subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
Well, this is certainly a good idea.

Lee Pilich wrote:

> At 23:55 12/12/2002 +0000, Cunc wrote:
> >Moderation is fine for lists with a clearly defined scope, such as
> >job-announcement lists or dog-breeding tips. These wiki lists do not have
> >such a clearly defined scope.
>
> I think this is a good point. I just looked at [[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]]
> and it says:
>
> "Wikipedia has a number of project mailing lists; the general project-wide
> list is Wikipedia-L. It's an essential resource for Wikipedia authors.
> Maybe you don't want to clutter up Wikipedia with questions or discussion.
> Or maybe, for whatever reason, you'd just like to chat with other
> Wikipedians without doing so via the wiki format. Great, then sign up for
> Wikipedia-L! "
>
> The writeup for WikiEN-L isn't much more precise, just adding that it is
> for "discussion of issues concerning the english wikipedia only".  Note
> that it doesn't say "The list isn't for flaming, so don't do it", or
> whatever. It even encourages "chat", which I think most subscribers would
> think of as unwanted noise.
>
> Before we go ahead with moderation (which I remain opposed to) we ought to
> have some idea of what is (or should be) and isn't (or shouldn't be)
> allowed on the list, make this clear to all list members, and edit
> [[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]] to reflect this. I am very unclear still as to
> what is being proposed about what should and shouldn't be allowed.
>
> Perhaps we need [[Wikipedia:What the mailing list is not]] or something.
>
> LP (camembert)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] What kind of moderation?

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E0A5D1F8@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 06:58:50PM -0500

body:
The main problem with ideas of this type is that people will respond to messages
that shouldn't have been sent in the first place, which leads to a confusing situation.

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Can we do the following?
>
> (A) Automatically send EVERY wikiEN-l post to the newsgroup
> (B) Still filter the mailing list according to Jimbo's moderation plan?
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
I like this

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Suppose we commit to a very light moderation, by me,
> which you said
> you could accept, with others helping out by doing
> approvals of posts.
> AND we commit to setting up and testing a bbs system
> as you've
> proposed several times in the past.
>
> We experiment -- wikien-l becomes moderated.
> wikipedia-l stays
> unmoderated and migrates to a bbs/email system.  We
> later revisit the
> issue (March 1st, I propose) and see how it's
> working out in practice.
>
> Some of your objections are concerns I share... for
> example, under
> moderation, the pace of a list is slowed down.  But,
> by how much, and
> does it help or hinder productive discussions?
> That's an empirical
> question, and it depends on how many approvers we
> have and how often
> they are logged in, etc.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary project launched

body:
On Thursday 12 December 2002 16:58, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I'm ashamed to admin I just cut-n-pasted from the Windows character map
> applet.
>
> I don't know of an X keyboard map for IPA, but I believe yudit
> (http://yudit.org) has an IPA input mode; you should be able to
> cut-n-paste into a browser.

kxkb has something it calls a Greek layout, but I couldn't get that to work
either! (it typed Cyrillic with altgr on, otherwise Latin) So I cut&pasted
from a po file. See [[Thesaurus]].

phma


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Clutch" is now way out of control

body:
Can someone please ban clutch? The community has reached a
consensus on the "Jehovah's Witnesses: Controversial
Issues" article, and Clutch has kept unilaterally
vandalizing it. Worse, today he he started a campaign of
lying about what the consensus is.

Clutch actually is claiming (see the "History" of the
article for yourself!) that he is now acting in accord with
Wikipedia community consensus. Since he isn't, one must
wonder whether he is simply a mean persin, and is a troll
trying to disrupt the community - or if he actually has
some sort of psychological problem, and believes the
delusion he has just written?

I again ask Wikipedia sysops to accept responsibility for
their position; please stop allowing vandals to ride
rougshod over Wikipedia community consensus by deleting
articles. Continued silence effectively implies consent,
which is unfortunate.

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [WikiEN-l] an apology to everyone

body:
I would like to apologize to everyone for claiming that there was a
concensus on the article "Jehovah's Witnesses: Controversial Issues".
A concensus involves everyones agreement, and that obviously was not the
case.

As a demonstration of good faith, I promise to abstain from reverting any
articles for the remainder of this year (2002).

Merry Christmas!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20021213/e51f89a9/attachment.pgp


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>First, any one approver can send message onward to the list.  So the
>conspiracy of silence would have to be unanimous.
>
>Second, I pledge to log in at least once per day, weekdays, to process
>all the remainders.  (Possibly the list will be made unmoderated on
>the weekends?  Or the approvers can be more generous on the weekends.)
>
>Third, any post that I reject will give the poster the option of
>INSISTING that it be published as-is, subject only to whatever legal
>liability I might face if it's really awful (like a death threat).
>
>Fourth, wikipedia-l will remain unmoderated, so anyone who feels that
>I've been cruel can squawk about it over there, unhindered.
>
>Do those safeguards address your concerns sufficiently?

Sounds fine.  I'm not trying to be difficult, really.  I do want
*something* to change, you know.  :-)

kq


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> Cunc, it seems like you're the strongest holdout.

Among several who have voiced opposition, me included.

> I've got people in private email telling me that it's imperative that
> we institute a formal voting procedure, because consensus can't work
> in a group of this size.  It is claimed that any one person can block
> change, even if that one person agrees that the current situation is
> not very desirable.

That's interesting. The campaign for a voting procedure, repeatedly
rejected by the mailing list, is now continued via private email
directly to you? Could we have more details?

Besides: the above argument for voting is weak for two reasons: we
currently have more than a single holdout against moderation, and
furthermore we have agreed before that "consensus" is different from
"everybody has veto power".

Axel

Payment for this message: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Galois_connection&diff=0&oldid=490006

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vacation for Uncle Ed

body:
Folks,

I woke up this morning dreaming about Wikipedia. I think I'm devoting too much time and energy to the project.

I'm the 6th-most-frequent contributor. That's crazy. I don't need to do that much work. It's not like the project will fail without my constant daily attention.

So I'm going to follow Larry's advice and example. Better than that, I'm going to stay off the mailing lists *and* the encyclopedia for the rest of the month.

See you all next year!

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vacation for Uncle Ed


from_name: Robert Kaiser

subject: [Wikipedia-l] More vandalism on English Wikipedia by Clutch

body:
Can someone PLEASE ban clutch? The community has reached a consensus on the
"Jehovah's Witnesses: Controversial Issues" article, and Clutch has kept
unilaterally vandalizing it. Worse, today he he started a campaign of lying
about what the consensus is. Comments from others indicate that Clutch may
well, in fact, be a pathological liar.

The vandal is out of control, and *everyone* who has been commenting keeps
saying. Wiki Sysops, please stop shirking your responsibility, and stop
allowing vandals to ride rougshod over Wikipedia community consensus by
deleting articles. Whether you like it or not, the _fact_ is that your
silence effectively implies consent.

Robert


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
on 12/13/02 11:06 AM, The Cunctator at cunctator at kband.com wrote:

> On 12/13/02 6:15 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>>
>> Suppose we commit to a very light moderation, by me, which you said
>> you could accept, with others helping out by doing approvals of posts.
>> AND we commit to setting up and testing a bbs system as you've
>> proposed several times in the past.
>>
>> We experiment -- wikien-l becomes moderated.  wikipedia-l stays
>> unmoderated and migrates to a bbs/email system.  We later revisit the
>> issue (March 1st, I propose) and see how it's working out in practice.
>
> We can try that, but I'm not sure what good that would do. A lot of it
> depends on who the approvers are. Their biases/likes would determine who
> would participate, and what kind of participation that would be. And by
> creating a contrast between wikipedia-l and wikien-l we're implying that
> they're somehow different in tone and content, rather than focus.

Hopefully the moderators will consciously suspend their bias (those that
they are aware of) and hopefully Jimbo will choose folks who have some
self-awareness. This ought not be a way to continue the struggle by other
means. It should be a list issue if that is the behavior we see.
>
> One thing: we've had a lot of call for moderation, but little explication of
> what the direct issues are that moderation would solve. What exactly are
> these problems?

The sort of post which has a lot more heat than light. Constant harping on
something. And although I havn't seen much of it here, spamming the list
with off the wall stuff that has nothing to do with the list, either
commericial or personal.
>
> There would need to be a clear determination beforehand of what will be
> moderated. And things like "no personal attacks" are too vague to be a clear
> moderation guideline. Even "avoid topical discussion" is hard, because some
> degree of appeal to specific entries/topics is necessary for discussion of
> broad points.

Like pornography, one knows it when one sees it, a typical attack will
generally include "stupid" blah blah, scatological references etc. Posts on
topics are the same, when they start getting into the details, the debated
issues, we all know it belongs on the discussion page of the article.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
on 12/13/02 11:35 AM, The Cunctator at cunctator at kband.com wrote:

>>> There would need to be a clear determination beforehand of what will be
>>> moderated. And things like "no personal attacks" are too vague to be a clear
>>> moderation guideline. Even "avoid topical discussion" is hard, because some
>>> degree of appeal to specific entries/topics is necessary for discussion of
>>> broad points.
>>
>> Like pornography, one knows it when one sees it, a typical attack will
>> generally include "stupid" blah blah, scatological references etc. Posts on
>> topics are the same, when they start getting into the details, the debated
>> issues, we all know it belongs on the discussion page of the article.
>>
> Pardon me for saying it, but the U.S. judicial standard on pornography is
> not the kind of standard that we should be using. We don't need to emulate
> the braindead handling of sex and pornography in the U.S.
>
> Rather, if we *can't* explicate clear guidelines of what is not acceptable,
> then we shouldn't be moderating. I'm not saying that all judgment should be
> removed, but that such judgment should be clearly defined.

You see, that's the trap: define it clearly so someone can play games with
it. Best just to say: Be courteous and address some subject relevant to
wiki.

Rules are evil, evil, evil...

Fred


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
On 12/13/02 6:15 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>
> Suppose we commit to a very light moderation, by me, which you said
> you could accept, with others helping out by doing approvals of posts.
> AND we commit to setting up and testing a bbs system as you've
> proposed several times in the past.
>
> We experiment -- wikien-l becomes moderated.  wikipedia-l stays
> unmoderated and migrates to a bbs/email system.  We later revisit the
> issue (March 1st, I propose) and see how it's working out in practice.

We can try that, but I'm not sure what good that would do. A lot of it
depends on who the approvers are. Their biases/likes would determine who
would participate, and what kind of participation that would be. And by
creating a contrast between wikipedia-l and wikien-l we're implying that
they're somehow different in tone and content, rather than focus.

One thing: we've had a lot of call for moderation, but little explication of
what the direct issues are that moderation would solve. What exactly are
these problems?

There would need to be a clear determination beforehand of what will be
moderated. And things like "no personal attacks" are too vague to be a clear
moderation guideline. Even "avoid topical discussion" is hard, because some
degree of appeal to specific entries/topics is necessary for discussion of
broad points.

Ed Poor brought up the "If a single veto were to derail..." If a single veto
were to derail this, I'd be happy to veto it. But I don't expect or really
want that to be the case. I will tell you why I think this is a bad idea.
But direct experience is a better teacher.

I think what would make more sense is for someone/a group of people to
moderate a "best-of" list, in which posts from wikipedia-l or wikien-l, say
no more than 5 or 10 a day? maybe fewer? would be forwarded. Replies to the
posts would go back to wikipedia-l or wikien-l.

Certainly, if we decide to go forward with list moderation, I'll try to help
find the best form of it, but that won't mean I'll think it's a good idea.


subject: [WikiEN-l] an apology to everyone

body:
In view of Clutch's apology and extraordinary promise, I ask the
community to drop any further discussion of banning him.

And now I really must go.

See you all next year!

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Walther [mailto:krooger at debian.org]
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 12:34 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] an apology to everyone

I would like to apologize to everyone for claiming that there was a
concensus on the article "Jehovah's Witnesses: Controversial Issues".
A concensus involves everyones agreement, and that obviously was not the
case.

As a demonstration of good faith, I promise to abstain from reverting
any
articles for the remainder of this year (2002).

Merry Christmas!

Jonathan


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
On 12/13/02 1:25 PM, "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> on 12/13/02 11:06 AM, The Cunctator at cunctator at kband.com wrote:
>> We can try that, but I'm not sure what good that would do. A lot of it
>> depends on who the approvers are. Their biases/likes would determine who
>> would participate, and what kind of participation that would be. And by
>> creating a contrast between wikipedia-l and wikien-l we're implying that
>> they're somehow different in tone and content, rather than focus.
> Hopefully the moderators will consciously suspend their bias (those that
> they are aware of) and hopefully Jimbo will choose folks who have some
> self-awareness. This ought not be a way to continue the struggle by other
> means. It should be a list issue if that is the behavior we see.

It's the biases they're not aware of that are the problem. The simplest
mechanism for tackling these biases is putting every decision made by the
moderators to the light. If someone's post is blocked or delayed, they (and
possibly everyone) should know who made the decision (and possibly why).

>> There would need to be a clear determination beforehand of what will be
>> moderated. And things like "no personal attacks" are too vague to be a clear
>> moderation guideline. Even "avoid topical discussion" is hard, because some
>> degree of appeal to specific entries/topics is necessary for discussion of
>> broad points.
>
> Like pornography, one knows it when one sees it, a typical attack will
> generally include "stupid" blah blah, scatological references etc. Posts on
> topics are the same, when they start getting into the details, the debated
> issues, we all know it belongs on the discussion page of the article.
>
Pardon me for saying it, but the U.S. judicial standard on pornography is
not the kind of standard that we should be using. We don't need to emulate
the braindead handling of sex and pornography in the U.S.

Rather, if we *can't* explicate clear guidelines of what is not acceptable,
then we shouldn't be moderating. I'm not saying that all judgment should be
removed, but that such judgment should be clearly defined.


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
On 12/13/02 1:47 PM, "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> on 12/13/02 11:35 AM, The Cunctator at cunctator at kband.com wrote:
>> Rather, if we *can't* explicate clear guidelines of what is not acceptable,
>> then we shouldn't be moderating. I'm not saying that all judgment should be
>> removed, but that such judgment should be clearly defined.
>
> You see, that's the trap: define it clearly so someone can play games with
> it. Best just to say: Be courteous and address some subject relevant to
> wiki.
>
> Rules are evil, evil, evil...
>
So is shifting the responsibility to be courteous and relevant off of the
participants.

If we are to invoke the evil of censors/moderators, they need to be bound by
the evil of rules.


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Suggestion for search engine crawlers

body:
I wonder how feasible and desirable you consider presenting a
slightly different page to queries from user agents recognised
as search engine bots.

Google queries seem to return results like this;

  International Phonetic Alphabet - Wikipedia
  216.239.46.98 Log in | Help. International Phonetic Alphabet. From Wikipedia,
  the free encyclopedia. The International Phonetic Alphabet ...

where they should return results like this;

  International Phonetic Alphabet - Wikipedia
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The International Phonetic Alphabet
  was originally developed by British and French phoneticians ...

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Ireland]] and [[China]]

body:
Mav wrote:

>Just following the new logic. Why should our article on the modern state of
>Mexico have history in it that doesn't belong to it? The history of the
>modern state called Mexico really doesn't start until until 1917 when its
>current constitution was drafted (arguably it may have started when it got
>its independence from Spain in 1810). So it is only logical that the article
>on the modern state should be at [[United States of Mexico]] and the main
>article on Mexican art, culture and history would be at [[Mexico]] (the
>history would probably start with Cortez since Mexican art and culture is a
>blending of Mesoamerican and Spanish art and culture).

I think that this logic is basically sound,
but that still doesn't mean that [[United States of Mexico]]
necessarily must be a separate article.
[[Mexico]] is the main article for all things Mexican,
and if everything that we had to say about Mexico fit on one page,
then it would all be there -- government, culture, history, etc.
But it doesn't fit, so we spin off other articles.
So we must look at the logic of spin-offs.

Of the present spin-offs, [[Politics of Mexico]], [[Economy of Mexico]],
[[List of states of Mexico]], and [[Demographics of Mexico]]
clearly all refer to present poltically defined conditions,
which are all about one modern state, the United States of Mexico.
OTOH, [[History of Mexico]], [[Geography of Mexico]], and [[Culture of Mexico]]
are more general, referring to Mexico under any government.

Fine, we know what *those* articles are about --
but what about [[United States of Mexico]] itself?
Where is the political entity named by this title discussed?
Well, it is discussed in [[Politics of Mexico]], [[Economy of Mexico]],
[[List of states of Mexico]], and [[Demographics of Mexico]],
each of which is prominently linked to from [[Mexico]].
So, [[United States of Mexico]] can redirect to [[Mexico]].
(And so it does -- now that I just created the redirect ^_^.)

Similarly, can [[People's Republic of China]] redirect to [[China]]?
Not as easily, since there are two sovereign states known as "China".
Similary, [[Politics of China]] is at least somewhat ambiguous
(although in that case, I'd give the PRC priority,
with a disambiguation block for the ROC linking to [[Politics of Taiwan]]).
But [[China]] itself needs to link to both --
or better, link to both [[People's Republic of China]] and to [[Taiwan]],
with these latter two articles linking to the relevant spin-offs.
(But [[China]] itself can still link to [[History of China]] and the like.)

This is what seems logical to me --
we can combine the state with the country
when the state is the only state (at least today) in the country,
but we need to spin the state off to its own article
when there are multiple states in the country.
Thus [[People's Republic of China]] is as much a spin-off of [[China]]
as [[History of China]] is, or [[History of Mexico]] a spin-off of [[Mexico]].
Also, [[Politics of China]] is a spin-off of [[People's Republic of China]]
while [[Politics of Mexico]] is a spin-off of [[United States of Mexico]] --
which is currently located entirely inside of [[Mexico]].

Let me say this all again in a diagrammatic way
(read using a fixed font, like Courier or Courier New):

           Mexico
             |
             v
             |
         +-<-+--------->----------+--------->---------+------>------+
         |                        |                   |             |
         v                        v                   v             v
         |                        |                   |             |
United States of Mexico   Culture of Mexico   History of Mexico  Geography ...
         |
         v
         |
         +---------->----------+---------->---------+------->------+
         |                     |                    |              |
         v                     v                    v              v
         |                     |                    |              |
Economy of Mexico  Demographics of Mexico  Politics of Mexico  List of ...

This is the purely logical structure of the spin-offs,
but it works well to redirect [[United States of Mexico]] to [[Mexico]]
and link to every other spin-off article from there.

          China                               Taiwan/Formosa (the island)
            |                                           |
            v                                           v
            |                                           |
            +------------>---------+----->------+----<--+-->---+
            |                      |            |              |
            v                      v            v              v
            |                      |            |              |
People's Republic of China  History of China  Taiwan  History of Taiwan/Formosa
            |                   |               |              |
            v                   v               v              v
            |                   |               |              |
        +-<-+---->-----+---<----+---->----+----------<---------+----->---+
        |              |                  |     |                        |
        v              v                  v     v                        v
        |              |                  |     |                        |
E,D,P of China  History of the PRC        +--<--+->-+  H of Formosa before 1900
                                          |         |
                                          v         v
                                          |         |
                    History of Taiwan after 1900  E,D,P of Taiwan

(This diagram is very complicated, and highly simplified here.
I hope can that you can see the spot where one line goes over another well.
That Taiwan lies under both China *and* Formosa, and similar things,
is why Wikipedia articles are not named hierarchically!)

We can redirect [[Formosa]] to [[Taiwan]] (as we currently do)
since we hardly discuss non-Chinese Formosans or Formosa before roughly 1900
(when the Chinese replaced the Formosans, making the island Taiwan).
Similarly, we can redirect [[Republic of China]] to [[Taiwan]],
and everything about the history of Taiwan/Formosa is in a single article now;
if we get more material about pre-Chinese Formosa, then these might change.

But it doesn't work so well to redirect [[People's Republic of China]]
to [[China]], since half of the E/D/P of China isn't even about the PRC.
Instead, we should have [[China]] link to [[People's Republic of China]]
and [[Taiwan]], so people can get to both Chinese states' material,
and also link to [[History of China]] and the rest from that article.
[[History of China]] itself could link to [[Chinese Empire]],
[[History of Taiwan]], and [[History of the PRC]], or such things,
depending on what is most convenient given how much is written
on the various epochs of Chinese history.  And so on.

So, to sum up, each title should be treated fairly generally,
and we should break articles up into logically divided pieces
when they get to be too long or about largely unrelated things.

-- Toby


body:
RK wrote in part:

>I again ask Wikipedia sysops to accept responsibility for
>their position; please stop allowing vandals to ride
>rougshod over Wikipedia community consensus by deleting
>articles. Continued silence effectively implies consent,
>which is unfortunate.

First, Clutch is not a vandal -- trolling, violating consensus,
and even lying about consensus are not acts of vandalism.
(I leave it unjudged whether or not he is doing these things;
that's not the point.)  Similarly, you are not a vandal.
Edit articles to improve them, however ill done, is not vandalism.
So please, neither of you label your edits "VANDALISM IN PROGRESS".

As for banning versus tacit consent, we are slow to ban on Wikipedia
(except in cases of persistent vandalism, which is not what we have here).
Given that, a failure to ban so far does not in fact indicate agreement.
Also, only Jimmy Wales has the authority to ban Clutch
(just as it was he that had to ban Lir and Helga, also nonvandals),
and he will only do this (I assume) after asking Clutch to talk to him.
Your position, then, if you want Clutch to be banned (or cured)
is to complain to Jimmy (which you're doing by mailing the list).
But don't expect "Wikipedia sysops" to exceed our authority.

In fact, I join your call for Jimmy to look at the situation with Clutch.
In the meantime, see the recent posts by Ed Poor and Axel Boldt
(either here or on <wikipedia-l>) about how well it works
to go away for a few days and then come back to fix an article
(when otherwise in the midst of an edit war).

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mark's moderation compromise

body:
Ed Poor wrote in part:

>Anyone who wants to participate on a moderated English-language list, to
>discuss the English Wikipedia, is welcome. All others are still free to post
>to wikipedia-l which will remain unmoderated. Those who like their scum or
>slush or whatever unfiltered will still get plenty this way.

>What could possibly be wrong with such an experiment?

What could be wrong is described in your big paragraph above.
People may well go to <wikipedia-l> to discuss [[en:]] specifically,
which is not what <wikipedia-l> is for -- we already have enough problems.
I am about to make a post in which I consent to trying this experiment,
but I think it would work best to combine it with an outlet
that sends out an unfiltered version of <wikien-l> --
the Gmane idea sounds like it would work for this.
We don't need to increase the [[en:]] on <wikipedia-l>.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mark's moderation compromise


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote to The Cunctator in part:

>Suppose we commit to a very light moderation, by me, which you said
>you could accept, with others helping out by doing approvals of posts.
>AND we commit to setting up and testing a bbs system as you've
>proposed several times in the past.

Can we try all of these things at once?:
* Moderate <wikien-l> under your proposal,
  so that nothing is rejected unless it's rejected by you.
* Send an unfiltered version of <wikien-l> to someplace on the WWW
  (possibly our archives, or perhaps even better Gmane).
* Move <wikipedia-l> to the sort of BBS system that Cunc likes,
  in a way that's compatible with both using wiki markup in posts
  and continuing to read the list with a mail reader like emacs or mutt.

I still don't see the *need* for moderation -- or Cunc's BBS --
but I'm perfectly willing to try all of these.

So long as Jimmy remains the only person capable of rejecting a post,
I will also agree to anybody's being a moderator,
although we should still avoid people (like Larry and Cunc)
that often arouse ire in others (like Cunc and Larry, respectively ^_^),
preferring the less controversial, more easygoing folks
like mav, Ed, KQ, -- April, Magnus, Lee, ... I'm forgetting a few.
But that's no longer so vital.

We still need to discuss the standards that will be used for moderation.
(And of course, there are other objectors remaining besides The Cunctator,
so we need to hear if they will agree to the trial too.)

-- Toby


list: wikitech-l

body:
Hi.

Thanks for running the test, but the answer really isn't up to me.

1. Although I am an administrator of wikiEN-l I don't make policy. I only carry out the will of the group.

2. I am going on vacation until Jan. 2, 2003 -- so I won't be around to make this happen!

I forwarded your post below, to wikiEN-l but that will be my last contact with the Internet for the rest of the year!!

Thus I cast off the spell of virtual reality and return the real world.

"Poof!"

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Giskart [mailto:giskart at wikipedia.be]
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 3:15 PM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Cc: public-wikien-l=Qm5IaAUhVgiGglJvpFV4uA at gmane.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] What kind of
moderation?

Poor, Edmund W heeft geschreven:
> Can we do the following?
>
> (A) Automatically send EVERY wikiEN-l post to the newsgroup
> (B) Still filter the mailing list according to Jimbo's moderation plan?
>
> Ed Poor

I have done a test and it is possibel to send a message only to the
newsgroup and not to the email subcribed list members.

See the posting "Test for Ed" on
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical

How to do it;
The message must be hold for approval.
Do not approve the message, select something else, like discard.
You have the option "Additionally, forward this message to:" and fill
there in the list member emailadress from Gmane.org (see Membership
Management)

And send it. Only the newsgroup will recieve it. Of cource, if somebody
send a reply from the newgroup everbody will see it.

So it is possibel. If it is a good idea is something else.

To do this WikiEN-l must be add to gmane. You are the list
administrator. My I add wikiEN-l to gmane?

Giskart

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


from_name: Giskart

body:
Poor, Edmund W heeft geschreven:
> Can we do the following?
>
> (A) Automatically send EVERY wikiEN-l post to the newsgroup
> (B) Still filter the mailing list according to Jimbo's moderation plan?
>
> Ed Poor

I have done a test and it is possibel to send a message only to the
newsgroup and not to the email subcribed list members.

See the posting "Test for Ed" on
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical

How to do it;
The message must be hold for approval.
Do not approve the message, select something else, like discard.
You have the option "Additionally, forward this message to:" and fill
there in the list member emailadress from Gmane.org (see Membership
Management)

And send it. Only the newsgroup will recieve it. Of cource, if somebody
send a reply from the newgroup everbody will see it.

So it is possibel. If it is a good idea is something else.

To do this WikiEN-l must be add to gmane. You are the list
administrator. My I add wikiEN-l to gmane?

Giskart


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] What kind of moderation?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
> That's interesting. The campaign for a voting procedure, repeatedly
> rejected by the mailing list, is now continued via private email
> directly to you? Could we have more details?

I mailed Jimbo about something else and the discussion developed naturally
from there. I'm not sure if anyone else contacted Jimbo about it. I don't
think you need to worry though -- Jimbo is about as opposed as voting as
possible. That doesn't meant that I'll give up anytime soon.

Repeatedly rejected "by the mailing list" is an untrue claim. You seem to
have a habit of suggesting wide agreement where none exists in order to
discredit arguments you do not like.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Feature Request: Bot user accounts and/or disable 'hide minor edits' for non-logged-in users

body:
Since I'm not sure that anybody is minding the shop at SourceForge and I'm
certain that developers don't read the wiki-based feature request page, I'm
going to make a feature request here:

As it is, when Rambot is running Recent Changes is nearly useless since human
generated edits are drowned-out by a flood of automatic edits. Worse yet, is
that all these edits are displayed by default. A person has to create a user
account in order to use the 'hide minor edit' feature. I'm worried that when
Rambot is running that potential contributors looking at Recent Changes will
get the wrong idea about our project (and maybe leave before getting that
user account).

To combat this, I would like to suggest the creation of a new type of user
account that would just be used for bots. To have such an account the bot
owner would have to prove that their bot generates good articles, is not
harmful to performance (as Ram-Man has) and promise that the account would
only be used by the bot and would not be used for anything underhanded (like
violating policy by sneaking in POV edits -- I'm sure there will still be
people, like me, to sample bot edits to make sure nothing is going awry).
Then all edits made by the bot under a registered bot account could be marked
with a "B" in Recent Changes and would be not be displayed by default. As it
is, the 'hide minor edits' feature is useless for anybody worried about
vandalism since non-logged-in users can (for some reason that totally escapes
me) mark edits as minor. At the very least I wish 'mark this edit as minor'
would be disabled for non-logged-in users (as it was in a previous version of
the software).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary.org wasn't reserved!

body:
FYI: I just registered this domain name and would like to donate it to the
Wiktionary Project. So I need to know the details on how to transfer the
registration to Jimbo. I, along with all the Wiktionarians I've heard from on
this topic, would also like to have the Wiktionary project moved to this url
soon and have Wiktionary.com (which is already registered to Jimbo) to point
to it.

WikiKarma payment was in cash
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiktionary.org wasn't reserved!


from_name: Digital Addictions Software

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Feature Request: Bot user accounts and/or disable 'hide  minor edits' for non-logged-in users

body:
Please, Please implement this feature.  For what it's worth, even though the
bot is running at a relatively slow pace (~2.4 articles/minute) and in blocks
instead of linearly, it *still* annoys people.  This new feature besides fixing
the annoyance to everyone would also allow me to increase the speed at which I
can add articles.  Instead of taking over a week to do each small task, it
could be done in a matter of hours.  This is important because it allows me to
get work done.  Right now I am adding coordinates and doing some cleanup work
on the articles (fixing some inaccurate information and such).  Nevertheless I
have had people tell me a number of mistakes in articles and I am waiting until
the current bot run is over before I start another one to find all the articles
that have invalid information. Oh and I could run it in the bot in middle of
the night on full speed and then turn it off during the day, but alas I sleep
during that time.
	Ram-Man

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Historical NPOV and wikipedian NPOV

body:
on 12/14/02 6:40 AM, mattheww+wikipedia at chiark.greenend.org.uk at
mattheww+wikipedia at chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 11, 2002, martin.harper at speechmachines.com wrote:
>> The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to
>> ignore these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical,
>> anachronistic, and irrelevant. My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV
>> "wider" than the historical NPOV: should we include content that
>> historians would judge inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so
>> that the historical view is not damaged or confused by non-historical
>> approaches?
>
> I think the answer to the first question is 'yes, the later moral
> judgements are valuable content for wikipedia'.
>
> The second question is harder, but the rough approach should be the
> usual one, of attributing the later points of view to appropriate
> groups (even if the group is really almost all modern people).
>
> The difficult cases will be ones where the presentation and emphasis
> when describing the historical facts is coloured by modern judgements.
> But this problem is basically the same as making other articles NPOV,
> particularly ones where most current editors share the same POV. Where
> people see problems, they can work to fix them.
>
> -M-

I think it might be useful to divide such an article into several parts, one
part a sophisticated survey of the subject (all with appropriate references,
not just "Whoa! I teach medieval history") done to modern professional
standards which attempts (so far as one is able) to reflect the spririt of
the times (medieval times that is).  Unless one is or chooses to become an
expert, one might avoid trying to edit that section.

The other part of the article would be based more on general knowledge and
incude such concepts as the dark ages and, of course, the viewpoint (and it
is held) that it was the best of worlds. Our hypothetical professional (not
so hypothetical in this case) should resign herself to inclusion of
viewpoints from popular culture. That viewpoint necessarily involve a look
back and judgements on how far we have come from those beknighted days, or
how far we have fallen from the golden age of chivalry and Chistian
community.

What is going on here is two levels of reality. One body of knowledge is the
sophisticated best effort of professional historians; the other common
sense, or what we all know.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Historical NPOV and wikipedian NPOV

body:
Martin Harper writes:
> If I understand Julie correctly, historians tend to refrain from making
> moral judgements about history, particularly when the people of that
> period had a significantly different world view. So it's not OK to say
> that "women were treated unfairly", but it is OK to say that "women were
> not able to vote or own property" - the former being a statement of
> morality and the latter being one of historical fact. ..[snip to save
space]...
>
>
> The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to ignore
> these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical, anachronistic,
> and irrelevant.

I can't speak for all historians, but the way I understand it, most
historians see their job as to find the facts. Moral judgements, by
definition, are not confirmable facts. However, this is not to say that
moral judgements are irrelevant; a moral society cannot exist without making
such judgements. Without making such judgements societies can - and sadly,
do - fall into immoral situations such as Communism (which in practice is
totalitarian, even if not in theory), Facism, etc. Also, without making
informed and reflectiv moral judgemens societies societies can - and sadly,
do - descend into a malestrom of self-accusation, in which men sometimes
oppress and virtually enslave women; in which gentiles sometimes oppress or
kill Jews; in which heterosexuals sometimes oppress and kill homosexuals; in
which demnocracy is perverted into a violent dictatorship of the majority
(however slight) such as in many African nations today. The list of examples
goes on and on.

But how can anyone make any moral judgements at all without first having
strictly NPOV historical facts? (And also a large helping of common sense,
self-relfection, and the intellectual modesty to admit that other ways of
thinking about a situation must always be considered!) So I affirm the
strict historical NPOV that Julie suggest, and hold that this is how
Wikipedia should _start_ to deal with each historical issue. However, just
because we agree with this standard and start from this position, we don't
need to end here:

> My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV "wider" than the
> historical NPOV: should we include content that historians would
> judge inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so that the historical
> view is  not damaged or confused by non-historical approaches?

I believe that Wikipedia articles should indeed contain material that
includes a definition of NPOV that is wider than the strictly historical
NPOV. Wo perhaps the solution is that we address and describe historical
issues first from the strictly narrow historical NPOV, and then add after
this description a few sentences that say "Today most people hold value
belief X about this situation, because of the following reasons."

Robert (RK)


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

body:
I knew I needed to unsubscribe sooner.

Martin said:

If I understand Julie correctly, historians tend to refrain from making
moral judgements about history, particularly when the people of that
period had a significantly different world view. So it's not OK to say
that "women were treated unfairly", but it is OK to say that "women were

not able to vote or own property" - the former being a statement of
morality and the latter being one of historical fact. Similarly,
historians explain things in terms of the temporal context, so the Rape
of
the Sabines in Rome would be explained in terms of how the romans viewed

women, sex, marriage, and the necessity of making lots of little Romans
who would grow up to throw weird-shaped spears and feature in historical

novels.

Julie Replies:   Pretty much -- although more in terms of women being
legitimate spoils of war and the story perhaps semi-legendary

However, certain periods in history have been reinterpreted by later
generations. The inquisition is a classic example, in that some neopagan

religions have used as a quasi-historical basis. Also, (IIRC) later
christian leaders have retrospectively apologised for the inquisition,
so
clearly they were judging the morality of the period against modern
morality. The inquisition has been used as evidence for the claim that
christianity and/or organised religion is amoral. Finally, the term
"witch
hunt" is an idiom for an irrational search for evil-doers that works
similarly to the way the Salem trials and the Inquisition are supposed
(in
popular imagination) to have been conducted.

Julie clarifies;  In an article on the Inquisition or on witch hunts, I
would expect to include such things as "current research suggests that,
in fact, some (perhaps many) people were the subjects for ulterior
motives -- for example, in so-and-so's (can't recall -- its out there)
seminal work on with trials of the 16th c.  s/he demonstrated that many
accused of witchcraft were independent landowning widows who had no male
relatives to protect them or defend them in the legal system or
community or whatever."  This does a couple of things: 1)  it brings
forward more current views, which may not be available to the general,
non-scholarly public; and 2) it allows people to see that the situation
wasn't morally cut and dried, and allows them to make their own moral
judgments (a la RK's comments).  In the case of the Inquisition, there
is no reason NOT to mention apologies for the institution -- Just as in
an article on the Rape of Nanjing, one should include the fact that
there have been demands for apologies and that Japan has acknowledged it
happening, but never actually apologized.  Let people make their own
judgments based on the facts and the least intrusive, least biased
interpretations.

The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to ignore
these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical,
anachronistic,
and irrelevant. My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV "wider" than the
historical NPOV: should we include content that historians would judge
inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so that the historical view
is
not damaged or confused by non-historical approaches?

Julie replies :  I believe that, if wikipedians stick to the keep out
the utter dreck, give appropriate space to minority valid opinion, part
of NPOV, things will be fine.  If, as Fred suggests, we:

should resign herself to inclusion of viewpoints from popular culture.

I think you're heading down a slippery slope.  Take for example the "jus
primae noctis"  -- the so-called Law of the First Night.  Popular
culture loves this -- it shows up as a motivating force in "braveheart."
It didn't exist.  Should articles give credence to it because it's part
of the popular conception of manorial life?  NO.  I cannot for the life
of me see talking about the Middle Ages in a way that panders to the
Society for Creative Anachronism.  If it gets a mention, it should be in
the context that the great German historian Karl Schmidt debunked this
ages ago and that, although many people accept it as "truth", really it
was a conflation of laws granting permission for a woman to marry off
the estate, and a church tax paid by the newlyweds to be allowed to have
sex on the first night of marriage.

In the same way, an article on the medieval economy would say that for
years historians believed that an agricultural boom in the 10th, 11th,
and 12th centuries was partially the result of technological advances
like the padded horse collar and tandem harnesses, the most recent
research shows that the climate became milder and that, in fact, there
is a great deal of evidence showing that the ancient world had very
similar horse collars and that chariot horses were in fact yoked in
tandem, and that most of the previously held theory was due to one piece
of flawed research which was nevertheless accepted by people who perhaps
didn't know much about farming and horses, but read a source that
appeared to them authoritative.    So the article says what most people
thought (and what popular culture pretty much holds) and why they
thought it, but shows that this theory, which influenced the writing of
history for many years, has been more than legitimately challenged and
is now in the process of being discounted.  It will probably take a
while to trickle down, by the way.  Not, as Erik seems to think, because
historians like to misrepresent things, but because we live in a world
where people who took one course in this subject as an undergrad 20
years ago are now being called on to teach outside their specialties.
Most professional historians who reach the top are very specialized --
not medieval, for example, but Visigothic Spain, or 9th c. land
transfers in southern France, or 8th c. sewer construction in English
towns.  The rest of us -- the people who teach more than research, often
teach outside their fields to make ends meet.  As long as we have a
system that relies on part-timers, we'll have modern Europeanists and
Americanists teaching the invention of the horse collar -- because they
took a class years ago that taught them that, and nobody can keep up
with everything.

As for Erik's letter,  I will say that I think that there is a
fundamental disagreement on what Erik thinks we disagree on.  This is
not meant to be a flame in any way, simply my understanding of things.
Just as with facts, historians also deal with the history of writing
history -- it's called historiography.  Although we might not know the
state of specifics, most of us are reasonably familiar with current
trends.  Unfortunately, a lot of our knowledge is acquired through
conversation with colleagues -- just plain old shop talk about people we
know (or that we've heard of) and what they're working on.   A lot of it
happens through glancing through mailing lists where someone says --
"I'm working on x, and need info about y -- can anybody help"?  The
responses might be about x, they might be about y, and they might be
"so-and so is working on something where he thinks y is really the same
as z."    I know it's not very scientific, but it's how we work a lot of
the time.   There is no universal database where we can search and see
what the latest is on any given subject.  Journals are mostly
specialized, and some only published for small local audiences.   From
my conversations with Erik, I gather that he rejects this.  Moreover, he
seems to believe, based only on a small selection of books that support
his own viewpoint, out of the overwhelming majority that do not, that
historians, medievalists in particular, are not to be trusted.  One of
these books (Cantor's Inventing the Middle Ages) has little in the way
of concrete evidence to support its claims -- and really only deals with
one mostly geographical section of the world's medievalists.  Despite
this, or perhaps because of it, Erik feels comfortable in labeling
anyone who disagrees with this an apologist or at least wishy-washy.
It's kind of like, "what Julie says disagrees with  what Erik sees as
being true (the destructive force of the church, for example) , ipso
facto, she fits into Cantor's group of apologist historians, and can't
be trusted to be non-biased. "

That is patently untrue.  Anyone who has read my work can tell that --
except Erik, because he has an agenda based on the idea that I've been
corrupted by my teachers and tradition and just don't know the
difference.   All I can say is that I have been trained to read
documents and look at other primary sources and interpret them, both
apart from other interpretations and, critically, in light of other
existing interpretations.  Oddly enough, I don't specialize in the
Church -- I specialize in Carolingian political, institutional, and
social history, mostly using written histories and land transactions.
One would think that would be fairly neutral.   But here's the deal.  I
can't defend myself against Erik's accusations, because he has set up a
situation where anything I say that disagrees with his preconceived
notions is by definition wrong.   Unfortunately for the wikipedia, Erik
is not speaking from a position of expertise, or training, or even a
broad and comprehensive exposure to the many schools of historical
thought.  And, it appears clear from your responses to the issues at
hand, that his approach finds more merit in your eyes, because it may
reflect more popular (albeit not really sustainable) beliefs.  If that's
the case, and if such attitudes are encouraged, then NPOV will cease to
exist on the wikipedia -- instead, NPOV will become PC POV, and reflect
whatever the lowest common denominator holds true.  It's a shame,
because the immediacy of the technology could make wikipedia cutting
edge.   I don't see it happening.  I am going to unsubscribe to this
list after sending (when I'm not subscribed, my posts don't go through
-- someone should check on that).

JHK


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Feature Request: Bot user accounts and/or
	disable 'hide minor edits' for non-logged-in users

body:
On 12/14/02 4:46 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip bot suggestion>

Please participate in the work that has been done at [[Wikipedia:Bots]].


body:
On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 09:28:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>little longer in time. We have a pretty large group of people on Wikipedia
>who happen to believe that God created Man. The general scientific
>consensus is that this is nonsense (let's not get into the merits of this

There can be no "scientific" concensus on an issue that is not
scientifically testable (falsifiable).  Please read Karl Poppers works.
There are a lot of scientists who DO believe in a creator God, but keep
quiet so they can retain their jobs in academia.  To say there is a
"scientific concensus" on the issue of God-creation is ludicrous.

>Wikipedia is not like a traditional encyclopedia. We do not try to get
>only the best information from (presumed or real) experts in the field. We

Is that how you see it?  That is a problem then.  I signed on to work on
a real encyclopedia, not a grand story about our cultures current mythology.

>Unfortunately, yes, historians have so far neglected the creation of
>bibliographical databases. There are some that can be used, however, and
>which are probably easily accessible to you.

If you had any clue you would realize how impossible such a project is,
and appreciate how much historians have already done.  Knowing where to
find things, and then being able to get access to them is an art, and
requires deep study and hard work.  Hard work which you admit you
haven't done, unlike Julie.

>> Journals are mostly
>> specialized, and some only published for small local audiences.   From
>> my conversations with Erik, I gather that he rejects this.  Moreover, he
>> seems to believe, based only on a small selection of books that support
>> his own viewpoint, out of the overwhelming majority that do not,
>
>Please, no popularity arguments.

You were the one who made the popularity argument. I think you should
take the consequences.

>ancient lens, I try to take his plausible arguments seriously. For me, it
>is not enough to refer to someone's expertise to discount a particular
>argument. Neither the age of an interpretation nor the credentials of its

This is a straw man. Julie didn't expect people to believe her because
of her expertise, but she is justified in expecting people to respect
her good intentions, AND her expertise.

>different historical tradition that needs to be presented. There have been
>very real and very provable attempts by the Catholic Church to create a
>new, apologist historical tradition. The existing, non-denominational

You have a chip on your shoulder about religion in general, and
Catholicism in particular.  Maybe you should reflect on the fact that
your bias is severely impacting your work on the Wikipedia.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021214/a9bcd8b0/attachment.pgp


in_reply_to: <OF88338590.FF064C1D-ON80256C8C.003ED062-80256C8C.0040EB1F@medquist.com>; from martin.harper@speechmachines.com on Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 11:52:33AM +0000

body:
On Wed, Dec 11, 2002, martin.harper at speechmachines.com wrote:
> The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to
> ignore these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical,
> anachronistic, and irrelevant. My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV
> "wider" than the historical NPOV: should we include content that
> historians would judge inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so
> that the historical view is not damaged or confused by non-historical
> approaches?

I think the answer to the first question is 'yes, the later moral
judgements are valuable content for wikipedia'.

The second question is harder, but the rough approach should be the
usual one, of attributing the later points of view to appropriate
groups (even if the group is really almost all modern people).

The difficult cases will be ones where the presentation and emphasis
when describing the historical facts is coloured by modern judgements.
But this problem is basically the same as making other articles NPOV,
particularly ones where most current editors share the same POV. Where
people see problems, they can work to fix them.

-M-


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Recent Changes

body:
The "hide the bots" feature request made me think (unbelievable, not?):
What ever happened to that nice new Recent Changes page? The one with
optional JavaScript? (I'm too lazy to dig up the mail)

Someone working on that? Is there a demo page? Some source?

IMO it should go online soon, if only as Yet Another User Option. If
it's fast, nice, and bug-free, it should become standard.

Magnus


body:
> To combat this, I would like to suggest the creation of a new type of user
> account that would just be used for bots. To have such an account the bot
> owner would have to prove that their bot generates good articles, is not
> harmful to performance (as Ram-Man has) and promise that the account would
> only be used by the bot and would not be used for anything underhanded (like
> violating policy by sneaking in POV edits -- I'm sure there will still be
> people, like me, to sample bot edits to make sure nothing is going awry).
> Then all edits made by the bot under a registered bot account could be
> marked with a "B" in Recent Changes and would be not be displayed by
> default. As it is, the 'hide minor edits' feature is useless for anybody
> worried about vandalism since non-logged-in users can (for some reason that
> totally escapes me) mark edits as minor. At the very least I wish 'mark this
> edit as minor' would be disabled for non-logged-in users (as it was in a
> previous version of the software).

Daniel,

I support both suggestions (I already suggested filtering RC during
earlier runs of the Ram-Bot). I'd like to add that there should be a
preference both for sysops and non-sysops to view bot-edits.

I'll implement the second suggestion (no minor edit checkbox for users not
logged in) if there are no objections.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] New Recent Changes

body:
> The "hide the bots" feature request made me think (unbelievable, not?):
> What ever happened to that nice new Recent Changes page? The one with
> optional JavaScript? (I'm too lazy to dig up the mail)

> Someone working on that? Is there a demo page? Some source?

> IMO it should go online soon, if only as Yet Another User Option. If
> it's fast, nice, and bug-free, it should become standard.

Magnus,

thanks for the support. No, so far I have only done the graphical mock-up
and thought about the implementation. Do you want to help coding it?

I suggest creating a separate "SpecialRecentchangesDynamic.php". The
JavaScript for dynamic opening/closing can be taken from Scoop CVS, it
works in both IE and Mozilla. The table generation is a bit tricky because
of the positioning of the "diff" links, which also need to use the correct
change IDs (unlike the current diff links). Also, we need to create a
function for fetching just the HTML for a specific change.

It doesn't make much sense to make it the standard because the main
advantage (being able to dynamically view an individual recent history)
only works in modern browsers. Older browsers would still see the changes
in summarized form, but be unable to expand an individual set of changes,
which would make the view a disadvantage when compared to the current one.

(I get the impression that this dynamic expand/collapse concept was not
well transferred by the mock-up I made. I really suggest looking at
Kuro5hin's "dynamic threaded" comment mode to see what I mean.)

Regards,

Erik


body:
Hi,

you're correct that this was one of my disagreements with Julie. I
actually agree with Julie that a strictly historical article should not be
laced with modern moral judgments (i.e. "women were treated unfairly,
according to .."). It's perfectly OK to include these, in attributed form,
in a designated section or separate article.

However, the major disagreement was whether certain *interpretations* of
the facts, especially of causes/effects - not moral judgments - should be
presented, or whether they should be regarded as "outdated" and discarded.
For example, was the church anti-scientific to make sure that its own
viewpoint was the only one that could prevail? Was it the cause of the
irrationalism of the period? Or was it simply an institution that grew out
of the chaos that followed the decline of the Roman empire, one that
brought order into chaos and preserved knowledge that would otherwise have
been lost? (A frequent relativistic/apologist interpretation.) These are
both not moral judgments, although moral judgments could be derived from
both.

I think that any interpretation that is properly attributed and verifiable
has a place on Wikipedia. Otherwise, our only alternative is to use
whatever is the "scientific consensus" (what is scientific? when is
consensus reached? do we ban all previous interpretations? do we ban all
non-scientific interpretations, e.g. creationism? does the English
Wikipedia concern the American scientific consensus or the African one?).
Not all interpretations have the same place, but IMHO it is especially the
extreme fringe (e.g. the theory that 200 years of medieval history were
invented) that should be condemned to the fringes of Wikipedia.

In general, I am against *deleting* attributed, verifiable information.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] the will of the group

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Thanks for running the test, but the answer really isn't up to me.
>
> 1. Although I am an administrator of wikiEN-l I don't make policy. I only carry out the will of the group.

So it is up to you, the group. Are there any formal objections against
adding wikiEN-l to gmane.org?

If you have not seen the postings about this at wikitech-l, please read
these;
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001621.html

It will give to who are interested a better way of reading and using the
lists of wikipedia. But it will not change anything to the current list
or the way users use it. There are not disadvantages. Modderation or not
makes not difference about this.

No responds = no objection

See Wikitech-l for a example
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

> 2. I am going on vacation until Jan. 2, 2003 -- so I won't be around to make this happen!
[cut]
> Thus I cast off the spell of virtual reality and return the real world.
>
> "Poof!"
>
> Ed Poor

Giskart


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Feature Request: Bot user accounts and/or disable
	'hide minor edits' for non-logged-in users

body:
On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 01:46, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Since I'm not sure that anybody is minding the shop at SourceForge

I'm keeping track; I get an automatic e-mail notice about anything
posted there.

> and I'm
> certain that developers don't read the wiki-based feature request page,

That's fo' darn sure.

> To combat this, I would like to suggest the creation of a new type of user
> account that would just be used for bots.

Done. If the user_rights field contains 'bot', their edits will be
specially marked and can be ignored in Recentchanges.

(To simplify this I've added an rc_bot column to recentchanges; if
you're tracking updates to the software for a personal test or other
wiki, be sure to run maintenance/bot.sql on your database before
upgrading to the latest CVS.)

Bot entries are at the moment hidden by default; you can manually show
them like so:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&hidebots=0

The Recentchanges filtering options need an overhaul to include minor
show/hide and grouping by title or author, so I'll put in an interface
option when I get to that. (Or if someone else gets to it first, be my
guest!)

Like connoting 'sysop' or 'developer' status, marking a user as a 'bot'
must currently be done by manually poking the database with pointy
sticks until it cries uncle.

> Then all edits made by the bot under a registered bot account could be marked
> with a "B" in Recent Changes

Probably a good idea...

> At the very least I wish 'mark this edit as minor' would be disabled for
> non-logged-in users (as it was in a previous version of the software).

Before I go diving into that; what about marking _new_ pages as minor
edits? I know I do this sometimes when creating redirects.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Log page code consolidated

body:
While I'm at it; I've consolidated the log page handling for the upload
and deletion logs into a LogPage class.

This should make it easier to add more logs of things that are currently
hard to track -- page protections/unprotections, ip blocks and unblocks,
etc.

But before doing that; would it be more worthwhile to use some kind of
event log table instead, from which the logs could be extracted through
simple filtering? Or is using wiki pages which sysops can correct,
rotate, and backup through the regular editing tools better?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database error

body:
On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 19:53, Pierre Abbat wrote:
[..]
> It looks like the space before "WHERE" is missing.

Oops -- I accidentally merged in some experimental code there! Lemme fix
it...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Julie "Erik, when I puke up my overpriced latte, I'll be thinking of you"
Kemp wrote:

> I think you're heading down a slippery slope.  Take for example the "jus
> primae noctis"  -- the so-called Law of the First Night.  Popular
> culture loves this -- it shows up as a motivating force in "braveheart."
> It didn't exist.  Should articles give credence to it because it's part
> of the popular conception of manorial life?  NO.  I cannot for the life
> of me see talking about the Middle Ages in a way that panders to the
> Society for Creative Anachronism.  If it gets a mention, it should be in
> the context that the great German historian Karl Schmidt debunked this
> ages ago and that, although many people accept it as "truth", really it
> was a conflation of laws granting permission for a woman to marry off
> the estate, and a church tax paid by the newlyweds to be allowed to have
> sex on the first night of marriage.

I think everyone agrees that historical claims don't deserve much credence
if those who hold them are not aware of alternative explanations. There
are many "common misconceptions" and "popular errors", and they are
referred to as such on Wikipedia -- unless, of course, there are people
who actually believe that the popular errors are not really popular
errors.

But let's extend this beyond recent history for a moment and go back a
little longer in time. We have a pretty large group of people on Wikipedia
who happen to believe that God created Man. The general scientific
consensus is that this is nonsense (let's not get into the merits of this
or that "theory" about "intelligent design" and stick to old-fashioned
creationism for the sake of the argument). Should we then call creationism
a "common misconception"? This is hardly in the spirit of NPOV which
allows people with very different views to work together.

Wikipedia is not like a traditional encyclopedia. We do not try to get
only the best information from (presumed or real) experts in the field. We
try to present all human knowledge, properly attributed, properly
prioritized according to the number and standing of its adherents. I
repeat my main point: There is rarely a case that can be made that certain
information should be *deleted* from Wikipedia if it is verifiable and
properly attributed. There is frequently a case that can be made that it
should be moved, compressed, refactored etc. This is why I believe that
your understanding of NPOV is dangerously wrong: You want to delete views
you disagree with. Moreso, you want to do so simply by referring to your
own authority or that of your peers, without any actual arguments.

> As for Erik's letter,  I will say that I think that there is a
> fundamental disagreement on what Erik thinks we disagree on.  This is
> not meant to be a flame in any way, simply my understanding of things.
> Just as with facts, historians also deal with the history of writing
> history -- it's called historiography.  Although we might not know the
> state of specifics, most of us are reasonably familiar with current
> trends.  Unfortunately, a lot of our knowledge is acquired through
> conversation with colleagues -- just plain old shop talk about people we
> know (or that we've heard of) and what they're working on.   A lot of it
> happens through glancing through mailing lists where someone says --
> "I'm working on x, and need info about y -- can anybody help"?  The
> responses might be about x, they might be about y, and they might be
> "so-and so is working on something where he thinks y is really the same
> as z."    I know it's not very scientific, but it's how we work a lot of
> the time.   There is no universal database where we can search and see
> what the latest is on any given subject.

Unfortunately, yes, historians have so far neglected the creation of
bibliographical databases. There are some that can be used, however, and
which are probably easily accessible to you.

> Journals are mostly
> specialized, and some only published for small local audiences.   From
> my conversations with Erik, I gather that he rejects this.  Moreover, he
> seems to believe, based only on a small selection of books that support
> his own viewpoint, out of the overwhelming majority that do not,

Please, no popularity arguments.

> historians, medievalists in particular, are not to be trusted.

Actually, re: your points

1) It's perfectly OK to gather information in informal communication. For
Wikipedia, however, we need quotable sources and evidence, which should be
gatherable in the same process. This is especially true when a case is
made that "Person XY is not trustworthy and his opinion should be deleted
from the article." Everything else is just laziness.

2) I do not believe in authority. If Robert Temple writes a book about
aliens who allegedly visited Earth in antiquity and then another one about
ancient lens, I try to take his plausible arguments seriously. For me, it
is not enough to refer to someone's expertise to discount a particular
argument. Neither the age of an interpretation nor the credentials of its
proponents should be enough to reject or accept it. Instead, we should
look at individual arguments and their merits.  However, if a person
repeatedly shows themselves to be not trustworthy, then I consider any
statement from them more skeptically.

It is correct that I have come to approach the field of medievalism with
some distrust because of its history and politicization, but that doesn't
mean that I would reject any arguments without looking at them. And
whether I would reject or accept them doesn't matter much anyway. In the
context of Wikipedia, we need to present the different interpretations,
carefully note who believes what, and prioritize our presentation
according to certain standards.

>   One of
> these books (Cantor's Inventing the Middle Ages) has little in the way
> of concrete evidence

Well, Cantor would certainly dispute that :-). But that's a separate
discussion. The point I was making by citing Cantor is: There is a
different historical tradition that needs to be presented. There have been
very real and very provable attempts by the Catholic Church to create a
new, apologist historical tradition. The existing, non-denominational
medievalist school is not identical to that tradition, but it is
influenced by it.

> Despite
> this, or perhaps because of it, Erik feels comfortable in labeling
> anyone who disagrees with this an apologist or at least wishy-washy.

I have quoted specific claims from you that I can only call wishy-washy --
the typical "in the historical context of the time, .." stuff. Sometimes
that's a good point, but often it is just an attempt to blur cause and
effect.

I do not call you an apologist. That is besides the point, because I am
perfectly happy to have your opinion in an article. I'm not happy to have
it the only one that is presented.

> Oddly enough, I don't specialize in the
> Church

Oddly enough indeed :->

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism vandal is a proxy

body:
205.188.209.39 vandalized something else, then removed the note on the
vandalism in progress page that said that he was vandalizing. I blocked the
address (vandalizing the vandalism page is cause for immediate blocking),
then looked it up and found that it's an AOL proxy and a neighboring proxy
was already blocked for some other vandalism. He will probably be back from
yet another proxy. Don't hesitate to block if he vandalizes the vandalism
page, but once he gives up, they should all be unblocked so that someone else
can use them.

phma


body:
> You have a chip on your shoulder about religion in general, and
> Catholicism in particular.  Maybe you should reflect on the fact that
> your bias is severely impacting your work on the Wikipedia.

I still think that Jonathan Walter's first "minor edit" to the Social work
article shows his understanding of bias best:

>They generally force their "help" on people who don't want it, and ignore
>human rights in their quest to "save" people. Social workers are trained
>to place their feelings and gut instincts supreme above reason,
>rationality, and respect for human dignity. Social workers typically act
>as repressive agents of fascist regimes, usually working hand in hand
>with police agencies to carry out low intensity eugenics programs against
>the poor and working classes.

Or how about his views on Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism:

>However, I believe even the link to Wagner and anti-Semitism is unneeded;
>in the context of his times Wagner was neither good nor bad; he was just
>ordinary. To put too much emphasis on this one aspect of his personality
>does a grave disservice to the legacy of great music he left posterity.

The same Jonathan Walter who thinks it is "inappropriate" to link to
opposing viewpoints in the Jehovah's Witnesses article. The same Jonathan
Walter who is only referred to as "Mr. Editor" on the article's talk page
because of his repeated attempts to enforce his edits.

Jonathan Walter, if I am biased by your standards, I am even closer to the
ideal of neutrality than I thought I was.

Regards,

Erik


body:
On Saturday 14 December 2002 21:54, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Before I go diving into that; what about marking _new_ pages as minor
> edits? I know I do this sometimes when creating redirects.

I can't imagine how a new page could be a minor edit. Any new page marked as
minor is suspicious to me.

Why are the lines for edits marked "N " for new, " M" for minor, but " MN"
for minor new? "NM" would make more sense.

phma


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database error

body:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Enigma.png results in the following error:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an
illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in
the software. The last attempted database query was: SELECT
cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title FROM cur,brokenlinksWHERE bl_from=cur_id AND
bl_to='Image:Enigma.png' LIMIT 10 from within function "Article::getContent".
MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax near
'=cur_id AND bl_to='Image:Enigma.png' LIMIT 10' at line 1".

It looks like the space before "WHERE" is missing.

phma


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Please test texvc instalation on http://test.wikipedia.org/


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] The will of the group

body:
Hi,

     Forgive me - I think this was asked already, but I can't find an answer in
the archives. If a member chooses to read the WikiEN-l list as e-mail, and
another member reads it as a newsgroup, if the newsgroup reader replies to the
newsgroup, will the e-mail reader get the reply too?

                  As Ever,

                    Ruth Ifcher

--

> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > Thanks for running the test, but the answer really isn't up to me.
> >
> > 1. Although I am an administrator of wikiEN-l I don't make policy. I only
> carry out the will of the group.
>
> So it is up to you, the group. Are there any formal objections against
> adding wikiEN-l to gmane.org?
>
> If you have not seen the postings about this at wikitech-l, please read
> these;
> http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001621.html
>
> It will give to who are interested a better way of reading and using the
> lists of wikipedia. But it will not change anything to the current list
> or the way users use it. There are not disadvantages. Modderation or not
> makes not difference about this.
>
> No responds = no objection
>
> See Wikitech-l for a example
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> > 2. I am going on vacation until Jan. 2, 2003 -- so I won't be around to make
> this happen!
> [cut]
> > Thus I cast off the spell of virtual reality and return the real world.
> >
> > "Poof!"
> >
> > Ed Poor
>
> Giskart
>
>
> --
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The will of the group

body:
rose.parks at att.net wrote:
[cut]

> if the newsgroup reader replies to the
>newsgroup, will the e-mail reader get the reply too?
>
>                  As Ever,
>
>                    Ruth Ifcher
>
Yes

Actualy , if a newsgroup reader replies to the newsgroup  gmane.org will
forward it to the list posting email adress. That is all.

The only thing you will notice is that all email adresses on the
postings that gone by the newsgroep are changed.

My email adress is ;  giskart at wikipedia.be
Gmane change it to something like:  giskart=hi6Y0CQ0nG0 at public.gmane.org

That strange adress is a working adress. If you send a message to it you
will recieve the first time a autoresponds to confirm that you exist and
are not a spammer.
The newsgroup can also be created whitout this anti-spam protection, be
it think it is a very good option.

Greetings,
Giskart


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l digest, Vol 1 #289 - 13 msgs

body:
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 06:14:24 -0800 (PST)
From: Digital Addictions Software
<digitaladdictions at yahoo.com>
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Feature Request: Bot user
accounts and/or
disable 'hide  minor edits' for non-logged-in users
Reply-To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Oh and I could run it in the bot in
middle of
the night on full speed and then turn it off during
the day, but alas I
sleep
during that time.
Ram-Man

Hi

Except your day time is other people night time. It
would annoy less some, and more others. It would also
slow down the server of other people day time. Please,
don't forget this. Thanks.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
Hello Tomasz,

Could you please provide a hint why parsing formulas failed? The message

	"Failed to parse: 3 H_2O + 2Fe{} \rarrow Fe_2O_3 + 3 H_2"

isn't very helpful. Better might be:

	"Failed to parse: 3 H_2O + 2Fe{} \rarrow Fe_2O_3 + 3 H_2"
                                         ^^^^^^^ unknown object

Or perhaps highlight the failed token in red.

   Best regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Jonathan Walther

body:
On Sun, Dec 15, 2002 at 11:18:12PM +0100, Giskart wrote:
>Yes, and in the good old days when we where using the modwiki's there
>where never server problems.
>
>Is it really so a good idea to put all wikipedias on the same server?

That's a good point.  Maybe we could have one database, many servers?
Postgres transactions impose no overhead in terms of cpu cycles, yet
they guarantee atomic transactions; just what we need for such a
distributed beastie.

There is also code for database replication; maybe subsidiary wikis
could do their "reads" from local copies of the database, and their
writes would go to the central database?  I need to look into the
replication code a bit more to see what is practical.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20021215/d6d78983/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Log page code consolidated

body:
On Sun, 2002-12-15 at 15:13, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Sunday 15 December 2002 12:00 pm, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > But before doing that; would it be more worthwhile to use some kind of
> > event log table instead, from which the logs could be extracted through
> > simple filtering? Or is using wiki pages which sysops can correct,
> > rotate, and backup through the regular editing tools better?
>
> Well it has been nice to be able to edit the logs. Both you and I have made
> the logs more useful by adding header information, timestamps and links. I've
> also been doing monthly archives of the deletion log and have been tracking
> the the number of monthly edits (we are in a downward trend). So I favor the
> current way of doing things.

Header text of logs, like the Recentchanges header text, could be
editable separately.

Monthly archives are useful because the page gets too long to load
comfortably; an event log table could be displayed in chunks of
arbitrary size, and one could jump back to arbitrary time periods,
obviating the need for manual cut-n-paste.

A table would also make it very easy to generate statistics.

And, the logs could be somewhat language independent; if we recombine
the image upload space for instance, the upload log should have to show
all files for all languages. Local date/time format and "uploaded"/
"deleted"/"banned"/"restored"/etc would be nice.

> BTW, would it be possible to make logs only appear once in Recent Changes
> instead of appearing each and every time a file is uploaded or pages are
> deleted? Many sysops often delete pages in chunks and many users upload files
> in batches. This leads to the creation of a lot of noise in Recent Changes
> (esp. for uploads since each upload generates two entries in RC). No biggie,
> but if it can be done easily it would be nice.

I'd say the same of pages in general -- I don't want to see half my RC
taken up by [[Richard Wagner]]. ;)  But at the same time I want the
information accessable... since the page history doesn't behave quite
the same on log pages as on regular pages (many automatic additions show
up in one 'revision'), the only way to tell whether one or a hundred
pages have been deleted would be to load the (too long for modem user)
log file and check the times of the previous entries.

Erik's dynamic unfolding suggestion would be helpful here. (I've enabled
the dynamic threading on my Kuro5hin account, and it's *wonderful*. If
we can do something like that cleanly for recentchanges, that'd be
awesome.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Clutch wrote in part:

>There can be no "scientific" concensus on an issue that is not
>scientifically testable (falsifiable).  Please read Karl Poppers works.

There is, of course, no scientific consensus
that Popper knew what he was talking about.
^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Scheduled downtime tonight/this morning at 01:00 UTC

body:
That's 5pm PST, 8pm EST, 1am GMT, 2am CET
Not long, but thought I'd give some slight warning for the
Wikipediholics among us... ;)

I'll be upgrading MySQL to support InnoDB tables which have row-level
locking which should help with the lag problem (actual conversion of the
tables will be done later, after I've double-checked it on
test.wikipedia.org).

Should only be down for a couple minutes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Scheduled downtime tonight/this morning at 01:00 UTC


body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:

>Brion Vibber wrote:

>>Before I go diving into that; what about marking _new_ pages as minor
>>edits? I know I do this sometimes when creating redirects.

>I can't imagine how a new page could be a minor edit. Any new page marked as
>minor is suspicious to me.

I agree, truly new pages are never minor.
The exception is new redirects; like Brion, I mark these minor.
But I don't mark any other new pages minor and wouldn't want to.

>Why are the lines for edits marked "N " for new, " M" for minor, but " MN"
>for minor new? "NM" would make more sense.

Alphabetical?

-- Toby


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Feature Request: Bot user accounts and/or disable 'hide
 minor edits' for non-logged-in users

body:
> On Saturday 14 December 2002 21:54, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Before I go diving into that; what about marking _new_ pages as minor
> > edits? I know I do this sometimes when creating redirects.
>
> I can't imagine how a new page could be a minor edit. Any new page marked as
> minor is suspicious to me.

I have done like Brion here: I often call a new page a minor edit if it is
a redirect. I do put "redirect" in the comments box in those cases.

Andre Engels


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>That's 5pm PST, 8pm EST, 1am GMT, 2am CET
>Not long, but thought I'd give some slight warning for the
>Wikipediholics among us... ;)
>
>I'll be upgrading MySQL to support InnoDB tables which have row-level
>locking which should help with the lag problem (actual conversion of the
>tables will be done later, after I've double-checked it on
>test.wikipedia.org).
>
>Should only be down for a couple minutes.
>
Thanks for the heads up!  It's a courtesy that is very much appreciated
by the masses.

Eclecticology


body:
On Sunday 15 December 2002 12:00 pm, wikitech-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> But before doing that; would it be more worthwhile to use some kind of
> event log table instead, from which the logs could be extracted through
> simple filtering? Or is using wiki pages which sysops can correct,
> rotate, and backup through the regular editing tools better?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Well it has been nice to be able to edit the logs. Both you and I have made
the logs more useful by adding header information, timestamps and links. I've
also been doing monthly archives of the deletion log and have been tracking
the the number of monthly edits (we are in a downward trend). So I favor the
current way of doing things.

BTW, would it be possible to make logs only appear once in Recent Changes
instead of appearing each and every time a file is uploaded or pages are
deleted? Many sysops often delete pages in chunks and many users upload files
in batches. This leads to the creation of a lot of noise in Recent Changes
(esp. for uploads since each upload generates two entries in RC). No biggie,
but if it can be done easily it would be nice.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Anthere wrote:

> Hi
>
> Except your day time is other people night time. It
> would annoy less some, and more others. It would also
> slow down the server of other people day time. Please,
> don't forget this. Thanks.

Yes, and in the good old days when we where using the modwiki's there
where never server problems.

Is it really so a good idea to put all wikipedias on the same server?

Giskart


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] AOL proxy vandal alert

body:
On 12/16/02 1:18 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I've already blocked about a dozen IPs from this person and they keep on
> comming back for more. This person makes 2 or 3 vandalism and then gets a new
> IP. I know these are AOL proxies so they will have to be unblocked soon.
>
Why bother blocking, then?


from_name: elian

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and anti-Semitism

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> elian wrote:
> > It seems to me that he really has NPOV in mind, but is too mangled in his
> > hatred against anything he considers as anti-semitic to realize how biased
> > his own writings are.
>
> I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you about RK, because I haven't
> read much of the relevant writings, but I suspect that virtually
> everyone has some "hot button" issue where NPOV writing will be
> difficult.

You will get a good impression at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AIslam_and_anti-Semitism
and its corresponding article.

After this discussion - and I thank all the people who tried - I can
understand why no one wants to get involved in these topics anymore.

> Certainly good advice.  Unfortunately, it is also true that people
> tend to know a lot about their "hot button" issues, and therefore have
> the ability to write a lot about them.

Of course, but it is all filtered knowledge, focussed on one specific
item. It is a bit like the fanatic feminist who asks in every book she is
reading: and how was this philosophers/writers/musicians attitude towards women?

> > Better be anti-Arab, it is politically a lot more opportune...
>
> Better, still, of course, is to not get involved on the level of
> advocacy at all.

Nice wish, but we _are_ already involved.

BTW: have you ever thought about how to ensure that the international
Wikipedias follow a NPOV-policy? And what the possible risks are if they
don't do?

greetings,
elian
--
where will microsoft try to drag you today?
do you really want to go there?


subject: [Wikitech-l] InnoDB tables

body:
I've switched test.wikipedia.org to use InnoDB tables (the ones with
row-level locking and transactions). This requires breaking the columns
for the search index out to a separate table, since the fulltext index
is only supported on MyISAM tables. I've set up an 'innodb' branch in
the cvs which contains these changes.

Please check it out; there are probably some cases remaining where
consistency isn't maintained.

Once that's all running smoothly, we can worry about things like
commit/rollback. (There are probably all kinds of fun race conditions in
the various updates that are made on separate tables during page
creation, edit, and renaming, which we currently have no protection
for.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 02:16, Magnus Manske wrote:
> I added a little hack to the Recent Changes page on test.wikipedia.org.
> Not the nice one we talked about, but it could be expanded to that.
> Please tell me what you think.

It's a nice start, thanks!

This makes the issue of entries for older revisions linking to the
current revision stand out more, though.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fan mail from [threeroses@adelphia.net: ]

body:
----- Forwarded message from Dana Hunley <threeroses at adelphia.net> -----

From: "Dana Hunley" <threeroses at adelphia.net>
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 21:11:34 -0500
To: <wikidown at bomis.com>
Subject:

your software sucks i get on and get kicked off everyday please fix it or i will stop refering ur site

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please test math markup support on http://test.wikipedia.org/

body:
http://test.wikipedia.org/ contains math extension to Wikipedia.
It is possible to write math markup with <math></math>
and it will be converted to nice PNG. Markup is more or less LaTeX+AMS.

Please test it.

Some error reporting has been added.

Oh, and for translators.
The following messages should be translated:
(preference page):
    "Rendering math"
    "Aways render PNG"
    "Try HTML first, fallback to PNG if too complex"
    "Leave it as TeX (for text browsers)"

What looks like:
=== Rendering math ===
(*) Aways render PNG
( ) Try HTML first, fallback to PNG if too complex
( ) Leave it as TeX (for text browsers)

(errors)
    "Failed to parse"
    "unknown error"
    "unknown function "
    "lexing error"
    "syntax error"

What looks like:
    Failed to parse (syntax error): ^_^
    Failed to parse (unknown function \elephant): \elephant^2 = \mouse


subject: [Wikitech-l] Please test math markup support on http://test.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 03:00, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Got the "toggle" thingy running with just a few lines of JavaScript.
> Please test on all browsers.

Nice!

Great on Mozilla 1.0.1 (but the + is kind of a small mouse target)

Lists are expanded by default in JavaScript-less lynx; the +s show up as
selectable, though useless, links, which is potentially distracting.

Opera 6.1/Linux doesn't seem to work... the lists are hidden, and
clicking the + signs doesn't seem to do anything. :(

> Oh, the file at test.wikipedia.org is the only copy, so maybe we should
> store that somewhere ;-)

Just to make sure it doesn't get lost, I've made and attached a diff.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
--- /home/brion/src/wiki/phpwiki/newcodebase/Skin.php	Sat Dec  7 12:31:14 2002
+++ Skin.php	Mon Dec 16 10:58:52 2002
@@ -48,7 +48,23 @@
 		$wgOut->addLink( "stylesheet", "", "{$wgStyleSheetPath}/{$ss}" );
 	}

-	function getHeadScripts() { return ""; }
+	function getHeadScripts()
+	{
+		$r = "" ;
+		$r .= "
+
+		" ;
+		return $r;
+	}

 	function getUserStyles()
 	{
@@ -1014,6 +1030,8 @@

 	function beginRecentChangesList()
 	{
+		$rccc = 0 ;
+		$this->rcc = array() ;
 		$this->lastdate = "";
 		return "";
 	}
@@ -1034,7 +1052,8 @@

 	function endRecentChangesList()
 	{
-		$s = "
\n";
+		$s = $this->recentChangesBlock() ;
+		$s .= "
\n";
 		return $s;
 	}

@@ -1100,15 +1119,51 @@
 		return $ret;
 	}

+	var $rcc ; # Recent Changes Cache for better display
+	var $rccc ; # Recent Changes Cache Counter for visibility toggle
+
+	function recentChangesBlock ()
+	{
+		$r = "" ;
+		if ( count ( $this->rcc ) == 0 ) return "" ;
+		$k = array_keys ( $this->rcc ) ;
+		foreach ( $k AS $x )
+			{
+			$a = $this->rcc[$x] ;
+			if ( count ( $a ) < 2 )
+				{
+				$y = array_shift ( $a ) ;
+				$r .= "{$y}\n" ;
+				}
+			else
+				{
+				$noc = count ( $a ) ;
+				$rci = "RCI{$this->rccc}" ;
+				$tl = "+" ;
+				$r .= "
{$tl} {$x} ({$noc} changes)
\n" ;
+				$r .= "
" ;
+				$r .= "
\n" ;
+				foreach ( $a AS $y )
+					$r .= "{$y}\n" ;
+				$r .= "

\n" ;
+				$this->rccc++ ;
+				}
+			}
+		return $r ;
+	}
+
 	function recentChangesLine( $ts, $u, $ut, $ns, $ttl, $c, $isminor, $isnew, $watched = false)
 	{
 		global $wgTitle, $wgLang, $wgUser;

 		$d = $wgLang->date( $ts, true);
 		$s = "";
+		$ret = "" ;
 		if ( $d != $this->lastdate ) {
-			if ( "" != $this->lastdate ) { $s .= "
\n"; }
-			$s .= "
{$d}
\n
";
+			$ret = $this->recentChangesBlock () ;
+			$this->rcc = array() ;
+			if ( "" != $this->lastdate ) { $ret .= "
\n"; }
+			$ret .= "
{$d}
\n
";
 			$this->lastdate = $d;
 		}
 		$h = $wgLang->time( $ts, true );
@@ -1151,7 +1206,11 @@
 		}
 		$s .= "
\n";

-		return $s;
+		$xt = $clink ;
+		if ( !isset ( $this->rcc[$xt] ) ) $this->rcc[$xt] = array() ;
+		array_push ( $this->rcc[$xt] , $s ) ;
+
+		return $ret;
 	}

 	function imageHistoryLine( $iscur, $ts, $img, $u, $ut, $size, $c )