body:
On 20/04/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> I've been thinking about introducing a tag which specifies that the source of the template should be
> displayed when you view the template page. There are a lot of meta-templates around where conversion
> to HTML with their default parameter values substituted in doesn't really tell you much about them.
> This would replace most uses for <includeonly>. Any comments on that?

Sounds great. Have a look at {{clearleft}} which I just "documented".
Such a tag would be very useful for templates like that.

> In any case, I would recommend documenting templates using <noinclude> sections, as long as the
> formatting is such that it is clear where the template stops and the documentation begins. I think
> that would be an improvement for usability, over using the talk page. The server overhead should be
> negligible (6ms per 100KB).

Cool. (this is the template section)<noinclude>
----
This is the documentation section.</noinclude>

Work for you?

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny

body:
* Fred Bauder wrote:

> taking the bait. It is just not good practice to reverse another
> administrator's actions. That needs to be part of our culture, not
> some wishy-washy notion that it is OK to wheel war when the other
> administrator is "wrong".

Umm... where do you suppose the "wishy washy notion that it is OK to wheel
war when the other administrator is 'wrong'" COMES from?

There was an arbitration case on wheel warring not so long ago where the
set of administrators who were adjudged 'wrong' were reprimanded or
de-sysoped while the set of administrators who were adjudged 'right' were
not... regardless of the degree to which each individual had engaged in
'wheel warring'. One admin was even PRAISED for 'wheel warring'.

If you really want to make the case that wheel-warring is ALWAYS wrong
then it needs to be treated that way. Not as a cudgel for use only against
'those with whom we disagree'.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wheel culture (was:Indefinite block and
	desysopping...)

body:
On 4/20/06, Ben Lowe <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote:
> I still haven't heard a reason why admins
> shouldn't revert admin actions "at all" except that it's wheel-warring,
> which is a rather circular answer (fitting, I suppose for a wheel).
>
Because we elect admins we feel we can trust to use good judgment and
be responsible. When someone's been an active admin for a while, they
develop instincts about how to act in certain situations, and they
tend to be very familar with policy and how it works de jure and de
facto, and the admin community should trust and respect that
experience. That doesn't mean don't question it. It means don't undo
it, unless an unambiguous error has been made.

Sarah


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] The problem with flagging things with {{office}}

body:
On 4/20/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> James D. Forrester wrote:
>
> > Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
> > but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info
> > (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
> > them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
> > can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
> > it to their wonderful service.
>
> Can stuff be deleted such that sysops are not party to deleted sections?
>   That would perhaps solve the issue.

Currently, that requires developer assistance, or a complicated
sequence of deletions, moves, and undeletions that is easy to foul up.

Kelly


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template documentation convention

body:
On 20/04/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> I've been thinking about introducing a tag which specifies that the source of the template should be
> displayed when you view the template page. There are a lot of meta-templates around where conversion
> to HTML with their default parameter values substituted in doesn't really tell you much about them.
> This would replace most uses for <includeonly>. Any comments on that?

Actually, to be honest, the best solution in most cases is probably to
show both the source *and* the rendered code. Maybe the way to do that
would be a __TEMPLATESOURCE__ tag, sort of like this:

__TEMPLATESOURCE__

which would produce HTML roughly like

Code for this template:

<div style="clear: left; float: left">

Admittedly, there is no benefit in showing the rendered template in
this case. But in others it's probably more helpful.

Steve


from_name: John Tex

subject:
[WikiEN-l] To: User:Jimbo Wales Re: Indefinite block and
	desysopping by User:Danny

body:
Jimbo Wales said:
> Mostly, if we (any of us! for any reason!) stub a
>controversial article and demand careful sourcing for rebuilding it,
>that's fine, EVEN IF THE ARTICLE SUCKS FOR A FEW DAYS.

These are very true words.  I thank you for reminding us all that Wikipedia
is here for the long haul, and that most of the time we really can slow down
and take the time to think, and even rethink, before we decide to
[[WP:Bold]].

Having read through all the posts here, it seems to me that everyone or
almost everyone has respect for [[WP:Office]], and for [[User:Danny]] and
for the great job that Danny does.  The concern is really around
understanding what the new "rules of engagement are" so that we don't run
afoul of them.

What I would like to understand is:
1.  Are there cases where Danny needs to take [[WP:Office]] action without
labeling it [[WP:Office]]?
2. If the answer to 1 is "yes", then should we just change [[WP:Office]] to
say, "Never under any circumstances undo any action Danny makes unless you
receive permission from Danny or Jimbo first"?

As a comment, if there is in fact a need to keep things quiet and not
attract the attention that WP:Office brings, I don't think avoiding the use
of the WP:Office tag will do much practical good.  It seems the trolls and
vandals will just watch Danny's every move.  It will make more edits for
them to look at, but they have plenty of time.  Danny "only" makes 20 edits
per day.  That is a lot of edits for the person making them, but not that
many edits for a determined person to look at if they are determined.

If you can reply to my two questions I would greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,
-Johntex


body:
On 4/20/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have, what, 4000 new articles a day, something like that. Something
> like half gets speedied, and a chunk goes to Afd or gets {{prod}}ed.
> We need every single admin we can get.

No, we don't.  50% of admin actions in March 2006 were performed by 29
of our nearly 900 admins; 90% by 170.  We could probably lose 500
admins without any real impact on our ability to get administrative
work done.  Note also that sending articles to AfD or prod doesn't
require an admin.

> Simply disagreeing with someone, or thinking that they break some
> policies are not enough for desysopping. Such an action is never
> punitive, which means that an admin can (and should) only lose their
> status for misuse of their priviliges. Can you name anyone lately?

Karmafist.  Ed Poor.  Guanaco.  Stevertigo.  There's others; do you
pay any attention to the Arbitration Committee's docket lately?

Kelly


from_name: geni

body:
On 4/20/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
> but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info
> (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
> them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
> can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
> it to their wonderful service.

Doubtful. Have a look at how mauch of the article has been deleted. In
any case they could get it from answers.com.

You can't hide WP:OFFICE actions because then people could just watch
danny's protection and deletion log.
--
geni


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> I feel that the immediatist attitude of the vandal-fighter has
> infected many of the decision-making processes of en-wikipedia way too
> much.  Everything must be fixed NOW.  We must act as if we have the
> attention span of a mayfly, because later is as good as never.

With the absolute deepest respect for the vandal fighters, whose
immediatist attitude saves us from untold volumes of unspeakable
horrors, I will say that I agree totally with Matt here.

Some things require immediate action.  Even some things having to do
with WP:OFFICE, although my view is that if it comes to that, what we
really really should do is look at what failure of process led us to
that impasse in the first place.

But mostly, no.  Mostly, if we (any of us! for any reason!) stub a
controversial article and demand careful sourcing for rebuilding it,
that's fine, EVEN IF THE ARTICLE SUCKS FOR A FEW DAYS.

> Whereas in my belief most administrator actions do NOT need to be
> fixed *right now*, even if they are wrong.  Bans and blocks - in most
> cases, the world will not end if an individual can't edit Wikipedia
> for a day.  Frustrating though it might be.  Page protection: everyone
> can live with not editing an article for a little bit.  Deletion:
> undeletion can be done at any time, and unless an article is a very
> high-traffic one, our readers are unlikely to even notice.

Totally.  Some of the silliest fights we have gotten into about alleged
'censorship by admins' was over the most trivial of topics.

> The culture of feeling entitled to instantly revert, though, is quite
> damaging.  It escalates arguments, builds up pressure, makes everyone
> tense, encourages revert wars.  Nothing on Wikipedia should be settled
> by a fight.  I feel that instant, no-discussion reverts of anything
> other than *obvious vandalism* - whether edits or administrative
> actions - encourages a quite unpleasant pattern of behaviour.
>
> If we feel we have to do things instantly because it's too hard to
> keep track of things otherwise, then we need tools - procedure or
> software - to help with that.

Absolutely!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
><snip>
>
>
>>...but I have a
>>great deal of respect for the need of the Foundation to take
>>appropriate measures to protect its very real legal interests in the
>>face of potential litigation.
>>
>>
>This has been repeated ad nauseum in this thread, but it appears that
>this point hasn't gotten through: I'm positive that 99% of the
>community (and this thread) has NO problem WHATSOEVER with WP:OFFICE.
>We get it, it's a necessary evil. It's not fun, but it is something
>that has to be there. We don't want wikipedia sued, and if that's what
>it takes, so be it. WP:OFFICE is not the point in this case.
>
>The point is that Eloquence, one of the oldest and most trusted users
>on wikipedia, one of the people that have really helped shape the way
>we see and use wikipedia today, was indefinitly blocked and desysopped
>for undoing what he thought was a random admin action, one that he
>thought was out of policy. Danny, who is the only one who can invoke
>WP:OFFICE, simply ignored to tell us, the rest of the community, that
>he was doing just that.
>
If Danny is the only one who can invoke WP:OFFICE why is it that the
category tag is there under the name of user:David Newton, and the
protection tag under the name of User:Lbmixpro?  Surely if the effects
of this tag are going to be so severe it's addition by anyone else
should not be permitted.

If the intention of imposing a block is to initiate discussion of a
problem, 24 hours will be long enough to have that effect.  Indefinite
blocks only encourage acrimony.

>When it comes to WP:OFFICE, we don't demand much. You can lock down
>the article for as long as it is an issue, you don't have to tell us
>anything about the case, you don't even have to inform us how long it
>will be locked. We're fine with all that. But please, show us enough
>respect to actually, properly, inform us what we are doing, and don't
>perma-ban one of the most trusted editors out there for a simple
>misunderstanding.
>
Yes, the point is that if harsh measures are needed there needs to be a
stricter adherence to process by those who would impose such measures.

Ec


body:
On 20/04/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can a template transclude itself inside a <noinclude> section?  In
> other words, would documentation that contains an example of the
> template in use (very useful for infoboxes, for example) parse
> properly if placed on the template itself, rather than its talk page?

Yes, as I discovered this morning, but it's confusing as all hell to
actually create those examples. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevage/templatetest

Example of confusion: I just edited it to add a couple of words. When
I save, I don't see those words. When you edit it, they show up in the
preview. If you save it again, they'll show up.

So basically, you just an extra blank save after every change to get
changes to propagate through to the examples.

Steve


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a big difference between my unilaterally deleting a bunch of
> rather unimportant userboxes and Erik reverting the protection of a
> hot article implemented by Danny.  You will also note that I did not
> wheel war with respect to any of the userboxes I deleted; I did not
> redelete any of the ones that were speedily restored by various
> admins, and the small handful which I did delete twice I redeleted
> after discussion with the objectors to the original deletion.

Just to make sure all of the facts are on the table:
1) I did not "wheel war". I reverted the protection once, and left a
comment on the talk page. I did not revert the stubbification in
respect of Danny's editorial judgment on the matter.
2) The Office Protection was not labeled as such. It was instead
labeled as a normal protection.
3) When another user added an Office Protection label, Danny reverted
him. This is only visible in the list of deleted revisions of
[[NewsMax.com]].
4) He did this using [[User:Danny]], at a point when he had already
created his separate [[User:Dannyisme]] account for foundation tasks.

I'll shut up again now.

Erik


body:
On 4/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/04/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You can't hide WP:OFFICE actions because then people could just watch
> > danny's protection and deletion log.
>
> IMHO, you can hide absolutely anything, until an admin attempts to
> unprotect the page. But anyone watching the page will probably notice
> that it went from 5 pages down to a stub without so much as a whisper.
>
> Steve

Other people may notice they can't edit the page.

--
geni


body:
On 4/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Under this definition, Eloquence's block truly would be a death
> sentence, since no one could ever revert Danny's stupid initial
> indefinite block -- even Jimbo.

Don't be silly.  All you have to do is have a discussion and reach
consensus.  A reversal based on consensus is not wheel warring.

Kelly


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> ...but I have a
> great deal of respect for the need of the Foundation to take
> appropriate measures to protect its very real legal interests in the
> face of potential litigation.

This has been repeated ad nauseum in this thread, but it appears that
this point hasn't gotten through: I'm positive that 99% of the
community (and this thread) has NO problem WHATSOEVER with WP:OFFICE.
We get it, it's a necessary evil. It's not fun, but it is something
that has to be there. We don't want wikipedia sued, and if that's what
it takes, so be it. WP:OFFICE is not the point in this case.

The point is that Eloquence, one of the oldest and most trusted users
on wikipedia, one of the people that have really helped shape the way
we see and use wikipedia today, was indefinitly blocked and desysopped
for undoing what he thought was a random admin action, one that he
thought was out of policy. Danny, who is the only one who can invoke
WP:OFFICE, simply ignored to tell us, the rest of the community, that
he was doing just that.

When it comes to WP:OFFICE, we don't demand much. You can lock down
the article for as long as it is an issue, you don't have to tell us
anything about the case, you don't even have to inform us how long it
will be locked. We're fine with all that. But please, show us enough
respect to actually, properly, inform us what we are doing, and don't
perma-ban one of the most trusted editors out there for a simple
misunderstanding.

That is really not ok, not in any way, shape or form.


body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 3) When another user added an Office Protection label, Danny reverted
> > him. This is only visible in the list of deleted revisions of
> > [[NewsMax.com]].

> Actually, no, he didn't.  I did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/NewsMax.com
#  00:46, April 19, 2006 . . Danny (Reverted edits by ContiE (talk) to
last version by Danny)
# 22:31, April 18, 2006 . . ContiE (using the office template.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Splash&diff=prev&oldid=49018307))

Erik


from_name: Ben Lowe

body:
>
>  The
> first person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel
> war, and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening (except
> where the original admin can't be contacted and it has to be done
> quickly). But as a rule, we shouldn't be undoing each other's admin
> actions at all.

I think "wheel war" is a great term that overly bold admins can throw at
people who disagree with them, making it seem like it is the fault of the
reverter, that the one returning things to the status quo is the rouge, when
in fact it could simply be that the original admin's edits were
unwarranted.  Or stupid.  I still haven't heard a reason why admins
shouldn't revert admin actions "at all" except that it's wheel-warring,
which is a rather circular answer (fitting, I suppose for a wheel).  So I
suppose my response to "We shouldn't be undoing each other's admin actions
at all" is that we also shouldn't be making any mistakes at all.  But it
happens, and so should be able to unhappen.

Ben


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] new checkuser policy

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 4/20/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I am not all that pleased with having to deal with "outsiders" in order
>>to obtain this critical information, although having it is better than
>>not having it.  I am really curious as to the reasons why Essjay and
>>Karynn are any better candidates for checkuser status on en.wikibooks
>>than the current two candidates on the request for checkuser status, and
>>all I can say is that they enjoy somewhat better relationships with the
>>Foundation board.  That seems hardly a reasonable policy.
>>
>>
>
>I don't know the current candidates on en.wikibooks that well, and
>while I don't have any reason to believe that there's anything wrong
>with them, I also don't have any reason to believe that they can be
>trusted at the level that should be expected and required of those
>with CheckUser privileges. CheckUser is a position that carries very
>hefty responsibilities; the Foundation has good cause to restrict the
>number of people with this privilege.  Frankly I think *all*
>CheckUsers need to be approved by the Foundation because it's the
>Foundation that will be on the hook for a misuse of the information
>that CheckUsers have access to.  So the fact that Essjay and I are
>well known to the Foundation makes us more appealing to the
>Foundation, not specifically because we have done most of our work on
>Wikipedia (although this is true for me and to a lesser extent for
>Essjay, who has more meta experience than I do) but because we have
>become known to the Foundation as reliable, trustworthy individuals.
>
>
So why doesn't the existing policy simply say this?  If the individuals
have to be so trusted that they need formal approval of not only the
project, but also the Foundation board itself, then it should be stated
as such.  This is not currently the policy.  As far as you not trusting
these users, that is because you have not interacted with them and had a
chance to see their editing and administrative styles, and more of a
matter that they are not as active on en.wikipedia to your tastes.  From
my perspective, the Wikibooks candidates are as trustworthy as any
Wikimedia user can possibly be without getting into cabal accusations or
political arguments, and would very likely have recieved the checkuser
status a long time ago if they had instead been working on Wikipedia
instead of Wikibooks.  They are solid and very active Wikimedia users.

>>Perhaps because this was buried under all of the previous comments, but
>>it really hasn't been answered at least to my satisfaction.  Under what
>>reasonable criteria is being applied that would allow somebody to become
>>a bureaucrat on a project that would not also mean they are trusted
>>enough to have checkuser status as well?
>>
>>
>
>There's a big difference between bureaucrat and checkuser.  CheckUsers
>have access to personal, private information about other editors,
>information which is protected by law in some nations (e.g. the
>European Union) and the inappropriate disclosure of which could easily
>cause grave harm to someone.  Bureaucrats just get to decide who has
>access to the special buttons on a given project.  The worst damage a
>bureaucrat can do is mistakenly promote someone who ought not have
>been promoted, resulting in annoying damage to a particular project
>and some degree of frustration for its editors and readers.  The worst
>damage a checkuser can do is publicly announce the IP address of a
>political dissident editing from a country where political dissidence
>is punishable by death.  Misuse of CheckUser power can easily lead to
>the loss of jobs and potentially even of freedom or of lives.  I hope
>you now understand how the gravity of the responsibility of a
>CheckUser is that much greater than that of a bureaucrat, and why the
>screening process for bureaucrats is inadequate for determining who
>should be trusted with checkuser rights.
>
>
On this I guess we have to agree to disagree on this point.  I
completely disagree that checkuser disclosure of IP addresses is going
to cause any real problem at all, and is making a mountain out of a
molehill to prevent some very minor and difficult to accomplish abuse at
the risk of denying a very powerful tool to local projects... powerful
in the sense of identifying blatant abuse and stoping vandals from
destroying a project.  And pointing out that IP addresses are also used
anyway and even publicly disclosed for most Wikimedia users as well (the
unregistered users).  I won't rehash any of my previous arguments to
respond further, but any attempt to not disclose this information if
futile anyway for somebody who might lose their job or recieve capital
punishment for something they write on a Wikimedia project, and the
Foundation would be compelled to disclose that IP address anyway, by the
standards of the checkuser policy as written.  This policy will never
save even a single life, just at most give them a few more months of
life at best due to legal manuvering with the Wikimedia Foundation
instead being sent through the mud as harboring political dissidants or
even people plotting to overthrow governments, such as perhaps some
al-Queida operatives planning on blowing up the Empire State Building in
New York City.  Is that the kind of press that the Foundation wants in
terms of who is being protected by this policy?

>>And getting back to the original point of this thread, the Stewards who
>>supposedly have at least the option of having checkuser status, and are
>>allowed to act in the capacity of performing administrative actions
>>where existing policies on individual projects are lacking these
>>policies due to their size, are ignoring checkuser requests.  If Essjay
>>and Karynn have the trust and support for this widespread and cross
>>project assistance, perhaps they should simply be made stewards as well.
>> And to the point at hand, en.wikibooks is in English, which from what
>>I've seen of the list of stewards is one of the languages of every
>>current steward.  That these checkuser scans aren't being performed is
>>more of a condemnation of all of the stewards, or a very serious
>>misunderstanding of what their role is as backup administrators to
>>smaller projects.
>>
>>
>
>Relatively few stewards are in a position to perform checkusers; the
>position requires both technical competency and a high degree of trust
>and responsibility.  That most stewards (who presumably have the trust
>and responsibility, even if not the technical competency) are
>unwilling to perform them is likely because they don't know how to or
>even that they can as much as that they aren't bothering.
>
>Kelly
>
>
I guess I'm confused at the duties of stewards then.  Most of what they
do is "promote" users to become admins or sysops, and now grant
checkuser status as well based on a whole variety of standards, many of
which even contradict currently the checkuser policy on Meta.  This by
itself does require a certain level of technical competency, and I fail
to see how comparing two different IP addresses from two users is really
all that much more difficult of a technical task.  This is not operating
system assembly-level driver writing we are talking about, just looking
up an IP address or two and comparing numbers.  As far as letting
stewards know they can do this, I hope this is a wake-up call to let
them know that this is something that is needed, in terms of being able
to help smaller projects on a task they simply can't do for themselves.
 If the level of trust is so high but the amount of work so great,
perhaps a recruiting drive to get more stewards should occur.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] new checkuser policy


body:
Delirium wrote:

>Kelly Martin wrote:
>
>
>>On 4/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>But Danny has explicitly said (on this list) that he is also a normal
>>>editor, and only his actions that are accompanied with a statement that
>>>they are WP:OFFICE actions should be treated as such.  So if he does
>>>something and does not tag it WP:OFFICE, we should all operate on the
>>>presumption that he is doing it in his capacity as a normal Wikipedian.
>>>
>>>
>>That does not excuse reversion without discussion.  Even taking as an
>>assumption that Danny had been acting on his own behalf, Erik's
>>actions could easily have been the start of a wheel war, and were
>>inappropriate by any reasonable standard.  WP:OFFICE has nothing to do
>>with that; wheel warring is still wheel warring.
>>
>>
>He didn't revert Danny's edits or wheel war.  Danny stubbed and
>protected the page; Erik noted that he was willing to give Danny the
>benefit of the doubt on stubbing, but that the protection was contrary
>to the protection policy (a correct observation), so unprotected the
>page but left it stubbed.  It is quite acceptable and even encouraged to
>unprotect pages that have been inappropriately protected.
>
If the original protection was not clearly explained one cannot really
blame Erik for the steps that he took in making a single reversion.
Going further than that should have required more discussion than a
simple edit summary.  Kelly justifies her stand with the words "could
easily have been".  It is improper to conclude that what could be is
what is.  Yes, wheel warring is still wheel warring, but what could be a
wheel war is not a wheel war; it's speculation.  Assume good faith ...
even from Erik. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
On 4/20/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I believe them when they say they are pro-Wikipedia.

That's a tad unbelievable.  Have you actually *looked* at the content
of the site?  They're blatant trolls just dripping with the most
poisonous malice, and they boast about their claimed abuse of
administrator powers to put up copyright infringing and defamatory
content that has been removed from the main site.


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> Results vary when you complain, some problems are dealt with, some
> work themselves out, some are ignored, but I have never seen a
> vengeful or paranoid attitude from our central leadership.

Depends on who you count among the "central leadership", I suppose.  I'm
not trying to single her out here, but I was struct by the juxtaposition
of your comment above and a message just left by Kelly Martin (who seems
to be "in the know" on this current issue) at [[WP:1WW]:

"... Eloquence deciding that he's entitled to unilaterally reverse
without discussion a protection imposed by Danny, one of most trusted
administrators. That was wheel warring. He deserves to be desysoped (and
was desysoped, although that punishment, while originally imposed by
Jimbo, was subsequently reversed by Jimbo for reasons that frankly make
no sense to me) for that."

So, let's see:

* That nice hot-button word "unilaterally".  It wasn't more than a few
months ago when the unwashed hordes were screaming it at Kelly herself.

* Desysoping (and prosumably blocking) are apparently now punitive, not
preventative.

* "I am sure Erik will not do anything bad" frankly makes no sense to her.

I'm sorry to say this, but, all in all, that comment sounds pretty
nasty.  Maybe not "vengeful or paranoid", but certainly very stressed
out and high-handed, with a good amount of zero tolerance and "assume
bad faith" thrown in.  Maybe I'm reading too much into this paragraph,
but it sure sounds as if someone is in urgent need of a vacation here.

Mind you, when the smoke clears, I'd really like to know what caused all
this panic at the office in the first place -- did someone hold Jimbo at
gunpoint while demanding that the articles be removed, or what?

Just another admin without all the pieces of the puzzle,
--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
On 20/04/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
> but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info
> (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
> them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
> can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
> it to their wonderful service. Now Wikimedia has been informed that they

Presumably there are ways to totally purge/hide/protect those deleted
revisions, even from admins. And if there aren't currently, such ways
could be invented.

But that wouldn't really solve the problem. Which is that Wikipedia, a
site built purely for the free flow of information, in the real world,
occasionally needs to limit the flow of information. And in any
practical sense it simply can't. By attempting to stop people looking
at information, it simply draws attention to the fact it's missing,
and people can get it from other sources.

My only half solution is to use the office flag frequently, to throw
people off the scent of the "real" issues.

Steve


body:
On 20/04/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but if Wikimedia were found
> liable for Wikitruth's deliberate and purposeful attempt to re-spread
> material we removed at request of someone else, wouldn't Wikimedia
> have standing for suing Wikitruth as attempting to defraud Wikimedia
> or something like that?

Since apparently we have a real lawyer on this list, we should
probably leave the legal speculation to him :)

Steve


body:
On 20/04/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whoops, what's this?  Wikipedia was constructed to write an
> encyclopedia.  It's most definitely not "built purely for the free
> flow of information" or we wouldn't be deleting stuff off of it on a
> regular basis.

I didn't say "the free flow of all information, no matter how crufty"
:) Seriously though, the very fact we use the GFDL, allow unlimited
free downloads of our content for third parties, that the histories of
articles are readily available etc, all point to the fact that
Wikipedia is geared towards free distribution of its content. As far
as I am aware, the Wikipedia project has no goals other than creating
good content, and disseminating it as widely as possible.

This is totally different to, say, a government ministry, or a
corporation, both of which maintain much tighter controls on
information flow, because it's contrary to their missions.

Hopefully that makes what I said a bit clearer?

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny
	(Johntex)

body:
On 20/04/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> Foundation", I don't see a better wa than applying WP:OFFICE. People may
> complain, but they know the consequences of reverting him.

I wonder if the foundation has investigated taking a traditional
route, like blanking the page, and replacing it with "CORRECTION: John
Seigenthaler has never been at all involved in Kennedy assinations"
etc, and leaving it like that for a week or so.

Steve


body:
On 4/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would it be worth asking less active admins to consider handing in
> their mops, on the understanding that they can ask for them back
> without having to go through RfA again? Just to keep the number of
> mops out there down a bit?

I really don't see any need for that.  Most of the low-activity admins
aren't the ones causing trouble, just a few of them.  My point is that
we should not be that concerned about lopping off problematic admins;
we're not running short on them by any means.

Kelly


body:
On 20/04/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can't hide WP:OFFICE actions because then people could just watch
> danny's protection and deletion log.

IMHO, you can hide absolutely anything, until an admin attempts to
unprotect the page. But anyone watching the page will probably notice
that it went from 5 pages down to a stub without so much as a whisper.

Steve


from_name: SJ

subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by
	User:Danny

body:
On 4/20/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> >
> > Death Phoenix stated for the record:
> >
> > > Since Danny didn't apply the WP:OFFICE tag, does that warrant an immediate
> > > desysoping and indefinite ban? I've seen such measures only after an
> <
> > Minor correction: even the ArbComm cannot impose an indefinite ban.

Both the ban and the desysopping were indefensible.  Editors should
not be punished for violating nonexistent policies.

Desysopping on more than one project was unprecedented and outrageous.

It is perfectly legitimate to have legal reasons for actions to remain
secret.  It is not legitimate to pretend that such reasons don't exist
-- and then punish editors because they really do.

> > Don't let the issue here get buried under discussion of OFFICE.  The
> > issue is that Danny, while apparently acting as a common or garden
> > variety admin, -- and not just without discussion, but rather while
> > /actively refusing to discuss/ -- imposed a lifetime ban from Wikipedia.

Right.  This is not an OFFICE issue, except insofar as that was the
source of a misunderstanding.  This is an issue of misuse of authority
and refusal to communicate, once the misunderstanding had taken place.

--
++SJ

> > Indefinite block.
> >
> > While /actively refusing to discuss/.
> >
>
> Precisely. Trying to defend Danny's desysopping and ban by crying
> wheel-war is just wikilawyering in my opinion.
>
> --Oskar


body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > He didn't revert Danny's edits or wheel war.
>
> Yes, he did.  He reverted another admin's protection within a very
> short time of when it was imposed, without discussion.  That, by
> definition, is the open salvo in a wheel war.
>
> Kelly

So you condem this action?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=protect&user=Naconkantari&page=Main+Page

--
geni


body:
On 20/04/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> That sounds like an excellent way to go. It will be visible from the
> template page, and editable in its own place, away from both the
> actual template code and the talk page discussion.

Shall we propose a naming convention? Possibilities:

/help
/documentation
/doc
/usage

Steve


body:
On 4/20/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The practical question here is how we go about determining which
> admins are "problematic".

Indeed.

Kelly


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Data dumps, now with md5sums

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Brion Vibber
| Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 11:21 AM
/
| ...MD5 checksums are available again for new dumps,
| to confirm that files downloaded correctly.

It is great news, really. Thanks Brion.

Reg, Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski


body:
On 20/04/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> How would that matter, though?  It's the content being removed that's
> sensitive, not the fact that *something* is gone; and if the offending
> revisions are deleted/hidden/whatever, there's no way for someone to
> get at that content (at least not directly from us).

Sure there is, especially if the offending material has been sitting
on the site for, oh, say, 4 months? This is where the "free flow of
information" thing comes in - it's precisely because we're focused on
getting information out there quickly that it's incredibly hard to mop
it up suddenly if we need to. After 4 months, there are probably
several hundred copies of the material available on the net, possibly
even more on various users' hard disks, without mentioning Google's
cache, archive.org ....

Steve


body:
On 20/04/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Other people may notice they can't edit the page.

Sure, but pages being protected isn't in itself suspicious. Page
protection being applied by the Foundation, pages not being able to be
unprotected, or (sorry) sysops being desysopped for
unprotecting...that's suspicious.

Steve


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
G'day Pete,

> Kirill Lokshin wrote: "...to an openly anti-Wikipedia site"
>
>> From
>> http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Wikitruth:Editing_guidelines
>
> "some amazing people are working behind the scenes and in the front
> lines over there [i.e. at Wikipedia], putting in the hours to make a
> difference and make Wikipedia better. [...] We wouldn't have this
> site if we didn't respect and love the concept of a Wikipedia. It's
> the implementation we have issues with."
>
> I believe them when they say they are pro-Wikipedia. I've been
> astonished by how many Wikipedians are unwilling to be open to
> criticism (one of the essential elements of a cult by the way :) !) I
> don't agree with their vehemence of the opposition to WP:OFFICE. But
> anyone who's been following this debate about Erik and Danny will
> realise its implementation has been completely ham-fisted at times.
> So disagree with Wikitruth, and prove it wrong, but don't lie about
> it.

I agree with you: this is just Wikipolitics by other means, as opposed
to the straight anti-Wikipedia bizzo peddled by Britannica (through
fear) or Brandt (through sheer kookiness).

I wouldn't describe what Kirill said as a "lie", though.  It's a fairly
easy mistake to make, especially given the poisonous content of some
articles (like the silly thing about Jimbo's daughter, or the hate
shrines to certain admins).  WikiTruth may not be anti-Wikipedia, but
it's definitely anti-Wikipedian.

> Endnote: Yes they did copy an article about a member of Jimbo's
> family that lingered in the database for several days. I am glad they
> are embarassed about that and have deleted it. Makes their
> motivations more believeable.

I, too, am glad that they deleted the article, and I agree that it makes
them just a smidgeon more credible ... as credible as a group who plan
to upload articles known to be defamatory, going out of their way to
hurt innocent people because they want to mock Wikipedia.

Keep in mind, however, what they replaced the article about Jimbo's
daughter with:

   When one of our staff threw up a bunch of deleted pages, they
   included one on Kira Wales. Not because they were particularly
   targeting the little angel, but because they just were throwing
   stuff up on this site willy-nilly. We just found it here, and
   removed it. Apologies to King Jimbo for pulling his little
   princess into the mudfight. Won't happen again.

"his little princess", etc., etc.  Even when they're trying to do the
right thing they can't resist being dicks.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.4/318 - Release Date: 18/04/2006


from_name: Nathaniel Sheetz

body:
Kelly said:

"NOBODY is entitled to revert without discussion.  3RR says we're willing to
tolerate it for regular editors.  Admins are expected to be above
this.  Any admin who doesn't want to play by this rule is invited to
visit [[m:Requests for permissions]]."

Slimvirgin said:

"The first person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel
war, and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening as a rule."

True story:
Last month, I restored [[Static grass]] after another admin mistook the AfD
template for the PROD template I had replaced a few hours previously.  The
toolserver was lagging and as a result the PROD list was outdated, and
because the two templates look similar, it was an easy mistake to make.  The
discussion on AfD was ongoing.  More than 20 hours later, the deleting admin
left a message on the AfD page apologizing for the mistake.  Are you
suggesting that I should I have just left the article deleted until he
logged on again to undo the deletion, thus bringing the AfD discussion to a
halt?

What if he had left on vacation immediately after deleting the article?
Does the AfD just sit there?

Alternatively, what if I talked with 4-5 other admins and they all agreed
that I should undelete the article?  Under the definition above, I would
still be starting a wheel war by undeleting the article.

Obviously wheel warring is bad news, but surely common sense must be applied
in some situations.  If you think I'm off track, please tell me what I
should have done instead.

Nathaniel

On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/20/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/20/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Is it the right of every administrator to second-guess the
> > > administrative actions of any other administrator, and instantly
> > > revert them if they feel justified?
> > >
> > > The culture of feeling entitled to instantly revert, though, is quite
> > > damaging.
> > >
> > Exactly right. Some admins have adopted a definition of "wheel
> > warring" that excludes the first revert of an admin action -- so that
> > if X blocks, and Y unblocks, Y is not wheel warring. But if X restores
> > the block, X has started the wheel war. This is nonsense. The first
> > person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel war,
> > and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening as a rule.
>
> I concur entirely with Sarah's definition of when a wheel war begins.
> This culture of "free whacks at the post" has to go.  NOBODY is
> entitled to revert without discussion.  3RR says we're willing to
> tolerate it for regular editors.  Admins are expected to be above
> this.  Any admin who doesn't want to play by this rule is invited to
> visit [[m:Requests for permissions]].
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Nathaniel C. Sheetz
http://www.personal.psu.edu/ncs124


from_name: Ilia Alshanetsky

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.1.3RC3 testing

body:
Hello!

You are receiving this email because your project has been select to
take part in a new effort by the PHP QA Team to make sure that your
project still works with PHP versions to-be-released. With this we
hope to make sure that you are either aware of things that might
break, or to make sure we don't introduce any strange regressions.
With this effort we hope to build a better relation between the PHP
Team and the major projects.

If you do not want to receive these heads-up emails, please reply to
me personally and I will remove you from the list; but, we hope that
you want to actively help us making PHP a better and more stable
scripting language.

The final release candidate of PHP 5.1.3 can be found at
http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.1.3RC3.tar.bz2. I would like to
ask you to test your application against this release and let us know
about any issues that you discover. We are particularly interested in
backwards compatibility breaks and new issues appeared in this
release, but were not present in prior 5.1 versions. If you find any
issues, please contact the PHP QA team at "php-qa at lists.php.net".

In case you think that other projects should also receive this kinds
of emails, please let me know privately, and I will add them to the
list of projects to contact.

Best Regards,

Ilia Alshanetsky
5.1 Release Master


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 4/20/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Both the ban and the desysopping were indefensible.  Editors should
> not be punished for violating nonexistent policies.
> Desysopping on more than one project was unprecedented and outrageous.

I guess that everyone who thinks that it isn't as black and white as
you do is just an idiot?


from_name: Carl Fûrstenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
Could this be one?
http://wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Image:7312_deleted_edits.png


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:36:23 +0100, you wrote:

>Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
>but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info
>(amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
>them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
>can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
>it to their wonderful service.

This is a great idea, and I strongly encourage them to do so.  The
sooner the better - then they can be shut down by the lawyers who
spend their time bugging Danny, and we can get on with building that
encyclopaedia.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
 Someone please define wheel-warring, and not simply by example.  If
"wheel-warring" is when one admin reverts another, the word "wheel" seems
irrelevant and the word "war" is blatant hyperbole.

Ben


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would it be worth asking less active admins to consider handing in
> > their mops, on the understanding that they can ask for them back
> > without having to go through RfA again? Just to keep the number of
> > mops out there down a bit?
>
> I really don't see any need for that.  Most of the low-activity admins
> aren't the ones causing trouble, just a few of them.  My point is that
> we should not be that concerned about lopping off problematic admins;
> we're not running short on them by any means.

The practical question here is how we go about determining which
admins are "problematic".

Kirill Lokshin


body:
On 4/20/06, Ben Lowe <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Someone please define wheel-warring, and not simply by example.  If
> "wheel-warring" is when one admin reverts another, the word "wheel" seems
> irrelevant and the word "war" is blatant hyperbole.

We have an article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_war

Which doesn't quite lay out the exact definition of one in Wikipedia
terms, but the gist of it is there.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Platonides

body: Great. It was expected for a long time :)


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>On request I've created a mailing list for Wikisource:
>
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>

Any chance you could create a wikiversity-l mailing list?  I requested
one a couple of months ago so there should be something on file if that
is required.  If there is a standard request template I could take that
to the wikiversity subcommittee of the special projects committee who is
apparently current in charge of resubmitting the proposal modified as
per the stacked Board's request of approximately six months ago, should
you choose to provide a link to that entity.

It might be a bit late since the activity level on Wikiversity seems to
have fallen off quite a bit over the past six months.  On the other hand
there might be quite a few participants checking once in a while to find
out whether an actual decision to proceed or to not to proceed has been
reached.

It will be a useful data product even if the Wikicommunities decide to
pass on wikiversity.  There has been a lot of general interest shown in
the concept and much of the input could be summarized efficiently for
others to use in implementing the project concept elsewhere.   This
would also be useful locally if; after the cleanup phase deletes the
disapproved project from Wikibooks and meta; the community ever decide
to resurrect the project.

Regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created


body:
On 4/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Death Phoenix stated for the record:
>
> > Since Danny didn't apply the WP:OFFICE tag, does that warrant an immediate
> > desysoping and indefinite ban? I've seen such measures only after an
> > arbitration case. Nowhere did Danny say he was applying WP:OFFICE. If Erik
> > got into a wheel war, fine. I've seen wheel-warring admins get desysoped (or
> > cautioned, or whatever), but only after an arbitration case was held against
> > them. An indef ban should certainly only come after an arbitration case.
>
> Minor correction: even the ArbComm cannot impose an indefinite ban.
>
> Don't let the issue here get buried under discussion of OFFICE.  The
> issue is that Danny, while apparently acting as a common or garden
> variety admin, -- and not just without discussion, but rather while
> /actively refusing to discuss/ -- imposed a lifetime ban from Wikipedia.
>
> Indefinite block.
>
> While /actively refusing to discuss/.
>

Precisely. Trying to defend Danny's desysopping and ban by crying
wheel-war is just wikilawyering in my opinion.

--Oskar


body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>>On 20/04/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>You can't hide WP:OFFICE actions because then people could just watch
>>>danny's protection and deletion log.
>>
>>IMHO, you can hide absolutely anything, until an admin attempts to
>>unprotect the page. But anyone watching the page will probably notice
>>that it went from 5 pages down to a stub without so much as a whisper.
>
> How would that matter, though?  It's the content being removed that's
> sensitive, not the fact that *something* is gone; and if the offending
> revisions are deleted/hidden/whatever, there's no way for someone to
> get at that content (at least not directly from us).

One word: mirrors.

Pretty much any Wikipedia content that has been around for more than a
day or two has leaked to mirror sites and search engine archives.  It's
out there for anyone, admin or not, to grab even after it has been
deleted from Wikipedia proper.

In short, Jdforrester's argument breaks down, since potentially _any_
deletion, protection or reversion of Wikipedia content may increase the
risk of it being copied to sites like WikiTruth, regardless of whether
they have admins helping them or not.  Given that, we can either stop
worrying ourselves sick about it, or give up and shut down the project.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
On 4/20/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is nonsense and it lies at the heart of all this trouble. The
> first person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel
> war, and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening (except
> where the original admin can't be contacted and it has to be done
> quickly). But as a rule, we shouldn't be undoing each other's admin
> actions at all.

This sounds like a fine and productive suggestion.

It is not *completely* obvious that this is the right way to behave,
however -- one of the arguments for IAR as applied to admins, for
instance, has long been that other admins can rv your actions right
back -- and it is not currently understood as policy.  So it is not
surprising that many admins don't operate under this understanding.

++SJ


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] an idea for a commons help tool

body:
> > It also includes links like [[w:lupus|lupus]] as interwiki links. I'm
> > not sure where they even come from but they're not interwiki. Well OK
> > they are... they link to Wikipedia articles, but they don't produce
> > interwiki links - you need a language code for that. (eg. en)
> >
> Since I'm too lazy to make a list of all language codes used, I only
> check for length ;-)
> Now set to two-letter-codes only, should ignore "w:" now.

Hm, that's better, but I'm sorry to report that there are some three
and maybe longer lang codes eg nds.wp. But minimum length 2 shouldn't
be too bad, I think it will still pick up links like [[meta:]] but
there shouldn't be too many of them in articles anyway.

Brianna

--
"Mathematicians do it with Nobel's wife."


body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I concur entirely with Sarah's definition of when a wheel war begins.
> This culture of "free whacks at the post" has to go.  NOBODY is
> entitled to revert without discussion.  3RR says we're willing to
> tolerate it for regular editors.  Admins are expected to be above
> this.  Any admin who doesn't want to play by this rule is invited to
> visit [[m:Requests for permissions]].

Slightly OT, I think it makes a lot of sense to clearly tell
prospective admins what *obligations* they are subjecting themselves
to, as well as what special 'powers' they are gaining, by becoming
administrators.

Obligations to:
* Learn relevant policy and keep up with policy changes
* Restrict what they repost on other sites
* Respond to inquiries about their admin actions by other admins?
* Obey a 1RR?

--SJ


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN problem - Same folder twice

body:
>Those are different names.
I think they are the same human-word. I have $wgCapitalLinks set ;)
I don't see the point of having that two folders separated. The contents are
on different subfolders so no problems would came from there. Maybe links to
the repository? I don't think it's being very linked. And most references to
the moved folder would be handled by the subversion merge feature.

>Don't check out the entire repo, that's a waste of time, disk space, etc.
>Check out specific bits.
It's not something very likely, but the repo _is going to fail_ for somebody
with an uncommon config. If we were going to only accept valid input most of
the parser work wouldn't be necesary and this maillist wouldn't be full of
'MediaWiki automated test run failure's.


from_name: geni

body:
On 4/20/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>   "Delerium",
>
>   In regards to:
>
> > [Erik] didn't revert Danny's edits or wheel war.  Danny stubbed and
> > protected the page; Erik noted that he was willing to give Danny the
> > benefit of the doubt on stubbing, but that the protection was contrary
> > to the protection policy (a correct observation), so unprotected the
> > page but left it stubbed.  It is quite acceptable and even encouraged to
> > unprotect pages that have been inappropriately protected.
>
>   While we're engaging in this critique of Danny's response, it might make sense
> to ask whether or not Danny, and the other office people, are aware that there
> exists some large segment of the admin population who regard it as routine to
> undo other admin actions without discussion because they were "out of process",
> or "obviously wrong", or whatever.  Can we imagine the possibility that some
> people might interpret that as inexplicable, or even hostile, interference, if
> they aren't used to this?
>
>
>
>                                 Jkelly

You are suggesting that there are admins on wikipedia who are not
aware that stuff done on wikipedia may be undone?

--
geni


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

body:
On 4/20/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Well-established material gets book citations.
> New material gets journal citations.
> Internet memes gets blog citations.
> Horses for courses.
>
> This idea is analogous to the idea of NPOV - we just provide the data and
> the reader does the hard work.

To some extent, this already passes.  The problem lies with the word
"blog".  The reliability of blog sources varies - I would be happy to cite
Talkingpointsmemo.com in support of the statement "Josh Marshall said..."
On the other hand, the average blogger account is a far less reliable source
because there is no way to verify the identify of the blogger.

However, this only applies to primary sources.  If we are looking for
secondary sources, we have to be more picky.  Since most of what we write
should be based on secondary sources, they are the real heart of
verifiability

Ian


body:
On 4/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I concur entirely with Sarah's definition of when a wheel war begins.
> > > This culture of "free whacks at the post" has to go.  NOBODY is
> > > entitled to revert without discussion.  3RR says we're willing to
> > > tolerate it for regular editors.  Admins are expected to be above
> > > this.  Any admin who doesn't want to play by this rule is invited to
> > > visit [[m:Requests for permissions]].
> >
> > Slightly OT, I think it makes a lot of sense to clearly tell
> > prospective admins what *obligations* they are subjecting themselves
> > to, as well as what special 'powers' they are gaining, by becoming
> > administrators.
> >
> > Obligations to:
> > * Learn relevant policy and keep up with policy changes
>
> WP:CSD is edited more than once a day. I mean seriously that page
> needs an RSS feed or something. Keeping up with it is no trivial task.

Yes.  It's a good thing these aren't already obligations :-)
But I can imagine someone creating a weekly 'policy update'
newsletter, and writing a bot that spams admin talk pages with a link
to the latest edition once a week.  You wouldn't be able to opt out of
this spam as an admin, and would be expected to catch up on the
newsletter regularly.

> > * Obey a 1RR?
>
> Revert warriours would just love that.

I meant "Obey a 1RR with regards to other admins?"... but the question
mark is still there for a reason.

SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel culture

body:
On 4/20/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>   Geni,
>
> >
> > You are suggesting that there are admins on wikipedia who are not
> > aware that stuff done on wikipedia may be undone?
>
>   I'm not clear on whether or not you're just goofing around here.  There are a
> lot of things that "may" potentially be done on a wiki that would surprise or
> alarm experienced users if they were actually put into practice.  If you were
> just goofing, I didn't get the joke.
>
>                            Jkelly

It's a wiki. Actions get reversed. The only way to prevent that is to
proive masses of justification or cite WP:OFFICE.

--
geni


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
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Kelly Martin stated for the record:

> Except he wasn't an Wikipedian in good standing; he had attempted to
> start a wheel war.
>
> Kelly

Untrue and inflammatory.  In a word, trolling.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Bad: all life stopping instantaneously,
 sean at epoptic.org | and every molecule in your body
                  | exploding at the speed of light.
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body:
On 4/20/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/04/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/20/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The practical question here is how we go about determining which
> > > admins are "problematic".
> >
> > Indeed.
>
> It is probably worth remembering that this whole sorry argument began
> with one of the few dozen people least likely to get desysopped by any
> such test...

If you mean the unprotect/desysop/block mess, certainly.

If we make some (possibly quite incorrect) assumptions about why Danny
moved in the way he did -- to wit, that at least a partial reason for
keeping office actions less visible is the leaking of deleted
information -- it becomes less clear.  Would desysopping the (assumed)
admin(s) passing this information to wikitruth -- ignoring for the
moment the question of whether we can catch them -- help in avoiding
the need for this sort of secrecy in the future?  Or will office
actions need to be kept under wraps even if there's no danger of
admins interfering?

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 4/20/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>:
> > That does not excuse reversion without discussion.  Even taking as an
> > assumption that Danny had been acting on his own behalf, Erik's
> > actions could easily have been the start of a wheel war, and were
> > inappropriate by any reasonable standard.
>
> Yet, equally, that does not excuse the indefinite blocking of a Wikipedian in
> good-standing.

Except he wasn't an Wikipedian in good standing; he had attempted to
start a wheel war.

Kelly


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Any chance you could create a wikiversity-l mailing list?  I requested
> one a couple of months ago so there should be something on file if that
> is required.

There's been one for some time, but it's in German (wikiversityde-l). Do you
want a separate English list?

I'll need the e-mail addresses of the initial list admin(s) to set one up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Any chance you could create a wikiversity-l mailing list?  I requested
> one a couple of months ago so there should be something on file if that
> is required.

There's been one for some time, but it's in German (wikiversityde-l). Do you
want a separate English list?

I'll need the e-mail addresses of the initial list admin(s) to set one up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Any chance you could create a wikiversity-l mailing list?  I requested
> one a couple of months ago so there should be something on file if that
> is required.

There's been one for some time, but it's in German (wikiversityde-l). Do you
want a separate English list?

I'll need the e-mail addresses of the initial list admin(s) to set one up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource list created

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Any chance you could create a wikiversity-l mailing list?  I requested
> one a couple of months ago so there should be something on file if that
> is required.

There's been one for some time, but it's in German (wikiversityde-l). Do you
want a separate English list?

I'll need the e-mail addresses of the initial list admin(s) to set one up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >   While we're engaging in this critique of Danny's response, it might make sense
> > to ask whether or not Danny, and the other office people, are aware that there
> > exists some large segment of the admin population who regard it as routine to
> > undo other admin actions without discussion because they were "out of process",
> > or "obviously wrong", or whatever.  Can we imagine the possibility that some
> > people might interpret that as inexplicable, or even hostile, interference, if
> > they aren't used to this?
>
> Perhaps the real problem is that a large segment of our admin
> population needs not to be admins anymore.
>
> Kelly

If you have gripes with some of our admins, start an RfC on them. As
soon as there are legitimate issues, even borderline-looney barely
legitimate issues, someone always starts an RfC.

We have, what, 4000 new articles a day, something like that. Something
like half gets speedied, and a chunk goes to Afd or gets {{prod}}ed.
We need every single admin we can get.

Simply disagreeing with someone, or thinking that they break some
policies are not enough for desysopping. Such an action is never
punitive, which means that an admin can (and should) only lose their
status for misuse of their priviliges. Can you name anyone lately? I
mean, other than Eloquence. If you can't then stop writing these
inflammatory messages, that serve no point whatsoever. If you can,
then do something about it, and stop writing these inflammatory
messages that serve no point whatsoever.

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins?

body:
In a project as obsessed with the fictional as Wikipedia, The Game
(game) is, I guess, an archetype: a fictional construct which one
"loses" by even acknowledging its existence.

After much agonising it was finally deleted recently.  It had survived
one AfD because "I've heard of it" trumped WP:V, it appears to have
been BJAODNed once or twice, but finally the total lack of any sources
whatsoever led to its deletion.  And a DRV debate (obviously).  And
the setting up of an external website, http://www.savethegame.org
dedicated to finding some sources for it.

Wahey!  We now have a source.  Reportedly.  I say reportedly because I
don't have a subscription to De Morgen, and I can't read Dutch anyway.

So have the trolls won?  Or has Wikipedia won?  I personally think
this is yet another example of WP:V being swept aside under an
avalanche of Google hits, a problem in several areas at present where
all the POV pushers have to do is spam as many blogs and web boards as
they can find and suddenly an article must be verifiable (it's just
that the reliable source is a long way down the list, honest).  A
supposed meme which inspires such fierce passions and which has had
its fans searching the world at the urging of a website, but which can
only come up with a single mention in a foreign-language newspaper,
does not sound to me like the kind of thing for an encyclopaedia. More
something for a Wikicities project.  but then, I am older than your
average Wikipedian, and I've seen my kids obsessed by, and lose
interest in, many things along the way.  Whether Warhammer is "better"
than Pokemon I wouldn't like to say...
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Wikitech-l] Changes in toolbar

body:
Recently, with the software update somewhat the wikipedia toolbar behavior
changed so it now is breaks many custom buttons. Or more exactly, the
monobook.js break the original buttons, as the custom ones work but the
originals don't react at clicking (deactivatin the monobook makes them work
so it's an incompatibility).
In order to look deeper on what makes them break (it may be even only on
some browsers :S)
Can anyone point the diff of that toolbar change? If this is talked anywhere
else, links are welcomed, too.

Platonides.


from_name: Steve Block

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

> Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
> but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info
> (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
> them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
> can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
> it to their wonderful service.

Can stuff be deleted such that sysops are not party to deleted sections?
  That would perhaps solve the issue.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.4/319 - Release Date: 19/04/06


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel chill

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>The basic problem with {{office}} is that I don't trust Brad Patrick and Danny to decide between
>them what's right and wrong. I'm not making a slight on their character. I'm just saying that there
>needs to be oversight, when something so important as the neutrality of the encyclopedia is at
>stake. In some cases, we may need to make a tradeoff between NPOV and risk of being sued, and I fear
>that due to their background, a lawyer may be inclined to automatically choose minimisation of risk
>over neutrality, even when the risk of a successful lawsuit is very small.
>
>
In all of the cases that I've looked into so far, I hardly think what's
going on is a choice of minimizing risk at the expense of neutrality. In
fact, lack of neutrality has been very much at the root of these
problems, probably as much so as the risk of a lawsuit.

Unfortunately, the community has proven unable on a number of occasions
to actually produce a neutral encyclopedia article in a timely fashion.
This tends to draw complaints from affected parties, who not
surprisingly want the Wikimedia Foundation to be responsible once it has
been put on notice of problems on a site it operates. I shall not
comment on whether any particular case truly involves actionable libel,
but I think to speak of "libel chill" misapprehends the situation.

First of all, a neutral encyclopedia article is not an unrestrained free
speech zone, and I think the rhetoric of someone's freedom of speech
being chilled is out of place to begin with. Second of all, it is
entirely consistent with our mission to seek to "chill" content that is
decidedly non-neutral and in most cases fails to provide verifiable,
reputable sources for its assertions besides. Finally, in terms of
producing a better encyclopedia, it really matters very little whether
libel is the real concern or not. Quite simply, the articles involved
have fallen abominably short of our declared standards, with very poor
prospects for improvement, so intervention has been necessary.

There is also the point that whether a lawsuit would be "successful" is
not the only consideration. Any lawsuit, even a frivolous one, would
entail significant costs. Much more than the value of the man-hours it
should take to bring something up to the standard of a neutral article
that properly cites reputable sources for its facts--even if we assign a
suitable value to the time being donated by volunteers. Hence when it is
possible to avoid a lawsuit by intervening on the wiki, it is highly
desirable to do so. Sometimes the execution has been awkward, but that's
a different problem.

>I would like to see review of these "office actions" by a diverse committee, such as the juriwiki-l
>mailing list.
>
>
I won't speak for the other participants on that mailing list, but from
my personal interaction and observation, I trust Brad Patrick to handle
outside concerns appropriately when they arise. There hasn't been much
discussion of these cases on that list; I won't speculate as to whether
that's due to apathy, or because nobody thinks it's that big of a
concern. Certainly anybody who's worried that we're not aware of these
situations is welcome to email the list and call them to our attention.

--Michael Snow


body:
On 4/20/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is it the right of every administrator to second-guess the
> > administrative actions of any other administrator, and instantly
> > revert them if they feel justified?
> >
> > The culture of feeling entitled to instantly revert, though, is quite
> > damaging.
> >
> Exactly right. Some admins have adopted a definition of "wheel
> warring" that excludes the first revert of an admin action -- so that
> if X blocks, and Y unblocks, Y is not wheel warring. But if X restores
> the block, X has started the wheel war. This is nonsense. The first
> person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel war,
> and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening as a rule.
>
> Sarah

So if I say delete [[Template:NPOV]] (T1) you wouldn't revert that action?

--
geni


from_name: Molu

body:
  Kelly Martin wrote:
  >Not all admins are equal

  Not all admins are equal? Animal Farm anyone? Kelly Martin is more equal then others, everyone bow to him! Your comments about Erik's blocking (which was obviously a bad mistake on the part of Danny) were in very bad taste and does not indicate that you are more interested in the well-being of the encyclopaedia than thrash other people.

  You not only support the blocking, you support CONTINUED blocking of one of Wikipedia's most valuable contrbutors (far more valuable than you) because of what was at most a failure to discuss a revertion of a protection before doing it. I believe one revertion is perfectly okay for a normal editorial action, whatever happened to [[WP:BOLD]]? And as Danny explicitly removed the [[WP:OFFICE]] notice (which makes it quite clear than the tag must be used to invoke the special powers of the policy), Erik had every reason to assume that it was nothing but an ordinary editorial action.

  Even if Erik should have discussed the revertion, is it ground for any punishment, let alone desysoping and indefinite blocking? His action may have increased chance of harm to the Foundation, but the liability lies with Danny and not Erik. In writing such a vindictive and ill-thought comment about Erik, you behaved like a shark drawn to blood and showed an utter disrespect towards fellow community members. You should immediately apologise, but knowing you you probably won't.

---------------------------------
Celebrate Earth Day everyday!  Discover 10 things you can do to help slow climate change. Yahoo! Earth Day


body:
On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:32:39 +0100, you wrote:

>So if I say delete [[Template:NPOV]] (T1) you wouldn't revert that action?

Not without asking you why you did it, no.  After all, nobody would do
something with such far-reaching consequences unless they had a really
compelling reason.

I seriously don't see what the problem is in having a default
zero-revert policy for admin actions.  Anything else is tantamount to
suggesting that admins are not open to reason if asked to reconsider.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
geni wrote:
> On 4/20/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Kirill Lokshin wrote:
>> "...to an openly anti-Wikipedia site"
>>
>> >From http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Wikitruth:Editing_guidelines
>>
>> "some amazing people are working behind the scenes and in the front
>> lines over there [i.e. at Wikipedia], putting in the hours to make a difference and make
>> Wikipedia better. [...] We wouldn't have this site if we didn't respect and love
>> the concept of a Wikipedia. It's the implementation we have issues with."
>>
>
> They are violateing the GFDL.
>

Yes. I wonder what would happen if they undeleted a copyvio attack page...

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

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body:
On 4/20/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So if I say delete [[Template:NPOV]] (T1) you wouldn't revert that action?
>
> Sometimes it will be annoying following a culture of 'no instant admin
> reverts', but I think the overall effect will be positive.
>
> In such a case, I'd leave a message on YOUR talk page to the effect of
> 'Are you crazy?', and post to a few noticeboard pages to the effect of
> 'Geni has deleted [[Template:NPOV]], anyone agree with me that he
> shouldn't have?' and wait for either your response or a few other
> opinions before acting.  Wikipedia will not end for want of
> [[Template:NPOV]].
>

No but it would probably have some rather negative effects. The
fallout from restoring it would probably be less serious than the
fallout from waiting around

To chose a more extream example. How long would you hang around discusing this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=move&user=&page=Main+Page

> However, deleting a commonly-accessed page upon which policies and
> guidelines depend could be construed as vandalism, too.
>
> -Matt

The template is "divisive and inflammatory" a clear T1 candidate.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

body:
On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:09:58 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:

>So I wonder if it would be more pragmatic to drop these arbitary thresholds and just say "sources are required".
>Each article has the best sources we can find for that topic. If the best sources are blogs then fine -
>the reader is left to him/herself to determine notability based on their own frame of references.

This has been suggested at WP:V but was soundly rejected as being
functionally equivalent to "articles must cite sources unless you
can't find any".  There is a good reason that encyclopaedias typically
do not document facts which cannot be verified from reliable sources:
a significant proportion of them turn out to be false.

Consider: you wish to promulgate a "Fred is Gay" meme (you are a not a
friend of his, as we know friends of gays should not be allowed to
edit Wikimedia projects).  So, you set up your blogs on LiveJournal
and Blogger, publish it, and then toddle off to Wikipedia to complete
the writing into canon of your new shiny meme.  Job done.  Can you see
how that might be bad?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 4/20/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I concur entirely with Sarah's definition of when a wheel war begins.
> This culture of "free whacks at the post" has to go.  NOBODY is
> entitled to revert without discussion.

Can I watch what happens when you tell the CVU this?

> 3RR says we're willing to
> tolerate it for regular editors.  Admins are expected to be above
> this.  Any admin who doesn't want to play by this rule is invited to
> visit [[m:Requests for permissions]].

Thanks for the invite but I've been there already. I play by the rules
as written in policy. You have no right to ask anything more than
that.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel culture (was:Indefinite block and

body:
  On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:35:06 -0500, "Kelly Martin" wrote

  >Perhaps the real problem is that a large segment of our admin
>population needs not to be admins anymore.

>Kelly

  Obviously. Since a large segment of our admins disagree with Kelly Martin, equalest of them all, they are underserving to be admins. I think the current process of selecting admins is broken, how about giving Kelly Martin the power to select admins? That is sure to solve all Wikipedia's problems (parmanently, most likely).

---------------------------------
Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone  calls to 30+ countries for just 2?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 20/04/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Exactly right. Some admins have adopted a definition of "wheel
>>warring" that excludes the first revert of an admin action -- so that
>>if X blocks, and Y unblocks, Y is not wheel warring. But if X restores
>>the block, X has started the wheel war. This is nonsense. The first
>>person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel war,
>>and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening as a rule.
>>
>>
>How's this for a definition:
>X blocks
>Y unblocks
>
>If X disagrees with Y's unblock, then Y has wheel warred. If X
>reinstates the block, then X has wheel warred too.
>
>This covers the situation where X makes a mistake and Y fixes it - X
>agrees with the mistake, and no damage is caused. If Y fears that X
>may accuse him of wheel warring, he shouldn't be undoing X's actions.
>(or should be prepared for the consequences)
>
Anything but a one free revert policy makes no sense at all.  There are
just too many reasons why one admin might revert the actions of
another.  Some are good reasons; others are very bad.

Not allowing one free revert sets up the presumption that the original
admin was right to do what he did, whether or not he included an
explanation.  The first revert, which should at least have an edit
summary lets it be known that there is a difference of opinion.  The one
point where I disagree with Steve it that Y could be retroactively
declared a wheel warrior for an honest expression of opinion.

If X disagrees with Y's initial revert, he too owes us an explanation.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

body:
  Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:54:31 +0100
From: Guy Chapman aka JzG
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

Message-ID: <2f0g4297pqislk26ve83lh5sgbtvaf9m8s at 4ax.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:09:58 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:

>So I wonder if it would be more pragmatic to drop these arbitary thresholds and just say "sources are required".
>Each article has the best sources we can find for that topic. If the best sources are blogs then fine -
>the reader is left to him/herself to determine notability based on their own frame of references.

This has been suggested at WP:V but was soundly rejected as being
functionally equivalent to "articles must cite sources unless you
can't find any". There is a good reason that encyclopaedias typically
do not document facts which cannot be verified from reliable sources:
a significant proportion of them turn out to be false.

Consider: you wish to promulgate a "Fred is Gay" meme (you are a not a
friend of his, as we know friends of gays should not be allowed to
edit Wikimedia projects). So, you set up your blogs on LiveJournal
and Blogger, publish it, and then toddle off to Wikipedia to complete
the writing into canon of your new shiny meme. Job done. Can you see
how that might be bad?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

  Umm... No? What's so bad about it? Wikipedia has an article saying two blogs contain a sentence "Fred is Gay" and the reader draws the inference that the owner of those blogs is seriously retarded. Big deal. If it so happens that after a year T-shirts are selling reading Fred is Gay, Wikipedia was the first to document this rising star, good for Wikipedia. If it dies a quite death like so many others, Wikipedia has spent a few KBs writing an article few are interested in reading. So what?

  IMHO an extended interpretation of NPOV should not allow WP to judge particular sources as relaible and others as unreliable. Leave that to the reader.

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikitruth.info (Slashdot story)

body:
On 4/18/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Notice that WikiTruth is reprinting an attack article written about my
> little girl, and then ask yourself if this is good faith criticism or
> trollng.

In fairness, they deleted that particular page.

# (Deletion log); 07:01 . . Nibbler (Talk) (deleted "Uncensored:Kira
Wales": Our apologies to Jimbo and his Family.)

The tone on the site is rather juvenile, I wouldn't take it too
seriously. They might actually be cooperative in cases of real legal
trouble, and at least there's human beings looking at the content they
copy. The same cannot be said about hundreds of outdated mirrors in
many different countries. Given that it typically takes significant
time for potentially libelous information to be removed, it is highly
likely that it replicates before that happens.

I do not think there's anything that can be done about this. Our legal
strategy needs to take it into account.

As for wikitruth.info, the wisest thing to do is probably to ignore
them, at least for now.

Erik


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins?

body:
On 20/04/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> After much agonising it was finally deleted recently.  It had survived
> one AfD because "I've heard of it" trumped WP:V, it appears to have
> been BJAODNed once or twice, but finally the total lack of any sources
> whatsoever led to its deletion.  And a DRV debate (obviously).  And
> the setting up of an external website, http://www.savethegame.org
> dedicated to finding some sources for it.

Since there are really no genuine sources apart from possibly a single
article, there's not a lot to write about. Once the concept is
explained, there is no encyclopaedia article, because as a social
phenomenon, nothing is actually known about it.

End result: Replace by a two mention on some "List of hoax memes" page
or something.

Whatever you do, don't "delete" it - that might upset people. Simply
file it somewhere more appropriate.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

body:
On 20/04/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So I wonder if it would be more pragmatic to drop these arbitary thresholds and just say "sources are required".

After having spent a fair bit of time analysing WP:V, I'm incapable of
saying what our "arbitrary thresholds" are. The most hardline
statement of WP:V seems to be "Every statement must be sourced", which
is a nonsense that no article actually meets. The softest seems to be
"Every statement should agree with what has been published somewhere,
even if you don't know where. Actually even stuff that's never been
published is probably ok unless someone actually takes exception to
it."

If we ever get around to actually defining what "must" means, or
indeed, what it means that an article "must" satisfy criteria, then we
will all be happier. All we seem to know for sure is that an edit war,
WP:V can be brought out. But no one is really brave enough to say
"don't add unsourced material to articles". Nor do we even say "don't
add material which may not have been published". All we have is an
ideal which is never met, but which is used to blow away articles that
stray too far from it.

Steve


body:
And you through your repeated and completely unwarranted inflammatory comments about a person who has done far more for Wikipedia than you have are trying to start a flame-war. No current policy or even community standard of acceptability prevented Erik from reverting admin action once and even when there is policy it is extremely unlikely that desysoping and indefinite banning accompanied by refusal to discuss will be prescribed as punishment. Let's not bury the real issue over the separate discussion about wheel-war (there are several peoposed policy pages for that).

  We are talking about whether Danny was justified in his actions. I believe everyone except Kelly (and possibly Danny) believes he was not. Kelly not only believes his actions to be justified, but also believes that Erik should still be banned for a crime he did not commit. To advance her position, she repeatedly makes inflammatory comments about Erik without basis that on a wiki talk page would have been deleted for being violations of NPA and AGF.

  She also feels herself to be more equal than other admins and qualified to pass judgments on whether admins elected to that position through community consensus about their fitness are deserving and wthether they should be desysoped.

  Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 21:44:06 -0500
From: "Kelly Martin"

>Except he wasn't an Wikipedian in good standing; he had attempted to
>start a wheel war.

>Kelly

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body:
On 20/04/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly right. Some admins have adopted a definition of "wheel
> warring" that excludes the first revert of an admin action -- so that
> if X blocks, and Y unblocks, Y is not wheel warring. But if X restores
> the block, X has started the wheel war. This is nonsense. The first
> person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel war,
> and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening as a rule.

How's this for a definition:
X blocks
Y unblocks

If X disagrees with Y's unblock, then Y has wheel warred. If X
reinstates the block, then X has wheel warred too.

This covers the situation where X makes a mistake and Y fixes it - X
agrees with the mistake, and no damage is caused. If Y fears that X
may accuse him of wheel warring, he shouldn't be undoing X's actions.
(or should be prepared for the consequences)

Steve


from_name: Carl Fûrstenberg

body:
He could always delete WP:AFD :)

On 4/20/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So if I say delete [[Template:NPOV]] (T1) you wouldn't revert that
> action?
>
> Sometimes it will be annoying following a culture of 'no instant admin
> reverts', but I think the overall effect will be positive.
>
> In such a case, I'd leave a message on YOUR talk page to the effect of
> 'Are you crazy?', and post to a few noticeboard pages to the effect of
> 'Geni has deleted [[Template:NPOV]], anyone agree with me that he
> shouldn't have?' and wait for either your response or a few other
> opinions before acting.  Wikipedia will not end for want of
> [[Template:NPOV]].
>
> However, deleting a commonly-accessed page upon which policies and
> guidelines depend could be construed as vandalism, too.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why the uproar over wikitruth

body:
Hi,

  I don't understand something, what is the reason of this uproar about wikitruth's publication of articles deleted by us. There's even talk of prohibiting admins from reposting content, isn't that completely against the spirit of this project, free dissemination of information? Why should we care if wikitruth is posting copyvio and libel articles on their website? They are gonna get sued, bad for them.

  I can't see how reposting of our content will make us legally more liable than we already were. We do not remove illegal content from our servers, we simply hide it from all but a select few. That obviously does entail some legal liability. When that content is reposted for the general public, the extra liability is incurred by wikitruth. We, as always, are still alllowing only those select few to access the content.

  If they are okay about attracting lawsuits, good for us. We have deleted those articles only for legal or editorial concerns. No harm done to us if someone else decides to showcase that content. In fact it's good for us since non-admin users can view deleted content without any possibility of harm to the Foundation. Or is there more to this issue than meets the eye? I'll like to know.

  On a related note, there is another uproar over secrecy, concerning whether office actions need to be hidden. There is a general perception that the reason office actions are being taken nee dto be hidden from even admins. I do not see why this is so. We are not the CIA, the reasons for actions coming from the top is to protect the Foundation from lawsuits. What's so secret about that. What if every wikipedian knows that corporation A threatened to sue the Foundation and as a result libellous content has been removed from their article by office action untill sources are provided? What's the harm if every office action is advertised on the front page?

  I think there's a paranoia about secrecy around. We are an encyclopaedia, it is our goal to provide information. The Wikimedia foundation is a not-for-profit organisation running some innovative websites without any illegal activities (hopefully). What's so secret about that?

  Molu

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body:
Hi,

  I don't understand something, what is the reason of this uproar about wikitruth's publication of articles deleted by us. There's even talk of prohibiting admins from re-posting content, isn't that completely against the spirit of this project, free dissemination of information? Why should we care if wikitruth is posting copyvio and libel articles on their website? They are gonna get sued, bad for them.

  I can't see how re-posting of our content will make us legally more liable than we already were. We do not remove illegal content from our servers, we simply hide it from all but a select few. That obviously does entail some legal liability. When that content is re-posted for the general public, the extra liability is incurred by wikitruth. We, as always, are still allowing only those select few to access the content.

  If they are okay about attracting lawsuits, good for us. We have deleted those articles only for legal or editorial concerns. No harm done to us if someone else decides to showcase that content. In fact it's good for us since non-admin users can view deleted content without any possibility of harm to the Foundation. Or is there more to this issue than meets the eye? I'll like to know.

  On a related note, there is another uproar over secrecy, concerning whether office actions need to be hidden. There is a general perception that the reason office actions are being taken nee dto be hidden from even admins. I do not see why this is so. We are not the CIA, the reasons for actions coming from the top is to protect the Foundation from lawsuits. What's so secret about that. What if every wikipedian knows that corporation A threatened to sue the Foundation and as a result libellous content has been removed from their article by office action until sources are provided? What's the harm if every office action is advertised on the front page?

  I think there's a paranoia about secrecy around. We are an encyclopedia, it is our goal to provide information. The Wikimedia foundation is a not-for-profit organisation running some innovative websites without any illegal activities (hopefully). What's so secret about that?

  Molu

---------------------------------
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from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Apr 20, 2006, at 11:41 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Kelly Martin stated for the record:
>
>> Except he wasn't an Wikipedian in good standing; he had attempted to
>> start a wheel war.
>>
>> Kelly
>
> Untrue and inflammatory.  In a word, trolling.

The courtesy and sense train have really left the station on this
one, haven't they?

-Phil