body:
On 4/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> > Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who
> > are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly
> > appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the
> > media are not public figures, although something interesting may have
> > happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
>
> This is all very vague ("the media") and would IMHO lead to a loss of
> useful biographies of scientists, authors, inventors, and other
> individuals who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and
> relevant.
>
> I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be
> whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record
> of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
>
> Incidentally, a person like Daniel Brandt (who has been covered
> throughout the years for his activism) meets that criterion, whereas
> someone like Brian Peppers (who is notable only because of an Internet
> phenomenon) does not.
>
> We do not lose much if we give up articles about the occasional media
> sensation and Internet meme. We do lose an awful lot if we allow
> everyone who is not a media figure to delete themselves.

How much do we really lose, though?  We have, at the moment, upward of
150,000 biographies of living individuals; as a class, they
substantially outnumber any other area of Wikipedia.  Now, how many of
those are going to be (a) of borderline notability and (b) insistent
on having their article removed?  A thousand?  Ten thousand?  We could
delete articles by the hundreds without making a substantial dent in
our overall coverage.

Sure, we won't have as many biographies of obscure bloggers and
whatnot; but is the benefit of not having to deal with legal threats,
the harassment of editors, the scathing stories in the New York Times,
and whatever else the subjects can throw at us not worth this?  Do we
really need those articles *that* badly?

Kirill


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] If anybody is remotely interested...

body:
On 8 Apr 2007 at 22:28, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll be in London tomorrow for two nights. Camel and Artichoke in Lower
> Marsh Street near Waterloo from 1830 on Tuesday. Tim Tams will be provided.

Well, I'm going to be in London myself, but unfortunately not at that
time... my trip is in July (14th - 23rd).  If there are any
Wikipedians over there I can meet with then, I'd be open to that.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Suppression of links to 'attack sites'?

body:
On 8 Apr 2007 at 15:38, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> the article it's in.  Wikipedia Review most likely does not have
> relevance to any article except maybe [[en:Daniel Brandt]]; whether it
> should be linked there or not is a content decision based on its
> notability.  But a blanket ban on links to "attack sites" is silly, even
> if we could define what that meant.

Not to mention that, since the (actual or potential) ban on such
links has been interpreted as applying to talk and project pages as
well, it would suppress the ability to cite content in such sites
when discussing potential legal threats to Wikipedia, and the like,
which are being discussed there.  But I suppose we can just all put
our heads in the sand and pretend they don't exist.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Anyone want some paying work?

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Sheldon for OmegaWiki we have not always the money to have our
> programmers
> work for us. I would really love it when we have more work for
> them. Several
> of them have SVN access to MediaWiki. One of them is an experienced
> programmer .. an other is a starting programmer.

Thanks. I've added your information to our file and will contact you
if we have something. As I stated in my previous email, we don't have
any immediate work, but I expect that we will probably have some in
the future.

--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans
|     The Best War Ever
--------------------------------
|  Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting:
|  http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
|
|  Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
|  https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
--------------------------------


list: commons-l

from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Commons-l] The disastrous popularity of Commons

body:
On 4/8/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> [1] Shouldn't it be t9n? *confused*
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
And what does it mean unabbreviated ?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Foundation-l] Version 0.5 CD *finally* released

body:
0.5 to 0.7 to 1.0? Is there any rhyme or reason to the versioning?
What should 1.0 signify?

cheers,
Brianna

On 08/04/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Either way, as the number "0.5" indicates, we are not done; static releases, just like Wikipedia itself, are not finished, as they are works in progress. We're starting work on Version 0.7 soon, and as everything else on Wikipedia, "more eyes are always more better" (the bad grammar is intentional ;) ). After v0.7, if things go as planned, we intend to finally publish Wikipedia Version 1.0 and accomplish our goal. But we need everyone's help.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA reform

body:
Sam Blacketer wrote:
> That is indeed what RfA should become, but the problem which needs to
> be solved is how to set up the process so that this assessment is made
> in a more intelligent way other than simple voting. If, for instance,
> instead of asking the community to "Support" or "Oppose", they were
> asked "Is <x> trustworthy? Yes/No" the result would be
> indistinguishable from what we have now. The only change would be the
> heading over the top of the !votes.
>
Rehashing an idea I proposed awhile ago, how about a set of standards
similar to those at [[Wikipedia:Featured article criteria]] (but
[[Wikipedia:Administrator criteria]] instead)? If opposing comments are
not relevant to specific points in the criteria, they can be ignored.
Not a perfect system, but it might be better than the current system.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] elections

body:
Note that a short statement doesnt exclude a longer statement. I think
it would be very good too if there would be a set of standard
questions asked to every candidate, and answered upon. But that kind
of stuff is finally up to the community to ask. What we are discussing
here is the set of rules. I think it is a very good thing to ask the
candidates to summerize shortly their ideas, and 50 or 100 words are
not a bad idea for such a summery. It might actually say a lot about a
candidate, as (s)he would have to characterize him/herself, and could
lift out the points (s)he finds the most important.

It is of course possible that candidates have besides that a longer
statement, but that should not be on the election page, but maybe on
some seperate page. I can imagine that that should be hosted on meta,
maybe somewhere central with for every candidate a page being set up
so it would be easy to find.

On the part of election officials, I think it is a good idea to ask
organizations such as debian to help us. I think it would mean a good
deal for trustworthy however, if multiple outside parties would be
involved. I would very much appreciate the thoughts of the advisory
boardmembers on this, as they have a broader scope here.

I could imagine a comittee of for instance five people, from different
organizations, with one or two wikimedians in it, who know their way
in the wikimedia communities for stuff like sitenotice etc.

Greetings, Lodewijk

2007/4/8, Robert Horning <robert_horning op netzero.net>:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Longe statements written in Englishe are bad even if you do not
> > considere translacioun.
> >
> > You always run the risk of tl;dr. While obviously some voters are
> > going to be all enthusiastic and willing to read anything you write, I
> > think the majority is going to have the type of mentality where they
> > do respond to long statements with a hearty "tl;dr".
> >
> > Mark
> >
> Unlike elections for admin or other actions on projects involving
> personalities, very few Wikimedia users are going to know any of the
> individuals who are running for a position on the board.  I know in the
> last election I felt a little overwhelmed at trying to even find out
> what the key issues that were of concern, and it was even harder to see
> who might have philosophies that were similar to what I thought should
> be happening as well.  In a very short statement of just 50 words, I
> don't see how you can address even a single issue, much less multiple
> issues.
>
> Long is relative as well.  It just doesn't seem like there should be
> some arbitrary limits if candidates are are actually covering issues.  I
> agree that any such statement ought to be concise, and in the interest
> of helping translators be as brief as possible.
>
> And as your reply has indicated, it should be free of obscure acronyms
> that are not defined.or understood by a large audience.
>
> -- Robert
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] elections

body:
Note that a short statement doesnt exclude a longer statement. I think
it would be very good too if there would be a set of standard
questions asked to every candidate, and answered upon. But that kind
of stuff is finally up to the community to ask. What we are discussing
here is the set of rules. I think it is a very good thing to ask the
candidates to summerize shortly their ideas, and 50 or 100 words are
not a bad idea for such a summery. It might actually say a lot about a
candidate, as (s)he would have to characterize him/herself, and could
lift out the points (s)he finds the most important.

It is of course possible that candidates have besides that a longer
statement, but that should not be on the election page, but maybe on
some seperate page. I can imagine that that should be hosted on meta,
maybe somewhere central with for every candidate a page being set up
so it would be easy to find.

On the part of election officials, I think it is a good idea to ask
organizations such as debian to help us. I think it would mean a good
deal for trustworthy however, if multiple outside parties would be
involved. I would very much appreciate the thoughts of the advisory
boardmembers on this, as they have a broader scope here.

I could imagine a comittee of for instance five people, from different
organizations, with one or two wikimedians in it, who know their way
in the wikimedia communities for stuff like sitenotice etc.

Greetings, Lodewijk

2007/4/8, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net>:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Longe statements written in Englishe are bad even if you do not
> > considere translacioun.
> >
> > You always run the risk of tl;dr. While obviously some voters are
> > going to be all enthusiastic and willing to read anything you write, I
> > think the majority is going to have the type of mentality where they
> > do respond to long statements with a hearty "tl;dr".
> >
> > Mark
> >
> Unlike elections for admin or other actions on projects involving
> personalities, very few Wikimedia users are going to know any of the
> individuals who are running for a position on the board.  I know in the
> last election I felt a little overwhelmed at trying to even find out
> what the key issues that were of concern, and it was even harder to see
> who might have philosophies that were similar to what I thought should
> be happening as well.  In a very short statement of just 50 words, I
> don't see how you can address even a single issue, much less multiple
> issues.
>
> Long is relative as well.  It just doesn't seem like there should be
> some arbitrary limits if candidates are are actually covering issues.  I
> agree that any such statement ought to be concise, and in the interest
> of helping translators be as brief as possible.
>
> And as your reply has indicated, it should be free of obscure acronyms
> that are not defined.or understood by a large audience.
>
> -- Robert
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] add alias nan: for
	zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org per ISO 639-3

body:
Fwding to an audience more likely to be able to act on this suggestion.

Brianna

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kaihsu Tai <kaihsu.tai at bioch.ox.ac.uk>
Date: 07-Apr-2007 04:21
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] add alias nan: for zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org per ISO 639-3
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Cc: Pochung Chen <pcchen at phys.nthu.edu.tw>, "Henry H. Tan-Tenn"
<tantenn at lomaji.com>

Hello. Now that ISO 639-3 has the entry "nan" for Min Nan,
is it possible please to add an alias "nan:" for
"zh-min-nan:"?  Cheers.
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nan
http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/
"http://nan.wikipedia.org/" (does not exist yet)

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Special rules for "controversial" AFDs

body:
On 4/8/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Israel_News_Agency
>
> Eventualy proved posible to delete through AFD despite claims to the contry.

The AFD in question...  http://tinyurl.com/yrzj2h

But in order to make it possible, you had to make a special rule about
having to have 150 edits to make a keep/delete comment, a rule that
doesn't apply to any other AFD though a similar "made up" rule was
used once used for GNAA.

If it is necessary to treat certain controversial sock prone AFDs this
way then a policy needs to be adopted covering it, who can invoke
"special rules", under what circumstances, and what qualifies an
account to "vote" when the rule is invoked. This is so it doesn't look
like the nominator is pulling rules out of his ass. If I am not
mistaken, users have been warned in the past about making up their own
policies.

As for how such a rule would be phrased, I don't like the use of "edit
counts". In the case of the INA AFD, my vote would have been ruled out
even though I am nobody's sock and have been around since 2005. A
better idea would be to disallow "votes" from accounts less then 15
days old which should cover the length of an AFD plus a relisting.
That is, if it must be done at all.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  And over at RFA ...

body:
On 08/04/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

> Fleshlight.

Office.

> Israel News Agency.

Office. (Spamming attack troll.)

>His block log.

Including office time?

>  Musa Cooper.  Sean
> Black's RfA.  Essjay's RfB.

Unfamiliar with these. Details please?

>  His use of the rollback function.

Details please?

>  And,
> although it's more than resolved, the Erik Moller situation is a fine
> example of the "shoot first, don't ask questions later" type of actions
> that people have, unfortunately, come to expect from Danny.

Office.

>  That's how
> we get bad administrators, we need less of those.

So in summary, you're saying we get bad administrators when the
administrators in question are employed by the Foundation.

That really is drooling idiocy on your part, and I would have expected
better of you.

> Plus, while it isn't administrative, his treatment of Elonka was beyond
> the pale.

I know they don't like each other, but I don't know any other details.

- d.


from_name: Slim Virgin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies

body:
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> >From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton at gmail.com]
> >Define "Not so notable". If you can do that well, then this idea might
> >have merit, but currently it is far too vague and will just result in
> >arguments over notability, rather than over content.
> >
>
> Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
>
One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia
biography is whether that person has already had a biography published
by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper
article or a book. If we were to adopt a "no first biography"
criterion, it would ensure not only that our subjects are truly
notable, but would also help to ensure accuracy, because we'd have a
published biography to base the Wikipedia article on.

Sarah


body:
On 08/04/07, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll be in London tomorrow for two nights. Camel and Artichoke in Lower
> Marsh Street near Waterloo from 1830 on Tuesday. Tim Tams will be provided.

Sadly I'm stuck at home on call. Bah!

(Probably to be a father in a week or two. Eek ...)

- d.


body:
On 4/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia
> > biography is whether that person has already had a biography published
> > by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper
> > article or a book. If we were to adopt a "no first biography"
> > criterion, it would ensure not only that our subjects are truly
> > notable, but would also help to ensure accuracy, because we'd have a
> > published biography to base the Wikipedia article on.
>
>
> Encourages systemic bias. Wikipedia suffers badly enough from that.
>
Would it do that any more than the current NPOV policy? The published
biography could be in any language and from any type of publication
regarded as reliable in the country of origin.


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies

body:
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> I doubt very many people will bother to make such a request, and even if a
> few tens of thousands did, the loss to the utility and interest to the
> encyclopedia would be minimal. This would not apply to prominent persons,
> but would apply to subjects such as John Seigenthaler, whose article was so
> seldom accessed or edited that a major error remained there for months
> without being notice. If the person is not notable enough that we pay
> attention to its content, there is some risk just from having it.
>
> Fred

OK.  So an 18 year old girl makes a few X-rated movies.  At 25 she decides
to settle down, get married and have a normal life.  Somebody however, feels
her legendary notabilty is wortth preserving for posterity, and
incicendtally, if you wish to purchase one of her classic pieces, click
here.

So the question becomes balancing the public's appetite for a human
sacrifice against a persons desire for privacy.


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 4/7/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:

> As part of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, I hope that you will enjoy and use our work, and we hope to provide you with more news of this kind soon.
>

Hi,

I downloaded the iso image and had a few minutes to play with it.
Congratulations and thank you for doing this work.

Here is a short list of my observations (this may overlap with other
emails in this thread).

The software is, as far as I can see, a modified mozilla rendering
engine with another skin that does display pre-rendered articles from
the CD-ROM. 1964 moderatly long articles take about 112 MB of size
(without images, without search index).

There are no wikilinks present (despite its lack of use on such a selection)

the search engine works fine, as far as I can tell.

I am not sure if the current solution can be considerered license
compliant with the GFDL.

I was unable to find the source code for the kiwix software somewhere.

the current skin consumes quite a lot of space currently. It also
suggests that this is "the" wikipedia. In the future, it might become
a good offline version of it, until then, it may be confusing to
people as long it is just a very thin selection (...albeit of some of
the finest articles from en.wp).

Greetings,
Mathias


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Version 0.5 CD *finally* released


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] Version 0.5 CD *finally* released


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] elections

body:
Hoi,
When the candidates are offered a platform, it is for them to make use of
it. When the platform allows for a certain amount of content that will be
translated, this is what is on offer. When the format includes a fixed set
of questions, that is what is on offer.

When you make it "rules" it means that the candidates are bound by this
format. The reason for this format is practical from the organisational
point of view. I do not see a reason why people cannot do more over and
above what is on offer to them. If the argument is that this will benefit
the English speaking candidates, I agree. This is not a bad thing when you
consider that the lingua franca of our organisation is English.

One other reason why I would like an imaginative campaign is because we need
imaginative people in our board.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 4/8/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Note that a short statement doesnt exclude a longer statement. I think
> it would be very good too if there would be a set of standard
> questions asked to every candidate, and answered upon. But that kind
> of stuff is finally up to the community to ask. What we are discussing
> here is the set of rules. I think it is a very good thing to ask the
> candidates to summerize shortly their ideas, and 50 or 100 words are
> not a bad idea for such a summery. It might actually say a lot about a
> candidate, as (s)he would have to characterize him/herself, and could
> lift out the points (s)he finds the most important.
>
> It is of course possible that candidates have besides that a longer
> statement, but that should not be on the election page, but maybe on
> some seperate page. I can imagine that that should be hosted on meta,
> maybe somewhere central with for every candidate a page being set up
> so it would be easy to find.
>
> On the part of election officials, I think it is a good idea to ask
> organizations such as debian to help us. I think it would mean a good
> deal for trustworthy however, if multiple outside parties would be
> involved. I would very much appreciate the thoughts of the advisory
> boardmembers on this, as they have a broader scope here.
>
> I could imagine a comittee of for instance five people, from different
> organizations, with one or two wikimedians in it, who know their way
> in the wikimedia communities for stuff like sitenotice etc.
>
> Greetings, Lodewijk
>
> 2007/4/8, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net>:
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > Longe statements written in Englishe are bad even if you do not
> > > considere translacioun.
> > >
> > > You always run the risk of tl;dr. While obviously some voters are
> > > going to be all enthusiastic and willing to read anything you write, I
> > > think the majority is going to have the type of mentality where they
> > > do respond to long statements with a hearty "tl;dr".
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > Unlike elections for admin or other actions on projects involving
> > personalities, very few Wikimedia users are going to know any of the
> > individuals who are running for a position on the board.  I know in the
> > last election I felt a little overwhelmed at trying to even find out
> > what the key issues that were of concern, and it was even harder to see
> > who might have philosophies that were similar to what I thought should
> > be happening as well.  In a very short statement of just 50 words, I
> > don't see how you can address even a single issue, much less multiple
> > issues.
> >
> > Long is relative as well.  It just doesn't seem like there should be
> > some arbitrary limits if candidates are are actually covering issues.  I
> > agree that any such statement ought to be concise, and in the interest
> > of helping translators be as brief as possible.
> >
> > And as your reply has indicated, it should be free of obscure acronyms
> > that are not defined.or understood by a large audience.
> >
> > -- Robert
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] elections


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: And over at RFA ...

body:
On 4/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Israel News Agency.
>
> Office. (Spamming attack troll.)
>

false:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Israel_News_Agency

Eventualy proved posible to delete through AFD despite claims to the contry.

> >  And,
> > although it's more than resolved, the Erik Moller situation is a fine
> > example of the "shoot first, don't ask questions later" type of actions
> > that people have, unfortunately, come to expect from Danny.
>
> Office.
>

No. Asside from the failure to follow procedure indef block could not
be justified through office.

> So in summary, you're saying we get bad administrators when the
> administrators in question are employed by the Foundation.

We have only two examples to go from and one of those has been around
for a fairly short time thus there is no way to conclude on way or
another.

--
geni


body:
On 4/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/04/07, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'll be in London tomorrow for two nights. Camel and Artichoke in Lower
> > Marsh Street near Waterloo from 1830 on Tuesday. Tim Tams will be provided.
>
>
> Sadly I'm stuck at home on call. Bah!
>
> (Probably to be a father in a week or two. Eek ...)

hmm

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Father_and_children

needs work.
--
geni


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] And over at RFA ...

body:
on 4/8/07 6:14 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson at oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com wrote:

> Just take his dealings with newbies
> (such as blocking someone for a month for simple newbie mistakes,
> instead of educating them and trying to educate them and possibly
> create a solid wikipedian). This is something I personally care a lot
> about because that's one of the things I spend a lot of time doing.
> That sort of behavior is unacceptable, in my opinion.
>
> It's not like all the opposers are insane trolls. Look at that list
> and you'll see a whole lot of fantastic wikipedians.

Wonderful attitude, Oskar! I hope there are many more out there like you.

This is how a healthy culture is built.

Marc Riddell


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>>From: Eugene van der Pijll
>>
>>Erik Moeller schreef:
>>
>>
>>>I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be
>>>whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record
>>>of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
>>>
>>>
>>I'm looking forward to see your vote at [[Wikipedia:Articles for
>>Deletion/Lee Harvey Oswald]].
>>
>>
>That's not the sort of stuff we are talking about. But suppose someone put up an article on one of his kids? Extensive investigation and coverage of him has produced a significant corpus of material.
>
True enough.  Oswald nevertheless would never have been notable save for
that one event. Jack Ruby too would have been one step further removed
from fame.  I think that Erik's point is a good place to start from, but
when a rule is taken too rigidly we end eliminating an article on
someone like Oswald..  Eugene makes a valid point.  If articles are to
be written on his kids they would need to have their own notability.
Erik's test is a good one for inclusion, but not for exclusion.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
It has been suggested that people who are not particularly notable should have the option of requesting removal of their Wikipedia biographies. This suggestion has come up in the context of Daniel Brandt, who has long complained, but please address the general question.

I doubt very many people will bother to make such a request, and even if a few tens of thousands did, the loss to the utility and interest to the encyclopedia would be minimal. This would not apply to prominent persons, but would apply to subjects such as John Seigenthaler, whose article was so seldom accessed or edited that a major error remained there for months without being notice. If the person is not notable enough that we pay attention to its content, there is some risk just from having it.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  And over at RFA ...

body:
On 8 Apr 2007 at 22:25, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl>
wrote:

> David Gerard schreef:
> > On 08/04/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Fleshlight.
> >
> > Office.
>
> No it wasn't.
>
> "I only used office as Dannyisme, ..."
> ([[Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Danny]])

But it shows the perniciousness of the whole concept of "office"
actions, where things get deleted, protected, etc., with no debate
permitted either before or after the fact, since they cast a penumbra
much wider even than the "office" intended -- there seems to be a
tendency in the culture of the "Wikipedia inner circle" to assume
that anything done by certain persons is automatically an office
action, not to be questioned, even when it actually isn't.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


body:
On 4/8/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > It has been suggested that people who are not particularly notable should have the option of requesting removal of their Wikipedia biographies.
>
> Horrid suggestion, and I disagree that the impact would be minimal.  On
> the contrary, it opens an entire can of worms and allows us to be
> governed by trolls and trollish elements rather thatdoing what we're
> supposed to be doing, building an encyclopedia.

Jeff, can you expand on how it would do that? As I see it, it might do
the opposite. Biographies of borderline notable people often either
languish unattended or are used as a platform by people with an axe to
grind.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:    Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at waterwiki.info]
Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:19 PM
To: 'Thomas Dalton'
Subject: Re:  [WikiEN-l] Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton at gmail.com]
>Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:15 PM
>To: fredbaud at waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
>
>Define "Not so notable". If you can do that well, then this idea might
>have merit, but currently it is far too vague and will just result in
>arguments over notability, rather than over content. I'd much prefer
>to argue about the content and get a good article at the end than
>argue about the notability and end up with either a bad article or no
>article.
>

Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.

Fred


body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Marc Riddell [mailto:michaeldavid86 at comcast.net]
>Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:20 PM
>To: fredbaud at waterwiki.info, English Wikipedia
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
>
>on 4/8/07 3:04 PM, Fred Bauder at fredbaud at waterwiki.info wrote:
>
>> It has been suggested that people who are not particularly notable should have
>> the option of requesting removal of their Wikipedia biographies. This
>> suggestion has come up in the context of Daniel Brandt, who has long
>> complained, but please address the general question.
>>
>> I doubt very many people will bother to make such a request, and even if a few
>> tens of thousands did, the loss to the utility and interest to the
>> encyclopedia would be minimal. This would not apply to prominent persons, but
>> would apply to subjects such as John Seigenthaler, whose article was so seldom
>> accessed or edited that a major error remained there for months without being
>> notice. If the person is not notable enough that we pay attention to its
>> content, there is some risk just from having it.
>
>How is notability determined in the encyclopedia?
>
>Marc Riddell

By the existence of verifiable information from a reliable source, published information. Where that goes wrong is that for people who are not public figure who are regularly covered in the media, the only coverage that is ordinarily found is some mess they got into, spot information which often produces a distorted picture of them.

As a practical matter notability is determined by the Requests for Deletion process, during which the question of whether there is verifiable information is examined.

Fred


from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

body:
2007/4/8, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com>:
> I downloaded the iso image and had a few minutes to play with it.
> Congratulations and thank you for doing this work.

Thanks

> Here is a short list of my observations (this may overlap with other
> emails in this thread).
>
> The software is, as far as I can see, a modified mozilla rendering
> engine with another skin that does display pre-rendered articles from
> the CD-ROM. 1964 moderatly long articles take about 112 MB of size
> (without images, without search index).

That is true.

> There are no wikilinks present (despite its lack of use on such a selection)

Hmm... you mean interwiki links ?

> the search engine works fine, as far as I can tell.

Thx to Linterweb, which has coded this search engine.

> I am not sure if the current solution can be considerered license
> compliant with the GFDL.

It is true that a few problem stay open... but we do our best to be
fully GFDL compliant for the next release.

> I was unable to find the source code for the kiwix software somewhere.

http://www.kiwix.org

> the current skin consumes quite a lot of space currently. It also
> suggests that this is "the" wikipedia. In the future, it might become
> a good offline version of it, until then, it may be confusing to
> people as long it is just a very thin selection (...albeit of some of
> the finest articles from en.wp).

It is true that this selection is very/too small, this problem will be
always less important with the next release.

Best regards

Kelson


subject: [Commons-l] [Wikisource-l] Wikimania 2007 - Call for Submissions

body:
I encourage anyone who is considering attending to consider making a
presentation or poster about some aspect of Commons. Here are some
aspects which might be interesting:

* Managing a multilingual wiki - we are probably the most ambitious
multilingual website on the web. (are we? who else attempts
large-scale multilinguality? how do their processes compare to ours?)
How successful are we, really? (How many pages are written in each
language, compared to the main page? Which languages have active
communities at Commons, and how big are they? Is English actually the
only functional language, despite the rhetoric?) What do Babel-use
stats tell us about the language distribution of Commons users? What
software limitations do we face? What functionality do we need?

* Interaction with other Wikimedia wikis. With some toolserver
analysis, interesting statistics like use of Commons images vs use of
locally uploaded images might be derived. How does a specific wiki (eg
Japanese Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia) interact with Commons? (What is
user awareness like? Do people upload locally or is there a push to
Commons for freely licensed material? How much translated policy is
available in that language? Is there suspicion about Commons? How is
Commons perceived? Are the two projects perceived as sharing the same
goals, or is there conflict? Why?) Very interesting case studies could
be done on wikis who have transitioned to a Commons-only upload
policy. What was user reaction like? How was consensus reached - which
arguments were effective? What actions were effective? How did the
transition affect Commons?

** CheckUsage, CommonsTicker, CommonsDelinker

* Licensing - a presentation about Creative Commons licenses, for
example, explaining the benefits of various options, and why Commons
doesn't allow NC or ND. What are the benefits of choosing a free
license? (Yes, this will be useful even for a Wikimedia audience!)


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia
>> biography is whether that person has already had a biography published
>> by a reliable third-party source...
>
> Encourages systemic bias. Wikipedia suffers badly enough from that.

But remember, this isn't about deciding which biographies to include.
It's about which biographies not to allow opting out of.
The bias is therefore considerably diluted.


body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Erik Moeller [mailto:erik at wikimedia.org]
>Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:33 PM
>To: fredbaud at waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
>
>On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>> Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who
>> are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly
>> appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the
>> media are not public figures, although something interesting may have
>> happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
>
>This is all very vague ("the media") and would IMHO lead to a loss of
>useful biographies of scientists, authors, inventors, and other
>individuals who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and
>relevant.
>
>I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be
>whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record
>of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
>
>Incidentally, a person like Daniel Brandt (who has been covered
>throughout the years for his activism) meets that criterion, whereas
>someone like Brian Peppers (who is notable only because of an Internet
>phenomenon) does not.
>
>We do not lose much if we give up articles about the occasional media
>sensation and Internet meme. We do lose an awful lot if we allow
>everyone who is not a media figure to delete themselves.
>--
>Peace & Love,
>Erik

How many of the scientists, authors, inventors, and other individuals who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and relevant would opt out? I expect very few would. Those who would, would be those who notability is based on some kind of sensation, like [[John and Lorena Bobbit]], an excellent example of the pernicious effect of spot media coverage of non-notable figures.

Fred


body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton at gmail.com]
>Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:32 PM
>To: fredbaud at waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
>
>> Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
>
>In your own words, that's a "rough" definition. We need a precise and
>objective one, otherwise this proposal will just result in more
>arguments.

It would result in decisions, for which we have a designated procedure, nomination for deletion. The only time this would be necessary is when, after a request to opt out, there was disagreement as to whether the person was a public figure regarding whom there was substantial information.

Fred


subject: [Wikitech-l] Did anything happen with dumps?

body:
On 08/04/07, Felipe Ortega <glimmer_phoenix at yahoo.es> wrote:

> I've tried to get the latest completed dump (pages-meta-history) of dewiki, and I've found only two prior dumps available, neither of them valid.

What's the status of dumps?

Dumps are really important - otherwise the database is basically not
forkable. People are stopped from just crawling the pages, after all.

- d.


body:
On 08/04/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > (Probably to be a father in a week or two. Eek ...)

> hmm
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Father_and_children
> needs work.

Yuh. I'll be the really tired-looking one. Oh wait, that's all of
them. Us. Aieee.

- d.


body:
On 4/8/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Slim Virgin wrote:
>
> > Jeff, can you expand on how it would do that? As I see it, it might do
> > the opposite. Biographies of borderline notable people often either
> > languish unattended or are used as a platform by people with an axe to
> > grind.
>
> Well, the first problem is the construct of "borderline notability."
> There's no such thing.  You're either notable or you're not, and our
> twisted concepts of the idea doesn't help.

There are people for whom there's what Fred called "spot coverage,"
because they did something interesting, but they're not overall
notable. Along the lines of "John Smith is a British schoolteacher who
came to public attention after being discovered on the floor naked
during a geography class, having asked his pupils to draw a map of
Europe on his genitals."

I think we could fairly easily come up with a working definition of
"notable borderline," where George Bush is at one end of the scale and
our geography teacher at the other.

The point is that no news organization or encyclopedia would publish a
biography of the geography teacher just because of that one incident.
We're currently asking the question "Why shouldn't Wikipedia publish
biographies on everyone for whom reliable sources can be found?" but I
think we should turn that on its head and ask "Why *should* we, given
that no else does?"

If we were to adopt an opt-out clause for borderline notables, I think
it would generate significant goodwill among the public, because this
is seen as one of our major problems.

Sarah


from_name: Dycedarg

body:
I think the attempts to set the notability requirements for this in
stone are misguided. Notability is a difficult enough concept to
define as it is without attempting to define marginal notability as
well. I find it quite unlikely that we'll receive enough requests that
each request couldn't be dealt with as a separate matter, and
editorial judgment applied to determine whether or not the request
should be granted. The policy itself shouldn't need more than general
guidelines.

--

Dycedarg


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 4/8/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If I am not
> > mistaken, users have been warned in the past about making up their own
> > policies.
> >
>
> I wasn't making up policy. I was doing what I believe needed to be
> done in order to create a workable AFD.
>
Why does an AFD have to be "workable"?  If there is consensus for
something to be done, it should be pretty obvious.

Anthony


body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Eugene van der Pijll [mailto:eugene at vanderpijll.nl]
>Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:58 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
>
>Erik Moeller schreef:
>> I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be
>> whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record
>> of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
>
>I'm looking forward to see your vote at [[Wikipedia:Articles for
>Deletion/Lee Harvey Oswald]].
>
>Eugene

That's not the sort of stuff we are talking about. But suppose someone put up an article on one of his kids? Extensive investigation and coverage of him has produced a significant corpus of material.

Fred


from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> It has been suggested that people who are not particularly notable should have the option of requesting removal of their Wikipedia biographies.

Horrid suggestion, and I disagree that the impact would be minimal.  On
the contrary, it opens an entire can of worms and allows us to be
governed by trolls and trollish elements rather thatdoing what we're
supposed to be doing, building an encyclopedia.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
Define "Not so notable". If you can do that well, then this idea might
have merit, but currently it is far too vague and will just result in
arguments over notability, rather than over content. I'd much prefer
to argue about the content and get a good article at the end than
argue about the notability and end up with either a bad article or no
article.


from_name: Felipe Ortega

body:
Hello.

I've tried to get the latest completed dump (pages-meta-history) of dewiki, and I've found only two prior dumps available, neither of them valid.

On every page http://download.wikimedia.org/your_language_here/ I've found only two links for prior versions (valid for some languages, damaged for others, for example, dewiki and, of course, enwiki).

Is this a temporal failure? In the latest pages I've found new links for RSS sindication (please excuse me if I missed some announcement about this). What is that all about?

Thank you.

Regards,

Felipe Ortega.

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

LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y m?viles desde 1 c?ntimo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com


body:
On 4/8/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Slim Virgin wrote:
> > Along the lines of "John Smith is a British schoolteacher who
> > came to public attention after being discovered on the floor naked
> > during a geography class, having asked his pupils to draw a map of
> > Europe on his genitals."
>
> > The point is that no news organization or encyclopedia would publish a
> > biography of the geography teacher just because of that one incident.
>
> Well, if a news organization isn't reporting it, we're not including it.

They might report the incident. They wouldn't rush off to write a
biography of the person on that basis alone.

>   That seems to be a valid standard to work with in terms of biographies
> of living people, even if we go way too far with it already.  We're more
> than your standard encyclopedia, and we cover what's possible to cover.
>   If John Smith is in the news, he's notable and we should consider
> inclusion.

You seem to be saying we should have a biography on every single
person who has ever been in the news.
>
> > We're currently asking the question "Why shouldn't Wikipedia publish
> > biographies on everyone for whom reliable sources can be found?" but I
> > think we should turn that on its head and ask "Why *should* we, given
> > that no else does?"
>
> Because we're better than everyone else, and we're better than to cow to
> the demands of our subjects.

Well, another way of looking at it is that it's because we're worse
than everyone else, and that we don't listen to our subjects'
reasonable requests.
> >
> > If we were to adopt an opt-out clause for borderline notables, I think
> > it would generate significant goodwill among the public, because this
> > is seen as one of our major problems.
>
> Among who?  Our problems deal with reliability, with vandalism, and with
> trust.  "Borderline notability" is hardly on the radar when you consider
> factual issues, Sinbad/Sieganthaler-style vandalism, and issues like the
> Essjay incident.

There's a perception that we're not reliable, and that we don't take
sufficient editorial responsibility for the material produced by our
thousands of anonymous editors. If we were to announce that we
recognize biographical material on living persons is an area where the
open-editing model can be inappropriate, and that therefore we're
going to allow certain types of subjects to opt out, we'd be seen as
responsible and self-regulating.
>
> Building an encyclopedia is about building a wealth of knowledge, not
> creating some goodwill.  If we're in the market for goodwill, then start
> a goodwill project, not an encyclopedia.

It's the goodwill of the public that's financing us.


body:
> Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.

In your own words, that's a "rough" definition. We need a precise and
objective one, otherwise this proposal will just result in more
arguments.


body:
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> It has been suggested that people who are not particularly notable should have the option of requesting removal of their Wikipedia biographies. This suggestion has come up in the context of Daniel Brandt, who has long complained, but please address the general question.
>
> I doubt very many people will bother to make such a request, and even if a few tens of thousands did, the loss to the utility and interest to the encyclopedia would be minimal. This would not apply to prominent persons, but would apply to subjects such as John Seigenthaler, whose article was so seldom accessed or edited that a major error remained there for months without being notice. If the person is not notable enough that we pay attention to its content, there is some risk just from having it.
>
John Seigenthaler (Senior) doesn't qualify as a public figure?

I dunno, I think it's a good idea, until I hear that.  This is going
to do pretty much nothing to stop errors from cropping up in the next
John Seigenthaler article, because the person has to notice the
article in order to request removal of it.

As such, I don't think "not particularly notable" is well enough
defined.  I'd support the idea if the term was defined, such as
"whether that person has already had a biography published
by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper
article or a book".

Anthony


body:
Slim Virgin wrote:

> Jeff, can you expand on how it would do that? As I see it, it might do
> the opposite. Biographies of borderline notable people often either
> languish unattended or are used as a platform by people with an axe to
> grind.

Well, the first problem is the construct of "borderline notability."
There's no such thing.  You're either notable or you're not, and our
twisted concepts of the idea doesn't help.

With that said, okay, so now Brandt wants to opt out of his article.  Or
some otherwise noteworthy-in-his-field crank who doesn't want an
article.  Or someone who's perfectly reasonably notable in certain
areas, but most people wopuldn't know from a hole in the ground.  Then
we start getting these battles and ill will and what have you.

And then the trolling elemtns come in - we have plenty of troll types
who have their own articles at this point - why are we even considering
allowing the subjects any say in the matter?

Completely insane.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


body:
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
>
By that definition, are there any people who have articles, have
requested deletion, and are not ordinarily covered by the media?
Checking Google news for DB and Angela I see both have been covered in
the news this year.  Brian Peppers doesn't have an article, and to my
knowledge hasn't requested his article be deleted anyway (his name is
also way more well known than those two, and we are more justified
writing about him as he's a convicted child molester).

Isn't there a list somewhere of people who have requested that their
article be deleted?  I couldn't find it.

Anthony


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 4/8/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> Why does an AFD have to be "workable"?  If there is consensus for
> something to be done, it should be pretty obvious.

Sometimes a person(s) who really really wants an article kept or gone
for reasons other then wikipedia policy will flood an AFD with
sock/meat puppets and use them to sling bullshit all over the place.
With all this noise it's almost impossible to reach a true consensus
one way or the other. What geni did was set special ground rules for a
particular AFD to keep them from doing that. All "votes" from accounts
with less then 150 edits were moved to the talk page. He did this
because he suspected that there were "sleeper socks" ready to wake up
and invade this particular AFD.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 08/04/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> How many of the scientists, authors, inventors, and other individuals
> who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and relevant
> would opt out? I expect very few would. Those who would, would
> be those who notability is based on some kind of sensation, like
> [[John and Lorena Bobbit]], an excellent example of the pernicious
> effect of spot media coverage of non-notable figures.

OTRS gets not a few requests like this.

Leaving aside those who want their article deleted because someone's
using it as a scandal sheet, the usual "please delete this, I'm not
notable" request is anecdotally... hum, junior academics, mostly, the
odd writer who's turned a couple of mid-range books, a minor artist or
two. Only once did I see a really significant academic request it (a
very modest and private man, one assumes) - not a Nobel laureate, but
certainly in the top layer of his field.

(I don't know what we did with that request)

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


body:
Anthony wrote:
> By that definition, are there any people who have articles, have
> requested deletion, and are not ordinarily covered by the media?

[[Seth Finkelstein]] springs immediately to mind.


body:
On 4/8/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > Why does an AFD have to be "workable"?  If there is consensus for
> > something to be done, it should be pretty obvious.
>
> Sometimes a person(s) who really really wants an article kept or gone
> for reasons other then wikipedia policy will flood an AFD with
> sock/meat puppets and use them to sling bullshit all over the place.
> With all this noise it's almost impossible to reach a true consensus
> one way or the other. What geni did was set special ground rules for a
> particular AFD to keep them from doing that. All "votes" from accounts
> with less then 150 edits were moved to the talk page. He did this
> because he suspected that there were "sleeper socks" ready to wake up
> and invade this particular AFD.

Why do you put the word "votes" in quotation marks?  Is it because
you're not supposed to be counting votes in the first place?


subject: [WikiEN-l] And over at RFA ...

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 08/04/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Fleshlight.
>
> Office.

No it wasn't.  It was him deleting something because they told him
something and ignoring consensus.
>
>> Israel News Agency.
>
> Office. (Spamming attack troll.)

Wasn't when he was dealing with it, not an office action.

>
>> His block log.
>
> Including office time?

Again, let's not confuse "things he did working with the office" with
"office actions"
>
>>  Musa Cooper.  Sean
>> Black's RfA.  Essjay's RfB.
>
> Unfamiliar with these. Details please?

Look 'em up.
>
>>  His use of the rollback function.
>
> Details please?

See the RfA for details.

>
>>  And,
>> although it's more than resolved, the Erik Moller situation is a fine
>> example of the "shoot first, don't ask questions later" type of actions
>> that people have, unfortunately, come to expect from Danny.
>
> Office.

Well, no.  Again.

> So in summary, you're saying we get bad administrators when the
> administrators in question are employed by the Foundation.

Only if you think that every action done while employed is done as an
office action.  Only if working for the Foundation somehow makes you
above accountability later.

>
> That really is drooling idiocy on your part, and I would have expected
> better of you.

Wow.  Thanks for that.  Really constructive.  What an asshole comment to
make.

>
> I know they don't like each other, but I don't know any other details.

I'd say accusing someone of being a self-promoter with zero evidence,
thus tarnishing a longterm user's reputation on the project more than
"they don't like eachother."

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Version 0.5 CD *finally* released

body:
On 4/7/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> [cross-posted to Foundation-l, Wikipedia-l and WikiEN-l]
>
>
>
> Well, after a couple of snags that pushed back the release dates, Wikipedia 0.5 is finally available for commercial distribution. Thanks to Linterweb, one of the long-term goals of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team in the English Wikipedia has been accomplished.
>
>
>
> The release consists of an eclectic selection of 1964 articles, selected over a period of one year, which span from Art to Zeus. It draws heavily on the English Wikipedia's featured article base, to have it also be a showcase of the best of our work. The CD is available at http://www.wikipediaondvd.com, and sells for approximately ?12 ($15 USD, ?8.50) with part of the sales going directly to the Wikimedia Foundation. The CD is also publicly viewable online, and the CD's ISO file is available as well.
>
>
>
> Either way, as the number "0.5" indicates, we are not done; static releases, just like Wikipedia itself, are not finished, as they are works in progress. We're starting work on Version 0.7 soon, and as everything else on Wikipedia, "more eyes are always more better" (the bad grammar is intentional ;) ). After v0.7, if things go as planned, we intend to finally publish Wikipedia Version 1.0 and accomplish our goal. But we need everyone's help.
>
>
>
> As part of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, I hope that you will enjoy and use our work, and we hope to provide you with more news of this kind soon.
>
>
>
> Titoxd.

This looks very nice :) I couldn't find a torrent on the site, so I'm
assuming that you can only download it directly? Does it work under
Linux?

--Oskar


body:
On 4/8/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> Why do you put the word "votes" in quotation marks?  Is it because
> you're not supposed to be counting votes in the first place?

It's to make it clear that I understand the current line that AFD
(which use to be known as "votes for deletion") is not a "vote" even
though a lot of people still treat it as one.


body:
Slim Virgin wrote:

> There are people for whom there's what Fred called "spot coverage,"
> because they did something interesting, but they're not overall
> notable.

This is some fallacious concept being cooked up.  Either you're notable
or not.

> Along the lines of "John Smith is a British schoolteacher who
> came to public attention after being discovered on the floor naked
> during a geography class, having asked his pupils to draw a map of
> Europe on his genitals."

Which is notability, whether we like it or not.

>
> I think we could fairly easily come up with a working definition of
> "notable borderline," where George Bush is at one end of the scale and
> our geography teacher at the other.

Not at all.
>
> The point is that no news organization or encyclopedia would publish a
> biography of the geography teacher just because of that one incident.

Well, if a news organization isn't reporting it, we're not including it.
  That seems to be a valid standard to work with in terms of biographies
of living people, even if we go way too far with it already.  We're more
than your standard encyclopedia, and we cover what's possible to cover.
  If John Smith is in the news, he's notable and we should consider
inclusion.

> We're currently asking the question "Why shouldn't Wikipedia publish
> biographies on everyone for whom reliable sources can be found?" but I
> think we should turn that on its head and ask "Why *should* we, given
> that no else does?"

Because we're better than everyone else, and we're better than to cow to
the demands of our subjects.
>
> If we were to adopt an opt-out clause for borderline notables, I think
> it would generate significant goodwill among the public, because this
> is seen as one of our major problems.

Among who?  Our problems deal with reliability, with vandalism, and with
trust.  "Borderline notability" is hardly on the radar when you consider
factual issues, Sinbad/Sieganthaler-style vandalism, and issues like the
Essjay incident.

Building an encyclopedia is about building a wealth of knowledge, not
creating some goodwill.  If we're in the market for goodwill, then start
a goodwill project, not an encyclopedia.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Slim Virgin wrote:
>> There are people for whom there's what Fred called "spot coverage,"
>> because they did something interesting, but they're not overall
>> notable.
>
> This is some fallacious concept being cooked up.  Either you're notable
> or not.

Nonsense.  Notability ain't pregnancy.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Anyone want some paying work? (crossposted to
	Mediawiki-l)

body:
Hoi,
Sheldon for OmegaWiki we have not always the money to have our programmers
work for us. I would really love it when we have more work for them. Several
of them have SVN access to MediaWiki. One of them is an experienced
programmer .. an other is a starting programmer.

When you are interested, I may hear more from you..

Thanks,
    Gerard Meijssen

On 4/8/07, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
>
> My organization (the Center for Media and Democracy) occasionally has
> need of people with MediaWiki expertise to help with projects related
> to our wiki (www.sourcewatch.org). These projects might include
> writing or modifying MediaWiki extensions, advising our webmaster
> about server/performance issues, helping make modifications to the
> skin, etc. We don't currently have a project in the works, but I'm
> trying to compile a list of qualified and interested programmers so
> that we have some names on file when we need to hire a consultant. If
> anyone here thinks you might be interested, please shoot me an email
> at: sheldon at prwatch.org.
>
> --------------------------------
> |  Sheldon Rampton
> |  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
> |  Author of books including:
> |     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
> |     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
> |     Mad Cow USA
> |     Trust Us, We're Experts
> |     Weapons of Mass Deception
> |     Banana Republicans
> |     The Best War Ever
> --------------------------------
> |  Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting:
> |  http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
> |
> |  Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
> |  https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
> --------------------------------
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 4/8/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
> > By that definition, are there any people who have articles, have
> > requested deletion, and are not ordinarily covered by the media?
>
> [[Seth Finkelstein]] springs immediately to mind.
>
Thanks.  With that link I found the page I thought I remembered:
[[Category:Biography_articles_of_living_people_who_have_requested_removal]]

Unfortunately, it seems to no longer be up to date.

Looking at the arguments made by Seth at
[[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Seth_Finkelstein]], I think that
ethically, something should be done.  Maybe it'd be enough to
permanently protect articles like his.  This wouldn't be a solution
for DB or Angela though, as there is far too much potential for
conflict of interest.  Then again, maybe that's an article that
Wikipedia shouldn't have articles on DB or Angela (or Jimmy Wales) at
all, even if they don't request deletion, because there is too much
potential for a conflict of interest.

But then, if you delete the article on Angela and Jimbo, people like
Seth might complain about a double standard if his article merely gets
protected.

Anthony


body:
Steve Summit wrote:

> Nonsense.  Notability ain't pregnancy.

It's closer to pregnancy than some fleeting thing.  Keep in mind -
Wikipedia notability has nothing to do with real world notability, so we
need to keep it, uh, in-universe.  If we say "notability is x," we can't
then turn around and say that there's "borderline" - it doesn't,
shouldn't, and won't fly.

Want to remove "borderline" cases?  Try to get consensus at WP:BIO.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who
> are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly
> appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the
> media are not public figures, although something interesting may have
> happened to them and there has been spot coverage.

This is all very vague ("the media") and would IMHO lead to a loss of
useful biographies of scientists, authors, inventors, and other
individuals who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and
relevant.

I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be
whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record
of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.

Incidentally, a person like Daniel Brandt (who has been covered
throughout the years for his activism) meets that criterion, whereas
someone like Brian Peppers (who is notable only because of an Internet
phenomenon) does not.

We do not lose much if we give up articles about the occasional media
sensation and Internet meme. We do lose an awful lot if we allow
everyone who is not a media figure to delete themselves.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


body:
On 4/8/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > Why do you put the word "votes" in quotation marks?  Is it because
> > you're not supposed to be counting votes in the first place?
>
> It's to make it clear that I understand the current line that AFD
> (which use to be known as "votes for deletion") is not a "vote" even
> though a lot of people still treat it as one.
>
Well, just to clarify the line was that it wasn't a vote even when it
*was* called "votes for deletion".

Other than that clarification, I'm going to bow out of this
discussion.  It's giving me a headache just thinking about it :).

Anthony


body:
Slim Virgin wrote:

> You seem to be saying we should have a biography on every single
> person who has ever been in the news.

I wouldn't argue against it, no.

> Well, another way of looking at it is that it's because we're worse
> than everyone else, and that we don't listen to our subjects'
> reasonable requests.

It's unreasonable to expect someone to remove a legitimate biography on
a notable figure.

> There's a perception that we're not reliable, and that we don't take
> sufficient editorial responsibility for the material produced by our
> thousands of anonymous editors. If we were to announce that we
> recognize biographical material on living persons is an area where the
> open-editing model can be inappropriate, and that therefore we're
> going to allow certain types of subjects to opt out, we'd be seen as
> responsible and self-regulating.

No we wouldn't.  Internally, we'd be cowardly and stupid.  Externally,
no one would give a shit - it does nothing to solve the problems ("Okay,
so some people can have their biographies removed.  Too bad the articles
are still inaccurate.")

> It's the goodwill of the public that's financing us.

Yup.  And that doesn't seem to be changing, and it doesn't look like we
need a misguided policy to increase it further.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

body:
Erik Moeller schreef:
> I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be
> whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record
> of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.

I'm looking forward to see your vote at [[Wikipedia:Articles for
Deletion/Lee Harvey Oswald]].

Eugene


body:
On 4/8/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Slim Virgin wrote:
> > Well, another way of looking at it is that it's because we're worse
> > than everyone else, and that we don't listen to our subjects'
> > reasonable requests.
>
> It's unreasonable to expect someone to remove a legitimate biography on
> a notable figure.
>
What if that biography is only "legitimate" some of the time?


from_name: ikiroid

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chicago situation resolved.

body:
I am still waiting for an administrator to archive the discussion. It is sad
that a certain wikipedian can be so messed up and that we let their dirty
laundry blow in the wind. Whether or not there was a genuine suicide
attempt, it is still apparent that this person has many issues which will
not be solved by having us gossip and joke about it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  And over at RFA ...

body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 08/04/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> > Fleshlight.
>
> Office.

No it wasn't.

"I only used office as Dannyisme, ..."
([[Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Danny]])

08:55, 1 October 2006 Danny (Talk | contribs | block) deleted
"Fleshlight" (non encyclopedic cruft to promote a sex toy)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Fleshlight)

>
> > Israel News Agency.
>
> Office. (Spamming attack troll.)

That wasn't Office either.

19:19, 10 May 2006 Danny (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Israel News
Agency" (vanity page by banned user)

> >His block log.
>
> Including office time?

"To be clear, there were 7 office actions performed--6 under Dannyisme
and only one under this user name." (WP:RFA/Danny)

So the block log of [[User:Danny]] should be almost free of OFFICE
actions.

Having said that, I'm not convinced his actions were unreasonable in
these cases.

Eugene


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA reform

body:
On 08/04/07, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sam Blacketer wrote:

> > That is indeed what RfA should become, but the problem which needs to
> > be solved is how to set up the process so that this assessment is made
> > in a more intelligent way other than simple voting. If, for instance,
> > instead of asking the community to "Support" or "Oppose", they were
> > asked "Is <x> trustworthy? Yes/No" the result would be
> > indistinguishable from what we have now. The only change would be the
> > heading over the top of the !votes.

> Rehashing an idea I proposed awhile ago, how about a set of standards
> similar to those at [[Wikipedia:Featured article criteria]] (but
> [[Wikipedia:Administrator criteria]] instead)? If opposing comments are
> not relevant to specific points in the criteria, they can be ignored.
> Not a perfect system, but it might be better than the current system.

FAC requirements have notably raised over the past few years, both
consciously and unconsciously. I see no reason such a system for RFA
would not be susceptible to the same problem. In fact, the present
problem is pretty much requirements creep.

- d.


from_name: Skyring

body:
I'll be in London tomorrow for two nights. Camel and Artichoke in Lower
Marsh Street near Waterloo from 1830 on Tuesday. Tim Tams will be provided.

--
Peter in Singapore


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 08/04/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a somewhat-related question: I have ideas for press releases to
> drag the general public to Commons at a *fantastic* rate. But do we
> want that?

I don't work on Commons because I like it to be my own little secret
project. I work on it because I want it to be a worldwide success, as
well known as Flickr and Getty Images... and English Wikipedia. :)

What is the point of working on a project if not to lead it to greater success?

...And yet, none of us can deny the major holes in technical functions
that hamper our maintenance work (proper search, proper image
workflow, proper usage tools). None of us can deny the major problems
from the outset that make using a wiki unintuitive and painful (think
categories/galleries, aliases, t10n [1]).

Of course, we have backlogs now. But we probably always will have. (If
not visible ones, then invisible: check everything chronologically...)
An important question is: if we're not ready now (for explosive
growth), when will we be ready? How will we know? What are the
visible, measurable markers that will tell us?

Otherwise you just live in fear of popularity which is... stupid. The
Wikimedia mission is about sharing free knowledge with the world. See
below.

> - stratospheric bandwidth bills. You think it's bad now.

Goodness. The ultimate conclusion of such a view is that we should
shut all the sites down. then 0 bandwidth costs. :)
I guess it depends how we measure our success. 99% certified copyvio
free, or household brandname recognition? or something in between.
they are not incompatible, exactly.

IMO this should not be our concern. or if it our concern, it is only a
secondary one, NOT a primary one. otherwise there is some conflict,
why do we ask people to upload hi-res originals?

> I still think Wikipedia got way too popular way too quickly and I
> would be much happier if it were a Top 100 site rather than a Top 10
> site. It would also be cheaper in bandwidth.

That is an interesting idea. But I wonder if it would really make a
difference, or just be delaying the inevitable.

cheers,
Brianna

[1] Shouldn't it be t9n? *confused*


from_name: geni

body:
On 4/8/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> But in order to make it possible, you had to make a special rule about
> having to have 150 edits to make a keep/delete comment, a rule that
> doesn't apply to any other AFD though a similar "made up" rule was
> used once used for GNAA.
>

I think it has been used on other occasions but it isn't common no.

however the lesser form of ignoring !votes from new accounts is far
more common and is pretty standard when we are worried about outside
interference.

> If it is necessary to treat certain controversial sock prone AFDs this
> way then a policy needs to be adopted covering it,

If you really want a policy justification then it was an enforcement of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AFD#How_to_discuss_an_AfD.2FWikietiquette

> who can invoke
> "special rules",

Anyone who can do so without significant opposition. I had no ability
to enforce the 150 edit number if I encounter significant opposition.
I just judged correctly that I would not in this case.

>under what circumstances, and what qualifies an
> account to "vote" when the rule is invoked. This is so it doesn't look
> like the nominator is pulling rules out of his ass.

Rules were set up as needed I was aware of a number of aged socks with
non zero edit counts around but I was pretty sure the number was not
as high as 150.

> If I am not
> mistaken, users have been warned in the past about making up their own
> policies.
>

I wasn't making up policy. I was doing what I believe needed to be
done in order to create a workable AFD.

> As for how such a rule would be phrased, I don't like the use of "edit
> counts". In the case of the INA AFD, my vote would have been ruled out
> even though I am nobody's sock and have been around since 2005. A
> better idea would be to disallow "votes" from accounts less then 15
> days old which should cover the length of an AFD plus a relisting.
> That is, if it must be done at all.
>

Wouldn't work in that case. These things are done case by case to deal
with each individual situation so a universal rule would be a bad
idea. Additionally the whole thing is not common enough to need a
policy.

--
geni


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
A Wikimedia developer like Nikerabbit is looking for a summer job.. It is
likely that you can have him for a relatively low amount of money if you
have a sustained amount of work that can be done in the Summer period..
Thanks,
    Gerard

PS I really want the MediaWiki skillset to do well !!

On 4/8/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> Sheldon for OmegaWiki we have not always the money to have our programmers
> work for us. I would really love it when we have more work for them. Several
> of them have SVN access to MediaWiki. One of them is an experienced
> programmer .. an other is a starting programmer.
>
> When you are interested, I may hear more from you..
>
> Thanks,
>     Gerard Meijssen
>
> On 4/8/07, Sheldon Rampton < sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
> >
> > My organization (the Center for Media and Democracy) occasionally has
> > need of people with MediaWiki expertise to help with projects related
> > to our wiki (www.sourcewatch.org). These projects might include
> > writing or modifying MediaWiki extensions, advising our webmaster
> > about server/performance issues, helping make modifications to the
> > skin, etc. We don't currently have a project in the works, but I'm
> > trying to compile a list of qualified and interested programmers so
> > that we have some names on file when we need to hire a consultant. If
> > anyone here thinks you might be interested, please shoot me an email
> > at: sheldon at prwatch.org.
> >
> > --------------------------------
> > |  Sheldon Rampton
> > |  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
> > |  Author of books including:
> > |     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
> > |     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
> > |     Mad Cow USA
> > |     Trust Us, We're Experts
> > |     Weapons of Mass Deception
> > |     Banana Republicans
> > |     The Best War Ever
> > --------------------------------
> > |  Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting:
> > |  http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
> > |
> > |  Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
> > |  https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
> > --------------------------------
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>


from_name: Sam Blacketer

subject: [WikiEN-l] RfA reform

body:
On 4/8/07, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rehashing an idea I proposed awhile ago, how about a set of standards
> similar to those at [[Wikipedia:Featured article criteria]] (but
> [[Wikipedia:Administrator criteria]] instead)? If opposing comments are
> not relevant to specific points in the criteria, they can be ignored.
> Not a perfect system, but it might be better than the current system.

It might be an advance in helping to weed out which are the frivolous
oppose votes and which are not. However, there is the danger that this
will become a kind of "painting adminship by numbers" process in which
the candidate has to have 100 reports to AIV, 1 featured article,
spotted 20 copyright violations, etc. It would have to be, as you see
in person specifications in job adverts, which are necessary and which
are desirable attributes.

--
Sam Blacketer
London E15


body:
On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia
> biography is whether that person has already had a biography published
> by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper
> article or a book. If we were to adopt a "no first biography"
> criterion, it would ensure not only that our subjects are truly
> notable, but would also help to ensure accuracy, because we'd have a
> published biography to base the Wikipedia article on.

Encourages systemic bias. Wikipedia suffers badly enough from that.

- d.


from_name: THD

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikimania registration has been open. Please
	register soon.

body:
Dear Wikimedians,

I am zh:User:Theodoranian <http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Theodoranian>,
Wikimania 2007 organizer. The registration of Wikimania 2007 has been open
for near one month. Your enthusiastic participation will make this event
successful.

The 3rd edition of Wikimania is from Aug. 3 to Aug. 5 ,2007. We choose Chien
Tan Overseas Youth Activity Center (Taipei City, Taiwan) as the event venue.
Wikimedians from all over the world will get together to know each other, to
exchange opinions in this event. You can imagine that Wikimedia Projects
participators from more than 20 countries learning, conferencing, having
lunch, drinking, and chatting all together. You will meet those Wikimedians
you never met in real life, and you will find you are just like old friends.
This is really a good chance for global partners who share the same vision
and dreams to contact face-to-face. I think Wikimedians will know more about
the similarity and differences between each other via this event. I hope
Wikimania will help Wikimedians getting a closer connection, no matter among
Wikimedia Projects, or among nations/regions.

In this event, many scientists who research Wikimedia community will address
their fruitful results; many wiki technology developers will release their
new inventions; many important participators will share their experience
upon participating Wikimedia Projects. By attending this event, you may have
plentiful harvest on the internet hottest issues: Wiki-culture, wiki-tech,
and free access to knowledge.

Before the main conference, we will hold Hacking Days & Extra (Aug. 1 to
Aug. 2), and also Citizen Journalism Unconference (Aug.2). We will have a
big Wikimania Party in the evening of Aug. 4 at a historical heritage Red
Theater which is a tea-house now. In the party, we can drink beers,
cocktails, Taiwanese tea. Since Red Theater was a movie theater before, the
organizing team are trying to find some Wikimedia related films and will
play them in the Party. After the conference, we also arrange a friendly
tour agent which provides optional 1 to 3 days Taiwanese Cultural Tours
around the island.

Wikimania 2007 organizing team have devoted much time and efforts from last
September. We hope the first held-in-Asia Wikimania will be a good
experience for all attendees. Thanks for assistance from all over the world,
and thank for giving Taiwanese Wikimedians a chance to host. Please register
and come to Taipei to enjoy our hospitality. For more information please see
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration.

See You in Taipei.

Best Regards,

Theodoranian


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikimania registration has been open. Please register
	soon.


body:
On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Would it do that any more than the current NPOV policy? The published
> biography could be in any language and from any type of publication
> regarded as reliable in the country of origin.

What about reliable in the field of origin? Most of the problem with
WP:RS is its abuse by the ignorant as a bludgeon against content they
don't like. I do see what makes the idea seem good, but entrenching
that further strikes me as an absolutely awful idea.

In any case, newspaper articles typically take whatever the subject
tells them and reprint it. They are essentially lightly-mediated
autobiography. And if *anyone* here tries to tell me that newspaper
bios are fact checked on any sort of routine basis, I will laugh at
them.

- d.


body:
On 4/8/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would it do that any more than the current NPOV policy? The published
> biography could be in any language and from any type of publication
> regarded as reliable in the country of origin.

how many bios of Mauritanian MPs exist? Even Sidi Ould Cheikh
Abdallahi was dificult to dig stuiff up on.

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

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] And over at RFA ...

body:
On 4/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/04/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> > I have a very hard time swallowing many of the support votes concerning
> > trust and qualifications when he's shown time and time again that he's
> > been overly abusive with the tools.
>
>
> {{fact}}

David, I have enormous respect for you but you could at least make an
effort to read the oppose votes. They list many of the things he has
done that would not be tolerated at all from any other admin (and no,
they weren't office actions). Just take his dealings with newbies
(such as blocking someone for a month for simple newbie mistakes,
instead of educating them and trying to educate them and possibly
create a solid wikipedian). This is something I personally care a lot
about because that's one of the things I spend a lot of time doing.
That sort of behavior is unacceptable, in my opinion.

It's not like all the opposers are insane trolls. Look at that list
and you'll see a whole lot of fantastic wikipedians. Some of them are
insane trolls, of course (with terrible reasons for opposing, as Steve
Bennet points out), but you cannot deny that there are real concerns
about Danny.

--Oskar

--Oskar


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Apr 8, 2007, at 5:44 PM, Ron Ritzman wrote:

> If it is necessary to treat certain controversial sock prone AFDs this
> way then a policy needs to be adopted covering it, who can invoke
> "special rules", under what circumstances, and what qualifies an
> account to "vote" when the rule is invoked. This is so it doesn't look
> like the nominator is pulling rules out of his ass. If I am not
> mistaken, users have been warned in the past about making up their own
> policies.

Dreadful idea. There's no way to close an AfD like this to
everybody's satisfaction. I'd rather the thing that pisses people off
be a well-reasoned human than an arbitrary set of rules.

-Phil


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 8 Apr 2007 at 20:02:00 -0500, "Slim Virgin" <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The point is that no news organization or encyclopedia would publish a
> biography of the geography teacher just because of that one incident.

In cases where the incident is notable but the person(s) involved may
not be, perhaps there ought to be an article about the incident
rather than the person -- "John Q. Smith geography scandal" or
"Little Whinging Grammar School geography scandal".

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


body:
On 4/9/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/8/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > If I am not
> > > mistaken, users have been warned in the past about making up their own
> > > policies.
> > >
> >
> > I wasn't making up policy. I was doing what I believe needed to be
> > done in order to create a workable AFD.
> >
> Why does an AFD have to be "workable"?  If there is consensus for
> something to be done, it should be pretty obvious.
>
> Anthony

There are various ways to flood AFDs with socks that make things difficult.

--
geni


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 4/8/07, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > - what to do when people who don't quite get it realise what they've
> > done (e.g. released pictures of selves or kids under a free content
> > licence) and want to change their mind?
> We recently got some of those cases. On one hand we [[don't want to be
> a dick]], on the other hand it is very hard whether users really were
> not aware that GFDL means commercial use. We are having a case, where
> a user cited these reason; it turned out to be that he had a conflict
> on his local wiki and wanted to leave all projects and have all his
> images deleted. What to do in such cases?

If someone's a new Wikipedia user, perhaps they could be confused.  If
someone's been around a while on any Wikimedia project, they damn well
should know the implications of GFDL.  Just like if someone wants to
leave Wikipedia and delete all their text contributions - we don't do
it.  If a newbie shows up and creates three stupid articles and then
asks for them to be deleted, there's a better chance.

-Matt


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Foundation-l] Bot aid

body:
Just to announce a scratch of the page. If I did something which
exists, please let me know to delete the page.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bot_aid

A lot of small projects (or even WikiProjects on larger Wikimedian
projects) don't have people who are able to make bots. This page
intends to become a place for people who don't know to work with bots
-- to ask for help.


subject: [Foundation-l] Bot aid


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bot aid


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot aid


subject: [WikiEN-l] And over at RFA ...

body:
On 4/8/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not like all the opposers are insane trolls. Look at that list
> and you'll see a whole lot of fantastic wikipedians. Some of them are
> insane trolls, of course (with terrible reasons for opposing, as Steve
> Bennet points out), but you cannot deny that there are real concerns
> about Danny.

I think, frankly, that Danny was left to do a hard job in terms of
handling a huge volume of complaints and crap, more than he probably
should have had to handle, and the stress of that is largely
responsible for some poor judgment on occasion.

I also think that, freed of the load of the office, Danny will be a
much better administrator.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

references:
<b23fe4070704060243n238e8a25v742fa8a3914edfca@mail.gmail.com>
	<i3mc131bqtkei8cp1ub8465ncu01d7ojd8@4ax.com>
	<4616CE89.2040500@gmail.com>
	<84pe13h5p5aq5re6umin4r03firl3sqvrt@4ax.com>
	<4617EC9B.1040501@gmail.com>
	<ka6g13p7a5nkelfv0fgr1l49qv6gcl0lae@4ax.com>
	<cc76a3bc4499e.4617bb17@shaw.ca>
	<fm7g13lr4uv31ce127kcrerq1qe2orabvr@4ax.com>
	<46185782.8070509@telus.net>
	<4pvj135c6qsocchkpog9pb23v45b6b06mi@4ax.com>

body:
On 4/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Well yes, that's true.  What I hadn't realised was that there appears
> to be a degree of philosophical opposition to the idea of copyright,
> or at least to the idea that we should only include what we know to be
> clean, rather than waiting for conclusive proof before removing
> anything.  That's a reversal of the burden of proof, as far as I'm
> concerned.

The opposition at least in my case is about how far some people and
corporations will go to claim copyright (or trademark, or indeed
patent, although the latter doesn't affect Wikipedia nearly so much)
in ways that range from laughable through questionable and dubious to
unlikely.

-Matt


body:
On 09/04/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

> Building an encyclopedia is about building a wealth of knowledge, not
> creating some goodwill.  If we're in the market for goodwill, then start
> a goodwill project, not an encyclopedia.

Precisely. We have enough trouble with people taking WP:BLP to mandate
sympathetic point of view, rather than neutral point of view.

- d.


body:
On 09/04/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

> > Building an encyclopedia is about building a wealth of knowledge, not
> > creating some goodwill.  If we're in the market for goodwill, then start
> > a goodwill project, not an encyclopedia.

> It's the goodwill of the public that's financing us.

That sounds awfully like "so much for NPOV."

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:

>* Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
>
>>Define "Not so notable".
>>
>>
>I'd think we'd have a good place to start with;
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
>
>&
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_privacy
>
If the matter has already been in the newspaper, and we are using that
as the source one could hardly call it an invasion of privacy.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>There's a perception that we're not reliable, and that we don't take
>sufficient editorial responsibility for the material produced by our
>thousands of anonymous editors. If we were to announce that we
>recognize biographical material on living persons is an area where the
>open-editing model can be inappropriate, and that therefore we're
>going to allow certain types of subjects to opt out, we'd be seen as
>responsible and self-regulating.

SlimVirgin gets it and comes through...

Fred