from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik,

I'm a little confused here. The mediation committee has indicated that they would like
to be the sole administrators and moderators of the mediation message board. You
appear to have taken this request as personal criticism of your good self, and as a
result have robustly defended yourself. I think you have certainly made your point of
view on the matter clear enough, and I'm sure it is clear to all readers that your
actions are without defect. Having established that, let us now move forwards.

It appears that the mediation committee would *still* like to be the sole administrators
and moderators of the mediation message board, *despite* your actions being entirely
error-free. I think this is an entirely reasonable request. By agreeing to this request,
you would be in no way bringing disrepute on yourself, or casting any doubt on the
validity of your prior actions as moderator. Indeed, the ability to gracefully hand over
the levers of power, where appropriate, is a highly prized ability amongst leaders.

If there are some important reasons, that we are unaware of, why it would be
dangerous for you to allow the mediators to administer the mediation message board
unaided, I'm sure we would all like to know. Otherwise, I hope you will shortly make all
the mediators admins, as they have suggested, and thus free up your valuable time
for other things.

Cheers,
-Martin


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>
>>The fact you named Sannse moderator only partly solve the issue.
>
>
> I deleted a bunch of useless messages. If you think that's something that
> "needs to be reported" or "needs to be discussed", well, there's a whole
> message board where you can discuss things like that. Don't expect me to
> participate, though.

Precisely, I expect you not to participate.

I expect that only mediators, disputants and people interested in
mediation participate on that board.

You are not a mediator. As far as you know, you never asked to be. You
refused to be an arbitrator as well. So, there are not reasons why you
should *arbitrate* the way we mediators choose to work. This is our
business, not yours. You are not welcome to moderate the mediation board
  in a way that is not respectful of our methods.

Mediation is a business that require a bit a delicacy, diplomacy and
sympathy. One external to a dispute is very likely to hurt the process
when putting his heavy feet in the middle of it. So please do not.

I expect you *not* to participate as a moderator.

Please let mediators do what they agreed to work on, and give admin of
the board to them.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Martin-
> It appears that the mediation committee would *still* like to be the sole
> administrators and moderators of the mediation message board

Admin status on phpBB is different from moderator status; it allows the
creation and deletion of entire boards, the management of permissions on
all boards, changing the languages, styles etc. and other far-reaching
settings. It inevitably comes with the ability to moderate any discussion
board.

This status has to be limited, and it has to be limited to users who are
technically able and willing to administrate the board. I volunteered for
that job when the board was created, because I am personally interested in
phpBB and familiar with it.

Of course the ability to moderate forums does not have to be *exercised*
if there are actual moderators to do the job. So I'm all for the mediation
team moderating their own board and have in fact immediately made sannse a
moderator.

After her repeated personal attacks against me, I must admit that I have
strong reservations about Anthere as a moderator and a mediator, but if
Jimbo explicitly asks me to I will certainly make her a moderator as well.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Combining bits of various posts:

Erik  wrote:

>you are now a moderator.

Thanks.  That's helpful.

Erik  wrote:

>I deleted a bunch of useless messages.

No, you deleted a bunch of messages that were still useful to me.  I
understand that this was an inadvertent mistake on your part, and that you
believed them to be useless.

Erik wrote:
> Your [Anthere's] behavior here is increasingly bordering on trolling.

I don't think that's a fair comment.  Anthere is annoyed at the lack of
communication - which could have prevented this mistake.  This is not a big
issue in the sense of the particular thread deleted.  It was inconvenient to
me that it was deleted before I was finished with it - no biggie.  But I
think her concern is that similar situations are likely unless this is
discussed.

Erik wrote:

>Admin status on phpBB is different from moderator status; it allows the
>creation and deletion of entire boards, the management of permissions on
>all boards, changing the languages, styles etc. and other far-reaching
>settings. It inevitably comes with the ability to moderate any discussion
>board.

>This status has to be limited, and it has to be limited to users who are
>technically able and willing to administrate the board. I volunteered for
>that job when the board was created, because I am personally interested in
>phpBB and familiar with it.

Is it possible to have more than one admin?  If so I'm willing to learn how
to administrate the board and become admin for the mediation board.  I
realise that this would give me access to admin abilities for all parts of
the boards - but in the same way you have agreed not to moderate on the
mediation board, I would agree not to on the other boards.  Only if the rest
of the mediation committee agrees of course.

--sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
sannse-

>> I deleted a bunch of useless messages.

> No, you deleted a bunch of messages that were still useful to me.

I do not remember seeing any messages which I considered of possible
value. It seemed like a dead thread intended for immediate deletion. Maybe
there was something in the thread which I overlooked. In that case, the
deletion was a mistake. But there's no way to find out now, so trusting my
own judgment, I do not consider it a mistake.

> Anthere is annoyed at the lack of communication

I disagree with you about your characterization of Anthere's behavior here
and elsewhere, but this will get us nowhere. Unless Anthere apologizes to
me I have no desire to resume interaction with or discussion about her.

> Is it possible to have more than one admin?

Yes. If there is general agreement, I can make you a global forum
administrator.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Pretty serious bug (was: Strangeness with
	Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles)

body:
Rich Holton wrote:

> Ummm... [[wikipedia:Orphaned Articles]] is distinct
> from [[wikipedia:Orphaned articles]] (look closely).

Yeah. Someone pointed it out to me on my User talk page. I suppose we
can really delete [[Wikipedia:Orphaned articles]] and move
[[Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles]] over to the intuitive capitalisation
that matches our naming convention in the article namespace.

> It does sound similar to what you describe, though
> more muddled. Here we had:
> -Heading plus sections A & B
> -Heading
> -Heading plus sections A thru Z (ie whole correct
> page)
> -Sections D thru Z

** PLING! **

Whee, I know what's going on. And I'm really surprised this didn't come
up before, but anyway. This is just a theory, but it seems so 100%
plausible to me that it just gotta be right:

I think what is happening is this:

- You click the little "edit" link for section editing. In your example,
   you edited the section "C".
- You get an edit conflict. The top window on the edit conflict screen
   then displays the entire text of the article as it was submitted by
   the person that was quicker than you.
- However, a hidden form element still contains the section number.
   Thus, when you submit, the software thinks you're still
   section-editing, although you're actually sending the entire article!
- Thus, it replaces section "C" with the entire article text. This is
   why all sections except for "C" are duplicated.

This definitely needs to be fixed :-) I suppose the easiest fix would be
to just remove that hidden form element and have users fiddle with the
entire article text. A more sensible fix would be to actually display
only that section. However, that latter solution will be extremely
complicated in cases where the person that was quicker than you added or
removed a section above the one you were editing, so the sections are
renumbered...

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
>>>>> "KA" == Kelly Anderson <kelly at acoin.com> writes:

    KA> I'm sorry if my ignorance is showing here, but I went to both
    KA> sourceforge and gnutella.com and I still don't have any idea
    KA> what gnutella is, other than it's a peer to peer networking
    KA> protocol for file sharing. In other words, I can't figure out
    KA> why Gnutella is different from Ares, the old Napster, or
    KA> Bittorrent from an architectural point of view.

The main reason it's different -- and one that has nothing to do with
Wikipedia, btw -- is that you don't need to connect to a central
server, like Napster or BT. You just need to know other people running
Gnutella, and get their IP addresses, and then you "discover" new
addresses over time.

The main reason it'd be appropriate is that it's probably still the
biggest P2P network. Because the protocol is open, there are lots of
clients that use the network. Kazaa, Limewire and Bearshare, for
example, all run on the Gnutella network.

One thing it's _not_ good at is for publishing Web sites over
P2P. That's probably what we'd need for Wikipedia.

    KA> I am more familiar with Bittorrent, which is very useful for
    KA> distributing copies of very large files (which a pdf version
    KA> of Wikipedia would certainly qualify as) without using hardly
    KA> any bandwidth on the main server.

I, for one, would _never_ download the entire Wikipedia PDF file. Not
only would it be humongous, but several hundred or thousand articles
would be edited between the time I started the download and the time
it finished.

It makes more sense to distribute a page at a time rather than the
whole thing at once.

~ESP

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I do not remember seeing any messages which I considered of possible
> value.

Please consider rethinking this philosophy, Erik, and consider the
possibility that (a) your view of what is "of possible value" may not
coincide with everyone else's, and (b) your action *may* have been wrong
*from the point of view of others*. Even if nothing in the thread had
been "of possible value" indeed, it can nevertheless be viewed as wrong
of you to intervene with the operation of a board that you are not even
participating in. Please realise that this *can* be a cause for grief
and annoyance, and if so, that you are responsible for it.

> Unless Anthere apologizes to me

Other than the inappropriate reference to the de-sysopping of 168, which
has nothing to do with this issue, I do not see anything in this thread
that Anth?re should be required to apologise for. Quite to the contrary,
if I followed this all correctly, you were the one who deleted that
thread. It seems more appropriate that you should apologise for that,
and consider not doing it again in the future.

It seems that you feel that your ability to administer the board is
being questioned. I understand that it can be taken that way. But, as
has been said, even the greatest leaders make mistakes, and they are not
great leaders if they cannot admit their mistakes and learn from them.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
John C. Penta wrote:

> Uh, can the mediation groupies take this elsewhere and leave this list for more general stuff?

Uh, I beg your pardon? What rule did you dig up where that says that
this is not supposed to be discussed here?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Timwi-

> Please consider rethinking this philosophy, Erik, and consider the
> possibility that (a) your view of what is "of possible value" may not
> coincide with everyone else's

Indeed. That's why I apply very low standards in moderation. A thread
which only contains "deleted", "yesterday", "deleted", yesterday",
"deleted", "yesterday" certainly falls into a category where, with common
sense, one can assume that it is a dead discussion that can be removed.

As only administrator of the board at the time, it fell into my
*responsibility* to do such housekeeping operations. And as it is with
housekeepers, if you don't want them to throw away something that looks
like crap, make it not look like crap. Alternatively, keep your own house.
That is now the solution which we have agreed upon, and it is certainly
one which I can happily accept.

It is, however, beyond the pale that I was attacked publicly (in a
discussion that will be archived and indexed, with my real name in it, for
years to come), on a personal level, for doing what I volunteered to do,
was appointed to do, and did in completely good faith, using common sense.
For that, I expect an apology.

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] no-cache header?

body:
Hi,

it seems that Wikipedia's HTTP response contains this header:

Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate

If I understand this right, this means that the page must not be cached
by the browser.

Has this header always been there? Or has it been added recently? If so,
can it be removed again? :)

The reason I'm bringing this up is that I've noticed that Firefox has
suddenly started reloading all pages whenever I use the "Back" function.
It didn't use to do that until today. Hence, I suppose the header wasn't
there before.

If the header isn't new and has always been there, does anyone have any
idea what else might be causing Firefox's change in behaviour?

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: A

from_email: A

subject: [WikiEN-l] Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
I do not feel Anthere made any personal attacks
against Moller. He did make a personal attack against
her, in which he essentially said she was "trolling"
(see also: wiki/internet troll)

The Link at Which Erik Moller Makes a Personal Attack
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-March/011780.html

I felt it was important to bring this to the attention
of the mailing list; because I feel Erik has a
tendency to personally attack people while
simultaneously claiming that it is they who are
personally attacking them -- I think such behaviour
needs to be addressed.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
Kelly Anderson wrote:
> Would someone who is familiar with both Gnutella and Bittorrent tell me
> why using Bittorrent for such a project would be stupid? It would
> certainly use less of Wikipedia's already strained bandwidth.

Well, wikipedia's bandwidth is not strained at all.  And I don't think
that large downloads of whatever is really going to be an issue.

There have been proposals, which I enthusiastically support, that we
should in some organized and sensible fashion try to share our
articles on Gnutella networks.  The reason to use gnutella rather than
bittorrent for such a thing is just that lots more people use gnutella
than bittorrent, although I should add that once we decide on ways to
share things, then sharing by either system should be simple enough.

But, perhaps I'm behind the times in some ways, so maybe I've got this
all wrong.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Rick wrote:
> [[User:Nunh-huh]] insists on including three pizza places and a
>restaurant on the New Haven page.  I've been trying to delete them but
>he won't let me.  When I suggested that if he's going to list them he
>should add several others, he said that I needed to add them if I
>thought they should be included.  Isn't it POV to list only a very few
>of the hundreds of stores in a city's list?  Isn't this free
>advertising?

I'd say that it depends on the entire context.  It can certainly be
valid to mention some restaurants or establishments of any type in an
article, if they are actually of some cultural importance in that
city.

It seems that on the last revision, Nunh-huh is agreeing to leave out
the pizza joints, but wants to leave in the refernece to Louis' Lunch.
If the description is true _and verifiable_, then it should stay,
because a restaurant that claims to have invented the hamburger and
which has "queues ten deep at lunchtime" does sound like a useful bit
of local color/culture for the article.

http://www.louislunch.com/ has several links to newspaper articles and
the Library of Congress which appear to confirm the cultural
importance of this place.

By and large, we can do away with disputes of this type by simply
citing confirmability.  In this case, the info about Louis' Lunch
appears to meet that test.  For the others, I didn't check.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
He's kind of in the wrong, but what does it really amount to, not much
really, better for everyone to move on. Does Erik's behavior NEED to be
addressed? Not unless there is a whole lot of other stuff I never noticed.

Fred

> From: A [name omitted for privacy reasons] <wikilir at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 04:09:12 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Erik Moller and Anthere
>
> I do not feel Anthere made any personal attacks
> against Moller. He did make a personal attack against
> her, in which he essentially said she was "trolling"
> (see also: wiki/internet troll)
>
> The Link at Which Erik Moller Makes a Personal Attack
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-March/011780.html
>
> I felt it was important to bring this to the attention
> of the mailing list; because I feel Erik has a
> tendency to personally attack people while
> simultaneously claiming that it is they who are
> personally attacking them -- I think such behaviour
> needs to be addressed.
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Timwi-
>
>
>>Please consider rethinking this philosophy, Erik, and consider the
>>possibility that (a) your view of what is "of possible value" may not
>>coincide with everyone else's
>
>
> Indeed. That's why I apply very low standards in moderation. A thread
> which only contains "deleted", "yesterday", "deleted", yesterday",
> "deleted", "yesterday" certainly falls into a category where, with common
> sense, one can assume that it is a dead discussion that can be removed.
>
> As only administrator of the board at the time, it fell into my
> *responsibility* to do such housekeeping operations. And as it is with
> housekeepers, if you don't want them to throw away something that looks
> like crap, make it not look like crap. Alternatively, keep your own house.
> That is now the solution which we have agreed upon, and it is certainly
> one which I can happily accept.

This is a message Bird posted today on Sannse page, on Wikipedia, not on
a volatil board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Sannse&curid=172724&diff=0&oldid=0

He wrote

The message you missed on the board was one in which I replied in kind
to your appreciation for my time and thanked you for helping clean up
after the party. [[User:Bird|Bird]] 03:43, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The incentive for spending most of your free time as a mediator is very
very very low. Mediation is a solitary activity. It is not very
rewarding. Few mediations have succeeded till now. No one sees what you
do. Few wikipedians think of thanking you. Even among the disputants
themselves. On top of it, not only do you get little reward for trying
to help bringing a little bit of peace in the committee, but some people
also tell us you are not doing well, that mediation/arbitration is crap,
even refuse to even try because they set up their minds we are wortless,
  and sometimes even some say you did not put enough effort in the
mediation and that with more discussions, it would have succeeded.

There are few things that can help you going on. One of these things is
that a disputant thanks you for the time you spent.  A thank you note is
not "crap". It is something important for the well-being of a mediator.
It is worthwhile, at least for a second, the second you spend reading
the note.

I recognise your hard work Erik, and I recognise your dedication. I
never said you did this deletion ill-meaning, not even that it was an
error, because I know you did so thinking well. But this post was
important, and it was not your to decide it was crap. All we ask is that
housekeeping responsabilities are in the hands of those taking care of
the matter.


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
On Wed, 17 Mar 2004, Rick wrote:

>
> [[User:Nunh-huh]] insists on including three pizza places and a restaurant
> on the New Haven page.  I've been trying to delete them but he won't
> let me.  When I suggested that if he's going to list them he should
> add several others, he said that I needed to add them if I thought they
> should be included.  Isn't it POV to list only a very few of the hundreds
> of stores in a city's list?  Isn't this free advertising?
>
I think so.

It's one thing to have an article about a company, which provides factual
information about said company: it's chief executive officers, what it
makes, why it is of interest. Much like a profile you might find in one
of the Business references like S & P. There's an article about [[Powell's
Books]] here in Portland, which is defensible because it considered a
local landmark; I've been considering writing one on [[Tom Petersen]], a
local electronics retailer, who not noly is a local pop culture icon, but
has cameo roles in a number of Gus Van Sant movies (e.g., he plays the
chief of police in "My Private Idaho").

It's another thing to have a link or entry that does nothing more than
promote the business. I removed an external link to a listing of a local
chain of restaurants for that reason. From your description, Nunh-huh is
doing nothing more than providing free advertising.

Geoff


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] My dear friends Erik and Anthere

body:
Ma cherie amie und meine freuden,

Pardon my French and German spelling, please!

Both of you, my dear friends, have been doing an excellent job and
working hard to help Wikipedia. I don't think either of you has done
anything wrong about the Mediation discussion boards.

However abrupt or rough the request may have been to hand over control
of the Mediation board, it's nonetheless a reasonable request.

Sometimes misunderstandings arise, due to language nuances not being
well understood -- or due to quick vs. slow ways of doing things, or
"intrusive" vs. "collaborative".

Let's put this in the past, shall we?

Being the first to apologize doesn't bring any shame down upon a party
to a conflict. Rather it shows who's "the bigger man", the one who cares
the most about the relationship. It only raises everyone's opinion of
you! :-)

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Pretty serious bug (was: Strangeness
	with	Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles)

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> schrieb:
> Rich Holton wrote:
>
> > Ummm... [[wikipedia:Orphaned Articles]] is distinct
> > from [[wikipedia:Orphaned articles]] (look closely).
>
> Yeah. Someone pointed it out to me on my User talk page. I suppose we
> can really delete [[Wikipedia:Orphaned articles]] and move
> [[Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles]] over to the intuitive capitalisation
> that matches our naming convention in the article namespace.
>
> > It does sound similar to what you describe, though
> > more muddled. Here we had:
> > -Heading plus sections A & B
> > -Heading
> > -Heading plus sections A thru Z (ie whole correct
> > page)
> > -Sections D thru Z
>
> ** PLING! **
>
> Whee, I know what's going on. And I'm really surprised this didn't come
> up before, but anyway. This is just a theory, but it seems so 100%
> plausible to me that it just gotta be right:
>
> I think what is happening is this:
>
> - You click the little "edit" link for section editing. In your example,
>    you edited the section "C".
> - You get an edit conflict. The top window on the edit conflict screen
>    then displays the entire text of the article as it was submitted by
>    the person that was quicker than you.
> - However, a hidden form element still contains the section number.
>    Thus, when you submit, the software thinks you're still
>    section-editing, although you're actually sending the entire article!
> - Thus, it replaces section "C" with the entire article text. This is
>    why all sections except for "C" are duplicated.
>
> This definitely needs to be fixed :-) I suppose the easiest fix would be
> to just remove that hidden form element and have users fiddle with the
> entire article text. A more sensible fix would be to actually display
> only that section. However, that latter solution will be extremely
> complicated in cases where the person that was quicker than you added or
> removed a section above the one you were editing, so the sections are
> renumbered...

If that is indeed the problem, it must be a relatively new bug - I have done
this kind of thing several times, and as far as I know I only once did this
result in the given bug. Alternative explanation is of course that I have
caused the bug several times without realizing I did so...

Andre


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Force user to choose a licence when uploading data

body:
I had implemented a half-working user interface once; is that still in
the code or was it lost (can't check right now)?

Magnus

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I think there is universal support for this proposal, actually this
>proposal:
>
>1.  Force the user to choose a license
>2.  Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the source
>3.  Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
>4.  Additionally store the license and source information in a separate
>database field
>
>Now that we have our wish list, all that is needed is source code!
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I don't see *any* practical benefits
to this whatsoever. What are we trying to accomplish? Anyone who uses
gnutella can fire up a web browser and browse the site; our articles are
tiny, and don't even begin to approach the size where there is tangible
benefit from distributing them peer-to-peer. Finally - do we really want
to pollute the p2p network(s) with horrendously outdated versions of
articles (since this is inevitably what would happen)?

Not to mention what the evil users can do: pack the trendy variant of
Bagle/[insert virus name here] as "Wikipedia - <Legit article
name>.pdf.scr", and start distributing all sorts of crap bearing the
project name. Of course, one can argue that these people can already do
so now: but remember, right now, we're not endorsing p2p as an official
distribution channel of any type. The moment we start to is the moment
when this type of flagrant abuse becomes unstoppable, because a user
(especially if clueless) cannot tell whether an article he's getting is
John Doe's POV wrapped in a Wikipedia header, a virus, or a legit article.

What's, ideally, the benefit? And how does it surpass normal browsing?

Cheers,
-IK

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> There have been proposals, which I enthusiastically support, that we
> should in some organized and sensible fashion try to share our
> articles on Gnutella networks.  [...]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik wrote:

> sannse-
>
> >> I deleted a bunch of useless messages.
>
> > No, you deleted a bunch of messages that were still useful to me.
>
> I do not remember seeing any messages which I considered of possible
> value. It seemed like a dead thread intended for immediate deletion. Maybe
> there was something in the thread which I overlooked. In that case, the
> deletion was a mistake. But there's no way to find out now, so trusting my
> own judgment, I do not consider it a mistake.

So my judgement, as the mediator involved, has no value?  My annoyance level
has just gone up from "slightly grumpy" to "seriously miffed".

But I'm going to drop this now.  I have great respect for you and for all
you do for the 'pedia.  And I think the solution we have come up with is a
good one - not because I have any doubts as to your ability or integrity,
simply because it makes sense for the mediators to maintain the mediation
board.

> > Is it possible to have more than one admin?
>
> Yes. If there is general agreement, I can make you a global forum
> administrator.

Thank you.  I'm waiting for the other mediator's opinion on this.

Regards,

sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] No censorship (was: Erik Moller and Anthere)

body:
This mailing list will not be censored -- not as long as I am the
Administrator of it.

If a thread goes on too long, any one may suggest (not demand!) that it
be taken to a different forum -- such as private e-mail.

But this mailing list is for any topic related to improving the English
Wikipedia. I hope that we can have a COURTEOUS discussion about
improving the level of courtesy!

Thanks.

Ed Poor
Administrator
English Wikipedia mailing list


from_name: Judy Inman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Madrid terrorists attach

body:
I was wondering if there is some way I could get a list of the people who died in the Spain Madrid terrorists attach on the trains. Thank You

Judy Inman
inman at powerweb.net
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
On 3/18/04 10:20 AM, "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> Fred-
>>
>>> He's kind of in the wrong
>>
>> I would appreciate it if you would keep your input to yourself
>
> So are we censoring the mailing list as well now? :-)
>
Wow, you guys sure get grumpy at each other when I'm not around to direct
all the fire.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Peter Jaros wrote:

> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 03:55 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I think there is universal support for this proposal, actually this
>> proposal:
>>
>> 1.  Force the user to choose a license
>> 2.  Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the source
>> 3.  Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
>> 4.  Additionally store the license and source information in a separate
>> database field
>
> What about {{msg:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided}}, which takes an
> "argument" (text following the tag)?  Perhaps a text field after the
> license choice?

My only concern about this approach is that most people don't understand
anything about copyright.  Asking them to choose a license under those
circumstances is like rolling dice.  It would be nice if the license
choices were accompanied by a brief outline of the implications of each
choice.

Ec


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: no-cache header?

body:
On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 03:52:15 +0000, Timwi wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> it seems that Wikipedia's HTTP response contains this header:
>
> Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate
>
> If I understand this right, this means that the page must not be cached
> by the browser.
>

A good explanation is at
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.9
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 03:55 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>> I think there is universal support for this proposal, actually this
>>> proposal:
>>>
>>> 1.  Force the user to choose a license
>>> 2.  Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the source
>>> 3.  Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
>>> 4.  Additionally store the license and source information in a separate
>>> database field
>>
>>
>> What about {{msg:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided}}, which takes an
>> "argument" (text following the tag)?  Perhaps a text field after the
>> license choice?
>
>
> My only concern about this approach is that most people don't
> understand anything about copyright.  Asking them to choose a license
> under those circumstances is like rolling dice.  It would be nice if
> the license choices were accompanied by a brief outline of the
> implications of each choice.

Or simply a "don't know". If a person doesn't really know about this stuff,
I'd rather them say they don't know, than to try to pick an approximate
match. A tricky way to help sniff out problem pics is to ask for the date of
the picture too, then focus attention on "post-1923 don't knows".

Stan


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
Fred-
> He's kind of in the wrong

I would appreciate it if you would keep your input to yourself, unless you
explicitly want to argue with me about whether, where and how I am "kind
of in the wrong".

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
sannse-
>> I do not remember seeing any messages which I considered of possible
>> value. It seemed like a dead thread intended for immediate deletion. Maybe
>> there was something in the thread which I overlooked. In that case, the
>> deletion was a mistake. But there's no way to find out now, so trusting my
>> own judgment, I do not consider it a mistake.

> So my judgement, as the mediator involved, has no value?  My annoyance level
> has just gone up from "slightly grumpy" to "seriously miffed".

I never said nor wrote nor implied nor thought such a thing. Stop putting
words into my mouth.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Anthere-

> The message you missed on the board was one in which I replied in kind
> to your appreciation for my time and thanked you for helping clean up
> after the party. [[User:Bird|Bird]] 03:43, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I remember that message. The comment "thank you for helping clean up"
made me think that this thread was dead and could be safely removed, given
that the other messages were blanked.

> I recognise your hard work Erik, and I recognise your dedication. I
> never said you did this deletion ill-meaning, not even that it was an
> error, because I know you did so thinking well. But this post was
> important, and it was not your to decide it was crap.

Yes, it was. At the time I was the only administrator of the board and I
did exactly what I was supposed to do. As a matter of fact, I remember
actively *offering* moderator status on the board. So far, nobody had
applied to me for moderator status, so I was the only moderator as well.
The message board was my idea, I configured it, I volunteered to maintain
it. It is completely unfair to attack me for doing what I was supposed to
do at the time.

What I question is the way you brought this issue to the fore, the public
message, the "we are being oppressed!" tone, the "this is none of your
business!" type comments, the "just like with 168" insinuation. The next
time you have an issue with something I do, I would very much appreciate
it if you would tell me so in private so we can seek a resolution, instead
of screaming bloody murder without just cause.

As should be obvious by now, I am just as interested in making the board
"run itself" as you are. But as a mediator, I really expect more from you
in terms of interpersonal communication. This whole thread was completely
avoidable and took us all away from doing more useful things. This is not
the first time you have brought up matters in public that could have been
resolved in private. I hope it is the last time.

Erik


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] An odd webpage - did Michael write it?

body:
Interesting stuff keeps popping up on Jimbo's
user page. A short while ago, an anonymous soul
stated on it that the following website referring to
wikipedia and some of its members should be checked
out, as it may have been written by Michael.

http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-23922.html

The webpage was certainly done by someone with a mind
similar to Michael's. Mind you, there is an option on
it you can choose: "Michael is a troll".

If it was indeed Michael who created it, I can only
say that some kinds of wounds or hatreds certainly
seem to run deep.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


subject: [WikiEN-l] Best and Worst Site - revisited

body:
Further to what I wrote earlier, there is
another webpage on that site that also refers to
Hesphestos, this time as a candidate for best
actress:

http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-3436.html

Both pages are "humor" pages. It's all too easy
to assume that this nomination was Michael's work.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


subject: [Wikitech-l] Geoffrin's status? And Wiktionary, too

body:
Nicolas Weeger wrote:

> Hello.
>
> Can't wait to get full text search back ^.^

That would be a pleasure.

> Also, when will the 'real' fr.wiktionary (or other languages :)) be
> available?

I know that I've heard this several times since Wiktionary was started.
 The only thing that's needed is for someone who wants them to take the
initiative and get working on them.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Best and Worst - more wikipedia references

body:
New suspect pages keep popping up on the The Best and Worst website.

This one has more references to wikipedia staff, this
time for best couple, here:

http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-3718.html

Some of the other nominations on this page are also
very off-colour.

This next one has a unrepeatable title:

http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-7174.html

This also looks suspect, it refers to 'Jimbo and the jetset':

http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-6681.html

This one, with another disgusting title, contains what
seems to be a reference to Zoe, another of Michael's
unfavorites:

http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-5345.html

I also tried to see what other pages Michael had
written besides the one referred to by the anonymous
soul on Jimbo's page.

But, presumably because the site was being moved, the search did not produce any results, even though the
first page lists Michael as its author.

Like I wrote before, some kinds of hatreds run deep..

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 03:55 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think there is universal support for this proposal, actually this
>>>> proposal:
>>>>
>>>> 1.  Force the user to choose a license
>>>> 2.  Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the
>>>> source
>>>> 3.  Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
>>>> 4.  Additionally store the license and source information in a
>>>> separate
>>>> database field
>>>
>>
>> My only concern about this approach is that most people don't
>> understand anything about copyright.  Asking them to choose a license
>> under those circumstances is like rolling dice.  It would be nice if
>> the license choices were accompanied by a brief outline of the
>> implications of each choice.
>
>
> Or simply a "don't know". If a person doesn't really know about this
> stuff,
> I'd rather them say they don't know, than to try to pick an approximate
> match. A tricky way to help sniff out problem pics is to ask for the
> date of
> the picture too, then focus attention on "post-1923 don't knows".

A little admission of not knowing goes a long way.  I agree that a
little data about where and when these pictures come from would be very
helpful.  The failure to explain the origin of a submission is rapidly
becoming a problem at Wikisource.  The contributor is in the best
position to know where his material comes from, and he owes a little due
dilligence to the rest of the community.  Regretably, many of the
unsourced contributions probably are in the public domain, but anything
more than some very basic tests are beyond the scope of what a reviewer
should need to do.

Without going into details, I consider myself as having an aggressive
attitude about what should be treated as in the public domain, but even
an aggressive attitude needs facts to back it up.

Ec


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Yes, I remember that message.

Ah, so you even knew that there was something other than
"deleted"/"yesterday" in the thread.

>>I recognise your hard work Erik, and I recognise your dedication. I
>>never said you did this deletion ill-meaning, not even that it was an
>>error, because I know you did so thinking well. But this post was
>>important, and it was not your to decide it was crap.
>
> Yes, it was.

The more you insist on this, the more I'm worried you might do it again,
which in turn diminuates my trust in you as a moderator. Not that I care
much, since I'm not using the board either, nor am I a mediator, but I
feel that Anth?re and the other mediators deserve better treatment for
their work for Wikipedia.

> The message board was my idea, I configured it, I volunteered to maintain
> it. It is completely unfair to attack me for doing what I was supposed to
> do at the time.

I'm pretty sure that I could set up several more of those boards each
day, configure them and even delete a few threads here and there. I
believe it is a much greater step to volunteer to mediate. It's much
more delicate and much less rewarding business.

> What I question is the way you brought this issue to the fore, the public
> message, the "we are being oppressed!" tone, the "this is none of your
> business!" type comments, the "just like with 168" insinuation.

I agree with you that the latter insinuation was inappropriate, but I
already said that. I don't remember seeing the first, and the second one
is entirely correct.

> The next
> time you have an issue with something I do, I would very much appreciate
> it if you would tell me so in private so we can seek a resolution, instead
> of screaming bloody murder without just cause.

As far as I understood this, nobody knew who actually deleted the
thread. It was therefore perfectly justified to post to the mailing
list. Given the frustration and annoyance caused by the thread deletion,
the tone of the posting was perfectly understandable.

> But as a mediator, I really expect more from you
> in terms of interpersonal communication

says the "administrator" of the board who deleted a thread without a
trace of interpersonal communication...

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

references:
<c3b128$mi8$1@sea.gmane.org> <956MeOUSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<4059474A.1010907@yahoo.com>

body:
Anthere wrote:

> The incentive for spending most of your free time as a mediator is very
> very very low.  [...]
> There are few things that can help you going on. One of these things is
> that a disputant thanks you for the time you spent.  A thank you note is
> not "crap". It is something important for the well-being of a mediator.
> It is worthwhile, at least for a second, the second you spend reading
> the note.

Oh my gosh, I so totally completely know what you are talking about. I
can sympathise with this so much, it's almost scary. Yes, I know, I'm
not a mediator... but I'm a LiveJournal Support volunteer, and the
situation you describe is almost the same there.

Timwi


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Please people - enough. This is clearly a misunderstanding, nothing more. Let's let the matter rest.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Timwi [mailto:timwi at gmx.net]
Sent: 18 March 2004 15:07
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

Erik Moeller wrote:

> Yes, I remember that message.

Ah, so you even knew that there was something other than
"deleted"/"yesterday" in the thread.

>>I recognise your hard work Erik, and I recognise your dedication. I
>>never said you did this deletion ill-meaning, not even that it was an
>>error, because I know you did so thinking well. But this post was
>>important, and it was not your to decide it was crap.
>
> Yes, it was.

The more you insist on this, the more I'm worried you might do it again,
which in turn diminuates my trust in you as a moderator. Not that I care
much, since I'm not using the board either, nor am I a mediator, but I
feel that Anth?re and the other mediators deserve better treatment for
their work for Wikipedia.

> The message board was my idea, I configured it, I volunteered to maintain
> it. It is completely unfair to attack me for doing what I was supposed to
> do at the time.

I'm pretty sure that I could set up several more of those boards each
day, configure them and even delete a few threads here and there. I
believe it is a much greater step to volunteer to mediate. It's much
more delicate and much less rewarding business.

> What I question is the way you brought this issue to the fore, the public
> message, the "we are being oppressed!" tone, the "this is none of your
> business!" type comments, the "just like with 168" insinuation.

I agree with you that the latter insinuation was inappropriate, but I
already said that. I don't remember seeing the first, and the second one
is entirely correct.

> The next
> time you have an issue with something I do, I would very much appreciate
> it if you would tell me so in private so we can seek a resolution, instead
> of screaming bloody murder without just cause.

As far as I understood this, nobody knew who actually deleted the
thread. It was therefore perfectly justified to post to the mailing
list. Given the frustration and annoyance caused by the thread deletion,
the tone of the posting was perfectly understandable.

> But as a mediator, I really expect more from you
> in terms of interpersonal communication

says the "administrator" of the board who deleted a thread without a
trace of interpersonal communication...

Timwi

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

> I do not feel Anthere made any personal attacks
> against Moller.

Me neither, but I can somewhat appreciate how it feels like it to Erik.
He probably feels that Anth?re is questioning his ability to run the board.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Fred-
>
>>He's kind of in the wrong
>
> I would appreciate it if you would keep your input to yourself

So are we censoring the mailing list as well now? :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Timwi-
>> Yes, I remember that message.

> Ah, so you even knew that there was something other than
> "deleted"/"yesterday" in the thread.

Read again what I said above.

> I agree with you that the latter insinuation was inappropriate, but I
> already said that. I don't remember seeing the first, and the second one
> is entirely correct.

Asserting it does not make it so.

> As far as I understood this, nobody knew who actually deleted the
> thread.

Then how about "We need to know who the administrator of the board is
because there is a matter that we would like to discuss with them?" Is
that so much to ask?

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
Timwi-
> So are we censoring the mailing list as well now? :-)

Just my inbox. Welcome to my killfile.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Then how about "We need to know who the administrator of the board is
> because there is a matter that we would like to discuss with them?" Is
> that so much to ask?

How about: Don't delete threads in boards you don't participate in? Is
that so much to ask?

Why is it so difficult for you to appreciate that your deletion caused
annoyance?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Erik Moller and Anthere

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Timwi-
>
>>So are we censoring the mailing list as well now? :-)
>
> Just my inbox. Welcome to my killfile.

To anyone else who might be reading this: If you feel the need to
killfile someone, please feel free and go right ahead - but please do
not announce it. Thank you.


from_name: Osobný úrad  KÚ v Nitre

subject: [WikiEN-l] application

body:
good afternoon,

i m looking for information about Act of political party, especially which concerning of the establisment of the political party in general in Sweden and Denmark.
I am not able to find this data on the website of "Wikipedia", Can you help me please, where i have to look for it?

Thank you very much

Miriam
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from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/18/1079199302793.html

"John Dalton recommends kuro5hin for on the ground insights into what?s happening in Spain. He also recommends wikipedia on Madrid attacks: ?The quality of this article is really opening my eyes to the power of collaborative media.?"

RickK

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
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subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Yeah, I had no problem with leaving Louis' Lunch in there, but it was the three other pizza places that he kept trying to re-insert.  I haven't checked the latest version yet, if he's willing to leave those out then I'm satisfied.

But what do we do in the future if an editor insists on adding two or three stores or restaurants and won't let the ads be removed?

RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

Rick wrote:
> [[User:Nunh-huh]] insists on including three pizza places and a
>restaurant on the New Haven page. I've been trying to delete them but
>he won't let me. When I suggested that if he's going to list them he
>should add several others, he said that I needed to add them if I
>thought they should be included. Isn't it POV to list only a very few
>of the hundreds of stores in a city's list? Isn't this free
>advertising?

I'd say that it depends on the entire context. It can certainly be
valid to mention some restaurants or establishments of any type in an
article, if they are actually of some cultural importance in that
city.

It seems that on the last revision, Nunh-huh is agreeing to leave out
the pizza joints, but wants to leave in the refernece to Louis' Lunch.
If the description is true _and verifiable_, then it should stay,
because a restaurant that claims to have invented the hamburger and
which has "queues ten deep at lunchtime" does sound like a useful bit
of local color/culture for the article.

http://www.louislunch.com/ has several links to newspaper articles and
the Library of Congress which appear to confirm the cultural
importance of this place.

By and large, we can do away with disputes of this type by simply
citing confirmability. In this case, the info about Louis' Lunch
appears to meet that test. For the others, I didn't check.

--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Yeah, I had no problem with leaving Louis' Lunch in there, but it was the three other pizza places that he kept trying to re-insert.  I haven't checked the latest version yet, if he's willing to leave those out then I'm satisfied.

But what do we do in the future if an editor insists on adding two or three stores or restaurants and won't let the ads be removed?

RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

Rick wrote:
> [[User:Nunh-huh]] insists on including three pizza places and a
>restaurant on the New Haven page. I've been trying to delete them but
>he won't let me. When I suggested that if he's going to list them he
>should add several others, he said that I needed to add them if I
>thought they should be included. Isn't it POV to list only a very few
>of the hundreds of stores in a city's list? Isn't this free
>advertising?

I'd say that it depends on the entire context. It can certainly be
valid to mention some restaurants or establishments of any type in an
article, if they are actually of some cultural importance in that
city.

It seems that on the last revision, Nunh-huh is agreeing to leave out
the pizza joints, but wants to leave in the refernece to Louis' Lunch.
If the description is true _and verifiable_, then it should stay,
because a restaurant that claims to have invented the hamburger and
which has "queues ten deep at lunchtime" does sound like a useful bit
of local color/culture for the article.

http://www.louislunch.com/ has several links to newspaper articles and
the Library of Congress which appear to confirm the cultural
importance of this place.

By and large, we can do away with disputes of this type by simply
citing confirmability. In this case, the info about Louis' Lunch
appears to meet that test. For the others, I didn't check.

--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: lame test from gmane

body:
> Hello wikipedia-l,
>
>   trying to post from gmane :((
>

Using web interface now.

Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Erik wrote:

> >> I do not remember seeing any messages which I considered of possible
> >> value. It seemed like a dead thread intended for immediate deletion.
Maybe
> >> there was something in the thread which I overlooked. In that case, the
> >> deletion was a mistake. But there's no way to find out now, so trusting
my
> >> own judgment, I do not consider it a mistake.
>
> sannse-
> > So my judgement, as the mediator involved, has no value?  My annoyance
level
> > has just gone up from "slightly grumpy" to "seriously miffed".
>
> I never said nor wrote nor implied nor thought such a thing. Stop putting
> words into my mouth.
>

That's what I felt your words implied, I'm glad it was not the case.  I
apologise for my misunderstanding.

--sannse

p.s. everyone else - it's sorted.  Drop it eh?


subject: [Wikitech-l] improving search engine hits

body:
Hello,

Would it be possible to change the title of the main page from "Main Page
Wikipedia" to "Main Page - Wikipedia free encyclopedia" ?

Although the english wikipedia comes to top when you search google for
"free encyclopedia" [1], the french wikipedia doesn't appear in the top 10
list when searching for "encyclop?die gratuite" cause other pages got this
in their title [2].

It will certainly get us new comers once google update its cache ;)

REFERENCES:
[1]: google.com search for "free encyclopedia":
http://www.google.com/search?q=free+encyclopedia

[2]: google.fr search for "encyclop?die gratuite":
http://www.google.fr/search?q=encyclop?die+gratuite

--
Antoine
http://fr.wikipedia.org/
L'encyclop?die gratuite et libre.
do not send mail to listme at listme.dsbl.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] lame test from gmane

body:
Hello wikipedia-l,

  trying to post from gmane :((

--
Ashar
mailto:thoane-whniv8GeeGkdnm+yROfE0A at public.gmane.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: My dear friends Erik and Anthere

body:
Anthere-
> I apologize for having used words which were perhaps a bit harsh toward
>   Erik (harsh : dur, bourru, rude, s?v?re, ?pre ... that should be what
> I mean...).

Thank you, apology accepted. The conflict was probably the result of
confusion about who is the administrator of the board. That should have
been made clearer. I have now changed the board config accordingly. (Note:
There is a single "super-admin", but there can be an arbitrary number of
users who have admin rights.) As I have said, I will refrain from
moderating posts in the "mediation" board in the future.

Let me know if you want any other changes to be made to the board setup.

Again, in the future, if there are any similar issues, please contact me
privately by email or at least on my talk page. That does not negate your
ability to discuss matters publicly later if that should become necessary.

All best,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: lame test from gmane

body:
On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:26:07 +0100, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Hello wikipedia-l,
>
>   trying to post from gmane :((

The last one coming from newsreader. My apologizes.

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar
do not send mail to listme at listme.dsbl.org


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board, Erik and Brion

references:
<4059474A.1010907@yahoo.com> <956MrWlCpVB@erik_moeller>
	<c3cdvm$r0k$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi a ?crit:
> Erik Moeller wrote:

>> The next  time you have an issue with something I do, I would very
>> much appreciate  it if you would tell me so in private so we can seek
>> a resolution, instead  of screaming bloody murder without just cause.
>
>
> As far as I understood this, nobody knew who actually deleted the
> thread. It was therefore perfectly justified to post to the mailing
> list. Given the frustration and annoyance caused by the thread deletion,
> the tone of the posting was perfectly understandable.

When I receive a private mail from the board, from the administrator of
the board...(the one called admin), to notify me I got a private
message, the name given is Brion Vibber one and the email adress is
brion at pobox.com

check here

http://boards.wikimedia.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2&sid=672eafc24e44ca6a4cb5bb093cc0a94a

I remember well that Erik nicely set the board for us; but frequently
receiving mails from admin-brion, well, you wonder who the admin is.

I was following that thread closely.
When I could not find it, I first thought I had lost synapses. I looked
again and again.
Then I thought Sannse had asked deletion. I asked her on irc. She had not.
I then thought perhaps I had never noticed that the author of a thread
could delete it (in this case, Bird I think), I went back, but no.
I consequently understood that neither Sannse, nor Bird had deleted it,
but who was the admin was not obvious. But clearly, an admin had deleted
it, without asking nor reporting.

If Erik had been on irc, I would have asked him directly. Not being
there, the most obvious step was the mailing list. I do not see this
issue as being only private. The whole mediation board is concerned.


from_name: Stephan Walter

subject: Printed version for academic use, was: Re: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
Lightning wrote:
>> How fast is that wiki->PDF script?

The script (see http://wiki.auf-trag.de/ ) uses the Special:Export
function to collect the articles, then parses the Wikicode with lots of
regexps, and finally runs latex three times (to resolve all referencies
like in the TOC). It's probably not a good idea to feed it with 1000
articles at once, but there is no theoretical limit.

> As a certain category or a certain topic is populated with articles of a
> high caliber it might be fun to release
> PDF formatted "books" or mini encyclopedias of this topic. These could
> be polished, and put out every couple of months. These files which would
> be formatted in a manner suitable for printing and stand alone use could
> be in turn distributed in a limited fashion to certain educational
> institutions in order to raise awareness of the project.

That already exists for the german WP, it's called "WikiReader"

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader

> Imagine this scenario.. a copy falls on the hand of a certain professor
> who as an assignment makes his students write a paper on a certain
> topic. Instead of what usually happens with papers (boxed and forgotten
> about) he might suggest that if students want to contribute they submit
> their papers to wikipedia. This content would now be opened and improved
> upon.

I agree that this is an excellent way of improving WP

> People in college have lots of time and ideals. They are the kind of
> people who love to advocate their ideas too.

Let's hope we can keep NPOV...;-)

Regards,
Stephan


body:
Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:
> Ma cherie amie und meine freuden,
>
> Pardon my French and German spelling, please!
>
> Both of you, my dear friends, have been doing an excellent job and
> working hard to help Wikipedia. I don't think either of you has done
> anything wrong about the Mediation discussion boards.
>
> However abrupt or rough the request may have been to hand over control
> of the Mediation board, it's nonetheless a reasonable request.
>
> Sometimes misunderstandings arise, due to language nuances not being
> well understood -- or due to quick vs. slow ways of doing things, or
> "intrusive" vs. "collaborative".
>
> Let's put this in the past, shall we?
>
> Being the first to apologize doesn't bring any shame down upon a party
> to a conflict. Rather it shows who's "the bigger man", the one who cares
> the most about the relationship. It only raises everyone's opinion of
> you! :-)
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed

Hum ?
I apologize for having used words which were perhaps a bit harsh toward
  Erik (harsh : dur, bourru, rude, s?v?re, ?pre ... that should be what
I mean...).

I am convinced he was thinking he was doing the best, and I know he
absolutely not acted in bad faith. He was well-meaning and dedicated to
help things work properly. As always.

I thank him for setting up the board for us, which was much appreciated,
and I now thank him in advance for offering the administration now to
Sannse.

This last sentence is a consensual opinion of those of the committee who
expressed themselves today, as well as some people on this mailing list,
and Jimbo.

PS Tonton Ed...j'aime bien l'id?e d'?tre le 'bigger man' :-) Sexiste va!


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

body:
> The script (see http://wiki.auf-trag.de/ ) uses the Special:Export
> function to collect the articles, then parses the Wikicode with lots of
> regexps, and finally runs latex three times (to resolve all referencies
> like in the TOC). It's probably not a good idea to feed it with 1000
> articles at once, but there is no theoretical limit.

What would be really great would be for the script to be able to keep internal
wiki links, and make'em as PDF links.
So if I select for instance 'Europe' and 'France', links from/to Europe to/from
France are rendered as PDF links.
This would make it really easy to make nice-looking PDFs.

Nicolas


body:
Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> What would be really great would be for the script to be able to keep
> internal wiki links, and make'em as PDF links.
> So if I select for instance 'Europe' and 'France', links from/to Europe
> to/from France are rendered as PDF links.
> This would make it really easy to make nice-looking PDFs.

This is an excellent idea, but unfortunately I didn't think of that when
organising the script. The problem is that the article retrieving and
the parsing happens in two different scripts, so the parser script
doesn't know which articles will be in the file.

But sooner or later I'll have to change the whole structure anyway, and
then I may implement your idea.

Btw: There is now a CVS repository, anyone who knows a bit of Python is
invited to join the development. Go to http://sf.net/projects/wikipdf/
You need a Linux box with Apache, PHP, Python and LaTeX to test the script.

Regards,
Stephan


from_name: Dan Miller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 8, Issue 52

body:
> It's another thing to have a link or entry that does
> nothing more than
> promote the business. I removed an external link to
> a listing of a local
> chain of restaurants for that reason. From your
> description, Nunh-huh is
> doing nothing more than providing free advertising.
>
> Geoff
>

I disagree.  Imagine [[Las Vegas]] without mentioning
the MGM Grand, or [[Chicago]] without mentioning
Wrigley Field.  Private enterprises compose an
essential part of the character of many places, and
avoiding them emasculates the articles.

Meelar

=====
"If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years, the kind of tax increases that both Kerry and [Sen. John] Edwards [D-N.C.] have talked about, we would not have had the kind of job growth we've had."

-- Vice President Cheney, in an MSNBC interview March 2, lending his perspective to the economy's loss of 2.2 million jobs over three years.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
I am deeply concerned that several people appear to consider mediation
issues on the english wikipedia are not relevant topics to the english
mailing list.
I fear, it is an example of how little mediation is integrated in the
english wikipedians minds, that discussion about it is thought not
appropriate here.

I hesitate to propose that the whole experiment is just stopped dead, or
on the contrary, to very regularly advertise it here and there.

What is your opinion Peter ? What do you think mediation is ? How can it
help ? Do you think your opinion is welcome to build it, or is it a
closed black box? Do you think mediation organisation should be
invisible to non mediators ? Where do you suggest we discuss english
wikipolitics from now on ?

Peter Jaros a ?crit:
> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 01:17 PM, Anthere wrote:
>
>> Today, a whole thread was deleted from the mediation board.
>
>
> Isn't there a better place to put this discussion?  There ought to be.
>
> Peter
>
>                                   -- ---<>--- --
>                         A house without walls cannot fall.
>            Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
>                                   -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Caroline Ford

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 03:55 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>> I think there is universal support for this proposal, actually this
>>> proposal:
>>>
>>> 1.  Force the user to choose a license
>>> 2.  Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the source
>>> 3.  Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
>>> 4.  Additionally store the license and source information in a separate
>>> database field
>>
>>
>> What about {{msg:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided}}, which takes an
>> "argument" (text following the tag)?  Perhaps a text field after the
>> license choice?
>
>
> My only concern about this approach is that most people don't
> understand anything about copyright.  Asking them to choose a license
> under those circumstances is like rolling dice.  It would be nice if
> the license choices were accompanied by a brief outline of the
> implications of each choice.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
Another problem is that people regularly put things under the wrong
license ie claiming things are public domain when they are not.

We certainly need sources though.

Caroline


from_name: Kelly Anderson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
At 08:25 PM 3/17/2004, you wrote:
>On Mar 17, 2004, at 15:58, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>Gnutella is decentralized; it was designed in response to the classic
>Napster, which could be and was shut down by suing the server runners into
>oblivion. Search requests are passed from node to node to node in a very
>inefficient fashion, but once a file is out there, the original seeder
>need not remain on the network. Nodes generally provide many files for
>peering (often all they have ever downloaded). The system was designed for
>smallish files (up to several megabytes).

Thank you for that clear explanation Brian. I think I understand better
now. Too bad that the search couldn't be somewhat more efficient... but I
get the model now.

>BitTorrent is very centralized; it was designed for legitimate
>distribution of large files to many simultaneous downloaders, using
>peer-to-peer transfers simply as a way to save bandwidth for the central
>server. There is no searching mechanism; you must connect to the
>particular tracker server managing the torrent for the file you want and
>ask for it specifically. If the tracker goes offline, everything fails.
>Nodes only make available for peered access the files they are in progress
>downloading or have very recently downloaded (and not yet closed the
>window on). The system was designed for large files (tens, hundreds, or
>thousands of megabytes), and fetches pieces of a file from multiple
>different peers simultaneously if possible.

While it is true that BitTorrent does not have a search facility, I believe
it is relatively easy to duplicate the torrent file so that it becomes
decentralized. In fact, I believe it to be the case that once you have an
entire copy of the file in question, you become a new seeder, although I'm
unclear if that automatically gives you a new distributable version of the
torrent file. I think it doesn't as you say.

>Don't know anything about Ares.

It's a little commercial program more similar to Gnutella than BitTorrent,
as per the discussion here.

>>Would someone who is familiar with both Gnutella and Bittorrent tell me
>>why using Bittorrent for such a project would be stupid? It would
>>certainly use less of Wikipedia's already strained bandwidth.
>
>The overhead of torrenting individual articles or PDF booklets on
>particular subjects from Wikipedia would likely far outweigh simple HTTP,
>particularly since it's generally unlikely that many people would be
>downloading the same (small) file (out of many thousands available)
>simultaneously.

Agreed, we were talking though about distributing the entire database, or
large portions of it (like all the images). For this, BitTorrent would be
perfect. The centralized nature isn't a problem since there is only really
one source of the information.

>Hypothetically it might be useful for distributing large bulk dumps (such
>as the current database dumps), if and only if more than one person at a
>time is likely to be downloading them.

Precisely. Although typically with BitTorrent people leave the connection
open to upload at least as much as they download, even if that may take
much longer. It's a feature of at least some of the BitTorrent clients. All
in all, BitTorrent is IMHO a very cool file distribution mechanism.

>Bandwidth really isn't a problem for Wikipedia; we use a fair amount of it
>(compared to Joe Bob's homepage, not compared to Yahoo) but it's not
>"strained".

I guess I was using "bandwidth" in a more generic sense, including CPU time
and so forth. From the response times I normally get from Wikipedia,
something is generally straining... (I have a broadband connection, and it
happens relatively consistently, so I'm relatively sure the issue is mostly
with the server.) This is not to disrespect Wikipedia or WikiMedia, just
that in my personal experience it is just not as responsive as say Ebay or
Amazon or similar sites. I must say that I'm somewhat surprised at this
with all the hardware that has obviously been thrown at the problem of
late. Perhaps the issue is just PHP... I don't know. Wikis that I've set up
(which typically only have a dozen users admittedly) seem to have good
response times, so I don't think it's the code per se, but rather the load.
In any case, my thought was that BitTorrent would be a good way to
distribute large Wikipedia files without impacting any of the existing
servers in a substantial fashion.

-Kelly


subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
For 99.9% of the users 99.9% of the time you are exactly correct. The
discussion of Gnutella and P2P came up in the context of the major
"bandwidth stealers" who were downloading the entire site one page at a
time, and were taking images on an as needed basis. Using Gnutella or
BitTorrent to distribute a big zip file with all the images in it at once
would solve this very specific issue.

If, as others have said, bandwidth isn't a scarce resource, then this is
probably not an idea that should be implemented any time soon.

-Kelly

At 07:51 AM 3/18/2004, you wrote:
>Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I don't see *any* practical benefits to
>this whatsoever. What are we trying to accomplish? Anyone who uses
>gnutella can fire up a web browser and browse the site; our articles are
>tiny, and don't even begin to approach the size where there is tangible
>benefit from distributing them peer-to-peer. Finally - do we really want
>to pollute the p2p network(s) with horrendously outdated versions of
>articles (since this is inevitably what would happen)?
>
>Not to mention what the evil users can do: pack the trendy variant of
>Bagle/[insert virus name here] as "Wikipedia - <Legit article
>name>.pdf.scr", and start distributing all sorts of crap bearing the
>project name. Of course, one can argue that these people can already do so
>now: but remember, right now, we're not endorsing p2p as an official
>distribution channel of any type. The moment we start to is the moment
>when this type of flagrant abuse becomes unstoppable, because a user
>(especially if clueless) cannot tell whether an article he's getting is
>John Doe's POV wrapped in a Wikipedia header, a virus, or a legit article.
>
>What's, ideally, the benefit? And how does it surpass normal browsing?
>
>Cheers,
>-IK
>
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>There have been proposals, which I enthusiastically support, that we
>>should in some organized and sensible fashion try to share our
>>articles on Gnutella networks.  [...]
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] A Plan For Van(dalism)

body:
Having spent a good portion of my academic life in the field of Pattern
Recognition, and having read the CRM114 articles in depth, my gut tells me
that some of the other methods (throttling, etc.) would likely reduce
Wikipedian Vandalism sufficiently that a Markovian approach would give
little additional benefit. Making vandalism easy to fix, like undoing all
edits from a particular user/IP with one switch also sound very useful.

I do like the idea of flagging suspect pages and I also really liked the
idea of flagging anonymous users at a higher suspect rate than logged in
users. I suspect that a "heuristic" (lots of rules) model similar to that
used by SpamAssasin where you can plug in new rules for new threats would
probably be the best way to solve the Vandalism problem for Wikipedia over
time (although I don't have a really good idea from the discussion thus far
as to whether it is already a serious issue or not).

For example, one heuristic would be "anonymous user" add a couple of points
to the "Spam" score. Another heuristic, "this user/IP has added lots of
edits really quickly" would add a few points. If a user was in a "safe"
list as a mass spell checker/grammar checker, then you would subtract a
bunch of points. Heuristics for the type of article might be useful. I
suspect that political articles are particularly targeted by vandals, for
example. The point is, a heuristic engine adapts over time, whereas a
Markovian model would perhaps serve as ONE good heuristic within the larger
engine. Markovian or Baysian engines tend to get "tired" over time. My
Baysian email spam filter is now so tired of spam that it sees nearly
everything as spam, whether it is or isn't (of course it was trained on
nearly 300,000 spams before it reached that point.)

When a heuristic engine is coupled with human interaction and double
checking (as would be the natural case with Wikipedia) this becomes a great
system. You would just have a special suspected vandalism page that is
generated much as the special statistics type pages are generated now.

Knowing the seriousness of the problem at this point would drive whether or
not this feature should be developed quickly, and that is knowledge I don't
posess at this point.

-Kelly

At 08:17 PM 3/14/2004, you wrote:
>So, I just installed the CRM114 Markovian spam filtering software:
>
>     http://crm114.sourceforge.net/
>
>The whole thing is based on Bayesian filtering, which is just a way to
>make very dumb software make really smart decisions. With sufficient
>training, a very simple piece of software can make very accurate
>distinctions between spam and non-spam email messages. See Paul
>Graham's famous "A Plan for Spam" about this:
>
>     http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
>
>The CRM114 stuff is Markovian, which means it's _even_dumber_ than
>Bayesian stuff, and makes _even_smarter_ decisions. More or less.
>
>Anyways, one thing that's mentioned on the crm114 page is that folks
>use the same technology for different kinds of text sorting. Like, for
>system administrators, they can sort log file entries into ones
>they're interested in and ones they're not.
>
>And I was thinking: you know, it'd be nice to be able to flag
>acceptable and problematic articles in MediaWiki Web sites. Like, say,
>an admin sees some vandalism going on, and goes to fix it. One of the
>checkmarks on saving is "Vandalism fix" or some such. This would tag
>the previous version as... ungood. Something.
>
>And then after a while the software gets good at understanding what's
>ungood and what's not. And there could be a tracking page to say,
>"These seem to be pages in an ungood state." And it would be easier to
>find those and fix 'em.
>
>~ESP
>
>--
>Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
>Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
>The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Force user to choose a license when uploading data

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Peter Jaros wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 03:55 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think there is universal support for this proposal, actually this
>>>> proposal:
>>>>
>>>> 1.  Force the user to choose a license
>>>> 2.  Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the source
>>>> 3.  Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
>>>> 4.  Additionally store the license and source information in a separate
>>>> database field
>>>
>>>
>>> What about {{msg:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided}}, which takes an
>>> "argument" (text following the tag)?  Perhaps a text field after the
>>> license choice?
>>
>>
>> My only concern about this approach is that most people don't
>> understand anything about copyright.  Asking them to choose a license
>> under those circumstances is like rolling dice.  It would be nice if
>> the license choices were accompanied by a brief outline of the
>> implications of each choice.
>>
>> Ec
>
>Another problem is that people regularly put things under the wrong
>license ie claiming things are public domain when they are not.
>
>We certainly need sources though.
>
Sources we absolutely must have. I still think it would be simpler, and
better, to not provide choices of license. We don't need to have people
engaging in the amateur practice of law any more than they already do.

--Michael Snow
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body:
Hello.

Just wondering what's Geoffrin's status :)
Can't wait to get full text search back ^.^

Also, when will the 'real' fr.wiktionary (or other languages :)) be available?

Nicolas 'Ryo'


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] ATTN: Admin: Mistake to delete

body:
Could an admin delete the 2nd version of [[Image:Two polar bears
sparring.jpg]]?  It's identical to the next (current) version.  Me
being silly.

Is there a better place to post this request?  I couldn't find it.

Peter

                                   -- ---<>--- --
                         A house without walls cannot fall.
            Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                   -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Lothar Kimmeringer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Gnutella

body:
On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 18:19:05 +0200, Itai Fiat wrote:

[Wikipedia over Gnutella]

The idea sounds interesting but I think you will run into problems
on the long term when there are many different versions of the
same document circling around in this network because it has
been edited at Wikipedia.

Regards, Lothar
--
Lothar Kimmeringer                E-Mail: spamfang at kimmeringer.de
               PGP-encrypted mails preferred (Key-ID: 0x8BC3CD81)

Always remember: The answer is forty-two, there can only be wrong
                 questions!


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: An odd webpage - did Michael write it?

body:
In message <KAPKGHMHLFCFDJAA at mailcity.com>, Arno M
<redgum46-DVq+YeWbj7cAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>
>Interesting stuff keeps popping up on Jimbo's
>user page. A short while ago, an anonymous soul
>stated on it that the following website referring to
>wikipedia and some of its members should be checked
>out, as it may have been written by Michael.
>
>http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-23922.html
>
>The webpage was certainly done by someone with a mind
>similar to Michael's. Mind you, there is an option on
>it you can choose: "Michael is a troll".
>
>If it was indeed Michael who created it, I can only
>say that some kinds of wounds or hatreds certainly
>seem to run deep.

Michael is still around. I was on meta about three days ago when he
turned up and I had an entertaining 20 minutes or so blocking half a
dozen users he created and clearing up the mess once I confirmed to my
satisfaction that it was him!

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
On Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 02:49 PM, Anthere wrote:

> What is your opinion Peter ? What do you think mediation is ? How can
> it help ? Do you think your opinion is welcome to build it, or is it a
> closed black box? Do you think mediation organisation should be
> invisible to non mediators ? Where do you suggest we discuss english
> wikipolitics from now on ?

On the contrary, I feel that mediation itself is important and should
be an integral part of the Wikipedia community.  I just think that this
squabble about the deletion of a thread most of us know nothing about
doesn't need to be discussed here.  Based on Erik's description of the
thread as he saw it, I personally don't see what the big deal is.  From
what *I* know, it was useless when he found it.

If, on the other hand, it *was* useful to certain people who knew what
it meant, I'm fairly certain the large majority of the subscribers to
this list *didn't* know what it meant.

I'm sorry.  I don't mean to take sides.  It's not my business.  But
that's my point: I don't think its the business of most of us.

Again, I don't mean mediation, I just mean this argument.

Peter

                                   -- ---<>--- --
                         A house without walls cannot fall.
            Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                   -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Youandme

body:
On 18 Mar 2004 at 14:25, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Nicolas Weeger wrote:
(...)
> > Also, when will the 'real' fr.wiktionary (or other languages :)) be
> > available?
>
> I know that I've heard this several times since Wiktionary was started.
>  The only thing that's needed is for someone who wants them to take the
> initiative and get working on them.

There are at least four persons who want to start Polish version of Wiktionary
see: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polska_wersja_s%C5%82ownika_Wiktionary

So you see... there's much more than one person asking
for a new incarnation of Wikipedia.

We are looking forward to any new installations of Wikitionary
e.g. pl.wiktionary.org :)

Discussions about the interface/technology suitable to edit dictionaries
in a wiki way are very valuable and necessary
(as far as I know this is the main obstacale that hods back creation of new
dictionaries) but before new solution pops up our ethnusiasm might  be lost.
Can anybody install a new DB for Polish Wiktionary, please?
We would be very grateful.
Integration of wiktionaries would be a far future.
We've got a lot of material in our minds
and we have no place where we can put it!

Regards
Youandme


list: wiktionary-l

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Geoffrin's status? And Wiktionary,
	too


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: improving search engine hits

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Although the english wikipedia comes to top when you search google for
> "free encyclopedia" [1], the french wikipedia doesn't appear in the top 10
> list when searching for "encyclop?die gratuite" cause other pages got this
> in their title [2].

That's true, but that's probably because Wikipedia isn't an
"encyclop?die gratuite", or at least not primarily. It's an
"encyclop?dia libre":

http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=encyclop%E9die+libre&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta=

Voil?, first search result is [[fr:Accueil]].

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mediation board

body:
Peter Jaros wrote:

> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 01:17 PM, Anthere wrote:
>
>> Today, a whole thread was deleted from the mediation board.
>
> Isn't there a better place to put this discussion?  There ought to be.

This is totally the place for this discussion.

Maybe not the only one, but it's nowhere near inappropriate.


references:
<KAPKGHMHLFCFDJAA@mailcity.com>
	<5S9trXEf+iWAFwt2@cartref.demon.co.uk> <405A4A26.7060509@hotmail.com>

body:
In message <405A4A26.7060509 at hotmail.com>, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296-PkbjNfxxIARBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> writes
>Arwel Parry wrote:
>> Michael is still around. I was on meta about three days ago when he
>>turned up and I had an entertaining 20 minutes or so blocking half a
>>dozen users he created and clearing up the mess once I confirmed to my
>>satisfaction that it was him!
>
>Michael's obsession with Wikipedia defies reason. For 9 months, he has
>been adding information about several bands to Wikipedia, only to have
>it consistently and rapidly removed. First to the English wiki, then to
>meta, simple and even on es and pl using a machine translator.

I'm relieved there's no such thing as an English-to-Welsh machine
translator!

>When he's not posting inaccurate information about bands, he's making
>fun of Hephaestos or other administrators. Ordinary wikipediholics like
>ourselves at least have something to show for our efforts. Will Michael
>eventually realise how much time he's wasting and do something useful
>with his life? Or will his obsession continue throughout adulthood?

At least his user names are quite easy to spot (I didn't think George W.
Bush would really spend time contributing to meta about "Death by Streo"
(sic)...). I do hope he'll grow up some day soon, though.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: commons.wikimedia.org

body:
I propose that the current Project Sourceberg is integrated into a larger
"Wikimedia Commons".

Said "Wikimedia Commons" should reside at commons.wikimedia.org and be a
repository for
- images
- public domain texts
- otherwise freely licensed documents
- music, artistic works (but see below)

All material in the commons would have to be licensed under one of several
licenses, not necessarily the FDL, but all allowing at the very least free
distribution and commercial use. For texts, modification rights would also
be a requirement. There would be NO fair use material on
commons.wikimedia.org.

Material would be eligible for inclusion in the Commons if it is useful to
at least ONE Wikimedia project. This includes plausible *future*
usefulness.

The Commons Community would apply commons sense .. excuse me, common
sense, to determine which files are eligible for inclusion, i.e. if a band
is notable enough to have an article in Wikipedia, and their MP3s are
freely licensed, they can be deposited; if a file is highly referenced
from the outside and causes unbearable bandwith costs, it can be removed.
The larger and more popular a file, the more pressing needs to be its
rationale for inclusion.

I propose that we shall build an interface between the files residing in
the Wikimedia Commons, and other Wikipedia projects, so that it will be
possible to easily reference a file in the commons, like so:

[[Image:co:Airplane.jpg|200 px|A very nice airplane]]
[[Media:co:listen.mp3]]

This would not create a copy of the file or auto-generated thumbnails on
the local server (e.g. en:). However, [[Image:Airplane.jpg]] could be used
to describe the file in the local language and context (we should probably
rename the Image: namespace to File: in the long term, because it is also
used for other description pages.)

All new uploads would automatically go to the commons unless the uploader
explicitly chooses not to send them there (e.g. for material which is
clearly only relevant to one project, only allowed under certain
jurisdictions ..).

The commons wiki itself should of course be multilingual as Project
Sourceberg and Meta are. There are some features which we should enter
into our software development roadmap to facilitate the transition to
using the commons:
- user interface languages can be set in the preferences
- automatic import of source information from the commons to the
description page of the local wiki
- better interlanguage handling in a single wiki installation
- friendly user interfaces for multi file uploading, automatic addition of
uploaded files to a category etc. - things that make life easier for
people not familiar with Wikipedia
- automatic gallery generation for multiple images of one category

What are the advantages of this system?

- Central place to resolve licensing issues
- Less time wasted on locating relevant files
- Less time wasted on re-uploading files
- A place for things like image galleries that go beyond the needs of a
single article (e.g. 10 different pictures of the same airplane)
- We can actively solicit contributions specifically to the commons from
people who are not interested in contributing on a regular basis
- We can provide the largest such respoitory of freely licensed material,
with a quality control mechanism that other such projects lack (the
community)
- We further establish our name beyond being merely the largest, greatest
encyclopedia ever
- We benefit from the positive connotations of the term "commons" and
appeal more directly to altruism, which will be beneficial when we ask for
donations
- We create a very real consciousness for the copyleft idea which so far
is missing especially for images, where many people simply upload whatever
they find on the net.
- We can use this platform to become more politically relevant in the
ongoing discourses about copyright law.

What are the downsides?

- The user interface is likely to be a bit clunky at first. We can fix
that.
- This project can exceed Wikipedia in costs if it is successful. I
believe prominent fundraisers will cover us, if not, we can fix this by
limiting the scope of the commons.
- People will upload all sorts of things which we don't want. We can fix
that the same way we deal with Wikipedia articles we don't want.
- Changes to the software will be very specific to our needs, other
MediaWiki sites will probably be unable to interface directly with the
commons. Maybe we can authorize other projects on an individual basis to
interface with us.

I believe that we should not work on a temporary fix to the licensing
(tagging) problem, but address this issue in one fell swoop instead. More
generally, if we want to do this, I would suggest for Jimbo to authorize
me to set up a roadmap on Meta for the implementation. That roadmap would
also be a place for volunteers to list themselves for specific tasks that
need to be completed. This will have to be a community effort among
developers, sourcebergers, wikibookers, wikipedians etc.

I believe we can launch the Wikimedia Commons within about 3 months, maybe
less, if we work together. Let me know your thoughts and possible
improvements to this concept.

Please help to get the word out about this proposal by forwarding this
message to the other project mailing lists, translating it, summarizing it
etc. As this concerns a way to share relevant data among *all* projects, I
believe every Wikimedia user should know about this and participate in the
planning phase.

I suggest that the initial discussion (do we want to do this?) take place
on wikipedia-l (we have no Wikimedia list yet, sadly), and that the
implementation discussion, if any, take place on meta.wikipedia.org.

All best,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal: commons.wikimedia.org