from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
What you're saying is
a) just about right and
b) certainly not what the current policy says.

On 3/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been trying to get my head around why we even have a rule about
> what an acceptable source is. It seems to me that this is how things
> should work.
>
> A WP article must only exist if its subject has been referred to in a
> reputable source (notability, mostly). This source should, but need
> not, be cited.
> Information in WP articles must be verifiable. This means either:
>  - the information is directly verifiable (eg, you could figure out
> who to ring up to find whether a train timetable was accurate)
>  - or, the information has been published by a secondary source. The
> source must be either reputable or cited. Ie, if the information has
> been published in a peer reviewed journal, then not having cited that
> source is not a major problem (someone else can find it later).
> Similarly, quoting a weblog is ok, as long as the source is given,
> since readers can evaluate its reputability for themselves
>
> Is this a reasonable ruleset? At the moment we seem to have nonsense
> rules flying around like every piece of information added must be
> cited to a reputable source, which is neither common practice, nor
> practical, nor desirable.
>
> If this ruleset is ok, then developing guidelines flows naturally. If
> you think information breaks one of the rules, you can remove it. If
> you think it has never been published anywhere reputable (and a
> disreputable source is not provided), then remove it to the talk page.
>
> Note that I'm setting the bar quite low here - obviously it is
> desirable that we cite sources. But we need to be strict about exactly
> what should never be in Wikipedia.
>
> Steve
>
> On 3/4/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/4/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > > I wrote:
> > > > Those interested in verifiability, and in particular whether
> > > > "insufficiently verified" information can be rightfully removed,
> > > > might be interested in a controversy bubbling over at the
> > > > [[Jeffrey Vernon Merkey]] page.  That page contains information
> > > > critical of Merkey which was derived from the [[Linux Kernel
> > > > Mailing List]]...
> > >
> > > Never mind; the issue is a bit more subtle than I appreciated at
> > > first.  It's not that unflattering things were said about Merkey
> > > on the mailing list.  It's that Merkey *did* unflattering things
> > > on the mailing list, things that have been amply documented
> > > elsewhere.  (I remember reading about them at the time.)
> >
> > See [[Wikipedia:Verifiability/Proposed revision]] for one that boils
> > things down.
> >
> > I think it's a good idea for the question of "what's an acceptable
> > source" to be distinct to the rule of verifiability. The latter is
> > central to Wikipedia; the former is a much more contentious and fuzzy
> > issue.
> >
> > People need to understand that primary sources are always acceptable.
> > E.g. if you're referring to a mailing list archive to discuss the
> > mailing list archive, or (for example) the text of someone's post to a
> > mailing list, that's totally fine and what historians and journalists
> > of computer history do all the time.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking for inappropriate usernames

body:
On 3/5/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Really, I don't think there is any need for policy justification of dealing
> with vandals. People have been dealing with them in this way for a long time
> and there has never been a problem with it. I have to suggest that you
> consider whether the apparent need for policy justification of blocking
> inappropriate usernames is a solution to a problem that actually exists, or
> whether it is its own problem. The perjorative term in this case is "process
> fetishism".

As it stands, a vandal could legitimately claim that process wasn't
followed. Sure, they wouldn't necessarily get far - but wouldn't it be
better to actually document standard practice?

> To put it simply, I view this as a common-sense situation. We don't need
> rules when common sense does the job just fine.

>Well, I wasn't actually proposing creating new rules - simply
documenting existing ones.
> There's no need to involve policy in this anywhere. Policy makes people
> think that they only have to follow the rulebook, rather than use their
> common sense and talk things out. The rulebook is good for some things, but
> it's not good here. We need to have more trust in ourselves and each other
> to do the right thing when the time comes, I think.

Speaking as a pleb, policy also serves to reassure people that admins
do follow some kind of rulebook, rather than simply making it up as
they go along. I'm not sure that admins regularly blocking people for
an undocumented reason is a good thing. However, as it is not a
disastrous thing, either, I'll let it go.

Steve


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Magic word for talk page?

body:
Well, [a] SourceForge is shit, so it didn't commit properly and [b]
I'm not bothering, since Avar, Niklas and Mark are objecting.

Sorry.

Rob Church

On 05/03/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've added {{TALKPAGENAME}} and {{TALKPAGENAMEE}} variables which will
> be available when someone next synchronises the site with the code.
>
> [Note: On talk pages, the variable will simply print out the current page name.]
>
>
> Rob Church
>
> On 05/03/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > On http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words it lists all the
> > various MediaWiki magic words.
> >
> > I'm looking for something that can be used to give the talk page for
> > the current page.
> >
> > For example, in:
> > * The main namespace (namespace 0), it would return "Talk:{{PAGENAME}}".
> > * In the talk namespace ({{ns:1}}), it would return
> > "Talk:{{PAGENAME}}" (since the talk page for a talk page is the talk
> > page itself).
> > * In the User namespace ({{ns:2}}), it would return "User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}".
> > * In the User talk namespace ({{ns:3}}), it would return
> > "User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}" (since the talk page for a user talk page is
> > the user talk page itself).
> > * And so forth...
> >
> > Does anyone know of a way of doing this? If not, can I maybe suggest a
> > new magic word along these lines, such as "{{TALKPAGE}}", which would
> > do this?
> >
> > All the best,
> > Nick.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You raise an interesting question which has occurred to me before.
> There are topics I would consider editing on, but I don't really want
> them to come up in my list of contributions. Yet I feel like I should
> retain my copyright on those contributions...I can't think of any
> solution though.

Are you bringing this up because someone mentioned [[Donkey Punch]] in
another thread? ;)


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] For Alexa buffs only

body:
On Alexa.org, try the Traffic rankings, comparing WP with the BBC site
bbc.co.uk, and looking at the Page Views tab: like

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare_sites=bbc.co.uk&y=p&url=en.wikipedia.org#top
.

Then since Christmas WP and the Beeb are almost spookily tracking each
other; and not just in the weekday/weekend fluctuations.

Any idea of what this might mean?  The numbers could be broken; or the
demographics match amazingly over the population from which these things are
calculated.

It could mean that WP became a household word in December; in that target
group.

One to watch.

Charles


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pity the admin....

body:
On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 00:52:12 +0100, you wrote:

>Yes, it's an interesting phenomenon that I've noticed at [[Freddie
>Mercury]] (I always thought he was openly gay, but apparently there
>are those who swear he was, and those who swear he wasn't)

He wasn't until he was, if you see what I mean.  At least that's how I
remember it.

But yes, I do see echoes here of the lists which seek to claim
historical figures as Jewish / Theists / White supremacists / People
who broke their egg the small end.  It all smacks of revisionism to
me.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: textbook-l

from_name: michael_irwin at verizon.net

subject: [Textbook-l] Who would be the right contact?

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

>Hi, I have someone from the Scuola Superiore per Mediazione Linguistica
>who is interested in the Wikiversity project. It can be quite a good
>contact. So could you please let me know who I can connect her to?
>Please don't tell me just to subscribe to the list. I need one or two
>persons to create a small group of people who to refer to in such cases.
>Probably there will be also an contact to the University of Rome - but
>all this takes some time and some direct contacts.
>
>So please let me know who can help me on that :-)
>
>

At the moment we are decentralized, disorganized, and have no authority
from the Wikimedia Foundation to proceed in English with Wikiversity at
en.wikiversity.org.    If you are looking for authoritative information
or need to process sensitive negotiations or information your best bet
is probably to contact a member of the Board of Directors.

You might also point interested people at the German Language
Wikiversity portal:   http://de.wikiversity.org  which reroutes to this
apparently functional wikiversity site:
http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/Hauptseite.   I do not know for certain
who actually owns this domain and the servers currently supporting it.
I have been assuming the Wikimedia Foundation but it seems odd that
Wikiversity has been authorized to proceed in German but not English.
Perhaps the German wikimedia sites are operating under different
auspices than the original Wikimedia Foundation.

The Board has been considering setting up a number of committees,
presumably to distribute their workload and improve feedback from the
informal  "communities" to the official Wikimedia Foundation responsible
for managing donations, the internet infrastructure, and public
interface/regulatory requirements but as far as I know they have not
achieved any published formal responsibilities or procedures.  It is
possible the Board has completed initial selection, screening and
appointment of committee chairs or initial committe members from whom
the chair will be selected.  I have seen rumors of a "Communications
Committe" so perhaps a search at the meta site created to work on
project projects and organizational issues would yield something useful.

There is an active help desk (I usually check it at least once a week)
at the Wikiversity School of Engineering but there is very little
activity there, presumably because we are receiving very little casual
or dropin web traffic.

Perhaps there is such at a School of Linguistics or other applicable
subjects.  Links to the current temporary web space are available here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Wikiversity_Schools

An option that other projects have been starting to exercise which you
may wish to suggest for your serious contacts to consider is that they
contact their local information technology support people about setting
up a local wikimedia environment and then link to it from the appropiate
point in the link mazes or learning trails we are developing.   As long
as they use a compatible license template there should be no trouble
forking, merging or shifting material appropriately as policy issues are
sorted for the various sites.

Some participants do not welcome blatant attempts to merely divert local
web traffic to commercial endeavers.  Such links may be deleted as spam
or left in place until local materials or policies regarding spam links
evolve; what occurs is currently dependant upon the preferences of
individual participants who encounter the link.

There is also a for profit organization owned, at least in part, by a
couple of members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board where some
prototyping regarding collaboration on FDL'ed educational materials and
public/peer reviewed publishing for Academics has or is taking place.
http://academia.wikicities.com

Some particpants at Wikiversity including myself have been discouraging
participation at wikicities.com until the Board authorizes the English
Wikiversity link en.wikiversity.org in accordance with the expressed
intent of aproximately 69% of about 300 votes regarding the Wikiversity
project.  Others, including some of our best qualified academics feel it
is an appropriate place to experiment with the paradigm.
http://education.wikicities.com/wiki/Wikiversity#Wikiversity_Core_Courses_Initiative

Sorry we have no better answers for you.   The technology and paradigm
has awesome potential but it fizzles fast when potential participants
cannot agree on common goals or trust that there is a stable namespace
or server to deliver their efforts to the rest of the planet.  What
point in achieving carpal tunnel syndrome only to have the material
casually deleted or the servers froze from excessive demand by semantic
web bots calibrating google search capability?

I have encouraged a few highly qualified professionals to drop by and
check us out but this has resulted in no visible participation to date
so I have abandoned it for the moment as counterproductive.  This may
provide a clue as to how your colleagues will perceive the site unless
you adequately prepare them for an experiment still undergoing initial
development discussions.

Perhaps you should suggest to your candidate participants that we are
still prototyping and if they would like to get in on the ground floor
and help establish workable policy and a favorable climate for their
goals then they should browse around and either contribute something or
drop messages or questions on other participants talk pages.
Alternatively they could get a feel for online collaborative processes
at Wikipedia.org or one of the other advertized projects at the bottom
of the main entry portal pages.

If they are more interested in details or effective propagation of their
specific disciplines via proven methods; rather than developing and
setting up the experimental online learning environments to find out
what works;  then it might be best to advise them to check back every
year or so or run a google for forks or competing paradigms that they
may find more suitable or usefully active in a stable, reliable, trusted
namespace applicable to their interests or field of expertise.

I hope this was helpful.

Sincerely
Michael R. Irwin
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User_talk:Lazyquasar


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Marvel.com have a wiki

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Claiming copyright on Wikipedia material would be a violation of GFDL.  If
>> they claim copyright on everything on their site, and they copy our stuff
>> onto their site, then we can send them a letter they've violated GFDL and
>> asking them to stop.  That's all there is to it.
>
> It's not even just a violation of GFDL, it's just a normal copyright
> violation. The copyright to our articles is held by the contributors
> of those articles. If they copy them, well, they're breaching our
> individual copyrights.

But what happens if someone copies over stuff from wikipedia, or
somebody adds to wikipedia and to there?  It looks like it's impossible
to access the history at the Marvel site without registering, but it
might be needed to ascertain potential copyright violations.  Users
might dump text from there into wikipedia.  We're already fighting a
rearguard battle against some users who think they can simply copy
material from Marvel's published character guides, is there a way to
register an account which wikipedians can use to verify the dates things
were added?

Steve Block

--
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from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Magic word for talk page?

body:
 >Rob Church wrote:
 > On 05/03/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
 >
 >>I've added {{TALKPAGENAME}} and {{TALKPAGENAMEE}} variables which will
 >>be available when someone next synchronises the site with the code.
 >
> Well, [a] SourceForge is shit, so it didn't commit properly and [b]
> I'm not bothering, since Avar, Niklas and Mark are objecting.

If you don't mind me asking, what's the objection?  This is a feature
that has been requested several times during the time I've been here.
It would be extremely useful for both templates and system messages.  I
was ready to jump and shout with joy that this perennial request had
finally been fulfilled before I saw your followup message.  :(

Anyway, if you do decide to implement something like this, I'd prefer to
see {{TALKNAMESPACE}} and, to complement it, {{CONTENTNAMESPACE}}.  Plus
the URL-encoded forms, of course.

And while we're wishing for the moon, how about an {{encode:}} function
so we wouldn't _need_ all those pre-URL-encoded variables?  It would be
very useful in a number of templates, such as [[en:Template:Vandal]], too.

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting for the closing down of Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
The Moldovan Wikipedia community has decided to close down the
Wikipedia.

A bit of background on this: Moldovan was the name given to the
standard Romanian language written with Cyrillic alphabet in the
Soviet Union.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the independent Republic of
Moldova kept this name for the language, although it asserted to
be the same language with Romanian and began to be written once
again with Latin script.

More on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language

As such, the "Moldovan language" got its own ISO code and a Wikipedia
was created for it, although practically it's the same language as
Romanian.

This Wikipedia remained empty with a redirect to Romanian Wikipedia on
the main page, until User:Node_ue was made admin and began writing
articles in Cyrillic alphabet.

About 95% of these articles were simply transliterations of articles
from Romanian Wikipedia, a part of the transliterations being done
manually by User:Russ, who can't speak Moldovan/Romanian and the
resulting articles were rather wrong.

A few articles were actually written by User:Node_ue, but they were
mostly stubs and rather badly written (with several grammatical
mistakes per sentence).

The translation of the interface used a large number of obscure
"pure Moldovan and not found in Romanian" words, which however,
were not known to actual Moldovans. (examples include
"bircieste" = "search" and "halaturi" = "tools")

The Voting
-----------

During the period of 12 January - 12 February, a local voting has been
organized to determine whether the community sees the need for the
existence of a Moldovan Wikipedia.

The vote was opened to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian
editors. While many of the side discussions were held in English
and Russian (in addition to Moldovan/Romanian), the vote was
restrained to determine the will of actual and potential editors.
Some votes were rejected on this basis.

Romanian editors were accepted to vote for two reasons:

* 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
translation is necessary) from the Romanian wikipedia. In the oppinion
of the moldovan organizers of the referendum, this gives Romanians a
right to express their vote.

* Romanian and Moldovan are the same language for all day-to-day
purposes (cf. [[:en:Moldovan language]]), which makes them potential
editors.

Two votes were rejected because they were from people who did not
speak Romanian/Moldovan and didn't had enough contributions to
either wikipedia.

There are several strong reasons that compelled us to request the
deletion of the Moldovan language Wikipedia. Among them technical,
originality, and ethical arguments that we briefly expose here.

History
-------
It was created by Node_ue, who was the first admin.

Its deletion has already been discussed. Consensus not reached, for
the intentions of Node_ue, and the reaction of Moldovan editors was
not clear at the time. At that time, it was already clear that a
Latin-script Moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist (so that even
Node_ue agreed to point the latin version to the Romanian wikipedia).
It appeared that his only concern is to maintain the cyrillic version
of the moldovan wikipedia, which uses the Sovied-imposed script.

Following several abusive administration incidents, the adminship has
been removed from Node_ue.

==Deletion referendum==

Was held between between 12 January and 12 February and it was opened
to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian editors. Romanian
editors were accepted here for two reasons:

- 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
translation is necessary). In the oppinion of the moldovan organizers
of the referendum, this gives Romanians a right to express their vote.

- Romanian and Moldovan are arguably the same language for all
day-to-day purposes.

The result of the referendum is the following:

* No Moldovan editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.

* No Romanian editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.

* Only two editors have abstained, showing that the overwhelming
majority of the users find the existence of the moldovan wikipedia
offensive.

By Moldovan editor we understand here an editor that is able to
contribute originally in the language.

Conclusion
------------

In conclusion, we, the Moldovan and Romanian wikipedia editors,
believe that the current moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist
for:

- it has no editor fluent in Moldovan

- it brings no information

- it is considered offensive by many Moldovans and Romanians.

Voting results
--------------

The following people voted for the closing of the Wikipedia:

Moldova
----------
#[[User:Pavel|Pavel]]
#[[User:Furculita|Furculita]]
#[[User:AndersoN|AndersoN]]
#[[User:Landroni|Landroni]]
#[[User:Argos|Argos]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:TSO1D|TSO1D]]

Romania
---------
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Out_slide|Out_slide]]
#[[User:Bogdan|Bogdan]]
#[[User:Romihaitza|Romihaitza]]
#[[User:AdiJapan|AdiJapan]]
#[[User:Dpotop]]/[[:ro:Utilizator:Dpotop]]
#[[User:Ditae|Ditae]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Vlad|Vlad]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Orioane]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Leinarius]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Wars]]
#[[Utilizator:Dacodava|Dacodava]]
#[[User:Vasile|Vasile]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:MobyDick]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Arado]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Waelsch]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:olario]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Bunu vio]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:SCriBu]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Emily]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:R.S.]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Constantzeanu]]
#[[User:Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?|Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?]]
#[[User:Cosco|Cosco]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:AnaZ|AnaZ]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Dumiac|Dumiac]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Evosphere]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Laurap]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:KlaudiuMihaila]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Strainu]]

With these results, a clear consensus has been reached in the group
of those who speak Romanian/Moldovan language.

http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Alegeri


subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I've been trying to get my head around why we even have a rule about
> what an acceptable source is.

I think it was developed with articles on scientific subjects in mind,
rather than cultural ones.  I suppose it depends where you sit on
pseudoscience.  Should people be able to assert that levitation exists,
or that the grand theory of everything is y=2+b, stuff like that.  When
we move into cultural and historical topics I think there is certainly a
case for relaxing the sourcing requirements somewhat.  But I do think
there should be standards, but they have to be contextualised by the
information that is being sourced:  it seems reasonable to source
opinion and commentary from blogs, history should be sourcable by
building a narrative from a chain of events, but scientific theory
should be sourced from peer reviewed journals, that sort of thing.

I guess there's also issue with the denouncing of sources.  For example,
the recent afd over Neglected Mario Characters webcomic hinged on the
claim for notability, namely for being potentially the first sprite web
comic.  Research was performed using the Internet Archive, and that was
challenged as original research.  To my mind the source should have been
challenged, since the archive is not complete and may miss stuff, but
that shouldn't preclude using the information sourced; rather we should
note that fact in the citation.

Steve block

--
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from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Magic word for talk page?

body:
On 3/5/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> If you don't mind me asking, what's the objection?

The objection is that this variable presumes that there will be one
talk page per each main namespace page, which does not hold true in
the new namespace system which'll be merged into HEAD shortly. Hence
adding this would introduce compatability problems later.


subject: [WikiEN-l] It's dead, Jim!

body:
The site is experiencing technical difficulties, apparently.  Seems to
be titsup.com.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
--- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> On Mar 5, 2006, at 4:27 PM, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA
> wrote:
>
> > --- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >
> >> It's appropriate for Wikipedians to express their
> >> opinions about the
> >> governance and rules of Wikipedia on their
> userpage.
> >> It's
> >> inappropriate for them to do so in an infantile
> >> fashion. That applies
> >> to you and to Freakofnurture.
> >
> > Is it what you say official?
>
> No. It is, however, my opinion, which makes it
> correct in every
> meaningful sense.

Then make it sound like an opinion. In my opinion,
your opinion is not correct.

Anittas.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Taking a break

body:
Much as I enjoy contributing to the gentle banter of this list, and editing
various bits of the Wikiverse, I'm taking a break for a couple of months.
Osaka, Guernsey, Dublin, Shrewsbury, Charleston, Toronto and other bits. I
get back in May, and I'll catch up then.

I'm taking a camera and tripod with me, and I'll see if I can fill a few
holes in our free photographic coverage.

In the meantime, you'll have to rely on your own resources for comic relief.

Cheers all!

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEn-l] Article surveys, revisited

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Guy Chapman aka JzG stated for the record:
>
>
>>Sounds familiar.  For reasons now lost in the mists of time I have
>>"donkey punch" on my watchlist; it never ceases to amaze me how so
>>little can be said in so many words by so many editors.  For all that,
>>it remains a "supposed sex move" which has never been documented by
>>any reliable source as having been used.
>>Guy (JzG)
>>
>
>If the very existence of the subject of an article is unverifiable, can
>the entire article be removed by any editor as unsourced?
>
It would be a shame to lose [[F-19]]. And wouldn't all articles
on fictional entities have go too? Mythology too. Come to think of
it, haven't people put [[God]] on AfD before?

Stan


body:
On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:32:39 -0800, you wrote:

>At the other extreme of editing are the four articles with 100 or more
>edits.  Unfortunately, this does not neccessarily translate into an increase
>in article content.

Sounds familiar.  For reasons now lost in the mists of time I have
"donkey punch" on my watchlist; it never ceases to amaze me how so
little can be said in so many words by so many editors.  For all that,
it remains a "supposed sex move" which has never been documented by
any reliable source as having been used.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Anthere

body:
Well...

This is a summary such as we would be happy to see more often ! Thanks
for it Bogdan !

A question : do you think it should just be "frozen" as is ? (no more
editable).
Or do you think mo.wikipedia should redirect to ro.wikipedia ?

ant

Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> The Moldovan Wikipedia community has decided to close down the
> Wikipedia.
>
> A bit of background on this: Moldovan was the name given to the
> standard Romanian language written with Cyrillic alphabet in the
> Soviet Union.
>
> After the fall of the Soviet Union, the independent Republic of
> Moldova kept this name for the language, although it asserted to
> be the same language with Romanian and began to be written once
> again with Latin script.
>
> More on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language
>
> As such, the "Moldovan language" got its own ISO code and a Wikipedia
> was created for it, although practically it's the same language as
> Romanian.
>
> This Wikipedia remained empty with a redirect to Romanian Wikipedia on
> the main page, until User:Node_ue was made admin and began writing
> articles in Cyrillic alphabet.
>
> About 95% of these articles were simply transliterations of articles
> from Romanian Wikipedia, a part of the transliterations being done
> manually by User:Russ, who can't speak Moldovan/Romanian and the
> resulting articles were rather wrong.
>
> A few articles were actually written by User:Node_ue, but they were
> mostly stubs and rather badly written (with several grammatical
> mistakes per sentence).
>
> The translation of the interface used a large number of obscure
> "pure Moldovan and not found in Romanian" words, which however,
> were not known to actual Moldovans. (examples include
> "bircieste" = "search" and "halaturi" = "tools")
>
> The Voting
> -----------
>
> During the period of 12 January - 12 February, a local voting has been
> organized to determine whether the community sees the need for the
> existence of a Moldovan Wikipedia.
>
> The vote was opened to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian
> editors. While many of the side discussions were held in English
> and Russian (in addition to Moldovan/Romanian), the vote was
> restrained to determine the will of actual and potential editors.
> Some votes were rejected on this basis.
>
> Romanian editors were accepted to vote for two reasons:
>
> * 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
> translation is necessary) from the Romanian wikipedia. In the oppinion
> of the moldovan organizers of the referendum, this gives Romanians a
> right to express their vote.
>
> * Romanian and Moldovan are the same language for all day-to-day
> purposes (cf. [[:en:Moldovan language]]), which makes them potential
> editors.
>
> Two votes were rejected because they were from people who did not
> speak Romanian/Moldovan and didn't had enough contributions to
> either wikipedia.
>
> There are several strong reasons that compelled us to request the
> deletion of the Moldovan language Wikipedia. Among them technical,
> originality, and ethical arguments that we briefly expose here.
>
> History
> -------
> It was created by Node_ue, who was the first admin.
>
> Its deletion has already been discussed. Consensus not reached, for
> the intentions of Node_ue, and the reaction of Moldovan editors was
> not clear at the time. At that time, it was already clear that a
> Latin-script Moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist (so that even
> Node_ue agreed to point the latin version to the Romanian wikipedia).
> It appeared that his only concern is to maintain the cyrillic version
> of the moldovan wikipedia, which uses the Sovied-imposed script.
>
> Following several abusive administration incidents, the adminship has
> been removed from Node_ue.
>
> ==Deletion referendum==
>
> Was held between between 12 January and 12 February and it was opened
> to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian editors. Romanian
> editors were accepted here for two reasons:
>
> - 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
> translation is necessary). In the oppinion of the moldovan organizers
> of the referendum, this gives Romanians a right to express their vote.
>
> - Romanian and Moldovan are arguably the same language for all
> day-to-day purposes.
>
> The result of the referendum is the following:
>
> * No Moldovan editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.
>
> * No Romanian editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.
>
> * Only two editors have abstained, showing that the overwhelming
> majority of the users find the existence of the moldovan wikipedia
> offensive.
>
> By Moldovan editor we understand here an editor that is able to
> contribute originally in the language.
>
> Conclusion
> ------------
>
> In conclusion, we, the Moldovan and Romanian wikipedia editors,
> believe that the current moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist
> for:
>
> - it has no editor fluent in Moldovan
>
> - it brings no information
>
> - it is considered offensive by many Moldovans and Romanians.
>
> Voting results
> --------------
>
> The following people voted for the closing of the Wikipedia:
>
> Moldova
> ----------
> #[[User:Pavel|Pavel]]
> #[[User:Furculita|Furculita]]
> #[[User:AndersoN|AndersoN]]
> #[[User:Landroni|Landroni]]
> #[[User:Argos|Argos]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:TSO1D|TSO1D]]
>
> Romania
> ---------
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Out_slide|Out_slide]]
> #[[User:Bogdan|Bogdan]]
> #[[User:Romihaitza|Romihaitza]]
> #[[User:AdiJapan|AdiJapan]]
> #[[User:Dpotop]]/[[:ro:Utilizator:Dpotop]]
> #[[User:Ditae|Ditae]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Vlad|Vlad]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Orioane]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Leinarius]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Wars]]
> #[[Utilizator:Dacodava|Dacodava]]
> #[[User:Vasile|Vasile]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:MobyDick]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Arado]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Waelsch]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:olario]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Bunu vio]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:SCriBu]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Emily]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:R.S.]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Constantzeanu]]
> #[[User:Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?|Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?]]
> #[[User:Cosco|Cosco]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:AnaZ|AnaZ]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Dumiac|Dumiac]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Evosphere]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Laurap]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:KlaudiuMihaila]]
> #[[:ro:Utilizator:Strainu]]
>
> With these results, a clear consensus has been reached in the group
> of those who speak Romanian/Moldovan language.
>
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Alegeri


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Sabine Cretella wrote:
>
>
>>Hi, I have someone from the Scuola Superiore per Mediazione Linguistica
>>who is interested in the Wikiversity project. It can be quite a good
>>contact. So could you please let me know who I can connect her to?
>>Please don't tell me just to subscribe to the list. I need one or two
>>persons to create a small group of people who to refer to in such cases.
>>Probably there will be also an contact to the University of Rome - but
>>all this takes some time and some direct contacts.
>>
>>So please let me know who can help me on that :-)
>>
>>Thank you!
>>
>>(I am not continuously online these days - I am with a dial-in
>>connection in Germany and so answering could take some time).
>>
>>Best,
>>
>>Sabine
>>
>>
>
>
> I hope you understand that there is no "project leader" like Jimbo
> specifically for Wikiversity.  There are a few people I could strongly
> suggest that are leading organizers for Wikiversity.
>
> Most notably:
>
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3AMfinney   (Michael D. Finney and the
> organizer of the School of Fire and Emergency Management)
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3ALazyquasar
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3AJWSchmidt
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3ADragontamer
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3AJavariel
>
> I know I'm missing people, but these are all very active in the
> discussions of Wikiversity and some good people to contact to understand
> what is going on.  All of these individuals have e-mail links from their
> user pages that you can contact them privately or add a note on their
> user talk pages, and are real people to contact, not just a generic
> mailing list.  Some additional individuals can be found on
>
> http://de.wikiversity.org/  (German Wikiversity... which is up and going
> as a seperate project at the moment)
>
> and there are some other individuals that work on Wikiversity in
> languages besides English.  There were over 200 supporters of
> Wikiversity when the formal vote for project creation was made, so there
> is certainly no shortage of people with opinions on the topic.  There
> also appears to be some very steady development of Wikiversity on
> Wikibooks at the moment.  For formal "partnerships" and arrangements, I
> would recommend contacting the Wikimedia Foundation board (notably
> Jimbo, but any board member is sufficient for this).

The special project committee is commissionned to work on such project.
Please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee

Most notably, Cormaggio should try to revive the wikiversity issue, so
that a final decision is taken on the topic. I would highly include him
in the names mentionned above by Robert. This is a bit stupid that the
whole issue is still pending as of today.

For formal partnerships and arrangements, you may also contact the sp
com or any of its members. I am currently trying to work on the issue,
but it is slow building :-)

ant


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pity the admin....

references:
<9f7c02df59bd8j690pcgt0sk6csq24lhrk@4ax.com>
	<20060301223702.INJM15112.omta03ps.mx.bigpond.com@skyringstudy>
	<f1c3529e0603011552p4378d9d3u59b8c0e2057d21a2@mail.gmail.com>
	<legm02thfgj365dinl6fpc3sidt3p022ff@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 00:52:12 +0100, you wrote:
>
> >Yes, it's an interesting phenomenon that I've noticed at [[Freddie
> >Mercury]] (I always thought he was openly gay, but apparently there
> >are those who swear he was, and those who swear he wasn't)
>
> He wasn't until he was, if you see what I mean.  At least that's how I
> remember it.

Well "I'm as gay as a daffofil, my dear", in the NME (1974, the year
of their breakthrough album) is pretty definitive.  He was gay if you
really needed to know, and if you didn't, he had a convenient
girlfriend.  If people want to quibble over "gay" and "bisexual" my
observations are that (1) they need to get a life and (2) I've had sex
with "straight" guys and I'm pretty sure that a lot of "gay" guys have
sex with women.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
Please try choosing a better username.  It's reasonable for joke
usernames to be questioned, and it's very easy to register a new one.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this worth requesting?

body:
G'day Phil,

<snip />

> If however Brion's new feature
> (<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bitfields_for_rev_deleted>) gets working, it
> would be feasible to do all deletions the same way, in which case those
> revisions would become accessible.
>
> HTH HAND

It does indeed help, and my day wasn't bad, either.  It had not occurred
to me that there would be a significant technical barrier to the
proposal (although it should have).

Thanks.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.2/274 - Release Date: 3/03/2006


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Text access on toolserver?

body:
What is the status of getting text access back on Toolserver?
Is there anything I can do to make it happen?

The lack of text access is killing most of my projects other than toy
statistics gathering.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrary Block

body:
On 3/1/06, silaslynch at aol.com <silaslynch at aol.com> wrote:
> My username, user:Please Don't Block, has been banned from editing on wikipedia

Why does this surprise you?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
G'day Bacchante,

> Almost immediately after creating account for what would be my first
> time editing wikipedia an admin blocked me indefinitely.
>
> username : Let's Get High And Edit Wikipedia IP : 69.60.118.148
> Reason given "stoner..." by
> "*Freakofnurture<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Freakofnurture>" *
>
> This admin describes himself as pissed off and also proudly displays
> a widget that says he does not do any drugs.  I had the impression,

You aren't trying to imply that these silly widgets make people look
silly, are you?  Golly, gosh.

> perhaps wrongly so, that wikipedia was supposed to be more of an open
> atmosphere where there isn't such a heavy hand with admin powers.  In

Registering an account is incredibly easy.  What's to stop you
registering a new one, with a different username?

> other words, a place where someone's first visit isn't met with an
> insult (stoner) by someone claiming to be angry, pissed off and a
> judeofacist (whatever that is, but it doesn't sound too nice).  I
> really do not see what the problem with my username is.  It is silly,
> perhaps, but not offensive.

I'll be honest with you.  I would not have blocked that username myself.
  I don't personally consider it a violation of our username policy.
However, I *also* would not have *registered* that username, because it
is, frankly, a very stupid username indeed.

Chalk it up as a character-building experience: you ran into someone who
did something you didn't like (welcome to the world!), and you got the
opportunity to choose a decent username.  This time tomorrow, you'll be
a much better person because of it.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.2/274 - Release Date: 3/03/2006


subject: [Wikitech-l] Magic word for talk page?

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
> The objection is that this variable presumes that there will be one
> talk page per each main namespace page, which does not hold true in
> the new namespace system which'll be merged into HEAD shortly. Hence
> adding this would introduce compatability problems later.

Ah, okay.  That does sound interesting.  Is there somewhere I can learn
more about this new system?

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/5/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > And probably a violation of the GFDL as far as I can tell. I'm proud of
> > my edits (well, 99.99% of them :), I _want_ my edits to be attributed to
> > me. If Wikipedia were to start hiding them I would be nonplussed.
>
> You raise an interesting question which has occurred to me before.
> There are topics I would consider editing on, but I don't really want
> them to come up in my list of contributions. Yet I feel like I should
> retain my copyright on those contributions...I can't think of any
> solution though.
>
> Steve

Sockpupet accounts. Unless you legaly have to assert your copyright
you don't have to admit haveing made them.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/5/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In a perfect world, we could have perfect anonymity in this matter
> > (actually, we wouldn't /need/ anonymity), but the world is far from
> > perfect. I'm not going to buy into the "this proposal amounts to
> > trolling" argument, except to say this: removing usernames from
> > contributions would be a troll's paradise.
>
> Predicting the future is hard. I wonder how you arrive at that
> conclusion? How is it possible to troll something that is effectively
> nothing more than a huge stack of edits? Trolls require opponents and
> if the opponents are not discernible the primary incentive to troll is
> not there. There are lots of totally anonymous (as anonymous as you
> can get on the Internet) communities and the few I have been involved
> in have not been plagued by trolls.
>

You don't need discernible opponents oponets to troll.

> Of course, no way in hell that Wikipedia will do away with the user
> account concept. It is just to deeply rooted. But thinking about it
> can give you some insight on flaws in how Wikipedia currently
> operates. For example, did you know that in some universities
> professors are not able to see the students names on exams and papers
> handed in? Why do you think that is and do you think Wikipedia users
> are in general better than university professors?
>

Because our view of a person will almost always be shaped by what they
have done on the wiki. People dislike me because of what I have done
on wikipedia. Not because of what I have done in the real world or on
other sites.

A university professor will have Baises other than those caused by
viewing the exam.

__
geni


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
On 3/5/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> I think it was developed with articles on scientific subjects in mind,
> rather than cultural ones.  I suppose it depends where you sit on
> pseudoscience.  Should people be able to assert that levitation exists,
> or that the grand theory of everything is y=2+b, stuff like that.  When

Are you talking about sneaky people abusing Wikipedia by quoting
rubbish, or good-faith editors being unable to explain the limitations
of their sources? In the latter case, wouldn't "Athough no
peer-reviewed journals have yet published on the theory, Ricky's Home
Journal of K00l Stuff dedicated 60 pages to it in 2003[1]" handle it?

In any case, supposedly in Wikipedia we never "assert" anything
(supposedly). We simply repeat what others say, and say where it came
from. Now, I'm proposing that if we *don't* say where the informaiton
came from, we are implying that it came from a very good source. We
should continue the tradition that bad sources cannot be implicitly
used, but extend the rule to allow them to be explicitly used.

> we move into cultural and historical topics I think there is certainly a
> case for relaxing the sourcing requirements somewhat.  But I do think
> there should be standards, but they have to be contextualised by the
> information that is being sourced:  it seems reasonable to source
> opinion and commentary from blogs, history should be sourcable by
> building a narrative from a chain of events, but scientific theory
> should be sourced from peer reviewed journals, that sort of thing.

Yeah. Linking to blogs to explain alternative viewpoints seems both
helpful and valid.

>
> I guess there's also issue with the denouncing of sources.  For example,
> the recent afd over Neglected Mario Characters webcomic hinged on the
> claim for notability, namely for being potentially the first sprite web
> comic.  Research was performed using the Internet Archive, and that was
> challenged as original research.  To my mind the source should have been
> challenged, since the archive is not complete and may miss stuff, but
> that shouldn't preclude using the information sourced; rather we should
> note that fact in the citation.

Precisely: we should be able to use
bad/dodgy/questionable/non-reputable sources, as long as we note them
and their dodginess.

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 3/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The Cunctator wrote:
>>Except for cases where we're replacing "fair use" images,
<snip>
>
> I was talking about "fair use" images.
>

Ok, you're not as silly as I thought you were, and I'm a lot sillier
than you thought I was :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Pity the admin....

body:
On 3/5/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well "I'm as gay as a daffofil, my dear", in the NME (1974, the year

1. Yes but he was kidding!!!11!
2. Yes but gay meant bi!!!1!1!
3. No that interview was a conspiracy!111111111111111!!!!

> of their breakthrough album) is pretty definitive.  He was gay if you
> really needed to know, and if you didn't, he had a convenient
> girlfriend.  If people want to quibble over "gay" and "bisexual" my
> observations are that (1) they need to get a life and (2) I've had sex
> with "straight" guys and I'm pretty sure that a lot of "gay" guys have
> sex with women.

Right. And I just don't see the problem with saying "Mercury was
either bi, gay, or straight depending on who was asked, and when." in
the article, possibly giving a few sources. Or even just avoiding the
labelling and saying "It is uncontested that Mercury had sex with both
men and women at various times". Similarly for the question of whether
he was "Persian", just stating the facts then saying "Whether this
makes him Persian is a question of definition that has often been
disputed."

But some peope really lerve their labels.

Steve


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-06

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Parser hook: static parser hook inside a comment... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 266 of 288 tests (92.36%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Marvel.com have a wiki

body:
On 3/5/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> But what happens if someone copies over stuff from wikipedia, or

Copyvio

> somebody adds to wikipedia and to there?  It looks like it's impossible

If Marvel is claiming "copyright", then they would probably be
breaking Marvel's terms and conditions.

> to access the history at the Marvel site without registering, but it
> might be needed to ascertain potential copyright violations.  Users
> might dump text from there into wikipedia.  We're already fighting a
> rearguard battle against some users who think they can simply copy
> material from Marvel's published character guides, is there a way to
> register an account which wikipedians can use to verify the dates things
> were added?

I didn't understand this last question, can you clarify? Are you
talking about a way of verifying when certain text was added to a WP
article?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/5/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> And probably a violation of the GFDL as far as I can tell. I'm proud of
> my edits (well, 99.99% of them :), I _want_ my edits to be attributed to
> me. If Wikipedia were to start hiding them I would be nonplussed.

You raise an interesting question which has occurred to me before.
There are topics I would consider editing on, but I don't really want
them to come up in my list of contributions. Yet I feel like I should
retain my copyright on those contributions...I can't think of any
solution though.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/6/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Nobody's that anal,

It appears we may deal with different groups of wikipedians.

--
geni


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> In a perfect world, we could have perfect anonymity in this matter
> (actually, we wouldn't /need/ anonymity), but the world is far from
> perfect. I'm not going to buy into the "this proposal amounts to
> trolling" argument, except to say this: removing usernames from
> contributions would be a troll's paradise.

Predicting the future is hard. I wonder how you arrive at that
conclusion? How is it possible to troll something that is effectively
nothing more than a huge stack of edits? Trolls require opponents and
if the opponents are not discernible the primary incentive to troll is
not there. There are lots of totally anonymous (as anonymous as you
can get on the Internet) communities and the few I have been involved
in have not been plagued by trolls.

Of course, no way in hell that Wikipedia will do away with the user
account concept. It is just to deeply rooted. But thinking about it
can give you some insight on flaws in how Wikipedia currently
operates. For example, did you know that in some universities
professors are not able to see the students names on exams and papers
handed in? Why do you think that is and do you think Wikipedia users
are in general better than university professors?

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/6/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you bringing this up because someone mentioned [[Donkey Punch]] in
> another thread? ;)

No, but it's a perfect example. I was going to change the intro text
to "alleged sexual positions" or something, but...I really don't want
Donkey Punch showing up in my history *forever*.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/6/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:

> operates. For example, did you know that in some universities
> professors are not able to see the students names on exams and papers
> handed in? Why do you think that is and do you think Wikipedia users
> are in general better than university professors?

If and when Wikipedia has an article review process, anonymity may be
useful. A better analogy for Wikipedia would be collaborating together
to write journal articles, which afaik, is never done anonymously.

Steve


body:
Since most content is (rather badly) transliterated from Romanian
Wikipedia and the few original articles are short and badly written,
I wouldn't say that the current content on mo.wiki has any value.

The transliteration between "Romanian" Latin alphabet and "Moldovan"
Cyrillic alphabet can be done pretty accurate by a script. I have made a
php script for testing and I think it could be improved to near 100%
accuracy, but I doubt it would be necessary.

Latin alphabet has been official in the Republic of Moldova for
the last 17 years and virtually all Moldovans can use it.
Then, there's the unrecognized territory of Transnistria where
Moldovan children are still taught in that alphabet, (although it's
not what they really want, see the 2004 crisis)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3631436.stm

There has been some discussion on whether Romanian Wikipedia should
have a Cyrillic alphabet section or that we should have a transliteration
script integrated, but the truth is that we have yet to find a Moldovan
willing to contribute using the Cyrillic alphabet.

As such, I think that it would be better to be a redirect.

Sunday, March 5, 2006, 11:38:13 PM, you wrote:

A> Well...

A> This is a summary such as we would be happy to see more often ! Thanks
A> for it Bogdan !

A> A question : do you think it should just be "frozen" as is ? (no more
A> editable).
A> Or do you think mo.wikipedia should redirect to ro.wikipedia ?

A> ant


from_name: Sean Barrett

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

Stan Shebs stated for the record:

> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>>Guy Chapman aka JzG stated for the record:
>>
>>
>>>Sounds familiar.  For reasons now lost in the mists of time I have
>>>"donkey punch" on my watchlist; it never ceases to amaze me how so
>>>little can be said in so many words by so many editors.  For all that,
>>>it remains a "supposed sex move" which has never been documented by
>>>any reliable source as having been used.
>>>Guy (JzG)
>>>
>>
>>If the very existence of the subject of an article is unverifiable, can
>>the entire article be removed by any editor as unsourced?
>>
>
> It would be a shame to lose [[F-19]]. And wouldn't all articles
> on fictional entities have go too? Mythology too. Come to think of
> it, haven't people put [[God]] on AfD before?
>
> Stan

There are sources describing the F-19, Harry Potter, and Odin.  I could
thoroughly footnote any discussion of YHVH.

Can anyone point me to a reputable published description of a donkey punch?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | If catapults are outlawed, only
 sean at epoptic.org | outlaws will have catapults.
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body:
On 3/6/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> If the very existence of the subject of an article is unverifiable, can
> the entire article be removed by any editor as unsourced?

The existence of the subject is not relevant, or topics like god,
aliens, ESP etc would not be allowed. But as long as there are decent
sources which say something interesting about the topic, then it
qualifies for WP.

Steve


from_name: Andreas Vilén

body:
Since the languages are virtually the same it's probably better for
the mopedia to redir to the ropedia, so that Moldovan users can reach
info in a language understood by them, instead of being restricted to
the crappy Moldovan wp, perhaps without knowledge of the Romanian one.
>From the summary above I see no reason to keep the mowiki in a locked
state.

/Andreas

On 3/6/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Since most content is (rather badly) transliterated from Romanian
> Wikipedia and the few original articles are short and badly written,
> I wouldn't say that the current content on mo.wiki has any value.
>
> The transliteration between "Romanian" Latin alphabet and "Moldovan"
> Cyrillic alphabet can be done pretty accurate by a script. I have made a
> php script for testing and I think it could be improved to near 100%
> accuracy, but I doubt it would be necessary.
>
> Latin alphabet has been official in the Republic of Moldova for
> the last 17 years and virtually all Moldovans can use it.
> Then, there's the unrecognized territory of Transnistria where
> Moldovan children are still taught in that alphabet, (although it's
> not what they really want, see the 2004 crisis)
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3631436.stm
>
> There has been some discussion on whether Romanian Wikipedia should
> have a Cyrillic alphabet section or that we should have a transliteration
> script integrated, but the truth is that we have yet to find a Moldovan
> willing to contribute using the Cyrillic alphabet.
>
> As such, I think that it would be better to be a redirect.
>
> Sunday, March 5, 2006, 11:38:13 PM, you wrote:
>
> A> Well...
>
> A> This is a summary such as we would be happy to see more often ! Thanks
> A> for it Bogdan !
>
> A> A question : do you think it should just be "frozen" as is ? (no more
> A> editable).
> A> Or do you think mo.wikipedia should redirect to ro.wikipedia ?
>
> A> ant
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > On 3/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>The Cunctator wrote:
> >>Except for cases where we're replacing "fair use" images,
> <snip>
> >
> > I was talking about "fair use" images.
> >
>
> Ok, you're not as silly as I thought you were, and I'm a lot sillier
> than you thought I was :)

Though a project to replace all the photographs on Wikipedia with
drawings *would* be entertaining.


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

Ben Lowe stated for the record:

>>Can anyone point me to a reputable published description of a donkey
>>punch?
>
>
> http://www.bookslut.com/propaganda/2003_10_000777.php
>
> Sorry, that's as good as I could do on short notice.
>
> Cheers,
> Ben

Wow.  I suppose I could try to cling to "reputable," but there doesn't
seem to be much point.  I surrender.  That's definitely a ... source,
and it's clear that if this article were removed, Wikipedia would be ...
a few bytes smaller.

/me staggers away, stunned.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Many occasions arise when a woman versed
 sean at epoptic.org | in the knowledge and use of firearms
                  | may find that information and skill
                  | of great importance. --Annie Oakley
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from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rumours of my death are mildly exaggerated.

body:
"Jay Converse" <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:6b397ba40603031330i2f3e88c7j9c6fef41caf39e71 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 3/3/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com>
> wrote:
>> Bel Lowe wrote:
>> > The plaque proposal has
>> > evolved slowly through the day and now looks like -- guess what,
>> > everybody!
>> > -- a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jordanhill_commemoration>
>> Well, the best suggestion there (by [[User:Cherry blossom tree]])
>> has been to put up, not an engraved plaque with the wording,
>> but a chalkboard...
> Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, what?  Aren't we going a little overboard
> here?  This is like putting a plaque in a New York subway station saying
> "The 500th episode of Law and Order was filmed in this station."

At King's Cross station, there is a plaque showing the "location" of
Platform 9-3/4:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_station#Harry_Potter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:KingsCrossStationTrolley.JPG
...and apparently they have had people trying to push their trolleys through
the wall (this has not been helped by some wag adding a half-trolley as can
be seen in that picture :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Though a project to replace all the photographs on Wikipedia with
>>drawings *would* be entertaining.
>>
>
>If a little short notice for this year's April Fools' :)
>
A little tinkering with the image-crunching pipeline could auto
translate photographs into line drawings when they're asked for,
then clear the cache at the end of the day to cover one's tracks.
OK, I've said too much already, please delete this message.

:-)

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Magic word for talk page?

body:
"Minh Nguyen" <mxn at zoomtown.com> wrote in message
news:440A82FF.9050006 at zoomtown.com...
> Nick Jenkins wrote:
>> On http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words it lists all the
>> various MediaWiki magic words.
>> I'm looking for something that can be used to give the talk page for
>> the current page.
>> For example, in:
>> * The main namespace (namespace 0), it would return "Talk:{{PAGENAME}}".
>> * In the talk namespace ({{ns:1}}), it would return
>> "Talk:{{PAGENAME}}" (since the talk page for a talk page is the talk
>> page itself).
>> * In the User namespace ({{ns:2}}), it would return
>> "User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}".
>> * In the User talk namespace ({{ns:3}}), it would return
>> "User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}" (since the talk page for a user talk page is
>> the user talk page itself).
>> * And so forth...
>> Does anyone know of a way of doing this? If not, can I maybe suggest a
>> new magic word along these lines, such as "{{TALKPAGE}}", which would
>> do this?
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Talk> currently just tacks a "
> talk" to the end of the namespace, but you could use the
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Switch> template to detect
> whether the current page is already a talk page and refrain from adding
> " talk" to the namespace.

I did this on :en: already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:ARTICLESPACE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:TALKSPACE

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
michael_irwin at verizon.net wrote:

>At the moment we are decentralized, disorganized, and have no authority
>from the Wikimedia Foundation to proceed in English with Wikiversity at
>en.wikiversity.org.    If you are looking for authoritative information
>or need to process sensitive negotiations or information your best bet
>is probably to contact a member of the Board of Directors.
>
>You might also point interested people at the German Language
>Wikiversity portal:   http://de.wikiversity.org  which reroutes to this
>apparently functional wikiversity site:
>http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/Hauptseite.   I do not know for certain
>who actually owns this domain and the servers currently supporting it.
>I have been assuming the Wikimedia Foundation but it seems odd that
>Wikiversity has been authorized to proceed in German but not English.
>Perhaps the German wikimedia sites are operating under different
>auspices than the original Wikimedia Foundation.
>
>
>

wikiversity.org is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, with Jimbo as the
administrative contact and Brion Vibber as the technical contact.  The
data dumps for this site are available from the usual places you can get
them for the rest of the Wikimedia projects, but is part of the "other"
group of projects in terms of server administration right now (aka meta,
foundation wiki, wikispecies, sept11, and wikimania).

As far as why German Wikiversity is active and not English Wikiversity,
that is something to bring up to the Foundation board.  That question
has never really been answered completely other than a developer got
active and simply decided to do it, and is no end to controversy as a
result.  A rather substantial thread about this topic was done about a
year ago on Foundation-l.  There is no authority for operating the
German Wikiversity other than some people interested got a bug in the
ear of one of the developers and made it happen.  I will let this issue
die right now, unless somebody wants to pick up the torch from here,
because I've said plenty about this issue already.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> >>It's
> >>inappropriate for them to do so in an infantile
> >>fashion. That applies
> >>to you and to Freakofnurture.
> >
> >
>
> Stefan wrote:
> > Is it what you say official? If it is, then I
> would
> > like to see this policy. Or perhaps you are
> Jimbo's
> > right hand and have the authority to say what is,
> and
> > what is not, appropriate. I think that the most
> > appropriate thing for people to do, is to mind
> their
> > own business when something is not harming anyone.
> And
> > if Jimbo is Libertarian, as someone suggested in
> the
> > past, then he should start acting like one.
>
> If you're asking me to assert an absolute right of
> infantile stupidity
> and freedom to stalk and harass other users, then
> you won't get it, sorry.

If the condition of not harming others is fulfilled,
as it was in this case, then people should be allowed
to their business. That's my argument.

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

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


from_name: Victoria Powers

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Can I send email from a form I created as a Special
	Page?

body:
I think that this has been discussed before, but I am still unclear if it is possible to send mail from within the wiki.

I have developed a form as a special page to capture and search data using a mysql database and I would like to implement a mail notification when new data has been entered.  Is this possible?  If the default is that this functionality has been disabled, is there a way to enable it?  I really just need to know my options of implementing a mail notification within my form.

Any info is appreciated!

-V


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tony Sidaway on the "Mark Sweep,
	Guanaco et al" application to the Arbitration Committee

body:
On 3/6/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> --- Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've decided to recuse as a clerk in this one, mostly in order to say
> > this: this case is about userboxes.
>
> I had a quick look at it, and to me it would seem to be more a case about
> admins revert-warring using rollback; userboxes are just the backdrop.

On the other hand, many (if not most) recent incidents of
wheel-warring (and admin edit-warring in general) have been centered
around userboxes.  They can hardly be considered just a backdrop at
this point.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
>>It's
>>inappropriate for them to do so in an infantile
>>fashion. That applies
>>to you and to Freakofnurture.
>
>

Stefan wrote:
> Is it what you say official? If it is, then I would
> like to see this policy. Or perhaps you are Jimbo's
> right hand and have the authority to say what is, and
> what is not, appropriate. I think that the most
> appropriate thing for people to do, is to mind their
> own business when something is not harming anyone. And
> if Jimbo is Libertarian, as someone suggested in the
> past, then he should start acting like one.

If you're asking me to assert an absolute right of infantile stupidity
and freedom to stalk and harass other users, then you won't get it, sorry.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ben Lowe

body:
>
> Can anyone point me to a reputable published description of a donkey
> punch?

http://www.bookslut.com/propaganda/2003_10_000777.php

Sorry, that's as good as I could do on short notice.

Cheers,
Ben


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Escaping the GDFL -- can it be done?

body:
The IP 64.81.245.138 made the edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bruce_Perens&diff=prev&oldid=21506542

The user [[User:Bruce Perens]] made the edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Bruce_Perens&diff=39812529&oldid=24762948

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_FAQ&diff=prev&oldid=21450107
and http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html .

I suppose this all might really be Perens.  Perens has been involved
in these topics.  In 2001 he claimed that the "GFDL is a
DFSG-compliant license", but his position may have changed since then.

I do think that a statement that "it is unlawful to host the wikipedia
on a computer running any contemporary operating system" is fairly
delusional, though.

Anthony

On 3/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 3/3/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Speaking of people objecting to our current licensing, check out
> >>[[Talk:Bruce Perens]]. Apparantly he objects to us having an article on
> >>him, because he has issues with the license we are using... oh, and
> >>apparantly we're neither a Free Software project *or* an Open Source
> >>project. Hrm.
> >>
> >
> > I assume you're implying that the paragraph signed "Bruce" (who I now
> > find out is User:Bruce Perens) is supposed to be Bruce Perens?  Is
> > there any evidence that's actually the case?
>
> "I learn in email that it is indeed Perens. ? ciphergoth 19:03, August
> 21, 2005 (UTC)"
>
> If you want you can contact him at his debian.org address to confirm
> that he made these statements. Or you can ask me to, I'm not fussed
> either way.
>
> >  Because a comment like
> > "because of the flaws in the license - it is unlawful to host the
> > wikipedia on a computer running any contemporary operating system"
> > seems to be pretty far out there.
> >
> > Doing a quick Google search, I find
> > http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=4921 and
> > http://www.oetrends.com/news.php?action=view_record&idnum=457
> > ("Wikipedia is an example of a non software incarnation of Open
> > Source."), which makes me even more skeptical that this person is
> > indeed Bruce Perens.
> >
>
> Well, you never know. Again, I can contact him to confirm and elaborate
> on this if you want...
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
>> If you're asking me to assert an absolute right of
>> infantile stupidity
>> and freedom to stalk and harass other users, then
>> you won't get it, sorry.
>
> If the condition of not harming others is fulfilled,
> as it was in this case, then people should be allowed
> to their business. That's my argument.

Infantile userpages harm all of us by bringing disrepute to the
community and to the project.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrary Block

body:
<silaslynch at aol.com> wrote in message
news:8C80AEA0A7FB81D-1638-791C at MBLK-M39.sysops.aol.com...
> My username, user:Please Don't Block, has been banned from editing
> on wikipedia either for having an inappropriate username or for
> "vandalism." I encourage any administrator to look into my editing
> history (which includes numerous excellent edits), I have vandalized
> no one's page. I left a comment at someone's userpage that offended
> another user, and therefore I was blocked. However, leaving unpleasant
> comments is not banned according to wikipedia policy. My username is
> additionally not offensive. I demand to have the block removed
> immediately or some explanation as to why I am blocked.

If you were to walk around your local neighbourhood with a sign on your back
saying "please don't throw stuff at me", how long do you think it would be
before some wag threw something at you, and how much explanation for their
actions would you require?

How long do you think it would take you to explain to such authorities as
you might try to invoke in your favour why you were doing such a silly
thing?

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
--- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> >> If you're asking me to assert an absolute right
> of
> >> infantile stupidity
> >> and freedom to stalk and harass other users, then
> >> you won't get it, sorry.
> >
> > If the condition of not harming others is
> fulfilled,
> > as it was in this case, then people should be
> allowed
> > to their business. That's my argument.
>
> Infantile userpages harm all of us by bringing
> disrepute to the
> community and to the project.

No, it doesn't. You just mind your own business.
Whether you like a nickname or not, should not be an
issue. Corny, annoying, and childish nicknames should
be allowed.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] How do i hide users from User List?

body:
On 3/6/06, Jan Vanoverpelt <jan.vanoverpelt at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com>:
> >You can't. Why do you need to hide them? I know the docs say not to,
> >but it *might* be safe to do so under certain circumstances...
>
> What are these "certain circumstances"? Why is it not safe do delete users
> from the database? Certain user-ids are missing then, but in which
> situations is this a problem?

Because, as typical for a MySQL targeted application, our database
schema doesn't ask the database to enforce referential integrity.

As a result it is possible, through the deletion of users, that you
can leave the database in what is effectively, from MediaWiki's
perspective at least, a corrupted state:  Our behavior is not
(well)-defined for many cases where a user is referenced but does not
exist.

Deletion is possible as long as you understand the schema and
MediaWiki's operation well enough to perform it... but the software
wasn't designed with that in mind, so you have to watch out for
pitfalls.

An easier solution would be to just rename such users with a name that
will end up at the end of the sorted output.

As to why people would want to do this, it's simple: bad intentioned
users have realized that if they spam the userlist on MediaWiki sites
their spamming will likely go unremoved.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

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

STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA stated for the record:

>
> --- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
>>>>If you're asking me to assert an absolute right
>>>>of infantile stupidity
>>>>and freedom to stalk and harass other users, then
>>>>you won't get it, sorry.
>>>
>>>If the condition of not harming others is
>>>fulfilled,
>>>as it was in this case, then people should be
>>>allowed
>>>to their business. That's my argument.
>>
>>Infantile userpages harm all of us by bringing
>>disrepute to the community and to the project.
>
>
> No, it doesn't. You just mind your own business.
> Whether you like a nickname or not, should not be an
> issue. Corny, annoying, and childish nicknames should
> be allowed.

You're impressively good at argument by assertion, but I'm afraid you'll
find that simply stating your unsupported opinion isn't a terribly
effective way of persuading us, especially when your unsupported opinion
directly contradicts the project policies we have adopted by consensus.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | No, Grasshopper! Carry hibachi by handles!
 sean at epoptic.org |
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
On Mar 6, 2006, at 12:32 PM, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA wrote:

>> Infantile userpages harm all of us by bringing
>> disrepute to the
>> community and to the project.
>
> No, it doesn't. You just mind your own business.
> Whether you like a nickname or not, should not be an
> issue. Corny, annoying, and childish nicknames should
> be allowed.

Please take this as a polite yet insistent exhortation: *actually
read my emails before you reply to them*. I was talking about
userpages, not usernames. If you lack the effort or the capacity to
properly comprehend what other people say do not waste your time
attempting to contradict them.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
--- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> On Mar 6, 2006, at 12:32 PM, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA
> wrote:
>
> >> Infantile userpages harm all of us by bringing
> >> disrepute to the
> >> community and to the project.
> >
> > No, it doesn't. You just mind your own business.
> > Whether you like a nickname or not, should not be
> an
> > issue. Corny, annoying, and childish nicknames
> should
> > be allowed.
>
> Please take this as a polite yet insistent
> exhortation: *actually
> read my emails before you reply to them*. I was
> talking about
> userpages, not usernames. If you lack the effort or
> the capacity to
> properly comprehend what other people say do not
> waste your time
> attempting to contradict them.

Excuse me, but you were the one who replied to one of
my messages, and in that message, I was referring to
nicknames -- not userpages. In that case, it was you
who went off-topic, not I. I talked about the
nickname. If you want to talk about userpages, do so,
but don't reply to one of my messages where I talk
about nicknames! And don't be rude to people!

>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
On Mar 6, 2006, at 1:28 PM, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA wrote:

> Excuse me, but you were the one who replied to one of
> my messages, and in that message, I was referring to
> nicknames -- not userpages. In that case, it was you
> who went off-topic, not I. I talked about the
> nickname. If you want to talk about userpages, do so,
> but don't reply to one of my messages where I talk
> about nicknames! And don't be rude to people!

I just checked my records, and you are mistaken, although since this
thread was originally about usernames and branched out several side
discussions, any confusion is understandable.

For your convenience, here is the conversation, in order:

Cunctuator:

> I think it's appropriate to Wikipedians to express their opinions
> about the governance and rules of Wikipedia on their userpage.

Phil:

> It's appropriate for Wikipedians to express their opinions about the
> governance and rules of Wikipedia on their userpage. It's
> inappropriate for them to do so in an infantile fashion. That applies
> to you and to Freakofnurture.

Stefan:

> Is it what you say official? If it is, then I would
> like to see this policy. Or perhaps you are Jimbo's
> right hand and have the authority to say what is, and
> what is not, appropriate. I think that the most
> appropriate thing for people to do, is to mind their
> own business when something is not harming anyone. And
> if Jimbo is Libertarian, as someone suggested in the
> past, then he should start acting like one.

Jimbo:

> If you're asking me to assert an absolute right of infantile stupidity
> and freedom to stalk and harass other users, then you won't get it,
> sorry.

Stefan:

> If the condition of not harming others is fulfilled,
> as it was in this case, then people should be allowed
> to their business. That's my argument.

Phil:

> Infantile userpages harm all of us by bringing disrepute to the
> community and to the project.

Stefan:

> No, it doesn't. You just mind your own business.
> Whether you like a nickname or not, should not be an
> issue. Corny, annoying, and childish nicknames should
> be allowed.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Monday talk cancelled

body: No talk this evening - I have another bug.  Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
--- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> On Mar 6, 2006, at 1:28 PM, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA
> wrote:
>
> > Excuse me, but you were the one who replied to one
> of
> > my messages, and in that message, I was referring
> to
> > nicknames -- not userpages. In that case, it was
> you
> > who went off-topic, not I. I talked about the
> > nickname. If you want to talk about userpages, do
> so,
> > but don't reply to one of my messages where I talk
> > about nicknames! And don't be rude to people!
>
> I just checked my records, and you are mistaken,
> although since this
> thread was originally about usernames and branched
> out several side
> discussions, any confusion is understandable.
>
> For your convenience, here is the conversation, in
> order:
>
> Cunctuator:
>
> > I think it's appropriate to Wikipedians to express
> their opinions
> > about the governance and rules of Wikipedia on
> their userpage.
>
> Phil:
>
> > It's appropriate for Wikipedians to express their
> opinions about the
> > governance and rules of Wikipedia on their
> userpage. It's
> > inappropriate for them to do so in an infantile
> fashion. That applies
> > to you and to Freakofnurture.
>
> Stefan:
>
> > Is it what you say official? If it is, then I
> would
> > like to see this policy. Or perhaps you are
> Jimbo's
> > right hand and have the authority to say what is,
> and
> > what is not, appropriate. I think that the most
> > appropriate thing for people to do, is to mind
> their
> > own business when something is not harming anyone.
> And
> > if Jimbo is Libertarian, as someone suggested in
> the
> > past, then he should start acting like one.
>
> Jimbo:
>
> > If you're asking me to assert an absolute right of
> infantile stupidity
> > and freedom to stalk and harass other users, then
> you won't get it,
> > sorry.
>
> Stefan:
>
> > If the condition of not harming others is
> fulfilled,
> > as it was in this case, then people should be
> allowed
> > to their business. That's my argument.
>
> Phil:
>
> > Infantile userpages harm all of us by bringing
> disrepute to the
> > community and to the project.
>
> Stefan:
>
> > No, it doesn't. You just mind your own business.
> > Whether you like a nickname or not, should not be
> an
> > issue. Corny, annoying, and childish nicknames
> should
> > be allowed.

Okay, the way I see it is this: the discussion started
with a complaint about a nickname that was blocked. I
got involved and messaged that admin, etc. Somewhere
on the way, you guys started talking about userpages.
I don't know how it's possible to change the topic
like that and I don't read all messages, but anyway;
you said something about userpages and I made a reply,
and also mentioned Jimbo's name. My comment to Jimbo
was meant to refer to the original topic, i.e., the
nickname conflict. He then replied, and I replied back
to him, meaning for my comment to refer to the
nickname argument. You then thought that I replied to
the userpage argument, which is understandable,
because I didn't point out what I was referring to.
That's what caused the confusion and perhaps it was
mainly my fault, because I wasn't clear enough. It's
no biggie, tho. I just wish people would stay on topic
all the time.

>
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Meta-conversation about userpages

body:
On Mar 6, 2006, at 1:56 PM, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA wrote:

> He then replied, and I replied back
> to him, meaning for my comment to refer to the
> nickname argument. You then thought that I replied to
> the userpage argument, which is understandable,
> because I didn't point out what I was referring to.
> That's what caused the confusion and perhaps it was
> mainly my fault, because I wasn't clear enough. It's
> no biggie, tho. I just wish people would stay on topic
> all the time.

OK, we were reading and replying in an inconsistent context. Instead
of staying on topic, let's stray off topic, but change the subject
line when we do so :)

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Monday talk cancelled

body:
Disregard - wrong list.  Not myself today. Charles

> No talk this evening - I have another bug.  Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
--- Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/6/06, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA
> <wizzard_bane at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > got involved and messaged that admin, etc.
> Somewhere
> > on the way, you guys started talking about
> userpages.
> > I don't know how it's possible to change the topic
> > like that and I don't read all messages, but
> anyway;
> <snip>
> > no biggie, tho. I just wish people would stay on
> topic
> > all the time.
>
> Are you a troll? Just curious.

If you are asking whether I like to provoke people and
arguments, then yes, sometimes I like to do that, but
not without purpose. Is that wrong?

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

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from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
I've decided to recuse as a clerk in this one, mostly in order to say
this: this case is about userboxes.

More specifically, it is about the extremely destructive but widely
denied effects on our community of the creation in template space of
very large numbers of templates that have as their sole purpose the
viral propagation of political opinions and the linking together of
Wikipedians according to those opinions. Sometimes the highly
politicised templates contain links to categories, which have the
effect of linking the users of these templates in a network according
to political opinion. This network is incompatible with Wikipedia's
principle of neutrality and has been openly used (for instance in the
Catholic Alliance case) in deliberate and conscious attempts to
subvert that policy.

There is nothing that can be said in a template that cannot already be
said by keying or pasting into a page the equivalent sequence of wiki,
html and css code. There is no meaning that cannot be conveyed by such
sequences of code . Therefore these political templates, by
facilitating the replication of their contents, and through the
category and whatlinkshere mechanisms, have as their sole function the
systematic destruction of the neutrality policy.

The arbitration committee must decide whether its principal purpose is
to uphold and defend the culture that has gotten us this far, or
merely to enforce some of the written rules that are being used to
mock and trample that culture. Whether to preside over the recovery of
Wikipedia from one of the most massive challenges to its neutral,
welcoming culture, or to read its death sentence. --Tony Sidaway
14:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Mon, 6 Mar 2006 07:44:34 +0100, you wrote:

>The existence of the subject is not relevant, or topics like god,
>aliens, ESP etc would not be allowed. But as long as there are decent
>sources which say something interesting about the topic, then it
>qualifies for WP.

Indeed - which is why we have extensive coverage of Pokemon cards and
other minor fictional subjects (like it or not).

As to "decent sources" that rather invites the question of what
qualifies as a decent source.  In this case the reliable sources are
mainly cited as reacting to a description fed to them by somebody else
inna "that sounds dangerous" stylee.  There is also reportedly a pr0n
film based on this subject.  I personally don't view the pr0n industry
as a reliable source, but the creators of the many articles on the
associated "stars" seem to think it is.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pity the admin....

body:
On Mon, 6 Mar 2006 00:14:40 +0100, you wrote:

>some peope really lerve their labels.

Ain't that the truth.  A recent battle over where (and how
prominently) the Spanish name of the Falkland Islands should be
included is a case in point, albeit of considerably greater merit than
most.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've decided to recuse as a clerk in this one, mostly in order to say
> this: this case is about userboxes.

I had a quick look at it, and to me it would seem to be more a case about
admins revert-warring using rollback; userboxes are just the backdrop.

> More specifically, it is about the extremely destructive but widely
> denied effects on our community of the creation in template space of
> very large numbers of templates that have as their sole purpose the
> viral propagation of political opinions and the linking together of
> Wikipedians according to those opinions.

>From the incidents that I hear about, much more destructive would seem to be
the way people (both pro and anti) care so much about userboxes that they'll
act in daft ways to defend their positions. I'm not at all convinced that the
use of userboxes as POV rallying tools is anywhere near as problematic as this.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Though a project to replace all the photographs on Wikipedia with
> drawings *would* be entertaining.

If a little short notice for this year's April Fools' :)

Steve


body:
On 3/6/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> There are sources describing the F-19, Harry Potter, and Odin.  I could
> thoroughly footnote any discussion of YHVH.
>
> Can anyone point me to a reputable published description of a donkey punch?

Such a thing may not exist for "NSA in popular culture" or whatever
the example was, either. Most of the donkey punch article is about
such references anyway.

Steve