subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do
	Imisunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

body:
On 5/18/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> In my experience, it is far more often ignored because an editor wants to
> draw some original conclusions about something, and is unaware of the
> policy, unable to comprehend it, or simply doesn't care.  Currently the risk
> that Wikipedia will be damaged by "blindly following" the NOR policy is far
> less than the risk that it will be damaged by *not* following it.

We have entire areas of study which would be exceptionally difficult
to document if we were strictly adhering to a no original research
policy.  For example our articles on Free Software related subject
often contain information sourced from mailing lists and form the
editors experience, sources which would not normally be acceptable
under the normal application of the original research standard.

Deciding what may be accepted as research is as difficult a problem as
determine what is notable.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and
	encyclopedic merit.

body:
On Thu, 19 May 2005, David Gerard wrote:

> Andy Rabagliati (andyr at wizzy.com) [050519 07:36]:
>
> > Without a massively-parallel peer review system, I see no manageable
> > selection system, unless it includes page views, which in my cursory
> > examination have not been revealed.
>
> The beginnings of precisely such a system is something we hope will be
> switched on in 1.5. It'll have to be massively distributed to scale at all.

I am looking forward to the "push toward 1.0".

It is hard for me to explain to people how BIG wikipedia (:en) is.

Folks that know about wikipedia - I say - only the lead paragraph is published.

but, for the folks that have, i will remind you that the only realistic
distribution system in the third world is physical carriage of hard drives.

Cheers,  Andy!


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: importing wiki dump to mediawiki

body:
james wrote:
> Error 1153 <08S01> at line 1323: Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet'
> bytes
>
> How can I get around this?

Set max_allowed_packet to 16M in my.cnf / mysql.ini / whatever your OS
calls it.

This should be in the documentation for the download dumps page, but
everything got moved when Domas changed the backend server for them and
I'm not sure where the directions went. :(

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Transfer of a wiki base

body:
Philippe Roth wrote:
> We made a transfer from a wiki database version 1.2.2 to version 1.3.10.
> All the articles we wrote in the old data base were well transfered but
> articles concerning Wiki Help, tutorials, etc... are empty, but these
> articles contain text in the old database.
> In fact, all the articles containing "wikipedia:" in the link seem to be
> empty after the transfer...

Check your namespaces and interwiki links. Namespaces and defined
interwiki prefixes obscure any titles with the literal prefix in their
titles that are contained in the main article namespace: these should
not generally happen, unless you're changing configurations without
properly fixing up after it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Schools on en: (was Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On
	notability and encyclopedic merit.)

body:
[cc'd and reply-to wikien-l]

Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050519 02:51]:

> I didn't just choose the intersection example because I thought it was
> a good strawman, ( :) ), I also choose it because I'm aware of the
> level of information available, and could actually create a lot of
> these articles myself. Since I used to work for a county government in
> Florida, still have a copy of most of the GIS database, and know the
> right people in a few other counties, I could patch together a bot to
> create thousands of such articles, complete with aerial photographs,
> construction dates, and in many cases some level of traffic
> information (I have traffic counters for all the arterial/arterial
> intersections with the data I have).  ... The point is that I haven't
> spammed wikipedia with this data because I believe it is completely
> inappropriate for an Encyclopedia, and I imagine many other people
> have a similar ability to produce endless quantities of non-notable
> material if that what we thought wikipedia was supposed to contain.
> ... Such trivia would only be useful as a raw reference, why not
> wikisource if any of the preexisting wikis?

So what you mean is, you don't want to create the articles?  Then don't
create them.

> So, I'd really appreciate some commentary on this... Am I in a
> minority in expecting a criteria of notability to be used in our
> judgement of encyclopedic merit, or should we really be including
> every fact we can cite?

The last time it was advanced as policy, it got a simple majority but
failed to make consensus. Jimbo also explained why verifiability is good
enough for *articles people actually want to write*:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance#No

"'fame' and 'importance' are not the right words to use, they are merely
rough approximations to what we're really interested in, which is
verifiability and NPOV. I understand and appreciate where people are coming
from on the 'Yes' vote, but feel that they will only get the unanimity
necessary in a wiki environment if they rephrase the issue in those terms.
Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24 hits on
google. I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world have
heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it. (I certainly
don't.) It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think that
no one would serious question that it is valid material for an
encyclopedia. What is it that makes this encyclopedic? It is that it is
information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an
NPOV fashion. (Though perhaps only as a stub, of course, since it's very
complicated and not many people would know how to express it clearly in
layperson's terms.)"

Further down that page, he answers quite a lot of common contrived
counterexamples much like yours.

This issue is being brought up in the context of high-school articles on
en:, after someone started submitting thirty school articles at a time to
VFD. Thankfully, there is now useful discussion rather than confrontative
action, in progress at [[:en:Wikipedia:Schools]].

- d.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On
	notability and encyclopedic merit.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] My IP address blocked?

body:
Connor O' Kane (escobar600 at gmail.com) [050519 00:53]:

> I only relaised today that my IP address has been blocked, it says the
> IP is 62.254.32.19. and it was blocked by RickK, but when I looked at
> the block list, then at this IP's contributions, I had done none of
> them at all, but they were all to do with things in my country.
> My username is Escobar600ie and I have only made positive
> contributions, I am not a vandal.
> Check the contributions by both, you will see they are diferent.

62.254.32.19 = belf-cache-3.server.ntli.net - an NTL proxy server, used by
tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. (NTL is a huge
cable provider in the UK.) It's currently unblocked.

The netblock is 62.254.32.0-62.254.63.255. It is currently listed on the
Special:Blockip page as NTL range, block only for shortest time required.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Address blocked without a visible reason

body:
Amir Livne Bar-On (amirlb at bonbon.net) [050519 00:53]:

> Around the time Wed May 18 08:41:00 UTC 2005, I was given "User is
> blocked" on attempt to edit "Software transactional memory", and then
> "Wikipedia:Sandbox" (to check whether I'm actually blocked) on the
> English Wikipedia.
> I use a firewall and a NAT, but that shouldn't affect my wiki browsing.
> The blocking page requests me to include the sentence "Your IP address
> is 217.132.73.18" in my requests, so here I do. It is notable that
> 212.132 doesn't appear in Special:Ipblocklist at this time.

I don't see the IP listed either. That IP is
CBL217-132-73-18.bb.netvision.net.il, which looks like an individual cable
IP.

I don't see any automatic IP blocks around that time either ...

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do I misunderstand
	Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

body:
Stirling Newberry (stirling.newberry at xigenics.net) [050519 03:48]:

> The size problem will be solved by a distribution system, probably one
> that includes rating of articles. The local geography articles will get
> low ratings and thus not be in the "short" version of wikipedia.

Yes. VFD is supposed to be an immune system, to keep out the *shit*. It's
far too blunt a tool to try to use as a general quality-control system,
which is why people get so very upset when articles that are NPOV and
verifiable get nominated for VFD on grounds that are, per the deletion
policy, spurious.

(pointing to wikien-l - this is really en: related)

- d.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do I misunderstand Wikipedia?
	On notability and encyclopedic merit.)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and
	encyclopedic merit.

body:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050519 03:55]:

> Thanks you David for forcing me to subscribe to a high volume list,
> just so I can receive all the responses to my non-language specific
> query about the intentions of wikipedia.

It's easy enough to subscribe (so you can post) but set no-mail (so you
don't get a flood) and read answers on the web archive:

    http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ("Changing options
and unsubscribing" - you want to change options)

    http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/ (archives)

The archive is updated not too long after real time.

Sorry for not forwarding the full original message when I replied to
wikien-l. I cc'd it there because the actual dispute and disputants are
pretty much on en:, so it was the obvious relevant place. I see that it is
about the whole project also.

- d.


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was DoImisunderstand
	Wikipedia

body:
On Thursday, May 19, 2005 12:43 AM, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
wrote:

> JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050519 08:30]:
>
> > Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of the
> > trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies are
> > much clearer in the case of articles about individuals than they are in
> > the case of articles about schools.
>
> Excellent! Where's this notability policy?

Sadly for those that protest its many apparent fantastical abilities, only
in their minds.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Eric

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re[2]: privacy problem with anonymous posting

body:
 <monk <at> zoomcon.com> writes:
>
> Hello Abigail,
>
> Tuesday, May 17, 2005, 3:53:28 PM, you wrote:
>
> >>  My first proposal: after I am logged on, I should have the option to
> >>  disallow my IP address from anonymous posting. So when I am on
> >>  wikipedia once again, anonymous, the system won't give me the
> >>  possibility to save changes without logging in (or, may be, pushing
> >>  explicit button "I want to edit without logging in, with ip-address
> >>  logged").
> > This would be a very dangerous facility, if provided.  It would mean
> > that anyone using a proxy server could block everyone else using the
> > proxy server, inadvertently.
> Why? I don't propose letting to log in only for THAT only user. Any
> user will be able to log in - or even to post anonymously - it just
> won't be so implicit.
>
> > If we did something like this it would need doing with cookies, I suppose.
>
> I think, usual "remember my password across session" option is already
> working through cookies. So if cookies are set properly, I will be
> already logged on. And if I'm not logged on, cookies are wrong - so I
> think your proposition has little sense...
>

I'm not sure if I'm in the right list? If not, I apologize.
I'm having about these same kinds of concerns. I'll be installing a WIKI
for a controversial subject where:
1) Users are concerned about their identity, and _cannot_ have their IP's seen
by others.
2) Vandalism could be rampant.
For (1), someone advised me and I was able to easily edit ProxyTools.php to
always record the IP as 123.123.123.123 and that was great, but ofcourse this
has problems if we want to deal with vandals. The only way out would then be to
disable anonymous edits, but as someone on this list made the point: If we do
that, we're going to loose big time as much less people will edit.
So I need anonymous editing, with safety of the users ensured and vandalism
taken care of too.

Is there any way where only SysOps can see the actual IP address, while others
see the same string "xxx"?
A good solution would be to have some sort of a coded IP which would still be a
unique number identifying the user but not the real IP which exposes the
location of the individual, but this would be too complex.

How can we change it such that, if a Sysop is logged in, he sees the real IP's
but if its anyone else, they just see "111.111.111.111"
The IP address is recorded in atleast 3 different databases.

I'm trying to find out a way for doing this. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

thank you
Eric


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal

references:
<d6cnou$dro$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<BAY107-F343B6FB6081C0AAC6B02EDB0160@phx.gbl>
	<d6ff13$4k2$1@sea.gmane.org> <428B81BE.9020302@telus.net>

body:
On 5/19/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately people might not understand the importance of such a
> move.  There were riots when the change from the Julian to the Gregorian
> calendar stole 11 days from people's lives.  Imagine how irrationally
> they will respond when we seek to shorten their lives by four years. :-)

It'd be Y2K all over again, and you'd get holdouts in Ohio stubbornly
refusing to leave "God's Years", and stockpiling chips.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability
	and encyclopedic merit.

body:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050519 04:43]:

> I could write a quite through article on the slim mold in the back of
> my refrigerator (well providing I could talk some grad students into
> researching it, or some OPed columnist into writing about it since
> we're so adverse to original research), but no amount of facts,
> hyperlinks, measurements, charming prose, or photographs would make it
> into a good encyclopedia article.

Published research, as you describe, on most topics would certainly produce
something suitable for three paragraphs and a couple of references.  You're
coming close to advocating things you don't actually want to happen ...

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors who refuse to supply checkable sources

body:
Skyring (skyring at gmail.com) [050519 05:57]:
> On 5/19/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Skyring (skyring at gmail.com) [050519 00:27]:

> > > Yeah.
> > > Not as much fun.

> > Cool. Was there any particular reason you should stay on this list?

> To keep an eye on you, for one thing, now that I've looked back at the
> link given.

You could do that from the web archive. Is there any reason you can think
of to allow you to continue to trash-talk other editors on this list for
"fun" rather than work on sorting out your problems with them just as if
you're trying to write an encyclopedia?

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On
	notability and encyclopedic merit.

body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050519 06:15]:

>   Perhaps a notifiability project might be more popular, as
> long as notifiability is divorced from deletability (if not, the
> notifiability project would acquire a rather bad reputation).

Precisely. That's what I mean when I say that VFD is entirely too blunt an
instrument to use as Wikipedia quality control.

- d.


body:
On 5/19/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Skyring (skyring at gmail.com) [050519 05:57]:
> > On 5/19/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > > Skyring (skyring at gmail.com) [050519 00:27]:
>
> > > > Yeah.
> > > > Not as much fun.
>
> > > Cool. Was there any particular reason you should stay on this list?
>
> > To keep an eye on you, for one thing, now that I've looked back at the
> > link given.
>
> You could do that from the web archive. Is there any reason you can think
> of to allow you to continue to trash-talk other editors on this list for
> "fun" rather than work on sorting out your problems with them just as if
> you're trying to write an encyclopedia?

Thanks. I might ask the same of yourself. You don't seem to have
looked at the efforts I've repeatedly made. What value are you adding
here beyond amusing yourself yet again?

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
Skyring (skyring at gmail.com) [050519 06:22]:
> On 5/19/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > You could do that from the web archive. Is there any reason you can think
> > of to allow you to continue to trash-talk other editors on this list for
> > "fun" rather than work on sorting out your problems with them just as if
> > you're trying to write an encyclopedia?

> Thanks. I might ask the same of yourself. You don't seem to have
> looked at the efforts I've repeatedly made. What value are you adding
> here beyond amusing yourself yet again?

As a list admin, suggesting you cut with the trash-talking and personal
attacks. HTH!

- d.


body:
On 5/19/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Skyring (skyring at gmail.com) [050519 06:22]:
> > On 5/19/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> > > You could do that from the web archive. Is there any reason you can think
> > > of to allow you to continue to trash-talk other editors on this list for
> > > "fun" rather than work on sorting out your problems with them just as if
> > > you're trying to write an encyclopedia?
>
> > Thanks. I might ask the same of yourself. You don't seem to have
> > looked at the efforts I've repeatedly made. What value are you adding
> > here beyond amusing yourself yet again?
>
> As a list admin, suggesting you cut with the trash-talking and personal
> attacks. HTH!

Cripes. I can't win here. I complain of a serial abuser and get
accused of doing the same thing by a bored admin. Are you saying I
should just cop it sweet?

I might make the occasional smart-arse comment and be a bit of a
nit-picker on things I know about, but I don't deserve continued
harassment and what looks to me like a thinly disguised death threat
from an editor who should know better. I got told months ago that
"he's like that to everyone", and while that was a comfort to me
personally, I have to wonder about what sort of environment we are
supporting here.

I really don't mind if people have opposing opinions to mine and
express them forcefully. More power to their strong right arm, I say.
Eventually the facts emerge and we come to a consensus. And often I
learn something along the way. Heaven forbid I should regard myself as
incapable of error!

But I don't hold with being bullied and threatened. Look, David, I
know I might be a pain in the bum now and then, but can you see how it
looks from where I'm standing?

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: james

body:
It came up with an error at about 11.30 last night, lost mysql or something -
though i tried connecting again and it worked - so left it overnight.... same
thing

so now trying it out on this Xampp thing - Gets to 1.2Gb pretty quickly, but
then terminates with the error;

Error 1153 <08S01> at line 1323: Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet'
bytes

How can I get around this?

If it is the .sql file - I am downloading the newest version now - unless it
is something in my.ini - but I don't know what I should change here.....


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Announcing a policy proposal: Why I devised
	thisproposal

body:
"Richard Rabinowitz" <rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu>
wrote in message news:Pine.GSO.4.58.0505182107490.18429 at er1.rutgers.edu...
> There was a discussion over the reader's right to perform autofellatio?

You wouldn't believe some of the things some people want to restrict. Then
some moron drags NPOV into the argument and BOOOM!!!
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
:-) BTW


body:
Andy Rabagliati (andyr at wizzy.com) [050519 07:36]:

> Without a massively-parallel peer review system, I see no manageable
> selection system, unless it includes page views, which in my cursory
> examination have not been revealed.

The beginnings of precisely such a system is something we hope will be
switched on in 1.5. It'll have to be massively distributed to scale at all.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] My IP address blocked?

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [050519 07:02]:

> In plain English

NTL is a big cable ISP in the UK. Each proxy serves tens or hundreds of
thousands of people. Anon editors all look like the same IP. Therefore,
when blocking in that range, make the block really short, so as to help
avoid collateral damage. Also good if you keep your Wikipedia email working
for notices of collateral damage.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] My IP address blocked?

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [050519 07:05]:

> Sorry, I somehow clicked send before I could finish the message. In
> plain English that means, someone else with the same Internet Service
> Provider got this IP adress during one of their wikipedia visits. It
> probably wasn't you, but we still had to block the IP in order to stop
> this person from committing vandalism.
> We're sorry for the inconvenience it caused you but we can't do
> anything about the collateral damage such a block causes. Please be
> patient and continue your good contributions.

*splutter* Sorry, I thought you were asking for an explanation in plain
English ;-)

- d.


body:
Skyring (skyring at gmail.com) [050519 07:06]:

> But I don't hold with being bullied and threatened. Look, David, I
> know I might be a pain in the bum now and then, but can you see how it
> looks from where I'm standing?

Fair enough, and sorry for snapping. But saying it was more "fun" really
made me wonder what was up with this.

(I've already said I'd recuse if it came to arbitration, because even
though the AC bends over backwards to avoid content issues I've already
stated loudly I think you're dead wrong ;-)

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do
	Imisunderstand Wikipedia

body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050519 08:30]:

> Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of the
> trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies are much
> clearer in the case of articles about individuals than they are in the case
> of articles about schools.

Excellent! Where's this notability policy?

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
JAY JG wrote:

> That's true *even if* we'd react differently to a ton of one-liners
> mass-imported saying nothing more than "Randolph School is a private
> school in Huntsville, Alabama, US" and "Indian Springs is a private
> school in Birmingham, Alabama, US" and on and on and on, ad nauseum."
>
> We are at the stage where people are indeed adding masses of trivial
> one-line articles about schools, which the school inclusionists
> immediately describe as a "good stub with potential for organic growth".

To the extent described above the applicable criterion is not
notability, but the fact that these are sub-stubs.  ALL the information
contained in these sub-stubs could be found elsewhere, as in something
like [[List of schools in Alabama]].  When the article has so little
material it's probably better to have a red link to encourage writing on
the subject.  Even then, a pre-condition for putting the matter on VfD
should be that there has been an attempt to contact the contributor in a
good faith attempt to resolve the problem.  (Admittedly this would be
less possible when the contribution is from an anonymous IP.)  Absence
of such an effort should be reason enough to remove the item from VfD.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
Geoff Burling (geoff at agora.rdrop.com) [050519 09:58]:
> On Wed, 18 May 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> > Notability is not really definable.  Jimbo has even suggested that it's a
> > proxy for verifiability.

> Last time I saw the word used on VfD, context suggested that it was the
> equivalent of "another article about a teenager whose most important
> achievement so far is not dropping out of high school, which was posted
> by her/his friend or relative."

Far too often I see it used to mean "it must not be important because I've
never heard of it."

(Not that I'm questioning in any way that almost everything that hits VFD
needs to be killed with a very big axe.)

- d.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was
	DoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
JAY JG wrote:

> James, is it only in my mind that [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]]
> states "Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base, that is, it is not
> an indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something
> is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an
> encyclopedia."?  Did I just imagine that it says "Subjects of
> encyclopedia articles must have a claim to fame besides being fondly
> remembered by their friends and relatives." and "Biography articles
> should only be for people with some sort of notoriety or
> achievement"?  What are these and similar statements, if not
> notability policies?

This section of _What Wikipedia is not_ IMO doesn't imply anything
specifically about "notability". This is the complete list of examples
it gives:

> While there is a continuing debate about the encyclopedic merits of
> several classes of entries, current consensus is that Wikipedia
> articles are not:
>
>    1. *Lists of Frequently Asked Questions
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAQ>*. Wikipedia articles should
>       not list FAQs. Instead, format the information provided as
>       neutral prose within the appropriate article(s). You may want to
>       consider contributing FAQ lists to Wikibooks
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks>.
>    2. *Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics* such as
>       quotations, aphorisms or persons. If you want to enter lists of
>       quotations, put them into our sister project Wikiquote
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote>. Of course, there is
>       nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous
>       /because/ they are associated with or significantly contributed
>       to the list topic. Wikipedia also includes reference tables and
>       tabular information for quick reference.
>    3. *Travel guides*. An article on Paris
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris> should mention landmarks
>       such as the Eiffel Tower
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower> and the Louvre
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre>, but not the telephone
>       number or street address of your favorite hotel or the price of
>       a /caf? au lait/ on the Champs-Elys?es
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champs-Elys%E9es>. Such details
>       are, however, very welcome at Wikitravel
>       <http://wikitravel.org/> (/http://wikitravel.org//), but note
>       that due to license incompatibility you cannot copy content
>       wholesale unless you are the copyright holder.
>    4. *Memorials*. It's always sad when people die, but Wikipedia is
>       not the place to honor them. Subjects of encyclopedia articles
>       must have a claim to fame besides being fondly remembered by
>       their friends and relatives.
>    5. *News reports*. Wikipedia should not offer first-hand news
>       reports on breaking stories (however, our sister project
>       Wikinews <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikinews> does exactly
>       that). Wikipedia does have many /encyclopedia articles/ on
>       topics of historical significance that are currently in the
>       news, and can be significantly more up-to-date than most
>       reference sources since we can incorporate new developments and
>       facts as they are made known. See current events
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_events> for examples.
>    6. *Genealogical entries*, or *phonebook entries*. Biography
>       articles should only be for people with some sort of notoriety
>       or achievement. One measure of achievement is whether someone
>       has been featured in several external sources (on or off-line).
>       Minor characters may be mentioned within other articles (e.g.
>       Ronald Gay in Persecution of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the
>       transgendered
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_gays%2C_lesbians%2C_bisexuals%2C_and_the_transgendered>).
>       See m:Wikipeople <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipeople> for
>       a proposed genealogical/biographical dictionary project.
>    7. *Directories <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory>, directory
>       entries*, or a *resource for conducting business*. For example,
>       an article on a radio station generally shouldn't list upcoming
>       events, current promotions, phone numbers, etc (although mention
>       of major events or promotions may be acceptable). Furthermore,
>       the Talk pages associated with an article are for talking about
>       the article, not for conducting the business of the topic of the
>       article.
>
This guideline seems more like a restriction against database dumps and
articles containing non-encyclopedic content such as phone numbers to
me. It's about what _types_ of information should be in Wikipedia, not
whether the information needs to be "notable". (the memorial and
genealogical entries points do mention notability, but the threshold is
so low that I suspect it's not applicable to many of the cases where
people have argued that articles they think are non-notable should be
deleted. Every single prof at my university would pass, for example. And
they're specific to people in any case, so it's no help with the
disputes over schools).

Perhaps it's time we actually started a page on notability policy so
that something more definitive could be worked out rather than relying
on these subjective attempts to figure out what other policies imply?
That would still leave lots of openeings for subjectivity when
determining whether any particular article is notable, but at least
there wouldn't be so much argument over "non-notable articles must be
purged, inclusionist scum!"/"Anything verifiable deserves an
encyclopedia article, deletionist scum!"


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: "James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org>
>
>On Thursday, May 19, 2005 12:43 AM, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>wrote:
>
> > JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050519 08:30]:
> >
> > > Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of the
> > > trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies are
> > > much clearer in the case of articles about individuals than they are
>in
> > > the case of articles about schools.
> >
> > Excellent! Where's this notability policy?
>
>Sadly for those that protest its many apparent fantastical abilities, only
>in their minds.

James, is it only in my mind that [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] states
"Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base, that is, it is not an
indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something is 100%
true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia."?  Did I
just imagine that it says "Subjects of encyclopedia articles must have a
claim to fame besides being fondly remembered by their friends and
relatives." and "Biography articles should only be for people with some sort
of notoriety or achievement"?  What are these and similar statements, if not
notability policies?

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was DoImisunderstand
	Wikipedia?

body:
>From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
>On 5/18/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > In my experience, it is far more often ignored because an editor wants
>to
> > draw some original conclusions about something, and is unaware of the
> > policy, unable to comprehend it, or simply doesn't care.  Currently the
>risk
> > that Wikipedia will be damaged by "blindly following" the NOR policy is
>far
> > less than the risk that it will be damaged by *not* following it.
>
>We have entire areas of study which would be exceptionally difficult
>to document if we were strictly adhering to a no original research
>policy.  For example our articles on Free Software related subject
>often contain information sourced from mailing lists and form the
>editors experience, sources which would not normally be acceptable
>under the normal application of the original research standard.
>
>Deciding what may be accepted as research is as difficult a problem as
>determine what is notable.

That may be true for certain cutting edge topics which are not well
documented.  But in other areas (e.g. religion, politics, current world
conflicts, controversial people, etc.) the more typical problem is that
people insist on inserting their own analysis.

Jay.


from_name: Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon

subject: [Wikitech-l] xhtml_slim.pt

body:
NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> where is the /template/xhtml_slim.pt file in MediaWiki 1.4 ?

It's no longer used by default in 1.4.  Instead, edit the skins/*.php
files as appropriate.

--
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brent at brentdax.com>
Perl and Parrot hacker


from_name: David Benbennick

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images to
	be deleted

body:
On 5/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Non-commercial_use_only_images
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_used_with_permission
>
> Are the relevant categories.

Also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_NonCommercial_images
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial_images
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial_2.0_images
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_NonCommercial-ShareAlike_images
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike_images
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike_2.0_images


body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>
>JAY JG said:
> >>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
> >>JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050519 08:30]:
> >>
> >> > Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of
> >> > the trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies
> >> > are
> >>much
> >> > clearer in the case of articles about individuals than they are in
> >> > the
> >>case
> >> > of articles about schools.
> >>
> >>
> >>Excellent! Where's this notability policy?
> >
> > [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] is a good place to start.
>
>
>"Wikipedia is not a collection of ideas, concepts, institutions and places
>I haven't heard of or don't think are significant", perhaps? :)

That's not what the policy says; perhaps you should read it.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>
>JAY JG said:
> >
> > I read his opinion on schools, and it seemed to be explicitly excluding
> > the  extremes Tony (and various school inclusionists) are suggesting.
>
>Interesting.  Examples?

In the post in question Jimbo said
"Let me make my point more clear: arguments about what we ought to if
someone really starts to abuse wikipedia with thousands and thousands
of trivial articles do not prove that we ought to delete any and every
article that's too trivial today.

Put another way: if someone wants to write an article about their high
school, we should relax and accomodate them, even if we wish they
wouldn't do it.  And that's true *even if* we should react differently
if someone comes in and starts mass-adding articles on every high
school in the world...

That's true *even if* we'd react differently to a ton of one-liners
mass-imported saying nothing more than "Randolph School is a private
school in Huntsville, Alabama, US" and "Indian Springs is a private
school in Birmingham, Alabama, US" and on and on and on, ad nauseum."

We are at the stage where people are indeed adding masses of trivial
one-line articles about schools, which the school inclusionists immediately
describe as a "good stub with potential for organic growth".

>And on a side note, I'm rather suprised to find myself--long classed by
>some as a ruthless deletionist, described here as an extreme inclusionist.

Described where as "an extreme inclusionist"?

Jay.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
Stan Shebs said:
>>
> My personal fav in this category is renowned computer scientist
> Ralph Griswold. Apparently if you developed novel new languages
> in the 1960s, that's undiscovered prehistory to the young PHPers.

We've all got our stories of stupid nominations to VfD, often by a
green-but-keen editor who has not heard of something and has no way of
evaluating the subject.  I'm new enough as an editor to remember my own
early solecisms, so I can sympathize.
Some substubs are salvageable if you know enough--I remember someone
listing an article that contained only a fragment of a sentence referring
to Stuart Hall.  The Stuart Hall article contained a passing reference to
the concept, which happens to be a significant strand in the theory of
literary criticism--reception theory, it was.  I happened to have heard of
Hall through his televised work and some of his articles in Marxism Today
in the 1980s.  And so a substub rapidly developed into quite a decent
little article.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 5/19/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >We have entire areas of study which would be exceptionally difficult
> >to document if we were strictly adhering to a no original research
> >policy.  For example our articles on Free Software related subject
> >often contain information sourced from mailing lists and form the
> >editors experience, sources which would not normally be acceptable
> >under the normal application of the original research standard.
> >
> >Deciding what may be accepted as research is as difficult a problem as
> >determine what is notable.
>
> That may be true for certain cutting edge topics which are not well
> documented.  But in other areas (e.g. religion, politics, current world
> conflicts, controversial people, etc.) the more typical problem is that
> people insist on inserting their own analysis.

Right, and as I said, the no-original-research rule mostly gets
applied in the case of conflict.  I wasn't lamenting the current
conditions, just pointing out that it's silly for us to propose a set
of inclusion criteria that is ultimately limited by
no-original-research.

Unlike NPOV I don't consider no-original-research to be a core (thus
non-negotiable) principal of the project, rather it's just a useful
rule.

Once wikipedia has dominated the known universe and has become the
primary repository for all human knowledge it may become the case that
the only way to get good peer review is to publish in wikipedia.  It
is already the case that I'd trust content vetted in wikipedia over
some sources (notably the non peer-reviewed sort).  I expect that
we'll revise our procedures to address this when the time comes.

Speaking of research in wikipedia,  it would be useful if there were a
wiki-interviews project... Wiki style editing used to develop
questions to be asked of interviewees,
answered collected and maintained as a source. The material could then
be cited in wikipedia articles. This may be a handy way to reduce the
need to original research by providing an easy way to obtain targeted
views by acceptable experts.


from_name: Philippe Roth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Transfer of a wiki base

body:
Dear all,

We made a transfer from a wiki database version 1.2.2 to version 1.3.10.
All the articles we wrote in the old data base were well transfered but
articles concerning Wiki Help, tutorials, etc... are empty, but these
articles contain text in the old database.
In fact, all the articles containing "wikipedia:" in the link seem to be
empty after the transfer...

We would like to know if there is a possibility to get all these
"wikipedia:" articles in the new database as they are in the old
database (in fact ALL the articles) or if these kind of articles are
always empty in all databases transfers (these articles are always empty
when creating a fresh installation of a database)?

Many thanks for help and sorry for my english.

Best regards,
Philippe Roth
Switzerland


body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>>JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050519 08:30]:
>>
>> > Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of
>> > the trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies
>> > are
>>much
>> > clearer in the case of articles about individuals than they are in
>> > the
>>case
>> > of articles about schools.
>>
>>
>>Excellent! Where's this notability policy?
>
> [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] is a good place to start.

"Wikipedia is not a collection of ideas, concepts, institutions and places
I haven't heard of or don't think are significant", perhaps? :)


body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>
>JAY JG said:
> >>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> >>Gregory Maxwell said:
> >> >
> >> > When it comes down to it, if we only use the criteria of "verifiable
> >> > and NPOV" we end up with the prohibition on original research as
> >> > being the only real control on what can go into wikipedia after a
> >> > little tidying up.
> >>
> >>That's basically it.
> >
> > Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of the
> > trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies are
> > much  clearer in the case of articles about individuals than they are
> > in the case  of articles about schools.
>
>Non-notability has been rejected as a criterion for deletion.

By you, perhaps.  Clearly not by many others.

>Inappropriate biographical entries can be rejected on grounds of vanity.

And for the large number that cannot be rejected on the grounds of vanity,
the various other notability criteria explicitly outlined in
[[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] serve well.

>Humans tend to be a lot less intrinsically encyclopedic, as individuals,
>than institutions or even cultural manifestations such as the infamous
>Pokemon.

Define "intrinsically encyclopedic".

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do
	Imisunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

body:
Gregory Maxwell said:
>  For example our articles on Free Software related subject often
> contain information sourced from mailing lists and form the
> editors experience, sources which would not normally be acceptable
> under the normal application of the original research standard.
>

"Personal experience" isn't verifiable.  Such sources must be disregarded.
 If someone says "Linus in 1993 contemplated starting again, abandoning
the GPL" and cites a personal conversation, then delete it.  If he can
cite a mailing list that is archived on a public server, I'd cite that and
check with Torvalds himself if there was any question over authenticity.
Mailing list archives can be, but are not always, for good old fashioned
reasons of checking provenance, acceptable sources (at the risk of
stirring up that whole debate again.)


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

body:
On 19/05/05, Eric <ek79501 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  <monk <at> zoomcon.com> writes:
> >
> > Hello Abigail,
> >
> > Tuesday, May 17, 2005, 3:53:28 PM, you wrote:
> >
> > >>  My first proposal: after I am logged on, I should have the option to
> > >>  disallow my IP address from anonymous posting. So when I am on
> > >>  wikipedia once again, anonymous, the system won't give me the
> > >>  possibility to save changes without logging in (or, may be, pushing
> > >>  explicit button "I want to edit without logging in, with ip-address
> > >>  logged").
> > > This would be a very dangerous facility, if provided.  It would mean
> > > that anyone using a proxy server could block everyone else using the
> > > proxy server, inadvertently.
> > Why? I don't propose letting to log in only for THAT only user. Any
> > user will be able to log in - or even to post anonymously - it just
> > won't be so implicit.
> >
> > > If we did something like this it would need doing with cookies, I suppose.
> >
> > I think, usual "remember my password across session" option is already
> > working through cookies. So if cookies are set properly, I will be
> > already logged on. And if I'm not logged on, cookies are wrong - so I
> > think your proposition has little sense...
> >
>
> I'm not sure if I'm in the right list? If not, I apologize.
> I'm having about these same kinds of concerns. I'll be installing a WIKI
> for a controversial subject where:
> 1) Users are concerned about their identity, and _cannot_ have their IP's seen
> by others.
> 2) Vandalism could be rampant.
> For (1), someone advised me and I was able to easily edit ProxyTools.php to
> always record the IP as 123.123.123.123 and that was great, but ofcourse this
> has problems if we want to deal with vandals. The only way out would then be to
> disable anonymous edits, but as someone on this list made the point: If we do
> that, we're going to loose big time as much less people will edit.
> So I need anonymous editing, with safety of the users ensured and vandalism
> taken care of too.
>
> Is there any way where only SysOps can see the actual IP address, while others
> see the same string "xxx"?
> A good solution would be to have some sort of a coded IP which would still be a
> unique number identifying the user but not the real IP which exposes the
> location of the individual, but this would be too complex.
>
> How can we change it such that, if a Sysop is logged in, he sees the real IP's
> but if its anyone else, they just see "111.111.111.111"
> The IP address is recorded in atleast 3 different databases.
>
> I'm trying to find out a way for doing this. Any advice is greatly appreciated!
>
> thank you
> Eric
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en:
	(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>JAY JG said:
>
>Don't seem to be applicable to schools, which are in any case used and
>remembered by far more than "their friends and relatives".  We're talking
>about institutions that (in the case of state public schools at least)
>have a pretty big footprint in the community.

But Tony, the claim (which is often made), and to which I was responding,
was that Wikipedia had *no* notability policies.  Clearly it does, though it
doesn't specifically use the word "notability" to describe them.  Whether or
not schools are included/excluded by these notability rules is a continuing
debate.

Jay.


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Ian Monroe

subject: [Wiktionary-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary

body:
IANAL (and it sounds like one is needed) but you can't change a
license without the consent of all owners of a work. So its
impossible, thus Wikipedia is still using GFDL even though no one
likes it. You might be able to have all /new/ work be on a different
license, but thats kind of pointless and would come at a cost of
people not being able to use content from Wikipedia (as-if!).

I thought it was generally considered to be in compliance with GFDL
if, for instance, on your mirror of Wikipedia you referenced back to
Wikipedia.org. We'd want to keep the history online somewhere
regardless, perhaps a crawl of the Wiktionaries could be done and just
have it up as static content HTML files (so security and such wouldn't
be an issue). When distributed Ultimate Wiktionary would referenced
its own site and the Ultimate Wiktionary would link to the Wiktionary
archive.

On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
>
> So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license.
> With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real
> possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict
> format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail
> that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At
> this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not
> realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL
> does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to
> expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that
> we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict
> format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance
> of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not
> feasible to export the complete history with every word.
>
> I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far
> as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free
> therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I
> really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author
> information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are
> working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the
> data when it finds this other use.
>
> Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate
> Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from
> the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is
> possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary
> will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing
> Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content
> including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the
> current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention
> the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims
> of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view
> there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change
> the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the
> data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data
> that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there
> will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible
>
> We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise
> past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for
> people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work
> they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.
>
> Basically I have two questions;
>
> *What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use
> of the UW data
> *Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to
> UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an
> original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change
> the license?
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>


body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>JAY JG said:
> >>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> >>
> >>JAY JG said:
> >> > [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] is a good place to start.
> >>
> >>
> >>"Wikipedia is not a collection of ideas, concepts, institutions and
> >>places I haven't heard of or don't think are significant", perhaps? :)
> >
> > That's not what the policy says; perhaps you should read it.
> >
>
>
>Indeed I'm very aware that it isn't policy.  There is no such policy with
>regard to non-biographical subjects.

Right.  You made a strawman argument and I called you on it.  I encourage
reading [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]]; it lists many different
notability criteria excluding all sorts of things.

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do I
	misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

body:
Gregory Maxwell said:
> Often the cost of finding a citation (if indeed
> one is available) for a particular point which is obvious to anyone who
> has studied the references, is just too great.  As time goes on we will
> find more and more things where the material in the various
> wikiprojects is some of the highest quality material
> available, and we would have to ask ourselves, must we cite
> inferior information because of a silly policy when no one disputes
> what we would like to provide?
>

I'm sure we could both find examples where we'd both agree that a citation
was either unnecessary or not worth compiling.  I suspect that any
meaningful examples would be rather contrived.
Someone objected to the use of the word "evolved" in the article "centipede":

"...and jaw-like mandibles and other mouthparts that [[evolution|evolved]]
from modified appendages."
He edited it with the summary "no scientific evidence of evolution",
removing this part: "and other mouthparts that [[evolution|evolved]] from
modified appendages"
I peremptorily reverted with the summary "this is not fundypedia", because
diversification and specialization of such organs in arthropods has been
well established for over a century.
Should we cite down to this level? I think not, but mainly because we can
link internally.  The word "evolved" is linked to "evolution" and that
article cites Darwin and Mayr, who (although the latter citation would
probably make at least one acquaintance, an embryologist, wince and mutter
about panadaptationism) seem to be adequate, as well as quite a lot of
online resources.  Thus scientific ideas can be presented in a Wiki
without the need to annotate every sentence.  In any case the interested
reader can go to the Tree of Life project's entry on Chilopoda (an
external link in the Centipede article) and find a host of references,
including exhaustive examinations of the morphology, philogeny and
evolution of centipedes, which are a particular example of diversification
about the arthropod's characteristic modular bauplan of repeated segments
whose characteristics, research strongly suggests, are controlled by gene
expression.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
JAY JG said:
>
> I read his opinion on schools, and it seemed to be explicitly excluding
> the  extremes Tony (and various school inclusionists) are suggesting.

Interesting.  Examples?

I thought he was pretty plain--verifiable, NPOV.

I don't hold up Jimbo as supreme arbiter, as anyone who followed the
autofellatio debate will be all too aware.
And on a side note, I'm rather suprised to find myself--long classed by
some as a ruthless deletionist, described here as an extreme inclusionist.


body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>Gregory Maxwell said:
>> >
>> > When it comes down to it, if we only use the criteria of "verifiable
>> > and NPOV" we end up with the prohibition on original research as
>> > being the only real control on what can go into wikipedia after a
>> > little tidying up.
>>
>>That's basically it.
>
> Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of the
> trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies are
> much  clearer in the case of articles about individuals than they are
> in the case  of articles about schools.

Non-notability has been rejected as a criterion for deletion.
Inappropriate biographical entries can be rejected on grounds of vanity.
Humans tend to be a lot less intrinsically encyclopedic, as individuals,
than institutions or even cultural manifestations such as the infamous
Pokemon.


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML whitelist

body:
DefaultSettings.php from MediaWiki 1.3.9:

# Allow limited user-specified HTML in wiki pages?
# It will be run through a whitelist for security.
# Set this to false if you want wiki pages to consist only of wiki
# markup. Note that replacements do not yet exist for all HTML
# constructs.
$wgUserHtml = true;

Where is this whitelist?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>JAY JG said:
> >
> > We are at the stage where people are indeed adding masses of trivial
> > one-line articles about schools,
> > which the school inclusionists
> > immediately  describe as a "good stub with potential for organic
> > growth".
>
>
>This is a reasoned response to the few perfectly good stubs that I've seen
>listed for deletion, mostly only a few weeks after creation.  In general
>the consensus seems to be against deletion of such stubs, even the tiny
>and almost useless ones like Mahajana school, about which little of value
>is known.

Well, to begin with, there's hardly a consensus here, and there never has
been.  More importantly, do you see the problem with describing even "tiny
and almost useless" stubs as "perfectly good"?  Jimbo's point was that we
should accomodate good editors who want to write decent articles about
schools.  In his words,

"Let's say I start writing an article about my high school, Randolph School,
of Huntsville, Alabama.  I
could write a decent 2 page article about it, citing information that can
easily be verified by anyone who visits their website. Then I think people
should relax and accomodate me.  It isn't hurting anything.  It'd be a good
article, I'm a good contributor, and so cutting me some slack is a very
reasonable thing to do."

Note that he is talking about a "good contributor" writing a "decent"
article, one that is two pages long, with cited and verifiable information;
in that case, we should "cut some slack" for the article.

On the other hand these "School X is a school in city Y" stubs written by
fly-by anonymous contributors are not at all what Jimbo was talking about
accoimodating.

Jay.


from_name: Jure Spik

subject: [Wikitech-l] Blank page after refresh in firefox

body:
Hi, I've installed the MediaWiki code on my site

    MediaWiki <http://wikipedia.sf.net/> (/http://wikipedia.sf.net//):
    1.4.0
    PHP <http://www.php.net/> (/http://www.php.net//): 4.3.11 (cgi-fcgi)
    MySQL <http://www.mysql.com/> (/http://www.mysql.com//): 4.0.24-standard

and I've got a problem with firefox(IE doesn't have it):
Pages which can be edited are displayed only the first time I visit
them, next visits return a blank page (only html and body tags). This
can be observed on
http://driversplanet.com/wiki/index.php?title=Epson/EPSON_Stylus_COLOR_600_Color_Inkjet_Printer

I've tried to add &action=purge to the URL which works, but setting
$wgEnableParserCache = false; in LocalSettings.php changes nothing. The
only change between the working page and the blank page headers is
"If-Modified-Since: Tue, 17 May 2005 13:37:41 GMT" in the blank page header.

I don't have access to php.ini so I can't offer any php logs :/
Enabling the wgDebugLogFile returned the following differences:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
bad page:

GET
User::loadFromSession() unable to load from memcached
Using reader #0: IP
User::loadFromSession() successfully saved user
User:spreadBlock()
Block::load: '', '1', 1

-- client send If-Modified-Since: Thu, 19 May 2005 11:08:36 GMT
--  we might send Last-Modified : Thu, 19 May 2005 11:08:36 GMT
** private caching; Thu, 19 May 2005 11:08:36 GMT **
CACHED client: 20050519110836 ; user: 20050519105736 ; page: 20050519110836
Request ended normally
------------------------------------------------------------------------
good page (after deleting the sess_* file which never gets deleted by
itself)

GET
User::loadFromSession() unable to load from memcached
Using reader #0: IP
User::loadFromSession() successfully saved user
User:spreadBlock()
Block::load: '', '1', 1

-- client send If-Modified-Since: Thu, 19 May 2005 11:08:36 GMT
--  we might send Last-Modified : Thu, 19 May 2005 11:19:38 GMT
READY  client: 20050519110836 ; user: 20050519105736 ; page: 20050519111938
 tryFileCache() - not cacheable
** private caching; Thu, 19 May 2005 11:19:38 GMT **
Request ended normally
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will be grateful for your help.

--

Jure ?pik,
Carpe diem, d.o.o., Kranj


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
On 5/19/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >And on a side note, I'm rather suprised to find myself--long classed by
> >some as a ruthless deletionist, described here as an extreme inclusionist.
>
> Described where as "an extreme inclusionist"?

That is my ba:, I've used that label on Tony, if not here then on the
wiki and on IRC.
I don't do it as an insult, for I don't think it's something someone
should find insulting... But rather statement about how I see his
position: At the far inclusionist end of the spectrum.

Tony has suggested in his previous comments on the list that it would
probably good for me to generate an article for every roadway
intersection that I can get solid verifiable information on...

I don't mean to claim that Tony would support keeping nonsense, for
such people I'd probably use the word vandal :).  Just that he has a
liberal idea of what should be included as compared to mine, and that
there are few would would wish to include more (the only things left
that Tony would not include are things that are not possibly NPOV and
things that are not verifiable, and I think we have near consensus on
those requirements being a bare minimum for inclusion).

I've used the title inclusionist rather than saying Tony because he is
not alone in his position and I have no issue with him. I use the term
not to criticize Tony but to make sure that I am not singling him out.


body:
On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ian Monroe wrote:
>
> >IANAL (and it sounds like one is needed) but you can't change a
> >license without the consent of all owners of a work. So its
> >impossible, thus Wikipedia is still using GFDL even though no one
> >likes it. You might be able to have all /new/ work be on a different
> >license, but thats kind of pointless and would come at a cost of
> >people not being able to use content from Wikipedia (as-if!).
> >
> >
> When data is imported into Ultimate Wiktionary it will first be
> converted beyond recognition of the orignial content. One difference you
> discount is that Wiktionay and Wikipedia are GNU-FDL at this moment in
> time. Ultimate Wiktionary will be a completely different database and as
> such all content can be considered new content with a new license. Why
> use the Wikipedia word ??

People commonly take from Wikipedia, for instance articles that don't
deserve Encyclopedia entries get moved to Wiktionary. Given that its
hard enough to stop people from importing dictionary.com, good luck
explaining they can't use content from Wikipedia.

I still don't see how a change in license for Wiktionary or Wikipedia
could ever be possible. It would be possible had people given up their
copyrights to Wikimedia, but isn't what happens, everyone still has
their copyrights. When an open source software project wants to change
its license they have to go through and get permission from
everyone/every company that has contributed and re-write the parts
they don't have permission for. Quite hard in a software project,
impossible for any of the Wikimedia projects.

Converting something (give a new format?) doesn't mean the original
copyright holders lose their rights to it... works the same with
translation into a new language. German Harry Potter might be
converted beyond recognition as far as J.K. Rowling is concerned, but
she still owns the copyright. And yes I know we're talking about
Wiktionary, not Harry Potter, its an example. :D

Or is Ultimate Wiktionary throwing out everything from current Wiktionary?

> >I thought it was generally considered to be in compliance with GFDL
> >if, for instance, on your mirror of Wikipedia you referenced back to
> >Wikipedia.org. We'd want to keep the history online somewhere
> >regardless, perhaps a crawl of the Wiktionaries could be done and just
> >have it up as static content HTML files (so security and such wouldn't
> >be an issue). When distributed Ultimate Wiktionary would referenced
> >its own site and the Ultimate Wiktionary would link to the Wiktionary
> >archive.
> >
> >
> We are only talking Wiktionary here. This has nothing to do with
> Wikipedia. Adding History information on a talk page in the Ultimate
> Wiktionary DOES allow for pinpointing who contributed to an article it
> just does not show WHAT was contributed.

Wikipedia is another GFDL project... I was using it as an example.

I don't think the GFDL requires to show what was contributed, does it?

> When we distribute content it will not be in the same format as the
> Ultimate Wiktionary. It will be completely seperate from it and we DO
> want people to use it and contribute to UW. As UW will be the source of
> .dict information people will update UW in order to improve their next
> import.
>
> There will be not one wiktionary archive, the potential exists that all
> wiktionaries will be imported into UW and what is the point of keeping
> these as archives if they serve no purpose?

To keep a history of the project and you were concerned about giving
credit, so I suggested that a static archive site be created. Not too
complicated I don't think. :)

>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re[2]: privacy problem- GOT THE SOLUTION!!!

body:
On 5/19/05, Eric <ek79501 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Great work, Eric! Patting my own back. I did what these WikiMedia people could
> not do.
> Comments eh? Or any advice for the encryption?

Perhaps it is not incompetance on the part of everyone else, but your
failure to effectively communicate your goal?  The simplest answer...

Anyway, it sounds like you want a secure hash, so why not use
something like MD5 or SHA or something?


body:
> > Define "intrinsically encyclopedic".
> >
>
>
>Empirically this can be defined as "having a calculable likelihood, as a
>class of subjects, to sustain an article that wouldn't end up being
>deleted if listed on VfD."  In general it seems to be pretty difficult to
>get consensus to delete a school article, of instance, even one about a
>little-known high school about which nothing much is known, whereas if I
>wrote an article about a random human, my friend's brother say, when
>listed on VfD it would die a mercifully quick death.

The reason it is hard to delete school articles is two-fold;
1) Wikipedia deletion rules are stacked in favour of inclusion; at least
two-thirds of voters (and often more) must vote to delete for it to happen,
and votes to re-direct  are interpreted as "keep", though the obvious intent
is that the article should not stand on its own.
2) School inclusionists are now organized, and have set up a "Schoolwatch"
page to ensure that all schools are kept.  These people vote to keep every
single school, usually with cut and paste comments.  Thus a group of a dozen
or so inclusionists can easily force Wikipedia to keep every single school
article, no matter how silly, uninformative, trivial or unverifiable they
are.  And, in fact, that's exactly what they do.  However, whether these
dozen people represent the consensus of Wikipedia is another question.

Jay.


body:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050520 03:47]:
>
> > 2) School inclusionists are now organized, and have set up a
>"Schoolwatch"
> > page to ensure that all schools are kept.  These people vote to keep
>every
> > single school, usually with cut and paste comments.
>
>
>I only use cut-and-paste comments myself in response to cut-and-paste
>nominations.

Fair enough, but you're not one of the people I'm talking about.

> >  Thus a group of a
> > dozen or so inclusionists can easily force Wikipedia to keep every
>single
> > school article, no matter how silly, uninformative, trivial or
>unverifiable
> > they are.
>
>
>I look at every article I vote on first. Are you saying I, or these
>hypothetical conspirators, in fact don't?

You obviously do; you've even voted to delete some schools.  The organized
inclusionists do not read the article, nor do they believe they should have
to; for them, including all school articles is a matter of "principle",
usually of the "Wikipedia is not paper" and/or "schools are intrinsically
notable" sort.

> >  And, in fact, that's exactly what they do.  However, whether
> > these dozen people represent the consensus of Wikipedia is another
>question.
>
>
>Indeed, but that applies to the people flooding VFD with school articles,
>and indeed to *any* so-called "consensus" formed only of VFD habitues, so
>you're not actually saying something very specific.

You say that like it's a bad thing. ;-)

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>
>It seems to be a completely undistinguished article about an utterly
>ordinary school.  It comprises six sentences and an external link.
>
>(Bs pbhefr jr nyy xabj gung Wvzob vf gur frperg travhf tenaqfba bs Iba
>Oenha.)

I have to admit, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Jay.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Geoff Burling (geoff at agora.rdrop.com) [050519
> 09:58]:
> > On Wed, 18 May 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> > > Notability is not really definable.  Jimbo has
> even suggested that it's a
> > > proxy for verifiability.
>
> > Last time I saw the word used on VfD, context
> suggested that it was the
> > equivalent of "another article about a teenager
> whose most important
> > achievement so far is not dropping out of high
> school, which was posted
> > by her/his friend or relative."
>
>
> Far too often I see it used to mean "it must not be
> important because I've
> never heard of it."
>
> (Not that I'm questioning in any way that almost
> everything that hits VFD
> needs to be killed with a very big axe.)

Far too often I see this straw man argument used to
villify people with good intentions.  I've seen far
too many times, "Keep it, it must be notable, I've
heard of it."  Isn't that just the other side of the
same coin?  Please refrain from making personal
attacks on the motives of people who make VfD
nominations.

RickK

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] download.wikimedia.org

body:
Hi,

I am wondering, are there many people actualy downloading the database? If so,
is this not something where bittorrent is perfect for?

---
[[w:nl:gebruiker:Walter]]


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article validation feature (again) in 1.5?

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

David Gerard schrieb:
> Sorry to keep on about this, but I'm still not clear as to whether this
> will be on in 1.5 - it's not on the 1.5 test wiki. (Brion switched it on
> and everything broke, so he switched it off again.)

I fixed it (hopefully) and asked Brion to turn it on again.

> What will it take for it to be switched on in 1.5 on Wikipedia? Or at least
> on en:?
>
> (I ask in particular because if it's going on then we need to work out what
> things to rate articles on, debug the interface and so on.)

The current implementation is mainly for collecting data. You can see a
limited statistic of each version of each article, but nothing detailed
- - yet.

It would be very helpful for people to try this function and give me
feedback on what to add/change.

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCjJDiCZKBJbEFcz0RAkhMAJ9HbMhDmUniBM7diORhiwJJDYXc0QCeIIBR
nDJIWb2NBnyEnDO9Qvlrd8Y=
=y0d/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Alphax

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images
	to be	deleted

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jimmy Wales wrote:
[snip]
> It is very unfortunate that such images are still being uploaded _new_
> when we have not be happy about them for a long time.  It is not fair to
> contributors who are working on such things, since we have no intention
> to keep them in the long run.
>

Maybe we should disable image uploads and have all images go through a
review panel to check that they have correct source and licence info
(and would prevent image content disputes as well).

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCjCfv/RxM5Ph0xhMRAn0dAKCjIdtCk/7+Qg9Xo4lj4fcCxTQiSwCgkrhL
poPBUPekbURTGsJLADBLImI=
=D1L/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: ABCD

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on mole molars

body:
A mole (abbr. mol) is approx. 6.0221415 ? 10?? molecules, with
6.0221415 ? 10?? being Avogadro's number.  See [[Mole (unit)]].

ABCD

On 5/18/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Cormac Lawler wrote:
> > On 5/17/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> >>>Speaking of explosives, should we talk of chemical measures in terms of
> >>>moles (units consisting of a certain number of molecules, the number of
> >>>which has slipped my mind at this moment)?
> >>
> >>You're thinking of Avocado's Number, named after the famous lawyer.
> >>
> >>Two avocados is a yotta molecules (if you interpret "yotta" in the
> >>"binary prefix" sense of 2^80 rather than 10^24).
> >>
> >>A mole is a small burrowing animal in the family Talpidae, and their
> >>dentition does include molars.
> >>
> >
> >
> > So, in other words, it's the number of avocados it takes to fill a mole?
> >
> > 6.022 * 10^23
> >
> > That's a pretty big mole..
> >
>
> Or a very small avocado :)
>
> - --
> Alphax
> GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
> and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
> Lewis
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFCiwsi/RxM5Ph0xhMRAsBYAJ4tapCeoItlDyalkOnzHvpsD/O3nwCfbPej
> g6W4qxIreIHeg3hVfnNxqJ8=
> =hQ9s
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on
	en:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>JAY JG said:
> > You obviously do; you've even voted to delete some schools.
>
>Haven't we all?

Nope.

> > The
> > organized  inclusionists do not read the article, nor do they believe
> > they should have  to; for them, including all school articles is a
> > matter of "principle",  usually of the "Wikipedia is not paper" and/or
> > "schools are intrinsically  notable" sort.
> >
>
>
>Well that's a very serious charge.  You're accusing some unnamed people of
>making bogus votes on VfD--copy-pasted and without looking at the article
>in question.
>Do you have some evidence to support this?

"Very serious charge"?  Get real, this is a Wikipedia mail-list.  As for
evidence, here's one example of an editor who took some valuable time out of
editing Pokemon related articles to make 17 identical keep votes on schools
in 9 minutes, and soon after another 10 identical keep votes in 4 minutes:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Ketsuban]
  Several times she was able to get in 3 keep votes a minute.  I envy her
her internet connection; I couldn't have even gotten to all those VfD pages
in that time, much less read the related article, edited, voted, saved, and
returned.

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was DoImisunderstand
	Wikipedia

body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
wrote:
> "Wikipedia is not a collection of ideas, concepts,
> institutions and places
> I haven't heard of or don't think are significant",
> perhaps? :)

Yet again a straw man and an un-Wiki attack on the
motives of VfD nominators.

RickK

__________________________________
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Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.
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from_name: james

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: importing wiki dump to mediawiki

body:
right - after finally doing the database with no errors (thanks to the above
poster :) ) - it has finished with one file cur.MYD @ 2.5 ish GB, now its
doing something with another file cur.MYI - how big will this file get to be?
Mainly cos I want to go out, and turn the PC off sometime, as its been on for
30hrs or so. Is it safe to turn it off, or would I have to start again, or
howbig does this file get to be?


body:
But you have to be careful - just because a image is licenced under cc
dosn't mean that it isn't also GFDL.

ABCD

On 5/19/05, David Benbennick <dbenbenn at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Non-commercial_use_only_images
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_used_with_permission
> >
> > Are the relevant categories.
>
> Also
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_NonCommercial_images
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial_images
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial_2.0_images
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_NonCommercial-ShareAlike_images
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike_images
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creative_Commons_Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike_2.0_images
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
wrote:
> Non-notability has been rejected as a criterion for
> deletion.

By some.  There is no consensus on this issue.

RickK

Discover Yahoo!
Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: List policy: unsubscribed posts

body:
David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc:

> Brion Vibber (brion at pobox.com) [050518
> 08:01]:

>> Due to a very high volume of spam hitting this list in the last couple
>> days (several hundred), I've changed the list configuration to
>> automatically discard posts from addresses not subscribed to the list
>> instead of holding them in the moderation queue.

> Yeah, WTF is happening? wikien-l is getting a new spam literally every
> minute or two. Is there a new spammer in town with our address?

i believe there's a new virus around which exists only to spam some kind of
right-wing propaganda (in German), which may account for some of it.

> - d.

kate.


from_name: HYWwebsite at aol.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question about changing language-handling

body:
Hello.
I've been modifying the standard MediaWiki software for my own site, but have
not been able to figure out how to modify it so that non-logged-in users can
pick a language. Ideally, I would like to change the language selection form
so that it sets a new global variable of my own, which can then be used both
for determining the regular language display and also for routing users to the
correct article in the selected language.
Any ideas?

Many thanks for any help provided.
Allen Williamson


from_name: Delirium

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Unlike NPOV I don't consider no-original-research to be a core (thus
>non-negotiable) principal of the project, rather it's just a useful
>rule.
>
>Once wikipedia has dominated the known universe and has become the
>primary repository for all human knowledge it may become the case that
>the only way to get good peer review is to publish in wikipedia.  It
>is already the case that I'd trust content vetted in wikipedia over
>some sources (notably the non peer-reviewed sort).  I expect that
>we'll revise our procedures to address this when the time comes.
>
>
I'd disagree with that view---if Wikipedia is to be an *encyclopedia* by
any reasonable definition of that term, it has to be a compendium of
existing human knowledge, not a research journal publishing novel
claims.  I'm not opposed to a Wikimedia Foundation project that would
include original research, but I think it would be problematic to
include it as part of an encyclopedia.  Perhaps eventually it would
become a test of important research that it makes it into Wikipedia, but
this would be after it's presumably published and discussed elsewhere;
it shouldn't make its first appearance in an encyclopedia article, if
this is to actually be an encyclopedia.

-Mark


from_name: JAY JG

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools
	onen:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>
>JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050520 05:26]:
>
> > "Very serious charge"?  Get real, this is a Wikipedia mail-list.
>
>Then it's just trash-talking and ad hominem to a class of editors (those
>who want to keep the school articles), and you really should be backing it
>u.

Again, not all school inclusionists, but a certain subset of them.  And I
have backed them up.

>
> >  As for
> > evidence, here's one example of an editor who took some valuable time
>out
> > of editing Pokemon related articles to make 17 identical keep votes on
> > schools in 9 minutes, and soon after another 10 identical keep votes in
>4
> > minutes:
> >
>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Ketsuban]
> >  Several times she was able to get in 3 keep votes a minute.  I envy her
>her
> > internet connection; I couldn't have even gotten to all those VfD pages
>in
> > that time, much less read the related article, edited, voted, saved, and
> > returned.
>
>
>Assuming she edits like me (load a pile of tabs, read and vote) I'd expect
>to see just that result.

Do you reall think this is likely David?  If I lined up 17 tabs and hit
"save" on each one, I'd have had all the edits done in a couple of minutes;
her edits look much more like someone who was just plowing sequentially
through the list as quickly as possible.  Don't forget, she was entering
reasonably lengthy talk comments
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Bisexuality&diff=prev&oldid=13851103]
just a minute before she went on her "keep" rampage, and a different one 3
minutes before that.  Do you really think that while that was going on she
was carefully reading each VfD'd article, then lining the VfDs up in a
series of 17 Firefox tabs so that she should hit "save" on each one as close
to simultaneously as possible, and even then it took 10 minutes for them all
to save?  I'm asking your honest opinion here.

>So do you have any other substantiation for this assertion?

If you think that all the people who are making boilerplate "keep" votes in
incredibly short periods of time are not actually just mindlessly and
sequentially voting "keep", but rather are people who read the articles,
consider them carefully, then like to line up all the votes in many
different tabs so that the votes all show up on the Contributions list in as
short a period of time as possible, then no.  But I think my assumption is
far more reasonable and plausible than yours.

Jay.


body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>Well that's Ketsy, bless her socks.  I first bumped into her the other day
>when I happened to revert one of her edits on
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexuality and she went to talk.  Nobody's
>roboposter.
>
>Funny thing is, Ketsy's *first* Vfd vote against a schools listing was
>just two days ago, and she has been editing since February and
>participating occasionally on VfD since early March.
>
>So I don't think you can class her as one of these "organized
>inclusionists".

She's very organized now.

Jay.


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Live and Let live?  Oh, really?

body:
Ed writes:
> This whole thing smacks of an "anti-religious agenda",
> rather than any sincere effort towards neutrality.
> When we couldn't agree on British vs. American spelling,
> we chose this solution:...
>
>...Ever hear of live and let live? Sheesh!

I am rather disturbed by the rather paranoid claims filling
this list that people are anti-Christian, and persectuing
Christians, and discriminating against Christians, etc.
These angry accusations are false, hurtful, and simply
disingenuous.  I can't believe that anyone seriously
believes that following NPOV and referring to dates in a
neutral way is meant as an evil plot against that poor and
few in number minority, the Christians....

It seems to me, rather, that some people are just venting
anger, as they refuse to let others "live and let live".
Frankly, for the majority of people on this planet who do
not worship Jesus as their God, messiah and saviour, it
makes no sense to force them to use religious Christian
terminology.  It is those who ask for a "live and let live
policy" who are being attacked, not the Christians.

I already have put up with enough abuse today, as several
of my fellow faculty and staff came - as well as many
students - in with T-shirts advertising "Jesus Day" at a
public school.  It had a motto that said that only through
Jesus will anyone find God, and that all others are doomed
to be without God (i.e. damned to Hell.)  Apparently being
in the vast majority is not enough for some right-wing
Evangelical Protestant Christians.  They have to push their
threats of damnation via religious proselytizing in public
arenas?!

I'm one step away from filing a complaint, as this clearly
constitues a hostile workplace environment.  And what's
next?  Jihad T-shirts from Islamists demanding that all
Americans accept Allah and the Quran?  Atheist t-shirts
from Communists demanding that all Americans accept Marx
and Engels?  That behaviour is just great...if you hate
your neighbor and want to start a religious war.

Let's stop pretending we have NPOV and that we tolerate our
fellow man, and let's start acting that way in practice.

Robert (RK)

I?m astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it?s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. - Woody Allen

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subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
I have reported this guy to abuse at fuse.net as a
spammer.

RickK

--- David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> I trust this was wrongly authorised? :p
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <bbarron at fuse.net>
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 9:04 PM
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)
>
>
> > would like to help as much as possible
> >
> > Hi i am Pastor Rev.Bill Barron and i am running
> for the city of cincinnati
> council. i am a goodman  who wants to bring peace
> and harmony to are city.i
> have help campaign for others an i am very hands
> on,and yes more
> jobs.volunteers&donations are in need
> call(513)621-2349.campaign hats&bumper
> stickers are $15.00&$4.00 sign of a cross on bumper
> stickers,to
> represent!(smile)send checks or money orders to;Bil
> Barron for city council
> 609 walnut st.suite#1016 cincinnati,ohio
> 45202.seriously i am looking for
> business parters to make our own money."only ask if
> you have money to
> invest". "new" web site. www.revbillbarron.org
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Discover Yahoo!
Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html


body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>
>Try again.

How about this
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Howrealisreal]
Contribution list which includes 35 identical "keep" votes in 30 minutes;
another example of careful consideration of each school article, followed by
lined-up Firefox tabs and rapid-fire voting? And don't forget, these
articles are in different locations and on different subpages of the VfD
page; these people are clearly going through one of the two "Schoolwatch"
pages which have been set up.

Do you need another example?

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l]
	Schoolsonen:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>JAY JG said:
> >
> > If you think that all the people who are making boilerplate "keep"
> > votes in  incredibly short periods of time are not actually just
> > mindlessly and  sequentially voting "keep", but rather are people who
> > read the articles,  consider them carefully, then like to line up all
> > the votes in many  different tabs so that the votes all show up on the
> > Contributions list in as  short a period of time as possible, then no.
>
>
>Now you've said there are a number of these people, and remember that I've
>shown you that Ketsy is by no means an organised inclusionist--she never
>voted on a school deletion listing before Tuesday of this week.
>
>So who are these organised inclusionists?

Where did she find all those schools?  Don't you think it was from the
Schoolwatch pages, set up and maintained by school inclusionists?

>And given that Ketsy is new at this, isn't it at least plausible that she
>was responding in a robotic manner to what is very widely perceived as
>some particularly robotic deletion listings by a certain editor?

I suppose, but that would still make it an example of unthinking school
inclusionist voting, wouldn't it?

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050520 07:46]:
> > --- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> > > Far too often I see it used to mean "it must not
> be
> > > important because I've
> > > never heard of it."
>
> > Far too often I see this straw man argument used
> to
> > villify people with good intentions.  I've seen
> far
> > too many times, "Keep it, it must be notable, I've
> > heard of it."  Isn't that just the other side of
> the
> > same coin?
>
>
> Only insofar as notability is itself a deletion
> reason per policy, which it
> isn't.  (Things relating to it certainly are.)

This is your opinion, not consensus.

RickK

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML whitelist

body:
On Thursday 19 May 2005 16:03, Zigger wrote:
> The HTML whitelist is inside the function removeHTMLtags in the file
> Parser.php.

Could you please make the HTML whitelist configurable via LocalSettings.php
(or a web interface if you plan to build any) in a future 1.4 or 1.5 version?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


body:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
> > If you think that all the people who are making boilerplate "keep" votes
>in
> > incredibly short periods of time are not actually just mindlessly and
> > sequentially voting "keep", but rather are people who read the articles,
> > consider them carefully, then like to line up all the votes in many
> > different tabs so that the votes all show up on the Contributions list
>in
> > as short a period of time as possible, then no.  But I think my
>assumption
> > is far more reasonable and plausible than yours.
>
>
>What, that someone edits VFD like I do?

But they don't; your comments are not all identical, theirs are.

>I suspect the root of your assertion is that you can't really believe
>anyone would vote "keep" sincerely on almost all school articles. So when
>you see someone do so, you immediately assume bad faith editing on their
>part; and you won't be swayed from this explanation for what you see.

Not true.  I know there are people who believe *most* school articles should
be kept.  But the boilerplate votes in short periods of time which make no
reference at all to the article or the VfD page are examples of something
else, and in particular, when I see someone voting "keep, good stub" etc. on
a completely useless stub.

>Me, I vote 'keep' on almost all of them because they're NPOV and verifiable
>(though in most cases they don't have an independent reference listed; as
>per my proposal on [[Wikiedpa:Schools]], I certainly wouldn't object to
>that as a very strong guideline). I really don't see that a 'keep' vote
>requires any greater justification, whatever someone's edit pattern.

I understand your position; I've never objected to your votes, or your
voting pattern.

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do
	Imisunderstand Wikipedia

body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
wrote:
> Rick said:
> >
> > --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Non-notability has been rejected as a criterion
> for
> >> deletion.
> >
> > By some.  There is no consensus on this issue.
>
>
> Ergo, it has been rejected.  That's how we make (or
> don't make) policy on
> Wikipedia.

Um, no, there is no consensus either way.

RickK

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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was
	DoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
JAY JG said:

WP:WWIN:

> Did I  just imagine that it says "Subjects of
> encyclopedia articles must have a  claim to fame besides being fondly
> remembered by their friends and  relatives."

WIN a memorial.  Refers to people.

> and "Biography articles
> should only be for people with some sort  of notoriety or achievement"?
>  What are these and similar statements, if not  notability policies?
>

Don't seem to be applicable to schools, which are in any case used and
remembered by far more than "their friends and relatives".  We're talking
about institutions that (in the case of state public schools at least)
have a pretty big footprint in the community.


body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>
>>JAY JG said:

(with respect to the mythical "notability policy"):

>> >
>> > [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] is a good place to start.
>>
>>
>>"Wikipedia is not a collection of ideas, concepts, institutions and
>>places I haven't heard of or don't think are significant", perhaps? :)
>
> That's not what the policy says; perhaps you should read it.
>

Indeed I'm very aware that it isn't policy.  There is no such policy with
regard to non-biographical subjects.


from_name: David

subject: [WikiEN-l] Segration of MediaWiki projects

body:
Chris McIntosh wrote:

>My company wants to use MediaWiki for internal documentation. They
>would like to separate how projects are physically stored in the
>MediaWiki structure.
>
>For example instead of all files being listed under the root
>structure, can I create a new project folder for each project and have
>files be placed in their respective projects?
>
>Is this possible?
>
>
I believe you want to ask on
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l , they'll be more
knowledgeable on the subject.  And you won't get deluged by messages
about the notability of school articles.

-[[en:User:Humblefool]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: wikipedia downloads only available with 2GB?!

body:
Merlin wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> I am trying to download the german "old" table on:
> http://download.wikimedia.org/#wikipedia
> The link says that the size of that file is 13.97 GiB.

> Howver, the file is just 2GB (definatelly) and there are no aditional
> files like described on the wikipedia download help page.

are you sure the program you are using to download it supports large files?

? 101> curl >/dev/null http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/20050516_old_table.sql.gz
  % Total   % Received % Xferd  Average Speed             Time             Curr.
                                Dload  Upload   Total    Current    Left   Speed
 22 14.0G  22   3.1G   0     0  27.5M      0   0:08:40   0:01:55   0:06:45 28.2M

> merlin

kate.