body:
On 3/31/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> There is no upper limit to the number of admins Wikipedia needs - even
> now with 800 admins there is a backlog on WP:COPYVIO and WP:PROD which
> needs work. There will always be vandals who could be blocked quicker,
> nonsense pages (created by the aforementioned vandals) which need
> deleting. The more admins we have, the quicker these things get done,
> and therefore the smoother Wikipedia works.

Then would it make sense to relax some of the requirements for future
admins, or at least ask voters to consider relaxing them? Is adminship
really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Analysis of Request for Adminship

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>>sock.  The six months or so between the two events served not only to
>>familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some
>>confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I
>>got my admin buttons.
>
> The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin
> rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be  quickly
> desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it).
> Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting
> ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly,
> inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights?
> Sounds fishy to me.

Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole.  It's
more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin
povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for
ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best
thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them
carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.

That said, even vandalism _is_ a concern, if an unlikely one.  Besides
the obvious opportunities, like replacing MediaWiki messages with
genitalia, a malicious admin could really have a field day with the
ability to edit the sitewide javascript files.  Unfortunately that does
make adminship a big deal in some ways.

(Ideas on how to sneak in some malicious javascript without getting
immediately noticed snipped per [[WP:BEANS]].)

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l]Redémarrage du Wikiquote Francophone / French Wikiquote Relaunch

body:
Well, then the best thing to do would be to go to your jawq
contributions... and source them !

Best,

JBS

Le 31 mars 06 ? 09:31, Aphaia a ?crit :

> C'est un jour triste !
> Mais votre mot, Monsieur, m'a donn? l'espoir; il sera relanc?.
>
> Back to our normal mode,
> Mon chou, you say it should have been closed and erased as whoe
> because of too many copyvio. But please, Soufron or any other FR WQ
> editors, can you give me a list of articles which are really copyvio?
> Because I imported some stuffs from frwq to ja, and now I'm afraid if
> those pages on ja should be deleted also. (Most of them are classical
> authors due to jawq submission policy; no author alive or died 50+
> years before must not have their pages on JA WQ.)
>
> Pour vos collaborations a propos,
> *bisous*
>
> Aph
>
> On 3/30/06, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Bonjour,
>>
>> Apr?s avoir expertis? l'?tat des donn?es contenues dans le site
>> fr.wikiquote, la fondation Wikimedia consid?re que le mat?riel
>> h?berg? dans la base
>> du site fr.wikiquote ne pr?sente pas les garanties minimales de
>> s?ret? juridique n?cessaires ? la
>> p?rennit? du projet. Le site va donc ?tre enti?rement repris pour
>> ?tre effac? et relanc?. Une politique
>> plus exigeante de tra?abilit? des citations mises en ligne sera
>> instaur?e sur la version II de
>> fr.wikiquote. Cette d?cision a ?t? prise dans l'int?r?t de l'ensemble
>> des projets mis en oeuvre par la
>> fondation Wikimedia.
>>
>> --English Translation --
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
>> Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
>> fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
>> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
>> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched. A
>> policy requiring greater traceability of quotations will be put in
>> place on fr.wikiquote version II. This action has been taken for the
>> benefit of all Wikimedia Foundation projects.
>> Translations can be made into other languages after the announcement
>> for the benefit of Wikiquotes in other languages that may be
>> interested. Any such translations should if possible work from the
>> original French text, this is a French announcement.
>>
>> ----
>>
>> Jean-Baptiste Soufron
>> wikimedia foundation
>> chief legal officer
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
> --
> Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
> email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
cersa-cnrs paris 2
+33 (0)6 17 96 24 57
http://soufron.typhon.net


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Philosophical question re sources

body:
On 3/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Haven't forgotten, but I'm singing Beethoven's Missa Solemnis tomorrow
> night, and we are hosting a choir over from Germany to sing with us,
> so I'm a bit busy and will be until Monday.
>
> I'm not welshing, honest :-)

Heh, no worries. If this works out we'll have to write it up as a
policy document.

Q: What to do when an article stresses you out?
A: Find someone else in the same boat. Swap. Don't even look at "your"
article for a week.

We could revolutionise Wikipedia!

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> All admins learn on the job.  It's not skill at doing the technical
> duties of an admin that matters, it's competence in using
> administrative powers responsibly that is being selected for.    RfA
> has proven to be relatively poor at discriminating against people who
> should not be admins, because the criteria that most people are
> applying when they vote are not really very good proxies for "will not
> abuse administrative privilege" and in some cases are actually proxies
> for "will abuse administrative privilege".

Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour
of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled
conflict" well. The trouble is then that those admins will obviously
want to continue editing the same types of articles, only they have
"admin" attached to their name now, and aren't treated or perceived
the same way.

Speaking for myself, I treat an "admin" differently when he has a
difference of opinion on content on a certain page. Perhaps we need a
non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that
don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?

> contest, as it is today.  But the best solutions to accomplish that
> all involve creating special "administrator selection committees" or
> similar such bodies, which will be roundly decried as anti-democratic
> and cabalistic by people who are more interested in Wikipedia as an
> social experiment.  And while this latter group is smaller than the

Would it be possible to make such a body purely an advisory panel? Ie,
3 people review a user, and present their findings to the community,
who then votes? Is that feasible for the volume of RfAs?

> group of people who are interested in Wikipedia as an encyclopedia,
> this smaller group is disproportionately represented amongst those who
> participate in community processes, thereby skewing "consensus" toward
> the "social experiment" point of view.

The "social experiement" type users are the most likely to react
violently against a "cabal", right? Whereas the "get the encyclopaedia
written" ones are theoretically more like to support such fascism.
Does that help at all as a starting point?

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation.  For example,
> edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is
> desirable for admins in general.  People who assume that others will
> know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not
> make very good admins.

Sure, but the difference between 90% and 100% does not seem significant to me.

> Similarly, someone whose only edits are to user pages and templates is
> obviously not likely to be a viable admin candidate.  Whereas someone
> who's only been around for a month is simply a wild card: we know
> they're sensible now, but will they continue to act sensibly when they
> get caught in an edit war, or someone insults their mother, or they go
> off their meds?  Waiting three, or six, or twelve months improves the odds.

I'm not sure that your correlation there should be against time,
rather than against edits (or better, articles edited). That is,
waiting for 3000 edits improves odds over 1000 odds. But 3000 odds
over a year rather than over 3 months does not seem to improve the
odds that they have really demonstrated ability to avoid edit wars,
does it?

> Of course, voting solely on the basis of numeric metrics like edit
> counts and account age is not only silly, but also easily gamed.

Yes. Very. 150 edits with summaries is not difficult to achieve, and
looks impressive. It's also not terribly useful. And who is most
likely to game the system? Someone who would really make a good admin?

> Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out
> the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses
> different criteria tends to balance things out.

Except in my brief glance I saw a lot of "as per everyone else".

> Now there's a suggestion I would certainly support, if we could only
> figure out who this poor fellow would be.  For non-selfnoms we might
> consider putting the obligation to provide detailed information about
> the nominee on the nominator; while not impartial, they are at least
> likely to be somewhat less biased than the nominee.

Random selection? Any admin that the would be admin can find to do the
job? It would be an interesting step in the process - first you have
to pass muster by an existing admin. It would also avoid people (like
me) getting blown up by making a newbie mistake in the application
process.

In case anyone misreads this, I'm suggesting that you have to find one
admin to sponsor your application by reviewing your entire history.
Not that one admin could singlehandedly block your application :)

> Of course, the way it currently works is that people provide reasons for
> their votes, and others may comment on them.  While this system is far
> from perfect, and tends to weight memorable isolated incidents over
> long-term trends, it still generally results in at least some amount of
> public background review being done.

Yeah, I saw one poor chap getting torn to shreds for a single instance
of removing a comment that apparently had nothing to do with him from
his talk page a long time ago.

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> don't intend to do these things why do you need the tools?  An admin
> has no more or less status in the community than any other editor in
> good standing.  There are many editors who do nothing but create good

Oh, if that were true.

Steve


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Francis Tyers

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Language versions' popularity vs. number
	of	articles (vs. number of speakers)

body:
I'd definately like to see a standard flier. I'm sure people could
arrange translations. Perhaps even just a paragraph or so and then have
many many translations on one flier :)

Fran

On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 18:20 -0500, Patrick Hall wrote:
> On 3/30/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > One way is posting flyers at universities and other intellectual
> > "hotspots". The Icelandic Wikipedia had printable fliers a while back
> > for people to post around your school, they were neat, and could
> > probably very easily be adapted to any other language. (sort of like,
> > "Come help us build the first free online encyclopedia in Icelandic"
> > or something like that).
>
> Is this flyer still available online somewhere? I think that's a great
> idea, I'd like to take a look at it.
>
> I've been thinking about doing something similar in my area, which is
> pretty multilingual. I know several people offhand who could probably
> be persuaded to translate the flier, assuming it's a short document.
>
> Plenty of places to post them, as well -- most coffee places have
> community bulletin boards, so do libraries.
>
> Pat
> --
> ?6u?sn?? s? ?po??un
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
> > [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
>
> Heh, nup. Who, apart from admins, does?
>
> Steve

Some of our vandles (or they know a workaround). User:Ashibaka knew
about it before they became an admin.

Of course there are probably admins who don't know about that page
either (mediawiki is the cabal).

--
geni


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [Foundation-l] Hold on a moment, please.

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>> This struck me as unnecessarily confrontational.
>
> The stream of abuse from those who consider themselves the guardians
> of Meta strikes me as unnecessarily confrontational, and I'm really
> not happy about it. When one of those is a Foundation board member,
> I'm even less happy about it.

Can you stop breaking the subject lines? I've asked you this many times.
  If your email client doesn't support it, please upgrade to one which
does, such as Thunderbird. It is really inconvenient for the rest of us.

Thanks,
Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

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


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>>Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole.  It's
>>more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin
>>povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for
>>ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best
>>thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them
>>carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
>
> And we are going to detect such users by ensuring we only select
> admins who use edit summaries 95% of the time and have made at least
> 1500 distinct edits in the minimum 6 months they have had an account
> at en?

Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation.  For example,
edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is
desirable for admins in general.  People who assume that others will
know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not
make very good admins.

Similarly, someone whose only edits are to user pages and templates is
obviously not likely to be a viable admin candidate.  Whereas someone
who's only been around for a month is simply a wild card: we know
they're sensible now, but will they continue to act sensibly when they
get caught in an edit war, or someone insults their mother, or they go
off their meds?  Waiting three, or six, or twelve months improves the odds.

Of course, voting solely on the basis of numeric metrics like edit
counts and account age is not only silly, but also easily gamed.
Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out
the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses
different criteria tends to balance things out.

> I think I'd rather that each RfA required a neutral person to review
> the person's entire edit history, noting the number of edit wars,
> whether edit summaries were accurate, their apparent stance on
> controversial topics like userboxes etc, then publishing those facts
> for everyone to decide on. Rather than (incorrectly) assuming that
> each person voting does such a review for themselves.

Now there's a suggestion I would certainly support, if we could only
figure out who this poor fellow would be.  For non-selfnoms we might
consider putting the obligation to provide detailed information about
the nominee on the nominator; while not impartial, they are at least
likely to be somewhat less biased than the nominee.

Of course, the way it currently works is that people provide reasons for
their votes, and others may comment on them.  While this system is far
from perfect, and tends to weight memorable isolated incidents over
long-term trends, it still generally results in at least some amount of
public background review being done.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Gianluigi Gamba

subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons

body:
> There is a proposal on meta : InstantCommons
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/InstantCommons
>
> I would be happy if some of you could have a look at it (if not at the
> technical details, at least to the general concept - it will not take
> you much time) and give a feedback about it (here or on meta or on irc).

At a very first sight (from a non-technically-skilled user), it's a project
worth being developed.

Making the information we're collecting more easily and widely available to
everyone is coherent with the grounds of the Wiki projects (otherwise, why
and whom should we collect and categorise information for? ;o)

It also provides people willing to re-use Commons content with another way
to do it, already complying with copyright and autorization issues.

My two (euro)cents.
Bye.
G. (aka Paginazero)


subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons


from_name: David Alexander Russell

body:
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The skills can indeed be 'learned on the job', but we need to find out
if people have the right ATTITUDE for adminship ie weed out potential
'screw process' (ie 'I will act outside my authority and there's nothing
you can do about it') types

Cynical

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/31/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> There is no upper limit to the number of admins Wikipedia needs - even
>> now with 800 admins there is a backlog on WP:COPYVIO and WP:PROD which
>> needs work. There will always be vandals who could be blocked quicker,
>> nonsense pages (created by the aforementioned vandals) which need
>> deleting. The more admins we have, the quicker these things get done,
>> and therefore the smoother Wikipedia works.
>
> Then would it make sense to relax some of the requirements for future
> admins, or at least ask voters to consider relaxing them? Is adminship
> really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

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body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour
> of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled
> conflict" well. The trouble is then that those admins will obviously
> want to continue editing the same types of articles, only they have
> "admin" attached to their name now, and aren't treated or perceived
> the same way.
>
> Speaking for myself, I treat an "admin" differently when he has a
> difference of opinion on content on a certain page. Perhaps we need a
> non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that
> don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?
>

There are admin tasks beside vandal figting.

> Would it be possible to make such a body purely an advisory panel? Ie,
> 3 people review a user, and present their findings to the community,
> who then votes? Is that feasible for the volume of RfAs?
>

No.

> The "social experiement" type users are the most likely to react
> violently against a "cabal", right? Whereas the "get the encyclopaedia
> written" ones are theoretically more like to support such fascism.
> Does that help at all as a starting point?
>
> Steve

Not really the pure "get the encyclopaedia written" group never get
involved in wikipolitics. Every other group tries to claim it as a
title which can lead to some amuseing sitations.

The anti-"cabal" bunch are very divirse. Losers in the game of
wikipedia politics who are looking for people to blame. People with
trust issues. Conservatives who don't want the structures to change.
Idealists. People who have seen too many power mad admins on other
parts of the internet. People who geniunly belive that is the best way
to give power to the people who get the encyclopaedia written.

The pro centeralisation of power seem to consist of Losers in the game
of wikipedia politics who are looking for people to blame. People with
trust issues. Conservatives who don't want the balance of power to
change (ie they want the same longtimer admins in power forever).
People who have seen too many internet communities wrecked by trolls.
People who geniunly belive that is the best way to help the people who
get the encyclopaedia written.

Seems bad huh? It is even more depressing. The only thing worse than
the battle would be either side "winning".

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] [FYI] OLPC mailing list about content

body:
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Adverts for other services are all very well, but sent to the mailing
list they just fill up my inbox with content unrelated to the subject of
the mailing list (ie the English Wikipedia). Grr.

Cynical

Mathias Schindler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> you will find a newly created mailing list about the OLPC programme at
> http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/content which is described as
> follows:
>
> Content -- Discussions of OLPC content, both software and booklike.
>
> We expect content to be both pretty conventional ebooks, but also
> educational software to encourage/enable children to construct
> interesting things that will engage them in the learning process.
>
>
> If you go through the archives, you will both find favourable comments
> about wikipedia from Negroponte and if I remember correctly, Jimmy has
> also expressed his support for the OLPC.
>
>
> I am pretty certain that Wikipedia might be one interesting piece of
> content that could be included into the OLPC. While there are technical
> issues (for example for some languages due to space problems), all the
> other debates about child-safe-correct-npov-aspects also apply.
>
> I would love to see some Wikipedians, Wikibookians, etc. who are
> interested in joining this list if they want to participate in this project.
>
> There are more mailinglists at
> http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo which might also be
> interesting for other aspects, such as technical stuff or
> portugese/brasilian related things.
>
> Greetings,
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

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from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
Hi,

you will find a newly created mailing list about the OLPC programme at
http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/content which is described as
follows:

Content -- Discussions of OLPC content, both software and booklike.

We expect content to be both pretty conventional ebooks, but also
educational software to encourage/enable children to construct
interesting things that will engage them in the learning process.

If you go through the archives, you will both find favourable comments
about wikipedia from Negroponte and if I remember correctly, Jimmy has
also expressed his support for the OLPC.

I am pretty certain that Wikipedia might be one interesting piece of
content that could be included into the OLPC. While there are technical
issues (for example for some languages due to space problems), all the
other debates about child-safe-correct-npov-aspects also apply.

I would love to see some Wikipedians, Wikibookians, etc. who are
interested in joining this list if they want to participate in this project.

There are more mailinglists at
http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo which might also be
interesting for other aspects, such as technical stuff or
portugese/brasilian related things.

Greetings,
Mathias


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>>On 30 Mar 2006, at 17:43, Angela wrote:
>>
>>
>>>(I'm copying this to wikien-l since the issue of whether the English
>>>Wikipedia needs its own "meta" is probably better discussed there. See
>>><http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-March/
>>>thread.html>
>>>for previous mails.)
>>
>>Until we have single sign in, meta is a minority interest.
>>
>>Move things to en.wikipedia.org/Meta: if its about en.
>>
>
>
> No if it is pure En it should probably be in the wikipedia namespace.
>

Why?

--
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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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTTP interaction with MW?

body:
On Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 11:54:35AM -0800, Rich Morin wrote:
> I'm looking into writing an script to (login and) edit MW page
> content, via HTTP.  Is there a sample script that anyone can
> recommend?  Alternatively, is there any documentation on how MW
> handles login sessions (eg, what cookies it sets), etc?

Have you looked at the pywikipediabot library for python?

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: flogan1 at swarthmore.edu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project proposal

body:
Hello list! I'm new to the list, so perhaps a short intro is in order. My
name is Finlay and I am known to WP as Cantara. I've been a Wikipedian since
sometime in 2004, but have only become really active in the last few months.
I joined the list at the suggestion of CComMack, who thought that an idea I
had (see below) might want input from people knowledgeably about policy and
so forth.

My idea is this. We all know that Wikipedia is great and all, repository of
the world's information, &c. However, there are people who disagree, who
think that Wikipedia is inaccurate because it is written by people who are
not experts and because it lacks oversight (or whatever it is they're saying
now). When considering these two things together, I realized that there is a
kind of information that Wikipedia seriously lacks, and that is
bibliographies. If you've written a research paper lately (I'm writing two at
the moment, myself) you know that the list of books that the author has read
is just as valuable as whatever the book itself is about. However,
Wikipedians don't really make an effort to include "further reading" as part
of the entry, beyond what they list as citations.

I wanted to start a project to focus on getting that store of information
into Wikipedia, and once I get around to it I'll list it on Proposed
Projects. However, as mentioned about, a fellow editor suggested that a
project like this might have repurcussions in other areas (and I hope he
responds to explain what they were - something about the manual of style?).

Discuss, then, and if you'd like to help, I'll have information up somewhere
on my userpage fairly soon.

Yours,
Cantara


body:
On 3/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:%D0%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%92%D0%B5_%D0%94._%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:.:Ajvol:.#Moscow_map
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:PanBK#Great_pics.21
>
> Errrr, I did not see exactly why these links were here.
>

People disscussion interlang issues (with ru.wikipedia).

> Well... possibly. But this also happens in the other languages. Again,

> An example of something it would be only mildly nice to discuss only on
> en would be the creation of a new project, such as wikiversity. But even
> if discussion occurs on en, what is important is that the decision takes
> place on a neutral ground. The decision over a new project should not be
> done on en. The decision for a new feature should not be done on en.
> Those must take place on meta or on a general list. And unless I am
> wrong, this is what is happening.
>

En is the ideal place to discuss many new features since we have the
highest editing load and most sophistacted vandles.

> And *this* is to be highly regretted.
> Who takes care of Wikimedia funding ?

Dunno I think that was part of the issue. The new finace comitte (or
whatever it was called) has a seriously tough job ahead of it.

> English editors ? No.

En readers and de local branch as responcible for provideing the vast
majority of the funding.

> Board members ? Much more indeed.
> I presume the debate on funding certainly was interesting. But did it
> have any outcome ?

Yeah the financial model was a complete joke and the board considers
donator fatigue to be a non issue. Oh an meta/The board was incaperble
of rapidly translating fundraiseing notices.

>Was any new type of funding implemented after that
> debate ? How much was brought in the purse after that discussion ?
>

None. The pro board people won.

> Discussion on the matter certainly can take place on en, but it would be
> wise either to point out this debate to those practically involved in
> financing the project, OR (even better) to make those a report with the
> best ideas. A debate which bring nothing in the end is intellectually
> fruitful. But it also should bring an outcome.
>

I found what is probably a better option for cafepress for wikipedia
mechendise. In fact I belive submitted the info to the suggestion page
on meta. No responce.

> For example, en has often talked about a paper version. But those
> currently *making* a paper version are the germans.

Last I heard that project was on hold/abandoned which would push
Wikijunior back into poll position.

> I do not mean to say there are not good discussions on en on many topics
> Geni, but 1) these debates must offer practical outcome and 2) outcome
> is more likely if people from several projects and several languages are
> working on it together.
>
> Ant

Which is why en wikipedia will en up takeing over if meta doesn't get
it's act together. We've got the people from multiple
progects/languages with got plently of places to disscuss stuff. The
only barrier left is the cry of no no this must be done on meta. If
meta continues to drag it's feet that barrier will cease to exist
--
geni


from_name: Anthere

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>>If the locals are causeing problems just speed up the process of
>>>shifting most of the interproject stuff over to en where a lot of the
>>>interproject comunication takes place anyway.
>>>
>>>
>>>--
>>>geni
>>
>>A lot of the interproject communication is taking place on en wikipedia
>>rather than meta ?
>>
>>Can you show me some examples please ?
>>
>>Ant

Hello

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:%D0%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%92%D0%B5_%D0%94._%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:.:Ajvol:.#Moscow_map
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:PanBK#Great_pics.21

Errrr, I did not see exactly why these links were here.

> The whole moldovan langauge thing spilled over onto en.wikipedia.

Well, it spilled in many places... Well, in this case, what matters is
that the current mo and ro editors find an agreement all of them will be
happy with. It does not really matter where it took place. Whether on
meta, or on wikipedia-l or on en, what matters is that those concerned
by the situation agree with the final decision. If some editors on en
find a solution, so much the better...

> We've traced vandles over multiple languages (although fortunetly most
> of them stay en based).

Well... possibly. But this also happens in the other languages. Again,
it does not matter as long as those concerned by the vandalism are happy
with the outcome. This example is again an example of something
impacting only one language or one project. So, it does not matter where
the discussion takes place as long as anyone knows where it take place.

An example of something it would be only mildly nice to discuss only on
en would be the creation of a new project, such as wikiversity. But even
if discussion occurs on en, what is important is that the decision takes
place on a neutral ground. The decision over a new project should not be
done on en. The decision for a new feature should not be done on en.
Those must take place on meta or on a general list. And unless I am
wrong, this is what is happening.

> Things that will effect multiple projects tend to have discusion based
> on en.wikipedia (to be expected since en.wikipedia has the largest
> consitancy
>
> The one solid debate on wikimedia funding I've seen was on
> en.wikipedia (the fincial models presented were amusing)

And *this* is to be highly regretted.
Who takes care of Wikimedia funding ?
English editors ? No.
Board members ? Much more indeed.
I presume the debate on funding certainly was interesting. But did it
have any outcome ? Was any new type of funding implemented after that
debate ? How much was brought in the purse after that discussion ?

Discussion on the matter certainly can take place on en, but it would be
wise either to point out this debate to those practically involved in
financing the project, OR (even better) to make those a report with the
best ideas. A debate which bring nothing in the end is intellectually
fruitful. But it also should bring an outcome.

For example, en has often talked about a paper version. But those
currently *making* a paper version are the germans.

I do not mean to say there are not good discussions on en on many topics
Geni, but 1) these debates must offer practical outcome and 2) outcome
is more likely if people from several projects and several languages are
working on it together.

Ant


body:
On 3/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I don't doubt that a lot of this stuff gets discussed extensively on en.
>
> The big advantage of doing what you suggest is that the results and
> effects could be limited to en:wikipedia.  The other projects would no
> longer be bound by these discussions. :-P
>
> Ec

Since take a rather extream position with regards to project
independance I would have very little problem with this. Board level
stuff (fundraiseing, devside, legal stuff and absolutely nothing else)
could be handled at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

--
geni


body:
On 3/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> > It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
> >
> >certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so
> >it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.
> >
> If you think that the ability to apply range blocks is so important to
> being a good admin, maybe you should try to amend the rules to have that
> included.
>
> Ec

Nah that one is so uncommon that as long as we have one admin who
knows how online  at all times it isn't really an issue. There is a
lot which is useful to know though.

--
geni


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically
> they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football
> referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.

Sorry, we must be editing different sites.  Going into edit wars and reading
the riot act is basic admin stuff.

> I may be forgetting some pertinant situations here, but being well
> versed in getting a point of view across in a content dispute is not
> necessarily a useful skill in adminship. No?

And writing well is useless for an editor?  This is all just so wrong.
Settling tough edit wars can come down to patient drafting of versions.

Charles


body:
On 3/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > geni wrote:
>
> >>The one solid debate on wikimedia funding I've seen was on
> >>en.wikipedia (the fincial models presented were amusing)
>
> ooops, I forgot. Could you give me the link to it please ?
>
> Ant

You know where. It breaks out a bit after you threatened to break the
three revert rule to get your way. Incerdently I see de has dropped
the notice.
--
geni


body:
On 3/31/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
> > [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
>
> Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having
> a clue what that does.
>
> -Matt

I didn't vote for you (ok I didn't vote for anyone for reasons
unrelated to my opions of the candidates).

You need to know about it to understand certian types of vandle
activity and at the end of the autofelleto debate it was quite well
know.

In any case for all you admin watchers out there it appears the
userbox war has flared up again. Will the block on grue trigger a
wheel war? Will wikipedia review finaly be put to bed? Will jimbo
intervean and if so on which side? Has anyone got any idea what this
fight is about anymore?

So ladies and gents get your popcorn ready for the next exciting
epersode of the wikipedia soap opera.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
On 3/31/06, Robert Rapplean <mythobeast at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that'll do it for an introduction.  If this is interesting to you,
> please let me know and I can provide you with more details.

It sounds great, but for widespread acceptance you're going to have to
dumb it down. Avoid words like "conjecture" and "debate". Maybe "idea"
and "discussion" or something :)

Do you have any working prototypes?

Steve


body:
Anthere wrote:
> geni wrote:

>>The one solid debate on wikimedia funding I've seen was on
>>en.wikipedia (the fincial models presented were amusing)

ooops, I forgot. Could you give me the link to it please ?

Ant


body:
On 3/31/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>
> > Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour
> > of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled
> > conflict" well.
>
> Errr ... aren't those exactly the kind of people we are short of?  Few are
> natural diplomats, but part of being an admin is a willingness to intervene
> in tense situations, where there is no personal gain at all in sight.

Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically
they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football
referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.

I may be forgetting some pertinant situations here, but being well
versed in getting a point of view across in a content dispute is not
necessarily a useful skill in adminship. No?

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
> > > [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
> >
> > Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having
> > a clue what that does.
> >
> > -Matt
>
> I'd not heard of it before today.
>
> Kelly

You know you are not helping my case here.
--
geni


list: textbook-l

from_name: martin.mai at split.uni-bamberg.de

subject: [Textbook-l] automated response

body:
Hallo

ich bin bis Samstag bei einer Konferenz in Potsdam.
ich versucht zwar Mails abzurufen aber...
Lese dann sp?testens am Montag.

Viele Gr??e und viel Spa? mit dem Fr?hling

Martin


from_name: Jtkiefer

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>    * if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
>>>
>> And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy
>> breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the
>> current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that
>> either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing
>> to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
>>
>
> Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those
> who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that
> fair enough?
>
> I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to
> the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the
> userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
>
> I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so
> often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about
> something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging
> form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because
> I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot
> of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more
> edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with
> more than 2000.
>
> And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
> because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
> but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
>
> </rant>
>
> Steve
>
Don't blame me, I went up for bureaucratship so that I could actually
interpret RFA's as not being votes but based on consensus where the
jackasses get discounted but the asshole cabal;voted me down 5 times in
a row.  If that doesn't show that Wikipedians and RFA are fucked up in
the head I don't know what it says.

-Jtkiefer


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day David,

> *Ducks for cover* the '3 admins request' you suggested would mean that
> we end up with very few admins left - recent wheelwars have occured
> (where more than 3 admins were involved in each side) where both sides
> would be happy to use this procedure to desysop each other. I do think
> we need to make it easier to desysop 'screw process'/'screw consensus'
> admins, but making it a '3 admins request' would a) Make spurious
> desysoppings far too easy and b) Lead to charges of cabalism - why
> should admins only hold office at the pleasure of OTHER ADMIMS?

0) As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my
    quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.

1) There are not "screw consensus" admins.  There *are* admins who
    disagree with certain wikilawyers about what "consensus" means, but
    then that's hardly their fault.

I think what you *meant* is that we need to make it easier to desysop
people who abuse their privileges or are otherwise bad admins, and I
agree entirely.

Cheers,

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

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subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
On 3/31/06, Robert Rapplean <mythobeast at gmail.com> wrote:
> I couldn't agree with you more.  I've actually gone through many iterations
> of descriptive words for the elements, including changing the structure so
> that a conjecture was actually a question (because some people think it's
> impossible to improve on socratic method).  The current set of words are
> specifically for describing the idea to people who might be able to actually
> implement it, not for describing it to people who might want to use it.
> They most specifically convey the meaning.  For a working version, I expect
> things to be described by people who know how to teach ideas to people, not
> those who know how to implement them.

Perhaps the best idea for the end product would use no words at
all...it would be totally intuitive. I'm having trouble visualising
this in a wiki environment though. Sort of seems like anyone
sophisticated enough to use such a tool is probably capable of arguing
coherently in the first place :) Also, for your "hostile debaters",
they would probably attack the credibility of such a tool. And for the
"casual debaters", perhaps they would just look at it, go "too
complicated", and move on.

> I wish I did.  For the past two years I've had so much on my plate that the
> edges of the plate have been cracking off.  I've started and stalled the
> project several times in the past five years, and I just had to admit that
> I'll never get it done on my own.  However, I continue to have great faith
> in this tool's ability to help people achieve greater harmony, so I continue
> to look around for others who might be able to help.

Pity, a concrete prototype would be great. Personally I find Wiki very
badly suited to the sort of discussion that has to happen at WP. Very
frequently, I find that someone makes a point, and the first person to
respond pretty much monopolises the conversation. If anyone else
attempts to respond to the initial point, they get lost in the flow.

For example, this sort of structure:
Point
:Response1
::SubResponse
::SubSubResponse
...

Now, where does Response2 go? Immediately below "Point", or where the
... are? Perhaps it would be helpful if the age of each response could
be shown (newest stuff highlighted) or something, but as it stands,
Response2 will rarely attract a reply. Similar problems surround
signing, and the lack of a convenient, coherent way of replying
individually to points made by a single person. Once a third person
joins in, it becomes an unmanageable mess.

By contrast, email allows the focus of the conversation to be
constantly redefined. Each email, by quoting selectively, draws the
reader's attention to a single part of the dialogue. However email
lacks permanence - all the replies that will ever be made to an email
will be made within a week or so. Whereas it's not uncommon to see
replies on wiki made a year or more after the original post, with the
presumption that some time later someone else will take up the
original viewpoint.

Ok, enough rambling, this is the tech list after all. :)

Steve


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
> > [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
>
> Heh, nup. Who, apart from admins, does?
>
> Steve

I do, but that's because I have no life :D

--Oskar


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>>Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation.  For example,
>>edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is
>>desirable for admins in general.  People who assume that others will
>>know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not
>>make very good admins.
>
> Sure, but the difference between 90% and 100% does not seem significant to me.

Agreed, definitely.

> I'm not sure that your correlation there should be against time,
> rather than against edits (or better, articles edited). That is,
> waiting for 3000 edits improves odds over 1000 odds. But 3000 odds
> over a year rather than over 3 months does not seem to improve the
> odds that they have really demonstrated ability to avoid edit wars,
> does it?

There's probably correlation against both, but I'd personally consider
time more important than edit count.  Of course, that's time as an
active contributor -- an abnormally low edit count may suggest long
periods of nonparticipation, which should be discounted.  Those edit
frequency graphs are somewhat more useful here than just the totals,
though nothing beats actually looking at the contribution history.

In any case, raw edit counts can be quickly and easily inflated.  In
fact, I could even argue that a low edit frequency _does_ suggest to
some extent the ability to avoid edit wars, simply because edit wars
themselves tend to inflate the edit count.

Also, having been around for a while without getting into trouble means
one has had time to witness all sorts of "Wikipolitics" without getting
dragged into edit wars and such, and also correlates negatively with the
type of highly immediatist attitude that often makes one prone to hasty
decisions, moral panics, edit/wheel wars, etc.

>>Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out
>>the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses
>>different criteria tends to balance things out.
>
> Except in my brief glance I saw a lot of "as per everyone else".

When a nomination is uncontroversial, the first dozen or so voters tend
to say most of what needs to be said.  After that most votes gradually
become "per X above", simply because there's no point in restating what
someone else already said better.

> Random selection? Any admin that the would be admin can find to do the
> job? It would be an interesting step in the process - first you have
> to pass muster by an existing admin. It would also avoid people (like
> me) getting blown up by making a newbie mistake in the application
> process.
>
> In case anyone misreads this, I'm suggesting that you have to find one
> admin to sponsor your application by reviewing your entire history.
> Not that one admin could singlehandedly block your application :)

So you're essentially proposing that candidates should only be nominated
by someone who is already an admin, and that the nominating admin would
be expected to carry out a background check on the nominee.

That sounds like a reasonable proposal to me, for what little my opinion
counts.  It's not as if anyone with the proverbial snowball's chance in
hell of passing RfA couldn't find one _single_ admin to nominate them.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
G'day Steve,

> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>0) As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my
>>>   quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.
>>
>>Process is the method by which the commonity can control admins. If
>>admins wish to step outside that control another more direct method is
>>required.
>
> What is a "screw process" admin anyway? Is it:
> - an admin who does destructive things without respect for consensus
> - an admin who streamlines process to achieve the right result
>
> or something else?

The latter.  Note that, in the case of the former, the problem is not
his attitude to process, but the fact that he's doing destructive things
(I'll ignore the "respect for consensus" thing, because that's a
buzz-phrase).

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikide-l] [FYI] OLPC mailing list about content

body:
Also see my related mail to the SP committee about a recently started
project that aims to bring WP to the OLPC:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/spcommittee-l/2006-March/000062.html

Erik


from_name: Habj

body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy
> breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the
> current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that
> either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing
> to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.

yes. Amen. Ditto.  (In some places it is considered bad form to post
"me too" replies, but sometimes you just need to do it)

/habj


from_name: Lauren Sweat

subject: [WikiEN-l] emailing to "query being blocked"

body:
This evening I saw something that I knew to be inaccurate on a Wikipedia
page (namely on the *Starbucks* page).  I often visit Wikipedia, and enjoy
reading it, but never before had I ever attempted to edit anything.  So I
was really surprised when I clicked on the *edit* button and it send me to a
page informing me that I was blocked.  I would like to find out why my I.P.
address is associated with this event, and I appreciate your efforts in
looking into this.

*General info*:

I do not have an account at this time, so no username.

My I.P. address is *198.151.179.66*
**
Wikipedia says that I was blocked by *Refdoc* for "vandalism," but does not
specify any further (i.e. what it was concerning).

I would be really pleased if this could be sorted out/cleared up,
explained, and I could then create an account with Wikipedia.  I really want
to find out what this "block" is referring to.  Again, thank you for your
time.

-Lauren Sweat


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Language versions' popularity vs.
 number	of	articles (vs. number of speakers)

body:
Francis Tyers schrieb:
> I'd definately like to see a standard flier. I'm sure people could
> arrange translations. Perhaps even just a paragraph or so and then have
> many many translations on one flier :)

The evil version of me would now say (especially in regard to the
current fight on foundation-l): it's on meta, try to find it.

The more gentle version of me says:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Leaflet

greetings,
elian


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l]  Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>>This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an
>>attempt to make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work
>>wiki, rather than a disorganised collection of historical
>>documents with a few working pages camped out in the
>>archaeological rubble.
>>
>>
>
>Can anyone please explain to me what "work" means here?
>
>One of the archaic pages on meta is
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies
>which hasn't really changed much since September 2004. The project
>proposal is dead, nobody works on it.  There are few better
>examples of dead meat on meta.
>
>The current proposal to "overhaul" meta seems to suggest that the
>Wikispecies page could be simply deleted.  Is that correct?
>
>Then next month, someone can come to this new, fresh and
>legacy-free meta to do "work", for example by suggesting a new
>project called Wikispecies.  Since there is no previous mentioning
>of this idea, it must be new.  Brave new world!
>
>If I'm missing something here, perhaps a better explanation
>of the overhaul plans could be needed.
>
>
Absolutely do not delete pages like this!

This is exactly the kind of stuff that needs to be preserved on Meta and
marked perhaps as a historical page, but not removed.  Or else you might
as well simply delete everything on Meta and restart it as a fresh
project like is being done with the French Wikiquote.

Seriously, this is going way too far.  I've said it before and I'll say
it again:  What Meta needs is some way to navigate the content, not a
need to clean out deadwood like you are suggesting here.  Oh, I am sure
that there is random nonsense that was put into Meta by some users that
needs to be deleted, and is mostly a personal soapbox and perhaps
resembles vandalized pages as new user experiments.  Clearly you aren't
talking about cruft like that, are you?

Just because a page hasn't had any edit activity for some period of time
does not by itself justify deletion on any Wikimedia project.  You need
to take into account what links to that content, and how significant it
is to the rest of the project.  The quality of the prose does have an
impact when I'm trying to evaluate pages like this myself... i.e. if it
is a significant essay that has been obviously proofread and worked on
by more than a couple editors, you should be especially wary of a quick
decision to delete the content.

In the case of Wikispecies, we need to keep that around as a historical
reminder to find out just what went wrong with that proposal, and why
did the project turn out so poorly. Negative examples are just as
important as positive examples of project pages like the Wikinews or
Wikibooks pages on Meta.  So are you proposing to delete the Wikinews
page as well, since the project is already up and running and no longer
needs the page on Meta?  The logic is identical here other than a few
more recent edits have happened on the Wikinews page instead.

I'm certain there is real cruft on Meta of the new user experiment
variety that you shouldn't have to waste your time trying to decide if a
historical page like the Wikispecies page is worthy of removal.  Please
deal with the obvious garbage pages first before removing stuff you know
is going to get people upset.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
 wishes to become a wiki project

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>What about if you wanted to have yourself on a family tree could you do
>that? (See my prewious comment)
>
>On 31/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Simply asking a person's permission would simply lead to chaos.  The
>>>person whom you ask may agree, but his brother may not.  A 110 year rule
>>>may be a little excessive.  The US census, for example, is in the public
>>>domain after 72 years.  BMD announcements in newspapers are all a matter
>>>of public record; telephone directories, property tax records and the
>>>Social Security Death Index are all publicly available sources of
>>>information.
>>>
>>>Ec
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>The point of the 110 rule is that it does fit with almost all known
>>privacy laws throughout the world, and for geneological research
>>purposes is generally not that big of an inconvience.
>>
Yourself, perhaps.  I understand in part that you want to show a full
family tree starting with yourself and going to your ancestors (or
decendants if you are older).  The problem here is that this information
is all going to be publicly available for anybody to use and have
access.  Indeed, a very, very common "security question" used to help
prevent identity theft is to ask what your mother's maiden name was.  By
publishing full geneological links in a public place like on a Wikimedia
project, you are inviting fraud, identity theft, and violation of
several personal privacy laws.  With the Wikimedia Foundation so
paranoid about something so insignificant as an IP address connected to
a user account and the hyper paranoid (in my opinion) check user policy,
this might be enough to kill this whole proposal completely in terms of
violating privacy laws.

More important, the suggestion here is that other living relatives may
also be listed if a policy like this isn't implemented.  They did not
give concent to have their information posted in a public forum, even if
on a technical level the information is available through public records
like birth certificates and driver's license registrations.

I completely agree that this is a sticky issue.  I'm just suggesting
that some thought needs to go into it and I'm also suggesting what other
groups are doing who publish geneological information in a public forum.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Subversion

body:
Since SourceForge's developer CVS has been down for a couple days solid, I've
gone ahead and set up our own source control server.

The repo is now running on Subversion, and for the moment is running on my
offsite server (along with the wikitech server work status wiki). We may later
move it onto one of Wikimedia's servers.

The repo includes all revisions and branches from the old CVS archive, and
anonymous access will be immediate unlike the delay after commits that we had on
CVS.

I've whipped up a few quick notes here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion

At the moment only myself and avar have commit access, but I can add more people
shortly once we have it better set up. Commit notifications by email and IRC are
working; the viewcvs-ish thing isn't quite working yet.

[No this is not an April Fool's joke. The surprise outage due to hardware
failure on SourceForge's CVS server has seriously cramped our ability to work
the last couple days, so I moved up the schedule a little.]

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Garrett

subject:
[Textbook-l] Fwd: [Wikia-l] Fw: [Pakistan PRESS RELEASE]
	PAKISTAN BLOCKS WIKIPEDIA

body:
I don't think we'll have been hit by this block. Blogspot blogs use
subdomains, however Wikibooks isn't a subdomain of Wikipedia so won't have
been counted in a full-domain ban.

I'd say Wikinews might be next, as they've surely covered these stories too
(although probably not in as much detail as WP). Unless of course they've
specifically decided to ban ALL Wikimedia sites, which is also possible.

As for Wikibooks, we may be the next target of such a block. I doubt the
cartoon article was anything less than NPOV at the time they reviewed; if
someone only chooses to focus on the negative portions of a work it's easy
to write off the whole site because of it. We at WB can't future-proof
against such occurrences without hampering editors, and our disclaimers
won't necessarily satiate offended parties either.

I knew things in Pakistan were bad, but, damn, destroying freedom...
-- Garret

On 01/04/06, xkernigh at netscape.net <xkernigh at netscape.net> wrote:
>
> I forward an email claiming that Pakistan was blocking access to
> Wikipedia. I do not know whether Wikibooks and other Wikimedia
> sites were also blocked (they run on the same servers), but an
> earlier block against one Blogspot blog apparently blocked all
> of Blogspot.
>
> The linked site http://help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/
> claims that the Wikipedia block began at 31 March 2006, but was lifted
> at
> the same day. I have no way to verify this information.
>
> The email said that Wikipedia "was likely
> blocked because one article of the massive 3.5 million topics covered
> on the website contained information pertaining to the controversial
> cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)". I am aware that an
> English Wikipedia article contains such cartoons. There is a thread
> from February 2006 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kernigh
> about them. Though I favor removing the cartoons from the article,
> I think that governments should not block unrelated pages, and
> governments that respect free speech should not block such cartoons
> nor pages about them.
>
> I am not aware of any similar content on Wikibooks, but we could
> have such content in the future. English Wikibooks policy at
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW states that "Wikibooks is not
> censored for the 'protection of minors' (content-rated)," and that
> "modules can be, and are, censored by consensus."
> -- [[User:Kernigh]], in USA
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sabahat Ashraf <ashrafs at alum.rpi.edu>
> To: pakistan-l at wikicities.com; wikia-l at wikicities.com
> Sent: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:24:33 -0800
> Subject: [Wikia-l] Fw: [Pakistan PRESS RELEASE] PAKISTAN BLOCKS
> WIKIPEDIA
>
>   I am not on the wikipedia lists; please forward.
>
> S
>
> <-----Original Message----->
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Dr. Awab Alvi
> Date: Mar 31, 2006 12:20 PM
> Subject: PRESS RELEASE
>
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
> 31st March 2006
>
> For Further Information:
>
> Dr. Awab Alvi (Pakistan)
> Cell: 92-333-2373493
> Email: drawab at cyber.net.pk
> Blog: http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/
>
> Omar Alvie (UAE)
> Cell: 00971-50-6268410
> Email: over_email at yahoo.co
> Blog: http://oream.blogspot.com
>
> URL: http://help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/
>
> PAKISTAN BLOCKS WIKIPEDIA
>
> Today, 31 March 2006, at around 13:00 Pakistan Standard Time, it has
> come to our attention that another important website was added to the
> blacklisted domains from Pakistan: that is the entire domain of
> Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, was likely
> blocked because one article of the massive 3.5 million topics covered
> on the website contained information pertaining to the controversial
> cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). While the block appeared to
> be limited in duration, having been lifted at 20:00 (PST) seven hours
> after the initiation, the real issues remain about the future
> censorship of education and knowledge in Pakistan.
>
> We request the international print and electronic media to bring this
> issue to light in order to ensure that the concerned Pakistani
> authorities and ISPs understand the importance of free access to the
> Internet.
>
> A month back, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked
> access to upwards of 10 million websites being hosted on the
> blogspot.com domain, following a Supreme Court order issued on March
> 3rd condemning the controversial cartoons. The judicial order
> instructed the PTA to regulate only twelve offending websites which
> were promoting the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad
> (PBUH). One of the offending websites happened to be hosted on the
> domain www.blogspot.com. The PTA, as the supreme controlling body of
> internet access in Pakistan, entirely blocked access to upwards of 10
> millions websites.
>
> Wikipedia is the world's largest online encyclopaedia and is
> considered as the single largest online storehouse of knowledge having
> over 3.5 million articles on every imaginable topic conceivable in the
> world. These articles are gradually improved by contributors and then
> the topics are stored safely to then be freely shared with the entire
> world. The wikipedia project is translated into over 200 languages
> with over one million pages written in the English language, and it
> even contains hundreds of topics specifically written in the Urdu
> language. It should be important to point out that the largest
> printable encyclopaedia Britannica can only cover 65,000 topics which
> is easily dwarfed by the 3.5 million topics on Wikipedia.
> Simultaneously the printed version of the Britannica Encyclopaedia can
> cost upwards of $1400 to purchase but on the other hand each and every
> article on Wikipedia is free to read by anyone having an internet
> connection.
>
> The DON'T BLOCK THE BLOG campaign
> (http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/ ) was launched
> on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight and protest the issue of the
> blockage of blogs in Pakistan. We now extend our campaign to protest
> any blockage of Wikipedia in Pakistan. Both these issues are
> important to a developing nation such as Pakistan. What began as
> censorship of simple freedom of speech appears to have the real
> possibility of being extended to censorship of education and knowledge
> in Pakistan.
>
> --
> [Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf]
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> c: (510) 304 5927 www.ashrafs.org/iFaqeer
> ashrafs at alum.rpi.edu pakistan.wikia.com
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Please visit: http://pakistan.wikia.com/wiki/Earthquake_10-05
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> http://iFaqeer.blogspot.com Socio-Political Commentary
> http://WadiWallah.blogspot.com Technology, Life & Silicon Valley
> http://PakistanFutures.blogspot.com Possible Futures for Pakistan
> http://Urdu-ke-Naam.blogspot.com Language, Poetry and Spirituality
> http://Rickshaw.blogspot.com Rickshaw!
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> My religion is humanitarianism?.. Which is basis [sic]of every religion
> in this world.
> Abdus Sattar Edhi (Pakistan's humanitarian phenom)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>    _______________________________________________
> Wikia-l mailing list
> Wikia-l at wikicities.com
> http://lists.wikicities.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l
>
>
> ___________________________________________________
> Try the New Netscape Mail Today!
> Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List
> http://mail.netscape.com
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


from_name: geraki at geraki.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] History

body:
Hello,

I would like to read what you think of the following:

When someone copies some text that is under the GFDL to a wikipedia article, the
rule is to write about it on the bottom of the article to pay attribution. I
think this is not fair for users of wikipedia, as for them the only attribution
is in the History section. Take as an example an article of five paragraphs, two
from some other GFDL source and three from a user contributions. The X source
will me mentioned in the article, while the user will be mentioned only in
history, among minor edits and bot edits. Remember that the GFDL says that
authors should be mentioned in a section entitled "History" not in the
Document.

I think we would follow the GFDL better, if there was a feature in MediaWiki
that would allow a user to make a contribution, and put a note and/or a weblink
instead of his username to the history (independent of the summary note). I mean
something like:

* (cur) (last) 23:13, 19 February 2005 User1 (→This)
* (cur) (last) 23:12, 19 February 2005 128.205.218.14 (→Something -
translating a paragraph)
* (cur) (last) 18:15, 18 February 2005 66.134.120.164 (→That - partial
English translation)
* (cur) (last) 15:17, 16 February 2005 '''FOLDOC''' (copied text from FOLDOC)
* (cur) (last) 10:05, 16 February 2005 UserX (some edits)

Instead of having a history like this:

* (cur) (last) 23:13, 19 February 2005 User1 (→This)
* (cur) (last) 23:12, 19 February 2005 128.205.218.14 (→Something -
translating a paragraph)
* (cur) (last) 18:15, 18 February 2005 66.134.120.164 (→That - partial
English translation)
* (cur) (last) 15:17, 16 February 2005 UserX (copied text from FOLDOC)
* (cur) (last) 10:05, 16 February 2005 UserX (some edits)

And having to put a note on the article (''This article is based on...'')

It would be nice for all users to be able to make contributions like this, or at
least sysops or bureaucrats to be able to change attribution of some edit to
something other than just a username (this would be very useful: many times
there are new articles from anonymous IPs from copyrighted sources and we
receive permission under the GFDL when we check about the copyrights).

What do you think? Is this possible?

Konstantinos (geraki at el.wikipedia)


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do?

body:
On Sat, 1 Apr 2006 15:19:51 +1100, you wrote:

>This sounds similar to an issue that came up before. The policy at
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places)#Counties_of_Britain
>was made in an attempt to help the situation.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>In the case of Wikispecies, we need to keep that around as a historical
>reminder to find out just what went wrong with that proposal, and why
>did the project turn out so poorly. Negative examples are just as
>important as positive examples of project pages like the Wikinews or
>Wikibooks pages on Meta.  So are you proposing to delete the Wikinews
>page as well, since the project is already up and running and no longer
>needs the page on Meta?  The logic is identical here other than a few
>more recent edits have happened on the Wikinews page instead.
>
I don't think that it is fair to say that Wikispecies has turned out
poorly.  I just checked the RC there and there were over 250 entries in
the last 24 hours.  Is that doing poorly?

Ec


from_name: Anthere

body:
Thanks Brion and all who worked to fix the whole wikiquote issue.

Maybe we did not choose the best date...

Ant

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>
>>Apr?s avoir expertis? l'?tat des donn?es contenues dans le site fr.wikiquote,
>>la fondation Wikimedia consid?re que le mat?riel h?berg? dans la base du site
>>fr.wikiquote ne pr?sente pas les garanties minimales de s?ret? juridique
>>n?cessaires ? la p?rennit? du projet. Le site va donc ?tre enti?rement repris
>>pour ?tre effac? et relanc?.
>
>
> fr.wikiquote.org est maintenant effac?.
>
> Le nouveau site serait relanc? si existe des participants...
>
>
>
>>After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
>>Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
>>fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
>>soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
>>site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched.
>
>
> fr.wikiquote.org has now been taken down.
>
> A new site will be relaunched if there are people interested in working on it...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>On 01/04/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Yourself, perhaps.  I understand in part that you want to show a full
>>family tree starting with yourself and going to your ancestors (or
>>decendants if you are older).  The problem here is that this information
>>is all going to be publicly available for anybody to use and have
>>access.  Indeed, a very, very common "security question" used to help
>>prevent identity theft is to ask what your mother's maiden name was.  By
>>publishing full geneological links in a public place like on a Wikimedia
>>project, you are inviting fraud, identity theft, and violation of
>>several personal privacy laws.  With the Wikimedia Foundation so
>>paranoid about something so insignificant as an IP address connected to
>>a user account and the hyper paranoid (in my opinion) check user policy,
>>this might be enough to kill this whole proposal completely in terms of
>>violating privacy laws.
>>
>>More important, the suggestion here is that other living relatives may
>>also be listed if a policy like this isn't implemented.  They did not
>>give concent to have their information posted in a public forum, even if
>>on a technical level the information is available through public records
>>like birth certificates and driver's license registrations.
>>
>>I completely agree that this is a sticky issue.  I'm just suggesting
>>that some thought needs to go into it and I'm also suggesting what other
>>groups are doing who publish geneological information in a public forum.
>>
>>
>I understand the need for being cautious about security and I think that
>your comment that the subject is something that needs to be thought hard
>about is exactly right. However, there's one thing that I have been
>wondering about. You have raised the point that identity theft could be
>carried out, using the mother's maiden name. As, Rodovid grows and the
>number of people with the same increases, it will be difficult to link a
>person whose identity you are trying to steal with someone on the database.
>To do this would mean having other data such as age, place of birth and so
>on, which would probably be as difficult to obtain as  the maiden name.
>
These other data may be as difficult to obtain, but it can be done.  If
a person is intent on stealing an identity, he is bound to look for what
can be done most conveniently and be most suitable to his intents.  Just
because the guy's a crook doesn't mean he's stupid.  A genealogical
database where people with the same name are easily confused isn't a
very good database, and isn't even worth having for the purposes for
which it is intended.

In pre-internet days mother's maiden name was an easy security test,
because it was something that most people knew about themselves and were
unlikely to mention in ordinary conversation.  For a variety of reasons
this test may not be as secure as it used to be.  In a sensible
genealogical database women should conventionally be listed by their
birth names; without such a convention it can be far more difficult to
connect people.

In any event if this project is going to be viable we need to start with
the possible.  Initially, at least, a conservative privacy policy should
be adopted with the understanding that it could be relaxed in the future
when we have a better idea of what information is really public like BDM
announcements in newspapers, or newspaper lists of graduation classes.

Putting that issue on the backburner that way would leave us
concentrating on the issue of verifiability, so that we can avoid
importing and perpetuating the sloppy research of others.  I would
prefer that whatever we produce not be a companion piece to the Da Vinci
Code. :-)

Ec


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: unfair block

body:
I'm too busy right now to deal with unblock requests, so I've decided
to forward this to the list so you guys can take a look at it.

Mgm

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Zadil <muliben at walla.com>
Date: Apr 1, 2006 12:21 AM
Subject: unfair block
To: MacGyverMagic <MacGyverMagic at gmail.com>

it seems like user SlimVirgin is abusing his privilages in the midst
of a discussion.
please, note my follwoing complaints:
1)the above user has blocked me for no apparent valid reason.
2)He has used the block in the midst of a dicussion, and then took the
freedom to revert my edit.
3)He has nominiate a new article by me for "speedy deletion" and
indeed deleted it without any discussion. I'ts indeed a shame that I
can not provide you any link to that article, but it was -in my humble
opinion- a very useful article.
4)He has used threats against me and still use in the midst of
discussion, a fact I've already complaint and was assured by Benon
that they better should be ignored. (see my user page)
5)He has took to privilage of my block to "vandalise" my user page", a
fact which is the most disturbing.

Please, if you can, take the trouble to look my relevant edits and
ublock me. It is really unfair to have such "discussion" on wikipedia.
And may I suggest, that an administrator who constantly uses threants
and indeed blocks other users in the midst of discussion, should be
deprived from such privileges.

Thank you
Zadil bbb
Muliben at walla.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] unfair block

body:
Oh, never mind. I just now noticed the unblock in the log...

On 4/1/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm too busy right now to deal with unblock requests, so I've decided
> to forward this to the list so you guys can take a look at it.
>
> Mgm
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Zadil <muliben at walla.com>
> Date: Apr 1, 2006 12:21 AM
> Subject: unfair block
> To: MacGyverMagic <MacGyverMagic at gmail.com>
>
>
>
> it seems like user SlimVirgin is abusing his privilages in the midst
> of a discussion.
> please, note my follwoing complaints:
> 1)the above user has blocked me for no apparent valid reason.
> 2)He has used the block in the midst of a dicussion, and then took the
> freedom to revert my edit.
> 3)He has nominiate a new article by me for "speedy deletion" and
> indeed deleted it without any discussion. I'ts indeed a shame that I
> can not provide you any link to that article, but it was -in my humble
> opinion- a very useful article.
> 4)He has used threats against me and still use in the midst of
> discussion, a fact I've already complaint and was assured by Benon
> that they better should be ignored. (see my user page)
> 5)He has took to privilage of my block to "vandalise" my user page", a
> fact which is the most disturbing.
>
> Please, if you can, take the trouble to look my relevant edits and
> ublock me. It is really unfair to have such "discussion" on wikipedia.
> And may I suggest, that an administrator who constantly uses threants
> and indeed blocks other users in the midst of discussion, should be
> deprived from such privileges.
>
> Thank you
> Zadil bbb
> Muliben at walla.com
>


body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at
> the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on
> the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application,
> and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure
> misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not
> doing enough "project work".

Maybe I'm not awake enough, but surely his offline work would somehow
be noticed if it benefited Wikipedia. Visible tools for editing,
visible references added to articles. I work a lot offline too, but
eventually that work shows in one or more edits.

Mgm


from_name: Adam Atlas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension problem

body:
I run a MediaWiki-based site, and I am working on writing an
extension, of the type that adds an XML-style tag which is processed
by a callback. On first inspection it works fine, but if a page
includes multiple templates, each of which contains an instance of
the extension's tag, then only the last one displays correctly, and
all the others appear as a long string starting with UNIQ and
followed by mostly-random-looking data (but also containing the tag's
name in the middle).

I can only find a brief reference to this issue (or a similar-
sounding one), at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
MediaWiki_extensions_FAQ#Templates_with_extension_tags>, but I don't
understand what the fix is. I'm running the latest versions of
MediaWiki and PHP. What am I doing wrong?


body:
geni wrote:

>On 4/1/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I see...
>>
>>No. I do not know where. I am not following you step by step you know ?
>>
>>
>Edit war around the 12th week of january. Turned into quite an
>interesting debate. Discovering the best financial model foundation
>had projected rather more taffic than yahoo within three years was
>interesting. In any case the next fundraiseing drive is comeing up so
>that should settle the core of the debate once and for all.
>
>
>>We have 8 project and over a 100 languages. I am not prescient.
>>And since I do not consider the english wikipedia to be the central
>>place where all relevant debates take place, I must admit I do not take
>>the time to daily follow everything that happens here.
>>
>>
>You do however view us as central for funding:
>
>10:21, 12 January 2006 Anthere (some things are needed to keep the
>website running....)
>
>Refering to a notice than appeared on en but not on many other
>wikipedias (it now on even fewer now which is kinda anoying because it
>makes the calculations more difficult)
>
>
>>I think it is kinda amazing to see a perfectly decent, normal, polite,
>>simple and neutral question being answered in such a rude way.
>>
>>
>What kind of responce would you have wanted? "A couple of mediawiki
>pages starting on the 12th of jan". You know that would be
>missleading. You were there.
>
>
>>Well, it is good there are plenty of good editors on the english
>>wikipedia to work with.
>>
>>
>Yes please help them turn meta into something worthwhile
>
>I mean have you ever seen how dead http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals is?
>
>
>>Because with editors such as you, I would have
>>long dropped the project. You lack the most basic knowledge of what civility is.
>>
>>
>Type of bird isn't it?
>
>
>>As such, you'll be invisible to me in the future. Period.
>>
>>Anthere
>>
>>
>Well good luck and try to make sure the board doesn't do anything else
>dissruptive.
>
An answer like "You know where" to a straightforward question is indeed
rude. It's just the kind of thing that you would expect from an
authoritarian father or cop who will not have his opinion swayed by
evidence.

Your subsequent response is nothing more than unmitigated trolling, and
the community would do well to insist that you apologize to Anthere for
this kind of behaviour.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/31/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>
> > Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically
> > they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football
> > referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
>
> Sorry, we must be editing different sites.  Going into edit wars and reading
> the riot act is basic admin stuff.

Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care
who's right, play nicely please"?

> And writing well is useless for an editor?  This is all just so wrong.
> Settling tough edit wars can come down to patient drafting of versions.

But what does that have to do with being an admin? Any editor could do that.

Steve


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> On 3/31/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>>
>> > Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically
>> > they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football
>> > referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
>>
>> Sorry, we must be editing different sites.  Going into edit wars and
>> reading
>> the riot act is basic admin stuff.
>
> Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care
> who's right, play nicely please"?

The latter. No personal attacks, for example.  It is a different matter when
an admin says this, compared to people going on about ad hominem in a
pot-kettle situation.

Charles


body:
On 4/1/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe I'm not awake enough, but surely his offline work would somehow
> be noticed if it benefited Wikipedia. Visible tools for editing,
> visible references added to articles. I work a lot offline too, but
> eventually that work shows in one or more edits.

He was just remarking that he had made several edits consisting of the
addition of 2-3000 words of text and 20 footnotes. Thus, a simple edit
count was misleading in terms of the amount he had contributed to the
project.

Steve


body:
On 4/1/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> As one of the four opposers he asked votes not be counted, I personally note
> that his self-nom just noted the number of his edits, how long he's been
> here, and that he'd never been blocked. I opposed based on not enough
> information given. Regarless of whether it's a self-nom or not, I'd think
> just plainly saying "I've (This user's) never been blocked in my (their) X
> months here and have (has) Y edits and thus I want (they deserve) to be an
> admin" would not get anyone the mop and bucket.

What more information did you want, other than access to his total
edit history? If you don't have the time to go and analyse his
contributions, that's one thing, but I don't see the justification for
voting "oppose" for such a thing?

Steve


body:
On 4/1/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The thing is: not everyone has been that active in vandal fighting,
> and it is not required in order to become an administrator (nor
> arbitrator, for that matter).  Thus, not everyone knows all the little
> vandal-fighting tricks.

Yes, does adminship have to be synonymous with vandal fighting? From
the list of activities at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_how-to_guide
, true vandal fighting (admin reversion) is only one of about 20
useful things admins can do.

Steve


body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>>I completely agree that this is a sticky issue.  I'm just suggesting
>>that some thought needs to go into it and I'm also suggesting what other
>>groups are doing who publish geneological information in a public forum.
>>
>>--
>>Robert Scott Horning
>>
>
>I understand the need for being cautious about security and I think that
>your comment that the subject is something that needs to be thought hard
>about is exactly right. However, there's one thing that I have been
>wondering about. You have raised the point that identity theft could be
>carried out, using the mother's maiden name. As, Rodovid grows and the
>number of people with the same increases, it will be difficult to link a
>person whose identity you are trying to steal with someone on the database.
>To do this would mean having other data such as age, place of birth and so
>on, which would probably be as difficult to obtain as  the maiden name.
>
>
Of course you are publishing such information like:

http://en.rodovid.org/wk/Person%3A1114

That is the kind of information that you are collecting, so having that
basic information like age, place of birth, and where you likely are
living would be available, which with a little bit of extra work is all
you need to steal somebody's identity.

I went through the process myself when I lost my identification papers
and had to re-establish my identity from scratch.  It was a slightly
difficult task, but it shocked me at how easy it really was.  All I
started with was a college class schedule that I happened to have that
included my name and my Social Security number on that form.  From that
I obtained a birth certificate, marriage certificate, a driver's
license, a home mortgage, access to my bank account, and even a United
States Passport.  My entire identity right now is based on that one
scrap of paper, which I've seen hundreds of those schedules floating
around the college campus where I went to school, any one of which I
could have done the same thing with had I really cared to impersonate
somebody else rather than simply try to establish my own identity.  BTW,
I didn't even need to show my ID at the time to obtain the class
schedule... just my name.

Part of this is really because governments don't want to do the hard
part of trying to establish identity from sources that are hard or
impossible to forge, such as blood type, DNA, fingerprints, etc.  The
whole process of establishing an identity is something that can cause
problems, and unfortunately public information such as a mother's maiden
name, government ID numbers, and places of birth are treated as
_passwords_ to establish that information.  I think it is pure BS, but
unfortunately the way that our society is currently set up.

Any computer security expert would tell you a hundred different ways to
set up a good password for an account like your Wikimedia user account.
 Using your government ID number as a password would rank right near the
bottom of a suggested idea, and strongly discouraged.  Why should your
edit privileges on Wikipedia be harder to access and offer more security
than your bank account?  That is definitely a messed up proposition
there and I hope it will change in the future.  Until then, publication
of this sort of information for people who are alive is going to be a
problem.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>
>>In the case of Wikispecies, we need to keep that around as a historical
>>reminder to find out just what went wrong with that proposal, and why
>>did the project turn out so poorly. Negative examples are just as
>>important as positive examples of project pages like the Wikinews or
>>Wikibooks pages on Meta.  So are you proposing to delete the Wikinews
>>page as well, since the project is already up and running and no longer
>>needs the page on Meta?  The logic is identical here other than a few
>>more recent edits have happened on the Wikinews page instead.
>>
>>
>>
>I don't think that it is fair to say that Wikispecies has turned out
>poorly.  I just checked the RC there and there were over 250 entries in
>the last 24 hours.  Is that doing poorly?
>
>Ec
>
>

Compared to similar projects that have been around for the same length
of time, its Alexa ranking, and the fact that it is linked prominently
on the front page of every Wikimedia sister project, yeah, it isn't
doing as well as it could or should be doing.  I don't want to open the
can of worms about the project status of Wikispecies, but there are some
problems on that project that simply need to work everything out.  It
has also been commonly cited as an example of a project that hasn't
worked out or wouldn't be approved if it had to go through the current
new project policy.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> To be honest I am not a huge fan of self-nominations for adminship
>
>anyway.  I turned down three nominations before accepting one, and had
>to be persuaded even then.  Are we sure that Tyrenuis' assessment of
>his own fitness for adminship is objective?  Not that I'm saying he
>would not be a good admin, but it seems to me that the people who get
>given admin tools are generally the ones who are seen to be likely to
>use them, those who are active in countering vandalism, cleaning up,
>stopping wars, finding vanity and spam articles and so on.  If someone
>is not doing these things, why do they need the Wikimop?  If they are
>doing these things, they will get noticed.
>
>
Self-nomination shouldn't be an issue if the standards for being an
admin are otherwise the same.  Self-nominating is nothing more and
nothing less than letting the community know what one wants.

I think that you put undue emphasis on ferretting out the wrongdoesrs.
I would be very suspicious of a candidate who does nothing but that, and
does very little to contribute to actual articles.  How can a person
understand NPOV when he has no direct NPOV edits to his credit?  The
primary goal of Wikipedia is to build an encyclopedia; while it remains
important to deal with vandalism that must still remain a secondary and
incidental goal.

Ec


body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:

>Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>>And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
>>because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
>>but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
>>
>>
>However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this
>can in fact be quite reasonable advice.  The subtext is often "We don't
>know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin.  If you're still
>interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again
>in a few months."  Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough
>yet.  Try again when you've been around longer."  Or possibly both.
>
>People do change over time, and more importantly, people also reveal
>more about themselves as they interact with people.  _I_ know I was as
>trustworthy back when I registered my account as when my RfA was passed,
>but for all anyone else knew back them, I could've been another WoW
>sock.  The six months or so between the two events served not only to
>familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some
>confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I
>got my admin buttons.
>
If we tell someone to come again later we need to tell him why, and what
he must do in the interim to qualify.

I also think that it should be possible for bureaucrats to desysop
someone more easily.  There are always some candidates that seem
borderline, and where it would be good to give them a chance, but one
hesitates when there would be no easy chance to undo an error.

Ec


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 3/31/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
>>>>[[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
>>>
>>>Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having
>>>a clue what that does.
>>>
>>
>>I'd not heard of it before today.
>>
>
>
> You know you are not helping my case here.
>

You're not helping your case either, so why don't we all just drop the
whole thing?

--
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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