from_name: Berto 'd Sera

body:
Hoi!

> We are quite capable to say what we have to say.
Sometimes I feel we are not :) I get the recurrent impression that whatever we say both sides just hit the "reply" button and copy back what they had said before...

So, for all who are blind/deaf: I have said it and will repeat it all over again: no consensus = no nothing. We will not go and impose a new script on a place where a civil war just ended simply to make the nerves of a couples of extremists happier. If and when there is a clear signal that the communities as a whole are in favor of the merge we can start to talk about tech details.

This "clear signal" includes stopping idiot mumbling about why any of the two sides has no right to exist and how you are going to tell the teacher that my mom was a nazist/communist if we don't buy you candies. We all have been kids and we all know what blackmailing is. Well, it won't work.

Just as it won't work hiding behind someone else and shouting "see? I told you you'd be punished!" (this one's for Mark, in case it's not clear). Since lots of people behave as 4 y.o. kids, I'll try the language lil' babies usually understand.

IS THAT CLEAR NOW? Or should we publish it in a multimedia hyerogliphic text with the Bangles playing underneath??

Now I switch my waiting mode on and keep waiting for a message beginning with:
"My constructive position is <add MO-RO ideological crap here>".

B?rto ?d S?ra
Personagi dl?ann 2006 p?r l?arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of GerardM
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 10:14 PM
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

Mark,
It is not helpful if you
repeat after us. You make it seem as if we agree with a side in this affair.
We have not considered if we would accept it as a new project. What is at
issue here is very much that the mo.wikipedia is an existing project, there
are some people who care for it and the arguments used for its closure are
not really acceptable.

The optimal solution from our pov is that the mo.wikipedia is cleaned up and
that the data of both ro and mo are merged. The first step for this to
happen is to coexist peacefully. Your behaviour does not help.

There is the option of a transliteration engine. This is however not
available at this time. Optimally it should allow for round trip conversion.

Thanks,
     Gerard

On 3/12/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps you have not been following this list.
>
> Do you think Gerard or B?rto really care who it is making these
> arguments? To them, you and Liviu may as well be the same person
> because you are saying the same things. Over and over.
>
> They have said over and over that the position that they have already
> described is FINAL. They did not "misunderstand" anything, they did
> not miss any of the facts or the evidence.
>
> Just because they do not agree with your personal interpretation of
> reality does not mean they need you to "tell them the facts". They
> have already heard what you have to say, and it has already been
> evaluated. Many times.
>
> The suggestion was, originally made to Liviu: Go to ro.wp and start a
> poll there about adding an option to convert to Cyrillic. In the mean
> time, stop complaining. Their idea is that eventually such an option
> MIGHT exist, but only if ro.wp community successfully integrates it of
> its own free will, NOT on the decision of some random single user.
>
> If you can get the majority of Ro.wp'ians to agree to a converter in
> the style of sr.wp (meaning that content may be edited and added in
> Cyrillic as well), then this discussion may proceed. If you cannot, it
> is over.
>
> Nobody wants to hear any of this anymore. Haven't you understood that by
> now?
>
> Mark
>
> On 10/03/07, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Concerning your invitation to work, which is
> > insulting:
> > 1. Don't you working guys have civility rules around
> > here any more?
> > 2. Does your work consist in giving uncivil answers to
> > messages you didn't read, sent by a user that did not
> > send messages on this forum in the last 3 months?
> > Because both you and GerardM answered my message
> > without reading it. Or, if you read it, it may be
> > useful to interrupt working for thinking a bit.
> >
> > Dpotop
> >
> >
> > --- Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Hoi!
> > >
> > > > My constructive position
> > > So... It was told to Liviu, it gets told to YOU. It
> > > will be duly copied to
> > > all of you, as an auto answer.
> > > 1) WHO of you spammers has found the time to call up
> > > a regular vote on
> > > RO.wiki on becoming fully bilingual and giving
> > > warranties of acceptance of
> > > articles by the Transdnistrian minority?
> > > 2) Who of you will prove clever enough to do that
> > > BEFORE littering our
> > > mailboxes with your carnival?
> > >
> > > Until you answer to that ANY Moldavian position (pro
> > > Cyrillic/anti-cyrillic/Acyrillic or whatever) will
> > > be just low quality
> > > toilet paper for my house. Or do you guys seriously
> > > think that we want to
> > > start a big internal war in RO.wiki just to please a
> > > couple of hysterical
> > > kids?
> > >
> > > You want to make a change in someone else's house.
> > > You go there and ask the
> > > landlord for permission, before coming up here with
> > > your emotional scenes.
> > > It's called "respect" and "private property" in case
> > > you aren't familiar
> > > with the terms.
> > >
> > > All the tears in the universe won't make a
> > > difference. GO TO WORK! No work,
> > > no consideration.
> > >
> > > B?rto 'd S?ra
> > > Personagi dl'ann 2006 p?r l'arvista american-a Time
> > > (tanme tuti voj?otri)
> > >
> > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > >
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> > No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go
> > with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.
> > http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Almeda University paying for positive Wikipedia edits

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

Let me repeat what I was responding to

>No matter what, people will be paid to edit. The questions is whetehr
>>>they'll bother to tell us.... let's make a registration requirement,
>>>and ban the hell out of anyone who violates it, and see where that
>>>takes us.
>
>
>>This is the best possible solution, I think.  Encourage people to be open
>>about it, and we'll run into far fewer problems.
>
>
Jeff Raymond wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>What's encouraging about it?
>>
>>
>More, better content?  More detailed articles about organizations that
>may not get written otherwise?  A more comprehensive encyclopedia?
>
When someone starts from a position of "banning the hell out of anyon"
how can that possibly be encouraging?  I very much prefer to assume good
faith   I know that it was Jake's idea and not yours, and please forgive
me if I wrongly interpreted your response as a support of that
attitude.  Your most recent comment is more in line with what I support.

>>The clear need to be cautious about corporate behavioue should not
>>translate into anti-corporate paranoia.
>>
>>
>Yet that's mostly where it comes from.  Maybe not from you, but it's
>certainly rooted there.
>
> > Most of the stuff that will
>
>
>>come from corporations will probably be fairly middle-of-the-road and
>>informative.  We already have plenty of rules for dealing with the bad
>>actors.
>>
>>
>Right, so why be so firm about trying to discourage it?
>
Discourage?  I support reasonable editing from the corporations.  A
system for knowing where these edits are coming from is fundamentally a
good thing.  What really bothers me is the desire of some to keep such a
tight control over the process.  They appear frighteningly intent on
rooting out every bit that they consider to be against the rules.
Putting these corporate spokespeople constantly under a microscope and
treating them like schoolkids does absolutely nothing to build trust
between ourselves.  It does not motivate them to work with us.

I find it bizarre now that I, an old fart leftist with sympathies for
Marxist causes.  The whole debate with some of these doctrinaire and
utopian libertarians have a peculiar parallel to the issues that Lenin
faced with left-wing communists.  See
http://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/  Sometimes these people who
take strong anti-corporate, anti-commercial attitudes strike me as
though they just haven't thought things through, and I end up defending
corporations. :-[

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

references:
<et40s2$fvr$1@sea.gmane.org> <45F59AEA.5010507@pobox.com>
	<45F5ECC2.9000808@shaw.ca> <45F6050F.2010507@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> I have torrents available. I am finishing up the torrent files.
>
> Present size of enwiki images as of 20070206 is:
>
> [root at gadugi wikipedia]#
> [root at gadugi wikipedia]# ls -l
> total 208410848
> drwxrwxr-x 25 apache apache 4096 Mar 9 17:19 en
> -r--r--r-- 1 root root 213204285440 Mar 11 01:39
> enwiki-allimages-20070206.tar
> [root at gadugi wikipedia]#
> [root at gadugi wikipedia]#
>
> The torrents files go up later tonight after the hashes build and verify.
>
> ftp://ftp.wikigadugi.org/
>
> I am using enchanced-ctorrent.

Where will this be announced? I wasn't actually asking for the image
dumps for my own use (it'd use up two months of my bandwidth quota and
ten times the current free space on my hard drive :), I was asking since
 I didn't got a response at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Database_download#Image_dumps_getting_old
and an anon user subsequently told me he had an interest in it. So this
should probably go on the database download page, but if it's your
personal site I wouldn't want to just plop it over there without asking.


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be
>
> > Ugh, I'm tired. I meant, "If you say that we are all editors, then who
> > are the writers?"
>
>
> Do we really have regular contributors writers who do no
> editing/subediting at all? A few maybe. Not many.
>
> In any case, "editor" is IMO the right word for what most people do on
> Wikipedia most of the time.
>
>
> - d.

IIRC, there is a difference between an editor and a subeditor or copyeditor.
It's one thing to make minor changes to text; it's another to approve ideas
for articles and suggest major changes. Traditionally in the print world,
the former is the role of the copyeditor, while the latter is the role of
the editor, isn't it?

Johnleemk


list: foundation-l

from_name: shi zhao

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
How set up another languages? how keep open (like wikipedia)?

2007/3/12, ?ukasz Garczewski <lgarczewski at gmail.com>:
> I just saw the link to Planet Wikimedia in Meta's sidebar and thought
> we could take it one step further.
>
> Wikimedians, like all internet users, use a host of different services
> and sites, some of which are community driven. How about a page
> listing those user groups? Or perhaps a page with links to
> wikimedia-related tags at various sites? Or both. ;)
>
> Think Wikimedia(ns) on Flickr, Last.fm, Orkut, LinkedIn...
>
> * http://flickr.com/search/?q=Wikimedia
> * http://www.lastfm.pl/group/Wiki (Polish users' group)
> * ...
>
> What do you think?
>
> --
> ?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
CNBlog: http://blog.cnblog.org/weblog.html
Social Brain: http://www.socialbrain.org/default.asp
cnbloggercon: http://www.cnbloggercon.org/

[[zh:User:Shizhao]]


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] The community


from_name: stevertigo

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks (was: Re: Almeda University paying
	for positive Wikipedia edits)

body:
On 3/12/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> It wouldn't need to be Wikimedia paying for it, unless of course
> [[Wikipedia:Paid editing]] gets accepted as policy, in which case it
> would.

One proposal shoots another proposal in the foot. I like it.

-Stevertigo


from_name: William Pietri

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks (was: Re: Almeda University paying
 for positive Wikipedia edits)

body:
Angela wrote:
>> Possible PR issues? "Wikimedia, which ran a donation drive only X
>> months ago, is already throwing money at Amazon..."
>>
>
> It wouldn't need to be Wikimedia paying for it, unless of course
> [[Wikipedia:Paid editing]] gets accepted as policy, in which case it
> would.
>

Speaking of which, would the Foundation accept money to pay editors,
either for specific neglected topic areas or for a Mechanical Turk
effort? Personally, I'd be willing to drop a couple hundred bucks on
either one of those.

Thanks,

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-13

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20381).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/13/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> My thought is to require a central list, and anyone who's being paid
> to edit Wikipedia needs to be registered on that list with username,
> who's paying them to edit, and the reason that they are being paid to
> do this.

I would keep the requirements not too onerous. We *want* them to
disclose what they're doing, because they're going to do it anyway. So
ask them nicely to register themselves. Then quietly keep on eye on
them, and just revert them whenever they violate our policies,
politely.

The whole idea here is that when they turn some crappy stub into a
longer article, it may certainly be slanted towards their viewpoint.
But it's a lot easier to just deslant it, than it would have been to
write it from scratch. So we let them build it slanted - and when
they're finished, we just gently nudge it upright. They do all the
hard work. We get the benefit.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd still call it their problem rather than ours. Most Wikipedia edits
> are much more akin to "subediting" rather than "writing." This is a
> project that really does have thousands of *editors* - it's the right
> word for what they do.

Disagree. Publications have editors and writers (and possibly
subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be
much truer to say we have writers, but no editors.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be

Ugh, I'm tired. I meant, "If you say that we are all editors, then who
are the writers?"

Steve


body:
On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's a *great* idea IMO and quite easy not to make a COI.

Oh incidentally, I wanted to point out that one weird economical thing
about the mechanical turk system is that workers are in oversupply,
and work is scarce. And people find these tasks *fun*. People actually
carry out these pretty mindnumbing tasks for ridiculously low rates,
like $1 an hour. So we could probably literally buy sources for 10c
each, and get other jobs done (like categorising, copyediting etc)
even cheaper.

http://www.salon.com/news/cookie756.html?URL=/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/

Steve


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [WikiEN-l] Status of stable versions?

body:
Hi,

Where can I get an update on the status of the "Stable versions" feature?

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

doesn't seem to be maintained.

Thanks,
nyenyec


from_name: Angela

body:
On 3/12/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That's a *great* idea IMO and quite easy not to make a COI.
> >
> > Can anyone else here see a problem with this idea?
>
> Possible PR issues? "Wikimedia, which ran a donation drive only X
> months ago, is already throwing money at Amazon..."

It wouldn't need to be Wikimedia paying for it, unless of course
[[Wikipedia:Paid editing]] gets accepted as policy, in which case it
would.

Angela


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I'd still call it their problem rather than ours. Most Wikipedia edits
> >>are much more akin to "subediting" rather than "writing." This is a
> >>project that really does have thousands of *editors* - it's the right
> >>word for what they do.
> >>
> >>
> >Disagree. Publications have editors and writers (and possibly
> >subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be
> >much truer to say we have writers, but no editors.
> >
> Radical solution:  Let then be called whatever they want to be called,
> and WSJ can use whatever term it wants.
>
> Ec

Jimbo, et al would still have to pick a term to use when explaining WP to
the press. Our policy/guideline/etc. pages would also have to decide on one
term. As nice as this idea sounds, I don't think it's very practical.

Johnleemk


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

body:
Check back tommorrow on the torrents. I am still setting up the
archives. It takes about 6 hours to tar up
each one of them due to the number of files and the size of the tar
files. Almost done.

Jeff

Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>I have torrents available. I am finishing up the torrent files.
>>
>>Present size of enwiki images as of 20070206 is:
>>
>>[root at gadugi wikipedia]#
>>[root at gadugi wikipedia]# ls -l
>>total 208410848
>>drwxrwxr-x 25 apache apache 4096 Mar 9 17:19 en
>>-r--r--r-- 1 root root 213204285440 Mar 11 01:39
>>enwiki-allimages-20070206.tar
>>[root at gadugi wikipedia]#
>>[root at gadugi wikipedia]#
>>
>>The torrents files go up later tonight after the hashes build and verify.
>>
>>ftp://ftp.wikigadugi.org/
>>
>>I am using enchanced-ctorrent.
>>
>>
>
>Where will this be announced? I wasn't actually asking for the image
>dumps for my own use (it'd use up two months of my bandwidth quota and
>ten times the current free space on my hard drive :), I was asking since
> I didn't got a response at
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Database_download#Image_dumps_getting_old
>and an anon user subsequently told me he had an interest in it. So this
>should probably go on the database download page, but if it's your
>personal site I wouldn't want to just plop it over there without asking.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
On 3/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote
> When someone starts from a position of "banning the hell out of anyon"
> how can that possibly be encouraging?  I very much prefer to assume good
> faith   I know that it was Jake's idea and not yours, and please forgive
> me if I wrongly interpreted your response as a support of that
> attitude.

You've got my position completely wrong. I was responding to the
argument that states we shouldn't, ever, allow anyone to edit
Wikipedia for money. My comment about banning the hell out of people
who /don't/ comply was meant as a moderated version of the position
that would otherwise suggest doing the same to those who /would/
comply with the simple registration I suggested.

And I'm not talking about some "bureacracy", I'd hate to see that
happen. Just talking about a list, that anyone who's being paid to
edit should list their user account, who's paying them for it, and a
brief statement of why ("[[User:Someoneorother]] - anonymous
benefactor - To improve general quality of articles"). No "just these
fifty questions, drug test, and a background check" like RFA, no "is
the Ottoman Empire really /notable/? I never heard of it before, and I
don't like the sound of it... DELETE!" VFD-like arguments... it's not
a "candidates to be allowed".  I don't think that those three pieces
of information are some onerous burden.

Believe me, I'm thoroughly against a red-tape approach... IRL, I have
to deal with McCain-Feingold day in, day out... where it can be a
crime to talk to a friend in general terms about how your day went, if
said friend's day job is with an organization you're banned from
coordinating with...

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

body:
On 3/13/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think it helps to assume that anyone who believes that
> corporate donation would bias Wikipedia's coverage of that corporation
> also believes that "Wikipedia is in on the take". Bias works more
> subtly than that. After all, it is a serious problem now despite our
> thousands of well-intentioned editors.

We do, indeed, have to be careful that we do not cover those who like
Wikipedia better than those who don't like it, including especially
those cases where the like includes assistance.

-Matt


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] a tought

body:
--- Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> maybe because it is sunday...
>
> I was having a look at the press a few minutes ago, and I saw Essjay
> real name plastered everywhere, and referred to a "fake", fired from
> Wikipedia and fired from Wikia.
>
> To be honest, whatever the degree of his mistake, my heart grieves for
> him. He did not deserve to be shamed publicly in this way. I feel very
> very sorry for him.

Indeed. However, I haven't seen a single article question the content of his edits or the
community work he did. The question has been about his supposed credentials. For that reason, I do
hope he can come back someday soon. Of course, this time, he should not pretend to be something he
isn?t. That is simply not acceptable because it is a violation of our trust.

-- mav

____________________________________________________________________________________
Bored stiff? Loosen up...
Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games.
http://games.yahoo.com/games/front


subject: [Foundation-l] a tought


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] We're unstoppable!

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Rob Enderle has come out against Wikipedia too. w00t! With adversaries
> like these ...
>
> http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/must-read/56224.html
>
I actually know Rob Enderle (my wife got him his first Silicon Valley
job), and well, back in the mid-90s, he was certain that Linux was a
nice hobby OS, but wouldn't go much of anywhere.

Stan


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why cutting'n'pasting from Wikipedia is not a good
	idea

body:
While it's hysterically funny, and they deserved what they got for
not reading what they copied, don't laugh too much.

As Wikipedia has become successful, the percentage of people who
understand _anything_ about Wikipedia is declining.

_We need to educate them._ Somehow.

It would be interesting to have a poll of the people who used
Wikipedia in the last week and see how many of them even noticed the
the caption "edit this page" or the slogan "the free encyclopedia
that anyone can edit." I'd bet that _the majority have not_.

Impossible, you say? Heck, everyone knows about Wikipedia, Colbert
jokes about it, nobody would get the joke. Well, not everybody
watches Colbert.

I suspect that at this point in time the vast majority of Wikipedia
accesses are via Google. People just type something they want to
know, Wikipedia comes up as one of the top links, they click it, they
read the article. Many of them _may not even notice that it's in
something called Wikipedia_ In some vague way an aura of authority is
cast over the article simply by being endorsed, as it were, by
Google. People don't consciously think "it must be true or it
wouldn't be a high-ranking Google result." The authority is enhanced
by Wikipedia's professional-looking appearance.

People don't _seriously link_ about Wikipedia's reliability any more
than they think about the reliability of their newspaper. Either they
blindly think it must be true because "they" said so, and because
"they" are a source other people use. Or, alternatively, perhaps they
blindly think their newspaper is a cesspool of political bias and/or
that Wikipedia is unreliable, not because they've looked into how
their newspaper or Wikipedia work, but because someone they trust
told them so.

But the people who believe Wikipedia is unreliable don't use
Wikipedia. The problem is with the people who do use Wikipedia.

The percentage of Wikipedia users who say "That sounds odd. Let me
check this History just to make sure this isn't a bit of vandalism
that hasn't been fixed yet" is probably negligible. (The percentage
who even know what the History tab does is probably minuscule).


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a primary source

body:
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Slim Virgin wrote:
> The policy on sources, WP:ATT, allows self-published sources to be
> used in biographies of living persons. This means we can use the
> subject's personal website or blog, so if someone wants to address an
> issue in their Wikipedia article, they only have to publish it
> themselves on their blog first, which anyone can set up at no cost.

Setting up a blog can be quite a hassle, especially for a non-techie, even
if he doesn't have to pay to get it.  Basically, "if you want this fixed,
set up a blog" is a big hoop you're making people jump through in order to
fix something that they probably didn't even want in the first place.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Status of stable versions?

body:
On 3/13/07, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Where can I get an update on the status of the "Stable versions" feature?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stable_versions
>
> doesn't seem to be maintained.

Technical work is ongoing. An update will be posted soon.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 3/13/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> People don't _seriously link_ about Wikipedia's reliability any more
> than they think about the reliability of their newspaper.

At least with the newspaper, there's no chance that, depending when
you choose to open it, you will see "BLOW ME" in big red letters
instead of the story you were expecting to read.


from_name: luke brandt

subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship: Speedy deletion of porn articles

body:
Yonatan Horan wrote:
> On 3/10/07, George Herbert wrote:
>> My questions:
>>
>> Is the current he.wp rules structure which allegedly forbids the
>> pornographic references documented?
>
>
> What sort of documentation are you looking for? It is not quite an official
> policy and I have more than one admin at he who supports that argument. It
> is also not included in the "Deletion policy" page on he (although an admin
> tried to add it to the page, he was reverted and the page was protected and
> reverted back to the version that doesn't disallow articles on porn
> subjects).
>
Are/were the principles of natural justice being adhered to?

[e.g. an extract from Wikipedia:

Natural justice includes the notion of procedural fairness and may
incorporate the following guidelines:

    * A person accused of a crime, or at risk of some form of loss,
should be given adequate notice about the proceedings (including any
charges).
    * A person making a decision should declare any personal interest
they may have in the proceedings.
    * A person who makes a decision should be unbiased and act in good
faith. He therefore can not be one of the parties in the case, or have
an interest in the outcome. This is expressed in the latin maxim, nemo
judex in sua causa: "no man is permitted to be judge in his own cause".
    * Proceedings should be conducted so they are fair to all the
parties - expressed in the latin maxim audi alteram partem: "let the
other side be heard".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_justice ]

- luke


list: textbook-l

from_name: Andrew Whitworth

subject:
[Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policies
	onWikibooks?

body:
>From: "Milos Rancic" <millosh at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policies
>onWikibooks?
>Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:39:41 +0100
>
>- Wikibooks and/or Wikiversity allow POV and OR for art analysis. This
>is the best solution because we will have one community. Also,
>realization of the goal "free education" will stay inside of the
>projects which aim to work on this goal.

Every field, not just art, contains people who criticise and interpret the
works of others. In economics, for instance, where people make financial
decisions based on interpretation of data and also intent. Engineering, also
teaches students to use arbitrary, personally selected metrics for
optimizing designs. My point is that art is not a special case of this, and
allowing OR and POV for teaching art for these reasons would require an
abandonment of the policies completely. In many instances, OR and POV might
be nice. They should not, however, be permitted on Wikibooks.

>- Wikimedia makes another project for such purpose (something like
>"wikiartstudies"). This is something like a "middle solution" because
>we will have de jure one community, but de facto two. Realization of
>the goal "free education" will be outside of Wikibooks and
>Wikiversity, but inside of Wikimedia.

Again, my point above that art is not special, and no one particular
discipline requires it's own special wiki. You can suggest this on meta, i
doubt the proposal will get far.

>- The worst solution is to try to find a solution out of Wikimedia
>(i.e. Wikia or anything else) because we will have both de jure and de
>facto different communities. Realization of the goal will be outside
>of both -- projects and Wikimedia.

So then a solution needs to be found in wikimedia. I think you don't
understand the difference between explaining of an opinion (especially a
common opinion), and the statement of that opinion as if it were fact. NPOV
requires only that opinions not be treated as facts, and we can discuss art
criticisms from an purely NPOV, academic background.

--Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight)
>Textbook-l mailing list
>Textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l

_________________________________________________________________
The average US Credit Score is 675. The cost to see yours: $0 by Experian.
http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=660600&bcd=EMAILFOOTERAVERAGE


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 13 Mar 2007 at 17:06, "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> In a book or newspaper, the editor has the final word. No Wikipedia
> *ever* has the final word. From a functional perspective, "real"
> editors and Wikipedia editors are similar. From an authority
> perspective, they're vastly different. And it's the authority side
> that is misreported all the time in newspapers.

So I guess the terminology is Wikipedia's "geek bias" showing up
again... geeks tend to think of things in terms of the "functional
perspective", while the outside world is more into power, authority,
politics, personalities, and such.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trust vs. Credentials (was Re: Accountability:

body:
On 11/03/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:

> > What problem are we trying to solve exactly?
> >
> > Problem: Magazine interviews Wikipedia editor and believes his falsely
> > claimed credentials.
> > Solution: Caution media to check any credentials claimed by Wikipedia editors.
>
> Well, there is also the problem of a Wikipedia administrator writing to
> professors as a fellow professor. That was pretty bad in my mind, and
> could have also led to a public black eye even if the media had checked
> credentials.

We have a hard enough time stopping Wikipedia administrators writing
to professors as "a Wikipedia administrator", much less anything
else...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] 10 Things You Did Not Know About Wikipedia

body:
On 11/03/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Erik wrote:
> > I'd appreciate comments and (cautious) editing.
>
> #4 ("You cannot actually change anything in Wikipedia") is weird.
> I see what you're trying to say, but the surface implications
> seem misleading.  (I've taken a stab at editing it.)

Mmm, I've hacked it around a bit.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: phoebe ayers

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania: CfP and Scholarships

body:
All,

* The submission system for presentations, posters, panels, and workshops
for Wikimania 2007 is now available at:
<http://cfp.wikimania.wikimedia.org/>

Please review the Call for Participation guidelines <
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Particpation> and
submission guidelines <http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submission>
before submitting abstracts. We welcome your submissions!

* Additionally, Wikimania 2007 is offering a limited number of scholarships
for conference attendees. If you're interested in getting a scholarship to
defray the cost of travelling to the conference, please review the
guidelines, here:
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships>

and take a look at the scholarship application questions:
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships/application>

* Questions about scholarships may be directed to
wikimania-scholarships at wikimedia.org, and questions about submissions should
go to cfp at wikimedia.org.

Hope to see you in Taipei!

cheers,
Phoebe Ayers (brassratgirl)


list: commons-l

from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject:
[Commons-l] Please do not delete images used on [[Wikimedia
	logo mosaic]]

body:
On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/13/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > It is the second time in two weeks I have to restore a deleted image
> that
> > > appears on the [[Wikimedia logo mosaic]]:
> > >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ANorthwest+Airlines+Boeing+757-200.jpg
> > >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ATermografia+chiesa.jpg
> > >
> > > It may be because of our brand new CommonsDelinker (great tool btw),
> some
> > > admins may feel they can delete images without checking the usage of all
> > > photos. This is not the case. Please always checkusage before deleting.
> If
> > > you are about to delete an image appearing in the mosaic, find another
> one
> > > to replace it *before* deleting the bad one.
> >
> > I fail to see any reason to hesitate when it come to deleteing likely
> copyvios.
> >
>
> I fail to see any reason to not take some minutes to find a similar image to
> replace it before the deletion.
>
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
> [[m:User:guillom]]
>  http://www.wikimedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>

AS pretty as mosaic is, it's not a top priority. That's why.


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
>> directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
>> It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
>> on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If
>> Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone
>> commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a
>> purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the
>> statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections
>> (date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had
>> sexual relations with that woman").
>
> Because WP:V requires that challenged statements have sources.  You
> can't replace one unsourced statement with anohter like that, nor would
> it be acceptable to replace a sourced statement with an unsourced one.
>
> -Jeff
>

Can't we discuss these sort of ideas without resorting to quoting
policy? Ok, yes, we can state what the current policy *is*, but
sometimes it's worth considering what the policy *should be*, or what
the actual practice should be. Or, why the current policy is the correct
policy. But, in this kind of a conversation, just simply quoting policy
is not particularly useful (IMHO).

-Rich


from_name: Jason Calacanis

subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

body:
> It could go either way. I remember thinking when looking at the
> [[Virgin United]] article last time that I would find it somewhat mean
> to be as hard-nosed towards their article as I might normally be. But
> I'm sure that other editors would be the opposite, perversely
> insisting on sources for *everything*, bringing up any dirt they can
> find, to challenge the notion that the company is getting a free ride
> on us.
> Steve

Steve,

The is exactly what would happen, in large part because of the
unprecedented sense of fairness and ethics by the core Wikipedians.
I've seen this in journalism from time to time, when journalists (at
good publications at least) become aware that someone is a sponsor
they become extra vigilant when covering those companies.

>> Oldak said: It seems insidious to dismiss anyone who holds this viewpoint
>> as "conspiracy theorists... (and in some cases insane)".

Fair enough Oldak. I didn't mean to say all folks, I'm talking about
that specific contingent who take any successful project and attack it
with theories that just don't exist (or are highly unlikely). I have
to learn to tone down my debates when talking to Wikipedians.... Jimbo
is giving me private lessons in that. :-)

best j
---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
Entrepreneur in Action, Sequoia Capital
Mobile: 310-456-4900
My blog: http://www.calacanis.com
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis


from_name: Garrett

subject:
[Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policies on
	Wikibooks?

body:
Right now Wikiversity allows editors to make non-NPOV edits as long as they
make a full disclosure (
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Disclosures ), which is why I
wasn't aware NPOV was a Foundation-wide rule (although it does make sense).
In light of this correction I don't know that POV writings have much of a
future there either (and perhaps someone should bring this up on Wikiversity
before writings in breach of global policy get too much out of hand).

As for a non-Foundation home there's the Academic Publishing Wiki (
http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page ), but right now it's for
journal-style works rather than book-length ones (although this could of
course change). Wikiversity currently links to some of its content in a
roundabout way and there has even been talk of possibly merging the project
(although, again, if NPOV is still a mandatory rule this may not be possible
as some works on that wikia seem to be slightly POV).

Regardless of the implementation, the type of criticism/instruction being
written should never be an excuse for not sticking to rules against POV and
OR if it is at all possible to find other works detailing the topic.

Anyway, that's the state of things.

Garrett

On 13/03/07, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I completely understand why NPOV is nearly perfect for any kind of
> something which we call "objective knowledge". And there is no
> question about NPOV inside of factographic descriptions of anything.
>
> However, POV analysis of art are very usable for art studies.
> Actually, there is no such thing like NPOV art critics. (But it is
> possible to have NPOV book about art critics.)
>
> My point is that I think that we need, for example, "Dadaist critics
> of South Park" -- for educational purpose because:
>
> - Dadaism is not live cultural movement and it is not so obvious that
> there will be some dadaist who would do so. However, it is possible to
> imagine dadaist critics of South Park.
> - If Wikibooks and Wikiversity want to have complete courses for some
> art field, there is a lot of needs for improvisation. If there is no
> some art critique which we need because of educational purposes, we
> should make it. In other words, if we want to have a *real* free
> source for complete education, we need a lot of things which are not
> NPOV nor NOR.
>
> So, there are a couple of solutions:
> - Wikibooks and/or Wikiversity allow POV and OR for art analysis. This
> is the best solution because we will have one community. Also,
> realization of the goal "free education" will stay inside of the
> projects which aim to work on this goal.
> - Wikimedia makes another project for such purpose (something like
> "wikiartstudies"). This is something like a "middle solution" because
> we will have de jure one community, but de facto two. Realization of
> the goal "free education" will be outside of Wikibooks and
> Wikiversity, but inside of Wikimedia.
> - The worst solution is to try to find a solution out of Wikimedia
> (i.e. Wikia or anything else) because we will have both de jure and de
> facto different communities. Realization of the goal will be outside
> of both -- projects and Wikimedia.
>


from_name: phpuser

subject: [Wikitech-l] template creation

body:
I know how to create a page using wiki
Can you tell me how to create a template using wiki?


body:
On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/13/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I fail to see any reason to not take some minutes to find a similar
> image to
> > > replace it before the deletion.
> >
> > AS pretty as mosaic is, it's not a top priority. That's why.
>
> If deleting images were so easy, we would let bots deal with it. You
> (meaning you human commons admins) are supposed to have a brain and use it.
> Of course it is easier to click the delete button without bothering
> replacing it.
>
> --
>
> Guillaume Paumier
> [[m:User:guillom]]
> http://www.wikimedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>

If it's a copyvio, it should be deleted on sight, it being on the
mosaic is no excuse for waiting (I was commenting on above's comment
above copyvios).


from_name: Slim Virgin

body:
> > Erik Moeller wrote:
> >> It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
> >> directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
> >> It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
> >> on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source.

The policy on sources, WP:ATT, allows self-published sources to be
used in biographies of living persons. This means we can use the
subject's personal website or blog, so if someone wants to address an
issue in their Wikipedia article, they only have to publish it
themselves on their blog first, which anyone can set up at no cost.

The reason we require this is so that readers can check that X really
does say what we say he says, and also so that the subject is making a
public commitment to that version of events, which we are simply
repeating.

In order to prevent the subject's Wikipedia article from becoming, in
effect, an extension of his personal website (he publishes something
on his blog so that it ends up on Wikipedia), we've built in some
safeguards, namely that the material shouldn't be contentious or
unduly self-serving, and shouldn't involve claims about third parties
or events not directly related to the subject. Also, articles are not
allowed to be based on such primary sources.

It seems to work pretty well in that it allows subjects a right of
reply or opportunity to correct factual errors, while ensuring that we
don't become first publishers, and that Wikipedia biographies don't
turn into platforms for their subjects' views.

Sarah


from_name: wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com

body:
> From: "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>

> A professional company that doesn't proofread their work?
> I could understand it if they had used Wikipedia info and missed some sneaky
> vandalism, but copying wholesale without checking it is inexcusable. They
> deserve what they got.

There's no excuse for anyone leaving their keys in the ignition when they exit their car, but I'm glad that mine beeps a warning whenever I^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h

There's no excuse for anyone leaving their keys in the ignition when they exit their car, but I'm glad that according to the owner's manual, if, hypothetically, my wife were to do so, it would beep a warning at her.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
> directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
> It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
> on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source.
For instance, if someone says he's a tenured professor of theology, we
should just paste it in unquestioningly, right?

:-)

I think it's a valuable lesson in WP policies to ask subjects of
articles to adhere to the same standards that we supposedly follow for
everything else. If they object, we can say, "yes we trust you, but are
you willing to give us your personal phone number and put it in on the
article's talk page, so editors can call you up at any time, day or
night, in the future and clarify something?" So far as I know, no one's
ever signed up to that kind of open-ended commitment.

The idea that anybody famous can call up the WP office and expect
"harmless corrections" on demand will be very damaging in the long run -
first it will be subjects of articles, then articles connected to the
subject of an article, then any article. Note that Edwina Currie's
criticism wasn't directed at just her own bio, but at related articles,
so in one breath she's already angling to slant non-biographies.

Just as we need to be known for not allowing corporations to buy slanted
coverage, we need it to be known that celebrities can't get the slant
they want just by asking.

Stan


body:
On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/13/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If it's a copyvio, it should be deleted on sight, it being on the
> > mosaic is no excuse for waiting (I was commenting on above's comment
> > above copyvios).
>
> Hey, I hate copyvios as much as everybody, I have deleted thousands of them,
> I am clearly not saying we should keep copyvios with the excuse of them
> being on the mosaic or any other much-viewed page. I am asking admins to
> think a little and take 1 minute to find another image to replace it with an
> image from the colours gallery [1].
>
> [1]
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_logo_mosaic/Colours_gallery
>
> --
>
> Guillaume Paumier
> [[m:User:guillom]]
> http://www.wikimedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>

I'm saying, once the pressing matter is done (deleting the copyvio),
there are other more pressing matters than looking for a image that
fits in the mosaic. Yes, mosaic pretty. Finding replacements for it
nice thing to do. But again, it's not a top priority, we shouldn't
stop doing what we're doing just to attend the mosaic. Onc eagain,
doing so it's a nice thing however.


from_name: Jim Hu

subject: [Wikitech-l] More on creating templates

body:
Look at the InputBox

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Inputbox
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Mar 13, 2007, at 7:34 AM, phpuser wrote:

> When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter
> any
> details(say schedule)
> when i click abc, a different template should be created where user
> can enter
> some other details(say news)
> This should be done using mediawiki.
> i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
> and another page called Template:<abc>
> Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch
> case 'raw'
> or is it something else?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] More on creating templates

body:
Hmm... I thought there was a way to preload a template with inputbox,
but that must have been from some discussion on the list, not in the
original extension.  Anyone remember if anyone got that working?

Jim
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Mar 13, 2007, at 9:38 AM, Jim Hu wrote:

> Look at the InputBox
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Inputbox
> =====================================
> Jim Hu
> Associate Professor
> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
> 2128 TAMU
> Texas A&M Univ.
> College Station, TX 77843-2128
> 979-862-4054
>
>
> On Mar 13, 2007, at 7:34 AM, phpuser wrote:
>
>> When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter
>> any
>> details(say schedule)
>> when i click abc, a different template should be created where user
>> can enter
>> some other details(say news)
>> This should be done using mediawiki.
>> i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
>> and another page called Template:<abc>
>> Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch
>> case 'raw'
>> or is it something else?
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: cohesion

body:
On 3/11/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > This may be a matter of judgment and who the target audience is, but in
> > my experience #1 and #2 aren't really things people don't know about
> > Wikipedia.  People get lots of things wrong about us, but that Wikipedia
> > is a free-content encyclopedia run by a non-profit organization is
> > usually gotten right.
>
> I've seen rather a lot of "will google buy wikipedia?" blogs and forum threads.

Yes, this is extremely common, I was glad they were listed first. This
idea was very prevalent a few weeks ago with the mini "wikipedia is
running out of money" meme.

Judson
(enwiki:cohesion)


from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
> directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
> It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
> on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If
> Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone
> commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a
> purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the
> statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections
> (date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had
> sexual relations with that woman").

Because WP:V requires that challenged statements have sources.  You
can't replace one unsourced statement with anohter like that, nor would
it be acceptable to replace a sourced statement with an unsourced one.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikipedia%2C+wiki%2C+open+source%2C++free+software%2C+linux+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
>
> Draw your own conclusions. Don't bother attempting comparisons to
> Britannica - they don't even rate a mention.

It seems odd that Basque was the top language Google performing these searches.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hsiang-Tai Chien wrote:
> I think what Shi Zhao means is how to set up another language (like Chinese)
> for the Planet Wikipedia feed and to make it as wide-open as Wikipedia.

Sure, we can definitely do that!

It would probably be good to have an initial list (opt-in, it's a little
freaky to aggregate peoples' blogs without asking IMHO), and probably a
central contact in each language to manage the list would be good. :)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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subject: [Foundation-l] The community


subject: [Wikitech-l] More on creating templates

body:
Doh!

	preload=pagename

Gotta think more before replying...or have coffee...
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Mar 13, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Jim Hu wrote:

> Hmm... I thought there was a way to preload a template with inputbox,
> but that must have been from some discussion on the list, not in the
> original extension.  Anyone remember if anyone got that working?
>
> Jim
> =====================================
> Jim Hu
> Associate Professor
> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
> 2128 TAMU
> Texas A&M Univ.
> College Station, TX 77843-2128
> 979-862-4054
>
>
> On Mar 13, 2007, at 9:38 AM, Jim Hu wrote:
>
>> Look at the InputBox
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Inputbox
>> =====================================
>> Jim Hu
>> Associate Professor
>> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
>> 2128 TAMU
>> Texas A&M Univ.
>> College Station, TX 77843-2128
>> 979-862-4054
>>
>>
>> On Mar 13, 2007, at 7:34 AM, phpuser wrote:
>>
>>> When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter
>>> any
>>> details(say schedule)
>>> when i click abc, a different template should be created where user
>>> can enter
>>> some other details(say news)
>>> This should be done using mediawiki.
>>> i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
>>> and another page called Template:<abc>
>>> Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch
>>> case 'raw'
>>> or is it something else?
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>>> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Audio file sizes

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> I'd hate to see this discussion die out without some sort of judgment
> from the developers. Brion, do you think this sort of implementation is
> possible? Perhaps if we had a dedicated cluster for performing the audio
> encoding, and queued the stuff up so that while the lossless version
> wouldn't be available immediately, it would show up eventually?

Yep!

I think it's a fantastic idea, both for audio and video.

I've stuck this on the list of suggested projects for the Google Summer
of Code this year. (We've applied as a mentor organization, but won't
know until tomorrow? for sure if we're accepted.)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2007

^^ feel free to add/remove/tweak/suggest

> Also, regarding anonymous FTP, I believe SourceForge has a similar setup
> for uploading release packages, so I think if we made it write-only
> (i.e. the list directory command returns no entries), only allowed
> established users to upload, and did regular housekeeping, it might be
> viable.

FTP gives me the willies, personally. :) But perhaps we could arrange
something.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

body:
On 12/03/07, Jason Calacanis <jason at calacanis.com> wrote:
> There are no conflicts--none.
>
> It would be a HUGE leap for someone to think that a donation to a
> non-profit from a corporation would give them the ability to trump a
> encyclopedia edited by *consensus* by *volunteers* -- most of whom are
> anonymous.

I think it's far easier to influence an encyclopaedia edited by
volunteers using big money donations than traditional encyclopaedias.

> Would an unpaid editor on the Wikipedia think "gosh, I should lie on
> Google's wikipedia page because they are one of dozens (hundreds?
> thousands?) of companies that have donated to the foundation."

No, I wouldn't expect many editors to make a conscious decision to lie
on a corporate article, but our preferences and likes do manifest in
our editing.

> Furthermore, for this theory to work it would require that the
> thousands of other editors think EXACTLY the same way and would not
> revert the biased revisions.

It doesn't take thousands of editors to bias an article.

> You're always going to have a contingent of conspiracy theorists out
> there who think Wikipedia (or any other organization with any level of
> success) is in on the take. It's the reward you get for being
> successful at what you do. :-)
>
> I don't think we can't base our fund raising behavior on the
> conspiracy theories of a the few (and in some cases insane).

I don't think it helps to assume that anyone who believes that
corporate donation would bias Wikipedia's coverage of that corporation
also believes that "Wikipedia is in on the take". Bias works more
subtly than that. After all, it is a serious problem now despite our
thousands of well-intentioned editors.

It seems insidious to dismiss anyone who holds this viewpoint as
"conspiracy theorists... (and in some cases insane)".

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: William Pietri

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/13/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
>> Speaking of which, would the Foundation accept money to pay editors,
>>
>
> You would hope so.
>

I would, but I'm not sure of the answer. Well, if anybody gets an MTurk
project going, let me know and I'm in for up to $250 donated to the
Foundation to help fund it.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


body:
Hi, Ray. You were speaking about groups,  and I'm not sure to what
extent you see me as in the groups. But the same issues have come up on
the proposal talk page, so I'll take the opportunity to make my position
clear.

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> What really bothers me is the desire of some to keep such a
> tight control over the process.  They appear frighteningly intent on
> rooting out every bit that they consider to be against the rules.

In my case, this is not puritanism or process wonkery. It's pragmatic.
Journalists have a carefully evolved code of ethics around conflict of
interest, and careful mechanisms to separate funding from conflict of
interest. I believe we need roughly the same code and equivalent
mechanisms, and for basically the same reasons.

> [...] Sometimes these people who
> take strong anti-corporate, anti-commercial attitudes strike me as
> though they just haven't thought things through, and I end up defending
> corporations. :-[

For the record, I am neither anti-corporate nor anti-commercial. I've
been in business for myself for a decade, and a large fraction of my
family runs or has run their own businesses. I make most of my money
producing intellectual property for pay, and a portion of that is
writing for pay. I have also written for paid publication, and I'm sure
I'll do more. I think writing for pay is great. I think people should be
able to write on Wikipedia for pay -- as long as that money goes through
the Foundation in a way that creates a Chinese wall.

I think we are people who are trying to serve the public. We need to be
fair, and we need to be seen as fair. Professionals who depend on that
all have rules about who they can take money from. Journalists, who we
are most akin to, have very strict rules. We ignore their example at our
peril.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 ImageMap Extension Errors and bugs

references:
<45F5A30E.6040602@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<45F5CC25.2070303@pobox.com>
	<45F5C28E.6050906@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<45F5CE79.7010709@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> You may want to look at this page. I do have tidylib installed and running.
>
> http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/Sun

There's an unclosed <div>.

Confirm that tidy is working correctly; check also the UI portions?

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>It is interesting the slow rise of "wiki" after Wikipedia has
>introduced the term to the public.
>
>What I find more amusing is comparing "wikipedia" and "porn". Looks
>like Wikipedia's caught up with porn in 2007! More interest in
>Wikipedia, or less interest in porn? You decide. :)
>
>
Observations:
The one place where "wiki" is a more popular search term than
"wikipedia" is Japan.

In the cities where Wikipedia is most popular only Helsinki has a rival
porn score.

The top 6 porn consuming cities are all in the United Kingdom.

The places where Jesus is more popular than Wikipedia are Spanish speaking

These are also the places where Jesus is more popular than porn.

Ec


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 3/13/07 10:08 AM, Rich Holton at richholton at gmail.com wrote:

> Can't we discuss these sort of ideas without resorting to quoting
> policy? Ok, yes, we can state what the current policy *is*, but
> sometimes it's worth considering what the policy *should be*, or what
> the actual practice should be. Or, why the current policy is the correct
> policy. But, in this kind of a conversation, just simply quoting policy
> is not particularly useful (IMHO).

That would require thinking outside of the box - something many of the
contributors to this List seem reluctant to do.

Marc Riddell


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why cutting'n'pasting from Wikipedia is not a good
 idea

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>I wonder sometimes if we ought to mark non-live and non-article pages
>>somehow visually, to flag up that they're not quite right. I'm not
>>sure how - a red bar at the top under the pagename?
>>
>>
>We do something similar when your try and edit an old version, it
>would make sense to do with same when viewing one. A simple change to
>[[MediaWiki:Revision-info]] making it bright red and putting a box
>round it would probably do the trick.
>
When we finally have stable versions perhaps they could be similarly
marked in green.

For now, simply highlighting the old version may not do the trick.  If
the vandalized page is the most recent it's the good version that will
be marked in red.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 13/03/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> While it's hysterically funny, and they deserved what they got for
> not reading what they copied, don't laugh too much.
> As Wikipedia has become successful, the percentage of people who
> understand _anything_ about Wikipedia is declining.
> _We need to educate them._ Somehow.

Every press call I get (typically one or two a day), I say "check the
history" - one day it will leak into the public consciousness!

> It would be interesting to have a poll of the people who used
> Wikipedia in the last week and see how many of them even noticed the
> the caption "edit this page" or the slogan "the free encyclopedia
> that anyone can edit." I'd bet that _the majority have not_.
> Impossible, you say? Heck, everyone knows about Wikipedia, Colbert
> jokes about it, nobody would get the joke. Well, not everybody
> watches Colbert.

We're top-10. Wikipedia is *mainstream*.

All we can do is hammer home the simple soundbites at every opportunity.

Every editor is a public relations spokesperson for Wikipedia. We're
top-10 presumably because we're useful to people. So tell the truth,
tell people things that will make it more useful to them.

> Google. People don't consciously think "it must be true or it
> wouldn't be a high-ranking Google result." The authority is enhanced
> by Wikipedia's professional-looking appearance.

This is something people have complained of over the past few years -
that we look too good for readers who aren't thinking.

> The percentage of Wikipedia users who say "That sounds odd. Let me
> check this History just to make sure this isn't a bit of vandalism
> that hasn't been fixed yet" is probably negligible. (The percentage
> who even know what the History tab does is probably minuscule).

You're quite correct. There was one minor press kerfuffle a few weeks
ago where some wag had sent several UK newspapers a link to a history
version of [[Cheryl Cole]] saying her husband was gay. It took a
moment on the first call to work out that was actually a history link
and they were the victims of a prankster.

"If you see something really surprising, you should click the
'history' tab at the top of the page. It might be rubbish someone just
added."

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Antwort:  template creation

body:
 <christoph.huesler at ...> writes:

>
> just create a page called Template:<template name>
>
> wikitech-l-bounces at ... schrieb am 13.03.2007 10:20:39:
>
> > I know how to create a page using wiki
> > Can you tell me how to create a template using wiki?
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at ...
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
Hi christoph huesler,
Thanks for your response.
When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter any
details(say schedule)
when i click abc, a different template should be created where user can enter
some other details(say news)
This should be done using mediawiki.
No as you said i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
and another page called Template:<abc>
Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch case 'raw'
or is it something else?


from_name: christoph.huesler at css.ch

body:
just create a page called Template:<template name>

wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org schrieb am 13.03.2007 10:20:39:

> I know how to create a page using wiki
> Can you tell me how to create a template using wiki?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Hsiang-Tai Chien

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
I think what Shi Zhao means is how to set up another language (like Chinese)
for the Planet Wikipedia feed and to make it as wide-open as Wikipedia.

Shi-Zhao has collected some Chinese blog links in his zh.wp account so zh
people can know who is blogging about Wikipedia in Chinese. He has done that
a year ago.

Hope this helps.

H.T.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf
> Of Bryan Tong Minh
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 2:23 AM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The community
>
> There is also a Commons group on flickr.
>
> Bryan
>
> > On 12/03/07, shi zhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > How set up another languages? how keep open (like wikipedia)?

___________________________________________________
 ??????? ? ????????????????
 http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/


subject: [Foundation-l] The community


from_name: John Vandenberg

body:
On 3/13/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That's a *great* idea IMO and quite easy not to make a COI.
> >
> > Can anyone else here see a problem with this idea?
>
> Possible PR issues? "Wikimedia, which ran a donation drive only X
> months ago, is already throwing money at Amazon..."

As an alternative to improving _any_ article as Steve initially
suggested, if the MTurk Experiences and HIT templates could be set up,
individual Wikipedians could pay for the HITs regarding a specific
article that they want to see improved.  That way the existing funds
are clearly not being used and the community can get a feel for how
well it works.

As an example, I would like some nice images added to the commons and
a digitised copy of some public domain sources added to wikisource,
and would be willing to pay for someone to do the leg work so that I
can use them to improve a wikipedia article.

--
John


subject: [WikiEN-l] Status of stable versions?

body:
On 13/03/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Where can I get an update on the status of the "Stable versions" feature?

> Technical work is ongoing. An update will be posted soon.

:-D We eagerly await news!

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] More on creating templates

body:
When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter any
details(say schedule)
when i click abc, a different template should be created where user can enter
some other details(say news)
This should be done using mediawiki.
I will create one page called Template:<xyz>
and another page called Template:<abc>
Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch case 'raw'
or is it something else?


from_name: shi zhao

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
Thanks Chien :)

This page is: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shizhao/blog

2007/3/13, Hsiang-Tai Chien <htchien1225 at yahoo.com.tw>:
> I think what Shi Zhao means is how to set up another language (like Chinese)
> for the Planet Wikipedia feed and to make it as wide-open as Wikipedia.
>
> Shi-Zhao has collected some Chinese blog links in his zh.wp account so zh
> people can know who is blogging about Wikipedia in Chinese. He has done that
> a year ago.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> H.T.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> > [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf
> > Of Bryan Tong Minh
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 2:23 AM
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The community
> >
> > There is also a Commons group on flickr.
> >
> > Bryan
> >
> > > On 12/03/07, shi zhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > How set up another languages? how keep open (like wikipedia)?
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________
>  ??????? ? ????????????????
>  http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
CNBlog: http://blog.cnblog.org/weblog.html
Social Brain: http://www.socialbrain.org/default.asp
cnbloggercon: http://www.cnbloggercon.org/

[[zh:User:Shizhao]]


subject: [Foundation-l] The community


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 13/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is something people have complained of over the past few years -
> that we look too good for readers who aren't thinking.

(...)

> You're quite correct. There was one minor press kerfuffle a few weeks
> ago where some wag had sent several UK newspapers a link to a history
> version of [[Cheryl Cole]] saying her husband was gay. It took a
> moment on the first call to work out that was actually a history link
> and they were the victims of a prankster.

I wonder sometimes if we ought to mark non-live and non-article pages
somehow visually, to flag up that they're not quite right. I'm not
sure how - a red bar at the top under the pagename?

This is an archived draft of the article {{PAGENAME}}. It may contain
inaccuracies or errors not present in the [[{{PAGENAME}}|current
version]].

{{PAGENAME}} is in the [[Wikipedia:User pages|personal workspace]] of
a [[Wikipedia:Editors|Wikipedia user]]. It is not an encyclopedia
article.

(You'd be *amazed* what people find through google... and what people
leave lying dormant in userspace...)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>A professional company that doesn't proofread their work?
>I could understand it if they had used Wikipedia info and missed some sneaky
>vandalism, but copying wholesale without checking it is inexcusable. They
>deserve what they got.
>
>It's true. People need to be educated. Just because it's a top search on
>Google or just because it looks nice doesn't mean something is true. People
>need to be more critical.
>
It's also remarkable that the National Post in reporting on the matter
called the town Sioux Falls instead of Sioux Lookout.  They should know
better.

Ec


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> I wonder sometimes if we ought to mark non-live and non-article pages
> somehow visually, to flag up that they're not quite right. I'm not
> sure how - a red bar at the top under the pagename?

We do something similar when your try and edit an old version, it
would make sense to do with same when viewing one. A simple change to
[[MediaWiki:Revision-info]] making it bright red and putting a box
round it would probably do the trick.


from_name: phpuser

subject: [Wikitech-l] template creation

body:
Hi christoph huesler,
Thanks for your response.
When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter any
details(say schedule)
when i click abc, a different template should be created where user can enter
some other details(say news)
This should be done using mediawiki.
No as you said i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
and another page called Template:<abc>
Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch case 'raw'
or is it something else?


from_name: Cary Bass

subject:
[Commons-l] Please do not delete images used on [[Wikimedialogo
	mosaic]]

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: commons-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:commons-l-
> bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pedro Sanchez
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:28 AM
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Please do not delete images used on
> [[Wikimedialogo mosaic]]
>
> On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/13/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I fail to see any reason to not take some minutes to find a similar
> > image to
> > > > replace it before the deletion.
> > >
> > > AS pretty as mosaic is, it's not a top priority. That's why.
> >
> > If deleting images were so easy, we would let bots deal with it. You
> > (meaning you human commons admins) are supposed to have a brain and use
> it.
> > Of course it is easier to click the delete button without bothering
> > replacing it.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Guillaume Paumier
> > [[m:User:guillom]]
> > http://www.wikimedia.org
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commons-l mailing list
> > Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> >
> >
>
> If it's a copyvio, it should be deleted on sight, it being on the
> mosaic is no excuse for waiting (I was commenting on above's comment
> above copyvios).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.10/720 - Release Date: 3/12/2007
> 7:19 PM

Are these all copyvios?  Or something less severe, like No Source, or
Replaced.

It's fairly easy to determine if anything is being used on Commons without
even going into checkusage.  The pages they're being used on are listed
right on the image page.

Cary


subject: [Wikitech-l] More on creating templates

body:
When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter any
details(say schedule)
when i click abc, a different template should be created where user can enter
some other details(say news)
This should be done using mediawiki.
i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
and another page called Template:<abc>
Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch case 'raw'
or is it something else?


body:
Rich Holton wrote:

>Jeff Raymond wrote:
>
>
>>Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
>>>directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
>>>It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
>>>on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If
>>>Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone
>>>commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a
>>>purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the
>>>statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections
>>>(date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had
>>>sexual relations with that woman").
>>>
>>>
>>Because WP:V requires that challenged statements have sources.  You
>>can't replace one unsourced statement with anohter like that, nor would
>>it be acceptable to replace a sourced statement with an unsourced one.
>>
>>
>Can't we discuss these sort of ideas without resorting to quoting
>policy? Ok, yes, we can state what the current policy *is*, but
>sometimes it's worth considering what the policy *should be*, or what
>the actual practice should be. Or, why the current policy is the correct
>policy. But, in this kind of a conversation, just simply quoting policy
>is not particularly useful (IMHO).
>
An excellent suggestion!

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

body:
On 13/03/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't think it helps to assume that anyone who believes that
> > corporate donation would bias Wikipedia's coverage of that corporation
> > also believes that "Wikipedia is in on the take". Bias works more
> > subtly than that. After all, it is a serious problem now despite our
> > thousands of well-intentioned editors.
>
> We do, indeed, have to be careful that we do not cover those who like
> Wikipedia better than those who don't like it, including especially
> those cases where the like includes assistance.

Quite. I imagine a large corporate donation would be well publicised
within Wikipedia. The article for that corporate donor will inevitably
be seen by many editors and will likely be much improved. Is this a
situation we want?

Take another scenario. There's a Criticism section in an article about
a company. For one of the criticism, only a single reference in the
mainstream press can be found (say to the Globe and Mail). Users
discuss whether such a criticism should be included since no secondary
verification can be done. Are the editors more likely to omit that
criticism if they think of the company favourably? [I'm not asking
whether the inclusion of that criticism is right or not, I'm simply
demonstrating the kind of bias that may start creeping in.]

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikipedia%2C+wiki%2C+open+source%2C++free+software%2C+linux+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
>
> Draw your own conclusions. Don't bother attempting comparisons to
> Britannica - they don't even rate a mention.

I really don't think there are any conclusions to draw. "wiki" is
obviously tied to wikipedia so of course they have risen slightly
(well, that, and the fact that small wikis are becoming way popular).
The other three, "open source", "free software" and "linux" are
completely 100% unrelated to wikipedia. We all make a deep connection
between wikipedia and those three, but the general public has NO idea
that we are an off-shoot of the open source movement.

I mean, if you are the guy looking up [[Boobs]] or [[Some strange
anime]] (which would be about 75% of our audience), you're not gonna
care about GFDL or free software or anything similar. Our audience
just doesn't make that connection.

--Oskar


from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

body:
Brion, Sorry, I tried to ask for the german dump. The last one was from
2007 02 06.

Jochen

Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Jochen Magnus wrote:
>>> I am so sorry, but my inevitable question after five weeks without fresh
>>> dumps goes: When can we expect recent dumps?
>
> The last one was two weeks ago. Next one will start in a couple days.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)


subject: [WikiEN-l] We're unstoppable!

body:
Rob Enderle has come out against Wikipedia too. w00t! With adversaries
like these ...

http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/must-read/56224.html

- d.


from_name: Chris Marmo

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC Extension - does this exist?

body:
I'm currently searching for an extension which allows the TOC to be
extracted from the page and used elsewhere in the skin (for example,
in a sidebar - outside the confines of the article itself). It seems
to be a common request yet I haven't been able to find any solutions.

If this extension does not exist then I will be making one. It's my
first time delving in to Mediawiki so I would appreciate any guidance
on how to go about doing this.

I've found this post which seems to be an overview of what I need to
do - can anyone expand on this?

http://article.gmane.org/
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/17938/

Best Regards,
Chris


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 3/11/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > "9. We're not a dictatorship. " - I dispute this. Jimbo is quite
> > clearly, explictly, unambiguously the ultimate arch-dictator of
> > Wikipedia. He has never renounced this right, and occasionally
> > exercises it. Now, fortunately, some dictators are benevolent... :)
>
> Jimmy has a special community role in the _English_ Wikipedia, which
> is however not legally anchored in any way. The only legally anchored
> authority is that of the Board of Trustees and anyone it chooses to
> delegate legal powers to. Of course, it would be unwise to exercise
> that authority unless absolutely necessary.
>
> There is definitely some lingering confusion and some inconsistency
> about this, partially due to Jimmy's past double role as Chair and
> President of the Wikimedia Foundation (he is neither today). But
> that's the present situation.

Jimbo's role is ambiguous, but it seems pretty clear that for
day-to-day purposes, he can ignore consensus-gathering, which no one
else on the project can do (without some kind of explicit Foundation
mandate, like devs/sysadmins in software/administration matters or
Danny in office matters).  If he does something As Jimbo, then no one
else can undo it without getting him to agree, de facto, unless they
want to be blocked or desysopped.  I think this was made pretty clear
by the pedophilia userbox thing, where people who reversed what he did
were summarily desysopped, and it took a day or two of arguing with
him to get him to undo a block that seemed to pretty clearly not have
consensus (as I recall the incident).

So it's disingenuous to say that Jimbo is not a dictator on the
English Wikipedia.  It's not really accurate to call him a benevolent
dictator, because I think you're right that if the community really
wanted him to become an ordinary sysop or less he would probably
become one, but I think it's closer to the truth than saying he's not
a dictator at all.


from_name: Sharon, Lois Bram

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requesting assistance re user:Bastique

body:
Hello,

I need to request assistance with an issue I am having with an administrator
who, for whatever reason, feels the need to be abusive and problematic
towards me. This is the first time I'm encountering something like this, the
rest of the time people have been extremely helpful, especially when I
didn't know how to fix something on the page for pixar's Cars film and they
helped troubleshoot a problem I saw with one of the images going over text.

What is going on is at the [[National Council of La Raza]] page. I saw that
there was an editing dispute there, editors disagreeing over the content of
the page and the nature of the group. I've been reading the sources supplied
by the various sides and it seems the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

However, user:Bastique saw fit to revert to a version he preferred, and then
semiprotected the page. This seems to be at odds with the protection policy
and admin policies which state that admin powers should not be used to win a
content dispute.

I reverted the page, and left a note on the talk page, the admins
noticeboard, and then Bastique's page as a friendly reminder of what policy
states:

Page history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Council_of_La_Raza&action=history
Edit on talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ANational_Council_of_La_Raza&diff=114801400&oldid=114394497
Edit made to Bastique:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ABastique&diff=114803985&oldid=114197204

Bastique's response was to threaten me by saying "Don't revert me again": he
also reverted the page back and fully protected it this time, to "win" his
argument by preventing me from doing so. (see page history above).

He has since continued to attack me, violating WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. He
directly called me a liar, and has been lying about the fact that he
threatened me, as well as accusing me of "gaming the system" which I am not
doing, and it seems obvious despite his claims to the contrary that he has
some stake in the content of the page, otherwise he would not have
reverted/locked it TWICE nor would he be spending this much time attacking
me for pointing out that his doing so is against policy.

It has gotten so bad that I had to create a new section regarding this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&diff=114838915&oldid=114838462This
section fully explains my problem as well as containing the additional
difference links.

I do not know what else to do, this is scary to be treated in this manner by
an administrator, so I am posting here in hopes that someone can help.

Please, if anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.
User: One Elephant Went Out to Play...


body:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > "If you see something really surprising, you should click the
> > 'history' tab at the top of the page. It might be rubbish someone just
> > added."

> Wouldn't it be great if text that had just been added turned up red
> with a squiggly line underneath it instead? Instead of trying to train
> the entire universe, why not just fix the software?

Great idea, go write it! :-D

- d.


body:
on 3/13/07 10:20 AM, Marc Riddell at michaeldavid86 at comcast.net wrote:

>
> That would require thinking outside of the box - something many of the
> contributors to this List seem reluctant to do.
>

Folks,

This was bullshit statement for me to make. It was not worthy of you or me.

I apologize.

Marc


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
Just wanted to point out that this currently the 30th most popular
item on reddit.com. (!)

Steve


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Erik Moeller [mailto:erik at wikimedia.org]
>Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 07:28 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a primary source
>
>It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
>directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
>It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
>on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If
>Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone
>commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a
>purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the
>statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections
>(date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had
>sexual relations with that woman").
>
>I wouldn't be surprised if such interactions are even common among
>traditional encyclopedias, and corrections are simply quietly
>incorporated (they don't have talk pages). The main problem with us
>seems to be making the source "reliable", but there seem reasonable
>ways to do so (OTRS, "update this website please", call a volunteer,
>...). No, just like any credentials verification, WMF shouldn't be
>involved directly. But while I generally fully support the need for
>good sourcing in any article, I often find it absurd how people who
>point out simple corrections are treated.
>--
>Peace & Love,
>Erik

We already do that for minor personal details. Attributed statements such as "I am not a crook" would seem Ok.

Fred


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks (was: Re: Almeda University paying
	for positive Wikipedia edits)

body:
On 3/13/07, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> As an alternative to improving _any_ article as Steve initially
> suggested, if the MTurk Experiences and HIT templates could be set up,
> individual Wikipedians could pay for the HITs regarding a specific
> article that they want to see improved.  That way the existing funds
> are clearly not being used and the community can get a feel for how
> well it works.
>
> As an example, I would like some nice images added to the commons and
> a digitised copy of some public domain sources added to wikisource,
> and would be willing to pay for someone to do the leg work so that I
> can use them to improve a wikipedia article.

Yes, I really haven't thought far of the possible applications to
Wikipedia. In general tasks should be exceptionally straightforward,
and require no knowledge of Wikipedia. They also need to be fairly
short (or expensive), and be easy to judge good/bad. There can be many
such projects running simulatenously, effectively independent of each
other.

I think this would be ok under existing policies. If the bounty board
is still valid, then this is ok.

Steve