body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > If Wikipedia becomes a place where information is censored, then I
> > think a lot of contributors will leave.
>
> We censor the encyclopedia fairly heavily.
>
> Have you ever been on RC patrol? Have you ever tried to bring an article from a
> POV essay to an NPOV article? I have. And when I do, I delete and revert utter
> crap at a high rate. For subpar content, I censor out the crap and salvage the
> good parts.
>
> Editorial standards are very much so a form of censorship. The reason why this
> is a good thing, is because Wikipedia is not a social club.

I agree totally with the sentiment, but not with the terminology.  Let me explain why.

If what we do when we carefully write a great article is *censorship*
then we've blurred the use of a very good word which should be
reserved for cases where someone is using *force* to prevent other
people from speaking freely.

If we're censors, then how can we criticize governments who block
wikipedia?

It's just a terminological thing, but I totally totally agree with mav
otherwise.

I would have worded it this way: editorial judgment is *not*
censorship.  We can't let our passions against censorship (which are
valid, given our mission) lead us to keep crap in the encyclopedia
only because it's offensive.

If an image as badly made as this one was posted on a totally
innocuous topic, I think it would have been deleted long ago, just for
being awful.  It's ironically only that we are so afraid of being
accused of censorship that we let it go on this long, I think.

(And many have said this to me about this one: is it a bad precedent
to delete it?  It's a bad precedent if by doing so we are saying that
we can't have images that offend anyone.  It's not a bad precedent if
we say: This image is as awful as a misspelled word.)

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Axel

subject: [Wikitech-l] java based format parser

body:
Stefan Groschupf schrieb:
> Hi there,
>
> may someone know if there is a java based parser for the wikimedia
> formating language.
> I would love to transform an article into html and transfer for example
> [image:xxx] to <img src... etc.
> I found the lucene project in the cvs but this only cleanup the strings.
>
> Or may someone can give me a hint where I can found a full documentation
> of the allowed annontations since the help pages wasn' available or at
> least wasn't complete.
Hi

I started a java parser at:
http://www.plog4u.org
http://www.plog4u.de (german site)

It's an eclipse plugin which contains a Wikipedia syntax parser for the
internal previewer. The internal previewer creates HTML files.
The parser isn't perfect yet, but much things work.

The parser/render engine is based on radeox:
http://www.radeox.org

Radeox is also used in wiki engines like
http://www.snipsnap.org and
http://www.xwiki.org

In CVS you can also find a start for an Eclipse HTML export wizard and
PDF export wizard (Menu: File->Export...) for saving the HTML files on
disk or for converting the internal HTML to PDF with the iText packages:
http://www.lowagie.com/iText

If you like to help improving the plugin or parser, please mail me.

--
Axel Kramer


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> >We went through this with 'clitoris'.  We used to have a photo there
> >which was terrible and in poor taste.
> >
> I beg to differ. So far, I still haven't seen any reasonable argument on
> what was wrong with the original picture. And, as I recall, it could be
> tracked down to a website about the clitoris, not to a porn site. You
> will have to accept that many people are not happy to follow someone
> else's opinion on what is "terrible and in poor taste"."

And everyone will have to accept that in a wiki, if your writing style
is bad, or your taste in photos is bad, other people will delete it.
People who are not happy to follow other people's opinions to a
significant degree probably have a lot of stress when wiki editing in
general, no?

> Aesthetics is not something which is easy to argue about, obviously. In
> the clitoris discussion, I got the impression that some people
> deliberately were looking for "ugly" pictures in order to make sure that
> any sexual arousal by the image is prevented. Someone even suggested a
> truly horrible and inaccurate illustration from 1866, when women weren't
> even believed to be capable of orgasm. Is it objective to say that a
> vagina or penis which is unattractive is more tasteful and encyclopedic
> than one which is attractive?

Well, it is objective to say that if the purpose of a photo is
educational, it needs to be (unlike the 1866 illustration) accurate
and informative.  And it is also objective to say that if the purpose
of a photo is educational, then it should focus on the informational
aspect rather than on sexually arousing (or shocking, or whatever) the
viewer.

> Let's be honest here: Someone who really wanted to know about
> autofellatio -- out of the desire to know about the subject, not out
> of the desire to discuss its merits as we do -- probably would like
> to see that photo, even if it's not the best possible one.

This person will not be hindered by us having the photo as a link.

To be even more informative, we could add a link to the google image
search (or similar) with a notice explaining that if you click it, you
are likely to get what you're asking for: autofellatio images.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Goodbye

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted.  I will
> > therefore remove myself from the project.  Now I'll just have to find some
> > other way to spend my time.
>
> Rick - where did you get this idea from? Please don't go - we need more people
> in the trenches. You are a bit abrasive sometimes and I'm pretty sure you don't
> like me (not that that is a requirement for anything), but I think the good you
> do far outweighs any bad.

Rick and I have straightened this out I think.

Basically what happened was that in a talk I used Rick as an example
to illustrate the diversity of our community and governance.  Rick
understood my remarks as criticism, when they were meant as praise.

The fault is entirely mine, and I have apologized to Rick so much for
my poor wording that I think he'll throw up if I do it again here on
the mailing list.

But he thanked me for my apology.  He need not feel anything bad about
this in the future, he was totally in the right to be mad at me, and
I'm very grateful that he gave me the opportunity to set things right.

The summary is this: I talked about a classic movie cliche: the cop
who people would like to see fired but no one can fire him because
he's just *too damned good*.  I said that Rick is like an action hero
to me.

I meant this as praise, but it was clumsy.

I did not use his name, and I was speaking before a small audience.
This is no excuse though, because it was transparently obvious to
people in the community *and* of course (duh!) it spread all over the
internet fairly quickly.

I get more complaints from lunatics and trolls about Rick than anyone
else.  This is no surprise.  He protects us from idiocy the depths of
which we can barely conceive.

The whole misunderstanding was my fault, and again I think Rick for
being so gracious about the whole thing.

--Jimbo


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] More thoughts on the 3-revert rule

body:
>Yes.  But why not?  Would the life of Wikipedia benefit more from an edit
>done *now* rather than, say, tomorrow?  But why?

Because Wikipedia should be a trusted encyclopedic resource of NPOV
information, not a place where any anonymous POV warrior can put obvious
bias into an article and have it stay up for days at at time, all the while
being mirrored on dozens of Wikipedia copy sites.

>If you find yourself
>reverting more than once a day (and I have), isn't that a pretty good
>indication that you're (a) editing way too much and (b) in disagreement
>with at least one other person?

a) possibly.  b) what's your point?

>I think it's four times.  Seriously, I think we should be aiming for 1RR.

Perhaps in some other ideal world or project.

Jay.


body:
>Yes, there is an illusion of fairness in having a black and white rule with
>an absolute threshold. However, I do not think such a standard is very
>wiki-like in spirit. In my case, because Netoholic saw fit to continue in
>pursuing punitive actions against me, even though there was no longer any
>disagreement between us, I feel very little good will towards him.

I note that there was little administrator support for continuing the block,
once the situation was understood, regardless of Netoholic's many arguments
that it should be continued/extended.

Jay.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Mark Pellegrini said:
> The three revert rule was not meant to be applied mechanically for
> every  person who violates the rule - in fact, the phrasing (which I
> wrote) makes this  clear. Admins are expected to use their discretion
> when blocking people for  violating it,

Yes.  But why not?  Would the life of Wikipedia benefit more from an edit
done *now* rather than, say, tomorrow?  But why?  If you find yourself
reverting more than once a day (and I have), isn't that a pretty good
indication that you're (a) editing way too much and (b) in disagreement
with at least one other person?  In such a situation, why should someone
who persists in reverting *as many as four times* deserve any kind of
sympathy?
> and SHOULD NOT be blocking
> every person who reverts three times.

I think it's four times.  Seriously, I think we should be aiming for 1RR.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in Wikipedia?

body:
Ray Saintonge said:
> NSK wrote:
>
>>On Friday 11 February 2005 02:37, Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Showing ads for, for example, anti-patent groups, gives the idea that
>>>Wikipedia supports these groups.
>>>
>>>
>>There are anti-smoking, education, science/math or anti-discrimination
>>ads,  too. I think it would be safe to show these ads.
>>
> Even in this "safe" group there could be difficulties.  Surely, there
> must be some smokers in the membership.  Others may have problems with
> the role of commercial enterprises in education.  The gay marriage
> issue  has two sides that look at discrimination in very different
> issues.

Wikipedia material is GFDL. Wikimedia Foundation can and should employ
whatever fundraising methods it thinks are optimal.  Anybody who doesn't
like the methods still gets to use the product on their own fork.  Free as
in speech.


subject: [WikiEN-l] How dated is that Stormfront conversation?

body:
>It does raise one question - how dated is that entire Stormfront chat page?
>There are no dates on any of the postings there.
>I now suspect that they have been there for far longer that I
>for one had initially supposed.

Actually, all posts there are dated, in the top left corner of the post.
The discussions there were and are quite current.

Jay.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] NYTimes.com: Google may host encyclopedia project

body:
Of course.

But a more complete democracy would've been better.

Mark

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 21:45:27 -0500 (EST), Thomas Whaples <tom at eh.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What worries me is that the final say rests with a small-but-trusted
> > group of individuals, not with the community. This is the trouble of
> > our switch from a complete democracy to a not-so-representative
> > democracy (only two of the board members were elected) - we have to
> > trust that these people will be gentle with our future.
>
> I think you're idealizing the 'primeval' state of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as
> a web site (with its attendant collection of computers, DNS registrations,
> and other unique features) was never owned or operated by some sort of
> collective you could describe as a 'complete democracy'. It was run by
> Jimbo Wales, and he had the final say in everything- he was just nice
> enough to defer to the community in most matters. If Google had proposed a
> deal with Wikipedia before the WMF was founded, then the final say would
> rest with him just as much as it currently rests with the Board of
> Trustees of the Wikimedia foundation.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Welcome to the "Wikipedia-l" mailing list

body:
> >As far as I know, there are more fluent speakers of Klingon than of Quenya.
>
> Although the *media* reports the use of Klingon more frequently than Quenya,
> I've seen no data to back this up. A quick google search pulls up 133,000
> hits for Quenya, but only 14,000 hits for tlhIngan (the Klingon language).
> That's a considerable difference.

The difference here is that "quenya" is the name of the language in
English and many other languages, while "tlhIngan" is in Klingon.

While there is no data to back either claim up, my vote is for
Klingon. I know real people who speak fluent Klingon, but you are the
first Quenya speaker.

Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Goodbye

body:
>Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted.  I
>will therefore remove myself >from the project.  Now I'll just have to find
>some other way to spend my time.

I didn't get that impression, and I hope you change your mind.

Jay.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use on Wikinews; local uploads disabled

body:
Local uploads have been disabled on the English Wikinews from the start.
Uploads are only possible through the Wikimedia Commons. This is meant
to make the upload of "fair use" images as well as images under other
non-free licenses impossible, and generally encourage use of the
Commons. The decision to disable uploads on the English Wikinews was
made in accord with Jimmy. Uploads on the other wikis were only enabled
to begin with in order to allow them to replace the logo. Since that has
now happened, local uploads are disabled there as well.

In order to nicely integrate a link to the Commons into the sidebar, I
suggest using [[MediaWiki:Currentevents]] as well as
[[MediaWiki:Currentevents-url]], which are pointless in Wikinews anyway
since the entire wiki is about Current Events. You can point those
directly to [[Commons:Special:Upload]], which will then put users on the
Commons upload form if they are logged in.

The decision to disable uploads is not permanent and subject to change.
The reasoning behind this decision is as follows. Wikinews is a project
which directly competes with major news organizations, magazines and
newspapers. It also allows and encourages commercial use of its content.
Fair use of photos from a news agency, for example, is very difficult to
justify under these circumstances.  But regardless of the legal
arguments, there is also the practical argument that Wikinews will soon
be perceived as a threat, because most of its stories are based on
reporting done by others -- and we give it away for free, while they
charge money. These people will eventually try to stop us by all means
necessary.

There is a distinct possibility that we will face issues similar to SCO
v. Linux, where a competitor accuses us of stealing content -- even if
we didn't. Fair use, being so volatile in its definition, makes a
successful attack more likely and opens us up to additional legal risks.
That is why uploads will not be enabled until it is fully clear under
what circumstances non-free licenses can be allowed.

Work is currently being done on the English Wikinews to formulate a
"fair use" policy. I encourage other Wikinews editions to do the same.
Fair use on Wikinews could encompass things like logos, graphics,
screenshots -- or photos that have not been produced by competing
organizations and companies. Once that policy is written, we shall
submit it to the Board for approval and possibly legal review. If it
passes that review, uploads will be re-enabled. The same goes for all
the other Wikinews editions.

In the meantime, I ask you to only upload images under free licenses or
in the public domain, directly to the Wikimedia Commons. Uploading them
there does not affect the image syntax at all -- you can use them like
you would use a local image. But they will not show up in Wikinews
Recent Changes.

If the Board would like this decision to be reverted, please let me
know. Otherwise I will coordinate the next steps as described.

All best,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Let's be honest here: Someone who really wanted to know about
> autofellatio -- out of the desire to know about the subject, not out
> of the desire to discuss its merits as we do -- probably would like to
> see that photo, even if it's not the best possible one. So I think, if
> the other criteria were fulfilled, which does not appear to be the
> case, that it should be available until a generally more popular
> replacement can be found.

I'd disagree with that.  There's plenty of things I want to know about
but have no real interest in seeing explicit pictures of.  I've had
occasion to read Wikipedia articles on surgical procedures, for example,
but if each of them were liberally sprinkled with highly graphic
photographs of actual surgeries, I might find reading them a bit
difficult and look elsewhere for that information.

The current situation with articles like [[clitoris]] is similar.  I'm
not /offended/ per se by clitorises or open-heart surgery, but I don't
generally want to see photographs of either of them when I'm reading,
unless I've actually clicked on a "click here to see photographs of
[...]" link.  At the moment, that makes Wikipedia a poor source of
information, and one I increasingly do not use.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autofellatio - NO to that image

body:
Hello Blankfaze,

>WE PRESENT INFORMATION
>(an image of autofellatio is, no matter what any idiot argues, information)
>WE DO NOT CENSOR INFORMATION
>
>
while I happen to agree with your opinion, I would note that reasonable
people can disagree about this. Certainly some images will offend a
great many people, while others will only offend few.

Now, I would argue that it is wrong and POV for us to remove them -- and
if we did that using this standard, we would have to remove many
political images on the same grounds. But, I don't think it's wrong for
us to provide people with meaningful labels and allow them not to see
certain images. This could be done right now using stylesheets by
putting the whole image in a
 tag.

Users could then hide such images by associating the ID with the
attribute "display:none;" in their stylesheet. No POV on our part - just
someone deciding on their own what they don't want to see. We could have

,
 etc., as
well. In spite of Christianity being a widespread delusion, some people
from different cultures might be offended by explicit religious imagery
featuring a half-naked man nailed to a cross and covered in blood.
Again, we could give them the choice to hide such imagery.

It's a bit like image copyright tagging. If we start doing this now, we
can work on improving the tools to filter in the future.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ron H

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya Language response

body:
I decided to wait a few days before responding to any of the threads. I've
read all your comments, and would like to briefly respond.

1. I am not opposed to Quenya articles in Wikibooks, but how does one even
go about *that*?

2. The Tengwar do not need to be used: Tengwar and Quenya are independent of
one another-- Tengwar is simply the type of script, and is not part of the
language itself. So any objections to Quenya based on problems associated
with Tengwar are easily solved by using the Roman alphabet, as many Quenya
speakers already do.

3. There seem to be two (very opposite!) objections to Quenya: one that it
would "never grow large", and the other that it would "take up too much
valuable resource space". These two points of view seem quite contrary to
me. Either it would take up too much space, or it wouldn't ever take up
"enough" space. I don't see Quenya language on wikipedia growing huge.
However, I think there is always too much focus on Wikipedia for largesse
"We're currently working on 455,000 articles!". An encyclopedia doesn't have
to have a million articles to *be* an encyclopedia!

4. Klingon hasn't been a huge success, hmm? But can't that be said of many
Wikipedia language articles? Aren't there dozens of languages with, say,
just one article? And since I (and other Quenya contributors; there's
interest on the 'request for languages' page)  don't speak these languages
anyway, it's not as if we're holding back these languages because we'd be
working on Quenya ones. What I mean is, I don't know Alsatian, so I'm not
ever going to be contributing Alsatian-language articles.

5. There is one really strange objection to Quenya language on Wikipedia
that I *must* address. All the rest of the objections at least made *sense*
to me, even if I don't hold that point of view. But my puzzlement comes from
this idea that a Quenya language wiki is somehow an "insult" to another
language. Without entangling myself in political debates concerning
Cantonese, if any language was "insulted" because a fictional language made
it into Wikipedia before a real-world language, I'd expect it was Klingon,
not Quenya, which caused such "insult". I think the whole idea is fairly
strange anyway... If Cantonese is sufficiently different than Mandarin,
perhaps there should be a wikipedia for it, but that has nothing to do with
my proposal for Quenya.

6. Someone asked about the abbreviation. My proposed ISO thingy would be qy
, but I wouldn't object to a change on that, and didn't include one with my
first post to the list because I think that's the simplest part of the whole
deal, and the only part that might *not* meet with objection.

7. There is a very large subset of Quenya-speakers amongst Tolkien fans. A
Quenya language project is not doomed to failure, and in the past two weeks
there has been seeming interest even on the somewhat obscure 'request for
languages' page. I can almost guarantee that a Quenya language project would
quickly eclipse any similar Klingon project.

Response (positive or negative) is appreciated.

And, please, someone, tell me more about the Wikibooks thing. I've been a
contributer for 2 years (mostly anon.), but I know nothing about Wikibooks.

Ron/firsfron on Wikipedia


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Mark Williamson stated for the record:

> Of course.
>
> But a more complete democracy would've been better.

An interesting opinion.  One that is not universal.

--
  Sean Barrett     | And, friends, they may think it's a movement!
  sean at epoptic.com |


from_name: pinco

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Capitalisation on eo.wiktionary.org

body:
Sorry, but I don't understand your question :(

Ti scrivo in privato.

Ciao,
Nino

Sabine Cretella ha scritto:

> Does anybody know if capitalisation on the Esperanto wiktionary has
> been taken of and if it is on UTF-8? As much as I know Gerard already
> requested this in the chat (that strangely doesn't work on my computer).
>
> Just to avoid doulble work.
>
> Sorry for the message to all lists, but I'd like to start working on
> that and therefore this is essential - I now tried and it seems as if
> capitalisation is still on.
>
> Thank you!!!
>
> Ciao, Sabine
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

--
http://www.vessella.it (italiano, esperanto, kiswahili, english)
http://www.changamano.org (Iniziative di solidarieta` per la Tanzania)
http://www.lernado.it (Articoli di quotidiani della Tanzania, Corso di lingua swahili, Corso di lingua esperanto, Vocabolario esperanto-italiano, Jifunze lugha ya Kiesperanto, Kamusi ya Kiesperanto)


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
Jimmy-

>We went through this with 'clitoris'.  We used to have a photo there
>which was terrible and in poor taste.
>
I beg to differ. So far, I still haven't seen any reasonable argument on
what was wrong with the original picture. And, as I recall, it could be
tracked down to a website about the clitoris, not to a porn site. You
will have to accept that many people are not happy to follow someone
else's opinion on what is "terrible and in poor taste"."

Aesthetics is not something which is easy to argue about, obviously. In
the clitoris discussion, I got the impression that some people
deliberately were looking for "ugly" pictures in order to make sure that
any sexual arousal by the image is prevented. Someone even suggested a
truly horrible and inaccurate illustration from 1866, when women weren't
even believed to be capable of orgasm. Is it objective to say that a
vagina or penis which is unattractive is more tasteful and encyclopedic
than one which is attractive?

Truthfully, the distinction between "taste and aesthetics" and
"offensiveness" is not as big as you seem to imply. The perceptions of
both are very much based on personal experiences and values. I think we
should stick first and foremost to criteria which are easy to compare.
Is the picture accurate? Does it add information to the article? Is the
copyright situation clear? Are any personal rights being violated (being
in an encyclopedia for the next 100 years might not be agreeable to the
subject of a photo)?

Only when we have images which are identical in all these matters, the
feelings of the community could be the deciding factor. For example, I'm
sure there could be an illustration of autofellatio in the style of the
sex position images which would be generally considered more tasteful
and less offensive in an encyclopedia article. But I would not want to
remove an image which satisfies the above criteria -- not saying the
autofellatio one does -- on the grounds that we could potentially have a
nicer one in the future. That just seems like an invitation for people
to use their personal views of what is tasteful or non-offensive as a
justification to push an agenda. The outcome would be a very culturally
biased project, though results would vary from page to page.

I have no problem in principle with the removal of the autofellatio
photograph on copyright grounds. But aesthetics alone is, I think, a
fairly weak argument, and really very similar, if not often identical,
to the general argument about offensiveness. The correct answer to that,
I believe, is labeling of the content with metadata to allow people to
hide it based on their preferences of what they want to see.

Let's be honest here: Someone who really wanted to know about
autofellatio -- out of the desire to know about the subject, not out of
the desire to discuss its merits as we do -- probably would like to see
that photo, even if it's not the best possible one. So I think, if the
other criteria were fulfilled, which does not appear to be the case,
that it should be available until a generally more popular replacement
can be found.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK welcome

body:
I received a mail from RK today, telling me his ban
was over, but he was still banned.

The ac decision was made on the 14th, but he was
apparently notified on the 15th (after being blocked I
fear), so it seems to me that he should be unblocked
today;

Accordingly, I unblocked him. I however asked him to
edit his personal space today, in case some people are
nosy enough to say it is the 14th rather than 13th.

RK served his time very well. He did not try to cheat
at all. He apparently went on reading what was going
on, since we could see him write to this mailing list,
in a very reasonable tone, from time to time.

I hope that everyone will take heart to welcome him
back and hope that we can all work together in good
faith and peace.

Anthere

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


body:
Thanks for your thoughts, Mark. I'd like to respond to your post briefly.

>I agree on all points. I do not think it would ever grow very large,
but as I have noted in the past I don't think Wikipedia creation
should be limited by such factors.

That's certainly good to know, although I do not know how many of your
fellow W-listers share this point of view.

>The difference is that Klingon had a huge debate, and it had people
who committed to contributing who apparently gave up because it was
too difficult (!), while most of the languages that lie inactive were
requested by non-fluent speakers at some time in the distant past and
were created without any debate.

Well, I have no wish to create a huge debate to create a Quenya wikipedia
section. Either it will be allowed or it won't. However, if one is created,
or a wikibooks section is provided, I don't intend to give up on such a
project, and I might add that I believe Quenya-language scholars are quite a
dedicated lot. Pages such as http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/birth.htm (a
translation of big passages from the Bible into Quenya), etc can give you a
fair idea that Quenya is workable. RL publications such as Vinyar Tengwar
and Tyalie Tyelellieva, Quenya language periodical publications, have been
around for decades. Fans were compiling dictionaries on Quenya ever since
the series was published in the 1950's. So Quenya scholarship isn't some
fly-by-night operation. And predates Klingon by some years.

>Klingon and Gothic are the only two controversial Wikipedias that were
actually created that so far haven't attracted many users. At least
one person has committed to me to add to the Gothic Wikipedia but I'm
not sure I entirely believe that. The Klingon Wikipedia is currently
suffering from the problems resulting from the fact that some people
think they should use Conscript registry codepoints for piqad, while
others think they should use the Roman alphabet.

Well, that's all Greek to me. Actually, it's Klingon to me. ;)

>However, I strongly urge you to think over your request carefully. Is
knowledge of Quenya grammar and vocabulary extensive enough that you
could translate a good, long article on a real-world modern subject?

Yes. See examples above, or check out
http://www.forodrim.org/daeron/md_home.html (none of these are my sites,
I'll add, but you can see the translations can be quite extensive...
certainly as long as many encyclopedia articles).

>What would you do when you encoutered words or grammatical structures
that are not known from those writings of Tolkien which are currently
publicly available?

There is always a way around, Mark, and it's certainly not too 'difficult'.
I've been writing in Quenya for years (in such publications as Tyalie
Tyelellieva). The going can be slow, but articles in sciences such as
Botany, Astronomy, etc, aren't all that difficult, because Tolkien's
fictional elves had a love of these subjects, so there is absolutely plenty
to work with in terms of the language.

>As there is no Ethnologue code, I propose we use the Linguist List
code
(http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/forms/langs/GetListOfConstructedLgs.html),
QYA, thus art-qya as the language code.

I certainly don't object to your proposal.

>Of course, this is if and only if the Wikipedia is created.

Of course.

>As far as I know, there are more fluent speakers of Klingon than of Quenya.

Although the *media* reports the use of Klingon more frequently than Quenya,
I've seen no data to back this up. A quick google search pulls up 133,000
hits for Quenya, but only 14,000 hits for tlhIngan (the Klingon language).
That's a considerable difference.

Again, thanks for your opinions and ideas, Mark.

Ron :)


body:
Daniel-

>I also imagine that different Wikipedia language versions will come up with
>whatever policies best fit them.
>
>
That would mean giving up on the idea that there is a neutral point of
view, and instead succumbing to local cultural biases. In the case of
the English Wikipedia in particular, this would be highly regrettable,
as it is used as a source in many different cultures with strongly
varying values, but the majority of editors (and hence voters in such
decision processes) are probably American and British. The other
argument against this practice is that it might reinforce and spread
values which are harmful. It is not our mission to establish standards
of normality in either direction.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying offensiveness should not be taken
into account at all. The "default view" of Wikipedia could hide certain
images which are considered offensive by the vast majority of editors.
But our real goal should be to make the decision what is displayed an
individual one, rather than a community choice that is imposed on the
reader. We could also, on the request of schools and libraries,
associate certain IP addresses with certain filter settings. Ideally,
this would just be a switch in stylesheets and not affect the caching of
the article pages.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo)-

>I have contributed to this debate by removing the image from the page
>
>
Perhaps you could clarify that this was not done in your role as
trustee. I don't believe it was, as you did not consult with Angela and
Anthere, so I consider it just like an edit by any other Wikipedia
editor, only that, of course, you hope that people will take it more
seriously because of the reputation that comes with your role in the
project, past and present. That's completely reasonable, if done rarely
and in cases you consider important.

The page is currently being edit warred over, and one editor uses the
comment "rv to Jimbo's approved version". It would be helpful if you
could state here that you are not in the business of approving articles.
I believe your edit summary "This image is completely unacceptable for
Wikipedia" could be misconstrued to be an official statement, when it is
your personal opinon. Some people still see Wikimedia as being governed
by a benevolent dictator, and any explanation would help to eliminate
that misconception.

I still remember how the Spanish Wikipedia forked over some discussion
on advertising. I'm somewhat worried that people might misunderstand
your comments, and assume that you are acting as "Chief Editor". On the
other side, those who do support the removal of the image might
deliberately seek to create that impression in order to further their
agenda.

All best,

Erik


from_name: Arno M

body:
I now realise that the conversation about storming that Jewish ethnocentralism page is something that has already been picked
up by other wikipedians.

It does raise one question - how dated is that entire Stormfront chat page?
There are no dates on any of the postings there.
I now suspect that they have been there for far longer that I
for one had initially supposed.

'Hektor' and 'Rodskarl Dubhgall' have commented on this page, and of 'interesting' hysteria on it.
See http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=173563&page=5&pp=10.
Those have been the only new additions since I last looked at it.

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body:
I'd like to put my reply to sannse's e-mail here.

That autofellatio image should go - and go immediately.

People have the right to go through this wikipedia without being confronted
with this kind of pornographic material without warning.

It's like you going down a street and having some idiot expose himself
to you without warning. Would you like that? How about your kids? Would you like them to see this kind of thing without warning or supervision?

I see nothing here inconsistent with freedom of expression. This kind of
exhibitionist behaviour is anarchy, NOT freedom.

Oh, and for the record and at the risk of raising the hackles of certain
wikipedians, I also remain very opposed to links to pornographic sites within wikipedia. Autofellatio also has this, as do certain other pages.

This tells minors where to go looking for such material and again, that's
not on. This is NOT a pornography website referral centre.

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from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Coolcat and Kurds

body:
Coolcat is running roughshod over Kurd-related articles (notably
[[Kurdistan]] and [[Kurds]]) apparently unopposed.

I'm not about to start fighting with him, but someone else might want to.


from_name: Bill Konrad

body:
geni wrote:
>I blocked the user so I suspose I had better explain

Geni, just to be clear, I'm not faulting you or accusing you in any way and
I'm sorry if I implied that. My questions were aimed at trying to reach a
broader understanding and consensus about when the 3RR should be applied. I
think the operative phrasing in the 3RR is that it is "intended as a means
to stop sterile edit wars".  If anyone, I have a problem with Netoholic
immediately resorting to the 3RR as a legalistic maneuver to essentially
slap my face. Though it may not be what he intended, he was successful in
both insulting me and in undermining whatever respect I had for him as a
wikipedia editor. Whatever the number of reverts made, that dispute had made
progress and was not a sterile edit war, so seeking retribution under the
3RR was in my opinion, very unwikilike and counterproductive. I mean, at a
minimum, I would have expected a warning from Netoholic saying that he was
planning to seek enforcement if I continued to revert. That would simply be
common decency.

I think having a blind threshold for the 3RR encourages revert-counting over
productive discussion.

bkonrad


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Goodbye

body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> See for example the thread just up the page from this one called
> "Blocked ISP Proxy". The action hero equivalent of blocking a proxy to
> ban one vandal is blowing up a bus full of innocents just to get to the
> one bad guy. Hardly something Keanu or Bruce would ever do?

Rick did not know it was a proxy (how could he have?) and has
apologized. What exactly is your problem?


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
Delirium said:
>
> The current situation with articles like [[clitoris]] is similar.  I'm
> not /offended/ per se by clitorises or open-heart surgery, but I don't
> generally want to see photographs of either of them when I'm reading,
> unless I've actually clicked on a "click here to see photographs of
> [...]" link.  At the moment, that makes Wikipedia a poor source of
> information, and one I increasingly do not use.
>
A surprising number of present-day web users seem to be unwilling to use,
and sometimes even unaware of, their browser's options to turn picture
downloads on and off.  I have a caterpillar phobia, a rather severe one,
but it doesn't stop me browsing Wikipedia because if I want to read about
butterflies and the like I adjust my browser.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Goodbye

references:
<20050213065615.72377.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com>	<cuo4nf$hv1$1@sea.gmane.org>	<420FA0F2.3070208@runawaynet.com>
	<cuo96b$vgq$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
>> Rick did not know it was a proxy (how could he have?) [..]
>
>
> So you are saying blocking an IP about which you know nothing is _not_ a
> problem?

Nowhere, NOWHERE did I come CLOSE to implying there was no problem, only
that Rick can't be blamed for taking perfectly reasonable action.

IPs are summarily blocked for vandalism _all the time_. Occasionally a
legitimate proxy gets caught in the mix. When it happens, it gets
corrected and the IP is added to a list of known proxies in the hopes
that the situation is avoided in the future. This is not at all unusual,
and Rick is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first admin to
block a previously unknown legitimate proxy through which vandalism was
being performed.

If you've got some magic way to detect legitimate proxies so admins
don't accidentally block their IPs, we'd all love to hear it. Attacking
Rick for doing the best he could in a bad situation is NOT a solution.

>
>  > and has apologized. What exactly is your problem?


body:
Thanks for the support, Jimbo.

Blankfaze, do NOT confuse censorship with responsible use of
freedom of expression. For some persons , at least , this seems
far too easy to do.

It sounds like you have no problem with being faced with an image like
this one. Others, however, are not in that way.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] How dated is that Stormfront conversation? Feb 2005.

body:
Thanks for your answer, slimvirgin.

On what other websites has this been discussed? More crucially, has anything come of it
(at least so far) by way of an attack?

One thought of mine as to why their 'putsch' has not (apparently) occurred is
that the conversation was an old one, and that this charge by WhiteBamboo and
co has not (apparently) taken place is that they changed their minds for
whatever reason. Perhaps it was a bluff, as suggested by others.

But if it was as recent as Feb 2, well, I can certainly understand the
concern of wikipedians on Feb 6, which is when this topic was first raised.

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body:
JAY JG said:
>
[I wrote]
>
>>If you find yourself
>>reverting more than once a day (and I have), isn't that a pretty good
>>indication that you're (a) editing way too much and (b) in disagreement
>>with at least one other person?
>
> a) possibly.  b) what's your point?
>

That there is a serious difference of opinion on what the article should
contain, and your own opinion is probably not (yet) in the majority.  This
should probably not be resolved by edit warring, in my opinion, because
the scope for communication is very low.  In my experience it's easier to
persuade people if you resort to English, and use the talk page.  I've
rarely had a problem gaining wide support for an edit that I discussed in
any depth, but I've seen edit wars go on for days, whose only effect is to
exacerbate ill feelings.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Progress on wikimedia.com?

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>>That sounds not very plausible because to my knowledge the US trademark
>>>is a pre-condition to apply for registration in the EU according to the
>>>Madrid Agreement.
>>
>>Well, still... according to Jimbo... this is a fact.
>
>
> The pre-condition is actually an *application* in the US.  I had the same
> misconception as akl for a long time.  There's a Madrid Protocol and a
> Madrid Agreement, and they are different.
>
>
>>I am interested by this agreement ... you mean something can't get
>>protected unless it is first protected in the USA ???
>
>
> There's a concept of a "home" country and "other countries".  If you
> are registering first in France, then you can use that to get
> protection in the US.  That is, it is because we are based in the US
> that the US had to be done first.  (Or maybe not, it's all very
> confusing, all I really know is how I did it.)  If you were
> registering in France, that would have to go first.  (Or maybe EU-wide
> first, I really have no clue.)

Oh, right. That really makes sense then...
In this case, akl is really correct... it is curious we got the
protection in Europe and Japan before getting it in the home country :-)

Anthere

>>Nod. Jimbo promised to do it within the next few days. If not, we need
>>to torture him to do so.
>
>
> :-)
>
> The stuff is on my desk to give all details.
>
> --Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
I did not see this post until just now, and after I wrote
the previous one thanking Jimbo for his support.

Thanks again. To be honest, I had not expected such a prompt
action, just an increase on participation in this issue,
both here and the discussion page.

That copyvio is also an issue - I'd simply assumed that THAT
photo at least was legit in terms of copyright. So, I suspect,
did quite a few others.

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from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
I doubt the credibility of the NY Times after the Jason Blair incident.
They're one to talk about credibility.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
rose.parks at worldnet.att.net
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 3:25 AM
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] NYTimes.com: The Unassociated Press

This page was sent to you by: rose.parks at worldnet.att.net.

Hi, Is it possible that no one else saw this article in the N.Y. Times? As
Ever, Ruth Ifcher

TECHNOLOGY / CIRCUITS | February 10, 2005

The Unassociated Press
By AARON WEISS

Wikinews, an experiment in collaborative news gathering, is gaining in
popularity. But the central question about the Wikinews effort is its
credibility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/technology/circuits/10wiki.html?ex=1108789
200&en=7114f995abf3ad92&ei=5070

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Article service.  For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help at nytimes.com.

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Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Retracting my goodbye

body:
Jimbo and I have had an exchange of emails, and it became clear that I misinterpreted his comments.  I'm sure it will sadden many of you, but I'm going to be staying.

Thanks to those who contacted me and asked me to stay.

RickK

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body:
>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>That there is a serious difference of opinion on what the article should
>contain, and your own opinion is probably not (yet) in the majority.  This
>should probably not be resolved by edit warring, in my opinion, because
>the scope for communication is very low.  In my experience it's easier to
>persuade people if you resort to English, and use the talk page.

It depends on how committed they are to Wikipedia policy.  If they are
committed to "NPOV" and "No original research" in particular, then these
things are usually (and even then not always) better resolved on the Talk:
pages.  But there are many editors (admittedly usually newer ones) who are
not committed to these principles, and with them Talk: is often useless.
And you'll tend to find those kinds of editors on hot-topic pages.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RK welcome

body:
I disagree with this action.

RK continued to attempt to edit during his ban, as is evident by a practically daily entry into the block log showing that he had done so.  He did not serve his ban appropriately, and the ban should have been reinstated from the date he last attempted to edit.

RickK, who had no opinion on either side of RK's banning

Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
I received a mail from RK today, telling me his ban
was over, but he was still banned.

The ac decision was made on the 14th, but he was
apparently notified on the 15th (after being blocked I
fear), so it seems to me that he should be unblocked
today;

Accordingly, I unblocked him. I however asked him to
edit his personal space today, in case some people are
nosy enough to say it is the 14th rather than 13th.

RK served his time very well. He did not try to cheat
at all. He apparently went on reading what was going
on, since we could see him write to this mailing list,
in a very reasonable tone, from time to time.

I hope that everyone will take heart to welcome him
back and hope that we can all work together in good
faith and peace.

Anthere

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body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>It is not clear to me that NPOV could ever require a _single_ version
>of all policies and all articles.  Certainly the concept does push in
>the direction of a general sort of consistency, but not every kind of
>difference is "succumbing to local cultural biases".
>
>For example, we don't insist that the German wikipedia be written in
>English, so as to avoid the local cultural bias of "speaking in
>German".
>
>Or, imagine that a particular battle in Europe during World War II had
>some unusual but local impact on Japan.  We might quite naturally
>imagine that the Japanese article _without bias_ but _with an eye
>towards the needs and interests of the local audience_ would have a
>different degree of detail on that topic than say en or fr or de.
>
>
I used to have this viewpoint on NPOV and languages, but increasingly
I'm not sure it makes sense.  The fundamental reason we have separate
languages for the encyclopedias is simply that there is no one language
that all people can easily read, so it's a necessity.  The German
Wikipedia can't be in English or vice versa because many Germans can't
read English and many Americans, Britons, and other English-speakers
can't read German.  Now these languages do correspond somewhat to
cultures, but not always very well---in some cases, like English, pretty
poorly (especially if you count people who speak English as a second
language, it's hard to identify an "English-speaking culture").

So, if we really wanted encyclopedias whose focuses were geared towards
local culture, we would actually need to split some languages into
multiple encyclopedias---a U.S.-english and a European-english
encyclopedial; Americas-spanish and Spain-spanish; France-french,
Canada-french, and Africa-french; and so on.  Otherwise, which countries
get version with content geared towards local tastes and interests and
which don't is based on historical accident---Italy gets a local
version, because nobody else really speaks Italian, but the U.K. has to
share its encyclopedia, because a lot of other people speak English.

I think, instead, we ought to treat languages as sort of a necessary
evil, and strive to make them all as internationalist and *non*-local as
possible.  Japanese may not be spoken as widely as English, so will
inherently tend towards more local biases and focus.  That, IMO, simply
means that the ja: Wikipedia needs to make more of a special effort to
actively seek out other viewpoints, whereas the en: Wikipedia has a bit
of an easier time because the other viewpoints come to it on their own.

I personally prefer as internationalist an encyclopedia as possible, and
for that reason consider myself somewhat lucky that my main language is
English---I think the en: Wikipedia would be much, much less interesting
and informative if US-english had diverged enough to be considered its
own language, and therefore there was a us: encyclopedia edited only by
Americans.  Not that a us: encyclopedia couldn't be useful or
interesting, but I much prefer the current en: encyclopedia, even if
it's often not geared towards my local culture.  (If nothing else, when
I'm surprised at the order of information, or the caveats and so on, it
reminds me that a lot of things I take for granted aren't universal.)

Now whether it's possible to synthesize a NPOV encyclopedia that covers
the entire world without any particular bias, and what that would mean,
is an interesting issue the sociologists and philosophers will no doubt
have volumes to say about. =]

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
Jimbo said:
>
> To be even more informative, we could add a link to the google image
> search (or similar) with a notice explaining that if you click it, you
> are likely to get what you're asking for: autofellatio images.
>
You do get a page of reasonable illustrations if you click such a link;
however it's a bit hit and miss because what you get depends on the status
of the arms race between Google's search engine technology and those who
try to game it by including inappropriate keywords.
Currently the article has a link to solosuck.com, which contains some high
quality stills and video clips or a very talented and enthusiastic
autofellator.  Of course as with all external sites we may wake up one
morning to find that it has become an auction site, a viagra sales site,
or something else that would be useless.  Or the owner may replace his
current stills with lower quality images and remove his video clips.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RK welcome

body:
Rick wrote:
> I disagree with this action.
>
> RK continued to attempt to edit during his ban, as is evident by a practically daily entry into the block log showing that he had done so.  He did not serve his ban appropriately, and the ban should have been reinstated from the date he last attempted to edit.

Isn't there still a bug where the software registers any access of
Wikipedia whatsoever (including simply reading it) on the block log as
an attempt to edit?


from_name: Puddl Duk

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
--- Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at last-straw.net>
wrote:
>
> What I would find most interesting in such debates
> would be statistics
> allowing us to analyse any systemic bias.
> Unfortunately we don't have
> the data to carry out such analysis.
>

I would be interested in these statistics too. I'll
bet the supporters of these images have a systemic
bias along the lines of; male, adolescent or college
age, no children.

Christiaan, you have been slapping lables on people
who don't vote your way with the zeal and relish of a
[[Fire and brimstone]] fundamentalist; "...the prude
crusaders", "...puritan cultural POV.." (see the vote
pages). I don't appreciate being labled as such.

Nobody likes censorship. But we always need editorial
judgement.  If we don't keep our own house, we risk
far greater censorship by others (schools, work
places, etc).

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from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Writing about sexual topics responsibly is not censorship

body:
Some people have been talking about putting explicit images
of sexual activities on Wikipedia.  Still images are being
discussed just for now - but what about when we get more
bandwidth and server space?  Will some people also want to
put on actual videos of these sexual practices?

Remember - our goal is to create an encyclopedia, and
encyclopedias are not repositories for just any
information.  In fact, the goal of making an encyclopedia
is to bypass 99.9% of the vast amount of images, videos and
text that are already extant, and instead use such raw info
to construct a summary.

Our goal always has been to write a reliable (and thus
well-referenced) encyclopedia-quality article on as many
topics as possible. Not including certain phrases or images
is *not* censorship.  In fact, I get the idea that people
who are still crying censorship have no idea what the word
means, and have never been subjected to it.

Censorship occurs when you prevent other people from
writing about what they want to write about. That is simply
not happening here, end of story. I just checked for myself
- there are millions of explicit sex images available on
the web, easily found on images.google.com.  No censorship
is occuring.

Christiaan writes:
> this is essentially what the argument boils down to.
> To treat such pictures differently is a cultural
> statement in itself about that picture. This debate is
> not so much about what constitutes an appropriate image
> but which cultural point of view will prevail on
> Wikipedia. It's one of those issues where

True, but is our task to show pornography in the name of
freedom of speech or open culture?  Our task is to make an
encyclopedia.  As such, we should have an academic and
well-referenced article on pornography and on various
sexual acts, but not host a repositary of shocking sexual
images.

> To hide or remove such an image is a statement.
> To keep such an image inline or linked is a statement.

Yes - and our statement is "This is an encyclopedia, not
Hustler magazine."  If someone wants to view explicit
images and videos of sexual acts, then freeedom of speech
already exists - there are thousands of outlets for just
such things.  But presumably people come to Wikipedia to
read a professional academic article.

In any case, our encyclopedia is useless if people refuse
to read it...and thousands of schools will ban its use if
it continues to offer pornographic images (and eventually,
videos.)  What good is our work if few people can access
it?  Even if it is not officially banned by entire schools,
many teachers will tell their students that Wikipedia is
not reliable or professional if we continue this course of
extreme sexual explicitness.

Do not get me wrong: We need not censor ourselves by
adopting the least offensive text and images - that would
be impossible.  Somebody will find everything about sex
offensive.  But we also do not have to go to the other
extreme by shoving in what is essentially pornography.

At every edit we should be asking ourselves "Am I helping
educate people by creating an encyclopedia?"  An educated
adult should be able to professionally write about human
sexual practices without being coarse, and without showing
photographs of men sucking themselves off. I hate to be so
blunt, but this is what we are talking about here.

In between puritan censorship and outright use of explicit
sexual photographs (or videos) there is plenty of room to
write a set of real encyclopedia articles.

Robert (RK)

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from_name: geni

body:
I blocked the user so I suspose I had better explain

I try and apply policy evenly. I tend to take the view that the
alturnative is that you end up with a popularity contest which will
result in even more 3RR gameing. In this case I made my descision
based on the following:

1.The user was not reverting vanderlism

2. They were straight forward reverts not "complex reverts"

3. There was no reason to assume that the user was not aware if policy

There are 370 active admins that is a lot of people to appeal to if
you belive I have made a mistake.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] False claims about RK

body:
Rick K writes about Anthere unblocking me:
> I disagree with this action. RK continued to attempt to
> edit during his ban, as is evident by a practically
> daily entry into the block log showing that he had done
> so.

This is not true!  I simply did not do this, and I am
outraged by this false claim.  Where is this so-called
record of 120 attenpts to circumvent Wikipedia?

> He did not serve his ban appropriately, and the ban
> should have been reinstated from the date he
> last attempted to edit.
> RickK, who had no opinion on either side of RK's banning

Does anyone have any idea of why RickK would claim such a
thing?  I checked the log myself, and what he says IS NOT
THERE.  If I did this every day, as he falsely claims, then
there would be some 120 records of an attenpt to edit from
my ISP! But as far as I can see, they are just not there.

(Also, I suspect that there are many people who might also
use my ISP. I live in a densely populated area.  I DO NOT
have my own ISP; mine is shared with potentially thousands
of other people, which is NOT uncommon.)

Does merely *viewing* Wikipedia count as a violation of a
ban?  Are views recorded?

Look, I have some three hundred articles on my Watchlist.
I suppose I could easily have edited all of them over the
last four months at any time, by dialing in through another
local ISP portal.  Each separate phone number - as far as I
know - has a separate IP, and would not be blocked.  Heck,
I could even have gone to my local public library and
edited my three hundred Watchlist articles from there.

If what RickK says about my intentions were true, then by
now there would be thousands of edits by me on articles I
have always done edits on!  (Conservative responsa,
anyone?)  So he is claiming that I am not only trying to
violate a ban, but that I am incompetant in doing so!  He
thinks that I can't even figure out how to drive to my
local public library and use their computer?

In any case, my free time has been spent on creating an
entire High School science course on Evolution.  This was
an unexpected bonus from my boss, who allowed me this
luxury prize; thus under no circumstances would I have had
time over the last few months to work much on Wikipedia
anyways.

Confused as hell,

Robert (RK)

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from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language

body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 17:34:07 +0000, Ron H <aceron99 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> No, it isn't, Andre :) . It's a difference of a factor of 10, which is the
> same as my results. Only thing is: "Klingon" is the name of both the *race*
> and the *language*. Quenya is only the name of the language. So naturally
> 'Klingon' gets more hits. To me, THAT seems a misinterpretation.
>
> I was discussing with Mark the number of *fluent* speakers of Quenya vs
> *fluent* speakers of Klingon. Naturally, fluent speakers are more likely to
> use the Klingon word for "Klingon", just as fluent speakers of Quenya are
> more likely to refer to 'Quenya' rather than "Elf-latin" (the English term
> for Quenya).

I have no wish to extend this discussion inordinately, but this point
doesn't strike me as credible.  'Elf-latin' may be the formal English
name for Quenya, but it is very clear that English speakers, even
those unfamiliar with Quenya, do routinely call it "Quenya", not
'Elf-latin'.  For proof you need look no further than this thread.

I don't see how Google rankings will be of much use here.  'Klingon'
will return a lot of junk about Star Trek, mostly in English.
'tlhIngan' will probably hit a lot of stuff in Klingon.  'Quenya' will
return both stuff in Quenya and stuff in English (or other languages).
 Since the two are commingled, I can't see how you can get any results
out of this.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
--- BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I totally accept that some images are to gross for
> Wikipedia to show.
> Like the rumoured goatsex one. But removing images
> because some
> Wikipedia editors think it is porn is unacceptable.
>
>
Not a rumor, its here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Goatse_screenshot.jpg

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from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> We Do NoT AlLoW PeOpLe To TyPe LiKe ThIs in wikipedia.  It hurts the
> eyes on purely aesthetic and editorial grounds which have nothing to
> do with prudishness or censorship.

I understand the concept of appropriateness and to suggest that a
picture of a man performing autofellatio on a page describing
autofellatio is inappropriate seems farcical to me. To then attempt to
turn it into an issue of aesthetics appears disingenuous. I'd be
interested to see a picture of someone performing autofellatio that all
these people trying to get rid of this picture would find aesthetically
pleasing. Of course it boils down to prudishness and censorship, if not
personal then cultural.

What I would find most interesting in such debates would be statistics
allowing us to analyse any systemic bias. Unfortunately we don't have
the data to carry out such analysis.

Christiaan


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
Bill Konrad wrote:

> Geni, just to be clear, I'm not faulting you or accusing you in any way
> and I'm sorry if I implied that. My questions were aimed at trying to
> reach a broader understanding and consensus about when the 3RR should be
> applied. I think the operative phrasing in the 3RR is that it is
> "intended as a means to stop sterile edit wars".  If anyone, I have a
> problem with Netoholic immediately resorting to the 3RR as a legalistic
> maneuver to essentially slap my face. Though it may not be what he
> intended, he was successful in both insulting me and in undermining
> whatever respect I had for him as a wikipedia editor. Whatever the
> number of reverts made, that dispute had made progress and was not a
> sterile edit war, so seeking retribution under the 3RR was in my
> opinion, very unwikilike and counterproductive. I mean, at a minimum, I
> would have expected a warning from Netoholic saying that he was planning
> to seek enforcement if I continued to revert. That would simply be
> common decency.

You raise an interesting point.  While I'm not sure adding more
fine-grained administrative guidance to the rule is the best idea, a
notion along those lines occurs to me:

Might it be desirable to add a notation to the 3RR about how to apply
the rule when a complaint is lodged by one of the participants in an
edit war?  By this, I'm suggesting a statement to the effect that a
participating edit warrior should post a polite warning that
administrative action will be pursued before seeking intervention, and
that at least one more revert must be applied after such a warning
before a complaint by a war-participant leads to an application of the 3RR.

I'm sure it can be better phrased than that, for clarity.  The purpose
of such a modification of the rule, in any case, would be to promote
dialog rather than retribution and spite.  The soft approach seems the
more appropriate, when it can be applied effectively, as compared with
the hard approach.  If we can encourage that, I think we should.

--
Chad


body:
Arno M wrote:

> This kind of exhibitionist behaviour is anarchy, NOT freedom.

uh, with anarchy being the highest form of freedom I'd be interested to
know what you really mean by this comment.

Christiaan


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> JAY JG said:
>
>>But there are many editors (admittedly usually newer
>>ones) who are  not committed to these principles, and with them Talk:
>>is often useless.   And you'll tend to find those kinds of editors on
>>hot-topic pages.
>
>
> I've run into people like that, I'm sure we all have.  But I really don't
> understand why you would claim that using talk with newcomers and
> mavericks is useless.

I don't think that's what was being said at all.  My interpretation of
phrasing was not that "using talk with newcomers and mavericks is
useless," but rather that there is a statistical trend of "useless"
effect to discussion with certain demographics.  That doesn't mean that
one shouldn't try talking to members of such demographics, but rather
that one should understand that sometimes such attempts at reasonable
discussion are more prone to failure than with other people.

> Newcomers need to be handled gently and with understanding, as your aware.
>  Mavericks can only really be dealt with via dispute resolution, which
> requires us to assume good faith and try to use persuasion in the first
> instance.  Give a troll a chance and he'll hang himself.  A maverick with
> clue can be an asset, up to a point.

I don't see that as actually disputing the statement you quoted at all.

--
Chad


body:
Skyring wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:00:08 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
> <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>>Skyring said:
>>
>>>If you want
>>>Autofellatio, you have to find it for yourself. You can't honestly
>>>expect to be offended by something you have gone out of your way to
>>>find.
>>
>>At this point somebody can be relied upon to object to this statement on
>>the grounds that pressing the random article button may deliver an
>>article that X or Y user thinks outrages public decency.
>
>
> Yeah, well I thought of that, but it's not a likely outcome. You'd
> have to stroke the button long and rapidly before you came across an
> objectionable image. And it's not something that can easily be

The nature of random numbers means such a claim is patently ridiculous.
You cannot predict how many clicks it could take. It could take 1 or
1,000,000. Or even an infinite number.

> reproduced. Reverend Hardmind might claim that he pressed random and
> up popped a beaver, but his parishioners are going to find that they
> press the same button and get [[Flannel]].

Except you can't predict that. Every person that hits that link from now
to judgement day could land on [[Random number generator]]. This is the
nature of randomness.


from_name: Arne Klempert

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> > Nod. Jimbo promised to do it within the next few days. If not, we
need
> > to torture him to do so.
>
> :-)
>
> The stuff is on my desk to give all details.

I found public information from the US Patent and Trademark Office
(including Madrid Protocol information) that are obviously up to date:

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=ip39pb.1.1
Search Term: "Wikimedia"
Field: "ALL"

1 78507335  MEDIA WIKI
Status: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78507335

2 78483359  WIKIPEDIA
Status: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78483359

3 78507349  WIKINEWS
Status: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78507349

To get back to the subject, I propose the registration of "Wikimedia"

-Arne (akl)


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Separately, I don't think the argument that "Those who want to hide
> these images don't trust the audience to be able to handle it" is very
> compelling, because the opposite argument could be made just as well.
> "Those who want to force the audience to see the image don't trust
> them to make up their own minds about what to read."

True, but, putting people's rhetoric aside, this is essentially what
the argument boils down to. To treat such pictures differently is a
cultural statement in itself about that picture. This debate is not so
much about what constitutes an appropriate image but which cultural
point of view will prevail on Wikipedia. It's one of those issues where
there is no NPOV. To hide or remove such an image is a statement. To
keep such an image inline or linked is a statement.

Christiaan


body:
Arne Klempert wrote:
>
> I found public information from the US Patent and Trademark Office
> (including Madrid Protocol information) that are obviously up to date:
>
> http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=ip39pb.1.1
> Search Term: "Wikimedia"
> Field: "ALL"

Damn! (Sessions)

Move to
http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm
and click "SEARCH trademarks"

-Arne (akl)


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Võro Vikipeediä

body:
Hi Sulev,

I believe that at this point the creation is probably for-sure and the
time of creation is equal to the soonest convenience of the
developers.

The surest bet to create it is Brion since he does most of these sorts
of things.

You might try filing a bug request at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/,
or leaving a message on Brion's, TimStarling's, or another developer's
talkpage on Wikipedia.

Mark

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 16:50:24 +0200, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:
> Dear members of Wikipedia-l and Foundation-l,
>
> I asked for creation of V?ro Wikipedia last month in foundation-l and request page:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#V.C3.B5ro_Wikipedia.
> Angela forwarded it also to the Wikipedia-l.
>
> It was proposed in the discussion that the code for V?ro Wikipedia could be for the first time "fiu-vro" or "fiu-voro". There
> was no serious objections against creating.
>
> Does somebody know when the V?ro Wikipedia will be created?
> (By the way: on what the creation depends, who and when decides it?)
> What else should be done by me before?
>
> Regards
> Sulev (V?rok)
>
> 2.02.2005 20:11:58, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> kirot':
>
> >Forwarding from foundation-l to wikipedia-l since there was no
> >reaction on that list....
> >
> >---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >From: Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee>
> >Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 19:43:52 +0200
> >Subject: [Foundation-l] V?ro Vikipeedi?
> >To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >
> >
> >Dear members of the foundaton,
> >I'm a user of Estonian (V?rok) and English Wikipedia (V?rolang) and a
> >native speaker,
> >researcher and activist of the V?ro language spoken in Estonia. V?ro
> >(native name V?ro
> >or V?ro kiil?) belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric
> >languages. It has about
> >70.000 speakers mostly in southern Estonia.
> >Language codes (not yet official) are Vro and Vr. See more about V?ro in
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V?ro and http://www.wi.ee/.
> >
> >I and my friends would like to begin with V?ro language Wikipedia. We
> >can translate
> >Estonian language file to V?ro (actually we have already started) and begin with
> >creation of new articles. Of course your objection may be that there are too few
> >speakers of V?ro. Yes, but the speakers are quite active and
> >computerized people and
> >the V?ro language community needs an encyclopedia in their own
> >language. I'm sure the
> >number of potential editors in V?ro is not smaller than the Kashoub,
> >Cornish, Gaelic,
> >Faroese or Saami's or many other small languages' one. I have
> >discussed the idea of
> >V?ro Wikipedia with Estonian Wikipedia developers: Andres, Ker, Klaus etc.
> >(http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipeedia:Community_Portal#V.C3.B5rukeelne_Wikipedia).
> >They are supporting the idea and will help us. I hope you will support us too.
> >Best regards, V?rolang -- 80.235.61.143 11:33, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> Arno M wrote:
>
>> This kind of exhibitionist behaviour is anarchy, NOT freedom.
>
>
> uh, with anarchy being the highest form of freedom I'd be interested to
> know what you really mean by this comment.

to be more clear:
Using "anarchy" as a pejorative term betrays a great deal of bias, or at
least ignorance of how the term is often used in reasonable discussion
of various political philosophies.  I hope you (Arno M) don't use the
term "anarchy" to mean "bad chaos" when writing or editing Wikipedia
articles, whether or not you personally view anarchism as a valid and
valuable political philosophy.

Perhaps what was meant by that statement could be better phrased using
different terms.

--
Chad


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Writing about sexual topics responsibly is not
	censorship

body:
Tony Sidaway writes:
> The sale of the very successful sexually explicit
> educational video, The Lovers' Guide, through mainstream
> high street bookstores in 1991 under an 18 certificate
> showed that the general public is receptive to well
> presented informational movies on sexual topics.
> Obviously Wikipedia isn't a "How to" guide of that type,
> but where a movie would be useful and one is available
> under GFDL it should be considered.

Sure - it might be a good idea to have a GFDL, open-source
website on sex.  I just don't think that the full, explicit
content of such a site should be in a general encyclopedia
like ours. Wikipedia should discuss human sexuality (even
the "gross" aspects, which apprently vary from reader to
reader) while at the same time not being a sex instruction
site.

I wouldn't have any problem with someone making a Wiki sex
instruction site, a Wiki-cooking and baking site, or a
Wiki-anything-else kind of site.  I just wish to
diffentiate between the role of an encyclopedia, and the
role of, well, other things that are not encyclopedias.

Skyring writes:
> And the end result would be that thousands of schools
> would ban Wikipedia, which would be a shame. Is there
> some way that we can find a technological solution?
> Have a "splash screen" that warns of explicit images?
> A cookie that prevents download of "adult content"?
> Something that will pop up when the casual user
> navigates to Autofellatio? All we really need is some
> sort of hurdle that must be leapt, some button that must
> be pressed, some door that must be opened.

This is an excellent idea (and is in no way censorship.)
This is not only a good idea for sex-related articles, it
also would be a good idea for any surgery-related articles,
or articles on forensics.  I don't want to see one of my
students loosing their lunch...again.

I have taught many high school students about
fertilization, fetal development and birth.  (It is
shocking how little so many of our 16 year olds actually
know about their own bodies.)  Most students were alright
with all of it, even the videos, but some students screamed
with genuine horror at seeing a woman actually give birth.
One of them threw up!  Granted, this wouldn't happen in
some other cultures where birth is treated as just another
fact of life, but where I live most people don't see such
things, and some do not want to!

If I read an article where something "really gross" might
be explained in a photo, I'd want an option to see it, and
not have it forced on me.  Given my student's reactions, I
am not alone!

Finally, professional line-drawings (as opposed to photos)
are apparently less of a problem. They are nearly
universally considered less offensive (and/or gross) and
are more often perceived as academic and professional (when
drawn and labeled well.)

Robert (RK)

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body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>
> I think my phrasing was sloppy.  I meant that I don't think discussion is
> *ever* useless.  There is simply no point at which, in my opinion, it is
> acceptable to resort to edit warring--certainly not to the level where one
> editor alone is in danger of breaching the 3RR.
>

I don't disagree with that as a policy of action, but I do in terms of
objective principle.  Specifically, I think there are many instances
where an attempt at discussion is useless in any direct sense, but that
we should always try to proceed (at least initially) as though it is
not, because we could be wrong in our assumptions of when it will be
useless.

In any case, your rephrasing is noted, and if that had been the original
phrasing I'd have felt no compunction to comment.  Thanks.

--
Chad


body:
I wrote:
> but some students screamed with genuine horror at seeing
> a woman actually give birth.   One of them threw up!
> Granted, this wouldn't happen in some other cultures
> where birth is treated as just another fact of life,
> but where I live most people don't see such things,
> and some do not want to!

Frankly, I'm not even sure that I want to see my own wife
give birth.  Fortunately, given the fact that I faint when
my own blood is drawn (yup, eyeballs rolling to the back of
my head) she may forbid me from being within a hundred feet
of her when she gives birth.  ;-)

We are considering some kind of video-conferencing system.
:-o   Or just drugging me.  ;-)

Robert (RK)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Goodbye

references:
<20050213065615.72377.qmail@web60606.mail.yahoo.com>	<cuo4nf$hv1$1@sea.gmane.org>	<420FA0F2.3070208@runawaynet.com>	<cuo96b$vgq$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<420FAB3C.2080007@runawaynet.com>

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
> Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
>
>> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>>
>>> Rick did not know it was a proxy (how could he have?) [..]
>>
>>
>>
>> So you are saying blocking an IP about which you know nothing is _not_
>> a problem?
>
>
> Nowhere, NOWHERE did I come CLOSE to implying there was no problem, only
> that Rick can't be blamed for taking perfectly reasonable action.
>
> IPs are summarily blocked for vandalism _all the time_. Occasionally a
> legitimate proxy gets caught in the mix. When it happens, it gets
> corrected and the IP is added to a list of known proxies in the hopes
> that the situation is avoided in the future. This is not at all unusual,
> and Rick is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first admin to
> block a previously unknown legitimate proxy through which vandalism was
> being performed.
>
> If you've got some magic way to detect legitimate proxies so admins
> don't accidentally block their IPs, we'd all love to hear it. Attacking
> Rick for doing the best he could in a bad situation is NOT a solution.
>

All that aside, I think the most relevant and important part of the
objection to making Rick a target is the following:

>>
>>  > and has apologized.

He realized his mistake, admitted it, and corrected it.  I don't
understand why he would continue to be taken to task for it.

--
Chad


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins who abuse their powers

body:
This is a request for clarification about admins and their powers.

There's  been a clear case today and yesterday of an admin abusing his
powers (unprotecting a page he wanted to edit), and engaging in what
could be argued amounts to vandalism. Complaints about this have met
with the response that, though it's agreed that this admin abused his
powers, there's nothing that can be done about it, because admins
aren't allowed to block other admins for an abuse of power. All
editors can do in a case like this, we're being told, is begin the
long process of RfCs, mediation, and arbitration.

Regardless of the details of this particular case, is it true that
admins are not allowed to block other admins for an abuse of power?

If this is true, how do we go about getting that changed?

Sarah


from_name: Delirium

body:
Chad Perrin wrote:

> to be more clear:
> Using "anarchy" as a pejorative term betrays a great deal of bias, or
> at least ignorance of how the term is often used in reasonable
> discussion of various political philosophies.  I hope you (Arno M)
> don't use the term "anarchy" to mean "bad chaos" when writing or
> editing Wikipedia articles, whether or not you personally view
> anarchism as a valid and valuable political philosophy.

Well, this is getting a bit off topic, but anarchy *does* also mean "bad
chaos" in the English language.  The word has many meanings, only one of
which is the political philosophy.

To quote the OED's first definition:
1. a. Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence
or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder.
  b. A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or
body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without
implication of disorder).

You seem to be talking of 1.b., but "anarchy" can also refer to simple
lawlessness, as in Somalia, or chaotic celebrations following a sports
victory.

-Mark


body:
That's very pompous of you, Daniel.

If I recall correctly, when a similar advertising debate occurred some
time back, there was a major fork (monolingual) which now houses a
substantial number of articles and users, and although that debate
passed is still separate and competes for attention and visits with
the corresponding Wikipedia.

To assume that forks will not attract any people is very na?ve. We
should always tread carefully, and try not to move into any territory
that is liable to get many people up in arms and wanting to fork (ie,
adding ads).

Mark

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 18:45:43 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia material is GFDL. Wikimedia Foundation can and should employ
> > whatever fundraising methods it thinks are optimal.  Anybody who doesn't
> > like the methods still gets to use the product on their own fork.  Free as
> > in speech.
>
> This is not going to be an issue so long as donations of both money and hosting
> keep us running. So far this has been the case - it just looks like we will
> have to pay more attention to grants and hosting offers in the future than we
> have been.
>
> In fact one of the most remarkable things about Wikipedia and her sister
> projects is the fact that they *fully* exist due to the good will and
> generosity of the people who use them and the people who just admire them.
>
> But yes - the choice between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia is a
> no-brainer for everybody except for the most ardent anti-capitalistic zealots.
> Making that choice, however, does not at all seem to be something we need worry
> about in the foreseeable future.
>
> -- mav (just talking for himself - as always unless stated otherwise)
>
>
> __________________________________
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from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What's so hard about waiting 24 hours?

body:
On Feb 13, 2005, at 2:57 PM, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> I'm not sure I'd bother placing one so far after the event. But the
> 3RR is
> supposed to be such a silly thing to violate that it can operate as an
> electric fence. So a good thing to do would be to email the blocking
> admin
> (or another admin), apologise for getting taunted by the perceived
> foolishness of another into violating it, and asking to be unblocked.
> Or
> something like that.

Or, just wait 24 hours. I don't get it. What's so hard about waiting 24
hours?

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo in Ossetian for the new Ossetic Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 19:01:44 -0500, Stephen Forrest wrote:
> > - Why there is still no Ossetian logo in http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_other_languages. Is it hard task to create a
> > logo for a new language Wikipedia? Who will do it?
>
> I've created one, which should be visible on meta: momentarily.
>

Thank you, Steve! It's really good!

Sl.

--
Esperu cxiam!


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>> to be more clear:
>> Using "anarchy" as a pejorative term betrays a great deal of bias, or
>> at least ignorance of how the term is often used in reasonable
>> discussion of various political philosophies.  I hope you (Arno M)
>> don't use the term "anarchy" to mean "bad chaos" when writing or
>> editing Wikipedia articles, whether or not you personally view
>> anarchism as a valid and valuable political philosophy.
>
>
> Well, this is getting a bit off topic, but anarchy *does* also mean "bad
> chaos" in the English language.  The word has many meanings, only one of
> which is the political philosophy.
>
> To quote the OED's first definition:
> 1. a. Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence
> or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder.
>  b. A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or
> body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without
> implication of disorder).
>
> You seem to be talking of 1.b., but "anarchy" can also refer to simple
> lawlessness, as in Somalia, or chaotic celebrations following a sports
> victory.
>

Upon reading the quoted definitions, I find that even 1.a. isn't
specifically pejorative, while the comment I quoted is.  An absence of
government, a state of lawlessness due to absence of "supreme power", a
state of lawlessness due to inefficiency of "supreme power", and
political disorder are (attempted, at least) objective statements of
condition and circumstance.  They are not renderings of judgment.

Using the term "anarchy" to describe "chaos that is Bad", on the other
hand, is very much a rendering of judgment, not only of that to which
the term anarchy is being applied but to the term itself.

Somalia, by the way, is not "simple lawlessness".  Somalia suffers
within a very, very awful situation that happens to include a rather
complex lawlessness.

--
Chad


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Software glitch?

body:
There is a delay, which is part of the setup.

Fred

> From: AndyL <andyl2004 at sympatico.ca>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 17:18:46 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Software glitch?
>
> I've noticed today that with a few articles I've edited it appears when I
> check back that my edits haven't been implemented (but in fact they have).
> I've also seen a few other complaints on talk pages about edits and comments
> being "erased" though it seems that, in fact, this hasn't happened, it's
> just that the editor in question cannot see their own edits.
>
> Is there some sort of glitch in the software when it comes to "updating"
> articles or to the ability of some accounts to "see" updated articles?
>
>
> Andy
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] what happened to en db download?

body:
> Brion, any chance to include the imagelinks table into the dump script, too?

You may use rebuildlinks/refreshlinks scripts from maintenance/ package.
If imagelinks would be included, so should links, categorylinks, brokenlinks, math and all other metadata tables, which can be generated out from cur..

Domas


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> NSK wrote:

>> There are anti-smoking, education, science/math or anti-discrimination
>> ads, too. I think it would be safe to show these ads.
>>
> Even in this "safe" group there could be difficulties.  Surely, there
> must be some smokers in the membership.  Others may have problems with
> the role of commercial enterprises in education.  The gay marriage issue
> has two sides that look at discrimination in very different issues.
>

Still others might have problems with the role of government in
education, or even simply the absence of commercial enterprises in
education.  Many issues are much stickier than most people realize.

--
Chad


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>>Wikipedia material is GFDL. Wikimedia Foundation can and should employ
>>whatever fundraising methods it thinks are optimal.  Anybody who doesn't
>>like the methods still gets to use the product on their own fork.  Free as
>>in speech.
>

What if those ads contain bias toward strict intellectual property
rights to the exclusion of such efforts as those behind the GFDL?  If
something is, by underlying assumption, opposed in principle to "free
and open content", that might change the tenor of the issue in the minds
of some people.  Taking that recognition of the minefield of bias
involved back to previously passed-over issues might then shed new light
on the subject.

I'm not specifically arguing against AdCouncil ads on the site, mind
you.  I simply believe that the clear biases of AdCouncil ads shuld be
recognized and viewed with attention to detail and concern, and all
ramifications of allowing advertising bias should be considered before
any such decisions are made.

>
> This is not going to be an issue so long as donations of both money and hosting
> keep us running. So far this has been the case - it just looks like we will
> have to pay more attention to grants and hosting offers in the future than we
> have been.
>
> In fact one of the most remarkable things about Wikipedia and her sister
> projects is the fact that they *fully* exist due to the good will and
> generosity of the people who use them and the people who just admire them.
>
> But yes - the choice between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia is a
> no-brainer for everybody except for the most ardent anti-capitalistic zealots.
> Making that choice, however, does not at all seem to be something we need worry
> about in the foreseeable future.

I agree, personally speaking, that the "no Wikipedia" option is to be
avoided, and that having ads with no strings attached would be
preferable (though I'd be more inclined to go with unobtrusive
text-based Google ads, whose only biases are "They pay us money!").

This is certainly not a particularly useful quibble, for this
discussion, but I feel it's worth mentioning:  There are ardent
pro-capitalistic "zealots" who would also oppose advertising on a
project like Wikipedia, possibly to the point where the choice might be
made to drop Wikipedia entirely.  Capitalism, itself, isn't merely about
making profit.  It's about a complex, socially supported system of
economics wherein money ("capital") is used as a convenient method of
facilitating trade (and cooperation).  In some respects, a
donations-only project that produces freely available output is a
perfect representation of capitalistic process: it proves that the value
of a thing can ensure its survival without resorting to any confiscatory
measures.

In any case, I'll let things get back to the on-topic now, I suppose.

--
Chad


body:
Charles, I didn't want to have to go into the details of this
particular case, because it's not why I'm posting to the board. But in
brief, the admin recreated a page that had been deleted after a VfD (a
deletion that had been confirmed at a VfU); recreated it again after
an admin deleted his first recreation; pasted a fake deletion notice
on it in an effort to force a third (fake) vote about the deletion;
then when an admin protected the blank page so the first admin
couldn't recreate and write on it again, the first admin used his
admin power to unprotect it. But admins are not supposed to use their
power to protect or unprotect pages they're involved in editing.

Regarding the point you made about them unblocking themselves, if it
were possible to block an admin for abuse of power, then if they
unblocked themselves, they'd be abusing their powers again, and so
could be blocked again. It would actually be a very simple process,
perhaps with blocks increasing in time each time they unblocked
themselves.

Admins not having the power to block other admins for abuse of power
is like the police not being able to take action against an
out-of-control police officer. It makes no sense, and I would like to
change it, and so my question is how do I start that process.

Sarah

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 17:30:00 -0500, Charles Podles wrote:
if a sysop is consciously abusing his
> powers, then what's to stop him from abusing them further in order to unblock himself? Blocking for abuse of sysop powers would be
> pointless.
>
> Last, I'm not sure unprotecting a page in order to edit it even
> qualifies as an abuse of admin powers---articles are meant to be
> edited, and unprotecting a page opens it to editing by all.
>
> --Charles P. ([[en:User:Mirv]])
>


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: what happened to en db download?

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

>> Brion, any chance to include the imagelinks table into the dump script,
>> too?

> You may use rebuildlinks/refreshlinks scripts from maintenance/ package.
> If imagelinks would be included, so should links, categorylinks,
> brokenlinks, math and all other metadata tables, which can be generated
> out from cur..

links, categorylinks and brokenlinks (and a couple of others) are actually
included in the dump (http://download.wikimedia.org/archives/en/).  i think
the lack of imagelinks is an oversight in the dump script.

> Domas

kate.


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have.  But really the users should
> be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the
> producers of content.  http is not a push medium.

And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse
an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that
adds no value to the article whatsoever.