from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] board elections: help wanted

body:
I look forward to finding out more about why a candidate would not want
email.  If it isn't stated somewhere explicitly, the notion of someone
thinking they can effectively participate as a board member without email
is, well, absurd.

On 8/21/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you for showing interests,
> Although I directly replied to a certain editor who has been already
> involved into the operational side very well, and personally I
> convinced all involved parties will be supportive for this editor, I
> think it would be nice to show what we/I did and will do last week and
> this week.
>
> *Done
> - a meeting  (1 hour) with Datrio via google chat on confirmation
> (procedure, drafting relevant announcement etc).
> - posting that announcement to meta & foundation-l (by me)
> - bringing a possible problem on candidacy (by me; no response until now)
> - replying Fl Celloguy's questions sent to us three
> - trying to multilingualize meta sitenotice (by me; failed)
> - copyediting some Japanese translation related to the Election
> - found some wikis lacking sitenotice; contact to the local people
> through irc and other media and ask them to restore (by me; needed
> three days in a sum; I hope local community realises the global
> sitenotce is the notice on the global issues from the Foundation,
> based on many discussions between several involved parties [this case,
> Election officers, Communication committees and some developers], and
> even if they don't want, it is unthoughtful to remove it without
> reporting to the global community in a proper channel like
> foundation-l)
> - drafting a note for candidates (by me; thanks mindspillage for her
> copyediting)
> - send meta mails to unconfirmed candidates (be me; I asked others to
> share this work but no response came; then I realized a need to
> additional help).
>
> Though I wanted to do something for Election related as one of
> Election Officials and of Promotion & Translation Subcommittee, I
> found no enough time to deal with those. So it should be done in this
> week.
>
> Todo:
> - end the confirmation process [till Tuesday]; currently four
> candidates had no information from us, if I recall correctly. They
> want not to be mailed. Perhaps we put a note to their talk or
> otherwise.
> - discussion and decision-making of a certain candidate's candidacy [till
> 8/28]
> - checking translation of candidate presentation and coordination, if
> necessary. Collaboration with PTsubcom might be considered. [asap, and
> till 8/28]
> - preparing the translation platform for new boardvote messages [asap,
> and translation into major langs will be ideally ended before the
> voting, 9/1, or the voters will be misinformed in some points]
> - make a complete list of [confirmed] candidates and give it a
> developer (perhaps Tim Starling) [8/29]
> - update Election FAQ on meta, if possible, translation coordination
> of FAQ into several major languages
> - checking wikis randomly to know if they have been informed about
> this Election properly (some wikis might hold the last year notice
> ...) [if time available]
>
> I hope these two lists help you to understand what we have done and
> will do, and also why I think an additional help is necessary at this
> point.
>
> Also, I'd like to stress that I expected the requested helper as not
> informal one, but a formal additional staff, since I think the absence
> of two "inspectors" has paralysed the decision making process related
> to this Election recently, and personally I think it inappropriate
> that one remaining, that is,  "additional" officer (in this case, me)
> makes a decision unilaterally, in particular some serious issues like
> candidacy or voters' eligibility. To make a decision by consensus, I
> long for an additional staff whose opinion can be legitimately
> reflected to the Election Officials decisions.
>
> I had no time to discuss the above with anyone until now, so don't
> know how the idea we have one another Election Official in that moment
> will be considered by the Board, other Officers and involved parties,
> however I'd like to point out that it would be better for us to have
> such before voting starts than after that.
>
> > > > On 8/19/06, Anthere < Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > > Hello,
> > > > >
> > > > > It seems we have a shortage of help for election officials, at
> least
> > > > for
> > > > > august. Could someone give a hand to Aphaia and assist her ?
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks
> > > > >
> > > > > Anthere
>
> --
> Kizu Naoko
>   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>   * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ligulem

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
	008 pages for the servers?

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 8/20/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 8/20/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
>>> How bad is a category with 21,008 pages for the servers?
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_with_unsourced_statements
>> IIRC, it's not a problem now that we have category paging, but my
>> recollection may be faulty.
>
> 20k isn't that large.. we have quite a few with a lot more than that...

Thanks for the responses. So this is not a technical problem then. I
just wonder what's the benefit of having such huge categories...

I thought categories were meant as a tool for editors to iterate over
the articles contained in them. I can't imagine that a human would ever
iterate over a set of 20K pages (at least not without using specialized
tools like AWB [1] or bots).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AWB


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 04:53:06AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> Is that the one with an article for each faux pas of a well-known US
> political figure in?

Hee.
-- j
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Steve Bennett

references:
<ecaspe$6pt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7c2a12e20608202035j432f022eld15bb41d9601ed5d@mail.gmail.com>
	<e692861c0608202046n4ae62ffem4eee07bb63b2a3c3@mail.gmail.com>
	<ecbll4$omd$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 8/21/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the responses. So this is not a technical problem then. I
> just wonder what's the benefit of having such huge categories...
>
> I thought categories were meant as a tool for editors to iterate over
> the articles contained in them. I can't imagine that a human would ever
> iterate over a set of 20K pages (at least not without using specialized
> tools like AWB [1] or bots).

There are several distinct uses of categories:
a) To allow human readers to browse related articles
b) To organise articles for future distribution, publishing etc
c) To assist quality control, such as labelling articles that need cleanup etc
d) To assow bots to work some kind of magic.

Steve


references:
<ecaspe$6pt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7c2a12e20608202035j432f022eld15bb41d9601ed5d@mail.gmail.com>
	<e692861c0608202046n4ae62ffem4eee07bb63b2a3c3@mail.gmail.com>
	<ecbll4$omd$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f1c3529e0608210017v215f3754ha36be562ebce6026@mail.gmail.com>
	<ecbr89$8pd$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 10:35:23AM +0200, Ligulem wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >  ..
> > c) To assist quality control, such as labelling articles that need cleanup etc
>
> It seems rather pointless to me to label 20k pages needing citation. But
> that's probably not a technical question.

How many editors does en have?

> If I do a random walk on en Wikipedia, almost every page seems to have
> some tag needing something ("This page is in need of <insert your pet
> peeve here>"). This reminds me of all these "under construction" pages
> in the earlier days of the web.

Well, perhaps, but those sites weren't being crawled hourly (and
minutely :-), but people a) equipped and b) inclined to fix things.

I'd ask if anyone has any statistics on how often those tags are
affixed and removed, but...

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 02:24:19PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> On 21/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > I'd ask if anyone has any statistics on how often those tags are
> > affixed and removed, but...
>
> Wikipedians prefer to highlight and tag problems than to take 30
> seconds to fix them, it seems. I can understand that larger cases crop
> up, and warrant attention from more than one person, but stupid little
> unsourced stubs don't need to be tagged - either find a source on the
> web, or find reference that a source might exist within five minutes,
> or "prod" it, or whatever we do now.

Well, that could be a failure in [[Be Bold]], or it could just be
laziness.  I wonder if there's any way to decide which...

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 8/21/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been thinking for some weeks or more now that a good feature to improve
> the usefulness of large categories would be "Random article in this
> category". I would be excellent for maintainence where nobody is going to
> iterate through the whole lot but does like to try to keep order etc.

Yes. Definitely support that.

And, going even further, is doing what most "funny photo" sites do,
which is find "similar articles" to the current one, by looking for
articles that share most of the same categories. Maybe with the
differences between our "categories" and the "tags" on other sites, it
wouldn't work as well, but would still be interesting...

Steve


list: wikien-l

from_name: Joe Szilagyi

subject: [WikiEN-l] perjorative terms under [[WP:LIVING]] in article lead

body:
Hi,

On this article, there's a dispute going on that relates to the
defamation discussion that just happened:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones

The discussion is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#.22Conspiracy_theorist.22

Specifically, the question is whether labeling someone a conspiracy
theorist is pejorative and a violation of policy, and if it's
sourced--if he is considered one--whether it should be in the article
lead. I agree with this: "It should not be WP editorial position to
characterize anyone in such a pejorative term (no matter how accurate),
but presenting outside characterization is OK."

But other editors are strongly disagreeing on this article and related
ones, and I would like some clarification, especially as the subjects of
these articles are known to read these articles.
--

Regards,
Joe


list: foundation-l

from_name: geni

body:
On 8/21/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> - found some wikis lacking sitenotice; contact to the local people
> through irc and other media and ask them to restore (by me; needed
> three days in a sum; I hope local community realises the global
> sitenotce is the notice on the global issues from the Foundation,
> based on many discussions between several involved parties [this case,
> Election officers, Communication committees and some developers], and
> even if they don't want, it is unthoughtful to remove it without
> reporting to the global community in a proper channel like
> foundation-l)

A slightly more consitant atitude on this would be nice. Still
awaiting reasoning why you cannot use MediaWiki:Watchdetails and why
you felt the need to use IRC rather than say [[MediaWiki
talk:Sitenotice]].

> - checking wikis randomly to know if they have been informed about
> this Election properly (some wikis might hold the last year notice
> ...) [if time available]

Ah mostly funraising notices and local notices are more likely.
Haven't seen an old election notice. To start with there is:
gu.wikipedia.
ml.wikipedia
av.wikipedia
mo.wikipedia  <-- probably not a good idea to change
fiu-vro.wikipedia
af.wiktionary
cs.wiktionary <--odd setup here
he.wiktionary <-probably
hi.wiktionary

--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy hypothetical

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> Yes, it was a bad example :) A better example might be a scientific
>
>study which is criticised by a religious group. Science-minded editors
>would probably consider that criticism of little interest. Others
>might find it relevant. Similarly, a scientific evaluation of a
>paranormal claim might not be considered worth much of a mention by
>most editors of the paranormal article (presumably those interested in
>such things...)
>
>Now, to really let my biases show, I would probably be a bad offender
>in these cases. I tend to consider scientific studies of paranormal or
>pseudoscience claims *not* to be relevant, as the mere fact of the
>study lends too much credence to the field. Probably why I keep well
>away from such articles :)
>
Sigh!  I am clearly more likely to give credence to paranormal matters
than you, but distinct and separate from the doctrine of religious
groups.  I have no reason to object to scientific evaluations of the
paranormal.  If, as you suggest, both sides of this divide avoid
scientific evaluation, it is dificult to see how any progress can be
made.  It doesn't help that most scientific evaluation in this area tend
to be remarkably inconclusive, and fail to give a knockout blow for
either side.

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] editorial judgment and process (was Re: Defamation
	policy hypothetical)

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> The classic one I see again and again is people trying to put numbers
> on "consensus". I recently noticed that at FPC, "Consensus in Featured
> picture candidates is generally regarded to be a two-third majority in
> support." WTF? I mean, really, "what the fuck?" Anyone incapable of
> determining genuine consensus should *not* be given a crutch to lean
> on. Any decision that can only be justified on the basis of a
> numerical count is not a good decision...
>
> Steve
>

Who in this case are you asking to do the "determining genuine consensus"?

Why should I accept their resoning over that of someone else? You see
the problem.

--
geni


from_name: Oleg Alexandrov

subject: [Foundation-l] Board election notice on the English Wikipedia

body:
I beg your pardon, "Established users don't read the crap on watchlists
anymore"?  Perhaps a few editors ignore their watchlist, but unless you don't
want to be kept updated with changes to articles, or unless you are technically
proficient enough to use an alternative to watchlists for tracking changes (few
do that), the watchlist is still the way things are done.

As such, watchlists are much more appropriate medium if you want only editors
to see a message, rather than putting that message on all article pages.

Oleg

On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 05:43:02PM +0200,  effe iets anders  wrote:

> I think the watchlist is too minor. Established users don't read the
> crap on the watchlist anymore, because they already exactly know
> what's in there. So putting a notification on top of that won't help
> much, maybe only for the few users that look for the first time on
> their watchlist. (And then I don't even mention all the users who have
> adapted their watchlist through scripts). So I don't think the
> watchlist is an appropriate solution.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2006/8/21, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu>:
> > The board election is coming up real soon, and it is good that people are
> > notified about that. However, I strongly disagree with the election notice
> > showing up on all English Wikipedia article pages.
> >
> > I would believe it would be more appropriate for that notice to show up on
> > wathclists only, that way any established editor can see it. I think it is just
> > distracting on all article pages.
> >
> > Comments?
> >
> > Oleg Alexandrov


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking anon page creation was an experiment,
	wasn't it?

body:
On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Analysis has been done, results will be published.
>
> In any case, I'm curious about what you believe we lost that we could
> have had with additional planning?

Well traditionaly it is a good idea to lay out your method for
stastical anaysis in advance.

--
geni


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21, 008 pages for

body:
Some of the issues around the structure of categories have been both
contentious and promising for a long time, 2 years or better...  (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_math_feature, and many links
to category intersections / category math on meta)

I *still* think categories as tags is one of the most promising applications
of a wiki, as opposed to hierarchical categories like dmoz.  We currently
seem to be doing some of both (the administrative categories are essentially
tags, while many other categories, ie "Norwegian
composers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Norwegian_composers>"
which is several levels down from the high level musicians category, etc.)
and that's really pretty cool.

I think we should *embrace* doing both types of categories, because we can
in the wiki structure, it's not an mutually exclusive way of doing things.
We can make everybody (sort of) happy.  The hurdle then becomes writing code
efficient enough to sift through all the records to find what you want.

Now, as I mentioned before, I don't' have experience with writing code to
deal with zillions of hits, but I think a simple implementation of "find all
pages belonging to category1 AND category2" is accomplished using a sql like
this pseudocode:  "select pages, count(pages) as count where
(category='category1' or category='category2') group by pages having
count='2'"

Again, I'm not efficiency expert, but that puts the heavy lifting on mysql
and is pretty straightforward.  I've currently written an implementation
that is a bit more full featured, messy, and inefficient than that.. but I'd
be happy to pitch in to a new one (I'm still on mediawiki 1.4x, sshh!)

Best Regards,
Aerik


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] News.com: Teen's warning on the gospel of Wikipedia

body:
On 8/21/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Coming from a non-chalant user point of view though, they do not
> realise that they can track back through the history of the page to
> verify things themselves. The quality control you speak of is not
> perfect, the author of the article was not attempting to say there was
> no control, just that the control is susceptible to failure due to its
> passive nature.

I seem to remember this person literally writing there was no quality
control.


body:
On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Surprised that you didn't name this one, since it is one of the more
> useful human oriented ones (and a primary application for the living
> people cat):
>
> e) Produce a filtered recent changes feed
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people)

Heh, didn't know you could do that.

Lots of these functionalities would be better if they handled
subcategories, but for that to work we really need a better subcatting
system. But I haven't got a solution yet.

Steve


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
[apologies to Steve, who gets this twice]

On 19/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/19/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps a corrolary is "if the Wikipedia article can significantly
> > influence its subject compared to anything else written about them,
> > should we have it?"
>
> If a Wikipedia article can't influence the public's perception of a
> subject, why bother having it?

Ah, now, I didn't say that. Note "compared to anything else written
about them". We should have good, informative articles; so should the
newspaper which mentions the organisation, or the biographical
dictionary which has a paragraph on the person.

But we shouldn't be the only ones publishing the story about
so-and-so's messy divorce. We shouldn't be the only ones pulling
together this court record and that advertisment and another press
release to say that the company has systematically defrauded its
customers.

If we can influence people to think, that's good. But if we can
influence them to think where no other published source would
influence them to think... are we really being an encyclopedia,
republishing knowledge, or is this a sign we're getting into original
research?

It applies disproportionately to less-notable people, and I feel it
ought to. Just because we can write a factual article doesn't mean we
*should*...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If the goal is to get stuff out of google, why don't we just nospider
>>the talk pages? Is there any reason to have them spidered?
>>
>>
>Having talk pages in google has advantages and disadvantages.  The
>main advantage is that it makes it easier to search for things on talk
>pages, as Wikipedia's search facilities still kind of suck.
>
This sounds llike a damn good reason for fixing the search facilities.

>I'd be in favor of taking talk pages out of google, but I think it'd
>meet from resistance by others.  It could also be argued that putting
>parts of Wikipedia under robots.txt constitutes "technical measures to
>obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you
>make or distribute" and violates the GFDL.
>
I don't believe that the talk pages should be on Google at all.  Most of
what is there is thoroughly unverifiable rants. raves and speculation,
or it's a parking place to question that sort of thing.  Even if we can
purge it of outright defamation, there would still remain stuff that we
could not possibly recommend to an outsider as a reference.  It's about
as worthless as what would find on blogs and usenet.  I don't think that
talk pages should ever be viewed as anything more than our own internal
technique for sorting things out.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> In any case, I'm curious about what you believe we lost that we could
> have had with additional planning?

My support for the whole endeavour, for one. The appearance of
professionalism, for another. This thing looks like it was just a
knee-jerk reaction to bad publicity.

We've lost a lot of time as well. It's been almost nine months now,
during some of the most widespread publicity Wikipedia's ever had. If
when analysis is finally published it turns out that this experiment had
a major negative impact on new user participation it would have been
nice to know that more quickly to limit the damage.


body:
Hi Mark,
  Very interesting post. The logical conclusion of all that would seem
to be that we must avoid specifying rules for certain parts of our
code of behaviour. That is, we should leave certain areas deliberately
vague, in order to stop these "rule-followers with poor judgment" from
having any rules to follow.

The classic one I see again and again is people trying to put numbers
on "consensus". I recently noticed that at FPC, "Consensus in Featured
picture candidates is generally regarded to be a two-third majority in
support." WTF? I mean, really, "what the fuck?" Anyone incapable of
determining genuine consensus should *not* be given a crutch to lean
on. Any decision that can only be justified on the basis of a
numerical count is not a good decision...

Steve

(Yes, I top posted. I didn't have any specific remarks to make wrt any
particular section of the post).

On 8/20/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Steve,
>
> > I wish we had editorial judgment. Specifically, I wish we had a way of
> > determining which of our editors had good judgment, and empowered them
> > to do so.
>
> I was going to suggest that we do.  Those with good editorial judgment
> are the ones who don't follow the rules anyway, and so the system sorts
> itself out by making those who need the rules most being the only ones
> who follow them.  However, I thought about it a bit too much, and that
> led to this post.
>
> Bear with me for a moment, we're talking about a matrix in words again.
>  There are four possibilities:
>
> 1. Those with good judgment who follow the rules
> 2. Those with good judgment who Ignore All Rules(TM)
> 3. Those with poor judgment who follow the rules
> 4. Those with poor judgment who Ignore All Rules(TM)
>
> Now, of these, the process wonks with good judgment tend to become less
> wonky as time goes on, promoting the worthwhile aspects of process but
> acknowledging that when it leads to an absurdity one should never follow
> process to the letter.
>
> Those with good judgment who do what they think is in the best interests
> of the encyclopaedia tend to get away with it.  Boo-yah!
>
> Those with poor judgment who ignore the rules get blocked, because the
> rules would be all that keeps them from being dickheads.  I don't intend
> to cry too much over them.
>
> Finally, we get to those with poor judgment who follow the rules.  These
> people are a *problem*.  They don't seem to care about doing the Right
> Thing or the Wrong Thing, they don't seem to know what's appropriate
> behaviour and what isn't, they don't seem to be capable of saving their
> grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without ... you
> get the idea.  This is a problem for five reasons:
>
>   a) They get upset at those of us who are willing to make editorial or
>      administrative decisions even though we *haven't* received orders
>      signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queries, lost, found,
>      subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft
>      peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
>
>   b) They can make some really rather shit decisions, because of that
>      "process can lead to absurdity" thing mentioned above.
>
>   c) They refuse to accept that there's anything at all silly about
>      their behaviour, becuase the rules say such-and-such, and how can
>      it be wrong if they're following the rules?  This same point of
>      view leads to the famous "instruction creep", as they to make more
>      rules, subconsciously trying (I reckon) to provide enough
>      guidelines to blindly follow that they can never be held
>      responsible for anything.
>
>   d) THEY CORRUPT THE YOUTH!!!!!  In more sensible terms, what I mean is
>      that new users tend to assume that Wikipedia, given its size and
>      status and their own experience with the Real World(TM), must be a
>      bureaucracy.  Process wonks are only too happy to oblige.  I recall
>      one anonymous user told he couldn't copyedit an article on a video
>      game character without discussing it on the talkpage first!
>
>   e) Which leads me to my biggest complaint: they get the rules *wrong*.
>      It's bad enough to insist that we all follow the rules regardless
>      of the end result, but when *they don't even know what the rules
>      are*, they become a menace.  This is my current hobbyhorse: the
>      "Chinese Whispers Effect".  It means that someone with the wrong
>      idea about policy but who thinks he knows what he's talking about
>      will attempt to impose his view of policy on other editors, who
>      will misunderstand and take an even more corrupted view ... and so
>      on.
>
>      Examples include: the video game talkpage thing above; someone on
>      DRV who attempted to use the definition at [[Rough consensus]]
>      (mainspace article!) to argue that my satirical Administrator
>      Discretion Zone really did exist (!!!); the fellow who opposed an
>      RfA because "there is no excuse, *ever*, for not using the
>      {{testN}} templates to warn someone"; the people replacing removed
>      {{prod}} tags because the article author isn't allow to remove it
>      (or because the reason for removal wasn't considered sufficient);
>      the people insisting articles must be speedied because "it fails
>      WP:CORP"; and ... well, how long do we want this list to *get*?
>
>
> The more intelligent actions (not to say there haven't been some
> blindingly stupid actions too) of Wikipedians like Lar and to a lesser
> extent Aaron Brenneman and Xoloz have convinced me that people who
> espouse a "process is important" view can be worth listening to at
> times.  Process wonkism is not necessarily the enemy of Clue, but
> Cluelessness when combined with wonkism is a bloody menace.
>
> There are some Clueful editors --- see "corrupted youth" --- who merely
> hung out with the wrong crowd and are salvageable.  However, there are
> others out there who are too ignorant to bear; too arrogant to teach[0];
> too bossy to ignore.  What's the answer?
>
>
> <snip/>
>
> [0] I'm the first to admit I can be an arrogant prick at times, too.
>     Arguably, I have taken on such a persona to write this post.  I like
>     to think, though, that in comparison with the people who've
>     inflicted their stupidity on this community in the guise of
>     upholding policy, I've earned it.
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "You shit-lover!  Off-brusher!  Jaded, bitter joy-crusher!  Failure has
> made you so cruel!" (Never get Amanda Palmer angry)
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Process is evil

body:
On 8/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The idea here is that Assume Good Faith is really important, and
> WikiLove is really important.  Being harsh and feeling sanctimonious
> about battling idiots is a temptation that all good people can fall
> into, especially when tired.  But it dehumanizes others and causes them
> to behave worse, not better.

Hear, hear, hear.

Being sanctimonious with anyone never achieves *anything* good, other
than the dubious value of team bonding amongst those mocking them.

Steve


body:
> What effeitsanders means is that no-one reads the intro text.
> Everybody knows what it says, and don't need to read it every time
> they view the page.

But that applies to any article page then. So you end up with the board
election notice being a piece of text which shows up all over the place all the
time, and is either ignored or percieved as an annoying advertisement.

And most importantly, the election notice is NOT relevant in the article
namespace.  Yes, ultimately the board is what governs Wikipedia, but putting an
advertisement about it all over the place strikes me as self-centered.

Oleg Alexandrov


body:
On 8/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Hmm, I might be convinced by what you are saying here, but this example
> does not seem compelling to me.  I think, based on my limited
> recollection of this case, that it more or less turned out that the
> "alleged administrative adventures" were more or less cooked up, i.e.
> that this was a non-scandal.  But I would suspect that reasonable
> Republicans would take the same view that I do: the overall incident is
> still notable, of course.

Yes, it was a bad example :) A better example might be a scientific
study which is criticised by a religious group. Science-minded editors
would probably consider that criticism of little interest. Others
might find it relevant. Similarly, a scientific evaluation of a
paranormal claim might not be considered worth much of a mention by
most editors of the paranormal article (presumably those interested in
such things...)

Now, to really let my biases show, I would probably be a bad offender
in these cases. I tend to consider scientific studies of paranormal or
pseudoscience claims *not* to be relevant, as the mere fact of the
study lends too much credence to the field. Probably why I keep well
away from such articles :)

Steve


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] Using someone's real name instead of his wikiname

body:
Hoi,
Waerth has been long enough with the WMF projects not to have asked. I just
checked, he did and as could have been expected it is a well known
"gentleman" who should know better that is again at it being his "gracious"
self. Not only does he refuse the reasonable request not to name names, he
ends his diatribe with a promise to scrutinize the articles on Thailand
which is one of the centers of gravity of Waerth's activities. In my opinion
this can not be seen as anything but a deliberate provocation of Mr Muijz.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 8/21/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Have you tried asking him to stop?
>
> On 8/21/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> > On the Dutch wikipedia there is a user who is constantly using my real
> > name in discussions instead of my wikiname. Although my real name is
> > widely known, I do not wish that it is used on the wiki in discussions.
> > One of the reasons is Google's indexing the other reason is my real name
> > is known only by people who have been on the wiki for a long time.
> >
> > I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this user is
> > violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
> > name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy policy?
> >
> > Waerth
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/21, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> Hoi,
> Waerth has been long enough with the WMF projects not to have asked. I just
> checked, he did and as could have been expected it is a well known
> "gentleman" who should know better that is again at it being his "gracious"
> self. Not only does he refuse the reasonable request not to name names, he
> ends his diatribe with a promise to scrutinize the articles on Thailand
> which is one of the centers of gravity of Waerth's activities. In my opinion
> this can not be seen as anything but a deliberate provocation of Mr Muijz.

A diatribe which was based on Waerth's refusal to accept any edits by
Muijz on Thailand-related articles. Who is being unreasonable here,
the user who decides to specifically try to improve the articles that
another user has made, or the user who reverts any and all edits by a
certain user to an article he has created?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] How to address threats of disruption

body:
On 8/21/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> "Google-searching your chosen area of interest gets you further and
> faster.  Wiki is crap, and the bigger it gets, the more irrelevant it
> becomes - more blogosphere than reputable encyclopedia. "

Heh, google searching your chosen area always hits Wikipedia first,
which tells you exactly what you need to do. Wikipedia long ago became
my preferred first source for looking up any random topic. I'd love to
know what their areas of interest are that Wikipedia is *less*
informative than random pages found on Google.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
On 8/20/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I'd phrase it as "I removed a possibly defamatory claim because it was
> unsourced [link to diff]".  What's materially changed is that the
> claim is a bit more hidden, and probably more importantly, that the
> claim won't show up in a google search (as diff pages are under the
> robots exclusion).
>
> It's also just cleaner and easier (IMO).  Why copy/paste the claim
> when you can just link to it?

If the goal is to get stuff out of google, why don't we just nospider
the talk pages? Is there any reason to have them spidered?

Steve


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/8/21, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Waerth has been long enough with the WMF projects not to have asked. I just
>> checked, he did and as could have been expected it is a well known
>> "gentleman" who should know better that is again at it being his "gracious"
>> self. Not only does he refuse the reasonable request not to name names, he
>> ends his diatribe with a promise to scrutinize the articles on Thailand
>> which is one of the centers of gravity of Waerth's activities. In my opinion
>> this can not be seen as anything but a deliberate provocation of Mr Muijz.
>>
>
> A diatribe which was based on Waerth's refusal to accept any edits by
> Muijz on Thailand-related articles. Who is being unreasonable here,
> the user who decides to specifically try to improve the articles that
> another user has made, or the user who reverts any and all edits by a
> certain user to an article he has created?
Hoi,
I am blissfully unaware of all the ins and outs of the quarrels at the
nl.wikipedia. The issue at hand is the use of names. That is what I had
a look at and frankly it was not a surprise to see Muijz as one of the
parties in this. He has his reputation and he lives up to this
reputation. The part of the discussion I read was on the use of real
names, I believe you where you say that there is a history to it. It
does not change the issue; it shows lack of civility to name names on
Wikipedia.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
On 8/20/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> > I'd phrase it as "I removed a possibly defamatory claim because it was
> > unsourced [link to diff]".  What's materially changed is that the
> > claim is a bit more hidden, and probably more importantly, that the
> > claim won't show up in a google search (as diff pages are under the
> > robots exclusion).
> >
> > It's also just cleaner and easier (IMO).  Why copy/paste the claim
> > when you can just link to it?
>
> I don't say this to you often, Anthony, but: good show.  I think you've
> hit the nail firmly on the head there.
>
> Why *not* just explain what you've done and link to a diff?  Easier for
> you, safer for us, for considerate for them.

*Because* it's "a bit more hidden". At the end of the day, our talk
pages are there to assist *us* in having a good discussion, to achieve
our goals of neutrality, informativeness etc. A diff instead of the
text hinders that. What if I removed 30 claims in one edit? How would
I make it clear which one was the problem? I really do strongly
believe that we should be looking at ways to make talk pages a more
powerful tool where free, open discussion can take place, not looking
at ways to censor them from search engines.

To ask again: Any reason talk pages should be searchable?

Steve


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 8/21/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> There is a difference between what is published on Wikipedia and what is
> published on a mailing list. On all projects I am known as GerardM. It
> is trivial to find my full name. However, it is not up to anyone to make
> this connection on any of the Wiki projects.. Yes, you may deduce that
> my first name is probably Gerard.. :)
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
> > GerardM wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Hoi,
> >> I do disagree utterly.
> >>
> >
> >
> >> I would be interested to see to what extend Waerth has made this
> connection.
> >> I am of the opinion that there should be no link between peopel IRL and
> >> people in their Wikimedia persona. There are few people where a link
> with
> >> their real life persona is justifiable, Jimmy Wales is one. Even Angela
> asks
> >> to have her article removed once her tenure as a board member has
> ended.
> >> It is not polite to say the least.
> >> Thanks,
> >>     GerardM
> >>
> >
> > Still, if someone uses his real name on a public mailing list, I don't
> > see how using that name in conversation at Wikipedia is a violation of
> > privacy. If Waerth doesn't want his real name to be public, he
> > shouldn't post on public mailing lists with his real name in the
> > "From:" field and in his e-mail address.
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

In the long term, I think this anonymity policy is silly, and will get WP
and the WMF in more trouble than it avoids.

That said, users bludgeoning each other with real names is at the very least
uncivil.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>  ..
> c) To assist quality control, such as labelling articles that need cleanup etc

It seems rather pointless to me to label 20k pages needing citation. But
that's probably not a technical question.

If I do a random walk on en Wikipedia, almost every page seems to have
some tag needing something ("This page is in need of <insert your pet
peeve here>"). This reminds me of all these "under construction" pages
in the earlier days of the web.


body:
On 8/21/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimbo wrote once:
> "Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
> anonymous users in the English Wikipedia."

That statement is much better understood if you substitute "trial" for
"experiment".

Personally I don't think anonymous page creation serves our goals much. *shrug*

Steve


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sorry if this is all spelt out on policy pages, but I can't find
> it clearly enough.  I'm wondering how self-contained articles
> need to be with regard to citations.
>
> Take an example (but please answer on the principle and
> not on the example).  Suppose an article has this:
>    [[Babe Ruth]] hit 60 home runs in the 1927 season.
>
> Now someone comes along and slaps a "citation required"
> tag on it.  Someone else takes off the tag on the grounds
> that the WP article on Babe Ruth is linked right there and
> has copious citations that covers this fact.

Often the problem is that the Babe Ruth article doesn't have a
specific citation for this either.

> Who is right?  We aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a
> source, but I always took that to mean that Wikipedia is
> not an -ultimate- source for anything, not that a wikilink
> can never be an adequate way to show where the source
> for something can be found.

There's an easy solution; if there's a citation in the Babe Ruth
article, then copy it into the other article. Keep in mind that
Wikipedia is a Wiki, so you don't know, at any given time, whether or
not the article on Babe Ruth will actually have that citation in it.
Putting in the other article means you don't have to rely on the Babe
Ruth article, and, if it ever somehow gets deleted, there's still a
history that one can go back to to find and restore it.

Jay.


body:
On 8/21/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >  ..
> > c) To assist quality control, such as labelling articles that need cleanup etc
>
> It seems rather pointless to me to label 20k pages needing citation. But
> that's probably not a technical question.

Totally agree on that one. There are some useful ones though, like
"pages needing categorisation", "pages needing LaTeX formatting" etc.
Any task that can be performed by a non-subject specialist, in
particular.

>
> If I do a random walk on en Wikipedia, almost every page seems to have
> some tag needing something ("This page is in need of <insert your pet
> peeve here>"). This reminds me of all these "under construction" pages
> in the earlier days of the web.

Yeah. I can't stand {{cleanup}} - what's the point? But I occasionally
use {{wfy}} or {{globalize-USA}} or whatever, the latter mostly to let
off steam :)

Steve


from_name: Alex Powell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Hi,

I was wondering if there was a reason why the date fields are stored
as char(14), doesn't that make them a string? I want to analyse the
dates things happened - between ranges etc, and could do with changing
them to a double or big int or even a mysql date! Storing them in a
numeric format would also increase performance marginally, as the
field size would become much smaller. Am I missing something important
about MySQL/mediawiki date handling? Will MW break if I change the
underlying format? I have never seen a non numeric string in a
timestamp...

Kind regards,

Alex


body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see the problem in *theory* but not in *practice*. In practice there
> are very few disputes over consensus. The people who close these
> discussions tend to be clueful and have been around a while. They're
> not just random people - they deserve some respect.
>

There are few dissputes over consensus these days because generaly it
is defined. Or do you want to see what would happen if a buracrat
passed an admin at 69% or failed them at 81%?

> When your friend says "hey I asked around and everyone wants to go
> bowling", do you say "what do you mean, 'everyone'? Did you get at
> least 75%?" No, you accept that they're not out to screw you over, and
> a good result will be achieved...
>
> Steve

Except of course in this case I know what the percentage is and the
arguments used and in theory at least I am in a position to draw my
own judgement.

--
geni


from_name: Anthere

body:
Aphaia,

If that is fine with you, I am happy with Jon becoming an official hand
to help with elections.

Anthere

Jon Harald S?by wrote:
> On 8/19/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>It seems we have a shortage of help for election officials, at least for
>>august. Could someone give a hand to Aphaia and assist her ?
>>
>>Thanks
>>
>>Anthere
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
> If there's anything I could do, I'd be happy to help. =)
>
> Best regards,
> Jon Harald S?by
>
> Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
> Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
> MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
> Skype - jon.harald.soby


list: commons-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/21/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yep, I'm pretty sure 20mb is the magic limit set by Brion et al.
>
> Hey, it used to be 8mb :P and I think it might still be, on en.wp.

The mediawiki set limit gets you a nice rejection screen.

20 meg sound like the php default for posts if you don't change the
config. Is our web server setup script slacking?


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Policy something you should think very hard before not following.
> > Guidelines are something to be ignored if they get between you and
> > your objective. Any questions?
>
> '''and your objective'''.

I don't like that phrasing.  "And the project's objective", maybe.
Otherwise if your objective is to disrupt, or to POV-push, or to ...

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Policy something you should think very hard before not following.
> > > Guidelines are something to be ignored if they get between you and
> > > your objective. Any questions?
> >
> > '''and your objective'''.
>
> I don't like that phrasing.  "And the project's objective", maybe.
> Otherwise if your objective is to disrupt, or to POV-push, or to ...
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Right.

In addition to those who are simply knowingly disruptive, there are also
people who deeply and honestly feel that any attempt to, for example (their
opinions not mine), continue to publish articles about this mythical
Holocaust thing are an attempt to supress the superior white race.

I respect those people's right to hold an opinion, but their objective is
not one I want them to be able to project onto their interactions with WP.
The process of consensus and minority viewpoint representation is important
to help ensure that those people don't get to have more influence on
Wikipedia.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/19/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > And I see someone has added a beautiful and oh so apposite quote to
> > [[m:instruction creep]]:
> >     - Wikis, Grafitti, and Process, Clay Shirky, 2003-08-01

> I enjoy process when it quickly helps me figure out how to do
> something without reinventing the wheel on my own, and when it helps
> my work be more consistent with the rest of the project.  I dislike it
> when it's used as a bludgeoning device by the weak minded to produce
> an easy attack against someone whos actions taken with deep
> understanding and careful consideration.

Perhaps an essay page: [[Wikipedia:Process is dangerous]]. "Process is
important. But beware of two common fallacies: 1. that therefore more
process is better; 2. that process can cure cluelessness. Product
beats process."

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
Sometimes I add {{fact}} to articles and sections that I write - as a
reminder to myself that I need a better source, or because my source
is at home or in the library and I can't quite cite accurately without
having it to hand.

I don't personally see a problem with this - anyone else?

-Matt


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Who in this case are you asking to do the "determining genuine consensus"?
>
> Why should I accept their resoning over that of someone else? You see
> the problem.

I see the problem in *theory* but not in *practice*. In practice there
are very few disputes over consensus. The people who close these
discussions tend to be clueful and have been around a while. They're
not just random people - they deserve some respect.

When your friend says "hey I asked around and everyone wants to go
bowling", do you say "what do you mean, 'everyone'? Did you get at
least 75%?" No, you accept that they're not out to screw you over, and
a good result will be achieved...

Steve


body:
On 8/21/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, now, I didn't say that. Note "compared to anything else written
> about them". We should have good, informative articles; so should the
> newspaper which mentions the organisation, or the biographical
> dictionary which has a paragraph on the person.
>
> But we shouldn't be the only ones publishing the story about
> so-and-so's messy divorce. We shouldn't be the only ones pulling
> together this court record and that advertisment and another press
> release to say that the company has systematically defrauded its
> customers.
>
> If we can influence people to think, that's good. But if we can
> influence them to think where no other published source would
> influence them to think... are we really being an encyclopedia,
> republishing knowledge, or is this a sign we're getting into original
> research?

Oh, sorry, looks like I did distort your meaning a bit. Yes, I agree
with all that - we should not be too far out of line from other
sources. We can definitely achieve things by bringing together
material that two different types of publications would publish - in
fact, that's probably one of our major strengths, the fact that we
shamelessly quote from scientific journals, popular magazines,
blogs[1] and newspapers in the same article.

Steve
[1] Yeah, yeah, some people think blogs are uncitable.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Now someone comes along and slaps a "citation required"
> tag on it.  Someone else takes off the tag on the grounds
> that the WP article on Babe Ruth is linked right there and
> has copious citations that covers this fact.
>
> Who is right?  We aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a
> source, but I always took that to mean that Wikipedia is
> not an -ultimate- source for anything, not that a wikilink
> can never be an adequate way to show where the source
> for something can be found.

If someone came around and slapped the tag on it I see two possibilities:
1) They didn't know that the information was right there.
2) They know something we don't, considered it insufficient.

So why not try something somewhat novel on Wikipedia... Have a chat
with them rather than revert warring.

If they after being shown the other article the still find the
citation insufficient... go ahead and humor them and copy the
reference over. It won't hurt.

Our citation policy needs to be aggressively worded, and in undefined
cases default to 'cite it', because it is our best 'policy hammer'
against kooks adding original research. At the same time that makes it
useful for the disruption of Wikipedia.

As a result we must be aggressive in preventing people from misusing
the policy to disrupt... but one case does not demonstrate a pattern
of disruption.

If someone makes a practice of going around and {{fact}}ing obvious
things, then they are due an RFC, and if that fails, I'd hope arbcom
would be quite willing to censure them.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On Aug 21, 2006, at 11:38 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> On 21/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If someone makes a practice of going around and {{fact}}ing obvious
>> things, then they are due an RFC, and if that fails, I'd hope arbcom
>> would be quite willing to censure them.
>
>
> It has been in the past, thankfully.
>

And, unless this has changed, the policy on citing sources and
reliable sources expressly says not to tag stuff that you don't
question the accuracy of.

Did we ever revise the definition of a reliable source to something
where all of our featured articles were valid, btw?

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> There's an easy solution; if there's a citation in the Babe Ruth
> article, then copy it into the other article. Keep in mind that
> Wikipedia is a Wiki, so you don't know, at any given time, whether or
> not the article on Babe Ruth will actually have that citation in it.
> Putting in the other article means you don't have to rely on the Babe
> Ruth article, and, if it ever somehow gets deleted, there's still a
> history that one can go back to to find and restore it.

Yes..

Personally I think our standard for providing citations should be 'if
any sane participant in good faith thinks there should be a citation',
then we should go ahead and provide it...

At the same time, lets be clear:  If I see anyone going around
{{fact}}ing multiple pages rather than fixing it themselves when (1)
they believe the fact to be true, and (2) providing the citation is as
easy as copying it from another page.... I will be one of the first to
sign on the RFCs against them.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (Whatever happened to my project to give the policy/guidelines
> > collection a much-needed enema this year ...)
>
> I think we should schedule 6 monthly enemas. Every policy should be
> rewritten from scratch every 6 months, only incorporating the
> absolutely most critical and still relevant sections from the
> preceding version.

The policy pages I watch are fairly cruft immune.. because they are
mostly meta policies, doctrine not process....

But there are certainly a lot of policies which do get crufted... but
suggesting we nuke them ignores one of the primary causes of the
crufting:  They get crufted because there either isn't anyone with an
interest in stopping it, or some malfunction in our community is
allowing the one-rule-per-mistake-made crowd to have editorial control
of the page.

Simply nuking the pages from orbit would not solve this....  and it
would quickly drive the folks who've worked so carefully on our more
balanced non-crufted policies totally insane as new users decide they
can (ab)use that policy to rewrite our policies in their own image.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Milos Rancic

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] From mass content adding to cross-Wikipedia
	cooperation

body:
It seems that I didn't send this mail... If i sent it, sorry for two mails.

Finally, I found some time to continue with work on the project Mass
content adding (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding). I
started with preparing materials for adding countries
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_world and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_world/Names_of_the_countries)
and I found a number of open questions of multilingual/cross-Wikipedia
cooperation.

As I want to have the base for countries related things -- on English
Wikipedia -- the first point on the road of getting some help was the
WikiProject Countries
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countries) on
English Wikipedia. I wrote a message to the participants of the
project and I am waiting for their response...

And, here is the point: It is very useful for me that some other
projects can cover some parts of the project Mass content adding. But,
this is the project of English Wikipedia, not a multilingual project.
And I am sure that some people from other Wikipedias would be
interested to participate in the project Mass content adding. Also,
for the MCA project, there is a need for coordination between a number
of Wikipedian communities. And there is no such thing as "Coordination
place for WikiProjects Countries". And this is just one example of
need for cross-Wikipedia coordination/cooperation.

So, I think that all of such projects should have some place on Meta
for multilingual coordination. This means, also, that there people
from different Wikipedias should announce the existance of new project
on some page on Meta.

I would like to see a unified template for countries on all of
Wikipedias; a unified template for biographies on all of Wikipedias;
etc. In general, smaller Wikipedias are copying English templates, but
there are no feed-backs.

I remember: when I asked people on Serbian Wikipedia would we want to
use a template from English Wikipedia, one of them said "Why to use
their, our is better?" And, in deed, in that time Infobox Country on
Serbian Wikipedia was based on Infobox Country on English Wikipedia,
but with some more features.

In other words, I think that a number of technical details on
Wikipedia should be multilingual and not specific for the local
Wikipedias.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
On 21/08/06, Alex Powell <alexp700 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering if there was a reason why the date fields are stored
> as char(14), doesn't that make them a string? I want to analyse the
> dates things happened - between ranges etc, and could do with changing
> them to a double or big int or even a mysql date! Storing them in a
> numeric format would also increase performance marginally, as the
> field size would become much smaller. Am I missing something important
> about MySQL/mediawiki date handling? Will MW break if I change the
> underlying format? I have never seen a non numeric string in a
> timestamp...

This is documented in maintenance/tables.sql - check the comments at
the top, it has something about timestamp fields.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
On 21/08/06, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > This is documented in maintenance/tables.sql - check the comments at
> > the top, it has something about timestamp fields.
>
> Generally someone ages ago didn't like that TIMESTAMPs are auto-
> updated in MySQL and chose CHAR(14) instead of DATETIME.
> It would be pretty good idea to switch some day to datetime, and we
> have nearly all code in there. The sole problem is tables with tens
> of millions of rows to change.
> But that is doable, I suppose.

With Domas to read for them, I think the future of literature and the
English language is sound.

Rob Church


body:
On 21/08/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been thinking for some weeks or more now that a good feature to improve
> the usefulness of large categories would be "Random article in this
> category". I would be excellent for maintainence where nobody is going to
> iterate through the whole lot but does like to try to keep order etc.

Someone tell me why the bollocking hell I never implemented that? I'm
pretty sure I set out to do so at least once in the past.

** adds it to the big list(tm) **

Rob Church


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] en: well on the way to ... 2 million!

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>I started Berufsverbot and, more recently, Holding the Fort.  The
>former is a controversial German law barring political radicals from
>public sector employment, and the latter is an ITV situation comedy
>that ran for three seasons and starred two very famous actors.
>
>I was very surprised on both occasions that we didn't have articles on
>the subjects.  There are still yawning gaps.
>
I've had a similar experience---while 1.3 million articles sounds like a
lot, the sum of human knowledge is much larger. :-)

To have reasonable coverage of all major topics, I'd guess at least 5
million articles would be necessary, if not 10 million.  In particular,
we should bring coverage on en: of non-Anglosphere geography, history,
and politics up to the level of coverage we have for the Anglosphere.
For example, we have at least a basic article on every single town in
the U.S. (thanks to the census database) and almost all in the U.K., but
don't even have articles for every state or province of some countries,
let alone all the cities and towns.  There are people who have been
president or prime minister of a sovereign country for whom we don't yet
have a biography.  Even in the Anglosphere, there's plenty of room for
expansion: there are lots of major court precedents, moderately
important historical figures (state/provincial governors, entrepreneurs,
judges, etc.), state/provincial parks, geographical features (mountains,
rivers, islands, etc.), and so on that are still either red links or
wholly absent.

-Mark


body:
On 21/08/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Because it would require a DB query with an execution time proportional to
> the number of articles in the category? Having categories with lots of
> members is fine, as long as we don't try to traverse them all the time.

That would be it. I couldn't find an effective method which Domas
would agree with.

> The efficient way to do it would be to enumerate the category members,
> saving the results to a table for later lookup. The entries in this special
> table could have an expiry time. Is that how you were planning on doing it?

I don't bother planning things any more. Having four months' worth of
notes turn useless is not a fun experience.

More details? Enumerate them when, and save which results?

Rob Church


from_name: samuli at samulilintula.net

subject: [Commons-l] Copyrighted free use

body:
> I see that lots of people loads images and give them template
> {{Copyrighted free use}}. The funny thing about it is, that in most
> cases they are screenshots from TV, movies, movie posters, game
> covers, etc. So maybe we should make a large cleanup of images in this
> category, couse there can be tons of copyvios...

Many people have suggested that those who tag with {{copyrighted free
use}} have the following misunderstanding: "I got the from a page on the
internet. I guess you can use it freely."

I believe that the way the tag is really misunderstood is this: "[This
picture is] copyrighted [, it can used according to] free use".
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Spacechase-ripjump-small.jpg&diff=prev&oldid=2633285

--
Yst?v?llisin terveisin,
Samuli Lintula


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Beyond watchlists and "my contributions"

body:
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 05:53:31PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> However, what I really want is:
> Show me every change made to any article I've worked on recently. Let
> me "approve" changes so they don't show up again.
>
> It's kind of half way between: the "my contributions" is primarily
> interesting for the presence or absence of "(top)" which means that no
> one has touched it - but it doesn't show who changed it, when, or how
> often. Watchlist is more detailed, but quickly gets out of control and
> you end up seeing changes on articles you haven't touched in months,
> but haven't bothered to remove from your list.
>
> I gather that there exists a mechanism for 'approving' changes at the
> personal level (I don't want/need anyone else to see which changes
> I've approved). If that were combined with a way of sorting the
> watchlist in order of the last time I made a change to that article,
> this would alost satisfy the need I see (apart from the watchlist
> getting out of control...). Is this possible?
[ ... ]
> Does anyone agree that this would be a more useful and relevant way of
> showing changes? Are there further enhancements one could add to
> quickly see what's changed since the last time one checked - within
> the narrow sphere of one's own interests?

You're right, but I rather suspect the answer you're going to get from
people who've been here longer than me is "yes, but that might
encourage people to feel like they 'own' articles, and we want to avoid
that".

Which has some credence to it, as I had to have pointed out to me
during the Hurricane Katrina live TV coverage links wars last year.

cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
On 21/08/06, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!!!!
> > With Domas to read for them, I think the future of literature and the
> > English language is sound.
>
> ?

I didn't realise it was international punctuation mark week. I think
I'll opt for the apostrophe.

Domas, it was light sarcasm.

Rob Church


body:
2006/8/21, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:
> Which ''was'' one of the centers of Waerths activities. Waerth has
> stopped contributing since it was made impossible by Muijz and Wikix as
> they deliberately provocate Waerth by deliberately making edits for
> edits sake. Meanwhile accusing Waerth of not wanting to co-operate.
> Anyone looking at the edits made on Thailand articles in the Dutch
> wikipedia will see that Waerth co-operates in a good manner. And I think
> that the people who also work on Thailand articles in the english
> wikipedia like Ahoerstemeier can attest that waerth co-operates in a
> fine manner.

Then I assume you have never told Ahoerstemeier that he should not be
editing pages on Thailand, I assume?

> I am getting sick and tired of people who edit for edittings sake and
> who only use that as a way to provocate others. And then hold large
> diatribes accusing others of refusing to co-operate.

They edit many articles, and the only time that that is considered a
provocation, is by you when they edit on Thailand. Apparently there is
not just an issue with them, there is an issue with you as well.

> And then to be even
> more provocative use someone's real name which means that someone's real
> name gets slaundered all over the internet.

Apparently it's okay when you or someone who you like does it, but if
it's someone you don't like, it's suddenly an act of vandalism that
should be punished with a block. Maybe he's done it before, and maybe
you have told him not to do so, I cannot find that, but I can find
that the connection between your nick and your real name is currently
7 or 8 times on Wikipedia, with none of them created by Wikix, but
instead by Tlc, Walter, Steinbach, Flyingbird, yourself (3 times) and
me in discussion with Verrekijker. None of these seem to have been
considered provocations by you.

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


body:
On 8/21/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>My support for the whole endeavour, for one.
[snip]

I hope you understand that getting the permission of each and every
user before making a change is a solution which doesn't scale.

> We've lost a lot of time as well. It's been almost nine months now,
> during some of the most widespread publicity Wikipedia's ever had. If
> when analysis is finally published it turns out that this experiment had
> a major negative impact on new user participation it would have been
> nice to know that more quickly to limit the damage.

I don't believe we could have gotten useful data about the possible
positive impacts of this change any sooner than now. The most useful
metrics take time (i.e. life expectancy of an article), and there is a
lot of noise.. so to make confident statements we need lots of data.

For your reference, there have been people watching this for clearly
negative impacts all along. Had there been substantial evidence that
it was doing a significant amount of harm, it would have been aborted.

Here is some data, http://myrandomnode.dyndns.org/new_articles.png
The graph shows the rate of article creation, excluding articles which
were eventually deleted, based on the timestamp of the oldest visible
revision over the life of the project.  X is time in julian day
numbers, the ticks are about 200 days apart, and the graph is about a
month old.

This doesn't tell us that the policy *helped* but it does indicate
that it isn't causing serious harm.   A more comprehensive statistical
study of the impact is forthcoming.

> From a purely data standpoint probably not a whole lot was lost thanks
> to the thoroughness of the database's records, though having to rely on
> the deletion database for long-term information retention does make me a
> bit nervous. But that's not the only consideration here.

Our retention of deleted metadata is just as robust as anything else...


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia 2010

body:
For the last days, I've been hacking on a C++ - based demo platform for
both a wikipedia offline reader and new tools to use with wikipedia
content. I've euphemistically dubbed it "Wikipedia 2010" ;-)

I hope that people will use it as a platform to test new feature ideas
that are too complex or graphics-dependent to go on the web. Internally,
it offers many useful functions like getting links, categories, etc.,
local caching incuded. I also hope that it could become a wikipedia
offline reader in the future.

Screenshots, Source, Windows and Mac executables are at

http://www.magnusmanske.de/wp2010/

Attention: This is *not* supposed to be usable software in any way! At
least, not yet. Also, I could probably have it implemented in C#, or as
an AJAX application. But I wanted a fast, easy-to-install software, and
so it's C++ with wxWidgets.

I will check it into SVN later today, if there are no objections.

Magnus

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/21, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:

> I am still waiting for the bloody arbcom which was promised over a year
> ago on nl: but still gets frustrated.

Now, there I agree, but it seems that the Dutch Wikipedia is very good
at fight and namecalling, and very bad at actually making a decision.
I have stopped bringing this up, because it's probably not going to
work anyway. I'm afraid that if I bring it up now, there's a lot of
discussion on whether to do it and how it should look, then when I
wait till it has died out and make a proposal, everyone will complain
that they have not had a chance to get their say on how it will look.
At best.

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


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Blank pages being delivered at en?

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have saved the source code of a "blank page" to a text file.
> Comparing this to the result of the reloaded page is yielding me
> confusing results - not 100% sure I can trust FireFox's "show page
> source"?

Nope.  Another thing it does is escape stray &s.


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 8/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> (I'm quoting from
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/033880.html)
>
> Jimbo wrote once:
> "Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
> anonymous users in the English Wikipedia."
>
> This was way back in 5 Dec 2005. Has the experiment run long enough?
> What sort of experiment varies the independent variable only one way?
>
> Let's turn page creation back on for anons. We turned it off, so let's
> see what happens when we turn it back on; otherwise we're simply
> running on sheer blind inertia and unthinking myopia. Every month
> since Dec. 2005 we should have been asking whether the costs have been
> worth the benefits.

I don't think we're both blind and myopic, but otherwise I
wholeheartedly agree. Turn on anon page creation, maybe in Dec 2006 so
we have a year's worth of data to compare to.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
 008 pages for the servers?

body:
Steve Bennett schrieb:
> On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Surprised that you didn't name this one, since it is one of the more
>> useful human oriented ones (and a primary application for the living
>> people cat):
>>
>> e) Produce a filtered recent changes feed
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people)
>>
>
> Heh, didn't know you could do that.
>
> Lots of these functionalities would be better if they handled
> subcategories, but for that to work we really need a better subcatting
> system. But I haven't got a solution yet.
>
I have. It's in the current code, turned off. It's a filter to mass-sift
through articles fast. The only implemented use (also turned off) is to
filter Recent Changes to show only articles in a category *and its
subcategories*. I have asked to turn it on for testing some time ago,
but was more or less ignored (as usual;-).

It could be tested on one of the smaller wikis to check what impact it
would have on en or de.

Magnus

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body:
On 8/21/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I have. It's in the current code, turned off. It's a filter to mass-sift
> through articles fast. The only implemented use (also turned off) is to
> filter Recent Changes to show only articles in a category *and its
> subcategories*. I have asked to turn it on for testing some time ago,
> but was more or less ignored (as usual;-).
>
> It could be tested on one of the smaller wikis to check what impact it
> would have on en or de.

How does it cope with category cycles? Basically I feel that since we
have no real definition of what "subcategory" means (on en, at least),
it's not that meaningful at this stage to presume that subcategories
should be searched along with the main category. Or perhaps the user
should be able to choose whether or not that's meaningful for the
category he's searching...

Steve


from_name: Greg Sabino Mullane

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
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Hash: SHA1

> I was wondering if there was a reason why the date fields are stored
> as char(14), doesn't that make them a string? I want to analyse the
> dates things happened - between ranges etc, and could do with changing
> them to a double or big int or even a mysql date!

For what it's worth, if you use MediaWiki with a Postgres database,
dates *are* stored as true timestamp fields. The only big problem I
found when converting them over was with the archive table, which still
needs to at least emulate a char(14) due to the URLs generated within
the code. Just a heads up for when/if the timestamp changes for the
MySQL version.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
End Point Corporation
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200608210919
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > '''and your objective'''.
> >
> > I don't like that phrasing.  "And the project's
> objective", maybe.
> > Otherwise if your objective is to disrupt, or to
> POV-push, or to ...
> >
>
> Err in that case the cynical side of me would rather you
> ignored our
> guidelines since it would make it less work to neutralise
> you.

>From the articles I've worked on, all too often the people
are taking the YOUR-objective approach and treating the
article as if it's theirs and any changes are a challenge
to THEIR objective, which they now view as the article's
objective.  That makes it harder for the people trying to
make the content better, and it certainly interferes with
policy like NPOV, WP:V, and WP:CITE when you have people
clinging onto what they feel is their hard,
well-intentioned (i.e., "good") work instead of what's best
for the article.
~~Pro-Lick

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


body:
On 8/20/06, Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com> wrote:
> Actually, I've been getting these blank pages too, and I'm not using
> Google Accelerator. Using Firefox on WinXP and MacOSX, ZoomTown (local
> broadband ISP). I haven't been seeing this with any other website.

Ok, I just got another one. I notice that I'm only getting these at
work (Firefox 1.5.0.6), and not at home (Firefox 1.0.something). XP in
both cases, various firefox extensions.

I have saved the source code of a "blank page" to a text file.
Comparing this to the result of the reloaded page is yielding me
confusing results - not 100% sure I can trust FireFox's "show page
source"? It seems to be either identical to the "correct" output, or
minus a few unimportant linefeeds. However, the "view rendered source
chart" extension shows just the string "<HTML></html>".

I'm tempted to think this is a FireFox anomaly? Some odd race
condition where it's rendering the page and *then* retrieving the full
source?

Steve


body:
2006/8/21, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:

> Why should he or you not edit? Neither of you have ever added false
> information. Wikix has and Muijz has removed relevant info.

Well, I have made mistakes too. Corrected them of course when I
realized it was a mistake (except for one, which I'm going to do
immediately after this post), but I have written them. And I have
removed material from pages too. Probably the one who put it there
found it relevant, otherwise s/he would not have put it there. So
block me.

> Well in that case I will have a look and remove the instances.

So are you going to call for our blocking too?

> Muijz is
> not using my full name but my family name. Which means that after it is
> taken up by google these accusations that Muijz makes can be pertained
> to any member of my family. Which means that he is slandering them all
> and adding them to a personal fight he has with me.

No, of course not. He is saying it's a Van Kalken. Everyone will
realize that there is more than one of them and that his criticism is
just to one. And also, you earlier said it's an issue of privacy.
Disclosing your full name would be more breaking privacy than just
your last name, no? If someone calls me 'Andre', I assume people are
clever enough to realize that I am meant, and not every Andre on the
whole planet.

> And with your redenation I can publish
> Muijz full name and his history anywhere as he has made a website about
> himself and his very particular history. Because it is widely known and
> he has told about it on wikipedia on talkpages. Just because he has done
> so doesn't give me the right to do this, neither does he have the right
> in a discussion between user:Waerth and user:Muijz to all of a sudden
> draw my complete family in the conflict.

And you're completely right if you would just ask your real name or
family name to be kept out of this. But you're not. You're asking for
Muijz to be blocked because of his trolling and vandalizing behaviour
of naming your whole name. Just remove the name and add a *friendly*
notice that you would not like him to do that. That would have been a
lot more effective and a lot less conflictuous than what you have done
now.

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


from_name: will at avery.homelinux.org

subject: [Commons-l] Upload large files

body:
Quoting Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de>:

> I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
> some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
> upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
> for PHP.
>
> Is there a way to bypass that limit? I'd hate to have to cut perfectly
> good ogg files.
>
> Magnus
>
>
In PHP the php.ini file has a  configurable limit called upload_max_filesize.

It is possible this is configured to 20 Mb on the server.

Will

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from_name: effe iets anders

body:
Maybe it's worthwhile to split the discussion, and focus on the
original question, in which answer I am quite interested in too:

Is this a Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy violation?

Lodewijk

2006/8/21, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:
> Andre Engels wrote:
>
> >2006/8/21, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I am still waiting for the bloody arbcom which was promised over a year
> >>ago on nl: but still gets frustrated.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Now, there I agree, but it seems that the Dutch Wikipedia is very good
> >at fight and namecalling, and very bad at actually making a decision.
> >I have stopped bringing this up, because it's probably not going to
> >work anyway. I'm afraid that if I bring it up now, there's a lot of
> >discussion on whether to do it and how it should look, then when I
> >wait till it has died out and make a proposal, everyone will complain
> >that they have not had a chance to get their say on how it will look.
> >At best.
> >
> >
> >
> We agree on one thing.
>
> Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
2006/8/21, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>:

> > And with your redenation I can publish
> > Muijz full name and his history anywhere as he has made a website about
> > himself and his very particular history. Because it is widely known and
> > he has told about it on wikipedia on talkpages. Just because he has done
> > so doesn't give me the right to do this, neither does he have the right
> > in a discussion between user:Waerth and user:Muijz to all of a sudden
> > draw my complete family in the conflict.

And maybe you should go to him to ask this. Maybe he doesn't mind. I
don't mind if you use my real name (although looking back having it as
my nick makes it a bit too conspicuous - everyone looking up me on the
web will get to a few dozen Wikipedia userpages), maybe he doesn't
either. Maybe he does, but then at least he's given you good
ammunition to argument against him doing the same to you.

I am not saying that what he did is right or that what you did is
wrong. What I am saying is that by reacting as if it is the greatest
wiki-sin possible whenever Wikix or Muijz says anything about you or
about Thailand, you're not helping to solve the situation. You are
just making Wikix' "everyone is allowed to edit" reasoning sound more
and more reasonable.

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


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Policy something you should think very hard before not following.
> Guidelines are something to be ignored if they get between you and
> your objective. Any questions?

'''and your objective'''.

Hmm.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 21/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> > I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
> > some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
> > upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
> > for PHP.
>
> You mean a magical limit for uploading to MediaWiki? Maybe a nice
> person with access to the servers would copy them for you? :)

There are limits within MediaWiki, PHP and Apache. Magic can come from
more than one direction.

Rob Church


subject: [Commons-l] Upload large files

body:
I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
for PHP.

Is there a way to bypass that limit? I'd hate to have to cut perfectly
good ogg files.

Magnus

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
for PHP.

Is there a way to bypass that limit? I'd hate to have to cut perfectly
good ogg files.

Magnus

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body:
On 8/21/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> I wonder why for these purposes templates aren't used. You can then retrieve
> all pages that have the "tag" via WhatLinksHere.
>
> Maybe I didn't get the memo, but on wikis I contributed to that was done
> this way instead of using categories :)

Templates aren't really designed for that the way categories are.  The
syntax is less clear (the function of "{{foo}}" is less obvious than
that of [[Category:Foo]], because of the keyword "category"), the
"what links here" page is sorted quite randomly to most people's eyes
(by date added, not alphabetic order), there aren't category links on
the bottom of the page, fewer entries are displayed per page by
default, you can't easily browse to a supercategory (which might in
some cases by handy even for simple "tags"), and you can't split up
large categories into subcategories.

Why would you *want* to use templates instead of categories?


body:
Steve Bennett schrieb:
> On 8/21/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>> I have. It's in the current code, turned off. It's a filter to mass-sift
>> through articles fast. The only implemented use (also turned off) is to
>> filter Recent Changes to show only articles in a category *and its
>> subcategories*. I have asked to turn it on for testing some time ago,
>> but was more or less ignored (as usual;-).
>>
>> It could be tested on one of the smaller wikis to check what impact it
>> would have on en or de.
>>
>
> How does it cope with category cycles?
IIRC it remembers which categories were already checked, and doesn't
cycle forever ;-)

Also, it starts with the categories a given list of articles are in,
then goes *down* through the tree, towards the parent/root (or was the
"up"? I keep forgetting), and checks if it finds a given category.
> Basically I feel that since we
> have no real definition of what "subcategory" means (on en, at least),
> it's not that meaningful at this stage to presume that subcategories
> should be searched along with the main category. Or perhaps the user
> should be able to choose whether or not that's meaningful for the
> category he's searching...
>
Well, saying "show me recent changes in biology and subcategories" is
definitely something I'd enjoy.

Magnus

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from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Hi,

> This is documented in maintenance/tables.sql - check the comments at
> the top, it has something about timestamp fields.

Generally someone ages ago didn't like that TIMESTAMPs are auto-
updated in MySQL and chose CHAR(14) instead of DATETIME.
It would be pretty good idea to switch some day to datetime, and we
have nearly all code in there. The sole problem is tables with tens
of millions of rows to change.
But that is doable, I suppose.

And in case anyone needs a cast, one can do that with say... ourfield
+interval 0 second ;-)

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


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 21/08/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> I forget who said it (probably David Gerard), but it's incredibly true:
> Wikipedia doesn't scale.

Wasn't me, that I recall ...

> "Consensus" works when you're confident that
> everyone who's involved Has A Clue. When you've got a thousand wolves in
> sheep's clothing, and you can't tell who is which (because there are so
> bloody many of them! ever tried counting sheep?), that's when
> "consensus" falls flat on its face.

It fails when you can no longer assume everyone isn't stupid.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 21/08/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I don't think it's MediaWiki, as it doesn't display the
> file-is-too-large message, but just returns a blank upload form. And
> AFAIK, Apache doesn't have an upload size limit /per se/ (though you can
> set one, apparently, with LimitRequsetBody). Thus, I'd bet on PHP to be
> the culprit. I know we've raised the PHP upload limit, but maybe not
> enough, or maybe there is a compiled-in limit?

Yeah, I was advising Steve that more than one possible limit exists. :)

Rob Church


body:
On 21/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> I'd ask if anyone has any statistics on how often those tags are
> affixed and removed, but...

Wikipedians prefer to highlight and tag problems than to take 30
seconds to fix them, it seems. I can understand that larger cases crop
up, and warrant attention from more than one person, but stupid little
unsourced stubs don't need to be tagged - either find a source on the
web, or find reference that a source might exist within five minutes,
or "prod" it, or whatever we do now.

Do we still have AfD, or was it renamed again?

Rob Church


body:
2006/8/21, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de>:

> > Basically I feel that since we
> > have no real definition of what "subcategory" means (on en, at least),
> > it's not that meaningful at this stage to presume that subcategories
> > should be searched along with the main category. Or perhaps the user
> > should be able to choose whether or not that's meaningful for the
> > category he's searching...
> >
> Well, saying "show me recent changes in biology and subcategories" is
> definitely something I'd enjoy.

I'm afraid that it would be awfully timeconsuming. I recently checked
for one article its category and their supercategories and it ran in
the hundreds, perhaps over a 1000. Subcategories, definitely of a
high-level category like Biology, might well have the same problem.

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


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Heh, google searching your chosen area always hits Wikipedia first,
> which tells you exactly what you need to do. Wikipedia long ago became
> my preferred first source for looking up any random topic. I'd love to
> know what their areas of interest are that Wikipedia is *less*
> informative than random pages found on Google.

I suspect it's an area where our article doesn't have "the dirt".

-Matt


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
On the Dutch wikipedia there is a user who is constantly using my real
name in discussions instead of my wikiname. Although my real name is
widely known, I do not wish that it is used on the wiki in discussions.
One of the reasons is Google's indexing the other reason is my real name
is known only by people who have been on the wiki for a long time.

I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this user is
violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy policy?

Waerth


subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Hi!!!!
> With Domas to read for them, I think the future of literature and the
> English language is sound.

?

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


from_name: Peter Ansell

body:
On 21/08/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> The author of the article seems to forget that while you should take any
> source with a grain of salt, online ones in particular. Wikipedia has the
> advantage that it is subject to quality control (despite of what the author
> says) althought it's nearly impossible to keep an eye out on all entries.
> Wikipedia has the advantage of allowing the readers to track down the
> sources for any given entry. If there aren't any, you can contact the author
> and ask where they got it.

Of course in theory it works perfectly like that. However, if a "fact"
was included in a version a year ago how easy is it to figure out who
put it in to go and ask them for verification? There is no automatic
mechanism for "blaming" any one user for any word in an article, which
means it is a possible, but totally manual process.

Coming from a non-chalant user point of view though, they do not
realise that they can track back through the history of the page to
verify things themselves. The quality control you speak of is not
perfect, the author of the article was not attempting to say there was
no control, just that the control is susceptible to failure due to its
passive nature.

Not everyone thinks like a seasoned Wikipedian!

Peter Ansell


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 21/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedians prefer to highlight and tag problems than to take 30
> > seconds to fix them, it seems. I can understand that larger cases crop
> > up, and warrant attention from more than one person, but stupid little
> > unsourced stubs don't need to be tagged - either find a source on the
> > web, or find reference that a source might exist within five minutes,
> > or "prod" it, or whatever we do now.
>
> Are you talking about presumed hoaxes or presumed good articles that
> simply don't have any citations?

I'm talking about the little stub that looks 50/50, or the single
spelling error that causes them to roll out the {{cleanup}} tag.

> > Do we still have AfD, or was it renamed again?
>
> You mean Arguments for Dimwits?

Those are the best kind!

Rob Church