from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Clickable images

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 9/9/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Thank you for selective snipping, in this way a solution to your long
>> argument was removed. To recapitulate, we can have options for under the
>> left mouse click. Think solutions please.
>>
>
> If you make clicking on the image do the expected thing for navigation
> uses, then you obscure the attribution.  Hiding the attribution behind
> an abnormal procedure would be a failure to provide attribution,
> hiding the navigational use behind an abnormal procedure would fail to
> aid navigation.  I did address this directly in my reply.
>
If the current way of providing attribution does not work because of a
need to be innovative than we need to change our way in which we
attribute. Currently we do attribute by having a "click through" to the
image page. We could have in a similar way as we currently do the
citations have footnotes with pictures. These footnotes would consist of
a name and a license identification and a link to the image page. I
would even be in favour of having a separate tab with the citations
because both citations and other comments detract from reading the article.
> Further, it would be quite infuriating and not at all user friendly
> for Wikipedia to further override the browsers normal behavior.
> (making right click, or modifier-click (recall not all computers have
> two mouse buttons) do something other than bring up the browsers
> menu)...  Not to mention the accessibility problems, and browser
> compatibility issues.
>
>
Why would it infuriate you? There are many applications that support
these kind of things. Denying this is equally infuriating because it
prevents you in thinking what you can do. Browser compatibility .. sure
they are .. one of the best things about the automatic update procedures
of Firefox and Internet Exlorer is that they replace the old versions
and thereby remove the need to support many old incompatible browsers.
People that do not have a mouse or have a text only browser have a big
problem on the web. Our software could do much better in supporting the
visually impaired if we spend effort in doing so. Preventing the use of
pictures as a navigational aid is not the best way, it is ducking that
problem.
> Some time back (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-May/035663.html)
> I'd proposed we simply create a new type of image tag such as:
>
> [[Imagelink:Foo.jpg|100px|Foo page]]
>
> Here is an example of what such a tag would look like:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
>
>
I had a look, I think it is an effort but I think it clutters the total
image of the page up. I would prefer to use part of what you have done
there and link it to a footnote. Oh, and nobody having implemented it
when you proposed something ? That is the norm not the exception.

Thanks,
   GerardM


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Clickable images


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Fwd: BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 9/10/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:

> Why not have a rewrite rule, that looks at the format of the display text
> and rewrites it only if appropriate?

> e.g.

> [[1976|AD 1976]] is detected as being an AD date, and rewritten if necessary
> [[1976|the following year]] does not match, so no changes are made.

> If the display text matches Year Epoch or Epoch Year (where Epoch = BC, AD,
> BCE or CE and ignoring case and whitespace) then rewrite according to user
> preferences, in all other cases leave as it is.

That sounds like a good idea, so I'll go ahead and add that into the patch.

It'll mean some additional regular expression matching, which will
slow down parsing and page display ever-so-slightly, but that seems
better than rewriting display text in a potentially unexpected (or
unwanted) manner.

-Bill


list: foundation-l

from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject:
[Foundation-l] Hi, Jimmy Wales,
	Is there inspectors to investigate admins?

body:
[...]
> Why have the server of Japanese Wikipedia been set on Korea? Very
> heavy and
> terribly unfair!
This is where I started laughing ;-)

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
If your question can be shortened to "are the admins controlled" the
answer is YES! To be exact, by the comunity. The community can appoint
and send away admins, and can control them.

further there is at the dutch wikipedia (and we are somehow weird,
fyi) a community reprepresentative that has access to the
sysop-mailinglist and could shout alarm if the admins were plotting
something bad. Afaik he has never had to use his access to shout
alarm, although he reads almost everything on-list.

@domas: I started earlier, here: "In Japanese Wikipedia all admins
seemes to be anti-Japanese cruel Korean fascists." ;-)

Lodewijk

2006/9/10, Peter Rocky7 <freudianjungianp at hotmail.com>:
> Greetings
>
> I am [[User:Rocky7]].
>
> Is there inspectors to investigate the behaviors of all admins in English
> Wikipedia?
>
> In Japanese Wikipedia there is no inspectors to investigate whether the
> behaviors of admins are right or not, so almost Japanese Wikipedians cannot
> trust admins at all. And it seems very clear that admins abuse sockpuppets
> terribly unfairly. They have been blocking superior Wikipedians one after
> another. They would have done out of jealousy, inferiority complex, and/or
> anti-Japanese hate.
>
> In Japanese Wikipedia all admins seemes to be anti-Japanese cruel Korean
> fascists. They cannot be Japanese characteristically. It is the fact that in
> Korea anti-Japanese cruel Korean fascists have been oppressing pro-Japanese
> people since 2000.
>
> Japanese are peaceful and generous, but Koreans are aggressive and sly (at
> least since 1945).
>
> Why have the server of Japanese Wikipedia been set on Korea? Very heavy and
> terribly unfair!
>
> Who have left the adminships of Japanese Wikipedia to sly anti-Japanese
> Koreans who pretend to be Japanese?
>
> The relation between Japanese and Koreans is the same as that between
> Israeli Jews and (Palestinian) Arabs.
>
> Is there the board of inspectors to investigate the behaviours of all admins
> in English Wikipedia?
> If not, please create it. Now!
> As far as admin's vandalism abusing ordinary Wikipedians is left, it is
> extremely obvious that there is no use preventing anons from creating new
> pages.  The prank like that of [[Siegenthaler Sr]] cannot be settled unless
> admins be re-elected and trusted.
>
> As long as general Wikipedians cannot respect admins, it's the worst method
> to set a limit to releasing the newest version of the article. I don't know
> why the admins of Deutche Wikipedia can take such a silly countermeasure.
>
> After all, The Problem of Wikipedia is evidently the Problem of Admins.
>
> Do you understand?
>
> I hope that there would be wise admins here who can think and act logically
> and help build the ideal of Jimmy Wales.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Rocky7
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get the new Windows Live Messenger!
> http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/default.aspx?locale=en-us&source=wlmailtagline
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wmfcc-l] Living bio patrol on en:wp [[WP:BLPP]]

body:
Well, I'm sure we could come up with a checklist for patrollers as to
whether or not the article is notable, and I can code AfDing into the
MWT version for BLP if there is such a need. In terms of quality
control, we would really need the cleanup taskforce to take a look at
the whole category for a week or so to bring articles up to scratch.

On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/09/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
> > For these and other reasons, en.wp should develop policy limiting
> > living persons articles to primary career facts and academic
> > achievements, current positions held or endeavors, and minimal
> > personal facts. By presenting a minimal set of biographic facts the
> > community can circumvent a large number of internal and external
> > conflicts, whilst avoiding maintenance issues and keeping the
> > articles relevant until such time as the subjects may be viewed in
> > historical context.
>
>
> And, of course, [[WP:LIVING]] has pretty much from its creation said
> what you're asking for here: facts in the article need to be relevant
> to the subject's notability.
>
> (removed developers from the cc:, as I can't see them caring about an
> editorial policy issue)
>
>
> - 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
>


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
Admins are not controlled on the Dutch Wikipedia. At best there is room for
censuring them. Control means that the community enforces behaviour of
admins. When people insist that people do things in a certain way, they have
to appreciate that admins are volunteers. When this urge of control becomes
too much people can and do decide not to be an admin anymore and
consequently all the control the community thought it had is lost.

There is little that cannot be done without having the "buttons" that are
essentially everything that an admin has over a non-admin. When an admin
goes overboard and starts to BAN people for no obvious reason, the admin has
lost his control and is likely to get censured. When a community is
fractured to the extend where opinion is divided in power blocks, we have a
situation where it is questionable to what extend the objectives of having a
WMF project are still primary. This is the situation in several projects
where the main issues are political and/or the dogmatic imposition of rules
that have little to do with the aim of the project.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 9/10/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If your question can be shortened to "are the admins controlled" the
> answer is YES! To be exact, by the comunity. The community can appoint
> and send away admins, and can control them.
>
> further there is at the dutch wikipedia (and we are somehow weird,
> fyi) a community reprepresentative that has access to the
> sysop-mailinglist and could shout alarm if the admins were plotting
> something bad. Afaik he has never had to use his access to shout
> alarm, although he reads almost everything on-list.
>
>
> @domas: I started earlier, here: "In Japanese Wikipedia all admins
> seemes to be anti-Japanese cruel Korean fascists." ;-)
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2006/9/10, Peter Rocky7 <freudianjungianp at hotmail.com>:
> > Greetings
> >
> > I am [[User:Rocky7]].
> >
> > Is there inspectors to investigate the behaviors of all admins in
> English
> > Wikipedia?
> >
> > In Japanese Wikipedia there is no inspectors to investigate whether the
> > behaviors of admins are right or not, so almost Japanese Wikipedians
> cannot
> > trust admins at all. And it seems very clear that admins abuse
> sockpuppets
> > terribly unfairly. They have been blocking superior Wikipedians one
> after
> > another. They would have done out of jealousy, inferiority complex,
> and/or
> > anti-Japanese hate.
> >
> > In Japanese Wikipedia all admins seemes to be anti-Japanese cruel Korean
> > fascists. They cannot be Japanese characteristically. It is the fact
> that in
> > Korea anti-Japanese cruel Korean fascists have been oppressing
> pro-Japanese
> > people since 2000.
> >
> > Japanese are peaceful and generous, but Koreans are aggressive and sly
> (at
> > least since 1945).
> >
> > Why have the server of Japanese Wikipedia been set on Korea? Very heavy
> and
> > terribly unfair!
> >
> > Who have left the adminships of Japanese Wikipedia to sly anti-Japanese
> > Koreans who pretend to be Japanese?
> >
> > The relation between Japanese and Koreans is the same as that between
> > Israeli Jews and (Palestinian) Arabs.
> >
> > Is there the board of inspectors to investigate the behaviours of all
> admins
> > in English Wikipedia?
> > If not, please create it. Now!
> > As far as admin's vandalism abusing ordinary Wikipedians is left, it is
> > extremely obvious that there is no use preventing anons from creating
> new
> > pages.  The prank like that of [[Siegenthaler Sr]] cannot be settled
> unless
> > admins be re-elected and trusted.
> >
> > As long as general Wikipedians cannot respect admins, it's the worst
> method
> > to set a limit to releasing the newest version of the article. I don't
> know
> > why the admins of Deutche Wikipedia can take such a silly
> countermeasure.
> >
> > After all, The Problem of Wikipedia is evidently the Problem of Admins.
> >
> > Do you understand?
> >
> > I hope that there would be wise admins here who can think and act
> logically
> > and help build the ideal of Jimmy Wales.
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Rocky7
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Get the new Windows Live Messenger!
> >
> http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/default.aspx?locale=en-us&source=wlmailtagline
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can anything be done about Deletion Review?

body:
On 10 Sep 2006 at 21:52, "Akash Mehta" <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Best thing since sliced bread. And whats all this about 'top posting'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_styles
http://mailformat.dan.info/quoting/top-posting.html
http://mailformat.dan.info/quoting/bottom-posting.html

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] Enabling import from en.wp to en.wb

body:
Request to a dev, lots of Wikisource wikis have Special:Import enabled (see
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Subdomains_coordination ) in request
based mode.

On 9/10/06, John McC <sb_johnny at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm curious why the import function is not currently
> enabled from between these two projects.
>
> en.wikipedia has a strictly enforced policy of
> deleting articles with "how-to" materials, and/or
> removing sections of articles containing this sort of
> information. See, for example, this category:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_containing_how-to_sections
>
> I also remember seeing quite a few articles on the AfD
> pages which were decided as "Delete/transwiki to
> wikibooks", but don't seem to have shown up on the
> transwiki log at wikibooks (though some are simply
> copied directly to a main namespace location).
>
> The current system just seems broken, for several
> reasons:
>
> 1) Many articles that *are* transwikied end up being
> moved without edit histories, and in one case I had to
> get a WP admin to undelete a series of articles and
> provide the histories.
>
> 2) We (as in the wikibooks admin staff) have no idea
> if new modules (i.e., books or chapters) are
> transwikied or not. We can often make a good guess if
> a new module has a million red links in it, but even
> so this doesn't necessarily tell us where it came
> from.
>
> 3) The current copy/paste method is just unwieldy and
> time consuming. Is there any real reason the import
> function shouldn't be enabled (I've used it on
> wikiversity, and it's quite graceful and easy to use).
>
>
> 4) Many of the articles that are marked as having
> how-to sections contain only a slice of information
> about a topic that might be part of a larger text, and
> stubs just aren't very appropriate to the structure of
> wikibooks. For example, I recently transwikied
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery from
> wikipedia, then placed it in an otherwise empty book
> called Battery Power (
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Battery_Power ). To
> provide structure for filling out the book, it would
> be nice to be able to transwiki related articles (see
> table of contents of the book), which may or may not
> currently contain how-to information, in order to have
> something to build from. (The book could be useful for
> emergency preparedness, energy independence,
> electronics, etc.). This would be much easier to do
> using the import tool.
>
> I'm curious whether there's any strong arguments
> against doing this, or if not, perhaps it could be
> enabled?
>
> -Johnny
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 10/09/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Admins are not controlled on the Dutch Wikipedia. At best there is room for
> censuring them. Control means that the community enforces behaviour of
> admins. When people insist that people do things in a certain way, they have
> to appreciate that admins are volunteers. When this urge of control becomes
> too much people can and do decide not to be an admin anymore and
> consequently all the control the community thought it had is lost.

For comparison, on en:wp -

On en:wp, there was a perception for a long time that admins were
impossible to remove even if they were widely thought to have gone off
the rails. Then in early 2006 a bunch of admins got de-adminned by the
Arbitration Committee after Jimbo asked the AC to look into the matter
in question:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war

So on en:wp, you can get de-adminned if the Arbitration Committee
considers you have gone off the rails in a way that will be damaging
to the encyclopedia project (encyclopedia or community).

The most recent case was someone who'd been in lots of trouble but had
kept their sysop bit because they'd never abused their admin powers as
such; but when they said elsewhere they would, their admin status was
taken away immediately. So upsetting people and being a [[m:dick]]
won't get your sysop powers taken away; abusing the powers is the only
likely cause.

This may change later if it needs to. But it seems workable for now.

- d.


from_name: A

subject: [WikiEN-l] Name pages and disambiguation

body:
About a week ago, [[User:JHunterJ]] revised [[Wikipedia:Manual of
Style (disambiguation pages)]] and then began making sitewide changes
to articles on human names based on his revisions:

"People who happen to have the same given name should not be listed on
a disambiguation page for that name unless they happen to be very
frequently referred to simply by the given name (e.g., Beyonc?,
Regis). If the name is uncommon enough for such a list to be
maintainable (and if it would otherwise meet the WP:LIST guidelines),
consider creating the page [[List of people named Title]] instead."

I have found that a few name pages I monitor with lists of people by
name are magnets for occasional vanity additions, and more common
names will have very long lists. However, such lists seem useful and
interesting for causal readers, so I'm wondering what people think
about balancing utility (especially for causal readers) and page size?
Right now the lists are being removed entirely instead of being moved
to [[List of people named___]]. This has led to protests by some
editors, and he's only part way into the A names (actually, I just
checked and he's now into B names).

My concern is that a lot of information is being removed when he
implements these changes. Sometimes he's adding {{Lookfrom}},
sometimes not, but many of the articles with lists had explanatory
information, not just a list. At the very least, I'd like to see that
information moved to another page rather than deleted outright. I have
asked him to hold off until a few more people had a chance to weigh
in, but he has decided to continue.

Thoughts?


body:
On 10/09/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> ... which is why I've MFD'ed it.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Deletion_review

I'm shocked and amazed mine is the first "kill it".

- d.


body:
On 10/09/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:

>> And, of course, [[WP:LIVING]] has pretty much from its creation said
>> what you're asking for here: facts in the article need to be relevant
>> to the subject's notability.

> No, actually.
> To give an example of what I mean:
> [[Tom DeLay]]

Then that's an example of an existing policy not being followed. I
don't see that adding more policy will make it be followed more. (c.f.
[[m:Instruction creep]].)

I suggest that one needs to convince people that (a) this policy is a
good idea (b) to do the hard work to make sure it's followed and
*reasonably easy* to follow. I think we have (a), we're working on
(b).

- d.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about "External links"

body:
On 08/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am curious if there is any factual data about how many clicks per day, on
> > average, that a run-of-the-mill outbound link receives in the "External
> > links" section of a typical Wikipedia article?  My guess is that it's
> > somewhere around 3 or 4, but that's just me looking at it as a [[Fermi
> > problem]].
> >
>
> Depends on the article they are on but I've seen over 100 claimed on SEO forums.

[checks local logs]

I have a copy of my thesis linked from two pages (it's stunningly
boring, but it's a source for a lot of one and a footnoted cite in
another), and a third locally-hosted page is linked as a source in a
particuarly obscure article.

Between them, they're getting anywhere from one visit per day to two a
week, on average. I can't comment on "external links" sites generally.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> For comparison, on en:wp -
>
> On en:wp, there was a perception for a long time that admins were
> impossible to remove even if they were widely thought to have gone off
> the rails. Then in early 2006 a bunch of admins got de-adminned by the
> Arbitration Committee after Jimbo asked the AC to look into the matter
> in question:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war
>

There were previous simular cases.

Day to day admins are regulated by other admins. I don't think en has
a sysop-mailinglist.

--
geni


body:
On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... which is why I've MFD'ed it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Deletion_review

uh huh. Would people tell me which bit of wikipedia it is going to be
cool to attack next week so things can be better organised?

--
geni


body:
On 10/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > For comparison, on en:wp -
> >  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war

> There were previous simular cases.

Thinking back, I know 172 lost his sysop bit before then, but I do
think that was the big one in establishing that you could lose your
sysop bit for egregious bad behaviour.

> Day to day admins are regulated by other admins. I don't think en has
> a sysop-mailinglist.

Most detailed discussion happens on the admin noticeboards ([[WP:AN]]
and subpages). There's some discussion on the lists, and IRC
#wikipedia-en-admins was set up specifically as an admin matters
discussion space (and a place Danny or Jimbo could go when they needed
quick admin action on sensitive matters).

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia (en:wp) as cultural reference point

body:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/observer/story/0,,1868812,00.html

A review of a quasi-operatic piece about Libya's Col. Gadaffi, done by
the English National Opera and the Asian Dub Foundation. How's this
paragraph strike you:

    "Accentuate that word 'attempt', for the piece signally fails to
answer the questions it raises. The many conflicting sides to the
intriguing figure of Gaddafi are serially presented, uniform by
uniform - liberator, ideologue, religious zealot, mass murderer,
whacko - but the end-product fails to take a position. The first half
is an inert Wikipedia guide to the Libyan leader, a dictator painted
by numbers, and the more animated second a confused morass of
suggestive set-pieces, sending us back into the night to sort it out
over dinner."

I'm struck that en:wp apparently has enough of a perceptible style
that it can serve as a reference point for dullness in an opera
review. The pain of neutrality!

- d.


body:
At least its well referenced :) According to [[WP:V]], the excess
content is acceptable, so there has to be a policy thats accepted and
has been around for a while to challenge that. If there is (and there
appears to be - WP:LIVING), then anyone with time can go through and
cut out unneccessary stuff (get the cleanup taskforce on it, by any
chance?).

On 9/10/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
> On 9-Sep-06, at 2:56 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > On 09/09/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> >
> >> For these and other reasons, en.wp should develop policy limiting
> >> living persons articles to primary career facts and academic
> >> achievements, current positions held or endeavors, and minimal
> >> personal facts. By presenting a minimal set of biographic facts the
> >> community can circumvent a large number of internal and external
> >> conflicts, whilst avoiding maintenance issues and keeping the
> >> articles relevant until such time as the subjects may be viewed in
> >> historical context.
> >
> >
> > And, of course, [[WP:LIVING]] has pretty much from its creation said
> > what you're asking for here: facts in the article need to be relevant
> > to the subject's notability.
> >
> > (removed developers from the cc:, as I can't see them caring about an
> > editorial policy issue)
> >
> >
> > - d.
>
>
> No, actually.
>
> To give an example of what I mean:
>
> [[Tom DeLay]]
>
> {{infobox}}
>
> '''Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay''' (born in [[1947]]) is a former member
> of the [[United States House of Representatives]] from [[Sugar Land,
> Texas|Sugar Land]], [[Texas]], the former [[Majority Leader of the
> United States House of Representatives|House Majority Leader]], and a
> prominent member of the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican
> Party]].
>
> == Early life and education ==
>
> DeLay was born in Laredo, Texas. He spent part of his childhood in
> Venezuela, due to his father's employment. He attended Calallen High
> School in Corpus Christi, Texas, and spent two years as a pre-med
> student at Baylor University. DeLay received a Bachelor of Science
> degree with a major in biology from the University of Houston in 1970.
>
>
>
> == Public service ==
>
>
>
> In 1978, DeLay won the election for an open seat in the Texas House
> of Representatives. He was the first Republican to represent Fort
> Bend County in the state House. DeLay was elected to the federal
> House in 1984, representing the Texas 22nd congressional district,
> after his predecessor, Republican Ron Paul, declined to run for re-
> election.
>
>
>
> DeLay was appointed deputy whip by then-Minority Whip Dick Cheney in
> 1988. When the Republican Party gained control of the House in 1995
> following the 1994 election, DeLay was elected Majority Whip. After
> serving as his party's Whip for eight years, DeLay was elected
> Majority Leader upon the retirement of Dick Armey in 2003. After
> being indicted in Texas on charges related to campaign contributions,
> DeLay stepped down as Majority Whip.
>
>
>
> On April 3, 2006, DeLay announced that he would not run for re-
> election. He also announced his resignation effective June 9, 2006,
> and that he planned to form a lobbying firm that would work to
> support conservative issues.
>
>
>
> </example>
>
> Compare to the extant article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay
>
> ?
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 10/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Amgine wrote:

> >>> For these and other reasons, en.wp should develop policy limiting
> >>> living persons articles to primary career facts and academic
> >>> achievements, current positions held or endeavors, and minimal
> >>> personal facts. By presenting a minimal set of biographic facts the
> >>> community can circumvent a large number of internal and external
> >>> conflicts, whilst avoiding maintenance issues and keeping the
> >>> articles relevant until such time as the subjects may be viewed in
> >>> historical context.

> I think that way of putting it seems a bit extreme.  In the example
> under discussion [[Tom Delay]], it seems pretty clear that the article
> is much stronger due to the inclusion of much more than some minimal set
> of facts.

Yes. One bad example is not a reason to adopt a policy with the
specific goal of making living bio articles as useless as possible.

I wonder what the readers want from Wikipedia bio articles.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Clickable images

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>I don't see [[:en:mystery meat navigation]] or requiring the user to
>have a computer with a mouse - let alone a specifically two or more
>button mouse - as a likely solution to anything for Wikimedia or
>MediaWiki.
>
A mouse is notable as a mystery meat in restaurants of a certain class.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Clickable images


list: textbook-l

from_name: Andrew Whitworth

subject: [Textbook-l] Problem with NPOV

body:
A problem with wikibooks at the moment is that we don't have any formal
statement of the wikibooks "mission statement" anywhere, and we also don't
have any formal accepted definition of what precisely a "textbook" is, how
one is identified, etc. If we want to measure textbooks against the standard
that they must be used in an "accredited institution", that begs the
question what we mean by "accredited". Accredited by whom, precisely? There
are plenty of educational institutions that are "accredited" by all sorts of
bogus agencies, and there are plenty of educational institutions that are
not "accredited", but which do teach valuable, meaningful courses and
lessons to students.

Consider for instance an "accredited institution" that teaches phrenology,
astrology, etc. Such an institution would certainly be accredited by groups
that advocate such topics, but neither the educational institution, nor the
accrediting agency would be listed as "respected". Consider now the
existance of community organizations that teach informal classes to children
and the elderly. These organizations would certainly not be "accredited",
but they can certainly teach valuable lessons to the respective students.

Jimbo: If you want us to use a specific defintion of "textbook" and
"accredited institution", then you are going to have to mandate such
definitions to us. At the moment we are picking our way through such
matters, with varying degrees of success.

-- Andrew Whitworth "Whiteknight"

>From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
>Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <textbook-l at wikimedia.org>
>To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <textbook-l at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Problem with NPOV
>Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2006 07:51:43 -0400
>
>Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz wrote:
> > What do you think of
> > http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Christianity/Living_as_a_Christian and
> >
>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Imamat_or_Successorship_After_the_Last_Prophet_of_God#Successorship?
> >
> >
> > I noticed there are more and more users who contribute to books that
> > are made with strongly islamic point of view (we already have some
> > texts about islam: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:Islam), with
> > nicks like "Truebeliever", "Believer" etc. I'm afraid that we might
> > attract some zealots who see us as a good place to develop
> > propaganda. Generally, I think that we should think how we should
> > treat books about religious topics.
>
>1. NPOV is crucial.  Textbooks are not advocacy.  They are to instruct
>and inform, not brainwash and convert (in either direction!).
>
>2. Wikibooks is for _textbooks_, not any random sort of nonfiction book.
>   One of the tests we should use is: "Does this book serve the specific
>textbok needs of any actual class offered at any actual accredited
>institution?"  That will be a good way to cut out a lot of nonsense at
>the start.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>Textbook-l mailing list
>Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Akash Mehta wrote:
> On 9/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Indeed. Any process that results in a group nomination of 61 articles
>> and allows both group votes and individual voting on each specific
>> article like this is a horrendous mess. What sense can possibly be made
>> of all the "keep most" and "delete most" votes?
>
> Absolutely. Each article should have some form of individual entry
> with a quick method of voting for or against, and an overall comments
> section at the bottom. Then again, the whole deletion review principle
> appears to serve an insignificant and problematic need. Maybe a MfD?
>

... of DRV? Excellent idea.

PS. I've never been too fond of the name "Deletion review" - sounds like
 some sort of revisionist history/slander site...

--
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

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body:
On 10/09/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh, and thanks to people claiming the "DRV doesn't have a snowball's
> chance in hell of being deleted" (despite the fact that several people
> were strongly in favour), I've now created the proposed policy of
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_Undeletion for your
> perusal.

Well, it arguably didn't, regrettable as that is.

Possible workable split: DRV for strict process review; AFU for merit
undeletion.

- d.


body:
On 9/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Indeed. Any process that results in a group nomination of 61 articles
> and allows both group votes and individual voting on each specific
> article like this is a horrendous mess. What sense can possibly be made
> of all the "keep most" and "delete most" votes?
Absolutely. Each article should have some form of individual entry
with a quick method of voting for or against, and an overall comments
section at the bottom. Then again, the whole deletion review principle
appears to serve an insignificant and problematic need. Maybe a MfD?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is Dangerous

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_is_Dangerous

This is barely a skeleton as yet. Ideas and examples welcomed.

- d.


from_name: Jason Potkanski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is Dangerous

body:
Excellent, I was planning on writing a Process is Good...rant/essay.

For a reason on why process is BAD, however...See [[Taylorism]] and

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2003/0903scharf.html

Perhaps a [[scripted talk]] is a article candidate?

-jtp Electrawn

On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_is_Dangerous
>
> This is barely a skeleton as yet. Ideas and examples welcomed.
>
>
> - 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
>


body:
On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Amgine wrote:
>
> > >>> For these and other reasons, en.wp should develop policy limiting
> > >>> living persons articles to primary career facts and academic
> > >>> achievements, current positions held or endeavors, and minimal
> > >>> personal facts. By presenting a minimal set of biographic facts the
> > >>> community can circumvent a large number of internal and external
> > >>> conflicts, whilst avoiding maintenance issues and keeping the
> > >>> articles relevant until such time as the subjects may be viewed in
> > >>> historical context.
>
> > I think that way of putting it seems a bit extreme.  In the example
> > under discussion [[Tom Delay]], it seems pretty clear that the article
> > is much stronger due to the inclusion of much more than some minimal set
> > of facts.
>
>
> Yes. One bad example is not a reason to adopt a policy with the
> specific goal of making living bio articles as useless as possible.
>
> I wonder what the readers want from Wikipedia bio articles.
>

Hard to say, but...

* Legally, can't be libelous/defaming.
* Probably don't want to read like a tabloid journal
* Probably don't want to be like a book biography... "Mr X took a
number 2 on Nov 5th, 1985 in the 2nd floor bathroom...he usually goes
to the 3rd floor bathroom."

Compared to a who's who or book biography.

* Shouldn't be completely Positive smiley happy happy - all negatives scrubbed.
* Should touch on recent events/litigation - up to date as of now.
* Learn something interesting or unknown - trivia.
* Make the person look human - care.

That last one is the tough one...Not only do editors need to be civil
with each other, they need to be civil with the subjects they right
about. Underneath, they have families and bleed red just like you.
Using [[Tom Delay]], you would think the guy belonged in the same
class as Sadam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. (Not quite hitler or bin
ladin).

-Electrawn


body:
On 9/10/06, Jason Potkanski <electrawn at electrawn.com> wrote:
> On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > Amgine wrote:
> >
> > > >>> For these and other reasons, en.wp should develop policy limiting
> > > >>> living persons articles to primary career facts and academic
> > > >>> achievements, current positions held or endeavors, and minimal
> > > >>> personal facts. By presenting a minimal set of biographic facts the
> > > >>> community can circumvent a large number of internal and external
> > > >>> conflicts, whilst avoiding maintenance issues and keeping the
> > > >>> articles relevant until such time as the subjects may be viewed in
> > > >>> historical context.
> >
> > > I think that way of putting it seems a bit extreme.  In the example
> > > under discussion [[Tom Delay]], it seems pretty clear that the article
> > > is much stronger due to the inclusion of much more than some minimal set
> > > of facts.
> >
> >
> > Yes. One bad example is not a reason to adopt a policy with the
> > specific goal of making living bio articles as useless as possible.
> >
> > I wonder what the readers want from Wikipedia bio articles.
> >
>
> Hard to say, but...
>
> * Legally, can't be libelous/defaming.
> * Probably don't want to read like a tabloid journal
> * Probably don't want to be like a book biography... "Mr X took a
> number 2 on Nov 5th, 1985 in the 2nd floor bathroom...he usually goes
> to the 3rd floor bathroom."
>
> Compared to a who's who or book biography.
>
> * Shouldn't be completely Positive smiley happy happy - all negatives scrubbed.
> * Should touch on recent events/litigation - up to date as of now.
> * Learn something interesting or unknown - trivia.
> * Make the person look human - care.
>
> That last one is the tough one...Not only do editors need to be civil
> with each other, they need to be civil with the subjects they right
> about. Underneath, they have families and bleed red just like you.
> Using [[Tom Delay]], you would think the guy belonged in the same
> class as Sadam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. (Not quite hitler or bin
> ladin).
>
> -Electrawn
>

right->write. Embarassing, but in retrospect, a good pun.


body:
On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Maybe a MfD?
> >
>
> ... of DRV? Excellent idea.
>
> PS. I've never been too fond of the name "Deletion review" - sounds like
> some sort of revisionist history/slander site...
Well, I personally felt it fitted into the 'Miscellany' thing well.
Didn't CVU have an MfD? And deletion review (from a en:wp perspective)
seems like a policy to handle a policy (deletion policy) to handle
stuff that fails policy.


body:
On 9/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/09/06, Jason Potkanski <electrawn at electrawn.com> wrote:
> > On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I wonder what the readers want from Wikipedia bio articles.
> >
> > Hard to say, but...
> >
> > * Legally, can't be libelous/defaming.
> > * Probably don't want to read like a tabloid journal
> > * Probably don't want to be like a book biography... "Mr X took a
> > number 2 on Nov 5th, 1985 in the 2nd floor bathroom...he usually goes
> > to the 3rd floor bathroom."
> >
> > Compared to a who's who or book biography.
> >
> > * Shouldn't be completely Positive smiley happy happy - all negatives scrubbed.
> > * Should touch on recent events/litigation - up to date as of now.
> > * Learn something interesting or unknown - trivia.
> > * Make the person look human - care.
>
> Basically, what this seems to boil down to: we want a comprehensive,
> well-written, broadsheet obituary which quotes its sources.
>
> IME, you can write surprisingly good biographies by taking two or
> three obituaries, using them to fill in each others gaps, and
> expanding on anything specialised. Of course, using that technique for
> someone who isn't dead yet isn't possible... but perhaps we can turn
> it around -
>
> If the subject of this article died tonight, would you be completely
> shocked to open the Times or the Guardian or the Telegraph and find a
> copy of this, slightly fixed up, filling half the obituary section?
>
> If so, it's a decent article. If not, why not?
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

You don't think that some news organizations don't have that stuff
ready to go? heh heh...

http://news.com.com/CNN+postings+send+some+to+early+graves/2100-1025_3-997367.html

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/cnnobit1.html

-jtp Electrawn


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  BC vs BCE era names

body:
"Bill Clark" <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:741500800609082032x7df90e7by572b2d8c1447ae34 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 9/8/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
> >    While I do not like the idea of someone using AWB to go through and
> > change one to the other.  If the feature works well enough in the
> > preferences they could go through and rewikify the dates to make the
> > feature detect them (leaving the displayed version alone).  I think that
> > is what is currently done when someone wikifies [[June 22, 2005]] a bot
> > of some sort comes and changes it.
>
[SNIP]
>
> I'm leaning toward having the parser just rewrite the display text as
> well as the link itself, since the other "reasonable" alternative is
> to leave the display text alone, and (assuming we put in place my
> BC/BCE rewriting patch) this could result in aesthetically unappealing
> situations where BCE and AD are mixed in a date range, if the user has
> BCE set as their preference (or BC and CE mixed for users who prefer
> BC).
>
> The display text is already provided automatically for users who set a
> preference and for wikilinked dates that don't already include display
> text, so there's already an expectation that dates won't necessarily
> display according to the regular rules of interpreting wikicode.
> Rewriting display text would make it impossible for editors to specify
> something other than what users prefer to see, but I can't think of
> any situations where that would be truly disasterous.
>

Why not have a rewrite rule, that looks at the format of the display text
and rewrites it only if appropriate?

e.g.

[[1976|AD 1976]] is detected as being an AD date, and rewritten if necessary
[[1976|the following year]] does not match, so no changes are made.

If the display text matches Year Epoch or Epoch Year (where Epoch = BC, AD,
BCE or CE and ignoring case and whitespace) then rewrite according to user
preferences, in all other cases leave as it is.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


body:
On 9/10/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >     "Accentuate that word 'attempt', for the piece signally fails to
> > answer the questions it raises. The many conflicting sides to the
> > intriguing figure of Gaddafi are serially presented, uniform by
> > uniform - liberator, ideologue, religious zealot, mass murderer,
> > whacko - but the end-product fails to take a position. The first half
> > is an inert Wikipedia guide to the Libyan leader, a dictator painted
> > by numbers, and the more animated second a confused morass of
> > suggestive set-pieces, sending us back into the night to sort it out
> > over dinner."
> >
> > I'm struck that en:wp apparently has enough of a perceptible style
> > that it can serve as a reference point for dullness in an opera
> > review. The pain of neutrality!
>
> I disagree that that's how it reads.  It sounds to me like they're
> saying "laying out the facts without any enterpretation" which is, of
> course, a good thing, and I don't think it's used pejoritively there
> except in that operas shouldn't be so tame!
>
> --
> Sam

Sounds like its a two act opera. Maybe they are reading the wikipedia
article on Gaddafi verbatim on stage?

The use of the word guide is interesting.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/article ,
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/guide . Do we have articles or guides?
If they are articles, the perception is a stricter factual view. For
guides, the rules loosen a bit.

-jtp Electrawn


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grandmother copyrighted anonymous works

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> ... Closest I've come to this is e.g. uploading an image by
> [[:en:User:Arkady Rose]] (my girlfriend) to Commons because she can't
> be bothered creating Yet Another Login. I uploaded it myself and said
> it was by her and put there under copyleft-self (dual GFDL and
> CC-by-sa) with her permission.

And then there's the related case of photographs taken "under
direction" (my camera, my idea, but you held it and pushed the button).
This has a sort of "work for non-hire" feel to it, and I'm sure
it's been discussed at length, too.  I mention it now because I
just came across an amusing example: [[Image:Thisisspinaltap.jpg]].
Summary (by [[User:Brainhell]]): "this is my picture of me getting
a spinal tap".


from_name: Bradypus

subject:
[Foundation-l] Hi, Jimmy Wales,
	Is there inspectors to 	investigate admins?

body:
From: "Domas Mituzas" <midom.lists at gmail.com>
> [...]
>> Why have the server of Japanese Wikipedia been set on Korea? Very
>> heavy and
>> terribly unfair!
> This is where I started laughing ;-)

I was already concinced it was a joke at that point.
It was a joke, wasn't it?

Bradipus


from_name: John McC

subject: [Textbook-l] Problem with NPOV, and the textbook definition question

body:
Actually, 2 of our philosophy books are rather
missionary too, one mostly advocating for a "Universal
Religion". I don't think there's any baby in that
bathwater... both the religious groups and the athiest
groups should just start another wiki without the NPOV
restriction. I suppose there could be "relative point
of view", but even then it seems the relative groups
would get pretty small (i.e., "A baptist, a
pentecostal, and an episcopalian go into a bar to try
to write a wikibook on christian doctrine... <insert
punchline here>").

I think keeping the textbook definition fairly vague
is better than pigeon-holing it. Aside from texts that
might be used for graduate school through
kindergarden, there is other materials that might be
used for emergency preparedness and response,
scouting, etc. Even some of the most mundane of the
how-tos (how to tie a tie, shaving, etc.) might be a
good "textbook for the school of life" if a single mom
is trying to help her male child get better
opportunities.

A book on frisbee golf (not sure if there is one, but
there probably will be eventually) can be used in gym
class or by a father and son tossing team. The first
aid book can be used to train EMTs or 10 year olds. A
book on horticulture can help train agricultural
workers, as could a book on agriculture help gardeners
get a leg up. The cookbook might be good for culinary
school, while at the same time being useful for anyone
who eats.

I do understand the dislike for video game guides... I
don't think I'd want to see a book on "how to use a
beer bong" for similar reasons. Some video games are
(I'm told) educational, and I think having something
about them might be ok. Shoot-em-up games (etc.) might
be good for hand-eye coordination, but having a book
about the game isn't necessarily going to enhance
this.

IOW, textbooks need to be useful for building mind,
body, career opportunities, and perhaps houses, but
should they be written for building (or debunking)
souls? That way leads to somewhere we might not want
to go.

-johnny.

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


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
The import-functionality is standard not active. You can ask for
community backup and request it then per bugzilla.wikimedia.org .

Greetings, Lodewijk

2006/9/10, John McC <sb_johnny at yahoo.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I'm curious why the import function is not currently
> enabled from between these two projects.
>
> en.wikipedia has a strictly enforced policy of
> deleting articles with "how-to" materials, and/or
> removing sections of articles containing this sort of
> information. See, for example, this category:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_containing_how-to_sections
>
> I also remember seeing quite a few articles on the AfD
> pages which were decided as "Delete/transwiki to
> wikibooks", but don't seem to have shown up on the
> transwiki log at wikibooks (though some are simply
> copied directly to a main namespace location).
>
> The current system just seems broken, for several
> reasons:
>
> 1) Many articles that *are* transwikied end up being
> moved without edit histories, and in one case I had to
> get a WP admin to undelete a series of articles and
> provide the histories.
>
> 2) We (as in the wikibooks admin staff) have no idea
> if new modules (i.e., books or chapters) are
> transwikied or not. We can often make a good guess if
> a new module has a million red links in it, but even
> so this doesn't necessarily tell us where it came
> from.
>
> 3) The current copy/paste method is just unwieldy and
> time consuming. Is there any real reason the import
> function shouldn't be enabled (I've used it on
> wikiversity, and it's quite graceful and easy to use).
>
>
> 4) Many of the articles that are marked as having
> how-to sections contain only a slice of information
> about a topic that might be part of a larger text, and
> stubs just aren't very appropriate to the structure of
> wikibooks. For example, I recently transwikied
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery from
> wikipedia, then placed it in an otherwise empty book
> called Battery Power (
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Battery_Power ). To
> provide structure for filling out the book, it would
> be nice to be able to transwiki related articles (see
> table of contents of the book), which may or may not
> currently contain how-to information, in order to have
> something to build from. (The book could be useful for
> emergency preparedness, energy independence,
> electronics, etc.). This would be much easier to do
> using the import tool.
>
> I'm curious whether there's any strong arguments
> against doing this, or if not, perhaps it could be
> enabled?
>
> -Johnny
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


references:
<fbad4e140609091156q244a5ef1l14fa27db579b041c@mail.gmail.com>
	<42f90dc00609091350od7c889fnbc37b8946270f788@mail.gmail.com>
	<6ac0ff0e0609091723x23d634b6i5d1e1c6a71cbafc8@mail.gmail.com>
	<qfm7g29auri3sio8eofhta3eqitnnr89dt@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 20:23:11 -0400, "Carl Peterson"
> <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Speaking of process votes, one of the biggest problems I see with DRV is
>> that it becomes a second AFD. For example, if you look at the DRV for the
>> CVU you'll notice that most of the comments (including some of my own) had
>> more to do with the original delete/keep discussion that took place in the
>> MfD than it did with whether or not policy was followed in the way the MfD
>> was closed.
>
> It is strange that you see it this way.  As far as I can see, DRV is
> one of the few places where there is a serious attempt at a clue-based
> approach.  Whatever the notional rules, people look at both content
> and process, and take a view on what is likely to be best for the
> project.
>

You have GOT to be joking. Process all the way, baby. Screw the content,
so long as all the "votes" were "counted" and the "process" was
"followed correctly", the result stands. Just about every time I've
looked at the scrapheap (which isn't many btw.), it's been a slather of:

"(whatever the AFD result was), valid AFD ~~~~"

<snip>
> In the case of the esoteric programming languages, overall, most of
> them were below the level of trivial and in many cases looked like
> vanity for the creators.  Several people at DRV asked that those which
> were considered to have been wrongly deleted, be listed separately,
> since the majority were clearly (to my mind) delete-worthy.
>

For what it's worth, I tend to agree with the outcome.

> But I do think that AfD is not a good mechanism for deciding on a
> class of articles.  Maybe a block RfC to discuss the individual
> articles, with an AfD nom at the end for those which by consensus in
> that discussion should be deleted.
>

Until there's an "editorial board", nothing else will ever really work,
because any peanut in the gallery can shout out their opinion. Wikipedia
is an encyclopedia, not an experiment in mob rule.

--
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

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from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Akash Mehta wrote:
> >
> > Maybe a MfD?
>
> ... of DRV? Excellent idea.

Or simply delete it, a la Uncle Ed.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
Akash Mehta wrote:
> On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an experiment in mob rule.
>
>
> Are you quite sure about that?
>

Hrm, I don't know. How about this one:

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

It's not anarchy, it's not democracy, it's not bureaucracy.

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

--
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

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body:
Akash Mehta wrote:
[fixed top posting, again]
> On 9/10/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Akash Mehta wrote:
>>>> Maybe a MfD?
>>>
>>> ... of DRV? Excellent idea.
>>
>> Or simply delete it, a la Uncle Ed.
>>
>
> Without wasting the time of a sysop to delete it, a respected user to
>  raise questions regarding its deletion, a newbie to complain that
> they lost a lot of work in it, another respected user to realise this
> deserves an RfC, yet another sysop to look at the comments made by 10
> other respected users in the RfC... Ah, process.
>

... which is why I've MFD'ed it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Deletion_review

--
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

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from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>     "Accentuate that word 'attempt', for the piece signally fails to
> answer the questions it raises. The many conflicting sides to the
> intriguing figure of Gaddafi are serially presented, uniform by
> uniform - liberator, ideologue, religious zealot, mass murderer,
> whacko - but the end-product fails to take a position. The first half
> is an inert Wikipedia guide to the Libyan leader, a dictator painted
> by numbers, and the more animated second a confused morass of
> suggestive set-pieces, sending us back into the night to sort it out
> over dinner."
>
> I'm struck that en:wp apparently has enough of a perceptible style
> that it can serve as a reference point for dullness in an opera
> review. The pain of neutrality!

I disagree that that's how it reads.  It sounds to me like they're
saying "laying out the facts without any enterpretation" which is, of
course, a good thing, and I don't think it's used pejoritively there
except in that operas shouldn't be so tame!

--
Sam


subject: [Foundation-l] Observer story on China and Wikipedia

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>FYI - silly headline for a self-serving (for The Observer) article.
>
>Yes, Wikipedia is defying Chinese censors by... er... well... doing
>nothing and being itself.
>---
>Wikipedia defies China's censors
>
>David Smith and Jo Revill
>Sunday September 10, 2006
>The Observer
>
>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1869006,00.html
>
I couldn't help noticing the paragraphs at the end:

> Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has said that the company
> compromised its principles by accepting Chinese censorship. He said it
> was 'a set of rules that we weren't comfortable with.'

With capitalism as a guiding principle he's uncomfortable all the way to
the bank.

> ? Members of the US Congress have championed the Global Online Freedom
> Act in a bid to stop major internet companies co-operating with
> regimes that restrict free expression, including Belarus, China, Cuba,
> Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, North Korea, Tunisia and Vietnam.
>
The US Congress is, as ever, secure in the belief that two wrongs do
make a right.  Apart from China, have any of these taken consistent
steps against Wikipedia.  Even North Korea doesn't discriminate against
us; apparently it just blocks everything.

Ec


from_name: Akash Mehta

body:
Without wasting the time of a sysop to delete it, a respected user to raise
questions regarding its deletion, a newbie to complain that they lost a lot
of work in it, another respected user to realise this deserves an RfC, yet
another sysop to look at the comments made by 10 other respected users in
the RfC... Ah, process.

On 9/10/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Akash Mehta wrote:
> > >
> > > Maybe a MfD?
> >
> > ... of DRV? Excellent idea.
>
> Or simply delete it, a la Uncle Ed.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> 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 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an experiment in mob rule.

Are you quite sure about that?


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
Some people have tried to do this before.  I disagree.

In general, rewriting policy yourself and then acting as if it's the
"will of the community" is frowned upon.

-Matt


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 10/09/06, A <jokestress at gmail.com> wrote:

> My concern is that a lot of information is being removed when he
> implements these changes. Sometimes he's adding {{Lookfrom}},
> sometimes not, but many of the articles with lists had explanatory
> information, not just a list. At the very least, I'd like to see that
> information moved to another page rather than deleted outright. I have
> asked him to hold off until a few more people had a chance to weigh
> in, but he has decided to continue.
> Thoughts?

Take it to [[WP:ANI]]. If he's been disruptive enough, he'll get
blocked and his changes mass-reverted.

(If it turns out he hasn't, of course, you might.)

- d.


body:
Best thing since sliced bread. And whats all this about 'top posting'?

On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> ... which is why I've MFD'ed it.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Deletion_review
>


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

>>
>>Wikipedia defies China's censors
>>
>>
>>
>
>
It's their country, it's communist, and there are not guaranteed rights
for those people. I find it interesting to discuss the Demoncratic
Revolt with the censors - I doubt they want salt rubbed in that old
wound and embrassment for their government . Near as I can tell, most of
the hacking is done by their government officials anyway to shut down
Wikipedia mirror and primary sites. They've been hacking wikigadugi.org
since it was setup to the point I have disabled SSHD on the external
Intenet addresses for the Server Proxy Caches. I've got the DNS entries
setup to randomly swap out unique Dynamic IP addresses for China IP
ranges for the proxies so their blocking does not work at my site - it
cycles through new IP addresses about once a week, and from what I can
tell several schools in China are getting access to the English content.

Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is Dangerous

body:
On 10/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_is_Dangerous
> This is barely a skeleton as yet. Ideas and examples welcomed.

With useful adds from Ummit and a pile of stuff from Phil Sandifer,
this is looking much more essay-shaped. Further additions,
suggestions, comments and (especially) strong disagreement is
welcomed.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is Dangerous

body:
ig

On 10/09/06, Jason Potkanski <electrawn at electrawn.com> wrote:

> Excellent, I was planning on writing a Process is Good...rant/essay.

Last year was the big year of "process will destroy Wikipedia" versus
"ignoring the rules will destroy Wikipedia", and that's when the
essays linked at the top were written.

> For a reason on why process is BAD, however...See [[Taylorism]] and
> http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2003/0903scharf.html
> Perhaps a [[scripted talk]] is a article candidate?

A friend of mine said "You know how Wikipedia was having a funds drive
recently? they should open a shop selling spools of Wikipedia branded
red tape."

- d.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 10/09/06, Jason Potkanski <electrawn at electrawn.com> wrote:
> On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I wonder what the readers want from Wikipedia bio articles.
>
> Hard to say, but...
>
> * Legally, can't be libelous/defaming.
> * Probably don't want to read like a tabloid journal
> * Probably don't want to be like a book biography... "Mr X took a
> number 2 on Nov 5th, 1985 in the 2nd floor bathroom...he usually goes
> to the 3rd floor bathroom."
>
> Compared to a who's who or book biography.
>
> * Shouldn't be completely Positive smiley happy happy - all negatives scrubbed.
> * Should touch on recent events/litigation - up to date as of now.
> * Learn something interesting or unknown - trivia.
> * Make the person look human - care.

Basically, what this seems to boil down to: we want a comprehensive,
well-written, broadsheet obituary which quotes its sources.

IME, you can write surprisingly good biographies by taking two or
three obituaries, using them to fill in each others gaps, and
expanding on anything specialised. Of course, using that technique for
someone who isn't dead yet isn't possible... but perhaps we can turn
it around -

If the subject of this article died tonight, would you be completely
shocked to open the Times or the Guardian or the Telegraph and find a
copy of this, slightly fixed up, filling half the obituary section?

If so, it's a decent article. If not, why not?

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-11

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

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 Template infinite loop... 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: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cluesticks needed regarding WP:BLP and WP:RS

body:
On 9/9/06, Jason Potkanski <electrawn at electrawn.com> wrote:

> Greetings, Electrawn here. I think this is a perfect opportunity to
> introduce myself since I am being flamed on the list here without a proper
> invite

I don't feel that I've flamed you, but I have raised questions (in
what was, I admit, a rather strident tone) about your judgement and
your interpretation of policy, which is a different thing entirely and
I'm sorry if I offended you.  In my original message I chose not to
identify users by name to avoid this becoming a debate about
particular personalities. I also chose not to be specific about what
articles I was referring to as I was interested in discussing the
broader issues affecting all articles instead of the minutiae of a
particular article, which belongs on that article's talk page.
Instead, you've chosen to personally attack me and drag out the
details of a single article, neither of which is particularly
productive here.

I do want to clear up some of your misstatements regarding the Jeff
Gannon matter. I am not "in arbitration" regarding this matter, or in
anything at all except in a dispute with another user (more about him
in a minute).  An op-ed piece (one which I personally haven't read and
have not proposed using for a source) was not the source for calling
Gannon a prostitute, but was merely one of many mainstream media
sources presented by multiple editors as substantiating the fact that
Gannon advertised his sexual services.  The "repeated reversions" I
have made were reverting that user who wished to remove all mention of
this from every WP article that mentioned Gannon.

And thank you for mentioning the issue of the Southern Voice, which is
perhaps the most appalling of your policy interpretations, which would
prohibit all LGBT publications from being used in Wikipedia.  Would
you propose the same thing about Ebony?  Univision? If not, why not?
What is the difference? Even if you subscribed to the ludicrous idea
that all LGBT publications are too "partisan" and thus "unreliable",
the proposed use of the Southern Voice was not to provide facts about
Phillips, but to substantiate the fact that some LGBT organizations
criticized Phillips.  We do, of course, want to consider issues of
undue weight and prevent WP articles for being overwhelmed with
criticism, but the things you have proposed would serve to eliminate
legitimate criticism from Wikipedia articles and disqualify many
mainstream, reputable sources from being used in those articles.

As for your LPU, you mention (while taking a moment to attack me) that
you invited "all sorts of people" to participate.  You invited 17.
They included the user who wished to scrub all mention of Gannon's
former occupation from WP, who mentions on his user page that he's
from a conservative messageboard and declares his mission here is to
"correct" WP's "liberal bias".  Another was an editor who uses his
user space to denounce about 20 or so editors by name and until fairly
recently had them under a "list of weasels" or somesuch.  These were
the people you thought would be good to recruit, and of course they
eagerly signed up.  I thought the small number of members and the
relatively high proportion of problem users among them was alarming.
This was the main reason I thought it was imperative to bring your
project to the attention of more users.

Several times in your long message you repeat the acronym soup, to, in
your words "beat this in like a headon commercial."  We're not idiots
here, we are aware of these policies.  What is needed is a thoughtful
application of these policies, not a simplistic mantra.  Chanting BLP!
BLP! BLP! doesn't automatically make you right, or does it mean those
who disagree with you want to stuff WP with libel.  (Now with 20
percent more libel!) Mentioning reliably sourced unflattering facts is
not libel.  Mentioning criticism of the subject of the article is not
libel.  But you've recruited a bunch of POV warriors to go around
stripping WP articles of unflattering things about their fellow
political party members (BLP! BLP! BLP!) with no oversight and no
means to watch the watchmen.  This coupled with your wildly
over-expansive interpretation of BLP makes me conclude that you should
not be playing a key role in interpreting the policy or implementing
how it is enforced.


body:
Bradypus wrote:

>Demoncratic Revolt? I like it, but is sounds spooky ;-)
>
>From: "Jeffrey V. Merkey" <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com>
>
>
>
>>I find it interesting to discuss the Demoncratic Revolt with the censors
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
typo. I meant "democratic".

:-)

Jeff


body:
geni wrote:
> On 9/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ... which is why I've MFD'ed it.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Deletion_review
>
> uh huh. Would people tell me which bit of wikipedia it is going to be
> cool to attack next week so things can be better organised?
>

Next week we're taking out stub-sorting and introducing captchas to
break all the semi-bots; only users with a bot flag will be exempt.

Oh, and thanks to people claiming the "DRV doesn't have a snowball's
chance in hell of being deleted" (despite the fact that several people
were strongly in favour), I've now created the proposed policy of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_Undeletion for your
perusal.

--
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

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body:
On 9/10/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/9/06, Jason Potkanski <electrawn at electrawn.com> wrote:
>
> > Greetings, Electrawn here. I think this is a perfect opportunity to
> > introduce myself since I am being flamed on the list here without a proper
> > invite
>
> I don't feel that I've flamed you, but I have raised questions (in
> what was, I admit, a rather strident tone) about your judgement and
> your interpretation of policy, which is a different thing entirely and
> I'm sorry if I offended you.  In my original message I chose not to
> identify users by name to avoid this becoming a debate about
> particular personalities. I also chose not to be specific about what
> articles I was referring to as I was interested in discussing the
> broader issues affecting all articles instead of the minutiae of a
> particular article, which belongs on that article's talk page.
> Instead, you've chosen to personally attack me and drag out the
> details of a single article, neither of which is particularly
> productive here.

I am not offended. I don't feel I was personally attack, nor was the
response a personal attack. The post was framed to a single point of
view, designed to solicit yes men drum beating. We agree to disagree.

>
> I do want to clear up some of your misstatements regarding the Jeff
> Gannon matter. I am not "in arbitration" regarding this matter, or in
> anything at all except in a dispute with another user (more about him
> in a minute).  An op-ed piece (one which I personally haven't read and
> have not proposed using for a source) was not the source for calling
> Gannon a prostitute, but was merely one of many mainstream media
> sources presented by multiple editors as substantiating the fact that
> Gannon advertised his sexual services.  The "repeated reversions" I
> have made were reverting that user who wished to remove all mention of
> this from every WP article that mentioned Gannon.

Personal: If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck...quacks like a duck...

Real World: (My opinion, legal expert needed) If not true, this is
libel. Big...center of the bullseye in the dartboard Libel.

Wikipedia BLP Articles:  When in doubt, keep it out...when not in
doubt, bring back in. Don't revert.

Wikipedia Other Articles: Let eventualism ring. Do revert.

Analysis: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=jeff+gannon+prostitute .

Actual Prostitute:

- Primary Reliable Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1416370,00.html, a
reliable UK source, dares call him a prostitute.

- Primary RS: The Independant, another UK reliable source, possibly
calls him a hooker in an article title. I am having trouble finding
the article text.

Numerous Unreliable primary sources such as blogs make the claim.

Involved with prostitution:

- PRS: NY Daily News,
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/279556p-239417c.html
 "after left-leaning Internet bloggers discovered possible ties to gay
prostitution."

- PRS: Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36733-2005Feb18.html .
"naked pictures have appeared on a number of gay escort sites"

Deeper:

AP Archives have nothing on "Jeff Gannon" AND prost* or "Jeff Gannon"
AND escort.

LexisNexis alacarte for "Jeff Gannon Prostitute" turns up 500 hits.
Now we have some real meaty RS all over the place, some claiming he is
a prostitute.

No secondary sources were easily located.

Conclusions: Big mainstream US media doesn't dare make the jump to "A
prostitute." They hover around escort and involved with prostitution.
Mainstream UK Media seems to jump right out and say "a prostitute."
Smalltime US media, but still many reliable sources, seem to
occasionally say "a prostitute."

Questions:
* What is right for wikipedia: ...a prostitute? alleged prostitute
(Note:No charges filed)? involved with prostitution? involved with an
gay escort service? involved with an homosexual escort service? nude
pictures on a escort service website? Leave out alltogether?
   -(I personally say leave out all together, lack of journalistic
credentials enough is to tell the story. Parading as a prostitute is
notable and widely reported, however, the guy is human and needs to
make a living. Does this need to be in a biography, especially when
defamation considerations are in play?)
* How many sources is enough to back up potential defamation? One? Two? Three?
   -(I say at least three.)
* United States versus British media as defamation backing sources?
Basically, if the US big boys aren't going to stick their necks out,
can wikipedia? Are foreign backed sources enough? Are smalltime US
sources enough?

However, if all these sources are relying on just one source, thats a
big hmm for another discussion.

Final: Before searching Lexis Nexis, I was pretty sure that prostitute
should stay out. After,   I feel its use may hold weight.

> And thank you for mentioning the issue of the Southern Voice, which is
> perhaps the most appalling of your policy interpretations, which would
> prohibit all LGBT publications from being used in Wikipedia.  Would
> you propose the same thing about Ebony?  Univision? If not, why not?
> What is the difference? Even if you subscribed to the ludicrous idea
> that all LGBT publications are too "partisan" and thus "unreliable",
> the proposed use of the Southern Voice was not to provide facts about
> Phillips, but to substantiate the fact that some LGBT organizations
> criticized Phillips.  We do, of course, want to consider issues of
> undue weight and prevent WP articles for being overwhelmed with
> criticism, but the things you have proposed would serve to eliminate
> legitimate criticism from Wikipedia articles and disqualify many
> mainstream, reputable sources from being used in those articles.

I am not sure you are following me correctly. LGBT sources and other
narrow audience sources should be used quite sparingly and are not a
reliable source for MOST articles. An LGBT papers Field Of View is on
LGBT people and LGBT issues. This makes it great and reliable for LGBT
biographies and LGBT pages. Articles on say...a CNN journalist push
use of such a source, in my opinion, towards unreliable. Overreliance
on these as primary sources may make articles have a POV.

I think we can agree on:
- Use of advocacy journalism primary sources should be replaced with
objective journalism sources where possible.

> As for your LPU, you mention (while taking a moment to attack me) that
> you invited "all sorts of people" to participate.  You invited 17.
> They included the user who wished to scrub all mention of Gannon's
> former occupation from WP, who mentions on his user page that he's
> from a conservative messageboard and declares his mission here is to
> "correct" WP's "liberal bias".  Another was an editor who uses his
> user space to denounce about 20 or so editors by name and until fairly
> recently had them under a "list of weasels" or somesuch.  These were
> the people you thought would be good to recruit, and of course they
> eagerly signed up.  I thought the small number of members and the
> relatively high proportion of problem users among them was alarming.
> This was the main reason I thought it was imperative to bring your
> project to the attention of more users.

I suppose, humorously (and should be interpreted as), to quote Dennis
Leary:  "Thank you, thank you, thank you and ..."

Justice is(er, should be) blind. Treat editors with blindness (and
good faith and civility) until malice. Most of the people invited were
recent contributers to NPOV, BLP, LIBEL, BLP noticeboard talk pages as
well as Kyra Phillips. More metapedians needed at BLPP.

Catch-22, I think. The framing of the post sends people on wikien to
BLPP with a chip on their shoulder, without the framing though, there
would be no interest.

> Several times in your long message you repeat the acronym soup, to, in
> your words "beat this in like a headon commercial."  We're not idiots
> here, we are aware of these policies.  What is needed is a thoughtful
> application of these policies, not a simplistic mantra.  Chanting BLP!
> BLP! BLP! doesn't automatically make you right, or does it mean those
> who disagree with you want to stuff WP with libel.  (Now with 20
> percent more libel!) Mentioning reliably sourced unflattering facts is
> not libel.  Mentioning criticism of the subject of the article is not
> libel.  But you've recruited a bunch of POV warriors to go around
> stripping WP articles of unflattering things about their fellow
> political party members (BLP! BLP! BLP!) with no oversight and no
> means to watch the watchmen.  This coupled with your wildly
> over-expansive interpretation of BLP makes me conclude that you should
> not be playing a key role in interpreting the policy or implementing
> how it is enforced.

Then why I am I seeing quick reversions from adminstrators when
defamation and reliable sourcing are being raised? Both these things
seem to have been much agreed upon to keep out till in and for editors
who want to keep them to prove it? What is needed is to educate most
editors that actions on defamation issues run contrary to prominient
wikipedia philosphies, hence the use of a simple mantra. Chanting
BLP,BLP... is designed to get eyeballs on the problem and the severity
of its nature. Most editors are acting in good faith but are generally
unaware of defamation laws and various journalistic and historical
codes of conduct. When defamation is in play, reliable sourcing needs
to be rock solid and in generous quantity. Depending on the
seriousness of potential libel, verifiability may not be enough, the
standard may have to be truth! Criticism is good but most belongs
outside of wikipedia. I have recruited a bunch of editors to help
build consensus on how to handle problematic BLP articles. If editors
are off willynilly editing articles under a BLPP mantra without
consensus, shoot them and ban them. I am sorry you think I am unable
to play a key role, but I think you misunderstand how I actually think
about this.

Underneath, mostly, I am quite moderate. I am frequently stepping into
zealot shoes and taking devils advocate positions to bring up
defamation issues that need to be addressed NOW. Not only do BLP
articles requires immediatism, the wikipedia policies behind it
require immediatism too. The run a red flag up the highest flagpole
and aim those hollywood spotlights at it kind of immediatism. Its a
ticking bomb.

As for qualifications, over my career I have been a journalist, beat
reporter, opinion columnist, editor, web editor, read AP stylebook,
code of ethics and various ethics textbooks. I have been a political
scientist (mm...SCOTUS!), parlimentarian, read Roberts Rules of Order
cover to cover. Have been a business/technical analyst, where six
sigma, TQM, BPI, scientific management, taylorism and most other
process management buzzwords come into play. Also a computer
programmer: PHP, Perl, Java, C/C++, ircbots like eggdrop and TCL/TK,
to use of mediawiki with xoops on a personal wiki.

So not only do I fully understand the ethical issues and the
significance of the legal ones, I understand political culture and how
to create and enforce processes and policies alike. From a technical
standpoint, I know the limitations and potential of mediawiki and
other software well.

-Jtp Electrawn

> _______________________________________________
> 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 9/11/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think its appropriate to rewrite policy to suit your intentions. It
> defeats the purpose of having a policy in the first place. I respect the
> user as an editor, but I totally disagree with the changes simply because
> they aren't approved on policy - being on MoS without any prior community
> approval isn't policy.

I have a unique solution. Add Brainstorming subpages to each official
policy and guideline, keep {{brainstorming}} on the top of those
subpages, on the original, make editors aware of the subpage. Let
significant changes and discussion move forward on the brainstorming
pages, providing a sandbox. Protect the main policy pages from editing
and only move changes over from brainstorming when they reach
consensus. This should satisfy both immediatism and eventualism camps
and discourage users who make an individual change to a policy to run
around like its accepted.

-jtp Electrawn


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

geni stated for the record:
> On 9/11/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>We have to account for things like that. You can't say,
>>"Can you please take a photo of me and my wife? Here's my camera. Oh,
>>and while your're at it, could you release all rights to that?"
>>
>
>
> Why not?

Because finding the equivalent of a notary in a foreign country is a
pain, and I sometimes discover that I've forgotten to bring along the
pack of release forms that the fetishists demand.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | I'm tired of getting the fuzzy
 sean at epoptic.com | end of the lollipop. --Sugar Kane
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from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
On 9/11/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> FYI - silly headline for a self-serving (for The Observer) article.
>
> Yes, Wikipedia is defying Chinese censors by... er... well... doing
> nothing and being itself.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
> ----
>
> Wikipedia defies China's censors
>
> David Smith and Jo Revill
> Sunday September 10, 2006
> The Observer
>
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1869006,00.html

Particularly ironic considering The Observers "useful idiot" role in
aiding and abetting the scientologists (successful) campaign to shut
down anon.penet.fi.

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro

Candidate for Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation in the
September 2006 elections.


body:
Demoncratic Revolt? I like it, but is sounds spooky ;-)

From: "Jeffrey V. Merkey" <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com>

> I find it interesting to discuss the Demoncratic Revolt with the censors


subject: [Wikitech-l] Long delay after submitting an edit

body:
Timwi <timwi at ...> writes:

> Have you tried several different browsers? Are you using a proxy to
> access the MediaWiki?

I use Firefox 1.5.  I can reproduce the error using IE6 on XPSP2.

There's no proxy, so I'm pretty sure something's up on the server side.


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 9/11/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/11/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > And then there's the related case of photographs taken "under
> > direction" (my camera, my idea, but you held it and pushed the button).
> > This has a sort of "work for non-hire" feel to it, and I'm sure
> > it's been discussed at length, too.
>
> I don't think it has been discussed, and such images have been deleted
> in the past - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Minneapolis_meetup_2005.jpg
>
> I guess such images are fair use if you never asked the person using
> your camera to license the image.
>
I'd say you don't have to ask for permission.  If you came up with the
idea, then you are at least a joint author.

Anthony


subject: [Textbook-l] Problem with NPOV

body:
--- Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Jimbo Wrote:
> >Well, I think the policy is pretty clear, and yes,
> as the community
> >applies the policy in practice, I don't always
> agree with the outcome,
> >nor do I expect to always agree with the outcome.
> >
> >I am not sure why you are saying there is currently
> no policy.
>
> because to the best of my knowledge there currently
> is no specific policy
> that says specifically what a "textbook" is.

Hmmm, well, it seems to me that this policy is
actually supposed to be vague and subject to
interpretation (though I could be wrong on that). Most
of Jimbo's policies seem to run along that vein: I
mean, what the heck is a neutral point of view,
really? Deciding what's NPOV or not depends on your
POV about NPOV, which is great fun to debate (or watch
being debated), and doesn't really need to be fixed
unless it's broken (which rarely happens).

> This policy is currently "proposed", but is a long
> way away from being
> enforced:
>
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Textbooks

I get the feeling that that policy (much like the
"consensus rules guideline") is going to simply
restate the obvious, like all good policies do.

The religious/athiestic texts are POV, because they
assume the reader either (a) has that point of view,
or (b) should have that point of view (because if not
they're (a) damned to hell or (b) just plain stupid).

> This policy is a broad cover-all, but again never
> states specifcally what a
> "textbook" is, nor how to distinguish between
> "instructional resources" that
> do belong here, and "instructional resources" that
> don't belong here ([[How
> To Build A Pykrete Bong]] was instructional, and
> NPOV, but we deleted it
> anyway as mostly a matter of conscience):

That was deleted? Why? (It's certainly legal in
Amsterdam, if not in California or British Columbia).
Seems to me that having something like that could be
good for interpreting for other projects (presumably
it could be modified to make a chimney scrubber or
something like that for a wood-burning
microgenerator). (And before you ask, no, I don't
smoke pot.)

If I might put forward a guess, Jimbo: was your
comment about video-game guides more or less just
pointing out what seemed common-sensical (i.e.: "those
aren't textbooks, silly!")?

I do think the argument that we will "lose" a lot of
productive bookwriters if the VG guide people are
chased off is pretty weak. If you look at the contribs
from those writers, they rarely venture into the other
parts of wikibooks, and those that do aren't likely to
"leave" (it's not as if they're relocationg from New
York to LA or anything... it's just a few mouse clicks
from "here" to "there").

> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW
>
> Fact is that the wikibooks policy cannon is very
> incomplete.

Yes, but that's just a cultural divide. Jimbo made
wikipedia and wikibooks, and with rare exceptions just
leaves it vague and lets things evolve. The people who
actually work on the wikis like making things more and
more specific (which is why our
books/articles/definitions are so damned good). I
*don't* think we need to make our policies ever-more
specific (i.e., we don't want what the wikipedians
refer to as instruction creep), because then we're
tying the hands of the next writers. I do think the
"Wikibooks:Textbook" page will have some merit though,
since we let the VG guides get firmly established, and
we need to narrow it a bit so we don't get caught by
the "well, if you delete my book, you need to delete
those ones too" argument. But I think that defining
has to be kept to a level of simply defining what's
common-sensical, which shouldn't in any way be a
narrow definition.

-johnny.

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


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Well, yeah. Closest I've come to this is e.g. uploading an image by
> [[:en:User:Arkady Rose]] (my girlfriend) to Commons because she can't
> be bothered creating Yet Another Login. I uploaded it myself and said
> it was by her and put there under copyleft-self (dual GFDL and
> CC-by-sa) with her permission. If some hardworking wikilawyer started
> claiming the image must therefore be deleted as a risk to the project
> (what if EVERYONE did this?) then I fear my legendary patience and
> calm might slip.

The key here is: we trust you to have done the right thing.

We can do that with people we know and trust.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:IMG_5934.JPG

is an image I uploaded for someone else.

--Jimbo


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/09/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Oh, and thanks to people claiming the "DRV doesn't have a snowball's
> > chance in hell of being deleted" (despite the fact that several people
> > were strongly in favour), I've now created the proposed policy of
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_Undeletion for your
> > perusal.
>
> Well, it arguably didn't, regrettable as that is.
>
> Possible workable split: DRV for strict process review; AFU for merit
> undeletion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Wikipedia:Deletion_review


from_name: Andrew Whitworth

subject: [Textbook-l] Problem with NPOV

body:
I'm not saying that I want Jimbo to mandate a definition to us, but I also
don't want him making generalized statements of what "does and does not
belong" on wikibooks if there is no formal policy to back such statements
up. If he wants the world to know that material on wikibooks must follow
such and such criteria, then that criteria should be laid out unambiguously
in policy. There currently is no policy, ergo we cannot be expected to know
unambiguously what does and does not belong on our project. We do need to
"pick through" such matters, and the outcome might not always be what Jimbo
or the foundation wants.

--Andrew Whitwort

>From: "Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <textbook-l at wikimedia.org>
>To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Problem with NPOV
>Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 15:23:48 +1000
>
>On 11/09/06, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Jimbo: If you want us to use a specific defintion of "textbook" and
> > "accredited institution", then you are going to have to mandate such
> > definitions to us. At the moment we are picking our way through such
> > matters, with varying degrees of success.
>
>It is my observation that TPTB is very reluctant to offer such
>definitions or mandates, even when requested. "Picking our way through
>such matters with varying degrees of success" -- it seems to be the
>wiki way. Try just making your own definitions (as a project), and I
>guess you'll find out if you've been too WP:BOLD if you notice some
>personal interventions after that. :)
>
>It doesn't seem ideal, but I guess I can understand why they're
>reluctant to define such things. Then the criticism of such things
>also falls to them. The people who are actually running the project
>should take control of its direction at some stage... although
>mandates would make life so easy.
>
>cheers
>Brianna
>user:pfctdayelise
>_______________________________________________
>Textbook-l mailing list
>Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l