from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 2/21/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thats why i asked whether the foundation will advice on the local law part
> (as there are little or no lawyers on nl.wikipedia) and whether the
> foundation has to agree upon the EDP (as otherwise, the community might just
> push it through) I hope  both will be answered with 'yes'.

Well, our GC is not an all-knowing godlike entity, so the most we can
expect from him is to make sure that there's a lawyer responsible for
each country, and to coordinate the overall process. (The WMF, I
believe, will financially assist in paying for expertise where
necessary.) As to approval, yes, though this cannot be much more than
a "smell test". If the process was followed, that should be
sufficient.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: Draft licensing policy resolution


list: wikien-l

from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

body:
On 2/21/07, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/20/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/20/07, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Shouldn't unblock-en-l serve that function now?
> >
> >
> > If it were actually properly monitored and served a real enforcement
> > function? Perhaps. Instead, it's just something ignored, yet another
> rubber
> > stamp with no real meaning.
>
>
> So what's the solution then?  You have a tiresome amount of things to
> say here about imagined malfeasance,

It wouldn't need to be said if the malfeasance weren't both all too real,
and all too common.

so what do you propose we do
> about this supposed problem?  It would be preferable to come up with a
> solution that doesn't expose our volunteers to daily abuse and attacks
> and make this list a troll free-for-all.

Ideally? I'd like for administrators not to do the things that cause
problems. But that's not likely.

So here's a few thoughts/steps:

=======================
#1 - Recognize that adminship, as it exists now, is a big deal.

If Adminship were not a big deal, then losing adminship would not be a big
deal. However, the bar for losing adminship is nearly impossibly high.
If Adminship were not a big deal, the ever-growing requirements for it would
not be ever-growing. But they are.

Adminship is a big deal. It is a big deal because of the damage an
administrator can do to the project. But it is also a big deal because of
the control it gives an administrator: they have the ability to not only
damage the project, but to cause major damage just to individual
contributors at the drop of a hat, anyone with whom they have a
disagreement... save for other administrators.

It is this very power that the most abusive of administrators wield, but
it's this same power that the rest of the administrator pool spends their
time protecting. I don't think that most of the administrators actually want
more administrators on the project, because they behave to the contrary:
they behave as if more administrators would dilute their own power, and
rightly so.

For the same reason, SERIOUS inquiry into serious misdeeds by administrators
is stonewalled constantly. Why? Because if one administrator can lose their
powers, then other administrators are also "vulnerable", and they don't want
that to happen. Rather than clean up their acts and not break the rules,
they protect other administrators who break the rules freely.

The very power given to administrators is also a cause of the great
corruption. Remember the parable of the hammer:

when the only tool you give someone is a hammer, they are apt to see
everything as a nail.

We have too many admins today who run around whacking with their hammers,
not caring who they hit or what, being egged on by other administrators who
do the same thing.

=======================
#2 - Make it perfectly clear: administrators are NOT above the rules.

here is the biggest problem with wikipedia today. Administrators are free to
do whatever they want. Any administrator can claim something is "trolling",
and the rest of the administrators will pop their heads up to say "sure is"
without really looking; again, if one administrator can claim something is
"trolling" and wield their power, it makes it easier for the next one to as
well.

Administrators today are free to be incivil as they want, and complaints of
incivility are greeted with yawns and ignored by the other administrators
claiming administrators have a "tough job." Well, "Administrators are just
regular editors with extra buttons" - remember that? That ought to mean that
administrators are subject to the same rules.

Yet that's not the case. An administrator today who insults a user, then
turns around and blocks for "incivility" when insulted back, is lauded.
That's not only wrong, it is part of the reason so many admins are so stuck
up: they believe their adminship gives them a free pass to be as mean, as
incivil, as abusive as they want.

And all too often, they're right about that.

=======================
#3 - Set clear-cut rules against the ongoing abuses of the system. ENFORCE
THEM.

Here's a few abuses of the system that have become commonplace recently by
administrators:

(A) "Scarlet Letter" abuse. Users clearing/archiving warnings that they've
already seen, or clearing off bad-faith tagging such as "suspected
sockpuppet" tags or "warning" templates placed by abusive users trying to
harass another user (usually claiming that a difference of opinion on a
content matter is "vandalism), are routinely targeted by administrators. The
goal of both abusive users and administrators is to rile the editor up. This
is deliberate provocation, completely incivil, and all too common - yet it
is regularly given a free pass by the administrator community.

Were a regular user to start putting a "suspected sockpuppet" template on an
admin's user page, or leaving them warnings about breaking the rules and
reverting the warning if the admin removed it, the admin wouldn't think
twice about blocking them for "harassment" or "trolling" or something else.
Yet administrators get away with this freely.

That's a problem.

(B) Talk-page abuse/Unblock abuse

One of the second most common behaviors by administrators, and somewhat
related to "scarlet letter" harassment, is abusing a user's talk page while
they are blocked. It has been established by the wikipedia community that it
is helpful to allow a user to still edit on their own talk page when
blocked: at least then, they have SOME on-wiki way of communicating,
responding, or voicing complaints.

Abusive administrators all the time take this as a means of attack, however;
they block a user, usually leaving an insulting verbage as their "you're
blocked for X" notice, and then sit back. When the user files an unblock
request, the user or one of their cronies either denies it with another
incivil note, or reverts it and then locks the talk page. More egregious,
sometimes the reverter isn't even an administrator themselves.

Administrators need to understand: BLOCKING SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET THEM
MAD. It is an action that is agressive and adversarial. No matter what the
temperament of the user, they will feel angry over this. They are likely to
leave a message that lashes out in anger at whoever did it, PARTICULARLY if
it is not justified within the rules or they already feel picked-upon by the
admin or his/her cronies.

What is the harm of leaving the talk page alone? Nothing. User space is not
indexed, it does not affect the article space in any way. Yet administrators
routinely abuse the talk page of a user, trying to provoke them into further
"incivility" in order to extend blocks or come up with an excuse to be even
more punitive.

What's worse is that this sort of behavior goes directly against the
blocking policy: blocks are never supposed to be punitive. Yet when you're
locking a user's talk page for reacting after provocation, you are doing
exactly that: punishing them for being angry at something that's been done
to them.

(C) Admins with conflicts of interest

This is one of the most insidious, but it's been routinely abused by many
administrators: rather than leave well enough alone, they take it upon
themselves to wield every possible method of administrator power against a
user all at once. Administrators don't just block a user and leave a
message, politely stating why: they leave an insulting block message, to
harass the user, revert the unblock notice, extend the block (many times to
indefinite), and lock the user's page and talkpage down so that the user
cannot possibly respond.

The declining admin on an unblock request rarely just leaves a decline, they
also lock down the user page. The phrasing on the unblock template that it
"continues to be visible" doesn't help either when it clearly doesn't:
unblock-declined templates are REMOVED from the page list of users
requesting an unblock, so the only person likely to see it is the
administrator and his friends coming by to have a laugh over what they've
done to someone.

=======================
#4 - STOP Abusive usage of CheckUser

One of our worst items today is the CheckUser code: I wrote an email after
seeing the output in one case, earlier.

CheckUser itself isn't a bad tool. Correctly used, it can distinguish with
some relative certainty, though not absolute certainty, whether someone is
sockpuppeting. This is useful.

What is not useful today is the fact that the system has grown from being
Positive, Negative, or No-Conclusion to having umpteen different
gradiations, each of which is no help at all except for the end two.
CheckUser is abused in this manner, with administrators who have access to
it using it not to say for certain or saying "this is not conclusive
enough", to using it as a deliberate way to take unrelated users and claim
they're sockpuppets. Fishing expeditions have gotten worse as this has gone
on: it used to be that abusive attacks claiming someone was a "sockpuppet"
over content disputes were relatively easily solved, but now the only
question is which side can get their abusive admin to do a checkuser on the
other side and claim it's positive first, regardless of the actual result.

The worst problem with CheckUser, unfortunately, is that it is "secret
evidence." It's the equivalent of a paid informer in a box, saying that
someone broke the law: how can you defend against such a thing even if it's
not true? You can't, and the worst CU performers know it, and exploit that -
especially since CU policy explicitly denies anyone the right to see the
results or even demand a re-check, not that it would matter since most of
the CU readers are also part of the admin clique (see part #1).

====
My solution would be: SEPARATION OF POWERS.

It's quite simple. The less power someone has, the less likely they are to
be corrupt. The problem we have today is a bunch of people running around
who are Judge, Jury, Executioner, Court Reporter, Appeals Court, King,
Bishop, Whatever all thrown together in one neat little package. They have
way too much power in one set of hands.

Someone who is a Bureaucrat should not be an Administrator.
Someone who does CheckUser should not be an Administrator.
Someone who is on ArbCom should not be an Administrator.

Preferably, they should Never Have Been administrators.

It doesn't completely eliminate the ongoing problems of cronyism - see what
George W Bush has done to the US even through separation of powers - but it
would at least be a start, to lessen them somewhat.

One other point to make:
"It would be preferable to come up with a
solution that doesn't expose our volunteers to daily abuse and attacks..."

I agree fully. I don't think "daily abuse and attacks" help anything.

The reality, however, is that there are legitimate problems - obvious
vandals - that administrators should deal with daily. I really have no
problem with this: once you block them, they can edit their own talkpage...
so what if they do something there? It's not in the article space, it
shouldn't be an issue. You're free not to revisit the page, and let other
administrators take care of it from there.

And then there are the illegitimate problems, and THIS is where
administration is breaking down: far too many administrators think that they
have the right to abuse their power in content disputes, to block only one
side of an argument for "incivility" when they're friends with another side,
to deliberately protect a POV clique that they are friends with. This is not
only where most of the abuses I outlined above occur, this is what gives
Wikipedia such a poor reputation.

It's not the obvious vandalism that's a problem, it's the number of people,
growing every day, who see an article, try to fix it, and get whacked by an
over-eager, over-egoed, over-caffeine-dosed admin who's lost the ability to
distinguish from a real vandal and someone trying to [[Be Bold]] and fix a
problem. These people, abused and mistreated by wikipedia's administrators,
don't just "leave", they become obvious vandals or worse yet, enemies of
wikipedia. When they see wikipedia having a donation drive, they laugh it
off as a joke and announce they hope it fails.

The animosity of those people is on your heads, for allowing this problem to
get so big.

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jim Wilson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Announcing UsenetSyntax Extension

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> Since it's an extension, and the mainline is unlikely to load it, could
> you make it an install-time configurable option whether _this_ renders
> as italics or underscore?

Done deal.  See the extension page for details on how to configure (you'll
need to re-download the extension for the changes to take effect)

-- Jim

On 2/21/07, Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > The communities I hang out in
> > (and I was on Usenet since 1984 or so, back when I could still read The
> > Entire Feed) tended to stick to *bold* and _whatever_; I didn't see
> > /these sort of italics/ much, partially because it conflicts with
> > search string notation, I suspect.
>
> FWIW, [[Crossmark]] uses *boldface*, /italicized/, _underlined_ and
> Mozilla Thunderbird automatically recognizes the same syntax in
> plaintext mail.
>
> --
> Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Berto 'd Sera

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Admins blocking each other

body:
Hi!

> This is all good and well on a big wiki, but on nv: the only admins, and
> in fact the only regular users, are the two involved people. The only
> other admin that could have been asked was the blocking admin himself,
> the proper channel would be to get agreement between all blocked users
> - half of which are the person being blocked, the other half the person
> doing the blocking...

LOL you guys suddenly made me feel that I come from a HUGE community :)
Seriously, such things are going to happen frequently on small wikies, if
and when there are problems in personal relations. Can't we have an external
Shared ArbCom for it?

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 01:55:13PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> > Woohoo.  :-)
>
> Thanks - I'm glad you approve!
>
> > FWIW, the customary rendering (IME) is _italics_, since handwritten
> > underlining is usually rendered as italics in typesetting, and most
> > computer displays have, traditionally, not had a good way to render
> > underlining...
>
> Dang.  When I asked everybody on the IRC channel, they told me it was
> *bold*, _underline_, and /italics/
>
> The change is trivial to make in the code - I just need to know what the
> "accepted format" is - I've never used Usenet.

One of the reasons the mainline isn't interested in this is, I suspect,
precisely that it's not well defined.  The communities I hang out in
(and I was on Usenet since 1984 or so, back when I could still read The
Entire Feed) tended to stick to *bold* and _whatever_; I didn't see
/these sort of italics/ much, partially because it conflicts with
search string notation, I suspect.

I don't think there's A Standard, myself.

Since it's an extension, and the mainline is unlikely to load it, could
you make it an install-time configurable option whether _this_ renders
as italics or underscore?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
No, there is no arbcom because there are only two active users -- the
blocking admin, and the blocked admin.

If there were other admins, I would never have unblocked myself
(although for whatever reason, when I am blocked, it won't let me edit
my talkpage, even though it's not locked). However, I have been an
admin there for much, much longer than has he, and I felt that in fact
it would've been more reasonable for me to have blocked him than
vice-versa.

As noted in other e-mails on this thread, it is very rare for admins
to block each other and usually only happens in the case of eg a
compromised account. Jeff Merkey blocked me because he said I am
"breaking the rules", but he doesn't seem to have a very good handle
on policy.

Mark

On 20/02/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> IMHO one, or both, of you need to be desysoped.
>
> In general you should not unblock yourself unless the block message states
> it, or it is your autoblock AND somone else already unblocked you.
>
> Does your project have an ArbCom that can take care of this dispute?
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Delirium" <delirium at hackish.org>
> To: <wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 5:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Admins blocking each other
>
>
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> >>I have a couple of questions.
> >>
> >>First of all, in what circumstances should an admin block another admin?
> >>
> >>Second of all, is it somehow "dishonest" for an admin to unblock
> >>themselves when they honestly believe they have done nothing wrong?
> >>Does it make them untrustworthy if they do not observe a block imposed
> >>upon them by another admin?
> >>
> >>
> > I can only speak for consensus on the English Wikipedia, and don't know
> > how far these are universal, but on en:
> >
> > 1. An admin generally cannot block another admin (or any other
> > established user, for that matter), except in emergencies like
> > vandalbots, or specific circumstances like a 24-hour block for 3RR
> > violations.  Those sorts of blocks are the Arbitration Committee's
> > job---unilateral blocks by a single admin are only for cases like anon
> > vandals or vandal-only accounts, not for blocking established users who
> > have gotten engaged in disputes.
> >
> > 2. An admin is not generally supposed to unblock themselves, but instead
> > place an {{unblock}} request on their talk page and wait for another
> > admin to do it for them.
> >
> > So I guess by en: standards, both sides in your description would be in
> > the wrong.  But some things are a little different---presumably small
> > wikipedias have no ArbCom, and also don't have enough admins for an
> > {{unblock}} request to be likely to be seen.  So that's a bit of a
> > problem.
> >
> > -Mark
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: commons-l

from_name: daniel1978 at uol.com.br

body:
Sorry, but categories should have English-language names only.

How can someone find "Bridges in Athens" if the category title was written
in Greek? Or "Palaces in Istambul"? Or "Rivers in India" (and what alphabet
should we use in this last case?).

And category redirects do not work well, because they divide the media and
cause more and more confusion.

My mother tongue is not English, but it's clear to me that we must have a
lingua franca in order to understand each other.

If a find a picture of Teheran and I want to categorize it I'll have to find
the correct Persian name of the correct category? That doesn't make sense to
me. People should know that is no offence to use English in order to achieve
a greater good: communication and understanding.

Dantadd

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yann Forget" <yann at forget-me.net>
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 10:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons

> Hello,
>
> Patrick-Emil Z?rner a ?crit :
>> I am quite appalled about how things have a nasty tendency to a nasty
>> outcome on commons. M?nchen is being moved to Munich, Praha is moved
>> to Prague,... and all on a specious kind of based argumentation. I
>> know how the cities are called. I have seen the traffic signs! The
>> cities are actually called M?nchen, Praha,...
>>
>> I read e.g. that [M?nchen, Germany] would look silly. Yes it does.
>> That is why it should have been [M?nchen, Deutschland] in the first
>> place with the redirect being [Munich, Germany] or even a
>> disambiguation on [Munich] as it already is on the en-WP. What was
>> clear to many people in the beginnig of commons now gets overthrown
>> and people keenly start their bots.
>>
>> Moreover I do not mind having [東京] as log as there is a
>> redirect on [Tokyo], [Tokio] etc.
>>
>> As far as I remember commons was planed for all projects to coexist
>> but not to assimilate them until a bad english gets the upper hand.
>>
>> I am appalled about this and do not know if I carry on in this pile of
>> shards.
>>
>> disappointed greetings
>>
>> paddy
>
> Yes, this is happening again.
> It is very disappointing that people try to enforce an English only
> categories naming. Actually categories redirect works quite well, so I
> don't see why there should English names when the language of the place
> is not English.
>
> People do not even care about opposition to renaming categories, and
> threathen me as vandal when I am trying to keep the original name.
>
> This on-going change should not happen.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Ivan Krstić

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> The communities I hang out in
> (and I was on Usenet since 1984 or so, back when I could still read The
> Entire Feed) tended to stick to *bold* and _whatever_; I didn't see
> /these sort of italics/ much, partially because it conflicts with
> search string notation, I suspect.

FWIW, [[Crossmark]] uses *boldface*, /italicized/, _underlined_ and
Mozilla Thunderbird automatically recognizes the same syntax in
plaintext mail.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


body:
On 2/21/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/21/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> > When you (or anybody) write like this, I have to grit my teeth and make
> > a strong effort to find the useful content that lies behind the contempt
> > and acid words. If your goal is to get people to take your concerns
> > seriously, there are more effective ways to go about things.
>
> I think this essay on meta is relevant...
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick
>
> From the essay...
>
> "Being right about an issue does not mean you're not being
> a dick yourself! Dicks can be right ? but they're still dicks;
> if there's something in what they say that is worth hearing,
> it goes unheard, because no one likes listening to dicks,
> no matter how right they are."
>

If more administrators would pay attention to this in the first place, then
we wouldn't have problems with abusive administrators.

The problem is, way too many administrators feel they are free to be dicks
because of their position, and then kick other people around for responding
in kind.

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


body:
The extension's hooking point "ParserBeforeTidy" happens very late in the
parsing of a page.  So late, that at this point all interpretation of MW
syntax has already occurred.

For this reason, my extension has no knowledge of <nowiki> delimiters and
will go right through them.

Also, I do no processing for strings that contain tags.  So this:

 Hi *some bold <span> text*, more text </span>

Becomes this:

 Hi <b>some bold <span> text</b>, more text </span>

And I have no idea what Tidy would do to that one (probably something very
ugly).

So this is by no means a real actual solution.  The "correct solution" (if
you are of the party that thinks there's a problem in the first place) would
be much more complicated and would need to hook into the Parser much more
deeply - so much so that it may not even be possible given current Parser
hooking points.

But it works in a pinch - and as long as everybody uses reasonable syntax,
it should work just fine.

-- Jim

On 2/21/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 03:30:26PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> > Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > > Since it's an extension, and the mainline is unlikely to load it,
> could
> > > you make it an install-time configurable option whether _this_ renders
> > > as italics or underscore?
> >
> > Done deal.  See the extension page for details on how to configure
> (you'll
> > need to re-download the extension for the changes to take effect)
>
> Well, Jim; y'know; I like you a lot.  :-)
>
> I have to upgrade my home MW to something reasonably current; I'll
> install this when I do.
>
> How did you avoid the confusion everyone warns of with
>
> * list
> *item
> **marking?
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth
> jra at baylink.com
> Designer                          Baylink                             RFC
> 2100
> Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87
> e24
> St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647
> 1274
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> wikien-l is to some extent an official channel for complaint. Starting
> unduly stroppy is generally forgivable.
>
> But if the accusations are serious, list readers will reasonably
> expect details and diffs.

For the record, my approach is to allow a user's first post to be
stroppy and ranty, and thereafter to expect them to calm down and act
in an adult manner. I would accept this:

"It's frustrating to me how abusive some of the admins are, and how
they get away with it. Have a look at this diff..."

but not this:

"All the admins are abusive, and get away with murder. Tom, Dick and
Harry are the worst!"

The first is likely to lead to a productive discussion. The second is
purely inflammatory and degrades the quality of this list.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Moving the contents to the side panel

body:
On 2/21/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would help if we could restrict the depth of the TOC for a given
> article using a magic word.

Yeah, I have a feeling I or someone else has requested that before.
Other possibilities:

- Make the TOC hideable
- Make the TOC take less space by default (smaller font for example)
- Make the TOC a little box with scrollbars

Steve


body:
Well yeah, if you wanna put it that way :)

* *So this will work* just fine
**While this will* still be a 2nd level bullet

On 2/21/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 03:53:25PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> > > How did you avoid the confusion everyone warns of with
> > >
> > > * list
> > > *item
> > > **marking?
>
> > The extension's hooking point "ParserBeforeTidy" happens very late in
> the
> > parsing of a page.  So late, that at this point all interpretation of MW
> > syntax has already occurred.
>
> So, in short, you dealt with it by running late enough that MW got
> precedence, and grabbed all the asterisks it thought it was interested
> in.
>
> That works for me.
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth
> jra at baylink.com
> Designer                          Baylink                             RFC
> 2100
> Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87
> e24
> St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647
> 1274
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 2/21/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider this monstrocity:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial
>
> It's problems have nothing to do with the toc....

What's actually wrong with that? It's one of the smaller infoboxes
I've seen. Look up countries or cities. I'm sure I've seen some two
pages long.

> Would be nice if the toc could be made multiple columns wide....

Yeah, not a bad thought, especially if combined with only showing the
top level. Or how about a nested expandable tree, like:

1. Section 1 +
2. Section 2 +
...

Where clicking the +'s expands the next layer.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
On 2/21/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not if there is, in fact, no reason for it.  Personally, I suspect
> this was from before bot edits were hideable on RC and/or watchlists,
> and was annoyance-oriented rather than technically-oriented.  But I
> don't know.

Could we increase the limit to 12/minute on a trial basis?

Steve


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

body:
On 2/20/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Its main visitor attractions are its churches, renowned gastronomic
> restaurants
> and art galleries - Wiki travel, Wikipedia or both?"
> Neither. Those are the visitor attractions of any city that has them. It
> provides no helpfulm information. If they're all named with address and

Not sure I get your logic. If a casino is a visitor attraction for any
city that has them, then you would not include the sentence "It is
renowned for its casinos" in [[Las Vegas]]?

But anyway we are broadly in agreement.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account

body:
On 2/21/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It would be great help if you look into the request made on the meta page:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/volunteering
>
> Hear, hear! There have been a lot of requests recently for more people
> to volunteer for the info-en queue, but if the history of that page is
> anything to go by, no new people have been given accounts since
> November last year (that's the last edit that removed any names).

That's not actually the case, just that the list isn't well maintained
and people aren't always grabbed in the order they volunteer...

In any case there are two new admins now, so perhaps it will be more efficient!

-Kat

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account


body:
It wouldn't notice.  The extension is only concerned with pairs of
delimiters which occur at word boundaries (one before and one after).

So we have the following which all work:

   Simple _word_ highlighting *is fine*

   Usenet syntax within *some tags* works

   This sentence *has bold text _and embedded underlined_ text*

And none of these would work:

    Trying to _wrap_ some tags.

    A sentence spanning *two lines
    where the second delimiter* occurs on the second line.

    A sentence _with only a leading delimiter
    ... or only_ a trailing delimiter

    Mismatched *delimiters_ have no effect either.

    Trying to make something *_both underline_* and bold at the same time
(leaves asterisks, only makes text underlined)

    Or trying to _*have it the other way around*_ (only bold, leaves
underscores)

Hope this helps.

-- Jim

On 2/21/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 04:04:29PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> > > So, in short, you dealt with it by running late enough that MW got
> > > precedence, and grabbed all the asterisks it thought it was interested
> > > in.
> > >
> > > That works for me.
> >
> > Well yeah, if you wanna put it that way :)
> >
> > * *So this will work* just fine
> > **While this will* still be a 2nd level bullet
>
> Which, as far as I'm concerned, is the proper thing.
>
> How does it handle this* situation?
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> * IE: the use of an asterisk as an actual footnote marker
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth
> jra at baylink.com
> Designer                          Baylink                             RFC
> 2100
> Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87
> e24
> St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647
> 1274
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 2/21/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:

> When you (or anybody) write like this, I have to grit my teeth and make
> a strong effort to find the useful content that lies behind the contempt
> and acid words. If your goal is to get people to take your concerns
> seriously, there are more effective ways to go about things.

I think this essay on meta is relevant...

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Now we're ready for prime time...

body:
On 2/21/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> This may be the most prominent pop-cultural mention we've got so far;
> previous TV mentions were mostly on late-night cable shows like The
> Colbert Report, but this is on a major network (if you call Fox that)
> in prime time (7 or 8 PM - 11 PM in the U.S.).  It's perhaps related
> that the Wikipedia traffic ratings spiked up again in Alexa at that
> time, with the rank at a new record of #8.

I'm fairly certain I've heard wikipedia referred to a number of times
on prime time tv. I think they did it on a Gilmore Girls episode (and
yeah, I love Gilmore Girls, and I'm proud of it!) or something.
Richard Roeper definitely talked about it on Ebert & Roeper, but that
probably doesn't count.

--Oskar


body:
On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 03:30:26PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Since it's an extension, and the mainline is unlikely to load it, could
> > you make it an install-time configurable option whether _this_ renders
> > as italics or underscore?
>
> Done deal.  See the extension page for details on how to configure (you'll
> need to re-download the extension for the changes to take effect)

Well, Jim; y'know; I like you a lot.  :-)

I have to upgrade my home MW to something reasonably current; I'll
install this when I do.

How did you avoid the confusion everyone warns of with

* list
*item
**marking?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274


body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_permissions&oldid=498773

Romihaitza. Mr Merkey didn't specify a reason for his request.

Mark

On 21/02/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > he doesn't seem to have a very good handle
> > on policy.
>
> Who's decision was it to make him an admin?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
There are plenty of admins on projects with that many (or less)
articles. It's much easier to take care of vandals when you have
sysops.

Mark

On 21/02/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > See http://tinyurl.com/338yqv for his adminship request on meta.
> >
> > In case people aren't aware, the person who blocked Mark is
> > User:Gadugi who (along with his sockpuppets) is blocked on the English
> > Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Gadugi
>
> So it was basically a temporary sysopping until they built up a
> community. That was 2 months ago, and there is still no community. If
> it were up to me, I'd desysop both of them. The only thing you need
> admins for on such a dead wiki is deleting articles, and you can get
> by with blanking them. Once they've managed to attract a community,
> proper elections can be held.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 03:53:25PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> > How did you avoid the confusion everyone warns of with
> >
> > * list
> > *item
> > **marking?

> The extension's hooking point "ParserBeforeTidy" happens very late in the
> parsing of a page.  So late, that at this point all interpretation of MW
> syntax has already occurred.

So, in short, you dealt with it by running late enough that MW got
precedence, and grabbed all the asterisks it thought it was interested
in.

That works for me.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposed: Topical archiving of talk

body:
On every page, that sounds like an awful lot of work; on the very busy
pages, that sounds like it could be useful. I'd agree with the ordered
archives being the "archives of record," more or less (less refactoring =
more authentic, if perhaps a little less useful).

As far as linking back and forth, I think all you'd need would be a template
with two parameters: the section name and archive page to be linked to.
Example:

{{X|Arbitrary section|Archive 4}} -- links to [[Talk:Page/Archive
4#Arbitrary section]]
{{X|Arbitrary section|Foo discussion}} -- links to [[Talk:Page/Foo
discussion#Arbitrary section]]

The template itself would be pretty simple, too:

See this topic in
[[{{TALKSPACE}}:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{{2}}}#{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}]].

..or some such. I haven't tested that, but obviously something along those
lines should work.

Just slip that template in, directly under each section heading, and you're
set. Do something to set it apart from the rest of the text -- I'd say
bolded and smaller font should be fine.

It occurs to me that it might make more sense to have the archive name as
the first parameter, and the section name as the second -- it's all the same
to me, but if anybody cares and this template gets made, speak up quick. ;)

Just a thought. This is feasible. Is it desirable?
-Luna


body:
On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 04:04:29PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> > So, in short, you dealt with it by running late enough that MW got
> > precedence, and grabbed all the asterisks it thought it was interested
> > in.
> >
> > That works for me.
>
> Well yeah, if you wanna put it that way :)
>
> * *So this will work* just fine
> **While this will* still be a 2nd level bullet

Which, as far as I'm concerned, is the proper thing.

How does it handle this* situation?

Cheers,
-- jra
* IE: the use of an asterisk as an actual footnote marker
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

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

If there is a technical problem with high rate editing then we will limit
the rate by technical means. We can't rely on policy to maintain good
performance. Recommended bot edit rates are there for non-technical
reasons, such as to allow time for review.

Currently there is a technically imposed limit of 8 edits per minute on
IPs and new accounts, to mitigate bot-driven vandalism. There is no limit
on established accounts.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 07:32:06 -0800 (PST), Cheney Shill
<halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:

>So you were being literal and meant "This is the admin;
>forget policy, abide by essays, and stop using
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:HORSE_CARCASS ?"  You'll
>see that I've never created or edited such an article (or
>one on stick or horsemeat)

Nope, I meant that *NOBODY CARES*.  They might have done once, but
they don't any more.

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


body:
On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:32:32 +0900, "Mark Ryan" <ultrablue at gmail.com>
wrote:

--8<------------

As I thought: the mods are conservative in what they block, only the
most egregious nonsense gets moderated.  The comments in those
messages, we'd have ignored.

You were right, keep up the good work.

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


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<BAY103-F169B87AEEC05F6DDEAD5C5E88A0@phx.gbl>
	<45D99F9C.9070609@gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140702190505o6aff4cfay40d2d6bb1d3d69cf@mail.gmail.com>
	<45D9A1B3.7040402@gmail.com>
	<17sjt21ho25q4tcnvohjb4umln7f4v8nue@4ax.com>
	<45DAC91D.8000400@shaw.ca> <3eqlt254hk17e9b2vv8f5losm5jq98qiaa@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:10:37 -0700, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> Would making it more explicit, say by restricting the list to only the
>> top five hundred tall men rather than some specific height, be an
>> improvement?
>
> Not really.  500 is an arbitrary number.  We can fix it by including
> only those identified by reliable secondary sources as being tall in
> context.  So a 6'1" Sumo would be in, but a 7' BB player probably not.

I suspected you'd say something like this and I still just don't
understand how it's supposed to be _less_ subjective or arbitrary. We'd
go from one arbitrary but consistent and objective criterion to a whole
collection of different arbitrary criteria selected from a random
assortment of magazines, websites, etc. IMO this approach would be much
better done as [[list of tall sumo]], [[list of tall basketball
players]], etc. - that way each individual list would resolve down to
just two criteria, profession and height, both of which are pretty easy
to judge. The original [[list of tall men]] would remain profession-neutral.

But since I'm not doing any of the work, c'est la vie.


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
Meta:RFP seems to amount to "I want to be a sysop on (small project)."
"OK, done." with no background check. (Kind of the counterpart to the
bureaucratic nightmare that en:WP:RFA has become in the last few
years.) Though I suppose it can be difficult to do any checking as it
stands... another argument for single login, I guess.

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]

On 2/21/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/21/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > he doesn't seem to have a very good handle
> > > on policy.
> >
> > Who's decision was it to make him an admin?
>
> See http://tinyurl.com/338yqv for his adminship request on meta.
>
> In case people aren't aware, the person who blocked Mark is
> User:Gadugi who (along with his sockpuppets) is blocked on the English
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Gadugi
>
> Angela
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 20/02/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I'd generally allow it to pass myself in the first instance, FWIW.
> > Though I'd expect substantiation to follow. It's supposed to be a
> > productive working list for a project.

> The user in question has, in fact, mailed in not just numerous diffs but a
> very accurate description of the situation. In fact, they were attacked by
> other users of this list for sending "too many" emails, apparently because
> the list system was not functioning properly and did not inform them of the
> moderation queue.

I was speaking in general, as the original question asked me seemed to
be about the general approach.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: increased bot edit rates on en:wp

body:
stvrtg wrote:
> Ah but there is a limit :
>
> "However I found the constant bombardment with messages from those damned
> bots the last straw." - Jtdirl

Last night I put a comment on a talk page and realized at the exact
moment I clicked "save" that I hadn't signed it. Rather than frantically
try to abort the save, I moved the mouse pointer to where the "edit"
link was to appear after the save finished and I clicked it the moment
it came up. [[User:HagermanBot]] had already managed to slip in and put
an "unsigned comment" signature in there for me.

Both impressive and mildy annoying, IMO. A bot that's intended to help
the forgetful and ignorant should wait to make sure an editor is
actually being forgetful or ignorant. A minor matter, though.


body:
Single login would mean that when looking at someone's history, you
could check what they'd done at other projects, if they're not doing a
multiple account/sockpuppet thing. If they are, then it's be easier to
know they're either faking or inexperienced.

Of course, I think that if someone's been shown to be a sockpuppeting,
disruptive jerk on one project, they're probably someone we should ban
from all projects anyway...

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]

On 2/21/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> How would single login help ? It allows you to have one user for all
> projects. It does not prevent you from having multiple users. IMHO sock
> puppetry is typically a really odious idea.
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> On 2/22/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Meta:RFP seems to amount to "I want to be a sysop on (small project)."
> > "OK, done." with no background check. (Kind of the counterpart to the
> > bureaucratic nightmare that en:WP:RFA has become in the last few
> > years.) Though I suppose it can be difficult to do any checking as it
> > stands... another argument for single login, I guess.
> >
> > -- Jake Nelson
> > [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
> >
> > On 2/21/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 2/21/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > he doesn't seem to have a very good handle
> > > > > on policy.
> > > >
> > > > Who's decision was it to make him an admin?
> > >
> > > See http://tinyurl.com/338yqv for his adminship request on meta.
> > >
> > > In case people aren't aware, the person who blocked Mark is
> > > User:Gadugi who (along with his sockpuppets) is blocked on the English
> > > Wikipedia:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Gadugi
> > >
> > > Angela
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
This strikes a chord with me. Table of contents seems like metadata
which should be part of the interface rather than part of the article.
It seems odd that it's included with action=render in the
article and not in the sidebar areas handled by the skin.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

On 2/21/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/21/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Consider this monstrocity:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial
> >
> > It's problems have nothing to do with the toc....
>
> What's actually wrong with that? It's one of the smaller infoboxes
> I've seen. Look up countries or cities. I'm sure I've seen some two
> pages long.
>
> > Would be nice if the toc could be made multiple columns wide....
>
> Yeah, not a bad thought, especially if combined with only showing the
> top level. Or how about a nested expandable tree, like:
>
> 1. Section 1 +
> 2. Section 2 +
> ...
>
> Where clicking the +'s expands the next layer.
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Bot_edit_rate

This has been discussed on wikitech-l a bit in the last few days. Tim
Starling says there's no technical reason for a limit, the current
limit's to allow workable human review; so it's a matter for local
policy. Further discussion at above URL.

- d.


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body: And they could use throwable addresses, too...


from_name: stvrtg

body:
On 2/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Bot_edit_rate
>
> This has been discussed on wikitech-l a bit in the last few days. Tim
> Starling says there's no technical reason for a limit, the current
> limit's to allow workable human review; so it's a matter for local
> policy. Further discussion at above URL.

Ah but there is a limit :

"However I found the constant bombardment with messages from those damned
bots the last straw." - Jtdirl


body:
Hello folks,
Im proposing we come up with a system by which people can make well-formed
topic-based archives of talk pages.  This is because some talk pages are
fairly busy, and the archives are often hard to read. Date based bot
archiving is of no help here.

This would be a redudant archive - not to replace standard ordered archives,
and ideally there would be some template that would make it easy to link
between the two, particularly in the direction from Topical -> Ordered. The
ordered one is to be the "reliable" base archive, and the topical one will
permit some level of editing: header renaming, structural reformatting,
excising or hiding superfluous comments.

I need help figuring out how to best link Topical and Ordered sections and
so on. The process needs to be solid enough that any criticism would be
minimal. I think its usefulness will be demonstrated quickly enough.

-SV


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2007/2/21, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>:
>> Jeremy Cushman wrote:
>>> Right now on the English Wikipedia bots are limited to 6 edits per
>> minute.
>>> Is it time to raise the permitted edit rate?  Do we have the server
>> capacity
>>> now to handle rapid editing?
>> If there is a technical problem with high rate editing then we will limit
>> the rate by technical means. We can't rely on policy to maintain good
>> performance. Recommended bot edit rates are there for non-technical
>> reasons, such as to allow time for review.
>>
>> Currently there is a technically imposed limit of 8 edits per minute on
>> IPs and new accounts, to mitigate bot-driven vandalism. There is no limit
>> on established accounts.
>
>
> Does this mean I can disable the get-throttling of the bots? Or does this
> statement only hold for the edit limit?

Only for the edit limit. And only then because I doubt anyone will try a
high enough edit rate to cause serious load on the server. If someone
starts trying 100 reads per second, it's going to cause problems. And more
so for 100 writes per second.

As a general rule, all bots should be single threaded. This limits the
performance impact they can have on the server -- cheap requests can be
done often, and expensive requests less often. If you run requests in
parallel, then you're using more than your fair share of server resources.

Even single-threaded bots can cause problems if the requests are
particularly long running. If you want to be polite and sleep between
requests, you should throttle them in proportional to the service time --
a duty cycle, in other words. Say if a request takes 0.5s to service, you
could use a duty cycle of 25%, corresponding to one request every 2
seconds. Think about your load on the server in terms of the number of
threads you're tying up, on average.

The worst offenders we've discovered in recent times are the edit counters
-- web based scripts that send requests to the servers often lasting
minutes, with unrestricted parallelism. We were very tempted to block them
all. We would have blocked them for much less if we weren't afraid having
an angry mob of hundreds of Wikipedians obsessed with edit counts,
descending on our door.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
2007/2/21, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>:
>
> Jeremy Cushman wrote:
> > Right now on the English Wikipedia bots are limited to 6 edits per
> minute.
> > Is it time to raise the permitted edit rate?  Do we have the server
> capacity
> > now to handle rapid editing?
>
> If there is a technical problem with high rate editing then we will limit
> the rate by technical means. We can't rely on policy to maintain good
> performance. Recommended bot edit rates are there for non-technical
> reasons, such as to allow time for review.
>
> Currently there is a technically imposed limit of 8 edits per minute on
> IPs and new accounts, to mitigate bot-driven vandalism. There is no limit
> on established accounts.

Does this mean I can disable the get-throttling of the bots? Or does this
statement only hold for the edit limit?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account

body:
> It would be great help if you look into the request made on the meta page:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/volunteering

Hear, hear! There have been a lot of requests recently for more people
to volunteer for the info-en queue, but if the history of that page is
anything to go by, no new people have been given accounts since
November last year (that's the last edit that removed any names).


subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account


from_name: bawolff

body:
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:07:02 +0100
From: " Artur Fija?kowski " <wiki.warx at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input:
       policy  onautomatic image replacement
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
       <commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
       <ea8e5e7f0702200307j61ad19fdx1d0104493672a9b0 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

2007/2/20, peter green <plugwash at p10link.net>:
>
>> personally i think such svg gnomes should be blocked on sight but thats a
>> descision for individual projects to make.
>

>So come and ban me for changing bitmap COAs to SVG versions, and I will
>delete them without changing to SVG on your project:P

>You have axe so nobody can forbid you to cut  off your head!

>AJF/WarX

Posts on this subject are really confusing. what's the problem with
linking to svg's?

-bawolff


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Commons-l] Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons

body:
daniel1978 at uol.com.br a ?crit :
> Sorry, but categories should have English-language names only.

How can you decide that?

> How can someone find "Bridges in Athens" if the category title was written
> in Greek? Or "Palaces in Istambul"? Or "Rivers in India" (and what alphabet
> should we use in this last case?).

Categories redirect works quite well, so this argument is not valid.
See for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monte_Bianco

> And category redirects do not work well, because they divide the media and
> cause more and more confusion.

See above.

> My mother tongue is not English, but it's clear to me that we must have a
> lingua franca in order to understand each other.
>
> If a find a picture of Teheran and I want to categorize it I'll have to find
> the correct Persian name of the correct category? That doesn't make sense to
> me. People should know that is no offence to use English in order to achieve
> a greater good: communication and understanding.
>
> Dantadd

Regards,

Yann


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hooks inside extensions

body:
Well, the good old-fashioned way to reduce the likelihood of
collisions is just to name it using some prefix convention like
"MyExtensionName_" (assuming your extension name isn't some common
English word).  That should be effective.


from_name: daniel1978 at uol.com.br

body:
Yann,

Well, I didn't say I can "decide" anything. I just said what I think, can I
do it?

Sorry, category redirects do not work well at all, and require permanent
attention.
Can you imagine media divided in Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera, Svizzra....?
What is really the point? Language pride? I'm not offended to have
categories such as "Brazil" or "Italy".

Extreme examples are quite illustrative. What do you think about more than
20 category names for India?

I'd really want to understand what's really the problem...

Dantadd

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yann Forget" <yann at forget-me.net>
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 8:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons

> daniel1978 at uol.com.br a ?crit :
>> Sorry, but categories should have English-language names only.
>
> How can you decide that?
>
>> How can someone find "Bridges in Athens" if the category title was
>> written
>> in Greek? Or "Palaces in Istambul"? Or "Rivers in India" (and what
>> alphabet
>> should we use in this last case?).
>
> Categories redirect works quite well, so this argument is not valid.
> See for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monte_Bianco
>
>> And category redirects do not work well, because they divide the media
>> and
>> cause more and more confusion.
>
> See above.
>
>> My mother tongue is not English, but it's clear to me that we must have a
>> lingua franca in order to understand each other.
>>
>> If a find a picture of Teheran and I want to categorize it I'll have to
>> find
>> the correct Persian name of the correct category? That doesn't make sense
>> to
>> me. People should know that is no offence to use English in order to
>> achieve
>> a greater good: communication and understanding.
>>
>> Dantadd
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
On 2/21/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/21/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's not the obvious vandalism that's a problem, it's the number of
> people,
> > growing every day, who see an article, try to fix it, and get whacked by
> an
> > over-eager, over-egoed, over-caffeine-dosed admin who's lost the ability
> to
> > distinguish from a real vandal and someone trying to [[Be Bold]] and fix
> a
> > problem.
>
> I can see two possible patterns a newbie editor can get into when
> trying to "fix" a "defended" article.
>
> 1. bold/revert/talk/shrug/go play elsewhere
>
> 2. bold/revert/bold/revert/bold/revert/go WTF on talk
> page/bold/revert/bold/revert/
> bold/revert/more dickery on talk
> page/block/sockpuppets/block/lather/rinse/repeat
>
> As far as you know, have any of these innocent newbie editors drew the
> wrath of a "rogue admin" following pattern 1?

You're drawing a false route There are more possibilities than that:

0. Obvious vandalism from the start: no question on blocking, and I really
have no problem with blocking.

1. bold/revert/talk/shrug/leave

2. bold/revert/argue/blocked/leave - This one's been made into an enemy of
wikipedia

3. bold/revert/get abused by POV clique - Another enemy of wikipedia now

4. bold/revert/bold/revert/bold/etc (Your #2) - congratulations, you've made
an enemy again.

5. bold/revert/bold/talk/reverted by others/accused of being a sockpuppet of
someone previous/angry at false accusation... and again, wikipedia's made an
enemy.

Parker

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


body:
Check for yourself then.

Parker

On 2/21/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 22/02/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > - Regarding Jpgordon and the Checkuser, one of the few nice things about
> > being an old admin is that I still have a few contacts (who will remain
> > nameless for reasons you know well), and I've got the checkuser data
> myself.
>
> CheckUser queries are logged. The only administrator to look at the
> CheckUser data of all three users you mention is Jpgordon, the very
> administrator whose CheckUser actions/results you criticise.
>
> So, unless you're in bed with a developer, I think it's safe to assume
> you're lying.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

body:
I see to main problems:

How many of you seeing eg. 'zolw' will know that it's '??????w' without
diacritics?

And what about if correct form is with and without diacritics and they mean
something different?

I agree that 'Bridges in Athens' should be in English, same 'Churches in
Warsow', but some people are trying to mix both English and non-English
versions what would give (for me terrific) results eg.

'powiat miko??owski' is name of territorial unit in Poland and correct
grammar and orthographic version is as I written, but people are trying to
make English version like this:

* 'Poviat miko??owski' - Englicised 'powiat' with Polish adjective (ugly, but
correct orthography)
* 'Poviat Miko??owski' - as above but wrong orthography
* 'Poviat Miko????w' - correct grammar and orthograph (Miko????w is noun in
nominative, city name), but something like that doesn't exist
* 'Poviat Mikolow' as above, but without diacritics

As we see all versions aren't really good ;) but first ('powiat miko??owski')
is correct in Polish so I think we should keep it ;)

Everything is getting much more bad when we try to apply it to names of
churches where are used constructions not existing in non-slavic languages
and there is more then 10 different versions and every has some of reveled
by me errors.

AJF/WarX
-------------- nast?pna cz??? ---------
Za??????cznik HTML zosta??? usuni???ty...
URL:  http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070221/6f8073c4/attachment.htm


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 2/21/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Well, our GC is not an all-knowing godlike entity, so the most we can
> expect from him is to make sure that there's a lawyer responsible for
> each country, and to coordinate the overall process. (The WMF, I
> believe, will financially assist in paying for expertise where
> necessary.) As to approval, yes, though this cannot be much more than
> a "smell test". If the process was followed, that should be
> sufficient.

Hm, are we agreed on this? I don't think of approval being simply a
"smell test" to see if process was followed... some communities
already have a well-thought-out policy in line with overall goals
(particularly the ones who have chosen not to allow any unfree content
at all!) and it will be just "this looks OK", others need more
direction and revision.

(I also don't think having the GC and a lawyer heavily involved is
necessarily the course we are set on taking; probably any sane lawyer
wouldn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole.)

I am afraid of misconceptions and misinterpretations spreading too far
about what is to be allowed and what isn't, and I've been hearing
misinterpretations both on the too-inclusive and too-exclusive side...

Argh.

-Kat

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


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 2/21/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's not the obvious vandalism that's a problem, it's the number of people,
> growing every day, who see an article, try to fix it, and get whacked by an
> over-eager, over-egoed, over-caffeine-dosed admin who's lost the ability to
> distinguish from a real vandal and someone trying to [[Be Bold]] and fix a
> problem.

I can see two possible patterns a newbie editor can get into when
trying to "fix" a "defended" article.

1. bold/revert/talk/shrug/go play elsewhere

2. bold/revert/bold/revert/bold/revert/go WTF on talk
page/bold/revert/bold/revert/
bold/revert/more dickery on talk
page/block/sockpuppets/block/lather/rinse/repeat

As far as you know, have any of these innocent newbie editors drew the
wrath of a "rogue admin" following pattern 1?


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
I never personally called him a vandal. I haven't blocked him, he has
been blocking me. He is blocked on the English Wikipedia (as
User:Gadugi and his various sockpuppets), and if you look at the
reasons he's blocked there it doesn't make much sense for him to be
sysop anywhere at all, but that is just my opinion.

I'm not sure how much of this conflict is personal. I have nothing
against him, except that he doesn't seem to know policy very well and
he has blocked me several times, and when I unblock myself that
somehow means to him that I am "dishonest".

Mark

On 21/02/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hoi again!
>
> I had a look on what he's doing at the Cherokee wiki, I would not call him a
> professional vandal. At least, even if he is a vandal, he is not ONLY a
> vandal. So in this case a general ban IMO would not be justified.
>
> Mark, how much of this conflict is simply personal?
>
> B?rto 'd S?ra
> Personagi dl'ann 2006 p?r l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Ron Ritzman wrote:
> On 2/21/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's not the obvious vandalism that's a problem, it's the number of people,
>> growing every day, who see an article, try to fix it, and get whacked by an
>> over-eager, over-egoed, over-caffeine-dosed admin who's lost the ability to
>> distinguish from a real vandal and someone trying to [[Be Bold]] and fix a
>> problem.
>
> I can see two possible patterns a newbie editor can get into when
> trying to "fix" a "defended" article.
>
> 1. bold/revert/talk/shrug/go play elsewhere
>
> 2. bold/revert/bold/revert/bold/revert/go WTF on talk
> page/bold/revert/bold/revert/
> bold/revert/more dickery on talk
> page/block/sockpuppets/block/lather/rinse/repeat
>
> As far as you know, have any of these innocent newbie editors drew the
> wrath of a "rogue admin" following pattern 1?
>

Ron,

Perhaps I'm misconstruing your point. Is your question rhetorical, or
actually seeking information? Are you suggesting that, if a "newbie
editor" were to simply walk away, there would be no problem?

IF that is what you're suggesting, then I seriously disagree with you.
Sure, perhaps there would not be the more visible problem of revert
wars, "dickery", sockpuppets, etc. But the less visible, but more
insidious problem of an admin preventing valid work an a page would
remain. A "bold edit" (as opposed to vandalism) should not simply be
reverted. Yes, I may be guilty of doing this, but then I should be
gently warned, and progressively less gently warned if I continue, until
either more drastic action is required against me, or I mend my ways.

Of course, none of that is exclusive to admins. That's just standard,
respectful behavior. But if the newbie has heard that one must be
careful about admins, or one can get blocked, the "shrug and walk away"
behavior is more likely, especially for the kind of newbie editors who
would likely become productive editors. The boldness of the newbie
editor is diminished (if not squashed entirely), and at least in some
cases, the newbie may give up on the project entirely.

Meanwhile, the admin who reverted the newbie doesn't draw the attention
of anyone else. You can't really call the admin "abusive", at least not
intentionally. But from the point of view of the newbie, it could very
easily seem like "there was this admin, who could ban me from the
project, who refused to allow me to make changes to this page. I guess
Wikipedia isn't as open to people editing as I thought they were. And
those admins sure are a pain in the ass."

No complaints to anyone. Just a bad taste in a newbie's mouth.
Successful businesses quickly learn that the real bad news isn't that
your customers are complaining to you--the real bad news is when your
customers aren't complaining to you but are disappointed, and are
complaining to others.

-Rich


subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account

body:
> That's not actually the case, just that the list isn't well maintained
> and people aren't always grabbed in the order they volunteer...

I thought that might be the case - I imagine plenty of those
volunteers haven't been processed yet, though, which could seriously
help the backlog...

> In any case there are two new admins now, so perhaps it will be more efficient!

Excellent!


subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account


from_name: samuli at samulilintula.net

body:
>> How can someone find "Bridges in Athens" if the category title was
>> written
>> in Greek? Or "Palaces in Istambul"? Or "Rivers in India" (and what
>> alphabet
>> should we use in this last case?).
>
> Categories redirect works quite well, so this argument is not valid.
> See for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monte_Bianco

Yes, you can redirect people. But you can't redirect images. Hence people
will not find images that are not in the "deutsch name" gallery.

Furthermore, I object that this is made some kind of political/ideological
issue. I speak a language that is not in the top 100 of most spoken
languages in the world, which is not the case for most of you. I've also
studied 14 foreign languages (no, I don't know most of them). Neither of
these nor both of them combined stops me from seeing that the lingua
franca (sic!) is English and using the most common language is the only
practical solution.

--
Yst?v?llisin terveisin,
Samuli Lintula


body:
Parker Peters wrote:
> On 2/21/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2/21/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>>
>>> When you (or anybody) write like this, I have to grit my teeth and make
>>> a strong effort to find the useful content that lies behind the contempt
>>> and acid words. If your goal is to get people to take your concerns
>>> seriously, there are more effective ways to go about things.
>> I think this essay on meta is relevant...
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick
>>
>> From the essay...
>>
>> "Being right about an issue does not mean you're not being
>> a dick yourself! Dicks can be right ? but they're still dicks;
>> if there's something in what they say that is worth hearing,
>> it goes unheard, because no one likes listening to dicks,
>> no matter how right they are."
>>
>
> If more administrators would pay attention to this in the first place, then
> we wouldn't have problems with abusive administrators.
>
> The problem is, way too many administrators feel they are free to be dicks
> because of their position, and then kick other people around for responding
> in kind.
>
Peter,

I think that you're over-stating the problem...not just in this post but
  in most of your posts. Yes, the ranks of the admins are not free from
"dickism", and in a sense, any dickism is too much. But I am convinced
that the vast majority of the admins are well-meaning, reasonable,
conscientious contributors.

However, the more I think about the way interactions take place on
Wikipedia, the more I am convinced that the asymmetry in power and
experience between an admin and a typical editor results in vastly
different perspectives on the same actions. What seems (and in fact is)
reasonable to an admin or an experienced user, can seem to be (and in
fact is) a demonstration of admin "dickism" to a newbie.

Without abandoning the effort to find and appropriately deal with the
admins who have (for whatever reason) run amuck, let's admit that those
admins are the minority.


from_name: Tietew

subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account

body:
Hi.
I'm a sysop and a member of info-ja team of ja.wikipedia. (see
signature)

I request for OTRS account named "tietew" and maintener of
info-ja queue. Other member of info-ja will request OTRS account
later.

I'm trying to make OTRS fully-compatible with Japanese at
otrs-dev mailing list. (see http://lists.otrs.org/)

Thanks,

--
[[User:Tietew]] <tietew at tietew.net>
Blog: http://www.tietew.jp/
Wiki: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tietew
PGP/GPG: 26CB 71BB B595 09C4 0153  81C4 773C 963A D51B 8CAA


body:
> he doesn't seem to have a very good handle
> on policy.

Who's decision was it to make him an admin?


from_name: Angela

body:
On 2/21/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > he doesn't seem to have a very good handle
> > on policy.
>
> Who's decision was it to make him an admin?

See http://tinyurl.com/338yqv for his adminship request on meta.

In case people aren't aware, the person who blocked Mark is
User:Gadugi who (along with his sockpuppets) is blocked on the English
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Gadugi

Angela


body:
> See http://tinyurl.com/338yqv for his adminship request on meta.
>
> In case people aren't aware, the person who blocked Mark is
> User:Gadugi who (along with his sockpuppets) is blocked on the English
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Gadugi

So it was basically a temporary sysopping until they built up a
community. That was 2 months ago, and there is still no community. If
it were up to me, I'd desysop both of them. The only thing you need
admins for on such a dead wiki is deleting articles, and you can get
by with blanking them. Once they've managed to attract a community,
proper elections can be held.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-22

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20027).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
How would single login help ? It allows you to have one user for all
projects. It does not prevent you from having multiple users. IMHO sock
puppetry is typically a really odious idea.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 2/22/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Meta:RFP seems to amount to "I want to be a sysop on (small project)."
> "OK, done." with no background check. (Kind of the counterpart to the
> bureaucratic nightmare that en:WP:RFA has become in the last few
> years.) Though I suppose it can be difficult to do any checking as it
> stands... another argument for single login, I guess.
>
> -- Jake Nelson
> [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
>
> On 2/21/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/21/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > he doesn't seem to have a very good handle
> > > > on policy.
> > >
> > > Who's decision was it to make him an admin?
> >
> > See http://tinyurl.com/338yqv for his adminship request on meta.
> >
> > In case people aren't aware, the person who blocked Mark is
> > User:Gadugi who (along with his sockpuppets) is blocked on the English
> > Wikipedia:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Gadugi
> >
> > Angela
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 2/21/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> >>
> >
> > If more administrators would pay attention to this in the first place,
> then
> > we wouldn't have problems with abusive administrators.
> >
> > The problem is, way too many administrators feel they are free to be
> dicks
> > because of their position, and then kick other people around for
> responding
> > in kind.
> >
> Peter,
>
> I think that you're over-stating the problem...not just in this post but
>   in most of your posts. Yes, the ranks of the admins are not free from
> "dickism", and in a sense, any dickism is too much. But I am convinced
> that the vast majority of the admins are well-meaning, reasonable,
> conscientious contributors.
>
> However, the more I think about the way interactions take place on
> Wikipedia, the more I am convinced that the asymmetry in power and
> experience between an admin and a typical editor results in vastly
> different perspectives on the same actions. What seems (and in fact is)
> reasonable to an admin or an experienced user, can seem to be (and in
> fact is) a demonstration of admin "dickism" to a newbie.
>
> Without abandoning the effort to find and appropriately deal with the
> admins who have (for whatever reason) run amuck, let's admit that those
> admins are the minority.

Sorry, but  I can't agree with your assessment.

The problem admins may be in the minority. They may not be.

Some admins are perfectly fine one day and then absolute dicks the next;
there ought to be a corrective mechanism of an admin being temporarily
relieved of duty, both as a form of stress relief and yes, a punitive
measure should an admin act like a dick.

Right now, there is no such mechanism, and quite the reverse, admins who
behave like dicks are defended by other admins.

As for the "vastly different perspectives" thing, I've touched on a few
things in a long email (which I don't think has gotten past the mod queue
yet) that admins in general need to stop doing, because they are most
definitely forms of dickery if not worse.

Anyways, my last painkiller dose is taken for the day, so I'm off to try to
sleep.

Parker

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


from_name: Shyam Bihari Agarwal

subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account

body:
Thanks Delphine,

It would be great help if you look into the request made on the meta page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/volunteering

The page has listed some requests which are listed more than three months
back, i.e. November 20, 2006.

I suppose it is a very long time to be waited before accepting a request by
the committee.

Your replies would be appericiated.

Regards,

Shyam

On 2/21/07, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can you please send me at dmenard AT wikimedia PUNTO org:
>
> login: tietew
> preferred email address (the one where you want to receive OTRS stuff)
> real name (in latin alphabet and Japanese) or "real sounding name" so
> that I can put this in the system.
>
> We require that anyone operating on OTRS use a "real name" (or, as I
> said a "real sounding name" if you do not wish to disclose your real
> name to the public).
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Delphine
>
> On 2/21/07, Tietew <tietew at tietew.net> wrote:
> > Hi.
> > I'm a sysop and a member of info-ja team of ja.wikipedia. (see
> > signature)
> >
> > I request for OTRS account named "tietew" and maintener of
> > info-ja queue. Other member of info-ja will request OTRS account
> > later.
> >
> >
> > I'm trying to make OTRS fully-compatible with Japanese at
> > otrs-dev mailing list. (see http://lists.otrs.org/)
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> >
> > --
> > [[User:Tietew]] <tietew at tietew.net>
> > Blog: http://www.tietew.jp/
> > Wiki: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tietew
> > PGP/GPG: 26CB 71BB B595 09C4 0153  81C4 773C 963A D51B 8CAA
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> ~notafish
> NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
> this address will probably get lost.
> NB. Cette adresse est utilis?e pour les listes de diffusion. Tout
> email personnel envoy? ? cette adresse sera probablement perdu.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>It would be great help if you look into the request made on the meta page:
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/volunteering
>
>
> Hear, hear! There have been a lot of requests recently for more people
> to volunteer for the info-en queue, but if the history of that page is
> anything to go by, no new people have been given accounts since
> November last year (that's the last edit that removed any names).

Well. Just a few days ago, we discussed adding two names on the french
speaking list and one was added yesterday. But admittedly, I forgot to
remove the name on meta :-) This is now done :-)

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Request for OTRS account


from_name: stvrtg

body:
On 2/21/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:

Your comments are quite helpful, Luna.

> As far as linking back and forth, I think all you'd need would be a
> template
> with two parameters: the section name and archive page to be linked to.
> Example:

{{X|Arbitrary section|Foo discussion}} -- links to [[Talk:Page/Foo
> discussion#Arbitrary section]]

It occurs to me that a bottleneck here is how sections are named. Im
thinking that we could use redundant numbered headers just as place links
within the ordered archive:

   == Header with a really long name ==
   === 5 ===
or
   = 5 =
   == Header with a really long name ==

That way things can be pointed to by number, I'm not skilled at template
syntax at all, so Ill leave that to someone else.

To link from talk ordered archive to topical archive:
  {{ta|5|Archive 4}}

It occurs to me that it might make more sense to have the archive name as
> the first parameter, and the section name as the second -- it's all the
> same
> to me, but if anybody cares and this template gets made, speak up quick.
> ;)

May be better to keep the hierarchy of template|archive|section :
   {{ta|Archive 4|5}}
   [[{{TALKSPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}/{{{1}}}#{{{2}}}|{{{1}}}]].

and compact the archive, so that archiving is standardized
  {{ta|4|5}}
  [[{{TALKSPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}/Archive {{{1}}}#{{{2}}}|{{{1}}}]].


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] (en.wp) donation appeal ideas

body:
There haven't been many helpful suggestions so far, so I'd like to
bring this to more people's attention:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Donation_appeal_ideas

This is a brainstorming page for the donation appeal that appears to
unregistered users on each en.wp pageview. The idea of randomized
messages has also been suggested. Either way, we need more messages to
choose from. This could also be helpful to other WMF communities that
choose to implement an appeal through MediaWiki:Anonnotice.

Please add your ideas to the page or associated discussion.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


body:
On 2/22/07, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
Whoops! Did something wrong: Templates and talk subpages need some way to
distinguish ordered and topical archives: Topic archives are subpages named
with a general subject:

  {{ta|Subject|5}} -- links to [[Talk:Page/Subject #5]]
[[{{TALKSPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}/Topic {{{1}}}#{{{2}}}|{{{1}}}]].

And from talk topical archive to ordered archive is fine, with "archive" as
the placeholder.

  {{oa|4|5}} -- links to [[Talk:Page/Archive 4#5]]
  [[{{TALKSPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}/Archive {{{1}}}#{{{2}}}|{{{1}}}]].

-Stevertigo


from_name: Berto 'd Sera

body:
Hi!

There's a monitoring group for small wikies AFAIK, so we could do without
sysops. Yet, if I wanted to litter up an edition I would not do something an
automated SWAT could easily find. In the end what you need is a person who
can tell whether the text is a text or not. You could use a template as a
signal for a deletion request, though.

One question, is THAT difficult to block a person at cross-edition level? I
mean, a vandal is a vandal he will not help an edition and damage another.
He'll do his job as much as he can. Once we have clear evidence we could
simply get rid of them once and for all, methinks.

B?rto ?d S?ra
Personagi dl?ann 2006 p?r l?arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html


body:
Hoi again!

I had a look on what he's doing at the Cherokee wiki, I would not call him a
professional vandal. At least, even if he is a vandal, he is not ONLY a
vandal. So in this case a general ban IMO would not be justified.

Mark, how much of this conflict is simply personal?

B?rto ?d S?ra
Personagi dl?ann 2006 p?r l?arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html


subject: [Foundation-l] OER Grapevine

body:
I think this is a useful resource that deserves some attention:

http://oergrapevine.org/OER_projects

OER Grapevine is meant to be a neutral meeting place for activists in
different "Open Educational Resources" projects (a buzzword used in
the education community to mean pretty much anything from free
download to free license). This is both an opportunity to evangelize
free licensing, and a chance to share ideas about technology, policy,
and content development.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] OER Grapevine


subject: [Foundation-l] OER Grapevine


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/22/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> There haven't been many helpful suggestions so far, so I'd like to
> bring this to more people's attention:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Donation_appeal_ideas
>
> This is a brainstorming page for the donation appeal that appears to
> unregistered users on each en.wp pageview. The idea of randomized
> messages has also been suggested. Either way, we need more messages to
> choose from. This could also be helpful to other WMF communities that
> choose to implement an appeal through MediaWiki:Anonnotice.
>
> Please add your ideas to the page or associated discussion.
>

I raised the issue on #wikipedia. The result is ah interesting.

--
geni


from_name: min Sui

subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: search manipulation

body:
Hi.
thanks to reply.

I just updated script on test.wikipedia.org for commons.

http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?uselang=de
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?uselang=en
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?uselang=fr
anything you like. :D

2007/2/20, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com>:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > Thanks Suisui, it's awesome!
> >
> > One last note - is it possible to have different button labels
> > depending on the user's language setting?
> >
> > cheers
> > Brianna
>
> Apply this to the js:
> -submit.value = "??";
> +submit.value = document.getElementsByName("fulltext")[0].value;

I just put it , thanks.

> This should work, although i don't understand why ?? is being shown as
> "Recherche".

hm, I cant reproduce.. what language did you select? environment?

> On IE the search engines are one after other, so some line breaks should
> be added.

yup, but currently, there's no good way to make linebreak without <br/>
it immobilize when you change the window size.
it's tooo bad. so i just lieave it.

> Please use the international (*.com) version of the search engines, not
> the japanese.

check URL above.

thanks.

suisui
suisui at gmail.com

>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Jim Wilson

body:
> Hmm so it wouldn't work with languages which don't have explicite word
> boundaries like Chinese, Japanese, and Thai then )-:

Nope, not at all.  I should probably add this to the documentation.

I won't be much help implementing a solution though since wo bu hui shuo
Zhong-wen.

On 2/22/07, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/22/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It wouldn't notice.  The extension is only concerned with pairs of
> > delimiters which occur at word boundaries (one before and one after).
>
> Hmm so it wouldn't work with languages which don't have explicite word
> boundaries like Chinese, Japanese, and Thai then )-:
>
> Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
>
>
> > So we have the following which all work:
> >
> >    Simple _word_ highlighting *is fine*
> >
> >    Usenet syntax within *some tags* works
> >
> >    This sentence *has bold text _and embedded underlined_ text*
> >
> > And none of these would work:
> >
> >     Trying to _wrap_ some tags.
> >
> >     A sentence spanning *two lines
> >     where the second delimiter* occurs on the second line.
> >
> >     A sentence _with only a leading delimiter
> >     ... or only_ a trailing delimiter
> >
> >     Mismatched *delimiters_ have no effect either.
> >
> >     Trying to make something *_both underline_* and bold at the same
> time
> > (leaves asterisks, only makes text underlined)
> >
> >     Or trying to _*have it the other way around*_ (only bold, leaves
> > underscores)
> >
> > Hope this helps.
> >
> > -- Jim
> >
> > On 2/21/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 04:04:29PM -0600, Jim Wilson wrote:
> > > > > So, in short, you dealt with it by running late enough that MW got
> > > > > precedence, and grabbed all the asterisks it thought it was
> interested
> > > > > in.
> > > > >
> > > > > That works for me.
> > > >
> > > > Well yeah, if you wanna put it that way :)
> > > >
> > > > * *So this will work* just fine
> > > > **While this will* still be a 2nd level bullet
> > >
> > > Which, as far as I'm concerned, is the proper thing.
> > >
> > > How does it handle this* situation?
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > -- jra
> > > * IE: the use of an asterisk as an actual footnote marker
> > > --
> > > Jay R. Ashworth
> > > jra at baylink.com
> > > Designer                          Baylink
> RFC
> > > 2100
> > > Ashworth & Associates        The Things I
> Think                        '87
> > > e24
> > > St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727
> 647
> > > 1274
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
> http://linguaphile.sf.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
On 2/22/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/21/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Perhaps I'm misconstruing your point. Is your question rhetorical, or
> > actually seeking information? Are you suggesting that, if a "newbie
> > editor" were to simply walk away, there would be no problem?
>
> If the newbie's (or anybody else's) change to an article is reverted
> and he can't make his case in the "talk" phase then yes "walk
> away"[1]. There's no consensus for his change. A "dick" phase is not
> going to change that. If he strongly feels that. If he strongly feels
> that the article is being defended in a state that violates policy
> then there are "non dick" paths he can follow such as rfcs or arbcom.
> If he can't get satisfaction there then hey that's life. You can't win
> them all.

A "new user" who goes to either of these in less than 6 months is the most
likely candidate for the "sockpuppet aaugh sockpuppet" form of abuse all too
prevalent. He's also likely to be declared a sockpuppet/meatpuppet based on
the short life of account and/or IP address status alone, despite policy
stating that new people arrive to WP all the time (ESPECIALLY on the
articles that are highly contentious and involve plenty of POV issues) and
with no other evidence.

The system itself is abusive.

Parker

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


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 2/21/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The faster you allow them to edit, the faster two bots could conceivably get
> into a war as well.

I don't know what freaky bots you work with, but as far as I know,
Skynet does not edit wikipedia (yet...)

--Oskar