body:
I have to reply this, though we should move this discussion
to wikipedia-l. It is because Brion, you got a wrong idea.

>Are you saying that discussion about the site should be
hidden away on a
>secret "hackers-only" wiki where people can't find it
instead of the
>open-to-everyone meta wiki?

1. The current meta-wiki is dead.

I certainly understand the initial motivation of meta-
wikipedia.org. We should talk about development, management,
or policy in the different place than English-edition
wikipedia or meta?? (It seems apparent that the site should
be renamed)

But what kind of contents are there? There is almost
anything but inproper in the main wikipedia. There are
haiku, september 11, ....

As the saying goes, bad eats good (Forgive me. I can't
remember phrase). Weird (at least to most of people) stuff ,
including non-English contents just makes meta-wikipedia
look anything but the place to conduct decent discussion.
What if I submited a Japanese essay? It is acceptable in the
current policy, but it aggregate the situation because no
one can review it.

As I said, if we decided to change the policy of meta-
wikipedia, I certain second it. But otherwise, meta-
wikipedia seems dead or going to be dead.

Buried on the English Wikipedia where
>people coming from other languages won't have a *clue* how
to find
>things, and people who don't speak English don't have a
chance of having
>their voices heard?

Oh, that is great! I can type even Japanese (I tried. See
SandBox)

Anyway,

2. The meta-wikipedia is not multilingual at all and it
cannot be.

I don't see any reason that the sole wiki site has contents
written in several languages. Sure, technologically
speaking, meta-wiki is multilingual, but in practice, is it
really? What if I started to post Japanese comments, who
will reply to them? If I did, I just only increase the bunch
of mess. You can't discuss one theme in more than one
languages. That is for sure. The discussion

So, there is no reason to have a multilingual wiki site,
hence there is no reason to separate English discussion from
the English-edition wikipedia.

3. Practically meta-wikipedia and maing lists segregate the
majoriy of wikipedians from the decision-making.

What is now happing is decision-making occurs in the place
that most of people don't see. The recent changes in English-
edition wikipedia is the critical place where most of people
notice even minor changes. In the reality, meta-wikipedia
practically separate people to express their voices.

You can speak, but only if you go to travel to Alaska. It is
not democratic. The discussion about the policies should
take place in where people are actually living.

>I say NO to that. Closing meta would be undemocratic,
bigoted, and wrong
>in every way.

Closing meta means nothing because meta means nothing.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
Thank you for you answers.
I understand the need of international harmonization at code level.
But each language have its own typographic rules, and perhaps, those rules
will need specific technical features.
How do you planed to handle that ?
For my own problem (be able to use full-bar & small-bar), I will not bother
you any more ;o)
We can do it with HTML, so if the french wikipedians agree we will still
using it.
Cheers,

Aoineko

PS : Where the discussion about the WikiSyntax (table,...) are taking place
?

> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > No way, all Wikipedias run on the same codebase.
>
> And I think this is really important.
>
> >But you can try to convince other people than myself to support your
> >syntax. I think it's a bad idea.
>
> The best place to convince other people to support a proposed new
> syntax is wikipedia-l, rather than wikitech-l, I'd like to add.
> Wikitech-l is for technical issues, but new syntax falls into the
> realm of policy issues.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] hacker.wikipedia.org

body:
hacker.wikipedia.org is a bad idea. The solution is not to create *yet
another Wikipedia* which we have to check, but to clean up meta, which is
currently used for purposes which are clearly beyond its mission (i.e.
whenever some unfixable idiosyncratic crap is posted to Wikipedia and the
person posting it insists on keeping it, the solution is "let's move it to
meta").

Meta should be about

- meta-project: discussing and formulating project-wide (i.e. not
language-specific) policies; organizing events, contests etc.
- meta-content: organizing and preparing content, e.g. templates; language
files
- meta-code: coordinating the development process - bugs, features etc.

I don't see why we have to use the SourceForge facilities except for CVS;
having a single place on meta to organize bugs etc. would probably be more
useful. The SourceForge UI is a mess, especially for newbies.

Personal essays should not be stored on meta, they can be stored as user
subpages in the respective language Wikipedia, or deleted.

Someone recently reorganized meta, it is already a lot cleaner than it was
a few months ago. If we move the personal stuff out and organize the rest,
it should be more than good enough for better coordinating development.
Activating subpages on meta might help.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
I think I remember stating somewhere that I gave just
the recent editions.
The first edits were *awfully* biaised.

But, I really don't think the last ones were so much.
In any case, there were not so biaised that the only
reaction to them be to *remove* them immediately,
without trying any cooperative editing. Cooperation is
not about removing what doesnot please you. It is not
about saying people are vandals and write only loads
of shit when you don't agree with them. It is slightly
more nicer than that.

It is interesting to note you stated the info on
racialism was probably coming from "My Kampf", and it
turned out to come from a "sos racism" site :-)

Whatever.

The last edits do not justify banning

There is nothing to justify the insults you use

The french-speaking wikipedia does not have to follow
the french law. Lybiens also speak french, and quite a
number of countries in northern africa. Some of them
are under islamist republic. I am sure some of them
would find the actual content going against some of
their laws; Would you accept them saying it should be
removed because it goes against their laws ? I don't
think so, but where is the difference ? When the
french-speaking wikipedia is printed to be distributed
in France, we'll have to worry about that. When it
will be printed and distributed in Lybia, we'll have
to worry about law. Not now.

Following the UN point of view on wikipedia is wrong.
It is *against* the very idea of a neutral and
extensive encyclopedia.

And whether it is true or not that human races do not
exist, some have theorized there were several races,
and this information should be in wikipedia. And as Ec
put it "racialism" is a theory, and must be
differenciated from "racism" which add the notion of
superiority of one race over the other. It is wrong to
qualify racism every theory that talk about race, and
as such to remove it from wikipedia, and it is wrong
to qualify as a racist every person who support this
type of theory.

As for all the below sentences, I have no worry. With
about 10 people jumping on any edits to immediately
remove them - just in case it might be offensive (and
before checking if it really is), there is very little
chance it will damage any reputation.

Meanwhile, we have a bunch of slightly better
articles, no ?

-- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
> Bonjour,
> Anthere gave you only very soft links... why ???
> Here is the sentence that the majority of french
> wikipedians don't want to
> see in wikipedia.
> All was wrote by Philippe :
>
> In Racisme, jan 15, 2003 :
>
> "Il semble que certaines races soient superieures
> aux autres races pour
> certains aspects; par exemple, les noirs courent
> plus vite que les blancs."
>
> Translation by "Babel Fish Translation" :
>
> "It seems that certain races are higher than the
> other races for certain
> aspects; for example, the blacks run more quickly
> than the white."
>
> In Antisemitisme, jan 27, 2003 :
>
> "Historiquement, il existe de nombreux motifs pour
> justifier
> l'antisemitisme, incluant des facteurs sociaux,
> economiques, nationaux,
> politiques, raciaux et religieux.."
>
> Translation by "Babel Fish Translation" :
>
> "Historically, there are many reasons to justify the
> anti-semitism,
> including factors social, economic, national,
> political, racial and
> religious."
>
> In Antisemitisme, jan 27, 2003 :
>
> "Les juifs sont des personnes d'une race
> distinctement differente des autres
> personnes. La discrimination basee sur une telle
> distinction est donc
> valide."
>
> Translation by "Babel Fish Translation" :
>
> "The Jews are people of a race distinctly different
> from the other people.
> The discrimination based on such a distinction is
> thus valid"
>
> Comment ?
>
> Aoineko
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Takuya Murata

subject: [Wikitech-l] "View user page" edit links on anon talk pages

body:
>On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 09:38:36PM -0600, Takuya Murata
wrote:
>> 2. The meta-wikipedia is not multilingual at all and it
>> cannot be.
>>
>> I don't see any reason that the sole wiki site has
contents
>> written in several languages. Sure, technologically
>> speaking, meta-wiki is multilingual, but in practice, is
it
>> really? What if I started to post Japanese comments, who
>> will reply to them? If I did, I just only increase the
bunch
>> of mess. You can't discuss one theme in more than one
>> languages. That is for sure. The discussion
>>
>> So, there is no reason to have a multilingual wiki site,
>> hence there is no reason to separate English discussion
from
>> the English-edition wikipedia.
>
>[en]
>Because Japanese Wikipedia is small now and there aren't
many
>people who can understand Japanese here, it's not good idea
to use
>Japanese on meta. But there's nothing special about English,
>and any language understood by sufficient number of
Wikipedians is ok.
>And so will be Japanese in the future.
>
> ....
>
>(yes, i know that my japanese is no good)

No, it is good. I am impressed really. (Nihongo jyuzu desu
ne) Truely the linguistic diversity of wikipedia is great.

Anyway, I don't mean the discussion in non-English language
is meaningless, but I meant it doesn't make sense that the
same discussion conducted in more than one language unless
the participants are generally bilingual.

You may say Japanese speakers discuss in Japanese. Polish
speakers discuss in Polish (Polska?). But if discussions
occur in different language, why do we need to put them
together? The number doesn't matter.

Do you really believe debate in more than one lanugage makes
sense? UseNet, SlashDot, .... I don't see any successful
forum dedicated to discussion in more than one language.
SlashDot in Japanese is active, but it is seprated from
English SlashDot.


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Race

body:
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 11:01:30AM -0800, P Philippe wrote:
>Une race est un terme  d?finissant un groupe humain
>qui serait distinct des autres par des
>caract?ristiques biologiques particuli?res. On a
>baptis? racialisme, la croyance persistante en
>l'existence de races.
>
>This text is deleted and Aoineko said it was un "tas
>de merde". Just because they say race do not exist, so
>this article should not exist
>
>I think it must exist. What do you think ?

You are in the right, they are in the wrong.  This is the Wikipedia, not
the Ostrichpedia. (Ostriches are famous for hiding their heads in the
sand as if that would make a problem go away)

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 03:26:40PM +0900, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
>Bonjour,
>I didn't delete the Philippe article about Racialisme, but just move it in
>the talk page because I didn't found this word neither in my dictionnary nor
>in "Le Dictionnaire de l'academie francaise" that mean this world not exist
>officilly in french language. After some search over the web, I found many
>mention of this word so I proposed an new article to explain this racist
>theory.

The Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary.  And it is certainly
not an arbiter which words people may or may not use. You may not use Le
Dictionnaire de l'academie francaise as justification for removing an
article.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
>> 1. The current meta-wiki is dead.
>
>No it is not. Look at the Recent Changes. If you are
missing something
>there, start a new page, hope that enough people (able to
speak the
>language you choose)are interrested in the topic, and see
what happens.
>Maybe announce it on one of the mailing lists.

Yes, and doesn't it mean chaning the policy of meta-wiki? I
am the one who advocates it. Meta-wikipedia can be better,
of course.

Actually both of I and you are right and wrong. This is the
exactly same discussion about some say usenet is dead, some
say no usenet has still good stuff and can have.

Saying meta-wikipedia is dead, I don't want to mean
dismissing the motivation of meta-wikipedia. I agree with
the idea that we need the place.

To make my arguments clear, I advocate proposals below.

1. Let's make discussion about policy in its native language
wikipedia. (What if there is no corresponding wikipedia? It
would be a problem. I don't know about such a case)

If a discussion takes place in the meta but it is not in
English, the problem is the same thing. Putting discussion
together really doesn't mean reflecting their voices.

2. Quit sourceforge. Objections?

3. Publishing wiki sourcecode in wiki and make it editable
just like wikipedia articles.

I don't know if this works but we can try. Probably the
first step is publishing "language.php"s and probably sysop
applies them.

>Yes, there is a lot of crap. If something really annoys
you, start a
>page [[Pages that should be deleted]] and explain it there
or ask on the
>talk page for deletion.
>

> The name meta.wikipedia sounds good to me. Where is the
problem?

Because if meta is the place for development and
administration, the name like admin, develop should make
more sense. Don't you think?

>> 3. Practically meta-wikipedia and maing lists segregate
the
>> majoriy of wikipedians from the decision-making.
>
>So everything should be discussed in the English Wikipedia:-
namespace?

No, no no at all. Discussion about the policy should occur
in the native language.

>The majority of users just aren't interrested in the
software
>developement and administration. Everybody who is can
subscribe to our
>lists and/or go to meta.

Probably. If meta is the place only for those who are
interested in development and administration, I would like
to participate in meta.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
Why is it that these messages took so much time before
being published ?
I think holding on messages is really disrupting the
flow of conversation...

--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> > But french people consider the word don't exist,
> they
> > insult me, and delete my article
>
> The word DON'T exist in french. That don't mean the
> theory don't exist.
> I wrote an article on that don't you see it ?
>
> > But, it is the definition that is on Wikip?dia
> now.
>
> False. Look at this page :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racialisme

It was certainly not the definition you gave
yesterday.
It is totally stupid to hold messages, so when people
can answer them, they are no more valid.

> > I don't know if people other then french speak
> french
> > here. But, if they do, can they give their advice
> > please ?
>
> Good advice : Stop to bug us.
> There are several racist homepage where you can
> wrote your theory.

Aoineko, the racialism theory is *not* racism.

> > I think it is totally untrue that wikipedia is
> > neutral. It is not. Unless you do something, and
> tell
> > them not to delete what I write.
> > I tried to merge my texte and their texte, but
> they
> > deleted mine again.
>
> Neutral don't mean to say all theories are right.

Very true Aoineko
It is why we should state *nowhere* theories are right
or wrong.
This is true in both ways. Ideally, we should not
state either that being an non-racist is the *right*
way to be.

I hope most people, after reading the wonderful
wikipedia, full of neutral articles stating every
point of view, will be able to decide by themselves,
what is right and wrong by themselves and for
themselves.

It is not our role to tell them the right path.

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> Bonjour,
> I didn't delete the Philippe article about
> Racialisme, but just move it in
> the talk page because I didn't found this word
> neither in my dictionnary nor
> in "Le Dictionnaire de l'academie francaise" that
> mean this world not exist
> officilly in french language. After some search over
> the web, I found many
> mention of this word so I proposed an new article to
> explain this racist
> theory.
> I don't know how to handle word that not exist in
> french, but if I decide to
> create a new word, "ekojeslker" for exemple, then
> can I create an article on
> it in an encyclopedia ???

Aoineko,

I have no dictionary at home other than Le Petit
Larousse, so I am gonna ask you something

Please, could you check for me whether the word
"biodiversit?" is in there ?

Yes ? good news :-)

No ? then, please, go ahead, delete about 50% of what
I wrote in about 6 months. For it is all about
biodiversit?. Please go to my page, and check my
articles. You will probably find out about half of the
things I talk about are NOT in the dic. Please, do
remove all of them. DO !

Do you really think that just because they are not in
the dic, they do not exist, and have no room on
wikipedia ???

Now check out the words on google, and see where the
real life it. Not in the page of an old grey book.

Why is that ? Because, our academicians are old, and
they work slowly. Most theories, most concepts
developped in the past 30 years (how old are you ?)
are not in the dic yet. But they exist. People have
been working on them for years, written books...

It is not because they are not in the academia book
they should not be there, if enough people care about
them, that gives them more reality than your grey and
rusty book.

That's why the net is good stuff. It is up-to-date.

So, please, don't forget to check in other places that
the french dict to check if something exist. And check
reality of existence of words, BEFORE assuming they
don't exist...

Another thing, I never say anything on computer
science or egyptology, because I know very little
about these fields. I think (hope ?) you would admit I
know more about biology and genetics and race than you
do  ?

I will rework the racialism article. I am far from an
expert (very far :-)), but I hope *very much* you will
accept what I will write.

Do you know why
> Sure, Philippe is a polite person, but dont forget
> what he wrote :
>
> In Racisme, jan 15, 2003 :
>
> "Il semble que certaines races soient superieures
> aux autres races pour
> certains aspects; par exemple, les noirs courent
> plus vite que les blancs."
>
> Translation by "Babel Fish Translation" :
>
> "It seems that certain races are higher than the
> other races for certain
> aspects; for example, the blacks run more quickly
> than the white."
>
> In Antisemitisme, jan 27, 2003 :
>
> "Historiquement, il existe de nombreux motifs pour
> justifier
> l'antisemitisme, incluant des facteurs sociaux,
> economiques, nationaux,
> politiques, raciaux et religieux.."
>
> Translation by "Babel Fish Translation" :
>
> "Historically, there are many reasons to justify the
> anti-semitism,
> including factors social, economic, national,
> political, racial and
> religious."
>
> In Antisemitisme, jan 27, 2003 :
>
> "Les juifs sont des personnes d'une race
> distinctement differente des autres
> personnes. La discrimination basee sur une telle
> distinction est donc
> valide."
>
> Translation by "Babel Fish Translation" :
>
> "The Jews are people of a race distinctly different
> from the other people.
> The discrimination based on such a distinction is
> thus valid"
>
> I apologize french wikipedians for there rudness
> with Philippe, but we don't
> tolerate this kind of sentences on the french
> wikipedia !

Then improve them, instead of removing them.
And also improve your way of talking to people who
don't think the way you do. That might help Philippe
to be more concilliant - as I think he was in the past
two days.

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list: wikien-l

from_name: M Carling

subject: [WikiEN-l] DW is still here - time for an IP ban

body:
I agree that the prevalence of dynamically allocated IP addresses makes
banning by IP address undesirable (though in principle it should often be
possible to determine whether an IP address is statically or dynamically
allocated.

If this turns out a be a serious problem, one idea would be to only allow
logged-in users to make changes (except in the Sandbox).

M Carling


body:
>> 3. Publishing wiki sourcecode in wiki and make it
editable
>> just like wikipedia articles.
>>
>> I don't know if this works but we can try.
>
>Source is fragile enough that I'd be very wary of this.
That, and I
>really do want a better editor than Mozilla when working
with code. ;)
>
>>  Probably the
>> first step is publishing "language.php"s and probably
sysop
>> applies them.
>
>The current format of those files (a bunch of arrays and a
class
>definition in a PHP source file!) is horrible, arcane, and
very very
>fragile. (About half the updates I get submitted to me ends
up with a
>missing comma, an extra quotation mark, whatever, and hence
syntax
>error. And that includes the ones I make myself!)
>
>What we need is a human-friendly interface for editing the
messages,
>being able to compare all or selected language versions of
each one
>side-by-side. The ability to incrementally and safely
update 99% of this
>stuff without waiting for a developer's intervention will
be a big help
>for newer language sections being established.

I totally agree with that. Then why don't we employ wiki to
improve the sourcecode? Also, I don't know if it will work.
Then why don't we try?


from_name: Pieter Suurmond

body:
Anthere wrote:
>
> >But if you mean "democratic" as in voting, then no,
> we
> don't do that.
>
> I didn't mean that. I don't believe in voting.
> Actually I am not so sure about what is more
> democratic
> system. I said the system of wikipedia should be more
> democratic because it seems to me that the decision
> about
> the wikipedia system doesn't reflect well the opinion
> among
> the majority of wikipedians, if not totally. First,
> simply
> really few people subscribe this mailing list. Second,
> changes are somewhat invisible. Basically there is no
> announcement about the changes. For example, new text
> for
> new pages. (Forget the talk pages or Village pump.
> They
> exist for conversation not for announcement) I don't
> want to mean people who have access to CVS should
> speak more (I am implying Brion). I am saying we
> should make
> the management (including decision-making) more
> visible and
> closer to oridanly wikipedians. Sure, now people
> dicuss in
> Village pump or some send direct message to Brion
> personally
> in his talk page. But it is not the democracy in the
> essence. Wikipedia is great because not only it is
> free, open-content
> but also because it is democratic. People made
> decision in
> their own. People go where they want to go without
> discussion. The important distinction is wikipedia is
> the
> place where not the rulers listen to people's demands
> but
> all of people rule. Sorry I am just talking about
> something abstract. But this
> is why I felt the management should be more
> democratic. And
> again I don't know practical way.

Sorry for bothering again but I very much agree with
the above. Having no solution, it is at least good to
talk about it (clear and visible management, democracy, etc).

Maybe, closing down meta.wikipedia.org is a good idea?
Designers, developers, programmers, administrators, etc should be
on the 'normal' wikipedia, they should _not_ be 'gods'.

This relates to (inter)language problem: there is no
central wikipedia (or do you regard the English-speaking
one, www.wikipedia.org, as the central one?).
Wikipedia thus already DOES work with distributed
servers, isn't it? (Spanish wikipedia is on another machine
than the Dutch, and the English, etc?)

Sorry for speaking here (I did not read _all_ previous e-mails).
Pieter Suurmond

> Hello Takuya
>
> What you say makes a lot of sense. I agree the current
> system is far from being the perfect one.
>
> Just wanted to add that if people want to get
> involved, they may come here if they want. But, if all
> the discussions take place on the en.wiki, you just
> remove internationals the possibility to say their
> word too. We can't follow what is happening on the en.wiki.
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
Hi Anthere!

> Comments anyone ???

Sorry Anthere, I must admit that I sometimes don't understand what
you're talking about. This is also there case here.

Could you give an example for that kind of article you're talking about?

Kurt


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
After reviewing the matter, I do have a few observations.

1.  I believe that Phillippe was acting in good faith in his efforts,
and willing to adjust his writing to conform with community standards.
 It is quite common for the first draught of an article to show bias in
some way.  That only means that it requires improvement, rather than
deletion.  Just because it happens to be about a sensitive subject like
race, and that it attempts to give some explanation of the term doesn't
mean that the writer believes or supports the idea that he is describing.

2. Just because the Acad?mie doesn't recognize a word, doesn't mean that
it's not a word.  Language changes faster than the Acad?mie.

3. The difference between racism(e) and racialism(e) can be a difficult.
 British usage treats the two terms as identical, but American usage
makes an important distinction between the two words.  Saying that
blacks run faster than whites would be a racialist expression but not a
racist one.  The proportion of blacks who have won Olympic medals in the
100 metre run suggests that the statement is true; it's what we do with
that information that makes it racist.  (Perhaps if there were more
blacks in the Acad?mie, it might run faster. :-) )

4. The issue of violating French law didn't help solve any problems..
 Even assuming that the writing does violate French law it would be the
job of a French judge to make that decision, not some individual who has
decided that French law will be interpreted and imposed based on his own
idiosyncratic view of that law.

5. There is a need to avoid oversensitivity with these subjects.  Often
what seems racist to some readers can have no such intention in the
mouth of the speaker.

Eclecticology


body:
Thanks very much for explaining Brion!
I'm very pleased with what I hear about all that
intergration on 1 machine. Sounds great.

Sorry for mentioning 'gods'
It's just that I dislike the word 'meta',
I would prefer the word "development" or "admin" or.... (?)

I'm now considering the following:

 Read-Only Caching:
 Cache some of the wikipedia-documents on my own server
 for read-only. Just when I might want to edit, I 'll get
 redirected to your real wikipedia-server to read the
 latest version, and perhaps write..

 Or maybe your server (or a second machine) might run a
 read-only version of the wikipedia-content, as a regular
 webserver?... Just for quick reading, there should be no
 locks. Locks are only required for writing documents
 (conflicts and such).
 For someone that quickly wants to read-only, it is no
 problem when he or she does not really get the *latest*
 version of that page, but a cached version from yesterday.
 .... ? ....

Well, anyway, thanks for your very informative and clear
reply. Thanks to all other Wikipedia-maintainers as well
for making Wikipedia possible.

Pieter

Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> On ??a??, 2003-01-30 at 15:33, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> > Sorry for bothering again but I very much agree with
> > the above. Having no solution, it is at least good to
> > talk about it (clear and visible management, democracy, etc).
>
> Great!
>
> > Maybe, closing down meta.wikipedia.org is a good idea?
>
> What??! Why??
>
> Are you saying that discussion about the site should be hidden away on a
> secret "hackers-only" wiki where people can't find it instead of the
> open-to-everyone meta wiki?
>
> Or buried in a thousands-of-edits-per-day encyclopedia where people
> can't find it instead of a more leisurely specifically-for-discussion-
> about-running-the-site meta wiki? Buried on the English Wikipedia where
> people coming from other languages won't have a *clue* how to find
> things, and people who don't speak English don't have a chance of having
> their voices heard?
>
> I say NO to that. Closing meta would be undemocratic, bigoted, and wrong
> in every way.
>
> > Designers, developers, programmers, administrators, etc should be
> > on the 'normal' wikipedia, they should _not_ be 'gods'.
>
> Not sure what this means.
>
> > This relates to (inter)language problem: there is no
> > central wikipedia (or do you regard the English-speaking
> > one, www.wikipedia.org, as the central one?).
>
> meta.wikipedia.org is the central wiki for discussion about the workings
> of Wikipedia and plans for changing it. It is officially multilingual,
> and open to all (though _so far_ most content is only in English).
>
> > Wikipedia thus already DOES work with distributed
> > servers, isn't it? (Spanish wikipedia is on another machine
> > than the Dutch, and the English, etc?)
>
> They're all on the same machine, and will be integrated further when the
> user accounts and upload sections are rolled into one to avoid the
> numerous headaches encountered currently by people working in multiple
> languages (separate logins; have to copy images multiple times, have to
> put in interlanguage links multiple times, etc).
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                        Name: signature.asc
>    signature.asc       Type: application/pgp-signature
>                 Description: This is a digitally signed message part


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] hacker.wikipedia.org

in_reply_to: <200301302010.EDY22819@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 02:11:03PM -0600

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
> What do you think?

I'm going to read the comments of others before responding
to the particular details, but I think that your ideas are
constructive and forward-thinking, and I generally support
the idea.

Magnus used to be "the main guy" on the software.  Then Lee Crocker
got excited and rewrote everything, and then he was "the main guy".
Brion was working alongside them all that time, and now he's "the main
guy".  There's nothing official in any way about this, but that's the
way it worked out due to how much time people had, their level of
excitement/interest at that moment, etc.

It certainly would be better to have more of a group effort, and if we
can gently move ourselves in that direction, it would surely be of
benefit to all.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

in_reply_to: <1043976324.1832.1063.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 05:25:24PM -0800

body:
Wow!  This was a fantastic paragraph, buried in Brion's longer letter,
and it was so good I wanted to just reproduce it here to highlight it.

Brion Vibber wrote:
> The current versions of these articles aren't necessarily the best way
> to handle it; I think they would do better to discuss *and debunk*
> racist notions as much as possible, putting them in the proper context
> so when some kid hears about "racialism" or "reverse racism" and then
> looks it up on Wikipedia they'll see a rational, neutral explanation of
> what makes some people think and speak that way -- so they'll
> _understand_ why to discount those ideas. Pretending the terms don't
> exist or saying "oh, that's just what RACISTS think, if you touch them
> it might rub off on you! stay away!" strikes me as ineffective, or even
> counterproductive ("look, those Wikipedians are so biased they're afraid
> to take us on rationally!"). There are lessons to be learned from the
> evil that men do.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
The policies of wikipedia, even the French wikipedia, are not
constrained by French law.  Yahoo caved in to French censorship
efforts because they are a large company with many business interests
in France.  We do not have that problem.

However, I will say this in addition:
>  To allow wikipedia to be accessible, I
> thus will delete any article which directly
> contradicts the first and the second article of the
> universal declaration of the humans right:

There is a great irony here.  It is suggested that we should delete
any article that contradicts the first and the second article of the
universal declaration of human rights, because of a French law that is
itself a strong violation of article 19 of that same document!

Article 19:
>Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
>right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
>seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
>regardless of frontiers.

Anyhow, no article in Wikipedia should ever directly contradict or
directly support any controversial statement of moral principle such
as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  That's not NPOV, and
it's not our mission.

Nonetheless, I suppose it is possible that there could be NPOV
articles on valid topics which would be banned by various countries
around the world.  I suppose that an Arabic-language encyclopedia
might contain many true statements, properly contextualized, written
in NPOV, but which still might run afoul of censors in some hardline
Islamic countries.

Then, so be it.  If the French people are not free of human rights
violations by the French government, we should be all the more
inspired in our mission to help them.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Some confusion about 'meta'

body:
There appears to be some confusion about the history and purpose of
meta.  This is easy to understand, because meta evolved over time.

In the early days, there was a lot of talk *about wikipedia* *on
wikipedia*.  We didn't have user pages in the early software, all
pages were the same kind of page.  So it happened that we were having
lots of discussion and debate on the wikipedia about the wikipedia,
and it was clogging up recentchanges and generally getting in the way
of work.

So we decided to move all the 'meta-discussion' (i.e. discussion about
wikipedia) to meta.wikipedia.com.  This meant, of course, that meta
allowed for non-NPOV essays, etc.

Later, user pages were invented, and so that became a more sensible
place for SOME non-NPOV essays on meta-topics.  But meta is still
useful, as a place for non-user-specific meta-discussion.

Except, as a practical matter, the major meta discussion is now here,
on the mailing lists.

Whatever meta is, it is *not* necessarily the same thing as an
experimental wiki for the running of the latest code.  It is a
fine place for discussing the future of the software, I suppose,
although wikitech-l is more important for that right now.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <200301310519.EDY59190@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 11:20:27PM -0600

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
> 2. Quit sourceforge. Objections?
>
> 3. Publishing wiki sourcecode in wiki and make it editable
> just like wikipedia articles.

These are little bit nervewracking to me.  Sourceforge tools, and CVS,
and so forth, are standard development tools that have grown up and
been tested and refined by social processes for many years now for
*exactly* this mission: development of open source software by
geographically separated volunteers.

It strikes me as very likely that if we try to "roll our own" by using
a wiki to edit code, we are going to end up with something
significantly worse, and for no good purpose.

It is true, I guess, that CVS and all the rest provides a barrier to
entry for developers.  But not much of one, since it's easy to learn
and since most developers will already know about it.

> Probably. If meta is the place only for those who are
> interested in development and administration, I would like
> to participate in meta.

The best place for discussion of development and administration, the
technical aspects, is right here on wikitech-l.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

in_reply_to: <003101c2c8f1$b7a40b10$0101a8c0@arcsy.co.jp>; from gblanchard@arcsy.co.jp on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 03:26:40PM +0900

body:
It's very difficult to work with babelfish translations, or
with *any* translation, because the difference between POV and
NPOV can be lost in a particular translation.  Language is subtle,
and nuance matters a lot.

> "Historically, there are many reasons to justify the anti-semitism,
> including factors social, economic, national, political, racial and
> religious."

As written, this is POV, because it implies (but barely) that the
reasons were valid justifications.  It could be made more neutral by
saying "Historically, many reasons have been given by the anti-semitic
to justify their anti-semitism, including ..."

That's a fact, an unobjectionable one, which doesn't commit wikipedia
to implicitly endorsing or condemning anything.

> "The Jews are people of a race distinctly different from the other
> people.  The discrimination based on such a distinction is thus
> valid"

This is impossible to render in NPOV.  The best that could be done is
to indicate that _some anti-semites believe_ such-and-such.  It is
*not* the position of wikipedia to decide such issues as whether or
not Jews are "people of a race", nor (even more so) to ever claim
that discrimination based on such a distinction is valid.

> I apologize french wikipedians for there rudness with Philippe, but
> we don't tolerate this kind of sentences on the french wikipedia !

You are right not to tolerate this kind of sentence.  Absolutely
right.

But, not becaue of French law!  Because of NPOV.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> The Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary.  And it is certainly
> not an arbiter which words people may or may not use. You may not use Le
> Dictionnaire de l'academie francaise as justification for removing an
> article.

I would agree with the sentiment, but I don't like saying "You may
not".  Better to say "It is not a good idea to..."

We already have some distrust between the French and English
wikipedias, and I don't want them to get the impression that the
English speakers will set every policy down to the last detail by
edict.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

in_reply_to: <007f01c2c905$c939e7f0$0101a8c0@arcsy.co.jp>; from gblanchard@arcsy.co.jp on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 05:50:20PM +0900

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> I said this word is not french, so we have to think about how to
> handle this kind of case.
> And what is the criteria that make a word that don't exist
> officially can be add in an encyclopedie or not ?

The "culture" of English is very different from the "culture" of
French in this regard.  What I mean is, the idea that a word doesn't
exist "officially" is a very odd idea to English speakers.  Words
exist when people use them and know what they mean.

I recommend using a variety of factors in determining whether or not a
word is a "real word" for the purposes of the Encyclopedia.  Whether
or not it is in a dictionary is certainly _one_ factor that's worth
considering.  But common usage is also important, probably more
important, isn't it?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Race

body:
P Philippe wrote:
> Just because they say race do not exist, so
> this article should not exist
>
> I think it must exist. What do you think ?

The usual solution to conflicts of this type, if all parties are
working together in goodwill, is to not have the article assert that
race exists, or that race does not exist.  Rather, the article should
explain the concept, the arguments for and against, without drawing
any conclusions.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Race

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> You are in the right, they are in the wrong.

I would like to soften this.  Phillippe admits that his early articles
were biased and inappropriate.  So it is easy to understand that
people were wary of him.

But it sounds like he wants to contribute in a neutral manner, now,
and that would be great.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 04:42:31AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>We already have some distrust between the French and English
>wikipedias, and I don't want them to get the impression that the
>English speakers will set every policy down to the last detail by
>edict.

My apologies. I wasn't aware of the situation.  I love French cheese,
wine, bread, and literature, but I don't have much patience for the
Academy.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 09:38:36PM -0600, Takuya Murata wrote:
> 2. The meta-wikipedia is not multilingual at all and it
> cannot be.
>
> I don't see any reason that the sole wiki site has contents
> written in several languages. Sure, technologically
> speaking, meta-wiki is multilingual, but in practice, is it
> really? What if I started to post Japanese comments, who
> will reply to them? If I did, I just only increase the bunch
> of mess. You can't discuss one theme in more than one
> languages. That is for sure. The discussion
>
> So, there is no reason to have a multilingual wiki site,
> hence there is no reason to separate English discussion from
> the English-edition wikipedia.

[en]
Because Japanese Wikipedia is small now and there aren't many
people who can understand Japanese here, it's not good idea to use
Japanese on meta. But there's nothing special about English,
and any language understood by sufficient number of Wikipedians is ok.
And so will be Japanese in the future.

[jp]
Nihongo no wikipedia chiisakute nihongo ga wakaru hito ga wikipedia ni
sukosi kara nihongo de meta de kaku ha ii koto ja arimasen
Demo eigo wa tokubetu ja arimasen, sosite mai no wikipedian no takusan no
gengo ga ii desu. Mirai ni nihongo mo ii desu.

(yes, i know that my japanese is no good)

[pl]
Poniewaz japonska Wikipedia jest na razie niewielka i niewiele
osob rozumie tu japonski, uzywanie japonskiego na meta nie
jest najlepszym pomyslem. Ale nie ma nic specjalnego w angielskim,
i kazdy jezyk z wystarczajaca liczba rozumiejacych go osob jest ok.
W przyszlosci bedzie to rowniez japonski.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: No more new (major) features until jan 2004 ?

in_reply_to: <8etL+9EhpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 11:25:00AM +0100

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Forget it. There's plenty of new stuff we need (Tomasz has touched
> upon it), and most of it is not a problem from a performance
> perspective. What we do need to do is discuss for every new feature
> what impact it might have on performance. That should be a priority.

Absolutely.


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> it's probably philosophically good for us to
> get in the habit of thinking "unless this feature is free or really
> really useful, we should do without it".  That is, we already have a
> bad case of feature-itis, and taking a hardline on such things might
> be very helpful.

Very much agree!
No more new features until jan 2004 (or so). Then allow 4 new ones or so.

Mathematics is difficult enough. Don't create more headache.
Programming / developing software IS mathematics in the end.

Let's agree on things like: no more than doubling the amount of sourcecode
within 5 years (or so).

Wikipedia-content can be self-organising very well, Wiki is great!,
but metaWiki should become more 'pre'-structured. Designing democratic
structures, institutions, etc. is also quite 'technical', this seems
the place (I have no account yet on wikipedia-l, but I'll soon get one.)

Sorry for bothering,
Pieter Suurmond


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
Maybe Jimbo and Brion should run for office in France...

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 04:03:52 -0800
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?
>
> Wow!  This was a fantastic paragraph, buried in Brion's longer letter,
> and it was so good I wanted to just reproduce it here to highlight it.
>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> The current versions of these articles aren't necessarily the best way
>> to handle it; I think they would do better to discuss *and debunk*
>> racist notions as much as possible, putting them in the proper context
>> so when some kid hears about "racialism" or "reverse racism" and then
>> looks it up on Wikipedia they'll see a rational, neutral explanation of
>> what makes some people think and speak that way -- so they'll
>> _understand_ why to discount those ideas. Pretending the terms don't
>> exist or saying "oh, that's just what RACISTS think, if you touch them
>> it might rub off on you! stay away!" strikes me as ineffective, or even
>> counterproductive ("look, those Wikipedians are so biased they're afraid
>> to take us on rationally!"). There are lessons to be learned from the
>> evil that men do.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sorry.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> On Don, 2003-01-30 at 05:09, Takuya Murata wrote:
>
> > Actually I am not so sure about what is more democratic
> > system. I said the system of wikipedia should be more
> > democratic because it seems to me that the decision about
> > the wikipedia system doesn't reflect well the opinion among
> > the majority of wikipedians,
>
> Actually, the wiki code is developed in a manner very similar to wiki
> articles themselves. CVS access is granted fairly liberally, so almost
> anyone can modify the software. Like wiki, CVS stores all previous
> revisions, so it's always possible to revert if necessary. To avoid
> problems, we use a manual mechanism similar to FileCopy, in the form of
> Brion occasionally updating the live sever. This part could be more
> formalized, and probably should be eventually.
>
> Given this, I'm surprised we don't have more active coders. Right now,
> it's mostly Brion, Magnus, Tomasz (TeX) and me. There are really few
> valid excuses not to participate, given that PHP is easy to learn and
> all the tools you need are free. If you have time to work on Wikipedia
> articles, you have time to work on Wikipedia code.
>
> The only real difference is that you need to be a coder to participate.
> Since we're dealing with code, I don't think this can be much improved.
> Importing the code into wiki doesn't make much sense -- we should use
> the right tool for the right job. CVS is tried and tested and works well
> in this situation, so do SourceForge's tools.
>
> When there are conflicts about features we try to resolve them either
> before or after the feature is introduced, depending on personal
> judgment. Knowing that there are *always* people who disagree about
> something if you ask if there are people who disagree makes it tempting
> to wait until someone complains *after* a feature has been added.
> Compare it to asking on a Talk page before making a change, or just
> making the change and waiting until someome complains.
>
> But if by "democratic" you mean that the coders need to work on what the
> non-coders decide then, sorry, that's not gonna happen. If you want
> that, I have a long list of articles that I want to be written ..

	It is more about what you should NOT do
	that we non-coders want to have influence on.
	(Don't add any more feautures please.)
	Otherwise you are playing 'Gods' over us 'normal' wikipedians.
	Sorry, I'm coding for more than 20 years now but I do not
	dare to fiddle around in codes that I don't know nor fully understand
	(I don't want to disturb you or the non-coding-wikipedians (99.9999%).
	Kind Regards,
	Pieter Suurmond

> Regards,
>
> Erik
> --
> FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
> Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

in_reply_to: <004c01c2c8f6$cc027ba0$0101a8c0@arcsy.co.jp>; from gblanchard@arcsy.co.jp on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 04:03:02PM +0900

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Racism and anti-Semitism are not a problem of biais.
> Firstly it is attack to human dignity.
> Secondly it is forbidden by the french law.

Can you clarify for me what is against French law?  Is it against
French law to have a neutral article describing what racism and
anti-Semitism are, without making a judgment of any kind?

I sort of doubt if that would be against French law.

> > Following the UN point of view on wikipedia is wrong.
> > It is *against* the very idea of a neutral and
> > extensive encyclopedia.
>
> ?

The wikipedia strives not to take a position on any controversial
issue.  If an issue is controversial, we merely describe the issue,
not taking a side.  This does NOT mean that we act as if "maybe racism
is moral, maybe not, who knows?"  We are not moral relativists.  But
we just describe what racism is, and leave the value conclusions to
the reader.

> I'm not agasint speak about those theory, I'm agaisnt those who
> claim there are right.

Very good.  To claim that they are right would be a serious violation
of NPOV.

> Except you, all wikipedians seem to agree the fact Philippe don't
> write articles to halp wikipedia, but onlu to bug us.

Well, I don't know enough to say for sure.  It seems that Philippe
does admit that his early efforts were bad, but he says that he will
do better.  I think that we should give him the benefit of the doubt
for now.  If he keeps trying to insert pro-racist (or pro-racialist)
articles, then he should be banned for that.

But for now, let's see how he does.

--Jimbo


body:
> 1. The current meta-wiki is dead.

No it is not. Look at the Recent Changes. If you are missing something
there, start a new page, hope that enough people (able to speak the
language you choose)are interrested in the topic, and see what happens.
Maybe announce it on one of the mailing lists.

Yes, there is a lot of crap. If something really annoys you, start a
page [[Pages that should be deleted]] and explain it there or ask on the
talk page for deletion.

The name meta.wikipedia sounds good to me. Where is the problem?

> 2. The meta-wikipedia is not multilingual at all and it
> cannot be.

Tomasz already answered this one.

> 3. Practically meta-wikipedia and maing lists segregate the
> majoriy of wikipedians from the decision-making.
>
> What is now happing is decision-making occurs in the place
> that most of people don't see. The recent changes in English-
> edition wikipedia is the critical place where most of people
> notice even minor changes. In the reality, meta-wikipedia
> practically separate people to express their voices.

So everything should be discussed in the English Wikipedia:-namespace? I
already overlook things on the German Wikipedia, how could I notice them
on the English one? Or should we start to discuss e.g. a new table
syntax also on the German Wikipedia? And on all the other Wikipedias? It
doesn't sound like a good idea.

BTW, I'd like to have every Wikipedia:-namespace page on my watchlist
automatically. Whould this be easy to implement?

The majority of users just aren't interrested in the software
developement and administration. Everybody who is can subscribe to our
lists and/or go to meta. It's just one click away (unlike Alaska) :-)

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

in_reply_to: <002e01c2c92b$ad1fbbf0$0200a8c0@guillaume>; from gblanchard@arcsy.co.jp on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:21:33PM +0900

body:
Guillaume, you are right that there was a misunderstanding.  But I
think things are clearer now.  You are not opposed to have articles
*about* racism and anti-semitism.  You think those articles should be
NPOV.  You are 100% correct!  I agree with you completely.

Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> I think we all agree the better way to speak about racism is to
> explain with a neutral point of view the different way of
> thinking. And we don't think the actual version of articles we
> re-wrote are good articles.

Guillaume, on this point, the defense of NPOV, you are exactly right.

French law is not very relevant here, and I consider French law
to be wrong.  Even racists have the right to freedom of expression.

But, not on wikipedia.

--Jimbo


body:
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 05:20:49AM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > it's probably philosophically good for us to
> > get in the habit of thinking "unless this feature is free or really
> > really useful, we should do without it".  That is, we already have a
> > bad case of feature-itis, and taking a hardline on such things might
> > be very helpful.
>
> Very much agree!
> No more new features until jan 2004 (or so). Then allow 4 new ones or so.
>
> Mathematics is difficult enough. Don't create more headache.
> Programming / developing software IS mathematics in the end.
>
> Let's agree on things like: no more than doubling the amount of sourcecode
> within 5 years (or so).
>
> Wikipedia-content can be self-organising very well, Wiki is great!,
> but metaWiki should become more 'pre'-structured. Designing democratic
> structures, institutions, etc. is also quite 'technical', this seems
> the place (I have no account yet on wikipedia-l, but I'll soon get one.)
>
> Sorry for bothering,
> Pieter Suurmond

No, it's all completely wrong.

We need lot of new features, like:
Support for SVG, conversion to good printable formats (PS and PDF),
exporting Wikipedia to text-only dict format, better mirroring (that would
just transfer daily diffs or so), speech synthesis support, including
generating pronunciation of words in actual sound files, support for
rendering non-Latin scripts into PNGs (most browsers don't have CJK,
Arabic etc., and it would be nice if they could see it anyway),
multilingual accounts, recent changes and all that stuff, moving
all Wikipedias to UTF-8 with some support for broken browsers,
spelling checker, support for external WYSIWYG editor (mode for
Emacs or something), <code> tag that would allow to download examples
(as separate filer or as gziped tarball generated on fly), support
for XHTML and MathML, and a lot more.

And programming is not math at all.


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #993 - 10 msgs

body:
Je crois que la question de la loi fran?aise n'est qu'une distraction.
Primo, pas tous les Wikip?diens francophones sont fran?ais, et la Wikip?dia
n'est destin? non plus ? un public sp?cifiquement fran?ais de France;
secundo, je ne vois pas pourquoi un article vraiment encyclop?dique
(factuel, neutre de point de vue, etc) serait banni par la loi fran?aise.
Canada a aussi des lois contre le discours haineux mais tout m'indique qu'un
article d'encyclop?die n'y serait pas vis?. (Il y a des articles sur le
racisme dans les encyclop?dies en papier fran?aises!)

Donc faisons les articles vraiment encyclop?diques et il n'y aura aucun
probl?me!

------

I think that the question of French law is just a distraction. First, not
all of the francophone wikipedians are French, nor is French Wiki intended
just for a public from France; secondly, I don't see why a truly
encyclopedic (factual and NPOV) would be prohibited by French law. Canada
also has laws against hate speech but I have no reason to believe that an
encyclopedia article would be prohibited. (There are articles on racism in
French paper encyclopedias!)

So let's make the articles really encyclopedic and there won't be a problem!

Matt McLauchlin
Montreal


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Nice article in The Guardian

body:
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 12:59:25PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 09:05, Gareth Owen wrote:
> > Perusing my paper over lunch, I spotted a nice write up of the project in
> > todays Guardian.
> >
> > Highlights :
> > "perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the generosity on the web"
> > "What makes the Wikipedia so compelling - and this article so hard to finish -
> >  is the way everything is so massively linked. You read one entry, and before
> >  you know it, you're reading up on Anne Boleyn or Italian greyhounds."
> >
> Not bad for the press, even though they got the URL wrong, credited
> Sanger with the creation of Wiktionary, and utterly mangled the
> definition of WikiWiki.
>

Well, then.  Maybe somebody should send a letter to the editor in, and
maybe with a little luck they'll run it twice and we'll get two mentions
for the price of one :)

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                          rgmerk at mira.net
"...the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an
environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more
serious than those raised by sex" -- Peter Singer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
Yann Forget wrote:
> However, I do not support the idea to block people who write racist
> articles.  It's counter-productive. It's better to correct their
> articles and show them the limit (as defined by the law in
> France). And this as long as they are few and we can correct their
> articles.

I don't think I can emphasize strongly enough that French law is
irrelevant for our purposes here.  Appealing to censorship laws is not
a firm foundation for writing better articles, the NPOV policy is.

--Jimbo


body: > Yes, and doesn't it mean chaning the policy of meta-wiki?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] racialisme

body:
julien tayon wrote:
> - first it was not neutral, as a french who is aware of political
> science and history letting him write this article was the same as
> letting KKK write an article on white power. It does not means he is
> racist, it only means he is lacking of objectivity (or "recul"),

But, it is the *article* that lacks objectivity.  The original author
is not very important.  It is almost always better to fix the article,
than to delete.  Moving really bad parts to a talk page as a temporary
measure is fine, of course.

There are certain topics on which I do not try to write, because I
know that NPOV would be too difficult for me on those topics.  My own
biases, held in check by good judgment, do not prevent me from writing
on wikipedia.

> - secondly, is considered racist anythings that gets in contradiction
> with the first article of the D?claration universelle des Droits de
> l'Homme, saying that any people are born equal in dignity and in regard
> to the law, and therefore (article 2) no difference can be made
> regarding the the people. And that is illegal in France.

Whether it is illegal or not in France to voice unpopular political
opinions does not matter to wikipedia simply because the wikipedia
should not voice *any* political opinions, popular or otherwise.  And
not for reasons of law, but for reasons of NPOV.

> Europe is not america, we do not have the 1st Amendment (liberty of
> speech) we have la libert? d'expression (which is bounded to the respect
> of the ground of democracy), and since the 2nd WW it is considered as a
> delictuous to justify or state theory that are either xenophobic,
> racist, or revisionist (like saying shoah never existed). You may say
> that wikipedia is in the US. Fine, Yahoo also was but had problems with
> french justice for selling nazis items, because regarding internet,
> France -as the US- consider their justice is "extra-terriorial". As long
> as a speech is seen from France, it can be prosecuted wherever the
> server is.

Outside of instituting a massive firewall like that of China, the
French government can not do anything to me at all, no matter what.  I
have no business interests in France.  I do not intend to visit France.

I say the same thing of China, of Iraq, of North Korea, of every state
that would seek to impose by force their views on what an encyclopedia
should contain: I am an American, so I will publish what I wish, and
you can't stop me without blocking the Internet completely.

But as it turns out, this whole discussion of French law is misplaced,
because -- as I understand it, anyway -- our policy of NPOV would not
run afoul of French censorship law.

> If we accept definition that are an implicit legitimation of racism
> (racialism) (wich made nazi legitimate too in killing tzigan) :
> - should we also made article saying that it is legitimate to think
> shoah never was? If so no matter what my opinions are, I will write it.

An article on racialism should not implicitly legitimate the concept.
An article on holocaust denial should not implicitly legitimate the
concept.  Avoiding these topics is not right.  Treating them with NPOV
is right.

> - Do you assume the legal responsabilities if we are prosecuted ?

I do not advocate that anyone break the laws of their own country,
because I think that civil disobediance is up to you.  If you are
prosecuted for writing a valid NPOV article, then I will do everything
in my power to come to your public defense.

But isn't this a fairly remote possibility anyway?  Does the French
government really look for people who are writing biased encyclopedia
articles as part of an international humanitarian project?

> If you are not firm at the very beginning, fr.wikipedia.org will
> have the same problem as indymedia => shutdown -f now.

I am not sure I understand you here.  How was French Indymedia shut
down?  By legal action?  Or because the maintainers chose to close it
rather than permit articles that disagreed with the general Indymedia
politics?

--Jimbo


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: DW is still here - time for an IP ban

body:
M Carling wrote:

>If this turns out a be a serious problem, one idea would be to only allow
>logged-in users to make changes (except in the Sandbox).

That won't do much to keep out banned people. If someone wants to
continually evade the ban, all they would have to do is subscribe a
different user name every time they need to log in.

Banning IP numbers isn't a very satisfactory solution either. To get
around that barrier, just visit a different Internet cafe every day.

In the event that this becomes more of a problem, perhaps the tech
folks should start working on a more substantial system for
authenticating subscribers. Here's what I think would work:

(1) Establish a toggle that people with developer status can use to
switch between "permission required" and "no permission required"
mode for accepting new subscriptions. When "permission required" is
turned ON, new subscribers would have to pass their submission
request through a sysop, who would have to approve it before they can
begin posting. When it is turned OFF, people can subscribe the same
way they do now. Most of the time, it would be turned OFF, but in
situations where a persistent vandal is active, it could be turned
ON. That would make it possible to deny access to the vandal until he
or she loses interest and goes elsewhere.

(2) Create a special page, computer-generated and available only to
sysops, which lists all of the pending submission requests. It will
list the nickname of each pending subscriber alongside a check box,
so a sysop can go through and quickly approve a batch of names simply
by running down the list, checking the boxes, and clicking a "submit"
button. A separate check box next to each user name can be used to
flag individuals for further scrutiny, and clicking on the name
itself will take you to a talk page for that user. Most users can be
quickly approved this way simply by verifying that their IP number is
not on a banned list or range. The others can be contacted via email
and asked a few questions. Of course, vandals could still get through
eventually by giving disingenuous answers, but there would be enough
barriers to entry to slow them down and keep them from simply running
amok at will.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Linux Journal and wikipedia

body:
I was contacted by someone at Linux Journal interested in mentioning
us.  They were concerned about our performance and concerned about
"slashdotting" us, so to speak.  I told them that we'll have all the
performance issues fixed soon, and suggested that I'd like to
volunteer to write an article about the project for LJ.

There's no firm response yet, but it seemed to be a favorably received
suggestion.  This fellow said he would ask someone else what sort of
article might be wanted.

If they are interested, it might be good to have a couple of articles.
I could write about our history and culture and ideals, and someone
else could write an article about the software.

That second article, done properly, could be a great recruiting tool
for more developers.  The LJ's subscribers would be a great place for
us to get development help.

Who would be interested in writing such an article?

(Note, I'm just raising the idea, there's no guarantee that they would
be interested.)


body:
>> Yes, and doesn't it mean chaning the policy of meta-wiki?

>Hmm, it seems everything is on topic, including software
developement
>and administration :-)

I meant if I deleted contents that are personal and not
related to development and administration, doesn't it mean I
am against the policy of meta-wiki, which says everything is
acceptable as the name meta implies?

>I guess we don't need dev.wikipedia.org but
trashcan.wikipedia.org for
>things people don't dare to delete completely from
wikipedia. Be bolder!

Again, if meat becomes anything but trashcan I would love to
contribute to meta. But can we do that without the
agreement? Actually, I am not only talking to Kurl but just
asking anyone who objects to clean up meta-wikipedia.


from_name: Tony Wilson

body: DW is still posting from IP 64.228.30.29. I don't know if he has others


from_name: Jason Richey

in_reply_to: <200301311628.EDZ20927@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:29:59AM -0600

body:
If I'm not mistaken, it is totally within YOUR power to get the source
code from CVS and import it into (Meta?) Wikipedia somewhere.  I don't
think it's a good idea, but it is possible for you to do.  I think
that, if you were to perform this exercise, you would see that wiki
isn't very well suited for source code modification/viewing.

I understand that you want to see if it works.  That's perfectly
reasonable.  However, you are asking other volunteers, who are already
busy with other important things, to do something that, for the most
part, they are not willing to do.

Jason Richey

Takuya Murata wrote:

> I don't aim to discuss which one is better CVS or wiki.
>
> First of all, again I am not so sure developing in wiki
> works. Some think it won't work and some (including me, only
> me?) think it might.
>
> But think of the reality. Don't we need better mechanism for
> development? Wiki might not work I know that. But I am not
> sure yet.
>
> Why don't we try? Is there any technical trouble to publish
> wikipedia software sourcecode? It seems to me that it is
> possible to publish sourcecode and some sysops apply them
> regularly. If it didn't yield good result, it doesn't hurt
> anything anyway.
>
> Oh, maybe am I only one who believes development in wiki
> might work? If so, I should do that in my own.
>
> >> Probably. If meta is the place only for those who are
> >> interested in development and administration, I would
> like
> >> to participate in meta.
> >
> >The best place for discussion of development and
> administration, the
> >technical aspects, is right here on wikitech-l.
>
> What about the rest of stuff? Like documentation, testing,
> bug reports and so on. Sourceforge?
>
> I understand CVS seems better than wiki. Does anyone give
> the opinion that the bug reports system of sourceforge is
> better than meta-wikipedia. If I remember, there is none. I
> would like to move bug reports in sourceforge to meta-wiki
> (gradually). Objections?
>
> I probably am going to post more detailed documents to meta-
> wikipedia. (and hopefully more people will help
> documentation)
>
> I know my proposal is not good enough, what else we can do
> to encourage more people to partipicate development?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Background info on DW -- very hush, hush!

body:
Some little known facts about "DW"...

http://www.unitedmedia.com/creators/onebighappy/archive/images/onebighappy27316010030120.gif

Uncle Ed


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
> Hi,
>
> It's me who put this in the "racialisme" article.
> The word may be used by
> quite some people, but I really think that it was
> invented by racist groups
> and people to justify racism. Links in Google don't
> and can't justify
> anything.

Hello Yann

*you* think it was invented by racists. Other people
do not think that way.

> And I also redirected the articles about "racisme
> anti-blanc" and "racisme ?
> l'envers" to "racisme". Personnally I don't think
> such articles should be in
> Wikipedia. I think that it doesn't improve the
> quality and reputation of
> Wikipedia.
>
> But if a great number of people think I am wrong,
> then put back these
> articles.

Thanks. I put them back. However, after some thoughts,
I moved the definition to anti-blanc rather than ?
l'envers, for it seems to me that word is more
"famous".

When my kids are big enough to realise that their
fellow children of another color (being in an
international school, there are many colors, and many
nationalities, and you don't MY color) are sometimes
bugged by people, called names, etc...and start to
look for definition of what racisme anti-blanc means,
I will be very happy if there is such a place as
Wikipedia to explain them in proper and honest ways
what it is.

Racisme anti-blanc is not a no-word (I mean : with no
existence). I don't care if it is in the dic or not,
when people use it extensively, it is a word. When
first humans improved communication between each
others, they used words (and others means) which were
not in any dictionary, but they communicated
nonetheless with *these* words.

A language is alive; when a concept needs to be
defined, people need to have a common frame to
communicate, so they create words. Some white people
think racisme against them exist. They call that
racisme anti-blanc, they use that word extensively.
So, that word *exist* in the french language,
academicians are maybe too old or living in the wrong
places.

Where will my kids go to understand what the word
racisme anti-blanc mean ?
In the dic ? noway, it is not there.
Where is it ? On right-wing extremist internet sites.
Do I want my kids to end up on these sites to find out
what that word mean ?
No, I would prefer them to find out on Wikipedia

If you have kids, and if they are starting to surf on
the net, you will understand it is "beneficial" that
this word "is" in Wikipedia Yann.

> However, I do not support the idea to block people
> who write racist articles.
> It's counter-productive. It's better to correct
> their articles and show them
> the limit (as defined by the law in France). And
> this as long as they are few
> and we can correct their articles.
>
> Regards,
> Yann

The french wikipedia is for ALL people speaking
french. Not only french from France.

Thanks for giving your viewpoint and listening to mine

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] cvs hooks

body:
Why don't we add some hooks in our CVS setup to post a message to this
list whenever something is committed?  Honestly, I don't care about
what is committed, but it seems that plenty of people are upset that
changes are occuring without them knowing.

Do we have that sort of CVS access at sourceforge?  We had something
sort of like that set up back in the day at Nupedia (all commits were
written to a page that Larry, who started it all, could look at and
decide whether or not he could run his "install all this stuff" script
to update the site).

Just a thought, feel free to ignore it.

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Rosa Williams

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

body:
> Wow!  This was a fantastic paragraph, buried in Brion's longer letter,
> and it was so good I wanted to just reproduce it here to highlight it.
>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > The current versions of these articles aren't necessarily the best way
> > to handle it; I think they would do better to discuss *and debunk*
> > racist notions as much as possible, putting them in the proper context
> > so when some kid hears about "racialism" or "reverse racism" and then
> > looks it up on Wikipedia they'll see a rational, neutral explanation of
> > what makes some people think and speak that way -- so they'll
> > _understand_ why to discount those ideas. Pretending the terms don't
> > exist or saying "oh, that's just what RACISTS think, if you touch them
> > it might rub off on you! stay away!" strikes me as ineffective, or even
> > counterproductive ("look, those Wikipedians are so biased they're afraid
> > to take us on rationally!"). There are lessons to be learned from the
> > evil that men do.

I'd just like to add an AMEN and a further highlight.  I think that this is
perhaps the best possible way to deal with offensive text: to discuss it,
why it's offensive, and most of all, why it's incorrect.  If you don't have
access to enough information to fully refute the claims, but you know that
99% of academics disagree, you can just put in statements such as "These
claims are highly disputed among those who have  studied the subject, and
are generally regarded as an extremist, ultra-minority view." Then you can
send out a call for balanced treatment to fellow Wikipedians!

An example I'll use is the "masculism" article on the English Wikipedia.
Obviously QIM doesn't like feminists. At all.  And he thinks the sexes are
fundamentally different. This view was plastered all over the masculism
article in no uncertain terms as part of the very definition of the word,
and also as fundamental truths. :)   I found that this could be greatly
ameliorated by just adding "Some masculists claim..." at every appropriate
point, and adding a brief counter-balance paragraph at the end. The article
still needs serious work, mind, I just got tired of arguing with QIM. ;)
But it now isn't a blatant statement of one user's view of the world.

Likewise, "Racialisme"  or "Racialism".  Suppose you just added text to the
effect (my French is poor - J'ai oublie' tout les mots - so I'll stick to
English):

 "Racialism" is a term used by some to distinguish between what they claim
are genuine racial differences, and the predjudice and exaggerated
difference associated with the term [[racism]].  It should be noted that
many see "racialism" as fundamentaly racist in and of itself.  For instance,
many dispute that "race" is a meaningful term, biologically speaking, when
applied to human beings.  Others argue that the classification, while
socially valid, is so vague as to make discussions of "racial differences"
invalid in anything but a highly subjective sense.

... and so forth. Babel renders this in French as:

"Racialism" est un terme employ? par certains pour distinguer ce qu'elles
r?clament sont des diff?rences raciales v?ritables, et le predjudice et la
diff?rence exag?r?e li?e ? la limite [ [ racisme ] ]. Il convient noter que
beaucoup voient le "racialism" en tant que fundamentaly raciste seule. Par
exemple, beaucoup contestent que la "race" est une limite signicative,
parlant biologiquement, une fois appliqu? aux ?tres humains. D'autres
arguent du fait que la classification, tandis que socialement valide, est si
vague quant ? rendent des discussions "des diff?rences raciales"
inadmissibles dans n'importe quoi mais un sens fortement subjectif.

(Except that it rendered "race" as "course", which was definitely not the
meaning I had in mind. I changed it to "race" in the translation. :)    Feel
free to correct and use this text and any variations thereof in further
discussions on race and racism.  I think Wikipedia has some good, balanced
coverage of the subject... the article on, I think,  [[race and
intelligence]] for instance.  You can also find an excellent summary (in
English, alas) at the website http://skepdic.com/iqrace.html on the same
particular facet of this ongoing debate.

For the record: my own biases: I feel that "race" is meaningless as a
biological term when applied to humans. It has some validity as a social
term because of past history, but has always been so vaguely defined as to
make strict classification impossible; therefore almost all generalizations
using such classification are essentially meaningless.  I also think that
"racialism" is, usually, used simply an effort to sanitize racist
commentary; however, I have sympathy for those trying to discuss e.g. race
in social and historical context, who are often accused of racism simply for
using the term.  End non-list-appropriate aside. ;)

-- April


body:
I don't aim to discuss which one is better CVS or wiki.

First of all, again I am not so sure developing in wiki
works. Some think it won't work and some (including me, only
me?) think it might.

But think of the reality. Don't we need better mechanism for
development? Wiki might not work I know that. But I am not
sure yet.

Why don't we try? Is there any technical trouble to publish
wikipedia software sourcecode? It seems to me that it is
possible to publish sourcecode and some sysops apply them
regularly. If it didn't yield good result, it doesn't hurt
anything anyway.

Oh, maybe am I only one who believes development in wiki
might work? If so, I should do that in my own.

>> Probably. If meta is the place only for those who are
>> interested in development and administration, I would
like
>> to participate in meta.
>
>The best place for discussion of development and
administration, the
>technical aspects, is right here on wikitech-l.

What about the rest of stuff? Like documentation, testing,
bug reports and so on. Sourceforge?

I understand CVS seems better than wiki. Does anyone give
the opinion that the bug reports system of sourceforge is
better than meta-wikipedia. If I remember, there is none. I
would like to move bug reports in sourceforge to meta-wiki
(gradually). Objections?

I probably am going to post more detailed documents to meta-
wikipedia. (and hopefully more people will help
documentation)

I know my proposal is not good enough, what else we can do
to encourage more people to partipicate development?


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Takuya Murata <takusi at manjiro.net> wrote:
> >> Yes, and doesn't it mean chaning the policy of
> meta-wiki?
>
> >Hmm, it seems everything is on topic, including
> software
> developement
> >and administration :-)
>
> I meant if I deleted contents that are personal and
> not
> related to development and administration, doesn't
> it mean I
> am against the policy of meta-wiki, which says
> everything is
> acceptable as the name meta implies?
>
> >I guess we don't need dev.wikipedia.org but
> trashcan.wikipedia.org for
> >things people don't dare to delete completely from
> wikipedia. Be bolder!
>
> Again, if meat becomes anything but trashcan I would
> love to
> contribute to meta. But can we do that without the
> agreement? Actually, I am not only talking to Kurl
> but just
> asking anyone who objects to clean up
> meta-wikipedia.

I object.

These pages do not disturb anyone but you. As long as
Jimbo has room on his server, what would you remove
pages that *you* think are personals ? Why does it
disturb you so much that we are offered a tiny
personal space ?

I don't think the encyclopedic wikis it is the right
place really to put pov stuff on, for these are public
places. There are no limits to povs, and I don't think
proper that these pov positions coexist with
supposingly neutral articles. For readers could find
them pretty easily and wonder over them.

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body:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> M Carling wrote:
>
> >If this turns out a be a serious problem, one idea would be to only allow
> >logged-in users to make changes (except in the Sandbox).
>
> That won't do much to keep out banned people. If someone wants to
> continually evade the ban, all they would have to do is subscribe a
> different user name every time they need to log in.

It would discourage some but not all vandals and would do so without
significantly discouraging contributors.

> Banning IP numbers isn't a very satisfactory solution either. To get
> around that barrier, just visit a different Internet cafe every day.
>
> In the event that this becomes more of a problem, perhaps the tech
> folks should start working on a more substantial system for
> authenticating subscribers. Here's what I think would work:
>
> (1) Establish a toggle that people with developer status can use to
> switch between "permission required" and "no permission required"
> mode for accepting new subscriptions. When "permission required" is
> turned ON, new subscribers would have to pass their submission
> request through a sysop, who would have to approve it before they can
> begin posting. When it is turned OFF, people can subscribe the same
> way they do now. Most of the time, it would be turned OFF, but in
> situations where a persistent vandal is active, it could be turned
> ON. That would make it possible to deny access to the vandal until he
> or she loses interest and goes elsewhere.

This only works in conjuction with my idea above of requiring users to log
in to make changes.  Better to try only the less intrusive part first, and
if it doesn't suffice, something more radical can be considered.

> (2) Create a special page, computer-generated and available only to
> sysops, which lists all of the pending submission requests. It will
> list the nickname of each pending subscriber alongside a check box,
> so a sysop can go through and quickly approve a batch of names simply
> by running down the list, checking the boxes, and clicking a "submit"
> button. A separate check box next to each user name can be used to
> flag individuals for further scrutiny, and clicking on the name
> itself will take you to a talk page for that user. Most users can be
> quickly approved this way simply by verifying that their IP number is
> not on a banned list or range. The others can be contacted via email
> and asked a few questions. Of course, vandals could still get through
> eventually by giving disingenuous answers, but there would be enough
> barriers to entry to slow them down and keep them from simply running
> amok at will.

I like this idea better, but with a modification.  Sysops could designate
trusted users so that most submissions would not need to be queued for a
check.  Those that need to be checked can be examined directly to see
whether or not they are vandalous -- no need to engage in an email
exchange.

M Carling


from_name: Takuya Murata

body:
>It would help if you would read the arguments instead of
constantly
>repeating yourself.

Sorry for annoying you and the rest of everyone. I read the
arguments and I don't disagree with that. I think you
thought I didn't read your arugment because I didn't post a
mail arguing against your point.

Also, you have to notice that the fact is you believe wiki
might not help, and I believe it might. Then what do we do?.
Do I always have to convice you to try something new?
Consensus? Can we always reach the sole agreement?

Actually this is why I hate to partipate in the debate,
which is always endless and counterproductive. See Biography
standard in English wikipedia.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>It's me who put this in the "racialisme" article. The word may be used by
>quite some people, but I really think that it was invented by racist groups
>and people to justify racism. Links in Google don't and can't justify
>anything.
>
I agree that when the word racialism(e) was invented it may well have
been by racist groups.  This seems to have happened around 1900.  They
may very well have done it to make their racist views more acceptable.
 For many of their opponents there was no difference at all between
racialism and racism.  For others the distinction was a useful one.
 Accepting that distinction did not make them racist.  Nobody owns the word.

>And I also redirected the articles about "racisme anti-blanc" and "racisme ?
>l'envers" to "racisme". Personnally I don't think such articles should be in
>Wikipedia. I think that it doesn't improve the quality and reputation of
>Wikipedia.
>
Why shouldn't they be?  If these phenomena exist, they need to be
described fairly.  That doesn't mean agreeing with them.  A racist
article and an article about racism are two different things.

>However, I do not support the idea to block people who write racist articles.
>It's counter-productive. It's better to correct their articles and show them
>the limit (as defined by the law in France). And this as long as they are few
>and we can correct their articles.
>
The difficulty here is who decides what French law means?

Eclecticology


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> I totally agree with that. Then why don't we employ wiki to
> improve the sourcecode? Also, I don't know if it will work.
> Then why don't we try?

I've already replied to this:

http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-January/002384.html

It would help if you would read the arguments instead of constantly
repeating yourself.

Regards,

Erik


body:
> No more new features until jan 2004 (or so). Then allow 4 new ones or so.

Forget it. There's plenty of new stuff we need (Tomasz has touched upon
it), and most of it is not a problem from a performance perspective. What
we do need to do is discuss for every new feature what impact it might
have on performance. That should be a priority.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Challenge to Sheldon Rampton re: global warming (was: DW is still here - time for an IP ban)

body:
Hey, speaking of disingenuous answers, how about applying the NPOV to the [[global warming]] article? Are you able to step back from your advocacy and be neutral for a few minutes, and help us make a balanced article there?

One of the best ways to attain neutrality in a contentious article is for a person who believes passionately in one side to focus on making the best case for the OTHER SIDE. If you could do this, it would be a big help.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Racialisme

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>
> >It's me who put this in the "racialisme" article.
> The word may be used by
> >quite some people, but I really think that it was
> invented by racist groups
> >and people to justify racism. Links in Google don't
> and can't justify
> >anything.
> >
> I agree that when the word racialism(e) was invented
> it may well have
> been by racist groups.  This seems to have happened
> around 1900.  They
> may very well have done it to make their racist
> views more acceptable.
>  For many of their opponents there was no difference
> at all between
> racialism and racism.  For others the distinction
> was a useful one.
>  Accepting that distinction did not make them
> racist.  Nobody owns the word.

I believe that whoever set the word, the distinction
is *very* useful. Discussing (and maybe agreeing)
there are enough differences between humans to
taxonomise them in different groups (races) is an
*entirely*  different thing from using this
information to justify a specific behavior from one
group toward another.

> >And I also redirected the articles about "racisme
> anti-blanc" and "racisme ?
> >l'envers" to "racisme". Personnally I don't think
> such articles should be in
> >Wikipedia. I think that it doesn't improve the
> quality and reputation of
> >Wikipedia.
> >
> Why shouldn't they be?  If these phenomena exist,
> they need to be
> described fairly.  That doesn't mean agreeing with
> them.  A racist
> article and an article about racism are two
> different things.

The phenomena exist sure enough. And any attempt to
define words properly, to provide people with a common
frame can only enhance communication between humans,
relationships between humans and others living beings.
I can't figure how properly defining words could be
detrimental to wikipedia.

Another thing that might touch you better Yann. Dunno
if you have kids. No matter how well you try to
protect them, they end up knowing racism exist (and
that is good they discover it exist rather than
keeping eyes shut:-)). They look at things, listen to
conversations, surf on the net...and sure enough...one
day or another, they fell on an article about "racisme
anti-blanc".

If they are curious (and usually they are), they
wonder what it exactly means...
Look in the dic (as I did for some words as a kid),
and find nothing...weird, a word used by grown-ups,
but it is said not to exist ?
Unlike me as a kid, they will maybe be able to look on
the net.

And where do you think they will end up ????

Ahhhhhhh, la CELEBRISSIME CINQUIEME COLONNE !!!!!!!

http://5eme-colonne.org/

On y revient......

Ton gosse, pr?f?re tu qu'il apprenne ce qu'est le
racisme anti-blanc sur un site tel que la 5eme
colonne, ou dans un fabuleux article, bien document?,
neutre (dans le sens non pas machi macha de
politiquement correct tel que certains le concoivent,
mais dans le vrai sens : information compl?te non
biais?e pr?sentant tous les aspects de fa?on honnete
et acceptable par tous ?), bref sur Wikip?dia.

Pour ma part, c'est *tout choisi* !

> The difficulty here is who decides what French law
> means?
>
> Eclecticology

The other difficulty here is who decide that the
french wikipedia should follow the French law. Why not
the canadian one ? Or the swiss (ah neutralit? !), why
not the marrocan one ?

When was is decided the french wikipedia was french
only ?

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Open-Site.org]

body:
vladd wrote:

>>>When it comes to copyright, the real problem is not going to be with
>>>
>people who put copyrighted material into an on-line encyclopedia.
> That's easily removed as soon as it's recognized.  It's going to be
>with people who try to claim personal copyrights on openly licensed or
>even public domain material.  <<
>
>Public domain material is by definition uncopyrighted. People can not, by
>definition, claim personal copyrights on public domain materials. At best,
>they can argue whether a certain material is in public domain or not.
>
>Personal copyrights on openly licensed material is not something new. If I
>create a material and publish it under the GNU FDL license, I still have
>copyright on it and I'm free to distribute it under any other license that I
>choose to. People will be able to use my material according to the GNU FDL,
>or select the alternative licenses that I offer to them.
>
The problem is not that simple.  Under US law as it now stands copyright
lasts for 95 years, and that's plenty of time for lots of mischief.  A
lot of material gets published now with a copyright notice.  Such an
item may be a very long unattributed extract from a public domain source
(perhaps fromWikipedia or Open-site or an obscure old book) preceded by
one paragraph of original introductory material.  The copyright notice
doesn't make any distinction between what is original and copied
material.  Ten years later, when somebody uses a significant portion of
that article (not from the introduction) the person who first copied it
claims copyright violation.  The difficulty is not with the theoretical
rights that anybody has; from our vantage point these are quite clear.
 It is with proof, and who is in a position to defend material that is
in the public domain or under GNU-FDL license from wrongful claims of
copyright.  Stretch that process out over a 95 year period, and the
prospects are boggling!

Eclecticology


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Open-Site.org]

body:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  It is with proof, and who is in a position to defend material that is
> in the public domain or under GNU-FDL license from wrongful claims of
> copyright.  Stretch that process out over a 95 year period, and the
> prospects are boggling!

Prospects schmospects -- the size the old article revision database
is going to be in 2096, now *that's* mind-boggling!

3 gigabytes in the first two years; and it's not been a linear increase...
We're gonna need a bigger hard drive by then. I hope Jimbo can arrange it.
;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)