subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Seems to me that Wales first mentioned banning, no?  Nonetheless, quite a
few of us have indicated our disagreement with such a stance.

If your idea of moderation is biting sarcasm and a dismissive attitude I'm
afraid you do not put forth a good image of the Arbcomm.

On 11/25/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Puppy stated for the record:
> > Sean Barrett wrote:
> >> #1 there can never be any doubt that hateful bigotry is running
> rampant,
> >> crippling the functioning of our society
> >>
> >> #2 anyone who wonders whether the alleged oppression is really as bad
> as
> >> is claimed is a hateful bigot who must be immediately reeducated if not
> >> exiled from the community
> >>
> >> Please remember that we started talking about -- and I'm still talking
> >> about -- Wikipedia, the place where we write articles, not this mailing
> >> list or IRC.  As I think you pointed out, there are different players
> as
> >> well as different sets of rules for each, making them distinct
> communities.
> >>
> >> - --
> >>  Sean Barrett     | I was forced to live for days
> >>  sean at epoptic.com | on nothing but food and water.
> >>
> >
> > regarding #1: I assumed the precise opposite until this thread.
> > regarding #2: Bit dramatic, aren't you? Try rephrasing with less sturm
> > und drang.
> > Regarding both: Who are you saying made those assumptions?
> >
> > -kc-
>
> I find it difficult to hold a conversation with someone who thinks I am
> mocking them when I am not.  It tends to make "the climate ... hostile
> to speaking up," as someone just said.  To be clear: I am not mocking
> you.  I am trying to write from a moderate position, neither bigoted nor
> overly concerned about Wikipedia being crippled by bigotry.  However,
> I'm being rather clearly told that a moderate position is unacceptable.
>
> #1: This thread is indeed very bad.  This mailing list can be, but is
> not always, very bad.  IRC is so bad I don't bother logging on, which is
> bad for an Arbiter because quite a lot of significant activity occurs
> there.  I do not think that Wikipedia-the-place-where-we-write-articles
> is bad.  If you have evidence to the contrary, point me at it, and I
> will block the bad guys and bring the ArbComm case against them myself.
> We are commissioned to protect the article-writing community, and I
> think we've done a not-bad job for the past three years.  Any bigotry in
> Wikipedia-the-place-where-we-write-articles is only there because the
> ArbComm has not been made aware of it.
>
> #2: Okay, perhaps over-dramatic, but this just in: "telling Alphax to
> put his head in a bucket 100 times, and take it out 99, is treating him
> too kind."  Banning has been mentioned several times up-thread, which
> seems a bit much to me.  Rhetoric-escalation runs rampant, and of that
> particular crime I am as guilty as anyone.
>
> QUESTION: So can we make my comment #2 unquestionably over-dramatic?  Is
> there any way to bring the emotional intensity of this thread down?  I
> would like more information on the problems people have when trying to
> contribute to Wikipedia-the-place-where-we-write-articles.  I signed up
> to support that community, lo these many moons ago.  I'm still on duty,
> at least for another few weeks.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | I was forced to live for days
> sean at epoptic.com | on nothing but food and water.
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--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

references:
<20061122135828.XUFV644.aamtaout01-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<809E091A-08D3-4CB7-9FAF-FE393D01704D@waterwiki.info>
	<45679171.1080308@KillerChihuahua.com>
	<EC581B33-FFA7-4A9D-8A9F-E17FE2E2BEC2@waterwiki.info>
	<456794BE.50405@KillerChihuahua.com> <45686C59.3070705@earthlink.net>
	<456870C6.5090209@KillerChihuahua.com> <456872B3.7070201@gmail.com>
	<45687900.60901@KillerChihuahua.com>
	<e692861c0611250938sbe001ecjaf5e25a46d03b5fc@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 11/25/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The argument appeared to be of the form of "Look at [[indisputably bad
> thing X]]. How can we reduce the harm thing Y is causing.", where the
> blanks were filled in with "our bad coverage of subjects which tend to
> be more interesting to woman" and "the material biases in our  caused
> by the over-representation of men in our decision making".

gah. edit! edit! darnit.

I intended to wrote "the material biases in our policy caused by the
over-representation of men in our decision making".

At least thats how I view the implication and undertone of the OP.


from_name: Jim Schuler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Uh, correct me if I'm wrong -- was it not you who posted the assumptions?
Has anyone agreed that they are universal or even valid?

On 11/25/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Jim Schuler stated for the record:
> > Sean is merely mocking himself with his allegedly witty posts.  He has
> no
> > doubt also opened the eyes of a few people who might previously have
> thought
> > highly of him, even if only because of his position on Wiki.  Sad
> really.
>
> More of point #2: any questioning of the assumptions renders the
> questioner irredeemably worthless as a human being.
>
> I really wish I were being over-dramatic.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | I was forced to live for days
> sean at epoptic.com | on nothing but food and water.
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> =Tsyb
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On Nov 25, 2006, at 12:42 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>
> We need to keep focused on culling the worst and not waste our time
> with impossible goals like providing a nutcase free zone or providing
> unbreakable anonymity.

No, everyone eventually forgets to log in.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
This certainly needs more of an explanation, "snide remarks about Board
members given no second chance".

On 11/25/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Alphax wrote
>
> >Generally this list is home to not sexism but general stupidity. What
> will it take before people feel safe enough to post here?
>
> How about:
>
> - civility code enforced
> - trolls given no second chance
> - snide remarks about Board members given no second chance
> - profanity barred.
>
> Just for a start. We all have our little list.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Agreed...very good points.

On 11/25/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Stan Shebs wrote
>
> >The
> > hazard of asserting that women editors have something similarly
> > distinctive to bring to WP, by virtue of gender alone, is that one is
> > playing right into the stereotype of "women's topics" or "female
> > viewpoints", and risks creating a sort of "pink collar" ghetto in WP
> > that new female editors would be subtly (or not-so-subtly) steered
> towards.
>
> The argument is broken.
>
> Sure, creating the editorial equivalent of traditional newspapers' Women's
> Pages is not only a generation out of date and patronising, it is nothing
> anyone with WP experience would want anything to do with.
>
> But WP is a voluntary organisation, first and foremost. Discouraging women
> in any way is shooting ourselves in the feet, big time. Not just because
> slant in topic coverage will be harder to correct. But because women are (on
> average) better quality volunteers. Why else did we elect Angela and Anthere
> to the Board?
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Arbcom-l] Fwd: simple example

body:
On 11/25/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> I saw Kiko just the other day. What is this innocent person, living
> an ordinary life, doing on Wikipedia with false information about him?
>
> Fred
>
> _______________________________________________

Thank you, Fred.  Again I ask, "What evidence do you have that nobs
did not attempt to discern the facts"

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_January_2006/Candidate_statements/Fred_Bauder&diff=prev&oldid=30396478#Question_from_nobs

and

"I do a search on Kiko Martinez, one result says he blew himself up in
1970, another makes reference to Kiko Martinez's widow, and other
results cite Kiko Martinez attending rallies and lectures but does not
give a date. So I write, "Kiko Martinez, who may or may not have blew
himself up in 1970, attended rallies and lectures on unspecified
dates", yet cannot attribute that to one particular source, would be
considered original research. nobs 20:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC) "

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability&diff=prev&oldid=30392874#Query

The point being Mr. Bauder voted to accept the case " Based on
Nobs01's edits to [[Talk:Chip Berlet]] "  02:42, 16 November 2005
(UTC), i.e. a Content Dispute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=next&oldid=28465641

Further evidenced by Mr. Bauder's next entry on the case,

"Ok, here's the problem. You put stuff on there about Kiko Martinez;
what does Chip Berlet have to do with Kiko Martinez? Fred Bauder
20:59, 16 November 2005 (UTC)", i.e. a Content Dispute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nobs01#Talk:Chip_Berlet

None of the Verifiable Citations I offered were intended as "personal
attacks"; if blatant errors existed in the source material, I am
extremely grateful for it being brought to my attention, which you
did.  The very fact that I altered course from writing on various
Comintern activities in the 1930's & 1940's, to the NLG in the 1960's
was because of the harassment I received since August 2005 (now 15
months).  WP:Harassment defined as "actions which disrupt the editing
activity of another user."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others#Harassment

But this evidence too was ignored.

Again, all I seek is a review and proposed modification of the
language, " The ban may be renewed for additional years by any 3
administrators after its expiration should personal attacks of the
virulence found in this case continue.", and perhaps clarification of
when the twelve months end in my probationary period (2006 or 2007?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others#Nobs01_banned_for_personal_attacks

P.S.  I believe in letting bygones be bygones, and am spending the
time now extensively reviewing all discussions on WP:ATT, WP:RS,
WP:BLP, and other such related discussions since last year.  Thank
you.

Nobs01


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Earth screenshots

body:
Bagamoya at aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 11/24/2006 6:37:32 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> wikilegal at inbox.org writes:
>
> mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
> I want to unsubscribe
>

And behold, it was done.

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

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body:
On Nov 25, 2006, at 1:07 PM, Rob Smith wrote:

>
> Thank you, Fred.  Again I ask, "What evidence do you have that nobs
> did not attempt to discern the facts"

Given Kiko's  phone number, you decided a call was not necessary
before you libeled him on Wikipedia.

Fred


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/25/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>
>
> Back on the dialog: the truly nasty stalkers are easy to spot, and
> there's little debate on how to deal with them (ie, as harshly as
> possible as quickly as possible).

Actually that doesn't always work.  While the instances of which I am aware
may not be representative, it seems like most (but by no means all) of the
instances where editors have been harrassed at home or work have involved
female editors.  We don't have much by way to tools to protect against
things like that.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Puppy wrote:
<snip>
> How is Guettarda's email "malicious needling", yet Alphax's overt
> misogyny doesn't even rate a comment?
>

Trolling rarely rates a comment. I'm sorry that you took me seriously.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
That may be true, and I know I had never thought negatively of him, but his
comments of the past two days are not indicative of the qualities one would
assume in an arbitrator.  By replying to KC's concerns in a mocking tone, he
created the perception of insensitivity, and, as we all know,  in the human
psyche perception all too often trumps the truth.

On 11/25/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> "Jim Schuler" wrote
>
> > If your idea of moderation is biting sarcasm and a dismissive attitude
> I'm
> > afraid you do not put forth a good image of the Arbcomm.
>
> Sean is a good Arbitrator: don't get that wrong.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


from_name: Puppy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>
>> Stan Shebs wrote
>>
>>
>>
>>> The
>>> hazard of asserting that women editors have something similarly
>>> distinctive to bring to WP, by virtue of gender alone, is that one is
>>> playing right into the stereotype of "women's topics" or "female
>>> viewpoints", and risks creating a sort of "pink collar" ghetto in WP
>>> that new female editors would be subtly (or not-so-subtly) steered towards.
>>>
>>>
>> The argument is broken.
>>
>> Sure, creating the editorial equivalent of traditional newspapers' Women's Pages is not only a generation out of date and patronising, it is nothing anyone with WP experience would want anything to do with.
>>
>> But WP is a voluntary organisation, first and foremost. Discouraging women in any way is shooting ourselves in the feet, big time. Not just because slant in topic coverage will be harder to correct. But because women are (on average) better quality volunteers. Why else did we elect Angela and Anthere to the Board?
>>
>>
> I absolutely agree. I'm speaking purely to the systemic bias point,
> valiantly trying to stay on-topic for this thread. :-)
>
> My gut feeling on this is that there is some systemic bias in topics of
> interest to women, but that it's subtle and going to be hard to write
> down as a project a la Africa coverage. As I mentioned earlier, our
> right person to write in depth about blowdryers is not the daily user
> who has only anecdotal unsourced comments to relate, but the nerd who
> collects books on the subject or the retired engineer who used to design
> them - but how do you advertise the interest without getting into a big
> fight about stereotypes? Nobody gets accused of any -ism for building up
> a list of Gabon-related topics.
>
> Stan
>
It appears to me there are two topics here (worth staying on, anyway):
systemic bias as regards articles, which I don't see specific evidence
of, although along with Stan I have a bit of a "gut feeling" about,
although I entered this thread to protest Blowdryers as a "woman's"
topic. The second topic on this thread could be categorized as subtle
discouragement of women in general, which I didn't realize existed until
this thread. I agree with Fred that dialogs can be productive, and while
I have no clue as to any bias in coverage or methods to address them, I
feel we have made some progress on looking at and trying to resolve the
issue of overall subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) bias against women
contributors. I have no diffs to offer, as someone requested - I
personally have not experienced much sexism, but that may be because so
many people think I'm male.

-kc-


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> <snip>
>
> In any case, the attacking tone this thread has taken.. especially by
> those who are claiming to be attacked is especially troublesome.   I
> was and am honestly afraid to post my thoughts as a result of it.   I
> think you should take a step back and think about that before
> replying.
> </snip>
>
Why do you find this thread intimidating? And who has claimed to be
attacked, and counter-attacked? I am not being flippant, I am truly
puzzled, and would appreciate clarification. Thanks -

-kc-


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Puppy wrote:
<snip>
>
> Now women's health issues is important, and it would concern me should
> they be neglected. Blow dryers probably gets neglected for the same
> reason can opener is a stub - it simply isn't that notable a topic
> compared to WWII, or menstruation.

I secretly suspect that if it /were/ expanded, it would quickly be
culled as "cruft" - we've had joke articles (eg. European toilet roll
holder, floating around some BJAODN archive) that are longer than the
articles on real-world objects. The more likely (and publically
acceptable) reason why these articles haven't been expanded is lack of
reference materials - what can people write about them that is
verifiable and not original research? Short of advertisements in
long-lost "women's magazines", I doubt that much raw material was ever
produced. /Possibly/ there are reviews by consumer associations, but
they're probably in the realm of pay-access and hence not particularly
friendly...

> This is not to say that improving and expanding such articles is not
> desirable - after all, we wish to be the premier source of general
> information on everything

Well, yes.

> - but it is not due to gender bias, and to imply that it is to me is
> reinforcing the "woman-as-empty-headed-shallow-person".

Claims of gender bias are /rarely/ seen as justified, mainly due to
saturation and desensitisation by female chauvinists who scream "OMG
gender bias" at every available oppurtunity. Sadly, as a result, very
few claims of gender bias are treated seriously, regardless of who is
making them.

> Why all the variations on "menstrual" point to one article is
> probably due to the fact that they are so close to synonymous that to
> split them would be introducing redundancy.

And yet, I've seen cases where multiple similar/synonymous articles that
/could/ be merged exist as disjoint stubs. IMO the best solution is to
merge the articles under one title, but explain the seperate points,
preferably with one sub-heading for each incoming redirect (where
applicable).

> The only subjects of which I am aware which are over-subdivided, if
> you will, are politically or religiously charged subjects. Hence,
> Abortion is an enormous cascade of articles, because people have
> strong views, there is a legal debate, a religious debate, etc - but
> no one is arguing about a woman's menstrual cycle. I could be in
> error, but that is how it appears to me.
>

Yes, because I suspect that it's very hard for our predominately male
editing population to POV push on something that they feel doesn't
affect them.

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

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body:
On 11/25/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> On Nov 25, 2006, at 1:07 PM, Rob Smith wrote:
>
> >
> > Thank you, Fred.  Again I ask, "What evidence do you have that nobs
> > did not attempt to discern the facts"
>
> Given Kiko's  phone number, you decided a call was not necessary
> before you libeled him on Wikipedia.
>
> Fred
>

Honestly, I did not know he was alive until you told me so.  And my
source said, "?Francisco Kiko Martinez, also an attorney, was killed
in a car when a bomb they were transporting exploded.100 "

footnoted to :100 Sgt. A. McCree, ''A Case For
Self-Defense,'' Military Police (Summer 1981).

And where, in the entry, can a libel be attributed to the user who is
actually cut and pasting a portion of text attributed to the primary
source document without adding comment? (Source: Laird Wilcox, The
Watchdogs: A Close Look at Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups, Editorial
Research Service, 1999, p. 115-117. ISBN 0-993592-96-5)

Nobs01


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
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Sarah stated for the record:

> Sean, one thing that would help is for editors who are doing it to be
> banned without hesitation, and admins to be desysopped. Currently,
> even that isn't happening. It might not stop the attacks, but it's
> pretty galling to have to edit alongside someone who's engaged in
> trying to track down your personal details on an attack site; even
> more galling when that person is a Wikipedia administrator.
>
> Sarah

Please send me details by private e-mail and I will dig in.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Warning: Dates on calendar
 sean at epoptic.com | are closer than they appear.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/25/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> Those of us with checkuser and oversight stand ready to do anything
> we can to deal with these situations, including deleting user and
> talk pages, and removing personal information using oversight. Best
> defense is maintaining anonymity.

Perhaps the worst cases of material harm to our users that we've seen
are to users who thought there were anonymous and edited in ways which
they wouldn't want made public... only to later discover that
anonymity is terribly fragile.

We're not an anonymity service. Anonymity is  by it's very nature
terribly fragile. We take a great risk of causing harm if we encourage
people to believe they are more anonymous than they actually are.

The world is a scary place at time, we can't solve that.  We can, and
do, avoid our own project being a fertile breeding grow for the worst
of the loons.

We need to keep focused on culling the worst and not waste our time
with impossible goals like providing a nutcase free zone or providing
unbreakable anonymity.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
OK, that's what I wanted to know -- I was unaware of that.   I only recently
joined this mailing list. Thanks.

On 11/25/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> "Jim Schuler" wrote
>
> > This certainly needs more of an explanation, "snide remarks about Board
> > members given no second chance".
>
> Does it? We have seen Jimbo attacked (quite often, and recently). We saw
> Geoffrey Kohs take aim at Angela, a recently-departed Board member. These
> things are in the list archives, posted on the Web. I really don't know why
> we tolerate use of this list for people to let off steam. (Well, I do, of
> course. There is a reason to have steam let off in a controlled manner. But
> it undermines the list's status as a serious forum.)
>
> I agree with Fred - it's a talking shop.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
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>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jim
http://iacobomus.blogspot.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> On Nov 24, 2006, at 8:50 PM, Puppy wrote:
>
>> So where is the limit, Fred? Attack women on the mailing list, ok.
>> Call them a cunt, that's ok too. Say all women are idiots, that's
>> ok. As long as we don't out their personal information? Where is
>> your line for "bad behavior" drawn, precisely? There has been a
>> thread for a couple of months about the imbalance of the ratio of
>> men to women editors for months now, and I am saying attacking
>> women /because they are women/ is, to put it mildly, off-putting.
>> Its beyond uncivil. It is, as David Gerard's friend pointed out,
>> "hopelessly patriarchally biased and useless to harmful."
>
> None of that is acceptable.
>

So what should we do about it?

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

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from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/25/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> Fred Bauder stated for the record:
> > Biggest problem is off-wiki targeting and stalking. No names, but at
> > least 4 prominent women were strongly affected. And I can think of
> > two others. Mostly it is framed as trying to access personal
> > information, calling employers, etc. Imagining that one demonic woman
> > is oppressing.
>
>
> Do you have any ideas what we as Wikipedians can do that we aren't
> already doing?  Law enforcement was notified in at least one case.  I
> think that all of the perps are blocked for eternity from both the site
> and the mailing list.
>
Sean, one thing that would help is for editors who are doing it to be
banned without hesitation, and admins to be desysopped. Currently,
even that isn't happening. It might not stop the attacks, but it's
pretty galling to have to edit alongside someone who's engaged in
trying to track down your personal details on an attack site; even
more galling when that person is a Wikipedia administrator.

Sarah


body:
Plaintiff libelled Profs. Haynes and Klehr and Romerstein and advanced
a conspiuracy theory,

"Haynes and Klehr and Romerstein are part of a project to make it
appear that violations of civil liberties during the Cold War and
McCarthyism were justified..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers&diff=35566271&oldid=35564984%C2%A0

accused them of being part of a lynching,

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Harry_Magdoff_and_espionage&diff=34950836&oldid=34254772

used the same reference to a "posse lynching" again

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Harry_Magdoff_and_espionage&diff=next&oldid=34975393

Nobs01 stated,

"[Plaintiff] is asking the Committee to establish ...a special
exemption privilege .... What has come into focus is [Plaintiff's]
undisclosed conflict of interest when entering into (a) normal editing
practices (b) dispute resolution processes. ...

"Prof. Klehr states in Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left
Today (Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1988), p. 161,

"The NLG is an affiliate of the Soviet-controlled International
Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).... Over the years it has
steadfastly supported every twist and turn in Soviet foreign policy,
including the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan."

Chip Berlet#Resume states,

"[Plaintiff] is former vice-president of the National Lawyers
Guild..."; also [10]

"[Plaintiff] posts at WikiIN-1, 7 Nov 2005 [11]

"I freely confess, I have a vested interest..."

"It is clear now, his vested interest extends to (1) breach of faith
in dispute resolution, (2) impugning critics of the NLG, (3)
continuing to advance notions of conspiracism to promote book sales by
using Wikipedia as a vehicle for advertising and self-promotion. nobs
17:21, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Evidence#Nobs01_view_of_Cberlet.27s_request

It is evident that plaintiff has used his special exemption privilege
to libel living persons.  Plaintiff defamed me twice during the
Arbitration Hearing (my name is now public via Wikien-1).  Continuing
the unfairness of the process, given the admitted errors, is not
helpful in laying the matter to rest.

Nobs01

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from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Earth screenshots

body:
On 11/24/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In 99% of cases, I doubt it the work done by Google would be enough to
> > obtain copyright protection.  Most of the time it isn't even something
> > done by hand, it's something done by computer.
>
> I think Google have done enough for it to count as a derived work.
> It's not just a compilation of images, they are put together in a very
> careful and precise way. As far as I know, it doesn't matter if
> something is done by hand or by computer - it's still copyrightable.

Careful and precise are not the standards for copyright protection.
Creative is.  In the case of an image which is completely from a
single public domain source, there just isn't anything creative being
done.  You stitch together the tiles in a completely algorithmic
manner.  If anyone holds the copyright on the resulting work, it would
be the person who chose what scene to picture (the user of the
software), not the person who wrote the software.  That is also the
person who put the work in fixed form, another requirement for
copyright protection.

I say show me the creativity.  I don't see it.  I actually don't see
much creativity in any satellite photography, but when it comes to
creativity from Google in a typical Google Earth shot, I don't see any
at all.

This is all completely US-centric of an argument, of course.  In many
jurisdictions creativity isn't even required for copyright protection.

Anthony


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Earth screenshots

body:
Anthony wrote:
> I say show me the creativity.  I don't see it.  I actually don't
> see much creativity in any satellite photography, but...

Um, have you ever looked at Google Earth?  It contains much more
than satellite photography.  Most major cities (including the
ones people are snipping scenes of schools from) are overlaid
with high-resolution photographs taken from airplanes.  Those
datasets were collected (as far as I know) by commercial aerial
photography companies, and licensed by Google for big bucks.

Typically you see two or three different copyright notices at
the bottom of a Google Earth screen, covering the licensed,
commercial photographs used, the data overlays (roads, rivers,
etc.)  applied, and anything else.  (And the notices change as
you pan around, and hit coverage from different datasets.)

The stuff ain't PD.  I'm prepared to be proved wrong, but as
far as I know, it's quite legitimately copyrighted.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Puppy wrote
> Would our "welcoming attitude" to women and "being on the lookout for
> bad behavior and mitigating its effects" include chastising men who make
> overtly sexist and insulting remarks? Alphax made such remarks, and thus
> far two people have spoken up - Mindspillage, a female; and Guettarda.

I'll speak up, though I said something indirect earlier. I have no idea what Alphax was thinking he was doing, but I hope in future he'll do it in another forum, or, better, not at all. (If people don't pile on, it can be because 'don't feed the trolls' is sound advice.)

>There is no longer any question
> of whether there is gender bias on WP: it has been demonstrated here.

Don't assume this is representative of Wikipedia.
> Sean actually attacked Guettarda for calling bigotry what it is

I heartily disapproved of that, (a) because it was wrong, and (b) because it prolonged the discussion of inappropriate comments. By the way, all these posts are very public.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Sean Barrett wrote

> Damned right I pointed out his malicious needling.  Guettarda began
> attacking Alphax only after Alphax had stopped his admittedly hostile
> remarks, saying "I'm putting myself on moderation."

Oh, come on. Email is not a synchronous medium at the best of times. We are all at the mercy of ISPs and their servers. Besides, telling Alphax to put his head in a bucket 100 times, and take it out 99, is treating him too kind.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Alphax wrote
> Do you think I'm proud of what I said? Do you think I actually meant it?
> Do you think that continuing to attack me would have helped the
> situation? Do you think that there was any apology I could have give
> that wouldn't have been just brushed off as insincere?

Do you think you could just shut up, until 2007?

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Puppy wrote

> Women are emailing me telling me how intimidated they feel - they don't
> want to post their concerns to this list because they also feel
> intimidated here.

Membership of this list has historically been open (just as Wikipedia has been). Personally I'd like to see a cull. It takes a _lot_ to get anyone thrown off. Can we have the bar lowered on that, please?

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Alphax wrote

>Generally this list is home to not sexism but general stupidity. What
will it take before people feel safe enough to post here?

How about:

- civility code enforced
- trolls given no second chance
- snide remarks about Board members given no second chance
- profanity barred.

Just for a start. We all have our little list.

Charles

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_______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Puppy wrote

> As
> Larry Pieniazek pointed out, we cannot change the world - but we can
> change how we respond to sexism in our little sphere of influence, which
> includes all things wp - wp itself, this mailing list, and yes irc. We
> have no control over irc, of course, yet if there is concerted response
> towards any sexism, it should have an effect.

I have never used IRC; the logs I have seen are not encouraging, either.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Stan Shebs wrote

>The
> hazard of asserting that women editors have something similarly
> distinctive to bring to WP, by virtue of gender alone, is that one is
> playing right into the stereotype of "women's topics" or "female
> viewpoints", and risks creating a sort of "pink collar" ghetto in WP
> that new female editors would be subtly (or not-so-subtly) steered towards.

The argument is broken.

Sure, creating the editorial equivalent of traditional newspapers' Women's Pages is not only a generation out of date and patronising, it is nothing anyone with WP experience would want anything to do with.

But WP is a voluntary organisation, first and foremost. Discouraging women in any way is shooting ourselves in the feet, big time. Not just because slant in topic coverage will be harder to correct. But because women are (on average) better quality volunteers. Why else did we elect Angela and Anthere to the Board?

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Stan Shebs wrote

> It's an interesting phenomenon for the
> sociologists - if you look at the subscriber list, you'll see that there
> are plenty of male lurkers, but of course they don't give their reasons
> for not speaking up. Once in a great while I've met one of these male
> lurkers in person, and a couple (almost shamefacedly) admitted to
> feeling intimidated by the risks of public posting. In any case, this is
> not unique to WP mailing lists, and as far as I know it's never been
> satisfactorily resolved for public lists - having a women-only or
> approved-members-only list is the usual tactic, but then it's not really
> a public list anymore. Any other ideas that have been tried?

Well, I'd certainly support using this multiply-unfortunate thread to do something about the etiquette and respect level.

But on the substantive, on-topic point, perhaps we do need to talk over having a dedicated email list for 'systemic bias', as a whole. It's a hazardous idea - anyone can think of drawbacks.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
"Jim Schuler" wrote

> If your idea of moderation is biting sarcasm and a dismissive attitude I'm
> afraid you do not put forth a good image of the Arbcomm.

Sean is a good Arbitrator: don't get that wrong.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

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

David Gerard stated for the record:
> Come to this thread and be not stupid!
>
> So ... written any good articles lately?
>
>
> - d.

I've been bringing [[NORAD Tracks Santa]] into the era of Homeland Security.

Not being stupid, tho ... that's not going so well.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | What good does it do merely to
 sean at epoptic.com | stun them? --Worsel of Velantia
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] I18N / L10 / Language Wishlist

references:
<ejm49d$dga$1@sea.gmane.org> <ejnbj8$7er$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejnfkb$igf$1@sea.gmane.org> <ejoj8q$9e9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ek4713$4bm$1@sea.gmane.org> <ek5vdv$n0o$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7c2a12e20611232236w34f087c9od10a50e58b2736f7@mail.gmail.com>
	<e92136380611241004m24a10b9ay9d1ed53fa072d677@mail.gmail.com>
	<ek9v03$4d4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 25/11/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I think I used ucfirst instead of Title::newFromText() to convert from
> message names to DB keys, for efficiency reasons. That could be changed, of
> course. The efficiency of the message cache system has been completely blown
> to hell anyway, by the invention of parsed messages. Here I am worrying
> about a few more lines of PHP, and then someone adds a shell out to Tidy.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need to run it through Tidy...

Rob Church


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

references:
<20061125173812.FNPL17393.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<456885C8.3090107@earthlink.net>
	<45688B94.9000500@KillerChihuahua.com>

body:
Responses to several subthreads, all mixed up:

So, Alphax said something... ill-considered at best. If I hadn't been
one of the first to see the post, I wouldn't have responded, either,
not out of intimidation but because I don't see the need to pile on.
It was a tactless and ill-judged posting, and someone should have said
something about it; someone did and I don't see the need for
*everyone* to, particularly if it had been then left and everyone went
on talking about the primary topic of the thread.

It's interesting for me to read of the private responses kc has
received: I find it hard to think of myself feeling intimidated at the
thought of responding to that, and I normally consider myself more
timid than most. If I ever feel intimidated on the list (and sometimes
I do), it's because I think I'm less knowledgeable about the subject
being discussed or because I have a very unpopular opinion; this
feeling is not unique to Wikimedia lists, and not even different for
me on mostly-female lists. I'm surprised to hear of so many women
feeling intimidated over concerns of sexism here because I simply
haven't experienced it -- or perhaps I have and am oblivious to it.

(As for the idea that any criticism of the position that there is bias
here would be held as evidence of misogyny -- if the criticism
expressed so far were more genuine and less antagonistic it would be
better received. Responding antagonistically and then holding up the
fact that you were attacked for it does not help make the argument
that reasonable criticism also would be attacked.)

I don't know of any of our policies in particular that are unfriendly
to women, and so I don't know how they would be changed to be more
female-friendly. If I do see a problem it is with the users and their
interactions and not with the policies themselves, which seem fairly
neutral; I'd like to see examples of policies and processes that
others believe *are* harmful in this way.

If anything, I think "female" topics (whatever they may be) would be
more welcoming -- less contentious, fewer people fighting over them.
(Aside from the hot-buttons: abortion, etc.) My own areas of interest
are for the most part uncontentious; I don't know that I would have
the patience to stick around long if my primary interests were
hot-button politics or religion, where personal beliefs,
characteristics, and affiliations of all sorts are brought into the
unending arguments.

The thread has gone somewhat off the original topic in discussing the
extreme harassment against female editors, which, yes, I have
experienced as well. Everyone agrees that it's horrible and generally
that the people who engage in it should be banned into oblivion.
However, I don't think that it is Wikipedia policy or process enabling
it, save that Wikipedia is part of the internet and that sadly a woman
who reveals her gender online is probably going to be harassed; really
the only way to avoid it anywhere is anonymity. (Men have been
harassed this way on WP too, though it's indeed less common, and they
are only targeted by plain creepy jerks, not creepy jerk misogynists.)

The coverage issues that the thread started with are more interesting
to me. Why are topics that are traditionally of female interest,
whatever they are, less well-covered? My
completely-unsupported-by-evidence anecdotal conjecture is that the
intersection of people interested in those topics with the people who
spend a lot of time online and think it would be enjoyable to edit an
online encyclopedia is somewhat less than that with, say, those who
are interested in computing and military history. (I'm not one of the
people, incidentally: I have little knowledge of many traditionally
female-interest topics, which is part of why I spend so much time
online in the first place.)

And I don't know that changing the way we work is the way to change
that -- we have to bring them here first. It seems that they don't
care much that we exist, or realize that they can edit, or know what
the policies are that they might object to; if we want these subjects
covered I would suggest reaching out to the places where enthusiasts
of these topics share information (magazines, specialty forums, etc)
and helping them get started, maybe even encouraging them to adapt or
release material they've already written elsewhere. But as far as I
can tell the potential writers aren't even here to do that.

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/25/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> And I don't know that changing the way we work is the way to change
> that -- we have to bring them here first. It seems that they don't
> care much that we exist, or realize that they can edit, or know what
> the policies are that they might object to; if we want these subjects
> covered I would suggest reaching out to the places where enthusiasts
> of these topics share information (magazines, specialty forums, etc)
> and helping them get started, maybe even encouraging them to adapt or
> release material they've already written elsewhere.

I don't fully agree on this point.

I believe that while bringing in people who like X to write about X is
a good start, it will not be enough to produce even coverage.

There will always be subjects which are important but where the
intersection of people who are interested, whom are willing, and whom
are able to write free content will be small.

So in parallel to finding ways to attract a wider spectrum of regular
volunteer contributors, we should also be exploring a number of other
solutions:

# Encouraging our existing volunteers to write about things they don't
care about but which we can generally agree that we ought to cover
well.
## Admittedly, we already do this to an extent but there is certainly
more we can do.

# We're already raising money for the substantial operating costs of
the projects, and there have already been of grants to create for
content on non-wikipedia projects (wikibooks for example). It would be
possible for us to get some folks paid to work full time writing and
improving content where we have insufficient volunteer resources
available.
## This will require having a good picture of what we need done. The
various content projects have done a lot of work which will help us,
but I'm not sure that we have enough lined up to actually go about
hiring people to do the work.

Both of the two options classes I've proposed  are both more
actionable than the vague suggestion to "bring more users of class X"
and I have more confidence that both are more likely to bring about
the desired outcome (better coverage).

So while I'm not opposed to bringing in a broader spectrum of
volunteers, I think should treat such an effort as distinct from an
effort to improve the evenness of our coverage.


from_name: Sage Ross

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
A little grist for the mill, blog posts by feminist academics who are
Wikipedia outsiders or near outsiders:

http://badgerbag.typepad.com/badgerbag/2006/08/feminist_histor.html

http://smg.typepad.com/smg/2006/09/wiki_wiki.html

-Ragesoss


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
"Jim Schuler" wrote

> This certainly needs more of an explanation, "snide remarks about Board
> members given no second chance".

Does it? We have seen Jimbo attacked (quite often, and recently). We saw Geoffrey Kohs take aim at Angela, a recently-departed Board member. These things are in the list archives, posted on the Web. I really don't know why we tolerate use of this list for people to let off steam. (Well, I do, of course. There is a reason to have steam let off in a controlled manner. But it undermines the list's status as a serious forum.)

I agree with Fred - it's a talking shop.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/25/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/26/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > # Encouraging our existing volunteers to write about things they don't
> > care about but which we can generally agree that we ought to cover
> > well.
> > ## Admittedly, we already do this to an extent but there is certainly
> > more we can do.
> >
>
> Not really. Most wikipedia volunteers are here to write about the
> stuff they are interested in.   They are not interested in major work
> beyond that. Sometimes the boarders can be bent (so you are interested
> in wars? How about the wars of Africa?). Sometimes they cannot be.
>
> Further problems is that sometimes you need particular bits of
> knowledge to write about things. Hard to write much about say
> Mauritania without being able to read Arabic and french (which is a
> pity because the results of the last elections came out on Thursday
> and [[Politics of Mauritania]] need uprating).

If your writing is totally dependant on what you know, then you
probably have a [[WP:NOR]] related problem.

A side effect of NOR is that completely disinterested parties should
be able to do a job of similar quality to our interested writers,
although perhaps with a somewhat greater expenditure of energy.

... and I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to expend
energy. We call our contributors volunteers for a reason.  Are people
vacationing at Disney land called 'volunteers'?   :)

We do see evidence of folks working on subjects that are not primary
interests to them... I saw it in the last danny contest, but I'm sure
there are many other examples.

> Working with people paid to edit is going to be problematical since
> you would likely have to pay them to do more than write.

I do not claim that it's trivial. Only that it's actionable.   ...  We
don't really know what to expect.  It's my thought that  on many of
the subjects that need work it will be fairly easy... if anyone cared
enough to fight over the content of the article then the article
probably wouldn't stink.  If this turns out to be true, then our
policy for paid writers could be to tell them to just walk away from
any subject where community interest presents an obstacle to their
efforts.


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
I, too, don't see Alphax's comments as anything other than
ill-conceived, rather than/as opposed to fully hateful.

On 11/25/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Jimmy Wales stated for the record:
> > Puppy wrote:
> >> I appreciate that, Fred. I am not concerned so much about the lack of
> >> response to my concerns, as I am about the lack of response to overt
> >> sexist attacks on this mailing list. I am well aware it is not
> >> Wikipedia. Most of the people on this list are the same people as on
> >> Wikipedia. If you call a black man a nigger in the field, you will at
> >> least /think/ he's a nigger in the house. And don't think the attitude
> >> doesn't bleed through, because it does.
> >
> > Can someone send me a link to the archive where these attacks took place?
> >
> > --Jimbo
>
> The attacks were an ill-considered remark from Alphax, and then my
> wondering why Alphax was being lynched for what was to me clearly a mere
> grumble rather than a truly hateful remark.  But wait!  My questioning
> of their lynching revealed that I too am a vicious misogynist!  From
> there, the script is playing out as usual -- there is of course no
> defense against a charge of misogyny; /any/ response whatsoever (other
> than immediate public self-abasement followed by a good long
> self-flagellation) proves the charge.
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | I was forced to live for days
>  sean at epoptic.com | on nothing but food and water.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFFaF72/SVOiq2uhHMRAgEiAKDctyR34JwaJu730yaD6iN1a5/o+gCfcDO3
> 6Q0uAFYbyT90u3QGrytsJqw=
> =TRrQ
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] CISCO TV Commericals using Wikipedia Logo

body:
I jsut saw a television commercial on the SciFi where CISCO shows a 3
second spot with a laptop computer using Wikipedia.
The commercial aired at 7:33 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.   There were
no screen shots of Windows or any other computer
software on the commercial apart from Wikipedia's logo.  The laptop
appeared to be a MAC but I am not certain.

Jeff


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
FINALLY!

Uh, anyways, I got a book from Amazon about the History of the Papacy. I'll
be using it to (continue) improving the article on History of the Papacy.

On 11/25/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Come to this thread and be not stupid!
>
> So ... written any good articles lately?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
Oh hells yes.

Where can I buy a series of specialist encyclopedias?

Also, I saw you on Citizendium. \o/

On 11/25/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 26/11/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Uh, anyways, I got a book from Amazon about the History of the Papacy.
> I'll
> > be using it to (continue) improving the article on History of the
> Papacy.
>
>
> I must get to the boxes with the books in and hit the specialist
> encyclopedias. Whereas general encyclopedias are tertiary sources,
> subject-respected specialist encyclopedias are secondary sources and
> often have a great deal of primary research, so are eminently usable
> as reference material.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Jim Schuler wrote:

>Drawing an odd inference there -- if anything was implied it was that
>silence is tolerance of misogyny, not misogyny itself.
>
Bullshit.  That inference is too odd to be taken seriously.

Ec


body:
Yup, Danny Wool negotiated with Cisco to use Wikipedia in the commercial.

If I remember Danny correctly, he said he got the Foundation a nice sum of
moolah for it.

On 11/25/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
> I jsut saw a television commercial on the SciFi where CISCO shows a 3
> second spot with a laptop computer using Wikipedia.
> The commercial aired at 7:33 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.   There were
> no screen shots of Windows or any other computer
> software on the commercial apart from Wikipedia's logo.  The laptop
> appeared to be a MAC but I am not certain.
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
On 11/25/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> So ... written any good articles lately?

I actually decided to take a break from both Arbcom and paying job
over this long American weekend and write some articles.  Mostly
filling in gaps in our railway coverage - I'm knocking [[EMD MRS-1]]
into shape, which is a fascinating locomotive built for the US Army in
the Fifties explicitly to be able to run on captured Russian railways
in the event of World War 3.  Since the war never happened, they sat
in storage for 20 years and then got used all over the place when sold
off as surplus, once the USA realised that such a land war was not
going to happen.

It also brought into focus that for all our seemingly exhaustive
coverage of matters military, non-modern non-combat units of even the
US Army are almost completely ignored and hard to research. since
everyone seems only interested in the pointy weapons and not the
logistics machine that makes it all run.

So much for 1.5 million articles meaning there's nothing left to add!

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
Speaking of translation, I have a semi-active effort to translate the French
article on the Phalanx formation into English, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Messedrocker/Phalanx-fr2en

On 11/25/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/26/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Come to this thread and be not stupid!
> >
> > So ... written any good articles lately?
>
> I translated most of [[Phare de la Vieille]]. It's a very long article
> (especially the French original version) about an insignificant
> lighthouse off the coast of Brittany.
>
> And lots of stubs. Also, probably the only stub I've started which has
> since been significantly expanded, [[Todd Skinner]].
>
> Thanks for asking! :)
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with whitelists

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

Let's say example.com and example.net are blacklisted, but
subsite.example.com is whitelisted.

Then, subsite.example.com.example.net is allowed. Isn't this incorrect
behavior? Too tired to file/check for a Bugzilla report...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFaR1yqTO+fYacSNoRAoNeAJ91tOJiwZHOxFpIkI6rn6TuPb3JiACcCjEG
he0UxEL21cG3iEe75F5iePA=
=+SdR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Andrew Garrett

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org on behalf of Rob Church
Sent: Sat 11/25/2006 10:53 AM
To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [17917] trunk/phase3

> Ahem.

> *pokes Werdna with docs/hooks.txt*

Dammit, I knew I'd forget something.

>Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
Oh pfft, I mean a series of specialist encyclopedias THAT IS NOT WIKIPEDIA!
:)

On 11/25/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 26/11/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Oh hells yes.
> > Where can I buy a series of specialist encyclopedias?
>
>
> I think we're writing it.
>
>
> > Also, I saw you on Citizendium. \o/
>
>
> shhhhhhhhh!
>
> (now I need to write something there too ...)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
James Hare wrote:

>Oh hells yes.
>
>Where can I buy a series of specialist encyclopedias?
>
I just looked at eBay for the listing for encyclopedias in books, and it
gave me 3555 hits.  Prices vary from 1 cent for more than 30 items to
$1,888.88 for an English translation of the 31 volume Great Soviet
Encyclopedia.

The cheapest 50 include encyclopedias on
    Home plans
    Women's health
    Dieting
    Natural healing
    Drawing techniques
    Military Modelling
    Collectibles
    Sports
    Stichery
    US at War
    Film Directors
    Dreams
    Star Wars
    Networking and Telecommunications
    Cooking
    "Encyclopedia Brown"
    Mystical & Paranormal Experiences
    Witchcraft and Demonology
    Espresso
    Children's Encyclopedia
    Card Tricks
    Fishing
    Plants and Flowers
    James Bond
    E Business
    Music
    Common Diseases
    Alien Encounters
    Aquarium Fish
    Reptiles and Amphibians

There was also a copy of the 1945 EB.  That should be enough for
anybody.  Imagine getting all 50 cheapest ones for less than $4.00 +
shipping. :-)

Ec


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
To be a little more exact, the ad agency contacted us about using the  logo
for the ad. We all discussed it in the office, and agreed that there should  be
some compensation. I asked, and they agreed. Nothing too spectacular.

Danny

In a message dated 11/25/2006 9:48:43 PM Eastern Standard Time,
messedrocker at gmail.com writes:

Yup,  Danny Wool negotiated with Cisco to use Wikipedia in the commercial.

If  I remember Danny correctly, he said he got the Foundation a nice sum  of
moolah for it.

On 11/25/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey  <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
> I jsut  saw a television commercial on the SciFi where CISCO shows a 3
> second  spot with a laptop computer using Wikipedia.
> The commercial aired at  7:33 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.   There were
> no screen  shots of Windows or any other computer
> software on the commercial  apart from Wikipedia's logo.  The laptop
> appeared to be a MAC but  I am not certain.
>
> Jeff
>  _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing  list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>  http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
_______________________________________________
foundation-l  mailing  list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-26

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Passed 449 of 469 tests (95.74%)... FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
It's not very wiki-like, you're right, but Wikipedia actually began
with one of the founders getting paid to write articles.

--Ryan W.

On 11/26/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> >There will always be subjects which are important but where the
> >intersection of people who are interested, whom are willing, and whom
> >are able to write free content will be small.
> >
> >So in parallel to finding ways to attract a wider spectrum of regular
> >volunteer contributors, we should also be exploring a number of other
> >solutions:
> >
> ># Encouraging our existing volunteers to write about things they don't
> >care about but which we can generally agree that we ought to cover
> >well.
> >
> We already have some Wikipedians wanting more experts.  This is the
> opposite to what you propose.  Writing about things that you don't care
> about is not easy.  Try doing such an article from scratch.  You can
> find a book and write about what's in there, but your lack of background
> will quickly become apparent.
>
> ># We're already raising money for the substantial operating costs of
> >the projects, and there have already been of grants to create for
> >content on non-wikipedia projects (wikibooks for example). It would be
> >possible for us to get some folks paid to work full time writing and
> >improving content where we have insufficient volunteer resources
> >available.
> >## This will require having a good picture of what we need done. The
> >various content projects have done a lot of work which will help us,
> >but I'm not sure that we have enough lined up to actually go about
> >hiring people to do the work.
> >
> >Both of the two options classes I've proposed  are both more
> >actionable than the vague suggestion to "bring more users of class X"
> >and I have more confidence that both are more likely to bring about
> >the desired outcome (better coverage).
> >
> >So while I'm not opposed to bringing in a broader spectrum of
> >volunteers, I think should treat such an effort as distinct from an
> >effort to improve the evenness of our coverage.
> >
> Paying people to write articles would be a whole new ballgame, and
> probably very un-wiki..  There would be no more effective way of
> creating a class of vested interests with certain visions of how they
> want the project to look.  We all want better coverage, but at what cost?
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/26/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> # Encouraging our existing volunteers to write about things they don't
> care about but which we can generally agree that we ought to cover
> well.
> ## Admittedly, we already do this to an extent but there is certainly
> more we can do.
>

Not really. Most wikipedia volunteers are here to write about the
stuff they are interested in.   They are not interested in major work
beyond that. Sometimes the boarders can be bent (so you are interested
in wars? How about the wars of Africa?). Sometimes they cannot be.

Further problems is that sometimes you need particular bits of
knowledge to write about things. Hard to write much about say
Mauritania without being able to read Arabic and french (which is a
pity because the results of the last elections came out on Thursday
and [[Politics of Mauritania]] need uprating).

> # We're already raising money for the substantial operating costs of
> the projects, and there have already been of grants to create for
> content on non-wikipedia projects (wikibooks for example). It would be
> possible for us to get some folks paid to work full time writing and
> improving content where we have insufficient volunteer resources
> available.
> ## This will require having a good picture of what we need done. The
> various content projects have done a lot of work which will help us,
> but I'm not sure that we have enough lined up to actually go about
> hiring people to do the work.
>

Working with people paid to edit is going to be problematical since
you would likely have to pay them to do more than write.

--
geni


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] About web streaming in Wikimania

body:
?? schreef:
> Hello everyone, I am Littlebtc, a member of Wikimania 2007 planning team.
>
> When we talk to sponsors about web streaming sponsorship,  they want
> to know how many people will use web streaming to watch the conference
> so that they can help us.
>
> So we'd like to know the amount of web streaming listener, or
> bandwidth of the streaming website during Wikimania 2006.

I was watching it when it worked.

Regarding the streams I would focus not on the live streams but trying
to get fast after every event the recoding of it online.

For Wikimanina 2006 it was announced several times that there where
recordings made and that the where coming online soon.

At this time these recordings are still not listed on the Wikimania 2006
archive page. What exist is made by people in the audience or recordings
made from the live stream.

I recommend;
- try to get the recordings online between 15 and 60 minutes after every
event online. That is really not difficult.
- give priority on the audio recording above the video recording
- providing a stable distribution channel for the media. Consider bittorrent

For the live stream;
- provide also an audio stream of it
- broadcast it also with peercast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercast
- The not announced use of RealMedia for the live stream for
Wikimania2006 was very inconvenient.
I understand that if the streaming service is offered for free by
someone it will be in the format the are useing.
But if the use a non WMF recommended file format it must be know in time
by the interested people so the can try to get support for it on there
computer. Also publish a sample file if that is the case so that you can
test if of playback works.

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 25/11/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> It is close to worthless nowadays, seldom a productive or worthwhile
> discussion. A few people seem to post over and over and say very
> little. And that's not even addressing the nasty aspects.

I recommend gmail. It's so nice being able to ignore a whole thread at a time.

- d.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" images of living people

references:
<98dd099a0611151216n11602f22paeff1d73b1f91c72@mail.gmail.com>
	<98dd099a0611161116x6d89bb1cw9637d2cc077a8f3@mail.gmail.com>
	<2504.63.151.8.141.1163706349.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<9cppl2df2at3g7q386iortgepocug69fmb@4ax.com>
	<455CE767.4000503@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<8bspl2l3vf5s37l7kumhse3612aomspbra@4ax.com>
	<f80608430611161523l29b60433ife5c7cbddada974c@mail.gmail.com>
	<38a7bf7c0611161541r4a7cc02aye8f9a18604b9217f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4567919D.3080704@telus.net>
	<42f90dc00611241852v283b928bgcffbed70a2ef7ba7@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 11/25/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The very fact that someone is claiming scans from a book were
> self-produced CAD drawings says they should be deleted.  No matter
> what, the claim of self-authorship is bogus.

We have CSD I7, the first part of which is for images tagged with what
is clearly an incorrect fair use tag. Really there should be something
like this that applies to obviously copyrighted images which the
uploader claims are PD or some copyleft licence.

And unless it can be shown that the person did not realise that they
were passing off copyrighted work as their own and purportedly
licencing it as such, I would think that this would be grounds for an
immediate ban. Policing the stuff that people claim as fair use and
tag as such is a large enough task on its own without this sort of
problem.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>Responses to several subthreads, all mixed up:
>
>So, Alphax said something... ill-considered at best. If I hadn't been
>one of the first to see the post, I wouldn't have responded, either,
>not out of intimidation but because I don't see the need to pile on.
>It was a tactless and ill-judged posting, and someone should have said
>something about it; someone did and I don't see the need for
>*everyone* to, particularly if it had been then left and everyone went
>on talking about the primary topic of the thread.
>
>It's interesting for me to read of the private responses kc has
>received: I find it hard to think of myself feeling intimidated at the
>thought of responding to that, and I normally consider myself more
>timid than most. If I ever feel intimidated on the list (and sometimes
>I do), it's because I think I'm less knowledgeable about the subject
>being discussed or because I have a very unpopular opinion; this
>feeling is not unique to Wikimedia lists, and not even different for
>me on mostly-female lists. I'm surprised to hear of so many women
>feeling intimidated over concerns of sexism here because I simply
>haven't experienced it -- or perhaps I have and am oblivious to it.
>
I find your analysis of this thread refreshing   To some extent we all
experience some level of intimidation.  Unpopular opinions tend to be
not very well received, and sometimes the responses can be quite out of
proportion.  Knowing this we resist jumping into some threads.

>(As for the idea that any criticism of the position that there is bias
>here would be held as evidence of misogyny -- if the criticism
>expressed so far were more genuine and less antagonistic it would be
>better received. Responding antagonistically and then holding up the
>fact that you were attacked for it does not help make the argument
>that reasonable criticism also would be attacked.)
>
Absolutely.  Masculine hysteria abounds.  Sexist and often boorish
comments are hysterically interpreted as misogyny.  Claims that someone
has said something wrong are elaborated into claims of lying.
Investigations of possible copyvios are treated as outright
certainties.  Statements are often sprinkled with that greatest of
attack words, "obviously."

>I don't know of any of our policies in particular that are unfriendly
>to women, and so I don't know how they would be changed to be more
>female-friendly. If I do see a problem it is with the users and their
>interactions and not with the policies themselves, which seem fairly
>neutral; I'd like to see examples of policies and processes that
>others believe *are* harmful in this way.
>
I again agree.  What often appears female-unfriendly is the masculine
tone with which some issues are pursued, whether or not women are
involved or mentioned.  The absolute certainty and immutability of some
views is not consistent with the more feminine tendency toward
negotiation and accomodation.  The punitve attitude that everything
would be so much better if only we acted more harshly with offenders
often leaves little room for new win-win solutions.  For sure, there
will always be people who need to be banned, but in a remedial
environment it is done out of a real need to improve the community
rather than to get rid of petty annoyances.

>The thread has gone somewhat off the original topic in discussing the
>extreme harassment against female editors, which, yes, I have
>experienced as well. Everyone agrees that it's horrible and generally
>that the people who engage in it should be banned into oblivion.
>However, I don't think that it is Wikipedia policy or process enabling
>it, save that Wikipedia is part of the internet and that sadly a woman
>who reveals her gender online is probably going to be harassed; really
>the only way to avoid it anywhere is anonymity. (Men have been
>harassed this way on WP too, though it's indeed less common, and they
>are only targeted by plain creepy jerks, not creepy jerk misogynists.)
>
One still needs to distinguish between the very poor manners of sexist
comments in a mailing list, and the offline extremes applied by the
stalkers.

>The coverage issues that the thread started with are more interesting
>to me. Why are topics that are traditionally of female interest,
>whatever they are, less well-covered? My
>completely-unsupported-by-evidence anecdotal conjecture is that the
>intersection of people interested in those topics with the people who
>spend a lot of time online and think it would be enjoyable to edit an
>online encyclopedia is somewhat less than that with, say, those who
>are interested in computing and military history. (I'm not one of the
>people, incidentally: I have little knowledge of many traditionally
>female-interest topics, which is part of why I spend so much time
>online in the first place.)
>
With patience people (women?) will eventually arrive to deal with these
topics.  There are plenty of women's magazines in supermarket magazine
racks, so there must be authors to produce all that.  We need to
remember too that cooking may be stereotypically considered as a female
topic, yet there was a protracted dispute about having recipes in
Wikipedia.  It could be intimidating to believe that other such topics
could be treated as not worthy of a proper encyclopedia.

>And I don't know that changing the way we work is the way to change
>that -- we have to bring them here first. It seems that they don't
>care much that we exist, or realize that they can edit, or know what
>the policies are that they might object to; if we want these subjects
>covered I would suggest reaching out to the places where enthusiasts
>of these topics share information (magazines, specialty forums, etc)
>and helping them get started, maybe even encouraging them to adapt or
>release material they've already written elsewhere. But as far as I
>can tell the potential writers aren't even here to do that.
>
Yes, it just takes patience.

Ec


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Jim Schuler wrote:
> I find it sad that someone feels the need to have a separate mailing list
> for women.  Gender bias is an issue that touches all of us and should be
> discussed openly by *all of us.  *As KC noted, separate but equal is a
> farce: it is merely separate, not equal, for in the act of separation power
> is ceded to the majority, a majority that is often boorish and smug in its
> ignorance.
>
> It is also sad that when some of the men here spoke out in defence of women,
> they were attacked for piling on (the offender had slinked off without so
> much as an apology)

Do you think I'm proud of what I said? Do you think I actually meant it?
Do you think that continuing to attack me would have helped the
situation? Do you think that there was any apology I could have give
that wouldn't have been just brushed off as insincere?

--
Alphax


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>There will always be subjects which are important but where the
>intersection of people who are interested, whom are willing, and whom
>are able to write free content will be small.
>
>So in parallel to finding ways to attract a wider spectrum of regular
>volunteer contributors, we should also be exploring a number of other
>solutions:
>
># Encouraging our existing volunteers to write about things they don't
>care about but which we can generally agree that we ought to cover
>well.
>
We already have some Wikipedians wanting more experts.  This is the
opposite to what you propose.  Writing about things that you don't care
about is not easy.  Try doing such an article from scratch.  You can
find a book and write about what's in there, but your lack of background
will quickly become apparent.

># We're already raising money for the substantial operating costs of
>the projects, and there have already been of grants to create for
>content on non-wikipedia projects (wikibooks for example). It would be
>possible for us to get some folks paid to work full time writing and
>improving content where we have insufficient volunteer resources
>available.
>## This will require having a good picture of what we need done. The
>various content projects have done a lot of work which will help us,
>but I'm not sure that we have enough lined up to actually go about
>hiring people to do the work.
>
>Both of the two options classes I've proposed  are both more
>actionable than the vague suggestion to "bring more users of class X"
>and I have more confidence that both are more likely to bring about
>the desired outcome (better coverage).
>
>So while I'm not opposed to bringing in a broader spectrum of
>volunteers, I think should treat such an effort as distinct from an
>effort to improve the evenness of our coverage.
>
Paying people to write articles would be a whole new ballgame, and
probably very un-wiki..  There would be no more effective way of
creating a class of vested interests with certain visions of how they
want the project to look.  We all want better coverage, but at what cost?

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
Yeah, I find that annoying, too.

Like this one time when I found an excellent article from the Mayo Clinic
about Tinnitus, so I run over to the Wikipedia article about it and find a
detailed article. Aww, so much for that!

On 11/26/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/25/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So ... written any good articles lately?
>
> I actually decided to take a break from both Arbcom and paying job
> over this long American weekend and write some articles.  Mostly
> filling in gaps in our railway coverage - I'm knocking [[EMD MRS-1]]
> into shape, which is a fascinating locomotive built for the US Army in
> the Fifties explicitly to be able to run on captured Russian railways
> in the event of World War 3.  Since the war never happened, they sat
> in storage for 20 years and then got used all over the place when sold
> off as surplus, once the USA realised that such a land war was not
> going to happen.
>
> It also brought into focus that for all our seemingly exhaustive
> coverage of matters military, non-modern non-combat units of even the
> US Army are almost completely ignored and hard to research. since
> everyone seems only interested in the pointy weapons and not the
> logistics machine that makes it all run.
>
> So much for 1.5 million articles meaning there's nothing left to add!
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] AOL IP addresses

body:
On 25/11/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I've just made a change to MediaWiki so that it respects XFF headers for AOL
> proxies. The change is live on Wikimedia right now. The logs seem to
> indicate that AOL is not giving us XFF headers consistently, but hopefully
> that's a problem we can sort out with them over the next few days.
> I'd appreciate some reports from AOL users as to whether this is working.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project

So how to say this in [[Mediawiki:Blockiptext]]? Just leave it as-is
with the table, because individual IPs won't be in the table ranges?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
Come to this thread and be not stupid!

So ... written any good articles lately?

- d.


body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>
>To be a little more exact, the ad agency contacted us about using the  logo
>for the ad. We all discussed it in the office, and agreed that there should  be
>some compensation. I asked, and they agreed. Nothing too spectacular.
>
>Danny
>
>
This has been a test of the emergency wikipedia logo electronic
transmission usage and detection subsystem, powered by MediaWiki 1.8.2 and
Merkey's eyeballs. This has only been a test.

:-)

Jeff

>
>
>In a message dated 11/25/2006 9:48:43 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>messedrocker at gmail.com writes:
>
>Yup,  Danny Wool negotiated with Cisco to use Wikipedia in the commercial.
>
>If  I remember Danny correctly, he said he got the Foundation a nice sum  of
>moolah for it.
>
>On 11/25/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey  <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I jsut  saw a television commercial on the SciFi where CISCO shows a 3
>>second  spot with a laptop computer using Wikipedia.
>>The commercial aired at  7:33 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.   There were
>>no screen  shots of Windows or any other computer
>>software on the commercial  apart from Wikipedia's logo.  The laptop
>>appeared to be a MAC but  I am not certain.
>>
>>Jeff
>> _______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing  list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l  mailing  list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
On 26/11/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> Uh, anyways, I got a book from Amazon about the History of the Papacy. I'll
> be using it to (continue) improving the article on History of the Papacy.

I must get to the boxes with the books in and hit the specialist
encyclopedias. Whereas general encyclopedias are tertiary sources,
subject-respected specialist encyclopedias are secondary sources and
often have a great deal of primary research, so are eminently usable
as reference material.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Puppy wrote:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> On Nov 25, 2006, at 7:28 AM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Jim Schuler wrote:
>>>
>>>> I find it sad that someone feels the need to have a separate
>>>> mailing list
>>>> for women.  Gender bias is an issue that touches all of us and
>>>> should be
>>>> discussed openly by *all of us.  *As KC noted, separate but equal
>>>> is a
>>>> farce: it is merely separate, not equal, for in the act of
>>>> separation power
>>>> is ceded to the majority, a majority that is often boorish and
>>>> smug in its
>>>> ignorance.
>>>>
>>>> It is also sad that when some of the men here spoke out in defence
>>>> of women,
>>>> they were attacked for piling on (the offender had slinked off
>>>> without so
>>>> much as an apology)
>>>>
>>> Do you think I'm proud of what I said? Do you think I actually
>>> meant it?
>>> Do you think that continuing to attack me would have helped the
>>> situation? Do you think that there was any apology I could have give
>>> that wouldn't have been just brushed off as insincere?
>>>
>> Just say you are sorry and get it over with. Then sin no more. I
>> think most of us are aware that there is an element of trolling
>> involved in this thread, but there are also real problems which we
>> need to deal with effectively.
>>
>>
> Well put. I fear there is some conflation of the comment, the response
> (or lack thereof), and the overall situation.
>

The comments were inappropriate, and I'm sorry for making them. The
response is sadly lacking, and I'm sorry for contributing to an
atmosphere that discourages appropriate responses. The situation is a
mess, and I'm sorry for having started it.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid wikien-l thread

body:
On 26/11/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh hells yes.
> Where can I buy a series of specialist encyclopedias?

I think we're writing it.

> Also, I saw you on Citizendium. \o/

shhhhhhhhh!

(now I need to write something there too ...)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
<snip>
> You will find very few people willing to express any doubt about the
> assumptions behind this passion play; those who do will be tarred and
> feathered, then run out of town on a rail to the tune of comparisons to
> the Nazis.
>

Shall we get back to Wikipedia: Arbeit macht die freie Enzyklop?die, and
does Godwin approve?

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Puppy wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>> Puppy wrote:
>>
>>> I appreciate that, Fred. I am not concerned so much about the lack of
>>> response to my concerns, as I am about the lack of response to overt
>>> sexist attacks on this mailing list.
>>>
>> I personally didn't respond because it looked like trolling, and you're
>> not supposed to feed the trolls. But apparently my attempt at troll
>> starvation is evidence of misogyny? Bummer...
>>
>> Stan
>>
> I almost didn't respond for that very reason, but now I'm glad I did.
> Women are emailing me telling me how intimidated they feel - they don't
> want to post their concerns to this list because they also feel
> intimidated here. That I would have never known had I not replied.
>

Generally this list is home to not sexism but general stupidity. What
will it take before people feel safe enough to post here?

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

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from_name: Tim Starling

references:
<ejm49d$dga$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejnbj8$7er$1@sea.gmane.org>	<ejnfkb$igf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejoj8q$9e9$1@sea.gmane.org>	<ek4713$4bm$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ek5vdv$n0o$1@sea.gmane.org>	<7c2a12e20611232236w34f087c9od10a50e58b2736f7@mail.gmail.com>
	<e92136380611241004m24a10b9ay9d1ed53fa072d677@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 24/11/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Someone suggested on IRC once that something might break if we use
>> spaces, because the message names also serve as page names and maybe
>> whatever creates the pages will expect underscores.  I usually use
>> hyphens, myself . . . I find them less obtrusive and easier to type
>> than underscores.
>
> That's bollocks, spaces in message names are fine and there's no
> reason we can't use them. We have, I think, a few messages with spaces
> in their names at present as it is.

I think I used ucfirst instead of Title::newFromText() to convert from
message names to DB keys, for efficiency reasons. That could be changed, of
course. The efficiency of the message cache system has been completely blown
to hell anyway, by the invention of parsed messages. Here I am worrying
about a few more lines of PHP, and then someone adds a shell out to Tidy.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/26/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Paying people to write articles would be a whole new ballgame, and
> probably very un-wiki..  There would be no more effective way of
> creating a class of vested interests with certain visions of how they
> want the project to look.  We all want better coverage, but at what cost?

Don't be so foolish to deny that there are already people being paid
to edit...

The question in my mind is: Will more people be paid to advance the
public good in cooperation with the larger community of contributors,
or will more people be paid to advance private interests in opposition
and through subverison of the communities interests.

Done right, I think such an adventure could do a lot to strengthen our
community and leave us better prepared to cope with the results of
people paid to edit for less noble goals.

At least were we to embark on that particular journey we would do with
sensitivity and understanding of the risks. In no way should any such
measure be itself used as a mechanism for control. The purpose of paid
writers would be .. to write. And any such arrangement should be
structured to avoid the creation of such interests. For example, it
would be reasonable that you get paid just as equally if the community
goes and removes your work.

You didn't elaborate much on your position, but I  don't buy yet your
claim of vested interests.  Who cares more about controlling
Wikipedia?  Some nationalist who spends his every free moment working
without pay to shape Wikipedias coverage, or some working person
punching a time clock and writing a bunch of material selected by
someone else?


subject: [Wikitech-l] AOL IP addresses

body:
I've just made a change to MediaWiki so that it respects XFF headers for AOL
proxies. The change is live on Wikimedia right now. The logs seem to
indicate that AOL is not giving us XFF headers consistently, but hopefully
that's a problem we can sort out with them over the next few days.

I'd appreciate some reports from AOL users as to whether this is working.

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

-- Tim Starling