subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

body:
On 8/23/06, Pill <wiki.pill at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Some days ago on de.wp a user reported that he suddenly was logged in as
> another user on Wikipedia. That happend on his own desk and in in his
> opinion it was not possible that anyone else was at his computer. Maybe this
> is associated with this problem? Imagine an anonymous is suddenly an admin

Dunno, but also in the last few days I'm suddenly finding I'm being
logged out a lot at en. Normally, I don't ever have to log in at home
or work - not for weeks on end. However, in the last few days, once I
very clearly was logged in, clicked edit, and was suddenly editing in
anonymous mode. Wonder what's going on?

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?")

body:
On 8/23/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Now I'm confused.  Voting definitely doesn't scale.  But was Kelly
> suggesting that the fact that voting doesn't scale has something to do
> with a claim that consensus decision making doesn't scale?

Voting doesn't scale? In the sense that you get a bad result, or what?
Now *I*'m confused. :)

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> In the sense that if you vote on every single issue you wind up
> with...AfD...an enormous waste of time on the part of everyone.

I think the problem with AfD being a vote is more to do with the fact
that interested parties can now begin "competing" to get "their way".
I presume the idea originally was to use "consensus" to work out what
the community really wanted for a given article. Sort of "hey Bill,
should we keep this? Oh, I dunno, ask Mary" kind of thing. If no one
has a stake, and no one is deliberately trying to "win", then it
works.

As soon as people start voting "for" or "against" things - as opposed
to simply having their opinion gauged - then the whole thing breaks
down.

Steve


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 96

body:
Timwi wrote

>
> You method would:
> > * retrieve all pages from category1
> > * retrieve all pages from category2
> > * sort the whole list
> > * group them (i.e. replace runs with their counts)
> > * filter out those where the count is 2
> >
> > The straightfoward method would be:
> >
> > select a.page from categorylinks a
> > where a.category='category1' AND EXISTS (
> >         select * from categorylinks b
> >         where a.page=b.page AND b.category='category2'
> > )
> >
> > This would:
> > * retrieve all the pages from category2
> > * find all the pages in category1 that are any of those
> >
> > I don't have MySQL handy, but tested this on MSSQL and the second method
> > was way faster. :)
> >
> > Timwi
> >

Just out of curiousity, I tried it in MySQL with real data (25,000 rows of
categorylinks - not wikipedia, but something).  I cycle through each type of
query 100 times, and did no other processing besides running the loop and
executing the query.  Each way took about 20 seconds for the 100 loops.  I
also ran a control query ("SELECT * FROM categorylinks LIMIT 1") and it took
lik .05 seconds, and then .014 or something - it must be caching the query.
I didn't try it with the joins yet.  So it looks like MySQL handles it
differently than MSSQL.  I wonder if there's a better way than both of these
(maybe using the joins?  I'll have to try it.).

Best Regards,
Aerik


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-24

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Native Cherokee Language Translation XML Dumps for
 enwiki-20060816 Posted

body:
Native Cherokee Language XML dumps for
enwiki-20060816-pages.articles.xml have been posted at
ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki to:

sylwiki-20060816-pages-articles.xml.bz2
<ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/xml/sylwiki-20060816-pages-articles.xml.bz2>
phwiki-20060816-pages-articles.xml.bz2
<ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/xml/phwiki-20060816-pages-articles.xml.bz2>

The Native Cherokee Language Translation Project is a work in Progress.

Jeff V. Merkey


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

body:
On 23/08/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking at the Oracle support in 1.6.8, it doesn't look all that complicated
> at first glance.  But I haven't been doing any mediawiki programming to
> date.  Who do I talk to about the supportability and support issues which
> the Oracle stuff was seeing?

Have a chat with our lead developer, Brion Vibber, if interested in
reviving Oracle support; he'll sort out commit access and keep an eye
on stuff. :)

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Blank pages being delivered at en?

body:
On 23/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1. What pages?
>
> All of them. This afternoon it was happening fairly frequently when
> saving pages, almost at 50%!
> Though I've had this happen once when clicking on an external link
> from Wikipedia, which makes me less convinced that it's really a
> MediaWiki problem. More observation needed.

Is it confined to Wikimedia-hosted wikis or do other MediaWiki
installations mess up? Check places like http://test.leuksman.com and
http://nike.idler.fi/betawiki.

Rob Church


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
	008 pages for the servers?

body:
2006/8/23, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk>:

> The problem is different senses of 'subcategory': there's [1] "the set
> of objects in B are a strict subset of the set of objects in A", which
> is loop-proof, and [2] 'B is a topic that is usually discussed in the
> context of A'
>
> For example:
>
> London -[2]-> Thames Valley -[1]-> London, comes to mind
>
> Russia -[2]-> Soviet Union -[1]-> Russia, as well.
>
> Also, another entirely reasonable cycle would be:
>
> Universe -[contains]-> Human beings -[who have]-> Human thought -[which
> includes]-> Philosophy -[which studies the]-> Universe

Doing a search of cycles, I found that there must be thousands if not
more of them on the English Wikipedia. Yours differ somewhat from the
average by being short. I chose a category more or less at random (it
was [[Category:Waves]]). It had 999 supercategories, and was part of 6
cycles (counting only elementary cycles):

Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
-> Peace -> Social justice -> Community organizing -> Protests ->
History of social movements -> Critical theory -> Cultural studies ->
Museology -> Anthropology -> Linguistics -> Proper nouns ->
Organizations -> Educational organizations -> Schools -> School
subjects -> Biology -> Tree of life -> Eukaryotes -> Animals ->
Chordates -> Tetrapods -> Synapsids -> Therapsids -> Theriodonts ->
Mammals -> Primates -> Apes -> Humans -> Technology -> Systems ->
Dynamical systems -> Waves

Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
-> Peace -> Social justice -> Community organizing -> Protests ->
History of social movements -> Critical theory -> Cultural studies ->
Museology -> Anthropology -> Linguistics -> Proper nouns ->
Organizations -> Educational organizations -> Schools -> School
subjects -> Biology -> Tree of life -> Eukaryotes -> Animals ->
Chordates -> Tetrapods -> Synapsids -> Therapsids -> Theriodonts ->
Mammals -> Primates -> Apes -> Humans -> Technology -> Applied
sciences -> Engineering -> Mechanics -> Dynamical systems -> Waves

Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
-> Peace -> Social justice -> Community organizing -> Protests ->
History of social movements -> Critical theory -> Cultural studies ->
Museology -> Anthropology -> Linguistics -> Proper nouns ->
Organizations -> Educational organizations -> Schools -> School
subjects -> Biology -> Tree of life -> Eukaryotes -> Animals ->
Chordates -> Tetrapods -> Synapsids -> Therapsids -> Theriodonts ->
Mammals -> Primates -> Apes -> Humans -> Technology -> Applied
sciences -> Education -> Education by subject -> Physics education ->
Introductory physics -> Waves

Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
-> Peace -> Social justice -> Community organizing -> Protests ->
History of social movements -> Critical theory -> Cultural studies ->
Museology -> Anthropology -> Linguistics -> Proper nouns ->
Organizations -> Educational organizations -> Schools -> School
subjects -> Biology -> Tree of life -> Eukaryotes -> Animals ->
Chordates -> Tetrapods -> Synapsids -> Therapsids -> Theriodonts ->
Mammals -> Primates -> Apes -> Humans -> Technology -> Applied
sciences -> Education -> Academia -> Academic disciplines ->
Mathematics -> Dynamical systems -> Waves

Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
-> Peace -> Social justice -> Community organizing -> Protests ->
History of social movements -> Critical theory -> Cultural studies ->
Museology -> Anthropology -> Linguistics -> Proper nouns ->
Organizations -> Educational organizations -> Schools -> School
subjects -> Biology -> Tree of life -> Eukaryotes -> Animals ->
Chordates -> Tetrapods -> Synapsids -> Therapsids -> Theriodonts ->
Mammals -> Primates -> Apes -> Humans -> Technology -> Applied
sciences -> Education -> Academia -> Academic disciplines ->
Mathematics -> Differential equations -> Waves

Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
-> Peace -> Social justice -> Community organizing -> Protests ->
History of social movements -> Critical theory -> Cultural studies ->
Museology -> Anthropology -> Linguistics -> Proper nouns ->
Organizations -> Educational organizations -> Schools -> School
subjects -> Biology -> Tree of life -> Eukaryotes -> Animals ->
Chordates -> Tetrapods -> Synapsids -> Therapsids -> Theriodonts ->
Mammals -> Primates -> Apes -> Humans -> Technology -> Applied
sciences -> Education -> Academia -> Academic disciplines ->
Mathematics -> Equations -> Differential equations -> Waves

Interestingly, checking out your examples, I found none of them (I
checked London, Russia and Universe, with 1060, 1013 and 1001
supercategories) is currently part of a loop.

For Jesus on the other hand, there are 39 different cycles, which
however all start with:
Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence -> Peace ->
Social justice -> Community organizing -> Protests -> History of
social movements -> Critical theory -> Cultural studies

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Leon Weber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

body:
Pill schrieb:
> Some days ago on de.wp a user reported that he suddenly was logged in as
> another user on Wikipedia. That happend on his own desk and in in his
> opinion it was not possible that anyone else was at his computer. Maybe this
> is associated with this problem? Imagine an anonymous is suddenly an admin
> ...
>
>
There's also a bug report for that:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6464

-- L.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking anon page creation was an experiment,
	wasn't it?

body:
On 8/24/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to say that this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curry%27s_paradox&oldid=458475
>
> is pretty clearly the work of a troll, trying to convince us that
> black is white and that God doesn't exist.

?

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms - First post here by myself

body:
On 8/24/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem of external PR companies is (IMHO) associated with the
> kind of articles that each wiki allows. If you focus on concepts and
> principles and more about the thing in general, rather than a destinct
> product from a specific company, you might be able to avoid a lot of
> problems as there is no place for PR companies to land. Focus on
> [[car]] not on [[Mercedes L-400 2006 edition 1,5l diesel with ipod
> socket]].

However, there's much less damage that a PR company can do at your
example of a specific car model.  The worst we get is an uploaded
brochure, and hopefully some pictures we can use.  The puffery can be
edited out, the factual stuff can stay.

-Matt


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
I have to say that in that picture, Jimmy does look kinda evil......

On 8/24/06, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia.htm
>
> Well, looks like we've been found out. Then again, maybe that's just
> what the Cabal wants him to think.
> --
> Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
> <christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:53:59 -0700, Christopher Larberg
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:

>http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia.htm
>Well, looks like we've been found out. Then again, maybe that's just
>what the Cabal wants him to think.

w00t!  Now I'm Jewish as well as a communist, nazi, censor, liberal,
neocon, child, old man...

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


from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
I agree with Delphine's assessment of the goals for the
WikimediaFoundation.org site:

1) Inform, generally, what the Foundation does, who is part of it.
2) Serve as a platform for official announcements.
3) Serve as an interface for donations.

I would like to restate this in a somewhat more honest way: IMO the
goal of the WikimediaFoundation.org site is to solicit funds and
publicity.

Where there is multi-lingual content, use of dynamic tools to
automate the presentation to minimize maintenance should be
encouraged. (For example, using DynamicPageList to display the most
recent press releases in a given language, avoiding the need to
update every language main page as the press release is translated.
This could also allow the page to display the most recent releases in
more than one language.) I also agree we should select a limited set
of languages to try to always translate for; I think the translation
subcommittee has identified this set of languages and is working on
doing this.

I'm not sure I agree with SJ's suggestion of presenting detailed
information about the Foundation and its members, projects, and so
on. The reason comes back to the maintenance issue. The more detailed
the information presented, the more likely it is that some or most of
that information will need to be updated as small details are
modified. Consider the number of edits per month to the en.Wikipedia
article on the Wikimedia Foundation[1], nearly 100 edits (including a
major rewrite) in July alone.

Providing enough detail to describe the Foundation and its projects
as well as figures within the Foundation is similar to other NGOs and
corporations; enough detail to answer most questions but not so much
the site becomes a burden to maintain.

Providing a very intuitive interface to the donations system which is
painless and, if possible, enjoyable is a really important role for
the site.

Amgine

-------------- next part --------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

body:
On 8/24/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not 100% sure why, and it's so rare that it's _extremely_ hard to be sure, but my working theory is that by pure random fluke
> two session_id strings or two session file names/keys have clashed, resulting in user identity getting confused.

Talking out of my arse here, but if that happened, would you expect
the problem to be cleared up simply by refreshing? Wouldn't it persist
until you logged out?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On 8/24/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> w00t!  Now I'm Jewish as well as a communist, nazi, censor, liberal,
> neocon, child, old man...

In short, you're a wikipedian :D


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On 24/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> In a, what I find, rather poor move regarding NPOV,
> Jimbo himself figured NPOV, the demographics of
> Wikipedia, and the usual editorial mechanisms weren't
> enough to keep Wikipedia from turning into a nazi
> propaganda site and brought on a ton of jewish people
> to administrator posts, and in addition amended
> a couple of policies that ignore NPOV when it is
> about stuff like holocaust denial.

This is history as I ... do not quite recall it. References please.

> As a result from this action, the jewish community
> is now a huge, powerful force inside Wikipedia,
> that turns it into zionist propaganda.

I will refrain from intimating that you are smoking bad crack unless
and until you fail to show you aren't gibbering.

- d.


from_name: Ian Woollard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 23/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> An example:
> Tonight I reverted a date vandalism to [[Pioneer plaque]] which was
> made over a year ago
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pioneer_plaque&diff=14242706&oldid=13186287).
>
> In that case, it would appear that the edits of a good user hid the bad diff.
>
> Does anyone have any good ideas kicking around in their heads on how
> to improve this situation... I've thought of some things but I'd like
> to collect some ideas.

Yeah, in my view this is really a problem with the current wikipedia
software- it doesn't highlight the low-fidelity nature of a previous
edit and the good standing user ends up essentially authorising the
edit.

In other words, if editors are shown a diff from anonymous or low edit
count editors they are much more likely to check it out.

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 8/23/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
> My first IP address was http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/209.167.55.131
>
> As you see, after briefly checking that I could, in fact, edit, I jumped right
> in with article creation. What would happen if I wandered into Wikipedia today?
>
I have to say that this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curry%27s_paradox&oldid=458475

is pretty clearly the work of a troll, trying to convince us that
black is white and that God doesn't exist.


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
The Cunctator sez:
> I have to say that this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curry%27s_paradox&oldid=458475
>
> is pretty clearly the work of a troll, trying to convince us that
> black is white and that God doesn't exist.

I was nearly killed by a speeding cab at a zebra crossing.

I am not making this up.


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy hypothetical

body:
The example is compelling when one is aware of the facts and not merely a single well publicized even in mass media spin.  This may be a useful example for your PR issues also.
http://www.prwatch.org/node/2921
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/20/bush_guard_records/index.html
http://www.prwatch.org/node/2916

Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote: Steve Bennett wrote:
> Notability at the fact level is even harder to determine than
> notability at the subject level. Ask a republican whether Bush's
> alleged administrative adventures in the National Guard were
> "notable". Ask a Democrat the same.

Hmm, I might be convinced by what you are saying here, but this example
does not seem compelling to me.  I think, based on my limited
recollection of this case, that it more or less turned out that the
"alleged administrative adventures" were more or less cooked up, i.e.
that this was a non-scandal.  But I would suspect that reasonable
Republicans would take the same view that I do: the overall incident is
still notable, of course.

But I still might agree with your basic point, that notability at the
fact level is harder to determine that notability at the subject level.

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

body:
Hello,

On 8/23/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
 <snip>

> This alltogether looks quite messy. And at the end, especially for a
> foundation ''based'' on the internet, the website is a businesscard.
> So enough reason to do something about it.
>
> Would it be an idea to make a team of people (not just one) who can
> restructure the Wiki, categorize nicely, try to update, delete what is
> unnessecairily (like the french version of the awards page: all empty
> but the langbar) and coordinate with the translation-committee? It
> should mostly be structural changes.
>

This is true, and Jd recently sent a mail on foundation-l about that [1].
See also [2]. I think it is a good idea to set up a team dealing with
cleaning the foundation wiki. Of course, this team must be multilingual to
be efficient.

If help if needed for translation, I'm sure you can ask on translators-l;
people work on meta, then the team members check the translation and update
content on the foundation wiki.

g.

[1] http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-August/008901.html
[2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Babel#Miscellaneous

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/24/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> How would you describe the relationship between Category:John Lennon
> and Category:The Beatles, knowing that Category:John Lennon contains
> songs that have nothing to do with The Beatles? Actually, just to
> flesh this out, what are the relationships between these (possibly
> fictional) categories: English rock bands, The Beatles, John Lennon,
> John Lennon songs, The Beatles songs. Similarly, into which categories
> would these articles go: [[The Beatles]], [[John Lennon]], [[I Am The
> Walrus]] (John Lennon/Beatles song), [[Imagine (song)]] (John Lennon
> solo song).

It's simple.  Look up at my earlier subcategories of humans:

==Subcategories==
All of the following are {{PAGENAME}}.

* People by city
* People by company
* People by country of residence
. . .

The key line is "All of the following are {{PAGENAME}}.".  Well, let's
rephrase that slightly: "All articles in each of the following
categories are {{PAGENAME}}."  Given the line "All articles in each of
the following categories are British rock bands", does Category:The
Beatles fit?

Now, one problem here is that "The Beatles" actually means
"Beatles-related things" here, just as "Jesus" means "Jesus-related
things".  This is something that will need to be clarified.  To that
end, notice that I've introduced multiple constructions *hard-coded
into the category page* that assume that the category name is in the
plural--no more lazy ambiguous shortcuts like "Category:Jesus".  If
"article X and Y are in category Z" is not synonymous to "article X
and Y are Z", then the category is wrong.

Of course, people could change the interface back, but with some
encouragement I don't think they would.  You just have to make a
change that will allow them to have "related to" built into the
system, and combined with easy recategorizing/category renaming, I
think they'll see the light.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
If it hasn't been suggested already and this is not simply PR'n on an easy target with the "very very strongly", subscribing this list to the PRwatch weekly spin summary would help to remind admins about what to look out for on a regular basis.  That would actually seem like very, very strong emphasis on the importance of this:
http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/weekly-spin

The entire month up until now:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin

Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
strongly.  The appearance of impropriety is so great that we should make
it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
what they would like to do.

It is all well and good to say, well, it is ok so long as they remain
neutral, but if they really want to write neutral articles, they can do
so, on their own websites, and release the work under the FDL, and
notify Wikipedians who are totally independent.

Additionally, it is always appropriate to interact on the talk pages of
articles.  If a PR firm is not happy about how something is presented
about their client, they can identify themselves openly on the talk
page, and present well-reasoned arguments and additional information and
links.

Of course it is always going to be the case that unethical practitioners
  may get involved in inappropriate behavior, but I think this is no
argument for simply accepting it.  Rather, it is a strong argument for
asking people to do this the right way: transparently and allowing
independent editors to make the actual editing decisions.

--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
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WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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from_name: Dabljuh

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:53:59 -0700
Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia.htm

To a degree the guy does have a point. Wikipedia
has a huge jewish/zionist bias on a large number
of articles.
(Newsflash: There's biased articles in/on Wikipedia?)

But the guy is ultimately wrong. Of course it's not
that Wales & Sanger are secret zionist overlords.
Wales, like many americans and many liberals, just
has a rather common pro-israel/pro-judaism bias.
Personally, I really don't see that jews on Wikipedia
need a sort of protection that other religions/folks
don't receive.

If I remember correctly, in the beginning of 2005,
a self-proclaimed nazi community announced it'd go
to "npovize" etc holocaust and judaism related
articles.

In a, what I find, rather poor move regarding NPOV,
Jimbo himself figured NPOV, the demographics of
Wikipedia, and the usual editorial mechanisms weren't
enough to keep Wikipedia from turning into a nazi
propaganda site and brought on a ton of jewish people
to administrator posts, and in addition amended
a couple of policies that ignore NPOV when it is
about stuff like holocaust denial.

As a result from this action, the jewish community
is now a huge, powerful force inside Wikipedia,
that turns it into zionist propaganda.

One might say "Well that's still better than nazi
propaganda" but I am far from convinced that without
this sort of intervention, the holocaust articles
would now say "Some people argue the holocaust happened,
while others don't", but I'm pretty sure the articles
on circumcision and foreskin wouldn't deny that the
penile skin is erogenous

(This is not a hyperbole. I'm not kidding. Did you think
Holocaust would be the only article complex that Jews
write on?)

All in all, Wikipedia *is* jewish/zionist propaganda,
and it's all Jimbo's liberal-pro-judaism-biases fault :P


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Good writers always welcome (was A tidy way of
	handling "popular culture" references)

body:
On 8/24/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 23/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
> > > favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?
> >
> >
> > OH YES PLEASE.
>
> Please not. See the earlier thread:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-June/049731.html

I didn't throw it out as a really serious suggestion, but I don't
agree with your argument.

The disadvantage of the words "anyone can edit" are threefold:
1) It's not completely honest: If you are emotionally handicapped, or
otherwise mentally disabled, and cause problems as a result you will
ultimately be asked to leave. It's not hard to argue that there are
some people who can't edit, at least not for long. This must be the
case, because while being inclusive is valuable, it can not override
our primary goals.
2) It's too handy an excuse: We frequently get arguments from people
who argue that they should be able to do whatever they want (spam,
violate NPOV, etc) because they see anyone can edit as a permission to
do anything.  Changing the words won't stop their bad actions,
perhaps, but it will remove this demoralizing exchange that our good
editors must suffer.
3) Most importantly, it's a matter of respect. Everyone knows that the
world contains a lot of harmful people... and increasingly "anyone can
edit" is viewed as in invitation for the worst that humanity has to
offer. As I've argued elsewhere, we must show the greatest respect for
our own project if we are to expect others to respect it. So while a
message saying that we're only interested in good writers will not
directly stop bad ones, I believe retiring the words "anyone can edit"
will indirectly discourage bad behavior by increasing the overall
respectability of the project.

 I think this thread has been productive... the proposed alternatives
are quite interesting.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> How would you distinguish honest errors from malicious vandalism,
> especially with reagrd to something like dates? I could edit an
> article to reflect that World War 2 ended in 1935, without intending
> to do so because of a typographical error? Unless the edit is obvious
> vandalism, (like saying World War 2 ended in 2045-which cannot,
> reasonably, be termed a typograhical error), it would be difficult to
> seperate the vandals from those who make such errors while typing or
> as a result of looking up the date from a source that is not correct.

Do we need to?

A huge amount of vandalism on wikipedia is a result of "can I really
edit this?" as evidenced by the high levels of self revert.  Because
of this, it is sound policy to warn on the first incident rather than
block.  Unfortunately we don't have a good way of closely monitoring
the contribs of a warned user, but thats another matter.

In any case, our primary concern on this matter is to be accurate...
it doesn't matter if the error was induced through an honest mistake,
idle curiosity, or malicious intent. We still must detect and resolve
it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On 24/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:30:08 +0100
> "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > This is history as I ... do not quite recall it. References please.

> Yes, it is history as *I* remember it. Someone else may remember
> it in a different, possibly more enlightening way.

No, I mean give any damn evidence whatsoever.

> > I will refrain from intimating that you are smoking bad crack unless
> > and until you fail to show you aren't gibbering.

> I infer that I could give you 100, or 1000 links to blatant violations
> of npov, to jewish-controlled articles, to unreasonable administrative
> sanctions against users who opposed the "jewPOV" etc and you would
> find that "uncompelling, anecdotal evidence". If you have not
> noticed this sort of thing going on by now, you wouldn't notice it
> when hit over the head by a cluestick either.

Cool. I think I'm about to exercise my Zionist cabal credentials.

- d.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On 8/24/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:30:08 +0100
> "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is history as I ... do not quite recall it. References please.
>
> Yes, it is history as *I* remember it. Someone else may remember
> it in a different, possibly more enlightening way.

This exchange should be framed and hung on [[WP:NOR]] as an example to
the world.

--
Sam


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
> Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
> of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
> Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
> for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
<snip>

What a total mess. I had no idea it was this bad. Why is the category
Jesus under "People executed for heresy"? The only subcategories I
could think of for a category like that would be "Americans executed
for heresy" or "People executed for heresy in the middle ages".

Now, the rest of a post I meant to send yesterday:

On 8/23/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think that's a problem.  *Categories* are still at a concept
> level, after all, and even if they aren't, hierarchy would still work
> as expected (just there wouldn't be many available strict
> supercategories).  [[Beamish and Crawford]] would be in both
> [[Category:Breweries]] and [[Category:Beers]].  Arguably that breaks
> down the idea of strict super-/subsets, but there's no reason to apply
> that to articles as a whole if it would make sense to apply it to only
> part of an article that deals with multiple topics.

Yes, I think you're right, I didn't really think it through.

> We don't even need [[located-in::]] for the main encyclopedia (leaving
> aside the mythical Wikidata, which is a good idea but still in the
> indefinite future).  We just need three types of relationships:
> related-to, superset-of, subset-of.

How would you describe the relationship between Category:John Lennon
and Category:The Beatles, knowing that Category:John Lennon contains
songs that have nothing to do with The Beatles? Actually, just to
flesh this out, what are the relationships between these (possibly
fictional) categories: English rock bands, The Beatles, John Lennon,
John Lennon songs, The Beatles songs. Similarly, into which categories
would these articles go: [[The Beatles]], [[John Lennon]], [[I Am The
Walrus]] (John Lennon/Beatles song), [[Imagine (song)]] (John Lennon
solo song).

Steve


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] "Access to Knowledge in a Network Society"

body:
Karsten Gerloff has published his Master's Thesis on A2K under CC-BY-SA:

http://nearlyfreespeech.org/downloads/a2k.netsoc.pdf

Good background on the global battle for IP legislation, the relevance
of trade agreements like TRIPS, and the attempts to put the needs of
developing nations on the agenda of the UN's World Intellectual
Property Organization. The last two chapters describe the idea of an
Access to Knowledge Treaty.

Every Wikimedia Board candidate should have a basic understanding of
these topics, IMHO.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

body:
Amgine wrote:

> I agree with Delphine's assessment of the goals for the
> WikimediaFoundation.org site:
>
> 1) Inform, generally, what the Foundation does, who is part of it.
> 2) Serve as a platform for official announcements.
> 3) Serve as an interface for donations.
>
> I would like to restate this in a somewhat more honest way: IMO the
> goal of the WikimediaFoundation.org site is to solicit funds and
> publicity.
>
> Where there is multi-lingual content, use of dynamic tools to
> automate the presentation to minimize maintenance should be
> encouraged. (For example, using DynamicPageList to display the most
> recent press releases in a given language, avoiding the need to
> update every language main page as the press release is translated.
> This could also allow the page to display the most recent releases in
> more than one language.) I also agree we should select a limited set
> of languages to try to always translate for; I think the translation
> subcommittee has identified this set of languages and is working on
> doing this.
>
> I'm not sure I agree with SJ's suggestion of presenting detailed
> information about the Foundation and its members, projects, and so
> on. The reason comes back to the maintenance issue. The more detailed
> the information presented, the more likely it is that some or most of
> that information will need to be updated as small details are
> modified. Consider the number of edits per month to the en.Wikipedia
> article on the Wikimedia Foundation[1], nearly 100 edits (including a
> major rewrite) in July alone.
>
> Providing enough detail to describe the Foundation and its projects
> as well as figures within the Foundation is similar to other NGOs and
> corporations; enough detail to answer most questions but not so much
> the site becomes a burden to maintain.
>
> Providing a very intuitive interface to the donations system which is
> painless and, if possible, enjoyable is a really important role for
> the site.
>
> Amgine
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>

I would assume that of all the Wikimedia sites under this umbrella of
projects, the Wikimedia Foundation Website is the one site where the
Foundation sets the content, tone, message it  communicates to the world.

Jeff


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
I think that the most important thing now is to
*Define the goals of the Website
*Find out what are the consequeses for those goals
**>>  What pages fulfill those goals, what pages are missing that
should fulfill those goals
*Then take care of the pages that do *not* fulfill the goals. That can
be done in different ways:
-- Delete
-- Move to an Archive-Namespace
-- Move to Meta and delete on foundation-wiki. Remember that the links
should be adapted.
I think moving to meta might be best. You can do that with the
import-function, so history will remain intact. It would be best to
make an Archive WMF: namespace then, and protect those pages.
(Archives shouldn't be edited anymore), and categorize them nicely.
*When it is clear what should stay and what not, you can bring
structure in the whole by categories, trees, links, namechanges etc.
*When there is a structure, everything is easy to find, you can start
really translating what's nesessairy.

But we should start at the beginning. What is the goal of the website
of the Wikimedia Foundation? What is the intention? Should it inform
the press? Or is Meta a better place for that? Is it only for
official, approved, pieces? What about the reports? There is a press
report etc, all very tiny still. Is there planning to stay using those
in the future?
Should the foundation-website also be an archive to look things up, or
should it be a website just to inform about current things, things
that are now important. In other words: Should outdated stuff stay
there, or be moved?

This kind of questions should be answered in my opinion. And I think
it would be best if the Foundation itself could answer this. Maybe
Brad, Danny or someone of the Board? I know these are quite hard
questions to answer, but they should be, to be able to really make a
usefull website out of it.

Greetings, Lodewijk

2006/8/24, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com>:
> Hello,
>
> On 8/23/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>  <snip>
>
> > This alltogether looks quite messy. And at the end, especially for a
> > foundation ''based'' on the internet, the website is a businesscard.
> > So enough reason to do something about it.
> >
> > Would it be an idea to make a team of people (not just one) who can
> > restructure the Wiki, categorize nicely, try to update, delete what is
> > unnessecairily (like the french version of the awards page: all empty
> > but the langbar) and coordinate with the translation-committee? It
> > should mostly be structural changes.
> >
>
> This is true, and Jd recently sent a mail on foundation-l about that [1].
> See also [2]. I think it is a good idea to set up a team dealing with
> cleaning the foundation wiki. Of course, this team must be multilingual to
> be efficient.
>
> If help if needed for translation, I'm sure you can ask on translators-l;
> people work on meta, then the team members check the translation and update
> content on the foundation wiki.
>
> g.
>
> [1]
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-August/008901.html
> [2]
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Babel#Miscellaneous
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
> Disciplus Simplex
> http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:30:08 +0100
"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is history as I ... do not quite recall it. References please.

Yes, it is history as *I* remember it. Someone else may remember
it in a different, possibly more enlightening way.

> I will refrain from intimating that you are smoking bad crack unless
> and until you fail to show you aren't gibbering.

I infer that I could give you 100, or 1000 links to blatant violations
of npov, to jewish-controlled articles, to unreasonable administrative
sanctions against users who opposed the "jewPOV" etc and you would
find that "uncompelling, anecdotal evidence". If you have not
noticed this sort of thing going on by now, you wouldn't notice it
when hit over the head by a cluestick either.

And my crack is first rate.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 8/24/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>>On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 10:16:24 +0100
>>"Sam Korn" <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This exchange should be framed and hung on [[WP:NOR]] as an example to
>>>the world.
>>>
>>>
>>Wasn't there recently a ruling that people who invoke WP:NOR or WP:NPOV
>>to talk pages, user pages, or mailing lists, get crucified?
>>
>>
>That wasn't an invocation.
>
The crucifiction of one criminal insurgent 2000 years ago is a bit of a
stale joke; Christians like Dabljuh should learn to get over it. :-)

Ec


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
D> To a degree the guy does have a point. Wikipedia
D> has a huge jewish/zionist bias on a large number
D> of articles.

That's systemic bias: our Jewish contributors are very
good writers, while our Nazi contributors are mostly
vandals who can't understand NPOV. :-)

D> If I remember correctly, in the beginning of 2005,
D> a self-proclaimed nazi community announced it'd go
D> to "npovize" etc holocaust and judaism related
D> articles.

A reasonable nazi would have done more to "NPOVize" than
1000 angry vandals, but I guess that being a reasonable
person and being a nazi are mutually exclusive.


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 24/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, since there tend to be less categories in each category than
> there are articles, it might make sense to display the "sister
> categories" for each category to again reinforce to the editor whether
> the category is in the right supercategory or not. Working on
> categories at the moment is very much like operating through a keyhole
> - you can't see *anything* of the surrounding context.

I don't know if it's quite what we're looking for, but we could
inspect the category browser feature (for efficiency and load etc.)
and perhaps switch it on...?

Rob Church


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

body:
I've seen the same general type of problem (PHP app that confuses users with no immediately obvious explanation) happen exactly
twice in a period of 6 years on some of my (non-MediaWiki) apps.

I'm not 100% sure why, and it's so rare that it's _extremely_ hard to be sure, but my working theory is that by pure random fluke
two session_id strings or two session file names/keys have clashed, resulting in user identity getting confused.

I recall reading an article in PHP|Architect around a year ago about how you could store the first parts of the user's IP address +
the usual session_id stuff to lessen the chance of something like this (not eliminate it however, since you could still have a large
proxy supporting many users, or an especially active subnet, and potentially have the same thing) + other various tricks to switch
the session_id if it looks like someone is trying to spoof it or if there's an accidental clash.

As a disclaimer, I have only very superficially scanned some of MediaWiki's session handling code (so it could already have these
guards, I honestly don't know), but *maybe* it's something like this? That's my first thought, anyway.

Certainly the number of WP users is much higher, so the chances of clashes happening presumably are correspondingly greater too.
(i.e. on a long enough time-scale, and with enough permutations, the statistically improbable becomes probable).

All the best,
Nick.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Pill
> Sent: Thursday, 24 August 2006 7:11 AM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message
>
>
> Some days ago on de.wp a user reported that he suddenly was logged in as
> another user on Wikipedia. That happend on his own desk and in in his
> opinion it was not possible that anyone else was at his computer. Maybe this
> is associated with this problem? Imagine an anonymous is suddenly an admin
> ...
>
> --
> -- Pill (wiki.pill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
On 8/24/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> You proceed to argue that "anyone can edit" is a bad slogan. But I
> have never argued that it is not;

Ah, I almost commented on that.. it seems that your argument is off
topic for the thread: the other posts have been discussing the words
to use. But later in your post you make comments like:

"We have a history of being welcoming to _everyone_, and to then
examine their track record, to assist them in improving their
contributions, or to remove them from the project."

And I was no longer sure of how you felt about anyone can edit, since
you did not clarify your position in the linked post.

In any case, there have been a number of suggestions in this thread.
.. I don't think anyone here thinks that using a direct translation
from the german is the best way to say the same thing, or even that we
need to be saying the exact same thing.


from_name: A

subject: [WikiEN-l] Disambiguation vs. notability

body:
Should there be a lower threshold for notability in cases of
disambiguation? A while ago I ran into an issue on the article for
Susan Blanchard. Here's the version I found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Susan_Blanchard_%28actress%29&oldid=53866327

As I worked on disambiguating, I found there were three American
actresses who could potentially be confused, so I split the two
mentioned above and made a disambig page:

-Susan Blanchard (actress): Notable for work on All My Children
-Susan Blanchard (socialite): Described as an actress in the press (no
credits listed) but better known for having married several famous
actors
-Susan Blanchard Ryan: Notable for the film Open Water

Susan Blanchard (socialite) was immediately nominated for speedy
deletion, under the argument that name confusion does not seem to be a
valid reason to create an article on someone who otherwise would not
merit one.

I understand the argument about Susan Blanchard (socialite) being
non-notable. However, more than half of the original article was about
her. That information didn't seem to belong on a disambiguation page,
but I didn't want to have it appear only on related pages (such as
articles on her notable husbands). Without a linked Susan Blanchard
article on the related pages, it seems the name confusion might
persist. I have run into the same problem where both people were
clearly notable, but this case seemed less clear.

I tend to be broadly inclusionist, so I would argue for separate
articles, even if one subject is far less notable, to help reduce
confusion. I can see where some would make a case for just a mention
on the disambiguation page, though. Thoughts?

Jokestress


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 8/24/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that the most important thing now is to
> *Define the goals of the Website
> *Find out what are the consequeses for those goals

Thanks jd and effeitsanders for trying to take care of this stuff.
My take is following:

The Foundation website is the official window of the organisation. As
such, it should:
1) present the Foundation, what it does, who is part of it, efficiently
This should be a pretty much static thing, the goals of the Foundation
and what it is do not change everyday.
2) Allow for official annoucements to be made (reports, press releases etc.)
This is the dynamic part of the site, and should auto-archive when
news are too old
3) Allow for a good interface for donations
This is not *so* dynamic, but should be updated with every fundraising.

I *do not* believe, unfortunately, that the dynamic part should exist
in all languages automatically, because unfortunately, the translation
does not occur in real time. As we can see today, some of the dynamic
pages are frightfully out of date and if someone looks at the Dutch
page [1], it's totally different from the English one,. The Italian
version [2] might be one solution, as it integrates the English news.

If we're going to provide the static version in xxx languages, we need
to make sure that changes are repercuted in all other versions in due
time, and not three years later. So we might want to cap the number of
languages we provide the translation in to those languages that are
actually being updated.

All in all, I would keep the number of dynamic parts as small as
possible, so as to make sure that the site does not look out of date
every other month.

And someone should be responsible in the long run for making sure that
the site stays updated. As in, *really* responsible.

Delphine

[1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina
[2]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Pagina_Principale
--
~notafish


from_name: Adam Lorenz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Finding deleted contributions of a user

body:
Is there a simple way (for admins) to find the deleted contributions of a
user?

--
Adam J. Lorenz
Charleston, SC


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>:
> On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Waves -> Sound -> Music -> Music events -> Music competitions ->
> > Eurovision Song Contest -> Eurovision host cities -> Rome -> History
> > of Rome -> Ancient Rome -> Ancient Roman religion -> Ancient Roman
> > Christianity -> Patristics -> Heresy -> Heretics -> People executed
> > for heresy -> Jesus -> Doctrines and teachings of Jesus -> Nonviolence
> <snip>
>
> What a total mess. I had no idea it was this bad. Why is the category
> Jesus under "People executed for heresy"? The only subcategories I
> could think of for a category like that would be "Americans executed
> for heresy" or "People executed for heresy in the middle ages".

Well, that's your opinion, and mine, but I already have given up
arguing that. It's just not doable.

The last time I argued against it on the Dutch Wikipedia (it was about
Category:Upper Silezia being in Category:Provinces of Poland), there
were three reactions:
* Would anyone expect that they [=the pages in Category:Upper Silezia]
would all be Polish provinces, because they are under "province in
Poland"? I don't think so.
* That's a fully normal category. (...) A principle that dozens of
users have no problems with and apply automatically. Here and on other
wikis.
* Of course [to the person of the second reaction]

If you have an idea about how to improve it, I'd like to hear it. For
now, on Wikipedia we are a tiny minority, so it doesn't matter if
we're right or wrong, we won't be heard.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

references:
<44E9A0AF.8080108@web.de> <ece7r5$ps6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<44EAB0D6.70007@web.de> <ecfi2a$gq1$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<44EC0315.9060001@web.de> <eckhdt$mhp$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 8/24/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> I was trying to address the security issues
> that come from the user's ability to cause the server to perform any GET
> request to any server.

This is a problem why, provided the server is careful about what it
does with the response?  It could potentially be used for, e.g.,
flooding a third party's server, but it wouldn't be hard to restrict
the harm that could do (by throttling), and no one could do much more
damage that way than they could do without the WMF's help.  An
overwhelming number of massive, reputable sites are willing to execute
arbitrary GET requests -- it's necessary for spidering, to begin with.

Given that this feature is *not* currently implemented, I see no
reason not to discuss its possible implications openly.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Good writers always welcome (was A tidy way
 of	handling "popular culture" references)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 'Good contributors are always welcome', perhaps.
>
> The inclusionists would have field day.
>

Inclusionism/deletionism are dead. The current factions are policy/process.

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

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from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 24/08/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 23/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
> > > favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?

> > OH YES PLEASE.

> Please not. See the earlier thread:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-June/049731.html

So how's the result on de: look to you? (Do you contribute much to de:
of late?) Should en: pursue the goal of becoming de:? Please answer
with as much detail as you can.

- d.


body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you have an idea about how to improve it, I'd like to hear it. For
> now, on Wikipedia we are a tiny minority, so it doesn't matter if
> we're right or wrong, we won't be heard.

The basic process would be:
* Convince a few clueful people that there is *a better way*
* Majorly update the help/guideline pages about categories
* Somehow modify the interface for categories so it's clearer what
should and should not be added. This is the tricky bit.

Actually, it would be really cool if category pages could draw a local
map of related categories,  like maybe two nodes up and one node down
or something, to give people a visual impression of what the category
is doing, and whether it's behaving as it should.

Also, since there tend to be less categories in each category than
there are articles, it might make sense to display the "sister
categories" for each category to again reinforce to the editor whether
the category is in the right supercategory or not. Working on
categories at the moment is very much like operating through a keyhole
- you can't see *anything* of the surrounding context.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/24/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> I was trying to address the security issues
> that come from the user's ability to cause the server to perform any GET
> request to any server. But now that I think about it more, I haven't
> actually solved that issue at all: the necessity to retrieve the "token
> file" would still grant the user that ability... so scratch it all :)

How is this solved in Open-ID implementations?


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/24/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe since the GET operation is not exactly the same as the HTTP
> upload operation (again I don't know what I'm talking about), there
> would be a way of forcing MediaWiki to download something harmful to
> itself, such as an executable, or a file that would cause a buffer
> overrun?

Buffer overruns are critical security flaws that are always specific
to a particular implementation's misprogramming.  PHP does not have
any known buffer overruns; if it did, they'd likely be patched within
days if not hours.

> What if you set up a dodgy server that said it was going to
> download you a nice little .gif file, and instead sent you 10 gig of
> executable?

Same as if a user tries to submit 10 gigs of executable as an uploaded
image: you either discard it, or interpret it as whatever it's claimed
to be.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:
> http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia.htm
>
> Well, looks like we've been found out. Then again, maybe that's just
> what the Cabal wants him to think.
>

On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_cabals there is
neither a "Jewish cabal" or "Zionist cabal", which means it /must/ be true!

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

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body:
effe iets anders wrote:

><snip>
>
>
>>I would assume that of all the Wikimedia sites under this umbrella of
>>projects, the Wikimedia Foundation Website is the one site where the
>>Foundation sets the content, tone, message it  communicates to the world.
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>
>>
></snip>
>
>What do you mean exacly by that?
>
>Lodewijk
>
>
There is the digital world and the real world. The foundation is the
interface to the real world. While community concensus is important
for the Foundations community participation and success, I don't see how
the cyberspace community and its concensus mentality can
effectively address real world issues. Let's be honest, the Foundation
has to deal with all the fallout from the community's interactions
and content on the various sites. A good analogy would be a company or
group who have an attorney to represent them in court.

The foundation represents the community to the real world and acts as
their "representative". Letting the community take over this role
would be like a litigant asking his lawyer to sit and watch while the
client goes pro-se. I think there needs to be a limit as to where this line
is drawn on how far community concensus extends. It's ultimately up to
the foundation, and I do not speak for them,
but I would think the community would want the Foundation's
representation independent of it to increase the safety buffer and
strengthen their effectiveness as an advocate on their behalf. Allowing
the concensus driven community, whose goals for the most
part are completely alien to real world issues, to dictate the message
of the Foundation without the necessary checks and balances
would send a message of chaos to financial contributors and those who
want to drive initiatives with the foundation without being concerned
that they would be run over by some splinter group in the community with
an agenda.

The Foundation is the communities advocate, buffer, protector, and
mentor. It should be independent of the whole community voice,
while balancing the communities dreams, goals, and desires. Allowing two
community members to sit on its board provides this
avenue of communition, but there are checks and balances. The Foundation
can certainly take suggestions from the community on
its external messages, and clearly does and is there for the community,
but that's a far cry from driving its direction.

This is simply my humble opinion, and I don't speak for the Foundation.

All my love,

Jeff

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


body:
2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>:

> The basic process would be:
> * Convince a few clueful people that there is *a better way*

Well, good luck. I'm not good at convincing people, and besides, those
who really matter (those who work much on categorisation) will
undoubtedly say "this is how we do it everywhere" and refuse to even
consider your proposal. Also, they are the ones who told me it was
'fully logical and done by everyone' what is done now.

> * Majorly update the help/guideline pages about categories

As if that helps. Either I get reverted or they get ignored. Probably both.

> * Somehow modify the interface for categories so it's clearer what
> should and should not be added. This is the tricky bit.

And how would you do that? People will either use the system for their
own nonsense, or they will not look at it at all. Or even worse, they
will go and revert whatever you did through the localisation. We can
make nice texts, but people will have other opinions and go and change
the texts in the MediaWiki namespace.

> Actually, it would be really cool if category pages could draw a local
> map of related categories,  like maybe two nodes up and one node down
> or something, to give people a visual impression of what the category
> is doing, and whether it's behaving as it should.

Problem is, they ARE behaving as they should. Or at least, they are
behaving like those who work on them think they should.

> Also, since there tend to be less categories in each category than
> there are articles, it might make sense to display the "sister
> categories" for each category to again reinforce to the editor whether
> the category is in the right supercategory or not. Working on
> categories at the moment is very much like operating through a keyhole
> - you can't see *anything* of the surrounding context.

The category system is a mess, a labyrinth. But I don't see any way to
improve that any more. I have given up on them, to me they're just the
sewer of Wikipedia now. Which is a shame, because they looked so great
when introduced. But apparently it's typically something where the
lowest common demonimator decides the level of the whole. Where
there's two possibilities, both will have people in favor of them, and
in the case of categories, it's the stupidest of those two who will
prevail.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
Dabljuh wrote:

>On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:53:59 -0700
>Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia.htm
>>
>>
>To a degree the guy does have a point. Wikipedia
>has a huge jewish/zionist bias on a large number
>of articles.
>(Newsflash: There's biased articles in/on Wikipedia?)
>
>But the guy is ultimately wrong. Of course it's not
>that Wales & Sanger are secret zionist overlords.
>Wales, like many americans and many liberals, just
>has a rather common pro-israel/pro-judaism bias.
>Personally, I really don't see that jews on Wikipedia
>need a sort of protection that other religions/folks
>don't receive.
>
To the extent that such biases may exist systemically, that observation
does not imply that the actions are systematic, nor does it warrant the
imputation of motives.  The relationship between American society and
its internal Jewish communities has always been a mixed bag anyway.
Let's not forget the [[MS Saint Louis]] incident from 1939; the
underlying attitude to that event did not disappear in a sudden stroke
of altruism on the part of the American government.  In the years that
followed until the creation of the State of Israel the tiger did not
change his stripes.

I find it grossly deceptive when serious criticisms of Israel, such as
its breach of the Geneva Convention by using cluster bombs against
civilian populations in Lebanon, become twisted by both sides into
fraudulent claims of anti-semitism.  It would come as no surprise to
find that many Jews, as well as goyim are thoroughly disgusted by the
actions of the Israeli government.  It would be a great help to the
cause of truth if you desisted in your conflation of the two concepts.

Ec


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
Thank you for posting that, Erik.

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro

Candidate for Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation in the
September 2006 elections.


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> So how's the result on de: look to you? (Do you contribute much to de:
> of late?) Should en: pursue the goal of becoming de:?

No we tend to be slightly more upfront about our problems.

--
geni


body:
On 24/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > So how's the result on de: look to you? (Do you contribute much to de:
> > of late?) Should en: pursue the goal of becoming de:?

> No we tend to be slightly more upfront about our problems.

"Please answer with as much detail as you can." C'mon, give us more
than your usual one-liners.

- d.


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Idealism

body:
 Just throwing this out there for discussion,
 integrate with existing threads if needed:

Statement 1:

Ideally, Wikipedia should be developed to the point where

 1) it is the canonical reference resource on the web.
 2) a) such that articles reference other articles as sources
       for the current discussion, or
    b) articles should only reference outside sources and
       never other articles.

Accordingly there is some disparity between those who think Wikipedia

 a) should be well cited by its researchers.
 b) should be well written by its editors.
 ...where neither is mutually exclusive and neither has "official" status.

There are a number of modalities for how people behave and operate on
Wikipedia with respect to what they do on Wikipedia. I think disparities
between these modalities have led people to think along extreme lines about
the value and values of Wikipedia, some of which appear to violate core
policy. A canonical example of this was IAR, which was basically a loophole which
basically claimed itself to be above even NPOV and CIVIL.

Re-examining that policy led to its deprecation, and I believe other policies,
in order to be taken seriously need to be put in a formal place within the policy
heirarchy. In this respect, I view Wikipedia bi-polar way where on the one hand
we have content disputes which are are ultimately guided by NPOV/objectivity, and
behavioural disputes which are ultimately deferential to CIVIL/civility. Where
there is a choice between these two appears to end up becoming a contest between
free willed independents who aspire to excellence, and the culture of beauraucrats
who aspire to process and formality.

Conclusion: Even if these groups represent a somewhat fundamental divisions in
real society, they should not operate on Wikipedia in a mutually exclusive way.

-Stevertigo

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
2006/8/24, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>:
> The category system is a mess, a labyrinth. But I don't see any way to
> improve that any more. I have given up on them, to me they're just the
> sewer of Wikipedia now. Which is a shame, because they looked so great
> when introduced. But apparently it's typically something where the
> lowest common demonimator decides the level of the whole. Where
> there's two possibilities, both will have people in favor of them, and
> in the case of categories, it's the stupidest of those two who will
> prevail.

I got admonished on the Dutch Wikipedia because I did just complain
about the category system, but did not say *what* should be improved.
Problem is, the whole 'tree' has more dead wood than useful content.
So I looked for 10 random categories, and judged about half of them to
have major mistakes. Here a similar attempt on the English Wikipedia:

Category:Cities in Tokyo - is both in "Geography of Tokyo" and "Tokyo". Why?
Category:Romanian military aircraft 1930-1939 - there are 3 articles
in this category. There's also 3 categories to put it in. Need I say
more?

Category:Spanish translators - Why is this divided by nationality
instead of language, which I would find much more logical. And I don't
consider translators non-fiction writers either

Category:Sendai class cruisers - A category with only 2 pages is
functioning more to confuse than to enlighten. A subcategory of
"cruiser classes" although it is rather than has cruiser classes.
Subcategory of both Cruisers of Japan and Cruisers of the Imperial
Japanese Navy which have the same content but different locations in
the category tree.

Category:British academics: Is this useful? Why is this a subcategory
of Education and Educators?

Category:Fictional Jeet Kune Do practitioners: I hate this type of
category, but alas, putting it directly in the parent categories would
be even worse

Category:Indoor ice hockey venues in Sweden: What is gained by having
indoor and outdoor ice hockey venues in separate categories, except
that there are more categories with more possibilities for getting
lost?

Category:TRS-80 Color Computer games: Well, nothing *major* wrong with this one

Category:Haywood County, Tennessee: The type of case we are
discussing. Only parent category: Tennessee counties

Category:Canadian football stubs: Why o why....

Category:1862 in Mexico: That's two articles. And no doubt many
similar categories. There's even a category Underpopulated (Year) in
Mexico categories.... Categorizing for the sake of categorizing. Or
worse.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 8/24/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Feel free to edit:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Slogans
> or to post more ideas and I'll collect them there.

I don't know about anyone else, but my interest in this thread is
greatly diminished by your apparent effort to step in and take credit
for it.   If you as so supportive of this idea why was your an initial
post a dismissive reference to an older post of yours?

In any case, I think the discussion was working just fine prior to you
stepping it and directing people.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 8/23/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>How would you distinguish honest errors from malicious vandalism,
>>especially with reagrd to something like dates? I could edit an
>>article to reflect that World War 2 ended in 1935, without intending
>>to do so because of a typographical error? Unless the edit is obvious
>>vandalism, (like saying World War 2 ended in 2045-which cannot,
>>reasonably, be termed a typograhical error), it would be difficult to
>>seperate the vandals from those who make such errors while typing or
>>as a result of looking up the date from a source that is not correct.
>>
>>
>Do we need to?
>
>A huge amount of vandalism on wikipedia is a result of "can I really
>edit this?" as evidenced by the high levels of self revert.  Because
>of this, it is sound policy to warn on the first incident rather than
>block.  Unfortunately we don't have a good way of closely monitoring
>the contribs of a warned user, but thats another matter.
>
>In any case, our primary concern on this matter is to be accurate...
>it doesn't matter if the error was induced through an honest mistake,
>idle curiosity, or malicious intent. We still must detect and resolve
>it.
>
Unless there is an evident pattern in the editor's behaviour, the only
way to resolve the problem is to fix the error, and go on with life.
Warning a person for making an obvious typo, and blocking him if he
makes a second typo strikes me as an extremist attitude.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > The people who add this stuff to articles way out of proportion to the
> > > actual subjects of the articles. Your task now: assume you can't hold
> > > back the locust swarm with a policy edict; say something to *convince*
> > > them this is not a good idea.
>
> > Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
> > favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?
>
>
> OH YES PLEASE.

Please not. See the earlier thread:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-June/049731.html
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: SJ

body:
On 8/24/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 8/23/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would it be an idea to make a team of people (not just one) who can
> > restructure the Wiki, categorize nicely, try to update, delete what is
> > unnessecairily (like the french version of the awards page: all empty
> > but the langbar) and coordinate with the translation-committee? It
> > should mostly be structural changes.
> >
>
> This is true, and Jd recently sent a mail on foundation-l about that [1].
> See also [2]. I think it is a good idea to set up a team dealing with
> cleaning the foundation wiki. Of course, this team must be multilingual to
> be efficient.

Yes.  As the for site's article goals, I would say:  it should aim to
present a detailed description of the foundation and its projects -
informed by, but more stable (and often more detailed) than Wikipedia
articles on the same.  Much of it should be written with a lay
audience in mind - the press, people not familiar with how wikis work.
 It should be the place to keep official announcements, reports,
recognition of support.  Older content should be kept in an archive,
but stable content and news should be highlighted.

And the site should showcase the diverse languages and efforts of the
organization; there should be clear categorization across languages,
prominent interlanguage links, active inclusion of smaller projects in
commentary.  Translation priorities for the site's pages.  The main
pages should be rather static, with attention paid to translating
updates (changes to those pages could trigger mail to an appropriate
list), and editors from core languages should review the site's
content peroidically.  Once the task is better-defined, an interested
translation team could be found, as guillaume suggests.

SJ

> If help if needed for translation, I'm sure you can ask on translators-l;
> people work on meta, then the team members check the translation and update
> content on the foundation wiki.
>
> g.
>
> [1] http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-August/008901.html
> [2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Babel#Miscellaneous
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
> Disciplus Simplex
> http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
> NPOV is non-negotiable. It is one of the "pillars" of Wikipedia. Most
> policies are just the verbose version of what is already present
> thanks to the pillars. If a policy is not approved, you can always
> refer to them.
>
> FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars

Why are the "pillars" non-negotiable?
Who created  the "pillars"?
Who approved them?

I need sources to use them in discussion.

--
Alexander Sigachov


body:
On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > So how's the result on de: look to you? (Do you contribute much to de:
> > > of late?) Should en: pursue the goal of becoming de:?
>
> > No we tend to be slightly more upfront about our problems.
>
>
> "Please answer with as much detail as you can." C'mon, give us more
> than your usual one-liners.
>
>
> - d.

Well on en it is generaly accepted that we have a copyright problem.
On de less so. Although they don't have fair use issues (in theory)
there are certianly other problems.

On en we have a large number of people who go around lableing stubs.
de just seems to accept large numbers of rather short articles
(incerdenitaly does anyone know why
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marla_Glenn isn't just a redirect?)

Also I'm not seing references even for fairly major articles such as:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock-Festival (a featured article)

Also site appears not be useing MediaWiki:Anonnotice so foundation
election is being advertised to non users (they are however useing
sitenotice to produce a shorter message which I like).

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On 24/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 10:16:24 +0100
> "Sam Korn" <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> > This exchange should be framed and hung on [[WP:NOR]] as an example to
> > the world.

> Wasn't there recently a ruling that people who invoke WP:NOR or WP:NPOV
> to talk pages, user pages, or mailing lists, get crucified?

Please prove you're not an idiot before the end of today.

- d.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On 8/24/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 10:16:24 +0100
> "Sam Korn" <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This exchange should be framed and hung on [[WP:NOR]] as an example to
> > the world.
>
> Wasn't there recently a ruling that people who invoke WP:NOR or WP:NPOV
> to talk pages, user pages, or mailing lists, get crucified?

That wasn't an invocation.

--
Sam


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24/08/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> en: has articles on types of products ([[videocassette recorder]]),
> lines of products ([[Casio Exilim]]) and on individual products
> themselves ([[Ford RS200]]).

And so we should, IMO (which I suspect you meant) - at least, when
there is sufficient info to write an article and sufficient interest
to keep it maintained.

[I wondered why [[Ford RS200]] seemed familiar; turned out the images were mine]

> For edits from companies, the main benefit they could bring to the
> wiki would be references for the sort of detail that product geeks
> really want to see.

And hopefully the official references rather than poorly-maintained,
poorly-available fan pages.

-matt


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] ANNOUNCE: Skypecast - Wikipedia Conversation from Florida

body:
Sorry for the late notice, but this may be interesting to folks on this list.

I will be hosting a live Skypecast of a conversation/interview with
Brad Patrick and Danny Wool of the Wikimedia Foundation on Friday,
August 25, 2006 at 11 am EST. All are welcome to join (using Skype),
and also to chime in with questions. Find details on the Skypecast
here.

Full details:
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2006/08/24/skypecast-wikipedia-conversation-from-florida/

Skypecast details:
https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=29063

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

LONG: I'm in St. Petersburg, Florida, as part of research on a book
about Wikipedia, and wanted to interview both Brad and Danny. I
figured, why don't we do a "radio-like" show with us in the Wikimedia
Foundation offices, and community members can chime in as well? Brad
Patrick is the general counsel and interim executive director of the
WMF, and Danny Wool is a longtime Wikipedian and holds the position of
grants officer. Among the things we'll discuss (but we want audience
participation):

What does the WMF office do? Who are the people in the office?
What is the difference between Wikimedia and Wikipedia?
What happens on a day to day basis in the office?
Where are the Wikimedia servers?
What can the WMF staff do to help the Wikimedia projects?
What are the challenges for the future for WMF?

Please feel free to add comments/questions here, or listen live via
Skype and you can "Request the microphone" just like a radio call-in
show. We will try to let as many participants chime in.

The time was chosen so that it occurs when most folks are awake - 11pm
in East Asia, 9pm in Moscow, 4/5pm in Europe, 11am in Eastern US, 8am
in Western US. If you cannot join online, I plan to make a podcast
available.

Caveat: This is the first Skypecast we're hosting so please be patient
if at 11am we are still working out some kinks.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] ANNOUNCE: Skypecast - Wikipedia Conversation from
	Florida


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, good luck. I'm not good at convincing people, and besides, those
> who really matter (those who work much on categorisation) will
> undoubtedly say "this is how we do it everywhere" and refuse to even
> consider your proposal. Also, they are the ones who told me it was
> 'fully logical and done by everyone' what is done now.

I have to believe that if an idea is genuinely good, there are enough
sensible people who will eventually realise it and work towards
implementing it.

> > * Majorly update the help/guideline pages about categories
>
> As if that helps. Either I get reverted or they get ignored. Probably both.

Hence getting support first. I agree that most guidelines are
generally ignored, hence the third step, which is a bit more 'in your
face'.

> > * Somehow modify the interface for categories so it's clearer what
> > should and should not be added. This is the tricky bit.
>
> And how would you do that? People will either use the system for their
> own nonsense, or they will not look at it at all. Or even worse, they
> will go and revert whatever you did through the localisation. We can
> make nice texts, but people will have other opinions and go and change
> the texts in the MediaWiki namespace.

That could happen, but I'd like to think it wouldn't.

> Problem is, they ARE behaving as they should. Or at least, they are
> behaving like those who work on them think they should.

I don't know, I've pointed out a few local weirdnesses in categories
to people and they've generally been fairly receptive. It *seems*
logical at first that Category:John Lennon is a subcategory of
Category:The Beatles. But not when you consider that John Lennon ends
up being a subsubcategory of Category:English rock bands.

> The category system is a mess, a labyrinth. But I don't see any way to
> improve that any more. I have given up on them, to me they're just the
> sewer of Wikipedia now. Which is a shame, because they looked so great
> when introduced. But apparently it's typically something where the
> lowest common demonimator decides the level of the whole. Where
> there's two possibilities, both will have people in favor of them, and
> in the case of categories, it's the stupidest of those two who will
> prevail.

I interpret it differently. I think categorising stuff well is more
difficult than editing articles. Generally, categories are structured
relatively badly, and used relatively badly - not through ill will,
but just lack of understanding. OTOH, it actually doesn't take that
long to totally clean up a category. Maybe 2 hours to evaluate and
recategorise 100 articles. I've only done it a couple of times though,
and I'm still working out what the issues are. And I've not had anyone
tell me to stop, or undo my changes.

Categories may be the sewer of Wikipedia, but would you like to live
in a society with no sewers?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Idealism

body:
--- Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you're saying "Wikipedia articles should have a reference for every
> statement of fact, and none of those references should be Wikipedia",
> then yes, that goes without saying.

"Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching libel
out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have affected
Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a quarter mil?
How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what technocrats
plop down as fact?

> What do you mean by a)? Do you mean that people who perform research
> using Wikipedia as a base should cite it?

No. I meant simply that people follow different modes of editing, one of which
can be generally called "research."

> we would not want to be cited in an academic journal.

We dont?

> My interpretation of IAR is basically a restatement of ...

And therefore a redundancy, and therefore a confusing fork of...
a policy which is sharply in contrast with... current topics of discussion.

-SV

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body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Category:Cities in Tokyo - is both in "Geography of Tokyo" and "Tokyo". Why?
> Category:Romanian military aircraft 1930-1939 - there are 3 articles
> in this category. There's also 3 categories to put it in. Need I say
> more?

We lack good model categories, I think. For me, a category like
"Tokyo" should only contain two things: Subcategories (Geography of
Tokyo, Tokyo culture, People born in Tokyo...), and articles waiting
to be subcategorised. It's totally consistent with the wiki principle
that articles can be dumped in the simplest category, and then moved
later by an editor with more "local" knowledge.

To answer your "why?" question: Because subcategories don't work. The
princple that "If X is a subcat of Y, then Z should not be in both X
and Y" is totally bogus and unworkable - at the moment.

> Category:Spanish translators - Why is this divided by nationality
> instead of language, which I would find much more logical. And I don't
> consider translators non-fiction writers either

See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Translators - what more
could you ask for, we have [[Translators by nationality]],
[[Translators by destination language]] *and* [[Translators by source
language]]. In the subcategories, not only do we have
[[Category:Translators from Spanish]] but we even have
[[Spanish-English translators]]. Perfect! Sure, these categories
aren't well populated, but the structure is 10 out of 10.

> Category:Sendai class cruisers - A category with only 2 pages is
> functioning more to confuse than to enlighten. A subcategory of
> "cruiser classes" although it is rather than has cruiser classes.

There is general blurring of the distinction between classes of things
and things themselves. See [[Category:Elephants]] for an example. The
solution is probably to branch these categories into "Famous X's",
"Classes of X" etc. For a category with only 5-6 members I'm not
fussed if it contains both articles on general classes of things and
specific instances of those things, but for bigger categories we
should be more precise.

> Category:British academics: Is this useful? Why is this a subcategory
> of Education and Educators?

A good example of our common "non-strict subset" problem. Lots of
academics are "educators". But not all.

> Category:Fictional Jeet Kune Do practitioners: I hate this type of
> category, but alas, putting it directly in the parent categories would
> be even worse

Why? It seems to be in the right place, a subcat of both Fictional
martial artists and Jeet Kune Do practitioners. Should probably be a
subcat of some "Computer game characters" or something too.

> Category:Indoor ice hockey venues in Sweden: What is gained by having
> indoor and outdoor ice hockey venues in separate categories, except
> that there are more categories with more possibilities for getting
> lost?

I disagree - everything is to be gained by splitting categories
whenever they can be unambiguously and precisely split. OTOH, since
Category:Outdoor ice hockey venues in Sweden doesn't exist, the point
is moot.

> Category:Haywood County, Tennessee: The type of case we are
> discussing. Only parent category: Tennessee counties

Seems to be in good working order?

> Category:Canadian football stubs: Why o why....

Yep, these "metacategories" (ie, categories containing meta
information about our articles) are a bit ugly, but they don't seem to
cause a great deal of harm. And one day it will be trivial to tag them
all and do something special with them. They're all subcats of
Category:Stub categories after all. And currently they're somewhat
useful.

> Category:1862 in Mexico: That's two articles. And no doubt many
> similar categories. There's even a category Underpopulated (Year) in
> Mexico categories.... Categorizing for the sake of categorizing. Or
> worse.

What's wrong with "Categorizing for the sake of categorizing"? And
what's wrong with underpopulated categories? It's just like a stub -
awaiting further development.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Idealism

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is carefully, comprehensively wrong. IAR has been ratified as
> policy directly by Jimbo, as a shortcut when process is tying people
> up in red tape. It doesn't supersede NPOV or CIVIL. Its "deprecation"
> was an attempt at shouting it down by process fetishists.

* "Shortcut (policy)"
#redirect [[Loophole]]

* "Fetishists (process), according to U:DG"
#redirect [[Integrationalists]]

> To be taken seriously, a policy needs to (a) obviously help the actual
> task

...Where the "task" is somewhat relativistic, given the context of
Wiki inflationary expansion...

> (b) not be a pain in the arse in practice.

Like an inCIVIL or POV application of CITE?

-SV

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from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Surname disambiguation urgently needs its own Manual
 page

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>I have been arguing for a while that the disambiguation by surname is a very special case. Now, a rash of users misapplying the WP:MOSDAB 'rules' (they are merely suggestions) are starting to delete and prod lists by surname.
>
>I need hardly say that this kind of pedantry is completely negative for the navigation of enWP. Please can we urgently have some guidelines that apply so that what is going on at [[Allen (surname)]] and its Talk need not be repeated.
>
>
I agree---I use these all the time.  In some academic disciplines it's
common to refer to well-known or even moderately well-known people by
surname only.  If I don't happen to be familiar with the person myself,
I find out who they are by looking up the surname on Wikipedia, and
scanning down the list for someone of the right occupation and right era.

-Mark


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Idealism

body:
On 8/24/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > If you're saying "Wikipedia articles should have a reference for every
> > statement of fact, and none of those references should be Wikipedia",
> > then yes, that goes without saying.
>
> "Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching
> libel
> out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have
> affected
> Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a
> quarter mil?
> How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what
> technocrats
> plop down as fact?
>
> > What do you mean by a)? Do you mean that people who perform research
> > using Wikipedia as a base should cite it?
>
> No. I meant simply that people follow different modes of editing, one of
> which
> can be generally called "research."
>
> > we would not want to be cited in an academic journal.
>
> We dont?
>
> > My interpretation of IAR is basically a restatement of ...
>
> And therefore a redundancy, and therefore a confusing fork of...
> a policy which is sharply in contrast with... current topics of
> discussion.
>
> -SV
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Steve writes:
--
"Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching
libel
out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have
affected
Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a
quarter mil?
How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what
technocrats
plop down as fact?
--

I think you're misinterpreting that.

It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.

I have toyed with the idea of an underlying data structure for listing facts
(factual claims, referenced facts).  Over time, it would be good if there
were a slow evolution towards nearly everything being referenced, well
referenced and multiply referenced if possible.

That is not a requirement that we all rush out and reference everything
immediately.

Just because something hasn't had references added to date, doesn't mean we
should inherently mistrust it or throw the articles out or anything.   This
is in a sense the ultimate "leave something for others" project aspect...

Fuzzy end goal, not immediate requirement.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com