subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> I am concerned with WHEELER's anti-semitism.  He has made some
> offensive
> remarks in the past, but ones I could dismiss as poor communication
> in the
> course of heated debate.  Now he really has posted an ad hominem
> non-sequitor on the following page:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Early_National_Socialism/draft#personal_pedigree
> In the context of a discussion with AndyL over the relationship
> between the
> Austrian and Hungarian National Socialist movements, WHEELER posted
> the
> following:
> And by the way since you want to declare a pedigree just because
> your
> relatives suffered under the Holocaust. [As far as I can tell, this
> is not
> true; Andy L always bases his arguments on historical documentation
> -- SLR]
> The Nazis also committeed atrocities on the island of Crete.  My
> uncle,
> Sirodakis, was a great underground fighter.  It was my island that
> lead a
> ferocious resistance to the Nazis.  It was my co-religionists,
> Catholic
> priests that went to the camps as well.  And it was Jewish
> communists that
> destroyed the Orthodox Church in Russia.  Many a Christian died in
> Jewish
> concentration camps in Russian before the Nazis ever killed a
> single
> Jew.  So don't cry buster and don't wave your victimhood in my
> face.[[User:WHEELER|WHEELER]] 15:43, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
>
> Not only does this have nothing to do with the article, it is
> simple, base
> anti-semitism -- a simple association of bolshevism with Judaism
> that the
> Nazis themselves mastered and promoted.  I think WHEELER should be
> banned
> for it, personally.  At the very least it calls for a profound and
> sincere
> apology.
>
> Steve
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701

Surely you are aware that he may be correct in stating that some jews
may have been communists (it was popular in the Soviet Union between
the wars) and that some of them may have been involved in, how shall
I say this, "purging" certain "christian" elements out of the New
Soviet Society.

On the other hand, he may not be. But for you to say that this did
not in fact happen means that your homework is rosk solid.

Calling them concentration camps may stretch the meaning of the word,
but in the very liberal sense, camps where people are concentrated
may be called concentration camp. Of course, it's a poor choice of
words, but it's not illegal.

By the way, my grandfather was sent to a German labort camp. He was a
captain in a french armor unit in 1940. So don't assume I don't know
what I am talking about.

Finally: calling for a ban does not foster wikilove, so please calm
down before clicking send and review your email to make sure it is constructive.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Antispam and antivirus ?

body:
Hi Timwi,

Le Thursday 01 July 2004 04:43, Timwi a ?crit :
> Yann Forget wrote:
> > I think we should have some filtrer for the mailing lists against spams
> > and virus.
>
> How come I never see spam or viruses here?
>
> Is it because friendly gmane folk manually delete them from the server?
> If that is so, I can only recommend strongly everyone use gmane's NNTP
> interface too! :) If, however, gmane have automated spam filtering
> mechanisms installed, it means legitimate messages may sometimes not
> show up. Worrying...

Spams and virus are blocked because the sender's address is not subscribed to
the list. There are dozens like this daily. And list admins have to clean to
mess every now and then. It's becoming a unnecessary burden when virus and
spams could just have been rejected because the address used is non valid.

> Timwi

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wikien-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forget mentoring systems, we need a web of trust

body:
--- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> Just as something for all to think about, for the last couple of months,
> I've been making edits to WP from work without logging in. I'm not adding
> anything controversial thru my "sock puppet" -- unless fixing typos & bad
> grammar is considered insidiously pushing a POV -- & I would rather not
> draw my employer's attention to my online activities between 8:00 &
> 5:00 (after all, I should be working ;-).

If you are editing from work then your employer's IP address (which is probably
assigned just to your work computer) will be displayed. *That* makes you much
less anonymous. I see nothing wrong with having a separate account for this
type or thing so long as you don't double vote, agree with yourself on talk
pages, or use it in an edit war.

> However, I just noticed today that I've managed to make something like
> 70 edits from a single IP address, & no one's seemed to notice. Not that
> I care, but one has to wonder how many more anonymous contributors are
> quietly working away on a regular basis, adding positively to Wikipedia
> without anyone noticing.

Lots (especially small copyedits and adding interlanguage links). But most of
our vandalism and other newbie behavior also comes from IP addresses, meaning
people on RC patrol have to check *each* one (lots of duplicated effort). A
unified log-in system will cut down on the proportion of good anon edits vs bad
simply by displaying user name's of people who are adding interlanguage links.

But what we really need is a way to share the workload by excluding or graying
out and reducing the font size of edits in a special RC once they have been
viewed more than x times (3 perhaps) by a certain group of users (a preference
choice between admins or non-newbie logged-in users would be nice, for
example). To be maximally useful, this would have to be applied to the newbie
RC that Brion gave a link to and the anon RC as well.

In the long term though, we need a web of trust system where each logged-in
user can select the people they trust and even the people whose trust opinions
they trust - thus trusting by proxy. See
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-February/014300.html

Somebody created a page in the Wikipedia namespace about this, but I can't find
it. :(

But baby steps first since I understand the coding and the computing power
needs of such a web of trust would be significant. An enhanced newbie/anon RC,
as described above, should work real well in the meantime. As it is, I rarely
look at RC anymore since there are way too many edits (20 a minute is not
uncommon). I simply get bored reviewing edits since the great majority of them
(by volume) are good. But since the volume of edits is so great, even a small
percentage of bad edits will result in a lot of damage in an absolute sense. So
we need to work on ways to share the workload and reduce duplicated effort -
otherwise RC burnout will become more common.

-- mav

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from_name: James Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's Anti-Semitism

body:
Chris,
   I understand and respect your position.  I think,
however, it is not sufficiently clear that Sl's post
here was the result of the four months of difficulty
many of us have had in working with WHEELER.  He has
made frequent Anti-Semitic remarks, as well as being
blatantly rude to a number of editors (questioning
their competence, their belief in God at one point,
etc.).  Suggesting a ban isn't in violation with
wikilove at this point, I think.  I, Kim Bruning, Sl,
Sam Spade, and numerous other editors have done our
best to encourage WHEELER to do good here, and have
attempted to correct him when he has abused our good
faith.  Enough is enough.  That's my opinion.
Certainly a call for a ban here isn't going to get
results -- that's an AC measure.  But I think Sl is
posting here because those of us who have tried to
work with WHEELER are frustrated to the point of
giving up.  I hope you, Chris, will begin to work on
compromise and wikilove with WHEELER -- if you are
successful, you're a better man than I am.  And it may
be that you will discover that the quoted comment
isn't one misinterpretation by SL of a researched fact
of WHEELER's, but rather it is the tip of an iceberg
of bigotry and intolerance.  I wish you luck in your
work with him.

James R. (Jwrosenzweig)

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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Marking articles with specific "flags" (was: web of
	trust)

body:
Mav,

I agree with your idea about reducing the burdens of those "on patrol"
against petty vandalism.

How about some sort of marking or system, whereby you can set the "Looks
Good To Me" flag on a particular edit (or on a particular article
version, which is not _quite_ the same thing).

I personally would not bother re-checking any anon edit which mav had
already looked at and marked okay. If mav says okay, it's good enough
for me!

Contrariwise, users could mark an edit (or article version) with:
* a "Huh?" flag (I don't understand what the contributor is saying)
* a "Bias" flag (Looks like unattributed POV masquerading as _fact_)
* a "Copy Edits needed" flag (too many spelling or grammar errors for
me)

Note that this would not be a voting system. Nothing automatic would
happen to edits, versions, or contributors based on their "score".

But it would give other editors the chance to use filters to see (or
avoid seeing) classes of articles needing (or unworthy of) their
attention.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thumbnails

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> After discussion with some people (especially Tannin) on the
> en.wikipedia, I propose a few changes (more like additions) to the
> thumbnail function.
>
> Here's the "main proposal":
>
>     [[image:bla.jpg|thumb|some text]] generates a normal thumbnail
>     [[image:bla.jpg|thumb=bla_small.jpg|some text]] uses "bla_small.jpg"
> as the thumbnail

This would be very useful due to the fact that cropping needs to be extreme
with images that are displayed as small thumbs while cropping can be more lax
for images displayed as larger thumbs, and very lax on image description pages.
Alternatively one should be able to redirect the image page of the thumb to
point in the right place, but the result of that is ugly (the image from the
redirected page and the target page are displayed on the same page). Another
idea would be to specify the crop from within the image code, thus eliminating
the need for two uploaded images:

[[image:blah.jpg|thumb|crop=right10%;left15%;top5%;bottom20%|some text]]

Other things that would be *very* nice
*re-enable the center tag
*create a 'caption' tag so that captions can be easily added to images which
are displayed at their actual size in articles. The only difference in look
from 'thumb' tagged images, would be the absence of the box within a box icon.

> ...
> Additionally, the automatic thumbnail generation should be improved:
> * Add a little sharpening, at least to photos (.jpg/.jpeg).
> * Apparently, automatically generated thumbnails look nicer when they
> are recaled by an exact even number. For example, for a 640x480 image, a
> thumbnail of 200px is requested, generate one with a width of 213px
> instead, as this is a factor of 33.3%, or 1/3. I propose to use a
> variation of up to 10% from the requested width.

This might be ugly on pages were images are in a series box or otherwise close
to one antother (thus size differences would be obvious). See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Mount_Shasta

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Forget mentoring systems, we need a web of trust

body:
Partially cross posted to WikiEN-l since this is more of a global issue:

--- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote on WikiEN-l:
>...
> However, I just noticed today that I've managed to make something like
> 70 edits from a single IP address, & no one's seemed to notice. Not that
> I care, but one has to wonder how many more anonymous contributors are
> quietly working away on a regular basis, adding positively to Wikipedia
> without anyone noticing.

Lots (especially small copyedits and adding interlanguage links). But most of
our vandalism and other newbie behavior also comes from IP addresses, meaning
people on RC patrol have to check *each* one (lots of duplicated effort). A
unified log-in system will cut down on the proportion of good anon edits vs bad
simply by displaying user name's of people who are adding interlanguage links.

But what we really need is a way to share the workload by excluding or graying
out and reducing the font size of edits in a special RC once they have been
viewed more than x times (3 perhaps) by a certain group of users (a preference
choice between admins or non-newbie logged-in users would be nice, for
example). To be maximally useful, this would have to be applied to the newbie
RC that Brion gave a link to and the anon RC as well.

In the long term though, we need a web of trust system where each logged-in
user can select the people they trust and even the people whose trust opinions
they trust - thus trusting by proxy. See
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-February/014300.html

Somebody created a page in the Wikipedia namespace on en.wiki about this, but I
can't find it. :(

But baby steps first since I understand the coding and the computing power
needs of such a web of trust would be significant. An enhanced newbie/anon RC,
as described above, should work real well in the meantime. As it is, I rarely
look at RC anymore since there are way too many edits (20 a minute is not
uncommon). I simply get bored reviewing edits since the great majority of them
(by volume) are good. But since the volume of edits is so great, even a small
percentage of bad edits will result in a lot of damage in an absolute sense. So
we need to work on ways to share the workload and reduce duplicated effort -
otherwise RC burnout will become more common.

-- mav

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from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Pocket Internet Explorer and other handheld
	devices

body:
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 00:49 +0100, Rowan Collins wrote:
> I'm not sure what a better solution would be, but maybe some
> JavaScript voodoo to add them or uncomment them. In general, I dislike
> relying on JavaScript even more than I dislike relying on CSS, but I
> accept that this option is never going to be viable server-side, and
> presumably people wanted it.

There is a simple css-only solution in commonPrint.css, currently
commented out. Drawback: doesn't work with older browsers like IE, but
is fine in Opera, Moz/Firefox and derivates, Safari etc.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Timwi

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

> Spams and virus are blocked because the sender's address is not subscribed to
> the list. [...] And list admins have to clean to
> mess every now and then.

I have noticed that when I post to a gmane newsgroup before I'm
subscribed, I will get an e-mail asking me to confirm that I am a real
person (not a spammer) and that my address is valid. Replying will
subscribe me and post the withheld message.

Can't we have the same thing for the mailing lists? That would
definitely take the load off the list admins.

Timwi


body:
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 10:31 +0100, Rowan Collins wrote:
> if MySkin is just literally
> MonoBook minus the CSS; I don't really understand how the skinning
> works.

That's the case and the idea. I went to great lengths to make the basic
xhtml as versatile as possible to be able to create many different Skins
based on the same xhtml using css. I hope there will be more skins to
choose from based on the same xhtml soon, the gallery of user styles at
meta has some promising examples already.

I share your opinion that it would be better not to add the printable
links as hidden spans, and i wouldn't even mind if IE was left in the
rain with its incapability. After all, there *are* disadvantages if
you're using a browser that doesn't implement web standards well. Also,
Pocket IE's inability to hide things is a very good excuse ;-)

Not showing the printable link for certain classes of links is pretty
easy, we have all the classes we need afaik.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's Anti-Semitism

body:
--- James Rosenzweig <jwrosenzweig at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Chris,
>    I understand and respect your position.

Ok.

>I think,
> however, it is not sufficiently clear that Sl's post
> here was the result of the four months of difficulty
> many of us have had in working with WHEELER.

Indeed, it was not. The poster should have made that clearer.

>  He has
> made frequent Anti-Semitic remarks, as well as being
> blatantly rude to a number of editors (questioning
> their competence, their belief in God at one point,
> etc.).

Not illegal is it? It's called freedom of speech. You should try it
sometime.

> Suggesting a ban isn't in violation with
> wikilove at this point, I think.  I, Kim Bruning, Sl,
> Sam Spade, and numerous other editors have done our
> best to encourage WHEELER to do good here, and have
> attempted to correct him when he has abused our good
> faith.

Obviously your efforts, while well-intended, have failed. Again,
whose fault?

> Enough is enough.  That's my opinion.

Being frustrated with a situation is a personal emotion, and is
rarely effective in logical discourse.

> Certainly a call for a ban here isn't going to get
> results -- that's an AC measure.

Yes. That was one of my points.

>  But I think Sl is
> posting here because those of us who have tried to
> work with WHEELER are frustrated to the point of
> giving up.

Again, that's their fault. They should apply their talents where they
are effective, and leave the rest alone.

> I hope you, Chris, will begin to work on
> compromise and wikilove with WHEELER -- if you are
> successful, you're a better man than I am.

Better is POV.

> And it may
> be that you will discover that the quoted comment
> isn't one misinterpretation by SL of a researched fact
> of WHEELER's, but rather it is the tip of an iceberg
> of bigotry and intolerance.

Then it sould have been stated as such. Again, calling on a ban for
one infraction without mentioning the sum of the infractions is not
very good communication.

> I wish you luck in your
> work with him.

Never said I was going to. Got other fish to fry.

Sorry for the americanism in the expression to the international readers.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Some Restrictions May Apply

body:
On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 20:28:23 +0000 (UTC) "Dan Drake" <dd at dandrake.com>
wrote:

>These lines could be sorted by the submitter ot the change, turning the
>faceless entities into something resembling people.  At present, of
>course, if an edit looks like vandalism, one can check User Contributions
>to see if that's the user's pattern of behavior; but having the user's
>edits grouped together in this way would encourage looking at them
>together, which would automatically bring out any patterns.

I already submitted something similar to Sourceforge Feature Requests a few
weeks ago: A recent changes sorted by author.

I think its use would especially be in case a newbie or IP address was doing
good work - check 1 or 2, and then go on to the next person. Even checking
on the regulars could be done reasonably fast that way.

>Further: a list of recent edits by randomly selected anons & newbies could
>be a sort of alternate watchlist.  When I've made my daily check that the
>articles I know about haven't been crapped on, I click on the alternate
>list, and see what a few random new editors are doing.  Somebody else
>clicks and gets a different list.  If a bunch of people did this, we'd
>have a much improved spotting of new vandals, misguided flaming newbies,
>and astoundingly good new contributors.  It could feed into some kind of
>mentoring, as advocated by Ed Poor.

One that I have thought of (with others at nl:): Give edits a 'trust' value.
It starts low (say 0) for newbies, higher (say 1) for regulars and even
higher (say 1.5) for sysops. When a regular or sysop watches the change, its
trust value is heightened, with a cap at some maximal value (say 2).

Then allow people to get a list of badly-trusted changes. This way we can
make it easier to have check-ups cover all messages instead of this one not
being checked and that one five times.

Andre Engels


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
I am concerned with WHEELER's anti-semitism.  He has made some offensive
remarks in the past, but ones I could dismiss as poor communication in the
course of heated debate.  Now he really has posted an ad hominem
non-sequitor on the following page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Early_National_Socialism/draft#personal_pedigree
In the context of a discussion with AndyL over the relationship between the
Austrian and Hungarian National Socialist movements, WHEELER posted the
following:
And by the way since you want to declare a pedigree just because your
relatives suffered under the Holocaust. [As far as I can tell, this is not
true; Andy L always bases his arguments on historical documentation -- SLR]
The Nazis also committeed atrocities on the island of Crete.  My uncle,
Sirodakis, was a great underground fighter.  It was my island that lead a
ferocious resistance to the Nazis.  It was my co-religionists, Catholic
priests that went to the camps as well.  And it was Jewish communists that
destroyed the Orthodox Church in Russia.  Many a Christian died in Jewish
concentration camps in Russian before the Nazis ever killed a single
Jew.  So don't cry buster and don't wave your victimhood in my
face.[[User:WHEELER|WHEELER]] 15:43, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Not only does this have nothing to do with the article, it is simple, base
anti-semitism -- a simple association of bolshevism with Judaism that the
Nazis themselves mastered and promoted.  I think WHEELER should be banned
for it, personally.  At the very least it calls for a profound and sincere
apology.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:

> First, Chris, I never claimed that you don't know what you are
> talking
> about.  Also, although it isn't always easy to tell from an e-mail,
> I
> believe I am pretty calm (pulse and bp seem about normal).

Never said you had. calm is good.

> But I do think you misunderstand me, and WHEELER.  WHEELER was not
> arguing
> that some Jews were communists (indeed, many were), nor was he
> arguing that
> some of the people who established and ran Soviet prison camps were
> Jewish
> (certainly, some were).  He wasn't arguing these things, because
> these
> issues are not relevant to the article under discussion.  He was
> neither
> responding to anyone's argument that "no Jews were communists" nor
> was he
> suggesting that the fact that some Jews were communists (or, some
> communists were Jews) should be included in the article.  He made
> his
> assertions solely in the context of a personal attack against
> AndyL.

Ah, ok. In context, it makes more sense.

> More importantly, he did not (as you suggest) claim that some Jews
> were
> communists, or some communists were Jews, or that communists
> persecuted
> Christians (I wouldn't take issue with any of these claims, and
> certainly
> don't think any of them are anti-Semitic).

> Rather, he identified
> Jews with
> communists, thus repeating a Nazi slur.  He singled out "Jewish"
> communists
> as guilty for destroying the Russian Orthodox Church.

If his aim was to offend, then it's ok.
An example:
If I said: "Bush is an asshole". Does it offend? If my purpose is to
offend, I'm going to use an offensive term. I would not rephrase it
as "I disagree with Bush policies".

> This is
> offensive
> for two reasons: first, for a very long time it is the Orthodox
> Russian
> Church who persecuted Jews and promoted anti-Semitism; secondly,
> after the
> Revolution the Communist Party as a whole was involved in
> persecuting the
> Church.  Why single out Jews?  It is such singling out that is
> offensive.  He also referred to "Jewish concentration camps," which
> I take
> to be anti-Semitic.  I have no objection to calling the gulags
> concentration camps; I do object to calling them "Jewish"
> concentration
> camps as if "Jews" in general are responsible.  This is offensive
> on its face.

Which means he was effective in his communication.

> If you still have trouble understanding the difference between
> anti-Semitism and a reasonable assertion of facts, let me try an
> analogy.  Some Nazis were brought up in the Catholic Church.  Yet
> it would
> be misleading and offensive for me to talk of "Catholic Nazis who
> persecuted Jews" (because non-Catholic Nazi's also persecuted Jews,
> and
> there were Catholics who helped Jews), or to talk of "Catholic
> concentration camps."  Yes, there is a complex relationship between
> the
> Catholic Church and the Nazis, as there is a complex relationship
> between
> the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Jews.  But to talk
> of
> "Catholic concentration camps" is just as offensive as talking
> about
> "Jewish concentration camps."

I hear you.

> Perhaps you have never suffered from hate-speech, or are simply
> insensitive
> to the matter, Chris.

I'm french and american living in america. So yes, I am fairly
insensitive to hate speech. Did I mention my wife is japanese?

> You certainly have a right to disagree with
> me and
> even to say this message is unconstructive.

Ok.

> But trust me, I am
> calm, I
> have thought about this, and I believe it is constructive.  What
> WHEELER
> wrote is not just a violation of wikicivility, it is an example of
> hate
> speech.

Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Take it up with your
State's Attorney General.

> It served and serves absolutely no purpose at wikipedia,
> except to
> use this space as a vehicle for expressing hate speech.

I'm not sure that it does not serve a purpose. I tend to think that
viewed from different angles, everything serves a purpose.  It may
even be contructive, in some unexpected ways.

> I am
> against that.

Your right.

In general, though, nobody every said building a free and
international encyclopedia was going to be easy.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] anti-Semitism

body:
These two assertions are completely unacceptable:

>>it was Jewish
>> communists that
>> destroyed the Orthodox Church in Russia.  Many a Christian died in
>> Jewish
>> concentration camps in Russia

Simple identity of Jews with Boshevism is nothing but a slur.

Fred


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: American concepts of justice (was: Rules vs. Anarchy)

body:
On 07/01/04  at 05:25 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:

> I think it's important for the Wikipedia articles to reflect that fact
> that many Americans take just the attitude you described above:

>   that America "does something better than most of the world does" by
>   "having an independent judiciary that is largely in the hands of  people
>   who understand the concept of due process of law and even approve of it"

Making due note, of course, of such egregious lapses such as the Supreme Court decision which made Bush president. At this point, the US might have something to learn from, say, Bolivia on how to run a fair presidential election.

V.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] American concepts of justice (was: Rules vs. Anarchy)

body:
Ed Poor wrote

>I think it's important for the Wikipedia articles to reflect that fact
that many Americans take just the attitude you described above:

  that America "does something better than most of the world does" by
  "having an independent judiciary that is largely in the hands of
people
  who understand the concept of due process of law and even approve of
it"

I see that [[capital punishment in the United States]] quotes a figure of
67% of capital convictions eventually overturned, ''mainly on procedural
grounds''.  One can read this either way, of course.  Does look like a glass
more than half empty to me, though.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
--- "Christopher Mahan" <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>  wrote

>Surely you are aware that he may be correct in stating that some jews
>may have been communists (it was popular in the Soviet Union between
>the wars) and that some of them may have been involved in, how shall
>I say this, "purging" certain "christian" elements out of the New
>Soviet Society.
>On the other hand, he may not be. But for you to say that this did
>not in fact happen means that your homework is rosk solid.
>Calling them concentration camps may stretch the meaning of the word,
>but in the very liberal sense, camps where people are concentrated
>may be called concentration camp. Of course, it's a poor choice of
>words, but it's not illegal.
>By the way, my grandfather was sent to a German labort camp. He was a
>captain in a french armor unit in 1940. So don't assume I don't know
>what I am talking about.
>Finally: calling for a ban does not foster wikilove, so please calm
>down before clicking send and review your email to make sure it is
>constructive.
>=====
>Chris Mahan
>818.943.1850 cell
>chris_mahan at yahoo.com
>chris.mahan at gmail.com
>http://www.christophermahan.com/

First, Chris, I never claimed that you don't know what you are talking
about.  Also, although it isn't always easy to tell from an e-mail, I
believe I am pretty calm (pulse and bp seem about normal).

But I do think you misunderstand me, and WHEELER.  WHEELER was not arguing
that some Jews were communists (indeed, many were), nor was he arguing that
some of the people who established and ran Soviet prison camps were Jewish
(certainly, some were).  He wasn't arguing these things, because these
issues are not relevant to the article under discussion.  He was neither
responding to anyone's argument that "no Jews were communists" nor was he
suggesting that the fact that some Jews were communists (or, some
communists were Jews) should be included in the article.  He made his
assertions solely in the context of a personal attack against AndyL.

More importantly, he did not (as you suggest) claim that some Jews were
communists, or some communists were Jews, or that communists persecuted
Christians (I wouldn't take issue with any of these claims, and certainly
don't think any of them are anti-Semitic).  Rather, he identified Jews with
communists, thus repeating a Nazi slur.  He singled out "Jewish" communists
as guilty for destroying the Russian Orthodox Church.  This is offensive
for two reasons: first, for a very long time it is the Orthodox Russian
Church who persecuted Jews and promoted anti-Semitism; secondly, after the
Revolution the Communist Party as a whole was involved in persecuting the
Church.  Why single out Jews?  It is such singling out that is
offensive.  He also referred to "Jewish concentration camps," which I take
to be anti-Semitic.  I have no objection to calling the gulags
concentration camps; I do object to calling them "Jewish" concentration
camps as if "Jews" in general are responsible.  This is offensive on its face.

If you still have trouble understanding the difference between
anti-Semitism and a reasonable assertion of facts, let me try an
analogy.  Some Nazis were brought up in the Catholic Church.  Yet it would
be misleading and offensive for me to talk of "Catholic Nazis who
persecuted Jews" (because non-Catholic Nazi's also persecuted Jews, and
there were Catholics who helped Jews), or to talk of "Catholic
concentration camps."  Yes, there is a complex relationship between the
Catholic Church and the Nazis, as there is a complex relationship between
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Jews.  But to talk of
"Catholic concentration camps" is just as offensive as talking about
"Jewish concentration camps."

Perhaps you have never suffered from hate-speech, or are simply insensitive
to the matter, Chris.  You certainly have a right to disagree with me and
even to say this message is unconstructive.  But trust me, I am calm, I
have thought about this, and I believe it is constructive.  What WHEELER
wrote is not just a violation of wikicivility, it is an example of hate
speech.  It served and serves absolutely no purpose at wikipedia, except to
use this space as a vehicle for expressing hate speech.  I am against that.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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from_name: Enrico Weigelt

subject: [Wikitech-l] postgreSQL port

body:
Hi folks,

is there anyone working on porting mediawiki to postgreSQL ?

cu
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subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki + patTemplate

body:
Hi folks,

I'd like to implement an patTemplate-based skin for mediawiki.
Is there any howto for mediawiki-Skins or something which might help ?

thx
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Mentoring system (was: Some Restrictions May Apply)

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote

> Effectively, anons cannot be assumed to be newbies.

Perfectly true - I've seen a number who return time and again.  They can
easily flag their experience by using the edit summary, though.

Charles


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
I tend to be of the opinion that the AC should be bothered when there's
a controversial situation, or when a long-term ban is in order. I think
that, based on that post and WHEELER's past history, a 24 hour vacation
would be fine without an AC ruling. If the problem continues, then we
can burden the poor AC.

-Snowspinner

On Jul 1, 2004, at 3:27 PM, David Gerard wrote:

>> Perhaps you have never suffered from hate-speech, or are simply
>> insensitive to the matter, Chris.  You certainly have a right to
>> disagree with me and even to say this message is unconstructive.  But
>> trust me, I am calm, I have thought about this, and I believe it is
>> constructive.  What WHEELER wrote is not just a violation of
>> wikicivility, it is an example of hate speech.  It served and serves
>> absolutely no purpose at wikipedia, except to use this space as a
>> vehicle for expressing hate speech.  I am against that.
>
>
> Surely this is Arbitration Committee material? They take a while
> (gosh darn these unpaid volunteers in a job that sucks by definition!),
> but the results have been sensible so far IMO.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] extending wiki-syntax

body:
Hi folks,

I'm using a wiki for writing (preparing) articles and several similar
stuff. To make it easier, I'm currently writing an wiki-syntax parser
for my Website-Kit, so it can directly read wiki articles (otherwise
I would have to rewrite it to some XML schema).

But my article schema supports a little bit more than just text
and headlines, i.e. outline, title, ext.linklists, etc.

So I'm planning to extend the common wiki syntax by some additional
elements, i.e. some block/section tags (as used by some template engines).
An extendet wiki article could probably look like:

{--ATTR--}
Language:	de
Translation-en:	foo

{--TITLE--}
Article Title

{--OUTLINE--}
This is the article outline

{--TEXT--}
...

The traditional wiki syntax would in fact be a subset of the new (extendet)
syntax. We could now store also some metadata, i.e. changelog, editor-flags
(i.e. for non-public areas), etc.

Any comments ?

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: American concepts of justice (was: Rules vs.
	Anarchy)

body:
Viajero wrote:

>On 07/01/04  at 05:25 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:
>
>
>>I think it's important for the Wikipedia articles to reflect that fact
>>that many Americans take just the attitude you described above:
>>
>>
>>  that America "does something better than most of the world does" by
>>  "having an independent judiciary that is largely in the hands of  people
>>  who understand the concept of due process of law and even approve of it"
>>
>>
>Making due note, of course, of such egregious lapses such as the Supreme Court decision which made Bush president. At this point, the US might have something to learn from, say, Bolivia on how to run a fair presidential election.
>
>
I would give the senior U. S. judiciary the benefit of the doubt in
these matters.  Some local judges may be a problem when they are the
product of local power brokers, and need not know anything about the law
in order to gain their positions.

The problem with the judicial system is often the expense of being
properly represented.  It doesn't matter that your position in a case
may be correct "in the eyes of God", when God is not willing to pay your
legal bills.  The judges may be absolutely fair; just try to get there.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: American concepts of justice

body:
Dan Drake wrote:

>Actually, I considered putting a disclaimer in the posting, but thought it
>would be a waste.  Wrong again.  I need to be more ultra-patriotic
>American, and assume that any praise of anything in my country will be
>taken as an attack on the world, foreigners being quite unable (like all
>too many Americans) to understand such subtleties.
>
>
Ultra-patriotism is one thing that will unite non-Americans of any
political stripe anywhere.  Praising what is right is perfectly
acceptable to many of us foreigners.  Just try to avoid gratuitous
superlatives; they are not subtle. :-)

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Thumbnails

body:
Magnus-
> * Apparently, automatically generated thumbnails look nicer when they
> are recaled by an exact even number. For example, for a 640x480 image, a
> thumbnail of 200px is requested, generate one with a width of 213px
> instead, as this is a factor of 33.3%, or 1/3. I propose to use a
> variation of up to 10% from the requested width.

Please don't do this. It would break many layouts (e.g. multiple images
aligned horizontally or vertically, images in fixed width tables ..) and
be very confusing.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikitech-l] Thumbnails

body:
On Thursday 01 July 2004 18:04, Tony wrote:

> Magnus proposed that the software generate a thumbnail *close* to the
> requested size (and thus preserve as much image
> quality as possible, at the cost of producing (e.g.) a 213px rather than a
> 200px thumb.
>
> Erik said please don't do it as it would break many layouts.

it might be a solution to modify the code, such that

  [[image:bla.jpg|thumb|200px ...]]

gives the old result and

  [[image:bla.jpg|thumb|~200px ...]]

means that you want something which is roughly ~200 px (+-10% with the
advantage of a slightly higher quality). At least this would solve the above
mentioned problem and the notation would make some sense to me.

best regards,
  Marco


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is User:The Trolls of Navarone another 142/Entmoots/JRR
	reincarnation?

body:
Could someone more expert in these things please look over
[[User:The Trolls of Navarone]]'s edits and talk page. If
he's not a reincarnation, he's doing his best to look like one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:The_Trolls_of_Navarone&curid=585853&diff=0&oldid=0

- that's a favourite slab of text of 142/Entmoots/JRR - and
writes in an almost identical style. Some consider him a
reincarnation already:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:The_Trolls_of_Navarone&action=history

- but this appears disputed. I'm inclined to say "of course he
bloody is", but would like the opinion of someone with more
experience of the ex-user in question.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
> Perhaps you have never suffered from hate-speech, or are simply
> insensitive to the matter, Chris.  You certainly have a right to
> disagree with me and even to say this message is unconstructive.  But
> trust me, I am calm, I have thought about this, and I believe it is
> constructive.  What WHEELER wrote is not just a violation of
> wikicivility, it is an example of hate speech.  It served and serves
> absolutely no purpose at wikipedia, except to use this space as a
> vehicle for expressing hate speech.  I am against that.

Surely this is Arbitration Committee material? They take a while
(gosh darn these unpaid volunteers in a job that sucks by definition!),
but the results have been sensible so far IMO.

- d.


from_name: Dan Drake

body:
On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 11:31:39 UTC, Viajero
<viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:

> On 07/01/04  at 05:25 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:
>
> > I think it's important for the Wikipedia articles to reflect that fact
> > that many Americans take just the attitude you described above:
>
> >   that America "does something better than most of the world does" by
> >   "having an independent judiciary that is largely in the hands of  people
> >   who understand the concept of due process of law and even approve of it"
>
> Making due note, of course, of such egregious lapses such as the Supreme Court decision which made Bush president. At this point, the US might have something to learn from, say, Bolivia on how to run a fair presidential election.

Jesus Christ, one really can't get away from the America-bashing, can one?
 Say ANYTHING positive about the country, and one is lectured on its
failings.

In using this example (which was also relevant to a point made earlier in
the thread) I was hoping it would be obvious to *most* of the non-American
readers here that they, too, living in countries that also do better than
*most* of the world in this regard, were not being attacked by American
chauvinism here.

Actually, I considered putting a disclaimer in the posting, but thought it
would be a waste.  Wrong again.  I need to be more ultra-patriotic
American, and assume that any praise of anything in my country will be
taken as an attack on the world, foreigners being quite unable (like all
too many Americans) to understand such subtleties.


body:
On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:25:34 UTC, "Poor, Edmund W"
<Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

>
> Dan, would you please weave this insight into a Wikipedia article about
> America or Americans? Or start a new article called [[American concepts
> of justice]]? Or maybe put this into [[independent judiciary]], as part
> of a series on [[American government]]?
>
> I think it's important for the Wikipedia articles to reflect that fact
> that many Americans take just the attitude you described above:
>
>   that America "does something better than most of the world does" by
>   "having an independent judiciary that is largely in the hands of
> people
>   who understand the concept of due process of law and even approve of
> it"

Heh.  When I started reading this, I was half-expecting it (not having
looked at the signature) to turn out to be a sarcastic attack.  Wrong
again.  And it's not a bad suggestion.  But do I have time for the flame
wars?  Consider the reactions to your quote of my remark--reactions which
appear to come from countries that are "better than most of the world" in
exactly the same way and have little or no reason to be sensitive on this
issue; but it's not OK to make such a claim for the US.

Not that I'd be damaged by being called names, but could a text ever be
agreed on?


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Marking articles with specific "flags" (was: web of
	trust)

body:
On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 19:08:25 UTC, "Poor, Edmund W"
<Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

>...
> How about some sort of marking or system, whereby you can set the "Looks
> Good To Me" flag on a particular edit (or on a particular article
> version, which is not _quite_ the same thing).
>
> I personally would not bother re-checking any anon edit which mav had
> already looked at and marked okay...

Another good idea, and easier to implement than the random surveillance
system I've suggested.  If such flags showed up in the Recent-changes
list, eliminating a lot of duplicated effort, do you think it might stave
off the day when the people who watch the list give up from sheer
overload?


from_name: Robert Dodier

subject: [WikiEN-l] proposal: rename "Votes for deletion" to "Triage"

body:
Hello everyone!

It turns out that VfD is used as a general forum to
determine what to do with an article. Deletion is an
option but redirect, cleanup, & copyvio are used as well.
So I suggest renaming "Votes for deletion" to "Triage".

The VfD header message can be changed accordingly --

  "This article has been listed on Wikipedia:Triage
  because someone decided it would be a good idea to
  get some more eyeballs on it."

I'm thinking such a message is more accurate, and
also gentler on new contributors, whose articles
end up on VfD out of proportion to their numbers.

Maybe "Triage" isn't the best name since it
suggests trauma. Any other ideas?

For what it's worth,
Robert Dodier
(Wile E. Heresiarch)

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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Thumbnails

body:
I have summarized all proposed changes on
    http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbnails

Marco Krohn wrote:

>it might be a solution to modify the code, such that
>
>  [[image:bla.jpg|thumb|200px ...]]
>
>gives the old result and
>
>  [[image:bla.jpg|thumb|~200px ...]]
>
>means that you want something which is roughly ~200 px
>

So funny, I thought of the exact same syntax befor I reached your mail
in the thread. Must really be intuitive! :-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Thumbnails


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Nested lists, a small parser bug

body:
Tony wrote:

> This one has been around for ages and is ''probably'' easy to fix.

Please *do not* reply to a message when you're trying to start a new
thread. Thanks!

> In most cases, this works fine. Consider the following list structure, however
>
> * item
> *** 3rd-level item
> ** 2nd-level item
> * (more items)

This is structurally/logically invalid. What you labelled as the
"3rd-level item" doesn't have a parent here.

> Lists with this general structure are quite common

That surprises me. They should be fixed.

> The HTML that results, however, has issues:

> * list item
>    *
>       * 3-deep list item
>    * 2-deep item
> * (more items)

This is correct and expected behaviour.

> Notice the gap and the spurious list marker. The desired display is this:
>
> * list item
>       * 3-deep list item
>    * 2-deep item
> * (more items)

No, this is definitely not "desired", and I'm not even sure it's
possible to do in all browsers; HTML is not a formatting mark-up
language. It's a document structure mark-up language.

Timwi


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: proposal: rename "Votes for deletion" to "Triage"

body:
Robert Dodier wrote:

>It turns out that VfD is used as a general forum to
>determine what to do with an article. Deletion is an
>option but redirect, cleanup, & copyvio are used as well.
>So I suggest renaming "Votes for deletion" to "Triage".
>
>The VfD header message can be changed accordingly --
>
>  "This article has been listed on Wikipedia:Triage
>  because someone decided it would be a good idea to
>  get some more eyeballs on it."
>
>I'm thinking such a message is more accurate, and
>also gentler on new contributors, whose articles
>end up on VfD out of proportion to their numbers.
>
The message would be too gentle, I'm afraid. Not that I oppose being
gentle with new contributors, but if article deletion is to remain an
option, we need to give people fair warning of that. Many people take
umbrage even at having a few words deleted from articles, let alone
having an entire article deleted. Since deletion is such a serious step,
we need to make some effort to let people know about the possibility.

That being said, I certainly agree that people discussing potential
deletions should be more aware of other alternatives.

--Michael Snow


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Is User:The Trolls of Navarone another
	142/Entmoots/JRR reincarnation?

body:
He has an IP address of 217.26.162.142 listed on his user page. Would
one of the developers mind checking out whether that matches up to
EntmootsOfTrolls or JRR Trollkien?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Tony

subject: [Wikitech-l] Nested lists, a small parser bug

body:
This one has been around for ages and is ''probably'' easy to fix. In Parser.php the function openList does this:

if ( "*" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
 else if ( "#" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
 else if ( ":" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }

In most cases, this works fine. Consider the following list structure, however

* item
*** 3rd-level item
** 2nd-level item
* (more items)

Lists with this general structure are quite common (although editors usually go through some hoops to re-arrange them
because of the problem I'll outline in a moment). The HTML that results, however, has issues:

 item

 3rd-level item

 2nd-level item

 (more items)

(Reformatted for clarity, and some leftover closing
 tags omitted on the grounds that they don't do any real harm.)

Notice that spurious
 in line 4 (which I capitalised here to make it easier to see). It results in a very ugly display on the
user's screen, looking rather like this:

* list item
   *
      * 3-deep list item
   * 2-deep item
* (more items)

Notice the gap and the spurious list marker. The desired display is this:

* list item
      * 3-deep list item
   * 2-deep item
* (more items)

How to fix it? I'm sure that someone with more skill than me could come up with a comprehensive and elegant fix, but here is
a simple one on the brute-force level. Retain the basic:

  if ( "*" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }

but reprocess it afterwards looking for the string "

" and replacing the string with just plain "
". If I have this straight
in my mind,
 should *never* directly precede
 in the output HTML. Similar logic applies to the other two list types.

Tannin (Tony Wilson)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Thumbnails

body:
Magnus proposed some improvements to the thumbnail function, notably:

>    [[image:bla.jpg|thumb|some text]] generates a normal thumbnail
>    [[image:bla.jpg|thumb=bla_small.jpg|some text]] uses "bla_small.jpg" as the thumbnail
>    Add a little sharpening, at least to photos (.jpg/.jpeg).
>    Other stuff

This is an excellent and much-needed improvement. As I have documented at length on his en wiki talk page (among other
places), the current thumbnailing method produces significantly sub-optimal results. This will deal with the criticisims I and
others have made, and provide a major improvement in our visual presentation.

(PS: the styling of the thumbnail boxes is still pretty ordinary: some attention to the CSS would also be good.)

Tannin (Tony Wilson)


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Robert Dodier wrote:
>
>> Maybe "Triage" isn't the best name since it suggests trauma. Any
>> other ideas?
>
> Votes for an article's fate? :)

Some of us consider any encounter with that page to be traumatic.  :-)

Ec


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:
> I am concerned with WHEELER's anti-semitism.  He has made some offensive
> remarks in the past, but ones I could dismiss as poor communication in
> the course of heated debate.  Now he really has posted an ad hominem
> non-sequitor on the following page:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Early_National_Socialism/draft#personal_pedigree
> In the context of a discussion with AndyL over the relationship between
> the Austrian and Hungarian National Socialist movements, WHEELER posted
> the following:
>
>     And by the way since you want to declare a pedigree just because
>     your relatives suffered under the Holocaust. [As far as I can tell,
>     this is not true; Andy L always bases his arguments on historical
>     documentation -- SLR] The Nazis also committeed atrocities on the
>     island of Crete.  My uncle, Sirodakis, was a great underground
>     fighter.  It was my island that lead a ferocious resistance to the
>     Nazis.  It was my co-religionists, Catholic priests that went to the
>     camps as well.  And it was Jewish communists that destroyed the
>     Orthodox Church in Russia.  Many a Christian died in Jewish
>     concentration camps in Russian before the Nazis ever killed a single
>     Jew.  So don't cry buster and don't wave your victimhood in my
>     face.[[User:WHEELER|WHEELER]] 15:43, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
>
> Not only does this have nothing to do with the article, it is simple,
> base anti-semitism -- a simple association of bolshevism with Judaism
> that the Nazis themselves mastered and promoted.  I think WHEELER should
> be banned for it, personally.  At the very least it calls for a profound
> and sincere apology.
>
> Steve
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701

Evening Steve :-)

Upon reading the entire wiki talk page, I can see that basically none of
it is showing much wikilove between editors. Even before the paragraph
that made you react, it seems most of the exchange is pretty dry. I can
see a sort of growing tension between the various parties, and I can't
say I am surprised of the outcome of it. This is really unfortunate. I
think it would be beneficial in such heated or potentially dangerous
discussion, to refactor as things go.
It many controversial topics as this one, it is frequent for all
parties, to say things that they may regret later, or things they wont
regret, but realise afterwards are not facilitating discussion. It is
often a good move, a constructive move, to change one's comments
afterwards, when one realise they may offend. I noticed RK was also
frequently doing this, and I think it is a good idea he does so. I think
that if both parties had toned a little bit, this might not have happened.

I have trouble realising the level of offense you feel Steve. Offense is
something very personal. But obviously, you feel very upset, so that is
important.
Sam Spade made a wise comment on the talk page. He wrote "I think this
particular thread should be dropped. Sam 16:32, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)".
The paragraph in question was obviously meant to hurt.
One option is to refuse to be hurt. You may observe a very deep silence
in front of it. Or you may remove it. Or you may remove it and copy it
on Wheeler talk page. To express your disapproval. If it was hate speech
intended to mislead people, it can't mislead people since it is no more
there.

About deep and sincere apology request. I suppose I could go on forever
on this one. The best is that I suggest that you read :
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology
I think mixing calling for ban or requesting apology at the same time is
tricky. It sounds a bit like a threat, and if the user gives the apology
as an attempt to escape the possible ban, then it is not very likely it
will be sincere.

I am unhappy about that, but it is a fact unfortunately that on
Wikipedia, some very uncivil comments are made to other users. When it
happens, and if you make a comment stating your deep disapproval, two
main things may happen :
* the uncivil comment was meant to hurt you and to win a battle, and the
offender does not care about you or preserving your relationship. Chance
is that no apology and no removal/refactoring for the comment will be
done, whatever the request. Either the hurt person drops the topic, or
it goes to some punishment for the offender
* the uncivil comment was given in the heat of the discussion, and the
offended feelings or the community reaction is important to the
offender, and apology or repair of some sort will be offered.

In the first case, mediation is useless. If you care very much about the
topic, try arbitration.
In the second case, arbitration would be disastrous, as you will ruin
chances for peaceful settlement.

Does that answer your question ?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Thumbnails

body:
I pointed out (elsewhere) that thumbnail image quality is better  when the rescale uses an exact even number. (50%, 33.3%,
etc.). (Not under all circumstances, by the way. It depends of the resolution of the source image. In general, the larger the
original the less it matters.)

Magnus proposed that the software generate a thumbnail *close* to the requested size (and thus preserve as much image
quality as possible, at the cost of producing (e.g.) a 213px rather than a 200px thumb.

Erik said please don't do it as it would break many layouts.

Ahh! I hadn't thought of that!

No matter. Exact fraction resizes are really only required for a small proportion of images - off the top of my head, maybe
10%. These can be hand-thumbnailed instead. As it happens, it is low to medium-resolution originals that tend to have the
worst problems when autothumbnailed, and benefit most from human intervention, so the reality is that we were probably
going to want to hand-thumbnail most of the images that could benefit from the (e.g.) 200 to 213px rescale anyway, so we
can simply leave the even-fraction rescale part out of the overhaul and not particularly miss it.

Tannin (Tony Wilson)


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Q3 2004 hardware budget

body:
I've worked out a provisional hardware budget for Q3 2004 based on our past
spending patterns.

We may need to spend $11000 (assuming we follow last quarter's growth rate) to
$73000 (assuming a repeat of the absurd growth rate a quarter before that -
probably caused by the installation of the new server farm) on servers by the
end of third quarter (which started 1 July). Both of those figures, however,
are probably outliers and thus do not represent a trend.

1) Averaging all growth rates since Q3 2002 gives an increase in traffic (hits)
per quarter of 90.98%, meaning a Q3 2004 budget of between $26000 to $32000.

2) Removing the last two quarters gives a 68.72% growth rate, meaning a $20000
to $24000 budget.

3) Also removing an earlier outlier (Q1 2003's dismal 1.42% growth) gives an
average growth rate of 85.55%, meaning a $24000 to $29000 budget.

My spreadsheet is still a bit messy but I think the estimate is sound. Please
check:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hardware_costs.pdf
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hardware_costs.sxc

I'm still working on getting these data in a more presentable form. The finance
department also needs to come together so we can work on an annual budget and 5
year master plan. I could do this myself if our only expenses will be hardware
related, but I imagine that we will want to expand the operations of the
foundation. Thus we need to form policy on what we want to spend money on. I
most certainly cannot do that alone.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS - I won't have hard numbers until Jimbo gets back and faxes me the last
three months of bank statements, but we should have about $27,800 total
($9,400 in PayPal, $9000 server refund, $9000 award, and $400 misc.).

__________________________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Q3 2004 hardware budget


from_name: Timwi

body:
Tony wrote:

> Lists of the structure I cited are *common as mud*. Do you think I am a complete fool and just made something up? Shall I
> spell out a real-world example for you?

Calm down. I did not attack you or anything; there is no reason to be
offended like that. I never said you made anything up or anything; I
only said those invalidly-structured lists need to be fixed.

> Consider a list of water catchment basins, which in turn lists the major and minor streams belonging to each one.
>
> * Basin 1
> ** major stream A
> ** Major stream B
> *** minor stream C
> *** minor stream D
> *Basin 2
> *** minor stream E
> *** minor stream F
> * Basin 3
> ** major stream G
> *** minor stream H

This structure suggests that "minor stream C" and "minor stream D"
belong to the "Major stream B". Is that the case? I doubt it. You are
misusing the structure to emphasise difference between two categories
(minor and major) that are logically on the same level (belonging to
Basin 1). The correct structure would be either:

* Basin 1
** major stream A
** major stream B
** minor stream C
** minor stream D
* Basin 2
** minor stream E
** minor stream F

or, if you really *must* emphasise the grouping between "major" and
"minor" thingies:

* Basin 1
** Major streams:
*** A
*** B
** Minor streams:
*** C
*** D
* Basin 2
** Minor streams:
*** E
*** F

> * Cockatoos
> *** Cockatiel, Nymphicus hollandicus
> ** Black cockatoo group
> *** Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhynchus banksii
> *** Glossy Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhyncus lathami
> *** Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhyncus funereus
> ** White cockatoo group
> *** Gang-gang Cockatoo, Callocephalon fimbriatum
> *** Galah, Eolophus roseicapilla
> *** Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Cacatua galerita

The correct structure would be:

* Cockatoos
** Black cockatoo group
*** Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhynchus banksii
*** Glossy Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhyncus lathami
*** Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhyncus funereus
** White cockatoo group
*** Gang-gang Cockatoo, Callocephalon fimbriatum
*** Galah, Eolophus roseicapilla
*** Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Cacatua galerita
** Other
*** Cockatiel, Nymphicus hollandicus

> Now, can we get back to the bug that I brought up and stop spouting nonsense?

You did not bring up a bug. As I said, it's correct and expected
behaviour. I'm pretty sure it is invalid HTML to put a UL directly
inside a UL without an LI in between.

What you did bring up is that these kinds of lists are invalidly
structured as commonly as mud. That is alarming and really really needs
to be fixed.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir and Guanaco

body:
Good news. I think we clarified the issue Lir had with her banning.
Well, hopefully :-)
If not, please contact Sannse. I am away till monday :-)


body:
Robert Dodier wrote:

> Maybe "Triage" isn't the best name since it
> suggests trauma. Any other ideas?

Votes for an article's fate? :)


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Optimize mentoring system

body:
On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 14:17:12 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl> wrote:
> Only trusted mentors should have access to this function to avoid trolls
> approving their own edits.

"Trusted mentor"?
If you're proposing a new permissions bit, how will we go about
selecting people to fill the role? What would you say to the
(numerous) objections about there being a new role, the confusing
and/or evil heirerarchy, and stuff like that?

Or would you rather attach this to the Administrator role? What would
the risks of that be, with... <ahemahem> certain administrators whose
neutrality have been questioned of late?


from_name: David Iberri

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: extending wiki-syntax

body:
--- Reini Urban <rurban at x-ray.at> wrote:
> Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> > I'm using a wiki for writing (preparing) articles and several similar
> > stuff. To make it easier, I'm currently writing an wiki-syntax parser
> > for my Website-Kit, so it can directly read wiki articles (otherwise
> > I would have to rewrite it to some XML schema).
>
> This already exists:
> perl  http://search.cpan.org/~diberri/HTML-WikiConverter-0.16/

HTML::WikiConverter doesn't fit the bill. It's an html->wiki converter, i.e. it parses the HTML
source into a tree, then outputs its in equivalent wiki markup. It doesn't do wiki syntax parsing.

-- David Iberri (the module's author)


body:
On the contrary, Timwi,

Lists of the structure I cited are *common as mud*. Do you think I am a complete fool and just made something up? Shall I
spell out a real-world example for you?

Consider a list of water catchment basins, which in turn lists the major and minor streams belonging to each one.

* Basin 1
** major stream A
** Major stream B
*** minor stream C
*** minor stream D
*Basin 2
*** minor stream E
*** minor stream F
* Basin 3
** major stream G
*** minor stream H

Note Basin 2 which has no major streams. What do you want the user to do? Go out and dig a new river so that you can
have nice idealogically pure lists?

Got it? Or do you need another one?

* Cockatoos
*** Cockatiel, Nymphicus hollandicus
** Black cockatoo group
*** Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhynchus banksii
*** Glossy Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhyncus lathami
*** Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhyncus funereus
** White cockatoo group
*** Gang-gang Cockatoo, Callocephalon fimbriatum
*** Galah, Eolophus roseicapilla
*** Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Cacatua galerita

Examine the Cockateil (second line above). It doesn't belong to a sub-group

>No, this is definitely not "desired", and I'm not even sure it's
>possible to do in all browsers; HTML is not a formatting mark-up
>language. It's a document structure mark-up language.

It definately *is* desired, chum.

This is *not* HTML, it is wiki markup It works just fine cross-browser (yes, including that perennial problem child Internet
Explorer).

In any case, HTML does not exist to serve narrow ideaalogical purposes. It exists to serve *users*, in this case, users
attempting to describe the real world. It is particularly important to remember the real purpose of wiki markup, because
(unavoidably) the wiki markup language takes away the ability of the user to format pages using more flexible tools such as
word processing software, HTML, or pen and paper.

Now, can we get back to the bug that I brought up and stop spouting nonsense?

Tannin (Tony Wilson)


from_name: Mark Richards

subject:
Save the articles! Re: [WikiEN-l] proposal: rename "Votes for
	deletion" to "Triage"

body:
This is interesting, but I would like to focus on
keeping things that don't really need deletion of Vfd,
and trying to get another forum for article cleanup.
Cleanup needs to be 'sexed up' somehow though - people
seem much more enclined to vote for article deletion
than to put effort into deleting it - perhaps awards
editors working hardest to save articles from
deletion? Mark

--- Robert Dodier <robert_dodier at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone!
>
> It turns out that VfD is used as a general forum to
> determine what to do with an article. Deletion is an
> option but redirect, cleanup, & copyvio are used as
> well.
> So I suggest renaming "Votes for deletion" to
> "Triage".
>
> The VfD header message can be changed accordingly --
>
>   "This article has been listed on Wikipedia:Triage
>   because someone decided it would be a good idea to
>   get some more eyeballs on it."
>
> I'm thinking such a message is more accurate, and
> also gentler on new contributors, whose articles
> end up on VfD out of proportion to their numbers.
>
> Maybe "Triage" isn't the best name since it
> suggests trauma. Any other ideas?
>
> For what it's worth,
> Robert Dodier
> (Wile E. Heresiarch)
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Robert Dodier wrote

> It turns out that VfD is used as a general forum to
> determine what to do with an article. Deletion is an
> option but redirect, cleanup, & copyvio are used as well.
> So I suggest renaming "Votes for deletion" to "Triage".

It's more like a filter, in a way.  I don't have an immediate answer to the
VfD issue.  I'd prefer it divided into some rough categories, by topic area.
I can see that this goes against the idea that it should be run as a
rough-and-ready democratic forum.  I also think WP could move to more
explicit page-rating levels, with say 1 = good stub, 5 = featured article.
This allows level 0 = serious need of clean-up, -1 for delete if not quickly
salvaged, -2 = rapid delete.

Charles


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking Policy - ban of IP address 203.166.76.237

body:
>?Is there any way that I can change my IP address so that I edit again before 2005?
>What processes can legitimate users have when a person with a
>similar IP address use to change the problems in order to avoid being
>caught when a lengthy ban is put in place?
?
You don't need to change your IP. Just create a named account. The block is for anon editors only. If you log in you will not be blocked. (Or at least you shouldn't be, let us know if you are)

Go to

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Userlogin&returnto=Special:Userlogin

choose a username and a password and that's it. You do not have to give your email address if you don't want to. You do not have to give any personal information.

HTH

Theresa


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: American concepts of justice

body:
Dan Drake wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Dan Drake wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Actually, I considered putting a disclaimer in the posting, but thought it
>>>would be a waste.  Wrong again.  I need to be more ultra-patriotic
>>>American, and assume that any praise of anything in my country will be
>>>taken as an attack on the world, foreigners being quite unable (like all
>>>too many Americans) to understand such subtleties.
>>>
>>>
>>Ultra-patriotism is one thing that will unite non-Americans of any
>>political stripe anywhere.  Praising what is right is perfectly
>>acceptable to many of us foreigners.  Just try to avoid gratuitous
>>superlatives; they are not subtle. :-)
>>
>>
>
>I quite agree.  In fact, ultra-patriotism of any kind will offend people
>everywhere, including America (*).  It's not clear to me, though, why you
>admonish me in this way.  It will surely have been clear that the post
>(from which you chose to cite only a paragraph of sarcasm so heavy-handed
>that perhaps I should apologize for it), as well as previous posts in this
>thread, went to some trouble to avoid superlatives.
>
>
>(*) Not all, of course.  Some people approve of ultra-patriotism of the
>_proper_ sort, here as elsewhere.  By the way, thanks for giving us le mot
>juste for such people; I infer that chauvinism is not unknown in the
>country which M. Chauvin had the honor (insofar as he was real, and
>separated from the mythology) to live in.
>
I tend to look at chauvinism as a broader category  that includes
ultra-patriotism.

My apologies. No admonition was intended, though I can see now where the
imperative "Just try ..." can be interpreted that way.  I would have
thought that the smiley would have been a stronger suggestion of
friendly banter.

Ec


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's Anti-Semitism

body:
Chris,

As someone who is not in the least involved in this situation, I find your breezy blowing off of these people's concerns as offensive.  If you aren't interested in becoming involved, then may I suggest you not bother to deal with it?

RickK

Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- James Rosenzweig wrote:
> Chris,
> I understand and respect your position.

Ok.

>I think,
> however, it is not sufficiently clear that Sl's post
> here was the result of the four months of difficulty
> many of us have had in working with WHEELER.

Indeed, it was not. The poster should have made that clearer.

> He has
> made frequent Anti-Semitic remarks, as well as being
> blatantly rude to a number of editors (questioning
> their competence, their belief in God at one point,
> etc.).

Not illegal is it? It's called freedom of speech. You should try it
sometime.

> Suggesting a ban isn't in violation with
> wikilove at this point, I think. I, Kim Bruning, Sl,
> Sam Spade, and numerous other editors have done our
> best to encourage WHEELER to do good here, and have
> attempted to correct him when he has abused our good
> faith.

Obviously your efforts, while well-intended, have failed. Again,
whose fault?

> Enough is enough. That's my opinion.

Being frustrated with a situation is a personal emotion, and is
rarely effective in logical discourse.

> Certainly a call for a ban here isn't going to get
> results -- that's an AC measure.

Yes. That was one of my points.

> But I think Sl is
> posting here because those of us who have tried to
> work with WHEELER are frustrated to the point of
> giving up.

Again, that's their fault. They should apply their talents where they
are effective, and leave the rest alone.

> I hope you, Chris, will begin to work on
> compromise and wikilove with WHEELER -- if you are
> successful, you're a better man than I am.

Better is POV.

> And it may
> be that you will discover that the quoted comment
> isn't one misinterpretation by SL of a researched fact
> of WHEELER's, but rather it is the tip of an iceberg
> of bigotry and intolerance.

Then it sould have been stated as such. Again, calling on a ban for
one infraction without mentioning the sum of the infractions is not
very good communication.

> I wish you luck in your
> work with him.

Never said I was going to. Got other fish to fry.

Sorry for the americanism in the expression to the international readers.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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body:
>The block is for anon editors only. If you log in you will not be
blocked

Well a quick test proves me completely wrong about that. Blocking an IP
address does block logged in users with the same IP. Is this deliberate?

Also I've checked the block list and the above IP isn't on it. The only
similar address is 203.166.96.232/29 blocked by Pakaran  but this range
block should not be blocking 203.166.76.237 so unless something is wrong
that can't be it. I also checked the blocklog and 203.166.76.237 nor any
range blocks that I could see were there so I am at a loss. Perhaps
someone else can help this bloke?

Theresa


from_name: Reini Urban

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: extending wiki-syntax

body:
Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> I'm using a wiki for writing (preparing) articles and several similar
> stuff. To make it easier, I'm currently writing an wiki-syntax parser
> for my Website-Kit, so it can directly read wiki articles (otherwise
> I would have to rewrite it to some XML schema).

This already exists:
perl  http://search.cpan.org/~diberri/HTML-WikiConverter-0.16/

php   http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/HtmlParser
(for the phpwiki dialect, for parsing the mediawiki dialect just apply
the perl rules)


subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
I agree.  See Rienzo's disgusting anti-gay hate speech that he spewed onto my Talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk%3ARickK&diff=4358967&oldid=4358636

RickK

"steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
4) Wikipedia should not tolerate hate speech.  I think an open society should limit such regulation as much as possible. Some people have pointed out that even WHEELER has a right to free speech.  I agree.  But that does not mean that someone can say whatever they like, here.  We should tolerate a certain level of offensive remarks as unavoidable byproducts of heated exchanges, just as we should tolerate a high level of ultimately empty chatter on talk pages as necessary byproducts of the editing process.  We should certainly encourage controversy.  But there is simply no benefit to Wikipedia from hate speech, and there is no need for us to provide people with an outlet for hate speech.   God knows, there are plenty of other outlets on the internet for that.  For the same reason, there should be no need for me to go (as one person suggested) to an attorney general to try to prosecute WHEELER for hate speech.  What WHEELER wrote may very well be legal -- so he can write it elsewhere.
 I just don't want to see someone use Wikipedia as a vehicle for hate speech.  Wikipedia policy is not nor should be the same thing as state or federal law.

Steve

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from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
I think it's probably beside the point - IP addresses can be spoofed.
If it were the same, it would be proof. If it's different, it doesn't
show anything one way or another.

I've not got the time or patience to go digging into the edit histories
for similarities, but if the alleged similarities exist, I'd have no
problem with a swift ban for reincarnation.

But, then, I've got minimal patience for people who don't appear to be
editing in good faith. This user is admitting on his userpage that he
is a troll, in the tradition of a number of other banned trolls. This
is not good faith. No deep philosophical debate needed here.

-Snowspinner

On Jul 2, 2004, at 1:36 AM, Michael Snow wrote:

> He has an IP address of 217.26.162.142 listed on his user page. Would
> one of the developers mind checking out whether that matches up to
> EntmootsOfTrolls or JRR Trollkien?
>
> --Michael Snow
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's Anti-Semitism

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> As someone who is not in the least involved in this situation, I
> find your breezy blowing off of these people's concerns as
> offensive.  If you aren't interested in becoming involved, then may
> I suggest you not bother to deal with it?

You are correct to be offended, from your point of view. From mine
however, you are not. But that's not the point.

If I were not involved, I would not have replied to the mail.

I suggest that if someone says : "I hate americans, they're
assholes", they have a right to say that, and that might be hate
speech (since it's targeted at a group of people), yet I will not
take action against them because it makes people unconfortable.

[sarcasm="on"]
Freedom of Speech in America: You can say whatever you want, as long
as it's not against the state, any religious or ethnic groups,
minorities, disadvantaged, disabled, and certainly not against
gay/lesbian/bi or women.
You are free to insult white protestants heterosexual males, as long
that does not involve National Security, is not a commercial message,
and does not involve imminent danger.
[sarcasm="off"]

Is that your definition of Free Speech?
Are these the laws we want to live by?

Are these the standards we want to apply to the W?

If people are being silly, then, please, coach them. If they're being
destructive, then ban them. But if they stand on a soap box and
scream to the top of their lungs how The End Of The World Is Near,
then keep walking.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> What WHEELER wrote may very
> well be
> legal -- so he can write it elsewhere.

Why not here? We're a public forum.

>  I just don't want to see
> someone
> use Wikipedia as a vehicle for hate speech.

Your POV.

>  Wikipedia policy is
> not nor
> should be the same thing as state or federal law.

Exactly.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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body:
I don't think this is a good idea. Banning someone
because you don't have the patience to look at edit
histories isn't the kind of thing we need. IP
addresses are usually accepted as evidence in this
case, and since this user has done nothing wrong, it
seems crazy to try to block him. This is the kind of
baiting that leads to more conflict. The user is using
the term troll to declare his politics about
Wikipedia, but that in itself is not a good reason to
ban him.
Mark

--- Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I think it's probably beside the point - IP
> addresses can be spoofed.
> If it were the same, it would be proof. If it's
> different, it doesn't
> show anything one way or another.
>
> I've not got the time or patience to go digging into
> the edit histories
> for similarities, but if the alleged similarities
> exist, I'd have no
> problem with a swift ban for reincarnation.
>
> But, then, I've got minimal patience for people who
> don't appear to be
> editing in good faith. This user is admitting on his
> userpage that he
> is a troll, in the tradition of a number of other
> banned trolls. This
> is not good faith. No deep philosophical debate
> needed here.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
> On Jul 2, 2004, at 1:36 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>
> > He has an IP address of 217.26.162.142 listed on
> his user page. Would
> > one of the developers mind checking out whether
> that matches up to
> > EntmootsOfTrolls or JRR Trollkien?
> >
> > --Michael Snow
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Attachments

body:
> There seems to be a tendency amongst some users to e-mail using
> attachments.
>
> Could I remind them that this will produce irritating "An HTML
> attachment was scrubbed...
> " error messages? Just send them in plain text.

On Jun 30, 2004, at 6:00 AM, rkscience100 at yahoo.com wrote:

> Your document is attached.
[<document.pif> not quoted]

That's another reason for avoiding attachments!

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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Optimize mentoring system

body:
Mav wrote:

"I simply get bored reviewing edits since the great majority of them (by
volume) are good."

It would be less of a burden if each edit was checked only once by a trusted
mentor. Now efforts are duplicated since noone knows what has been checked
already. Imagine all anonymous edits were put on a queue and people could
ask 'show me the oldest x unchecked edits and remove them from the queue'.
Only trusted mentors should have access to this function to avoid trolls
approving their own edits.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Brion Vibber

references:
<cc1uht$or8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<20040701233024.8B80F1AC0328@mail.wikimedia.org>	<cc2hbs$l07$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<kogbe0hr5cgb8bgr3i0rkkopv56p8enkes@4ax.com>

body:
Philip Newton wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 03:29:58 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>>I'm pretty sure it is invalid HTML to put a UL directly
>>inside a UL without an LI in between.
>
>
> That is my understanding, too.

We went through this question a couple years ago and, yes, that's
illegal. The correct way to nest is like this:

* Item
** Subitem

     Item

Subitem

Obviously this isn't very forgiving to skipping levels.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Optimize mentoring system

body:
Fennec wrote:

"If you're proposing a new permissions bit, how will we go about selecting
people to fill the role? What would you say to the (numerous) objections
about there being a new role, the confusing and/or evil heirerarchy, and
stuff like that?"

The only reason to restrict access is to avoid trolls emptying the queue.
Everyone can still recheck edits through RC as much as they want. It is
simply a scheme to make sure alle anon edits are checked at least once with
minimal effort. So maybe every user whith 25+ edits and two weeks
registration would qualify.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Daniel Boyer

subject: [WikiEN-l] 24.168.92.117

body:
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from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
Reading various people's response to my charge of anti-Semitism (on my talk
page and here) I realize that some people either do not understand my basic
assumptions about hate-speech.  Since this matter extends beyond WHEELER or
the early National Socialism talk page to a matter of general policy, I
want to clarify my assumptions here.  Obviously if people disagree with
these assumptions, they will disagree with my call to ban WHEELER.  My
assumptions by the way are based on personal experience but also my
understanding of U.S. Hate Speech laws (not that Wikipedia is obliged to
follow them, but that they reflect the thinking of many other people) and
Sartre's book Anti-Semite and Jew (not that Wikipedia is obliged to follow
French existentialist thought -- I just think it is a thoughtful book, not
just about anti-Semitism but about hate speech in general).  Here I explain
what I assume at some length, because my point is not about some specific
conflict between me (or AndyL) and WHEELER; it is a general point of which
WHEELER's comment happens to be one example.

1) hate speech is categorically different from offensive or uncivil
remarks.  Many people have pointed out that there is often a certain level
of incivility at Wikipedia; sometimes people make unfortunately offensive
remarks in the heat of an argument, and sometimes remarks are offensive
because they are controversial and play a constructive role in an
argument.  I agree with these points in principle, but do not think they
apply to hate speech.  For example, if someone writes "Sl, you are a
shithead," well, yeah, I would take that as an uncivil and offensive
remark.  But I would not call it hate speech.  Nor would I call it
anti-Semitism.  WHEELER observed that just because a dog barks at a Jew
doesn't make the dog anti-Semitic.  Fair enough.  Just because I am Jewish
does not mean that all attacks on me are anti-Semitic.  But if the dog
barks "Sl, you are a dirty Jew," that is anti-Semitic.  Here is the
difference: the first attack attacks me as an individual; the second
attacks me as a member of a class or group of people.  For this reason I
respectfully disagree with Anthere's sympathetic remarks.  The point is not
that I feel hurt or injured.  These are personal feelings and I have always
strived not to let personal feelings affect my involvement in
Wikipedia.  Anti-Semitism is not wrong because it is hurtful on an
individual or personal level; anti-Semitism attacks a whole
group.  Anti-Semitism is impersonal by nature.  By the way, it is for this
reason that non-Jews can and ought to oppose anti-Semitism, just as Whites
can oppose racism against Blacks and Jews can oppose racism against
Arabs.  You do not have to feel personally injured to oppose something that
is wrong.  In fact, WHEELER didn't hurt my feelings because I do not care
what WHEELER thinks about me at all.  I simply oppose hate speech and
anti-Semitism in all forms because it is wrong.

2) hate speech is never about factual accuracy.  This is because facts are
contingent, but racism is based on essentialism.  It is a fact that some
Jews have been murderers.  But are they murderers because they are
Jewish?  That they were (or are) Jewish is almost certainly incidental to
their having murdered (or robbed a bank, or gone through a red light).  It
may very well be a fact that several or even many prison guards in the
Soviet Union were Jewish.  But they weren't camp guards because they were
Jewish.  To then talk about "Jewish concentration camps" is simply not
about a factual claim we can research or question.  There is no point in
even questioning it as a factual claim.  It is absurd on its face and the
only point of the claim is to lump all Jews together, to treat them not as
individuals but as members of a class.  By the way, sometimes such
correlations may be valid.  Criminologists often look for correlations
between behavior and race, class, or gender.  I just think it is obvious
that in this particular case WHEELER was not making an empirical claim
subject to argument; he was using a slur in order to attack (I think
Jrosenzweig and AndyL have provided sufficient evidence, for those who do
not think this is obvious)

3) There is a difference between what one feels or thinks, and how one
expresses it publicly.  Regulating hate speech (through a ban, or an
apology or retraction) is not about regulating how someone feels.  I don't
think it is possible to control someone else's feelings -- hell, I am not
sure it is possible to control one's own feelings.  And if it were
possible, I don't think it would be desirable.  But we (not just
government, but society or community) regulates how people express there
feelings all the time.  We can think what we like, but we know that in some
contexts it is inappropriate or even dangerous to say what we think; we
regulate ourselves, personally, as well.  WHEELER, for example, can think
whatever he wants.  But to participate in a conversation, there are some
things he won't say.  And to participate in a community there are some
things he shouldn't say.  Where we draw the line is a separate matter that
I address below -- here I just want to emphasize that it is what WHEELER
wrote on one of our pages, not what he thinks, that I think we should
concern ourselves with.

4) Wikipedia should not tolerate hate speech.  I think an open society
should limit such regulation as much as possible. Some people have pointed
out that even WHEELER has a right to free speech.  I agree.  But that does
not mean that someone can say whatever they like, here.  We should tolerate
a certain level of offensive remarks as unavoidable byproducts of heated
exchanges, just as we should tolerate a high level of ultimately empty
chatter on talk pages as necessary byproducts of the editing process.  We
should certainly encourage controversy.  But there is simply no benefit to
Wikipedia from hate speech, and there is no need for us to provide people
with an outlet for hate speech.   God knows, there are plenty of other
outlets on the internet for that.  For the same reason, there should be no
need for me to go (as one person suggested) to an attorney general to try
to prosecute WHEELER for hate speech.  What WHEELER wrote may very well be
legal -- so he can write it elsewhere.  I just don't want to see someone
use Wikipedia as a vehicle for hate speech.  Wikipedia policy is not nor
should be the same thing as state or federal law.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Like fun?

body:
Help me out! ;)

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Like fun.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 13:43:31 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Is User:The Trolls of
> Navarone another
> > 142/Entmoots/JRR reincarnation?
> >
> > The user is using
> > the term troll to declare his politics about
> > Wikipedia, but that in itself is not a good reason
> to
> > ban him.
> > Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Stormie

body:
Robert Dodier wrote:
> Maybe "Triage" isn't the best name since it
> suggests trauma. Any other ideas?

Great, now I have this vision of lying in a hospital bed while a bunch of
nurses stand around me and say "Delete. Not notable." :-)

Cheers!
David...