from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please remove me from daily mailings

body:
On 6/29/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Send an email to wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org with the subject
> unsubscribe and you will be removed.
>

That really works? Heh, I had no idea.

~Mark Ryan


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Kate

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search mechanism

body:
Phil Boswell wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> One would assume that a search for _Dark brown_ (ie just the words, no
> quotes involved) would result in a list topped by the article [[Dark
> brown]]

the history for this article suggests that it was created after the last
search index rebuild and will therefore not appear.

kate.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism and quackery

body:
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David Gerard wrote:
> Seconded. It's not [[Category:Earthmoving implements commonly held to be of
> wood and metal construction]].
>

Why call a spade a spade, when you can call it a bloody shovel? :)

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal: Requests for rollback

body:
On 6/29/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Michael Turley wrote:
>
> >The blocking feature makes newbie biting much easier, which is not a
> >good thing.
> >...
> >Regarding "domination".  I chose the word to best express why *I* am
> >uninterested in a particular subset of admin tools.  I prefer
> >persuasion to force.  I have no current interest in tools of force
> >here at Wikipedia; I intend to test the boundaries of wikilove, good
> >reason, and persuasion.
> >...
> >Finally, the rollback feature, as far as I can tell, is unique, in
> >that it is a very valuable editing enhancement, but is the only one
> >that doesn't have any powers of enforcement behind it.
> >
> The rollback feature *is* a power of enforcement, just like blocking is,
> in the rhetorical framework you're using (other people prefer the
> rhetoric of janitorial tools). Blocking doesn't have any additional
> powers of enforcement behind it either, as we regularly find when
> dealing with vandals who can edit from multiple IP addresses. Rollback
> is just as susceptible to use in biting newbies as blocking, although
> people may differ on the degree of seriousness involved.
>
> Reverting is widely considered a "slap in the face" to the person being
> reverted. If we are to use your rhetoric, then I don't see how we can
> avoid considering it an instrument of force. If you really are such a
> wiki-pacifist as you claim, and prefer persuasion to force in all
> circumstances, then you shouldn't be interested in having the rollback
> function either.
>
> --Michael Snow

No, this is incorrect.

Blocking users and locking pages exert complete dominance over either
the other user, or the page in question.  From what I know, rollback
exercises no control at all over the other user, and no more control
over the page than regular editing because unlike the other two I
mentioned, rollback doesn't foreclose the other person's ability to
re-edit.

Reversion is a bit of a slap in the face, but it's a tool that every
editor possesses equally.  No single user has a monopoly of force.
Where there is no monopoly of force, people either live in a constant
state of warfare, learn to get along together, or appeal to someone
who does have overwhelming force to apply.

>From what I know of it, rollback is merely a more convenient way to
accomplish an edit.  It doesn't eliminate the possibility of the
rollback being reverted like a block or lock does.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikipedia-l]
	Re: The elections are on, but I cast a blank   ballot!

body:
Hello Craig and Gregory

Well... I think Erik said what I meant to say with more eloquence than I
could ;-) So there is little to add here. Thanks a lot Erik.

I'll repeat one point which I think is important.
The 3 weeks dedicated for candidates statements are in most part
envisionned as an special time to have the opportunity to ask all
candidates questions.
For all of us (but Sj who candidated at the last minute), talk pages
were available for you to ask us to clarify what is necessarily heavily
summarized in a 1000 caracters statement.
I invite you to ask more questions here as well as on the appropriate
candidate talk page if you feel it necessarily.

Another point I'll add is that if all candidates seem to hold the same
views to you (a strange statement for me anyway), then you should go
further and consider personalities. The 6 candidates are very very
different, and even though they probably agree on some points, they will
use different methods to reach certain goals.

Lastly... It is not of my opinion that it is necessarily good a
candidate has a strong opinion on everything and is able to answer to
each question by a "I believe in this and to achieve that goal, I will
do that". Some certainties are certainly important, but to my opinion, a
board member must not only rely on his or her strong certainties, but
also simply listen to the people around, and make his or her opinion
according to what s/he hears and according to his or her internal ideals
and beliefs. The final decision will be a balance of everything.
The good point of this is probably that if you offer the proper
reasonable arguments, you may make the person change his mind.
If you ask for someone with strong opinions on everything, then you are
looking for another type of board member, one who will lead you on a
path while explaining to you what is good for you and what is not.

please, if you have a question left, ask it.

Anthere

Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Hello Craig,
>
>> But I do have an opinion.  The positions of all the candidates seem to be
>> essentially identical, "we love Wikipedia and NPOV".
>
>
> I don't think that's accurate at all, but even if you do think that, you
> should look at the track record of our current trustees to get an idea
> what their future actions are likely to be. To wit:
>
>  > topics of copyright
>
> A new, semi-private mailing list, juriwiki-l, was created to discuss and
> resolve these issues as they occur, in collaboration with legal
> specialists. Angela and Anthere also use the Wikimedia e-mail ticketing
> system, OTRS, to respond to copyright inquiries. Indeed, from what I
> know, I would say that the Board is spending a great amount of time to
> deal even with the silliest complaints and threats.
>
> There have been discussions with the FSF and Creative Commons to improve
> the GFDL, but moving this forward is not just up to the Board.
>
> Copyright, in my opinion, is such a large issue that the community needs
> to be highly involved in forming policy. The Board has allowed this to
> happen on the Commons, on Wikinews, with the ESA licensing effort, in
> the different language communities, etc., while generally keeping a
> watchful eye on what is going on, even in languages they do not speak,
> relying on trusted individuals to relay information.
>
>  > promotion
>
> The Board has tried to energize promotion efforts by establishing a logo
> and trademark policy. Local promotion efforts are up to individual
> chapters where they do exist. The Board has helped with official press
> releases, a newsletter (the Wikimedia Quarto), and the Foundation
> website. It has also appointed a press officer (Elian).
>
> Given our limited budget and our natural growth, I think it would be
> unwise to allocate a significant amount of resources to promotion at
> this point. Instead, the Board should continue to do what it has done in
> the past: encourage the community to design and distribute promotional
> materials.
>
>  > hardware
>
> A hardware officer advises the Board on what machines to purchase. This
> has so far worked very well. The successful cooperations with Kennisnet
> and Yahoo! and the negotiations with Google were coordinated by the
> Board, and I think it has played exactly the role it should:
> Establishing partnerships while leaving the implementation details to
> qualified individuals. Wikimedia is probably also the only major
> non-profit whose President (Jimbo) not only looks over every hardware
> order, but who also installs the machines and makes sure they are working.
>
> There are at any given time secret, confidential discussions underway,
> some of which fail because of unacceptable demands from would-be sponsors.
>
>  > or managing growth.
>
> The fundraising efforts, hiring of Brion and Chad, appointment of a CTO,
> CRO and Hardware Officer, partnerships, attempts to build spare
> capacity, efforts to eliminate points of failure, and so forth, have all
> served this goal. I would indeed say that the Board has made this one of
> its key activities, and that this has been possible at all on the budget
> we're operating on (while similarly large websites employ a staff of
> hundreds) is a testament to Wikimedia's efficiency.
>
>  >  The candidates all propose to increase community input to the
>  > board, but don't say exactly how they will do this.
>
> Both Angela and Anthere have generally tried to listen and to fully
> document what the Board is doing. The various surveys such as
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions
> and
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser
> are good examples of this. As Chief Research Officer, I also see it as
> my role to communicate technical needs from the community to the Board.
>
> You have had a lot of time to ask the candidates questions already, and
> you can continue to do so. I think engaging in dialogue is a much more
> constructive use of your time than a blank "protest vote." I find it
> somewhat saddening that we have so few candidates this year, but it is
> also an expression of respect for the work Angela, Anthere and Jimbo
> have done -- for no pay, and indeed, often investing their own money in
> phone calls and travel. The Board is not above criticism, but given the
> exceptional job it has done so far, such criticism should be well-founded.
>
> Best,
>
> Erik


from_name: Peng

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Search mechanism

references:
<d9ui74$a9e$1@sea.gmane.org> <1144530.5kbEGGL8fW@rose.local>
	<20050629225225.GR7309@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<1779503.ThcqS5S4SN@rose.local>

body:
On 6/29/05, Kate <keturner at livejournal.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
>
> > Kate (keturner at livejournal.com) [050630 08:02]:
>
> >> the history for this article suggests that it was created after the last
> >> search index rebuild and will therefore not appear.
>
> > How often are the Lucene search indexes rebuilt?
>
> whenever Brion gets around to it :)
>
> > - d.
>
> kate.

And how often is that, generally?


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Protoscience category

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson (haukurth at hi.is) [050629 23:27]:

> >The current article on [[Alternative medicine]] has suffered a bad case of
> >Gohde and could do with a lot of cleaning up, but the Category links to
> >Pseudoscience and Protoscience get the point across IMO (having as it does
> >both).

> Currently the Protoscience category includes such
> topics as String theory and Quantum gravity as well
> as Phrenology (old debunked non-sense) and Biorythm
> (recent debunked non-sense). To me it does not seem
> that these things have enough in common to be usefully
> included in the same category.

Phrenology has almost certainly fallen well into pseudoscience (if it still
has followers). Biorhythms, I don't know enough about. String theory
probably isn't. Stuff like [[Ufology]] probably belongs there - some
cranks, some people trying to gather information in a respectable manner.

I started the category for the sake of [[Alternative medicine]] and added
stuff from [[List of protosciences]] to it as I thought were sensible.
There was a lot of editorial decision-making involved.  We need a handy
NPOV definition of "protoscience" that divides these things up elegantly.
This sort of thing is endlessly fascinating :-)

- d.


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Requests for rollback

body:
On 6/30/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/29/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> > Let me remind you that I have never voted on requests for adminship
> > before, and that I have never insulted or in any way had a confrontation
> > with any Wikipedia admin. Do you have any proof of these accusations?
> >
> > The only person to make such ridiculous claims as an 'anti-admin lobby'
> > and 'me whinging' is you. Maybe you have strong feelings about that -
> > but that is certainly no reason to attack or insult others in this way.

That was not specifically directed at you; rather, the previous
poster. I apologise if I worded my point badly. The point is that if
you want rollback, apply for adminship. Adminship should *not* be seen
as some form of supreme power structure, as much as some users (and I
don't count you as one of those) have tried very hard to make it so.
It's simply a mop and a broom - and if you want that mop and broom,
apply for it through the normal process rather than getting it by
another name for no good reason.

 -- ambi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pseudoscience category - GSPOV

body:
Habj (sweetadelaide at gmail.com) [050629 23:45]:
> On 6/28/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > Note that the alternative medicine area in particular was badly fouled up
> > by [[User:John Gohde]], aka [[User:Mr-Natural-Health]], whose idiosyncratic
> > and confrontative behaviour currently has him banned for a year. So the
> > area is generally in really bad need of a cleanup and one should take care
> > before using it as an example in the present discussion ;-)

> Sorry, I didn't know that...

Editors who are looking for something to do and who have knowledge of the
area and of the views held on it may like to look through edits under those
two usernames and see what articles could do with checking over. There's
quite a lot. There's also [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative medicine]],
which was basically under his personal control, but will have lists and
ideas on stuff to do.

- d.


body:
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samrushing at charter.net wrote:
> I dont know why I am being bombarded with e-mail
> discussion groups.
> Please let me  know how to remove these messages
> thanks
>     Sam Rushing
>
> sam c
>

Send an email to wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org with the subject
unsubscribe and you will be removed.

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wiktionary.org temporarily broken

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org,
>>causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too many
>>for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
>>
>>I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate it if
>>whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.
>
>
> I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in
> the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten
> who it was.

It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and
forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away
from the computer for the next several hours.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] en.wiktionary.org temporarily broken

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org,
>>causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too many
>>for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
>>
>>I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate it if
>>whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.
>
>
> I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in
> the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten
> who it was.

It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and
forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away
from the computer for the next several hours.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Alphax (alphasigmax at gmail.com) [050630 00:48]:
> samrushing at charter.net wrote:

> > I dont know why I am being bombarded with e-mail
> > discussion groups.
> > Please let me  know how to remove these messages
> > thanks
> >     Sam Rushing

> Send an email to wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org with the subject
> unsubscribe and you will be removed.

I've hand-unsubscribed Sam.

- d.


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5 full German message texts

body:
To whom it may concern:

I have translated all missing German texts for the new features in 1.5
(e-mail confirmation, notification)

Language file only is
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=655&action=view
to http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2619

I propose, that the texts are checked again and then committed to CVS

If you want to make a reference installation, please download and
install EnotifWiki3.30 for current CVS
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=138202&package_id=155401&release_id=337755

Tom


from_name: geni

body:
> If indeed homeopathic medicine doesn't work as you allege, there is at
> least no recent claims of it doing direct harm.  (Direct harm involves
> far more than any allegation of negligence for failing to send the
> victims to a "real" doctor.)

Hmmm of course to make that stement you have to accept that
agrivations are not due to any active effect of homeopathy.

you also have to ignore this

http://www.adrugrecall.com/zicam/zicam.html

(although of course not all homeopaths would accept that as homeoapthy.

--
geni


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: meta-discussion for new project proposals
	(was	Proposal for new project: Faith Wiki)

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Dovi Jacobs wrote:
>
>> But it does seem that the vast majority of needs are covered by the
>> existing projects.
>> So I agree with the general sentiment that most of the effort should
>> be going into bettering
>> the existing projects, though this does not mean there cannot be new
>> projects. We should indeed guide people as to how they can build
>> their ideas within the existing projects.
>>
> I agree with this, and think a lot of what people want in new projects
> could be taken care of by new views on the same data, which is more a
> matter of coding, software architecture, and user-interface design
> than a new project per se.  For example, Wikispecies has a strong
> overlap with Wikipedia---it's generally accepted (at least in en:)
> that any recognized species about which any data is available is an
> appropriate candidate for an article, and many people agree that it
> would be nice if we had some sort of structured data in Wikipedia that
> would allow querying/etc. (essentially the sort of standard
> information that ends up in various info boxes, like elevation for a
> mountain peak).
> Given that, it should be possible for a database of species and
> Wikipedia to share the same information, just present and query it in
> different ways.  So in both this case and others, I'd lean more
> towards a long-term solution along these lines, rather than starting
> more projects with duplicate information that needs to be kept in
> sync.  An issue with user-interface or software can be fixed, but if
> we end up with multiple projects duplicating information, merging them
> at a later date is much harder.
>
> -Mark

I don't think there is anybody on this list that considers Wikispecies
to be a run-away success.  There were some serious mistakes made in the
beginning, and that is obvious even on the discussion pages within
Wikispecies (I've taken a look at it and even made a <<few>>
modifications).  Yes, much of what was there could have been accomodated
by Wikipedia, and most of what Wikispecies offered was a taxonomy for
how to access the information for various species of living things.

I'm just pointing out that there is more out there, and it is precisely
a project like Wikispecies that I would like to prevent from happening
in the future... at least until it can get proper leadership and figure
out (in the case of Wikispecies) exactly how they are going to organize
the information rather than tyring to restart the project all over again
midstream with a whole new structure (IMHO the real reason why
Wikispecies is a dead project).

Also, don't try to convince me that anything and everything will be
accomodated on current set of projects being run by Wikimedia.  I have
seen too many people told to yank stuff off of various project servers
that had nothing to do with the GFDL, copyleft, NPOV, spamming, or even
good taste.  It just wasn't "appropriate" for the given project and
hence was removed and the content deleted.  If you want specific
details, I will provide them, but most people on this list should know
what I'm talking about here.

If it appears that I am digging my heels in here, I am.  I know that
Wikispecies has given quite a few people some very bad taste in their
mouth about new project startups, but that shouldn't stop new ideas from
coming up.  I also understand that the Wikimedia Foundation is not a
catch-all for every crazy Wiki project that comes along, and certainly
the MediaWiki software is available for anybody to use if they care to
grab it.  I have a friend who has just started a fiction colaboration
website using MediaWiki software (Wikibooks for fiction...which
Wikibooks is not).  I appreciate the design to date for the MediaWiki
software, and it is neat to see that it can be used for other purposes,
even pure commercial (like this one is... and closed membership... by
choice of the participants).  That certainly can be an option as well
for people who have a cool idea for a project that perhaps the Wikimedia
Foundation doesn't want to get involved with, and something perhaps some
of the participants in the new project proposal area should be directed
to.  Under ideal circumstances, suggestions for funding or grants could
also be made by the Wikimedia community in general to help get an
independent project going....again, something that the Wikimedia
Foundation doesn't have to take direct responsibility for or dillute
efforts to concentrate on existing projects.  If we can keep good
relations with people that "leave", the goodwill is going to come back
to the Wikimedia Foundation with interest, and possibly $$$ as well.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Search mechanism

references:
<d9ui74$a9e$1@sea.gmane.org> <1144530.5kbEGGL8fW@rose.local>
	<20050629225225.GR7309@thingy.apana.org.au>

body:
David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> Kate (keturner at livejournal.com) [050630 08:02]:

>> the history for this article suggests that it was created after the last
>> search index rebuild and will therefore not appear.

> How often are the Lucene search indexes rebuilt?

whenever Brion gets around to it :)

> - d.

kate.


subject: [WikiEN-l] New user, blocked indefinitely?

body:
Fred Bauder (fredbaud at ctelco.net) [050630 02:49]:

> Seems to be a sockpuppet of Enviroknot, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Talk:Jihad&diff=17828932&oldid=17827080

CheckUser doesn't appear to be switched on for me in 1.5 as yet, or I'd go
look. I'll ask for it to be switched back on once the devs have the bugs
from the 1.5 beta under control, and I'm back on IRC ;-)

- d.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The elections are on, but I cast a blank ballot!

body:
On 6/30/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think 'questions' are a good solution to
> the lack of information in the statements because we can not expect a
> large enough audience to read the discussion.

The lack of information in the statements can be explained by the 1000
character limit on those. I disagree about the questions not being a
good solution though. Last year, I only wrote my candidate statement
after the questions were asked because that process highlighted what
points were actually important to the community.

> What is your long-term position with respect to the GFDL, particularly
> with respect to attribution?

My position is that the GFDL, as it currently stands, is almost
impossible to adhere to for modified versions. I did already make some
comments about this at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela/Election_questions_2005

Work is underway to make the process of reusing the content much simpler.

> Specifically, I've read the new CC-wiki
> license and I'm very concerned that it creates a special right for
> site operators (as opposed to first editors or publishers).

I don't feel that the draft license at
<http://creativecommons.org/drafts/wiki_0.5> which has the requirement
to attribute the original site gives that site any special rights. It
isn't actually a new license, but a re-branded version of the cc-by-sa
with the only major difference being that the wiki is attributed
rather than the authors. In practice, this is how people are already
interpreting the GFDL. I am aware of very few mirrors who credit the
authors rather than simply crediting "Wikipedia" and linking to the
original article.

> Obviously Wikipedia could never be licensed as CC-wiki, and I have
> great faith that the Free Software Foundation would not make unwise
> changes to later versions of the GFDL... but I think that we would all
> benefit from finding out exactly what changes the board would request
> on our behalf.

The only request has been the fairly general one of making the license
easier to understand. Personally, I would not want anything that would
remove the rights of authors, which seems to be what you are implying
might happen.

> I feel confident that the community will not tolerate a change to the
> licensing which grants Wikimedia special legal rights which would
> inhibit the ability of the community to fork should the board somehow
> lose its mind and act against what the community feels is its best
> interest.

I can't imagine any way in which later versions of the GFDL would do
that beyond what the current version does. Wikimedia doesn't control
the GFDL, and is far from being the only user of it. Also, if the
changes made by the FSF were so awful you wanted to fork, you could
still do so under the terms of the old license. Current content can be
reused under the current license, even after a new version is
introduced. Because of this, you can be fairly confident that any
adoption of a new version of the license would have to be approved by
the community, and not only by the Board.

If you have specific requirements for what should or should not be
part of the next license, it would be useful to make those at a page
such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:GFDL_upgrade (or
the page on meta linked to there by pcb21 that has not yet been
created) so this can feed into any discussions between Wikimedia and
the FSF.

> This would require that the license not provide a special
> attribution loophole that allows only attributing to the site where
> the material was originally created.
> I would like a direct assurance
> that the board members will make no attempt to achieve such a change
> for GFDL-licensed content on Wikipedia, Commons, or Wikibooks.

In practice, this is already being done as I mentioned above. The
section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Example_notice
seems to be widely supported by the community at the English
Wikipedia, and a similar statement exists on other projects (see
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lizenzbestimmungen#Praktische_Anwendung_in_Online-Medien>
for example). If this is not the case, then the community needs to
make a decision to change the wording, which all contributors are
currently agreeing to (since that copyrights page is linked from the
edit page).

However, perhaps the fact that the authors are attributed in the page
history, which is linked from the Wikipedia article that the mirrors
are being asked to link to, is seen as sufficient attribution. I
wouldn't agree to anything which allowed the complete removal of that
attribution, but allowing a situation where readers had to make a few
clicks to get to it, in order to make re-using the content easier,
would not necessarily be something I would oppose.

> I'd also like to know how each board member thinks the board to
> incorporate community input into licensing-related discussions.

The main issue here seems to be the next version of the GFDL, which
neither the board nor the Wikimedia community has any control over. In
terms of discussions prior to a new license, I would hope anyone
interested would contribute their opinions on the page I previously
linked, or on meta to make it more international, or on any of the
relevant mailing lists. The more important question might be how the
discussions are managed after a new version of the GFDL is introduced.
I don't know if the FSF release draft versions as the CC do. If they
do, this would be an ideal opportunity for the Wikimedia communities,
as well as for anyone else using the license, to have an input into
this discussion. If that is not the case, then there will need to be
discussion after the release of GFDL 2.0 whereby the community as a
whole could decide whether it was appropriate to change to that new
license. Imposing a new version without any sort of community
discussion and consensus is something I aim to avoid.

> I believe that most people would agree that the use of our content could
> be enhanced by some degree of carefully thought out change, but I know
> I'd like to have the ability to provide input; for example, my point
> on the non-negotiability of the legal ease of forking.

Perhaps you and others with opinions on this could form some sort of
special interest group
(<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_interest_group>) where these
issues can be discussed, agreed upon, and then presented to the FSF in
a more formal way. Do you think that could be a useful way to ensure
input on this rather than relaying opinions only through the Board?

Angela.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: get text of old database dump

body:
Scorpunit wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a problem to get the real text out of the old_text column.
> In the cur table for example the real text is saved in the database.
> But in the old table the text is hashed.
>
> for example:
> O:15:"historyblobstub":2:
> {s:6:"mOldId";s:5:"48086";s:5:"mHash";s:32:"1ea4d983a8fd0a10c46022035552d597";}
>
> How can I get the real text out of such a hash?
>
> Thanks..

Easy.

<?php
$hash = $argv[1];
if ( $hash == md5( '' ) ) {
    exit(0);
}
for ( $len = 1; $len < 1e6; $len++ ) {
    $a = array_fill( 0, $len, 0 );
    do {
        $s = '';
        for ( $i = 0; $i < $len; $i++ ) {
            $s .= chr( $a[$i] );
        }
        if ( md5( $s ) == $hash ) {
            print $s;
            exit(0);
        }
        $i = 0;
        do {
            $a[$i] = ( $a[$i] + 1 ) % 256;
        } while ( !$a[$i] && ++$i < $len );
    } while ( $i != $len );
}
exit(1);
?>

Might need some optimising before it's fast enough for server use though.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mongolian, crazy Mongolian

body:
Hi all

As you may or may not already know, Mongolian is one of the few
languages in the world that is written vertically _all_ the time
(Japanese, Chinese, and a few others can be written vertically, but
they can also be written horizontally).

Although Outer Mongolia (ie, the independent nation, as opposed the
Inner Mongolia which is currently administered by the People's
Republic of China) switched decades ago to the Cyrillic script for
Mongolian (due to pressure from their favourite ally and neighbour,
the USSR), since 1994 great efforts have been made to reintroduce the
Mongolian script. Many Outer Mongolians can read it, and it's being
taught in schools now.

Inner Mongolia never switched scripts: it has used Mongolian script
continuously now since its emergence.

Now, the issue here isn't which script to use as that can be worked
out later. The issue here is how we would organise a vertical website.
W3C standards spell out how to make vertical text properly using HTML.
However, this isn't supported by all browsers (Firefox, for one,
doesn't support it).

Also, since the user interface is designed for languages that are
written horizontally, it may be difficult to adapt to Mongolian. The
typical solution is to flip EVERYTHING 90 degrees counterclockwise.

A representation of what a proper implementation of Mongolian script
protocols on mn.wiki should look like can be found here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Mongolian_wikipedia_preview.png
(it's pretty neat, actually)

Mark

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Voting

body:
Hahaha!

I think that's the most common voting practice here in the States...
vote for whoever has the nicest-sounding name, or is the prettiest, or
who has a pleasant accent. Don't worry about their political views.

Mark

On 30/06/05, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
> I always take my democratic right to vote very seriously.  I thought I would share with the rest of the world my thought processes in selecting amongst the excellent candidates for the whatyamacallit.
>
> I voted one for Anthere because it is a such a beautiful name.
> I voted two for Angela because her name is very similar to my surname.
> I voted three for one of the token blokes - in the name of fairness and diversity - I am a firm believer in voting on principles and the big picture.
>
> I hope that more of us can open up and share our voting experience, speaking personally, I found this to be quite cathartic.
>
> Salutamu
> pippu d'angelo, canberra
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] (fwd) bishonen exercises abuse of admin power

body:
Figuring out which accounts are the sockpuppets or Ip addresses of
banned users is inexact and there may be collateral damage when a new
user mimics the editing style and tactics of a banned user. The ban
of a user regularly using sockpuppets or editing anonymously is in
effect a ban of all users who are edit in the same way. Obviously if
it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and flies like a duck, it
might be a grebe and not the original duck at all. Likewise the real
duck might be sanctioned for what the grebe has done.

Fred

On Jun 30, 2005, at 4:06 AM, Nathan J. Yoder wrote:

>> This is not meant to imply that I attribute any substance to this
>> complaint
>> whatsoever, and personally I would say "cheers to Bishonen, keep
>> up the
>> good work." But anyway.
>>
>
> Of course you would say cheers, you're the one who created the
> injunction and in the process violated Wikipedia policy by personally
> attacking me in the injunction itself.  It's too bad there's no one to
> regulate the arbitrators.
>
> Also, it appears bishonen, out of her personal vendetta, has renewed
> my block:
>
>
>> Nathan, I blocked you for 24 hours at 0:15 UTC. You're perhaps not
>> aware that the clock is automatically reset if you try to edit
>> without being logged in to your usual account. I've noticed here
>> that that has happened several times now. (Only the latest time it's
>> happened will be recorded on the blocklist.) In other words, you're
>> lengthening your block yourself. Provided you stop doing it now, I'm
>> willing to unblock you 24 hours after my original block, as a
>> gesture of good will. Bishonen | talk 30 June 2005 08:02 (UTC)
>>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Njyoder
>
> I'd say a gesture of good will would to be to stop lying and to remove
> the block since it was motivated by a personal vendetta.
>
> She didn't even check the ips and I'm not sure she even has the
> authority to do that in the first place.  Go ahead, check the ips
> yourself, they two are not the same.  Admins most certainly should not
> be blocking ips and extending blocks without checking them first. It
> doesn't even make sense anyway, why would I post during a block with
> the same ip?
>
> Notice how she didn't provide a link to whatever account was
> supposedly doing the editing and what article it was editing.  Yes,
> totally honest admins make an accusation of circumventing a ban
> without providing a link to where it was supposedly cirumvented!
>
> Also, I have to wonder if David Gerard, the one who created the
> injunction, is ever going to bother abiding by the no personal attacks
> rule himself and actually bother to qualify what counts as a personal
> attack.  He won't bother since he knows he's guilty of it himself.
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> Nathan J. Yoder
> http://www.gummibears.nu/
> http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 6/30/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> >In practice, this is how people are already
> > interpreting the GFDL. I am aware of very few mirrors who credit the
> > authors rather than simply crediting "Wikipedia" and linking to the
> > original article.
>
> I made it clear in my email that I was already aware of the wikipedia
> copyright page, and it's lack of strict conformance with the GFDL. I
> mentioned it clearly and specifically and quite frankly I am somewhat
> offended that you paid my message little enough credit or attention
> that you failed to notice this.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn't not notice it. I just wanted
to clarify it for others on this list. :)

> > The only request has been the fairly general one of making the license
> > easier to understand.

> Easier to understand is a fair request.  However, with the text "Work
> is underway to make the process of reusing the content much simpler.",
> you contradict yourself. Which is it?

I see these as the same point. If the license is easier to understand,
reusing the work is much simpler. One problem now is that people
simply don't know how to adhere to the GFDL. There's no simple version
like the CC have with their "human-readable summaries" meaning the
board address frequently gets mails from people asking whether they
can use the work, and what they need to do.

> As I said, "and I have great faith that the Free Software Foundation
> would not make unwise changes to later versions of the GFDL", but
> specifically I was requesting confirmation that the foundation was not
> even *requesting* changes in the future versions which would grant
> Wikimedia special rights which a fork of Wikipedia would not have

We're not requesting any changes that would hinder a fork while
benefiting the Foundation. Our aim is to make use of the content
easier, not to make use of the content by forks harder.

> I am well aware of this, however, it would be unacceptable for
> Wikimedia to be granted a special right over the material in the fork
> simply because Wikimedia hosted the content first.

The fork could choose to maintain the current content under the
current GFDL, so any changes to the license could not guarantee
Wikimedia any rights over that forked content.

> Considering my past correspondence with with FSF and their long term
> track record, I would gauge the chance of them approving such a change
> to be something near a snowballs chance in hell... Because of this, I
> was simply looking for the confirmation that the board wasn't even
> trying to request such a thing.  If anything your reply has only
> increased my concern.  As what is almost certainly the single largest
> user of the GFDL, and probably one of the most important it would be
> foolish to assume we have no clout.

No, we're not trying to request any changes that would grant Wikimedia
additional rights.

> If you believe that adding additional terms to a page separate from
> the licence notice that every contributor sees somehow permits the
> wikimedia foundation to redefine the GFDL then you are sorely mistaken
> and are potentially putting the foundation in a legally precarious
> situation.

That isn't what I meant to imply. It might be useful for Jimmy to give
some feedback from his recent meeting with Eben Moglen on this point.

> > The main issue here seems to be the next version of the GFDL, which
> > neither the board nor the Wikimedia community has any control over.
>
> This is inaccurate. As one of the largest users of the GFDL it would
> be foolish to deny that we have some degree of influence.

I agree it has influence over it, but that's not the same as control.

Angela.


from_name: Nathan J. Yoder

body:
> This is not meant to imply that I attribute any substance to this complaint
> whatsoever, and personally I would say "cheers to Bishonen, keep up the
> good work." But anyway.

Of course you would say cheers, you're the one who created the
injunction and in the process violated Wikipedia policy by personally
attacking me in the injunction itself.  It's too bad there's no one to
regulate the arbitrators.

Also, it appears bishonen, out of her personal vendetta, has renewed
my block:

> Nathan, I blocked you for 24 hours at 0:15 UTC. You're perhaps not
> aware that the clock is automatically reset if you try to edit
> without being logged in to your usual account. I've noticed here
> that that has happened several times now. (Only the latest time it's
> happened will be recorded on the blocklist.) In other words, you're
> lengthening your block yourself. Provided you stop doing it now, I'm
> willing to unblock you 24 hours after my original block, as a
> gesture of good will. Bishonen | talk 30 June 2005 08:02 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Njyoder

I'd say a gesture of good will would to be to stop lying and to remove
the block since it was motivated by a personal vendetta.

She didn't even check the ips and I'm not sure she even has the
authority to do that in the first place.  Go ahead, check the ips
yourself, they two are not the same.  Admins most certainly should not
be blocking ips and extending blocks without checking them first. It
doesn't even make sense anyway, why would I post during a block with
the same ip?

Notice how she didn't provide a link to whatever account was
supposedly doing the editing and what article it was editing.  Yes,
totally honest admins make an accusation of circumventing a ban
without providing a link to where it was supposedly cirumvented!

Also, I have to wonder if David Gerard, the one who created the
injunction, is ever going to bother abiding by the no personal attacks
rule himself and actually bother to qualify what counts as a personal
attack.  He won't bother since he knows he's guilty of it himself.

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


body:
Aha, I figured out why it's doing it.  I just hit "edit page" while
still logged in as njyoder and the thing automatically renews the
block whenever I do that.  This is what happens when you upgrade to
beta version of software.  Try a test block on another account and
you'll see it will automatically renew the block even if you're logged
in as the same user who was originally blocked.  That's a bug or some
strange misfeature.

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] The sandbox incubator

body:
Because the sandbox talk page is frequently vandalized, and because this
is a larger issue, I'm posting this here. I'd like to know whether I'm
alone with this position.

Currently, the Wikipedia Sandbox features 5 links to "experimental
projects":
* Hangman
* Chess
* Go/Weiqi
* Checkers
* Poetry

Ever since WikiChess became popular and accepted on Wikipedia, the
sandbox has turned into an incubator for new "wikigames". The problem
with this is that, as long as a page is a subpage of the sandbox, it is
very difficult to delete it, because it is regarded as "legitimate
playground." On the other hand, once a game has found a sufficient
number of players, these players are all likely to vote "keep" when the
game eventually and inevitably creeps into the Wikipedia namespace, as
has happened with chess.

Therefore, the sandbox has become an incubator for a potentially
unlimited number of wikigames which are almost impossible to get rid of
once they've become popular. While there's nothing wrong with some
harmless games, I strongly feel that such games need to be limited because:

1) Eventually, these gaming activities will attract users who do nothing
*but* playing games, and therefore use our donation-sponsored hardware
effectively as an Internet gameserver. These users can exist outside our
normal community framework, potentially causing problems when they
interact with the rest of the community and the site.

2) A couple of wikigames don't make much of a difference, but once
there's 10 or 20 popular ones, the constant edits to these pages will
start to clutter up Special:Recentchanges.

3) The Wikipedia: namespace is meant primarily for policies; an
abundance of gaming-related pages complicates browsing and searching.

4) The more visible these activities become, the more they become a
reflection on our project to outsiders.

I'm not arguing that any existing wikigame activities should be
suspended -- that would be an exercise in futility, as anyone trying to
do so will be shouted down by the existing player community. No, my
suggested solution is this: All subpages of Wikipedia:Sandbox should be
deleted. There's no need to have any "experimental development" pages.

Users who want to conduct non-game experiments can use user sandboxes
for this purpose. If someone wants to start a new wikigame, they should
start it in the Wikipedia: namespace, where it will receive a much more
intense assessment right from the start. If a game started in the proper
namespace survives VfD, then it may very well be fun or useful enough to
exist.

In other words, I would strongly argue in favor of shutting down the
sandbox as a VfD-resistant incubator for games which distract from the
purpose of building an encyclopedia. There is value to wikigames as
entertainment and as an artistic effort, but there's a separate wiki
dedicated to this already -- http://games.wikicities.com/ -- and I feel
that our own gaming related efforts should be limited at best.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

body:
On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org,
> causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too many
> for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
>
> I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate it if
> whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.

I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in
the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten
who it was.

Weren't you there?


from_name: Kate

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Search mechanism

body:
Peng wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> On 6/29/05, Kate <keturner at livejournal.com> wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

>> > How often are the Lucene search indexes rebuilt?

>> whenever Brion gets around to it :)

> And how often is that, generally?

every week or two, maybe.  it varies since the new search system is still
being worked out.  recently more effort is being spent on the 1.5
conversion.

kate.


body:
Kurita Ryohan (kurita77lineman at hotmail.com) [050630 06:01]:

> What the hell is wrong with you people?

Mostly that we're not as stupid as you hope we are? I think that's probably
it.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search mechanism

body:
Kate (keturner at livejournal.com) [050630 08:02]:

> the history for this article suggests that it was created after the last
> search index rebuild and will therefore not appear.

How often are the Lucene search indexes rebuilt?

- d.


from_name: Laura K Fisher

subject: [WikiEN-l] new software bug or bad state?

body:
I've had something similar with the editing.  The change shows in the
current revision and my user contributions and watchlist, but it takes
a few minutes to actually appear in the page history.

Laurascudder

On Jun 30, 2005, at 6:23 AM, actionforum at comcast.net wrote:

> I just had a flakey login where it looked like it succeeded, but my
> watchlist was unavailable, but I was able to look at my user
> contributions.  But any further  viewing of pages, look like I am NOT
> logged in.  I edited and saved on Talk:Fox news.  The change showed up
> on the page, but the change did not show up on the history of the
> page.  I am the last contributer in the history, but that version is
> not the version that shows when viewed.
> This is either another bug, or the system has gotten itself into an
> unstable flakey state.
>               --Silverback
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] The sandbox incubator

body:
I suggest creating a new project, called WikiGames. Let wiki addicts
have an entirely separate server.

Erik created WikiNews, as an offshoot of en.wikipedia Current events.
Why not create one more wiki?

I really believe in giving free rein to hackers (er, enthusiastic
programmers who seek to extend the capabilities of computer systems).
But once they've discovered something useful, it should be packaged in a
way that the rest of us (mere mortals) can also enjoy and access. And
they should also clean up their mess and move on.

How hard is it to set up a new wiki? Takes 30 minutes, right?

Or they can just go to http://games.wikicities.com/ as Erik suggested.

Ed Poor
Technical Consultant
Unification Encyclopedia Project

P.S. I'm still a wiki admin and mailing list admin at wikien!


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: wikipedia luxembourgeois

body:
Ch?re Martine.

Je d?couvre en m?me temps que vous la situation et je
suis terriblement choqu?e. En effet, cette photo est
rest?e un mois complet sur la wikip?dia
luxembourgeoise, en tant qu'image du mois.

C'est quelque chose d'extr?mement inadmissible dans
notre communaut? et qui visiblement se produit car la
wikip?dia en question est de petite taille, et a pu
?tre "r?cup?r?e" par des militants.

Nous allons bien entendu ?tudier la situation et
prendre toutes pr?cautions pour l'?viter ? l'avenir.

Je vous remercie grandement de votre mail.

Florence Devouard

--- Culture & Bilinguisme
<bilinguisme.alsace at libertysurf.fr> wrote:

> bonjour,
> j'ai d?couvert votre encyclop?die et je vous adresse
> mes f?licitations pour la multiplicit? des langues.
>
> Mais je n'appr?cie pas du tout l'image NON a la
> CONSTITUTION sur le site wikip?dia luxembourgeois et
> elle n'a pas du tout sa place dans une encyclop?die.
>
> Pour cela j'h?site ? vous faire de la publicit?.
>
> Cordiales salutations
> Martine Mugler

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search mechanism

references:
<d9ui74$a9e$1@sea.gmane.org>	<1144530.5kbEGGL8fW@rose.local>	<20050629225225.GR7309@thingy.apana.org.au>	<1779503.ThcqS5S4SN@rose.local>
	<da0ltr$dkc$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Kate wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
>>> How often are the Lucene search indexes rebuilt?
>>
>> whenever Brion gets around to it :)
>
>
> How much work is this? I can't really imagine it would be more than a
> few commands. Can't this be automated to run once every night (or every
> weekend, if it's too much load)?

I see this hasn't gotten through to you yet.

The updater system's not done yet; it's experimental and needs more work
yet. For now it gets run from time to time, not on a regular schedule.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Rebonjour Martine,

En faisant marcher nos d?tectives, nous avons pu
comprendre le pourquoi du comment... Et j'ai l'extr?me
soulagement de vous annoncer qu'il s'agit d'un simple
vandalisme. Un ?diteur a t?l?charg? cette image le 28
juin
http://lb.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=Pierre+Boirin&page=
en rempla?ant l'image parfaitement l?gitime qui ornait
la page principale du site.

L'image est rest?e sur la page principale pendant 11
minutes avant d'?tre remplac?e par un de nos
administrateurs, ce qui est en soit un temps de
r?action extr?mement honorable.

Le probl?me est que cette image a continu? d'?tre
visible (et continue peut ?tre encore) car elle est
stock?e en "cache" dans certains de nos serveurs. Ce
syst?me permet de stocker des pages tr?s fr?quemment
vues par nos lecteurs, pour les rendre visibles plus
rapidemment, et ?vite des requ?tes multiples aux bases
de donn?es. Cela permet de consid?rablement diminuer
le temps de r?ponse du site... mais l'inconv?nient
est... qu'un vandalisme d?j? corrig? depuis 2 jours...
apparait encore publiquement.

C'est un probl?me d?finitivement embarassant qui
j'esp?re va ?tre discut? entre nous.

En esp?rant que vous ne vous sentirez pas d?courag?e
par cet ?pisode.

Cordialement

Florence Devouard

--- Culture & Bilinguisme
<bilinguisme.alsace at libertysurf.fr> wrote:

> bonjour,
> j'ai d?couvert votre encyclop?die et je vous adresse
> mes f?licitations pour la multiplicit? des langues.
>
> Mais je n'appr?cie pas du tout l'image NON a la
> CONSTITUTION sur le site wikip?dia luxembourgeois et
> elle n'a pas du tout sa place dans une encyclop?die.
>
> Pour cela j'h?site ? vous faire de la publicit?.
>
> Cordiales salutations
> Martine Mugler

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] iCheckUser is broken in 1.5 (was New user,
	blocked indefinitely?)

body:
David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) [050630 02:52]:
> Fred Bauder (fredbaud at ctelco.net) [050630 02:49]:

> > Seems to be a sockpuppet of Enviroknot, see
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> > title=Talk:Jihad&diff=17828932&oldid=17827080

> CheckUser doesn't appear to be switched on for me in 1.5 as yet, or I'd go
> look. I'll ask for it to be switched back on once the devs have the bugs
> from the 1.5 beta under control, and I'm back on IRC ;-)

CheckUser is broken in 1.5, so I can't do IP checks for the moment. I've
filed a bug on it, and Tim will probably look into it when the devs have
dealt with all the exciting new bugs that 1.5 going live will reveal!
What fun ...

- d.


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
I'm fairly sympathetic to the idea of separating out features to be
doled out on a finer grain level, but many oppose it because it is
creating different shades, and thereby different classes, of users,
which is something Wikipedia has never been about. As mentioned in
other threads, this leads to "collecting privileges" like medals or
awards, when the spirit of Wikipedia has been to treat adminship as
even "no big deal."

A reminder - the primary reason for admin status was because of page
deletion, and that's where the "trusted user" idea came from.

On 6/30/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rollback is *ideally suited* for reverting vandalism.  Perhaps it is
> equally suited for edit warring, but if it were *more* suited for edit
> warring than its intended purpose, I'm pretty sure it would have been
> written out of the software by now.

Um, but because rollback is given only to trusted users right now,
this is not a problem.

Even for admins, they are discouraged from using rollback for issues
related to legitimate content issues. Rollback should be used for
fighting vandalism and trolling, and not as a standard part of an
editor's toolbox.

-User:Fuzheado


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal: Requests for rollback

in_reply_to:
<da178f$7m9$1@sea.gmane.org> (message from Timwi on Thu, 30 Jun
	2005 17:47:01 +0100)

body:
> The current situation seems to be that the people who frequent
> [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]] are quite paranoid with giving out
> adminship status. Anyone who isn't obviously completely dedicated and
> who doesn't think of nothing else than Wikipedia's well-being day and
> night, can't possibly be a suitable admin.

So we should give admin privileges to people who aren't dedicated and
don't think about Wikipedia's well-being?  Huh?

--
 Sean Barrett     | The right to be heard does not include the right
 sean at epoptic.com | to be taken seriously. --Hubert H. Humphrey


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Voting

body:
I always take my democratic right to vote very seriously.  I thought I would share with the rest of the world my thought processes in selecting amongst the excellent candidates for the whatyamacallit.

I voted one for Anthere because it is a such a beautiful name.
I voted two for Angela because her name is very similar to my surname.
I voted three for one of the token blokes - in the name of fairness and diversity - I am a firm believer in voting on principles and the big picture.

I hope that more of us can open up and share our voting experience, speaking personally, I found this to be quite cathartic.

Salutamu
pippu d'angelo, canberra

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pseudoscience and pseudohistory

body:
Establishing the truth of a proposition, however obvious, as this is,
is not the purpose of Wikipedia, nor the purpose of categories.
Categories are an aid to the reader to in finding information.

To take an example from a current arbitration case (Yoder); He
removed the category "Geography of Israel" from the article on Golan
Heights. His view was that having the article in that category
established or somehow endorsed Israel's annexation of the Golan
Heights. However the purpose of the category is to point the reader
to the articles which have information which falls into the category,
not to establish a fact.

Likewise [[cold fusion]] may be included in the Category Pseudo-
science, without us knowing whether or not it can occur. It is enough
that a the category is a useful guide to the reader. That can mean
that articles may fall into contradictory categories, as it is not an
exercise in logic but in finding information.

Fred

On Jun 30, 2005, at 10:00 AM, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

> And if someone uses Wikipedia in 50 years to demonstrate
> to her friend that Creationism is pseudo-science that's
> fine too. Because it is.


from_name: cookfire

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] en.wiktionary.org temporarily
	broken

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Tomer Chachamu wrote:
>
>> On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org,
>>> causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too
>>> many
>>> for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
>>>
>>> I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate it if
>>> whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in
>> the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten
>> who it was.
>
>
> It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and
> forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away
> from the computer for the next several hours.

There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody
apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had
indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when. Anyway,
on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated and there was
a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go about it. If Tim
had read all that, he would have known we were not ready for the change.
Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm sure
we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.

Polyglot


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

body:
I just had a flakey login where it looked like it succeeded, but my watchlist was unavailable, but I was able to look at my user contributions.  But any further  viewing of pages, look like I am NOT logged in.  I edited and saved on Talk:Fox news.  The change showed up on the page, but the change did not show up on the history of the page.  I am the last contributer in the history, but that version is not the version that shows when viewed.
This is either another bug, or the system has gotten itself into an unstable flakey state.
              --Silverback


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
............

>>
>>
>> It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and
>> forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away
>> from the computer for the next several hours.
>
>
> There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody
> apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had
> indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when.
> Anyway, on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated and
> there was a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go about
> it. If Tim had read all that, he would have known we were not ready
> for the change.
> Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm
> sure we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.

As much as I remember the switch over should have been done on April 1st
(no, not a joke), but then, even if it was decided no-one really moved.

I am already cleaning the links on it.wiktionary to en.wiktionary since
someone (withour logging in) added manually some interwiki-links using
capitalised words and besides that creating messed up pages using
{{PAGENAME}} instead of re-writing the word in the title - so basically
all double work. Should whoever added these pages read this message:
please never use the pagename-template again like you did - if you don't
know how to create a proper page, just contact me (also by e-mail is fine)..

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Bishonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: (fwd) bishonen exercises abuse of admin power

body:
Nathan, somebody showed me the message where you comment on my post
on your talk page. Thank you for quoting me so people can see for
themselves what I said. *Your* take on it is: "Also, it appears
bishonen, out of her personal vendetta, has renewed my block", with
many another choice accusation. I apologize for offering to shorten
your block, I take it back. Oh, btw, I also see your next post to the
mailing list, where you have "figured out why it's doing it". Is that
your idea of an apology?
Bishonen


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] Re: en.wiktionary.org temporarily
	broken

body:
Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> Polyglot is yet again misrepresenting the so-called vote.

No, he's only cutting it down to the things that are relevant to this
(technical) mailing list.

Stop making such a big fuss about it, Hippietrail; it is people like you
that made this change so unbearably long.

Finally I can add words under their actual spelling!

Timwi


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] bug?  I can't seem to edit.

body:
I can't seem to edit while I am logged in.  Every time
I hit 'save changes' it acts as if I hit 'show
preview'.  For some reason the sandbox works for me,
but not my userpage or any articles. I can delete and
move pages, but not rollback. I can edit while logged
out.

Gamaliel

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search mechanism

references:
<d9ui74$a9e$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<1144530.5kbEGGL8fW@rose.local>	<20050629225225.GR7309@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<1779503.ThcqS5S4SN@rose.local>

body:
Kate wrote:
> David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
>
>>How often are the Lucene search indexes rebuilt?
>
> whenever Brion gets around to it :)

How much work is this? I can't really imagine it would be more than a
few commands. Can't this be automated to run once every night (or every
weekend, if it's too much load)?

Timwi


subject: [Foundation-l] Report from South Korea

body:
Hello all,

as some of you may know, I was in Seoul, Korea, from Wednesday to Sunday
to visit the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum and give a
presentation on Wikinews. Two reports on this event with lots of photos
are now online at:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/OhmyNews_citizen_reporters_meet_in_Seoul%2C_Korea
and
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/OhmyNews_forum_discusses_experiences_in_citizen_journalism
[The second one has just been posted, so it may not be quite up to snuff
yet.]

For those not familiar with OhmyNews, it is an extremely significant
website in South Korea known literally to the entire young generation
there. It popped up five years ago as an alternative to overly
conservative traditional media. 80% of stories are written by "citizen
reporters" and vetted by a professional staff of editors. Many people
say that OMN was responsible for putting the current President in power,
and indeed, he granted his first interview to OhmyNews.

Behind this fairy tale, there's also the truth that there's a lot of
money invested into OhmyNews. It's a for-profit endeavor, sponsored by
advertising and subscriptions, and enjoys good relationships with Korean
industry and politics. The "citizen reports" are often so-called "life
stories", the kind of thing you would find in a blog, but edited
professionally.

The project has recently launched an "international" (really English,
but from many different countries) edition, which it sought to boost
using the International Forum. Even people who had just written a
handful of stories were, with generous sponsor support, flown to Seoul
to share their experiences.

In my presentation ( http://www.scireview.de/temp/wikinews.pdf ), I
invited the OhmyNews community to share content with Wikinews through
compatible licensing, and to find other ways to collaborate, such as
common communication channels. I had agreed with Jimbo on the night
before on my strategy to continue these discussions privately with
OhmyNews founder Oh Yeon Ho. Yeon Ho is seeking to build a "global
citizen journalism alliance" and asked me what it would take for
Wikinews/Wikimedia to join such an alliance. I responded that this would
likely only happen if the alliance itself was a non-profit project not
governed by a single entity.

We also briefly discussed the issue of free content -- currently all
OhmyNews content is under traditional copyright, and indeed, due to the
editing process, citizen reporters lose the right to distribute their
own stories in the published form. Yeon Ho didn't seem to know about
free content licensing -- he had never heard of Creative Commons -- so I
am going to follow up on this privately. I also hope that some citizen
reporters will begin to publish their stories under Creative Commons
licenses; it would be interesting to see how and if OMN reacts to that.

All in all, I think it was a productive and valuable visit, and I hope
that Oh Yeon Ho is serious about bringing citizen journalism projects
closer together.

Best,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Report from South Korea


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia enquiry

body:
Hi Marty,

This is a general Wikipedia mailing list, usually used primarily for
discussing Wikipedia policy and things like that. The best place for
asking factual questions of this sort is generally at the Wikipedia
"Reference desk" (at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk).

According to the US copyright office
(http://www.copyright.gov/records/cohm.html), the rights to "Full
Metal Jacket" are owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment, who are in turn
owned by Time Warner Inc. You will need to contact whoever their
licensing/permissions office is to request this usage, I imagine -- I
can't find any easy link to such an office through Google, but I
believed the name of that division may be "Warner Brothers Consumer
Products".

FF

On 6/29/05, mfairbc045 <mfairbc045 at rogers.com> wrote:
> Dear Mailing list,
>
> I am searching for permission to use a frame enlargement from FULL METAL JACKET.  Any ideas as to who I would contact about this?  It's for a book on film art.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Marty Fairbairn, PhD
> Trustee, Upper Grand District School Board
> Member, Guelph Police Services Board
> 53 Ptarmigan Drive
> Guelph, ON
> N1C 1B4
> Tel: (519) 824-1703
> FAX: (519) 824-5421
> Email: mfairbc045 at rogers.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV

body:
On 6/30/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Maybe the only way out of this is to call the categories something
> unwieldy-but-NPOV like [[Category:Theories or beliefs widely considered
> pseudoscience]]...

Well, "pseudoscience" is not something "widely" considered -- it is
something which is reflective of the consideration of a relatively
small community (the scientific community, very small in the world at
large). And if we have, [[Category:Theories or beliefs considered by
mainstream scientists to be pseudoscience]] why would we not also have
[[Category:Theories or beliefs considered by fundamentalist Christians
to be lies of Satan]]?

The American Association for the Advancement of Science claims 10
million members. According to the Wikipedia article [[Evolution
poll]], far far FAR greater numbers in the USA believe in some variety
of Creationism. 45% of citizens in 2001 believe in straight Biblical
creationism -- some some 126 million people or so! (yuck!) So appeals
to consensus don't help us much, unless we start plugging in the
*specific* communities we are talking about. I can't see any good
reason not to label Evolution as a [[Satanic lie]] if we'll label
Creationism [[Pseudoscience]] -- they've certainly got us beat in the
numbers game! (Sigh...)

FF


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Voting

body:
Giuseppe DAngelo wrote:

>I always take my democratic right to vote very seriously.  I thought I would share with the rest of the world my thought processes in selecting amongst the excellent candidates for the whatyamacallit.
>
>I voted one for Anthere because it is a such a beautiful name.
>I voted two for Angela because her name is very similar to my surname.
>I voted three for one of the token blokes - in the name of fairness and diversity - I am a firm believer in voting on principles and the big picture.
>
>I hope that more of us can open up and share our voting experience, speaking personally, I found this to be quite cathartic.
>
The "token blokes" might have made a big-picture vote easier if they had
told us how much they weigh.  :-)

Ec


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV

body:
The important insertion that Wikipedia is not making in this debate
is that pseudoscience is wrong.

That most reasonable people do believe pseudoscience to be wrong is
incidental. The term itself does not necessarily imply the value
judgment that "satanic lies" does.

-Snowspinner

On Jun 30, 2005, at 10:33 AM, Timwi wrote:

> Fastfission wrote:
>
>> [[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
>> regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
>> straightforward -- the users making such objections are almost always
>> either Creationists or Eugenicists or other people who believe in
>> bodies of thought labeled as "pseudoscience" -- and the response is
>> generally pretty straightforward as well: Wikipedia is not claiming
>> these so-labeled articles are actually "pseudoscience", but rather
>> that they are labeled *by the mainstream scientific community* as
>> "pseudoscience".
>>
>
>
> It is the year 2047.
>
> After a plentiful dinner, Bob and Stan have somehow got into this
> discussion that doesn't seem to want to come to an end. Bob is a
> Creationist, firmly believing in the truth of the Bible. Stan is a
> scientist and defends Darwin's theory of evolution.
>
> To settle the dispute, Stan gets up and grabs a book from the
> shelf. The front cover reads, "Wikipedia 1.0 - Category Index".
> Knowing that if there's one thing he and Bob can agree on, it's the
> reliability of the world-renowned Wikipedia, he browses through it
> and eventually presents to Bob a page led by the heading
> "Category:Pseudoscience". His finger points to the place where
> Creationism is listed.
>
> "See, Creationism is pseudoscience," he explains.
>
> Bob snaps the book out of Stan's hands and browses forward a fair
> chunk of pages. Under "Category:Satanic lies", he shows to Stan, we
> find a reference to the entry on "Evolution".
>
> "See, Evolution is a Satanic lie."
>
>
> No matter how many people you can convince that listing Article X
> under [[Category:Pseudoscience]] does /not/ mean that Wikipedia
> takes the stance that Topic X is a pseudoscience, the vast majority
> will assume that it does.
>
> And that is why people are complaining about those categorisations.
>
> I am happy to have [[Creationism]] listed under
> [[Category:Pseudoscience]], but only because it happens to agree
> with my POV.
>
> Maybe the only way out of this is to call the categories something
> unwieldy-but-NPOV like [[Category:Theories or beliefs widely
> considered pseudoscience]]...
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: actionforum at comcast.net
>
>I just had a flakey login where it looked like it succeeded, but my
>watchlist was unavailable, but I was able to look at my user contributions.
>  But any further  viewing of pages, look like I am NOT logged in.  I
>edited and saved on Talk:Fox news.  The change showed up on the page, but
>the change did not show up on the history of the page.  I am the last
>contributer in the history, but that version is not the version that shows
>when viewed.
>This is either another bug, or the system has gotten itself into an
>unstable flakey state.

This is what I was referring to before; Wikipedia iis regularly and randomly
logging people out, sometimes immediately after they login.  It continutes
to happen to me, and I've seen it happen to others as well.

Jay.


from_name: Edward De Jongh

subject: [Wikipedia-l] DB migration issue

body:
Hi all I have an issue with migrating a current wiki from RHES8 to
Debian Sarge. Is this the right list to post to? If not please let me
know which is the correct list.

ed


body:
>From: Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is>
>
> > No matter how many people you can convince that listing Article X under
> > [[Category:Pseudoscience]] does /not/ mean that Wikipedia takes the
> > stance that Topic X is a pseudoscience, the vast majority will assume
> > that it does.
> >
> > And that is why people are complaining about those categorisations.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > Maybe the only way out of this is to call the categories something
> > unwieldy-but-NPOV like [[Category:Theories or beliefs widely considered
> > pseudoscience]]...
>
>Once again. Do you object to [[Holocaust denial]]
>being in the [[Pseudohistory]] category? Would you
>prefer to have something "NPOV" like [[Category:Theories
>or beliefs widely considered pseudohistory]]?
>
>Such over-qualifications with the good intention
>of being as NPOV as possible is something which
>Wikipedia has too much of already.

Indeed; for example, there have been persistent attempts by a small number
of editors to remove Wikipedia all instances of the phrase "Conspiracy
theory", particularly in titles, in the name of "NPOV", and replace them
with various circumlocutions.  Having generally failed at that, in some
cases they have restored to creating POV forks of articles which, for
example, list the commonly understood view of 9/11 (Al Qaeda hijackers) as
just another "conspiracy theory", on the grounds that it is a theory about a
conspiracy.

Jay.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV: Libraries?

body:
Hopefully the book is cross-referenced under both "categories."

Fred

On Jun 30, 2005, at 2:10 PM, <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> How do libraries handle it?
>
> When I was about eleven, I discovered that my local library had a
> copy of
> Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" shelved among the
> science books.
> I went to the librarian full of indignation, demanding that they
> reshelve it
> under "science fiction." The librarian somehow calmed me down...
> and the book
> stayed where it was.
>
> Well, I'm older. (And to tell the truth the geologists seems to be
> a lot less
> uniformitarian than they used to be. Asteroids extinguishing the
> dinosaurs?
> Well, OK. But I still don't think the fall of manna that saved the
> Israelites
> resulted from the earth passing through a comet's tail.)
>
> Anyway, it seems to me that librarians must deal with this sort of
> thing all
> the time. And the many public libraries that use the Dewey Decimal
> system
> can't just fall back on the Library of Congress. Although perhaps
> there's
> some central authority that recommends Dewey classifications. But
> in any
> case, someone has to decide whether Velikovsky is science or
> science fiction.
> Who does? and how?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: DB migration issue

body:
Thanks

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 2:11 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: DB migration issue

Edward De Jongh wrote:
> Hi all I have an issue with migrating a current wiki from RHES8 to
> Debian Sarge. Is this the right list to post to? If not please let me
> know which is the correct list.
>

You want mediawiki-l:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Tim Starling

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


body:
>From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
>
>If only it was as easy to become admin as you're making it out to be!
>
>The current situation seems to be that the people who frequent
>[[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]] are quite paranoid with giving out
>adminship status. Anyone who isn't obviously completely dedicated and who
>doesn't think of nothing else than Wikipedia's well-being day and night,
>can't possibly be a suitable admin.

That's hardly the case.  There currently are hundreds of admins (500?), with
2 or 3 new ones being created weekly, so its hardly impossible.  And I've
never seen the argument made that someone should be an admin simply because
they aren't completley Wiki-addicted.

>I especially don't get why most people seem to think that someone with a
>minimum number of edits and/or a minimum average number of edits per day is
>automatically a more suitable admin. I would think that someone who edits
>frantically is much more likely to turn into a troublemaker than someone
>who edits only sporadically.

I've also never seen anyone make a "minimum average number of edits per day"
argument for or against adminship.  As for the "minimum number of edits"
argument, you have misconstrued it; people with a large number of edits are
not automatically considered more suitable.  In fact, I've seen more than
one nomination for admin that was soundly rejected even though the editors
in question had many thousands, even tens of thousands of edits.  The real
point is that the more you edit, the better people are able to guage whether
or not they think you have a good grasp of policy and are reliable.  People
who are very new to Wikipedia are not likely to have a good grasp of policy,
and people with very few edits are not well enough known yet; in other
words, there is not yet enough evidence to show they will use admin powers
responsibly.

Jay.


from_name: john kaczmarowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiMedia Error

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> I'm glad to hear it worked.
>
> The reason (I know of) that DefaultSettings.php should not be edited
> is that your changes will disappear when upgrading your wiki.
>
> As I said in my original message, COPY the relevant block of settings
> from DefaultSettings.php into LocalSettings.php, and edit them there.
> :)
None of which explains why copying the defaultsettings.php from the
deistribution did not fix the original problem.  When I compare the
defaultsettings.php form distribution to the one that appears after
installation, they are in fact the same.  So, while I solved my
immediate problem, I have yet to see how that problem occurred or how to
avoid it in the future.  :-)


body:
cookfire wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Tomer Chachamu wrote:
>>
>>> On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org,
>>>> causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too
>>>> many
>>>> for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
>>>>
>>>> I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate
>>>> it if
>>>> whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.
>>>
>>> I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in
>>> the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten
>>> who it was.
>>
>> It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and
>> forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away
>> from the computer for the next several hours.
>
> There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody
> apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had
> indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when.
> Anyway, on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated and
> there was a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go about
> it. If Tim had read all that, he would have known we were not ready
> for the change.
> Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm
> sure we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.

That's pretty well my take on the situation.  I wouldn't put too much
blame on Tim for this.  A self-administered slap on the knuckles with
wet spaghetti should be adequate punishment.  We'll believe him when he
says the punishment has been carried out. ;-)

One determined opponent had succeeded in grinding the process to a halt,
and it didn't look as though it would go anywhere without bold action.
The clean up will be bigger than I would want, but we'll cope.  There
are a few points where we may still need special help from the devs, and
those will become clear over the next few days.

Ec


from_name: Delirium

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>No matter how many people you can convince that listing Article X under
>>[[Category:Pseudoscience]] does /not/ mean that Wikipedia takes the
>>stance that Topic X is a pseudoscience, the vast majority will assume
>>that it does.
>>
>>And that is why people are complaining about those categorisations.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>Maybe the only way out of this is to call the categories something
>>unwieldy-but-NPOV like [[Category:Theories or beliefs widely considered
>>pseudoscience]]...
>>
>>
>
>Once again. Do you object to [[Holocaust denial]]
>being in the [[Pseudohistory]] category? Would you
>prefer to have something "NPOV" like [[Category:Theories
>or beliefs widely considered pseudohistory]]?
>
>
Yes.  Some neutral title like [[Category:Non-mainstream historical
claims]] or [[Category:Non-mainstream historical theories]] would be
much better.

Although on a larger level, I'm not convinced using any of these labels
is superior to not using them at all.  Is [[Atlantis]] under
[[Category:Pseudohistory]]?  What about [[The Bible]]?

-Mark


body:
>From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
>
>Establishing the truth of a proposition, however obvious, as this is,  is
>not the purpose of Wikipedia, nor the purpose of categories.  Categories
>are an aid to the reader to in finding information.
>
>To take an example from a current arbitration case (Yoder); He  removed the
>category "Geography of Israel" from the article on Golan  Heights. His view
>was that having the article in that category  established or somehow
>endorsed Israel's annexation of the Golan  Heights. However the purpose of
>the category is to point the reader  to the articles which have information
>which falls into the category,  not to establish a fact.

Just to clarify, Fred is referring to User:Yuber.

Jay.

>
>Likewise [[cold fusion]] may be included in the Category Pseudo- science,
>without us knowing whether or not it can occur. It is enough  that a the
>category is a useful guide to the reader. That can mean  that articles may
>fall into contradictory categories, as it is not an  exercise in logic but
>in finding information.
>
>Fred
>
>On Jun 30, 2005, at 10:00 AM, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
>
>>And if someone uses Wikipedia in 50 years to demonstrate
>>to her friend that Creationism is pseudo-science that's
>>fine too. Because it is.
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

body:
How do libraries handle it?

When I was about eleven, I discovered that my local library had a copy of
Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" shelved among the science books.
I went to the librarian full of indignation, demanding that they reshelve it
under "science fiction." The librarian somehow calmed me down... and the book
stayed where it was.

Well, I'm older. (And to tell the truth the geologists seems to be a lot less
uniformitarian than they used to be. Asteroids extinguishing the dinosaurs?
Well, OK. But I still don't think the fall of manna that saved the Israelites
resulted from the earth passing through a comet's tail.)

Anyway, it seems to me that librarians must deal with this sort of thing all
the time. And the many public libraries that use the Dewey Decimal system
can't just fall back on the Library of Congress. Although perhaps there's
some central authority that recommends Dewey classifications. But in any
case, someone has to decide whether Velikovsky is science or science fiction.
Who does? and how?


subject: [WikiEN-l] e-mails to wikien-l being dropped

body:
Your block will soon end and, provided your posts to the list do not
continue to harp on being banned. your mail will go through and all
will be back to normal.

Fred

On Jun 30, 2005, at 2:13 PM, Nathan J. Yoder wrote:

> It appears that my e-mails to this list are being dropped by the
> moderator, just so people know why I haven't been able to respond. In
> case this one isn't dropped too, you should know that David Gerard,
> one of the arbs on my RfA is the one who is censoring me.
>
> How can arbitrators not claim bias when they're engaging in active
> censorship?  I can't respond on Wikipedia now and now not even on this
> list.
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> Nathan J. Yoder
> http://www.gummibears.nu/
> http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please remove me from daily mailings

body:
Mark Ryan wrote:
> List-Unsubscribe: <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>,
> 	<mailto:wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

> On 6/29/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Send an email to wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org with the subject
> > unsubscribe and you will be removed.
> >
>
> That really works? Heh, I had no idea.

It says so in the headers.

Gerrit.

--
Weather in Twenthe, Netherlands 30/06 14:25:
	19.0?C Few clouds mostly cloudy wind 2.7 m/s S (57 m above NAP)
--
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
    -Dwight David Eisenhower, January 17, 1961


body:
Andrew Dunbar wrote:

>Polyglot is yet again misrepresenting the so-called vote. I really don't want
>to go through it again but anybody who wants to know the true sentiments
>felt by *all* the contributors to the en.wiktionary must read the relevant
>sections of the "voting" page, the Beer parlour, etc. It has a long history
>which Polyglot and a couple of others are very happy to gloss over because
>the change is what they want and it is convenient for them to make
>absolutely zero mention of the multiple heated debates.
>
I don't think anyone is trying to gloss things over, or ignoring the
debate and votes.  There were two votes.  The first went slightly
against the change, but the second was strongly in favour.  You were
notably alone against the change in the second vote until you managed to
change a few minds after the fact..  When things didn't go your way you
went ahead with a lot of spurious claims about the legitimacy of the
vote.  It's all a matter of public record.

>When the anger died down a little I was told that in fact the scheme I've
>hoped for all along, full case folding, is planned for the long run.
>
Whatever you mean by "{full case folding" it was not a part of the
discussion.  If I'm wrong please show where this concept was discussed.

>What
>this means is that we will be running around splitting all the articles in
>two now, making plenty of mess; then after that change, running around
>merging them back together in a different way!
>
Speculative.

Ec


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Support for vertical scripts

body:
Hi all

As you may or may not already know, Mongolian is one of the few
languages in the world that is written vertically _all_ the time
(Japanese, Chinese, and a few others can be written vertically, but
they can also be written horizontally).

Although Outer Mongolia (ie, the independent nation, as opposed the
Inner Mongolia which is currently administered by the People's
Republic of China) switched decades ago to the Cyrillic script for
Mongolian (due to pressure from their favourite ally and neighbour,
the USSR), since 1994 great efforts have been made to reintroduce the
Mongolian script. Many Outer Mongolians can read it, and it's being
taught in schools now.

Inner Mongolia never switched scripts: it has used Mongolian script
continuously now since its emergence.

Now, the issue here isn't which script to use as that can be worked
out later. The issue here is how we would organise a vertical website.
W3C standards spell out how to make vertical text properly using HTML.
However, this isn't supported by all browsers (Firefox, for one,
doesn't support it).

Also, since the user interface is designed for languages that are
written horizontally, it may be difficult to adapt to Mongolian. The
typical solution is to flip EVERYTHING 90 degrees counterclockwise.

A representation of what a proper implementation of Mongolian script
protocols on mn.wiki should look like can be found here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Mongolian_wikipedia_preview.png
(it's pretty neat, actually)

Mark

PS
For what it's worth, it's top-to-bottom, left-to-right.

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: cookfire

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

> ............
>
>>>
>>>
>>> It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and
>>> forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away
>>> from the computer for the next several hours.
>>
>>
>>
>> There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody
>> apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had
>> indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when.
>> Anyway, on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated
>> and there was a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go
>> about it. If Tim had read all that, he would have known we were not
>> ready for the change.
>> Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm
>> sure we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.
>
>
>
> As much as I remember the switch over should have been done on April
> 1st (no, not a joke), but then, even if it was decided no-one really
> moved.
>
> I am already cleaning the links on it.wiktionary to en.wiktionary
> since someone (withour logging in) added manually some interwiki-links
> using capitalised words and besides that creating messed up pages
> using {{PAGENAME}} instead of re-writing the word in the title - so
> basically all double work. Should whoever added these pages read this
> message: please never use the pagename-template again like you did -
> if you don't know how to create a proper page, just contact me (also
> by e-mail is fine)..
>
> Ciao, Sabine

Gerard wanted to force the move through quickly after the vote had been
cast, but that would have been way too soon. He proposed the 1st of
April, but noboby of the regulars agreed with that. 1st of May was
proposed but also not done. Anyway, I think a request to flip the switch
should only have been considered when a sysop had requested it and even
then after asking for confirmation.
On the other hand I'm really excited it finally happened and I want to
say thank you to Tim as it may have been the only way to actually do it.
A request for confirmation would merely have blown up some dust and
everything would have stayed the same in the end. Since full agreement
of everybody involved seems impossible to attain in a larger project.

Polyglot


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>A representation of what a proper implementation of Mongolian script
>protocols on mn.wiki should look like can be found here:
>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Mongolian_wikipedia_preview.png
>(it's pretty neat, actually)
>
>
Cool!  Maybe someday we may even able to handle those American Indian
languages that started in the middle of a deerskin and wrote in a
spiral. :-)

Ec