subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/17/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/archives/2006/06/17/the-new-york-times-gets-it-exactly-backwards/

Since no one else has pointed it out, here's their "correction":
A front-page headline on Saturday with an article about the online
reference work Wikipedia referred imprecisely to its "anyone can edit"
guidelines, which have always restricted changes in a small percentage
of articles. While Wikipedia has indeed added a category of articles
that are "semi-protected" from editing, it has not "revised" its
policy or otherwise put additional restrictions on editing; it says
the change is intended to reduce the number of entries on which
editing is banned altogether.
--

I'm not sure what our '"anyone can edit" guidelines' are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction ?

I am uncomfortable with saying "the change is intended to reduce the
number of entries on which editing is banned altogether" - in
practice, I think it's used on many articles where people just get
sick of cleaning up the vandalism by hand, and the threshold for use
is probably lower than the threshold for using full protection. It's a
perfectly acceptable compromise to me, but we should be honest about
it.

I also note there is very little at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-protection or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy which
explictly says that semi-protection is intended to improve openness or
"anyone can edit"-ness.

There is also a link to a post from Jimbo a few months ago, which
includes this quote:
"2.  A great many minor bios of slightly well known but controversial
individuals are subject to POV pushing trolling, including vandalism,
and it seems likely that in such cases, not enough people have these on
their personal watchlists to police them as well as we would like.
Semi-protection would at least eliminate the drive-by nonsense that we
see so often." http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046883.html

That seems to support the notion that semi-protection should be used
in cases where previously no protection at all applied.

Is my conscience pricking me unnecessarily?

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-stuff (was Re: New York Times article)

body:
On 6/22/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> We've all seen users completely blocked because of a regrettable
> tendency to upload copyvios or create POV forks or move-war.  Now, they
> could be otherwise intelligent people who think they know about
> copyright law but don't; or useful contributors when they're being
> supervised by other people on controversial articles, but who feel free
> to let rip on their "own" fork articles; or people who insist on
> treating the "move" button as a toy and causing unnecessary work for
> admins and unnecessary stress for non-admins.  In that last case, Curps'
> bot caught at least one offender, but that's hardly reliable.
>
> It would be nice to be able to prevent certain people from doing
> obnoxious things without blocking them completely.  We shouldn't have to
> block otherwise sane users because of a minor foible.

While this sounds like a good idea in theory, I think the model of
having a class of users *less* empowered than the default class is
unworkable. They would obviously simply create new accounts when they
had these priveleges taken away from them. The only way to do it would
be to provide these privileges after some number of edits/days with
the project, and revoke them as needed. I suppose it *could* work with
editors who have invested a lot in their username...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/21/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure Selina didn't say anything about evil crony nepotistic
> conspiracies, so maybe you should tone down your rhetoric.

No one said anything about trust and confidential information either.
They're just two extreme interpretations.

> History has shown us that when power is concentrated among the few without
> any formal regulation the long-term result is pernicious.

The history of wikis? Or the history of governments? What is the "long
term"? 2 years? 50? 200?

Steve


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
For 18 miles, uphill, both ways, in the snow!

On 6/22/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/22/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Neil Harris wrote:
> > > Arwel Parry wrote:
> > >> In message
> > >> <980278fa0606171146h719fef74g2bc6333b4d42e826 at mail.gmail.com>, John
> > >> Lyden <rasputinaxp-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
> > >>
> > >>> On 6/17/06, Conrad Dunkerson
> > >>> <conrad.dunkerson-XfrvlLN1Pqtfpb/ySbbPhw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>> Ok, stop... you're making me all nostalgic. I think it all started
> to
> > go
> > >>>> downhill when the modems became capable of transferring text faster
> > than
> > >>>> you could read it (aka 2400 baud). :]
> > >>>>
> > >>> By that measure, my downhill was 9600 baud.
> > >>>
> > >>> Of course, I jumped right from my 1200 baud Multitech to a 14.4K on
> my
> > >>> 486. Jump to lightspeed!
> > >>>
> > >> Some of us started out on 10 c.p.s. teletypes and input our first
> > >> programs on paper tape....
> > >>
> > >>
> > > Paper tape? Luxury. What's wrong with toggling your programs in using
> > > the panel switches?
> > >
> >
> > (mutters something about the luxury of switches and having to rely on
> > compass needles twiddling and having to wave magnets, uphill both ways
> > in the snow)
> >
>
> In my day, our computers and calculators were our fingers and toes. I
> could
> only count to eighteen because I lost my pinky and big toe hunting wooly
> mammoths.
>
> (uphill, both ways, in the snow)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N. (Now with 2% Juice)
http://ilya.nepfamily.com (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimarkup request: -- to em-dash

body:
On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 11:37:16AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
>
> > Would requiring spaces on either side of the double dash before
> > converting it into an emdash improve the parsing behavior any?
>
> No; the conversion simply needs to be smart enough not to damage markup, but to
> instead operate only in plain text areas. (Additionally it probably ought to
> exclude itself from areas like <pre>, <tt>, and <code>.)

That's a shame.  It seemed like such a good idea, too. . . .

>
> >  It
> > should at least solve the image name problem, since spaces in image
> > names should (in my honest opinion) be considered a no-no in any case.
> > Then again, I'm not in charge, of course.
>
> On the contrary, spaces are highly recommended in image names. Names should be
> descriptive; "Lake McFoobar viewed from Mount Baz lookout point.jpg" is strongly
> preferred to, say, "DSC000247.JPG".
>
> Note that images' names are going to be more and more decoupled from their
> physical filenames in the future; the file extension won't have to be maintained
> as part of the wiki name for it and it will be possible to change names after
> uploading.

Ahh, right, I'd forgotten the discussion about decoupling displayed
image names from image filenames.  Mea culpa.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
This sig for rent:  a Signify v1.14 production from http://www.debian.org/


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
Arwel Parry wrote:
> In message
> <980278fa0606171146h719fef74g2bc6333b4d42e826 at mail.gmail.com>, John
> Lyden <rasputinaxp-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>
>> On 6/17/06, Conrad Dunkerson
>> <conrad.dunkerson-XfrvlLN1Pqtfpb/ySbbPhw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, stop... you're making me all nostalgic. I think it all started to go
>>> downhill when the modems became capable of transferring text faster than
>>> you could read it (aka 2400 baud). :]
>>>
>> By that measure, my downhill was 9600 baud.
>>
>> Of course, I jumped right from my 1200 baud Multitech to a 14.4K on my
>> 486. Jump to lightspeed!
>>
>
> Some of us started out on 10 c.p.s. teletypes and input our first
> programs on paper tape....
>
>
Paper tape? Luxury. What's wrong with toggling your programs in using
the panel switches?

-- Neil


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikitech-l] Urdu Wikipedia gone?

body:
Hoi,
It is there for me :)
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 6/22/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all, I can't see the Urdu Wikipedia http://ur.wikipedia.org/
>
> What's up?
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Eliminating homographs in usernames: was: Re:
	Pruning "dead" accounts (was Re: New York Times article)

body:
The only problem is languages that don't have latin alphabets.

You can't restrict them to being only one charset. For example, Russian. I
don't want to be User:??????? , but then again there may be users that use
cyrillic in their names.

On 6/20/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Chris L?er wrote:
> > At 09:59 AM 6/19/2006, Guettarda wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Don't forget the accounts which exist to prevent impersonation in one's
> main
> >> language - names with capital I's to mimic L's and Cyrillic characters.
> >> Deleting these would just open things up for abuse again.
> >>
> >
> > Is there are a reason why user names with weird Unicode characters
> > are even allowed? It would seem sensible to limit user names on each
> > Wikipedia to the alphabet that is used in that language.
> >
> >          Chl
> >
> >
> >
> A suggestion, based on practices used for IDN registration:
>
> Restrict new usernames on the en: Wikipedia to characters from the Latin
> alphabet and selected punctuation only (and possibly digits as well).
>
> Before allowing a username to be registered, generate a canonical
> comparison form by Unicode normalization, lowercasing, punctuation and
> space suppression and accent-stripping, followed by homograph
> canonicalizations such as mapping both digit zero and letter O to the
> latter, digit 1 and letter L to the latter, eth to lowercase d, etc.
>
> A new username should then only be allowed to be registered if the
> comparison form of the proposed new username is different from the
> comparison form of every existing username (which are stored in an
> indexed table, alongside the full, uncanonicalized name that actually
> gets registered).
>
> Doing this will eliminate the vast majority of all simple username
> spoofing hacks.
>
> Existing usernames get grandfathered in, of course.
>
> -- Neil
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N. (Now with 2% Juice)
http://ilya.nepfamily.com (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo's rule, copyright, old images with permission only

body:
Revisiting http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023760.html
and checking the long long long list of images at [[Category:Images
used with permission]] there are many of them kept becuase they were
uploaded before such date.

It's been more than a year since the ruling, I believe older images
weren't removed in order to let uploaders tag them properly, find
replacements, or so they could be processed at the old Vfd.

Quoting Jimbo

"It is very unfortunate that such images are still being uploaded _new_
when we have not be happy about them for a long time.  It is not fair to
contributors who are working on such things, since we have no intention
to keep them in the long run."

Well, if in the long run they have to go, it could start now. So, I
was wondering why aren't they being processed yet.  I'm thinking of
nominating batches of them at IFD every certain time. On the other
hand, however [[WP:IFD]] is clogged, so I was a bit hesitant about
doing so without more feedback.

Thus I created [[User:Drini/OldCopyrightedImgs]] which has a small
sample for the first bacth and shows how I would be nominating them. I
tried to sample different kind of images (uploaded by the webmaster's
site, by random users, by respected old users, without source,
orphaned images, etc) so we can get an idea what we're dealign with.

Still, IFD is overloaded, so maybe better alternatives can come up?
Maybe a IFD-like for this kind of images?

Jimbo, what's your current view about such things?


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Urdu Wikipedia gone?

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Hi all, I can't see the Urdu Wikipedia http://ur.wikipedia.org/
>
> What's up?
WORKSFORME... There's a bug report about this, but I can load it.

Filip


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight -- Really new or not?

body:
Hi,

You'll have to pardon me as I've been on break for a little bit.

I'm just wondering how oversight is much different than an admin just
deleting an article and restoring all but the selected revision.

It's not like the revision is deleted in the database.

So why have a separate permissions group?

--
~Ilya N. (Now with 2% Juice)
http://ilya.nepfamily.com (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

body:
On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 04:31:57PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
> > I added in a feature that after someone is marks an edit as patrolled
> > it takes them to the next unpatrolled diff page. It keeps our
> > community members happy since they don't have to press the back
> > button twice and click on the next diff to get to the next
> > unpatrolled edit.
>
> Wow. Has no-one ever thought of using tabs? o.O

That's how I'd do it, if the system wasn't designed to make things
easier for me.  Of course, I use a tabbed browser.  Not everyone is as
enlightened as me.  Some people still use IE, for instance.

Actually, many people still use it.

Additionally, it's worth noting that it would still probably be an
improvement to have the system you're using simply forward to the most
likely next thing you're going to do.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The measure on a man's real character is what he would do
if he knew he would never be found out." - Thomas McCauley


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is "spam?"

body:
Ilyanepatgmaildotcom

That'd be a mouthful.

Anyways, I'm think and hoping that Alphax was kidding

On 6/22/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
> > From: "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> >
> > Nathan wrote:
> >> I remember having an imposter with a weird unicode version of the
> >> first
> >> "N" in my username. In fact, it's my only imposter.
> >>
> >> I think such usernames should be blocked too.
> >>
> >> - Nathan (nathanrdotcom)
> >>
> >
> > I think *your* username is innappropriate since you're spamming
> > your URL
> > in it.
>
> Yeesh. Give him a break.
>
> It's unobtrusive. It's a username, so it never appears in the main
> namespace. It's not a link, so it won't affect his site's pagerank.
>
> And if you look at that site, _it's just a personal website,_ no
> different in kind from a Wikipedia user page.
>
> On the spectrum from where co-opting Wikipedia for commercial gain is
> a ten and obnoxious self-promotion is a one, this is a zero. It's
> about as objectionable as using a username that happens to resemble
> one's email address.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N. (Now with 2% Juice)
http://ilya.nepfamily.com (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> The suitable initial group seems clear enough: every administrator.

1000 people? That's an absurdly large group. As it is there are
administrators digging up deleted articles and posting them on other
websites.

> Beyond that, the censored log should be available to everyone.
> Administrators often have more than enough to do and any assistance
> non-administrators can do in the way of oversight is a good thing.

No, the log should not be available to everyone.  I can't see what
possible good that could come from it, and the log itself could be
used to reveal the very kinds of things it is intended to conceal
(e.g. personal information).

> Removing the page isn't close to sufficient - it conceals what is
> perhaps the most significant part of what is being overseen: who is
> doing what, where and still concealed from most, why.

What's the danger here?  What horrible thing will happen if some edit
disappears from the history?

> It's worth remembering that a few million pages with things not
> vanishing completely have not brought the encyclopedia or Foundation
> down.

Um, not yet.  The past is not a good predictor of the future in these
kinds of things.

> Making sure we have ample oversight so that people actually look
> hard at what is being done and mention problems is important to our
> process.
>
> Without broad oversight, the capability to make thing silently vanish
> should also be vanishing.

And that's bad because?

Jay.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Arnold

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
Am Donnerstag, 22. Juni 2006 01:23 schrieb Anthere:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy_policy&oldid=14088
>
> may be found here.
>
> Please, spread the word that all the translations in various languages
> should be updated. Thanks in advance.

I just wanted to update the one in Wikimedia Commons but sadly I was unable to
fetch the page source code from Wikimedia wiki without registration (ok I
could take the one from meta but I prefer taking it from the "official"
source).

So it would be rather cool if there is a way that unregistered users can grab
the page code as well.

BTW (as people did mention it) although probably almost everyone knows that
(and did it already), people in local wikis should not forget a disclaimer
like:

--

This is a local copy of the official '''[[Wikimedia:Privacy policy|Privacy
policy]]''' of the [[Wikimedia:Home|Wikimedia Foundation]]. In doubt only the
official original version counts. Requests for changes can be made at the
[[meta:talk:Privacy policy|discussion page in Meta]].

--

Arnomane


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hi,
>   Many must have informally requested it: would it be possible and
> desirable to have -- be interpreted as em-dash (?)? It's a very useful
> symbol, particularly in the context of writing an encyclopaedia, but
> is not readily available on the keyboard. Many editors already seem to
> naturally use -- to try and imitate a proper em-dash.
>
> What are the issues involved? Anyone know of other uses of -- that
> should not be interpreted this way? Is there any argument that it
> should become some other kind of dash instead?
>
> Also, I realise there are bots that occasionally go around replacing
> -- with other dashes, but that does seem a bit kludgy.
>
> In the meantime, on en I have created {{--}} which surprisingly no one
> had thought of creating.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>
The only example I can think of a use of -- that should not map to
emdash is in programming languages like C, where x-- is used to mean
"take the value of x and then decrement it"

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Complete log including revision text to all administrators (and
> action, including removal of the full view capability from the
> administrator concerned, taken if an administrator misuses the
> capability) and the former incomplete censored one without the
> contents of the text available to all.

Wow, so thousands of people can now see the libellous or personal
information that the tool was intended to remove in the first place?
Sounds completely self-defeating.

> That makes it pretty easy for anyone to question an act and any
> administrator (perhaps the one they trust most) to check on it and
> reassure them that it merited removal.

Great, thousands of queries constantly coming in now, from any of the
tens of thousands of Wikipedia editors, so that we can further spread
the damage.  "Oh, turns out X removed information stating that
politician Y is a serial rapist.  Pass this on to anyone else who
wants to know."

> And revisit perhaps in the event that we see a regular pattern of
> problems arising from this. Could happen; we'll see.

What is likely to happen is a regular pattern of querelous and
tendentious questioning of any deletion done, followed by inevitable
leakage of whatever damaging stuff was deleted in the first place.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] "the experiment" - did it work?

body:
On 6/22/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> You could always add a checkbox for this (though I would think adding
> a category or tweaking an interwiki link would suggest that one does
> not think an article is suitable for deletion).

Well, extensions already exist to allow patrolling. A minimal
implementation might be to have a bot which checks for recently
created articles by anons, and stamping them with some
template/category combination, which, as you say, could be later
removed by established users.

Steve


body:
On 6/22/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> So if new articles by users that weren't logged in had "Wikipedia:" in
> front of their title then you wouldn't have a problem with keeping the
> crap?

It's more that content created by users that's sitting on a page
called "Wikipedia:Articles for creation" is much less of a problem
than that same content sitting on its own page called "Jerry the gay
wanker". To whatever extent having crap articles is a problem for us.

Steve


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
Nathan Reed wrote:
> "It is the policy of Wikimedia that personally identifiable data collected
> in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser
> feature, may be released by the system administrators or users with
> CheckUser access, in the following situations:"
>
> Does this mean that personally identifiable information may be released by
> users with CheckUser permissions? For example, is it permissible for me to
> release the actual IP address of a vandal to the general public? I'm not
> sure, but this may not be a good thing.
>
> I can understand using the information for IP blocks, but perhaps the
> release of the information should not be so broad in these cases. Or, maybe
> I'm tired, have failed to comprehend the policy completely, and have missed
> something.. :D

Notice that the privacy policy is what we tell the public that we *may*
do.  We can and should, in practice, be as privacy conscious as we can
be, and so checkusers who have any doubt about to whom they should
release information, and when, and why, should check carefully with
Angela, Anthere, me, brad, other checkusers, relevant arbcoms, etc.

Even if our privacy policy leaves us room to do something if we need to
do it, we may choose not to do it in most cases.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Urdu Wikipedia gone?

body:
On Jun 22, 2006, at 1:42 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> Hi all, I can't see the Urdu Wikipedia http://ur.wikipedia.org/
wasn't that fixed half an hour ago?

Domas


from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > > Complete log including revision text to all administrators (and
> > > action, including removal of the full view capability from the
> > > administrator concerned, taken if an administrator misuses the
> > > capability) and the former incomplete censored one without the
> > > contents of the text available to all.
> >
> > Wow, so thousands of people can now see the libellous or personal
> > information that the tool was intended to remove in the first place?
> > Sounds completely self-defeating.
>
> That's fine when its those administrating the project - the project
> administrators - who are able to see it to carry out their role.

All admins should *not*, _not_, NOT have access to all of this,
because, frankly (and this is sad to say), I don't trust every admin.
Why do you think some people voice their opposition to their RfAs?
There has been some shady business, and I think those that were
initially given the rights to oversight are plenty to ensure nothing
is abused.  Sorry. --LV


body:
Hi,
  Many must have informally requested it: would it be possible and
desirable to have -- be interpreted as em-dash (?)? It's a very useful
symbol, particularly in the context of writing an encyclopaedia, but
is not readily available on the keyboard. Many editors already seem to
naturally use -- to try and imitate a proper em-dash.

What are the issues involved? Anyone know of other uses of -- that
should not be interpreted this way? Is there any argument that it
should become some other kind of dash instead?

Also, I realise there are bots that occasionally go around replacing
-- with other dashes, but that does seem a bit kludgy.

In the meantime, on en I have created {{--}} which surprisingly no one
had thought of creating.

Steve


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Martin Walker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] moving forward on article validation

body:
Please forgive me if I'm formatting this post wrongly, this is my first
comment to this group.

I am involved with the Wikipedia 1.0 team on en, both the Version 0.5
project and the contact with WikiProjects.  It might help to let folks know
what we're up to, since much of the validation work you mention goes hand
in hand with our mission at Wikipedia 1.0.
1. We are putting together an "alpha test" version of the most important
articles of Wikipedia (with vetting for quality), with a planned release in
the autumn of 2006.  For this version, each article is simply nominated by
one person, then reviewed by another from a "review team".  Anyone can sign
up for this team, though in practice only a few who sign up seem to review
much.
2.  We hope to go on to do further expanded versions after V0.5, but these
will almost certainly include review by several independent reviewers, not
merely one.
3. Oleg Alexandrov has worked miracles with a bot that uses categories, and
this is now generating lists daily with the title "XXXX articles by
quality," summarised here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index_of_subjects
Anything from our "core topics" list or our Version 0.5 list is tagged on
the article talk page, the bot picks this up every night.  Delirium may be
interested to note that the bot stores a link to the version it found on
the day the assessment was done.  We will compare this with the current
version, allowing us easily to check for a quality decline when we go to
press.
4. This bot was mainly designed to help WikiProjects provide us with
information on their articles.  This is proving a great success, with new
projects being added to the bot's list every couple of days.  We recently
began a "second round" of contacting projects, and this will bear fruit
over the summer and autumn.  The Military History project, for example, now
has over 4000 articles assessed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Military_history_articles_by_quality
It is my hope that once these assessment schemes become established right
across Wikipedia, we will end up with a large body of assessments BY
SUBJECT EXPERTS.  People who know a subject well are much more likely to
know, "This biography should also discuss X's work on Y."
5. This contact we are building with projects will help greatly if we
institute a system of expert peer review (no. 2 of Delirium's list) of
selected articles - we already have people we know in most subject areas.

Regarding Delirium's comments in detail, I don't like option 1 for the same
reasons as others.  I think option 2 is possible, indeed many groups like
Chemistry and Military History are already well down that road, and within
a year I expect us to have most areas of en:Wikipedia covered.  Giving the
work, responsibility and tools to the people who know and care about the
particular articles is a very powerful way to do this, and extremely
scalable.  As for option 3, as Sj points out this is partly what projects
like Version 0.5 are doing.

Overall, I think it is crucial to distinguish between VALIDATION and
ASSESSMENT.  Validation is often used rather loosely here, but my previous
career in the pharmaceutical industry forces me to consider validation to
mean, "How do we know this article is completely accurate?" It goes much
deeper than assessment (as done at V0.5), which is merely a 10-15 minute
scan of the article- "does it seem complete, are the sources cited, is it
written well, etc.?"  My favourite example is an article I wrote on
gold(III) chloride, listed as a "Good Article."  How do you KNOW that the
magnetic susceptibility is minus 0.000112 cc/mol, i.e., can you validate
this article?  I would like to see Wikipedia move towards having validated
versions of articles available, articles that have been rigorously checked
by subject experts.  I'd like to see the standard version of each article
still fully available, but for all validated articles I'd like a tab at the
top saying "validated" that would allow any user to see a non-editable,
validated version of the article.  It might be necessary to create a new
namespace on Wikipedia to do this.  This approach in effect combines
options 1 & 2.  There is a proposal sitting on Wikipedia that suggests much
of this - I don't agree with all of it, but it's a very good start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TidyCat/Achieving_validation_on_Wikipedia

I am helping to organise a discussion on this very topic at Wikimania in
August, I hope some of this group will be there.  I think this is a nettle
we have to grasp if Wikipedia is to move forward and receive the respect it
deserves.  The only way to achieve this IMHO is to get a group of people
around a physical table (not a virtual one!) who can come to a workable
consensus view, and to have people at that table who can also say, "I can
write the code" and "I will authorise the changes."  Please be there!

Martin A. Walker (User:Walkerma)


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > So if new articles by users that weren't logged in had "Wikipedia:" in
> > front of their title then you wouldn't have a problem with keeping the
> > crap?
>
> It's more that content created by users that's sitting on a page
> called "Wikipedia:Articles for creation" is much less of a problem
> than that same content sitting on its own page called "Jerry the gay
> wanker". To whatever extent having crap articles is a problem for us.
>
> Steve

What extent is that?  How can this be resolved?

What if the page is called "Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Jerry the
gay wanker"?

> I'm simply arguing that AfC is less work for us, the established
> Wikipedia community, than is putting crap new articles through AfD.
> It's definitely less convenient for the newcomer.

There's no reason that crap new articles have to go through AfD.

Anthony


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Re : on (re)organizing wikimedia

body:
<snip my desire for an alternative to a proportionally
representative Wikicouncil>

> Wikicouncil would certainly be a possible body to
> oversee overall
> day-to-day operations.  It could function in
> addition to a governing
> Board AND and advisory board.
>
> < snip governing Board >
>
> <snip advisory Board>
>
> A Wikicouncil needs to represent three broad groups:
> languages,
> countries and overall projects.  It needs to avoid
> domination by any one
> group or sub-group, and at the same time it needs to
> avoid becoming so
> large as to become unwieldy.  The size of the
> Wikicouncil can be
> open-ended but still include policies to slow the
> growth.
>

Compare this paragraph with your openinig sentance:
"Wikicouncil would certainly be a possible body to
oversee overall day-to-day operations."
I am sorry but I do not believe all this would be
effective.  I doubt it is possible to actually
assemble a group as described above, and I am
confident such a group could not oversee day-to-day
operations.

> Groups and sub-groups all need a large degree of
> autonomy, and a higher
> level of governance should have its right to impose
> policies clearly
> restricted.  The recommended governance scheme for
> sub-groups needs to
> vary in relation to the size of the group.
>
> For countries it would be easy to suggest one seat
> for each national
> chapter as the initial model, but this could change
> as the chapter idea
> becomes more developed.  Currently there is still
> only a handful of
> chapters concentrated in countries with functional
> education systems and
> internet access, and no account is taken of the size
> or etnic
> diversities of countries.  I think that issues such
> as whether US
> representation should be allocated to states or
> judicial districts or
> whether Belgium should have separate French and
> Flemish representatives
> will need to wait for a later stage of development.
>
> For projects, size matters.  Number of articles is
> an easy metric to
> work with for the sake of these comments.  A metric
> that also reflects
> active membership and the number of megabytes of
> data in a project may
> be more accurate if it can be developed.  I could
> allow for the fact
> that Wiktionay finds stubs perfectly acceptable, or
> in Wikisource it
> could cope with decisions of whether a given book is
> all on one page or
> divided into chapters.
>
> Basing this on the completely arbitrary metric of
> 25,000 main namespace
> articles in a language on any project with that many
> articles would be
> guaranteed one seat on the Wikicouncil.  Smaller
> languages within that
> project would be able to combine their numbers to
> receive one seat for
> each 25,000 articles.  Larger languages within a
> project on a sliding,
> perhaps logarithmic, scale.
>
>

These paragraghs describe a very complicated
logistical mess.  And this is just about assigning
seats!  Think about how what the actual elections
would entail.  Every sub-group must decide on
citizenship; are dual citizens allowed; how far can
one subproject's policy in this regard veer from the
median of the rest.  Then the elections must actually
be conducted and counted, but those editiors who
normally count such things will probably be running so
who may perform the duties of striking sockpuppets
etc.  Then we must find election auditors with
appropriate language skills, or we can take it all at
face value and hope the whole first session of the
Wikicouncil isn't overrun by accusations of false
elections.  After all that, we will have a WikiCouncil
which I believe will be ineffective.  And honestly, it
will be mostly made up of people who are buearacrats
on a sub-project.

I must ask is proportional representation really worth
the effort?  Even if the effort is half what I believe
it will be, do you really believe the results will be
surprising, that these representatives will not be
current leaders within projects?  If you do not
believe the effort is a problem in itself, how do you
feel about how much time it will take to execute these
elections?

Is it not possible to gather a diversity of viewpoints
and leaders with any easier or more effective method?
Do the editors really need to be "represented" or do
they just need to have a designated person (or group)
to approach with larger questions?

Please think for a moment about the origins of
proportional representation.  It was designed to make
sure everyone had a voice in a situation where
communication was a real problem.  I mean people had
to travel great distances (without airplanes!) to meet
and communicate. It is the lack of *organized*
communication which I believe is our problem.  Not the
lack of ability.  After all we are speaking about
*wikis* here.  Every single editor (barring language)
is able to communicate directly with a Board Member if
they so chose.  The development of proportional
representation in order to give editors of a *wiki*
their "voice" in these matters is one of the largest
wastes of effort I have ever heard of.  I am sorry to
be so critical of ideas many of you have been working
a long time on, but the more details I hear of this
model the more confident I am that it would be
buearacracy for its own sake.  What we need is a
simple organization that allows the leaders from
sub-projects to collaborate with one another and with
the Foundation.  We need a "chain of accountabilty" to
ensure problems are solved or passed on up to until
they reach the board (with the research already
done!).  We do not need a goverment.  I think we could
build something workable from the base of the Apache
model.  I am sure there are also other models we could
work from instead.  However, I do not believe a
parlamentary goverment is one of them.

Birgitte SB

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


body:
On 6/22/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> The only example I can think of a use of -- that should not map to
> emdash is in programming languages like C, where x-- is used to mean
> "take the value of x and then decrement it"

Heh. Actually in that case, it's likely to be indented with a space,
which effectively does <nowiki> anyway. Other uses?

Steve


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> Beyond that, the censored log should be available to everyone.
> Administrators often have more than enough to do and any assistance
> non-administrators can do in the way of oversight is a good thing.

Do you mean the complete log that is now available to those with
oversight permissions (including details of the hidden revisions)?
Making that public would really defy the point of hiding revisions in
the first place; oversight has been used almost exclusively (if not
exclusively) so far for hiding revisions with personal information in
them, and they were hidden because noone should be able to view them.

If you mean the incomplete log that was available publically before
the complete log was developed (which merely indicated who had been
using the tool, and when), then I would support that being restored in
parallel to the complete private log.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l]And you thought Pokémon was trivial...

body:
On 22 Jun 2006, at 14:25, Steve Bennett wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Price_is_Right_pricing_games
>
> No less than 102 pages, detailing each and every "pricing game" ever
> used in the American version of the game show The Price is Right.
>
> And what do we have to say about them? Analyses, statistics, etc? Nah,
> just when it showed up, and when it went.
>

The main article includes the memorable part:
"Not all episodes of the Cullen run are believed to exist, although many
of them do. All episodes of the other versions are believed to exist."

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] A very interesting recent "fair use" case ruling

body:
On 6/22/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 6/21/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> It is a very interesting case and I find it very encouraging. The most
> >> relevant aspects in respects to Wikipedia seem to me (non-lawyer that
> >> I am) to be:
> >>
> >> 1. That moving a work into a very different context seems to be
> >> considered transformative (i.e. from "expressive use of images on
> >> concert posters" into a "biographical work"). Does moving an image
> >> into an "encyclopedic work" make it "transformatively different"?
> >> Under the court's argumentation here, almost certainly (accompanying
> >> the images with textual material and creating something substantially
> >> different as a whole than the original).
> >>
> > This part doesn't seem at all new.  "Transformative use" has long been
> > considered to include the context of the work, and not just whether or
> > not the work itself was altered.  Use of an artistic work for the
> > purposes of commentary, such as in an encyclopedia, would generally be
> > considered highly transformative.  Of course, note the qualification
> > "of an artistic work".  Taking a diagram from an educational textbook
> > and using it in an encyclopedia article to accomplish the same basic
> > purpose would be much less transformative.
>
> Yes, transformative use has long been a feature of fair use in the US.
> However, it's not a feature of fair use/dealing under English common law or
> the Berne Convention. Unless there is some amount of harmonisation, US law
> will remain largely irrelevant for Wikipedia. As I've repeatedly argued,
> Wikipedia should be freely redistributable throughout the world, not just in
> the US.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
It'd certainly be nice.  To some extent it's unreasonable, of course
(we don't want to be freely distributable in China, for example).  But
to the extent that content is only legally distributable in the USA,
it probably shouldn't be in Wikipedia.

I don't forsee there being any consensus on this issue for a long time, if ever.

Anthony


from_name: Leon Weber

body:
Steve Bennett schrieb:
> Hi,
>   Many must have informally requested it: would it be possible and
> desirable to have -- be interpreted as em-dash (?)? It's a very useful
> symbol, particularly in the context of writing an encyclopaedia, but
> is not readily available on the keyboard. Many editors already seem to
> naturally use -- to try and imitate a proper em-dash.
I filed a bug and attached a patch for that:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6402

Leon


from_name: John Lyden

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/22/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> For 18 miles, uphill, both ways, in the snow!

On STUMPS!! We didn't even have FEET back then!!!

--
John Lyden - rasputinaxp at gmail.com
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time..." -Kerouac


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-stuff (was Re:  New York Times article)

body:
On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:32:40 +1000, Mark Gallagher
<m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:

>It would be nice to be able to prevent certain people from doing
>obnoxious things without blocking them completely.  We shouldn't have to
>block otherwise sane users because of a minor foible.

Yes, absolutely.  It could be a way of stopping things from
escalating, as they so often do when a full block is implemented.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> The suitable initial group seems clear enough: every administrator.
>

No. Apart from anything else see wikitruth.

--
geni


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

body:
> > It appears to me that at least a large minority of them aren't written
> > by an "ignorant newbie" but by a "smart newbie." Each and every one of
> > them is one more problem that some wikipedian has to deal with. Seems
> > to me like the whole AFC thing has just managed to move the problem to
> > another place. AFC = AFD in reverse.
>
> No, the great thing about AfC is no one has to deal with it at all. If
> we stopped working on AfC, then Wikipedia would simply lose a little
> bit of growth. By contrast, if we stopped working on AfD, then
> Wikipedia would fairly dramatically fill up with total crud.
>
> By and large, AfC is a lot less work for any given article than AfD
> is. "Bad" AfCs can simply be ignored. "Good" ones take a couple of
> minutes, but at least we end up with a useful, well-formatted article
> out of the deal.

I think you are suffering from the My Perspective is the Only One that
Counts syndrome. Try submitting a few articles to AFC as an anon user
and then tell us how nice it is.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I sound like I'm attacking a strawman here, but I honestly
> don't think I've seen a good reason why people think this tool is
> dangerous. Please, someone, give me a scenario where this could be
> used badly, where the ability to expunge deleted revisions is somehow
> harmful in a way that a public log would prevent...

Person A vandalizes a biographical article, replacing believable
claims to notability with unbelievable ones.  Person B, not realizing
that the article was vandalized, lists it for deletion.  Person C
reverts the vandalism.  Person A's edit is vanished.

At this point, to anyone looking through the article history, it
appears that person B is attacking the subject of the article, trying
to get that article deleted.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


body:
On 6/22/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Will we have to sit through watching some troll be successively banned
> from one action after another as people cry "Why prevent him from
> editing articles about Chemotherapy? All he was doing was uploding
> goatse to articles on homosexuality?  He might be a good user."
>
> --Jimbo

No. At the moment when I run into someone who just ignores image
copyright my only option is to try and educate them and if that fails
try and figure out some way under the rules to block them. I don't
have a button to deal with people who can't upload images responsibly.

--
geni


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 6/22/06, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is something that was in the 1.5 development tree before release
> but pulled out just before release due to issues with doing dumb -- to
> emdash replacement in the not-a-parser. One case I remember it
> breaking on was image names which contained --, links around --
> ([[foo|bar]]--[[bar|foo]] didn't work etc.)

OIC, the substition was taking place too early? Yeah, you wouldn't
want {{--}} to be treated as if you'd typed {{?}}...

So is it permanently dead?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] And you thought Pokémon was trivial...

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Price_is_Right_pricing_games

No less than 102 pages, detailing each and every "pricing game" ever
used in the American version of the game show The Price is Right.

And what do we have to say about them? Analyses, statistics, etc? Nah,
just when it showed up, and when it went.

Heh.

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 22/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, great! Out of curiosity, how many developers are that implement
> "general" features like this? It's often difficult to get any kind of
> picture of the process followed between "hey I've got a great idea"
> and a line in some release notes some time later.

There are ~ 10 active committers at present, 2 of of which are SoC
committers. The fairly regular updaters are Brion, Tim, myself, Niklas
Laxstrom (i18n)...Rotem Liss, a new committer, is fairly active, I'd
say - Avar's dropped off a bit (work commitments?) plus a few names
I've missed. The others with commit access put in a few modifications
now and again. ;)

The answer to the unasked question ("is someone who cares reading
this?") is yes; although I'd like to humbly point out that feature
requests are so much easier to track when filed in the correct
location.

Rob Church


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 6/21/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It is a very interesting case and I find it very encouraging. The most
>> relevant aspects in respects to Wikipedia seem to me (non-lawyer that
>> I am) to be:
>>
>> 1. That moving a work into a very different context seems to be
>> considered transformative (i.e. from "expressive use of images on
>> concert posters" into a "biographical work"). Does moving an image
>> into an "encyclopedic work" make it "transformatively different"?
>> Under the court's argumentation here, almost certainly (accompanying
>> the images with textual material and creating something substantially
>> different as a whole than the original).
>>
> This part doesn't seem at all new.  "Transformative use" has long been
> considered to include the context of the work, and not just whether or
> not the work itself was altered.  Use of an artistic work for the
> purposes of commentary, such as in an encyclopedia, would generally be
> considered highly transformative.  Of course, note the qualification
> "of an artistic work".  Taking a diagram from an educational textbook
> and using it in an encyclopedia article to accomplish the same basic
> purpose would be much less transformative.

Yes, transformative use has long been a feature of fair use in the US.
However, it's not a feature of fair use/dealing under English common law or
the Berne Convention. Unless there is some amount of harmonisation, US law
will remain largely irrelevant for Wikipedia. As I've repeatedly argued,
Wikipedia should be freely redistributable throughout the world, not just in
the US.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 6/22/06, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So is it permanently dead?
>
> No, like I said the currently availible implementation has flaws, and
> there might also be other issues to work out besides that, such as
> locale issues. But I don't think anyone (Brion for one doesn't, IIRC)
> objects to the idea of having a working implementation of that in the
> parser.

Ok, great! Out of curiosity, how many developers are that implement
"general" features like this? It's often difficult to get any kind of
picture of the process followed between "hey I've got a great idea"
and a line in some release notes some time later.

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED

body:
On 6/22/06, Daniel Bregman <dbmag9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> (Product)^RED (RED is in superscript) is a brand name which works with other
> well-known brands to produce a product of which at least 1% of the profit
> goes to (Product)^RED, and this goes in aid of helping fight AIDS and
> related diseases. See http://joinred.com for information

Wow, (at least) one whole percent?!?  Doesn't really seem like it
would be worth the trouble of having the ads, a for-profit skin, etc.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I don't understand the proposal.  --LV


subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED


list: commons-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Image donations?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/21/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
<snip>
>> Here's a thought: Let people mail their images, descriptions, and
>> license to a central e-mail directly. Volunteers could then upload them
>> after checking.
>
> Free form e-mail is difficult to process because every mail looks
> different. It also makes it more difficult to collaborate using
> interfaces like FlickrLickr.
>

Agreed. MUAs like Apple Mail have this horrible habit of "embedding"
attachments into the message so that the email ends up being (2n+1) MIME
parts for each attachment:

* Initial text
* Attachment
* Next bit of text
* Attachment
* Next bit of text

etc. These sort of messages are *horrible* to process using something
like OTRS. At least with a web interface, we get to decide what format
things are arriving in...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:
> The main article includes the memorable part:
> "Not all episodes of the Cullen run are believed to exist, although many
> of them do. All episodes of the other versions are believed to exist."

Is there a source?  My main concern about all this fancruft is that we
are absolutely going to get burned by a hoaxer if we do not become much
more serious about banning original research and mercilessly editing
stuff that has no sources.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED

body:
> On 6/22/06, Daniel Bregman <dbmag9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (Product)^RED (RED is in superscript) is a brand name which works with other
> > well-known brands to produce a product of which at least 1% of the profit
> > goes to (Product)^RED, and this goes in aid of helping fight AIDS and
> > related diseases. See http://joinred.com for information

>From the website:

***Established brands who license the (PRODUCT) RED mark send a
portion of the profits made on (PRODUCT) RED products directly to the
Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. (RED) never handles this
money.***

So we create a red skin, pay (RED) to use their name, handle all the
money and donations to the Global Fund, and (RED) does what exactly?
While I appreciate the cause, I just don't get it.  --LV


subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED


body:
On 6/22/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you are suffering from the My Perspective is the Only One that
> Counts syndrome. Try submitting a few articles to AFC as an anon user
> and then tell us how nice it is.

I'm simply arguing that AfC is less work for us, the established
Wikipedia community, than is putting crap new articles through AfD.
It's definitely less convenient for the newcomer.

Steve


from_name: Ben Yates

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
> Since no one else has pointed it out, here's their "correction":

They changed the headline, too.


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > > > Complete log including revision text to all administrators (and
> > > > action, including removal of the full view capability from the
> > > > administrator concerned, taken if an administrator misuses the
> > > > capability) and the former incomplete censored one without the
> > > > contents of the text available to all.
> > >
> > > Wow, so thousands of people can now see the libellous or personal
> > > information that the tool was intended to remove in the first place?
> > > Sounds completely self-defeating.
> >
> > That's fine when its those administrating the project - the project
> > administrators - who are able to see it to carry out their role.
>
> All admins should *not*, _not_, NOT have access to all of this,
> because, frankly (and this is sad to say), I don't trust every admin.
> Why do you think some people voice their opposition to their RfAs?

Exactly.  Sad, but with 1000 admins, inevitable.  And some of the
stuff that is being deleted could seriously endanger people
(particularly personal information).  On the other hand, I still
haven't heard anyone explain exactly what the *real, practical* danger
is of deleting an edit.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:44:48 +0200, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
> wrote:
>
>> It is my intention that we work to creatively
>> soften even more restrictions.
>
> How about semi-blocking, letting semi-blocked editors comment on Talk
> but not in article space?
>

Ideally, blocking would be even more fine-tuned:

* Block users from individual namespaces
* Block users from individual articles
* Fix Bug 550 *and implement the fix*

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED

body:
I think it's that if you were to enable the RED option in your settings,
you'd get a new skin, a different Main Page, and advertisements. Money
earned from the ads goes towards AIDS research and partially towards
Wikimedia.

It sounds like a good idea, as long as it's off by default.

On 6/22/06, Daniel Bregman <dbmag9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (Product)^RED (RED is in superscript) is a brand name which works with
> other
> well-known brands to produce a product of which at least 1% of the profit
> goes to (Product)^RED, and this goes in aid of helping fight AIDS and
> related diseases. See http://joinred.com for information
>
> Why not set up a (Wikipedia)^RED which would essentially be a skin through
> which the normal Wikipedia is viewed: it would change the colours to red
> (or
> shades thereof), have a different Main Page which explains the scheme and
> has inobtrusive advertisements on the side (under the interwiki links)
> which
> generate revenue to do to (Product)^RED (and Wikimedia).
>
> I think that the aim of this is wholly consistent with that of the
> Wikimedia
> Foundation, and I would like to hear your views.
>
> --
> -Daniel (meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dbmag9)
> dbmag9.blogspot.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED


body:
On 6/22/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:32:40 +1000, Mark Gallagher
> <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> >It would be nice to be able to prevent certain people from doing
> >obnoxious things without blocking them completely.  We shouldn't have to
> >block otherwise sane users because of a minor foible.
>
> Yes, absolutely.  It could be a way of stopping things from
> escalating, as they so often do when a full block is implemented.

It would give them a last chance to demonstrate good faith. Probably
worth doing as a trial at any rate, it's so hard to predict how these
things play out in reality.

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Eliminating homographs in usernames: was: Re:
 Pruning "dead" accounts (was Re: New York Times article)

body:
Nathan wrote:
> I remember having an imposter with a weird unicode version of the first
> "N" in my username. In fact, it's my only imposter.
>
> I think such usernames should be blocked too.
>
> - Nathan (nathanrdotcom)
>

I think *your* username is innappropriate since you're spamming your URL
in it.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> >  > The suitable initial group seems clear enough: every
> administrator.
> >
> > 1000 people? That's an absurdly large group. As it is there are
> > administrators digging up deleted articles and posting them on other
> > websites.
>
> This isn't about publishing deleted articles.

No, it's about reliability of admins when it comes to deleted information.

> > > Beyond that, the censored log should be available to everyone.
> > > Administrators often have more than enough to do and any
> assistance
> > > non-administrators can do in the way of oversight is a good thing.
> >
> > No, the log should not be available to everyone.  I can't see what
> > possible good that could come from it, and the log itself could be
> > used to reveal the very kinds of things it is intended to conceal
> > (e.g. personal information).
>
> It's good to have the largest practical group able to examine our
> actions. That increases the chance that enough people will take an
> interest and provide effective questioning of actions.

Right, and that group consists of around 20 highly trusted editors.
That's the largest *practical* number.  1000 is a completely
impractical number that will significantly raise the risks of doing
damage.

> > > Removing the page isn't close to sufficient - it conceals what is
> > > perhaps the most significant part of what is being overseen: who
> is
> > > doing what, where and still concealed from most, why.
> >
> > What's the danger here?  What horrible thing will happen if some
> edit
> > disappears from the history?
>
> Nothing harmful at all will happen if all the actions are in accord
> with policy.

And what harm will happen if the actions are not in accord with policy?

> If someone uses the capability to hide edits that are uncomplimentary
> to them or simply make a project look bad in a news story, when the
> project did actually have a problem then that would be an entirely
> different and problematic mater.

Huh?  You mean in an article about themselves?  And how could they
make the project look bad in a news story?

> Things like "we screwed up" or "yes,
> that was a bad edit" aren't what this capability is for. Oversight is
> about making sure that the capability isn't misused in this sort of
> way, however much we all want to be perfect and might be tempted to
> try to look better than we are.

I've seen no evidence anyone has even contemplated using it that way.
And why would they? It seems completely farfetched.

Jay.


body:
On 6/22/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > You'll have to pardon me as I've been on break for a little bit.
> >
> > I'm just wondering how oversight is much different than an admin just
> > deleting an article and restoring all but the selected revision.
> >
>
> Becuase the version was one click away from restor
>
> > It's not like the revision is deleted in the database.
>
> That isn't exactly true.

Well, it isn't, though.

Jay.


body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> We've all seen users completely blocked because of a regrettable
> tendency to upload copyvios or create POV forks or move-war.  Now, they
> could be otherwise intelligent people who think they know about
> copyright law but don't; or useful contributors when they're being
> supervised by other people on controversial articles, but who feel free
> to let rip on their "own" fork articles; or people who insist on
> treating the "move" button as a toy and causing unnecessary work for
> admins and unnecessary stress for non-admins.  In that last case, Curps'
> bot caught at least one offender, but that's hardly reliable.

It is unclear to me that there really are that many cases of people who
are extremely annoying in some areas, but whose help would be so
valuable in other areas.

> It would be nice to be able to prevent certain people from doing
> obnoxious things without blocking them completely.  We shouldn't have to
> block otherwise sane users because of a minor foible.

Perhaps.  But "being an idiot" is not normally a tendency which is
confined to easily identifiable areas of activity.

I am not totally opposed to the concept, but we have to think carefully.
 Every change to the tools gives rise to changes in the equilibria.
Will we have to sit through watching some troll be successively banned
from one action after another as people cry "Why prevent him from
editing articles about Chemotherapy? All he was doing was uploding
goatse to articles on homosexuality?  He might be a good user."

--Jimbo


body:
On 6/22/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I am not totally opposed to the concept, but we have to think carefully.
>  Every change to the tools gives rise to changes in the equilibria.
> Will we have to sit through watching some troll be successively banned
> from one action after another as people cry "Why prevent him from
> editing articles about Chemotherapy? All he was doing was uploding
> goatse to articles on homosexuality?  He might be a good user."

In the case of a recidivist copyviolater, simply banning image
uploading seems like a sensible move, though. However, that would
imply banning it for all anons too - almost certainly a good thing.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Anyway, the more I consider the facts, the less convinced I am. The
> problem is in the interpretation of "anyone can edit". Does it mean
> "anyone who wants to edit, can", or does it mean "anyone at all can
> edit". Normally this wouldn't matter, but it's critical if we're
> attempting to measure "anyone-can-edit-ness" (ACEN).

To me it means "To the maximal extent consistent with keeping vandalism
down to a dull roar, we try to let as many people edit as many things as
we can with as little barrier as possible.  When we are forced to enact
some barrier, we try to keep it as narrowly focussed as possible, and as
short term as possible."

It does not mean, and has never meant, "Come one, come all, even if you
are a jerk or complete idiot there is a home for you here."

The Germans have it right, in my opinion, on their homepage:
"Gute Autorinnen und Autoren sind stets willkommen."

"Good authors are always welcome."

I think that the upcoming experiental implementation of a "stable
article" feature (to be introduced first in the German community, most
likely) is going to be a nice step in the right direction, because
almost all article protection can be completely dropped.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
On 6/22/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 22, 2006, at 8:16 AM, geni wrote:
>
> > At the moment when I run into someone who just ignores image
> > copyright my only option is to try and educate them and if that fails
> > try and figure out some way under the rules to block them. I don't
> > have a button to deal with people who can't upload images responsibly.
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> Does it make sense to have one? a button, that is.
>
> Fred
 yes

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED

body:
On 6/22/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it's that if you were to enable the RED option in your settings,
> you'd get a new skin, a different Main Page, and advertisements. Money
> earned from the ads goes towards AIDS research and partially towards
> Wikimedia.
>
> It sounds like a good idea, as long as it's off by default.

Except that we have to do all of the work, pay to use the (RED) name,
and put ads on Wikipedia.  Who's going to volunteer to collect all the
revenue and handle all the donations to the Global Fund?  Why pay to
use their brand name?  If WMF really wanted to donate to the Global
Fund, why not just make a straight donation and skip all the licensing
fees?  Just my thoughts though. --LV


subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

body:
> I added in a feature that after someone is marks an edit as patrolled
> it takes them to the next unpatrolled diff page. It keeps our
> community members happy since they don't have to press the back
> button twice and click on the next diff to get to the next
> unpatrolled edit.

Wow. Has no-one ever thought of using tabs? o.O


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED

body:
On 6/22/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> Except that we have to do all of the work, pay to use the (RED) name,
> and put ads on Wikipedia.  Who's going to volunteer to collect all the
> revenue and handle all the donations to the Global Fund?  Why pay to
> use their brand name?  If WMF really wanted to donate to the Global
> Fund, why not just make a straight donation and skip all the licensing
> fees?  Just my thoughts though. --LV

Optional user activated advertisements have been proposed before, the
primary objection is that it wouldn't make a lot of money for us.

I, like the others in this thread, don't see any value to (RED)... it
doesn't appear that participation would be in our best interest.


subject: [Foundation-l] (Wikipedia)^RED


body:
On 6/22/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> The answer to the unasked question ("is someone who cares reading
> this?") is yes; although I'd like to humbly point out that feature
> requests are so much easier to track when filed in the correct
> location.

That's fine, once I figure that a) the feature is desirable and b)
there is some chance of it getting implemented, I'm more than happy to
lodge a formal feature request for it.

Steve


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>The only example I can think of a use of -- that should not map to
>>emdash is in programming languages like C, where x-- is used to mean
>>"take the value of x and then decrement it"
>
> Heh. Actually in that case, it's likely to be indented with a space,
> which effectively does <nowiki> anyway. Other uses?

That is not true. Space-indented text is still subject to some parsing,
e.g. ''' for bold.


subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

body:
On 22/06/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Wow. Has no-one ever thought of using tabs? o.O

Perhaps, Timwi, you'd like to arrange some human benchmarking when
it's all done. Are tabs faster than continuous clicking? I don't know.
But it would stop you posting unhelpful comments, wouldn't it?

Rob Church


body:
Heh, I see in this case it's been requested at least 3 times before.
Most of the discussion is on
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1485 and is quite
interesting - issues about when to convert to em-dash vs en-dash. The
discussion seems to boil down to: everyone agrees that -- to em-dash
is intuitive, but how do you then implement a syntax for en-dash for
the few people who want it?

Steve

On 6/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The answer to the unasked question ("is someone who cares reading
> > this?") is yes; although I'd like to humbly point out that feature
> > requests are so much easier to track when filed in the correct
> > location.
>
> That's fine, once I figure that a) the feature is desirable and b)
> there is some chance of it getting implemented, I'm more than happy to
> lodge a formal feature request for it.
>
> Steve
>


from_name: Jon Awbrey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

sydney,

me again.

since you offered to share some of your experience,
i will take the risk of asking for further advice,
and take the further risk of discussing it here,
in open forum, as that always increases the
chance that someone who's afraid to ask
might learn from our discussion.

if you've got the time, take a visit at the article on [[Truth]],
and especially what's going on at its talk page, as i would be
very interested in hearing your observations about what in
the devil is going on there.

many regards,

jon awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


subject: [WikiEN-l] Monobook suddenly changed?

body:
Looks like we suddenly have another big change to monobook, with all
the unicode symbols below the edit box being reformatted to involve
hide/show buttons. However, they're still all lumped together, unlike
at other Wikipedias like the French one, and unlike the brief trial
that occurred on en.

Similarly, a few days ago it looked like a new warning appeared when
you create a new page, that advertising etc will be harshly removed.

Is there a way of being notified of these changes before they suddenly appear?

Steve


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 11:16:56PM +0300, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> > I suppose I should go look at the bugzilla discussion now.  I seem to
> > recall, last time I looked at it, that the endash people were advocating
> > for -- being translated to endashes and --- to emdashes, which seems
> > counterintuitive for both, since endashes are supposed to be shorter
> > than - and emdashes have been represented as -- for so long and in so
> > many contexts that using three dashes will just confuse the heck out of
> > many.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
>
> Wot?  En dashes are, by definition, one en long.  Hyphens are usually
> shorter.
>
> Compare:
>   - hyphen
>   ? en dash
>   ? em dash

You could be right about that.  I haven't dealt with endashes much, so
may just be misremembering them.  I still like -- for emdashes, though,
since (among other reasons) it's pretty nearly the correct size for an
emdash anyway (and because it's what pretty much everybody uses when
true emdashes aren't available in other contexts).  I also like the fact
that, in absence of text being parsed and transformed to render true
emdashes, -- is recognizable as such to the casual reader (or editor who
is viewing the content source, in the case of MediaWiki).  Frankly, I
tend to expect that if we used -- and --- for endash and emdash,
respectively, we'd get thousands of endashes were emdashes were
intended, and that it's a problem that would never entirely go away as
new users/editors join the Wikimedia community all the time.

So far, though, there seem to be problems with every suggestion put
forward -- in some cases, unacceptable problems in an otherwise
excellent solution.  It will probably be a while before something
workable is implemented.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary
to shoot the engineers and begin production." - MacUser, November 1990


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/22/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> To me it means "To the maximal extent consistent with keeping vandalism
> down to a dull roar, we try to let as many people edit as many things as
> we can with as little barrier as possible.  When we are forced to enact
> some barrier, we try to keep it as narrowly focussed as possible, and as
> short term as possible."
>
> It does not mean, and has never meant, "Come one, come all, even if you
> are a jerk or complete idiot there is a home for you here."

Uh...I agree, but that's a separate interpretation all together.  Even
good authors are prevented from editing semi-protected pages if they
don't have an account.

It seems to me, with my fairly imprecise data, that anonymous editors
are barred from editing a greater portion of articles than they could
a year ago. It's not a significant portion, but it's growing.

I don't want to flog this dead horse too much longer, but that
conclusion seems to be fairly much in line with what the NYT was
saying.

Steve


body:
On 6/22/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't think that uploads had *ever* been enabled for IP users, at
> least not under Mediawiki...

Good :)

Steve


body:
On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 11:21:29PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> > Would requiring spaces on either side of the double dash before
> > converting it into an emdash improve the parsing behavior any?  It
> > should at least solve the image name problem, since spaces in image
> > names should (in my honest opinion) be considered a no-no in any case.
> > Then again, I'm not in charge, of course.
>
> I actually don't like this solution, even though it seems neat. The
> trouble is, it's just not "intuitive" in the sense that no one would
> expect markup to behave differently whether it has spaces around it or
> not. Someone is likely to see "foo--boo" get rendered as an en-dash
> and think "damn, how do I get an em-dash?" Nothing else -- with the
> exception of space indentation itself -- in mediawiki gets rendered
> differently depending on spaces surrounding it.

Rendering foo--boo as an endash would be inappropriate, even if the
editor intended an endash, anyway.  Endashes are not meant to be used as
hyphens, and should have a space on either side of them.

>
> Or maybe I'm confusing Wikipedia and MediaWiki here - your solution is
> perhaps not bad for MediaWiki, switchable by individual site admins.
> But for Wikipedia it's a bad idea.

I'm not sure I see how something good for MediaWiki is bad for
Wikipedia, in this case.  Could you elaborate on the difference as it
relates to this issue?

>
> > counterintuitive for both, since endashes are supposed to be shorter
> > than - and emdashes have been represented as -- for so long and in so
> > many contexts that using three dashes will just confuse the heck out of
> > many.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
>
> It's "intuitive" *after the fact*. "Oh, I get how it works now -
> that's cute!" Em-dash from -- is blissfully ignorantly intuitive -
> people will get it right without even realising that they were doing
> anything. Many editors probably don't even realise that -- is not a
> good way of doing an em-dash at the moment.

That's sort of the problem: people will keep doing emdashes with -- and
never realize something's wrong, in many cases, I suspect.

Of course, considering the miniscule differences between hyphens and
endashes, I'm not sure endashes really need to be addressed for general
visual formatting purposes.  I'm sure there are some strict endash fans
who will disagree vehemently with me, though.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Brian K. Reid: "In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
I think people are seriously underestimating the seriousness of some
personal privacy violations.

stevertigo wrote:
> TK:
> "Unfortunately this means that the log itself has to
> be kept private. Those people with oversight can view
> it. No one else can."
>
> What people seem to disagree with is with the notion
> that the log "has to be kept private" due to someone's
> claim of 'legally problematic revisions.' Is Google
> facilitating the "damage of Starbucks' reputation" by
> not removing "consumer whore" from its Image searches?
>
> Understanding that legal systems are not always
> reasonable, WM cant reasonably be responsible for
> everything in the history of its articles. And to say
> the risk is great is simply to court the clique of
> privelege who think they can simply make a phone call
> and get things deleted through a privileged legalistic
> and back-door process -- for what everyone else does
> with the edit button.
>
> Stevertigo
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Alphax,

> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:44:48 +0200, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>It is my intention that we work to creatively
>>>soften even more restrictions.
>>
>>How about semi-blocking, letting semi-blocked editors comment on Talk
>>but not in article space?
>
> Ideally, blocking would be even more fine-tuned:
>
> * Block users from individual namespaces
> * Block users from individual articles
> * Fix Bug 550 *and implement the fix*

* Block users from uploading images
* Block users from creating articles
* Block users from moving articles

We've all seen users completely blocked because of a regrettable
tendency to upload copyvios or create POV forks or move-war.  Now, they
could be otherwise intelligent people who think they know about
copyright law but don't; or useful contributors when they're being
supervised by other people on controversial articles, but who feel free
to let rip on their "own" fork articles; or people who insist on
treating the "move" button as a toy and causing unnecessary work for
admins and unnecessary stress for non-admins.  In that last case, Curps'
bot caught at least one offender, but that's hardly reliable.

It would be nice to be able to prevent certain people from doing
obnoxious things without blocking them completely.  We shouldn't have to
block otherwise sane users because of a minor foible.

(I don't know Bug 550, but I assume it's the one about the autoblocker)

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:25:39 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>It seems to me, with my fairly imprecise data, that anonymous editors
>are barred from editing a greater portion of articles than they could
>a year ago. It's not a significant portion, but it's growing.

The missing piece of data is: what proportion of anonymous editors are
good contributors?  If it's very small, then it's a non-issue.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:12:20 +0200, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>It is unclear to me that there really are that many cases of people who
>are extremely annoying in some areas, but whose help would be so
>valuable in other areas.

My original thought was to allow edits to Talk (and user and project)
space but not article space - like protection in reverse.  It would
reduce the number of protected articles, because where there is an
edit war we just confine the warriors to Talk for a while until
they've hammered out their differences.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

body:
On 6/22/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > I added in a feature that after someone is marks an edit as patrolled
> > it takes them to the next unpatrolled diff page. It keeps our
> > community members happy since they don't have to press the back
> > button twice and click on the next diff to get to the next
> > unpatrolled edit.
>
> Wow. Has no-one ever thought of using tabs? o.O

Before I got AWB, I used tabs to try and do some repetitive stuff
quickly. My work flow for adding a navbox to 30 different articles
linked to one page:
1. Hold ctrl and click one of the links (repeat x10)
2. Press ctrl+tab and click the "edit" link (repeat x10)
3. Go back to first opened tab, scroll to bottom, paste text, type
"add navbox" in comment, press save, press ctrl+tab (repeat x10)
4. Press ctrl+f4 (repeat x10)
5. Go back to step 1 (repeat x3)

Still a major pain in the arse.

Moral: tabs can slightly improve your work flow. But drudgery is still drudgery.

Steve


body:
On 6/22/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> That is not true. Space-indented text is still subject to some parsing,
> e.g. ''' for bold.

Let's be honest here: space indented text is *weird*. What's the
historical context behind it? Why is it monospaced, coloured,
surrounded with a border, and why doesn't it wrap? It's such an odd
layout choice for something so easy to do by accident.

(it would all sort of make sense except for the lack of wrapping...maybe)

Steve


from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

body:
"Travis Derouin" <travis at wikihow.com> writes:

> Hey,
>
> I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but on our wiki I
> added in a feature that after someone is marks an edit as patrolled it
> takes them to the next unpatrolled diff page. It keeps our community
> members happy since they don't have to press the back button twice and
> click on the next diff to get to the next unpatrolled edit. For 1.6 we
> plan on passing along along any of the filter settings (namespace,
> minor edit, etc) to choose the next diff.
>
> I thought I'd share this in case anyone else is interested.

 I'd be happy to see the code for that. Patrolling 15 edits after an
editor who is hit by the mysterical "No preview button" bug, can be a
chore.

--
// Wegge
Min begrundelse for at betragte Arne Wilstrup som en paphat:
<http://wiki.wegge.dk/Usenet_personligheder>
Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indl?g *EN* gang.


from_name: Fadix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked for 36 hours

body:
I guess that's that. When an Admin is right in his/her decision no one waste his/her time supporting that Admin, but when an Admin abuses his/her power, just wait that the block expires when the abuses is clear cut and if the member is not happy he should waste his time over a RfAr, RfC on placing it on the Administrators noticeboard and expect any admit to have the guts to admit the abuse.

 Anyway, I took the decision yesterday to quit the project, I would have hoped that after about a year and a half of contribution I would have gotten the support, not email supports, it is easy for an Admin telling in private there is no block material, but only one Admin publically said not seing block material. I guess only users need this support to get 'elected' as Admins and once they are one they now feel being just more than a user.

---------------------------------
 All new Yahoo! Mail -
---------------------------------
Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane.


from_name: James

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
> > The suitable initial group seems clear enough: every
administrator.
> >
> No. Apart from anything else see wikitruth.

If any administrator has already misused this "with edit contents"
capability to obtain the contents of a hidden revision that was
properly removed and publish those specific contents there, then do
exclude that administrator from the initial set of administrators with
the capability.

This seems very unlikely at present, since it's only been available to
a limited set of administrators.

James Day


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > Complete log including revision text to all administrators (and
> > action, including removal of the full view capability from the
> > administrator concerned, taken if an administrator misuses the
> > capability) and the former incomplete censored one without the
> > contents of the text available to all.
>
> Wow, so thousands of people can now see the libellous or personal
> information that the tool was intended to remove in the first place?
> Sounds completely self-defeating.

That's fine when its those administrating the project - the project
administrators - who are able to see it to carry out their role.

> > That makes it pretty easy for anyone to question an act and any
> > administrator (perhaps the one they trust most) to check on it and
> > reassure them that it merited removal.
>
> Great, thousands of queries constantly coming in now, from any of
the
> tens of thousands of Wikipedia editors, so that we can further
spread
> the damage.  "Oh, turns out X removed information stating that
> politician Y is a serial rapist.  Pass this on to anyone else who
> wants to know."

I trust that you would instead say "I've looked and the removal
accords with this (specified) policy of xx Wikipedia".

> > And revisit perhaps in the event that we see a regular pattern of
> > problems arising from this. Could happen; we'll see.
>
> What is likely to happen is a regular pattern of querelous and
> tendentious questioning of any deletion done, followed by inevitable
> leakage of whatever damaging stuff was deleted in the first place.

I suggest you see the proper reply above and use that instead of the
one you suggested. As for the questioning, that's a good thing - we're
_supposed_ to have our actions questioned. It's part of what oversight
is about.

James Day


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
>  > The suitable initial group seems clear enough: every
administrator.
>
> 1000 people? That's an absurdly large group. As it is there are
> administrators digging up deleted articles and posting them on other
> websites.

This isn't about publishing deleted articles.

Not that I have any objection to something like publishing every
deleted article without personal information somewhere. Might produce
some welcome extra feedback about what gets deleted inappropriately.

> > Beyond that, the censored log should be available to everyone.
> > Administrators often have more than enough to do and any
assistance
> > non-administrators can do in the way of oversight is a good thing.
>
> No, the log should not be available to everyone.  I can't see what
> possible good that could come from it, and the log itself could be
> used to reveal the very kinds of things it is intended to conceal
> (e.g. personal information).

It's good to have the largest practical group able to examine our
actions. That increases the chance that enough people will take an
interest and provide effective questioning of actions.

> > Removing the page isn't close to sufficient - it conceals what is
> > perhaps the most significant part of what is being overseen: who
is
> > doing what, where and still concealed from most, why.
>
> What's the danger here?  What horrible thing will happen if some
edit
> disappears from the history?

Nothing harmful at all will happen if all the actions are in accord
with policy.

If someone uses the capability to hide edits that are uncomplimentary
to them or simply make a project look bad in a news story, when the
project did actually have a problem then that would be an entirely
different and problematic mater. Things like "we screwed up" or "yes,
that was a bad edit" aren't what this capability is for. Oversight is
about making sure that the capability isn't misused in this sort of
way, however much we all want to be perfect and might be tempted to
try to look better than we are.

> > It's worth remembering that a few million pages with things not
> > vanishing completely have not brought the encyclopedia or
Foundation
> > down.
>
> Um, not yet.  The past is not a good predictor of the future in
these
> kinds of things.

I disagree.

> > Making sure we have ample oversight so that people actually look
> > hard at what is being done and mention problems is important to
our
> > process.
> >
> > Without broad oversight, the capability to make thing silently
vanish
> > should also be vanishing.
>
> And that's bad because?

It's not bad at all. Looking hard at what we do is good. So is
capabilities without oversight going away, since that needlessly
introduces the scope for misuse by eliminating the checks and balances
we should be striving for in all we do.

James Day


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> What people seem to disagree with is with the notion
> that the log "has to be kept private" due to someone's
> claim of 'legally problematic revisions.' Is Google
> facilitating the "damage of Starbucks' reputation" by
> not removing "consumer whore" from its Image searches?

That might be an appropriate stance towards potentially libellous
revisions that are hidden, but from random sampling of the old log,
most of the revisions hidden so far seem to have been hidden because
they contain personal information, which I'm sure we all want to keep
hidden.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 22/06/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/21/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > The problem is that what we are removing is stuff like personal
> > information or libelous statements that we really do want to vanish
> > and not be repeated internally.
>
> Then the log as viewable to the world at large should say something
> like '10:49, 22 June 2006 Fred Bauder deleted 1 revision(s) of "George
> W. Bush" (Personal information)'

An idle thought vaguely prompted by this... you know what would be
nice? After a normal deletion, for the history to go from

* 12:13 2006-01-01 User:Adam m. (Fixed typo)
* 12.54 2006-01-01 User:Bill (Expanded biographical section)
* 13.17 2006-01-01 User:Vandal (...)
* 13:22 2006-01-01 User:NotAdmin (Remove defamation)

to

* 12:13 2006-01-01 User:Adam m. (Fixed typo)
* 12.54 2006-01-01 User:Bill (Expanded biographical section)
* 13.17 2006-01-01 User:Admin [Revision deleted (Defamatory material)]
* 13:22 2006-01-01 User:NotAdmin (Remove defamation)

rather than

* There is one deleted revision.
* 12:13 2006-01-01 User:Adam m. (Fixed typo)
* 12.54 2006-01-01 User:Bill (Expanded biographical section)
* 13:22 2006-01-01 User:NotAdmin (Remove defamation)

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


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
On 6/22/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:
> I just wanted to update the one in Wikimedia Commons but sadly I was unable to
> fetch the page source code from Wikimedia wiki without registration...

You can use [[Special:Export]] to get the wikitext.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Export/Privacy_policy

Angela


subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


from_name: geni

body:
On 6/22/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> You'll have to pardon me as I've been on break for a little bit.
>
> I'm just wondering how oversight is much different than an admin just
> deleting an article and restoring all but the selected revision.
>

Becuase the version was one click away from restor

> It's not like the revision is deleted in the database.

That isn't exactly true.
--
geni


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Sue Reed wrote:
> They are not sourced and there are a bunch of statements like "The reason often given for its retirement ..."

There are three external links at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Price_Is_Right_pricing_games>
that have detailed descriptions of the various specific games:

*[http://www.cbs.com/daytime/price/games/plinko.shtml Official CBS
website,  games archive]
*[http://www.golden-road.net/modules/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pricing_game_notes
Pricing Game Timeline and Notes] from Golden-Road.net (I had to repair
this one, the link 404ed previously)
*[http://gscentral.net/pricing1.htm The TPIR Pricing Game Directory]
Features extensive descriptions and screengrabs of all current and past
pricing games.

I haven't done anything like an extensive comparison (I glanced at ten
or so of the articles picked at random) but from the amount of
information I've seen for each game they could well be the source for
much if not all of the content of these articles. Might do well for a
start to paste this external links section into all of the individual
game articles.

The current arrangement looks like a reasonable way of organizing this
information to me, merging them all into one big article on pricing
games would result in a monsterously huge article. The description from
the initial posting on this thread,

> And what do we have to say about them? Analyses, statistics, etc? Nah,
> just when it showed up, and when it went.

_greatly_ misrepresents what I'm seeing here, most of these articles
have a detailed description of how it works and a substantial "trivia"
section with a list of other facts about it.

This is actually quite fascinating, I had no idea there were fans of the
Price is Right who'd keep track of all this sort of stuff. :)

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from_name: Cary Bass

subject: [Commons-l] Project completed

body:
I noticed that [[Category:One Hundred Poets]] was in there.  It looks,
however, that all of these images should in fact be jpeg files, because
png-8 format is making them into monsters of files.  I'm uploading rotated
versions of jpeg files and marking the originals as {{superseded}}.

Cary Bass
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bastique

[[Category:Images requiring rotation]] has had all approximately 150 images
rotated back to proper viewing this week. I left the category and there
should be more coming in to fill the article and be worked on. I also
created a category for Vietnam War Memorial photographs and catelogued the
existing ones that were in neither article nor category other than Vietnam
War, which seemed innapropriate.

Wayne Ray