body:
It has nothing to do with those articles and has all to do with her repated confrontational style and disrespect for others, not only on the Wikipedia but here on the mailing list.
Zoe
 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

> It has been said I am blocked for my work on sumer and wealth of
> nations. Nobody has directed a complaint regarding this to me before.
> I see no reason why you wouldn't be willing to discuss things.

I just looked at both of these articles and their talk pages, and there
is no apparent cause for this drastic action. These actions against Lir
are reminiscent of sharks on a hysterical feeding frenzy.

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from_name: Zoe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
Are you serious, or are you being facetious?  Tarquin's was in response to Lir's comments regarding americanizatin of the Wikipedia.  I was responding to was his question to Lir.
Zoe
 Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> wrote:You know Zoe, most of your posts are a real mystery to
me...

Who is she ?

Is it okay to answer "yes she does" to a "do you think
this should be" ?

Since when is an encyclopedia talking ?

What is "frequent" ?

Did you ever go on the french wiki and check the
"Londres" article (please some bilingual do something
for that poor lonesome city...)

I am at a loss really

--- Zoe wrote:
>
> Yes, she does. She's said so frequently.
> Zoe
> tarquin wrote:
> Do you think the French wikipedia should write
> "london" instead of
> "londres"?
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate messages?

body:
But I was getting them before I singed up for the English wiki mailing list.
Zoe
 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:Zoe wrote:

> Is anybody else getting duplicate mail messages?
>
Yes, but this seems to happen when you are on more than one mailing
list, and the other of the message has posted the message to more than
one list.

Eclecticology

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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> explication:
> c'etait au sujet de Lir, celle / celui que Jimbo a
> aujourd'hui barr'e du
> EN-Wiki.
>
> Lir a monte une campagne contre l'anglicization des
> noms propres, et
> aurai voulu qu'on ait, par ex., une page "Munchen"
> au lieu de "Munich".
> pour remuer un peu, j'avais dit -- et les autres
> langues? faut-il
> qu'elles aussi utilises les noms propres etrangers
> dans leur forme
> d'origine?
> c'etait purement de la rhetorique.
>
>
> je passerai voir "Londres", mais je previens que
> j'ai du mal a taper les
> accents, meme sur mon Mac.

Super!
 A part sa jolie photo, cette page est
intersid?ralement vide...

Les accents ne sont pas un probl?me. D autres
personnes ne les mettent pas non plus car ils sont a l
etranger avec un clavier anglosaxon, et je sais
combien c est penible. D autres reprennent apr?s ;-)

Par contre, le systeme de "mispeeling" ne marche pas
pour les accents. Le terme "l?g?r" n est pas reconnu
comme tel, "?gyptien" est confondu avec "egyption".

C'est un bug !

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] bot

body:
--- bderksen <bderksen at ualberta.ca> wrote:

> BTW, I believe that the calender doesn't actually
> have a year 0; it went
> straight from -1 to 1 the next year. Hence causing
> all the pointless arguments
> over whether to celebrate the new millennium on jan
> 1 2000 or jan 1 2001.

Gasp. Thanks...

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from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] "Mark all edits minor by default"

body:
Hello,

Is there an agreed definition of what is or is not a "minor edit"? I
haven't been able to find one, so I've just been guessing. I suspect that
most people are just guessing. So if it's such a big deal to people,
perhaps there should be clearer guidelines on what should or should not be
marked as a minor edit. Perhaps the "minor edit" box should have a link by
it, with the text "What is a minor edit?", linking to a page of such
guidelines.

As for naughty people sneaking in major changes by pretending that they
are minor, it wouldn't make any difference what the defaults were. Even
with the "minor edit" box not ticked by default, all someone has to do is
click on it - hardly a difficult task for our hypothetical naughty person!
If anyone is worried about people doing this, the only thing they can do
is deselect the option to hide minor edits from the "Recent changes" page.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Max Walter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The sweden site must be updated!

body:
I'm new to the list and I don't know if this is the right place to ask
this question: We in Sweden wonder when sv.wikipedia.com will be
updated to the new version? Who should we contact to solve this issue?

//Max Walter (taxen at telia.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] lags

body:
I did not have to time to go through all the mails, so
I don't know if so raised the subject, but in spite of
the changes yesterday the lags on the fr.wiki are
horrible. Yesterday evening, it took between 5 to 20
mn to edit a page. I just saved a couple of them then
give up.

We had no contributions at all between 21h and 0h
which are usually the busiest time of the day. I guess
everybody just gave up.

This has been going on for several days now. The day
before, we got the message connexion error very often
for example.

People are getting very weary, and I am worried that
the contributions will drop tremendously if this goes
on for a long time. Most contributors are from Europe.
Most can only contribute in the evening. If it doesnot
go better, they will just stop. Meanwhile, the en.wiki
was not accessible for us either. But, I noticed it
was still working for some as people were
contributing. It was impossible on the french wiki.

I know you do your best. I saw on the announcement,
you made some change to improve the matter. Well,
yesterday, it was worse than ever : -(((

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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sumer and wealth of nations

body:
On 11/21/02 6:55 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> That's not why Jimbo banned her. How can you be so obtuse?
>
Now, now, no need to quote the Shawshank Redemption.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
Sorry, no I was serious. I'm absolutely not a
facetious person :-)
the top of the message was missing...I just missed a
step...boum

Excuse me Zoe

PS : about the strange duplication of messages (apart
from potential quadripletion from the tech, the inter,
the main and the en), I remember it started when we
moved from nupedia to wikipedia.org. Could it be still
related ?

--- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Are you serious, or are you being facetious?
> Tarquin's was in response to Lir's comments
> regarding americanizatin of the Wikipedia.  I was
> responding to was his question to Lir.
> Zoe
>  Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> wrote:You know Zoe,
> most of your posts are a real mystery to
> me...
>
> Who is she ?
>
> Is it okay to answer "yes she does" to a "do you
> think
> this should be" ?
>
> Since when is an encyclopedia talking ?
>
> What is "frequent" ?
>
> Did you ever go on the french wiki and check the
> "Londres" article (please some bilingual do
> something
> for that poor lonesome city...)
>
> I am at a loss really
>
> --- Zoe wrote:
> >
> > Yes, she does. She's said so frequently.
> > Zoe
> > tarquin wrote:
> > Do you think the French wikipedia should write
> > "london" instead of
> > "londres"?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up
> now
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up
> now.
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> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
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>
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] A New Rule

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>1. For every posting on one of Wikipedia's mailing lists, a
>   substantial edit to a Wikipedia article has to be made.

Since I regularly mark minor edits (except when I forget),
I'll interpret "substantial edit" as any not so marked.

>2. Any substantial edit can only be used for one mailing list
>   message.

Naturally.

>3. The substantial edit has to have occurred within 24 hours
>   of the posting of the mailing list message.

I get the mailing list by email and respond to it intermittently and quickly,
while substantial Wikipedia editing is usually reserved for
large blocks of time that may require several days to appear.
So I'll replace the 24 hour cut off with the rule that
unused edits from one large block can't roll over to after the next,
which should preserve the intent of this clause.

>4. Proof of the substantial edit is to be attached to the posting,
>   as link to the corresponding diff.

I'll start this after my next large block of editing, probably Friday night
(Saturday UCT).  Let's see how I do.

>* The New Rule is fully enforced policy and goes into
>  effect immediately.
>* There will be no discussion, and no voting.
>* As always, everybody is free to ignore the New Rule.
>* I do not have a definition of "substantial edit".
>* No action by Jimbo is required at this time.

^_^

>P.S. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hilbert%27s_Nullstellensatz&diff=436524&oldid=436508

Now *that*'s a substantial edit!

-- Toby


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] vandalism spree

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>Although I fear that something that is fast enough is too fast by definition
>(if I can keep up with a bot having a certain speed, I will have to have at
> least that speed myself, and it's something one does quite fast, but not the
> fastest of all - correcting a spelling error is often faster).

>A limit of 1 per minute would be much too strict, in my opinion. One should
>really not go further than 2 edits per minute, and even that might be enough
>to have some people get irritated and decide not to do 'trivial tasks' such
>as going through the 'regular misspellings' or disambiguating pages.

OK, with this and some other replies, I think that it's clear that
any time limit short enough not to bother regular legitimate users
will be too short to allow one person to keep up with a bot.
Will it be short enough to allow the entire militia
(or what of it is online at any given time) to keep up?
Or if not that, will a time limit still help *enough* to be worthwhile?
Not rhetorical questions, but I have no good idea of how to answer them.

Zeroth approximation for time limit: 1 minute.
First approximation for time limit: 10 seconds.
(I'm putting not bothering regular legitimate users
as the determining factor in my evolving approximations,
rather than allowing us to keep up with the bot.)

-- Toby


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] lags

body:
On Thu, 2002-11-21 at 22:22, Anthere wrote:
> I know you do your best. I saw on the announcement,
> you made some change to improve the matter.

Bit by bit; problem areas are being identified and optimized. In
particular, the slowest operations tend to bog down everything when
traffic is high, because other pages have to wait on them to finish.

Right now I'm going through and adding indexes for user id and user
name; this *vastly* speeds up the 'user contributions' pages. (Note that
as I add the indexes, the various wikis may be briefly unavailable for a
few moments.)

I've also just made a tweak to "Most wanted pages" which for the English
wiki takes the generation time down from about 90 seconds to about 30.
Still too long, but it's an improvement.

> Well,
> yesterday, it was worse than ever : -(((

In the middle of the day the whole database server was bogged down
somehow for a while until I killed and restarted Apache and MySQL; this
may or may not be related to weird segfaults I was seeing from the PHP
cache system when running my experimental RDF generator script (see
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDF_spool ). (I've disabled it for the
meantime on the off chance it was causing trouble.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] "Mark all edits minor by default"

body:
Jonathan Walther (Clutch, right?) wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>There's a new preference in CVS now to have edits minor by default, as
>>per someone's request on wikipedia-l. This may be helpful for
>>copyeditors. I haven't added it to the other Language* files (except for
>>German) yet.

>How many people actually find this distinction between major/minor edits
>useful?

I do; even though I don't hide minor edits,
I get an idea about what to expect;
if it's from a user whose practices I know,
I may choose to ignore a minor edit.

>Most of us leave minor edits enabled anyway, so we can see
>potential vandals try to sneak by.  Shouldn't that be part of the social
>contract?  For the benefit you receive from the Wikipedia, you need to
>be in a position where you can see the litter if you decide to be an
>editor?

The litter is visible to every reader, editor or no.
I don't think that anybody should be required to
take steps to expose themselves to the litter,
even to the extent of view a list of minor recent changes.
Editing Wikipedia should be easy and require nothing
besides observance of NPOV, our encyclop?dic nature,
and (in edit conflicts) a willingness to work with others.

Which is about what mav proposed we put on a
<terms and conditions of use> page.
What about that idea?  I liked it!

-- Toby


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wiki is stuck

body:
I have been trying for at least half an hour to delete a single nonsense
page. Someone please kick the server.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Treason (Was: stupid anglicization)

body:
Jonathan Walther (Clutch, right?) wrote to Lir:

>You claim to be
>from Iowa; speaking ill of your country, in the way that you do, is
>treason.

No, it's not.  Maybe in Canada it is, which is why I'm still proud
to be an American, despite the ever shrinking reasons for such pride.
But ill speech of anybody and anything is still protected here
to a greater extent than anywhere else, thank goodness.

-- Toby

PS:  US Constitution, Article III, Section 3, Clause 1:
     "Treason against the United States,
     "shall consist only in levying War against them,
     "or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
     "No Person shall be convicted of Treason
     "unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act,
     "or on Confession in open Court.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
explication:
c'etait au sujet de Lir, celle / celui que Jimbo a aujourd'hui barr'e du
EN-Wiki.

Lir a monte une campagne contre l'anglicization des noms propres, et
aurai voulu qu'on ait, par ex., une page "Munchen" au lieu de "Munich".
pour remuer un peu, j'avais dit -- et les autres langues? faut-il
qu'elles aussi utilises les noms propres etrangers dans leur forme
d'origine?
c'etait purement de la rhetorique.

je passerai voir "Londres", mais je previens que j'ai du mal a taper les
accents, meme sur mon Mac.

Anthere wrote:

>You know Zoe, most of your posts are a real mystery to
>me...
>
>Who is she ?
>
>Is it okay to answer "yes she does" to a "do you think
>this should be" ?
>
>Since when is an encyclopedia talking ?
>
>What is "frequent" ?
>
>Did you ever go on the french wiki and check the
>"Londres" article (please some bilingual do something
>for that poor lonesome city...)
>
>I am at a loss really
>
>--- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Yes, she does.  She's said so frequently.
>>Zoe
>> tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>>Do you think the French wikipedia should write
>>"london" instead of
>>"londres"?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>---------------------------------
>>Do you Yahoo!?
>>Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
>>
>>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
>http://mailplus.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
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>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Hum, I pretty much agree with that Meta-Wikipedia article,
>>but I don't see how the *definition* of NPOV is at fault.
>>No article will ever perfectly satisfy the current definition,
>>which is therefore an ideal, and I don't see any proposal
>>for replacing that definition.

>That's what "NPOV is an ideal" is.

What's what "NPOV is an ideal" is?
A definition?  "an ideal" isn't a definition.

>>Surely you don't want Wikipedia to state as fact
>>that George W. Bush is an awful US President!
>>But if it doesn't, then it won't contain that piece of knowledge;
>>it will at best only contain the knowledge that
>>certain people hold that view for certain reasons.
>>(Well, it might contain that piece of knowledge for a little while,
>>but that would surely be quickly replaced by a more NPOV version,
>>as we strive ever more for the elusive NPOV ideal.)

>Exactly.

OK, so again we seem to agree on NPOV --
except that I can't see where this contradicts
the definition on [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]].
I mean, I get *everything* (it seems), and basically agree,
except the idea that it has to do with any *definition*.

I press because I do want to understand you,
and I sense that you have a point in using that word.
Please, define "neutral point of view".

(Or tell me where on meta or something this has happened before.
I can't find any extensive discussion involving you now,
but I'm sure that some must be preserved somewhere.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: "Mark all edits minor by default"

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>BTW, why do anonymous IPs have the ability to mark edits as minor? That wasn't
>the case for Phase II. The way it is now "hide minor edits" is useless
>because most vandals are anonymous and oftentimes mark their vandalisms as
>"minor". I therefore don't use the hide minor edits feature.
>
>
>
>>What I've seen work is to make summaries mandatory for non-minor edits.
>>
>>
>Sound like an interesting idea.
>

Either of the above options is good; I don't think both are required
together; and I prefer the first: let only named users minor-edit.

I frequently use minor edits if I'm just making links, or clearing up
typos, or making tweaks to sentence structure -- having to fill in the
edit box each time would be a little tedious.

- tarquin

>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
>
>
>Les accents ne sont pas un probl?me. D autres
>personnes ne les mettent pas non plus car ils sont a l
>etranger avec un clavier anglosaxon, et je sais
>combien c est penible. D autres reprennent apr?s ;-)
>
>Par contre, le systeme de "mispeeling" ne marche pas
>pour les accents. Le terme "l?g?r" n est pas reconnu
>comme tel, "?gyptien" est confondu avec "egyption".
>
>C'est un bug !
>
L'interpretation des accents par les ordinateurs est au-del? de mes
compr?hension.  ? l'heure actuelle je m'en sers d'un clavier
franco-canadien.  En effet ?a veut dire un clavier ou les lettres sont
plac?es de la fa?on am?ricaine, avec des clefs sp?ciales qu'il faut pour
?crire le fran?ais.  Quand-m?me, je m'en sers avec un logiciel anglais.
 Pour qu'il fonctionne comme il faut j'aurais besoin de changer des
pr?f?rences dans mon syst?me, ce qui me causerait de nouvelles peines.
 Mais je m'habitue, et pour ?crire "?", par example, je m'en sers de Alt
+ 0233.  ?a devrait fonctionner car si mon texte est cit? dans une
r?ponse, il est tout en forme.

Ce qui me confond sont les textes que je re?ois.  J'ai bien copi? le
texte ci-dessus de ton messagee, et les lettres accent?es ont l'air bien
rendu.  Mais dans le courriel que j'ai re?u toutes ces lettres accent?es
sont repr?senter pae un esp?ce de carreau noir contenant un point
d'interogation..  Je ne comprends pas comment ?a peut arriver.

Eclecticology


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

body:
--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> I often prepare a set of inter-related articles and upload them
> using
> multiple browser tabs, saving them as fast as I can click the
> button.
> There's no reason I couldn't wait between saves, but I don't want
> to....

Same here.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: transliteration is stupider

body:
Mav wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>NPOV, of course, has nothing to do with this (despite what Lir says).
>>As you know, NPOV doesn't mean the majority point of view.
>>It means presenting every point of view in a manner fair to it.

>Key words "in a manner fair to it". In my world view what is most "fair" in
>terms of NPOV is to express majority opinions as majority opinions and
>minority ones as minority.

As is done in the sort of article text that I would write:

'''München''' (population whatever), usually called '''Munich''' in
[[English language|English]], is a [[city]] in [[Germany]].

(Or write "[[Deutschland]] (Germany)", but that's a finer point,
and a more radical one than we need to discuss now.)

>This also affects the amount of text we give to
>any particular opinion in an article. So majority opinions get majority time.
>Therefore if something is known by a particular name by the great majority of
>English speakers we should reflect this fact in our choice of what to name
>the article. So yes, NPOV does most certainly apply.

I've decided that this is probably a category error.
The neutral point of view covers our article content.
This is possible only because we have room in our articles
to explain every POV fairly (possibly even by
spinning it off to its own separate article).
This isn't possible in article titles,
so we come up with *conventions* to deal with these.
Was it NPOV that told us not to capitalise article titles?
No, most English speakers capitalise the titles of articles --
but it's a heck of a lot more convenient if Wikipedia doesn't.
And *Naming* conventions aren't the only POV that Wikipedia holds.
Heck, was it NPOV that told us to be NPOV?
Not at all, most people write from a POV,
up to and including most editions of the Encyclop?dia Britannica.
But Wikipedia decided to a neutral encyclop?dia.
So the content of our articles is neutral.
Nevertheless, our copyright policy certainly isn't!
Etc.

>>A truly NPOV title would be [[The city known to its residents as
>>"M?nchen" but commonly called "Munich" in English,
>>and which some people argue that we should talk about
>>in an article entitled "M?nchen" becuase <blah blah blah>
>>but which others argue that we should talk about
>>in an article entitled "Munich" because <yada yada yada>]].
>>But we can't do this, so we pick one or the other.
>>Either is an equally POV choice (since the majority POV
>>is as much a POV as going to the original name is),
>>which is why we use naming *conventions* instead.

>Either is /not/ equally POV. See above. And the description of things go into
>the articles themselves, not in titles so that anti-argument is no argument
>at all.

You know that it's not NPOV to state only the majority opinion.
However much we may give *more* time to the majority opinion,
we must also indicate minority opinions where applicable.
It is applicable in article titles -- but we can't do so there,
because (as you say, and this is *central* to my argument,
not contradictory to it), such discussion goes into the article itself,
not into the title, which must present only one thing.
We must make a decision in the title, we can't be NPOV there,
(and we don't have to in order to be a neutral encyclop?dia
since everything is explained immediately beneath said title).

>>Under the current plan we also have to delve into linguistic usage
>>(not *wars* that I can see, but I don't anticipate those in any case),
>>to decide which usage is most common.  That's an issue of linguistic usage.

>Eh? Finding out what most English speakers actually use is much easier than
>having to research what the residents of where the term is derived use it.

Not at all.  There are a lot fewer residents of M?nchen
than English speakers.  No, Google does *not* do the job;
Google isn't anywhere *close* to a reprsentative sample of English speakers.
The fact that a Google measurement is *easy* to do
doesn't change the fact that it's highly biased and thus almost meaningless.

>Their language evolves too, just like ours. Should we use what they call the
>term now, back when the term was coined or some arbitrary date inbetween?

Well, if our language evolves, then what *English* term should we use,
what English said back then, or what English says now?
Actually, I know the answer to my question: what English says now.
Similarly, we can come up with an answer to your question.
I suggest referring to a place by the name used by the current residents
(or the residents at the time for articles focussing on a historic period)
and referring to a person by the name that they used for themself.
That seems pretty natural to me.

>There will also be different spellings and different use of diacriticals to
>deal with, not to mention competing terms. How in the world can an
>English-only speaker sort this out?

The same way that such a speaker currently
sorts out what's most commonly used in English:
by making the best guess that they can
using the resources easily available to them
and then being corrected by later editors.
Such corrections happen now under the current policy, too.
Example: [[Pythagorean Theorem]].

>The proposed plan is asking way too much
>and the more I argue about it the more I am convinced that it would be a very
>very bad thing to do.

I'm not surprised, since we're only arguing about the reasons against it.
Whoever's on the offensive at a given moment tends to gain ground ^_^.

>>I don't know about Lir, but I don't propose such a thing,
>>because "mammal" is a common noun, not a proper noun.
>>I certainly don't want to change all of our article titles
>>back to Proto-Indo-European ^_^!

>Well that is the road we will be heading down if this convention takes hold. I
>for one will fight tirelessly to stop this from happening.

I for one will *also* fight tirelessly to stop
any such outrageous misinterpretation of the new policy.
The new policy is proposed for *proper*nouns* only,
and refers to historical forms *only* in historical contexts.
It's not about retracing the origins of English etymology *at*all*.
I will fight tirelessly, should this proposal be adopted,
to prevent people from making such mistakes.

>Already there is a
>continuum of opinion on how such a convention would work; Lir on the extreme
>"all anglicization is bad" end, you in the middle and Ec on the more liberal
>and IMO sane side.

Yes, there's a continuum, going from Lir to me to Eclecticology to you.
Why does it follow that you must then be right?  Why not Lir?
>From her perspective, there's a continuum of opinion about
how words derived from proper names should sometimes be anglicised;
you on the extreme "any anglicization done by most anglophones is good" end,
Ec in the middle and me on the more liberal and IHO sane side.
It's not like there's some wide gulf between you and Eclecticology
that doesn't exist between me and Lir.

>>This is definitely the best point that I've seen so far.
>>You can tell, because I don't have any response to it ^_^!
>>I'll have to think about that.

>The "Google question" is an important point to consider.

Yep.  Still considering.  You may yet see a post from me
where I decide that the current convention is best for just this reason.
In the meantime, I'll respond to your other objections.

>Below are some questions that you haven't answered yet to my recollection:

Well, in one case, that's because it was never even raised before.
But I will answer them now or indicate where answers may be found.

>1) There is also the fact that the proposed change absolutely requires the use
>of a technological fix to work (namely redirects). How is it less complicated
>when redirects are absolutely required? Not to mention the fact that the
>current display of redirects is rather ugly after following them. To fix this
>would require yet another technological fix.

See <http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000069.html>.

>2) Google's language tools can be used as an objective measure of widest usage
>whereas the proposed plan depends on subjective choices between different
>more native transliterations and language sets.

See <http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000069.html>.

>3) How is it more NPOV when it shuns widest English usage for a minority
>naming scheme?

See this very post, of course.

>4) What about the audience: How is it more useful for them to use words they
>can't pronounce, spell or are familiar with?

It's more useful for them to have the name used by the person in question
or in the place in question up front and direct in their minds.
We use pronunciation guides for weird words like "Kong-fu-zi" (/koN 'fu dz/)
and "Confucius" (/k at n 'fju S at s/), which as you can see in this example,
include both native and common English forms in most cases.

>6) What about the writers: How is it more useful for them to have articles
>that they can't link to directly (or at all when redirects are not made)?

See <http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000036.html>.

>Also, most English speakers do not know how to make the more elaborate
>diacrtic marks with their keyboard. So they will have to copy and paste to
>make direct links. How is that at all user-friendly?

They don't *have* to make direct links.
Just like I hardly ever make direct links to long titles today.
For example, I don't link to [[Kernel (category theory)|]],
I link to [[Kernel (categories)|]], a redirect, because it's shorter.
Similarly, you link to [[Memphis (Egypt)|]] since it's shorter than
[[Memphis, Egypt|Memphis]] (or at least you said that you'd do this
on [[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)]]).

>7) How would the proposed system not cause a chilling effect by favoring
>titles that most English speakers don't know? Remember: "Otherwise somebody
>will come by later and move the article and probably chide the original
>author for their Anglo-centric based ignorance."

See <http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000069.html>.

>Just because you won't do it, doesn't mean that others will be so nice.

This may well be read as a response to that post.
But of course, it's just as possible for somebody to be mean
while correcting a native form in the current system.
You're essentially arguing against a proposal
because one mean person (Lir) supports it.
(But she's banned, and since it's highly unlikely
that she'll meet Jimbo's stated criteria for returning,
even that's no longer relevant.)

-- Toby


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Jonathan Walther (Clutch, right?) wrote to Lir:
>
>>You claim to be
>>
>>from Iowa; speaking ill of your country, in the way that you do, is
>
>>treason.
>>
>No, it's not.  Maybe in Canada it is, which is why I'm still proud
>to be an American, despite the ever shrinking reasons for such pride.
>But ill speech of anybody and anything is still protected here
>to a greater extent than anywhere else, thank goodness.
>
No, not in Canada either.  We don't regard our politicians as seriously
you do yours.  An aide to the prime minister to-day made a casual remark
that George W. Bush was a moron.  The politicians are aghast, but the
public is giggling.

Speaking ill of one's country could be sedition rather than treason ...
if it's anything at all.  Patriotism masks too many evils.

I finally subscribed to the en-list and spent the rest of the day
catching up on the archives.  Larry's definition of fact seems way off
base.  If we strictly follow his definition of fact than it is fact to
say that Saddam Hussein is a popular president.

Fact is what is or what was, independently of what anybody sees to be
fact.  NPOV is a great ideal, if only the people trying to apply it knew
what it means.  From our frail human perspective, it can only be
approximated.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria for banning

body:
[Moving to <wikipedia-l> since Jimmy's pronouncements are of a general nature,
including his reaction to offensive user names.]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>TMC has argued that
>changing his name is tantamount to the use of force against him.  This
>argument is stupid, because he has no property interest in his
>username,

*gag*  Right-libertarian ideology!  *choke*  ^_^

In case anybody else finds the "property interest" angle odd,
let me note that I, a complete nonbeliever in the legitimacy of
any notion of property rights, agree that TMC's argument is stupid,
because his name is not him.

As it happens, I even disagree with the decision to change his name,
but I *still* think that the <force> argument is stupid.

>For ip addresses, anonymous contributions, we should continue our
>policy of banning them for simple vandalism at the slightest
>provocation.

At the slightest provocation?
Note that according to [[en:Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress]],
an isolated instance of text deletion, for instance, is not vandalism.
So the slightest provocation that qualifies as vandalism,
but not the slightest provocation that might be so interpreted
if the interpretation as vandalism is incorrect by our policy.
(This is ultimately just what Jimmy's text above says,
but I wanted to clarify.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Criteria for banning


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
Jonathan Walther (Clutch, right?) wrote in last part:

>Thank you for your time and patience working on the Wikipedia, Jimmy.

Me too!  ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: What we need


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>Larry Sanger wrote:

>>>In addition to this, it would help a LOT for you to solicit draft
>>>statements of policy regarding clear circumstances in which people can be
>>>banned for being really egregiously difficult.  There has to be a
>>>*reasonably* clear line drawn that distinguishes difficult but
>>>on-the-whole useful contributors, on the one hand, from contributors so
>>>egregiously difficult that the project suffers from their continued
>>>presence.  The policy should codify, for example, the reasons why we did
>>>ban 24 and Helga, and the reasons why we might ban Lir.  Let's have a
>>>discussion about this, bearing in mind that one option that is *not* on
>>>the table is that we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
>>>behavior at all.  We definitely will, so let's make the policy clearer.
>>>You could start the discussion and make it clear that at some point soon,
>>>we *will* determine a policy.

>>>I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course.  I'm just saying that,
>>>IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people.  You're in a
>>>position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who
>>>it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.

>>I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current
>>situation.  Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing
>>that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
>>behavior at all"?

>First, I DON'T think there is a unified band of people who *call*
>themselves anarchists with all the same views.  I frankly don't care about
>the word.  The point is that there are now a lot of people about who hate
>one or more part of what, in my opinion and it so happens yours, defines
>Wikipedia, and that they're trying either to eliminate it or to weaken it
>radically (as Cunctator, just for example, would like to do with the
>nonbias policy).  Those are the people I am calling "anarchists."  I
>should probably call them "Wikianarchists" since their political views
>might very well not be in the anarchist camp.

Knowing from a later post that you never meant me anyway,
I now have to say that I don't know anybody of that sort either.
There's some newbies and the people that you think are trolls, of course,
but you listed the anarchists as a powerful block on the list in addition,
and I don't know who they are, if they hate part of what defines Wikipedia.

>Anyway, you want examples: Cunctator (he is now perfectly clear and
>unambiguous about it: see
>http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006575.html ).

You know, that seems like one of The Cunctator's more ambiguous posts to me.
In it, he tries to stay firmly on the fence between
approving and disapproving of banning in situations like 24's.
Did you mean a different one?  (Or are you dropping this claim,
per your later reply to The Cunctator?)

>So I trust that Cunctator disapproves of your recent banning of Lir.  TMC
>is another easy example.  If you put the question explicitly, you'd find a
>number of others, I'm sure.  One person who wrote to me privately
>certainly seems to be of this view.

TMC is part of a bloc on the mailing list?  I didn't think that he'd got
so far already.  Good for him!  But I don't see any hate from him.

>In response to my "In addition to this..." paragraph above, Toby Bartels
>wrote:

>>IOW, let's decide before the discussion that we will change policy,
>>and only leave the discussion open to *how*.
>>I support a discussion about policy for banning what you call "trolls"
>>(not that Helga, much less Lir, is *actually* a troll),
>>but let's not a priori rule out the views of a sizable group.

>So he supports a banning policy himself but thinks that there's "a sizable
>group" that opposes it.

I think that there may have been a misunderstanding here too.
I interpreted your call as for deciding on reasons for which
we, the ordinary Wikipedia administrators, would ban users
such as 24, Helga, and Lir.  I think that many people oppose this,
and in any case, it's hardly clear that there's a consensus for it.
But perhaps you meant deciding on reasons for which
we would ask Jimmy to ban them, as he's banned them before.
This is a different matter, and if that's what you meant,
then I don't believe that it required any gall whatsoever ^_^.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Searching for redirects (Was: anglicization)

body:
Mav wrote in part:

>Redirects are also ugly and uninformative in the search results. Their byte
>counts show up as tiny and no text is displayed below them. This isn't
>useful.

Agreed, and this goes far beyond the anglicisation issue.
We should give them the byte counts and text display
that the article that they redirect to has.
Developers, can this be done?

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Searching for redirects (Was: anglicization)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
On 11/22/02 3:26 AM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> Toby Bartels wrote:
>
>>> Hum, I pretty much agree with that Meta-Wikipedia article,
>>> but I don't see how the *definition* of NPOV is at fault.
>>> No article will ever perfectly satisfy the current definition,
>>> which is therefore an ideal, and I don't see any proposal
>>> for replacing that definition.
>
>> That's what "NPOV is an ideal" is.
>
> What's what "NPOV is an ideal" is?
> A definition?  "an ideal" isn't a definition.

I'm referring to the meta article, not the statement.

>>> Surely you don't want Wikipedia to state as fact
>>> that George W. Bush is an awful US President!
>>> But if it doesn't, then it won't contain that piece of knowledge;
>>> it will at best only contain the knowledge that
>>> certain people hold that view for certain reasons.
>>> (Well, it might contain that piece of knowledge for a little while,
>>> but that would surely be quickly replaced by a more NPOV version,
>>> as we strive ever more for the elusive NPOV ideal.)
>
>> Exactly.
>
> OK, so again we seem to agree on NPOV --
> except that I can't see where this contradicts
> the definition on [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]].
> I mean, I get *everything* (it seems), and basically agree,
> except the idea that it has to do with any *definition*.
>
> I press because I do want to understand you,
> and I sense that you have a point in using that word.
> Please, define "neutral point of view".
>
> (Or tell me where on meta or something this has happened before.
> I can't find any extensive discussion involving you now,
> but I'm sure that some must be preserved somewhere.)

I'd rather start with how "neutral point of view" is defined on Wikipedia
proper: as presenting conflicting extremes. The lengthy article there
repeated presents neutral or unbiased writing in terms of conflicting
viewpoints. Framing knowledge in terms of conflict is not the best way to do
it. It can be a helpful starting point, but a more complete synthesis is
desired (and should be possible).

And statements like this: "according to our understanding, when one writes
neutrally, one is very careful not to state (or imply or insinuate or
carefully but subtly massage the reader into believing) that any particular
view at all is correct" are just wrong.

And the distinction between "facts" and "opinions", as written, is just not
helpful. "Mars is a planet", where "planet" is a "massive object that orbits
the Sun" has only been a "fact" for a few hundred years. "God exists" has
been a "fact" for much longer than that.

The whole page could be greatly improved and shortened by stating that the
NPOV relies on evidentiary criteria. That is to say, all statements are
assertions which rely on some form of evidence and definition, both of which
should be explicated somewhere, preferably within Wikipedia itself (though
primary sources should simply be referenced).


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] [anthere5@yahoo.com: [Wikipedia-l] lags]

body:
Tech gurus,

When I emails telling me that the wikipedia is stuck, I go and restart
apache thusly:

/apache/bin/apachectl restart

This always seems to solve the problem.

As a temporarily and admittedly horrible crutch, would it be
incredibly bad of me to make a cron job to do that once per hour
overnight?

----- Forwarded message from Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> -----

From: Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 22:22:02 -0800 (PST)
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] lags

I did not have to time to go through all the mails, so
I don't know if so raised the subject, but in spite of
the changes yesterday the lags on the fr.wiki are
horrible. Yesterday evening, it took between 5 to 20
mn to edit a page. I just saved a couple of them then
give up.

We had no contributions at all between 21h and 0h
which are usually the busiest time of the day. I guess
everybody just gave up.

This has been going on for several days now. The day
before, we got the message connexion error very often
for example.

People are getting very weary, and I am worried that
the contributions will drop tremendously if this goes
on for a long time. Most contributors are from Europe.
Most can only contribute in the evening. If it doesnot
go better, they will just stop. Meanwhile, the en.wiki
was not accessible for us either. But, I noticed it
was still working for some as people were
contributing. It was impossible on the french wiki.

I know you do your best. I saw on the announcement,
you made some change to improve the matter. Well,
yesterday, it was worse than ever : -(((

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

----- End forwarded message -----


body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> Is there an agreed definition of what is or is not a "minor edit"? I
> haven't been able to find one, so I've just been guessing. I suspect that
> most people are just guessing. So if it's such a big deal to people,
> perhaps there should be clearer guidelines on what should or should not be
> marked as a minor edit. Perhaps the "minor edit" box should have a link by
> it, with the text "What is a minor edit?", linking to a page of such
> guidelines.

That's not a bad idea.  For users who are not naughty, I think it
serves as a way to flag "This was substantial enough that other people
should look at it."  I personally think that almost anything other
than typo or minor grammar fixes should not be flagged as minor edits.
I only check minor edit if I think that really, no one would want to
be bothered to know that I made the change.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <200211220021.TAA19621@TheWorld.com>; from tompar@world.std.com on Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 07:21:18PM -0500

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> If you don't think it's worth anyone's while to know about the edit,
> it's minor.

That's a very concise way of saying what I think is right and the
general consensus.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:
> First, I DON'T think there is a unified band of people who *call*
> themselves anarchists with all the same views.  I frankly don't care about
> the word.  The point is that there are now a lot of people about who hate
> one or more part of what, in my opinion and it so happens yours, defines
> Wikipedia, and that they're trying either to eliminate it or to weaken it
> radically (as Cunctator, just for example, would like to do with the
> nonbias policy).

I'm not aware of him wanting to eliminate or weaken radically the NPOV
policy.  I think he has trouble with some of the
explanation/definition, but I think he agrees with the general thrust
of it.  At any rate, I haven't seem him saying that the wikipedia
should be deliberately biased.

> Anyway, you want examples: Cunctator (he is now perfectly clear and
> unambiguous about it: see
> http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006575.html ).
> So I trust that Cunctator disapproves of your recent banning of Lir.

I imagine that he does, to a degree, although he's said nothing
against it.  His views are well-known and not extraordinary.
WikipediAhimsa explains it quite well.

When possible, and to the best of our finite and flawed abilities, we
should work to never have to ban people.  It is better if the system
is set up in such a fashion that through humility, forbearance, love
and diligence, we bring people into our community in a positive
fashion.

Cunctator says "I think that most people would agree that in an ideal
situation, banning would be unnecessary."  I certainly do.  I hold
forth hope that over time we will develop both social customs and soft
security procedures that make outrights bans largely unnecessary.  A
ban is a primitive and crude tool with great risk of abuse.

[Having said all of that, let me add that I do think that there is a
very tiny minority of people who are just plain evil assholes.  I
don't imagine that such people can be reached at all.]

> To put this all in perspective, it really would help to read through
> Wikipedia-l discussion from October and November.  It won't be fun, but I
> predict it will be enlightening.

Well, I've been reading it on a daily basis as it has happened -- I
always read everything on wikipedia-l, with a few exceptions.
(I.E. sometimes I get bored with a particular thread and skip over
parts of it).  I try to especially pay attention to big-picture policy
issues, since I consider attentiveness to that my primary WikiDuty.

I think it's very important to distinguish between "Person A advocates
that Wikipedia have no standards of any kind" and "Person A advocates
policy changes that _in my view_ would lead to Wikipedia having no
standards of any kind".

If we take someone to be of the first type, when they are really of
the second type, we will have a hard time listening to and
understanding their position.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] A concept from Buckminster Fuller

body:
(I confess: I don't understand what should go to wikien-l and what
should go to wikipedia-l.)

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

When a wasp is in the house, most people try to shoo it out a window
with a newspaper.  They open a window wide, and then take a newspaper
or magazine and launch repeated attacks on the wasp to try to convince
it to fly out the window.  This is a frustrating and usually
impossible procedure.  It is contrary to the nature of the wasp.  It's
exhausting and usually ends in the death of the wasp.  I would imagine
that some people get stung in the process.

Buckminster Fuller found a better way, a way that works with virtual
certainty, with comparatively little effort.  Here's what to do: close
the curtains and/or shades and/or blinds on all the windows except the
open window.  Turn off the light in the room.  Make the room as dark
as possible, except for the window where you wish the wasp to go.  The
wasp will fly out quickly and voluntarily.

There are lessons to be learned here.  In the design of proper traffic
systems, it's important to not fight against human nature.  Rather
than expecting and hoping people to behave properly at huge
intersections, it's safer to build overpasses and ramps.

In dealing with problem members, we should ask ourselves: are we
shooing a wasp?  Is there a better way?

--Jimbo

p.s. Through a quick web search, I have been unable to confirm that this actually
should be attributed to Buckminster Fuller.  But that's how I heard it.


subject: [Wikitech-l] [root@www.wikipedia.org: Cron <root@www> /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg]

body:
This sounds vaguely unpleasant.  Is it important?

----- Forwarded message from Cron Daemon <root at www.wikipedia.org> -----

From: root at www.wikipedia.org (Cron Daemon)
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 22:36:54 GMT
To: root at www.wikipedia.org
Subject: Cron <root at www> /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg

ERROR: I guess another mrtg is running. A lockfile (/etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg_l) aged
1 seconds is hanging around. If you are sure that no other mrtg
is running you can remove the lockfile

----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

in_reply_to: <3DDDFEE4.2060009@tonal.clara.co.uk>; from usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk on Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 09:54:44AM +0000

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> This can be handled by a "leaky bucket" mechanism which gives the user
> an allowance of say five saves that can be used as fast as they like.
> When the burst allowance is used up, they have to wait for their
> allowance to be refilled before they can do it again. This allows quick
> bursts of edits, whilst restraining the sustained rate.

This all sounds very icky to me.  At it's core, wikipedia is a very
simple thing.  I think a better solution is to find the problem and
fix it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com: ]

body:
Could someone make Ed Poor an account, and transmit a password to him
in some secure fashion.  PGP would be good, but if that's not possible,
a telephone call would be fine, too.

----- Forwarded message from "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> -----

From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:10:04 -0500
To: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject:

I used to be a Network Administrator for a company with 300 seats, plus as a software developer I had admin rights to all the company's MS SQL Server databases. Unclogging the network and resolving database gridlock were 2 areas I excelled in there.

If you'd like to give me developer access, I could take a look around and try to see what keeps slowing us down. I guess it's a lot of different things, many of which Brion has already identified.

But the fact that restarting the machine always speeds thing up again indicates the probable presence of one or more as-yet unidentified problems.

Of course, as a "developer" I would be ever scrupulous about the "rules" -- I would absolutely not use developer rights to, say, win a POV battle or unilaterally ban an obnoxious user.

Ed Poor
"Opinions and proposals expressed in this letter are mine personally, and are unrelated to any aims or policies of my employer."

----- End forwarded message -----


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Mark all edits minor by default"

body:
On 21-11-2002, Brion Vibber wrote thusly :
> On Thu, 2002-11-21 at 15:54, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > The only other thing, which is I think why there's a check box for
> > "minor edit" in the first place, is that a lot of people don't want to
> > see minor edits: the "view minor edits" option is off by default.
>
> "*Hide* minor edits" is off by default. Logged-in users may, at their
> option, enable it and hide minor edits.
And new articles marked minor edits are not affected ?

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>
>>I often prepare a set of inter-related articles and upload them
>>using
>>multiple browser tabs, saving them as fast as I can click the
>>button.
>>There's no reason I couldn't wait between saves, but I don't want
>>to....
>>
>>
>
>Same here.
>
>=====
>Christopher Mahan
>chris_mahan at yahoo.com
>http://www.christophermahan.com/
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
>http://mailplus.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
>
This sort of situation is a well known problem in network traffic
shaping and other queueing systems.

This can be handled by a "leaky bucket" mechanism which gives the user
an allowance of say five saves that can be used as fast as they like.
When the burst allowance is used up, they have to wait for their
allowance to be refilled before they can do it again. This allows quick
bursts of edits, whilst restraining the sustained rate.

So, a reasonable specification for a "leaky bucket" rate filter might be:

instantaneous edit rate: no limit
max sustained rate: 2 edits per minute
bucket size: 5 edits

Neil Harris


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> (I confess: I don't understand what should go to
> wikien-l and what
> should go to wikipedia-l.)

Well, that's simple. Do you think wasps only enter the
main window leading to the english wikipedia, or do
you think the wasp may also enter that small remote
window on - say - the french wikipedia ?

Answer : monday evening, I painfully climbed the
ladder to close the window for the night, for a wasp
has entered through the window.
10 mn ago, I closed it again, and will favor keeping
it close now. Youssefsan suggested we also close the
curtains and not advertise the french wiki location
for the wasps not to come in big numbers.

If the wasp can enter only the main window in the
home, you post to the english list. If it appears the
wasp can enter through any open window, you post to
the main list...

ya ?

I'll take time to come back on the answers/comments
provided a couple of days ago this we...

But we must not kill the wasp

> When a wasp is in the house, most people try to shoo
> it out a window
> with a newspaper.  They open a window wide, and then
> take a newspaper
> or magazine and launch repeated attacks on the wasp
> to try to convince
> it to fly out the window.  This is a frustrating and
> usually
> impossible procedure.  It is contrary to the nature
> of the wasp.  It's
> exhausting and usually ends in the death of the
> wasp.  I would imagine
> that some people get stung in the process.
>
> Buckminster Fuller found a better way, a way that
> works with virtual
> certainty, with comparatively little effort.  Here's
> what to do: close
> the curtains and/or shades and/or blinds on all the
> windows except the
> open window.  Turn off the light in the room.  Make
> the room as dark
> as possible, except for the window where you wish
> the wasp to go.  The
> wasp will fly out quickly and voluntarily.
>
> There are lessons to be learned here.  In the design
> of proper traffic
> systems, it's important to not fight against human
> nature.  Rather
> than expecting and hoping people to behave properly
> at huge
> intersections, it's safer to build overpasses and
> ramps.
>
> In dealing with problem members, we should ask
> ourselves: are we
> shooing a wasp?  Is there a better way?
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
> p.s. Through a quick web search, I have been unable
> to confirm that this actually
> should be attributed to Buckminster Fuller.  But
> that's how I heard it.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] A concept from Buckminster Fuller


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Get back to work (was:  Treason (Was: stupid anglicization))

body:
Jonathan, Toby,

Let's try to keep discussion on topic, shall we?

The issue of whether speaking ill of the US constitutes treason isn't related to improving Wikipedia, is it?

Or are you proposing to right an article on "Modern views of treason"?

Ed Poor


body:
Eclecticology opined:

> Larry's definition of fact seems way off base.
> If we strictly follow his definition of fact
> then it is fact to say that Saddam Hussein is
> a popular president.

You seem to be attempeting an argument ad absurdum, but I don't see how you get "Saddam Hussein is a popular president" from anything Larry said.

I say this without prejudice to whatever point you were trying to make. By the way, what point *were* you trying to make?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>I'd rather start with how "neutral point of view" is defined on Wikipedia
>proper: as presenting conflicting extremes. The lengthy article there
>repeated presents neutral or unbiased writing in terms of conflicting
>viewpoints. Framing knowledge in terms of conflict is not the best way to do
>it. It can be a helpful starting point, but a more complete synthesis is
>desired (and should be possible).
>
>And statements like this: "according to our understanding, when one writes
>neutrally, one is very careful not to state (or imply or insinuate or
>carefully but subtly massage the reader into believing) that any particular
>view at all is correct" are just wrong.
>
>And the distinction between "facts" and "opinions", as written, is just not
>helpful. "Mars is a planet", where "planet" is a "massive object that orbits
>the Sun" has only been a "fact" for a few hundred years. "God exists" has
>been a "fact" for much longer than that.
>
>The whole page could be greatly improved and shortened by stating that the
>NPOV relies on evidentiary criteria. That is to say, all statements are
>assertions which rely on some form of evidence and definition, both of which
>should be explicated somewhere, preferably within Wikipedia itself (though
>primary sources should simply be referenced).
>
I've just looked at the "NPOV" page, and it seems to me that NPOV needs
to be applied recursively.  It makes statements that support reliance on
experts without any guidelines about how we can determine when experts
are a big part of the problem  Expert opinion is still just opinion.
 The article includes the following "FAQ" type of discussion:

>
>       10.4 But wait. I find the optimism about science vs.
>       pseudo-science to be baseless. History has shown that
>       pseudo-science can beat out facts, as those who rely on
>       pseudo-science use lies, slander, innuendo and numercial
>       majorities of its followers to force their views on the anyone
>       they can. If this project gives equal validity to those who
>       literally claim that the Earth is flat, or those who claim that
>       the Holocaust never occured, the result is that it will
>       (inadvertently) legitimize and help promote that which only can
>       be termed evil.
>
> Please be clear on one thing: the Wikipedia neutrality policy
> certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity"
> to completely repugnant views. It does state that we must not take a
> stand on them qua encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from
> representing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the
> strong arguments against the repugnant views; from describing the
> strong moral repugnance that many decent people feel toward them; and
> so forth.
>
> Hence, on the one hand, Wikipedia does not officially take a stand
> even on such obvious issues, but on the other, it will not look as
> though we (the authors of Wikipedia) had accorded equal credibility to
> morally repugnant views. Given that the authors of Wikipedia represent
> a rough cross-section of the educated public, our readers can expect
> us to have a similar cross-section of opinion about extremism: most of
> us abhor it.
>
This seems to start with a controversy about science and ends up in
moral repugnance over holocaust denial.  Is the implication here that
pseudo-science is not just false but morally repugnant as well?  I find
the term "pseudo-science" itself to fail NPOV.  The prefix "pseudo-"
means false.  That puts any person defending a practice that has been
put under that rubric in the untenable position of supporting a
self-contradictory characterization.  When you get to that, the
factuality of the practice is irrelevant.  The dogma of falsifiability
in discussions about scientific method almost appears designed to
maximize confusion.

Scientific method is asymptotic to truth, and I would also extend that
assertion to NPOV.  That a particular view is held by a significant
majority (either of the general public or of experts) does not magically
convert that opinion into fact.  Scientific method very fairly allows
for the possibility that eccentric views may ultimately be found valid;
nevertheless, these allowances only represent distant hopes.  Poker
players are not dealt royal flushes very frequently.

Eclecticology


body:
On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 02:34, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Mav wrote in part:
> >Redirects are also ugly and uninformative in the search results. Their byte
> >counts show up as tiny and no text is displayed below them. This isn't
> >useful.
>
> Agreed, and this goes far beyond the anglicisation issue.
> We should give them the byte counts and text display
> that the article that they redirect to has.
> Developers, can this be done?

Yes, it's been on the todo list for ages but we're lazy and people yell
at us more about performance issues.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] lags

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Bit by bit; problem areas are being identified and optimized. In
> particular, the slowest operations tend to bog down everything when
> traffic is high, because other pages have to wait on them to finish.

Please could you tell us which are these slowest operations? Until the speed
problem is fixed it would be a good idea, I think, that everybody knows
which links he should _not_ klick. Maybe there is a lot goodwilled people
can do to (or better avoid) to keep Wikipedia at a reasonable speed.

I really worry that we may loose contributors...

greetings,
elian
--
there are no significant bugs in our released software
that any significant number of users want fixed.
- bill gates


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [root@www.wikipedia.org: Cron <root@www>
	/usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg]

body:
On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 07:44, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> This sounds vaguely unpleasant.  Is it important?

mrtg seems to be some sort of network traffic analyzer which generates
pretter graphs of how much traffic is going through your routers; it was
on the default install configuration which apparently does nothing
useful and drops its files into a black hole in /var/www where our
custom Apache wouldn't serve it if there was a reason to.

I disabled its cronjob.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

> ----- Forwarded message from Cron Daemon <root at www.wikipedia.org> -----
>
> From: root at www.wikipedia.org (Cron Daemon)
> Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 22:36:54 GMT
> To: root at www.wikipedia.org
> Subject: Cron <root at www> /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg
>
> ERROR: I guess another mrtg is running. A lockfile (/etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg_l) aged
> 1 seconds is hanging around. If you are sure that no other mrtg
> is running you can remove the lockfile
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
I used to be a Network Administrator for a company with 300 seats, plus as a software developer I had admin rights to all the company's MS SQL Server databases. Unclogging the network and resolving database gridlock were 2 areas I excelled in there.

If you'd like to give me developer access, I could take a look around and try to see what keeps slowing us down. I guess it's a lot of different things, many of which Brion has already identified.

But the fact that restarting the machine always speeds thing up again indicates the probable presence of one or more as-yet unidentified problems.

Of course, as a "developer" I would be ever scrupulous about the "rules" -- I would absolutely not use developer rights to, say, win a POV battle or unilaterally ban an obnoxious user.

Ed Poor
"Opinions and proposals expressed in this letter are mine personally, and are unrelated to any aims or policies of my employer."


in_reply_to: <200211222033.gAMKXbO03870@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 12:33:37PM -0800

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> It seems to me that people should know what we're here for and respect
> that, and people who don't should be asked, kindly, if their
> priorities are straight in coming to the website.  As far as I'm
> concerned, the encyclopedia is what matters; there are plenty of other
> places online to chitchat, argue, or pontificate.  Try yahoo!groups,
> or livejournal, or usenet, or even slashdot.  Our community is unified
> in purpose, and quite frankly, anyone who is not here for that purpose
> belongs to a different community.  Banning comes about IMHO because
> people aren't seeing enough community pressure to quit being an
> asshole and/or get to work.

I would agree with this completely.  I fully support that we should
ask people, kindly (of course!), if their priorities are straight in
coming to the website.  And that we should exert careful social
pressure on people who are being problematic.

This doesn't mean yelling at them or shaming them, since those are the
techniques of Usenet, appropriate (perhaps) to that medium, but less
than helpful in a medium of collaboration.

> So how we determine someone has nothing to contribute?  Isn't that a
> bold decision?  How long do we allow someone to try to contribute
> before deciding it's not worth it?

I wish I knew an easy answer to these questions.  But I think there is
none.  We can only be thoughtful and tolerant for awhile, and apply
pressure for awhile, and then eventually and *with the feeling that
we've failed*, we should ban as a last resort.  And even then, the
door to redemption should almost always remain open.

> I believe that: 1) It should not be necessary to tell people to leave.
>  The community expectation should be so great that we are here to
> build an encyclopedia that trolls and vandals are immediately and
> thoroughly discouraged.  2)I'd rather not feel compelled to tell
> people to leave because they're interfering.  Most people realize it,
> and so most people don't dabble where they don't belong.  3) If
> someone proves a stubborn & insistent impediment, we should tell him
> or her to leave.  4) When we do tell someone to leave, we should be
> able to enforce it if necessary.

I think that's all basically correct.  It's hard to strike the right
balance, but one thing that I do think we can do a better job of is in
educating/indoctrinating newcomers that we play nicely here, that we
aren't here to fight and argue, but to produce.  That's a hard lesson to
learn, but if the social pressure is solidly in that direction, it will
usually work.

>  some people are simply not helpful.
>  We don't all agree who those people are, but I think we do agree that
> such people exist.  For those people who won't listen to reason and
> won't listen to community pressure, we should have an accurate means
> of blocking access.  We are accepting to people by default, but wasps
> should make their nests outside, not inside.

I agree.

> I daresay our standards are fairly open: come here to help build an
> encyclopedia.  Do not come here to chitchat, to troll, to play.  Work
> may be fun, work may not always be fun (I know this for certain), but
> work is why we are here.  We are open to people who want to help; we
> are not open to people who want to hinder.  We also, it seems (and
> here I'm thinking of Helga), are not open to people who want to help
> and consistently can not.  Jerry Lewis can play in the
> [[wikipedia:sandbox]]; he should keep his hands off the [[muriatic acid]].

Yes.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
I think a lot of the problem has to do with the fact that Yahoo forces us to put our replies at the top instead of interspsersed through the message.  If we could do that, it would be much easier to follow.
Zoe
 Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> wrote:Sorry, no I was serious. I'm absolutely not a
facetious person :-)
the top of the message was missing...I just missed a
step...boum

Excuse me Zoe

PS : about the strange duplication of messages (apart
from potential quadripletion from the tech, the inter,
the main and the en), I remember it started when we
moved from nupedia to wikipedia.org. Could it be still
related ?

--- Zoe wrote:
>
> Are you serious, or are you being facetious?
> Tarquin's was in response to Lir's comments
> regarding americanizatin of the Wikipedia. I was
> responding to was his question to Lir.
> Zoe
> Anthere wrote:You know Zoe,
> most of your posts are a real mystery to
> me...
>
> Who is she ?
>
> Is it okay to answer "yes she does" to a "do you
> think
> this should be" ?
>
> Since when is an encyclopedia talking ?
>
> What is "frequent" ?
>
> Did you ever go on the french wiki and check the
> "Londres" article (please some bilingual do
> something
> for that poor lonesome city...)
>
> I am at a loss really
>
> --- Zoe wrote:
> >
> > Yes, she does. She's said so frequently.
> > Zoe
> > tarquin wrote:
> > Do you think the French wikipedia should write
> > "london" instead of
> > "londres"?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up
> now
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up
> now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
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>
>
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from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Jimmy wrote:
>There are lessons to be learned here.  In the design of proper traffic
>systems, it's important to not fight against human nature.  Rather
>than expecting and hoping people to behave properly at huge
>intersections, it's safer to build overpasses and ramps.
>
>In dealing with problem members, we should ask ourselves: are we
>shooing a wasp?  Is there a better way?
>
>--Jimbo

Yes, I agree with that.  What are the better ways?  I'm getting
disgusted with *what I perceive to be* (and which in fact may not be,
at all) a breakdown of community standards.  Notwithstanding 24, I
think everyone would agree that wikipedia is a community.  We try to
be friendly, we have the occasional tiffs, we choose to live together
and socialize a bit.  This to me is a no-brainer: Wikipedia is a
community?  Yes.

Physical communities have little compunction against casting people
out, either explicitly or implicitly: through gentrification, through
draconian rules regarding presentation, through neighborhood groups,
through calls to the police.  Sometimes this is a good thing,
frequently it is not.  Yet, unlike most communities, we are a
community bound by choice rather than circumstance, and we are bound
by intention rather than location.  We are together because we have a
common goal.  We are a community of people trying to build a free
online encyclopedia.  To this regard, it seems to me that we should
not hesitate to show people the door when they prove not to share our
goal.  We are a community, yes, but we are not a community of people
whose goal is to remove content, or to argue or chitchat (though some
of that will invariably occur along the way).

Imagine a community of economists who choose to work together in a
room dedicated to studying the economy.  An overzealous filmnut with
the initials KQ shows up and wants to talk about films endlessly, and
at every mention of trade he goes off on _Star Wars I_.  He doesn't
know much about the economy, he doesn't know much about trade, he
doesn't even know much about math; if he's aware of these defects he
doesn't even particularly care.  What he's found is a healthy
community who let him hang out, using their tolerance to assuage his
own clingy personal needs.

Would this person belong in a group of economists, given that he can't
discuss economy?  Should he go with them to work?  Certainly not.
Should he know this already?  Certainly.  Should the group tell him
this if he does not know?  IMHO: absolutely.  He is interfering with
work.  He is welcome to stay provided he's not interfering with work,
but if he is, he has to go.

I see nothing wrong with people who want to change community rules.
If we need to discuss a rule change, we need to discuss a rule change.
 What might be helpful is to put on each rule and convention page a
gloss over why the decision to support that convention was reached.
That way people can address specific points in the future rather than
starting the whole debate again from scratch (I've been here a year
and a half and I've seen more than enough of the basic debates about
basic conventions).  These new debates, when started, should be both
calm & respectful, which IMHO means logical and unemotional.

If the community decides that we should append "all hail Dubya the
wise and mighty U.S. emperor" to every page title, then I will either
roll up my sleeves and get started or I will remove myself from the
community.  But what I will *not* do is remain in a community whose
goal is so often ignored or forgotten that it resembles usenet.  I'm
not here to chitchat incessantly; I'm not here to sling insults and
cast people out; I want to help contribute to this free/free
encyclopedia because I believe in the idea.  I've seen what we've done
in two years; I want to see what we can do in another two.

It seems to me that people should know what we're here for and respect
that, and people who don't should be asked, kindly, if their
priorities are straight in coming to the website.  As far as I'm
concerned, the encyclopedia is what matters; there are plenty of other
places online to chitchat, argue, or pontificate.  Try yahoo!groups,
or livejournal, or usenet, or even slashdot.  Our community is unified
in purpose, and quite frankly, anyone who is not here for that purpose
belongs to a different community.  Banning comes about IMHO because
people aren't seeing enough community pressure to quit being an
asshole and/or get to work.

So how we determine someone has nothing to contribute?  Isn't that a
bold decision?  How long do we allow someone to try to contribute
before deciding it's not worth it?

I believe that: 1) It should not be necessary to tell people to leave.
 The community expectation should be so great that we are here to
build an encyclopedia that trolls and vandals are immediately and
thoroughly discouraged.  2)I'd rather not feel compelled to tell
people to leave because they're interfering.  Most people realize it,
and so most people don't dabble where they don't belong.  3) If
someone proves a stubborn & insistent impediment, we should tell him
or her to leave.  4) When we do tell someone to leave, we should be
able to enforce it if necessary.  some people are simply not helpful.
 We don't all agree who those people are, but I think we do agree that
such people exist.  For those people who won't listen to reason and
won't listen to community pressure, we should have an accurate means
of blocking access.  We are accepting to people by default, but wasps
should make their nests outside, not inside.

I daresay our standards are fairly open: come here to help build an
encyclopedia.  Do not come here to chitchat, to troll, to play.  Work
may be fun, work may not always be fun (I know this for certain), but
work is why we are here.  We are open to people who want to help; we
are not open to people who want to hinder.  We also, it seems (and
here I'm thinking of Helga), are not open to people who want to help
and consistently can not.  Jerry Lewis can play in the
[[wikipedia:sandbox]]; he should keep his hands off the [[muriatic acid]].

kq

p.s. I like Axel's idea of making an edit per email to the list.  This
was a long email, and so deserved more than a few edits--however, the
'pedia is responding very slowly.  I will redeem myself.  :-)

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Aunt_May&diff=439390&oldid=439389
(and later adding the missing verb)  :-)
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=The_Third_Man&diff=0&oldid=439397
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Academy_Award_for_Best_Cinematography&diff=439410&oldid=439407
and corrections.  Speaking of which, why doesn't "preview" preview?
All I get is a text-edit box showing what I've typed in.  An HTML
preview might be handy.


subject: [WikiEN-l] In support of Larry's point of view

body:
It occurs to me that it is possible that some may have mistaken my
disagreement with Larry about the state of the wikipedia might be
misunderstood as a disagreement with his basic position, with which I
have very little disagreement at all.

I fully support his efforts to find ways to raise the quality of
wikipedia, and to make it more hospitable to experts.  The only thing
I disagree with him in is his evaluation of how that debate is going:
I think he's winning, and has the support of almost every regular --
in goal, if not in all aspects of methodology.

I don't think there's a single regular on this mailing list who would
disagree that low quality contributions are bad, or that we should
find ways to minimize the pain that serious contributors have in
dealing with people who are obnoxious, stupid, trying to be funny,
biased, etc.

There is disagreement on methodology, and varying degrees of support
(from *zero* to *considerable*) for a more extensive use of banning.
But even within that disagreement, there is broad support for some
general principles, such as that banning is both undesirable (because
it would be better to let the wasps just fly out the window) *and* an
unfortunate necessity at times.

I think things are going pretty well, and that slow change is a good
thing.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Makes it all worthwhile

body:
Everyone,

This is the kind of praise that makes me think my wikimoderation is a Good Thing:

<< Hi Ed - of course I know who you are ;-) Thanks for your words, although I don't think, that I deserve the praise. Now I feel like having overreacted in that case. At that time Mirsa just repeated her edit again and again without any comment - so I took her actions for vandalism, probably erroneously. Let me say, that I was really impressed about the way, you settled the yesterday dispute on the Wagner article. I really appreciate your tolerance and patience against other users - much more patience than I would use to have, unfortunately. In this case your way to settle the dispute was a nice success. I will learn my lesson and next time be less abusive against a newbie - I promise ;-) -- Cordyph >>

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Questions concerning copyright and fair use

in_reply_to: <1125.10.0.0.30.1037999023.squirrel@bishop-perowne.worcs.sch.uk>; from bradba@bishop-perowne.worcs.sch.uk on Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 09:03:43PM -0000

body:
Alexander Stephen Bradbury wrote:
> I was wondering whther you have any answers on some copyright
> issue-related questions I have. Such as, in [[The Matrix]] article, can I
> legally add a screen capture from my DVD copy?, how about a small scan of
> the box cover? I can include a FULL cast list can't I? And what about
> computer games, or applications. Can I post screenshots of them? Can I
> reproduce copies of pictures of famous actors and post them under fair use
> (or maybe show a picture of them starring in a movie). Do we have answers
> to any of these questions?
>
> Thanks,
> ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]

I got email from Lawrence Lessig about this, and the answers are not
really so clear yet.  I'm waiting for him to respond to my latest, but
obviously he's a really busy guy.

I would say:

1.  We need to have a disclaimer on the download page, saying that our
database contains fair use materials, and that although *we* don't
place any further non-GFDL restrictions on what people might do with
those things, they should be sure that *their* use is legal.

2.  A screen capture from a DVD is pretty clearly fair use in our
context, less clearly fair use in other people's context.

3. A small scan of the boxcover is pretty clearly fair use in our
context, less clearly fair use in other people's context.

4.  Full cast lists should pose no problem of any kind.  A simple list
is not subject to copyright anyway, and who starred in a movie is a
_fact_ of the type that can't be protected by copyright.

5.  Pictures of celebrities are questionable.  One of the factors for
fair use is "portion of the work used".  One frame from a film is
pretty obviously a tiny quote from the film.  One photograph by a
photographer, though, is pretty obviously the whole thing.  At least
one court decision, though, protects fair use for thumbnails, which is
how Google can legally have their image search.  (The case is Arriba
v. somebody I forgot).

6.  WE DO NOT HAVE CLEAR GUIDANCE YET ON ANY OF THIS.

--Jimbo


body:
Larry Sanger wrote:
> > In dealing with problem members, we should ask ourselves: are we
> > shooing a wasp?  Is there a better way?
>
> The upshot of this post is that the wise way (wise ways are made to seem
> so with parables and the like ;-) ) is not to kick members out, and that
> there is a better way.  (If your final question was not rhetorical, then
> what was the point of the post?)

My point is that better ways can be found, and have already been
found, and more will be found in the future.

>  This means that what we just got done
> reaffirming, that we should sometimes kick problem members out, is not
> the wise way.
>
> But goddammit Jimbo, yes it most certainly is.  Sometimes you gotta use a
> nice big flyswatter and crush the wasp before it causes any further
> ruckus.  We know this already, from experience.

You have to use the flyswatter and crush the wasp *if that's the only
tool you have*.  If ways can be found to get the wasp to agree to
leave, with less fighting and fussing, then that's better for us.

--Jimbo


body:
Well, it was a good point, so I'm glad you sent it to the list.

Banning is a "necessary evil" in the short run.  And quite possibly in
the long run, although I'm optimistic about alternatives.

It's an evil because of the dangers of the slippery slope.

Just imagine if we banned Ed Poor.  That's really something to think
about.

--Jimbo


from_name: Larry Sanger

body:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> (I confess: I don't understand what should go to wikien-l and what
> should go to wikipedia-l.)

General Wikipedia discussion goes in Wikipedia-l, English-specific
Wikipedia discussion goes in WikiEN-l.

Never mind that there already exists intlwiki-l for general Wikipedia
discussions; basically, the non-English speaking crowd wants to muscle in
on the main Wikipedia discussion, and push aside the English-specific
Wikipedia discussion into a new list.  I don't have any objections,
really.  I think it would have been better to RENAME Wikipedia-l WikiEN-l
and leave the international discussion on intlwiki-l.

> When a wasp is in the house, most people try to shoo it out a window
> with a newspaper.  They open a window wide, and then take a newspaper
> or magazine and launch repeated attacks on the wasp to try to convince
> it to fly out the window.  This is a frustrating and usually
> impossible procedure.  It is contrary to the nature of the wasp.  It's
> exhausting and usually ends in the death of the wasp.  I would imagine
> that some people get stung in the process.
>
> Buckminster Fuller found a better way, a way that works with virtual
> certainty, with comparatively little effort.  Here's what to do: close
> the curtains and/or shades and/or blinds on all the windows except the
> open window.  Turn off the light in the room.  Make the room as dark
> as possible, except for the window where you wish the wasp to go.  The
> wasp will fly out quickly and voluntarily.
>
> There are lessons to be learned here.  In the design of proper traffic
> systems, it's important to not fight against human nature.  Rather
> than expecting and hoping people to behave properly at huge
> intersections, it's safer to build overpasses and ramps.
>
> In dealing with problem members, we should ask ourselves: are we
> shooing a wasp?  Is there a better way?

The upshot of this post is that the wise way (wise ways are made to seem
so with parables and the like ;-) ) is not to kick members out, and that
there is a better way.  (If your final question was not rhetorical, then
what was the point of the post?)  This means that what we just got done
reaffirming, that we should sometimes kick problem members out, is not
the wise way.

But goddammit Jimbo, yes it most certainly is.  Sometimes you gotta use a
nice big flyswatter and crush the wasp before it causes any further
ruckus.  We know this already, from experience.
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com: ]

body:
On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 08:19, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Could someone make Ed Poor an account, and transmit a password to him
> in some secure fashion.  PGP would be good, but if that's not possible,
> a telephone call would be fine, too.

Ed is now accounted for.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Sorry folks, I meant to send this to Jimbo personally--next time I'll
double-check the "To" line.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special links

body:
On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 13:33, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> Polish Wikipedia is testing the newly installed server and
> we wonder if this is a bug :
> [[m:Main Page]] works --> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
> and [[w:Lithium]] does not --> empty

[[w:]] is behaving as an alias to [[en:]], a language link that moves to
the list at the top of the screen instead of inline.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blank page with only an interlanguage link

body:
On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 13:42, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> [[Rotenburg]] on the English Wikipedia consists only of a link to the German.
> It is linked to from [[Rotenburg (district)]]. What should be done with such
> a page?

To summarize:
[[en:Rotenburg (district)]] modest article on the district
-> links [[en:Rotenburg]] (a town in the district); page empty but...
-> interlinks [[de:Rotenburg (W?mmer)]] page doesn't exist, but...
<- linked by [[de:Rotenburg]] (disambiguation page)

I put a one-line stub into [[en:Rotenburg]], it could do with
information from someone who's heard of it or knows where to find
details.

I personally tend to frown on interlanguage links to pages that don't
exist at present, since it's not very helpful -- there's no indication
on the link that you're going to a nonexistent page, and you just get
"there is no text in this page" instead of something helpful. But I
wouldn't bother removing them; better for someone to write the linked
articles and solve the problem. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 12:33, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Speaking of which, why doesn't "preview" preview?
> All I get is a text-edit box showing what I've typed in.  An HTML
> preview might be handy.

You didn't forget to scroll down below the edit box, right?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> My point is that better ways can be found, and have already been
> found, and more will be found in the future.

Sure.  I agree that in many cases, in the huge, vast majority of cases
where we encounter people we might consider to be "problem users," there
are much better ways than banning.

> >  This means that what we just got done
> > reaffirming, that we should sometimes kick problem members out, is not
> > the wise way.
> >
> > But goddammit Jimbo, yes it most certainly is.  Sometimes you gotta use a
> > nice big flyswatter and crush the wasp before it causes any further
> > ruckus.  We know this already, from experience.
>
> You have to use the flyswatter and crush the wasp *if that's the only
> tool you have*.  If ways can be found to get the wasp to agree to
> leave, with less fighting and fussing, then that's better for us.

I'm not disagreeing with that in the least.

The point is that you had agreed that sometimes we gotta ban people.  You
very kindly (and I *really* appreciate that) articulated principles we
should follow in banning.  Then in this post you basically said that the
wise way is another way.

Well, not always.  We need to stress *that* just as well.

So, yes, it's true and it's important to say that we should encourage
people with kindness and gratitude for participating.  But I think it was
important to stress that sometimes, banning is necessary--it's important
to stresss that particularly *in response to* the people I was calling
(rightly or wrongly) "anarchists."

That's all I want.  The rest, I agree with.  In fact, I agree that we
should always be slow and public in banning signed-in users for being
difficult; we should be lenient and make an attempt to understand
legitimate beefs.  Those have always been views, and they haven't changed.

The threat of ultimate reprisal *unfortunately* has to be there, though,
or the community will fall apart.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


body:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Well, it was a good point, so I'm glad you sent it to the list.
>
> Banning is a "necessary evil" in the short run.  And quite possibly in
> the long run, although I'm optimistic about alternatives.
>
> It's an evil because of the dangers of the slippery slope.

The dangers involved in the *current* context are highly overrated and
much too much worried about--since *yer the man* who does the banning in
these cases!

I can understand of course that you want to openly admit the dangers of a
slippery slope; this is because you rightly want people to know that it's
extremely important that the power not be abused.

But as a matter of fact, we--the vast majority of us--do trust you, and
those of us who do not either don't know you, or wouldn't trust *anyone*
with the power (most likely on purely ideological grounds).

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Zoe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Oregon City, Oregon

body:
Bryce Harrington has attached a copyright notice to the [[Oregon City, Oregon]] page.  Since the time of the copyright notice, Ram-Man's bot went in and added several paragraphs, making the vast majority of the article not part of Bryce's copyrighted material.  There is nothing on the page which indicates which parts are copyrighted by Bryce and which are not.

Zoe

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body:
There have been copies of the DVD cover included with other movie articles.  This seems to be covered by fair use.
Zoe
 Alexander Stephen Bradbury <bradba at bishop-perowne.worcs.sch.uk> wrote:I was wondering whther you have any answers on some copyright
issue-related questions I have. Such as, in [[The Matrix]] article, can I
legally add a screen capture from my DVD copy?, how about a small scan of
the box cover? I can include a FULL cast list can't I? And what about
computer games, or applications. Can I post screenshots of them? Can I
reproduce copies of pictures of famous actors and post them under fair use
(or maybe show a picture of them starring in a movie). Do we have answers
to any of these questions?

Thanks,
ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]
--

There are only 10 types of people in this world;
Those that know binary...and those that don't

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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body:
Brion Wrote:
>On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 12:33, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>> Speaking of which, why doesn't "preview" preview?
>> All I get is a text-edit box showing what I've typed in.  An HTML
>> preview might be handy.
>
>You didn't forget to scroll down below the edit box, right?

Um ... I don't know what the average percentage is on 'human error',
but I'm sure I've driven it up.

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted.  What I already had.  Let me try
that for Christmas now.  ;-)

kq