from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: German wikipedia to be printed - where's the
	stable version feature?

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> Salvatore's moderation feature was implemented in a similar way to
> Magnus' one, in that it used an extra revision ID field in the page
> table to point to the relevant version. Salvatore's used parameters
> passed back to Revision to determine whether page_latest or
> page_verified should be used, whereas Magnus's code operated mainly at
> the UI level, redirecting to a page with an oldid parameter, IIRC.
My current implementation does the template expansion at the moment of
setting the current version, and stores that text in its own database
table. It then checks if the requested version is a stable one, and
replaces the article text with the stored text.

Note that this is not the fastest way to do it, but it allows for
* multiple stable versions (deactivated by default, allowing only one
stable version per article)
* other types of "stablilty", like stable, reviewed, thoroughly
reviewed, really really reviewed, etc. :-)
Both these properties were requested at some time.
>
> Perhaps the simplest solution at the moment is to put Magnus's feature
> live (after the necessary code cleanup), and put up with the lack of
> caching for a while. We've still got a bit of spare hardware capacity
> haven't we? The request rate for stable versions should be lower than
> it would have been for verified revisions. If I understand it
> correctly, stable revisions are not displayed by default, verified
> revisions would have been.
After some hints from Brion yesterday, I changed a few things. There's
probably lots more, though. :-)
Brion also reported a strange effect on next/prev version links; I see
that too, but it doesn't change when I turn the extension off, so the
effect might not be related to the feature.

A few nice things are also still missing, like marking the stable
version in the page history. Also, maybe the text should display in the
sidebar instead of the sitenotice space.
But the core functionality is there.

Magnus


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Matt Brown wrote:

> On 1/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, I did keep the list. I'll keep my reasons for not following your
> > suggestion to myself, to avoid offending anyone. Presumably you would
> > like me to email the list to you so you can carry out this work? If
> > you're impatient, feel free to start hitting that "random article"
> > button - you'll find lots more like I did.
>
> I think you misunderstood Guettarda - he didn't mean improving the
> list of random articles you created, he meant that each of us should
> check all the articles we've created (or significantly rewritten, I'd
> add) and ensure that they are up to modern referencing standards.

Er, what is this "modern referencing standards" you are talking about?
Is this some new thing that was voted on & made policy without much
fanfare, or are you referring to some academic standard like the _MLA
Handbook_? If it is the later, I can show you many examples of
unsatisfactory referencing in modern publications, & excellent examples
in older publications. If it is the former, I need to point out that in
the last month I have encountered a wide variety of opinions from other
Wikipedians on how this should be done to conclude that most believe
that "proper referencing standards" is another way of saying "this is
how I think it should be done".

(As for me, I like footnotes & use them when in doubt. But I won't
footnote a statement if it is reasonably close to the section I have
just footnoted, & try not to overuse them. And I wish the MLA hadn't
deprecated the use of "ibid." & "op. cit.")
>
> After all, if you created the article, you probably know where to look
> to reference it.  Many of us created articles "back in the day" before
> strict referencing was being encouraged as strongly as it is now, and
> they could probably do with some work.
>
For the first couple of years I contributed to Wikipedia (up to about
the time David Gerard came on board) I was more concerned with avoiding
copyright infringements than proper research & reference practices.
(For example, if pressed about some of the material I contributed to
the Classical & Roman Empire topics, I doubt I could do much more than to
point at some of the standard references like the Oxford Classical
Dictionary or some other books on my shelves & say "I think it came from
somewhere in there.") I know I'm not the only person who did this:
I remember encountering the hundreds of mythology-related articles that
Tuff-Kat added in those days, & wondering which PD encyclopedia he had
copied the information out of. (Not to pick on Tuf-Kat; AFAICS, all of
that material looked reliable. And I could mention other, less salubrious
examples of material copied into Wikipedia from those days.)

Geoff


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Password security

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
> there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.

At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
> there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.

At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikimedia-l

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
> there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.

At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
> there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.

At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Password security

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
> there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.

At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikitech-l

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
> there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.

At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: note David Gerard's just placed on [[WT:AFD]]

body:
On 1/30/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/30/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Hard to fit in with th GFDL
>
> I don't understand. Please explain,
>
> Theresa

The quotes from the article would have to be credited to the author(s)
which would make the page even more clumsy.

--
geni


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of
>them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better.
>
>
I don't think this assertion is true.  There do exist articles that are
not useful in the least, but the vast majority of stubs are useful
starting points for a later expansion of the article.

A better solution is to better mark what is what, which is basically the
long-discussed sifter project.  A 2-sentence stub with no references
that nobody except the original author has read is at a low level of
trust.  A well-developed article with many references that many people
have worked on has a high likelihood of being accurate.  There can be
gradations in between, and of course all this only applies to particular
versions.

There's no reason to *delete* a 2-sentence unverified stub, merely to
make clear to our readers that it is in fact a 2-sentence unverified
stub, and so ought to be read accordingly.  Of course, an intelligent
reader already ought to be able to recognize that for themselves, but we
can help the rest along.

-Mark


from_name: admin Yellowikis

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki into print via Prince

body:
Anyone interested in printing from a wiki should check out Prince:

http://www.princexml.com/

Paul

--
Yellowikis is to Yellow Pages, as Wikipedia is to The Encyclopedia Britannica


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] 2. Re: How to use Mwdumper? (Brion Vibber)

body:
On 30/01/06, J Apple <visoredge at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Don't even know what to do with the .jar file.
> WHen I double click it nothing happens on my machine.
> Can anyone give me more detailed instructions on what
> I'm supposed to do with it?

1) Near the beginning of the readme, it says:
> Sample command line for a direct database import:
>   java -server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.5 pages_full.xml.bz2 |
>   mysql -u <username> -p <databasename>
That means you need to be at a shell/command prompt, and type in that
command. There is no user-interface built into the tool ("* GUI
frontend(s)" is in the TODO list), so double clicking will not do
anything even if you have .jar files associated with the appropriate
Java interpretter.

Try typing that exact command, and see if it works; if not, play with
dumping into a file or connecting directly to the DB (see below).

2) Daunting as they look, the options are neatly divided into 3 categories:
a) where do you want your output (e.g. to file; output directly to
screen or another command; direct to database);
b) what format do you want (e.g. XML, like "export" dumps; SQL data
suitable for input to a particular version of MediaWiki
c) do you want to do any filtering while you're at it.
Ignore the fact that you can have multiple of each, and just pick one
"--output" and one "--format", in that order.

3) As a minor "netiquette" issue, please avoid quoting entire message
digests (or even whole messages) when you reply; instead, trim the
quoted part to just enough to see what you're referring to.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Justin Cormack wrote:

> What a pain, you appear to be right. I was keen on making some. Is this
> exception just designed for OS/2?
>
> Which, looking at it has loads of external oinks that are clearly the
> references but someone thinks that it has no references...
>
Hmm. Over in this thread, we have Steve talking about putting down
Wikipedia like a sick dog; and in this thread we have Stefan talking
about how Swedes kill small animals as art. And now Justin brings up
Wikipedia's "external oinks".

There's a joke somewhere in all of this, but I'll be a monkey's
uncle if I can find it & tell it without ruining it.

Geoff


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... J Apple
| Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 6:31 PM
/
| The READ Me is not very newbie friendly...

:-))

| Don't even know what to do with the .jar file.
| WHen I double click it nothing happens on my machine.

Any details about your machine OS? But anyway mwdumper have not GUI
front-end yet, but works as command-line. So use shell  or open your
command-line tool, write and execute command like

java -jar proper-path-to/mwdumper.jar --output=file:your-wiki-dump.sql
--format=sql:1.5 --progress=10000 your-wiki-dump.xml

Of course "proper-path-to", "/", "your-wiki-dump" are only for example and
you must replace them with your really names/symbol. Next, you must have JRE
1.4 or preferable 1.5 installed in your OS. And remember, that the --output
argument must be before the --format argument if --format is used.

Reg.

 Janusz "Ency' Dorozynski


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
No, the one he is talking about, who tried to use DRV to overrule a
no-consensus AFD because it was more likely to get the result he wanted.
This is a picture-perfect example of how process should NOT be (ab)used.

Ryan

On 1/30/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/30/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This user is "gaming the system". Isn't there some policy that
> explicitly
> > forbids this?
>
> Which user - Tony?
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Password security

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?

Until I finish the force-user-to-change-password-on-next-login code. (Probably
tomorrow.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?

Until I finish the force-user-to-change-password-on-next-login code. (Probably
tomorrow.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?

Until I finish the force-user-to-change-password-on-next-login code. (Probably
tomorrow.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?

Until I finish the force-user-to-change-password-on-next-login code. (Probably
tomorrow.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Password security

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?

Until I finish the force-user-to-change-password-on-next-login code. (Probably
tomorrow.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Password security

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?

Until I finish the force-user-to-change-password-on-next-login code. (Probably
tomorrow.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Jesse Weinstein

body:
geni <geniice at ...> writes:
 > On 1/30/06, Jesse Weinstein <jessw at ...> wrote:
> > People might object that such a subpage is "just too hard", or "too
> > time-consuming", or various other things;
> Hard to fit in with th GFDL

I would second TK's request for you to explain further.  How does this have any
problem with GFDL?  All the text I write I license under the GFDL; all the
quotes are deeply justified as *sourcing for the article* - that's about the
most legitimate fair use claim that could be made.  I see no GFDL issue here.

And re: Steve's point about CSS tricks to make the sourcing unobtrusive - you
did read the bit in my message that talked about _putting the sourcing on a
*subpage*_ so they would not be obtrusive.  We don't need any CSS tricks
(although they'd be fine, if we want to use them...)

Thanks for the discussion, everyone!

Jesse Weinstein (User:JesseW)


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] US Congress Staff Editing Wikipedia

body:
John Lee wrote:
> John Lee wrote:
>
>> A most interesting case, ladies and gentlemen:
>> [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/United States Congress]]
>>
>> "This RFC concerns the behavior of editors from the United States
>> Congress". This could possibly set a precedent for how we deal with
>> vandalism from organisations trying to push their POV. We should
>> probably contact someone at Congress to let them know how their
>> reputations are being soiled on Wikipedia. I'm no good at
>> understanding the consequences or repercussions of this, so I just
>> think somebody involved with the Foundation (Jimbo? Angela? Anthere?)
>> might be interested in this. Certainly we don't get vandalised by
>> Congress everyday. :)
>>
>> John Lee
>> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
>
> Well, whaddya know; it's on WikiNews!
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prompt_Wikipedia_investigation
>
>
> That's probably a more readable explanation of what's going on than the
> RfC.
>

Oh, we've had a link to that (via http://ln-s.net/$jo) in the #wikipedia
topic for about 8 hours now... :)

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: US Congress Staff Editing Wikipedia

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>
>>Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>My secret dream is to see the United States Congress hauled up before
>>>the Arbitration Committee. Maybe we could get them to pass clearer
>>>fair-use legislation as part of their parole.
>>>
>>>
>>Clearer fair use legislation is not likely to do us any good. What we
>>want is *more generous* fair use legislation.
>>
>>
>US fair use legislation is already among the most generous in the world. Coupled with US-centric
>Wikipedia policy, this has the effect that anyone attempting to distribute Wikipedia offline outside
>the US risks being sued for copyright infringment. I'd prefer it if US fair use legislation was
>brought into line with the rest of the world, i.e. made more restrictive not less.
>
>
You mean this seriously? You'd rather make fair use in the US more
restrictive than make fair use/dealing/practice/whatever in other
countries less restrictive?

I understand the concern about Wikipedia policy vis-a-vis the laws of
nations generally, and personally I think we should avoid relying on
fair use if at all possible, but that's not what I was getting at. The
point was that asking for more clarity on these issues from Congress, or
any other body where rights organizations wield their influence, would
likely only result in making it more clear when the answer is "No."

>Or, you know, they could just give us money. Whatever.
>
>
Now there's a question - if the US government offered us money, no
strings attached, how would people respond?

--Michael Snow


body:
On 1/30/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
> Er; no they wouldn't.  The page they were from would be
> linked(obviously) and the history of it would be available.  I hope
> you're not claiming that someone can't quote a page from Wikipedia
> without directly crediting the account that first edited each word they
> quote...
>
> Jesse Weinstein

They don't have to name every author (the GFDL puts a minium number).

--
geni


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> 1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of
> them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better.

I don't agree with the first premise. Why is it better to delete "crap"
articles than improve/rewrite them?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
grm_wnr wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>  DRV is only particularly useful for retrieving deleted stuff since
>> you can't make an AfD nomination for an article that doesn't exist.
>
> Question: Why not? If DRV is so poisonous, why not make it so that
> someone unhappy with a deleted article just has to convince one of the
> ~800 admins  to give the matter the benefit of the doubt and undelete,
> then list on AFD again. This would basically turn DRV into a
> noticeboard where admins can pick up articles that are not obviously
> delete-worthy.
Sounds like a fine idea to me, if only for the sake of simplifying the
deletion situation (one set of "rules" rather than two). And then once
AfD gets fixed it'll solve everything at once.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 1/30/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>> I don't agree with the first premise. Why is it better to delete "crap"
>> articles than improve/rewrite them?
>
> That's sort of like saying, why do we have to choose between tax cuts
> and more spending on health? Why don't we cut taxes *and* spend more
> on health?

How is it like saying that?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
[originally sent yesterday but didn't seem to get through the
moderator, perhaps due to my mail server?]

Hi all,
  This is the deletion paradox as I see it:

1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of
them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better.
2) Deleting articles causes unhappiness and tension. The more articles
we delete, the more unhappiness and tension.

Anyone have a solution?

Steve


from_name: Miguel Chaves

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] requisites for opening wikipedia in a language not
	listed

body:
Hi,
I would like to know which are the pre-requisites for opening a wikipedia in
a language not covered yet.
I'm sure the answer must be in some place. I've been looking for this
information on wikipedia itself and in the previous postings to this lists,
but it's still not clear to me.
Thanks and regards.


subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
[also originally sent yesterday but didn't seem to get through the
moderator, perhaps due to my mail server?]

Hi all,
  I'd like to undertake a more thorough survey of wikipedia
referencing standards, but I've started with a quick "pilot" study.

Methodology: Click "random article". Discard results which are not
articles. Count the number of "external links", "references",
"paragraphs".

Terms: A bit fuzzy, I'm treating a web page which gives more
information as an "external link", and a page or book or whatever
which is claimed to be the source of the information (or is clearly
the source) as a "reference". Paragraphs are, well, paragraphs, but it
must be said that longer articles generally have longer paragraphs
than shorter ones do. So lines would probably be better...

Preliminary results:
Sample size:30 pages, of which 17 were stubs.

Number with no links: 21
Number with no references: 24
Average number of links: 0.67
Average number of references: 0.54

I found very few book references, one of which was patently false
("James Maxwell's book of James Maxwells not as cool as me, by James
Maxwell"). Similarly a list of newspaper articles turned out to all
have been written by the subject (a journalist). One page (out of 30)
actually gave ISBN references (Chepstow Bridge).

Conclusions:
None yet, really, since the methodology isn't very solid and the
sample set is small. But notably: More than half the articles were
stubs. Hardly any articles had any real "references". Most of the
external links were band websites, company websites etc. Of the few
refernces, one was blatantly false and a few were "bad". So it's
probably a little early to be claiming that all material added to
Wikipedia MUST be sourced or it will be removed. Because based on
this, only around 15% of Wikipedia would survive. (Which is more than
I would have predicted).

Any suggestions for improved methodology? It might be nice to harness
the wikipedia population to collect some more general article quality
metrics...

Steve


body:
My reaction seems to be unique so far. I would think it much better
for the Wikipedia project that we do not publicise that we know
exactly who is doing this. It is fascinating to watch the congress
staffers at work. It is just a pity that shortly they will smarten up
and be doing this with proper accounts via different IPs.

If there have only been a thousand changes so far, most of which were
positive, this does not seem to be a "major" problem. Certainly not
compared to the information we're gleaning from this. So, by all
means, let's continue to revert the particularly obnoxious changes,
but asking them to "stop it" will simply make it invisible.

Steve


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
--- Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   This is the deletion paradox as I see it:
>
> 1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of
> them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better.
> 2) Deleting articles causes unhappiness and tension. The more articles
> we delete, the more unhappiness and tension.
>
> Anyone have a solution?

Instead of deleting crap articles, identify good articles. Present the good
articles as "Wikipedia proper", and inform readers that anything else has even
less than no guarantee of usefulness.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Photos ? NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 8p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 30/01/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> > If there have only been a thousand changes so far, most of which were
> > positive, this does not seem to be a "major" problem. Certainly not
> > compared to the information we're gleaning from this. So, by all
> > means, let's continue to revert the particularly obnoxious changes,
> > but asking them to "stop it" will simply make it invisible.
>
> A little late for that since my phone is ringing off the hook with
> reporters interested in the story.

For what it's worth, and for a little international scope, at least
two parliament.uk IP address - probably proxy servers from inside the
Commons - have edited various articles, mostly those on individual
MPs. Minor fact-checking and expanding bio-stubs, as far as I can see
- the sort of thing anyone does on discovering their biography or that
of their boss. Haven't spotted any vandalism yet, or anything quite as
partisan as some of the US edits... but it's probably buried there
somewhere.

Anyone who understands the web system at aph.gov.au or parl.gc.ca want
to see if we can find an equivalent there?

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


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
On 1/30/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> Er, what is this "modern referencing standards" you are talking about?
> Is this some new thing that was voted on & made policy without much
> fanfare, or are you referring to some academic standard like the _MLA
> Handbook_?

Referring to a purely Wikipedia definition of 'modern' - in other
words, up til about 2 years ago there was little push to give
references.  Sometimes we did, but not all that often.  More often, we
just linked a few relevant external links that were probably among
where we got the info from.

There's a lot of articles I wrote in my first year on Wikipedia that
I'd extensively reference if I did them now.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/30/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> YOU are free to stop bothering WIkipedia's collaborative work if you
> think it amounts to a poor dog suffering a terminal illness in great
> pain. ME are free to continue adding my improvements to the greatest
> knowledge base in history if only you would stop trying to kill the
> dog.
>
> Sorry to say this to you, but since Wikipedia is not a dying dog, it
> doesn't need any euthanasians.

Aputation on the other hand... It is just that the gangrene is
starting to smell.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/30/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> I don't agree with the first premise. Why is it better to delete "crap"
> articles than improve/rewrite them?

That's sort of like saying, why do we have to choose between tax cuts
and more spending on health? Why don't we cut taxes *and* spend more
on health?

Oh wait..

Anyway, the vastness of crap on Wikipedia and the high proportion of
stubs indicate that the wikipedia workforce is unable/unwilling to
keep up with this amount of work. So, given that our poor dog is
suffering a terminal illness in great pain, do we put him down or
simply pray for him to get better?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
On 1/30/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's another challenge.  If you keep a list of the articles you started,
> go through them and make sure than they have external links or references,
> even if they are stubs.  Gotta start somewhere - might as well start on your
> own stuff

Well, I did keep the list. I'll keep my reasons for not following your
suggestion to myself, to avoid offending anyone. Presumably you would
like me to email the list to you so you can carry out this work? If
you're impatient, feel free to start hitting that "random article"
button - you'll find lots more like I did.

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/30/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> > I don't agree with the first premise. Why is it better to delete "crap"
> > articles than improve/rewrite them?
>
> That's sort of like saying, why do we have to choose between tax cuts
> and more spending on health? Why don't we cut taxes *and* spend more
> on health?
>
> Oh wait..
>
> Anyway, the vastness of crap on Wikipedia and the high proportion of
> stubs indicate that the wikipedia workforce is unable/unwilling to
> keep up with this amount of work. So, given that our poor dog is
> suffering a terminal illness in great pain, do we put him down or
> simply pray for him to get better?
>
> Steve

Steve hits a core point here. A lot of people prefer to create new articles
instead of improving existing ones. Not bad in itself, but at some point we
have improve the stuff we've already got rather than adding to our
collection. Only so can we improve the quality of our articles.

Support FAC and projects that look for sources.
Deletion is only an option for stuff that clearly cannot be redeemed.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
>
> Conclusions:
> None yet, really, since the methodology isn't very solid and the
> sample set is small. But notably: More than half the articles were
> stubs. Hardly any articles had any real "references". Most of the
> external links were band websites, company websites etc. Of the few
> refernces, one was blatantly false and a few were "bad". So it's
> probably a little early to be claiming that all material added to
> Wikipedia MUST be sourced or it will be removed. Because based on
> this, only around 15% of Wikipedia would survive. (Which is more than
> I would have predicted).
>
>
> Any suggestions for improved methodology? It might be nice to harness
> the wikipedia population to collect some more general article quality
> metrics...
>
> Steve

I think we can have quite a simply solution to this. Do the same as we did
to the images. Stuff which isn't cited within a week, can be speedy deleted
like we do with images now. Just make sure it only applies to articles
created after date X.

Mgm


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki into print via Prince

body:
Moin,

On Monday 30 January 2006 21:59, admin Yellowikis wrote:
> Anyone interested in printing from a wiki should check out Prince:
>
> http://www.princexml.com/

"Prince supports a rich subset of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), the
format of choice for graphics such as clip-art, diagrams, maps, charts
and graphs."

A "rich subset". Wow, thats a new one to me. Better than a "poor subset",
I guess. I'd prefer a "full subset", though.

SCNR:)

Tels

--
 Signed on Tue Jan 31 00:09:58 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Firefox: What are you trying to tell me, that I can block pop-ups?
 Morpheus: I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have
 to.
   -- Skyshadow (508) on 2004-11-30 at /.

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from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyway, the vastness of crap on Wikipedia and the high proportion of
> stubs indicate that the wikipedia workforce is unable/unwilling to
> keep up with this amount of work. So, given that our poor dog is
> suffering a terminal illness in great pain, do we put him down or
> simply pray for him to get better?

WE??

Who the hell are WE?

YOU are free to stop bothering WIkipedia's collaborative work if you
think it amounts to a poor dog suffering a terminal illness in great
pain. ME are free to continue adding my improvements to the greatest
knowledge base in history if only you would stop trying to kill the
dog.

Sorry to say this to you, but since Wikipedia is not a dying dog, it
doesn't need any euthanasians. Therefore your services aren't needed.
In fact, the world-wide demand for euthanasians is very low right now.
Join the army or something, I heard they are helpful to poor dogs
suffering terminal illnesses.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Outsiders on the Board? (was Re: Poll for
	Wikistandards)

body:
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> > As for having members of the board being outsiders, I think that should
> > not happen at all or under exceptional circumstances.

It's nice to hear that side for a change. I was beginning to form the
impression elected members were neither necessary nor wanted.

On 1/30/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> Some committees might benefit from the guidance of qualified outsiders,
> but the committees should still be dominated by volunteers, either
> selected by a transparent and fair process with Board oversight or, as
> Erik suggests, with open membership.

I don't think there's any suggestion the committees (as opposed to the
Board) should be dominated by anything other than community members at
this stage. The processes of selecting those members are still under
discussion, and something the people organizing the committees the
Board approved the creation of
(<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions> have been asked to
report on by February 11.

On 1/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

> At our size, however, we are faced with enormous
> responsibilities. ... This is something that requires professional legal and  financial
> knowhow.

Luckily we have an awful lot of legal and financial know-how within
the community. More than we could ever afford to pay for, and, more
importantly, coming from people who not only have that knowledge, but
have an understanding of what Wikimedia is and a belief in its
principles.

On 1/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> In some cases liability insurance can be
> purchased, but that too can be expensive.

The Foundation does intend to purchase insurance. Work has already
gone into completing applications for Board and Officers Liability
insurance and also for the more expensive Cyber Insurance. It was
partly the need to list the "Officers" on the application that raised
the question Anthere mentioned in this thread of who is an "Officer",
and whether the people Jimmy gave various titles to last year fell
under that definition.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Committees: open meeting, February 1

body:
On 1/30/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> Some committees might benefit from the guidance of qualified outsiders,
> but the committees should still be dominated by volunteers, either
> selected by a transparent and fair process with Board oversight or, as
> Erik suggests, with open membership.

The processes by which committees select their members have not yet
been worked out. Although some committee organisers have devised lists
of potential committee members, details of how members are chosen, or
whether the membership will be open in any way, has been largely
overlooked.

This is something that needs to be considered before the Board hands
down actual authority to these committees since there is the danger we
will turn from having a partially elected and accountable Board making
decisions to decisions being made in a non-transparent process by the
new committees, which was never my intention when I voted for this new
structure.

Therefore, I would like to propose an IRC meeting be held, for all
committee organizers along with all community members who want to take
an interest in the future running of the Foundation. The aim will be
to find ways the committees can remain accountable, legally and
financially, but also accountable to the Board and community. The
meeting is also to discuss how open and transparent various aspects of
those committees can or should be, including their membership,
processes, and actions. I'm aware there are strongly opposing
viewpoints on this area, but I hope that having a planned discussion
will lead to some consensus on how the committees can be best
directed.

The meeting will be on Wednesday February 1 at 21:00 UTC (4pm New
York, see <http://tinyurl.com/dmdjo> for other timezones). The
#wikimedia-meeting channel is accessible on the web via
http://irc.wikicities.com/meeting/ for anyone who can not access IRC
in the normal way.

Angela.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Error while imporing wikipedia en dump file

body:
Vijay wrote:
> First off pardon me if this is not the right list for posting this question.
> I am new to wikipedia mailing list.

You probably want mediawiki-l or wikitech-l for software issues.

> I have just downloaded the wikipedia en dump

Please tell me *exactly* which file you've got (with url), and *exactly* how
you're extracting it (with program versions and command lines, if applicable).

> and am trying to cofigure
> wikipedia on my local server. I have mysql and php on windows 2003 server. I
> installed mediawiki and have extracted the wikipedia en dump file which gave
> me an xml file (4 GB).

Is it 4gb exactly? The file may have been cut off; perhaps you used a faulty
decompression utility or you extracted it on a FAT32 filesystem that does not
support large files?

Have you tried piping output instead of decompressing it first? Tried tailing
the end of the file to confirm it closes the XML properly?

> When I tried importing the dump to mysql using importDump.php, the process
> started fine. But when the record count reached 18600, the process stopped
> with the following error. I wonder what could be the problem? Any help in
> this regard is highly appreciated.

Try using mwdumper instead of importDump. Any difference? (mwdumper is faster, too)

> By the way, the wikipedia dump file is the current version and not the
> complete one. The zip file is around 900 MB in size.

This one, or an older version?
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20060125/enwiki-20060125-pages-articles.xml.bz2

I'm still downloading it to double-check, but I can confirm that the XML in this
file is valid at least up to 29120 pages in, some ways past the point where your
import broke.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: oscar

subject: [Foundation-l] announce-l and "Wikizine"?

body:
hi brion, angela,

On 1/26/06, oscar <oscar.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 1/24/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > It seems a couple folks took over the abandoned announce-l mailing list
> > a couple
> > months ago, sending community updates branded as "Wikizine" on it. The
> > domain
> > name wikizine.org is being used to redirect to the list subscription
> > page, and
> > some links & an email address at that domain are used.
> >
> > http://wikizine.org/
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/announce-l
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine
>
>
> well, walter had the idea of launching a wikizine on announce-l, i
> supported the idea and asked elian for permission. she changed the
> list-owners to the current situation fyi.
>
> grtz, oscar
>
> Now, having some actual Wikimedia info on a mailing list is pretty cool.
> > :) But
> > I've got a couple organizational questions I want to toss out to the
> > broader
> > community:
> >
> > * It looks like Walter Vermeir owns this wikizine.org domain himself.
> > What's the
> > status of it? If Walter loses interest will it continue? Who'll be
> > responsible
> > for renewing it?
>
>
btw the idea is "bottom up", so wikizine is not an official wikimedia
foundation thing, with no official status at all, just supported by some
*nerds* such as i am ;-)

* I received a request to make a mailing list for a Romanian-language
> > Wikizine.
> > Are we going to add more such lists, and if so should we do so under the
> > 'announce' name set or 'wikizine'?
>
>
let them create a similar *zine* thing if they want, why not? after all, all
"more or less reliable communication" will enhance growth of the projects
imho.

* Some 'marketing' ;) This has been going on for two or three months and I
> > never
> > noticed. Was I just asleep at the wheel, or are a lot of people missing
> > out who
> > might be interested?
>
>
sorry for our insufficient pr... you are imho not asleep at the wheel - lol!
- but probably immersed in improving other parts of the car, aren't you? ;-)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
grtz, oscar

_______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
> >
>


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/30/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> > YOU are free to stop bothering WIkipedia's collaborative work if you
> > think it amounts to a poor dog suffering a terminal illness in great
> > pain. ME are free to continue adding my improvements to the greatest
> > knowledge base in history if only you would stop trying to kill the
> > dog.
> >
> > Sorry to say this to you, but since Wikipedia is not a dying dog, it
> > doesn't need any euthanasians.
>
> Aputation on the other hand... It is just that the gangrene is
> starting to smell.

Dear god, if you don't stop with the bad allegories, I'm going to kill
something (and I mean it literally, I'll go to a pet store, buy a cat
and drown it when I get home if I hear one more of these!)

Cheers!

--Oskar


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
On 31 Jan 2006, at 00:52, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> I think we can have quite a simply solution to this. Do the same
>> as we did
>> to the images. Stuff which isn't cited within a week, can be
>> speedy deleted
>> like we do with images now. Just make sure it only applies to
>> articles
>> created after date X.
>>
> Articles without references are simply works in progress most of
> the time, and I definitely don't support the deletion of works in
> progress. Images are different since it's far harder to check them
> for copyright issues and such.
>
> Instead of deleting such articles, how about simply withholding
> "stable" flags from all unreferenced versions (ie, all of them)?

Another idea would be to simply add an {{unreferenced}} or
{{unsourced}} tag, to alert readers.

Deleting articles because they have no references is draconian.

15 years ago or so I worked on a specialist encyclopaedia. It was
undersourced but was the
standard reference in the field. Like wikipedia, you could contact
the authors of the articles
if you wanted better references. I did encourage the addition of
sources a bit I seem to
remember (even though I was doing proofreading mostly). It is not
that important to have a
reference for every fact - eventually people will dispute the ones
that are unclear. Some
sources is really helpful, and I agree that there are far too few
references but this is a
transitional issue - not enough of the real sources are online and
books are not available
to all. There are some great online projects (like http://www.british-
history.ac.uk/) but
most of the stuff I know about isnt online yet. Many things people
write are memories
from sources that they no longer have access to. There are also some
bits of original
research around that are not that problematic - one day they will be
published elsewhere,
I am not going to complain before that.

We also need to be prepared for the way the internet is changing
availability of primary
sources. It used to be that access to these was rare and available to
only a few people.
Encyclopaedias were written from secondary or tertiary sources. The
"fancruft" of WP is
perhaps a primer for what happens when primary sources are available
without an academic
commentary (webcomics or whatever). Fields that have been less
restricted in access have
always been more dominated by "non professionals" for example [[Ian
Nairn]] as an
important architectural critic.

Amateurism (in the old sense) and expertise are very important.
"Academicism" where people
need to have PhDs and use the Chicago Manual of Style and cite a
reference for every sentence
are not where we need to be going. They represent a kind of geeky
view of knowledge as a
pure collection of facts where synthesis is ignored; do we have to
reference the order in
which we present these referenced facts?

Justinc


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Has anyone considered the possibility of improving those crap articles?
> That would be a fine lateral solution to the paradox.
>
> Ec

Yup. Have you seen cleanup lately?

--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
>> My secret dream is to see the United States Congress hauled up before
>> the Arbitration Committee. Maybe we could get them to pass clearer
>> fair-use legislation as part of their parole.
>
> Clearer fair use legislation is not likely to do us any good. What we
> want is *more generous* fair use legislation.

That could begin by dealing with the orphan copyrights issue.

Ec


body:
On 31 Jan 2006, at 03:00, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

> Without commenting on the principle of the idea, I would like to point
> out that there are no such things as "article subpages". All pages in
> the main space are pure articles, with the exception of the shortcuts
> and [[Main Page]] (i bet some smart-ass is going to throw some minute
> exception at me that I forgot, but I'm pretty sure that those are the
> only two). For your suggestion to work, we would need a new namespace,
> as none of the current ones would be suitable for such a thing.

Without commenting on anything else you said, yes there are subpages.
Anything separated by a /. They arent used much except for templates
(eg on AfD say where all the templates are subpages), but you can
create them anywhere - lots of people create them under their user pages
for testing.

Justinc


body:
On 31 Jan 2006, at 03:20, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

> I was under the impression that slashes in article titles indicated
> that that was it's name, like [[OS/2]], and for that reason there are
> no subpages in the main space (I mean, there are people who keep
> putting old versions of articles at [[Article name/old]], my point is
> that there should be no subpages in the main space).

What a pain, you appear to be right. I was keen on making some. Is this
exception just designed for OS/2?

Which, looking at it has loads of external oinks that are clearly the
references but someone thinks that it has no references...


body:
Without commenting on the principle of the idea, I would like to point
out that there are no such things as "article subpages". All pages in
the main space are pure articles, with the exception of the shortcuts
and [[Main Page]] (i bet some smart-ass is going to throw some minute
exception at me that I forgot, but I'm pretty sure that those are the
only two). For your suggestion to work, we would need a new namespace,
as none of the current ones would be suitable for such a thing.

Now to comment on your suggestion: I think this is fundamentally
unworkable. Articles can change rapidly, and it would be a herculean
task to keep the citation page up to date. I think that it would
simply not be possible for it to function in a meaningful way. If we
reference so heavliy that it cannot fit into the article nicely, a
separate page is going to be way longer than the article itself.

It is true that every sentance in an article should be backed up by
sources. That does not mean that we have to actually put a superscript
above every single fact that we use. The fact is that when articles
are written for wikipedia, they are not PhD thesis' (I how no idea how
to pluralize that word) that have to be presented to a number of
proffessors for review. No, wikipedia articles is just that,
_articles_! They have to abide by certain criteria for style. In
short, a good wikipedia article has to be nice looking.

As long as we can make sure that a) all sources are listed in a
"References" section, b) very important facts are referenced directly
and c) that we can always produce credible sources for every fact when
queried, we should be fine!

As long as an article is actually sourced with sources listed, we
don't need to specify where exactly every fact came from! We are
trying to build an encyclopedia, and a large part of that goal is
readability.

Chhers!
--Oskar

On 1/30/06, Jesse Weinstein <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
> On 1/25/06, Justin Cormack <justin at ...> wrote:
> > On 25 Jan 2006, at 21:47, Fred Bauder wrote:
> > > Properly done each fact (or set of facts) will point somehow to the
> > > source, including the page in the source.
> >
> > How? And how will the article still be readable? And what is a fact?
> > And what use is the page number
> > when there are loads of editions of a source?
> >
> > No encyclopaedia is written like this.
>
> I am sort of surprised and disturbed to see people getting so far-fetched with
> the task of specifying a source for each fact in an article.  We don't need
> magic new software tools, we don't need 500 obtrusive footnotes in the article,
> we don't need any of this.
>
> We can simply use a subpage.  On the subpage, put a list of quote from the
> article, followed by citations (and preferably quotes) from sources which
> support the quoted material from the article.  Simple, easy to do, requiring no
> magic software support.  The disadvantage is it dosn't automatically update if
> the article is changed, but on the other hand, that's actually an advantage; if
> the article changes, we *need* someone to review the references, so having the
> subpage not automatically update is actually a feature.
>
> People might object that such a subpage is "just too hard", or "too
> time-consuming", or various other things; my answer to this is simply - if you
> don't want to work on it, don't work on it.  It benefits the encyclopedia, by
> easing the task of factual verification; yes it will take many years to get lots
> done, but so what? Each piece we do is one more that's done.  This is not a
> problem, folks - it's just a big job.  Get to work! (if this is the sort of work
> you want to help with...)
>
> Jesse Weinstein (User:JesseW)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 1/31/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 31 Jan 2006, at 03:00, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>
> > Without commenting on the principle of the idea, I would like to point
> > out that there are no such things as "article subpages". All pages in
> > the main space are pure articles, with the exception of the shortcuts
> > and [[Main Page]] (i bet some smart-ass is going to throw some minute
> > exception at me that I forgot, but I'm pretty sure that those are the
> > only two). For your suggestion to work, we would need a new namespace,
> > as none of the current ones would be suitable for such a thing.
>
> Without commenting on anything else you said, yes there are subpages.
> Anything separated by a /. They arent used much except for templates
> (eg on AfD say where all the templates are subpages), but you can
> create them anywhere - lots of people create them under their user pages
> for testing.
>
> Justinc
I was under the impression that slashes in article titles indicated
that that was it's name, like [[OS/2]], and for that reason there are
no subpages in the main space (I mean, there are people who keep
putting old versions of articles at [[Article name/old]], my point is
that there should be no subpages in the main space).


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Password security

body:
brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) wrote:
> I've disabled the ability to use blank passwords on wiki accounts.
>
> For a long time we treated accounts very laxly in this regard; there generally
> wasn't _that_ much reason to secure a casual account unless you were one of the
> tiny number of sysops.
>
> In recent years though the number of sysops has exploded, and we've added
> customization features like the user javascript which are cool but potentially
> really annoying if someone gets into your account and messes with them. As a
> small concession to security and accountability, it's time for blank passwords
> to go.
>
> While running some password security checks, I found that a handful of sysop
> accounts had blank passwords. Probably some non-sysop accounts also had blanks.
>
> Affected accounts can reset the password by the automated e-mail
> password gadget on the login form, unless of course they didn't put in an e-mail.

This is seriously wrong. It should be completely reversed.

A lot of people have just lost their account because of this,
and it wasn't even announced that it was coming.
This part of the problem could be reduced if the change was
announced in advance.

However, that's not the full problem.
Many people use blank or trival passwords and don't give their emails.
This is completely reasonable, as it's very hard to remember just
another password (and reusing passwords on different websites is about
as bad as having none),
and even if spamming wasn't a problem, why the heck would any website
need their email in the first place ?

So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.

(and yeah, /me just lost 2 (rarely used) accounts on fr.wp and de.wp)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Password security


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
>  DRV is only particularly useful for retrieving deleted stuff since
> you can't make an AfD nomination for an article that doesn't exist.

Question: Why not? If DRV is so poisonous, why not make it so that
someone unhappy with a deleted article just has to convince one of the
~800 admins  to give the matter the benefit of the doubt and undelete,
then list on AFD again. This would basically turn DRV into a noticeboard
where admins can pick up articles that are not obviously delete-worthy.
Of course, doing this too often would be just as popular as repeatedly
AFDing the same article over and over, and should be... discouraged. I
have no sympathy for AFD, by the way (and don't want to protect it from
additional workload), so if it is able to deal with the torrent of crap
it is flooded with now, it can deal with the handfull of contested
deletions as well.

grm_wnr


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Password security

body:
brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>> So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
>> there's very little point in limiting passwords of the
non-privileged accounts.
>
> At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
> would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
> risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
> sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Password security


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Password security


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Password security


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on putting email addresses on wiki pages

body:
On 1/31/06, Tom Steinberg <tom at tomsteinberg.co.uk> wrote:
> Hello All,
> We've been mulling dumping all the Northern Ireland Assembly member's
> email addresses onto the relevent page on wikipedia, and then writing
> a scraper script to keep our own WriteToThem systems up to date.

Wikipedia is not an address book.  Email addresses are not biographical.

Kelly


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Block of a Notable Wikipedian

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Philip Welch

> How come we're blaming her all of a sudden? We're the ones
> who screwed up. The predominant culture on Wikipedia is
> really good at pissing off good-faith contributors
> sometimes--I'm often loath to ask others to contribute
> because I know how they'll ultimately be treated.
>
> Here's someone who openly states on her page that she wants
> to help Wikipedia, but she wants the personal attacks against
> her removed before that happens. If you step back and look at
> it from her point of view, and not through the lens of the
> Wikipedia culture, is that really so unreasonable?

I know that we can't make people be nice, but I can't help feeling that if
the culture changed a bit there would be positive feedback all along the
line. Not a vicious circle, but I dunno, some happier name.

New editors arrive and find long-established members behaving in a less than
polite manner. And getting away with it. Naturally they take this as par for
the course and retaliate in kind. Or less than kind, if you smoke my drift.

Now, my feeling is that the overwhelming majority of Wikipedians are polite,
friendly, hard-working people, and there are many here I enjoy working with.
But there's a few...

And yes, you can probably include me amongst that few. When I find someone
sinking the boot into me, I tend to apply a bit of needling in return.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
Delirium wrote:
> There's no reason to *delete* a 2-sentence unverified stub, merely to
> make clear to our readers that it is in fact a 2-sentence unverified
> stub, and so ought to be read accordingly.  Of course, an intelligent
> reader already ought to be able to recognize that for themselves, but we
> can help the rest along.

In many many cases there is a reason to delete a 2-sentence unverified
stub.  We need to be extremely aggressive about doing so when the
article in question contains negative claims about any living person or
existing company.   Such articles may be examples of people using our
site to attempt to libel others or they may just be hurtful to someone
who is non-notable for no good purpose.

I am always dismayed when I see a good editor wikifying and tagging an
absolute crap article, rather than blanking/radically stubbing it (at a
minimum) or deleting it (often would be better).

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Maybe at [[WP:NOT]]. That page definitely needs a "Wikipedia is not a
> game of Nomic", if it doesn't already have one.

Elian has some great old wikipedia quotes on her userpage in German:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Elian#Zitate_zu_Wikipedia

One of them is...

"The big secret of course is that Wikipedia is not really about an
encyclopedia, it's just a big game of nomic. ;-) --JimboWales"

That was just a joke in irc, of course, some years ago.


from_name: SCZenz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can a deleted page be used in an RfC?

body:
You could do any of the above for now, since deletion is reversible.
Obviously the diffs need to be visible to get comments on them, so it
will have to be undeleted while the RfC is running.  I'd recommend
blanking it and putting up a short (neutral) note on why the page
should be kept for the time being.

SCZenz

On 1/31/06, Elonka at aol.com <Elonka at aol.com> wrote:
> I've asked this a couple places around Wikipedia (including Kelly  Martin's
> page) but haven't gotten a reply, so I'm going to try again here.
>
> I'm currently preparing an RfC (or RfAr) regarding a long series of  personal
> attacks that are being genereated against me by User DreamGuy.   One of the
> attacks (the first one, actually) is at [[Talk:Eenasul_Fateh]], a  temporary
> page that was made to hold information during an AfD  discussion.
>
> One user tried to remove DreamGuy's attacks, but DreamGuy just went right
> back in and restored them.
>
> Anyway, I have the opportunity to speedy-delete the page as no  longer
> needed.  However, if I delete it, does that mean that I can no  longer refer to the
> personal attack on that page as part of the RfC?  Do I  have to keep it around
> for evidence?  Or can I go ahead and get rid of  it?
>
> Or should I blank it "in preparation for deletion", but hold onto it so  that
> the diffs will work?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Elonka
> [[User:Elonka]]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
I think this loophole is a clear argument for WP:DRV to make decisions
based only on process, not on content.  If it's not consensus-based,
we can't have the decision to delete be made there.

SCZenz

On 1/29/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an interesting one. An article "List of state-named Avenues in
> Washington, D.C." was listed for deletion recently but kept because of
> no consensus.  Someone thought "dang it, AfD is supposed to be a
> discussion, not a vote", and went to Wikipedia:Deletion review (DRV)
> to try to overturn the result for what he thought were weak arguments
> to keep.
>
> Well that's all very well, but DRV (perhaps uniquely in all Wikipedia
> forums) does not operate by consensus but by majority vote.  So it
> looks to me like we've got a possible loophole where someone
> dissatisfied with an AfD result can go and have the article deleted
> anyway on a straight majority vote.  As it happens a lot of people who
> looked at the article in DRV thought it should be deleted (which isn't
> unusual--it's part of the culture in DRV)
>
> So, I thought I'd give a second AfD a go. If the first AfD wasn't
> clear enough, let's try for a second. I accordingly relisted the
> article for deletion, explaining the circumstances and recommending
> keep.
>
> Six people promptly said "keep".
>
> Whereupon someone involved in the attempt to overturn the first
> deletion discussion and delete the article "unlisted* the article from
> AfD.
>
> This is quite a quandary.
>
> I've no doubt that this fellow is acting in good faith and genuinely
> believes that we cannot have a second AfD while the first is being
> reviewed, but I cannot see why not especially if (as seems here) it's
> clarifying that yes, Wikipedians really do want this article to be
> kept.
>
> However he's not really granting good faith, is he?  He's removed the
> second AfD listing. I restored once but I don't edit war so I'm not
> going to get into that stuff.
>
> So I turn to you, dear readers.
>
> How am I to ensure that, if this article is deleted, it is only
> deleted on the basis of consensus?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
> This compares reasonably well with the results of my survey
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100): about
> 15% of all articles are sourced.  My methodology was a little
> different, as I counted anything in a "references" section as
> a reference, while inline links were collectively counted as
> one reference.
>
> I'm still working on a survey of biography articles, but
> preliminary results are that slightly fewer biographies are
> sourced, but ones that are sourced tend to have more sources.

Nice! Are you interested in expanding it a bit, perhaps to include
grades in various categories like adherence to MoS, PoV etc? It would be
very interesting to get a few people together and regularly take samples
of 1000 or so articles, to see whether things are getting better, worse
etc.

Steve


from_name: Elonka at aol.com

body:
I've asked this a couple places around Wikipedia (including Kelly  Martin's
page) but haven't gotten a reply, so I'm going to try again here.

I'm currently preparing an RfC (or RfAr) regarding a long series of  personal
attacks that are being genereated against me by User DreamGuy.   One of the
attacks (the first one, actually) is at [[Talk:Eenasul_Fateh]], a  temporary
page that was made to hold information during an AfD  discussion.

One user tried to remove DreamGuy's attacks, but DreamGuy just went right
back in and restored them.

Anyway, I have the opportunity to speedy-delete the page as no  longer
needed.  However, if I delete it, does that mean that I can no  longer refer to the
personal attack on that page as part of the RfC?  Do I  have to keep it around
for evidence?  Or can I go ahead and get rid of  it?

Or should I blank it "in preparation for deletion", but hold onto it so  that
the diffs will work?

Thanks,

Elonka
[[User:Elonka]]


from_name: Zzyzx11 at Wikipedia

subject: [WikiEN-l] Uploading fair use images in SVG format

body:
After dealing with fair use images on user pages, and working with SVG image
files, I have been quietly making some unilateral additions to WP:IUP and
WP:FUC (actually they are corollaries to already existing policies).

The additions in a nutshell: Avoid uploading fair use images in SVG format
because SVGs are, in essence,  infinite-resolution images. They can be
expanded to any size and still maintain the same quality high resolution.

An example of this can be found at [[Wikipedia:Preparing images for
upload#Why you should use SVG over PNG]].

We do not want Wikipedia to become THE source for piracy, do we?
Theoretically, a piracy thief could easily download an SVG logo like
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia-logo.svg, expanded it to 2
meters in width, and illegally sell them as posters. But he would not be
able to do the same thing with a PNG image like
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipedia-logo.png since the
resolution will become very, very distorted.

Zzyzx11 at en.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zzyzx11
zzyzx11 at hotmail.com

_________________________________________________________________
FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar ? get it now!
http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) wrote:
>
>
>>While running some password security checks, I found that a handful of sysop
>>accounts had blank passwords. Probably some non-sysop accounts also had blanks.
>>
>>Affected accounts can reset the password by the automated e-mail
>>password gadget on the login form, unless of course they didn't put in an e-mail.
>>
>>
>
>This is seriously wrong. It should be completely reversed.
>
>A lot of people have just lost their account because of this,
>and it wasn't even announced that it was coming.
>This part of the problem could be reduced if the change was
>announced in advance.
>
>
>
For those users who do have e-mail addresses for their accounts, were
there any provisions done to try and send a simple e-mail to those users
asking them to update their accounts with stronger passwords?
 Especially sysops?

While I support the actions of Brian to try and strengthen the passwords
for user accounts, some internal notice should have been given in more
widely read forums, of which Wikitech-l and Foundation-l are not really
widely read forums for the typical Wikimedian.  Actually, I don't know
of a good place, although there are several places that would work to at
least notify a few more people than simply the e-mail lists.

I feel for Brian, however.  He is trying to secure the servers from
idiots and vandals when Wikimedia policies encourage idiots and vandals
to participate and wreck things.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The deletion paradox

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:f1c3529e0601301341h6fb8692an77af8bf38061a051 at mail.gmail.com...
[snip]
> 1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of
> them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better.

ITYM "the more **crap** articles we delete..."

Even better is taking a crap article and making it a good article.

> 2) Deleting articles causes unhappiness and tension. The more articles
> we delete, the more unhappiness and tension.

So improve article rather than increase unhappiness and tension.

> Anyone have a solution?

Yes.

Stop writing silly messages here and hie thee to the Wikipedia and get
improving!

That funny noise? That's me attempting to follow my own advice...
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Fastfission

body:
I don't think he's asking whether or not people can post their OWN
e-mail addresses on their OWN user pages (something which no one would
oppose -- you do so at your own risk, of course); the question is
whether Wikipedia articles should have the e-mail addresses of their
SUBJECTS posted.

Here's my take on it: Should they contain their post-office addresses
too? Probably not, even if it is just a P.O. Box or some other address
which is not a physical location of where they live. Of course,
generic addresses (so-and-so lives in Washington, D.C.; so-and-so
works in the Chamber of Commerce) are fine, but I don't think specific
addresses are a good idea. Whatever the privacy issues, they are
simply not fodder for an encyclopedia article.

(I think in the case of political figures the privacy issues are
minor, but I think it is also a bad habit to start. People *do* get
touchy about addresses, even if they are technically in the public
domain, like yellow and white pages.)

I think it is better to link to their homepage on the web -- if they
want people writing to them by e-mail or any other methods, they will
post that information themselves. People who want that sort of
information will be able to find it without Wikipedia's help. If they
can't find it without Wikipedia's help, it probably isn't something
that belongs on Wikipedia in the first place (that is, it probably
isn't meant to be accessible).

FF

On 1/31/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/31/06, Tom Steinberg <tom at tomsteinberg.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Is it permissable to put email addresses on wikipedia, if they're
> > already public?
> >
>
>
> Of course it is! How on earth are people to be able to communicate
> with one another if their email addresses are hidden?
>
> I profess profound distaste for the practice of concealing, mangling,
> and distorting email addresses.  I myself have had an email address on
> my userpage for well over a year and can count the amount of spam that
> has gotten though on the fingers of one hand, so there's no excuse.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sam Fentress (Asbestos)

body:
On 1/31/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I think it is better to link to their homepage on the web -- if they
> want people writing to them by e-mail or any other methods, they will
> post that information themselves. People who want that sort of
> information will be able to find it without Wikipedia's help. If they
> can't find it without Wikipedia's help, it probably isn't something
> that belongs on Wikipedia in the first place (that is, it probably
> isn't meant to be accessible).
>
> FF

Very good point, I think this is the exact solution.

As for replacing the '@' in an email address with the word "at", this does
basically nothing. Spammer's spiders aren't so stupid that they don't know
that everybody has been doing this for many years, and they simply delete
white space and replace at's and dot's with the relevant characters.

Sam

--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Here's an interesting one

body:
"grm_wnr" <grmwnr at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:43DEE795.7070101 at gmail.com...
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>  DRV is only particularly useful for retrieving deleted stuff since you
>> can't make an AfD nomination for an article that doesn't exist.
>
> Question: Why not? If DRV is so poisonous, why not make it so that someone
> unhappy with a deleted article just has to convince one of the ~800 admins
> to give the matter the benefit of the doubt and undelete, then list on AFD
> again.

Because then the admin who did that would receive a sh*tst*rm of complaint
about "going against process", be listed for "de-adminning", have screeds of
hate written about them on [[WP:AN/I]]...and might even be blocked for
[[WP:POINT]] and multitudinous other "sins"...whilst the offending article
was torn down and the earth under it salted and radiated to prevent anything
like it ever sullying the face of the Wikipedia again.

Need I go on?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Error while imporing wikipedia en dump file

body:
You should subscribe to wikitech-l (the Wikipedia technical issues
mailing list) for this sort of issue - I've forwarded this there.

- d.

On 31/01/06, Vijay <vijaykillu at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> I have just downloaded the wikipedia en dump and am trying to cofigure
> wikipedia on my local server. I have mysql and php on windows 2003 server. I
> installed mediawiki and have extracted the wikipedia en dump file which gave
> me an xml file (4 GB).
>
> When I tried importing the dump to mysql using importDump.php, the process
> started fine. But when the record count reached 18600, the process stopped
> with the following error. I wonder what could be the problem? Any help in
> this regard is highly appreciated.
>
> By the way, the wikipedia dump file is the current version and not the
> complete one. The zip file is around 900 MB in size.
>
> Here are the last few lines from the output
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 18400 (23.2640009615 pages/sec 23.2614722657 revs/sec)
> 18500 (23.2941692512 pages/sec 23.2916509627 revs/sec)
> 18600 (23.3273356919 pages/sec 23.3248273763 revs/sec)
> Content-type: text/html
> X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
>
> XML import parse failure at line 1672638, col 154 (byte 145084928; ""): no
> eleme
> nt found
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Thanks,
> Az
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 1/30/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, the one he is talking about, who tried to use DRV to overrule a
> no-consensus AFD because it was more likely to get the result he wanted.
> This is a picture-perfect example of how process should NOT be (ab)used.

Currently it stands as follows:

A second AfD was started by me on "List of state-named avenues in Washington".

The first AfD had been closed with a no consensus keep, and the user
was trying to get that overturned in DRV.  I believed that it would be
more appropriate to rerun the AfD and see what we got.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_state-named_Avenues_in_Washington%2C_D.C._%28second_nomination%29

This was closed by someone who falsely claimed that my nomination was
made "in bad faith" (apparently because I recommended a keep result,
although as a historical matter this is quite common in such reruns).

There is another case currently going through where an undeleted
article has been edited to add two paragraphs and an external
reference. Someone involved in Deletion review then protected the
article and slapped a template over the top, apparently in an attempt
to stop the editor improving the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Alexander_%28cartoonist%29

I have unprotected the article and removed the template.

I am used to this kind of illogic when dealing with those who frequent
Deletion review, but I do recognise that this is very, very bizarre
behavior.   Attempts to prevent a second run of a deletion nomination
because the first one is still being investigated, and attempts to
prevent the improvement of an article because its earlier speedy
deletion is under investigation.  In both of these cases it seems to
me that a process has been used to make it unreasonably difficult for
potentially useful content to be retained and improved in the
encyclopedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/31/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> YOU are free to stop bothering WIkipedia's collaborative work if you
> think it amounts to a poor dog suffering a terminal illness in great
> pain. ME are free to continue adding my improvements to the greatest
> knowledge base in history if only you would stop trying to kill the
> dog.

Ouch, I expressed myself really badly. My analogy was meant for an
invidual bad article - do we hang onto it hoping that it will get
better (knowing that there is a shortage of willing manpower to do
this sort of thing), or do we just kill/bury/hide the article?

Wikipedia is great - it just has a rather long "tail" (appropriate for
the analogy...) of bad/short articles. Working out what to do with
them all is the problem...

Steve


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Being able to see an article whose undeletion is being
	actively discussed

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> The AfD was prematurely *closed*, I meant to say.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Gazeebow_Unit_%28second_nomination%29
>
And the entry on it at DRV is loaded up with dozens of "Keep deleted,
AfD valid" votes. If the first AfD with its grand total of three deletes
(two with explanations simply "per nom") and one keep is valid, what
about the second AfD with two keeps and two deletes (one of which argues
to delete solely on the basis that its undeletion was out of process)?
Why isn't _that_ AfD valid? This sort of rules-lawyering is getting insane.

Is this "Gazeebow Unit" thing a good article to have on Wikipedia or
not? That's ultimately the only important question here. All this
digging in of heels over pointless protocol and procedure is getting in
the way of trying to discuss that.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anyway, the vastness of crap on Wikipedia

In order to test the truth of the above assertion, I pressed "random
article" ten times and wrote about what I saw.

The results were as I expected.  Out of ten articles, not one that I
would be completely happy about deleting.  They could all use
improvement, some more than others.  I contend that the phrase "the
vastness of crap on Wikipedia" is extremely misleading.  We have a
quality product and the world is beating a path to our door to sample
it.  Enough breastbeating! We should be proud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK

Rather nice article about a rapid transit system in Queens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claycomo%2C_Missouri

Article about a small village in Missouri.  Extensive use of census information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Skorton

Biography of the President of the University of Iowa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatayu

Disambiguation page.  Leads to two good short articles and one
single-sentence stub.  I added an appropriate stub template to the
stub.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/544

A historical link page about the year 544 AD. Sadly it is lacking in
any information about what was happening outside Europe and the
Northern Mediterranean area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_Pattern

A well written and compendiuous article about a feature of the
Japanese cartoon series: Transformers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narail_District

A stub about a district of Bangladesh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Clemens

A brief biographical article about a professional basketball player
who retired in 1976.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Naples

It does what it says on the tin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksmusik

An article about a German folk music form.


body:
On 1/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> >I've decided to act on this, and have placed the following notice on the page:
>
>
> I should note that I've had a notice on my user page that I'll make
> the text of a deleted article available for a while now, and I've had
> zero requests.
>

Alas, many people still go to deletion review, where they are usually
subject to all kinds of accusations of bad faith and procedural
quibbles.  I've seen several cases in which I've told the person
frankly that it would have been better to bring a contested speedy to
me, and I'd just undelete and list on AfD where at least there would
be less procedural nonsense.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony DiPierro
>
> If you're still talking about [[List of state-named Avenues
> in Washington, D.C.]], it's not of an encyclopedic nature.

Why not? Encyclopaedias have lists and indices. This one's thematic.

Speaking from experience, I probably could have used this a year back, when
I wandered down the wrong state avenue from [[Dupont Circle]] in search of
the Oz Embassy, and wondered why we seemed to be sharing space with a pizza
restaurant. A positive but unusual move IMHO, but on inquiry not correct,
and I retraced my frozen steps.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett

> [originally sent yesterday but didn't seem to get through the
> moderator, perhaps due to my mail server?]
>
> Hi all,
>   This is the deletion paradox as I see it:
>
> 1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large
> number of them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better.
> 2) Deleting articles causes unhappiness and tension. The more
> articles we delete, the more unhappiness and tension.
>
> Anyone have a solution?

Maybe there *isn't* a solution. There are many paradoxes and inconsistencies
in human life. People get hot under the collar about illegal drugs when
legal drugs are a far greater health hazard, for instance. Jails don't
reduce crime, judging by the growing number of inmates.

Some things are apparently incapable of a neat solution.

The way I see it is that in an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, one where
WP:AGF applies, editors will happily create articles that document their own
peculiar interests and fetishes, because these things are useful and
interesting to them and people like them. Other editors will see these
articles as crap.

A lot of these minority interest things ARE crap. But how does the average
Wikipedian discern the difference when they know very little about the
subject?

To my mind, deleting articles isn't the real problem. Editors, especially
admins, who assume bad faith and abuse others are the problem.

Peter (Skyring)


body:
I've also relisted an article on Gazeebow Unit, a Newfoundland rap
group.  The article was deleted in a previous nomination on a very low
vote, despite the fact that the sole delete voter gave ample evidence
of national notability.

Alas, I fully expect that someone will try to pull this renomination
on grounds of bad faith.  Nothing could be further from the truth.


body:
On 1/31/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've also relisted an article on Gazeebow Unit, a Newfoundland rap
> group.  The article was deleted in a previous nomination on a very low
> vote, despite the fact that the sole delete voter gave ample evidence
> of national notability.

I meant, of course, the sole "keep" voter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Gazeebow_Unit_%28second_nomination%29


subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of MacGyverMagic/Mgm

> > Any suggestions for improved methodology? It might be nice
> to harness
> > the wikipedia population to collect some more general
> article quality
> > metrics...
> >
> > Steve
>
>
> I think we can have quite a simply solution to this. Do the
> same as we did to the images. Stuff which isn't cited within
> a week, can be speedy deleted like we do with images now.
> Just make sure it only applies to articles created after date X.

That sounds useful. I once created an article, saved it as one or two
sentences and went googling for a source and when I came back to the
article, it had, like Mr Wales' bandaid, been ripped off.

May I suggest that if a new article is not sourced within a day, then a
warning template be placed on it, and if nothing is forthcoming six days
later, then delete it.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Password security

body:
On 1/30/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense,
> > there's very little point in limiting passwords of the non-privileged accounts.
>
> At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which
> would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather
> risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous
> sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).

Take your list of users with blank passwords. Import into database.
Join with the groups table to turn it into sysops.. use that as a
subselect in an update query to blank the password hash field on those
users. Done.

I'd just write the statement off the top of my head, but I'm not used
to dealing with those field. :)


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
>> Maybe at [[WP:NOT]]. That page definitely needs a "Wikipedia is not a
>> game of Nomic", if it doesn't already have one.
>
> Elian has some great old wikipedia quotes on her userpage in German:
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Elian#Zitate_zu_Wikipedia
>
> One of them is...
>
> "The big secret of course is that Wikipedia is not really about an
> encyclopedia, it's just a big game of nomic. ;-) --JimboWales"
>
> That was just a joke in irc, of course, some years ago.

I've always suspected Wikipedia wasn't actually an encyclopedia, but
then again, I just read Asimov's "Foundation".

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

body:
On 1/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This compares reasonably well with the results of my survey
> > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100): about
> > 15% of all articles are sourced.  My methodology was a little
> > different, as I counted anything in a "references" section as
> > a reference, while inline links were collectively counted as
> > one reference.
> >
> > I'm still working on a survey of biography articles, but
> > preliminary results are that slightly fewer biographies are
> > sourced, but ones that are sourced tend to have more sources.
>
> Nice! Are you interested in expanding it a bit, perhaps to include
> grades in various categories like adherence to MoS, PoV etc? It would be
> very interesting to get a few people together and regularly take samples
> of 1000 or so articles, to see whether things are getting better, worse
> etc.

Nice is right; I love this discussion.  We should start a proper
article improvement project, run spot checks like this every few
weeks, highlight 'good articles' and not just FAs, have regular ref
and stub fixing contests...

SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Block of a Notable Wikipedian

body:
"Peter Mackay" <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote
in message
news:20060130194249.DRNN10380.omta04sl.mx.bigpond.com at skyringstudy...
[snip]
> I know that we can't make people be nice, but I can't help feeling that if
> the culture changed a bit there would be positive feedback all along the
> line. Not a vicious circle, but I dunno, some happier name.

Opposite of "vicious circle" == "virtuous circle" IIRC

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On 1/31/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> There's no reason to *delete* a 2-sentence unverified stub, merely to
> make clear to our readers that it is in fact a 2-sentence unverified
> stub, and so ought to be read accordingly.  Of course, an intelligent
> reader already ought to be able to recognize that for themselves, but we
> can help the rest along.
>
> -Mark

The whole point being that if it remains unverifiable for other editors that
particular stub will never be expanded, which basically robs the stub of its
only function.

Mgm


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Being able to see an article whose undeletion is
	beingactively discussed

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:f1c3529e0601310404pb3284e7o1c0b02a2a172008f at mail.gmail.com...
> Does bad faith matter for deleting or keeping an article? I mean,
> regardless of what awful motives someone has, at the end of the day
> we should just delete articles we don't want, and keep articles we do,
> right?
> This is my naive, un-AfD-contaminated optimism here :)

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Process_is_Important

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Committees: open meeting, February 1

body:
Due to complaints over the meeting time, the planned time of 21:00 on
Wednesday is postponed.

Please sign up at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#Open_meeting.2C_February_2006
for the times you are available so a more appropriate time can be
arranged.

Angela.


from_name: Tom Steinberg

body:
Hello All,

We've been mulling dumping all the Northern Ireland Assembly member's
email addresses onto the relevent page on wikipedia, and then writing
a scraper script to keep our own WriteToThem systems up to date.

This raises a policy question:

Is it permissable to put email addresses on wikipedia, if they're
already public?

We've noticed that they're *not* featured for most MPs.

many thanks,

Tom

--
Director, mySociety
07811 082158
www.HearFromYourMP.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 31/01/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>> A lot of people have just lost their account because of this,
>> and it wasn't even announced that it was coming.
>> This part of the problem could be reduced if the change was
>> announced in advance.
>
> It strikes me that announcing in advance "Hey, guys, a number of
> accounts INCLUDING n SYSOPS have blank passwords and can easily be
> taken over..", then not fixing it for a while, is a recipe for
> disaster.

Bingo.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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