body:
I was thinking of an idea that articles could be trimmed down to what's been
sourced and the longer (albeit unsourced) article could go to some sort of
Crappopedia where it awaits confirmation. Stuff that is confirmed with a
source could be added back. That way, Wikipedia could maintain integrity and
the other wiki could be a development grounds.

On 11/29/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > e) Once tagged, there should be no big rush about deleting the
> > material, but it should not remain indefinitely, either. How long?
> > Assuming that there's no specific reason to doubt the material,
> > months and months.
> >
> > The _only_ objections to this I can think of is that that the tags
> > are ugly--which is true but susceptible to a technical fix--or that
> > we are not serious about verifiability and don't truly want to
> > restrict Wikipedia content to things that are supported by published
> > material.
>
> I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material
> is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
> sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Liviu Andronic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia (sry)

body:
> I'm starting to get the feeling that these messages to the mailing
> list are an organised campaign against mo.wikipedia.

I honestly doubt about the existance of "an organised campaign against mo.wikipedia". Simply, there are people interested in this matter and that are quite not OK with the current status-quo. And they present you with their opinion.

There were three-four such sparkling discussions on this list, and at least in two cases the discussions were started by persons that I've never seen neither on the list, nor on talk pages. And I'm advocating for a status-quo change for quite some time.

When people see something wrong on Wikipedia (in their opinion of course;
not to be entirely neglected in this case, as it is the opinion of people who speak this language; I am yet to see one Moldovan publicly supporting this mo.wikipedia on this list); so when there is something wrong on Wikipedia, the first natural reaction is to report it to the mailing list, with the appropriate arguments. So that I do not see anything wrong with this. If this problem isn't solved in a year or two, it's quite normal that reports will keep coming in. One way or another there will be people finding out about this Wikipedia and writing to the list.

Moldovans never asked for this Wikipedia and they are quite negatively intentioned towards its existance. And it's about their language that we are talking about. But then, they cannot do much other than report. They cannot nor make a decision, nor implement existing decisions.

My brief remarks,
Liviu


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [18007] trunk/extensions

body:
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Rob Church wrote:
> I don't think it's a massive
> deal, I just find it irritatingly confusing enough to complain about.

Perhaps you should be yelling at Brion. He is the one, after all, who
(probably) created the new user.
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/29/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:01:31 -0500, "The Cunctator"
> <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> But if the *only* sources are blogs we clearly have a problem.
> >Why?
>
> Anything not covered by even one reliable source off "teh Internets"
> is a problem, I think.  Wikipedia is not Google.
>
> Guy (JzG)

This would apply to [[Wookiepedia]], maybe?

What about sections?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncyclopedia#Main_Page_holidays is most
likely not covered by any reliable third party sources at all, let
alone ones off the Internet.  That section I'd advocate dropping,
actually, while [[Wookiepedia]] I'd probably advocate keeping.

Anthony


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

body:
Which could be used to catch a very large amount of fish.

On 11/29/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Like how Wikipedia was supposed to be a development grounds for
> Nupedia?  My point is that a "Crappopedia" could open a very large can
> of worms.
>
> --Ryan
>
> On 11/29/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was thinking of an idea that articles could be trimmed down to what's
> been
> > sourced and the longer (albeit unsourced) article could go to some sort
> of
> > Crappopedia where it awaits confirmation. Stuff that is confirmed with a
> > source could be added back. That way, Wikipedia could maintain integrity
> and
> > the other wiki could be a development grounds.
> >
> > On 11/29/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > > > e) Once tagged, there should be no big rush about deleting the
> > > > material, but it should not remain indefinitely, either. How long?
> > > > Assuming that there's no specific reason to doubt the material,
> > > > months and months.
> > > >
> > > > The _only_ objections to this I can think of is that that the tags
> > > > are ugly--which is true but susceptible to a technical fix--or that
> > > > we are not serious about verifiability and don't truly want to
> > > > restrict Wikipedia content to things that are supported by published
> > > > material.
> > >
> > > I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material
> > > is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
> > > sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
> > >
> > > Steve
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] MySQL4 to MySQL5

body:
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ting wang wrote:
> I am trying to *migrate* a wiki based on MySQL4 to MySQL5, the process i
> have done is:

Please post non-Wikimedia related inquiries to mediawiki-l. BTW, you
probably should upgrade to 1.8.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> In addition, DRV is the place where people comment, not on the merits of the
> deletion, but on whether the deletion was "in process" or "out of process".

Unless of course one is advocating maintaining deletion.  Then it
doesn't matter if the deletion was "out of process".

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback or archive pages by date....

body:
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madea wrote:
> Need to know if there is a way or a tool that will allow MediaWiki users
> to access the wiki AS IF they were in the past.  [snip]

Please post non-Wikimedia related inquiries to mediawiki-l.
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from_name: Kayle Clark

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 40, Issue 129

body:
> > From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info>
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:11:02 -0700
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Arbcom-l] Fwd: simple
> example
>
>
> On Nov 29, 2006, at 3:45 PM, Rob Smith wrote:
>
> > I submitted an AMA request and pledge not use the
> account for other
> > purposes outside an Appeal.
> >
> > Wikipedia:AMA Requests for
> Assistance/Requests/November 2006/Nobs02
>
> Looks good to me.
>
> Fred
>

I hope that's not a "need right away" thing, because
we're always backlogged. It might be a couple days/a
week before we can get to it. We're _really_ short on
active members.
[[w:en:User:Royalguard11]]

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


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being
 treated	as	absolute policy

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:04:16 -0700, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> There is no criterion for speedy deletion related to the absence of
>> references. Any article listed for speedy deletion on that basis should
>> simply be delisted.
>
> Indeed.  Absence of any claim to validity is what is at issue, and the
> absence of any sources is one of the diagnostic factors.  very few
> sourced articles are flagged for A7.

But even then it's still not not a remotely _reliable_ diagnostic
factor. For example, if there were an article whose text consisted of:

"Marty McFoo was a German actor who won several national awards for his
portrayal of Julius Caesar on TV."

This article would be completely unreferenced, but nevertheless it
asserts the subject's notability just fine. It is therefore not
speedyable. If you're considering whether to speedy-delete something on
the basis of whether it contains an assertion of notability why not
simply look for whether there's an _assertion of notability_? It should
be easy to spot.

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list: foundation-l

from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Foundation-l] Google sued for copyvio in France

body:
This may be of interest:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0 at 2-651865,36-840113 at 51-837044,0.html

Google is apparently (I say apparently, because journalists are
notoriously incompetent at law) sued for copyright violation and
business parasitism, for allowing copies of some movie on its
videos.google.com site.

Their defense: they're a mere hosting provider, not an editor or
publisher; they do not select their contents and they are thus bound to
act only when told about a violation, not preemptively. (See LCEN law.)


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid

body:
> From: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
>
> I was thinking of an idea that articles could be trimmed down to
> what's been
> sourced and the longer (albeit unsourced) article could go to some
> sort of
> Crappopedia where it awaits confirmation. Stuff that is confirmed
> with a
> source could be added back. That way, Wikipedia could maintain
> integrity and
> the other wiki could be a development grounds.

My own suggestion would be:

a) that the reference apparatus should delineate the _range_ of text
that's being referenced (not just the _end_ of the text that's being
referenced);

b) that the default display of an article should use a fairly subtle
difference in color between referenced text (black) and unreferenced
text (a dark tint of some dark color--perhaps Zune brown to suggest
"crap"), with of course a user preference to change this.

User preferences could include

a) any color combination, including no distinction between referenced
and unreferenced (which would also suppress superscripted footnote
numbers), and

b) hide unreferenced text.

I don't think it's all that hard to imagine solutions, provided what
we want to do is solve the problem, as opposed to battling between
the existing unsatisfactory alternatives of deleting unsourced text,
marking it and deleting it sometime much later, or leaving it in
forever without any ugly marks in hopes that "eventually" someone
will source it.


body:
> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>

> I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material
> is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
> sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.

Unsourced material is not high-quality material.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being
	treated	as	absolute policy

body:
Stan Shebs wrote
> My
> own impression is that the whole concept of citation is not being taught
> or enforced anymore, and there is now a generation perfectly happy to
> play at being their own "authorities", and who get irate when anybody
> questions the validity of whatever they happen to write down.

Really? You do encourage me. Sounds like the 1960s all over again.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/29/06, Sam Hocevar <sam at zoy.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2006, Tony Jacobs wrote:
> > Well, most of them weren't independent sources, being links to gnaa.us and
> > gnaauk.co.uk.
> >
> > Of those that were independent, they fell into three classes: some made
> > only a passing mention of GNAA, some were articles where GNAA was only
> > mentioned in the message board responses at the bottom, and those that were
> > actually *about* GNAA were blogs (there were one or two of those).
>
>    This is not true and makes me wonder how many people making those
> claims really have read the article.
>
OK, I just looked at the version from 26 September 2006 (which is on
the Citizendium pilot wiki).  The description given above of the
sources seems accurate.  Can you point us to which source doesn't fit
that description.

Reading the article, if all of it is true then the organization does
seem notable to me, and it seems to me there *must* be some reliable
third party sources out there.  That said, I don't know of any, so I
have to agree with the deletion with the understanding that a valid
deletion doesn't preclude someone writing a good article from reliable
third party sources in the future.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Arbcom-l] Fwd: simple example

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote

> The most effective solution for dealing with a bad thread is the onset
> of boredom.  Eventually they all come to an end.

Actually, they don't, and trolls don't always go back under bridges. It only takes two folk who won't concede the last word.

Ray, where does this bottomless pit of generalisations come from?

Charles

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from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community Sanction

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:50:25 +1030, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

>RFA as a cabalist institution is a failure; the presence of
>inclusionists and clueless twits in the ranks of adminship is proof of this.

Ah, but the clueless twits are not the inclusionists :-)

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


from_name: niht-hræfn

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On Nov 29, 2006, at 18:48, Anthony wrote:
<snip />
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncyclopedia#Main_Page_holidays is most
> likely not covered by any reliable third party sources at all, let
> alone ones off the Internet.  That section I'd advocate dropping
<snip />
> Anthony

That section was removed (as superfluous and "not verifiable") when I
rewrote the article, although regretfully because the information
isn't kept in any one place elsewhere. It is however easily verified
by checking http://uncyclopedia.org/index.php?
title=Main_Page&action=history (a perfectly valid source and 100%
accurate, a higher accuracy rate than any (most) third party), but
that'd never fly with the RS whores (please excuse my French).
Anyhow, it's been readded, and I'd predict future attempts to remove
it will be similarly reverted and I personally don't think the drama
is worth it.

--Keitei


body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:11:48 -0700, "Rob Smith" <nobs03 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>I need an advocate to assist; can you recommend anyone?

Fred said it, the AMA is a good starting point.  I'll not offer to try
to raise this on your behalf, as I'm sure I'd only make matters worse,
but if you have trouble with admins due to posting the request from an
IP or alternate account, I will undertake to do my best to help.  I
would say that appealing a block or ban, in a civil and reasonable
manner, is an exception to the ban on using sockpuppets to evade a
block.  In fact, I think I'll go and check [[WP:SOCK]] to ensure we
say just that.

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 29/11/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> Undeleting outside process depends somewhat on what it was deleted by; if it
> was AFDed, then DRV; if it was speedied I've seen people just put them back
> (with the usual "please contact the removing admin to inform them about your
> good reason" etc caveat), but DRV works too.  If it was PRODed, then I don't
> know; most of those seem to uncontroversially stay dead.  DRV is almost
> certainly never the wrong answer, but under some circumstances may not be
> required.

An admin can just undelete a PROD, but it's a good idea to then fix
whatever the reason for the PROD was. Also, someone may then put it on
AFD. But AFDing is by no means obligatory.

- d.


from_name: Darko Bulatovic

subject: [Foundation-l] Vandalism and small wikis

body:
geni wrote:
> Not so much. there are a number of different forms of English and yet
> it is accepted that there is only one language. In some areas "thou"
> still exists. In others colour is spelled color. What standisation
> there is is often not goverment mandated.
>
>
---  in mayor cases  Academies( or similar institutions) are working on
language standardisation. So that are working under Goverment policy on
educational and science level. Freedom in that filed is also regulated
on Goverment level, so in any case it is political meter. On that level
I was talking about.
>> Linguistics rules are just political will on people language. If you
>> ignore this your opinion will not be righteous.
>>
>
> The oxford manual of style is not writen by the goverment.
>
Please check this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(spelling)

Part of text: This table gives the accepted spellings (following
*government *guidelines and major dictionaries).
>> I will repeat my sentence:
>> - Wikipedia is multilingual and multicultural project.
>>
>> As I sad, culture is connected with language, and culture is spread by
>> communication, beside other ways of communication language is primary one.
>>
>>  >.When you read the article
>>  >about Montenegrin, the language on the English Wikipedia, it explains
>>  >quite clearly that elements that are to make Montegrin special can be
>>  >found outside of Montenegro as well.
>>
>> Do you know what you talk about? Do you know who write those articles?
>> Do you know anything about specifics of Montenegrin dialect of south
>> slavenian languages?
>>
>> Split of project is not our concern (As Montenegrin people are never
>> participated on this projects or they tried on marginal level), you know
>> well  why is was divided on Balkan, but you stay quiet on this. Special
>> regarding Serbian. Wikipedia is used for spreading of nationalism
>>
>
> It shouldn't be
>
>> and
>> now when Montenegrin wish to have their own wikipedia on their own
>> language, it become problem.
>>
>
> Well yes because we are yet to establish that the language exists.
>
>
But under same rule WMF has given
>
>> AND yes it become POLITICAL problem for WMF
>> or one part of their members. I am aware that Serbian community is very
>> strong on WMF.
>>
>
> Not really. the WMF is based in the US the board is mostly from the US
> and most significant non US chapter is prbably germany.
>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia (sry)

body:
On 11/29/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know how organised it is, but there is certainly a semi-united
> effort against the wiki.
Normal. It is supposed to be so.

>
> Most of the activity happens at the actual Wiki, with people blanking
> pages and saying nasty comments on talkpages
Personally, I'm against such practices. It's stupid and worthless.

, with very little of the
> activity carrying over to wikipedia-l.
>
> The thing is, Liviu's assertions simply don't stand.
Could you please zero in on this. It's a bit vague for me..

It would seem
> that the average Moldovan simply doesn't care. There have been several
> posts about it at moldova.net.
>Some people are outraged, others think
> it is "cool", and others don't seem to care much one way or the other.
I didn't check the posts myself, so that I don't really cosider seriously your comments.

>
> The agitations we have seen in Wikimedia are mostly repeated attempts
> from the same few people. Most of them are Romanians: Bogdan Giusca,
> Ronline, Danutz, Dpotop, AdiJapan, Bonaparte, etc., all with varying
> positions but all leaning towards the deletion of that Wiki.
>
> Our lovely Moldovans here are Liviu, Vania (aka TSO1D), and Oleg
> Alexandrov. Oleg Alexandrov took a very middle-of-the-road position
> (he believed it should exist, but that it wouldn't ever work because
> there would never be enough competent contributors)
Not exactly correct. Last time I talked to him he was on a position (in my words; it's _not_ a quote): "I don't care if it continues to exist or not. But if does, it should be on mo-cyr".

BTW, as to moving mo to mo-cyr. I understand that it is technically not acceptable, but I honestly believe that it would solve this controversy to an acceptable extent (that is, very little probability of any more reports on this list). People are deranged by the confusion: the language and script on mo.wiki is _not_ actively used in public life in Moldova.

, but he seems to
> have given up completely any involvement he had.
>
> Everyone else has just popped in occasionally for votes, or to make a
> single comment.

And "agitations", "lovely Moldovans" - you really have a problem with choosing words..

Liviu

> Mark
>
> On 29/11/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > I'm starting to get the feeling that these messages to the mailing
> > > list are an organised campaign against mo.wikipedia.
> >
> > I honestly doubt about the existance of "an organised campaign against
> mo.wikipedia". Simply, there are people interested in this matter and that
> are quite not OK with the current status-quo. And they present you with
> their opinion.
> >
> > There were three-four such sparkling discussions on this list, and at
> least in two cases the discussions were started by persons that I've never
> seen neither on the list, nor on talk pages. And I'm advocating for a
> status-quo change for quite some time.
> >
> > When people see something wrong on Wikipedia (in their opinion of course;
> > not to be entirely neglected in this case, as it is the opinion of people
> who speak this language; I am yet to see one Moldovan publicly supporting
> this mo.wikipedia on this list); so when there is something wrong on
> Wikipedia, the first natural reaction is to report it to the mailing list,
> with the appropriate arguments. So that I do not see anything wrong with
> this. If this problem isn't solved in a year or two, it's quite normal that
> reports will keep coming in. One way or another there will be people finding
> out about this Wikipedia and writing to the list.
> >
> > Moldovans never asked for this Wikipedia and they are quite negatively
> intentioned towards its existance. And it's about their language that we are
> talking about. But then, they cannot do much other than report. They cannot
> nor make a decision, nor implement existing decisions.
> >
> >
> > My brief remarks,
> > Liviu
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
"The Cunctator" wrote

> I'm mildly sorry for taking the shortcut of asking the list about things I
> could figure out by wading through the insanely complicated policy pages,
> but here goes-- if you think a page that went through the AfD process was
> wrongly deleted, what is the proper action?

There is a process, which is apparently full of twisty little passages, all of which sound the same.

> How wrong is it for an admin to undelete a page?

If you believe 0WW, it's wrong.

> Also, are we trying to get rid of all "list" pages?

This is actually a good question.

I'm not trying to rid enWP of lists, though in a sense they have to some extent had their day. Their functionality is still much superior to categories, in some important respects.

One of those respects is that one could _in principle_ annotate lists, entry-by-entry, justifying each claim. Something of the sort goes on at [[list of polymaths]], I gather, though I don't follow it in detail. No one knows what 'polymath' really means, so in the end we'd get out of that a fairly interesting article of who said of whom and when that polymath applied. That's OK, I think.

Another example in which I'm involved is [[editio princeps]]. I'm kind of staggered that I haven't just come across a list of when the classical Greek and Roman authors were first printed. So, anyway, there's a list being compiled there, mostly from internal enWP evidence. Technically it's fairly illegal to use other articles to source a list like that. In practice (a) the material, if from 1911 EB as it typically is, is highly reputable anyway; and (b) collating such a list is a very good first step, because checking an edition was produced in Venice in 1495 or something of a specific author is a short Google away. In other words, fact-checking something specific is convenient enough.

There have always been some really junky lists around, and some of those could reasonably be axed via AfD. It is not a solution just to use categories, certainly. That hides the problem, rather than solving it: categories look more trustworthy, but some are real rubbish. (Like the Erdos number fiasco ...)

Charles

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] unsourced, unverifyable, weee

body:
On the subject of the unsourced... While looking up some info on
british coinage today I ran across a cruftlink to [[Money in Harry
Potter]]. Talk about unsourced! it runs wild with rampant speculation,
routinely slips into the fictional universe, and I especially enjoy
the bit towards the end where it lapses into first person (search for
" I ").  It's bad enough that I'd probably check it carefully for
copyright violations before doing anything other than putting a
deletion notice on it.

Of course, no sources are provided for the stream of consciousness
analysis of books... although I bet someone will shove in a bunch of
fansite links.  But fixing the sourcing won't make this an acceptable
article... and I think thats something we should keep in mind:
Although we have a number of articles which unsourced but otherwise
good, there are also many articles which are unsourced but also bad in
other ways.. We risk doing ourselves a great disservice in simply
'sourcing' such articles but failing to improve their quality
otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Money_in_Harry_Potter&oldid=90241281


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being treated
	as	absolute policy

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:04:16 -0700, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>There is no criterion for speedy deletion related to the absence of
>references. Any article listed for speedy deletion on that basis should
>simply be delisted.

Indeed.  Absence of any claim to validity is what is at issue, and the
absence of any sources is one of the diagnostic factors.  very few
sourced articles are flagged for A7.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being treated as
	absolute policy

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 23:39:22 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>* Any statement that if false would be harmful, must be traceable to a source.
>* Any statement that could never be backed up by a reliable source
>should not be included.
>* Where possible, provide sources to help readers determine the
>accuracy of statements.

>The corollaries of these three rules are that non-trivial, non-harmful
>statements don't *have* to be cited, but *should* be. This is what
>most people *do*, but is not what our policies *say*.

>Anyone agree?

Of course.  The problem, though, is those who write what they see as
self-evidently true, but which is not self-evident to others.  Or
maybe is considered flat wrong by others.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Trivial categories

body:
"The Cunctator" wrote

> Huh. Just because one can't think of a reason that it would be of interest
> to have a list of mathematicians of Erdos Number 3 doesn't mean that noone
> can. Wikipedia ain't paper.

Trouble is: I have checked that my own Erdos number is at most 4. Knowing that it is exactly 4, rather than 3, is equivalent to knowing a huge amount about collaborative papers ... which is a needle-in-haystack search.

Charles

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body:
 > AND yes it become POLITICAL problem for WMF
 > >> or one part of their members. I am aware that Serbian community is
very
 > >> strong on WMF.
 > >>
 >
 > Not really. the WMF is based in the US the board is mostly from the US
 > and most significant non US chapter is prbably germany.

The problem that is discussed here looks like political problem, it is
not yet at that level ( e.g. WMF Board of Trustees), As I can see it is
just affected some part of this community. I just don't understand this
dilemma here regarding Montenegrin Wikipedia, so I am just trying to
realize what possible reasons cold be for this. I didn't aspect this
kind of welcome here on WMF, as we  indeed had a good intentions. So
much assumptions here with no reason, as we didn't do anything to
provoke this.

Darko Bulatovic


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote

> Absence of any claim to validity is what is at issue, and the
> absence of any sources is one of the diagnostic factors.  very few
> sourced articles are flagged for A7.

Oh, some are, you know. I had a worry about this yesterday, writing about a historian who was at the College de France. What if some admin has no idea whether this is an 'assertion of notability' or not? I'm not going to demean myself by adding 'the world-famous and prestigious academic institution in Paris'. But I do wonder whether some people would think I should, in order to be asserting a bit louder.

Charles

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body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:13:45 +0000, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

>It's the carpet we sweep the dust under. Which makes the rest of the
>place look a damn sight tidier. Remember, though, that it is the
>wikilawyers who run this 'you haven't defined your terms' riff into
>the ground, for their own sordid 'gain'. I'm happy enough that
>articles which, after best efforts to add reliable sources, do not
>have much to show, should be deleted at AfD.

Yes, that is reasonable enough, although the idea of allowing spammers
to get us to waste time working up their drivel before finally
deleting it is profoundly unattractive.

>I think we should admit that the pool of 'reliable sources' is
>dynamic, and certain things that are premature creations at the moment
>will in the future be much easier to source. This kind of argument
>helps keep us straight on celebrity (Warholinan 900 seconds) versus
>notability; and that WP cannot, be definition, itself be the pioneer
>reliable source on anything.

Absolutely.  For many subjects, the best sources of all are not
traditional treeware.  It's the authority of the source that matters,
not the medium, in my view.

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


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Time for preformatted empty articles?

body:
On Thu, 2006-30-11 at 01:30 +0000, Rob Church wrote:
> On 30/11/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > wikitech-l - is it possible yet to do a preload when someone hits
> > 'edit' on a red link? If so, what do we need for this to be switched
> > on for en:wp? It is likely time for such a thing.
>
> It's possible with the InputBox extension, although I think the
> preload text is specified in the parameters to the tag itself. There's
> also the Preloader extension, which allows customisable stuff
> per-namespace; the preload text is pulled out of the MediaWiki
> namespace, as I recall.

We use a little trick with MediaWiki:Newarticletext on Wikitravel to
make a little menu of preload options:

http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=A_page_that_does_not_exist&action=edit

It's not beautiful, but it does the job pretty darn well, and most of
our new articles have the right template selected now.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>


body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 20:30:47 +0000, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

>> Absence of any claim to validity is what is at issue, and the
>> absence of any sources is one of the diagnostic factors.  very few
>> sourced articles are flagged for A7.

>Oh, some are, you know. I had a worry about this yesterday, writing
>about a historian who was at the College de France. What if some admin
>has no idea whether this is an 'assertion of notability' or not? I'm
>not going to demean myself by adding 'the world-famous and prestigious
>academic institution in Paris'. But I do wonder whether some people
>would think I should, in order to be asserting a bit louder.

Hopefully a link to the article on the College de France would be
sufficient.  But you will note that I didn't say *no* sourced articles
are flagged for A7.  There are several articles I've written where I'm
conscious that they are on the borders of what might be considered
notable.  Mind you, those are the ones where I tend to make most
effort to establish notability, in case some heartless deletionist
like me gets wind of them...

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


from_name: Laurence Parry

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
>> Should Wikipedia accept original research or use less-than-ideal sources
>> in
>> cases where there is little or no existing literature? Nope: the reader
>> would
>> have no way to establish whether they could trust an article's contents.
>> It
>> might work if you had those articles controlled by verifiable experts,
>> but
>> again, Wikipedia's not that encyclopedia.
>
> I feel that if I go to Wikipedia to look up something relatively
> notable, and Wikipedia's response is "We don't have an article on
> that", then Wikipedia has failed me. If Wikipedia's response is
> "GNAA's website is X, and we couldn't verify any information beyond
> that, but here are some blogs", then it has performed much better.

On a similar note . . . a fortnight ago there was a spate of AfDs for furry
fandom articles, including a few furry conventions. Many of these articles
were little more than "X is a furry convention in Y occuring at Z, it has
1000 people attend each year here's their website". Nobody was actually
disagreeing that this was the case, but there was a lot of "Furrycruft!",
"Wikipedia isn't a dictionary!" and "if you can't find a reliable 3rd party
published source, you must convict!" flying around.

What I ended up doing was creating [[furry convention]], which is
essentially "[here's all the stuff we know in general about furry
conventions from the reliable sources], if you want to know more about
PafCon in particular, you want to go look at their website and at WikiFur,
which is an encyclopedia that can contain original research and unverifiable
material".

Of course, PafCon doesn't have a website because it's a fictional
convention, but you get the idea. If Wikipedia doesn't want to write about
topics, a good alternative is to do some kind of portal to direct people to
those who *do* want to write about it, as long as they are doing so
competently. That's helpful for the user because they get the information
they're looking for, and it's helpful for Wikipedia because it avoids
repeated creation of pages about "non-notable" topics (which inevitably
result in a certain proportion of angst-filled AfDs that burn some of our
most dedicated contributors out).

---
Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
http://greenreaper.co.uk - http://wikifur.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:54:05 -0500, "The Cunctator"
<cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

>If the source is a blog, the reader can supply his
>judgment in how much credence to give the source

But if the *only* sources are blogs we clearly have a problem.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Trivial categories

body:
"The Cunctator" wrote

> That's the type of reasoning that I find convincing with respect why it
> would be a bad idea to try to do explicit Erdos number categories.

The 'categories-for-deletion' vote to rid ourselves of those failed. So we have them. Nemmind, we can try again some time.

You can't tag a category with {{fact}}, which is a bummer.

Charles

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from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

Just to be clear, I don't care that the Montenegrin is created or not.
But I care that it would be created and become a battle field.
Which means that if it is created, there should be appropriate measures
to insure that it does not become a back spot on Wikimedia, like the
Moldavan Wikipedia is now. The problem is not that the Moldavan
Wikipedia was created. The problem is that Moldavian people did not
benefit from the creation of the wiki.

Regards,

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Biblioth?que libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:28:49 -0800, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>the vast majority of popular culture items have not been subjected to
>independent research and are not documentable other than the particular item
>of culture itself.

I quite agree.  And this is, for me, a major problem, in that it sends
all the wrong messages about original research.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

references:
<mailman.12918.1164754449.9606.wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
	<456CC545.1090709@earthlink.net>
	<456CE040.6000105@internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:20:00 -0500, Jeff Raymond
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>The only roadblock we have regarding blogs as sources is that some are
>more reputable than others, and filtering the wheat from the chaff is
>important.  However, we do that with magazines, books, and journals
>already, so it can't be *that* difficult.

Um.  There are many fewer unreliable magazines, due to the non-zero
bar to publication.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:25:43 +0200, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com>
wrote:

>if we started this, maybe we should delete 90% of
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Webcomics and
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Websites

I'm on it...

:o)

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/29/06, Darko Bulatovic <mail at itam.ws> wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Not so much. there are a number of different forms of English and yet
>>>it is accepted that there is only one language. In some areas "thou"
>>>still exists. In others colour is spelled color. What standisation
>>>there is is often not goverment mandated.
>>>
>>>
>>---  in mayor cases  Academies( or similar institutions) are working on
>>language standardisation. So that are working under Goverment policy on
>>educational and science level. Freedom in that filed is also regulated
>>on Goverment level, so in any case it is political meter. On that level
>>I was talking about.
>>
>>
>Historically things have been somewhat different.
>
>
>>Please check this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
>>
>>Part of text: This table gives the accepted spellings (following
>>*government *guidelines and major dictionaries).
>>
>>
>Governments at the present time are one of the few groups to produce
>enough material to need to create manuals of style. that does not mean
>they are required for standardisation of language
>
Governments also need style manuals for official publications, but these
do not have the force of law for non-governmental operations.  Our
schools never make reference to any kind of official spelling or grammar
when teaching children.  English, more than any other language is based
on history, custom and usage.  There is such a thing as poor language
skills for native speakers, but one feature that makes it very difficult
for the health of other languages is the easy acceptance by English of
ways of speaking drawn from other languages.


from_name: Steve Block

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline
 being	treated	as	absolute policy

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote
>
>> Absence of any claim to validity is what is at issue, and the
>> absence of any sources is one of the diagnostic factors.  very few
>> sourced articles are flagged for A7.
>
> Oh, some are, you know. I had a worry about this yesterday, writing
> about a historian who was at the College de France. What if some admin
> has no idea whether this is an 'assertion of notability' or not? I'm not
> going to demean myself by adding 'the world-famous and prestigious
> academic institution in Paris'. But I do wonder whether some people
> would think I should, in order to be asserting a bit louder.

I've seen articles which declare their subject to be Emmy winning csd
under A7, so I do wonder what constitutes an assertion of notability.
It's almost to the point where we need to write our articles with the
lead sentence blah is notable because they won an emmy rather than blah,
a sfx company which won an emmy...

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.14.19/556 - Release Date: 28/11/06


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/29/06, Darko Bulatovic <mail at itam.ws> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > Not so much. there are a number of different forms of English and yet
> > it is accepted that there is only one language. In some areas "thou"
> > still exists. In others colour is spelled color. What standisation
> > there is is often not goverment mandated.
> >
> >
> ---  in mayor cases  Academies( or similar institutions) are working on
> language standardisation. So that are working under Goverment policy on
> educational and science level. Freedom in that filed is also regulated
> on Goverment level, so in any case it is political meter. On that level
> I was talking about.

Historically things have been somewhat different.

> Please check this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
>
> Part of text: This table gives the accepted spellings (following
> *government *guidelines and major dictionaries).

Governments at the present time are one of the few groups to produce
enough material to need to create manuals of style. that does not mean
they are required for standardisation of language

--
geni


body:
On 11/29/06, Darko Bulatovic <mail at itam.ws> wrote:
> The problem that is discussed here looks like political problem, it is
> not yet at that level ( e.g. WMF Board of Trustees), As I can see it is
> just affected some part of this community. I just don't understand this
> dilemma here regarding Montenegrin Wikipedia, so I am just trying to
> realize what possible reasons cold be for this.

There is a lack of solid evidence that is is a solidly distinct language

>I didn't aspect this
> kind of welcome here on WMF, as we  indeed had a good intentions.

I'm sure you do.

> So
> much assumptions here with no reason, as we didn't do anything to
> provoke this.

There isn't much we can do until we can figure out if Montenegrin is a
distinct language or a dialect.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On 11/29/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's total bullshit.

And yet strangely causes less trouble than other systems we have
experimented with.

--
geni


body:
On 29/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Absolutely.  For many subjects, the best sources of all are not
> traditional treeware.  It's the authority of the source that matters,
> not the medium, in my view.

Remember also that most of our articles are not controversial - we
should take care not to make rules from special cases.

e.g. [[EXA]] - a minor topic, though significant enough for an article
in its tiny area (3D acceleration for the X.Org X11 server). One of
the references is to a blog! Worse yet, it's the original developer's
blog! Yet I submit there is no reason whatsoever to consider this any
less reliable as a source on this particular subject than a printed
publication would be.

- d.


body:
Darko Bulatovic wrote:

>>It's the global perspective that counts, not the one from the narrow
>>view of one language.  Most languages do not have a one-to-one relation
>>with any country.  If you recognize 3,000 languages and only 200
>>countries many would be left out.  For the endangered languages a
>>country devoted solely to that language would not be viable.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>I don't understand you very well here. Many language (mostly
>European)are having nation marks (English, French, German, Russian,
>Albanina, Greek, Italian, ....) so their process of building language is
>trough nation history. Same thing is with south Slavic language. It is
>not reference to country - more region in which people talk similar.
>History of south Slavic people ( Europe) is quite dense in political and
>demographic change, So many parts of South Slavs are developed
>differently try many centuries and that was also reflected on language.
>So here we have situation that all Balkan nations have their own
>languages and their wikipedias. I don't see how this same rule should be
>different for Montenegro. I will not mention that wikipedia is also
>possible for some artificial languages and don't have very harsh and
>strict rules regarding this. But in Montenegrin case it seems that
>people wish to close eyes. Why?
>
Many languages in Europe do not have countries to match the language:
Galician, Catalan, Frisian, Sardinian ...  And what should happen with
the Roma?  Other languages are spoken in several countries.  Wikipedia
is based on languages, not on nations or the evil of nationalism or
patriotism.

I don't like the artificial languages any more than you do.  Except for
Esperanto, there is nobody that really speaks these languages on a
regular basis, and nobody to be the audience for the language games that
their supporters like to play.  It would be very difficult to get rid of
them, as the experience with a totally ridiculous language like Klingon
has shown.

I have no problem with Montenegrin independence, though I have sometimes
wondered why it was so much slower to break away from Serbia  than the
other repblics of Yugoslavia.  Many of us from outside the Balkans find
the persistent chauvinism of the entire area (not just Yugoslavia)
thoroughly mystifying, and I don't think that Wikipedia should be
encouraging these separate language in the face of contrary linguistic
evidence.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] CC-BY-SA suitable for Wikipedia?

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Who really knows what the GFDL actually means in a legal sense. It hasn't
>been tested. So all of our opinions are just that.
>
I'm glad there's at least one person around here smart enough to
understand that.

Ec


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 29/11/06, 80686 at svn.wikimedia.org <80686 at svn.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Revision: 18007
> Author:   80686
> Date:     2006-11-29 14:25:31 -0800 (Wed, 29 Nov 2006)

With all due respect, what kind of ridiculous username is that? How
are we supposed to link "80686" to a person in a quick manner? I see
"brion", I can think "Brion Vibber, don't argue with his code", I see
"tstarling", I know it's Tim.

"80686" might be a popular username, but we aren't dealing with a
bunch of children dancing about behind some wonderful label. We're
dealing with people who need to be a touch *more* accountable than the
damn wikis this is powering.

In addition, using a number is confusing. It could get mistaken for a
revision number or identifier of another form.

Rob Church


references:
<4ADF33D3-6590-4C45-8329-16DA4ABD593C@waterwiki.info>
	<52a8cf060611271749s79bd0c37k3ed563a22022bfec@mail.gmail.com>
	<sdcpm25i9llqd0ennn8kncnid4f17011vd@4ax.com>
	<52a8cf060611281423m36a5d93cte770010d160b16c0@mail.gmail.com>
	<t2fpm2tc73db6j7mvpj1hl1hcnn8k5k3dd@4ax.com>
	<52a8cf060611281511m627c9782qa363bc3fb8b759ed@mail.gmail.com>
	<odorm2h38fi788dlhoc2r6oveu2tb0jlfo@4ax.com>
	<7861E6BB-91DB-4641-9FFF-78D291DA4BE9@waterwiki.info>

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:05:47 -0700, Fred Bauder
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

>Limited editing for such a purpose is not an issue, IMO.

Ditto my opinion.  But use of an alternate account for this turns out
to be rather unpopular, per the admin noticeboard.  There must be a
better idea somewhere.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline
	being	treated	as	absolute policy

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:13:03 +0000, Steve Block
<steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:

>I've seen articles which declare their subject to be Emmy winning csd
>under A7,

What, real Emmys or "regional Emmys" (aka best actor in Mudhole Flats,
Idaho)?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:01:31 -0500, "The Cunctator"
<cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

>> But if the *only* sources are blogs we clearly have a problem.
>Why?

Anything not covered by even one reliable source off "teh Internets"
is a problem, I think.  Wikipedia is not Google.

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


references:
<4ADF33D3-6590-4C45-8329-16DA4ABD593C@waterwiki.info>
	<52a8cf060611271749s79bd0c37k3ed563a22022bfec@mail.gmail.com>
	<sdcpm25i9llqd0ennn8kncnid4f17011vd@4ax.com>
	<52a8cf060611281423m36a5d93cte770010d160b16c0@mail.gmail.com>
	<t2fpm2tc73db6j7mvpj1hl1hcnn8k5k3dd@4ax.com>
	<52a8cf060611281511m627c9782qa363bc3fb8b759ed@mail.gmail.com>
	<odorm2h38fi788dlhoc2r6oveu2tb0jlfo@4ax.com>
	<7861E6BB-91DB-4641-9FFF-78D291DA4BE9@waterwiki.info>
	<tm2sm290q44pha9jvc4ogvs96ji6sk4suc@4ax.com>

body:
On 29/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:05:47 -0700, Fred Bauder
> <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> >Limited editing for such a purpose is not an issue, IMO.

> Ditto my opinion.  But use of an alternate account for this turns out
> to be rather unpopular, per the admin noticeboard.  There must be a
> better idea somewhere.

Blocked editors can email the arbcom. Such email is in fact read - as
a listadmin, I let through pretty much anything that's actually for
the arbcom.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

references:
<mailman.12918.1164754449.9606.wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
	<456CC545.1090709@earthlink.net>
	<456CE040.6000105@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<f6srm215dks88erf3kjolnmouhdctrmcru@4ax.com>
	<2703.63.151.8.141.1164833294.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:48:14 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>> Um.  There are many fewer unreliable magazines, due to the non-zero
>> bar to publication.

>That's not entirely true, though.  Magazines aren't considered "reliable"
>due to the said "non-zero bar" factor, but rather because of their
>history.  People are afraid of blogs, even though there are many blogs
>that are just as reliable - even perhaps more reliable - than many
>otherwise "trusted" magazines.  With very little exception, we'd accept a
>magazine source, with proper attribution, in a non-controverisial
>instance, and let the reader make the decision regardless of their
>knowledge of the source.  There's absolutely no reason we couldn't do that
>with blogs, too.

There are two bars to magazine publication: cost (for the magazine
itself) and editorial review (for the content).  Both these are absent
in blogs, so much greater care is necessary with blogs.  People will
say things on blogs that they would not say in print.  These things
may be better left unsaid.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:00:13 -0800, "Matthew Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
wrote:

>One of the biggest problems with our deletion system is that the
>amount of crap is so overwhelming that those who regularly participate
>in the system get jaded and are sometimes unable to recognise the
>situations where an exception should be made.

How true those words are, even today.

And those exceptions then become a stick with which to beat them.

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


from_name: Chris Picone

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
Yeah. Since all edits are manual anyways (and mirrors are usually low
on Google), the "bot"'s confusion can't hurt.

On 11/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Earle Martin wrote:
> > On 28/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> There is somewhere a pretty complete list of WP mirrors, official and
> >> otherwise. It was intended as a data file to a greasemonkey scrpt, to
> >> filter these results from Google searches. You could probably adapt
> >> it, using my incredibly helpful and explicit directions to find it.
> >
> > Aha, it looks like you're talking about this:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mirror_filter
> >
> > Thanks very much, I'll work it in.
> >
>
> The other page, useful for when you find non-compliant mirrors, is
> [[Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks]] (or similar).
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 11/29/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see no reason why we should be flexible about sources. If it hasn't got
> sources it can be deleted, regardless whether this is a policy or a
> guideline. It may be kept if someone bothers to find the sources the author
> should have included, but that might not happen.
>
> The only way to make people use sources is hammering it in, because no
> matter how many times it is said, people will ignore it. Perhaps deletion
> will get some backsides into gear.

If we come up with a workable policy, people might follow it. Our
policies basically state the undesirable and infeasible goal of "every
statement must be backed up by a reliable, verifiable source". What we
actually *want* is far less than that though. Something like:

* Any statement that if false would be harmful, must be traceable to a source.
* Any statement that could never be backed up by a reliable source
should not be included.
* Where possible, provide sources to help readers determine the
accuracy of statements.

The corollaries of these three rules are that non-trivial, non-harmful
statements don't *have* to be cited, but *should* be. This is what
most people *do*, but is not what our policies *say*.

Anyone agree?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [18007] trunk/extensions

body:
On 29/11/06, Manuel Schneider <manuel.schneider at wikimedia.ch> wrote:
[snip the lot]

Do excuse the fact that my (assumed) lack of formal IT education or
experience in the field makes me irrational. And let's bring age into
it; age is SUCH a brilliant non sequitur.

Do also excuse the fact that I don't word things in a manner that
non-native speakers won't be offended by. I don't think it's a massive
deal, I just find it irritatingly confusing enough to complain about.

Congratulations on getting sponsors, etc.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fiction and Wikia

body:
On 11/29/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > Is this actually in the policy? At least once I've seen someone move
> > links I've placed in the Sources section into the External Links
> > section.
>
> Last time I checked [[Wikipedia:External links]] it was the guidance
> offered.

You're right; I'm out of date.

> Last time I checked [[Wikipedia:External links]] it offered guidance to
> the effect that we consider linking to an open source web directory
> rather than to links for forums, personal homepages and blogs which,
> whilst relevant to the article subject, aren't relevant to the article
> itself.  Lines get drawn where consensus forms.

Oh yeah. That's actually a better solution.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Making it easier for the public to help out

body:
On 11/29/06, Humus Sapiens <humus.sapiens at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's make sure we are not implementing a drive-by tagging tool and
> anticipate what would happen to articles like [[Abortion]] or [[War on
> Terror]]. I would lean towards encouraging readers to join and become
> responsible editors.

What would happen to these articles? I guess in the system I've
tentatively been proposing, you would have a long stream of tags along
the lines of "Factually incorrect: NO BUSH LIED ITS ALL ABOUT OIL!!1"
or something. Perhaps there should be a way to indicate that certain
pages not be eligible for driveby assistance - "thanks, but we have
more than enough helpers on this page. Care to look at some
[[...|others]]?"

Good point.

Incidentally, anyone yet know how to implement this?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 11/29/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:28:49 -0800, "George Herbert"
>> <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> the vast majority of popular culture items have not been subjected to
>>> independent research and are not documentable other than the particular
>> item
>>> of culture itself.
>> I quite agree.  And this is, for me, a major problem, in that it sends
>> all the wrong messages about original research.
>>
>
> In particular to the editors working on those articles.
>
> I was wondering if it would be a positive step to strongly encourage the
> popular culture articles to move towards at least citing the (potentially
> unreliable) primary pop culture source for various factoids (for example,
> "Character did X" <ref episode XYZ>).  Whether we treat those topics as
> having any reliable sources or not (by normal WP standards), referencing the
> primary source extensively would set a good example.

We've started doing this at the comic project, but it is taking us time
to get there.  We have a cite issue template.  As you say, it's the
first step on introducing a lot of editors to the concepts of sourcing,
original research and point of view.  We can say, okay, The Hulk lost
his shoe laces, can you tell us in which issue this happened?  You can,
great, now, can you tell us why that's important?  You can, that's
great, now, can you tell us if you've seen anyone else say that?  You
can, that's great, now, we need to work out if this snippet is relevant
at all to the coverage Wikipedia aims for, being a reference work aimed
at a general audience.  Why do you think a general audience would be
interested?  They wouldn't?  Well, have you met the Marvel Wikia?

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.14.19/556 - Release Date: 28/11/06


body:
On 11/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> > Why is this thread being allowed to continue on this list?
> >
>
> The listmods aren't oppressive censors and/or can't be bothered doing
> anything about it.

There's no effective technical solution to a bad thread. You can't
really ban a thread. A much better solution is what charles.r.matthews
did: draw attention to the fact that thread is stupid, and ask people
to drop it. Anyone can do that.

Steve (listmod)


references:
<200611292354.45509.manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch>
	<e92136380611291540r431c7273j2c7ad7ee85ecbfa3@mail.gmail.com>
	<ekl67p$ccs$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 29/11/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> Perhaps you should be yelling at Brion. He is the one, after all, who
> (probably) created the new user.

Yeah, but Brion stabs.

Rob Church


from_name: Manuel Schneider

body:
Dear Rob,

> With all due respect, what kind of ridiculous username is that? How
> are we supposed to link "80686" to a person in a quick manner? I see
> "brion", I can think "Brion Vibber, don't argue with his code", I see
> "tstarling", I know it's Tim.
well, it's me, as I'm known since 15 years in all kind of computing fields,
including Wikipedia, MediaWiki and the IRC channels.

Exactly like Brion (thanks) has introduced me in his mail.

> "80686" might be a popular username, but we aren't dealing with a
> bunch of children dancing about behind some wonderful label. We're
> dealing with people who need to be a touch *more* accountable than the
> damn wikis this is powering.
It is not propular, and that's the reason why I kept it since 15 years.

I don't know how young you are, but as learned IT specialists and studied
computer scientiest (applied computerscience in the field of internet
engineering) I don't see a problem here.
To be honest, I didn't find sponsors to pay people to create questioned
extensions and deal with them that they may be put under GPL to be pissed off
by you because of such a stupid thing like a username.

--
Regards
Manuel Schneider

Wikimedia CH - Verein zur F?rderung Freien Wissens
Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
www.wikimedia.ch


body:
>
> It's the global perspective that counts, not the one from the narrow
> view of one language.  Most languages do not have a one-to-one relation
> with any country.  If you recognize 3,000 languages and only 200
> countries many would be left out.  For the endangered languages a
> country devoted solely to that language would not be viable.
>
> Ec
I don't understand you very well here. Many language (mostly
European)are having nation marks (English, French, German, Russian,
Albanina, Greek, Italian, ....) so their process of building language is
trough nation history. Same thing is with south Slavic language. It is
not reference to country - more region in which people talk similar.
History of south Slavic people ( Europe) is quite dense in political and
demographic change, So many parts of South Slavs are developed
differently try many centuries and that was also reflected on language.
So here we have situation that all Balkan nations have their own
languages and their wikipedias. I don't see how this same rule should be
different for Montenegro. I will not mention that wikipedia is also
possible for some artificial languages and don't have very harsh and
strict rules regarding this. But in Montenegrin case it seems that
people wish to close eyes. Why?


body:
On 11/29/06, Darko Bulatovic <mail at itam.ws> wrote:

> Criteria for ISO 639-1
>

We don't follow it.
--
geni


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-30

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Passed 449 of 469 tests (95.74%)... FAILED!


body:
>
> Being multilingual and multicultural does not mean that each language
> needs its own Bantustan.  South Africa already showed us that apartheid
> was a bankrupt system.  Post-colonial Africa had to accept that
> abandoning colonial boundaries in favour of a return to tribal areas
> would be a recipe for chaos.
>
> To say that languages must be driven by politics is absurd.  Generally
> it works the other way.  Tribes develop their own way of talking, and
> use that as an excuse for making politics.
>

Please Montenegro is not in Africa, and it has much to offer to the
world, from their own culture and civilization. Many great people was
born in Montenegro and many had a great contribution to the human
civilization. In other sense the Montenegrin Wikipedia is great tool for
Montenegro to put effort in building unified Encyclopedia that anyone
can use. Many Benefits are possible for future generations of
Montenegrin to aggregate knowledge and to continue to share their
knowledge and to translate form English to their native language and
vice versa.

Wikipedia and WMF had a vision when I started to use it and to use their
tools, if that vision was changed I don't know. This vision was saying
that Wikipedia is multilingual encyclopedia, not some -lingual encyclopedia.
> Using Wikipedia to spread nationalism is absolutely contrary to a
> Neutral Point of View.  Wikipedia did start in the United States, but if
> the Americans who were involved at the earliest stages had insisted that
> Wikipedia was there to promote US nationalism it would have failed
> miserably in all other English-speaking countries.
>
> Personally, I don't think that there should ever have been separate
> Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian wikipedias.  If any of them are using
> their respective projects to spread their own nationalism that is
> wrong.  As long as they have their own wikis nobody from within the
> Yugoslav communities will be willing to seriously criticise them for it,
> and nobody from outside the Yugoslav communities will understand the
> language enough to be able to do it.
>
> I can understand that Montenegrins can feel prejudiced when the same
> mistake is not made for them as was made for the Serbians.
>
>
But there are many articles on wikipedia that promote nationalism with
support of some facts or invented ones. Montenegrin related articles are
good examples, please see discussion on some of them and you will see
what happen there. If you stop Montenegrin wikipedia I don't see how
that will help in this effort? I think that will just do opposite. On
other languages cold be the same ( As I know it is on some Balkan versions).
> I don't think that bringing a bad image is a factor.  It's a broader
> question of linguistics.
>
I am not linguist but for this occasion I gathered many material on this
topic and I am ready to contribute to clear this part and to put it on
light.
>
>> I am ready to participate on any level of discussion but please don't
>> make assumptions as that will bring bad connotation to your willingness
>> to do right thing in this case.
>>
>>
> The only assumption there is that what you want is the right thing.
>
> There is another alternative.  Start using the serbo-croatian (sh)
> Wikipedia.  It was the original Yugoslav project, and is still alive and
> well.
>
> Ec
>
>
But I don't really see what happening here. Many people talk about
Montenegrin wikipedia in bad way as it should be killed before it is
born without fair trial. This not looks very good for community and for
future development.

It is not problem with Montenegrin wikipedia it is problem with current
wikipedias that don't obey rules to be NPOV. And it looks like no one
are willing to be persistent to change this.  In contrary to Yann I
think that Montenegrin wikipedia could contribute in solving this
problem in one part. At least that could show that problem is not on
small projects, That problem could be in people that lead and contribute
to the projects (easy could be on much larger WP). Laziness and trouble
fighting vandals should not be reason to stop new projects.

Yugoslavia have place in History but not in future, now future for
Balkan nations are in EU.

Regards,
Darko Bulatovic


subject: [WikiEN-l] Time for preformatted empty articles?

body:
On 29/11/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> We should probably still kill a lot of unsourced edits. Such a preload
> template is already in use at AFC and it is routinely ignored, but better to
> try and convince some people to follow it. It didn't solve the problem, but
> it cut back on problem cases slightly.

Yeah. The nice thing about a preload template is that it can guide new
editors without being a straightjacket on experienced ones - it's just
text in the edit box, after all.

Something like (off the top of my head):

'''{{PAGENAME}}''' is ... [one-sentence definition]. It is ...

==More detail==

[Put more detail about important aspects of {{PAGENAME}} here. Use
==section-name== around new sections.]

==References==

[List the sources you used in writing this article]

==External links==

[List the most important couple of external webpages on the subject.]

This shows people how to give us the useful content for a good stub
article without having to know all about editing wikitext and lovely
formatting.

wikitech-l - is it possible yet to do a preload when someone hits
'edit' on a red link? If so, what do we need for this to be switched
on for en:wp? It is likely time for such a thing.

- d.


body:
geni wrote:
> On 11/29/06, Darko Bulatovic <mail at itam.ws> wrote:
>
>> geni wrote:
>>
>>> Not so much. there are a number of different forms of English and yet
>>> it is accepted that there is only one language. In some areas "thou"
>>> still exists. In others colour is spelled color. What standisation
>>> there is is often not goverment mandated.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> ---  in mayor cases  Academies( or similar institutions) are working on
>> language standardisation. So that are working under Goverment policy on
>> educational and science level. Freedom in that filed is also regulated
>> on Goverment level, so in any case it is political meter. On that level
>> I was talking about.
>>
>
>
> Historically things have been somewhat different.
>
>
>> Please check this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
>>
>> Part of text: This table gives the accepted spellings (following
>> *government *guidelines and major dictionaries).
>>
>
> Governments at the present time are one of the few groups to produce
> enough material to need to create manuals of style. that does not mean
> they are required for standardisation of language
>
>

Criteria for ISO 639-1

The following criteria for defining new languages in ISO 639-1 has been
established by the ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee.

* Relation to ISO 639-2. Since ISO 639-1 is to remain a subset of ISO
639-2, it must first satisfy the requirements for ISO 639-2 and also
satisfy the following.
* Documentation.
o a significant body of existing documents (specialized texts, such as
college or university textbooks, technical documentation manuals,
specialized journals, subject-field related books, etc.) written in
specialized languages
o a number of existing terminologies in various subject fields (e.g.
technical dictionaries, specialized glossaries, vocabularies, etc. in
printed or electronic form)
* Recommendation.A recommendation and support of a specialized authority
(such as a standards organization, *governmental body*, linguistic
institution, or *cultural organization*)
* Other considerations
o the number of speakers of the language community
o t*he recognized status of the language in one or more countries*
o the support of the request by *one or more official bodies*
* Collective codes. ISO 639-1 does not use collective codes. If these
are necessary the alpha-3 code shall be used.

This document was revised on 22 Sept. 2006 as approved by the ISO 639
Joint Advisory Committee on 10 June 2006. This replaces the published
text in ISO 639-2, sections 4.1.1, 4.1.3, and A.2.1.

ISO 639-2 defines a proper subset of the totality of alpha-3 language
identifiers in all parts of ISO 639. The primary applications for which
ISO 639-2 is intended include libraries, archives and other
documentation applications. Thus, the general criterion for inclusion of
a language in ISO 639-2 is that there is a significant body of
literature in the language or describing the language. In order to
establish this, the following objective and subjective metrics will be
applied.

* Number of documents.
The request for a new language identifier shall include evidence that
one agency holds 50 different documents in the language or that five
agencies hold a total of 50 different documents among them in the
language. Documents include all forms of material and are not limited to
text. This is a necessary requirement, but not sufficient in and of
itself. In addition the following requirements will be considered.
* Size and variety of literature.
The size and variety of the literature in the language, be it written or
oral, will be considered and should be documented in the proposal. The
documentation may be in the form of reference to library holdings or
bibliographies or more general statements quantifying the literature and
its variation.
** National or regional support*
The proposal should preferably be explicitly supported by a national or
regional language authority or standardizing body. If such support for
some reason is unobtainable, a recommendation from another authority or
language organization will be taken into account.
* Formal or official status
If the language in question has some sort of "official" status,
documentation of this status will greatly support the proposal. The
assignment of formal status to languages is in no way consistently
practiced throughout the world, *and the lack of such status is not a
negative argument if other requirements are met.*
* Formal education
If the language is used as a means of instruction in formal education on
any level, documentation of this use will support the proposal. Teaching
of the language is also relevant, in particular if the teaching is
extensive.

I think that give list of requirements for standardization so that we
don't waste time in future discussion on this. I hope thios will clear
up my reference to government and to political aspect of this story.

Regards,
darko Bulatovic
>
>


body:
It's ok - let's go back to work and forget about it.

--
Regards
Manuel Schneider

Wikimedia CH - Verein zur F?rderung Freien Wissens
Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
www.wikimedia.ch


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
We should probably still kill a lot of unsourced edits. Such a preload
template is already in use at AFC and it is routinely ignored, but better to
try and convince some people to follow it. It didn't solve the problem, but
it cut back on problem cases slightly.

Mgm

On 11/30/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This would need at least some more planning that what Wikinews offers,
> since the range of article types is vastly different on Wikipedia.
> But not at all a bad idea if it can be done well.
>
> Ryan
>
> On 11/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Rather than going on a campaign to kill all new articles without
> > sufficient sourcing, would it be time to introduce article prefilling,
> > using the <inputbox> extension?
> >
> > For an example, go to en.wikinews.org, type something into the "Start
> > a new article" box and hit "Create article". This example is created
> > using the wikitext:
> >
> > <inputbox>
> > type=create
> > preload=Template:New_page
> > editintro=Template:New_article_intro
> > width=25
> > bgcolor=#f0f0ff
> > </inputbox>
> >
> > Presumably we'd need this switched on for en:wp if it isn't already.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: Sam Hocevar

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On Tue, Nov 28, 2006, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> The problem is that this article had no legitimate sources, not even
> close

   The Scotsman article is a legitimate source. LastMeasure and LMOS
are GNAA-branded products that are referenced in other places on
Wikipedia (except that someone apparently decided that because there
should be no GNAA article, there should also be no article mentioning
the GNAA and seems to be removing the references; an article about
shock sites that does not mention LastMeasure is laughable). Maybe
there were other legitimate sources, or content that can be sourced,
but the article and its talk pages are now gone, and we have to trust
your word on this?

> and after a long period of time, no one was able to come up with
> any, since there really are not any.

   Did you write this in a hurry, or are you really unquestionably
claiming that? I'd be happy to know what knowledge base you were
accessing.

--
Sam.


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On Tue, Nov 28, 2006, Tony Jacobs wrote:
> Well, most of them weren't independent sources, being links to gnaa.us and
> gnaauk.co.uk.
>
> Of those that were independent, they fell into three classes: some made
> only a passing mention of GNAA, some were articles where GNAA was only
> mentioned in the message board responses at the bottom, and those that were
> actually *about* GNAA were blogs (there were one or two of those).

   This is not true and makes me wonder how many people making those
claims really have read the article.

--
Sam.


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new non-stupid wiki-en thread

body:
By changing "links" to "link".  I think it helps to point out that
more resources are needed, especially if the subject has an adequate
amount of coverage elsewhere on the Internet.

--Ryan

On 11/29/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/30/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Same here, and of course I'm usually on the beat for fixing "External
> > links" headings that only have one external link. ;)
>
> By adding another one?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
I would, too, but a lot of them can't be sourced (fleeting nature of
imageboard content, etc., etc.).

--Ryan

On 11/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ryan Wetherell wrote:
> > Removing it is good with the reasons you gave.  We don't need lists of
> > in-jokes.  There's still quite a few on [[4chan]], but luckily we've
> > directed a lot of traffic to external sites that, er, specialize in
> > that.
> >
>
> I'd rather read about 4chan memes on Wikipedia than on who-knows-what
> external site like ED, kthx.
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


body:
On 30/11/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> wikitech-l - is it possible yet to do a preload when someone hits
> 'edit' on a red link? If so, what do we need for this to be switched
> on for en:wp? It is likely time for such a thing.

It's possible with the InputBox extension, although I think the
preload text is specified in the parameters to the tag itself. There's
also the Preloader extension, which allows customisable stuff
per-namespace; the preload text is pulled out of the MediaWiki
namespace, as I recall.

Rob Church


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
"Edward Z. Yang"
<edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote in
message news:ekl67p$ccs$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Rob Church wrote:
> > I don't think it's a massive
> > deal, I just find it irritatingly confusing enough to complain about.
>
> Perhaps you should be yelling at Brion. He is the one, after all, who
> (probably) created the new user.

"I am not a number! I am a.... oh wait... yes I am."

- Mark Clements (68080 - formerly HappyDog)


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 40, Issue 133

body:
> From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>
>
> Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>>> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>>
>>> I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material
>>> is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
>>> sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
>>
>> Unsourced material is not high-quality material.
>
> It can be, depending on the circumstances. This isn't something on
> which
> categorical statements can be made (or at least one can't expect
> anything close to consensus on such statements). For example, consider
> the articles where we imported masses of unreferenced material from
> the
> 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. That's not even high quality stuff by
> today's standards but it's served as a good foundation for further
> work.

Such articles _are_ sourced. They're sourced to the 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica.

When we source something to _The New York Times_, we don't worry
about whether _The New York Times_ cited _its_ sources. The reader
knows where the material came from: not from an individual editor's
head, but from a specific issue and page of The New York Times. They
can make their judgement about its reliability.

When we source something to the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, the
reader knows it cames, not from an individual editor's head, but from
the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and they can make their judgement
on its reliability.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

body:
> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>
> On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>>> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>>
>>> I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material
>>> is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
>>> sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
>>
>> Unsourced material is not high-quality material.
>
> I'll interpret that as "Uncited material can by definition never be
> considered 'high-quality material'."

Please don't.

> And then I'll strongly disagree. Newspapers, encyclopaedias and many
> other sources of high-quality information regularly do not cite their
> sources. If we take one of our best featured articles and remove the
> references section, it is still much better than a shorter article
> that does cite its sources. And streets ahead of an article which
> false cites its sources...

What I meant is that _in Wikipedia,_ uncited material is not high-
quality material.

_In Wikipedia,_ that's indeed by definition, and the "definition" in
question is Wikipedia's verifiability policy.

The New York Times and the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ don't have such
a policy.

Uncited material in The New York Times or the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ is high-quality material, because their mechanism for
insuring quality is different. It involves a web of trust in which I
trust these sources because I believe the editors make informed
judgements on the credentials of contributors. It's not 100.000%
true, but I assume that the Britannica only assigns articles to
knowledgeable people--not to volunteers who walk in off the street
attracted by an arch over their entrance that says "Edit this page."
I assume that the New York Times accepts articles people with
credentials as "journalists," earned by past performance on
increasingly important assignments and/or training in a journalism
school and/or adherence to a code of ethics.

Wikipedia is different, because Wikipedia does not select or judge
the competence or credentials of its editors.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trivial categories

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> On 11/30/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> > Trouble is: I have checked that my own Erdos number is at most 4. Knowing that it is exactly 4, rather than 3, is equivalent to knowing a huge amount about collaborative papers ... which is a needle-in-haystack search.
>
> No, it's really easy actually. Go to Wikipedia and check out
> [[Category:Erdos number 2]]. If you've worked on a paper with any of
> the people in it, you're 3. Otherwise, you're 4.

You're putting an awful lot of faith in the completeness and accuracy of our own information ... which in this case changes or should change every time one of a whole bunch of people publishes a preprint with a new collaborator. (By the way, do you update ENs at the preprint or journal publication stage, which might be years on?) It's a fun trivia game, but nightmarish, and EN2 is really the maximum we should allow on the site.

Charles

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body:
"Daniel P. B. Smith" wrote
> Unsourced material is not high-quality material.

"The Battle of Hastings was the most decisive Norman victory in the Norman conquest of England." From [[Battle of Hastings]], and unsourced. This is certainly of higher quality than it might be, in that it doesn't imply that there was no other fighting.

Charles

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body:
"David Gerard" wrote

> Yeah. The nice thing about a preload template is that it can guide new
> editors without being a straightjacket on experienced ones - it's just
> text in the edit box, after all.

I've always felt the empty edit box was a big plus. I would almost prefer a 'required field' for Sources with prompts for a new page.

Plus it would slow down making redirects to cut boilerplate text. I do a lot of redirects ... I do mean thousands.

Charles

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references:
<200611292354.45509.manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch>
	<e92136380611291540r431c7273j2c7ad7ee85ecbfa3@mail.gmail.com>
	<ekl67p$ccs$1@sea.gmane.org> <ekldv8$vre$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 30/11/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> "I am not a number! I am a.... oh wait... yes I am."

Right, that's it. Wanted, one esoteric symbol from an obscure font...

The Developer Formerly Known As Rob Church


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote
> If there were some way to make it easy to cull out
"more finished" stuff from the "less finished" stuff there might be less
pressure to delete work in progress in order to make Wikipedia as a
whole "more finished".

My post, to which this replied, was actually trying to point out something about our metaphorical take, also.

I think our quality control talk usually does go along these lines: skim off or cull the layer of worst articles; cream off the best and call them Featured, or whatever.

What's wrong with that? Nothing in there about hypertext. It's still per article, not speaking to navigation, orphanhood, incoming links as a metric and so on. Imagine a recently-created but much-needed stub article. One would hope the incoming links were noted before it was speedied for lack of sources.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Phrase and fable

body:
I glanced yesterday at a recent dictionary 'of phrase and fable', which had a Pokemon article.

Here's a thought, addressed to one part of 'what do we do about popular culture articles?' A new wiki, Wikifable, could be a place to transwiki material which was basically narrative treatment of myths (Norse, manga, soap operas ...). WP itself should be left with analytical and scholarly treatment of myths. Wikifable would have to work out its own protocols (canon, fourth wall, sources ...) but they could be independent of WP's.

Anyway, this would follow a pattern and path going back to Wiktionary.

Charles

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from_name: Tony Jacobs

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
>From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!
>Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:32:21 -0500
>
>I for one think it's pathetic that Wikipedia is giving up on the mission of
>being a complete encyclopedia because there exist specialty sites on
>particular areas of knowledge.

I disagree. Wikipedia can't be all things to all people, and I think it's
silly to try.  Wikipedia should consider itself one of a community of wikis,
specifically, the encyclopedic one, with academic standards.  Why not allow
for there to be multiple sources of information, and let the different ones
specialize in different things and get good at what they do?

Tony/GTB

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions, lists, etc?

body:
And the time that I did that it was attacked and merged.

On 11/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/30/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> > I'm not trying to rid enWP of lists, though in a sense they have to some extent had their day. Their functionality is still much superior to categories, in some important respects.
>
> The logical way to combine their functionality would be to put the
> hand-ordered hand-annotated list in the text section of the
> [[Category:...]] page. But no one seems to do this, least of all on
> commons where the ambiguity over pages and categories is a real
> nuisance.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

body:
On 11/30/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I for one think it's pathetic that Wikipedia is giving up on the mission of
> being a complete encyclopedia because there exist specialty sites on
> particular areas of knowledge.

I agree with you to the extent that verifiable subjects with
sufficient sources that would be on topic in a specialist encyclopedia
should be in Wikipedia.

For example, I would hate to see articles on my pet subjects deleted
off Wikipedia because 'they'd work better in a specialist
encyclopedia'.  E.g. there's a specialist Wiki encyclopedia for
cameras, CameraPedia.  I'm dreading the day someone tries to delete
[[Canon T90]] as "Cameracruft - move to CameraPedia".

Subjects that require original research or are off-topic in other ways
e.g. being howtos or reviews instead of encyclopedia articles DO fit
best elsewhere, though.

-Matt


from_name: Christophe Millet

body:
> But there are many articles on wikipedia that promote nationalism with
> support of some facts or invented ones. Montenegrin related articles are
> good examples, please see discussion on some of them and you will see
> what happen there. If you stop Montenegrin wikipedia I don't see how
> that will help in this effort? I think that will just do opposite. On
> other languages cold be the same ( As I know it is on some Balkan
> versions).

I thought that mixing different cultures in the same wiki was a way to
reach NPOV...
If there are a Montenegrin wp, and a Serbian wp, will we not have
a Montenegrin version of the history and a Serbian version of the history?
I don't see how this is NPOV...

Or maybe I didn't understand well (quite possible), then please explain.

Regards,
Kip.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 30/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/30/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

> > Plus it would slow down making redirects to cut boilerplate text. I do a lot of redirects ... I do mean thousands.

> I was going to say, it should be possible to disable this feature for
> experienced users.

Maybe. OTOH, just have a look through [[Special:Newpages]] on a Sunday
afternoon US time. You'll consider hitting Ctrl-A before typing
#REDIRECT to be a small price to pay.

- d.


body:
On 11/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rather than going on a campaign to kill all new articles without
> sufficient sourcing, would it be time to introduce article prefilling,
> using the <inputbox> extension?

Yes. Now, what should text should it generate?

Steve