body:
Well, this is a technical change to one site's configuration of a magnitude
similar to adding an extra namespace to a wiki. More technically, it means
modifying one wiki's LocalSettings.php file. I'm not entirely sure how
changing $wgAutoConfirmAge on pt.wikipedia.org will affect en.wikipedia.org,
for example. Technically, those settings are completely independent of one
another, as they reside on separate files. The only way one wiki's technical
requests affect everyone is when there is something *added* to MediaWiki,
and those effects are due to a new setting added to MediaWiki's
DefaultSettings.php file. As this isn't the case, since the functionality is
already there (that's the reason there's a four-day page-move restriction in
*all* Wikimedia wikis), changing it on one should not affect the other ones.
I'm not sure if Anthere's worry is that a setting of 45 days in pt: will
mean changing the setting to 45 days everywhere else, but if that is it,
then there is no reason to worry. Looking at the code, there is absolutely
no reason why the change would impact other wikis outside the Portuguese
Wikipedia.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthere
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 3:17 PM
To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page
movesinpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>First, having a software displaying different behavior depending on the
>>language/project is a bad idea. It makes things very complex and users
>>travelling from one language to another are likely to find this
disturbing.
>
>
> That same logic could be used to say all languages should have the
> same system for RFA, AFD, etc. It was decided a long time ago that
> different languages would be allowed to decide their own policies.
> Policies which are enforced by the software are no different from any
> other policies.

No, it is not the same. Policies with social implications (such as RFA,
AFD) may be developped independently by each community, without having
any consequences on the choice made by other communities.

Policies with technical implications may imply that a decision made by
one community, will be forced over the other communities. This is what
happened for many many months, as all software evolutions were driven by
the english community and forced over the other communities along the
way. We are no more in these times. If a change of software is
suggested, which could impact all communities, then there must be a
general agreement that this is a good idea.

Note that I do not say the suggestion is good or bad. I simply say "do
not expect a top down decision".

ant

>
> Personally, I think 45 days is rather long, and I'm a little
> uncomfortable with it apparently being handled as a vote (although the
> results of the vote don't leave much room for interpretation, so it
> probably makes no difference), but if that's how pt want to do things,
> it's entirely up to them.

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page
	movesinpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
	inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>First, having a software displaying different behavior depending on the
>>language/project is a bad idea. It makes things very complex and users
>>travelling from one language to another are likely to find this disturbing.
>
>
> That same logic could be used to say all languages should have the
> same system for RFA, AFD, etc. It was decided a long time ago that
> different languages would be allowed to decide their own policies.
> Policies which are enforced by the software are no different from any
> other policies.

No, it is not the same. Policies with social implications (such as RFA,
AFD) may be developped independently by each community, without having
any consequences on the choice made by other communities.

Policies with technical implications may imply that a decision made by
one community, will be forced over the other communities. This is what
happened for many many months, as all software evolutions were driven by
the english community and forced over the other communities along the
way. We are no more in these times. If a change of software is
suggested, which could impact all communities, then there must be a
general agreement that this is a good idea.

Note that I do not say the suggestion is good or bad. I simply say "do
not expect a top down decision".

ant

>
> Personally, I think 45 days is rather long, and I'm a little
> uncomfortable with it apparently being handled as a vote (although the
> results of the vote don't leave much room for interpretation, so it
> probably makes no difference), but if that's how pt want to do things,
> it's entirely up to them.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Instant Messenger / Email integration with
	MediaWiki

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I would love it if there was an email-to-wikipedia interface, mainly
> because my mobile phone gives me unlimited email for free (whereas web
> browsing is ridicously expensive - go figure). There do appear to be a
> lot of fairly significant hurdles though: authentication, parsing
> email (stripping out signatures, demangling character conversions,
> avoiding accidental changing of whitespace etc), and of course the
> potential for significant lag between receive and update - is merging
> really a safe option when the article may have been downloaded 6 hours
> earlier?
>
> Incidentally, is there by any chance a read-only email fetch mechanism
> for Wikipedia?
>
> Steve

If i had such free service, i'd set a server doing it for me :P
If it's a 'private' service, things gets easier:
-Authentication: Use a variable account name as password.
-Stripping out signatures: You use the same email ssystem -> Always the
same signature.

Is merging really a safe option when the article may have been
downloaded 6 hours earlier?
If it hasn't changed, yes ;)
If it's a poppular article, probably not. But merging could wait until i
sit in front of a proper computer.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Incremental article IDs

body:
Each article has an ArticleId. So you want to make Titles = ArticleId.
When someone gives you a title, convert to number and treat as ArticleId.
Plus 'touching' the editpage for not requiring a title.

PS: Are you sure it's a wiki what you need?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
Travis Derouin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've configured proxy_check and wgBlockOpenProxies, which seems to be
> working, but am still able to edit  our wiki anonymously using Tor. Is
> there anyway to tighten this up? It seems the majority of edits coming
> from Tor proxies are from vandals.
>
> Thanks,
> Travis

There is a list of Tor exit nodes. Block them all :P


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>
>>on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I speak of a culture that has
>>>produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
>>>collaboration.
>>>
>>>
>>Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?
>>
>>
>I just crossed my four-year anniversary, and while I can't speak to the
>beginning, the culture hasn't really changed much in my time here.
>
I thought you were here longer than that.  I think the culture has
changed.  The Seigenthaler incident was a big turning point in that.
After that the rule bound control freaks seem to have become more
dominant.  We had to respond to Seigenthaler, but in the process we
ended up with a lot of unnecesarily restrictive procedures.

>The
>biggest change for me is the larger scale; once upon a time I "knew"
>most of the admins and active editors, in the sense that I had read
>their work and had some sense of who they were. Now I can see a mention
>of somebody, wonder "who is that?", and see a history of 20K+ edits in
>areas I didn't even know existed. So I think the culture could change
>simply by different groups, unaware of each other, devolving into
>disparate subcultures.
>
Yes, I can even remember trying to predict when we would reach 100K
articles.  Some of the creative energy can still be there in some
WikiProjects.

>The webcomics thing is a case in point. From my "old-school" POV :-) , I
>tend to regard webcomics as intrinsically non-notable, and yet there is
>another part of the WP community that is intensely focussed on writing
>about webcomics, defining inclusion criteria, etc. On the flip side,
>though, when I look at how they actually go about their work, it seems
>very much like things we did on the early days of the ships project,
>back in 2003. So I think that as long as we have some ongoing
>cross-pollination between different specializations, that we can keep
>things from splintering too much.
>
I can take or leave webcomics, but it's still interesting to see how
some of them regard Wikipedia.

Ec


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 2/19/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:
[snip]
> college students, business users, and ISP customers, because of the
> actions of one or two people."  Uh, ya.
[snip]

A nit, it's not the minor actions of one or two people.. if we don't
block tor exist all the technically competent high-speed vandals will
just use tor. Because these vandals operate at fairly high speed
playing whack-a-mole after they've acted just isn't effective.
(especially with tor because it's quite possible to make every edit
come from a different exit)

I'm a tor user, I run a fairly high traffic non-exit tor node, I've
advocated that we do things to avoid harming tor users and folks who
happen to share an IP with a tor exit.... but the claim that blocking
tor exits isn't important to English Wikipedia (if not all the
wikimedia wikis) is false.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 20/02/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Nobody is promoting a wholesale purge of admins.

It's entirely unclear what is being advocated. I'm seeing long
invective-filled posts that tell me to go look for examples to support
the ranters' positions myself, but no actual case examples. And let me
remind you I'm one of the ones who thinks RFA is utterly broken and we
probably need about twice as many admins.

> Because of their
> leadership position they should be held to a higher standard than
> ordinary editors, and when applicable de-adminship should come swiftly
> and in no uncertain terms.  It could be appealed to Arbcom, but for any
> reasonable case it should be kept off until the appeal is resolved.

Indeed. Now please give me some solid criteria, with actual case
examples where you think someone should indeed have been de-adminned
swiftly and also cases where you think they shouldn't. So we're all on
the same page here.

- d.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-20

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20001).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching changes and troubles

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

A few hours ago Tim changed how the wiki handles output buffering and
compression so that a Content-Length HTTP header can be sent.

The primary benefit of this is that the Squid proxies in Amsterdam and
Seoul will be better able to maintain persistent connections to Tampa,
which should improve performance for logged-in visitors in Europe and Asia.

There were a couple small bugs which unfortunately we didn't catch
before putting it live:

* Breakage causing Special:Export to cut off unexpectedly with bogus
'Content-Length:' header, thus breaking transwiki import:

This is now fixed.

* Incorrect 'Vary: Accept-Encoding' header for anonymous page views,
causing logged-in visitors to sometimes see logged-out pages (with
default skin and login link instead of link to own user/talk/contribs):

The bug is fixed, but a fair number of cached entries are still present.
They'll vanish over time, but I'm not sure if we currently have a clean
way to flush them in bulk.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF2q57wRnhpk1wk44RAhQ0AJ9IVuM4ghugtBRdOI38YN57F0n68gCeO/hF
WTBbvgbHQM1hlTBSVPPJGN4=
=14UW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Small-scale distributed hosting?

body:
On 2/19/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The great advantage to this is that it can and will be done in the next
> few days, we don't have to wait for all these pipe dreams to magically
> come to fruition.

Yeah, I like that advantage :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On 2/19/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I suggested, [[List of men famous for being tall]]?

Mmm. Just pondering, would you want to include random "tallest ever
..." even if they weren't famous? The world's tallest jockey might not
be famous for it, but it might be interesting.

Of course, and the 8-foot list made this clear, there doesn't only
have to be one list.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On 2/20/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree. So does the real conflict come in having a subjective article
> name (using "tall") for an article that is using an objective criteria?

I was going to say yes, but actually no. If you apply that logic, you
end up with horribly named lists: [[List of communes in France with
over 20,000 inhabitants (1999 census)]] (god I wish I were kidding).

IMHO, the need for readable, human-friendly article names trumps the
need for the article name to be totally precise. As long as the
introduction makes it clear what the criteria are, err on the side of
pleasant article names.

Steve


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

references:
<bd4c411e0702090937y3482dadcm2a9d0f99b70eefd3@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqiicb$7rs$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a4359dff0702091319s5494dd52yebf530b1ce2fc9c3@mail.gmail.com>
	<2f33f2d40702191541j1f6d50aft79aaa12ca27d608b@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 2/19/07, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can wrongly merged page histories be demerged?

Yes. Would take hours/days of solid work in the case of long histories.

--
geni


from_name: habj

references:
<bd4c411e0702090937y3482dadcm2a9d0f99b70eefd3@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqiicb$7rs$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a4359dff0702091319s5494dd52yebf530b1ce2fc9c3@mail.gmail.com>

body:
2007/2/9, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:

> The system we use for editing pages (the one you think should be
> extended to admin powers) results in an enormous amount of vandalism,
> which takes a lot of effort to clean up. It's considered worth it, so
> we just shut up and get on with it. Using the same system with admin
> powers would result in an equal amount of admin vandalism, which takes
> more effort to clean up, does more damage, and is not at all worth it.

Can wrongly merged page histories be demerged?

/habj


subject: [Wikitech-l] Exporting sections of pages

body:
On 2/18/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Well, one suggested solution was piping the
>
> ==section header tag|secthead==

One obvious weakness with this is we don't have a way of terminating
sections. Granted, that's a problem in general with sections of this
sort, but it crops up here. Perhaps we would allow something like this
as a terminator:
==|==

(pretty isn't it :))

> but while I understand why that is most intiutive to people who *get*
> Wikipedia, I suspect it's a bit too breakable when confronted with
> people who don't--and there are a lot more of them.  So I like a
> template or parser function that takes an argument and expands to the
> appropriate hidden markup to support the pointer, myself.

So something like this?
{{section header tag|secthead}}

Or do you mean:
==section header tag==
{{sectionmagicword|secthead}}

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/20/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's entirely unclear what is being advocated. I'm seeing long
> invective-filled posts that tell me to go look for examples to support
> the ranters' positions myself, but no actual case examples. And let me
> remind you I'm one of the ones who thinks RFA is utterly broken and we
> probably need about twice as many admins.
>

The numbers I've seen suggest otherwise. Assumeing the number of
hyperactives amoungst the new crop stays constant the increase needed
is probably going to be closer to 50%. This converstation has been
short on stats. Lets have some:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/deleterlist

Gurch was running a bot which messes the figures slightly but I think
it is safe to say that ~45 admins handle ~50% of the deletions

In the top ten of those figures we appear to have lost 3.

Your 100% increase figure is more in line with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Actionsperadmin.png

Which appears to show ~100% increase in actions per admins although
with various bulk deletion and semi automation tools I don't think a
100% increase in admin power is required.

I can't prove it but going by those figures I suspect we have between
150 and  200 hyperactives who do most of the admin tasks (probably
towards the 150 end)

Juding by the backlogs and the burnouts I'd tend towards the position
that the hyperactives are maxed out. The upshot of this is that unless
we can find more hyperactives or get more of the long tail to join the
hyperactives we are going to have problems.

Lowering the standards on RFA is meaningless unless you can show we
will get more hyper actives rather than more paper admins.

Increaseing the activity level of the long tail is the other option
but no one appears to have any ideas on how to do this (ok we could
try to start admin action countitis but people tend to object to that
suggestion.

--
geni


list: commons-l

from_name: peter green

subject:
[Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy
	onautomatic image replacement

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: commons-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:commons-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Brianna
> Laugher
> Sent: 20 February 2007 01:07
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input:
> policy onautomatic image replacement
>
>
> On 20/02/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/19/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > Here are some main ones I know of:
> > > * Art. IMO no art "near-duplicates" should be deleted unless they are
> > > TRUE duplicates (eg by hash). Colour differences are too subjective to
> > > rule which one is the most accurate, so best idea is to keep them all
> > > and let local projects decide which to use.
> >
> > I don't think we should make it a policy to always keep extra images,
> > we should do so only when there is an honest and reasonable
> > disagreement over which image is better. Many times there is no
> > disagreement, and we shouldn't keep around many useless near
> > duplicates just because.
> >
> > So, for example, if a version is unused on other projects there should
> > be no problem.
>
> Well in those cases we can virtually do what we like, because no one
> will notice. ;)
> However I suspect we still have quite an army of hardworking "SVG
> gnomes" who spend some time re-linking PNGs as SVGs. Then, when an
> admin comes to *look* at the image, it appears that is not used
> (virtually, was never used). I don't know what to do about these
> gnomes...
its a pretty serious issue with mediawiki, categories suffer from the same problem.

i'm not going to go looking for bug reports right now but i bet its already been reported.

the problem is we only track history for page text and file content. While all other history can in theory be recovered from this in practice such searches would be impractically slow but this is a big change that would need to be done by the core devs and they are busy firefighting growth issues afaict.

one thing you can do is check where the svg is used and look for recent edit warring over the issue but thats a lot of work.

personally i think such svg gnomes should be blocked on sight but thats a descision for individual projects to make.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
On 2/20/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a reason on why flckrlickr doesn't fill in the fields at
> {{flickreview}} template?

The template was invented only recently, and has been applied to
FlickrLickr images even more recently. FlickrLickr images are reviewed
& correctly licensed (they were all under CC-BY when my bot spidered
them); CC licenses are not revocable. The justification here is that
"Another look can't hurt"; I'm worried that it will cause Fear,
Uncertainty and Doubt.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject:
[Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy on automatic image
	replacement

body:
Hello,

(If your project doesn't have a CommonsTicker... GET ONE...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker
and if nobody maintains it... well don't complain you were never informed :P )

CommonsDelinker is a Wikimedia-wide bot designed to remove image
redlinks from pages after an image has been deleted at Commons.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:CommonsDelinker

At the moment it is in the "testing" stage of image "relinking" --
replacing one image with another. I want to get some input from
communities about under what circumstances it would be acceptable for
Commons to use the bot for "relinking".

There are several reasons why replacing images might be desired:

1. Avoid conflicts with local image of the same name (bug 889, 2717)
[although usually this would be done at the local wiki rather than
Commons, but if the Commons image is poorly named, it can be
appropriate]
2. Rename images: as redirects don't work, the only option to upload
under the new name (bug 709, 4470)
3. Consolidate use of duplicate images at just one of them
4. Replace an image with a distinct, "improved" version

I guess (hope) 1 and 2 are not controversial. So I want to talk a bit
about 3 and 4.

Regarding 3: some people feel that there is no need to consolidate
duplicate images together. While it is true that there is no argument
to do this for "disk space reasons", consider it like a 'fork' of the
image. We don't allow forks of articles. One reason, for sure, has to
do with NPOV, but another reason is just about efficiency and the
natural human tendency to sort, collate, collect and organise. It
makes sense to have all the info about one thing in one place, whether
that is a topic (article) or an image.

Now regarding 4. This is the first point where the image being
replaced is not a true duplicate to the original. The most contentious
point has been where images are converted from raster (GIF, JPG, PNG)
to vector (SVG) format.
I don't want to hash out the details of a PNG vs SVG debate here. Some
PNGs are superior to SVGs, some SVGs are superior to PNGs. I want to
establish: what process should take place before a bot replacement
like this is acceptable?

Because it's a bot, I want Commons to have really clear guidelines
about when it is OK to use it, to avoid disrupting local projects.

Currently, such images are tagged with {{superseded}} and listed at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Superseded
. This page is quite backlogged (nearly 5 months, over 5000 items in
[[category:superseded]]) and almost no-one works on it (since our
copyvios are also backlogged, and they are more urgent, this is OK,
IMO).

Note: we have {{superseded}}, which usually means the old one will be
nominated for deletion, and we also have {{vector version available}},
which merely advertises the existence of a vector file and does not
imply the old one should be deleted.

So basically my question is, assuming someone putting a {{superseded}}
tag on an image appears on your local CommonsTicker, how long is it
acceptable to wait before we replace such images? A week, a fortnight,
a month?
What should consensus look like in such discussions? Since we don't
have to delete things for copyright reasons, is *one* person objecting
enough to keep the image? What if that person is the uploader? What
reasons should ensure an image gets kept?

Here are some main ones I know of:
* Art. IMO no art "near-duplicates" should be deleted unless they are
TRUE duplicates (eg by hash). Colour differences are too subjective to
rule which one is the most accurate, so best idea is to keep them all
and let local projects decide which to use.
* Small size PNGs used as icons - may be hand-optimised for rendering
in IE, which SVGs will still suffer from (as they thumbnail to PNG but
without special treatment).
* Errors in SVG rendering (there are many in bugzilla)
* PNGs as source files - should be kept for historical record (luckily
we can undelete now, this is not such a big deal, but still something
to keep in mind)

So, please take this as an opportunity to describe the most open and
accessible way Commons can work with your project, and how you would
like to see it operate to best benefit your project in this regard.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject:
[Commons-l] Fwd: Commons request for input: policy on automatic
	image replacement

body:
I sent this to foundation-l. Input from Commons folks obviously welcome...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>
Date: 20-Feb-2007 01:35
Subject: Commons request for input: policy on automatic image replacement
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>

Hello,

(If your project doesn't have a CommonsTicker... GET ONE...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker
and if nobody maintains it... well don't complain you were never informed :P )

CommonsDelinker is a Wikimedia-wide bot designed to remove image
redlinks from pages after an image has been deleted at Commons.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:CommonsDelinker

At the moment it is in the "testing" stage of image "relinking" --
replacing one image with another. I want to get some input from
communities about under what circumstances it would be acceptable for
Commons to use the bot for "relinking".

There are several reasons why replacing images might be desired:

1. Avoid conflicts with local image of the same name (bug 889, 2717)
[although usually this would be done at the local wiki rather than
Commons, but if the Commons image is poorly named, it can be
appropriate]
2. Rename images: as redirects don't work, the only option to upload
under the new name (bug 709, 4470)
3. Consolidate use of duplicate images at just one of them
4. Replace an image with a distinct, "improved" version

I guess (hope) 1 and 2 are not controversial. So I want to talk a bit
about 3 and 4.

Regarding 3: some people feel that there is no need to consolidate
duplicate images together. While it is true that there is no argument
to do this for "disk space reasons", consider it like a 'fork' of the
image. We don't allow forks of articles. One reason, for sure, has to
do with NPOV, but another reason is just about efficiency and the
natural human tendency to sort, collate, collect and organise. It
makes sense to have all the info about one thing in one place, whether
that is a topic (article) or an image.

Now regarding 4. This is the first point where the image being
replaced is not a true duplicate to the original. The most contentious
point has been where images are converted from raster (GIF, JPG, PNG)
to vector (SVG) format.
I don't want to hash out the details of a PNG vs SVG debate here. Some
PNGs are superior to SVGs, some SVGs are superior to PNGs. I want to
establish: what process should take place before a bot replacement
like this is acceptable?

Because it's a bot, I want Commons to have really clear guidelines
about when it is OK to use it, to avoid disrupting local projects.

Currently, such images are tagged with {{superseded}} and listed at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Superseded
. This page is quite backlogged (nearly 5 months, over 5000 items in
[[category:superseded]]) and almost no-one works on it (since our
copyvios are also backlogged, and they are more urgent, this is OK,
IMO).

Note: we have {{superseded}}, which usually means the old one will be
nominated for deletion, and we also have {{vector version available}},
which merely advertises the existence of a vector file and does not
imply the old one should be deleted.

So basically my question is, assuming someone putting a {{superseded}}
tag on an image appears on your local CommonsTicker, how long is it
acceptable to wait before we replace such images? A week, a fortnight,
a month?
What should consensus look like in such discussions? Since we don't
have to delete things for copyright reasons, is *one* person objecting
enough to keep the image? What if that person is the uploader? What
reasons should ensure an image gets kept?

Here are some main ones I know of:
* Art. IMO no art "near-duplicates" should be deleted unless they are
TRUE duplicates (eg by hash). Colour differences are too subjective to
rule which one is the most accurate, so best idea is to keep them all
and let local projects decide which to use.
* Small size PNGs used as icons - may be hand-optimised for rendering
in IE, which SVGs will still suffer from (as they thumbnail to PNG but
without special treatment).
* Errors in SVG rendering (there are many in bugzilla)
* PNGs as source files - should be kept for historical record (luckily
we can undelete now, this is not such a big deal, but still something
to keep in mind)

So, please take this as an opportunity to describe the most open and
accessible way Commons can work with your project, and how you would
like to see it operate to best benefit your project in this regard.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


body:
> However, if an image is on commons and a project doesn't want it there
> is no way for the project to stop the image from being used.. other
> than abusing the badimagelist or tracking down each and every time
> someone puts it in an article. They lose the ability to make a
> decision once and have it bind.
users can just reupload it under new names if they want to war over an images use anyway.

there are plenty of mechanisms already in place to deal with users who are disruptive or edit war.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WelcomeCommitteeBot?

body:
On 2/19/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I must be missing something. What non-standard way of using talk pages are
> you referring to?

Ok, you suggested a "please click here to reply" link, which would
presumably take them straight to an edit page, right? Whereas for the
rest of their time on Wikipedia, they're going to have to click on a
user's name, probably click "discussion" after that, and then click
"edit". So they're getting a shortcut that normally won't be there.

> Asking whoever welcomed you for advice could get some pretty far depending
> on who it was in the first place.

Heh, yeah. Hopefully you get what I mean now.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> In Karate there are 32 Vital Points on the human body. Some, when struck,
> can take as long a 10 days for the desired effect to occur ;-).
>

The evidence suggests this is not the case. No one has managed to
demostraight such abilities under controled conditions and Karate with
it's pure strikeing style tends to get taken appart by say BJJ or
judo. While there are exceptions the fighters in MMA contests such as
PRIDE ot UFC tend to rely on Muay Thai as their primary source of
stikeing skills rather than Karate.

--
geni


body:
On 20/02/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> so.. suppose I delete a png sicne there's a superior svg (manually
> checked) the bot currently delinsk the png from local projects
> is there a way to tell the bot to relink with the svg?
> otherwise projects will lose the png unaware that there's a svg replacing it

At the moment that's what will happen. But we can work with
Orgullomoore, the bot owner, to fix this up. For example, if you put
'no-orgullobot' in the deletion reason, it won't delink. So when we
delete such PNGs, we could just put 'no-orgullobot', and then manually
give it a replacement instruction. Or we could invent something new
like 'orgullobot-replace:newimage.jpg' . I don't think that will be a
big problem.

cheers,
Brianna


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/19/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:

> What is the difference between these two? The editor who is not an
> administrator has to live in daily fear that at any point, especially
> should
> they edit on any remotely controversial subject without the protection of
> another "friend" who is an administrator, they can be accosted by any
> administrator, their rights to edit terminated.

I would hardly consider myself to be living in fear.  While most of my
editing has been in fairly uncontroversial areas, I have edited more
controversial ones as well.  I've been around for almost 3 years, am nearing
20k edits, and had one problem with one administrator once.  And by problem,
I mean she was a bit rude.  Very far from abuse of power or anything of the
like.  And I didn't exactly smell like roses during that affair either - not
one of my best moments.

Meanwhile, the Admin is growing an ever larger ego, based solely on his
> ability to do just this. Rather than acting within policy, Administrators
> on
> Wikipedia are the equivalent of Judge Dredd - they are judge, jury, and
> executioner all in one package, screaming "I am the law" and doing
> whatever
> they want, confident that the other Judge Dredds will back them up if any
> questions of their abuses are ever raised.

Completely not the way my experience has been.  Whenever I've taken issue
with an admin's action and attempted to bring it to others' attention, I've
been able to get proper explanation and analysis, usually pointing to policy
pages that completely support what the admin did.

A noble concept, but completely inadequate with today's crop of admins; the
> goal of the vast majority of the administrators is not to build bridges or
> even an encyclopedia, but to consolidate their power and ensure that they
> have the power to be as abusive, mean, incivil as they wish to be. The
> rules
> to an admin are for the "little people", not for them.

The only people I've ever seen be abusive or mean are the ones who scream
"admin abuse".  Whenever I've seen incivility on the part of admins, it's
gone both ways and never has it been some big mean abusive admin picking on
a poor defenseless little person.

-- Jonel


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> geni,
>
> ==Sources==
> * http://www.ao-denkou-kai.org/leo_training.htm
>
> Are you wanting to revert my edit? :-)
>
> Marc

I was involved in the [[Ashida Kim]] deletion debate. I fear not your
[[bullshido]].

--
geni


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com> <45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<or7ht2l2icej8vvroklvl3p480cvb7qiql@4ax.com> <45D8BA99.8010405@shaw.ca>
	<vpght2htdh75b1780ohdjr54eg2cldecgn@4ax.com> <45D8DD31.5040101@shaw.ca>
	<mgnht29ipn8okq4cj629c6umlo5q56nt0a@4ax.com> <45D8E354.5060601@shaw.ca>
	<l7pht2t5u0d1qn6mvcc4hsojbrp1njs4mi@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:37:56 -0700, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>>> Yes, it is.  Check out the stats on average height by country.  There
>>> is a 10" difference between the lowest and the highest
>
>> The list is about tall men. Excluding short men from it hardly seems
>> like bias. It's like complaining that a list of the world's tallest
>> trees doesn't have any representatives from Saudi Arabia on it; it's not
>> bias because Saudia Arabia simply doesn't have any really tall trees in
>> it (I'm assuming for purposes of argument, anyway).
>
> No, you miss the point.  A notably tall Arabian tree would be much
> shorter than a notably tall Dutch tree, but still notably tall for an
> Arabian tree.

I think we must both be missing each other's points, then. The list that
you're referring to, the [[List of tall men]], doesn't have "tall
compared to the local people around them" as a criterion. It just has a
single numeric threshold. If you want to create an additional list of
_relatively_ tall men then I don't see a problem with that, but in the
meantime the existing list has nothing to do with it. To me this seems
like going to a shoe store and complaining to the manager because they
don't sell any good food there.

We seem to be going around in circles so we may have to agree to
disagree, which is fine IMO. Just go ahead and start building your list
of "relatively tall" people and if that works out turn [[List of tall
men]] into a disambiguation page linking both to the existing list and
your new one. Everyone gets their preferred presentation that way.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
> Hmmm, we seem to be talking at cross purposes. I really don't see how a
> "List of men above 8 foot tall" could be considered original research,
> provided you have good references and aren't making up fictional statistics.
> It's just a list of pretty big men. It may be unencyclopedic, of course, but
> that's another question.
>
> What is original research, in my opinion, is saying that these 8-foot men
> are tall, but that nobody else qualifies as tall. That is hardly NPOV. We
> just can't make up our own definition as to what is "tall" and what isn't.

I can see that, and agree that the existing "tall men" title is at least
misleading or ambiguous. But shouldn't this be trivial to fix simply by
renaming the article or tweaking the lead paragraph? If this is all that
needs doing it's no wonder I'm hopelessly confused by this thread, I
thought there was some sort of deep fundamental flaw some people were
seeing that I was totally missing. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<BAY103-F169B87AEEC05F6DDEAD5C5E88A0@phx.gbl>
	<45D99F9C.9070609@gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140702190505o6aff4cfay40d2d6bb1d3d69cf@mail.gmail.com>
	<45D9A1B3.7040402@gmail.com>
	<17sjt21ho25q4tcnvohjb4umln7f4v8nue@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:10:11 -0600, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I agree. So does the real conflict come in having a subjective article
>> name (using "tall") for an article that is using an objective criteria?
>
> No, the problem comes from the fact that the definition of "tall" was
> cooked up by some guys on the basis that it included some folks they
> wanted in but didn't make the list too long :-)

"Doesn't make the list too long" seems like a reasonable basis to me.
There are tons of situations on Wikipedia where practical considerations
like that come into play, and I suspect repealing such considerations of
length would result in articles of fancruft that would make even me
blush. :)

Would making it more explicit, say by restricting the list to only the
top five hundred tall men rather than some specific height, be an
improvement?


subject: [WikiEN-l] We're famous!

body:
David Ashby wrote:
> One more for the pile: http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=02152007
>
> and let's see if it exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray's_Urine

They seem to be rolling in now:
http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1483


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps

body:
On 2/20/07, Annabel <annabel at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Bot users are able download database dumps of the wikimedia projects at
> http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html.
> These bzipped dumps can be fairly large (especially for the English
> language). Would not it be handy to have a bitorrent link to lower the
> load on the download server?
>
It would definitely be handy.  Does anyone know of a stable site which
will host the tracker server for us (for free)?  Surely there is one
out there, since they'd only have to host the tracker server, not the
file itself.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>> When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
>> someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.
>>
>
> Editorial judgment.
>
> It's what we do.
>
> --Jimbo
>
Uh-oh, I can see the headlines now -

"Wikipedia founder favors censorship, calls it "editorial judgment"'

"Your company censored from Wikipedia? Wales is OK with that"

"The British government has learned that Jimmy Wales has sought
significant quantities of censorship - from Africa"

:-)

Stan


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
>> shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
>> those have been let through?
>
> It's a judgement call. I trust your judgement of the situation. This
> mailing list isn't the place for complaining about abusive admins,
> anyway.
>

I know that the list admins have been criticized of late for letting
through messages that people have questioned. However, this list is the
forum of last resort for people who have been banned from post to Wikipedia.

I'm one of those who see very little harm in letting through a hostile
message. No one is forced to read the message.

I'm also curious about the content of these messages. I have been pushed
on this list to provide evidence for abusive admins.

If calling an admin "abusive" is itself a personal attack, then am I in
danger of being moderated when I provide such evidence? Is it the mere
fact that the user in question called certain admins "abusive" the
grounds for not posting the message?

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

references:
<C1FF8B1E.1A24%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>	<45DA3D47.6080805@earthlink.net>
	<45DAA370.4080703@telus.net>

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>> Marc Riddell wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> I speak of a culture that has
>>>> produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
>>>> collaboration.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I just crossed my four-year anniversary, and while I can't speak to the
>> beginning, the culture hasn't really changed much in my time here.
>>
>>
> I thought you were here longer than that.  I think the culture has
> changed.  The Seigenthaler incident was a big turning point in that.
> After that the rule bound control freaks seem to have become more
> dominant.  We had to respond to Seigenthaler, but in the process we
> ended up with a lot of unnecesarily restrictive procedures.
>
That's a good point. I guess I saw it as more of a course correction
than a cultural change; people were citing sources before, but if they
didn't, there was less of a willingness to challenge the unsourced
material. Certainly there are more process freaks today, but there are
more editors of all kinds - has the percentage of process freaks gone
up? I don't have any sense about that.

Another thing I wonder about is the extent to which the procedures have
actually changed the culture. Article life cycle seems pretty much the
same, editor interactions seem mostly the same, the mix of editor types
and personalities seems the same. Lots of content is being added with
nary an edit war or rouge admin dispute; I find myself missing good new
material all the time, because it goes unnoticed in the RC flood, while
DYK is just a small fraction of what's coming in.

Stan


from_name: Jim Hu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Inheritance problem for CategoryPage.php

body:
Hi,

I'm trying to write an extension that makes an alternative category
page where the subcategories are split off from the articles.  I'm
hooking at CategoryPageView, and I thought that the simplest approach
would be to extend the CategoryViewer class from CategoryPage.php.
But when I try that, I get:

[Tue Feb 20 07:26:33 2007] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Class 'Article'
not found in /Library/WebServer/Documents/wiki/includes/
CategoryPage.php on line 15

This is after I require CategoryPage.php in the extension.  Requiring
Article.php in the extension doesn't seem to help, but it works if I
hack in a

  	require_once("$IP/includes/Article.php");

in CategoryPage.php itself.  Obviously, CategoryPage doesn't normally
need this, and I'd prefer to not hack the base code.  I know that I
could get around this by just copying the CategoryViewer code into
the extension, but if I can I'd like to do this by inheritance.

I don't understand why this happens.  The hook is called from
CategoryPage.php, so why does it have to be required again? Any
explanations or suggestions?  Thanks!!

Jim
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054


body:
Spoke too soon.  Adding the require in CategoryPage.php prevents my
test wiki from crashing always, but it still crashes when trying to
view a category. :(
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Feb 20, 2007, at 7:50 AM, Jim Hu wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to write an extension that makes an alternative category
> page where the subcategories are split off from the articles.  I'm
> hooking at CategoryPageView, and I thought that the simplest approach
> would be to extend the CategoryViewer class from CategoryPage.php.
> But when I try that, I get:
>
> [Tue Feb 20 07:26:33 2007] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Class 'Article'
> not found in /Library/WebServer/Documents/wiki/includes/
> CategoryPage.php on line 15
>
> This is after I require CategoryPage.php in the extension.  Requiring
> Article.php in the extension doesn't seem to help, but it works if I
> hack in a
>
>   	require_once("$IP/includes/Article.php");
>
> in CategoryPage.php itself.  Obviously, CategoryPage doesn't normally
> need this, and I'd prefer to not hack the base code.  I know that I
> could get around this by just copying the CategoryViewer code into
> the extension, but if I can I'd like to do this by inheritance.
>
> I don't understand why this happens.  The hook is called from
> CategoryPage.php, so why does it have to be required again? Any
> explanations or suggestions?  Thanks!!
>
> Jim
> =====================================
> Jim Hu
> Associate Professor
> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
> 2128 TAMU
> Texas A&M Univ.
> College Station, TX 77843-2128
> 979-862-4054
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 2/20/07 7:44 AM, Rich Holton at richholton at gmail.com wrote:

> I know that the list admins have been criticized of late for letting
> through messages that people have questioned. However, this list is the
> forum of last resort for people who have been banned from post to Wikipedia.
>
> I'm one of those who see very little harm in letting through a hostile
> message. No one is forced to read the message.
>
> I'm also curious about the content of these messages. I have been pushed
> on this list to provide evidence for abusive admins.
>
> If calling an admin "abusive" is itself a personal attack, then am I in
> danger of being moderated when I provide such evidence? Is it the mere
> fact that the user in question called certain admins "abusive" the
> grounds for not posting the message?

I also have a problem with someone censoring what I read based on their own
personal sensitivity.

Marc Riddell


from_name: Larry Pieniazek

subject: [Commons-l] Raising the connection limit for tangotango

body:
Hi all!

Apologies if this was already asked, but TangoTango wrote a very nifty
search tool, mayflower.
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/search.php?q=mayflower&t=n

See it here on the test wiki: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search
(you may need to be logged in)

It's really great, and it got added to commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search

But unfortunately it's bumping into the 15 connection limit already.

---
  Advanced search
Please wait, searching for "mayflower"...

Warning: mysqli::mysqli() [function.mysqli-mysqli]: (42000/1226): User
'tangotango' has exceeded the 'max_user_connections' resource (current
value: 15) in /home/tangotango/public_html/mayflower/search.php on line 258

Warning: mysqli::query() [function.mysqli-query]: Couldn't fetch mysqli in
/home/tangotango/public_html/mayflower/search.php on line 287

Warning: main() [function.main]: Couldn't fetch mysqli in
/home/tangotango/public_html/mayflower/search.php on line 469

Error:

Warning: mysqli::close() [function.mysqli-close]: Couldn't fetch mysqli in
/home/tangotango/public_html/mayflower/search.php on line 472

----

Please consider raising that limit, a lot. Not sure how much but a lot
because commons searches are quite frequent.

Thanks!

Larry Pieniazek
Work mail:   lpieniaz at us.ibm.com
Hobby mail:  lar at miltontrainworks.com

> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:25:47 +0100
> From: "DaB." <wp at daniel.baur4.info>
> Subject: [Toolserver-l] New limitation of mysql-connections
> To: Toolserver-ML <toolserver-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <1171754747.3681.2.camel at DanielX.intern.baur4.info>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hello all,
>
> I created a new limitation of 15 mysql-connections at the
> same time by a user (after a user flooded mysql with a few
> dutzend connection a few time ago).
>
> If someone need more connections, please mail me, the limit
> can set per user.
>
> Have fun :).
>
> Sincerly,


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Foundation-l] The Communist Vandal Trashed the Dine (Navajo)
	Wikipedia

body:
>why was his block length shortened to 19 days?
>

19 _fortnights_. That's equivalent to 266 days. I had thought a
permanent block was too harsh, but I did not know it was an interwiki
vandal with such an illustrious history. When Jeff re-blocked him, I
left it that way, although that didn't stop Jeff from hurling a
barrage of less-than-good-will at me. In fact, he blocked me recently
for "legal threats", apparently not realizing that admins are capable
of unblocking themselves.

Regarding so-called "spaming links", the link was a "contact us"
mailto link to my personal e-mail. Similar arrangements have been used
in the past on the Chinese and Romanian Wikipedias.

Since Jeffrey clearly felt there was a problem with this, I moved it
off the site notice onto a "Contact Us" page, where it was listed as
one of 3 contact options (the other two being the local Community
Portal and Wikipedia-l). Considering how long my e-mail was there
prior to the arrival of Jeffrey, and the fact that I received several
e-mails regarding the site but no complaints about the presence of the
e-mail address, I'm not sure exactly what the problem is.

Jeffrey proceeded to remove the e-mail from that page, again accusing
me of "linkspamming" (which, although I told him it offended me that
he accused me of "linkspamming", he has repeated several times).

He said that that was against foundation policy. I asked him to cite
the appropriate policy, but rather than citing any sort of policy, he
accused me of legal threats (unrealted to this matter, from a separate
conversation), again called me a spammer, and blocked me for 12
months.

He seems to also be accusing me of holding back the nv.wp from making
any sort of progress, while he claims to have several native speakers
on hand, and yet neither he nor they have contributed any articles.

Mark

>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
On 2/20/07, samuli at samulilintula.net <samuli at samulilintula.net> wrote:
> > Erik, if a Flickr user misclicked on the dropdown and selected the
> > wrong license unknowingly and unintentionally they did not make a
> > valid release under that license.  Not only would such an accidental
> > and uncompensated release have zero legal standing, it is terrible
> > from a position of ethics.
>
> IIRC, and it has been a short while since I uploaded images with
> FlickrLickr, a FlickrLickr user *does not* select any license from a
> dropdown box.

Please re-read what I wrote. You've misunderstood me and I'm not sure
how to clarify other than to say that I'm speaking about Flickr users
and not flickrlickr users.

> > Furthermore, there are *many* copyright violations on Flickr.  Flickr
> > refuses to take complaints from third parties so it is no wonder the
> > accumulate.  A second human review is a good sanity check against
> > situations where the flickr user is not really the copyright holder.
>
> Yes, but this chance has already once been reviewed by a FlickrLickr user.
> A second checks is just as silly an idea as double checking all images
> uploaded directly to Commons.

We've seen some copyvios from flickr. I've not personally used
FlickrLickr, does it make it easy to see other uploads from the same
person? Thats a typical place to look for signs of trouble.

> Well, I'm not going to touch any of those images I uploaded with
> FlickrLickr. Re-checking them is a waste of time, tagging them was a
> stupid move, and I'll let someone else choke on work no one has time to
> do.

No one asked you to.


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 2/20/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 20/02/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm with Oskar. If they call various administrators abusive they should
> be
> > able to back that up.
> > Of course, the smarter response is to talk it out with the admin in
> question
> > so it doesn't come to such accusations.
> >
> > Mgm
>
> Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
> shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
> those have been let through?

If you get to the point where you need to ask the list if you should have
moderated the message, you should send it to the list. Sending a message
saying that you considered moderation because of its tone may be
appropriate.

I.e., when in doubt, err on the side of transparency.

We're not children here; we can take the random annoying message.


body:
on 2/20/07 8:36 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

> On 20/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I also have a problem with someone censoring what I read based on their own
>> personal sensitivity.
>
>
> I really don't think that's an accurate description of what actually happens.
>
>
> - d.
>
David,

When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.

Marc


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Otrs-en-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] If you don't object
	to this, you're consenting

body:
On 20/02/07, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:

> > That's fine - OTRS volunteers will forward valid requests to the OTRS
> > legal queue, and close/deal with the insane/hysterical ones.
>
> I don't see where the Help Desk or the Foundation links are useful to get
> redress for factual errors.

"Thanks for letting us know; we've fixed it" is a marvellously useful phrase.

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


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> Calling someone "abusive" is still an ad hominem statement.
> Rather than saying "Admin X is abusive!1!" the person should say...

Indeed he should.  But this is also at the heart of one of the
rather disturbing asymmetries in the admin/non-admin relationship.

When a non-admin engaged in a petty dispute complains about some
of the things being said about him in that dispute, he's often
told, in so many words, not to take it so personally, to get a
thicker skin, that Wikipedia can be a harsh place, that if he
can't stand the heat this kitchen might not be the place for him.

But when a non-admin engaged in a petty dispute with an admin
calls the admin "abusive", or in a moment of anger refers to the
admin's revertions of the non-admin's petty edits as "vandalism",
he's apt to be blocked for this abuse.


body:
on 2/20/07 8:55 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:

> Helping you not to make a fool of yourself?  It's one possibility,
> anyway.,
>
> Guy (JzG)

Come on, Guy; that's about as subjective as it gets. You're going to do me a
favor by censoring what I write?

Marc


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
On 2/20/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 20/02/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > If you get to the point where you need to ask the list if you should
> have
> > moderated the message, you should send it to the list. Sending a message
> > saying that you considered moderation because of its tone may be
> > appropriate.
> > I.e., when in doubt, err on the side of transparency.
> > We're not children here; we can take the random annoying message.
>
>
> This is pretty much how it works. The moderation is basically to keep
> the level of utter crap down to manageable levels.
>
> (We're back to having new members start moderated. It was nice while it
> lasted.)
>

And the reasoning is why, precisely?

Oh, right. To make the echo chamber worse.

====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
> someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.

Editorial judgment.

It's what we do.

--Jimbo


from_name: Martin, Jon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images to be

body:
Dear Mr. Wales,

My apologies for bugging you on this. I am a new Wiki contributor
(fizbin) and am a bit confused by requirements for uploading photo
images. Below is an email conversation between myself and the owners
(New York Road Runners) of an online photograph I'd like to insert in
the Wiki entry for Jordan Hasay. Yet even though they clearly give
permission to use the photo in the Wiki entry, the Wiki rules you posted
have me confused as to whether you folks will allow its use. It almost
seems by what I've read that the only photos allowed will be ones that
contributors take with their own cameras!

Please advise. Thank you.

Jon Martin

Oakland, CA

________________________________

From: Jillian Haber [mailto:jhaber at nyrr.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 8:45 AM
To: Shannon Martin; Martin, Jon
Subject: Re: Fast Women Photos On Wikipedia

Hi Jon,

You have permission to post that photo of Jordan Hasay from the 2005
Foot Locker Nationals.  Please include the follow photo credit with the
photo

Photo Credit: Courtesy of New York Road Runners

Thanks,
Jillian

On 2/20/07 10:52 AM, "Shannon Martin" <smartin at nyrr.org> wrote:

Hello Jon,
I am copying this message to our photo editor, Jillian. 2005 is the last
year that NYRR shot photos of the Foot Locker Nationals, so that is
probably the most up-to-date photo of Jordan that we have.  Jillian
should be in touch with you soon as to the possibility of using this
photo.

Thank you!
Shannon

Shannon Martin
Editor
Fast-women.com
Mensracing.com
smartin at nyrr.org
New York Road Runners
9 East 89th Street
New York, NY 10128
212 860 4455
Extension 324

________________________________

From: Martin, Jon [mailto:jmartin at ebmud.com]
<mailto:jmartin at ebmud.com%5d>
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 4:04 PM
To: Shannon Martin
Subject: Fast Women Photos On Wikipedia

Dear Ms. Martin,

While looking up some info I came across the Wikipedia entry for Jordan
Hasay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Hasay). The entry was poorly
written, and so I spent a little time today cleaning up the beginning of
it. I was thinking of adding a photo, but got buried in Wiki's fair use
policy which appears to prohibit linking to pretty much any online
photos without express consent of the owners, which sounds fair to me. I
also note that your web site also has similar language.

So this is a request to add one of your site's photos of Jordan Hasay to
her Wiki entry. This one from the 2005 Footlocker would be good
(http://www.fast-women.com/photos/2005/footlockerxc05/footlockerxc120.jp
g), but your site has many pictures and you may have others you feel are
better for this purpose. If so, please let me know.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.
Jon Martin
Oakland, CA

Jillian Haber
Photo Editor
New York Road Runners
(212) 423-2237
jhaber at nyrr.org


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: I have a problem with CheckUser as administered
	by JPGordon

body:
On 2/20/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I am concerned that there has not been a single response beyond this to
> the
> > aggrieved user's post yet.
>
> Perhaps that has something to do with wikien-l not being part of the
> dispute resolution procedure?

It appears as though attempts to have any resolution or investigation are
being stonewalled, the user is being deliberately kept from their rightful
dispute resolution process, and that there is a severe systematic attempt to
block complaints because they relate to "high-ranking" administrators.

Your response is just one more example of same.

Parker

--
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


body:
On 2/20/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > But David, this takes me back to the original question: Is it really
> > offensive to call someone abusive? I, personally, would not use the word
> to
> > define someone, I would, instead, describe their behavior as abusive;
> but
> > isn't that, in the context of this List, somewhat nickpicky?
> >
> > Marc
>
> It totally depends on the context. If you have a serious complaint
> that you present properly with solid evidence to back it up, then
> calling an admin abusive isn't all that big of a deal. If you can't do
> that well and you are just throwing the word around, then hell yeah
> it's offensive.
>

I haven't seen the message, but in a later email Mark Ryan admits that diffs
were provided as evidence of the abuse.

Yet he blocked the emails claiming that it was a personal attack.

This is censorship, if not worse, and definitely does not help Wikipedia,
nor does it do anything to help resolve the situation. If anything, all it
is going to do is prove to the user that there IS a systematic attempt at a
coverup or something similar to protect administrators who abuse their
powers.

Parker

--
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


body:
on 2/20/07 9:10 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at wikia.com wrote:

> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
>> someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.
>
> Editorial judgment.
>
> It's what we do.
>
> --Jimbo

Fine literary editing requires a great deal of talent, and even the finest
writer needs an equally fine editor. But, do all of the persons editing
(moderating) this list have that degree of talent?

Marc


body:
On 2/20/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 20/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > on 2/20/07 9:26 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > No, which is why we try to keep a light hand and err on the side of
> > > letting stuff through. It takes a remarkable level of stupid for us to
> > > bother doing anything.
>
> > But David, this takes me back to the original question: Is it really
> > offensive to call someone abusive? I, personally, would not use the word
> to
> > define someone, I would, instead, describe their behavior as abusive;
> but
> > isn't that, in the context of this List, somewhat nickpicky?
>
>
> I'd generally allow it to pass myself in the first instance, FWIW.
> Though I'd expect substantiation to follow. It's supposed to be a
> productive working list for a project.
>
>
> - d.
>

The user in question has, in fact, mailed in not just numerous diffs but a
very accurate description of the situation. In fact, they were attacked by
other users of this list for sending "too many" emails, apparently because
the list system was not functioning properly and did not inform them of the
moderation queue.

As far as I can understand after investigating with my own tools, the
behavior towards this user was in fact abusive on the part of the involved
administrators. In fact, the whole circumstances surrounding the case seem
to stem from an administrator who felt it was his "right" to poke and prod
and provoke a returned user, trying to get a reaction in order to justify a
ban.

The fact that administrators actually will stand up to defend deliberate
provocation - behavior that would NEVER be tolerated of a normal user,
especially if it were directed at an administrator or so-called "respected
user" - is one more bit of proof that wikipedia has become elitist and of
the major cultural problems generated by too small a pool of people who have
too much power for their egos to withstand. The "rules" as we put them forth
seem to only apply to "other people" and you can get away with far too much
if you've got a friend with power, or power yourself.

Of course, the fact that emails seem to have sat in the queue for 36 hours
or more (one email, which I did not receive until Monday night, was
apparently sent Sunday morning) isn't helping either. I'm sure that is
frustrating the user to no end.

Parker
--
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>I know that the list admins have been criticized of late for letting
>>through messages that people have questioned. However, this list is the
>>forum of last resort for people who have been banned from post to Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>It rarely does any good, though. It would be better if they emailed
>the admin in question, or ArbCom.
>
A common element in the complaints is that the admin in question does
not respond to questions.

>>I'm one of those who see very little harm in letting through a hostile
>>message. No one is forced to read the message.
>>
>>
>There is no way to know if you want to read a message before you've
>read it, so you are forcing people to either read the message or not
>read the list at all. (You could read all the messages that don't
>mention admin abuse in the subject line, I suppose, but that would
>still result in you not reading perfectly good messages about admin
>abuse.)
>
You're just urging this false choice to be dramatic.  It doesn't take
much effort to look at the beginning of a message and decide that you
don't want to read it.  At that point it's easy to delete it and
anything else in that thread.  At least Mark was gracious enough to
outline his dilemma.  I am more worried by where others could take this
in the future than about what will happen with this individual.

Ec


from_name: Gregory Kohs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins worthy of review

body:
There has been a request to "count" the admins that we have encountered at
Wikipedia, who may at one time or another have chaffed non-admin editors.
Some of the most difficult actions that I've seen from admins are those who
get into a conflict with a non-admin editor, then block the non-admin
editor, then erase or censor the history of the discussion, then chastise
the non-admin editor in private or off-Wikipedia correspondence.

Some of the admins I have seen fulfill all or most of these distasteful
actions are:

User:Pschemp
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Travb&diff=next&oldid=104576572)
-- this admin has been very active in the past with blocking IP addresses
and such.  But, I feel a line was crossed when discussion between two OTHER
users was censored because it posed a situation whose implications Pschemp
didn't like.

User:JzG
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:JzG&diff=prev&oldid=107526553
) -- my interpretation is that this admin was dishonest in his edit summary
when he deleted an article from Wikipedia, by saying "article created by a
banned user while banned".  The date of article creation was June 2005,
about 15 months before any banning related to this company took place.  So,
there is an untruth in the public record (
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=ICR/International_Communications_Research),
but when attention is called to it, that comment gets deleted by a "Troll B
Gon" device with unlimited comedic value and an equally boundless disdain
for civility.

User:Lucky 6.9
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=User_talk:Lucky_6.9)
-- this guy was quite famous for making edits and dishing out User blocks,
then when properly-formatted complaints would be leveled to the
administrative heirarchy, he would try to censor out the complaints before
anyone was able to take action.  It looks like he self-destructed before the
ArbCom or anyone higher could desysop him.

Now, those are merely three off the top of my head, just from my
experience.  I will venture a guess that the WikiEN-l list will now work to
discredit me personally, because I brought these examples to the group's
attention.  What will THAT process then say about the cultural health of the
admin community?

--
Gregory Kohs
Cell: 302.463.1354


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
>>shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
>>those have been let through?
>>
>>
>It's a judgement call. I trust your judgement of the situation. This
>mailing list isn't the place for complaining about abusive admins,
>anyway.
>
My understanding was that when they are blocked they are told to come to
this list if they want to take their complaint further.  Is this wrong?

This would seem to account for the fact that most of these complaints
are from people who had not previously participated in the mailing
list.  How else would we end up with them?


body:
on 2/20/07 9:26 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

> No, which is why we try to keep a light hand and err on the side of
> letting stuff through. It takes a remarkable level of stupid for us to
> bother doing anything.
>
>
> - d.

But David, this takes me back to the original question: Is it really
offensive to call someone abusive? I, personally, would not use the word to
define someone, I would, instead, describe their behavior as abusive; but
isn't that, in the context of this List, somewhat nickpicky?

Marc


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 2/20/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> For transparency, the moderated user "countpointercount" has the
> following message for subscribers to the mailing list:
>
> 'Your "moderators" are now claiming that any reporting of abusive
> administrators is a "personal attack." This is obvious coverup
> behavior.'
>
>
> This is in response to my rejection of two emails, both of which I
> considered to contain personal attacks because they called various
> administrators 'abusive' etc. What are the thoughts of subscribers to
> the list on this? What would the appropriate course of action have
> been?
>
> ~Mark Ryan

Speaking for myself (and, I think, a number of other users), I
completely trust your and the other mods capability to judge whether
or not a post contains personal attacks. Ask him to state his case in
a more civil and neutral manner, and if he does so, let it through.

Not using personal attacks is the most basic criteria for being
allowed in the conversation, and if he can't do that, he shouldn't be
allowed to post.

Keep up the good work.

--Oskar


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] The Communist Vandal Trashed the Dine (Navajo)
 Wikipedia

body:
This really isn't the place for this.   I will take the matter to meta.

Jeff

Mark Williamson wrote:

>>why was his block length shortened to 19 days?
>>
>>
>>
>
>19 _fortnights_. That's equivalent to 266 days. I had thought a
>permanent block was too harsh, but I did not know it was an interwiki
>vandal with such an illustrious history. When Jeff re-blocked him, I
>left it that way, although that didn't stop Jeff from hurling a
>barrage of less-than-good-will at me. In fact, he blocked me recently
>for "legal threats", apparently not realizing that admins are capable
>of unblocking themselves.
>
>Regarding so-called "spaming links", the link was a "contact us"
>mailto link to my personal e-mail. Similar arrangements have been used
>in the past on the Chinese and Romanian Wikipedias.
>
>Since Jeffrey clearly felt there was a problem with this, I moved it
>off the site notice onto a "Contact Us" page, where it was listed as
>one of 3 contact options (the other two being the local Community
>Portal and Wikipedia-l). Considering how long my e-mail was there
>prior to the arrival of Jeffrey, and the fact that I received several
>e-mails regarding the site but no complaints about the presence of the
>e-mail address, I'm not sure exactly what the problem is.
>
>Jeffrey proceeded to remove the e-mail from that page, again accusing
>me of "linkspamming" (which, although I told him it offended me that
>he accused me of "linkspamming", he has repeated several times).
>
>He said that that was against foundation policy. I asked him to cite
>the appropriate policy, but rather than citing any sort of policy, he
>accused me of legal threats (unrealted to this matter, from a separate
>conversation), again called me a spammer, and blocked me for 12
>months.
>
>He seems to also be accusing me of holding back the nv.wp from making
>any sort of progress, while he claims to have several native speakers
>on hand, and yet neither he nor they have contributed any articles.
>
>Mark
>
>
>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
I'm with Oskar. If they call various administrators abusive they should be
able to back that up.
Of course, the smarter response is to talk it out with the admin in question
so it doesn't come to such accusations.

Mgm

On 2/20/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/20/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > For transparency, the moderated user "countpointercount" has the
> > following message for subscribers to the mailing list:
> >
> > 'Your "moderators" are now claiming that any reporting of abusive
> > administrators is a "personal attack." This is obvious coverup
> > behavior.'
> >
> >
> > This is in response to my rejection of two emails, both of which I
> > considered to contain personal attacks because they called various
> > administrators 'abusive' etc. What are the thoughts of subscribers to
> > the list on this? What would the appropriate course of action have
> > been?
> >
> > ~Mark Ryan
>
> Speaking for myself (and, I think, a number of other users), I
> completely trust your and the other mods capability to judge whether
> or not a post contains personal attacks. Ask him to state his case in
> a more civil and neutral manner, and if he does so, let it through.
>
> Not using personal attacks is the most basic criteria for being
> allowed in the conversation, and if he can't do that, he shouldn't be
> allowed to post.
>
> Keep up the good work.
>
> --Oskar
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Mark Ryan wrote:

>On 20/02/07, MacGyverMagic wrote:
>
>
>>I'm with Oskar. If they call various administrators abusive they should be
>>able to back that up.
>>Of course, the smarter response is to talk it out with the admin in question
>>so it doesn't come to such accusations.
>>
>>Mgm
>>
>>
>Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
>shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
>those have been let through?
>
For me it's clearly yes.  The diffs are a key positive factor.

Simply calling an admin abusive should not be a serious factor, nor
should failing to discern the subtlety between an abusive admin and an
abusive action.  I think that very few people would make that
distinction.  Relevance is more important.  A claim of admin abuse is
specifically about what the admin does in Wikipedia, and is thus
relevant.  If the claimant enters into all manner of claims about the
admin's personal morals, paternity or sexual preferences that would
clearly be beyond our control, and would fail the relevance test.

Ec


from_name: cohesion

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: Draft licensing policy resolution

body:
On 2/20/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> ; Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP)

That term seems a little redundant to me, but it's not the end of the
world. Otherwise this is all *very* encouraging!

Judson
[[:en:User:Cohesion]]


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Captcha changes

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

Any File wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> I've fixed up the image-based captcha to read from subdirectories, which
>> should put less load on the file server.
>
> Sorry for asking more information about captcha, but I have some
> problem in understanding how the various system message works.
>
> I have found 4 system messages in Allmessages
> * captcha-createaccount
> * captcha-edit
> * fancycaptcha-createaccount
> * fancycaptcha-edit
> (as weel as some other related messages like captcha-createaccount-fail )
>
> According to what I have been seeing on it.wikinews the
> captcha-createaccount message was used some time ago and was asked to
> enter a word displayed distorted in an image, then the same message
> was used, but what the user had to do was to solve a math operation,
> than from today (or yesterday) the  fancycaptcha-createaccount is used
> and an image of a distorted word is displayed.
>
> What are the system message that are used?

The ones above. The two pairs were separated a few weeks ago to make it
easier to have distinct directions for the math sample implementation
('captcha') and the image-based one ('fancycaptcha').

> Can I assume that, form now on, image of a word will be displayed and
> the user asked to insert the  distorted word displayed in the image?

Unless/until it changes.

> By the way in the default (English) message it is written "... enter
> the words  ... ", the plural is used, but I have seen only one word on
> the image. (Well actually I have made just a few tests)

It's always two words combined.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On 19/02/07, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> We just can't make up our own definition as to what is "tall" and what isn't.

Right. On the other hand, we can describe "tall" in terms of falling
into a particular percentile of height across all persons. A little
searching led to this; I am sure more recent data exists.

http://www.hf.faa.gov/Webtraining/HFModel/Variance/anthropometrics2.htm

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>For my money, a properly stated case against an admin from an editor
>with a history and a decent reputation is never a problem.  The vast
>majority of complaints about admin behaviour are generic "rouge admin
>abuse" crap and can safely be ignored, especially if they can't bring
>themselves to state it in a civil manner.  Sounds like this lot fails
>on both levels.
>
An editor with a history and decent reputation knows the ropes, and that
alone helps to keep him out of trouble.  There are exceptions, as the
recent complaints by Waerth have shown.  His complaints about how Thai
open proxies are blocked made sense, but his presentation of the problem
and abuse of those who wanted to help was abrasive and disinclined most
people from trying to help him

The others probably don't know what they have at their disposal, and
need to be taught.  One starts with the presumption that the claim is
valid, even if 95% of those claims turn out to be completely unfounded.
We can't really judge the validity of a claim without investigating more
deeply.

Some claimants are grossly abusive and offensive.  This goes well beyond
simple claims of admin abuse, or the occasional cuss word.  This should
receive a personal response from the moderator asking the claimant to
tone down his comment, and restate his complaint in a more civil
manner.  The mederator could even promise that if he does that he will
let the revised complaint move onto the list.  The moderator makes no
comment whatsoever about the merits of the claim; doing so would
compromise his neutrality.  The moderator can let the claimant know that
list members are free to take up advocacy or not for the claim, and that
it is not uncommon to wait for up to 48 hours before there is any reply.

Once a complaint has reached the list it is up to the interested list
members to ask for diffs or other missing information.  A very common
missing bit of information is the person's own user name, without which
nothing can be done with the complaint.

Assuming the complainant gets the message about how to civilly present
his case, arguments can be made against excessive e-mails or persistent
whining, but it is difficult to establish clear criteria about these
because the tolerance of list members varies considerably.  Again
though, the moderator must avoid getting himself into the middle of a
fight that has nothing to do with him.

Ec


from_name: William Pietri

body:
Mark Ryan wrote:
> For transparency, the moderated user "countpointercount" has the
> following message for subscribers to the mailing list:
>
> 'Your "moderators" are now claiming that any reporting of abusive
> administrators is a "personal attack." This is obvious coverup
> behavior.'
>
>
> This is in response to my rejection of two emails, both of which I
> considered to contain personal attacks because they called various
> administrators 'abusive' etc. What are the thoughts of subscribers to
> the list on this? What would the appropriate course of action have
> been?
>

Having  been cc'd on one of those rejected messages, I think you made
the right decision.

I looked into the user in question, and he was being contentious and
difficult on AIV within 30 minutes of creating his account. I'd give
10:1 odds that he's a sockpuppet doing the standard
I'm-really-not-a-sockpuppet dance. His refusal to calm down and the
stridency of his accusations aren't helping, either.

On the off chance that his he's really a well-meaning user, it seems to
me that he doesn't have a lot invested in that account, and he's already
gotten himself a bad reputation. If he's still following this list, I'd
suggest that he just let this incident go and take a month's break from
Wikipedia. Then when he has cooled down, he can start fresh with a new
account. As long as he becomes a good contributor and  behaves
appropriately, nobody will know or care that he once got off on the
wrong foot.

I know some people are concerned that this is censorship, and is
blocking an avenue of appeal. If people are really worried about that,
we could create another list where we try to sort the wheat from the
chaff and talk down from the ledge people who are upset, legitimately or
not. Something between an ombudsman, a help desk, and a therapist. I'd
rather not see that traffic on this list, but I'm glad to serve on that
other list.

William


from_name: Luna

body:
On 2/20/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
>
> I know some people are concerned that this is censorship, and is
> blocking an avenue of appeal. If people are really worried about that,
> we could create another list where we try to sort the wheat from the
> chaff and talk down from the ledge people who are upset, legitimately or
> not. Something between an ombudsman, a help desk, and a therapist. I'd
> rather not see that traffic on this list, but I'm glad to serve on that
> other list.
>

There's always unblock-en-l. As is probably the case with all of these
lists, it's too easy for frequent respondents and readers on that list,
myself included, to become jaded, so a little outside input and oversight
would probably be welcome, in my opinion.

Most of the requests on there are pretty obvious, but some aren't.

-Luna


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 20/02/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 2/20/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
>>>shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
>>>those have been let through?
>>>
>>>
>>Calling someone "abusive" is still an ad hominem statement. Rather
>>than saying "Admin X is abusive!1!" the person should say "Admin X
>>engaged in behaviour on Y page that seemed abusive to me, here's some
>>diffs..."
>>
>>
>wikien-l is to some extent an official channel for complaint. Starting
>unduly stroppy is generally forgivable.
>
>But if the accusations are serious, list readers will reasonably
>expect details and diffs.
>
Sure, and it's understandable if this is missing from the initial
complaint.  If a listmember wants to take it further he can always ask
those questions.  Stonewalling the questions will do nothing to settle
the problem.

Ec


from_name: Chris Picone

subject: [WikiEN-l] An idea for deletions

body:
I haven't read a lot of the responses but this looks waaay too
bureaucratic and prevents public debate/discussion

--Chris is me

On 2/13/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just an idea I have been bouncing around for deletion nominations.
>
> If a user, any user either with an account or anonymous wants to
> nominate an article for deletion. Instead of posting directly to AFD,
> he instead enters the name of the article and the reason he thinks it
> needs to be deleted into a web form. The nomination then goes to a
> "deletion preview" team who can take one of several actions...
>
> 1. Speedy delete. Only for obvious no doubt speedy deletion
> candidates, nonsense pages and troll pages. Example "Jimbo Wales is a
> bonehead" or "list of glups that glip".
>
> 2. Speedy keep. Article is definitely not a candidate for deletion ie
> some bozo nominates "George W. Bush" or "Star Wars". Also could be
> used to keep articles with a strong keep consensus from being
> constantly renominated by a troll.
>
> 3. Bounce back. The nominator (if a registered user) will be asked to
> resubmit the nom. ie "please be more specific then "fancruft" or
> "unencyclopedic""
>
> 4.Pass to ADF. Only then does the nomination go to AFD and only then
> does the article get tagged.
>
> 5. Rewrite by previewer. The nomination as written is invalid but the
> previewer notices something else about the article that bugs him.
>
> I think such a system would reduce the load on AFD but still allow us
> to deal with problem articles promptly.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: effe iets anders

subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page
	movesinpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

body:
I think anthere tried to explain that those changes have to be made on every
wiki. Not technically, but regarding policy. If I read correct, the
foundtaion wants that the technical side of every language project is about
the same, to make it easy to switch from one project to another.

In that case, I would like to add that the move page functionality should be
given to both users with a certain time of existance, but also to sysops.
That is because of the stewards, reverting vandalism on small wiki's then.
But that might be logical anyway. I think in that case two weeks makes more
sense then one and a half month. That is imho just far too long. In one
month a person is usually able to vote in votes, and is already sometimes
part of the hardcore community. Two weeks might even be too long.

Lodewijk

2007/2/20, Titoxd op Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia op gmail.com>:
>
> Well, this is a technical change to one site's configuration of a
> magnitude
> similar to adding an extra namespace to a wiki. More technically, it means
> modifying one wiki's LocalSettings.php file. I'm not entirely sure how
> changing $wgAutoConfirmAge on pt.wikipedia.org will affect
> en.wikipedia.org,
> for example. Technically, those settings are completely independent of one
> another, as they reside on separate files. The only way one wiki's
> technical
> requests affect everyone is when there is something *added* to MediaWiki,
> and those effects are due to a new setting added to MediaWiki's
> DefaultSettings.php file. As this isn't the case, since the functionality
> is
> already there (that's the reason there's a four-day page-move restriction
> in
> *all* Wikimedia wikis), changing it on one should not affect the other
> ones.
> I'm not sure if Anthere's worry is that a setting of 45 days in pt: will
> mean changing the setting to 45 days everywhere else, but if that is it,
> then there is no reason to worry. Looking at the code, there is absolutely
> no reason why the change would impact other wikis outside the Portuguese
> Wikipedia.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthere
> Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 3:17 PM
> To: foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page
> movesinpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
> >>First, having a software displaying different behavior depending on the
> >>language/project is a bad idea. It makes things very complex and users
> >>travelling from one language to another are likely to find this
> disturbing.
> >
> >
> > That same logic could be used to say all languages should have the
> > same system for RFA, AFD, etc. It was decided a long time ago that
> > different languages would be allowed to decide their own policies.
> > Policies which are enforced by the software are no different from any
> > other policies.
>
> No, it is not the same. Policies with social implications (such as RFA,
> AFD) may be developped independently by each community, without having
> any consequences on the choice made by other communities.
>
> Policies with technical implications may imply that a decision made by
> one community, will be forced over the other communities. This is what
> happened for many many months, as all software evolutions were driven by
> the english community and forced over the other communities along the
> way. We are no more in these times. If a change of software is
> suggested, which could impact all communities, then there must be a
> general agreement that this is a good idea.
>
> Note that I do not say the suggestion is good or bad. I simply say "do
> not expect a top down decision".
>
> ant
>
> >
> > Personally, I think 45 days is rather long, and I'm a little
> > uncomfortable with it apparently being handled as a vote (although the
> > results of the vote don't leave much room for interpretation, so it
> > probably makes no difference), but if that's how pt want to do things,
> > it's entirely up to them.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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