body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote
>
>
>>  Tell me if I'm wrong.
>
>
> I think you're right, in principle, to favour approaches where points of
> view out of the mainstream are documented in some way, rather than excluded
> by some sort of decree.

Of course I am.  Being Right is my superpower.
Err, whoops.  Was that my outside voice?

>
> That being said, WP will always want them documented in a certain
> low-rhetoric, crisp way with supporting cites.  This is unlikely to satisfy
> anybody but the most level-headed, reasonable holders of said points of
> view.

I believe it will, at minimum, cut down on the number of people
reverting the article after "attacks" have been "fixed" in some way, and
will reduce the number of attempts to circumvent administrative rules.
For one thing, the most egregious offenders act as blunt instruments,
and probably won't know what to do about information they've posted that
isn't deleted, but just gets shuffled around a bit to add a more
professional tone.  Such a person may not even necessarily realize that
his bias has been bled out, as long as his (probably specious)
statistics are still presented in some manner.

Keep in mind that people who push bias and ignore attempts at
objectivity think they're being objective, and the phrasing they choose
tends to be a result of the inability to recognize the distinction
between biased and unbiased language.  Bias in academic works is
typically the result of blindness to one's own bias: we all do it,
though the more alert of us might do it far less than some others.
Altering pejorative or prejudicial language without altering core data
can often mitigate problems of disagreement simply by leaving biased
parties with no options but A) leave it as is or B) becoming truly
irrational, even in one's own eyes.

In any case, as Jimbo has pointed out, the soft solution is preferable
if it works.  Considering Wikipedia is entirely built upon the notion
that collaborative peer review selects for good information and
presentation, it seems to me that the softest solution (apply
Wikipedia's core precepts faithfully and fully) is also likely the most
effective, in cases such as this.

>
> Acrid contention is to be expected, unless and until one gets 'insidious
> POV-pushing': people prepared to operate on a time scale of years within the
> norms and with the general grain of the way WP works.  We have ways of
> ring-fencing some of the contentious issues (not all); we don't currently
> have much idea about regulating the latter.

"Insidious POV-pushing" is probably far more prevalent than you realize.
  In fact, I suspect that every non-stub article in Wikipedia has at
least indirectly suffered at the hands of that phenomenon, though in
probably no greater degree than any Other Encyclopedia.  Even attempts
to mitigate or eliminate bias involve some degree of POV advocacy.  If
real bias begins to appear in an article, I haven't much fear that it
won't be corrected in due time, though.

The real problem to examine here, I think, is in such issues as
ballot-stuffing and revert-wars.  If the Stormfront troopers start
engaging in regular revert-wars, that's fairly easily addressed by such
administrivia as the 3RR and, if that proves ineffective, it just points
out something that needs work.

As for ballot-stuffing (which has already happened once with Stormfront,
apparently), I'm of the opinion that votes are counterproductive under
most circumstances, anyway.  Votes are calls for a majority opinion --
POV bias by definition -- rather than a function or extension of the
economics of public content reference materials.  Much like a
capitalistic market tends, in a vacuum, toward an equilibrium of wealth
production, so too does the semi-social machinery of Wikipedia's
publicly editable content tend toward an equilibrium of data purity, at
least when it mostly operates in a vacuum (without too much bureaucratic
red tape).

In short, the "solution" in this case (in my opinion) is three-fold:

1.  We should simply become better, and more alert, editors.

2.  We should treat system abuses as an opportunity to improve
administrative rules.

3.  We should avoid opportunities for tangential and auxiliary functions
(like polls and votes) to be sabotaged, most likely by minimizing the
incidence of such functions: if it can be done without a vote, but still
be accomplished in the spirit of community, it should be.

--
Chad


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Chad Perrin (perrin at apotheon.com) [050208 04:33]:
>
>
>>I'm not sure that anything at all "needs to be done" to deal with the
>>matter.  In fact, there's not really anything necessarily wrong with POV
>>getting into an article, as long as no POV is pushed as the only valid
>>POV.  Rather, multiple POVs* might be a more desirable status of an
>>article than no POV at all, where each is clearly identified as being a
>>particular perspective with identified adherents.  Thus, if Stormfront
>>troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were
>>gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit
>>it.  Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one
>>section, and label it as a particular perspective.
>
> I'm sure S*ll*g was very pleased with the results ;-)

I think I missed a reference, there.

>>Where a Stormfront (darn, the militant racists get all the cool names)
>
> They've given up on the cool uniforms, though. Foolish move.

Agreed.

>
>>activist enters some figures identifying the amount of money supposedly
>>cost the country by Zionists, stick it into an appropriate POV corral
>>and provide some academic analysis of where those figures might
>>originate.  If treated properly, such attempts to monkeywrench the
>>bias-mitigating machinery of Wikipedia can actually become a rich source
>>of information.
>
> You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent
> checkable reference out of them, thoguh.

Search for it independently, then.  If you don't find a reference, edit
it out if need be WITH A NOTE to the effect that it is unsubstantiated
at this time, and will be re-entered at such time as it can be
substantiated (note probably delivered both on the talk page and in a
note for the history page).  Editing other people's contributions out
should include justifications, anyway, and should not be done as a first
resort, in my considered opinion.  Don't edit what someone else has said
without being positive you know the reasons for what came before your
edit, even if your own edit requires attempts at independent verification.

Besides, if their heads explode you'll have reduced the population of
people introducing problematic edits into controversial articles.

>
>>I guess, in short, my point is that a lack of bias and a lack of
>>point-of-view are two different and separate things.  Points of view are
>>good.  Bias is favoritism to a particular point of view, and that's bad.
>> Tell me if I'm wrong.
>
> Mmm. Report and attribute them, don't just say them.
>
> Really, I've found they're really bad at checkable references on even the
> simple stuff - e.g. "This organization believes ..." It's actually really
> annoying.

I certainly don't disagree with that.  Activists do tend to have that
problem, and it definitely does tend to be annoying.

--
Chad


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
Paul Youlten wrote:
> I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...
>
> I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the
> right on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except
> the German and Swedish ones.

Sounds like this problem:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1084

The bug is marked as fixed, I'm not quite sure what the status is.

I seem to remember seeing a note somewhere about this problem still
being there on some wiki (hu.wikipedia.org maybe?) and being fixed by
removing some change (or making some removal?) to the
[[MediaWiki:Monobook.js]]. Unfortunately I can't find the reference just
now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jake Waskett

body:
On Monday 07 February 2005 16:41, David Gerard wrote:
> > If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar
> > to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to
> > articles with the controversial header.
> > This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and
> > justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for
> > edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the
> > matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.
>
> I don't think it'll do a damned thing to slow down POV pushers, but I do
> think the Summary field being compulsory would be good. It actually took me
> a couple of days to realise what it was for (commenting in a version
> control system).

I don't think that the summary field is sufficient for more than describing
the most minor edits (say, fixing a typo). More complex edits, particularly
if they need justifying, need an entry on the discussion page. This also
helps other users to explain why they agree or (more likely, unfortunately)
disagree.

My experience, having tried this informally for a few days and
encouraged/nagged others to do likewise, is that it does seem to reduce the
amount of edit wars. It still doesn't eliminate them, but it does help. And
when someone is forced to view the talk page first, there's a fair chance
that he'll at least read the most recent comments. Call me an idealist and I
won't argue, but I think that perhaps if people read comments explaining NPOV
and the application to articles often enough, maybe it'll sink in.

A 3UER (Unjustified Edit Rule) would at least encourage collaboration. And if
all else fails, it makes unreasonable editors MUCH easier to detect.

And maybe, if POV pushers lose motivation and drift away, it might be safe to
remove the notice at a later date.

Jake.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au stated for the record:

> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>> Did anyone notice I was in Jerusalem *on the very day* of the
>> Palestinian elections?  If that doesn't prove it, I don't know what
>> would.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>
> OMG!!! It's a Zionist/Roman Catholic conspiracy! You are worshipping a
> pagan god with your wikipedia! You are the NEW BABYLON!

Nah.  The StormAssTroopers would think more highly of him if he
worshipped a pagan god.  Though I must congratulate you on uncovering
the conspiracy that has been controlling the Marxist/Libertarian Cabal,
LLP, all this time.

Now you'll have to be triply-reverted, too.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Necessity is the plea for every infringement of
  sean at epoptic.com | human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants;
                   | it is the creed of slaves. --William Pitt


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
Yes, of course it's OK! After all, it is a Wiki...

Mark

On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:39:49 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Felix Wan wrote:
> > I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese
> > and English, and started to write the Main Page.
>
> Oooh, cool.
>
> You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?
>
> little Alex
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On Monday 07 February 2005 17:06, David Gerard wrote:
> > I don't think that the summary field is sufficient for more than
> > describing the most minor edits (say, fixing a typo). More complex edits,
> > particularly if they need justifying, need an entry on the discussion
> > page. This also helps other users to explain why they agree or (more
> > likely, unfortunately) disagree.
>
> [...]
> I'm not sure we need this for *all* pages - it's really the problematic
> 0.1%.

I'm sorry, I meant only the highly controversial (read: problematic) pages.

> The ArbCom has previously placed restrictions on individual editors
> to document better what they're doing, but the present AC is reluctant to
> do this at the article level, i.e. for *everyone* editing a given article.
>

I'm sure that the AC are intelligent, thoughtful people who are willing to
change their minds if presented with a possible approach to ongoing
problems. ;-)

> (Though it's bloody tempting, e.g. on anything on the Israel-Palestine
> conflict.)

Would be nice on the circumcision articles, too... And *if* it's tempting,
then the question is: is there a good reason not to *try* it?

> > My experience, having tried this informally for a few days and
> > encouraged/nagged others to do likewise, is that it does seem to reduce
> > the amount of edit wars. It still doesn't eliminate them, but it does
> > help. And when someone is forced to view the talk page first, there's a
> > fair chance that he'll at least read the most recent comments. Call me an
> > idealist and I won't argue, but I think that perhaps if people read
> > comments explaining NPOV and the application to articles often enough,
> > maybe it'll sink in.
>
> It's certainly a good practice where you're unsure of how an edit is going
> to go down - the usual way it's done is to include "(see talk)" in your
> edit summary and then explain yourself in talk. I'd be very reluctant to
> try to make it a requirement for all edits to all articles - it'd be a PITA
> to casual editing.

Yes, of course. But in terms of that 0.1%, edit wars are the biggest PITA, and
are almost invariably caused by *unjustified* (and POV) edits.

Jake.


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Paul Youlten wrote:
> > I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...
> >
> > I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the
> > right on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except
> > the German and Swedish ones.
>
> Sounds like this problem:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1084
>
> The bug is marked as fixed, I'm not quite sure what the status is.
>
> I seem to remember seeing a note somewhere about this problem still
> being there on some wiki (hu.wikipedia.org maybe?) and being fixed by
> removing some change (or making some removal?) to the
> [[MediaWiki:Monobook.js]]. Unfortunately I can't find the reference
> just
> now.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
I can confirm that the behavior is still present on en.wikipedia using
IE 6.0 SP2 on XP SP2. It is much harder for me to notice than it has
been in the past. I suspect at least part of that is the improved
performance of the site.

By the way, Paul, if you attached your screen captures, they did not
make it to the list (I think they're removed for security). Maybe you
could post them at bugzilla.wikimedia.org.

-Rich

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Jake Waskett said:
[...]
>
> Create and use a template for controversial articles, that says, in
> effect:  "This is a highly controversial article. Before making any
> changes, please  familiarise yourself with the discussion page, and add
> a comment describing  your change and the justification for it." We
> should also link to WP:NPOV.

There are already one or two templates of this type kicking
around--alerting editors to some specific controversy and pointing them at
the talk page.  Template:NPOV is the classic example of such a template.>
> If that works, great! I doubt it will, but it won't hurt to try.
>
> If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar
> to the  3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to
> articles with  the controversial header.
>
> This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and
> justifications  will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent
> for edits that authors  *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the
> matter. This may help get rid  of the more rabid POV editors.

It would be easy enough to put some javascript into the site CSS to
enforce edit comments (the default edit comment for a section which
contains the section name could be checked and refused on its own).
Regular editors would thus have to get used to annotating edits. Editors
who  enter nonsense would become known and their edits would tend to be
watched more closely.  The rest is all down to policy and dispute
resolution.
So no need to apply this only on some articles.  It could be site-wide
policy.
>
> Comments? I'm running on very little sleep today, so if I'm talking
> rubbish,  please tell me!
>

If you were, I think somebody would have noticed by now. :)


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to become a mediator

body:
I've been subscribed to this list for about a week now, and
overwhelmingly I see stuff about dispute resolution. What can I do to help?

[[en:User:Alphax]]


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Chad Perrin wrote

>   Tell me if I'm wrong.

I think you're right, in principle, to favour approaches where points of
view out of the mainstream are documented in some way, rather than excluded
by some sort of decree.

That being said, WP will always want them documented in a certain
low-rhetoric, crisp way with supporting cites.  This is unlikely to satisfy
anybody but the most level-headed, reasonable holders of said points of
view.

Acrid contention is to be expected, unless and until one gets 'insidious
POV-pushing': people prepared to operate on a time scale of years within the
norms and with the general grain of the way WP works.  We have ways of
ring-fencing some of the contentious issues (not all); we don't currently
have much idea about regulating the latter.

Charle


body:
steven l. rubenstein said:
>
> This brings us back to an issue I and others have raised: we have
> mechanisms for resolving disputes over behavior; we do not have, but
> need,  mechanisms for resolving disputes over content.

Well we do have some.  As a non-exhaustive list: talk pages, RfC (section
on Article content disputes), Wikipedia:Peer review, surveys, Village
Pump, page protection as a means of making disputants iron out their
differences.  And we have policies and guidelines to tell us what to aim
for.  Beware instruction creep.


body:
Fred Bauder said:
> We could have two recent changes, one that has everything, another that
> has pages of interest, a sort of watchlist for everyone that had all
> pages that were embroiled in controversy listed.

That's easy enough to do.  I think there is already a page for listing
controversial articles.  Suppose it's called [[Wikipedia:Foo]], a link to
get recent changes related to articles listed on this page would be
something like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Foo

Just pop that on your user page and click it when you want to watch recent
changes to controversial articles.


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates (quick question)

body:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:08:46 -0000, Robert Jones
<bob at jones-cliffe.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Are there any signigicant server load issues relating to extensive use of
> templates or use of templates within templates on a mediawiki installation?
> What (if anything) relating to use of templates would be bad for server
> load?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

You just need to look at the restrictions in place. No more than 5
inclusions of the same template work on one page on the MediaWiki
projects (I think). Further inclusions turn into a link to that
template. This is not affected by the template size.

This caused problems at the English Lucid Dreaming wikibook because
{{toplink}} was inserted every page or so before a new section. The
template is very small, but it didn't include it anyway. :(

On your own server, you will probably be able to afford the load of
more template inclusions.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Guessing interface language from Accept-Language

body:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 15:16:24 +0100, Petr Kadlec <petr.kadlec at gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe that for anonymous users, the interface language should be
> chosen based on their Accept-Language. I think the required code is
> simple, see the attached diff for a basic sketch that seems to work

I'm not sure that the header is often accurate. My cousins in Israel
(~16) use only the English version of Windows XP due to localisation
problems. (Mixing of right-to-left Hebrew and left-to-right English
programs, with the close button on the top-left *or* top-right of a
dialog; everything backwards from screenshots with the tray on the
bottom-left and start button on the bottom-right, trouble getting PC
support from English speakers, etc)

As long as language selection remains on the front page (and that will
be up to the wikis), this would be fine for me.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Converting ZopeWiki data to MediaWiki?

references:
<ctvn8k$hr9$1@sea.gmane.org> <4204395D.7060409@pobox.com>
	<cu82b5$te2$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 15:45:03 +0000, Arne Heizmann <Arne.Heizmann at csr.com> wrote:
> But I'm probably not going to be able to do it anyway. I would have to
> figure out Zope's file format, and to do that, I would probably have to
> figure out Python.

Can't you create a new wiki and insert some sample data you will look
for? Then you'll just need to sort out the timestamps.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Multilingual portal vote

body:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:39:48 +1100, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050207 08:07]:
> > What I don't like about the poll is that the vast, sweeping majority
> > of the voters are from en.wikipedia, who found the voting page because
> > it was listed on the village pump.
> In the time it took you to write this email, you could have listed it on
> the equivalent page on several other wikis.

...which he, of course, knows the language to.


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>>I think I missed a reference, there.
>
> <whisper>Look at the history of [[Sollog]] some time ...</whisper>

Ahhh.  It becomes clear, now.  Thank you.

>
> I find that with a new, hotheaded but potentially sincere editor,
> commenting out a dubious addition (HTML comments - start "<!--" and end
> "-->" ), starting the comment with a request for a reference, produces
> better results than just deleting material. It gives them a better idea of
> the standard to work to.

That's exactly the sort of approach I'd favor (if I were to ever find
myself in the position of deleting entire edits by others).

>>Besides, if their heads explode you'll have reduced the population of
>>people introducing problematic edits into controversial articles.
>
> I'd rather convert them into NPOV pushers ;-) The Arbitration Committee has
> recently reaffirmed that even the worst editors are to be regarded as
> theoretically redeemable!

In theory, there isn't any difference between theory and practice.  In
practice, there is.  (paraphrased from somewhere, source unknown)

. . . but I agree with the sentiment.

> "WE DONOT THINK THAT YOU ZOG ACTIVIST"
> "So do you have a checkable reference for what your organization does
>   believe?"
> "LOOK IT UP URSELF ASSWIP"
> "You put it in, you supply the reference. Statements with solid refs do
>   stay in."
> *silence*
>
> NPOV implies writing for the POV you don't agree with - I edit a lot on
> Scientology and neo-Nazi articles and try to keep my strong opinions on
> both topics in check and stick to the facts with references, ma'am - but
> there's a limit to how much of someone else's homework I can be bothered
> doing.

Great!  That's the way it should . . . err, "ma'am"?

--
Chad


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> the Marxist/Libertarian Cabal, LLP,

I can't stop laughing.

--
Chad


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 07:16:49PM -0000, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Fred Bauder said:
> > We could have two recent changes, one that has everything, another that
> > has pages of interest, a sort of watchlist for everyone that had all
> > pages that were embroiled in controversy listed.
>
> That's easy enough to do.  I think there is already a page for listing
> controversial articles.  Suppose it's called [[Wikipedia:Foo]], a link to
> get recent changes related to articles listed on this page would be
> something like:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Foo
>
> Just pop that on your user page and click it when you want to watch recent
> changes to controversial articles.

The problem here is that it depends on someone listing the article as a
controversial article on some other page.  Presently, I suspect there
are a lot more edit wars than ever get listed on WP:RFC or any other
repository for problems.  Moreover, I think we might not even know where
many of those problems are, because waiting for people to report them
publicly is no guarantee they ever get reported.

Telling people to figure out for themselves when a dispute has become a
problem, and to go list it on some "Controversial Articles" list, is
already problematic.  It's instruction creep.  It doesn't help the new
contributor who's gotten in over his/her head and doesn't know about all
the N different ways to ask for help.  And it doesn't help when the two
(or more) parties to a dispute don't realize that their little
disagreement has crossed the line into being destructive for Wikipedia.

We've already got mediation, RfC, peer review, and so on.  We definitely
don't need another way for editors who -know- there's a problem, and
-know- how to ask for help, to do so.  (We might need fewer.)  What I'm
thinking of is to pick up on problems -before- the editors involved
realize that they're in a bad spot.  Repeated reverts are a danger sign
that should be *automatically* detectable.

Heck, we've had revert wars over whether or not an article should have
an {{npov}} tag on it -- a tag that basically says "we're having a
disagreement, come see the talk page".  That should be a sign right
there that expecting people to notice on their own when their own
behavior is part of a problem in need of others' attention is not a
complete solution.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


from_name: Stacey Greenstein

body:
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 05:10:17 +1100, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent
> checkable reference out of them, thoguh.

Heh! For a very recent examplof this, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiedergutmachung

Stacey Greenstien
aka UtherSRG


from_name: David Monniaux

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:

>I'm not sure that the header is often accurate. My cousins in Israel
>(~16) use only the English version of Windows XP due to localisation
>problems.
>
Cannot Internet Explorer be told to request other languages than the
Windows default one?


from_name: John Lee

body:
Jake Waskett wrote:

>What about unanimous vote? If every editor had the ability to veto a change,
>it could work. Nobody would (presumably) object to truly NPOV changes, but at
>least one person would surely object to any attempt to insert POV changes.
>
>
>
The problem is, groups like Stormfront have a whole different definition
of what is NPOV.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
David Monniaux wrote:

> Tomer Chachamu wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure that the header is often accurate. My cousins in Israel
>> (~16) use only the English version of Windows XP due to localisation
>> problems.
>
> Cannot Internet Explorer be told to request other languages than the
> Windows default one?
>
For your information, Firefox is also broken when you want to work with
a combination of right to left and left to right. You can for instance
upload a file with Farsi and English using IE but not with Firefox. So
in many respects IE is preferable.

Bottom line, support for a non standard characterset (seen from a centre
periphery point of view - so DO select the wikinews logo for Wikinews
:)  ) is patchy in all offerings.
Thanks,
    Gerard


from_name: Jason Walker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Case sensitivity.

body:
After much thought and deliberation, I've decided that case
sensitivity in page names is not in the best interest of my project
(www.wikigaming.com), and I wanted to know if anyone has had any luck
in patching MediaWiki to ignore case?  There is probably something
simple that I'm missing (like an undocumented variable ;), but any
help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

--
~Jason Walker
Take back the web - Get Firefox!


subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 22:25:04 +0100, Paul Youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com> wrote:
> I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...
>
> I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the right on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except the German and Swedish ones.
>
> Any ideas how I fix this - or should I go on prozac?

Which browser and OS are you using?

If it's really annoying, switch to a different theme.


body:
So you can confirm for the list that it is difficult for a native
speaker of Mandarin to understand?

Shizhao had the audacity to say ? ????????????? zh wp???????, even
when I had to use a colloquial Cantonese dictionary to get anything
but the most basic understanding from my knowledge of Mandarin and
Baihua.

zh wp?????, you ask Shizhao? For one, it uses distinctly Cantonese
words and phrases, and follows Cantonese grammatical structures, all
of which would probably not be allowed in zh.wp. The use of Hanzi is
almost totally irrelevant, if you used Hanzi for all words on ja.wp
(it is possible, just not common), it would be even more difficult to
understand. Just because it uses the same ideographic writing system
does not mean you can understand it.

Mark

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 11:15:18 +0800, MilchFlasche??
<robertus0617 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Keep up the good working, guys, show them that how different Cantonese
> is from Mandarin, even when it's written in hanzi. I myself could only
> guess to understand, and I agree a lot with the idea that such
> wikipedia should reflect the cultural distinction of Hong Kong and
> Guangdong.
>
>
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:58:20 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, of course it's OK! After all, it is a Wiki...
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:39:49 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Felix Wan wrote:
> > > > I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese
> > > > and English, and started to write the Main Page.
> > >
> > > Oooh, cool.
> > >
> > > You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?
> > >
> > > little Alex
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
> 2005, make signs happen!
>


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] Backup problem source -- network saturation?

body:
>
> I'm full of crap; there are a bunch of misleading symlinks around. :)
>
> Unfortunately, writes to the disk array on albert really do seem that
> fricking slow. We're probably going to have to move the uploads to
> another machine, or something. Sigh.
>
> It seems great with smaller files, but as you get bigger I guess it
> can't cache it anymore and writes turn synchronous, turning performance
> to crap.
>
> A series of tests with
> 'time dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile bs=1M count=<size>':
>
> size  speed
> (MB)  (MB/sec)
>   50: 151
>  200: 310
>  400: 152
>  800:  37
> 1024:   8.4
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Instead of move upload, why not move only backup files, on a dedicated
storage server for example :) (where we could store logs too)

Shaihulud


from_name: Deathphoenix

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Deathphoenix said:
>
>
>>You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act
>>as  moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating
>>much  more than a single "protected article"). The current
>>{{protected}}  system is good for protecting the article so that only
>>admins can edit  it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
>>
>>
>
>Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness.  The best
>safeguard of content is verifiability.  The existing dispute resolution
>process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
>
>
I would think that part of being in a team of moderators would be to
edit according to consensus (per the talk page) and by verifying the
data. The existing dispute resolution is great for handling disputes,
don't get me wrong. I've been looking at the process and have been very
impressed. However, if a large scale, rapid attack *were* to become a
reality, the dispute resolution process might be too slow. Now, I
definitely like Jimbo's Calvinball, but if the worst were to happen, and
even a small fraction of a group like the <s>Stormtroopers</s>
Stormfront were able to stop dragging their knuckles long enough to
organise a long enough attack, even our benevolent dictator might be
overworked.

Having teams of trusted moderators (not necessarily the same team for
each article) to overlook certain "risky" articles might be a good
compromise. Part of being in a team of trusted moderators is the
knowledge that the best safeguard of content is verifiability. The team
can have disagreements, but I think it would be better to argue on the
talk page than to get into edit/revert war.

Just an idea for if the worst comes to pass.

Cheers,

DP


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sj

subject:
[Foundation-l] Budget for Q1 2005 approved;
	fundraising drive planned

body:
Word on the street is that CFO Daniel Mayer pushed through another
difficult budget package at this evening's board meeting, with
bipartisan support (that is, from les deux partis"An") :

 Hardware:    $75K*
 Extra hardware/dev projects:  $20K**
 Hosting:      $16K
 Developer contract:      $8K***
 Travel:         $5K
 Office expenses:    $2.5K
 Hardware assistance   $1.5K
 Domain names:   $500
 Fundraising/Promotion:  $500
 Miscellaneous:   $1K

 TOTAL    $130K

 * $40K of which is explicitly covered by a recent grant from the
Lounsbery Foundation.
 ** If we meet our fundraising goal; shortfalls will come out of this line iteml
 *** Being negotiated; to cover part-time work and perhaps bounties.

More on meta:  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget/2005/Q1

==Fundraising Drive==
  We will have a fundraiser for three weeks starting Friday, Feb 18;
and hope to raise $75k.  Discussion of how to display and broadcast
the drive is welcome.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising

Here is the discussion from last September's fundraising meeting :
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2004

--
+sj+


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia budget for Q1, 2005

body:
Jinx and a coke :-)

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 03:09:43 +0000, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> A finance meeting was held on IRC today with four members of the
> Board, and Daniel Mayer.
>
> Please see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/d8/WikimediaBankHistory2004.pdf
> for the budget details.
>
> An open general meeting will be held in #meeting.wikimedia on February
> 15. All are welcome to attend this to discuss the topics listed at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda
>
> Below is a summary of today's meeting. The full details of this will
> be posted at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/February_7%2C_2005
> as soon as Anthere and Jimbo approve them.
>
> *A budget for $130000 was approved
> *A fundraising drive to raise $75000 will take place for 3 weeks
> starting 18 February
> *Jimmy is discussing hiring options with Brion Vibber
> *The Google hosting proposal is being discussed this week
> *GuruNet will donate ?30,000 towards the Wikimania conference
>
> The following budget was approved for this quarter:
> Servers/Hardware (base)         $35,000.00
> Extra hardware/dev projects     $20,000.00
> Grant hardware  $40,000.00
> Grant special projects  $0.00
> Hosting         $16,000.00
> Travel  $5,000.00
> Domain names    $500.00
> Office expenses         $2,500.00
> Miscellaneous   $1,000.00
> Developer pay   $8,000.00
> Fundraising/Promotional         $500.00
> Hardware assistant      $1,500.00
> TOTAL   $130,000.00
> Needed in fund drive    $75,000.00
>
> Angela Beesley
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


from_name: David Gerard

references:
<BE2BB6BF.4E5C%andyl2004@sympatico.ca>
	<BE2B9F86.B5A0%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<20050206174320.GB7930@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<4206B618.2030608@hackish.org>

body:
Delirium (delirium at hackish.org) [050207 11:26]:

> I don't think this is a particularly unique trait of neo-Nazis though,
> merely something common to many activist groups.  Heck, I'm a member of
> several environmentalist organizations, and I'd argue that the
> description above applies to a large proportion of environmental
> activists, and I'd similarly have low hopes for a cadre of them
> successfully making NPOV edits to Wikipedia.  The circumcision-related
> articles have tended to be a mess from both sides as well, including
> recruitment of activists from off-wikipedia mailing lists.

NPOV is our secret sauce. IT HAS THE POWER TO EXPLODE HEADS!!

I expect the very worst we'll get from Neo-Nazis will be pseudointellectual
historical revisionists with the most remarkably crap references
imaginable. Assuming they don't decide in a week we're all Zionist
conspirators.

- d.


body:
Jake Waskett (jake at waskett.org) [050207 13:05]:

> Ok, Jimbo, you're right. Let me amend my earlier statement: on the whole, the
> system is working, but in a few articles, it is not. Now, the question is
> this: what can be done about the problem?
> One solution that I favour is to have permanent protection on targetted pages,
> and have a nominated admin apply changes that are agreed upon by vote on the
> article's talk page.
> What do others think?

Consensus is a means to NPOV, not something that trumps it.  A vote would
exacerbate the recruitment problem you have described.

- d.


body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050207 11:17]:

> Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels.  Even 10 would tax its
> current resources and structure.  If 1 in 4000 is intelligent, coherent,
> and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.

I think you're far too pessimistic. The incoherent ones will look like and
be treated as vandals, the semicoherent ones will look and act like
crackpots. Wikipedia does fine against both. And then there's NPOV to
explode their heads with. Our soft security is a tarpit.

- d.


from_name: Paul Youlten

subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...

I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the right on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except the German and Swedish ones.

Any ideas how I fix this - or should I go on prozac?

Paul


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia- a diversion?

body:
rose.parks at att.net wrote:
> Hi members,
>
>
>      I very rarely post to lists, but this thread is bothering me a lot. I have read
  the posting on Stormfront, as well, as at least 75% of the postings on
?Neo-nazi to attack.?
>      Despite this, I see only editors reacting as if what they have read on this site is
  going to happen, and exactly as described, i.e. all members of the
Stormfront site are to
  login as users of Wikipedia and try to influence all the articles
related to their position
  to make them POV.
>      I have little doubt that the members of this site hope to disrupt Wikipedia in a big
  way. But, frankly, they already _have_. Editors, who usually would be
working on articles,
  are now developing tactics to combat this neo-nazi POV attack. This is
their first success.
>      Score one for Stromfront!!!
>      Second, do you all really believe that if they intended to do exactly as they say,  they would post their tactics openly on their site? I wonder! I think
that they _do_ intend
  to do damage to Wikipedia, but the details are probably in private
mailings among members of
  their community. Meanwhile, they could be using their postings as a
_diversion_, and while
  everyone is concentrating on monitoring certain articles, they could
do something entirely
  different to damage our site. I leave it to those more technically
inclined to try to figure
  out what that might be?.
>      Just my thinking?.
>
>                                      As Ever,
>
>                                            Ruth Ifcher

I doubt that's really much of a valid concern, frankly.  For one thing,
this has become a useful policy discussion, I think.  For another, the
operation of Wikipedia hasn't been "disrupted" at all by this
discussion, as far as I can tell.  Finally, I think it's likely that the
Stormfront guys don't so much want to "damage" Wikipedia as they simply
want their perspective to be heard.  Whether or not there's any validity
to their perspective, that would require keeping Wikipedia in working
order, not damaging it.

--
Chad


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/d8/WikimediaBankHistory2004.pdf
> for the budget details.

Actually that is the full bank history for 2004. :) Jimmy still needs to look
it over one last time to make sure I didn't miscategorize anything. Also, the
CafePress item needs to be separated from the other income sources.

We in fact received $994.86 worth of checks from CafePress last year. These
were almost certainly lumped together with checks from donors and classified as
"mail donations". This needs to be fixed before we give this to a tax person
and I've alredy sent an email to Jimbo to see when these checks were deposited.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
Opps! I forgot to mention that the reason the Moneybookers income item is $0 is
due to the fact that, AFAIK, we have not transfered any money out of it - ever.

I also have no idea how much we have in that account (just something I don't
bug Jimbo about). Last info I had was at the end of the last official fund
drive http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2004/Q4 .

I would be very surprised if we had more than $2000 in that account now.

There is also *much* work that needs to be done to plan and coordinate the next
fund drive. Expect an email from me about this in a day or two.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Alex Kwan

body:
Hello,

Felix Wan wrote:
> I have created a test site:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-WP/zh-yue
> Please try to write some articles in Cantonese, and invite other people
> to write. Let's prove the concept to gain support.

Sorry, but I'm visiting Japan tomorrow. Might have to wait a bit before
I can contribute, but I definitely will. :)

little Alex


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo saves the world (was Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia)

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Did anyone notice I was in Jerusalem *on the very day* of the
>Palestinian elections?
>
Coming up in next week's issue of The Wikipedia Signpost:

WIKIPEDIA FOUNDER JIMMY WALES BRINGS PEACE TO MIDDLE EAST

Hey, he needs to make some noise about this pretty quickly, otherwise
based on some of the exuberance in the media recently, somebody else
might hog all the glory. (Just ask yourself, who would you rather see
get the credit, Jimbo or George W. Bush?)

Remember us in your Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Jimbo!

--Michael Snow


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL for uploaded audio clips

body:
Hi, you might like to take a look at these pages if you haven't already
in case they're relevant:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiScores
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Music_markup

Christiaan

On 7 Feb 2005, at 10:32 pm, uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

> Hello everyone
>
> I'm still on extended wikivacation in general but am undertaking a
> project to add music clips.  I plan to record my own playing of certain
> well-known classical keyboard works and add them to the encyclopedia.
> While I am not a great performer, I hope to provide some material of
> reasonable quality, and hope to inspire others to contribute in like
> fashion.
>
> The GFDL poses problems.  I would prefer not to use it and to use
> CC-by-SA only.
> (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode)
>
> The main problem with the GFDL is that, for a recording of a musical
> work, the "transparent copy" -- the "preferred form for modification"
> is unclear.  It could be construed to be the WAV file or a lossless
> (FLAC etc) encoding of it.  These files are prohibitively large.  It
> could also be construed to be the musical score, or the case could be
> made that there is no "transparent copy" and that the license is
> meaningless.  There are also some audio-specific and music-specific
> matters addressed by CC-by-SA, but not by the GFDL.
>
> There are very few audio clips uploaded thus far.  I am only aware of
> one that is not public domain (though there may be others).  Therefore,
> this is still a solvable problem.
>
> The Uninvited Co., Inc.
> (a Delaware Corporation)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050207 23:54]:
> Deathphoenix said:

> > You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act
> > as  moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating
> > much  more than a single "protected article"). The current
> > {{protected}}  system is good for protecting the article so that only
> > admins can edit  it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.

> Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness.  The best
> safeguard of content is verifiability.  The existing dispute resolution
> process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.

But we *must* kill the wiki in order to save it. Else all the editors will
leave in disgust and Britannica will not take us seriously. Possibly we
should vote on it.

- d.


from_name: Jonah Bossewitch

body:
>
> No, you couldn't, because my employer would have the copyright to it.
>

It's a shame your employer doens't realize that when it comes to code,
ownership is a liability.

> But I'm probably not going to be able to do it anyway. I would have to
> figure out Zope's file format, and to do that, I would probably have to
> figure out Python.
>

>From the ZMI in zope (the /manage screens) you should be able to export the
entire wiki as a serialized object in XML.  From there, you can use any of
your favorite tools to manipulate it.

g'luck,

/Jonah


from_name: Skyring

body:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:57:38 +1100, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050207 23:54]:
> > Deathphoenix said:
>
> > > You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act
> > > as  moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating
> > > much  more than a single "protected article"). The current
> > > {{protected}}  system is good for protecting the article so that only
> > > admins can edit  it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
>
> > Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness.  The best
> > safeguard of content is verifiability.  The existing dispute resolution
> > process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
>
> But we *must* kill the wiki in order to save it. Else all the editors will
> leave in disgust and Britannica will not take us seriously. Possibly we
> should vote on it.

Votes are exactly the sort of things that POV-pushing groups can
understand. As we see, they can organise themselves for votes. All you
gotta do is stand up and be counted, the more times the better.

Actually thinking or researching is a little more difficult. God
forbid we should build an encyclopaedia on the lowest common
denominator.

I go for the verifiable research test - if NeoNazis are anything like
the sort of fringe dwellers I see on Usenet, their idea of research
consists of something they might have heard on TV or talkback radio.
--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: promotional items (was no subject)

body:
Sj a ?crit:
> On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 06:00:11 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Well...
>>
>>Anyone interested by illustrator or xpress or high quality pdf files for
>>business cards, high resolution logos and leaflets, as well as ppt
>>presentation may contact me by mail and we'll figure out how to send 20
>>mb files by mail.
>
>
> I have about a gig of web-accessible space on my machine you can use
> to store files;
> can you use FTP to upload them to me?  You can also mail anything
> smaller than 5MB to this gmail account...
>

Thanks

I will explore feasability in the next few days. The files are over 10 MB...

My first move will be to post the remaining printed leaflets to Walter,
so that they can be available for FOSDEM. This is more important, and
slow postal travel will be less expensive. I am glad it will be a
ressource over there :-)

I may be little online in the next days I think, because I fear I got
the flu. Feels like getting under cover.

Ant


body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050208 00:20]:
> Skyring said:

> > I go for the verifiable research test - if NeoNazis are anything like
> > the sort of fringe dwellers I see on Usenet, their idea of research
> > consists of something they might have heard on TV or talkback radio. --

> Though I'm sure I should not try to speak for David, I think he was
> employing that deadly antipodean weapon: sarcasm.  He doesn't want a vote,
> either.

How dare you - I'm British. I have paperwork that says so.

With Neo-Nazis, pro/anti-circumcision activists, etc., they tend to be
cranks at best and that means their references are going to be crap.
Usually really obviously crap. (In some cases, as with David Irving, less
obviously crap until you look more closely.) They are also likely to be
pains in the arse in such a way as to violate most of our conduct rules in
relatively short order.

- d.


body:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:20:00 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Skyring said:
> >
> > I go for the verifiable research test - if NeoNazis are anything like
> > the sort of fringe dwellers I see on Usenet, their idea of research
> > consists of something they might have heard on TV or talkback radio. --
>
> Though I'm sure I should not try to speak for David, I think he was
> employing that deadly antipodean weapon: sarcasm.

You don't say?

Actually, I was just seizing an opening to dive into what is a
fascinating discussion. We seem to be reading their mail - is there
any evidence they are reading ours? IIRC, there is a reference to this
list somewhere in the blocking process.

Not that I feel particularly worried - it's not as if anybody is
proposing a mechanism that relies on secrecy.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
It only happens in IE (I have v.6 running on XP) - Opera and FireFox (also
on XP) seem fine. I can't get images to load in Lynx, but that particular
bug is well documented ;-)

Now it's happening on the German Wikipedia! Can anyone else see this or do I
need new glasses?

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tomer Chachamu" <the.r3m0t at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 10:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 22:25:04 +0100, Paul Youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...
>>
>> I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the right
>> on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except the German
>> and Swedish ones.
>>
>> Any ideas how I fix this - or should I go on prozac?
>
> Which browser and OS are you using?
>
> If it's really annoying, switch to a different theme.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
If anyone is interested (and maybe it's just me) I have captured the
moment as 2 screen grabs and made them into a photoshop (v.5.5) file -
if you turn the second layer on and off you can see how the logo loads
first - then, when the navigation box loads a moment later, it jumps 4
pixels to the right.

Paul


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] ENotif 2.00 for MediaWiki 1.3.10 -- currently under
	construction

body:
I am sending you this mail as a pre-announcement, because many have
asked me:

currently I work on a patch of ENotif 2.00 (e-mail notification) for
MediaWiki 1.3.10. This will be basically a maintenance port of my older
ENotif patch published last October see http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif
. (This patch was for mw 1.3.7).

Remark: the most recent working version of ENotif is available in CVS
HEAD and also includes a working e-mail authentication method by mailing
a temporary password, which is valid only for one login.

My patch will come as a diff against MW 1.3.10 and as a fully
installable tgz of MW 1.3.10+ENotif, which can be used for installation
with existing or new databases, as the patch comes with a
database-upgrader (updating an existing wiki database if needed).

Scheduled time for release: 09. Feb. 2005
Wikinaut Tom


from_name: Alex Y. Kwan

body:
Hello,

Felix Wan wrote:
> I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese
> and English, and started to write the Main Page.

Oooh, cool.

You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?

little Alex


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

body:
Hi members,

     I very rarely post to lists, but this thread is bothering me a lot. I have read the posting on Stormfront, as well, as at least 75% of the postings on ?Neo-nazi to attack.?
     Despite this, I see only editors reacting as if what they have read on this site is going to happen, and exactly as described, i.e. all members of the Stormfront site are to login as users of Wikipedia and try to influence all the articles related to their position to make them POV.
     I have little doubt that the members of this site hope to disrupt Wikipedia in a big way. But, frankly, they already _have_. Editors, who usually would be working on articles, are now developing tactics to combat this neo-nazi POV attack. This is their first success.
     Score one for Stromfront!!!
     Second, do you all really believe that if they intended to do exactly as they say, they would post their tactics openly on their site? I wonder! I think that they _do_ intend to do damage to Wikipedia, but the details are probably in private mailings among members of their community. Meanwhile, they could be using their postings as a _diversion_, and while everyone is concentrating on monitoring certain articles, they could do something entirely different to damage our site. I leave it to those more technically inclined to try to figure out what that might be?.
     Just my thinking?.

                                     As Ever,

                                           Ruth Ifcher


from_name: Angela

body:
A finance meeting was held on IRC today with four members of the
Board, and Daniel Mayer.

Please see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/d8/WikimediaBankHistory2004.pdf
for the budget details.

An open general meeting will be held in #meeting.wikimedia on February
15. All are welcome to attend this to discuss the topics listed at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda

Below is a summary of today's meeting. The full details of this will
be posted at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/February_7%2C_2005
as soon as Anthere and Jimbo approve them.

*A budget for $130000 was approved
*A fundraising drive to raise $75000 will take place for 3 weeks
starting 18 February
*Jimmy is discussing hiring options with Brion Vibber
*The Google hosting proposal is being discussed this week
*GuruNet will donate ?30,000 towards the Wikimania conference

The following budget was approved for this quarter:
Servers/Hardware (base) 	$35,000.00
Extra hardware/dev projects 	$20,000.00
Grant hardware 	$40,000.00
Grant special projects 	$0.00
Hosting 	$16,000.00
Travel 	$5,000.00
Domain names 	$500.00
Office expenses 	$2,500.00
Miscellaneous 	$1,000.00
Developer pay 	$8,000.00
Fundraising/Promotional 	$500.00
Hardware assistant 	$1,500.00
TOTAL 	$130,000.00
Needed in fund drive 	$75,000.00

Angela Beesley


body:
Jake Waskett (jake at waskett.org) [050208 03:28]:

> Create and use a template for controversial articles, that says, in effect:
> "This is a highly controversial article. Before making any changes, please
> familiarise yourself with the discussion page, and add a comment describing
> your change and the justification for it." We should also link to WP:NPOV.

Such a template exists, but it's presently only applied to talk pages.

(The idea is that such messages to Wikipedia editors are only ever to be
applied to an article as a temporary thing in the hope of facilitating
their removal - e.g. {{protected}}, {{npov}}, even {{stub}}. Ones intended
to be permanent fixtures seem not to be favoured at all by most editors.)

> If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar to the
> 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to articles with
> the controversial header.
> This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and justifications
> will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for edits that authors
> *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the matter. This may help get rid
> of the more rabid POV editors.

I don't think it'll do a damned thing to slow down POV pushers, but I do
think the Summary field being compulsory would be good. It actually took me
a couple of days to realise what it was for (commenting in a version
control system).

- d.


body:
Jake Waskett (jake at waskett.org) [050208 03:55]:
> On Monday 07 February 2005 16:41, David Gerard wrote:

> > > If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar
> > > to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to
> > > articles with the controversial header.
> > > This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and
> > > justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for
> > > edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the
> > > matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.

> > I don't think it'll do a damned thing to slow down POV pushers, but I do
> > think the Summary field being compulsory would be good. It actually took me
> > a couple of days to realise what it was for (commenting in a version
> > control system).

> I don't think that the summary field is sufficient for more than describing
> the most minor edits (say, fixing a typo). More complex edits, particularly
> if they need justifying, need an entry on the discussion page. This also
> helps other users to explain why they agree or (more likely, unfortunately)
> disagree.

Beware of instruction creep! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Instruction_creep

I'm not sure we need this for *all* pages - it's really the problematic
0.1%. The ArbCom has previously placed restrictions on individual editors
to document better what they're doing, but the present AC is reluctant to
do this at the article level, i.e. for *everyone* editing a given article.

(Though it's bloody tempting, e.g. on anything on the Israel-Palestine
conflict.)

> My experience, having tried this informally for a few days and
> encouraged/nagged others to do likewise, is that it does seem to reduce the
> amount of edit wars. It still doesn't eliminate them, but it does help. And
> when someone is forced to view the talk page first, there's a fair chance
> that he'll at least read the most recent comments. Call me an idealist and I
> won't argue, but I think that perhaps if people read comments explaining NPOV
> and the application to articles often enough, maybe it'll sink in.

It's certainly a good practice where you're unsure of how an edit is going
to go down - the usual way it's done is to include "(see talk)" in your
edit summary and then explain yourself in talk. I'd be very reluctant to
try to make it a requirement for all edits to all articles - it'd be a PITA
to casual editing.

> A 3UER (Unjustified Edit Rule) would at least encourage collaboration. And if
> all else fails, it makes unreasonable editors MUCH easier to detect.

They have a way of making themselves apparent anyway.

- d.


body:
Chad Perrin (perrin at apotheon.com) [050208 04:33]:

> I'm not sure that anything at all "needs to be done" to deal with the
> matter.  In fact, there's not really anything necessarily wrong with POV
> getting into an article, as long as no POV is pushed as the only valid
> POV.  Rather, multiple POVs* might be a more desirable status of an
> article than no POV at all, where each is clearly identified as being a
> particular perspective with identified adherents.  Thus, if Stormfront
> troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were
> gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit
> it.  Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one
> section, and label it as a particular perspective.

I'm sure S*ll*g was very pleased with the results ;-)

> Where a Stormfront (darn, the militant racists get all the cool names)

They've given up on the cool uniforms, though. Foolish move.

> activist enters some figures identifying the amount of money supposedly
> cost the country by Zionists, stick it into an appropriate POV corral
> and provide some academic analysis of where those figures might
> originate.  If treated properly, such attempts to monkeywrench the
> bias-mitigating machinery of Wikipedia can actually become a rich source
> of information.

You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent
checkable reference out of them, thoguh.

> I guess, in short, my point is that a lack of bias and a lack of
> point-of-view are two different and separate things.  Points of view are
> good.  Bias is favoritism to a particular point of view, and that's bad.
>  Tell me if I'm wrong.

Mmm. Report and attribute them, don't just say them.

Really, I've found they're really bad at checkable references on even the
simple stuff - e.g. "This organization believes ..." It's actually really
annoying.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: mediation committee - being arbitrator as well as
	mediator

body:
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 13:36:26 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Additionaly thinking that if only organisation was discussed on the
> mailing lists (not cases), we could very well imagine that
> 1) archives are open to anyone
> 2) people approved by the chair or committee may join the list as posters.
>
> Depends on what other mediators think what this list should become.

I think the list should be open to former mediators at the moment,
since there are a lot of changes proposed to mediation and it would be
useful to have their input on this. For example, sannse's suggestions
at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reviewing_mediation ought to
be discussed on this list.

Once the current problems with the mediation committee are resolved,
the list could be closed to the current committee, but I think that
the points which need to be discussed right now are not things which
need to kept confidential.

Angela.


body:
steven l. rubenstein (rubenste at ohiou.edu) [050208 04:56]:

> So: I do agree that we need mechanisms to resolve conflict over content
> (even though I reject this particular mechanism).  I believe that such a
> mechanism, along with vigorous enforcement of NVOP, No Original Research,
> and Verifiability will be enough to protect ourselves against any
> small-scale assault.

If those three were enforced harder - particularly verifiability - we
wouldn't be having most of those problems. One of the charges agsinst
Robert the Bruce in the present arbitration case is systematic removal of
information and references - whether that's found to be the case, I think
it indicates this sort of thing will not be regarded well by the Wikipedia
community.

> But Jay's point is that none of these mechanisms will protect us against a
> 43,000 person assault.  Fred might be right, that our worst-case scenario
> will not happen, but I tend to agree with Jay that we need to consider this
> and think of ways to deal with it.  But I do not think that the solution to
> this kind of problem will be anything like the mechanisms we currently rely
> on.

NPOV is not just our secret sauce, it's a shield. (It's a dessert wax *and*
a floor topping.) See, the thing about POV-pushing activists is ... they
act like POV-pushing activists. They're *really obvious*. Even if a call
goes out to a list, they won't really have much clue on how to infiltrate
just from a call.

And remember that most people are in fact sincere and of good will - even
if they're on an activist list, that doesn't mean they will act in bad
faith in the good cause. An editor with a POV is not necessarily going to
*push* POV.

I really am not at all convinced the sky is even close to falling.

- d.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
We have these on our watchlists now.

Fred

> From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:41:29 -0000 (GMT)
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
>
> other users will adopt other methods to identify the
> controversial articles.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] it.wikipedia localization not working

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>>From this morning something is not working on it.wikipedia.org.
>
> All interface texts are in English and the special page "All system
> messages" shows the default English texts instead of the translated one.
>
> The worst issue is that the Main Page has reverted to the "Wikipedia"
> article instead of the right one, "Pagina principale".  I fixed this with
> a redirect, that of course must be only temporary.

There's an intermittent problem with the message cache getting corrupted
or something.

I've cleared the message cache and it should be running ok now, however
I'm still not quite sure about the source of the problem.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Language Version for Wikipedia

body:
Hello,

I am not entirely sure any more where this could be done...
I would suggest to head for http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/logo.

For all practical matters, please do not write to the moderator of the foundation mailing list but rather register to wikitech-l at wikimedia.org, where such matters can be handled.

Thanks and hope you do a great job on ma (I think the language code is ma...).

Anthere

Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com> wrote:
I saw the language version for Malayalam in Wikipedia is not in full
mode for long. But i go through the entire stuff. There is no option
to edit the logo text. Thats wrong. And i would like to do the project
for malayalam. So if you can provide further information, then thats
better i think.

Hope you respond soon

--
Regards
Ginu George
www.ginugeorge.com

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'


from_name: AndyL

body:
on 2/7/05 9:46 PM, rose.parks at att.net at rose.parks at att.net wrote:

> Second, do you all really believe that if they intended to do exactly as they
> say, they would post their tactics openly on their site?

Yes. We're not exactly dealing with prime tacticians here.

Andy


body:
Albert seems to be connected to the internal network on a 100Mbps link;
the backup files are stored on yongle, and accessed over NFS through
that link.

Fast, disk-intensive things like making the image tarballs or md5sum'ing
the database dumps saturate the line; the apaches have to fight for
traffic on that same line trying to load images from albert's NFS server
when rendering pages... which leads to waits, hangs, and general suckiness.

If we run the backup process on yongle (or move the actual dump files
used?) maybe it'll work better... and/or if that 100Mbps link is
supposed to be gigabit, we need to figure out why it's at the wrong speed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Monday 7. February 2005. 20:33, David Monniaux wrote:
> Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> >I'm not sure that the header is often accurate. My cousins in Israel
> >(~16) use only the English version of Windows XP due to localisation
> >problems.
>
> Cannot Internet Explorer be told to request other languages than the
> Windows default one?

I think it can, but there are browsers (for example, Konqueror) which can't.

In addition, some people simply don't know about this and don't set the
language even though they prefer it, and some people will surf in from
Internet cafes located in (to them) foreign countries and so on - you can use
Accept-Language as a starting point but you can't really trust it. You can
set UI language based on it, but in that case users should always have an
option to easily change it.


body:
On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 13:11:18 -0500, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

>  On the other hand, the 27 Keep voters averaged 1715
> votes each...

This is waaay impressive!

--
Pete, wanting to make a minor edit


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
Hi!, thanks for the comments.

> I'm not sure that the header is often accurate. My cousins in Israel
> (~16) use only the English version of Windows XP due to localisation
> problems. (Mixing of right-to-left Hebrew and left-to-right English
> programs, with the close button on the top-left *or* top-right of a
> dialog; everything backwards from screenshots with the tray on the
> bottom-left and start button on the bottom-right, trouble getting PC
> support from English speakers, etc)
Fine, the header might not be accurate. Your cousins use English
version of Windows, so I guess they are able to understand English at
least a bit. And although their preferred language would be Hebrew,
they get English on Commons. But as soon as they create an account and
log in, they can choose the language in preferences. No problem here.
Fine, the header may not be perfect (but do you have a better idea?),
but it is IMHO better than presenting English to _everyone_.

> As long as language selection remains on the front page (and that will
> be up to the wikis), this would be fine for me.
The problem is not in the language of the contents, but in the
language of interface. There are two reasons why you would visit, say,
cs.wikipedia.org: Either you understand Czech and want to read
something, or you want to e.g. insert interwiki links. For that, it
would be fine if you would be able to create an account without any
knowledge of Czech.

And, as I said, the biggest problem for me lies in the international
wikis like Meta and (especially) Commons. Every anonymous user (=
every user before he/she could get to creating an account) is offered
English interface. How can we expect him/her to create an account, if
he/she does not understand English at all? Should the help page in
each language mention things like "click the second button from the
right, then fill in the upper edit box, ..." ?

-- [[:cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Albert seems to be connected to the internal network on a 100Mbps link;
> the backup files are stored on yongle, and accessed over NFS through
> that link.

I'm full of crap; there are a bunch of misleading symlinks around. :)

Unfortunately, writes to the disk array on albert really do seem that
fricking slow. We're probably going to have to move the uploads to
another machine, or something. Sigh.

It seems great with smaller files, but as you get bigger I guess it
can't cache it anymore and writes turn synchronous, turning performance
to crap.

A series of tests with
'time dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile bs=1M count=<size>':

size  speed
(MB)  (MB/sec)
   50: 151
  200: 310
  400: 152
  800:  37
1024:   8.4

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
> [snip] you can use
> Accept-Language as a starting point but you can't really trust it. You can
> set UI language based on it, but in that case users should always have an
> option to easily change it.

Just to be clear -- my idea is to add, not to remove. Currently, there
is AFAIK _NO_ possibility at all, how an anonymous user could choose
the language of the interface. If you visit Commons, then until
logging in, the whole interface is in English, and you have to log in
using that English interface.

Logged-in users can choose their language in preferences, and I do not
want to change that.

(Note that if Accept-Language would be "totally unacceptable", there
just has to be some other way to choose interface language by
anonymous users, e.g. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foobar?lang=cs, or
whatever.)

-- [[:cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]


from_name: Rhobite

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam on en:PHP

body:
The English article on PHP has been subject to some strange spam over
the past week. We're reverting the article quickly and blocking
spammers as we see them, but it's coming from many different IP
addresses, probably trojaned hosts from all over the world. It seems
to be an automated process and unfortunately the spambot makes about
10-20 edits over the course of a few minutes. It doesn't even link to
working sites, most of the advertised sites have already been taken
down.

But since we're still getting hit, could we add some domains to the
spam filter please? Here are the commonly spammed domains:

6x.to
uni.cc
grozny.su
tuva.su

See the history at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=PHP&action=history&limit=500&offset=0

Other technical solutions would also be appreciated. Thanks,

Rhobite


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
This might be an idea for commons, or meta. But I would not like to
have it on other projects. In my opinion the fact that someone goes to
a certain language Wikipedia or Wiktionary is more evidence of their
language wishes than their Accept-language.

Andre Engels
(who has felt no need to change interface language on the dozens of
Wikipedias he has been editing, but would be much interested in a
single login)

On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 15:16:24 +0100, Petr Kadlec <petr.kadlec at gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe that for anonymous users, the interface language should be
> chosen based on their Accept-Language. I think the required code is
> simple, see the attached diff for a basic sketch that seems to work
> (really only basic, some issues are ignored, e.g. when a new user is
> created, his default preferred language should be set to
> Accept-Language, too).
>
> There are some further issues that should be considered -- e.g. what
> about Main_Page/Hauptseite/...? What to do with a user preferring some
> language not supported on the wiki? (Should there be some local
> setting with a list of supported languages?) Etc.
>
> But I would like to know -- what do you think about the idea? (My
> initial thought was about the Commons -- users from many Wikipedias go
> there, only to find that, seemingly, the site is English-only. But
> their language is just a few clicks away; unfortunately, the clicks
> have to go through the English interface.)
>
> -- [[ :cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikistandards

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>inclusive in terms of what standards are allowed) scope along with its inherent
>importance will make for a viable project. Neat name too, btw. :)
>
>However, I still don't know if this is a good fit for the foundation (just
>because it is a good idea, does not necessarily mean we should host it), so
>some reasoning in that regard is needed.
>
>I'm also *very* worried by copyright and especially business practice patents
>that may be easily infringed in such a project. So I'd like to hear from a
>patent lawyer about that or at least somebody who knows a lot about this type
>of thing and how patents and copyright apply to standards.
>
Although I would be sceptical about this becoming a separate project, I
don't see the problem as being with copyrights.  If they really are
international standards they are part of the law in the adhering
countries, and thus in the public domain.  Patented processes that are
only available to a limited number of users seems inconsistent with the
idea of international standards.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikistandards


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

body:
I just think I'll note: I'm not really that worn down. So far I've
blocked at least 6-7 CheeseDreams accounts. However, this should have
been seen to be a problem when the following edit happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historicity_of_Jesus&diff=7165989&oldid=7146273

Note the comment in the history. "Remove inusefor tag. Haven't finished,
but really tired now. Will sort out the mess tommorrow." Then, check the
state of the article!

Yet when I reverted back due to an editor going into an EXTREMELY
controversial article (even before CD edited this it was controversial!)
and just taking away all the material.

I think that this diff really says it all about the whole situation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historicity_of_Jesus&diff=7203163&oldid=6967565
(before CheeseDreams and after CheeseDreams).

TBSDY

John Lee wrote:
> I just thought I'd point out something from [[User:UninvitedCompany]]'s
> user page - Wikipedia is a hundred times smaller than MSN. When we're
> that big (which could definitely not be too far in the future), we'll
> have a hundred CheeseDreams-like editors. True, we'll have a hundred
> times more editors than we do now to clean up the mess, but the question
> is, will we be able to put up against a hundred editors using tactics
> like CheeseDreams? I am not necessarily advocating Nicholas' proposal,
> but we should bear in mind that a minute saved is a minute earned. A
> minute spent reverting CheeseDreams could be a minute spent adding
> references to an article or a minute spent wikifying a decent new
> article. CheeseDreams' tactics of attrition are wearing us down, and
> it's doubtful whether a hundred times more editors would be capable of
> dealing with a hundred CheeseDreams.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:
> I just think I'll note: I'm not really that worn down. So far I've
> blocked at least 6-7 CheeseDreams accounts. However, this should have
> been seen to be a problem when the following edit happened:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historicity_of_Jesus&diff=7165989&oldid=7146273
>
>
> Note the comment in the history. "Remove inusefor tag. Haven't finished,
> but really tired now. Will sort out the mess tommorrow." Then, check the
> state of the article!
>
> Yet when I reverted back due to an editor going into an EXTREMELY
> controversial article (even before CD edited this it was controversial!)
> and just taking away all the material.

Hmm... that makes no sense. I meant to say "Yet when I reverted back due
to an editor going into an EXTREMELY controversial article (even before
CD edited this it was controversial!) and just taking away all the
material I got told that I should stay away from the article because I
was too close to it (no offense to the one who said that to me).

> I think that this diff really says it all about the whole situation:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historicity_of_Jesus&diff=7203163&oldid=6967565
>
> (before CheeseDreams and after CheeseDreams).
>
> TBSDY
>
> John Lee wrote:
>
>> I just thought I'd point out something from
>> [[User:UninvitedCompany]]'s user page - Wikipedia is a hundred times
>> smaller than MSN. When we're that big (which could definitely not be
>> too far in the future), we'll have a hundred CheeseDreams-like
>> editors. True, we'll have a hundred times more editors than we do now
>> to clean up the mess, but the question is, will we be able to put up
>> against a hundred editors using tactics like CheeseDreams? I am not
>> necessarily advocating Nicholas' proposal, but we should bear in mind
>> that a minute saved is a minute earned. A minute spent reverting
>> CheeseDreams could be a minute spent adding references to an article
>> or a minute spent wikifying a decent new article. CheeseDreams'
>> tactics of attrition are wearing us down, and it's doubtful whether a
>> hundred times more editors would be capable of dealing with a hundred
>> CheeseDreams.
>>
>> John Lee
>> ([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

body:
Karl A. Krueger said:
[...]
>
> The problem here is that it depends on someone listing the article as a
> controversial article on some other page.  Presently, I suspect there
> are a lot more edit wars than ever get listed on WP:RFC or any other
> repository for problems.  Moreover, I think we might not even know
> where many of those problems are, because waiting for people to report
> them publicly is no guarantee they ever get reported.
>
Yes.  Well, a way around this is to identify templates that are highly
likely to be associated with an edit war, and put those templates into a
category, which would result in controversial articles appearing in the
category.  Using the same mechanism on the category would give you another
view of possibly explosive articles.
Wikis are designed to be open and flexible so it's unlikely that any
single mechanism will ever be able to identify all controversial articles
without fail. Adopting the UNIX standard of "works in most cases" is good
enough, because other users will adopt other methods to identify the
controversial articles. --~~~~


from_name: Paul Youlten

subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:DE_wikipedia_logo_jump_01.gif

Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich Holton" <rich_holton at yahoo.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 2:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

>
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> Paul Youlten wrote:
>> > I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...
>> >
>> > I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the
>> > right on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except
>> > the German and Swedish ones.
>>
>> Sounds like this problem:
>> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1084
>>
>> The bug is marked as fixed, I'm not quite sure what the status is.
>>
>> I seem to remember seeing a note somewhere about this problem still
>> being there on some wiki (hu.wikipedia.org maybe?) and being fixed by
>> removing some change (or making some removal?) to the
>> [[MediaWiki:Monobook.js]]. Unfortunately I can't find the reference
>> just
>> now.
>>
>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>>
> I can confirm that the behavior is still present on en.wikipedia using
> IE 6.0 SP2 on XP SP2. It is much harder for me to notice than it has
> been in the past. I suspect at least part of that is the improved
> performance of the site.
>
> By the way, Paul, if you attached your screen captures, they did not
> make it to the list (I think they're removed for security). Maybe you
> could post them at bugzilla.wikimedia.org.
>
> -Rich
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
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from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>This might be an idea for commons, or meta. But I would not like to
>have it on other projects. In my opinion the fact that someone goes to
>a certain language Wikipedia or Wiktionary is more evidence of their
>language wishes than their Accept-language.
>
>Andre Engels
>(who has felt no need to change interface language on the dozens of
>Wikipedias he has been editing, but would be much interested in a
>single login)
>
>
I think the suggestion is that the interface language should be chosen
as follows, in the order given:
1: User preference of logged in user, if set
2: Language of the Wiki itself, if one is defined (all Wikipedias,
Wiktionaries, etc.), if 1 is not defined.
3: Accept-language of their browser, if neither 1 or 2 is defined
4: English, if their Accept-language is not supported (on the basis that
it is the world's most common language, counting both first and second
language users)

This seems like a pretty safe bet, as it should meet the principle of
least astonishment for the largest possible number of users.

-- Neil


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>Second, do you all really believe that if they intended to do exactly as
>they say, they would
>post their tactics openly on their site? I wonder! I think that they _do_
>intend to do damage to Wikipedia, but the details are probably in private
>mailings among members of their community.
>Meanwhile, they could be using their postings as a _diversion_, and while
>everyone is
>concentrating on monitoring certain articles, they could do something
>entirely different to damage
>our site. I leave it to those more technically inclined to try to figure
>out what that might be?.

I think you credit them with far more intelligence than they have ever
demonstrated.

Jay.


body:
Deathphoenix said:
>
> Having teams of trusted moderators (not necessarily the same team for
> each article) to overlook certain "risky" articles might be a good
> compromise. Part of being in a team of trusted moderators is the
> knowledge that the best safeguard of content is verifiability. The team
>  can have disagreements, but I think it would be better to argue on the
>  talk page than to get into edit/revert war.
>
You can't have "a team of trusted moderators" *and* verifiability--well,
you can, but only up to the point where the moderators are challenged on
unverifiable material.  At which point you have stopped trusting them and
you might as well have just left things the way they were.


body:
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:00:18 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> This might be an idea for commons, or meta.

That is my whole idea.

> But I would not like to
> have it on other projects. In my opinion the fact that someone goes to
> a certain language Wikipedia or Wiktionary is more evidence of their
> language wishes than their Accept-language.

Yes, as I said, there are still issues to solve -- I think that
MediaWiki code used on Commons is no different from the rest, so the
code should handle both options, probably using some LocalSettings
switch.

> (who has felt no need to change interface language on the dozens of
> Wikipedias he has been editing, but would be much interested in a
> single login)

You are of course right. Not to say that with the current state of
LanguageXx files, there is no reason I should switch to cs: on en:,
because I am able to understand English better than that
half-pseudo-Czech, half-untranslated-English I would receive with the
outdated LanguageCs.php file.

-- [[ :cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]


from_name: Wikimedia developers

subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
"Paul" == Paul Youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com> writes:

> I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...
> I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the right on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except the German and Swedish ones.

> Any ideas how I fix this - or should I go on prozac?

 FOUC?

<http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp>

--
/Wegge <http://wiki.wegge.dk>
echo mail: !#^."<>"|tr "<> mail:" dk at wegge
mailto:awegge at gmail.com - Invitationer p? FCFS basis


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Neo-nazis attempt to stack wikivote on Jewish
	Ethnocentrism

body:
Oh bloody hell. Baldrson?! I remember that nut from Kuro5hin. Figures
he'd be posting on stormfront.

TBSDY

AndyL wrote:
>  http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1630126
>
>  02-03-2005, 08:51 PM       #1
> Baldrson
> Forum Member
>
> Join Date: Jan 2003
> Posts: 121
> Location:
>
>  Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This is a "web tree alert" of sorts. If you have a web site people frequent,
> please put up a prominent post to alert them to get out to vote.
>
> There is a vote going on now to keep or ban a Wikipedia article on Jewish
> ethnocentrism.
>
> To vote you must first register.
>
> Then edit the vote discussion page by adding the following line to the end
> of the discussion:
>
> *'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~
>
> replace ... with your reason for wanting to keep Jewish ethnocentrism as a
> topic in Wikipedia. Leave the "~~~~" as it stands since that will affix your
> signature to the line.
> __________________
> Empty the Cities
>
>
> Baldrson
>
>  Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Come on people!
>
>
> Celtic_Frost
>
>
>
>  Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Check your spelling, or use the form below to create a new user account. If
> there is no form below, account creation is temporarily disabled. In this
> case, please accept our apologies and try again later.
> cant register at the moment.
>
> Lilith
> __________________
> Become a Friend of Stormfront
>
> You knock me down, take the shirt from our backs, kick me round but you will
> never stop me.
> Drag me down, take the words from my mouth, kick me round but you will never
> stop me. Mykind-Pitchshifter PSI
>
>
> Lilith
>
>  Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> There was once a very good article about white nationalism but it was
> changed to be biased against WNm and the original was transfered to wikinfo
> http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php?title=White_nationalism
> I've already registered and voted to keep "Jewish ethnocentrism" i hope it
> will not have the same fate.
>
>
> Lusitan
>
>  Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, the Wikipedia community has a very skewed take on objective.
>
>
> Celtic_Frost
>
>
>
>  Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to
> participate in voting.
> __________________
>
> WhiteBamboo
>
>  Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Quote:
> Originally Posted by WhiteBamboo
> How does one vote on wikipedia.org it is not clear what one has to do to
> participate in voting.
>
> I'll just re-cap on what Baldrson said.
>
> First, register.
>
> Next, click here.
>
> Finally, scroll down to the very bottom of all the text in the box, and
> underneath all the other comments write:
>
> *'''Keep''' because ... ~~~~
>
> Of course, in place of ... you must give your reason as to why you voted to
> keep the article - needless to say you should do so in a cordial manner,
> those wishing to delete the article will latch onto anything they can as an
> excuse to be hostile towards anybody criticising Jewish culture.
>
>
> Celtic_Frost
>
>
>  Re: Vote Now to Keep Wikipedia Article On Jewish Ethnocentrism
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> We need about 50 people from this forum to sign up to wikipedia.com and make
> more than 10 contributions to wikipedia.com before voting to keep Jewish
> Ethnocentrism on wikipedia. This will take a good amount of effort to get
> this kind of help.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>I expect the very worst we'll get from Neo-Nazis will be pseudointellectual
>>historical revisionists with the most remarkably crap references
>>imaginable. Assuming they don't decide in a week we're all Zionist
>>conspirators.
>
>
> We can tell them I really enjoyed my trip to Israel, if that will
> help.
>
> Did anyone notice I was in Jerusalem *on the very day* of the
> Palestinian elections?  If that doesn't prove it, I don't know what
> would.
>
> --Jimbo

OMG!!! It's a Zionist/Roman Catholic conspiracy! You are worshipping a
pagan god with your wikipedia! You are the NEW BABYLON!

TBSDY


subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
FOUCing hell - that is amazing! ... But it's not the jumping logo.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:DE_wikipedia_logo_jump_01.gif

Paul Youlten
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 10:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

"Paul" == Paul Youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com> writes:

> I know there are bigger things to worry about, but...
> I'm still having problems with my logo giving a little jump to the right
> on load - it happens on all the biggest Wikipedia's - except the German
> and Swedish ones.

> Any ideas how I fix this - or should I go on prozac?

 FOUC?

<http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp>

--
/Wegge <http://wiki.wegge.dk>
echo mail: !#^."<>"|tr "<> mail:" dk at wegge
mailto:awegge at gmail.com - Invitationer p? FCFS basis
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

body:
Good idea, neither FireFox nor Opera have the jumping logo problem.

The trouble is that it's not just me - the vast majority of visitors to my
site (and the different wikipedias) use IE.

Paul Youlten
----- Original Message -----
From: "NSK" <nsk2 at wikinerds.org>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 11:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] jumping logo

> On Tuesday 08 February 2005 11:43, Paul Youlten wrote:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:DE_wikipedia_logo_jump_01.gif
>
> Why you don't use Mozilla?
>
> --
> NSK
> http://portal.wikinerds.org/slashdotting2005feb4
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: MilchFlasche瑋平

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
Keep up the good working, guys, show them that how different Cantonese
is from Mandarin, even when it's written in hanzi. I myself could only
guess to understand, and I agree a lot with the idea that such
wikipedia should reflect the cultural distinction of Hong Kong and
Guangdong.

On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:58:20 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, of course it's OK! After all, it is a Wiki...
>
> Mark
>
> On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:39:49 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex at gmail.com > wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Felix Wan wrote:
> > > I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese
> > > and English, and started to write the Main Page.
> >
> > Oooh, cool.
> >
> > You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?
> >
> > little Alex
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
2005, make signs happen!