from_name: Silas Snider

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV on Israel

body:
On 12/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
<snip />
> To be more precise the turn off to the left is to "Arafat Makkah", the
> actual holy site in Mecca.  The sign going to the right has two arrows,
> which suggests two lanes.  Why, in a country that is predominantly
> Muslim, would the infidel minority get two lanes while the dominant
> religious group get only one?  Traffic control can be a serious problem
> at the time of the Hajj.

I'm sorry, but I'm having a little bit of trouble understanding the
reason for saying this. The assertion that you seem to be disputing is
that non-Muslims are not allowed in Mecca. You reply with a) a
technical nit-pick about non-Muslims being allowed into Mecca, just
not Arafat Makkah, and what seems to be a complaint about traffic
problems during the Hajj. I, and everyone who gets a full inbox of
this stuff would, I think, appreciate every byte of the message to be
full of meaningful information that is apropos to the topic.

To answer point (a) above, would you still object if the statement was
that non-Muslims are not allowed into "Arafat Makkah". With this
statement, Oldak Quill's point is still valid -- the comparison to
Apratheid is better made with the Saudis than with Israel.

> The Latter Day Saints do not allow non-Mormons into their inner temple
> in Salt Lake City, and I find no reason to be upset about that.

This is a bad analogy for two reasons:
1. Two wrongs do not make a right -- just because the Latter Day
Saints go around prohibiting people from entering their inner temple
doesn't give me moral grounds on which to do the same thing.

2. The reason I'm not (being a non-Mormon) allowed into the temple of
the Latter Day Saints has to do with it being private property, giving
them the right to arbitrarily refuse entrance to anyone they choose,
much like my home. The reason I'm not (being a non-Muslim) allowed to
enter Arafat Makkah is because the government of Saudi Arabia has
passed a law forbidding it.

> The photo adds no commentary, and is accompanied by a misleading title.
> Looking further into the website gives me the impression that it is run
> by fundamentalist hate mongers.

However much you may object to the website housing the photo, you have
nto yet offered a shred of evidence to negate the assertion that
non-Muslims are not allowed into Arafat Makkah. If you really need a
more neutrally  captioned photo, see
http://www.theraptureisathand.com/blog/index.php/2006/12/13/mecca-youre-not-welcome/
(though this site might be considered that of religious hate mongers as well)

Sincerely,
Silas Snider

> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silas Snider is a proud member of the Association of Wikipedians Who
Dislike Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category
of Article, and Who Are In Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad
Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They are Deletionist
(AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD) , and the Harmonious
Editing Club of Wikipedia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding the "change size" indicator in change
	lists

body:
On 12/31/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you're suggesting that we need to start asking for permission
> before we commit every single improvement to the software, then you
> can forget it; a lot of them have to be done to make the site more
> stable.

Asking permission? No. But the current situation looks to me like:

1) Developers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes
that affect users.
2) CSS and Javascript hackers randomly without any warning make
unannounced changes that affect users.
3) Users get peeved due to their feeling of powerlessness, and not
knowing any better, blame developers or CSS/Javascript hackers at
random.
4) Developers consider this unfair.

How do you think this can be improved?

> BugZilla is the bug tracking software, and it's where we track bugs
> and feature requests. I'm sorry if it's not considered wholly visible
> to all users, but it's not our fault no-one likes to link to it in,
> e.g. the sidebar, or other visible places on Wikipedia. If people have
> significant objections to something, we have that; and we also have
> this mailing list, which is not private, and at least two public IRC
> channels, which are not invite-only.

And I guess the technical village pump
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29).

It's probably fair to say that the developers prefer Bugzilla and IRC,
and that users prefer wiki-based discussion, hence the yawning gap
between them.

Is there a running changelog accessible from Wikipedia perhaps? Some
centralised place where highly visible changes are logged?

> I strongly object to the assertion that the development team is in
> anyway elitist or deliberately ignorant of user opinion; that is
> simply unfair and completely untrue. If we didn't care about the user
> base, we wouldn't actually be doing this.

I would disagree with that assertion, too.

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Bug 8379] moveBatch.php problems

body:
On 31/12/06, Dan Jacobson <jidanni at jidanni.org> wrote:
> No links on the lines I marked with @. Thus one needs to visit the
> move log to click on the newly born page "020a"

Ah, right...that's actually the case for me...

> And not only moveBatch.php, but moving pages via the main web
> interface too.

I made a dodgy guess at what language we're talking about, and came up
with "zh-tw" - check the language file for MediaWiki 1.7. The message
"1movedto2" does *not* contain link brackets around the $1 and $2
parameters.

Edit MediaWiki:1movedto2 and correct this...you'll also want to edit
other system messages related to moving, which can be found via
Special:Allmessages as usual.

Rob Church


list: wikien-l

from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] Not so broken after all, perhaps

body:
On 12/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
> Apply a random number generator to determine the order in which they
> appear each time they are downloaded.
>

I suppose we could use {{CURRENTSECOND}} to transclude 1 of 60
sub-templates, which in turn contain something around 200 #ifexist:
statements to transclude the various AfD sub-pages. It'd be a lot of work to
set up, but it's simpler than it sounds. AfD logs would look something like
this...

{{AfD Log {{CURRENTSECOND}}|
|Foo
|Bar
|Yar
|Pirates
|Ninjas
}}

Then the page would transclude {{AfD Log 04}} (or one of 59 other
templates), which each contain a lot of this, in different orders:

{{#if:{{{2|}}}|{{#ifexist:Wikipedia:Articles for
deletion/{{{2}}}|{{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/{{{2}}}}}}}}}
{{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{#ifexist:Wikipedia:Articles for
deletion/{{{3}}}|{{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/{{{3}}}}}}}}}
{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{#ifexist:Wikipedia:Articles for
deletion/{{{1}}}|{{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/{{{1}}}}}}}}}

Let each one take about 200-300 optional parameters, and I don't think
there's much chance of an overflow.

Surely I'm missing a few things, but the general concept seems workable.

I donno if it's a good idea. Still brainstorming. "Newer noms to the top"
would require a lot less overhaul, but I can see benefits from a
pseudo-random arrangement such as this.

If there actually is some template that generates random numbers, somebody
shoot me now. ;)

-Luna


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 16:50:12 +0000, "Thomas Dalton"
<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Um, actually, most people have simply given up the fighting.
>
>That's pretty much how consensus based decision making is meant to
>work. You keep arguing until one side stops, either because they're
>convinced by the others arguments, they've reached an acceptable
>compromise, or they simply don't think it's important enough to worry
>about.

In this case, however, it was because of absolute obdurate refusal to
countenance any form of compromise in any way whatsoever on the part
of some people whose religion holds as a fundamental tenet that "all
schools are inherently notable".

Numerous excellent ideas were floated, all rejected by the same small
group of people.  Wikipedia is not a directory, except of some things.

You still get people asserting "all schools are notable".  I think
they may even believe it. I don't: my first school is so far form
notable that it took considerable research even to find out how it
spelt its name, and even then I only have a shrewd idea, I can't find
a reliable source for it.  Another of my schools is over a thousand
years old and the only one in the English-speaking world to have
educated a Pope.  To assert that both are notable is to use such a low
threshold of notability as to render the term utterly meaningless.

I can already see the same arguments starting re shopping malls.  I
hate to think what will be next.

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


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Christmas lull

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~leon/stats/reqstats/reqstats-monthly.png
>
> The quiestest two days for Wikimedia were the 24th and 25th, straddling
> week 51 and 52 on the graph. A lull in request rate has continued
> throughout the week. We're still seeing significantly more traffic now
> than we were in the middle of the year, but I have to wonder if it might
> not have been better, in hindsight, to move the fundraising drive back a
> couple of weeks.
>
> -- Tim Starling

If moving it "back" means "starting two weeks sooner", I must emphasize
we expected to start the fundraising *sooner* than it actually started.
We were delayed first by the audit (we absolutely wanted to be able to
show financial results and a general budget along with the fundraising
call).
We were also delayed one more week, because technical details were not
ready (if I remember well, crm was not entirely set up, site notice was
not done at all, no agreement made with matching donors, the very cool
fundraising website was not done yet, no press release had been written
etc...).
In short, we were not ready.
Two weeks sooner would have been cool, but we just *did not have* the
resources to make that happen. No use "wondering" if that would have
been better. It was just not possible.

If moving it "back" means "starting two weeks later", this was
envisionned and much discussed; On one hand we wanted to give donors the
opportunity to make a donation in year 2006, for tax deductibility
purposes. On the other hand, the cash available was getting low. So, we
decided to move on anyway.

As for the realistic amount... let us be realistic. We have two main
options.
Either we give no goals. People see the money flow in, and are
reassured. They think "oh, that's cool, they have enough money and we
will not see any fundraising before a long time".
And on our side, we despair in silence. Because we know we will proceed
with a strict economy of sort.

Or we give a goal. Or hint there is a goal. And perhaps reach it,
perhaps do not reach it.
If we do not reach, it is kinda easy to say "this goal were irrealistic,
how stupid it was to set up such a goal".

 From my point of view, I prefer you to think we are irrealistic, but to
realise that if we do not have enough money, then we will not have
enough money to function properly. That may mean delay to purchase
servers (hence, poor service to readers and editors). That may mean less
developers (hence, no development of much needed features). That may
mean less legal support (hence, additional delay when you are waiting
for a contractual agreement to publish a DVD, or no help if you are a
chapter and want support to retrieve a cybersquatted domain). That may
mean no big meeting to work on the future of mediawiki. That may mean
letting people abuse our trademarks, because we have no mean to go after
abusers.

Well, I prefer that we set up a goal that appears irrealistic, but which
is nevertheless what we need. If we fail that goal, at least, I can
explain why the Foundation will not pay a developer to work on
reviewed-versions, or why the Foundation will not pay the travel of
people to go to the next chapter meeting. These are examples. We can set
up the priorities, and only fund the priorities. With much regrets for
the other cool things we could do :-)

Ant


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Christmas lull


body:
On 31/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Asking permission? No. But the current situation looks to me like:
>
> 1) Developers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes
> that affect users.

We try to avoid doing this wherever possible - Tim in particular is
very good at alerting wikitech-l and wikipedia-l in advance of making
changes, e.g. to the blocking mechanism, earlier this year.

Sometimes, stuff slips through the net, and what seems major to users
is not so major to us.

> 2) CSS and Javascript hackers randomly without any warning make
> unannounced changes that affect users.

Not our fault, I'm afraid; discipline them accordingly.

> 3) Users get peeved due to their feeling of powerlessness, and not
> knowing any better, blame developers or CSS/Javascript hackers at
> random.

Not our fault.

> 4) Developers consider this unfair.

Well, it is!

> How do you think this can be improved?

Encourage administrators with poor aesthetic taste not to make changes
to the sitewide CSS without consulting users. I thought this was the
usual precedent on your wiki?

> And I guess the technical village pump
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29).

No longer an official forum because it's not suitable for tracking bugs.

> Is there a running changelog accessible from Wikipedia perhaps? Some
> centralised place where highly visible changes are logged?

The Wikipedia Signpost has a "bugs, repairs and internal operational
news" slot each week, which includes software changes; I used to
maintain that bit before I disappeared in August, and Simetrical now
does a sterling job of it (although it's not necessarily fair to
expect that he will continue to do so), providing a damn sight better
description of most things than I ever did.

This isn't necessarily particularly official, either, but since you've
got a committer updating it...infer what you like. There's always the
Subversion log. Oh, but of course...non developers don't apparently
like opening their damn browsers.

> I would disagree with that assertion, too.

That's odd, because it seemed to me that your previous post perpetuated it.

Rob Church


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] NeOpuntia

body:
Okky Sulistijo wrote:
<snip>

Great, now the spammers are *subscribing*! Or is non-member moderation
disabled for this list?

--
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: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Risks

body:
Here is something I would like to share with all of you:

********

RISKS

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To explore feelings is to risk exposing our true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd is to risk loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try at all is to risk failure.
But to risk we must,
Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The man, the woman, who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is
nothing.

**********

Have a happy & healthy New Year,

Marc Riddell


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Risks

body:
We needed this.

Thank you!

On 12/31/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Here is something I would like to share with all of you:
>
> ********
>
> RISKS
>
> To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
> To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
> To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
> To explore feelings is to risk exposing our true self.
> To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd is to risk loss.
> To love is to risk not being loved in return.
> To live is to risk dying.
> To hope is to risk despair.
> To try at all is to risk failure.
> But to risk we must,
> Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
> The man, the woman, who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is
> nothing.
>
> **********
>
> Have a happy & healthy New Year,
>
> Marc Riddell
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV on Israel

body:
On 31/12/06, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> But on this mailing list there should be no need to cite sources for well-
> known facts.  Demanding a citation for something like this is ridiculous.
> Saudi Arabia's treatment of Muslims is well-known, and nobody who is the
> least bit informed about the subject can deny it.  It's like requesting a
> source for the Holocaust happening.

I'm sorry, but to compare Saudi Arabia not allowing non-Muslims to
drive on the highway that happens to lead into Mecca - the holy city,
who would have thought? - with the Holocaust is both grotesque and a
piece of gratuitous trolling.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] Christmas lull

body:
Hoi,
Anthere may I congratulate you and in you all of us who feel ourselves to be
part of the Wikimedia Foundation with a great 2006. I hope the progress that
we have seen will continue in 2007 and make it as special as this year was.
Thanks,
    GerardM

PS we can and will have more fundraisers :)

On 12/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
> >
> http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~leon/stats/reqstats/reqstats-monthly.png
> >
> > The quiestest two days for Wikimedia were the 24th and 25th, straddling
> > week 51 and 52 on the graph. A lull in request rate has continued
> > throughout the week. We're still seeing significantly more traffic now
> > than we were in the middle of the year, but I have to wonder if it might
> > not have been better, in hindsight, to move the fundraising drive back a
> > couple of weeks.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
>
>
> If moving it "back" means "starting two weeks sooner", I must emphasize
> we expected to start the fundraising *sooner* than it actually started.
> We were delayed first by the audit (we absolutely wanted to be able to
> show financial results and a general budget along with the fundraising
> call).
> We were also delayed one more week, because technical details were not
> ready (if I remember well, crm was not entirely set up, site notice was
> not done at all, no agreement made with matching donors, the very cool
> fundraising website was not done yet, no press release had been written
> etc...).
> In short, we were not ready.
> Two weeks sooner would have been cool, but we just *did not have* the
> resources to make that happen. No use "wondering" if that would have
> been better. It was just not possible.
>
>
> If moving it "back" means "starting two weeks later", this was
> envisionned and much discussed; On one hand we wanted to give donors the
> opportunity to make a donation in year 2006, for tax deductibility
> purposes. On the other hand, the cash available was getting low. So, we
> decided to move on anyway.
>
>
> As for the realistic amount... let us be realistic. We have two main
> options.
> Either we give no goals. People see the money flow in, and are
> reassured. They think "oh, that's cool, they have enough money and we
> will not see any fundraising before a long time".
> And on our side, we despair in silence. Because we know we will proceed
> with a strict economy of sort.
>
> Or we give a goal. Or hint there is a goal. And perhaps reach it,
> perhaps do not reach it.
> If we do not reach, it is kinda easy to say "this goal were irrealistic,
> how stupid it was to set up such a goal".
>
>
> From my point of view, I prefer you to think we are irrealistic, but to
> realise that if we do not have enough money, then we will not have
> enough money to function properly. That may mean delay to purchase
> servers (hence, poor service to readers and editors). That may mean less
> developers (hence, no development of much needed features). That may
> mean less legal support (hence, additional delay when you are waiting
> for a contractual agreement to publish a DVD, or no help if you are a
> chapter and want support to retrieve a cybersquatted domain). That may
> mean no big meeting to work on the future of mediawiki. That may mean
> letting people abuse our trademarks, because we have no mean to go after
> abusers.
>
>
> Well, I prefer that we set up a goal that appears irrealistic, but which
> is nevertheless what we need. If we fail that goal, at least, I can
> explain why the Foundation will not pay a developer to work on
> reviewed-versions, or why the Foundation will not pay the travel of
> people to go to the next chapter meeting. These are examples. We can set
> up the priorities, and only fund the priorities. With much regrets for
> the other cool things we could do :-)
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Christmas lull


from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
No, there's not even necessarily an 87.3% chance that the statistic given is
*made up*.  And not just because something made up need not be wrong.

KP

On 12/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net > wrote:
>
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
> >On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:33:18 -0500, "Daniel R. Tobias"
> ><dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Some more findings which are relevant here:
> >> http://www.esolutionsdata.com/statistic/5892
> >>
> >>
> >That's flat wrong.  The real value is: 87.3% of statistics are made
> >up.
> >
> Ergo there is an 87.3% probability that the 87.3% statistic is wrong. :-)
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV on Israel

body:
On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 09:33:21 -0800 (PST), Ken Arromdee
<arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

>Saudi Arabia's treatment of Muslims is well-known, and nobody who is the
>least bit informed about the subject can deny it.  It's like requesting a
>source for the Holocaust happening.

You might want to take that up with David Irving...

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


from_name: Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV on Israel

body:
Are you all done yet? I'm still waiting for a non-snide response to my
question "what's the issue at hand again?" If the answer is nothing,
let's make this thread -- and the poorly-formed analogies in it -- history.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

jayjg wrote:
> On 12/31/06, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 30 Dec 2006, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>>> If you're going to make a comparison with Apartheid, you've got a better
>>>> comparison looking at Saudi Arabia, where multiple cities require
>>>> non-Muslims to drive on different roads than Muslims, and non-Muslims are
>>>> barred from multiple areas of many cities, and are subject to different laws
>>>> and different punishments for breaking the laws.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <citation needed>
>>>
>> Oddly enough, there's a problem on Wikipedia with people disingenuously
>> slapping on "citation needed" when they very well know something is true,
>> but they're hoping that nobody will cite it, so they have an excuse to delete
>> it.
>>
>> At least on Wikipedia there's a requirement to cite sources, so they have
>> *some* point, even if they're using the rules in a biased way.
>>
>> But on this mailing list there should be no need to cite sources for well-
>> known facts.  Demanding a citation for something like this is ridiculous.
>> Saudi Arabia's treatment of Muslims is well-known, and nobody who is the
>> least bit informed about the subject can deny it.  It's like requesting a
>> source for the Holocaust happening.
>>
>
> Which is why I almost never respond to Ray's posts. Nevertheless:
>
> http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/country/Saudi%20Arabia/religious%20apartheid%20in%20sa.htm
>
> Jay.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:33:18 -0500, "Daniel R. Tobias"
<dan at tobias.name> wrote:

>Some more findings which are relevant here:
>http://www.esolutionsdata.com/statistic/5892

That's flat wrong.  The real value is: 87.3% of statistics are made
up.

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


from_name: habj

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
2006/12/29, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com>:

> Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in
> english, would be a solution.

My local community is not at all hostile to messages in English on our
Village pumps. Such animals drop in every now and then, and not seldom
everone will change their language to English to continue discuss the
matter - shutting Swedish speakers who do not speak English well out
completely from the discussion. We seldom care about this. It is one
of our cultural features, I guess.

I would prefer that the bot posted a short message including a link to
the major text elsewhere - on Meta, on wikimediafoundation.org, in the
mailing list archive or whatever. Actually, I think such an info-bot
would be a good idea. If one wants to draw attention to the mailing
list as a discussion forum, linking to discussions in mailing list
archives is probably a good idea.

/habj


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


body:
I've compared the standard of some current deletion debates with some
from a year back, only informally of course and without much system,
but it seems to me that:

* really obvious deletions are much less common, suggesting that PROD
is doing its job
* blatant spam and band vanity is no longer a significant contributor
to AfD
* quality of debate seems higher, with more references to policy and
guidelines and much less bald !voting
* more contextual knowledge is evident now, suggesting that
categorisation may also be working as intended

One thing which is not fixed: articles towards the end of the AfD day
attract much less input than articles at the beginning of the day.

Does anyone have a good idea for fixing that?

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


from_name: Gurch

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> I've compared the standard of some current deletion debates with some
> from a year back, only informally of course and without much system,
> but it seems to me that:
>
> * really obvious deletions are much less common, suggesting that PROD
> is doing its job
> * blatant spam and band vanity is no longer a significant contributor
> to AfD
> * quality of debate seems higher, with more references to policy and
> guidelines and much less bald !voting
> * more contextual knowledge is evident now, suggesting that
> categorisation may also be working as intended
>
> One thing which is not fixed: articles towards the end of the AfD day
> attract much less input than articles at the beginning of the day.
>
> Does anyone have a good idea for fixing that?
>
> Guy (JzG)

Move everyone to different timezones?

-Gurch


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] new site notice now ready

body:
On 31/12/06, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:

> > Who cares if it falls under some artificial definition of advertising
> > or not?  I'm sure you could find 100 dictionary definitions which
> > include what's going on, and 100 other definitions which don't.
> > Answers.com says "A notice, such as a poster or a paid announcement in
> > the print, broadcast, or electronic media, designed to attract public
> > attention or patronage."  I'd say sitenotice qualifies under that
> > definition.  Whoopdedoo, who cares?

> Apparently, you do.

I think it's clear that even if someone can mathematically prove that
"sponsorship" is technically not identical to "advertising", it looks,
walks and quacks enough like it to risk similar objectionableness.

Arguing the definition of the word "advertising" is missing the point
of the objection.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Illegal IP blocking on the Dutch wikipedia

body:
Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.

But Thailand, according to you, runs entirely on open proxies.

We'll have to make an exception.

On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
> Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
> IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot edit
> nl.wikipedia!
>
> On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
> proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
> cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this a
> wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still
>
> I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.
>
> Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
I don't think it's that English Wikipedia allows them, it's that they
haven't been blocked yet.

I don't know if Dutch Wikipedia has a formal requesting-unblock system in
place but leave some sort of message on your talk page saying the autoblock
doesn't allow you to edit. At least on English Wikipedia, open proxy blocks
get lifted this way.

On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
> I was busy writing on the bangkok bombings. And if this is wiki policy
> why does en.wikipedia allow these ip's to edit. The strangest thing is.
> I am logged in. So I should be able to edit. but I get the message that
> the ip is blocked because of open proxy. These ip's are the range of my
> provider. Which has 500.000 subscribers.
>
> Waerth
>
>
> >Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.
> >
> >But Thailand, according to you, runs entirely on open proxies.
> >
> >We'll have to make an exception.
> >
> >On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
> >>IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot edit
> >>nl.wikipedia!
> >>
> >>On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
> >>proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
> >>cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this a
> >>wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still
> >>
> >>I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.
> >>
> >>Waerth
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV on Israel

body:
Ugh... sigh... I guess my last message didn't get read. Please carry on
this dispute elsewhere.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

P.S. However, the sign is referring to two different places -- Mount
Arafat and the city of Makkah (and similarly the cities of Ta'if and
Riyadh for the other part). But please, let's abandon this topic...

Silas Snider wrote:
> On 12/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> <snip />
>
>> To be more precise the turn off to the left is to "Arafat Makkah", the
>> actual holy site in Mecca.  The sign going to the right has two arrows,
>> which suggests two lanes.  Why, in a country that is predominantly
>> Muslim, would the infidel minority get two lanes while the dominant
>> religious group get only one?  Traffic control can be a serious problem
>> at the time of the Hajj.
>>
>
> I'm sorry, but I'm having a little bit of trouble understanding the
> reason for saying this. The assertion that you seem to be disputing is
> that non-Muslims are not allowed in Mecca. You reply with a) a
> technical nit-pick about non-Muslims being allowed into Mecca, just
> not Arafat Makkah, and what seems to be a complaint about traffic
> problems during the Hajj. I, and everyone who gets a full inbox of
> this stuff would, I think, appreciate every byte of the message to be
> full of meaningful information that is apropos to the topic.
>
> To answer point (a) above, would you still object if the statement was
> that non-Muslims are not allowed into "Arafat Makkah". With this
> statement, Oldak Quill's point is still valid -- the comparison to
> Apratheid is better made with the Saudis than with Israel.
>
>
>> The Latter Day Saints do not allow non-Mormons into their inner temple
>> in Salt Lake City, and I find no reason to be upset about that.
>>
>
> This is a bad analogy for two reasons:
> 1. Two wrongs do not make a right -- just because the Latter Day
> Saints go around prohibiting people from entering their inner temple
> doesn't give me moral grounds on which to do the same thing.
>
> 2. The reason I'm not (being a non-Mormon) allowed into the temple of
> the Latter Day Saints has to do with it being private property, giving
> them the right to arbitrarily refuse entrance to anyone they choose,
> much like my home. The reason I'm not (being a non-Muslim) allowed to
> enter Arafat Makkah is because the government of Saudi Arabia has
> passed a law forbidding it.
>
>
>> The photo adds no commentary, and is accompanied by a misleading title.
>> Looking further into the website gives me the impression that it is run
>> by fundamentalist hate mongers.
>>
>
> However much you may object to the website housing the photo, you have
> nto yet offered a shred of evidence to negate the assertion that
> non-Muslims are not allowed into Arafat Makkah. If you really need a
> more neutrally  captioned photo, see
> http://www.theraptureisathand.com/blog/index.php/2006/12/13/mecca-youre-not-welcome/
> (though this site might be considered that of religious hate mongers as well)
>
> Sincerely,
> Silas Snider
>
>
>> Ec
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rotten tomatoes invited

body:
For those who are aware of the mess relating to Giano, a modest proposal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano/Workshop#.28Dec_2006.29_A_Modest_Proposal

For those who aren't, you betta off. Ya rly.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rotten tomatoes invited

body:
On 31/12/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well Daaaveeeey,
> I read it and it looks great!

"I DON'T CARE WHO'S WRONG. THIS IS STOPPING NOW. YOU'RE BOTH GROUNDED.
GO TO YOUR ROOMS!"

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
Or rather, schools are not inherently notable, but if there's something that
makes them notable, like receiving a national award or being part of a
shooting that made national news, then that makes them notable.

On 12/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/1/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > You still get people asserting "all schools are notable".  I think
>
> Don't forget, "notable" has two meanings:
> 1) Interesting, noteworthy, more worthy of discussion than similar
> entities in its category.
> 2) Suitable for an article in Wikipedia.
>
> All schools are clearly not notable(1). But unless we can define what
> that means, the default seems to be to assume that they are all
> notable(2).
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Bug 8381] Don't remove whitespace before
	[[Category:...]]

body: Webboy's solution worked, but the problem should still be fixed.


body:
> Could I trouble you to elaborate on this point a little?
$ lynx -dump http://localhost/mediawikibus/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges\&uselang=en|head -44

1. Odd, uselang=en didn't clean up this part:

   ????????????? [6]??????? ????????[7]????????? [8]???? ????[9]?????
   [10]????? ?[11]????????

   ?????????????????????[12]?? ???????????????????????????????????????

2.
     * ([29]Move log); 12:45 . . [30]WikiSysop ([31]Talk | [32]contribs)
@      (??:020?????:020a)
     * ([33]Move log); 12:45 . . [34]WikiSysop ([35]Talk | [36]contribs)
@       (020???020a)
     * (diff) ([37]hist) . . N [38]????:?????; 12:03 . . [39]MediaWiki
       default ([40]Talk) (Importing text file)
     * ([41]Deletion log); 12:03 . . [42]Delete page script ([43]Talk)
       (????????:?????)
     * (diff) ([44]hist) . . N [45]??:?????; 12:02 . . [46]MediaWiki
       default ([47]Talk) (Importing text file)

No links on the lines I marked with @. Thus one needs to visit the
move log to click on the newly born page "020a"

And not only moveBatch.php, but moving pages via the main web
interface too.


body:
On 31/12/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry to say this, but it's this kind of language that makes
> problems larger than they actually are.

Perhaps I could have worded it better, I do apologise.

> Repeat after me: Assume Good Faith.

I have done. I wasn't the one raising objections against anything on
the English Wikipedia, because I don't edit it - nothing there affects
me.

Rob Church


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> One thing which is not fixed: articles towards the end of the AfD day
> attract much less input than articles at the beginning of the day.
>
> Does anyone have a good idea for fixing that?

Have the "current debates" page, or whatever it's called, contain the
last 2 days, rather than the last day. That way you would move only
debates at least 24 hours old off the page at midnight UTC, rather
than moving all debates (including ones only 5 minutes old).


from_name: Ligulem

body:
On 31.12.2006 19:07, Rob Church wrote:
> ... discipline them accordingly.

I'm sorry to say this, but it's this kind of language that makes
problems larger than they actually are.

People are sensitive to arrogance and it's sometimes a bit hard to find
out where the joke ends and the arrogance starts.

Yes, Mets501 was a bit bold adding the colors. But the colors are still
in effect, so it can't be that bad.

Repeat after me: Assume Good Faith.

And nobody is perfect.

Happy 2007!


body:
Luna wrote:
> On 12/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>>
>> One thing which is not fixed: articles towards the end of the AfD day
>> attract much less input than articles at the beginning of the day.
>>
>> Does anyone have a good idea for fixing that?
>>
>
>
> Currently, new nominations are added to the bottom, which means people who
> stroll by and don't bother to scroll down fifty pages will only see the
> oldest nominations which are probably already filled with comments.
>
> What say we add new nominations to the top, instead? Might get them a bit
> more attention.
>
> Unless that's already been tried, and I'm silly. :p
>
> -Luna

That's a good idea - and when you think about it the logical way to do
these things. Though I can guarantee if this change is adopted, the
first day it goes into effect the nominations will all end up in a
jumbled heap :)

-Gurch


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-01

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.9alpha (r18741).
Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test Thumbnail image caption with a free URL... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A RFC with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A mailto link with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail- we don't render math in the parsertests by default,
so math is not stripped and turns up as escaped <math> tags.... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Image caption containing another image... FAILED!
Running test Bug 3090: External links other than http: in image captions... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Fuzz testing: image with bogus manual thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

Passed 463 of 490 tests (94.49%)... FAILED!


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Donation of DVDs to Wikimedia Foundation Projects

body:
I was going through the Wikibooks study help desk, and a very surprising
offer showed up recently:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks%3AStudy_help_desk#How_to_donate_a_dvd_formatted_lecture_series_on_undergraduate_calculus.3F

"I would like to donate A video taped lecture series on Calculus which
have been converted to dvd format. How do I go about doing this? The
lecturer is willing to send the dvds to an appropriate uploader, but
does not know much about computer programming himself. The lectures were
taped at The University of Missouri - Kansas City.

"Please send any information you have to: micheleforan at sbcglobal.net

"Thankyou"

I find this an incredibly generous offer, and something that supports
both Wikibooks and Wikiversity in a great many ways, although most media
content like this generally is sent to Commons.  There are some other
technical issues here involved as well, simply due to the sheer quantity
of material here that is going to be offered, which is one reason why
I'm trying to vet this idea here on Foundation-l.

In addition to trying to figure out just what Wikimedia sister project
this ought to be sent to for further assistance, I would like to know
what the status is right now for storage of large numbers of video
files.  I noticed that the [[Commons:Category:Video]] has several video
files listed, although almost all of them are generally very short
clips.  This offer as it currently stands could potentially be several
gigabytes of data, which would dwarf the entire video category by itself.

There is also the comparatively minor issue of trying to convert the
files from MPEG format to OGG or other patent-free (or compatable with
the GFDL) formats, but I think we can find some individuals to help out
with that on the various Wikimedia projects.  That is not the major
issue at the moment.

I guess this is also a political issue in the sense of wheither the WMF
wants to get into the business of hosting DVD-video length content on
its servers.  The costs of doing so I would guess would be rather
substantial for bandwidth costs alone, assuming several individuals are
all trying to download these huge files, which has been an issue raised
in the past.  Video files havn't been explicitly restricted from
Wikimedia projects, but then again most of the video that is used is
comparatively small snippets at the moment.  Any thoughts or ideas on
this topic are significantly appreciated.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: annabel

body:
Waerth,

Ronalvd has the support of the sysops on wikipedia NL. He is doing a great job by blocking open proxies of which we get a lot of vandalism.
Surely he doesn't block all open proxies (only the ones we need to block). Please contact him for a solution, instead of posting to this mailing list.

Greetings,
Annabel (@wikipedia.be)

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
Steve Summit wrote:

>Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
>
>>Guy Chapman wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Um, actually, most people have simply given up the fighting.
>>>
>>>
>>That's pretty much how consensus based decision making is meant to
>>work. You keep arguing until one side stops, either because they're
>>convinced by the others arguments, they've reached an acceptable
>>compromise, or they simply don't think it's important enough to worry
>>about.
>>
>>
>"Is meant to work", or, "ends up working in practice"?
>
>The problem, of course, is that you can end up with decisions
>biased pretty heavily towards people with obsessive personalities
>and waaaaaaay too much time on their hands.
>
Exactly.  Then what you have is not consensus but a form of bullying.
True consensus comes from finding a position that all will agree to on
the merits of the situation, not from wearing down opponents into
exhaustion  If people abandon an issue it may just be that they don't
have the energy to deal with the POV pushers.

Ec


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

references:
<n14gp2lhao502e8ircgp6kn9jvc63nqqsu@4ax.com>
	<1adf38660612311542m12afd53er4c279aa5119bdcfe@mail.gmail.com>
	<45984D16.9040507@btinternet.com>

body:
On 12/31/06, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Luna wrote:
> > On 12/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> One thing which is not fixed: articles towards the end of the AfD day
> >> attract much less input than articles at the beginning of the day.
> >>
> >> Does anyone have a good idea for fixing that?
> >>
> >
> >
> > Currently, new nominations are added to the bottom, which means people who
> > stroll by and don't bother to scroll down fifty pages will only see the
> > oldest nominations which are probably already filled with comments.
> >
> > What say we add new nominations to the top, instead? Might get them a bit
> > more attention.
> >
> > Unless that's already been tried, and I'm silly. :p
> >
> > -Luna
>
> That's a good idea - and when you think about it the logical way to do
> these things. Though I can guarantee if this change is adopted, the
> first day it goes into effect the nominations will all end up in a
> jumbled heap :)
>
> -Gurch
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

But is that really so bad? Who cares if they're not in chronological
(or reverse chronological) order? If anything, that'll just make them
more likely to have an even spread of views over the times in which
they were added.


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2007/1/1, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>:
>
> Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.

No, they are not. On nl:Wikipedia they  have not been blocked, partly
exactly for the reason Waerth mentions. Apart from that, if they are blocked
everywhere, then who has decided this?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 1/1/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> There is also the comparatively minor issue of trying to convert the
> files from MPEG format to OGG or other patent-free (or compatable with
> the GFDL) formats, but I think we can find some individuals to help out
> with that on the various Wikimedia projects.  That is not the major
> issue at the moment.

Conversion is trivial. There are some technical burps related to
handling large files (right now max file size on commons is set to
~20megs) which we will need to iron out for other content.

> The costs of doing so I would guess would be rather
> substantial for bandwidth costs alone, assuming several individuals are
> all trying to download these huge files, which has been an issue raised
> in the past.

The popularity of the content is a big factor.
A short video viewed by 10,000 people will usually use more bandwidth
than a long video viewed by ten people. :)  I think in the case of
this videos, if we found people viewing more than the beginnings it
would be evidence that they were actually being used.. and that is a
good thing..

Really I think something like this is valuable for far more reasons
than the video:  if the content were freely licensed it could be
transcribed and then converted into wikiversity courseware.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot edit
nl.wikipedia!

On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this a
wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still

I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.

Waerth


body:
I was busy writing on the bangkok bombings. And if this is wiki policy
why does en.wikipedia allow these ip's to edit. The strangest thing is.
I am logged in. So I should be able to edit. but I get the message that
the ip is blocked because of open proxy. These ip's are the range of my
provider. Which has 500.000 subscribers.

Waerth

>Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.
>
>But Thailand, according to you, runs entirely on open proxies.
>
>We'll have to make an exception.
>
>On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
>>IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot edit
>>nl.wikipedia!
>>
>>On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
>>proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
>>cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this a
>>wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still
>>
>>I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.
>>
>>Waerth
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
I asked the mods on IRC and allthey could do was laugh and say wait for
tomorrow

These call themselves mods.

Waerth

>I don't think it's that English Wikipedia allows them, it's that they
>haven't been blocked yet.
>
>I don't know if Dutch Wikipedia has a formal requesting-unblock system in
>place but leave some sort of message on your talk page saying the autoblock
>doesn't allow you to edit. At least on English Wikipedia, open proxy blocks
>get lifted this way.
>
>On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I was busy writing on the bangkok bombings. And if this is wiki policy
>>why does en.wikipedia allow these ip's to edit. The strangest thing is.
>>I am logged in. So I should be able to edit. but I get the message that
>>the ip is blocked because of open proxy. These ip's are the range of my
>>provider. Which has 500.000 subscribers.
>>
>>Waerth
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.
>>>
>>>But Thailand, according to you, runs entirely on open proxies.
>>>
>>>We'll have to make an exception.
>>>
>>>On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
>>>>IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot edit
>>>>nl.wikipedia!
>>>>
>>>>On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
>>>>proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
>>>>cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this a
>>>>wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still
>>>>
>>>>I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.
>>>>
>>>>Waerth
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
The whole range of my provider was blocked by RonaldB tonight Andre.

Waerth

>2007/1/1, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>:
>
>
>>Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.
>>
>>
>
>
>No, they are not. On nl:Wikipedia they  have not been blocked, partly
>exactly for the reason Waerth mentions. Apart from that, if they are blocked
>everywhere, then who has decided this?
>
>
>
>
>


body:
The following mods have refused so far:

CE
Gerbennn
avanschelven

because they say open proxy blocking is correct. This means I can never
edit nl.wikipedia anymore.

Waerth

>I don't think it's that English Wikipedia allows them, it's that they
>haven't been blocked yet.
>
>I don't know if Dutch Wikipedia has a formal requesting-unblock system in
>place but leave some sort of message on your talk page saying the autoblock
>doesn't allow you to edit. At least on English Wikipedia, open proxy blocks
>get lifted this way.
>
>On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I was busy writing on the bangkok bombings. And if this is wiki policy
>>why does en.wikipedia allow these ip's to edit. The strangest thing is.
>>I am logged in. So I should be able to edit. but I get the message that
>>the ip is blocked because of open proxy. These ip's are the range of my
>>provider. Which has 500.000 subscribers.
>>
>>Waerth
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.
>>>
>>>But Thailand, according to you, runs entirely on open proxies.
>>>
>>>We'll have to make an exception.
>>>
>>>On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
>>>>IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot edit
>>>>nl.wikipedia!
>>>>
>>>>On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
>>>>proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
>>>>cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this a
>>>>wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still
>>>>
>>>>I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.
>>>>
>>>>Waerth
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jerome Banal

body:
Hello Waerth,

Ask them to modify the block so as it to block only anonymous users using
those open proxies. This option is available since 2 or 3 months.
I think, it should solve both your problem (and any other registered or
future registred users one) and their problem (vandals using open proxy to
avoid being blocked).

Regards,
Jerome

2007/1/1, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:
>
> The following mods have refused so far:
>
> CE
> Gerbennn
> avanschelven
>
> because they say open proxy blocking is correct. This means I can never
> edit nl.wikipedia anymore.
>
> Waerth
>
> >I don't think it's that English Wikipedia allows them, it's that they
> >haven't been blocked yet.
> >
> >I don't know if Dutch Wikipedia has a formal requesting-unblock system in
> >place but leave some sort of message on your talk page saying the
> autoblock
> >doesn't allow you to edit. At least on English Wikipedia, open proxy
> blocks
> >get lifted this way.
> >
> >On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I was busy writing on the bangkok bombings. And if this is wiki policy
> >>why does en.wikipedia allow these ip's to edit. The strangest thing is.
> >>I am logged in. So I should be able to edit. but I get the message that
> >>the ip is blocked because of open proxy. These ip's are the range of my
> >>provider. Which has 500.000 subscribers.
> >>
> >>Waerth
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>Open proxies are banned from all Wikimedia projects.
> >>>
> >>>But Thailand, according to you, runs entirely on open proxies.
> >>>
> >>>We'll have to make an exception.
> >>>
> >>>On 12/31/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
> >>>>IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot
> edit
> >>>>nl.wikipedia!
> >>>>
> >>>>On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
> >>>>proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
> >>>>cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this
> a
> >>>>wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still
> >>>>
> >>>>I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.
> >>>>
> >>>>Waerth
> >>>>_______________________________________________
> >>>>foundation-l mailing list
> >>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>foundation-l mailing list
> >>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Try to Play Nice, Wicked Wide Web

body:
If we didn't have rules mandating civility and no personal attacks, things
would be much worse.

On 1/1/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> 'As a Web 2.0 site or a blog becomes more popular, a growing percentage of
> its reader contributions devolve into vitriol, backstabbing and name-calling
> (not to mention Neanderthal spelling and grammar). Participants address each
> other as "idiot" and "moron" (and worse) the way correspondents of old might
> have used "sir" or "madam."'
>
> "One thing is clear, however: the uncivil participants are driving away
> the civil ones. The result is an acceleration of the cycle, and an
> increasing proportion of hostile remarks."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/weekinreview/31pogue.html
>
> Fred
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rotten tomatoes invited

body:
On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 21:30:34 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>"I DON'T CARE WHO'S WRONG. THIS IS STOPPING NOW. YOU'RE BOTH GROUNDED.
>GO TO YOUR ROOMS!"

Hey, that's *my* line!  Just ask my kids :-)

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


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rotten tomatoes invited

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 31/12/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well Daaaveeeey,
>> I read it and it looks great!
>
>
> "I DON'T CARE WHO'S WRONG. THIS IS STOPPING NOW. YOU'RE BOTH GROUNDED.
> GO TO YOUR ROOMS!"

I probably shouldn't have but I did use the section sub-header "Pack it
in the pair of you" at WP:ANI the other day.  The kids had been playing
up all day and it just carried over to Wikipedia.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.16.1/611 - Release Date: 31/12/06


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
On 12/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
> >Interesting...  They're donating computers pre-loaded with Windows and
> >providing technical support and training.  Would they still donate the
> >computers if the library told them they intended to install Linux on
> >them?  Maybe.  But would they still provide the free technical support
> >and training for those libraries?  Somehow I doubt it (although it
> >would be really cool if they did).
> >
> Why would those libraries _want_ to install Linux?  The primary reason
> for free software evaporates when they are spared the costs of
> proprietary licences.
>
I'm sure entire books have been written on why one should use free
software rather than no-cost software.  If you really have trouble
finding information on this let me know and I'll do a better search
for some resources.  Or maybe someone else can provide us with some?

But for the purposes of this discussion, it's enough for me to merely
point out that the software license being given to the libraries does
not entitle that library to free upgrades.  That alone should be
enough reason to prefer Linux, if all other things were equal.  the
clear strategy here of Microsoft, if not the Gates Foundation, is to
give it away for free, get 'em hooked, and then start charging.

Of course, all other things aren't equal.  If the library gets free
support from the Gates Foundation with Windows, and doesn't get free
support with Linux (which tends to be more costly to support in the
first place), then it's going to be really hard for them to choose
Linux.

If the Gates Foundation really wants to help the libraries, then they
should help the libraries free themselves from relying on the
continued charity of Microsoft.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: florencedevouard

subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007

body:
Hello community

Yet another year is over. We?ll soon celebrate our 6 years of existence.
Wikipedia has made an amazing transformation, growing from a grassroots
effort to a global resource. A unique community-driven, non-commercial
top 10 website, letting people share their knowledge, culture and
resources with neighbours near and far.
Wikipedia is just one piece of the Wikimedia movement. Other projects
are growing. Wikicommons, our common repository of media documents, has
experienced an amazing growth and celebrated its first million of
documents. WikiSource is a effort aimed at unearthing primary sources to
unlock historical information, further academic research and add
credibility and depth to publicly available information. WikiBooks is
the future of learning ? up to date, readily accessible text books that
lets students around the world learn, inside and outside the classroom.
WikiNews, Wiktionary and Wikiquote are all growing, thriving examples of
the power of the community to bring new information to new audiences
everyday.

The global impact of Wikipedia and the other project opens the door to a
growing set of responsibilities and challenges for the Wikimedia
Foundation and the community behind it.

Year 2007 will be placed under two major priorities: Sustainability and
reliability.
Two minor priorities will be: Outreach and recognition as a charitable
organization.

Whilst there has been no formal ?vote? to decide so, it seems to be the
consensus emerging from discussions during the board retreat,
discussions during the board meetings, discussions whilst preparing the
fundraising. So, roughly, it seems these four words, sustainability,
reliability, outreach and recognition, will lead the coming months. It
does not necessarily mean other directions will not be pursued, but we
will really try to push along those lines and I hope very much you will
agree these directions are indeed important and will help.

I want to explain a little bit more about these four directions.

Sustainability.
Sustainability for the organization and the projects it support.
Sustainability require a new level of dedication to both organizational
and technological infrastructure.

The board retreat in Frankfurt in October 2006, has revealed deficits at
the organizational levels were a major issue.
The bylaws needed to be fixed, as they did not reflect the reality of
the organization structure. This was done in November. Issue closed.
Board expansion was planned and first step implemented, with the
addition of Oscar, Mindspillage and Jan-Bart. Next step will occur at
the next board members election in june 2007.
An advisory board was set up, future members were suggested by the
community and many contacted. Most of the ones contacted agreed to help
and several of them are already helping the board on various issues.
Angela Beesley, formely board member, has agreed to help chair that
advisory board. More information on this will be provided during January
probably.
Committees and workgroups are not working very well (big
understatement). There are many people willing to help, but few
coordinators, and we are losing a lot of time and energy to identify and
channel goodwill. This is a major issue to work on in the coming months,
and of course an issue for which community input (your input) will be
critically important.
In the past few days, with the discussion over the matching donations
issue, and in the past as well, some ask why volunteers are not involved
more in the Foundation activity. There are various reasons, ranging from
?the Foundation does not communicate sufficiently on its needs? to ?the
community does not show enough interest?, as well as ?you can not always
count on the availability or willingness of a volunteer to do the job?,
or ?a volunteer is not accountable? etc?
There is much to discuss on this list.

Staff. Most of you do not realize that, but the deficit of staff is
really a big issue. Various positions have been envisionned in November
and December, but we are waiting January and the end of the fundraising,
to really discuss that in depth and see what we can do, according to the
cash we have available. We need in particular more developers and more
people working in the office on administrative tasks, as well as divers
experts, which hopefully we could get pro-bono. I must say that it is
unlikely the global community will be involved much in these decisions,
simply because the people working on these tasks on a daily basis are
the ones more likely to know what is needed.
One of the most needed position and likely to be hired soon is an office
manager. We absolutely need to get some of the daily administrative
tasks fully taken in charge, and to relieve ourselves from this burden.
I saw a discussion this morning, stating that there was no need for an
accountant, that this could be done by a volunteer, just as so many
associations do. Now, wake up guys ! We are no more an association
running with 10 000 dollars a year and 10 checks to issue per month. We
are running an organization of over 2 millions dollars, with thousands
of unique donations, purchasing servers per hundred lot, receiving
hundreds of emails per day, legal requests every month. This can not be
done by a volunteer when (if) he has 2 hours free during the week end.
Executive director. The search of an executive director is also one of
our urgent and important tasks. This is currently ongoing.

On financial sustainability, there is a lot to say. This has been a hot
topic in the past few days with the matching donations system. I did not
comment much myself, but I read all the comments made on foundation-l,
offered privately, and the ones in languages I could understand on
village pumps. All I can say is that we hear your feedback and we?ll
take it into account in the next fundraisings. It is likely we?ll have
more fundraisings this year. We also need to get new sources of money to
be able to go on. Hopefully, the new executive director will have
creative ideas on this as well. Setting up an endowment is such a
solution, and a first step for this are the audit results and a suitable
bank (which is under way). Other needs involve making use of our ?big?
contacts, setting up an investment strategy and generally managing the
funds. Other directions involve making more ?business?, either as
services (datafeed) or products (DVDs). As of today, we simply do not
have the infrastructure to do that.
There is not much to say on the topic right now, but I just wanted to
mention how big an issue it is for the board.

Related to financial sustainability, the audit completed on our first
three years of operations will be a major asset in the future. Such an
audit is essential to get big donations and grants. It required a lot of
effort in the past months, and hopefully the path in front of us is less
steep. We?ll go on getting our financial statements audited every year
and as much as possible, we?ll try to implement the various
recommendations given by the auditors to ensure our organization is as
clean, transparent, fair as the public would like it to be. This will
involve setting up many policies and guidelines at the administrative
level, which will be invisible to you, but important for our long-term
sustainability. I invite you to read again the financial audit document
where a list of suggested procedures to implement is listed.

Sustainability of course also is technical. Decisions in that direction
involve more developers, hiring a chief technical officer, and having a
tech summit to work on mediawiki.

On the legal side, an important and quite urgent topic is related to our
trademarks and domain names. By securing our trademarks, we ensure long
term fruitful use of them, and decrease the risk of abuse by third parties.

Reliability.
Whilst not all our projects or all our languages are not in a ?mature?
phase, we believe a major issue on which we must dedicate time, energy
and probably money, is related to reliability. Content quality, not
quantity, is the measure that matters.
I could quickly cite some issues: the non-vandalized version feature.
The reviewed version feature. Guidelines to avoid spamming by small
companies. Guidelines to avoid uncontrolled modifications by PR
agencies. Issue of rampaging external links toward myspace and youtube
:-) Mandatory sources etc?
In most part, it is in community hands, but the Foundation (and the
chapters) can help, either the development of technical features, or
favor contacts between communities and academics/experts etc?

Outreach
It is regularly discussed. Pushing the envelope on global reach is
critical. We must continue to extend our boundaries in terms of
providing knowledge as well as a voice to those who?ve never had them
before. Not much to say on this issue. I think it a very important
issue, unfortunately often falling behind other more pressing issues.
Hopefully, we?ll find time and energy to work further on this.

Recognition
This comes from a very simple observation. For many, Wikimedia projects
are web 2.0 websites, similar to other websites such as myspace or
youtubes. People tend to confuse us with commercial projects, even
wikipedians themselves sometimes, who fear we will ?sell? the projects
to big companies.
We are not a commercial product. We provide free knowledge (? or
content? or educational content?) for everyone. Our goal is not to make
money. Our purpose is to help humanity be more informed, knowledgeable.
Not only are we confused with commercial companies sometimes, but big
charitable organizations do not recognize us as a charity, which greatly
limit the support we might get from them. I would consider as a goal for
year 2007, to change this.

Note that the blocks are not independent one from another.
To be recognized as an important charity, we must show we are a stable
and solid organization. We must show we are trustworthy as a resource.
And we must show we try to go beyond boundaries of wealth, language and
copyright.
To be able to reach everyone, we must be organized and relevant.
To be reliable, we need good foundations.

So, we can build the tower with the four blocks. First sustainability.
Second reliability. Third outreach and fourth recognition.

Hopefully, that?s what we will succeed doing in 2007. Together.

Happy New Year

Anthere

Some links:
* http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for (what
we need the money for)
* http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/fr (live list of donations)
* http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_2006_Mgmt_Letter.pdf (audit)
* http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_2006_fs.pdf (financial
statements)
* http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions (passed resolutions)
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_retreat (board retreat)


subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007


list: commons-l

from_name: Cary Bass

body:
I am fairly certain that the policy on Commons is that cities and other
localities are in the native language.  Therefore M?nchen and Praha are
absolutely correct and the categories must be fixed.

Cary

> -----Original Message-----
> From: commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Bryan Tong Minh
> Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 4:56 PM
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons
>
>
> The discussion about Munich can be found at the top of the Village
> Pump, or maybe in the latest archive by now.
>
> Bryan
>
> On 12/29/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >    Hi,
> >
> > Quoting Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de>:
> >
> > > I am quite appalled about how things have a nasty tendency to a nasty
> > > outcome on commons. M?nchen is being moved to Munich, Praha is moved
> > > to Prague,... and all on a specious kind of based argumentation. I
> > > know how the cities are called. I have seen the traffic signs! The
> > > cities are actually called M?nchen, Praha,...
> >
> >   There's no reason why we shouldn't have a gallery at both
> [[Munich, Germany]]
> > and [[M?nchen, Deutschland]].  If people aren't interested in
> maintaining both,
> > then I suppose we could get really worked up about which one is
> the redirect and
> > which one is the actual gallery, but it is a pretty trivial
> thing to argue over.
> >  Categories are different, and should use English, with the
> goal of eventually
> > translating based on user preferences.
> >
> >                      Jkelly
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commons-l mailing list
> > Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.2/613 - Release Date:
> 1/1/2007 2:50 PM
>
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.2/613 - Release Date: 1/1/2007
2:50 PM


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 12/31/06, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Interesting...  They're donating computers pre-loaded with Windows and
>>>providing technical support and training.  Would they still donate the
>>>computers if the library told them they intended to install Linux on
>>>them?  Maybe.  But would they still provide the free technical support
>>>and training for those libraries?  Somehow I doubt it (although it
>>>would be really cool if they did).
>>>
>>>
>>Why would those libraries _want_ to install Linux?  The primary reason
>>for free software evaporates when they are spared the costs of
>>proprietary licences.
>>
>>
>I'm sure entire books have been written on why one should use free
>software rather than no-cost software.  If you really have trouble
>finding information on this let me know and I'll do a better search
>for some resources.  Or maybe someone else can provide us with some?
>
I don't think that it's a question of availability of information.
Motivated library boards could look it up just as easily.  I think that
it has more to do with budgetting processes.  A cost free, and at least
superficially reliable, alternative can look mighty inviting in the
current budget when there is serious competition for funds.  Problems
that may not arise for five years can wait five years to be addressed.
Decision makers don't like complicated choices, even more so if those
choices involve technical matters that they do not understand.  For some
Microsoft has been in their face for years; the marketting strategy has
been successful.

The technically super-savvy people fail to appreciate the enormity of
the gap between them and the end users of the technology.  In a society
that embraces specialization, those who pursue a non-technical specialty
leave behind the skills needed to understand technological change.  How
can you expect somebody to understand how to change the clock on a DVD
player when they aren't yet able to do it on the VHS player?  Personally
I get my son to change the clock on my car radio when we change between
daylight and standard time.  I can't be bothered to go through a thick
manual to figure it out.  Under those circumstances I should probably be
pleased with year around DST. :-)

I recently had my stereo amplifier die after 20 years.  Replacing it was
a daunting task the results of which do not satisfy me.  My original
unit did what I wanted it to do, and I am now faced with the prospect of
working around a lot of features that I never wanted in order to achieve
my old functionality.

I suspect that Microsoft has grokked this problem.

>But for the purposes of this discussion, it's enough for me to merely
>point out that the software license being given to the libraries does
>not entitle that library to free upgrades.
>
I don't know enough to comment on that last point.

>That alone should be
>enough reason to prefer Linux, if all other things were equal.  the
>clear strategy here of Microsoft, if not the Gates Foundation, is to
>give it away for free, get 'em hooked, and then start charging.
>
They don't need to start charging the libraries.  That would not be good
marketting.  The end users of the software in the libraries are young.
Their loyalty to the Microsoft product line for the next 50 years is far
more valuable.  The managements of large for-profit corporations have a
big advantage in this kind of long-term strategic thinking and problem
solving.  Compare that with the enormous energy which some organizations
expend over whether dates should be marked A.D. or C.E.

>Of course, all other things aren't equal.  If the library gets free
>support from the Gates Foundation with Windows, and doesn't get free
>support with Linux (which tends to be more costly to support in the
>first place), then it's going to be really hard for them to choose
>Linux.
>
That's consistent with my point.

>If the Gates Foundation really wants to help the libraries, then they
>should help the libraries free themselves from relying on the
>continued charity of Microsoft.
>
I can't imagine that Bill Gates' altruism would include
auto-deFenestration. ;-)

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 31 Dec 2006 at 17:54, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I suppose we could use {{CURRENTSECOND}} to transclude 1 of 60
> sub-templates, which in turn contain something around 200 #ifexist:
> statements to transclude the various AfD sub-pages.

This will fail on the occasions when a leap second is inserted, as
this is the 61st second of its minute.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
On 1/1/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> You still get people asserting "all schools are notable".  I think

Don't forget, "notable" has two meanings:
1) Interesting, noteworthy, more worthy of discussion than similar
entities in its category.
2) Suitable for an article in Wikipedia.

All schools are clearly not notable(1). But unless we can define what
that means, the default seems to be to assume that they are all
notable(2).

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
On 31 Dec 2006 at 18:26, "K P" <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, there's not even necessarily an 87.3% chance that the statistic given is
> *made up*.  And not just because something made up need not be wrong.

But anything written by the rotten scum who top-post their replies
always will be.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Dan Collins

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 31 Dec 2006 at 17:54, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I suppose we could use {{CURRENTSECOND}} to transclude 1 of 60
>> sub-templates, which in turn contain something around 200 #ifexist:
>> statements to transclude the various AfD sub-pages.
>
> This will fail on the occasions when a leap second is inserted, as
> this is the 61st second of its minute.
>
>
Which is a whole once every 4 years, IIRC

--
GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net

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from_name: Omegatron

body:
[For the record, this was a response to
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1085 ]

[Civility:]

Rob Church <robchur at ...> writes:

> We might not implement their letter, but the spirit of the ideas of
> keeping civil and assuming good faith *are* applied at the development
> level; we just reserve the right to be blunt.

Being blunt or dismissive is completely contrary to the letter and spirit of
WP:CIV.  Things like:

* Rudeness
* Judgmental tone
* Belittling contributors because of their skills
* Personally targeted behavior that causes an atmosphere of greater
conflict and
stress

"Bluntness", if that's what we're calling it now, only makes things worse, and I
see it a lot when developers are involved.

I would very much like to see some guidelines for interpersonal behavior in the
development process.  As far as community and wikilove are concerned,
development of the site's software shouldn't be any different from development
of the site.  No one should get a special exemption to be an asshole to other
Wikipedians just because they know PHP.

> If we're to implement certain tweaks for this in user preferences,
> then we need some co-operation from the user base to allow us time

Shouldn't that have been implemented *before* going live with this feature?

> There's always the
> Subversion log. Oh, but of course...non developers don't apparently
> like opening their damn browsers.

What's a Subversion log?

> That attitude could very well lose you a lot of the behind-the-scenes
> supporting cast one day, without whom you wouldn't even *have* a
> website.

Oh please.  The exact same thing could be said about the site's users.  Without
content contributors, there would be no point in even *having* a
website, etc. etc.

Disputes like this could drive *both* developers and editors away, and we need
both (though in practice, it doesn't drive anyone away; it just causes them
undue stress and impedes progress).

We're all volunteers, here.  We're all contributing our free time to the same
altruistic project without getting anything in return except appreciation.  Some
of us know how to code websites, some of us know about Japanese fighter planes,
some of us know how to write CSS, some of use know about rodent biology.  More
love and understanding and less arrogance, elitism, and belligerence, please.

The problem here is that visible changes to the site's functionality can be made
in a few different ways (Mediawiki itself, site javascript, site CSS, template
markup), and when there is such a change, it's not discoverable at all how that
change was made or who was responsible for it.  It's not visible except to the
few people who happen to be watching that template, or watching that CSS page,
or know how to access and understand Mediawiki's CVS or whatever it is.  There's
no centralized place on the site where new features are announced ("You'll be
noticing a new addition to the watchlists starting today; it tells you this and
that and does this and that").  There's no centralized discussion point where
people can present their ideas for features and have those features critiqued by
the people who are actually going to use them.  There's no test site where
features are auditioned before going live.  Things just go live randomly, in
ways that may or may not be optimal for the site, and no one even knows where to
complain.

[Now, onto the actual feature being discussed:]

Gurch <matthew.britton at ...> writes:

> Exactly. I very much doubt anyone wants their diffs to look like mine
> (the stuff that's usually grey isn't even visible, they're blue and
> yellow, and generally ugly as sin). I also doubt many people want the
> "Go" and "Search" buttons hidden, as I have done (I just press Enter to
> Go, and my browser has a search box). But that's the way *I* want
> things, and because the interface can be customized that way I can have
> it that way.

That's fine.  But these numbers are similar to those changes.  Only a few people
want or use them, but they're on by default.  Like implementing your "ugly as
sin" diffs for the entire site by default, and then telling people they need to
change their user CSS to remove them.  It should be the other way around.

Something like this should be a user preference.  "Edit your user CSS" is NOT a
user interface.  Wikipedia editors are supposed to be regular people; not
hackers.  The site is supposed to be easy to edit, to avoid systemic bias, but
it just gets more and more technical and more difficult to use all the time.
Easy-to-use wiki markup has been abandoned in favor of HTML-esque tags for
everything, article source code is cluttered with ref tags and table markup and
on and on.  (I don't think refs or tables are bad, of course; I just think they
were not fully thought through, and implemented in a rush without much feedback
from the non-hackers who have to use them.  There are better solutions out there
in the proposals bins that have just been ignored.)

I don't even see what these numbers are useful for.  Maybe if someone lies in an
edit summary and says "small change" while the numbers say "big change", but
that's about it.  It doesn't give me any useful information about the diff
except in that case.   They don't actually tell how big the edit is, as some
have said; they just tell how much the page has changed in size.  That's a
pretty meaningless metric.  It may even be harmful; giving a false sense of
security for low numbers.  Changing
"He was elected the" into
"I like to eat poop", for instance, tells the patroller that nothing significant
has been changed:

12:31 User:Omegatron/George W Bush (diff; hist) . .  (0)  . .
Omegatron (Talk | contribs | block)

These numbers don't tell me what the edit actually was; I still have to visit
the diff as I normally would.    They don't even tell me which edits to
preferentially focus on for fighting vandalism.  I behave exactly the same when
viewing my watchlist with or without these numbers.  I don't see how they help
anything or save time anywhere.  And no, I'm not a lone whiner:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Added_or_removed_characters#To_remove_these_numbers_completely

A much, much more useful solution would be to expand the automatic edit summary
feature for all edits, as has been suggested several times for a few years.  We
finally got a limited auto edit summary feature recently
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Automatic_edit_summaries), which is
 great and really helpful, but it should be expanded to cover all types of diffs
and then shown on *every* edit, regardless of whether the user fills out an edit
summary or not.   The edit summary field would be used for a prose summary of
what was edited and the rationale for the edit, but the automatic summary would
tell explicitly *what* was edited, and, in a lot of cases, completely prevent
the need to view diffs to see whether the edits were valid or not, saving
bandwidth and money for the servers and saving time for editors.  Vandalism
would be immediately visible on watchlists or recent changes.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Automatic_edit_summaries#How_to_really_implement_this_feature
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28perennial_proposals%29#A_better_description

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1307


from_name: Asher Heimermann

subject: [Foundation-l] Free Resources

body:
The Resources of Sheboygan Commission said that they will donate free resources to The Wikimedia Foundation.

  Some of the resources will be:

  * Free subdomains
  * Free email
  * Free photos

  The Resources of Sheboygan Commission said that they will pay the $500 in the costs to provide the resources.

  Yours Truly,
      Asher Heimermann
      Board Member
      The Resources of Sheboygan Commission
      www.roscfriends.tripod.com

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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subject: [Foundation-l] Free Resources


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
'As a Web 2.0 site or a blog becomes more popular, a growing percentage of its reader contributions devolve into vitriol, backstabbing and name-calling (not to mention Neanderthal spelling and grammar). Participants address each other as ?idiot? and ?moron? (and worse) the way correspondents of old might have used ?sir? or ?madam.?'

"One thing is clear, however: the uncivil participants are driving away the civil ones. The result is an acceleration of the cycle, and an increasing proportion of hostile remarks."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/weekinreview/31pogue.html

Fred


from_name: Kurt Maxwell Weber

body:
On Monday 01 January 2007 13:35, Gurch wrote:
>
> I can't remember how frequent it is, but surely that doesn't matter:
> just have the 61st sub-template transclude everything. In my opinion
> this whole idea is fairly rediculous anyway, though.

"Ridiculous".

This particular misspelling is quickly turning into a major piss-me-off.

--
Kurt Weber
<kmw at armory.com>


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 1/1/07, Omegatron <9ybf94w02 at sneakemail.com> wrote:
> I would very much like to see some guidelines for interpersonal behavior in the
> development process.  As far as community and wikilove are concerned,
> development of the site's software shouldn't be any different from development
> of the site.  No one should get a special exemption to be an asshole to other
> Wikipedians just because they know PHP.

If you want Rob disciplined or something for being rude, go ahead and
talk to Brion.

> Shouldn't that have been implemented *before* going live with this feature?

No, because nobody thought that anyone would actually object
significantly.  When we think that, we're usually right, but there are
bound to be occasional exceptions.

> What's a Subversion log?

http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/?view=log

(takes forever to load . . . there's probably some option to restrict
it, timespan-wise, so it's not like ten megabytes or whatever)

> There's no centralized discussion point where
> people can present their ideas for features and have those features critiqued by
> the people who are actually going to use them.

Yeah, there is.  Bugzilla.  That most people don't follow it, we can't help.

> That's fine.  But these numbers are similar to those changes.  Only a few people
> want or use them, but they're on by default.

I've heard more people praising them than rejecting them.  Actually,
who aside from you really dislikes them?

> Something like this should be a user preference.

No, it should not.  Adding dozens and dozens of user preferences to
account for every possible thing people might like will clutter the
appropriate part of the interface and be a pain in the neck to
maintain.  Only the most common preferences should be available as
checkboxes, and not when it's whether to display an extra few
characters that users can ignore anyway.

We give users the power to implement their own advanced preferences
via CSS and JavaScript.  We're aware that most people can't use these
by themselves, but that's unavoidable for such powerful features.  If
they really don't like something, they can always ask someone to write
the CSS/JS for them for such a simple thing.

> A much, much more useful solution would be to expand the automatic edit summary
> feature for all edits, as has been suggested several times for a few years.  We
> finally got a limited auto edit summary feature recently
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Automatic_edit_summaries), which is
>  great and really helpful, but it should be expanded to cover all types of diffs
> and then shown on *every* edit, regardless of whether the user fills out an edit
> summary or not.   The edit summary field would be used for a prose summary of
> what was edited and the rationale for the edit, but the automatic summary would
> tell explicitly *what* was edited, and, in a lot of cases, completely prevent
> the need to view diffs to see whether the edits were valid or not, saving
> bandwidth and money for the servers and saving time for editors.  Vandalism
> would be immediately visible on watchlists or recent changes.

In other words, display the diffs in compressed/truncated form on the
history or watchlist page.  That will frequently amount to a couple
hundred characters or more.  A few people have already grumbled about
clutter on Special:Newpages; this would be much worse.  That is
something I would definitely say should be an option on the page to
display or not, and/or a user preference.

But it's a different request.  Please file it on Bugzilla.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 01:58:11PM -0500, Omegatron wrote:
> "Bluntness", if that's what we're calling it now, only makes things
> worse, and I see it a lot when developers are involved.

See my earlier reply to this, and realy *really* think hard about

40,000,000... versus 12.

Cheers,
- jr '*really* hard' a
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274