subject: [Wikitech-l] Error message

body:
Suggestion:
* PHP queries the database
* PHP gets an error because of max_connections
* PHP waits a random number of milliseconds, tries again
* If there's no connection after 5 (?) tries, *then* the error can show
That should reduce the occurrences of the error to a minimum.

Magnus

Constans, Camille (C.C.) wrote:

>
>
>
>>I keep getting
>>
>>   Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and
>>cannot contact the database server.
>>
>>intermixed with normal function. Maybe one of the apaches
>>really doesn't
>>find the database?
>>
>>
>
>They find the database, but the max_connections on mysql is hit (300 actually). If we increase this number, the requests could become very very slow.
>
>Shaihulud
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Carl-Johan Rosén

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hourly XML-dump of recently changed articles

body:
Hi,

Is it possible and/or of interest to release some kind of hourly XML-dump of
the last changed pages in Wikipedia? I'm running a copy of the Wikipedia and are
trying to keep up with the changes. I believe a XML-dump could ease the load
on the server a little.

For my needs the XML-document must contain at least:
    cur title
    cur text (in Wiki-format, including URLs to pictures)
    last change
    Only three of the namespaces (from what i understand): NS_MAIN, NS_IMAGE
and NS_CATEGORY.
    cur is redirect
I heard there are more people than me interested in this (Yahoo ...), what
do they want?

I've spoken to Erik M?ller on the WOS in Berlin about this and he direkted
me to this list.

/cj

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Looking up IP addresses of logged in users

body:
Summary: It's no longer practical for developers to look up the IP
addresses of logged in users, so I want to implement a method which will
make it much easier. Comments?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Developers used to be able to look up the IP addresses of logged in
users, by searching the apache logs. However over the past year, due to
the increased complexity of our cluster setup and the increased traffic,
this has been getting more and more difficult. For example, it took me 3
or 4 hours to determine the identities of several sock puppets when
asked to do so by the arbitration committee in relation to the Wik case.
The basic difficulties are:

1. Clock lag. The time in the squid logs is not necessarily the same as
the time in the database. Under heavy load, the difference can change
from edit to edit by 30s or so.
2. Edit conflicts and previews are indistinguishable from saves
3. Large amount of data makes searching slow
4. Recent edits, less than 1-1.5 days old, have logs spread across 3
squid servers

The first two items combine to make it difficult to assign IP addresses
to users, if the users are involved in a rapid edit war.

We had some difficulty recently merging and splitting the squid logs. A
large amount of recent log data was lost, when they almost filled up the
disk on zwinger. With this and the points listed above, I'm inclined to
declare the task of determining the IP address of a logged in user
impractical. It could potentially take hours to check if a given user is
a sock puppet, and even if I spent hours, I couldn't guarantee that I
could give any useful information even if they were using the same IP
address.

The reason we don't log IP addresses in a readable format is for
privacy. The idea is to discourage "casual snooping" by developers.
Perhaps this was appropriate 6 months ago, but the current setup makes
any kind of IP lookup impractical.

I'm of the opinion that checking the identity of sock puppets or trolls
is important for preserving the mental health of our regular
contributors. Hence I am proposing to store IP addresses of logged-in
users in the recentchanges table. This table has one entry per edit, and
older entries are automatically deleted. It is not available for public
download. This will make it easy for developers to match a username to
an IP address, for anyone who has edited the wiki recently.

Since this constitutes a weakening of the effective level of privacy for
contributors, it may be that some people will be opposed to this
feature. That's why I'm writing this post -- to find out what everyone
thinks of this. Is determining the identity of trolls important? Or
would you prefer to have IP addresses unlogged? Please speak up.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: irc: #mediawiki split

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Last week xirzon proposed to separate the chat traffic for the mediawiki
> software and the one for wikipedia servers. The idea was :
>
>  #mediawiki : mediawiki software development and support
>  #wikitech  : wikipedia specific issues and servers support
>
> I personally find its a good idea. Users asking for support in
> #mediawiki often found their question flooded by wikipedia's servers
> administrators :o)
>
> We could also get a bot that post cvs commit to #mediawiki since the
> traffic will be lowered (or maybe #mediawiki-cvs could feat this better).
>

I may have been tired, irritable and stressed at the time, but I seem to
remember voting with my feet on this proposal. MediaWiki developers
should be interested in Wikipedia server administration and similarly
it's hard to talk about Wikipedia server administration without getting
onto the subject of the only significant thing those servers do. People
asking for support regarding MediaWiki issues may at least know why they
are being ignored, if they see a room full of frantic discussion about a
server crash rather than simply a lack of response.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

from_name: jheiskan at welho.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request that 'libertarian' be banned

body:
Lainaus Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>:

> --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > To whom it may concern,
> >
> > I would like to request that 'libertarian' be banned from this mailing
> > list, as he is incapable of engaging in civilized discussion.
> >
> > Certainly disagreements are acceptable, but repeatedly referring to
> > other users as "morons" and declaring that one is superior to all other
> > participants in the discussion is unacceptable.
>
> I agree with this 100%.
>
> --mav
>

Dittoe. I'd already decided with going with the delete button, but I don't see
any reason anybody at all should have to suffer even going through the motions
with this guy.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: br.wikipedia.org broken (database not backed up)

body:
Pablo Saratxaga wrote:

> So, there actually was a breton wikipedia started?

Yes. I'm pretty sure it was announced on the French list, at least I
have vague memories of it.

> [[Wikipedia in other languages#Azeri .28az.29 .28http:.2F.2Faz.wikipedia.org.2F.29]]
> can we seriously expect people to type *that*?

Well, it is certainly possible to just copy & paste it. :-p

But I see your point.


from_name: Tony

body:
Tim wrote:

I think there are three possible circumstances to consider here.

1: The "pure" anonymous wiki. The current arrangement works just fine.
2: The big wiki (i.e., Wikipedia). Practicality demands a change much as you suggest. More to the point, this is in fact a *non* change: it simply
preserves the status quo - developers can examine IP addresses if need be - despite the changes brought by higher traffic and hardware additions.
3: Special-purpose wikis. May well be better served by a more permanent IP logging system.

>I'm of the opinion that checking the identity of sock puppets or trolls is important for preserving the mental health of our regular contributors.

Absolutely. Full support on this.


from_name: Stormie

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proof of Mark Richards' ignorance

body:
libertarian wrote:
> You still haven't answered my question: Is VR Krishna Iyer a
> Communist or not? Here is the part from my mail you conveniently
> snipped out.

Given that there doesn't even seem to be an article on VR Krishna Iyer
in the Wikipedia, why the hell are we arguing about whether he's a
communist or not?

Libertarian, if you wish to take this beyond whatever talk pages you and
  Mark have been arguing on previously, please give us some context. Or,
preferably, don't - stick to the normal Wikipedia dispute resolution
process.

Cheers!
David...


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: ruimu uestc

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>

> The block seems to have been confirmed, but I'm still not convinced that
it was
> entirely intentional. They could have blocked an entire IP range of
spammers or
> porn sites and we could have been caught in the cross fire. If that is the
case
> then this should be as simple as Jimbo writing the right person in the PRC
to
> explain the situation.

Finding the "right person" to write to is probably not so easy, and a direct
letter could be lost in administration daedalus. I guess Chinese admins
living in Beijing may have more chance to find an open ear in their
relationship that could reconsider the ban or at least explain what happend,
especially in university context. Mountain (juanml) said they tried to
contact people and I'm sure they are doing all what can be done, because
Chinese Wikipedia is their "baby", in a way. I'm not Chinese, just living in
China, but my little experience of this country tells me that we should
leave them manage the problem instead of jumping now on our horses.

My hypothesis about the reason why they probably banned Wikipedia is a fear
of this commemoration that recently took place in HK. So maybe all
"community" web-site where some words appeared may have been banned in a
bunch (it would be interesting to know if other web-sites have been banned
and which). One argument for wikipedia could be that it is all but a place
where friends discuss about current politics or recent history, even if some
articles deal with this topics. It is not a chat room, not a blog, not a
nest of political pamphlets, not even a community of interest editable
web-page, it's simply an open-content encyclopedia, and that's all.

(gbog)


from_name: Andreas Kasenides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Translating month names

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Andreas Kasenides wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>> I have been helping for a while to translate the interface of the Greek
>> wikipedia with much success due to the namespace feuture of the wiki
>> software.
>> There are though some things that cannot be translated via this
>> interface
>> (or so I believe) like month names?
>> Can somebody point me to the correct procedures for changing such items
>> that are not included in the namespace?
>> Thanx
>
>
> Hello,
>
> As far as I know, they are hard set in the LanguageXX.php, the El one
> is actually empty and default to the Utf8 one or maybe english.
>
> Can you provide us a list of weekdays name (sunday, monday ..), months
> names (january, february ...) and month abbreviations (jan, feb ...)
> in your language ?
>
> A dev (me for example) can then puts that in the LanguageEl.php, tests
> it and adds it to the mediawiki software. Then the wikipedia server
> operators will be able to enable it on the Greek wikipedia.
>

Then here it goes:

Weekdays starting with Sunday:
???????
???????
?????
???????
??????
?????????
???????

Months starting with January and abbreviations after the comma!
??????????,  ???.
???????????, ????.
???????, ????.
????????, ???.
?????, ?????
???????, ????.
???????, ????.
?????????, ???.
???????????, ????.
?????????, ?????.
?????????, ?????.
??????????, ?????.

Thanks a lot. I am sure it all looks Greek to you (which it is).
--

Andreas Kasenides
e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy
<mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy>
(replace the _at_ above with @)

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from_name: VV

subject: [WikiEN-l] libertarian

body:
 --- On Sat 06/12, libertarian < libertarian at myway.com > wrote:
From: libertarian [mailto: libertarian at myway.com]
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 14:55:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Ed Poor's abuse of admin powers

> Your frustration is understandable. I myself have faced this sort of
> hounding from the gang of BCorr, Ed Poor, Angela, VV and others. They
> form a closed knit group and inadverently indulge in propaganda.

For those curious what this is all about, and how I got lumped in
(flatteringly) with this set of contributors, it is a bit of a story.
Start with the page history for [[2002 Gujurat violence]].  This user
has posted as LibertarianAnarchist (LA), Democrate2003, and Conradx,
and I suspect most recently as Romanwarrior, Fatalvenom, and maybe one
other (I forget).  Of course, he vociferously denies using this army of
sockpuppets.  His main goal appears to be to push a Hindu nationalist
POV.  He has gone after many other pages, but this is the one where he
was most active.  ([[Babri Mosque]] is another.)

On Talk pages, he called everyone who disagreed with him either a
communist or (later) a racist.  His rhetoric on [[Mount Everest]] was
particularly wild, and some was repeated on the mailing list, as is now
happening again.  He also throws in vicious anti-Americanism from time
to time, as all have seen.  These accusations are utterly irrational
and completely unconnected to what anyone ever said.

A consensus to ban him was forming before he suddenly disappeared,
temporarily it would seem.

As for the "Indian kid", I assume that is a reference to User:Arvindn,
an excellent contributor who used his knowledge of India to try to find
balance on disputed articles.  Indeed, I asked for Arvindn's help a few
weeks ago when a spree of India articles suffered LA-style edits.  Or,
it may be a reference to User:KRS, also a good contributor.

In the midst of the Gujarat edit war, Angela stepped in to ask for a
resolution, eventually leaving it to Bcorr to mediate, which he did by
building a new article from the ground up.  Since it was a
straightforward matter of LA forcing a POV, the newly created article
looked much like the NPOV one.  Apparently LA now believes we must all
have been in it together.

The spat over Iyer is because he has ties to communist groups but
denies being a communist.  Nevertheless, LA wants to flatly state he is
a communist at every mention, in violation of NPOV policy.

As for Angela and me, I've had only a minor interactions with her (on
VfD, mostly).  Really, There Is No Cabal.

It might be considered that he *has* made helpful edits to
non-controversial India articles, though not many.

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


from_name: Mark Richards

subject:
Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence presented. Re: [WikiEN-l] Yes,
	A Reincarnation

body:
Erm, no, this would be like imprisoning black people
because you think they are more likely to commit
crimes anyway.
BTW, does anyone want to have a crack at why Leo
Trollstoy was blocked?
Mark

--- Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> On Sunday 13 June 2004 21:19, Mark Richards wrote:
> > Well, assuming you have access to more information
> > than I do, because what has been published is
> precious
> > flimsy, I'm prepared to take your word for it on
> JRRT,
> > but what about LT? I see no connection in edits.
>
> In this and future cases, would this formula be
> acceptable as an evidence?
>
> Wikipedia has n users which have "Troll" in their
> username, and exists for
> time t.
>
> Therefore, on average, user with "Troll" in its
> username is created every t/n.
>
> If an user with "Troll" in it username is created
> let the T be the time
> between its creation and banning of the last user
> with "Troll" in its
> username.
>
> Then, p=((t/n)/2)/T represents probability that the
> user is previous user.
>
> If the probability is higher then some value (say
> 10), ban the user. There's
> only 10/p chance that you are wrong.
>
> (I am not a statistician but surely someone can
> check and improve this.)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proof of my ignorance

body:
Erm, while I'm the first to admit my ignorance on many
matters, can someone fill me in on the purpose of this
thread? I don't believe I have ever come across this
user.
I have to say I assumed it was a comment on my
opinions on bans and blocks!
Mark

--- libertarian <libertarian at myway.com> wrote:
>
> For the ignorant Americans: Even though I'm
> indulging in an
> exercise as silly as "proving" that John F Kennedy
> belonged to
> the Democratic Party, I'm placing evidence on this
> list since
> most Americans are ignorant people brainwashed by
> Fox TV and
> go by stereotypes and get easily exploited as it has
> happened in
> this case.
>
> The question is whether VR Krishna Iyer is a Marxist
> or not.
> Of course he was a Minister in a Communist
> Government and he was the PResidential candidate of
> the Communist Party, but here is more stuff.
>
> Maharshi means "great sage."
>
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/br/2001/11/27/stories/2001112700100400.htm
> It is thus clear to those who take a serious view of
> the values of human existence, not a flippant abuse
> of religion or bigoted allergy to Marx, that
> Maharshi Marx (a profound expression used by Swami
> Ranganathananda) and the divinity of finer theology
> have no hostility, both being bed-rocked in humanity
> in the highest dimension.
>
>
http://www.hindu.com/2004/05/17/stories/2004051709801200.htm
> The current situation involves providing a new
> direction to economic development and dismantling
> the ideological structure created by communalism and
> ``the Left can undertake the task only as a part of
> the government and not by supporting it from outside
> ,'' said the `appeal' addressed to the Communist
> Party of India (Marxist) general secretary,
> Harkishan Singh Surjeet, and his Communist Party of
> India (CPI) counterpart, A.B. Bardhan, as well as to
> the policy making bodies of the two parties that are
> currently in session to decide on the nature of
> support to the Government.
>
> Among the signatories were K. N. Panikkar, Namwar
> Singh, U.R. Ananthamurthy, V.K. Krishna Iyer, A. K.
> Hangal, Asghar Ali Engineer, Praful Bidwai, Baba
> Azmi, Nandita Das, Govind Nihalani, Prof. Yashpal,
> Anand Patwardhan, Habib Tanveer, Saeed Mirza and
> Shabana Azmi.
>
> -libertarian
>
> _______________________________________________
> No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
> Make My Way your home on the Web -
> http://www.myway.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
--- Imran Ghory <imran at bits.bris.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere  269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela  345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

But I do see that Erik and Florence were nearly in a dead heat when voting
stopped. Might I suggest to the elected trustees that they consider changing
the draft bylaws to allow for one more trustee and for Erik to fill that
position? I think this is important due to the fact that two of the current
trustees don't seem to be active Wikimedians (Tim Shell was at one time,
however). Although I do note that that is not a requirement for life,
sustaining, or corporate members. I'm just concerned about the level of
activity we can except from Tim Shell and Michael Davis and that most of the
trustee work will go to just three people.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid logfile rotation

body:
On Mon, 2004-06-14 at 15:11 +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> Hi,
>
> since the access.log of maurus hit 2^32-1 bytes, squid died. Apparently
> access.log was not rotated. The cron jobs are there, but the logrotate
> settings where default ones. I changed them to the values browne is
> using:

Thanks Jens,

must've made a mistake when i scp'd the /etc/logrotate/squid file over
from coronelli.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
I hope there will be some special page to list all created/edited
articles since a certain date, as pure text or XML. That would be very
handy for my (emerging;-) wikipedia offline reader, as I could then
update a hard disk sqlite database via Special:Export XML.

That would also solve the original "hourly dump" question.

If noone else feels the need to do it, I'll implement it myself soon.

Magnus

Carl-Johan Ros?n wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Is it possible and/or of interest to release some kind of hourly
> XML-dump of
> the last changed pages in Wikipedia? I'm running a copy of the
> Wikipedia and are
> trying to keep up with the changes. I believe a XML-dump could ease
> the load
> on the server a little.
>
> For my needs the XML-document must contain at least:
>     cur title
>     cur text (in Wiki-format, including URLs to pictures)
>     last change
>     Only three of the namespaces (from what i understand): NS_MAIN,
> NS_IMAGE
> and NS_CATEGORY.
>     cur is redirect
> I heard there are more people than me interested in this (Yahoo ...), what
> do they want?
>
> I've spoken to Erik M?ller on the WOS in Berlin about this and he direkted
> me to this list.
>
> /cj
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML tags: is there any reason NOT to allow <span>?

body:
Tony wrote:

>Subject says it all.
>
>Currently (MediaWiki 1.3 beta 3) DIV is an allowed HTML tag, but SPAN is not allowed.
>
>
I don't like either SPAN or DIV myself.  It makes editing Wikipedia
articles look too much like editing HTML.  I'm more HTML-literate than a
lot of Wikipedia editors, and I usually read anything with a div in it
as "blah blah formatting crap" and skip past it.  Granted, some of the
same holds true for tables, even in wiki-syntax, but that's probably
unavoidable without an wysiwyg table editor.  But I think we could at
least limit the non-humanly-transparent stuff in the source; the move
from divs for floating images to using the extended image syntax is a
huge step in the right direction.

I think there could be a use for semantic classes that are easily
readable--along the lines of <math> we could have <anythingelse>, but I
think the syntax for that has already been proposed and discussed at
length (anyone have a pointer to that discussion?).  I suppose span
could do that as well if kept to a simple class-based usage like the
<span class=reptile> you proposed, but the word "span" isn't really
intuitive to anyone who doesn't know HTML, and I don't see why that
would be preferable to <reptile>blah</reptile>, which is readable by
just about everyone (if indeed "reptile" were a sematic markup tag we
thought useful).

-Mark


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Site broken due to unstable code in HEAD

body:
Hi,

currently the site is updated from cvs HEAD, not from a branch
of it. Despite this, new features are still going into HEAD, too.
Today, the rc_ip changes Tim announced to the ML went live. The
database did not contain a rc_ip column, though. This broke
saving articles for about 15 minutes.

Can we please use another branch for the main site than HEAD?
Else this will happen again. We need different branches for
production and development. It was OK to have only one branch
for the first week or two that 1.3 was running in production.
It's time to switch.

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Given all the comments, I have emailed the results to all of the candidates
first. I want them to know their standing before (and if) the results are made
public. That is only fair.

I want to add that all of the candidates were excellent. I hope that they
continue to share their ideas and advocate for them. I am confident that our two
representatives will take particular notice of what they have to say.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Given all the comments, I have emailed the results to all of the candidates
first. I want them to know their standing before (and if) the results are made
public. That is only fair.

I want to add that all of the candidates were excellent. I hope that they
continue to share their ideas and advocate for them. I am confident that our two
representatives will take particular notice of what they have to say.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Given all the comments, I have emailed the results to all of the candidates
first. I want them to know their standing before (and if) the results are made
public. That is only fair.

I want to add that all of the candidates were excellent. I hope that they
continue to share their ideas and advocate for them. I am confident that our two
representatives will take particular notice of what they have to say.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Given all the comments, I have emailed the results to all of the candidates
first. I want them to know their standing before (and if) the results are made
public. That is only fair.

I want to add that all of the candidates were excellent. I hope that they
continue to share their ideas and advocate for them. I am confident that our two
representatives will take particular notice of what they have to say.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
I wrote:
> But I do see that Erik and Florence were nearly in a dead heat when voting
> stopped. Might I suggest to the elected trustees that they consider changing
> the draft bylaws to allow for one more trustee and for Erik to fill that
> position? I think this is important due to the fact that two of the current
> trustees don't seem to be active Wikimedians (Tim Shell was at one time,
> however). Although I do note that that is not a requirement for life,
> sustaining, or corporate members. I'm just concerned about the level of
> activity we can except from Tim Shell and Michael Davis and that most of the
> trustee work will go to just three people.

I stand corrected on Tim. He has made almost 100 edits so far this year. I
still think that Erik should become the sixth trustee though.

--mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pants on Fire!

body:
On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 02:36:49 -0400 (EDT), libertarian <libertarian at myway.com> wrote:
>
>Reply to Fred Bauder's mail:0
>
>Fred neither knows history nor understands academic
>rigor. If he used his brains, he would have asked himself how
>Jews and Parsis live peacefully in India while Muslims do
>not. He doesn't understand that Muslims have special rights
>in India and have ethnically cleansed Kashmir of Hindus,
>do you?
>
>He comes across as an ignorant person by insisting that a person
>who served as a Minister in a Communist Government, was the
>Presidential candidate of the Communist Party and spews Marxist
>rhetoric is not a Communist! You guys are truly ignorant.

Then why don't you leave us ignorant guys alone and play somewhere
else other than Wikipedia?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] UTF-8 on English Wikipedia?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Nathan Hamblen wrote:
>
>> Will the English Wikipedia be moving to UTF-8? I think it's
>> appropriate, seeing how often non-Western European characters need to
>> be represented in it.
>
>
> We'd love to, but we need to either a) take it offline for a few days or
> b) invent a way to convert the database without data loss or damage
> while keeping it online.
>
> -- brion vibber (brino @ pobox.com)
>

I suppose most of the time will be taken to convert old.
Shouldn't be possible to convert only cur while either leave old unconvert
or mark each entrey in old as unconverted/still in iso-8859-1 and convert
these entries when they are needed or by a very low priority job?
(of course the soft will need to handle the conversion flag when viewing on old version
of an article, doing a diff, ...)

Is this doable or still too complex?

-- Looxix


from_name: Philip Newton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Server down message

body:
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 19:38:44 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Having [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]]
> displayed at the top of all watchlists and maybe at the top of all related
> changes pages would help matters.

That would indeed be useful.

Cheers,
Philip


from_name: Denni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re:Libertarian

body:
libertarian @ myway.com. 'Bout says it all. My way or no way. My way or
I'll cry. I'm quite surprised at how similar the bombast and rhetoric
from libertarian is to that I (unfortunately) encountered on an
anti-Palestinian/pro-Zionist website. Any hint of disagreement with any
portion of their argument, right down to prepositions and pronouns,
means you are worthless and should be squashed between the thumb and the
forefinger like the worthless bug you are. And scornful? Oh mymymy!!

Denni

--
?"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not
to be sneezed at." --George Will, on hyphen use
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: UTF-8 on English Wikipedia?

body:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 17:38:06 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
wrote:

> Nathan Hamblen wrote:
> > Will the English Wikipedia be moving to UTF-8? I think it's appropriate,
> > seeing how often non-Western European characters need to be represented
> > in it.
>
> We'd love to, but we need to either a) take it offline for a few days or
> b) invent a way to convert the database without data loss or damage
> while keeping it online.

I wouldn't mind having en: down for a couple of days if it comes back up
with UTF-8. Though I'm certainly not representative.

Cheers,
Philip


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Site broken due to unstable code in HEAD

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> Hi,
>
> currently the site is updated from cvs HEAD, not from a branch
> of it. Despite this, new features are still going into HEAD, too.
> Today, the rc_ip changes Tim announced to the ML went live. The
> database did not contain a rc_ip column, though. This broke
> saving articles for about 15 minutes.
>
> Can we please use another branch for the main site than HEAD?
> Else this will happen again. We need different branches for
> production and development. It was OK to have only one branch
> for the first week or two that 1.3 was running in production.
> It's time to switch.
>
> Regards,
>
> 	JeLuF

Maybe wikipedia should use the already existent 1.3 branch (aka beta
1.3.#) while devs and test.wikipedia.org stay on HEAD ?

--
Ashar Voultoiz
s/"/'/


body:
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
> Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
<snip>
>> A dev (me for example) can then puts that in the LanguageEl.php, tests
>> it and adds it to the mediawiki software. Then the wikipedia server
>> operators will be able to enable it on the Greek wikipedia.
>>
>
> Then here it goes:
>
> Weekdays starting with Sunday:
> ???????
> ???????
> ?????
<snip>

I commited a patch into cvs.

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia board of trustees / La fondation Wikimédia

body:
Congratulations to Florence and Angela for being elected to the board. I
am sure they will both do their best to represent the interests of the
community. Thanks to everyone who voted for me, many of them in spite of
differences that we may have had in the past.

The full election results absolutely should be published. Everything else
would be a travesty.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re. mav's China statement (Denni)

body:
I think mav's approach to the Chinese blockage is excellent, and well
thought out.

Denni

--
?"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not
to be sneezed at." --George Will, on hyphen use
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Visit my Wikipedia user page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3ADwindrim
Do you ICQ? I do - 276534369 Magpie


from_name: libertarian

body:
> Libertarian, if you wish to take this beyond whatever talk pages
> you and Mark have been arguing on previously, please give us some
> context. Or, preferably, don't - stick to the normal Wikipedia
> dispute resolution
> process.

Fair enough, I'll give you the context. But before that, I want you
to know that I went through the normal dispute resolution process
and submitted a list of factual errors in the existing documents
and corrections along with detailed documentation.

The counter-party did not even bother to make such a submission and
this was then buried without any resolution. I want to know why
India and Hindus should be judged by radical Communists who indulge
in propaganda and why such propaganda should be presented as FACT,
while Christian nations are judged by people who owe allegience to
Christianity and are usually from the mainstream White society.

The whole issue was about a firebombing of a train by Muslims (doing their regular religious duty) which sparked riots in India leaving hundreds of people dead (Hindus as well as Muslims, but naturally, the number of Muslims who were killed was more. This is due to the fact that Hindus outnumber Muslims.)
Like any other Hindu-Muslim riot, the Muslims start it and the number of dead Muslims outnumber the number of dead Hindus.

The firebombing was twisted by Communists (both in India as well as by
those posting on Wikipedia) as a sudden fight which erupted because the Hindu passengers (it turned out that many of them were women and babies) had provoked the Muslims.

Now, anyone with even a little analytical ability will realize that 2000 strong mob doesn't collect because two people squabbled over the price of tea.
Secondly, how did they get cans of petrol and diesel which was enough to burn down a train? All of this happened within 3 minutes for which the train stopped at the station.

Coming to Wikipedia, the claim about some passenger squabbling over the price of tea and then dragging a Muslim girl (unidentified of course) into the train was circulated on the internet and that chain mail gave the name of a journalist as the eyewitness who saw the incident. It also had his phone number.

Some journalists who were superior phoned up the 'eyewitness' for confirmation and were taken aback when the 'eyewitness' said that some enemy of his had sent out that mail and he felt harassed by all the calls and that he had actually reported the opposite!
I posted the articles which appeared in mainstream media pointing this out.
Yet, the mediators after offering to mediate and making me go through due diligence collecting evidence and carefully documenting them, chose to pretend that I did not exist. Perhaps they were lazy. Perhaps their ignorance was being exploited.

The second point was a report by a self-appointed "Human Rights" group which was a Communist organization. The key person was a person named VR Krishna Iyer, who was a Communist and IS a Communist. I was hounded out of Wikipedia for saying this. The 'expert' from India was a college kid who knew nothing about Indian politics and was spewing Communist rhetoric.
That chap was bewildered when I pointed out that VR Krishna Iyer was a Communist and the whole report was a string of allegations against unnamed people using usual Communist rhetoric. He needed to do a Google search to see if it was true. This is amazing because VRKI being a Communist is similar to Bill Clinton being a Democrat. There is no dispute here. Any Indian with half-baked knowledge will laugh at you if you try to dispute this claim.

All my points were obfuscated with the word alleged. Take my advice, if you are going to say that Bill Clinton is an alleged Democrat, it is Wikipedia's reputation which will suffer. All Communist propaganda has been presented as fact.

If VRKI's judgement of India is gospel, so too should be his judgement of USA. I think it is fair. Why should you be judged by a different yardstick? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

I hope you know what Mumbai Resistance is about. It is a violent Communist organization which had its meeting in Mumbai while the World Social Forum meet was going on.
Check out http://www.mumbairesistance.org/

That site also has a message from VR Krishna Iyer where he extends his support for this violent organization.
http://www.mumbairesistance.org/Messages/justice%20vrkrishna.htm

Again, I went through the regular mediation process. I was the one who trusted the mediators. I was the one who took the trouble of explaining the situation. I was the one who documented my claims. I would prefer that this be sorted out in the open with trustworthy people, not people like Angela or Brian Corr who played a game of deception.

Again, I am willing to agree to the Communists' views of India as the one which should be put out on Wikipedia provided you agree to have their views of "imperialist" USA as mainstream views. We'll use "facts" about USA from the same crowd which wrote up that report. Fair enough?

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] libertarian

body:
> This user has posted as LibertarianAnarchist (LA), Democrate2003,
> and Conradx, and I suspect most recently as Romanwarrior,
> Fatalvenom, and maybe one other (I forget).

This is a disgusting lie from you. I've used just one id or occassionally, none when I forget to log in.
Facts are on my side. I don't play dirty unlike you. If you have evidence of me posting with many ids, please present it here.

> Of course, he vociferously denies using this army of
> sockpuppets.

Your crude allegation above is the same manner in which you analyze your "facts."

> His main goal appears to be to push a Hindu nationalist
> POV. He has gone after many other pages, but this is the one where
> he was most active. ([[Babri Mosque]] is another.)

You are the one pushing the White Supremacist POV. I am neither religious nor a nationalist. I have stated facts in an academic manner. You googled your way through and displayed your ignorance. A bunch of ignoramuses writing an encyclopedia is bound to end up with rubbish.

According to you, I made up the claim about VR Krishna Iyer being a Communist. Now that I have posted proof about his message to the organization called Mumbai Resistance (I bet youare so ignorant that you have never heard of it), it proves that I am right and you are ignorant.

> On Talk pages, he called everyone who disagreed with him either a
> communist or (later) a racist.

You were the one who started throwing labels. Even in this mail, you try labelling me a "Hindu Nationalist." Why do you complain when I call you the equivalent of that term? At least I give facts while you learn from my posts.

> His rhetoric on [[Mount Everest]] was particularly wild, and some
> was repeated on the mailing list, as is now happening again.

Your statement is idiotic. I was the one to point out that the first person to figure out that the peak was the highest was a brilliant mathematician named Radhnath Sikdar.

You and other ignorant fools first refused that this was true, but when you Googled, you found that I was right (because my knowledge base is vastly superior to yours). Then you moved it down so that it isn't visible. You did this because you couldn't tolerate the fact that someone who is not a White can achieve something.

At that time, we had an exchange where you accepted that you would publicly agree that you were a fool if Radhanath Sikdar had indeed done what I claimed. According to you, Everest "discovered" the peak and made the calculations all by himself.

Even now you seem to be in a state of denial. What a loser.

> He also throws in vicious anti-Americanism from time
> to time, as all have seen. These accusations are utterly irrational
> and completely unconnected to what anyone ever said.

Vicious hatred of Indians and Hindus is acceptable? e.g: throwing the label "Hindu nationalist" when you cannot counter using facts.

> A consensus to ban him was forming before he suddenly disappeared,
> temporarily it would seem.

You are lying. Angela and BCorr contacted me asking me to desist from posting while they mediated. Out of respect for their request, I stopped posting.

> As for the "Indian kid", I assume that is a reference to
> User:Arvindn, an excellent contributor who used his knowledge of
> India to try to find balance on disputed articles.

Either VRKI is a Communist or not a Communist. Striking a balance on this is foolish. Which is what you did. It shows your idiocy. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you dispute it, use my post on VR Krishna Iyer's message of support to Mumbai Resistance.

> In the midst of the Gujarat edit war, Angela stepped in to ask for a
> resolution, eventually leaving it to Bcorr to mediate, which he did
> by building a new article from the ground up.

He didn't mediate. He agreed to go through point by point and discuss it out, but disappeared.

> Since it was a straightforward matter of LA forcing a POV, the
> newly created article looked much like the NPOV one. Apparently LA
> now believes we must all have been in it together.

It looks like something put together by ignoramuses. You are doing a sisservice to Wikipedia by posting Communist propaganda.

You have already lost it. My evidence this time cannot be disputed even by ignorant Americans clueless about VR Krishna Iyer. His message to a violent organization is proof enough.

> The spat over Iyer is because he has ties to communist groups

but you are ignorant. This is a FACT. He was a Minister in a communist Government, after he was appointed a judge he had to keep away from Communist organizations as the law in India prohibits judges from having affiliation to political organizations and after he retired, he was the Presidential candidate of the Communist Party.

Most recently, he sent a message of support to Mumbai Resistance, an organization about which you learnt from me.

Again, if he is not a Communist, why not use his statements about USA as a fact? You are afraid that you will be exposed, aren't you? Don't worry, I shall edit a few articles using VRKI's statements as authoritative.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Error message

body:
On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 04:10:37PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Suggestion:
> * PHP queries the database
> * PHP gets an error because of max_connections
> * PHP waits a random number of milliseconds, tries again
> * If there's no connection after 5 (?) tries, *then* the error can show
> That should reduce the occurrences of the error to a minimum.
>

Other proposal: Reduce number of apache processes to match number of
max_connections. Kernel would queue the requests to the apaches until
one is available.

JeLuF


from_name: Jim Higson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: experimental whysiwyg/syntax highlightededitor	for wikimedia

body:
On Monday 14 June 2004 16:28, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> I'd like to point out this page for those interested in WYSIWYG:
>
>     http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor

An interesting article, thanks.

> There are WYSIWYG HTML editors built into the two main browsers, which
> have been used successfully for a few CMS servers. This is probably a
> more fruitful path to follow than developing a custom Java applet.

I think I'm going to have to try it and see how far I get. Personally I don't
like the idea of relying on the user having one of the two main browsers (is
that MSIE and moz?).

The javax.swing.text RTE classes pretty much have a stylised editor built in,
and can be used without too much fuss to edit HTML, wiki, and whatever
formats we want to use it for. This way could be much more powerful and be
used with a wider range of browsers. Of course it would still require a JRE
plugin, but at least not anything wikipedia specific has to be installed and
is not a browser specific solution.

Syntax highlighting of the wikitext is something I'd really like to develop
for 'power editing'. And with an applet it would be pretty easy to do both at
once, since rendering of Elements is delegated to seperate View objects. It'd
be pretty sweet to have one ViewFactory object for whysiwyg-ish rendering
Views and another factory for syntax-highlighted, but the rest of the editor
code just the same :)

Anyway, I'm just going to go off and write some alpha code, come back and see
what you all make of it.


subject: Erik as backup trustee (was Re: [Foundation-l] Election results?)

body:
--- jheiskan at welho.com wrote:
> FWIW, and at the risk of writing a second "me too" post in a row:
>
> I agree that it wouldn't be mischaracterization to call Eriks and Florences
> competition a virtual dead heat.
>
> I might modify mavs suggestion though. As there is a potential problem of
> vote
> ties if one trustee or another cannot participate in board votes (if any);
> why
> not hold Eric as a substitute trustee (assuming he is willing). Attending all
>
> meetings, and being a voting trustee on those occasions that only four of the
> trustees can be in on the meeting. I do not know how feasible this would be
> in
> regard the laws and bylaws; so if that would not be feasible, in that case
> mavs
> suggestion sounds quite as good, even though perhaps suffering from the
> possibility of tied votes; which might have to be addressed.

I think that is an absolutely wonderful idea! And no, your post was not a 'me
too'. Hopefully mine won't be either....

This way Erik becomes a trustee, gets to do all the work required of a trustee
(attend meetings, head and work in committees, etc) but normally does not get
to vote unless either Anthere or Angela are absent. That way our representation
is more consistent *and* we get another trustee to share the work load.

Splendid idea! Make it so!

--mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> The bylaws say that the Board can do whatever it wants. However an
> ad-hoc interpretation of the voting results after the vote has concluded
> would hardly fill me with confidence. If you want a 6th board member,
> have another vote, with well-defined rules.

If there is a consensus to do this, then there is no need for another vote.

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

But I do see that Erik and Florence were nearly in a dead heat when voting
stopped. Might I suggest to the elected trustees that they consider changing
the draft bylaws to allow for one more trustee and for Erik to fill that
position? I think this is important due to the fact that two of the current
trustees don't seem to be active Wikimedians (Tim Shell was at one time,
however). Although I do note that that is not a requirement for life,
sustaining, or corporate members. I'm just concerned about the level of
activity we can except from Tim Shell and Michael Davis and that most of the
trustee work will go to just three people.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav

 -------------------
-------------------

I think it best that I give my opinion on this.

I have been thinking about that for several days. My initial reaction was just as yours Mav. It is very much a reaction from the heart. An emotional reaction.
It is for a similar reason, that results were withheld, to avoid hurting people feelings. The last few days have been emotionnally very demanding on the candidates.

But after initial shock, one can realise that a good election process has to follow a couple of mandatory steps, which might be
* transparent,
* fair,
* credible.

Transparency has been mentionned a lot these past days.
I think elections where you change the rules after the vote, will be seen as not fair and not credible.

When elections rules are proposed, they should be kept the same, and they should not change after the elections, depending on the results. If we do that, we subvert the democratic process.
For example, when there is an election which requires candidates to get at least 50% of support, changing the rules after voting to make the threshold at 80%, is plain unfair to the candidate, and greatly damage the credibility of the voting procedure for those who voted. We should be very careful with this. And doubly careful with the Foundation itself.
Changing the bylaws *after* the elections, *due* to election results, is not good. People expected 2 people to be elected. They voted with this in mind. They could have voted differently if they had known there would be 3 people on the board. Plus, 6 people are likely to cause problem as far as voting goes.

Yes, that is painful on heart, but I think reason should prevail. We think that voters would not forgive that fairness and transparency are not respected, and that would damage the board credibility. This said, I will not strongly defend one option or another. I am ready to listen to people opinion on this (I already know Jimbo, Angela, Mav and Cimon ones). I just want to raise the issue of the long lasting impact on procedure respect, of us changing afterwards, voting rules of the first board.

------------

In case nothing is changed, I want to insist on something

Perhaps 2 weeks ago, Erik and I had an IRC talk. I remember we discussed of our respective vision of what a board member should be. Erik considered a board member had to be a leader of action, while I considered a board member should be mostly a communicator and an emulator (I hope that word exist :-)). The position Angela and I hold are called "representant", which has to have a meaning. We will try to listen to people, report what they think to the board, and give them if needed, the means to achieve success of their wishes.

I think most people who voted for Erik did so because of his great platform and for his energy dedicated to make things moving.
The fact many people voted for this platform is the first message Angela and I can hear. We hear that many people consider Erik ideas good and important. We are not deaf to this message :-)

I also note that Mav indicates 3 board members will never be able to do everything. I do not think it was *ever* in question, that board members would do *everything*. I think more that our job will be in particular to set up working teams to take care of department of activity. For each of these department, the board might either name a leader or name a committee. This leader or the committee may be responsible of the running of this department, and report for the board.

For example, we may name someone (such as Mav), leader of the budget department, and let it to him to gather people to help him (or suggest him names). Mav would be responsible in front of the board of the budget, but will have liberty to do the best he thinks is needed to manage this.

One may figure out a bunch of direction
* budget
* membership management and fees issues
* Funding : a person or a committee specially dedicated to funds harvest, wikishops (obviously, Erik had a lot of interest and good ideas in that direction, probably Tom as well)
* Legal perspective : a "legal" team to set up privacy rights, to help us defend the project or people in case of trials, to fix copyright issues (I guess Michael would help here, no ?)
* Tech : a developer or two, along with a team. The leader of this committee might have a certain freedom of action to take care of tech issues, such as having the right to buy servers...
* Communication : a great committee of people dedicated toward promotion of the project. There is already one french who was named porte-parole on behalf of the foundation. But this is written nowhere but on his curiculum vitae. It should be publicly visible.
* Publication : printing, CD... along with a partnership coordinator. Actually, I do think this position already exist, and that Erik already holds it.... But it is no where written officially. However, this will probably become a major department in the coming years.
* etc...

We mostly need to define which main issues are, how to work around them (naming a coordinator, calling for spontaneous candidacies, having a committee rather than a coordinator...), and to make all this MUCH more official.

I think that Erik would be great in at least 2 roles as a coordinator and will really make things proceed. I think it is exactly what official positions are for. At the same time, an opportunity to leadership, a role that may be highly visible, a role where a man of action may be really needed.

Just my opinion.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

But I do see that Erik and Florence were nearly in a dead heat when voting
stopped. Might I suggest to the elected trustees that they consider changing
the draft bylaws to allow for one more trustee and for Erik to fill that
position? I think this is important due to the fact that two of the current
trustees don't seem to be active Wikimedians (Tim Shell was at one time,
however). Although I do note that that is not a requirement for life,
sustaining, or corporate members. I'm just concerned about the level of
activity we can except from Tim Shell and Michael Davis and that most of the
trustee work will go to just three people.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav

 -------------------
-------------------

I think it best that I give my opinion on this.

I have been thinking about that for several days. My initial reaction was just as yours Mav. It is very much a reaction from the heart. An emotional reaction.
It is for a similar reason, that results were withheld, to avoid hurting people feelings. The last few days have been emotionnally very demanding on the candidates.

But after initial shock, one can realise that a good election process has to follow a couple of mandatory steps, which might be
* transparent,
* fair,
* credible.

Transparency has been mentionned a lot these past days.
I think elections where you change the rules after the vote, will be seen as not fair and not credible.

When elections rules are proposed, they should be kept the same, and they should not change after the elections, depending on the results. If we do that, we subvert the democratic process.
For example, when there is an election which requires candidates to get at least 50% of support, changing the rules after voting to make the threshold at 80%, is plain unfair to the candidate, and greatly damage the credibility of the voting procedure for those who voted. We should be very careful with this. And doubly careful with the Foundation itself.
Changing the bylaws *after* the elections, *due* to election results, is not good. People expected 2 people to be elected. They voted with this in mind. They could have voted differently if they had known there would be 3 people on the board. Plus, 6 people are likely to cause problem as far as voting goes.

Yes, that is painful on heart, but I think reason should prevail. We think that voters would not forgive that fairness and transparency are not respected, and that would damage the board credibility. This said, I will not strongly defend one option or another. I am ready to listen to people opinion on this (I already know Jimbo, Angela, Mav and Cimon ones). I just want to raise the issue of the long lasting impact on procedure respect, of us changing afterwards, voting rules of the first board.

------------

In case nothing is changed, I want to insist on something

Perhaps 2 weeks ago, Erik and I had an IRC talk. I remember we discussed of our respective vision of what a board member should be. Erik considered a board member had to be a leader of action, while I considered a board member should be mostly a communicator and an emulator (I hope that word exist :-)). The position Angela and I hold are called "representant", which has to have a meaning. We will try to listen to people, report what they think to the board, and give them if needed, the means to achieve success of their wishes.

I think most people who voted for Erik did so because of his great platform and for his energy dedicated to make things moving.
The fact many people voted for this platform is the first message Angela and I can hear. We hear that many people consider Erik ideas good and important. We are not deaf to this message :-)

I also note that Mav indicates 3 board members will never be able to do everything. I do not think it was *ever* in question, that board members would do *everything*. I think more that our job will be in particular to set up working teams to take care of department of activity. For each of these department, the board might either name a leader or name a committee. This leader or the committee may be responsible of the running of this department, and report for the board.

For example, we may name someone (such as Mav), leader of the budget department, and let it to him to gather people to help him (or suggest him names). Mav would be responsible in front of the board of the budget, but will have liberty to do the best he thinks is needed to manage this.

One may figure out a bunch of direction
* budget
* membership management and fees issues
* Funding : a person or a committee specially dedicated to funds harvest, wikishops (obviously, Erik had a lot of interest and good ideas in that direction, probably Tom as well)
* Legal perspective : a "legal" team to set up privacy rights, to help us defend the project or people in case of trials, to fix copyright issues (I guess Michael would help here, no ?)
* Tech : a developer or two, along with a team. The leader of this committee might have a certain freedom of action to take care of tech issues, such as having the right to buy servers...
* Communication : a great committee of people dedicated toward promotion of the project. There is already one french who was named porte-parole on behalf of the foundation. But this is written nowhere but on his curiculum vitae. It should be publicly visible.
* Publication : printing, CD... along with a partnership coordinator. Actually, I do think this position already exist, and that Erik already holds it.... But it is no where written officially. However, this will probably become a major department in the coming years.
* etc...

We mostly need to define which main issues are, how to work around them (naming a coordinator, calling for spontaneous candidacies, having a committee rather than a coordinator...), and to make all this MUCH more official.

I think that Erik would be great in at least 2 roles as a coordinator and will really make things proceed. I think it is exactly what official positions are for. At the same time, an opportunity to leadership, a role that may be highly visible, a role where a man of action may be really needed.

Just my opinion.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

But I do see that Erik and Florence were nearly in a dead heat when voting
stopped. Might I suggest to the elected trustees that they consider changing
the draft bylaws to allow for one more trustee and for Erik to fill that
position? I think this is important due to the fact that two of the current
trustees don't seem to be active Wikimedians (Tim Shell was at one time,
however). Although I do note that that is not a requirement for life,
sustaining, or corporate members. I'm just concerned about the level of
activity we can except from Tim Shell and Michael Davis and that most of the
trustee work will go to just three people.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav

 -------------------
-------------------

I think it best that I give my opinion on this.

I have been thinking about that for several days. My initial reaction was just as yours Mav. It is very much a reaction from the heart. An emotional reaction.
It is for a similar reason, that results were withheld, to avoid hurting people feelings. The last few days have been emotionnally very demanding on the candidates.

But after initial shock, one can realise that a good election process has to follow a couple of mandatory steps, which might be
* transparent,
* fair,
* credible.

Transparency has been mentionned a lot these past days.
I think elections where you change the rules after the vote, will be seen as not fair and not credible.

When elections rules are proposed, they should be kept the same, and they should not change after the elections, depending on the results. If we do that, we subvert the democratic process.
For example, when there is an election which requires candidates to get at least 50% of support, changing the rules after voting to make the threshold at 80%, is plain unfair to the candidate, and greatly damage the credibility of the voting procedure for those who voted. We should be very careful with this. And doubly careful with the Foundation itself.
Changing the bylaws *after* the elections, *due* to election results, is not good. People expected 2 people to be elected. They voted with this in mind. They could have voted differently if they had known there would be 3 people on the board. Plus, 6 people are likely to cause problem as far as voting goes.

Yes, that is painful on heart, but I think reason should prevail. We think that voters would not forgive that fairness and transparency are not respected, and that would damage the board credibility. This said, I will not strongly defend one option or another. I am ready to listen to people opinion on this (I already know Jimbo, Angela, Mav and Cimon ones). I just want to raise the issue of the long lasting impact on procedure respect, of us changing afterwards, voting rules of the first board.

------------

In case nothing is changed, I want to insist on something

Perhaps 2 weeks ago, Erik and I had an IRC talk. I remember we discussed of our respective vision of what a board member should be. Erik considered a board member had to be a leader of action, while I considered a board member should be mostly a communicator and an emulator (I hope that word exist :-)). The position Angela and I hold are called "representant", which has to have a meaning. We will try to listen to people, report what they think to the board, and give them if needed, the means to achieve success of their wishes.

I think most people who voted for Erik did so because of his great platform and for his energy dedicated to make things moving.
The fact many people voted for this platform is the first message Angela and I can hear. We hear that many people consider Erik ideas good and important. We are not deaf to this message :-)

I also note that Mav indicates 3 board members will never be able to do everything. I do not think it was *ever* in question, that board members would do *everything*. I think more that our job will be in particular to set up working teams to take care of department of activity. For each of these department, the board might either name a leader or name a committee. This leader or the committee may be responsible of the running of this department, and report for the board.

For example, we may name someone (such as Mav), leader of the budget department, and let it to him to gather people to help him (or suggest him names). Mav would be responsible in front of the board of the budget, but will have liberty to do the best he thinks is needed to manage this.

One may figure out a bunch of direction
* budget
* membership management and fees issues
* Funding : a person or a committee specially dedicated to funds harvest, wikishops (obviously, Erik had a lot of interest and good ideas in that direction, probably Tom as well)
* Legal perspective : a "legal" team to set up privacy rights, to help us defend the project or people in case of trials, to fix copyright issues (I guess Michael would help here, no ?)
* Tech : a developer or two, along with a team. The leader of this committee might have a certain freedom of action to take care of tech issues, such as having the right to buy servers...
* Communication : a great committee of people dedicated toward promotion of the project. There is already one french who was named porte-parole on behalf of the foundation. But this is written nowhere but on his curiculum vitae. It should be publicly visible.
* Publication : printing, CD... along with a partnership coordinator. Actually, I do think this position already exist, and that Erik already holds it.... But it is no where written officially. However, this will probably become a major department in the coming years.
* etc...

We mostly need to define which main issues are, how to work around them (naming a coordinator, calling for spontaneous candidacies, having a committee rather than a coordinator...), and to make all this MUCH more official.

I think that Erik would be great in at least 2 roles as a coordinator and will really make things proceed. I think it is exactly what official positions are for. At the same time, an opportunity to leadership, a role that may be highly visible, a role where a man of action may be really needed.

Just my opinion.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

But I do see that Erik and Florence were nearly in a dead heat when voting
stopped. Might I suggest to the elected trustees that they consider changing
the draft bylaws to allow for one more trustee and for Erik to fill that
position? I think this is important due to the fact that two of the current
trustees don't seem to be active Wikimedians (Tim Shell was at one time,
however). Although I do note that that is not a requirement for life,
sustaining, or corporate members. I'm just concerned about the level of
activity we can except from Tim Shell and Michael Davis and that most of the
trustee work will go to just three people.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav

 -------------------
-------------------

I think it best that I give my opinion on this.

I have been thinking about that for several days. My initial reaction was just as yours Mav. It is very much a reaction from the heart. An emotional reaction.
It is for a similar reason, that results were withheld, to avoid hurting people feelings. The last few days have been emotionnally very demanding on the candidates.

But after initial shock, one can realise that a good election process has to follow a couple of mandatory steps, which might be
* transparent,
* fair,
* credible.

Transparency has been mentionned a lot these past days.
I think elections where you change the rules after the vote, will be seen as not fair and not credible.

When elections rules are proposed, they should be kept the same, and they should not change after the elections, depending on the results. If we do that, we subvert the democratic process.
For example, when there is an election which requires candidates to get at least 50% of support, changing the rules after voting to make the threshold at 80%, is plain unfair to the candidate, and greatly damage the credibility of the voting procedure for those who voted. We should be very careful with this. And doubly careful with the Foundation itself.
Changing the bylaws *after* the elections, *due* to election results, is not good. People expected 2 people to be elected. They voted with this in mind. They could have voted differently if they had known there would be 3 people on the board. Plus, 6 people are likely to cause problem as far as voting goes.

Yes, that is painful on heart, but I think reason should prevail. We think that voters would not forgive that fairness and transparency are not respected, and that would damage the board credibility. This said, I will not strongly defend one option or another. I am ready to listen to people opinion on this (I already know Jimbo, Angela, Mav and Cimon ones). I just want to raise the issue of the long lasting impact on procedure respect, of us changing afterwards, voting rules of the first board.

------------

In case nothing is changed, I want to insist on something

Perhaps 2 weeks ago, Erik and I had an IRC talk. I remember we discussed of our respective vision of what a board member should be. Erik considered a board member had to be a leader of action, while I considered a board member should be mostly a communicator and an emulator (I hope that word exist :-)). The position Angela and I hold are called "representant", which has to have a meaning. We will try to listen to people, report what they think to the board, and give them if needed, the means to achieve success of their wishes.

I think most people who voted for Erik did so because of his great platform and for his energy dedicated to make things moving.
The fact many people voted for this platform is the first message Angela and I can hear. We hear that many people consider Erik ideas good and important. We are not deaf to this message :-)

I also note that Mav indicates 3 board members will never be able to do everything. I do not think it was *ever* in question, that board members would do *everything*. I think more that our job will be in particular to set up working teams to take care of department of activity. For each of these department, the board might either name a leader or name a committee. This leader or the committee may be responsible of the running of this department, and report for the board.

For example, we may name someone (such as Mav), leader of the budget department, and let it to him to gather people to help him (or suggest him names). Mav would be responsible in front of the board of the budget, but will have liberty to do the best he thinks is needed to manage this.

One may figure out a bunch of direction
* budget
* membership management and fees issues
* Funding : a person or a committee specially dedicated to funds harvest, wikishops (obviously, Erik had a lot of interest and good ideas in that direction, probably Tom as well)
* Legal perspective : a "legal" team to set up privacy rights, to help us defend the project or people in case of trials, to fix copyright issues (I guess Michael would help here, no ?)
* Tech : a developer or two, along with a team. The leader of this committee might have a certain freedom of action to take care of tech issues, such as having the right to buy servers...
* Communication : a great committee of people dedicated toward promotion of the project. There is already one french who was named porte-parole on behalf of the foundation. But this is written nowhere but on his curiculum vitae. It should be publicly visible.
* Publication : printing, CD... along with a partnership coordinator. Actually, I do think this position already exist, and that Erik already holds it.... But it is no where written officially. However, this will probably become a major department in the coming years.
* etc...

We mostly need to define which main issues are, how to work around them (naming a coordinator, calling for spontaneous candidacies, having a committee rather than a coordinator...), and to make all this MUCH more official.

I think that Erik would be great in at least 2 roles as a coordinator and will really make things proceed. I think it is exactly what official positions are for. At the same time, an opportunity to leadership, a role that may be highly visible, a role where a man of action may be really needed.

Just my opinion.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

--------------------

I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with your qualities. Really. ant

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

--------------------

I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with your qualities. Really. ant

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

--------------------

I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with your qualities. Really. ant

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
> top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
> approval to doing so.
>
> The top 3 for contributing rep were:
>
> Anthere 269
> Eloquence 258
> Maveric149 163
>
> The top 2 for for volunteer rep:
>
> Angela 345
> Maveric149 159

Wow - I thought that I would have done better than that. I guess its my fault
for deciding to run at the last minute. Oh well.

--------------------

I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with your qualities. Really. ant

---------------------------------
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from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Following discussion between me and Danny, we have decided to disclose the
top canididates for each position where the candidates have given their
approval to doing so.

The top 3 for contributing rep were:

Anthere  269
Eloquence 258
Maveric149 163

The top 2 for for volunteer rep:

Angela  345
Maveric149 159

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats as grounds for automatic termination

body:
--- Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>...
> I started digging through our policies, and found this dusty relic:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_legal_threats
>
> At this point, it's only a proposal. Also, it doesn't actually *do*
> anything. I'd like to suggest adopting a terminate-on-site rule -- you make
> a legal threat, and you're automatically banned. I'd like to know what
> others here think.

Before any ban the user should be made aware of the policy first. Irismeister
was was banned for 10 days in part due to legal threats (there was a 6 to 0
ruling forbidding him from using legal threats as a tactic to intimidate other
users). So, IMO, this policy has been confirmed by the AC and should be
considered to be enforceable.

But do try to work with people first - banning them outright will only confirm
their paranoia and possibly make it more likely that they will mount a
frivolous (or otherwise) lawsuit. And those could be expensive to defend
against (or at least make it impossible for Jimbo to travel to countries where
there are bench warrants for his failure to appear in court).

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] [wik1234@fastmail.fm: Quagga's vandalism]

body:
The usual.  The threat here is direct and warrants a permanent ban.  I
can confirm this email to be that of user Wik, because he emailed me
using this account before he was banned, etc.  The two are adequately
associated.

If it is possible to tie user Quagga to the ongoing activity on those
pages, then Quagga should be banned as well, not because of Wik's
threats but because the behavior is simple trolling.

Myself, I wonder if Wik is not just trolling himself in order to
harass us.  One can never tell -- it seems that people will go to
extreme lengths when the point at stake is completely trivial,
juvenile, stupid and pointless.

--------------------------

From: wik1234 at fastmail.fm
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 21:47:21 UT
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 13:47:21 -0800
To: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Quagga's vandalism

The vandalism goes on and on:

06:09, 14 Jun 2004 Isomorphic deleted "User talk:Wik/Talk/Wik" (trolling
by some anon)
06:09, 14 Jun 2004 Isomorphic deleted "User:Wik/temp" (trolling by some
anon)
06:09, 14 Jun 2004 Secretlondon deleted "User talk:User talk:Wik"
(content was: 'I have sucked hairy balls for most of my life. i enjoy
wathing elephants have sex because incase you didnt know, the elephant
penis is the size of my ...')

I made the mistake of trusting your word; you gave a supposedly final
warning to Quagga, but didn't follow up on it. Therefore I'll now give
you the final warning: if Quagga isn't banned within 24 hours, I'll
start a script which does everything automatically including changing
proxies as needed, so don't hope that I will tire of it; nor is there
anything else you can do against it. It will run until Quagga is banned.
Too bad you don't understand any other language.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking
> for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the
> desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with
> your qualities. Really. ant

Thanks for the note. :) However I'm pretty sure that most people who voted for
me for one position also voted for me for the other. That is, unless they
thought they could not do that.

yeah, *unless* they thought they could not do that :-)

>-- Daniel

>PS - the reason why I decided to run for both was so that I did not single you
>or Angela out.

I am perfectly aware of that Mav. That was real nice of you, and I appreciated.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking
> for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the
> desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with
> your qualities. Really. ant

Thanks for the note. :) However I'm pretty sure that most people who voted for
me for one position also voted for me for the other. That is, unless they
thought they could not do that.

yeah, *unless* they thought they could not do that :-)

>-- Daniel

>PS - the reason why I decided to run for both was so that I did not single you
>or Angela out.

I am perfectly aware of that Mav. That was real nice of you, and I appreciated.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking
> for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the
> desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with
> your qualities. Really. ant

Thanks for the note. :) However I'm pretty sure that most people who voted for
me for one position also voted for me for the other. That is, unless they
thought they could not do that.

yeah, *unless* they thought they could not do that :-)

>-- Daniel

>PS - the reason why I decided to run for both was so that I did not single you
>or Angela out.

I am perfectly aware of that Mav. That was real nice of you, and I appreciated.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think Mav, that these results are due essentially to dilution (you asking
> for two positions, just add up numbers Mav, total number is good) and by the
> desire many had to see a non-english on the board. This has little to do with
> your qualities. Really. ant

Thanks for the note. :) However I'm pretty sure that most people who voted for
me for one position also voted for me for the other. That is, unless they
thought they could not do that.

yeah, *unless* they thought they could not do that :-)

>-- Daniel

>PS - the reason why I decided to run for both was so that I did not single you
>or Angela out.

I am perfectly aware of that Mav. That was real nice of you, and I appreciated.

---------------------------------
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subject: _[Foundation-l]_Wikimedia_board_of_trustees_/_La_fondation_Wikimédia

body:
Anthere wrote:
> If only for one reason : transparency. We should not
> build the Foundation upon bricks of secret.

If have no objection, and leave it up to the candidates and the
election organizers to make a decision.  If there is a big big fight
about it, I am happy to decide I guess, but hopefully...

Of course, I am not so sure how meaningful the numbers are.  From
looking at the numbers, it seems obvious to me that a great number of
people followed my desire and advice that we focus on non-American
candidates to give the board some international character.

So low votes for some candidates should not be interpreted as people
not liking or approving of them, but more of them not being well known
or else of them being American.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Fennec Foxen wrote:
> I'm not an authoratitative source on this, but apparently there will
> be NO release of figures (!), even on a sitewide basis, according to
> directives by Jimbo, for some sort of fear that it will hurt peoples'
> feelings? potentially provide statistics which might perhaps in the
> future maybe damage their potential standing in future elections? I
> have no idea, some sort of excuse of that nature... This is what I
> hear in the IRC channel, anyway, would anyone here (Jimbo? etc) care
> to confirm or deny it in a less transient medium?

There is no directive from me.  Please try not to say things that are
inflammatory!

> Jun 12 23:11:25 <dannyisme>	 i was originally against making them
> public, and jimbo, without knowing my opinion, concurred in a private
> email

I do concur in the opinion.  The numbers are not that meaningful, and
I am ont sure what the point is.  But I leave it to others to decide,
hopefully by a consensus of the candidates.

The reason I think that the numbers are not so meaningful is that I
think that a lot of people agreed with the idea of having a more
international board.  So I think some of the Americans got fewer votes
not because they were thought to be unsuitable, but rather than when
people felt that two candidates were otherwise equal, they tended to
vote European.

It is no big deal either way, but of course I understand that it is a
Wikipedia tradition to make a huge deal out of everything. ;-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Inaccessible In China - story hits the
	news cycle

body:
I just sent them a response.  But I would also like to hereby authorize
Andrew Lih to make a statement on our behalf, based on usual happy NPOV
talk.

The essential theme of what I have said is that Wikipedia is nonpolitical,
and neutral.  A ban of Wikipedia is not a ban of propaganda or antigovernment
stuff, just a ban of information.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote on WikiEN-l:
> > WIKIPEDIA Inaccessible In China
> > ChinaTechNews.com - Beijing,China
> > According to several Internet reports both the Chinese and English-language
> > versions of Wikipedia have now been blocked and are inaccessible from
> > the Chinese ...
> >
> >
> > http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1316
>
> They specifically mention that the Wikimedia Foundation has not responded yet.
> Could somebody who can speak for the foundation do that? I have a feeling that
> this story may get big due to the recent rash of censorship in China. Wikipedia
> could be lead part of many of those stories since it is hard to feel sorry for
> blocked porn and gambling sites but Wikipedia is cute and cuddly and now the
> Chinese version has been effectively squashed (with about a hundred
> contributors not able to contribute and many thousands disconnected from their
> favorite reference site - not to mention hundreds of millions of potential
> readers who will never know of us if this block is permanent). I think it is
> fairly serious when a very substantial part of the world's population is cut
> off from us.
>
> So we should have an official statement about this before the media starts to
> demonize the PRC's censorship policies. IMO, such a statement would need to say
> something to the effect that "Wikimedia wants to work with the PRC and we think
> that our NPOV policy should take care of any fears the PRC may have." Hopefully
> that will give the Chinese contributors a chance to work this out in a soft way
> first and give the PRC a way to back off without losing face. We could very
> well have been blocked due to bureaucratic misjudgment.
>
> --Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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>


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence presented. Re: [WikiEN-l] Yes,

body:
"Well, no. It would be like, if in a small city there is one known criminal,
and if a crime happens soon after he's released, detaining him."

I guess this means it's about time to 'round up the usual suspects.

--Mark
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subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>>The bylaws say that the Board can do whatever it wants. However an
>>ad-hoc interpretation of the voting results after the vote has concluded
>>would hardly fill me with confidence. If you want a 6th board member,
>>have another vote, with well-defined rules.
>>
>>
>
>If there is a consensus to do this, then there is no need for another vote.
>
>
Well, since I agree with Tim's viewpoint, it would seem there is not a
consensus, as a quick head-count indicates 3 people who've said they
think it's a good idea, and 2 who've said they don't.

If the board wants to appoint a sixth member unilaterally, it of course
has the power to change the bylaws to do so, but votes shouldn't be
interpreted based on criteria set *after* the voting took place.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Election results?


body:
I don't know if many of you are aware, but last week we had a user in here
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Fel
ix_F._Bruyns) who was on a personal crusade to make wikipedia 'family
friendly' - IE, by censoring our articles. Needless to say, it didn't go
over very well. Long story short, he ended up threatening to sue several
contributors -
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Raul654&diff=3853204&oldid=3852747,
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Moriori&diff=3853177&oldid=3852828

I started digging through our policies, and found this dusty relic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_legal_threats

At this point, it's only a proposal. Also, it doesn't actually *do*
anything. I'd like to suggest adopting a terminate-on-site rule -- you make
a legal threat, and you're automatically banned. I'd like to know what
others here think.

--Mark