list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Klingon Wiktionary closed

body:
On 31/03/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> Aside from the sensationalist fallacious logic that getting rid of
> Klingon Wiktionary means we will get rid of every other constructed
> language, even ones with native speakers and literature, has anyone
> offered any reason to keep it?
>
> We're still talking about the fictional language of a race of
> intelligent crustaceans in the 24th century as portrayed in a popular TV
> show, right? I think it should be the responsibility of that project's
> editors (if there are any), now that the Wikipedia is shut down, to now
> take it through the normal procedure for opening new Wiktionaries, as
> this one never did.

For the sake of full disclosure: I have never watched an episode of
Star Trek on TV or any of the films. I have no interest in the
fictional world.

I, for one, object to the closure of projects based on elitist
concerns as to the origin of the language. What matters is the place
of the language in the world now. This language is, crucially,
recognised as a language by the International Standardisation
Organisation

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
On 31/03/07, Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:

> could potentially cause damage. For example, simply being on an
> arbcom, as an authoritative body, could potentially have legal
> implications (I don't know if we do have any under 18s on these
> committees, but I don't know of any policy against it).

Sam Korn was on the en:wp arbcom at age 16, though he quit so as not
to interfere with his A-levels.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> So wikipedia is doomed to keep having its sordid downside? We're doomed
> to always be fighting a losing battle against libels and lies?

I wonder just how much of these "libels and lies" are real malice? I
suspect that much of it consists of things that "they just know",
"everybody knows" or "I read it in a blog/Usenet post". It's
reinforced by reading them in a lot of such posts. Who made that quote
about repeating a lie so many times that it becomes the truth? On top
of that, people can be very obstinate about things that "they just
know".

I good essay idea would be "Wikipedia is not for stuff read on the net
one day" followed by examples of places where you have to "read about
something" before you can put it into Wikipedia.


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting hammered in a tv interview is not fun

body:
On 3/31/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 3/31/07 10:43 AM, Ken Arromdee at arromdee at rahul.net wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, Marc Riddell wrote:
> >> This is in response to several recent posts. For the record, the
> concept of
> >> "do no harm" I was presenting to in WP was related to what information
> we,
> >> as editors, choose to include in biographies of persons. My point was
> that
> >> to consciously include gratuitous, tabloid-like junk in a biographical
> >> article is unnecessarily harmful to the person.
> >
> > "Do no harm" and "do no unnecessary harm" are *vastly* different.
> >
> Harm - in any form - no matter how it is phrased - should be unacceptable.
>
> Marc

If I'm not mistaken, there is a lot of bitterness in the Armenian community
about the Turkish genocide. Doesn't having an article about the Turkish
massacre of the Armenians harm the Turks by supporting the Armenian
bitterness against the Turks? Hell, doesn't having any article which
objectively states facts that aren't to the liking of somebody harm that
entity?

I still fail to see why "Do no harm" should be elevated to the status of a
pillar of WP, or above that. It's a good principle, but if it means throwing
out NPOV or accuracy, I know what I'd go with.

Johnleemk


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-04-01

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20876).

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

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

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


body:
On 4/1/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> John Lee wrote:
> > On 3/31/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >> on 3/31/07 10:43 AM, Ken Arromdee at arromdee at rahul.net wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, Marc Riddell wrote:
> >>>> This is in response to several recent posts. For the record, the
> >> concept of
> >>>> "do no harm" I was presenting to in WP was related to what
> information
> >> we,
> >>>> as editors, choose to include in biographies of persons. My point was
> >> that
> >>>> to consciously include gratuitous, tabloid-like junk in a
> biographical
> >>>> article is unnecessarily harmful to the person.
> >>> "Do no harm" and "do no unnecessary harm" are *vastly* different.
> >>>
> >> Harm - in any form - no matter how it is phrased - should be
> unacceptable.
> >>
> >> Marc
> >
> >
> > If I'm not mistaken, there is a lot of bitterness in the Armenian
> community
> > about the Turkish genocide. Doesn't having an article about the Turkish
> > massacre of the Armenians harm the Turks by supporting the Armenian
> > bitterness against the Turks? Hell, doesn't having any article which
> > objectively states facts that aren't to the liking of somebody harm that
> > entity?
> >
> > I still fail to see why "Do no harm" should be elevated to the status of
> a
> > pillar of WP, or above that. It's a good principle, but if it means
> throwing
> > out NPOV or accuracy, I know what I'd go with.
> >
> > Johnleemk
>
> This is ridiculous. I did not suggest 'do no harm' was to be a pillar of
> wikipedia. I merely
> suggested that when we are considering policies for improving wikipedia,
> that simply
> looking to what might get us sued is insufficient. We should also
> consider organising
> ourselves to minimise the damage we may do to individuals by having POV
> articles, attack pages, or allowing malicious people to post any crap
> about them. Here we have a moral as well as a legal responsibility to
> minimise harm. We are human beings, we don't need
> [[Wikipedia:TheSermonOnTheMount]] to tell us that thinking about others,
> and the impact our project has on them, is a Good Thing.
> Doc

I wasn't responding specifically to you - I was responding to Marc, who
seems to think otherwise.

Johnleemk


from_name: Jon Harald Søby

subject: [Foundation-l] Red category link is unhelpful

body:
Text on a category page is usually unnecessary, yes, but a category page
should always be categorized. An unhierarchical category system is of no use
whatsoever.

Actually, some developer said the same thing that you did a few months ago
(or perhaps more than a year ago, I can't remember), and made all category
links red, and there were a lot of complaints, so it was reverted.

On 4/1/07, Virgil Ierubino <virgil.ierubino at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Seen as category pages work even if they DO contain no text, treating them
> in the same way as a nonexistent article is unhelpful (especially to newer
> users who only think they see a broken link). I was thinking that perhaps
> category links could be red if they contain only the page they are linked
> from, blue otherwise. Text on a category page is largely unneeded.
>
> Just an idea. Thanks :).
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Jon Harald S?by
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Extensive Link Errors related to Proper Names -
 Needs	Fixing

body:
Mohamed Magdy wrote:

>Mets501 wrote:
>
>
>>>Whomever is running bots that link between articles should look at
>>>proper name links based on categories and check into this.  I found a
>>>large number of these types of errors.  They are subtle, but will most
>>>probably show up when browsing through articles unless you can analyze
>>>the link targets and relationships in the dumps.
>>>
>>>Jeff
>>>
>>>
>>Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_owners%27_noticeboard.
>>--Mets501
>>
>>
>>
>AFAIK links to another articles are done using human editors NOT bots..
>
>
>
>
I try to not post to the English Wikipedia or its mailing lists. The
problem was reported on Foundation-l with a courtesty notice to
the developers who control the dumps of the problem.

Jeff

Jeff


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Extensive Link Errors related to Proper Names -
	Needs	Fixing

body:
> Whomever is running bots that link between articles should look at
> proper name links based on categories and check into this.  I found a
> large number of these types of errors.  They are subtle, but will most
> probably show up when browsing through articles unless you can analyze
> the link targets and relationships in the dumps.
>
> Jeff

Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_owners%27_noticeboard.
--Mets501


from_name: Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
Hello,

The Language Prevention (sub)Committee would like to announce that the
Kabyle Wikipedia  has entered the localization stage. Once the primary
interface messages are translated, the subcommittee will recommend the
creation of the Kabyle Wikipedia to the board.

The Kabyle Wikipedia will be the first new wiki approved by the
subcommittee, so we've asked the Kabyle community to help tweak the
process for future requests. Based on this discussion, we have made it
unnecessary to translate the entire interface: 327 messages are
currently listed as unnecessary, and users have been invited to
suggest others.

The Language Prevention (sub)Committee is profoundly sorry for failing
to prevent the upcoming creation of the Kabyle Wikipedia, and is in
particular sorry for projecting a far quicker processing rate once the
procedure has been tested.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

* request: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kabyle
* localization discussion:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kabyle#Localization

Note: This message is only partially tongue-in-cheek (try to guess
which parts ;) ) and is not an official statement of the language
subcommittee.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lock new article creation for three months

body:
On 01/04/07, SonOfYoungwood at aol.com <SonOfYoungwood at aol.com> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 3/31/2007 7:07:46 PM Central Daylight Time,
> darthvader1219 at gmail.com writes:
>
> On  3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
> >  for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> >  articles.
>
>
> I feel this is a poor idea; some articles might need significant trimming  or
> need to be broken up into several subarticles. Also, some articles need to be
>  renamed, and so on. And what if an admin decides to delete a bunch of
> articles  to be an asshole?

Also, some users just/mostly enjoy article creation (I was once one of
these), they will be gone if this is implemented.

To be honest, I don't think article creation is stealing much effort
into other areas. Most users almost always edit existing articles. So
if we can't expect efforts to be redirected, this won't help us much
at all.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: doc

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

> Just like the problem of unsourced content, it's a problem of people,
> not of policies.
>

However, being realistic, our community is too large and impersonal for
us to be in the business of reforming people - all we can do is change
policies. But I get yelled at every time I suggest that.
Doc


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
On Sun, 1 Apr 2007, wiki_tomos at inter7.jp wrote:

> I think check user generates certain legal risk to the Foundation especially
> when he is a minor.

Please help quantify "certain risk".
Simply modifying a page generates certain risk.

> If a check user is legally a minor, he may be able to legally get away with
> breaking promises he has made, including the compliance with privacy policy.
> I am not sure if minors really are less reliable than adults, but if they
> are equally unreliable, then the Foundation is more responsible for minors'
> violation of privacy policy than adults.
>
> So, not because minors are less reliable, but because adults can bear
> more legal risk when they abuse their check user privilege, it is legally
> safer for the Foundation to limit the check user to adults.

I don't know how much risk there really is here, or what kinds of case
studies in the rest of the real world represent parallels that might shed
light on the question.  This all seems rather hypothetical -- because
everyone editing anonymously is already sharing this kind of information,
and because this is far, far less invasive than the kinds of privacy
violations that a site or group that collects real private personal data
might worry about.

When have there been checkuser abuses, or anything close to checkuser
abuses, that led to damage to others?  When has such damage or perceived
damage led to potential risk?  How would any of this in practice come down
to the personal responsibility and accountability of an individual
checkuser?  It all seems quite remote to me.

If none of thse things has happened and the possibility is both remote to
the nth degree and likely to trigger yellow flags before it becomes a
possibility, it seems more reasonable to set in place a process for
regular policy review, than to throw in CYA clauses for no specific reason
("must not be a minor" "must reveal and verify identity" "must sign a
waiver accepting responsibility for any damage caused as the result of
work" "must be personally bonded and insured for related work")

> How significant this difference? That is perhaps open to debate.
>
> I personally think that the better course of action to mitigate the
> legal risk is to treat check users as outsiders in the privacy policy.

As outsiders -- what does this mean?

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


body:
On 01/04/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> >
> > I, for one, object to the closure of projects based on elitist
> > concerns as to the origin of the language. What matters is the place
> > of the language in the world now. This language is, crucially,
> > recognised as a language by the International Standardisation
> > Organisation
> >
> >
>
> There is no sense of "recognition" in the ISO code designations. As they
> say for the 693-3 codes, "it is a goal for this part of ISO 639 to
> provide an identifier for every distinct human language that has been
> documented, whether living, extinct, or constructed, and whether its
> modality is spoken, written or signed." There are 7,589 currently. It's
> not about elitism; in fact, it's rather likely to me that other
> constructed languages of the same speaker population would not have
> gotten a wiki in the first place. I agree that what matters is the place
> of the language in the world right now, and that place is as a backdrop
> to a fictional universe with a fanbase who are sometimes known to use
> the words amongst themselves. It is encyclopedically interesting as a
> cultural phenomenon, but has no place as a dictionary. Words that aren't
> in common independent use except in reference to a literary work, or
> discussion in the context of that work, are not material for a general
> dictionary.

Wiktionary don't just contain the words of the language they're
written in. Words of all languages and contexts are ideally in
Wiktionary.There's no reason why Klingon couldn't get a broad coverage
of words.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Categories need 4 colors, not 2.

  Red:    empty with no description
  brown?: (the color of a substub) just a description
  green?: contents but an empty/substub description
  blue:   populated and described category.

SJ

On Sun, 1 Apr 2007, Brianna Laugher wrote:

> The category system is for sure not perfect, but the red link is
> definitely better than making them all blue. Wikis that rely on
> category structures for navigation and sorting of items (eg...
> Commons) also rely on this red link 'alert'.
>
> Something more flexible might be if there was a $wgAllCategoriesBlue
> or something that could be configured for each wiki, but a wholesale
> change would not be appropriate.


body:
On 01/04/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > On 01/04/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Oldak Quill wrote:
> >>
> >>> I, for one, object to the closure of projects based on elitist
> >>> concerns as to the origin of the language. What matters is the place
> >>> of the language in the world now. This language is, crucially,
> >>> recognised as a language by the International Standardisation
> >>> Organisation
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> There is no sense of "recognition" in the ISO code designations. As they
> >> say for the 693-3 codes, "it is a goal for this part of ISO 639 to
> >> provide an identifier for every distinct human language that has been
> >> documented, whether living, extinct, or constructed, and whether its
> >> modality is spoken, written or signed." There are 7,589 currently. It's
> >> not about elitism; in fact, it's rather likely to me that other
> >> constructed languages of the same speaker population would not have
> >> gotten a wiki in the first place. I agree that what matters is the place
> >> of the language in the world right now, and that place is as a backdrop
> >> to a fictional universe with a fanbase who are sometimes known to use
> >> the words amongst themselves. It is encyclopedically interesting as a
> >> cultural phenomenon, but has no place as a dictionary. Words that aren't
> >> in common independent use except in reference to a literary work, or
> >> discussion in the context of that work, are not material for a general
> >> dictionary.
> >>
> >
> > Wiktionary don't just contain the words of the language they're
> > written in. Words of all languages and contexts are ideally in
> > Wiktionary.There's no reason why Klingon couldn't get a broad coverage
> > of words.
> >
> >
> Are you suggesting we make a dictionary that defines words in terms that
> it does not itself define, since they cannot be attested according to
> normal dictionary standards? Or are you suggesting that we make a

A dictionary in language X should be able to define a concept in
language Y, even though language X doesn't have a word for that
language, in relatively few words.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Jesse,

It grieves the soul to see such slacking off.  Can a mere apology make
amends for this sort of lasting damage?  How does one say "seppuku" in
Kabyle?

SJ

On Sun, 1 Apr 2007, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) wrote:

> The Language Prevention (sub)Committee would like to announce that the
> Kabyle Wikipedia  has entered the localization stage. Once the primary
> interface messages are translated, the subcommittee will recommend the
> creation of the Kabyle Wikipedia to the board.
>
> The Kabyle Wikipedia will be the first new wiki approved by the
> subcommittee, so we've asked the Kabyle community to help tweak the
> process for future requests. Based on this discussion, we have made it
> unnecessary to translate the entire interface: 327 messages are
> currently listed as unnecessary, and users have been invited to
> suggest others.
>
> The Language Prevention (sub)Committee is profoundly sorry for failing
> to prevent the upcoming creation of the Kabyle Wikipedia, and is in
> particular sorry for projecting a far quicker processing rate once the
> procedure has been tested.
>
> Yours cordially,
> Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
>
> * request: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kabyle
> * localization discussion:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kabyle#Localization


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
Matthew Brown wrote:
> On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> However, being realistic, our community is too large and impersonal for
>> us to be in the business of reforming people - all we can do is change
>> policies. But I get yelled at every time I suggest that.
>
> Because changing policies does no damn good.  Most undesirable things
> are already prohibited.
>
> -Matt
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
So wikipedia is doomed to keep having its sordid downside? We're doomed
to always be fighting a losing battle against libels and lies? We're
doomed to go on consoling victims with empty words? And there's nothing
we can do about it? No way we can make the system even a little better?
It isn't even worth the attempt?

I refuse to be that pessimistic or that cynical. The day I am, I will
really quit.

Doc


body:
On 01/04/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > On 01/04/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Oldak Quill wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 01/04/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Oldak Quill wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> I, for one, object to the closure of projects based on elitist
> >>>>> concerns as to the origin of the language. What matters is the place
> >>>>> of the language in the world now. This language is, crucially,
> >>>>> recognised as a language by the International Standardisation
> >>>>> Organisation
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> There is no sense of "recognition" in the ISO code designations. As they
> >>>> say for the 693-3 codes, "it is a goal for this part of ISO 639 to
> >>>> provide an identifier for every distinct human language that has been
> >>>> documented, whether living, extinct, or constructed, and whether its
> >>>> modality is spoken, written or signed." There are 7,589 currently. It's
> >>>> not about elitism; in fact, it's rather likely to me that other
> >>>> constructed languages of the same speaker population would not have
> >>>> gotten a wiki in the first place. I agree that what matters is the place
> >>>> of the language in the world right now, and that place is as a backdrop
> >>>> to a fictional universe with a fanbase who are sometimes known to use
> >>>> the words amongst themselves. It is encyclopedically interesting as a
> >>>> cultural phenomenon, but has no place as a dictionary. Words that aren't
> >>>> in common independent use except in reference to a literary work, or
> >>>> discussion in the context of that work, are not material for a general
> >>>> dictionary.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Wiktionary don't just contain the words of the language they're
> >>> written in. Words of all languages and contexts are ideally in
> >>> Wiktionary.There's no reason why Klingon couldn't get a broad coverage
> >>> of words.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Are you suggesting we make a dictionary that defines words in terms that
> >> it does not itself define, since they cannot be attested according to
> >> normal dictionary standards? Or are you suggesting that we make a
> >>
> >
> > A dictionary in language X should be able to define a concept in
> > language Y, even though language X doesn't have a word for that
> > language, in relatively few words.
> >
> >
> That's not how Wiktionary works. The English Wiktionary, for example,
> defines non-English words *in English*. A Klingon dictionary would be
> expected to define words in Klingon. So I repeat, your choices are
> either to have a dictionary define words using words it does not define
> (Klingon words) or to define words (Klingon words) that cannot be
> attested according to normal dictionary standards. Either choice damages
> the integrity of the dictionary.

Sorry, I don't think I was at all clear. Of course, a Klingon
dictionary would be expected to define words in Klingon. I was just
making the point it could define non-Klingon words in Klingon.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Extensive Link Errors related to Proper Names -
	Needs Fixing

body:
On 01/04/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Whomever is running bots that link between articles should look at
> proper name links based on categories and check into this.  I found a
> large number of these types of errors.  They are subtle, but will most
> probably show up when browsing through articles unless you can analyze
> the link targets and relationships in the dumps.

If I understand the problem, and I'm not sure if I do, then the advice
I have is the operators of a lot of such bots won't be subscribed to
this list; try wikipedia-l.

Rob Church


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Foundation-l] A successful request not yet fulfilled (was
	Language Prevention Committee created)

body:
It's funny to some people because it is oh-so-true.

It's not funny to you because you want to convince yourself it's not true.

Mark

On 01/04/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The bottleneck is associated with NEW languages. So when a new project
> is requested for an existing language, it is more an issue of how the
> particular projects deal with this; WikiNews for instance has its own
> procedure. When a new project is started, it is expected that the
> language does have a message file that is part of MediaWiki proper. When
> it is not, it is the ideal moment to make it part of MediaWiki proper;
> this will prevent that the messages have to be localised yet again.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> PS I take it that calling the committee the "language prevention
> committee" is supposed to be funny. It is not.
>
>
> Luiz Augusto schreef:
> > Hi
> >
> > There is a successful and old request for opening a new wiki not yet
> > fulfilled. Language prevention/creation committee/subcommittee or
> > whatever/anything else, please forgive the MessagexXX.php paranoia and see
> > requests for non-Wikipedias wikis a while.
> >
> > # [[:oldwikisource:]] have a [[Wikisource:Language domain requests]] page.
> > # This page have at least one successful request for a new Wikisource wiki:
> > Tamil Wikisource (ta.wikisource)
> > ## This have a large community support:
> > http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Wikisource:Language_domain_requests&oldid=215092#Domain_requests_.28ta.wikisource.org.29
> > ## This have "incubator" pages: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Tamil
> > ## This have a bugzilla request:
> > http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6982
> > ## The MessagesTa.php is avaiable at MediaWiki SVN repository
> > ## There is someone interested on editing in this non-existing exactly now:
> > http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A-jkb-&diff=215093&oldid=214978
> > ## I've asked about it on the langcom wiki yesterday but no one
> > apparentlyhave read it.
> >
> > And, if the language prevention/creation committee/subcommittee or
> > whatever/anything else isn't happy to increase the current amount of
> > Wikimedia wikis, I found a good solution: open the ta.wikisource and close
> > the ang.wikisource. No, no one have deleted the MessagesAng.php from
> > subversion, this apparently has never created, but you can find a vote to
> > close that wiki with large community support at:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Old_English_Wikisource
> >
> > Best regards
> > [[:m:User:555]]
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Mohamed Magdy

body:
Mets501 wrote:
>> Whomever is running bots that link between articles should look at
>> proper name links based on categories and check into this.  I found a
>> large number of these types of errors.  They are subtle, but will most
>> probably show up when browsing through articles unless you can analyze
>> the link targets and relationships in the dumps.
>>
>> Jeff
>
> Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_owners%27_noticeboard.
> --Mets501
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

AFAIK links to another articles are done using human editors NOT bots..


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
on 4/1/07 1:42 AM, Andries Krugers Dagneaux at andrieskd at chello.nl wrote:

> That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it
> does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will
> help the project.

What does this mean exactly?

>This was explicitly written down by arbcom members
> Flonight and Charles Matthews. I hence decided to follow their example
> of not trying to be fair to others in Wikipedia.

What do you mean by "not being fair to others in Wikipedia"?

Marc Riddell


from_name: Andries Krugers Dagneaux

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
>Editors from English--speaking and European countries do operate under
>more or less the same ethical system, which promotes freedom and
>fairness [..]

That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it
does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will
help the project. This was explicitly written down by arbcom members
Flonight and Charles Matthews. I hence decided to follow their example
of not trying to be fair to others in Wikipedia.

Andries


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 4/1/07, Dycedarg <darthvader1219 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > If this is done I think I'll create a mirror consisting solely of such
> > unapproved articles, which is, of course, indexable by Google.  Should
> > get me a lot of traffic, at least until others figure out what I'm
> > doing and do the same.
> >
>
> You really think a dumping ground of everything Wikipedia won't publish
> because there's a good chance it's crap will be that popular?

Define a "good chance".  Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of
unapproved biographies.  If I went through and picked 100 at random,
how many do you think would be "crap"?  1 or 2 maybe?

And then define "popular".  I pretty much know such a site would get a
lot of traffic.  I know this because I used to run such a site.  I
stopped working on it because it was difficult to maintain.  But if a
couple hundred thousand biographies suddenly drop out of google,
getting traffic using those biographies would be child's play.

Finally, estimate how quickly you think Wikipedians can approve
100,000 articles.

> But really,
> even if it was, it wouldn't be Wikipedia publishing crappy unsourced libel.
> It would be some random internet person publishing information deemed by
> Wikipedia to be too unreliable to have on the main part of its site. That
> would probably play better in the media.
>
My comment wasn't meant as a threat.  If the Wikimedia foundation
decides it'd like to get out of the content distribution business when
it comes to unapproved biographies of living people, that's fine with
me (*).  I was merely pointing out what will be one of the unintended
consequences of doing so.

Anthony

(*) In fact, I think the Wikimedia foundation should get out of the
content distribution business altogether.  Let the mirrors distribute
*all* of the content, and let the foundation focus on building the
content.  But as the very mission statement of the foundation states
otherwise, it's not a point I actively argue for.


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
>> for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
>> articles.
>
> Because things happen every day that deserve to be documented, and
> there are always people who want to do so. Don't force them to try to
> do what you want.
>
> There are much softer solutions to get people's attention.  For example:
>
> A simple notice:
>
> "We have 1,715,464 articles in English. Why not bring an existing one
> up to [[featured article status]]?"
>
> on the new article creation page.
>
> A contest announced through the site notice for registered users.
>
> A "how to make Wikipedia better today" newsletter
>
> Making an "Improvement of the month" part of the Main Page for
> readers, which would also raise awareness of what Wikipedia
> represents.
>
> Organizing face-to-face meetups with a focus on actual research & work
> -- perhaps by making them focused on topics, or WikiProjects.
>
> E-mail newsletters of the "how you can help Wikipedia today" type.
> Real-time collaborations with Gobby. Topic-oriented mailing lists and
> IRC channels.
>
> Be creative. Locking article creation is not.

Trying to "be creative":

How about locking article creation for everyone one day a week? Or one
day in 5? or 10?

Keeping up with current events becomes much less of an issue. It
resembles the sort of routine that many people are familiar with (where,
for example, they do not work on weekends). And it would allow for some
time to "catch up".

Of course, it would not have the immediate degree of impact that locking
page creation for 3 months would have--but that includes both desirable
and undesirable impact.

-Rich


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject:
[Foundation-l] A successful request not yet fulfilled (was Language
	Prevention Committee created)

body:
Hi

There is a successful and old request for opening a new wiki not yet
fulfilled. Language prevention/creation committee/subcommittee or
whatever/anything else, please forgive the MessagexXX.php paranoia and see
requests for non-Wikipedias wikis a while.

# [[:oldwikisource:]] have a [[Wikisource:Language domain requests]] page.
# This page have at least one successful request for a new Wikisource wiki:
Tamil Wikisource (ta.wikisource)
## This have a large community support:
http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Wikisource:Language_domain_requests&oldid=215092#Domain_requests_.28ta.wikisource.org.29
## This have "incubator" pages: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Tamil
## This have a bugzilla request:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6982
## The MessagesTa.php is avaiable at MediaWiki SVN repository
## There is someone interested on editing in this non-existing exactly now:
http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A-jkb-&diff=215093&oldid=214978
## I've asked about it on the langcom wiki yesterday but no one
apparentlyhave read it.

And, if the language prevention/creation committee/subcommittee or
whatever/anything else isn't happy to increase the current amount of
Wikimedia wikis, I found a good solution: open the ta.wikisource and close
the ang.wikisource. No, no one have deleted the MessagesAng.php from
subversion, this apparently has never created, but you can find a vote to
close that wiki with large community support at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Old_English_Wikisource

Best regards
[[:m:User:555]]


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 18:20:01 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee
<arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

>A newcomer--the type of person most likely to be concerned about problems
>with their own article--is not going to think "oh, it really strongly
>discourages it, but it doesn't absolutely prohibit it, so I guess I'll do it
>then".

A newcomer is not even going to know about the existence of that page.

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


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Article hit rates -- research at the University of
	Minnesota

body:
Reid Priedhorsky wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>> Reid Priedhorsky wrote:
>>> Dear Wikitechnicians,
>>>
>>> My name is Reid Priedhorsky, and I'm a Ph.D. student at GroupLens
>>> Research, which is the human-computer interaction group at the
>>> University of Minnesota.
>>>
>>> We are currently working on some research which is investigating
>>> Wikipedia contribution and vandalism. To this end, statistics on the
>>> view rate of different articles would be extremely helpful to us --
>>> something along the lines of Leon Weber's WikiCharts tool, but with a
>>> larger limit (ideally all 1.7 million articles).
>> Producing such statistics will be a Google Summer of Code project this
>> summer. If you can't wait that long, then we can give you a sampled,
>> anonymised log stream to analyse.
>
> Yes, summer would be too late: anonymised logs would be be excellent for
> our purposes. Does "stream" mean that we would need to write a program
> to listen to the real-time log stream, or could you give us files?
>
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>  > Greetings, describe for me what you ideal data would look like.
>
> Ideal data would be log files that just looked like:
>
>    Main Page\t1169499304.066
>
> i.e., article titles as they appear in the XML dumps and request time.
>
> A close second choice would be simply-anonymized logs, e.g.:
>
>    sq18.wikimedia.org 1715898 1169499304.066 0 - TCP_MEM_HIT/200 13208
> GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page NONE/- text/html - - -
>
> If the logs still contains duplicates due to requests being forwarded
> between squids, we'd need pointers on how to resolve those.
>
> Please let me know what the next step is. Thanks for your help!
>
> Reid

We received a very similar request from Vrije Universiteit, and we're now
sending them a 1/10 sampled stream consisting of timestamp and URL, with
duplicates removed, real-time via UDP. It would be easier for us if we
could send you roughly the same thing. So for example:

1169499304.066 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

We don't have any system yet for periodically rotating, analysing and
sending logs, so streams are certainly easier for us. We get somewhere on
the order of 1.5 billion requests per day, and the simplified log line
above has an average length of 97 bytes, so it's an unsampled data rate of
about 135 GB per day. You'll probably want us to sample that down before
we send it to you.

Extracting the title as it appears in the XML dump is just a matter of
finding the right part of the URL and then unescaping it.

You can contact me privately to get the technical details sorted out.

--  Tim Starling


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:
> For the sake of full disclosure: I have never watched an episode of
> Star Trek on TV or any of the films. I have no interest in the
> fictional world.
>
> I, for one, object to the closure of projects based on elitist
> concerns as to the origin of the language. What matters is the place
> of the language in the world now. This language is, crucially,
> recognised as a language by the International Standardisation
> Organisation

And I think this shows what is wrong with the ISO.

--Jimbo


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
> for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> articles.

Because things happen every day that deserve to be documented, and
there are always people who want to do so. Don't force them to try to
do what you want.

There are much softer solutions to get people's attention.  For example:

A simple notice:

"We have 1,715,464 articles in English. Why not bring an existing one
up to [[featured article status]]?"

on the new article creation page.

A contest announced through the site notice for registered users.

A "how to make Wikipedia better today" newsletter

Making an "Improvement of the month" part of the Main Page for
readers, which would also raise awareness of what Wikipedia
represents.

Organizing face-to-face meetups with a focus on actual research & work
-- perhaps by making them focused on topics, or WikiProjects.

E-mail newsletters of the "how you can help Wikipedia today" type.
Real-time collaborations with Gobby. Topic-oriented mailing lists and
IRC channels.

Be creative. Locking article creation is not.
--
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: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] "So fix it." "The next day someone will fix it back."

body:
Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas Hofstadter", 4/1/07:

Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many
students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.

A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with
inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.

Q. So fix it.

A. The next day someone will fix it back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/magazine/01wwlnQ4.t.html

My thoughts:

It strikes me that there is really a crisis of confidence in people
that editing Wikipedia will have any long term effect. I have heard it
many, many times from people on the web and in person as well as seen
it in print. "Why bother, someone will just change it back later, or
erase it?"

I think it is too important to be dismissive about this approach. Even
correctly cited things can be removed or butchered, even incorrectly
cited things can stay on. I'm not sure that increased calls for
citation will solve or even mitigate the problem. Any academic can
tell you that citation is hardly a gold standard; it is not what
convinces people of the accuracy of any claim. In the end that comes
down to trust, and that comes down to authorship, and that comes down
to things that Wikipedia doesn't, won't, and maybe can't do right.

At this point, Wikipedia's epistemology privileges the persistant, the
dedicated, and those with a lot of free time on their hands. Which is
a set of qualities which describes both the best _and_ the worst
editors.

I don't have an answer though. Just something to muse on, in the face
of some rather derisive high-brow publicity from an immensely popular,
immensely intelligent person.

FF


from_name: Mark Ryan

body:
The video for the interview with Ellen Fanning will be on the Sunday
web site soon:

http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/feature_stories/article_2167.asp


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

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

Ken Arromdee stated for the record:
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Editors_who_may_have_a_conflict_of_interest
>
> No sane Wikipedia newcomer is going to read that section and think they are
> permitted to fix their own article about themselves.

I agree with Ken.  If I were a non-Wikipedian who had just found nasty
stuff in my biography, I would interpret that section to be saying, in
brief, "you're screwed."

A box highlighted for emphasis taunts our hypothetical non-W who's
feeling wronged by the errors in her article "...you have no right to
control its content, and no right to delete it outside our normal
channels. Content is not deleted just because somebody doesn't like it.
Any editor may add material to the article...."

Now someone is going to point out all the weasel words in that section
and claim that they weaken the prohibitions so that they are actually
encouragements.  Go for it.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | That would have worked if you hadn't
 sean at epoptic.com | stopped me. --Dr. Egon Spengler
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGD+yE/SVOiq2uhHMRAoMYAKDIb3bFfo2v3Q8RMaI6yV5zfKIWAgCffahB
UwJGJUu5zHa0Xt+EPMWF1H0=
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
on 4/1/07 10:09 AM, Andrew Gray at shimgray at gmail.com wrote:

> On 01/04/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> on 4/1/07 1:42 AM, Andries Krugers Dagneaux at andrieskd at chello.nl wrote:
>>
>>> That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it
>>> does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will
>>> help the project.
>>
>> What does this mean exactly?
>
> A clearer-than-it-would-be example: imagine there is a good-faith
> contributor who just causes unbelivable amounts of strife. They mean
> well, they make good-faith contributions, they haven't done anything
> *wrong* per se... but the community gets in vast lengthy wasteful
> fights with them over things, huge amounts of effort are wasted
> looking after them and cleaning up after them and trying to calm down
> the arguments and so on and so forth.
>
> Do you feel we should - a) ban or restrict that user and let people
> get on with their work; or b) some other remedy which essentially
> maintains the status quo?
>
> a) is probably more beneficial to the project, whilst b) is undeniably
> more fair to the user. Both are defensible solutions, but hopefully
> you can see the difference in the principles underlying each...
>
> [I don't follow arbcom; I don't know if there have been arb bans on
> the basis of They Just Waste Too Much Time. There have been community
> bans to that extent, however...]

Andrew,

Thanks for this very clear explanation. As for me, I would go with solution
a) for a period of time, while - and this is the important part - working
with and trying to help this contributor understand the problems they are
causing. That, to me, would be a solution fair to both the contributor and
the project.

Marc

--
* Practice random acts of kindness. *

* Practice random acts of tolerance. *


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 4/1/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/31/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > One big problem is that this is no longer true. WP:COI prevents
> > correction of articles by those most motivated to correct them.
>
> It doesn't prevent them editing such articles. It even gives them
> tips on how to handle it properly:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Editors_who_may_have_a_conflict_of_interest

The literal words may not prevent people editing articles, in theory.
But many are prevented from doing so in practice when certain users
react to *anyone* who may have some connection with the subject by
screaming "conflict of interest".

Just like the problem of unsourced content, it's a problem of people,
not of policies.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 4/1/07, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
>
>
> Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many
> students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.

1000 quatloos says this was something that "everybody knows".

> A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with
> inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.

And of course "everybody" is FOS.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
What's the point of being fair to people if doing so would break Wikipedia?

On 4/1/07, Andries Krugers Dagneaux <andrieskd at chello.nl> wrote:
>
> >Editors from English--speaking and European countries do operate under
> >more or less the same ethical system, which promotes freedom and
> >fairness [..]
>
> That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it
> does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will
> help the project. This was explicitly written down by arbcom members
> Flonight and Charles Matthews. I hence decided to follow their example
> of not trying to be fair to others in Wikipedia.
>
> Andries
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
On 4/1/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/31/07, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Locking down new article creation while we do a cleanup is sensible;
> > Afd would be less like a sewerage drain and we could then judge the
> > status of the cleanup by the, hopefully diminishing, number of Afds
> > being raised.
>
> Or AfD could be shut off too, starting one week after article creation
> is shut off.
>
> > During this time, creation of new articles could be restricted to
> > admins, and non-admins could use WP:AFC.
>
> They could use it as a temporary storage place, but if you're going to
> let people submit new articles through WP:AFC and then have admins
> create new articles based on those submissions, it seems you're just
> redirecting efforts from one type of creation to another, and adding
> more work in the process.
>
> > It would be more tedious,
> > but it would further encourage a culture of writing articles that fit
> > within our policies and guidelines.  Regular contributors can write
> > userspace articles and submit them to WP:AFC in order to request that
> > they are moved into the main namespace by an admin.
> >
>
> I don't see the point of that.  If you're going to stop article
> creation, stop it.  Admins can still create or move articles if they
> feel there are special extenuating circumstances, but giving them the
> task of reviewing and approving ordinary article creations defeats the
> whole purpose, which is supposed to be to free people up to fix what's
> already there.
>
> Anthony

I raised the point that during the time article creation is shut down, new
topics (often current events) will arise that require articles. To not be 3
months behind after creation gets turned on again, we need some effort to
keep up to date and to have admins do it is the most sensible choice.

Mgm


body:
If this was to be implemented it would be for a limited amount of time and
applied for creation of a specific set of articles. It is not to give admins
more powers, it is to focus the attention of editors on fixing existing
articles instead of creating new articles. It is easier to fix what we have
if there isn't a constant influx of new material that doesn't get the eyes
it needs.

Mgm

On 4/1/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Many of the proposals to "fix" Wikipedia of late have seemed to
> take
> > as a premise that what we've done is wrong. I, personally,
> disagree.
> > I think we've got a pretty good encyclopedia. It needs work, but
> it's
> > good enough to go public with, which, thank God, since we went
> public
> > with it. Sensible users can use it well.
> >
> > But if we really do want to speed up its improvement (which I
> can
> > take or leave, but everyone else seems desperate to take it)...
> >
> > Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace
> entirely
> > for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> > articles.
> >
> > Anything that's absolutely vital that comes into being in those
> > months will still be possible to write about in a few months, so
> > there's no real rush. And a lot of the crap that we create by
> reflex
> > will not get created and be pleasantly forgotten about. (Brian
> > Peppers, anyone?) And we could easily make the red page text
> read
> > something like "On XX/XX/XXXX suspended new article creation
> until XX/
> > XX/XXXX in order to better work on existing articles. If this is
> an
> > important topic that has developed since we made this decision,
> you
> > can probably find information on it by looking at existing
> articles
> > on related topics."
> >
> > We've suggested doing it for a day here and there. The heck with
> > that. Let's do it for a long period of time so that the culture
> of
> > fixing what we have becomes entrenched.
> >
> > Or, I mean, we could decide that everything we've worked on this
> far
> > is actually crap and create drastic proposals for how we could
> start
> > over.
> >
> > -Phil
>
> This is not a good idea. Haven't we learned anything from locking
> down *anonymous* page creation, and from the constant, and
> people-pissing-off, mess that is Articles for Creation? It's not a
> success by any standards - it's led to burnt out editors, deeply
> frustrated and well-meaning outsiders, and an arcane submission
> process that is slow, glitchy, and doesn't scale! There is no
> evidence whatsoever that AfC has helped Wikipedia: no evidence
> that it has encouraged people to focus on articles.
>
> And now you want to disable page creation for everyone except
> admins?  Besides the obvious aspect of adding yet another thing
> only admins and other higher ups can do, with ramifications for
> the culture and legally (if this goes through, and admins have to
> manually approve each article, will Wikipedia pass from being a
> host capable of claiming DMCA safe harbor to a publisher
> exercising editorial control and discretion over posting of new
> articles?), this simply won't scale. There are only  what, 1100
> admins, and how many of them are active? 900? Admins are already
> kind of busy with deletions and page moves and other sort of
> processes which are already too often backlogged (and related
> stuff like OTRS). We should be very very reluctant to propose any
> new process which could dump literally thousands of entries a day
> onto their collective laps.
>
> --
> Gwern
> Inquiring minds want to know.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: John Vandenberg

body:
On 4/1/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Many of the proposals to "fix" Wikipedia of late have seemed to take
> > > as a premise that what we've done is wrong. I, personally, disagree.
> > > I think we've got a pretty good encyclopedia. It needs work, but it's
> > > good enough to go public with, which, thank God, since we went public
> > > with it. Sensible users can use it well.
> > >
> > > But if we really do want to speed up its improvement (which I can
> > > take or leave, but everyone else seems desperate to take it)...
> > >
> > > Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
> > > for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> > > articles.
> > >
> > > <snip/>
> >
> >  Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with this. It's a lot easier to fix
> > the 1,5 million articles we have if there's not constantly new stuff pouring
> > in. But people will turn to Wikipedia if there's a new hurricane or massive
> > flood or to read about a country's new prime minister or president.
> >
> > These are the type of articles that need to be created and kept up-to-date
> > as they happen for maximal effect. If we were to do this for a significant
> > amount of time, we'd be severely lacking in articles about current events.
> > How do you think we should handle that?
>
> Oh, we can invent a process. Give the "article creation right" flag to
> admins or bureaucrats or [some arbitrary respected group of people],
> have a process where new articles can be created in a short period if
> it's utterly essential, leave them to it with the understanding it
> really shouldn't be used much.
>
> It's certainly nothing we can't solve just by fiddling the rules a
> little bit, and as we ourselves *make* the rules...

Locking down new article creation while we do a cleanup is sensible;
Afd would be less like a sewerage drain and we could then judge the
status of the cleanup by the, hopefully diminishing, number of Afds
being raised.  This suggestion meshes very well with the other current
activities like V 1.0 and stable revisions.

During this time, creation of new articles could be restricted to
admins, and non-admins could use WP:AFC.  It would be more tedious,
but it would further encourage a culture of writing articles that fit
within our policies and guidelines.  Regular contributors can write
userspace articles and submit them to WP:AFC in order to request that
they are moved into the main namespace by an admin.

--
John


body:
Anon page creation was shut down with no specific re-enable date mentioned.
That's quite different from this proposal.

Mgm

On 4/1/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> Rich Holton wrote:
> > I'm not sure it's a good idea. But it's not a suggestion for an
> > indefinite change, but for a temporary pause in new articles. Something
> > quite different.
>
> Disabling article creation for anonymous users was supposed to be "just
> an experiment" too and it's still in place over a year later despite no
> analysis ever being done. I can understand people being concerned about
> this experiment winding up the same way.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
On 4/1/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
> Be creative. Locking article creation is not.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik

I don't know. I'd certainly call it creative, but as with anything it has
its negative sides.
The ideas you presented are good too, but don't address the fact that with
the constant stream of articles coming in, cleanup efforts aren't scaling.
It takes a LOT more time to properly reference an article than to write an
unsourced new one and if nothing is done to address the difference, cleanup
efforts won't ever have a chance of catching up.

Of course, reaching that point is a pipe dream, but with several thousands
of articles being unsourced or containing dubious statements tagged
(probably a fraction of the real number) and that number going up all the
time, efforts need to be made that help cleanup efforts catch up with
creation efforts.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
In that case COI needs rewording to encourage the proper sort of feedback
from subjects on talk pages.

Mgm

On 4/1/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > It doesn't prevent them editing such articles. It even gives them
> > tips on how to handle it properly:
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Editors_who_may_have_a_conflict_of_interest
>
> No sane Wikipedia newcomer is going to read that section and think they
> are
> permitted to fix their own article about themselves.  If you squint at
> that
> section long enough, you might realize that it doesn't in fact prohibit
> editing where there is a conflict of interest, but this is a very non-
> obvious reading that is not what anyone's going to think of when the first
> thing the article says is that a conflict of interest is strongly
> discouraged.
> A newcomer simply will not have the sophistication to understand that
> "discouraged" actually means "encouraged in some cases".
>
> Allowing people to fix errors in articles about themselves won't work
> unless
> you make it *utterly clear* that they can do so.  Having an article which
> sounds like it says they cannot, but which upon very careful examination
> reveals that it is after all allowed, will not let them know.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 31 Mar 2007 at 23:20, "Matthew Brown" <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia cannot be perfect.  Wikipedia can get better.  IMO,
> Wikipedia is a lot less bad, percentage-wise, than it seems to someone
> who spends a lot of time trying to clean up biographical articles or
> reading OTRS complaints.

...and a lot less good, percentage-wise, than it seems to someone who
spends a lot of time reading featured articles.  Using the "Random
article" link repeatedly tends to result in unexceptional mediocrity;
neither anything scandalously bad nor brilliantly good.

(When I tried it just now, one of the articles I got was [[List of
asteroids/83201-83300]], which happens to include some of those that
were discovered on September 11, 2001.  Interesting.  Must be a
conspiracy!)

> I am fearful of the rush to 'do something' without the examination of
> likely consequences.  I am pessimistic about more rules being the cure
> for current rules being ignored.  I am cynical about the prospects for
> success of any solution that starts with drastic over-reaction and
> ignoring the reasons why Wikipedia is as successful as it is.

Don't just do something... stand there!

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
On 4/1/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> A clearer-than-it-would-be example: imagine there is a good-faith
> contributor who just causes unbelivable amounts of strife. They mean
> well, they make good-faith contributions, they haven't done anything
> *wrong* per se...

How would you define "good faith" in this context? I would say that if
a contributor continues to do "X" after several good faith "please
don't do X" requests from reasonable people, then that person is no
longer a "good faith contributor" and any of his contributions with
"X" in them are not "good faith contributions".

Therefore, Arbcom is not being "unfair" to such a person by ruling against him.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
>
>
> Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many
> students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.
>
> A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with
> inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.
>

Sorry to say, but in this case it's Hofstadter, not us, who is wrong.
His book _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ in particular *has* inspired many
students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence,
whether to not he likes that fact.  The claim should be better
referenced, but that's not too hard to do since there are dozens of
prominent researchers who have cited his book as an influence.  Hell, my
own advisor cites it as an influence.

-Mark


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Apr 1, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Ron Ritzman wrote:

> On 4/1/07, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas
>> Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
>>
>>
>> Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many
>> students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.
>
> 1000 quatloos says this was something that "everybody knows".
>
>> A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with
>> inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.
>
> And of course "everybody" is FOS.

There's no contradiction between the two statements, though.

Hofstadter's work, particularly Godel, Escher, Bach, is an enormously
popular text in theoretical computer science. Not a textbook, but a
popularizing text, and a landmark one. I read it when I was at the
beginning of a flirtation with the field, it's on the shelf of every
new media-focused professor I've ever met. It doesn't deal with
computers as such, but it's still a tremendously influential text in
that regard.

That Hofstadter himself is not interested in computers says nothing
about what his work has been influential in.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Weekly cycles to Wikipedia traffic

body:
Looking at the Alexa stats for Wikipedia:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=wikipedia.org

you see some interesting patterns.  The graphs seem to have a
sawtooth shape with a weekly period, but the specific days of the
week where it peaks differ depending on whether you're looking at
reach, traffic rank, or page views.

Raw page views seem to peak on Sunday and are lower at other times of
the week, though there's a smaller second sawtooth around Wednesday.
However, the reach statistic seems to be lowest on Friday and
Saturday and peak around the middle of the week, with Sunday being an
increase from Fri/Sat but not a major peak.  The traffic rank follows
the reach statistic, dipping on Friday and Saturday and holding
steady at its highest level the rest of the week.

Can anybody venture any theories (original research!) about why this
is the case?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 07:42:46 +0200, "Andries Krugers Dagneaux"
<andrieskd at chello.nl> wrote:

>One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it
>does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will
>help the project.

That's up there with "verifiability, not truth".  It does not mitigate
against the idea that there is a set of principles which enjoy broad
support, and whose rejection tends to be connected with a short and
turbulent life on Wikipedia.

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


from_name: William Pietri

body:
Ron Ritzman wrote:
> On 4/1/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>> Sorry to say, but in this case it's Hofstadter, not us, who is wrong.
>> His book _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ in particular *has* inspired many
>> students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence,
>> whether to not he likes that fact.
>>
>
> I started to wonder about that after my first post in this thread. Is
> it possible that the AI inspiration thing is a phenomenon that
> Hofstadter was unaware of.

Frankly, no. It's such a hugely influential book among geeks that had he
slipped into a coma shortly after mailing the manuscript and only just
awakened before the NY Times interview, he still couldn't have escaped
noticing, as people would have built a shrine around his hospital bed.

And more prosaically, he also said so himself:

    What the book did do was excite a lot of young people. Hundreds of
    people have written to me saying it launched them on a path of
    studying computer science or cognitive science or philosophy.

 From Kevin Kelly interviewing him in Wired, November 1995.
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.11/kelly.html?pg=2&topic=>

Personally, I'd guess he didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

William


body:
On 4/1/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Sorry to say, but in this case it's Hofstadter, not us, who is wrong.
> His book _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ in particular *has* inspired many
> students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence,
> whether to not he likes that fact.

I started to wonder about that after my first post in this thread. Is
it possible that the AI inspiration thing is a phenomenon that
Hofstadter was unaware of.

> The claim should be better
> referenced, but that's not too hard to do since there are dozens of
> prominent researchers who have cited his book as an influence.

But until good citable references are produced, it remains something
that "everybody just knows" and should stay out of the Article.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
Ron Ritzman wrote:
> How would you define "good faith" in this context? I would say that if
> a contributor continues to do "X" after several good faith "please
> don't do X" requests from reasonable people, then that person is no
> longer a "good faith contributor" and any of his contributions with
> "X" in them are not "good faith contributions".
>

I don't think that follows.

To me, acting in good faith only means that you are well-intentioned.
There are a lot of reasons why a person might not follow advice that you
see as reasonable; a lack of good faith is only one of them.

To come to a conclusion about somebody else's motivations, which is
something you can never know for sure, is rarely something they will
enjoy. You could well be wrong, and even when you aren't, you've created
ground for an endlessly unwinnable argument.

More importantly, people are creatures of context. If you treat them
like they are good people who have made perfectly reasonable mistakes
and just need a little help to fit in, they are much more likely to
start acting that way. Act like somebody who's in a fight, and they will
obligingly step up and fight you back. Get them mad enough and they'll
do it forever.

To me, that's the magic of AGF. Most of the time, most people really are
acting in good faith. By treating them that way, we avoid letting
miscommunication, misunderstanding, or their good-faith flubs wreck the
relationship. And when people come to us with mischief in their hearts,
treating them as if the meant well can bring out the side of them that
does mean well.

That's not to say that we shouldn't boot people that are hopelessly
disruptive. We've got an encyclopedia to build. But we should do it with
"a countenance more in sorrow than in anger," and without impugning
their motives. Not just because it's the kind thing, but because also
because it's the practical thing.

William


body:
On 1 Apr 2007 at 10:21, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
>
> Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many
> students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.
>
> A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with
> inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.
>
> Q. So fix it.
>
> A. The next day someone will fix it back.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/magazine/01wwlnQ4.t.html

I think that Hofstadter, an author I greatly respect by the way,
isn't being entirely fair here.  The cited statement in Wikipedia's
article on him does not actually contradict what Hofstadter said
about it; it's perfectly logically consistent for a person to have no
interest in computers, but nevertheless have, through his work,
inspired many students to begin careers in computing.  The former is
a statement about Hofstadter's personal interests (about which I
would presume Hofstadter himself is the best judge), while the latter
is a statement about the interests and motivations of students who
read of Hofstadter's work; it's quite possible that they can be
motivated in directions that seem bizarre or perverse from the
standpoint of the author himself.  After all, Jodie Foster could be
said to have "motivated" John Hinkley, Jr. to attempt to assassinate
Ronald Reagan, but that's hardly something she intended, supports, or
had an interest in.

Anyway, developing an interest in computing and AI from reading
Hofstadter's works doesn't even require a leap of madness of the sort
that Hinkley underwent; those books are full of references to these
topics, and at some points Hofstadter even gives illustrative
examples in the form of pseudocode in programming languages he
invents for this purpose.  I'm not sure in what sense he's not
interested in computers (perhaps he just wishes to disassociate
himself from the "geek community"?), but his own works seem to show a
great interest in the logical and philosophical issues raised by
computing.

However, if the statement that he's inspired people in those fields
is merely a personal feeling of an editor, it should be removed as
original research unless a specific source is found.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Dmcdevit

body:
Jim Breen wrote:
> Frankly I don't see what is wrong with having a Klingon dictionary.
> If Wikipedia can have an entry like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breen
> why get picky about yet-another artificial language.
>
> Jim
>

Sorry, what was the reason that Klingon is a useful language to build a
dictionary in? What does the English Wikipedia article on "Breen" have
to do with anything? That a single encyclopedia article on an unrelated
project is about a fictional species in Star Trek means we should *write
a dictionary* in a fictional language of Star Trek? I fail to see the
connection.

Dominic


from_name: Gwern Branwen

body:
Dycedarg <darthvader1219 at gmail.com> writes:

> On 3/31/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is not a good idea. Haven't we learned anything from
   locking
>> down *anonymous* page creation, and from the constant, and
>> people-pissing-off, mess that is Articles for Creation? It's
   not a
>> success by any standards - it's led to burnt out editors,
   deeply
>> frustrated and well-meaning outsiders, and an arcane submission
>> process that is slow, glitchy, and doesn't scale! There is no
>> evidence whatsoever that AfC has helped Wikipedia: no evidence
>> that it has encouraged people to focus on articles.
>>
>> And now you want to disable page creation for everyone except
>> admins?  Besides the obvious aspect of adding yet another thing
>> only admins and other higher ups can do, with ramifications for
>> the culture and legally (if this goes through, and admins have
   to
>> manually approve each article, will Wikipedia pass from being a
>> host capable of claiming DMCA safe harbor to a publisher
>> exercising editorial control and discretion over posting of new
>> articles?), this simply won't scale. There are only  what, 1100
>> admins, and how many of them are active? 900? Admins are
   already
>> kind of busy with deletions and page moves and other sort of
>> processes which are already too often backlogged (and related
>> stuff like OTRS). We should be very very reluctant to propose
   any
>> new process which could dump literally thousands of entries a
   day
>> onto their collective laps.
>>
>
> This is pretty much a complete misinterpretation of the
  proposal.
> Let me outline it for you:
> A. This would be a very temporary change. This would last for a
few months
> in an attempt to rejuvenate clean-up efforts, and then go away
forever.
> B. This would not be an attempt to filter all new pages through
the admins
> using some uber-beefed up AfC. There would be no new articles
whatsoever.
> Zero. Zip. Nada. The only very few and far between exceptions
would be those
> necessary to maintain our coverage of recent events, such as
hurricanes,
> floods, wars, and other natural/not so natural disasters. Admins
would only
> make new pages if it was patently obvious that we need such an
  article
> immediately. Any request for an article that is not necessary
  for such
> coverage would be ignored and deleted on sight.
>
> I would agree that the overall number of edits would drop as
people who
> typically only create new pages took a wikibreak. But I believe
that enough
> would remain that the concentration of their efforts on the
  remaining
> articles could be of a large amount of benefit. In fact: Even if
the amount
> of edits improving current articles remained constant, and no
  work was
> redirected at all, the fact that all the work that usually goes
  into
> stubbifying, prodding, CSDing, AfDing, wikifying, and all the
rest of what
> is necessary to make the brand new articles serviceable could
now instead be
> devoted to making the rest of the encyclopedia better, means
that in my
> opinion the over-all result would be positive. If anyone simply
can't wait
> another second before starting work on a new article, than they
can make it
> in their userspace and work on it until they can put it in
mainspace again.
> The draft will no doubt be all the better for it anyway.
>
> --
>
> Dycedarg

As another editor has pointed out, temporary things which affect
the entire wiki have a way of becoming permanent.

Even if it truly turns out to be temporary, we already have good
reason to believe that it would not do any good at all

As for the drop: it is obvious to foresee, but do you really think
that the shift of effort will be somehow so astronomically
valuable as to compensate for the certain loss of thousands of
man-hours, both temporarily/for the duration of the lockdown and
long-term as people leave to never return and other people simply
avoid ever joining? This is either extraordinarily optimistic or
extraordinarily paranoid.

There are many considerations here: legal, cultural, PR (there is
no way to spin this positively), and so on. All of them militate
against this proposal, and only fluffy hopes that it really would
be a net benefit are offered in return.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 4/1/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 1, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Ron Ritzman wrote:
> > On 4/1/07, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas
> >> Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
> >>
> >>
> >> Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many
> >> students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.
> >
> > 1000 quatloos says this was something that "everybody knows".
> >
> >> A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with
> >> inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.
> >
> > And of course "everybody" is FOS.
>
> There's no contradiction between the two statements, though.
>
For that matter, Hofstadter never claimed there was a contradiction.

He said the entry on him "is filled with inaccuracies".  Even if he
*did* mean to imply that the statement about inspiring many students
was one of those inaccuracies, he's still claiming there are many
others.

That said, I just removed the statement about inspiring students, as
it was anecdotal and lacked sources.  If someone cares to present a
reliable source which claims that Hofstadter has inspired many
students to begin careers in computing and AI, feel free to add it
back with a citation.

So, I fixed it.  Want to make a bet someone comes along and fixes it back?

Anthony


from_name: Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

body:
Hello,

The process on the multilingual Wikisource domain is not covered by
the language subcommittee yet; you'll notice that there is a redundant
process at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/RFL#Wikisource>. The
secondary processes will eventually be merged into the Meta process
(probably a combination of both, not simply removing one), but we want
to make sure that the latter is working at a reasonable efficiency
first. As your sarcasm indicates you already know, we've had some
difficulty starting up.

I would suggest continuing to follow the Wikisource process, since the
request is there. This process is the same as it was on Meta until the
reform: file a bug request following community approval, and it might
be done eventually. I'm sorry that we can't do anything more at the
moment, but we're busy catching up on requests (for many projects,
*not* only Wikipedias) that were filed through the subcommittee
process in the transitional period.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

(This message is not an official statement of the language subcommittee.)

> From: "Luiz Augusto" <lugusto at gmail.com>
> Hi
>
> There is a successful and old request for opening a new wiki not yet
> fulfilled. Language prevention/creation committee/subcommittee or
> whatever/anything else, please forgive the MessagexXX.php paranoia and see
> requests for non-Wikipedias wikis a while.
>
> # [[:oldwikisource:]] have a [[Wikisource:Language domain requests]] page.
> # This page have at least one successful request for a new Wikisource wiki:
> Tamil Wikisource (ta.wikisource)
> ## This have a large community support:
> http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Wikisource:Language_domain_requests&oldid=215092#Domain_requests_.28ta.wikisource.org.29
> ## This have "incubator" pages: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Tamil
> ## This have a bugzilla request:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6982
> ## The MessagesTa.php is avaiable at MediaWiki SVN repository
> ## There is someone interested on editing in this non-existing exactly now:
> http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A-jkb-&diff=215093&oldid=214978
> ## I've asked about it on the langcom wiki yesterday but no one
> apparentlyhave read it.
>
> And, if the language prevention/creation committee/subcommittee or
> whatever/anything else isn't happy to increase the current amount of
> Wikimedia wikis, I found a good solution: open the ta.wikisource and close
> the ang.wikisource. No, no one have deleted the MessagesAng.php from
> subversion, this apparently has never created, but you can find a vote to
> close that wiki with large community support at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Old_English_Wikisource
>
> Best regards
> [[:m:User:555]]
>

--
Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)


from_name: Bryan Derksen

references:
<1D2F7F6E-B5C8-4C28-A866-78AC2D85CBD5@gmail.com>
	<86y7lc4xp9.fsf@elan.rh.rit.edu>
	<fb7fdd9c0704010214n2833aaeen33207ac8415fcf61@mail.gmail.com>

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> If this was to be implemented it would be for a limited amount of time and
> applied for creation of a specific set of articles. It is not to give admins
> more powers, it is to focus the attention of editors on fixing existing
> articles instead of creating new articles. It is easier to fix what we have
> if there isn't a constant influx of new material that doesn't get the eyes
> it needs.

Adding new limits to everyone except admins is IMO no different in
practical terms from giving admins more powers.


body:
On 4/1/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 3/31/07, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Locking down new article creation while we do a cleanup is sensible;
> > Afd would be less like a sewerage drain and we could then judge the
> > status of the cleanup by the, hopefully diminishing, number of Afds
> > being raised.
>
> Or AfD could be shut off too, starting one week after article creation
> is shut off.

We have enough crap already to keep Afd going for quite a while.  My
preference is too keep Afd running because I'm concerned that in its
absence a lot of articles will be deleted using CSD.  Even when
justified, a prod type approach to deletion only notifies the existing
editors.  If the contributors who care are not regulars, the article
will slip down the drain.  WP:AFD has a sharp edge and related
WikiProject mechanisms such as delsorting are an effective way to
involve contributors that would not otherwise have been aware the
article existed.  It is that type of article that a cleanup effort
needs to cater for.

I don't see the point of creating another suitable system of doing
what AFD is intended to do: gathering consensus for deletion.  Turning
off the firehose will make AFD a happy place where we can take our
time and focus on researching odd articles, cleaning up unsourced
statements, and removing the articles that have no place on Wikipedia.

> > During this time, creation of new articles could be restricted to
> > admins, and non-admins could use WP:AFC.
>
> They could use it as a temporary storage place, but if you're going to
> let people submit new articles through WP:AFC and then have admins
> create new articles based on those submissions, it seems you're just
> redirecting efforts from one type of creation to another, and adding
> more work in the process.

In the event of a lock down, AFC could be restricted to a community
defined criteria for new articles that are considered necessary during
this period, e.g. current events.  The rest can be rejected out of
hand by ordinary editors before an admin needs to see it.

AFC would see more traffic, but it would be a pragmatic way to turn
the hose down to a well defined trickle that can be adjusted as
required to deal with new situations as they arise.

--
John


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Extensive Link Errors related to Proper Names -
 Needs Fixing

body:
Rob Church wrote:

>On 01/04/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I try to not post to the English Wikipedia or its mailing lists. The
>>problem was reported on Foundation-l with a courtesty notice to
>>the developers who control the dumps of the problem.
>>
>>
>
>We control the dumps, we don't control the content of the dumps. The
>issue is, in fact, nothing to do with us.
>
>
>
The origianl message was in two parts. The second part seems to be the
contentious part.
I tend to agree with you that the developers are unconcerned with human
errors in the dumps
(which has now been verified as a non-Bot non-MediaWiki issue which was
unconfirmed before).

The first part of the message discusses a machine created thesaurus
based upon these links which I will post as an XML
dump when th program is completed. That part may be of interest moving
forward as it would enable a built in
thesaurus for MediaWiki. The wikitrans uses this thesaurus created from
within the dumps. Could have a lot
of applications for translators. I have found it very useful.

Jeff


from_name: Erica

subject: [WikiEN-l] More concerns about wide scale article protection

body:
On 3/31/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Erica wrote:
>
> >I believe many vandals will type in the first thing they think of and
> >vandalize that. If they are unable to vandalize, a certain percentage
> >will think "oh, that sucks" and move on to some other non-wiki
> >activity.
> >
> It seems as though you are assuming that they are not smart enough to
> discover the "Random page" function. :-)
>
> Ec
>

Of course some do use the random page function. And of course
vandalism can occur anywhere. It is just fact that some articles are
bigger targets than others.

Erica


body:
[[Douglas Hofstadter]] also contains an image, [[Image:DH00.jpg]],
which is listed as GFDL.  But the description of the image is "Indiana
University Douglas Hofstadter home page", and looking at the
Hofstadter's homepage
(http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/hofstadter.html) I see
the same image there, with no mention of the GFDL.  The image was
uploaded by [[User:Paul venter]].

There are probably some tags and procedures that are supposed to be
followed in this case.  I don't feel like looking them up.  So I'll
post this here and hope someone else fixes it.

Anthony