body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>But feel free to do something really dumb.
> After all, I'm the competition.

HAHAHA.  Ouch.  The list thanks you Fred -- Wow,
humour does work wonders.

8D
-S-

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: deletions

body:
Message: 7
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2003 12:08:52 +1000
From: Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael again *sigh*
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Message-ID: <3F52AA34.7010109 at hotmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii;
format=flowed

Anthere asked:

 >Will this be working on any wikipedia as well ?

That's a very good question. Currently the feature
can't be turned on
and off easily, but if you want I can easily fix it up
so that it can
be.

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>

No. Don't bother. I am pretty sure that if the french
wikipedia was asked, the majority of participants
would agree with that feature. Very useful tool to
shut up opposition :-) ( <- there is a smiley, that
means it is said with gentle irony)

But please, when this will be made live on
international wikipedias, could you indicate it on the
main list ?

It is a bit weird to say so, but I have not been
blocked for at least 6 months, so I do not quite know
what is right now written as a message to the blocked
person trying to edit :-) ( <- this just mean I have
not been vandalizing wikipedia enough recently, I
promise to make some effort to do so very soon in the
near future)

An ip was blocked on the fr wiki a couple of days ago,
after two poor edits on the main page ( <- I mean
newbie vandalism).

He apparently had to struggle to find somewhere the
email address of a sysop to be able to complain of his
treatment. The sysop then send the complaint to the
ML, where his message was blocked because sent from an
unusual email address non registered by the sysop. I
discovered the blocked email some hours later and then
authorized it. It then took a couple of hours more for
the user to receive an answer and explanation for the
blocking from us. Come to think of it, I am not sure
someone thought of unblocking the ip ...:-) (<- This
is meant to be a joke, I am sure the blocking sysop
thought of doing so)

If that had happened when I was on holidays, the
message would have been unblocked possibly three weeks
later :-((( ( <- I am serious here. In this case
Youssef was the recipient, but if the blocked person
had wrote to the ML directly, who would have
authorized his message ?).

I know you are all thinking of Michael here, and I
acknowledge this concern, but Michael is not the only
one who gets blocked.

could it be possible that a blocked person (an ip or a
loggued in user) be offered the way to communicate ?

Either by offering a direct link to the mailing list,
where the message would be recognised and could
automatically get through ?
Or could the banned person have no right to edit
anything but one page where she could voice her
concern ? Perhaps her user page or histalk page ?

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Steve Vertigum

subject: [Wikipedia-l] protected pages

body:
I like this wholistic approach. Thinking of the wiki
like a human body -- its not a good idea to try to
load up on anti-biotics, or to live in an underground
shelter. A good soft skin (so they wanna actually
touch it) and an ability to fight off most diseases is
enough for most organisms.

-S-

>Fantasy: You could also show them how Wikipedia has a
> "self-healing" process,
> where vandalism is watched and reverted. They can
> try to vandalise, and
> they will see, that after some time the page is back
> as it was (and they
> will give up ;-)
> And maybe, by letting them try, they will come back
> to wikipedia because
> they like the idea.
> If you stop them from editing from the beginning,
> they will surely not
> get the Idea of Wikipedia.
>
> Give us the link to your pages, so many eyes will
> watch vandalism and
> revert it ;-)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] protected pages

body:
> Ilyanep-
> > I'm a sysop, and I don't want people messing up
> certain pages under my user
> > page...would it be considered unfair if I protect
> them or am I allowed to do
> > so?
>
> ERIK:Protecting your own user pages and user
subpages is
> generally considered
> an acceptable personal choice. In fact, non-sysops
> can ask sysops to do so
> for them.

Considering what Angela went through with Heine the
other night - theres no debate at all.

What about making a banned user IP a little bulletin
message on RC? :

  Sister projects: - meta - wiktionary - sourcewiki -
wikijobs..
  Blocked ip: 68.89.49.05.

etc. With Heine the other night - his ips were banned
sometimes by two or three people at once.

-S-

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An Approval Process (Proposal)

body:
David Levinson wrote:

> Allow logged in users to approve any version of an article. Logged in
> users could also disapprove any or  every version of an article.
> Articles would be scored based on number of users who approved
> (weighted?) - number of users who disapproved (weighted?).  The
> article with the highest approval rating would be the released
> (approved) article.  This would be displayed somewhere distinct from
> the working wikipedia (e.g. sifter.wikipedia.org, or something similar).
>
> New users would be presented with Wikipedia Release edition.  They
> could still edit the article, but it would not be released until the
> approvals on the new article exceed the approvals on the previously
> released article. The under-edit version from which users are working
> may differ from the release version if approvals have not yet been
> found. The differences would be highlighted on the edit screen.
>
> Under the article (in view mode) (for logged in users) would be  "vote
> to approve" and "vote to disapprove" buttons. A vote to approve would
> transfer a users vote to this version for approval and remove it from
> previous versions. A vote to disapprove would remain even if another
> version was disapproved.
>
> Comments?

The problem with this is that democracy is often at odds with NPOV and
truth.  The proposal would too easily lead to a "Tyranny of the Majority."

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Sysop ability to ban logged in users;
	Undelete bug   fixed

body:
> From: Tim Starling
> Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 9:35 AM
>
> * The timestamp on an IP block will be automatically refreshed if a
banned
> user accesses Wikipedia through that address.

What does this mean? Does this extend the block?


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to delete & undelete - reference

body:
We should probably put the following somewhere on a reference page
somewhere.

Delirium wrote:

> This is the procedure I normally use:
> 1. Delete the old page name.  It's just a redirect now, and has no
> history.
> 2. Move the new page name back to the old page name.
>
> Another possibility:
> 1. Move the new page name back to the old page name.
> 2. Delete the new page name (now just a redirect with no history).
>
> With the first approach, the page now looks like nothing ever happened
> (unless you look at the deletion log).  With the second approach, the
> page looks like it was turned into a redirect and then reverted (the
> two histories get merged).  Which is better might depend on your
> preference -- one shows evidence of vandalism, but is possibly
> confusing, while the other is less confusing but erases evidence of
> vandalism.

*/Allan Crossman <a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk>/* wrote: On 31 Aug 2003
at 21:16, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

I've fixed the Penis page by undeletion and moving...

To undelete in Explorer, first bookmark this address:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Undelete&target=PAGENAME

Now, whenever you need to undelete, just go to that page (nothing bad
happens
if you actually load it), change "PAGENAME" in the URL to the name of
the page,
e.g. User:Scarequotes, and there you go.

Don't try using the Deletion log to get there, it takes forever to load,
usually.
---------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Penis

body:
james duffy wrote:

>
>
> Please remember, folks, Michael is the bad guy here. RickK like so
> many of us was simply trying to undo Michael's vandalism.

Absolutely.
RickK acted in good faith -- I hope I didn't sound in my original email
as if I was blaming him.
What happens to article histories when you delete and move is arcane
knowledge! ;)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preferences

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> (Technical note: currently Special: is given numeric code -1; if we
>> were storing such pages in the database this would interfere with some
>> code that deals with non-talk vs talk pages as being
>> even/odd-numbered. Reassigning it to the next available positive
>> integer (8?) shouldn't interfere with anything.)
>
>
> Why not leave cur_title as "Special:XXX", and the whole thing in article
> namespace?

Er, because then they'd be counted as articles?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Sysop ability to ban logged in users;
	Undelete bug   fixed

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> I assume that sysops can be banned through this interface as well.
>>
> Yes; one sysop having fun could ban all other existing user accounts and
> finally him/herself. That would be a pretty silly thing to do, though.

Tsk tsk, don't you people read? ;) I said:

:As usual, these automatically generated entries, and the original
:username entries, can be unblocked by any sysop (even blocked sysops).

Blocking by username or IP address only stops the user from editing
pages, it does not stop them from blocking or unblocking people. Mav has
been known to block himself at times, in an attempt to discourage
himself from wasting all his time on this rather addictive website. Now
he'll be able to block himself by username, he won't have to go to the
trouble of looking up his IP address.

>> The
>> hack sounds pretty ugly. Banning by username should be done by banning
>> through the login (i.e. the cookies) not by checking IP.
>>
>
> Username banning bans the username only, or rather it _did_. (There was
> no user interface for doing it, so sysops could not do so.)
>
> Since it's trivial to log out and make a new account, Tim's patch also
> adds a check for the IP address when the banned user next tries to edit
> (and would thus discover they were banned) and add the IP address to the
> ban list as well. Thus a logout/login-with-new-name would be banned too.
>
> So all one has to do is log out _and_ change IP addresses. (A few
> seconds, click a couple buttons for many people with dynamic IPs.)
> Create a new account name under the new IP, and go wild.

I don't think most vandals would know how to change their IP address
easily. But even if they did, this modification makes things much harder
for them, and much easier for us.

> One might gain a slight additional protection by setting a "you're
> banned" note in the session data or a separate cookie instead of (or in
> addition to) banning the IP. The bannee could clear their cookies or
> restart their brower to clear it.

That's possible, but I'm happy to wait and see how effective the current
measures are. Banning with cookies could cause problems for Internet
cafes, because it would be difficult to lift the ban after a complaint.

>> Have these changes been checked in?
>>
>
> In the development branch.
>
>> This is not something that should go live without discussion on the main
>> mailing list.
>>
>
> It's been discussed before, many times. That's why Tim wrote some up,
> because it was discussed and many people were in favor. Of course it'll
> be discussed some more, and anyway this certainly isn't appropriate
> without also having automatic expiration of blocks.

Automatic expiration? Piece of cake, give me 24 hours. Any suggestions
for the lifetime?

-- Tim Starling.


body:
Steve Vertigum wrote:
> I like how "static" and "anti-wiki"has come to somehow
> be replaced with the term "stable"

"Stable" was precisely the term used to discuss it a year and a half ago
when I got here.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael again *sigh*

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>>From:  Daniel Mayer
>>Thank you Tim! At least now we will force the vandals to take the time
>>needed
>>to create a new login and force their modem to fetch a new IP address.
>>
>>Auto expiration of IP bans and rollback of page moves would also be
>>nice...

Yeah, that's definitely going to happen before this is implemented. Any
suggestions for expiration time?

>>Anything to slow down vandals like Micheal and the MIT vandal is a
>
> good
>
>>thing.
>>
>
> Hooray! Let's make it into a competition, a game, because we know how
> unattractive computer games are to computer geeks!
>
> Seriously, an arms race is not a useful allocation of developer energy,
> however much fun devising defensive stratefies is.

This is not an arms race of hacker against hacker, it's an arms race of
hacker against troll. Michael is using nothing more advanced than a web
browser. You shouldn't think of this as some kind of technological
cure-all, it is just a tool in sysops' arsenals, like the rollback
button. Sure a vandal can log out, change their IP address and log back
in again, but the moment they make a change to a page, a sysop can ban
them again. This greatly increases the cost to vandals, and reduces the
cost to us.

That said, the worst-case scenario of a vandalbot is always in the back
of my mind. This feature cuts off the simplest kinds of vandalbots, and
slows down the more advanced ones, meaning that they cause less damage
in the time it takes for a developer to respond.

Anthere asked:

 >Will this be working on any wikipedia as well ?

That's a very good question. Currently the feature can't be turned on
and off easily, but if you want I can easily fix it up so that it can be.

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Sysop ability to ban logged in users

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in part:

>Tim Starling wrote:

>>Banning with cookies could cause problems for
>>Internet cafes, because it would be difficult to lift the ban after a
>>complaint.

>The cookie or session variable could store a random-generated ID number
>which could sit in ipblocks and be displayed in the "you're blocked"
>notice, and used to unblock by if someone complains.

The cookie should also expire after the same amount of time as a block.
(See below.)

>(Also, if one is blocked accidentally, it's not very clear how to
>contact anybody about it. It tells you the username of the person who
>made the block, but you can't leave a note on their talk page. You can't
>e-mail them through the "e-mail this user" function because you're not a
>logged-in user with an e-mail address set...)

That's why somebody added a link to [[Wikipedia:Administrators]]
(at least on [[en:]]).  Then they find the list of administrators.
And they can't email mav, and they can't email Ilyanep ...
but they can email me!  (And on a few occasions, they have.)

>>Automatic expiration? Piece of cake, give me 24 hours. Any suggestions
>>for the lifetime?

>24 hours? :)

Everybody says a week.  That's probably too long if it works,
and too short if they keep coming back on another line.
You might consider offering a range of options in a radio button,
with the short one as the default (for new vandals).

-- Toby


body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Steve Vertigum wrote:
> > I like how "static" and "anti-wiki"has come to
> somehow
> > be replaced with the term "stable"
>
> "Stable" was precisely the term used to discuss it a
> year and a half ago
> when I got here.

I stand corrected--yet at the same time, validated.
-S-

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Undeletions

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Many months ago I made myself a little custom keyword for undeleting pages:
>http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html
>When I want to do so, I just type "und page_name". While this is a hack
>and you are correct that a proper action log table and a redesigned
>undeletion interface would be preferable, I do not see the information
>that deleted revisions exist as so useful as to have it on all pages,
>primarily because there's simply a fairly large number of pages which have
>been experimentally created at one point, deleted, and recreated.

I've decided that I like having this, including for the recreated pages.
It can still be a configurable option; no reason for us not to both be happy.

>How about displaying it in the top bar only for non-existing pages, and
>otherwise displaying it only on "Page history"? This should also reduce
>the number of checks in the ARCHIVE table needed.

(This would also be just fine with me.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Undeletions


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page cache for anon IPs problem?

body:
Allan Crossman wrote:
> Is something odd going on with the page cache for anonymous IPs? I deleted
> [[Granulomas]] and I can see it properly gone when logged in, but when logged
> out I still get a cached version. I've tried shift-reload, etc. I've also tried
> using a different browser. The problem's not at my end. :-)

Oops, that's not supposed to happen! :)

Cache now checks that the page still exists before looking for a saved
version.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] protected pages

body:
Thomas R. Koll wrote:

>>I'm a sysop, and I don't want people messing up certain pages under my user
>>page...would it be considered unfair if I protect them or am I allowed to
>>do so?
>>
>I'm szsop at the German WP and I protected it to prevent vandalism for a few
>vandals.
>Anzwazs it's mz own page and I would suggest that onlz the user himself can
>edit it, no matter if szsop or not.
>
In general I have no objection to users protecting their own user page.
 I do not substantially change other user pages, and expect mine to be
respected in the same way.

Still, there are times when such changes can be acceptable.  If my edits
in some article have caused a broken link in a user page, it is only
proper to go there and fix the damage that I have caused.  If I can't
fix iit because the bage is protected, well ...too bad.

Ec


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google Adwords

body:
On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:

> Jens Frank wrote:
>
> >As far as I can tell, yes. And since they only accept
> >credit card payment, this would actually be my risk :-)
>
> Hey, if it's on your credit card, do you need permission? -_^

I think it would be good to do so, yes. If this goes up, it will look like
an action from Wikipedia. And this particular action I think is a good one,
but suppose next time someone proposes to send out an email to 10,000,000
email addresses a few times, saying how great Wikipedia is. Then I would
want him/her to be told that we'd not be happy with it to say the least.

Andre Engels


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Toby wrote:
>That's why somebody added a link to
>[[Wikipedia:Administrators]] (at least on [[en:]]).
>Then they find the list of administrators.
>And they can't email mav, and they can't email
>Ilyanep ... but they can email me!  (And on a few
>occasions, they have.)

Couldn't they still email me by using the "Email this user" link? AFAIK, any
blocked IP can still log-in and use that feature. Is this also true for
blocked user names?

I have a question for the techies: On the "Contact us" page on Wikibooks I
have a live mailto link to textbook-l, but I have obscured the displayed
email address like so:

[mailto:textbook-l at wikipedia.org textbook-l at wikipedia.org] (replace " at "
with @)

Is this enough to prevent spam bots from sniffing the email address?

If so then I'll change my "email" link on the Admin page accordingly.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preferences

body:
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Guillaume Blanchard (Aoineko) wrote:

> Hello,
> Can we have a [[Wikipedia:Preferences]] page that will be the header of the
> [[Special:Preferences]] page ? (like [[Wikipedia:RecentChanges]] and
> [[Special:RecentChanges]]).
> In fact it may be very cool if all [[Special:xxx]] started with an include
> of [[Wikipedia:xxx]].
> It may be very useful especially for localize (no-english Wikipedia)
> specification to add explication and links.
> How?

Localizing is still possible, although the process is slower, by changing
the LanguageXx.php file; the text you are writing about for example can be
found in the "prefslogintext". In fact, Danish, English, Dutch and Polish
have already taken the step of adding a link to a page explaining the various
options there.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Once bloqued...

body:
>(Also, if one is blocked accidentally, it's not very
clear how to
>contact anybody about it. It tells you the username
of the person who
>made the block, but you can't leave a note on their
talk page. You
can't
>e-mail them through the "e-mail this user" function
because you're not
a
>logged-in user with an e-mail address set...)

That's why somebody added a link to
[[Wikipedia:Administrators]]
(at least on [[en:]]).  Then they find the list of
administrators.
And they can't email mav, and they can't email Ilyanep
...
but they can email me!  (And on a few occasions, they
have.)

--------

all right.

I thought it was time I was banned. So I am.

My IP is blocked. So Anthere can't edit any more.

Here's what I saw, the name of the banner (she does
not provide an email address on her page) and the
admin list (most not providing email address on this
list either)

So Anthere went to Tim page, and emailed him a
message. That worked.

Of course, if it is from a loggued-in user with no
email address, and naturally from an IP, no mail can
be send.

Well, I think it is bad, very bad, very very bad, that
blocked users are nearly unable to contact any one,
and usually not the banning sysop himself, since most
people do not give their email in clear.

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from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preferences

body:
Hello,
Can we have a [[Wikipedia:Preferences]] page that will be the header of the
[[Special:Preferences]] page ? (like [[Wikipedia:RecentChanges]] and
[[Special:RecentChanges]]).
In fact it may be very cool if all [[Special:xxx]] started with an include
of [[Wikipedia:xxx]].
It may be very useful especially for localize (no-english Wikipedia)
specification to add explication and links.
How?

Aoineko


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Undeletions

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Erik wrote:
>
>>....
>>Can we disable this by default and make it
>>a preference? Otherwise people will probably
>>start restoring junk revisions just to get rid of
>>the messages.
>
>
> I agree. Please make this a user preference for sysop accounts with the
> default set to no.
>

I agree with Erik that it looks too much like the "you have new message"
notification. But it's certainly a useful feature and I think it would
be a pity to force people disable it for aesthetic reasons. I think if
it was not bold, it would blend in to the other top links and you'd
barely notice it unless you were looking for it. Plus it would look like
"delete this page" and "protect this page", so it would be reasonably
consistent also.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Once bloqued...

body:
Anthere wrote:
>Well, I think it is bad, very bad, very very bad, that
>blocked users are nearly unable to contact any one,
>and usually not the banning sysop himself, since most
>people do not give their email in clear.

IMO, all Admins should have valid email set-up and the block message should
have a link to "email this Admin" leading to a form where the blocked person
can send a message to the Admin. It would also be important to automatically
input the block information into the email. I find it rather annoying to get
an email stating "please unblock me, I'm not Micheal" without the IP address
or time of the block.

A special Wikimedia email address could be set up to act as the sending email
address. Or we could just tell the blocked user that they need to log-in and
input a valid email address before sending an email.

I have a slight preference for the first option.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Tim-

> * Lifetime for user blocks and IP blocks is configurable separately, in
> LocalSettings.php. The current default is 24 hours for IP blocks, and
> infinite for user blocks.

That's a reasonable solution, I think.

Regards,

Erik


list: textbook-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] original sources on Wikipedia

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Magnus wrote:
>
> But Wikipedia is more than just an encyclopedia; it also has supporting
> almanac-like information and articles in it along with supporting
> gazetteer-like information and articles in it. Wiktionary is also not just a
> dictionary; it is also a thesaurus and a translating dictionary. Sometimes a
> few to several different things are similar and complimentary enough to each
> other that it makes sense to put them together. This tends to make one
> larger, more active project vs several smaller weaker projects.

Tables and lists (in a limited way) are part of any encyclopedia. We
just have more of them in wikipedia because of basically unlimited
space. And we have article lists ("Rare diseases" etc.), but this is
just framework for the actual articles.

> And it makes a great deal of sense to include the works of Shakespeare, for
> example, in Wikibooks so that it can be used along side a literature textbook
> (which will have lessons and questions specifically about particular plays).

But it would also make sense to have a biochemistry course along side
the biochemistry article. Do we write that course in the wikipedia? No
we don't. Because it's something different.

>>Advantages:
>>* Easier for the "end consumer"
>
> No it isn't. Having things separate will make it more difficult for
> instructors to write questions based on the source text and to annotate that
> text to suit the needs of the literature textbook. And the student will have
> to go to two different places for his/her textbooks and his/her sourcebooks.

You misunderstood me (or I you;-)
The source and the annotations should be in a single project, of course.
All I said that this is different from /writing a new book from scratch/.

>>* Easier to look at RecentChanges
>
> Huh? How is having source text going to mess that up?

Not at all, but the annotations will.

>>* Easier to fine-tune the software to each project
>
> Just enable a special namespace called "source" in Wikibooks. Done. Then
> instead of two different installations to maintain, you only have one.

We'd have only two different LocalSettings files instead of one, so no
big work here. But, we probably don't want to enable all options for
annotation when writing a new book, and probably some other options from
there in the source project.

Don't get me wrong, if that was already decided a long time ago (can't
remember...) then never mind. I won't go berserk if I'd find that
biochemistry book next to some annotated Shakespeare text. It just seems
to be something different by concept to me.

Magnus


from_name: limholt at excite.com

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikiversity proposal

body:
Wikiverity (or WikiU) is a potential project being discussed for inclusion at Wikimedia. The Wikiversity discussion has had several threads. I have attempted an outline proposal for a Wikiversity project, and placed it on the <http://textbook.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks%3AWikiversity> page.

Maveric will move this page to Wikimedia towards the end of the week, but it could certainly be improved by your thoughts and input before then.
While this thread can be used, it might be better to just use the Wikibook page, or its talk page.

Thanks,

Lou Imholt (LouI at Wiki)

_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Couldn't they still email me by using the "Email this user" link? AFAIK, any
> blocked IP can still log-in and use that feature. Is this also true for
> blocked user names?

It's non-obvious how to do this. There isn't even an "email this user"
link *at all* if you're not logged in, nor any hint that one would
appear if you did.

> I have a question for the techies: On the "Contact us" page on Wikibooks I
> have a live mailto link to textbook-l, but I have obscured the displayed
> email address like so:
>
> [mailto:textbook-l at wikipedia.org textbook-l at wikipedia.org] (replace " at "
> with @)
>
> Is this enough to prevent spam bots from sniffing the email address?

I expect not; that will put the live address directly into the link in
the HTML, after all.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0

body:
on 9/1/03 12:12 PM, Magnus Manske at magnus.manske at web.de wrote:

> As we are slowly wading through the usual swamp that is consensus ;-)
> towards Mordor, eh, wikipedia release 1.0, I was wondering: Is there any
> (more or less) organized effort
> * to find the gape wikipedia has, compared to *other* encyclopediae, and
> * to fill them
> Is there a (machine-readable?) list of all entries in Britannica,
> Encarta, or any other major encyclopedia?
>
> I remember putting lots of possible encyclopedia topics on the 'pedia,
> but wer'de probably past that stage anyway (had a little more than
> 100.000 entries, IIRC).
>
> Magnus

There are a number of indispensible but mundane topics which because they
are not that interesting to research remain undone, or incompletely done.

Fred


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Wikibooks has moved beyond merely /text/books since some time ago.
>>(Do not be confused by the limited examples and temporary URL!)

>Actually I was going by the main page, which says right at the top:
>"'''Wikibooks''' is a [[en:Wikimedia|Wikimedia]] project set up July 10,
>2003 for the cooperative development of free, open content textbooks."

Yes, that's exactly what it was /set/up/ for way back then. ^_^

The ultimate use is still somewhat nebulous.
There's this weird "Wikiversity" idea out now, for one thing.

-- Toby


body:
David Levinson wrote:

> Allow logged in users to approve any version of an article. Logged in
> users could also disapprove any or  every version of an article.
> Articles would be scored based on number of users who approved
> (weighted?) - number of users who disapproved (weighted?).  The article
> with the highest approval rating would be the released (approved)
> article.  This would be displayed somewhere distinct from the working
> wikipedia (e.g. sifter.wikipedia.org, or something similar).

Great, but IMHO we don't need a counting/voting. After all, articles on
wikipedia are not three-versions-in-parallel. There's one article, and
lots of old versions.
I say: Any logged-in user can approve any article with a single click,
which is then copied to a sifter site. Software's already in place (more
or less, and at the wrong place, but...)

> New users would be presented with Wikipedia Release edition.  They could
> still edit the article, but it would not be released until the approvals
> on the new article exceed the approvals on the previously released
> article. The under-edit version from which users are working may differ
> from the release version if approvals have not yet been found. The
> differences would be highlighted on the edit screen.

I'd prefer having the Wikipedia Release edition (I like that!) with a
link "view current revision" to wikipedia; *there*, you can edit if you
want, or just read...

> Edits would of course appear in Recent Changes.  In addition, there
> would be Recent Approvals tracking articles which recently were voted on
> for approval.

I'm afraid that would end in a how-many-voted-and-edited-what mess.

> An edit would of course count as a vote for approval (if preferences so
> set).
>
> Under the article (in view mode) (for logged in users) would be  "vote
> to approve" and "vote to disapprove" buttons. A vote to approve would
> transfer a users vote to this version for approval and remove it from
> previous versions. A vote to disapprove would remain even if another
> version was disapproved.

"Approve" should do just fine. Not approving means disapproving or not
caring. Approvals will show on the sifter RecentChanges only. That won't
clutter the wikipedia RC, and keep the sifter RC clean. Also, no more
code to write ;-)

> Possible weight =  1 if under 100 edits, 2 if under 200 edits, 3 if
> under 300 edits, 4 otherwise. Alternative weighting schemes are possible
> as well, including weight=1 for all logged in users.

What happened to "all wikipedians are equal"? ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preferences

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> (Technical note: currently Special: is given numeric code -1; if we were
> storing such pages in the database this would interfere with some code
> that deals with non-talk vs talk pages as being even/odd-numbered.
> Reassigning it to the next available positive integer (8?) shouldn't
> interfere with anything.)

Why not leave cur_title as "Special:XXX", and the whole thing in article
namespace?

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] protected pages

body:
Ilyanep-
> I'm a sysop, and I don't want people messing up certain pages under my user
> page...would it be considered unfair if I protect them or am I allowed to do
> so?

Protecting your own user pages and user subpages is generally considered
an acceptable personal choice. In fact, non-sysops can ask sysops to do so
for them.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Once bloqued...

body:
Anthere wrote:
>Well, I think it is bad, very bad, very very bad,
that
>blocked users are nearly unable to contact any one,
>and usually not the banning sysop himself, since most
>people do not give their email in clear.

>Mav answered

>IMO, all Admins should have valid email set-up and
the >block message should
>have a link to "email this Admin" leading to a form
>where the blocked person
>can send a message to the Admin.

I agree

It would also be >important to automatically
>input the block information into the email. I find it
>rather annoying to get
>an email stating "please unblock me, I'm not Micheal"
>without the IP address
>or time of the block.

I also agree

>A special Wikimedia email address could be set up to
>act as the sending email
>address. Or we could just tell the blocked user that
>they need to log-in and
>input a valid email address before sending an email.

I like the first option best because a non loggued in
user could also contact the sysop. Imho, that is also
important

>I have a slight preference for the first option.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Preferences

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in part:

>Another possibility is to make [[Special:xxx]] just appear a little more
>like a normal page; that is, there would be an "edit this page" link by
>which you can edit the header text.

This is what I would find most natural and convenient.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Preferences


subject: [Wikitech-l] Google Adwords

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Jens Frank wrote:

>>>As far as I can tell, yes. And since they only accept
>>>credit card payment, this would actually be my risk :-)

>>Hey, if it's on your credit card, do you need permission? -_^

>I think it would be good to do so, yes. If this goes up, it will look like
>an action from Wikipedia. And this particular action I think is a good one,
>but suppose next time someone proposes to send out an email to 10,000,000
>email addresses a few times, saying how great Wikipedia is. Then I would
>want him/her to be told that we'd not be happy with it to say the least.

OK, so 3 people (Jens, Andre, I) think it's a good idea,
and there are no objections.  Any more permission?

-- Toby


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sysop ability to ban logged in users;
	Undelete bug fixed

body:
Steve Vertigum wrote:

>Still maybe cung is right --in case this isnt already
>on the plate -- A routinely upadted shortlist of sysop
>ips for a check against a "ban username" function --
>might be appropriate.  With each login, the each user
>ip is updated. Only rarely might a conflict arise due
>to a same-ip range for dynamic ip sysops and potential
>problem user.

We shouldn't have to worry about sysops at all.
A banned admin can always unban themself.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 1, Issue 1307

body:
Bahnev wrote:

>Can you tell me what "diff" means?

The difference between two versions of the same document.

-- Toby


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Tim Starling wrote:

>>The timestamp on an IP block will be automatically refreshed if a banned
>>user accesses Wikipedia through that address.

>What does this mean? Does this extend the block?

That's what it sounds like to me.  The week starts over when they come back
(or when somebody comes back that we think is them because of the IP).

-- Toby


body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>We'd have only two different LocalSettings files
>instead of one, so no big work here. But, we probably
>don't want to enable all options for annotation when
>writing a new book, and probably some other options
>from there in the source project.

That's why there would be a source namespace; anything in the source namespace
would have special annotation functions above and beyond that allowed for
other modules.

>Don't get me wrong, if that was already decided a long
>time ago (can't remember...) then never mind.

Yes, Wikibooks has already decided to host source texts and to annotate them.

>I won't go berserk if I'd find that biochemistry book
>next to some annotated Shakespeare text.

It won't be any closer than an article on Larry Flint is from quantum
mechanics on Wikipedia.

>It just seems to be something different by concept
>to me.

No, not at all. The whole point of Wikibooks is to host books that are used by
students to learn. Part of that is source texts and the other part is
textbooks. We plan to add value to those source texts by adding annotation.

No separate project needed (a sub-project of Wikibooks might be needed
though).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>on 9/1/03 12:12 PM, Magnus Manske at magnus.manske at web.de wrote:
>
>I remember putting lots of possible encyclopedia topics on the 'pedia,
>but wer'de probably past that stage anyway (had a little more than
>100.000 entries, IIRC).
>
>Magnus
>
>
>There are a number of indispensible but mundane topics which because they
>are not that interesting to research remain undone, or incompletely done.
>
Hmmm.  We are very poor on agricultural topics.  We have [[Chicken,
Alaska]] and [[Chicken Ranch]] but no [[chicken ranching]]. :-)

Ec


body:
I wrote in part:

>That's what it sounds like to me.  The week starts over when they come back

I mean day, not week!

-- Toby


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>Couldn't they still email me by using the "Email this user" link? AFAIK,
>>any blocked IP can still log-in and use that feature. Is this also true
>>for blocked user names?

I thought that only people logged in /and/ with email addresses in the system
could use this feature in the first place.

>It's non-obvious how to do this. There isn't even an "email this user"
>link *at all* if you're not logged in, nor any hint that one would
>appear if you did.

I think that mav is referring to the "email" links
that he and Ilyanep have on [[wp:en:Wikipedia:Administrators]].
These use [[Special:Emailuser]], while mine just gives an email address
(for the reasons in my previous paragraph).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Once bloqued...

body:
Anth?re wrote in part:

>Well, I think it is bad, very bad, very very bad, that
>blocked users are nearly unable to contact any one,
>and usually not the banning sysop himself, since most
>people do not give their email in clear.

For people hesitating to give their email in cleartext:

The email addy that I use for all Wikimedia matters
is <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>, which is given in cleartext
on both [[wp:en:Wikipedia:Administrators]] and [[wp:en:User:Toby Bartels]]
since, respectively, 3003 May 30 and 2002 July 22 (when I became an admin).
It also appears in all of my mailing list posts, for that matter.
To date, I have received a grand total of 1 spam email to this address.

-- Toby


from_name: Joachim Kerschbaumer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] protected pages

body:
Ilyanep <ilyanep at yahoo.com> schrieb am 01.09.2003, 16:07:02:
> I'm a sysop, and I don't want people messing up certain pages under my user page
> The reason I'm asking this is that I have a few friends who I want to see my
> 'article' under my user page and they're all anon's on wikipedia, and
> there's a big chance that they'll mess it up and leave (never wanting to
> come back so blocking isn't an option!)

You could also show them how Wikipedia has a "self-healing" process,
where vandalism is watched and reverted. They can try to vandalise, and
they will see, that after some time the page is back as it was (and they
will give up ;-)
And maybe, by letting them try, they will come back to wikipedia because
they like the idea.
If you stop them from editing from the beginning, they will surely not
get the Idea of Wikipedia.

Give us the link to your pages, so many eyes will watch vandalism and
revert it ;-)

Fantasy :-)


from_name: Arnaldo Gouveia

subject: [Wikitech-l] Auth via console

body:
Hello,

I saw the description of your problem about authentication failed through
console access.

Did you solve it?

Thanks for any help.

Arnaldo Gouveia


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] protected pages

body:
> I'm a sysop, and I don't want people messing up certain pages under my
> user
> page...would it be considered unfair if I protect them or am I allowed to
> do
> so?

I'm szsop at the German WP and I protected it to prevent vandalism for a few
vandals.
Anzwazs it's mz own page and I would suggest that onlz the user himself can
edit it, no matter if szsop or not.

s/z/y/ (holidazs ;-)

--
www.TomK32.de -- just a geek trying to change
the world


subject: [Wikitech-l] A little more refactoring: death to globals!

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Article.php is
> now down to an almost manageable 1107 lines, 575 lines slimmer than its
> stable sibling.

Wow! 1/3 off. Way to go Brion!

But if we don't need all that code, why did we write it in the first
place? ;-)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Sysop ability to ban logged in users;
	Undelete bug fixed

body:
> From: Richard Grevers
> <snip>

> The legitimate user deserves the right to use wikipedia. If the user
who
> logs in vandalises wikipedia, then they should be blocked by username.

If being blocked is necessary. It shouldn't be our primary response to
block anyone whose contributions lower the quality of Wikipedia.
Blocking should be a last resort, not first.


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] software for making maps

body:
Eye candy! So in due time we can leave those ugly CIA maps behind,
great. They remind me of the maps I worked with at primary school.

While we are working to make Brittanica 'for snobs only' (*), we can put
Times Atlas on our 'to outdo' list.

* We might publish Wikipedia 2.0 in a leather-bound edition to get even
those onboard. :)

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preferences

body:
Yes, have a editable [[Special:xxx]] and a talk page may be very useful !

Aoineko

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org>; <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Preferences

> (CC'd to wikitech-l)
>
> Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> > Can we have a [[Wikipedia:Preferences]] page that will be the header of
the
> > [[Special:Preferences]] page ? (like [[Wikipedia:RecentChanges]] and
> > [[Special:RecentChanges]]).
> > In fact it may be very cool if all [[Special:xxx]] started with an
include
> > of [[Wikipedia:xxx]].
> > It may be very useful especially for localize (no-english Wikipedia)
> > specification to add explication and links.
> > How?
>
> Tim Starling's been working on some experimental code whereby various
> additional things can be made like this.
>
> Another possibility is to make [[Special:xxx]] just appear a little more
> like a normal page; that is, there would be an "edit this page" link by
> which you can edit the header text.
>
> So instead of a separate [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]] to find and
> maintain, you'd just go to [[Special:Recentchanges]] and hit edit in the
> usual fashion. A [[Special talk:xxx]] namespace to go with it would be
> useful too.
>
> (Technical note: currently Special: is given numeric code -1; if we were
> storing such pages in the database this would interfere with some code
> that deals with non-talk vs talk pages as being even/odd-numbered.
> Reassigning it to the next available positive integer (8?) shouldn't
> interfere with anything.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Allan Crossman

body:
Hi,

Is something odd going on with the page cache for anonymous IPs? I deleted
[[Granulomas]] and I can see it properly gone when logged in, but when logged
out I still get a cached version. I've tried shift-reload, etc. I've also tried
using a different browser. The problem's not at my end. :-)

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0

body:
As we are slowly wading through the usual swamp that is consensus ;-)
towards Mordor, eh, wikipedia release 1.0, I was wondering: Is there any
(more or less) organized effort
* to find the gape wikipedia has, compared to *other* encyclopediae, and
* to fill them
Is there a (machine-readable?) list of all entries in Britannica,
Encarta, or any other major encyclopedia?

I remember putting lots of possible encyclopedia topics on the 'pedia,
but wer'de probably past that stage anyway (had a little more than
100.000 entries, IIRC).

Magnus


body:
> May I suggest one more piece of logic?
> An IP block is automatically released if a non-banned user logs in on it.
> (which means that the IP has been reassigned away from the vandal)

Hrmm. I thought part of the joy of IP blocks was that vandal user accounts
can't come in from that IP either. I've used this at least once to ban a logged-
in vandal.

A vandal shouldn't be able to escape the block by creating new user accounts
(or falling back to user accounts that already exist)

I myself would like to suggest a feature: when we get sysop ability to ban
logged-in users, the last IP of a banned user should itself be banned for, oh,
an hour or so (without actually revealing the IP address to any non-developer,
if there are privacy concerns). Is that feasible?

Note the part about not revealing the IP address - this shouldn't become a way
for sysops to determine arbitrary users' IP addresses, by banning them briefly
(though actually I would like to be able to check IP addresses, but I guess if
we're going to have a privacy policy we can't do that).

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sysop ability to ban logged in users; Undelete bug fixed

body:
Sorry, I missed the previous part of the discussion about how user bans will
block the IP on their next edit attempt - still, is there a privacy issue here?
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


body:
>> Hrmm. I thought part of the joy of IP blocks was that vandal user
>> accounts can't come in from that IP either. I've used this at least
>> once to ban a  logged-in vandal.
>
> If a user on the same IP continues the pattern of vandalism, surely
> we would ban that user?

Why make life difficult? If we actually know a vandal's IP address, why allow
him to use it with all the 30 accounts he's already created?

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


from_name: Merritt L. Perkins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Writing articles

body:
I have been thinking of trying to write some Encyclopedia articles but I
would like to discuss them with several other people while I am preparing
them for publication.
. Suppose I choose to write about Rose of Sharon. I could look in the
Wikipedia and not find it under that heading. Perhaps it is described
somewhere and I didn't find it.
I could take close-up pictures of the flowers with my digital camera and
describe it from what I know and what I can see. Should I include
pictures of the whole plant, the seeds, or the roots? I could look in
encyclopedias and books for more information. I could prepare a rough
draft. After reading the instructions for submitting articles I would
like to discuss it with other people and get their comments and
suggestions. Someone told me that Rose of Sharon was mentioned in the
Bible. Somebody may know where. Should I include that and quote the Bible
passage?
An historian may be able to tell what part it played in history like the
thistle in Scotland and the War of the Roses in England. A botanist may
be able to correct and add to my description. People in other parts of
the world may tell me that it is common there. Is it the national flower
of some country or does it appear on a flag? Should we include the name
in some other languages?
If someone else is writing an article on the same subject I might choose
to let him take my article and use parts of it in his article.
After I get tired of editing it I could submit it to be included in the
Encyclopedia.
Then the readers would have their opportunity to make changes.
I didn't find articles about Jesse Ramsden who made precision navigation
instruments or Count Rumsford who left Massachusetts and went to England
and founded the Royal Institution.
There are several other subjects that I might write about but I would
like to have other people participate. How can I do this?
This matter may have been discussed in e-mail but I have more than 450
e-mail on my computer so it is hard to figure out what conclusions have
been reached.
Merritt L. Perkins


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Writing articles

body:
on 9/1/03 8:38 PM, Merritt L. Perkins at mlperkins3 at juno.com wrote:

> I have been thinking of trying to write some Encyclopedia articles but I
> would like to discuss them with several other people while I am preparing
> them for publication.
> . Suppose I choose to write about Rose of Sharon. I could look in the
> Wikipedia and not find it under that heading. Perhaps it is described
> somewhere and I didn't find it.
> I could take close-up pictures of the flowers with my digital camera and
> describe it from what I know and what I can see. Should I include
> pictures of the whole plant, the seeds, or the roots? I could look in
> encyclopedias and books for more information. I could prepare a rough
> draft. After reading the instructions for submitting articles I would
> like to discuss it with other people and get their comments and
> suggestions. Someone told me that Rose of Sharon was mentioned in the
> Bible. Somebody may know where. Should I include that and quote the Bible
> passage?
> An historian may be able to tell what part it played in history like the
> thistle in Scotland and the War of the Roses in England. A botanist may
> be able to correct and add to my description. People in other parts of
> the world may tell me that it is common there. Is it the national flower
> of some country or does it appear on a flag? Should we include the name
> in some other languages?
> If someone else is writing an article on the same subject I might choose
> to let him take my article and use parts of it in his article.
> After I get tired of editing it I could submit it to be included in the
> Encyclopedia.
> Then the readers would have their opportunity to make changes.

Please do that. Jump in; the water's fine.

> I didn't find articles about Jesse Ramsden who made precision navigation
> instruments or Count Rumsford who left Massachusetts and went to England
> and founded the Royal Institution.
> There are several other subjects that I might write about but I would
> like to have other people participate. How can I do this?

Another good idea

> This matter may have been discussed in e-mail but I have more than 450
> e-mail on my computer so it is hard to figure out what conclusions have
> been reached.

How to write an article is discussed at length on Wikipedia.

> Merritt L. Perkins

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0

body:
I think one area where Wikipedia is not yet faring too well is in the
fine arts section (painting, ballet, architecture, drama, music, etc).
Of course exceptions exist. Just a gut feeling, no time to dig into it
now.

I filled a few gaps myself: articles on Rembrandt, van Gogh, Dutch
Golden Age and a few others in that area were non existent or very
meagre a few monthes ago. This in itself says enough. If these articles
were in a bad shape until recently, it means we are still charting the
tip of the iceberg, we are talking mainstream household name fine arts
in these cases.

If my assumption is well founded, we might discuss how to attract more
Wikipedians from art schools, schools of music and the like.

----

A quote from the talk page for
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_Referenced_Articles

"I don't know what it says about Wikipedia (I tell a lie, I '''do'''
know what it says about Wikipedia), but [[God]] gets only 886 links,
while [[Science fiction]] is linked 998 times. -- Cimon Avaro on a
pogostick

Erik Zachte

---

P.S. I checked: the article about Rembrandt dates from Oct 2002, not
exactly a few monthes ago, still Wikipedia was almost 2 years old then.


body:
"Erik Moeller" wrote
> Tim-
> > Automatic expiration? Piece of cake, give me 24 hours. Any suggestions
> > for the lifetime?
>
> Should be configurable in minutes, with 0=infinite (we have permanently
> banned users).

Sorry Erik, I'm afraid that exceeds my "piece of cake" design brief. :)
Instead, I've just committed the following to CVS:

* Lifetime for user blocks and IP blocks is configurable separately, in
LocalSettings.php. The current default is 24 hours for IP blocks, and
infinite for user blocks.
* Blocks disappear from the table without a trace, at the end of their
lifetime. A possible future improvement would be to allow them to be
manually refreshed, but currently that is impossible.
* The timestamp on an IP block will be automatically refreshed if a banned
user accesses Wikipedia through that address.
* The software can be restored to roughly its previous behaviour using
$wgSysopUserBans=false in LocalSettings.php. The difference is that sysops
can now unblock users regardless of the setting, whereas before only
developers could unblock users.
* Blocks are now encapsulated in the "Block" object, in "Block.php". The
code is mostly converted over to use it. It optionally deletes expired bans
on read.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Preferences

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:3F530F1F.3000806 at pobox.com...
> (CC'd to wikitech-l)
>
> Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> > Can we have a [[Wikipedia:Preferences]] page that will be the header of
the
> > [[Special:Preferences]] page ? (like [[Wikipedia:RecentChanges]] and
> > [[Special:RecentChanges]]).
> > In fact it may be very cool if all [[Special:xxx]] started with an
include
> > of [[Wikipedia:xxx]].
> > It may be very useful especially for localize (no-english Wikipedia)
> > specification to add explication and links.
> > How?
>
> Tim Starling's been working on some experimental code whereby various
> additional things can be made like this.
>
> Another possibility is to make [[Special:xxx]] just appear a little more
> like a normal page; that is, there would be an "edit this page" link by
> which you can edit the header text.
>
> So instead of a separate [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]] to find and
> maintain, you'd just go to [[Special:Recentchanges]] and hit edit in the
> usual fashion. A [[Special talk:xxx]] namespace to go with it would be
> useful too.
>
> (Technical note: currently Special: is given numeric code -1; if we were
> storing such pages in the database this would interfere with some code
> that deals with non-talk vs talk pages as being even/odd-numbered.
> Reassigning it to the next available positive integer (8?) shouldn't
> interfere with anything.)

Your way is a bit easier to use, but my way is a bit more general. The thing
about special pages is that they often have several messages -- for example
Special:Userlogin has the form where you type in your details, a message for
new users, a message for existing users, etc. Also, my scheme could be used
for things like page deletion, where there is no special page. Perhaps
there's a way we can combine the best of both schemes. I'll think about it.

Maybe I'll do some more work on this once I've finished with the other few
things I'm doing at the moment.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: blocking user name

body:
Anthere wrote...
> From: Toby Bartels
>
> >Will this be working on any wikipedia as well ?
>
> I don't know.  Would you want it on [[fr:]]?
>
>
> -- Toby
>
> Me ? No :-)))
>
> Or Utilisateur:Papotages would have been banned before
> I was back from my holidays :-)
>
> I think several french would be very happy to have
> that feature. But there was never any serious
> discussion since we considered a "fact" we could not.
> Likely, f the feature is now possible, it will be
> transfered.
>
> Till now, we succeeded not to have any user name ever
> banned (except perhaps Mulot, but that was in phase I,
> I am still shivering in the memory of permanent
> deletion). The reason probably is that Jimbo is not
> able to follow some of the discussions.
>
> If the feature is available, it will be used. And
> probably not with Jimbo seal. Till now, conflict was
> eventually "solved" through mass reversion and
> protection of page. I suppose now it will perhaps be
> through blocking.
>
> It is easy to see on RC that a user is mass reverted.
>
> It is not easy to see a page is protected (essentially
> because people don't put headers, do not list it, and
> others unprotect). But we may notice the user
> protesting vehemently
>
> However, if the user is blocked, we may not even
> realise it (except for pure bliss coming down the
> wikipedia after a fight). I wonder if it might not be
> relevant to have somehow a warning somewhere telling
> us that a user name has been blocked since last
> connection. Otherwise, we might not notice and be able
> to unblock him perhaps.
>
> Just thoughts. Setting up blocking of names (which
> will be block with the ip, so entirely prevent the
> user to communicate with us) is just changing the
> concept. It requires to adapt.

I've changed it now so that we can switch it off on a language-by-language
basis. But like you say, many French Wikipedians may want it on, and there's
not much I can do about that.

Brion mentioned that it's currently not really clear what a banned user is
meant to do to get unbanned: they get a message saying "discuss this with
[[User:Someone]]", but they can't modify the user's talk page, and they
can't email him/her either. Perhaps we need to have a sandbox especially for
blocked people, where they can write comments or plead for forgiveness. The
difference between this page and ordinary pages would be that there's no
edit summary, and so no chance to flood RC with obscenties.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> I remember putting lots of possible encyclopedia topics on the 'pedia,
> but wer'de probably past that stage anyway (had a little more than
> 100.000 entries, IIRC).
>
> Magnus

[[Requested articles]] has some really obvious stuff listed.
I added [[saliva]] there some time ago but I think it's been done.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0

body:
Magnus-
> Is there a (machine-readable?) list of all entries in Britannica,
> Encarta, or any other major encyclopedia?

While that would be helpful, in many cases we have articles, but they are
rather poor. This is especially true for
- human anatomy, diseases, neuropsy. (few MDs on Wikipedia, it seems)
- third world nations (mostly CIA World Factbook / State Department data
and little else, history articles therefore have strong US bias)
- social sciences (some good articles, but very basic ones about key
figures still missing)

Now, Britannica et al. also have deficits in some of these areas, so we
should not just compare ourselves to them but also strive for quality
independently. Our strong sides (on en:) currently seem to be:

- US history
- western celebrities
- pop culture
- modern technology, computers in particular
- natural sciences
- controversial issues
- religions (mostly taken care of by their adherents so somewhat biased)
- fringe stuff (Grandma's Grand Unified Theory of Physics)

In other words, things Wikipedians predominantly feel strongly about.
Unfortunately at present, few Wikipedians feel strongly about, say, the
history of Cambodia, which is currently taken directly from the US State
Department and mentions "air raids" in one sentence. Maybe we can get them
to make a donation for the free propaganda.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:logo pb

body:
Till Westermayer till at tillwe.de
Tue Sep 2 08:55:13 UTC 2003

    * Previous message: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0
    * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [
subject ] [ author ]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
till we *) . . .

Hi Anthere,

there is no logo 138?!

Till

Hi Tillwe

How observant of you :-) (<- this is meant to be a
very friendly and cheerful irony)

Logo 138 (or rather logoS 138) were added after the
deadline, hence were removed by our foreman (err...the
organizer in case this word hold meanings I am not
aware of).

One of the logo 138 had the same name than another,
hence it replaced it. The previous saved state was
restored.

Logos 138 were kat-related logo. Very nice artwork,
but I fear they would not have been fit as logos
anyway, so  it is sad for the author, but won't impact
the final choice.

Cheers Tillwe

I take the opportunity to report - as an ambassador -
the displeasure of some author, who feel there is
applied pressure to direct their creativity to another
direction than is their wish, and officially ask me to
help him as my english ability is better than his. (<-
this is a neutral report)

In my opinion, any logo proposition and any logo
versioning is a "free-of-choice" work, and
"free-to-display" work (except for
sex-race-color-political-religion related works
perhaps, though this might be controversial), and any
pressure on authors is out of bounds. Please. Thanks.
(<- This is a personal opinion. Please and thanks mean
please and thanks, and this part of my message is not
for you Tillwe dear :-))

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Richard Grevers

references:
<3F52A1D6.8060706@hotmail.com> <8t1EzA4hpVB@erik_moeller>
	<bivhsp$36a$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 23:34:53 +1000, Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> Instead, I've just committed the following to CVS:
>
> * Lifetime for user blocks and IP blocks is configurable separately, in
> LocalSettings.php. The current default is 24 hours for IP blocks, and
> infinite for user blocks.
> * Blocks disappear from the table without a trace, at the end of their
> lifetime. A possible future improvement would be to allow them to be
> manually refreshed, but currently that is impossible.

May I suggest one more piece of logic?
An IP block is automatically released if a non-banned user logs in on it.
(which means that the IP has been reassigned away from the vandal)

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IBM analyzing Wikipedia page histories

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Jimbo spoke:
> > ... but I can imagine the howls if
> > I applied to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for support.
> :-)
>
> Are you HIV positive? Do you live in a sub-saharan nation?

No, but for those of long-range vision, what we are doing is very
important for the improvement of the condition of people all over the
world.  I was actually just joking when I said that, but since you
asked, my curiosity was piqued as to what kinds of projects they
actually support.

According to their website, "The foundation favors preventive
approaches and collaborative endeavors with government, philanthropic
and not-for-profit partners. Priority is given to grants that leverage
additional support and serve as a catalyst for long-term, systemic
change."

I'd say we qualify pretty well within those objectives.

However, further down the page, when they detail which of their
programs accept or don't accept letters of inquiry, it's hard to see
how we would fit.  Possibly if someone were to take articles on health
and construct a free textbook suitable for use in developing nations,
they might be interested in funding widespread distribution there.

But really, I can't even begin to imagine the controversy that would
be caused around here if we took money from Gates, so it's probably
best to leave it just as an ironic joke.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: My Wikipedia Rant

in_reply_to:
<20030831194513.49670.qmail@web80708.mail.yahoo.com>;
	from utilitymuffinresearch2@yahoo.com on Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at
	12:45:13PM -0700

body:
Steve Vertigum wrote:
> Next time include a link Tarq --
> http://forums.delphiforums.com/bully/messages/?msg=25069.1

The ironic beauty of this is that John calls it a 'socialist nirvana'
and laments the 'dead ends' he got when he tried to research the
founder of the site (I can only assume he meant me).

But I don't suppose it would be too difficult to research me and find
that I'm sufficiently pro-capitalist to make even most conservatives'
hair stand on end.  :-)

Good for a chuckle.

But I wouldn't worry too much about a horde of conservative vandals
coming in and putting jokes all over the site.  If nothing else,
conservatives can at least usually respect private property.  "You
kids get off'n my proppity!"

> After reading a little, I dont think hes a total
> moron, just a typical product of his isolated,
> depressed, and buttoned-down HUA, TYOB culture of the
> 50s/70s/90s conservative.

I'm glad you left out the 80s conservatives!  We rocked! ;-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Google Adwords

in_reply_to:
<20030901221839.GI6274@math-lw-n01.ucr.edu>;
	from toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu on Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at
	03:18:39PM -0700

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> OK, so 3 people (Jens, Andre, I) think it's a good idea,
> and there are no objections.  Any more permission?

Oh, I'm delighted by the idea.  I wonder if it wouldn't be better,
though, to think of a keyword to advertise the Wikimedia Foundation's
'ask for money' site, so that perhaps this 50 Euro donation might be
leveraged into a lot more?

I know it's a bit crude in the hallowed confines of Wikipedia to talk
about such things as return on investment, but the concepts are valid,
even in a non-profit context.

But if someone is volunteering to do something that will benefit
Wikipedia at their own expense, that's something that makes me very
happy.

--Jimbo


body:
On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 20:31:32 +0100, Allan Crossman
<a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk> gave utterance to the following:

>> May I suggest one more piece of logic?
>> An IP block is automatically released if a non-banned user logs in on
>> it.
>> (which means that the IP has been reassigned away from the vandal)
>
> Hrmm. I thought part of the joy of IP blocks was that vandal user
> accounts
> can't come in from that IP either. I've used this at least once to ban a
> logged-
> in vandal.

If a user on the same IP continues the pattern of vandalism, surely we
would ban that user?

>
> A vandal shouldn't be able to escape the block by creating new user
> accounts
> (or falling back to user accounts that already exist)

Perhaps creation of user accounts should be disallowed if the IP number is
temporarily blocked.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pb with logos.

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

Hi Anthere,

there is no logo 138?!

Till

>I have no time to clean it up right now. Sorry.

>But someone is messing with logos, replacing some old
>logos with some cat related logo.

>Logo 138 was not the initial logo. It was replaced

>Ant

>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
>http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikitech-l] Update to gfdl copyright notice needed

body:
On Thursday 28 August 2003 07:50, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On another front, it is often alleged that _true_ "fair use" of some
> non-FDL material (both text and images) _is_ compatible with the FDL.

I might missed that, but what does "true fair use" mean?

best regards,
  Marco


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:logo pb

body:
At 05:07 AM 9/2/03 -0700, Anthere wrote:
>Till Westermayer till at tillwe.de
>
>How observant of you :-) (<- this is meant to be a
>very friendly and cheerful irony)
>
>Logo 138 (or rather logoS 138) were added after the
>deadline, hence were removed by our foreman (err...the
>organizer in case this word hold meanings I am not
>aware of).
>
>One of the logo 138 had the same name than another,
>hence it replaced it. The previous saved state was
>restored.
>
>Logos 138 were kat-related logo. Very nice artwork,
>but I fear they would not have been fit as logos
>anyway, so  it is sad for the author, but won't impact
>the final choice.
>
>Cheers Tillwe
>
>
>I take the opportunity to report - as an ambassador -
>the displeasure of some author, who feel there is
>applied pressure to direct their creativity to another
>direction than is their wish, and officially ask me to
>help him as my english ability is better than his. (<-
>this is a neutral report)
>
>In my opinion, any logo proposition and any logo
>versioning is a "free-of-choice" work, and
>"free-to-display" work (except for
>sex-race-color-political-religion related works
>perhaps, though this might be controversial), and any
>pressure on authors is out of bounds. Please. Thanks.
>(<- This is a personal opinion. Please and thanks mean
>please and thanks, and this part of my message is not
>for you Tillwe dear :-))

My understanding is that artists are/were welcome to submit
any logo they wanted, and then everyone--including artists--are
encouraged to vote for logos we think are appropriate.

I'm not sure I understand the complaint.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: original sources on Wikipedia

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote in part:

>Magnus Manske wrote:

>>Don't get me wrong, if that was already decided a long
>>time ago (can't remember...) then never mind.

>Yes, Wikibooks has already decided to host source texts and to annotate them.

Well, if it's long times ago that people want,
then Project Sourceberg decided to host source texts much longer ago.
But it did not decide to annotate them -- Wikibooks does that.

And I agree that Wikibooks should do just that.
Having a physics text and a Shakespeare anthology
in the same project seems just right to me.

-- Toby


body:
On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 22:06:20 +0100, Allan Crossman
<a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk> gave utterance to the following:

>>> Hrmm. I thought part of the joy of IP blocks was that vandal user
>>> accounts can't come in from that IP either. I've used this at least
>>> once to ban a  logged-in vandal.
>>
>> If a user on the same IP continues the pattern of vandalism, surely
>> we would ban that user?
>
> Why make life difficult? If we actually know a vandal's IP address, why
> allow
> him to use it with all the 30 accounts he's already created?
>
The point is that for most of the world, IP addresses are dynamically
assigned, changing each time you dial in via modem. The whole point of
making IP blocks short-lived is to avoid the scenario where vandal is
blocked, goes off the  internet, and a legitimate user dials in to the
same ISP and gets the same IP number (coincidence, maybe, but it does
happen, and will happen more often once blocking becomes easier).

The legitimate user deserves the right to use wikipedia. If the user who
logs in vandalises wikipedia, then they should be blocked by username.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
Marco Krohn wrote:
> > On another front, it is often alleged that _true_ "fair use" of some
> > non-FDL material (both text and images) _is_ compatible with the FDL.
>
> I might missed that, but what does "true fair use" mean?

The exact law:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

I think by _true_, Brion only means to indicate that a person can't
just hand wave past the 4-part test outlined in the law.  Just saying
'fair use' doesn't automatically make it so.

The legal point is that if you really are using something "fairly" as
outlined in the law, then you are on solid legal ground regardless of
the licensing conditions someone may place on the material in
question.

The problem with fair use for us, and the reason I think we should be
conservative about it, is that fair use depends on the _use_ of the
material in a way that may be somewhat inconsistent with the spirit of
GNU-freedom.

Also, the 4-part text is vague.

Here's some excellent reading material:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-c.html

As you read over the case summaries, you'll begin to get a sense of
how puzzling this doctrine can be.  It seems that we'd be safer using
movie stills (which are a small portion of the overall work) than
individual photos (which are arguably the entire work) from a photo
shoot.  There are lots of quirks like that, and lots of cases that I
think would be hard to predict.

I think it's pretty clearly that there will be lots of cases where
*we* are on solid ground, but where potential re-users of our content
will not be.  I think that's problematic.

Both Richard Stallman and Larry Lessig have indicated to me,
informally, that they see no problem with using fair use materials in
GNU FDL licensed materials.  They actually seemed puzzled by the
question -- that's my interpretation, of course, and not something
they should be directly held responsible for, if the confusion was
mine!

--Jimbo


from_name: Jason Richey

in_reply_to:
<20030831150613.GA1026@tavaiah>;
	from taw@users.sourceforge.net on Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at 05:06:13PM
	+0200

body:
Hmm... My Spamassassin says:

> X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.1 required=5.0
>         tests=BAYES_20,FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS,FROM_WEBMAIL_ENDS_IN_NUMS6,
>               PRIORITY_NO_NAME,SEMIFORGED_HOTMAIL_RCVD
>         version=2.55
> X-Spam-Level:
> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp)

Jason

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> Btw, Tim, try making your email less spammy ;-)
>
>     Content analysis details:   (4.40 points, 5 required)
>     FROM_WEBMAIL_ENDS_IN_NUMS6 (1.5 points)  From address is webmail, and ends in lots of numbers
>     FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS  (0.7 points)  From: ends in numbers
>     SEMIFORGED_HOTMAIL_RCVD (1.7 points)  hotmail.com 'From' address, but no 'Received:'
>     PRIORITY_NO_NAME   (0.5 points)  Message has priority setting, but no X-Mailer

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> No separate project needed (a sub-project of Wikibooks might be needed
> though).

There's no such thing as a sub-project, at least not on the software
level. Either it is one project, or two. Two projects could be accessing
the same database, but I don't see a reason for that, as we'd have two
interfaces to show and do exactly the same thing.

Two projects could be *presented* as project and subproject, though. If
we call the two projects wikibooks.org and wikisources.org, or rather
textbooks.wikibooks.org and sources.wikibooks.org, doesn't make a
difference, at least not to me.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo pb

body:
Hi,

134 to 137 were put on the voting sheet after the
deadline, too, I believe.
This not being a problem seemed like a good example of
WikiLove, in my eyes.
See
[http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=International_logos_(126-150)&oldid=12065]
for example of voting in place without them.

Bye, Till we *)

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

Sorry, but I did not understand what you meant above.

Do you mean it was not an act of wikilove to point out
to the problem ?

I just know one thing

When I looked the other day, I just saw a user had
replaced with *his* logo (submitted after the
deadline), the logo of *another* user (logo number
67).

I had no time to check if I had really understood the
problem, so I just mentionned it for others to check

Clearly, that was a mistake. But in any case, I think
it was *not* a good idea to let someone replace the
official logos of another by his own.

Perhaps my saying was not wikilove toward the author
of 138, but it was toward author of 67 :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Writing articles

body:
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:

>I have been thinking of trying to write some Encyclopedia articles but I
>would like to discuss them with several other people while I am preparing
>them for publication.
>. Suppose I choose to write about Rose of Sharon. I could look in the
>Wikipedia and not find it under that heading.
>
(...snip, snip, snip)
Perfectionism can be a very diappointing experience when writing on
Wikipedia. There is no such thing as a perfect article.  If you want
contact with people interested in the Rose of Sharon, you are far more
likely to find that on the talk page for that article than on this
mailing list.  In education, perfectionism is one of the most difficult
problems for gifted children.  It is very hard for them to accept that
their errors are not faults.  They would often prefer to fail in school
by producing nothing than by producing what they consider to be
sub-standard work.

>If someone else is writing an article on the same subject I might choose
>to let him take my article and use parts of it in his article.
>
In a collaborative process everybody is contributing at the same time.
 The article will be neither yours nor his.

>After I get tired of editing it I could submit it to be included in the
>Encyclopedia.
>
Why wait?

>There are several other subjects that I might write about but I would
>like to have other people participate. How can I do this?
>
Just do it.  Once you write, you may wish that they didn't participate.

>This matter may have been discussed in e-mail but I have more than 450
>e-mail on my computer so it is hard to figure out what conclusions have
>been reached.
>
If you have 450 e-mails on your computer, you probably need to simply
delete half of them. :-)

Good luck!

Ray


body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

>What is displayed to a person on a blocked IP at present?

Anth?re recently gave a report;
but any sysop that wants to see for themself
should just go ahead and block themself.
(You may have to figure out what your IP is first.)
Even while blocked, you can still unblock yourself.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Writing articles

body:
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:

>I have been thinking of trying to write some Encyclopedia articles but I
>would like to discuss them with several other people while I am preparing
>them for publication.

In the Wikipedia method, you don't talk first, you do it!

Just put whatever you have now in the encyclopaedia,
Incomplete?  Either you or another person can add it later.
Information that you don't know?  Mention it on the talk page.
Want help from another user?  Ask on their user talk page.

If you just discuss it privately, then somebody else may write it first,
and then all of your plans are for nought.  Just write what you have now.
Then write more.  And discuss it on the talk page that any editor can read.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] banning users

body:
How difficult would it be to implement a user/ip watchlist (or add
such functionality to the current watchlist feature)?  It seems that
it would be useful to many sysops to be able to add "micheal" to their
watchlist, or his IP, or even an IP block (I mean a range of IPs here,
like an IP with netmask) that would indicate a person using his ISP
(or him with a new IP).

Something like this could track an IP block in real time before an edit is
attempted, giving sysops a chance to block an IP before he tries to
edit.  Though this doesn't seem too useful, it could give a vandal the
impression that our system is automatically tracking them down, even
when they delete their cookies, change their login, and change IPs.
It might cause them to give up.

Also, it might be helpful to "hold" (for a few minutes) edits made by
an IP range with a message like "your edit has been held temporarily
due to our super-intelligent vandalism filter.  If the edit is
legitimate, you can rest assure that it will be processed in a few
minutes.  If your edit is vandalism, you should head for the hills, we
know who you are."  This way, sysops could revert the vandalism before
the vandal gets the satisfaction of seeing it go live.

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: My Wikipedia Rant

body:
At 07:38 AM 9/2/03 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>Steve Vertigum wrote:
> > Next time include a link Tarq --
> > http://forums.delphiforums.com/bully/messages/?msg=25069.1
>
>The ironic beauty of this is that John calls it a 'socialist nirvana'
>and laments the 'dead ends' he got when he tried to research the
>founder of the site (I can only assume he meant me).

 From my viewpoint, it is a fine piece of an anarcho-socialist nirvana:
everyone contributes what they want and are able to, and everyone shares
the resulting benefits.

>But I don't suppose it would be too difficult to research me and find
>that I'm sufficiently pro-capitalist to make even most conservatives'
>hair stand on end.  :-)
>
>Good for a chuckle.
>
>But I wouldn't worry too much about a horde of conservative vandals
>coming in and putting jokes all over the site.  If nothing else,
>conservatives can at least usually respect private property.  "You
>kids get off'n my proppity!"

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>
>>Tim Starling wrote:
>
>
>>>The timestamp on an IP block will be automatically refreshed if a banned
>>>user accesses Wikipedia through that address.
>>
>
>>What does this mean? Does this extend the block?
>
>
> That's what it sounds like to me.  The week starts over when they come back
> (or when somebody comes back that we think is them because of the IP).

Say if Michael logs in under a banned name and accesses Wikipedia
through 1.2.3.4. The address 1.2.3.4 is automatically blocked, with an
expiration time 24 hours in the future. He continues to access Wikipedia
for a few hours using the same name and address. Each time he access a
page, the 1.2.3.4 block is extended. Now say he logs out and logs back
in with a new unbanned name. He still can't make changes because he's
still using 1.2.3.4, but the clock is now ticking. 24 hours after he
logged out and logged back in with the new name, the IP ban expires. But
by that time he's probably changed his IP address anyway. If he changes
his IP address and logs back in with the banned name, a second IP ban
will be created, under the same rules.

One problem with this scheme is that we can't ban static IP addresses
indefinitely anymore, like we used to. Well, it's more difficult,
anyway. You'd have to record the IP address somewhere, and then reban it
once a day.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Writing articles

body:
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Merritt L. Perkins wrote:

> I have been thinking of trying to write some Encyclopedia articles but I
> would like to discuss them with several other people while I am preparing
> them for publication.
> . Suppose I choose to write about Rose of Sharon. I could look in the
> Wikipedia and not find it under that heading. Perhaps it is described
> somewhere and I didn't find it.

Try doing a search using the terms under which it could be described. In this
case I would search under +rose +sharon, and under its binomial name (or
just the genus if it is a small one).

> I could take close-up pictures of the flowers with my digital camera and
> describe it from what I know and what I can see. Should I include
> pictures of the whole plant, the seeds, or the roots?

This is up to you - what do you think would be useful, what do you think
would not be very informative? I cannot give any general rules, except that
I would prefer to keep it to 1 or 2 pictures, unless the article gets very
large (over two pages, say).

> I could look in
> encyclopedias and books for more information. I could prepare a rough
> draft. After reading the instructions for submitting articles I would
> like to discuss it with other people and get their comments and
> suggestions.

The general Wikipedia way would be to write your draft and publish it.
If you have questions or ideas to enhance the page, you could place them
on the Talk page.

> Someone told me that Rose of Sharon was mentioned in the
> Bible. Somebody may know where. Should I include that and quote the Bible
> passage?
>
> An historian may be able to tell what part it played in history like the
> thistle in Scotland and the War of the Roses in England. A botanist may
> be able to correct and add to my description. People in other parts of
> the world may tell me that it is common there. Is it the national flower
> of some country or does it appear on a flag? Should we include the name
> in some other languages?

I would say it is all your call what you think is important enough to add
and what is not. I would make an exception for the names in other languages,
which I personally would choose not to include (except of course the official
biological binomial name), but for all others I would say, just do as you
like.

> If someone else is writing an article on the same subject I might choose
> to let him take my article and use parts of it in his article.

In general, this is done by having whoever is ready first publish it on
Wikipedia, then the second one combine the tow articles.

> After I get tired of editing it I could submit it to be included in the
> Encyclopedia.
> Then the readers would have their opportunity to make changes.

You might consider doing that before. There's nothing wrong with putting
something on Wikipedia while it is still a 'work in progress'.

> I didn't find articles about Jesse Ramsden who made precision navigation
> instruments or Count Rumsford who left Massachusetts and went to England
> and founded the Royal Institution.

There's many thousands of other interesting subjects that we do not have...
It's all still 'work in progress'.

> There are several other subjects that I might write about but I would
> like to have other people participate. How can I do this?

I don't think there is any specific method for that on Wikipedia. We all
just write on what we want to write on, and cooperation comes when we
happen to be writing on the same thing.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: My Wikipedia Rant

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> At 07:38 AM 9/2/03 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>
>> Steve Vertigum wrote:
>> > Next time include a link Tarq --
>> > http://forums.delphiforums.com/bully/messages/?msg=25069.1
>>
>> The ironic beauty of this is that John calls it a 'socialist nirvana'
>> and laments the 'dead ends' he got when he tried to research the
>> founder of the site (I can only assume he meant me).
>
>
> From my viewpoint, it is a fine piece of an anarcho-socialist nirvana:
> everyone contributes what they want and are able to, and everyone shares
> the resulting benefits.

To be really an inclusive project maybe we should consider it as an
anarcho-lebertarian-socialist nirvana. :-)

Ec


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Sysop ability to ban logged in users;
	Undelete bug fixed

body:
Allan Crossman wrote:
>>May I suggest one more piece of logic?
>>An IP block is automatically released if a non-banned user logs in on it.
>>(which means that the IP has been reassigned away from the vandal)
>
>
> Hrmm. I thought part of the joy of IP blocks was that vandal user accounts
> can't come in from that IP either. I've used this at least once to ban a logged-
> in vandal.
>
> A vandal shouldn't be able to escape the block by creating new user accounts
> (or falling back to user accounts that already exist)

Yes, I don't think it would be a good idea to have them automatically
released. It's far more likely that it's a banned user trying to
circumvent the system than another person altogether.

> I myself would like to suggest a feature: when we get sysop ability to ban
> logged-in users, the last IP of a banned user should itself be banned for, oh,
> an hour or so (without actually revealing the IP address to any non-developer,
> if there are privacy concerns). Is that feasible?

It's already done. But it's for 24 hours, not 1. And the IP address is
revealed.

> Note the part about not revealing the IP address - this shouldn't become a way
> for sysops to determine arbitrary users' IP addresses, by banning them briefly
> (though actually I would like to be able to check IP addresses, but I guess if
> we're going to have a privacy policy we can't do that).

Yes, the privacy concerns are significant. I think I will do something
about it. Thanks for pointing it out.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [Wikitech-l] software for making maps

in_reply_to:
<20030901013207.GA3920@tavaiah>;
	from taw@users.sourceforge.net on Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 03:32:07AM
	+0200

body:
I'm  impressed...

IIRC, this is the second major content generation system you've put
together.  It seems that there are many of these kinds of systems that
may be implemented in the future.  SVG graphics, Lilypond music, maps,
TeX, etc. are all things that people would like to see, and are all
the type of thing whose content is based on text.

It seems reasonable to me to say that we shouldn't add new tags for
every one of these systems, but should make them all be defined as
"text based media".  Then, they should be editable in their own page,
which should give a radio button indicating which rendering modules
are available (math, lilypond, SVG, map).

I recognize that it is easier to have mathematical equations inline in
most cases instead of giving each it's own page.  Perhaps this could
be solved with a tag like <text_based_media:math>\nabla \partial
dx</text_based_media> or the like.

jason

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> This software is used to make maps like those on
>     http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_first_useful_map
>     http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map
>
> It's not all the software I have here.
>
> Queries in city names database are being made separately,
> here only "cities2.pl" with cities for the first useful map is attached.
>
> This software needs:
> * absolutely most recent version of ImageMagick (5.5.7-10)
>   5.5.7-9 is not recent enough, it contains very serious bug
> * Ruby and RMagick
> * Geo::E00 (attached)
>
> And data:
> * NASA's BlueMarble (raster background)
>     ftp://mitch.gsfc.nasa.gov:21/pub/stockli/bluemarble/
> * CIA World DataBank II in text format (rivers)
>     http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/data/WDB/
> * UNEP/GRID data (boundaries / polygons)
>     http://www.grid.unep.ch/data/grid/gnv19.php
>     I'm not terribly certain about copyright status of this.
>     If it's bad, we always have 1988 free data and
>     only a couple of borders to digitalize.
>
> It should be possible to run it without BlueMarble
> or rivers data if these features aren't used.
> Boundary data is necessary.

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

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Michael evidence?

body:
Through the work of a user who I won't name because I'm not sure if he
wants to be anonymous on this, I now have a potential contact in the
right department at AOL who may be sympathetic to our plight with
respect to Michael.

Presumably, I'm going to need a log of ip numbers and times (GMT, I
guess) so that they can establish the account name from that.

Can someone help me with this?

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael again *sigh*

in_reply_to:
<20030831213148.GF2876@math-lw-n01.ucr.edu>;
	from toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu on Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at
	02:31:48PM -0700

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> AFAICT, it's so far authorised only for Michael.
> But it will probably be expanded as soon as Jimbo pronounces something.

Yes, that's right.  I suppose it's for Michael or what we have
traditionally called blatant vandalism (goatse.cx, etc.).  Certainly
it would be a *grave* abuse to use it in any case other than that.

We'll also want to take reasonable care that we not ban logged-in
users who aren't really Michael.  Mistaken identity is worse than a
few random idiot edits on his part.

> I would advise that it be used just as for IPs,
> which means that new usernames doing only vandalism can be blocked.
> But established user names can't be blocked for new errors,
> just as IPs that have done more than vandalism can't be.

That's right.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael again *sigh*

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> This greatly increases the cost to vandals, and reduces the
> cost to us.

I think that's exactly the right evaluation metric to use in cases
like this, although we should of course factor in the costs associated
with the risk that we may end up using the new feature in ways
contrary to our spirit of openness.

> That said, the worst-case scenario of a vandalbot is always in the back
> of my mind. This feature cuts off the simplest kinds of vandalbots, and
> slows down the more advanced ones, meaning that they cause less damage
> in the time it takes for a developer to respond.

Sure, but the great irony is that if someone did attack us in some
more sophisticated way, the net result would not be to shut us down,
but to force us to abandon one of our ideals of anonymous edits and
instant-signup-edits.

We could always introduce waiting periods on signups before they can
edit, etc., etc.  What a horrible and sad day that would be, though.

--Jimbo


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
> From: Tomasz Wegrzanowski
>
> We have already seen this on IRCNet.
> Giving sysops power to ban sysops is going to lead
> to a lot of problems.
>
> So could you:
> * forbid sysops block other sysops
> * don't install it on any Wikipedia but (maybe) English

They're not analogous situations. Banning on IRC means no ability to
participate--a sysop can't easily unban himself. Banning on Wikipedia
means only blocking the ability to edit pages--a sysop can easily unban
himself.

That is, the ability to ban WP sysops is only cosmetic.


body:
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 18:39:27 -0400, The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com>
gave utterance to the following:

>> From: Richard Grevers
>> <snip>
>
>> The legitimate user deserves the right to use wikipedia. If the user
> who
>> logs in vandalises wikipedia, then they should be blocked by username.
>
> If being blocked is necessary. It shouldn't be our primary response to
> block anyone whose contributions lower the quality of Wikipedia.
> Blocking should be a last resort, not first.
>
What is displayed to a person on a blocked IP at present? Perhaps such a
person who clicks on an "edit this page" link should be redirected to an
education page, which starts with "You have been brought to this page
because the last edit made from this IP address was considered
vandalism..."

Of course cookies would make it much easier to determine good from bad,
but are still not foolproof.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried