body:
On 10/24/02 1:49 PM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

>
> On 10/24/02 10:07 AM, "elian" <elian at gmx.li> wrote:
>>> http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Changing the front page into something like this is a profoundly bad idea.
>
> What are your specific objections?
See:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-August/004031.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005823.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005919.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005933.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005934.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005967.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000891.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000901.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000988.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006046.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006014.html

Anthere:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006086.html

LDC:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005922.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005949.html

In short:
1. A page like this is useful exactly once for any user. After that it
becomes useless.
2. Such pages kill usability and participation.
3. This kind of page promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of
largely distinct projects, balkanized by language (and implicitly branded by
nationality). I think this is very much the wrong approach.

Just because something can be done without coding doesn't mean it's a good
idea.

When/if I have the time, I'll make predictions of what the consequences of
such a change would be, with internecine squabbles, forks, depressed
participation, arguments for the language boxes to be randomly rotated, etc.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: mailing list software

body:
I've had a few responses, and I think this is my plan:

I'll name lists as (in the case of the french list) wikiFR-l, where FR
is the language code of the list.  Then, I can optionally add an alias
that directs mail sent to "francais-l at wikipedia.org" through the list
as well.  Only the official name, "wikiFR-l at wikipedia.org" would be
mentioned in the list settings, but people who are accustomed to
sending mail to deutsch-l at nupedia.com may be more apt to send to
deutsch-l at wikipedia.org than to wikiDE at wikipedia.org...

Jason

Jason Richey wrote:

> I have installed mailman on the new server to server the wikipedia
> lists.  More specifically, someone requested a list "francais-l" be
> added to the nupedia domain, but I found that a list by that name is
> already in use for Nupedia's purposes, so I made it
> francais-l at wikipedia.org instead.  So, we now have the ability to make
> any wikipedia lists point to wikipedia.org...
>
> So, my question is this:  On the old scheme, we prefixed the list name
> with 'wiki' to indicate that it was for wikipedia.  As I copy the old
> lists to the new server, should I convert the list-names as well?  I
> think not, but I thought I should ask.
>
> Also, are these the only wikipedia lists?  I think they are.
>
> Intlwiki-l
> Wikitech-l
> Wikipedia-l
> WikiNL-l
>
> And I think this begs another question.  The Dutch list is WikiNL, and
> the french list is francais-l (though this new list is not yet
> public).  Should we go with a standardized naming scheme on the
> language-specific (or is it country-specific?) lists.  Should I change
> francais-l to wikiFR-l?
>
> Jason
>
> --
> "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>
>

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] mailing list software

body:
On 10/24/02 2:48 PM, "Jason Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com> wrote:

> I have installed mailman on the new server to server the wikipedia
> lists.  More specifically, someone requested a list "francais-l" be
> added to the nupedia domain, but I found that a list by that name is
> already in use for Nupedia's purposes, so I made it
> francais-l at wikipedia.org instead.  So, we now have the ability to make
> any wikipedia lists point to wikipedia.org...
>
> So, my question is this:  On the old scheme, we prefixed the list name
> with 'wiki' to indicate that it was for wikipedia.  As I copy the old
> lists to the new server, should I convert the list-names as well?  I
> think not, but I thought I should ask.
>
> Also, are these the only wikipedia lists?  I think they are.
>
> Intlwiki-l
> Wikitech-l
> Wikipedia-l
> WikiNL-l
>
> And I think this begs another question.  The Dutch list is WikiNL, and
> the french list is francais-l (though this new list is not yet
> public).  Should we go with a standardized naming scheme on the
> language-specific (or is it country-specific?) lists.  Should I change
> francais-l to wikiFR-l?
>
The most important thing is to think about moving to a BBS-style system.
Naming conventions aren't terribly important, but I think the
"francais-l at wikipedia.org" convention is nice.

It's certainly better to have the wikipedia lists have wikipedia addresses.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Intlwiki-l] www.wikipedia.org design

body:
On 10/24/02 3:00 PM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote in part:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>> elian wrote:
>
>>>>> http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html
>
>>>> Changing the front page into something like this is a profoundly bad idea.
>
>>> What are your specific objections?

<snip>
>
>> 3. This kind of page promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of
>> largely distinct projects, balkanized by language (and implicitly branded by
>> nationality). I think this is very much the wrong approach.
>
> OTC, this is what the current system does.
> An international <www.*> is primarily being advanced
> to fix precisely this problem.

Note: the current page says "Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project
to produce a free and complete encyclopedia in every language."

Elian's page says something similar to the above, but also says:
"Below you will find welcome messages and links to each of our active
Wikipedia language projects."

I challenge you to demonstrate that it is not the case that the above
sentence promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of largely distinct
projects, balkanized by language.

<snip>
> Specifically, elian's suggestion can't be done without coding,
> which is why mav is right to say that we need to get
> an integrated Phase IV software (PediaWiki 4.0),
> allowing integrated Recentchanges, integrated searches, etc.

We do this first, and I'll be happy. I've been suggesting this long before
mav had. But I'm glad he agrees with me.


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep drivingaway good contributors

body:
On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 06:27:59PM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>Are you saying that rather than (A) banning jerks, we should rather (B) simply revert their "work" and drive on without them?
>
>If so, this sort of combines what Jimbo had said before about just letting them have their way for a day -- with the anarchists ideal of "not exercising power".
>
>But do you think edit wars won't mushroom out of control? Should I go back, say, 15 edits ago (to yesterday's "clean" version) and edit that? I can't figure out whether that's bending over to accommodate anti-social behavior -- or that's anti-social in itself.

I see no problem with going back 1 day to get a clean edit, as long as
you incorporate any of the new material that was actually valid/good.

I don't know exactly what you had in mind for increased sysop power Ed,
but I do worry.  Where there is a controversial topic, what is to stop
the older users with thousands and thousands of edits to their name (the
"prolific" Wikipedians, quantity over quality) from throwing up their
hands and shouting "VANDALISM!" when a comparitive newbie comes along
and starts making edits that they disagree with?

I wish there was a way of asserting that one has domain specific
knowledge, and this should protect one from the drive-by
edit-everything-under-the-sun Wikipidians who have opinions, and are
good at writing down "what everyone believes", but lack the detailed
knowledge to proper evaluate a new-comers submissions.

I hope you will provide more detail as to what you specifically had in
mind, Ed.

Cheers!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] www.wikipedia.org design

body:
Hello,

just a quick and dirty design study for www.wikipedia.org (not all links
are working, some text isn't translated yet and no colors are defined)

http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html

(tested on IE (Mac), Mozilla, lynx, links, iCab and Omniweb)

Maybe after Cunctator could be convinced that no old links will be broken we
can progress a little bit in this affair.

Comments, critics, other drafts and so on welcome,
greetings,
elian
--
Your mouse has moved. WinNT must be restarted for the change to take effect.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keepdrivingaway good contributors

body:
Ed begged:  :-)
>Wikipedia is the world's largest wiki, isn't it? When it's 10 times or 100 times the size, with 1,000 to 3,000 logged-in, daily contributors -- how will we manage then? My plea is for some way beyond the personal judgment of an elite, to maintain order, lest a self-perpetuating cabal develop that freezes out the very type of capable and devoted contributor it formed to protect.
>
...
>
>Help me out, here, man.

Well--what's so bad about setting up a page outlining an expected code of conduct?  Really that's what we've banned people based on--violation of an expected code of conduct--so let's at least outline what we expect.  It's just not fair to ban people based on rules that aren't explicitly and undeniably clear.

I propose e.g.  1) no name-calling; save it for Jerry Springer.  2) don't change other peoples' comments.  3) don't question whether other people are actually people.

kq


subject: [Wikitech-l] test

body:
Please disregard this test...

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikitech-l] test2

body:
Please disregard this second (and last, I hope) test.

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikitech-l] New list address

body:
I have copied the old list members and archives over to the new list,
and have begun forwarding the old list address
(wikitech-l at nupedia.com) to wikitech-l at wikipedia.org.  I beleive that
it is working without problem.  Please let me know otherwise.  I also
beleive that I copied the membership options correctly, though I'm not
absolutely positive.  One thing I expect will be slightly different is
the time that the daily digests are received.  I beleive the new
server is set to UTC whereas the old server was on PDT, and I beleive
digests go out at 5:00pm server local time...

Please let me know if you witness any trouble.

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving away good contributors

body:
> I hope we are all proud of ourselves about how
> tolerant we are with people who consistently exhibit
> anti-social behavior. Andre has left the project due
> to fatigue with having to deal with these miscreants
> and I am so /disgusted/ with loosing yet another great
> en.wiki contributor that for at least the next several
> days I am going to concentrate on the Spanish
> Wikipedia and contemplate priorities on my own future
> involvement in en.wiki.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Now, hold on for just one cotton-pickin' minute here!

By golly, I'm not going to take this sittin' down. I try very hard to _reform_ and _raise_ people who haven't quite got the hang of things here. But I'm usually one of the first to say: if they won't play by the rules, show them the door!

I have repeatedly requested that we come up with some guidelines for -- well, behavior for want of a better word.

I have:
* made specific guideline suggestions of my own
* supported the ideas of others
* pointed out users who IMHO needed a temporary ban
* banned several graffiti artists and page deleters

The response has always been the same:
* people get up and leave (Like: Andre Engels -- goodbye)
* people tell me not to warn offenders with the word "sysop" after my name

What am I doing wrong, Mav? I trust you. You maintain NPOV, even when you and I are 180 degrees apart.

What am I doing wrong, Jimbo? Can't we have just a tad more authority to keep order? Must you and the developers be the only ones who can enforce the rules?

What am I doing wrong, Lee? We don't let kids break up a good poker game. But a lot of contributors will tell you: if that kid peeks at my cards/spills a drink on the chips/bets out of turn/etc. one more time I'm leaving the game. Right?

We must have clear guidelines and the power to enforce them.

If the rules are not clear, we have to rely on Jimbo or Lee or Brion to make a decision, inform us and then we have to spend a week or two discussing it.

When I taught Sunday School, I just gave trouble-makers a time-out for:
* hitting another pupil
* grabbing something (a book, a chair) from another pupil
* teasing another pupil

Within a half-dozen classes, I had perfect order -- and, to top it off, my class doubled in size! Kids started calling me Uncle Ed, and everyone wanted to be in my class? Why? Because they liked getting time-outs?

No, because they knew that no one would (1) hit them, (2) grab their things, or (3) tease them.

Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.

Ed Poor

I hope we are all proud of ourselves about how
tolerant we are with people who consistently exhibit
anti-social behavior. Andre has left the project due
to fatigue with having to deal with these miscreants
and I am so /disgusted/ with loosing yet another great
en.wiki contributor that for at least the next several
days I am going to concentrate on the Spanish
Wikipedia and contemplate priorities on my own future
involvement in en.wiki.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/
[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 03:23 PM 10/24/02 -0400, The Cunctator wrote:

>Note: the current page says "Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project
>to produce a free and complete encyclopedia in every language."
>
>Elian's page says something similar to the above, but also says:
>"Below you will find welcome messages and links to each of our active
>Wikipedia language projects."
>
>I challenge you to demonstrate that it is not the case that the above
>sentence promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of largely distinct
>projects, balkanized by language.

I challenge you to demonstrate that it is not the case that that
sentence promotes the view that the Wikipedia is a group of people working
together in a variety of languages.

Alternatively, please demonstrate that you claim you're asking us to
disprove is valid.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] www.wikipedia.org design

body:
"elian" skribis:

> just a quick and dirty design study for www.wikipedia.org (not all links
> are working, some text isn't translated yet and no colors are defined)
>
> http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html
>
> (tested on IE (Mac), Mozilla, lynx, links, iCab and Omniweb)

[eo]
Mi pensas ke estas tro da angla teksto en la
komenco de la pagxo. Kun Opera (kaj mia nuna
ekran-grandeco) mi nur vidas la unuajn tri
(pseudo-)paragrafojn, kaj neniom de la lingva
elekto. La bildo estas iom strange lokita ...
Cetere: Kial la lingvoj kiel bildoj?
(Devus esti "Esperanta Vikipedio" ...)

[de]
Ich denke, es ist zu viel englischer Text am
Anfang der Seite. Mit Opera (und meiner
Bildschirmgr??e) sehe ich nur die ersten drei
(Pseudo-)Abs?tze, keinen Hauch einer Sprach-Auswahl.
Das Logo ist auch merkw?rdig verrutscht.
Au?erdem: Warum die Sprachen alle als Bild?
(Es sollte "Esperanta Vikipedio" hei?en ...)

[en]
IMHO there is too much english text in the
beginning of the page. With Opera (and my
actual screen size) I see only the first
three (pseudo-)paragraphes, nothing from
the language-selection.
By the way: the Logo is a little bit to much
downside ...
Why are the languages all images?
(This should be "Esperanta Vikipedio" ...)

Pauxlo


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep

body:
> Just to clarify, there are 40 sysops, about 400 regular
> contributors, 4000 registered contributors, and many
> thousands more readers. I was considering the 4000
> registered contributors the userbase, not the 400 regular
> contributors. In that calculation, the sysops are 1% and
> Jimbo .025%. I don't consider the developers as having the
> power to ban anyone, since they really really shouldn't.

The "registered" list is pretty meaningless; it never gets
cleaned up (another item on my ever growing agenda), so it
has lots of folk who will never been seen again.

Also, the developers clearly have the "power" to block
anyone or anything just as we have the power to make every
page green and purple: having your hands on the code is
about as much power as one can get.  But we serve as checks
to each other; if I did something stupid like that, Jimbo
or Brion or Magnus would undo it, and vice versa.  We should
work to create explicit cultural norms and guidelines for us
too, so that we have some idea what we really shouldn't do.

I think perhaps what Ed is arguing for, and what I support
as well, is the idea that we should perhaps take the idea of
freedom of action and the act-first-argue-later system that
seems to make Wikipedia work pretty well most of the time and
apply it at the meta-level as well; that is, let the sysops and
developers do what they think is necessary, so long as it can
be undone by others, and not freak out about it.  That includes
the drastic things like deleting articles and blocking users.
In other words, let's agree to see them as less drastic because
they're reversible, and accept that mistakes will be made now
and then, but nonetheless give people power--and the cultural
authority--to do them.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving
	away good contributors

body:
On 10/24/02 5:33 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give admins the
> power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the ability of
> contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.

You're looking at this in not quite the right way. Rather than thinking
about creating a police force (which is what giving one percent of the users
power to enforce rules is) we need to be thinking about SoftSecurity.


body:
"Will Smith" <will at willsmith.org> writes:

> Nice, but it's not totally clear that you have to click on the icon, rather
> than the underlined word underneath the icon.  I'd guess users typically
> click on underlined links rather than words appearing big and bold.
> Does there really need to be a link to each language's
> Special:Recentchanges from the www site?

No, it's just a nice feature for the recentchanges-junkies. Not really
necessary.

> And the search function ... that searches Wikipedia-EN?  Personally
> I'd say that's fine, other's might say that Wikipedia-EN is being
> given preferential treatment.

AFAIK there is no multilingual search, yet.
Until this is implemented, I'd say the biggest wikipedia merits some kind
of special treatment - at least the possibility that you get good search
results on the english is a lot higher than in the other languages.

Maybe later we could sort this out automatically like google does it: if
someone is searching f.e. for french words, he gets french
results, of course.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Mark Christensen

body:
I think a police force is can be considered SoftSecurity, so if you
don't consider it so,  could you please explain what you mean by term?

People enforcing social norms by quickly reverting the work of vandals
and antisocial jerks is SoftSecurity, if those people are organized and
empowered with social authority that makes no difference, except now it
may seem reasonable to some folks to call that group a "police force" --
which BTW is not Ed's term, but yours.

-----Original Message-----
From: The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator at kband.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 6:13 PM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep
drivingaway good contributors

On 10/24/02 5:33 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give
> admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the

> ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.

You're looking at this in not quite the right way. Rather than thinking
about creating a police force (which is what giving one percent of the
users power to enforce rules is) we need to be thinking about
SoftSecurity.

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
But, my dear Cunctator, we have already given one percent of the users power: Jimbo and the developers can ban anyone, even a signed-in user. Ordinary sysops, such as myself, can ban only an IP.

There are 40 sysops, out of about 200 to 300 regular contributors. So our Dear Leader and Dictator For Life -- Jimbo -- and his royal bodyguards -- are that one percent. Sysops are about 20%. It's a two-tier power hierarchy.

Don't get my wrong, I have no quarrel with the benevolence of Mr. Wales. It is by his munificence that this project got started at all. Richard Stallman couldn't do it. FSF didn't hire a genius philosophy professor like Larry Sanger.

But we can't keep limping along by trusting the judgment of the top 1%. The authority needs to be delegated, lest the burden be too big. Recall the account of Moses and the 70 elders in Genesis.

Is SoftSecurity better than written guidelines? If so, clue me in.

Ed Poor


body:
Mark,

Are you saying that rather than (A) banning jerks, we should rather (B) simply revert their "work" and drive on without them?

If so, this sort of combines what Jimbo had said before about just letting them have their way for a day -- with the anarchists ideal of "not exercising power".

But do you think edit wars won't mushroom out of control? Should I go back, say, 15 edits ago (to yesterday's "clean" version) and edit that? I can't figure out whether that's bending over to accommodate anti-social behavior -- or that's anti-social in itself.

Ed Poor


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep
	drivingaway good contributors

body:
On 10/24/02 6:18 PM, "Mark Christensen" <mchristensen at humantech.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator at kband.com] wrote:
> On 10/24/02 5:33 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>>> Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give
>>> admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the
>>> ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.
>
>> You're looking at this in not quite the right way. Rather than thinking
>> about creating a police force (which is what giving one percent of the
>> users power to enforce rules is) we need to be thinking about
>> SoftSecurity.

> I think a police force is can be considered SoftSecurity, so if you
> don't consider it so,  could you please explain what you mean by term?

See http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?HardSecurity . Note the first link.

> People enforcing social norms by quickly reverting the work of vandals
> and antisocial jerks is SoftSecurity, if those people are organized and
> empowered with social authority that makes no difference, except now it
> may seem reasonable to some folks to call that group a "police force" --
> which BTW is not Ed's term, but yours.

I hardly implied it wasn't. It is the case organization and empowerment with
social authority make only a limited difference from self-organization.
However, that is not what Ed said. He was discussing granting special powers
to a group of people differentiated not by social authority but by the law
of the code (admins).

I just want to make clear that I too very much want to find solutions to the
problems we have with recalcitrants. Our best approach is to figure out ways
to make the problems disappear, not ways to fight them.


body:
On 10/24/02 6:27 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Mark,
>
> Are you saying that rather than (A) banning jerks, we should rather (B) simply
> revert their "work" and drive on without them?
>
> If so, this sort of combines what Jimbo had said before about just letting
> them have their way for a day -- with the anarchists ideal of "not exercising
> power".
>
> But do you think edit wars won't mushroom out of control? Should I go back,
> say, 15 edits ago (to yesterday's "clean" version) and edit that? I can't
> figure out whether that's bending over to accommodate anti-social behavior --
> or that's anti-social in itself.
>
One approach is go back to the "clean" version and then incorporate edits
from the later versions that have value into that. It's an effective method,
and not anti-social.


body:
> > People enforcing social norms by quickly reverting the work of vandals
> > and antisocial jerks is SoftSecurity, if those people are organized and
> > empowered with social authority that makes no difference, except now it
> > may seem reasonable to some folks to call that group a "police force" --
> > which BTW is not Ed's term, but yours.
>
> I hardly implied it wasn't. It is the case organization and empowerment with
> social authority make only a limited difference from self-organization.
> However, that is not what Ed said. He was discussing granting special powers
> to a group of people differentiated not by social authority but by the law
> of the code (admins).
>
> I just want to make clear that I too very much want to find solutions to the
> problems we have with recalcitrants. Our best approach is to figure out ways
> to make the problems disappear, not ways to fight them.

Yes, I am talking about special powers -- but not simply an arbitrary _degree_ of power, which is what we have now. Developers can ban anyone, anytime, and are answerable only to Jimbo. Sysops can ban an IP, and any other sysop can unban that IP.

But it's all arbitrary, unless there is a consensus on what rules these bannings are intended to enforce.

Wikipedia is the world's largest wiki, isn't it? When it's 10 times or 100 times the size, with 1,000 to 3,000 logged-in, daily contributors -- how will we manage then? My plea is for some way beyond the personal judgment of an elite, to maintain order, lest a self-perpetuating cabal develop that freezes out the very type of capable and devoted contributor it formed to protect.

I'm not hitting a single note. I'm not saying, just give me power. I'm not saying make everything a matter of dry, rigid rules.

But sheer anarchy tempered by three dudes with shotguns isn't my cup of tea either.

Help me out, here, man.

Ed Poor


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikitech-l] New list address

body:
Jason Richey wrote:
> I have copied the old list members and archives over to the new list,
> and have begun forwarding the old list address
> (wikitech-l at nupedia.com) to wikitech-l at wikipedia.org.  I beleive that
> it is working without problem.  Please let me know otherwise.  I also
> beleive that I copied the membership options correctly, though I'm not
> absolutely positive.  One thing I expect will be slightly different is
> the time that the daily digests are received.  I beleive the new
> server is set to UTC whereas the old server was on PDT, and I beleive
> digests go out at 5:00pm server local time...
>
> Please let me know if you witness any trouble.

I had a second account (vibber at usc.edu) signed up with delivery disabled
so I could send mail to the list from that account when necessary
without having to wait for a moderator approval; I seem to be receiving
via both accounts now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ban 24.166.83.194

body:
24.166.83.194 keeps vandalizing articles, also edits the VANDALISM IN
PROGRESS page to cover his tracks and creates fake editlog entries. Should be
banned immediately.

Regards,

Erik

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


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>Toby Bartels wrote:
>>The Cunctator wrote:
>>>>>elian wrote:

>>>>>>http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html

>>>3. This kind of page promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of
>>>largely distinct projects, balkanized by language (and implicitly branded by
>>>nationality). I think this is very much the wrong approach.

>>OTC, this is what the current system does.
>>An international <www.*> is primarily being advanced
>>to fix precisely this problem.

>Note: the current page says "Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project
>to produce a free and complete encyclopedia in every language."

But has no prominent links to any language other than English.

>Elian's page says something similar to the above, but also says:
>"Below you will find welcome messages and links to each of our active
>Wikipedia language projects."

>I challenge you to demonstrate that it is not the case that the above
>sentence promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of largely distinct
>projects, balkanized by language.

The proof was mentioned by you already; it says at the very top
"Wikipedia is an international, multilingual collaborative project
"whose goal is to produce an interlinked open content, neutral and
"complete encyclopedia from scratch in every language.
Therefore it is not a coalition of largely distinct projects.
Ipso facto, the projects mentioned later must be subprojects;
that is the only logical conclusion (and clearly what elian intended too).

But yeah, the current wording towards the bottom could be approved.
It should just say something like "each of our active languages",
or at the very least say "subprojects" instead of "projects".

What I really don't understand about your objections
is your argument that an international home page is balkanising.
I mean, I totally cannot process this claim.
I'm not entirely pleased with the look of elian's proposal,
but it's axiomatic that the purpose is language integration.

>>Specifically, elian's suggestion can't be done without coding,
>>which is why mav is right to say that we need to get
>>an integrated Phase IV software (PediaWiki 4.0),
>>allowing integrated Recentchanges, integrated searches, etc.

Actually, I guess that it doesn't have a link to integrated Recentchanges,
just a link to integrated searching (which currently goes to [[en:]]
since integrated searching is not in actuality supported).
But it *should* have a link to integrated Recentchanges,
so we do still need to code this.

>We do this first, and I'll be happy. I've been suggesting this long before
>mav had. But I'm glad he agrees with me.

Yes, I thought that you would agree with this.
An integrated main page would not IMO *hurt* the project now,
but it would do a much better job of *helping* the project
under PediaWiki 4.0.

Unfortunately, you, mav, and I don't know PHP,
so we can only say what we would like to happen
while working on proposals for interlinguistic main pages.

-- Toby


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikitech-l] test

body:
Jason Richey wrote:
>
> I got word that posting to this list was not working...  Just testing.
>
> --
> "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>

I received this test message just fine.

I subscribed last night.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>Especially "no name-calling". What's name-calling? How about just extreme
>sarcasm? And what is vandalism?

Eh, well, vandalism seems self-explanatory: deleting articles (not non-articles, but *articles*) entirely, replacing them with profanity, splattering the goatse picture about....

"No name-calling" just seemed to me a basic to productive discussion.  e.g. don't call people fascist or racist, regardless of whether you think it's true, because it's really not going to help prove a point one way or another and certainly won't convince the other person that s/he is wrong.  Anyway, that was the idea.  Possibly not the right idea, but that's what I was thinking of.  And I don't think we should argue that free speech shouldn't be limited at wikipedia--at least not with a straight face--because 24 was banned for suggesting that LMS was not a person and would deserve anything anyone wanted to do to him.

kq


body:
Mark Christensen wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>Ed Poor wrote:

>>>Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give
>>>admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the
>>>ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.

I do agree that we should think about guidelines for
banning people for reasons other than outright vandalism.
I'm not convinced that this is necessary (at least not now),
but it's still a good idea to think about it.

What I primarily don't want to see is banning without guidelines.
Currently, Jimbo has banned only 2 people extraordinarily,
and each case was after long discussion, which is fairly safe.
Every other banning has been for outright vandalism (which is policy)
or has been objected to and reverted shortly thereafter.
Do we need to ban people for deliberately uncooperative behaviour?
If so, then we should set up guidelines for that before we start.
(And I think that most people here would agree with that.)
In particular, hard security measures reserved to "official" people (admins)
should be spelled out in some "official" document (a policy page).

>>You're looking at this in not quite the right way. Rather than thinking
>>about creating a police force (which is what giving one percent of the
>>users power to enforce rules is) we need to be thinking about
>>SoftSecurity.

I think that part of the problem is that, ironically,
people are sometimes too hesitant to implement soft security measures.
I think that it's reasonable for a group of contributors
to decide (through discussion on the relevant talk pages, most likely)
that a certain other "contributor" has repeatedly demonstrated
that they're unable or unwilling to work cooperatively,
and that therefore the miscreant's efforts can reverted without comment.
We are not obligated to continue to try to work with them
if they refuse to try to work with us.  So revert them.
(And there is also the good point, stressed by Jimbo among others,
that you'll sometimes want to wait an hour or so before reverting it
in order to give them a chance to go away in the meantime.
This is to prevent edit wars in the short term,
while edit wars over the long term are prevented by force of numbers.)

Will this always work?  Maybe not, certainly not forever.
Thus we should think about other security measures (soft or hard).
But the point is that there is an alternative between
attempting to work with somebody (which we all agree should be done first)
and banning them with extraordinary power (being discussed now).
This is Cunc's "SoftSecurity".

>I think a police force is can be considered SoftSecurity, so if you
>don't consider it so,  could you please explain what you mean by term?

It can be, depending on what it does, but banning people is hard security.
I assume that Cunc is using the term "police force", then,
to mean a small group with extraordinary hard security powers
(such as admins that ban people).

>People enforcing social norms by quickly reverting the work of vandals
>and antisocial jerks is SoftSecurity, if those people are organized and
>empowered with social authority that makes no difference, except now it
>may seem reasonable to some folks to call that group a "police force" --
>which BTW is not Ed's term, but yours.

Yes, this is soft security, and it's what I think we should primarily do
(except for the fact that doing so *quickly* is sometimes counterproductive).
I would prefer to call such a group a "militia" rather than a "police force",
especially since doing this doesn't require any extraordinary powers.
But the language is not important.  It's the hard security (banning)
that Cunc is objecting to, and that I want to be cautious about.

-- Toby


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Within a half-dozen classes, I had perfect order --
> and, to top it off, my class doubled in size! Kids
> started calling me Uncle Ed, and everyone wanted to
> be in my class? Why? Because they liked getting
> time-outs?
>
> No, because they knew that no one would (1) hit
> them, (2) grab their things, or (3) tease them.

Well, this isn't a Sunday School. The admins are not
adults in charge of squabbling children.

> Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure
> out how to give admins the power to enforce them --
> in a way that does not curtail the ability of
> contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.

In other words, let's make a police force. Stage 18 of
the Wiki Life Cycled.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving away  good contributors

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On 10/24/02 9:00 PM, "Karen AKA Kajikit"
> > It
> > doesn't matter that we have the ability to make
> these changes because we
> > asked for it. We care about the pedia enough to
> take action when
> > necessary. And yes, I think that should include
> the temporary banning of
> > people who repeatedly violate the code of conduct
> for the wikipedia. I
> > agree with KQ about this - atm the code of conduct
> is unwritten, but
> > when you sign up for virtually any other website
> you have to agree to
> > follow one. We should do the same - when you
> create a login you need to
> > agree to follow the basic rules - no name-calling,
> no vandalism, and no
> > uploading of copyrighted materials. Being caught
> doing any of those
> > things should be AUTOMATIC cause for unquestioned
> suspension for a
> > period of time. No arguments and no questions
> asked.
>
> I strongly and vociferously disagree with that
> attitude. SoftSecurity is so
> much better than such a policy of HardSecurity.
>
> Especially "no name-calling". What's name-calling?
> How about just extreme
> sarcasm? And what is vandalism?

Zero-tolerance policies are always disasters waiting
to happen.

For example, if I say on a talk page that the
Cunctator did something stupid, and responds that
calling his reasonable and prudent action "stupid"
could be considered vandalism, do we both get banned?

I will never support any kind of policy that entails
automatic, unquestionable punishment.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


body:
Ed Poor wrote in part to another poster:

>Should I go back,
>say, 15 edits ago (to yesterday's "clean" version) and edit that? I can't
>figure out whether that's bending over to accommodate anti-social behavior
>-- or that's anti-social in itself.

I don't know about Mark, but I think that you should do just that.
It's safer than banning people and easier for the ordinary user
(that is, a regular contributor that has not undertaken admin duties)
to revert in the case that you've made a mistake.

Is it antisocial?  To an extent, but it's less antisocial than banning
(even for just a short time) or locking a page (even for just a short time).
You need to make sure that you're certain (and that others agree)
that the antisocial "contributor" deserves this kind of treatment --
just as you'd have to make sure before banning them or locking the page.

A soft security programme of reverting the edits of the antisocial writer --
but after waiting a little while for them to wander off
(as Jimbo has suggested) in order to avoid immediate edit wars --
has all the functionality of the advanced (and as yet unprogrammed)
hard security measures that have been proposed:
* There's a cooling off period (because you wait a bit before reverting);
* The talk pages are still available (because you don't revert those);
* The contributor can continue to do good work on the other articles
  (because you're only reverting certain pages where their work is bad).
And if this is not the desired behaviour
(for example, you *should* revert their edits to talk pages
if they're forging other people's comments there),
then it's easy to adjust; there is no special mechanism to go through.
Also, different users can react in different ways,
depending on their own estimation of the situation,
rather than following the decision of the first admin to respond.
This is the power of devolution.

Ed, you're famous for trying to (and often succeeding at!)
working with recalcitrant newbies and turning them into good Wikipedians.
I too would be quick to give up on somebody that you couldn't help.
And it's no surprise that other people (like Julie Kemp)
burn themselves out by trying to work with some of these people.
I certainly agree that there are people that simply
aren't willing or able to work with the rest of us in good faith.
But I think that, in almost every situation
(not counting vandals and copyright infringers,
which admins regularly ban under current policy),
we can deal with them without resorting to hard security measures.
Once we have decided that they are impossible to work with
(which is a precondition for a hard security measure like banning),
then we should save our sanity and stop *trying* to work with them.
But this doesn't require asking an admin (or using our own admin power)
to lock a page or ban the user; ordinary users can do it on their own.
And if we're wrong, if the person *can* be worked with by superhuman effort,
then there is still an opportunity for SuperEd to come along and find a way.
In the meantime, we just get on with our work.

Mav spoke (sarcastically) about pride in "bending over backward"
to work with antisocial people, with the result that good people quit.
Trying to work with people is good, but that's not the source of my pride
when it comes to Wikipedia.  I'm proud of our devolved power structure,
our openness to newbies, and our ability to deal with whatever they give us.
I don't think that the last of these requires us to sacrifice the others.
Soft security is powerful, and way cool ^_^.

-- Toby


body:
On 10/24/02 6:23 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> But, my dear Cunctator, we have already given one percent of the users power:
> Jimbo and the developers can ban anyone, even a signed-in user. Ordinary
> sysops, such as myself, can ban only an IP.
>
> There are 40 sysops, out of about 200 to 300 regular contributors. So our Dear
> Leader and Dictator For Life -- Jimbo -- and his royal bodyguards -- are that
> one percent. Sysops are about 20%. It's a two-tier power hierarchy.

Just to clarify, there are 40 sysops, about 400 regular contributors, 4000
registered contributors, and many thousands more readers. I was considering
the 4000 registered contributors the userbase, not the 400 regular
contributors. In that calculation, the sysops are 1% and Jimbo .025%. I
don't consider the developers as having the power to ban anyone, since they
really really shouldn't.


body:
I fight to keep things open, not to tolerate
anti-social behaviour, but to keep Wikipedia from
becoming the online equivalent of a police state. I
believe that soft security is the best way to run a
wiki community, and that too much hard security will
eventaully kill us.

If we lock down Wikipedia too tighly, we'll lose
*most* of our great contributors.

Stephen G.

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I hope we are all proud of ourselves about how
> tolerant we are with people who consistently exhibit
> anti-social behavior. Andre has left the project due
> to fatigue with having to deal with these miscreants
> and I am so /disgusted/ with loosing yet another
> great
> en.wiki contributor that for at least the next
> several
> days I am going to concentrate on the Spanish
> Wikipedia and contemplate priorities on my own
> future
> involvement in en.wiki.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
> http://webhosting.yahoo.com/
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
h

__________________________________________________
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Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to
	keepdrivingaway good contributors

body:
On 10/24/02 6:41 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

>>> People enforcing social norms by quickly reverting the work of vandals
>>> and antisocial jerks is SoftSecurity, if those people are organized and
>>> empowered with social authority that makes no difference, except now it
>>> may seem reasonable to some folks to call that group a "police force" --
>>> which BTW is not Ed's term, but yours.
>>
>> I hardly implied it wasn't. It is the case organization and empowerment with
>> social authority make only a limited difference from self-organization.
>> However, that is not what Ed said. He was discussing granting special powers
>> to a group of people differentiated not by social authority but by the law
>> of the code (admins).
>>
>> I just want to make clear that I too very much want to find solutions to the
>> problems we have with recalcitrants. Our best approach is to figure out ways
>> to make the problems disappear, not ways to fight them.
>
> Yes, I am talking about special powers -- but not simply an arbitrary _degree_
> of power, which is what we have now. Developers can ban anyone, anytime, and
> are answerable only to Jimbo. Sysops can ban an IP, and any other sysop can
> unban that IP.

And those developers should never do so.

> But it's all arbitrary, unless there is a consensus on what rules these
> bannings are intended to enforce.
>
> Wikipedia is the world's largest wiki, isn't it? When it's 10 times or 100
> times the size, with 1,000 to 3,000 logged-in, daily contributors -- how will
> we manage then? My plea is for some way beyond the personal judgment of an
> elite, to maintain order, lest a self-perpetuating cabal develop that freezes
> out the very type of capable and devoted contributor it formed to protect.
>
> I'm not hitting a single note. I'm not saying, just give me power. I'm not
> saying make everything a matter of dry, rigid rules.
>
> But sheer anarchy tempered by three dudes with shotguns isn't my cup of tea
> either.

I agree with you. You want answers? Here's what should be done. One thing to
consider is whether we can figure out a way to make IP banning 99.999
percent unnecessary. If we can do that, then we can reserve that power for
Jimbo, our GodKing (see MeatballWiki).

In the meantime, here are things to consider, in some kind of descending
hierarchical order:
* make IP bans automatically time-limited. (definitely)
* make sysop status automatically granted. (should happen)
* state policy that if you make a bad IP ban, your sysop status will be
revoked (until it gets automatically granted again)
* allow sysops to enforce the above policy (that is, allow sysops to
un-sysop other sysops)
* make un-sysoping two-way; that is, you temporarily sacrifice your sysop
power to temporarily remove another's sysop power
* get rid of the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page or at least rename it to
something less violently alarmist

There are many other interesting things that could be done. But I think the
best thing would be for us to avoid paranoia and take a concrete measure of
what the worst anyone can or has done.

One article being irrationally skewed can be a big pain in the ass,
especially if you care about the subject and know it well, but it's not that
important overall. It's only important if it becomes a problem
statistically--many articles for an extended period of time. That is what
must be avoided.

Another good place to start is to notice what causes difficulties for you as
an editor for undoing problematic edits. Consider what interface tools would
make it easier to "fix" "problems".

(I put those quotes because we also need to make sure that "unfixing" is
just as easy.)

I hope this makes some sense.


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML versus Wiki-tags

body:
LDC wrote:

>Giskart wrote:

>>I see that more and more people are use Wiki-makeup
>>and removing HTML tags. But I like to use HTML-tags.
>>Is there, from a technical point of view any difference
>>between the folowing notations;

>>== Foobar ==
>>
Foobar

>Wiki markup is preferred because a good Wikipedia article
>is not only useful to read, but easy to edit.  We want non-
>compter nerds to be able to easily edit and add to topics
>in which they are interested.  Also, I still have a long-
>term plan of eliminating most HTML for security reasons.

The security issue should be a separate concern.
We can allow "
...
" as wiki markup
without allowing "...".
I do agree that "==" is better, however,
and we should make wiki markup look like HTML markup
only for rarely used but supported features (like )
and as a deprecated alternative for newbies' sakes.

>I also treat Wiki markup specially in the software in a
>few places; for example == Foobar == will cause a page
>to be ranked higher in a search for "Foobar", but the
>equivalent HTML tag will not.

I've also suggested treating the rendering of "=" markup in HTML
analogously to how we treat its rendering for numbered headers:
the shortest string of '='s will always be
,
even if it happens to be the currently deprecated "===".
But then "
" could still be used to force an
 tag in the HTML.
Although this proposal got little response and is unlikely to happen,
the point is that some variation is possible, and might be desirable,
for certain purposes.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] New list address

body:
Jason Richey wrote in part:

>I have copied the old list members and archives over to the new list,

>Please let me know if you witness any trouble.

I'm now going each individual post, rather than the digest as before.

While I'm on the subject, is it possible to get the digest
as a series of attachments, with each attachment an individual post,
as is currently done for <wikipedia-l> but not this list or <intlwiki-l>?
This is much more convenient when replying.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] www.wikipedia.org design

body:
On 10/24/02 8:49 PM, "Karen AKA Kajikit" <kaji at labyrinth.net.au> wrote:
> Some people are complaining that it seems to be a balkanised project -
> until all the databases are unified, then it IS balkinised. That's a
> fact of life. Once all the pedias are running on one server then I'd
> suggest a simple dropdown box that says 'What language would you like to
> work in today?' and then takes you to the appropriate place.

Just because it's balkanized technologically doesn't make it a good idea for
it to be balkanized explicitly as well.

I *do* think that the technological balkanization is a primary factor in
having people consider there to be separate Wikipedias.

If we agree that it's an important priority to interlink the backend, then I
think it would make sense on making front-end changes that relate to such
issues until after the new backend is in place.

By the way, with Ram-Man's automatic article addition, we've just hit 80.000
English entries.


body:
On 10/24/02 8:56 PM, "lcrocker at nupedia.com" <lcrocker at nupedia.com> wrote:
> I think perhaps what Ed is arguing for, and what I support
> as well, is the idea that we should perhaps take the idea of
> freedom of action and the act-first-argue-later system that
> seems to make Wikipedia work pretty well most of the time and
> apply it at the meta-level as well; that is, let the sysops and
> developers do what they think is necessary, so long as it can
> be undone by others, and not freak out about it.  That includes
> the drastic things like deleting articles and blocking users.
> In other words, let's agree to see them as less drastic because
> they're reversible, and accept that mistakes will be made now
> and then, but nonetheless give people power--and the cultural
> authority--to do them.

I generally agree with that philosophy, especially if it's really followed.
Blocking users is sticky, because people are quite different from entries.
I'd feel better if there was a way for blocked users to reverse their
blocking (without having to make a request to the person who blocked it),
and since that's hard to even conceive, at a minimum automatic unblocking.

I guess I also don't see blocking users as that obviously necessary,
especially if we say built a tool that could automatically roll back one
user's edits. (Though that could be even worse--imagine edit wars on such a
scale. Probably not a good idea. But interesting to think of.)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving
	away  good contributors

body:
On 10/24/02 9:00 PM, "Karen AKA Kajikit" <kaji at labyrinth.net.au> wrote:
> The thing is, like it or not, the sysops ARE a defacto police force.

I don't like it.

> It
> doesn't matter that we have the ability to make these changes because we
> asked for it. We care about the pedia enough to take action when
> necessary. And yes, I think that should include the temporary banning of
> people who repeatedly violate the code of conduct for the wikipedia. I
> agree with KQ about this - atm the code of conduct is unwritten, but
> when you sign up for virtually any other website you have to agree to
> follow one. We should do the same - when you create a login you need to
> agree to follow the basic rules - no name-calling, no vandalism, and no
> uploading of copyrighted materials. Being caught doing any of those
> things should be AUTOMATIC cause for unquestioned suspension for a
> period of time. No arguments and no questions asked.

I strongly and vociferously disagree with that attitude. SoftSecurity is so
much better than such a policy of HardSecurity.

Especially "no name-calling". What's name-calling? How about just extreme
sarcasm? And what is vandalism?

And even copyrighted materials are not that big a deal.

And one of the great things about wikis and Wikipedia is that you don't even
have to login to edit.

The only thing we must (legally) have editors agree to is the GFDL.
Everything else can be dealt with through SoftSecurity.


body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> 1.  The text is slightly different from what we have now, in some
> possibly debatable ways.  Let's assume that our current text is not
> set in stone and that it would be desirable to make it emphasize more
> clearly our international scope.

If someone can write a better (maybe also shorter) introduction, I'll
integrate it.

> 3.  The major 'other languages' are made more prominent, with "text
> images" saying the name of each language.  I think that particular
> design feature is a bad idea (why make an image when text will do the
> job just fine?), but I like the overall look of making the other
> wikipedias more prominent.

There is a new version without images at
http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia2.html

I took one of my old stylesheets so the colors (like the rest) are debatable.

> I would be opposed to automatically pulling all those numbers out of
> the databases for every load of the homepage -- an automated daily
> updating would be more efficient and would suit our purposes just
> fine.

I totally agree with this.

> 4.  Some of the "tools" are not linked here.  Recent Pages, Random
> Page, and so on.  I would support restoring those; they are important.
> What say you?

Recentchanges, the most important, is there. The rest is
language-dependent so we will get into trouble if we try putting them on
the Main Page. I'd like to keep it as clear and simple as possible.

greetings,
elian
--
Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put
on fire, and just ridiculed in general, THEN, and only then, have you
reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to
actually implement a driver. -- Linus Torvalds, linux-kernel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org design

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

> I personally think it would then be neat for
> www.wikipedia.org to sniff the language setting of a
> visitor's browser and then automatically direct them
> to their language's welcome page if it exists -- if it
> doesn't then it would bring them to the English
> welcome page. I don't think that matching the language
> a person's browser is in with a welcome page in the
> same language is going to harm the user when several
> other welcome pages in different languages are just a
> click away. If this sniffing is done then all the
> different languages can equally use www.wikipedia.org
> for promotional purposes without having to explain why
> the default is in English and how to get to their
> language's welcome page.

Although I normally oppose browser-sniffing, one solution would be to make
the welcome-text (and only this) language-dependent. Either this or in
addition to it we could also adapt Magnus' suggestion to emphasize the
preferred language-wikipedia.

> It would also be neat to be able to set your user preferences to bypass
> the multilingual Welcome Page or to over-ride the language sniffing and
> go directly to your language of choice (but typing xx.wikipedia.org or
> clicking on a different welcome page isn't that hard so this isn't too
> important).

At the moment it takes one click to get to Recentchanges from the mainpage
- in the future also. I assumed that's the page regulars consult first
when they come to wikipedia.

greetings,
elian
--
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it,
chances are you won't either.


body:
You Wrote:
>I fight to keep things open, not to tolerate
>anti-social behaviour, but to keep Wikipedia from
>becoming the online equivalent of a police state. I
>believe that soft security is the best way to run a
>wiki community, and that too much hard security will
>eventaully kill us.
>
>If we lock down Wikipedia too tighly, we'll lose
>*most* of our great contributors.
>
>Stephen G.

I agree with this.  Just for the record, I don't intend to ban people for name-calling or even being stubborn--I had that opportunity in the case of 24, and thought it was not something that should be done.  I just would like to codify our expectations of what users should do:  simply try to treat each other with respect.  Give each other the benefit of the doubt.  Avoid personal attacks.

I do think this is very important.  Not everyone has been on the net long; and it's quite easy when first starting online to miss the fact that there are people at a monitor somewhere reading what you just wrote.  Online newbies flame a lot without thinking; wikipedia newbies do it a lot too.  Let's just make it explicit and encourage people not to.

Let's face it: if we had always been as quick to ban as we are right now, then Larry, The Cunctator, Ed Poor, LDC, and I would all have been banned at one time or another, possibly permanently.  (24 is still banned, isn't he?  That was meant to be temporary).  We've all been trollish, disrespectful, and/or stubborn at one time or another for various reasons.  But look: Larry has contributed some fine philosophy articles and was crucial in codifying NPOV; The Cunctator has contributed fine articles on the Sept. 11 attacks and is this list's consciensce; Ed is now a diplomat extraordinaire; Lee is an excellent coder and a workhorse who's also written some first-rate articles on poker.

What I would like is a page to encourage people to be how we want them to be, instead of punishing when they're not.  Something simple & direct, e.g. [[Wikipedia:Staying cool when the editing gets hot]].  I don't want to ban everyone who uploads goatse.cx or is adamant about a point of view, but I also don't want people insulting each other and leaving out of frustration.  We are a community; we all have the same goals; we all have something to contribute.  Let's keep the process open, and let's be as generous with others as others were with us.  :-)

kq


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikitech-l] mailing list software

body:
Jason Richey wrote:

>[cut]
>
>And I think this begs another question.  The Dutch list is WikiNL, and
>
>
I chose the name WikiNL-l for that list because in the same style which
as the other lists (Inlwiki-l and Wikitech-l).   If for each the format
WikiXX-l  is used  you get a shorter and easy e-mail address whit the
same format. (not a long like "nederlands-l at wikipedia.org"), By its use
of the language code it simple to the link between that  list and the
url of that wikipedia.   And especially, if you want in a text to refer
to the maillinglist it is uglier to for saying "english-l" or
"nederlands-l" this whereas something like as WikiNL-l sounds better.

I say, make the lists in the format wikiXX-l and give those wikipedias
control over them. Then the can make what want them of it.

Giskart


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving
 away good contributors

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> (24 is still banned, isn't he?  That was meant to be temporary).

24.150.61.63 has been off the ban list for quite some time. (Certainly
since the July upgrade wiped the slate, I'm not sure about before.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] mailing list software

body:
Jason Richey wrote:

 >[cut]
 >
 >And I think this begs another question.  The Dutch list is WikiNL, and
 >
 >
I chose the name WikiNL-l for that list because in the same style which
as the other lists (Inlwiki-l and Wikitech-l).   If for each the format
WikiXX-l  is used  you get a shorter and easy e-mail address whit the
same format. (not a long like "nederlands-l at wikipedia.org"), By its use
of the language code it simple to the link between that  list and the
url of that wikipedia.   And especially, if you want in a text to refer
to the maillinglist it is uglier to for saying "english-l" or
"nederlands-l" this whereas something like as WikiNL-l sounds better.

I say, make the lists in the format wikiXX-l and give those wikipedias
control over them. Then the can make what want them of it.

Giskart


body:
>24.150.61.63 has been off the ban list for quite some time. (Certainly
>since the July upgrade wiped the slate, I'm not sure about before.)
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Hm, if I weren't attending classes full time & working 30 hrs a week, I would have known that.  Still, though, I bet mav knew it.  ;-)

kq


body:
On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 12:53:43PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> I hope we are all proud of ourselves about how
> tolerant we are with people who consistently exhibit
> anti-social behavior.

I am proud that we are a wiki, and I hope we remain one.

> Andre has left the project due to fatigue with having to deal with
> these miscreants

Then he was under a misconception. He did not have to deal with them.

-M-


subject: [Wikitech-l] New list address

in_reply_to: <3DB8AFEC.4010802@pobox.com>; from brion@pobox.com on Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 06:43:56PM -0800

body:
I imported the data in a slightly different way now, this should fix
some problems (I had missed everyone's passwords before).  Let me know
if you continue to see this problem, Brion.

Jason

Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Jason Richey wrote:
> > I have copied the old list members and archives over to the new list,
> > and have begun forwarding the old list address
> > (wikitech-l at nupedia.com) to wikitech-l at wikipedia.org.  I beleive that
> > it is working without problem.  Please let me know otherwise.  I also
> > beleive that I copied the membership options correctly, though I'm not
> > absolutely positive.  One thing I expect will be slightly different is
> > the time that the daily digests are received.  I beleive the new
> > server is set to UTC whereas the old server was on PDT, and I beleive
> > digests go out at 5:00pm server local time...
> >
> > Please let me know if you witness any trouble.
>
> I had a second account (vibber at usc.edu) signed up with delivery disabled
> so I could send mail to the list from that account when necessary
> without having to wait for a moderator approval; I seem to be receiving
> via both accounts now.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikitech-l] mailing list software

body:
"Jason Richey" skribis:

> Also, are these the only wikipedia lists?  I think they are.
>
> Intlwiki-l
> Wikitech-l
> Wikipedia-l
> WikiNL-l

Deutsch-l at nupedia.com was originally used by the
german translation team of Nupedia, but now is
used by the german wikipedists. I think, it should
be converted, too.

It would be nice if also the esperanto-wiki
could get a list (know we are (not) using
a yahoogroups-list).

Paul


subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org design

body:
"elian" skribis:

> Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > I personally think it would then be neat for
> > www.wikipedia.org to sniff the language setting of a
> > visitor's browser and then automatically direct them
> > to their language's welcome page if it exists -- if it
> > doesn't then it would bring them to the English
> > welcome page. I don't think that matching the language
> > a person's browser is in with a welcome page in the
> > same language is going to harm the user when several
> > other welcome pages in different languages are just a
> > click away. If this sniffing is done then all the
> > different languages can equally use www.wikipedia.org
> > for promotional purposes without having to explain why
> > the default is in English and how to get to their
> > language's welcome page.
>
> Although I normally oppose browser-sniffing, one solution would be to make
> the welcome-text (and only this) language-dependent. Either this or in
> addition to it we could also adapt Magnus' suggestion to emphasize the
> preferred language-wikipedia.

What do you think about a design like the one
at www.esperanto.net?

A _very_ short greeting message in your language
(in our case maybe a bit longer) then a list of
the supported languages, with your own language
highlighted.

Not to forget: When doing language-switching and
the preferred language is not available, try the
next ones from the list before falling back to
english. (There are webpages giving me english
instead of german since german is at place 2,
Esperanto at place 1.)

Paul


body:
On Fri, Oct 25, 2002 at 02:28:42AM -0400, Mark Christensen wrote:
>My overall view is that we ought not to become a bounded set movement.
>This is my primary concern, and I think the distinction between hard and
>soft security is of secondary importance. If we were to become more
>concerned about membership in our club than our mission to build a free
>encyclopedia, I'm fairly confident that our movement will slowly fall
>apart.

My experience in similar online communities says that what will happen is
that the fresh new blood will dry up, and, after a couple years of seeming
health, the community will be anemic, exclusive, parochial, snobbish, and
go in for a lot of navel-gazing instead of working on it's grand project.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205 Email:   djw at reactor-core.org Webpage:
http://reactor-core.org Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
On 10/24/02 10:32 PM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> Mark Christensen wrote:
<snip>
>> I think a police force is can be considered SoftSecurity, so if you
>> don't consider it so,  could you please explain what you mean by term?
>
> It can be, depending on what it does, but banning people is hard security.
> I assume that Cunc is using the term "police force", then,
> to mean a small group with extraordinary hard security powers
> (such as admins that ban people).

That's basically right. I'm using the term in the explicit sense as
described here:
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?PoliceForce .
>
>> People enforcing social norms by quickly reverting the work of vandals
>> and antisocial jerks is SoftSecurity, if those people are organized and
>> empowered with social authority that makes no difference, except now it
>> may seem reasonable to some folks to call that group a "police force" --
>> which BTW is not Ed's term, but yours.
>
> Yes, this is soft security, and it's what I think we should primarily do
> (except for the fact that doing so *quickly* is sometimes counterproductive).
> I would prefer to call such a group a "militia" rather than a "police force",
> especially since doing this doesn't require any extraordinary powers.
> But the language is not important.  It's the hard security (banning)
> that Cunc is objecting to, and that I want to be cautious about.
>
Hard security also includes militias and police forces (and explicit trust
metrics). Essentially, anything you'd notice as active security is hard
security.


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Hi elian, hi list!

> Although I normally oppose browser-sniffing, one solution would be to
make
> the welcome-text (and only this) language-dependent. Either this or in
> addition to it we could also adapt Magnus' suggestion to emphasize the
> preferred language-wikipedia.

I like this idea, and I also like the new design. (Just the search box
could be a bit further up.)

I think it's a good concept.

Kurt


body:
> Are you saying that rather than (A) banning jerks,
> we should rather (B) simply revert their "work"
> and drive on without them?

I think this is better than banning them, yes.

Beyond that I'd like to point out that this "hard/soft" security debate, is just part of a larger set of issues.  As I see it there are two different kinds of movements bounded set, and center set.  A center set movement is defined by its mission or purpose, and have very little interest in determining who's in and who's out of the group.   Bounded set movements are very much interested in determining the boundary conditions for group membership.  You're in if you do A, B, or C, and out if you do X, Y, or Z.  As a center set movement (like the wikipedia community) age, they tend to acquire more and more of the characteristics of bounded set movements.

This can be seen in Larry's proposal to involve more specialists by creating a bounded set movement for them, so they don't have to deal with the "fringe" types, as well as in most of the recent talk about how to better deal with the "fringe" elements.

My overall view is that we ought not to become a bounded set movement.  This is my primary concern, and I think the distinction between hard and soft security is of secondary importance. If we were to become more concerned about membership in our club than our mission to build a free encyclopedia, I'm fairly confident that our movement will slowly fall apart.

Yours
Mark Christensen
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from_name: Anthere

body:
--- elian <elian at gmx.li> wrote:

> This applies to everybody: If someone has other
> visions he should tell me
> precisely how he wants to have it ("put the logo in
> this corner, take this
> text, take this color sample, include this...") and
> I'll make another
> version.

Hi,

Your page is including some good stuff. It is
presenting langage and other wikipedias in a balanced
way.
Imho, it is just missing others very important
features.

I think it is oriented toward a writer point of view,
not toward a reader point of view.

- a writer (i.e., a wikipedian) is interested by
1)choosing his/her langage and
2)access to recent changes.
3)watch list (if log recognised)

1 and 2 are available in your proposition.
Though in case of 2, I think I understood
Interlanguage recent changes will *not* be available
until phase IV, so are hardly of any usefulness right
now.
3 is not available.

- a reader (i.e., anybody) is interested by
1) choosing his/her langage (for understanding)
3) multilingual search function (for punctual needs)
2) information/content (to be hooked, to get started)
4) access to main sections (for aimless wandering)

3 and 4 are missing. I believe it a problem.
Some say that page must be bare, straightforward,
minimalist. Well, I think a minimalist page is missing
the point. Wikipedia is by definition a very lively,
swarming, bushy place. A minimalist page is just a
misrepresentation of what Wikipedia concept is. And it
is booooooring.
We don't only want a magnificent page, we also want a
useful one. I don't think it is entirely useful for a
reader here.

Reader/writer
On international wikipedias, what we want to favor now
are writers, because that is what we need, and our
encyclopedias are not
interesting/reliable/comprehensive enough yet.
On the en.wikipedia, the content is beginning to be
consequent. It is usefull for a reader. The en.wiki
must support its writers for sure, but also the
readers for it is the final goal of an encyclopedia I
believe.
The writers know perfectly well where to go, they
won't go throught www.wikipedia.org.

On the en.wiki, I am much much more a "reader" than a
"writer" for obvious linguistic reasons.
I basically never go to recent changes (I am sure some
will find that unbelievable :-)), the basic reasons
being
1) my weeding job, I already do on the fr.wiki
2) loading time is a pain (hum, categories ?)
3) it seems each time I go there, 90% of the lines are
from RamMan. This is similar to special:newpages,
which I gave up looking at. And, well, as Tarquin
said, these are uninteresting to me, and hiding other
interesting pages in the mass.

In short, as a reader, I don't go to recentchanges. I
wander from the actualities, I wander from some of the
main categories, to tunnel deeper down.
As a reader/occasional writer, I use the watch list on
what is of interest to me.

Now, my questions are

- are we making the www.wikipedia.org for *readers* or
for *writers* ?

- how much are readers expected to be occcasional
writers ?

- how can we solve scaling issues ? When recentchanges
are multilanguages, I don't think all changes should
be displayed, even in a two languages choice. If a
bilingual french/english find his changes made of 90%
of RamMan entries in his list, he will quickly set
back an entirely french recentchanges. This must be
thought of.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cunc, tell us what you want?

in_reply_to: <B9DDB554.46F5%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 02:33:56PM -0400

body:
Cunc,

Do you propose that the current front page is the best possible?  That
there is no way to accomodate the desire for greater language
neutrality?

I went through and asked about several specific features of the
proposed alternative page.  Surely some possible changes don't bother
you, unless you consider our current front page the best possible?

It might be helpful here if you made a positive proposal that would
satisfy your concerns, while still attempting to address the concerns
of others.

What is desired?

1.  Greater language-neutrality -- this is not an English project with
minor "mere translation" projects -- it is a language neutral project.

2.  No balkanization -- this is not a confederation of separate language
projects, it is a single project, language neutral.

--------

How should we achieve these things?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] mailing list software

body:
Jason Richey wrote:
> Intlwiki-l
> Wikitech-l
> Wikipedia-l
> WikiNL-l
>
> And I think this begs another question.  The Dutch list is WikiNL, and
> the french list is francais-l (though this new list is not yet
> public).  Should we go with a standardized naming scheme on the
> language-specific (or is it country-specific?) lists.  Should I change
> francais-l to wikiFR-l?

I think consistency is good.  I think we should not change the names of the existing
lists.  I think that we should ultimately make wikipedia-l at nupedia.com an alias for
the real and preferred name of the list, which would be wikipedia-l at wikipedia.com.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] mailing list software

in_reply_to: <3DB93908.6030405@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Fri, Oct 25, 2002 at 02:28:56PM +0200

body:
Augh, yes of course!   Everything .org is the wave of the future.

Now I have to teach my fingers.

Magnus Manske wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >I think consistency is good.  I think we should not change the names of the existing
> >lists.  I think that we should ultimately make wikipedia-l at nupedia.com an alias for
> >the real and preferred name of the list, which would be wikipedia-l at wikipedia.com.
> >
> You surely mean wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80,000

body:
> Indeed, perhaps all articles should be marked as
> stubs until they have
> at least one revision by a contributor who was not
> the original creator.
> This will automatically catch any auto-generated
> articles.
>
> Neil

Maybe I have not understood *at all* what a stub was
???

I thought it was a very short article, in bad need of
being expanded ???

Are you not confusing *stub* with *not-reviewed
articles* here ?

If such a decision is taken, we'll have to set up a
new page "articles to be absolutely reviewed not to be
confused with stubs". I have a handful of articles
which I believe have never been edited by anybody. I
certainly would feel very insulted if they were listed
as stubs.

There is a need to catch automatically generated
articles, but not that way.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: how to deal with uncooperative users

body:
Many times folks simply don't understand something and can eventually be
brought along. Trying several times would seem to be better than just once.
Some of the other suggestions like revert after two weeks are very good and
energy conserving.

It's a good rule in personal relations to assume people do not change, but
perhaps a better practice to have faith that they can provided not too much
is risked on the effort.

Fred

Message: 9
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Date: 25 Oct 2002 11:48:33 +0200
From: elian <elian at gmx.li>
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] how to deal with uncooperative users
Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com

Hello,

I followed the ongoing debate about how to deal with uncooperative users
with some astonishment. Some people seem to forget the first rule of
online-communities: Don't feed the trolls!

Precisely, it depends largely on each one's personal attitude how to deal
with jerks.

First, try to discuss only once. If your adversary does not answer in a
way you regard as serious, is insulting or refuses to substantiate claims
with arguments, immediately stop discussion - forever or until you see
somewhere else that he has changed his attitude. Don't try to educate
people except you specially? like to do this. Don't feel responsible for
a jerk's metal health!

Second, take your time. Let him have his way, put the article on your
watchlist and silently revert the changes two weeks later without further
discussion. Time is on the side of the regulars, not the jerks.

Third, just an idea: to feel not so alone, you could put up a page
[[Wikipedia:Annoying users]] where you could state your feelings. If
enough votes come up on one person, this person could _ eventually_? be
banned.

Just my experiences from the German wikipedia where we had almost no edit
wars at all up to now. We have questionable contributions, some are
silently moved to talk pages, some are rewritten. Discussion is tried
once, after this fails the person is simply ignored.

just my two cents,
elian
--
Computers are like Airconditioners - they stop working properly when
you open windows

_________________________________________________________________
Get faster connections?-- switch to?MSN Internet Access!
http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/default.asp


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep drivingaway
 good contributors

body:
I see a lot of good points being made here, and I frankly don't know what
to think about some of the issues raised.  But I'd like to offer this
perspective.

On wasting time on recalcitrants: I (obviously) totally sympathize with
those who say they don't want to waste their time dealing with
recalcitrant users.

Wikipedia contributors can be difficult in a variety of ways.  Not all of
them require banning, and the most common types can't:

	* cussedness.  I plead guilty, as must nearly everyone at some
time or other.  People can be rude, dogmatic, uncooperative, etc., on talk
pages.  This isn't a reason for banning, though--at least, we haven't yet
met someone who is so completely rude and antisocial that *that alone*
suffices for us to ban 'em.  I doubt we ever will...

	* vandalism (writing pointless profanity, deleting articles, and
other such activity).  We have been banning people for vandalism since the
beginning, and this is a good thing.  In particular, the fact that there
is no precising definition of "vandalism" that eliminates all borderline
cases is *not* a reason to stop doing it.

	* ignoring rules to consider (e.g., titling articles with all
caps, writing small amounts of bias, using first person, and infractions
of that moderate level of seriousness).  We have never banned people for
these things, and we never should.  As far as I know, no one is suggesting
that we should, and that is one thing I'm happy about.  :-)

	* brazen bias.  I think this deserves a separate category: people
who repeatedly write really badly biased stuff, even after being told
repeatedly that there's a strictly-enforced policy against it.  This was
Helga's problem; to a lesser extent it has been a chronic problem with
some other people.  I reluctantly have to agree with a slight change
of policy on this point: people who leave no doubt, over a number
of days or weeks (not hours), that they simply don't care about the
nonbias policy, who keep shovelling screeds into Wikipedia and editing
articles *only* to represent their own points of view, should be banned.
But this should only be in really egregious cases.  Very many people,
including people who have been posting on the list lately ;-), write
subtly or slightly biased stuff all the time, apparently daring other
people to catch their subtle bias.  I don't think we should ban people for
that, we should just thunk 'em on the head (virtually, of course).

	* kookiness.  Yep, I think kookiness should be and arguably has
been a reason for banning people.  If they just won't go away, and they
continue to shovel their kookiness into Wikipedia, we should ban them.
This was an ancillary but important reason for banning both 24 and Helga,
both of whom wrote all sorts of kooky stuff.  We're still undoing the
damage that 24 did, in fact.  The defining characteristic of the kook is
(1) saying stuff that's totally false or totally biased, while (2) not
knowing, or admitting, that it's totally false or totally biased, and
(3) passing their stuff off as legitimate knowledge developed the way
other scientific and academic knowledge is developed (when it ain't).

	* other kinds of difficulty.  People will invent all sorts of ways
of being difficult.  E.g., not that anyone has done this yet, but if
someone were to write perfectly usable but atrociously spelled entries
over and over again, I can imagine that that would be a source of much
frustration for those who would have to follow the person around
correcting the spelling.  While people can be difficult in many ways, I
doubt there are many more grounds for banning.

	* uncooperativeness, i.e., claiming ownership of articles.  Now,
this is a new category among the alleged "grounds for banning"--and we
ought absolutely to demand that we get clear about this before we move
forward with any such ban.  Being an egotistical jerk is not by itself
grounds for banning.  Being insolent and insulting is not by itself
grounds for banning.  Those are both ways of being "uncooperative," but
people shouldn't be banned for those things.  On the other hand, basically
claiming an article for yourself, constantly reverting other people's
edits for no good reason, etc., can sometimes (*modulo* the usual concerns
about clemency, clear evidence, a demonstrated pattern, and egregious
offenses) be grounds for banning, I think.

But this is hard to interpret.  I think DW came close to bannability on
this grounds.  On the other hand, I can easily imagine someone who is a
bona fide expert on some topic about which there are some things that
nearly all experts would want to say--and *not* say.  I can imagine that
various people might try to edit the article written by the expert, and
the expert might (reluctantly) wind up reverting all the changes, because
all the other editors, not being experts, simply were mistaken.  This is
not very likely, not very common, but I think something like this does
happen.  Here's where it's unfortunate that we do not have more
participation of more educated people, so that we can have several experts
acting as checks and balances on each other.  But anyway, the point is
that the expert who is defending an article against bad edits might appear
to want to "own" the article, and thus to be highly uncooperative.  I
don't think that experts should have to "cooperate" with people who don't
know what they're talking about.  Just because Wikipedia is open, that
doesn't mean that nonexperts shouldn't defer to experts on matters of
fact.  Matters of bias are another can of worms--sometimes, an expert will
give a partisan presentation of an issue, and then defend it because he's
the expert, when other nonexperts can spot the bias.  In such cases, I
think we should remove the bias but defer to the expert on everything
else.

====

This is a bit off the topic, but it came up and I can't let it pass.  KQ
said recently that Cunctator is the project's *conscience*.  Perhaps KQ
was just trying to be nice, but I think that is actually unfair to the
rest of us, who like to think we have a principled approach to the project
as well.  It also accords Cunc respect as somehow *the* representative of
a *particularly* moral point of view, to whom the rest of us ought to pay
special heed--I disagree with that and I enjoin you not to accord *any*
one person such special respect.  (I'm not sure KQ meant to imply all this
by "conscience of the project," and I also doubt, in his reasonableness
and modesty, that Cunc would reject the description when cashed out as I
have done, but I just want this to be clear.)

--Larry


body:
--- erik_moeller at gmx.de wrote:
> I'm not the person being asked, but I think there's
> a simple solution:
> www.wikipedia.org should do an HTTP redirect to
> en.wikipedia.org,
> de.wikipedia.org or whatever based on the language
> preference in the
> browser. If someone who has German in their browser
> then wants to work on
> the English WP, they just click on the "English"
> link on the top, or go to
> en.wikipedia.org next time instead of
> www.wikipedia.org. But in general,
> no language would be preferred, and the browser
> settings would be honored
> instead.
>
> Is there any problem with that? I strongly agree
> with Cunctator and others
> that a static, language-"neutral" frontpage is a
> very, very bad idea, esp.
> from a usability perspective.

Yes, this is what I want as well. The only objection
that has been raised (to my knowledge) is that people
may get directed to the wrong language. I don't
understand this objection, as we should be using the
language preference setting in each visitor's web
browser. Also, a person would still be one click away
from any other language, and he could set a language
in his Wikipedia preferences should he desire.

Stephen G.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Intlwiki-l] www.wikipedia.org design

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> Whenever non-english 'pedias have asked "how come
> we're still on UseMod
> and you guys are on phase III" we reply "because we
> tried cloning Brion
> and it failed".
> Then they ask "so in the meantime, how about at
> least having equal URLs,
> as a sign of goodwill", and we say "sorry, the
> mailing list is populated
> by Golgafrinchams who are still discussing what
> colour the wheel should be."
>
> Note that word: goodwill.

I want it on the record that I am neither a telephone
sanitizer nor a hair-dresser. ;-)

Also on the record: I am firmly against a static
"portal" page at www.wikipedia.org. I think it's a
very bad idea.

That does not mean:

a) I'm advocating English as the most important
Wikipedia language.
b) I'm trying to insult people who think it is a good
idea.
c) I'm trying to stall progress on interlanguage
issues.
d) I don't care about the other languages.
e) I don't care about goodwill.
f) I'm secretly in love with the Cunctator.

It simply means I'm against the static front page
idea.  I don't think it solves any fundamental
problems, but that's not the point; even if it was
*only* a symbolic gesture of goodwill I would support
it. However, I believe it would be harmful to the
project as a whole, not just the English language part
of the project.

I, along with others, have stated my reasons, and I'll
state them again if requested. I (again, with others)
have proposed an alternate solution that I believe
would extend the same goodwill, be more functional,
and avoid the pitfalls of a static front page of
links. I will state this again too upon request.

In summary, I couldn't care less what colour the wheel
is. I just don't want it to be square.

Stephen G.

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body:
On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, The Cunctator wrote:

> On 10/25/02 11:02 AM, "Larry Sanger" <lsanger at nupedia.com> wrote:
>
> > I see a lot of good points being made here, and I frankly don't know what
> > to think about some of the issues raised.  But I'd like to offer this
> > perspective.
> >
> > On wasting time on recalcitrants: I (obviously) totally sympathize with
> > those who say they don't want to waste their time dealing with
> > recalcitrant users.
> >
> > Wikipedia contributors can be difficult in a variety of ways.  Not all of
> > them require banning, and the most common types can't:
>
> <snip laundry list of "difficult" contributors>
>
> It is a detrimental approach to come up with categories of problem
> contributors. Every contributor is individual, emotional, biased, and a bit
> kooky. Noone is perfectly normal--that's just the average. Rather, we should
> try to avoid CommunityExile (see MeatballWiki) if possible.

(1) The list you refer to is not of difficult contributors, Cunc; it is a
list of *behaviors*.  Read it again.  And as long as we are going to ban
some people for some *behaviors*, we sure as heck *better* clearly define
those behaviors.

(2) I don't read MeatballWiki and I don't think they define Wikipedia's
values for Wikipedia.  We define our own values.  I don't know if that's
what "avoiding CommunityExile" means, and I don't care.  Are you saying we
should never ban anyone?  That surely isn't your view, though; you thought
we should ban 24.

> > This is a bit off the topic, but it came up and I can't let it pass.  KQ
> > said recently that Cunctator is the project's *conscience*.  Perhaps KQ
> > was just trying to be nice, but I think that is actually unfair to the
> > rest of us, who like to think we have a principled approach to the project
> > as well.  It also accords Cunc respect as somehow *the* representative of
> > a *particularly* moral point of view, to whom the rest of us ought to pay
> > special heed--I disagree with that and I enjoin you not to accord *any*
> > one person such special respect.  (I'm not sure KQ meant to imply all this
> > by "conscience of the project," and I also doubt, in his reasonableness
> > and modesty, that Cunc would reject the description when cashed out as I
> > have done, but I just want this to be clear.)
>
> I suppose all this faint praise will make me a better devil's advocate...

I wasn't aware of even faintly praising you, but if you want to claim to
be faintly praised, go right ahead.  ;-)

Done with Wikipedia for today,
Larry


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep drivingaway good contributors

body:
--- Larry Sanger <lsanger at nupedia.com> wrote:
> (2) I don't read MeatballWiki and I don't think they
> define Wikipedia's
> values for Wikipedia.  We define our own values.  I
> don't know if that's
> what "avoiding CommunityExile" means, and I don't
> care.

No one on MeatballWiki tries to define the values of a
community. It is, however, a group of people who
analyze, discuss and build online communities. Many of
them are experts in this area. Learning from what
others have done (and not done) is not the same as
looking to others to define Wikipedia.

There's a rich history from older wiki communities and
projects that we can, and should, draw upon, just as
we draw upon existing sources for encyclopedia
articles.

Stephen G.

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