body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> Then that's what we should say, of course.  It's really a bit much for
> _Wikipedia_ to leap from that to saying that the other side is
> "incorrect" or that what they are saying is "obviously false".

The thing with which Ed Poor disagreed is universally held to be true.
You can follow atmospheric mixing within any number of passive tracers, and
break down CFCs with UV in the lab.  You get chlorine.

I have never heard anybody (except Ed Poor) dispute this.
To suggest that CFCs they behave differently in the atmosphere is ... crazy.

> Journals can afford to be partisan and sloppy in a way that we can't.

I'd disagree.  Journals can (and do) afford space to any number of well
researched papers that are out of line with academic consensus, but whose
resarch methodology reach basic standards.

Besides Ed's continued refutation of unpalatable facts (such as the behaviour
of CFCs in the atmosphere) is the only partisan opinion I've seen expressed.
--
Gareth Owen
I'm very enamoured of the idea of meta-content markup ...
there are a lot of cool possibilities. But we should be reluctant to tamper
much with a system that totally works in an amazing way. -- Jimmy Wales


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gareth Owen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] William Connelley no longer neutral contributor(Re:
	toJimbo)

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> Perhaps that is what Ed is doing, but it doesn't sound like it to me.
> The particular statement that he's discussing is an example where, as
> originally written, _Wikipedia_ was itself making a claim that is
> significiantly too strong for us.

Its not.  Really.  That's what CFCs do.  Honestly.  Everyone knows this.
It is a fact.  You can look it up in any reputable encyclopedia.

> That's one possible sign yes, but of course that is NOT what is going
> on here.  There are peer-reviewed articles.

Denying that turbulent mixing occurs in the atmosphere?
That CFCs reach the stratosphere?  Its not a theory.  Its not a model
prediction. You can detect them there, with balloon-borne gas chromatographs.

I'm all for scepticism, but in this area Ed too often cannot distinguish
between NPOV and Ed'sPOV
--
Gareth Owen
I'm very enamoured of the idea of meta-content markup ...
there are a lot of cool possibilities. But we should be reluctant to tamper
much with a system that totally works in an amazing way. -- Jimmy Wales


subject: [WikiEN-l] William Connelley no longer neutral contributor

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> > "However, most scientists find Singer's objections to go beyond reasonable
> > skepticism...", preferably with a source.
>
> I think you said this very very well.

Madness.  Absolute madness.

We now have a carte blanche for the inclusion on any scientific page
absolutely any crackpot theories we care to include, as long as we annotate
them.

Are you really suggesting that
    "most scientists find Theory X to be beyond reasonable skepticism."
is not an acceptable standard for the exclusion of Theory X from a supposedly
scientific encyclopedia.

I despair.
--
Gareth Owen
"The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity"
                  --  W. B. Yeats forsees the standard of debate on wikipedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [jasonr@bomis.com: server: big package... Full of
	penguins.]

body:
Jason won't have a chance to install it until after the holiday
(Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the US), but he's going to play with
it, run some benchmarks, make sure it's running right.

----- Forwarded message from Jason Richey <jasonr at bomis.com> -----

From: Jason Richey <jasonr at bomis.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:28:21 -0800
To: jwales at joey.bomis.com
Subject: server: big package...  Full of penguins.

The server just arrived.

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>

----- End forwarded message -----


from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [WikiEN-l] SEPP and Theory X... :-)

body:
> Are you really suggesting that "most scientists find Theory X to be
> beyond reasonable skepticism." is not an acceptable standard for
> the exclusion of Theory X from a supposedly scientific
> encyclopedia?

Hold on, hold on. We're not talking about excluding Theory X from the
encyclopedia - Theory X in this case only appears on the article
about [[SEPP]], as one of the claims SEPP makes or made. What we're
talking about is how we phrase our description of the fact that
scientists mostly reject Theory X. I'm happy to agree with Jimbo that
we should be a bit more sympathetic, but the reader should be left in
no doubt that scientists do indeed reject Singer's claim.

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


subject: [WikiEN-l] SEPP and Theory X... :-)

body:
"Allan Crossman" <a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> Hold on, hold on. We're not talking about excluding Theory X from the
> encyclopedia - Theory X in this case only appears on the article
> about [[SEPP]], as one of the claims SEPP makes or made.

I've no problem with it appearing at [[SEPP]], as representing the opinion of
SEPP.   I've no problem with the page [[Flat Earth Society]], either.

Just keep it away from the scientific opinion.
--
Gareth Owen
"It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia."
                                 -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate


body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> Do you mean that if most scientists believe something, that we should be
> careful not to even _mention_ alternatives that are actually held by
> significant critics?

Significant scientific critics do not hold opinions that are demonstrably
false.  We don't mention flat earthers in discussion of geology, because
simply mentioning their alternative hypothesis lends it credence which it does
not deserve.  [[Solar system]] does not mention the various pre-Copernican
theories as viable alternatives, because science has thoroughly discredited
them. These are, however, quite rightly placed in their historical context.
We do not attempt to weasel a fake NPOV by saying "some obscure religious
orders still believe in the geocentric universe."  Even if its true, these
demonstrably false opinions do not belong in scientific arguments.

The opinions of SEPP are not scientifically motivated or justifiable.
They do not belong with scientific discussions.  I've not problem with their
opinions appearing in the discussion of the beliefs of SEPP.
--
Gareth Owen
"And Cunct, please stop being such a prick."
                        -- wikipedia-l gains a new mantra (Wed Nov  6 2002)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] possible link rendering bug?

body:
Seems a bug in the new software version. The following conversation
is taken from the english Village pump:

Red link

When I go into the lobster article, American lobster shows up as a red
link. But when I click on it, the redirect is already in place. Same
problem clicking Pakistan Air Force from Islamabad International Airport.
I've tried logging out and using a different browser. - Hephaestos 10:06,
24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Alas, it looks like the new experimental persistent link caching suffers
the same fate as the last similar attempt and isn't getting updated
correctly. It's now disabled pending further testing. Force a reload of
the page, it should appear correctly. --Brion 10:13, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ciao,
Alfio

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Arnaud G wrote:

>Peter Gervai wrote:
>
>We have the same prob on the french wikipedia. look at [[barite]] there
>is a link in [[baryum]] but if you look in what link here it's empty
>
>>Check these things on hu.wikipedia.org:
>>
>>See [[H?v?zi-t? TT]] (you can find it in recent changes if you're not
>>accent-read), and check "Mi hivatkozik erre" ("who links here"). Nobody.
>>
>>Now go to [[Magyarorsz?g term?szetv?delmi ter?letei]] (in the recent changes
>>as well), and look for the string "H?v?zi-t? TT", and you'll see: the
>>article contains link to the one before. However its link is "red" or
>>"question marked". If you click on it (create a non-existing article) then
>>you'll realise that it does exist, since the editor window contains the
>>actual text.
>>
>>If I would edit and save the second article I'm sure it'd heal (preview
>>shows it healed) but I don't want to mess it up until someone check what the
>>bug is.
>>
>>Brion? See anything?
>>
>>(The article can be fixed, naturally, but the bug should be instead. :-))
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] possible link rendering bug?

body:
Brion,

Thanks for discovering the link cache bug. It's not everyone who has the
humility to admit the existence of a mistake, but you have consistently
shown the willingness to speak frankly to the Wikipedia community about
the true state of the software which fuels the world's largest wikiwiki.

I have no doubt that you and the other developers will be able to
straighten out this snag. Just call it a worm and sic that "brilliant"
early bird, Tim Starling on it!

Ed Poor


from_name: Paul_Lorilla at pch.gc.ca

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Indigenous issues: Wikepedia Encyclopedia

body:
Mr. Jimmy Wales,

I hope this note finds you in good health and spirit.  I work for the
Aboriginal Affairs Branch at the Department of Canadian Heritage in the
capital region of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.   We came upon your website,
Wikipedia Encyclopedia and have found your work regarding Indigenous
languages to be very useful.

We are in the process of creating a website for our Policy and Research
Directorate and would like to use your website as a link for people to
research Aboriginal/Indigenous issues.   This is simply creating a
hyperlink under the word Wikipedia so that people can then visit and learn
from your site.   We are wondering if you would permit us to do that.

In addition, because our website is linked to the Government of Canada, it
is useful for sites to be bilingual (English and French).  Is there a
French version of the Indigenous website?

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your response.  I can be
contacted at 819 994 2257

Paul

Paul C. Lorilla
Policy Officer / Agent de politique
Policy and Research Directorate / Direction de la politique et de la
recherche
Aboriginal Affairs Branch / Direction g?n?rale des affaires autochtones
Canadian Heritage / Patrimoine Canadien
Tel. (819) 994  2257
Fax. (819) 997 3471
paul_lorilla at pch.gc.ca

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from_name: Nils Kehrein

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Export bug on de:

body:
FYI

[quote]

Fatal error:  Call to a member function on a non-object in
/usr/local/apache/common/php/SpecialExport.php on line 49

[/quote]

Regards,
Nils.

--
Math problems? Call 1-800-[(10x)(13i)^2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x].


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Shebs re: creationism (was: William Connolley no
	longer neutral contributor)

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> He's not dressing up his faith in scientific clothes: he's reporting genuine
> dissent WITHIN the scientific community.  Scientists like MIT's Richard
> Lindzen (an IPCC leader!) and Harvared's Sallie Baliunas DISAGREE with other
> scientists.

On certain issues.
Certainly not on CFC atmospheric chemistry, as you seek to make out.

> All I'm saying is that the controversy should be REPORTED in Wikipedia
> articles.

No.  You called for William Connolley's edits to be reverted.
And you called for the idea that CFCs deplete the ozone layer to be considered
controversial.

Both sides of the debate about Global Warming are represented quite well in
wikipedia.  After a definition, the [[Global warming]] article continues :
  "Depending on what data one chooses to emphasize,
   different conclusions are possible ... The difference between the
   interpretations of the historical record affects how the most recent
   warming trend is viewed: the quantitative records show the recent warming
   trend, and the current warmth, as unusual; from the qualitative record,
   many "skeptics" believe that the recent trend is not unusual"

And thats before we get to [[Global warming controversy]]...
  "A number of scientists with backgrounds in climate research -- notably
   Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and Sherwood
   Idso -- dispute the global warming theory (see [[global warming
   skepticism]]). Also, a number of conservative think tanks oppose the theory,
   some implying that fraud has been involved in advocacy for it (see Science
   and Environmental Policy Project)."

It is REPORTED.

You started this thread with specific complaints.
Don't now retreat behind generalities.
--
Gareth Owen
"And Cunct, please stop being such a prick."
                        -- wikipedia-l gains a new mantra (Wed Nov  6 2002)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Surveys have been taken (was: William Connolley no
	longer neutral contributor)

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
>
> The survey shows an even split among scientists on whether the GW theory
> is true. This is far from the "consensus" that some GW theory proponents
> claim exists.
> ...unless, of course, someone genuinely feels that a mean score of 4.8
> on a scale from 1 (agree) and 7 (disagree) represents a "consensus" of
> agreement!

Thats an horrific and dishonest interpretation of those results.

The question was not "do you believe that GW theory is true", it was
"do you trust present climate models over a period of 10 years to succesfully
 predict INTERANNUAL VARIABILITY" (my stress)

Trends in long term climate do *not* come into the compass of
inter-annual variability.  That you don't appreciate this... sheesh.

The score for GW as a future event was 2.6 on a 1-7 scale.
Already detected GW was 3.3.
--
Gareth Owen
"And Cunct, please stop being such a prick."
                        -- wikipedia-l gains a new mantra (Wed Nov  6 2002)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug hunting: a noble profession

body:
I once spent 5 months testing the same application, and finding bug
after bug. The programmers whose code I was testing were not so gracious
as E23 or Brion, however. They kept announcing that they had "fixed all
the bugs" and seemed to find my reports dismaying.

Anyway, I guess my little daughter must have overheard me discussing
work, because she started a hobby of finding bugs from the garden
outside and bringing them in the house in little jars, to study under
her magnifying glass!

She wanted to be just like her dad, I guess :-)

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Formulation requested by Jimbo

body:
Sheldon's formulation is fine, provided he can locate a source for the
"overwhelming majority" part and gives a numerical definition for
"overwhelming majority".

As it stands now, the only survey mentioned at Wikipedia seems to show
much less than "overwhelming" support for the GW theory. Perhaps it
depends on how one interprets the survey results?

But really, on such a crucial issue as Global Warming theory, with tens
or 100s of billions of dollars at stake (not to mention human lives,
assuming the theory is actually true!) -- I'd rather have more than an
average of answers from a survey question. Better to dig up exactly how
many answered "strongly agree", "somewhat agree", etc.

If there's really a consensus, showing the survey results this way will
make it obvious. Surely such a capable researcher as Mr. Rampton has
these figures at his fingertips already.

Ed Poor


from_name: Alexandre NOUVEL

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: unable to access wikipedia from Netscape
	7.01/Win2K pro

body:
Hello all,

I've sent a message last week-end about further testings I
planned to do by the begenning of this week.

The tests shows that I can access any wiki site from my
workplace. The only problem is that it does not work any
more when I try to use Netscape 7.01/windows2000Pro.
There is no problem while I use Internet Explorer 5.5 sp2.

Is there something wrong with the browser based upon Mozilla
when trying to access the wiki? I did not find any pertinent
answer to this question while searching the web for such
topic.

Best regards to all and thanks in advance for your kind help,
--
Alexandre.NOUVEL at alternatif.net
|-> http://www.bigfoot.com/~alexandre.nouvel
|-> La copie priv?e et l'auto-diffusion menac?es : http://eucd.info
\ I hate spam. I kill spammers. Non mais.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Gareth, don't call me dishonest

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> Gareth,
>
> Please do not call me dishonest. At worst, I might be mistaken.
> In this case, I believe it is you who are mistaken.
> There were several questions on the survey.
>
> You are presenting one question, then giving the score for the answer to
> another question. Assuming good faith, you are simply making an honest
> error.

I shall quote the page you gave

 the mean of the entire sample of 4.6 for the ability to make reasonable
 predictions of *inter-annual variability* tends to indicate that scientists
 feel that reasonable prediction is not yet a possibility... mean of 4.8 for
 reasonable predictions of 10 years ...mean of 5.2 for periods of 100 years...

You said:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The survey shows an even split among scientists
on whether the GW theory is true.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The numbers you cited (mean 4.8) were *specifically* about the accuracy of
*model predictions* on annual and inter-annual variability.

Got that?  Model predictions and inter-annual variability.
You represented as a statistic about "Is global warming true"
Thats totally dishonest.

When asked whether they believed in GW / GWH they said:

 the mean response for the entire sample was 3.3 indicating a slight
 tendency towards the position that global warming has indeed been
 detected and is underway.... Regarding global warming as being a possible
 future  event, there is a higher expression of confidence as indicated by the
 mean of 2.6.

You said :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  The survey shows an even split among scientists on whether the GW theory
  is true. This is far from the "consensus" that some GW theory proponents
  claim exists. The fact that a survey contradicts the political views of the
  Clinton administration and of the UN climate panel, should be in the
  Wikipedia.
  ...unless, of course, someone genuinely feels that a mean score of 4.8
  on a scale from 1 (agree) and 7 (disagree) represents a "consensus" of
  agreement!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't care that you find it unpalatable.
Your representation of those figures is flagrantly dishonest.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Software upgrades

body:
It seems my table markup made it as well :-)

Magnus

Brion Vibber wrote:
> We'll be moving the bug-reduced development branch of MediaWiki into
> production this afternoon/evening (US time) / late night (Europe). There
> may be some new bugs that haven't been caught yet, so please give a hoot
> if you notice anything unusual.
>
> User-visible changes in this round will include:
>
> * Should be faster loading pages with many links.
>
> * Special:Export -- export the source of individual wiki pages,
> optionally with their histories, in a thin XML wrapper which includes
> metadata (time, etc). This may be useful for those of you working on
> automated tools. (There is not yet any comparable import facility.)
>
> * MediaWiki: namespace for adjusting the localization of interface
> messages without waiting for a new LanguageXx.php file to get installed.
> Limited to sysops.
>
> A category system is partially in the code but won't be enabled just
> yet, pending another look over the code.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Software upgrades

body:
On Nov 25, 2003, at 09:37, Peter Gervai wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 02:05:01PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> * MediaWiki: namespace for adjusting the localization of interface
>> messages without waiting for a new LanguageXx.php file to get
>> installed. Limited to sysops.
>
> Should this work on nationalopedias? How? (Guess something on meta but
> I
> don't happen to See The Light.)

It's still disabled while we're tracking down other bugs; it should get
turned on once we've also fixed the bugs I noticed testing it but
haven't had a chance to track down yet.

Hopefully somebody'll scribble up some documentation! :) Tim knows it
best since he wrote it, but he's out of town right now so I don't know
if he's got free time to write up docs.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Found the bug that was breaking imagelinks, that should be solved
now... (missing DB_WRITE in a wfQuery() call in
Title::invalidateCache(), so it threw an error and died before
inserting the links.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Talk page notification

body:
Talk page notification seems to be no longer working, at least on the
English Wikipedia. Anyone got any leads what's wrong?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Export bug on de:

body:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 02:24:59PM +0100, Nils Kehrein wrote:
> FYI
>
> [quote]
>

> Fatal error:  Call to a member function on a non-object in
> /usr/local/apache/common/php/SpecialExport.php on line 49
 />
> [/quote]
>

Works for me.

How did you call it? On which page? Which browser? A little bit
more information would be kind.

Regards,

JeLuF

--
"Herr Doktor, ich bin krank." - "Ich glaube wir sollten amputieren."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vacation, governance

body:
I'll be away from tomorrow morning early and returning Tuesday.  I'll
be available by cellphone 24x7, so those of you who have that number
could reach me in an emergency.  I will also have net access, although
I don't intend to be online much.

Remember when I had people volunteer for mediation and arbitration
committees?  I haven't forgotten.  Expect initial appointments to
those committees on December 2nd, when I get back.

If anyone still wants to volunteer, let me know.

Remember -- mediation in this context means "attempting to resolve a
problem without resort to bans or restrictions of any kind, by helping
two parties to a conflict find a mutually satisfactory solution", and
arbitration in this context means "more mediation, but this time with
ultimate resort to bans or restrictions if absolutely necessary".

The idea here is to start working towards a scalable governance
solution that preserves and extends our culture of helpfulness,
openness, and WikiLove.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Enviornmentalism vs. Science (was: William Connolley a
	rational contributor)

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> 1. There is no scientific consensus. They just made it up. The IPCC's
> contributors, when polled, were split 50-50

Are you talking about the SEPP survey?
Of 71 IPCC panel members polled, only 15 responded, and the respondees were
entirely self selected.   It's questionable that such a sample may be thought
of as representative.  Wearing my other hat, thats just not good statistics.

If you were an environmental scientist whose scientific opinion supported
anthropogenic global warming, would *you* respond to a survey run by an
organisation dedicated to discrediting your work?

Show me an poll run by a reputable independent polling company (Gallup or
MORI, say), and I'll give the results some credence.

> on whether human-caused emissions were contributing to GW.

The sentence with which they agreed was:
"it is not possible to attribute all, or even a large part, of the observed
 global-mean warming [of 0.5 degree Celsius since 1890] to the enhanced
 greenhouse effect on the basis of observational data currently available."

Firstly, that sentence appears in the IPCC report.
Secondly, however you paint it, that is not the same thing as
   "whether human-caused emissions were contributing to GW."

> 2. Even if an overwhelming majority of people believe something, this
> doesn't make it true. All the experts were against Copernicus, until one
> solitary observer (Galileo) pointed his telescope at the Jupiter and
> discovered 4 moons revolving around it.

That's true.
They laughed at Galileo.
They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


from_name: Delirium

references:
<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280F4538@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>	<3FC298FA.1050909@apple.com>
	<3FC2A7CB.5030109@rufus.d2g.com>	<20031125130740.GH3295@joey.bomis.com>
	<r5i7k1o36qk.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:

>Are you really suggesting that
>    "most scientists find Theory X to be beyond reasonable skepticism."
>is not an acceptable standard for the exclusion of Theory X from a supposedly
>scientific encyclopedia.
>
>
I don't see why we shouldn't mention it, especially if it has some
following in the political debate, as long as we do mention that most
scientists consider it unreasonable and unfounded (when that is the
case).  Our pages on various minority religious views don't say, for
example, "only a bunch of crazy cultists hold this obviously illogical
view" (even in cases where the view is provably in conflict with
reality).  We instead say something more like "These claims are nearly
universally discounted by those outside the group."  Sure, it's a
*little* silly in some very fringe cases, but there's a lot of gray area
where we simply can't make that decision.  I don't really see what's
wrong with saying "This view is sometimes promoted, by widely
discredited by the scientific community."  That, to my mind, in fact is
a *stronger* statement against than "This view is clearly false",
because in the latter case people will say "so what if Wikipedia says
it's false?", given that we have no independent authority on essentially
any topic.  In the former case it's clear that we're reporting a matter
that was settled by people in the field, not making the claim ourselves

-Mark


references:
<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280F4538@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>	<3FC298FA.1050909@apple.com>
	<3FC2A7CB.5030109@rufus.d2g.com>	<20031125130740.GH3295@joey.bomis.com>	<r5i7k1o36qk.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>	<20031125134343.GK3295@joey.bomis.com>
	<r5iy8u41qo4.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:

>We do not attempt to weasel a fake NPOV by saying "some obscure religious
>orders still believe in the geocentric universe."  Even if its true, these
>demonstrably false opinions do not belong in scientific arguments.
>
>
I don't actually see what's wrong with this.  It adds information that
was otherwise not present--that there are some obscure religious orders
that believe in the geocentric universe (perhaps accompany with a link
to [[Flat Earth Society]] or some other group that flals in this
category).  And it doesn't place it on even footing with scientific
consensus, because it's clearly labeled as the view of "obscure
religious orders", not of scientists or even any mainstream religions.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] iptables on pliny

body:
Oh, forgot to mention this yesterday; I got iptables working on pliny
finally. Just an added layer of protection.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Software upgrades

body:
On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 02:05:01PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> * MediaWiki: namespace for adjusting the localization of interface
> messages without waiting for a new LanguageXx.php file to get
> installed. Limited to sysops.

Should this work on nationalopedias? How? (Guess something on meta but I
don't happen to See The Light.)

(As far as I see you commented out the "MediaWiki:" namespace in
languageHU.php, so I'm a bit confused now.)

> A category system is partially in the code but won't be enabled just
> yet, pending another look over the code.

Guess info's somewhere on meta, too?

grin


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Cunctator

body:
"Well done"?  Please elaborate.

RickK

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
Rick wrote:

> The Cunctator is unilaterally deleting Votes for Deletion headers from
> pages that are still under discussion on the Votes for Deletion page.
>
Well done!

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] The Cunctator again

body:
Wow.  When Maveric first "mandated" that the VfD header be included on every article on the VfD page, I objected, claiming that such action was unnecessary.  Not one person came to my defense, and I was attacked and excoriated for my lack of support for Wikipedia.  Now here I am, having bent my neck and acceded to the will of the Wikipedia, and now I'm attacked for putting the headers ON the articles?

Will someone please fill me on the rules and when they change?  It seems that no matter what I do, it's wrong.  Every single time I add something to the Main Page article, Maveric deletes it.  What's the point in my being here?

"Well done", indeed, right?

RickK

Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Ray Saintonge

Rick wrote:

>> The Cunctator has now begun marking his deletions
of >>VfD headers as
>> Minor changes.

>As long as it doesn't change the meaning of the
article, >I guess they are minor.

>Ec

Agreed. VfD headers are not especially relevant to the
content of the articles. The headers especially deface
those articles which have no reasons to be deleted :-)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special:Export bug on de:

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 02:24:59PM +0100, Nils Kehrein wrote:
>>Fatal error:  Call to a member function on a non-object in
>>/usr/local/apache/common/php/SpecialExport.php on line 49
 Works for me.
>
> How did you call it? On which page? Which browser?

It seems that the problem is about /empty/ lines in the textbox.
Input like
+------------+
| Henry Ford |
+------------+
works, but
+------------+
| Henry Ford |
|            |
+------------+
results in a fatal error.

Regards,
Nils.


body:
Well, just to be clear, I have to confess that brion this time admitted
to one of my bugs. What can I say, "it worked in testing".

As brion said, however, I'm working on a better way to rebuild the link
tables. I believe this approach to rebuilding the tables will allow us
to iteratively repair it article by article over the course of several
days, without any down time.

/E23

Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor-at-abc.com |wikipedia| wrote:
> Brion,
>
> Thanks for discovering the link cache bug. It's not everyone who has the
> humility to admit the existence of a mistake [...]


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] governance

body:
> From: Jimmy Wales
>
> I'll be away from tomorrow morning early and returning Tuesday.  I'll
> be available by cellphone 24x7, so those of you who have that number
> could reach me in an emergency.  I will also have net access, although
> I don't intend to be online much.
>
> Remember when I had people volunteer for mediation and arbitration
> committees?  I haven't forgotten.  Expect initial appointments to
> those committees on December 2nd, when I get back.
>
> If anyone still wants to volunteer, let me know.
>
> Remember -- mediation in this context means "attempting to resolve a
> problem without resort to bans or restrictions of any kind, by helping
> two parties to a conflict find a mutually satisfactory solution", and
> arbitration in this context means "more mediation, but this time with
> ultimate resort to bans or restrictions if absolutely necessary".

Unless the membership and decision-making of these committees is fully
open this will lead us to the same kind of broken, paranoid culture of
Dmoz.

Claims that mediation and arbitration can't work without secrecy are
false.

Or to be more positive: any structure set up which involves a level of
secrecy, if we are to move past the benevolent dictator model, MUST have
formal methods of ensuring accountability and oversight by the general
community--that is, everyone, including non-Wikipedians.

And I *strongly* believe that for any Wikipedia problem for which there
is a hierarchical solution there is also a non-hierarchical solution,
which though possibly more complicated to implement technologically,
will assuredly be better and more scalable.

--tc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ed Poor not a neutral contributor

body:
> From: Delirium
>
> Gareth Owen wrote:
>
> >We do not attempt to weasel a fake NPOV by saying "some obscure
religious
> >orders still believe in the geocentric universe."  Even if its true,
> these
> >demonstrably false opinions do not belong in scientific arguments.
> >
> >
> I don't actually see what's wrong with this.  It adds information that
> was otherwise not present--that there are some obscure religious
orders
> that believe in the geocentric universe (perhaps accompany with a link
> to [[Flat Earth Society]] or some other group that flals in this
> category).  And it doesn't place it on even footing with scientific
> consensus, because it's clearly labeled as the view of "obscure
> religious orders", not of scientists or even any mainstream religions.
>
The problem is that Ed Poor has been editing articles on climate science
to give equal weight to opinions outside of mainstream science, and
describing the different sides as "environmentalists, liberals,
Democrats and some scientists" and "other scientists".

This isn't a dispute over generalities or a philosophy of neutrality;
it's a specific dispute over the presentation of particular scientific
issues.

--tc


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Cunctator

body:
I think tha speaks for itself.  Cunc evidently did not want the article
to be deleted, and didn't have the time to waste at VfD.  All I'm saying
is that I support his action.

Ec

Rick wrote:

> "Well done"?  Please elaborate.
>
>
>
> RickK
>
> Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>     Rick wrote:
>
>     > The Cunctator is unilaterally deleting Votes for Deletion
>     headers from
>     > pages that are still under discussion on the Votes for Deletion
>     page.
>     >
>     Well done!
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>All right, Votes for Deletion is broken. There's something seriously,
>deliriously wrong when [[Gene Ray]] is listed on Votes for Deletion.
>
>In the same way that we trust users to delete pages that should
>*obviously* be deleted, we should trust users to remove pages from VfD
>that should *obviously* not be deleted. Entries that have been edited so
>that there is no doubt that they should be deleted should be able to be
>removed immediately from the VfD page.
>
>
What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting it
get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for deletion?

-Mark


from_name: Anthere

body:
Message: 6
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 14:15:48 -0500
From: Paul_Lorilla at pch.gc.ca
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Indigenous issues: Wikepedia
Encyclopedia

Mr. Jimmy Wales,

I hope this note finds you in good health and spirit.
I work for the
Aboriginal Affairs Branch at the Department of
Canadian Heritage in the
capital region of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.   We came
upon your website,
Wikipedia Encyclopedia and have found your work
regarding Indigenous
languages to be very useful.

We are in the process of creating a website for our
Policy and Research
Directorate and would like to use your website as a
link for people to
research Aboriginal/Indigenous issues.   This is
simply creating a
hyperlink under the word Wikipedia so that people can
then visit and
learn
from your site.   We are wondering if you would permit
us to do that.

In addition, because our website is linked to the
Government of Canada,
it
is useful for sites to be bilingual (English and
French).  Is there a
French version of the Indigenous website?

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your
response.  I can be
contacted at 819 994 2257

Paul

-------

As far as I am aware, the french version currently
does not contain much about indigenous people, but
does contain useful things about languages.

I recommand that you start at
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue and see if some of
the links may be relevant to you.

Do not hesitate to drop us a word.

Regards

Anthere

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>BTW, do you deny that having [[Gene Ray]] on VfD is a sign of something
>seriously wrong?
>
>
I do deny this.  If it were *deleted* I'd think it was something
seriously wrong.  If it's not deleted, no harm done--someone made a
mistake, it was corrected (presuming the page does not get deleted), and
the process works as it's supposed to.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>The problem is that Ed Poor has been editing articles on
>climate science to give equal weight to opinions outside
>of mainstream science, and describing the different sides
>as "environmentalists, liberals, Democrats and some
>scientists" and "other scientists".

This has been my impression as well. I have also asked Ed a few times in the
past (directly and indirectly) to refrain from making substantial edits to
the global warming articles. IMO, his POV on this issue seems too entrenched
for him to edit neutrally. Thus he tends to sometimes give more weight to
'anti-global warming theory' camps than is perhaps warrented.

I know my limits - my POV on homosexuality-related issues, for example, is so
far to the left that I honestly have a very hard time even seeing my own
bias. So I tend to direct major edits to articles I don't feel so
passionately about. It is much easier to be an approximation of neutral doing
that.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, E23 wrote:

>As brion said, however, I'm working on a better way to rebuild the link
>tables. I believe this approach to rebuilding the tables will allow us
>to iteratively repair it article by article over the course of several
>days, without any down time.

That would be doubleplusgood also for converting the wikipedias still on
the old UseModWiki to the PhaseIII software - there are quite a lot of
them, and some are getting quite large. Unless I'm totally
misunderstanding the way wiki software works :-)

Ciao,
Alfio


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Cunctator again

body:
RickK wrote:
>Wow.  When Maveric first "mandated" that the VfD header be included
>on every article on the VfD page, I objected, claiming that such action
>was unnecessary.  Not one person came to my defense, and I was
>attacked and excoriated for my lack of support for Wikipedia.  Now here
>I am, having bent my neck and acceded to the will of the Wikipedia, and
>now I'm attacked for putting the headers ON the articles?

Don't confuse disagreement with attack. I saw no attack. However, I'll add my
support: The headers are needed to inform editors and readers of the article
that it may be deleted soon. Not having such a header and just deleting the
article is a denial of due process to the editors and readers of the article.
Please continue to add this header as you see fit.

>Will someone please fill me on the rules and when they change?  It
>seems that no matter what I do, it's wrong.  Every single time I add
>something to the Main Page article, Maveric deletes it.

Stubs listed in the Selected Articles section on the Main Page are often
replaced by better examples of our content. That is the whole point of the
Selected Articles section! There also has to be some criteria to base listing
on. For the Anniversaries section much of that is dictated on the relative
completeness of the article. Other things to consider are the relative
importance of the event. More on Talk:Main Page, Talk:Selected Articles on
the Main Page and my user talk page. Once again you are spamming your
complaints in multiple places which requires multiple replys.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Cunctator again

body:
There's no need to personalize this with what Maveric said  That's a cop
out and evasion of responsibility.  The Community has not authorized
Maveric to "mandate" anything, not has it pushed that burden on his
shoulders.  He is a member of the Wikipedia Community like anybody else
here.  If you choose to elevate his words into some kind of a mandate
you are doing that as your own personal opinion.  The way I will respond
to you, is based on the merits of the issue itself, rather than on what
might or might not have been intended in another person's words.

The entire issue about VfD is about deletions, not about notices or
headers.  If a long standing credible member with a proven track record
of community interest removes a VfD notice then maybe you should
consider that as a strong indication that the article should stay - a
much stronger indication than one sentence buried in the endless
verbiage of VfD.  Perhaps that can be taken as an indication that you
should remove the item from the VfD list entirely.

Your statement that you were excoriated for "lack of support" I will
treat as rhetorical flourish.  Your claim that you have acceded to the
"will if the Wikipedia" is as valid as the crytal ball that gave you
that impression.  There is very little of such monolithic will on
Wikipedia.  What we have is a number of articles whose value is suspect;
some even seem symptomatic of a person with an obsessive disorder (No
need to mention which.), but nevertheless written in good faith.  The
rampant judgementalism that pervades VfD is grossly disrespectful
because it belittles the honest efforts of others, for no other reason
than the pursuit of the fantasy that they know how to maintain the
purity of Wikipedia.  If these contributors are doing no harm, let then
be; let them have the confidence that the little that they could
contribute is worth something.  That will build a much stronger
community than an endless litany of rules.

One of the things that I appreciate about Wikipedia is the paucity of
its rules.  I acknowledge that some people find life in such
circumstances very difficult.  That could even make them dinosaurs in
the midst of the tremendous paradigm shift that is being generated by
the on-line age.  That wildcat is now out of the bag, and there's no
putting it back in.  The rules don't exist; they can't exist.  That
security is no longer there, and tough love says that you've got to
learn to live with it.

Ec

Rick wrote:

> Wow.  When Maveric first "mandated" that the VfD header be included on
> every article on the VfD page, I objected, claiming that such action
> was unnecessary.  Not one person came to my defense, and I was
> attacked and excoriated for my lack of support for Wikipedia.  Now
> here I am, having bent my neck and acceded to the will of the
> Wikipedia, and now I'm attacked for putting the headers ON the articles?
>
>
>
> Will someone please fill me on the rules and when they change?  It
> seems that no matter what I do, it's wrong.  Every single time I add
> something to the Main Page article, Maveric deletes it.  What's the
> point in my being here?
>
>
>
> "Well done", indeed, right?
>
>
>
> RickK
>
> Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>     From: Ray Saintonge
>
>     Rick wrote:
>
>     >> The Cunctator has now begun marking his deletions
>     of >>VfD headers as
>     >> Minor changes.
>
>     >As long as it doesn't change the meaning of the
>     article, >I guess they are minor.
>
>     >Ec
>
>     Agreed. VfD headers are not especially relevant to the
>     content of the articles. The headers especially deface
>     those articles which have no reasons to be deleted :-)
>


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>I know my limits - my POV on homosexuality-related issues, for example, is so
>far to the left that I honestly have a very hard time even seeing my own
>bias. So I tend to direct major edits to articles I don't feel so
>passionately about. It is much easier to be an approximation of neutral doing
>that.
>
Ed has his good points when it comes to mediating.  He can be very
effective as long as he stays away from a few pet topics, but the rest
of us need to give ourselves credit too for knowing just what buttons to
avoid pushing.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Cunctator again

body:
> From: Daniel Mayer
>
> RickK wrote:
> >Wow.  When Maveric first "mandated" that the VfD header be included
> >on every article on the VfD page, I objected, claiming that such
action
> >was unnecessary.  Not one person came to my defense, and I was
> >attacked and excoriated for my lack of support for Wikipedia.  Now
here
> >I am, having bent my neck and acceded to the will of the Wikipedia,
and
> >now I'm attacked for putting the headers ON the articles?
>
> Don't confuse disagreement with attack. I saw no attack. However, I'll
add
> my support: The headers are needed to inform editors and readers of
the
> article
> that it may be deleted soon. Not having such a header and just
deleting
> the article is a denial of due process to the editors and readers of
the
> article.
> Please continue to add this header as you see fit.

All right, I cop to originally taking the VfD header off of a page that
(I believe) obviously should not be deleted. When RickK put it back, I
moved it to the bottom of the page--since it's a short entry, I wasn't
try to hide it, I was just trying to have it not be the first thing
someone would read when going to the entry.

RickK continued to say that I was deleting the header and moved it back
up to the top; I moved it back down; at that point Fuzheado moved it
back up and Haephestos made the symbolic guesture of protecting the page
and telling us to stop editing it. I unprotected the page, moved it to
the bottom once more, Angela moved it back up and reprotected the page,
and asked me to stop unprotecting the page. I've been unprotecting the
page every time I see it protected, but I've stopped moving the VfD
header to the bottom. Not that there's anything that says that the VfD
header has to be up top. I'm not going to compete with several people.

One thing that bothers me about the VfD header is that it's biased:
"This article has been listed on Votes for Deletion. Please see that
page for justifications and discussion."  Okay, I changed it to a less
suggestive form, one which encourages participation.

---tc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
All right, Votes for Deletion is broken. There's something seriously,
deliriously wrong when [[Gene Ray]] is listed on Votes for Deletion.

In the same way that we trust users to delete pages that should
*obviously* be deleted, we should trust users to remove pages from VfD
that should *obviously* not be deleted. Entries that have been edited so
that there is no doubt that they should be deleted should be able to be
removed immediately from the VfD page.

This still isn't the solution that I would propose for the situation,
but it would at least be a brake on the current runaway freight train of
deletion.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
Delirium wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> All right, Votes for Deletion is broken. There's something seriously,
>> deliriously wrong when [[Gene Ray]] is listed on Votes for Deletion.
>> In the same way that we trust users to delete pages that should
>> *obviously* be deleted, we should trust users to remove pages from VfD
>> that should *obviously* not be deleted. Entries that have been edited so
>> that there is no doubt that they should be deleted should be able to be
>> removed immediately from the VfD page.
>>
> What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting
> it get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for
> deletion?

Nothing except that I don't trust the deletionists.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Talk page notification

body:
On Nov 25, 2003, at 14:27, Erik Moeller wrote:
> 1) Edit talk page with separate browser, not logged in
> 2) Check in first browser
> -> no notification
>
> In the user_newtalk table, user_id is not set. This could be
> - because the deferred update is not run in some circumstances

Unable to reproduce on my test box with a copy of your talk page.
Patching some debug code into the live server...

SQL: DELETE FROM brokenlinks WHERE bl_from=146148 AND bl_to
IN('Test:Image:EloquenceSunflowerBlue-
Large3_copy.png','Current_Wiki_controversies','International_logo_contes
t','Terrorism_against_Arabs','UserContributions:Evercat','BackLinks:
Foo','Dating_Do's_and_Dont's')

Missed some escaping there. This looks to be the culprit in
LinksUpdate.php:
	$sql = "DELETE FROM brokenlinks WHERE bl_from={$this->mId} AND bl_to
IN('" . 		implode( "','", $del ) . "')";

Naturally this wouldn't be issued on my test box, which is missing the
brokenlinks entries in question and thus doesn't need to delete them.

Okay, I've added in an array_map() to run wfStrencode prior to the
implode, and it should be working fine now... database says you've got
messages!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
Martin wrote the following on [[Dcide]]:
	Delete based solely on dislike of Easter Bradford stubs. Martin

Is he being facetious, or is this what is counting as a reasonable
argument at VfD nowadays?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
> From: Delirium
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >All right, Votes for Deletion is broken. There's something seriously,
> >deliriously wrong when [[Gene Ray]] is listed on Votes for Deletion.
> >
> >In the same way that we trust users to delete pages that should
> >*obviously* be deleted, we should trust users to remove pages from
VfD
> >that should *obviously* not be deleted. Entries that have been edited
so
> >that there is no doubt that they should be deleted should be able to
be
> >removed immediately from the VfD page.
> >
> >
> What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting
it
> get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for
> deletion?

What's wrong with putting up every page that should obviously be deleted
on the Votes for Deletion page for 5 days?

How about this: you come up with answers to your question, and I'll come
up with answers to mine.

BTW, do you deny that having [[Gene Ray]] on VfD is a sign of something
seriously wrong?


body:
On Nov 26, 2003, at 01:48, Andre Engels wrote:
> Might it be an option to every month or every few months re-create the
> links
> and blinks tables from the cur table, so that all database
> inconsistencies
> of this kind get resolved?

Yes, E23 is working on making the rebuildlinks script less intrusive so
we can do this without shutting everything down for a few hours.

However we do prefer to fix the bugs too. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Software upgrades

body:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 04:24:58PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Nov 25, 2003, at 09:37, Peter Gervai wrote:
> >On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 02:05:01PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> >>* MediaWiki: namespace for adjusting the localization of interface
> >>messages without waiting for a new LanguageXx.php file to get
> >>installed. Limited to sysops.
> >
> >Should this work on nationalopedias? How? (Guess something on meta but
> >I
> >don't happen to See The Light.)
>
> It's still disabled while we're tracking down other bugs; it should get
> turned on once we've also fixed the bugs I noticed testing it but
> haven't had a chance to track down yet.

I see. The announcement mislead me. ;-)

> Hopefully somebody'll scribble up some documentation! :) Tim knows it
> best since he wrote it, but he's out of town right now so I don't know
> if he's got free time to write up docs.

Well I realised that the test.wikipedia probably has it, tried there
([[MediaWiki:All_messages]] just like Tim mentioned eons ago) and works. It
is really great, I can hardly wait for it to appear. :-) [No, I mean, take
your time to test it.]

grin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Talk page notification

body:
Brion-
> On Nov 25, 2003, at 08:41, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> Talk page notification seems to be no longer working, at least on the
>> English Wikipedia. Anyone got any leads what's wrong?

> Works fine for me.

> Are you referring to bug #843038 "Newtalk flag sometimes not cleared
> from cache"?
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?
> func=detail&aid=843038&group_id=34373&atid=411192

Nope.

1) Edit talk page with separate browser, not logged in
2) Check in first browser
-> no notification

In the user_newtalk table, user_id is not set. This could be
- because the deferred update is not run in some circumstances
- if ( 1 == $this->mAction ) in UserTalkUpdate.php returns false for some
reason.

I'm not sure if the memcached code should affect the flag in the database.
But the flag is not set when I test it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anthere is subverting the 142.177 hard ban

body:
142.177 has been hard banned for some time now and with a great deal of cause.
Anthere, however has been consistently undoing reverts of 142.177's edits on
meta and either restoring or recreating articles that 142.177 created.

I have tried to reason with her but she seems intent on not seeing as valid
Jimbo's pronouncement that 142.177 is banned /everywhere/:

ref: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-March/009407.html

This is in spite of the clear evidence otherwise (see above) and the fact that
it was primarily actions 142.177 did on meta which initiated the ban. She
seems to think that the ban only applies to en.wikipedia.

In my view, one of the main reasons he keeps coming back is because some
people continue to restore his edits. Such actions implicitly say that what
he did was OK to begin with.

Also, Jimbo's position on evaluating each edit by a banned user (as Anthere
wants to do) is clear:

|My own position is that if someone is sneaking in to
|edit after a ban, it's really important to simply revert
|everything they do, in order to deprive them of the
|benefit that they seek.  Debating over the quality of
|each individual edit only encourages them to stick
|around and argue about it, as if they had never been
|banned.

ref: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001354.html

Please advise.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mav and policy

body:
I encourage editors to consider the three articles I
have been restoring. These three have any right to be
on meta. The content of these is uncontroversial. It
could be edited by anyone, and I am ready to put any
effort necessary in those to modify them, as I
indicated to Mav, provided that they are not deleted
again, even when I recreate them under my name. I do
not feel ready to put some work on articles that are
being deleted immediately after. I fear that instant
deletion of these articles as now practiced, under any
editors name, even trusted ones, is likely to slow
down discussion and evolution of meta.

It is not a good idea that any topic touched by a
banned user, becomes de facto a topic which must not
be mentionned any more.

I entirely recognise and accept the decision over the
banning of 142. But the fact is that unfortunately,
142 is writing on many topics, two of them being my
favorite topics.

One is meta and cooperation between people, in
particular in the intent of having cooperation between
internationals and english users. I am also interested
by in everything that turns around people management
and systems. And of course banning, because it may not
have escaped some of you, the french wikipedia had to
ban someone about 2 weeks ago, our editors had to take
the decision to ban someone with no set rules or
recommandations; and then we had to fight (with the
great help of Tim Starling) to have this ban inforced
one way or another. So, naturally, all these topics,
about how someone is excluded from a place (and
whether it a community decision, or a single person
dream) interest me.
Unfortunately, 142 is also meddling in these topics as
well.

The second is ecology, because I am an agronom, and it
is just my job ! And not so many people are writting
on agricultural and ecological sciences topics,
neither on fr nor on en. Unfortunately 142 is also
interested in ecology. So I keep meeting him or rather
his articles on the topic. Participation on ecological
matters is sometimes biaised, but it is an interesting
approach, and participate to the global scheme. Given
that rather few people participate on these topics, I
1)feel it bad that good articles are just deleted
because of their author, just to leave instead a hole
and 2)feel that I am not gonna stop participate on my
favorite topics just because a banned user has put a
black hand on it.

If this goes to this, preventing regular users to edit
topics because of their smell, where is Wikipedia
going ?

The second point is this one :
Meta is for everyone who is interested in wikipedia
wide building. It is not only the english meta, it is
also everyone meta. And all those involved in the
matter, should feel concerned about how meta is
growing, and in particular how rules are currently
being made on meta. The rules should not be decided by
Mav, the rules should not be automatically the english
rules that suit him. The rules should be done by
everyone making meta, by the community. And perhaps,
these rules will be slightly different from en.

When I try to discuss this with you Mav, all I get is
"this is the way it is and this is final" or rather
"End of story".

Just like the english main page, not editable by most
users. Just like the wikimedia guide, just you editing
it, and calling other attempts forks.

Mav, I recognise you are doing a great job, and you
have been hurt by that user, and that 142 is indeed
banned;

what I have troubles accepting is that you decide the
way we should enforce the ban, you remove my comments
on talk pages, you delete articles I created under my
name, assuming if need there is their authorship, and
finally, that you try to break the only opposition to
your decisions on meta by calling for unsysoping
people.

So Mav, there is a point there. I explained in length
on meta why I was restoring these three articles. And
Dori made good comments about that. You just do not
consider my explanations. I also remind you that other
users on en are also doing this, and that it has
suggested that in case this is done, the articles
should be recreated under another person name. Which I
did (and I repeat I am ready to change the content as
well). So how what I do is different from what other
people do ? And why should I be unsysoped, when other
people are not for precisely the same actions than me?
And why would you not be unsysop yourself for deleting
my articles without other people opinion ?

In any place, there should be balance. The fact you
delete them is fine with me; the fact you refuse to
accept that other people have different opinions on
how meta should work is just plain not wiki.

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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] governance

body:
OFFLIST

I'm with you 100% on the openness thing, and probably with you on the
hierarchy thing, too.  And don't even get me started on dmoz's broken
culture.

It's a challenge.  One of the things that I'm absolutely sticking to
is a 'reserved power' of pardon, so that I can at least act as a final
safety valve in case things start to go haywire.  And I also, of
course, would reserve the power to 'disband parliament' if necessary.

The Cunctator wrote:

> > From: Jimmy Wales
> >
> > I'll be away from tomorrow morning early and returning Tuesday.  I'll
> > be available by cellphone 24x7, so those of you who have that number
> > could reach me in an emergency.  I will also have net access, although
> > I don't intend to be online much.
> >
> > Remember when I had people volunteer for mediation and arbitration
> > committees?  I haven't forgotten.  Expect initial appointments to
> > those committees on December 2nd, when I get back.
> >
> > If anyone still wants to volunteer, let me know.
> >
> > Remember -- mediation in this context means "attempting to resolve a
> > problem without resort to bans or restrictions of any kind, by helping
> > two parties to a conflict find a mutually satisfactory solution", and
> > arbitration in this context means "more mediation, but this time with
> > ultimate resort to bans or restrictions if absolutely necessary".
>
> Unless the membership and decision-making of these committees is fully
> open this will lead us to the same kind of broken, paranoid culture of
> Dmoz.
>
> Claims that mediation and arbitration can't work without secrecy are
> false.
>
> Or to be more positive: any structure set up which involves a level of
> secrecy, if we are to move past the benevolent dictator model, MUST have
> formal methods of ensuring accountability and oversight by the general
> community--that is, everyone, including non-Wikipedians.
>
> And I *strongly* believe that for any Wikipedia problem for which there
> is a hierarchical solution there is also a non-hierarchical solution,
> which though possibly more complicated to implement technologically,
> will assuredly be better and more scalable.
>
> --tc
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
Cunc-
> All right, Votes for Deletion is broken. There's something seriously,
> deliriously wrong when [[Gene Ray]] is listed on Votes for Deletion.

Pages can only be deleted in consensus, so I doubt there's a real risk
that articles like [[Gene Ray]] or [[Realdoll]] will be deleted.
I'm not completely opposed to delisting a page, but it's a matter of good
judgment. If one or several regulars have voted for deletion, or if a
newbie has done so and given a long explanation why he feels that way, you
should honor these opinions and let the process do its magic.

On the other hand, if it's just some newbies who haven't read our policies
feeling offended by a certain article and voting to delete, you might
unlist the page right away, but it would be nice to leave a message on
their talk page and explain why you did it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
Delirium-
> What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting it
> get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for deletion?

You've got it backwards. For a page to be deleted, there need to be little
or no objections against that.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
"Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de> schrieb:
> Delirium-
> > What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting it
> > get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for deletion?
>
> You've got it backwards. For a page to be deleted, there need to be little
> or no objections against that.

I don't see what your statement and Delirium's have to do with each other. Delirium says that he sees no harm in keeping pages that most tend to want to keep on VfD for five days. You say that you don't want pages with support for keeping deleted. I don't see how one and the other are in contradiction.

Andre Engels


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
The Cunctator wrote in part:

>Delirium wrote:

>>The Cunctator wrote:

>>>In the same way that we trust users to delete pages that should
>>>*obviously* be deleted, we should trust users to remove pages from VfD
>>>that should *obviously* not be deleted. Entries that have been edited so
>>>that there is no doubt that they should be deleted should be able to be
>>>removed immediately from the VfD page.

>>What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting it
>>get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for
>>deletion?

>What's wrong with putting up every page that should obviously be deleted
>on the Votes for Deletion page for 5 days?

All right, let's Cunc and Delirium make a deal:

Cunc will retain on VfD pages that should *obviously* not be deleted,
and Delirium will list on VfD pages that should *obviously* be deleted.
Minimum 5 days. ^_^

-- Toby

PS:  I'm not keeping up with Wikipedia very well these days -- very busy.
     Hopefully nobody has written anything recently on the mailing lists
     that I need to respond to; but you can mail me personally if you have.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Talk page notification

body:
Brion-
> Okay, I've added in an array_map() to run wfStrencode prior to the
> implode, and it should be working fine now... database says you've got
> messages!

Yes, it works again now, thanks. Damn those escaping bugs.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Bug hunting: a noble profession

body:
On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 14:52:47 -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> I once spent 5 months testing the same application, and finding bug
> after bug. The programmers whose code I was testing were not so gracious
> as E23 or Brion, however. They kept announcing that they had "fixed all
> the bugs" and seemed to find my reports dismaying.
>
> Anyway, I guess my little daughter must have overheard me discussing
> work, because she started a hobby of finding bugs from the garden
> outside and bringing them in the house in little jars, to study under
> her magnifying glass!
>
> She wanted to be just like her dad, I guess :-)
>
> Ed Poor

Hello ed,

:)))

I nominate your email for the "best post of the month" award.

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

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar
do not send mail to listme at listme.dsbl.org


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Formulation requested by Jimbo

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Sheldon's formulation is fine, provided he can locate a source for the
>"overwhelming majority" part and gives a numerical definition for
>"overwhelming majority".
>
>As it stands now, the only survey mentioned at Wikipedia seems to show
>much less than "overwhelming" support for the GW theory. Perhaps it
>depends on how one interprets the survey results?

Yes, I guess it does depend on how one interprets the survey results.
If the results are "interpreted" by someone like Ed who doesn't know
the basic language of science, it is possible to misconstrue the
survey and imagine that it shows less than overwhelming support for
the GW theory. Ed is referring here to the Wikipedia article titled
"Scientific opinion on climate change" and a survey which it cites
that was conducted in 1996 by Bray and von Storch. As Gareth Owen has
pointed out, however, Ed has completely misunderstood the Bray and
von Storch survey. Evidently Ed doesn't understand some of the basic
scientific terminology in the questions to which the scientists were
responding.

The most relevant question in the Bray and von Storch survey was, "We
can say for certain that, without change in human behavior, global
warming will definitely occur in the future." The scientists were
asked to rate this statement on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 meaning
they "strongly agree" and 7 meaning "strongly disagree." They gave it
a mean rating of 2.6, which is pretty high.

They were also asked to rate the statement, "There is enough
uncertainty about the phenomenon about global warming that there is
NO need for immediate policy decisions." The scientists strongly
_disagreed_ with this statement. Their responses were rated on the
same 1-to-7 scale. To quote the study itself, "Here there is
undisputed support for immediate policy to be implemented with the
overall mean response of 5.6 and no statistically significant
differences among groups."

So how did Ed read this survey and conclude that scientists are
"about equally split"? He misinterpreted _another_ question in the
survey which asked, "To what degree do you think the current state of
scientific knowledge is able to provide reasonable predictions of
inter annual variability?" In order to make this kind of error, Ed
would either have to be flagrantly dishonest (Gareth Owen's
interpretation) or simply incompetent (my interpretation). I think
the reality is that Ed doesn't know what the phrase "interannual
variability" means. Here's a definition: "Interannual variability"
means "climate variation from one year to the next." What the
scientists are saying is that they don't think the climate models are
precise enough to predict how the climate will change between 2003
and 2004. This is clearly not the same thing at all as the question
of whether they think "the global warming theory" holds up.

This is a really basic error on Ed's part. The term "interannual
variability" is widely used in climate research. If you do a Google
search for that phrase, you'll find more than 36,000 references,
almost all of which appear in scientific contexts. Of course, the
term is hardly used at all _outside_ of scientific contexts, which
undoubtedly explains why Ed doesn't know what it means. As I stated
previously, the fact that Ed doesn't grasp this kind of thing does
not mean that he is stupid or lacks integrity. Nevertheless, he ought
to be rather humbled by the fact that he keeps making this sort of
error. If he doesn't understand the everyday language of climate
science, he shouldn't be trying to impose his interpretations as
aggressively as he has been. This is rather akin to having someone
trying to rewrite articles on music theory who doesn't know the
meaning of phrases such as "chord progression."

Ed also wrote:

>But really, on such a crucial issue as Global Warming theory, with tens
>or 100s of billions of dollars at stake (not to mention human lives,
>assuming the theory is actually true!) -- I'd rather have more than an
>average of answers from a survey question. Better to dig up exactly how
>many answered "strongly agree", "somewhat agree", etc.

I agree completely. We shouldn't be relying on opinion polls to
assess the current state of scientific knowledge. Surveys like the
one conducted by Bray and von Storch can be helpful in getting a
general sense of the state of scientific opinion, but their utility
is limited. To begin with, surveys can only ask a limited number of
fixed questions, and responses to surveys can vary dramatically
depending on minor changes in wording of the questions. Moreover, the
value of the Bray and von Storch survey is limited by the fact that
they only sent it to 1,000 scientists and only got a 40 percent
response rate, and also by the fact that it was conducted seven years
ago.

Fortunately, we have a better indicator of what scientists think:
namely, the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), which was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Program
(UNEP) to fulfill the critical role of providing objective
scientific, technical, and economic assessments of the current state
of knowledge about various aspects of climate change. Some 2,000
scientists, experts and government officials prepared and signed off
on the IPCC's 1995 report, which represented the broadest consensus
available on the issue at that time. The conclusions of the IPCC's
1995 report are consistent with the opinions expressed in the Bray
and von Storch survey, but the IPCC report is incomparably more
detailed and specific.

Of course, the nature of science is that it continues to progress,
and the IPCC's 2001 report is an improvement over its 1995 report,
even though fewer scientists participated in drafting the 2001 report
(only 995, which is still more than double the 400 respondents to the
Bray and von Storch survey). The difference between the 2001 report
and the 1995 report is that the quality and quantity of scientific
research has improved in the meantime, while global warming has
accelerated, making it easier for scientists to measure and assess
the the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on global climate. (The
signal-to-noise ratio has improved, because the signal is stronger.)

Here are a few relevant excerpts from the IPCC's 2001 report:

>Globally, it is very likely  that the 1990s was the warmest decade
>and 1998 the warmest year in the instrumental record, since 1861.

>The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased
>by 31% since 1750. The present CO2 concentration has not been
>exceeded during the past 420,000 years and likely not during the
>past 20 million years. The current rate of increase is unprecedented
>during at least the past 20,000 years.

>The warming over the past 100 years is very unlikely to be due to
>internal variability alone.

>In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining
>uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years
>is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas
>concentrations.

>Emissions of CO2 due to fossil fuel burning are virtually certain to
>be the dominant influence on the trends in atmospheric CO2
>concentration during the 21st century.

In reading these statements, it may help to understand that the IPCC
uses the term "likely" to mean a  probability of 66% or higher. "Very
likely" means 90% or higher, and "virtually certain" means
probability of 99% or higher. Conversely, "unlikely" means
probability of less than 33%, and "very unlikely" means a probability
of less than 10%.

If we were dealing with someone who was less of an ideologue than Ed,
the IPCC's report would settle the matter. The problem is that Ed
doesn't want to accept the IPCC's standing as an indicator of what
climate scientists think. He prefers the opinion of S. Fred Singer
and the dozen or so people clustered around Singer at SEPP.

One way around this impasse might be to look at what other leading
scientific bodies have said about the matter, so here are a couple:

(1) The American Meteorological Society issued a detailed statement
this year, which strongly agrees with the IPCC:

http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/climatechangeresearch_2003.html

Here's an excerpt:

>The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement
>among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers-the
>validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately-can be
>exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the
>scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in
>reality, a strong scientific consensus.
[SNIP]
>IPCC assessment reports are prepared at approximately five-year
>intervals by a large international group of experts who represent
>the broad range of expertise and perspectives relevant to the
>issues. The reports strive to reflect a consensus evaluation of the
>results of the full body of peer-reviewed research. A large number
>of U.S. scientists are on the international Working Groups of the
>IPCC that prepare and review these reports. They provide an analysis
>of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some
>indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on the
>various statements and conclusions. These reports have become the
>prime scientific basis for international political decisions about
>climate change.

(2) The U.S. National Academy of Sciences (the most prestigious
general scientific body in the world) has issued a number of reports
reaching similar conclusions. In a 2001 report, for example, it
stated that the IPCC "does an admirable job of reflecting research
activities in climate science." You can download the full report, or
simply read the accompanying press release, from the following URL:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10139.html?onpi_webextra6

Obviously I can't do full justice to the substance of these reports
in the space of a single email, and I see that this message has
already gotten quite long. I could continue citing similar reports
from other leading national and international scientific bodies, but
I think I'll stop here.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (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
--------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for Deletion

body:
Andre-
>> Delirium-
>>> What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting it
>>> get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for
>>> deletion?
>>
>> You've got it backwards. For a page to be deleted, there need to be little
>> or no objections against that.

> I don't see what your statement and Delirium's have to do with each other.

Delirium said nothing about removing it from the page if there's lots of
support for deletion, so his question seems to imply that pages with
majority support, or some definition of "a lot of support", can be
deleted. Even if that's not what he meant, because his question could be
read that way, I found it important to challenge this notion, as it is a
common mistake (largely because of the somewhat misleading page title
"*Votes* for deletion").

Even if 9 people vote for deletion and only 1 person strongly objects,
that page should not be deleted as per the current "rough consensus"
policy. We do not always follow this policy in cases where the person
objecting is a new user and seems to have some special interest in the
page, or even is the primary author of the page. Nevertheless, it is
important to remember that rough consensus is currently needed for
deletion. It doesn't matter if there's "a lot" of support for deletion as
opposed to "little or no support".

Regards,

Erik


from_name: J. Noel Chiappa

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ed Poor not a neutral contributor

body:
     > From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>

     > his POV on this issue seems too entrenched for him to edit neutrally.
     > Thus he tends to sometimes give more weight to 'anti-global warming
     > theory' camps than is perhaps warrented.
     > ...
     > So I tend to direct major edits to articles I don't feel so
     > passionately about. It is much easier to be an approximation of neutral
     > doing that.

One might usefully apply this insight to both sides, I think.

It's worth remembering that the CFC process is many orders of magnitude less
complicated than the global warming / greenhouse gas question, since the
latter involves the earth's entire climate, which is an extraordinarily
complex process, and one which is still a long way from complete
understanding.

So people on either side who express certainty are probably unwise to do so.

To digress briefly, it appears from the prehistorical record (as best we can
determine it - although useful work has been done with isotope analysis, it's
still tricky to determine data from geological records) that the earth's
temperature has varied very substantially (without any human input at all, of
course) over the course of time, due to factors as arcane as the physical
configuration of landmasses, etc. (IIRC, the recent [in geological terms, of
course :-] Ice Age cycle is thought to have started when the Arctic Ocean
formed.)

A good sense of how poorly we understand climate can be seen in our article
[[Ice age]], an in particular the section "Causes of ice ages", which makes
clear how poorly we understand the operation of the climate.

If and when people have a climate model built only on basic physical
processes, which can successfully "predict" the pre-historical record, given
only the physical data (solar output, orbital path, land-mass configuration,
etc) then I think we can be more certain of the contribution made by
greenhouse gasses to the earth's climate - but our lack of understanding of
the Ice Ages makes clear we aren't there yet.

So I'd be wary of edits from people on either side of the controversy.

	Noel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] since we are on legal matters ...

body:
Since we are on legal matters, I would like that
enlightement is brought to me on a GFDL license point
: the one that is about authorship :-)

Mav claims I am illegally removing the credit for text
I did not write myself.

I answered that I mentionned in the comment box that I
was not the original author, hence not doing anything
illegal and definitly not stealing anyone else job.

Mav answers : Wrong. Read the author credit areas of
the GNU Free Documentation License.

So my question is : if none of us has the right to
attribute to himself the credit of something written
by someone else, what happen to all the major amount
of text that is regularly clipped from one article,
and moved to another page by someone who is not the
original author of the text ? How does the licence
handle that ? If the moved text contains legal issues,
who is said liable, the lost original author, or the
one who took the responsability of the move and who is
consequently the owner of the edit?

And is commenting in the comment box that we are not
the original author of the edit not enough to insure
legal rights of authorship are respected ? What are we
supposed to do when moving someone else work ? Is
commenting enough ? Or not ? Should we leave a message
in the talk page ?

Depending on the answers provided (I really understand
little of the gfdl matters :-))

I would like also to have an old edit of mine restored
as *mine*, as I was the main author of it.

It is there
http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Agricultural_science&action=history

The edits credited to Maveric and Robert Merkel are
mine entirely. It was my fifth edit as Anthere. And my
additions still constitute very much the core of the
current article. It was a welcome present to the
newbie Anthere that it was credited to someone else.

Not to be a pain either, but I would like as well,
that the creation of the article "Trade war over
genetically modified food" credited to Graft, be
credited to me, as the content was my work (Graft just
excised it from "genetically modified food" that I had
made a few days before) and as most of the article is
still essentially my work.

It is here
http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Trade_war_over_genetically_modified_food&limit=50&offset=50&action=history

Now,

* either legal issues are used to attack other
wikipedians in dishonest ways, and if my work being
credited to other people is making these edits
illegal, then I really would like that these credits
taken by other people be given back to me, to respect
the license. I would not like that the license is not
respected :-) In this case, any major move from one
article to another should also mention clearly all the
main authors of the piece moved.

* or we admit that we are together building an
encyclopedia, that ownership is secondary in our
building process, and that what is important is the
content, not the author. I would very much prefer that
option :-)

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] possible link rendering bug?

body:
On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Nov 25, 2003, at 03:48, Peter Gervai wrote:
>
> > Check these things on hu.wikipedia.org:
> >
> > See [[H?v?zi-t? TT]] (you can find it in recent changes if you're not
> > accent-read), and check "Mi hivatkozik erre" ("who links here").
> > Nobody.
>
> Various link table bugs that affect Whatlinkshere and link style are a
> known problem and are being slowly rooted out as they are found.

Might it be an option to every month or every few months re-create the links
and blinks tables from the cur table, so that all database inconsistencies
of this kind get resolved?

Andre Engels


body:
Anthere wrote:
>I encourage editors to consider the three
>articles I have been restoring. These
>three have any right to be on meta. The
>content of these is uncontroversial.

Article quality is irrelevant because they should not
have been created to begin with. However, if you had
created them independent of any action by 142.177 then
the existence of the articles would be fine. Since all
you did was copy /exactly/ what 142.177 wrote Cimon
Avaro has blanked them. If somebody wants to create
their own unique content about those subjects, then do
so. But re-creating the exact text by a hard banned
user is subverting that ban.

>It could be edited by anyone, and I am
>ready to put any effort necessary in
>those to modify them, as I indicated to Mav,

They are a clean slate now. Go ahead. However we
should not do this too often since it allows 142.177
to direct our attention to certain topics. Thus also
subverting the ban.

>provided that they are not deleted again,
>even when I recreate them under my name.

The text in these particular articles is minimal.
However if you did that for larger ones then you would
be in violation of the GNU FDL (since you would deny
142.177 credit). If this were a generally accepted
policy then the Wikimedia Foundation would be open to
a copyright infringement lawsuit or at least a take
down order. Please don't give such ammunition to a
person who wants to destroy Wikipedia as it is and who
severely hates "Jimbo and his friends."

>I do not feel ready to put some work on articles
>that are being deleted immediately after. I fear
>that instant deletion of these articles as now
>practiced, under any editors name, even trusted
>ones, is likely to slow down discussion and
>evolution of meta.

No it won't. It will just take control of meta's
content away from 142.177 (who is, BTW, meta's number
one 'contributor') and give it to the wider community.
As it is 142.177's idiosyncratic garbage is chocking
meta.

>It is not a good idea that any topic touched
>by a banned user, becomes de facto a topic
>which must not be mentionned any more.

What? I already explained on your talk page that this
is not the case. There is nothing stopping you from
writing on topics that a banned user 'touches'! Just
don't recreate the banned users exact (or even
substantial) edits and try hard not to be prompted to
edit a subject just because the banned user brought it
to your attention. This denies the banned user
influence over our content and the direction of
discussion.

>I entirely recognise and accept the decision
>over the banning of 142.

Then why are you recreating his edits!

>But the fact is that unfortunately, 142 is
>writing on many topics, two of them being my
>favorite topics.

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here:
A banned user 'touching' a subject does /not/ prevent
you from contributing to that subject. Besides that is
/not/ what you have been doing: you have been
reverting the deletion of the text that 142.177 has
written and you have also been responding to his
posts. That is very different than just happening to
write in the same areas. Your involvement is direct
and with the banned user.

>....

>The second is ecology, .... 2)feel that I am not
>gonna stop participate on my favorite topics just
>because a banned user has put a black hand on it.

Again, any edits unique to you are perfectly
acceptable. But don't give 142.177 the reward of
having any of his text survive in the top edit.
142.177 can write a lot; if only 20% of what he writes
survives then that is encouragement for him to keep
coming back. He is also a self-described troll, so
engaging him in conversation and doing things like
recreating his content that causes a great deal of
controversy is /exactly/ what he wants. Please stop
feeding the troll.

>If this goes to this, preventing regular users to
>edit topics because of their smell, where is
>Wikipedia going ?

I think I have already proven that this is a weak
argument, if not a strawman.

>The second point is this one :
>Meta is for everyone who is interested in
>wikipedia wide building. It is not only the
>english meta, it is also everyone meta. And
>all those involved in the matter, should feel
>concerned about how meta is growing, and in
>particular how rules are currently being made
>on meta.

I agree with this. However the banning of 142.177 was
an "everywhere" decision and was very justified. That
includes meta.

>The rules should not be decided by Mav,

Since when have I been deciding the rules in this
regard? I was acting on a decision authorized by Jimbo
and in response to a request by another user to
immediately delete the articles in question. You were
acting on your own authority. So who is making up the
rules?

>the rules should not be automatically the
>english rules that suit him.

Perhaps you have not read this email:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-March/009407.html

>....

>Just like the english main page, not editable
>by most users. Just like the wikimedia guide,
>just you editing it, and calling other attempts
>forks.

What? Please stop the personal attacks and lies. In
addition to myself these other users have also edited
the user's guide: Patrick, Brion, Nanobug, Hashar,
Kat, Mintguy, Archivist, and MyRedDice. And that is
just from the first several pages of the guide! I have
not taken issue with their edits. What I do take issue
with is the creation of a competing MediaWiki
documentation project instead of simply adding to the
current one. However I think the person doing this and
I have reached an understanding.

>Mav, I recognise you are doing a great job,
>and you have been hurt by that user, and
>that 142 is indeed banned;

Then why are you aiding and abetting him in the
subversion of the ban?

>what I have troubles accepting is that you
>decide the way we should enforce the ban,
>you remove my comments on talk pages, you
>delete articles I created under my name,
>assuming if need there is their authorship,
>and finally, that you try to break the only
>opposition to your decisions on meta by
>calling for unsysoping people.

Perhaps you have not read my first email:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-November/013113.html

Where in that email have I called for de-sysoping
anyone? I did consider doing that but then I realized
that it really wasn't an abuse of sysop power that you
were doing, but a basic disregard for policy. I also
recreated your edits (a one line response to 142.177)
and removed just what 142.177 wrote. Yet you reverted
that.

>So Mav, there is a point there. I explained
>in length on meta why I was restoring these
>three articles.

And I explained in length why I deleted them and
reverted 142.177's edits.

>...You just do not consider my explanations.

And you either do not read what I write or do not
recognize Jimbo's authority to authorize bans
everywhere.

>I also remind you that other users on en are
>also doing this, and that it has suggested
>that in case this is done, the articles should
>be recreated under another person name.

Again that is subverting the ban and is a violation of
the GNU FDL. Just because others are doing it too does
not make it right.

>....

>In any place, there should be balance. The
>fact you delete them is fine with me; the
>fact you refuse to accept that other people
>have different opinions on how meta should
>work is just plain not wiki.

The fact that you are helping a banned user get his
content into meta is a direct subversion of the ban.
The ban was for /everywhere/ so stop trying to pretend
that that does not include meta.

It is also highly insulting and in fact disgusting
that you are helping a person who stated that my
murder would be justified because I am being a censor.

>From 142.177:
"Murder of vast numbers of people who believe as you
do becomes justified, when you use control of a
technology that they don't have, to censor their views
on what you are doing, and make it impossible for them
to stop you any other way."

ref:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Maveric149&diff=4935&oldid=4934

He goes on to say that if I continue to IP block
"someone" that "they" can use things such as guns and
anthrax to silence me:

>From 142.177:
"It is entirely reasonable to say, ethically, that if
you use technology (e.g. IP bans and sysop priveleges
they don't have) to silence someone, they may also use
technology that you don't have (e.g. guns, anthrax) to
silence you,.."

ref:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Maveric149&diff=5313&oldid=5312

And recently he stated this:

>From 142.177:
"There are very few things you will regret more in
your life than defending your little clique of friends
here, Daniel Mayer. What they are doing is wrong,
racist, illegal, immoral and stupid. You seemed to
realize this for a while, but, you have stepped back
in, so, you deserve what you get."

ref:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Maveric149&diff=19973&oldid=19972

On top of this he also used my real name in a very
slanderous and false statement and if believed by my
employer could get me fired. That diff has since been
deleted from the database thanks to Brion.

Do I deserve that Anthere? By subverting the ban you
are implicitly saying that what 142.177 wrote above is
OK since in effect you are directly opposing the ban
as if it did not have merit. In fact I'm going to
inform the cops about 142.177 (I've never read all his
threats in quick order before - it creeps me out).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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body:
Anthere wrote:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-November/013123.html

Response here:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2003-November/000067.html

Wikilegal-l sign-up page:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilegal-l

--mav

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