from_name: Markus Krötzsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Exporting sections of pages

body:
On Saturday 17 February 2007 21:04, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 16, 2007 at 10:18:14AM +1100, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > On 2/16/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > > There was a fairly extensive discussion on this list a couple weeks ago
> > > -- which I thought you had participated in -- about microformats (I
> > > think the buzzword was) which amounted to "custom-made attributed to
> > > HTML tags which would be usable for semantic extraction, but ignored by
> > > browsers".
> >
> > I'm sure I've never heard that term before, but fortunately
> > [[Microformats]] got me up to speed. (Is there anything Wikipedia
> > can't do :))
> >
> > > This topic, and the approach you and I forsee, is sort of an offshoot
> > > thereof...
> >
> > I guess. What would the syntax look like to the user?
>
> Well, one suggested solution was piping the
>
> ==section header tag|secthead==
>
> but while I understand why that is most intiutive to people who *get*
> Wikipedia, I suspect it's a bit too breakable when confronted with
> people who don't--and there are a lot more of them.  So I like a
> template or parser function that takes an argument and expands to the
> appropriate hidden markup to support the pointer, myself.

Semantic MediaWiki in parts is very similar to what microformats try to
achieve. It collects semantic data and offers it in machine-readable formats.
The difference is that it also can work on the data within the wiki (e.g. you
can search for things). One could adjust Semantic MediaWiki to support
microformat-like applications. Now I don't know which microformat you have in
mind -- Semantic MediaWiki is not the solution for everything; but is has a
lot of existing infrastructure that was built for storing and processing such
structured data. So maybe extending Semantic MediaWiki is easier than
building another parser extension for microformats.

In general, microformats are application-specific mini-markups, that were
tailored to simplify markup for people who write XHTML. Microformats are
intended to be easy to write (for people used to writing XHTML), but they are
not easy to parse. Extracting microformat data from XHTML may require
substantial effort (at least that's what I heard from microformat people at
the W3C Technical Plenary last year). Now if you create a wiki markup
(Semantic MediaWiki has one, but you can invent another one if you need),
just to re-embed the already extracted information into XHTML, this seems to
be unnecessarily complicated. Since you already have the information, you can
easily provide it in a separate block of data -- both XML and RDF based
formats are available for many typical microformat applications.

There are many ways to attach metadata to HTML. flickr for instance exports
RDF metadata by directly embedding it into XHTML pages in a sort of
customised way. The RDFa effort is about to standardise a clean solution for
this. Semantic MediaWiki in turn puts the RDF on another URL which is linked
to the HTML-document through the header (this is fully XHTML conformant and
it scales to larger amounts of data); tools like Firefox' Piggybank extension
will find the data and can import it.

Microformats are still a very good starting point: they have identified common
applications and provide sets of important property definitions for each.
This is certainly something to draw from. I just would not implement a wiki
markup, XHMTL encoding, and custom handling for each such format.

Btw. what tool that supports microformats do you have in mind? Maybe this tool
supports further input formats that have been invented for similar
applications.

Cheers,

Markus

--
Markus Kr?tzsch
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe
mak at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de        phone +49 (0)721 608 7362
www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/     fax +49 (0)721 693  717
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 19/02/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Administrators are complained about all the time all over Wikipedia.  If
> > you're not seeing it, you're making certain you aren't.
>
>
> I see many complaints; how many of these are actually reasonably
> substantiable is an entirely different question. Please give examples
> of complaints you consider reasonable complaints and those you don't,
> so I have some idea of your sensitivity level.
>
>
> - d.

I think an administrator calling an editor a douche is a legitimate
complaint, the level of complaint, and the level of behaviour on the part of
an administrator that should have been a call to action by other
administrators--if it's the sort of action that could get an ordinary editor
permanently banned without ruffling many feathers at Wikipedia, and it is
done by an administrator, then it is actually reasonable, imo.  However, in
this matter, until the administrator turned on me, I did think that most of
this administrator's questionable actions were simply due to his being
willing to tackle too many of the tough, long-entrenched battles of various
love-matched-in-hell editor pairs.  I had to rethink this, though, once I
became the target.  This administrator flouts Wikipedia policy in favor of
his own arbitrary actions designed primarily to enflame editors he disagrees
with, the policy, blocking, the flouting, ignoring Wipedia's procedures for
requesting unblocks, the enflamed, using e-mailed unblock requests to attack
and mock the editor requesting an unblock--all the sort of activity that
shouldn't be a surprise coming from an administrator with the power to call
another editor a douche without consequences.  But, again, I spent time
looking around Wikipedia, following AN/I, and seeing these issues come up
again and again, an administrator acts in a manner that would get an editor
banned, and nothing is done.

What concerns me is the underlying issue, that I believe this occurs because
being an administrator is such a damned big deal, such a huge big deal, that
no one could ever risk losing it, meaning they have to, at all costs, even
to the detriment of Wikipedia, see that pretty much no one ever loses it.

I do realize, particularly after viewing the cesspool of Wikipedia from the
inside, that most of the complaints against administrators on the AN/I are
probably unfounded, but not all of them are, and there are legitimate
concerns raised there all of the time.

Let me know when you figure out which quote.

KP


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rx Dosage Instructions in Wikipedia

body:
POOP isn't a dry ingredient? Yuck!

On 2/19/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
>
> > From: "Stephen Bain" <stephen.bain at gmail.com>
> >
> > On 2/19/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >>
> >> I wouldn't
> >> bake a cake using a recipe from Wikipedia without checking against
> >> outside sources first...
> >
> > Ingredients:
> >
> > * 2 cups self-raising flour
> > * 1 cup sugar
> > * 2 eggs
> > * 2 tbsp nitroglycerine
> >
> > Method:
> >
> > Mix dry ingredients well. Beat egg and fold into dry mix. Throw
> > nitroglycerin at the mix as hard as you can.
>
> Don't be silly. The _really characteristic_ Wikipedia recipe would be:
>
> > Ingredients:
> >
> > * 2 cups self-raising flour
> > * 1 cup sugar
> > * 2 eggs
> > * 2 tbsp POOP!
> >
> > Method:
> >
> > Mix dry ingredients well. Beat egg and fold into dry mix. Stir in
> > the POOP!
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Anthony

subject: [Wikitech-l] Distributed content hosting

body:
On 2/19/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/19/07, Anthony <wikitech at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 2/19/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > As for image (or any other) hosting - WMF would have completely no
> > > power over privacy policy then - unless whole world agreed to turn
> > > off Referer [sic] request headers.
> >
> > Actually, there are plenty of ways to refer people to images without
> > leaking the article title.  I'm not sure what the point would be,
> > though.  Which pages you're viewing is pretty obvious based on what
> > images you're loading.
>
> And how do you propose we hide what pages an image is used on?
> Switch them up randomly?
>
No, what I said was precisely that you *can't* hide what pages an
image is used on.  You could hide the referrer using various tricks
(frames, redirects, javascript, etc), but doing so wouldn't accomplish
anything.

Anthony


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:

>on 2/19/07 1:33 PM, Rich Holton wrote:
>
>
>>We have to stop this self-destructive cycle. Admins should have respect
>>and be respectful. We need to have effective ways of dealing with admins
>>that get a fat head and abuse their power. We need to diminish the
>>perceived and real chasm that exists between admins and editors.
>>
>>
>Rich,
>
>Yes! You are presenting to the condition of the culture. It is interesting,
>though, that when statements along these lines are made, there is a curious
>silence that seems to fall over the List regarding them.
>
I've noticed that repeatedly.  Not just on this list, but in a lot of
things elsewhere that have nothing to do with Wikipedia.  It's as though
certain kinds of comments that address fundamental issues just go flying
over people's heads.  It sometimes makes me feel that I know that I've
said something good when nobody responds, or they divert the discussion
into a trivial subsidiary issue.

One of my favorite Nietzsche quotes is, "There are no Christians alive
today; the last one died on the cross."  I think that other philosophers
have also remarked how disciples change the nature of great ideas into
something smaller.  Sometimes when even Jimbo starts talking about
reliability and reputation I start to wonder whether he has been smoking
too much corporate air.

I still like to believe that the situation is salvageable, and that at
some point bold Lancelot will come along to cast the Hinayana from the
temple.

Ec


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 19/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I do believe the relaxation of de-facto requirements to become an admin
>> needs to come first. But streamlining the process to remove abusive
>> admins is also an important step.
>
>
> In clear-cut cases of abuse, the AC does its party-stopping impression
> of a ton of bricks quite efficiently. In cases of unpopularity with
> vocal mobs, it doesn't. I submit that if you mean the second case
> needs to be given more weight, that's probably not actually a good
> idea for getting an encyclopedia written.
>
>
> - d.
>

That's pretty binary thinking, David. Can you not even imagine the
existence of other alternatives?

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:

>On Feb 19, 2007, at 11:58 AM, Rich Holton wrote:
>
>
>>If an experienced admin is "swaggering" and abusing power, then that
>>admin is causing an asymmetric amount of damage to the project; not
>>the
>>kind of damage a vandal can cause, but damage none-the-less. We
>>need to
>>have effective and efficient ways to curtail that kind of damage, just
>>like we need effective and efficient ways to curtail the damage a
>>vandal
>>causes.
>>
>>
>Are we editing the same Wikipedia? I have not seen such "swaggering"
>and "abuse of power" but in exceptional cases.
>
If that's the case why are the exceptional cases dominating the
conversation?  Are the admins so powerless that they can't control their
renegades?

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:

>>On Feb 19, 2007, at 1:25 PM, Rich Holton wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>Are we editing the same Wikipedia? I have not seen such "swaggering"
>>>>and "abuse of power" but in exceptional cases.
>>>>
>>>>-- Jossi
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Without necessarily agreeing with you, I still have to ask: "And your
>>>point is...?"
>>>
>>>
>From [[WP:LA]]
>
>There are 1,122 (as of February 19 2007) users with sysop rights
>(active and otherwise), 814 of them active (as of January 18, 2007).
>
>How many of these admins, in your opinion, would fit in the category
>of "power abusers", "hostile to editors", etc?
>
There is little benefit in turniong this into a numbers game.  It is
enough to say that such admins do exist, and if they really are the
exceptional cases their influence is out of all proportion to what it
should be.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2007, at 11:58 AM, Rich Holton wrote:
>
>> If an experienced admin is "swaggering" and abusing power, then that
>> admin is causing an asymmetric amount of damage to the project; not
>> the
>> kind of damage a vandal can cause, but damage none-the-less. We
>> need to
>> have effective and efficient ways to curtail that kind of damage, just
>> like we need effective and efficient ways to curtail the damage a
>> vandal
>> causes.
>
> Are we editing the same Wikipedia? I have not seen such "swaggering"
> and "abuse of power" but in exceptional cases.
>
> -- Jossi

Without necessarily agreeing with you, I still have to ask: "And your
point is...?"

-Rich


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On 2/19/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Christiano Moreschi wrote:
>
> > So, it might be worth seeing whether something similar could work with
> > this List of Tall Men. Is this at al possible?
> >
> > Alternatively, something to think about might be a list of World
> > Record Holders for height, or something similar. But the current
> > arbitrary definition of x.y metres is not really acceptable. Arbitrary
> > definitions are original research.
>
> Definitions aren't research at all, and all definitions are arbitrary.
> Let's avoid expanding the idea of original research beyond what it was
> intended to do.

Creating "new knowledge" is OR.  While a definition cannot, in and of itself
be OR, using coming up with a new definition for "tall" (2.5-3 sd + 6 cm) is
OR, all the more so when it applies a modified paediatric definition of
"tall" to adults.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

>>There are 1,122 (as of February 19 2007) users with sysop rights
>>(active and otherwise), 814 of them active (as of January 18, 2007).
>>
>>How many of these admins, in your opinion, would fit in the category
>>of "power abusers", "hostile to editors", etc?
>>
>>
>I don't know if I know 100 of those admins, but I could probably rattle
>off 10 abusive ones as of that date.
>
>So my projection?  Roughly 75-80.
>
Gee, it's worse than I thought!  I was guessing 5% of the active admins,
which would only be 41.  But even 41 is too many.

Ec


list: textbook-l

from_name: claus torra

subject: [Textbook-l] (no subject)

body:
_________________________________________________________________
Descubre la descarga digital con MSN Music. M?s de un mill?n de canciones.
http://music.msn.es/


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 19, 2007, at 2:07 PM, Rich Holton wrote:

> How many abusive admins do you consider acceptable?

None.

And we have in place ways to deal with such behavior by *any* editor
(admin or not).

-- Jossi


from_name: Parker Peters

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: I have a problem with CheckUser as administered
	by JPGordon

body:
I am concerned that there has not been a single response beyond this to the
aggrieved user's post yet.

Parker

On 2/18/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> Hi, Samuel. Good pseudonym choice, by the way; I loved that movie.
>
> Samuel L Bronkowitz wrote:
> > I did not send "8 messages in a row." I sent updates, when new
> developments
> > happened.
> >
> > I see that the "moderation" system put them in all at once, and I got
> eight
> > "your comment is being moderated" notices at once.
> >
> > Since you obviously do not care about systemic abuse, feel free to just
> not
> > read my emails.
>
>
> People here do care a lot about systemic abuse.
>
> I think the problem you're running into is that a lot of people who end
> up on the unhappy end of some administrative action feel they are being
> abused, so we don't see a lot of correlation between accusations of
> abuse and actual abuse. That doesn't mean we don't care, but it does
> mean you probably won't get the instant and vigorous reaction you were
> hoping for.
>
> Further, you sent a lot of long messages in a short span of time,
> without waiting for a reaction. When writing to a large mailing list,
> anything you send takes up a lot of human time. I'm sure you didn't mean
> to give this impression, but demanding that people pay attention to that
> kind of volume doesn't demonstrate much respect for their time. A better
> approach would be to write one short, clear email and then wait for
> somebody to ask you for more details.
>
> And lastly, your messages came across to me as strident and demanding,
> messages from somebody who felt slighted and upset. I'm sorry you felt
> that way, but expressing that so strongly in your emails doesn't help
> your cause. The people here see a lot of drama, most of it unnecessary,
> and all of it wearying. There's also a negative correlation between the
> amount of strong negative emotion in a message and its utility. So in
> the future you're probably better off waiting until you cool down some.
>
> Does that help?
>
> Regards,
>
> William
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 19, 2007, at 2:38 PM, K P wrote:

> I do realize, particularly after viewing the cesspool of Wikipedia
> from the
> inside

Sorry, but I also have my own dignity and comfort level.

I do not have to respond to people that believe that Wikipedia is a
cesspool.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 19, 2007, at 3:10 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> If that's the case why are the exceptional cases dominating the
> conversation?  Are the admins so powerless that they can't control
> their
> renegades?

These admins are as much as *your* renegades as they are mine (if you
feel part of this project, that is).

That is the problem, Ray. You keep asserting and re-asserting a chasm
that may only exist in your perception.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:
>> On Feb 19, 2007, at 1:25 PM, Rich Holton wrote:
>>
>>>> Are we editing the same Wikipedia? I have not seen such "swaggering"
>>>> and "abuse of power" but in exceptional cases.
>>>>
>>>> -- Jossi
>>> Without necessarily agreeing with you, I still have to ask: "And your
>>> point is...?"
>
>  From [[WP:LA]]
>
> There are 1,122 (as of February 19 2007) users with sysop rights
> (active and otherwise), 814 of them active (as of January 18, 2007).
>
> How many of these admins, in your opinion, would fit in the category
> of "power abusers", "hostile to editors", etc?
>
> -- Jossi

How many would you consider to be an acceptable number?

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Jossi Fresco wrote:
>
> >On Feb 19, 2007, at 11:58 AM, Rich Holton wrote:
> >
> >
> >>If an experienced admin is "swaggering" and abusing power, then that
> >>admin is causing an asymmetric amount of damage to the project; not
> >>the
> >>kind of damage a vandal can cause, but damage none-the-less. We
> >>need to
> >>have effective and efficient ways to curtail that kind of damage, just
> >>like we need effective and efficient ways to curtail the damage a
> >>vandal
> >>causes.
> >>
> >>
> >Are we editing the same Wikipedia? I have not seen such "swaggering"
> >and "abuse of power" but in exceptional cases.
> >
> If that's the case why are the exceptional cases dominating the
> conversation?  Are the admins so powerless that they can't control their
> renegades?
>
> Ec

No!  They're not so powerless.  However, it's strongly to their disadvantage
to do anything to control their renegades.  Because .... adminship is such a
damned big deal, no one who ever got it would ever risk losing it, and
anyone losing it, increases the chances of scrutiny in too many ways on
others who hold the power--any time any administrator loses the tools,
editors notice they're not infallible, editors may question other
administrators.

Adminship is not in practice what it was intended, I think, to be.  I don't
think it was intended to be a big deal.  I don't think it was intended to be
a position of power so much as an additional set of duties that certain
dedicated users could control.  But I think it warped into a big deal power
play.  And human beings have shown through history that they will do
anything, up to and including destroying their own power
base/country/mission to keep their personal power.

They're not so powerless that they can't control them, they're so powerful
that they won't control them for fear of their own power being curtailed.

Also there's no purpose in discussing the non-exceptional cases.  There are
plenty of administrators who do a great job. Plenty of editors, too, who
crawl around on the fringes doing a great job with articles--hopefully
someone gives them a barnstar.  This is the best part of Wikipedia: the
anybodies who are doing great work.  But I don't think Wikipedia overall is
maintaining a welcoming atmosphere for the potentially huge variety of
people needed to reach its ultimate goal, and part of the problem is, imo,
the insufferable poweropoly of adminship.  It's designed to not foster
self-reflection.

KP


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jossi Fresco wrote:
> >> On Feb 19, 2007, at 1:25 PM, Rich Holton wrote:
> >>
> >>>> Are we editing the same Wikipedia? I have not seen such "swaggering"
> >>>> and "abuse of power" but in exceptional cases.
> >>>>
> >>>> -- Jossi
> >>> Without necessarily agreeing with you, I still have to ask: "And your
> >>> point is...?"
> >
> >  From [[WP:LA]]
> >
> > There are 1,122 (as of February 19 2007) users with sysop rights
> > (active and otherwise), 814 of them active (as of January 18, 2007).
> >
> > How many of these admins, in your opinion, would fit in the category
> > of "power abusers", "hostile to editors", etc?
> >
> > -- Jossi
>
> How many would you consider to be an acceptable number?
>
> -Rich
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Not my question, but I'll offer an answer:

(A) Probably on the order of 100 or so. Including several highly ranked and
at least one Arbcom member, from what I've seen recently.

(B) That is 100 too many.

Parker

--
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


from_name: George Chriss

body:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:52:47 +1100  English Wikipedia  wrote:

On 2/19/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
> Even with a general site disclaimer, the above information may be
non-encyclopedic.  Wikipedia is not a how-to guide, a doctor, a pharmacist, a
drug

I find it frustrating how often useful information is removed under
the single principle of "Wikipedia is not a ...". Explaining how to
use a coffee plunger? "Wikipedia is not a how-to..." - yes, but what
surely an explanation is an essential part of the article. Links to
articles that demonstrate the concept of [[One deal a day]]?
"Wikipedia is not a repository of links". Mentioning the local tourist
attractions and best restaurants of a small town? "Wikipedia is not a
travel guide" - yes, but that's probably the most useful thing you
could write about a small town.

Is it time we replaced WP:NOT with "Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia.
It's unique, and it's just trying to be useful to people, dammit."

Steve
Hi,

Wikibooks or Wikitravel would be good homes for the items mentioned above.  Part of Wikipedia's appeal, at least to me, is that good authors are very picky about choosing relevant information that best illustrates an abstract subject.  To borrow the example:  I know that a pancake comes from a Bisquick box, but what if I want to know what a pancake **really** is?

-George
en: [[User:GChriss]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 19, 2007, at 2:38 PM, K P wrote:
>
> > I do realize, particularly after viewing the cesspool of Wikipedia
> > from the
> > inside
>
> Sorry, but I also have my own dignity and comfort level.
>
> I do not have to respond to people that believe that Wikipedia is a
> cesspool.
>
> -- Jossi

Yawn.  This is part of what administrators do, they look at the cesspool of
new articles, speedy deletes, and utter vanity uploads, to make sure that
Wikipedia itself isn't one.  Someone on this list suggested I look at this
once, to gain an appreciation for the type of crap that Wikipedia
administrators are willing to wade through.  It had its intended impact: it
made me see how incredibly valuable it is to have a group of people willing
to spend hours a day on this.

You're not serving administrators to their advantage with desperate attempts
like this.  People who really do understand Wikipedia and value it, don't
need to denegrate editors who contribute only part-time, in order to support
administrators, because they can, instead, show what administrators do of
value.  It's really only those who don't know what administrators or
understand the benefits of all the anybodies that are at such a complete
loss for showing any positive examples of administrators, that feel
personally threatened and resort to personal attacks when anyone challenges
the very idea that administrators are superhuman.

KP


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 19/02/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Sounds familiar, except you're missing an important part: it must be easy,
>>also, to lose adminship.  In other words, it really must be no big deal,
>>which it currently isn't (no big deal).
>>
>>
>This is unlikely to happen - it strikes me there's not a lot of net
>plus in firing the experienced admins. The cases aren't symmetrical.
>
Nobody is promoting a wholesale purge of admins.  Because of their
leadership position they should be held to a higher standard than
ordinary editors, and when applicable de-adminship should come swiftly
and in no uncertain terms.  It could be appealed to Arbcom, but for any
reasonable case it should be kept off until the appeal is resolved.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 2/19/07 4:43 PM, K P at kpbotany at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > If there is a problem, denying it doesn't address it any better than
> > attacking the messenger.
>
> Or simply ignoring him.
>
> > Particularly when a large part of the problem is
> > the denial of a problem,
>
> Your are seeing that in action right now!
>
> > and an entrenched culture that prevents reviews and
> > solutions to the problem.
>
> Don't fix it - if it works for you.
>
> Marc

Your post was too subtle, it appears.

KP


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2007, at 1:43 PM, Rich Holton wrote:
>
>> How many would you consider to be an acceptable number?
>>
>> -Rich
>
> No, Rich. The ball is in *your* court now.
>
> -- Jossi

This isn't a game, Jossi. You asked me my opinion of something that can
be proved or disproved (or at least shown to be accurate or inaccurate).
I'm not going to go guessing how many might be power abusers or hostile
to editors.  I'm asking you something very different, that doesn't
require any evaluation or guessing as to the current situation. I'm
looking specifically for insight into your value system.

How many abusive admins do you consider acceptable?

I will try to find current examples of admin behavior that meet the
criteria we're talking about. Will you answer my question, that requires
no research on your part?

-Rich


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
>
>
>> I speak of a culture that has
>> produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
>> collaboration.
>>
>
> Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?
>
I just crossed my four-year anniversary, and while I can't speak to the
beginning, the culture hasn't really changed much in my time here. The
biggest change for me is the larger scale; once upon a time I "knew"
most of the admins and active editors, in the sense that I had read
their work and had some sense of who they were. Now I can see a mention
of somebody, wonder "who is that?", and see a history of 20K+ edits in
areas I didn't even know existed. So I think the culture could change
simply by different groups, unaware of each other, devolving into
disparate subcultures.

The webcomics thing is a case in point. From my "old-school" POV :-) , I
tend to regard webcomics as intrinsically non-notable, and yet there is
another part of the WP community that is intensely focussed on writing
about webcomics, defining inclusion criteria, etc. On the flip side,
though, when I look at how they actually go about their work, it seems
very much like things we did on the early days of the ships project,
back in 2003. So I think that as long as we have some ongoing
cross-pollination between different specializations, that we can keep
things from splintering too much.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
>
> > I speak of a culture that has
> > produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
> > collaboration.
>
> Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?
>
> Marc

"No."

Parker

--
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/20/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Not everything belongs in here.
>> Travel info belongs in Wikitravel.
>> Dictionary stuff belongs in Wiktionary and so on.
>>
>
> The first problem with this simplistic view is that there is a huge
> amount of overlap. For example: "Lyon is a city in France with 1
> million inhabitants" - WikiTravel, Wikipedia, or both? Its main
> visitor attractions are its churches, renowned gastronomic restaurants
> and art galleries - Wiki travel, Wikipedia or both? It is served by
> two airports and is a major stop on the Paris-Marseille TGV line -
> same question.
>
The way I look at it is that WP is a "compendium" of knowledge, that is
to say a condensed summary. There is a 400-page biography of Charles
Lindbergh, but I don't expect WP's Lindbergh article to be 400 pages
long. Similarly for scientific papers - we often mention papers'
results, but don't normally include every data table and experimental
setup. My ideal for the Lyon article would be to say only "Lyon has 30
3-star restaurants, including the historic [[Lying Lion]]" :-), while
the Wikitravel version lists all 30, their addresses, specialties, etc,
just like a travel book does.

Stan


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 2/19/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> POOP isn't a dry ingredient? Yuck!

Whether it was or not would spark an edit war of truly WP:LAME
proportions, spanning 3 talk pages, 2 spells of protection, and a
partridge in an RfC -- until someone noticed, 147 revisions later,
that it wasn't in the original recipe.

-Kat

--
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
* *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
>
>> I speak of a culture that has
>> produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
>> collaboration.
>
> Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?
>
> Marc
>

Marc,

Just a sample of one, to give you some idea.

Here's the page for my RfA (Request for adminship):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Rholton

Compare that to any of the current or recent RfA's.

I'm pretty sure that, should I apply (especially self-nominate) for
adminship now, I would be turned down on the basis on not enough
contributions to policy discussions, or for "not needing" the tools
(although, I have in just the last few days, taken some time to deal
with the incoming new pages, deleting those that are obvious speedy's).

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] class-action suit??

body:
On 2/18/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 19/02/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> >         I was recently contacted by some law firm from Miami,
> >         Florida about some class-action lawsuit they were
> >         assembling that involved a bunch of former and current
> >         Wikipedia editors that are suing the Wikimedia Foundation
> >         for compensation for all the time they spent improving
> >         the site without pay.
> >         [[User:Snowboarder77]] 03:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
> > I rather suspect it's bogus on a couple of different levels,
> > but I thought I'd mention it here.
>
>
> User:Spintasser having a spot of fun. Blocked 24 hours as a form of
> applause.
>
>
> - d.

Nice touch--really.  KP


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
> There are 1,122 (as of February 19 2007) users with sysop rights
> (active and otherwise), 814 of them active (as of January 18, 2007).
>
> How many of these admins, in your opinion, would fit in the category
> of "power abusers", "hostile to editors", etc?

I don't know if I know 100 of those admins, but I could probably rattle
off 10 abusive ones as of that date.

So my projection?  Roughly 75-80.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hi!

>> Not forever.
> Of course not.  But will they stop growing due to lack of funding, or
> due to the fact that the goals have been met and everyone in the world
> has access to the sum of all knowledge?

I wasn't telling "wikipedia will stop growing". It was more about the
word "exponentially" that everybody is happy to attach to the debate.
There're limiting factors, such as "everyone in the world", "all
knowledge", "enough funding", etc, which are quite philosophical and
outside the scope of this list.

Anyway, as for distributed content hosting ideas, we haven't been
ignoring them all that time. Though, we had to test and reject quite
a few of them.

Very interesting example is Joost (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/
15.02/trouble.html) - the article explains about distributed media
storage in popular terms, but in summary, they still have to handle
all the long tail content on their storage environment, and p2p wins
are mostly for the very fresh and very popular (and huge) content.
Their system is being built on most mature p2p platform out there,
and still does not seem to solve everything. And yes, they need a
special client.

As for image (or any other) hosting - WMF would have completely no
power over privacy policy then - unless whole world agreed to turn
off Referer [sic] request headers.
Of course, that aside, there're quite some other issues with
efficiency, and it is mostly about 'reducing costs' rather than
'improving user experience'.

It would be much easier just to have someone donate few gigabits of
IP transit ;-)

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]

P.S. Kudos to Tim for HTTP/1.0 keepalive issue tackling :)


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
on 2/19/07 4:43 PM, K P at kpbotany at gmail.com wrote:

> If there is a problem, denying it doesn't address it any better than
> attacking the messenger.

Or simply ignoring him.

> Particularly when a large part of the problem is
> the denial of a problem,

Your are seeing that in action right now!

> and an entrenched culture that prevents reviews and
> solutions to the problem.

Don't fix it - if it works for you.

Marc


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On 19/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just curious...would [[List of people taller than eight feet]] be OR?

Maybe not, but cue the inevitable edit war from people who think it
should be at [[List of people taller than 2.43 meters]]... (Who
themselves have a sub-war with the people who want to spell it
"metres".)

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:

> I speak of a culture that has
> produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
> collaboration.

Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Ron Ritzman wrote:
> On 2/19/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>> The webcomics thing is a case in point. From my "old-school" POV :-) , I
>> tend to regard webcomics as intrinsically non-notable,
>>
>
> Just curious, Have you ever closed an AFD on a webcomic? Considering
> your "old school POV" in the subject, could you be impartial judging
> consensus? The same question could be asked the "webcomic
> inclusionists".
>
Nope, I've stayed away from webcomics stuff. I'm one of those quiet
admins :-) , just do some image cleanup and the occasional vandal
spanking, not least because I have a huge backlog of my own photos to
upload!

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] WelcomeCommitteeBot?

body:
That could be remedied in one of two ways. Either point them to a talk page
tutorial or spell out how to respond in the welcome message itself.

On 2/19/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/19/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I must be missing something. What non-standard way of using talk pages
> are
> > you referring to?
>
> Ok, you suggested a "please click here to reply" link, which would
> presumably take them straight to an edit page, right? Whereas for the
> rest of their time on Wikipedia, they're going to have to click on a
> user's name, probably click "discussion" after that, and then click
> "edit". So they're getting a shortcut that normally won't be there.
>
> > Asking whoever welcomed you for advice could get some pretty far
> depending
> > on who it was in the first place.
>
> Heh, yeah. Hopefully you get what I mean now.
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark E

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 19 Feb 2007 at 23:28, Platonides wrote:

> Travis Derouin wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've configured proxy_check and wgBlockOpenProxies, which seems to be
> > working, but am still able to edit  our wiki anonymously using Tor. Is
> > there anyway to tighten this up? It seems the majority of edits coming
> > from Tor proxies are from vandals.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Travis
>
> There is a list of Tor exit nodes. Block them all :P

That's bad practice in my opinion. Such nodes could also be border points
for universites or large businesses or ISPs. Plus exit points change like
the hours on a clock - people drop in and drop off the network on a whim,
and many using dymanic DNS. So blocking Tor nodes is very iffy, and could
wind up blocking a bunch of legitimate contributors.

Mark


from_name: Kasimir Gabert

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
Hello,

I would highly recommend requiring Tor users to sign up for an
account, and just block edits from Tor exit nodes.  Many home users
run Tor servers to donate some of their bandwidth, and it would damage
your website if you permanently blocked all IPs from exit nodes.  You
might also want to run a cron job that updates the list of blocked
IPs, being sure to remove ones which are no longer exit nodes and add
in new ones.

Kasimir

On 2/19/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:
> On 19 Feb 2007 at 23:28, Platonides wrote:
>
> > Travis Derouin wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I've configured proxy_check and wgBlockOpenProxies, which seems to be
> > > working, but am still able to edit  our wiki anonymously using Tor. Is
> > > there anyway to tighten this up? It seems the majority of edits coming
> > > from Tor proxies are from vandals.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Travis
> >
> > There is a list of Tor exit nodes. Block them all :P
>
> That's bad practice in my opinion. Such nodes could also be border points
> for universites or large businesses or ISPs. Plus exit points change like
> the hours on a clock - people drop in and drop off the network on a whim,
> and many using dymanic DNS. So blocking Tor nodes is very iffy, and could
> wind up blocking a bunch of legitimate contributors.
>
> Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Kasimir Gabert


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 2/19/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Travis Derouin wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've configured proxy_check and wgBlockOpenProxies, which seems to be
> > working, but am still able to edit  our wiki anonymously using Tor. Is
> > there anyway to tighten this up? It seems the majority of edits coming
> > from Tor proxies are from vandals.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Travis
>
> There is a list of Tor exit nodes. Block them all :P

They change constantly.. and many people screw up doing this and
manage to block tor middle nodes. So take the time to actually
understand what you are doing.  Ideally you would only block tor exits
which could be used to access your site.

(I was blocked on several wikimedia projects in the past due to such
sloppy blocking)


from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > In Karate there are 32 Vital Points on the human body. Some, when
> struck,
> > can take as long a 10 days for the desired effect to occur ;-).
> >
>
>
> The evidence suggests this is not the case. No one has managed to
> demostraight such abilities under controled conditions and Karate with
> it's pure strikeing style tends to get taken appart by say BJJ or
> judo. While there are exceptions the fighters in MMA contests such as
> PRIDE ot UFC tend to rely on Muay Thai as their primary source of
> stikeing skills rather than Karate.
>
> --
> geni

No, you're both wrong, it's all in the wrists.  No, wait, maybe it's all in
the breathing.  KP


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Small-scale distributed hosting?

body:
On 19/02/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The great advantage to this is that it can and will be done in the next
> few days, we don't have to wait for all these pipe dreams to magically
> come to fruition.

Good, solid solution that works. Superb!

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 19 Feb 2007 at 19:52, Simetrical wrote:

> On 2/19/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:
> > That's bad practice in my opinion. Such nodes could also be border points
> > for universites or large businesses or ISPs. Plus exit points change like
> > the hours on a clock - people drop in and drop off the network on a whim,
> > and many using dymanic DNS. So blocking Tor nodes is very iffy, and could
> > wind up blocking a bunch of legitimate contributors.
>
> I think you're somewhat overstating how frequently the exit node list
> changes.  Nodes may change regularly, but there are a lot of IPs that
> have been steady Tor exit nodes for a long time, no?

> In any case, it should be noted that it's Foundation policy to block
> all open proxies, including Tor exit nodes.  The harm outweighs the
> benefit when it comes to trying to stop vandalism.

I see. Block Tor exit nodes. Translated: "Punish 10's of thousands of
college students, business users, and ISP customers, because of the
actions of one or two people."  Uh, ya.

Blocking open proxies is one thing. No wonder one of the settings in the
Tor client was called "Fascist Firewall" -- if you catch my drift.

Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
Currently Wikipedia blocks all anonymous edits from Tor exit nodes.
This is not harmful to real users but protects from vandalism.  You
should do the same, instead of blocking *everything* from tor exit
nodes.  (Allow account creation, allow edits from accounts).

I agree with Mark, however, on the subject of flat out blocking all
exit nodes.  Tor is used for legitimate use in many cases above
illegal use.  A few examples... people behind restrictive firewalls
(such as China and soldiers in Iraq) can access Wikipedia through Tor
without anything being filtered.  I would not block all Tor users.

Kasimir

On 2/19/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:
> On 19 Feb 2007 at 19:52, Simetrical wrote:
>
> > On 2/19/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:
> > > That's bad practice in my opinion. Such nodes could also be border points
> > > for universites or large businesses or ISPs. Plus exit points change like
> > > the hours on a clock - people drop in and drop off the network on a whim,
> > > and many using dymanic DNS. So blocking Tor nodes is very iffy, and could
> > > wind up blocking a bunch of legitimate contributors.
> >
> > I think you're somewhat overstating how frequently the exit node list
> > changes.  Nodes may change regularly, but there are a lot of IPs that
> > have been steady Tor exit nodes for a long time, no?
>
> > In any case, it should be noted that it's Foundation policy to block
> > all open proxies, including Tor exit nodes.  The harm outweighs the
> > benefit when it comes to trying to stop vandalism.
>
> I see. Block Tor exit nodes. Translated: "Punish 10's of thousands of
> college students, business users, and ISP customers, because of the
> actions of one or two people."  Uh, ya.
>
> Blocking open proxies is one thing. No wonder one of the settings in the
> Tor client was called "Fascist Firewall" -- if you catch my drift.
>
> Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Kasimir Gabert


list: commons-l

from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
On 2/18/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I'd like to officially announce Andre Engels as the reigning KING OF
> THE FLICKRLICKRS. Andre was one of the first FlickrLickr reviewers,
> and has reviewed a total of 30,000 CC-BY-licensed Flickr images so
> far.
>
> http://epov.org/cgi-bin/flickrlickr.pl?stats=1
>
> Thanks to Andre for his continuing dedication. Though, KenWalker is
> catching up quickly with 24,000 reviewed pictures. ;-) There are
> currently 65 registered reviewers.
>
> For those who do not know, FlickrLickr is a collaborative review
> process for picking freely licensed pictures on Flickr that should be
> uploaded to Commons:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr
>
> You see 50 random photos per page, edit their descriptions, and tick
> the ones you want to upload. The vast majority of photos on Flickr is
> of no relevance to us, or of unacceptable quality. So far, more than
> 150,000 pictures have been reviewed, and about 8,000 of these have
> been uploaded to Commons.
>
> New pics are being uploaded to Flickr at a much faster rate than we
> can review them -- there are more than 5 million pictures under
> acceptable licenses on Flickr. So we always need more volunteers. Just
> e-mail me off-list if you want an account (include your Commons
> username).
>
> You can review some of the favorites chosen by FlickrLickr users here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr/Highlights
> (That page could use some reorganization - feel free to be bold. :-)
>
> Some FlickrLickr pictures have become featured, and we do our best to
> ensure that useful pictures get included in Wikimedia articles.
> Volunteer today, and one day you might be the next .. KING OF THE
> FLICKRLICKRS. ;-)
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
> free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

Is there a reason on why flckrlickr doesn't fill in the fields at
{{flickreview}} template?+
for instance
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Building_reflection_chicago.jpg
and some others Iv'e spotted

a LOT of images on
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Flickr_review_needed
have a "reviewer" field, yet {{flickrreview}} isn't filled in and thus
images still show up there.

Is that a bug? a feature?


subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
On 2/19/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is there a reason on why flckrlickr doesn't fill in the fields at
> > {{flickreview}} template?
>
> The template was invented only recently, and has been applied to
> FlickrLickr images even more recently. FlickrLickr images are reviewed
> & correctly licensed (they were all under CC-BY when my bot spidered
> them); CC licenses are not revocable. The justification here is that
> "Another look can't hurt"; I'm worried that it will cause Fear,
> Uncertainty and Doubt.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
> free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

Thanks, I was just wondering about the duplicity. I'll continue
markign images as reviewed


from_name: Christiano Moreschi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Defining "2.344111 metres" as "tall" either violates NPOV or OR. It's a
completely arbitrary definition that someone has made up. Take your pick as
to which policy it violates.

Moreschi

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Hotmail is evolving ? check out the new Windows Live Mail
http://ideas.live.com


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:10:11 -0600, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com>
wrote:

>I agree. So does the real conflict come in having a subjective article
>name (using "tall") for an article that is using an objective criteria?

No, the problem comes from the fact that the definition of "tall" was
cooked up by some guys on the basis that it included some folks they
wanted in but didn't make the list too long :-)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:24:16 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>IMHO, the need for readable, human-friendly article names trumps the
>need for the article name to be totally precise. As long as the
>introduction makes it clear what the criteria are, err on the side of
>pleasant article names.

Yes, the name is fine, it's the selection criteria that bug me.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Hmmm, we seem to be talking at cross purposes. I really don't see how a
"List of men above 8 foot tall" could be considered original research,
provided you have good references and aren't making up fictional statistics.
It's just a list of pretty big men. It may be unencyclopedic, of course, but
that's another question.

What is original research, in my opinion, is saying that these 8-foot men
are tall, but that nobody else qualifies as tall. That is hardly NPOV. We
just can't make up our own definition as to what is "tall" and what isn't.

Cheers,

Moreschi

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Hotmail is evolving ? check out the new Windows Live Mail
http://ideas.live.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:56:35 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>As I suggested, [[List of men famous for being tall]]?

Would be fine.  As long as there are several sources identifying them
as unusually tall for their time / occupation / whatever.

Clint Eastwood is tall for his height...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:54:29 -0800 (PST), Cheney Shill
<halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:

>I'd support you, but, sadly, I have been blocked since last
>year for doing nothing more then trying to apply policy and
>remove original research

THIS IS THE POLICE!

DROP THE STICK AND STEP AWAY FROM THE HORSE CARCASS!

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] class-action suit??

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:29:35 -0500, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com>
wrote:

>	I was recently contacted by some law firm from Miami,
>	Florida about some class-action lawsuit they were
>	assembling that involved a bunch of former and current
>	Wikipedia editors that are suing the Wikimedia Foundation
>	for compensation for all the time they spent improving
>	the site without pay.
>	[[User:Snowboarder77]] 03:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

About six weeks early, I'd say.

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


from_name: Ilya "Voyager" Schurov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Incremental article IDs

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:

> The way I'd do this is for one namespace, disable all new page
> creations. Then create a new special page that acts as a new page
> interface sans the title requirement. When it gets submitted, the
> database assigns it a title (using a counter table to determine which ID
> to use) and creates a new page normally. It sounds doable, although it
> will probably require some hackery in EditPage.php.
Edward, thank you for reply.

As far as I understand, I don't need to turn off new page creations. It
can lead to some editing conflict, but it doesn't seems to be very
serious problem here. (BTW, is it possible to turn off new article
creation only for one particular namespace?).

I'd like the idea of using custom SpecialPage as a way to create
alternative new page interface. However, I can't realize how to save the
brand new article when user click "Submit" in the special page's form. I
dislike the idea to re-implement EditPage.php here :)

Any links to code samples are very appreciated.

--
With best regards,
Ilya V. Schurov.


body:
On 19/02/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> And how do you propose we hide what pages an image is used on?
> Switch them up randomly?

Kid of five views [[Teletubbies]].

Tinky winky,
Dipsy,
La-la,
OH MY GOD, IT'S GOATSE!

Rob Church


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 19/02/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sounds familiar, except you're missing an important part: it must be easy,
> also, to lose adminship.  In other words, it really must be no big deal,
> which it currently isn't (no big deal).

This is unlikely to happen - it strikes me there's not a lot of net
plus in firing the experienced admins. The cases aren't symmetrical.

- d.


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> The webcomics thing is a case in point. From my "old-school" POV :-) , I
> tend to regard webcomics as intrinsically non-notable,

Just curious, Have you ever closed an AFD on a webcomic? Considering
your "old school POV" in the subject, could you be impartial judging
consensus? The same question could be asked the "webcomic
inclusionists".


subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
On 2/19/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is there a reason on why flckrlickr doesn't fill in the fields at
> > {{flickreview}} template?
>
> The template was invented only recently, and has been applied to
> FlickrLickr images even more recently. FlickrLickr images are reviewed
> & correctly licensed (they were all under CC-BY when my bot spidered
> them); CC licenses are not revocable. The justification here is that
> "Another look can't hurt"; I'm worried that it will cause Fear,
> Uncertainty and Doubt.

*Sigh*

Erik, if a Flickr user misclicked on the dropdown and selected the
wrong license unknowingly and unintentionally they did not make a
valid release under that license.  Not only would such an accidental
and uncompensated release have zero legal standing, it is terrible
from a position of ethics.

We *depend* on the goodwill of content creators for our success. We
will squander our good will by taking advantage of simple mistakes
made by people who couldn't be expected to know any better.

Furthermore, there are *many* copyright violations on Flickr.  Flickr
refuses to take complaints from third parties so it is no wonder the
accumulate.  A second human review is a good sanity check against
situations where the flickr user is not really the copyright holder.

Part of our review process thanks Flickr users for their selection of
a free licenses.  This serves three purposes: It increases our
confidence that no mistake was made, it promotes free licenses over
non-free ones, and it raises awareness of our project and encourages
people to become direct contributors.

I hope that you can see the advantages of review and will withdraw
your objections.  No one is asking you to do any work on it... and the
end result should be a healther collection of content and a larger
community. I think it's a good tradeoff for verses a tiny number of
potentially ambiguously copyrighted images that we'll lose.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] There's a name for an all-out wheel war

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

Christof Sperl stated for the record:
> And seriously, I do not believe in Jimbos "devine vengeance"...

You don't?!?!?  Blasphemy!  Next you'll be denying His Noodly Appendage!

- --
 Sean Barrett     | If you read a post from the Buddha on
 sean at epoptic.com | Usenet, plonk his address in your killfile.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF2m/w/SVOiq2uhHMRArQvAKCJucrjlf1Cqc3NeK5pmx08X3naJwCeJoZj
H/jRi44/3MP7wRlMk2LVVzk=
=oghE
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 2/19/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:
> That's bad practice in my opinion. Such nodes could also be border points
> for universites or large businesses or ISPs. Plus exit points change like
> the hours on a clock - people drop in and drop off the network on a whim,
> and many using dymanic DNS. So blocking Tor nodes is very iffy, and could
> wind up blocking a bunch of legitimate contributors.

I think you're somewhat overstating how frequently the exit node list
changes.  Nodes may change regularly, but there are a lot of IPs that
have been steady Tor exit nodes for a long time, no?

In any case, it should be noted that it's Foundation policy to block
all open proxies, including Tor exit nodes.  The harm outweighs the
benefit when it comes to trying to stop vandalism.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] class-action suit??

body:
> This just in from [[Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Class Action?]]:
>
>         I was recently contacted by some law firm from Miami,
>         Florida about some class-action lawsuit they were
>         assembling that involved a bunch of former and current
>         Wikipedia editors that are suing the Wikimedia Foundation
>         for compensation for all the time they spent improving
>         the site without pay.
>         [[User:Snowboarder77]] 03:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
>
> I rather suspect it's bogus on a couple of different levels,
> but I thought I'd mention it here.

You can do that under Florida law? I'm living in the wrong country... ;)


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hi!
> For my part, I don't think the WMF *should* have any power over
> privacy policy.  The end users should have that power.  If they want
> to browse anonymously, there are plenty of tools out there to do that.
>  If they just want to stop giving referer information, there are
> plenty of tools for that too.

Yay, let's just give away all logs to the public, everyone will be
happy, and the ones concerned about privacy will be able to use Tor.
Or some anonymous proxy .
Why should WMF have power over that? Because the potential target for
the privacy violation attacks is the one who doesn't know about the
possibility.

Anyway, this is wrong place to discuss privacy policy. I just mention
that there're technical issues where we'd fail to comply with it.

> Reducing costs and improving user experience are fairly synonymous.
> If you can cut costs, then you can either spend the extra money
> improving user experience or you can have fewer or less obnoxious
> fundraising drives.

Of course, instead of buying a luxury car, you can buy two cheaper
ones and drive both at the same time ;-)
Now there're bits of experience, which are not completely synonymous
with reduced costs. That means being more up than down, getting
higher quality images, faster response times, etc.
Every decision like that has a cost. I guess we should hire some
consultants to do cost/benefit analysis for us, then we could give
that to board to decide on. ;-)

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 19/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> I do believe the relaxation of de-facto requirements to become an admin
> needs to come first. But streamlining the process to remove abusive
> admins is also an important step.

In clear-cut cases of abuse, the AC does its party-stopping impression
of a ton of bricks quite efficiently. In cases of unpopularity with
vocal mobs, it doesn't. I submit that if you mean the second case
needs to be given more weight, that's probably not actually a good
idea for getting an encyclopedia written.

- d.


subject:
[Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy on
	automatic image replacement

body:
On 2/19/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well in those cases we can virtually do what we like, because no one
> will notice. ;)

Indeed.

> > I'm almost tempted to say that IE bug workarounds should be removed
> > from commons. Perhaps some projects would choose not to work around IE
> > bugs, and yet we are shoving these workaround images on them?
>
> How is us having images, which any project can choose to use or not,
> "shoving" images on anyone? This is a somewhat odd assertion.
> Anyway I don't know much about this, I just know it's a reason some
> people have. And I personally don't want to push deletion of
> non-copyvios when it's going to cause friction between Commons and
> another project.

Projects can always upload an image locally if it is deleted or not
accepted on commons. (except those projects whom have totally disabled
local upload, .. but thats a self-inflicted wound)

However, if an image is on commons and a project doesn't want it there
is no way for the project to stop the image from being used.. other
than abusing the badimagelist or tracking down each and every time
someone puts it in an article. They lose the ability to make a
decision once and have it bind.

I don't know that it is a problem for these, but I think that it's
worthwhile to point out that it's worse for commons to have an image
that projects reject than it is for commons to reject an image a
project wants.


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
	inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

body:
> First, having a software displaying different behavior depending on the
> language/project is a bad idea. It makes things very complex and users
> travelling from one language to another are likely to find this disturbing.

That same logic could be used to say all languages should have the
same system for RFA, AFD, etc. It was decided a long time ago that
different languages would be allowed to decide their own policies.
Policies which are enforced by the software are no different from any
other policies.

Personally, I think 45 days is rather long, and I'm a little
uncomfortable with it apparently being handled as a vote (although the
results of the vote don't leave much room for interpretation, so it
probably makes no difference), but if that's how pt want to do things,
it's entirely up to them.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 20/02/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Nobody is promoting a wholesale purge of admins.
>>
>>
>It's entirely unclear what is being advocated. I'm seeing long
>invective-filled posts that tell me to go look for examples to support
>the ranters' positions myself, but no actual case examples. And let me
>remind you I'm one of the ones who thinks RFA is utterly broken and we
>probably need about twice as many admins.
>
Fair enough.  My focus is on how we add new admins, and that should have
priority at this time over what we do with the problem children.  We
probably agree on that.  I don't think that getting into actual case
examples which name names about who should be desysopped would be
helpful.  It would likely only result in a debate about the named
individuals.

>>Because of their
>>leadership position they should be held to a higher standard than
>>ordinary editors, and when applicable de-adminship should come swiftly
>>and in no uncertain terms.  It could be appealed to Arbcom, but for any
>>reasonable case it should be kept off until the appeal is resolved.
>>
>>
>Indeed. Now please give me some solid criteria, with actual case
>examples where you think someone should indeed have been de-adminned
>swiftly and also cases where you think they shouldn't. So we're all on
>the same page here.
>
I would much prefer dealing with criteria.  When Jossi referred to it
WP:ANI I went there to see what was happenning   I was disgusted by that
whole process; there were some possible candidates for de-adminning
there, but I would certainly want to read things there in more detail
before making specific recommendations.

Admins should know better.  If they had to know the rules before being
promoted they should not so easily forget them when they break them.  On
that basis alone they should not need the repeated warnings that might
be given to newbies.

Admins should not impose blocks arbitrarily longer than what it provided
for the penalty in question.  An admin who does that should be blocked
for as long as the excess he imposes.  No block in excess of 24 hours is
an emergency

Admins should not engage in persistently abusive action and name-calling.

Unless there is an emergency admins should give appropriate warning
before taking drastic actions.

Admins should be respectful of all others, especially newbies.

There are other possibilities, but I think that it's more that admins
know that when they behave badly there are people there willing to take
swift but fair action.  If something like that were in force, I would be
willing to disregard anything that happened before it came into force.

Ec


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
> On 2/19/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> on 2/19/07 4:43 PM, K P at kpbotany at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> If there is a problem, denying it doesn't address it any better than
>>> attacking the messenger.
>>
>> Or simply ignoring him.
>>
>>> Particularly when a large part of the problem is
>>> the denial of a problem,
>>
>> Your are seeing that in action right now!
>>
>>> and an entrenched culture that prevents reviews and
>>> solutions to the problem.
>>
>> Don't fix it - if it works for you.
>>
>> Marc
>
> on 2/19/07 7:01 PM, K P at kpbotany at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Your post was too subtle, it appears.
>
> KP

KP,

In Karate there are 32 Vital Points on the human body. Some, when struck,
can take as long a 10 days for the desired effect to occur ;-).

Keep the faith,

Marc


from_name: Matthias

subject:
[Commons-l] Fwd: Commons request for input: policy on automatic
 image replacement

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 20/02/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> so.. suppose I delete a png sicne there's a superior svg (manually
>> checked) the bot currently delinsk the png from local projects
>> is there a way to tell the bot to relink with the svg?
>> otherwise projects will lose the png unaware that there's a svg replacing it
>>
>
> At the moment that's what will happen. But we can work with
> Orgullomoore, the bot owner, to fix this up. For example, if you put
> 'no-orgullobot' in the deletion reason, it won't delink. So when we
> delete such PNGs, we could just put 'no-orgullobot', and then manually
> give it a replacement instruction. Or we could invent something new
> like 'orgullobot-replace:newimage.jpg' . I don't think that will be a
> big problem.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
As far as I know there is no way to include a replace-comment in the
deletion reason (yet). But I just noticed that the Delinker is able to
replace images through commands. See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Orgullobot/commands/documentation
for the syntax.

Matt
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list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Logo] One True Wiktionary logo

body:
Hello,
[[m:Logo]] claims logo should be consistent. I agree.
This document shows us the "scrabble" type logo as Wiktionary logo; at
least it was a result of straw poll. I am not sure if the Wiktionary
active editors love it. Perhaps not.
On the Wikimedia Foundation website, on "Our projects" table and
[[Wikimedia:Our projects]], both pages show visitors the old one (dic
entry type) logo as project logo.

On the project itself, most of projects - I visited top 10 websites of
Wiktionaries to write this mail - most of projects use the older one
as their logos, except one. The Vietnamese Wiktionary uses the
scrabble type.

We need to pursue consistency here? Or is it okay for all parties involved?

I think it is a matter of promotion/publification, not only the
community, so sent a cc to Communication committee (before I failed to
type the current email address of this list) .

Two different logos:
"scrabble type"
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiktprintable_without_text.svg
"dic entry type"
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiktionary.png
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


subject: [WikiEN-l] Outside view of adminship

body:
> Klyern   (1 day ago)
> you dont know s**t about wikipedia
>
> you have to rely ONLY on the posts created by mods. or ppl given power by mods.
>
> mods give power to a lot of ppl one at a time, its like a piramid. but
> it DOES works, its only that theres only so few mods yet and so few
> THEMES being mod locked yet.
>
> you can only sugest stuff in mod locked threads.

It doesn't like he's describing Wikipedia at all. Perhaps he's
describing some other wiki and doesn't understand that "wikipedia"
means a specific wiki?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

body:
> >Yes. Wikis make no distinction between editors and readers. Just as
> >your proposal would make no distinction between editors/readers and
> >admins.
> >
> If you're so hostile to wikis why do you waste your time with them?

Who said I'm hostile to wikis? I never said that making no distinction
between editors and readers is a bad thing, I just said that it's what
wikis did.


body:
> No one's talking about giving everyone admin powers.

Actually, they are. Most people that are making proposals are making
more moderate ones, but not all.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
On 2/19/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Erik, if a Flickr user misclicked on the dropdown and selected the
> wrong license unknowingly and unintentionally they did not make a
> valid release under that license.  Not only would such an accidental
> and uncompensated release have zero legal standing, it is terrible
> from a position of ethics.

And this just in... Flickr is now down because for the past two days
it has been displaying the wrong images. Although this seems to have
been limited to small images, there is no reason to see why other
technical difficulties couldn't cause license data and images to be
mismatched.

I'm glad the review bot compares the MD5sum of our copy and theirs. :)


from_name: Boris Eetgerink

body:
Anthony wrote:
> On 2/19/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2/19/07, Anthony <wikitech at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> On 2/19/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> As for image (or any other) hosting - WMF would have completely no
>>>> power over privacy policy then - unless whole world agreed to turn
>>>> off Referer [sic] request headers.
>>> Actually, there are plenty of ways to refer people to images without
>>> leaking the article title.  I'm not sure what the point would be,
>>> though.  Which pages you're viewing is pretty obvious based on what
>>> images you're loading.
>> And how do you propose we hide what pages an image is used on?
>> Switch them up randomly?
>>
> No, what I said was precisely that you *can't* hide what pages an
> image is used on.  You could hide the referrer using various tricks
> (frames, redirects, javascript, etc), but doing so wouldn't accomplish
> anything.

Or if you're desperate you can just download the archive/dump and search
it for that image. ;)

Boris


from_name: Rob Smith

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Otrs-en-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] If you don't object
	to this, you're consenting

body:
On 2/18/07, Jack <jackdt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_problem/Factual_error_%28from_enterprise%29
> >
> > I posted about this to both these lists and have had no replies or
> > comment whatsoever so far.
> >
> > So unless someone comes up with really convincing reasons not to push
> > this as the place to send companies with article concerns - and I mean
> > as in, sending out a press release - then that's precisely what's
> > going to happen.
> >
> > In particular, are there any OTRS volunteers who can tell me if that's
> > the best way to raise a substantial legal concern about something on
> > en:wp?
>
> That's fine - OTRS volunteers will forward valid requests to the OTRS
> legal queue, and close/deal with the insane/hysterical ones.
> --
> user:Jeandr?

I don't see where the Help Desk or the Foundation links are useful to get
redress for factual errors.

Rob Smith,
aka User:Nobs01


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
geni wrote:

>Juding by the backlogs and the burnouts I'd tend towards the position
>that the hyperactives are maxed out. The upshot of this is that unless
>we can find more hyperactives or get more of the long tail to join the
>hyperactives we are going to have problems.
>
>Lowering the standards on RFA is meaningless unless you can show we
>will get more hyper actives rather than more paper admins.
>
>Increaseing the activity level of the long tail is the other option
>but no one appears to have any ideas on how to do this (ok we could
>try to start admin action countitis but people tend to object to that
>suggestion.
>
I would tend to look toward the long tails, and more of the "quiet
admin" as Stan describes himself.  I'm sure that many good admins just
don't want to get involved in the constant haggling that goes on.  Some
might quietly go ahead and work on cleaning up non-contentious backlog,
but they aren't even going to try to become admins in the current scheme
of things.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
on 2/19/07 8:51 PM, geni at geniice at gmail.com wrote:

> On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> In Karate there are 32 Vital Points on the human body. Some, when struck,
>> can take as long a 10 days for the desired effect to occur ;-).
>>
>
>
> The evidence suggests this is not the case. No one has managed to
> demostraight such abilities under controled conditions and Karate with
> it's pure strikeing style tends to get taken appart by say BJJ or
> judo. While there are exceptions the fighters in MMA contests such as
> PRIDE ot UFC tend to rely on Muay Thai as their primary source of
> stikeing skills rather than Karate.

geni,

==Sources==
* http://www.ao-denkou-kai.org/leo_training.htm

Are you wanting to revert my edit? :-)

Marc


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 2/19/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:
> I see. Block Tor exit nodes. Translated: "Punish 10's of thousands of
> college students, business users, and ISP customers, because of the
> actions of one or two people."  Uh, ya.

Are there tens of thousands of college students, business users, and
ISP customers who are forced to use Tor?  I'm not aware that college
campuses tend to make all their machines Tor exit nodes as a matter of
course.  Chinese users, now, there you may have a case for permitting
edits from accounts, but I don't think anyone suggested banning edits
from accounts.

On 2/19/07, Kasimir Gabert <kasimir.g at gmail.com> wrote:
> Currently Wikipedia blocks all anonymous edits from Tor exit nodes.
> This is not harmful to real users but protects from vandalism.  You
> should do the same, instead of blocking *everything* from tor exit
> nodes.  (Allow account creation, allow edits from accounts).

That may make sense, yes.  Or allow edits from accounts but not
account creation, perhaps, so that users from China or whatnot will
have to go to a one-time effort of getting someone to create an
account for them (if you have to ask an admin, it's going to be rather
difficult to pile up dozens of sleeper accounts).  But that might be
too harsh, depending on the wiki.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
on 2/19/07 9:03 PM, K P at kpbotany at gmail.com wrote:

> No, you're both wrong, it's all in the wrists.  No, wait, maybe it's all in
> the breathing.  KP

Heavy, I hope :-)

Marc


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 19/02/07, rfrangi at libero.it <rfrangi at libero.it> wrote:
> And on en.wp anonymous users cannot create new articles. Also the ability for blocked users can edit their talk page in active somewhere, and inactive somewhere else.

(in regard to Anthere's comment)

Yeah, good point! Does this mean enwp has to let anon users create
pages again?  :P or does it get special status as the biggest project?

The 'let blocked users edit their own talk page' thing is a no-brainer, to me...

IMO it's ok for different wiki communities to have different
standards. Each group has their own idiosyncratic way of doing things,
e.g. esWP making all sysops bureaucrats (don't know if they're still
doing this or not).

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 19/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 19/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> >> I do believe the relaxation of de-facto requirements to become an admin
> >> needs to come first. But streamlining the process to remove abusive
> >> admins is also an important step.

> > In clear-cut cases of abuse, the AC does its party-stopping impression
> > of a ton of bricks quite efficiently. In cases of unpopularity with
> > vocal mobs, it doesn't. I submit that if you mean the second case
> > needs to be given more weight, that's probably not actually a good
> > idea for getting an encyclopedia written.

> That's pretty binary thinking, David. Can you not even imagine the
> existence of other alternatives?

I can, I'm specifically asking what *you* meant. That is, please
elaborate rather than saying "I dunno, think up what I might have
meant."

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 19/02/07, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:

> Can you give concrete examples of admins being "overtly hostile to
> part-time editors"?  And if you can produce such examples, are these
> the exception, or the rule?

Indeed. List any such cases (that's the put-up-or-shut-up bit) and see
if these can be dealt with by less than apocalyptic means first
(that's the assume good faith in the admins as well bit).

There's a lot of unspecified accusations in this thread and very
little in the way of concrete examples at all.

- d.


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>No one's talking about giving everyone admin powers.
>>
>>
>Actually, they are. Most people that are making proposals are making
>more moderate ones, but not all.
>
I have been quite content to suggest giving the privileges too 100
random editors who meet minimal criteria.  Track them for three months,
and be guided later by the results of that experiment.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/19/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
> Even with a general site disclaimer, the above information may be non-encyclopedic.  Wikipedia is not a how-to guide, a doctor, a pharmacist, a drug

I find it frustrating how often useful information is removed under
the single principle of "Wikipedia is not a ...". Explaining how to
use a coffee plunger? "Wikipedia is not a how-to..." - yes, but what
surely an explanation is an essential part of the article. Links to
articles that demonstrate the concept of [[One deal a day]]?
"Wikipedia is not a repository of links". Mentioning the local tourist
attractions and best restaurants of a small town? "Wikipedia is not a
travel guide" - yes, but that's probably the most useful thing you
could write about a small town.

Is it time we replaced WP:NOT with "Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia.
It's unique, and it's just trying to be useful to people, dammit."

Steve


body:
On 2/19/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are plenty of on-line places whose purpose is to give dosages.
> Usefulness?  I use that one every once in a while and get firmly scolded,
> Wikipedia is not a recipe book, for cakes or drugs, and dosage is a lot more

Quite frankly, I don't see anything "unencyclopaedic" about providing
a definitive, stereotypical recipe for [[pancake]]. It would be much
more useful and authoratitive than this waffle:

--
American or Canadian pancakes contain a raising agent, usually baking
powder, and contains different proportions of eggs, flour and milk,
which create a thick batter. If desired, one could add cinnimon and
sugar, giving the pancake additional flavour. This batter is either
spooned or poured (1/4 measuring cups are good for pancakes) onto a
hot surface, and spread to form a circle about ? or ? inch (1 cm)
thick. The raising agent causes bubbles to rise to the uncooked side
of the pancake, at which point the pancake is ready to be flipped.
--

Granted, we should include a source for the recipe, and a good one at that.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On 2/19/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure, a list of tall men is crufty.  We have lots of cruft on Wikipedia, so
> that element is just par for the course.  However, the statement that "Tall
> is defined by agreement of editors, not by any externally verifiable
> definition" obviously violates WP:V, which is policy, and WP:NOR.  We can't
> have a list that lacks criteria for inclusion which are not independent of
> Wikipedia.

Let's step back for a second and pretend we weren't Wikipedia. Imagine
we're a traditional encyclopaedia produced by a traditional, stuffy
publishing house. What criteria would they use? My guess is it would
be one guy picking anyone who seemed worth mentioning, on the basis
that they'd left some mark on history. World record holders,
politicians, actors, freaks would be on the list - but only a passing
mention of basket ball players.

Now, how can we collectively come up with a list as good as that? An
objective height requirement is clearly the least useful metric we
could use for the reasons stated. What would be better?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] WelcomeCommitteeBot?

body:
On 2/19/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the newbies try to reply on their own talk page, we should include a
> "please click here to reply" link to avoid that.

The (not necessarily drastic) downside of that is we would be teaching
them a non-standard way of using talk pages that won't actually get
them very far.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 19/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> How many abusive admins do you consider acceptable?

I think you really need to answer his question first. You're playing
sophist here.

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Instant Messenger / Email integration with
	MediaWiki

body:
On 2/19/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> Finally, in both the IM and Email cases, race-conditions become a serious
> issue.  How do you determine which publishing entity (IM, Email client, or
> wiki user) got there first?  Using a standard interface (the wiki)
> alleviates this problem.

Can you elaborate on this? Presumably at the server end there are IM,
email and web interfaces to the wiki database. How is the question of
an IM and an email "update" command arriving simultaneously any
different from that of two web POST commands arriving simultaneously?

I would love it if there was an email-to-wikipedia interface, mainly
because my mobile phone gives me unlimited email for free (whereas web
browsing is ridicously expensive - go figure). There do appear to be a
lot of fairly significant hurdles though: authentication, parsing
email (stripping out signatures, demangling character conversions,
avoiding accidental changing of whitespace etc), and of course the
potential for significant lag between receive and update - is merging
really a safe option when the article may have been downloaded 6 hours
earlier?

Incidentally, is there by any chance a read-only email fetch mechanism
for Wikipedia?

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Not everything belongs in here.
Travel info belongs in Wikitravel.
Dictionary stuff belongs in Wiktionary and so on.
The fact it's not a doctor or a pharmacist is just common sense.
You may think giving the advice is useful, but it isn't unless it comes from
an expert.

Mgm

On 2/19/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:52:47 +1100  English Wikipedia  wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On 2/19/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
> > Even with a general site disclaimer, the above information may be
> non-encyclopedic.  Wikipedia is not a how-to guide, a doctor, a
> pharmacist, a
> drug
>
> I find it frustrating how often useful information is removed under
> the single principle of "Wikipedia is not a ...". Explaining how
> to
> use a coffee plunger? "Wikipedia is not a how-to..." - yes, but
> what
> surely an explanation is an essential part of the article. Links to
> articles that demonstrate the concept of [[One deal a day]]?
> "Wikipedia is not a repository of links". Mentioning the local
> tourist
> attractions and best restaurants of a small town? "Wikipedia is not a
> travel guide" - yes, but that's probably the most useful thing you
> could write about a small town.
>
> Is it time we replaced WP:NOT with "Wikipedia is not an
> encyclopaedia.
> It's unique, and it's just trying to be useful to people, dammit."
>
> Steve
> Hi,
>
> Wikibooks or Wikitravel would be good homes for the items mentioned
> above.  Part of Wikipedia's appeal, at least to me, is that good authors are
> very picky about choosing relevant information that best illustrates an
> abstract subject.  To borrow the example:  I know that a pancake comes from
> a Bisquick box, but what if I want to know what a pancake **really** is?
>
> -George
> en: [[User:GChriss]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 19/02/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:

> Administrators are complained about all the time all over Wikipedia.  If
> you're not seeing it, you're making certain you aren't.

I see many complaints; how many of these are actually reasonably
substantiable is an entirely different question. Please give examples
of complaints you consider reasonable complaints and those you don't,
so I have some idea of your sensitivity level.

- d.


body:
Hi all,
  After the previous thread, I ask out of curiosity, what if there
were just a small number of servers spread around the world, not owned
by the WMF. Something like:

- Users can access en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia-brazil.org,
en.wikipedia-japan.org etc interchangeably
- Each site is a complete copy of the database, and capable of serving
independently
- Every change on one database is immediately replicated to the others
- To make this worthwhile, all the servers except the original are
owned and operated by third parties on a sponsorship arrangement,
presumably meaning they get to discreetly stick a logo somewhere

Is this sort of thing technically feasible? The clear advantage is
faster response time for people near one of the overseas hosts,
especially when just browsing. I can see obvious problems with the
replication (ie, two competing requests arriving simultaneously), and
what happens when a link fails for an extended period of time. Perhaps
a simpler model:

- Read requests are fulfilled by these distributed servers
- All write requests are sent to the one central server which
immediately pushes out a "dirty page" notification (but not page
content) to the other servers
- The distributed servers fetch updated pages when a user requests a
"dirty page", or perhaps after some time period, to avoid the whole
database becoming too out of date

This model would rely on the fact that the vast majority of requests
are reads, not writes, and attempts to reduce the impact of a page
which is heavily modified by one server, while infrequently requested
on another.

Thoughts? I'm obviously not a network or database engineer so I'm just
wondering if this would be a workable or useful solution. It at least
avoids the problems of untrusted servers, unreliable servers, and
gives an additional benefit in responsiveness.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout (deputy admins)

body:
On 2/19/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> As you're the second person to use the phrase "you both" when replying
> to me, I should point out that... oh, forget it.

Heh, sorry, point taken. I meant Ray and Thomas. See what happens when
you stray into the crossfire?

Steve


body:
On 2/19/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> It is a great piece of research.  However, is it Wikipedia's or
> WMF's thing to do this?  It seems like a generic web component,
> almost like Apache, the PHP programming language or the Squid
> proxy server.  If the fully distributed web server architecture
> was a really good idea, many kinds of websites could find use for
> it and someone else might already have implemented it.  Even if

WMF is unique in that its bandwidth requirements are astronomical
compared to its income. There are plenty of high-bandwidth sites. And
plenty of low-budget sites. But there's nothing that comes close to
Wikipedia in the proportion of the two. So if the (probably not that
critical) problem is "how to host a huge amount of highly-requested
content on a shoestring budget", it's not surprising that no one has
attempted to solve it before.

Steve


from_name: Jeremy Cushman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
Right now on the English Wikipedia bots are limited to 6 edits per minute.
Is it time to raise the permitted edit rate?  Do we have the server capacity
now to handle rapid editing?
--Mets501


from_name: Platonides

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> As for image (or any other) hosting - WMF would have completely no
> power over privacy policy then - unless whole world agreed to turn
> off Referer [sic] request headers.
> Of course, that aside, there're quite some other issues with
> efficiency, and it is mostly about 'reducing costs' rather than
> 'improving user experience'.

You could get them by FTP. Still, there's the leak of IP address and
which image you're seeing (most have an associated area). And some
clients may reveal the email.
And there's still the problem of faking the content: 'i asked for POTD,
and get the "goatse" image'.
Let's use ed2k protocol for images :D

> It would be much easier just to have someone donate few gigabits of
> IP transit ;-)
Not everybody can give a few gigas of IP transit ;)


from_name: Jim Wilson

body:
On 2/20/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think that's the case. As I understood it, MediaWiki just
> checks to see if the content that's changing has been changed. The
> following sequence of events is acceptable:

You're probably right - I haven't dug through EditPage in a long time. :(

On 2/19/07, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Google for "web-to-email", or take a look at this list:
>
> http://www.oscar.org.uk/about/webtoemail.htm
>
> A lot of those are no longer in operation, but I know that
> web at pagegetter.com works well.

Thanks for looking this up, John - I couldn't remember what it was called.
Good to know.

-- Jim


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Guettarda wrote:

>On 2/19/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Christiano Moreschi wrote:
>>
>>
>>>So, it might be worth seeing whether something similar could work with
>>>this List of Tall Men. Is this at al possible?
>>>
>>>Alternatively, something to think about might be a list of World
>>>Record Holders for height, or something similar. But the current
>>>arbitrary definition of x.y metres is not really acceptable. Arbitrary
>>>definitions are original research.
>>>
>>>
>>Definitions aren't research at all, and all definitions are arbitrary.
>>Let's avoid expanding the idea of original research beyond what it was
>>intended to do.
>>
>>
>Creating "new knowledge" is OR.  While a definition cannot, in and of itself
>be OR, using coming up with a new definition for "tall" (2.5-3 sd + 6 cm) is
>OR, all the more so when it applies a modified paediatric definition of
>"tall" to adults.
>
You can arbitrarily define tall as whatever you want it to be without a
lick of evidence, and without doing anything to resaearch the fact.  It
may even be an original definition, but not original research.  The
research comes in when you look to populate the list with those who meet
whatever criterion you have established for being tall.  If you find
those heights in published material it's not original research; if you
go out and measure the heights yourself it is.

Ec


body:
GerardM escribi?:
> Hoi,
> A live mirror is not based on using dumps. A life mirror wants an update by
> either crawling real time or by using the RSS feed to keep the system up to
> date.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

I know what is a 'live mirror'. What i don't know is how live does it
need to be for Anthony.
And not everyone is able to set sensible times. Probably, only the
server admins know what is acceptable and not at a moment.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:

>On Feb 19, 2007, at 1:43 PM, K P wrote:
>
>
>>Particularly when a large part of the problem is
>>the denial of a problem, and an entrenched culture that prevents
>>reviews and
>>solutions to the problem.
>>
>>
>That is, of course, your assessment and not a fact.
>
>You speak of "entrenched culture". I speak of a culture that has
>produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
>collaboration. I am proud to be have had the opportunity to be part
>of it, btw.
>
Boosterism aside, how has the RfA culture produced amazing results?

Ec