from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki default problems

body:
On the cy: wikipedia we have noticed that user "MediaWiki default" (a
bot?) seems to run every 6 months or so and repeatedly resets many of
the MediaWiki strings either to an older version which has been
corrected or (even worse) to English.  I've just had to edit
:cy:MediaWiki:Go from "mynd" (travel) to "ewch" (imperative) again!

It is intensely annoying to have to repeatedly go through
Special:Allmessages trying to find out what has been screwed up (our
users usually notice when the labels of the editing tabs or the sidebar
go crazy). I know you need to create new strings for new features in
MediaWiki but for goodness' sake can the bot be altered so that it
doesn't interfere with pre-existing strings?

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: new request for ASL/English wikipedia

body:
> It sounds an awful lot to me like sign language is an othorgraphy, not a
> distinct language. Having "American sign language" to the exclusion of
> Auslan, British sign language, et. al. is incredibly US-centric.

No, this is not the case. Signed languages are completely independent
languages, with different grammar, vocabulary, and syntax than
whatever spoken languages with which they may coexist.

As I noted, American Sign Language is used in parts of Mexico, even
though the spoken language there is Spanish.

I never proposed having ASL to the exclusion of other signed
languages... in fact, I don't believe anybody did.

> Can I ask just one question: how many deaf people with Internet access
> are illiterate in whatever the audible version of their language is?
> Any? Are there any websites which are "written" in sign language?

"audible version"? What do you mean?? Signed languages are languages
completely independent of all spoken languages. They are distinct
languages, and are no more "primitive" or "advanced" than spoken
languages. Each signed language is a language in its own right.

Now, to answer your question assuming that by "audible version of
their language", you mean the primary written language of their area.

It was noted earlier that the average deaf American has a 4th-grade
reading level (may be different for other countries).

Also, what about Catalan? How many Catalan speakers with internet
access are illiterate in Spanish? Any?? Yet, we have a Catalan
Wikipedia, and it's quite large now...

> Until these questions are answered, I don't see why (or indeed *how*)
> Sign Language Wikipedias can exist.

I have already answered both of these questions over and over. By
choosing to ignore my messages (and, indeed, those of others, as most
of the things I've said have been said in this thread by others as
well) as you seem to have done, you are wasting the time of everybody
involved -- including yourself -- by asking questions which have
already been answered.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
The link currently says "zhongwen" / "jung man" / "tiong bun".

While it literally means "middle sentence", it implies modern standard
written Chinese (ie, contemporary written Mandarin).

To change the interwiki link to say "BeiFangBaiHuaWen" (Northeastern
colloquial writing) would not only be confusing, but absurdly
rediculous, and would make us the laughingstock of most
zh.wikipedians, as well as much of the Sinophone internet.

Mark

On 12/09/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Far <ffaarr at seed.net.tw> wrote:
>
> > The two situations are different at all.  The  ZH Wikipedia is now  in fact Mandarin Wikipedia. No  articles in Kantonese, Minnan, Hakka , Wuu etc.   are written there. If someone  wrote   in zh wikipedia an article by the  language of Test-zh-yue, it will soon be deleted or translated into Chinese to make users of  zh wikipedia understand it.
>
> In that case, my opinion is that we should make the 'in fact' official
> in some way. Moving it to some more specific URL and making
> zh.wikipedia.org into a portal page was my first idea, but is probably
> going too far, but I do think that one should change the interwiki to
> something more specifically Mandarin, and have links to the other
> Chinese languages prominently on the frontpage.
>
> Andre Engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


list: wikien-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
On 9/12/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think this is an excellent point, actually - I think Memory Alpha
> is another example of a Very Bad Thing, and that the fact that they
> forked and used a different license is a devastating blow to our Star
> Trek coverage that will NEVER HEAL.

Memory Alpha was never a fork of Wikipedia. Please see
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha:General_FAQ#What_are_the_goals_of_Memory_Alpha.3F
and
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha:History
for details of how the project got started.

The founders were inspired by the collaborative nature of Wikipedia,
but they were not intending on forking it, as evidenced by the fact
the license they (wrongly) chose meant they could never use Wikipedia
content. This was also not a fork of the Wikipedia community, but
instead drew individuals from the various Star Trek communities,
especially since this replaced the former Star Trek Encyclopedia
project which had started in the mid 90s. Whether or not those people
might have started editing Wikipedia is unknown, but it is simply
wrong to claim that they forked either the content or community of
Wikipedia.

Angela


body:
Having said that, I do agree that links to other Sinitic Wikipedias
(and, indeed, to the minority languages of countries where any Sinitic
language is the national or official language) should place
prominently on the zhwiki mainpage.

Mark

On 13/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> The link currently says "zhongwen" / "jung man" / "tiong bun".
>
> While it literally means "middle sentence", it implies modern standard
> written Chinese (ie, contemporary written Mandarin).
>
> To change the interwiki link to say "BeiFangBaiHuaWen" (Northeastern
> colloquial writing) would not only be confusing, but absurdly
> rediculous, and would make us the laughingstock of most
> zh.wikipedians, as well as much of the Sinophone internet.
>
> Mark
>
> On 12/09/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/13/05, Far <ffaarr at seed.net.tw> wrote:
> >
> > > The two situations are different at all.  The  ZH Wikipedia is now  in fact Mandarin Wikipedia. No  articles in Kantonese, Minnan, Hakka , Wuu etc.   are written there. If someone  wrote   in zh wikipedia an article by the  language of Test-zh-yue, it will soon be deleted or translated into Chinese to make users of  zh wikipedia understand it.
> >
> > In that case, my opinion is that we should make the 'in fact' official
> > in some way. Moving it to some more specific URL and making
> > zh.wikipedia.org into a portal page was my first idea, but is probably
> > going too far, but I do think that one should change the interwiki to
> > something more specifically Mandarin, and have links to the other
> > Chinese languages prominently on the frontpage.
> >
> > Andre Engels
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Claus Färber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vandalism concerns with commons images

body:
David Benbennick <dbenbenn at gmail.com> schrieb/wrote:
> On 9/12/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net
> <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
>> Images hosted on commons cannot be protected by admins from
>> en.wikipedia.

> An admin on EN need simply download the image, upload it to EN, and
> protect.  We even have a template,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:C-uploaded, for this issue.

A technical solution where protecting an image from Commons on another
Wikimedia project "just works" would be better.
I.e. MediaWiki should automatically create a local copy when an image
from Commons is protected and delete if when the protection is lifted.

Claus
--
http://www.faerber.muc.de


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
> Despite the well-deserved chastising from Angela, I stand by my
> assertion that Memory Alpha has a disastrous long-term effect on
> Wikipedia, and that these... I'm not sure what you want to call them.
> Other encyclopedias, I suppose. Regardless, I think they have a
> profoundly negative effect on the long-term success of Wikipedia.
> -Snowspinner

And why is that? Memory Alpha is a project for creating a Star Trek
encyclopedia that just happens to use the MediaWiki software. As seen
in the history page, if it hadn't, it would just be another Star Trek
database, not editable by everyone - and it allows for a level of
details that would be just silly at Wikipedia. Same with other
fan-wikis. For example, I wrote this article at The Vault:
http://vault.duckandcover.cx/index.php?title=Two-headed_bear
and I would definitely vote for the deletion of such article if it
were created at Wikipedia.

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


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] Trademarks

body:
Hallo,

Commons:Licensing currently says that "trademarked logos" should not be
uploaded to Commons. I'd like to propose to change that.

Short version: Trademarks are very different from copyright. They are
more like "other laws which restrict the free use" of (any) content and
Commons does already allow seals, flags, coats of arms, Olympic symbols,
the Red Cross and Crescent (all of which are protected quite like
"commercial" trademarks) as well as Nazi symbols (the use of which is
extremly restricted in some legislations such as DE, AT, HU).

Long version:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Licensing#Trademarks

Claus
--
http://www.faerber.muc.de


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article deletion (proposed 1 month hiatus)

body:
> I think this would be an interesting experiment. Instead of
> deletionist and inclusionist camps throwing around anecdotes, you
> get a sizeable body of candidates to study, plus it encourages people
> to think about the process that they want to follow when the period
> ends and they have a whole pile of articles they want to process
> efficiently.

The inclusionist camp could of course just obstruct everything.

> We'll discover, how often borderline articles gets
> improved into good ones when left alone, or get made into redirs to
> existing articles. Some articles might be unfairly speedied, but
> if they're being tracked from a protected list, I think admins will
> leave the marginals to accumulate rather than risk being sanctioned
> for deleting worthwhile material out of hand.

What risk? Admins on RC patrol will be able to delete stuff before
anyone else has time to react and digging thourgh the deletion log
when you don't have admin powers is imposible and when you do it is
insanely boring.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism concerns with commons images

body:
On 9/12/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
> With increasing hosting of images on commons, there arise vandalism
> concerns.

Ever looked at the now commons backlog? The number of images on
commons that we don't have local coppies of  is pretty limited

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/12/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Alphax (alphasigmax at gmail.com) [050911 14:34]:
> > Phroziac wrote:
>
> > > No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> > > renaming it would fix the problems.
>
> > So you don't think that any articles need to be deleted (outside of
> > candidates for speedy deletion), ever?
>
>
> You have a logical fallacy implicit in that answer: that the only deletion
> mechanism possible is the one we've got. Surely that can't be the case.
>
> I reiterate my suggestion: suspend the deletion mechanism (keep CSD for our
> remaining sanity) for a month working out a deletion mechanism that won't
> drive people away, cause vicious infighting and lead to unhealable forks
> which can never be pulled back into Wikipedia. Two forks (the Star Trek and
> webcomics encyclopedias) is two too many.

Then I take it you support the removal of NPOV policy (or have you
forgotten wikinfo?). That is after all the logical end point of your
position.

>I figure a month without it will
> REALLY FOCUS PEOPLE'S ATTENTION.
>
>
> - d.

Or we could go the other way and turn all the VFD criteia into speedy
critia which waould really focus the attention of the inclusionists.

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Can anybody tell my what differencing algorithm MediaWiki uses?
> DifferenceEngine.php starts with "see diff.doc" - a file I cannot find.
> As far as I know it has been taken from phpwiki but is it still the same
> algorithm and what algorithm does phpwiki exactely use? I have not found
> any better references on differencing algorithms but the papers listed
> at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff#References. There seems to be some
> new research in differencing XML-files. Is MedaWiki's differencing
> algorithm based on E. Myers's algorithm (1986)?

MediaWiki's diff code was mostly written by Geoffrey Dairiki, for
PhpWiki. It was imported into MediaWiki by Magnus and has since been
modified by a few MediaWiki developers. It's a lowest-common subsequence
(LCS) algorithm, and is "mostly lifted" from a Perl module by Ned Konz,
now called Algorithm::DiffOld. It's called DiffOld because the new
Algorithm::Diff is faster. Maybe if someone's feeling ambitious, they
could port the new perl module. I was wondering if those string
comparisons were the slow part, and it seems the author of the new
Algorithm::Diff package found they were.

There is indeed a C++ version, but we don't use it. Brion had a bit of
trouble installing it, and based on the performance statistics, it's not
urgent. We'll get it working eventually.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] new request for sign language Wikipedia

body:
> Ok, thanks for explaining that. Is Braille a language or an orthography?

Braille is a tactile writing system which is used to write spoken
languages. So basically, it's an orthography. Sometimes, though,
different languages use different tactile alphabets.

> Ok, so a person who signs American Sign Language from Mexico can
> understand someone who signs American Sign Language from Rhode Island
> (to pick somewhere in the US at random)?

Yes.

> > I have already answered both of these questions over and over. By
> > choosing to ignore my messages (and, indeed, those of others, as most
> > of the things I've said have been said in this thread by others as
> > well) as you seem to have done, you are wasting the time of everybody
> > involved -- including yourself -- by asking questions which have
> > already been answered.
> >
>
> Actually, I think you've still failed to answer the *how*, even if
> you've answered the *why*. The "why do we need a Wikipedia written in
> sign language" I can understand. The "how will it work", I don't.

I meant in my other messages in this thread, not my most recent reply.
I've given several options for the "how".

Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
> Hear hear. Instead of moving VfD to AfD, we might as well have moved it
> to "Wikiproject Deletion." The last thing we need is a group of people
> who _specialize_ in deciding what articles are allowed in Wikipedia. The
> small, obscure articles don't get many people from outside the VfD
> regulars to consider the matter.

If people are a problem deal with the people (any other aprach would
result in us have to delete pretty much any high profile artilce if
taken to it's logical conclusion.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for being bold

body:
On 9/13/05, Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 08:07:24PM -0400, SPUI wrote:
> > Do your part and kill a deletionist today.
>
> I'm hoping that someone with administrative access heard this
> cry for help and extended that block to indefinite.

strangly saying something silly is not a legit reason for blocking

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
On 9/13/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote
> "if it hadn't, it would just be another Star Trek database, not
> editable by everyone"
>
> Mediawiki is NOT the only wiki software.
>
>

True but is has the largest pool of people who know how to use it

--
geni


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiversity, Pretoria and Amsterdam.

body:
Hello,

I will be next week at a workshop in Pretoria (South Africa) to present our projects, and more precisely Wikiversity.

The workshop is funded by CSIR, South Africa's largest Science and Technology Research Organisation.

This meeting is the second of a series of three workshops.
The first occured last april, with Angela and Eloquence being the invited speakers.
I will participate to the second next week.
The speaker at the third meeting (november 2005) is not confirmed yet, but is likely to be Mav.

Why not the same person each time ?
Well, I was interested in going to this second meeting as I wish to explore paths for more involvement from african editors. It was already the topic of my talk at Wikimania. I would gladly have participated to the third workshop, but by then, I won't be allowed to travel so far anymore. Angela will be busy at another conference. Mav appears to be a good choice, both as an officer of WMF and as someone who has been interested in Wikiversity pretty early on.

During the first workshop, I understood Angela mostly presented our main projects, our principles, wiki editing ... Erik presented MediaWiki and likely, development directions. During that meeting, the idea came to make a grant proposal related to Wikiversity.
The second workshop will be focused on paths of collaboration with regards to tertiary education, hence the presentation of Wikiversity and what it could be. Given what Angela and Erik presented in last april, I intend to orient my presentation in two directions, one being the Wikiversity concept, and the other being the Foundation itself (in particular to present the organisation and the different actors which might be involved in the next few months).
The next workshop will probably focus on making the idea a full grant proposal. If things proceed well, I hope I can participate from home :-)

Some useful links provided by Angela :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Free_Knowledge_Communities (quite a bit of information in various format there)
http://internal.wikimedia.org/wiki/FKC_and_MobiLed (mostly stuff written by Kim since the first workshop)
http://www.free-knowledge-communities.org/ (includes details of the first workshop)

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

I will welcome any input from those interested by Wikiversity in the next few days. Please do so by email (anthere9 AT yahoo.com) or in the relevant wiki pages. I am sure it will be most helpful to me :-)

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

>From a more practical perspective... TRAVEL
I will be in Pretoria on tuesday morning (the 20th) and will leave on saturday evening (the 23rd). This should leave enough time to organise a lunch or dinner with wikipedians over there. I'll post about this as soon as I find the relevant meeting page on the english wikipedia this evening.... (if anyone does before me, please feel free to take care of it :-))
I have a hell of a work at my job these days, school started again for my kids, so I have a little bit of difficulty to manage it all smoothly.

-----------------------
Another practical perspective....TRAVEL
I am living in a very remote city... and quite naturally, the airplane network is such that when coming back from to the southern part of Africa... to get back to middle of France... I have first to go rather north... that is, in Amsterdam (Netherlands) (more than 1000 km north of my city. No comment....).

Worse, I'll have a more than 9 hours break before going back home. This will be on sunday the 25th. I should be there in the morning on sunday. And have a plane at the end of the day. Any idea of what I could do in beautiful Amsterdam during a september sunday ???? I'll post about this on the dutch wiki this evening as well ;-)

Cheers.

Anthere

---------------------------------
Yahoo! for Good
 Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
> Mediawiki is NOT the only wiki software.

Yes, I know, but it is one best suited for writing an encyclopedia,
since it was created specifically for that purpose.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
> Although I am sure there are articles in Memory Alpha that would not
> be suitable for Wikipedia, I have not yet found one.
> -Snowspinner_______________________________________________

Well, I'm sure a lot of them would not be suitable as separate
articles. Merged - maybe. I also doubt all Star Trek appearances would
be allowed to be listed in every article about a real-world location
or historical person that appeared there.

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


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
2 things - When will the OE be up? And - will UW allow full inflection
charts for inflected languages (singular/plural, and nom/gen/dat/instr/acc
inflections)?  You said, "We could also automatically make use of synonyms,
plurals and inflections (though this requires further changes to the
category code beyond internationalization)."  Would the genitive Tags, or
dative Tagen (German) be auto-redirects to Tag, or how would you envision
that being handled?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wiktionary-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wiktionary-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2005 4:39 PM
To: wiktionary-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Fwd: [Wikitech-l] A small Ultimate Wiktionary demo]

Hoi
Erik did send this e-mail to the developers. I think however that you
will be as interested in it as the developers. The relevance is that the
Commons "tags" as Erik calls them use meanings defined in Ultimate
Wiktionary. It is a preview that is really rough, but it shows the idea
of using meaning and translations really well.

Thanks,
    GerardM

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Wikitech-l] A small Ultimate Wiktionary demo
Date: 	Sun, 04 Sep 2005 21:57:47 +0200
From: 	Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
Reply-To: 	Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
To: 	Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>

A while ago, Gerard posted this on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_Ultimate_Wiktionary_for_Commons

It was a short explanation how UW could be used to internationalize
categories on the Wikimedia Commons. I've now hacked together a small
mock-up that demonstrates (hopefully) more clearly how this could work
in practice:

http://epov.org/uwd/index.php?title=Tag:Dog&action=edit

(Further demos will be posted on http://epov.org/uwd/ in the coming
weeks and months.)

It should work in Firefox and IE. The only active component are the
radio buttons you can click.

Essentially, what this shows is:

1) A new tag for images of dogs is created. (In this demo, I call
categories "tags", because I hope this will be what they are eventually
called.)

2) The user can choose from the languages they speak to clarify which
language this tag name is written in.

3) Based on the tag name and language, a lookup on UW is performed,
which fetches all the associated meanings for this word.

4) The user selects one of these meanings.

5) Automagically, another lookup is performed to determine the available
translations, if any. After saving the tag, it is then instantly
available under these names in the other languages.

In the demo, the first two meanings have translations available, while
the other two do not.

Why is this so powerful? Because, if UW itself is successful and
contains many words, it almost instantly makes the entire media
repository on Commons available to speakers of all languages. (Now,
hopefully, you can see why we've been excited about getting millions of
translations for free from the Logos project.) No need to create many
different tags - just select the right meaning. Furthermore, it builds
bridges from other projects to UW. The language work we are constantly
doing will no longer be redundant, but focused on one place.

A 14-year-old Italian kid can then use the tag "cane" to look for photos
of dogs, while a Maori girl from New Zealand can use "kurii". Moreover,
the same category hierarchy can be used to browse in different languages
(based on user perferences, a fallback hierarchy would be queried to
determine the language that should be used should no translation be
available).

We could also automatically make use of synonyms, plurals and
inflections (though this requires further changes to the category code
beyond internationalization). Given that we are mapping one of multiple
meanings to a single tag, there will be tag collisions -- those will
have to be dealt with through disambiguation. But this is not important:
Try to see the tag name merely as a key to a meaning. What this key is
called is secondary.

The key principle of selecting a meaning and then performing automatic
translations can be used in many different contexts. For example, in
Wikidata, one could use the same principle to internationalize field
names such as "Country", "Flag" and "Population".

This application also shows that UW must contain everything from words
to names to phrases. There is no limit to the scope of it. This makes it
a potentially massively useful tool for both human and machine translation.

The category internationalization functionality will not be part of the
first release of Ultimate Wiktionary, but we believe we can get funding
to work on this later. I believe that UW, in combination with better
tagging features in general, could make our tagging system the most
advanced one available. Flickr, for example, has no localization, is
unlikely to ever get semi-automatic localization, and apparently
supports no synonyms either.

See the demo footnotes for further explanations. Feedback is welcome.
(I'll be away until Wednesday.)

Best,

Erik
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

_______________________________________________
Wiktionary-l mailing list
Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
> Fanfic is for the most part not verifiable, due to its extremely
> ephemeral nature, although I have supported a few highly notable
> fanfics getting articles - most memorably the Very Secret Diaries.
> Every planet mentioned in passing? No. I've also never said articles
> that are perma-stubs should be kept. I think perma-stub is a very
> good reason for deletion.

Well, perma-stubs are certainly welcome at fan wikis.

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


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Pure wiki"

body:
1) As I understand it, the proposed "pure wiki deletion system" doesn't
really delete articles, it just sweeps them under the rug.

2) It is more important to me that Wikipedia be an encyclopedia than that it
be a wiki. I accept that it isn't a _pure_ encyclopedia. I don't think it
should be a _pure_ wiki.

3) What is the evidence that a "pure" wiki system will work better? This
seems like ideology to me. Isn't Wikipedia, by most measures, far more
successful than any other Wiki or Wiki-like entity in existence? (Are
Wikinfo, Everything2, JnanaBase, etc. even a blip on the Internet radar?)

4) Slashdot is a group blog. An encyclopedia is not a group blog.

5) USENET resembles a pure wiki system. Articles can only be deleted
("cancelled") by the person who created them (and as of 2005 virtually all
news servers seem to ignore cancellations anyway). It is an inclusionist's
dream. It is far larger than Wikipedia and far more comprehensive. It
contains a great deal of valuable information and it is very, very useful to
me, particular in the decades since the establishment of Deja News/Google
Groups. I have the belief, correct or not, that I can judge the reliability
of the information I find on it. _I use it all the time for decision making,_
particular decisions about purchasing things. But it is not an encyclopedia.


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/13/05, William M Connolley <wmc at bas.ac.uk> wrote:
> How about only permitting people 3 votes per day in total?

How do you propose to enforce that?

Kelly


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Alphax (alphasigmax at gmail.com) [050911 14:34]:
> Phroziac wrote:

> > No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> > renaming it would fix the problems.

> So you don't think that any articles need to be deleted (outside of
> candidates for speedy deletion), ever?

You have a logical fallacy implicit in that answer: that the only deletion
mechanism possible is the one we've got. Surely that can't be the case.

I reiterate my suggestion: suspend the deletion mechanism (keep CSD for our
remaining sanity) for a month working out a deletion mechanism that won't
drive people away, cause vicious infighting and lead to unhealable forks
which can never be pulled back into Wikipedia. Two forks (the Star Trek and
webcomics encyclopedias) is two too many. I figure a month without it will
REALLY FOCUS PEOPLE'S ATTENTION.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050911 18:41]:
>From: Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com>

> >No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> >renaming it would fix the problems.

> I can't imagine why anyone would imagine it needs to die,

Well, I've been trying to explain ... we have two forks so far caused
directly by the way the current deletion mechanism works socially. How many
more would be enough?

> or what they
> imagine would handle the dozens of silly articles added to Wikipedia each
> day which rightfully should be deleted.

They can collect for a month while we try to work out a less toxic deletion
mechanism that will scale.

>  Let's try to remember that 90% of
> the articles nominated for deletion should, without question, be deleted.
> The fact that some people feel the "culture" at AfD has become "toxic" is
> perhaps an issue that should be addressed, but let's not continue to assert
> that AfD needs to go simply based on the 10% of nominations that are more
> controversial.

No, it needs to go based on the effects on the community of those 10% (I
would have said 2-5% myself, but anyway).

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050912 07:47]:
> Phroziac wrote:

> > No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> > renaming it would fix the problems.

> But die to be replaced with what?
> Deletion is absolutely necessary.  A community process for deletion is
> absolutely necessary.

This seems to carry the implicit assumption that the current mechanism is
the only one imaginable. If so, we're fucked.

Kill it for a month. That month should get people REALLY FOCUSED on a
deletion mechanism that's less toxic than the present one.

- d.


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

body:
>Any failures to gain commons adminship probably has more to do with
>the attitude of those applying then any general policy (I note that
>you failed in your application, uninvited).

>It is not unreasonable to reject adminship requests made by those who
>have no interest in the well-being of the project. I was recently
>voted an admin unopposed despite having no uploads and very few edits
>- but I have actively fought image vandalism there.

>Quite a number of other en.wp admins have also succeeded - because
>they did not simply "demand" adminship because they already have it
>elsewhere, but because they demonstrated that they care about the
>Commons.

I did not "demand" adminship on the commons.  I asked politely and was
turned down, based on my lack of involvement at commons.  Commons has
its own wikipolitics, which should be unsurprising.  The "official"
criteria is 100 uploads or other edits.  Sometimes this is enforced,
sometimes not.  As is the case on en, commons adminship requirements
appear to have become more demanding with time.

The point is that vandalism on commons affects en.wikipedia, and such
vandalism is likely to become a growing problem as more images get
migrated.  For technical reasons alone it is harder for en admins to
track such vandalism, because it does not appear in recentchanges on
en, or in the "related changes" pages.  The fact that vandalism, once
identified, cannot be properly addressed by en. admins (at least in
cases where page protection or a block is appropriate), makes matters
even more difficult.

If commons is a completely independent of en.wikipedia, perhaps we
should reconsider our present drive to move images to commons.  I don't
think that would be wise.  The original intent of commons was to create
a project that would serve all wikipedias rather than to create a
freestanding media archive unrelated to any of them.


body:
David Benbennick wrote:

> How about the reverse?  Are we prepared to grand EN adminship to all
> Commons admins?

I'm confused.  Does vandalism on EN affect commons?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050913 07:38]:
>From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)

> >I reiterate my suggestion: suspend the deletion mechanism (keep CSD for our
> >remaining sanity) for a month working out a deletion mechanism that won't
> >drive people away

> Have people been driven away?

I refer you again to the two examples that have been brought up repeatedly:
Memory Alpha and Comixpedia. We're not getting those volunteers back, and
in the former case we can't ever heal the fork because they chose a
different licence. Those forks were a stupid and bad idea. And if you
disagree on that, please explain what good they do Wikipedia, both in
themselves as forks and as bad examples frustrated contributors may follow
in the future.

- d.


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/13/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Turley wrote:
> > I suggest we consider adding an optional "hidden from casual browsers"
> > flag to Wikipedia article records, so that we would have a two level
> > deletion system: complete crap gets speedied, bad articles get deleted
> > as usual, good articles get kept as usual, and questionable articles
> > are shuffled off to limbo where they can be further developed before
> > being put back into the main articlespace.  (I'm not even sure how
> > much I like this idea myself, but thought I'd throw it out there.)
> >
>
> TINC.

I don't see how that applies here.  Please explain what you mean.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/12/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day geni,
>
> > On 9/12/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> >>>Phroziac wrote:
> >>>>No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> >>>>renaming it would fix the problems.
> <snip />
> >>I figure a month without it will
> >>REALLY FOCUS PEOPLE'S ATTENTION.
>  >
> > Or we could go the other way and turn all the VFD criteia into speedy
> > critia which waould really focus the attention of the inclusionists.
>
> Deletionist or not, I'd favour David's suggestion over *that* one.  It's
> a little over-the-top, no?
>
> You see borderline cases on AfD every day.  Deleting them outright, with
> no discussion, would be worse than allowing them to be.

I think the point was not that temporary expandsion of CSD is any
better idea than shutting down AfD for a month, but that either
extreme would be more harmful than leaving AfD as is.

They're both over the top ideas that would hurt a lot of feelings and
cause a lot of fights.

After all the fights there were over a minor expansion of CSD
recently, I can only imagine how bitter things would get if further
expansion were imposed top down.  And can you imagine what AfD would
be like on the day after a shutdown?  "Rabid monkey house" comes to
mind.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Travis Mason-Bushman (travis at gpsports-eng.com) [050913 08:17]:

> Why do you keep saying they've been "driven away?" They've not been
> "driven away," they've set up their own home for information. Wikipedia

Er, the Comixpedia people were pretty clearly driven away by truly stupid
misapplication of truly stupid VFD nonpolicy.

- d.


body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net (uninvited at nerstrand.net) [050913 08:17]:

> While I agree with much of David Gerard's reasoning, I am unconvinced
> that a one-month hiatus would provide any greater or more meaningful
> space for discussion of an alternative than would business-as-usual at
> AfD.

You're right. Make it three.

(We won't run out of disk space.)

- d.


from_name: Travis Mason-Bushman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea

body:
On 9/13/05 6:53 AM, "Kelly Martin" <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I also think that there's a case to be made for bold undeletes,
> disregarding any so-called consensus that might have arised on
> VFD/AFD, when the "consensus" is clearly wrong.  In my opinion, an
> admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the
> encyclopedia.

So would that mean that admins could invoke [[WP:IAR] to ignore a "keep"
consensus if, in their opinion, following it would harm the encyclopedia? Or
does this [[WP:BOLD]] action only apply when it fits with your personal POV?

-FCYTravis


body:
On 9/13/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> *People continuously criticize VFD/AFD but VFU rarely ever gets any
> requests. To me that says there's barely any stuff that actually needs
> to be undeleted.

The standard for undeletion on VFU is so high that a few dedicated
deletionists can block virtually all requests.  And the traffic there
is low enough that it's not difficult for those deletionists to do it.

Perhaps some inclusionists should flood VFU with articles and see if it helps.

I also think that there's a case to be made for bold undeletes,
disregarding any so-called consensus that might have arised on
VFD/AFD, when the "consensus" is clearly wrong.  In my opinion, an
admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the
encyclopedia.

Kelly


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 9/13/05, Far <ffaarr at seed.net.tw> wrote:

> The two situations are different at all.  The  ZH Wikipedia is now  in fact Mandarin Wikipedia. No  articles in Kantonese, Minnan, Hakka , Wuu etc.   are written there. If someone  wrote   in zh wikipedia an article by the  language of Test-zh-yue, it will soon be deleted or translated into Chinese to make users of  zh wikipedia understand it.

In that case, my opinion is that we should make the 'in fact' official
in some way. Moving it to some more specific URL and making
zh.wikipedia.org into a portal page was my first idea, but is probably
going too far, but I do think that one should change the interwiki to
something more specifically Mandarin, and have links to the other
Chinese languages prominently on the frontpage.

Andre Engels


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Commons-l] Creative Commons -NC Considered Harmful

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> For quite a long time, I've been meaning to write a summary of the key
> reasons not to use "non-commercial uses only" licenses. It is now online
> at:
>
> http://intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC
>
> I posted it to Kuro5hin as well, where it is now being discussed:
>
> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/11/16331/0655
>
> The version on the wiki is slightly more comprehensive and will
> hopefully evolve over time.

This essay is brilliant and should be read widely.  I think it will be
worthwhile to go through the list of counter-arguments in the Kuro5shin
discussion and make sure all of them are well answered in the wiki
version.  The arguments are not insane, but they are (in most cases)
mistaken.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Fair use

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>>At present, the project isn't soundly grounded in legal advice.  I'm not
>>an attorney so I can't fix that.  However I do disagree with the other
>>WikiProject members in several important areas.  I believe this is a
>>matter better resolved by competent counsel rather than by compromise
>>and consensus.  That is why I have brought it here.
>>
>>I believe, for example, that we do not accomplish anything meaningful by
>>using low-resolution images and sound clips; consenus appears to be that
>>resolution limits are important.  I don't think that discussing or
>>voting on this will help us because it is better settled by sound legal
>>advice.  I don't think it is in the best interests of the project to
>>have a bunch of laypeople (non-lawyers) dream up fair use policy.
>>
>>
>OK. Then don't complain about how you've tried to discuss this and
>haven't gotten anywhere with it. You haven't tried to discuss it. In
>the end, the hope is that one of our Wikilawyer types will look over
>all of the things we've been working on. But they're probably busy
>too. Better a dreamed up fair use policy based on some understanding
>of copyright law than no fair use policy at all. I don't think most of
>our legal understandings are really so baseless -- there is a heap of
>caselaw on the usage of small or degraded media in regards to fair use
>-- but then again, hey! I'm not a lawyer, so what the hell do I know.
>If you want discussion, it's there for you. If you want "just
>discussion with lawyers" then you'd better find a few lawyers who want
>to participate. They're welcome to participate too if they want to.
>
>I'd love it if some legal types would stop by and take a look at what
>we're up to, give some guidance when it comes down to it. At the
>moment we're trying to get something basic together, something to work
>with, and correct the obvious problems of the current policy which
>have allowed things to get a bit out of control. Which is frankly
>better than nothing, in my opinion. If your attempts to get
>unequivocal answers to difficult and murky questions turns up anything
>useful, please feel free to let the rest of us know. In the meantime,
>we'll continue our work.
>
You're essentially correct.  If we do nothing until competent legal
advice steps up to the plate, we do nothing forever.  We could probably
spend the entire $200K from the recent fundraising on lawyers and still
be no further ahead.  Half of that amount could go to those with a
conservative attitude toward fair use, and half to those with a more
agressive.  We would still be left with a decision.  Somehow it seems
cheaper just to muddle through.  At least that way we don't have to
spend the money until there is a real case.  I suspect that the average
lawyer knows very little about copyright law; we may even know more
about this specialty.  It's probably more cost effective for him to
guide his obviously guilty criminal client through a plea bargain.  We
really shouldn't direct our idolatry towards the lawyers.

To quote you, "Better a dreamed up fair use policy based on some
understandingof copyright law than no fair use policy at all."  That may
be all there is to work with.

Ec


from_name: William M Connolley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Hear hear. Instead of moving VfD to AfD, we might as well have moved it
> to "Wikiproject Deletion." The last thing we need is a group of people
> who _specialize_ in deciding what articles are allowed in Wikipedia. The
> small, obscure articles don't get many people from outside the VfD
> regulars to consider the matter.

How about only permitting people 3 votes per day in total?

-W.

William M Connolley | wmc at bas.ac.uk | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/
Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479
If I haven't seen further, it's because giants were standing on my shoulders


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 12/09/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
The commons community has turned down several
> requests for adminship from en.wikipedia admins in good standing who
> wished to become admins at commons in order to deal with vandalism on
> commons that affected en.  It is commons policy that significant
> involvement in commons in particular is a requirement for adminship,
> regardless of involvement in other projects.

Any failures to gain commons adminship probably has more to do with
the attitude of those applying then any general policy (I note that
you failed in your application, uninvited).

It is not unreasonable to reject adminship requests made by those who
have no interest in the well-being of the project. I was recently
voted an admin unopposed despite having no uploads and very few edits
- but I have actively fought image vandalism there.

Quite a number of other en.wp admins have also succeeded - because
they did not simply "demand" adminship because they already have it
elsewhere, but because they demonstrated that they care about the
Commons.

Dan


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
>From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>
>
>Hear hear. Instead of moving VfD to AfD, we might as well have moved it to
>"Wikiproject Deletion." The last thing we need is a group of people who
>_specialize_ in deciding what articles are allowed in Wikipedia. The small,
>obscure articles don't get many people from outside the VfD regulars to
>consider the matter.

The last thing we need is a group of specialists who actually care about
what kinds of articles are encyclopedic, and fall within Wikipedia's mandate
and policies, and what kinds are not?  Who aren't actually emotionally tied
up in the subject matter, but instead are able to view the topic with
dispassionate reason?  Instead we should leave decisions about these things
to one-off partisans who create articles on their narrow areas of interest
(e.g. the band they just founded, or flags which are red white and blue and
have stars on them)?

I find that argument difficult to accept.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
>From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
>
>JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050911 18:41]:
> >From: Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com>
>
> > >No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> > >renaming it would fix the problems.
>
> > I can't imagine why anyone would imagine it needs to die,
>
>
>Well, I've been trying to explain ... we have two forks so far caused
>directly by the way the current deletion mechanism works socially. How many
>more would be enough?

It depends on the content and viability of those forks.  Are they forks that
contain information that would be suited to Wikipedia?  Does Wikipedia
suffer by not having those articles?  Is it likely they will still be around
in 2 years?

> > or what they
> > imagine would handle the dozens of silly articles added to Wikipedia
>each
> > day which rightfully should be deleted.
>
>They can collect for a month while we try to work out a less toxic deletion
>mechanism that will scale.

As it is AFD is overloaded; how will the new mechanism deal with the daily
onslaught *and* 5000 articles that have piled up while we were searching for
some new ideal mechanism?

> >  Let's try to remember that 90% of
> > the articles nominated for deletion should, without question, be
>deleted.
> > The fact that some people feel the "culture" at AfD has become "toxic"
>is
> > perhaps an issue that should be addressed, but let's not continue to
>assert
> > that AfD needs to go simply based on the 10% of nominations that are
>more
> > controversial.
>
>
>No, it needs to go based on the effects on the community of those 10% (I
>would have said 2-5% myself, but anyway).

I agree that it's under 5% that are truly controversial, but I didn't want
to overstate the case.

Jay.


body:
> Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get
> delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.

Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia.  Just because a
"consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or
another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic.  See
Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
geni wrote:

>>Revert wars wouldn't get very far due to the 3RR - it would force
>>people to come to a *consensus* over whether or not to include an
>>article, rather than just voting. I bet most deletions wouldn't be
>>controversial (just as a lot of AfD listings aren't opposed). I don't
>>see how having vandalism in page histories is a problem.
>>
>>Dan
>>
>>
>The 3RR is not massively effective in stoping revert wars. if you have
>an article that runs down the fault line between inclusionist and
>deletionist camps then it will have no effect whatsoever (well in
>theory it could turn wikipedia into a straight democracy).
>
Thee we have it!  Democracy cannot be gay. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
> How do we decide what is visible to which editors? Should they be
> visible only to sysops, or only to logged in editors? Or only editors
> with a certain number of edits? Or accounts which are not in the newest
> 1% (a la page moves)?

Each reader may choose for emself whether to see "questionable"
articles.  This is really much the same as the "stable article
version" discussion that has been under discussion for quite some
time.  A combination of stable article tagging and pure wiki deletion
would probably serve quite nicely.

Kelly


from_name: Far

body:
On 9/12/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > Well, we still wouldn't split the two, because it's still lunacy to split.
>
> Why don't we just have a Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia then instead of
> separate ones for each dialect?

Oh, but we do have that! We have BOTH a Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia (sh:)
AND separate Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian ones. Which I think is a
HIGHLY undesirable situation.

For this reason I have locked the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia half a year
ago, but the pressure to unlock it got too strong, so I unlocked it
again. But only under protest. I think we should either have sh: or
sr+bs+hr:, but not both.

By the way, there is an issue with the Chinese languages there too -
if we get a separate Kantonese Wikipedia, we should not keep a Chinese
one alongside. Rather, we should make that into a Mandarin Wikipedia,
or even better, move each article to whatever language it has been
written in.

Andre Engels

-----
The two situations are different at all.  The  ZH Wikipedia is now  in fact Mandarin Wikipedia. No  articles in Kantonese, Minnan, Hakka , Wuu etc.   are written there. If someone  wrote   in zh wikipedia an article by the  language of Test-zh-yue, it will soon be deleted or translated into Chinese to make users of  zh wikipedia understand it.

ffaarr


from_name: Felipe Micaroni Lalli

body:
(Portuguese)
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio:FML/propostas/Licen%C3%A7a_cc-by-nc-nd_na_PT.Wikip%C3%A9dia

2005/9/13, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > For quite a long time, I've been meaning to write a summary of the key
> > reasons not to use "non-commercial uses only" licenses. It is now online
> > at:
> >
> > http://intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC
> >
> > I posted it to Kuro5hin as well, where it is now being discussed:
> >
> > http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/11/16331/0655
> >
> > The version on the wiki is slightly more comprehensive and will
> > hopefully evolve over time.
>
> This essay is brilliant and should be read widely. I think it will be
> worthwhile to go through the list of counter-arguments in the Kuro5shin
> discussion and make sure all of them are well answered in the wiki
> version. The arguments are not insane, but they are (in most cases)
> mistaken.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
um abra?o,
Felipe
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subject: [Commons-l] Trademarks

body:
I agree.

13 Sep 2005 02:43:00 +0200, Claus F?rber
<claus at xn--frber-gra.muc.de<http://frber-gra.muc.de>
>:
>
> Hallo,
>
> Commons:Licensing currently says that "trademarked logos" should not be
> uploaded to Commons. I'd like to propose to change that.
>
> Short version: Trademarks are very different from copyright. They are
> more like "other laws which restrict the free use" of (any) content and
> Commons does already allow seals, flags, coats of arms, Olympic symbols,
> the Red Cross and Crescent (all of which are protected quite like
> "commercial" trademarks) as well as Nazi symbols (the use of which is
> extremly restricted in some legislations such as DE, AT, HU).
>
> Long version:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Licensing#Trademarks
>
> Claus
> --
> http://www.faerber.muc.de
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
um abra?o,
Felipe
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body:
On 9/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions
> are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to
> be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the
> deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles
> harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that
> survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.

I'm simply suggesting that admins should be more willing to use
judgment in making the decision deletions they are already empowered
to make.  This isn't about giving new powers to admins, it's about
expecting admins to exercise their existing powers with judgment and
discretion instead of mechanically.

AFD is swarming with professional deletionists, and many deleted
articles were deleted with input mainly from editors whose main
contribution to Wikipedia is to vote to delete things.  I question
whether this group of individuals fairly represents the Wikipedia
community, and therefore whether AFD actually arrives at community
consensus, except in obvious cases, and therefore call for admins to
exercise their judgment in evaluting AFDs for whether they reflect
true consensus, and also for admins to feel free to boldly undelete
articles that were clearly deleted in a manner which harms the
encyclopedia.

I know that it has become popular to grill admin candidates on their
criteria for "consensus" at AFD, and candidates who fail to meet the
standard that the deletionists have established as "reasonable" get
dogpiled with oppose votes.  Frankly, I'm worried about this emergent
mob mentality, which I think is encouraged by having a caste of
professional deletionists, which is itself a consequence of having a
centralized deletion mechanism.

Kelly


body:
> So would that mean that admins could invoke [[WP:IAR] to ignore a "keep"
> consensus if, in their opinion, following it would harm the encyclopedia?

As long as they're prepared to explain their reasoning, absolutely.
IAR is a two-edged sword: if you invoke it and can't defend it, you
lose community respect.

Kelly


body:
Alphax wrote:

>Abigail Brady wrote:
>
>
>>On 13/09/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following
>>>>it would harm the encyclopedia.
>>>>
>>>>Kelly
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't
>>>get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
>>>
>>>
>I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and call [[WP:NOR]] - but that's not
>a speedy criteria, because an article is no longer original research as
>soon as references are added.
>
>The proposal of "speedy or nothing" seems to be an attempt to move
>towards writing a bot that will detecting CSDs and act appropriately. It
>will never work. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I'm
>quite capable of judging for myself what I do and don't want to be on
>Wikipedia. I don't need a bot or a set of rules saying "anything can
>stay unless it's X, Y, or Z" to decide for me.
>
That makes you an exception with whom I can sympathise.  I find that
both here and in many other circumstances, people have a great deal of
difficulty coping with an environment that has flexible rules.  A
flexible rule environment requires requires that people take time to
reflect and consider.  This is inconsistent with the compulsion to deal
with huge amounts of material quickly.  For the compulsive a single word
is enough of an explanation, and if he can manage with a cryptic
abbreviation so much the better.  Some of us just need time to reflect.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/13/05, William M Connolley <wmc at bas.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> > Hear hear. Instead of moving VfD to AfD, we might as well have moved it
> > to "Wikiproject Deletion." The last thing we need is a group of people
> > who _specialize_ in deciding what articles are allowed in Wikipedia. The
> > small, obscure articles don't get many people from outside the VfD
> > regulars to consider the matter.
>
> How about only permitting people 3 votes per day in total?
>
> -W.
>
>
Having a vote threshold simply won't work. Last night I closed 4 AfD's, all
on Bus Stops (result was no consensus). What if each voter could only vote
on 3 of the 4, and then no more articles at all? Besides, that would just
increase the number of articles who don't get enough votes to reach
consensus- they'd have to be relisted, increasing the AfD load.

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Ral315 wrote:

>On 9/13/05, William M Connolley <wmc at bas.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Hear hear. Instead of moving VfD to AfD, we might as well have moved it
>>>to "Wikiproject Deletion." The last thing we need is a group of people
>>>who _specialize_ in deciding what articles are allowed in Wikipedia. The
>>>small, obscure articles don't get many people from outside the VfD
>>>regulars to consider the matter.
>>>
>>>
>>How about only permitting people 3 votes per day in total?
>>
>>-W.
>>
>>
>Having a vote threshold simply won't work. Last night I closed 4 AfD's, all
>on Bus Stops (result was no consensus). What if each voter could only vote
>on 3 of the 4, and then no more articles at all? Besides, that would just
>increase the number of articles who don't get enough votes to reach
>consensus- they'd have to be relisted, increasing the AfD load.
>
We like to limit the frequency with which bots can edit.

What might be a little more practical than 3 votes per day would be a
minimum 15 minute wait between votes.  This would give the person time
to think between votes.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Pure wiki"

body:
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 13/09/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > 3) What is the evidence that a "pure" wiki system will work better?
>
> As far as I know, there is none. Sounds like a good reason to put it
> live and see what happens :-).
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

The problem is, I could blank a lot of articles in [[Category:Cleanup]]

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Pure wiki"

body:
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 13/09/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > 3) What is the evidence that a "pure" wiki system will work better?
>
> As far as I know, there is none. Sounds like a good reason to put it
> live and see what happens :-).
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

The problem is, I could blank a lot of articles in [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]],
and even if someone noticed, they probably couldn't prove I did it with
malice. I was simply "deleting unnecessary articles".

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


body:
Alphax wrote:

>geni wrote:
>
>
>>On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get
>>>>delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia.  Just because a
>>>"consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or
>>>another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic.  See
>>>Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
>>>
>>>
>>So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions
>>are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to
>>be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the
>>deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles
>>harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that
>>survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.
>>
>>
>I concur. There are too many people shouting "OMG ROUGE ADMIN" already.
>
"ROUGE ADMINS" = a Commie conspiracy? :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/13/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Turley wrote:
> > On 9/13/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Michael Turley wrote:
> >>
> >>>I suggest we consider adding an optional "hidden from casual browsers"
> >>>flag to Wikipedia article records, so that we would have a two level
> >>>deletion system: complete crap gets speedied, bad articles get deleted
> >>>as usual, good articles get kept as usual, and questionable articles
> >>>are shuffled off to limbo where they can be further developed before
> >>>being put back into the main articlespace.  (I'm not even sure how
> >>>much I like this idea myself, but thought I'd throw it out there.)
> >>>
> >>
> >>TINC.
> >
> >
> > I don't see how that applies here.  Please explain what you mean.
> >
>
> How do we decide what is visible to which editors? Should they be
> visible only to sysops, or only to logged in editors? Or only editors
> with a certain number of edits? Or accounts which are not in the newest
> 1% (a la page moves)?

Well, I'm open to other ideas, but the way I envisioned it, it would
be a separate article space that is open to everyone, but not
immediately visible from the front page, nor included in searches
unless explicitly included.

Call it "article limbo" or "marginal articles" or "not quite
encyclopedic enough to suit the general public, but this is a pretty
close try articles" if you will, but I wouldn't lock the content away
from anyone.  Instead, just put it in a virtual cupboard, away from
casual view where editors who are interested can work the articles
without the timeline and "reconvince the delete voters" pressure, and
then later appeal to have them brought into the main articlespace when
they're ready.

We'd have the more scholarly, enforced to traditional standards
Wikipedia that would keep the articles suitable for print versions,
and the second level Limbopedia where editors are somewhat more free
to pursue their own interests and share more localized, more specific
knowledge without accusations of "cruft" and "not notable enough".
Maybe most stubs would reside there, maybe not, I don't know.  An
internal fork, to make the main project more aligned with its goals,
with the daughter project serving as an additional development area.
Or maybe we should fork upward, with a brand new empty space to
nominate our best articles into...

I still see room for argument, but since there would be more middle
ground for resolution, I think we'd see more people finding middle
ground.

(And speaking personally about an issue I care deeply about, I'd
expect almost all school articles to reside in limbo, even though we
almost always keep them now, and even though I think they almost
always belong in the main article space...  I should shut up before
someone thinks this is a good idea...)

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Worldtraveller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion

body:
So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an
editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide
a rationale.  Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case,
delete as necessary.  If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can
either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision,
or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed
afu?)

This seems to me to have the following advantages:
1. It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
deleting admin to query deletions.  This would avoid a giant page of bad
feeling.
2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to
really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably
should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'.  However, if things
were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu
decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to
include.  If an article does not attract sufficient community input to
determine consensus then it would remain deleted.

Any thoughts?

WT


list: foundation-l

from_name: Traroth

subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikimediafr-l] Inquiétude au sujet de Yahoo en Chine

body:
Maybe this helps :

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p01s03-woap.html

The french article in Courrier International is based
on that article.

Traroth

--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> a ?crit :

> (It would be nice to know a bit more about this
> case; a quick skim of
> the linked article doesn't say who passed
> information along where at
> what point, on what authority.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
> > No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> > renaming it would fix the problems.
>
> But die to be replaced with what?
>
> Deletion is absolutely necessary.  A community process for deletion is
> absolutely necessary.

By autonomous(sp?) decision making. Currently, VfD is where everyone
is supposed to have a say (aka vote) and the future of many articles
is decided by something similar to a centralized government. It is the
reason why there are so many policies and rules related to deletion.
Hundreds of people have a say and can vote "keep" or "delete" on
obscure articles they have neither any clue nor interest in. It is
IMHO completely opposite to the wiki way. And it doesn't scale very
well either. My replacement system would work like this:

1. A person finds an article.
2. That person doesn't think the article belongs in Wikipedia.
3. That person writes on that pages talk page: "I think this page
should be deleted for this and that reason."
4. That person waits (this step is essential).
5. Maybe some discussions appear on the talk page. The people there
form a consensus on what to do with the article.
5.5 If noone responds to the person at all after a certain amout of
time (see step 4), it is a safe bet noone cares and the article can
safely be deleted.
6. If necessary, someone notifies an admin which deletes the article.

This system has some advantages over the current:

1. It ensures that you have actually seen the article before you add
your opinion about it.
2. The discussion is kept close to where the content of the article
is. That means it is more natural to find "alternative" solutions
instead of VfD which often degenerates into Keep vs. Delete.
3. It scales beautifully.
4. People who aren't insterested in the article are "kept out."
Because if they haven't seen the article they don't know about the
delete-discussion about it.
5. Similarily, people who aren't interested in the article doesn't
have to deal with it. They can still add their opinions about the
future of other articles without ever seeing the articles they aren't
interested in.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] *Sigh*, AFD is a discussion.

body:
Phroziac wrote:

>[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and
>Subversives have Penetrated Washington]]
>I just closed this vfd. Apparently someone decided vfd is not a
>discussion, and all discussion should be on the discussion page. Don't
>we have a big notice somewhere saying AFD is a discussion?
>
This looks like a great example.  I haven't read the article, but my
first impression from the title is that it's probably very deletable.
But being deletable does not mean that the process has to be rushed.  A
mere one week for deletion discussions is very short.  If most people
feel that they have had the opportunity to express themselves the heat
to light ratio will become smaller.  If it takes two weeks to get rid of
it that should be no big deal.

Ec


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> MediaWiki's diff code was mostly written by Geoffrey Dairiki, for
> PhpWiki. It was imported into MediaWiki by Magnus and has since been
> modified by a few MediaWiki developers. It's a lowest-common subsequence
> (LCS) algorithm, and is "mostly lifted" from a Perl module by Ned Konz,
> now called Algorithm::DiffOld. It's called DiffOld because the new
> Algorithm::Diff is faster. Maybe if someone's feeling ambitious, they
> could port the new perl module. I was wondering if those string
> comparisons were the slow part, and it seems the author of the new
> Algorithm::Diff package found they were.

As far as I could see Algorithm::Diff uses the classic longest-common
subsequence algorithm by Dan Hirschberg with O(n*m) where n and m is the
length of each text and linear space:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/161/960229.html

There is also an algorithm by Eugene W. Myers with O((n+m)*D) where D is
the size of the difference between the texs:
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/myers86ond.html

Davide Libenzi implemented it in C:
http://www.xmailserver.org/xdiff-lib.html

Maybe diffs are not the most important performance issue but surely they
can be speed up.

Greetings,
Jakob


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On Sep 13, 2005, at 11:44 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

>
> I'm the only person I know who does this regularly at present--there
> aren't presently a lot of articles being wrongly speedied so it
> only takes
> one person to check.  I think the RC patrollers generally exercise
> good
> judgement.  There is a tendency to stretch speedy criteria but this is
> mostly done with commonsense.

As what looks like the most radical inclusionist in this debate, I
should note that when I have the stomach for new pages patrol, about
half the pages should die. Not all of these are clear cut speedies,
but most of them are clear cut deletes. Since new pages patrol is
pure hell, and your eyes burn rapidly from the stupid, I tend to be
very supportive of people being given a long leash when they do it.
The number of people who can contribute at least moderately OK
articles on first edit is such that we can afford to lose the wholly
illiterate to Comixpedia and other sites.

But as I look at Comixpedia, that's pretty obviously not who we lost.

-Snowspinner


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposed handling of cumbersome "disambiguation"

body:
There has been a dislikable tendency to use large
notes -- often dealing with superficial aspects of the
name -- as disambiguation headers.

As a solution, I suggest using the footnote tags
{{fn|1}} (top) {{fnb|1}} (bottom), under a == Notes ==
section, to move such things down as footnotes rather
than hatnotes. Hatnotes should be substantial and as
brief as possible, not links to punk bands, or any
other thing other than disambiguation, or exactly
similar titles.

In some cases, using a Disambiguation section (after
links) seems a better compromise than even creating a
disambiguation page.

SV

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
>From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
>
>JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050913 07:38]:
> >From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
>
> > >I reiterate my suggestion: suspend the deletion mechanism (keep CSD for
>our
> > >remaining sanity) for a month working out a deletion mechanism that
>won't
> > >drive people away
>
> > Have people been driven away?
>
>I refer you again to the two examples that have been brought up repeatedly:
>Memory Alpha and Comixpedia. We're not getting those volunteers back, and
>in the former case we can't ever heal the fork because they chose a
>different licence. Those forks were a stupid and bad idea. And if you
>disagree on that, please explain what good they do Wikipedia, both in
>themselves as forks and as bad examples frustrated contributors may follow
>in the future.

As Angela has pointed out, Memory Alpha was not a fork.  But even if it
were, I think we have to accept that Wikipedia will not be the only
encyclopedia on the internet, and also that this is not necessarily a bad
thing.  Wikipedia is a general purpose encyclopedia, and the level of detail
is appropriate for the general reader.  There will always be special purpose
areas of knowledge for restricted audiences which will delve into areas in
considerably more depth.  That's the way it is with printed encyclopedias as
well.

In addition, special purpose encyclopedias will almost certainly have
editing policies which differ from Wikipedia's, particularly around issues
such as NPOV and Original Research.  I can easily imagine, for example,
various religious groups setting up Wikis for areas of specialized
knowledge, which would both have far more detail than Wikipedia, but also
their own rules for content, and I don't think this is a bad thing.

Finally, competition is good; it makes us produce a better product than if
we were a monopoly. I don't think we should strive to be the *only*
encyclopedia on the internet, but instead strive to be the *best* one out
there.

Jay.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Keith Old wrote:

>We should be encouraging users to participate in the process not
>discouraging them with artificial limits. It seems that many people who
>don't participate in the process are the most vocal about its supposed
>deficiencies. It's a bit like complaining about the quality of the
>politicians that are running the country while you don't vote.
>
I used to participate, as part of doing new pages patrol, but between
the socks and the ignorant, the whole thing was so unpleasant and
inefficient that I moved on to other WP activities. It's kind of a
shame, because I've read perhaps 10% of all of en's articles, and
edited on some 15K of them, so I'm in a pretty good position to know
what fits, what doesn't, and what's redundant - but it's pointless
to participate in a process where those who know nothing of a subject
area can outvote the people who actually know something. WP only
works because 99% of the time the ignorant are willing to defer to
the knowledgeable; but VfD process works in the opposite way -
the knowledgeable are made to do extra work to overcome the
objections of the ignorant.

Stan


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As what looks like the most radical inclusionist in this debate, I
> > should note that when I have the stomach for new pages patrol, about
> > half the pages should die. Not all of these are clear cut speedies,
> > but most of them are clear cut deletes. Since new pages patrol is
> > pure hell, and your eyes burn rapidly from the stupid, I tend to be
> > very supportive of people being given a long leash when they do it.
>
> Half is a little high

No, it's not.  If you exclude new redirects, I would say that between
50% and 75% of the new pages created on any given day are deletion
fodder and get speedied.  Note that you wouldn't know this unless
you've actually done new page patrol, because the admins who do it
tend to be very efficient at it; total crap pages only last a few
minutes, typically.  (Of course, sometimes the same page gets speedied
ten times in as many minutes, too...)

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 12/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Dan Grey wrote:
> > Pure wiki deletion system.
>
> Can you explain what you mean by that?  In some detail?
>
> --Jimbo

As Angela linked to before:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Pure_wiki_deletion_system_(proposal)

On 12/09/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dan, you are one of the most vocal proponents of the PWDS.  Please
> explain to me this: what  would we gain by having revert wars over
> something, with blatantly obvious vandalism available in page
> histories, rather than deleting outright?

Revert wars wouldn't get very far due to the 3RR - it would force
people to come to a *consensus* over whether or not to include an
article, rather than just voting. I bet most deletions wouldn't be
controversial (just as a lot of AfD listings aren't opposed). I don't
see how having vandalism in page histories is a problem.

>
> This may be "pure wiki" and therefore desirable from a social point of
> view, if you take the viewpoint that Wikipedia is a wiki as would
> conventionally be seen.  I suggest, however, that many ideas about
> wikis do not apply to Wikipedia because of the difference in scale and
> therefore vandalism.

I simply disagree!

>
> In the end, we are going to force discussions over the matter.  It is
> conventional WP philosophy that edit wars are not good.  They attract
> trolls and POV-pushers and, in the end, force a tyranny of the
> majority, as the 3RR will always win.  However, the discussions would
> essentially be AfD discussions about controversial articles.

No, AfD doesn't have "discussions", it has simple majority votes. PWDS
would force *discussion* over voting, as the power to delete/undelete
would belong to everyone, therefore everyone would have to agree on a
course of action :-).

>
> So we are back where we started.
>
> So I ask this:
>
> 1) What do we hope to gain by introducing PWDS?
> 2) How do we handle the vandals who will blank a page (as many already
> do for vandalism) then to claim "but I was deleting the article"?

1.See everything I've written and the above link
2. Any deletion blanking would still have to be justified on the talk
page as per the Deletion policy, and also indicated in the edit
summary - if not, it would simply be reverted as vandalism.

Dan


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Article deletion (proposed 1 month hiatus)

body:
"geni" <geniice at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f8060843050912185312a86a1c at mail.gmail.com...
> The inclusionist camp could of course just obstruct everything.

...and later:

> What risk? Admins on RC patrol will be able to delete stuff before
> anyone else has time to react and digging thourgh the deletion log
> when you don't have admin powers is imposible and when you do it is
> insanely boring.

Not quite managing to see just which of these you are more worried about...
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
In some cases, I have used the same disambiguation
link at top, only it links to a Disambiguation section
at bottom, rather than on a separate page. The link
looks the same. In other cases, where the
"disambiguation" is misused for overly specific links,
I will used the {{fn|1}} footnote tag. Thats for
linking to a Notes section, put before External links.
[[Monica Lewinsky scandal]] now has this, and I note
that people are using these more consistently.
Disambiguation could benefit from the same thing.
Whoever said that disambiguations needed to be
exclusively pages, and not sections? In cases where 98
percent of traffic links to a main article, or where
only one separate entry (which people try to stick at
the top) a simple disambiguation section seems
justified.

SV

--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Disambiguations are there to make it easier for
> people to find the
> article they're looking for and have a similar name
> to the article
> they end up at. Shortening to a regular "For other
> uses see Foo
> (disambiguation)" seems better than hiding them at
> the bottom, which
> defies the entire point of having them.
>
> Only expand such top dab notices for stuff that's
> searched for really often.
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 9/13/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > There has been a dislikable tendency to use large
> > notes -- often dealing with superficial aspects of
> the
> > name -- as disambiguation headers.
> >
> > As a solution, I suggest using the footnote tags
> > {{fn|1}} (top) {{fnb|1}} (bottom), under a ==
> Notes ==
> > section, to move such things down as footnotes
> rather
> > than hatnotes. Hatnotes should be substantial and
> as
> > brief as possible, not links to punk bands, or any
> > other thing other than disambiguation, or exactly
> > similar titles.
> >
> > In some cases, using a Disambiguation section
> (after
> > links) seems a better compromise than even
> creating a
> > disambiguation page.
> >
> > SV
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
>From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
>
>Revert wars wouldn't get very far due to the 3RR - it would force
>people to come to a *consensus* over whether or not to include an
>article, rather than just voting.

With 3 people on each side of a delete vote, I could see them getting quite
far.

> > In the end, we are going to force discussions over the matter.  It is
> > conventional WP philosophy that edit wars are not good.  They attract
> > trolls and POV-pushers and, in the end, force a tyranny of the
> > majority, as the 3RR will always win.  However, the discussions would
> > essentially be AfD discussions about controversial articles.
>
>No, AfD doesn't have "discussions", it has simple majority votes. PWDS
>would force *discussion* over voting, as the power to delete/undelete
>would belong to everyone, therefore everyone would have to agree on a
>course of action :-).

AfD has plenty of discussions, and quite often people changing their votes
as a result of the discussions, or as a result of changes to the article
itself.  However, "PWDS" would more likely simply result in endless revert
wars - I see no reason to think that any discussion would be "forced", and
Wikipedia consensus isn't about *everyone* agreeing, but rather most people
agreeing.  Creators of an article will almost never agree it is a good idea
to delete it, regardless of the amount of discussion.

Jay.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
G'day Bryan,

> Mark Gallagher wrote:
>> G'day Dan,
>>> Pure wiki deletion system.
>>
>> A vandal's paradise.
>>
> Vandals can _already_ blank pages. Other people notice the blanking,
> check what's been blanked in the history, and if they think it was
> inappropriate they revert it. What would change?

Under "pure wiki deletion system", AIUI, blank pages are effectively no
different from deleted pages.  At present, an experienced editor coming
across a blank page would say "that's funny, we shouldn't have blank
pages," and revert, then either put it up for AfD or move on.

If all blank pages are redlinks, then one obvious clue that a page
should exist would disappear.  How many people would follow a redlink
(given the gigantic amount we have on en-WP) just to see if it has any
history?

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion

body:
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an
> > editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide
> > a rationale.  Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case,
> > delete as necessary.  If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can
> > either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision,
> > or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed
> > afu?)
> >
> > This seems to me to have the following advantages:
> > 1. It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
> > deleting admin to query deletions.  This would avoid a giant page of bad
> > feeling.
> > 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to
> > really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably
> > should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'.  However, if things
> > were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu
> > decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to
> > include.  If an article does not attract sufficient community input to
> > determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
> That's exactly why I oppose decentralization. If it's on a category
> instead of a centralized page, admin's can't see when notices are
> removed, and if I visit a category at two different times, it's very
> hard to see what's been added and what I've already voted for (I often
> work on different machines, so link color isn't always an indicator).

That's easily solved by just using a DynamicPageList to list the articles.

Worldtraveller's ideas have been proposed in several forms before, but
AfD  zealots always reject the idea as it would make their past-time
harder (they'd have to go and edit talk pages, rather than edit all
the votes on one big AfD page).

This is why I said it's impossible to get any sort of consensus for
replacing AfD - the people who hang out there don't want it changed,
and will (and have) vociferously oppose any proposals.

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion

body:
>From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
>
>Worldtraveller's ideas have been proposed in several forms before, but
>AfD  zealots always reject the idea as it would make their past-time
>harder (they'd have to go and edit talk pages, rather than edit all
>the votes on one big AfD page).

"AfD zealots" is extremely unhelpful language, and in my opinion undermines
your arguments.

>This is why I said it's impossible to get any sort of consensus for
>replacing AfD - the people who hang out there don't want it changed,
>and will (and have) vociferously oppose any proposals.

People who don't hang out there also oppose its deletion.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
On 12/09/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just tried this as an experiment: completely at random, I decided to
> search for "sheep shearing", and was redirected (I pressed "Go" not
> "Search") to [[Sheep shearer]].
>
> Now, this is where it gets interesting: a large part of that article
> describes something called "Blade shears". But if you put "Blade
> shears" into the search box and click Go, you're taken to a search
> page which doesn't list [[Sheep shearer]] anywhere on the first page.
> The top two results - [[Shearing]] and [[Shears]] - both lead to a
> disambiguation page that doesn't mention blade shears at all, either.

On 12/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've seen lots of people unfamiliar with Wikipedia complain because
> the search engine doesn't list any close matches and the go button
> confuses them too.
>
> Regardless of whether mergism is good or not, I think the search
> engine could use some upgrading.

Indeed. Personally, I only use Google site search on Wikipedia (which,
incidently, had [[Sheep shearer]] as the first result for "Blade
shears").

I've noticed that Wikicities has a google search box below the
built-in search. I wonder if we could have the same?

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
G'day Snowspinner,

<snip />

> David is right. We would be better off with disks overflowing with
> band vanity, original research, and poo jokes. Those don't do damage
> to the community and to the long term success of the project. The
> fact that we have to share the volunteers on Star Trek articles with
> Memory Alpha, and that the work can never be merged does. So does
> every other fork.

Although I'm a Trekkie myself, I think Memory Alpha is a Good Thing.
It's somewhere for /Star Trek/ fans to list all sorts of non-notable
trivia that doesn't belong in Wikipedia.

So what if we have to share /Star Trek/ volunteers?  Actually, as I
write that, I can see a counter-argument brewing: Trekkies might come to
Wikipedia to put in their two cents on some meaningless piece of cruft
(cruft, I say!), and stay on to write about other stuff.  If they go to
Memory Alpha alone, we've lost them altogether.  But I suspect that's
not your actual argument.

Why is it a Bad Thing to lose /Trek/-only contributions?  Not just for
/Trek/, but for anything where fans get a little too enthusiastic to
judge encyclopaedic worth.  Do we need a separate article for every
planet mentioned in passing in the /Star Wars/ movies (or in the novels,
or cartoons, or comics, or --- it'll happen --- fanfic)?  How about
minor /Digimon/ characters?  I've noticed that, despite the existence of
an *entire project*, /Harry Potter/ is missing vital information on what
happened in a paragraph of page 421 of the latest epic, /Harry Potter
and the Thingy-Riddled Thing/.

Would it be such a great loss to lose all of this?  We're not talking
Elf-Only Inn, here.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Treat like Hieroglyphics (was Re: new request for
	ASL/English wikipedia)

body:
<HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote in message
news:OFF9C091A5.D2C71C17-ON85257076.006A0360-85257076.0069F851 at doe.k12.ga.us...
>
> I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful
> resource
> for deaf users and will be recruiting more.

I had an idea in connection with this, whilst reading all the "how do we do
it" messages. Unfortunately the website I wanted to use is unavailable: the
SWML (SignWirting Markup language) site at http://swml.ucpel.tche.br/ seems
be broken at present.

I wondered whether it could be possible to create a SignWriting extension to
Mediawiki, along the same lines as WikiHiero, which used SWML as the source.
This would at the very least allow us to display the signs in articles about
them, and might provide some sort of kick-start for more extensive usage.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
>From: Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
>
>On 9/13/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > *People continuously criticize VFD/AFD but VFU rarely ever gets any
> > requests. To me that says there's barely any stuff that actually needs
> > to be undeleted.
>
>The standard for undeletion on VFU is so high that a few dedicated
>deletionists can block virtually all requests.  And the traffic there
>is low enough that it's not difficult for those deletionists to do it.

And yet things are undeleted all the time.

The bar at VfU seems quite appropriate; VfU is a "court of appeal", so it
deals strictly with procedural errors.  It's not a "second guess the
original voters" or "do-over because I lost" page; otherwise it would simply
be AfD2.

>Perhaps some inclusionists should flood VFU with articles and see if it
>helps.

WP:POINT never helps, especially when there is no evidence of a problem to
begin with.

>I also think that there's a case to be made for bold undeletes,
>disregarding any so-called consensus that might have arised on
>VFD/AFD, when the "consensus" is clearly wrong.  In my opinion, an
>admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following it would harm the
>encyclopedia.

Sounds like a recipe for admin abuse, or charges of the same. Do you also
support admins deleting stuff even though the vote is to keep it, "when
consensus is clearly wrong, and following it would harm the encyclopedia".

Jay.


body:
On 9/13/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >I know that it has become popular to grill admin candidates on their
> >criteria for "consensus" at AFD, and candidates who fail to meet the
> >standard that the deletionists have established as "reasonable" get
> >dogpiled with oppose votes.  Frankly, I'm worried about this emergent
> >mob mentality, which I think is encouraged by having a caste of
> >professional deletionists, which is itself a consequence of having a
> >centralized deletion mechanism.
>
> This "deletionist cabal" view of the way both RFA and AFD work does not
> correspond to any sort of reality that I am aware of.

Check out the number of admin candidates who were asked to specify
their standard for AFD consensus by Hamster Sandwich.  Sam Vimes got
dogpiled when his answer was deemed unsuitable (although he may have
been dogpiled for other reasons as well).  JesseW was also
interrogated closely, although he passed muster and was not dogpiled.
Marianocecowski was interrogated.  Scimitar was interrogated, but the
question was removed when it was answered collaterally.  Hamser
Sandwich seems to have discontinued this interrogation method, but I'm
not pleased to see it happening.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
G'day David,

> JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050911 18:41]:
>> From: Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com>
>
>>> No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
>>>  renaming it would fix the problems.
>
>> I can't imagine why anyone would imagine it needs to die,
>
> Well, I've been trying to explain ... we have two forks so far caused
>  directly by the way the current deletion mechanism works socially.
> How many more would be enough?

Depends on the fork, I guess.  A fork to give fandom something
non-encyclopaedic to write about is a Good Thing; a fork because
ignorant people on VfD were being ignorant (ahem) is a Bad Thing.  What
sort of fork are we talking about, for certs?  Would anybody shed tears
if /Star Wars/ fans decided that they were going to setup a wiki of
their own to discuss non-canon but doubtless "notable" characters?

VfD *is* toxic.  It's toxic because those on VfD are getting jaded by
seeing more and more ridiculous articles crop up, and have become more
and more nasty about them, and forgetting that the entries were created
in good faith (usually those that aren't are CSD) by a contributor who
actually cares about whatever it is.  There's the "delete" side: jaded,
nasty, jeering.  Then we get to "keep": argumentative, whiny, refusing
to read or understand the delete guidelines.

I'm sure it won't be this simple, but:
- People nominating for VfD should be forced to explain why the article
   must be deleted, else the VfD subpage itself should be speedied and a
   note posted on the nominator's talkpage.
- There should be a notice on every VfD page and subpage explaining
   that:
-- a nomination is not a reflection on the contributor
-- "unencyclopaedic" doesn't mean "unimportant"
-- all discussion must be kept civil

Should help a little, surely?

<snip />

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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