from_name: Oliver Coddington

body:
I'd have to say any block seems to me to be out of place. Why should
Eloquence be punished for Danny's actions, and lack of clarity over whether
his action was OFFICE related or not.

It certainly seems fair that Eloquence should have perhaps used more
judgement before his actions, but I still don't think they warrant any block
or ban, indeed it is Danny's actions which are more of a problem (from the
lack of the correct template, unclear edit summary, blocking a user
indefinitely, and de-sysopping).

I understand the problems of litigation, indeed I have plenty of experience
in this field, in the UK setting, but I still don't think such 'threats' (I
do much prefer to call them challenges) justify what I see as abnormal
action.

I think all parties will have learnt from this experience, but I think a
line should be drawn under the whole thing, and any blocks removed.
Otherwise you could argue that Danny should be looking at punitive measures
as well, due to his actions I outlined above.

Oliver [User:Wisden17]

On 4/19/06, Patrick, Brad <bpatrick at fowlerwhite.com> wrote:
>
> I understand that the indefinite ban was reverted by Danny and
> reinstituted by dannyisme for 48 hours.
>
> I don't believe Eloquence should receive a death sentence either.

-----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Barrett [mailto:sean at epoptic.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 5:03 PM
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org; Patrick, Brad; jwales at wikia.com
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] Indefinite block and
> desysopping by User:Danny
>
>
> Thank you for your explanation.  As an Arbiter, I have some slight idea
> of how ... interesting ... situations can become, and I full support of
> the OFFICE policy as a tool to use in handling those situations.
>
> Can you explain the reasons why Eloquence must be prohibited from ever
> editing the English Wikipedia again?  Danny is apparently using OFFICE
> to justify what looks like a lifetime ban (something even the
> Arbitration Committee cannot impose) that he refused to explain.
>
> I can understand that the Foundation's obligations are greater than
> loyalty to any one user.  Is it the case that the Foundation cannot
> explain why this one user is being permanently banned with no
> explanation of why he must be sacrificed?
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.
> sean at epoptic.org | But this wasn't it. --Groucho Marx -----BEGIN PGP
> SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFERqV2MAt1wyd9d+URApaEAJ9Z8kCoKNjftKcpIeop7qk2QAuPggCfVzgT
> PtydwMTp8nFCx376DKOkdtM=
> =9ROC
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 4/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>We shouldn't examine that data, however. Very bad precedent, and poor
>>for privacy, especially since we aren't dealing with out-and-out
>>vandals here, but merely critics.
>>
>>
>If the circumstantial evidence provided is valid, this is far worse
>than vandalism.   This is people in a position of trust abusing it and
>possibly exposing Wikipedia to liability for copyright infringement or
>defamation by causing such material to be published.
>
If the premise that the material is such that would expose its publisher
to that kind of liability there would be no liability to Wikipedia if
the material was removed shortly after the problem was discovered.  If a
person subsequently abuses the material any liability would be on his
shoulders.

Ec


list: foundation-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Indefinite block and desysopping
 by User:Danny

body:
BorgHunter schrieb:

> I understand the concerns about the Office action, and how it may have
> posed a legal threat to Wikimedia. The issue at stake here, however, is
> not "Was the Office action justified?" Rather, I think the problem was,
> at a fundamental level, communication. Along the way, it was failed to
> be communicated that the action in question was indeed an Office action.
> Thus, it was acted upon as if it was not.

And then it is okay to revert another admin's actions without even
asking before? This seems to me a problem of lack of good faith an admin
should assume.

If Wikimedia feels the need to
> issue such an action, should it not be clearly labeled to avoid that
> very legal threat to Wikipedia that Danny was attempting to avoid in the
> first place? I hope that all involved have learned from the experience,
> but I don't think that Erik constitutes a continued threat. His action
> was borne of misunderstanding, and actions against him to prevent
> further threats are, now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up,
> unnecessary.

This was not a misunderstanding, this was lack of good faith. Erik
should have trusted danny that he has good reasons for an action which
might not be selfexplaining. If he wanted to know more, he could have
asked. And an admin who acts before he understands the situation can -
as this incident has shown - potentially endanger the foundation.

> I don't think anyone is questioning the legitimacy of the
> Office action here, but I think we all are concerned that a
> misunderstanding led to all this. Again, I ask: Should Office actions
> not be labeled explicitly as such?

It is often better to play things low and not on an official level. I
don't know if this was the case here.

greetings,
elian


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] Indefinite block and
 desysopping by User:Danny


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] Indefinite block and desysopping
 by User:Danny


from_name: Carl Fûrstenberg

body:
Are we ment to be afraid of danny?

On 4/19/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why is it problematic? It's a simple enough thing to simply ask Danny
> first
> before undoing something he's done, whether or not he's acted on behalf of
> the foundation.  I've done it before (and gotten a "yes but I'd rather
> this
> stay low profile" answer very quickly).
>
> Everybody who's an administrator knows -- or ought to know -- that any of
> Danny's actions could be undertaken on behalf of the foundation. To me,
> this
> suggests -- in fact, demands -- a lot more caution with undoing his admin
> actions than otherwise, and at the very least warrants a discreet "what's
> this about?" before taking action.
>
> k
>
> On 4/19/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com>:
> > > I think that lately Danny has not been using the OFFICE tag because
> > people
> > > tend to raise a fuss over things protected under this specific policy,
> > and
> > > more publicity to/furor over an issue that's already very sensitive is
> a
> > > thorny thing to deal with.  My guess, anyway.
> >
> > Forgive me if I haven't understood this correctly, but: OFFICE actions
> are
> > unreversible on pain of dire consequences (e.g. desysopping and
> indefinite
> > banning), yet anything that Danny does could be an OFFICE action even
> though
> > not identified as such? This seems very problematic; is there now a
> class of
> > editor (Danny) whose actions noone can now dare risk undoing in case the
> > action turns out to be an OFFICE action? Surely not.
> >
> > -- Matt
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 19/04/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Everybody who's an administrator knows -- or ought to know -- that any of
> Danny's actions could be undertaken on behalf of the foundation. To me, this
> suggests -- in fact, demands -- a lot more caution with undoing his admin
> actions than otherwise, and at the very least warrants a discreet "what's
> this about?" before taking action.

There is something very problematic about:
- creating a special user account to use for "official business"
- creating a special template to use for "unreversible legal-issue
official business"
- (deliberately?) not using either when in fact legal-issue official
business is exactly what's being done

Sort of like how there's a convention of waving a white flag to
surrender, and in the middle of a warzone, someone leaves the white
flag on the ground and comes out holding a gun. The very fact of
flouting the convention speaks loudly...

Disclaimer: I obviously know nothing of the specifics of this case,
nor do I know Erik or Danny. But on the basis of what has been
presented here, Katefan0's comments do not follow logically from the
stated sequence of events.

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Finally,
	we are exposed. Wikipedia is a CIA project. Or something like that

body:
On 19/04/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
> At least de.wp does not even pretend to be a democracy. We only claim
> that some aspects of decision making are similar to those in
> democracies. Apart from the feudalistic, meritocratic, monarchist,
> anarchist and technocratic ones.

en quite specifically disclaims being a democracy. And to the extent
that occasionally it is democratic, it again disclaims ever being more
democratic than necessary.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 19/04/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Or, in some cases better yet, create the redirect and _then_ fix the link.

Agreed.

Actually agree with your whole post.

Steve


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 4/19/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We shouldn't examine that data, however. Very bad precedent, and poor
> > for privacy, especially since we aren't dealing with out-and-out
> > vandals here, but merely critics.
>
> If the circumstantial evidence provided is valid, this is far worse
> than vandalism. This is people in a position of trust abusing it and
> possibly exposing Wikipedia to liability for copyright infringement or
> defamation by causing such material to be published.

I disagree. Vandalism is direct actual damage to our content and our
reputation, as opposed to possible theoretical damages caused by those
iages. The abuse of trust is sad, and possibly a moral lapse (do we
expect admins to never take screenshots of deleted pages, and to hold
close to their chest any information declared verboten?), but the
legal argument I'm not sure I buy- the guilty one is the one
retrieving it and publishing it. We removed it, in good faith. While I
am not a lawyer, our responsibility seems minimal.

~maru


body:
On 19/04/06, Ben Lowe <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this really a surprise?  I remember always hearing the best way to make a
> book popular is to get it banned; why should this be any different on
> Wikipedia?  For people looking for controversy and scandal on the
> encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the two or three articles that *no one --
> NO ONE -- can edit for fear of eternal exile *are way more interesting than
> the more-than-a-million other articles.  I suspect more Wikipedians (and
> slashdotters) know about [[Brian Peppers]] than [[Jordanhill railway
> station]].  Is OFFICE necessary?  Sure, probably.  Wikipedia definitely
> needs to be responsible, both in terms of its own liability. But if Danny
> wants to use WP:OFFICE without controversy, he needs it to be normalized,
> not hidden.  People need to simply get used to it.  The only way that
> WP:OFFICE is going to become non-controversial is if it's openly used.

Here's another solution. Make it possible for Danny to silently
protect a page without it being unprotectable. Communicate a policy to
all admins that if an admin discovers that a page has been protected
in such a way, that he should keep it to himself, or risk desysopping.

The ordinary user will simply see a protected page. Admins, unless
they actually try and unprotect it, will be none the wiser. And if
they do try, perhaps a message should alert them to keep it
confidential.

But that's just breeding conspiracy theories, I know.

Steve


body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:

>On 4/19/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Don't get fixated on the admin power abuse thing. It is merely a
>>convenient method and sign of who they have on their side. They could
>>do it just as easily through database dumps, or spidering CFD/AFD, or
>>scaping mirrors, or... You see what I'm getting at? Frankly, the CC
>>GFDL issue aside, I find it kinda amusing we're all so horrified at
>>seeing some of our content (for better or worse) on other websites.
>>They're the one hosting it; no moral blame descends on us for at one
>>time making a mistake, rectifying it, and then keeping records in case
>>our rectification was a mistake. But I think I've posted enough in
>>this thread, so good night.
>>
>>
>It's not the fact that they've obtained the deleted material per se.
>As you point out, they could have gotten it by other means; and the
>material itself, in this case, isn't particularly impressive.
>
>My concern is more to the "sign of who they have on their side"
>aspect.  The Wikipedia admin model works to a great extent because
>admins can be trusted not to harm the project.  Here we have evidence
>-- circumstantial and not very specific, but nevertheless quite
>damning -- that one or more admins _are_ clearly attempting to harm
>Wikipedia.  I would argue that this is a bad thing regardless of
>whether they've actually damaged anything yet.
>
The most disturbing aspect of this view is the classic paranoia.  Of
course we are in no position to go so far as to put a bullet in
somebody's head for disloyalty, but the underlying aura of suspicion is
similar.  The fear that the people you might be working with are not as
loyal as you, that they do not worship the words of the great leader as
much as you are very scary.  In a totalitarian regime there is no need
for the leadership to issue repressive orders, or to hire high-price
hitmen.  A few handshakes, a smile or a bit of casual praise to a
roomful of sycophants and paranoids will be far more cost effective.

As long as these rogue admins are taking ludicrous positions can they
really harm Wikipedia with their rants?  And how do we distinguish
between the kooks and the honest whistleblowers who are exposing
legitimate problems?


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 4/19/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/19/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > We shouldn't examine that data, however. Very bad precedent, and poor
> > > for privacy, especially since we aren't dealing with out-and-out
> > > vandals here, but merely critics.
> >
> > If the circumstantial evidence provided is valid, this is far worse
> > than vandalism. This is people in a position of trust abusing it and
> > possibly exposing Wikipedia to liability for copyright infringement or
> > defamation by causing such material to be published.
>
> I disagree. Vandalism is direct actual damage to our content and our
> reputation, as opposed to possible theoretical damages caused by those
> iages. The abuse of trust is sad, and possibly a moral lapse (do we
> expect admins to never take screenshots of deleted pages, and to hold
> close to their chest any information declared verboten?), but the
> legal argument I'm not sure I buy- the guilty one is the one
> retrieving it and publishing it. We removed it, in good faith. While I
> am not a lawyer, our responsibility seems minimal.

Vandalism is also much easier to fix, of course.

But the question is not one of admins innocently taking screenshots of
deleted pages.  It's one thing to fail to properly safeguard
information that shouldn't be getting distributed; it's quite another
to use admin abilities within Wikipedia in order to pass sensitive
information to an openly anti-Wikipedia site.

Kirill Lokshin


body:
On 4/19/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/19/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I disagree. Vandalism is direct actual damage to our content and our
> > reputation, as opposed to possible theoretical damages caused by those
> > iages. The abuse of trust is sad, and possibly a moral lapse (do we
> > expect admins to never take screenshots of deleted pages, and to hold
> > close to their chest any information declared verboten?), but the
> > legal argument I'm not sure I buy- the guilty one is the one
> > retrieving it and publishing it. We removed it, in good faith. While I
> > am not a lawyer, our responsibility seems minimal.
>
> Vandalism is also much easier to fix, of course.
>
> But the question is not one of admins innocently taking screenshots of
> deleted pages. It's one thing to fail to properly safeguard
> information that shouldn't be getting distributed; it's quite another
> to use admin abilities within Wikipedia in order to pass sensitive
> information to an openly anti-Wikipedia site.
>
> Kirill Lokshin

Don't get fixated on the admin power abuse thing. It is merely a
convenient method and sign of who they have on their side. They could
do it just as easily through database dumps, or spidering CFD/AFD, or
scaping mirrors, or... You see what I'm getting at? Frankly, the CC
GFDL issue aside, I find it kinda amusing we're all so horrified at
seeing some of our content (for better or worse) on other websites.
They're the one hosting it; no moral blame descends on us for at one
time making a mistake, rectifying it, and then keeping records in case
our rectification was a mistake. But I think I've posted enough in
this thread, so good night.

~maru


from_name: Rudy Koot

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 19/04/06, Ben Lowe <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Is this really a surprise?  I remember always hearing the best way to make a
>>book popular is to get it banned; why should this be any different on
>>Wikipedia?  For people looking for controversy and scandal on the
>>encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the two or three articles that *no one --
>>NO ONE -- can edit for fear of eternal exile *are way more interesting than
>>the more-than-a-million other articles.  I suspect more Wikipedians (and
>>slashdotters) know about [[Brian Peppers]] than [[Jordanhill railway
>>station]].  Is OFFICE necessary?  Sure, probably.  Wikipedia definitely
>>needs to be responsible, both in terms of its own liability. But if Danny
>>wants to use WP:OFFICE without controversy, he needs it to be normalized,
>>not hidden.  People need to simply get used to it.  The only way that
>>WP:OFFICE is going to become non-controversial is if it's openly used.
>
>
> Here's another solution. Make it possible for Danny to silently
> protect a page without it being unprotectable. Communicate a policy to
> all admins that if an admin discovers that a page has been protected
> in such a way, that he should keep it to himself, or risk desysopping.
>
> The ordinary user will simply see a protected page. Admins, unless
> they actually try and unprotect it, will be none the wiser. And if
> they do try, perhaps a message should alert them to keep it
> confidential.
>
> But that's just breeding conspiracy theories, I know.
>
> Steve

What about adding another protection "level". Instead protecting under a
edit=sysop, move=sysop, have Danny protect the pages under edit=board,
move=board, so admins can't "accidentally" unprotect a WP:OFFICE
protected article?

--Ruud


body:
On 4/19/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't get fixated on the admin power abuse thing. It is merely a
> convenient method and sign of who they have on their side. They could
> do it just as easily through database dumps, or spidering CFD/AFD, or
> scaping mirrors, or... You see what I'm getting at? Frankly, the CC
> GFDL issue aside, I find it kinda amusing we're all so horrified at
> seeing some of our content (for better or worse) on other websites.
> They're the one hosting it; no moral blame descends on us for at one
> time making a mistake, rectifying it, and then keeping records in case
> our rectification was a mistake. But I think I've posted enough in
> this thread, so good night.

It's not the fact that they've obtained the deleted material per se.
As you point out, they could have gotten it by other means; and the
material itself, in this case, isn't particularly impressive.

My concern is more to the "sign of who they have on their side"
aspect.  The Wikipedia admin model works to a great extent because
admins can be trusted not to harm the project.  Here we have evidence
-- circumstantial and not very specific, but nevertheless quite
damning -- that one or more admins _are_ clearly attempting to harm
Wikipedia.  I would argue that this is a bad thing regardless of
whether they've actually damaged anything yet.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 4/19/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Everybody who's an administrator knows -- or ought to know -- that any of
> Danny's actions could be undertaken on behalf of the foundation. To me, this
> suggests -- in fact, demands -- a lot more caution with undoing his admin
> actions than otherwise, and at the very least warrants a discreet "what's
> this about?" before taking action.

First of all, I appreciate the support that has been expressed in this
thread. I hope we can put this episode behind us quickly and move on.

In response to the above: Danny had _explicitly_ labeled this page as
a regular protected page, and _explicitly_ removed the {{office}}
template. This is why I believed it was his point that it was _not_ a
WP:OFFICE action, but one of his many ongoing contributions to
Wikipedia as an editor and admin (over 30,000 edits on en.wp, only a
tiny, tiny fraction of which are office-related). Please note that I
assumed good faith on Danny's part, which is why I did not revert the
"stubbification" itself. I trusted him, as an editor, on the content
issue, but I objected to the act of protecting the article, if taken
as a regular administrative action. I would _never_ revert a WP:OFFICE
action that is labeled as such, but again, here the opposite was the
case; it was labeled as a non-office action.

Apparently (I'm still not sure), the protection was a _sensitive_
Office Action which is not meant to be publicized as such. That idea
did not occur to me. I'm not sure if this approach is at all viable
(if anything, this episode may show that it is not), and I am not very
fond of the idea of mixing regular editorial/sysop tasks with Office
Actions which cannot be clearly distinguished, and whose reversal is,
effectively, treated with the Wikipedia equivalent of the [[Usenet
Death Penalty]]. However, please understand that I will from now on
remain largely silent on this issue, and will wait for the Board to
clarify things.

Again, I apologize if my actions were rash, but I believed them to be
justified based on the information available to me. As of this point
in time, I am banned for 48 hours; this is a punishment I can accept.
I am also still indefinitely blocked on Meta and desysopped. I would
like to kindly request that the remaining indefinite block and the
desysopping will be reversed. Again, I will do my best to follow
policy, even if the policy is that "Anything Danny does is unusual and
should be treated differently from what regular admins/editors do".
However, I do believe it needs to be clear _exactly_ what the
situation is.

Thanks,

Erik


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Reinhardt WIEWE @ torg.is

subject: [Wikitech-l] broken documentation links

body:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

On Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:58:45 -0700
 Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> > Brion Vibber wrote:
> >> FYI, I tried running phpdoc over the current code and found it breaking
> the
> >> memory limit of 256 megabytes I have set on my server.
> >>
> >> We might want to consider a new documentation parser that can handle our
> code. :)
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > r13740 migrated trunk from phpdoc to doxygen, I even updated the
> > mwdocgen.php.
>
> Neat! Now being autogenerated daily at http://svn.wikimedia.org/doc/
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

zay gezunt / kve?ja / gru? / salutas / best regards

reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]
irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki
irc://irc.freenode.net/wiktionary
+49-89-89670017
gangleri at torg.is
skype: "irelgnag"
http://easy.go.is/gangleri/
for updates see http://easy.go.is/gangleri/uppfaert/


from_name: Rotem Liss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cross-namespace templates

body:
Use {{FULLPAGENAME}} instead of {{PAGENAME}} in the namespace User.

Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 19/04/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>
>>For most templates, this would be counterproductive.  For those few that
>>would benefit from it, there's <includeonly>.
>>
>>In fact, you can even do something like this:
>>
>>   <includeonly>
>>     (ACTUAL TEMPLATE CODE HERE)
>>   </includeonly><noinclude>
>>     {{{{PAGENAME}}|PARAMETER1|PARAMETER2}}
>>   </noinclude>
>>
>>to show the parameters as Steve suggests above.
>>
>>
>
>Ah-ha: I didn't realise a template could legally include itself.
>That's actually quite nice. Logically you would want to then wrap all
>that code in a nice template called {{showtemplate}} or something, but
>I'm almost certain that's not possible :)
>
>Also, that actual code didn't work for my test in the user namespace,
>presumably something to do with {{PAGENAME}} not returning the
>namespace. But that's ok.
>
>Though I must say, the edit preview you get when using code like that
>is extremely confusing ;) Since it shows you the previous incarnation
>of the code...then you save it, and you think you're seeing the
>current version, but when you press edit, it changes again. Eep. A
>nice, minor brainf*ck.
>
>Steve
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny

body:
2006/4/19, Patrick, Brad <bpatrick at fowlerwhite.com>:

> Certain members of the community (and notably, not Mr. Moeller) have
> expressed dissatisfaction about WP:OFFICE and its use.  There is a
> healthy debate yet to be had about it.  We can have that debate, but I
> also have to make clear that the Foundation's obligations are greater
> than loyalty to any one user.  Even someone with the history of
> contributions to Mr. Moeller.

I very much rescind this statement. Apparently the Foundation's
obligations are so important that going against them is ground for
desysopping and blocking, whereas loyalty to users is not even
important enough to tell them in advance what actions will lead to an
indefinite ban. It makes me wonder why on earth I am still cooperating
with this.

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


body:
2006/4/20, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>:

> Indefinitely doesn't mean forever.  Indefinite means "we'll lift it
> when it's safe to do so".

So apparently Erik's presence on the Wiki was unsafe?

> If, on the other hand, you want to prevent the Foundation from being
> able to defend itself against legal threats, then by all means take
> away the ability of the Foundation to respond to legal threats.

Was there a legal threat because of Erik's ability to edit articles?
Or be a moderator? I don't think so. I very well believe you if you
say the protecting of the articles was based on a legal threat. But in
that case re-protecting them, with a very short statement that there
are reasons of legal accountability to do so, seems like the way to
go. Not blocking someone who made an honest mistake in their
activities as a moderator.

> People who put themselves into harm's way will get run over from time
> to time. You can safely assume that anything Danny does that appears
> difficult to explain is probably him responding to a legal threat in
> some way, since that's basically all he does anymore.  They are *that*
> frequent.

If it is a legal threat to have Erik as a moderator or editor, that's scary.

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


from_name: geni

body:
On 4/19/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Recent office actions involve more than just protection. They tend to
> > involve a serious cut down of the article as well. As wikitruth has
> > shown tracing admins who are leaking information is tricky.
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
>
> Actually, I've been wondering about this. Do we really know that an
> admin is behind Wikitruth? I haven't seen anything to prove that they
> haven't simply scraped Wikipedia at the right time or an outdated
> mirror later, and simply claimed to be an admin.
>
> ~maru

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Restore_Wikitruth_info.png

Ad nothing in the metadata suggests photoshop.

--
geni


from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Indefinite block and desysopping
	by User:Danny

body:
Not discussing the legal basis here, total trust in Brad's legal
skills and expertise.

But any action could have been done with consideration.

I'm not famous for being a member of Erik's fan club, though I've
always had respect for both his creativity and his coding ability.
Once Erik had done his mistake, even if it was in a allegedly
malicious drive, what would have been the problem with taking it easy
after Erik took his phone and called Danny ? What whould have been the
problem with re-protecting the page ASAP and telling him on the phone
to *stay away from a serious legal issue* : a seven word sentence to
say.

Now, indefinite block and desysopping at first sight ? The crucial
legal issue is one thing, displaying such an obvious amount of
contempt is another one. Next time somebody is experienced as a
troublemaker for Foundation, one can use subtility, or finesse, or
even mere common sense, instead of shooting at first sight. What could
be expected from that, apart from a new useless conflict ? I'm aghast.

The rest of my comments will go to private lists or mails, if it's
worth it - which I doubt.

villy ~~JC


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Indefinite block and
	desysopping by User:Danny


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Lost money

body:
Brion Vibber schreef:
>
>>It's only a small website isn't it? I bet the costs of moving to a
>>reliable, independent webhoster will easily pay off.
>
>
> Ah, but if Wikipedia is down, the traffic requirements for it will be HUGE. So
> you can't think of it as a "small website". When we previously tried mirroring
> the donation page on Angela's site it simply collapsed under the weight very
> shortly afterwards.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Is it really necessary to provide the normal donation form? Just put on
the error-page itself ( PayPal: donation at wikipedia.org ) and if that is
possible make from the email address a link to the website of PayPal to
a page where the can donate to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Side note (board/PR remark; I see the donation email address is
@wikipedia.org  Would it not be better to use @wikimedia.org or
@wikimediafoundation.org for that? People give money not to Wikipedia
but to the Foundation and also not especaily for Wikipedia.

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


subject: [Foundation-l] Lost money


body:
Aha, the inner circle I assume? :)

On 4/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> > I will not wheel-war, so I will not re-un-block Eloquence, but I firmly
> > stand by my characterizations of this action.  Regardless of any
> > WP:OFFICE issues involved, Eloquence is not a danger to the project;
> > blocking him and refusing to communicate is a stupid thing to do.
>
> I have unblocked Erik and hope that everyone will relax so we can talk
> about these issues slowly and carefully.  I am sure Erik will not do
> anything bad.
>
> I have not had time to really study anything yet, and I am about to go
> have dinner with some wikipedians.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


from_name: Pete Bartlett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
"...to an openly anti-Wikipedia site"

>From http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Wikitruth:Editing_guidelines

"some amazing people are working behind the scenes and in the front
lines over there [i.e. at Wikipedia], putting in the hours to make a difference and make
Wikipedia better. [...] We wouldn't have this site if we didn't respect and love
the concept of a Wikipedia. It's the implementation we have issues with."

I believe them when they say they are pro-Wikipedia.
I've been astonished by how many Wikipedians are unwilling to be open to criticism (one of the essential elements of a cult by the way :) !)
I don't agree with their vehemence of the opposition to WP:OFFICE. But anyone who's been following this debate about Erik and Danny
will realise its implementation has been completely ham-fisted at times. So disagree with Wikitruth, and prove it wrong, but don't lie about it.

Pete

Endnote: Yes they did copy an article about a member of Jimbo's family that lingered in the database for several days.
I am glad they are embarassed about that and have deleted it. Makes their motivations more believeable.


body:
On 4/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Restore_Wikitruth_info.png
> >
> > Ad nothing in the metadata suggests photoshop.
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> Point taken. All the other possibilities (an admin innocently taking a
> screencap, exporting his desktop to another computer who did take a
> screencap etc) seem less likely than a disgruntled admin. Albeit, the
> shot is a bit odd- do logged in accounts really look like that in
> monobook? It's been so long I've forgotten.
>
> ~maru

Yes they do. I cheacked because I was wounding if they were using a
custom .JS or.CSS which would have made them traceable.

--
geni


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] Indefinite block and desysopping
	by User:Danny

body:
Precisely. Punitive action was not called for at all in this case, what was
needed was for Danny to learn that he needs to be very clear when he is
undertaking OFFICE actions, and Eloquence needs to learn that Danny will not
always be perfect in doing that, and that it would have been helpful to
check before doing what he did.

But to start banning people etc. is completely out of place especially when
the party that brought the action did not bring it with clean hands, which
if we are going to start moving more into law is pretty key.

Both parties are at fault, but the extent to which etc. is open to debate.
But a line simply needs to be drawn in the sand and let's move on. Remove
Eloquence's block and Danny, for God's sake, use OFFICE tags in future!

Oliver [User:Wisden17]

On 4/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Oliver Coddington wrote:
>
> >I'd have to say any block seems to me to be out of place. Why should
> >Eloquence be punished for Danny's actions, and lack of clarity over
> whether
> >his action was OFFICE related or not.
> >
> >It certainly seems fair that Eloquence should have perhaps used more
> >judgement before his actions, but I still don't think they warrant any
> block
> >or ban, indeed it is Danny's actions which are more of a problem (from
> the
> >lack of the correct template, unclear edit summary, blocking a user
> >indefinitely, and de-sysopping).
> >
> >I understand the problems of litigation, indeed I have plenty of
> experience
> >in this field, in the UK setting, but I still don't think such 'threats'
> (I
> >do much prefer to call them challenges) justify what I see as abnormal
> >action.
> >
> >I think all parties will have learnt from this experience, but I think a
> >line should be drawn under the whole thing, and any blocks removed.
> >Otherwise you could argue that Danny should be looking at punitive
> measures
> >as well, due to his actions I outlined above.
> >
>
> We have too many people who prefer a punitive solution to problems.  If
> indeed Ruddy was the one to complain about the articles, (and it would
> be his right to complain) would it not have been easier to simply say
> that the article is temporarily blocked for that reason while the matter
> is being investigated?  As long as the basis for punitive actions
> remains unexplained we can expect reactions such as have happened here.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

body:
Patrick, Brad wrote:

>Greetings:
>
>I am the attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation in the US.  I work for
>the Board.  Among my responsibilities is keeping the Foundation out of
>legal trouble and responding to lawsuits, actual and threatened.  I have
>had a long chat with Eric Moeller about the circumstances that resulted
>in his ban (since reverted by someone Being Bold).  I also believe that
>the misunderstanding, although in good faith, still presented a risk to
>the Foundation.
>
>
What is your qualified legal opinion regarding Eric's suggestion that
the work be labeled appropriately so that other members of the community
(or he) do not repeat this mistake in the future?

Would proper labeling reduce the Foundation's legal risks in the future?

This is not a trivial rhetorical question.  In the early days of
Wikipedia  it was often unclear in what capacity various agents such as
Bomis employees were acting.   Now with the success of the Wikimedia
Foundation in fund raising we once again have employees and professional
staff .... and there appears to be some form of communications failure
or conflict once again occuring between compensated professionals and
community volunteers.

>The issue of blocked articles is a complex one, and in many instances
>can be the visible result of careful consideration on the part of
>Foundation board members, staff, and other admins/bureaucrats/sysops who
>have knowledge of the facts and circumstances.  Often the community at
>large will not have any idea what the facts and underlying
>considerations are.  Not everything that involves Wikipedia is public,
>nor should it be.  The typical user or admin doesn't have all the pieces
>of the puzzle.  Don't let hubris get the better of you.
>
>There may be those of you who have yet to experience the American legal
>system in any fashion, save for a movie or two.  Dealing with lawsuits
>is what I do for a living.  Avoiding them is also what I do for a
>living.  My job is to make sure that the Foundation has the best legal
>advice and best options open to it to keep things running smoothly, and
>to not land in court unless all other avenues have been exhausted.
>
>
Are you paid by Foundation funds or by personal funds of  members of the
stacked Board?

In a conflict of interest between the Foundation's responsiblities to
the pulblic as per Florida law and the Board members' personal interests
who do you represent?

>The WP:OFFICE policy is still in its infancy.  People will challenge it
>through their words and actions.  Everyone is entitled to his or her
>opinion.  But I believe everyone who believes in the future success and
>sustainability of the project must also recognize the need for judicious
>use of confidentiality at the Foundation level.
>
Personally I do not see any need for a non profit public foundation
dedicated to legally publishing free information created by the public
at large; and located physically in the United States of America; to be
engaged in excessive secrecy.  Certainly employee social security
numbers should be kept private in keeping with U.S. laws.  The need for
secret or private communications tools such as restricted email lists,
non public meetings, etc. escapes me.  Certainly I would advise you to
comply strictly with all provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act when called
upon by warrant to cooperate with U.S. Federal authorities, unless you
enjoy small cubicle environments.

It has been my experience that often lawyers cite specific sections of
U.S. or State code or regulations or even specific phrases or case law
when informing lay people of their opinions regarding legal matters.

Perhaps if you or the office were to write up some specific
recommendations regarding how the community or the Wikimedia Foundation
or your client could avoid legal liabilities by actually complying with
the applicable laws rather than simply recommending that the Foundation
get secretive about its "private" matters we could avoid some legal
risks in the future?

In your august opinion; does arbitrary, capricious, or excessive action
towards an individual such as Eric, who has demonstrably contributed in
large positive measurable ways to the community's projects in the past
incur any legal, operational, or measurable avoidable risks for the
Foundation, the stacked Board, or their legal advisers?

I suggest the community members present on the Foundation-L mailing list
consider a placebo vote regarding whether the Wikimedia Foundation
should issue an apology to Eric and reimburse him for the long distance
calls necessary to recover his editing priveleges.

I vote Aye.  Sorry about the inconvenience Eric.   I value your past and
future contributions and I think the Wikimedia Foundation should send
you a reimbursement check for the no doubt expensive phone calls
necessary to straighten out this mess so that you can continue
volunteering your efforts to our projects.

>The Foundation officers
>and Board members have a fiduciary obligation to the organization, as I
>do as a lawyer for my client.
>
>Certain members of the community (and notably, not Mr. Moeller) have
>expressed dissatisfaction about WP:OFFICE and its use.  There is a
>healthy debate yet to be had about it.  We can have that debate, but I
>also have to make clear that the Foundation's obligations are greater
>than loyalty to any one user.  Even someone with the history of
>contributions to Mr. Moeller.
>
>

Are the Wikimedia Foundation's obligations greater than loyalty to a
single founder or stacked Board of Directors?

In the event of a conflict do you work for the stacked Board, Jimmy
Wales, or the Foundation?  Is your client the stacked Board, Jimmy
Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation?  What is the legal signature on
checks sent to your office in response to invoices?  Does U.S. and/or
Florida law distinguish between individuals in offices and the
organization itself?

Does the Wikimedia Foundation have any fiduciary responsibilities to the
contributing public and the public at large under U.S. law?  Are these
responsibilities defined exclusively by U.S. law or are the public
solicitations used to gather public donations considered somewhat
influential or binding in Florida State or U.S. Federal  courts?

Regards,
Michael R. Irwin
aka,
lazyquasar or
mirwin, the lying troll


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
geni wrote:
> On 4/19/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
>
>>This was not a misunderstanding, this was lack of good faith. Erik
>>should have trusted danny that he has good reasons for an action which
>>might not be selfexplaining. If he wanted to know more, he could have
>>asked. And an admin who acts before he understands the situation can -
>>as this incident has shown - potentially endanger the foundation.
>
> Admins almost never work with complete information.

Indeed, Brad himself wrote just that in his response:

"Not everything that involves Wikipedia is public, nor should it be.
The typical user or admin doesn't have all the pieces of the puzzle."

Note that, while this is abviously true, it doesn't mean I necessarily
like it much.  I don't know WTF is going on at the office -- my first
thought was that Danny must be really close to burning out from stress
to react so out of proportion -- but events like this are making
Wikipedia feel like a minefield, an oppressive place where one must
watch one's every word and never take a step before checking twice that
no-one's toes are in the way.  If I'm to work effectively as an admin, I
_need_ all the pieces of the puzzle, or at least I need to know where
the missing pieces are.  We are not mushrooms, to be kept in the dark
and fed manure.

I strongly supported Kelly Martin's earlier 0RR proposal, since it was
sensible and clear: don't redo what you did earlier without discussion.
  But if the new policy is to be that an admin may not do anything that
might step on someone else's toes, I'm not sure I dare to continue being
an admin.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Roberto Frangi

body:
We are talking of two guys that are quite important for Wikimedia. And
moreover of two guys that know each other. So, I just don't understand
how this could have happened, and why this hasn't been settled in a
private way.

Roberto (Snowdog)


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Some questions about Wikipedia (caching,
	DB-updates)

body:
Sebastian Doeweling wrote:
> 3) Some memory cache named memcached that is able to cache database
> queries and distribute writes across the database architecture.
> This is similar to MySQL query caching?

No, it's not. MySQL query caching is useless, as a table's query cache
is invalidated on every write. But memcached
(http://www.danga.com/memcached/) has nothing directly to do with
databases; it's just a fault-tolerant distributed in-memory blob cache.
You can stuff arbitrary key-value pairs in it, so one popular use of it
turns out to be database record caching.

In addition to stock memcached, Wikimedia sites use Tugela cache, which
is Domas' unholy hybrid of BDB and memcached (essentially replacing the
memory backend in memcached with disk-backing via BDB). Tugela adheres
to the memcached API, though it requires manual item expiration management.

> Another issue are database updates (these occur only, if I edit and
> change a page, right?

Yes, generally.

> (assuming parser cache is enabled)) - what
> influence does caching have on these?

A page edit invalidates that page's cache.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tool Server disabled - link to WikiTech-L maillist
 discussion (Johntex)

body:
John Tex wrote:
> Recently, enwiki was apparently moved without warning to a new server.  This
> caused the external toolserver to be unable to perform any analysis of
> enwiki information.  One of the major users of toolserver is Gmaxwell, who
> performs several different beneficial processes using the toolserver.
>
> He has posted to WikiTech-L explaining what happened and what the effects
> are:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034904.html
>
> There is also an essay forming at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Toolserver
>
> I urge everyone to visit one or both of the above links to learn more and to
> express your support for getting the situation resolved.
>
> Johntex.

The tools at tools.wikimedia.de were not only used by the English
Wikipedia, however. Things like the user edit count and Duesentrieb's
CategoryTree tool were used by other language editions, as evidenced by
the number of translations for CategoryTree.[1]

At the Vietnamese Wikipedia, the most popular user infobox linked to
interiot's edit counter,[2] and the CategoryTree tool was even built
right into the category structure there,[3] via a "c?y" ("tree") link in
every category page that contained subcategories.

tools.wikimedia.org is currently timing out for me, but I hope that it
won't be down for any extended period of time. Although the English
Wikipedia certainly accounts for a large chunk of the Toolserver's
usage, other language editions -- which still worked just fine with the
tools there -- will find it odd that the tools have just suddenly vanished.

If it has been disabled, please consider restoring access to these
valuable tools; even though they don't yet work for the English
Wikipedia or the Asian cluster wikis, there are a number of wikis that
could still benefit from this service.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/CategoryTree
[2]
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti%C3%AAu_b%E1%BA%A3n:T%C3%B3m_t%E1%BA%AFt_v%E1%BB%81_th%C3%A0nh_vi%C3%AAn_Wikipedia
[3]
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%E1%BB%83_lo%E1%BA%A1i:T%E1%BA%A5t_c%E1%BA%A3

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Data dumps, now with md5sums

body:
download.wikimedia.org is back online and I've restarted the dump runs. MD5
checksums are available again for new dumps, to confirm that files downloaded
correctly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny
	(Johntex)

body:
On 4/20/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Finally, I love the message for our attorney which explains the importance
> of having an office policy, but does absolutely nothing to provide any
> rational for why we should then FAIL TO FOLLW our office policy.  I guess
> maybe that sort of speech fools some of the people some of the time.

This is uncalled for.

Firstly Brad said that there does need to be a healthy debate about
precisely this.

Secondly the question of whether the i's are dotted and the t's are
crossed by the person performing the protection is of piddling
insignificance when set against the fact that the right thing is done.

Policy is that we don't let potentially dangerous content remain while
we discuss a  problem with a third party who has contacted us with a
serious complaint.  If this isn't spelled out then perhaps it should
be.

I'm sitting here and, over the months, watching people head towards
Danny's office actions like moths to a flame.  No wonder he doesn't
want to advertise them, particularly the more sensitive ones.  This
latest kerfuffle is a good sign that the process we have set up just
isn't enough.  The rules are not an end in themselves.  We must
recognise that the Foundation does important work to keep this and the
other projects alive and well funded, and it must be permitted to do
that.  All the fripperies about whether X or Y followed some rules are
immaterial.  The work must be done.


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 20 Apr 2006, at 02:52, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> Secondly the question of whether the i's are dotted and the t's are
> crossed by the person performing the protection is of piddling
> insignificance when set against the fact that the right thing is done.
>
> Policy is that we don't let potentially dangerous content remain while
> we discuss a  problem with a third party who has contacted us with a
> serious complaint.  If this isn't spelled out then perhaps it should
> be.
>
> I'm sitting here and, over the months, watching people head towards
> Danny's office actions like moths to a flame.  No wonder he doesn't
> want to advertise them, particularly the more sensitive ones.  This
> latest kerfuffle is a good sign that the process we have set up just
> isn't enough.  The rules are not an end in themselves.  We must
> recognise that the Foundation does important work to keep this and the
> other projects alive and well funded, and it must be permitted to do
> that.  All the fripperies about whether X or Y followed some rules are
> immaterial.  The work must be done.

The problem seems to be that if even admins cant see what is being done
then people will be upset. This is purely a software problem that can be
fixed by various means. If the Danny account is to be specially
privileged
otherwise than all admins need to know. But this of course wont be
secret.
It would be better to have an invisible office note for admins if
this is
seen as necessary.

Justinc


body:
On 4/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> We shouldn't examine that data, however. Very bad precedent, and poor
> for privacy, especially since we aren't dealing with out-and-out
> vandals here, but merely critics.

If the circumstantial evidence provided is valid, this is far worse
than vandalism.   This is people in a position of trust abusing it and
possibly exposing Wikipedia to liability for copyright infringement or
defamation by causing such material to be published.


body:
On 4/20/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Finally, I love the message for our attorney which explains the importance
> > of having an office policy, but does absolutely nothing to provide any
> > rational for why we should then FAIL TO FOLLW our office policy.  I guess
> > maybe that sort of speech fools some of the people some of the time.
>
> This is uncalled for.
>
> Firstly Brad said that there does need to be a healthy debate about
> precisely this.
>
> Secondly the question of whether the i's are dotted and the t's are
> crossed by the person performing the protection is of piddling
> insignificance when set against the fact that the right thing is done.
>

It not so much that that the i were not dotted and the t were not
crossed. It's that the the dots and crosses removed.

> Policy is that we don't let potentially dangerous content remain while
> we discuss a  problem with a third party who has contacted us with a
> serious complaint.  If this isn't spelled out then perhaps it should
> be.
>
> I'm sitting here and, over the months, watching people head towards
> Danny's office actions like moths to a flame.  No wonder he doesn't
> want to advertise them, particularly the more sensitive ones.  This
> latest kerfuffle is a good sign that the process we have set up just
> isn't enough.  The rules are not an end in themselves.  We must
> recognise that the Foundation does important work to keep this and the
> other projects alive and well funded, and it must be permitted to do
> that.  All the fripperies about whether X or Y followed some rules are
> immaterial.  The work must be done.

WP:OFFICE actions can be carried out. They cannot be carried out in
secret since that would involve sucessfuly hideing information from
wikipedians (the only way to do that is to claim something is a
wikipedia guideline or list it as a copyvio). We have a process of
sorts. If it is goinged to be changed some warning would be nice.
--
geni


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch chapter

body:
Fruggo wrote:

>I believe Walter is right when he contradicts that there is a group of
>admins that act against the wishes of the community. When the first plans of
>a Dutch Wikimedia organisation were made I contributed to the discussions on
>the Dutch Wikimedia website and I went to a (the first?) meeting of people
>who were interested. It soon occurred to me that some people had very strong
>opinions on forming an organisation, and there was not many room for
>dissident opinions. I got the impression that many people thought that the
>organisation could/should have a say about the Dutch Wikipedia. I didn't
>like the way some people (who were intent on becoming a board member) seemed
>to force their opinion on others, so I backed out of the development of the
>organisation. I believe that the way dissident opinions were handled is now
>an important source of the fear of many Dutch Wikipedians that the Dutch
>foundation and association (but mostly the foundation, since that is the
>least democratic) will not listen to the Dutch community.
>
>-Fruggo
>
>
>
I totally agree with Fruggo here.

Waerth/Walter van Kalken


from_name: John Lee

body:
Jesse W wrote:

>As much as I don't want to get into this, and as much as I respect and
>appreciate Danny's work answering the phones and handling complaints,
>this is not right.
>
>Further explanation *is needed*.
>
> From what I understand, Danny, wanting to keep things from being
>unnecessarily dramatic, did not invoke the WP:OFFICE policy with
>regards to [[Newsmax.com]] and [[Christopher Ruddy]], even though, in
>fact, that was what was intended - someone had called the office, and
>complained about the articles.  This is OK - although it is troubling
>that Danny feels the WP:OFFICE policy can't be used whenever it is
>needed.
>
>What is not acceptable is to retroactively claim that the WP:OFFICE
>policy *was* invoked, and to then desysop and ban Eloquence on that
>basis.  That's plainly and simply wrong.  If it is required in some
>case that an action by Danny not be reversed, we *have* a policy for
>that.  If Danny does not use it, it's a justified assumption that the
>action in question *can* be reversed, like any other action on the
>'pedia, and immediate banning is not an acceptable response.
>
>I urge that Jimbo, someone else from the Board, and/or Danny further
>explain and/or apologize for this apparent mistake.  We have WP:OFFICE
>for a reason.
>
>Jesse Weinstein
>
>
While I agree...I sense a disturbance in the force. Sean Barrett (The
Epopt) just unblocked Erik. *sits back and waits for shit to hit the fan*

John


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Erik Moeller stated for the record:
>
><snip>
>
>
>
>>I have just been indefinitely blocked from the English Wikipedia, and
>>desysopped, by user Danny, under the new nickname "Dannyisme", as an
>>"Office Action" for alleged "reckless endangerment" which was not
>>specified further. I have called Danny on the phone, but he said that
>>he was not willing to discuss the issue, and that I should instead
>>talk to the Foundation attorney instead. To my knowledge, this is the
>>first time office authority has been used to indefinitely block and
>>desysop a user.
>>
>>
>
><snip>
>
>I have unblocked Eloquence on the English Wikipedia.  Blocking him was
>clearly inappropriate.  Blocking him indefinitely was astoundingly
>stupid.  Desysopping is equally insane, but resysopping him can wait for
>the wheels to grind.
>
>
Danny reverted the block, but didn't use the OFFICE account (Dannyisme).
This is getting interesting...

John


from_name: Sebastian Doeweling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Some questions about Wikipedia (caching, DB-updates)

body:
Good evening,

I am currently starting with my diploma thesis at the Semantic Mediawiki
group at University Karlsruhe. I will investigate caching issues in this
context and therefore I started with looking at Mediawiki / Wikipedia
caching and database updates.

>From what I got from the documentation there are three types of caches:

1) Squid HTTP caches (invalidated via Multicast HTCP purging). These
caches rewrite HTTP-header for client caching if necessary.
If I got that right, the caching time depends on $wgSquidMaxage, and the
client cache is invalidated once the user logs in or the page is edited.
Now is the Wikipedia setting for $wgSquidMaxage equal to the default
value given in the documentation (18000)? And is this caching strategy
enforced only in sendCacheControl() or are there other functions I have
to look at?
2) The parser cache which temporarily keeps already parsed pages - this
cache is either in memory or in a special table(?).
3) Some memory cache named memcached that is able to cache database
queries and distribute writes across the database architecture.
This is similar to MySQL query caching?

Another issue are database updates (these occur only, if I edit and
change a page, right? (assuming parser cache is enabled)) - what
influence does caching have on these?
I have to admit that I have not dived deep enough into the code to
understand where and how these updates happen.

I know that is a bunch of question, yet I appreciate any help, be it
answers or links to documentation I have not looked at, yet, very much.

Thanks in advance,
Sebastian


body:
Jesse W wrote:
> On Apr 19, 2006, at 4:55 PM, maru dubshinki wrote:
>>On 4/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Restore_Wikitruth_info.png
>>
>>Point taken. All the other possibilities (an admin innocently taking a
>>screencap, exporting his desktop to another computer who did take a
>>screencap etc) seem less likely than a disgruntled admin. Albeit, the
>>shot is a bit odd- do logged in accounts really look like that in
>>monobook? It's been so long I've forgotten.
>
> Well, the photo has obviously been carefully cropped, as the personal
> toolbar (which begins with the account name) has been erased.  Also,
> I've only checked on Firefox on Mac OS X, but the font picked might be
> able to identify what browser and OS it was taken from.

It's Internet Explorer on Windows XP.  That narrows it down a bit, but
not much.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- "Michael R. Irwin" <michael_irwin at verizon.net>
wrote:
>
> I suggest the community members present on the
> Foundation-L mailing list
> consider a placebo vote regarding whether the
> Wikimedia Foundation
> should issue an apology to Eric and reimburse him
> for the long distance
> calls necessary to recover his editing priveleges.

I have not followed the details of this, but I will
tell you what I think in general terms.  I am amazed
how many people have written this list with the
underlying idea that it is proper to immediately
revert the admin action of *any* other admin without
disscusiion.  I think that in itself would deserve
some sort of reprimand, and shows unsuitability as an
admin.

First Eric commits what I consider a breach of
etiquette by unprotecting a page on his own.  This may
be just a difference in culture, but at WS we expect
admins to request protection/unprotection like any
other editor and a separate admin will carry out the
action.  So to unprotect a page on your own volition
is like closing a deletion where you made the original
nomination in my eyes.  Next is the fact that page had
*just* been protected.  If it had just been done by
any average admin, I would question if Eric was trying
to start a wheel war at this point. Then you add the
fact that the admin action was made by a *steward*,
which is a highly trusted position.  Now any idea the
Eric is acting in good faith is very hard to believe.
Do you really believe it is acceptable to revert a
steward on any admin action without discussion?  And
on top of that Danny is a Foundation employee who
often makes non-editorial decisions.  I don't know how
Eric could not have known he was asking for trouble.
The fact that I have seen so many responses purporting
that Eric made an honest mistake only makes me certain
that a strong message needed to be sent.  I will not
comment on the actual reprimands, because I am not
familiar with what generally warrants desysoping at
WP.  I cannot express how surprised I am that you
think Eric should get an apology.  I do hope he can be
repatriated to the project and that everyone who at
first thought his actions where acceptable realizes
their error.

I wonder sometimes whether people involved in this
project, really take it seriously.  This is real
organization here with real concerns and a real
hierarchy.  We elect stewards for a reason, so that
when they do something it can be trusted.  We ask
people like Danny to take responsibility to do the
things that must be done for this organization.  We
must trust them.

If you do not trust the organization, work to change
it on the big issues that your distrust stems from.
Picking a fight with every decision however will get
you no results.  People will simply tune you out.  Not
everyone (or even many people) can be aware of the
details of every decision.  If this is the reason for
any lack of trust, I think the problem is more with
you.  Because no matter who sits on the board that is
not going to change.

BirgitteSB

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


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
On 4/20/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Pete,
>
> > Kirill Lokshin wrote: "...to an openly anti-Wikipedia site"
> >
> >> From
> >> http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Wikitruth:Editing_guidelines
> >
> > "some amazing people are working behind the scenes and in the front
> > lines over there [i.e. at Wikipedia], putting in the hours to make a
> > difference and make Wikipedia better. [...] We wouldn't have this
> > site if we didn't respect and love the concept of a Wikipedia. It's
> > the implementation we have issues with."
> >
> > I believe them when they say they are pro-Wikipedia. I've been
> > astonished by how many Wikipedians are unwilling to be open to
> > criticism (one of the essential elements of a cult by the way :) !) I
> > don't agree with their vehemence of the opposition to WP:OFFICE. But
> > anyone who's been following this debate about Erik and Danny will
> > realise its implementation has been completely ham-fisted at times.
> > So disagree with Wikitruth, and prove it wrong, but don't lie about
> > it.
>
> I agree with you: this is just Wikipolitics by other means, as opposed
> to the straight anti-Wikipedia bizzo peddled by Britannica (through
> fear) or Brandt (through sheer kookiness).

Looking through some of the material they're gatherin on various
Wikipedians (FCYTravis and Kelly Martin come to mind), they're
definitely starting to resemble Brandt.

Their stated motivations are quite irrelevant; "legitimate criticism"
need not involve what amounts to borderline defamation (and vicious
stalking) at best.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 4/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> I have unblocked Erik and hope that everyone will relax so we can talk
> about these issues slowly and carefully.  I am sure Erik will not do
> anything bad.

Not more than usually ;-). Thank you, Jimmy. I appreciate it. Thanks
also to Angela for restoring my access on Meta. From what I can tell,
I am now fully reinstated. Given this, I have no further comments on
this matter. I will only say that I hope the discussion will move on
from this particular conflict to the underlying policy issues. But
that's for others to work out - I've had my share of "Office Action"
for now. ;-)

Thanks again,

Erik


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Most of us who see problems complain to Jimbo directly and at great
length on the mailing lists. We may even create a fork. What we don't
do is make up a bunch of scurrilous accusations, for example, bogus
accusations that we are friendly to pedophiles, and promote them in
the external media.

Results vary when you complain, some problems are dealt with, some
work themselves out, some are ignored, but I have never seen a
vengeful or paranoid attitude from our central leadership.

Fred

On Apr 20, 2006, at 12:25 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The most disturbing aspect of this view is the classic paranoia.  Of
> course we are in no position to go so far as to put a bullet in
> somebody's head for disloyalty, but the underlying aura of
> suspicion is
> similar.  The fear that the people you might be working with are
> not as
> loyal as you, that they do not worship the words of the great
> leader as
> much as you are very scary.  In a totalitarian regime there is no need
> for the leadership to issue repressive orders, or to hire high-price
> hitmen.  A few handshakes, a smile or a bit of casual praise to a
> roomful of sycophants and paranoids will be far more cost effective.
>
> As long as these rogue admins are taking ludicrous positions can they
> really harm Wikipedia with their rants?  And how do we distinguish
> between the kooks and the honest whistleblowers who are exposing
> legitimate problems?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 4/20/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Sean Barrett wrote:
> > > I will not wheel-war, so I will not re-un-block Eloquence, but I firmly
> > > stand by my characterizations of this action.  Regardless of any
> > > WP:OFFICE issues involved, Eloquence is not a danger to the project;
> > > blocking him and refusing to communicate is a stupid thing to do.
> >
> > I have unblocked Erik and hope that everyone will relax so we can talk
> > about these issues slowly and carefully.  I am sure Erik will not do
> > anything bad.
> >
> > I have not had time to really study anything yet, and I am about to go
> > have dinner with some wikipedians.
> >
> You might consider getting a different lawyer.

Dear lord, why?  Brad is one of the few people in this entire incident
who is behaving sensibly.

Kelly


body:
I know something about this, for someone who is an "outsider", not
deeply involved in day to day Wikipedia rough and tumble, he's doing
OK. No practicing lawyer could spend hours and hours editing or
dealing with policy issues in the trenches and we will always face
some lack of insight, but Brad is OK, actually does have a sense of
humor, and, I think, serves us well.

Fred

On Apr 20, 2006, at 7:33 AM, The Cunctator wrote:

> On 4/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> Sean Barrett wrote:
>>
>>> I will not wheel-war, so I will not re-un-block Eloquence, but I
>>> firmly
>>> stand by my characterizations of this action.  Regardless of any
>>> WP:OFFICE issues involved, Eloquence is not a danger to the project;
>>> blocking him and refusing to communicate is a stupid thing to do.
>>>
>>
>> I have unblocked Erik and hope that everyone will relax so we can
>> talk
>> about these issues slowly and carefully.  I am sure Erik will not do
>> anything bad.
>>
>> I have not had time to really study anything yet, and I am about
>> to go
>> have dinner with some wikipedians.
>>
>>
> You might consider getting a different lawyer.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
I don't know the details either, but apparently someone made a
complaint about the article which had considerable merit. I only
glanced at the article, but it seemed to be a hatchet job.

Fred

On Apr 20, 2006, at 8:46 AM, Ilmari Karonen wrote:

> Mind you, when the smoke clears, I'd really like to know what
> caused all
> this panic at the office in the first place -- did someone hold
> Jimbo at
> gunpoint while demanding that the articles be removed, or what?


body:
On 4/20/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have not followed the details of this, but I will
> tell you what I think in general terms.  I am amazed
> how many people have written this list with the
> underlying idea that it is proper to immediately
> revert the admin action of *any* other admin without
> disscusiion.  I think that in itself would deserve
> some sort of reprimand, and shows unsuitability as an
> admin.

Indeed.  And that is part of the problem with the English Wikipedia
right now: it has become acceptable to revert admins without
discussion.  Attempts to declare a policy against such behavior have
been met with considerable resistance; most admins want to give people
a few "free shots" (one revert a day, one revert a week, various other
policies that would tolerate low-level wheel warring, etc.).  It is my
impression that most of our admins have a broad sense of entitlement,
without the corresponding sense of responsibility that should go with
it.  It's along the lines of "Assume good faith for me, but not for
you", which is another cultural issue that enwiki is having problems
with, to be honest (whch is another issue that comes back to the
pervasive culture of entitlement on enwiki).

> First Eric commits what I consider a breach of
> etiquette by unprotecting a page on his own.  This may
> be just a difference in culture, but at WS we expect
> admins to request protection/unprotection like any
> other editor and a separate admin will carry out the
> action.  So to unprotect a page on your own volition
> is like closing a deletion where you made the original
> nomination in my eyes.  Next is the fact that page had
> *just* been protected.  If it had just been done by
> any average admin, I would question if Eric was trying
> to start a wheel war at this point. Then you add the
> fact that the admin action was made by a *steward*,
> which is a highly trusted position.  Now any idea the
> Eric is acting in good faith is very hard to believe.
> Do you really believe it is acceptable to revert a
> steward on any admin action without discussion?  And
> on top of that Danny is a Foundation employee who
> often makes non-editorial decisions.  I don't know how
> Eric could not have known he was asking for trouble.

I also find it very hard to believe that Erik was acting in good
faith.  I remain utterly perplexed by many of the comments in this
discussion, especially the ones from members of the Board, who I would
normally expect to refrain from contradicting their valued employee so
obviously; normally when a valued high-visibility employee makes a
mistake (and I am not saying that Danny did) the public statement
comes in the form of a carefully worded press release from the
organization as an entity, not as offhand rebuking comments from
random Board members, and normally the affected employee is informed
in advance.  But I guess I'm used to a more professional approach from
a leading non-profit organization.

> The fact that I have seen so many responses purporting
> that Eric made an honest mistake only makes me certain
> that a strong message needed to be sent.  I will not
> comment on the actual reprimands, because I am not
> familiar with what generally warrants desysoping at
> WP.  I cannot express how surprised I am that you
> think Eric should get an apology.  I do hope he can be
> repatriated to the project and that everyone who at
> first thought his actions where acceptable realizes
> their error.
>
> I wonder sometimes whether people involved in this
> project, really take it seriously.  This is real
> organization here with real concerns and a real
> hierarchy.  We elect stewards for a reason, so that
> when they do something it can be trusted.  We ask
> people like Danny to take responsibility to do the
> things that must be done for this organization.  We
> must trust them.
>
> If you do not trust the organization, work to change
> it on the big issues that your distrust stems from.
> Picking a fight with every decision however will get
> you no results.  People will simply tune you out.  Not
> everyone (or even many people) can be aware of the
> details of every decision.  If this is the reason for
> any lack of trust, I think the problem is more with
> you.  Because no matter who sits on the board that is
> not going to change.

I can't say much more than that I agree wholeheartedly with the above comments.

Kelly


body:
Kelly Martin is not in "our central leadership" (that would be Jimbo,
Angela, Anthere, Daniel Mayer, and a few others) and has no future as
a diplomat. Kelly is correct about our difficulties with establishing
that wheel warring is absolutely unacceptable. I have have had a few
invitations to wheel warring when someone felt they could simply
revert what I had done, but so far I haven't gotten in a real mess by
taking the bait. It is just not good practice to reverse another
administrator's actions. That needs to be part of our culture, not
some wishy-washy notion that it is OK to wheel war when the other
administrator is "wrong". If they are wrong, especially repeatedly,
it needs to be dealt with by talking, that is negotiation, and if
that is unsuccessful, with the remaining steps in the dispute
resolution process.

Fred

On Apr 20, 2006, at 8:46 AM, Ilmari Karonen wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>
>> Results vary when you complain, some problems are dealt with, some
>> work themselves out, some are ignored, but I have never seen a
>> vengeful or paranoid attitude from our central leadership.
>>
>
> Depends on who you count among the "central leadership", I
> suppose.  I'm
> not trying to single her out here, but I was struct by the
> juxtaposition
> of your comment above and a message just left by Kelly Martin (who
> seems
> to be "in the know" on this current issue) at [[WP:1WW]:
>
> "... Eloquence deciding that he's entitled to unilaterally reverse
> without discussion a protection imposed by Danny, one of most trusted
> administrators. That was wheel warring. He deserves to be desysoped
> (and
> was desysoped, although that punishment, while originally imposed by
> Jimbo, was subsequently reversed by Jimbo for reasons that frankly
> make
> no sense to me) for that."
>
> So, let's see:
>
> * That nice hot-button word "unilaterally".  It wasn't more than a few
> months ago when the unwashed hordes were screaming it at Kelly
> herself.
>
> * Desysoping (and prosumably blocking) are apparently now punitive,
> not
> preventative.
>
> * "I am sure Erik will not do anything bad" frankly makes no sense
> to her.
>
> I'm sorry to say this, but, all in all, that comment sounds pretty
> nasty.  Maybe not "vengeful or paranoid", but certainly very stressed
> out and high-handed, with a good amount of zero tolerance and "assume
> bad faith" thrown in.  Maybe I'm reading too much into this paragraph,
> but it sure sounds as if someone is in urgent need of a vacation here.
>
> Mind you, when the smoke clears, I'd really like to know what
> caused all
> this panic at the office in the first place -- did someone hold
> Jimbo at
> gunpoint while demanding that the articles be removed, or what?
>
> Just another admin without all the pieces of the puzzle,
> --
> Ilmari Karonen
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 4/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> > I will not wheel-war, so I will not re-un-block Eloquence, but I firmly
> > stand by my characterizations of this action.  Regardless of any
> > WP:OFFICE issues involved, Eloquence is not a danger to the project;
> > blocking him and refusing to communicate is a stupid thing to do.
>
> I have unblocked Erik and hope that everyone will relax so we can talk
> about these issues slowly and carefully.  I am sure Erik will not do
> anything bad.
>
> I have not had time to really study anything yet, and I am about to go
> have dinner with some wikipedians.
>
You might consider getting a different lawyer.


from_name: Adrian Buehlmann

body:
"Sebastian Doeweling" <doeweling at zkm.de> wrote in
message news:4446ECC7.7090100 at zkm.de
> Good evening,
>
[..]
> Another issue are database updates (these occur only, if I edit and
> change a page, right? (assuming parser cache is enabled)) - what

Hallo Sebastian

The generated html (and thus the cached html) is also influenced by
template inclusion mechanism

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Template

A wikipage can include (template inclusion) another wikipage by this. Thus
there are wikipages that, when changed, invalidate the cache of the
wikipages that include them. This is transitive.

Just to make sure you don't forget that.

BTW the ultimate authority on template inclusion is Tim Starling.
I'm only a wikipedian dealing a lot with templates.

Adrian


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Foundation-l] Lost money

body:
On 4/19/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Jakob Voss wrote:
> > Uhm, the problem that people may like to donate when servers are down
> > but cannot do so when servers are down is known for ... years? Why is
> > wikimediafoundation.org still hosted at Wikimedia's own server
> > farm?
>
> Because it will take a million years to get permission from the board to get
> additional hosting. ;)
>
Just hide it in Jimbo's travel expense budget.  ;)

Seriously though, if you can serve a page which says "The Wikimedia
Foundation servers are currently experiencing technical
difficulties.", then you can serve a set of pages which provide enough
information for people to find out about the organization and lets
people make donations.  There's no reason a donation page has to be
dynamic.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Lost money


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] an idea for a commons help tool

body:
> Like this [1]? ;-)
>
> Maybe extensive testing should wait until wikipedia is up to decent
> speed again, though.
>
> Magnus
> (still waiting to be approved by the toolserver gods)
>
> [1] http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/commons_sumitup.php

Someone give the man approval! Thankyou, that's super awesome.

It's also quite useful for determining incorrect interwiki links. What
exactly does 'Missing interwiki links' mean?

Something weird happened to the layout when I put in 'Serbian
language' as well (to test an article with many interwiki links).

Two problems:
1) The vast majority of links will be red in Commons, so either links
should be ignored, or they should point back to the original wikipedia
article
2) Well actually, there's only one problem. ;) I love it!

Of course it's not quite perfect, I suspect templates will stuff it up
a bit, but I expect the person operating it to be able to figure that
out, even in another language.

Too awesome!

Brianna


body:
On 4/20/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:

> * That nice hot-button word "unilaterally".  It wasn't more than a few
> months ago when the unwashed hordes were screaming it at Kelly herself.

There is a big difference between my unilaterally deleting a bunch of
rather unimportant userboxes and Erik reverting the protection of a
hot article implemented by Danny.  You will also note that I did not
wheel war with respect to any of the userboxes I deleted; I did not
redelete any of the ones that were speedily restored by various
admins, and the small handful which I did delete twice I redeleted
after discussion with the objectors to the original deletion.  I may
not have much respect for some of enwiki's arbitrary processes, for
the vast quantities of cruft that float around in enwiki, or for the
community that seems to exist more much for its own perpetuation than
for its purported purpose of writing an encyclopedia, but I have a
great deal of respect for the need of the Foundation to take
appropriate measures to protect its very real legal interests in the
face of potential litigation.  I tend to believe that the Foundation
is, at its core, more interested in being "an encyclopedia being
written by a community" than a "community which is writing an
encyclopedia".  I'm not so convinced that the same is true of the
Wikipedia community as a whole.

And, yes, I am somewhat more in the know on this issue than you are,
but that doesn't mean I have all of the pieces of the puzzle either.
All rhetoric aside, not all admins on Wikipedia are equal; some of us
are clearly more bothered about this than others.

Kelly


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
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Death Phoenix stated for the record:

> Since Danny didn't apply the WP:OFFICE tag, does that warrant an immediate
> desysoping and indefinite ban? I've seen such measures only after an
> arbitration case. Nowhere did Danny say he was applying WP:OFFICE. If Erik
> got into a wheel war, fine. I've seen wheel-warring admins get desysoped (or
> cautioned, or whatever), but only after an arbitration case was held against
> them. An indef ban should certainly only come after an arbitration case.

Minor correction: even the ArbComm cannot impose an indefinite ban.

Don't let the issue here get buried under discussion of OFFICE.  The
issue is that Danny, while apparently acting as a common or garden
variety admin, -- and not just without discussion, but rather while
/actively refusing to discuss/ -- imposed a lifetime ban from Wikipedia.

Indefinite block.

While /actively refusing to discuss/.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.
 sean at epoptic.org | But this wasn't it. --Groucho Marx
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body:
On 4/20/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> 3) When another user added an Office Protection label, Danny reverted
> him. This is only visible in the list of deleted revisions of
> [[NewsMax.com]].

Actually, no, he didn't.  I did.

Kelly


body:
On 4/20/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/20/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 3) When another user added an Office Protection label, Danny reverted
> > > him. This is only visible in the list of deleted revisions of
> > > [[NewsMax.com]].
>
> > Actually, no, he didn't.  I did.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/NewsMax.com
> #  00:46, April 19, 2006 . . Danny (Reverted edits by ContiE (talk) to
> last version by Danny)
> # 22:31, April 18, 2006 . . ContiE (using the office template.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Splash&diff=prev&oldid=49018307))
>
> Erik

Ah, yes.  Danny did revert, and THEN I deleted both the edit and the
reversion.  My mistake.

Kelly


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
I don't mean to be rude or anything, but if you are going to discuss
wikitruth, can you please change the subject and start a new thread.
My gmail inbox is hard to navigate enough :P

--Oskar


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny

body:
Hello

I have restored Eloquence sysop status on the english wikipedia this
morning (I did it on meta since I do not have bureaucrat status on
en.wiki, so it will not appear on the en bureaucrat log).

First, I appreciate Erik saying he will be more careful on these matters
in the future. Thank you.

However, I think Danny should be very careful not to have his role as an
employee of the Foundation (acting as WP:Office) confused with his role
as an editor. When action is not taggued as WP:Office, Erik is perfectly
within his right to revert (along the three revert rule, which also
applies to Danny).

Thirdly, I think the reaction of the WP:Office was too bold. Erik is a
long time serious editor. Not a wild kid. He is accessible to reason.
Blocking, even for 2 hours (and needless to say for indefinite time) is
not suitable without discussion first. Unsysoping with no discussion
either is just plain not okay.

I appreciate that the whole issue was very stressing for Danny, hence
his reaction. Danny is directly in contact with critical situations,
which is difficult for him.

Nevertheless, Danny, you appear as the "voice" of the Foundation on
en.wiki, so you should be careful to act as much as possible as the
members of the Foundation would act.

It would be *talking*.

Anthere

Erik Moeller wrote:
> I have been a Wikipedian since 2001 and a MediaWiki developer since
> 2002. I was Chief Research Officer of the Foundation from May to
> August 2005. I initiated two of Wikimedia's projects, Wikinews and the
> Wikimedia Commons, and have made vital contributions to both. I have
> made roughly 15,000 edits to the English Wikipedia, and uploaded about
> 15,000 files to Wikimedia Commons. A list of my overall contributions
> can be found at
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence
>
> and the linked to pages; this does not include my numerous
> international activities such as conference speeches, as well as my
> book and articles about Wikipedia. I have never been blocked before,
> nor have I ever been subject to an Arbitration Committee ruling (in
> fact, I was one of Jimmy's original suggestions for the first ArbCom,
> and one of the people who proposed that very committee).
>
> I have just been indefinitely blocked from the English Wikipedia, and
> desysopped, by user Danny, under the new nickname "Dannyisme", as an
> "Office Action" for alleged "reckless endangerment" which was not
> specified further. I have called Danny on the phone, but he said that
> he was not willing to discuss the issue, and that I should instead
> talk to the Foundation attorney instead. To my knowledge, this is the
> first time office authority has been used to indefinitely block and
> desysop a user.
>
> What happened?
>
> Yesterday, Danny radically shortened and protected two pages,
> [[Newsmax.com]] and [[Christopher Ruddy]]. The protection summary was
> "POV qualms" (nothing else), and there was only the following brief
> comment on Talk:NewsMax.com:
>
> "This article has been stubbed and protected pending resolution of POV
> issues. Danny 19:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)"
>
> There was no mention of WP:OFFICE in the edit summary or on the talk
> page. Danny did not apply the special Office template, {{office}}, nor
> did he use the "Dannyisme" account that he created for Foundation
> purposes, nor did he list the page on WP:OFFICE. Instead, he applied
> the regular {{protected}} template.
>
> Given that Danny has now more explicitly emphasized this distinction
> between his role as a Foundation employee and a regular wiki user, I
> assumed he was acting here as a normal sysop and editor, and
> unprotected the two pages, with a brief reference to the protection
> policy. I also asked Danny, on [[Talk:NewsMax.com]], to make it
> explicit whether the protection was under WP:OFFICE. I would not have
> reprotected, of course, if he had simply said that they were, and left
> it at that.
>
> I apologize if this action was perceived as "reckless", but I must
> emphasize that I was acting in good faith, and that I would much
> appreciate it if all office actions would be labeled as such. I was
> under the impression that this was the case given past actions. In any
> case, I think that the indefinite block and desysopping is very much
> an overreaction, and would like to hereby publicly appeal to Danny,
> the community and the Board (since Danny's authority is above the
> ArbCom) to restore my editing privileges as well as my sysop status. I
> pledge to be more careful in these matters in the future.
>
> Thanks for reading,
>
> Erik


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] new checkuser policy

body:
Anthere wrote:

>You may find a new version of the checkuser access policy here
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CheckUser_Policy#Access_.28new_version.29
>
>the main differences are
>* it takes into account the fact some local communities with arbcom do
>not necessarily want to delegate appointement of checkusers to their arbcom
>* any local project may choose at least 2 people amongst the already
>approved checkusers, with localized requirement (the local community
>choose itself percentage of support, minimum number of votes etc...)
>
>Which would allow to make Essjay and Karynn checkuser on en.wikibooks if
>the en.wikibooks is happy with this.
>
>Warning : the idea is not that all checkusers be selected by wikipedias
>and later imposed on other projects. The idea is rather that generally,
>a person widely supported in one project to do a job... is some one we
>generally trust to do the job properly anywhere.
>
>So, if wikicommons wants to appoints 5 checkusers from 5 different
>languages, all those 5 may serve on various other projects. The one
>requirement to keep though : always at least 2 checkusers per project.
>
>Opinion ? Please comment on the meta page. Trolls not welcome. I do not
>have the time this week :-)
>
>
>ant
>
>
>
I am not all that pleased with having to deal with "outsiders" in order
to obtain this critical information, although having it is better than
not having it.  I am really curious as to the reasons why Essjay and
Karynn are any better candidates for checkuser status on en.wikibooks
than the current two candidates on the request for checkuser status, and
all I can say is that they enjoy somewhat better relationships with the
Foundation board.  That seems hardly a reasonable policy.

It does indeed seem as though Wikibooks is being requested to get
permission from Wikipedia, and all of the checkusers are selected by
Wikipedias because they happen to, at the moment, be the big boys on the
block, and that Wikipedia wants to have editorial control over all other
Wikimedia projects of similar languages.  Or this is a crack in the door
for this to happen.

Perhaps because this was buried under all of the previous comments, but
it really hasn't been answered at least to my satisfaction.  Under what
reasonable criteria is being applied that would allow somebody to become
a bureaucrat on a project that would not also mean they are trusted
enough to have checkuser status as well?  This is a critical question in
the sense that the current approach isn't really scalable if you assume
that the board have personal knowledge of each person with checkuser
privileges.  It also strongly favors very large projects, and sets up a
preceedence that all new administrator-like functions will only be
allowed for very large projects, because of the sensitive nature of some
of the information they are dealing with.

I don't mind this approach if you are trying to suggest that people with
checkuser privileges is more of a social experiment by the Wikimedia
Foundation and that the whole issue of even allowing checkuser scans is
still something that is being Beta tested to see if it is effective and
worth the effort.  The official policy should state it in that manner,
and suggest that it is only going to be tested on Wikipedias first.
 That removes the ambiguity of the issue and makes it clear what is
happening.  By only giving this to very trusted users known personally
to the Foundation, the Foundation can then gague its effectiveness and
keep watch on a much smaller group of users.  But a beta test also
implies that it will only be available for a limited time before it is
expanded to other areas or simply removed altogether.

And getting back to the original point of this thread, the Stewards who
supposedly have at least the option of having checkuser status, and are
allowed to act in the capacity of performing administrative actions
where existing policies on individual projects are lacking these
policies due to their size, are ignoring checkuser requests.  If Essjay
and Karynn have the trust and support for this widespread and cross
project assistance, perhaps they should simply be made stewards as well.
 And to the point at hand, en.wikibooks is in English, which from what
I've seen of the list of stewards is one of the languages of every
current steward.  That these checkuser scans aren't being performed is
more of a condemnation of all of the stewards, or a very serious
misunderstanding of what their role is as backup administrators to
smaller projects.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] new checkuser policy


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created

body:
On request I've created a mailing list for Wikisource:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created

body:
On request I've created a mailing list for Wikisource:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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