from_name: GerardM

subject:
Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: [Foundation-l] Re:
	Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

body:
I th

On 10/26/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/26/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > It might at some point pay to look at selling some of the older
> servers
> > > to buy newer ones. This would have two benefits:
> > >
> > > 1. we are now exclusively buying dual-opterons for apache webserving,
> > > these are significantly more powerful _in the same physical space_
> than
> > > our single-pentiums -- therefore, we can save a lot of rack space at
> the
> > > colo by replacing. (This space is not especially expensive, though, in
> > > the grand scheme of things.)
> > >
> > > 2. In addition to saving physical space, there is a fair amount of dev
> > > time which goes into working with 124 servers (the current count, I
> > > believe, except not all of them are installed just now) which could be
> > > reduced if we were running on half the number of servers. Wikipedia
> > > traffic is growing faster than Moore's Law, but even so, Moore's Law
> > > should make it possible for us to do more with fewer boxes.
> > >
> > > The first benefit can be quantified, the second cannot. (How much
> money
> > > should we be willing to spend to save the developers some time? My
> > > answer is: a LOT. Developer time is not free to us, it is infinitely
> > > expensive. What I mean by that is that it is a lot more cost effective
> > > to have volunteer devs working in a well-funded and exciting
> environment
> > > where they can play with cutting-edge technology, than it is to
> > > eventually be forced to hire devs to work with boring and annoying old
> > > hardware.)
> > >
> > > ----
> > >
> > > My suspicion is that by the time we are seriously ready to get rid of
> > > some old machines, they will have minimal market value. Dunno.
> >
> > If that is the case, then we could donate the machines to other free
> > content/software projects that are still much, much smaller than us.
> >
> > -- mav
>
>
> Or to schools without internet access, with Wikipedia pre-installed. :)
>
> By the way, I have to take issue with the statement that volunteer
> developer
> time is infinitely expensive. At the most it's slightly less expensive
> than
> the cost to hire someone to do the task (and c'mon, who wouldn't want to
> work for Wikimedia?). Otherwise, we're doing something wrong.

Hoi,
When you hire someone, you hire a "professional" he/she is a payed hack it
does not mean he is good or better and it does not mean he/she does have the
same involvement with what we do. We do not have the resources to hire
people, developers are a rare commodity for us and therefore they are truly
expensive. As to us doing something "wrong"; yes we do not have the money to
spend on development and there are several people that are of the opinion
that we should not even consider paying for development.
Thanks,
GerardM


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: foundation-l

from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
These are all very valid points. However, before we have a meeting, it
would seem rather sensible for the board to decide who the organizing
committee is. In that way, tasks will not be replicated, and efforts
will not be wasted. Do we know who the coordinators for this event are?

Danny

-----Original Message-----
From: SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>;
Wikimedia Translators <translators-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:11:38 -0400
Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 : general meeting & getting
involved

  Dear all,

Wikimania this past August was a joyous and wonderful event.  It was
remarkable above all for the geographic diversity of its attendees.

Help make the next Wikimania just as wonderful, and even more
international and multilingual.  Please translate this message and
pass it on to your respective mailing lists and wikis.

How to get involved :
1. Come to an IRC meeting next week.  We will be discussing conference
dates, among other things.  Note what times you can make it, or add to
the agenda, here:
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Planning#Meetings

2. Volunteer your time, language skills, and enthusiasm:
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Planning#Volunteering

3.  Sign up for yet another mailing list (wikimania-l).  It is
currently low-traffic and primarily English-language; two things you
can help change.
    http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l

4. Plan carpools or offer crash space for the event.  (harder to do
before the date is fixed, of course)
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Venue#Attendees

Organizing Wikimania is at once demanding and rewarding; and a chance
to learn about the inner workings of a large conference.  Please join
us on IRC, or on the wiki, to find out more.

++SJ
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 : general meeting & getting involved


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes
 DefaultSettings.php, 1.383, 1.384 Parser.php, 1.515, 1.516

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Update of /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes
>In directory sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net:/tmp/cvs-serv14307/includes
>
>Modified Files:
>	DefaultSettings.php Parser.php
>Log Message:
>new config option: $wgAllowExternalImagesFrom
>motivation: people want to remove the wikimedia logos, which are non-free,
>from commons. using this, we could move them to a trusted directory on the
>wikimedia servers, and access them from all wikis using absolute URLs.
>
>

This will break static HTML dumps and any other offline usage. Can't we
just change Commons policy instead?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
> > By the way, I have to take issue with the statement that volunteer
> > developer
> > time is infinitely expensive. At the most it's slightly less expensive
> > than
> > the cost to hire someone to do the task (and c'mon, who wouldn't want to
> > work for Wikimedia?). Otherwise, we're doing something wrong.
>
>
> Hoi,
> When you hire someone, you hire a "professional" he/she is a payed hack it
> does not mean he is good or better and it does not mean he/she does have
> the
> same involvement with what we do.

I believe that every job performed by volunteers here could be done by
someone who is paid to do it, with the same exact quality, at *some* price
point. Since there exists a price point, it's not *infinite*. The value of
volunteer labor doing something like maintaining servers can be quantified,
to a very high level of accuracy.

We do not have the resources to hire
> people, developers are a rare commodity for us and therefore they are
> truly
> expensive.

The whole reason this topic came up was to bring up the question of when
does it make sense to buy new servers to replace old ones. So the money to
buy the new servers (minus the savings in hosting costs) is what would be
used to hire those people.

Now look, labor is generally very expensive compared to servers, so the
savings would have to be really tremendous. But Jimbo implied that the cost
of labor was infinite, and not possible to quantify. I was just pointing out
that it's not.

As to us doing something "wrong"; yes we do not have the money to
> spend on development and there are several people that are of the opinion
> that we should not even consider paying for development.

My statement about doing something wrong was qualified with a specific
scenario. I have no idea if it's actually the case, in part because I have
no idea how much volunteer developer time is being spent on various things,
and what those volunteers would be willing to do if they didn't have to
spend that time doing whatever it is they do.

Yes, there are people of the opinion that we should not even consider paying
for development, at any cost. In my opinion these extremists are potentially
very detrimental to the project, and probably have a big overlap with those
who feel we should never have advertising at any cost. Unless they're
suggesting that Wikimedia start feeding and housing some of its volunteers
(which would be kind of neat), money is a requirement for the vast majority
of them.

Unfortunately there's something about money that causes people to get all up
in arms. I see money as little more than a mechanism to facilitate barter. I
guess some people don't even like barter, I really don't understand it
though.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA concern

body:
On 10/27/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> I am slightly concerned about the RfA for Acetic Acid. This is a user
> whose only attempt to create an article is [[vitaminwater]] which is
> really bad. He does however have overwhelming support (even from a
> couple of people I know) and clearly has a huge fanclub, and he hasnt
> done anything blatently wrong (apart from a perhaps unnecessary RfC).
>
> I was wondering about suggesting a mentoring program in how to write an
> article perhaps, which would be something I would be interested in
> creating anyway.
>
> I am sure he wont do any harm as an admin, but it all seems a bit odd.
>
> Justinc

A substantial fraction of our admins are largely worthless at writing
articles.  In fact, there's a good argument for the position that
people who can write articles should not be admins: we need them
writing articles, not running around breaking up fights.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA concern

body:
On 10/27/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Sounds like an irc star. That would explain a fan club. I can't stand
> irc, but I have no objection to folks who can constructively banter
> becoming administrators.

The name is vaguely familiar to me from IRC but not so much that I'd
qualify him as a "star".

Kelly


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pure Wiki Deletion

body:
> You ever seen a long running edit conflic where neither side with
> compramise? I have. they generaly end in one side or the other
> implodeing. You know who wins such conflicts? Not the side that was
> right or even the side with more people on. No it is the side which
> has the greater wiki warfare skills. The ones who know how to play the
> politics and their oponents emotions. The ones who have no problem
> with fighting a battle for months at a time. The ones who know how to
> play the intensity of the conflict so as to maxism stress on thier
> oponent.

That is a completely made up scenario. Edit wars last because the
status quo remain unchanged. When page blankings become the new
deletion system, it becomes easier to resolve the standstill.

Most articles nominated for deletion are about something that the
nominator didn't think was "notable." But the nominator is usually not
an expert on the subject and usually has added anything to the
article. The article is also usually very small. Since most people
think it is a complete waste of time (I'm guessing here) to edit an
article that will be deleted, they will refrain from it. The only
reason to edit the article is if you think that your edits will make
it so that the article will not be deleted. But it is much more
effective to ARGUE on the AFD page why you think that the article
should be kept. It is also more convenient to write something like
"Keep. This person has been on the cover of a magazine see [bla bla]"
than to write the same thing in a Wikipedia article.

That's why sane editors avoid AFD - it turns productive work into
pointless arguing. Not so with page blanking as deletion. Why? Mostly
because those who would vote Keep can instead add their arguments as
facts to the article without threat of it being completely erased. A
Keep vote becomes productive work.

As a side note, I think with page blanking as deletion, many more
articles would be deleted from Wikipedia. But that is not such a big
deal since mistakes can be rectified. Someone who votes delete only
has to look at the article in its current version and decide for him
or herself whether he or she thinks it merits for inclusion in
Wikipedia or not. Someone who votes keep has to go through the page
history and decide that any revision, despite that someone has voted
delete on it, should not be excluded from Wikipedia.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Previews

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>>>Half the time I click on "Save Page" the next screen is a "Preview" (and my
>>>edits are not yet saved).  I have been careful about this, and am
Me to - now seems fine, but last night I had the same problems.

> We don't know exactly why this problem happens, but it's probably caused by
> loss or temporary unavailability of session data. Brion says we still got
I suspect the same, as when the above effect appears I also have
problems to use the rollback function, it then gives an error message
saying something about session data if I recall it correctly.

> A closely related problem is being spontaneously logged out if you didn't
> select the "remember me" checkbox when you logged in.
Strangely, this only happened in the Thai wikipedia yesterday, while in
the english one the login was remembered at the same time.

[[w:en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]


list: commons-l

from_name: Felipe Micaroni Lalli

subject: [Commons-l] Should Commons host the Wikimedia Logos or not?

body:
I think the Wikimedia logos cannot to be on Commons. One exception open
others exceptions. Maybe a photo of a person with a T-shirt with the
Wikimedia logo...

hugs,
Felipe.

2005/10/26, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:
>
> Hi all.
>
> The Wikimedia logos are up for deletion in Commons *yet again*. I
> therefore started a page which is designed to give a once and for all
> answer on this matter. The page is:
>
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Alter_Wikimedia_Commons_policy_to_allow_Wikimedia_logos
>
> Please keep all comments to the talk page:
>
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Alter_Wikimedia_Commons_policy_to_allow_Wikimedia_logos
>
> Timeline for now is two weeks discussion, three weeks vote, if you
> feel it should be longer, please change it. This is a decision that ,
> in case of a "no we shouldn't" answer,will deeply affect all projects
> and require new technical implementations. So please do pass this on
> to your individual projects and translate the vote page on commons if
> needed. Thank you.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Delphine
> --
> ~notafish
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
um abra?o,
Felipe
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from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Unilateral action contrary to a vote from a rouge
	admnin, David Gerard

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>I disagree with this; in my experience twoversions has been useful in
>providing transparency to the nature of a dispute over two distinct
>versions of an article.  Differences of opinion over which version is
>more neutral are legitimate--balance is about judgement, not a black
>and white issue.  There may also be differences over other issues,
>such as style.  Most recently I used twoversions when an article
>rewrite was opposed.  The dispute was over whether the correct
>definition of the subject of the article was being used.
>
>
I've used it too, though darned if I can remember what the article was
at this point. The twoversions template didn't say anything about what
the _nature_ of the dispute between the two versions was, and it doesn't
give any indication that the two-version situation is good or permanent
(perhaps more emphasis can be added when it's restored that it's only a
temporary measure), so I don't think it'll be a tool for POV-splitting
articles in the long run. Perhaps if someone thinks it might be they
should check the articles that use it to see how long the template's
been in use on each.


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Foundation-l] Member Since. Was Rigging at RfA

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>> ...
> You can go to their user contributions page, scroll to the bottom
> and
> click "Earliest", and it'll list their first 50 edits.

Yeah, I know that. I meant in the page next to your sig, so that if
you have 50 people voting, you can tell at a glance how long the
user's been there.

Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Skyring edit history to date

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>He's become a difficult problem, & all of the easy solutions have
>been tried & shown not to work. And he's gotten to the point
>where attacking Wikipedia has become his life: calling that
>"pathetic" doesn't properly do it justice.

Skyring's life is denial. If he's in this much denial about being the
author of his own misfortunes on Wikipedia, he's well practiced in the
art and will be in denial about lots of things. However, he's actually
noteworthy enough to get an article (for his work on Bookcrossing -
he's doing getting a metric shitload of press and media on it of late,
check his blog, and his past involvements in politics). So who wants
to start [[Peter Mackay]]? It would make Wikipedia a better
encyclopedia by one useful article (on the guy who leads Bookcrossing
in Canberra and other things). I figure an article with 110%
verifiable and undeniable factual references detailing facts and
establishing encyclopedic nature to a degree that not even a weasel
like Skyring can wriggle out of would be a good thing..

- d.


from_name: Puddl Duk

subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA concern

body:
On 10/27/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/27/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> > I am slightly concerned about the RfA for Acetic Acid. This is a user
> > whose only attempt to create an article is [[vitaminwater]] which is
> > really bad. He does however have overwhelming support (even from a
> > couple of people I know) and clearly has a huge fanclub, and he hasnt
> > done anything blatently wrong (apart from a perhaps unnecessary RfC).
> >
> > I was wondering about suggesting a mentoring program in how to write an
> > article perhaps, which would be something I would be interested in
> > creating anyway.
> >
> > I am sure he wont do any harm as an admin, but it all seems a bit odd.
> >
> > Justinc
>
> A substantial fraction of our admins are largely worthless at writing
> articles.  In fact, there's a good argument for the position that
> people who can write articles should not be admins: we need them
> writing articles, not running around breaking up fights.
>
> Kelly

The old phrase "it takes all kinds" comes to mind. Just as some people
aren't good at writing, others aren't good at interaction. But we
really need both these, and many other qualities in administrators and
editors alike.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/27/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
>>A mass copy-and-paste nomination of articles for deletion without
>>providing any justification isn't disruptive?
>>
>>
>
>However I can't show that they are doing it to make a point
>
>
And you can't in my case either, because I really do have a reason why I
think those nominations should fail to delete those articles. I don't
vote "keep" unless I mean it.

Anyway, this back and forth POINTing isn't really furthering the
discussion of AfD's problems. If you want to "get" me under some rule or
another, go ahead; I won't argue it here.

>
>
>>I've now gone through all of my ComCat-nomination votes and expanded on
>>them with more extensive comments. Turns out that my initial instincts
>>were completely correct, after due reconsideration all of my votes
>>stayed "keep" (with one exception where I mistook a "NN,D" _vote_ by
>>ComCat as a _nomination_ instead - the actual nomination was
>>reasonable). Plenty of fodder for debate there, and plenty of effort
>>spent to back up my position.
>>
>>
>
>I'd bet tempted to go a stage further and not vote at all.
>
>
Why shouldn't I vote when I've got perfectly good reasons for casting a
vote? I really don't think that those AfDs should result in "delete",
and so I voted that they should result in "keep". Seems quite
straightforard. I'd vote "no deletion" instead, except I have no idea
how the closers will interpret that whereas "keep" has a pretty clear
prodivdence and means almost the same thing.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Joseph Reagle

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wale's explaination of the Stallman incident

body:
On Tuesday 18 October 2005 10:36, Joseph Reagle wrote:
> Unfortunately, that page is just ads and links now and Jimbo doesn't seem
to
> have a copy and he recommended this list as a possible source.

I have not been able to find a copy of that document, but Richard Stallman
was able to explain what happened from his point of view and gave me
permission to share it publicly:

============

Re: You and Nupedia?
From: "Richard M. Stallman" <rms at gnu.org>
To: Joseph Reagle
Message-Id: <E1EUoPy-0006Hp-2D at fencepost.gnu.org>

>So, evidently Jimmy Wales was able to explain the confusion, but,
>unfortunately, that document has been lost. I was wondering if you
>could tell me whether you intended to create a separate project,
>was there some confusion, or did you merely wish to express the
>principles of freedom that you thought would be important in such
>a project?

I was discussing with each of them at intervals of weeks or months.
Thus, in between messages, I mostly forgot about them both. Thus,
most of the time I was not consciously aware I was talking with two
different encyclopedia projects. Meanwhile, at least for some of the
time, it was not clear at the time that Nupedia would be free. Thus,
at some times when I was aware there were two projects, I could not
conclude that Gnupedia was superfluous.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Infinite
	BlockbyAbusiveAdmin/Extortion/Harassment/Fraudulent
	use ofWikipediaAbuse Emails

body:
Fred,

Here's the settlement.  Roll the page back to the agreed content and
lock it and unblock my accounts so I can edit
in the cultural areas.  Leaving me blocked is grounds for action.  Why
should I be blocked when it was your admins
who violated the laws?    Blocking me to avoid claims when you allow
others to edit is unlawful.  Was I blocked due to
my race?  Or perhaps due to my religious or culturual beliefs.  See
where this could go?   From my perspective, I was
a victim of stalking on this site, and I was blocked for political
reasons, not because I did anything wrong.  Making
claims you can block people for legal threats in the case of this person
may become a self fulfilling prophecy.

There's right and wrong, and you are an attorney.  You cannot block a
public forum for any reason or no reason.  It violates
the CDA and anti-trust legislation.  Think about it.

Jeff


subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing anonymously
	notice.

body:
>As the Board have been rather slow with publicising the new privacy
>policy, I have taken the step of adding a notice to the bottom of
>[[MediaWiki:Copyrightstext]] on the English-language Wikipedia (the text
>which is displayed when you click "Edit this page"), which mentions that
>if you are editing anonymously, your IP address will be publically and
>permanently associated with the edits, and if you're editing while
>logged in, your IP address will be stored for around 2 weeks.

Firstly, I must apologise for being so terse and shitty on IRC last night.

Secondly, the message (which is [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]]) got this edit:

 00:16, 27 October 2005 A Man In Black (rv - Why is a warning like
this necessary? Why is it being added to a MediaWiki page without
discussion?)

I did say that seeking outside opinion would be a good idea ... or
waiting to hear back from the Board, if this is of Board-level
importance.

Your added text was (at the top, not the bottom):

    By editing Wikipedia, your [[IP address]] (which is [[personally
identifiable information]]) is recorded. If you are not logged in,
your IP address will be publicly associated with your edits. If you
are logged in, your IP address will not be publicly displayed. Please
read our [[wikipedia:privacy policy|privacy policy]].

This is terrible in all sorts of ways.
(a) it's too long and too wordy.
(b) It will either scare or be utterly ignored by people who don't
care, and will cause noisy stupidity from those who think the sky is
falling if we block Tor because of vandals.
(c) You can't educate people about what IP addresses are in an
apparently important warning message. That's what links are for, not
warning messages. If they don't know an IP address is personally
identifiable information, this really isn't the place to tell them
inline.
(d) No-one reads a sentence over five words. No-one reads past the
second sentence. No-one reads a word over two syllables unless they
have to. (This one is really hard to keep to ...)
(e) Probably more.

(Your previous version was: "Warning: By submitting edits to
Wikipedia, your IP address, which is personally-identifiable
information, will be associated with your edit. If you are not logged
in, your IP address will be permanently and publically associated with
your edits. If you are logged in, your IP address will not be
publically displayed, however it will be kept for around 2 weeks.")

My suggested wording is:

    All edits to Wikipedia are recorded and visible, with the [[IP
address]] they are from. Your IP address is publicly visible on edits
where you are not [[Special:Userlogin|logged in]]. See
[[wikipedia:privacy policy|privacy policy]].

Says all we need, promises nothing.

If this is important enough to add for Foundation reasons, it's
important enough to get right. For *hundreds* of projects, not just
en:.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing anonymously notice.


subject: [WikiEN-l] I've said it before, I'll say it again...

body:
On 10/27/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> I am purposefully breaking the thread here:
>
> Ryan Delaney wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Do you really want deletion in the hands of these people? Other than a
> >>mild interest in which of our edit warriors would come out on top I
> >>can see nothing posertive about this aproach.
> >>
> >
> > It sounds to me like you just don't believe in the idea of a Wiki in
> > general. I could make the exact same argument against letting anyone
> > edit the article; the more persistent edit warrior always wins, so
> > what's the point? If that's your view, we can't even have a discussion
> > about this. But it makes me wonder why you are involved with Wikipedia
> > at all. :\
> >
>
> I've said it before, I'll say it again:
>
> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
>
> Wikipedia being a wiki is a means to an end, NOT the other way around.

 Wikipedia is also a wiki. And while wiki might be merely a means to an end,
it is the means that was adopted by Wikipedia. It also seems to work a lot
better than the alternatives, at least for the type of budget Wikipedia has.
You might have some other ideas how to create an encyclopedia, but I think
you'll have a tough time convincing others in the project to adopt them.
 Do you believe in the idea of a Wiki in general? If not, why *do* you
bother participating in Wikipedia, which is clearly a wiki and is going to
continue to be so as long as Wikipedia still exists.


from_name: Kerim Friedman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bibtex

body:
Does anyone know of any efforts to integrate bibtex citation data into
MediWiki? Something like this plugin for PMWiki?

<http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/BibtexRef>

Thanks!

kerim


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] Benefits of advertising (was
	Our	exponentiallyincreasing costs)

body:
Poe, Marshall wrote:

>Could someone, just for the benefit of this (relative) outsider and
>journalist, explain what the basic objections are to AdSense type ads on
>Wikipedia? I know you'll be speaking for yourself and not the community,
>and will read the explanations accordingly.
>
>
 From my point of view:

1) I think ads on the internet typically look gaudy and unprofessional.
Reliable, authoritative pages from non-profit organizations rarely have
ads---take a look at, say, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
which is also in financial straits but ad-free
(http://plato.stanford.edu).  Or http://www.gnu.org.  Take a look at
http://www.dailykos.com for an extreme example of the opposite.

2) By their keyword placement, they allow people with money and a bit of
trial and error to purchase prominently-displayed links to rebuttals on
specific Wikipedia article pages.

-Mark


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't punish the articles for the sake of problem
	editors (was Unilateral action contrary to a vote from a
	rouge admnin, David Gerard)

body:
geni wrote:

> Not all dissputes are over NPOV.

I know not all uses are for POV forks. But most of them are, and it's
a blatant encouragement to do so.

Some editors have a fondness for the idea of POV forking so as to
minimise editor conflict; but this makes a bad and non-NPOV article at
the expense of readers for the sake of problem editors. It's the
editors that are being problematic, not the article; whack their heads
together, don't make a bad article.

I mean, WTF. Voting on NPOV?

- d.


from_name: SJ

body:
Which tasks and efforts might be duplicated or wasted?  The purpose of
a meeting is to encourage discussion, so that people interested in
Wikimania can throw out ideas or volunteer to help organize the event.
 I don't see how anyone can know who would be coordinating the event,
or what it would involve, before these conversations have started.

Right now the larger problem seems to be the lack of public discussion
about Wikimania, replicated or otherwise.  July seems like a long way
away, but it isn't truly that far off.

--SJ

On 10/27/05, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> These are all very valid points. However, before we have a meeting, it
> would seem rather sensible for the board to decide who the organizing
> committee is. In that way, tasks will not be replicated, and efforts
> will not be wasted. Do we know who the coordinators for this event are?
>
> Danny
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>;
> Wikimedia Translators <translators-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:11:38 -0400
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 : general meeting & getting
> involved
>
>   Dear all,
>
> Wikimania this past August was a joyous and wonderful event.  It was
> remarkable above all for the geographic diversity of its attendees.
>
> Help make the next Wikimania just as wonderful, and even more
> international and multilingual.  Please translate this message and
> pass it on to your respective mailing lists and wikis.
>
> How to get involved :
> 1. Come to an IRC meeting next week.  We will be discussing conference
> dates, among other things.  Note what times you can make it, or add to
> the agenda, here:
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Planning#Meetings
>
> 2. Volunteer your time, language skills, and enthusiasm:
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Planning#Volunteering
>
> 3.  Sign up for yet another mailing list (wikimania-l).  It is
> currently low-traffic and primarily English-language; two things you
> can help change.
>     http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
>
> 4. Plan carpools or offer crash space for the event.  (harder to do
> before the date is fixed, of course)
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Venue#Attendees
>
>
> Organizing Wikimania is at once demanding and rewarding; and a chance
> to learn about the inner workings of a large conference.  Please join
> us on IRC, or on the wiki, to find out more.
>
> ++SJ
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pure Wiki Deletion

body:
On 10/27/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's why sane editors avoid AFD - it turns productive work into
> pointless arguing. Not so with page blanking as deletion. Why? Mostly
> because those who would vote Keep can instead add their arguments as
> facts to the article without threat of it being completely erased. A
> Keep vote becomes productive work.

Except of course the article might as well be erased.

--
geni


subject:
[Foundation-l] Benefits of advertising (was Our exponentially
	increasing costs)

body:
On 10/27/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dan Grey wrote:
> >On 27/10/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com <http://gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> >> A full one-third of that hard core sufficiently dedicated to Wikipedia
> >> to spend their own scarce cash going all the way to Wikimania 2005,
> >> wasn't it? Something about that doesn't sound "insignificant" to me.
> >> Maybe it does to you.
>
> >I think you're under-estimating the total number of editors WP has,
> >over-estimating who'd leave, and over-valuing their importance.
> >Where'd you get that figure from anyway?
>
> This list:
>
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-October/004659.html
>
> "Apparently a poll was done at Wikimania and 2/3 of people were
> against it and 1/3 said they'd leave. So yeah, there's one good
> argument not to have ads, I guess. I just can't figure out what any of
> the other ones are."
>
> (I've only just noticed it was posted by Anthony DiPierro, who may or
> may not be a primary source - was he at Wikimania?)
>
>
> - d.

 Nope, I read it somewhere on meta (can't remember where and can't check
right now), so it's merely rumor at this point (which is why I said
"Apparently").


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
On 27 Oct 2005, at 05:06, geni wrote:
>
> No it shoulds be dissregarded because WP:POINT. I take it you conceed
> that the nominator did in fact take more effort to nominate than you
> did to vote.

The nominator is just wasting everyones time. In one case the article is
a joke (Mattism), but was listed as "NN D". This is not helpful,
especially
as it means that everyone who wants to vote has to do the research
rather
than the nominator. One of the articles was part of a series, so
nominating
it alone was stupid (I think he did it as it had school in the name).

The amount of time wasted makes this tantamount to vandalism and I think
blocking the user from VfD would be a suitable response.

Justinc


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing anonymously
	notice.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Previews

body:
On 26/10/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> > We don't know exactly why this problem happens, but it's probably caused
> > by
> > loss or temporary unavailability of session data. Brion says we still got
> > these reports when we put sessions in NFS, so memcached can't explain the
> > problem in its entirety, but nonetheless I'd be inclined to think the
> > current increase in reports is due to load on the memcached servers. We
> > should probably try installing memcached on another 10 or 15 servers and
> > see
> > if that fixes the problem.
> >
> > A closely related problem is being spontaneously logged out if you didn't
> > select the "remember me" checkbox when you logged in.
>
>
> I've noticed that problem since the upgrade - sometimes a second or third
> submit does it, sometimes it never works and I just copy the edit to
> notepad, close Firefox, and try again. I'd say it happens maybe every third
> edit. This is very different from the timeout messages.

It was in existence before the upgrade - I had a spate of it twice in
eight months or so - but was quite obscure, and I believe most people
just thought "bugger, I hit 'preview' not 'save'". Anecdotally, it did
start happening a lot more just after the upgrade; I don't know if
that suggests a software issue or simply a load one.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 10/27/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> The twoversions template didn't say anything about what
> the _nature_ of the dispute between the two versions was, and it doesn't
> give any indication that the two-version situation is good or permanent
> (perhaps more emphasis can be added when it's restored that it's only a
> temporary measure), so I don't think it'll be a tool for POV-splitting
> articles in the long run. Perhaps if someone thinks it might be they
> should check the articles that use it to see how long the template's
> been in use on each.

The problem with {{twoversions}} is when it becomes a way of life for
the article.

Too bad we can't rig it so the template explodes after seven days.

Kelly


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Rigging at RfA

body:
>[[User:Anonymous editor]] is contesting for Adminship. Many votes in his
>support are by usernames created in the last couple of days, and their only
>contribution to wikipedia has been that vote. When I pointed that out,
>[[User:Anonymous editor]] deleted my comments, marking his deletions as a
>"minor edit", and his close admin friend [[User:Slimvirgin]] blocked me.
>This pair is known for misusing wikipedia policies and admin powers in the
>past, for example, with reference to the [[Islamophobia]] article.
>Kindly look into the past credentials of [[User:Anonymous editor]], and cast
>your vote.

I have to get around to doing a pile of sockchecking [*] on this
precise matter. If you see an edit from me placing strikes through a
pile of the "Oppose" votes, you'll know why.

It may be necessary for bureaucrats to look very closely at these
votes or kill the RFA and restart it or try again later, in case
supporters have been swayed by the apparent mass of 'oppose' votes.

- d.

[*] The problem is I don't scale. We need more users with checkuser
access; how to arrange this is a vexed question, because the Board has
the willies about the privacy policy issue. It's not a matter to put
to a vote, any more than root access is. I discussed this with Tim
Starling last night and will hopefully send an email to the Board
tonight. It needs sorting out properly and correctly, but soon. I have
a couple of prospects in mind on en:.

[cc'ed to foundation-l]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rigging at RfA


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
On 10/27/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:

> The amount of time wasted makes this tantamount to vandalism and I think
> blocking the user from VfD would be a suitable response.
>
> Justinc

Maybe maybe not but there is no way under the rules to do that.

--
geni


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
Some points here:

Before answering what might be duplicated or wasted, let me ask:
1. Do you have a list of what tasks need to be done?
2. Since some of these tasks involve representing the foundation to
potential donors and making snap decisions regarding funding, do you
know who is authorized to make these decisions?
3. Have said people come aboard on this?
4. Are there any tasks which require professional assistance, and do we
have any professionals within the community who are willing to assume
these responsibilities?
5. What channels of communication are there to avoid contradictory
messages to potential sponsors, supporters, suppliers, etc. -- for
instance, if I am in the process of negotiating a price of $500 for
food, and someone else had already told them we will pay $700, my
position is weakened considerably.
6. Who are the on-the-ground people who will be conducting these
negotiations? What are their relations to the community? Have they
attended the previous Wikimania or other, similar events?
7. Why are we changing the name? How does that help in our effort to
brand our product?
8. Who is qualified to allow the use of our logo without it becoming a
trademark violation? Allowing people to use it freely is a surefire way
to lose our rights to it.
9. WHO IS KEEPING RECORDS OF ALL COSTS, RECEIPTS, ETC. HOW WILL THEY BE
KEPT? (intentionally caps)

Wikimania is an event that will cost tens of thousands of dollars. It
is very easy to blow that kind of money without even noticing it.
Certain key decisions will have to be made in a top-down manner,
considering the financial, legal, and other implications of the
decision.

Danny

-----Original Message-----
From: SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 11:00:57 -0400
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 : general meeting & getting
involved

  Which tasks and efforts might be duplicated or wasted?  The purpose of
a meeting is to encourage discussion, so that people interested in
Wikimania can throw out ideas or volunteer to help organize the event.
 I don't see how anyone can know who would be coordinating the event,
or what it would involve, before these conversations have started.

Right now the larger problem seems to be the lack of public discussion
about Wikimania, replicated or otherwise.  July seems like a long way
away, but it isn't truly that far off.

--SJ

On 10/27/05, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> These are all very valid points. However, before we have a meeting, it
> would seem rather sensible for the board to decide who the organizing
> committee is. In that way, tasks will not be replicated, and efforts
> will not be wasted. Do we know who the coordinators for this event
are?
>
> Danny
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>;
> Wikimedia Translators <translators-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:11:38 -0400
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 : general meeting & getting
> involved
>
>   Dear all,
>
> Wikimania this past August was a joyous and wonderful event.  It was
> remarkable above all for the geographic diversity of its attendees.
>
> Help make the next Wikimania just as wonderful, and even more
> international and multilingual.  Please translate this message and
> pass it on to your respective mailing lists and wikis.
>
> How to get involved :
> 1. Come to an IRC meeting next week.  We will be discussing conference
> dates, among other things.  Note what times you can make it, or add to
> the agenda, here:
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Planning#Meetings
>
> 2. Volunteer your time, language skills, and enthusiasm:
>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Planning#Volunteering
>
> 3.  Sign up for yet another mailing list (wikimania-l).  It is
> currently low-traffic and primarily English-language; two things you
> can help change.
>     http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
>
> 4. Plan carpools or offer crash space for the event.  (harder to do
> before the date is fixed, of course)
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006:Venue#Attendees
>
>
> Organizing Wikimania is at once demanding and rewarding; and a chance
> to learn about the inner workings of a large conference.  Please join
> us on IRC, or on the wiki, to find out more.
>
> ++SJ
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] More at the Register

body:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/27/wikipedia_britannica_and_linux/

I sent a lengthy message, which Mr Orlowski represented with some
creativity, and the version run almost reflects things I said. I
strongly suggest that anyone answering one of Mr Orlowski's articles
in future also sends a copy to the editor directly:
http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_the_reg/?user=joef . I have no
idea if it'll make any difference, but at least the editor can't then
claim he wasn't aware.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pure Wiki Deletion

body:
On 10/27/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> It sounds to me like you just don't believe in the idea of a Wiki in
> general. I could make the exact same argument against letting anyone
> edit the article; the more persistent edit warrior always wins, so
> what's the point?

Because you can negotate on text. There are more than two posible
outcomes which means it is posible to come up with an alturnartive
that is vaugely aceptable to both sides. This is not posible if
someone want to delete the article

> If that's your view, we can't even have a discussion
> about this. But it makes me wonder why you are involved with Wikipedia
> at all. :\
>
> Ryan

We protect articles all the time thus technicaly pure wiki editing has
already failed.
--
geni


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Ideas for AfD

body:
On 10/26/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/26/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Supports what consensus? I just said, if people can't come to a general
> > agreement, then there *is* no consensus. You seem to be mistaking
> majority
> > with consensus.
>
> General aggreement isn't going to happen any more on anything. As such
> in order to get things done we have to shift over to super majority.
> If you don't like this go and join a smaller project.
>
> --
> geni

 Like I said, I can come to accept it if the process is changed from
consensus to majority rule. If you think Wikipedia should drop consensus as
a goal, by all means make that argument. What I don't accept is redefining
the term consensus to mean majority rule.
 Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pure Wiki Deletion

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:

>It sounds to me like you just don't believe in the idea of a Wiki in
>general. I could make the exact same argument against letting anyone
>edit the article; the more persistent edit warrior always wins, so
>what's the point? If that's your view, we can't even have a discussion
>about this. But it makes me wonder why you are involved with Wikipedia
>at all. :\

Probably the single most damaging thing about AFD is that it
encourages participants to Assume Bad Faith. That's why it's a
poisonous pit so many of us don't wish to participate in. And that's
also why the rise in proceduralism over content.

Again, don't take my word for it. Read some of the discussions, see
the bad faith, see the personal attacks.

(I dont' mean geni, I mean VFD/AFD/VFU in particular.)

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Can you trust Wikipedia?"

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> The Guardian has a story entitled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" in which
> various specialists rate Wikipedia articles in their field of
> knowledge: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1599116,00.html
>
> At the very least, it will draw attention to the articles reviewed,
> particularly the article on [[haute couture]], which Vogue's editor
> rated at 0/10.
>
> Noted Wikipedia critic Robert McHenry rates the [[Encylopedia]]
> article at 5/10: not nearly good enough, but it's a start... it might
> well be worthwhile to try to improve Wikipedia's McHenry Index by
> improving the quality of this article, and backing up its statement
> with solid cites. Downplaying the self-reference to Wikipedia own
> fabulousness might be a useful first step.
>
> The other article ratings were:
>
> [[Steve Reich]] 7/10
> [[Basque people]] 7/10
> [[TS Eliot]] 6/10
> [[Samuel Pepys]] 6/10
> [[Bob Dylan]] 8/10
>
> A friend forwarded me a link to this; they have an interest in one of
> the fields reviewed, and commented that they were somewhat dubious
> about the factual accuracy of one of the criticisms made in the
> article ;-)

One distinctive feature of Wikipedia is the ability to self-correct.  A
simple issue like the Wheatley/Wheatly spelling in the Pepys article can
be checked, and if need be corrected, very quickly.  What would be more
interesting would be to have these same critics review the same articles
a month later to comment on the changes that have taken place as a
result of their criticism.

Ec


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Ratings again (was: Oour quality could
	rival Encyclopedia Britannica)

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:

>>A previous version of the code (not the current version, I think?)
>>loaded *all* revisions of the article being rated, and switching it on
>>would have caused an extremely unhappy DB server and a top-50 error
>>message pretty much instantly ;-)

>I *think* I fixed this...

So how do we establish this to Brion's satisfaction?

- d.


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee elections, 2005

body:
On 10/27/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> In the past you've alleged voting blocks in RfA based on their "deletionist"
> tendencies, and this was discussed on this mailing list.  Are you still
> making this claim?

I haven't seen as much of that, lately.  The voting blocks I believe
to exist seem more to be based on social networks rather than any
particular position on Wikipedia policy.  Of course, at least one of
these social networks does seem to have a strong deletionist bent.

It would be interesting to do a social proximity analysis based on RFA
supports (and maybe also RFC opinion supports); I suspect you'd find
several well-defined cliques.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] New Ideas for AfD

body:
On 10/27/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/27/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Like I said, I can come to accept it if the process is changed from
> > consensus to majority rule. If you think Wikipedia should drop consensus
> as
> > a goal, by all means make that argument.
>
> I don't think it should be droped as a goal but I do think we should
> be realistic enough to accept that in certian areas it isn't going to
> happen.

 I actually think a consensus approach toward deletion would be more
efficient. It is essentially the approach used for speedy deletion, and a
lot less time is wasted on speedy deletion. The problem with VFD is that
individual articles are considered one at a time rather than considering the
base questions and coming to agreement on that first. If we adopted a
deletion standard, via consensus, saying what factors should be considered
with regard to say a Webcomic, then a simple majority rules vote on whether
or not a particular Webcomic fits those standards would be simple and
efficient.
 Furthermore, if we want simply a majority rules system, then there are more
efficient ways to do this as well. I proposed a representative system, for
instance, so that not all Wikipedians have to monitor the process
constantly, but they can elect representatives to vote for them. The
representative could be chosen proportionally, so that all the different
opinions could be represented. This alone would save tons of time, and it'd
more fairly represent the opinions of everyone, as well. But as long as we
delude ourselves into believe that our current system represents a
consensus, things like this will be thrown out, because "Wikipedia isn't a
democracy."

> What I don't accept is redefining
> > the term consensus to mean majority rule.
> > Anthony
>
> And destory all the hard work on the wikipedia newspeak project?
>
>
> --
> geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA concern

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>A substantial fraction of our admins are largely worthless at writing
>articles.  In fact, there's a good argument for the position that
>people who can write articles should not be admins: we need them
>writing articles, not running around breaking up fights.
>
>
At the moment, even granting that viewpoint, adminship is still pretty
useful just for editing.  I can't count how many times it would have
been a real pain in the ass if I hadn't been able to do things like
delete a redirect to make way for a move, not to mention needing admin
rights to edit things like [[Wikipedia:In_the_news]] in the first place.

-Mark


body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>Neil Harris wrote:

>> Hmm. 2500 hits/sec * 86400 secs/day * $1 CPM = $216,000 / _day_, or
>> $78,000,000+/year. Have you considered that the Wikimedia foundation
>> board might be aware of this, and that its decision not to put up
>> advertising might be a principled decision, rather than motivated by
>> "fear of money"?

>We don't have 2500 hits/sec, we have 2500 requests/sec, i.e. including
>images, stylesheets, etc. The difference is roughly a factor of 3. The
>income would thus be closer to $26M.
>By these figures, we could cover our current operating costs by putting
>ads on the site for two weeks per year. I'm not sure if it's a good idea
>though.

I think recent discussion on en: re the Answers.com deal has
established that if we put ads on en: Wikipedia, a significant
proportion of contributors will feel sufficiently betrayed and ripped
off to get up and *leave*. Certainly enough to start a viable fork.
For no good reason of operating policy, and to the detriment of both
forks.

Whether this is foolish or not is debatable, but it is the case. I'm
not sure which sizable Wikipedia this *wouldn't* happen on. Gloriously
tempting buckets of money or no.

- d.


body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>Is there an easy way to find how long ago a user has been a member?
>Maybe a special tag that renders that automatically?
>
>
You can go to their user contributions page, scroll to the bottom and
click "Earliest", and it'll list their first 50 edits.

-Mark


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 27/10/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think recent discussion on en: re the Answers.com deal has
> established that if we put ads on en: Wikipedia, a significant
> proportion of contributors will feel sufficiently betrayed and ripped
> off to get up and *leave*. Certainly enough to start a viable fork.
> For no good reason of operating policy, and to the detriment of both
> forks.

I wonder how they'd pay for their fork...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if the choice is between a
website with ads and no site at all, I'll take ads.

The relatively small number of editors who will throw a hissy-fit off
won't be missed - new editors arrive all the time, and many eventually
crawl back after a public foot-stomping session anyway.

Dan


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: copyright and NOR policies re: math and science

body:
On 10/26/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> But in many fields, esp. mathematics and some scientific fields, the
> distinction between "facts" and "creative work" or "ideas" isn't so
> clear-cut.  A previous poster seemed to imply, if I understand correctly,
> that one cannot write, e.g. "E = mc^2" without attributing fair use to
> Einstein.  This seems ridiculous to me.

Two things:

1. "Scientific facts" cannot be copyrighted. I am fairly sure that
even "scientific theories" would fall under this. Of course, claiming
priority for something you did not come up with yourself is unethical,
but I don't think there is any recourse to copyright law. Scientific
laws cannot be copyrighted. Specific scientific _procedures_ can be
*patented* (not copyrighted), but that does not prohibit discussing
how they work in any way (it just puts limits on how one can reproduce
them).
2. It should be noted of course that E = mc^2 would not be
copyrightable anyway because its copyright, if it had one, would be
expired (was published in 1905).

> In mathematics, there often is no
> way to "paraphrase" a result, so that you are presenting "the facts" but not
> the "creative work".  For example, suppose someone in analytic number theory
> proves yet another technically tedious result on the zeta function.  Just
> imagine an expression full of integrals and special functions that goes on
> for an entire line (or more).  By the above interpretation, how is one to
> present this result without violating copyright?  After all, there is no way
> to "paraphrase" the equation.  And what about a proof?  One can always
> paraphrase a proof, but at the end of the day, you're really violating
> copyright in spirit under the above interpretation as much as if you copied
> verbatim.

I'm pretty sure mathematical proofs would not be copyrightable. They
do not represent "creativity" in the legal sense -- they are the
logical followings of a given set of circumstances. (None of this is
meant to imply that they don't require a great deal of creativity in a
larger sense to process and figure out) At least, that's how I'd
imagine a court would rule.

Even in something as non-scientific as the writing history (I say this
as a historian, mind you), "facts" are not copyrightable. Even a
particular structuring of them is not unless taken more or less
verbatim. Again, not giving credit (plaigiarism) is a bad thing, but
in many instances copyright law provides little recourse for that
unless it was truly copied from an original. I could write my own
version of the same facts in a given book and have full claim to a
copyright in this instance. In fact this happens all the time -- such
is how most "popular" works of history (and science) are composed.
Sometimes people resent this, but I've never heard of a successful
copyright lawsuit in this respect.

> This brings me to another point that I don't think was addressed when I
> brought it up -- many people seem to think that NOR means that every single
> mathematical argument in wikipedia requires a reference to the published
> literature.  Again, this is ridiculous.

I think a good line of work with NOR is to say that every fact which
could be reasonably contested should be cited. That is, if I write an
article the History of X, and I say that on such-and-such a date,
so-and-so did something, I might from the get-go assume that this is
common knowledge (at least among specialists). If someone comes to the
talk page and says, "Hey, I don't know about that," then it is my duty
to pull out some other source which says it. I think citation is
allowed to be an evolving thing.

A practical example: In the [[eugenics]] article, there were a lot of
statements about what the Nazi sterilization programs were like
(common knowledge amongst most people who have done a little reading
on this). A fellow who did not know much about this history came along
and said that he found these things incredible and wanted a citation.
And so I gave him half a dozen. No big deal -- a legitimately
contested fact is worth citing. There are limits of course -- people
who come in and demand a citation for things such as "World War II
occurred" can probably be regarded as people trying to game the system
in some way, but I think with good faith, good judgment will prevail.

It's not hard to reference literature. It's also not hard to have
nested referencing -- for example, I needn't cite that there was a
government called Nazi Germany in the article on eugenics, but there
can be ample citing in the article on Nazi Germany for that to be
sufficient.

FF


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 : general meeting & getting involved

body:
On 10/27/05, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Some points here:
>
> Before answering what might be duplicated or wasted, let me ask:

What do these questions have to do with a meeting of community members
to talk about Wikimania and share ideas?  Difficult aspects of
logistics and finance would not be well-served by a general meeting,
nor would anyone be interested in them.

> 7. Why are we changing the name? How does that help in our effort to
> brand our product?

This sounds like something that might come up at a general meeting, but...
What name are we changing?  What product are you talking about?

++SJ


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Ratings again (was: Oour quality
	could rival Encyclopedia Britannica)

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Neil Harris wrote:
>
>
>
>>Finally, in any case, since ratings would only be an experiment during
>>this phase, the whole ratings system could be turned off at any time if
>>it presented a serious problem.
>>
>>
>
>
>A previous version of the code (not the current version, I think?)
>loaded *all* revisions of the article being rated, and switching it on
>would have caused an extremely unhappy DB server and a top-50 error
>message pretty much instantly ;-)
>
>
I *think* I fixed this...

Magnus


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Ratings again (was: Oour quality
	could	rival Encyclopedia Britannica)

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

>
> Am I being naive here, or would a super-dumb implementation with a
> single table with the columns shown below be enough to work in the
> short term?
>
> Page_ID
> Revision_ID
> User_ID
> Rating_ID
> Rating value
> Timestamp

This is what I did; no timestamp, but a varchar for comments. Topics to
rate and their range (e.g, 1-5) are encoded here as well for user #0.
That's about as dumb as it gets ;-)

Magnus


from_name: David Gerard

body:
>The relatively small number of editors who will throw a hissy-fit off
>won't be missed - new editors arrive all the time, and many eventually
>crawl back after a public foot-stomping session anyway.

A full one-third of that hard core sufficiently dedicated to Wikipedia
to spend  their own scarce cash going all the way to Wikimania 2005,
wasn't it? Something about that doesn't sound "insignificant" to me.
Maybe it does to you.

>I wonder how they'd pay for their fork...

A fork would be a disaster for both prongs of the fork, but that
doesn't mean it wouldn't be a certainty.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Page freezing on "good" articles

body:
There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of
protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good",
in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen
even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the
problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.

Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?

In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for
Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the
opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby
people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article
was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This
article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit
it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of
"frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA
which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review,
no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out
(hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those
who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which
would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a
talk page.

So anyway, I'm not caught up on the latest status of this debate, but
I think something of this sort might be a good idea, and prevent the
sort of incoherence that sneaks into even good articles over a long
period of time.

(And before anyone points out that this would make it hard for new
users to edit such articles -- that would be the *point* of such a
policy, not an unintended consequence. And it would, ideally, focus
users away from such articles and onto the legions which still need
basic work).

FF


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes
	DefaultSettings.php, 1.383, 1.384 Parser.php, 1.515, 1.516

body:
Tim Starling:

> This will break static HTML dumps and any other offline usage. Can't we
> just change Commons policy instead?

I'm not getting into the discussion on whether we should change the
policy. I do think that *if* we're going to delete the logos from
Commons, a viable alternative should exist to have them easily usable in
a Wikimedia context without re-uploading them to many wikis. Having a

	http://upload.wikimedia.org/nonfree/

directory might be one way to do that. Static dumps, when viewed online,
should still work if they are generated using the same settings. For
offline viewing, the dumper would have to mirror the nonfree directory.

I'm happy if the few new lines of code are removed if the vote is in
favor of keeping the images on Commons, though the whitelist ability
might be useful in other contexts as well, e.g. Intranet use.

Erik


from_name: Ryan Delaney

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

Alphax wrote:

>
> I've said it before, I'll say it again:
>
> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
>
> Wikipedia being a wiki is a means to an end, NOT the other way
> around.

Naturally. But that isn't an answer to the point I was making. If
someone wants to say that "PWD is terrible because there would be edit
wars" they have to explain why deletion edit wars would be any more
horrible than content or vandalism edit wars. We can handle the last
two well enough; what's wrong with the first? It just doesn't explain
the basis for the judgment that deletion ought to be treated
differently from other edits.

Ryan
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from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: copyright and NOR policies

body:
>From: Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>

>I think a good line of work with NOR is to say that every fact which
>could be reasonably contested should be cited. That is, if I write an
>article the History of X, and I say that on such-and-such a date,
>so-and-so did something, I might from the get-go assume that this is
>common knowledge (at least among specialists). If someone comes to the
>talk page and says, "Hey, I don't know about that," then it is my duty
>to pull out some other source which says it. I think citation is
>allowed to be an evolving thing.

I think this is _exactly_ right. And ought to apply
to other situations involving "common knowledge" among people
reasonably knowledgeable about the topic.


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Firstly, I must apologise for being so terse and shitty on IRC last night.

No you must not! It's fine.

> My suggested wording is:
>
>     All edits to Wikipedia are recorded and visible, with the [[IP
> address]] they are from. Your IP address is publicly visible on edits
> where you are not [[Special:Userlogin|logged in]]. See
> [[wikipedia:privacy policy|privacy policy]].
>
> Says all we need, promises nothing.

That's good, I would prefer that we ask people to "read" the privacy
policy rather than just "see" it though.

> If this is important enough to add for Foundation reasons, it's
> important enough to get right. For *hundreds* of projects, not just
> en:.

It's absolutely important to get right. I'm glad that we've got some
discussion going over it.

Chris


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA concern

body:
> A substantial fraction of our admins are largely worthless at writing

> > articles. In fact, there's a good argument for the position that
> > people who can write articles should not be admins: we need them
> > writing articles, not running around breaking up fights.
> >
> > Kelly
>
>
I think that admin powers are primarily editing tools which, secondarily,
can be used for community governance. Someone does not have to be an admin
to make peace and sort out fights - in fact, the only admin tools that can
be used to break up fights are to lock a page (which does not fix a fight,
just moves it to the talk page) and to threaten blocks for misbehaviour,
which is actually something that the blocking policy opposes. People can be
effective mediators and peacemakers without admin tools.

On the other hand, if you do a lot of editing you will find yourself needing
to delete pages (when you create a page or a category with a typo in the
name, for example) or edit protected pages (like DYK and the Main Page), or
have a look at a deleted page that you want to re-create (especially if the
page was speedied).

That said, of course, I agree with Geni that there is lots for an admin to
do even if s/he does not create pages or add much in terms of content. And
again, and RFA is really a matter of posing the question to the community -
do we trust this person not to abuse admin tools. In the case of Acetic
Acid, while I have not voted, I have seen a lot of contributions by this
editor, I have seen them around a lot, and I think I have enough information
to have an opinion as to whether they would or would not "behave themselves"
- without having ever used irc.

Ian (Guettarda)


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
>
>On 10/25/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Prove it. I haven't seen any of these voteing blocks.
>
>Then you're not watching.  The existence of voting blocks is quite
>evident in RfA.

In the past you've alleged voting blocks in RfA based on their "deletionist"
tendencies, and this was discussed on this mailing list.  Are you still
making this claim?

Jay.


body:
On 27/10/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >The relatively small number of editors who will throw a hissy-fit off
> >won't be missed - new editors arrive all the time, and many eventually
> >crawl back after a public foot-stomping session anyway.
>
>
> A full one-third of that hard core sufficiently dedicated to Wikipedia
> to spend  their own scarce cash going all the way to Wikimania 2005,
> wasn't it? Something about that doesn't sound "insignificant" to me.
> Maybe it does to you.

I think you're under-estimating the total number of editors WP has,
over-estimating who'd leave, and over-valuing their importance.

Where'd you get that figure from anyway?

Dan


from_name: SJ

body:
On 10/27/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> I completely support your point of view. Especially when I think that we
> will take decision that will engage the legal liability of the Foundation.
>
> It is necessary to play by the rules !

I agree with this wholeheartedly.  The financial, legal, and even
community implications should be considered for everything the
Foundation does.  This need not be a barrier to people getting
involved with community projects, or to finalizing a date for
Wikimania.

++SJ


from_name: Angela

body:
> >As the Board have been rather slow with publicising the new privacy
> >policy, I have taken the step of adding a notice to the bottom of
> >[[MediaWiki:Copyrightstext]] on the English-language Wikipedia

I think including this information in the privacy policy and linking
every project to that would make more sense that putting people off
editing by having all this text on the actual edit page. Addressing
whether we should be publicly displaying these IPs forever might be a
better option than just trying to scare users into logging in. If the
privacy policy is linked, please link to the official version on
wikimediafoundation.org rather than to non-updated local copies.

Angela.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ironies

body:
There's something painfully ironic about the Cleanup-priority template. Its
text is ungrammatical and awkward:

"This topic is considered a necessary subject on Wikipedia, and there is a
high-priority on its being cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of
quality. See How to Edit and Style and How-to for help, or this article's
talk page."

"There is a high-priority"? Does *anyone* know the rules of English grammar
any more?

I don't even know where to start with improving it.

The whole idea of edit-comment templates is wrongheaded, anyway.

Is there some way to hide them? They're maddening.


body:
On 10/26/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>   http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html
>
> If you don't have a structure then one will form out of your sight and
> bite you in the arse.

An interesting point, and a good read.  I certainly don't agree with
all of Freeman's statements, but her Principles of Democratic
Structuring at the end are rather good.  Working out how this might
work in a wiki setting is a worthy exercise.

1 Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for
specific tasks by democratic procedures. If people are selected to do
a task, preferably after expressing an interest or willingness to do
it, they have made a commitment which cannot easily be ignored.

2 Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be
responsible to all those who selected them. This is how the group has
control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may
exercise power, but it is the group that has the ultimate say over how
the power is exercised.

3 Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably
possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in
positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of
exercising it. It also gives many people an opportunity to have
responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn specific
skills.

4 Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held
too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as
that person's 'property' and are not easily relinquished or controlled
by the group.

5 Allocation of tasks along rational criteria.  Ability, interest and
responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection.
6 Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible.

7 Equal access to resources needed by the group.  A member who
maintains a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press or
a darkroom owned by a husband) can unduly influence the use of that
resource. Skills and information are also resources. Members' skills
and information can be equally available only when members are willing
to teach what they know to others.

++SJ


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to use "--output=mysql" option of mwdumper?

body:
Hi All,

How do I use the "--output=mysql" option of mwdumper?

Here's what I've tried:
* Started with a URL as per http://download.wikimedia.org/tools/README.txt
* varying the URL (using 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost, with and
without a username and password)
* With and without a JDBC driver (both the old mm.mysql, and the newer
mysql-connector)

Output as follows:
=========================================================
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
"--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki&password=wiki"
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
"--output=mysql:mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki&password=wiki"
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-classpath /usr/java/mm.mysql-2.0.2-bin.jar:. -server -jar
mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4 20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
"--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki&password=wiki"
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-classpath /usr/java/mm.mysql-2.0.2-bin.jar:. -server -jar
mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4 20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
"--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki&password=wiki"
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-classpath mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:.
-server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki\&password=wiki
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-classpath mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:.
-server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
--output=mysql://127.0.0.1/enwiki?user=wiki\&password=wiki
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-classpath mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:.
-server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2 --output=mysql://127.0.0.1/enwiki
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia#
=========================================================

Before doing the above, I did the following in MySQL to grant rights:
=========================================================
grant all on enwiki   to wiki at localhost.localdomain identified by "wiki";
grant all on enwiki.* to wiki at localhost.localdomain identified by "wiki";
grant all on enwiki   to wiki at localhost identified by "wiki";
grant all on enwiki.* to wiki at localhost identified by "wiki";
grant all on enwiki   to wiki identified by "wiki";
grant all on enwiki.* to wiki identified by "wiki";
=========================================================

Versions of software being used:
=========================================================
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia#  /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -version
java version "1.5.0_05"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_05-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_05-b05, mixed mode, sharing)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# mysql --version
mysql  Ver 11.16 Distrib 3.23.49, for pc-linux-gnu (i686)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia#
=========================================================
And mwdumper.jar is the latest version.

I'm bound to be doing something wrong, but I just don't know what it
is. Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

All the best,
Nick.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The answer for AfD

body:
The answer for AfD:

Get rid of it. Allow anyone to delete articles. Anyone who tries to create
an article or clicks on a link to a deleted article will get the
notification that previously deleted entries exist (the message that admins
get for deleted articles). Allow anyone to view and restore those edits.

That is, because deletion is now non-destructive (i.e., reversible), there's
no need to restrict the power -- or the power to restore. The rules about
edit wars and reversions apply as normal.

Only exception: copyright infringement/illegal content. Those go through the
AfD process, are hard-deleted. That's it.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How to use "--output=mysql" option of mwdumper?

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
[snip]
> I don't understand the "Expected file stream, got SQL connection?"
> error ... surely an SQL connection in this case is a good thing?

You need to put the --output:mysql *before* the --format=sql:1.4.

The structure of arguments on mwdumper is such that each output group is
headed by an "--output" specifier. For convenience, --output can be left
out of the first group, implying text sent to stdout.

So --format=sql:1.4 --output=mysql means you're giving it two output groups:
1) SQL in 1.4 schema on stdout
2) XML on a MySQL JDBC connection

The second set fails because you can only send SQL to MySQL, not XML.

A half-assed attempt at a formal description of the parameters:

params = [<outputgroup>...] [<inputfile>]
outputgroup = [<output>] [<format>] [<filter>...]
output = --output=<outputtype>[:<data>]
format = --format=<formattype>[:<data>]
filter = --filter=<filtertype>[:<data>]

I realize it's a little complicated, but it's meant to be able to do
multiple output streams with different filters and compression options,
so it's of necessity. When I finish the GUI front-end it should be a
little more 'one-click' friendly. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
On 10/27/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > On 10/27/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> >
> > > The amount of time wasted makes this tantamount to vandalism and I think
> > > blocking the user from VfD would be a suitable response.
> > >
> > > Justinc
> >
> > Maybe maybe not but there is no way under the rules to do that.
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> See the Arbitration case of Anthony DiPierro.  He was a disruptive
> inclusionist; there is no reason why someone couldn't be banned
> from AfD for deletionist disruption.

Arbcom may do what they like.

> Note that the disruption is of /Wikipedia/.  It is impossible to
> disrupt /AfD/ with deletionism, no matter how lunatic -- that entire
> subsystem is maliciously designed to support and encourage lunatic
> deletionism.
>

AFD is designed?


body:
Dan Grey wrote:
>On 27/10/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> A full one-third of that hard core sufficiently dedicated to Wikipedia
>> to spend  their own scarce cash going all the way to Wikimania 2005,
>> wasn't it? Something about that doesn't sound "insignificant" to me.
>> Maybe it does to you.

>I think you're under-estimating the total number of editors WP has,
>over-estimating who'd leave, and over-valuing their importance.
>Where'd you get that figure from anyway?

This list:

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-October/004659.html

"Apparently a poll was done at Wikimania and 2/3 of people were
against it and 1/3 said they'd leave. So yeah, there's one good
argument not to have ads, I guess. I just can't figure out what any of
the other ones are."

(I've only just noticed it was posted by Anthony DiPierro, who may or
may not be a primary source - was he at Wikimania?)

- d.


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pure Wiki Deletion

body:
> My experience is the opposite. I frequently edit pages nominated for
> deletion explaining their notability, expanding them, cleaning them up and
> provided sources.
>
> Saving such articles on "Articles for Deletion" and noting you have made
> done so is by far the most effective method of ensuring the retention of an
> article. If a majority of people have voted to delete it based on the
> original substandard article, I leave messages on their talk page advising
> them that the article has been changed and asking them politely to have a
> fresh look at the article.

I've tried that too, but it didn't work for me. However, I forgot the
part about leaving messages on the delete-voters talk pages. Also it
has happened once that a major edit I did on a VFD:ed page was
reverted because with my edit the vfd-nomination wouldn't be valid
anymore. :) Instead I was supposed to wait until the page got deleted
and then insert my new text.

In my experience I have found it hard to change someones vote. You
either use the confrontational method "People who vote delete on this
are morons, it obviously is notable. Check the 999000 google hits
[www.google.com]" or the more consolidating "Maybe this article should
be kept? It gets 999000 google hits." But people generally have a
tendancy to not want to be proven wrong... Your experience most
definitely has been different.

You also have very little time (4 or 5 days now?) to save the article.
Many times I have skimmed through VFD:ed articles and thought that I
definitely should "save" the article. But I can't with such a short
time, and not with the threat of my effort going to waste.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing anonymously notice.

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:

>> Firstly, I must apologise for being so terse and shitty on IRC last night.

>No you must not! It's fine.

I stormed off in a huff! (And did in fact switch off the computer and
go to bed.) How dare you invalidate my hissy fit! YOU ALL SUCK AND I'M
DELETING MY LIVEJOURNAL!

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Unilateral action contrary to a vote from a rouge admnin,
	David Gerard

body:
Alphax:

>I have to concur. There are plenty of disputes over "facts" - I
>requested page protection for such an article the other day.

It's still an article fork template in essence, and hence a Bad Thing.

>I propose re-creating {{twoversions}} as:
>"The editors of this article are crazy and will be shot as soon as a
>rouge admin finds them. (Look, there's one! Under the big pile of hay in
>the barn! Quick, before 'e gets away! CHARGE!!!!!!1)"

At this point I wish you'd gotten admin.

- d.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stevertigo's RFA or whatever trigram

body:
This decision is very unpopular with the community. A couple of
things: Stevertigo's request should stay up for the usual time and
receive consideration based on him, not on what folks think of the
arbitration decision. The arbitration decision can be appealed to
Jimmy Wales by Stevertigo.

Fred

On Oct 27, 2005, at 3:53 AM, Anthere wrote:

> Dear fellow wikipedians,
>
> Yesterday, stewards received a request to unsysop
> Stevertigo, after a failed reconfirmation of
> sysophood, following an arbcom decision.
>
> Jtkiefer also asked me privately by irc to carry on
> the request.
>
> I consequently unsyoped Stevertigo.
>
> Today, Steve post on my talk page, this comment :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
> User_talk:Anthere#Request_for_permissions
>
> As a reminder, stewards are not here to judge, but to
> carry on the decision of the community. I have no idea
> why Steve was brought in front of the arbcom (well,
> right, it is a 3RR issue, but I do not know the
> details, and I do not want to get in this).
>
> Now, I think in this case, the "judges" are
> * the arbcom
> * the voting community
>
> And the steward is just to carry on the decision the
> "judges" made.
>
> If there is something unclear in the final decision,
> it should not be my job to go reading all the
> discussions around this case, so as to figure out
> myself the "correct" conclusion. I think Stevertigo is
> a honest editor, and he would not try to cheat on the
> decision, so if he feels the outcome has not been
> fair/clear, it is probable that there is a little
> something unclear somewhere.
>
> So, what I would like you to do, is to clarify the
> current situation, so that the correct decision, to
> desysop or not to desysop, is taken.
>
> I give it 48 hours without doing anything, and if
> there is no clarification by then, I will revert to
> the previous stable situation (ie, Steve sysop) till
> an agreement is reached between yourselves.
>
> Ant
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pure Wiki Deletion

body:
On 10/27/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, the thickhead edit warriors are convinced that they are RIGHT
> and everyone else is WRONG.
>
> Alphax

however such editors have a strong emotional atachment to what they
are doing and as a result are fairly easy for skilled edit warriors to
deal with.

--
geni


body:
> You can't use "-classpath" with "-jar". You have to add mwdumper.jar
> to the classpath and directly specify the main class. Another option
> is to add Class-Path to the manifest file.
>
> java -classpath mysql.jar:mwdumper.jar org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper ....
>
> --fb

Thank you! That definitely gets me closer.

It's still not quite there though:

=========================================================
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-classpath mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:.
-server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2 --output=mysql://localhost/enwiki
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-classpath mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:.
-server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
--output=mysql:mysql://localhost/enwiki
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath
mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
--output=mysql:mysql://localhost/enwiki
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: No suitable driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath /usr/java/mm.mysql-2.0.2-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
--output=mysql:mysql://localhost/enwiki
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath /usr/java/mm.mysql-2.0.2-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki 20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath
mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki 20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Access denied for
user: '@localhost' to database 'enwiki'
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.connectMySql(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.openOutputFile(Unknown Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath
mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
"--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki&password=wiki"
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
Expected file stream, got SQL connection?
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper$OutputWrapper.getFileStream(Unknown
Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath
mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
"--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki&password=wiki"
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
Expected file stream, got SQL connection?
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper$OutputWrapper.getFileStream(Unknown
Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath
mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
--output=mysql://localhost/enwiki?user=wiki\&password=wiki
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
Expected file stream, got SQL connection?
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper$OutputWrapper.getFileStream(Unknown
Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath
mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.4
--output=mysql://127.0.0.1/enwiki?user=wiki\&password=wiki
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
Expected file stream, got SQL connection?
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper$OutputWrapper.getFileStream(Unknown
Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# /usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -Xmx200M
-server -classpath
mysql-connector-java-3.1.11/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar:mwdumper.jar
org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper --format=sql:1.5
20051020_pages_articles.xml.bz2
--output=mysql://127.0.0.1/enwiki?user=wiki\&password=wiki
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
Expected file stream, got SQL connection?
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper$OutputWrapper.getFileStream(Unknown
Source)
        at org.mediawiki.dumper.Dumper.main(Unknown Source)
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia#
=========================================================

Ran out of variations I could think of to try at this point.

I don't understand the "Expected file stream, got SQL connection?"
error ... surely an SQL connection in this case is a good thing?

All the best,
Nick.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing
	anonymously notice.

body:
>My suggested wording is:
>    All edits to Wikipedia are recorded and visible, with the [[IP
>address]] they are from. Your IP address is publicly visible on edits
>where you are not [[Special:Userlogin|logged in]]. See
>[[wikipedia:privacy policy|privacy policy]].

I've just realised that's ambiguous and partly incorrect. How about:

    All edits to Wikipedia are publicly visible. Your [[IP address]]
is recorded, and it is publicly visible on edits where you are not
[[Special:Userlogin|logged in]]. See [[Wikimedia:Privacy policy]].

(BTW, the Wikimedia: interwiki prefix works on meta: but not on en:.)

Better? Easily translatable? An improvement on nothing at all?

- d.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing anonymously
	notice.