body:
Jimbo,

Thank you for your response.  I think I agree with most of what you
said.  Here are a few comments:

>> So the editor who's trying to delete something has to do, say, 100
>>times the work of the person who added it.
>
>
> I don't think that's true.  If it is, then we should engage in a
> concerted effort to be conscious of it and make it not so.

The best example of an article where I was not involved personally is
"Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Laboratory Contamination."  Here we have
an article written by someone who clearly has an axe to grind.  It has
been listed on VfD but kept.  In the words of User:ThereIsNoSteve, "The
tiny amount of research I've done on this topic shows that most of the
claims are greatly exaggerated and some might be outright false. The
whole article is essentially an editorial..."

No one has tried to remove the outrageous claims because there wouldn't
be much of anything left and the community frowns so heavily on just
blanking things.  And no one is willing to do the research for the
_correcting_ and _improving_ that are probably called for.  So the
article remains in its present form.

I'm willing to bet that if I walked in and started editing, that there
wouldn't be much support for removing the outrageous claims (or
restating them as opinion rather than fact), even if I had some
well-researched factual material debunking them.

This isn't so much a matter of policy as a matter of culture, and
perhaps it has drifted since the early days.

> But you don't have to refute it.  It isn't necessary to prove a
> negative in order to remove something.  All that you have to do is say
> something like, in your own delightful wording, "moving unsourced
> material to talk pages".  And then put a note on the talk page saying
> something like "This is interesting about Count Leonard III, however I
> was unable to confirm it.  Can someone post a source before we put it
> back in the article?"
>
> I'm sure that would carry plenty of weight.

I think you might find it interesting to log in under a pseudonym and
try exactly that in a couple places.

> One issue here is whether or not it belongs in the article, and that's
> a tough one to treat.  I suspect an article about Roundup could more
> easily cover that controversy, and that the throwaway statement on the
> vegetable crops article is likely best just left out completely.
>
> For example, it would likely be best to avoid "Roundup, generally
> considered safe, has seen increasingly..." too.  If there's ongoing
> genuine controversy, then perhaps it's necessary for even the
> vegetable crops article to say something like "Roundup has seen
> increasingly widespread use on fruit and vegetable crops each year
> since 1995.  There has been some resulting controversy, which is
> covered in more detail in the article on [[Roundup]]."

Yes.  I chose an example where the attempt to ''load the language'' was
blatently obvious, so it's an easy case.  Real article disputes are more
opaque.

>>I don't think that banning users solves anything, and did not suggest
>>it in my post.
>
>
> Do you think it never solves anything?  I agree completely that
> banning has an uneven track record.  Sometimes it works!  Other times,
> it just generates monsters from people who would have otherwise merely
> been annoyances.

Banning a user is like divorcing a spouse or firing an employee:

- It is not a problem solving tool, but rather an outcome when problem
solving tools fail.

- Though it is the largest hammer in the toolbox, it is not 100%
effective.  Just like ex-wives and ex-employees, banned users can
continue to make nuisances of themselves.

- If we were truly wise, we would make an effort to learn in what
fashion the community failed to serve the banned member (realizing that
in some cases there was probably nothing to be done).

- When it is inevitable, it should be done promptly, and with respect
and proper follow-through.

> One of the things that my strong 'libertarian' political views tell me
> is that "there ought to be a law" is a constant temptation, but often
> a siren's song.  People misbehaving on the Wikipedia?  Ban 'em!

I continue to believe that most bad behavior on Wikipedia by established
users grows out of disputes over articles.  With a better method to
address these disputes, the number of users where a ban is contemplated
is sure to drop.

Louis


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anti-scientific bias has me hopping mad!

references:
<blvcsn$mu0$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20031008000324.97498.qmail@web41802.mail.yahoo.com>
	<bm1dk5$ctd$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20031008173742.GF22072@joey.bomis.com>
	<bm1shc$g8p$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> This isn't so much a matter of policy as a matter of culture, and
> perhaps it has drifted since the early days.

*nod*  Well, hmmm, let's drift it back.  :-)

> I think you might find it interesting to log in under a pseudonym and
> try exactly that in a couple places.

I might.  Of course, my schtick is that I don't edit in order to
preserve my neutrality in the case of disputes, but the truth is I
can't stand editing the website when it's slow.  It drives me bonkers.
So after the upgrades, perhaps I'll sneak around and study things by
trying this.

--Jimbo


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
> Don't be too trusting of Google - it can only tell you about the
> info that somebody went to the trouble of putting into a web page.
> I've been comparing Google results with books from the library lately,
> and there is a lot of encyclopedic information that is simply not
> online, or not being indexed. [...]

I would like to second this.  Google is a great tool, but everything is
not on the web, and everything that is on the web is not indexed.

Historical data is one gaping hole, such as the history of a town or
small city, or a biography of a person who is no longer prominent.

There is also relatively little coverage of past controversies.  You can
still find articles about the refusal of Minnesota's state government to
fund construction of a new stadium.  But what can you find about the
controversy that went on regarding the construction of the present
stadium, 20-odd years ago?

And some corporations maintain official web silence on controversies
they are involved in.  Continuing an earlier example, Monsanto doesn't
have a rebuttal of the Ericson & Hardell study on their web site, but if
you write to them and explain that you're writing an article about the
safety of glyphosate, they'll send it to you, with references.

Also, the web is a terrible place to try to get a sense of the relative
importance of something.  Books aren't perfect but you can get a rough
sense of importance of, say, composers or painters by reading through a
survey of the era in which they were prominent.

Louis


from_name: Gutza

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Andrew wrote:

> >I agree. User names are not supposed to express any sort of religious or
> >political message. "Jesus is Lord!" is offensive to non-Christinans and
> >atheists.
>
> >-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> I'm not particularly offended.. but I dunno. ehh.
>
>
>
... but on the other hand, you're a sponge. :)

Gutza


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Explicit links between articles (Was: Anti-scientific
	bias has me hopping mad!)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote in part:

>If there's ongoing
>genuine controversy, then perhaps it's necessary for even the
>vegetable crops article to say something like "Roundup has seen
>increasingly widespread use on fruit and vegetable crops each year
>since 1995.  There has been some resulting controversy, which is
>covered in more detail in the article on [[Roundup]]."

>(Stylistically, that's a bit odd, because we usually write each
>article as self-contained and without mentioning other articles.)

Personally, I think that this is a bad idea.
Most of the time, a [[wiki]] link to another article will be fine;
even in this example, beginning the sentence with "[[Roundup]] has ..."
is probably plenty good to let people know where to go for more detail.
But in some cases, it's not clear to the reader (especially to a newbie)
where discussion of some further point may be found.
This is especially true when there was controversy among Wikipedians
as to whether some material should be on a certain page or another.
So in some cases, an explicit link to some other article
(along the lines of "For more on this, see the article [[X]].")
can be a very helpful edit.

-- Toby


list: wikitech-l

from_name: JDG

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiP fairly flyin

body:
Yay-- as of 21:00 UTC Wikipedia is fairly flyin (I say fairly because a few
page loads still need to think about it for a moment before taking the
plunge). Any chance we can get a bullet list of server additions/changes?
I'm especially interested in whether you have any round robin happening. I'm
hoping to free up time to help out with some programming and maybe some
server/DB admin, if you need it-- just want a feel for the new lay of the
land.

--
JDG


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:

> Anthropogenic perhaps!  Anthropomorphic conjures up visions of the movie
> "Godzilla Meets the Smog Monster". :-)   I know that's it's not polite to
> criticize on the basis of language or grammar, but some misuses are really
> funny.

No offence taken.
I don't think there's any shame in such polysyllabic malapropism.
--
Gareth Owen
"I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people
 on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really
 bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The donation text

body:
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>

> I wonder if there is a service out there that could assist, for a
> reasonable fee, in actually complying with these absurd regulations.
> If I could just spend $2500 and wave my hand to make it happen, that'd
> be great.

These people will do it for less than $12,000:
https://www.incspot.com/public/c7-01d.html

Alex756


subject: OFFL:IST: Re: [Wikipedia-l] The donation text

body:
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org>

Jimmy I would not worry about it too much right now, as
many states require that you have already applied to the IRS
for an exemption (some even require that you receive it
and some states let you file after the end of the fiscal year.
It is a very complex and troublesome process, but I don't think
they are going to go after every $5,000 group out there,
the requirements would be too onerous. Obviously most of
these states thought up their regulations before the internet
came into existence.

> I wonder if there is a service out there that could assist, for a
> reasonable fee, in actually complying with these absurd regulations.
> If I could just spend $2500 and wave my hand to make it happen, that'd
> be great.

https://www.incspot.com/public/c7-01d.html
These people charge about $11,000 for filings in all 39 states that
have regulations.

It really shouldn't cost that much. Accountants will usually do it for much
less. lawyers  will do it too. It is mostly printing multiple copies of the
Uniform Statement and an address and a putting the check in the envelope..
http://www.multistatefiling.org/urs_webv231.pdf
It is a fillable form so you can fill it in online and then print out 39
copies
(plus the six states that have appendixes).  The form is page 5 to 8, there
is some state specific information the rest is instructions and the six
states that have supplemental requirements.

 Once you have filled out the form it may just have to be notarized several
times for different states. Most of the states want a copy of the
first year's 990 form and really most conisider solicitation as occuring
when you are sending documents, emails or telemarketing calls
into the state.

There is talk about having an online site to do it, but last I heard they
had not gotten that together yet. Maybe if you wait a few months
it will happen.

The Uniform Registration Statement makes it much easier to comply,
though it is still a lot of paperwork. I think the Charleston Principles
are on your side, you don't really know where the contributions come
from (though remember that the IRS requires a notice sent to anyone
who receives more than a $75 benefit (as a donation). I can't recall
but I think keeping paper records of donors and addresses is still
required because of these state charities requirements.

Also there is always going to be a bit of a lag when organizations
get started, they give you a while to file the IRS 1023 exemption
application and you can get an extension (and only then if
the projected income is over $5,000 which may not really happen
this year).

I would not worry about it much as long as solicitations are not
sent out via email or snail mail. Once Wikipedia's income is over
$25K a year then, yes, best to comply, but for now it is pretty
prudent to just say it is not solicitation. I think most people
understand the distinction. They are not going to "break the
balls" of a $5K a year organization, really the IRS filing is more
important for now.

Probably best to get all the paperwork ready for the 1023, bylaws,
board minutes, first year budget, etc. once the 1023 is filed the
state forms can be sent out (many of them want a copy of that
anyway along with a copy of the 990 tax return).

I think if Wikimedia has a $5,000 annual budget using almost half
of that to comply with state regulations is a good reason to delay
in filing these forms. Most of them do not have to be filed until
after the end of the fiscal year which I am assuming is sometimes
in 2004, so you have some time to do it, though I would probably
do it in California as that is where the servers are for now.

You might want to look at these BBB Wise Giving standards.
This is something else that gives on an idea what compliance
with all these charitable giving laws is all about.

http://www.give.org/standards/newcbbbstds.asp

You will note that getting the Wise Giving Seal of approval
costs a minimum of $1,000 per year and that is for organizations
with income of less than $1,000,000 Wikimedia is way under
that figure. http://www.give.org/seal/seal_license.pdf

This is a private method to so that there is transparency
in the organization's finances and government.

Alex


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
What I find "offensive", and what I think should be a bannable offense,
is this (from what I can tell, fairly recent) spate of new accounts
that are obviously Wikipedia old hands (displaying intricate knowledge
of the system, talking about events that happened months and years
ago), which are being created to cause disruption in the pursuit of
some "agenda."

I wish the developers would look to see if a new, troublemaking account
is exhibiting the same signs as that of a banned user, and whether or
not the new account is coming in from the same IP, and that they were
empowered to take action on it.

If these accounts are being made by Wikipedians in "good standing," I
would go so far as to question that "good standing," and would further
encourage whoever it is to display enough cojones to work toward a
resolution of their problems with their established handle, rather than
acting like a cowardly Internet troll.

Regardless, the situation needs to end, and soon.  This particular
"Jesus is Lord!" situation had become overly problematic and disruptive
before twelve hours had passed; there is enough of a consensus on the
talk page to act -now-, rather than waiting through another week or
more of needless bickering over a decision that's easily reversed at
any rate if by some miracle it turns out to be wrong.

-Hephaestos


from_name: James Duffy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please change the embarrassing donations message

body:
>
>JT wrote:
> >Wiki's phenomenal growth requires constant upgrading
> >of technology to give you the best service possible. Giving
> >that service requires funding. You now can donate money to
> >help your wikipedia remain the fastest growing encyclop?dia
> >on the internet. For more information, see [[Wikipedia donations]].
>
>For God's sake James, that is WAY too long and your use of "Wiki" is like a
>bad piece of bad chalk on the blackboard. It is either Wikipedia or
>Wikimedia. There are more than one wiki if you haven't noticed yet.
>

Mav, I wasn't proposing a wording, When designing a soundbite, the first
thing you do is define the core message. When you know /what/ you want to
say then you tighten it to /say/ what you want to say. All I was doing was
giving what I believe is the core message. Once we agree on what we want to
say, we can work out how to say it. I made it clear in the message that I
was not /proposing/ a text. Please re-read what I wrote and stop
mis-interpreting it.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Jeezis needs a name change

body:
User:Retard seems to have disappeared without anyone having done anything about what, to me, was an offensive username.

RickK

Lee Pilich <pilich at btopenworld.com> wrote:

As far as I know, there has not yet been a case where somebody has
suggested a name is unacceptable without said name later being forcibly
changed. In that sense, no limit has been established on what is considered
"unacceptable".

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

>> Louis wrote (in part):
>>
>> > Mydogategodshat - Two readings here, my/dog/ate/gods/hat and
>> > my/dog/ate/god/shat.  Both unacceptable.
>>
>> I /do/ feel this one is unacceptable, and said so when it was first
>> discussed in May.  If feel it is directly comparable with our old
>> friend the
>> radioactive chicken.
>
> Can someone PLEASE explain to me what is offensive about that
> username? My Dog Ate God's Hat. It makes ABSOLUTELY no sense, sure,
> but offensive? Please...

Things about that name were quiet for a while; I thought he was long
gone.  I'm certainly not offended by it.  I find it does make its own
kind of sense in a Monty Python kind of way. :-)

Ec


from_name: Lee Pilich

body:
[Note: this email contains some rude words]

Thus spake Jimbo:
 >What's our exact policy on this?  I'd be happy to issue a ruling, but
 >I'd prefer to stick with exact precedent.  But I don't remember what
 >that is.

[[Wikipedia:Username]] contains some recommendations to avoid certain types
of username, and also states "Wikipedia *does not allow* inflammatory user
names" (it also says some weird stuff about voting and sysops being able to
ban people with offensive names, but I'll pass over that as it isn't really
relevant here).

As for precedents: User:Throbbing Monster Cock was deemed unacceptable (by
your good self, if I remember rightly), and was forcibly changed to
User:TMC. He later returned as Swollen Cock of Doom and Throbbing monster
cock - these were also banned. More recently, User:Saddam Hussein was
forcibly changed to User:SH. User:Fuck and User:FuckingFucker have also
been banned, no doubt partly due to their username, but they also did a
spot of random vandalism. I don't think there have been any other cases
where a user has been forced to change their name.

As far as I know, there has not yet been a case where somebody has
suggested a name is unacceptable without said name later being forcibly
changed. In that sense, no limit has been established on what is considered
"unacceptable".

A parallel which might be worth considering here is the article originally
titled [[AIDS Kills Fags Dead]]. After some debate, the page was moved to
[[Slogan 'AIDS Kills Fags Dead']] lest people should see the name of the
page in search results or on Recent Changes and think we were making a
statement.

Just to be clear: I don't necessarily agree with decisions which have been
made in the past (nor do I necessarily disagree with them), and I'm not
trying to suggest a course of action which should be taken in this case.
I'm just laying out what's been done before.

Lee (Camembert)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
> wrote:
> > [Sent both to wikiEN-l and directly to mav.]
> > > > Does this mean that [[User:GayCommunist]] is
> > offensive as well?
> > Not to me. Although user:GayCommunist was neither
> gay
> nor a communist if I recall... He did it more or
> less
> for shock value, which may form cause for a name
> change.
> > > Or is it because [[User:Jesus is Lord!]] makes a
> > direct claim, so that [[User:Subject of Lord
> Jesus]]
> > > would be fine?
> > Bingo! It is a bad idea to allow bumper sticker
> messages as user names.
> > --mav

>That sounds completely arbitrary. I think all
>usernames should be allowed. How do usernames affect
>our development as an encyclopedia?
>LDan

I suppose "Jesus is Lord" is so horribly offending to
some, that just by the ***sight*** of the name, they
might be repelled and flee away from Wikipedia.

Perhaps setting a scale of offense would be good here.
  Calling people nazi was tolerated for months, but
just seeing "Jesus is Lord" in the RC is not.

Has a user already taken the name Nazi ?

__________________________________
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from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anti-scientific bias has me in bunches!

body:
--- Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>
> I agree completely. I would not have bothered
> criticizing Ed as
> strongly as I have if Ed had not announced his
> intention to ban
> people unilaterally.

OK --I took that comment by Ed as a tongue in cheek
remark-- a joke.  That nobody else took it that way,
except maybe Ray -- was no doubt a surprise.  I think
maybe Ed meant it as a self-effacing joke. Thats
enough on that. Ed can answer this or not.

> Actually, Ponte is not  and never was an
environmentalist >or a scientist. To the contrary,
he's a former Reader's >Digest editor and Hollywood
publicist

No kiddin.  So thats kinda like 'Leeza Gibbons leaving
the infotainment biz to do nanotech research and
investment. Or maybe like Gary Coleman putting away
his acting carrer to....

> writes nowadays for conservative websites such as
> GOPUSA.com and the David Horowitz website
>FrontPageMagazine.com.

This guy is a jerk-- I used to read his crap on
H-Diplo.  And  why Camille Paglia likes his nonsense I
dunno.

> As Connolley demonstrates, Ponte misrepresented the
> conclusions of  the 1975 report published by the
National >Academy of Sciences (NAS),

Thats too much reading for me-- can you point to
something that's only a sentence long, yet will get
the point across just as well?

>If you want to know what someone ACTUALLY said,
> you should go back and read > the original rather
than >play Chinese Whispers.

This should be policy-- "no trusting web sources."

> I assume that Ed had me in mind with his reference
> to a "biased, axe-grinding environmentalist." This
is a
> fairly typical example of  what he calls his
"cordial" and
> "affable" approach to discussing this topic.

I wouldnt call his approach "cordial" or "affable"
either-- maybe "condecending," and "imposing" --but he
tries really hard, and gets it right usually.  With
this issue... well, Sheldon's right-- everybody has
*some* kind of bee up their butt.

~S~

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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageFr.php v1.4.2.12

body:
A new version of LanguageFr.php have been commited to the stable branch.

Can you put it on the server when you have some time.
Thanks.

-- Looxix


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I suppose "Jesus is Lord" is so horribly offending
> to some, that just by the ***sight*** of the name,
they
> might be repelled and flee away from Wikipedia.

Well -- I took point with that one, because it had to
be done--its way too POV/inflammatory/political, etc.
Dont be disingenous, Anthere. Plus the guy was being a
jerk -- making him change his name was a way to tap
him on the shoulder, and ask him to pay attention to
the wikiworld around him.

> Perhaps setting a scale of offense would be good
> here. Calling people nazi was tolerated for months,
but
> just seeing "Jesus is Lord" in the RC is not.
> Has a user already taken the name Nazi ?

Do you mean to insinuate that there are some passive
double standards in the way things are dealt with on
WP?  No kiddin. Wow.  What a thought.

What do you think Ed?
~S~

PS-- Ok, no more picking on Ed.  I mean it.

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from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: donation via FSF ? Re: donations

body:
Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>I confirm that two french people tried in various ways
>>to  donate and met impossibility. Yann donated through
>>paypal system with a french card last june.
>
>
>>From  Belgium, I  have various  issue with  Paypal. Can  we  imagine a
> donation via  (for example)  the FSF and  after you make  an agreement
> with them ?

Yes, that sounds good.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/help/donate.en.html

And for donations in France and Germany, donations are tax-deductable.

If the agree and there are no legal problems.

Or, it can be done the Wiki-way, the comunitiy can help. A very trusted
member of a Wikipedia can recieve money on this/her personal account for
wikipedia and transfer it to the paypall account when there is some.

Walter


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Louis wrote (in part):

> Well, as long as Tim Starling has his user-name-changebot warmed up and
> ready to go to work, there's no sense in stopping with our friend Mr.
> Jesus_Is_Lord!.  Why, there are any number of user names that someone
> might find just as offensive.

> Mydogategodshat - Two readings here, my/dog/ate/gods/hat and
> my/dog/ate/god/shat.  Both unacceptable.

I /do/ feel this one is unacceptable, and said so when it was first
discussed in May.  If feel it is directly comparable with our old friend the
radioactive chicken.

> I suggest that someone remove the vote presently taking place.  Let's
> forget about this, and odds are that whoever is using the JesusIsLord
> username for homophobic alter ego will lose interest in it and move on.

This is a good point, and is partly the reason I didn't push the point then.
The other part being that, while I dislike the user name, I don't feel it is
a big enough issue to shout about.

I feel pretty much the same way with "Jesus is Lord!"

Regards

sannse


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>And of course, as I've said, it would be inappropriate to ban people
>without due process, and I tend to suspect that this case if studied
>carefully would reveal the healthy debate that gives rise to NPOV
>rather than any actual bannable offenses.

I agree completely. I would not have bothered criticizing Ed as
strongly as I have if Ed had not announced his intention to ban
people unilaterally. To Ed's credit, he announced his intention
publicly before carrying through with it, thereby enabling people
such as myself and Jimbo to cry foul before harm was done. For the
record, I don't think Ed is a total jerk; he's just hot-headed and
irrational about this particular topic (global warming).

Ed wrote:

>Sorry about my "false claim", Sheldon. Perhaps I was wrong to believe
>Lowell Ponte, who attributed the "ice age" prediction to the NAS:

[Ponte quote snipped]

>Or maybe I was wrong to believe that S. Fred Singer was quoting Ponte
>correctly.

Singer correctly quoted Ponte, but it was deceptive for him to
suggest that Ponte's book represented the "then-prevailing mood" of
scientists and environmentalists in the 1970s. Actually, Ponte is not
and never was an environmentalist or a scientist. To the contrary,
he's a former Reader's Digest editor and Hollywood publicist who
writes nowadays for conservative websites such as GOPUSA.com and the
David Horowitz website FrontPageMagazine.com. (Do a Google search on
his name, and you'll see what I mean.) Like Ed, Ponte is a global
warming skeptic. In other words, the guy who was hawking an alarmist
book titled "The Cooling" in the 1970s is actually a member of Ed
Poor's own clan. It's really laughably absurd that Ed (parroting Fred
Singer) would quote Ponte now as an example of what "environmentalist
fearmongers" were supposedly saying in the 1970s.

>Or maybe I just misunderstood the quote. You're an expert on
>disinformation, and you probably have Ponte's book on your shelf.

Actually, I don't have Ponte's book, but William Connolley has read
it and critiqued it in some detail. Those who are interested can read
his critique at the following URLs:

http://www.wmc.care4free.net/sci/iceage/ponte.html
http://www.wmc.care4free.net/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html

As Connolley demonstrates, Ponte misrepresented the conclusions of
the 1975 report published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS),
titled "Understanding Climatic Change." The NAS report merely said
there was a "finite" (and small) chance that an Ice Age could begin
"within 100 years" -- hardly a "shocking" statement (as Ponte hyped
it at the time), certainly not "hysterical" (as Singer claims now),
and not at all a prediction (which is how Ed characterized the NAS
report that he obviously never read).

Here I should remind people that Connolley, a climate modeler for the
The British Antarctic Survey, is the very same climate scientist whom
Ed mentioned by name as an example of someone  he wanted to ban from
the Wikipedia. The irony here is that unlike Ed, Connolley has
actually taken the time to read both the 1975 NAS study AND Ponte's
book. Connolley went back to original sources, whereas Ed carelessly
relied for his conclusions on a quote of a quote of a quote. This is
only one example of how Connelley's scholarship is superior to Ed's.
Any serious scholar knows the importance of looking at primary
sources whenever possible. If you want to know what someone ACTUALLY
said, you should go back and read the original rather than play
Chinese Whispers. If anyone here is unfamiliar with the game of
"Chinese Whispers," (sometimes called "Telephone"), here's a web page
that explains it:
http://www.indiaparenting.com/funtime/partygames/cp001.shtml

For an example of how this sort of thing can get out of hand
regarding serious issues, here's another URL:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa011701a.htm

Ed continued:

>On the other hand, if Singer correctly quoted Ponte, and if he in turn
>correctly characterized the views of the NAS, then maybe my mistake lay
>in knuckling under to pressure from a biased, axe-grinding
>environmentalist.

I assume that Ed had me in mind with his reference to a "biased,
axe-grinding environmentalist." This is a fairly typical example of
what he calls his "cordial" and "affable" approach to discussing this
topic.

For those who think I'm wasting too much bandwidth on this or who
don't like to see me bashing Ed, I apologize. Normally this level of
detail belongs on a Wikipedia talk page rather than on wikien-l. If
Ed will promise to comply with Jimbo's pronouncement against banning
people without due process, I'll happily drop the topic so we can all
move on.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] username policy

body:
Jimbo asks:
> What's our exact policy on this?  I'd be happy to issue a ruling, but
> I'd prefer to stick with exact precedent.  But I don't remember what
> that is.

Advice and policy page (edit mercilessly):
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikipedia:username

Last I checked, Jimbo had delegated the ability to make the final and binding
decision to developers, interpreting the will of the broader community. Which I'm
sure will be done in due course, if it proves necessary.

The most recent precedent was [[user:SH]], where Tim Starling made the final
decision, after taking into account everyone's opinion.

hth,
-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


body:
Rick wrote:

> User:Retard seems to have disappeared without anyone having done
> anything about what, to me, was an offensive username.
>
>
>
> RickK
>
As is usually to be expected.  ... and since our absent Retard has
exclusive rights to the name, nobody else can use it.  It has banned itself.

Ec

>


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiP fairly flyin

body:
On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 05:02:39PM -0400, JDG wrote:
> Yay-- as of 21:00 UTC Wikipedia is fairly flyin (I say fairly because a few
> page loads still need to think about it for a moment before taking the
> plunge). Any chance we can get a bullet list of server additions/changes?
> I'm especially interested in whether you have any round robin happening. I'm

Currently only one of the two servers is running, the other one has some
hardware issues. Spare parts are on their way.

The one that's running has some probably SCSI-related problems that make
the box lock up every now and than. A new system board with a new SCSI
controller is to be installed soon.

> hoping to free up time to help out with some programming and maybe some
> server/DB admin, if you need it-- just want a feel for the new lay of the
> land.
>

The next step in programming is probably an increase in the amount of caching,
some intermediate steps could be cached in memory to increase processing speed.
PHP is not very strong in this area, Brion is currently examining memcached.

Regards,

JeLuF


body:
Jimbo wrote:

> I did a quick search in google and found no evidence that anyone
> named Leonard III ever existed, much less that he was a brilliant
> tactician in the 100 Years War.  I've removed it for now, and
> unless someone has a source, I think it should stay out."

We have very similar advice to that on Wikipedia, at:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:verifiability

We also have very similar discussion to that taking place here at:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:verifiability

and a related subpage:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Dates

All very much worth reading. If there are any points made here not adequately
addressed there, it would be great if someone could comment appropriately.

Cheers,
-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


list: textbook-l

from_name: Thomas Strohmann

subject: [Textbook-l] 3 months of wikibooks - some ideas...

body:
Hello,

On October 10, Wikibooks will be 3 months old. I was thinking that we could
take this as an occasion to write up a first 'quarter report'. It is truly
amazing to see how much has been done by volunteer work only and in that short
amount of time: 1 book relatively complete and dozens of other really cool
multimedia books in development!

Also, we could use our 3 month 'anniversary' to make some more advertisement -
for example by placing a 'Wikibooks Celebrates' link on the Wikipedia main
page. For Wikibooks holds the same principle as for every Wiki: the more
people we get involved, the better the project will become.

Cheers,

Thomas


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] hardware upgrades, donations

body:
So its hardware upgrades that have been taking the site
down so much lately ? Its nice that the intrest is growing
in wikidom but a pain to have a slow or unavailable wiki.

Time to get your monetary donations in. I made my first one
already thru Paypal to clear out some dollars I had
languishing there. I think its the power users who will be
ponying up the cash more than the casual readers ..
together we can make a difference.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
From: Stevertigo <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>> I suppose "Jesus is Lord" is so horribly offending
>> to some, that just by the ***sight*** of the name,
they
>> might be repelled and flee away from Wikipedia.

>Well -- I took point with that one, because it had to
>be done--its way too POV/inflammatory/political, etc.
>Dont be disingenous, Anthere.

Who ? Me ?? Disingenous ???

Never.

You must be confusing with Anth?re.
Or was it Anth?re ? or Anth?re ? Or Anth?re...err; I
do not remember exactly :-(

She was dishonnest.

>> Perhaps setting a scale of offense would be good
>> here. Calling people nazi was tolerated for months,
but
>> just seeing "Jesus is Lord" in the RC is not.
>> Has a user already taken the name Nazi ?

>Do you mean to insinuate that there are some passive
>double standards in the way things are dealt with on
>WP?  No kiddin. Wow.  What a thought.

Indeed. It was revealed to me by the Lord yesterday.

Btw, and here, I am very serious (seriously; really) :
what does "Retard" means ? (in french, it implies
"late")

I looked in my Harraps, and I fail to see where the
offense lays

Note that I did not very well saw what the offense
really was in TMC name; I know what cock means, but I
still do not see the connection with coq very well.

and I had to ask to KQ what was wrong with Tuf-Kat
initial name as well.

I am also still wondering if there is a second meaning
in Paige (as she appears to say on meta, but denied an
answer to me when I asked)

I know I am no reference there :-)

So, what is wrong with Retard ?

>What do you think Ed?
>~S~
>PS-- Ok, no more picking on Ed.  I mean it.

Yes. People were unnice to him. He was just blowing a
bit of despair, and calling for help.

That reminded me of that suicide note last year.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] www.wikipedia.com

body:
On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 03:03 AM, Walter Vermeir wrote:

> There is again an article about Wikipedia on a website;

Grr! They should stop doing then. If nobody knew about the site we
wouldn't have half as much trouble with the servers. ;)

> But when you use www.wikipedia.com it stays a .com

Fixed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l spam

body:
--- wikitech-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Send Wikitech-l mailing list submissions to
> 	wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org

> Attached is a zip file containing the output from
> SHOW PROCESSLIST.
> There is one file showing "typical" output, between
> the episodes, and
> three showing output in the middle of an episode.
> One thing stands out
> like a sore thumb:
>
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='167.206.112.85'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='217.244.15.107'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='80.55.166.58'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='66.196.90.11'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='172.176.254.188'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='220.54.212.24'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_id=7580
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='194.78.48.226'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='80.225.14.29'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='144.32.128.73'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='62.216.15.127'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='134.151.225.179'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='213.81.145.123'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='129.137.208.159'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='195.93.72.17'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='218.19.141.2'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='68.11.187.242'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='63.34.208.93'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='81.196.21.16'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE
> user_ip='202.156.2.82'
>
> Millions of user_newtalk requests, conspicuously
> absent from the typical
> dump. Many of them are doing "statistics", whatever
> that means, and the
> rest are locked. One side of me is curious as to
> what "statistics" means
> and why it produces this behaviour. The other side
> of me says
>
> KILL KILL KILL

Needless to say, I have no idea what you are talking
about

But I feel the KILL KILL KILL feeling each time the
mailing list is attacked by spamers, which in turn
fills up my mailing box of rebouncing dirt.

I would be curious to know how much spam other mailing
lists receive ? Now that I know every money problem
the african business man have, that I know how to
expand my penis to incredible size, and how to get
called "lips on fire", what ?

Is it possible to add some words to an anti-spam list,
and to have any message containing "sex", "enlarge",
"lips", "money", "daemon", "free business
proposition", "free flower" (if only, sigh) and such
just be automatically sent back ? ,(or just plainly dumped)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
There seems to be a strong consensus developing on [[m:Final logo
variants]] for this logo variant of the winning logo:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/7a/Nohat-wiki-logo.png

So far only one person has said that it is worse than the current (new)
logo while 19 have said that it is better. What do you say, should we try
the consensus approach for a change and just replace the logo until
someone objects very strongly and annoyingly? Then we can start refining
this one some more.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Who ? Me ?? Disingenous ???

:-)

> what does "Retard" means ? (in french, it implies
> "late")

LOL. En English it means "mentally retarded" --as in
"stunted growth". See "fire retardant".

> That reminded me of that suicide note last year.

Now thats not a fair comparison.

~S~

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop...

body:
I heard an "uncle."  Now, Sheldon, could you please
release your vulcan mindgrip on Ed?

Thanks.

~S~
Hasta lluego.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
It's an offensive term for a person with a limited intelligence -- someone who is mentally retarded.

RickK

Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Btw, and here, I am very serious (seriously; really) :
what does "Retard" means ? (in french, it implies
"late")

---------------------------------
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
Guillaume-
> No objection on Nohat's variant.
> But perhaps we can vote again :o) not for logo, but just for feature on the
> logo.
> For exemple :
> Color : Yes / B&W
> Texte on the globe : No / Big / Small
> Wikipedia : No / Upper / Lower
> Or something like that.
> Just a idea... but perhaps people against this logo will still against it...

I prefer voting/expressing my opinion on actual variants. For example, I
might prefer a color variant of Nohat's logo, but I do not like the
current color variants much (too pale). I might want *some* kind of text,
but then someone might create a totally cluttered variant and I would hate
it. So I'd say we should just encourage people to keep submitting variants
in all colors, shapes and sizes and then express our opinion on what we
think about those particular variants.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hot Issue: Profiling

body:
Tim,

Thanks for paying attention to the profiling issue -- I don't mean
[[racial profiling]], of course.

Identifying the parts of the code which are taking a long time to run,
is one of the best steps toward speeding up a system.

(By the way, if you really want my home phone number to contact me in an
emergency, just write me privately. I might not be any use with
technical details, but I have a long track record as a sympathetic
listener and CATALYST whose presence on a team seems to facilitate the
production of brilliant solutions by the the other team members.)

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spam and enlarging our capacity

body:
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
Subject: RE: [Wikitech-l] spam

>Anthere,

>I am not getting any of the mailing list spam you are
>talking about --
>at least, not in noticeable amounts.

That is *totally* unfair.

One or two weeks ago, I had a sort of rebouncing mail
which filled up my mailbox with more than 100 mails in
a couple of hours. When I went to the admin page, most
had to be treated individually to remove them from the
list. Thank God Brion helped me there to clean and to
block the mail.
Today, I just caught one soon after it started.
Fortunately, all had the same sending adress so it was
quick to clean.

But how happen you admin a list and have no spam ???

>I use Microsoft Outlook, and I'm behind a corporate
>firewall, so my
>experience may be different from yours. But I have
>configured my mail
>client (MS Outlook) to move e-mail containg words
>like:
>[Wikitech-l]
>Into a folder market Wikipedia Developers.

Is it possible then in the admin of the list, to
prevent the administrator to receive the individual
mails, just the reminders perhaps ?

Mind you, when I find more than 100 mails in my mail
box in the evening, I do not always dig for
unauthorized messages sent by careless wikipedia
editors under an unregistered email adress.

>My anti-spam strategy is a poor man's version of
>filtering.

>I leave everything in "Inbox", except e-mail from
>known sources like:

>* Business colleagues (address contains the same
>domain as mine)
>* Friends and relatives (added to a list, one by one)
>* Wikipedia (subject line contains "Wiki")

(I hope I am in the list :-))

Aren't you the listadmin for wikitech ? Do you
sometimes have messages to authorize ?

>I've heard of some sophisticated techniques >using
"Bayesian statistics"
>but I haven't tried them yet.

>Is there anything I can do, as mailing list
>administrator, to help get
>rid of spam?

>Ed Poor
>Wiki-tech admin
>Wikien admin

Explain to me why wikien-l and wikitech-l have no spam
perhaps :-)

And explain to the spamers I alone receive these
mails, ain't enlarge my penis, and my lips are ok, so
they can just drop the matter ?

Dunno :-(

Wikifr admin

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

From: Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l spam

On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Anthere wrote:

> Is it possible to add some words to an anti-spam
list,
> and to have any message containing "sex", "enlarge",
> "lips", "money", "daemon", "free business
> proposition", "free flower" (if only, sigh) and such
> just be automatically sent back ? ,(or just plainly
dumped)

>And how are we going to discuss getting MONEY to
>ENLARGE the capacity of our hardware then?

>Andre Engels

Err...french people do not discuss sex and money on
the mailing list Andr?. They discuss "sexe" (not even)
and "argent". Let's not be desperate upon enlarging
the hardware :-)

Soooo...perhaps a mail subject with a bunch of
classical english words might be enough to get rid of
the worse.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop bashing me

body:
Sheldon Rampton is annoying me. I wish he would be more affable.

In previous posts, he's wished aloud for the ability to murder me by
electrocution. I laughed that off, but...

I don't appreciate personal remarks like
* "I don't think Ed is a total jerk" -- Is he calling me "a jerk", or
what?
* "he's just hot-headed" -- this feels like an insult
* "irrational about ... global warming" -- this _is_ an insult

On several occasions he has tried to discredit me with unfair tactics.
Ironically, a central theme of his books and websites are that SKEPTICS
try to discredit environmentalists with unfair tactics. Well, it seems
to me that he is targeting me with the same tactics he complains of in
others. To do this would be rank hypocrisy.

I do not accuse him of hypocrisy, however; I say only, "If the shoe
fits, wear it." I beg Sheldon to ask himself sincerely if he's giving me
a fair shake or not; whether he's treating me the way he wants to be
treated himself, the way he wants environmentalists and scientists who
agree with his POV to be treated.

I wish he would stop taking one minor counter-example to a trend and
calling it representative of a supposed counter-trend. He's free to do
that in his books and on his website, of course. He has a POV and like
all other advocates he has a right to assert it. If he wants to call
Singer, Lindzen and Lomborg names, that's fine: they are public figures
and parties to the debate.

But I wish he would not treat me the same way as his ideological
opponents, in discussions with Wikipedians about how to write neutral
articles. I am not his opponent, nor am I a public figure. I'm just a
writer of encyclopedia articles. I'm trying to cover one of the top
controversial issues in the world - and do it neutrally.

I think my cooperation has been adequate, if not superlative. Rampton
hasn't given a single example of my having insisted on an unsupportable
point. In his previous letter, rather, he gave an example of just the
opposite.

So why is he criticizing me? And on what basis? What am I doing that's
anti-Wikipedian?

I have no objection to Rampton's POV. What annoys me is his tactic of
maligning my reputation, and his insults and threats. After a point, it
gets beyond being a joke.

I can safely say that am at least AVERAGE at maintaining Jimbo's NPOV
style of contribution at Wikipedia. I daresay I would be right to claim
that I'm ABOVE AVERAGE at this skill. If the number and quality of
comments I've gotten on my talk page and this mailing list are any
measure, I may possibly be ONE OF THE BEST at maintaining neutrality in
my  contributions at Wikipedia.

Mr. Rampton's edits to Wikipedia -- after our first clash -- have been
utterly neutral. He can apply the NPOV when he wants, much to his
credit.

Yet the way Sheldon Rampton characterized me is unfair. If I were a
litigious person, I'd... - but I'm not. I seek no damages, no apology. I
just wish he would stop his unfair criticisms and take care to avoid
anything which would (in his opinion) constitute an unfair discrediting
attack, if it were aimed by a "skeptic" at an "environmentalist".

Unabashedly,

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Sheldon Rampton [mailto:sheldon.rampton at verizon.net]
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 12:04 AM
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anti-scientific bias has me hopping mad!

Jimbo wrote:

>And of course, as I've said, it would be inappropriate to ban people
>without due process, and I tend to suspect that this case if studied
>carefully would reveal the healthy debate that gives rise to NPOV
>rather than any actual bannable offenses.

I agree completely. I would not have bothered criticizing Ed as
strongly as I have if Ed had not announced his intention to ban
people unilaterally. To Ed's credit, he announced his intention
publicly before carrying through with it, thereby enabling people
such as myself and Jimbo to cry foul before harm was done. For the
record, I don't think Ed is a total jerk; he's just hot-headed and
irrational about this particular topic (global warming).

Ed wrote:

>Sorry about my "false claim", Sheldon. Perhaps I was wrong to believe
>Lowell Ponte, who attributed the "ice age" prediction to the NAS:

[Ponte quote snipped]

>Or maybe I was wrong to believe that S. Fred Singer was quoting Ponte
>correctly.

Singer correctly quoted Ponte, but it was deceptive for him to
suggest that Ponte's book represented the "then-prevailing mood" of
scientists and environmentalists in the 1970s. Actually, Ponte is not
and never was an environmentalist or a scientist. To the contrary,
he's a former Reader's Digest editor and Hollywood publicist who
writes nowadays for conservative websites such as GOPUSA.com and the
David Horowitz website FrontPageMagazine.com. (Do a Google search on
his name, and you'll see what I mean.) Like Ed, Ponte is a global
warming skeptic. In other words, the guy who was hawking an alarmist
book titled "The Cooling" in the 1970s is actually a member of Ed
Poor's own clan. It's really laughably absurd that Ed (parroting Fred
Singer) would quote Ponte now as an example of what "environmentalist
fearmongers" were supposedly saying in the 1970s.

>Or maybe I just misunderstood the quote. You're an expert on
>disinformation, and you probably have Ponte's book on your shelf.

Actually, I don't have Ponte's book, but William Connolley has read
it and critiqued it in some detail. Those who are interested can read
his critique at the following URLs:

http://www.wmc.care4free.net/sci/iceage/ponte.html
http://www.wmc.care4free.net/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html

As Connolley demonstrates, Ponte misrepresented the conclusions of
the 1975 report published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS),
titled "Understanding Climatic Change." The NAS report merely said
there was a "finite" (and small) chance that an Ice Age could begin
"within 100 years" -- hardly a "shocking" statement (as Ponte hyped
it at the time), certainly not "hysterical" (as Singer claims now),
and not at all a prediction (which is how Ed characterized the NAS
report that he obviously never read).

Here I should remind people that Connolley, a climate modeler for the
The British Antarctic Survey, is the very same climate scientist whom
Ed mentioned by name as an example of someone  he wanted to ban from
the Wikipedia. The irony here is that unlike Ed, Connolley has
actually taken the time to read both the 1975 NAS study AND Ponte's
book. Connolley went back to original sources, whereas Ed carelessly
relied for his conclusions on a quote of a quote of a quote. This is
only one example of how Connelley's scholarship is superior to Ed's.
Any serious scholar knows the importance of looking at primary
sources whenever possible. If you want to know what someone ACTUALLY
said, you should go back and read the original rather than play
Chinese Whispers. If anyone here is unfamiliar with the game of
"Chinese Whispers," (sometimes called "Telephone"), here's a web page
that explains it:
http://www.indiaparenting.com/funtime/partygames/cp001.shtml

For an example of how this sort of thing can get out of hand
regarding serious issues, here's another URL:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa011701a.htm

Ed continued:

>On the other hand, if Singer correctly quoted Ponte, and if he in turn
>correctly characterized the views of the NAS, then maybe my mistake lay

>in knuckling under to pressure from a biased, axe-grinding
>environmentalist.

I assume that Ed had me in mind with his reference to a "biased,
axe-grinding environmentalist." This is a fairly typical example of
what he calls his "cordial" and "affable" approach to discussing this
topic.

For those who think I'm wasting too much bandwidth on this or who
don't like to see me bashing Ed, I apologize. Normally this level of
detail belongs on a Wikipedia talk page rather than on wikien-l. If
Ed will promise to comply with Jimbo's pronouncement against banning
people without due process, I'll happily drop the topic so we can all
move on.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: KNOTT, T

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Strohmann [mailto:Thomas.Strohmann at colorado.edu]
Sent: 09 October 2003 09:05
To: textbook-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [Textbook-l] 3 months of wikibooks - some ideas...

Hello,

>Also, we could use our 3 month 'anniversary' to make some more
advertisement.

Whilst I'm normally all for advertising. I wonder if it's a good idea to do
it now, what with the hardware upgrades slowing everything down. When we do
get new people, we don't want them put off by everything going at a snails
pace. (perhaps it's just me though, maybe others haven't found it difficult
to connect etc over the past few days ?)

Theresa


subject: [Wikitech-l] www.wikipedia.com

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

>There is again an article about Wikipedia on a website;
>
>http://www.thedenverchannel.com/technology/2539258/detail.html
>
>And for some strange reason the always use the domain www.wikipedia.com
>
That's something to be lived with.  Since Wikipedia has both the .com
and .org domains the searcher can still be easily served.

I believe that many people simply presume that a site is ".com" without
even looking at the facts.  Once they get to us we can explain the
situation, but not before.

Ec


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
> IMHO the best things to address for enhancing speed would be:
>
> * DB replication. For some reason, server time is much more readily
> donated than actual money. A few people have offered to host mirrors. I
> want to know if it is feasible to set up these small servers as full
> read-write mirrors -- a kind of distributed cluster. I imagine an
> architecture involving a local slave DB at each location, and the master
> DB on pliny.

I'm not an expert on MySQL, but MS SQL Server and Oracle both have
considerable native support for replication.  Perhaps MySQL does too; if
not, I think it would be a relatively simple matter to migrate to a
commercial database product that does.

There are various replication architectures that can be used, including
full read/write mirroring as you suggest.  With databases like WP where
there are mostly added rows and few sweeping updates, replication works
well.  Simple read-only replication utilizing the database transaction
log has much lower overhead and could work well if we were to use a
separate database for read-only access.

> * Hotspots in C. Profiling has shown that rendering wikitext takes a
> significant amount of processor time, and that there are reasonably
> small hotspots. A compile-time C/C++ extension to PHP to perform these
> tasks should increase speed significantly.
>
> -- Tim Starling.

I would be willing to do this, if it would help.  C++ is my langauge of
choice, though lately I've been profiling a bunch of C code and
rewriting it in 68k assembler.

<<AxelBoldt's suggestion about splitting traffic>>

Architecture-only solutions (caching, total splits and mirrors) have
their limits.  What about:

1.  Plan the architecture for N Apache/PHP servers.
2.  Each server sends database updates through a database session that
connects to, say, pliny.
3.  Each of the N Apache/PHP servers sends its read queries to one of M
database servers that is synchronized to pliny by reading pliny's
transaction log.

This architecture would scale well and exploit the fact that most access
is read-only, without changing the user experience.  I believe that as
the popularity of WP grows, there will be greater growth in read traffic
than edit traffic, and this architecture would fit well with that.

Louis


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Anthere wrote:

>So, what is wrong with Retard ?
>
J'esp?re que ma r?ponse ne soit pas en retard. :-)   Le sens du nom
"retard" (souvent prononc? REEE-tard) en anglais est plut?t dans le sens
d'un "retard?" en fran?ais.  Bien que cette terminologie ?tait une fois
tr?s ordinaire les retard?s ont commenc? ? y trouver insulte.  Alors la
necessit? d'?tre "politiquement correcte" exige l'utilisation d'une
terminologie plus encourageante.  Il ne fout jamais dire que les
retard?s sont retard?s.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Periodic lag problem

body:
Tim,

I wouldn't discount the possibility of a denial of service (DOS) attack,
but I also wouldn't panic and take an axe to the hard drive.

(I do have a poster on the wall depicting an angry duck who says
"Compute this!" as he initiates a violent act against his recalcitrant
machine, but this is more for venting my own frustration than as a model
for my own behavior ;-)

I'm intrigued by the periodic shutdown phenomena, and I really
appreciate your efforts at using perl to open the oyster, so to speak.
There's precious jewelry to be found somewhere in Wikipedia's innards,
and you're just the man to find it.

Ed Poor
Cheerleader, Coach and Vendor of Refreshments

P.S. May I fax you a fresh, hot cup of coffee?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Periodic lag problem

body:
Tim,

Please avoid harming any vital equipment belonging to Wikipedia: note
that this includes your head!!

8-)

Ed "I coulda had a V-8!" Poor


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> --- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>what does "Retard" means ? (in french, it implies
>>"late")
>
>
> LOL. En English it means "mentally retarded" --as in
> "stunted growth". See "fire retardant".

"To retard" is a perfectly legitimate verb meaning "to hold back" or "to
slow."  Assuming that it refers to a psycological condition is every bit
as ridiculous as assuming that "niggardly" has something to do with skin
color.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l spam

body:
I installed SpamAssassin on the server (from RPMs) but never quite got
to figuring out how to get things filtered through it.

If anyone's got experience with it, please advise.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 08:02 AM, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> I'm not an expert on MySQL, but MS SQL Server and Oracle both have
> considerable native support for replication.  Perhaps MySQL does too;

Go to mysql.com and type "replication" in the search.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] spam

body:
Anthere,

I am not getting any of the mailing list spam you are talking about --
at least, not in noticeable amounts.

I use Microsoft Outlook, and I'm behind a corporate firewall, so my
experience may be different from yours. But I have configured my mail
client (MS Outlook) to move e-mail containg words like:

[Wikitech-l]

Into a folder market Wikipedia Developers.

My anti-spam strategy is a poor man's version of filtering.

I leave everything in "Inbox", except e-mail from known sources like:

* Business colleagues (address contains the same domain as mine)
* Friends and relatives (added to a list, one by one)
* Wikipedia (subject line contains "Wiki")

I've heard of some sophisticated techniques using "Bayesian statistics"
but I haven't tried them yet.

Is there anything I can do, as mailing list administrator, to help get
rid of spam?

Ed Poor
Wiki-tech admin
Wikien admin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l spam

body:
You daemon! The prospect of getting better hardware has me smacking my
lips!!

But Anthere's proposition makes sense, if we can bring Bayesian sampling
techniques to full flower.

I got the idea from the Cunctator, who is actually not a bad fellow once
you see through the bluster.

Ed Poor


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> What's our exact policy on this?  I'd be happy to issue a ruling, but
> I'd prefer to stick with exact precedent.  But I don't remember what
> that is.
>
> --Jimbo

We don't have an exact policy. [[Wikipedia:Username]] is a good start,
but it's probably best to look at the revision before SV changed it in
response to this debate, in order to make this particular case a more
clear-cut violation. Although there's no exact policy, there is a broad
consensus, which IMHO trumps policy every time. Consensus beats policy,
principle beats consensus.

After TMC, there was a broad consensus that "offensive usernames" should
not be allowed. I interpreted this to mean offensive to a significant
minority, rather than offensive to the majority of people.

In the SH case and in this case, it was clear that most people are
interpreting the policy in a similar way. Although people who openly say
that they are personally offended by a given name are rare, a majority
in each case wanted the name changed. I was not at all offended
personally by SH, but I changed the name out of respect for those who
were offended.

My own personal opinion is that people who are not offended by a
particular name, and can see no reason why anyone else should be
offended, should abstain from voting, unless they have some other reason
why they believe the name is acceptable or unacceptable. That's their
choice, though.

In the SH case there was no formal vote, but a head count of opinions
expressed played the same role.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please change the embarrassing donations message and
	Re: The donation text

body:
There was general agreement on wikipedia-l that the
current donation text on each Wikipedia page should be
changed to:

   Find out how you can help [support] Wikipedia's
phenomenal growth.

with [support] being a link to
http;//wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising

Please 'make it so!' somebody. This message does not
apply to other projects for obvious reasons (another
message will have to be developed for them).

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 05:02:39PM -0400, JDG wrote:
>
>>Yay-- as of 21:00 UTC Wikipedia is fairly flyin (I say fairly because a few
>>page loads still need to think about it for a moment before taking the
>>plunge). Any chance we can get a bullet list of server additions/changes?
>>I'm especially interested in whether you have any round robin happening. I'm
>
>
> Currently only one of the two servers is running, the other one has some
> hardware issues. Spare parts are on their way.
>
> The one that's running has some probably SCSI-related problems that make
> the box lock up every now and than. A new system board with a new SCSI
> controller is to be installed soon.
>
>
>>hoping to free up time to help out with some programming and maybe some
>>server/DB admin, if you need it-- just want a feel for the new lay of the
>>land.
>>
>
>
> The next step in programming is probably an increase in the amount of caching,
> some intermediate steps could be cached in memory to increase processing speed.
> PHP is not very strong in this area, Brion is currently examining memcached.

IMHO the best things to address for enhancing speed would be:

* DB replication. For some reason, server time is much more readily
donated than actual money. A few people have offered to host mirrors. I
want to know if it is feasible to set up these small servers as full
read-write mirrors -- a kind of distributed cluster. I imagine an
architecture involving a local slave DB at each location, and the master
DB on pliny.

* Hotspots in C. Profiling has shown that rendering wikitext takes a
significant amount of processor time, and that there are reasonably
small hotspots. A compile-time C/C++ extension to PHP to perform these
tasks should increase speed significantly.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Erik,

>There seems to be a strong consensus developing on [[m:Final logo
>variants]] for this logo variant of the winning logo:

>http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/7a/Nohat-wiki-logo.png

>So far only one person has said that it is worse than the current
>(new) logo while 19 have said that it is better. What do you say,
>should we try the consensus approach for a change and just replace
>the logo until someone objects very strongly and annoyingly? Then
>we can start refining this one some more.

I wouldn't call that "consensus approach", more "dictatorship until
protest", but I think it could work.

Regards, Till
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Browsers and editors separated on two servers

body:
To continue the saga of grand new schemes-that-solve-it-all, to be
implemented by someone else:

One server (the bigger one), let's call it edit-en, operates exactly
like our current system. Except it's closed to all spiders and runs
apache and mysql on one machine.

The other server, let's call it en, only runs apache and serves a static
tree to the world. The static tree is updated once a night from edit-en.
It's spidered by Google and takes the brunt of the browsers. Its
interface is radically stripped: no logging in, no cookies, no
RecentChanges, no special pages. Just a search box, What-links-here,
Edit-this-page, Discuss-this-page and page-history. The latter three
direct to edit-en; edit-en decides whether its version is newer than
en's version, and if so, displays a warning and lets people edit away.

The unwashed masses that come in through Google will thus never touch
edit-en.

The updating of en's versions could be done by dumping the whole
database and let en format it into a static HTML tree (probably too
slow), or by having edit-en always store its cached files in the file
system, to be periodically exported to en via rsync (need to make sure
that *all* files are cached, of course).

Benefits:
* hopefully speedup (but can edit-en alone do a decent job for us
   editors?)
* to be done with current hardware
* simpler interface for drive-by-browsers
* Future extension: have several static ens, use DNS
   round-robin on them.
* En can have a nice fast htdig search whose index is statically
   computed once (or is that too slow?).
* The servers are almost independent; if either one goes
   down, Wikipedia is at least still readable.
* If the rsync variant is chosen, we could offer public rsync
   and static Wikipedia mirrors would spring up all over the world.

Drawbacks:
* some programming to distribute the static HTML to en.
* Edit wars or vandalizing could increase shortly prior to the
   time of storing a static version on en (maybe randomize the
   time of doing that?)
* Copyright violations and vandalizations sometimes stay visible
   for a whole day.

Axel


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] www.wikipedia.com

body:
There is again an article about Wikipedia on a website;

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/technology/2539258/detail.html

And for some strange reason the always use the domain www.wikipedia.com

So far can see all the XX.wikipedia.com domains point to the
XX.wikipedia.org domains.

But when you use www.wikipedia.com it stays a .com

Should when you enter www.wikipedia.com it not display www.wikipedia.org
or en.wikipedia.org?

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop bashing me

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> but so long as there are no fundamental policy questions here, the
> matter should be taken to the respective talk pages.

Seconded.

--Jimbo


body:
> Explain to me why wikien-l and wikitech-l have no spam
> perhaps :-)

Wikien-l is configured to "pass" only messages from subscribers. All
other messages are put on "hold" until an administrator deals with them.

I don't know who was dealing with this before my vacations this year,
but recently I've been looking once a week and deleting anything that
didn't look look a legitimate message.

I **!! NEVER !!** communicate with spammers. Telling them not to send
more mail only alerts them to the fact that they've found a real live
human being, someone who might read their, um, merde. Until the US
Congress passes an anti-spam law, it's best just to delete unwanted
e-mail.

If you need help configuring Wiki-fr you could e-mail the password
privately and I could take a look.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting Tamil WikiPedia

body:
The absence of comments on this very brief request from

amala2singh at yahoo.com

suggests that nobody noticed in the midst of much other activity.
 Perhaps somebody could contact him.
Ec

Amala Singh wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I would like to start Tamil Wikipedia. But I have no
>I idea to whom to contact and how to go ahead with
>this.
>
>Can anybody help me regarding this?
>
>Amala Singh.
>


from_name: Ivo Köthnig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Feature Requests on Meta-Wiki

body:
Hello,

i am Ivo K?thnig (nick: Coma) from the german wikipedia. I have made some
feature requests on the metawiki. I would like to inform you here, so you can
give comments or improve the ideas.

The first request was not originally my idea, but is an old wish from Kurt
Jansson (also from the german wikipedia). The topic is a "meta namespace" to
put some meta informations inside. More informations can be found here:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-Namespace

The second is an Rewievers Mode, which focuses on the interests of rewiewers
for articles.  More informations can be found here:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviewers_Mode

The last idea is an java-chat to improve comunicatian of actual users online.
More informations can be found here:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultan_Java-Chat

best regards
Coma


body:
I recommend to go to 'privacy options' and then 'sender filters'.
Scroll to the bottom.  For the setting for what happens when people
who are not subscribed send email to the list, click on either
'reject' or 'discard'.  And then set the next setting so that when
that automatic action happens, you are not notified.

This will eliminate virtually all of the spam that you have to deal
with as a list administrator.

The decision between 'reject' and 'discard' is based on this: If you
discard, it is kinder to the world at large in the sense that you
don't bother responding with a rejected message to the 99% of what you
get that is totally useless spam from invalid messages.  If you
'reject', it is kinder to the unfortunate list member who accidentally
doesn't realize that they posted from the wrong address.

A discard does not send out a notification to the sender at all, it
just discards their message and that's the end of that.

So I slightly favor 'reject'.

--Jimbo


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop bashing me

body:
On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 13:37, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Yet the way Sheldon Rampton characterized me is unfair. If I were a
> litigious person, I'd... - but I'm not. I seek no damages, no apology. I
> just wish he would stop his unfair criticisms and take care to avoid
> anything which would (in his opinion) constitute an unfair discrediting
> attack, if it were aimed by a "skeptic" at an "environmentalist".
>
> Unabashedly,
>
> Ed Poor
This isn't at all an unreasonable request. Ed has brought forward a
legitimate problem, and in his frustration has made a threat to
temporarily ban NPOV violators. The consensus is that he should not do
this, but that these NPOV violations should be brought to the attention
of the community, since as Ed said, explaining NPOV and being cordial
did not work.

No one is at risk of anything. Let's heed the intent of Ed's words and
take the sharper parts with a grain of salt.


from_name: Alex R.

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Please change the embarrassing donations message
	and Re: The donation text

body:
It seems when I log on there is still the same
donation text:

"We are trying to make Wikipedia faster and more responsive. You can help by
making a donation. "

There seemed to be general consensus that it should
be changed with some suggestions from me from
keeping it from appearing like an outright solicitation.

Is there a final proposal?

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please don't put words in my mouth

body:
Gareth,

I know the difference between my POV and "scientific consensus". I don't
recall ever claiming that there was a scientific consensus confirming my
own POV. Please quote an e-mail, talk comment or article edit that
implies otherwise, or stop speculating publicly about what I "could not
realise".

I find such comments belittling and well as insulting.

Anyway, my CURRENT position is that MEDIA reports I've seen in the last
decade OVERWHELMINGLY support the GW hypothesis. I am aware of only 3
scientists who disagree with it:

* Lindzen - prof. at MIT
* Balunias - astronomer at Harvard
* Singer - (retired?) scientist who pioneered satellite temp.
measurements

I've been consistent about QUESTIONING the Democratic Party platform
plank which claimed a "scientific consensus" on GW. If any one has
identified their own POV with scientific consensus, it's the US
Democratic Party -- not me. So don't try to pin that on me.

In fact, don't put words in my mouth at all. The dust makes me choke,
and then I have to gargle with Listerine. :-(

Ed Poor


from_name: Kaustubh

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
This looks great! I would say go ahead and change it!

On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 13:29, Erik Moeller wrote:
> There seems to be a strong consensus developing on [[m:Final logo
> variants]] for this logo variant of the winning logo:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/7a/Nohat-wiki-logo.png
>
> So far only one person has said that it is worse than the current (new)
> logo while 19 have said that it is better. What do you say, should we try
> the consensus approach for a change and just replace the logo until
> someone objects very strongly and annoyingly? Then we can start refining
> this one some more.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
Alex R. wrote:

> It seems when I log on there is still the same
> donation text:
>
> "We are trying to make Wikipedia faster and more responsive. You can help by
> making a donation. "
>
> There seemed to be general consensus that it should
> be changed with some suggestions from me from
> keeping it from appearing like an outright solicitation.
>
> Is there a final proposal?
>
> Alex756
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 02:24 PM, Jens Frank wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 03:46:22PM -0500, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>> There are a number of advantages, among the more important being that
>> the domain can be more readily redirected if the IP is unavailable.
>> For
>
> Just assign the IP to another box. Like www.wikipedia.org is currently
> using Larousse's IP on Pliny.

The limitation of this, at least with our present configuration, is
that we can't really get at the machines except through the network,
and if we've taken over the IP by another machine and then bring that
machine up, it won't be able to get at the network because its IP is in
use. So, we've got to release the IP, then bring up the machine, which
will lead to a few minutes of downtime on that IP... assuming the
machine does come back up.

Alternatives include assigning 'internal use' and external IPs, or a
serial terminal server that we can get directly at the machines
through, and which can be got at through the network. (I remember
hearing something about we might have one waiting for the next upgrade?
I don't know details though.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Could someone please come and referee?

body:
Richard wisely observed:

> Basically, Ed forgot one of the fundamental rules of sysophood: "Sysop

> powers may not be used in disputes on articles where the sysop is a
party
> to the dispute (has contributed to the article)."
> His correct action would have been to post "I'm fed up with these
people,
> could someone please come and referee?" without suggesting suspension.

Well, ex-cuuuuse me for voicing a wish. I'm only human.

So you gonna come referee, or what?

The Edinator


from_name: Paul N Stansifer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo consensus

body:
I'm using Lynx right now, so I can't tell if you've made the change, but I
support it, especially because the current version isn't a final draft at
all.  I'm working on incorporating Nohat's changes that are unambiguously
beneficial to my branch of the logo, but the GIMP is very slow for
3200x3200 images, so it's taking me a while.  Anyways, why don't we rotate
between the versions that got more "better than current" votes in order to
generate interest in the process?  Also, it won't imply that we're done
with this (at least, I'm not, and I want a chance to put together a more
"conservative" variant incorporating the minor necessary changes).  Sorry
I'm being so slow about this!

(Also, I think that
[[m:image:paullusmagnus-logo_(small)_less_cluttered1.png]] is better
anyways....  I guess I didn't make it clear what its purpose was...
oops.)

Paul/Paullusmagnus


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please change the embarrassing donations message
	and	Re: The donation text

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

> Please 'make it so!' somebody. This message does not
> apply to other projects for obvious reasons (another
> message will have to be developed for them).
>
> -- mav

New message is on line, it is still appearing on the
printable version of the text.
I believe there was also consensus about taking
it off the printable version.

Alex756

>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
> http://shopping.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grandfather Louis for sysop

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I don't know who Grandfather Louis is. Surely not a refugee from "The
>Munsters"? ;-)
>
>But everything he says makes sense. He's gained my instant respect, and
>respect is something I usually give out grudgingly.
>
>He plainly has a lot of on-line experience. And he doesn't write
>anything like Martin Harper - or Lir. (Actually, his style is closer to
>Jimbo's if anyone's but I detect a Confucianist flavor.)
>
>If he's not a sysop, he should be one.
>
>
Unless this is some sort of an allusion I've completely missed, perhaps
what you're looking for is here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#Nominations_for_adminship

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
There is nothing particularly difficult about setting up DNS, and there
is no reason you can't run DNS on both servers, setting up one as a
secondary.  This is what should be done.  I wouldn't trust register.com
for a minute for as much traffic as WP gets.

Also, I highly recommend www.easydns.com for reliable secondary service.
  I have no relationship with them other than as a satisfied customer.
They have servers on two or three continents and will set them up as
secondaries for a nominal fee, around $50 a year as I recall.

There are a number of advantages, among the more important being that
the domain can be more readily redirected if the IP is unavailable.  For
example, if because of some ISP related snafu, the IP has to change on
short notice, you can rely on the easyDNS secondary to provide service
until Veri$ign and the root nameservers can get updated.  Similarly, if
the WP has to be rehosted at another location on short notice, the
traffic can be switched, pronto, without waiting around for the root
nameservers.

Anyway, BIND can be set up to serve requests in round-robbin fasion.
For that matter, if you want 1/3 of the traffic to pliny and 2/3 to
larousse that could be done without much trouble as well.

Louis

Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, JDG wrote:
>>
>>>Can someone answer my question about round robin, whether it is in the works
>>>or at least planned?
>>
>>YES, absolutely.
>
>
> And while that's on my mind; how do we go about setting up a clean round
> robin DNS that's fairly tolerant of one of the servers dropping out for
> "unplanned maintenance"?
>
> I think we're currently using register.com's default DNS servers; would we
> need to set up our own?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Matthew J. Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ahem

body:
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Allan Crossman wrote:

> While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I should note here that I have
> deleted the odious article [[Finding child pornography on the Internet]] even
> though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think it was obviously not going to
> survive, and deleting it as fast as possible seemed a good idea...

A deletion that I support, fwiw.

-Morven


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
Sanford,

Would it be feasible to take the work done on the US
Constitution and Government and/or US History books and
adapt it to fit the CA state standards in place of the
World History Project ?

Um, congrats or condolances on your new governor, depending
on your opinion.

Karl

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from_name: JDG

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
"JDG" <jimg5 at optonline.net> wrote in message
news:bm1u22$jm7$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Yay-- as of 21:00 UTC Wikipedia is fairly flyin (I say fairly because a
few
> page loads still need to think about it for a moment before taking the
> plunge). Any chance we can get a bullet list of server additions/changes?
> I'm especially interested in whether you have any round robin happening.
I'm
> hoping to free up time to help out with some programming and maybe some
> server/DB admin, if you need it-- just want a feel for the new lay of the
> land.
>
> --
> JDG

Can someone answer my question about round robin, whether it is in the works
or at least planned? All this DB talk is fine, but judging by the _way_ in
which wikipedia is slow, I'm all but certain a very simple DNS Round Robin
with two Apache processes on two separate machines is the immediate ticket
to _nuch_ improved response.

__
JDG


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Spam (thank yous)

body:
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
Subject: RE: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spam and enlarging our
capacity

>Wikien-l is configured to "pass" only messages from
>subscribers. All
>other messages are put on "hold" until an
>administrator deals with
>them.

We do the same

>I don't know who was dealing with this before my
>vacations this year,
>but recently I've been looking once a week and
>deleting anything that
>didn't look look a legitimate message.

Once a week...

>I **!! NEVER !!** communicate with spammers. Telling
>them not to send more mail only alerts them to the
>fact that they've found a real live human being,
>someone who might read their, um, merde. Until the US
>Congress passes an anti-spam law, it's best just to
>delete unwanted e-mail.

Please DO PASS that law ! :-)

But if you email automatically reject their mail, do
they think there is a human being .

>If you need help configuring Wiki-fr you could e-mail
>the password privately and I could take a look.

Thanks, I made some changes upon Jimbo
recommandations. I'll see. I fear I totally forgot the
fr password btw. I must have written it somewhere :-(

Ed Poor

From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>

>I installed SpamAssassin on the server (from RPMs)
but >never quite got  to figuring out how to get
things >filtered through it.

>If anyone's got experience with it, please advise.

Yes, if anyone with experience....please advise Brion

From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>

>I recommend to go to 'privacy options' and then
>'sender filters'.
>Scroll to the bottom.  For the setting for what
>happens when people
>who are not subscribed send email to the list, click
>on either
>'reject' or 'discard'.  And then set the next setting
>so that when
>that automatic action happens, you are not notified.

>The decision between 'reject' and 'discard' is based
>on this: If you
>discard, it is kinder to the world at large in the
>sense that you
>don't bother responding with a rejected message to
the >99% of what you
>get that is totally useless spam from invalid
>messages.  If you
>'reject', it is kinder to the unfortunate list member
>who accidentally
>doesn't realize that they posted from the wrong
>address.

>A discard does not send out a notification to the
>sender at all, it
>just discards their message and that's the end of
>that.

>So I slightly favor 'reject'.

Oh, right. Thank you. I looked at these pages. I made
a change "just" not to receive notice on my mail for
now.  When I am bored and the ml rather sleeping, I
will switch to "reject". "Discard" is imho impolite.

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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l spam

body:
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Anthere wrote:

> Is it possible to add some words to an anti-spam list,
> and to have any message containing "sex", "enlarge",
> "lips", "money", "daemon", "free business
> proposition", "free flower" (if only, sigh) and such
> just be automatically sent back ? ,(or just plainly dumped)

And how are we going to discuss getting MONEY to ENLARGE the capacity
of our hardware then?

Andre Engels


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>"To retard" is a perfectly legitimate verb meaning "to hold back" or "to
>slow."  Assuming that it refers to a psycological condition is every bit
>as ridiculous as assuming that "niggardly" has something to do with skin
>color.

Certainly not every bit!
"niggardly" /never/ has anything to do with skin color.
"retard" really can refer to a psychological condititon --
especially when it's a noun (as usernames typically are).

Here are the varios meanings of "retard" as a noun (from the OED):
1: "Retardation, delay."
Example (1971): "The Government, somewhat in retard of the fact,
enacted the..eugenic protection law in 1949."
2: "retard of the tide"
3: "A device in a motor vehicle for retarding the ignition spark."
4: "U.S. slang. A mentally retarded person."

Which is most likely?  Certainly, we do not /know/,
just as we didn't /know/ that "TMC" didn't mean
a Godzilla-like 100-foot-tall, vibrating rooster.
Heck, he even said that it /did/ mean that!

Not that this is directly relevant to anything,
since as somebody (Ec?) mentioned before,
[[User:Retard]] has banned the name for us already,
by leaving some time ago, probably forever.

-- Toby


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
> There seems to be a strong consensus developing on [[m:Final logo
> variants]] for this logo variant of the winning logo:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/7a/Nohat-wiki-logo.png
>
> So far only one person has said that it is worse than the current (new)
> logo while 19 have said that it is better. What do you say, should we try
> the consensus approach for a change and just replace the logo until
> someone objects very strongly and annoyingly? Then we can start refining
> this one some more.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

No objection on Nohat's variant.
But perhaps we can vote again :o) not for logo, but just for feature on the
logo.
For exemple :
Color : Yes / B&W
Texte on the globe : No / Big / Small
Wikipedia : No / Upper / Lower
Or something like that.
Just a idea... but perhaps people against this logo will still against it...

Aoineko


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking up against the mob

body:
I have been watching the "vote" and conversation here regarding
User:Jesus_is_Lord! with interest.  I am saddened to see what I believe
is a mob justice attitude developing.

I wish there were something I could do, since I believe this is
unfolding most unfairly, and in a fashion detrimental to the Wiki.

The first edits under the name Jesus_is_Lord! began October 6.
Generally, the edits appear helpful and in good faith.  Most have been
made to articles addressing homosexual issues.  In contrast to the
assumption many have made (me included until I read through the
history), the edits do not reflect an anti-gay bias.

Several users complained about the name, here on the mailing list and on
the wiki.  There was brief discussion that rapidly deteriorated into a
"vote".  While a majority of people have "voted" to impose a mandatory
name change, there are also clear reservations.

I am concerned about several aspects of this, um, process.

1. The vote took place before discussion was complete, which isn't
supposed to be how we do things.

2. I am really rather dumbfounded by the number of Wikipedians who
usually have a strong libertarian bias and are ordinarily ardent
supporters of freedom of expression, who have voted to force a name
change.  These are largely the same people so strongly oppose censorship
of any kind when the substance of the material is different.

3. Forcing a name change in this case is inconsistent with our treatment
of other, similar users.  In the interest of fairness and consistency,
if we are going to force a name change by technical means in this case,
we ought to in the several others that have been enumerated in previous
posts to the list.

4. I believe that there are elements of retributive justice in some
people's thinking, as in SV's statement that "the guy was being a jerk
-- making him change his name was a way to tap him on the shoulder, and
ask him to pay attention to the wikiworld around him."  This line of
reasoning has no place here.  The fact that the user has limited
history, appears to have edited under other names, is making edits some
object to, etc etc etc etc should have nothing to do with the decision
making here.

5. I also believe that a "herd mentality" has developed in the vote:
people are voting to force a change because they want to support other
users who have already voted the same way.  I steadfastly refuse that
the 20 or so wikipedians who have voted this way have each independently
evaluated the evidence and made a thoughtful decision on the merits.

6. The "there ought to be a law" ad hoc invention of rules and
governance procedures is simply inappropriate at Wikipedia, except in
egregious cases, which this isn't.

7. The various threats of immediate action by developers who have the
technical means at their disposal to carry them out, are uncalled for
and have made consensus harder to achieve.

8. Lastly, forcing someone to change their name through technical means
is not going to build community.  It is not going to bring the
Wikipedians closer together, or build solidarity, or make WP a more
comfortable, friendly project.  There is an old saying: Friends come and
go, while enemies tend to accumulate over time.  Is it worth it for us
to make another user upset with Wikipedia?

So, in light of all this, I once again call for the vote to be
discontinued, and encourage everyone who has taken strong positions one
way or another to retract them so that there is enough space for
discussion and consensus.

Respectfully

Louis


body:
John Robinson wrote:

> What I find "offensive", and what I think should be a bannable offense,
> is this (from what I can tell, fairly recent) spate of new accounts that
> are obviously Wikipedia old hands (displaying intricate knowledge of the
> system, talking about events that happened months and years ago), which
> are being created to cause disruption in the pursuit of some "agenda."
> [...]
> -Hephaestos

I'm not quite sure exactly what Hephaestos is trying to say.  In case he
or anyone else is wondering, I would like to make a couple things clear.

1.  I am not a previously banned user.
2.  I am not JiL.
3.  As I have stated before, I am not Martin Harper.

I believe my contributions and posts speak for themselves; speculation
as to my identity accomplishes little.  If anyone has any further
questions or concerns about who I am or am not, I would be happy to
address them on my talk page.