from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Lir yet again

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

> We usually move hopelessly POV stuff to Meta. I vote for moving ALL the
> Wikipedia/foo pages there (even the geographic based categories). IMO the
> Wikiepdians page at en.wiki should be a alphabetic list with a link to the
> the chronological "history" list that states when each user joined.

No, the geographical categories are really useful. If you need an
information about a country specific topic, you can ask someone there,
f.e. I would even suggest to add more categories. Wikipedia has become
quite anonymously. I think it would be useful for example to set up pages
like "people mainly interested in philosophical topics" or "music
freaks". As Wikipedia grows, we will need small communities of people
working in one field together instead of individuals filling up the
articles.

This would be also a step towards a more efficient dealing with "content
trolls", ie. people who step in, holding obscure views and imposing
their agenda onto wikipedia. One of the main problems with these people is
that they get away a long time with their behavior because the people who
try to control are not able to judge what is rubbish and what is not.

An example: in the German wikipedia I would love to have some economy
students who could at least tell which parts of the content added by our
"Freiwirtschaft"-adherent to the articles about economy are mainstream
view and which need to be marked as minority view.

Don't deny people this possibility to organize!

greetings,
elian
--
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority

body:
Cunctator wrote:
>Preventing someone from contributing to Wikipedia takes something
away from
>them. That is harm.

Yes, it's a harm to their ego and nothing else.  It's not a human or
civic right to edit wikipedia.

kq


from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
what is being done about the lag? what is the problem?

---------------------------------
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority
	(wasRe: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
On 11/11/02 1:38 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>> On 11/11/02 12:21 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>>> We have some customs. We need to review and codify them. "Ignore all rules"
>>> will have to go. "Please follow the rules or be blocked" will have to
>>> replace it.

>> Doing so will destroy Wikipedia. Rather, the type of contributors will
>> steadily become limited to a certain type of person, which type will over
>> time become more and more limited.

> And you have failed to explain how reviewing and codifying our customs and/or
> blocking violators of codified will "destroy" Wikipedia. What the heck does
> "limited to certain type of person" mean? Are you afraid that people like you
> would be kicked out? Shucks, you're the first person I would vote for to be a
> Moderator!

I'd either leave or be kicked out, yes, since I couldn't agree to such a
change.

> We already block the IPs of graffiti artists. How would reviewing and
> codifying the "vandal blocking" policy make things worse?

The same way that extending any policy that harms others makes things worse.
Harming others is only okay to the degree that you're harming bad people.
The more people you harm and the more that you harm them, the harder it is
to be just.

See m:WikipediAhimsa.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Lir yet again

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 07:52 am, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> Because of the "Anti". Enlisting as a queer user says nothing about your
> attitude about non-queer people. Positive categories are fine (ecologists,
> human right or peace activists, atheist, christian or muslim), negative
> categories are evil: "anti-christian", "antisemite", because they don't say
> only something about the self-categorized person but also insult other
> people.
>
> greetings,
> elian

Somebody already mentioned the "Pro- Osama" vs "Anti- Osama" dilemma. I
therefore renew my call for the moving of the POV wikipedians/foo pages to
meta. Anti this and pro that do not serve our goal of creating an NPOV free
encyclopedia. These categories only serve to divide the community and
community building is means to attaining our goal. Meta was created for POV
material and for Wikipedians to "hang out", so lets use it for what it was
made for.

Somebody else had the idea of creating different types of /useful/ categories
such as Wikipedians who have knowledge of certain subjects. I think this a
great idea that should be integrated with the Wikipedia:Help Desk page along
with the Wikipedians page. These types of categories are useful because they
further goals of the project.

Just because you are a Linux user, or happen to be gay, or a vegetarian
doesn't mean that you have the requisite knowledge to write NPOV articles on
these subjects. These pages are therefore only of peripheral interest and
should be moved to a POV-friendly forum.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Hold on, how does it "harm" someone to restrain them from sabotaging a project? If a school principal requires a student to remove graffiti which says "Aron 151" from other students' lockers in the hallway, does this harm the student? I think it teaches them a valuable lesson in responsibility and in respecting the rights of others.

Enforcing a "do not harm others" rule is not inherently harmful.

Ed Poor


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Ed Poor wrote:

>>What it comes down to is a tough choice between two choices:
>>(1) We are building a free encyclopedia. Therefore, we use Wiki software.
>>(2) We are maintaining a Wiki community. If we make some good encyclopedia
>>articles, that's nice too.

>We have one choice:
>(1) We are building a free Wiki encyclopedia.

Hear, hear!

All 3 of the final words in the last sentence are vital.
I wouldn't have cared about Wikipedia without "encyclopedia",
I wouldn't have considered it without "free",
and I wouldn't have joined without "wiki".
Changing any of them would probably cause *me* to leave.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> what is being done about the lag? what is the problem?

Too many people using the site. Feel free to be noble and sacrifice
yourself for the common good. ;)

Seriously, our database backend isn't structured as efficiently as it
might be, and MySQL is not very forgiving. As the site gets more popular
(and more widely linked-to), load at peak hours (mid-day in the US) gets
to be too much for the poor thing. The db freezes up from too many
simultaneous accesses, and you hhaaavveee ttttooooooo wwwwaaaaaiiiittttt
aaaaa llloooonnngggg ttttiiimmmmeeee fffffoooorrrr aaaannnnnyyyy
ttttthhhhiiinngggg.

Replacing MySQL with Postgresql, which has better locking and is said to
scale better to heavy loads, is one option being explored.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (wasRe: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
I don't understand your "functionality" vs. "authority" distinction.

I maintain that Wikipedia has *de facto* five levels of AUTHORITY. Now, the users on each level may have different roles and responsibilities; they may carry out different functions.

But I maintain that each category of users has power over all the users in the lower categories.

Jimbo can pull the plug on the machine, arbitrarily fire any developer, block any user, etc. The developers can erase a user account, grant or revoke sysop rights. Sysops can block unsigned users.

That is a hierarchy of power, like it or not. By the way, I never said I favored such a hierarchy. I am just describing the status quo.

There are five levels of POWER in our community. If we agree that such is the case, then let's start discussing what responsibilities they should have: if you will, what their "functions" should be. There's always some improvement to be made, right?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  Wikipedians groups (was small Small Request and other titles)

body:
Please, let's not create factions. Let each user state their biases on their user page, as I have done. I am an absolutist, yet I support NPOV. I oppose homosexuality, yet my extensive contribution to the various pages on homosexuality has resulted in nary a peep of complaint about my POV. In fact, much of what I wrote months ago has stood the test of time.

In talk pages, though, people complain about my position -- but not about my edits, unless my memory is being especially selective today.

Ed Poor


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki is down

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> I get timeouts on both en and fr, and have gotten connection refused, for the
> past half hour or so.

I've spent the last hour or so getting it more or less back online. I'm
running *extremely* late for class, so if it breaks again in the next
few hours, somebody else is gonna have to fix it.

I've disabled updating of the view count and site stats (two database
writes on every page view!) for the time being, in the hopes that this
will slightly improve performance. Since the db still descends into
uselessness after a couple minutes, I put the whole English wikipedia
temporarily into read-only mode.

It will automatically pop out after a couple hours when traffic should
be lower, or sooner if another developer wants to mess with it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #839 - 15 msgs

body:
tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:

> Matt M. wrote:
> >How are they any different from the geographical Wikipedian pages? I don't
> >see how asserting I'm Queer is any different from asserting I'm Canadian.

> Sure.
> But then why are users being prevented from asserting their opposition
> to the US in its current state as a polluting warmonger ruled by an
> oil baron despot?

Because of the "Anti". Enlisting as a queer user says nothing about your
attitude about non-queer people. Positive categories are fine (ecologists,
human right or peace activists, atheist, christian or muslim), negative
categories are evil: "anti-christian", "antisemite", because they don't say
only something about the self-categorized person but also insult other
people.

greetings,
elian
--
those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Yeah, you also said:
>
> MySQL has really crappy table locking, and blocks everything when certain slow operations are being done. We're looking into replacing it with Postgresql, which is said to scale better. But, first I have to adapt the code, change the table definitions, make sure it works on my home server, set up a test installation here before we go converting hundreds of megabytes of databasey goodness willy-nilly. --Brion 21:16 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)
>
> So what do we need table locking for?

It's implicit, we don't perform any explicit locks at all. In fact, it's
a pretty fragile system...

 > You want me to fix it for you? Should I join the developers mailing
list?

Yes, please!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 09:15 am, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> Here is a partial list of the customs or guidelines I see as already in
> place: * don't delete an entire article or insert random nonsense (no
> vandalism) * don't alter other user's comments (no forgery)
> * don't write partisan articles on controversial subjects (NPOV)
> * don't post copyrighted material, except fair use
>
> Here are the 3 enforcement mechanisms:
> * anyone can undo a change, thus reverting the vandalism, forgery or POV
> violation (soft security) * a sysop or above can ban an IP address
> * developers can ban a signed-in user (not "authorized" but "can")
> * Jimbo can ban a signed-in user
>
> Is this is fine, then let's keep it. If it could possibly be improved,
> let's improve it.
>
> Ed Poor

This seems similar to what I proposed in this post
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-November/007226.html

In that post I also added that a statement be added to each edit window that
reads;

"By saving this page you indicate that you agree to the terms and conditions
of using this website"

"rules and conditions" would be a link to the policy page (read more in my
previous post - near the bottom).

Yes it is a EULA but dammit is no longer possible to review each days edit and
get to know each new user. Believe me I have tried more than anybody else
except Ed to orient new users. At one time not too long ago at all I greeted
each one that had made more than 2 unoverwritten edits and I edited each of
their first entries for style, NPOV etc and then gave them feedback. But I
don't have time to do this when there are 40 new users every that meet those
selection criteria every several days. I guess I will change the filter to 5
unoverwritten edits.

The point is that we are quickly loosing the ability to effectively do things
like we always have done them. Now instead of "tapping somebody on the
shoulder" as was the previous custom we must have the software point people
to where our policies are and state that those policies are enforceable.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On 11/11/02 2:06 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Hold on, how does it "harm" someone to restrain them from sabotaging a
> project? If a school principal requires a student to remove graffiti which
> says "Aron 151" from other students' lockers in the hallway, does this harm
> the student? I think it teaches them a valuable lesson in responsibility and
> in respecting the rights of others.

Well, yes, it teaches them that lesson by making them do something tedious
and difficult, and which brands them as a vandal. Which isn't bad, as I
said, as long as they need that lesson. But it certainly would be quite
terrible to force the student to remove the graffiti if the student didn't
do it.

Preventing someone from contributing to Wikipedia takes something away from
them. That is harm.


from_name: Zoe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] server

body:
Who locked the database, why, and when will it be unlocked?  If solving the lag problem is to make it impossible to update, what' s the point of having a wikipedia?
Zow
 tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:talking about server performance, it's been unavailable here for the
last hour ("operation timed out"), except for about 5 minutes and during
that time I got a "database locked" when I tried to edit.

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

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body:
On 11/11/02 2:15 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> I don't understand your "functionality" vs. "authority" distinction.

Again, there's a doctor, a plumber, and a fry cook in a room. Who has more
authority? Who has more moral authority?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ed F.A. Poor

body:
Okay, then ban me. I surreptitiously vandalized 5 or 10 pages with a fake account, then confessed to Larry.

Suppose you revoke my sysop rights, erase my user name, block my IP. Will that solve the crisis facing Wikipedia? Will that prevent the abuses that you fear will stem from codifying and enforcing standards?

My Fallacious Alter-ego experiment was designed purely to draw attention to the problem of having poorly defined standards. If it was a "poor" idea, chalk it up to the poverty of

    your most obedient servant,
    Ed Poor


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Our options; *your* opinion requested

body:
I solicit your opinion--yes, you, humble (or exalted) list member.

I ask you, dear reader and fellow Wikipedian, to offer your mere opinion.
If you want to support it with reasons, that's great, but I'd like us to
hold off on attack each others' opinions for right now, so that we can
actually get an idea of what we all simply think.

If you don't want to send your reply to the list, send it to me, and I'll
do my best to compile a summary.

As I see it, there are two issues under debate: whether there is a
problem; and if so, what the solution should be.

=======

ISSUE 1.  The problem or lack thereof.

PRO: There is indeed a serious problem now on Wikipedia.  Many newbies
(and some people who have been here for a while) brazenly violate the
basic defining rules of our community, and presently, neither peer
pressure, nor following violators around constantly, nor the occasional
actual sanction seems to be solving this problem.  Well-respected, clearly
productive members of the community are driven away by having to deal with
these people or such behaviors, and this is a really serious problem.

CONTRA: While there are of course people who abuse Wikipedia, their
numbers and effects are perfectly manageable and are not particularly
egregious.  Either "well-respected, clearly productive members of the
community"--whose value is probably overrated--are not being driven away,
in fact, or if they are, so much the worse for them, if they can't thrive
in an open, free atmosphere.

OTHER: [Insert your take on this debate here.]

=======

ISSUE 2.  What to do about the problem, if anything.

The Anarchist/Radical Freedom Option: We should strip everyone of powers
to ban and to delete pages permanently.  "SoftSecurity" alone is adequate
as a safeguard against Wikipedia's abusers.

The Status Quo Option: We should continue on as we have been in recent
months, viz., everyone has, for the asking, the power to delete pages and
to ban IP numbers.  There doesn't need to be set policy on when this is
appropriate and when not.

The Status Quo, Plus Clearer Principles Option: We need to debate and
settle upon some clear principles about when sanctions are to be meted out
by our sysops.

The Moderators Option: Rather than having giving power to all sysops who
ask for it, we should give the power to moderators on a rotating basis.
They act explicitly as judges, adjudicating disputes and building up a
history of cases that allows us to find-tune and rationally apply the
rules that eliminate from our presence trolls and others who simply refuse
to play by the rules.  They are responsible for judging by the rules
fairly, and as a result the office of moderator is rewarded with moral
authority.

Other Option: [Describe your solution here.]

--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Locked database

body:
Why is it, that when I try to edit a page, I'm getting a notice that the database is locked, but Recent Changes show that updates have been made at the exact same time I'm told that I can't do any updates?  Have I been singled out?

Zoe

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body:
That's why many have suggested a temporary block. Even Jimbo's ban of Helga (H. Jonat) will will expire soon.

How about a 24-hour ban, followed by a 3-day or 7-day ban?

How about blocking write access only -- not read access?

How about limiting banned users to their own talk page?

Let's explore all the options and come to as broad a consensus as possible.

I am REALLY TIRED of seeing users like Maveric, Elian, Larry, Julie, et al., hand in their resignations because some stubborn, um, fellow on the school board says that suspending a student "harms" them.

Ed Poor
"my opinion, not my employer's"


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ed F.A. Poor

body:
On 11/11/02 2:31 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Okay, then ban me. I surreptitiously vandalized 5 or 10 pages with a fake
> account, then confessed to Larry.
>
> Suppose you revoke my sysop rights, erase my user name, block my IP. Will that
> solve the crisis facing Wikipedia? Will that prevent the abuses that you fear
> will stem from codifying and enforcing standards?

By "you", do mean mean me? Please quote the entries to which you refer. I
never called for banning you.

I don't think there's a crisis facing Wikipedia, nor that this is its most
pressing problem.


from_name: Throbbing Monster Cock

body:
Ortolan88 wrote:

> TMC states on his user page that he believes the
> Wikipedia is "doomed to to failure at worst or
> uselessness at best"

I do believe this, but that doesn't mean that my
objective is to hasten the process.  I'd love to see
wikipedia succeed, but I think it has basic structural
problems. Recognizing those problems doesn't make me
an enemy of the project.

> and explicitly states his opposition to NPOV.

I do no such thing.  I do refer to the existence of
something I have called the "Tyranny of Neutrality",
but that is not the same as saying I oppose
neutrality.  Again, it is just an awareness that
Neutrality, absolutely applied, will cause certain
problems and can become a tyranny of itself.

> pretense that the name is pure poultry, he is so
> embarrassed by his user name that he never uses it,
> even on his own pages.

I am not embarrassed by my chosen user name.  If you
read my talk pages you would see that Tarquin asked me
long ago to begin using a nickname instead of my full
name to sign my posts, and I have done so fairly
consistently since then.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
elian wrote:

>>But then why are users being prevented from asserting their opposition
>>to the US in its current state as a polluting warmonger ruled by an
>>oil baron despot?
>>
>>
>
>Because of the "Anti". Enlisting as a queer user says nothing about your
>attitude about non-queer people. Positive categories are fine (ecologists,
>human right or peace activists, atheist, christian or muslim), negative
>categories are evil: "anti-christian", "antisemite", because they don't say
>only something about the self-categorized person but also insult other
>people.
>
>
That's exactly why I had the "Anti-American users" page deleted (which
Lir instantly identified as "vandalism"). People who are "anti" often
don't know a better alternative, or else they could say they're
"pro"-something ;-)
Besides, having an anti-America page on an American server does
discredit itself somewhat...

Magnus


from_name: Jonathan Walther

body:
I would be all for your rotating moderators proposal except for one
thing; the user RK.  He has an incredible number of "edits" to his name,
but with his style of trying to (not) work with people, giving him
moderatorship would be like handing a flame-thrower to a psychopath
in a crowded subway station.

I agree with Ed, Isis, and others that "Throbbing Monster Cock" isn't an
appropriate name for the Wiki, even though it is a good joke when you
see the picture of the chicken.

I think Ed, and many others would be great with "moderator" powers.  But
I worry that with powers come the power-hungry, drawn like moths to a
flame.  I'd rather put up with some inconvenience now, than suffer when
the power-hungry finally manage to weasel their way into positions of
power sometime down the road.

Lir is a nuisance, and I'm not sure what the solution to her is.  She
seems to honestly try to contribute, but she just doesn't know how an
encyclopedia should go, and what things are appropriate to put in, and
what things are better left out.  Her articles on Sumer and "Wealth of
the Nations" are good examples.  The problem is she is so prolific;
she overwhelms the small number of editors who are available to "fix"
her modifications.

How do we know she isn't a saboteur sent from the Encyclopedia
Britannica to mess up the Wikipedia?  She has lowered the tone and
credibility of an incredible number of our articles.

But I find it hard to recommend any specific action against her; there
are those who violently disagree with my edits on some religious topics
on the Wikipedia, and if Lir is acted against, how much longer until
they demand that I be limited, merely because of my holding
a different POV from the majority?  I sincerely want the Wikipedia to be
the best it can be; and my intimate knowledge of some of the topics I
edit *is* at odds with what many people believe; what will protect me
from mob rule, when the mob considers my NPOV to be straight-up
false propaganda?

The one thing I can say is I agree that clarification and codification
of our cultural policies are always appropriate.  Our Debian "policy"
document now runs many pages in length, but it lets all of us work
smoothly and harmoniously together, despite being 1000 strong.

Jonathan

On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 02:33:29PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote:
>I solicit your opinion--yes, you, humble (or exalted) list member.
>
>I ask you, dear reader and fellow Wikipedian, to offer your mere opinion.
>If you want to support it with reasons, that's great, but I'd like us to
>hold off on attack each others' opinions for right now, so that we can
>actually get an idea of what we all simply think.
>
>If you don't want to send your reply to the list, send it to me, and I'll
>do my best to compile a summary.
>
>As I see it, there are two issues under debate: whether there is a
>problem; and if so, what the solution should be.
>
>=======
>
>ISSUE 1.  The problem or lack thereof.
>
>PRO: There is indeed a serious problem now on Wikipedia.  Many newbies
>(and some people who have been here for a while) brazenly violate the
>basic defining rules of our community, and presently, neither peer
>pressure, nor following violators around constantly, nor the occasional
>actual sanction seems to be solving this problem.  Well-respected, clearly
>productive members of the community are driven away by having to deal with
>these people or such behaviors, and this is a really serious problem.
>
>CONTRA: While there are of course people who abuse Wikipedia, their
>numbers and effects are perfectly manageable and are not particularly
>egregious.  Either "well-respected, clearly productive members of the
>community"--whose value is probably overrated--are not being driven away,
>in fact, or if they are, so much the worse for them, if they can't thrive
>in an open, free atmosphere.
>
>OTHER: [Insert your take on this debate here.]
>
>=======
>
>ISSUE 2.  What to do about the problem, if anything.
>
>The Anarchist/Radical Freedom Option: We should strip everyone of powers
>to ban and to delete pages permanently.  "SoftSecurity" alone is adequate
>as a safeguard against Wikipedia's abusers.
>
>The Status Quo Option: We should continue on as we have been in recent
>months, viz., everyone has, for the asking, the power to delete pages and
>to ban IP numbers.  There doesn't need to be set policy on when this is
>appropriate and when not.
>
>The Status Quo, Plus Clearer Principles Option: We need to debate and
>settle upon some clear principles about when sanctions are to be meted out
>by our sysops.
>
>The Moderators Option: Rather than having giving power to all sysops who
>ask for it, we should give the power to moderators on a rotating basis.
>They act explicitly as judges, adjudicating disputes and building up a
>history of cases that allows us to find-tune and rationally apply the
>rules that eliminate from our presence trolls and others who simply refuse
>to play by the rules.  They are responsible for judging by the rules
>fairly, and as a result the office of moderator is rewarded with moral
>authority.

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
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Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
Ed Poor wrote:

> If a school principal requires a student to remove
> graffiti which says "Aron 151" from other students'
> lockers in the hallway, does this harm the student?

It is harmful to the student in many ways.

First, it causes the destruction of the "Aron 151"
embelishment, which was presumably of value to the
student.

Second, the time the student wastes removing the
graffiti in question is time that could have been more
valuably spent by painting "Aron 151" tags in other
places.

Third, it can cause there to be a perception that the
principal has greater "authority" than the student.

> Enforcing a "do not harm others" rule is not
> inherently harmful.

The rule *may* be reasonable, but who defines "harm"?

Ed Poor

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 05:16:06PM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>Yeah, you also said:
>
>MySQL has really crappy table locking, and blocks everything when certain slow operations are being done. We're looking into replacing it with Postgresql, which is said to scale better. But, first I have to adapt the code, change the table definitions, make sure it works on my home server, set up a test installation here before we go converting hundreds of megabytes of databasey goodness willy-nilly. --Brion 21:16 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)
>
>So what do we need table locking for? You want me to fix it for you? Should I join the developers mailing list?

Um, the problem is that the SQL is intermingled with the PHP code, so
it's a bastard to go through and remove the MySQLisms.  I myself have
modified the DatabaseFunctions.php file, but am dragging my feet on
going through all the table definitions and making sure the data types
are appropriate/compatible with Postgres.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikitech-l] Soft Bans?

body:
At 2002-11-10 20:56 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>If we set a cookie in the browsers of all Wikipedia visitors, anonymous or
>not, we could the assign them random global user IDs. Instead of banning users
>by IP, we could ban them by GUID, which would eliminate the risk of
>accidentally banning legitimate contributors.
>
>While the majority of users have cookies enabled, a minority does not, so
>"soft bans" as I like to call them would not work for them. Other users might
>be smart enough to turn cookies off to avoid the ban. But I consider both
>beyond the technical understanding of most vandals, so I think soft bans might be
>quite efficient.
>
>What do you think?

Sounds like an idea worth considering.

Some other suggestions: Ban a whole range of
IP-addresses, except for people that did behave
in the past. You could for example give out
(coded) successive cookies for each range of
256*256 IP addresses. Whenever someone misbehaves
in that range, you ban the whole range, except
the people with a cookie with a lower number.
Because the numbers are coded it's hard to
guess a coded number that represents a lower
number.

Another idea is to ban not only based on the
IP-address-range but also on the kind of browser
and OS etc. This means that everybody in the
whole range would be banned unless they use
another browser/version or OS.

Another method could be to notify all former
users in the range by email and ask them to
contact a supervisor if they want to use
Wikipedia during the banning period.

By the way, I think people should not be allowed
to edit articles on Wikipedia when they don't
have logged in. That way you also have a better
handle on vandals.

It seems to me that there are probably many
more ways to tackle this problem.

Greetings,
Jaap


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Authority vs. function

body:
I'm not going to understand you better just because you repeat yourself.

Try:
*Hospital Administrator
*Chief Surgeon
*Surgeon
*Scrub Nurse
*Orderly

Each has authority over those on the level below.

Ed Poor


from_name: Mark Christensen

body:
>> My overall point is that if we are looking to find "moral
>> authority"  we need to think and act in ways which respect
>> human dignity, and which encourage at least a basic level
>> of kindness and
> civility.
>
> So your point is that we have to treat even our trolls with
> kindness and civility, and that is what will allow our
> productive members to be respected and treated as if they had
> some legitimate authority on the project?  I disagree completely.

No, that is not my point. I'm glad you disagree, because I do too.  My
point is that respect for human dignity is a mandatory subset of what we
should do, not that it is the only thing necessary.

> Your point too is far overstated.  There is much more than we
> could possibly do than simply "encouraging at least a basic
> level of kindness and civility."  I do agree that we should
> do that.

That was my whole point, I did not go further. I made no claims that my
post addressed all the problems we face, so to critique it because "more
can be done" is inaccurate.

In particular, I did not address the point that we need to make our
rules more clear, and be more consistent in enforcing those rules.  I
think your description of our need in this area is exactly right.
However, I think that even this needs to be done in a way that indicates
our respect for people generally, and specifically for the people who we
are asking not to work on our project any more.  Obviously we need to
also respect the people who've work hard on our project, as well as
experts who donate limited and valuable time to work on our encyclopedia
project.  I don't see these goals as mutually exclusive.

In particular, as I see it there's just no point tying negative labels
to anybody.  When somebody violates the rules of our project, we should
seek to have the same NPoV description of what they've done that we
expect in other places.  And we don't need to judge their character to
say that we think the project would progress more smoothly without their
participation.

As far as I can tell, the only real disagreement we seem to have is
about what constitutes a basic respect for human dignity in the context
of a public project. My position is that negative labels just aren't
respectful, and therefore name calling is not appropriate.  In the
office, I expect the people I work for/with to deal fairly with people's
ideas, and not to call each other names.  I expect the same from my
roommates, nephews, parents, and friends. And I would --really like-- to
be able to expect it here.

I sometimes catch myself occasionally writing one of my colleagues off
as incompetent, or lazy, or stupid, if only in my head.  But when I
recognize this in myself, I recognize it as wrong.  I am more than
willing to admit that others don't share my distaste for negative
labels.  But before you reject it, I'd like to hear why you think
calling Lir "a disruptive child" is better than attempting to briefly
describe Lir's --behavior-- as disruptive, counterproductive, and
lacking in maturity.  As I see it there's no need to judge Lir's value
as a person, we have no idea why Lir is responding in the way she is,
and in other contexts she may be perfectly coherent, mature, and
productive.

Yours
Mark Christensen


subject: [Wikipedia-l] windshield police (Was: Wikipedia moderators and moral authority)

body:
Ed Poor wrote:
> I might be an anarchist, but if I see a gang of kids
> going down the street, methodically knocking out car
> windshields with baseball bats -- I'm calling the
> cops. And I want them to have handcuffs, mace and
> guns.

In this case we have your opinion that windshields
should not be knocked out, and the opinion of the
"gang" that windshields should be knocked out.  What
makes your opinion that the windshields should remain
intact superior to the opinion that they should be
shattered?

Is your attempt to call the police merely another way
of saying you would resort to the use of force
(handcuffs, mace, and guns) to enforce your opinion
regarding windshields?  Is force to be the ultimate
determanant of what is "right" or "wrong"?  Does that
mean that if the gang has overbearing force to use
against the police, then they are now morally right
regarding the windshields?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Authority vs. function

body:
On 11/11/02 2:51 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> I'm not going to understand you better just because you repeat yourself.
>
> Try:
> *Hospital Administrator
> *Chief Surgeon
> *Surgeon
> *Scrub Nurse
> *Orderly
>
> Each has authority over those on the level below.
>
Only in a sense;  I certainly wouldn't want the hospital administrator to
tell the chief surgeon how to perform an appendectomy; nor, say, if the
chief surgeon is a cardio specialist, would I want her to tell a
neurosurgeon how to remove a brain tumor; nor does the surgeon know more
about the scrub nurse's job than the nurse does, etc.

And if the orderly happens to be my mother, the HA doesn't have moral
authority over the orderly.

Authority and levels are *contextual*.

To not use analogy: the developers know more about (or at least have a
greater combination of knowledge, time, and interest) Wikipedia code than
others. That hardly means that they are better judges of what makes a good
editor than non-developers. It doesn't even mean they're a better judge of
interface.

Similarly, I respect Jimbo's authority not because he controls the project,
but because he's demonstrated that he controls the project *and* he knows
how to do it well.


body:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 03:01:51PM -0800, Throbbing Monster Cock wrote:
>In this case we have your opinion that windshields
>should not be knocked out, and the opinion of the
>"gang" that windshields should be knocked out.  What
>makes your opinion that the windshields should remain
>intact superior to the opinion that they should be
>shattered?
>
>Is your attempt to call the police merely another way
>of saying you would resort to the use of force
>(handcuffs, mace, and guns) to enforce your opinion
>regarding windshields?  Is force to be the ultimate
>determanant of what is "right" or "wrong"?  Does that
>mean that if the gang has overbearing force to use
>against the police, then they are now morally right
>regarding the windshields?

TMC, you show an immature understanding of anarchism.  Those car windows
represent work and labor on someones part, whether the builder, or
someone who traded their labor for those car windows.  To destroy those
windows is to rob someone of their labor.  Anarchists clearly frown on
robbery, as it is a form of coercion.

And yes, it is legitimate in anarchist society to defend your rightful
possessions with force, if force is the only solution.

Anarchists have nothing against power and authority as such; human
beings naturally have differing amounts of these.  Their objection is to
the concentration of power, and to the use of authority as justification
for the abuse of power.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject:
Pro and contra, was: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol
  1 #839 - 15 msgs

body:
At 2002-11-11 14:45 +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
>elian wrote:
>>>But then why are users being prevented from asserting their opposition
>>>to the US in its current state as a polluting warmonger ruled by an
>>>oil baron despot?
>>
>>Because of the "Anti". Enlisting as a queer user says nothing about your
>>attitude about non-queer people. Positive categories are fine (ecologists,
>>human right or peace activists, atheist, christian or muslim), negative
>>categories are evil: "anti-christian", "antisemite", because they don't say
>>only something about the self-categorized person but also insult other
>>people.
>>
>That's exactly why I had the "Anti-American users" page deleted (which Lir instantly identified as "vandalism"). People who are "anti" often don't know a better alternative, or else they could say they're "pro"-something ;-)
>Besides, having an anti-America page on an American server does discredit itself somewhat...

So it's okay to be pro Osama bin Laden, but bad to be anti American? ;-)

Greetings,
Jaap

PS. I am neither. I'm more against digest readers
in general and especially those who respond to
messages without changing the subject header. ;-)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bottleneck: Internal link resolution

body:
Hi,

after some browsing around in the code, I've found a major bottleneck:
the current internal link resolution system.

If you have a local Wikipedia install, try it for yourself: Visit a few
very link heavy pages, like [[List of reference tables]]. You will
notice that the rendering speed depends directly on the number of
internal links (not on the actual text size, or formatting tags). The
link cache seems to work as page rendering gets faster as you load a
page repeatedly, but it remains rather slow for link-heavy pages.

For further proof, edit OutputPage.php and in the function
replaceInternalLinks.php just add a return $s at the top. As a result,
internal links will no longer be resolved. Now browse a page (optimally
open Main Page before the change and follow links from there after it)
and notice that the rendering is lightning fast.

The internal link resolution process is quite complex. I notice that
lots of Title objects are created, and we have lots of ID lookups. I
won't speculate too much about the cause until I have had time to
examine them closer. But that this is a bottleneck is certain.

I believe we need to make use of the links and brokenlinks table for the
actual page rendering. Right now they seem to be used only for the
special pages.

Regards,

Erik

--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tokerboy weighs in

body:
On 11/11/02 2:52 PM, "Tucci" <tucci528 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Tokerboy
> :Ed Poor
>
> I originally only wanted to respond to two posts.
> First of all, I like the Cunctster being a prick--he's
> a vaccine against groupthink because no decision will
> ever be unanimous as long as he is here--makes me
> wonder if that's his goal.  Many CEOs and team leaders
> and the like secretly designate one board/team member
> to disagree on every decision, because otherwise
> groups tend to accept the first even remotely viable
> option presented.

Oh, I've agreed with many a decision. My goal is not to disagree with every
decision, just to discourage mistakes.

I don't think freezing pages is the right way to deal with edit conflicts.

I think the right thing to do would be to carefully go over the case history
and look at specific examples of where people feel the system has broken
down.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] voting

body:
We need voting. Some people here are advocating for a "republic". Who are they to declare that they are an expert on experts? We must have voting. There are issues to be resolved. Obviously we do not want to be dominated by a "majority" of generated IPs. But we must have voting.

We must end the nonsense. Never again must a page like, "Anti-American Wikipedians" be deleted on the say-so of some elitist. We must vote on such issues. Never again should the name of Munchen or Colombo be decided by some American with administrative powers. We must vote on such issues and we must start this voting process soon.

Democracy is a difficult concept. Should we accept it we are then facecd with the decision of whether to have a representative or pure democracy. I argue, in the spirit of the founding fathers of America (who argued for a blend between a republic and a pure democracy ie the representative democracy), I argue for a blend between the pure democracy and the representative democracy.

We must have a vote. This first vote is very simple. It will ask

Should we start voting?

One can either say Yes, No, or give a user name. If you give a user name then your vote will be identical to that users vote. In that manner, somebody that is unsure of what to vote for, can give way to another whom they believe will make the correct choice.

Once we have a decision to start voting we can then work out the details of such a proces, THROUGH VOTING.

There is one minor detail that must be decided and that is, "Who can vote in this first question?" Shall we limit it to mav and larry sanger? Perhaps we will let Epopt and Cunctuator contribute their opinion as well. On the other hand we could let everyone vote and Fucking Asshole, Lear, and 63.32 will weigh in heavily with their opinions.

This decision must be made. We must vote and we must choose who can vote.

---------------------------------
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U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive medley & videos from Greatest Hits CD
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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tokerboy weighs in

body:
--- Tokerboy (Tucci <tucci528 at yahoo.com>) wrote:

> I think we should divide the controversial powers up ...<

> Sysop: delete obviously vandalized articles, delete
> pages to make way for a move, ban anonymous IPs if
> necessary.  If there is _any doubt_ as to whether a
> change should be considered vandalism, refer the
> matter to a moderator.

> Moderator: powers of sysop above, but intervenes in
> edit wars and disagreements if a user or sysop asks
> (or if the moderator simply sees one developing).  The
> moderator tries to get the situation cooled down, and
> the argument resolved in one way or another.  I'd say
> the standard for freezing an article is 1: if an
> actual edit war has erupted and 2: the article should
> be frozen at the state it was before the war, or with
> no text at all and a reference to the talk page.  I'd
> also suggest allowing both sides to write an article
> (or a section) from their POV, and then having one or
> more moderators combine the two.

I think the term moderator has negative connotations.

> If someone does not agree with the moderator's
> decision, some sort of court should be established
> where a user can complain about a moderator's actions,
> and other moderators and/or sysops can discuss the
> decision and whether or not it was justified.

Arbitration: There should be binding arbitration, just like in what
is happening a lot with corporations in the US.

> Moderators should be chosen through some sort of
> anonymous nomination system.  Any signed-in user can
> nominate another user and when a person has been
> nominated five times (by different users), he can be
> made a moderator.  Alternatively, perhaps a person
> must be a sysop for a month or two before becoming a
> moderator.

I think an Arbitrator (don't like the term moderator) should be part
of a hierarchy. Logged in users vote, then the top three voted become
arbitrator. I would specifically disallow sysops powers for
arbitrators. The arbitrator should hand down his/her decision and let
a sysop or Jimbo do the actual changes. The claimants should be able
to appeal the decision, in which case the other arbitrators will take
a look at it ande decide whether to reverse the decision.

> I think regardless of the merit of what I propose
> above, I do believe we should have a Bill of Rights of
> sorts for users without any special status (i.e. not
> even signed in) to more effectively guarantee that
> abuse will not occur.

I agree. And if abuse does occur, a clearly detailed appeals
procedure needs to exist.

> 1:Users have the right to edit any page, except for
> specifically protected ones or articles temporarily
> frozen because an edit war was developing.

> 2:Users have the right to access a forum to complain
> of abuse of power.

I think I would add that users have a right to speedy and just
resolution of conflicts. I would not want the parties to go on a
6-month long flame-war, hum, filibuster before the user could get
resolve of his or her issue.

>
> Tokerboy

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Locked database

body:
Zoe wrote:

> Why is it, that when I try to edit a page, I'm getting a notice that
> the database is locked, but Recent Changes show that updates have been
> made at the exact same time I'm told that I can't do any updates?
> Have I been singled out?
>
I doubt that it's personal at all.  One thing that I've noticed with
some of my edits in those circumstances is that they do get made, but
that the system goes strange when it tries to download the revised article.
Ec


body:
Larry Sanger wrote in part:

>(1) In the absence of people who are generally respected as in authority,
>"rebellion" will continuously break out.

One can only have rebellion if there is someone to rebel *against*.
Rebellion continuously breaks out, then, in the *presence* of people
that claim to be in authority but are however not resepected as such.
So there are two ways to reduce rebellion: increase the respect,
or reduce the claim.

>Doesn't [the moderator system] mean an even more baroque power structure?
>(No, I'd tentatively suggest we strip all erstwhile "sysops" of their
>too-easily-abusable rights, in favor of this system.)

Have administrators ("sysops") been abusing their power?
While some have made *mistakes*, I haven't seen any abuse.
And the mistakes are correctable, since there are many administrators
(more than just 3 at any given time!).
Even abuse should be correctable in this way.

>I am not going to argue for this or elaborate it anytime soon.  (I'd like
>to get the Wikipedia peer review project going first:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/sifter-l )  But I would lot to
>hear nonfallacious, nonvacuous, non-potshot-ish comments about it, if
>anyone has any.

Of course, you *have* been arguing for it since this post ^_^.
But I won't hold you to a promise that was probably unwise to begin with
(much as I don't hold politicians to promises to retire after 2 terms).
You should be able to defend your position against unreasonable attacks
(or even those that you think to be unreasonable).

-- Toby


body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:

>So it's okay to be pro Osama bin Laden, but bad to be anti American? ;-)
>
>
OK, let's open a pro-Osama page. Once all have signed in (especially
americans), I'll be happy to forward the URL to the FBI. I'm sure
they'll have shut down wikipedia in no time ;-)

Seriously, while geographic location pages for users are surely OK,
political statements etc. have *no* use at all on an encyclopedia, with
the possible exception of a "list of expert users" for some topic.
"wikipedia:Muslim users" might serve a function. Your *views* should be
kept either to your user page or to the meta, where we already have
several "my view on life"-style articles.

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ed F.A. Poor

body:
Why would I use the pronoun 'you' to refer to you? That's silly! One would think I was opposing your call to ban me -- despite your never having made one.

Look, we can trade witticisms all day.

But Wikipedia is getting bigger, it's throbbing, it's monstrous, it's becoming cocky, and I'm with Magnus and Larry:
* I want to build a free encyclopedia.
* I see Wiki software as a means to an end.

When I wrote an appointment scheduler for a hospital, it wasn't because they wanted to "have appointment scheduling software" but because they wanted to "keep track of their appointments".

Let the end guide the choice of means. (Not to be confused with -- or to override -- "the end justifies the means", lest Larry stomp me while you hold me down!)

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  server

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 02:39 pm, Zoe wrote:
> Who locked the database, why, and when will it be unlocked?  If solving the
> lag problem is to make it impossible to update, what' s the point of having
> a wikipedia? Zoe

Yes, an uneditable wiki is a major joke. Our articles are always readable via
Google cache. Could it be possible to allow editing by at least logged-in
users?

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS I hope the reason why there have been so damn many posts today is just
because nobody can edit. I don't have time to read 5+ digests a day.


from_name: Matsunaga, Richard

subject: [Wikitech-l] problem accessing site

body:
Hi there,

I get the following when I try to access the site. I have tried clearing my
cache to no avail.

Warning: Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many connection
errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in
/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on line 19
Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1

Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many connection errors.
Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
please notify the  <mailto:wikitech-l at nupedia.com> Wikipedia developers.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sidebar change, comments?

body:
Hi,

a few days ago, I wrote a patch for the navigation sidebar. The patch
changes a few link names and fixes a bug. The current sidebar looks as follows:

Main page
Recent changes
Watch list
Current events
--------------------
Edit this page
Watch this page
Move this page
Talk page | Subject page
History
What links here
Watch links
--------------------
Upload
Bug reports
Special pages

The links are perfectly OK, but I have problems with the words used and
sometimes with the positioning. The modified sidebar looks like this:

Main Page
Recent changes
My watchlist
Random page
Current events
--------------------
Edit this page
Watch this page
Move this page
Discuss this page | View article
Older versions
What links here?
Related changes
--------------------
Upload file
Special pages
Bug reports

Explanations:
- "Watch list" should be "My watchlist" to make clear that this is not a
page that is the same for all users, like the other links in this
section of the sidebar. Perhaps later we will also add a direct link "My
contributions".
- "Talk page" should be "Discuss this page" to use the same imperative
style of the other links above it. Since users don't have to create
"/Talk" links anymore, it's not necessary that we use the actual word
"Talk" anywhere but in the URLs.
- "Subject page" should be "View article" or "Back to article". "Subject
page" is really ambiguous and hard to understand, I searched several
times for a way back to the article because I didn't find an obvious
link.
- "History" should be "Older versions" or "Page history" to be more
obvious. Most people are not familiar with the concept of article
histories.
- "What links here" needs a questionmark.
- "Watch links" should be "Link history", "Related changes" or something
else. "Watch links" suggests that this will add the links to my
watchlist, which it doesn't do.
- Upload should be "Upload file". True, a bit redundant, but more
familiar this way.
- Bug reports should be at the bottom as this is the least relevant.

If there are no objections, I will apply this change later today or
tomorrow.

Regards,

Erik Moeller

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: 90000 articles

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Larry Sanger wrote:
>
>> I think we should implement the greatly-pared-down counting scheme we
>> were
>> discussing on the list earlier.  We don't have 90K articles.  We have
>> about 50K articles and about 40K geographical entries automatically
>> created from a database.
>>
>>
> How about "90K entries, 50K of them articles" on the Main Page? (well,
> the last part needs rewording...)

Good idea.

>
>
> I thought of something else: Automated "evaluation" of articles. I'm
> uncertain if that has been mentioned before, though.
>
> We could add a score to each article. Certain properties are usually
> good:
> * Many edits (as well as number of contributors)
> * many outgoing internal links
> * image links
> * links to other languages
>
> Furthermore, the following could be scored somehow:
> * text to list (* and #) ratio
> * text to external links ratio
> * text to headings ratio
> * text to number of paragraphs ratio
>
> Granted, such a scoring method won't be able to separate all good and
> bad articles from each other. But, it could find many "bad" articles
> (lists, text dumps, stubs, etc.), and give us some kind of statistics
> about where we stand.

Good idea.
But don't be too harsh on * and #. I've often turned a large paragraph
of "there are three types of trout commonly found, the blah trout which
is ... ... ... , the foo trout which is ..." into a clearer list format.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Our options; *your* opinion requested

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 02:39 pm, Larry wrote:
> The Status Quo, Plus Clearer Principles Option: We need to debate and
> settle upon some clear principles about when sanctions are to be meted out
> by our sysops.

I vote for this option

> The Moderators Option: Rather than having giving power to all sysops who
> ask for it, we should give the power to moderators on a rotating basis.
> They act explicitly as judges, adjudicating disputes and building up a
> history of cases that allows us to find-tune and rationally apply the
> rules that eliminate from our presence trolls and others who simply refuse
> to play by the rules.  They are responsible for judging by the rules
> fairly, and as a result the office of moderator is rewarded with moral
> authority.

Bad idea. We already have the problem of not having enough sysops to watch the
shop and perform maintenance. I would, however, support the /addition/ of
moderators to the current set-up. The moderators would decide the borderline
cases, content wars, blocking of POV users etc.

You still haven't responded to my previous post on this issue.

See
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-November/007226.html

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: 90,000 articles

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 01:25 pm, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> Why don't we just say "thousands and thousands of articles"?
>
> Since we've agreed that there's no certain way
> to automatically detect which articles are "real",
> making milestones like 100K even more meaningless than usual,
> we shouldn't pretend than any one figure is correct.
> Anybody that's interested in a total count,
> using any of the various automatic definitions of "article",
> can look at [[Wikipedia:Statistics]] for that information.
> Anybody that believes a particular method of counting to be useful
> can announce milestones based on it on [[Wikipedia:Announcements]].
>
> We can even link from [[Main Page]] to [[Wikipedia:Statistics]]
> directly from the phrase "thousands and thousands of articles",
> so even newcomers can get an easily accessible precise count --
> deciding for themselves which precise count is most accurate.
>
>
> -- Toby

Bad idea. It is important to have a running count of our progress in the most
visible place - the Main Page. We already have a definition for what we
consider an article to be and what we let the software count as an article.
All we need to do is change the definitions so that bot-generated entries are
not counted as articles until x number of human non-minor edits have been
made to them.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article


body:
Erik Moeller wrote to Larry Sanger in part:

>In general, I do not see the problems you see.

I agree with you here, Erik, and with others that have said the same thing.
The problems with disruptive users (Helga, Lir, et al) aren't getting worse.
(This is distinct from the problems with vandals.)

>Note that one of your favorite "bad examples", Everything2, is an example
>for a community that has been completely eroded by a supposedly benevolent
>elite (albeit not a random, changing one).

I think that you're too dismissive of the value of random selection, however.
This should be moot, since I agree with the more overarching point
that it's better to have lots of administrators with devolved power
than a select few, however selected.
But when a select few is selected,
then random selection breaks up concentrations of power --
assuming that the select few in question actually has the power.

>Express respect for the other person's view, and try to find a way to
>integrate it without violating NPOV.

I agree with Larry that it's useless to express respect for
people that are constitutionally incapable of acting respectably.
(And I do believe that there are such people, in the short term.)
However, I don't think that any of us is able to judge ahead of time
which these people are.  Ed Poor is famous for mentoring new users,
whom he treats with respect and whose views he tries to integrate,
and many of them have turned out to respond well to his efforts.
A few, like Helga, did not -- but Ed would never have had his successes
if he didn't treat *everybody* with respect.
So in conclusion, I agree with you again, Erik.

-- Toby


from_name: Steve Callaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] USER: LEAR Vandalism

body:
re user: Lear

Can someone with the privileges wipe this user's account? It's another manifestation of the persistent page-wiping vandal.

rgds

Steve C
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: 90000 articles

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>I think we should implement the greatly-pared-down counting scheme we were
>discussing on the list earlier.  We don't have 90K articles.  We have
>about 50K articles and about 40K geographical entries automatically
>created from a database.
>
>
How about "90K entries, 50K of them articles" on the Main Page? (well,
the last part needs rewording...)

I thought of something else: Automated "evaluation" of articles. I'm
uncertain if that has been mentioned before, though.

We could add a score to each article. Certain properties are usually good:
* Many edits (as well as number of contributors)
* many outgoing internal links
* image links
* links to other languages

Furthermore, the following could be scored somehow:
* text to list (* and #) ratio
* text to external links ratio
* text to headings ratio
* text to number of paragraphs ratio

Granted, such a scoring method won't be able to separate all good and
bad articles from each other. But, it could find many "bad" articles
(lists, text dumps, stubs, etc.), and give us some kind of statistics
about where we stand.

Comments?

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 06:38:41PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
>I must say, my suspicion is that it's less a problem of MySQL than it is
>of Wikipedia's implementation.
>
>(I'm saying this as someone who's done a lot of MySQL/Access/Oracle
>work, but not any Postgres work.)
>
>I'm always suspicious when someone makes the assertion that Language or
>Database X is vastly inferior to Language or Database Y, especially when
>all of the languages and databases have been around for a lot longer
>than the code that uses it.
>
>There have been some efforts to optimize the database, but not many. And
>LDC's code is certainly better than the original mess, but it's hardly
>gotten the million-eyeball treatment.
>
>That said, I know we've got limited resources, so if you're a Postgres
>expert and switching to Postgres is what will motivate you to do a code
>revamp, then tally ho! (Which is why I'm just writing this to you,
>because in the end I'm not saying anything important.)

I'm not saying Postgres would result in dramatic speedups; it's about
equal to MySQL in speed. But I believe the slowdown caused by locks
WOULD go away.  I agree with you that better indexing could speed things
up, as could better code design.  I have been looking at the PHP, and
this is a big job.  I need to finish implementing cookies in my C cgi
library, then I can consider doing it.

I've been prejudiced against MySQL since the day I bought the "Practical
SQL Handbook", sat down to type in the examples, and none of them worked
on MySQL, and they all worked on Postgres.

The current PHP code mixes SQL in with regular code, (ugh!) and doesn't
have separate HTML templates either; the HTML is also intermingled with
the code.  (double ugh!)

If the codebase could be cleaned up, the database optimizations would be
much easier to do, and we might not even need to switch from MySQL.

Thanks for your mail; I'm a slow worker but I tend to get there in the
end.  And you are right, switching to Postgres would be a big motivator
:)

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: voting

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 03:12 pm, Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] (aka Lir) wrote:
> We must end the nonsense. Never again must a page like, "Anti-American
> Wikipedians" be deleted on the say-so of some elitist. We must vote on such
> issues. Never again should the name of Munchen or Colombo be decided by
> some American with administrative powers. We must vote on such issues and
> we must start this voting process soon.

The Anti-American page was POV nonsense that is counter to our goal of
creating an NPOV encyclopedia and a cohesive community. It has therefore been
moved to meta where it belongs.

Naming conventions have been shaped through many many months of hard work and
discussion by many different users. Unilaterally and deliberately going
against that is a slap in the face of everybody who has worked to shape these
conventions.  So the only person acting unilaterally here was the person
moving the page from the naming convention-compliant title to the
non-compliant title.

Voting is fine if it refines established law. But voting is dangerous without
protections in the form of a clear set of rules, conventions and case history
to act as a stop-gap to control mob rule.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchbox patch committed

body:
Since there were no objections, I have committed the patch for the
watchlist checkbox in article edit mode (Magnus has given me CVS
access). I have checked out a second copy and tested it quite
thoroughly, but let me know if there are any problems.

Note that I obviously don't have all translations, so I hope people will
eventually send us the translated strings.

I have also sent a request for further feedback regarding the sidebar
links to wikipedia-l, and will commit that patch as well if there are no
objections.

If anyone actually reads this mail, I would appreciate some advice: Is
there a way to tell CVS to ignore my LocalSettings.php? .cvsignore only
ignores files that are not in the repository.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: 90000 articles

body:
Hi Magnus,

I don't think such a complex scheme is necessary. As I posted previously, it
will probably suffice to count only articles that have >=2 edits. That
catches most bots and stubs, and leaves a reasonable number of articles.

If nobody else will implement this, I will put it on my To-Do-List.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>There seems to be a pretty fixed number of Wikipedians who write "write
>>nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff" on a
>>consistent basis.
>>And that fixed number can be counted on one hand.

>I'm not just concerned about the ones who do it "on a consistent basis."
>I'm really concerned about the behavior, not the people.  Moreover, the
>number of people who have polluted Wikipedia to any very significant
>degree in these ways would easily run into the many dozens.  That's not
>counting the mere vandals.  We've just forgotten about them because
>they've gone away, in many cases very quickly.  The ones whose names
>immediately come to mind can be counted on one hand, yes.

If they come in, cause some trouble, and then go away,
causing little enough trouble and going away quickly enough
that we've forgotten about them, then I'm OK with that
(much as I'm OK with the fact that anaesthesia wouldn't work as well
if they didn't include amnesia inducing agents in it).
That's the price of being a wiki -- people can cause trouble.
Enforcing community standards will get rid of them --
which we did, without needing to take it to the list.
So the system works.

>I remember writing at one point (for the "replies to our
>critics" page, I think) that we hadn't had many problems with cranks and
>internecine warfare.  Now, I really couldn't write that, and I suspect the
>"replies" page should be updated, if it hasn't already been.
>What do the rest of you think?

I think that we haven't had many problems with cranks and internecine warfare.
It would be wrong to say that we haven't had *any*.
Perhaps you and I differ about what "many" is.

-- Toby


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki is down

body:
I get timeouts on both en and fr, and have gotten connection refused, for the
past half hour or so.

phma


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Arms race.

body:
>People have stated that the percentage of vandalism by anonymous users
>has gone up recently.

>Is this simply because we have instituted IP blocking, and increasingly
>use it?

>It's hardly unlikely. In fact, it's what normally happens when hard
>security measures are taken.

Surely you mean to say "logged in users" at the end of the first line?
Then yes, this is what happens when people meet with hard security,
they find ways to work around it.

-- Toby


body:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 04:28:55PM -0800, Throbbing Monster Cock wrote:
>This is not a debate on the flavors of anarchism, but
>an example illustrating that the gang's desire to
>smash windows is objectively equal to Ed's desire to
>leave them intact.

And?  Mere desire has nothing to do with moral absolutes.

>If it makes you feel any better, the gang considers
>the intact windshields to be the "means of production"
>through which broken windshields are produced.
>Because the social class of "car owners" cannot use
>their ownership of these means of production to exert
>control over the gang, it is necessary for the gang to
>take "possession" of the windshields while they put
>they to the use of being smashed.

If the cars were being used as instruments of coercion and oppression,
then the gang would be justified in destroying them.  But you never
specified that when you first stated the example.

>The point is that without some moral absolutes, Ed and
>the gang are on equal moral ground.

What makes you think anarchists don't have morals?

Capitalists are never anarchists; the accumulation of wealth in private
hands invariably involves coercion.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
> Those car windows represent work and labor on
> someones part, whether the builder, or someone who
> traded their labor for those car windows.  To
> destroy those windows is to rob someone of their
> labor.  Anarchists clearly frown on robbery, as it
> is a form of coercion.

This is not a debate on the flavors of anarchism, but
an example illustrating that the gang's desire to
smash windows is objectively equal to Ed's desire to
leave them intact.

If it makes you feel any better, the gang considers
the intact windshields to be the "means of production"
through which broken windshields are produced.
Because the social class of "car owners" cannot use
their ownership of these means of production to exert
control over the gang, it is necessary for the gang to
take "possession" of the windshields while they put
they to the use of being smashed.

You can label the thought processes of the gang
whatever you like, I really don't care.  Call them
"anarcho-capitalists" or call them "crypto-facists".
The point is that without some moral absolutes, Ed and
the gang are on equal moral ground.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Check boxes and other articles counts

body:
> Not that i have objections against this change, but
changes to the
> software/userinterfase of the Wikipedias should be
announced formaly
and
> well in advance.
> Somthing like this;
> Give 3 weeks notice.

>This is way too long. I don't have time to track each
>individual patch  over three weeks, especially since
patches >become obsolete quite quickly  as other
changes are committed.

Please do consider that it is probably not worth
telling us anything under at least a week notice. Not
enough time to understand, then to translate, then for
people to react, then to translate again. If a patch
is so necessary that it can't wait a week, please
proceed without asking. Otherwise, please consider we
are maybe not in such a hurry that the other
wikipedians don't have time to maybe give their point
of view or just to be informed.

>Besides, intwiki-l is not for feature discussion (see
the list >description). wikitech-l is, and if feature
discussion concerns >wikipedia policies, it should be
copied/moved to wikipedia-l.

I am officially asking that the international
wikipedia list be discarded. It is useless, and
providing the false feeling to international people
that it is "their" list, and that they don't need to
register to the *main* *english* one. This is very
misleading. It would be better not to pretend things,
but to make them clear.

Please also make official wikipedia-l and wikitech-l
are the only lists that are worth considering as far
as general policies are concerned for similar reasons.

However, also realise that just doing so will prevent
international wikipedias to have any real involvement
in general policy matters. Today, in 5 hours, my mail
box received 85 messages. I do not feel fluent in
english enough to read all of them. I'll discard some
of them, hoping no essential issue for us was raised,
for I know nobody else will tell them.

>Notice that the above policy is not used by anyone
else either, >so I don't  even see why you bring it
up.

So, if I follow you, not having other people follow
policies is enough reason for you not to follow them
enough ? If so, why are these policies still there ?
Let's discard them to.

>Members of the international Wikipedias that  want to
take part >in feature discussions should subscribe to
wikitech-l  and/or >wikipedia-l, if we spread this
stuff over three lists, we'll >never get anything
done.

Probably true. But, that is not what is widely
understood among "foreigners" though. Hence, I think I
am gonna remove international-l from our mailing list
page, let's be blunt and realistic. I already
understood quite many years ago that not understanding
english would just get me nowhere.

>What I can agree on is to send strings that need to
be >translated to  intwiki-l before committing a
change, and to >wait a few days for  translations to
come in, then to commit >the change together with the
translations. But if not all >translations come in
within a reasonable  amount of time, they >will have
to be added later, meaning that the user interface
>will have some English in it until the translations
are
>submitted. If you check some of the international
Wikipedias, >you will  notice that this is the case
for quite a few of them, >for features with which I
had nothing to do.

We can manage with that; we have no choice anyway if
we want to participate a bit but to understand
english; so a couple of features in english won't be
much trouble (though some will protest-their problem).

However, to tell the truth, I won't be able to
translate your feature for the very good reason that
though I tried to concentrate very hard on it, I have
not being able to understand what that checkbox in the
watch list was all about. I just couldnot figure what
you were talking about.

So, could you spend a tiny little bit of your time
just telling us what is going to appear ? I am sure it
is a good choice, since everybody seems to agree with,
but I am just curious.

Also, I have read your proposition (that if I
understood well you decided to implement today if
nobody complained about it...maybe some answers are in
the 85 messages...) about the counting of articles.
Please could you tell me whether it will apply to
international wikipedias or just to the english one ?
If it does, I am not sure I understood well when the
article will stop being considered a bot or a stub

- when at least 2 edits have been made after the
creation, whoever the authors of the edits are ?
- 2 edits by authors, creators excluded ?
- 2 edits by 2 different authors, creators excluded ?

Though I understand well the interest of this (and
definitly support the change of count to exclude some
small or automatic entries), I would be happy then if
you could provide a system to list articles that are
*above* a certain number of characters (no stub) and
not automatically generated.
I think your system is gonna exclude some specialized
articles I think would deserve accessing to the status
of articles. I would be glad - in my own field of
expertise - to go and humanly edit them enough for
them to be considered real articles.

I hope I didnot misunderstand entirely what you were
planning to do. When I don't understand things, I
usually wait for further discussion to enlighten me,
but here, I didnot see much discussion. So...I am not
sure I understood well.

Thank you in advance for your answers

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: voting

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 03:48 pm, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> While the rest of the world came to to the conclusion that America is =
> just a jumped up banana-republic junta run by a bunch of crypto-fascists =
> with a finger glued permanently to the self-destruct button a long time =
> ago, you're not allowed to point it out in Wikipedia. How thoroughly =
> refreshing to be working on such an enlightened project. Dickens' =
> Ministry of Circumlocution would have been proud of the people who =
> deleted that page.
>
> rgds
>
> Steve Callaway

Then state your POV on your user page or write an essay and post it at Meta.
But leave the wikipedia:namespace free from POV divisiveness.

We have open POV forums. Please use the correct channels.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: 90,000 articles

body:
Mav wrote:

>Toby wrote:

>>Why don't we just say "thousands and thousands of articles"?

>Bad idea. It is important to have a running count of our progress in the most
>visible place - the Main Page.

It *would* be important to have it there, if we *had* such a running count.
But we need to change our definition of "article"
every time we see something new that shouldn't count.
And the definition was *never* correctly implemented by the software.

I made this proposal because I've come to believe
that we can't ever have a reasonable running count.
Rather than let the number climb slowly up over time
and be slashed down when we change the definition,
we should stop pretending that we actually know how many articles we have.

Of course, if you think that we *do* know how many,
then you would disagree with me.
But knowing how many satisfies some software hack isn't the same thing.

>We already have a definition for what we
>consider an article to be and what we let the software count as an article.
>All we need to do is change the definitions so that bot-generated entries are
>not counted as articles until x number of human non-minor edits have been
>made to them.

>See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article

I know all about this page, I helped write it.
While I think that it still serves the purpose
of telling people how our own thinking goes,
it doesn't serve the purpose of giving a quantifiable definition.

-- Toby


from_name: Nick Hill

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Wikipedia "mirror"

body:
On Fri, 01 Nov 2002 15:47:45 -0800
Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> It might ultimately be a good idea to have some kind of explicit 'mirror
> mode' such that there's a "see and/or edit the current version of this
> page on the main server"-ish link instead of a local edit link.

I agree this is important. It will be sad if we have other general wikis
where users are submitting their edits, which will get lost when the
administrator updates from the main wiki.

I suspect Wiki mirrors will work well if the resources needed to mirror the
database file are made fewer.

Although I don't intend to run a mirror, I have gone through the database
creation steps to learn more about MySQL and to consider creating a PERL
script to make an HTML tree, which shouldn't be too difficult.

Currently, each time someone wishes to update their version of the mirror,
they need to download a 80Mb file, unzip it to 412 Mb then run a database
create (which took me 6 hours with a 10,000 rpm drive). (If I had 1Gb
memory, this would be brought down to 40 min.)

By making the wiki database .MYI,  .MYD and .frm  files available by
anonymous rsync, mirrors can sync their database to the wiki database in
minutes, with relatively little data transfer (Rsync only sends the
differences between the local and remote copy of the file over the
network). With such a system, I can imagine lots of databased wiki mirrors
pointing their edits back to the main wiki.

The same thing would work just as well, and be easier to implement, using
rsync on an HTML tree image of Wiki.

>
> And perhaps a way to dump a static HTML tree. -- Incidentally, the total
> combined size of the pages in article and Wikipedia: space on the
> English wiki is about 172 megabytes. The upload directories bring
> another 134 megs;
This surprises me. I would think it closer to 400Mb. The current article
database seems mostly plain text and weighs in at 404Mb without revision
histories. I have viewed the database with Hexedit and less than 10% is
non-text.

> we still fit on a CD-ROM uncompressed. That may not
> remain so, though...

The KDE Konqueror web browser can navigate and open files in a .tgz
archive, but this would only be a medium-term partial solution.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Soft Bans?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>If we set a cookie in the browsers of all Wikipedia visitors, anonymous or
>not, we could the assign them random global user IDs. Instead of banning users
>by IP, we could ban them by GUID, which would eliminate the risk of
>accidentally banning legitimate contributors.

>While the majority of users have cookies enabled, a minority does not, so
>"soft bans" as I like to call them would not work for them. Other users might
>be smart enough to turn cookies off to avoid the ban. But I consider both
>beyond the technical understanding of most vandals, so I think soft bans might
>be quite efficient.

>What do you think?

I don't think that this is particularly *soft*,
just less error prone that banning by IP.
That is, it's less prone to errors of one type (banning the innocent)
and more prone to errors of the other type (not banning the guilty).

Will it work?
We could test the situation by giving anonymous users such cookies
and seeing how often the same IP comes back without the same cookie.
Then we could try to determine if any of these cases are the same person.
If not, or if rarely, then this method will have a good chance of working,
on the technically unsavvy.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Soft Bans?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Integrating Two Integrative Sites?

body:
Kris ROOSE wrote in part:

>As I describe in the Future of this Site
>page, integration with such an integrative
>site as Wikipedia will be sought. In
>a first stage I'll try to
>add progressively our contents to the
>Wikipedia site. If, for some reasons yet
>to discover, this kind of integration
>proves impossible, we'll
>try to start up a new Wiki-like site, or
>introduce the Wiki software into this site.

If you add your contents to the Wikipedia,
then they'll have to be changed to fit in with us.
For instance, we will mercilessly edit it for NPOV,
and probably make the writing read more formal.
OTOH, if you start up your own wiki at your site,
then you can maintain the content in your style,
while still having the benefits of wiki editing.
Then you can invite us to join your new wiki,
if we like the way that *your* site works.
The code is at <http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/>.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strong request: Make the == presentation smaller

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Personally, I think that the "==" headers are too small now,
>>and in particular were better the way that they were before.
>>I'm probably in a minority position there, however ^_^.

>So far it's you versus dozens of whiners over the last few months.
>Squeaky wheel gets the grease. ;)

I didn't squeak before because I didn't think that it'd look this bad!
But the result is probably just; I'm not going to squeak any more now.

>>Brion Vibber wrote:

>>>We did that a long time ago; headers have a bottom margin of zero. If
>>>you don't put in a paragraph break, they directly abut the following
>>>text.

>>But remember that this works only in those browsers (most, so far)
>>that don't render the HTML correctly (according to W3C).
>>And along the same lines, it can't even be done in XHTML.
>>I think that it would work better if the same wiki markup
>>were implemented in HTML in different ways using style sheets,
>>if this is possible.

>I'm not sure I follow you, so I'll make something up that sounds like
>what I think you want.

There was a more complete explanation,
written when I had W3C web pages in front of me,
on the feature request for that change at SourceForge.
I don't know how to read closed feature requests, however.

>What we could theoretically do is create an alternate paragraph style
>that has no top margin, and explicitly use it when we start up text that
>immediately abuts a header; I think this should give the desired results
>by the book.

I don't actually know CSS, so I don't know if that's what I want,
but I agree that it *sounds* like what I want ^_^.
Can we also do it for text that abuts lists and horizontal rules?
And for bottom margins?  If this does what I think it will do,
then it'll be cool ^_^.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Arms race.

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 04:43 pm, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> >People have stated that the percentage of vandalism by anonymous users
> >has gone up recently.
> >
> >Is this simply because we have instituted IP blocking, and increasingly
> >use it?
> >
> >It's hardly unlikely. In fact, it's what normally happens when hard
> >security measures are taken.
>
> Surely you mean to say "logged in users" at the end of the first line?
> Then yes, this is what happens when people meet with hard security,
> they find ways to work around it.
>
>
> -- Toby

That is why we should always try to follow vandals around and fix their
vandalism first before resorting to a block.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  windshield police (Was: Wikipedia moderators and moral authority)

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 04:43 pm, TMC wrote:
> If it makes you feel any better, the gang considers
> the intact windshields to be the "means of production"
> through which broken windshields are produced.
> Because the social class of "car owners" cannot use
> their ownership of these means of production to exert
> control over the gang, it is necessary for the gang to
> take "possession" of the windshields while they put
> they to the use of being smashed.

That's a bunch of relativistic morality crap. If somebody goes to the effort
of building something or working their ass-off to pay for something it is
absolutely wrong for somebody else to destroy that. Basic morality 101.

If this is your true position then their is no reason to try and reason with
you because your frame of reference is totally unreasonable.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ed F.A. Poor

body:
On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 15:23, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 14:38, The Cunctator wrote:
> > On 11/11/02 2:31 PM, <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> > > Okay, then ban me. I surreptitiously vandalized 5 or 10 pages with
> > > a fake account, then confessed to Larry.
> >
> > > Suppose you revoke my sysop rights, erase my user name, block my
> > > IP. Will that solve the crisis facing Wikipedia? Will that prevent
> > > the abuses that you fear will stem from codifying and enforcing
> > > standards?
>
> > By "you", do mean mean me? Please quote the entries to which you
> > refer. I never called for banning you.

> Why would I use the pronoun 'you' to refer to you? That's silly!
> One would think I was opposing your call to ban me -- despite your
> never having made one.
>
> Look, we can trade witticisms all day.

I'm not trying to trade witticisms. I'm asking you to quote entries to
which you refer, instead of using pronouns with unclear antecedants.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
I don't know. I had an 18-minute lag today, an eternity in Internet time.

Is someone locking an entire database table just to change one or two records? That would be dumb.

Ed Poor

-----Original from Greatest Hits CD

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] server

body:
I've heard something from some of the developers about record-locking or table locking.

I think this is a high priority item. Let's stop gabbing about trolls and fix our database woes.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database Lock is getting old

body:
Can somebody unblock the database at least for logged-in users?

An uneditable wiki is a dead wiki and I've already mentioned that people can
read our articles via Google cache so it is stupid to disallow edits just so
people can read.

The reverse would make more sense in these situations; not serving any pages
to non-logged-in browsers (which I don't think is possible but would be a
nice alternative to the current db block).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database Lock is getting old


subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
Yeah, you also said:

MySQL has really crappy table locking, and blocks everything when certain slow operations are being done. We're looking into replacing it with Postgresql, which is said to scale better. But, first I have to adapt the code, change the table definitions, make sure it works on my home server, set up a test installation here before we go converting hundreds of megabytes of databasey goodness willy-nilly. --Brion 21:16 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)

So what do we need table locking for? You want me to fix it for you? Should I join the developers mailing list?

Ed Poor
SQL Programmer since 1994


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchbox patch committed

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Since there were no objections, I have committed the patch for the
> watchlist checkbox in article edit mode (Magnus has given me CVS
> access). I have checked out a second copy and tested it quite
> thoroughly, but let me know if there are any problems.
>
> Note that I obviously don't have all translations, so I hope people will
> eventually send us the translated strings.
>
> I have also sent a request for further feedback regarding the sidebar
> links to wikipedia-l, and will commit that patch as well if there are no
> objections.
>
> If anyone actually reads this mail, I would appreciate some advice: Is
> there a way to tell CVS to ignore my LocalSettings.php? .cvsignore only
> ignores files that are not in the repository.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Not that i have objections against this change, but changes to the
software/userinterfase of the Wikipedias should be announced formaly and
well in advance.

Somthing like this;
Give 3 weeks notice.
Send a message to Intlwiki-l like this;

(first week)
Subject:[RFD]Software change announcement

Explain what you want to change and why.
Give a change for discussion to change mayby somthing. The ambassadors
or then announce the posibel change to there Wikipedias

(second week)
Subject:[NOTICE1]Software change announcement

Explain the change.
Tell what you need. Like translations of some words.
Tell to who to send them.

Tell when the change will be done.

(3th week)
Subject:[NOTICE2]Software change announcement

Explain the change.
Tell what you need. Like translations of some words.
Tell to who to send them.

Tell when the change will be done. (end of the week)

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? Wikipedia, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fucking Asshole

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>What would happen if a signed-in user started writing the following all over Wikipedia? How would we deal with it? (Purely a hypothetical case, I assure you ;-)
>
>
>"I hate everybody and everything. I will destroy Wikipedia, and you can't stop me. Your own stupid rules forbid it, BWAH HA HA HA!"
>
>
>
Well it's not hypothetical any more:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AFucking_Asshole

Could we have a vague policy that profanity is not okay for user names?
(vague because people's idea of profanity doesn't always match -- we'd
have to decide on a case by case basis)

>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Locked database

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 17:35, Zoe wrote:
> Why is it, that when I try to edit a page, I'm getting a notice that the
> database is locked, but Recent Changes show that updates have been made at
> the exact same time I'm told that I can't do any updates?  Have I been
> singled out?

I get the same notice. They are probably backlogged updates from before when
the database was locked.

phma