body:
On 10/19/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I, for one, am not about to start reading entire articles to check for problems
> every time I encounter one of them being blanked by a new user with no
> explanation. Sure, as a human I can grok the context better than a bot, but I'm
> not going to waste more than half a minute on it.

Then you have no business reverting blanked articles... if you are
going to do a worse job than the bots, then you should leave it to
them.

> Sure, there might be a tiny
> chance that the person had spotted a problem and was making a good faith effort
> to flag that -- but they'll find a way to send the message another way.
> Honestly, they will. It's not just editors who have the grey white mush between
> their ears, right?

And they did, obviously, because if they hadn't the junk would have stayed up.
But that doesn't fix the loss of goodwill that we suffer because of this.

> This is a trade-off between the convenience of outsiders versus the convenience
> of experienced editors.
> My view is that in this particular type of situation,
> the inconvenience of experienced editors very much outweighs the inconvenience
> of an outsider. Most of the time, we should (and do) bend over backwards to
> help newcomers at our own cost, but there's a limit.

It would be a lot easier if the expirenced editor, in this case, did
nothing at all.

Either a bot which can be trained make better decisions than a person
who doesn't read, or a person who did read, would have done a better
job.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about sources

body:
On 10/19/06, Luis Alberto Riveros <riveros11 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In this page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brahma_Kumaris_World_Spiritual_University
> It seems that VERIFIABILITY :
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
>
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Walnut.png> This
> policy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies>in a
> nutshell:
> *Information on Wikipedia must be reliable and verifiable. Facts,
> viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in articles if
> they
> have already been published by reliable
> sources<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources>.
> Articles should cite these sources
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CITE>whenever possible. Unsourced
> material may be challenged and removed.
>
> Is in a way in contradiction with the policy below in the same page:
>
> * *Material from self-published sources, and other published sources of
> dubious reliability, may be used as sources of information so long as:*
>
>    - *It is relevant to the organization's notability;*
>    - *It is not contentious;*
>    - *It is not unduly self-serving;*
>    - *It does not involve claims about third parties, or about events not
>    directly related to the subject;*
>    - *There is no reasonable doubt about who wrote it.*
>
> Please clarify this.
> Do you want reliable sources or not? If an antagonistic group starts an
> article and uses a self-published source to hurt an organization's image,
> is
> this considered "non contentious"? or "relevant to the organization
> notability?" or "unduly self-serving"?Thank you for your attention to
> this.

You bring up a valid point.

I cringe every time I see one of our "respected admins" reverting someone
with an edit summary along the lines of "no blogs allowed" for instance...

Parker


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] good example of overuse of {{fact}}

body:
On 10/17/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia article.

Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up
in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not
obvious.

(minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)

-Matt


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Before reverting blanking, please read the text

body:
  Hi,

  I'm a little surprised by this thread.  Unless I am not understanding what I
am reading, there seems to be actual resistance to the idea that one should
read what they are reverting back to.  When one reverts, one becomes the latest
author/publisher of that article; I suggest that there should be some sense of
responsibility for its content.

  I'd just encourage all of us not to make edits that can result in introducing,
or, yes, re-introducing, defamation, nonsense or vandalism into Wikipedia
articles.  If you really cannot afford the time to read your edit, it probably
is better to not make that edit.  As Greg Maxwell is pointing out, the bots do
at least leave a message on the user's talk page about what to do if they
believe that they have been reverted in error.

                     Jkelly


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pattern copyvios involving comic book characters

body:
On Oct 18, 2006, at 11:27 PM, The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:

> No idea how we're going to unravel this one.

Nuke all of the articles on Marvel comics characters.

Restart them all from scratch while clearly paying attention to our
policies about fictional characters. Aggressively eliminate extended
fictional biographies from all of them, focusing the articles on
publication history, media appearances, creation histories, iconic
versions, and other information that pertains to the real world.

-Phil


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Matt R wrote:
> > --- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to
> >> revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and
> >> tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were
> >> all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
> >
> > Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of
> > instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user
> > blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's
> > vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the
> time
> > to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone
> with
> > a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very
> shortly
> > thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
> >
>
> If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you
> mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective
> method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted
> had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:

Even better, of course, would have been for the person to have used (say) the
edit summary box to give some indication of why they were blanking an
encyclopedia article. I really do feel that the onus is on them to give some
reason for their drastic action, which is otherwise indistinguishable from
hundreds of similar acts of vandalism a day.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Rob

body:
The idea that one should read and screen an entire article that is
blanked is absurd.  Tt is entirely probable that even if you rewrote
the article from scratch you might not address whatever supposed
problem the vandal had with the article.  We should keep an eye out
for problems as best we can but we aren't mindreaders and we can't
assume every vandal is an angry celebrity.


from_name: Sydney aka FloNight

body:
---- Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

=============
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:09:42 +0100, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia.
>You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you
>do? You delete it.

The whole article?  *All* of it?  Even the bits which are not crap? No
I don't.

Guy (JzG)

================================

The first, second, ..... time they remove the crap. When it keeps getting inserted they blank the whole article.

Sydney


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 10/19/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The idea that one should read and screen an entire article that is
> blanked is absurd.  Tt is entirely probable that even if you rewrote
> the article from scratch you might not address whatever supposed
> problem the vandal had with the article.  We should keep an eye out
> for problems as best we can but we aren't mindreaders and we can't
> assume every vandal is an angry celebrity.

In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the
person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an
abortion.

I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and
missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent
history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert
without reading at all? ... unacceptable.

To me it seems that the tone of your post, "an angry celebrity",
really comes off as disrespectful both to the people we write about
and to the folks who are dealing with this kinda garbage...   Rest
assured that no one is working on this subject area because they like
merely appeasing people who cry about non-issues.  The overwhelming
majority of cases which get acted on are serious and materially
hurtful attacks and it is not reasonable for you to belittle the
matter.


body:
> You do realize how completely stupid you sound, right?

And I hope you realise that I have not read your email because this line caught
my eye. If you want to have a discussion about something, avoid abuse.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
All New Yahoo! Mail ? Tired of Vi at gr@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html


body:
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and
> missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent
> history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert
> without reading at all? ... unacceptable.

I've read the article in question, and that's the kind of thing that
any editor who even saw the page should have removed, not just someone
reverting vandalism.  There's plenty of blame to go around there.

> To me it seems that the tone of your post, "an angry celebrity",
> really comes off as disrespectful both to the people we write about
> and to the folks who are dealing with this kinda garbage...   Rest
> assured that no one is working on this subject area because they like
> merely appeasing people who cry about non-issues.  The overwhelming
> majority of cases which get acted on are serious and materially
> hurtful attacks and it is not reasonable for you to belittle the
> matter.

Oh, please.  Two words on a mailing list does not mean I don't take
the issue seriously or that I'm not one of "the folks who are dealing
with this kinda garbage".  Your generalization is inaccurate,
insulting, and unhelpful.


body:
On 10/19/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've read the article in question, and that's the kind of thing that
> any editor who even saw the page should have removed, not just someone
> reverting vandalism.

Exactly.

>There's plenty of blame to go around there.

Blame is a waste of time... we need improvements. If you're thinking
about blame you're thinking about the wrong thing.

> Oh, please.  Two words on a mailing list does not mean I don't take
> the issue seriously or that I'm not one of "the folks who are dealing
> with this kinda garbage".  Your generalization is inaccurate,
> insulting, and unhelpful.

As I said, it sounded like you were belittling the concern, I'm glad
that you've clarified your position.  In the future you could avoid
causing me to draw such incorrect conclusion by avoiding
characterizing our response to a terrible attack on a private person
as a response to "an angry celebrity". :)


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"Parker Peters" wrote

> We have a bunch of semi-secret policies and procedures hiding everywhere, we
> speak in code, half the supposed "policies" are just something some boob
> with no life came up with in order to justify his powers anyways, our
> dispute resolution system is a joke, and AGF has been thrown down the
> shitter in favor of Admins Rule All.

There seems little evidence, to me, that you are learning to express your comments with moderation and plausibility.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


body:
--- Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

> I watched your nonsense long enough, I've seen plenty of similar comments
> sent here including multiple sent to me both publicly over this list and
> privately.
>
> If you're going to stop reading because I pointed out how inane your
> comments were, feel free to do so. You're more than welcome to be part of
> the problem rather than part of the solution.
>
> Parker.

*plonk*

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> As I said, it sounded like you were belittling the concern, I'm glad
> that you've clarified your position.  In the future you could avoid
> causing me to draw such incorrect conclusion by avoiding
> characterizing our response to a terrible attack on a private person
> as a response to "an angry celebrity". :)

The person I was thinking about when I wrote "angry celebrity" was the
artist John Byrne, who repeatedly blanked his article until I locked
it.  He refused to say what was wrong with the article despite being
repeatedly asked by myself, Jimbo, and others, including people on his
own personal message board.  We (well,mostly me) rewrote the article
from scratch and he was still mad.  You do all you can but you aren't
telepathic and you are never going to satisfy complaints that you do
not know anything about.  That was my point but I didn't feel like
going on and on about some editing experience I had so I left that
part out of my original email.

For the record I obviously support the removal of that attack from the
article on the person whose article started this discussion, who is
someone I've briefly met in real life, by the way. I think that any
reasonable person would support removing such an attack.  I thought
that this list was filled with mostly reasonable people who would
universally share that assumption and that I did not need to qualify
my message by pointing that out.  Also, I support kittens, apple pie,
and world peace.  Anything else I need to point out to you before you
assume that I'm the sort of person who is in favor of unwarranted
vicious personal attacks in encyclopedia articles?


from_name: jf_wikipedia at mac.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
Please see [[Larry Craig]].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig

There are rumors being commented about, but not on the mainstream
press,  based on a blog post and there is a dispute if [[WP:BLP]]
should apply here or not.

My view is that we need to err on the side of caution and apply
WP:BLP. That is why that policy was created. Wikipedia should not be
a place to help the spreading of rumors. I do not want an article in
the mainstream media that crtitizes our project for doing such a
thing. Erring on the side of caution is the responsible thing to do
in this case.

Your comments in talk page would be appreciated.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On Oct 19, 2006, at 4:30 PM, Rob wrote:

> There is a case to be made either way, I think, and that is a
> legitimate issue to be discussed, and it's one I've gone back and
> forth on in my internal dialogue as well as on the talk page.  But
> it's just absolutely not true that it has not been discussed in the
> mainstream press and I find it frustrating that you keep repeating
> this false assertion, especially when your other comments on the
> matter are thoughtful and responsible.
If you refer to this:
: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/10/19/publiceye/entry2108678.shtml
... I would suggest you read it.

-- Jossi


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:30:49 -0500, "Parker Peters"
<onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Not really.  Page blanking is counted as simple vandalism, suitable
>> for use of rollback.  We really mustn't lose sight of the fact that
>> this is the only instance thus far presented where page blanking
>> without summaries by a new account with no other edits was anything
>> other than vandalism.  Is it really so hard for a new user to find out
>> how to correct a problem, contact the office, attract attention or in
>> some other way fix the issue?  It may be that it is.

>It is. Nobody bothered sending a welcome message, or any other form of
>talkpage message, to the user. Nothing was generated automatically to help
>them become an effective editor or help them learn now to work within the
>system.

So, based on your review of all the new accounts which have started
off with page blanking, how many have you discovered that have gone on
to be valuable contributors?  How many are drive-bys?  How many are
subsequently blocked as vandalism-only accounts?

"Hard cases make bad law".

>And it's poor attitudes like yours that I've been seeing for the past few
>months that make our problems worse. Instead of taking two minutes to look
>at the reason for an action, instead of assuming good faith, you just go off
>on your "vandal-fighting" attitude where all ill-advised behavior and
>collateral damage is OK in the name of "fighting vandals".

Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to patronise
me.

Is vandalism a significant problem on Wikipdeia?  Yes.  Is reversion
of valid blanking by accounts newly registered to fix a problem, but
without the knowledge to comment, request help elsewhere, or include
an edit summary, a significant problem on Wikipedia?  We have, to
date, one example.  Let's try to maintain a sense of proportion, shall
we?  Bear in mind that I actually take the time to userfy egregious
vanity from single purpose accounts if the username matches the
subject, because in the end newbies *do* matter, but demanding that
every vandalism edit be accompanied by the planting of a shrubbery on
the user's Talk page does not seem to be based on any realistic
assessment of the problem.  I'd have no problem with the vandalbots
doing this automagically, but I'm not intending to bother just yet.
With over ten thousand articles on my watchlist, many of them vandal
magnets, I really don't see it as a productive use of my time.  Feel
free to sue me.

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


body:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:39:44 +0100, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

>There seems little evidence, to me, that you are learning to express your comments with moderation and plausibility.

Understatement of the week.

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


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On Oct 19, 2006, at 4:36 PM, Rob wrote:

> You know I've read it.
Sorry, Rob, I missed to notice that you are Gamaliel.

Would want to hear other editor's opinions.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about sources

body:
On 10/19/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Blogs are often self-serving or a platform for fringe opinions.
> People using self-published sources are usually out to promote their opinion
> instead of offering an unbiased article. These rules seem pretty clear and
> non-contradictory to me.

And often they are part of the reporting of a reputable news
organization.   Self-published blogs should be treated like
self-published books, news blogs from a reputable news organization
should be treated like other material from that reputable news
organization.

Sorry for the hijack, but I just keep seeing the simplistic
formulation of blog=bad over and over again, either by people who
parrot policy and can't distinguish the two, or by people who use
policy to further their agendas.


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/19/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The idea that one should read and screen an entire article that is
> > blanked is absurd.  Tt is entirely probable that even if you rewrote
> > the article from scratch you might not address whatever supposed
> > problem the vandal had with the article.  We should keep an eye out
> > for problems as best we can but we aren't mindreaders and we can't
> > assume every vandal is an angry celebrity.
>
> In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the
> person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an
> abortion.

I'm disappointed to have read this entire thread before getting this bit of
information.

I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and
> missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent
> history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert
> without reading at all? ... unacceptable.

Absolutely.  If you're going to revert a blanking, you should be damn sure
that at least *some* part of the original text was in fact accurate.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about sources

body:
On 10/19/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Self-published books aren't neccesarily bad sources either. I've heard about
> 2 guys who are writing a jazz encyclopedia and publishing it on Lulu. It
> might be a self-published source, but it won't promote their opinion. I'd
> see no harm in using their work as a source and I'm sure I'd have the same
> feelings with other self-published books.

If it is self-published by recognized authorites in a field, I don't
see anything wrong with using it as a source, absolutely.  Broad
categories of anything shouldn't be treated as automatically good or
bad.  That's the problem, people aren't making these kinds of
distinctions and instead are acting like, as David Gerard put it,
"insane robots" mechanically repeating a sentence from a policy page.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Wind Sun

body:
hi Evan,
    thanks for ur reply, i had got  valuable replication from Travis, if u interest also, check the maillist to get the article about.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Evan Prodromou" <evan at prodromou.name>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Cc: "Travis Derouin" <tderouin at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 3:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] How to implement 'wikihow' web style??

> On Mon, 2006-16-10 at 20:22 +0800, ??? wrote:
>
>> i think lots of people here had browsed this site www.wikihow.com. i have several technical question about the site,dos anybody can give
>> me some trains of thought :)
>
> I know that Travis Derouin, the tech lead on wikiHow, has made a lot of
> customizations for the site. None of what you asked about is possible
> with vanilla MediaWiki, as far as I know. Maybe you can ask Travis about
> it?
>
> ~Evan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Feature request: "single block"

body:
On 10/19/06, Piotr Derbeth Kubowicz <derbeth at wp.pl> wrote:
> For me, it is logical that block of IP number should be common to all Wikimedia projects. Allowing this would have a large impact on number of vandalisms in sister projects.

It would also result in cross-wiki block/unblock wars with no central
authority to realistically appeal to.  Open proxies should be dealt
with on the software level via DNSBL as discussed here a while back,
and there's not so much reason to carry over other blocks.  If this
does occur, it needs to be a (bureaucrat-settable?) local option to
inherit from one specific wiki, and blocks need to be locally
overridable by local admins.


body:
hi Travis,
  Very very thanks for ur replication when i confused, and thanks for ur contribution with mediawiki.i had got ur code.
  i think ur(wikihow) thinking is a edification for wiki's application, hope you will have a great future!

  very thanks

----- Original Message -----
From: "Travis Derouin" <travis at wikihow.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 8:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] How to implement 'wikihow' web style??

> Hi wind sun,
>
> I'm the engineer at wikiHow and should be able to help you, thanks for
> your interest.
>
> Don't worry about the rex parameter, it doesn't have any affect on the
> page creation page. You can download a copy of our source code here:
>
> http://www.wikihow.com/x/wikihow-1.6.tar.gz
>
> It contains all our modifications to Mediawiki. For the page creation
> page, check out includes/EditPageWrapper.php, all it does is extend
> EditPage.php and splits an article into the separate parts (intro,
> steps, tips, warnings, etc) and then glues it back together again
> before saving. To make sure that the 'edit' action uses this page
> instead of EditPage.php, check out the changes to includes/Wiki.php at
> around line 383.
>
> For the discussion namespace, I renamed the usual Talk namespace in
> Namespaces.php, Discussion sounded more intuitive to us. For the form
> at the bottom of each talk page, check out skins/WikiHowSkin.php,
> there's a function called getTalkPostForm() which sets up the form on
> talk pages and posts to a special page located at
> includes/SpecialPostcomment.php.
>
> The code really needs to be cleaned up at some point, so sorry for any mess.
>
> Let me know if you have any questions!
> Travis
>
>
>
> On 10/16/06, ??? <cdexs at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> i think lots of people here had browsed this site www.wikihow.com. i have several technical question about the site,dos anybody can give
>> me some trains of thought :)
>>
>>   1)i saw "Create page" link url was implemented as "http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?action=edit&rex=4",here "rex" le
>>     seems a additional customized parameter, why use this additional url parameter? how to "Create page" by this way?
>>
>>   2) while clicked "create page",in next new page, has several textarea to input "Introduction"?"steps"?"tips" etc separately. MediaWiki
>>      just has one textarea to add content?how to customize edit page like that?
>>
>>   3)while clicked "discuss this page" will goto http://www.wikihow.com/Discussion:Cook-Food, we can find here has a new namespace
>>    "Discussion"?and in this page,top area of page lists all discussion and bottom placed a textarea to add discussion?it's very convenient
>>    for user to check and add topics? in standard mediawiki,discussion page just lists topics,should click"+" again to add topic, wikihow
>>    style is a better choice, how to do?
>>
>>
>>    thanks in advance!
>>
>>    wind sun
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: commons-l

from_name: bawolff

subject: [Commons-l] And in other news...

body:
Thanks, Thats a nice picture. I changed [[n:portal:space]] to use it

On 10/18/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> bawolff wrote:
>
> >>And a few stats:
> >>
> >>http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Commons_stats_October_2006.svg
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Out of curiosity, Does anyone know what they highest resolution image
> >on commons is?
> >
> Except for fake sizes such as SVG pictures, the largest is:
> Orion_Nebula_-_Hubble_2006_mosaic_18000.jpg
>
> a 18000x18000 picture stored in a 19 megabyte file.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
bawolff
Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85
million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.


body:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> You make it sound like we're asking you to chop down the tallest tree in
> the forest with a herring. We're not. We're asking you to use a little
> bit of Common Sense. How on earth is someone meant to defend themselves
> if they don't even know the crime that they've been charged with? How on
> earth is a newbie meant to learn that there are certain things they're
> not supposed to be doing something if nobody ever tells them?

Hang on, I thought we were just reverting an unexplained page blanking by a new
account without communicating with them. We're not, as far as I recall,
charging them with a crime or requiring that they defend themselves from
anything.

You mentioned common sense. I think most people have enough common sense to
realise that if they blank an encyclopedia article without giving any reason
for it, and then it's undone, they should probably try something else. Common
sense suggests that if someone's figured out where the "edit" link and "save
page" button is, they're not too far off from the "discussion" link or the
"edit summary" box. It really isn't that hard.

Assume good faith is a fine principle, but the suggestion here seems to be that
editors must engage every such page blanker in dialogue based on the remote
chance that they just might have a good reason for doing it, even though they
didn't bother giving it at the time. That just doesn't seem worthwhile to me;
the effort involved seems disproportionate to any possible harm.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> The issue here isn't that someone blanked their own page and was
> reverted without us talking to them. The issue is that someone blanked
> their own page *containing blatant crap* and was reverted for it;

Actually, it wasn't all _that_ blatant. Blatant crap is stuff like
"GEORGE IS GAY LLOLZORS!!1!". The article was neatly formatted, had a
nice picture, was well categorized, and the first half of it was
completely plausible (and as it turns out mostly true). The second half,
which contained the objectionable bit, was not readily distinguishable
from the first simply by scanning ones' eyes lightly over it. Still not
correct to revert to but an understandable thing to overlook under the
circumstances.

Some of the reactions in this thread to this mistake are way over the
top, IMO, we should not be holding our editors to unreasonably strict
standards of perfection. This was an "oops, should have read that more
carefully" situation, not a "what kind of brainless moron would do such
a thing!?" situation.

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body:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Perhaps we need to enable one of the JavaScript "Warn if no edit
> summary" things (I wrote a great one which can nag you up to 3 times)
> for anons... something like "As an anonymous user, you are required to
> provide a reason for your changes. Please enter it in the text box
> below:"...

Perhaps this could be combined with a coarse edit analyser of some sort. For
example, if there is a large reduction in the article length, then the user
gets nagged for an edit summary. If the page is blanked, then the user could be
given a warning such as: "I see you're blanking the page. Would you like some
advice on that?".

Wiki[[Clippy]], in other words,

Apologies, not quite sure where my reply transitioned from serious to jest;
take your pick ;-)

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
Peter Ansell wrote:
> On 20/10/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which
>> is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when
>> you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will
>> generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a
>> human who is pretending to be a bot.
>
> You contradict yourself.

I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human
who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no
more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack,
and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the
inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original
blanker is just as much in the wrong.

Can we tone down the hyperbole a bit?

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body:
On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
> article.
>
> Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up
> in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not
> obvious.
>
> (minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)

Looking back at the example, I guess the sort of thing like "Thomas
Jefferson was the third president" does belong in an encyclopedia, and I can
see how such a fact could be considered "obvious".

At the same time, I'd put this in the category of those facts which
absolutely should be contained somewhere in the reference material, but need
not be referenced by an individual footnote.

What's more controversial is "obvious" facts about public perceptions, such
as the example Jimmy was talking about.

"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being
"viral"<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F>,
based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under
the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])

What should we do with that?  {{fact}} tag it?  Remove it?  Leave it as is?
Personally I'd say it should be removed.  I just removed, without logging
in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding
this "perception".  Let's see what happens.

Anthony


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/19/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Perhaps this could be combined with a coarse edit analyser of some sort. For
> example, if there is a large reduction in the article length, then the user
> gets nagged for an edit summary. If the page is blanked, then the user could be
> given a warning such as: "I see you're blanking the page. Would you like some
> advice on that?".

I think we did that when we were haveing problems with the google toolbar.

--
geni


body:
On 10/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have, /that we can remember/, one example. How many other examples
> have been raised in the past, nobody can remember. How many other
> incidences there have been, nobody knows. I somewhat suspect that none
> of the current admins care, either, because they're all too busy making
> themselves feel big and important and patting each other on the back for
> making the most mouse-button-clicks in an hour. Never mind the actual
> intent, it's the number of button clicks that count!

A lot of cases of self blanking end up at CSD. I think I may have seen
the odd case where a copyvio has been blanked.

--
geni


body:
Sydney aka FloNight wrote:
> ---- Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> The whole article?  *All* of it?  Even the bits which are not crap? No
> I don't.
>
> Guy (JzG)
>
> ================================
>
> The first, second, ..... time they remove the crap. When it keeps getting inserted they blank the whole article.

You are making things up out of thin air. Here are the contributions of
the article-blanker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Aarcelay

Just two edits, both of those were wholesale removals of the entire article.

The edit that added the objectionable material was on October 11:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judy_Genshaft&diff=80888561&oldid=80486747
That material wasn't touched until Aarcelay blanked the article. Nobody
at any point tried removing _just_ the objectionable bit.

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from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 19/10/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:29:45 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
> <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I couldn't agree more. I can't just assume a blanking is valid if the person
> >doing it provides no reason whatsoever.
>
> Not least because the verifiable instances of blanking by newly
> registered accounts for good reasons are, to date, precisely one,
> whereas the documented instances of it being vandalism are too
> numerous to count.

[hand up]

I've seen plenty. I've never stumbled across them, but I've seen a
good few where after the blankings have been helpfully reverted, I've
cleaned up the mess when they emailed us.

Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia.
You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you
do? You delete it. Getting new users to spot and understand the edit
summary box is a bit of a lucky dip anyway - a new and angry user,
somewhat less likely.

"That's not the way we do things around here" isn't an automatic
ticket to not check if they had a point.

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


body:
On 19/10/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Assume good faith is a fine principle, but the suggestion here seems to be that
> editors must engage every such page blanker in dialogue based on the remote
> chance that they just might have a good reason for doing it, even though they
> didn't bother giving it at the time. That just doesn't seem worthwhile to me;
> the effort involved seems disproportionate to any possible harm.

No, the suggestion that kicked this off is that editors should eyeball
the material which was blanked to check that *it itself* isn't
vandalism or other miscellanous undesirableness before automatically
reverting. I've spotted a few cases in the past where someone has
rolled back to vandalism because someone helpfully tried to remove it;
I suspect I may have done it myself.

The issue here isn't that someone blanked their own page and was
reverted without us talking to them. The issue is that someone blanked
their own page *containing blatant crap* and was reverted for it; the
issue is that, to outsiders, this sort of not-quite-paying-attention
error looks and feels like *we're* actively trying to push this stuff
about them.

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


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Good example;
	The works of Charles Darwin freed :)

body:
On 19/10/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The article does mention other language editons
> (Danish, Russian).  So I just want to point out that
> he very well may own the copyright on the
> translations.

Not to mention...

"Darwin Online features many newly transcribed or
never-before-published manuscripts"

Bingo, entirely legitimate "unpublished copyright" for parts of the
corpus. You can copyright Shakespeare (for a while) legally in most
jurisdictions if you happen to find an unpublished manuscript!

> Most all websites do a poor job of
> distingiushing the different copyrights of the variety
> of material they host.  It is quite common for people
> simply write the terms of use to cover the most
> restrictive copyright material on the site.

Indeed. "Please contact us before doing anything" is, on occasion,
"please get in touch with us so we can tell you whether or not X bit
is copyrighted".

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


list: wikimedia-l


body:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:09:42 +0100, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia.
>You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you
>do? You delete it.

The whole article?  *All* of it?  Even the bits which are not crap? No
I don't.

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


body:
Peter Ansell wrote:
> I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than
> blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page. I know I always
> listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative
> than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.

Certainly, this is the best way to go about something like this. I
wasn't saying that the silent page-blanking was "okay." The sort of
slack I was talking about cutting was to respond "oh, I see, you're just
trying to delete that bit at the end because it's libel. You weren't
going about things in the best manner, though, here's how to handle a
situation like this in the future to ensure we get the right idea..."

Not cutting slack would be more along the lines of "Oh, I see you're
just trying to delete that bit at the end. Nevertheless, you blanked the
entire article instead. BANNED!"

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body:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 01:46:59 +0930, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Bear in mind that I actually take the time to userfy egregious
>> vanity from single purpose accounts if the username matches the
>> subject, because in the end newbies *do* matter, but demanding that
>> every vandalism edit be accompanied by the planting of a shrubbery on
>> the user's Talk page does not seem to be based on any realistic
>> assessment of the problem.

>You make it sound like we're asking you to chop down the tallest tree in
>the forest with a herring. We're not. We're asking you to use a little
>bit of Common Sense. How on earth is someone meant to defend themselves
>if they don't even know the crime that they've been charged with? How on
>earth is a newbie meant to learn that there are certain things they're
>not supposed to be doing something if nobody ever tells them?

Common sense indicates that wholesale blanking is usually vandalism.

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


body:
On 19/10/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:09:42 +0100, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Pause for a second. Imagine you're entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia.
> >You see some horrible crap. You figure out you can edit. What do you
> >do? You delete it.
>
> The whole article?  *All* of it?  Even the bits which are not crap? No
> I don't.

To be honest, neither would I. But at the risk of sounding smug, I
think you and I have perhaps more clue than most minor-notability
people we have articles on...

I've certainly seen it happen, done in good faith and with good
intentions, enough that I try not to ignore the possibility.

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


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Wikitech-l] Suggestion: Problem solving feedback system

body:
On 19/10/06, Mindaugas Indriunas <inyuki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So one suggestion would be to make such a feedback system, and there
> should be a much larger number of people giving out their ideas; some
> of which might be of real value.
>

There are many ways to give feedback to both the MediaWiki and Wikimedia
guys. You can make suggestions on the IRC channels, make suggestions and
proposals on these mailing lists, make suggestions and proposals on a few
Wikis (http://meta.wikimedia.org/ http://www.mediawiki.org/), or post a
bug/feature request at Bugzilla (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/).

I would say with confidence that the Mediawiki developers are far closer and
more responsive to their users. Importantly, they are mostly volunteers
drawn from the Wikimedia community.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
> On Oct 18, 2006, at 11:27 PM, The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
>
>> No idea how we're going to unravel this one.
>
> Nuke all of the articles on Marvel comics characters.

Wow. Your proposal is to delete thousands and thousands of unrelated
articles, many of them quite large and with edit histories going back to
the early days of Wikipedia, and start them all over from scratch. But
Steve Block is able to "unravel" the situation by adding source info to
all images on the list and deleting just two pages as copyvio. No idea
how large the list is but if one guy was able to go through it all doing
that it couldn't have been all that long.

The term "ludicrous overkill" comes to mind. I think you've got another
agenda here. :)

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body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which
> is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when
> you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will
> generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a
> human who is pretending to be a bot.

I, for one, am not about to start reading entire articles to check for problems
every time I encounter one of them being blanked by a new user with no
explanation. Sure, as a human I can grok the context better than a bot, but I'm
not going to waste more than half a minute on it. Sure, there might be a tiny
chance that the person had spotted a problem and was making a good faith effort
to flag that -- but they'll find a way to send the message another way.
Honestly, they will. It's not just editors who have the grey white mush between
their ears, right?

This is a trade-off between the convenience of outsiders versus the convenience
of experienced editors. My view is that in this particular type of situation,
the inconvenience of experienced editors very much outweighs the inconvenience
of an outsider. Most of the time, we should (and do) bend over backwards to
help newcomers at our own cost, but there's a limit.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
Peter Ansell wrote:
> Thats quite reasonable. Did that person actually get banned for their
> good faith action?

Wow, looks like she did:

10:33, 18 October 2006 Darwinek (Talk | contribs | block) blocked
"Aarcelay (contribs)" with an expiry time of 3 hours (.numerous vandalism)

Only three hours, but IMO this _does_ put a significant black mark on
Darwinek now. I can understand not looking in sufficient detail to
notice the problems when simply reverting a blanking, but one definitely
shouldn't block someone without at least some sort of attempt at
interaction with them to confirm what's going on. And two blankings
doesn't really count as "numerous vandalism."

Bit of a surprise, really. I hadn't even considered checking this before
giving that hypothetical example.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> We could have a paragraph in Craig's article describing the
> controversy, including how the Spokesman-Review ran the story and the
> mainstream commentary on the whole business. But would that be
> appropriate from a BLP perspective? The real story is only
> peripherally about Craig.

If someone encounters the rumors about Craig and is curious about them,
I expect the first place they'll look is the page about Craig. So if
this rumor really is very popular and widespread IMO it's quite
reasonable to at least mention it on Craig's page, ideally providing a
link to another article where details about the "real story" can be
found (probably [[The Spokesman-Review]], I would guess).

Disclaimer, this opinion is based entirely on your description of the
situation.

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body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/19/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > I, for one, am not about to start reading entire articles to check for
> problems
> > every time I encounter one of them being blanked by a new user with no
> > explanation. Sure, as a human I can grok the context better than a bot, but
> I'm
> > not going to waste more than half a minute on it.
>
> Then you have no business reverting blanked articles... if you are
> going to do a worse job than the bots, then you should leave it to
> them.

Who said I was going to do a worse job? Given what I know as a human, I'm
pretty sure that there's no reason to blank, for example, [[Alan Turing]]
without explanation, so I can revert that in the time it takes to hit
"rollback". And, while I can do a lot more than a bot could with 30 seconds,
I'm unlikely to read through an entire article if it's of any length.

> And they did, obviously, because if they hadn't the junk would have stayed
> up. But that doesn't fix the loss of goodwill that we suffer because of this.

I believe that the risk of reasonable people bearing us ill-will if we revert
their unexplained page-blanking is negligible. If, on the other hand, they
communicated a problem about an article to us in a fashion readily
distinguishable from vandalism and test edits, and we did nothing, then we lose
goodwill.

> It would be a lot easier if the expirenced editor, in this case, did
> nothing at all.

I'm afraid we'll have to disagree on that.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html


body:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 10:50:33 -0700, "Mark Wagner" <carnildo at gmail.com>
wrote:

>It may be the only case presented here, but in the short time I've
>been involved in OTRS, I've seen several cases where someone is
>reporting that they blanked a defamatory article about themselves,
>only to have it back the next time they checked.

So they found another, better way.  Sure, we should check [[WP:BLP]]
cases a little more carefully than <s>spam</s> organsiations.

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


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
Have we looked through the history of all the copyvios to see if it's the
same guy doing this? If so, we can just block him and revert, and it's not
too bad. If not, then we really do have a serious problem and we're going to
have to go through a lot of pages of comic book characters in the near
future. I'll help out with the cleanup if needed, and I promise not to AfD
anything.

On 10/18/06, The Uninvited Co., Inc <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
>
> No idea how we're going to unravel this one.
>
> We have received, over a period of months, numerous reports to OTRS
> regarding copyvios from the www.marvunapp.com web site.  That site
> publishes character summaries for scores of comic book characters
> ranging from the well-known to those obscure figures that make only
> cameo appearances.  The summaries are written by a fairly small number
> of contributors to the the site and are generally not edited once they
> are posted.
>
> Their site content is making its way to Wikipedia.  There are three
> problems:
> a) Cut and paste copying of text
> b) Paraphrasing of text
> c) Unattributed copying of images the site has scanned from comic books
>
> (a) and (b) are copyright violations.  The problem goes back at least
> six months and is ongoing.
>
> (c) while not strictly speaking a copyvio since marvunapp.com is merely
> making scans of flat art, is upsetting the site operators due to the
> volume of material involved and the lack of attribution.  If left
> unaddressed (c) is likely to make them more pedantic about their rights
> regarding (a) and (b).  So far they've been pretty understanding and
> supportive, considering.
>
> Right now we don't know the extent of the problem because we've only
> investigated cases that the marvunapp.com people have reported, which
> cover perhaps a couple dozen pages all together.  I've investigated a
> couple myself and it is very time consuming since often there is just a
> paragraph or two in the middle of a longer Wikipedia article that's a
> copyvio and the use of paraphrasing makes automated tools unhelpful.
> Addressing these in a meaningful way is difficult because ongoing edits
> after the copyvio leads to a badly polluted page history that no one
> wants to delete, and I've ended up having my removals reverted over the
> course of time by people who show up two weeks later and don't realize
> when and why the text was removed, so they re-add it from the history.
>
> The copyvios have been added by more than one user, probably because
> unrelated people trying to expand our comic coverage have found
> marvunapp.com so helpful.
>
> I've asked for some help on WP:AN/I and so far no real takers although
> there at least has been support for my block of one of the perps.
>
> Here's what I think needs to be done:
>
> * The pages marvunapp.com has reported to us need to be reviewed by
> experienced editors and any copyvios found and dealt with at least in
> the current version of the page.
> * Ideally, the history should be purged.  In cases where this isn't
> practical, notes should be left on the talk page so that people don't
> erroneously assume they can re-integrate content from the history.
> * The perpetrators should be re-educated about how big of a deal this is
> and how much work it is to clean up.
> * Pages where marvunapp.com was used as a reference should include
> marvunapp.com in the list of references.
> * Images taken from the marvunapp.com should be properly attributed even
> if copyright doesn't apply.
> * If we ever get everything else done, we would want to try to be a
> little more vigilant in going through the comic articles ourselves
> rather than waiting for the marvunapp.com people to report them.
>
> Volunteers for all this drudgery should be IMO selected from a pool of
> people who still believe that the main deciding factor in
> inclusion/deletion debates should be the cost of hard disk space.
>
> The Uninvited Co., Inc.
> (a Delaware corporation)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On 10/19/06, jf_wikipedia at mac.com <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:
> Please see [[Larry Craig]].
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig
>
> There are rumors being commented about, but not on the mainstream
> press,  based on a blog post and there is a dispute if [[WP:BLP]]
> should apply here or not.
>
> My view is that we need to err on the side of caution and apply
> WP:BLP. That is why that policy was created. Wikipedia should not be
> a place to help the spreading of rumors. I do not want an article in
> the mainstream media that crtitizes our project for doing such a
> thing. Erring on the side of caution is the responsible thing to do
> in this case.

There is a case to be made either way, I think, and that is a
legitimate issue to be discussed, and it's one I've gone back and
forth on in my internal dialogue as well as on the talk page.  But
it's just absolutely not true that it has not been discussed in the
mainstream press and I find it frustrating that you keep repeating
this false assertion, especially when your other comments on the
matter are thoughtful and responsible.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On Oct 19, 2006, at 6:10 PM, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Stephen Bain wrote:
>> We could have a paragraph in Craig's article describing the
>> controversy, including how the Spokesman-Review ran the story and the
>> mainstream commentary on the whole business. But would that be
>> appropriate from a BLP perspective? The real story is only
>> peripherally about Craig.
>
> If someone encounters the rumors about Craig and is curious about
> them,
> I expect the first place they'll look is the page about Craig. So if
> this rumor really is very popular and widespread IMO it's quite
> reasonable to at least mention it on Craig's page, ideally providing a
> link to another article where details about the "real story" can be
> found (probably [[The Spokesman-Review]], I would guess).
>
> Disclaimer, this opinion is based entirely on your description of the
> situation.
>

There is no harm in waiting a few days and see what happens with that
story. There is no rush, really.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On 10/19/06, jf_wikipedia at mac.com <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 19, 2006, at 4:30 PM, Rob wrote:
>
> > There is a case to be made either way, I think, and that is a
> > legitimate issue to be discussed, and it's one I've gone back and
> > forth on in my internal dialogue as well as on the talk page.  But
> > it's just absolutely not true that it has not been discussed in the
> > mainstream press and I find it frustrating that you keep repeating
> > this false assertion, especially when your other comments on the
> > matter are thoughtful and responsible.
> If you refer to this:
> : http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/10/19/publiceye/entry2108678.shtml
> ... I would suggest you read it.

You know I've read it. I said so when you asked me the same thing on
the talk page, and I also posted a link to it there myself before you
asked me the first time.  And this doesn't address my point at all.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judy_Genshaft&diff=82245476&oldid=82239003
>>
>> Yes, the University already saw it, and no, they're not happy.
>
> In all fairness, the user that blanked it twice gave no edit summary
> whatsoever and those two blankings were the only edits that user has
> ever done on Wikipedia. The objectionable part of the article is only
> obvious if you read all the way through the text, whereas the signs
> suggesting that the blanking is vandalism are plainly obvious.
>

In all fairness, the user who performed the blanking was never asked why
they were blanking the article, or told that it wasn't the right thing
to be doing.

> So the other take-home message is that when blanking an article you
> should give some indication of _why_ you're blanking it. Saves trouble
> all around.
>

And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to
revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and
tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were
all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.

--
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: Claudi Meneghin

subject: [Wikitech-l] new LLD wikipedia

body:
Hi,
  due to its recent approval, I would like to ask a new Dolomitic Ladin wikipedia to be created, with domain
  http://lld.wikipedia.org

  Many thanks.
  Sincerely yours,

  Claudi

---------------------------------
D?couvrez une nouvelle fa?on d'obtenir des r?ponses ? toutes vos questions ! Demandez ? ceux qui savent sur Yahoo! Questions/R?ponses.


body:
Justin Cormack wrote:
> The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
>
<sni>
>> Their site content is making its way to Wikipedia.  There are three
>> problems:
>> a) Cut and paste copying of text
>> b) Paraphrasing of text
>> c) Unattributed copying of images the site has scanned from comic books
>>
>> (a) and (b) are copyright violations.  The problem goes back at least
>> six months and is ongoing.
>>
>> (c) while not strictly speaking a copyvio since marvunapp.com is merely
>> making scans of flat art, is upsetting the site operators due to the
>> volume of material involved and the lack of attribution.  If left
>> unaddressed (c) is likely to make them more pedantic about their rights
>> regarding (a) and (b).  So far they've been pretty understanding and
>> supportive, considering.
>>
>>
> Just for clarification:
> (c) is a copyvio too. "flat art" is under copyright too. Their site
> presumably has no permission to host these pictures either though?
> Unless they are claiming fair use?
> (b) on the other hand is not a copyvio in general, unless it is really (a).
>

I'll bite.

a) is an infringement of the copyright of the site's authors and is rude.
b) is plagiarism and is rude.
c) is plagiarism *and* copyright infringement of the comic book
authors/artists, the latter of which we believe is justifiable under the
mysterious "fair use" and "fair dealing" clauses present in many
English-speaking countries (especially the US). It's also rude.

In short:

1. DON'T INFRINGE ON COPYRIGHT. "Fair use" images should be the
exception to the rule and should NOT be used when a Free alternative is
available.
2. Don't use a source without attribution. If we can do it for NASA and
the US Government who so graciously put their works into the Public
Domain, we can at least acknowledge the hard work of people who have
carefully scanned (often rare) comic books and made those images
available online, and researched and written detailed summaries on said
comics.

--
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: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
On 10/19/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 19, 2006, at 4:36 PM, Rob wrote:
>
> > You know I've read it.
> Sorry, Rob, I missed to notice that you are Gamaliel.

No harm done, I didn't realize that people might miss that.  I should
start signing my posts.

Gamaliel


body:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:39:42 -0400, Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>Restart them all from scratch while clearly paying attention to our
>policies about fictional characters. Aggressively eliminate extended
>fictional biographies from all of them, focusing the articles on
>publication history, media appearances, creation histories, iconic
>versions, and other information that pertains to the real world.

At last!  A crusade I can join with a clear conscience!

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


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 19 Oct 2006 at 09:08, "Parker Peters" <onmywayoutster at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That's one of the reasons I gave up on editing Wikipedia and am slowly not
> bothering even to check my email on here: accounts blocked for "vandalism"
> or other reasons with no talkpage, new accounts with no welcome message, and
> general evidence of admins being shitty to them and getting away with it.

I remember reading somebody's online description of trolls, where one
of the signs is that they keep saying that they're quitting an online
community / list / newsgroup / forum / site / etc., but rarely
actually do.

I forget... is Parker Peters the one who picked a peck of pickled
peppers, or is he secretly Spider-Man, or what?  :-)

--
== 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: Steve Block

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/19/06, The Uninvited Co., Inc <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
>> No idea how we're going to unravel this one.
>>
>
> I've contacted WikiProject Comics. They are the people most likely to
> be able to do something about this.
>

Based on the list provided, there isn't much of an issue.  The
downloading of images from there and uploading them to Wikipedia, as far
as I can see ain't a copyright issue, since it's Marvel who holds the
copyright, not the site in question.  I've added source info to all
images on the list and deleted two pages from the list as copyvio, but
to my eye that's the extent of the problem.  I appreciate this
sitemaster is a little miffed, but what we are doing to him is no
different to what we're doing to any other fan-site on the internet.
That's my take on it at the minute, anyway.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.5/485 - Release Date: 19/10/06


body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> On 10/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'll bite.
>
> Me too!
>
>> a) is an infringement of the copyright of the site's authors and is rude.
>
> Very true, on both accounts.
>
>> b) is plagiarism and is rude.
>
> Not if you provide a source it ain't. If you provide a reference for
> the information it is simply another piece of the encyclopedia. Hell,
> this is what we do! We summarize and paraphrase other sources and put
> it in neat little packets called "articles". If this really was just
> paraphrasing (and not, as Mgm points out, just changing a few words) I
> have no problem with it. Source it, and it's not only ok, it is
> standard practice.
>
<snip>
>

I read it as "paraphrasing without attribution of source". If there had
been paraphrasing /with/ attribution then I don't see on what grounds
they could complain.

--
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: phoebe ayers

body:
On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
> article.
>
> Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up
> in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not
> obvious.

Indeed. Jefferson was the third president, sure, but I would have a tough
time naming, say, the first three Australian prime ministers. Qualitatively
there's no difference between these questions. By extension, I wouldn't know
the difference if someone vandalized these articles in a non-obvious way;
this is why good sources for obvious facts are useful. We write for English
speakers and learners around the world, at all possible levels of knowledge.

I figure for everything I write about, there's someone out there who might
want to know more, and if I can't provide outside sources I've no business
writing about it. I know this argument has gone round and round in circles
for years regarding undocumented facts of life in various cultures, but I am
talking about the other 95% of information in the encyclopedia. Let's not
forget that an encyclopedia is by definition a tertiary source, something
that makes connections to an outside world of knowledge. I wish there was a
culture of making notes about sources, no matter how bad those sources are,
on the talk pages of articles as information was added -- better to know
that someone was adding information they gained through personal knowledge,
or because it is "common sense," or because they copied from another
article, than to not have any information at all about where a particular
statement comes from.

-- phoebe / brassratgirl


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reminder

body:
On 10/18/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
> > (I license my work cc-by.)
>
> Thought of saying so on your user page e.g. {{DualLicenseWithCC-By-2.5}} ? You
> currently have cc-by-sa.

This shows how much I edit my userpage.  Thanks for the correction!

> I really doubt you'll get flamed for it.

You never know... I've seen some copyleft zealots get cross at this
kind of opinion on these lists in the past...

--
Sam


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikportal.tk

body:
On 10/19/06, ROSC Club Director <resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> www.wikiportal.tk is live and will redirect to www.wikimedia.com.
>
As www.wikimedia.com redirects to wikimedia.org, it might be a good
idea to directly redirect to wikimedia.org (hint: Wikimedia Foundation
is non-profit, .com is for "commercial")
Michael


subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikportal.tk


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 10/19/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

>
> "Critics of the GPL often describe it as being "viral"<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F>,
> based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under
> the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
>
> What should we do with that?  {{fact}} tag it?  Remove it?  Leave it as
> is?  Personally I'd say it should be removed.  I just removed, without
> logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation
> regarding this "perception".  Let's see what happens.
>

21:59, 19 October
2006<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&oldid=82506819>
75.202.44.46<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=75.202.44.46>(
Talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:75.202.44.46&action=edit>
) ({{fact}})
22:18, 19 October
2006<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&oldid=82510061>
Haeleth <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Haeleth>
(Talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Haeleth>|
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Haeleth>
) (rv deletion with misleading edit summary)

I'm not at all surprised.  This is why I usually use the {{fact}} tag.

Anthony


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Lawrence Lo wrote:

>Academic journals, thousands of them. If free access to all knowledge
>is our goal, freeing the journals is a major step towards there. I
>don't know what Open access or Wikiversity might impact the process of
>knowledge generation in the future, but I know the academy was/is the
>most important part in the process. Though I wonder if a million
>dollars is enough :P
>
Most of this is probably more relevant to Wikisource than Wikiversity.
Wikiversity needs to develop effective ways to use the material rather
than just accumulate the stuff.

>Another thing I have in mind, albeit maybe off-topic, is the
>digitization public domain works. Not only text (which is what Project
>Gutenberg is doing), but books, documents, photos, paintings,
>pictures, recordings etc. Forget about copyrighted stuff, there are a
>lot of goodies without copyright but I can't access them simply
>because I am not sitting next to them.
>
The mass of available out-of-copyright material is certainly worth
doing, but that is a manpower rather than a copyright problem.  I would
add archival ephemera to this.

Ec


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sourcing question

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:State_Road_913_%28Florida%29#A_bulletproof_argument...
Am I right or is the IP right? Do commercially-produced maps that show
an unsigned designation continuing along a causeway trump Department of
Transportation sources?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Frederick "FN" Noronha wrote:

>Just some suggestions:
>
>1. Government-funded software.
>2. Archives.
>3. All UN-related publications.
>4. Photographs of archival value.
>5. Textbooks.
>6. Out-of-print books.
>7. Documentary film and sharable footage.
>8. Music created by non-corporate artistes.
>9. Recordings of state-funded radio stations.
>10 Newspapers' content (which are over 24 hours old, in case of dailies)
>11 Local language computing solutions
>12 Translations tools across languages.
>13 Archives of content of all websites prior to 2005.
>14 Government records and files over five years old.
>
There's a lot of useful material in all that, but with a task so
enormous we also need to respect the work of others.  If another
organization is doing a good job at making some class of material freely
available we don't need to overwhelm them with our bigness.  Remember
that bigness is what makes Microsoft and Google such big targets.

Ec


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] Planned change to default IP blocking behavior

body:
I agree, but I think by having the default settings as I suggest, the
right message is being sent out. However, you're right - it's trivial
to override it in monobook.

S

On 18/10/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> Sean Whitton schreef:
> > I would agree with switching the boxes - we need to assume good faith
> > with blocks, not the opposite. However, I agree that a lot of blocks
> > would need the box ticking - it would make sysops without scripts
> > think about it before hitting the button.
> >
> > Just my thoughts.
> >
> > S
>
> When the new blocking options where created user w:en:user:Lupin posted
> some javascript to change the default blocking options. I suppose that
> will still work when the default options are changed.
>
> So users or wikis can override the default options if the wish to do so.
>
> See;
> http://en.wikizine.org/2006/07/wikizine-number-34_17.html
>
> --
> Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
> Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
	?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] We go! We go!

body:
> From: "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name>
>
> I remember reading somebody's online description of trolls, where one
> of the signs is that they keep saying that they're quitting an online
> community / list / newsgroup / forum / site / etc., but rarely
> actually do.

GENERAL: Away, away!

POLICE: (without moving)    Yes, yes, we go.

GENERAL: These pirates slay.

POLICE: Tarantara!

GENERAL: Then do not stay.

POLICE: Tarantara!

GENERAL:  Then why this delay?

POLICE: All right, we go.

ALL: Yes, forward on the foe!
           Yes, forward on the foe!

GENERAL: Yes, but you _don't_ go!

POLICE: We go, we go

ALL: Yes, forward on the foe!
           Yes, forward on the foe!

GENERAL: Damme, you _don't_ go!

POLICE: We go, we go

ALL: At last they go!
    At last they really go!


from_name: Sydney aka FloNight

body:
---- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

=============
Sydney aka FloNight wrote:
> ---- Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> The whole article?  *All* of it?  Even the bits which are not crap? No
> I don't.
>
> Guy (JzG)
>
> ================================
>
> The first, second, ..... time they remove the crap. When it keeps getting inserted they blank the whole article.

You are making things up out of thin air. Here are the contributions of
the article-blanker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Aarcelay

Just two edits, both of those were wholesale removals of the entire article.

The edit that added the objectionable material was on October 11:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judy_Genshaft&diff=80888561&oldid=80486747
That material wasn't touched until Aarcelay blanked the article. Nobody
at any point tried removing _just_ the objectionable bit.

Bryan Derksen,

I was speaking generally about the frustration seen on the OTRS complaints I have answered. If this was a single incident none of us would be going on and on about it.

Sydney


from_name: Sherool

subject: [Commons-l] Language

body:
On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:33:18 +0200, damodar vinayak bale
<dvbale at rediffmail.com> wrote:

>  ?  Can one refer to book "How Language Works" By:David Crystal,
>     published by Penguin Books.
>       Shyam.

Just a little request here. Could you please set your mail client to post
using "plain text" and ditch the animated HP ad banner from your sig. It's
kinda anoying (no offense).

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


from_name: Curly K-Man

body:
How hard is it to actually check before reverting?
Whenever I'm reverting a change, I always check to see
who the last editor (before the vandalism) was.
Anytimes it's either a a) IP or b) user without a
userpage (redlink) or c) the same user that added the
current "vandalism" , I'll go back into the history
and see what that person added. Sometimes, there are
multiple instances of vandalism not picked up by
whatever tools we're using (RC,VP, VS, IRC, ect).

-Royalguard11 [[User:Royalguard11]]

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reminder

body:
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:07:03 +0200, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Matt R stated for the record:
>
>> I saw this on BBC News today:
>>
>>    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6059726.stm
>>
>> Made me think. I suspect I'm not the only one on this list to have
>> encountered
>> some pretty disturbed and angry people on Wikipedia. I know you all
>> know this
>> already, but a reminder: it's a good idea to ensure your physical
>> address (at
>> the very least) is not public if you plan to tangle with nutcases
>> online.
>>
>> -- Matt
>
> To quote from the article:
>
> 	Det Cons Christopher Creagh, of the Metropolitan Police, said:
> 	"This is the first instance of a web-rage attack."
>
> /me generally doesn't panic at the first instance.
>

Well there have been a couple Counter Strike / MMORPG (Everquest I think)
related murders i Korea already though. However in those cases the guys
where already in the same room while playing or knew each other in real
life, so it's not quite the same as some nutjob tracking down a complete
stranger after a nasty flamewar.

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> Our articles on fictional characters are cesspools of fancruft,
> original research, and outright idiocy. This should be a clear call
> to the fact that we do not have sufficient control over these
> articles.

In this incident we had two copyvio articles and a bunch of unattributed
images. It's not at all clear how you're progressing from that to the
conclusion that all of Wikipedia's fictional character articles are so
out-of-control that they need to be "nuked."

> We need to demonstrate our lack of tolerance with a zeal
> previously known only to BLP.

Wikimedia Foundation could get sued for having "fancruft" in articles
about fictional characters? Or having fancruft could somehow ruin the
lives of fictional characters? Those are the reasons for BLP but I don't
see any similar level of importance for fictional character articles.

Sorry, this is still a ludicrous overreaction as far as I can tell.

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from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

body:
Single login is said to be coming soon, but what about unifying other things beyond just logging in?

 From my experience as sysop at several Wikipedia sister projects (Polish: Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary; English Wikibooks), significant part of vandals are coming from Wikipedia, just after being blocked there. Another problem is open proxies: English Wikipedia blocks many of them, but this process is not synchronised with other language editions and sister projects and as a result spammers and vandals can play cat and mouse with admins there using IPs that are infinitely blocked on English Wikipedia since a long time. In fact, Wikimedia's open proxy policy is not working at all - blacklist on for example Meta is available, but there is a separate one on English Wikipedia and people just don't have time to apply all these blocks everywhere.

For me, it is logical that block of IP number should be common to all Wikimedia projects. Allowing this would have a large impact on number of vandalisms in sister projects.

--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about sources

body:
Blogs are often self-serving or a platform for fringe opinions.
People using self-published sources are usually out to promote their opinion
instead of offering an unbiased article. These rules seem pretty clear and
non-contradictory to me.

Mgm

On 10/19/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/19/06, Luis Alberto Riveros <riveros11 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > In this page:
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brahma_Kumaris_World_Spiritual_University
> > It seems that VERIFIABILITY :
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
> >
> >
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Walnut.png> This
> > policy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies>in a
> > nutshell:
> > *Information on Wikipedia must be reliable and verifiable. Facts,
> > viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in articles if
> > they
> > have already been published by reliable
> > sources<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources>.
> > Articles should cite these sources
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CITE>whenever possible. Unsourced
> > material may be challenged and removed.
> >
> > Is in a way in contradiction with the policy below in the same page:
> >
> > * *Material from self-published sources, and other published sources of
> > dubious reliability, may be used as sources of information so long as:*
> >
> >    - *It is relevant to the organization's notability;*
> >    - *It is not contentious;*
> >    - *It is not unduly self-serving;*
> >    - *It does not involve claims about third parties, or about events
> not
> >    directly related to the subject;*
> >    - *There is no reasonable doubt about who wrote it.*
> >
> > Please clarify this.
> > Do you want reliable sources or not? If an antagonistic group starts an
> > article and uses a self-published source to hurt an organization's
> image,
> > is
> > this considered "non contentious"? or "relevant to the organization
> > notability?" or "unduly self-serving"?Thank you for your attention to
> > this.
>
>
> You bring up a valid point.
>
> I cringe every time I see one of our "respected admins" reverting someone
> with an edit summary along the lines of "no blogs allowed" for instance...
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd:  Dream a little -- collaboration

body:
If I had $100 mil to work with, or even a tenth of that, I'd want to set up
a framework for coordinating current digitization, archiving and online
content distribution projects. Such an organization could provide
digitization support and expertise, hosting support, and lobbying and legal
support for free licenses and free content. This organization could have as
clients everyone from the Internet Archive to a random university library
that has a collection of papers they're digitizing to the free Darwin
project to... whatever. Like CNI ( http://www.cni.org/) the organization
could help make connections between partners, but on a much larger scale.
I've done research into what digital libraries and collections of free
content exist, and it's truly unbelievable how many startup digitization and
content-freeing projects there are out there, many of which are struggling
for lack of money, manpower and expertise. Only by working with the people
who have local expertise in what content is available where -- the
librarians, archivists, copyright holders and government agencies of the
world -- will these corners of excellent content be unearthed and made
available to everyone.

Even huge digitization projects are plagued by the fact that they're often
fighting a losing battle. For instance, the U.S. government has an ongoing
project to archive online materials produced by government agencies, but
still hundreds of thousands of documents a year go offline, disappear and
are lost forever, mostly not through malice but through an inability to keep
up. Project Gutenburg has been going on for years and there are still
thousands of works that could be included. These projects, and more
importantly much smaller and unknown ones besides, could do with support and
help coordinating volunteer hours to expand the scope of current
preservation efforts. Wikimedia, through providing the right framework, has
achieved the seemingly impossible in five short years -- the world's largest
reference work, plus a cultural movement to boot. Think about what
developing an equally appropriate framework for content freeing and
distribution efforts could do.

-- phoebe
--
phoebe ayers | brassratgirl /at/ gmail.com |

On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales < jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
> I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
> would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
> generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
> purchased and freed.
>
> Dream big.  Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase
> copyrights to be made available under a free license.  What would you
> like to see purchased and released under a free license?
>
> Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific,
> be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.
>
> I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a
> position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what
> we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would
> expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about sources

body:
For example, I would have no qualms about using the Writer Beware blog as a
source. It's an important part of the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of
America), a notable organisation in literature. I also wouldn't have
problems with the blogs of reputed directors blogging about the filming
process of their new work or the blog at the Newsround website. Random "My
Life" blogs however, are not acceptable. Unfortunately, the distinction
isn't always easy, especially when the notability of the person writing the
blog (about themselves) is in question.

Self-published books aren't neccesarily bad sources either. I've heard about
2 guys who are writing a jazz encyclopedia and publishing it on Lulu. It
might be a self-published source, but it won't promote their opinion. I'd
see no harm in using their work as a source and I'm sure I'd have the same
feelings with other self-published books.

Mgm

On 10/19/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/19/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Blogs are often self-serving or a platform for fringe opinions.
> > People using self-published sources are usually out to promote their
> opinion
> > instead of offering an unbiased article. These rules seem pretty clear
> and
> > non-contradictory to me.
>
> And often they are part of the reporting of a reputable news
> organization.   Self-published blogs should be treated like
> self-published books, news blogs from a reputable news organization
> should be treated like other material from that reputable news
> organization.
>
> Sorry for the hijack, but I just keep seeing the simplistic
> formulation of blog=bad over and over again, either by people who
> parrot policy and can't distinguish the two, or by people who use
> policy to further their agendas.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Ilia Alshanetsky

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.2.0RC6 Testing

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

Hello!

You are receiving this email because your project has been select to
take part in a new effort by the PHP QA Team to make sure that your
project still works with PHP versions to-be-released. With this we
hope to make sure that you are either aware of things that might
break, or to make sure we don't introduce any strange regressions.
With this effort we hope to build a better relation between the PHP
Team and the major projects.

If you do not want to receive these heads-up emails, please reply to
me personally and I will remove you from the list; but, we hope that
you want to actively help us making PHP a better and more stable tool.

The 6th release candidate of PHP 5.2.0 was released today, it can be
downloaded from http://downloads.php.net/ilia/. If you discover any
problems with this release please notify PHP's QA team at "php-
qa at lists.php.net".

In case you think that other projects should also receive this kinds
of emails, please let me know privately, and I will add them to the
list of projects to contact.

Best Regards,

Ilia Alshanetsky
5.2 Release Master

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from_name: effe iets anders

body:
As I understand it it is also possible to set the standard locally
different, so why changing it globally? I think it would be best if
the communities make these decisions themselves and define it in their
monobook.

But one way or another, I think it is very important that it is easy
for another sysop to see in the log how the block was performed. Is it
possible that an additional note will be added to the blocklog and the
blocklist, telling what type of block was performed? (with or without
blocking logged in users, with or without blocking accountcreation) I
think that is very important, as we are having a lot of problems with
that when people come complain through OTRS for instance.

Effeietsanders

2006/10/19, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com>:
> I agree, but I think by having the default settings as I suggest, the
> right message is being sent out. However, you're right - it's trivial
> to override it in monobook.
>
> S
>
> On 18/10/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> > Sean Whitton schreef:
> > > I would agree with switching the boxes - we need to assume good faith
> > > with blocks, not the opposite. However, I agree that a lot of blocks
> > > would need the box ticking - it would make sysops without scripts
> > > think about it before hitting the button.
> > >
> > > Just my thoughts.
> > >
> > > S
> >
> > When the new blocking options where created user w:en:user:Lupin posted
> > some javascript to change the default blocking options. I suppose that
> > will still work when the default options are changed.
> >
> > So users or wikis can override the default options if the wish to do so.
> >
> > See;
> > http://en.wikizine.org/2006/07/wikizine-number-34_17.html
> >
> > --
> > Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
> > Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
>         ?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
>                 sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Oct 19, 2006, at 8:40 PM, Bryan Derksen wrote:

>
> The term "ludicrous overkill" comes to mind. I think you've got
> another
> agenda here. :)

Damn straight.

Our articles on fictional characters are cesspools of fancruft,
original research, and outright idiocy. This should be a clear call
to the fact that we do not have sufficient control over these
articles. We need to demonstrate our lack of tolerance with a zeal
previously known only to BLP.

-Phil


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Matt R wrote:
> --- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to
>> revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and
>> tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were
>> all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
>
> Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of
> instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user
> blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's
> vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the time
> to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone with
> a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very shortly
> thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
>

If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you
mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective
method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted
had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:

"Please do not replace Wikipedia pages with blank content. Blank pages
are harmful to Wikipedia because they have a tendency to confuse
readers. If it is a duplicate article, please
[[Wikipedia:Redirect|redirect]] it to an appropriate existing page. If
the page has been [[Wikipedia:How to spot vandalism|vandalised]], please
[[Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version|revert]] it to
the last legitimate version. If you feel that the content of a page is
inappropriate, please [[Wikipedia:How to edit a page|edit]] the page and
replace it with appropriate content. If you believe there is no hope for
the page, please see the [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy|deletion policy]]
for how to proceed. Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia!"

Which /should/ read a lot more like {{test1a}}, which talks about using
the talk page.

--
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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