from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Userboxes started innocously enough, first seeing widespread use with
> the Babel project, intended to inform users of one another's language
> skills.  But they haven't stayed that way.  From helping editors to
> locate one another by skill, they have evolved into a way for editors
> to group by conviction.

Tony, I agree these are a problem, but I'm not very familiar with
them, so I have a question. What is the difference between having a
box on your page saying you're e.g. Hindu, and having yourself listed
in a Hindu Wikipedians category? Can the boxes be used to group
editors by political or religious affiliation in a way that categories
can't?

Sarah


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Suggestion for future fundraisings

body:
I'd imagine Wikimedia UK, when it's finally set up, will be looking to
do something like that.

Rob Church

On 03/01/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> > This comment on slashdot isn't ignorant:
> > http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=172759&cid=14379365
> > "
> > I've donated to Wikipedia twice in a year. At this point, I've given
> > probably four times the amount of money that I would for, say,
> > Encarta. I love Wikipedia, but 1) I don't have a permanent copy of it
> > on a DVD, like I would for Encarta,
>
> I have on in my hand right now!
>
> However, it's in German. The English-language market is missing out...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: SCZenz

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Userboxes aren't good for much, but they can be managed so they don't hurt
the servers much either, I suspect.  Likewise we can get rid of
inappropriate "fair use" images.  And unless we're gonna delete user
categories too, we can't stop people from identifying themselves publicly by
their POV's.  So I don't think getting rid of userboxes makes things better.

Meanwhile, many users *like* userboxes, silly though they may be.  It keeps
them happy, which means they stay and make more productive edits.
Conversely, if we tell all those users their views don't count and they
should stuff it, we will lose editors.  (I've already seen some leaving over
the current mess.)

The Wikipedia community exists to write the encyclopedia, no other reason;
but if we alienate a large section of the community, the encyclopedia won't
be written nearly as well.

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> December 2005 saw a fivefold increase in edits on pages in template
> space whose titles started with the characters "User_".  From about
> 1200 in November, the number of such edits rose to 6100.
>
> Userboxes started innocously enough, first seeing widespread use with
> the Babel project, intended to inform users of one another's language
> skills.  But they haven't stayed that way.  From helping editors to
> locate one another by skill, they have evolved into a way for editors
> to group by conviction.  Last month one editor used userbox
> information to locate dozens of people who shared his religious
> persuasion in an overt attempt to destroy the consensual
> decision-making process of Wikipedia.  The religious userbox page
> (yes, such a page exists) lists some fifty userboxes intended to
> identify and group editors by expressed religion.  There is also a
> page for grouping according to political ideology.
>
> The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
> They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
> equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
> They must die.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
To my mind, userboxes jumped the shark when the Userbox page got
plastered with "Save our userbox, comment on this RFC/RFAr" boxes. If
the userbox project is more invested in its Wikipolitics than in
helping the project or addressing concerns with itself, it should be
destroyed with haste.

-Phil

On Jan 3, 2006, at 10:00 AM, Garion1000 wrote:

> On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
>> They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
>> equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
>> They must die.
>> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Not to mention the use of "fair use" images in them. Or the whole
> RFC/Kelly
> Martin. Including that special template that a RFC against Kelly
> Martin has
> been filed.
>
> This whole userbox thing seems to be getting out of hand.
>
> Garion
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Meanwhile, many users *like* userboxes, silly though they may be.  It keeps
> them happy, which means they stay and make more productive edits.

Several of the editors most stridently defending userboxes are editors
who have few, if any, article edits.  I looked at one user's
contributions today where that editor has edited virtually nothing
other than his own user page, various user boxes in the template
space, and the userbox project page.

What purpose is served by this editor's participation in Wikipedia?
Does this person really qualify as a "Wikipedian"?

Kelly


from_name: Brian

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
>Meanwhile, many users *like* userboxes, silly though they may be.  It keeps
>them happy, which means they stay and make more productive edits.
>Conversely, if we tell all those users their views don't count and they
>should stuff it, we will lose editors.  (I've already seen some leaving
over
>the current mess.)

>The Wikipedia community exists to write the encyclopedia, no other reason;
>but if we alienate a large section of the community, the encyclopedia won't
b>e written nearly as well.

>SCZenz

I think that a lot of the problem has come from the fact that a lot of these
new users spend very little time actually editing the encyclopedia. I did a
random scan of contributions of some of the people who signed the RFC and
found a lot of them were not actively editing in article space. It's no
surprise that they don't have a complete understanding of how it works.
There's a lot of people involved against Kelly's RFC that are both not
regular editors of Wikipedia and are causing a great deal of disruption.


from_name: l'Omnivore Sobriquet

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblocking the unblocked... please !

body:
Dear Admins,
    Here is a case of a block that has been lifted and that in fact hasn't been lifted...
 Some technicals I guess.
I got an (unwarned) blocking that I had made lifted regularily here in this group, but, twelve days afterwards, that is still on. You may refer to my talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:L%27Omnivore_Sobriquet
    There is nothing else I can do but simply report this mistake, that could be corrected within a short time. (yes, should be, in my view.)

Your IP address is 83.205.12.198. Please include this address, along with your username (if you are a registered user), in any queries you make.

    Please act or explain !!
l'Omnivore Sobriquet


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Several of the editors most stridently defending userboxes are editors
> who have few, if any, article edits.  I looked at one user's
> contributions today where that editor has edited virtually nothing
> other than his own user page, various user boxes in the template
> space, and the userbox project page.
>
> What purpose is served by this editor's participation in Wikipedia?
> Does this person really qualify as a "Wikipedian"?

This is an increasing problem. Some of the users who cause most
trouble do very little editing of articles, and trying to deal with
their trolling on talk pages can be soul-destroying. Yet block one of
them and their friends scream blue murder, aided and abetted by
certain admins who should know better. It's something we need to get a
grip on because it's going to keep getting worse, and eventually
they'll start affecting policy.

Sarah


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>> Let's say McDonald's pays us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast
>> food]]. Is that compliant with [[WP:NPOV]]?
>
> Yes.

I think it probably isn't, but there we are. :)

>> What happens if McDonald's will pay us $500,000 to put an ad
>> on [[Fast food]], but only if we nix the 'Nutritional value' section?
>
> Then we say, "See [[WP:NPOV]]". Or perhaps "we" nix that section and
> someone else puts it back. This is a bit of a strange argument that has
> been made a few times. WP is WP. I don't think anyone is proposing
> changing its core principles simply because we start taking ads. And
> again, I don't see how placing ads on WP is compromising any of WP's
> principles in any way.

It isn't per se, but it does raise the possibility (particularly if ads
are linked in to a 'frozen', 'stable' version of the encyclopaedia).

The argument in favour of ads appears to be 'if we don't use them, we're
throwing away a big potential revenue stream'. How long before the idea
of allowing advertisers 'final approval' of articles on which their ads
appear appears on the basis that 'by not doing it, we're throwing away a
big potential revenue stream'?

> I'm not especially in favour of ads, but let's at least be sensible in
> discussing the possibility. :)

I appreciate that my example is (intentionally) extreme, but I think
it's something we would do well to consider.

You might argue that this is someting of a logical fallacy (see, for
instance, [[Slippery slope]]), but I am very concerned about the idea of
opening up the principles of the project to anything other than 'making
an encyclopaedia'. 'Making an encyclopaedia while keeping our
advertisers happy' isn't in the mission statement as far as I'm concerned.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Last month one editor used userbox
> information to locate dozens of people who shared his religious
> persuasion in an overt attempt to destroy the consensual
> decision-making process of Wikipedia.

Was this editor successful?  I get appeals on my user talk page for various
things on a regular basis, and I treat them just like any other thing may
have seen on rfc.  Just because an editor is contacted doesn't mean they've
signed on to the fight.  I don't think such contacts are a good thing, but
I'm not convinced they are, on the whole, successful at what they're trying
to do.


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

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

> Peter Mackay wrote:
>
> >>From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> >>[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs

> >>Since there are already mirrors with ads, yes, there are people
> >>chasing that money now. A high-quality clone that could
> compete with
> >>WP's name recognition would require significant investment
> up front,
> >>and take several years to establish itself in the public's mind;
> >
> >Your idealism and loyalty is laudable, but remember that in terms of
> >quality, a teenager with a bit of Linux knowledge can download the
> >whole lot for free and get it operational in an afternoon.*
> >
> That would be the "low-quality" clone. One Linux box is
> easily slashdotted; the current WP installation laughs at
> Slashdot, or so I'm told. Our teenager would have to buy 100+
> machines and get them all working in concert before going live.

Although they are similar words, "quality" and "quantity" have different
meanings. MediaWiki is robust high quality software and that's not going to
change whether it's running on a laptop or a server farm. As I noted for
this not so hypothetical teenager "*dealing with success and bandwidth might
be a problem, however".

Getting back to the original point, charging Google enough to keep WP
running isn't going to do much beyond providing an incentive for Google to
put up their own online encyclopaedia. I would imagine that if they were
pressed, Google could get the MediaWiki software and Wikipedia content
loaded and tested in a matter of days, if not hours, and alter their search
results to give their "Googlopedia" a higher precedence than Wikipedia. We
don't have any sort of "big stick" to threaten Google with.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, some of these admins *don't* know better.  Recently I've seen
> people become admins with thousands of edits, but under a hundred Talk: page
> comments, and others who became admins with as few as 16 people voting for
> them.  People who have had so little interaction with other Wikipedians, or
> who are so unknown that there aren't even 20 Wikipedians willing to vouch
> for them, are simply not members of the Wikipedia community in any
> meaningful way.  It is not surprising, then, when they act in ways which
> display an ignorance of, or go against Wikipedia norms (e.g. unblocking
> blocked users without even first discussing the block with the blocking
> admin).  The purpose of Wikipedia is not to create a website where people
> can set up really cool user pages, or engage in wheel wars.

Exactly right. Almost every block is at serious risk now of being
reversed by an admin who's never read the blocking policy, has had
very little interaction with the community, and who got elected with
under 20 votes, but decides he quite liked something the blocked user
once posted, and so therefore he has to unblock, leading to wheel
wars, endless explanations of the most obvious things on WP:AN/I, and
a consequent unwillingness on the part of other admins to block
troublemakers until they become serious problems (and even then it can
be difficult: see the Marsden situation). Unfortunately, part of this
problem is fueled by the philosophy that adminship is "no big deal,"
which if Jimbo reads this thread, I ask that he consider commenting on
somewhere, because I've lost count of the number of support votes I've
seen quoting it, leading to yet another unknown and possibly clueless
admin being promoted. Combine poor admins with hundreds of users who
are turning Wikipedia into a social club, and you have a giant mess.

Sarah


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:

>On 1/4/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
>>They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
>>equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
>>They must die.
>>
>>
>
>You really ought to learn to pick your battles. Yes, some people do things
>on Wikipedia that are less than entirely productive. But some of these
>things boost community morale and connect people with each other in fun
>ways. Yes, in an ideal world, we would spend all our time working on the
>encyclopedia and doing nothing else. But tha door swings both ways. In that
>world, you would spend all your time working on the encyclopedia, not
>launching a crusade over trivial crap like this.
>
Taking a longer perspective, we do have fads that sweep over from time
to time. About the time I started, three years ago, lists were a big
issue - lots of lists being created and expanded, lots of argument
about the value of lists. Now they're just part of the scene, don't
get much attention.

Somebody compared userboxes to bumper stickers, and I think it's very
apt. While we may dislike seeing cars covered with bumper stickers,
we don't (usually :-) ) try to pass laws regulating the number or
type of bumper stickers on a car, nor do we try to outlaw the
printing of bumper stickers.

Similarly, if there are somebody who admire WP so much that they want
to be associated with it, even if they don't have anything to
contribute to the encyclopedia, that seems like a good thing. In fact,
if their language skills are abysmal and their library skills
nonexistent, I would rather have them tinkering with user pages and
talking about WP with their friends rather than editing on articles
proper. For some, I imagine that the user page is a good way to learn
about editing without disrupting article development. (It does suggest
that we should fine-tune our metrics so that user-space edits are never
counted.)

Stan


from_name: Ben Emmel

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
I agree with the sentiment that all user boxes that don't serve an actual
purpose should be nuked, or at the very least, userfied. This includes
everything on [[Wikipedia:Userboxes/Funny]], [[/Other]], [[/Userboxes]],
[[/Emoticons]] and many others. Wikipedia is not Myspace, Facebook, or a
social site. It is an encyclopedia

However, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that userboxes for languages,
knowledge of certain topics, or Wikiprojects can be useful, not only for
identification purposes, but also for finding help on certain topics. It
gives a nice visual clue when looking for editors within certain genres, and
sometimes are a bit more wieldy then a list or category.

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worthy admins? (was "The userbox fad")

body:
On 1/3/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > This is an increasing problem. Some of the users who cause most
> > trouble do very little editing of articles, and trying to deal with
> > their trolling on talk pages can be soul-destroying. Yet block one of
> > them and their friends scream blue murder, aided and abetted by
> > certain admins who should know better. It's something we need to get a
> > grip on because it's going to keep getting worse, and eventually
> > they'll start affecting policy.
> Unfortunately, some of these admins *don't* know better.  Recently I've
> seen
> people become admins with thousands of edits, but under a hundred Talk:
> page
> comments, and others who became admins with as few as 16 people voting for
> them.  People who have had so little interaction with other Wikipedians,
> or
> who are so unknown that there aren't even 20 Wikipedians willing to vouch
> for them, are simply not members of the Wikipedia community in any
> meaningful way.  It is not surprising, then, when they act in ways which
> display an ignorance of, or go against Wikipedia norms (e.g. unblocking
> blocked users without even first discussing the block with the blocking
> admin).  The purpose of Wikipedia is not to create a website where people
> can set up really cool user pages, or engage in wheel wars.  Nor is its
> purpose to create a website where one can endlessly pontificate on the
> actions of other editors, and devise more and more policies to control
> their
> actions in increasingly bizarre ways.  Rather, the purpose of Wikipedia is
> to create a great encyclopedia.
>
> Jay.

I am noticing some of the same issues: Users are slipping through RfA
without much opposition, but without much community support either. They
seem to be decent editors, mostly doing work in a small area of Wikipedia,
and when (self)nominated for adminship, they get their "Wikifriends" to
support them, and boom! admin tools. Inevitably, wheel warring (large or
small) will happen from these admins, because they actually don't understand
or generally support the long-standing policies that we have here.

I almost hate to say this, but with the growing size and popularity of
Wikipedia, we might need to start treating adminship truly as a big deal.

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Unblockable usernames? -- countermeasures

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
[snip]
> Although these rules sound restrictive, they will actually allow almost
> any reasonable username through whilst preventing many, many nasty
> tricks.  (Yes, Coptic disunification is a problem, but I know how to fix
> that special case ;-)
>
> Although these rules sound hairy, they can actually be reduced to just
> one range-lookup table, and about thirty lines of code.

Would you mind whipping up a table to work with? (Or a list of regexes; PCRE
understands UTF-8 character ranges with the /u modifier.) I've already got a
Unicode normalization library in MediaWiki so NFKC is easy.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
We need to deal with non-contributing users who suck up our resources
in some sensible way, yes.  But what's been done so far discounts
contributing users' views too, and that is not to be done lightly.  We
don't even have consensus among admins on what to do!

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Brian <brian at bhaws.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Meanwhile, many users *like* userboxes, silly though they may be.  It keeps
> >them happy, which means they stay and make more productive edits.
> >Conversely, if we tell all those users their views don't count and they
> >should stuff it, we will lose editors.  (I've already seen some leaving
> over
> >the current mess.)
>
> >The Wikipedia community exists to write the encyclopedia, no other reason;
> >but if we alienate a large section of the community, the encyclopedia won't
> b>e written nearly as well.
>
> >SCZenz
>
> I think that a lot of the problem has come from the fact that a lot of these
> new users spend very little time actually editing the encyclopedia. I did a
> random scan of contributions of some of the people who signed the RFC and
> found a lot of them were not actively editing in article space. It's no
> surprise that they don't have a complete understanding of how it works.
> There's a lot of people involved against Kelly's RFC that are both not
> regular editors of Wikipedia and are causing a great deal of disruption.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Developer help
	needed

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> I guess we are just fucked if we can't get your cooperation.

Who said you didn't have my cooperation?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject:
[Wikitech-l] IP blocking of repeat user account creation after
	a	user block

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Please tell me if this is already the case, but would it make sense for
> accounts which have just been blocked to have their current IP address
> temporarily autoblocked (for say, 30 minutes) from creating other user
> accounts. This would be in addition to the current
> account-creations-per-day limit.

I'm pretty sure this is already the case; that'll trip the autoblocker. Can you
test?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] $formCallback=null

body:
FxParlant wrote:
> Still searching a way to get authimage working in mediawiki 1.5 and
> above, I found this reference to captcha in EditPage.php (version 1.6
> phase3)
>
> /**
>  * Send the edit form and related headers to $wgOut
>  * @param $formCallback Optional callable that takes an OutputPage
>  *                      parameter; will be called during form output
>  *                      near the top, for captchas and the like.
>  */
> function showEditForm( $formCallback=null ) {
>
>
> Could someone tell me how to use this ?
> Is it endly, the way to catch the validation?

extensions/ConfirmEdit

I'll be cleaning this up for 1.6 in a bit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Some Wikipedias not accessible through anonymouse.org

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> Anonymouse.org is a proxy popular with Chinese users to circumvent
> censorship. Unfortunately, not all Wikipedias are accessible through
> it. I just tried a large sample, and I found that the following do
> *not* work: ja, ko, zh, mr, th. What happens is that anonymouse
> redirects the main page of these Wikipedias back to the main page,
> resulting in an infinite loop.
>
> The brokenness of zh is of particular concern, for obvious reasons.
>
> It might be a unicode issue, but ar, he, ru all work fine. I doubt that
> is is a bug in anonymouse that affects only certain unicode characters.

I can load pages with Latin names, so that probably actually is the case:

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

Further testing... Try putting in:
http://test.leuksman.com/view/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91

it redirects to:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://test.leuksman.com/view/????

which redirects to:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://test.leuksman.com/view/

which redirects to:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://test.leuksman.com/view/Main_Page

Probably somewhere along the line it's stripping the Chinese characters, or
misconverting them into question marks (?). If you go to
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/, this will put you into an infinite loop trying to
load the main page at its canonical URL.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mo. cyrillic -> mo-cyr., when ?

body:
Adrenalin wrote:
> So, is this problem solution on some admin to-do list ?
>
> (srry list, but this problem is really important to me..)

It's in the bugzilla queue:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4409

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WMF Exploits and MediaWiki

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> It seems like the subject as been brought up everywhere (such as English
> Wikipedia's Village Pump and a Wikinews talk page), but it hasn't been
> breached on wikitech-l yet. So that's what I'm going to do. It appears,
> from [[wikinews:Talk:Microsoft Windows metafiles are a vector for
> computer viruses]] that Commons accepts wmf files masquerading as ogg
> files. The security of MediaWiki installations on Windows platforms is
> also dubious.
>
> For information purposes, what are the developers doing about it?

MediaWiki allowed the creation of <img> tags for types such as ogg, this
is the worst aspect of this vulnerability since it allows infection
without user interaction. I've created an initial patch for this and
applied it to Wikimedia websites. The only remaining vulnerability that
we're aware of is if someone clicks on a link to a file and specifically
tells their browser to open it in a program with magic number detection,
such as MS Paint.

To be sure though, we're currently working on preventing the uploading
of WMF files by magic number detection. Once both of these fixes are
committed and backported, we'll do a release.

In the meantime, site administrators can apply the following patch to
their 1.5 or 1.6 installations:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-cvs/2006-January/013086.html

Users of 1.4 should either upgrade to 1.5 or disable uploads.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

references:
<ce4d55b80601030825j6f2c1a12v86a0b2a29d39b2e6@mail.gmail.com>
	<FEEHIDNLFFBKHPIPAHGNKEHFCGAA.brian@bhaws.com>
	<3f797b9a0601031034w3c742b41v72af49dd8154ed51@mail.gmail.com>
	<eecbb0630601031037j43be02buff202456716b8ece@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 1/3/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> If there's anything to be learned from this, it's that unproductive members
> of the community do less harm than trying to take away their toys does. You
> end up alienating a lot more people than you thought you would.
>
I'm not sure that's true, Ryan. They do a lot of harm, it's just
usually less dramatic.

Sarah


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/3/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Several of the editors most stridently defending userboxes are editors
> > who have few, if any, article edits.  I looked at one user's
> > contributions today where that editor has edited virtually nothing
> > other than his own user page, various user boxes in the template
> > space, and the userbox project page.
> >
> > What purpose is served by this editor's participation in Wikipedia?
> > Does this person really qualify as a "Wikipedian"?
>
> This is an increasing problem. Some of the users who cause most
> trouble do very little editing of articles, and trying to deal with
> their trolling on talk pages can be soul-destroying. Yet block one of
> them and their friends scream blue murder, aided and abetted by
> certain admins who should know better. It's something we need to get a
> grip on because it's going to keep getting worse, and eventually
> they'll start affecting policy.

Unfortunately, some of these admins *don't* know better.  Recently I've seen
people become admins with thousands of edits, but under a hundred Talk: page
comments, and others who became admins with as few as 16 people voting for
them.  People who have had so little interaction with other Wikipedians, or
who are so unknown that there aren't even 20 Wikipedians willing to vouch
for them, are simply not members of the Wikipedia community in any
meaningful way.  It is not surprising, then, when they act in ways which
display an ignorance of, or go against Wikipedia norms (e.g. unblocking
blocked users without even first discussing the block with the blocking
admin).  The purpose of Wikipedia is not to create a website where people
can set up really cool user pages, or engage in wheel wars.  Nor is its
purpose to create a website where one can endlessly pontificate on the
actions of other editors, and devise more and more policies to control their
actions in increasingly bizarre ways.  Rather, the purpose of Wikipedia is
to create a great encyclopedia.

Jay.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] List of authors for each article

body:
Robert Bamler wrote:
> I'm working on a Wikipedia reader for the Apple iPod.

Out of curiosity, is this to run under the regular iPod OS or an alternative
like iPod Linux? If it'll run on a stock iPod, let me know if you need a beta
tester for the fifth-generation models.

> To minimize the data
> size occupied on the iPod I will only store the current articles on the
> device (no "old"-table). However, the GFDL requires to mention the authors of
> an article. Thus, each article on the iPod should contain a list of all
> Wikipedia-users that appear in the revision history.
>
> So, finally, my question is: Is there a way to get a list of the authors of
> each article without having to download the (extremely large) xmldump of all
> wikipedia-articles ever written since the beginning of time? I've already
> tried the online SQL querying mechanism, but it seems to limit queries to
> 1000 results and to not support queries on the "old"-table.

Currently no, sorry. :(

You could screen-scrape the history pages, but that's ugly. ;)

> By the way, another question comes to my mind: If a contributor to an article
> wasn't logged in, do I have to mention his IP-number in the list of authors?
> I don't think this would make much sense, but perhaps it's legally required
> by the GFDL. Or is it sufficient to make the reader application display the
> string "There might be other (anonymous) contributors to this article"?

The Wiki Press books being published in Germany don't appear to be including IP
addresses in their author lists, but YMMV, IANAL, consult your lawyer if in
doubt, blah blah.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
Peter Mackay wrote:
<snip>
> Getting back to the original point, charging Google enough to keep WP
> running isn't going to do much beyond providing an incentive for Google to
> put up their own online encyclopaedia. I would imagine that if they were
> pressed, Google could get the MediaWiki software and Wikipedia content
> loaded and tested in a matter of days, if not hours, and alter their search
> results to give their "Googlopedia" a higher precedence than Wikipedia. We
> don't have any sort of "big stick" to threaten Google with.
>

Actually, we do. We withold editors. What will they do when they are
vandalised? They won't have WP's 650+ admins (and 2000+ others) to help
deal with it.

Googlopedia on Wheels, here we come...

--
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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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Fred Bauder:
>> Please consider my request at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/
>> Developer help needed
>>
>> The problem is that semi-protection as now coded relies on % of users
>> rather than on measurement of edits. This permits stockpiling of
>> sleeper accounts which can later be activated as sockpuppets
>> defeating semi-protection.
>
> Wouldn't such stockpiling be rendered fairly ineffective by the
> autoblocker, or does that only affect anonymous users?

The autoblocker is not effective against proxy-switching.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Peter Mackay wrote:
>
>>> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>>> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs
>>>
>>> charles matthews wrote:
>>>
>>
>>>> (i) If the market is really saying that there is a huge revenue
>>>> available since people 'in general' don't mind ads (the good French
>>>> verb is 'mithridatiser', I recall), why is no corporation not
>>>> sincerely chasing this money with a high-quality WP clone?
>>>>
>>> Since there are already mirrors with ads, yes, there are people
>>> chasing that money now. A high-quality clone that could compete with
>>> WP's name recognition would require significant investment up front,
>>> and take several years to establish itself in the public's mind;
>>>
>>
>> Your idealism and loyalty is laudable, but remember that in terms of
>> quality, a teenager with a bit of Linux knowledge can download the
>> whole lot
>> for free and get it operational in an afternoon.*
>>
> That would be the "low-quality" clone. One Linux box is easily
> slashdotted; the current WP installation laughs at Slashdot,
> or so I'm told. Our teenager would have to buy 100+ machines
> and get them all working in concert before going live.
>
>>
>> And I rather suspect that our "name recognition" is due more to being up
>> near the top of Google search results than any other single factor. If
>> Google developed their own product, I can confidently predict that it
>> would
>> be way cooler than WP, and that they would bump their own results
>> above WP's
>> in Google searches.
>>
> Well, their motto is supposedly "don't be evil", but of course if
> they *were* truly evil, they would lie about their motto. :-)
>

Now you're sounding like Daniel Brandt... ;-)

--
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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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia

body:
Peter Mackay wrote:
>>From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>>[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Alphax
>>(Wikipedia email)
>>Sent: Tuesday, 3 January 2006 00:09
>>To: English Wikipedia
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia
>>
>>Peter Mackay wrote:
>>
>>>>From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>>>>[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Lisa Thurston
>>>
>>>
>>>>Why shouldn't the companies making money from the Wikipedia data at
>>>>the microscale should be the primary funders of Wikipedia?
>>>
>>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>If, as you say, some large companies derive a commercial
>>
>>benefit from
>>
>>>WP and should fund us, then what is to stop them from downloading
>>>MediaWiki, hiring some professionals, and building their own
>>>encyclopaedia, perhaps as a joint effort with Google along with
>>>toolbars and popups and so on? That way, they'd get the
>>
>>same benefits
>>
>>>as well as control over the operation and a more focused product.
>>>
>>
>>There's one thing they wouldn't get - control of the
>>community. Yes, WP is primarily an encyclopedia, but it
>>wouldn't be /anything/ without its contributors.
>
>
> Granted, but I'm quite sure that recruiting a few thousand ambitious
> know-it-alls isn't as big a task as you might imagine. In fact, I think
> Googleopedia or Wikiexpedia would merely have to open their doors and they
> would instantly get tens of thousands of enthusiastic contributors and media
> exposure that we can only dream about. Remember all that fuss when Gmail
> began and Gvites were being auctioned on eBay for sizable amounts?
>

So what can (insert name of commercial fork here) offer that WP can't?
Will they pay their editors?

--
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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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Sounds good. Contribute or suffer the ads. :)
>

Nah, you have to tie editcountitis and deletionism into it /somehow/...

--
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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subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure how this whining about new admins is helpful. Rather than
> stirring up bad feeling amongst admins, perhaps you could do something
> more productive about the situation, such as asking new admins to
> explain their actions, voting oppose to people you think are unfamiliar
> with admin policy, etc.?
>
I do as you advise quite frequently but it makes no difference, and
there are only 24 hours in a day; to do any more I would have to, like
them, stop editing the encyclopedia completely. These e-mails are part
of the attempt to, as you say, "do something more productive about the
situation," so it's somewhat discouraging to have you dismiss it as
"whining."

Sarah


body:
On 1/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I almost hate to say this, but with the growing size and
> > popularity of Wikipedia, we might need to start treating
> > adminship truly as a big deal.
>
> So what you're saying is: Too much privilege (and prestige) and not
> enough responsibility? How do we fix it?
>
I would like Jimbo to change the "no big deal" philosophy, and I'd
like to see no one promoted without a minimum number of votes: I've
suggested 30 elsewhere. That would be a start.

Sarah


body:
On 1/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > I almost hate to say this, but with the growing size and
> > popularity of Wikipedia, we might need to start treating
> > adminship truly as a big deal.
>
> So what you're saying is: Too much privilege (and prestige) and not
> enough responsibility? How do we fix it?
>
> Steve

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Admins have plenty of responsibility.
There's a lot of work to be done. However, there needs to be a certain
measure of accountability, and that candidates that go through RfA clearly
need to show that they understand and will follow all the major policies of
Wikipedia: Blocking, deletion, NPA, AGF and all that good stuff.

The only way I can see in fixing it is to be more stringent in RfA
nominations

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

references:
<ce4d55b80601030825j6f2c1a12v86a0b2a29d39b2e6@mail.gmail.com>
	<FEEHIDNLFFBKHPIPAHGNKEHFCGAA.brian@bhaws.com>
	<3f797b9a0601031034w3c742b41v72af49dd8154ed51@mail.gmail.com>
	<eecbb0630601031037j43be02buff202456716b8ece@mail.gmail.com>
	<4cc603b0601031044i3521ed24u6ca601f0bb20af9a@mail.gmail.com>
	<eecbb0630601031056n76ba6231r9cf2bf64cd7f7410@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 1/3/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>  They certainly do less harm than this whole ordeal has. Some people just
> can't stand to have anything on Wikipedia that disagrees with their
> principles, and they're willing to go to war over it. This is a great
> example. The war is more damaging than the thing you're going to war over.
> We all should really just call it quits on this one.

These unproductive users cause harm every day on hundreds of talk
pages and articles, editing carelessly, insulting people, looking for
ways to cause trouble, coming back with sock puppets if blocked,
getting friends from outside Wikipedia to join in revert wars. The
user box issue is just the first time they've joined forces, and it's
a good thing in a way that it's happening over this and not over some
policy change they try to force through, which will happen soon enough
if we don't get a grip.

Sarah


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Brian <brian at bhaws.com> wrote:
>
> I think that a lot of the problem has come from the fact that a lot of these
> new users spend very little time actually editing the encyclopedia. I did a
> random scan of contributions of some of the people who signed the RFC and
> found a lot of them were not actively editing in article space. It's no
> surprise that they don't have a complete understanding of how it works.
> There's a lot of people involved against Kelly's RFC that are both not
> regular editors of Wikipedia and are causing a great deal of disruption.

Quite true.  Slightly unfair to the more productive individuals
commenting on that RFC, but still quite true ;-)

On the other hand, many people don't care about the userboxes, but are
instead upset over the way with which their deletion has been handled.
 More deletions at this point may solve the userbox problem, but not
the community interaction problem.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure how this whining about new admins is helpful.

I was wondering why you were being aggressive, Chris, but now I
realize you're User:Talrias, the admin who reduced Marsden's block
twice, even though, as I believe you admitted, you were unfamiliar
with the situation. Without wanting to get into a row with you, I must
admit that that was the kind of incident that has caused me concern,
though by no means the only one. I want to stress that I'm not
alleging bad faith, but I feel that admins have to be able to trust
each other's judgement, even when we may disagree with it, so that
blocks aren't constantly being done and undone; and that speaks
directly to the issue of how we elect new admins, because if we want
to trust their judgement, and have them trust ours, there has to be a
shared philosophy or vision, and that requires a minimum amount of
community interaction before they're promoted. Without community
interaction, there's no respect for the community. But with too much
community interaction, there might be less respect for the
encyclopedia. So electing admins who have the right balance of edits
is a tricky business, a very "big deal" in my view.

Sarah


body:
On 1/3/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > Here's an example of what I mean.  I noticed that a specific administrator,
> > in the last 12 hours, managed to get into a delete wheel war with another
> > admin, get himself blocked for 3RR, and then unblocked himself.  He then
> > unblocked an obvious troll, without informing the blocking admin, and
> > blocked another editor permanently, accusing him of being a sockpuppet, with
> > no evidence that I am aware of.  My curiousity piqued, I looked at his
> > recent edits, and discovered that *none* of his past 600 edits have been to
> > an article, but do find a comment he has posted today saying that Jimbo is
> > "too busy asking for money" to deal with Wikipedia issues.  I then do an
> > editcount, and discover that of his 8700 edits, only 1800 are to articles,
> > the *exact same number* of edits he has made to his User page.  I look at
> > his User page, and discover *86* user boxes on it.

> If you think he shouldn't be an admin, I invite you to file an RFAr
> about it, rather than complaining to the mailing list, which does
> nothing but create ill will amongst contributors.
>
Talrias, the point is that some editors believe there may be a problem
with the way admins are being elected, and so we are discussing the
situation in general terms, using examples (with no names) as
appropriate. If you do not believe there is a problem, you're welcome
to say so, or not to take part in the discussion, but it's perhaps
unhelpful to try to stop others from having it.

Sarah


body:
jayjg wrote:
> Here's an example of what I mean.  I noticed that a specific
administrator,
> in the last 12 hours, managed to get into a delete wheel war with another
> admin, get himself blocked for 3RR, and then unblocked himself.  He then
> unblocked an obvious troll, without informing the blocking admin, and
> blocked another editor permanently, accusing him of being a sockpuppet,
with
> no evidence that I am aware of.  My curiousity piqued, I looked at his
> recent edits, and discovered that *none* of his past 600 edits have been
to
> an article, but do find a comment he has posted today saying that Jimbo is
> "too busy asking for money" to deal with Wikipedia issues.  I then do an
> editcount, and discover that of his 8700 edits, only 1800 are to articles,
> the *exact same number* of edits he has made to his User page.  I look at
> his User page, and discover *86* user boxes on it.
>
> What is going on here?

If you think he shouldn't be an admin, I invite you to file an RFAr
about it, rather than complaining to the mailing list, which does
nothing but create ill will amongst contributors.

Chris
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
_______________________________________________

An RFAr would cause just as much or more ill will. I think it's fine to use
specific examples when talking about larger Wikipedia issues.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Alphax
> (Wikipedia email)
> Sent: Tuesday, 3 January 2006 13:23
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?
>
> Peter Mackay wrote:
> <snip>
> > Getting back to the original point, charging Google enough
> to keep WP
> > running isn't going to do much beyond providing an incentive for
> > Google to put up their own online encyclopaedia. I would
> imagine that
> > if they were pressed, Google could get the MediaWiki software and
> > Wikipedia content loaded and tested in a matter of days, if
> not hours,
> > and alter their search results to give their "Googlopedia" a higher
> > precedence than Wikipedia. We don't have any sort of "big
> stick" to threaten Google with.
> >
>
> Actually, we do. We withold editors. What will they do when
> they are vandalised? They won't have WP's 650+ admins (and
> 2000+ others) to help deal with it.

Why not? You think Google would have problems attracting editors?

Peter


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Alphax
> (Wikipedia email)

> > Granted, but I'm quite sure that recruiting a few thousand
> ambitious
> > know-it-alls isn't as big a task as you might imagine. In fact, I
> > think Googleopedia or Wikiexpedia would merely have to open their
> > doors and they would instantly get tens of thousands of
> enthusiastic
> > contributors and media exposure that we can only dream
> about. Remember
> > all that fuss when Gmail began and Gvites were being
> auctioned on eBay for sizable amounts?
> >
>
> So what can (insert name of commercial fork here) offer that WP can't?

I don't think Google would have any trouble attracting "a few thousand
ambitious know-it-alls". Surely you don't think that WP has cornered the
market on such people?

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 1/3/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>Somebody compared userboxes to bumper stickers, and I think it's very
>>apt. While we may dislike seeing cars covered with bumper stickers,
>>we don't (usually :-) ) try to pass laws regulating the number or
>>type of bumper stickers on a car, nor do we try to outlaw the
>>printing of bumper stickers.
>>
>
>There have actually been attempts to pass such laws, and in some cases
>they've even been passed.  Such laws are unconstitutional in the
>United States, however, and so they don't last.
>
>Wikipedia is not a free speech forum, however, and does not have to
>worry about restrictions on advertisement, personal promotion, etc.
>being found unconstitutional.
>
Agreed. But even so, we don't tend to restrict user page content
beyond the basic requirements of civility, no legal threats, etc.
It seems generally accepted that user pages can be as POV as one
likes, that personal promotion is OK, advertising is OK, grotesque
graphic design is OK :-), etc.

To me, the verbiage in a user box isn't any better or worse than
if it were in the text directly. There was a comment that the
userboxes enabled like-minded people to find each other, but it's
been a longstanding practice for user pages to list "friends" and
"enem^Wpeople with which one respectfully disagrees". So the argument
against userboxes would have to explain why some kinds of permitted
user page content is OK in a box, and why some other kinds are not.

Stan


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Peter Jacobi wrote:

>There's an impersonator on dewiki who added NBSP (U+00A0) to another user's
>username. The impersonator's account seems to be unblockable by normal means
>as the trailing NBSP at some stage of blocking gets stripped and the
>legitimate user is blocked.
>
>Is this problem known?
>
>Is there a known workaround?
>
>Regards,
>Peter Jacobi
>
>
>
>
Given that this is an arms-race between the vandals and the software
developers, it might be a good idea to implement the following
restrictions on creating new usernames.

Usernames should first be NKFC normalized, and then be restricted to
contain only:

SPACE
The printing ASCII punctuation characters
The ASCII digits
MIDDLE DOT (for Catalan)
Combining marks

and script-specific characters from _exactly one_ writing system;
namely, codepoints that belong only to a single script, or any subset of
one of the following three script combinations:

HAN + BOPOMOFO

HAN + KATAKANA + HIRAGANA

HAN + HANGUL

In addition, characters from the Hangul Jamo and Braille blocks and any
characters from any compatibility-character, presentation form, half
width, full width, spacing modifier, small, phonetic, superscript,
enclosed, symbol, mathematical, musical, and punctuation Unicode blocks,
as well as all of the exotic metacharacters and undefined characters,
should be explicitly forbidden.

(This is based on the recommendations of UTR #36, with some tweaks,
based on a _lot_ of other research into name-spoofing.)

Although these rules sound restrictive, they will actually allow almost
any reasonable username through whilst preventing many, many nasty
tricks.  (Yes, Coptic disunification is a problem, but I know how to fix
that special case ;-)

Although these rules sound hairy, they can actually be reduced to just
one range-lookup table, and about thirty lines of code.

_That_ should slow the more devious vandals down a bit, and I have more
tricks up my sleeve for later.

-- Neil


body:
On 1/3/06, Ben Emmel <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/3/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > This is an increasing problem. Some of the users who cause most
> > > trouble do very little editing of articles, and trying to deal with
> > > their trolling on talk pages can be soul-destroying. Yet block one of
> > > them and their friends scream blue murder, aided and abetted by
> > > certain admins who should know better. It's something we need to get a
> > > grip on because it's going to keep getting worse, and eventually
> > > they'll start affecting policy.
> > Unfortunately, some of these admins *don't* know better.  Recently I've
> > seen
> > people become admins with thousands of edits, but under a hundred Talk:
> > page
> > comments, and others who became admins with as few as 16 people voting
> for
> > them.  People who have had so little interaction with other Wikipedians,
> > or
> > who are so unknown that there aren't even 20 Wikipedians willing to
> vouch
> > for them, are simply not members of the Wikipedia community in any
> > meaningful way.  It is not surprising, then, when they act in ways which
> > display an ignorance of, or go against Wikipedia norms (e.g. unblocking
> > blocked users without even first discussing the block with the blocking
> > admin).  The purpose of Wikipedia is not to create a website where
> people
> > can set up really cool user pages, or engage in wheel wars.  Nor is its
> > purpose to create a website where one can endlessly pontificate on the
> > actions of other editors, and devise more and more policies to control
> > their
> > actions in increasingly bizarre ways.  Rather, the purpose of Wikipedia
> is
> > to create a great encyclopedia.
> >
> > Jay.
>
>
> I am noticing some of the same issues: Users are slipping through RfA
> without much opposition, but without much community support either. They
> seem to be decent editors, mostly doing work in a small area of Wikipedia,
> and when (self)nominated for adminship, they get their "Wikifriends" to
> support them, and boom! admin tools. Inevitably, wheel warring (large or
> small) will happen from these admins, because they actually don't
> understand
> or generally support the long-standing policies that we have here.
>
> I almost hate to say this, but with the growing size and popularity of
> Wikipedia, we might need to start treating adminship truly as a big deal.

Here's an example of what I mean.  I noticed that a specific administrator,
in the last 12 hours, managed to get into a delete wheel war with another
admin, get himself blocked for 3RR, and then unblocked himself.  He then
unblocked an obvious troll, without informing the blocking admin, and
blocked another editor permanently, accusing him of being a sockpuppet, with
no evidence that I am aware of.  My curiousity piqued, I looked at his
recent edits, and discovered that *none* of his past 600 edits have been to
an article, but do find a comment he has posted today saying that Jimbo is
"too busy asking for money" to deal with Wikipedia issues.  I then do an
editcount, and discover that of his 8700 edits, only 1800 are to articles,
the *exact same number* of edits he has made to his User page.  I look at
his User page, and discover *86* user boxes on it.

What is going on here?

Jay.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
December 2005 saw a fivefold increase in edits on pages in template
space whose titles started with the characters "User_".  From about
1200 in November, the number of such edits rose to 6100.

Userboxes started innocously enough, first seeing widespread use with
the Babel project, intended to inform users of one another's language
skills.  But they haven't stayed that way.  From helping editors to
locate one another by skill, they have evolved into a way for editors
to group by conviction.  Last month one editor used userbox
information to locate dozens of people who shared his religious
persuasion in an overt attempt to destroy the consensual
decision-making process of Wikipedia.  The religious userbox page
(yes, such a page exists) lists some fifty userboxes intended to
identify and group editors by expressed religion.  There is also a
page for grouping according to political ideology.

The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
They must die.


body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> Given that this is an arms-race between the vandals and the software
> developers, it might be a good idea to implement the following
> restrictions on creating new usernames.
>
> Usernames should first be NKFC normalized, and then be restricted to
> contain only:
>
> [snip]
>
> Although these rules sound hairy, they can actually be reduced to just
> one range-lookup table, and about thirty lines of code.
>
> _That_ should slow the more devious vandals down a bit, and I have more
> tricks up my sleeve for later.

And, before you ask, yes, I _do_ have some GPL-licenced code for doing
this. It's in C, but it's rather straightforward, and should be easily
translatable to the language of your choice. If anyone is seriously
interested in addressing the issue of bogus and spoofed usernames, I'd
be happy to send it to them.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> They fulfil a function, or you wouldn't be bringing it up.  I am against all
> polarising moves on WP, since I think we need to gather in the centre ground
> to do the job. (Like not making centre versus center a big deal, for
> example.)
>
> But I don't think you're going to win on this one.  I would quite agree that
> they are no better than bumper stickers, in many cases.

It should be noted that I don't object to user boxes per se; I have
seven of them on my user page, in fact.  I merely object to user boxes
that violate copyright law, that are offensive, that are incivil, or
that are likely to interfere with our primary mission.

Kelly


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
The ones we need it for come in on variable ips. For example
Gibraltarian who comes in from Gibraltar. It would be nice to have an
option other than blocking everyone from Gibraltar. He created Gib1
Gib2 Gib3 Gib4 edited with one but just left the other 3 to age.

Fred

On Jan 3, 2006, at 1:43 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Fred Bauder:
>
>> Please consider my request at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/
>> Developer help needed
>> The problem is that semi-protection as now coded relies on % of
>> users  rather than on measurement of edits. This permits
>> stockpiling of  sleeper accounts which can later be activated as
>> sockpuppets  defeating semi-protection.
>>
>
> Wouldn't such stockpiling be rendered fairly ineffective by the
> autoblocker, or does that only affect anonymous users?
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: friday fraggle

body:
I agree, but I would add that I have at least as many concerns about certain
long-time admins as I do about certain new ones.  In some ways, errant
newbies are easier to deal with- they may be more receptive to criticism.
Many of the old timers appear to be far too confident in the correctness of
their actions.

Friday

On 1/3/06, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The solution (and problem) lies in the selection of admins, which I
> believe has become too lax. We need to recognize that adminship on a
> top 30 website IS a big deal. Even one admin who's unfamiliar with
> policy or who gets into wheel wars can cause major issues. We need
> stricter screening of candidates, preferably as soon as possible.
>
> Carbonite
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia appeal on digg

body:
You might want to note that the Wikipedia appeal has popped up on digg:

http://digg.com/links/Personal_appeal_from_Wikipedia_founder_Jimmy_Wales

Only 13 diggs so far, though.

-- Neil


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Somebody compared userboxes to bumper stickers, and I think it's very
> apt. While we may dislike seeing cars covered with bumper stickers,
> we don't (usually :-) ) try to pass laws regulating the number or
> type of bumper stickers on a car, nor do we try to outlaw the
> printing of bumper stickers.

There have actually been attempts to pass such laws, and in some cases
they've even been passed.  Such laws are unconstitutional in the
United States, however, and so they don't last.

Wikipedia is not a free speech forum, however, and does not have to
worry about restrictions on advertisement, personal promotion, etc.
being found unconstitutional.

Kelly


from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 30, Issue 19

body:
On 1/3/06 1:08 PM, "wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org"
<wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org> wrote:

> From: Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 05:37:24 +1100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad
>
> On 1/4/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On the other hand, many people don't care about the userboxes, but are
>> instead upset over the way with which their deletion has been handled.
>> More deletions at this point may solve the userbox problem, but not
>> the community interaction problem.
>
>
> If there's anything to be learned from this, it's that unproductive members
> of the community do less harm than trying to take away their toys does. You
> end up alienating a lot more people than you thought you would.
>
> Ryan

Not to sound elitist but I probably will but WHO CARES if we alienate a few
people who are more interested in making a sticker book than an
encyclopedia?  If someone is so riled that their little sticker that says
"Caring Cat Owner" (yes, it does exist at Template:User_Caring_Cat_Owner) is
no longer allowed, so much so that they decided to leave the project then I
say don't let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out.  We ARE NOT going
to miss those people.

If this community and this project should have learned any damn thing from
the Siegenthaler fiasco it is that QUALITY matters more than QUANTITY and
that translates on down the line.  I would rather have 100 thoughtful
editors than 1000 who don't have a clue.

Does this mean that I think we should have some sort of test or requirement
for editors?  Of course not.  Does it mean that we shouldn't let everyone on
in to contribute?  Of course not.  What it does mean is that any addition to
the project needs to be closely scrutinized with a cost/benefit analysis --
does this feature, project, fork, or what have you offer more benefit to the
project than it could cause harm?  We apply the same criteria to special
protection -- do anonymous editors add more benefit to controversial
articles than they could cause harm?  Absolutely not and we've developed a
process to deal with that.

In the case of user boxes, outside of the babel boxes, I think this whole
matter has demonstrated without a single doubt ABSOLUTELY NOT and they
should be terminated.

--Guy  (User:Wgfinley)


body:
geni wrote:

>To
>be honest how often do you read user pages anyway? Personaly I feel
>sorry for anyone reading mine.
>
I always skim a person's user page before leaving a note for them.
If nothing else, it helps me know which arguments are most likely
to be persuasive. Taking a page from Tom Sawyer, why edit a
hundred pages myself if I can talk somebody else into doing it?
My own edit count doesn't need any more pumping up. :-)

More seriously, I think additional user page info helps foster
a collaborative atmosphere. If someone apologizes in advance
for being a habitual bad speller, I'm more likely to help out
by doing a copyedit pass, or to pick a recent real case, a South
African interested in aviation is likely to have ready access
to books too obscure for any university library in Nevada.

Stan


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> I guess we are just fucked if we can't get your cooperation.
>
> Fred
>
No, the code was _never_ intended to protect against determined vandals
with technical tools; indeed it's hard to think of _any_ automatic
measure which would be completely effective against such vandals; you'd
just create a technical arms race, which they'd enjoy for being the
subject of so much attention.

Rather, it's designed as a low-tech aid to [[soft security]]; a "speed
bump", not a barrier. All it does is to make drive-by vandalism a little
bit harder. But making it just a little bit harder considerably reduces
its prevalence, enabling human editors to spend more time editing and
curbing the serious vandals. As such, it's very a Wiki countermeasure.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > These unproductive users cause harm every day on hundreds of talk
> > pages and articles, editing carelessly, insulting people, looking for
> > ways to cause trouble, coming back with sock puppets if blocked,
> > getting friends from outside Wikipedia to join in revert wars. The
> > user box issue is just the first time they've joined forces, and it's
> > a good thing in a way that it's happening over this and not over some
> > policy change they try to force through, which will happen soon enough
> > if we don't get a grip.
> >
> You're saying that people who play with userboxes do this? You'd better ban
> me from the project right away; I'm a scourge to Wikipedia, apparently.
> Congrats, you've just alienated one more productive editor.

I'm not talking about the user boxes, Ryan, I'm talking about users
who treat Wikipedia as a social club and not an encyclopedia. The
user-box issue is the first time I've seen some of them act en masse.
My point was that I'm glad we've seen it over a relatively minor issue
(though I feel bad for the targets of it), because it might prompt
some action before it gets to the point where they're dictating
policy. Just because some of the user-box editors, if I can call them
that, make few edits to the encyclopedia doesn't mean none do, or even
that most don't, obviously.

Sarah


body:
On 1/3/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> jayjg wrote:
> > Here's an example of what I mean.  I noticed that a specific
> administrator,
> > in the last 12 hours, managed to get into a delete wheel war with
> another
> > admin, get himself blocked for 3RR, and then unblocked himself.  He then
> > unblocked an obvious troll, without informing the blocking admin, and
> > blocked another editor permanently, accusing him of being a sockpuppet,
> with
> > no evidence that I am aware of.  My curiousity piqued, I looked at his
> > recent edits, and discovered that *none* of his past 600 edits have been
> to
> > an article, but do find a comment he has posted today saying that Jimbo
> is
> > "too busy asking for money" to deal with Wikipedia issues.  I then do an
> > editcount, and discover that of his 8700 edits, only 1800 are to
> articles,
> > the *exact same number* of edits he has made to his User page.  I look
> at
> > his User page, and discover *86* user boxes on it.
> >
> > What is going on here?
>
> If you think he shouldn't be an admin, I invite you to file an RFAr
> about it, rather than complaining to the mailing list, which does
> nothing but create ill will amongst contributors.

Chris, the list *is* the place to raise discuss these issues; characterizing
this as "complaining" or "whining" is far more likely to engender ill-will
than raising the issues in the first place.

Jay.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] IP blocking of repeat user account creation after a
	user block

body:
Please tell me if this is already the case, but would it make sense for
accounts which have just been blocked to have their current IP address
temporarily autoblocked (for say, 30 minutes) from creating other user
accounts. This would be in addition to the current
account-creations-per-day limit.

This would help prevent many mid-level vandals from playing the game of
repeatedly creating multiple accounts immediately after getting blocked,
and would reduce the amount of time admins currently have to spend
playing whack-a-mole with these sockpuppet accounts.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> > Exactly right. Almost every block is at serious risk now of being
> > reversed by an admin who's never read the blocking policy, has had
> > very little interaction with the community, and who got elected with
> > under 20 votes, but decides he quite liked something the blocked user
> > once posted, and so therefore he has to unblock, leading to wheel
> > wars, endless explanations of the most obvious things on WP:AN/I, and
> > a consequent unwillingness on the part of other admins to block
> > troublemakers until they become serious problems (and even then it can
> > be difficult: see the Marsden situation). Unfortunately, part of this
> > problem is fueled by the philosophy that adminship is "no big deal,"
> > which if Jimbo reads this thread, I ask that he consider commenting on
> > somewhere, because I've lost count of the number of support votes I've
> > seen quoting it, leading to yet another unknown and possibly clueless
> > admin being promoted. Combine poor admins with hundreds of users who
> > are turning Wikipedia into a social club, and you have a giant mess.
>
> I'm not sure how this whining about new admins is helpful. Rather than
> stirring up bad feeling amongst admins, perhaps you could do something
> more productive about the situation, such as asking new admins to
> explain their actions, voting oppose to people you think are unfamiliar
> with admin policy, etc.?
>
> I, in general, don't see how complaining about inexperience among new
> admins, is going to give them the experience necessary. I think it
> should stop, and more productive behaviour should start.

Chris, considering that you were the person who wheel-warred on Marsden's
blocking (Marsden was eventually banned by Jimbo), while admitting you did
not know the details of the case, and incorrectly claiming that permanent
bans could only be applied by the Arbitration Committee (though the policy
quite clearly says otherwise), I'm not surprised you reacted negatively to
those comments.  Nevertheless, this list *is* the place to discuss these
things.

Jay.


body:
On 1/3/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Incidentally, I agree with this, but the problem is that it will really
> become harder and harder to screen candidates accurately. Do you have any
> suggestions on how this could be done in some kind of scalable fashion?
>
> Ryan

I think a simple way to do this is to start having a minimum number of net
supports. 30, perhaps. This insures that the candidate is known enough
around Wikipedia. When the readership and editor numbers of Wikipedia
increases, so can the net support number, in order to accurately reflect the
population.

Another way is to promote a change in the voting mindset. I think that we
are too big and important to have support people with a simple "Oh, s/he
looks like a good editor. '''Support''' ~~~~"

My personal policy is to only vote for a candidate if I can personally vouch
for their editing, conflict handling, and janitorial abilities. There was a
time when I would support every candidate that looked ready. I eventually
realized that was only hurting the 'pedia, since even a good editor can go a
bit crazy with admin tools due to a lack of understanding.

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


from_name: Brian

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of slimvirgin at gmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 2:40 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

The user-box issue is the first time I've seen some of them act en masse.
My point was that I'm glad we've seen it over a relatively minor issue
(though I feel bad for the targets of it), because it might prompt
some action before it gets to the point where they're dictating
policy. Just because some of the user-box editors, if I can call them
that, make few edits to the encyclopedia doesn't mean none do, or even
that most don't, obviously.

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

And relationships are being formed right now in the group of new-ish users
that have been brought together over user boxes that will indeed result in
attempts to shout policies through. Not to be melodramatic but I really
think we're at a crossroads here.

The increase in usage has brought a lot of new users in, some of whom have
been active in forum-like sites where participation and acceptable ways of
communicating are much different.....


from_name: Rob Church

body:
That's a nice attitude you've got yourself.

Rob Church

On 03/01/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I guess we are just fucked if we can't get your cooperation.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jan 2, 2006, at 8:23 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> > Fred Bauder wrote:
> >
> >> Nevertheless, some are better than others. Certainly an option
> >> susceptible to the easy creation of sleeper accounts is worse than
> >> the
> >> other alternatives. I am somewhat at a loss as to how a threshold
> >> based
> >> on an edit count could be easily gamed as we could all at least
> >> look at
> >> the record. Building up a thousand edits just so you can vandalize an
> >> article seems like an awful lot of work.
> >>
> >
> > Not a lot of work for a persistent vandal. A simple bot can make a
> > thousand
> > "spelling corrections" and "formatting tweaks" easy enough. You're
> > already
> > talking about having the foresight to make sleeper accounts, and
> > you're going to
> > tell me that a few non-suspicious edits first are unthinkable?
> >
> > It *can* be gamed. The question is just whether it will be enough
> > of a speed
> > bump to be worth it without seeming like a barrier to gleefully
> > jump over.
> >
> > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Carbonite

body:
On 1/3/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > Here's an example of what I mean.  I noticed that a specific administrator,
> > in the last 12 hours, managed to get into a delete wheel war with another
> > admin, get himself blocked for 3RR, and then unblocked himself.  He then
> > unblocked an obvious troll, without informing the blocking admin, and
> > blocked another editor permanently, accusing him of being a sockpuppet, with
> > no evidence that I am aware of.  My curiousity piqued, I looked at his
> > recent edits, and discovered that *none* of his past 600 edits have been to
> > an article, but do find a comment he has posted today saying that Jimbo is
> > "too busy asking for money" to deal with Wikipedia issues.  I then do an
> > editcount, and discover that of his 8700 edits, only 1800 are to articles,
> > the *exact same number* of edits he has made to his User page.  I look at
> > his User page, and discover *86* user boxes on it.
> >
> > What is going on here?
>
> If you think he shouldn't be an admin, I invite you to file an RFAr
> about it, rather than complaining to the mailing list, which does
> nothing but create ill will amongst contributors.

The reality is that de-admining isn't a simple process and it's only
likely to be successful in clear cases of admin misconduct. In cases
where an admin hasn't blatantly abused his powers, but has made many
poor judgement calls, there's not much that can be done. Even if the
ArbCom accepts the case, it's likely going to cause more problems than
it solves.

The solution (and problem) lies in the selection of admins, which I
believe has become too lax. We need to recognize that adminship on a
top 30 website IS a big deal. Even one admin who's unfamiliar with
policy or who gets into wheel wars can cause major issues. We need
stricter screening of candidates, preferably as soon as possible.

Carbonite


from_name: Reg forafd

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mistakenly blocked User:Regforafd--block affecting
	family and friends in 3 US states

body:
This account is NOT a sockpuppet for AfD!!! Didn't anyone notice that it was created about the time that ANON's stopped being able to create "New" articles? I created this account because I can no longer file things on AfD using my normal IP account User:24.17.48.241. Jeez. Regforafd 23:03, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Photos
 Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays, whatever.


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
"Tony Sidaway" wrote

>The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
They must die.

They fulfil a function, or you wouldn't be bringing it up.  I am against all
polarising moves on WP, since I think we need to gather in the centre ground
to do the job. (Like not making centre versus center a big deal, for
example.)

But I don't think you're going to win on this one.  I would quite agree that
they are no better than bumper stickers, in many cases.

Charles


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> December 2005 saw a fivefold increase in edits on pages in template
> space whose titles started with the characters "User_".  From about
> 1200 in November, the number of such edits rose to 6100.
>

So it will terminaly mess with the edit counters at WP:RFA.

> Userboxes started innocously enough, first seeing widespread use with
> the Babel project, intended to inform users of one another's language
> skills.  But they haven't stayed that way.  From helping editors to
> locate one another by skill, they have evolved into a way for editors
> to group by conviction.  Last month one editor used userbox
> information to locate dozens of people who shared his religious
> persuasion in an overt attempt to destroy the consensual
> decision-making process of Wikipedia.  The religious userbox page
> (yes, such a page exists) lists some fifty userboxes intended to
> identify and group editors by expressed religion.  There is also a
> page for grouping according to political ideology.

So people admit their bias upfront. Handy.

>
> The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
> They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
> equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
> They must die.

Alturnitivly we could spend the time it would take to kill them on
writeing articles about canals.

--
geni


from_name: SCZenz

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Yes, we can certainly illegalize any userboxes we like.  The question is,
are the productive users we're going to lose (and there are some) if we
crack down on userboxes worth it?  And who should decide?

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> There have actually been attempts to pass such laws, and in some cases
> they've even been passed.  Such laws are unconstitutional in the
> United States, however, and so they don't last.
>
> Wikipedia is not a free speech forum, however, and does not have to
> worry about restrictions on advertisement, personal promotion, etc.
> being found unconstitutional.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> Tony, I agree these are a problem, but I'm not very familiar with
> them, so I have a question. What is the difference between having a
> box on your page saying you're e.g. Hindu, and having yourself listed
> in a Hindu Wikipedians category? Can the boxes be used to group
> editors by political or religious affiliation in a way that categories
> can't?
>
> Sarah

One could theoretically do a "Special:Whatlinkshere" on the template
page, which would give the same thing as a category would, albeit with
some extra pages added in and it wouldn't be displayed in a very
aesthetic manner.

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
> They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
> equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
> They must die.
> _______________________________________________

Not to mention the use of "fair use" images in them. Or the whole RFC/Kelly
Martin. Including that special template that a RFC against Kelly Martin has
been filed.

This whole userbox thing seems to be getting out of hand.

Garion


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I'm coming across as much more strident in this thread than I mean to
> be. But the point is that pseudoscience is in fact *bullshit*, not
> science, and there's going to be no label that doesn't puff up the
> subjects with false respectability that won't soon carry the same
> connotations. Because it is in fact bullshit.

I wholeheartedly agree with the above. Pseudoscience is nothing more
than dogmatic and irrational thinking trying to pretend it's exactly the
opposite to get public support. It should not be given a single bit of
credibility at all - and not giving it credibility would fit perfectly
with our policy of neutral point of view.

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Parascience subst. pseudoscience

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
> G'day Ray,
>
>> Karl A. Krueger wrote:
>>
>>> Yup.  See also [[euphemism treadmill]].  Creating a politically-correct
>>> neologism won't change the situation:  People who are misleading the
>>> public (by pretending to scientific research they aren't doing) don't
>>> like having the fact pointed out.
>>
>>
>> 20,000 Google hits is not a characteristic of a neologism.
>
>
> So it's a euphemism, not necessarily a neologism.  A slight improvement;
> like being rescued from the fire and dumped into the frying pan.
>
>> The difference is that "parascience" assumes good faith;
>> "pseudoscioence" does not.
>
>
> Assume Good Faith is a community tool, not an explanation of how to
> achieve NPOV.  Describing astrology, Intelligent Design[0], the healing
> power of magnets[1], etc. as "pseudoscience" is entirely accurate.
>
> Describing it as "alternative science" is adopting a label that
> fraudsters and dupes (e.g. I've no doubt many astrologers really believe
> they're telling the truth, which makes them more dupes than liars
> themselves) would prefer, conjuring up as it does positive thoughts of
> the spiritual knowledge of the Ancients of the Orient, as with
> "alternative medicine".
>
> Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.  Encyclopaedias are expected to tell the
> truth, whether they do so in a neutral tone of voice or not.  It is not
> POV to call a liar a liar; it is not NPOV to refuse to do so.  NPOV does
> not oblige us to give all sides a fair hearing.  That's called
> "journalistic balance", and it's an ethically bankrupt concept which
> inevitably hands victory to the biggest liar.  We're obliged to be
> truthful, and neutral; we're not obliged to be "balanced".  We should be
> careful that, in our rush to give pseudoscience a fair hearing, we do
> not start POV-pushing for them.
>
> Someone, I think it was David Gerard, said recently that we won't get
> into trouble if we lean too far towards what Jack Lynch calls "SPOV":
> 'tis better to be thought of as scientifically accurate than to be
> considered a haven of confused POV-pushing liars.  If it was him, he's
> exactly right.
>
>
> [0] That is, the American extremist Christian fraud "Intelligent
>     Design", not the concept of an intelligent designer
>
> [1] By which I mean those who promise to send you a motivational VHS
>     tape and a packet of fridge magnets for just $199.95 (+ $4.95 p&s)
>     and if you pay NOW by credit card you'll get not one, not two, but
>     FOUR free sets of steak knives ...
>

I second the above comment (and I was trying to get at this myself, less
eloquently I might add).

Chris


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 1/3/06, Brock Batsell <wikipedia at theskeptik.com> wrote:
>
>>Say an article contained an image not legally usable in Wikipedia. The
>>appropriate action in that case is to delete the image, and remove it
>>from the article, not to delete the article altogether. How, in any way,
>>shape, or form, is the appropriate action for dealing with an image not
>>legally usable in a template to delete the template altogether? The
>>appropriate action is to delete the image and remove it from the
>>template (it can be replaced with simple text or a free image).
>>
>
>One gets tired of doing that over and over again.  Zach and I spent
>months fighting with these people over our policy about the use of
>unlicensed media on user pages.  They simply refuse to listen; they
>are convinced that they have the right to do whatever they want
>without regard to policy, common sense, or really anything else.
>
>
Tacticswise, I think it would be better to spank the bulk of the
non-legit images (untagged, unsourced, and bogus fair use) before
tackling "popular" images. Not only do you get to say "everything
else is clean, these are the last ones left", but you can get the
combined gaze of the 100-odd image cops to back you up.

Stan


from_name: Jim Redmond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Beebday dawns ...

body:
charles matthews wrote:

> Peering at the Alexa graphs, it seems that WP has within the past day
> or so gone ahead of bbc.co.uk, the BBC website, on all three standard
> measures.

Heavens.  It's true.  The current one-day ranking for wikipedia.org is
20; for bbc.co.uk, it's 22.  <boggle>

Let's hold off on the champagne for a little while longer, though.
One-day ranks are EXTREMELY sensitive to flukes, and we cannot discount
the possible effect the recent holidays have had on Web traffic across
much of the world.

Jim Redmond
[[User:Jredmond]]


from_name: Antônio Carlos de Lima Mendes Júnior

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and world

body:
Dear Mr. Jimmy Wales,
Why don't you make wikipedia per-to-per, so the other countries could be the
owners of their own contents ? I don't believe in a secure and accurate
information under the USA, and Europe servers, according with their laws and
interests. Their Laws isn't the World law, and Wikipedia contents are World
contents. Think about it, if you don't give us the right (under our law) to
access world public information, so I will be very interested to make it
possible.

Thanks,
Cacalo.

_________________________________________________________________
  http://imaginemsn.com/messenger/default2.aspx?locale=pt-br


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> This isn't a question of constitutionality. It's a question of, I don't
> know, respect? This thing seems a lot to me like the Wikipedia Chess
> Championship (which I note at least one Arb is playing in), which was also
> VfD'd on the grounds that it had nothing to do with building an
> encyclopedia. That VFD failed, incidentally, on the grounds that the project
> wasn't hurting anything and it was a fun way for users to cool their heels.
> Userboxes are like that- and you might have gotten the same kind of useful
> discussion, if you had bothered to discuss it with others before making your
> decision that the userboxes must die. (Is this an example of IAR gone too
> far?)

The difference is that the chess tournament didn't violate copyright,
and when told to stop violating copyright, scream that its free speech
rights were being violated.

The userbox aficianadoes are.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal on userbox disagreement

body:
Yes! Yes! A reasonable way to resolve this!

-Hermione1980

--- SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's what I think we should do.  I don't expect it
> to be popular, but
> compromises never are...
>
> 1. The userbox wikiproject go through and get rid of
> all userbox images used
> that have inappropriate copyright permissions for
> userpages, including fair
> use images.  Likewise they make sure there are no
> meta-template issues in
> the userboxes.  The Wikiproject agrees to police
> these problems itself in
> the future.
>
> 2. Kelly Martin aknowledges that there are many
> serious contributors who
> like userboxes, so her decision to delete userboxes
> in defiance of those
> contributors' opinions was an overreaction.
>
> 3. We all go back to the live-and-let-live attitude
> that lets us write an
> encyclopedia.
>
> SCZenz
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> Several of the editors most stridently defending userboxes are editors
> who have few, if any, article edits.  I looked at one user's
> contributions today where that editor has edited virtually nothing
> other than his own user page, various user boxes in the template
> space, and the userbox project page.
>
> What purpose is served by this editor's participation in Wikipedia?
> Does this person really qualify as a "Wikipedian"?

What about the other people who use them?

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 1/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Tony, I agree these are a problem, but I'm not very familiar with
>>them, so I have a question. What is the difference between having a
>>box on your page saying you're e.g. Hindu, and having yourself listed
>>in a Hindu Wikipedians category?
>>
>
>None.  It is the categorization that is the problem, facilitated to
>some extent by the convenience of userboxes (the ease of typing {{user
>bigendinan}} compared to "[[Category: Bigendian wikipedians]]).
>
>Categorization people by skill or by services provided is a good use
>of user boxes.  But the beliefs and religions userboxes provide a
>handy telephone book for people interested in pushing a point of view
>an unscrupulous enough to spam user talk pages or contact likely
>supporters by email.
>
>The categories must die too.
>
But people have been doing that all along by making lists of like
minded users on their user pages, all watching the same articles,
setting up WikiProjects, etc. I think the difference is that the
number of editors is now so large that some special-interest topics
can now have 20-30 who share a POV, many of whom are new and/or
have never had enough contact with the generalists to pick up the
right habits of thought. The userboxes look more like a symptom
rather than a cause.

It would be interesting to have some way in which specialists
can't form a "consensus" completely unilaterally, in the way that
university departments bring in members of other departments for
tenure evaluations and the like, trying to prevent inbreeding.

Stan


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia

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

>
> On 1/2/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > I don't think Google would have any trouble attracting "a
> few thousand
> > ambitious know-it-alls". Surely you don't think that WP has
> cornered
> > the market on such people?
> >
> > Peter (Skyring)
> >
>
> I actually think that people would go to a Googlepedia pretty quickly.
> There's always that prestige associated with saying to
> someone "I work with Google." With the strength of its name
> alone, Google could attract a sizeable population in a matter
> of months. How it would work out, I'm not sure. Isn't Google
> a supporter of Wikipedia though, in terms of server space and
> PageRank?

I think Google and Wikipedia work well together. I don't know if there's any
formal relationship, but certainly each benefits from the other.

I don't think Google is going to start up a competitor any time soon,
however. Not unless, as Lisa suggested, we try to make them fund WP.

Pete (Skyring)