body:
Delirium a ?crit:
 > Tim Starling wrote:
 >
 >> Choice of language is a political
 >> issue, see e.g.
 >>
 >> http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html
 >>
 >> I think the production of content accessible to less well educated
 >> people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with
 >> Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a
 >> species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available
 >> for generating content in these languages.
 >>
 >>
 > There are, of course, two solutions to this problem.  One is to help
 > less-well-educated people become better educated, which in India means
 > learning English (or, to some extent, Hindi).

<big understatement>

I... do not think helping less-well-educated people become better
educated... *means*    -------->    "teaching them English".

</big understatement>

  The other is to produce
 > content in less-widely-spoken languages of India.
 > As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought
 > to be in the business of running political campaigns.  Providing
 > resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose,
 > sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other
 > languages isn't our place.
 >
 > -Mark

Plus, I think two issues are at stake here

1) is providing content to readers
2) getting readers to contribute to build up a ressource


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Benbennick

subject: [Wikitech-l] Missing image history

body:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Small_House,_Conwy.jpg and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Telford's_Bridge,_Conwy.jpg for two
image that have no associated "image history".  (And they're not from
the Commons!)

Is there anything that can be done to find out who uploaded them and when?


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Enciclopedia Libre

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> A remerge has been suggested, but Enciclopedia Libre (Free
> Encyclopaedia) has been resistant and they are, after all, at an
> advantage because they have more articles than do we.

They are GFDL. By taking all their articles that don't clash with
article titles on es, we'll already have more articles than they. :-p

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Enciclopedia Libre

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> I was thinking of another non-English semifork of Wikipedia which has
> way more articles than the Wikipedia version, and whose owner is
> deeply involved in Wikipedia but while bragging in private e-mails and
> on-list about how much work he/she does compared to others to put more
> free content online, does not consider allowing the corresponding
> language version of Wikipedia to share content.

If they are GFDL, they cannot disallow that. If they are not GFDL, they
are using material originally from Wikipedia illegally.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
Rebecca wrote:

>On 6/6/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>> As a result, I think that for us mediation is more likely
>>to be useful much earlier in the process, as disputes are only beginning
>>and before they have really had a chance to heat up. This would require
>>watching more closely for situations where mediation can help, and a
>>more interventionist approach from the mediators, rather than waiting
>>for cases to come to them.
>>
>>
>Once again, I think that's very true - but how can we get a system
>where these conflicts are actually attended to that quickly?
>
>
The simplest thing that comes to mind is to put the Mediation Committee
in charge of the Requests for comments page. I think this would, if we
can get enough mediators with enough energy, help address structural
issues with both processes.

There are two major complaints made about RfC. One is that the page is
poorly maintained and regularly swells to an unwieldy size. The other is
that it's not terribly effective, because many requests do not succeed
in drawing much comment from people outside the dispute. Each of these
problems also tends to exacerbate the other.

If, to make mediation workable, we want it to happen earlier in the
dispute resolution process, we need something that will signal the
existence of a dispute to the mediators. Right now, what signal do we
have available? That's right, RfC, which is itself in need of attention
from mediator-types.

In particular, it would be great to have lots of mediators working to
solve the article content disputes on RfC. With more effort along these
lines, we might see fewer content-related issues going to arbitration,
and less pressure to come up with some kind of separate content
arbitration. Or, if content arbitration does indeed prove necessary,
their experience might help us know how to come up with better solutions
when we get there.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Yann Forget

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Indian languages and grants (was Re: Combined
	effort)

body:
Le Sunday 5 June 2005 23:06, Delirium a ?crit :
> Tim Starling wrote:
> >Choice of language is a political
> >issue, see e.g.
> >
> >http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html
> >
> >I think the production of content accessible to less well educated
> >people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with
> >Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a
> >species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available
> >for generating content in these languages.
>
> There are, of course, two solutions to this problem.  One is to help
> less-well-educated people become better educated, which in India means
> learning English (or, to some extent, Hindi).

This is really NOT a solution. It may even be seen as a provocation.
I?believe that most of the education problems India has are because of poorly
thought suggestion like this. People get thought in a foreign language and
are illetrate in their mother tongue.

> The other is to produce
> content in less-widely-spoken languages of India.
>
> As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought
> to be in the business of running political campaigns.  Providing
> resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose,
> sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other
> languages isn't our place.

Well, imposing a foreign language is a political choice, even if it is because
this is not enough content in the local language.

> -Mark

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


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Indian languages and grants (was Re: Combined effort)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> All major languages of India?!
>
> That's  ... amazing. (As well as wrong and bad.)
>
> Free software has enough interest for organisations to form (FSF India).
> Perhaps FSF India would be a good place to drop a line about this to.

The Indian language wikis suffer from the fact that most of the people
in India with Internet access speak English. In fact, according to this
article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1719346.stm

...most keyboards in India have a US layout, and keyboards designed for
Indian languages are unstandardized. Choice of language is a political
issue, see e.g.

http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html

I think the production of content accessible to less well educated
people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with
Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a
species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available
for generating content in these languages.

I think it would be great if Wikimedia could ignore distracting grant
opportunities to provide content for already well-resourced populations,
such as biologists or American 10 year olds, and concentrate on its core
premise. We have a method for cheap content generation, now how can we
use that method to do the most good? How can we use scarce funds as
leverage?

Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and
lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent
mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical
measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a
full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of
the advertising.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Alex Y. Kwan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US Education system (was NPR interview)

body:
Hello,

On 6/5/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> never seen a chemistry textbook titled "Rise of the Atom".

Atoms have always existed, regardless if we know about them. Nations,
well, haven't. Anyway, I've always liked _The Origin of Species_
better. Would _The Origin of Nations_ be a better title?

> I do share your difficulty with the dismissive attitude taken toward
> other nations' histories in public education.  I just tend to believe
> that's a mere symptom of a pathology in the way American history is
> taught.

And the way it is taught right now is, well, a mere symptom of a
pathology in the way Americans think of America and other nations.

little Alex


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Indian languages and grants (was Re: Combined
	effort)

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>>
>> Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and
>> lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent
>> mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical
>> measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a
>> full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of
>> the advertising.
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
>>
>>
> Tim Starling's proposal makes a lot of sense. I feel we should seriously
> consider it. Not just for India, but Africa as well.

The same conditions exist in many developing countries -- the rich
people have Internet access and English skills, and the poor people
don't have either. Those rich people might be moved to write in their
native language if we can convince them that they will be doing a great
service to the non-English speakers in their country, and that we will
be able to distribute the content to at least some of that audience.

The statement above is mostly speculation though, targeting is a
question for market research.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Unsubscribed posters now being moderated instead of
	rejected

body:
The list mods' mailboxes will now be flooded with crap in the cause of
unsubscribed posters getting straight through to the list. Nazi spam or no
Nazi spam.  w00t :-) List info also updated accordingly.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Juriwiki-l] Re: Izynews? Sorry whom are they
	negotiating with

body:
(moving thread from juriwiki to foundation-l)

> I feel that we somehow should forbid our copiers to
> copy wikipedia: and user: pages they are not
> encyclopedic content. I hate the fact that my name is
> on their site and mentioned at google higher than mu
> usernamesite is at wikipedia.

Since the content of those namespaces is GFDL, we can't forbid anyone
using it. What we should be looking to do instead is to make it very
easy to copy just the main namespace, meaning mirrors would choose to
do that rather than using their current method of taking the whole
database. I know suggestions have been made for this before, so does
anyone know if there's a page on the wiki about creating some sort of
"mirror program" making it easy for reusers of our content to take the
content we want them to take, and making it easy for them to abide by
the GFDL?

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Indian languages and grants (was Re:Combined	effort)

body:
Le Monday 6 June 2005 00:38, Delirium a ?crit :
> Yann Forget wrote:
> >>As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought
> >>to be in the business of running political campaigns.  Providing
> >>resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose,
> >>sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other
> >>languages isn't our place.
> >
> >Well, imposing a foreign language is a political choice, even if it is
> > because this is not enough content in the local language.
>
> I don't see how that's "imposing" anything.  As an English speaker, I
> provide content in English free of charge; people may choose not to use
> it if they don't like English-language encyclopedias.  If speakers of
> other languages do not provide a similar amount of content, that's not
> because I imposed anything on them.

You didn't, but social, commercial and technical solutions have been imposed
on them which prevent them to read and write in their mother tongue or other
local languages. So saying that they have the choice not to use English
content is false. They are forced to do so, because they don't have the means
to work in another language.

> Providing tools to people to do what they want with them is
> non-political.  Launching a $30,000 advertising campaign to promote the
> use of minority languages is overtly political, and something I would
> strongly oppose.

Yes, providing tools is necessary, but not enough. It is also necessary to
explain content providers (web sites, etc.), content distributors
(cybercaf?s, universities, etc.) and users (writers, teachers, etc.) why
using these tools are beneficial for the end users. No big money is necessary
for that, only some well organised lobbying.

> -Mark

Regards,

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


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 09:38:41AM -0700, Sean Barrett wrote:
> Alex Y. Kwan stated for the record:
> >And the way it is taught right now is, well, a mere symptom of a
> >pathology in the way Americans think of America and other nations.
>
> Of course, all Americans think of America and other nations in exactly
> the same pathological way.
>
> We all think that all foreigners are mindless bigots who think all
> Americans think alike.

Hah.  That's funny.  It's much cleverer than what I was going to say,
which was "Incorrect.  It's a symptom of a broken government -- no more
broken than any other, unfortunately."

Whoops, I said it anyway.  In any case, you make a better point.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Statistics

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Yann Forget wrote:
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>FYI, we have now 21 Wiktionaries with more than 1,000 articles and 20 more
>>with more than 100 articles.
>>
>>
>Although of course counting the number of articles/words can lead to an
>excessive valuation of stubs, I think it is also quite fun and
>interesting, if done cautiously.
>
>It is always wonderful to celebrate milestones, and I love hearing about
>them.  Please anyone who notices a language drawing close to a
>milestone, let's celebrate it here.
>
>
The "Ido" Wiktionary has nearly 11,000 articles with 11 contributors and
no administrators.  Ido is a constructed language that was an early
break off from Esperanto.  Most of the articles are indeed stubs showing
only a word from some language and its translation into Ido. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>My daughter recently asked Danny why the word 'receipt' has a 'p' in it.
> Well, he gave a decent answer but I think he made it up out of thin air.
>That's the best that most of us can do, even very well educated and
>smart people.
>
The irony with such situations arises when you answer "I don't know",
and somebody still insists on an answer.  So you just oblige them with a
made-up answer.  Those insisting on an answer are not just children.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Soufron wrote:
>
>
>>>Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this
>>>these days ?
>>>
>>>
>Yes, I think we are.
>
>The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from
>museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the
>public domain for a very long time.  If I get one more like that, I'm
>going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
>
>
That did arise in this thread.  The third person commentor remarked that
our 1847 photograph of Emily Dickinson was owned by Amherst College, and
that permission should be obtained to use it.

Ec


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>On Sat, 2005-06-04 at 20:03 +0200, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>
>>I am willing to defer on this issue to Debian.  Can anyone report on
>>whether or not MP3s can be created and played with software that Debian
>>has in their 'free' category?
>>
>>
>
>Fraunhofer, the owners of the mp3 patents, claim $0.75 royalties per
>decoder sold; they explicitly say that this fee is waived for "free
>software distributed over the Internet", but that does mean that Linux
>distributions on CD or sold by other means cannot include MP3 decoders
>without triggering the fee, but they can point users to where free
>decoders can be downloaded.
>
>Whether their claim has any legal validity is another issue entirely.
>
>
>
While I would grant that many software patent issues are dubious at best
(notably the LZW GIF issue from back elsewhen), this one is quite
legitamate, and well known by at least those who are quite familiar with
the development of multimedia software.  The compression algorithm was
specifically designed by Fraunhofer for the MPEG  Audio (ISO/IEC
11172-2) specification, and credit for that effort is published in the
appendex of that specification, with a specific warning that it needed
to be contacted in order to resolve any patent issues.  And the
algorithm employed by Fraunhofer really is unique enough that I don't
have as much of a problem with them claiming patent status as opposed to
the incredibly silly patents that have been issues (like the one-click
patent by Amazon.com).  Their "legal" website is:

http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/index.html

I've been involved with multimedia data formats for some time, and I
would have to say that the "non-free" status of MP3s is indeed a huge
issue for an organization like the Wikimedia Foundation.  This is not
something to be lightly swept under the rug.  While you can have "free
software" that implements the specification, the legal issues are hardly
clear.  Another website I would strongly recommend to look at is:

http://www.mpegla.com/

This is the "licensing authority" for most MPEG products, and will give
you at least somewhat of a legal whitewash if you license stuff through
them.  It doesn't, however, cover MP3s, which is why you need to license
directly through Fraunhofer.  By legal whitewash, I mean that people
known to the MPEG committee to have patent issues with the standards
have been contacted and negotiated with to set the fees.  They still
don't guarentee that you will be safe from patent violation, but you
have been covered from the major players who open insist on royalties
for those patents that are covered by the specs.

Ugly, and it does get worse.

Where it comes down to what the Wikimedia Foundation is concerned, there
would be interest in selling copies of Wikimedia content (on CDs, in
books, etc.) even if it is just as a fundraiser to pay for the server
farm.  Fraunhofer is insisting on a royalty for even distributing MP3s,
so some of the money raised from the sale of a Wikipedia CD (for
example), would have to be sent to the MP3 licensing authority.  I don't
know the legality of this in Europe, but I wouldn't avoid paying this
fee there either without a lawyer on retainer to deal with potential
lawsuits.

The "free" aspect is more a recognition that one of the major reasons
why MP3s are popular is because they are widely traded over the
internet, and they don't want to hassle all of the free MP3 download
sites, unlike the RIAA.  This still violates the terms of the GPL,
notably clause seven:

"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute
so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and
any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not
distribute the Program at all."

While this clause is not in the GFDL (I am surprised here on this
point), I would expect a similar legal argument if it were brought up.

While I am not a lawyer, I do have experience in this issue from a
professional standpoint, and it is my strong recommendation that the
Wikimedia Foundation avoid MP3s on any of the Wikimedia sites, as it
violates at least in nature free media, and could produce headaches for
the Foundation that would be better left alone.  When the Fraunhofer
patent expires, that may be another issue, and I do expect that the
Wikipedia will outlive this patent, but that is several years in the future.

--
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
Sorry, but your last sentence is a bit confusing to me.

Are you trying to say "the Polish Wikipedia would be part of
assignments to add bibliographies, annotation, and various other
activities"?

Mark

On 04/06/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 5, 2005, at 1:31 AM, Sj wrote:
>
> > On 5/24/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> >> On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
> >>> On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > What Chad said.  Wikipedia will be recognized as an unparallelled
> > reference work soon enough, without anyone apologizing for its muddy
> > openness.  And I think that we will see small scalable gains by
> > improving the way we recognize excellence and expertise in
> > subject-areas -- say, by avoiding the initial stages of certain edit
> > wars, by improving the efficiency of RC-patrol, watchlist-patrol, and
> > article/subject reviewing.  But it seems far more interesting to me to
> > emphasize that our success emerged from the mud and with its help,
> > than to assure everyone that the mud can be washed off.
> >
> > It isn't clear to me that the project would have become such a success
> > /without/ contributions from dedicated kooks, eccentrics, trolls, and
> > people who are just plain misguided in their convictions.  Explicitly
> > focusing on credentials might well reduce contribution; even in its
> > absence, the most common reason my brilliant iconoclastic US friends
> > give me for not writing about <whatever they're reading / studying> in
> > Wikipedia is that they are "no expert" on the subject.
> >
> > --SJ
> > _______________________
>
> In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in
> fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on
> wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions,
> and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and
> other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Jerome Jamnicky

subject: [Wikitech-l] people biographies pulled in via RSS

body:
QuotationsBook.com Webmaster/Support wrote:
> Hello
>
> I'm constructing a large literary resource, and would like to query
> articles about authors automatically, and receive Wikipedia articles
> back as RSS/XML documents to present in my website, with all the
> relevant backlinks to wikipedia.
>
> Does Wikipedia have customised syndication of its content?

If you do some sort of [semi-]dynamic inclusion of Wikipedia content
into your site, please adhere to the following:

1) Take measures to ensure that your site does not violate robots.txt.
In case it is not apparent, this includes ensuring that bots, which
access your site, do not indirectly violate Wikipedia's robots.txt when
your site is acting as an intermediary.

2) Have your software clearly identify itself to Wikipedia, on each
request, with a user-agent string.  There are some broad user-agent
blocks in place to combat the frequent abuse of the site by bots using
certain software/libraries.  It's acceptable to alter the user-agent of
your software to get past these blocks, as long as you make sure that it
is well-behaved.

3) Know what your software is doing.  Monitor the behaviour of your site
to ensure that it doesn't load Wikipedia's servers with rubbish such as
that you can see at the following URL:
http://noc.wikimedia.org/~jeronim/mysic.txt

I'd also suggest that you list your site on the relevant subpage of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks
and describe its interaction with Wikipedia.  This will help to conserve
the time of the volunteers who monitor sites which use Wikipedia
content, and hopefully prevent any misunderstandings.

> Regards
> Amit
> quotationsbook.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
Delirium (delirium at hackish.org) [050606 02:14]:
> Sj wrote:

> >At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated
> >explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to
> >be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of
> >those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and
> >commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that.  (I am
> >more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).

> That much is true, if they are "creative works" rather than verbatim
> copies, which is the gray area.
> Interestingly, not all museums follow the anti-information-dissemination
> route.  All of Greece's national museums permit free photography without
> a permit to all visitors, with the caveat that no flash is permitted (to
> avoid either damaging the pieces or irritating visitors with incessant
> flashes).

The Victoria & Albert Museum  in London often allows photography, though
without flashes. But with a good digital camera that's not a problem. I
have some fantastic shots from the Vivienne Westwood exhibition I'll be
putting on Wikipedia some time before the Sun goes cold.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Automatic image tagging

body:
Magnus Manske (magnus.manske at web.de) [050606 03:59]:

> So I thought, why not, upon upload of a new image, *automatically* add
> "{{unverified}}" to any image dewscription that does *not* contain the
> sequence "{{"? This is dead easy technically, and will bring untagged
> images to our attention without wasting time and effort of people who
> could do something more constructive.
> Image descriptions that contain "{{" but *not* a copyright tag can still
> be found through the current scanning process.
> The "{{unverified}}" could be stored in [[Mediawiki:AutoImageTag]] or
> something, so each wikipedia can use the one appropriate for the
> language/tagging system.

Sounds very good to me!

- d.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> The simplest thing that comes to mind is to put the Mediation Committee
> in charge of the Requests for comments page. I think this would, if we
> can get enough mediators with enough energy, help address structural
> issues with both processes.

What a great idea! A 'Desired outcome' section should also be added to the RfC
template so that the various sides of an RfC can indicate what they want from
the process. A mediator could try to help the both sides come to an agreement.

-- mav

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
Sometimes we do, but sometimes we lose our nerve. Most of the
arbitration committee are elected. Insisting on inclusion of
unpopular points of view is not conducive to maintaining popularity.
Announcing a high-minded principle is one thing, living by it - another.

Fred

On Jun 6, 2005, at 6:08 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> steven l. rubenstein said:
>
>
>> I do not believe that disputes over
>> content are  irresolvable, but I do think that there are POV warriors
>> who insist on  including content even if it comes from narrow and
>> perhaps even
>> disreputable sources, and deleting content that is the product of
>> good
>> research.
>>
>
>
> Arbcom can and does rule in such cases. In the Robert the Bruce
> case, for
> instance, arbcom affirmed the principle that "Removal of references
> from
> articles is generally inappropriate" by 8-0 and "It is
> inappropriate to
> remove blocks of well-referenced information which is germane to the
> subject from articles on the grounds that the information advances
> a point
> of view. Wikipedia's NPOV policy contemplates inclusion of all
> significant
> points of view" by 9-0.
>
> These were also reaffirmed in the case of Robert Blair, who was
> involved
> in the same dispute on the other side.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/
> Robert_the_Bruce
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/
> Robert_Blair
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
steven l. rubenstein was annoyed to be reminded that he had stated for
the record:

> NPOV does not require that our
> article on the moon state, "According to some, the moon is made of green
> cheese, although virtually all astronomers disagree."  Don't laugh --
> silly statements like this are easy to spot when we are talking about
> physical phenomena.  But they are much harder to spot when talking about
> historical and cultural phenomena, which is one reason why some content
> disputes are protracted and cannot be resolved by mediation alone.

Silly statements that are so very hard to spot that they cannot be
rebutted and can only be corrected by rendering them unexpressible are
not silly.  They may be wrong, but they are not speedy-obliteration
candidates.

I am very worried that we are seriously discussing the formation of a
committee empowered to prohibit unpopular content from Wikipedia and to
ban those that feel that it is important to record it.

--
  Sean Barrett     | All men are frauds. The only difference
  sean at epoptic.com | between them is that some admit it.
                   | I myself deny it. --H.L. Mencken


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal

?

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 6/6/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/6/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/6/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > ...
> > >  As a result, I think that for us mediation is more likely
> > > to be useful much earlier in the process, as disputes are only beginning
> > > and before they have really had a chance to heat up. This would require
> > > watching more closely for situations where mediation can help, and a
> > > more interventionist approach from the mediators, rather than waiting
> > > for cases to come to them.
> >
> > Once again, I think that's very true - but how can we get a system
> > where these conflicts are actually attended to that quickly?
> >
> > -- ambi
>
> We have RC patrol. Would a Mediation patrol be useful? It would be
> fairly simple to set up a page to allow people to post disputes they
> happen to come across. You can find many of them just by looking at
> talk pages on Special:Recentchanges.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
Sean Barret wrote,

>Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
>
> > steven l. rubenstein said:
> >
> >>David, this is an issue I and others have raised repeatedly over the
> >>past  years: many irresolvable disputes center on content, and
> >>Wikipedia needs a  mechanism for dealing with these content-based
> >>disputes.
> >
> >
> > Why?  If the disputes are irresolvable, why is it necessary to bring in a
> > deus ex machina to declare a resolution?  Isn't it just more honest to
> > leave the irresolvable unresolved?  I find this, the current way, quite
> > satisfactory and if the arbcom really is accepting cases that are in the
> > realm of content disputes then they should simply be more parsimonious in
> > the kind of dispute they accept.
>
>
>No dispute is irresolvable once you get past that archaic idea of NPOV
>and accept OTPOV -- the One True Point of View.

Sean misinterprets my position, and Tony either misunderstands it, or just
doesn't agree with me.  I do not believe that disputes over content are
irresolvable, but I do think that there are POV warriors who insist on
including content even if it comes from narrow and perhaps even
disreputable sources, and deleting content that is the product of good
research.  In many of these cases (which, I still remind you, is only a
small percentage of all content-related disputes), debates on talk pages
can go on for weeks and weeks.  Are these "irresolvable?"  No.  But a
committee could review what the different sources are and how they are
being presented (e.g. as mainstream authorities, as authorities taking a
minority position, as popular opinion, as representing a fringe
organization) and resolve the dispute by ruling on which sources are
inappropriate, and by giving clear guidance on how the remaining diverse
views can be represented in an NPOV way.  Is this effort an unnecessary
waste of time?  No.  Debates such as the ones I am talking about that go on
for weeks, even months, waste good editors' time, during which we have a
second-rate article.

I just do not understand this mental block so many people have.  They have
no problem with a mechanism that promotes more respectful relations within
a more harmonious community, yet have a problem with a mechanism that would
promote a better encyclopedia.  This is odd because the "better
encyclopedia" is what this project is all about.

Sean seems to think that all content disputes can me handled through our
NPOV position, and insinuates that my (and Jguk's and Mav's) desire to have
a mechanism to resolve content disputes will impose one point of
view.  This is nonsense for two reasons.  First, I have stated explicitly
that NPOV is one of the content-related policies such a committee should
enforce.  Second, read the NPOV policy carefully.  Id does not state that
"anything goes."  NPOV does not require that our article on the moon state,
"According to some, the moon is made of green cheese, although virtually
all astronomers disagree."  Don't laugh -- silly statements like this are
easy to spot when we are talking about physical phenomena.  But they are
much harder to spot when talking about historical and cultural phenomena,
which is one reason why some content disputes are protracted and cannot be
resolved by mediation alone.

Steve

PS what is with this "states for the record" crap?  Do conversations on the
list-serve have any authority over policy (that is, are these formal or
informal conversations)?  Certainly, we keep a record of list-serve
messages, but we are not writing for that record, we are writing for one
another.  And why are some quotes introduced by "X wrote" and others, "Y
stated for the record?"  Are Y's comments more official than X's?  What is
the point?

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


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

body:
>
> While I'm not an expert in French legislation, I highly doubt that
> it prohibits allowing other people to use your work for any purpose
> whatsoever. They might consider it a licence as opposed to public
> domain, but that doesn't make a difference in practice.

Well, I can tell you : it prohibits allowing other people to use your
work for any purpose whatsoever... (which is not the case with the
gfdl license for example).

We had such a discussion a few weeks ago.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Automatic image tagging

body:
>>
>>
>
> Some can be tagged correctly without the original uploader:
> * fair use
> * where a suitable source is given
> * images that are obviously PD because of age
> and probably some other cases.
>
> That said, the {{unverified}} template should probably include a
> warning
> not just to guess a license, and that doing so might have legal
> consequences. After all, if I tag a copyrighted picture with, say,
> {{GFDL}}, and wikipedia (or someone else using it) gets sued, they can
> point to me for tagging it, right?

That sounds perfect to me.


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject:
[Foundation-l] automated multi-edit comparator (was ass pus on
	IRC)

body:
What do you guys think of a bot that looks at edits by single
individuals over multiple pages to see how identical they are?

Say if VandalKing went to add "You feel foul" on 10 pages in a row,
the bot would catch that and alert someone... In recent changes, add
an option for "show only bots".

Thoughts?

Note that I don't want the discussion to turn to technical aspects
just yet.

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

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Find restaurants, movies, travel and more fun for the weekend. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/weekend.html


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On Jun 6, 2005, at 6:29 AM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> Sorry, but your last sentence is a bit confusing to me.
>
> Are you trying to say "the Polish Wikipedia would be part of
> assignments to add bibliographies, annotation, and various other
> activities"?
>
> Mark
>

That bit of wit is almost certainly numbered on a list of stupid puns
some place or other.


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> The simplest thing that comes to mind is to put the
> Mediation Committee
> in charge of the Requests for comments page. I think
> this would, if we
> can get enough mediators with enough energy, help
> address structural
> issues with both processes.
>
> There are two major complaints made about RfC. One
> is that the page is
> poorly maintained and regularly swells to an
> unwieldy size. The other is
> that it's not terribly effective, because many
> requests do not succeed
> in drawing much comment from people outside the
> dispute. Each of these
> problems also tends to exacerbate the other.
>

Well, there's a couple of use who check and prune the
requests quite often, but there's a lot of active
disputes at any one time so the page is always quite
large :-).

There's nothing to prevent anyone who wants to 'have a
go' at mediation jumping in and doing it on RfC and
3rd opinion. I do it. It would be nice if more people
did it, too. Perhaps the wording of the pages could be
altered to encourage people to try and mediate, rather
than make "you're right/he's wrong" type comments.

Dan

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Delirium wrote:
> As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought
> to be in the business of running political campaigns.  Providing
> resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose,
> sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other
> languages isn't our place.

If I understand correctly, it's not a political issue in the sense of
being controversial, it's a political issue in that polticians all want
to do something about it. That's what I meant in my original post,
anyway. The need for educational material in Hindi and
regional languages is not controversial. Most schools in India will
continue to use an Indian language in their classes, regardless of what
we do.

-- Tim Starling


body:
I think we are thinking about creating a committee to consider
whether there is published authority for information, popular or
unpopular. Beyond that it might consider the reputation and
credibility of the source, but first it must pass the threshold of
whether it exists at all. There is also the question of whether it is
reasonably convenient to access it. For example, a NYT's article
might cost 2 bucks but something that requires accessing Nexus or
consulting an obscure journal is much more expensive.

Fred

On Jun 6, 2005, at 8:25 AM, Sean Barrett wrote:

> I am very worried that we are seriously discussing the formation of
> a committee empowered to prohibit unpopular content from Wikipedia
> and to ban those that feel that it is important to record it


from_name: elwp at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] dump format

body:
Brion Vibber:
> > <page>
> >
sectiontext0

> >
sectiontext1

> >
sectiontext2

> >   <revision><text type="sectionlist">0 1</text></revision>
> >   <revision><text type="sectionlist">0 2</text></revision>
> > </page>
>
> Can you show that this does significantly better than gzip?

I don't know if this alone does better than gzip. The output
is meant to be compressed with gzip of course. And gzip
compresses this much better than a stream of complete revision
texts.

I've tested it with the dumps of the German Wikipedia. The
results are here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:El/History_compression

On average the total size of compressed revision texts can be
reduced to (not by) 18.5%. As the complete dumps include other
information as well (user, timestamp ...) that don't benefit
from my method, I guess the final sizes will be around 1/4.

The window size of the deflate function is the main cause for
this huge difference. Its maximum value is 32kB, but many pages -
especially discussion pages - are larger. So you must bring
matching regions closer together. Splitting files by section
and sorting sections of several revisions by section heading
does exactly this. (And additionally one can omit unchanged
sections.)

> Certainly it
> won't simplify dump processing.

Yes, but it's not very complicated. The program just needs
to keep some sections in memory and concatenate them.

--
Geschenkt: 3 Monate GMX ProMail gratis + 3 Ausgaben stern gratis
++ Jetzt anmelden & testen ++ http://www.gmx.net/de/go/promail ++


subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal

body:
Excellent. I was just watching the debate in the House of Commons on
the issue and there seems to be genuine puzzlement as to what the
people of Europe want. Surely, if this idea has any traction among
the population at large, very valuable feedback would be obtained. I
assume this will be multilingual?

Fred

On Jun 6, 2005, at 8:35 AM, Jan Ulrich Hasecke wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've just added a proposal on meta.wikimedia.org: Wikitution - A
> Free  European Constitution.
>
> The citizens of France and The Netherlands did not accept the
> proposed european constitution in two national polls. Europe is
> facing a serious crisis. It needs a free and democratic
> constitution, to which everybody can contribute and which will be
> accepted by the great majority of all citizens in Europe.
>
> The site is up and running: http://www.wikitution.org
>
> I set up the wiki and registered the domain name without knowing
> that Merlin of Eragon proposed "Wiki constitution/political theory"
> with the same domain name. I am sorry for that. The problem in
> europe is urgent and we need a solution soon. I hope that we can
> cooperate.
>
> I think that this is a temporary project. We cannot debate about a
> constitution for years, but need to come to an end in two or three
> years. If the project will run successfully I foresee much traffic
> and great organizational work, which I cannot do by myself. So I
> would be glad, if the project would be a temporary wikimedia-
> project and if some more experienced mediawiki-users will join the
> team.
>
> Thanks!
> Jan Ulrich Hasecke
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Email authentication on Wikimedia wikis + Single
	user sign-on

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Tim Starling schrieb:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>>I'm not sure what Tim is referring to.
>>
>>There's support for using a shared user table for multiple wikis; that
>>can't be used for our sites as it came two years or so too late.
>>Accounts are already established separately on each wiki which can't be
>>automatically resolved in a clean way, so this has never been an option.
>
>
> Yes it can. We've talked about conflict resolution methods before. We
> merge accounts that are the same person, remove clashing accounts that
> have no contributions and for the small percentage of genuine clashes,
> I've suggested allocating them on a first-come first-served basis and
> requiring the others to change their name.

So I'm user "Magnus Manske" on en, de, meta, and I-don't-know-what.
Suppose someone created a user "Magnus Manske" (unlikely for that name,
but anyway;-) on, say, the French wikipedia, a week ago. He has edited
three articles since then. He sees the new user system a minute before
me and signs on. So he gets to keep the "Magnus Manske" user and I'll
have to change my user name?

Frankly, I don't think so.

Image Lir, signing on as "Jimbo Wales" on some mostly usused wikipedia,
with a little luck getting that user name officially. Or as Brion Vibber
or Tim Starling.
Granted, that's extreme, but even without malicous users doing "user
name squatting", first-come first-serve strikes me as a recepie for chaos.

I think I suggested this some time ago, but here it goes again:
* Create "global" users for all unique user names in wiki(pedia)-land
* Merge all users which carry same name and password hash (and maybe
email), where all instances across wiki-land match perfectly
* Block creation of all conflicting user names, both locally and globally
* Work the conflicting ones out one-by-one manually, while keeping them
active locally

This seems like the only fair way to me.

Magnus

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from_name: Leuch

subject: [Wikitech-l] I'm volunteer for a "Static HTML tree dumps" program

body:
Hello,

I'm student and for the next months i'll have some free time to spend for free
developement. If the announcment of this article is still relevant, please can u
describe what u want exactly ?

I'm skilled in mysql, php stuffs, and i know a little about LAMP, but no more
things usefull... ready to learn perl :)

First i can try to do that from the _Weekly database dumps_, Do you think it's
feasable and usefull ? Say what u think about that plz.

Sorry for my bad english.

Leuch.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship discussion: Thanks to all

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Dovi Jacobs wrote:
>
>
>>Wikimedia is committed to free software and free content: All of our
>>projects are provided "free as in beer" and licensed to be used
>>freely (as in "free speech"). We are also committed to "free speech"
>>in the traditional sense, namely that fear or threats of censorship
>>will not be allowed to interfere with the development of any existing
>>or proposed Wikimedia project."
>>
>>
>
>I agree with you, and I think you've been mostly right about everything
>that you've said.
>
>The reason it took me so long to answer this thread (in addition of
>course to being insanely busy day and night with everything) is that I
>have been thinking about it slowly and carefully.  It's really important
>and in my opinion it is really really difficult.
>
>I want to state a hypothetical and then at the end of this letter, I
>will also talk about what happens when the assumptions in my
>hypothetical are not true.  So read to the end before responding to my
>hypothetical. :-)
>
>Imagine for a moment that we knew with absolute certainty (we don't)
>that starting a Chinese language Wikinews would result in complete and
>total and permanent censorship within mainland China of all Wikipedia
>projects.  Remember, all of Wikipedia is currently accessible in China
>and Wikipedians in China are doing a wonderful job of building a
>wonderful resource.
>
>This is something very important -- if I remember correctly even the BBC
>is routinely blocked in China.
>
>Now, imagine that we start Chinese Wikinews anyway, out of a strong
>desire not to bow to fear or threat of censorship.  Suppose we start it,
>indeed, with a majority of mainland Chinese Wikipedians opposing it, and
>only a slim majority of non-mainland Chinese Wikipedians supporting it
>(hypothetical assumptions, again).
>
>And then suppose that all of Wikipedia is, as per the hypothetical in
>which we are operating, blocked permanently from China.  The Mainland
>Chinese Wikipedia community would effectively be destroyed.  Chinese
>Wikipedia(s) would continue to grow, but much more slowly, and 1 billion
>people would be deprived of the opportunity to learn about it.
>
>We would be lauded as heros in the western media.  I'd have my face on
>the cover of Time Magazine and Der Spiegel and so on.  "Wikipedia shut
>down by the Chinese government" -- an exciting story!  We feel great
>about ourselves for fighting against censorship!
>
>But would we really have done anything useful?  Not really.  We would
>have ruined the chance to get free content into China by fighting for
>something not even supported very strongly by the Wikipedia community.
>
>Do you agree with me that *if* the conditions of this hypothetical were
>true, then as a matter of _tactical_ wisdom in our fight for freedom of
>information, it would be a suicidal battle to engage in?
>
>Fighting a war is a bad analogy for what we are doing, but it does
>illustrate that not every retreat or avoidance of the enemy is a moral
>failing.  So long as we remain strongly committed to winning the overall
>battle for freedom of knowledge, we can choose our battles wisely -- let
>us choose the battles that we will win, not the battles which will lead
>us to a ruinous loss.
>
>Now, if you agree with me that *if my hypothetical were true* then we
>should avoid this fight at this time, and if you agree with me that if
>an opposite hypothetical were true (i.e. that we _know_ that wikinews
>won't hurt anything) we should open it, then the remaining question is
>how to make a decision under conditions of uncertainty.
>
>There is only one way: careful deliberation and judgment in consultation
>with people who know and care about the overall goals.
>
>And that's where we are.  We aren't surrendering to Chinese censorship,
>we are pausing to evaluate the situation.  We are gathering in strength.
> We are learning about what to do to ensure freedom in the long run.
>
I very much agree with this analysis.  There is always a need to
maintain some focus on the general goals of the projects. Primarily, it
involves making information freely available to everyone.  This kind of
goal has more of the "free as in beer" characteristics.  Most of our
core principle focus on providing access to both writers and readers.
Our discussions on intellectual property laws ultimately relate to how
this might be done.  Even NPOV focuses on seeing multiple sides of the
story, rather than suppressing opposition.

Freedom as in speech may follow as a natural consequence of NPOV.  Just
as the success of Wikipedia in obscure languages will depend on work
done by speakers of those languages so too will free speech in
relatively unfree countries depend on the action of the people
affected.  Those of us in relatively free countries can help but we
can't interfere.  We also need to accept that freedom in those places
may look quite different from what is familiar to us.

I don't know how tongue-in-cheek Jimbo was when he spoke of the way that
history is taught in the United States.  Notably when it leaves the
perception that other countries can be ignored until they go to war
against each other, at which point a poerful outsider needs to go in and
knock some sense into the combatants.  As often as not the effect of
that can be that the combatants will then unite, but only to fight
against a common enemy.

Free speech is not gained by free idealists haranguing the unfree from
the comfort of their armchairs.

I think that so far we have had an easy ride in our free-as-in-beer
approach. Phenomenal growth has probably left a lot of people stunned
and wondering how this 10-ton weight ended up on their toes.  For some,
like Britannica that already had to adapt to Encarta in 1994, the blow
may be fatal.  Others may just be waiting for auditors' reports before
they can understand the effect on the bottom line.  We are in the lag
before the reports.  There are bound to be some reactions when they
realize that this upstart has undermined their bottom line rather than
attacked it.  I can forsee some interesting times ahead, which I hope we
will face without succombing to panic.  That is best accomplished by
holding tight to core values.  Of the two kinds of freedom, both are
important, but only one is a core value.

Ec


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Magnus Manske wrote:

>I think I suggested this some time ago, but here it goes again:
>* Create "global" users for all unique user names in wiki(pedia)-land
>* Merge all users which carry same name and password hash (and maybe
>email), where all instances across wiki-land match perfectly
>* Block creation of all conflicting user names, both locally and globally

Are there any stats on how many conflicting usernames are in the db? Is it
possible to run some query on the user tables? If we only have 10
conflicting accounts, going manually is a workable strategy. Not if we
have 20,000.

Alfio


body:
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Alfio Puglisi schrieb:
> On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>>I think I suggested this some time ago, but here it goes again:
>>* Create "global" users for all unique user names in wiki(pedia)-land
>>* Merge all users which carry same name and password hash (and maybe
>>email), where all instances across wiki-land match perfectly
>>* Block creation of all conflicting user names, both locally and globally
>
>
> Are there any stats on how many conflicting usernames are in the db? Is it
> possible to run some query on the user tables? If we only have 10
> conflicting accounts, going manually is a workable strategy. Not if we
> have 20,000.

Even with 20,000 initial conflicts, it would be quite possible. IMHO
many/most conflicts will be with user names that were created a year ago
and used once, with no user page.

Then maybe some accounts created by the same user, with different
passwords or emails.

Come on, a community that created two million encyclopedia articles
could merge 20,000 user accounts in an instant ;-)

(though I strongly doubt there are as many as 20,000).

Magnus
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body:
Folk with eccentric points of view such as splinter political parties
often maintain websites and sometimes even publish books.

Fred

On Jun 6, 2005, at 10:00 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Fred Bauder said:
>
>> I think we are thinking about creating a committee to consider
>> whether there is published authority for information, popular or
>> unpopular. Beyond that it might consider the reputation and
>> credibility of the source, but first it must pass the threshold of
>> whether it exists at all. There is also the question of whether it is
>> reasonably convenient to access it. For example, a NYT's article
>> might cost 2 bucks but something that requires accessing Nexus or
>> consulting an obscure journal is much more expensive.
>>
>
> Well the latter problem can usually be solved by someone with a
> library
> subscription.  I'm loath to sanction anyone to rate the credibility of
> sources; rather we should continue to treat all sources with great
> circumspection.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
Mark Pellegrini wrote:

> The Arbitration Committee is seeking public commentary and suggestions
> pertaining to an ongoing problem:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/RFC
>
My immediate impression is that having a committee rule on content would
be ruinous.  Successful NPOV depends on people finding common ground
even when that may be very difficult.

Committee decisions on content will only please those who like to suck
on frozen truthsicles.

Ec


body:
Fred Bauder stated for the record:

> There is also the question of whether it is  reasonably convenient
> to access it. For example, a NYT's article  might cost 2 bucks but
> something that requires accessing Nexus or  consulting an obscure
> journal is much more expensive.

So material from an "obscure" journal is less acceptable?  I guess my
digging into old Soviet naval records for information about their
nuclear submarines is a waste of time.

The harder the original editor worked, the more likely his work will be
deleted.  That's ... I'm groping for the word ... smart? ... no ... oh,
I have it: perverse.

--
  Sean Barrett     | If you insist upon discussing my fiasco, I
  sean at epoptic.com | shall forthwith go home. --Nadreck of Palain


from_name: admin Yellowikis

body:
Would it be possible to give username priority first to sysops, then
by number of accounts owned across different wikis, then most recent
edit activity, and finally date of first registration?

or some combination of these.

That should reduce the number of conflicts to almost zero.

Paul

On 6/6/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
>
> Alfio Puglisi schrieb:
> > On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Magnus Manske wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I think I suggested this some time ago, but here it goes again:
> >>* Create "global" users for all unique user names in wiki(pedia)-land
> >>* Merge all users which carry same name and password hash (and maybe
> >>email), where all instances across wiki-land match perfectly
> >>* Block creation of all conflicting user names, both locally and globally
> >
> >
> > Are there any stats on how many conflicting usernames are in the db? Is it
> > possible to run some query on the user tables? If we only have 10
> > conflicting accounts, going manually is a workable strategy. Not if we
> > have 20,000.
>
> Even with 20,000 initial conflicts, it would be quite possible. IMHO
> many/most conflicts will be with user names that were created a year ago
> and used once, with no user page.
>
> Then maybe some accounts created by the same user, with different
> passwords or emails.
>
> Come on, a community that created two million encyclopedia articles
> could merge 20,000 user accounts in an instant ;-)
>
> (though I strongly doubt there are as many as 20,000).
>
> Magnus
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFCpAdACZKBJbEFcz0RAsceAJ9XCIZkVYHeTUc9zJCXkIrUkDi3KwCeMXaP
> FY2PxZ2KrUNuf702SaD7Bsk=
> =BDsA
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Jack Lynch wrote:

>There does need to be some sort of final say on matters of NPOV and
>opinion. Concensus cannot always be achieved, and many contentious
>pages are controlled by a POV lobby which alert one another when a
>vote w partican potential comes along.
>
The problem there is more the POV lobby than the specific POV that they
are supporting.

Ec


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

> steven l. rubenstein stated for the record:
>
>> What we need first is a ruling by or concerning the ArbCom that it
>> will consider and pass judgements on content-based disputes, or it
>> will not.  We just need to make this clear, one way or the other.
>
> The ArbComm[0] will neither consider nor pass judgement on
> content-based disputes.  Is that clear enough for you?

There is still a distinction to be made between "judgement on
content-based disputes" and "judgement on content."

Ec


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>steven l. rubenstein said:
>
>
>>David, this is an issue I and others have raised repeatedly over the
>>past  years: many irresolvable disputes center on content, and
>>Wikipedia needs a  mechanism for dealing with these content-based
>>disputes.
>>
>>
>Why?  If the disputes are irresolvable, why is it necessary to bring in a
>deus ex machina to declare a resolution?  Isn't it just more honest to
>leave the irresolvable unresolved?  I find this, the current way, quite
>satisfactory and if the arbcom really is accepting cases that are in the
>realm of content disputes then they should simply be more parsimonious in
>the kind of dispute they accept.
>
Insisting on a solution to that paradox leads to the whole cloth from
which religions (including scientism) are carved.

People find it very difficult to accept that a problem may have no
solution or that a question may have no answer.

Ec


body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

>On 6/5/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>That's why I want to breath new life into the Mediation Committee. I
>>think Mediation shouldn't be another step towards banning either party
>>but a genuine effort at resolving the problem.
>>
>>
>Absolutely. Many people see mediation as only an annoying formality to
>skirt around before going to ArbCom. Mediation needs to be seen as an
>end in itself.
>
And an uncooperative attitude in mediation could be a factor in an
arbitration decision.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I'm not familiar with COPPA.  What does it stand for?  I also have no
>>  memory of evr visiting Live Journal.
>
> If your answer is "I don't know", then why do you reply?

I read that attitude as equivalent to saying that COPPA is irrelevant.
We can safely bignore it.

>> When someone says that he is not a child, who can tell the
>> difference?
>
> That is irrelevant. I am talking about cases where we do know.

How do you know?  You're practising age discrimination.  Maybe kids are
better off staying in the closet about their age.

Ec


body:
Aside from the question of whether you are doing original research
(which, by the way, I heartily approve of and support a change in
policy to accept) , a good effort to identify your source is still
necessary. This is a grey area. If I go to the Saguache County
Courthouse and look up documents on say the [[Baca Grant No. 4]] that
would seem to be both a well documented source (book and page) and
publicly available but also difficult and expensive to access and
original research to boot. So pretty ambiguous in terms of our policies.

Fred

On Jun 6, 2005, at 11:30 AM, Sean Barrett wrote:

> Fred Bauder stated for the record:
>
>
>> There is also the question of whether it is  reasonably convenient
>> to access it. For example, a NYT's article  might cost 2 bucks but
>> something that requires accessing Nexus or  consulting an obscure
>> journal is much more expensive.
>>
>
> So material from an "obscure" journal is less acceptable?  I guess
> my digging into old Soviet naval records for information about
> their nuclear submarines is a waste of time.
>
> The harder the original editor worked, the more likely his work
> will be deleted.  That's ... I'm groping for the word ...
> smart? ... no ... oh, I have it: perverse.
>
> --
>  Sean Barrett     | If you insist upon discussing my fiasco, I
>  sean at epoptic.com | shall forthwith go home. --Nadreck of Palain
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 6/5/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's why I want to breath new life into the Mediation Committee. I
> think Mediation shouldn't be another step towards banning either party
> but a genuine effort at resolving the problem.

Absolutely. Many people see mediation as only an annoying formality to
skirt around before going to ArbCom. Mediation needs to be seen as an
end in itself.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: nicolas ramke

subject: [WikiEN-l] two comments

body:
Hello!

Listen, I have two suggestions --

1 - make a 'printer friendly' version of articles, so one does not have to cut and past into a word file and then erase the dozens of 'hyper links' !

2 - have your email address in plain site!  It took me a long time to find this address!

thank you

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] dump format

body:
David Gerard:
> You mean, something closer to keeping diffs rather than each revision in
> its entirety? Have you tested using diff rather than this custom diff-like
> thing?

Diff compresses well ([1], Consecutive forward diffs). And it is probably
fast as well, if you want to access all consecutive revisions. I developed
the algorithm I proposed primarily for compressing history blobs [2]. This
would not be possible with diffs, because if someone wants to get the
20th revision in a blob, the server would have to apply 19 patches, which
would be very slow.

I don't know if my SplitMergeGzipHistoryBlobs will be used some day,
but if so, the generation of dumps would certainly be faster if the
same logical structure would be used.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/History_compression
[2] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2310

--
Weitersagen: GMX DSL-Flatrates mit Tempo-Garantie!
Ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Strawman attacks on recent proposals

body:
Sean writes:
> I am very worried that we are seriously discussing the
> formation of a committee empowered to prohibit unpopular
> content from Wikipedia and to ban those that feel that it
> is important to record it.

Isn't that a deliberate lie?  What facts (written in NPOV
format) did Larry Sanger try to censor?  What facts
(written in NPOV format) did Steve Rubenstein try to
censor?  NONE.

I strongly object to this strawman attack - which borders
on an ad homenim attack - on the discussion of improving
Wikipedia.

Folks, we still have a major problem. There are many people
here who unfortunately refuse to cite sources, engage in
original research, write things that are just false and
bizarre.

For years many of our best contributors have been driven
away due to these problems, and the Wikipedia leadership
has done little to address the core problem: While we
enforce rules about "playing nice", virtually no one
attempts to seriously enforce our rules and policies on
citing sources, verifiability, and just plain making sure
that our articles do not contain flat-out bullshit.

There are many people who are exceptions to this, of
course, like Steve R. and JayJG. For them, following
Wikipedia policy such as citing sources, verifiability, and
removing original content are actually important, and not
just lip-service.  However people like them are working on
an individual basis.  That just doesn't cut it for an
encyclopedia of tens of thousands of articles!

For some time Steve Rubenstein and a few others have
pointed out this flaw, and have made the quite reasonable
suggestion that we have some sort of ArbCom to deal with
content disputes.  (Remember, the entire point of this
project is to create reliable encyclopedia content.
Everything else is an aside.)

Yet at every turn people who ask for such minor and
obviously useful control mechanisms are attacked with
strawman criticisms, falsely accused of censorship, and are
generally treated with disdain.  Is it any wonder that
Wikipedia still has a relatively poor reputation among many
college, university and high school teachers?

Until we take our primary goal seriously - dealing with
content problems - Wikipedia will remain at beast a
curiosity, an "encyclopedia" filled with questionable
content.

What's most shocking about this is that the problems we
face are so easily solvable (for instance, set up volunteer
ArbComs for article content) but every proposal is attacked
in heated and misleading ways.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Compulsory Mediation,
	Was Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
Suppose we did require cooperation with mediation and consider how
the user conducted themselves and sanction those who don't cooperate.
What do we gain, what do we lose?

Fred

On Jun 6, 2005, at 12:10 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Stephen Bain wrote:
>
>
>> On 6/5/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> That's why I want to breath new life into the Mediation Committee. I
>>> think Mediation shouldn't be another step towards banning either
>>> party
>>> but a genuine effort at resolving the problem.
>>>
>>>
>> Absolutely. Many people see mediation as only an annoying
>> formality to
>> skirt around before going to ArbCom. Mediation needs to be seen as an
>> end in itself.
>>
>>
> And an uncooperative attitude in mediation could be a factor in an
> arbitration decision.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: possible interwiki solution

references:
<d7s71u$3la$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d7sci3$g1q$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d7sgqi$q7h$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d7v185$4j4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Elly Waterman wrote:
>
>>
>> If there is no lookalike article in another language, you just should
>> not link to it. I think these problems will also be diminished by a
>> central database, at least they get more clearly visible.
>
>
> That's your POV. Other people disagree. If you are going to implement
> some technical solution to a problem, you can't just say "if everyone
> follows _my_ opinion, the problem is solved".

Hoi,
When a solution is proposed, it has its own inherent rules/restrictuons,
calling this POV is a bit off. A solution like this is either adopted or
rejected. It has to be seen for what it is; a solution to a problem.
When it improves on the current practices, it is a way forward. Not
accepting is because some people have different views is stupid. Let
those people voice their arguments. Now your argument is not much more
than "it has nothing to do with me". If you do not have an opinion, do
not voice one.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Email authentication on Wikimedia wikis +
	Singleuser sign-on

body:
> Would it be possible to give username priority first to sysops,
> then by number of accounts owned across different wikis, then
> most recent edit activity, and finally date of first registration? or
> some combination of these. That should reduce the number of
> conflicts to almost zero.

This would lead to conflict of values.
We should be as technocratic as possible with all this stuff,
then least 'value conflicts' can be raised. And sure, it can be
implemented faster.

The best selector is most ancient revision actually
(that nearly matches date of first registration).

Number of accounts on different wikis? Sure, there are
people who register their accounts on every possible wiki.

Most recent edit activity? How does it relate to any sense?

Sysops? Should we encourage people to climb that ladder
just because their accounts were safer? ;-)

Cheers,
Domas


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Ellywa's Law

body:
On 6/6/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> It runs: "After growing to some 10,000s of artricles, there will be a steady
> growth of duplicate information (two articles on the same topic or the same
> information once in a specialised and once in a broader article)."

This is related to the [[Birthday paradox]], in that it happens far
quicker than you would expect.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
steven l. rubenstein said:

> I do not believe that disputes over
> content are  irresolvable, but I do think that there are POV warriors
> who insist on  including content even if it comes from narrow and
> perhaps even
> disreputable sources, and deleting content that is the product of good
> research.

Arbcom can and does rule in such cases. In the Robert the Bruce case, for
instance, arbcom affirmed the principle that "Removal of references from
articles is generally inappropriate" by 8-0 and "It is inappropriate to
remove blocks of well-referenced information which is germane to the
subject from articles on the grounds that the information advances a point
of view. Wikipedia's NPOV policy contemplates inclusion of all significant
points of view" by 9-0.

These were also reaffirmed in the case of Robert Blair, who was involved
in the same dispute on the other side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Robert_the_Bruce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Robert_Blair


body:
On 6/6/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Folk with eccentric points of view such as splinter political parties
> often maintain websites and sometimes even publish books.

But when there is a source for some fringe idea at least we can attach
the source, so people can judge the quality of that source themselves,
rather then leave it 'some people'.

Attaching sources doesn't require that we judge the sources, but our
lack of judgement doesn't prohibit our readers from judging the
source.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

>
> In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in
> fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on
> wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions,
> and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and
> other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.

Not only that.  The work has meaning because it is available to
everybody.  Once finished, and the degree granted, it is no longer
relegated to gathering dust in  inaccesible library stacks where nobody
ever visits.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
On 6/6/05, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> I think theres one issue that your missing here with mediation - Most
> parties that get to the point of arbitration have no desire to allow
> mediators to get involved, and have no desire to even consider discussing
> the situation.

I don't agree with this.

It is true that there exist incurably closed minded and uncooperative
people. I believe such people form only a tiny minority of the people
involved in Wikipedia. We should not worry about them when deciding
our arbitration and moderation procedures, because the ultimate
destination for such people is ejection from our community.

We need to use triage:

1. Those who want to cooperate and find a mutual solution but need an
outsider to facilitate communication and to help cut away moot issues.
2. Those who are not interested in cooperation but can be reasoned
with and can be convinced to accept a compromise.
3. People who can't be cured. (This group consists mostly of people
who get their jollies due to disrupting wikipedia).

We should only expend substantial effort working on mediation support
for a lower group once the higher group has been sufficiently handled.

Right now we have some users who want to help with disputes whom are
very heavy handed. I think these approaches are good for class 3 users
above, but if used on the first group it often turns them into the
second.  I think a lot of the recent grumbling about our toleration of
aggressive admins is because by large they only tend to abuse #3s,
which no one cares about.. quite rightly. :)


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC numbering bug

body:
If you set up an article with sections like this, the auto-numbering gives
an incorrect result:
==   1
==== 1.1
==== 1.2
===  1.1
===  1.2

Should the "====" sections be labelled "1.0.?"? I think "yes".

I have searched BugZilla for mention of this without success: before I add
this does anyone else know if it has already been added?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Ryan Lane

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LDAP Authentication and Mediawiki 1.5

body:
Brion Vibber <brion <at> pobox.com> writes:

>
> Cool! Doesn't look like the core changes should break anything; I've
> checked those in. I haven't touched the plugin itself yet, but we could
> put it in CVS with our other extensions.
>
> One nit: there's inconsistent use of tabs versus spaces for indentation;
> I went ahead and normalized the bits I checked in to tabs.
>

Great.

I'll check my plugin for the spaces/tabs problem. Thanks for bringing that to my
attention, I didn't even pay attention to that.

Thanks,

Ryan Lane
NAVOCEANO


from_name: Rebecca

body:
On 6/6/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I don't think the problem with mediation is a lack of training or skills
> (no offense, but by and large I wouldn't call the arbitrators
> professionally trained either). Mediation can be handled by anybody with
> good sense, patience, and the ability to resist getting over-agitated by
> the emotions of the disputing parties. We actually have had quite a few
> instances of successful mediation, but many of them have happened
> outside the formal process, often handled by people who are not part of
> the Mediation Committee.

I think you're partly right there - mediation can be handled by anyone
with those qualities, and in many cases, has indeed worked. I know of
many instances of successful mediation outside of the formal process.
The problem, though, is that a) the formal process hasn't been working
- people haven't been able to get mediators to a particular dispute
when its needed to prevent it from going any further, and b) some of
the disputes are just too heated for all but the best mediators to do
- and we don't have very many of those. It's for the latter reason
that I'd really like to see someone like Ed Poor put together a guide
to help those of us who aren't quite so good at it.

> [skipped a bunch of stuff that is very true]

>  As a result, I think that for us mediation is more likely
> to be useful much earlier in the process, as disputes are only beginning
> and before they have really had a chance to heat up. This would require
> watching more closely for situations where mediation can help, and a
> more interventionist approach from the mediators, rather than waiting
> for cases to come to them.

Once again, I think that's very true - but how can we get a system
where these conflicts are actually attended to that quickly?

-- ambi


body:
But if the article is [[astrophysics]]?

Fred

On Jun 6, 2005, at 12:54 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Fred Bauder said:
>
>> Folk with eccentric points of view such as splinter political parties
>> often maintain websites and sometimes even publish books.
>>
>>
>
> Then those websites and books are pretty good references for their
> opinions.  I don't see a problem here.  A flat earth society
> website is an
> excellent reference for a description of the views of that society.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Fred Bauder said:
> Sometimes we do, but sometimes we lose our nerve. Most of the
> arbitration committee are elected. Insisting on inclusion of
> unpopular points of view is not conducive to maintaining popularity.
> Announcing a high-minded principle is one thing, living by it -
> another.
>

Well it isn't as if you were being paid, or anything. :)

Seriously, I don't know why anyone serving on arbcom would be interested
in serving more than a single term.  It must be exhausting.


body:
On 6/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Fred Bauder stated for the record:
> > There is also the question of whether it is  reasonably convenient
> > to access it. For example, a NYT's article  might cost 2 bucks but
> > something that requires accessing Nexus or  consulting an obscure
> > journal is much more expensive.
>
> So material from an "obscure" journal is less acceptable?  I guess my
> digging into old Soviet naval records for information about their
> nuclear submarines is a waste of time.
>
> The harder the original editor worked, the more likely his work will be
> deleted.  That's ... I'm groping for the word ... smart? ... no ... oh,
> I have it: perverse.

I agree, that is a foolish metric.

Now, if we have two equal sources (that is, roughly equal reliability
and authority) for the same information we should choose the one which
is more widely available (and of course, cost is a factor there).

This is like the pruning I do on external links... sometimes I find
places where someone has taken free content (Linux documentation
project materials, for example), and place it on their blog or a site
laden with advertising then linked it from Wikipedia.  When I
encounter those I change the link to point to the more authoritative
source.

This should not dissuade us from using a very expensive, very rare
source, or even an advertising laden websource, if that is what is
available for the information. That someone can verify its
authenticity and authortativeness is the bar we impose.

That said, it would be a shame if we wrote articles with only very
expensive sources, but I don't think we are running any risk of that.
:)


body:
Maybe some of the museums need to have their fingers slapped as happened
in  http://www.eff.org/legal/ISP_liability/OPG_v_Diebold/

Ec

Fred Bauder wrote:

> The law is not unclear, nor is the fact that it is considered ethical
> to seek to intimidate by adopting a posture which although it has
> little, or even no support in law, may yet succeed in influencing
> other's behavior.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jun 4, 2005, at 11:41 PM, Sj wrote:
>
>> At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated
>> explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to
>> be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of
>> those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and
>> commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that.  (I am
>> more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).
>>
>> So I do not think these are random museums breaking from tradition, or
>> overeager law departments stretching to expand their control beyond
>> current limits; perhaps the precedent here is unclear, or unclear to a
>> significant subset of museums and their lawyers.
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Homosexuals and other groups overrepresented
	here(was: sco/fiu-vro in danger)

body:
On 6/6/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Well, i'm left-handed, but I don't have Asperger's syndrome. Infact i've
> > never heard of it :/
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aspergian_Wikipedians

Is there a list of [[left handed|sinister]] wikipedians?


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
Sean Barret wrote,

>Silly statements that are so very hard to spot that they cannot be
>rebutted and can only be corrected by rendering them unexpressible are
>not silly.  They may be wrong, but they are not speedy-obliteration
>candidates.
>
>
>I am very worried that we are seriously discussing the formation of a
>committee empowered to prohibit unpopular content from Wikipedia and to
>ban those that feel that it is important to record it.

This is not a constructive comment.  I am sure everyone else understood I
was using a hyperbolic example just to make the point.  Anyone who has done
serious research in the social sciences or humanities (and this certainly
doesn't require a PhD.) can recognize inaccurate assertions that people who
have not done serious research probably will not recognize.  This is a
fact; no one would dispute that someone who has seriously researched
physics can tell the difference between a good or bad explanation of the
Uncertainty Principle, or the theory of Special Relativity.  The same goes
for articles on history, politics, culture, and so on.

Moreover, no one has mentioned "unpopular" content and Sean is just waving
a red herring to distract us from a serious problem.  In one of my own
messages -- here or at the project page -- I pointed out that one use of
such a committee is to ensure that the content is being presented in an
NPOV way, or to ensure that the sources are properly represented.  Anyone
can assert something and cite a book.  But in some cases readers need to
know whether the author of that book was published by a university press, a
trade press, or a vanity press, or whether the book was written by someone
with a PhD. in Biblical Studies or Geology.  You might think that disputes
revolving around such questions would be easy to resolve, and of course, in
many cases, they are.  But sometimes they are not, and there is a need for
some mechanism to arbitrate content.

Finally, Brian reminds me that I must repeat that Wikipedia is first and
foremost an encyclopedia.  In an encyclopedia, accuracy is of the utmost
important.  Brian should not put in inaccurate content, and then protest
its deletion because it is "unpopular."

Steve

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Jimmy Wales said:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>> My daughter recently asked Danny why the word 'receipt' has a 'p' in
>>> it. Well, he gave a decent answer but I think he made it up out of
>>> thin air. That's the best that most of us can do, even very well
>>> educated and smart people.
>>>
>> The irony with such situations arises when you answer "I don't know",
>> and somebody still insists on an answer.  So you just oblige them with
>> a made-up answer.  Those insisting on an answer are not just children.
>
> I should note based on what I said, that Danny didn't make up a crazy
> answer, and he properly couched it in terms of being a possible theory.
> He offered that perhaps a long time ago people pronounced with with a
> p.
> So his answer was perfectly fine, and properly indicated his own doubt.
> :-)
>
> My own answer was much worse: "Beats me, ask Danny."
>

Receipt, like debt, is a post-hoc latinization of a Middle English word
derived from Norman French.  dette by way of debitum was latinized to
debt.  Receite by way of recepta (neut pl) was latinized to receipt.  The
letters p and b in these cases were almost certainly always silent.


body:
On 6/6/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Aside from the question of whether you are doing original research
> (which, by the way, I heartily approve of and support a change in
> policy to accept) , a good effort to identify your source is still
> necessary. This is a grey area. If I go to the Saguache County
> Courthouse and look up documents on say the [[Baca Grant No. 4]] that
> would seem to be both a well documented source (book and page) and
> publicly available but also difficult and expensive to access and
> original research to boot. So pretty ambiguous in terms of our policies.

A open invitation to original research would be a bad thing... but at
the same time the prohibition against it denies the ability to print
common sense to those in a field... Despite the handwaving claims to
the contrary, it can be quite difficult (measured against the value of
including the text) to find a citation for something that is common
sense in a given field but not necessarily outside it.  Fortunately,
at least on en, we look the other way on original research unless
there is a dispute.

We need to start thinking about ways to include original research in a
way which maximises the gains and minimizes the harms, and what sorts
of research could be most easily included.

I've been thinking about one such way which might be useful: Form a
new project called Wikiviews.  Wikiviews is a collaborative framework
for conducting and collecting interviews with notable people.  The
wikiviews community would establish notability criteria to decide who
is eligible for an interview for example, having an article on
wikipedia about them would be a great start, but it would also be
useful to interview notable professionals and hobbyists in their areas
of interest.  Collaborative consensus building can be used to create
proposed questions. The interview is then performed and stored, and
can then be used for citations in Wikipedia articles. This would give
us greater ability to insert informed opinion into an article without
running into many of the problems with original research since we
could attach a source to those views.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> My daughter recently asked Danny why the word 'receipt' has a 'p' in it.
>> Well, he gave a decent answer but I think he made it up out of thin air.
>> That's the best that most of us can do, even very well educated and
>> smart people.
>>
> The irony with such situations arises when you answer "I don't know",
> and somebody still insists on an answer.  So you just oblige them with a
> made-up answer.  Those insisting on an answer are not just children.

I should note based on what I said, that Danny didn't make up a crazy
answer, and he properly couched it in terms of being a possible theory.
 He offered that perhaps a long time ago people pronounced with with a p.
So his answer was perfectly fine, and properly indicated his own doubt. :-)

My own answer was much worse: "Beats me, ask Danny."

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Scheduled global downtime

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> What I wonder is, in moves like this, why are they all moved at the
> same time? Why not move half, and then after we get _those_ up and
> running again move the other half?

Well, this involves other difficulties and complexities and potentially
much more extended downtime.  (And potentially, no actual downtime but a
period of extreme slowness.)

It was a difficult decision as to which to do, but I chose the "fast
move all at once option" after a consideration of time and resources and
difficulty on the volunteer admins.

In this case, all the volunteer admins need to do is be around when we
bring things back up.  Ideally, nothing should need to be done -- the
machines will all be unchanged in configuration, our ip numbers will be
routed to the new cage, everything should be identical.

Of course, nothing like this is ever ideal, and we should expect
catastrophe.

--Jimbo


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Indian languages and grants (was Re: Combined
	effort)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> The Indian language wikis suffer from the fact that most of the people
> in India with Internet access speak English. In fact, according to this
> article:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1719346.stm
>
> ...most keyboards in India have a US layout, and keyboards designed for
> Indian languages are unstandardized.

I can confirm this based on chatting with a group of Wikipedians and
potential Wikipedians when I was in India earlier this year.  At the
conference I was attending I hosted a special session on "Hindi
Wikipedia" and people told me that there's a major obstacle in that
typing Hindi on an English keyboard is quite difficult, and there is no
standard Hindi keyboard which is widely available.

> I think the production of content accessible to less well educated
> people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with
> Wikipedia's mission.

I agree completely.

> I think it would be great if Wikimedia could ignore distracting grant
> opportunities to provide content for already well-resourced populations,
> such as biologists or American 10 year olds, and concentrate on its core
> premise. We have a method for cheap content generation, now how can we
> use that method to do the most good? How can we use scarce funds as
> leverage?

I agree with you although it is not clear to me what you mean by
"distracting".  I spend a lot of time talking to NGOs in Africa and
about Africa.  I will be going to Africa in November with a specific eye
towards learning more about what we might usefullly do.  I share with
you the notion that this is one of our most important missions.

> Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and
> lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent
> mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical
> measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a
> full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of
> the advertising.

It is possible, but it is of course also possible to waste a lot of
money for no good purpose.

Even so, yes, I think that we should understand that by *some methods*
which we don't yet understand, it is likely to be necessary for us to
spend money (which means, necessary for us to raise money) to make some
solid progress in some of these areas.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sco/fiu-vro in danger..

body:
David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:
> Indeed, the amount of openly LGBT Wikipedians is interestingly high. I don't
> know why Wikipedia is so appealing to homosexual contributors, but it
> appears to be that it is.

We also have a disproportionate number of left handed people.

--Jimbo


body:
On 6/6/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/6/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > ...
> >  As a result, I think that for us mediation is more likely
> > to be useful much earlier in the process, as disputes are only beginning
> > and before they have really had a chance to heat up. This would require
> > watching more closely for situations where mediation can help, and a
> > more interventionist approach from the mediators, rather than waiting
> > for cases to come to them.
>
> Once again, I think that's very true - but how can we get a system
> where these conflicts are actually attended to that quickly?
>
> -- ambi

We have RC patrol. Would a Mediation patrol be useful? It would be
fairly simple to set up a page to allow people to post disputes they
happen to come across. You can find many of them just by looking at
talk pages on Special:Recentchanges.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Robert stated for the record:

> Sean writes:
>
>>I am very worried that we are seriously discussing the
>>formation of a committee empowered to prohibit unpopular
>>content from Wikipedia and to ban those that feel that it
>>is important to record it.
>
>
> Isn't that a deliberate lie?  What facts (written in NPOV
> format) did Larry Sanger try to censor?  What facts
> (written in NPOV format) did Steve Rubenstein try to
> censor?  NONE.
>
> I strongly object to this strawman attack - which borders
> on an ad homenim attack - on the discussion of improving
> Wikipedia.

Good tactic: when you can't answer the point, call the person making it
a liar.

I am not lying when I say I am worried.  I am worried about people who
want to set up committees to decide what points of view will not be
allowed to be represented in Wikipedia.  When RK states that I am lying
about being worried, he is ... guess what?

--
  Sean Barrett
  sean at epoptic.com