from_name: Anthere

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>>But right now, we do NOT have this log. And people are ASKING for the
>>check user status to go live !
>
>
>
> I would really like to know who thought voting for checkuser was a
> good idea and why.
>
>
> - d.

At that point, I must add a couple of information for my fellow wikipedians.

Currently, only two projects have been granted checkuser status for at
least one editor.

The polish wikipedia has Taw with checkuser status.

The english wikipedia has David.

How did that happen ? (correct me I am wrong on a detail)
Initially, the developers were doing that job upon request (I myself
asked twice for information in three years if I remember, to Tim or to
Brion).
When the requests started being too numerous, Tim made the checkUser
tool, in order to hand out to the community the role of doing checks,
rather than to let it to the developers.

Two people were given access. David, probably per agreement with Tim and
support from Jimbo. Taw, because he had developer access, but his only
activity (if I understood well) was to check on users.

Then, requests went on pouring on the developers, who answered there was
a tool now to do this. So, editors asked to have access or asked for
other people to do the job for them.

This is when the policy started to be discussed.

Recently, the english arbcom has complained that David was no more
sufficient to do the job himself and more people should have access;
that the policy making was too slow being made, and that the fact it was
not established yet on all projects should not slow down access for the
english wikipedia.

There were two main outcome
* first, I tried to speed up the policy making process
* second, Jimbo, made the decision of who should have check user access
on the english wikipedia about a week ago.

So, to answer David question, I think there are roughly three main options

First option : people get checkuser access on an automatic basis,
through another status (for example, all bureaucrats automatically get
the tool).

Second option : people get checkuser access through an approval system
(with a community vote or an arbitrator vote)

Third option : the monarchy system. Tim (as suggested by David) or Jimbo
(as recently done for the english wikipedia) decide who has check user
access.

My feelings
The first option is out of question (it was discussed in length in talk
pages)
The third option requires either that Tim accepts the job (and I somehow
doubt he will) and/or that Jimbo acts like a monarch on all projects.
The Foundation frankly needs Jimbo for certain things for which he is
much more necessary than nominating checkuser for all projects as he is
currently doing for the english wikipedia. Besides, the non-english
projects are generally not used to Jimbo acting like a monarch on such
decisions and I doubt they would really feel happy with him taking such
decisions.

That lets the second option... I think any large community can be fully
trusted to give that status to good people who will not abuse it.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search very intermittent on :en:

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Is it just me who keep getting some sort of strange error on searches on
> :en:?
>
> The symptoms so far include showing the Google/Yahoo boxes and an odd error
> message indicating some sort of bad return from an IP in the [10.*.*.*]
> range. My IP knowledge is rusty: is that a private range?
>
> Sorry I can't be more precise: the error sometimes goes away when I try
> again, and did this time :-(

At the moment, we have three search servers: maurus (10.0.0.16), vincent
(10.0.0.17) and coronelli (10.0.0.230). For reasons not quite understood,
they sometimes hang, accepting connections but closing them immediately.
Yesterday, Brion set up an hourly restart of the daemons to mitigate this.
Most of the search errors before then were probably due to this problem. The
server you get for any given query is random, that's why it often goes away
when you try again.

The other potential problem is a timeout: if the search server takes more
than 3 seconds to respond, then an error will be returned. This could happen
due to high load, or due to random temporary events. Looking at the
profiling data I gathered yesterday, it's likely that this has been
happening a fair bit during peak time.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Voting is evil (was CheckUser policy)

body:
geni wrote:

>Of course. However AFD structure limits it to a degree since the
>person is at most your oponent for 5 days.

Hence the observable lack of a concerted effort to get rid of Tony
Sidaway. Oh, wait ...

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: CheckUser policy (was Status of Wikimedia)

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>The
>>only major comments I heard from the english arbcom was that ***I*** was
>>to slow to make that policy go live and that ***I*** was blocking the
>>decision making, issue on which I already commented quite clearly.
>
>
>
> That would be waiting on the board precisely because of your strong
> concerns as expressed on the mailing lists. I would have thought it
> rude simply to ignore them; surely you're not saying you would prefer
> I had just ignored them.
>
>
> - d.

I am not saying you should have ignored them.
But I would like to know why you have not made any comments this week
while I have indicated a week ago that unless there was opposition, this
policy would go live this week.

Please, explain to me.

ant


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/8/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hence the observable lack of a concerted effort to get rid of Tony
> Sidaway. Oh, wait ...
>
>
> - d.

It doesn't appear to have worked and he appears to have made it to
admin so it can't have been that sucessful. Anyway most of the issues
raised in the RFC have to do with him failing to follow AFD practice
rather than any individual cases.

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: CheckUser policy

body:
Anthere wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:
>> Anthere wrote:

>>>* on a project with no arbcom, the community will have to vote for its
>>>editors with checkuser access. A limit of votes number has been set on
>>>purpose. I recommand avoiding using sockpuppet for voting. A wiki
>>>community with 10 editors and 30 voters is likely to be frowned upon.

>> And next, we'll be voting for root, database access and CVS access.
>> Get your votes in now! Brion, Tim or Lir for Mediawiki lead? It's a
>> hot contest!

>I think it should be possible to discuss without using fallacious
>arguments David. There is no comparison between a checkuser access and a
>root access.

There is, really: neither is a voting matter. I raised this before,
but you appear to regard the objection as (to quote you) "no real
opposition". Not to mention Tim's quote when voting for checkuser was
floated: "Users would vote themselves root if they could."

What I said was that users need:
- the technical knowledge to know what they're seeing (which a network
admin was one example of);
- the trustworthiness that they won't break the privacy policy

>The main problem I see here is that it seems you consider that check
>user access should only be given to sysadmins. I do not think the
>majority of editors would agree with you.

Please don't misrepresent my words. I said that was not what I thought
and I meant that was not what I thought. You therefore have no
justification to say that that's what I said or meant. I ask you to
retract it.

>I see your argumentation aiming only at restricting the use of this tool
>to a very limited number of editors, approved by Jimbo or Tim. Right
>now, Jimbo has approved the access to a half dozen english editors, none
>of whom are actually sysadmins.
>What is your feeling toward these nominations ?

As you FULLY KNOW BECAUSE I CC'D YOU ON THE EMAIL IN QUESTION, I am
fine with all of those.

Why are you pretending I am saying things I didn't or not saying things I did?

>But I would like to know why you have not made any comments this week
>while I have indicated a week ago that unless there was opposition, this
>policy would go live this week.

After you complained on arbcom-l of people not commenting, I went and
checked that I had in fact commented ... and had already pointed out
the ridiculousness of voting on the matter.

As Chris Jenkinson said:

>Surely the enforcement of the Foundation's privacy policy is the
>responsibility of the Foundation, and thus access to personal
>information (such as IP addresses) should be given out upon approval by
>the Board, rather than by some kind of election system?

Indeed. Anthere, I originally understood this was your position.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: CheckUser policy


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Foundation-l] checkUser live

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>* on a project with no arbcom, the community will have to vote for its
>>editors with checkuser access. A limit of votes number has been set on
>>purpose. I recommand avoiding using sockpuppet for voting. A wiki
>>community with 10 editors and 30 voters is likely to be frowned upon.
>
>
>
> And next, we'll be voting for root, database access and CVS access.
> Get your votes in now! Brion, Tim or Lir for Mediawiki lead? It's a
> hot contest!
>
>
> [cc: to wikitech-l]
>
>
> - d.

I think it should be possible to discuss without using fallacious
arguments David. There is no comparison between a checkuser access and a
root access.

The main problem I see here is that it seems you consider that check
user access should only be given to sysadmins. I do not think the
majority of editors would agree with you.

I see your argumentation aiming only at restricting the use of this tool
to a very limited number of editors, approved by Jimbo or Tim. Right
now, Jimbo has approved the access to a half dozen english editors, none
of whom are actually sysadmins.

What is your feeling toward these nominations ?

Ant


list: foundation-l

from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live

references:
<dkpr94$qsp$1@sea.gmane.org> <4370B649.7080307@starglade.org>
	<dkqejk$p4s$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I guess that most points you are raising do not really belong to the
> checkuser policy proper, but to the privacy policy.
>
> More particular, these points are visible here :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Policy_on_release_of_data_derived_from_page_logs

That is exactly the same text as the text I was questioning - it's just
as vague.

>> What does "If the user has said they're from somewhere and the IP
>> confirms it, it's not releasing private information to confirm it if
>> needed." mean?
>
> Well... I live in Clermont Ferrand and published this information
> myself. If for some reasons a check is done on my user:Anthere, I can
> not complain that it be publicly revealed that the user:Anthere ips are
> leading to Clermont Ferrand...

What happens if someone claims they are from somewhere (for example
France), yet the IP address of the user suggests they are from somewhere
else (for example Japan)?

>> What does "generally" in "Revealing the country is generally not
>> personally identifiable (e.g. "User:Querulous is coming in from the
>> UK, User:Sockpuppet is coming in from Canada")." mean?
>
> The problem with releasing data is to allow others to identify a
> "person". If my ip is fixed and if I edit under another name, such as
> user:antfish, the check will reveal that user:anthere and user:antfish
> are editing from the same ip... which could lead to high suspicion that
> both are the same editor.
>
> Versus, if it is revealed that user:antfish is an editor with an ip in
> France... well, we are only 60 millions or so. This will not publicly
> prove I am user:Antfish.

I don't think you've defined "generally" there.

>> I'm still not happy with the idea that access to personal information
>> can be given to people on the say-so that they will behave. Yes, the
>> people who this will be given to are going to be some of the most
>> trustworthy Wikipedians there are, but this is *personal information*.
>> We should have some kind of legal agreement in place so there are no
>> excuses.
>
> Difficult to do as I understood...
> Amongst things we could do for example, is to require an editor with
> this type of access to provide his real name (privately) and a valid
> email. And have him confirm by email that he read the privacy policy.
> Would that be an idea ? Yes ? No ?

How is signing an agreement difficult? You get sent the agreement via
email, print it off, sign it, scan it and email it back. Or, print it
off and fax/post it back.

Chris


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live


from_name: Clare-Marie White

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

body:
Again, in almost all cases, the community
> should be the foundation?s agent in deaccreditation and reaccreditation. But
> community processes are slow and in really bad cases the foundation should be
> able to quickly remove credentials of offending users or even suspend the
> whole
> process if it ever gets out of hand.

If you didn't have any system, then anybody would be able to claim they were
writing for Wikinews, as in fact they can anyway. Reporters need to phone
organisations up and point to a page which confirms that they are indeed
trusted by the community as reporters and not complete unknowns. For a lot
of events they will get a separate press badge and for places like Britain
they would be well advised to have an union/nationally approved press badge
as well as soon as their work reached any level of professionalism, so the
badge with the Wikinews logo really isn't that significant.

I've seen no evidence that the system could get out of hand, indeed it is
very conservatively used and applicants are quite rigorously grilled. If
someone did start to offend, the same page could be used to make it clear
that their activities did not meet with the approval of the community/board.

Freelance reporters have to say they are working for different organisations
all the time and it is mainly done on trust. If Wikinews is to get anywhere
as a news organisation it needs to be able to have this sort of system and I
think it's been very well organised so far. Nobody would imagine that a
freelance journalist spoke for CNN's board, so they won't think that a
Wikinews reporter is somehow representing the whole Wikimedia board.

I think you're worrying overly.

Clare (User:Cmwhite)


from_name: Fl Celloguy

body:
>From: Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Voting is evil (was CheckUser policy)
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID:
>	<bd4c411e0511080908o221dd0c3pf49dc8752a348315 at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>On 11/8/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Mediation is intermittent at best, and (from what I can tell) almost
>never
> > achieves a positive outcome, but that's nothing compared to RfC.
>
>Mediation is more successful than you may realize, in part because
>successful mediations often occur in relative obscurity.  A problem
>that once existed went away, without an RfC or RfAr being filed; as a
>result, only the editors involved in the dispute know about the
>mediation or the resolution, and they often don't talk much about it.

I would have to agree with that. In addition, how can you judge the
"success" of a mediation? Two users who are in dispute are unlikely to
become best of friends quickly. I consider any mediation successful if any
one of the involved parties gains even an iota more respect or understanding
of the other person, or if we have progressed, even if a tiny bit, on the
article matter. There are so many complex issues in mediation that it is
extremely difficult to achieve "total success". Even in the rare occasion
that they do occur, they are not well-publicized. It is human nature to
focus on the things that need fixing; thus, we all hear about failed
mediations, but we rarely hear about successful ones. (Analogy - look at the
news today. It's filled with "bad" news. However, there's plenty of "good"
news out there; it's just not as newsworthy.)

>
>Note that I'm specifically not referring to mediation under the
>auspices of the Mediation Committee, which has, indeed, been
>notoriously unreliable.  I'm referring more to informal mediations
>conducted by a variety of informal mediators who get involved via talk
>pages, IRC, IM, email, and any number of other methods to settle
>disagreements between editors amicably.  I've done at least a dozen
>such mediations (only one since being appointed to ArbCom, though) and
>most of them have been at least moderately successful.  The more
>public ones are the ones that have failed, usually because by the time
>the dispute is loud enough to be noticeable generally, the parties are
>too pissed at one another to ever settle their dispute.  Many
>mediations merely consist of discovering an edit war and, instead of
>doling out punitive blocks (as so many admins on Wikipedia are wont to
>do), diagnosing the problem, talking to the users in question, and
>resolving the dispute.  Often it's not hard to do this, but most of
>our admins never try.  It's so much easier just to go "3RR, block
>block block".

True, the MedCom has gained a rather unfair reputation of being unreliable.
I would note, though, that under our new chair, Redwolf24, we have
progressed greatly. In addition, if you drop by the MedCom first, we will
often provide you advice regarding your dispute - i.e. Redwolf24, acting on
behalf of the MedCom, has both rejected cases and referred them to the
ArbCom. This can often provide an opinion on your dispute - whether or not
the dispute can be handled under the dispute resolution process or not,
whether it should jump directly to the ArbCom or not, etc. Correct me if I'm
wrong, Arbitrators, but you all are more likely to accept cases that have
gone through Mediation or at least attempted mediation. In addition, if a
mediation recommends a case to the ArbCom, policy suggests that Arbitrators
accept it.

Thus, the MedCom can do more than mediation - we can be the starting stone
of the dispute resolution process (besides RfCs) and can also offer a
perspective on your dispute. Finally, as I stated above, even if the two
parties gain an inch more of respect or understanding, I consider the
mediation to be worthwhile and successful to an extent.

>
> > Article RfCs are numerous, and rarely attract the attention of more than
>one
> > or two outside editors.  Frequently they attract no outside interest at
>all.
>
>Indeed.  I've only rarely seen article RfCs attract significant
>attention.  Shameful, since articles are what Wikipedia is supposed to
>be all about.  There are too many people who are part of Wikipedia for
>the community, instead of for the encyclopedia.

The problem with article RfCs is that people probably find it boring to
particpate in a subject area that they are not familiar with. Under the
current system, there's little to be gained by participating, and lots to
lose. This must be changed.

>
> > User RfCs are a mess - in theory they are a platform for addressing and
> > solving community issues.  In practice, they are often venues for
>warring
> > camps to air grievances, and for certain notorious individuals (who feel
> > they don't get enough attention) to use as soapboxes for their own
> > speechifying (i.e. yet another "outside view").  Obvious trolling is
>rarely
> > addressed - the complainants outline their case, and a dozen or so
>regular
> > editors vote in support.  The troll provides a lengthy response, and
>three
> > or four troll buddies/generall trolls/people with grievances against the
> > complainant line up and vote in support of him, or add another "outside
> > view" that has little to do with the case at hand, and is mostly about
>their
> > own issues with the complainants.  Nothing changes, and everyone goes
>away
> > bitter.
>
>This definitely describes several of the RfC's I've been involved in
>in some way lately.  I agree that this serves no purpose.  I'm also
>tired of hearing editors state "In my RfC my opinion got more
>endorsements than yours did, therefore I won and you must shut up."
>(Yes, I've heard things like this said.  It's stupid.)  RfC is
>emphatically not supposed to be a popularity contest, although I must
>admit it has turned into one.

True - we must remember that Wikipedia is *not* a democracy. The masses are
often wrong, and RfCs often turn into a slinging battle of words, pitting
one group of users against another, when both already loathe the other side
before the RfC. In addition, it is extremely rare for a RfC to resolve a
dispute - someone who has a RfC filed against him/her is highly unlikely to
listen to the outcome of the RfC. After all, nothing's binding, and the
"outcome" (i.e. "voting") is often disregarded. Thus, user RfCs are
extremely ineffective.

>Of course, the same can be said of
>RfA/RfB.

Again, true - several RfAs (not all of them or even a majority, but a
significant minority of them) have recently turned into slugfests, complete
with sockpuppets, POV warriors, and whatnot. And I sympatize with you on
your RfB- I'm sure that such a process can be very stressful.

>
>Kelly

It is clear that reform must be made in the dispute resolution process. It's
better to do it now, rather than later. SV recently set up a page,
[[WP:Dispute Resolution Reform]] ([[WP:DRR]]) - should we start
consolidating discussion on one page regarding the entire dispute resolution
process?

Thanks.

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
Ed Poor wrote

>If we mark articles as bad or stub, we could keep them somewhat hidden from
>the public.

Ah, the insidious plausibility of the worst ideas!

The default must be that we keep the stubs in view, unless people somehow
opt otherwise.  How else are we going to get the encyclopedia written?  I
thought there was anyway consensus that the content took priority over all
else, including impressing people with excessively tidy minds.

Charles


body:
On 11/8/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Ah, the insidious plausibility of the worst ideas!
>
> The default must be that we keep the stubs in view, unless people somehow
> opt otherwise.  How else are we going to get the encyclopedia written?  I
> thought there was anyway consensus that the content took priority over all
> else, including impressing people with excessively tidy minds.
>
> Charles

I don't think it is safe to use the word consensus anywhere near the
encopedist/pro-content disspute (formaly know as the
deletionist/inclusionist disspute we can't solve it but we can darn
well rename it).

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>> I guess that this policy is approved for now. if you have further
>> comments, please add them in the talk page. I archived all the
>> discussions, if you wish some to be kept on the live page, please move
>> them back.
>
>
> Can we have some clarifications of "disruptive" (as in "Where the user
> has been vandalising pages or persistently behaving in a disruptive
> way") and "reasonably necessary" and "safety" (as in "Where it is
> reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the
> Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public.") from the Board
> regarding the Foundation's privacy policy, just so that everyone is
> crystal clear about what circumstances this personal information may be
> released?

Hi

I guess that most points you are raising do not really belong to the
checkuser policy proper, but to the privacy policy.

More particular, these points are visible here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Policy_on_release_of_data_derived_from_page_logs

Maybe this page needs clarification...

> What does "If the user has said they're from somewhere and the IP
> confirms it, it's not releasing private information to confirm it if
> needed." mean?

Well... I live in Clermont Ferrand and published this information
myself. If for some reasons a check is done on my user:Anthere, I can
not complain that it be publicly revealed that the user:Anthere ips are
leading to Clermont Ferrand...

> What does "generally" in "Revealing the country is generally not
> personally identifiable (e.g. "User:Querulous is coming in from the UK,
> User:Sockpuppet is coming in from Canada")." mean?

The problem with releasing data is to allow others to identify a
"person". If my ip is fixed and if I edit under another name, such as
user:antfish, the check will reveal that user:anthere and user:antfish
are editing from the same ip... which could lead to high suspicion that
both are the same editor.

Versus, if it is revealed that user:antfish is an editor with an ip in
France... well, we are only 60 millions or so. This will not publicly
prove I am user:Antfish.

> I'm still not happy with the idea that access to personal information
> can be given to people on the say-so that they will behave. Yes, the
> people who this will be given to are going to be some of the most
> trustworthy Wikipedians there are, but this is *personal information*.
> We should have some kind of legal agreement in place so there are no
> excuses.
>
> Chris

Difficult to do as I understood...
Amongst things we could do for example, is to require an editor with
this type of access to provide his real name (privately) and a valid
email. And have him confirm by email that he read the privacy policy.
Would that be an idea ? Yes ? No ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live


body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>> So, to answer David question, I think there are roughly three main
>> options
>>
>> First option : people get checkuser access on an automatic basis,
>> through another status (for example, all bureaucrats automatically get
>> the tool).
>>
>> Second option : people get checkuser access through an approval system
>> (with a community vote or an arbitrator vote)
>>
>> Third option : the monarchy system. Tim (as suggested by David) or
>> Jimbo (as recently done for the english wikipedia) decide who has
>> check user access.
>
>
> Surely the enforcement of the Foundation's privacy policy is the
> responsibility of the Foundation, and thus access to personal
> information (such as IP addresses) should be given out upon approval by
> the Board, rather than by some kind of election system?
>
> Chris

I dunno about other board members, but in truth, I do not know ...
say... the hebrew community... and I do not think it would be very
secure that I approve an editor to have this access if I do not know him
at all. Same for Jimbo.

Ant


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Translations between different wikipedias,
	and GFDL

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Do I need to state that I translated this article from another
>> Wikipedia? -> Yes, but an edit summary suffices for that.
>>
>> Does the article text itself need to state that it was originally a
>> translation from another Wikipedia? -> No.
>
> I prefer the idea of citing it as a source, in the references section.

That's doubly wrong. Firstly, a "source" or "reference" is where you get
facts from, not the text (so it doesn't satisfy the history
requirement). Secondly, if you're going to "reference" an article in
another language, you might as well "reference" the article itself,
which is kind of duh.

Timwi


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] disputing block: 69.108.172.162, lysdexia

body:
On 11/8/05, Autymn D. C. <lysdexia at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Rdsmith4 is misrepresenting and libelling me, and abusing his
> joke-of-a-power again by blocking me again after I had insisted and
> enforced that an article be put in an accurate grammatic mood to fit
> the context, which was not real but ideal.

It looks to me like you were insisting that the phrase "The sun emits
power" to "the sun emit power" . etc.You were told by numerous people
that this is wrong yet you continued to revert.  BTW he is not
libelling you. Please don't use legal terms like this.

A short exchange is at
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:
> Lysdexia#Grammar_at_Black_Body>.  There, I pointed out that his and
> others' calling my edits only "trolling and disruption" was a fraud, as
> every edit I've ever made to Wikipedia was, in this order: cleanup,
> fact checking, factual disputes, linking, added or alternate
> explanations, expansions.  I checked the block policy page and saw that
> nothing I've done calls for blocking me; in deed, every incident that I
> was in was caused by someone ignorant, irrational, and uncouth
> reporting me to the administrators because I had done something to
> correct or improve a space that /they/ /did not/ /understand/.

When everyone disagrees with you, you should at the very least
_consider_ the possibility that they are right and you are wrong don't
you think?  By insisting on your wording even though it plainy reads
wrong and sounds silly you are opening up yourself to accusations of
trolling.

Every
> mistake that they claimed I'd made elsewhere was /their/ mistake of
> being an ignorant fool.

Personal attacks are not allowed on wikipedia. Please don't call people names.
>
> Lately I've been bringing out my contentions to the Talk pages before
> editing over the articles,

Did you do that in this case before you reverted and called someone a
vandal for correcting your bad grammar?

and I hadn't even broken the three-revert
> rule when I was reverting when I found that I was blocked after trying
> to fix some numbers in an Order of magnitude article.  Here's the note
> that's related to my work then:
> <http://egroups.com/group/message/free_energy/20090>.  I was logged in
> then, and found that the block was for a day; but the next time I found
> that my cookies expired, for Yahoo! and Wikipedia, so I had to log in
> again.  But before I did, I saw what happened when I tried with the
> numeric IP.  The same block screen came up, so I logged in and found
> that the block was advanced another day!

This is the autoblocker. You need to not edit at all either logged in
or not. Then the block will expire.

>  I seem to recall this
> happening before, and I didn't deserve it then either.  Note that every
> time this rogue took abusive action against me, he gave no warning
> before so that I could reply instead of doing whatever he was told that
> I shouldn't, against policy, and that he calls my edits of fake value,
> also against policy.  This person has no clue what he's doing, and I
> really need to update my article, as I have a life outside edit or
> dispute wars.

I'm glad to hear that. Come back after a day, but please do not
correct any more grammar, as you appear not to understand it.

Theresa


from_name: Wikiacc

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] CheckUser policy (was Status of
	Wikimedia)

body:
On 11/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> >>But right now, we do NOT have this log. And people are ASKING for the
> >>check user status to go live !
> >
> >
> >
> > I would really like to know who thought voting for checkuser was a
> > good idea and why.
> >
>
> Apparantly Wikipedia is a democracy where all problems can be solved by
> voting. One user has even written a script to "help automate further
> voting processes".

[[WP:NOT]] a democracy.
[[m:Voting is evil]].

>
> - --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iQEVAwUBQ3Cum7MAAH8MeUlWAQhybQf+O2yqTduUI5lIgBZ8kr1di1hjLcVQBQt6
> 99FGEzIck5qq/vOrbLnkZIyBoMdWiv6nnKrJoYOKSBWPKNoKX0stqR7lO6r3sEl2
> R0oYGq1udAjdwK4x7so/dwZ7dPqhGaNz82jp92o4Pa3Nyy6EYmGH6QOpH9h8iVFT
> 9WW8CZGuO/nchzahaKLR4P8zh6JkUu7EsSb5qtXT4N1q83z0uWkzXSTA2XAgnMAp
> tiUjYJjWWPzBvlHdsa+LHyXZtIGWRTjqaKbe4CipXOGZXuG9KY7SzdjGtrqEVJwd
> KOLHecNU0SY8e4gvM9skjKNqOwjP8cVJpgm2bryT3GvuK7BMij2GtA==
> =vWbS
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikiacc


from_name: Amruta Lonkar

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to proceed from save page/preview page

references:
<1130334628.435f89a4cb189@webmail.mail.gatech.edu>
	<djokrs$cni$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<1131293661.436e2bdd0e553@webmail.mail.gatech.edu>

body:
I have a few doubts about the flow of code once the user clicks
save/preview/show diff buttons. I am sorry for posting this again but am
really stuck at this :(

I have made changes to our locally installed wiki
1)Added a reference button in the edit toolbar which when clicked pulls up a
pop up where the user can enter reference information. Once user cliks submit
in this form the information gets entered to the reference table in wikidb.

What i need to understand is, how should i proceed when user clicks eithr the
save/preview button. I have a slight idea that only after user clicks save
page, information should get entered to the  referencelinks table which is a
replica of the imagelinks table.

Also I tried looking into the Article.php code as said by Tim, but i still
cant figure out how i should proceed.

I cannot figure out at what point and where in the code i can add information
to the referencelinks table. Or should this be done when user clicks the
preview page button?

I would really appreciate any help.

Amruta

>
>
> Quoting Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>:
>
> > Amruta Lonkar wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I am trying to find whihc function is called when user hits the save
> button
> > on
> > > edit page and in whihc file the button click for save is checked.
> > >
> > > Any help appreciated.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > --
> > > Amruta
> >
> > Article::save(), in Article.php. Submitting the form generates a POST
> > request to index.php with action=save in the query string. This action is
> > dispatched to the Article object.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Amruta
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Amruta


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
Alphax wrote:
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>>No! I meant to say that... umm... they exist, but you won't find them
>>at your library because there are no printing presses in Zlatibor so
>>they have to write out copies manually!
>
> So if there's no printing presses, let alone computers, exactly *who* is
> going to read this glorious Zlatiborian Wikipedia?

Why, he of course. :)


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> But all is not lost. If we mark articles as bad or stub, we could keep
> them somewhat hidden from the public.
>
>
>
*COUGH* validation feature *COUGH*

'cuse me, I'm recovering from a cold ;-)

Magnus


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Status of Wikimedia (was: Status
	of Serbia and Montenegro chapter)

body:
On 11/7/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> As officer of the Wikimedia Foundation I can't welcome your decision and
> would question your competence to speak for the whole of the not yet
> existing serbian Wikimedia chapter.

I think that I made clear distinction between "we" and "I", even my
words as "I" have also almost 100% support of the community / members
of the chapter which would be created in the couple of weeks. (It can
be checked, of course.)

> On 1 september I sent the following email to the board:
> [...]
> | In the last open board meeting there was a discussion about having a
> | seed wiki and a committee deciding policies for it.
> | So, here a proposal how to deal with new language requests (not new
> | projects)
> | * community elects a committee of seven people on meta-wiki (one-year
> term)
> | * requests for new languages will be submitted to the committee on
> meta-wiki
> | * committee will create a catalogue of criterias over time
> | * they examine the case (check if language or dialect, spread of
> | language, number of the people willing to work on it, consult
> | experts)
> | * they decide, three sorts of decisions are possible: accept, reject
> in general (because no real language etc.), reject in
> | this case (not enough support) but can be later again proposed if
> | conditions have changed
> | * have a developer create the wiki if approved
> |
> | This way, we can maybe get rid of these pending requests:
> | http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> [...]
> | If the committee does its job well, it could later also get the
> | competence to filter new project proposals.
> | Add your suggestions and criticisms and say yes or no.
> |
> | I'd be willing to help with the election but I don't have the time
> | for an extensive community debate and slow process on the
> | mailinglists and wikis with no decision at all after months.

I am completely for this proposal. And this is the way how to solve
this kind of problems. We can talk about details (How the community
would control this council? -- I think that members of council should
have linguistic/anthropological/ethnological/sociological education or
at least that they are introduced into linguistic/ethnological
problems very well and that they are reliable persons. -- etc.).

And I would like to see that we started to implement this proposal. A
lot of important proposals are dead only because of inactivity or a
lack of will to finish it. (I have one which is on stand by, but it is
not important as this one is [small letters at wikilinks].) So, I am
ready to help.

Do we need Bord action or we can just start with it on Meta?

> As wikipedian who dedicated myself to the creation of a high quality
> free encyclopedia in as many languages as are _needed_ to make human
> knowledge accessible to everybody, I can very well understand your feelings.

Thank you. Before your email I felt like to talk with a wall.

> What shall I tell a journalist who asks the press officer about the
> zlatiborian language wikipedia? "Eh yes, it's ridiculous, but you see, a
> few people who don't even speak this city dialect pressured the
> community into it. Cantonese? Oh yes, the same thing happened.
> Wikiversity? Ah well, sorry, we're still looking for a concept. There's
> rubbish on wikibooks like the "How to get a girl manual"? See, people
> are working on the encyclopedia, there are not enough people to look
> into the other projects and control them for quality. You found a
> copyvio on suaheli wikiquote? Sorry, I don't speak suaheli - and the
> three suaheli speakers in Wikimedia are busy with the encyclopedia. Why
> are there so many corn field related news on german Wikinews while XY
> isn't treated? Oh well, now this is a funny story...

There is big difference between new Wikipedias and articles. While
articles can be POV without marking it (I know for a lot of examples
on English Wikipedia) because it is the part of process of building
knowledge using wiki -- completely different story are (new) languages
and (new) language communities on Wikipedia.

I agree with Gerrit about "How to get a girl/boy manual". While I
didn't read this wikibook, I can say that such kind of manuals can be
very useful in emotional development of young persons and this is
"knowledge about life" and it should be free, too. (Of course, I would
like to see some psychologist to work on such manuals.

Completely other question are Wikipedias on new languages. And there
are two different cases:

1. The first case is the most often: Some language is not welcomed by
some community because of some political reason. And inside of this
case there are two sub-cases:

1.a. Language/dialect is really different then standard (or majority)
language is and there are enough people who want to work on this
Wikipedia. I think that in such cases we should not look at any
political reason which "rationally" tries to describe that it is "the
same language" etc. (In the case that Mark is right about Cantonese --
it can be the example.)

1.b. Language/dialect has very small differences with standard (or
majority) language and there are enough people who want to work on
such Wikipedia. As the classic example of such situation is my
language area, I can say that we should work very carefully on this
kind of cases. A lot of irrational feelings are inside of the
"language confrontation" and we should work carefully and slowly.

Potential ask for Montenegrin Wikipedia is the case.

If we don't have usable conversion software for such case (as we don't
have in this moment) and that there are Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and
Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, I think that Montenegrins should have their
own Wikipedia.

If we have usable conversion software (and I think that we would have
it in the next couple of months), I think that Montenegrins should:
(1) choose "a friendly Wikipedia" (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian or
Serbo-Croatian), (2) to implement differences between the main
language and Montenegrin standard in the software, (3) to get the code
(for example, "cg" if it is not exist) and to have their own language
Wikipedia as the option from "a friendly Wikipedia" and as default
option from their own domain. (4) This means that Montenegrin and "a
friendly Wikipedia" would be the same one with two skins.

2. Zlatiborian is the second case. The story about it is a clear hoax
because Zlatiborian is not even a dialect, but
sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-dialect (Shtokavian->Neo-Shtokavian->Eastern
Herzegovian->Western Serbian->Zlatiborian) and there are no people who
feel like Zlatiborians in ethnic/national sense. (... bla, bla,
bla...)

Council should be the most important body in such cases. While there
are a number of Serbian Wikipedians (as well as Croatian who are well
introduced in the situation), there is reasonable possibility to find
ethnicity with a couple of millions of speakers which is not so well
known (as well as a thousands of smaller). In such cases council
should elaborate (using expert knowledge, literature, maybe even to go
to the area in the future) with the clear answer to the community is
it a hoax or not.

> ...
> If someone wondered lately why there's almost no elian anymore around in
> Wikimedia affairs, that's why.
> ...

Social relations are not easy. Especially in the large community such
Wikimedian is. I think that there are enough people who want to
improve Wikimedian projects from the roots.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Status of Wikimedia (was: Status of Serbia and
	Montenegro chapter)


from_name: Angela

body:
On 11/8/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Credentials are given by organizations - not by just some people on the
> Internet (which is all any Wikimedia project is by itself). Using that term -
> in the real world where it has a specific meaning - to describe that process is
> very misleading.

But you could also say "encyclopedias are written by organizations -
not by just some people on the Internet (which is all any Wikimedia
project is by itself). Using that term - in the real world where it
has a specific meaning - to describe that process is very misleading."

I trust the content of Wikipedia because I trust the community behind
it. I don't expect the Board to have approved the people editing it,
or to have approved the content itself, and yet I'm still happy for it
to be called an "encyclopedia", even though that term has meaning in
the "real world" which implies a traditional process of peer review
and publishing that Wikipedia doesn't have. I don't see the difference
between this and Wikinews. "Press credentials" have no more or less
meaning than "encyclopedia". If we're challenging the "traditional"
model of an encyclopedia by letting a community write it, why would we
not do exactly the same for press credentials? Challenge this model of
a higher authority and let the people involved work out who can be
trusted. It's the only scalable approach, and the only one that will
work across all 15 language editions.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Try out the rating scheme

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Well, I guess just having a vote cascade on the mailing list isn't going
>to work. Hrmph. Anyone know who specifically is "in charge" of deciding
>what Wikimedia configuration to use? Or is the problem perhaps that
>there _isn't_ anyone specifically in charge? :)

Brion is and he doesn't like the current implementation, so it doesn't
go in. This is as it should be (there's a top-50 - sorry, TOP-40 -
website to worry about that barely stays up as it is), but it's
understandably frustrating to those of us who REALLY REALLY WANT IT
IN.

- d.


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] [OT] IOCCC

body:
Is it our Timwi, by the way, who just won the IOCCC?

     http://www.ioccc.org/whowon2005.html

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


body:
Alphax wrote:

> I was just thinking that. The people who currently have checkuser status
> were granted it by the developers, who currently already have that
> capability. The developers were effectively approved to do (whatever) by
> the board; hence, the board decides who is allowed access to the
> checkuser function.

The board does not approve developers. Developers approve themselves.

The majority of users with checkuser access are stewards. Stewards have
been approved by the community, neither by developers, nor by the board,
nor by Jimbo.

Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Translations between different wikipedias, and GFDL

body:
On 11/8/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> Isn't juriwiki a closed mailing list? I seem to remember trying to sign up
> there and getting auto-rejected.

It is closed to subscribers, but anyone can post to it. Posts will be
held for moderation by Soufron or Notafish. Replies will, in theory,
be cc'd to the original poster if they are not a subscriber to the
list. However, the list is more for current issues rather than general
legal discussions. I don't think interpretations of the GFDL need to
be made on a closed list.

More details at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Juriwiki_mailing_list>.

Angela.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
On 08/11/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, slight correction: User:Nobs04, who is not a bad contributor
> most of the time but is not very subtle in his thinking on these
> things, has contacted a number of "extremely conservative" editors (I
> won't get into whether I find their thinking subtle):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:TDC&diff=prev&oldid=27675611

"Attack on Venona sources again". I can't help but note the scent of
having stumbled into a pre-existing content war...

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live

references:
<dkpr94$qsp$1@sea.gmane.org>	<4370B649.7080307@starglade.org>	<dkqejk$p4s$1@sea.gmane.org>	<4370C727.4060702@starglade.org>
	<dkqlr6$kq2$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Anthere wrote:
> No. I suggest you ask to the original author of that sentence. I think
> it is David. Otherwise, perhaps Datrio, I did not check.

As you are someone on the Board (who are ultimately responsible for the
privacy policy, among other things), I would be grateful if you would
find out this information and get back to me on it.

Thanks,
Chris


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] check user policy

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>>>* on a project with no arbcom, the community will have to vote for its
>>>>editors with checkuser access. A limit of votes number has been set on
>>>>purpose. I recommand avoiding using sockpuppet for voting. A wiki
>>>>community with 10 editors and 30 voters is likely to be frowned upon.
>
>
>>>And next, we'll be voting for root, database access and CVS access.
>>>Get your votes in now! Brion, Tim or Lir for Mediawiki lead? It's a
>>>hot contest!
>
>
>
>>I think it should be possible to discuss without using fallacious
>>arguments David. There is no comparison between a checkuser access and a
>>root access.
>
>
>
> There is, really: neither is a voting matter. I raised this before,
> but you appear to regard the objection as (to quote you) "no real
> opposition". Not to mention Tim's quote when voting for checkuser was
> floated: "Users would vote themselves root if they could."
>
> What I said was that users need:
> - the technical knowledge to know what they're seeing (which a network
> admin was one example of);
> - the trustworthiness that they won't break the privacy policy

I still do not see how that allows the comparison between a check user
access and a root access.

>>The main problem I see here is that it seems you consider that check
>>user access should only be given to sysadmins. I do not think the
>>majority of editors would agree with you.
>
>
>
> Please don't misrepresent my words. I said that was not what I thought
> and I meant that was not what I thought. You therefore have no
> justification to say that that's what I said or meant. I ask you to
> retract it.

I do not really see how I can retract what I think is your position.
Admittedly, I may be wrong and not seeing your correct position, but I
can't lie about what I believe. That would be denying my beliefs. I hope
you see the difference.
Now, I hope you will agree that you consider only editors with a certain
level of technical knowledge should have access to this tool. When I
suggested that this technical knowledge could be offered in the help
pages on meta, you said it was not easy to provide such knowledge.
So ? What can we do ?

>>I see your argumentation aiming only at restricting the use of this tool
>>to a very limited number of editors, approved by Jimbo or Tim. Right
>>now, Jimbo has approved the access to a half dozen english editors, none
>>of whom are actually sysadmins.
>>What is your feeling toward these nominations ?
>
>
>
> As you FULLY KNOW BECAUSE I CC'D YOU ON THE EMAIL IN QUESTION, I am
> fine with all of those.
>
> Why are you pretending I am saying things I didn't or not saying things I did?

Because I do *not* understand what your position is.
I understand you oppose access by voting, but I still do not understand
by what you suggest the "nomination system" to be replaced. Correct me
if I am wrong, but as I understood, you currently suggest that people be
approved by Jimbo or Tim ?

You say on one hand that check user should have a certain technical
knowledge and be trustworthy. And on the other hand, apparentely that
only Jimbo or Tim (I am  not entirely sure of this point) should agree
on who should have access. My question is : how do you think Jimbo or
Tim will do to check the trustworthyness of editors who will maybe not
even talk english ? Jimbo or Tim could probably check in most cases the
technical ability, but how will they check the trustworthy ability ?

How will they do this for more than 300 projects ????

Another point is, right now, all stewards have check user access. But no
steward was approved by a developer or by Tim himself (who is at the
origine of the steward status creation), nor by Jimbo.
So, do you suggest that stewards are asked not to use this tool ? Or
should they be allowed only after approval by Jimbo or Tim ? Or should
stewards be only nominated by Jimbo or Tim in the future ?

My problem with your position David, is that I understand against what
you are, but I do not understand at all what you propose to replace that
proposal with.

One thing I know is that the way our projects work is a mixture of
various political systems. I am pushing toward a system more inspired of
democracy or oligarchy (community or subcommunity approval). It seems to
me you are pushing toward monarchy or technocracy. This seems to be the
root of the current problem.

>>But
I would like to know why you have not made any comments this week
>>while I have indicated a week ago that unless there was opposition, this
>>policy would go live this week.
>
>
>
> After you complained on arbcom-l of people not commenting, I went and
> checked that I had in fact commented ... and had already pointed out
> the ridiculousness of voting on the matter.

It seems most people who gave their opinion approved the voting method.
Are all these people ridicule ?

In case some people did not understand, the english wikipedia will NOT
be voting. The checkUser system on the english wikipedia will rely on
the arbcom, and for now, nominees were confirmed by Jimbo himself. So,
no one will have to bother with voting there.

Now, the fact is, David, while I understand your position to a certain
point, I am not sure you have a very strong experience with the
non-english communities. You are mostly involved (very much) in the
english one. It seems the english community is quite happy with a
mixture of monarchy (Jimbo) and oligarchy (committees....). This is not
necessarily the case on most projects. And I think most projects will
not be very happy with Jimbo (for example) making a decision for them.
My best example on this issue is that... stewards... are definitly
approved by the community. And though I think most of those who know Tim
  consider him a great guy, I also think going back to a system where
decision making is done by a developer... will not be something really
appreciated.

In the current proposal, any community has actually a CHOICE between
voting and not voting. If they REALLY do not want a community vote, they
have two options
* they can set up a sort of arbcom system to make this kind of decision
for them
* or they can entirely avoid voting for anyone and rely on stewards to
carry on ponctual requests.

And thinking about the french arbcom, if the french community feels like
the community should handle a vote, then the arbcom itself is empowered
to just say "okay, we could make this decision for you, but we prefer
the community make that decision".

> As Chris Jenkinson said:
>
>
>>Surely the enforcement of the Foundation's privacy policy is the
>>responsibility of the Foundation, and thus access to personal
>>information (such as IP addresses) should be given out upon approval by
>>the Board, rather than by some kind of election system?
>
>
>
> Indeed. Anthere, I originally understood this was your position.

No. Not upon approval. We are not a top down organisation.

If we were a top-down organisation, with board approval at any step, you
would possibly not have yourself the check user status as the board was
never asked to approve it.

By default, we consider you are doing the job with full honesty and
understanding.

Anthere


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request for the creation of a Nedersaksisch Wikipedia

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Helo Arbeo!

On Tuesday 08 November 2005 02:32, Arbeo M wrote:
> Hi Tels!
>
> Thanks for your inquiry. This can be a bit confusing
> indeed. That's part of the reason why discussion took
> so long here.
>
> > I am also confused. Does this mean we will have
> > wikipedias for every
> > German dialect (saxionian, bavarian etc), too?
> > *confused*
> >
> > How does "nedersaksisch" relate to
>
> "nieders?chsisch"?

[snipabit]

Thanx for the clarification. I think it would have been good to include a
few links for casual readers of this mailing-list, not everyone is
familiar with all the details/languages and ongoing/past discussions etc.

Regarding these two wikipedias, it seems that this is the unique situation
where a dialect (the dutch one) of a language (plattdeutsch) will get
it's own wikipedia.

I am not per se opposed to dialects getting their own wikipedia. It might
be very interesting to see the content (even if it is just for preserving
the dialect/language).

OTOH, "real" languages like "Sorbisch" (ISO code "wen") don't have thier
own wikipedia yet, and these would at least have some "official" rules on
how to spell things. I am no language expert, but things like saxonian
could get very messy in written form. Since I know nothing about
nedersaksisch, I will refrain from vote for or against it :)

> 2. However, Low Saxon (=Nedersaksisch, Nieders?chsisch
> or Plattd??tsch) is almost unanimously considered a
> separate language and not regarded as is belonging to
> the German language. As a German, I can confirm and
> assure that the two languages are not mutually
> intelligible.

Heh, you could say that between bavarian and saxonian! (I jest! :)

Here is a .sig of mine relating to that topic:

	Neulich in Dresden geh?rt:
	  "Gundach. Schbindadoni. Isvleisch dadidada?" -- Ex-Kahl-Libur

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Nov  8 17:44:52 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be ready within 10
 years." Alex Lewyt, of the Lewyt Corporation, a vacuum maker, predicted
 in The New York Times on June 10, 1955 -- A warning to all technophiles

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBQ3DX+XcLPEOTuEwVAQGazQf+LLp/3ma4wV9/jy/hm2UObuerVcIJC1Di
sAnU20RbvqQ7S8YoxFEdnrn9qI6n+HDkQotN8Gg+cswb9AjdYN1tY7rruTLQ+15y
ljtZx/7Py22Gb0KJlrfXLj14ZVs8fjxIflYfFBxnxz5Jhnh+g6rr5ghcCFNSMp9K
y7jk0zz7JVfCixDatzkMfPNjqLNsxL8/ARmcQPPlVp4l91cIskYDEnMLW+0lHoQy
AqaVKGb4HUlDzp4Ap2493qQTFWnVJ535LPISFIVm0gKKbChGjMKHSoPu8OqnExvR
5J/v8cMox81LTB8kjM6yF49rSI1DU3ZbREimplFxrX0rAteTN30drQ==
=waKc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live

references:
<dkpr94$qsp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4370B649.7080307@starglade.org>	<dkqejk$p4s$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4370C727.4060702@starglade.org>

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>> I guess that most points you are raising do not really belong to the
>> checkuser policy proper, but to the privacy policy.
>>
>> More particular, these points are visible here :
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Policy_on_release_of_data_derived_from_page_logs
>
>
>
> That is exactly the same text as the text I was questioning - it's just
> as vague.

It is just as vague, because it is a copy of what the privacy policy
says... :)

And yes, I agree, this is vague ----> to be discussed on the talk page.

(note : I did not write the privacy policy. Could Soufron or one of our
legal persons help here ?)

>>> What does "If the user has said they're from somewhere and the IP
>>> confirms it, it's not releasing private information to confirm it if
>>> needed." mean?
>>
>>
>> Well... I live in Clermont Ferrand and published this information
>> myself. If for some reasons a check is done on my user:Anthere, I can
>> not complain that it be publicly revealed that the user:Anthere ips
>> are leading to Clermont Ferrand...
>
>
> What happens if someone claims they are from somewhere (for example
> France), yet the IP address of the user suggests they are from somewhere
> else (for example Japan)?

Then I suppose it should be publicly said that the ip does not seem to
sign a presence in France, but rather in Japan. If the person is
suspected to be a sock puppet of someone in Japan, it may leads to high
suspicions of sockpuppetry, both because of the common country and
because of the lie. But the ip number should not be published.

Note that in case of pure mass vandalism, when range ips blocks are
necessary, this will be nevertheless visible.

>>> What does "generally" in "Revealing the country is generally not
>>> personally identifiable (e.g. "User:Querulous is coming in from the
>>> UK, User:Sockpuppet is coming in from Canada")." mean?
>>
>>
>> The problem with releasing data is to allow others to identify a
>> "person". If my ip is fixed and if I edit under another name, such as
>> user:antfish, the check will reveal that user:anthere and user:antfish
>> are editing from the same ip... which could lead to high suspicion
>> that both are the same editor.
>>
>> Versus, if it is revealed that user:antfish is an editor with an ip in
>> France... well, we are only 60 millions or so. This will not publicly
>> prove I am user:Antfish.
>
>
> I don't think you've defined "generally" there.

No. I suggest you ask to the original author of that sentence. I think
it is David. Otherwise, perhaps Datrio, I did not check.

>>> I'm still not happy with the idea that access to personal information
>>> can be given to people on the say-so that they will behave. Yes, the
>>> people who this will be given to are going to be some of the most
>>> trustworthy Wikipedians there are, but this is *personal
>>> information*. We should have some kind of legal agreement in place so
>>> there are no excuses.
>>
>>
>> Difficult to do as I understood...
>> Amongst things we could do for example, is to require an editor with
>> this type of access to provide his real name (privately) and a valid
>> email. And have him confirm by email that he read the privacy policy.
>> Would that be an idea ? Yes ? No ?
>
>
> How is signing an agreement difficult? You get sent the agreement via
> email, print it off, sign it, scan it and email it back. Or, print it
> off and fax/post it back.
>
> Chris

I remember there was some discussions on this proposal somewhere, but I
can't find it anymore :-( At least, not on meta.

Perhaps those who commented at that time could repeat their arguments to
Chris ?

Personnaly, I have no specific opinion either direction.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkUser live


from_name: JuergenL

subject: [Wikitech-l] Invalid range LoadBalancer.php line 584

body:
Hi,

I am using MediaWiki 1.5.1 with PHP 4.1.2 and I often get the
following warning when accessing my wiki pages:

Warning:  mt_rand(): Invalid range:  0..0 in
/path/to/mediawiki/includes/LoadBalancer.php on line 584

Do you know that warning and can you tell me how to fix it?

Thanks in advance.

JuergenL


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Status of Serbia and Montenegro chapter

body:
On 11/8/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Guess what: It never was! Unless a developer went totally loopy and
> decided to create it just to piss people off, it will never be created
> and under no recent circumstances would it have been.

I believe you that you never was. But, this is still a big community
problem (not Zlatiborian, but general), which can waste a lot of time
and/or a lot of Wikimedian relevancy.


from_name: Amgine

body:
foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org wrote:

> Why are you mentioning that? That is a strawman due to the fact
> that I strongly support the scalable approach.
>
> -- mav

Because your argument reduces the scalability.

Perhaps this entire thread could have been presented differently.

Board members? Would it be possible for you to discuss the Wikinews
press credentialing process at some point? Currently we use the system
in the same way high school and other non-professional journalism
organizations do all over the world, but perhaps we should have
something more than a tacit approval. One idea would be approval of a
phrase such as:

''Wikinews editions may accredit persons according to their policies
for the purpose of acting as freelance journalists when reporting on
news events for Wikinews."

Would this answer your concerns, Mav? It clearly states the
contributors are not representing Wikinews or the Wikimedia
Foundation, limits when and how the credentials may be used, but
allows the project to develop credentialing policies.

Amgine


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/8/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed.  I've only rarely seen article RfCs attract significant
> attention.  Shameful, since articles are what Wikipedia is supposed to
> be all about.  There are too many people who are part of Wikipedia for
> the community, instead of for the encyclopedia.

Part of the problem is that many of the subjects under disspute are
somewhat specialised. I cheack out the science section from time to
time but most of the time I don't really know enough about the subject
to say anything.

--
geni


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Look

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Tony Sidaway wrote:
> We're going to lose a perfectly good potential bureaucrat to a
> pusilanimous beauty contest if you don't get down  and at least
> consider whether Kelly Martin deserves your vote.
>

Can we get rid of Raul while we're at it? He's ugly.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQ3BcJLMAAH8MeUlWAQjCIgf/WwBZ7MZEvCcWyiAid/idekbTYDFIesTe
oje5t0Obpk04bfn9NuW7LKw0d+y5YKY2KXa0r7O+22IC0McKaZSQrNyeOD8aQIWw
GkxbbRfr+bqR2s904AGF08/fPzSpdPWnfv4xHeCD506457IxTeWIzVgq8ZrcyX8i
dC/b3SNCALGHhr3vxEqbaeQE/AM6Zm7w8TJVGS+9/jq5kzWTZl/kHkT57iNv8ZKe
ahYhZk/tLEJWbRnaRB0Xh+WJWPCKA0VgVAF0HMW2OS/Hh522fKCgpEXguitNa1/t
uvr5PFDGuWigwK2vw3CD8ZMZHSfLK2HBpuSY9in067nq2GrYbLHGTA==
=/zhw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Speeding up Mediawiki

body:
Robert Jones wrote:
> Are there any tricks to speeding up Mediawiki? I have many other pages on my
> site that talk to the MySQL database that open in <1s but the Mediawiki ones
> tend to take longer c.2-5s, and I don't have an enormous amount of load on
> the server.

If you're not already using one, install a PHP opcode cache. Without
one, your server wastes a lot of time recompiling MediaWiki's source
code every time you hit a page.

Free/Open Source:
APC: http://pecl.php.net/package/APC
eAccelerator: http://eaccelerator.net/
Turck MMCache: http://turck-mmcache.sourceforge.net/index_old.html
(older version)

Proprietary non-commercial:
PHP Accelerator: http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/

Proprietary commercial:
Zend Accelerator: http://www.zend.com/

(Note that 'Zend Optimizer' is a different product, and less likely to
improve performance significantly.)

You may also get a slight improvement from using memcached instead of
the in-database cache for messages and rendered pages.
http://www.danga.com/memcached/

> It is a wiki installation that isn't editable by the public and doesn't use
> a skin as such (I just allow all the HTML I want to allow by editing the
> parser and another file), so I was wondering if there were any tricks to
> bypass things and make the pages load quicker. It's probably worth noting
> that I don't use the cache facility and that I have an extension that
> displays only if someone is logged in (this is the reason for chche not
> being used).

Enabling the parser cache can make a difference with longer pages as
well. If your extension just shows, and isn't particularly
time-dependent, you might hack User::getPageRenderingHash() to include
the logged-in state. This would cause the parser cache to store separate
entries for renderings for logged-in and non-logged-in users.

If you get a lot of reads by external viewers, you might also try
enabling the file cache, which can shave off a little more time for
anonymous viewer cache hits by reading complete page HTML from disk.
(See DefaultSettings.php; note you may have to tweak a couple of setting
for it to work.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Any File

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikinews is giving out press credentials

body:
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 20:51:23 -0800 (PST)
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <20051108045123.83078.qmail at web51611.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

> Credentials are given by organizations - not by just some people on the
> Internet (which is all any Wikimedia project is by itself). Using that term -
> in the real world where it has a specific meaning - to describe that process is
> very misleading.

In normal newspapers also the emplyment status and the wages are given
by the organization
More precisely the credential is given by the same organization is
given by who recruit the journalist. Since here the "journalist" is
not recruit by the Board, there is no reason why it should the only
one entitle to give out creential.

In my Opinion what is misleading is the way normal journalist consider
themselves.

Why should journalist be treated in a different way of normal people
when asking for informations?

AnyFile


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] check user policy

body:
> Another point is, right now, all stewards have check user access. But no
> steward was approved by a developer or by Tim himself (who is at the
> origine of the steward status creation), nor by Jimbo.
> So, do you suggest that stewards are asked not to use this tool ? Or
> should they be allowed only after approval by Jimbo or Tim ? Or should
> stewards be only nominated by Jimbo or Tim in the future ?

It isn't true that all stewards have CheckUser access. Stewards have
the ability, though not the right, to assign themselves this access.
It's unfortunate that some have violated their privileges by assigning
themselves CheckUser access without approval of the communities
they're using it on. I thought stewards could be trusted not to do
that, but seemingly not.

Angela
A steward with no checkuser access


subject: [Wikitech-l] check user policy


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Status of Wikimedia

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Mark Williamson wrote:
> No! I meant to say that... umm... they exist, but you won't find them
> at your library because there are no printing presses in Zlatibor so
> they have to write out copies manually!
>

So if there's no printing presses, let alone computers, exactly *who* is
going to read this glorious Zlatiborian Wikipedia?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQ3BgubMAAH8MeUlWAQjNAgf9G67U2pWWR9SQs9hehIk2AQJek3rbj6i2
T65YG+r36JP9/sQuqN1wRz3xtdIzE2z3+LY1LS7Gf+BpM1Zv6DCutAhtQd0LXMBF
bdjazY+qE3xeFyDoVJUbiKhO3X6npmgBv3Mv23vcS3TEarLnweDxxe7m8jiRQeGp
gk/QfcrZwobD86uF1PjDJUxrTf0TsqSxtaNraYEomXi09QNhlFwe6rhPNAiqyqyt
OdnpTSLgEwuqLR5OkevY18SUDiVUoPGPUZ/XBCQZeuWTqQq6tFVMEkUgk585xpCE
Qvj8/QpNNea2LILlkoTpr32hcyMnhZoVxP4q4EljpZDc7fCbC8NQLA==
=Cxyh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Moses

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Special:Ipblocklist doesn't function well
	inzh.wikipedia

body:
thanks, it's very clear for me ;)

--
?? Tim ?? "Re: Special:Ipblocklist doesn't function well
inzh.wikipedia" ??????? 05 ?? Moses ???;
??? ID ? 385244;
?? 27 ?? 4933 ??.
 ??>> system, the user name was truncated. That's maybe why this list
 ??>> doesn't work any more. So, could any developer fix the problem?
 ??>> Or, if it's a bug, please fix it in the next upgrade.

 TS> No, the problem isn't the long ID, the problem is this:

 TS> http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Ipboptions&diff=1104262&oldid=861199

 TS> The Chinese and English versions are around the wrong way, you
 TS> need to swap them. See

 TS> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Ipboptions

 TS> for an example of how it's meant to be done.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semapedia

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Magnus Manske wrote:
> I just found this site:
>
> http://www.semapedia.org
>
> It is supposed to tag "physical objects" with the barcode of a wikipedia
> URL. Basically, you enter the URL of a wikipedia article, and it prints
> a chessboard-like box with black and white squares. You then glue this
> sheet of paper onto the object (after asking permission!), for example,
> a famous building.
>
> The site also offers a Java software for cell phones with a camera.
> Anyone with that software can now take a picture of the sheet of paper
> with the cell phone, and the software will convert it back into a URL,
> which you can then open on the cell phone to see the article about that
> building.
>
> I, for one, welcome our new tagging overlords! I am currently printing
> the URL of my user page to glue it to my forehead, so people can find
> out who I am without having to talk to me ;-)
>

Yeah, I'd heard of that before (not sure if it was the same site, but it
was the same idea). Not all of us have cameras though, let alone phones
with them...

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQ3Bq9rMAAH8MeUlWAQiJBAgAlas11F4jW7MRda960Z949zbAoStyOPNV
GIhPIvQylUVTcHbHcOurOsxuAM747ny2pn2m5VY3nzNAmjInLmg1EgYC34//Ytp5
PWYUF4fgxOC/rsjtY/L/e5SQ9wMucsCdGjx7uG0N06V/xAKopDTLPWylLWfcu2Bk
dmxbT8/kuLXQp+jkBBAzhreVQZGOyCGPSTN+2aSZDBQfMFHSaVkd05dct8sd8Ucx
9K9tgoRMsXV0rniVH/djHimOBi/idm8DJxnZD0ZrucFycJLdg/qsrTH6LZq7RRp6
Blfmt9jOvMjw05UJ6rtbqV5RTFIM9gZIJAaKdwYAUbCJXMV+oFfUNA==
=dAuP
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: kosebamse at gmx.net

body:
Thanks for the feedback. One interesting point with my little test seems to
be that the average quality of our content has not much improved since March
(or since 2003, as far as I can remember).

A thought experiment: if we were the editorial committee of an encyclopedia
to be written from scratch and were given Wikipedia's current content as a
basis (but not the user base), what would we do? I guess we would put our
energy into improving the material, i.e. rewriting/deleting/merging most of
it. But we would not try to acquire more articles of that quality. (Ah wait,
we ARE the editorial committee of an encyclopedia to be written from
scratch...)

Kosebamse

--
Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko!
Satte Provisionen f?r GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:
<snip>
> By the way, how do you get cascading replies? I'm
> using Yahoo Mail... is it possible?
>

Email me off list and I'll send you a gmail invite. Better yet, I've
just sent you one :)

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQ3Bs2rMAAH8MeUlWAQiQKQf+PKHPciInUl//6Ox+qRuDzLv+HsZ0mNmo
VZQ3XvtwvgIRLkL1TfMHceJ0FDlFnkLvDiVKRh4xgiVLPeWDTH0KjfYtD7RIjuom
dD/P7Bb/Ka5rDqmcKSjiehp8N0Mrihx8zRCPsmegqpYuB/8nBsCTXmn/sWjQBzRd
3Bhu4S2g/EdimeBj6/YoprNPPklxyf53gsW/CYnp4S6UD+2+ecAy3uJ80vhfky66
VDxPqLj1zSQ7vG5g039Lj7FMXtp9O4O06msrPgr8sgJcBGPEsauYZ7W8f/E9ze43
PldbNz+qB1Oof8MZS2k52Uje4OE1+8RqJUhhlrrlYOGvA7Xs/QcgPA==
=PYTx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Special:Ipblocklist doesn't function well in
	zh.wikipedia

body:
Moses wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Chinese wikipedia (zh.wikipedia) admins can't block vandalic users from
> Oct. 18, 2005. Please compare
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist and
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block for
> more details.
>
> As you see in the Ipblocklist, the last user successful blocked useing a
> very long ID, after the upgrade of the MediaWiki system, the user name
> was truncated. That's maybe why this list doesn't work any more. So,
> could any developer fix the problem? Or, if it's a bug, please fix it in
> the next upgrade.

No, the problem isn't the long ID, the problem is this:

http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Ipboptions&diff=1104262&oldid=861199

The Chinese and English versions are around the wrong way, you need to swap
them. See

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Ipboptions

for an example of how it's meant to be done.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 08/11/05, Autymn D. C. <lysdexia at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Rdsmith4 is misrepresenting and libelling me, and abusing his
> joke-of-a-power again by blocking me again after I had insisted and
> enforced that an article be put in an accurate grammatic mood to fit
> the context, which was not real but ideal.

Wow! A quick glance through some of the disputes involved here reveals
a whole level of linguistic conservatism I had not previously
encountered. Some of the assertions made ('Temporisation, French Latin
for "timesening"', "English infinitives [...] end in -an") suggest a
view of the language as not only set in stone, but defined by rigid,
complex rules. Thus, "loan words" are simply "foreign" (as also argued
re. the plural of "virus"), and usages not conforming to grammatical
rules "incorrect", however common and accepted they may be.

Now, I freely admit that I hold a strongly descriptivist view, so it
seems to me fairly obvious that language is a dynamic, constantly
evolving, construct, and that "correctness", "grammar", etc, are all
constructs created *after the fact* to better describe and understand
it. And it follows, in my mind, that rules which are *never* (not even
rarely) applied are simply erroneous, however logical or historically
accurate.

I know that mine is, in its way, an extreme position, and there is
some grounds for arguing that a "correct form" must exist at any time,
and by definition cannot change arbitrarily; in which case there must
be a lag between changes occurring and becoming "acceptable" and
"correct". But even so, it is self-evident that language *does*
change, and that English *has* changed, so that the "rules" do have to
be updated *sometimes*.

In my opinion, the language this user seems to be advocating is a kind
of grammatically-defined "pure" Anglo-Saxon, which is not what most of
us would recognise as "contemporary English" (i.e. "early 21st-century
Modern English") at all. So, given that the edits were on the "English
Wikipedia", I'd say they were, at best, misplaced.

I know this is all fairly tangential to anything, but it just
intrigued me to think about it a little...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Roman Maurer

body:
Anthony DiPierro pravi:

> I know we're usually lenient about this, because hey, it's still Wikipedia,
> but what if answers.com <http://answers.com> put a note in some edit summary
> saying "translated from [[:fr:Andorra]]". Would anyone be complaining about
> GFDL compliance then?

IMHO this is slightly off-topic.  Answers.com (or any other mirror's)
policy is of little interest to wikipedians that translate articles from
other's wikipedias (note the subject).

That said, I think that [[:fr:Andorra]] on a mirror should really be a
link to the French mirrored article.  In this article, it should be
noted that the content is from (French) Wikipedia.  If the mirror site
does not mirror French version of Wikipedia, then it should make sure
that all fr: links are redirected to the original fr.wikipedia.org.

At least this is how I understand this issue ...
--
	Pozdrav,
	  Roman


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 14:30 +1030, Alphax wrote:
> This is where allowing "Fair use" images is getting us... what do I tell
> them? "Sorry, that's actually a copyright infringment which we can use
> via a legal loophole, but nobody else is allowed to"?
>
> I thought the idea was to allow "maximal reuse" and "free content", not
> "copyright situations so complicated that nobody can understand them"!

It's not really a "legal loophole," per se; it's a group of restrictions
upon copyright law. That said, I agree with your point. Having totally
Free content on Wikipedia would be great. But, reality seldom conforms
to ideals. As long as the vast majority of the world's content producers
adhere to restrictive copyright schemes, it's either fair use or no use
at all. I, personally, would rather have non-redistributable content
than none at all, at least for illuminative purposes.

Of course, reasonable fair use is necessary. Authors who think Wikipedia
needs images of every single character in a work, no matter how minor,
are obviously overstepping the bounds of fair use. And yes, fair use
does complicate our situation somewhat. I think the benefits of
responsible fair use outweigh the downsides, however. And remember,
there will always be people uninformed about copyright or Wikipedia in
general asking if they can do this or that. We do have Wikipedia: pages
for explanations.
--
Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20051108/67f396cb/attachment.pgp


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Adding a new tab

references:
<dkm303$j24$1@sea.gmane.org> <dkq1sp$e7q$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ba1b6b9f0511080753k5442d92dkd9789e1b6d10e32a@mail.gmail.com>
	<dkr1n9$2be$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Hi Candy.

I don't really know all the options since perhaps you're running your
own wiki but I've just made some code that any user can use to add a
tab to an existing wiki that she does not own.

My js is not global but could be. Currently just the people who are
interested in it put a copy in their own js page. Not all skins
support custom per-user js. I know monobook does and classic doesn't.
I'm not sure about the others.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

On 11/8/05, candy <ccanddyy at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Andrew but the mediawiki I installed doesnt have any javascript
> code. It has monobook.php and css files
> In tht case can I use the js code. If so how or else whats the alternative?
>
> C
>
> Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> > On the English Wiktionary I've added a new tab using javascript.
> > The code is here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Hippietrail/monobook.js
> >
> > Look for the function "addCiteTab"
> >
> > Good luck.
> >
> > Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
> >
> > On 11/8/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >>> Does anyone has any idea as to how to add a new tab to the existing
> >>>tabs (article,discussion,edit and history) to the wikipedia page.I have
> >>>the mediawiki installed and the database dump imported. Now i wana tweak
> >>>and make additions to wikipedia. I have very little idea of php but am
> >>>ready to learn the advance concepts as the need may arise.
> >>
> >>You make additions to Wikipedia at http://wikipedia.org. Don't call your
> >>site Wikipedia, or you would be violating trademark law.
> >>
> >>That said, have a look at Magnus Manske's validation feature; it adds a
> >>new tab, 'validate', to every page.
> >>
> >>Timwi
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Wikitech-l mailing list
> >>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://linguaphile.sf.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: muhammad zaid zainuddin

subject: [Wikitech-l] diacritics problem

body:
dear wikitech,

I'm really really sorry for bothering and giving you guys with a lot of
trouble. I've been away because of end of ramadan and eid celebration.

About the virama diacritics (attached), actually, it's kind of 'new',
because it's introduced in 1985 by the 'Balai Penelitian Bahasa Ujung
Pandang' (Ujung Pandang Committee of Language), thus will never be found in
old text like i la galigo. Therefore, ominoglot and other lontara sources
didn't mention this diacritic because they are referring to the oled texts.
Here's the scan of the page from Buginese Grammar written in Indonesia. You
will notice this at page five. The title of this book is 'Tatabahasa Bugis'
published by 'Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan', Indonesia (Department
of Education and Culture of Indonesia) in 1991. I think, you can find this
book at main library or university's library. I hope wikitech creates this
diacrtic and informs me about how to make the input.

Secondly, I notice that the diacritic /e/, when written, got mix up with
the other consonant. Take a look at this page:

<http://bug.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E1%A8%84%E1%A8%82%E1%A8%89%E1%A8%99%E1%A8%91%E1%A8%99%E1%A8%82>

When I typed in the word 'pangadereng', the vowel /e/ got mix up with the
other consonants. Thus, make it harder to read.

Thirdly, I got some replies telling me that the consonant is too small to
read. Can wikitechs make it a little bigger like Malayalam language.

Thank you.

Muhammad Zaid Zainuddin


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On 11/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is where allowing "Fair use" images is getting us... what do I tell
> them? "Sorry, that's actually a copyright infringment which we can use
> via a legal loophole, but nobody else is allowed to"?
>

They are not a copyright infringement and it is not a legal loophole. It is,
rather, a sensible limit to the extent of copyright protection, which is not
an absolute right and is not 'intellectual property'.

What we should tell him is that we use those pictures under the United
States doctrine of Fair Use and that we cannot give any permissions, since
we do not own the copyrights ourselves. He must either obtain permission
from the copyright holder or make his own determination as to whether Fair
Use is applicable to his situation.

There is a strong argument that those concerned with freedom should
aggressively use the provisions of Fair Use - explicitly to never allow the
fiction that copyright owners have absolute control to establish itself.
Fair Use is equivalent to a public right of way, in a sense - and should not
be a right allowed to lapse through unuse.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- kosebamse at gmx.net wrote:

> ...regarding the quality of our work:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kosebamse/Twenty-random-pages_test
>
> Plus ?a change, plus c?est la m?me chose. Kosebamse

I think it's worth making a distinction between the quality of randomly-chosen
articles, and the quality of popular articles. It's hard to know, of course,
but I'd doubt that many of the articles on your list would be getting more than
a handful of readers every month. It's quite possible that the average quality
of Wikipedia articles is staying the same (as people constantly add new stubs /
fancruft etc), while the average "Wikipedia experience" of a reader goes up.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Voting is evil (was CheckUser policy)

body:
I just want to mention that while I usually do not, in this case I
find myself agreeing w the 2 above arbiters, altho regarding mediation
I feel Kelly is spot on, that informal mediation works far better than
Mediation Commitee mediation, which often, in my experience, involves
nothing more than a link to a page where the 2 users are expected to
sort things out on their own, w no formal structure or assistance from
the mediation commitee.

We need MC reform as well as RFA reform as well as RFC reform as well
as AFD reform... pretty much all of the wikipedia name space process's
need work. Not to give too many pats on the back, but the system that
currently seems to be working best is ArbCom...

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/8/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/8/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Mediation is intermittent at best, and (from what I can tell) almost never
> > achieves a positive outcome, but that's nothing compared to RfC.
>
> Mediation is more successful than you may realize, in part because
> successful mediations often occur in relative obscurity.  A problem
> that once existed went away, without an RfC or RfAr being filed; as a
> result, only the editors involved in the dispute know about the
> mediation or the resolution, and they often don't talk much about it.
>
> Note that I'm specifically not referring to mediation under the
> auspices of the Mediation Committee, which has, indeed, been
> notoriously unreliable.  I'm referring more to informal mediations
> conducted by a variety of informal mediators who get involved via talk
> pages, IRC, IM, email, and any number of other methods to settle
> disagreements between editors amicably.  I've done at least a dozen
> such mediations (only one since being appointed to ArbCom, though) and
> most of them have been at least moderately successful.  The more
> public ones are the ones that have failed, usually because by the time
> the dispute is loud enough to be noticeable generally, the parties are
> too pissed at one another to ever settle their dispute.  Many
> mediations merely consist of discovering an edit war and, instead of
> doling out punitive blocks (as so many admins on Wikipedia are wont to
> do), diagnosing the problem, talking to the users in question, and
> resolving the dispute.  Often it's not hard to do this, but most of
> our admins never try.  It's so much easier just to go "3RR, block
> block block".
>
> > Article RfCs are numerous, and rarely attract the attention of more than one
> > or two outside editors.  Frequently they attract no outside interest at all.
>
> Indeed.  I've only rarely seen article RfCs attract significant
> attention.  Shameful, since articles are what Wikipedia is supposed to
> be all about.  There are too many people who are part of Wikipedia for
> the community, instead of for the encyclopedia.
>
> > User RfCs are a mess - in theory they are a platform for addressing and
> > solving community issues.  In practice, they are often venues for warring
> > camps to air grievances, and for certain notorious individuals (who feel
> > they don't get enough attention) to use as soapboxes for their own
> > speechifying (i.e. yet another "outside view").  Obvious trolling is rarely
> > addressed - the complainants outline their case, and a dozen or so regular
> > editors vote in support.  The troll provides a lengthy response, and three
> > or four troll buddies/generall trolls/people with grievances against the
> > complainant line up and vote in support of him, or add another "outside
> > view" that has little to do with the case at hand, and is mostly about their
> > own issues with the complainants.  Nothing changes, and everyone goes away
> > bitter.
>
> This definitely describes several of the RfC's I've been involved in
> in some way lately.  I agree that this serves no purpose.  I'm also
> tired of hearing editors state "In my RfC my opinion got more
> endorsements than yours did, therefore I won and you must shut up."
> (Yes, I've heard things like this said.  It's stupid.)  RfC is
> emphatically not supposed to be a popularity contest, although I must
> admit it has turned into one.  Of course, the same can be said of
> RfA/RfB.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Tue, 8 Nov 2005 kosebamse at gmx.net wrote:

> Thanks for the feedback. One interesting point with my little test seems to
> be that the average quality of our content has not much improved since March
> (or since 2003, as far as I can remember).
>
One detail that attracted my attention in your results was that both times
that you id your test, you found exactly *5* articles were of "good"
quality or better. Was this the result of an unconscious bias, or would a
painstaking study show that about 25% of Wikipedia articles are satisfactory
or better?

So I did my own survey of 20 articles, picked at random.

First result I found was that Kosebamse had better luck than me: of the
20 articles I found, no matter how generous I felt, I couldn't rate
any of the articles I found as anything better than "satisfactory". I did
check Kosebamse's ratings, & the 4 articles K rated as better than
"satisfactory" were arguably good; I added 2 of them to [[WP:GA]]. But the
ones I found weren't that good; I rated about 4-6 out of 20 as "satisfactory".

Two were on the cusp: [[J. Paul Getty]] was in many ways an adequate article,
but most of the article was devoted to discussing a pair of events in Getty's
life: the fact that he had a pay phone in his mansion at one time, & the
events surrounding the kidnapping of his grandson. The narrative of his life
was very thin.

The other was [[Santa Clara Drum and Bugle Corps]], to which I had a
conflicted reaction: this was an article that I had a hard time imagining
why anyone would bother to read it. Now before anyone thinks I would
want to remove this article from Wikipedia, I will say that I would never
put it on AfD, & if I found it there I would most likely defend it from
deletion. However, after I read it, I was still as perplexed as I was
at the beginning over why anyone would write an article about it. And
that is my criticism of the article, & why I wonder if it will ever
reach FAC status: the people who care about this subject have no sense for
how to make the rest of us care about the topic.

But back to my original point: Kosebamse found 25% of the articles at
least satisfactory. I found at worst 20%. I suspect that the number lies
somewhere between the 2 numbers.

But if Kosebamse's two surveys are a fair sampling, it shows that only
25% of our articles at any time -- no matter how many there are -- would
be acceptible as they stand. I find this an interesting suggestion where
we need to focus our energies.

Geoff


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
On 11/8/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Attack on Venona sources again". I can't help but note the scent of
> having stumbled into a pre-existing content war...

On 11/8/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It seems strange to me that any category which could be defamatory would
> be subject to the whims of the voting process.  This is not just a
> question of "Soviet spies".  Any category suggesting a criminal activity
> of any kind should be viewed as POV.

Well, these are really one and the same issue: the "content war" is
not limited to these authors but is an ongoing dialogue about the
history of the Cold War and the value of the VENONA decrypts in
general, one which has its origins and most of its battles outside of
Wikipedia.

VENONA, for those who are not aware and don't feel like reading the
entry on it, was a series of intercepted and decrypted Soviet
communications during the 1940s and 1950s. They were not released
until the 1990s, however.

People who would have sided with the Anti-Communists in the 1950s saw
them as a vindication of Anti-Communism and even McCarthyism, and saw
them as confirming that a number of people (Alger Hiss, Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, etc.) who had had nasty loyalty trials in those days
were actually Soviet agents. In this view, the liberals have/had it
all wrong in thinking that McCarthyism was a witch hunt or an instance
of political persecution.

People who would be inclined to oppose these opinions politically or
for other reasons would sympathize with the accused took one of two
tacks. One interpreted the data differently: VENONA showed not that
McCarthy was right, but that he was wrong; instead of massive
insidious spying, they depict a limited and loose network of misc. and
somewhat incompetent agents (Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan espoused this
point of view in his book _Secrecy: The American Experience_). The
other approach was to doubt the sources themselves -- emphasizing that
they were less clean-cut than they appeared: on top of multiple levels
of "translation", including decryption, translation from Russian, and
figuring out who all of the code names were supposed to be, the
scattered phrases released are often as sensible as a Nostradamus
translation, and to base strong legal and moral statements on such
sketchy evidence should be done with caution at best. VENONA in many
ways in not an idea source to rely on by itself, and requires much
interpretation to make any sense of. So the argument goes.

Anyway.. that's the debate. It's larger than Wikipedia -- it's about
the history of Anti-Communism -- who was right and who was wrong in
the 1950s, which is a large part of the mythos of American political
culture *at the present moment* as well (there are those who compare
the current concerns with terrorism with Cold War fears of communist
infiltration, as I'm sure most of us have seen).

In the spirit of complete openness, I should probably note that 1. I
do some research in this area, and 2. personally I fall somewhere
between the Moynihan approach and the skeptical approach -- I think
there's evidence that the Soviets did have a number of agents of some
sort or another at various times, but that VENONA is a very
problematic source for a number of methodological and practical
reasons. Of course on Wikipedia I think a NPOV approach should be
taken at all times.

Hope that clears up the latent issue here. In any event, I think
categories which label people as having committed a crime should be
done in a very careful way. Though this is an appeal to the extreme, I
would be just as cautious about having a category called [[Child
molesters]].

FF