from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: #wikipedia-en-admins

body:
On 1/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Admins == trusted editors (well, admins *should* == trusted editors),
> > but trusted editors > admins.

> Actually it's really more like <math>Admins \subset Trusted
> Editors</math>, or, if you really, really want to use natural numbers
> |Admins| < |Trusted Users|
>
> I'm sorry, I just had to :P

Sam Korn =/= Mathematician

However you write it. :-)

--
Sam


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Kat Walsh

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and
	the rest

body:
On 1/26/06, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > sannse wrote:
> >>I think that something needs to be done to bring the two versions
> >>together.  It seems clear that people are writing to helpdesk-l,
> >>thinking that they are writing to the "site owner's" email address, and
> >>asking questions that would be better answered officially.  And there
> >>are plenty of mails on OTRS that could be better answered by a general
> >>help desk.
> >>
> >>The only way I can see of bringing them together is on OTRS.  Perhaps
> >>with two queues, one official mail and one helpdesk.
> >>
> >>I don't know, but I do think it's something we should look at.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Unfortunately there will always be people who use the wrong one.
>
> Yes, but with OTRS it is easy to switch email from one queue to another.
>   If there were clear guidelines as to what goes in which queue, then it
> wouldn't be a problem that some mail initially got in the wrong queue.
>
> Or we could have one big queue - with both addresses leading there (and
> /many/ more helpers on it!)

I like the idea of using the ticket system for both addresses: grant
access liberally to the helpdesk queue (anyone interested and
reasonably clued) while having a smaller crew of people to answer the
mail that really must be handled carefully and discreetly
(confidential concerns, potential media blowups, etc.), to be easily
moved back and forth. I don't think helpdesk-l works as is, as it's
difficult to keep track of messages, and the boilerplate responses are
a *big* help answering mail in OTRS. (You can see these at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en> - it's amazing how much of
the mail we get is people applying to our university or wishing to
email celebrities.)

The possible benefits of having the helpdesk as a list -- many
experienced eyes all looking at one question, openness, easy signup,
etc. -- are negated by the sheer volume of the list, dearth of regular
volunteers, and the fact that many people are confused about the
difference between sending to the private info address and to a public
mailing list -- I don't think anyone anticipated the sheer volume of
it when it was created.

Oh, and in response to the initial post and others regarding
confidentiality vs. transparency -- Delphine absolutely has it. Some
issues need to be confined to a group of people who can be trusted to
handle things discreetly. I don't think "admins" is the right group,
as many trusted users are not admins, and many admins are not good
with this sort of work. But a "volunteer fire department" of sorts is
necessary. I know there are people I will beg and plead to go clean
things up where I haven't the knowledge, resources, or time to do so,
some of whom are admins and some of whom aren't (or weren't, at
least).

Tagging for cleanup is not a feasible option. Things sit in cleanup
for months, and most do not get acted on quickly because there is no
urgency about them. They're not marked by priority, in general, and
requests for grammar fixes are lumped in along with great unsourced
info dumps. Where people are *actively complaining*, sometimes with
legal teeth behind it, however, there is urgency, and it's not enough
to wait until someone passing by has the inclination to take it on.
It's good to have a crew of people who can do the "dirty work" --
sourcing, fact checking, NPOVing -- while the PR crew does the (often
equally difficult) task of corresponding with the affected people,
explaining how things work, calming them down. (Oh, yeah, and
hopefully dissuading them from pursuing legal action.)

-Kat
one of your friendly neighborhood OTRS crew

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
"Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
- Leonardo da Vinci


list: foundation-l

from_name: Kernigh

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: GFDL Version issue: Can simply syncing GFDL
	Licence	document solve GFDL version imcompatibility?

body:
PiaCarrot <nao-yuki at ...> writes:

> Each article on most editions on wikipedia are licenced under
> "GFDL 1.2 or later", but articles on ja.wp are currently licenced
> under "GFDL 1.1 or later".
This means that you cannot translate articles from en.wikipedia (and some
others) to ja.wikipedia.

> If licence on ja.wp shifted to "GFDL 1.2 or later" simply,
> can their "Duplicated articles and images" be relieved
> from  GFDL version imcompatibility because article 9 of
> GFDL licence?
I was planning to eventually propose such a shift for en.wikisource and
en.wikiquote. Both projects, plus sep11.wikipedia, all currently use "GFDL"
without a version number (effectively the same as "GFDL 1.1 or later") for
everything (project pages, talk pages) except sources and quotes. However, some
of the project pages are adaptations from en.wikipedia.

-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Recentchangescamp

body:
So, there's an informal wiki-oriented code-and-talk conference called
Recentchangescamp coming up Feb 3-5, 2006 in Portland:

        http://recentchangescamp.org/

I'm going to be there, and I was wondering if any other MW developers
will be, too. It'd be fun to do a project during the camp.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
and reliable world-wide travel guide


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Zenodot / Directmedia Publishing GmbH is planning to
	print an encyclopedia...

body:
Hi,

I just got wonderful news: Zenodot / Directmedia Publishing GmbH has
announced an encyclopedia project. They are planning to take wikipedia
(in a license compliant way..) content from the German language
Wikipedia. The time schedule is for around 100 volumes until December 2010.

For those of you who speak German, you can read more about it at

www.wp10.de and de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WP_1.0

Mathias


from_name: Sherool

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

body:
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:15:53 +0100, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>
> --- Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
>> Matt R wrote:
>> > You're confusing user space with article space. User pages are *not*
>> the
>> > distributable free content encyclopedia. User pages are part of the
>> framework
>> > which builds the distributable free content encyclopedia.
>> >
>> > There is a perfectly reasonable goal of avoiding fair use images in
>> *articles*,
>> > wherever possible. As I understand it, we also remove most Fair Use
>> images
>> from
>> > user pages because we normally don't have any decent Fair Use
>> rationale for
>> > using them there. However, as a parody, we do have a rationale for
>> the AYB
>> > image.
>> >
>> > It's a good thing to keep a few fun things on Wikipedia outside of the
>> article
>> > space. It's a good thing to be wary of fair use images. It's a bad
>> thing to
>> > delete humour because of misplaced "fair use" political correctness.
>>
>> They all get bundled together in the downloads, though.
>
> Do you mean the databse dumps? You can download just the articles.

Yes you can download just the articles, the image dump don't discriminate
though, it simply contains all the images on the server AFAIK.

So if someone download the article dump and the image dump with plans of
publishing it in the US (outside they would have to delete all the faur
use images anyway, or obtain permission for each individual image) then
your humorous fair use image from your userpage become a copyright
violation for that reuser because without your userpage he has no fair use
defence for it. This means that re-users would have to spend time and
effort to purge these humor, parody and other orphanded userpage stuff
 from the dump, and while it's not rocket sience to automate such a purge
it's still an extra burden on re-users that is completely unnessesary.

--
[[User:Sherool]]


from_name: Heinz

subject: [Wikitech-l] how to add an extension to wp

body:
i would like to add an extension to wp, especial to wp.de.
it is the point-mapping-extension described
here:http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GISWiki/Point-Mapping_Extension

the extension could help to avoid approximately the upload of several
100.000 of images which just describe the position of e.g. a city in a
country

how can an extension be added?

heinz


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML tags in discussions?

body:
Hello

Some weeks ago I asked whether in general is was acceptable to use
HTML Tags in wikipedia. There was no unique answer, but my impression
was that those constructs which do not have a wikipedia equivalent
such as blockquote.

Now recently I was pointed out, on a german discussion page, that the
use of HTML Tags was, well, basically forbidden.

    -  One reason was that todays converters could not deal with such
       constructs and therefore it would be impossible to convert
       discussions page say in wikibooks (I honestly fail to see the
       value of that but anyhow).

    -  The other reason was that the use of such TAGS annoys other
       users.

Could anybody comment on that, especially on the issue whether a
administrator has the right to impose the use of certain formating
constructs.

Regards

Uwe Brauer


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Poll for Wikistandards

body:
> fyi, i have started a poll concerning '''wikistandards''' at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards#Poll

Because [[Wiki for standards]] and [[Wiki for standards/Vote]] are not
linked from anywhere else in Meta (in fact, I only know about them from
reading foundation-l), I have posted a comment to the vote page:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards/Vote#comments

-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Zenodot / Directmedia Publishing GmbH is planning
	to print an encyclopedia...

body:
Yes, Wikimedia's flagship project - the German Wikipedia - is doing pretty
well. But what about backwards old English Wikipedia? Can we publish a DVD
version anytime soon? :)

Regards,
Haukur

> Hi,
>
> I just got wonderful news: Zenodot / Directmedia Publishing GmbH has
> announced an encyclopedia project. They are planning to take wikipedia
> (in a license compliant way..) content from the German language
> Wikipedia. The time schedule is for around 100 volumes until December
> 2010.
>
> For those of you who speak German, you can read more about it at
>
> www.wp10.de and de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WP_1.0
>
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] note David Gerard's just placed on [[WT:AFD]]

body:
On 25/01/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:

> And what use is the page number
> when there are loads of editions of a source?

I may just be being slow, but this is why people traditionally also
write down the publisher and year of publication - these aren't,
generally, just there to look pretty.

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


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML tags in discussions?

body:
On 26/01/06, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
> Could anybody comment on that, especially on the issue whether a
> administrator has the right to impose the use of certain formating
> constructs.

Well, when running a collaborative, and therefore community-oriented
website, which features of the software are used and how is down to
the power structures in that community. Wikimedia projects tend to aim
for a fairly democratic power structure, based on approximate
consensus - so formatting rules can be (and are) "imposed" on a
minority if a substantial majority agrees to do so. They can't - in
those particular communities - be imposed by any one particular user
*against* the grain of a consensus. If you're running your own wiki,
obviously you can choose whatever power structures you want.

As for technical issues to do with converting it, that's completely up
to who writes the converter, what the desired input and output is,
etc. If a community decided (either by consensus or by top-down
decision) to use <blockquote>, I'm sure somebody would come along to
"teach" any tool that community wanted to use to "understand"
<blockquote> appropriately. Using it *without* consensus, though,
would leave it as an "edge case" that may well not be supported as
well as people might like.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
Dear Angela, dear list,

thank you for publishing this, and thanks to the Board and everyone else
involved for taking these steps, which I hope will help to decentralize
the organization and empower and encourage users to participate in
everyday work such as the establishment of partnerships, the
coordination of fundraising campaigns, the management of press releases,
the handling of libel cases, and so on. I'd like to get involved a bit
to help this process along as much as possible.

As you requested, in this response I focus specifically on the Executive
Committee. I am sending a separate message with some general concerns.

The situation in the past has been that the Board was the single
executive body of the Wikimedia Foundation. This was obviously not
scalable. There are, essentially, two competing problems:
* the Board is too small to deal with the amount of decisions that need
to be made.
* the Board is too large and distributed to immediately make a decision
when one is needed.

This relates to the problem Angela has pointed out of two competing
goals of a small and a large committee. As Jake has explained, the
solution is probably a compromise.

It is my understanding that our mid term goal is to have a full-time CEO
in addition to the Board. This CEO position is highly relevant, as the
CEO will have to make many of the immediate short term decisions. I
would strongly recommend not to pick a complete outsider for this
position. While non-profit experience is obviously helpful in running an
organization like Wikimedia, Wikimedia is a very unusual beast and a
highly participatory community.

The CEO needs to be a person who understands the community, the goals,
the technology, and the organization. They also need to be particularly
good at electronic communications, which is our main means of getting
things done. I'd much rather see someone like Daniel Mayer or James
Forrester in this position - both individuals with great organizational
talent - than someone who has never edited a wiki.

I would support the current Board or a subset thereof serving in an
interim role as a multiple personality CEO while this position is being
defined and a suitable candidate is sought. However, I strongly believe
there need to be more people on the Executive Committee.

We have subunits in the organization (chapters) which could provide some
of the members of the EC: each head of a chapter would automatically be
a member of the EC. In addition, we have the existing officers like the
CTO, CFO and CRO, who should serve on the committee.

Now, if we stick to all these people, we still have a few problems:
- They are all quite busy in their existing roles.
- Some of these positions are appointed, others were elected to a
specific chapter. I think we should try to avoid a situation where the
executive body is stagnant and seen as bureaucratically distant from the
community, like the European Commission.
- In all likelihood, these people, through their existing roles, will be
forced to focus on our largest project, Wikipedia.

Therefore, I suggest that in addition, we have an annual or biannual
open election of about 10 members, one or two for each Wikimedia
project. These could be elected by their project communities, or by the
entire Wikimedia community - I have no strong opinion on that.

The members of the EC would meet at least weekly (but also be present
much of the time on a designated IRC channel). Realistically, in a
volunteer organization, you'd probably find that of the relatively large
committee, only a subset of maybe 10 people really show up and
participate regularly. So you'd need to state that decisions can be made
by such a subset.

Any decision that can be postponed until the next meeting would be made
in consensus or through a vote by the members present then and there
(with the CEO having the power to override a split vote). In addition,
the CEO would be required to consult with the Executive Committee
whenever possible (in practice, through the aforementioned IRC channel).

The Board would primarily exercise strategic oversight: ensure the
openness of the organization, prioritize long term goals, evaluate the
work of the officers, and so on. The President (Jimmy) would also be the
main person identified with the organization at large to the outside
world, i.e. the guy who gets the Nobel Prize in the end ;-).

Whether there needs to be a "Wikicouncil" as has been suggested before
(similar to the Central Committee Jake mentioned) is a separate
question. Personally, I do not see the need at present, since we also
have the other committees which hopefully will be open enough to enable
wide participation. A very large representative body does not really
strike me as appropriate for an organization like ours - if you can have
a large group of people, you might as well make it completely open and
participatory.

I see one key role of the Executive Committee and the CEO as the
authorization of outside contacts and partnership proposals. Anything
that doesn't fall within a defined and agreed upon strategy needs to be
authorized a priori or a posteriori.

Ideally, in the next few years, I think we should gradually work towards
making these executive positions full-time positions (some paid for
through the chapters), as they will have to do quite a lot of work when
it comes to the organization and oversight of the committees, and we
need to be able to rely on them being available during meetings. Of
course, this will not be nearly possible without a very substantial
increase in our budget (i.e. multiple millions), so we could continue as
we do now, starting with the most necessary official positions.

These are my thoughts for now and I'm very interested in what others
have to say. Most importantly, I hope that all non-confidential
discussion about these issues will take place in open forums and on open
pages from now on.

Best,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More on WT:AFD

body:
> From: Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>

> It occurred to me that there are three totally different situations
> which could be described "deletion":
>
> Topic: The topic itself simply doesn't belong in Wikipedia, and even a
> brilliant article should be deleted. Examples: Dictionary definitions,
> un-notable people/groups. Solution: Delete and put a note on the
> topic.
> Article: The topic itself could belong in Wikipedia, but it doesn't
> deserve a whole article. Examples: Less well known songs of notable
> but not famous groups, less well known characters in fictional
> universes ("fancruft"). Solution: Merge with other articles.
> Content: The topic itself could make a good article, but this isn't
> it. As it stands it's worse than nothing. Examples: Copyright vio,
> substub, horribly POV etc. Solutions: Delete, reduce to stub, call for
> help to rewrite, trim, as appropriate.
>
> Perhaps the format for AFD could be modified to split nominations into
> these three categories. This could reduce some hurt for some article
> "owners" ("It's not that your writing is bad, it just doesn't belong
> here"), and also make it a bit clearer when an article is being
> deleted for the wrong reason. Ie, it's in the bad topic section, but
> the dispute is about poor writing or lack of comprehensiveness.
>
> Comments?

Mod +1, "insightful."


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API

body:
On 1/26/06, Michiel van Hulst <michiel at vanhulst.nu> wrote:
> So could anyone tell me the story of the API ;-)

Of course I may not have all the facts of the matter but this is
basically what happened: On 2005-06-23 Jimbo Wales on behalf of
Wikimedia/Wikipedia announced that an API (most likely SOAP) would be
written to access Wikimedia content. As far as I know the foundation
did not actually follow up on this, somebody obviously has to write it
and they didn't hire anyone to do that (yet?). Perhaps they were
hoping that someone would do it for free upon them announcing it but
that obviously hasn't happened. Long story short lots of talk but not
much of anything else.

I actually started writing a SOAP API that used standard MediaWiki
functions at one point which worked for some limited things like
getting article text but didn't finish it because other things came
up.

There are several issues with implementing a robot API like that, one
is that a lot of our logic is still tied to our current XHTML output
code, which would have to be split off into a backend and presentation
frontends. Another is that it's inherently hard to write some simple
things like getting the first paragraph of an article (or a summary)
because we don't store those things relationally, and UA's having to
implement their own parser for our syntax isn't really practical due
to its complexity.

See the page on meta[1] and bug 208[2]

1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/KDE_and_Wikipedia
2. http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Committees: general concerns

body:
As announced in my previous response, here are some general concerns
about the various committees created through:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions

=== Openness ===

The secret to our project-level success has been that we allow ordinary
people to do extraordinary things. This distinguishes Wikimedia from
other organizations. It is essential that we preserve this principle in
our organizational work.

There has been a committee before these new committees; it is the
Wikimedia Research Network which I started while I was CRO. This
committee is open. Anyone can join, it has public meetings anyone can
participate in, and public IRC logs and reports. I hope that we can make
these new committees (except for the Executive Committee) similarly open.

That does not mean that every member has to have the same rights and
privileges. There can be leaders, a trusted (elected or appointed) core
group, and a larger open membership group surrounding the core. There
may be meetings which are open to all members, and those which are only
open to the core group.

But I hope we all agree that an approach which maximizes openness and
participation is desirable. I would very much like to see open meetings
about the formation of these committees, open discussions about their
purpose, and open reports about their activities. I would appreciate
some Board-level oversight to ensure that this openness is preserved.

Are there still documents on the internal wiki or relevant messages on
the internal mailing list which have not yet been, but can be
publicized? If so, I would appreciate it if this was done.

=== Multiple languages ===

I do not find anything in the resolutions about languages. In fact, as
far as I know, all the committee organizers speak English. This is to be
expected and perfectly alright. However, as a community which strives to
bring knowledge to people in their language, I find it highly important
that people are enabled to participate in their language on an
international level. (We do enable local participation through the
projects and chapters.)

This is a tricky problem, but I believe there are reasonable ways to
deal with it. For example, every committee can agree on its most
commonly spoken language - in almost all cases, this will be English.
Beyond that, it can form language-specific subcommittees that meet
separately, and that relay the results of their work through someone who
speaks the common language.

This may seem like overkill, but do keep in mind that if we aim for open
committees with different levels of authority, we will also end up with
fairly large groups, so this will become a real issue. I certainly hope
that it will! :-)

=== Multiple projects ===

Among the resolutions, there is a "Special projects" committee which, at
the moment, has no definition. I'm not sure if I would call Wikisource,
Wikiquote, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikimedia Commons "special
projects". (Wikispecies is perhaps one because of its relation to a
grant.) Yet, all of these projects have very specific needs.

For example, there have been ideas floating around for Wikinews to work
together with journalism schools and radio stations. There's been talk
about collaboration between Wikisource and Project Gutenberg /
Distributed Proofreaders. And there are about a hundred different
possible collaborations actively being explored around Wiktionary and
its potential successor, from the European Union's terminology databases
to Swahili dictionaries.

It is clear that these partnerships need to be pursued by people close
to the projects, who understand their needs and who are in touch with
the right people, some of them because of their personal background,
others because of their passion.

In all these cases, it would greatly help to have a workgroup that is
authorized and tasked with pursuing these partnerships, and that can act
in the name of the Wikimedia Foundation, together with the Executive
Committee (more on this below).

Wikimedia is much more than just Wikipedia. Therfore, I think it is
absolutely necessary to think about forming project-specific committees
for each Wikimedia project. I understand "special projects" to be
something separate from this - things like grants work, new project
proposals like Wikiversity, and other meta collaborations. What do the
organizers of the special project committee think about its role?

In line with my earlier comments about the Executive Committee, if we
end up with project-specific committees, their leaders could be elected
by their communities, legitimizing them and at the same time ensuring
their participation on the ExecCom.

=== Clear definitions ===

At the moment, none of these proposed committees has a clear scope or
clear definition. There is a communication committee, for example.
Communication cannot be compartmentalized; every single committee needs
to be able to communicate with the inside and outside world. My concern
is that as these definitions are made, there will inevitably be scope
conflicts between the committees.

This reinforces my earlier point about the need for openness. Perhaps an
open meeting with all committee organizers and interested parties could
be organized soon to hammer out the basic definitions, in order to avoid
overlap. Angela, Anthere and Jimmy, would you be willing to organize
something like this in the near future?

Best,

Erik


from_name: sannse

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and
	the	rest

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> sannse wrote:
>>I think that something needs to be done to bring the two versions
>>together.  It seems clear that people are writing to helpdesk-l,
>>thinking that they are writing to the "site owner's" email address, and
>>asking questions that would be better answered officially.  And there
>>are plenty of mails on OTRS that could be better answered by a general
>>help desk.
>>
>>The only way I can see of bringing them together is on OTRS.  Perhaps
>>with two queues, one official mail and one helpdesk.
>>
>>I don't know, but I do think it's something we should look at.
>>
>
>
> Unfortunately there will always be people who use the wrong one.

Yes, but with OTRS it is easy to switch email from one queue to another.
  If there were clear guidelines as to what goes in which queue, then it
wouldn't be a problem that some mail initially got in the wrong queue.

Or we could have one big queue - with both addresses leading there (and
/many/ more helpers on it!)

--sannse


from_name: Travis Mason-Bushman

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/26/06 9:20 AM, "Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

> It occurred to me that there are three totally different situations
> which could be described "deletion":

'''Support''' --~~~~

-FCYTravis


from_name: Michiel van Hulst

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API

body:
Hi there,

I read in an article that KDE and the foundation are announcing a
knowledge-intergrated desktop using a webservice API.

This is just great! And the idea of a SOAP/WSDL API is even better.

What is the status or are the plans on this API?

I realy would like to have the wikipedia websites to be accesible
trough a API.

I don't know and couldn't find out if there's allready a developing
team, ect on this one.  But it would be a great feature which I also
want to contribute to.

So could anyone tell me the story of the API ;-)

Cheers,

Michiel
--
M.P.A. (Michiel) van Hulst
e: michiel at vanhulst.nu
w: http://michiel.vanhulst.nu


from_name: STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA

subject: [WikiEN-l] FeloniousMonk's admin powers

body:
You're not the first to have problems with this admin
and you won't be the last one. I hold the same opinion
as you do when concerning Monk.

--- Itake <tchakolli at gmail.com> wrote:

> Username: Itake
> IP: 213.67.50.30.
>
> I was banned by the user "FeloniousMonk" because he
> felt I violated
> wikipedia's civility code even though I was warned
> several times. Not only
> is this untrue, but it is clear that the user in
> question has a bias against
> me because he and I are involved in an ongoing AfD
> dispute.
>
> First off, I'd like to say that I did indeed violate
> the rules in question.
> At that time, I wasn't aware that there even existed
> rules for civil conduct
> on wikipedia. I was warned that my behavior was
> against the rules.
> I replied to the warnings on my talk page. I didn't
> even edit the AfD
> disputes any further, or violate the civil conduct
> rules again, but then
> suddenly I was banned. So user FeloniousMonk is
> lying. I wasn't warned
> several times, I was told I violated it one time and
> continious violations
> would lead to my ban. I didn't continue to violate
> it, yet I was banned.
>
> Further, I belive the user FeloniousMonk should have
> his admin powers
> removed. He is quite clearly abusing them. I direct
> your attention first to
> examples of uncivil conduct found on the wikipedia
> page about it:
>
> rudeness
> judgmental tone in edit summaries ("fixed sloppy
> spelling," "snipped
> rambling crap")
> belittling contributors because of their language
> skills or word choice
> ill-considered accusations of impropriety of one
> kind or another
> starting a comment with: "Not to make this personal,
> but..."
> calling someone a liar, or accusing him/her of
> slander or libel. Even if
> true, such remarks tend to aggravate rather than
> resolve a dispute.
> More serious examples include:
>
> Taunting
> personal attacks
> racial, ethnic, and religious slurs
> profanity directed at another contributor
> lies
> defacing user pages
> calling for bans and blocks
> First off, the users Feloniousmonk is grouping with
> fit in on several of
> these criteries. Yet he didn't ban them. For
> example:
>
> From my user talk page:
> ::Both of you need an objectivity lesson. And Itake
> needs a civility lesson.
> [[User:Daycd|David D.]] [[User talk:Daycd|(Talk)]]
> 17:05, 21 January 2006
> (UTC)
>
> ::: What's the matter, Daycd?  Can't you just feel
> that "Christian" love?  -
> [[User:WarriorScribe|WarriorScribe]] 19:14, 21
> January 2006 (UTC)
>
> That's it, you've pushed it too far
>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/J._Otis_Ledbetter&diff=36030780&oldid=36027828
> this time].  Continue violating [[WP:CIVIL|the
> civility guidelines]] and you
> will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.  --<font
> style="background: #000000"
> face="Impact" color="#00a5ff">[[User:Cyde|Cyde
> Weys]]</font> 04:19, 21
> January 2006 (UTC)
>
> ::::: Interesting.  So you interpret Matthew 5:39 as
> not applying to you,
> then? - [[User:WarriorScribe|WarriorScribe]] 01:05,
> 22 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> Delete pity we can't delete the author. ??? Dunc|
> ??? 22:21, 19 January 2006
> (UTC)
>
> (last one was from here:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Thomas_Ice)
>
> Secondly, the admin himself violated several of
> these principles in a very
> serious way. As can be shown by his comments on the
> AfD in question, he does
> not only have a serious bias that no doubt played a
> role in my ban, but he
> also does some uncivil conduct himself:
>
> Delete Neither diploma mills nor their presidents
> warrant articles. Another
> non-notable from our most prolific creator of
> articles on non-notables,
> Gastrich. FeloniousMonk 22:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> Delete. Another non-notable from our most prolific
> creator of non-notable
> bios, Gastrich. FeloniousMonk 22:08, 20
>
> Your campaign here to promote your diploma mill is
> its most notable aspect.
> Who knows, maybe they'll name a "hall" in your
> honor... FeloniousMonk 22:33,
> 19 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> Delete Another tool off the diploma mill
> assemblyline. FeloniousMonk 22:42,
> 19 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> Delete Though I was impressed with the fact that "he
> regularly reads
> academic papers at Oxford University." But since I
> regularly read the Pixley
> Press and the ingredients on the back of cereal
> boxes and I don't get an
> article here, why should he? FeloniousMonk 03:53, 19
> January 2006 (UTC)
> The admin in question is quite clearly being rude,
> he's throwing around
> accusations, he's doing blatant lying, he is
> taunting and he is being
> judgemental. In my opinion, he has violated more of
> these criterias then I
> have. But because of his admin powers, not only does
> he escape justice but
> all the users who favor his side of the argument and
> violate these criterias
> seem to escape being banned aswell.
>
> Further, FeloniousMonk has just banned the User
> "Jason Gastrich" on equally
> poor basis. In the wake of this ban, and before the
> ban, FeloniousMonk
> himself continued to violate Wikipedia rules and
> throw around unfounded
> accusations. The admin FeloniousMonk is abusing his
> admin powers, both to
> punish users he doesn't like and to influence AfD
> disputes in his favor.
>
> I feel the entire AfD dispute around the Louisiana
> Baptist University
> articles is being handled very poorly, and it gets
> even worse when admins
> like FeloniousMonk comes along to abuse their
> powers. I hope this dispute,
> FeloniousMonk's status as an admin, and my ban all
> gets the attention it
> deserves.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Itake.
>
> (ps. I didn't quite get the procedure for these
> kinds of things. There was
> something about a mailing list, but I think that
> signing up to it wasn't
> necessary? If my inquiries are going to the wrong
> place or so, please tell
> me so I know who to send them to .ds)
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API

body:
?var, Brion,

Thanks for your replies,

I think an API would be in everybody's intrests. I don't have looked
at the complete data structure so I couldn't make a prediction how
much effort it would take to code a first verion of an API.

The basis functionality I personaly would like to see in a first sort
like API, it to ask a question/page on subject x and receiving this
article in clean content.

I'm going to look into the data sets and try to get a feeling what
should be done. If this isn't to scary (proberbly is scary) I would
like to contribute some of my time to try and setup or code futher on
the work allready started or at least have a look at it.

It would be great to have this API, but like all other things in live
you need to get you priorities ;-)

Cheers,

Michiel

On Jan 26, 2006, at 9:04 PM, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

> On 1/26/06, Michiel van Hulst <michiel at vanhulst.nu> wrote:
>> So could anyone tell me the story of the API ;-)
>
> Of course I may not have all the facts of the matter but this is
> basically what happened: On 2005-06-23 Jimbo Wales on behalf of
> Wikimedia/Wikipedia announced that an API (most likely SOAP) would be
> written to access Wikimedia content. As far as I know the foundation
> did not actually follow up on this, somebody obviously has to write it
> and they didn't hire anyone to do that (yet?). Perhaps they were
> hoping that someone would do it for free upon them announcing it but
> that obviously hasn't happened. Long story short lots of talk but not
> much of anything else.
>
> I actually started writing a SOAP API that used standard MediaWiki
> functions at one point which worked for some limited things like
> getting article text but didn't finish it because other things came
> up.
>
> There are several issues with implementing a robot API like that, one
> is that a lot of our logic is still tied to our current XHTML output
> code, which would have to be split off into a backend and presentation
> frontends. Another is that it's inherently hard to write some simple
> things like getting the first paragraph of an article (or a summary)
> because we don't store those things relationally, and UA's having to
> implement their own parser for our syntax isn't really practical due
> to its complexity.
>
> See the page on meta[1] and bug 208[2]
>
> 1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/KDE_and_Wikipedia
> 2. http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

On Jan 26, 2006, at 9:06 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> I read in an article that KDE and the foundation are announcing a
>> knowledge-intergrated desktop using a webservice API.
>>
>> This is just great! And the idea of a SOAP/WSDL API is even better.
>>
>> What is the status or are the plans on this API?
>
> We chatted a bit in August and not much has happened since. A bunch
> of other
> things that are really annoying but have had more immediate
> priority (like
> making the servers work regularly ;) keep coming up.

--
M.P.A. (Michiel) van Hulst
e: michiel at vanhulst.nu
w: http://michiel.vanhulst.nu


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 26 Jan 2006, at 19:20, Andrew Gray wrote:

> On 25/01/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>> And what use is the page number
>> when there are loads of editions of a source?
>
> I may just be being slow, but this is why people traditionally also
> write down the publisher and year of publication - these aren't,
> generally, just there to look pretty.

Yes, true. It doesnt work so well with distributed editing.

If I am using the paperback reprint of the third edition and you use
the 1st edition are we expecting fullcitations from all of these?

It conflicts horribly with readability.

And its pointless unless sources disagree. Obviously if they do
(and dont cite primary sources) it might be worth a note.

But in general, for most subjects, there just arent that sort
of disagreement about *facts*, just about interpretations, so
adding a footnote for the death date of say [[Berthold Lubetkin]]
seems like a waste of time and makes the article less readable.

Justinc


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
sannse wrote:
>
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> Delphine M?nard wrote:
>>
>>> crossposting to wikipedia-l as this is an international issue
>>> =========
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> as a totally non-en person, admin on other wikis and actually working
>>> "behind the scenes", I would like to give my view on what I believe is
>>> needed, and why an en-admin-only channel and list won't help to the
>>> extent that is needed. This is long, but please bear with me.
>>>
>>> Let me try to make this more concrete.
>>>
>>> OTRS (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS) receives a lot (and here I
>>> mean "A LOT") of complaints.
>>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> I'd like to add that helpdesk-l (which is just a regular old mailing
>> list) suffers from the same problem, except that we have no way of
>> knowing who has answered what until someone else posts a reply to it,
>> and there are a lot less people working on it. At present I have a
>> backlog of over 2300 messages, some of them from December last year. If
>> you are interested please visit
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l - we mostly use
>> the OTRS messages (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en), but
>> Humblefool and Jareth have some other messages at
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Humblefool/Helpdesk_boilerplates and
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jareth/Boiler respectively.
>>
>> Maybe we should shut it down and all move to OTRS. I don't know.
>>
>
> I think that something needs to be done to bring the two versions
> together.  It seems clear that people are writing to helpdesk-l,
> thinking that they are writing to the "site owner's" email address, and
> asking questions that would be better answered officially.  And there
> are plenty of mails on OTRS that could be better answered by a general
> help desk.
>
> The only way I can see of bringing them together is on OTRS.  Perhaps
> with two queues, one official mail and one helpdesk.
>
> I don't know, but I do think it's something we should look at.
>

Unfortunately there will always be people who use the wrong one.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
On 26/01/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:

> The possible benefits of having the helpdesk as a list -- many
> experienced eyes all looking at one question, openness, easy signup,
> etc. -- are negated by the sheer volume of the list, dearth of regular
> volunteers, and the fact that many people are confused about the
> difference between sending to the private info address and to a public
> mailing list -- I don't think anyone anticipated the sheer volume of
> it when it was created.

I signed up to assist helpdesk-l, some time back, and I got out a
couple of emails before being overwhelmed. I do like the idea of
merging the systems - even if a mail sits on OTRS for a while, it is
at least clear that it's yet to be handled. It seems a better system
for it, though the idea of having the seperate "sensitive" and
"general" streams is smart. And it removes the number of people who
think Wikipedia "ignores them" through not recieving a reply from
helpdesk-l, which they think is an official contact...

(That said, I haven't signed up to OTRS yet - who do I email?)

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


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 1/26/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> (That said, I haven't signed up to OTRS yet - who do I email?)

See [[m:PR department]].

--
Sam


subject:
[Wikitech-l] adding any php-generated-content without getting in
 conflict with mediawikicode

body:
how can i add any php code by extension without getting in trouble with
mediawiki-code.

i would like to add "windows" within articles to content from other
sources.

heinz


subject:
[Wikitech-l] adding any php-generated-content without getting in
	conflict with mediawikicode

body:
On 26/01/06, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
> how can i add any php code by extension without getting in trouble with
> mediawiki-code.

See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Extending_wiki_markup
and:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_extensions_FAQ#How_do_I_disable_caching_for_pages_using_my_extension.3F
(without the latter, the page won't update each time you view it).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Kim Bruning

subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 12:49:53AM +1100, Angela wrote:
> As you may have seen from
> <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions>, the Board has
> approved the creation of a number of new committees: Financial,
> Technical, Executive, Events, Communications, Special projects, Board
> expansion committee, and Chapters.

Hmm! So how about we open a discussion about those on the meta wiki
and get some input. After all, if it isn't written down, it doesn't
really exist.

Another thing you could do is maybe have an irc meeting, and
get some input that way. I know it's always noisy, but
hey, that's what logs are for.

read you soon,
	Kim

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
Daniel Mayer:
> While I'm extremely flattered at the suggestion, I must advise the board to not consider me for a
> post as CEO. I'm not qualified and don't have the relevant experience to run the size and scope of
> an organization that we want the foundation to be. We need somebody with an MBA and years of
> non-profit experience. While it would be nice to have a Wikimedian fill this role, I don't think
> that is a critical thing for the board to consider.

Hi Daniel,

one thing that would help me a great deal is something like "The typical
day of the CEO". What is their interaction with the committees going to
be like? When someone proposes "Let's have a cooperation with the
European Union's environmental terminology community in order to get
their databases licensed under the GFDL for Wiktionary", what are they
going to say? In a stagnating project decision like Wikiversity or
Chinese Wikinews, are they going to play a role, or will this fall back
to the Board? What will their involvement be in pushing a project like
"English Wikipedia DVD by 2007"?

Now, I realize that there are a lot of organizational issues to work
out: hiring staff, making sure the budget is in order, dealing with
legal problems, and so forth. But then again, we have qualified legal
and financial committees to advise the CEO on those matters. We do have
qualified committees as well to advise them on the other matters above,
but will they be listening? Will they understand the nature of the wiki,
and the importance of a particular project that is proposed to them?
Will they be accepted by the community if they are essentially an
outsider to it? Will they try to push things through when they should be
consulting with the community?

My ideas may be very far off from what the Board is thinking about what
the role of the CEO should be, and what you are thinking, so
clarification would be helpful. This is what an open discussion is good
at, bringing out different perceptions, and helping to arrive at useful
definitions.

Oh, and please, can I have some brownie points for keeping the
hypothetical CEO gender neutral? ;-)

Thanks,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


from_name: Maru Dubshinki

body:
On 1/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
..
> I support this idea. How soon before we can change helpdesk-l to an OTRS
> queue (oh, and maybe call it helpesk and have helpdesk-l forward there...)?
>
> Completely burned out,
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

Darn! I had just joined helpdesk because I heard the current editors
were almost burned out and I wanted to avert it. :(

~Maru


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Schema change pending

body:
Schema change pending in HEAD, take care when updating. It's not live yet.

In case anyone's interested, it's an "externallinks" table, to support a fast retroactive spam
filter which hasn't been written yet. In the meantime, it might be useful to find and analyse spam.

-- Tim


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and
	the rest

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:
> On 1/26/06, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>
>>>sannse wrote:
>>>
>>>>I think that something needs to be done to bring the two versions
>>>>together.  It seems clear that people are writing to helpdesk-l,
>>>>thinking that they are writing to the "site owner's" email address, and
>>>>asking questions that would be better answered officially.  And there
>>>>are plenty of mails on OTRS that could be better answered by a general
>>>>help desk.
>>>>
>>>>The only way I can see of bringing them together is on OTRS.  Perhaps
>>>>with two queues, one official mail and one helpdesk.
>>>>
>>>>I don't know, but I do think it's something we should look at.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Unfortunately there will always be people who use the wrong one.
>>
>>Yes, but with OTRS it is easy to switch email from one queue to another.
>>  If there were clear guidelines as to what goes in which queue, then it
>>wouldn't be a problem that some mail initially got in the wrong queue.
>>
>>Or we could have one big queue - with both addresses leading there (and
>>/many/ more helpers on it!)
>
>
> I like the idea of using the ticket system for both addresses: grant
> access liberally to the helpdesk queue (anyone interested and
> reasonably clued) while having a smaller crew of people to answer the
> mail that really must be handled carefully and discreetly
> (confidential concerns, potential media blowups, etc.), to be easily
> moved back and forth. I don't think helpdesk-l works as is, as it's
> difficult to keep track of messages, and the boilerplate responses are
> a *big* help answering mail in OTRS. (You can see these at
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en> - it's amazing how much of
> the mail we get is people applying to our university or wishing to
> email celebrities.)
>
> The possible benefits of having the helpdesk as a list -- many
> experienced eyes all looking at one question, openness, easy signup,
> etc. -- are negated by the sheer volume of the list, dearth of regular
> volunteers, and the fact that many people are confused about the
> difference between sending to the private info address and to a public
> mailing list -- I don't think anyone anticipated the sheer volume of
> it when it was created.

I am totally with mindspillage here. Two queues and movement of emails
between the two.

For those who do not know the system yet, our OTRS contains now possibly
15-20 (?) queues and emails just circulate from one queue to the other,
as needed. Some queues are just to answer information requests, others
are more specialised (board, legal, donations etc....).

If I had one thing to ask for OTRS improvement, it would be for it to be
able to better clean up spam though...

ant


body:
On 1/27/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maru Dubshinki wrote:
> > Darn! I had just joined helpdesk because I heard the current editors
> > were almost burned out and I wanted to avert it. :(
> >
>
> Don't worry, you're quite welcome to stay on...
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

...Did I just feel a chill wind blow by?

~Maru


from_name: oscar

body:
thank you :-)))

grtz, oscar

On 1/27/06, Kernigh <xkernigh at netscape.net> wrote:
>
> > fyi, i have started a poll concerning '''wikistandards''' at
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards#Poll
>
> Because [[Wiki for standards]] and [[Wiki for standards/Vote]] are not
> linked from anywhere else in Meta (in fact, I only know about them from
> reading foundation-l), I have posted a comment to the vote page:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards/Vote#comments
>
> -- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] German wikipedia to be printed - where's the stable
	version feature?

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Some of you might have notices a slight problem with this - there is no
> stable version feature in Wikipedia. As usual, we have discussed a lot
> about the stable version (which is good), and AFAIK most people agreed
> that it won't do much harm, depending which version is presented (I'd
> consider that consensus, provided we still show the current version
> first), and then, in good tradition, did - nothing.
>
> As I said time and again, I don't care if it's my stable version
> extension, or Tim Starling's, or one donated by a merciful god, but we
> should *use* one, on every wikipedia that wants it. And /soon/. Like
> now. Or next week. There's nothing left to discuss, except repeating old
> arguments over again.

I agree. Let?s get on with it. The only thing we were arguing about is what version to show by
default to anons. If we simply do as we do now - show the most current one - then I agree that we
have a consensus. A print version is exactly the type of thing that a stable version should
support. I?d also like the foundation or a subsidiary to run a mirror with GoogleAds that hosted
stable versions and which the current Wikipedia versions linked to (all revenue would support the
foundation?s charitable mission and projects ; including Wikipedia). But that can wait a bit.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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from_name: david weiss

body:
sorry i accidently sent more than one message.  it wasn't clear to me
that my first message got through.  now i know better how to use this
tool (i think).

in response to your e-mail, you gave one of six incidents i observed this
past week where Eliezer silenced a dissenting voice.  most of them
involved different users.  let me focus upon my own problem with
Eliezer.  he currently has me under a 24-hour block because he claims i
violated the 3rr rule (though the 3rr rule permits me to revert vandalism
by OpenInfo.  e.g. "he claims to be from the knesset" "opinion of ONE
israeli", etc. instead of permitting me to entitle my own comments
"reason for alert" and the like)  if i violated the 3rr rule, then so did
OpenInfo and the 3rr rule specifies Eliezer must apply the rule fairly to
all offending parties.  Eliezer deleted my tags, blocked me without
warning and did not block OpenInfo.  what's the difference between
OpenInfo and me?  OpenInfo shares Eliezer's anti-messianic agenda and
admits on the talk page that he supports outreach judaism - an
anti-messianic group.  i expressed the mainstream voice of judaism that
is pluralistic.

on this same note, i tagged the alert and went to the talk page to
explain the reason for my tag.  as i was typing part 2 of my reason,
Eliezer blocked me.  my full explanation never saw the light of day.  the
partial explanation i managed to get onto the talk page was ignored by
Eliezer and criticized by OpenInfo.  this certainly does not represent
the voice of the community who watches this article.

(please note: i never stated that i personally sibscribe to any of the
above-mentioned views.  Eliezer and OpenInfo ASSUME i'm expressing my own
religious views.  while i have my own religious convictions this forum is
not the appropriate place since all of us are supposedly neutral.)

finally, your question about the messianic jews executed during the
spanish inquisions is a valid question (though i never got the chance to
address that issue either in the article or on the talk page.)  the
inquisions exclusively tagerted jews who were in the church - i.e. jews
who confessed belief in Jesus.  while the majority of jews in spain at
that time refused to join the church or confess belief in Jesus, the
spaniards focused exclusively on jews within the church.  they rounded up
1500, killed 500 who refused to renounce their jewish identity while
believing in Jesus and released 1,000 under a death threat who agreed to
renounce their jewish identity while believing in Jesus (at least
publicly).  did the term "messianic jew" exist at the time?  no.  by
PROPER definition, were their religious beliefs and practices consistant
with messianic judaism or hebrew christianity?  they certainly weren't
behaving like orthodox jews (though they could have).  if we apply a
consistant and fair logic, then the article inaccurately asserts
messianic judaism "began" in the 1860's and came from the church of
england.  the term "messianic jew" didn't exist at that time, either.
we'd have to say messianic judaism started in the 1970's when the
movement adopted the name and was clearly in full swing for a long time.
if we more appropriately analyze the CHARACTERISTICS of messianic
judaism, then we find this unique religious expression has existed 2,000
(which predates christianity by over 300 years).  we further discover
messianic judaism has always existed over the past 2,000 years - whether
in large or small numbers.

give unbiased third parties who have done over 10 years research into
messianic judaism a voice in this article and i believe the end result
will be an article that preserves the intrigrity of wikipedia and does
not serve the radical agenda of Eliezer and OpenInfo.

  Message: 7
  Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:32:05 +0100
  From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm
  Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eliezer is not a suitable administrator
  To: English Wikipedia
  Message-ID:

  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

  Sending one message to the list is quite enough.
  If you are talking about reversions like
  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Messianic_Judaism&diff=36540336&oldid=36537686
  then
  Eliezer was quite right to make them. Articles are about facts, and
  questioning the validity of any of them, should happen on the talk
  page.

  Where and when did you post those concerns on the talk page? Just
  tagging is
  not enough.
  I've seen several people tag the article as totally disputed without
  putting
  any discussion on the talk page.

  It would help a lot of you posted diff links to the edits you are
  referring
  to see WP:DIFF.

  About the first editorial comment. If the article says Messianic
  Judaism
  started in the 1800s, then are you sure Judaism was actually called
  Messianic in the 1490s? Jews may have died during Crusades or at the
  hands
  of Queen Isabelle, but they may simply be a completely different form
  of
  Judaism altogether.

  Mgm

  On 1/26/06, david weiss wrote:
  >
  > eliezer imposes an unfair, seriously biased and inaccurate article
  > dealing with messianic judaism. when i had previously raised my
  concerns
  > in the discussion page and point out the gross misinformation in
  the main
  > article, eliezar would delete my tag. (as a side note, i observed
  others
  > tag this article as violating the npov policy only to have their
  tags
  > deleted without explanation.)
  >
  > i expressed my concerns on the talk page, only to be vandalised by
  > OpenInfo and blocked by Eliezer. Eliezer prevented me from
  explaining:
  > 1. where the npov policy was violated in several places; 2. show
  where
  > the facts were seriously inaccurate and, 3. show where the author
  > contradicted himself. eliezer blocked me without sufficient warning
  per
  > the blocking policy.
  >
  > while i strongly disagree with eliezer's anti-messianic agenda, i
  do not
  > feel i vandalized the article or site in any way. this site's
  policy
  > allows me the freedom to edit articles that violate the npov in a
  good
  > faith effort to make them more accurate.
  >
  > i believe eliezer will only force his anti-messianic agenda upon
  the
  > public and a new administrator needs to be appointed who will
  fairly
  > address the topic. thank you for your prompt and open-minded
  attention
  > to this matter.

--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Kernigh wrote:

>>fyi, i have started a poll concerning '''wikistandards''' at
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards#Poll
>>
>>
>
>Because [[Wiki for standards]] and [[Wiki for standards/Vote]] are not
>linked from anywhere else in Meta (in fact, I only know about them from
>reading foundation-l), I have posted a comment to the vote page:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards/Vote#comments
>
>-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]
>
>
I would like to point out that while the vote page seems to be
structurally sound, take a look at the history page and you will see
that almost none of the people listed on the supporting side have
actually cast their votes.  This is merely somebody who has gone through
the effort to consolodate a list of general supporters of the concept.
 This is not that they are sock puppets, but that they havn't really
been given the opportunity to really review the proposal.

It would also be useful to try and advertise this interest survey onto
the other sister projects as well.

I know that the people involved with this want to see it become reality
and in general I support their efforts.  I think this would be an
excellent candidate for the seed wiki (or whatever name that goes under)
to try and see what the group of supporters could come up with.  The
content that they are trying to develop doesn't really fit on any of the
current Wikimedia projects, including Wikibooks, which is the most
likely candidate for hosting content of this nature.

I wish that before this vote began, that a little more discussion took
place to try and develop this concept, as well as try to make it a
broader proposal than just a language standard Wiki.  Yes, there were
some comments here on this mailing list, some discussion at the
conference mentioned in the proposal, and some private e-mails on the
topic, but this page that is discussing the project proposal was only
linked to the New Project page yesterday.  I hardly call 1 day of wide
discussion enough to come to a community concensus by even supporters of
the project, much less trying to turn the idea into a polished proposal.
 Seeing what the Wikiversity supporters are going through right now in
developing their revised proposal, I don't see anywhere near that
quality of work going into this proposal.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] FeloniousMonk's admin powers

body:
This seems to be ancient history. You were blocked for 24 hours for
personal attacks which on investigation seem indeed to be personal
attacks. Your block has been over for nearly a week now. Please just
accept the lesson and avoid personal attacks and discourtesy in the
future. I have not examined the entire pattern of your behavior, but
be assured that new users are welcome here. I hope that after you are
"broken in" you find this an agreeable environment for the
exploration of established knowledge.

Fred

On Jan 24, 2006, at 6:57 PM, Itake wrote:

> Username: Itake
> IP: 213.67.50.30.
>
> I was banned by the user "FeloniousMonk" because he felt I violated
> wikipedia's civility code even though I was warned several times.
> Not only
> is this untrue, but it is clear that the user in question has a
> bias against
> me because he and I are involved in an ongoing AfD dispute.
>
> First off, I'd like to say that I did indeed violate the rules in
> question.
> At that time, I wasn't aware that there even existed rules for
> civil conduct
> on wikipedia. I was warned that my behavior was against the rules.
> I replied to the warnings on my talk page. I didn't even edit the AfD
> disputes any further, or violate the civil conduct rules again, but
> then
> suddenly I was banned. So user FeloniousMonk is lying. I wasn't warned
> several times, I was told I violated it one time and continious
> violations
> would lead to my ban. I didn't continue to violate it, yet I was
> banned.
>
> Further, I belive the user FeloniousMonk should have his admin powers
> removed. He is quite clearly abusing them. I direct your attention
> first to
> examples of uncivil conduct found on the wikipedia page about it:
>
> rudeness
> judgmental tone in edit summaries ("fixed sloppy spelling," "snipped
> rambling crap")
> belittling contributors because of their language skills or word
> choice
> ill-considered accusations of impropriety of one kind or another
> starting a comment with: "Not to make this personal, but..."
> calling someone a liar, or accusing him/her of slander or libel.
> Even if
> true, such remarks tend to aggravate rather than resolve a dispute.
> More serious examples include:
>
> Taunting
> personal attacks
> racial, ethnic, and religious slurs
> profanity directed at another contributor
> lies
> defacing user pages
> calling for bans and blocks
> First off, the users Feloniousmonk is grouping with fit in on
> several of
> these criteries. Yet he didn't ban them. For example:
>
> From my user talk page:
> ::Both of you need an objectivity lesson. And Itake needs a
> civility lesson.
> [[User:Daycd|David D.]] [[User talk:Daycd|(Talk)]] 17:05, 21
> January 2006
> (UTC)
>
> ::: What's the matter, Daycd?  Can't you just feel that "Christian"
> love?  -
> [[User:WarriorScribe|WarriorScribe]] 19:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> That's it, you've pushed it too far
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/
> J._Otis_Ledbetter&diff=36030780&oldid=36027828
> this time].  Continue violating [[WP:CIVIL|the civility
> guidelines]] and you
> will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.  -- #000000"
> face="Impact" color="#00a5ff">[[User:Cyde|Cyde Weys]] 04:19, 21
> January 2006 (UTC)
>
> ::::: Interesting.  So you interpret Matthew 5:39 as not applying
> to you,
> then? - [[User:WarriorScribe|WarriorScribe]] 01:05, 22 January 2006
> (UTC)
>
> Delete pity we can't delete the author. ? Dunc| ? 22:21, 19
> January 2006
> (UTC)
>
> (last one was from here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/
> Thomas_Ice)
>
> Secondly, the admin himself violated several of these principles in
> a very
> serious way. As can be shown by his comments on the AfD in
> question, he does
> not only have a serious bias that no doubt played a role in my ban,
> but he
> also does some uncivil conduct himself:
>
> Delete Neither diploma mills nor their presidents warrant articles.
> Another
> non-notable from our most prolific creator of articles on non-
> notables,
> Gastrich. FeloniousMonk 22:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> Delete. Another non-notable from our most prolific creator of non-
> notable
> bios, Gastrich. FeloniousMonk 22:08, 20
>
> Your campaign here to promote your diploma mill is its most notable
> aspect.
> Who knows, maybe they'll name a "hall" in your honor...
> FeloniousMonk 22:33,
> 19 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> Delete Another tool off the diploma mill assemblyline.
> FeloniousMonk 22:42,
> 19 January 2006 (UTC)
>
> Delete Though I was impressed with the fact that "he regularly reads
> academic papers at Oxford University." But since I regularly read
> the Pixley
> Press and the ingredients on the back of cereal boxes and I don't
> get an
> article here, why should he? FeloniousMonk 03:53, 19 January 2006
> (UTC)
> The admin in question is quite clearly being rude, he's throwing
> around
> accusations, he's doing blatant lying, he is taunting and he is being
> judgemental. In my opinion, he has violated more of these criterias
> then I
> have. But because of his admin powers, not only does he escape
> justice but
> all the users who favor his side of the argument and violate these
> criterias
> seem to escape being banned aswell.
>
> Further, FeloniousMonk has just banned the User "Jason Gastrich" on
> equally
> poor basis. In the wake of this ban, and before the ban, FeloniousMonk
> himself continued to violate Wikipedia rules and throw around
> unfounded
> accusations. The admin FeloniousMonk is abusing his admin powers,
> both to
> punish users he doesn't like and to influence AfD disputes in his
> favor.
>
> I feel the entire AfD dispute around the Louisiana Baptist University
> articles is being handled very poorly, and it gets even worse when
> admins
> like FeloniousMonk comes along to abuse their powers. I hope this
> dispute,
> FeloniousMonk's status as an admin, and my ban all gets the
> attention it
> deserves.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Itake.
>
> (ps. I didn't quite get the procedure for these kinds of things.
> There was
> something about a mailing list, but I think that signing up to it
> wasn't
> necessary? If my inquiries are going to the wrong place or so,
> please tell
> me so I know who to send them to .ds)
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Re: Could an Administrator please look into this
	conflict?

body:
If a copyright violation is not promptly removed for some reason, the
person or entity complaining needs to be pointed to our designated agent

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Designated_agent

Such contact is not a legal threat but an appropriate action which
allows Wikipedia to solve the problem.

There is no reason someone could not continue editing under those
circumstances.

Keep in mind that a copyright holder has the right to demand and
enforce removal

One thing that happens, of course, is that demand is often made by
some one that has little or no claim to the copyright they seek to
enforce. Verifying whether a claim is valid is a legal matter which
can be resolved after contact is made with the designated agent.

Fred

On Jan 25, 2006, at 1:26 PM, Philip Welch wrote:

>> The point of the "no legal threats" policy is that legal threats end
>> discussion. Once lawyers and courts are involved, discussion is
>> over and
>> you're on to adjudication. In other words, when someone is
>> actually carrying
>> out legal action, talking about it on Wikipedia is pointless-
>> which means
>> that legal threats have absolutely no value for any kind of rational
>> discussion.
>>
>> So, as you are asking, how should someone enforce their legal rights?
>> Answer: By pointing out their legal rights, without making
>> threats. "This
>> item is my intellectual property and you do not have permission to
>> use it."
>> At that point, we should remove it immediately. There is no need
>> to mention,
>> or benefit from mentioning, lawyers or lawsuits.
>>
>
> I don't think we should penalize copyright holders for serving WP
> with a cease-and-desist for a copyvio, whether formally or
> informally, although we might want to require them to, as a
> prerequisite for their future participation, state that their
> grievances are met and that no further action will be taken.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] blocking policy was violated by Eliezer

body:
And your user name is ?

Fred

On Jan 25, 2006, at 9:30 AM, david weiss wrote:

> eliezer imposes an unfair, seriously biased and inaccurate article
> dealing with messianic judaism.  when i had previously raised my
> concerns
> in the discussion page and point out the gross misinformation in
> the main
> article, eliezar would delete my comments.  (as a side note, i
> observed
> others tag this article as violating the npov policy only to have
> their
> tags deleted without explanation.)
>
> i wove my editorial comments into the main article and eliezer
> deleted my
> comments- saying it belonged on the discussion page (though he had
> already deleted my comments from the discussion page).  i attempted to
> repost my woven comments on the discussion page and he deleted there
> again.  i attempted to repost my comments woven into the main
> article to:
> 1. highlight where the npov policy was violated in several places; 2.
> show where the facts were seriously inaccurate and, 3. show where the
> author contradicted himself.  eliezer blocked me without sufficient
> warning per the blocking policy.
>
> while i strongly disagree with eliezer's anti-messianic agenda, i
> do not
> feel i vandalized the article or site in any way.  this site's policy
> allows me the freedom to edit articles that violate the npov in a good
> faith effort to make them more accurate.
>
> i believe eliezer will only force his anti-messianic agenda upon the
> public and a new administrator needs to be appointed who will fairly
> address the topic.  if no other unbiased third party is willing to
> take
> that responsibility, i am willing to volunteer.  (just tell me what i
> need to do to qualify)  thank you for your prompt and open-minded
> attention to this matter.
>
> --
> ___________________________________________________
> Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Hoping not mistaking adresse

body:
Forwarded to wikien-l itself, which this presumably was for. Can
someone please help?

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: burophone.lyon <burophone.lyon at wanadoo.fr>
Date: 27-Jan-2006 08:46
Subject: Hoping not mistaking adresse
To: wikien-l-owner at wikipedia.org

Good morning,

Since I've not speak english for a very long time, I don't undestand
exactly what you expect from me. Shall I re_subscribe or not. I'd like
to have a "interlocuteur" (somebody to speak with) and hav try to find
a translator on your site but with the big work I have to do at this
time (en ce moment) I can't go as fast as you. I have "b?anmoins"
have contacts with some of yours for a projet (the Skype one if I
remenber well and was very interessting to participate an implicate to
it. If I have done or say something wich make that I must stop any
relation with your "aimable" so insteresting but "?trange et complexe
for me" I 'll ask for your indulgence and pray you to forgive me. I
shall first read the "Wiki-rules" sure but let me a little time or
send me a trans lator a burophone.lyon at wanadoo.fr as soon as possible.
There is also the fact that some people NOT CONCERNED who have access
at this adresse, so my mail "perso" c.j.ferreira at free.fr will be ready
in 1/4h (the trouble was that it was full). And to end, if you don't
want of the collaboration of a "acharn?, travailleur et honn?te
homme", just tell it to me... hoping I have not again do a mistake
answering at this adress.

Dans l'attente d'une r?ponse au c.j.ferreira at free.fr that will totally
be free at 11h00 (hour of France). I hope. 'cause there is a Cpatain
of PJ (Police Judiciaire who wait to listening me for one of my
custumer who have trouble with TVA stories...

So, waiting for your answer,

Je vous prie d'agr?er, Monssieur l'expression de mes courtoises salutations.

Cyrille Jean Ferreira
Le Diacre PSSW C#a&b at O


body:
Again what is your user name?

Fred

On Jan 27, 2006, at 4:02 AM, david weiss wrote:

> sorry i accidently sent more than one message.  it wasn't clear to me
> that my first message got through.  now i know better how to use this
> tool (i think).
>
> in response to your e-mail, you gave one of six incidents i
> observed this
> past week where Eliezer silenced a dissenting voice.  most of them
> involved different users.  let me focus upon my own problem with
> Eliezer.  he currently has me under a 24-hour block because he
> claims i
> violated the 3rr rule (though the 3rr rule permits me to revert
> vandalism
> by OpenInfo.  e.g. "he claims to be from the knesset" "opinion of ONE
> israeli", etc. instead of permitting me to entitle my own comments
> "reason for alert" and the like)  if i violated the 3rr rule, then
> so did
> OpenInfo and the 3rr rule specifies Eliezer must apply the rule
> fairly to
> all offending parties.  Eliezer deleted my tags, blocked me without
> warning and did not block OpenInfo.  what's the difference between
> OpenInfo and me?  OpenInfo shares Eliezer's anti-messianic agenda and
> admits on the talk page that he supports outreach judaism - an
> anti-messianic group.  i expressed the mainstream voice of judaism
> that
> is pluralistic.
>
> on this same note, i tagged the alert and went to the talk page to
> explain the reason for my tag.  as i was typing part 2 of my reason,
> Eliezer blocked me.  my full explanation never saw the light of
> day.  the
> partial explanation i managed to get onto the talk page was ignored by
> Eliezer and criticized by OpenInfo.  this certainly does not represent
> the voice of the community who watches this article.
>
> (please note: i never stated that i personally sibscribe to any of the
> above-mentioned views.  Eliezer and OpenInfo ASSUME i'm expressing
> my own
> religious views.  while i have my own religious convictions this
> forum is
> not the appropriate place since all of us are supposedly neutral.)
>
> finally, your question about the messianic jews executed during the
> spanish inquisions is a valid question (though i never got the
> chance to
> address that issue either in the article or on the talk page.)  the
> inquisions exclusively tagerted jews who were in the church - i.e.
> jews
> who confessed belief in Jesus.  while the majority of jews in spain at
> that time refused to join the church or confess belief in Jesus, the
> spaniards focused exclusively on jews within the church.  they
> rounded up
> 1500, killed 500 who refused to renounce their jewish identity while
> believing in Jesus and released 1,000 under a death threat who
> agreed to
> renounce their jewish identity while believing in Jesus (at least
> publicly).  did the term "messianic jew" exist at the time?  no.  by
> PROPER definition, were their religious beliefs and practices
> consistant
> with messianic judaism or hebrew christianity?  they certainly weren't
> behaving like orthodox jews (though they could have).  if we apply a
> consistant and fair logic, then the article inaccurately asserts
> messianic judaism "began" in the 1860's and came from the church of
> england.  the term "messianic jew" didn't exist at that time, either.
> we'd have to say messianic judaism started in the 1970's when the
> movement adopted the name and was clearly in full swing for a long
> time.
> if we more appropriately analyze the CHARACTERISTICS of messianic
> judaism, then we find this unique religious expression has existed
> 2,000
> (which predates christianity by over 300 years).  we further discover
> messianic judaism has always existed over the past 2,000 years -
> whether
> in large or small numbers.
>
> give unbiased third parties who have done over 10 years research into
> messianic judaism a voice in this article and i believe the end result
> will be an article that preserves the intrigrity of wikipedia and does
> not serve the radical agenda of Eliezer and OpenInfo.
>
>
>   Message: 7
>   Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:32:05 +0100
>   From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm
>   Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eliezer is not a suitable administrator
>   To: English Wikipedia
>   Message-ID:
>
>   Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>   Sending one message to the list is quite enough.
>   If you are talking about reversions like
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Messianic_Judaism&diff=36540336&oldid=36537686
>   then
>   Eliezer was quite right to make them. Articles are about facts, and
>   questioning the validity of any of them, should happen on the talk
>   page.
>
>   Where and when did you post those concerns on the talk page? Just
>   tagging is
>   not enough.
>   I've seen several people tag the article as totally disputed without
>   putting
>   any discussion on the talk page.
>
>   It would help a lot of you posted diff links to the edits you are
>   referring
>   to see WP:DIFF.
>
>   About the first editorial comment. If the article says Messianic
>   Judaism
>   started in the 1800s, then are you sure Judaism was actually called
>   Messianic in the 1490s? Jews may have died during Crusades or at the
>   hands
>   of Queen Isabelle, but they may simply be a completely different
> form
>   of
>   Judaism altogether.
>
>   Mgm
>
>
>   On 1/26/06, david weiss wrote:
>
>>
>> eliezer imposes an unfair, seriously biased and inaccurate article
>> dealing with messianic judaism. when i had previously raised my
>>
>   concerns
>
>> in the discussion page and point out the gross misinformation in
>>
>   the main
>
>> article, eliezar would delete my tag. (as a side note, i observed
>>
>   others
>
>> tag this article as violating the npov policy only to have their
>>
>   tags
>
>> deleted without explanation.)
>>
>> i expressed my concerns on the talk page, only to be vandalised by
>> OpenInfo and blocked by Eliezer. Eliezer prevented me from
>>
>   explaining:
>
>> 1. where the npov policy was violated in several places; 2. show
>>
>   where
>
>> the facts were seriously inaccurate and, 3. show where the author
>> contradicted himself. eliezer blocked me without sufficient warning
>>
>   per
>
>> the blocking policy.
>>
>> while i strongly disagree with eliezer's anti-messianic agenda, i
>>
>   do not
>
>> feel i vandalized the article or site in any way. this site's
>>
>   policy
>
>> allows me the freedom to edit articles that violate the npov in a
>>
>   good
>
>> faith effort to make them more accurate.
>>
>> i believe eliezer will only force his anti-messianic agenda upon
>>
>   the
>
>> public and a new administrator needs to be appointed who will
>>
>   fairly
>
>> address the topic. thank you for your prompt and open-minded
>>
>   attention
>
>> to this matter.
>>
>
> --
> ___________________________________________________
> Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever
	andthe rest

body:
"Anthere" <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote in
message news:drbnq9$34c$1 at sea.gmane.org...
[snip]
> If I had one thing to ask for OTRS improvement, it would be for it to be
> able to better clean up spam though...

It's open source, same as Mediawiki...must be someone here who could chip in
a few hours hacking :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Eliezer is not a suitable administrator

body:
Sending one message to the list is quite enough.
If you are talking about reversions like
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Messianic_Judaism&diff=36540336&oldid=36537686
then
Eliezer was quite right to make them. Articles are about facts, and
questioning the validity of any of them, should happen on the talk page.

Where and when did you post those concerns on the talk page? Just tagging is
not enough.
I've seen several people tag the article as totally disputed without putting
any discussion on the talk page.

It would help a lot of you posted diff links to the edits you are referring
to see WP:DIFF.

About the first editorial comment. If the article says Messianic Judaism
started in the 1800s, then are you sure Judaism was actually called
Messianic in the 1490s? Jews may have died during Crusades or at the hands
of Queen Isabelle, but they may simply be a completely different form of
Judaism altogether.

Mgm

On 1/26/06, david weiss <loveisrael at mail.com> wrote:
>
> eliezer imposes an unfair, seriously biased and inaccurate article
> dealing with messianic judaism.  when i had previously raised my concerns
> in the discussion page and point out the gross misinformation in the main
> article, eliezar would delete my tag.  (as a side note, i observed others
> tag this article as violating the npov policy only to have their tags
> deleted without explanation.)
>
> i expressed my concerns on the talk page, only to be vandalised by
> OpenInfo and blocked by Eliezer.  Eliezer prevented me from explaining:
> 1. where the npov policy was violated in several places; 2.  show where
> the facts were seriously inaccurate and, 3. show where the author
> contradicted himself.  eliezer blocked me without sufficient warning per
> the blocking policy.
>
> while i strongly disagree with eliezer's anti-messianic agenda, i do not
> feel i vandalized the article or site in any way.  this site's policy
> allows me the freedom to edit articles that violate the npov in a good
> faith effort to make them more accurate.
>
> i believe eliezer will only force his anti-messianic agenda upon the
> public and a new administrator needs to be appointed who will fairly
> address the topic.  thank you for your prompt and open-minded attention
> to this matter.
>
> --
> ___________________________________________________
> Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
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>


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

body:
Cyrille,

Quel est exactement ton probl?me ? (Tu peux parler en fran?ais si tu
pr?f?res.)

g.

On 27/01/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Forwarded to wikien-l itself, which this presumably was for. Can
> someone please help?
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: burophone.lyon <burophone.lyon at wanadoo.fr>
> Date: 27-Jan-2006 08:46
> Subject: Hoping not mistaking adresse
> To: wikien-l-owner at wikipedia.org
>
>
>
> Good morning,
>
> Since I've not speak english for a very long time, I don't undestand
> exactly what you expect from me. Shall I re_subscribe or not. I'd like
> to have a "interlocuteur" (somebody to speak with) and hav try to find
> a translator on your site but with the big work I have to do at this
> time (en ce moment) I can't go as fast as you. I have "b?anmoins"
> have contacts with some of yours for a projet (the Skype one if I
> remenber well and was very interessting to participate an implicate to
> it. If I have done or say something wich make that I must stop any
> relation with your "aimable" so insteresting but "?trange et complexe
> for me" I 'll ask for your indulgence and pray you to forgive me. I
> shall first read the "Wiki-rules" sure but let me a little time or
> send me a trans lator a burophone.lyon at wanadoo.fr as soon as possible.
> There is also the fact that some people NOT CONCERNED who have access
> at this adresse, so my mail "perso" c.j.ferreira at free.fr will be ready
> in 1/4h (the trouble was that it was full). And to end, if you don't
> want of the collaboration of a "acharn?, travailleur et honn?te
> homme", just tell it to me... hoping I have not again do a mistake
> answering at this adress.
>
> Dans l'attente d'une r?ponse au c.j.ferreira at free.fr that will totally
> be free at 11h00 (hour of France). I hope. 'cause there is a Cpatain
> of PJ (Police Judiciaire who wait to listening me for one of my
> custumer who have trouble with TVA stories...
>
> So, waiting for your answer,
>
> Je vous prie d'agr?er, Monssieur l'expression de mes courtoises
> salutations.
>
> Cyrille Jean Ferreira
> Le Diacre PSSW C#a&b at O
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Guillom
"Je sers la science et c'est ma joie" - Basile le Disciple
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
I did an interview yesterday and got a taste of the effects of AFD on
Wikipedia's relations with the outside world. The guy's a podcaster of
minor notability - http://bicyclemark.org/ . (Though he has listeners,
so is doing better for notability than a lot of podcasters.)

The thorny bit was talking about WP:AFD and its ... little ways. He
sprung on me in the interview that he had created an article on
himself, it was deleted as "vanity", several of his readers recreated
it, it was deleted all those times too, and apparently some of the
deletion discussion comments were more than a little spiky. I think I
talked my way past that one OK ("this user is a native speaker of
Bullshit"), but it was a tricky moment. I explained that if he got
referenceable notice from third parties, that may show that he was
notable enough to probably rate an article; that next month he might
become vastly popular and clearly rate an article; and emphasised that
the edge cases are always the painful ones.

(He says the podcast should be up tonight or Saturday morning.)

This is a minor podcaster, not broadcast media. But the point remains
that this sort of thing causes real problems. Many think we shouldn't
care about media image, but those dealing with our sometimes shaky
relations with the outside world are understandably sensitive to
potential PR disasters of this sort. It would be almost no effort at
all to go through AFD and find a hundred diffs "proving" that
Wikipedians are rude bastards, for example. (I'm sure someone can
suggest it to Mr Orlowski at the Register.)

So please, when discussing things on AFD ... FOR FUCK SAKE, COOL IT IN
YOUR COMMENTS AND TREATMENT OF OUTSIDERS. AND PEER-PRESSURE OTHERS TO
DO SO. Thanks.

- d.


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blue sky thinking around "neutral point of view"

body:
> While we're at it, anyone care to deal with the term "POV-pusher"? It
> seems to me legitimate for someone to take an underrepresented but
> valid point of view (eg, "The US is not the centre of everything worth
> describing on Wikipedia"), and systematically adapting articles to
> include this point of view. If someone distorts an article to the
> point where it over-represents a minority viewpoint, that would be one
> thing. But systematically expanding the range of viewpoints in
> articles to include a more global viewpoint...

POV pushers exist, and if we ban the term, we'll come up with another
term to replace it. We have to realize that increasingly, there are
editors who act in bad faith to popularize a given viewpoint or agenda.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Willis, Harry

body:
>Forwarded to wikien-l itself, which this presumably was for. Can
>someone please help?
>
>
>- d.

Babel would be a good place to start, although I would be happy to speak with anyone needing a french translator as I speak the language relatively well.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good morning,

Since I've not speak english for a very long time, I don't undestand
exactly what you expect from me. Shall I re_subscribe or not. I'd like
to have a "interlocuteur" (somebody to speak with) and hav try to find
a translator on your site but with the big work I have to do at this
time (en ce moment) I can't go as fast as you. I have "b?anmoins"
have contacts with some of yours for a projet (the Skype one if I
remenber well and was very interessting to participate an implicate to
it. If I have done or say something wich make that I must stop any
relation with your "aimable" so insteresting but "?trange et complexe
for me" I 'll ask for your indulgence and pray you to forgive me. I
shall first read the "Wiki-rules" sure but let me a little time or
send me a trans lator a burophone.lyon at wanadoo.fr as soon as possible.
There is also the fact that some people NOT CONCERNED who have access
at this adresse, so my mail "perso" c.j.ferreira at free.fr will be ready
in 1/4h (the trouble was that it was full). And to end, if you don't
want of the collaboration of a "acharn?, travailleur et honn?te
homme", just tell it to me... hoping I have not again do a mistake
answering at this adress.

Dans l'attente d'une r?ponse au c.j.ferreira at free.fr that will totally
be free at 11h00 (hour of France). I hope. 'cause there is a Cpatain
of PJ (Police Judiciaire who wait to listening me for one of my
custumer who have trouble with TVA stories...

So, waiting for your answer,

Je vous prie d'agr?er, Monssieur l'expression de mes courtoises salutations.

Cyrille Jean Ferreira
Le Diacre PSSW C#a&b at O

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Wellington College does not accept responsibility for email contents.
Problems to administrator at wellingtoncollege.org.uk.
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********************************************************************************


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Directmedia, the company who brought us the German Wikipedia on CD and
DVD, has expanded to print publishing, as can already be seen in form of
"WikiPress", a topic-specific series of books.

They just announced that they will publish the German Wikipedia *in full
print*, 100 volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in
October 2006, to end with Z in 2010.

For this, they hired a few people. The plan is for these "editors" to go
over *the stable version* of each article.

Some of you might have notices a slight problem with this - there is no
stable version feature in Wikipedia. As usual, we have discussed a lot
about the stable version (which is good), and AFAIK most people agreed
that it won't do much harm, depending which version is presented (I'd
consider that consensus, provided we still show the current version
first), and then, in good tradition, did - nothing.

As I said time and again, I don't care if it's my stable version
extension, or Tim Starling's, or one donated by a merciful god, but we
should *use* one, on every wikipedia that wants it. And /soon/. Like
now. Or next week. There's nothing left to discuss, except repeating old
arguments over again.

Magnus

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from_name: Leander Hanwald

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API

body:
Hi all

One question: Is SOAP really the best for wikipedia here?
As I know SOAP, it can't Cache with Squid and normally you have to use a
big lib. to to request and handle the response.
When I think about million request to the wikimedia servers with SOAP... ;)

Why don't think about REST or simple called: XML over HTTP. You could
use all existing mechanisms to create a website, but try to create a XML
instead of the website itself. It's not really harder to use then SOAP,
but you don't need any* additional knowledge and tools to handle it. And
I think the caching is very Important for Wikimedia, and XML over HTTP
is the same then HTML over HTTP for Squid I think.*

Did anyone have a Link to the diskussions made where SOAP was choosen?
Thx :)

?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason schrieb:

>On 1/26/06, Michiel van Hulst <michiel at vanhulst.nu> wrote:
>
>
>>So could anyone tell me the story of the API ;-)
>>
>>
>
>Of course I may not have all the facts of the matter but this is
>basically what happened: On 2005-06-23 Jimbo Wales on behalf of
>Wikimedia/Wikipedia announced that an API (most likely SOAP) would be
>written to access Wikimedia content. As far as I know the foundation
>did not actually follow up on this, somebody obviously has to write it
>and they didn't hire anyone to do that (yet?). Perhaps they were
>hoping that someone would do it for free upon them announcing it but
>that obviously hasn't happened. Long story short lots of talk but not
>much of anything else.
>
>I actually started writing a SOAP API that used standard MediaWiki
>functions at one point which worked for some limited things like
>getting article text but didn't finish it because other things came
>up.
>
>There are several issues with implementing a robot API like that, one
>is that a lot of our logic is still tied to our current XHTML output
>code, which would have to be split off into a backend and presentation
>frontends. Another is that it's inherently hard to write some simple
>things like getting the first paragraph of an article (or a summary)
>because we don't store those things relationally, and UA's having to
>implement their own parser for our syntax isn't really practical due
>to its complexity.
>
>See the page on meta[1] and bug 208[2]
>
>1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/KDE_and_Wikipedia
>2. http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>