayjg stated for the record:
>
> > No, what the second admin should do is discuss the case with the first
> > admin, rather than unblocking.  Maybe the first admin has evidence
> > that the second admin is unaware of.  If the second admin has
> > conclusive evidence, then the first admin will undoubtedly unblock. If
> > not, then there is a dispute, and the second admin should not wheel
> > war.  In any event, admins should not act under the bad faith
> > supposition that *they know better*; that is what starts the wheel
> > war.
> >
> > Jay.
>
> The statement "if the second admin has conclusive evidence, then the
> first admin will undoubtedly unblock" has been recently demonstrated to
> be untrue -- the conclusive evidence that Eloquence is not a danger to
> the project is patent, yet Danny (first admin) reverted my (second
> admin's) unblocking.

Did you communicate first?  The first reversion is wrong, regardless
of who does it, unless they've communicated.

Jay.


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] First-pass central authentication conflict check

body:
Moin,

On Sunday 23 April 2006 14:55, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've run a quick simulation of the first-pass automatic conflict
> resolution for the future single login migration:
>
> Total registered usernames:  2,097,231
>    No edits on any wiki:     1,475,146 (70.3%)
> Only registered on one wiki: 1,918,547 (91.5%)
> Automatically resolved:        139,466 (6.6%)
> Potential conflicts:            39,218 (1.9%)

Just want to say Thanx! for pushing single-sign on.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Sun Apr 23 16:07:32 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Schau, schau, Schoschonen."

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 481 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060423/8e4253f6/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> jayjg stated for the record:
>
> > One can posit all sorts of "maybes", but the fact remains that
> > reverting the first admin assumes the first admin is incorrect.
> > Instead of assuming, contact them first, and find out for sure.  It's
> > quite simple, and it astonishes me that anyone would defend summarily
> > reverting an admin action over communicating with them first and
> > building a consensus.  This is not an emergency, and almost never is.
> >
> > Jay.
>
> And when the first admin explicitly refuses to communicate?

That, in fact, is an unusual case.  Communicate with them, and if they
don't respond after a *reasonable* length of time, then drop them a
note stating what you are doing and why.  What is reasonable?  In a
case of blocking, I would say at least a half day if you don't see
them editing, less time if you do see them editing.

Jay.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So, clearly a definition of "reverting any administrative action counts
> as wheel-warring" doesn't work.

It's because it focuses on the "what" - it needs to look at the "why".

Take the example above of A blocking and B unblocking. Why did B
unblock? Was it because the block was some sort of mistake (blocking
the wrong range, or blocking an AOL proxy for too long, etc) or was it
because B disagreed with A's interpretation of the user's edits? If
there was such a disagreement, then why did B not discuss the block
with A? It's that part which most people find problematic, the attack
on someone's judgement, not the actual action of unblocking.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wars on wheels

body:
On 4/23/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Apr 23, 2006, at 12:33 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> > In other words: If the person you reverted accuses you of wheel
> > warring, then you wheel warred.
>
> And the only way of knowing that for sure before you revert is to
> contact the other admin before you do anything.
>
> In both cases, there's the admin absentee problem. Solution? Silence
> + external consensus = consent to go-ahead. We're enough of a
> community that you can seek out another admin for a third opinion if
> the admin you're reverting isn't around.

Exactly so; we're not working in a vacuum here.  There's WP:AN/I, for example.

Jay.


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fair use image galleries in articles

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:
> On 22 Apr 2006, at 21:40, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>
>>Without seeing any particular examples, my opinion would be that a
>>gallery of past logos used to document the evolution of the visual
>>identity of the company in question generally ought to be acceptable
>>fair use.
>
> *If* you are talking about the evolution of the company logo.
> *Not* if you are just talking about the company.
>
> Do we have articles about the history of individual company logos?
> Not in these cases (yet). So not fair use. Just pretty copyvio pics.

An article about the historical logos used by a company would probably
be a candidate for merging with the main article about the company.
Such a merger does not generally affect the validity of fair use claims
for images included in the merged content.

More generally, "pretty copyvio pics" sounds like a straw man argument
to me.  Who in their right mind would consider a company logo pretty?
The sole reason for inclusing old logos in an article is that such logos
*add information to the article*.

Of course, the article does need to discuss the logos to some extent,
for the images to be relevant to the article.  Like, say, noting the
time period during which each logo was in use.  If we have additional
information on the logos, like for example who designed them, so much
the better.

The reason I'm taking the time to argue this point is that I find this
drive to eliminate eminently justifiable fair use content frankly absurd
and also detrimental to the encyclopedia.  If I read about the history
of a company, I may very much like to know what their logo used to look
like in the 50's, for example.  The only reasonable way to convey this
information is by including a picture of the logo.

Fundamentally, this is about what fair use really means.  The law leaves
its definition deliberately vague, relaying instead on the common sense
notion that a use is "fair" if it serves a useful purpose and does not
unduly harm the copyright holder.  In this case, we're using these logos
for the purpose of improving the coverage of a free encyclopedia, and
we're not taking anything away from anyone by doing so.

Mind you, if anyone actually were to complain about us including their
logos, we should immediately take them down.  But until and unless it
happens, it seems reasonable to me to assume that our use of company
logos in an encyclopedic context, with proper attribution, is doing no
actual or perceived harm to the copyright holders.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:

> The 'first reverter' is NOT always the problem and 'discussion' does
> not cure all ills. I don't think I've ever seen a serious wheel war
> where discussion WASN'T going on.

Discussion does frequently develop, but usually it fails to involve both
of the participants in the actual "war". If both sides were busy
discussing instead of serially undoing each other's actions, then that
problem wouldn't come up, and they'd hopefully be able to make progress
in terms of resolving the underlying issue.

Unfortunately, the situation is sometimes aggravated by those who are
late to the party, see that a dispute has come up, and decide to join in
on the *action* rather than the *discussion*. Quite a bit of the userbox
fiascos can be attributed to this, I think.

To prevent this, I think the obligation needs to fall on the original
participants. If you've helped precipitate a dispute that has moved to
discussion, in order for that discussion to mean anything you need to
prevent people from actively perpetuating the dispute. Specifically, you
should be stepping in when your would-be allies arrive, as those are
people who ought to listen to you, telling them to stop and join the
discussion instead.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Wouldn't want to bother anybody during an outage, as I'm sure that folks
> are busy.  The point of a postmortem is to figure out how to prevent the
> same from happening in the future.

Since I still don't have a clue what you're talking about, preventing it
from happening in the future might be difficult. I'll ask again: what is
"local time"? Which local time are you talking about?

> Besides, IRC isn't a very conducive for planning, email exchange is much
> preferable.
>
>
>
>>There are no other clusters which fill the same role as pmtpa. Go to this page:
>>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Profiling/20051208
>>
>
> For failover, every cluster needs its own copy of the SQL database (slaved),
> and its own apache servers, and its own squid.
>
> After all, ISP customers aren't calling support because they cannot edit,
> it's because they aren't getting pages served.
>
>
>
>>and tell me how fast the site would be if every one of those Database::query
>>or memcached::get calls required a couple of transatlantic RTTs. Using
>>centralised caches improves the hit rate, and keeping them within a few
>>kilometres of the apache servers makes the latency acceptable.
>>
>
> Strawman.  Are the Tampa apache's using some sort of memcache shared
> between them?  Then, how do the Seoul apache's share that?

Don't give me this "strawman" crap. You've been here 2 weeks and you think
you know the site better than I do? Unless you're willing to treat the
existing sysadmin team with respect it deserves, I'm not interested in
dealing with you.

The yaseo apaches serve jawiki, mswiki, thwiki and kowiki. The memcached
cluster for those 4 wikis is also located in yaseo. We discussed allowing
remote apaches to serve read requests from a local slave database, proxying
write requests back to the location of the master database. The problem is
that cache writes and invalidations are required even on read requests.

While distributed shared memory systems with cache coherency and
asynchronous write operations have been implemented several times,
especially in academic circles, I'm yet to find one which is suitable for
production use in a web application such as MediaWiki. When you take into
account that certain kinds of cache invalidation must be synchronised with
database writes and squid cache purges, the problem of distribution, taken
as a whole, would be a significant project.

Last year, we discussed the possibility of setting up a second datacentre
within the US. But it was clear that centralisation, at least on a per-wiki
level, gives the best performance for a given outlay, especially when
development time and manageability are taken into account. Of course this
performance comes at the expense of reliability. But Domas assured us that
it is possible to obtain high availability with a single datacentre, as long
as proper attention is paid to internal redundancy.

With the two recent power failures, it's clear that proper attention wasn't
paid, but that's another story.

Automatic failover to a read-only mirror would be much easier than true
distribution, but I don't think we have the hardware to support such a high
request rate, outside of pmtpa.

In the end it comes down to a trade-off between costs and availability.
Given the non-critical nature of our service, and the nature of our funding,
I think it's prudent to accept, say, a few hours of downtime once every few
months, in exchange for much lower hardware, development and management
costs. If PowerMedium can't provide this level of service despite being paid
good money, I think we should find a facility that can.

> I've noted that the ns0, ns1, and ns2 for wikimedia are located far apart,
> presumably your clusters.  Good practice.

Don't be patronising.

>>>However, that loss of DNS responses from the same subnet leads to the
>>>conclusion the subnet might be under congestive collapse.  That is, this
>>>lag might not be produced by wikimedia itself, but a problem with the
>>>link to or within the facility.
>>
>>I very much doubt it. Did you try testing for packet loss by pinging a
>>Wikimedia server?
>>
>
> Yes, of course, for most folks that's the first thing to do!  (100% loss.)
> Then, traceroutes from various looking glasses to see whether the problem
> is path specific.  (Showed a couple of those earlier.)
>
> Again, something caused all the squid and apaches to stop getting bytes
> and packets in.  I saved the ganglia .gifs, would you prefer I sent them
> as attachments?

If the external network was down for 20 minutes then it's PowerMedium's
problem. They probably lost a router or something. I have better things to
worry about.

> You've got a bastion at several clusters, where would the documentation be
> for what you're running at each?
>
> I've looked at https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/All_servers, but its
> hopelessly sparse (and out of date).

If it's not there then it probably doesn't exist.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Run that by me, one more time?

body:
Gordon Joly wrote:
> Today's featured article (Main Page, 23rd April 2006)
>
> "Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish language....."

Without even looking at the article, I'm guessing that "literature" and
"Turkish language" are wikilinks.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [WikiEN-l] Can the building owner be sued?

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 4/23/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
>>>
>>>So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
>>>writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
>>>owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
>>>down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
>>>removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
>>>message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
>>>people.
>>>
>>>You think the building owner can be sued?
>>>
>>>
>>I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued.
>>
>>The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different
>>question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess.
>>
>>
>C'mon now, there are plenty of people who are not lawyers who are
>trying to guess.  Surely the fact that you are not a lawyer is not the
>reason you wouldn't even try to guess.
>
>
No, the real reason he isn't trying to guess is because he has good
sense. You don't see any lawyers trying to guess, do you?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[WikiEN-l] 2 Questions for Jimbo about WP:OFFICE and
 things	that aren't labeled WP:OFFICE.

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Combining this with the discussion of defamation, and Wikitruth, maybe
> there is a simple solution.  Give Danny and other agents of Wikimedia
> special powers which can't be overridden by admins.  Let them protect
> pages in a way that they can't be unprotected by admins, and let them
> delete defamatory information, copyright violations, and other legally
> problematic material, permanently, in a way that the information can't
> even be read by admins.

In cases where it's necessary to remove information this way, the case is
forwarded to me and I trim the revisions manually. Either it's *extremely* rare
or Danny isn't telling me about such things.

A wiki-accessible version of this is partly implemented but incomplete
(currently it doesn't mix properly with regular page deletion.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060423/c3b307ad/attachment.pgp


from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

body:
William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> writes:

> However, it would be nicer for you to treat folks offering help with the
> respect *they* deserve.  After all, I do happen to have 30+ years of
> experience in the field, organized the state government funding for NSFnet
> (the academic precursor to the Internet) 20 years ago, was an original
> member of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), have written
> a fair few Internet standards over the years, among other things.

 With all due respect for your qualifications, you lack the prime
skill needed: Know who and what you are dealing with, before trying to
change things.

 ...

> Not knowing "Domas" (or whether that's a name or a company), I'm not
> sure of the basis for the assurance.  Had you checked with other
> sites, I'm pretty sure you'd have heard that reliability from a
> single data center is extremely unlikely.

 Not knowing domas does not exactly qualifies for preferential treatment.

--
// Wegge
Weblog: http://blog.wegge.dk
Wiki:   http://wiki.wegge.dk


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Foundation-l] Optional advertisement on wikipedia

body:
On 4/23/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
> >Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I'd guess the open questions would be:
> >>
> >>1) How would this impact the charitable non-profit status of WMF?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >The general rule is that a non-profit organization should have at least
> >one-third of its annual income come from a combination of: governmental
> >donations, donations from other public charities, and small (less than
> >2% of total income each) donations from the general public and private
> >charities (large donations can still have the first 2% counted).  If
> >that all adds up to less than 1/3, things get considerably more complicated.
> >
> >Whether advertising income would cause a problem depends on how much we
> >expect to get, and how much in large donations from private individuals
> >and charities we typically get.
> >
> >-Mark
> >
> >
>
> Interesting information.   Do you have any further detail.   Is the
> above a good general guideline because it is mandated by law;  accepted
> as good practice by accountants, IRS, rating organization, possible
> donors or other?
>
Presumably he is referring to the "public support test", section 509
of the Internal Revenue Code.  Failure to meet the test would have the
organization deemed a private foundation which would have significant
negative tax effects.  In extremely excessive cases the organization
could completely lose its non-profit status.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
I hate to personalize this as I think Erik's gone through enough, but really
I can't let this go by.

This phone call could've been avoided if he had simply made an attempt to
communicate -- in any fashion -- before he reversed Danny.

k

On 4/23/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> jayjg stated for the record:
>
> >>And when the first admin explicitly refuses to communicate?
> >
> > That, in fact, is an unusual case.  Communicate with them, and if they
> > don't respond after a *reasonable* length of time, then drop them a
> > note stating what you are doing and why.  What is reasonable?  In a
> > case of blocking, I would say at least a half day if you don't see
> > them editing, less time if you do see them editing.
> >
> > Jay.
>
> By telephone.  Danny /explicitly/ refused to discuss his multi-project
> indefinite block of a Wikipedian who's been around since 2001.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | Knowledge is power. Power
> sean at epoptic.org | corrupts. Study hard, be evil.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFES+KcMAt1wyd9d+URAvfCAJ9cRq7jLqX40+X0zTeIfhn1ew4p1wCeKTQ1
> t5bFXKIieIh1QwwfhvSmhsE=
> =PkHs
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rob Church

references:
<4448F04B.2040406@gmail.com> <e2de51$ts7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<444AEBB2.60400@gmail.com> <e2f6o6$as3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<444B6C1F.5080500@gmail.com> <m37j5guyh5.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>

body:
On 23 Apr 2006 17:02:14 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge at wegge.dk> wrote:
> > Not knowing "Domas" (or whether that's a name or a company), I'm not
> > sure of the basis for the assurance.  Had you checked with other
> > sites, I'm pretty sure you'd have heard that reliability from a
> > single data center is extremely unlikely.
>
>  Not knowing domas does not exactly qualifies for preferential treatment.

All right, let's sort that out, then. "Domas" is Domas Mituzas, one of
our core operations staff; I'd describe him as our resident
performance nut, and one of our main database admins. He handles a lot
of hardware purchasing and is one of the group of people who beat the
site back into submission/working on a routine basis. Of note is the
fact that he works for MySQL AB, although I confess I don't recall his
precise position.

No doubt I left bits of the description out; feel free to amend it. :)

Rob Church


from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] problem with wrongful block

body:
On Apr 23, 2006, at 3:14 PM, Stephane Charette wrote:
<snip details of dispute>
> My comments were reverted.  Today, that user posted my username on
> WP:AIV.  I've been blocked ever since by Royboycrash.

Happily, this error was quickly resolved:

     * 18:05, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan unblocked S charette
(contribs) (Decided to simply unblock.)
     * 18:05, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan blocked "S charette
(contribs)" with an expiry time of 12 hours (shorter block time)
     * 18:04, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan unblocked S charette
(contribs) (shortening block)
     * 17:30, 23 April 2006 Royboycrashfan blocked "S charette
(contribs)" with an expiry time of 31 hours (stalking/vandalism)

35 minutes blocked.  It still shouldn't have happened, from what I
understand, but I hope that the quick resolution restored at least some
of S_charette's faith in Wikipedia.

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Arbeo M

body:
On 4/23/06, Tony Bruguier <tony.bruguier at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to this list, so please forgive me if I mess up. There's been
> some talk about advertisement on wikipedia or not. Why not make it
> optional, so that each user decides if he/she wants to see the
> advertisement? That way, users can "support" wikipedia or not. I don't
> think that'd be a sell out.
>
> Tony
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bruguiea
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Thanks for your suggestion. I for one would not feel fundamentally disturbed
by seeing ads imcluded like at wikia.com, especially not when they can help
to secure the future of Wikimedia's projects. However, one major concern
persists no matter if we make ads optional or mandatory: How can it be
assured advertisers don't influence Wikipedia's content? IMHO, once we start
selling ads customers will invariably affect our content to some degree. For
the most part probably not in a spectacular way but rather in a very subtle
manner. For example articles that deal with companies that regularly
advertise on Wikipedia will most likely tend to contain slightly less
critisism than they normally would, in order not to lose those customers.
They will possibly have a tendency to sound a little bit more well-meaning
than articles on competing companies that don't buy ads. On top of that,
Wikipedia editors will spend more time and effort on writing content dealing
with companies that advertise on Wikipedia. Not because of any gross
corruption, simply because they will be more aware of them, seeing their
names while spending time at Wikipedia. An increased number of commercial
links in articles might be another possible side-effect of allowing ads.

Once again, this is not to say that I'm fundamentally opposing all forms of
advertising under all circumstances. It is vital for our project to have a
solid financial basis and we might one day reach a point where donations
will no longer be sufficient. However, the community should be aware of the
fact that generating income by means of selling ads will almost invariably
reduce our independence to some degree.

Arbeo


body:
On 4/23/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> >I'd guess the open questions would be:
> >
> >1) How would this impact the charitable non-profit status of WMF?
> >
> >
> Zero impact.  Nonprofit means that surplus revenue is not handed to
> private individuals as a return on investment.  The Wikimedia Foundation
> can funnel as much money as they and their contributors feel they are
> willing invest in the public good/purpose as per the
> charter/organization plan/etc. approved by the State of Florida.   I
> have been told that arrangements are in progress to select a CPA and get
> the first required audit completed.
>
> The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has assets of approximately 25
> billion dollars so given billy boy's and pals past performance in
> extracting revenue from captive or coerced markets it probably has an
> annual income from stock dividends or splits anywhere between 2.5 and 5
> billion dollars.
>
As has already been pointed out, it's simply not true that there is
zero impact.  As for your example, the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation is a private foundation, not a public charity, and they
don't make their revenue off of advertising anyway.

One need only look to the Mozilla Corporation to see the impact of
making advertising a significant portion of revenue.  Note I said the
Mozilla Corporation, not the Mozilla Foundation.  To quote Wikipedia:
"The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla
Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of
Internet-related applications such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser
and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by the growing global
community of open-source developers, only some of which are employed
by the corporation itself."  "The Mozilla Corporation was established
on August 3, 2005 to handle the revenue-related operations of the
Mozilla Foundation. As a non-profit, the Mozilla Foundation is limited
in terms of the types and amounts of revenue."  Mozilla wanted to
charge Google et. al. lots of money to put their search engines in the
search engine box of the browser (essentially, advertising).  So they
started a wholly owned taxable subsidiary corporation to do so.  It's
much easier than dealing with UBTI, the public support test, and the
risk of losing non-profit status.

That would probably be the best solution for Wikipedia as well if they
wanted to get any significant amount of advertising revenue.  Form a
wholly owned subsidiary corporation and put the ads on the for-profit
site.  The edit link would point to the standard site owned by the
non-profit.  This would also answer the opt-out/opt-in question.  To
opt-in to ads you go to wikipedia.com.  To opt out, you go to
wikipedia.org.  (Or whatever the two different urls were).

Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, and not even a CPA, just a lowly
non-government-regulated tax accountant.  This is not tax advice, blah
blah blah (whatever crap that lawyer keeps saying about Circular 230,
that goes for me too).

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
I wasn't talking about anything you did -- perhaps it was you not paying
attention?   I'm talking about the *very first* point at which someone could
have reached out and did not.  This whole thing got botched up when Erik
reversed Danny's action without a word to him.  If he'd tried to contact
Danny *before* he decided to reverse his action, all this could've been
avoided.

I'm not saying I agree with everything that happened later.  But that indeed
was the first place this all broke down, and is at the root of the lack of
respect and courtesy I've been pressing since this started.  (Speaking in
general terms -- again, I'd really prefer not to be personalizing this and
don't doubt Erik's dedication.)

k

On 4/23/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Katefan0 stated for the record:
>
> > I hate to personalize this as I think Erik's gone through enough, but
> really
> > I can't let this go by.
> >
> > This phone call could've been avoided if he had simply made an attempt
> to
> > communicate -- in any fashion -- before he reversed Danny.
>
> Nice try.  If you were paying attention, you would recall that the
> refusal came /before/ I attempted to correct the error.  Eloquence
> called Danny to ask why he was blocked, and Danny refused to explain.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | Knowledge is power. Power
> sean at epoptic.org | corrupts. Study hard, be evil.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFES/F/MAt1wyd9d+URAhOfAJ90im9FWITn5C6CXQ0Q/r2fEG/93ACfT/F+
> yYztSW4PaHn2jRLrpaY6y6Q=
> =MCiD
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
No, it's okay.  Nothing personal.  If we all didn't care so much about
Wikipeida, this topic wouldn't engender such strong feelings.

k

On 4/23/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I wasn't talking about anything you did -- perhaps it was you not paying
> attention?   I'm talking about the *very first* point at which someone could
> have reached out and did not.  This whole thing got botched up when Erik
> reversed Danny's action without a word to him.  If he'd tried to contact
> Danny *before* he decided to reverse his action, all this could've been
> avoided.
>
> I'm not saying I agree with everything that happened later.  But that
> indeed was the first place this all broke down, and is at the root of the
> lack of respect and courtesy I've been pressing since this started.
> (Speaking in general terms -- again, I'd really prefer not to be
> personalizing this and don't doubt Erik's dedication.)
>
> k
>
> On 4/23/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Katefan0 stated for the record:
> >
> > > I hate to personalize this as I think Erik's gone through enough, but
> > really
> > > I can't let this go by.
> > >
> > > This phone call could've been avoided if he had simply made an attempt
> > to
> > > communicate -- in any fashion -- before he reversed Danny.
> >
> > Nice try.  If you were paying attention, you would recall that the
> > refusal came /before/ I attempted to correct the error.  Eloquence
> > called Danny to ask why he was blocked, and Danny refused to explain.
> >
> > - --
> > Sean Barrett     | Knowledge is power. Power
> > sean at epoptic.org | corrupts. Study hard, be evil.
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> >
> > iD8DBQFES/F/MAt1wyd9d+URAhOfAJ90im9FWITn5C6CXQ0Q/r2fEG/93ACfT/F+
> > yYztSW4PaHn2jRLrpaY6y6Q=
> > =MCiD
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>


body:
On 4/22/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/22/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > The Prodigy case is irrelevant, because the CDA was passed after that
> > case.  In fact, section 230 of the CDA was created in large part as a
> > response to the Prodigy case.  See [[Section 230 of the Communications
> > Decency Act]].
>
> Well, almost.  The common law elements of the Prodigy case stand if
> the elements of the statutory exemption of CDA 230 are not satisfied.
> It is *probably* the case that Wikipedia can *sometimes* satisfy CDA
> 230, but not always.  If someone is trusted with access to sensitive
> information in order to facilitate the smooth running of Wikipedia and
> then proceeds to publish that information, then a plaintiff, having
> notified Wikipedia of defamation and then seen the defamation
> published via a leak by a Wikipedia administrator to WikiTruth
> *might* argue that Wikipedia did not take all reasonable steps to
> limit damage, and a court might accept this as a prima facie case for
> third party liability.
>
Frankly, I just don't see it, but maybe I don't know what you mean by
"sensitive information".  You also don't mention what Wikipedia would
be sued for.  Negligence?  If so, I don't see where the duty of care
is.

> This is hypothetical, but I think it demonstrates that Wikitruth, if
> its purported evidence of Wikipedia admin collusion is correct,
> represents a fairly serious problem for Wikipedia.

I'm not willing to say that there isn't a serious problem.  In fact,
if Wikitruth is publishing information which violates someone's right
to privacy, *that* might be a problem.  But in my opinion anything
that violates someone's right to privacy shouldn't be available to
admins in the first place.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
On 4/22/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> A similar argument applies to defamation.  The onus is on me, as
> custodian of my own post, to demonstrate that I do not recklessly
> dispose of it.  Whilst I shouldn't be expected to take responsibility
> for any and every illegal act that is perpetrated by my servants, once
> I become aware that such an act may take place, I should take
> reasonable steps to prevent it.  The problem is the word "reasonable".
>  If a defamatory statement is published, a plaintiff may well have an
> apprehension that this is because I have been reckless, even if I
> haven't,  and much time and money may be spent by both sides in
> deciding the issue.

So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
people.

You think the building owner can be sued?

I don't get it.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
Damn.  I changed my analogy before sending this message and didn't fix
it correctly.

On 4/22/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> A similar argument applies to defamation.  The onus is on me, as
> custodian of my own post, to demonstrate that I do not recklessly
> dispose of it.  Whilst I shouldn't be expected to take responsibility
> for any and every illegal act that is perpetrated by my servants, once
> I become aware that such an act may take place, I should take
> reasonable steps to prevent it.  The problem is the word "reasonable".
>  If a defamatory statement is published, a plaintiff may well have an
> apprehension that this is because I have been reckless, even if I
> haven't,  and much time and money may be spent by both sides in
> deciding the issue.

So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on a corkboard message.  Then the
owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
people.

You think the building owner can be sued?

I don't get it.

Anthony


body:
On 4/23/06, cwarner <cwarner at kernelcode.com> wrote:
> The short, there was no vandalism.

Then the 3RR applies.

--
geni


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
* jayjg wrote:

> One can posit all sorts of "maybes", but the fact remains that
> reverting the first admin assumes the first admin is incorrect.
> Instead of assuming, contact them first, and find out for sure.  It's
> quite simple, and it astonishes me that anyone would defend summarily
> reverting an admin action over communicating with them first and
> building a consensus.  This is not an emergency, and almost never is.

I find your position equally illogical. Tracking down the admin who
originally protected a page to get their 'buy in' on unprotecting it after
the issue has been resolved would be a pointless waste of time. MAYBE one
time in a hundred they are going to have some non-apparent reason for
wanting the page to remain protected, but usually not.

Admins contravene the actions of others every day without anyone saying a
word about it. When situations change or new facts are uncovered admins
SHOULD take the initiative to do what makes sense in the current
circumstances. Putting that on hold to get the original admin's near
certain agreement would be a pointless drag on getting things done. Ergo,
this 'never ever undo the action of another admin without discussing it'
seems to me untenable.

The only time you should need to 'discuss first' is if you think the other
admin might disagree with your decision. People who's judgement of what
another admin might object to is consistently off aren't likely to become
admins in the first place or to remain that way. Wheel warring is almost
never due to such mistaken assumptions as to what is ok, but rather due to
deliberate actions which the person KNOWS the other admin will object
to... often while 'discussion' is going on.


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 4/23/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 4/23/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
>>>>>
>>>>>So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
>>>>>writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
>>>>>owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
>>>>>down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
>>>>>removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
>>>>>message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
>>>>>people.
>>>>>
>>>>>You think the building owner can be sued?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued.
>>>>
>>>>The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different
>>>>question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>C'mon now, there are plenty of people who are not lawyers who are
>>>trying to guess.  Surely the fact that you are not a lawyer is not the
>>>reason you wouldn't even try to guess.
>>>
>>>
>>No, the real reason he isn't trying to guess is because he has good
>>sense. You don't see any lawyers trying to guess, do you?
>>
>>--Michael Snow
>>
>>
>Are you implying that lawyers have good sense?
>
>
I certainly don't claim that for all of them, but they're probably as
capable of good sense as the rest of the population.

>Anyway, no, I don't see any lawyers trying to guess, but lawyers tend
>to be greedy and not give away their expertise without getting paid
>for it - one of the reasons I'm not a lawyer.
>
>
Actually, most lawyers of my acquiantance are frequently willing to give
their initial impression about a situation to people they know, without
insisting on being paid. Any lawyer knows that one of the
blessings/curses of their avocation is the inundation of friends and
family with questions about legal issues, even if the appropriate
response sometimes is, "You need to get a lawyer." However, lawyers
generally prefer to deal with real situations, not made-up ones; this is
at best a law school exam hypothetical, and they've already done enough
of those, thank you very much.

Also, to the extent that this implicates a real situation, any sensible
attorney should have an idea of who they're communicating with. To the
extent that you're responding to a potential client, it's usually not a
good idea to discuss it in a public forum, because then you've probably
destroyed any attorney-client privilege that might exist for the
communication.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
* jayjg wrote:
> Did you communicate first?  The first reversion is wrong, regardless
> of who does it, unless they've communicated.

I disagree. Entirely.

Example 1: Admin A protects a 'high use' template to prevent possible
vandalism. Months pass and the template is deprecated and is now barely
used. Admin B unprotects the template without 'discussion'. Admin B has
done nothing wrong whatsoever.

Example 2: Admin A is in discussion with other admins and states that they
are going to take a course of action. The other admins all strongly object
and state their reasons. Admin A goes ahead with their plan anyway. No
reversion has taken place but in my view Admin A is clearly 'wrong' and
any Admin B would be justified in reversing it based on the existing
consensus.

The 'first reverter' is NOT always the problem and 'discussion' does not
cure all ills. I don't think I've ever seen a serious wheel war where
discussion WASN'T going on.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/23/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 4/22/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > A similar argument applies to defamation.  The onus is on me, as
> > > custodian of my own post, to demonstrate that I do not recklessly
> > > dispose of it.  Whilst I shouldn't be expected to take responsibility
> > > for any and every illegal act that is perpetrated by my servants, once
> > > I become aware that such an act may take place, I should take
> > > reasonable steps to prevent it.  The problem is the word "reasonable".
> > >  If a defamatory statement is published, a plaintiff may well have an
> > > apprehension that this is because I have been reckless, even if I
> > > haven't,  and much time and money may be spent by both sides in
> > > deciding the issue.
> >
> > So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
> > writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
> > owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
> > down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
> > removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
> > message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
> > people.
> >
> > You think the building owner can be sued?
> >
> > I don't get it.
> >
> > Anthony
>
> Under UK law they probably could be. Sending a postcard containing
> deflamotory information under UK law is enough to allow a claim to be
> made.
>
The building owner didn't send anything to anyone, though.

Anthony


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel chill

body:
On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 10:14:45 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:

>I have an answer.  Enforce WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV and scrap everything else other than legal policies and a technical policy or 2 to keep vandals, spammers, and edit wars under control.  Other than copyright violations, those 3 policies enforced would put libel and most other legal issues in the sources' laps.

Policy advice from a permablocked POV pusher.  Just what we need :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
On 4/23/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/23/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
> > writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on a corkboard message.  Then the
> > owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
> > down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
> > removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
> > message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
> > people.
> >
> > You think the building owner can be sued?
> >
>
>
> Yes, I think that the owner of the apartment building might well be
> liable for the defamation conducted by the janitor.  It would be, as
> I've said, something that a court would decide.  Arguably by not
> disposing of the defamatory material in an appropriate manner he
> facilitated the subsequent actions of the janitor.
>
Frankly, I think that's ridiculous.

> Now if it was found that one of his janitors had done this *once*, it
> might not be a big deal and there wouldn't be much of a case.  But
> once this happens, the owner of the apartment building becomes aware
> that his janitors are not all reliable, it would be reasonable to
> expect him to take steps to keep sensitive material out of their
> reach.

I fail to see how defamatory material = sensitive material.  We're not
talking about secrets here, we're talking about false statements.  If
the paper contained the person's social security number, I could see
you calling it sensitive.  The fact that the janitor sees a piece of
paper which says "[whoever] is gay" does not in fact affect her
ability to defame [whoever] in any way.

I mean, what if the statement was: "The following statement is false:
Joe Heybobarebob is gay".  And then the janitor copied the statement
removing the preface?

What if Wikipedia adds "the following article is false" to the top of
the history?

> So the second time it happens there would be a stronger case,
> and each time the owner of the apartment building permits potentially
> defamatory material to be published by not taking such steps, the case
> becomes stronger.

I'm sorry, I just don't see it.  But I guess your position has been
made clear to the point where there's nothing more I can say other
than that I disagree.

I'm not sure whether to call this defamation paranoia or the chilling
effects of defamation law.  But either way, it lends credence to my
belief that Wikipedia needs to shed its centralized control and
reorganize as a peer-to-peer system, and soon.

Anthony


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
> From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
>
> So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
> writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
> owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
> down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
> removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
> message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
> people.
>
> You think the building owner can be sued?

I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued.

The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different
question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess.


body:
On 4/23/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
> >
> > So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
> > writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
> > owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
> > down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
> > removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
> > message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
> > people.
> >
> > You think the building owner can be sued?
>
> I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued.
>
> The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different
> question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess.
>
C'mon now, there are plenty of people who are not lawyers who are
trying to guess.  Surely the fact that you are not a lawyer is not the
reason you wouldn't even try to guess.

Anthony


from_name: Mark Bergsma

body:
William Allen Simpson wrote:

> That 84.40.24.22 inverse is only at 2 DNServers both located on the same
> subnet (very bad practice):
[snip]

I wouldn't worry so much about reverse DNS, since we are only using it
for cosmetic purposes...

> Also, I'm seeing incorrect DNS configuration (CNAME to CNAME):
> ;; ANSWER SECTION:
> en.wikipedia.org.       92      IN      CNAME   rr.wikimedia.org.
> rr.wikimedia.org.       600     IN      CNAME   rr.pmtpa.wikimedia.org.

CNAME chaining is not incorrect, just "discouraged". And yes, we are
fully aware of the consequences of this setup.

--
Mark

mark at nedworks.org


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > * Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> > > Funnily enough, my definition works here as well. Someone whose
> > > judgment is being questioned will accuse their reverter of wheel
> > > warring. Someone who made a mistake won't.
> > >
> > > In other words: If the person you reverted accuses you of wheel
> > > warring, then you wheel warred.
> >
> > I almost agree, but in some cases that person might still be operating
> > under mistaken assumptions. Say they found some evidence which suggested
> > that a particular user was a sockpuppet of a blocked user and placed a
> > block on the 'sockpuppet' as a result. However, the second admin then
> > uncovered proof that the person wasn't a sockpuppet and unblocked. The
> > first admin might well accuse the second of 'wheel warring' and reblock,
> > but only because of a failure of communication. The second admin wasn't
> > 'opposing the judgement' of the first, they were just working off a
> > different set of facts. The second admin shouldn't have to discuss the
> > matter before taking an action they know to be correct... though it would
> > be a good idea to send the first admin a note to fill them in on the details.
>
> No, what the second admin should do is discuss the case with the first
> admin, rather than unblocking.  Maybe the first admin has evidence
> that the second admin is unaware of.  If the second admin has
> conclusive evidence, then the first admin will undoubtedly unblock. If
> not, then there is a dispute, and the second admin should not wheel
> war.  In any event, admins should not act under the bad faith
> supposition that *they know better*; that is what starts the wheel
> war.
>
> Jay.

In the mean time an inocent user may stay blocked. Not good. Remeber
the first admin was also sure enough that they knew best in order to
block.
--
geni


from_name: Gordon Joly

body:
At 16:45 +0300 23/4/06, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>Gordon Joly wrote:
>>  Today's featured article (Main Page, 23rd April 2006)
>>
>>  "Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish language....."
>
>Without even looking at the article, I'm guessing that "literature" and
>"Turkish language" are wikilinks.
>
>--
>Ilmari Karonen
>

Does that stop it being a tautology?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


body:
At 07:09 -0700 23/4/06, Pete Bartlett wrote:
>  >"Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish language....."
>
>Source?
>
>
>
>

There are no references that back this up, as far as I can see...

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel chill

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>>Steve Bennett schrieb:
>>
>>>I would be curious to know - not necessarily with examples - whether
>>>we have had legal threats related to articles that did meet WP:V. That
>>>is, we published something which was by all accounts true, and had
>>>verifiable sources to back it up - and yet was deemed offensive by
>>>some miffed party.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Garrels

Before anyone else gets to point this out, let me note that the
situation appears to be somewhat more complicated than my cursory
examination of the page history at first suggested.

(Essentially, it seems only some of the disputed information has been
restored with sources; other parts appear to have indeed been false.
What confused me was that the part that was removed by Jimbo was among
the former.)

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Delirium

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>> The general rule is that a non-profit organization should have at least
>> one-third of its annual income come from a combination of: governmental
>> donations, donations from other public charities, and small (less than
>> 2% of total income each) donations from the general public and private
>> charities (large donations can still have the first 2% counted).  If
>> that all adds up to less than 1/3, things get considerably more complicated.
>>
>> Whether advertising income would cause a problem depends on how much we
>> expect to get, and how much in large donations from private individuals
>> and charities we typically get.
>>
> Interesting information.   Do you have any further detail.   Is the
> above a good general guideline because it is mandated by law;  accepted
> as good practice by accountants, IRS, rating organization, possible
> donors or other?
>
> Any background you care to provide regarding where you gained this
> knowledge would also be appreciated but I can follow up elsewhere if you
> do not care to provide that private information on a public mailing list.
>

The official guidelines on the subject are in IRS publication 557,
"Tax-Exempt Status for Your Organization".  The relevant chapter for the
Wikimedia Foundation is chapter 3 on 501(c)(3) organizations (online:
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p557/ch03.html).

I was a bit imprecise; these aren't requirements for all non-profit
organizations, but specifically for 501(c)(3) organizations, the type
that are required to be public charities.  That gives added benefits
over private charities (like the Gates foundation), such as allowing
people who donate money to deduct those donations from their taxes.  It
also includes added requirements; for example, they must serve a public
purpose (rather than a community or niche purpose), must spend their
money on activities that advance that public purpose (not social
activities), and must receive a substantial amount of their monetary
support from the general public, either directly or through government
entities or other public charities.  One-third support seems to be the
official line above which the organization is safe; if the public
support is less than that but above 10%, it's still possible to maintain
the status, but things get trickier.

-Mark


subject:
[WikiEN-l] 2 Questions for Jimbo about WP:OFFICE and things
	that aren't labeled WP:OFFICE.

body:
On 4/22/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
> JimboWales said:
> >Since WP:OFFICE is done publicly and under intense scrutiny from the
> >community and the external world, I hardly see any need for a special
> >narrow committee to be specifically tasked with overseeing it.
>
> It seems that this was not true in this particular case.  Danny did not add
> the WP:OFFICE tag.  There was every indication that it was not an office
> action.  If it was a WP:OFFICE action, why did Danny not tag it as such?
>
> >What should people do when they see a WP:OFFICE action?  Treat it as a
> >call for attention from the absolute best within ourselves, the absolute
> >best within our community.
>
> That makes perfect sense but again there was originally no indication this
> was a WP:OFFICE action.  So, the question I think many of us want answered
> is, "What should people do when they see something appears to NOT be an
> office action"?
>
> Johntex

Combining this with the discussion of defamation, and Wikitruth, maybe
there is a simple solution.  Give Danny and other agents of Wikimedia
special powers which can't be overridden by admins.  Let them protect
pages in a way that they can't be unprotected by admins, and let them
delete defamatory information, copyright violations, and other legally
problematic material, permanently, in a way that the information can't
even be read by admins.

Any idea how hard it would be to implement such a thing, Brion?

Anthony


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wiki trademark issue for ZH Wikipedia in
	mainland China

body:
2006/4/23, THD <theodoranian at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
> There are some things different between Chinese characters and English word.
> Every Chinese character has its own meaning. When we translate a foriegn
> language into Chinese, sometimes we do it by meaning, but more often we use
> characters with similar pronunciation for translation. Wiki is a generic
> name, so it can't be a trade mark. In Chinese sphere, wiki can be translate
> in many ways. Such as ?? (now all the Wikimedia projects in Chinese
> language, the first one pronunces as "wei", and the second pronunces as
> "gee"), ??(first "wei", second "gee"), and ??(first "wei" , second "ke")etc.
> ?? is one of translations of the word "wiki", and it was chosen by Chinese
> Wikipedians to be the only name of Chinese Wikipedia. Before Chinese
> Wikipedian's choosing ?? as the name, there was no famous name of wiki
> technology. The problem is "if we don't register ??, the Chinese Wikipedia
> will face the challenge of changing its name (in Chinese)". Wikipedia is one
> word, but ???? have 4 characters.  In Chinese text trade mark, the
> government protect the usage of charater singly.When someone registers ??,
> other people can't use ?? in their own trade mark. So the situation is not
> the same.
> THD

I am not into Chinese trademark law, but in general is it not a
defense against a claim of trademark violation that one used the
trademark continuously since BEFORE the person claiming violation used
it? I know that this is the case here in the Netherlands, there is
even the rule that if that other person knew about your previous use
of the trademark, their registration is considered mala fide, and can
be cancelled on those grounds.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


body:
On 4/23/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > Delirium wrote:
> >
> >> The general rule is that a non-profit organization should have at least
> >> one-third of its annual income come from a combination of: governmental
> >> donations, donations from other public charities, and small (less than
> >> 2% of total income each) donations from the general public and private
> >> charities (large donations can still have the first 2% counted).  If
> >> that all adds up to less than 1/3, things get considerably more complicated.
> >>
> >> Whether advertising income would cause a problem depends on how much we
> >> expect to get, and how much in large donations from private individuals
> >> and charities we typically get.
> >>
> > Interesting information.   Do you have any further detail.   Is the
> > above a good general guideline because it is mandated by law;  accepted
> > as good practice by accountants, IRS, rating organization, possible
> > donors or other?
> >
> > Any background you care to provide regarding where you gained this
> > knowledge would also be appreciated but I can follow up elsewhere if you
> > do not care to provide that private information on a public mailing list.
> >
>
> The official guidelines on the subject are in IRS publication 557,
> "Tax-Exempt Status for Your Organization".  The relevant chapter for the
> Wikimedia Foundation is chapter 3 on 501(c)(3) organizations (online:
> http://www.irs.gov/publications/p557/ch03.html).
>
> I was a bit imprecise; these aren't requirements for all non-profit
> organizations, but specifically for 501(c)(3) organizations, the type
> that are required to be public charities.  That gives added benefits
> over private charities (like the Gates foundation), such as allowing
> people who donate money to deduct those donations from their taxes.

I thought the Gates Foundation *was* a 501(c)(3) organization.  I
could be wrong about that, though.  Either way, a 501(c)(3) can be a
private foundation *or* a public charity.  In fact, all 501(c)(3)
organizations which make more than $5000 other than churches are by
default considered private foundations unless they apply for and
qualify as public charities under 509(a).  (see IRC 508(b) and 509(a)
at http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title26/subtitlea_chapter1_subchapterf_partii_.html).

Also, donations to private foundations generally *are* tax deductible,
just to a lesser extent (30% of AGI vs. 50% for most individual
taxpayers).

> One-third support seems to be the
> official line above which the organization is safe; if the public
> support is less than that but above 10%, it's still possible to maintain
> the status, but things get trickier.
>
The 1/3 test is 509(a)(2).  The other (trickier) tests are 509(a)(1),
509(a)(3), and 509(a)(4).

Anthony


body:
On 4/23/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >On 4/23/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
> >>>
> >>>So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
> >>>writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
> >>>owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
> >>>down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
> >>>removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
> >>>message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
> >>>people.
> >>>
> >>>You think the building owner can be sued?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued.
> >>
> >>The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different
> >>question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess.
> >>
> >>
> >C'mon now, there are plenty of people who are not lawyers who are
> >trying to guess.  Surely the fact that you are not a lawyer is not the
> >reason you wouldn't even try to guess.
> >
> >
> No, the real reason he isn't trying to guess is because he has good
> sense. You don't see any lawyers trying to guess, do you?
>
> --Michael Snow

Are you implying that lawyers have good sense?

Anyway, no, I don't see any lawyers trying to guess, but lawyers tend
to be greedy and not give away their expertise without getting paid
for it - one of the reasons I'm not a lawyer.

Anthony


body:
On 4/23/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I thought the Gates Foundation *was* a 501(c)(3) organization.  I
> could be wrong about that, though.  Either way, a 501(c)(3) can be a
> private foundation *or* a public charity.

Just checked with Guidestar (I'd give a link, but you need a free
account to see the information).  The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
"is a 501(c)(3)  Private Nonoperating Foundation."

Anthony


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/23/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A brief block is not the end of the world. If it drags on for a
> > lengthy period then it's something else.  And yes, the first admin
> > executed their best judgement when making the block; that's what
> > admins are supposed to do.  If a second admin disagrees with that
> > judgement, then they need to take it up with the first admin, rather
> > than initiate a wheel war with them.
> >
> > Jay.
>
> Pulling a block is not initiateing a wheel war.

Actually, it is, by definition.

> If I initiated a wheel
> war every time someone pulled one of my blocks we wouldn't be haveing
> this conversation now.

If someone pulled one of your blocks, then the wheel war has already
started.  How you respond, of course, is up to you.

>
> Allowing the revsal of admin actions is just a logical extension of
> [[WP:OWN]].

WP:OWN is about articles, not actions.  This is not a "logical
extension".  A more logical extension would have to do with not
reverting.

>Most revsals of admin actions don't result in any problems
> thus it requires less rescources to do whatever and then deal with any
> screaming afterwards.

Yes, and reverting someone using the admin revert button also requires
less resources, and you can deal with any screaming afterwards.

Jay.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> The basic problem is one of ego. For a place that prides itself on
> collegiality among editors, and particularly among administrators, we simply
> step on one another's toes too often. I don't see why we need to have all
> this parsing and ABC'ing when what we really need is to tug on a few ears
> and remind each other that it's rarely polite to undermine someone without
> so much as a word.
>
Exactly right. We need to introduce a culture of respect for each
other's admin actions, and when we disagree with something, try to
argue and persuade, instead of rushing in to undo. That has to be
accompanied by voting for users who will make responsible, committed,
and active admins so that our trust and respect isn't misplaced.

Sarah


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google Summer of Code 2006

body:
Hi,

after wandering through the archive of those lists, it seems that
nobody has yet mentioned that Wikimedia was accepted as a mentoring
organisation for the Google Summer of Code 2006.

http://code.google.com/soc/wikim/about.html

Students may apply for this in the first 8 days of May.

Please have a look at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2006 for suggestions
regarding possible projects.

It would be a great opportunity for us, yadda yadda etc. please apply.

Mathias


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> No if danny hadn't taken his action in the first place all this could
> be avoided.
>
That's true of all admin actions. You're implying that the best way to
stop wheel wars is to have no admins.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> No. You do not own articles. You do not own blocks . You do not own
> page protections. You do not own deletions. You do not own your
> f****** Mediawiki namespace edits. You're a wikipedia admin. Your ego
> can go hang and it is about time you started wearing toecaps.

I don't know who this was directed at, but it's exactly the attitude
that's causing a problem. Respecting someone else's judgment is not
the same as them "owning" the block or protection or edit.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> * jayjg wrote:
>
> > One can posit all sorts of "maybes", but the fact remains that
> > reverting the first admin assumes the first admin is incorrect.
> > Instead of assuming, contact them first, and find out for sure.  It's
> > quite simple, and it astonishes me that anyone would defend summarily
> > reverting an admin action over communicating with them first and
> > building a consensus.  This is not an emergency, and almost never is.
>
> I find your position equally illogical. Tracking down the admin who
> originally protected a page to get their 'buy in' on unprotecting it after
> the issue has been resolved would be a pointless waste of time. MAYBE one
> time in a hundred they are going to have some non-apparent reason for
> wanting the page to remain protected, but usually not.

You keep forgetting the element of time here.  The key is that it need
not be done immediately; unprotecting a page after 20 minutes is wheel
warring.  Unprotecting a page after 20 days is probably fine.

>
> Admins contravene the actions of others every day without anyone saying a
> word about it.

Sometimes for good, often for bad.

> When situations change or new facts are uncovered admins
> SHOULD take the initiative to do what makes sense in the current
> circumstances. Putting that on hold to get the original admin's near
> certain agreement would be a pointless drag on getting things done. Ergo,
> this 'never ever undo the action of another admin without discussing it'
> seems to me untenable.

Sort of like reverting.  Oh wait, but we should always discuss
reversions, shouldn't we?

>
> The only time you should need to 'discuss first' is if you think the other
> admin might disagree with your decision. People who's judgement of what
> another admin might object to is consistently off aren't likely to become
> admins in the first place or to remain that way. Wheel warring is almost
> never due to such mistaken assumptions as to what is ok, but rather due to
> deliberate actions which the person KNOWS the other admin will object
> to... often while 'discussion' is going on.

You can bet that if an admin has blocked someone, he'll object to the
block being lifted a few minutes later, unless he has it explained
first.  I've never seen a case where that wasn't true.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
* jayjg wrote:
> On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Pulling a block is not initiateing a wheel war.

> Actually, it is, by definition.

"By definition" a wheel war is something which happens on TENEX or UNIX
and has nothing to do with 'single revert' or 'double revert'.

Usage of the term has obviously been expanded, but no... you can't
reasonably say, 'my definition of what is a wheel war is better than your
definition'. Neither is written in stone, or even on paper, anywhere.

Better to say, 'pulling a block is not always a bad thing'.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> * jayjg wrote:
> > Did you communicate first?  The first reversion is wrong, regardless
> > of who does it, unless they've communicated.
>
> I disagree. Entirely.
>
> Example 1: Admin A protects a 'high use' template to prevent possible
> vandalism. Months pass and the template is deprecated and is now barely
> used. Admin B unprotects the template without 'discussion'. Admin B has
> done nothing wrong whatsoever.

"Months pass".  That's the key, of course.  We're not talking about
actions taken months later.

>
> Example 2: Admin A is in discussion with other admins and states that they
> are going to take a course of action. The other admins all strongly object
> and state their reasons. Admin A goes ahead with their plan anyway. No
> reversion has taken place but in my view Admin A is clearly 'wrong' and
> any Admin B would be justified in reversing it based on the existing
> consensus.

Ah, but then we're already in discussion, aren't we?  And if "other
admins" object, then there is a clear consensus against the action.

We need to deal with the real issues here, not strawman scenarios.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> * jayjg wrote:
> > On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Pulling a block is not initiateing a wheel war.
>
> > Actually, it is, by definition.
>
> "By definition" a wheel war is something which happens on TENEX or UNIX
> and has nothing to do with 'single revert' or 'double revert'.

The original definition had to do with undoing an admin action.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/24/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't know who this was directed at, but it's exactly the attitude
> > that's causing a problem.
>
> Really? Most historical problems with "wheel wars" have been due to
> the problem that it is tricky to block an admin who doesn't want to be
> blocked.

I don't know what that means. The wheel war problem is caused by
people taking it upon themselves to undo other people's admin actions,
simply because they disagree with them. As Kate said, it often boils
down to an ego problem, the presumption of knowing better.
>
> >Respecting someone else's judgment is not the same as them "owning"
> the block or >protection or edit.
>
> Functionaly the difference is?

You can strongly disagree with an admin action, but at the same time
realize that perhaps the original admin knows more about the situation
than you do; or perhaps knows just as much but has better judgment in
this case; or perhaps neither of these, and you'll just have to agree
to differ. Just as we can't always have our own way when editing, we
also can't always have our own way when adminning.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
* jayjg wrote:
> On 4/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> * jayjg wrote:
>>> On 4/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Pulling a block is not initiateing a wheel war.
>>> Actually, it is, by definition.
>> "By definition" a wheel war is something which happens on TENEX or UNIX
>> and has nothing to do with 'single revert' or 'double revert'.

> The original definition had to do with undoing an admin action.

Actually, the 'original definition' as I remember it was an attempt to
lock out other admins entirely rather than simply undoing some action of
there's. Sort of an electronic 'king of the mountain'. But then I wasn't
involved in the TENEX days and I left USL when they were bought out.


from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia
	Foundation

body:
Hi,

On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 11:58:56AM -0700, Jrgen Herz wrote:
> Hello,
>
...
 > Owner is a company called "Firestorm Forces Ltd." and searching on it
> together with Wikipedia I learned they're involved some bad
> anti-Wikipedia agitation. Seems they're also acting as "Infochannel
> Group" and as those clashed with german Wikipedians because of their
> entry ([[Infochannel Group]]) in de.wikipedia.

"Firestorm Forces Ltd." and "Infochannel Group" are identical.

> They also run a site
> called Encyclopedia Wikimania (http://www.wikimania.co.uk), a quite
> strange one with no real content.
>
...

yep,  and we'll loose wikipedia.eu, wikimedia.eu and other .eu
domains to them too, I suppose.
(because of completely incompetent handling of .eu matters on
Wikimedia side)

> Maybe someone is interested in doing some more research and foundating
> might think about filing an opposition.

Try to send it to juriwiki-l, unfortunately from my experience its as
useful as sending it to /dev/null

Jan Kulveit (User:Wikimol)


from_name: Artem

subject: [Wikitech-l] short URLs for non-latin pages

body:
Hi all!

I'm seeking a way to get rid of those huge URLs for pages with
non-latin symbols in their titles (in my case it's Russian). I found
an unresolved request #1450 in mediazilla on this theme, it contains
a comment with quite interesting advice (to use page id for it, like
/index.php?title=-&curid=1367).

Are there any more contemporary solutions to this issue? Ideally I'd
like to have a separate field for URL when creating/editing a page -
is it possible to create a plugin that would allow this? Another
solution would be having this field noneditable and automatically
filled with transliterated name of the page..

Thanks in advance,
Artem.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/23/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A brief block is not the end of the world. If it drags on for a
> lengthy period then it's something else.  And yes, the first admin
> executed their best judgement when making the block; that's what
> admins are supposed to do.  If a second admin disagrees with that
> judgement, then they need to take it up with the first admin, rather
> than initiate a wheel war with them.
>
> Jay.

Pulling a block is not initiateing a wheel war. If I initiated a wheel
war every time someone pulled one of my blocks we wouldn't be haveing
this conversation now.

Allowing the revsal of admin actions is just a logical extension of
[[WP:OWN]]. Most revsals of admin actions don't result in any problems
thus it requires less rescources to do whatever and then deal with any
screaming afterwards.~~~~

--
geni


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 03:50:30PM -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > The image fileserver is currently a potential problem, as the
> > application servers use NFS to manipulate files on it. NFS is
> > notoriusly tempermental, and if the server goes down it tends to
> > hang for long periods of time, with similar problem results.

> Well, I'll stop by and ask the fellow in charge of this for the Linux kernel,
> possibly tomorrow, or maybe 10am donuts on Weds.

Showing off is such bad form, William.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Browser problems with previewing long pages

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> In the last two weeks it has happened several times that I lost
> the tail of a long wiki page.  I think the page gets truncated
> when I'm doing a preview.  Can it be that some chunked transfer
> doesn't get completed? It has happened both on sites running
> MediaWiki and on other wiki websites, so it seems to be browser
> related rather than server related.  Perhaps this is related to
> Firefox 1.5 or 1.5.0.2?  I run Linux.  I never had this problem
> with Mozilla 1.7.8. Any clues?

Interesting... for the past couple weeks, I've been getting a truncation
problem too on occasion, but it also happens on shorter pages, and it's
only the "toolbox" list that gets truncated -- usually all that shows up
in that box is "What li" or something like that -- and the interwiki
links show up just fine after that. Reloading works just fine, but I
find it quite strange that the *middle* of a page would get truncated.
An issue with the MediaWiki: namespace, perhaps? (I can't really
reproduce this issue; it just happens randomly.)

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 4/22/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>If they infringe copyrigh or engage in defamation they're on their own
>>if they have to defend themselves in court.  Republishing copyvio
>>material is not a violation of GFDL since GFDL could not apply to the
>>original short-lived copyvio.
>>
>>
>GFDL is a straw man. I'm talking about third party liability.  Suppose
>I grant a servant access to my post, and one day someone sends me a
>copy of the latest Harry Potter novel in an envelope. Having opened
>the envelope and recognised the nature of its contents, I may take
>steps to dispose of it.
>
You have no obligation to destroy the photocopy.  All the servant has
done is carry the post from where the postman has left it.  How is he to
know what it contains unless you have authorized him to open it?

>But suppose that, instead of disposing of it, I place it within reach
>of someone whom I have reason to believe may wish to betray me.
>
If you have reason to believe that he would betray you, putting the copy
where he can easily do as you describe may put you in the role of "agent
provocateur" to his misdeeds.  That would make you complicit.

>Then I have contributed to any action that may be taken by that person
>to publish the work without authorization.
>
>A similar argument applies to defamation.  The onus is on me, as
>custodian of my own post, to demonstrate that I do not recklessly
>dispose of it.  Whilst I shouldn't be expected to take responsibility
>for any and every illegal act that is perpetrated by my servants, once
>I become aware that such an act may take place, I should take
>reasonable steps to prevent it.  The problem is the word "reasonable".
> If a defamatory statement is published, a plaintiff may well have an
>apprehension that this is because I have been reckless, even if I
>haven't,  and much time and money may be spent by both sides in
>deciding the issue.
>
This smacks of compulsive responsibility.  "Reasonable" allows room for
those times when everything around you just fucks up, and there really
is such a person as [[Joe Btfsplk]].  It can be awfully lonely waiting
at home for the process server that never comes.  Most people who have
been defamed will be willing to find a quick accomodation.  They don't
want to spend time in court any more than you do, and they probably want
the collateral publicity less than you do.

Ec


body:
Justin Cormack wrote:
> On 22 Apr 2006, at 21:40, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>> Without seeing any particular examples, my opinion would be that a
>> gallery of past logos used to document the evolution of the visual
>> identity of the company in question generally ought to be acceptable
>> fair use.
>
> *If* you are talking about the evolution of the company logo.
>
> *Not* if you are just talking about the company.
>
> Do we have articles about the history of individual company logos?
> Not in these cases (yet). So not fair use. Just pretty copyvio pics.
>
> Justinc

In fact, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_idents> is a good example of
how to write articles on things as trivial (?) as logos -- as with
company's hisorical logos, explaining network idents over the years
requires a sizable amount of fair use, and this article seems to do it
well, since the images haven't swallowed up the article.

There's also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_television_idents>, but
that article contains much less in the way of explanation, and might be
harder to justify under [[WP:NOT]] and fair use.

See also
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Film_and_television_logo_descriptions>.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/